The Slow Season Is Coming. Here’s What the Smart Techs Do in November.
By Randy Castricone, Founder, HVAC Mafia
Every year it’s the same story. Summer runs you into the ground. Sixty-hour weeks, no-cool calls stacked till dark, missed dinners, missed ballgames. Then the first cool front rolls through and the phone goes quiet.
And a week later you’re looking at a schedule with your name on it three days instead of five.
I’ve been in this trade 36 years. For 18 of those I owned a dealership, which means I was the guy making that schedule. So let me tell you what’s going on on the other side of the desk, and what you can do about it before it happens to you.
Shops are still hiring right now all around the country. Register free at thehvacmafia.com to see open role.
1. What your boss is thinking right now
Here’s the truth nobody says out loud. In November, an owner is looking at payroll and looking at the board, and the math doesn’t work. He’s got the same crew he had in July and half the calls.
So he’s sorting. Not by who’s the nicest guy. By who he can’t afford to lose.
The tech who closes maintenance agreements. The one customers ask for by name. The guy who can walk into a heat pump that’s been short-cycling for three visits and fix it on the first trip. Those guys get hours. Everybody else is a line item.
That’s not a knock on owners. I was one. It’s just how the business runs when the phone stops ringing. Your job is to make sure you’re on the first list.
2. Signs your hours are about to get cut
You can usually see it coming if you’re paying attention:
- The newest guys are suddenly riding along instead of running their own calls.
- Overtime disappeared before the weather even turned.
- The office starts talking about “filling the schedule” with tune-ups.
- Your service manager stops making eye contact when you ask about winter.
- Nobody’s talking about training, trucks or anything past Christmas.
One of these is noise. Three of them is a forecast.
3. What to do with the downtime
Slow season isn’t dead time. It’s the only time all year you can actually get better without a customer waiting on you. The techs who move up the ladder are the ones who use it.
- Get the certs you’ve been putting off. If you’re not current on the new A2L refrigerants, that’s first. Nobody’s going to hand the new equipment to the guy who hasn’t been trained on it.
- Get good at heating and heat pumps. If you’re a summer-only tech, you’re a seasonal tech. Learn the side of the trade that pays in January.
- Ask for the calls nobody wants. The weird intermittent problems. The commercial rooftop. The callback. That’s where you learn, and that’s where the owner notices you.
- Learn to talk to customers. The tech who can explain a repair clearly and offer a maintenance plan without sounding like a salesman is worth his weight in gold. Owners know it.
- Ask your boss straight up: “What do I need to do to be on your full-time list this winter?” Most guys never ask. The ones who do usually get an answer.
Know where the jobs are before you need one. Register free at thehvacmafia.com.
4. How to tell when it’s time to move
I’m not telling anybody to jump ship. Loyalty means something in this trade. It means something to me.
But loyalty runs both ways. If you’re getting cut every November with no plan, no training and no path up, that’s not a slow season. That’s a shop that doesn’t have a plan for you.
Ask yourself:
- Has anyone here ever sat down with me about where I’m headed in five years?
- Am I getting trained on anything new, or just running the same calls?
- Is my pay keeping up with what the shop down the road is paying?
- Do the good techs stay here, or do they leave?
If the answers are no, no, no and they leave, you already know.
5. The good shops don’t lay off in November
Here’s what nobody tells you. The best shops in this country have the same slow season everybody else does, and they don’t cut their people.
They use the winter to train. They run maintenance programs that keep the board full year-round. They techs get cross trained into heating, IAQ, plumbing or electrical and they plan for the slow season in March instead of panicking in November.
Those shops know what it costs to replace a good tech in April. They’d rather keep you.
Those are the shops we put on HVAC Mafia. Shops that want to hire, and want to keep who they hire.
The bottom line
You can’t control the weather. You can’t control the schedule. You can control whether you’re the tech they can’t afford to lose, and whether you know where the good shops are when it’s time.
That’s what the Family is for. We’ve got your back.
Shops are hiring right now. Register free at thehvacmafia.com to see every open role on the board. Takes a minute. Members only, so the shops see real techs, not scrapers.
No Shortcuts. Just Knowledge. Loyalty. Respect.