Ryan Englin on CARE to Lead® with Cynthia Corsetti: Why America Has a Retention Problem, Not a Hiring Problem

I went on CARE to Lead with Cynthia Corsetti to talk about why we don't have a labor shortage in this country. We have a retention problem.

Cynthia asked me what got me into this work, and I told her the truth. My dad was an owner-operator in manufacturing. Worked 12-hour days, six or seven days a week, on call 24/7. I spent my childhood at his shop as free labor and told myself I'd never join the family business. I went corporate, then started a marketing company thinking the answer for people like my dad was more leads. More customers. Surely that would fix everything.

It didn't. About four years in, a whole bunch of my clients told me the same thing. Leads aren't my problem. Customers aren't my problem. I can't find people to do the work. So I applied marketing principles to their recruiting. A few weeks later one HVAC contractor in Phoenix called to say they'd placed four techs in trucks, had two more on order, and wanted the leads turned back on. That moment changed my entire business. Unfortunately for my dad, by the time I figured all this out, he was ready to retire.

Cynthia and I dug into the Core Fit Hiring System and its seven components. Core. Find. Automate. Hire. Onboard. Engage. Assess. I told her the interview piece is the one I'm most passionate about, and we spent real time on it. Most employers conduct interviews wrong. They're desperate, so they spend 30 minutes selling themselves. The candidate says "sounds awesome," and six weeks later everyone is wondering what happened. That's not a conversation. That's a transaction.

The interview is a relationship. And the foundation of any relationship is two-way communication. Human being to human being. Not employer to employee. When you sit down and have a real conversation, the dynamic changes completely. I shared the story of a company that was ready to hire someone they were enamored with. They followed our expectation-setting process during the offer meeting, and the candidate voluntarily bowed out. He said he couldn't do it to them. He'd planned to use the job as a stopgap, but after seeing how important the team was, he refused to waste their time. That only happens when you have a real conversation.

We talked about onboarding and how it starts when they apply, not when they show up on day one. I compared it to a first date. My wife and I still remember ours, and it set the tone for the next 20-plus years. That first application interaction sets the tone for how engaged and effective someone will be. Most companies blow it. The new hire shows up, nobody knows they're coming, IT hasn't set up logins, and they end up shadowing Suzie for the day. That person goes home thinking, "This is not what I signed up for." And they quit in their heart before the first week ends.

Cynthia asked me to debunk the biggest misconception about hiring. Easy. There's no labor shortage. We have a retention problem. I told her to do the math. Ask your office manager how many people were on payroll December 31st, then ask how many W2s you issued last year. The number will make you sick. We get companies calling us all the time saying they need 20 people. Then I find out they went through 70 or 80 last year. If they'd kept 25% of those people, they wouldn't be calling me.

I also broke down rock stars versus superstars. Superstars interview brilliantly because they do it all the time. They want to climb, and if you don't promote them, they leave. Rock stars are the foundation. They want to be top 10% in their current role, go home, disconnect, and crush it again tomorrow. The problem is rock stars bomb interviews because they haven't done one in eight years. Their resume isn't polished. They look nervous. And companies discount them for all the wrong reasons.

We also covered the two types of job hoppers. One stays in the same industry and same role but bounces between employers looking for the right team. The other jumps from cashier to construction to manufacturing to medical. The first one is looking for a place to belong. The second one doesn't know what they want to do when they grow up. Steer clear of type two.

I shared how one client had almost a 90% interview no-show rate. We pulled their recorded screening calls and found the recruiter was just checking boxes. One candidate kept mentioning his band and she just moved on. We coached her to connect on what candidates actually want to talk about. Within a month, nine out of ten people were showing up. Because now there was a connection. Now the candidate had something to lose.

Recruiting is a marketing activity. It's not an HR function. The thing you post online is an advertisement. The interview is the sales process. The hiring manager is fulfillment. And engagement is what keeps people coming back for years.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on all seven components of the system on Titans of the Trades.