Ryan Englin on SharkPreneur: The Proven System to Hiring Right the First Time

I sat down with Kevin Harrington and Seth Greene on SharkPreneur to talk about why most businesses are losing the hiring game and how the Core Fit Hiring System fixes it.

The conversation started where it always starts. I told Kevin and Seth the origin story. I was running a marketing company, generating leads for trade contractors, and one of my HVAC clients in Phoenix called me in July and said stop sending leads. They had four trucks sitting in the yard with no techs to put in them. That moment changed my entire business. I realized the biggest problem these companies face isn't getting customers. It's getting the right people.

Seth asked me what the biggest mistakes employers make when hiring. The answer is simple. They don't know who they're looking for. They define the position but never define the person. They list skills, tools, experience, and education. That's great if you want a cog. But if you want a human being who belongs on your team, you have to go deeper. You need a Core Fit Profile. That means understanding the behaviors, the communication style, and the values that make someone thrive inside your specific culture.

People don't leave jobs. They leave people. We all know this. Yet 99 out of 100 job ads say nothing about who you'll work for, what the team is like, or why anyone would want to be there. That's broken.

I walked them through how we help companies build what we call the Core Vision. Three pieces. First, where is your bus going? Not the executive version of the vision. The version that makes the person in the field say "I'm excited about that destination and I'll help push this bus when it breaks down." Second, your value system. Not words like integrity and teamwork on a poster. Those are permission to play. If you don't have integrity, you don't get to show up. Core values need to be verbs. They need to describe how your people actually behave. Third, purpose. Why do you get out of bed in the morning to do what you do? That question is deeply personal, and the answer is what attracts the right people.

Then we talked about job ads. I gave them the Corvette example. When Chevy launches a new Corvette, they don't run a commercial listing the oil change interval and the maintenance costs. They put an attractive couple on Pacific Coast Highway with the top down. That's the multi-million dollar commercial. Because buying a car is an emotional decision. So is switching jobs. Your job ad needs to sell the experience of working with your team, not read like a window sticker full of bullet points and requirements. People give up time with their friends, their family, and the things they do for fun to come work for you. If you can't show them how being part of your team replaces some of that, they'll show up for the paycheck and leave the second something better comes along.

Seth asked me about behavioral assessments and how to screen for values. I told him I love assessments. DISC, Colby, all of them. The best one is the one your team actually uses. But I don't use assessments to make hire or no-hire decisions. Human beings are too complicated for that. What I use them for is understanding how to communicate with the person once they're on the team. The real screening happens in the four-stage interview process, where we observe behavior instead of just asking questions about it. Faking a process is harder than faking an answer.

I shared one of my favorite client stories. A reinforcing steel subcontractor came to me with about 150 employees and needed 50 people in 90 days. They had taken on a massive project, their crew was burning out on overtime, and they were falling behind. We filled all 50 positions. They hit 202 employees. Then we stopped the bleeding and implemented the full Core Fit Hiring System. They started using the recruiting-as-marketing strategies we teach. A couple of years later, Discovery Channel called them. Dirty Jobs was rebooting after 12 years off the air, and this company kept showing up everywhere online. They were picked for the premiere episode. Now that appearance is part of their recruiting. They don't struggle to fill positions anymore because they've been put on the map.

Kevin asked me about my biggest challenge right now. The answer is getting this message into enough businesses. That's why I wrote Hire Better People Faster. People don't wake up and say "I need someone to teach me how to recruit." They think they need a staffing agency or Indeed. What they actually need is a system they own. A system built inside their business. Staffing agencies and job boards don't work because they don't understand your culture. They're filling a position, not finding a fit.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on all of these frameworks on Titans of the Trades. That's where I unpack the real stories and the real systems every week.