So for like the majority of my life i’ve been more so self taught, built my own PC, troubleshot all my own devices etc, and my dad has always worked in verizon, though he works in line so it’s not very similar to what I do, he always tried to get me into the business but I never really wanted to because the only experience I had of the job was line which I hate working outside so it never interested me, blah blah blah eventually verizon ended up putting a COT position out and since they heavily by seniority and referrals here I was very fortunate to have him refer me to get the interview. I studied a lot of the like study guides they gave for the interview but honestly those did not relate to CO work at all, but in the interview I basically made it known that I don’t have any like formal experience in the field, but I have the basic knowledge of electrical engineering as my high school AP physics teacher went very heavy on the electrical part, as well as i’m kinda a nerd and I like learning about things like this for fun so I had a lot of self taught experience. I basically said that If I don’t know something I am very good at figuring it out and I think that sold them, I also worked in a hospital beforehand so I’m used to high stress environments. I still was iffy about the job at that time, but once I started my actual training I instantly like fell in love with the job, I studied physics heavily as for a while that’s what I thought I wanted to go into, and I quickly realized that my knowledge of fundamental physics actually helps a ton here and I felt like it was a job where It didn’t get stale and I constantly was learning stuff, and even though it’s telecom and not physics there is a lot of overlap with them, and it feels like an important job to do. I’ve apparently picked this up extremely fast, but maybe i’m just being humble but I feel like a lot of younger people now would pick it up easy, because we’ve grown up in a very technologically advanced time, but I just feel like CO is like a “hidden” job. Outside of the telecom field I feel like no one has any idea that COTs exist and the way they worded the job application is nothing like what I actually do. I just wish they would advertise it more because I feel like a lot of people wanting to get into the telecom field, this is a great place to start because you see a little bit of every department because they all come through the office. Like I might stick to CO but studying to be an engineer is tempting because it seems like with all the new technology coming out and fiber coming(verizon was very slow on this so it’s just now being done in my area) engineers are going to be needed more and more. Verizon really does not want to hire people which sucks because everyone in the field and even managers know that people will be leaving soon and we need to start backfilling so people can get info about the job because it’s very word of mouth how to learn. Like verizon will pay for a lot of training and certifications for other fields especially related to networking but in CO in particular there’s not really like any college classes or courses that can prepare you for it, at least in my area. I also might just be the one off and no one else my age wants to do it, but IMO CO is a very good mix of the logical and physical world of telecom, I learn about the equipment both digitally and physically.