How to Hire Plumbing Technicians: 11 Strategies That Actually Work

Hiring plumbing technicians is the number one problem I hear from plumbing company owners across the country.

And I get it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 6 percent increase in demand for plumbers and pipefitters through 2032, while trade school enrollment continues to lag behind. The gap between supply and demand is real, and it is not getting better on its own.

But here is what most owners miss: the technician shortage is not the only reason your trucks are sitting empty. In my experience working with 100+ plumbing companies, the bigger problem is that most plumbing companies are actively repelling great candidates with job postings that read like legal disclaimers, interview processes that take three weeks, and onboarding programs that amount to "here are your keys, good luck."

I have hired hundreds of technicians across my own companies. I have helped over 100 plumbing business owners build hiring systems that keep their trucks full. Here are the 11 strategies that actually work — not theory, not HR textbook advice, but what is working right now in real plumbing companies.

If you want to go deeper on the team side, read our article on plumbing technician retention and pay structure — because hiring without retention is just an expensive revolving door.

Why Most Plumbing Companies Struggle to Hire

Before we get into the strategies, it is worth understanding why the hiring problem is so persistent. Most plumbing owners approach hiring reactively — they post a job when a truck is empty, rush through interviews, and make desperate decisions they regret within 90 days.

The result is a cycle of bad hires, high turnover, and constant recruiting pressure that never lets up. Research on employee turnover consistently shows that the cost of replacing a skilled trade worker runs between 50 and 200 percent of their annual salary when you factor in recruiting, training, lost productivity, and the impact on team morale.

The fix is not just better job postings. It is building a hiring system that runs continuously — so you are never hiring from a position of desperation.

11 Strategies to Hire Plumbing Technicians Who Actually Stay

1. Write Job Postings That Sell the Opportunity

Your job posting is not a legal document. It is a sales letter. And most plumbing company job postings read like a list of demands — "must have 5 years experience, must have clean driving record, must be able to lift 50 pounds" — with zero information about why a great technician would want to work for you.

The best technicians in your market are already employed. They are not scrolling job boards out of desperation. They are scrolling because something better caught their eye. Your job posting needs to be that something better.

Lead with what you offer: pay range, benefits, company culture, career path, and what makes your company different. Put the requirements at the bottom. The headline should answer the question every technician is asking: "What is in it for me?"

2. Post on the Right Platforms

Indeed is the default for most plumbing companies, and it works — but it is also where every other company in your market is posting. To reach technicians who are not actively looking, you need to be in more places.

The platforms that consistently produce the best results for plumbing companies are: Indeed (for active job seekers), Facebook Jobs (for passive candidates who see your post in their feed), trade school job boards (for entry-level technicians), and your own company's social media pages (for candidates who already know your brand).

Do not underestimate referrals. Your current technicians know other technicians. A structured employee referral program — with a meaningful cash bonus paid after 90 days of employment — is consistently the highest-quality and lowest-cost source of new hires for plumbing companies.

3. Move Fast — Speed Is a Competitive Advantage

The best candidates are interviewing at multiple companies simultaneously. If your hiring process takes two weeks from application to offer, you will lose the best people to competitors who move in two days.

I recommend a 48-hour rule: every application gets a response within 48 hours, every qualified candidate gets a phone screen within 48 hours of that, and every offer goes out within 48 hours of the final interview. Speed signals that you are a well-run company. Slow response signals the opposite.

A phone screen does not need to be long. Ten to fifteen minutes is enough to determine whether a candidate is worth bringing in for an in-person interview. The goal is to qualify quickly, not to conduct a full interview over the phone.

4. Hire for Character, Train for Skill

This is the mindset shift that separates the plumbing companies with great teams from the ones that are perpetually frustrated with their people. Technical skills can be taught. Work ethic, honesty, customer service instincts, and coachability cannot be taught — at least not quickly.

When I interview technician candidates, I am looking for three things above everything else: do they show up when they say they will, do they take ownership when something goes wrong, and do they treat people with respect. Everything else is trainable.

This does not mean you hire anyone with a pulse. It means that a candidate with three years of experience and a bad attitude is a worse hire than a candidate with one year of experience and exceptional character. The experienced candidate with a bad attitude will poison your culture. The less experienced candidate with great character will grow into a star.

5. Conduct Structured Interviews

Unstructured interviews — where you just have a conversation and go with your gut — produce inconsistent results and are heavily influenced by unconscious bias. Structured interviews, where every candidate is asked the same set of questions in the same order, produce better hiring decisions and are legally more defensible.

Build a standard interview scorecard with 8 to 10 questions and a 1-to-5 rating scale for each answer. Include behavioral questions ("Tell me about a time a customer was upset with you — what happened and what did you do?"), situational questions ("If you arrived at a job and realized you did not have the part you needed, what would you do?"), and values questions ("What does a great day at work look like to you?").

Score every candidate on the same rubric. This makes it much easier to compare candidates objectively and explain your hiring decisions to your team.

6. Check References — Actually Check Them

Most hiring managers ask for references and then never call them. Or they call and ask softball questions that produce useless answers. Reference checks, done properly, are one of the most valuable tools in your hiring process.

Call every reference. Ask specific questions: "On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate this person's reliability?" "Would you rehire this person if you had the opportunity?" "What is one area where this person could improve?" The answers — and the hesitations — will tell you a great deal about what you are getting.

