What Skills Do You Need To Work With Metal?

With so many metal fabrication jobs Yorkshire-wide, now is the perfect time to consider a career in metalwork. But what are the skills that you need to thrive in this fascinating, rewarding and growing industry? These are some of the most important skills and attributes you must develop for success:

Focus and dexterity

Whether working with a MIG, drill press, hand tools… or a tape measure, you’ll need to have a strong degree of focus and excellent manual dexterity. Steel fabrication is complex and technical and it requires a high degree of detail and concentration to provide the exacting results that clients need. You’ll also need to be able to read technical plans, drawings and specifications and understand detailed briefs. Fabricators love a challenge!

Mechanical skills

Fabricators work with complex machinery and use highly exacting techniques to work with steel and other metal materials and composites. You’ll learn these mechanical skills as you train and refine your knowledge throughout your career, constantly learning new approaches, tools and techniques to provide the best result.

Physical strength

Working with steel requires a lot of physical strength as you’ll be moving your materials around and your tools as well. This is a great industry for people who love a good physical challenge and who enjoy moving and being active as they work.

Stamina

Equally, you’ll need a high degree of stamina to complete big projects and challenging briefs within short timescales. This job can be demanding, but strong teams have a great deal of motivation, morale and enjoyment working together and job satisfaction is usually very high.

Teamwork

Working in a team will set you up for a strong career in this interesting field, as fabricators often work within teams and need to have strong soft skills alongside their technical skills.

Communication

Steel fabricators need to be great communicators as they work with a variety of colleagues and sometimes clients directly. You will need to have strong written and verbal communication skills as well as great listening skills to really understand what is required and to communicate your own ideas, issues and updates.

Vision and creativity

Some steel fabrication jobs are particularly complex, so if you have vision and creativity, this will help you to overcome issues and to envisage the final result, especially if you are working on a project that requires problem-solving.

The desire to learn

Many steel fabrication jobs are now driven by technology such as CNC machines, so you’ll need to be keen to learn and develop new skills as you progress in your career. Doing so can position you strongly for the best jobs and allow you to have plenty of opportunities!

C&C Fabrications offers some of the best metalwork jobs Yorkshire wide as a leading steel fabrication company. We work with clients from across all industries to provide bespoke steel and metalwork solutions, thanks to our skilled and expert steel fabricators. Keen to find out more? Visit our careers page.