Skilled trades staffing and recruiting in Tampa, FL
10 Second Agency is a direct-hire trades recruiting agency. We find, screen, and place HVAC, plumbing, and electrical technicians for independent home-services companies across Tampa Bay and the Gulf Coast. Flat fee per hire or a flat monthly retainer, every candidate human-screened and background-checked, and a 90-day guarantee behind every placement.
Searching for a trades staffing agency or skilled trades recruiters in Tampa? We are the direct-hire alternative to temp staffing: the technician joins your payroll from day one, with no markup on every hour they ever work. Still weighing options? Here is every Tampa Bay option, honestly compared.
Recruiting in Tampa · St. Petersburg · Clearwater · Sarasota · Bradenton · Venice · North Port · Lakeland · Fort Myers · Naples · Orlando · Jacksonville · Miami
Your posting is not the problem. The pool is.
Associated Builders and Contractors estimates construction must attract 349,000 net new workers in 2026. In the AGC 2025 Workforce Survey of 1,340 contractors, 88% had openings for hourly craft positions and 92% of those had trouble filling them. And in a Housecall Pro survey of more than 400 trades pros reported in January 2025, 86% named a lack of qualified candidates as their biggest hiring challenge. The good technicians are not reading job ads; they are fielding direct offers.
So we do not wait for applicants. We build every search from state license records, county journeyman rolls, and referral chains, and we recruit from that list directly, starting the day you call. That is how we aim to land first submittals inside a week.
The technician roles we recruit for in Tampa Bay.
We recruit for residential service companies, so we screen for the seat you actually need filled, not a generic “HVAC tech.” A tech who closes on service calls and a tech who runs clean installs are different hires.
HVAC service technicians
Diagnose and repair residential systems, run a full board, and present options at the kitchen table. We confirm EPA 608 certification on the card, not just on the resume.
HVAC install technicians
Changeouts and new installs, including the newer A2L refrigerant equipment. We check install quality with references, not years of experience alone.
Maintenance technicians
Tune-ups and service agreement visits. The entry seat that feeds your service bench.
Plumbing service technicians
Drain, water heater, leak, and repipe calls, with a journeyman card confirmed where your county requires one.
Residential electricians
Service calls, panel upgrades, and generator hookups, from apprentices to licensed journeymen.
Lead techs, service managers, and qualifiers
The leadership seats: field leads, the service manager who runs dispatch, and licensed qualifiers whose license a company operates under.
What we verify before a candidate reaches you: Florida technician license requirements.
How our trades recruiting works, in three steps.
Tell us the role
Our intake responds in seconds, and a human talks to you the same business day. We define the role, the pay band, and what wins techs away from your competitors, with live local wage data on the table.
We screen, you interview
Every candidate passes a scorecard phone screen, license and certification checks, and background and MVR checks to your policy. You see a short list of real options, with a target of the first week.
Hire with a guarantee
We manage the offer on both sides and stay on it after the start date. If a placement does not stick inside 90 days, we replace them. Simple as that.
Built for independent residential service companies.
Our clients are owner-run HVAC, plumbing, and electrical shops where the owner or general manager still makes the hiring call. If that is you, we are built for your hiring problem. If it is not, we will say so on the first call.
A strong fit
- Residential service companies of roughly 10 to 75 employees
- Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee, and Sarasota counties
- A tech seat open for weeks, or a job post that keeps getting reposted
- Shops hiring two or more techs a year, which is where a retainer pays off
Probably not a fit
- Large roll-ups with their own in-house recruiting teams
- Short-term project crews, where a staffing agency fits better
- A first-ever hire at a very small shop, where our free hiring guide may be all you need
HVAC, plumbing, and electrician recruiting.
HVAC recruiters
Direct-hire recruiting for HVAC service techs, installers, and service managers at independent Florida shops.
Learn morePlumbing recruiters
Direct-hire recruiting for service plumbers, repipe crews, and rough-in talent across Tampa Bay and the Gulf Coast.
Learn moreElectrician recruiters
Direct-hire recruiting for residential service electricians, journeymen, and foremen for independent Gulf Coast shops.
