Top 15 HVAC Technician Skills to be Best on the Job

Top 15 HVAC Technician Skills to be Best on the Job

To be successful in your HVAC career, you need to have certain skills and qualities that will enable you to deliver best services to your customers or employers.

This post will help you identify major HVAC skills that you need to develop and apply in your work to take your career to the top.

Before delving into the qualities, let’s see what HVAC technician is:

Who is an HVAC Technician?

HVAC stands for Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning, and it covers furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps, and boilers.

Some of the duties of a HVAC technician include servicing and installing walk-in coolers, massive cooling towers, humidification units, air filtration systems, hazardous gas and material ventilators, etc. See complete HVAC technician job description.

Now, let’s get back to:

15 Important HVAC Technician Skills and Qualities to be Effective on the Job

1. Effective Communication: Your job as a HVAC technician requires that you interact well with customers who report problems affecting their systems.

These customers may not be familiar with the terminology of the industry, so they will rather prefer to explain their problems using the language they understand better.

You should carefully and patiently listen to them to know what questions to ask that could help identify the issue they present to you.

2. Troubleshooting and Problem-solving: If a problem is reported, you should first troubleshoot it; brainstorm solutions and implement possible steps toward solving the problem.

To be a good HVAC technician, you need to have knowledge of various troubleshooting techniques, as well as current testing equipment, such as humidity recorders, airflow meters, gas leak detectors, and voltmeters.

3. Customer Service: Your customer service abilities will help you to take extra time to explain repairs and new products to customers, and answer all their questions carefully. You must be able to make customers feel comfortable through making a good impression on them.

4. Mechanical Skills: HVAC technicians should be comfortable working with mechanical systems. Since these technicians are required when HVAC systems need to be assembled, disassembled, repaired and programmed, they need to get familiar with a wide range of HVAC systems, controls, and installation methods.

5. Time Management: You should be able to manage a schedule while remaining organized. As you have to deal with multiple calls each day, you need to be able to effectively complete each task before moving on to the next one without delay.

Your time management skills will help you to know what task to handle first and what comes later.

6. Physical Ability: You need this special skill set because during your work section, you need to be comfortable lifting parts, equipment and objects.

Even if you work in a team or alone, you may be called upon to carry out similar lifting. Being physically able will help you a lot, especially when you are all alone.

7. Attention to Detail: You need to thoroughly take note and pay attention to detail when working as a HVAC technician.

This will give you the ability to document exactly what tasks and services were performed.

Very importantly, you should keep good records of each appointment and the equipment used.

8. Computer Skills: When working as a HVAC technician, you will need to use many different tools such as a computer.

These days, the computer helps many employers to use software systems to maintain track of assignments and clients.

With the knowledge of the technology as being part of the job, you can actually use computers to control, monitor, and repair a lot of HVAC systems.

9. Education: For you to be eligible for employment as a HVAC technician, you need to possess at least a High School Diploma or GED education level. Additionally, you can go for a degree program to get a better chance on the job.

10. Organizational Skills: You need this skill set to ensure that the appropriate tools and parts are available whenever the house call is made, so that the customer does not have to reschedule the appointment to another time.

Organizational skills will help you to get a good idea of the system of the work you are about to do before making the call.

11. Safe Work Habits: Repairs can cause a hazardous situation if precaution is not taken. As a HVAC technician, you will need to work with electricity, gas, water, and other moving parts.

Therefore, you must ensure to follow proper repair procedures without taking shortcuts.

Before starting repairs, you should make sure that power sources are separated; work area secured from pets and children, and tools maintained.

You need to essentially learn safety regulations to prevent unnecessary accidents.

12. Patience: No matter how experienced you are, some problems can baffle you and attempt to stress you. You don’t have to give up when you become frustrated, but exercise some patience to help you conquer complex issues.

When you are faced with a difficult HVAC problem, you should try to stay composed and patiently try various solutions so as to correct the problem.

First of all, take a deep breath, go on a break for a while, and then come back to the project afresh.

Patiently use your mind and apply the right attitude towards finding the best solution to every problem that comes your way.

13. Integrity: Honesty is one of the qualities that will make you to be very good at your job.

Don’t overbill your customers with unnecessary expenses because they will not be happy spending their hard-earned money over high-costly repairs.

They will definitely enquire elsewhere about the truth, and if they eventually find out that they’ve been overcharged, they will run away from you and so you lose them.

Therefore, you need to maintain customer trust by being honest always even on the slightest issue.

14. Reliability: To demonstrate that you can be relied upon, make sure all your certificates, licenses, and permits are valid and up to date. This proves your legitimacy and trustworthiness.

Always be ready for customers’ calls at any time of the day, and be on time to appointments.

If you are running late, ensure you let customers know about it to prove that their time is valuable to you.

15. Confidence: The confidence you have for your work makes you to talk to your customers with authority, and have faith in your ability to perform your task perfectly.

Your success relies on how much you know the work you are called to do and the confidence you have in your own expertise.

To gain more confidence in your work, you can take more courses for more skill development, as well as take on more responsibilities to widen the span of your work.

HVAC Technician Skills for Resume

If you are writing a resume for an HVAC technician job, it is important to  include the skills or competence section to it.

This section, which helps you to show the recruiter the skills and qualities that you are bringing to the HVAC technician job, can be made by applying the skills and qualities provided above.

Conclusion:

This post shows you the skills and qualities you need to have as an HVAC technician to improve your performance on the job and increase your chances of succeeding in your career.

You may not be able to develop all the qualities and skills at once, but by making effort to gradually build them and apply on your job will definitely result to improvement in the quality of service you deliver to your customers or employers.