In the conversation
Ryan Englin on Behind The Numbers With Dave Bookbinder: Why Recruiting Is a Marketing Activity and How to Stop Hiring Duds
Key takeaways
- Recruiting is a marketing activity. The same work done to attract customers applies to attracting employees. Job posts that list requirements and ignore culture repel the exact people worth hiring.
- Rock stars stay put for years and interview terribly because they have no practice. Superstars impress in every interview because they do it constantly. Most companies keep accidentally hiring superstars when they need rock stars.
- Stop asking candidates about behavior. Tell them the standard up front and watch whether they meet it. Schedule the interview for 7 AM, tell them early is on time, and score whether they arrive at 6:50. Faking a process is harder than faking an answer.
- When a strong performer's numbers suddenly drop, something personal almost always triggered it. One plumbing tech went from zero callbacks to 10% in a month. The owner wrote it off as declining skill. The real cause was a personal crisis that started in February.
- People ghost interviews for two reasons. The company moved too slow and someone else hired them first. Or the phone screen had zero personal connection, so the candidate felt nothing to lose by disappearing.
- If a new hire shows up on day one and nobody knows their name, no desk is set up, and a shovel lands in their hand with no training, that person quits in their heart before the first week ends. The marketing promise and the day-one reality have to match.
I sat down with Dave Bookbinder on Behind The Numbers to unpack why hiring is broken for most small businesses and what owners can do to fix it.
Dave opened with a question I hear everywhere: do people still quit their boss, not their job? I asked the room that question at every workshop I ran that year. Every hand went up. People give up things when they leave home to come work for you. They leave their family, their friends, their fun. If they don't feel like they belong on the team, they find another one.
We spent a lot of time on recruiting as a marketing activity. Most business owners started their company to do the work, not to recruit. Nobody taught them how to hire. So they treat it like a necessary evil, slap up a job post full of requirements and must-haves, and wonder why the phone doesn't ring. I told Dave that if people leave jobs because of people, then your job ad needs to talk about people. Talk about your culture. Talk about your leadership team. Talk about what it feels like to be on your crew. Stop writing job posts that read like legal documents.
Dave asked how small businesses compete for the best people. My answer is simple. Be findable. Most companies have zero mention of hiring on their website. No careers page. No team photos. No indication that they're growing. A candidate goes to your site, sees nothing about employment, checks your Glassdoor or Indeed profile and finds it empty, reads a few bad Yelp reviews, and moves on. You just lost someone you never even knew existed. At minimum, put a careers page on your site. You don't need a novel. Talk about your team. Talk about why people stay. Show candidates there's a path forward.
We dug into the interview process and I walked Dave through the four stages. The pre-screen matters more than most people think. If you skip it and just invite everyone in, you burn yourself out interviewing people you never connected with. That pre-screen is where you find something in common, give the candidate a reason to show up, and build enough connection that they feel bad ghosting you. I told Dave that if you sense a candidate might ghost, ask them directly: do you plan on ghosting me? It sounds awkward. It works.
For the interview itself, stop asking questions and start observing behavior. I gave the example I use with every client. Tell them early is on time and on time is late. Set the interview for 7 AM and expect them at 6:50. Question number one on your scorecard: did they arrive at 6:50? You don't need to ask about punctuality. You just watched it happen. Faking a process is harder than faking an answer.
Dave shared a great anecdote about walking out to candidates' cars to check the interior. I love it. We teach the same thing. Walk the candidate to their car after the interview. That car interior is what your company truck will look like in three months.
We talked about rock stars versus superstars. The person who stayed at one company for eight years and is now interviewing for the first time in a decade is going to bomb the interview. They don't have practice. Meanwhile, the superstar who changes jobs every 18 months interviews like a pro. They impress you. You hire them. Two months later it's a mess. Entrepreneurs keep accidentally hiring superstars when they need rock stars. Recognize that a flat interview performance might just mean the person hasn't done this in years. That's actually a good sign.
Dave brought up ghosting from the employer side, and I agreed completely. Companies ghost candidates all the time. They're too busy putting out fires caused by being short-staffed to respond to the application that fixes the short-staffing. The irony is painful. I told Dave that clients cancel calls with me because someone called in sick and they're scrambling. That's the exact problem we're solving.
We closed out with empathy in the trades. I shared a real client story about an HVAC technician whose callbacks jumped from zero to 10% starting in February. The owner wrote it off as declining performance. I told him to pull the data and look at when it started. Nobody goes from zero callbacks to a bunch of callbacks because stuff just happens. Something is happening in their personal life. When the owner sat down and had a real conversation, the tech opened up. The fix wasn't complicated. The awareness was what mattered.
The bottom line: people are interviewing you just as much as you're interviewing them. Be authentic. Stop hiding cousin Jimmy before the candidate walks in. Spend time with people. Set real expectations. Think of hiring like a long-term relationship. Know what you're getting into before you commit.
If this conversation hit home, I go deeper on all of this on Titans of the Trades. And if you want the full playbook, grab a copy of Hire Better People Faster.
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