The Green Apprentice: First 90 Days Training Plan

Why this matters

A green apprentice is your cheapest path to a great tech and your easiest one to ruin. Throw them on a truck with no plan and they learn bad habits, get bored, feel useless, and quit inside a season. Give them a real 90-day ramp and you build a loyal, capable hand who owes their trade to you. The first three months set the ceiling on everything that follows. This is the plan.

Before day one: set them up to succeed

Decide who owns them. An apprentice with no clear mentor learns nothing and bothers everyone. Assign one steady senior tech as their primary trainer, not "whoever has room today."

Have the basics ready on the first morning: tools or a tool list, work clothes or uniform expectations, where to be and when, and a short written list of what the first weeks will look like. Showing up to chaos on day one tells them you are not serious.

Days 1 to 14: safety, respect, and the floor

The goal of week one and two is not to make them productive. It is to make them safe and to teach the non-negotiables.

1. Drill safety first. Lockout and tagout where it applies, ladder safety, PPE, what is dangerous and why. They should fear the right things before they touch anything live.
2. Teach customer conduct. How to greet a homeowner, drop cloths, wiping feet, watching language, leaving the space clean. This is a skill and you teach it explicitly, not by hoping.
3. Have them shadow and carry. They watch the senior tech, hand tools, learn names of parts, clean up. Carrying and watching is real learning, not busywork.
4. Name the tools. A tech who does not know what a part is called cannot ask for it or read a manual. Make them learn the vocabulary fast.

Days 15 to 45: hands on, supervised

Now they start doing, with the senior tech watching every time.

1. Assign simple, repeatable tasks. The basic, lower-risk parts of the job they can do under supervision. Let them own a small piece end to end.
2. Make them explain back. After a job, have them tell you what was wrong and why the fix worked. If they cannot explain it, they did not learn it, they just copied motions.
3. Correct in private, praise in public. Never dress them down in front of a customer. Fix the error quietly, then let them try again immediately so the correction sticks.
4. Track what they have touched. Keep a simple running list of skills attempted and skills solid. This is the spine of the whole ramp.

Days 46 to 90: stretch and start solo on the basics

The apprentice should be carrying real weight now and beginning to work the simplest jobs with light oversight.

1. Increase difficulty deliberately. Add one new skill at a time. Master, then stretch. Do not dump ten new things at once.
2. Let them solo the easy stuff where it is safe and legal, with a senior tech reachable by phone. The first independent job is a confidence milestone; choose it to be a win.
3. Hold a real check-in. Sit down, review the skills list, tell them honestly where they are strong and where they need work. They want to know they are progressing.
4. Give them a path. Show them what the next 6 to 12 months look like and what mastering it earns them. Apprentices stay when they can see where this goes.

What to measure at the 90-day mark

You are not grading speed. You are checking foundation. By day 90 a good apprentice should:

• Work safely without being reminded.
• Treat customers and their homes right by reflex.
• Complete the basic jobs of your trade with light supervision.
• Ask good questions instead of bluffing.
• Show up on time, every day, without drama.

If they are there, you have a keeper. Tell them so, and keep the runway in front of them.

Common mistakes that lose a good apprentice

• No mentor, just sink-or-swim. They drown quietly and leave.
• All grunt work, no teaching. They feel like a mule, not a future tech.
• Public humiliation when they err. Kills confidence and trust permanently.
• No visible progression. Smart, hungry people leave when the path is invisible.

References

• See related: Ride-Along Training: How to Teach in the Field
• See related: Build a Skills Matrix: Who Can Do What
• OSHA, general industry training and PPE requirements
• U.S. Department of Labor, registered apprenticeship framework
• Trade-standard practice for apprentice development