The Tech Shortage Is Not Coming. It Is Here, and Indeed Will Not Fix It.

OHM Editorial Team

You have a truck in the lot that could be billing forty hours a week. The work is there; the schedule proves it every time you turn down a job. What you do not have is the tech to put in the seat, and the job posting you paid to promote has produced two no-shows and a guy who wanted to know if drug tests were negotiable.

Every owner in the trades knows this story, and most are still telling themselves it is temporary. It is not. The shortage of skilled techs is structural, it is already here, and the tool most companies are using to fight it was never designed to win it.

Key takeaways

• The skilled tech shortage is structural, not temporary: experienced techs are retiring faster than young people enter the trades while demand for the work keeps growing.
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects tens of thousands of openings every year for HVAC technicians and for plumbers alike, many of them simply to replace people leaving the field.
• Job boards like Indeed reach only the thin slice of techs actively looking, make every posting an interchangeable commodity, and leave no asset behind when the spending stops.
• Recruiting is marketing with a different audience: an employed tech looks up a company’s trucks, reviews, social feed and careers page exactly like a homeowner researching a big purchase.
• Fully staffed shops publish pay ranges, show a visible career path, pay referral bonuses promptly, and post their crews and daily life so techs watch them for a year before reaching out.
• Recruit continuously rather than the week a tech quits: fix the careers page, post the real crew on real jobs, and talk to the instructor at the nearest trade program this quarter.

The Math Is Not Getting Better

This is not a mood; it is demographics. Experienced techs are retiring faster than young people are entering the trades, while demand for the work keeps growing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects tens of thousands of openings every year for HVAC technicians and plumbers alike, many of them simply to replace people leaving the field.

Openings without applicants have a price tag most owners never total up: the overtime you pay to cover the gap, the maintenance agreements you cannot sell because you cannot staff them, the growth plan that quietly became a staffing plan. HVAC feels it worst, which is why staffing sits at the center of our HVAC marketing playbook. An empty seat does not show up on the P&L, which is exactly why it costs so much.

Why the Job Boards Cannot Save You

Indeed and its cousins are not useless. They are simply the same pond every contractor in your market is fishing in, at the same time, with nearly identical bait.

• The best techs are not there. They are employed, busy and not scrolling job listings. A board only reaches the fraction of the workforce actively looking, which in a shortage is the thinnest slice.
• Your posting is a commodity. Strip the company name off most contractor job ads and they are interchangeable: competitive pay, benefits, must have license and clean record. Nothing in that list tells a tech why your shop is different.
• The board owns the relationship. Like every rented channel, the moment you stop paying, you vanish. Ten years of postings builds no asset and no reputation among the people you want to hire.

Sound familiar? It is the shared-lead problem wearing a hard hat. Renting access to a crowded pool, bidding against your competitors, owning nothing afterward. The fix is familiar too, because you already use it every day on the customer side of the business.

Recruiting Is Marketing With a Different Audience

The employed tech who might someday work for you behaves exactly like a homeowner researching a big purchase. He hears your name somewhere. He looks you up. He forms an impression from your trucks, your reviews, your social feed and whatever your careers page says, then he either files you under “someday” or forgets you. Hiring him is a campaign, not a transaction.

That means the machinery you use to win customers points directly at this problem.

• An employer reputation you actually manage. Techs read reviews too, including what your customers say about how your company treats people. The same review engine that powers your local SEO is quietly your recruiting resume.
• A careers page that sells, not screens. Real photos, real pay ranges where you can, real people saying why they stay. Most contractor careers pages are a wall of requirements guarding a generic form.
• Targeted campaigns where techs actually are. Social feeds, supply house geofences and the networks around trade schools reach the employed-but-open majority the boards never touch.
• Follow-up at customer speed. An interested tech is a hot lead with a counteroffer coming. Companies that respond same-day hire; companies that respond next week interview.

This is exactly the discipline behind our recruitment marketing work: the audience changed, the method did not.

What the Winning Shops Do Differently

Talk to the companies in any market that are fully staffed and a pattern emerges fast. They are not paying wildly more than everyone else; they are visibly better places to work, and they make sure the market knows it.

They put pay ranges in the open, because the tech comparing quietly at 9 PM skips every posting that hides the number. They show a career path: where the apprentice ends up in five years, who got promoted last year, what the training budget buys. They treat their current techs as the recruiting channel, with referral bonuses that are actually worth a tech’s social capital and paid promptly enough to be believed.

Most of all, they let the outside see the inside. The shop that posts its crews, its holiday party and its new-truck day is running a permanent recruiting campaign at zero cost. When a tech finally gets fed up where he is, he does not start a search; he messages the company he has been watching for a year.

Start Before the Seat Is Empty

The deepest mistake in trade hiring is timing. Companies start recruiting the week a tech quits, which is like starting your marketing the week the phone stops ringing. The companies winning the shortage recruit continuously: a bench of interested names, a reputation being built in calm months, a pipeline into the local trade school before graduation season.

Do the small version this quarter even if you hire nobody. Fix the careers page. Post the real crew on your real jobs. Have one conversation with the instructor at the nearest trade program; we wrote a whole playbook on becoming the company trade school graduates ask about. When the seat opens, you want to be a name techs already know, not a stranger with a posting.

Final Thoughts

The shortage is not a storm that passes; it is the new climate. Complaining about the boards while paying them is not a strategy, and neither is poaching wars that just move the same techs around town at higher salaries.

The durable answer is the same one that works with customers: become the company people already want before they need to choose. That is built with marketing muscles you may already be paying for. Point some of them at the empty seat.

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