I'm not the one looking for myself, but more like I had gotten an associate's degree, and tried a few times to find a long term job in the field of SMT board repair.

Unfortunately, the school I went to basically covered no SMT at all. I got hired straight out of school, by a place that does do on-the-job training. But because that's right when they hire you onto the paid position, obviously they need production from you, faster than a school does. So, picking up the SMT tools that quickly, didn't make for a long term career, when I had no chance to practice before doing anything with real boards.

To be clear, I wasn't expecting low to mid range consumer electronics to be a full time repair job, but more like a step up from that (such as industrial machines & their boards - or at least something where it's a matter of modular troubleshooting, not component level)

But for people who are looking for training to try and see if they can do the micro soldering - but where you don't have a big gap on your resume or a company that dismissed you for poor performance at the work bench, what would be a good alternative way to get SMT training?

 

It seems to me that any company hiring technicians would invest in training them on the soldering equipment they're using.

I started at HP a month after graduating with an ASEET degree in 1976. We had soldered some in school, but there wasn't a soldering class. HP gave new technicians a several hour course on soldering, how to install jumpers on boards for interlayer opens, etc.

 

Soldering techniques are not taught in college, but it's possible some trade schools do.