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My name is Michael Smith – I’m now in the second year
of my Automotive Mechanical Cert III course.
I found school to be a little bit hard.
I wasn’t the best at school
but I was awesome at work.
I loved working but I didn’t particularly love being at school.
My parents had always been taking their car to Eagles
and when it came to do work experience,
I’ve always been loving cars so I thought why not?
Better to go somewhere where I know.
We do a lot of regos, a lot of servicing.
Um, pulled out... pulled a couple of motors out.
Transmissions, clutches.
You name it, we do it, basically.
Dan, actually, is one of the best bosses.
When I actually left school, he was actually really understanding
because I needed to have surgery on my hand.
And through that I had a month off,
even though I’d just got out of school.
My first job was really...he wanted to find out what I could do.
So he just set me up with this car
and got me to strip the entire interior,
making sure everything was clean.
And then put it all back together.
So it took probably... maybe six weeks.
Yeah, there wasn’t much pressure.
It was pretty easygoing
but you still wanted to get it done really quickly
just to impress him.
The difference between
working at a private and working at a dealership –
it is completely different.
When you work at a dealership,
you’re really only working on one sort...sort of one type of car.
Your bosses don’t really let you do much,
like, um...pulling out motors, anything like that.
They don’t let you do...and touch.
But when I came here into a private one,
I found there was a wide range,
from Ford, Holden, Volvo – anything that sort of came in here.
You need to be able to ask a lot of questions.
Otherwise, half your TAFE
and half your learning at work just...you won’t get all of it.
You have to be a little bit annoying to get where you want to go, really.
You really have to be enthused about coming to work
and working on what you love.
If you want to get a job, get a job in what you want.
Go into something that you have a passion for.
I have the passion for cars, and...look where it’s brought me.