Skilled Trades · A sourcing playbook
A mechanical contractor needs journeyman electricians, plumbers, and HVAC techs, yesterday. Every shop in town is running the same Indeed ad and poaching at the supply house. The licensing board already printed the entire market.
The trades shortage is not a discovery problem, it is a reach problem. The techs you want are on a truck right now for a competitor, and they will not see a job post because they are not looking at job posts. Recruiters who wait for applicants are recruiting from the bottom of the market.
Meanwhile, every state licensing board maintains a public roster of licensed electricians, plumbers, and HVAC contractors: name, license class, status, and county. Most boards sell or publish the full file under open records rules, the same way nursing boards do. Journeyman cards, master licenses, fresh apprenticeship graduations, all on a list almost nobody orders.
Step 1 · Pull the license rosters
Order the electrical, plumbing, and HVAC rosters from the state board. License class tells you seniority, issue date tells you who just made journeyman, and status tells you who is current.
| Name | License | Class | County |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ray Delgado | EL 44210 | Journeyman | Tarrant |
| Chris Boyd | EL 38855 | Master | Dallas |
| Tyler Mack | EL 51902 | Journeyman | Collin |
| Luis Herrera | EL 47730 | Journeyman | Dallas |
Step 2 · Filter to your labor market
Import the roster and cut it by license class, status, and county. New-issue journeyman licenses are the sweet spot: recently promoted, underpaid at their current shop, and never contacted by a recruiter in their life.
41,206 records imported
Deduplicated against master database
Filter: Journeyman + Master, Active
18,340 match
Filter: DFW counties, licensed 2-8 yrs
2,410 match
Step 3 · Enrich at wholesale
The enrichment waterfall runs the filtered list through your providers. People Data Labs matches identities, ContactOut and SignalHire fill in mobile numbers and personal emails, and every tech lands on a candidate card tagged by trade and license class.
People Data Labs
2,140 identity matches
ContactOut + SignalHire
1,730 mobile numbers found
Total spend: ~$720
$0.30 per enriched tech
Step 4 · Your field supers make the calls
The engine exports the enriched list to your ATS and its job ends there. The message comes from your field super or recruiter, and it talks like the trade: the work, the schedule, the truck, the per-hour. As replies land, the board tracks who is warm for the next bid.
A trades staffing agency charges 40-60% markup on every hour a placed tech works, forever. A direct-hire fee runs $8-15K per tradesman. The roster costs a filing fee, the enrichment costs cents, and the database keeps every licensed tech in your market on file for the next job you win.
Re-order the roster each quarter and diff it: every newly minted journeyman in the state appears as a new row. That is a standing pipeline of exactly the people every contractor in town is fighting over, and you are the only one holding the list.
This is an illustrative playbook showing how the engine is designed to be used in this vertical, not a customer case study. Numbers are representative of published provider and roster pricing.
$18K once. Full source code. Every provider at wholesale. Your infrastructure, your database, your candidates.
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