Pros
If you can do good quality work at a reasonable pace it’s fairly straightforward to get regular pay rises at Captec. Each production technician has skills points on a matrix, and the more jobs you learn, the more skills points you get. All technicians without previous experience start out on minimum wage, but as you get more skills points your pay goes up. Some of the more experienced technicians are on £20K+. As well as on the job training, you get to go to college on day release if you want, paid for by the company. I’ve already got Btec level 3 electronic engineering and just started HNC. There are about 30 technicians at the moment. Some have been at Captec for 5 years or more, but some have moved on from production into other areas of the company, like customer repairs, sales and engineering, so there are good promotion prospects either within the production team or other areas of the company. The Captec building is really impressive – It’s modern and very clean and tidy. There are pool and bar football tables to play at break times or you can go for a walk to the local shops at lunch time if you want.
Cons
It’s a really busy work environment, and jobs need to be completed to deadlines to meet customer delivery dates, so if you like a laid back, chatty kind of workplace then it’s definitely not for you. Also there are a lot of hand skills required such as wiring up computers very neatly, and some people find they just can’t reach the skill level to meet the quality standards needed, even after training, so they don’t make it through their trial period and have to leave.