Hiring an HVAC or plumbing technician runs six steps: pick the role your work mix actually needs, verify the credentials the law requires, source candidates where they already train, set a pay plan that survives overtime law, run lawful background and licence checks, then onboard and keep them.
This guide walks owners and service managers through each step, names the agency behind every rule, and flags the state-specific parts to confirm with your licensing board.
Which HVAC or plumbing role do you actually need to hire?
Start from your work mix, not the job board.
A shop living on residential service calls needs a service technician who can diagnose in an attic as well as on a rooftop.
A changeout-heavy calendar needs installers.
Commercial work points to commercial HVAC or refrigeration technicians, and refrigeration work has its own credential demands.
On the plumbing side, the same logic applies: a service plumber for diagnostics and repair, a drain technician for the calls nobody else wants, pipefitters and steamfitters for commercial pipe work, and apprentices to handle prep, rough-ins and second-pair-of-hands tasks at an entry rate.
If you are not sure what each role covers day to day, the HVAC technician career guide and the apprentice guide describe the work from the technician's side.
Decide before you post, because every rung is contested.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 40,600 openings a year for HVAC mechanics and installers over 2025–2035, and 42,000 a year for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters — employment in both trades is projected to grow much faster than average (11% and 7%).
Skilled applicants are fielding multiple offers; a vague posting for "HVAC tech" competes with every precise one.
The HVAC industry statistics page tracks how many openings are live right now and what employers post for pay.
One useful exercise before you write the posting: browse HVAC technician jobs and plumber jobs to see what candidates see, then decide which level you are really hiring — an apprentice you will train, a journeyman-level tech who bills from day one, or a specialist.
What licence and certifications must your hire hold?
Three layers apply, and they come from different authorities.
The federal layer is EPA certification for refrigerant work: under 40 CFR 82.161, any person who could reasonably be expected to violate the integrity of the refrigerant circuit while maintaining, servicing, repairing or disposing of appliances containing CFC/HCFC or non-exempt substitute refrigerants such as HFCs must pass an exam from an EPA-approved technician certification program (Section 608 for stationary equipment; Section 609 for motor vehicle air conditioning).
Only EPA-certified technicians may buy refrigerant, with limited exceptions — an employer may purchase if it gives the wholesaler written evidence that it employs at least one certified technician.
Apprentices get a narrow carve-out: they are exempt from Section 608 certification only while they are closely and continually supervised by a certified technician, and the supervising technician shares responsibility for compliance.
The rule sets no time limit on that exemption.
Existing certifications also stay valid — EPA's AIM Act FAQ answers "no" to whether technicians already certified under Section 608 or 609 need to be re-certified.
The third layer is voluntary industry credentials, and it pays to read them correctly on a résumé: NATE, HVAC Excellence, NCCER, ASSE and OSHA outreach cards are industry credentials, not government licences.
NATE certifications renew every two years, and NATE's Ready-to-Work credential is explicitly a certificate, not a NATE certification — a fast filter for entry-level claims.
Verify what the candidate hands you.
There is no national EPA lookup: since January 1, 2018, each non-federal certifying program must publish an online list of the technicians it certified on or after January 1, 2017, updated at least annually, and technicians may opt out.
Certified technicians must keep a copy of their certificate at their place of business, so asking for a copy at the interview is reasonable.
State worker licences — journeyman, master, and their equivalents — are set by state law and often by cities and counties, and they are the layer most shops get wrong when hiring across state lines.
Rules change.
Confirm the exact credentials your state (and city, where licensing is local) requires for the work you are hiring for with your state licensing board before you set the job requirements.
Where do HVAC and plumbing contractors find candidates?
Apprenticeship pipelines first, because they compound.
Associated Builders and Contractors runs 67 chapters with more than 450 registered apprenticeship programs, and PHCC state chapters register plumbing and HVAC programs of their own — sponsoring an apprentice through one of these costs you training coordination, not a recruiter.
BLS points apprenticeship seekers to state employment services, state apprenticeship agencies, local contractors and union-management apprenticeship committees, and to apprenticeship.gov, which tells you where the candidate flow already runs in your state.
