At our company we historically have tried to hire people with existing electronics experience and skills. This typically includes soldering qualifications to various levels. For technicians positions, vs engineering positions, we have leaned heavily towards people with past military experience. Military schools taught what was needed, basic electricity and electronics, tube based electronics, component level troubleshooting, soldering skills, etc. Some civilian training programs also covered these tasks / skills, but typically the majority of our work force has been past mil.
However today fewer and fewer military schools teach these things. The military has gone more to LRUs and less to local level component level maintenance.
We are finding it difficult to acquire the personnel with the requisite technical skill. Dare I say "loss of skill set in the US"?
So recently we have started to hire inexperienced, but promising, individuals and training them ourselves. For example we hired a kid right out of highschool, his only electronics background was two semesters of high school level electronics, but he interviewed quite well. Now, 2 years later, he is one of our more promising techs.
Yes, there are certain existing courses, both online and on-site, that can be done. However these just tend to build the most basic skills. We then have to take that basic knowledge and build it into the skill set we need. There are real problems with this though. We have to develop training programs ourselves, put together training facilities, and invest significant corporate revenue towards this effort.
One of our engineers has built a small radar system in the lab just for training purposes. Full on, pulse-Doppler, conical scan, auto tracking radar with servo control loops, low power transmitter (it is in a classroom, after all, can't fry the techs just as we get them partially trained), receiver, indicators, processors, etc. We can put a small class of 4 to 8 techs in the room a couple times a week for a couple hours per day between their normal duties, teach theory, inject failures, and practice troubleshooting and repair. I am in the process of building up a small scale phased array (in this case AESA) radar for the same purposes.
(edit) Let me be clear, we prefer to higher qualified and experienced personnel, we just find that harder and harder to do. For example we currently have multiple openings for entry, mid, and experienced electronics techs, and several of those positions have been open for months on end. And we pay fairly well, on WD or more, the pay is very good when you consider the local cost of living. Of course, part of our issue might be not only finding the correctly skilled people, but also people with the right skill set willing to move to the desert.
T!