200 kilometres sleeping at home is a different job from four nights in a hotel. Hide it and you lose both applicant groups – and never notice.
Almost every job advertisement for field service technicians carries the same sentence: “willingness to travel required.” It means anything between 20 and 200 travel days a year. To the employer it is self-evident; to the candidate it is the single most important open question – and because it stays open, they answer it themselves. Conservatively.
This is the strongest single lever in recruiting service technicians, and it costs nothing beyond the willingness to write down a number.
In its analysis of the service technician shortage, Deloitte names very intensive travel as one of the two main causes, alongside the growing desire for better work-life balance. The occupation carries a reputation – and that reputation is the yardstick a candidate measures your ad against, as long as you give them no other.
The point is that the actual spread is enormous. Two roles, both “field service technician”, both “with willingness to travel”:
| Regional technician | Commissioning engineer | |
|---|---|---|
| Travel radius | around 200 km | international |
| Nights away | 1–3 a month | 10–15 a month |
| Getting home | every evening | weekend trips home |
| Vehicle | from home address | flight + rental car |
| Attractive to | technicians with families, 35+ | technicians who want variety |
Those are two different jobs. Advertise both under “willingness to travel required” and you speak concretely to neither: one does not apply because they suspect hotel weeks; the other applies, finds regional work, and is gone within eight months.
The usual objection to concrete figures is: “then fewer people will apply.” That is true. That is the purpose.
Run the math for the role in question. A service technician becomes productive after months, not weeks – in special-purpose machinery after six to twelve. A resignation in year one therefore costs more than any placement fee, and its most common cause is not technical but an expectation created during hiring and not met in the plant.
A company that quantifies travel days might get eight applications instead of twenty. But those eight know what they are getting into. The twelve who stay away would have been lost anyway – just later, after the interview, after the offer, or after eight months of onboarding.
“Southwest region, roughly 200 kilometers from your home address” is a statement. “Nationwide deployment” is a warning. Either beats nothing.
“On average two nights a month, up to four in project phases.” A range reads as more credible than a single figure and protects you at the same time: you named the ceiling.
How often, what allowance, what time off in lieu. An experienced technician reads “occasional on-call duty” as the worst thing they have lived through. “Every fifth week, allowance X, time off the following day” is a calculation they can run themselves.
This one line is missing from almost every advertisement and is one of the most discussed topics among experienced service technicians. If travel time from home counts as working time at your company, that is a hard argument – and it costs you nothing but the mention.
“Company car” can mean anything. “Service vehicle from your home address, private use possible” is an offer. For a regional technician that is often the point at which they consider a move at all.
Among manufacturers of compressors, pumps and valves – and across refrigeration, HVAC and building-technology service – the regional technician with a home base is the norm: decentralised, often working from home, with a company vehicle, without daily presence at the plant. For a technician tired of assembly trips and hotel weeks, that is exactly the offer they are looking for.
It appears in no advertisement. What appears there is how long the company has existed and how many sites it has.
That is the real loss: the company holds the more attractive offer and advertises salary instead – on the field where the corporation wins. Naming your arrangement means competing on ground where mid-sized companies hold a structural advantage.
Take your last advertisement for a service technician and mark every place where one of the six details appears: radius, nights, on-call, vehicle, control systems, travel time. In most cases the page stays unmarked.
Then read it again from the perspective of a technician who has worked for your competitor for six years, has two children, and wants to know whether they will be home in the evening. The question they ask is always the same – and it goes unanswered.
How to turn that into a repeatable process rather than a better single ad is in “Finding field service technicians” and on the page for the in-house recruiting system.
A field service technician hired in fourteen days. A machining company with three candidates for two roles in the first month. No magic pill – a system that stays in the company afterwards. The feasibility check tells you whether your role can be filled in your catchment area. If it cannot, we decline before you spend a cent. One company per field and area.
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