The Home Service Hiring System: How to Attract, Qualify, and Hire Better People

All right, well, welcome everyone. Really excited to have you here live with Ryan England, and this is our live event on the Home Service Hiring System: How to Attract, Qualify, and Hire Better People for Your Business. So while Ryan gives us a quick intro, if you don't mind hitting the chat where you're calling in from, what your business is, it gives us some context for the conversation. Ryan, thanks so much for joining us, man. Give us a quick 2-3 minutes, who you are, what you do. Yeah.

So Ryan England, I'm the CEO and founder of Core Matters. I wrote a bestselling book called Hire Better People Faster. I'm the host of Titans of the Trades podcast. Uh, very active in the trades community. It's, it's just a passion. I grew up in a blue collar family. I watched my dad, owner operator, have this dream of more money, less commitment to work, get to vacation, get to do all of this stuff. And then he wakes up 10 years later and goes, I work 16-hour days, 7 days a week. There's no such thing as a vacation and there's not enough money at the end of the month.

Yes.

Uh, and so I watched him do that and I watched him struggle and it wasn't until much later in life that I started to realize I have a passion for people like my dad. You know?

Yes.

And it just, if you're in the trades and you're an owner operator and you're still in that truck every once in a while, or you're still dealing with the fires every single day, it's, it's my passion and my purpose to really help these owners get out of the day-to-day so they can actually own a business. They can take those real vacations, they can hire people they trust. They can build that team that they've always dreamed of. And that's our focus is getting the right people in the right seats for your business, people you trust so that you can let go of the day-to-day.

Yeah, I love it. All right. So let's start with the real hiring problem that most owners miss. So is there a labor shortage going on? Reactive hiring versus intentional hiring? You know, what's the biggest misconception owners have about hiring?

I think the biggest one they have is that there's no one good out there. I think they think that, you know, we're all scraping from the bottom of the barrel right now. There's nobody that wants to work. All the good people are taken. And so, they just settle. And I think that's the biggest mistake they make is that they settle. Instead of really focusing on high-quality employees or team members, they just say, "Hey, you showed up to the interview. You're hired." You breathe. You can fog a mirror.

All right. So there are good people out there. What do you say to someone who's like, hey, I'm on Indeed, um, you know, just trying to find some good people. Is it really about finding people that are already at a position or is it like, no, there's people out there that are looking for, you know?

Yeah. So if you're on Indeed, I, I'm sorry. Um, because you and 7 million other employers are on Indeed and you're all looking for that same needle in the haystack, that great employee that's out there. And there are some. But the truth is only about 3 to 5% of the job market's on the job boards. Yeah. Now Indeed will tell you we have 700 million resumes or whatever that number is. Yes. Yeah. That's every single person that's ever applied through Indeed since the beginning of time. Those are not active job seekers. So I think what happens is people get on Indeed and they have this, this false sense of security and saying, hey, this is where the employees are. So I'm where they're at. So that's good. But here's who's on Indeed. It's people that don't have jobs or people that are struggling to keep a job or somebody who's disgruntled and upset. And they're like, I gotta leave this Yahoo. I can't do this anymore. And so they go to Indeed. Now there are some people that are down on their luck and, you know, they got laid off, maybe their leadership made a bad decision and they were, they were laid off or let go, but that's usually the exception. Yeah, you're gonna have to— I like to say you're gonna have to kiss a lot of frogs. You have to look at a lot of resumes on Indeed to find the one or two that are actually going to show up and do what you need them to do.

Yeah. Um, and, and we're going to talk about like, how do you find these people and get them to come work with you and that kind of stuff. But I know one of the big things, um, about your process is this CoreFit principal hiring process. Can you walk us through what that is? And then if someone is watching, listening to this right now, how can they understand that for their business?

Yeah. So we have this really simple reminder for a lot of people, and this will play out really well to the people listening right now, cuz they know Flash Consulting and what you guys do and help with the marketing side. But here's the reality, recruiting, the act of getting someone, getting the information in front of someone that is in the right place at the right time and looking for a work, The act of recruiting is a marketing activity. And too often I think what owners do is they, they look at it as something they have to do. It's this, oh, I need to hire people now, so I'm gonna do this thing.