Veterans are a second structured channel.
The Defense Department's SkillBridge program lets employers become approved training providers and host service members during their last 180 days of service — a working interview that runs months, not hours.
Your current techs are the third channel: a referral comes with a built-in reference, because the tech vouching for the candidate is answering the part no background check measures — whether the person shows up and treats customers well.
Ask your best techs directly, and pay the referral when the hire passes the ramp.
Trade school programs in your area are the fourth; the instructors know who is serious.
Whichever channels you work, post the opening where technicians already look rather than waiting for them to find you.
A dedicated trade job board puts your posting in front of people who searched for HVAC or plumbing work on purpose — post your opening on HVACHires and it sits next to the role-specific guides those candidates read.
How should you pay techs: hourly, flat rate, commission or hybrid?
Hourly pays for time and is simplest to run payroll on.
Flat rate pays per job from a labor guide, so a fast tech earns more and your payroll tracks billed work.
Commission ties pay to the ticket — common in residential sales-heavy service.
Most shops that scale end up on a hybrid: a base hourly or salary floor plus a flat-rate, spiff or commission layer that rewards the work you want more of.
The Fair Labor Standards Act follows the pay plan, not your labels.
Flat-rate pay does not remove overtime: for job-rate or day-rate workers, the regular rate is total job pay divided by hours actually worked, plus an extra half-time for each hour over 40 in a workweek.
Commissions count too — they must be included in the regular rate for overtime whether or not they are the only pay.
There is one narrow exemption, and it is easy to overstate.
Section 7(i) covers commissioned employees of a retail or service establishment only if their regular rate is more than 1.5 times the minimum wage and more than half their pay over a representative period is commissions; a retail or service establishment generally means one where 75% of annual sales of goods or services is not for resale and the business is recognized as retail in the industry.
In May 2020 the Department of Labor withdrew its old list of businesses lacking a retail concept — courts had read it as carving air-conditioning contractors out of the exemption — so whether an HVAC or plumbing service company qualifies today is decided case by case.
Do not assume your commissioned techs are exempt.
Benchmark the base before you pick the incentive layer: the HVAC technician salary and plumber salary pages carry the current Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics national and state tables for those roles, including the percentile detail that shows what the top of the market earns.
If you bid federally funded work, Davis-Bacon prevailing wages apply on contracts over $2,000, and apprentices can be paid apprentice rates on those jobs only if they are individually registered in a registered program.
Pay-plan law is federal (FLSA, enforced by the DOL Wage and Hour Division) plus state wage law on top.
Rules change.
Have an employment attorney review your pay plan before rollout.
Which checks (MVR, background, drug, licence) should you run before hiring?
Verify the licence and certificates first, because they are the checks with a public record: your state licensing board's lookup for journeyman, master and contractor credentials, and the certifying program's own published list for Section 608.
Make the start date conditional on what you can verify, not on what the résumé says.
If a background-screening company runs the criminal check, the Fair Credit Reporting Act controls the process: give the applicant a stand-alone written disclosure that is not part of the job application; before taking adverse action based on the report, give the person a copy of the report and the "Summary of Your Rights Under the FCRA"; after the adverse action, send the second, adverse-action notice.
EEOC guidance expects a targeted screen — at minimum the nature of the offence, the time elapsed and the nature of the job — plus an individualized assessment rather than a blanket no-records rule.
For hires with records who otherwise fit, the DOL's Federal Bonding Program issues free $5,000 fidelity bonds covering the first six months of an at-risk hire's employment.
Driving checks depend on what they will drive.
A commercial driver's licence is required for heavy vehicles — Class B starts at a GVWR of 26,001 pounds — and typical service vans sit well under that line; the traps are box trucks and van-plus-trailer combinations, which are judged on the combined weight rating.
In interstate commerce, a vehicle at 10,001 pounds GVWR or more puts the company under FMCSA registration and a USDOT number.
DOT drug-and-alcohol testing applies to drivers subject to CDL requirements — not to non-CDL service-van drivers — so for ordinary van drivers the testing policy is yours to set.
That drug policy is where state law bites.
