Coachable, Present, and Ready for Growth Opportunities: A Conversation with Skillworker Stefan
Interviewed by Skillwork Talent Expert
Some people stumble into a career in the trades, but Stefan was built for it. From a young age, he was curious about the mechanics of how things work: picking them apart and putting them back together. That interest led to trade school, the Marines, and a decade-long industrial maintenance career across facilities in the Midwest. We sat down with Stefan to talk about his beginnings, the path he took, the demands on production roles, the soft skills that can set you apart, and the advice he’d give every skilled worker today.
Q: You have an interesting path into maintenance. How did you get started in the trades, and how did you end up with Skillwork?
Stefan: I grew up wrenching. I was riding dirt bikes by age five, got into RC cars around ten, and by the time I was twelve or thirteen, I was taking them apart and putting them back together. When I was fifteen, my dad took a job with less pay and longer hours, so if I wanted to get to the motocross track, I had to maintain the bikes myself. That’s when I really started learning.
At seventeen, I enrolled in a gas-and-diesel trade tech program while still in high school. After that, I spent a couple of years in the Marines before getting discharged because of bad knees. I came out at twenty-two or twenty-three, not really knowing what I was going to do, so I started working in factories. I ended up at a popcorn company called Pop Weaver in Indiana, which was technically a production role but was heavily maintenance-focused. That’s where I really got into working on machines.
From there, I picked up an associate’s degree in engineering and another in business management, landed my first official maintenance job at Tyson, and have been moving around ever since: about six years in Louisville, two in Detroit, back to Kentucky, and in Indiana with Skillwork.
Q: You’ve worked in both large cities and rural areas. Are you seeing a trend toward production roles requiring more mechanical skills?
Stefan: It really depends on where you are. In a bigger city, you post a job, and you might get four or five thousand applicants in the first week. Out in the middle of nowhere, you’re lucky to get one or two people through the door. When the workforce is that thin, you have to allocate more responsibilities to the people you have.
Pop Weaver is out in Vanlue, Indiana, about forty-five minutes south of Fort Wayne, and the place I’m at now in Modena is similar. The more rural you get, the more you need someone who can do everything. You’re looking for a Swiss army knife because you just don’t have the bodies to fill every role. In those environments, yes, production roles are absolutely picking up the pace in terms of mechanical expectations.
Q: There are so many important skills in industrial maintenance. What are your top three?
Stefan: First, the ability to take direction. Specific, detailed direction. Second, the willingness to be coached and taught. And third, just show up. Be there.
I can’t tell you how many times a team has been put in a tough spot because someone keeps calling off. When you won’t come in three or four days a week, that weight gets carried by somebody else. It’s not just about your paycheck. It affects the whole team.
This is what I tell my son: if you’re coachable and teachable, you can learn anything. But if you’re hardheaded and people don’t like being around you, nobody will share the real knowledge with you. The tricks of the trade, the little things that make everything run smoother, those only get passed along to people you actually want to work with.
I’ve been in maintenance for ten years, and I still have no problem holding the flashlight or running to grab a bearing while someone with more experience handles the machine. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. Whether you’re building wood flooring, taking a position on a battlefield, or trying to get a boat across the finish line, you have to be a good teammate first.
Q: For soft skills, how would you recommend someone develop them?
Stefan: I can only speak from my own experience. Before I had my son, before I had real responsibilities, I walked off a couple of jobs. I had a bad temper, and I didn’t need anyone to tell me what to do. I had to hit rock bottom and rebuild a couple of times before I really started to figure things out. I’m thirty-four now. It took a while.
What I’ve found is that those skills usually follow when your life outside of work starts moving in the right direction. If you’re not improving, if you’re sacrificing your health, your sleep, your time with the people who matter to you, the job starts to feel pointless. But when your life is actually growing, when you’ve got something to protect and work toward, you show up differently.
I’ve worked at Tyson. I’ve had hog skulls fall on me. I’ve been up to my knees in oil. The job itself doesn’t always matter as much as who you’re doing it with and whether the rest of your life is headed somewhere worth going.
Q: When you were younger, what was driving you? And how has that changed?
Stefan: When I was younger, it was all about the money. From about twenty-two to thirty, I volunteered for every overtime shift I could get. In the last ten years, I’ve made it to maybe three family Christmases, one or two Thanksgivings, and a couple of New Year’s. That’s it. Because it was triple time, it was double time, and I could stack the check.
There was no personal growth in it. No long-term investment. No real direction. It was just about what I could buy next week or next month. Then I blinked, and my son was five years old. I couldn’t even recall where the last five years had gone.
I also see a lot of younger mechanics chasing instant gratification. They come in, get recognized for the first few months, and then there’s a plateau around two or three years, where raises slow down, learning levels off, and they feel like they’ve stalled. That’s when people start calling off, or their quality drops. But that plateau is right before the real growth. If you can hold on through that stretch, everything changes on the other side.
Q: If you could say one thing to every tradesperson in the industry right now, what would it be?
Stefan: Be a good person. And I mean that everywhere, not just at work.
We’re shaking fewer hands. Making less eye contact. And a lot of that is tied to honesty, integrity, and doing the right thing when nobody’s watching. That’s not just a workplace standard. That’s how you treat your family, how you take care of your home, how you maintain your vehicle, how you carry yourself every day.
I’ve got friends talking about buying forty acres. But they can’t mow a three-hundred-square-foot backyard. They want to buy an expensive truck but won’t take care of the one they have. You want a big house, but you can’t make your bed. Start there. Get your own house in order first.
The trades deserve respect. And the way you bring respect back to the trades is by being respectable. Lead by example. That starts at home, and it carries into every job site you walk onto.
Work Where Your Skills Are Valued
Stefan’s story is an excellent example of what Skillwork is all about. Skilled tradespeople who bring real expertise, a strong work ethic, and the kind of professional character that makes a difference on any job site.
If you’re a technician looking for your next opportunity, or if you want to learn more about how Skillwork connects skilled workers with great employers, we’d love to connect!
For more on learning and developing your skills in the trades, explore Thomas Harvell on admitting what you do not know and learning on the job. For a related perspective, see Jacob Ralston on growth beyond yourself in the trades.