Ask any service business owner what is capping their growth and the answer is almost never demand. It is that they cannot find people. The phone rings, the work is there, and the constraint is a seat in a truck that nobody is sitting in.
The premise underneath that — that there is nobody out there — is not quite right, and getting it right changes the whole approach. The technicians you want are employed right now. They are not reading job boards, they are not sending résumés, and they will never see your posting.
Hiring is a sales pipeline, so run it like one
This is the single reframe that fixes most hiring problems in the trades. A candidate is a lead: they arrive from a source, they go cold if ignored, they are comparing you to alternatives, and they decide fast.
Which means every failure mode you already know from sales applies directly.
| Sales failure | The hiring version | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Slow lead response | Four days to call an applicant back | They took the job that called the same day |
| No follow-up | One voicemail, then nothing | A good candidate who was simply busy that week |
| No pipeline visibility | "Did anyone call the guy from Tuesday?" | Applicants falling through the gap between two managers |
| No source tracking | No idea which channel produced your best hires | Spending on the channel that produces the worst ones |
Where good technicians actually come from
Ranked roughly by quality of hire, and almost inversely by how much attention most companies give them:
- Your own technicians' networks. Good techs know good techs, they have worked alongside them, and they will not recommend someone who will embarrass them. A referral bonus paid in two parts — at hire and at six months — is the cheapest recruiting channel in the trades by a wide margin.
- Suppliers and counter staff. The people behind the parts counter know who is competent, who is unhappy, and who just got laid off. Almost nobody asks them.
- Trade schools and apprenticeship programmes, but only if you build the relationship a year before you need someone. Showing up in May asking for graduates does not work.
- Competitors, handled carefully. Everyone does it; the ones who do it well do it slowly, without disparaging the current employer, and with a specific reason the move is better.
- Adjacent trades and the military. Someone who is mechanically capable, reliable, and good with customers can be taught your trade. The reverse — teaching reliability to a qualified tech who lacks it — does not work.
The job ad is doing the wrong job
Most trade job ads are a list of requirements: years of experience, certifications, a clean licence, the ability to lift fifty pounds. Written that way, the ad screens people out. But you are not drowning in applicants — the ad should be selling.
- Lead with the pay range. An ad without a number gets skipped by exactly the people who have options. This is not negotiable in a candidate-short market.
- Say what the day is actually like. How many calls, what trucks, whether they are stocked, who they report to, whether they will be sent out alone on something they have not done.
- Name the things techs complain about elsewhere. Being dispatched with no information, unpaid drive time, a truck that is a mess, no path to anything. If you are genuinely better on any of these, that is your ad.
- Cut the requirements list in half. Every line is a filter, and most filters are removing people you would happily hire.
Interview for the trait you cannot teach
Technical skill is testable and teachable. The thing that actually determines whether a hire works out in a service business is whether they can be trusted alone in a customer's home, unsupervised, on a bad day.
So interview for that, with questions that are hard to perform an answer to:
- "Tell me about a job you got wrong." The answer that matters is whether they noticed, told someone, and fixed it — or whether they have never got one wrong, which is a worse answer.
- "A customer is angry before you have said anything. What do you do?" You are listening for whether they take it personally.
- "What would your last dispatcher say is annoying about you?" Self-awareness, and how they talk about people who are not in the room.
- A ride-along or a paid working day — worth more than any three interviews, for both sides. Most bad hires are visible within four hours in a truck.
The first ninety days decide whether it worked
Trades hiring has a brutal quiet failure mode: the hire who leaves in month three. You paid to recruit them, you paid to train them, they consumed senior technician time, and you are now back at the start with the season further along.
The causes are consistent and mostly preventable — sent out alone too early, no idea whether they are doing well, and nobody who is obviously responsible for them. A named mentor, a scheduled check-in at week one, month one, and month three, and a written idea of what "good" looks like at ninety days covers most of it.
You are not short of technicians. You are slow to call the ones who applied, and vague about why they should come.
Common questions
Where do service businesses find good technicians?
Mostly through their own technicians' networks — good techs know good techs and will not recommend someone who embarrasses them. After that: supplier counter staff who know who is competent and unhappy, trade schools where you built the relationship a year early, and adjacent trades where you can teach the skill but not the reliability.
How fast do I need to respond to a trades applicant?
Within about 48 hours, and decide within a week. Skilled candidates in a tight market are usually talking to two or three employers, and the company that calls first, interviews within three days, and decides quickly routinely wins people it could not win on pay alone.
What should a technician job ad include?
The pay range first — an ad without a number is skipped by the people who have options. Then what the day actually looks like: call volume, truck condition, who dispatches, whether they will be sent out alone. Cut the requirements list in half, because every line filters out someone you would have hired.
What should I interview for when hiring technicians?
Whether they can be trusted alone in a customer's home on a bad day, because technical skill is teachable and that is not. Ask about a job they got wrong, how they handle an angry customer, and what a former dispatcher found annoying about them. A paid working day tells you more than three interviews.