Yeah.

I don't know too many owners that turn off marketing when business is going okay.

Right.

But I see people turn off recruiting all the time.

Mm-hmm.

They're like, oh, I, somebody just quit or I just fired somebody. I guess I better ramp up recruiting.

Yes.

Like how long does it take to get a marketing campaign to start working again if you You turn it off.

Right.

And I think we, we know that, that principle is true in the customer acquisition piece, but we never think about it as employee acquisition. So if you start shifting the way you think about recruiting and think about more as a marketing activity, you apply the same principles you do in marketing. In marketing, you're not shooting fish in a barrel. That's called cold calling, right? Yes. Like where you're like, hey, do you want to come do business with me? Do you kind of come do business with me?, and that's all very exhausting. That's a lot of work. And that's how a lot of people treat recruiting. Well, if you think about, instead of looking for people, instead of finding that great dream tech, that, that unicorn that you've always wanted to come work for you, instead of looking for them, you take, you take a step back and you say, how can I attract them? Mm-hmm. What can I do to attract the best people to come work for me? And you treat recruiting as a marketing activity where you have to attract people just like we attract customers. You gotta have a decent website. You gotta have a good pitch. We say you gotta have a great careers page.

Yes.

People don't leave jobs, they leave people. We've all probably heard this. So if you're looking for a seasoned tech who's out there, they got 3 to 5 years experience, they're great. They show up on time, they do what they do, they stay clean, they take care of the customer, they close out their tickets, all the things you wish your techs would do. If you're looking for that person, They're working for someone else. They're not on the job boards. And if they don't know you exist, or they do find out you exist, but you're not attractive to them, they're gonna move on.

Of course. Yeah.

So if you really wanna solve that, you have to start attracting people. You have to start treating recruiting like marketing.

Yeah. So when you think about this core fit profile, is it like, hey, I know all my technicians are coachable, so that's like who I'm looking for. Like, how do you, like, are there like, do you build like a list of 5 traits or something? Or how do you figure this out?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me tell you where this came from. So I grew up fishing. I got a little quick fishing story. I grew up fishing and, um, I still love fishing to this day. And I realized pretty early on that there's one decision that if I make this decision first, when it comes to fishing, all the other decisions are easier, unnecessary. And when I ask audiences this, they're like, oh, it's the location. It's the time. It's the, do I need a boat? No, it's what type of fish do I want to catch?

Hmm.

Because if I know I want to catch a certain type of fish, oh, I know what they eat. So I know the bait. I know how big they are. So I know what kind of gear I need.

Yeah.

I know what body of water they swim in. So I know where I need to go. I know what time of day or time of year they're most likely to bite. So if I can decide the type of fish that I want to catch, all the other decisions are made for me. The CoreFit profile is the same thing. It's identifying the perfect employee for you. Like you said, you know, the behaviors are there. Are they the right behaviors? Are the right motivators there? It's understanding the person that you want to hire, not just the checkbox of do they got 3 to 5 years experience? They know how to use this tool. They knew how to troubleshoot this. It's like, what kind of person do we want? Yeah. And that's what the CoreFit profile allows us to do. And we've divided it into a few different sections. And what I would say is really the simplest form, there's 3 sections. There's culture, there's the person, and then there's the work. That's really the 3 high levels. And then we break each one down into a little bit more. And I don't want to bore anybody listening right now with all the specifics on that. But if you think about it, what do we mostly hire people for? Can they do the work?

Mm-hmm.

Do they have the skills? Do they have the experience? Do they know how to operate the equipment? Do they know how to troubleshoot? Do they know our software? That's what we hire people for.

