Ryan Englin on Your Brand Amplified: Navigating the Skilled Workforce Landscape for Business Success

I sat down with Anika Jackson on Your Brand Amplified to talk about why the trades don't have a labor shortage. They have a marketing problem.

This conversation covered a lot of ground, but it kept circling back to one idea: companies that can't find good people aren't looking in the wrong places. They're unattractive to the right people. And that's fixable.

I shared the story that changed my entire career. I was running a marketing company doing lead gen for trade contractors. An HVAC client in Phoenix called me in July, 120-degree heat, and told me to turn off the leads. They were booking three weeks out because four trucks sat empty in the yard with no techs to drive them. I told them I'd fix it. Recruiting is a marketing activity, after all. Three weeks later those trucks were full and they were ordering two more. That moment pivoted everything. I stopped doing lead gen and started building what became the Core Fit Hiring System.

We talked about the disconnect between what employers say they want and what their job ads actually communicate. Every owner I talk to defines "the right people" the same way. They show up on time. They take care of the customer. They watch out for their teammates. They're safe. It's all behaviors. Yet their job ads read like a spec sheet: must have five years experience, must lift 50 pounds. That's a window sticker, not a Corvette commercial. If you want to attract rock stars, you need a rockstar brand.

Anika asked about the interview process, and that's where I light up. Interviewing is where we create a real human-to-human relationship. Everything before that point is technology. When we sit down with a candidate, we're not testing whether they can do the work. We're discovering whether they'll feel like they belong. And whether we'll feel like they belong. Gallup tells us one of the greatest indicators of engagement is having a best friend at work. People don't leave jobs. They leave people. So the interview needs to be about fit, not just skill.

I also brought up something that frustrates me every time I see it. Companies clean up the office before an interview. They hide the toxic employee in the back. They put their best foot forward. Then they get mad when the new hire did the same thing. That's not a candidate problem. That's an authenticity problem. I shared the story of a client who dropped f-bombs during interviews because that was legitimately the culture. I told him to put it in the job ad. He said he couldn't do that. I said then why are you behaving that way? You can't present one thing and live another. You cannot blame candidates for doing the same thing you do.

We got into job hoppers, too. There are two types. The person who went from cook to used car salesman to police academy doesn't know what they want to do when they grow up. Let them figure it out. But the person who has had six jobs in six years and stayed in the same trade is looking for the right employer. They want the right culture. They want to feel like they belong. When you align with their values during the interview process, those people become your best long-term employees.

I also told the story of a construction company with a couple hundred people that nobody had ever heard of. One-page website. A fax number for applications. We rebranded them, built a real careers presence, and ran basic six-second YouTube bumper ads. They started generating a dozen applicants a month from those ads alone. Then the Discovery Channel called. Mike Rowe was relaunching Dirty Jobs and wanted them on the premiere episode. When the owner asked why they were picked, the answer was simple: everywhere we looked, you kept popping up. That's what happens when you invest in your employer brand.

We also talked about the opportunity in front of the trades right now. Somewhere between 600,000 and 2 million open jobs exist in the blue-collar space. Forty percent of the skilled labor workforce is expected to retire in the next decade. We are not filling that gap fast enough. And one of the easiest wins sitting right in front of the industry is to stop alienating half the population. About 4% of trade workers are women. If you want to fix a labor crisis, start there.

Anika wrapped by asking about what's next for me. I told her the truth. This message needs to get out to more people. That's why I wrote Hire Better People Faster. That's why I podcast. And that's why I'm building a licensing model so coaches and consultants in other industries can put these tools in front of their clients too.

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