You mean an apprenticeship?
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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Well it sounds less spooky when you put it that way.
The only time I’ve heard the term “shadow” was in a 1-2 day “apprenticeship”, but it was more of a showcase of the work. This was ~3 years ago
I think there's a difference - "shadowing" a person is a short-term thing (couple days to a week? Maybe more?) where you want to get a taste of the trade, vs. an "apprenticeship" where it's treated more like a part-time job with responsibilities.
You need to clarify if you want to 'shadow' an electrician or get into an apprenticeship as an electrician.
You wouldn't want any crossed wires would you?
lol i got you there. Which one pays?
Normally Apprentices get paid, it's a lot lower than NMW, plus I don't know what the current rates are.
If you're talking about apprenticeship, it's still very much a thing in the trades. I don't work in the trades, so I don't really know what the process is like these days, and it likely varies a lot place-to-place, but if you're thinking it works by just finding an electrician and saying "hey, can teach me to do stuff with wires?" Then following them around learning and doing grunt-work for them for a while, I'm pretty sure that's just not how it works and there's going to be at least some classroom training involved these days.
In theory, internships are supposed to fill a similar role, though of course a whole lot of internships are kind of bullshit.
To me, a "job-shadow" is just kind of a "come in and watch for maybe a day or two to see what the job is like" kind of situation, not really a way to actually teach you to do the job.
That's something that actually happens a lot in my job (911 dispatch) at least at the agency I work for.
Part of the hiring process is for potential new hires to come in to sit with us for a couple hours, listen to us answering and dispatching calls, ask us some questions, and just kind of get a feel for what the job is like. For us this happens after an initial interview and aptitude test, and potentially before a second round of interviews depending on how many applicants we get.
We also get some other people coming in to sit with us from other public safety type jobs so that they can see how things work on our end. EMT students, firefighters, police academy students, I had someone from I think our Department of Health & Human Services sit with me one time, etc.
And trainees from our current class sometimes sit with us to see how what they're learning in the classroom applies to actually doing the job.
And then once they're out of the classroom, for a while they're out on the floor doing the job with a trainer sitting with them, listening to them handling calls and helping them as needed.
And a lot of jobs have something kind of similar to that last part where with varying degrees of formality, where you have someone assigned to train you and get you up to speed. I used to work in a warehouse, and for the first few weeks I was basically following around another warehouse employee as he taught me how to do everything.
[off topic?]
The only time I heard the phrase 'shadow' used that way was on the show 'Silo' based on the book 'Wool.' Hugh Howey author
Well, I worked as an apprentice for a bit doing commercial work. It's pretty easy to hit up the local union to work as a wireman to get into the apprenticeship program. You'd be working full time with good benefits while getting all your classes in. Not sure how involved you'd be willing to get to "try out" electrician work. You might call one of the local electricians around to see if they'd be willing to let you job shadow. Some master electricians run off to run their own business once they get their hours and pass the test, so who knows what they'd be willing to consider, although I imagine a majority probably wouldn't be too comfortable with the liability risk.
Either way, you could probably call the local union to see what they have for those curious, might let you sit in on a class or something, I dunno. I can answer some questions as well if you'd like.