State cannabis employment protections vary, and some state laws limit pre-employment THC testing — no single rule covers the country.
Write the policy around your state's current law, and re-check it whenever the state legislature acts.
How do you onboard a new tech in the first 90 days?
Paperwork first, because the government's clock starts at hire.
Every U.S. employer must complete Form I-9 for every person it hires; Section 2, the document review, is due within three business days of the hire date (at hire, for a job lasting fewer than three business days).
E-Verify is a free online service that checks the Form I-9 information against government records — and if you hold federal contracts with the FAR E-Verify clause, you must enroll within 30 days of award.
Build the credential file on day one: a copy of the Section 608 certificate, state licence numbers with expiry dates, and the renewal dates for anything that lapses — NATE every two years, state CE on the board's schedule.
Certified technicians are already required to keep a copy of their certificate at their place of business, so the copy belongs in your file too.
Then structure the ramp instead of improvising it.
Weeks one and two: ride-alongs on your routes, your pricing, your paperwork.
A new apprentice touches refrigerant only under a certified technician's close and continual supervision — that is the legal condition of their exemption, and it doubles as your training plan.
Weeks three to six: their own calls on equipment they know, with a senior tech a call away.
By the ninety-day mark you should have written expectations met or a documented plan to get there.
The shops that lose new hires early almost always skipped one of these: the credential file, the ride-along period, or the written ninety-day expectations.
None of them costs money.
All of them signal that the shop is run.
How do you keep techs from leaving?
The turnover picture is calmer than the headlines suggest.
BLS's JOLTS data had construction at 152,000 quits in August 2026 (preliminary), a quits rate of 1.8% against 2.1% for all private industry, and 251,000 job openings, a 2.9% openings rate against 4.5% for private industry.
Both figures are industry-wide, not HVAC-specific — and they sit below the private-sector average.
Ordinary churn is a management problem, not a market curse, which is good news: management is the part you control.
What the market does guarantee is alternatives: with 40,600 HVAC and 42,000 plumbing openings projected a year through 2035, an experienced tech who wants to move will not move far.
Retention therefore decides whether you pay for a replacement or keep the revenue-producing tech you already trained.
Be skeptical of numbers here, including flattering ones.
No verified industry figure exists for tech turnover cost, time-to-fill, or the size of a sign-on or retention premium in HVAC and plumbing — no primary source was found — so any vendor statistic you are quoted is marketing until you see its data.
Measure your own: quits per year, first-year attrition, and what a departure actually costs your route density.
What reliably moves techs is unglamorous: a pay plan they can explain to their family, on-call rotation that is fair and published, a training ladder toward the next licence rung with the shop paying for CE, and a truck and tool policy that respects them.
Fund the licence rungs — a tech whose employer pays for the journeyman exam has a reason to stay through it.
What does your company licence require of the people you hire?
Your company's contractor licence is a separate object from every credential your employees hold.
The state (and in some trades, the city or county) sets who must hold the contractor licence, what experience and examination it requires, and what the licence obliges you to do about the people working under it — that is state law, and the requirements differ state by state.
EPA 608 is a federal refrigerant-handling certification, not a state licence, and holding it does not authorize contracting in any state.
Two practical consequences for hiring.
First, set job requirements from your own licence obligations: whichever employee categories your state board ties to the company licence — years of experience, supervising credentials, per-job supervision — are requirements of the hire, not preferences.
Second, if you bid federally funded construction, Davis-Bacon adds rules about who works the job: apprentices may be paid below the journeyworker wage-determination rate only if individually registered in a program registered with the DOL's Office of Apprenticeship or a recognized state apprenticeship agency, the apprentice-to-journeyworker ratio may not exceed the ratio in the registered program, and anyone paid at an apprentice rate who is not registered must get the full rate for the work done.
Before you post the role, call your state's contractor-licensing board — or read the licence law on its site — and write down which credentials the business must hold and which each hire must hold.
It is a one-hour exercise that prevents the expensive version: discovering a gap after a permit is pulled or a job is inspected.
This page is employer career and business information, not legal advice. Confirm licensing questions with your state licensing board, and employment-law questions with the agency named or an employment attorney.