Ryan Englin on Teamforce AI: Why Recruiting Is Marketing and Retention Starts Day One

I sat down with Vivek Kumar on the Frontline Advantage to talk about why recruiting is a marketing activity, what an employee experience function actually looks like, and why most contractors are losing money they never see on a balance sheet.

Vivek and I met at Beekeeper's Frontline Success Summit. We were sitting in the same breakout session, started talking, and realized we see the frontline workforce problem the same way. The conversation on his show picked up right where we left off.

Here's the core idea I wanted to get across. Recruiting hasn't changed much in 30 or 50 years. We post an ad. We hope people apply. We screen them fast because we're overwhelmed with unqualified applications and we're looking for a needle in a haystack. Then we hand the whole process to HR. HR exists for compliance, safety, and recordkeeping. HR is not a marketing department. And recruiting is a marketing activity. You're putting the right message in front of the right people at the right time. That's marketing 101.

I don't need to find people who need a job. I need to get my message in front of people who want something bigger and better for their lives. People don't leave jobs. They leave people. When you attract them to a better culture, a better way of being, the cream of the crop rises up and says "I want to join your team." Not when you're desperate. Not when you just lost a crew. When you're just going about your day and people are knocking on your door because of what they've seen, what they know, and what they believe about your organization.

Vivek and I spent a good chunk of time on a distinction I've been making for years. The difference between what HR does and what an employee experience function does. We pulled up a slide that lays it out. HR handles payroll, compliance, recordkeeping, staffing plans, strategic planning. All necessary. All important. But the employee experience side, onboarding that creates belonging, retention processes that are proactive instead of reactive, employer branding, employee engagement, that's a different discipline. And it cannot report to HR. If it does, compliance thinking will slow down everything that matters.

Onboarding is one of the biggest gaps. I'm not talking about systems onboarding. I'm talking about giving people an opportunity to feel like they belong. People need to know how to join your team way before they need to know how to use your systems. If they don't feel like they belong, they won't last. They can be brilliant at using your tools and it won't matter. That's exactly why our 2412 Launch onboarding process spends the first two weeks on culture, relationships, and belonging before we ever put a wrench in someone's hand.

We also talked about the money side. Every decision in business can be tied to a number. If you just take the industry stats on disengagement, even the 25 to 30 percent of the workforce that's actively disengaged, and put real dollars on what that costs, the numbers make people sick. But because nobody writes a check for disengagement, because it doesn't show up as a line item in the bank account, companies dismiss it. Here's the truth. Burnout, overtime, disengagement. That's ripped right off the bottom line. Straight out of profit.

I shared two stories that stick with me. One client needed 50 employees in 90 days. He was only a 200-person company. We gave him the process for screening, vetting, and onboarding so people actually stayed. Most companies mess it up right there. They hire fast, skip onboarding, and then wonder why people leave or disengage. Then they do it over and over and over again.

The other story is a remodeling contractor who stuck with our Core Fit Hiring System for two full years. It didn't get broke overnight. It's not getting fixed overnight. Two years later they called me and said, "Ryan, it took us two years to believe you. We don't even post open jobs anymore. Our bench is so deep that people call us every month asking to join." They get to pick the best of the best because they followed the process.

One thing I told Vivek that I want to repeat here. The biggest unlock I see with clients isn't always in the numbers. It's in the confidence of the executive team. When leaders know they have a system to bring in the right people, their confidence goes through the roof. They bid bigger jobs. They land the biggest deal ever. I hear that phrase constantly. "We just landed the biggest job ever." You can't always connect every dot back to a hiring system, but when the CEO sits across from a client knowing they can mobilize, that confidence changes everything.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on building your employer brand and creating a proactive recruiting pipeline on Titans of the Trades. Subscribe for more conversations like this.