I love it. So at my home service business, what we did, so we had 28 technicians. So the first interview, we looked at the work and I could be wrong on this, but we looked at the work. So like, hey, tell me about a time when you actually did this, you know, duct cleaning or like, you know, those type of questions so we could figure out, do they actually know what the heck they're doing? Then we're like, do we kind of like this person? Then the second interview, we focus on the culture, like traits, and like, okay, one of our core values is, you know, always be obsessed. So then we would ask a question like, tell me about a time you became obsessed with a process or system, to see if they had an experience like that. And then through that process, we figured out if they were like a solid person that we would like, you know, around the age like that. Does that sound like a good process for someone who's listening to this? Or is that like, no, you started way wrong and do something else?

Well, you started wrong, but you're really close. So here's what we found. If you assess for skills first, you may miss people who fit in your culture, but maybe applied for the wrong job or maybe applied for a seasoned role, but you really could bring them as an apprentice. So we always assess for culture fit first. It's the hardest thing to find.

Yes.

Because I can train skills. I can train the skills. I can teach them how to do the, do the job. What I can't do is teach them how to be obsessed. Yeah, I can't teach obsession. Yeah. And we actually, that's one of our screening questions we like is tell me something you're obsessed with.

Okay.

So I think it's cool that you had that as a value. Tell me something you're— I don't care what you're obsessed with as long as I know that you can get obsessed about something.

Yes.

Because I want you to feel that way about the work we do and the customers we serve and the community that we're in. I want you to feel obsessed. So I thought that was really neat, that as an example you gave, but we do culture fit first. Because let's say they applied for a 5-year position and they only got 2 years. Well, we might have disqualified them if we focused on skills first, cuz they didn't have the skills.

Yes.

We might say, hey, you know what? You're the right fit for us. We think you're really coachable. We think we can train you quickly. How about we bring you into this lower level and over the next 12 months we work on getting you up to the job you applied?

Yeah. Okay. And would someone do that in a phone call or would that be like a fill out this thing and let us know, or? Yeah.

Yeah. So the first part of the interview process is always a prequalification step. It's the bare necessities, like what is the non-negotiables? Uh, for example, if you're looking for someone who's got some experience, if they call and they say they have no experience ever, they just want to get into the trades, you might not be able to hire that person. So let's just screen them out. So the prequalification is usually a phone call. Uh, there's some technology now where you can do one-way video interviews. You set up all the questions, they record themselves answering the questions, saves you some time. But it's just really a 10-minute quick form fill or, you know, video recording or a quick phone call. And then you move into culture fit and culture fit should be in person. And here's what I argue. If you're in the trades, that person has to know how to get from point A to point B pretty reliably. Yeah. If they can't get to your shop to have an interview with you on time, guess what that's going to mean when it comes to getting to the customer's place?

Absolutely. Well, we would do— so we would bring in technicians and we would actually introduce them to our 4 CSRs because they were usually women and they would have a really clear vibe check of the person. Like, that's a weird guy, or like, no, he's a cool guy, I'd like to, you know, I'd have him in my house, whatever. And also, like, can you have a conversation with them that makes sense? Like, not guy to guy, but like, yeah, woman to guy. It's just like a thing because they're going to be talking to women, you know, usually at homes.

Yeah, yeah. Usually I, I, I like to say this, usually it's the woman that answers the door that lets them in. So we actually have a process where we call it the creep test.

Okay.

Yeah. Is this guy creepy or not? Yeah. And so a lot of times what we'll do is when they come in the first part, 15 minutes, we introduce 'em to a CSR, an office manager, accountant, whoever it is that's, that's a woman and says, hey, this guy freak you out if he came into your house.

Yes, exactly.

And so I love it. Like we're thinking aligned like that. Um, Because it's totally true. Because if you've got someone who people aren't comfortable with, guess what's that's gonna do to your reputation? Yeah, it's gonna tank it and it's gonna make everything, not just customer acquisition, even employee acquisition harder.

Yeah. Okay. So once you figure out who is my core fit person based off of culture, the person, and then the work, then you have a good like filter when things are coming in, uh, applications are coming in. But let's talk about the actual candidate journey to get applications coming in. Just like a marketing side, you want leads coming in. But now you need to build some type of like a recruitment system to have applications coming in. What does that look like?