Pay particular attention to how former employers describe the candidate's relationship with customers and coworkers. Technical skills are easy to verify. Character is what references reveal.

7. Build a 90-Day Onboarding Program

Most plumbing companies have no formal onboarding program. A new technician shows up on day one, gets a truck and a uniform, and is expected to figure it out. This approach produces high first-year turnover, inconsistent service quality, and technicians who never fully adopt your company's systems and standards.

A structured 90-day onboarding program changes all of that. Research on employee onboarding consistently shows that structured onboarding programs improve first-year retention by more than 50 percent and accelerate time-to-productivity significantly.

Your 90-day onboarding program should cover: company values and culture (week 1), service standards and customer communication protocols (weeks 1-2), technical skills assessment and gap training (weeks 2-4), ride-alongs with your best technicians (weeks 2-6), pricing presentation and Good-Better-Best training (weeks 4-8), and independent performance review at 30, 60, and 90 days.

Assign every new hire a mentor — your best technician who is also a good communicator. The mentor relationship dramatically accelerates the new hire's development and signals that you are invested in their success.

8. Pay Competitively — and Communicate It Clearly

You cannot build a great team on below-market pay. I know that sounds obvious, but I talk to plumbing owners every week who are frustrated that they cannot attract good technicians — and then I look at their pay structure and it is 15 to 20 percent below market rate.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the median annual wage for plumbers and pipefitters is over $61,000, with top earners in high-demand markets exceeding $100,000. The best technicians in your market know what they are worth. If you are not paying at or above market, you are not competing for the best people.

Pay structure matters as much as base pay. A well-designed performance pay system — where technicians earn more when they perform better — attracts high performers and repels low performers. This is exactly the dynamic you want. For a detailed breakdown of pay structures that work, read our article on plumbing technician retention and pay structure.

9. Recruit From Trade Schools and Apprenticeship Programs

The best long-term hiring strategy for any plumbing company is building a pipeline of entry-level technicians from trade schools and apprenticeship programs. These candidates are not yet competing for the same jobs as your experienced technicians, and they are highly moldable — you can train them in your systems and culture from day one.

Contact your local trade schools and community colleges with plumbing programs. Offer to speak to students, sponsor events, or provide internships. Build relationships with instructors who can refer their best students to you before they even graduate.

The Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association (PHCC) runs apprenticeship programs in many markets that can be an excellent source of entry-level talent. Partnering with these programs puts you in front of motivated candidates before they are on the open market.

10. Create a Culture That Technicians Talk About

The best recruiting tool you have is your current team. When your technicians love working for you, they tell their friends. When they are miserable, they tell everyone. Culture is not a ping-pong table or a pizza party. It is how you treat people every day — how you communicate, how you handle problems, how you recognize good work, and how you invest in your team's growth.

The plumbing companies with the lowest turnover and the strongest recruiting pipelines share a common trait: their owners are visible, accessible, and genuinely invested in their team's success. They hold regular team meetings. They recognize top performers publicly. They have clear career paths so technicians know what their future looks like at the company.

If you want to understand what your culture looks like from the outside, ask yourself: would your best technician recommend your company to their best friend? If the answer is not an immediate yes, you have work to do.

11. Never Stop Recruiting

The biggest mistake plumbing companies make is treating hiring as a reactive activity — something they do when a truck is empty. The best plumbing companies are always recruiting, even when they are fully staffed.

This means keeping your job postings live year-round, maintaining relationships with trade school instructors, running your employee referral program continuously, and building a pipeline of candidates who are interested in your company before you need them.

When you have a pipeline, you can afford to be selective. When you are hiring from desperation, you make bad decisions. The companies that always have great people available are the ones that never stopped looking for them.

Building a Hiring System That Scales With Your Company

The 11 strategies above are not a checklist you complete once. They are the components of a hiring system that runs continuously and improves over time. The goal is to build a process that is predictable, repeatable, and scalable — so that hiring is never the bottleneck that limits your growth.

Here is what that system looks like in practice: you have live job postings on multiple platforms at all times. You have an employee referral program that your team actively participates in. You have a structured interview process with a scorecard. You have a 90-day onboarding program that every new hire goes through. You have a competitive pay structure that attracts high performers. And you have a culture that your current team is proud to be part of.

When all of these pieces are in place, hiring becomes a competitive advantage rather than a constant crisis. And the best technicians in your market start to see your company as the place they want to work — not just another option.

If you want to see exactly how to build this system inside your company, read our article on how to scale a plumbing business — which covers the full operational framework that makes great hiring possible. You can also explore our Owner Training Program and Technician Training Program for the specific systems we use inside our own companies.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line on Hiring Plumbing Technicians

The technician shortage is real. But the companies that are winning the hiring game are not winning because the shortage does not affect them. They are winning because they built systems that make them the most attractive employer in their market.

They write job postings that sell the opportunity. They move fast. They hire for character. They onboard properly. They pay competitively. They build cultures that technicians talk about. And they never stop recruiting.

If you want to build that kind of hiring system inside your company — and stop losing great candidates to competitors who have their act together — book a Complimentary Plumbing Profit Assessment. We will review your current hiring process, identify the gaps, and give you a 90-day action plan for building a team that keeps your trucks full.