You’re required to have three things to get your contractors license in California:

1
At least 4 years experience in the trade.*

2
Be at least 18 years old.

3
Have a Social Security Number or ITIN (To Obtain an ITIN number go here).

If you don’t have four years of experience you may consider the following options:

1. A four-year college degree will remove two of the four years of required experience.

2. Three years removed from the experience requirements if you have a degree in construction management.

3. Three years removed from the experience requirements if you have a degree in some sort of construction trade.
Please find more information on reducing your four years of experience requirements at WWW.CSLB.CA.GOV.

Self-employed experience is excepted by the Contractor License Board and can be submitted in the form of Invoices.

*The four years of experience should be as a full-time journeyman in the last 10 years. Journey-level experience applies to a person who is an experienced worker, not a trainee and is fully qualified and able to perform a specific trade without supervision or has completed an apprenticeship program either working for a specific trade or College.

Note: Although it is possible to apply for a contractors license at the age of Eighteen, we recommended that you be at least Twenty-one years old due to the experience requirement.

How Do I Apply?

You apply through CSLB, so that’s good.

You basically have to fill out an application and send it to the state. They usually take a few weeks to respond. They usually respond with carrier pigeons.

So once the pigeon drops off your response, you can eagerly open your letter to see if you were accepted.
And if you were accepted, you can finally buy that dream car you’ve always been dreaming of. On credit, of course, because you still need to pass your state tests and do a few other small steps to get the license and begin to take your own jobs.

So that’s cool.

What else?

You have to pass the trade test.
You have to pass the last test.

Those are the two main tests.

How can I study for the tests?

Easy. You can enroll in a contractor school. The strange coincidence is this: we’re a contractor school. We’re also based in California. And we’ve helped thousands of contractors get their licenses.

Options, Options, Ducks

You have a few options when it comes to studying for your state tests.

You can study from home.

You can enroll in our online course (where you can watch our classes streamed live through Zoom).

Or you can enroll in one of our in-person classes, if you live in Southern Cal.

If you live in Fresno or Bakersfield or anywhere up above the Grape Vine, you probably will want to do our home study or online course. We’re working on a carrier pigeon-based course. Where we communicate with our students exclusively through carrier pigeons.

Which brings me to my point about ducks: did you know the duck at the parks are free?

Crazy, right?

The crazier coincidence is you actually needed to know that to bolster up your duck collection.

That’s all, folks.

Get your license.

Or don’t.

But it would be better if you did.

You know it; and I know it.

Note from the CONTRACTOR LICENSE SCHOOL: Sure, Mike’s review was pretty basic (there weren’t any exploding helicopters or fireworks), but still. You get the point. Right? Okay, fine. We’ll include a more ‘in-depth’ review at the bottom of the page.