Need a Little Help Here

A little background before I ask my question. You see up until this past year I have never had to look for employment. The work was either so low level that almost any one could do it, or I knew someone, or someone I knew was a friend with someone on the inside. The latter is how I got to work for the company I was laid off from a year ago. I worked for them for 13 years. I started as a production tech building pc boards and wiring systems, worked my way to a field service representative, and was promoted to the coordinator of their nationwide service group in my last year.

To be fair the company was not the same when I left, as it was when I was first hired. For the first ten years of my employment the company was dedicated to building world-class emission monitoring equipment for industries such as pulp & paper, and utilities. The crown jewel of this company was the field service group. We had a dedication to our customers that was unmatched by any of our competitors.

It was the last three years that it all fell apart. Through a series of buyouts our company ended up being owned by one of our vendors. At first this seemed like a good thing. I think only my wife knew that it was a bad thing. They were one of the leaders in building gas analyzers and we thought that this would put us at an advantage against our competitors. First sign of bad times was when they fired our sales force that had spent 20 years building relationships and made us use their sales force who did not care if a single system got sold or who sold the system as long as a “blue box” was in it. Then the company started centralizing all of its operations. This is when we knew the handwriting was on the wall for good. Then came the attempted move of our division to MA and the uproar of our customers over that. Then they got sneaky and started selectively moving positions up to MA. That is how I lost my job.

Anyway that is a long tirade just to say that it used to be that if a man told you what he could or could not do you took him at his word and hired him. Now it seems you have to have all kinds of papers saying you know what you know. It has been quite frustrating on my part be cause I never got any kind of documentation on my training.

I am currently working as a test technician on a contractual basis for a medical instrument company, but it is contract work and could be terminated at any time as was evidenced by 6 of my coworkers at the beginning of this month.

So my question is does anyone out there in the Dallas area know someone who needs a qualified electrical technician but is not to concerned with degrees or certifications?