Ryan Englin on Five Star Company Culture: Revolutionizing Blue-Collar Hiring

I went on Five Star Company Culture with Josh Cunningham to talk about why blue-collar businesses keep losing people and what to do about it.

Josh and I are aligned on something fundamental. Company culture is not a nice-to-have. It's the foundation. And for trade contractors and field service companies, it's even more critical because you don't have the luxury of a water cooler or a ping pong table. You have to be intentional.

I shared the story of how I got here. I grew up watching my dad grind as an owner-operator. He never grew the business bigger than himself because he didn't know how to hire people. I went corporate, learned about process and systems, then started a marketing company serving home service and blue-collar companies. We kept hitting the same wall. Clients didn't need more leads. They needed more people to do the work. That light bulb moment changed everything. We applied marketing principles to recruiting, helped a couple of clients fill their crews in weeks, and then realized something bigger. If we didn't fix retention, recruiting just became a revolving door.

That's when we built what's now the Core Fit Hiring System. And instead of implementing it for companies, we teach them how to use it themselves. We teach them to fish.

I told Josh the story I tell everywhere. A business owner told me he couldn't find good people. I asked how many W-2s he issued last year. Forty-seven. How many people on his team? Eleven. That's not a hiring problem. That's a retention problem. Either that or you're making horrible decisions on the first date.

We talked about one of the biggest mindset shifts blue-collar owners need to make. When you hire someone, you did not just get a set of hands. You got a human being with hopes, goals, dreams, motivations, and drama. You get the whole package. There is no way to separate that. And the moment you expect your people to sacrifice the way you sacrifice as an entrepreneur, you lose them. They didn't sign up to build your dream at the expense of their family.

The conversation moved to attraction versus searching. Stop looking for good people. Start attracting them. Recruiting is a marketing activity. When you post on Indeed, you and four million other employers are fighting over the same 3% of the job market. The other 97% is somewhere else. And here's the thing. Looking for work is one of life's most stressful events. It's on the same list as losing a loved one or getting a health diagnosis. The rock stars, the people you actually want, are not putting themselves through that stress unless something pushes them. They need a reason to come to you.

If you're not attracting good people, it might be because you're not attractive to good people. That's hard to hear. But it's the truth.

I told the audience to look at their employer brand the same way they look at their customer brand. Check your Yelp reviews. Check your Glassdoor. Check your website. If a job seeker finds you and doesn't see a place they want to work, they move on. Your customers' experience of you tells job seekers everything they need to know.

Josh shared a great practice from his own company. After the formal interview, they bring candidates in for a shadow day. They let the candidate interview the company. I love that. It lines up with what we teach in our four-stage interview process. Faking a process is harder than faking an answer. When you put candidates in real situations and let them see the real version of your company, the ones who don't belong self-select out. The ones who fit lean in.

I left the audience with one challenge. Walk in your candidate's shoes. Step away from being the decision maker for a moment. Look at your brand, your process, your job ads, your website. Ask yourself honestly: is this a company I'd want to go work for?

If the answer is no, that's your starting point. And it is fixable.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on attracting and keeping the right people on Titans of the Trades.