So there are two types of job seekers out there. There are active job seekers, which is about 3 to 5% of the market. These are the people that either don't have a job and so they're like forced to go look, or they're so— it's so bad where they're at, they have no choice but to look. And so this is the person that gets off their job, they get on Indeed, they start filling out applications, they're actively looking for work. It's about 3 to 5% of the market. And then you have a full 75%, 70, 75% of the market that is passively looking for work. These are people that they're not on Indeed because they don't want to deal with that mess. And, but, but they go to their friends on the weekends. They're like, hey man, how's that new job? Hey, where are you? Do you find any good opportunities out there? They're, they're calling their old coworkers and they're like, hey, what's it like over there? Like you were the guinea pig. Is it worth it? Should I apply?

Yeah.

Or they're, they're on social or they're on YouTube and they, they catch some of your marketing around the type of work that you do and they go, huh, that seems like an interesting company to work for. Let me go check it out. And they start stalking you for a couple of months.

Yeah.

Uh, this might even be the person that occasionally they'll say, hey, you know what? I'm just going to drive down there. I'm going to see if I can meet the owner and just introduce myself. And yes, that happens when people know your company exists. So those are called passive job seekers. So we create marketing funnels to attract passive job seekers. And I, I promise you, it's probably really close to the playbook. Yours is probably more advanced than the one we use, cuz this is what you do all day.

Yeah, of course.

But it's the same playbook. We create a funnel, we create opportunities to put people in the top of the funnel. We nurture them, we help them understand who we are. And you have to remember with passive job seekers, typically it's 9 to 12 months before they're ready to make a shift. Because they're not uncomfortable. They're not super unhappy. There's the rare occasion where their boss promised them the promotion or the raise and then said, oh, we can't do it. We had a bad quarter. And that, that upsets them enough to go look. But for the most part, those passive job seekers are taking their time because they're not looking for a new job or just a new position. They're looking for a new team to be a part of.

Mm-hmm.

They're looking for that, that group to say, hey, this is my second family and I like spending time with them and I feel like I'm valued there and the owner cares about me and my life goals and those kinds of things. That's what they're looking for. Yeah. And that can take 9 to 12 months. So we have to create very long, long cycles in our marketing funnels for that. But things like updating your website, things like posting more employee testimonials on your social media, uh, having your employees share more more about the work that they're doing. Hey, just went out to this customer today and they loved it and I got the 5-star review. Like, get your employees involved in helping you recruit. Grassroots campaigns, get involved in the community. We had a company years ago, the owner was a big fan of Habitat for Humanity, and so he'd always volunteer his guys to go down and help with the houses and everything that was going on. And he required them to bring the company truck and wear the company uniform. Because these are technician types that are part of this. And it didn't happen right away, but after a year or two, they started getting calls. They're like, hey, I've been working with so-and-so over at Habitat for the last 2 years. And he just talks about how amazing it is. These are things that take time, but it's just like planting a tree. Like, don't wait another year or 2 or wait until you have the time to do it. Like, start putting these things in place now.

Yeah. So if I'm hearing you right, so when we do marketing, let's say we run ads, you run it to a landing page. And that landing page is specifically to convert visitors into leads. So the way you would look at this is you need a careers page on your website and that careers page needs to have like employee testimonials, obviously a form that someone can fill out and put in their resume, something like that. And you need to be doing organic content. You need to be doing local community things that's driving traffic to this landing page to then get leads coming into your business, which are candidates. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Absolutely.

And then. What would you— so just like a very simple playbook for someone, would it be like, okay, every day or once a week you should be posting something about hiring or something about your employees? Is that like a good cadence or is it like too much or monthly or whatever?

I tell people, I tell owners that 30% of your work week should be committed to you building your team.

Okay. So a third, a third of it.

So I don't think you can do too much. I mean, what's the half-life of a social media post.

