Plumbing Recruiting: Different Experts Sharing Tips [2024]

Tips from Experts on Recruiting Plumbers

Here are some tips from plumbing business owners and recruitment specialists with experience hiring qualified plumbers.

1. Pay Attention to Your Business Culture

Josh Smith, Vice President of Internet Marketing at Scorpion, stresses a recruiting strategy that includes multiple digital platforms (Google, Bing, Facebook, and YouTube) beyond the classic job sites like Indeed, Craigslist, and LinkedIn. 

Smith writes that pay-per-click ads or even self-created videos on YouTube could help find the best candidates.

Some strategies for recruiting plumbers include helping candidates relax during interviews and increasing your company’s brand image. 

The latter is vital because the first step in hiring plumbers begins at home: Being part of the solution means taking care of your own business first. 

Appealing to new hires means building an appealing workplace that fosters collaboration, ingenuity, and initiative and develops an environment that encourages growth and development. 

The company's culture, whether it's in plumbing, HVAC, or electrical services, serves as the face of the company to both customers and the local community.

This culture will actively promote the company, contributing to the fulfillment of available job positions.

“Your culture is a magnet,” said Chris Hunter, ServiceTitan's Director of Customer Relations. “People want to work for winners.”

2. Provide the Right Financial Incentives

Another critical step is to recognize what plumbing offers to job seekers and include it in your job description.

Plumbing jobs are open to anyone who can handle the physical requirements—regardless of age.

Apprenticeships typically last three to five years, but they provide on-the-job training and steady income en route to being a journeyman or master plumber—without taking on hefty student loan debts.

There are stories of people who made the career switch at age 40 and were happy they did it.

“The trades offer a tremendous opportunity,” says Jessie Cannizzaro, master plumber and owner of Milestone Plumbing Inc.

These job opportunities are also financially rewarding.

A ServiceTitan study of salaries showed that the median salary for a senior experienced plumber in the United States is $60,700 per year.

An entry-level plumber makes $49,100 on average. The average wage for plumbing techs with two to four years of experience is $59,500.

The financial rewards and job stability alone should increase the number of plumbers seeking employment.

But surprisingly, it doesn’t.

This shows that few people know about the financial rewards and career opportunities—emphasis on career—that abound in the plumbing industry. 

The more people realize that, the more they consider it a favorable option.

So, experts advise you to add extra incentives like sign-on bonuses and healthcare benefits to attract talent. And add the bonuses and commissions they’ll receive working with you.

Let’s be honest: Commissions, bonuses, and other financial incentives require tailored pay structures, making it hard to manage your payroll.

You can use ServiceTitan’s Contractor Payroll software to ensure techs receive correct and fair compensation.

The software allows you to create a pay structure incorporating commissions, bonuses, and overtime. This is better than calculating bonuses and commissions separately.

It also automates time tracking for each plumbing employee. 

Technicians' drive time, vendor runs, and wrench time are automatically added to their timesheets. And back office staff can clock in and out using the software.

This way, dispatchers can see which tech is available to take on new jobs.

3. Build a Pleasant Working Environment

Another step companies can take when hiring plumbers is to take care of their work environment.

Make it welcoming and fun. Be serious when it’s time to be serious, be fair to employees, treat them like family, and welcome diversity. 

ServiceTitan’s entire eight-part Growth Series in 2021 was, at its essence, about treating people well and building and maintaining a solid culture.

“You can’t always work in your business, but you can work on your business,” Cannizzaro said.

Eddie McFarlane, Vice President of Learning and Development at Haller Enterprises, said complaining does not address the challenge.

“What separates great organizations,” he said, “is working on the problem.”

John Akhoian of Rooter Hero Plumbing, in California and Arizona, stresses establishing five core values—faith, integrity, respect, service, and teamwork.

Those values sell the company and attract like-minded employees.

“When I’m interviewing somebody [in-person or remote], I introduce the values early on,” he said. “One of the questions I like is, ‘What do you like most about your current job? What’s your favorite value there, and tell me why?’ And we talk about it.

“It just gives me a good perspective of where they’re coming from. We don’t look at the values as a deal breaker[...]we try to bring people in and see if we can instill those values to help people better their lives.”

That helps him find the right candidates among the qualified plumbing service technicians.

Building that strong company foundation can help keep good people. Retention of good people matters.

Make the company such a good and nurturing environment that it’s hard to leave. If someone does depart, that foundation will attract a suitable replacement.

