What to Look For in an HVAC Technician

HVAC and refrigeration is one of the more heavily regulated trades to hire into, mostly because of refrigerant handling. Anyone working with refrigerants in Australia needs an ARCtick licence issued through the Australian Refrigeration Council, and it's a legal requirement, not a nice-to-have — handling refrigerant without one carries real penalties for both the technician and the employer who put them on the job. Checking ARCtick status (and that it covers the right class of work, since there are separate categories for split systems, commercial refrigeration, and so on) should be step one, before you even look at the rest of the resume.

Install work and service work are different skill sets

A technician who's spent their career on new-build commercial installs — running ductwork, commissioning new plant, working from mechanical drawings — isn't automatically strong at fault-finding on ageing equipment under a live maintenance contract, and vice versa. Neither is 'better'; they're different muscles. If your role is genuinely a mix of both, say so in the ad, and ask candidates directly about the split of install vs. service work in their last two roles rather than assuming years of experience tells you that.

Commercial systems vs. residential split systems

There's a meaningful jump in complexity between residential split-system work and commercial systems — VRV/VRF systems, chillers, commercial refrigeration, building management system integration. A technician with years of residential experience is not automatically ready to step into commercial maintenance without support, and pretending otherwise leads to callbacks and, worse, safety issues on gas or high-voltage work. Ask specifically what plant types and system sizes a candidate has worked on, not just 'commercial or residential.'

Mechanical services is broader than HVAC alone

Many technicians in this space work across HVAC and adjacent mechanical services — hydraulics, building automation, sometimes basic electrical work under supervision. If your business needs that breadth, it's worth screening for it explicitly, because a technician who's only ever done single-system HVAC work in a narrow scope may not have been exposed to the wider mechanical services environment that a facilities or commercial maintenance role demands.

The practical screening questions that actually help

Beyond licence checks, the most useful screening questions are concrete: what's the largest system they've commissioned or maintained solo, what refrigerant types they're current on, whether they've held on-call/emergency response responsibilities, and how recently they've worked unsupervised versus as part of a crew. Those answers tell you more about day-one readiness than years of experience on a resume ever will.