Top 12 Journeyman Lineman Skills to Put on Your Resume
In today's competitive job market, standing out as a journeyman lineman means proving you can work safe, fast, and smart with a crew that trusts you. The skills below will help your resume pop and, more importantly, show you’re ready for real-world conditions—storm nights, hot days, tight windows, and zero-room-for-error work.
Journeyman Lineman Skills
- Pole Climbing
- Electrical Safety
- Transformer Installation
- Hot Stick Techniques
- Underground Systems
- Distribution Networks
- Substation Maintenance
- OSHA Compliance
- Circuit Switching
- Aerial Lift Operation
- Rigging/Handlining
- Fault Analysis
1. Pole Climbing
Pole climbing, for a journeyman lineman, is the craft of ascending and descending utility poles using gaffs, proper body belts or full-body harnesses, and approved fall-restraint systems to perform installation, maintenance, or repairs on energized or de-energized plant.
Why It's Important
It’s the backbone of overhead work. Safe, efficient climbing means you reach the worksite, get the task done, and come down without incident—so power stays reliable and crews keep moving.
How to Improve Pole Climbing Skills
Progress comes from deliberate practice and strict safety habits.
Build the engine: Train core, legs, and grip. Squats, step-ups, planks, dead hangs. Strong legs do the climbing; your arms balance and guide.
Master gaff placement: Aim for consistent gaff penetration and stable body angle. Keep knees slightly out, hips close, and avoid overreaching. Practice cut-out recovery drills.
Use the right gear: Properly fit climbers, compatible pole straps, and a rated full-body harness with a fall-restrict device. Inspect before every climb.
Balance and footwork: Controlled steps, steady cadence. Train balance with simple drills—single-leg holds, low-height practice climbs, and transitions around obstruction zones.
Reps in real conditions: Train on varied pole classes and conditions—wet, cold, treated, old. Short sessions first, then longer climbs with tools and materials.
Current standards: Follow the latest utility safety rules, NESC, and company procedures. Minimum approach distances and fall protection rules aren’t optional.
Coaching: Ask a senior hand to watch your climb and critique posture, strap management, and descent control.
Head game: Breathe, visualize, execute. Calm focus beats muscle every time.
Refine the basics, respect the hazards, and climbing becomes smooth, almost quiet.
How to Display Pole Climbing Skills on Your Resume
2. Electrical Safety
Electrical safety means applying standards, procedures, and protective gear to prevent shock, arc flash, and burns while working on or near high-voltage systems. It’s vigilance plus discipline, every minute.
Why It's Important
Because one mistake can be final. Good habits protect you, your crew, and the public—while keeping the lights on.
How to Improve Electrical Safety Skills
PPE done right: Wear and maintain the correct gloves, sleeves, arc-rated clothing, eye/face protection, and head protection. Test and replace on schedule.
Minimum approach distances: Know them cold for each voltage class. Plan your body position and tool reach accordingly.
Test-before-touch: Verify de-energization, apply grounds where required, and confirm. Treat everything as energized until proven otherwise.
LOTO and clearances: Use formal switching orders, hold tags, and grounding plans. No shortcuts, no assumptions.
Tool integrity: Use insulated and voltage-rated tools. Inspect daily, clean, and remove damaged equipment from service.
Recurrent training: Refresh rescue, first aid/CPR, and bucket rescue. Review near-miss reports and lessons learned.
Consistent habits save lives. Make them automatic.
How to Display Electrical Safety Skills on Your Resume
3. Transformer Installation
Transformer installation covers mounting, connections, grounding, and verification for single- and three-phase units—overhead or padmount—so voltage is stepped correctly and safely delivered.
Why It's Important
It’s where primary becomes usable power. Get this wrong and you invite outages, equipment damage, and safety risks. Get it right and the system hums.
How to Improve Transformer Installation Skills
Pre-checks: Confirm kVA, primary/secondary voltages, vector group, impedance, BIL, and tap settings match the design. Inspect for shipping damage and verify accessories.
Sound mounting: Validate pole class and hardware ratings for overhead units; ensure pad integrity, clearances, and drainage for padmounts. Secure wildlife guards where required.
Wiring and phasing: Follow diagrams exactly. Verify polarity, phase rotation, and secondary configuration (wye/delta). Torque to spec; recheck.
Grounding: Low-impedance, bonded, and tested. Keep neutrals and grounds correct and separate where required.
Fluid and labeling: Confirm insulating fluid type (e.g., mineral oil or natural ester), check nameplates, install proper hazard and circuit labels.
Testing: Insulation resistance, ratio, and polarity checks before energizing. Document results.
Final verification: Clear area, communicate, and energize per switching order. Post-energization checks for sound, heat, and load balance.
A careful install pays dividends for years.
