Machines and vehicles
What does a Quality Control Inspector do?
Finding out why something has stopped working, and putting it right.
What the day is like
- Indoors, under a roof.
- Largely on your own.
- Right or wrong, to a standard.
- The same shape each day.
- Answerable for your own work.
The facts
- Pay
- $48,570 a year, median
- Quality Control Inspectors, May 2025
- Usually needs
- High school diploma or equivalent
- Weeks to months. Most people can start from where they are.
- Jobs
- +3% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks growing slowly
What is good about it
- You can be earning at it within months rather than after years of training.
- You answer for your own work rather than for other people, which suits more people than admit it.
What people find hard about it
- Repetition
- Being the person who says no
- Pressure to pass borderline work
Saying no to your own colleagues is the job, not a sign it is going badly.
Will machines take this job?
Hard for machines to take over. Diagnostics increasingly come from software, but the repair itself and the judgement about what is safe do not.
How to find out whether it suits you
Ask a manufacturer to let you check a batch against its specification for an hour.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.