Ryan Englin on Construction Genius: How to Hire Better People Faster

I went on Construction Genius with Eric Anderton to talk about why hiring in the trades is more like dating than most owners want to admit.

The core idea is simple. Before you go to market looking for people, take inventory of what you actually have to offer. If you're a four, you're not landing a ten. That's true in dating and it's true in recruiting. The good news is you can become more attractive. You can invest in leadership training, fix your communication, and build a culture people actually want to be part of. But you have to do the work first.

I walked Eric through the foundation of everything we teach at Core Matters. Start with your core values. Not words you copied off Google. Real behaviors that your team lives out every day. Then get clear on your purpose. Why does your company exist beyond making money? And finally, define where you're headed. If your bus is driving in a direction that repels the people you want, it's time to reset your vision.

We spent a lot of time on the interview process. Most owners talk too much in interviews. They sell the candidate on the company instead of shutting up and asking questions. I gave Eric an example using one of our core values at Core Matters, always improving. I present the value and then ask the candidate what it means to them and how they expect it to show up. I don't give my definition first. I want to see the gap between what I believe and what they believe. If the gap is small, we can bridge it. If it's massive, we're not a fit. That gap measurement is the whole point.

I also broke down our scorecard system for removing subjectivity from interviews. Before you sit down with anyone, define what a perfect answer sounds like and what a nails-on-a-chalkboard answer sounds like. Score every open-ended response on a scale of one to three. You still have gut instinct in the room, but now your entire team calibrates against the same standard.

Eric asked about how we structure multiple rounds of interviews, and I explained our approach. A senior leader handles the culture fit interview first. If they don't fit culture, move on. I don't care how skilled they are. Skills are teachable. Culture fit is not. Once culture checks out, the hiring manager does the position fit. And here's a move most companies skip: during that second round, introduce the candidate to a potential peer. Then walk away. Let them talk without a boss in the room. The candidate's language changes. Their guard drops. That peer gives you evaluation data you will never get sitting across the table yourself.

We talked about the 2412 Launch, our onboarding framework. First two weeks are about culture. Do they belong here? Do we belong with them? We're not even looking at work output yet. Weeks one through four, we assess whether they can do the job. Weeks one through twelve, we're setting them up to win. And every piece of onboarding is employee-led, not one-size-fits-all. Two technicians with different strengths need different onboarding paths. If you run the same program for both, you lose them both.

One of the biggest mistakes I see is owners assuming the new hire will raise their hand and say "I'm confused." They won't. Train them, invest in them, coach them until they tell you to stop.

I also walked through the pullback offer. Before anyone signs an offer letter, sit down and go through a checklist of the small things that will drive both of you nuts over the next six to nine months. What happens when information isn't communicated completely? How do we handle it when you need more details to move forward? I gave the example of a client whose perfect candidate smacked her gum during the interview. She was a culture fit. She was great on paper. But that gum smacking was going to destroy the relationship. So they had a direct conversation about it. The little things you think are weird to bring up are the exact things that turn into reasons to fire someone six months later. That's not fair to them and it's not fair to you.

I closed with the employer brand audit. Go to a coffee shop, Google your company name plus "jobs," and look at what shows up. Your 2.1 Yelp score. That one-star Indeed review from six years ago. A website that screams "we work nights and weekends and sacrifice our families for the customer." Ninety percent of job seekers Google you before they apply. They already see everything. Fix the narrative or someone else controls it for you.

Recruiting is a marketing activity. Interviewing is a sales activity. Retention is a customer retention activity. When you start treating them that way, everything changes.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on building your Core Fit Hiring System on Titans of the Trades.