How to Display Transformer Installation Skills on Your Resume
4. Hot Stick Techniques
Hot stick techniques use insulated live-line tools to work energized conductors and equipment from a safe distance. Precision hands. Clean tools. Strict procedures.
Why It's Important
They reduce outages and risk by allowing safe work on live lines when conditions and procedures permit.
How to Improve Hot Stick Techniques Skills
Inspection and care: Daily wipe-down, visual checks, and dielectric testing on schedule. Any damage—out of service.
Body mechanics: Stable footing, controlled reach, and tool alignment. Practice fine motor control with simulated tasks at working height.
Procedural clarity: Know each maneuver step-by-step before you touch the line. Communicate movements with your crew.
Tool familiarity: Grips, cutters, pruners, sockets, switch sticks—each has quirks. Train with load and in weather that mimics reality.
Stay current: Follow company live-line rules and the latest industry standards. Distances, barriers, and setups evolve.
Fitness and endurance: Shoulder stability and core strength reduce fatigue and mistakes.
Learn from veterans: Small tips—angle, sequence, pressure—make hard tasks feel easy.
Clean technique plus clean tools equals clean work.
How to Display Hot Stick Techniques Skills on Your Resume
5. Underground Systems
Underground distribution uses buried cable, conduits, vaults, terminations, and padmount gear. Different hazards, tighter spaces, careful locates, and specialized diagnostics.
Why It's Important
It hardens service against storms, improves reliability, and reduces public exposure—while demanding meticulous installation and fault-finding.
How to Improve Underground Systems Skills
Locate with certainty: Confirm marks, pothole where needed, and maintain safe dig practices. Never guess where a cable runs.
Cable work quality: Flawless terminations and splices. Follow strip lengths, cleanliness, and stress-cone steps without deviation.
Diagnostics: Use VLF, TDR, sheath integrity tests, and insulation resistance to pinpoint problems before cutting or digging.
Drainage and sealing: Keep water out. Seal conduits and vault entries. Manage sump pumps and moisture control.
Traffic and confined spaces: Control worksites with proper shoring, ventilation, and atmospheric testing. Crew communication is everything below grade.
Documentation: Update maps, as-builts, and tags. Good records speed the next repair.
Emergency readiness: Have a cable-thumping plan, generators, and bypass strategies ready before the storm hits.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast—especially underground.
How to Display Underground Systems Skills on Your Resume
6. Distribution Networks
Distribution networks carry power from substations to customers through feeders, laterals, and service drops, with protection and control devices coordinating in the background.
Why It's Important
This is the last mile. Reliability, safety, and power quality depend on how well these systems are built and maintained.
How to Improve Distribution Networks Skills
Hardening and upgrades: Replace aging poles and crossarms, install covered conductor or spacer cable where appropriate, and use wildlife protection on energized hardware.
Smart operations: Support AMI, ADMS, and FLISR deployments. Automated switching, better visibility, faster restoration.
Vegetation management: Proactive trimming and hazard tree removal. A clear right-of-way equals fewer outages.
Protection tuning: Coordinate fuses, reclosers, and relays. Verify settings after network changes.
Storm readiness: Staging, materials, mutual aid. Damage assessment and sectionalizing drills shave hours off restoration.
Efficient networks are built day by day—small improvements add up.
How to Display Distribution Networks Skills on Your Resume
7. Substation Maintenance
Substation maintenance covers inspection, testing, and repair of transformers, breakers, switches, bus, batteries, relays, and structures to keep the grid stable and safe.
Why It's Important
Substations are control points. If they’re healthy, outages are fewer, restoration is quicker, and safety margins stay wide.
How to Improve Substation Maintenance Skills
Preventive program: Stick to schedules. Infrared scans, oil sampling and DGA, breaker timing, contact resistance, and insulation tests catch problems early.
Condition-based tools: Use partial discharge monitoring, moisture analysis, and battery load testing to move from reactive to predictive maintenance.
Safety systems: Maintain grounding grids, verify clearances, and confirm arc-flash labels and boundaries are current. Housekeeping matters.
Environmental care: Manage oils and SF6 responsibly. Spill kits, leak checks, proper handling and reporting.
Records and spares: Keep detailed test histories and maintain critical spare parts. When something fails, minutes matter.
Disciplined maintenance keeps the big equipment quiet and dependable.
How to Display Substation Maintenance Skills on Your Resume
8. OSHA Compliance
OSHA compliance means aligning daily field work with safety regulations for electrical power generation, transmission, and distribution—covering fall protection, PPE, training, and energized work practices.
Why It's Important
It reduces injuries, prevents fatalities, and protects workers and employers from legal and financial fallout. Most of all, it builds a culture that sends everyone home.
