How long would it take to train someone to do your job?

About 20 years….

I’d say 2 months for my last job. For my current position as a college instructor, I don’t think every person can do it. Certain things can’t be taught…but it’d probably take 2 months, as well.

About 3 months to work it and on going study. It takes many years to master it.

If they have affinity (and a little experience) with cabinet making I would say, a few weeks/two months.
But like @judochop stated, it too would take longer to master it (I can say that without doubt because I am not a master myself yet).

For my last job you could just walk in off the street and probably do a better job than I was doing. For the job I’m doing now, probably 5 to 10 years to a life time.

One week to cover the duties; twenty years to get the artistry and attitude just right ;-)

My current job working in a warehouse as an equipment operator and shipper, one that I took because I can’t find anything related to my normal field since my last place of employment closed, it will take about 3 months for the girl to train me. As far as my normal career field as a maintenence tech I would say this would vary depending upon the equipment that the plant contains. However the skill level required to work on the equipment, well after 16 years of doing this I’m still learning (when I eventually get back to it).

Sadly the warehouse job that I’m currently working at actually pays better than many of the maintenance positions out there that require some type of secondary schooling and alot of experience.

To do it at all about four weeks. To do it well at least a year.

My job requires quite a bit of knowledge before beginning to work. If someone fresh off the street with no nursing education or medical training were to come, it would take a few years to get them all the knowledge they need.

If a new graduate nurse came to my unit, I could train them the specifics of my job within 6–12 weeks, depending on how quickly they got the hang of it.

An experienced nurse could come to my unit and I could train them the specifics within 2–6 weeks depending on their prior experience.

To get the basics and common occurrences of CNC machining, about 2–3 months, maybe less if the production schedule is slow enough for me to spend a little more time training. That would train them well enough to limp along if I’m out for a couple of days.
At my last job, I managed to reach a bright guy with the right aptitudes half of what I know in five months, so the company didn’t struggle too much when I left, but they had issues.

To get near my level, a bright person could manage it in a couple of years, but even I am still learning after six years. Programming, precision measurement, setup, making fixtures, learning the difference in sound between running a tool show enough to burn up and fast enough to shatter and finding the middle ground… that cannot really be taught except by experience.

Ooh, good question!

I’m currently teaching one of my 17yr old students how to teach a complete beginner on the harp. It’s fascinating, and she’s doing really well! She’s been playing harp herself for about 8 or 9 years, getting to about grade 5 (out of 8).

She’s one of these youngsters who’s doing a hundred different activities, and is good at them all, and could be excellent at any one of them if only she stopped the other 99…. A good all-rounder. It was the fact that she wasn’t really moving forward in her own playing that made me come up with the idea of teaching her to teach.

It gives her a new approach to the harp, makes her think much more about it, ultimately making her a better player herself, and she’s learning great communication skills. I sit in on the lessons she teaches, and we discuss them together afterwards, preparing for the next lesson. She’s given 14 lessons to her pupil now, and if for any reason I couldn’t make one, I feel that she would do a good job of it regardless. (I rarely say anything during the lessons, just take notes for discussion afterwards.)

First, the person would have to have a thorough grounding in English, grammar, and general culture and knowledge.

Then, it would take probably a couple of months to teach them to edit.

It would take years to reach an equivalent level of experience.

OOOooo we just went through that and had to fire a guy because he was with us for a year and not catching on. Our best estimate is that it will take about two years.

It’s funny, considering the knowledge, software, hardware, chemical, leadership, and travel requirements you’d think that we would be paid better.

Anybody could do the job I’m doing now, no training needed. Well, maybe a few suggestions if they have trouble at first. Some people do have a problem getting used to it. I’m retired.

If everything in my job goes right, anyone could learn it in 2 days.
The trick is that sometimes things go very, very wrong. That training has taken me 34 years, and every day I learn something new.

The one I’ve got now usually takes about a month, from first instructions to effective, independent operation.
We can get a new hire to basic proficiency in about an hour or two, but different shifts have different tasks to assimilate and streamline, and the trainee must be paired with an established associate for training – which may take some time to arrange. Since the position is largely unsupervised, a lot of the training is of the course-correction variety and so may take a day or two to be implemented. Some skills, like gauging product demand, are not taught but learned through trial and error, a process requiring some weeks.

Five years. Four years of undergraduate training plus one year of graduate work and teaching modules. That’s basically the minimum requirement for my job.

10 – 15 years.

If they’re already a seasoned graphic designer, fluent in foundational design (composition, typography, color, etc.), industry-standard software (adobe csx, html, css, etc.), digital photography, copywriting, basic audio & video editing, as well as experience in event design and planning, ad buying, social media, marketing, and budgeting…. about three months for my last job.

If not… years.

@mattbrowne I had to give you a GA. Apparently there aren’t many people here that appreciate jobs that take training and experience. I notice the high numbers go to jobs that can be learned in a couple hours. I think it’s the American need for instant gratification.

@Ron_C Do you really think the GA’s are being delivered on the time-to-learn-the-job part of the answer, rather than the delivery and detail of the answer? Note, @mattbrowne‘s answer is perfectly valid, I’m not dissing it. Every answer that answers the question is a good answer.

@harple It seems that way. Maybe people with easy to learn jobs have more time to make a snappy description?

Incidentally, I meant no disrespect or even criticism. It was just an opinion and observation.

* speechless *

Yes, every number can be different depending on what people do. In my case it took me five years to understand computer science, five years to properly apply it, and five years how to manage people and teams. There are jobs that are far more difficult, for example being capable of running a country, and jobs that are less difficult such as delivering pizzas.

But I agree with @Ron_C that many people underestimate the time that is needed to become good at a particular job. That people need to fail several times to succeed. There’s a saying that you need at least 10000 hours of practice to become a master of something, for example when playing the violine.

The concept of ‘training on the job’ does have value but it is no substitute for proper training and years of experience. The ‘couple of hours’ approach is absurd for most jobs. Including pizza delivery men and women.

Check this out, @harple, and you will find a reference to the “10,000-Hour Rule”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

@mattbrowne thank you… as a professional musician what you say rings very true. In no part was I disagreeing with that above, nor with the underestimation of time needed to become good at a particular job. I was purely responding to the premise that people who had answered with a shorter training time were being given more GA’s than the ones that had a longer training time based on the length of the training required alone.

Thank you for the link though, very interesting.

Hey, Matt, you forgot to add Science Fiction writer to your list. How many hours did that take, Including the reading and research necessary to write a proper book?

@Ron_C I don’t get your point, especially when you don’t know what people do. I mentioned that my current job takes five years to train for, but that job is itself part of the training for a job that it typically takes ten years to train for, which is again a job that is part of the training for a further job, and so on.

Well, it took me 10 years from 1998 to 2007, but I actually never calculated the total number of hours. I’ll give it a try here. I always held a full-time job as a computer scientist, so I had to use evenings, nights, weekends etc. Sometimes there were weeks without any progress.

1) Advanced English grammar, writing style, building self-editing skills etc. about 100 hours
2) Storytelling, plot development, suspense, maintaining consistency etc. again about 100 hours
3) Scientific research such as space travel, engineering, human psychology about 200 hours
4) Actual writing, rewriting, self-editing, evaluating and using peer reviews about 600 hours
5) Final phase before publishing like handling editor’s proposed changes about 200 hours

So that’s about 1200 hours in 10 years, which also shows I have not reached the master level, which wasn’t my intention anyway and which would normally require full-time writing. People like Ken Follett need 1–2 years to write and complete novels like Pillars of the Earth. But he became a master before that. He wrote many less well-known novels before that spending countless hours.