Ryan Englin on Harmonious at Lunch: Hiring Better People Faster

I sat down with Brandon Gano on Harmonious at Lunch to talk about what's really happening in the labor market, why employers keep struggling to find good people, and what it takes to fix it.

Brandon opened with the question everyone wants answered: is nobody working anymore? Here's the truth. The labor market isn't broken. The conversation between employers and employees is broken. COVID didn't create the problem. It put a magnifying glass over a problem that already existed for decades. When the government divided workers into essential and non-essential, it told millions of people "you're not that important." And those people heard the message loud and clear. They started asking better questions about what they want from work and from life. That shift isn't going away.

People work to live. They don't live to work. Once workers realized they had options, they stopped tolerating employers who treated them like replaceable parts. If you can't get good people to come work for you, and you can't get them to stay, it's probably because you're not attractive to good people. That's a harsh truth. But it's fixable.

The first step is ownership. It's not about the job market. It's not about generations. It's not about the government. As the employer, you have complete control over this. Take a look in the mirror and ask: am I attractive to the people I want to attract? It's the same thing you'd do if you were entering the dating market. You'd get a haircut. Hit the gym. Buy new clothes. But as employers we dust off a decade-old job description, post it on Indeed, and wonder why the good people don't show up.

I walked Brandon through our Core Fit Hiring System and the idea that almost every company we work with has never sat down and defined what a great employee actually looks like. When I ask that question, nobody tells me "they can turn a wrench" or "they can use our CRM." They tell me the right person behaves a certain way. Shows up on time. Respects the team. Takes care of the customer. That's what we build our Core Fit Profile around. Behaviors and traits. Not skills.

When you define the right behavior and put it in front of the market, something interesting happens. The wrong people see it and walk away. They see accountability. They see metrics. They see a team that doesn't let people hide. And they opt out. Applicant volume drops. Quality shoots through the roof. One client went from finding six good candidates in nine months to getting six a day. He had to turn everything off because he had too many great people applying.

I also broke down the difference between a job ad and a job description. This is recruiting as marketing, not HR administration. Think about how Chevy sells the Corvette. They don't lead with a window sticker full of specs and maintenance schedules. They run a 60-second spot of people living the dream. Roar of the engine. Grinning faces. The lifestyle. It's almost impossible to find a Corvette window sticker online because Chevy knows that's not what sells cars. Your job ad needs to sell the experience of being on your team. People don't leave jobs. They leave people. So your ad needs to talk about the people, not the duties.

Brandon asked about retention, which is where most companies fall apart. Everything we do is employee-first. Your number one goal in the first week of onboarding is for that new hire to go home and tell their friends and family "best decision I ever made." If you do that, you can double, triple, or quadruple the amount of time they stay with you.

For the people already on your team, the question is simple: are you helping them achieve their personal goals? Not professional goals. Personal goals. Too many companies obsess over certifications and training that only serve the business. But if someone wants to get out of debt and buy a house, connect them with financial advisors. Bring in mortgage experts. Run budgeting courses. We bring Dave Ramsey's Smart Dollar into trades companies where people are living paycheck to paycheck because nobody ever taught them how to budget. When you invest in people personally, you engage them in ways money never will.

Brandon asked me to leave the audience with one question. Here it is: What do I need to do, or who do I need to become, to attract the best people?

If this conversation hit home, I go deeper on all of this in my book Hire Better People Faster. And if you want more conversations like this one, check out Titans of the Trades where I unpack these ideas every week.