Ryan Englin on The Contractor Fight: Hiring a Winning Team

I went on The Contractor Fight with Tom Reber to talk about what it actually takes to attract, hire, and keep great people in the trades.

Tom and I started with something most hiring consultants skip entirely. The frontline worker. The technician. The person swinging the hammer, turning the wrench, answering the phone. That is our primary focus at Core Matters, and it always has been. Not project managers. Not salespeople. The people who make or break your ability to grow.

Here is the foundation everything else sits on. People do not leave jobs. They leave people. Every single time. And if you want to attract the best, you have to become attractive to the best. That means understanding your core. Not culture as a buzzword. Your actual core. Three questions: Why do you do what you do? Where is this bus going? And how do we behave?

That third one is the one that burns people. I told Tom about contractors who sell "family first" to new hires and then grind their crews into overtime every week with no PTO. That is a violation of a behavior you promised. And when that person leaves, it is not because they found a better paycheck. It is because you broke a commitment.

Tom shared a great story about a client whose crews were ready to jump ship because the company switched from physical job folders to an app. The empty folder holders on the wall made everyone think there was no work. The owner was booked out 18 months. The fix was dead simple. A big monitor in the shop showing green days on the calendar. Communication solved the problem instantly. I have seen the exact same pattern play out with my clients. Your people are not asking for your P&L. They want to know the bus is still moving.

We spent time on the biggest mistake I see with first hires. The owner writes down everything they do and goes looking for a clone. Then they get frustrated when that person does not care as much, does not sell as much, does not think the same way. Of course they don't. If they were you, they would be your competition. Stop looking for a mini-me. Take one hat off. Write down how you know when someone wearing that hat is doing a good job. Go find that person. That is it.

Tom and I also got into the interview process, which is my favorite part of what we do. The four-stage interview is built on one principle: faking a process is harder than faking an answer. It is not about clever questions. It is about observing behavior. Do they show up on time? Do they engage with the values you put in front of them? Can they do the actual work? Tom asked candidates "what's the most important part of a paint job?" If they only talked about crisp lines and coverage, they usually were not a fit. If they talked about communication and the full experience, that told him everything.

I also told Tom why the entrepreneur needs to get out of the interview chair. Every owner walks in with rose-colored glasses. All the red flags just look like flags at a party. Let your team run the early rounds. They are the ones working alongside this person every day. Tom confirmed this from his own experience. His team kicked him out of hiring, and the process got better immediately.

One story that came up naturally was around the growth accelerator program. Your employees spend more waking hours with you than they do with their families. Your role is to help them bridge the gap between where they are in life and where they want to be. That is the "what's in it for me" that keeps people. That is what makes the juice worth the squeeze.

We also hit on a moment that still fires me up. An HR manager at one of our clients told us they do not run assessments with field workers because "the assessments have big words." That is a breathtaking lack of respect for the people you exist to serve. If you do not have jobs in the field, you do not have a job in that office.

Here is what I want you to walk away with. Recruiting is a marketing activity. The interview is a sales process. Onboarding is the honeymoon. And retention is your ongoing relationship. If you treat your people like your number one customer, you will never run out of great people who want to work for you.

If you want the full playbook, grab a copy of Hire Better People Faster at corematters.com. If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on every one of these topics on Titans of the Trades.