Yeah, yeah. No, I, I completely agree. I completely agree. And the, the part that I, we, we had spoken about before as we, you know, built a relationship was like, customers actually enjoy seeing your real technicians and learning about your real people, which is another way to convert customers as well. So it has a double dip effect. So I think 30% is very reasonable.

Yeah. And that's something that we encourage people to do is to start thinking, is there a way to build content or build an ad that can both attract new customers and new employees. And I always share that radio commercial I heard a decade ago, and it was talking about— it was an HVAC company, and they were talking about the quality of people they hire, which every customer wants to know you're hiring quality people. But they talked about the training that they give, the new uniforms that they give, the nice trucks that they give, the, the fact that they're all paid hourly and there's no commission.

Yes.

Like, there's techs that are like, okay, yeah. And they're— and their customers are like, I like that, because now they're not incentivized to sell me stuff I don't need.

Yes. Yes.

You know, I'll never forget, I had an HVAC guy come to my house to do my preventative maintenance. It was a new company. It was like a $39 special. He gave me an itemized list of almost $12,000 of stuff he wanted me to do.

Yeah.

And I was just like, see ya. Of course.

You're nuts.

Yeah. So I want them, I want to know that we've got great technicians coming in. And so this radio commercial was all about the quality of the technician and the processes they've built and the training they've built. And the, the call to action at the end was, by the way, if you're looking for a new place to work, we're looking for you. It was a recruiting ad.

Yes.

But as the customer, I'm like, I want to call this company. I want to call this company because it sounded like that's the person I want to work with.

Yes. So we have— I have two situations where we actually did help people and get this, like maybe a simple blueprint for people. And maybe you have thoughts on this, Ryan. So we have an HVAC contractor in South Florida and they want to hire technicians. So we said, hey, Interview your technician about what they like working here, take a picture of them, and then that's a social post and we can put that in our email newsletter. Like a very simple thing.

Yeah.

And then we have another client we do video, uh, stuff for. We help them create videos. And so we said, hey, you're looking to hire, have one of your guys come on and we'll interview them about why they like working there. And then that's another content piece. From what I'm hearing from you is like, you got to embed the content into what you're doing and just like make it a natural part of what you're doing. And those are two Basic strategies that would, would help.

Absolutely. And you know what's crazy is so often I think owners think that they're on their own, like they're in an island, on an island to recruit. But you know what the reality is? Your people, they want to work with people they like.

Yeah.

They're incentivized to help you recruit. I've talked to teams before and we, we'll come in and The owners won't tell anybody that we're working with them now. And I'll, I'll introduce some techs and they'll be like, yeah, my owner doesn't care. I'm about ready to burn out. I'm working all these crazy hours. The overtime, I always get called in when a tech calls out. Now we got a truck sitting empty, so we're all taking on extra work because we need the revenue. And he's like, the owner doesn't care. And I'm like, here the owner for the last 3 months has been not sleeping, problems at home, like figuring out how to solve this problem. And when we talk to them, like, would you, do you want to help? Like, I would love to help, but I don't know how. I don't know what to, I'm not a recruiter. I'm a technician. I'm not a recruiter. And so just know that if you've got 20 people on your team, you've got 20 recruiters to help you with this.

Yes.

And we'll often go to people and say, hey, we need, we need employee testimonials. It's 3 questions. Why, what, what, what really attracted you to working here? What do you love about working here? And what would you say to someone who was thinking about joining our team? 3 questions. Really easy.

Great.

And it's crazy how many techs will go out and they'll set up their, their phone on the back of the truck and they'll stand there in the street and they'll just have like a 60-second conversation with the phone. That is some of the best recruiting content you can get.

Yes.

You know, and you just have to ask and you got to give them the 3 questions. You can't say, hey, can you do an employee testimonial and leave it at that? Because they don't know what that is.

Yes.

Got to ask. Give them the 3 questions. Give them an example, like record one as the owner. Hey, here's what would be awesome if you could do this. I think too often we, we put things like employee referral programs in place, or we ask our people for help, or we ask them for these things and we don't equip them. We don't train them.