Learn moreCommercial HVAC recruiters
Direct-hire recruiting for commercial HVAC service techs, refrigeration techs, controls techs, and service managers at Florida mechanical contractors.
Learn moreFractional recruiting
A flat monthly retainer that makes us your recruiting department: searches, screening, and a warm bench, placements included.
Learn moreConstruction management search
Retained and contingency search for superintendents, estimators, and project managers at Tampa Bay builders and GCs.
Learn moreTampa Bay technician pay, at a glance.
The median HVAC mechanic in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro earns $24.30/hr ($50,540), while the North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota median runs $4.10 an hour higher. Every search starts by pricing the seat against data like this, so your offer competes on day one.
| Trade | Tampa metro | Sarasota metro | Florida | United States |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC mechanics and installers | $24.30/hr ($50,540) | $28.40/hr ($59,070) | $27.24/hr ($56,670) | $29.33/hr ($61,010) |
| Plumbers | $25.00/hr ($52,000) | $27.96/hr ($58,150) | $25.44/hr ($52,910) | $30.67/hr ($63,800) |
| Electricians | $27.62/hr ($57,450) | $24.97/hr ($51,930) | $27.52/hr ($57,250) | $30.38/hr ($63,190) |
Median hourly pay with annual pay in parentheses, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (Tampa, North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, Florida, U.S.). By definition, half of workers earn more than the median, so an experienced service tech will often cost more than these figures. We pair them with wages posted in live local job ads, updated weekly.
Direct hire vs. a staffing agency vs. job boards.
All three can put a tech in a truck. They differ in who employs the tech, what you pay, and for how long you keep paying it.
| Direct-hire recruiter (us) | Staffing agency | Job boards | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who employs the tech | Your company, from day one | The agency, as the W-2 employer | Your company |
| What you pay | One flat fee, quoted before the search starts | The tech's hourly pay plus a markup, typically 25% to 65% by trade | Posting or pay-per-click fees |
| How long you pay | Once, with a 90-day replacement guarantee | Every hour, for as long as the assignment runs | Each time you post |
| Who finds and screens | We source, screen, and verify; you choose | The agency assigns a worker | You screen every applicant yourself |
| Best for | Permanent seats you plan to keep filled | Short-term or uncertain demand | Roles with plenty of active job seekers |
Markup range from industry rate guides. On a $30-an-hour tech at a mid-range 45% markup, the agency’s share is $13.50 an hour, about $27,000 over a 2,000-hour year. That markup also covers the agency’s payroll taxes and workers’ comp, so it is not pure profit; it is still expensive for a seat you mean to keep. The full comparison and the math.
One-off searches when you need one. A recruiting department when you are done gambling.
Hire once: one flat fee per placed tech, quoted in writing before the search starts. Hire all year: the fractional retainer makes us your recruiting department, placements included, bench always warm. Between hires, the pipeline plan keeps screened candidates flowing.
Every quote is priced to the seat and put in writing before any work starts, so you know the full cost before you commit.
Full pricingWhat is your open seat costing you each week?
Skilled trades take an average of 56 days to hire, according to Randstad’s analysis of more than 150 million job postings from 2022 to 2026. Every one of those days, a truck that could be running calls sits in the yard.
Our cost-of-vacancy calculator puts a number on it. Enter your weekly revenue per tech, your gross margin, how long the seat has been open, and the overtime covering the gap, and it shows the gross profit lost while you wait.
Run the numbersRecruiting from Tampa Bay across Florida.
Commute reality decides whether a tech stays, so our searches are local by design. Pick your market:
Tampa
The biggest trades labor market on Florida’s Gulf Coast, and the one where commercial construction competes hardest for your techs.
St. Petersburg
A built-out peninsula county where the trades run on service and replacement, and where commute geography decides who stays.
Clearwater
North Pinellas runs on its own talent pool: beach-corridor wear, suburban replacement work, and techs who will not drive the length of the county.
Sarasota
An affluent, consolidating market with a thin trades labor base for its size. Hiring here is a housing-math problem.
Bradenton
The coast’s growth engine: new rooftops from Lakewood Ranch to Parrish, install demand everywhere, and service talent in short supply.
