In the conversation
Ryan Englin on Grow Your Moving Company: How Trade Contractors Attract, Hire, and Retain A-Players
Key takeaways
- Ads that promote your team attract both A-player candidates and ideal customers. Ads that promote customer promises repel top performers because they hear crazy hours, no appreciation, and the customer always being right.
- The best candidates are not on job boards. Build a bench of pre-qualified people through email and text drip campaigns. Send them culture content, event photos, and a simple message: we wish you were here.
- An applicant tracking system operates like a CRM for candidates. It scores applicants automatically, triggers texts and emails, and keeps a curated pipeline of people you want to hire when the timing is right.
- The fuzzy file collects 10 to 30 personal details during onboarding: anniversary date, kids' ages, favorite restaurant, dietary restrictions. A $100 gift card mailed to a spouse before their anniversary costs less than a bowling night and creates loyalty money cannot buy. But if you do it for one person and forget another, it backfires fast.
- Only 6% of employees will refer someone for money. Reward referrals with family experiences instead. A weekend at a lodge with the kids includes the spouse who influences where that employee works and creates a memory no cash bonus can match.
- Stop investing in what makes you look good on social media. Invest in what your employees' families care about. Ask their kids what a fun weekend event looks like. That shifts loyalty from obligatory to genuine.
I sat down with Wade Swikle on Grow Your Moving Company to talk about what it looks like when you stop treating recruiting like an HR task and start treating it like the marketing activity it actually is.
Wade works in the moving industry, and movers deal with the same pain every other trade contractor deals with. Seasonal demand spikes. High turnover in frontline positions. Owners who post a job on Indeed when they're already desperate and wonder why they get the wrong people. Every single time.
We hit a bunch of ground in this conversation, but the big idea I kept coming back to is this: the same marketing you do to attract your ideal customer can attract your ideal employee. But it only works in one direction. When you put out content that brags about the quality of your team, the training you invest in, the culture you've built, customers see that and think "that's who I want moving my stuff." Candidates see it and think "that's the team I want to be on." Flip it around and lead with customer-facing promises like "we'll work as long as it takes" and "the customer is always right," and your best potential hires hear "they're going to work me into the ground and never say thank you." It's a small shift. Most people miss it.
We spent a lot of time talking about building a bench. That's a curated pipeline of pre-qualified candidates who raised their hand but aren't ready to move yet. You collect them into an applicant tracking system, nurture them with drip campaigns and culture content, and when the busy season hits or someone leaves, you're not scrambling on job boards. You're texting people who already know you and want to hear from you. One of my favorite moves is snapping a photo at a company event and texting the whole bench: "Wish you were here." Simple. Powerful. Nobody else is doing it.
We also talked about something most owners completely overlook: the fuzzy file. During onboarding, you ask 10 to 30 questions about the person. Anniversary date. Kids' names and ages. Favorite restaurant. Dietary restrictions. Favorite sports team. Then you use that information surgically throughout the year. Mail the spouse a $100 gift card to their favorite restaurant a week before the anniversary. Make sure the company cookout has snacks the kids with peanut allergies can eat. That kind of thing costs less than a bowling night and creates emotional loyalty that money never will. But here's the warning I gave Wade: if you do it for one person, you do it for everyone. Skip someone and you go from building engagement to destroying it.
Wade brought up a great point about how owners sometimes just check boxes. They cook breakfast for the crew, post the photo to a Facebook group, and pat themselves on the back. Meanwhile their people don't care about breakfast. They care about whether you noticed that their kid just had a birthday during a month where money is tight. The question I tell owners to ask is not "what do you want to do this weekend" but "what do your kids want to do this weekend?" Invest in the people your employees care about and they will fight to stay.
We got into employee referral programs too. Only 6% of employees will refer for money. Six percent. And most referral programs are built entirely around cash bonuses with a 90-day clawback. That's broken. Give them a weekend at Great Wolf Lodge with the family instead. It costs about the same, includes the spouse who has a lot of influence over where that person works, and creates an experience that sticks. Nobody quits the company that just sent their family on a weekend trip.
I also shared a rule of thumb I give every owner: 30% of your time and 30% of your marketing budget go toward your people. Not your customers. Your people. They are the ones who deliver the customer experience. Happy employees create happy customers. Happy customers create happy owners. The order matters.
We talked about the Core Fit Hiring System and the book Hire Better People Faster, and I offered Wade's listeners a free signed copy at corematters.com/freebook. If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on all of these frameworks on Titans of the Trades. Subscribe for more conversations like this.
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