Yes.

And then it doesn't work. And we're like, see, nobody knows anybody. Yeah, they probably know a ton of people. They just don't know what to say.

Yeah. So I want to dig into that because I think, at least in my home service business, it was like, okay, we need to hire someone. You know, our truck, we have a truck sitting over here, like, let's go. All out, we got to hire people. So hey, if you know someone, we're going to give you, you know, $250 if they stay here for 90 days or whatever. And then like, yeah, see, Ryan, I tried, man. I told them we have $250, but like, we didn't get anyone. What does a good system look like? And then also, like, how do you roll it out to make sure that it actually works?

Yeah, well, let me, let me break down why this didn't work in the first place. So a couple of things. It's called an employee referral program, not an employee retention program. So already you're putting the onus on me for that person to stay. And that feels like a huge responsibility to me.

Okay.

That is not my job.

Yeah.

It's not my job. I'm a tech. My job is to serve the customer, take care of the customer, get you 5-star reviews, but you're putting that onus on me. So instantly I shut down. I didn't sign up for that responsibility. I'm not taking that responsibility. The 90 days, you're, you should reward them for the referral. That's the behavior you want is the referral. Find a way to reward them for the referral. Keep in mind too, $250 isn't that much money by the time it's taxed and everything else. I get to go out on a Friday night and order a pizza and have a couple beers and I'm done.

Yeah.

So it's not that much money, especially if you got a tech that's making good money, right? $250 isn't that much. So there's a couple of reasons it doesn't work. The biggest one is we probably didn't give them any scripts. We probably didn't tell them how to break, breach this conversation. You know, we send techs into homes all the time and we teach them how to talk to the customer and we give them scripts for upsells and we give them tools like checklists. Like here are some other things, anything you What do you want us to work on? We give them all of this training and we give them all of these scripts and they still struggle.

Yeah.

So imagine what happens when you're like, hey, if you know anyone.

Yeah.

They're like, I know lots of people, but I don't want the responsibility. The reward's not enough. And I have no idea what to say. Because here's what happens. You don't want your technician referring the guy, the guy that's sleeping on his mom's couch because he's unemployed. You don't want that.

Yeah.

You want the guy that's gainfully employed.

Mm-hmm.

You got, you got the guy that once got responsibility, maybe got some responsibilities at home. And so what you're asking your employee to do is to go to their friend and say, hey, I know your wife hates my crazy ideas, but I got another one. Can you tell her that you wanna quit your job and come work here? And if you do, here's the cool part. My boss pays me $250. Yeah, that's the conversation you're asking your tech to have with their spouse. Yeah, that's not— yeah, no, it's never going to work. It's why most employee referral programs don't work. So what I tell people is to transfer the reward. You got to reward the employee for something. I don't like money. Other ways we can talk about that if you want to know, but like, like paid time off maybe, or paid time off. Okay. We have one that did a— you get to pick your prize. It was like a Traeger grill or like a Yeti cooler pack or like a fishing trip. Like you get to pick what you want., but it's an experience. If you have a lot of people that have kids at home working for you, uh, do a Great Wolf Lodge staycation. Like if you've got one in your backyard, find a way to include the family.

Yeah.

Because now the family's starting to think, oh, maybe there's other referrals out here. Cause I get something too. I love that. So that's how you reward your employee. The, but you need to reward the person taking the risk. Who's taking the risk? The guy that's gotta go tell his wife, I'm gonna quit my job and go work over here. Exactly. How do you reward that one? And, you know, an example I always give is a lot of times people don't give PTO in the first year, right? New tech, you have no idea. I'm not giving a lot of PTO. What if you gave him 3 days PTO that he could use after 90 days of being there?

Yeah.

