Ryan Englin on The Battle Plan Marketing Podcast: Harnessing Proven Systems to Attract, Hire, and Keep Top Talent

I went on The Battle Plan Marketing Podcast with Mark Ambrose to talk about what it actually takes to attract, hire, and keep great people in the trades.

Mark and I got into a lot of ground. The big theme? Most trade contractors don't have a hiring system. They have a prayer. Jimmy's buddy needs a job. The new guy showed up late twice and got fired. That's the extent of it. Not scalable. Not sustainable. And it produces exactly the results you'd expect.

I walked Mark through the idea that if you want better people, you have to become a better employer first. That means knowing exactly who you're looking for before you do anything else. I use a fishing analogy all the time. The first decision you make when you go fishing is what kind of fish you want to catch. That one decision tells you the gear, the bait, the location, everything. But most companies skip that step entirely. They just go straight to Indeed and cast a line. The people you want probably aren't on Indeed.

The shift I made over a decade ago changed everything for me. Recruiting is a marketing activity. Not an HR activity. Yet we hand it to HR and wonder why the results are disappointing. A marketing team sits down and says, "Tell me about your target customer." We need that same conversation about the target employee. Build a Core Fit Profile. Know who you're fishing for. Then put the right message and the right brand in front of those people.

We talked about the interview experience. Most companies run what I call a fog-the-mirror process. Did they show up? Can they catch the keys to the truck? Hired. One client told me that was literally their two-step interview. I walked Mark through why the interview process needs to feel more like a first date than a checkbox exercise. If you're looking for someone who wants a long-term committed relationship, don't spend the first date talking about sports scores. Talk about the stuff that matters. Values. Vision. Dreams. When you create an experience where someone gets back to their car and calls their spouse before they even start the engine saying "You won't believe how cool that was," you win.

Mark asked about what makes people stay. I told him money is never the real reason people leave. It's the excuse they use because they know you won't counter it. When a tech calls and says "they offered me $2 more an hour," the real question is what drove them to have that conversation in the first place. Was it a boss who belittled them? A broken promise about training? The feeling of being invisible? Find out the root cause. Fix that. The dollar-an-hour conversation disappears.

We got into the three things I believe are paramount for building a great recruiting and retention system. First, define acceptable behavior and hold everyone accountable to it. Including yourself. Second, make sure your employees' dreams align with the company's direction. Nobody wants to get on a bus that isn't going where they want to go. Third, get crystal clear on the why. Why does this company exist? Why do we get out of bed and do this when there are a million easier ways to make money?

I shared how some of our clients go far beyond paychecks. One company's vision is that every employee retires as a millionaire. They enrolled employees and their spouses in financial literacy programs. Other clients bring in mortgage experts, help people buy homes, invest in personal goals that have nothing to do with turning a wrench. That investment pays back tenfold in loyalty and engagement.

Mark asked about the timeline. I told him 12 to 18 months if you're committed. The first six to eight weeks we stop the bleeding. Fill the empty trucks. Solve the dispatcher crisis. Get the immediate pain handled so you can breathe. Then we build the infrastructure. The Core Fit Hiring System covers everything from attraction to onboarding to long-term engagement. We teach people to fish. We don't fish for them.

I closed with something I think every owner needs to hear. Your team knows when you're struggling. They see it. Stop pretending everything is fine. Ask them for help. Tell them you're working on solving the staffing problem. Ask if they know anyone. Include them in the conversation. People would rather have you say "I need your help" than watch you fumble through it alone. That one conversation builds more trust than any bonus check ever will.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on all of these frameworks on Titans of the Trades.