Venice
South county’s small-shop market: owner-operators scaling past their first trucks, serving an island of mid-century homes and a ring of gated communities.
North Port
The coast’s workforce city: where many of the region’s techs actually live, and a service market now growing into its own.
Lakeland
Florida’s fastest-growing county by headcount, wedged between the Tampa and Orlando labor markets on I-4. Small tech pool, rising demand.
Fort Myers
Southwest Florida’s biggest metro, still rebuilding and still growing: Cape Coral alone is up more than a fifth since 2020, and HVAC pay beats Tampa’s.
Naples
Pay above the Florida median in all three trades, a small tech workforce, and one in four homes held for seasonal use. Searches reach into Lee County.
Orlando
Commercial contractors employ more people here than residential ones, unlike Tampa or Miami. Four counties, four different journeyman card rules.
Jacksonville
Florida’s best-paying large metro for plumbers, its fastest-growing county next door in St. Johns, and a commercial sector that dwarfs residential electrical work.
Miami
Florida’s largest trades market by far: the oldest housing of any big metro, hurricane-zone building codes, and a workforce where Spanish is the majority language.
Trades staffing and recruiting questions
What does 10 Second Agency do?
10 Second Agency is a skilled trades recruiting firm in Tampa, Florida. We find, screen, and place HVAC, plumbing, and electrical technicians for independent home-services companies across Tampa Bay and the Gulf Coast, on a flat fee per hire or a monthly retainer.
What is a skilled trades recruiter?
A skilled trades recruiter finds and screens licensed tradespeople, such as HVAC techs, plumbers, and electricians, for companies that need to hire them. Unlike a staffing agency, a direct-hire recruiter places the worker on your own payroll for a one-time or monthly fee instead of renting them to you at an hourly markup.
Why is it called 10 Second Agency?
Because responsiveness is the product. Our intake responds to a new role in seconds, a human follows the same business day, and candidates hear back fast enough that they do not drift to the next offer. Hiring is a speed game; the name keeps us honest.
What does a placement cost?
One flat fee per placed technician, quoted in writing before the search starts and paid only when the hire starts. Shops that hire several times a year do better on the fractional retainer, with placements included in a monthly fee. Every placement carries a 90-day replacement guarantee.
How long does it take to hire an HVAC technician in Tampa?
Across the skilled trades, the average time to hire is 56 days, according to Randstad’s analysis of more than 150 million job postings from 2022 to 2026. We aim to put first candidates in front of you within a week of a signed job order, because we recruit working techs directly from state license records, county journeyman rolls, and referrals instead of waiting on applicants.
Is direct hire cheaper than a staffing agency?
For a permanent full-time seat, usually yes after a few months. A direct-hire fee is paid once (contingency recruiters commonly charge 20-25% of first-year pay, about $12,500 to $15,600 on that same tech), while a staffing markup on a $30-an-hour tech at an illustrative 45% markup adds about $28,000 over a 2,080-hour work year. For short-term or uncertain demand, an agency’s flexibility is worth the premium.
Do you place EPA-certified and licensed technicians?
Yes. We confirm EPA Section 608 certification for anyone who will handle refrigerant, and check journeyman cards with the issuing county where your work requires one. Most service techs work under their employer’s contractor license as employees, which Florida law allows under section 489.103(2) of the Florida Statutes.
What does an HVAC technician earn in Tampa?
The median HVAC mechanic and installer in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro earns $24.30 an hour ($50,540 a year), and the North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota median is $28.40 an hour ($59,070), per U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for May 2025.
Which areas do you serve?
We are based in Tampa and recruit across Florida: Tampa and Hillsborough County, St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, Sarasota and Manatee counties, Lakeland and Polk County, Orlando and Central Florida, Jacksonville and the First Coast, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach in South Florida, and Fort Myers, Cape Coral, and Naples in Lee and Collier counties, with candidate sourcing across each market’s commute shed. Every market we cover has its own page on our locations hub.
An empty truck costs more per week than our fee costs once.
Email dalton@openventuregroup.com or start a search online. The intake answers in seconds; a human follows the same business day.