Ryan Englin on Hammer & Grind: Built For Contractors: How To Hire People You Won't Want To Fire

I went on Hammer & Grind: Built For Contractors with Brad Huebner to talk about why most contractors think they have a hiring problem when what they actually have is a retention problem. And how to fix it.

Brad asked me the question I hear from every contractor: what's the number one thing people get wrong with hiring? The answer is the same every single time. If you haven't defined who the right person is, you will never find them. It's the same principle we use in marketing. You build a customer avatar before you run ads. You need an employee avatar before you run a job posting. Who aligns with your values? Who wants to do this work? Who is going to create the kind of experience that earns you five-star reviews? Get clear on that first. Everything else follows.

We spent a lot of time on the interview, because that's where I geek out the most. I told Brad this. The interview is like dating. You would never go on a 15-minute first date and propose marriage. But contractors do the equivalent every day. Fifteen-minute interview, make an offer, and then three weeks later they're shocked the person isn't who they thought. Slow down. Spend an hour. Build a relationship. That one hour saves you hundreds of hours of re-hiring.

I walked Brad through our multi-stage interview approach. The phone screen is two or three questions max. Non-negotiables only. Can you physically do the work? Are you authorized to work here? And one culture question. If someone says "I need a job" or "rent's due," that tells you everything about how long they'll stick around.

The in-person interview is where it gets real. Stop asking people questions they've rehearsed. Start putting them in situations that mirror the actual work. I shared the story about a roofing client who kept hiring people who said they weren't scared of heights. Then on day one, they'd freeze on a two-story roof. The fix was simple. Start doing the interview on the roof. You find out in 30 seconds what no question will ever reveal. Faking a process is harder than faking an answer.

Same principle applies everywhere. Plumbers? Have them replace a toilet. HVAC techs? Put a broken unit in the shop and give them 30 minutes to diagnose it. Customer service reps? Don't sit across from them in a conference room. Put them in a separate office and call them. They spend 99% of their time on the phone. Assess them that way.

Brad brought up gut feeling, which is real for a lot of contractors. Your gut comes from pattern recognition over years. That's valuable. But it's also where bias hides. I've seen owners hire someone because they rooted for the same sports team or their kids went to karate together. Those aren't reasons to hire people.

We got into retention, which is the real conversation. I told Brad about the W2 test. Ask your accountant how many people you had employed at the end of last year. Then ask how many W2s you issued. I've seen companies with 10 people on staff and 50 W2s. That's not a hiring problem. That's a keeping-people problem.

Here's the part that changes everything. If you fix your hiring process and start bringing in people who fit your culture, who fit your leadership style, who actually want to service your customers, you'll solve about half your retention problems without doing anything else on the retention side.

I also broke down why most employee referral programs fail. Only 6% of employees will refer for money or recognition. That's it. So the $250 bounty? It doesn't move anyone. Worse, most companies don't pay it until the referral stays 90 days. That turns your tech into an unpaid retention manager. That's not their job.

I walked Brad through a better approach. Give people something that actually matters. If PTO isn't standard in your industry, offer it as the referral incentive. Now your employee isn't calling their buddy and saying "my boss will give me 250 bucks if you quit your job." Instead they're saying "if you come over here, we both get paid time off. Your wife gets that trip she's been asking about." Way different conversation. Way better results.

We also talked about building a bench. Most contractors wait until someone quits, then dust off a stale job posting and throw money at Indeed. Flip that. Build an email list of people who've expressed interest. Nurture them. Send them a photo from your company party with the subject line "wish you were here." When a position opens, you call from the bench instead of scrambling.

Brad asked me the question I wish every contractor would ask. Is it possible to hire good people right now? There are over 150 million people employed in this country. Most of my clients need 20. Or 30. Or less. The people are out there. They just don't know you exist. And if they do know you exist, you haven't given them a reason to care. That is fixable.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on all of these frameworks on Titans of the Trades. Subscribe for more conversations like this.