How do you recruit techs who already work for a competitor?

Because experience is built on the job.

The tech who can run a service call alone, sell a maintenance agreement and train a helper learned all of it in someone's shop, on someone's truck.

The skill you are hiring is a work history, and a work history comes from a job.

The federal numbers describe the market you are hiring into.

BLS projects about 40,600 openings a year for HVAC mechanics and installers over 2025–2035, and it expects most of them to come from replacing workers who leave or retire rather than from new positions added by growth.

Plumbing is a parallel story on volume, with about 42,000 openings a year projected for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters over the same period.

Most of those projected HVAC openings, in other words, are backfill — they exist because someone left or retired — not new positions.

Do they move?

Some, every month.

BLS's JOLTS counted 152,000 quits in construction in August 2026 (preliminary) — a monthly quits rate of 1.8%, against 2.1% for all private industry.

Those figures cover all construction trades, not HVAC or plumbing alone, and the construction rate sat below the private economy's.

Our judgment, reading that series as recruiters: churn this low says the experienced tech you want is probably not job-hunting in any given month, and someone who is not job-hunting is unlikely to come across your posting.

Reaching them takes a personal approach — and a concrete pitch, because you are asking someone to leave a job they are doing fine in.

The practice also cuts both ways.

The tech you approach is someone else's hire, and the hire you land is a target for the next shop that needs one.

The keeping side of that bargain — pay plan, schedule, career ladder, stay interviews — is its own job, and our guide to retaining technicians covers it.

Recruit with the same honesty you would want aimed at your own crew.

Start with the warm door.

Your own crew usually knows who is good at the shops around you — who carries the hard commercial route, who just tested up a licence level, who is doing work above their title for a shop that has not moved them up.

A referral or a shared name answers the candidate's first question, "why is this shop calling me?", before you have to.

Our channel-by-channel guides to where to find HVAC technicians and where to find plumbers cover the full list; this page stays on the one channel that needs care — the direct approach to an experienced tech who is not actively job hunting.

Done right, the direct approach is plain and specific.

Reach out yourself, say who you are and why you are calling, and talk about their work: the job you saw them do, the equipment you would put them on, the schedule you actually run.

Never misrepresent who you are or which shop sent you, and never build the pitch on running down their current employer — you are selling your shop, not prosecuting theirs.

Never ask a candidate to bring anything that belongs to their employer — customer lists, pricing, service-agreement terms, vendor deals.

You want their skill, not their employer's property, and a hire who arrives with confidential material in hand is poisoned on day one.

Confidentiality agreements and trade-secret questions sit well past what this page can settle; if a candidate offers you their employer's book, decline it and take the situation to your attorney.

And respect the no. A tech who says "not this year" is a warm contact next year — leave the door open and keep the relationship professional.

The job board does its share too: a posting a tech can find quietly, without having to return anyone's call, lets a cautious mover weigh the move on their own terms before they ever talk to you.

A tech with a job is being asked to take a risk, and vague promises do not clear it.

Expect the first real question to be about money, and expect it to be precise: what does a typical week pay, and how is it computed?

Have the answer worked out on your own plan before you make the call — the hourly rate, how flat-rate hours actually come out against it, where spiffs and overtime land.

If you cannot show that math, the pitch is not ready; how each plan behaves is the job of our guide to tech pay plans.

Benchmark the offer against the market, not against what you paid your last hire.

The BLS pay tables live on our HVAC technician and plumber salary pages — check the state your crew works in before you name a figure.

Money starts the conversation; the rest of the pitch has to close it.

That rest is the job as it actually runs: the schedule and on-call rotation you really staff, the truck and tool situation, what the next rung on your ladder is and who holds it today, and how the shop behaves when a job goes sideways.

Concrete beats glowy on all of these: "competitive pay and great culture" gives a tech with options nothing to weigh.

If you close deals with a sign-on bonus, two cautions.

First, size it from your own math: our research found no verified source for typical sign-on bonus amounts in HVAC and plumbing, so there is no verified industry figure to copy.

Second, if you attach a repayment condition to it, know that California restricts the structure: under AB 692 — which governs contracts entered into on or after January 1, 2026 — a sign-on bonus repayment is allowed only if it sits in a separate agreement, is prorated, is interest-free, has a retention period of no more than two years, and the worker can defer the bonus to avoid repayment.

Structure those terms with your attorney, not from a template.

Start with the federal picture, because much of what you will read predates the change.

The FTC issued its Non-Compete Clause Rule in 2024, but a court vacated it before it took effect, and the agency has closed the chapter: on September 5, 2025, the FTC voted 3-1 to dismiss its appeals and accede to the vacatur, and on February 12, 2026 the rule — 16 CFR part 910 — was formally removed from the Code of Federal Regulations.

No federal ban on non-competes exists, and none is pending through that rule: whether the agreement your candidate signed holds up is a question of state law.

Our guide to the non-compete for HVAC technicians walks the enforceability picture and the pre-hire file in detail.

When you are the one recruiting, a non-compete is not the only agreement a candidate may carry — non-solicits, confidentiality agreements and training repayment agreements can sit alongside it, and how any of them applies when you are the hiring employer is a state-law question our research did not confirm a rulebook for.

So make it protocol instead of a guess.

Ask every tech candidate, early and in writing, whether they are party to a non-compete, a non-solicit, a confidentiality agreement or a training repayment agreement, and keep the answer in the file.

Get a copy of the actual document — the signing date and the state change the analysis — and have your employment attorney review it before the offer goes out.

Never coach a candidate to ignore an agreement, and decide how you will deploy them in their first weeks with your attorney, not on your own.

The one state statute our research confirmed in detail is California's AB 692, and it matters here because a candidate you recruit may be carrying a stay-or-pay term.

For contracts entered into on or after January 1, 2026, it is unlawful in California to include in an employment contract a provision requiring a worker to repay a debt or pay a penalty or fee for leaving a specific employer — the "stay-or-pay" family of terms, which is what training repayment agreements sit in.

The statute exempts, among others, contracts tied to an apprenticeship program approved by California's Division of Apprenticeship Standards and properly structured tuition repayment for a transferable credential.

A California candidate who says "I'd owe my old shop money if I left" may be describing a term the statute does not permit — but that is a call for your attorney, and the date the agreement was signed decides whether the statute reaches it.

One honesty note on scope: our research confirmed the federal picture and California's statute in detail; the rest of the state-by-state map of non-compete bans and limits was not confirmed, and we carry no verified list of it.

Confirm the current law of every state you recruit in with an employment attorney licensed there — before you scale the practice, not after the first angry letter arrives.

The sourcing, screening, pay and onboarding work around the hire itself is in our guide to hiring HVAC and plumbing techs.

This page is employer career and business information, not legal advice. Non-compete, non-solicitation and stay-or-pay rules are state law, and they change — confirm the current rules with an employment attorney licensed in every state where you recruit before you make the approach or rely on any agreement a candidate has signed.