I wouldn't doubt that he prefers the CES floor over AVS floor. Once you've seen the "stars" of that particular industry once, you have no desire to ever get back into the lines with the old geezers that are hoping to see something unexpected.

I guess it's a taste thing? But, I for one am not impressed by some obese, tattoed, nose ringed, spike haired, disease ridden thing.

Dressing tastefully sexy is one thing. But these AVS guys and gals haven't a clue about taste.

I guess you have met QQQ.

Still depends on the person's strong points. I am as much of a problem solver as my husband is. I'm the one always buying tools and suggesting to try a different way to modify applications for them.

You never have too many tools.

"You never have too many tools."

That's exactly what my husband always says. This man has a tool for *everything*. His dad owned a tool and die shop for many years, so you can just imagine what he has in the garage. I call him "Mr. Workbench." But what really drives me crazy is that he hardly ever uses the stuff, and we often end up calling "professionals" to fix things around the house .

Dawn

For what it's worth: We've trained something like 500 installers this year and I think there were four females in total. I've never met a company owner who wouldn't at least interview a female candidate, and all the ones I know well would do what ever they could to hire a woman. There just aren't enough in the business. So how do we attract women to the industry? We start 'em young.

In June I was at the SkillsUSA competition in Kansas City. A primarly trades based event (plumbers, carpenters, electricians, etc.), the nearly 5000 students (high school and college) seemed evenly split, female to male. The electricians area (where we were running part of the competition) had a much smaller percentage of females, but the ones that were there were very enthusiastic. If we - as an industry - were to help teach our business to youngsters then we may see a shift in the percentages. I've got a four volume Electronics Systems Technician textbook series from Pearson/Prentice Hall sitting on my desk right now. It is used by some university and trade schools to teach our trade (or parts of it, at least) as part of a degree program. What would happen if we as individuals were to sponser a local high school and buy the books for a class? Start building interest through classes, follow it up with career day visits and then hire graduates who went through the program.
Of course, it may all be for nothing - one of the women that I hired as an installer left after about a year to join the IBEW. They are so hard up for women that they'll pay them insane amounts of money and - unlike their male counterparts - women can be pretty much guarenteed 40 hours + every week. How do we compete with that?

If any women are interested in joing our industry, please stop in at your local Best Buy, talk to the manager and tell them I sent you. We'll happily train you and put you to work - as long as you're willing to do the job.
(had to put in my little plug there...)

Jeff Wagner

Why does the IBEW care that much about women in their force? Or at least why do they care more than anyone else would care? I'm not trying to be coy or cute, I just don't get why they are that aggressive about recruiting - why more so than any other similar trade org?

No. She was, and is not interested. She likes what we have in the home now, as it works properly, but everytime the sat glitches and needs to be reset, she complains. It's kindof like a flat tire. If I have one, I change the tire, or put air in it, and get it patched, but if she has a flat the world stops spinning, and eveyone must drop what they are doing to assist. She considers that a guy thing, and I need to take care of that!. I know there are mechanics out there who are women, and very capable, but most ouside people would assume working on cars to be the guys job. Where you start getting women interested is in architechtual speakers, central vac, and lighting. These things seem to be higher my wifes priority list anyway...

I spent what I alotted myself. I had a budget, and fortuneatley our vendors were quite generous on my equipment. I am always, adding, changing, and trying out new stuff as it helps me when designing customers homes.

We have a new salesperson at our place and she is doing very well. Like a former post stated she concentrates on less "buzz" words, and more of the function. I welcome women in our industry, and trully wish more would be involved. I find the differing opinions from men to women fascinating, and love to learn both sides of a story.

This message was edited by Sc0tty on 08/22/05 10:58 ET.

FP Crazy -
All of the other trades are interested in getting women on board, the electrical unions are just the only ones I run into. The promises made to the this particular female about jobs and constant work are far beyond what they'd ever tell a male. Unions in particular have a more pressing need for females: Since they do large goverment projects they have a much easier time getting the contract if they can show a large minority presence. For that matter, an African American gentleman who worked for me got wooed away by the longshoremen for much the same reason. Believe me when i tell you he had no usable skills for that gig - he'd been a low volt guy for many years.

Jeff

Though out of the AV biz at this time, in the past I had worked for three different AV retailers over nearly 20 years in sales, training, install, operations and store managemet. I always made it a point to hire females, especially for sales positions, as they were generally always my top two or three salespeole on the floor, usually lower maintainence than some of my "prima donna" salesmen (you know who you are!) and almost always on time.
However, for every female applicant I would get 50+ male applicants for a sales position. I can only recall one or two applicants for install positions, both of which were hired and did fairly well. Is this-the dearth od applicants- indicative of a bias in our culture against women in technical jobs (quasi-technical for sales) or an indicator that most (not all-this is a generalzation) women don't give a fig for this type of employment. A similar bias in the opposite direction can be seen in the ratio of men to women in elementary scholl teachers. Both ratios are changing but it appears to me that some occupations will be more biased toward one gender or another for many years.
As an sidebar, would this discussion even be taking place 60 years ago (pre WWII) if it were about some other, similarly biased occupation like...aircraft assembler?
Just my .02 cents.