Ryan Englin on The Next 100 Days Podcast: Recruiting Is a Marketing Activity, Not HR

I went on The Next 100 Days Podcast with Kevin Appleby and Graham Arrowsmith to break down the Core Fit Hiring System and why recruiting is a marketing activity, not an HR activity.

The conversation started where most of my conversations start. Someone asks what I do, and I tell them: I help entrepreneurs who are struggling to attract and hire great people put a process in place so they don't have to worry about hiring anymore. Then they ask how I got here.

The origin story is always the same. I ran a marketing company serving home service contractors. Every single one of them had the same problem. They couldn't take on the leads we were generating because they didn't have enough people. One HVAC contractor in Phoenix, in July, was booking AC repairs three weeks out because four trucks sat empty in the yard. I asked him why someone would want to come work for him. His answer was the same thing every contractor says. We pay well. We have new trucks. Great benefits. I told him the same thing I tell everyone: you and everybody else say the exact same things. That's not what makes people switch jobs.

We dug into what their culture was actually like. What their leadership looked like. How they communicated. That is what we promoted. And the job seekers who saw it said this is different. This isn't like everybody else. Within three weeks, those four trucks were filled and they had two more on order.

But getting people in the door is only half the battle. Once we drew them in, the contractors didn't know how to interview. Didn't know how to onboard. Didn't know how to engage or hold people accountable. That is why we built the full Core Fit Hiring System. Seven components. Attract, hire, retain. The whole thing.

Kevin asked a great question about the interview process. He wanted to know who is the seller and who is the buyer. Most people think the company is selling the job. Here is the truth: the employer is the buyer. One of the biggest mistakes I see is when a candidate walks in and the employer gets so excited someone showed up that they gush about the company for 20 minutes. They make promises they can't keep. Then they ask the candidate questions, and the candidate nails every one because you just gave them all the answers to the test. The employer has to stay in the mindset of the buyer. Your marketing got them excited enough to show up. Now let them sell themselves.

We talked about how we focus on culture fit and behavior over skills in the four-stage interview process. I can teach somebody to use the tools. I can teach them software or a script. What I cannot teach is behavior. I cannot teach someone to think the right way, clean up after themselves, or fit the culture. So instead of asking rehearsed questions, we design tests that get behaviors to show up naturally.

I gave the example of hiring customer service reps. Most companies bring them in, sit them across the desk, have a great face-to-face conversation, and hire them. Then they put them on the phones and it is a disaster. The person was great at reading body language in person but cannot connect over the phone. The fix is simple. Meet them face to face. Walk out of the room. Tell them the phone is going to ring in 15 seconds and you are doing the rest of the interview over the phone. Now you see them in their natural environment. Faking a process is harder than faking an answer.

Graham brought up something I loved. He said he used to take candidates on walks through the hills near his home. Half an hour, 45 minutes, walking side by side instead of staring across a desk. He came back knowing their whole life story. That is exactly right. When you hire somebody, you get the whole package. You get the spouse, the dad having problems with his kids, the money stress. All of it. The more you connect and let them know you care, the better off you will be.

We also covered employee referral programs. Most companies put a flyer on the wall offering a cash bonus and call it a day. Only about 6% of people are motivated by that. And the conversation you are asking your employee to have is terrible. You are asking them to call a buddy and say quit your job and put your family's livelihood at risk so I can get a thousand bucks. Nobody wants to have that conversation. That is why referral programs work once or twice and then die. We flip the entire approach inside our system.

I also talked about why I wrote Hire Better People Faster. My dad was an owner-operator. Twelve-hour days, six days a week. He had dreams of building a big business and having time and freedom, but work consumed him because he never found the right people. I meet entrepreneurs every week living the same story. They started their business to travel with their kids or send them to private school. When I ask how that is going, the answer is always some version of "we are still planning the trip" or "my kids go to the best school but they have no relationship with me." I wrote the book so those entrepreneurs have the tools to build effective teams, get out of the day-to-day, and focus on what matters most.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on all of this, the interview process, the culture work, the Core Fit Profile, and building a bench of candidates, on Titans of the Trades.