Ryan Englin on The Site Shed: The Recruitment Attraction Model

I sat down with Matt Jones on The Site Shed to talk about what I call the recruitment attraction model and why most trade contractors are invisible to the exact people they want to hire.

Matt and I got into it right away. The trades have been stuck in this loop for years. Owners say "I can't find good people." They post a job on Indeed, wait for someone to call, and hire whoever fogs a mirror. Three weeks later they're wondering why the new hire isn't working out. Every single time.

Here's the thing. It's not a labor problem. It's an attraction problem.

I told Matt the story that changed my entire career. I was running a digital agency doing lead gen for home service contractors when an HVAC client in Phoenix called me. Middle of July. 120-degree heat. He didn't need more leads. He had four trucks sitting empty in the yard with no techs to put in them. Customers were booking three weeks out for AC repair in the desert. I applied marketing principles to his recruiting. Three weeks later all four trucks were loaded and he turned the leads back on. That moment showed me that recruiting is a marketing activity, not an HR activity. And it set me on the path to building everything we do at Core Matters.

We spent a good chunk of the conversation on employer branding. Not the customer-facing brand. The employer-facing brand. I told Matt to put himself in the shoes of a job seeker and go Google his own company. Ignore the paid ads. Ignore the stuff the marketing team put up. Look at what actually shows up. The Yelp reviews. The Glassdoor page. The Facebook comments. If a potential employee sees one-star reviews and the owner attacking customers in the responses, that person is not applying. Period.

If you want to attract good people, you have to be attractive to good people. That means your online presence, your reputation, and the way you treat your current employees all matter before the candidate ever fills out an application.

I shared a principle that catches a lot of owners off guard. Stop asking for resumes. There are only two types of resumes out there. Those written by people who don't know how to write resumes, and those written by professional resume writers. Both are garbage. Make people show you they're a good fit through your process instead of through a polished document.

We also talked about the fishing framework. Most employers keep casting their line into the canal and pulling out bottom feeders, then complaining about the quality of fish. You want trout? Learn where trout live. Learn what they eat. Learn what attracts them. The same is true for hiring. Know who you're looking for before you pick the pond.

Matt brought up a great point about speed. When a good candidate reaches out, that person is not sitting around waiting for you. They're talking to ten other employers. You call a customer back within minutes because you don't want to lose the work. Give your candidates the same urgency. The A-players get scooped fast. The only ones still available a week later are the ones nobody else wants.

We got into employee referral programs and why most of them fail. Paying fifty bucks for a referral is insulting when you think about the effort it takes for an employee to put their reputation on the line. I teach a values-driven referral program. If one of your values is family, reward the referral with a paid day off to spend with their family. That costs about the same as fifty bucks in wages and means ten times more. Tie the reward to your values, not to a dollar amount.

One of my favorite parts of the conversation was about competing for attention. You're not just competing against the contractor down the street. You're competing against Amazon, Google, and the entire YouTube generation. People can sit at home and answer phones for eighteen dollars an hour. You need to give them a reason to choose your company. That reason is purpose. The modern workforce has traded a paycheck for a purpose. If you can communicate how your company makes a difference and how you invest in your people's personal and professional growth, you win.

I also shared something that gets pushback but works. I have an electrical contractor client who asks every new hire what they want out of life. When someone says "I want to own my own company someday," most owners panic. This client leans in. He pours into that person for three to five years. Teaches them the business. And almost every time, that person stays because they realize how good they have it. The ones who do leave? They never compete against the guy who mentored them. They become referral partners.

The bottom line: if you're not getting the results you want from recruiting, switching job boards is not the answer. Indeed is not the problem. The job market is not the problem. Your approach is the problem. And it is fixable.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on attraction-based hiring and the full Core Fit Hiring System on Titans of the Trades.