They are generally very good employees, probably management and/or highly skilled.

Initially, my dream was to open my own engineering consulting firm and a minimum have 10 employees.

In the Solo 401(k), it needs to be an owner-only business format, and you cannot have any non-owner employees in any business you control.It sounds like a self-directed IRA is the only plan available to you in your situation, and it is a great option.

But its not if  its happening  I was talking to  one of my Engineers yesterday and one of his buddies has a construction company that focuses just on  dig outs for  SFRs for the bigger production builders and he was doing 60 or so starts a month for many years here .. the switch was thrown and last couple  months its down to less than 20. and he had to layoff a good portion of his 50 person employees.. plus now you buy the Iron to do the work and it sits idol.  

@Melissa M.HelloHave the applicant get an offer letter from her new employee along with her old pay stub.  

So I suspect if you see old listings, they're people doing what I just said I did(PS:  HAR does not like this. 

Is there people in the industry that are willing to have an employee that want to learn while they work.

I read somewhere that if you become an "employee" of your friend and only manage for him, then you don't need a license.

HAR is a great data source (among other paid ones ofc).

You can read more about that here if you're interested in learning more:https://www.hireright.com/blog/background-checks/criminal-background-checks/the-myth-of-the-national-criminal-databasehttps://blog.verifirst.com/how-accurate-are-employee-criminal-background-checksWhat I do instead is, check the county records in each/every county they've lived to see whether they have any previous criminal convictions and/or eviction cases.