How to Improve OSHA Compliance Skills
Frequent training: Keep crews current on 1910.269 and related rules. Practice rescues and emergency response until they’re automatic.
Tool and equipment inspections: Buckets, booms, gloves, sticks—inspect, test, document, and remove defective gear immediately.
Safety meetings with purpose: Review incidents and near misses. Update procedures when lessons are learned.
Internal audits: Field checks, paperwork reviews, and corrective actions. Close the loop.
PPE enforcement: Right gear, right rating, right condition—every job, every time.
Compliance isn’t paperwork—it’s practice.
How to Display OSHA Compliance Skills on Your Resume
9. Circuit Switching
In utility work, switching means safely isolating, de-energizing, grounding, and restoring circuits using switches, reclosers, breakers, and jumpers—following a written order and verified clearances. It’s not telecom; it’s controlled electrical operations in the field and via SCADA.
Why It's Important
Precise switching prevents backfeed, protects workers, limits outage scope, and speeds restoration. One wrong step can cascade into a bigger problem.
How to Improve Circuit Switching Skills
Read the one-line: Know the feeder topology, tie points, and device ratings. Confirm before acting.
Step-by-step orders: Use clear, numbered switching sheets with hold tags and check-backs. No improvising mid-sequence.
Communicate: Radio discipline between field crews and system operators. Repeat-backs stop errors.
Grounding plans: Where, when, and how many—installed and removed under control.
Modern tools: Support automated switching and fault isolation schemes. Validate device status locally.
Plan it slow, execute it smooth, restore it fast.
How to Display Circuit Switching Skills on Your Resume
10. Aerial Lift Operation
Aerial lift operation is the safe use of bucket trucks and platforms to access elevated work on poles, conductors, and equipment. Setup matters. So does wind, terrain, and proximity to energized lines.
Why It's Important
It’s how most overhead work actually gets done—efficiently and without unnecessary climbing exposure.
How to Improve Aerial Lift Operation Skills
Pre-use checks: Controls, hydraulics, emergency lowers, fiberglas inserts, dielectric condition, outriggers—inspect and test before moving.
Stable setup: Level the truck, crib as required, respect ground conditions. Watch for overhead hazards and traffic.
Approach distances: Maintain required clearance for the voltage. Treat the boom and bucket as potential exposure points.
Emergency readiness: Practice bucket rescue and use of ground controls. Seconds count.
Operating finesse: Smooth, deliberate movements. Tool placement and material handling planned before you boom up.
Follow current standards: Adhere to the latest company rules and applicable equipment standards for inspections and safe operation.
Good bucket work looks almost boring. That’s the point.
How to Display Aerial Lift Operation Skills on Your Resume
11. Rigging/Handlining
Rigging and handlining involve ropes, blocks, slings, and hardware to move tools and heavy components safely—up a pole, across a span, or into position on a structure.
Why It's Important
Controlled lifts prevent dropped objects, strain injuries, and damaged equipment. Crews work faster when loads move cleanly.
How to Improve Rigging/Handlining Skills
Know your numbers: Calculate load weight, understand WLL and safety factors, and choose the right slings, blocks, and anchors.
Knot craft: Bowline, clove hitch, half hitches, figure-eight on a bight—tie them quickly, dress them cleanly.
Sheaves and angles: Mind the D/d ratio and side loading. Keep rigging in line and protect edges.
Tag lines and signals: Control swing and rotation. Use clear hand signals or radios to coordinate.
Pre-lift checks: Inspect gear, confirm path is clear, test-load gently, then proceed.
Practice: Rehearse common lifts and rescues. Muscle memory prevents chaos when it’s windy or dark.
Mentor feedback: Tiny changes in anchor choice or knot placement can make a big difference.
Safe rigging feels orderly. Everything moves when and how you expect.
How to Display Rigging/Handlining Skills on Your Resume
12. Fault Analysis
Fault analysis is the hunt: identify, locate, and clear electrical faults so service returns and the system stays protected.
Why It's Important
Faster, accurate fault work reduces outage minutes, limits damage, and keeps crews out of harm’s way.
How to Improve Fault Analysis Skills
Read the signs: Relay targets, recloser counts, and event records tell a story. Combine with customer calls and AMI pings.
Sectionalize smart: Open strategically, re-energize segments, watch indicators. Narrow the search quickly without re-faulting.
Use the instruments: Leverage fault indicators, impedance-to-fault estimates, and cable thumping or TDR for underground.
Walk the line: Patrol high-probability areas—splices, crossings, tree exposure, animal points, recent work.
Document and feed back: Capture cause, exact location, and corrective action. Use trends to drive preventive work.
Keep learning: Study unusual cases. Practice logic trees under time pressure.
Find it, fix it, learn from it. The cycle that makes a system tougher every storm.
How to Display Fault Analysis Skills on Your Resume
