Sean,
The first step is to identify the requirements of the specific license you are seeking. Talk to the department that is issuing the license. They may have a list of recommended study materials. If it is an open-book exam, you should have the books on their list because it is likely that the answers to many of the questions will be in the books they recommend.
You will want to know as much about the exam as you can in advance. Some license exams are almost exclusively related to building codes. Others put a lot of emphasis on general knowledge of electricity and electrical systems. State licenses generally are more building code oriented. When I had my electrical contracting company in the 1980s in Ohio, before we had statewide licensing, I had to carry multiple county and municipal licenses. In one county alone, I had to have four separate licenses. One was for the county and three were for municipalities within the county (now, even with state licensing two of the four still exist). The exams were all very different. One exam was in two parts. One four-hour segment was exclusively code (NEC, UBC, Ohio Basic Building Code, etc) questions. The other four-hour segment was all electrical theory and system design. It was possible to pass one segment and not the other and get a lower level license.
Another exam I took had relatively little emphasis on codes. It focused more on the mechanics of electrical system design. It would say, for example, create a schematic diagram of an electrical system for a duplex with panels located in each unit. List all the parts. Points were taken off for each component that was missed or incorrect. That was harder than it sounds (at least it was for me). I missed a few things on the parts list that I would never have missed in the field. It wasn’t enough, for example, to list a ground rod and connector. The size and type of both the ground rod and connector had to be listed. I think I lost a few points because I listed the connector but didn’t specify the type.
Exams can be either open-book or closed-book. Open-book tests can be tough. There is usually not enough time to look up all the answers. I’ve seen many electricians fail exams on the first try because they thought that they would be able to look up answers but ran out of time. If there are calculations involved, the questions are usually designed to test your electrical knowledge, not your arithmetic skills. If you start spending a lot of time working out the problem, move on to the next question. Typically, each question has exactly the same point value so it is better to move on so you can answer other questions. Doing practice exams in class, I’ve had many electricians get 100% of their answers right but only make it half way through the test because they would get wrapped up in questions and lose track of time. Obviously, you want to have the right answers but you also have to finish the test or at least come close to finishing it in order to pass.
Most state, county and municipal licenses also require a minimum amount of documented practical experience working under the direction of a qualified electrician. Some jurisdictions require that you go through specific levels (apprentice first, then journeyman, then master) while others have no such requirement. Some have specific minimum time requirements at each level. The educational component may also have to be in sync with the practical experience. In such cases, it is possible to have the total number of hours experience or education but not enough at a particular level or they may not be in sync.
Here’s a typical example for a journeyman residential electrician (2-yr program). The practical experience requirement is 4,000 hours. The educational requirement is 500 classroom hours. The apprentice has to complete both 250 classroom hours and 2,000 practical experience hours the first year in order on to move to the second year. If the apprentice misses too may classes, he may have his practical experience hours for year-one but they will not carry over to the year-two requirements. Only after the classroom and experience hours for year-one have been completed, do the hours for year-two start to accrue.
The experience requirements vary from place to place but journeyman residential electrician usually has to have a minimum of two years or 4,000 hours practical experience. Commercial journeyman (inside wireman, etc) is typically four years or 8,000 hours. Master (or General, Contractor, etc, depending on where you are) is usually a minimum of six years or 12,000 hours but eight years or 16,000 hours is also common.
Educational requirements have been steadily increasing over the past twenty years or so. It is becoming very common for electricians to have a two-year associates degree by the time they top out their apprenticeships. The good news is that it is much more open and accessible now than it was generation ago because the educational components of many apprenticeships are now being administered by community colleges.
Some jurisdictions have license tiers such as journeyman, residential only contractor, and general contractor where each level successive level supersedes those below it. Other jurisdictions have different categories or classifications of licenses. They may have various designations such as “Electrician Class A”, “Electrician Class H”, “Electrician Class L” and so on, where each class has certain privileges and duties but one class does not necessarily supersede another. An example of this would be where one class electrician is permitted to do installation, maintenance and repair in health care facilities but cannot do residential work. A different class may be able to do residential, retail and office buildings but not be permitted to do work in classified (aka hazardous) locations.
Alternatives
You mentioned in your question that you are pursuing licensing but if you do not need a license (as your follow-up posts suggest), you may want to consider certification as an alternative. Your state may have state recognized certifications that do not have the same privileges as a license but are still good credentials to have. Again, using Ohio as an example, they have hundreds of approved certifications that many are unaware of. A person living or working in Ohio can contact the Ohio Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training and find a program that is recognized by the state. Many of them are for various types of electricians.
When Ohio went to state licensing of the mechanical construction trades, they chose not to have a tiered system. In other words, there is no such thing as a journeyman at the state level in Ohio. Journeyman licenses still exist in counties and municipalities. An employer, however, may require an electrician to be qualified as a journeyman. A state recognized journeyman certification is not a license but it will satisfy most employers.
Journeyman certifications are also usually more specialized. To the outside world, an electrician is an electrician. In the trades, on the other hand, the designations tend to be more specific. Residential Electricians, Commercial Inside Wiremen, Maintenance Electricians, Instrumentation and Control Electricians and Linemen are all electricians but they are specialists too. Some work requires a license and some does not. I don’t have precise current numbers but only around 10%-15% of electricians are licensed. Certified electricians greatly outnumber licensed electricians.
