by Ian Stewart | Aug 6, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
The service sector of the U.S. economy showed some encouraging signs of growth in July, a study released Friday shows, although employment numbers from the same study — as well as the Labor Department — were a bit of a mixed bag. The Institute for Supply Management,...
by Darren Weiss | Aug 3, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
Pool tables are no strangers to abuse. Just pop into any bar and you’ll see: scratched and scuffed, sat upon and spilled upon, they definitely take a beating. But that means plenty of work for the folks who make a living repairing the key piece of equipment in...
by Tiffany Kaiser | Aug 1, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
A lot of workers worry that their job may some day be performed by a robot. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to be able to send a machine into a dangerous spot in place of a real-life person — like deep ocean engineering — and the upside of having these complex...
by Ian Stewart | Jul 27, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
The past four or five years have been a particularly painful time for many people in the trades. A dramatic economic recession, followed by a slow and grueling rebound that seemed to favor technological expertise over blue-collar work that has left the field a little...
by Darren Weiss | Jul 26, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
When one of its 170,000 wind turbines around the world breaks down, Southwest Windpower does what any good manufacturer does — it gets a field tech out there to check it out. But the company sends its techs with one word of warning: Don’t climb the towers....
by Sean Lyden | Jun 11, 2012 | Mobile & Tech
And surveying is the very definition of a field job: Surveyors measure land areas to establish legal boundaries and determine proper placement of all the intricate details that go into the construction of roads, buildings, office parks, residential developments, and...
by Meghan Bender | Mar 1, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
Do you remember the classic scene in Office Space where the three disgruntled workers take a malfunctioning printer into a field and smash it to pieces with a baseball bat? We’ve all been there, but now there’s something you can do about it (besides...
by Meghan Bender | Feb 23, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
For this week’s Job of the Week, we’re looking at a service tech position with Analogic, makers of x-ray imaging equipment used to screen baggage at the airport, as well as CT and MRI scanners in many hospitals. Or rather, we’re looking through it....
by Meghan Bender | Feb 16, 2012 | Strategy & Leadership
No, it’s not science fiction, and your tool belt won’t have a holster for a ray gun. But in this week’s SmartVan Job of the Week, you’ll get to play with lasers. For real. Like we said, you won’t exactly be working for MI6. Actually, the...
by Meghan Bender | Feb 9, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
Did you know that right now there are advanced underwater robots working in some of the most extreme conditions, deep in the ocean, to keep our underwater gas and oil machinery working properly? As a field service professional, that’s probably got you wondering...
by The Editors | Feb 2, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
Coca Cola’s slogan, Life Begins Here, will ring especially true for job seeking field service techs on the East Coast. Twist the Cap to Refreshment with this week’s installment of the SmartVan’s regular Job of the Week feature. Because Coca Cola Refreshments is...
by The Editors | Jan 19, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
Do you remember those games where, for 25 cents (or whatever they cost now), you’d try to guide a mechanical claw toward that plush toy you’d had your eye on? Only, at the crucial moment when you’d press the button to pinch the claw, the toy would...