Creative Recruitment Tactics That Work

Aside from the expert insights, we’ve found other little-known strategies you can use to upstage other plumbing companies in the plumbing tech talent pool.

Here’s a brief rundown of these strategies:

Let’s take a deeper look at each.

1. Reach out to past employees

Reaching out to past employees sounds like an odd strategy. But it works. According to Visier, one out of three external hires in 2021 were returning employees.

So, contact former employees when trying to fill open positions, especially if they left on a good note. They may be looking for a change and willing to return.

When reaching out to past employees, you should:

• Personalize your messages: Give a reason for reaching out and explain why they’re the best for the job type available.

• Give them a way to respond: Place a link to your job board or plumbing website. Encourage them to check it out and tell you what they think.

• Always follow up: If they express interest in a job opening, follow up promptly.

But one thing to note: In most cases, returning employees earn 25% more than their previous salary. So, increase their salary sufficiently while maintaining the profitability of your company.

2. Reach out to past applicants

It’s a great idea to reach out to people who responded to your job alert in the past. 

It's likely past applicants you didn’t hire were either not a good fit for your company culture or lacked the specialties required for the role. But they may have upskilled since your last conversation.

So, before you put out a job posting for a service plumber, look at your applicant tracking system (ATS) and pick out past applicants who fulfill the job description.

Then, craft a personalized message explaining why you feel they could be a better fit for your company this time.

3. Host a hiring event

In-person or virtual hiring events are excellent opportunities to engage with prospective hires without the influence of other plumbing companies.

Hiring events also allow you to talk about your company’s unique culture, opportunities for career advancement, and job roles.

To get the word out about the event and attract the best talents, partner with recruitment agencies, trade schools, and even high schools. And don’t forget to promote it across platforms.

Further, set up little focus groups for prospects to interact with current employees and get firsthand information about the benefits they stand to gain by working with your company.

4. Go old-school

These days, plumbing companies recruit primarily using digital channels. This reduces the competition on traditional channels.

So, to target more prospective hires, you can supplement your digital recruiting strategies with old-school tactics like:

• Distributing flyers in areas with high service-call volumes.

• Running direct mail campaigns.

• Placing plumber job ads in newspapers and trade publications.

• Rewarding employees for successful referrals.

Besides that, you can also give traditional recruiting strategies a modern touch by:

• Giving out pamphlets with scannable QR codes that lead to employee testimonial videos.

• Holding virtual job fairs.

• Direct mail marketing.

Pro tip!

Consider using ServiceTitan's Direct Mail feature to automate your direct mail campaigns.

Simply create a list using the data you already have stored in ServiceTitan…

…upload your postcard, and we’ll help you mail it to your prospective hires.

Say goodbye to printing and designing direct mail campaigns on your own.

5. Use a chatbot

Another way to boost engagement on your career page is to add AI-powered chatbots. Program it to answer questions about your company culture and the benefits of working with you.

Also, use it to qualify candidates by asking them about their skills, previous experience, and career goals.

Useful Plumbing Recruitment Tips

To close, here are some helpful recruitment tips to attract plumbers with sterling records and abilities.

• Portray your company as one that always has a full schedule and leverages tools to ensure the schedule stays full.

• Sell the career. Yes, the financial incentives are real, but so is the opportunity.

• Talk about the career path when recruiting and hiring. Show prospective employees your career opportunities to help them grow in your company. Make your social media presence a positive one that engages with the community.

• Make yourself reachable. Make it easy for potential applicants to find job openings and job listings, apply online, and connect. Think outside the box during the hiring process. Tell the prospective employee about your culture, perhaps invite their partner to join you and the applicant to dinner just to engage. Learn about the person, not just the worker.

• Develop the culture you want from Day 1. Foster it, strengthen it, and support it.

• Community involvement sells your workplace to others with similar values and interests. “People want to be part of something bigger than themselves,” says Angie Snow of Western Heating and Air Conditioning in Utah.

Now Over to You

Several plumbing companies are competing for each plumber at any time. 

So, think outside the box and implement creative recruitment strategies that can help you attract and hire qualified candidates.

But you should also remember this: Plumbers, like any other employee, prefer to work in organizations with seamless processes. It simplifies their jobs.

So, invest in plumbing software like ServiceTitan to automate your operations. Then, sell it in your job description to attract plumbers weighed down by the systems and workflows in their current company.

ServiceTitan is a comprehensive plumbing business software solution built to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and achieve growth. More than 100,000+ contractors across the country trust our award-winning, cloud-based platform.