Ryan Englin on ChoinqueCast Podcast: Why Hiring Better People Won't Fix a Team That Drives Them Away

I went on ChoinqueCast with Jim Emerick to talk about why hiring better people never fixes a team that drives them away.

We opened with my dad. He was an owner-operator in manufacturing, the resident expert in everything, late for dinner, in the shop on weekends, dragging me down there at ten years old after a Sunday round of golf. When he got his first brick phone in the mid-80s he thought he had arrived. I saw a leash. That image shaped everything I do now. I told my college guidance counselor I wanted control of my time. They laughed at me. So I went corporate for a decade, worked 80 and 90 hours a week, and learned one thing worth keeping: systems. When I do it my way and never tell my team how I do it my way, it never gets done. Which means I do it all. Forever.

That's why Core Matters exists. We started as a marketing company because I believed my dad's problem was cash. It wasn't. Our clients kept saying the same thing. I don't need more leads. I need better people.

Jim asked for the story that changed everything. An HVAC client called and told us to shut off the leads. Four trucks sat empty. I told them recruiting is just a marketing activity, and when they asked how, I said I'd figure it out. Three weeks later every truck was filled and they had two more on order. Six weeks later every one of those hires was gone.

That's the whole lesson in one sentence. A-players want to work on teams of A-players. This was a third-generation company with a tight inner circle, and anybody without the right lineage felt like an outsider from day one. We had to teach them how to connect with new people and create belonging. Hiring was never their problem. Keeping was. That gap is what the Core Fit Hiring System was built to close.

We talked about the technician whose performance tanked in two months. Callbacks everywhere, deals stopped closing, leadership ready to fire him. We sat down at the break room table and asked what was going on. Grown man broke down. Brutal divorce. He thought he was hiding it. He needed one thing: 24-hour notice flexibility for depositions and attorney meetings. They gave it to him. The team covered. Within a couple of months he was performing again. Nobody goes from great to terrible because stuff just happens. Something is going on.

I told Jim about Jackie from my corporate days. I was known as the hatchet man, the guy you got transferred to right before termination. Jackie was 15 minutes late every day because of her daughter's daycare hours, and her old boss made a public example of her every single morning. It wrecked her until lunch. I moved her start time to 8:30 and asked for the 30 minutes back at the end of the day. Within two months she was the number one performer out of 130 people. Her old boss accused me of doctoring the reports. If you don't care about what your people care about, they will never care about your numbers.

We spent real time on rock stars versus superstars. Rock stars are the foundation. Loyal, excellent at the job you hired them for, and they do not want the promotion. Superstars want the hockey stick. Here's the trap. The rock star has been at one job eight years and interviews terribly. The superstar has had six jobs in twelve months and dazzles you, because they practice constantly. So we hire the superstar when we needed the foundation. Every building has a bigger foundation than it does a top.

Which leads to the point I care about most. The best way to run an interview is not to ask questions. It's to watch behavior. Tell candidates early is on time and on time is late, then score what time they actually walked in. Put the CSR candidate in a separate office and finish the interview over the phone, because the phone weighs 700 pounds for some people. Drop a candidate in a demo CRM, walk away for ten minutes, and see whether they ask someone for help or sit there on their phone. I'll teach software, process, and how we serve customers. I won't teach punctuality, integrity, follow-through, or customer service. You either have it or you don't.

Jim asked why I wrote Hire Better People Faster. Because there are thousands of owners like my dad who will never hire a consultant. Pride, ego, school of hard knocks. They can read a book privately and get the system anyway.

We closed on the labor crisis. We don't have a shortage. We have a self-inflicted crisis. COVID sorted people into essential and non-essential, and workers learned their employer won't be there for them. Gallup just reported engagement at a 15-year low. Seven out of ten of your people are not engaged, and unengaged people are open to leaving. Stop asking where the good people went. Start asking how you become the employer that people without those problems want to work for.

If you liked this, I go deeper on employer branding and building a bench on Systems Not Seminars.