Ryan Englin on Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast: 7 Steps to Hiring Better People Faster

I went on the Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast with Nicole Greer to walk through the seven steps of the Core Fit Hiring System and why most companies make hiring way harder than it needs to be.

Nicole and I hit it right away on the big idea: the employee experience drives the customer experience. Not the other way around. Your employees deliver your customer experience. If they're disengaged, frustrated, or feeling invisible, your customers feel it. Every single time. So invest in the employee experience first. They take care of customers. Customers take care of revenue. That's the order.

I shared how I got into this work. I grew up in my dad's manufacturing shop. Watched him grind 12-hour days, six or seven days a week, always chasing more revenue because "cash is king." I thought the problem was always more customers. Turns out the problem was people. I went corporate, spent a decade learning process and interviewing hundreds of people, then started a marketing company to help owners like my dad. A few years in, my clients kept telling me they didn't need more leads. They had empty trucks and machines sitting idle. That's when I pivoted everything to hiring and retention.

We walked through the full system. It starts with the Core. Your values, your vision, your purpose. Not words on a wall. Behaviors you live under pressure. I told Nicole about the reinforcing steel contractor in Florida whose core value became "Give a Damn." It's on hard hat stickers, vehicle wraps, and they filmed a six-second video of 90 guys on a job site screaming it. That's a real value. I also shared the painter with 35 employees whose core value became "Share the Foxhole" because his whole frustration was that people didn't understand the impact when they didn't show up or clean up after themselves. Your values need to be yours. Not copied from a book.

Then we talked about the Core Story. Values don't stick through bullet points. They stick through stories. I coach clients to start every meeting with more than two people by picking one value and having everyone tell a story about it. Over time, your team starts watching for those behaviors because they know the story is coming. And when your frontline people go home and have a beer with their brother and the brother asks about the company, they don't recite a mission statement. They tell a story. And if that brother is qualified for your open position, that story just became your best recruiting tool.

We moved into Find, which is all about the Core Fit Profile. I used the fishing analogy. The first decision in fishing is what kind of fish you want to catch. That decision tells you your bait, your gear, your location, time of day, everything. Most companies skip this. They just go to Indeed. Here's the problem with Indeed: the most qualified, culture-fit, strong-work-ethic people are not on job boards. They're already employed and happy. You need to know who your ideal hire is, where they spend time, and go recruit them there. Stop fishing in Lake Indeed.

I broke down the four-stage interview process. Pre-qualification phone screen. Culture fit interview first, not position fit. Position fit second. And the pullback offer at the end. Nicole loved the pullback offer, and I explained it the way I always do. I compared it to pulling up to the house with your new spouse and sitting in the driveway with a checklist. Towels. Toothpaste. Toilet paper. Hamper. None of those things are dealbreakers alone. But unspoken expectations create death by a thousand paper cuts. The pullback offer does the same thing for new hires. Let's talk about what "on time" means. Let's talk about what "give a damn" looks like in practice. Let's bridge the gap now instead of three months in when I want to fire you.

I also hit on behavioral testing over questions. Instead of asking "are you punctual," tell candidates the interview starts at 7 AM and you expect them 12 minutes early. If they walk in at 7:01, that's question one on the scorecard. Instead of asking how they dress for work, tell them to show up dressed to work. If they arrive in Crocs for a construction site, now we have a conversation about mindset that would have taken three months to uncover on the job. Faking a process is harder than faking an answer.

Onboarding got a fast pass, but the framework is simple. The 2412 Launch: first two weeks, teach them to think like you think. First four weeks, teach them to do like you do. First twelve weeks, teach them to win like you win. And celebrate them showing up. Stop celebrating people leaving and start celebrating people arriving.

We closed on engagement and assessment. I told the story of the HVAC technician whose performance tanked. The company was ready to fire him. We ran a behavioral assessment, sat down with him, and he broke down crying about a brutal divorce. The company committed to schedule flexibility with 24-hour notice. Within weeks he was back to being their top tech. You hired a human being. You get the good, the bad, the drama. All of it. Care about their life as much as they care about your business, and they will fight to stay.

On assessment, I redirected the conversation away from individual performance reviews and toward process assessment. Measure your time to first contact. Measure your onboarding completion rates. Assess the system, not just the people inside it.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on every one of these steps on Titans of the Trades. Subscribe for more conversations like this.