That's, that's kind of a nice incentive because a lot of techs don't get PTO. Yeah. They just don't. Small companies. And so now the conversation is different. Now the conversation is, hey, you know how your wife's been wanting you to get away and go visit her family for the last year and you can't take the time off? You can't afford to. You come over here after 90 days, they'll give you a 3-day weekend, 4-day weekend. You guys can get out of town and you don't have to worry about it hitting your pocketbook.

Yeah.

That's a different conversation.

Yeah. I love it. So it's both like what's in it for both sides of it, but then also like what is this better deal? And, and it could be PTO, but there's also, you know, a bunch of other things that, that are on there as well that, that might be benefits. Um, you mentioned about the dollar amount. Is there a dollar amount that you would say like, okay, if they make $70,000, then like $700 might make more sense for something, or—

So I don't like money. Okay. Um, but I will tell you that the money starts to get real somewhere around the $3,000 to $5,000 mark.

Okay.

That's when it starts to get real. That's when people say, hey, you know what? I'll take the risk because now I can go to my buddy and go, hey man, you wanna make a grand?

Yeah.

Like just right off the bat. Cuz then they just share it.

Right? Yeah.

Uh, but I would say you usually it's somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 before people perk up. We have, uh, we have one company that they, they change the reward based on the level of employee. So like, uh, like a craft worker, a tradesman, a technician would be X. I don't remember what the number was, like $1,500. But then it would be, hey, if you know a PM, we'll give you $10,000. If you know a superintendent, we'll give you $15,000. Wow. Like it was big numbers because they did the math and they said, you know what, a recruiter is going to cost us 20% of the salary.

Of course.

We'd happily pay a recruiter to do it.

Of course.

Well, let's save a little bit. Let's save 20% and just pay that money to one of our people instead.

So good.

I love it. But we do, we hire recruiters all the time. Like, your people will be motivated at a certain point. Yeah. At a certain point they're going to get online and they're going to be like, hey, who can I find?

Yeah, I love it. I love that.

It's got to be big numbers.

So listening to this, um, at my home service business, if I was hearing this, I would say, okay, so Ryan, am I supposed to always be hiring people and like have this funnel coming in all the time? Like, What do I do with these people if I'm not actually hiring anyone? Like, do they just sit there? Do I like, you know, talk?

So, I mean, what I— it's gonna sound silly, but we already talked about this a little bit. But so if you don't need more business, do you stop putting people into the funnel? Do you stop peeping people on your email list? Do you stop— you cancel the phone lines? Like, I don't need any more business, turn the phones off. Yes. No.

Yeah.

You keep, keep bringing people in. And what do you do? You say, hey, Right now we're booked out for 2 weeks. I'd love to put you on the calendar. If it's not an emergency, we'll get you on the schedule. We'll be there in 2 weeks. And if someone really wants you, they'll wait. If it's not an emergency, right?

Yeah.

Uh, we do that all the time with customer acquisition. Do the same with employees. Hey, I know you applied for this job. Let's talk, let's talk about what the expectations are. We're planning to put 2 more trucks on the road in, you know, 3 months. And right now we're just looking for really great people. You seem like someone that could be really great. Here's what our plan would be over the next 2 months. We're just going to keep you in the loop. We're going to nurture you. We're going to explain to you why this is a great place. We're going to get you so excited that when your boss counters and offers you more money, you tell them, no, take a hike, because I'm already committed over there. We're going to bring in about a month before the truck's ready so we can get you trained. We can make sure everything's good. We can do some ride-alongs and then we'll put you in a new truck in 3 months. That's one example. What most of the time happens though, is this guy comes in and you're like, I don't have a new place for him. And then you meet him and you're like, wow, that guy's like a 10. I got Jimmy over there. He's like a 6. I've been wanting to get rid of Jimmy, but I felt like my hands were tied and I couldn't get rid of him. He cost me money. He's not very profitable. I can't give him as many jobs because, you know, he's stressed out all the time. Well, now it makes getting, letting, getting rid of Jimmy really easy.

Yeah. Right.

Absolutely. And we don't think about that. We get so scared to hold somebody accountable or to require certain performance standards because we're afraid they'll quit. Well, that's because we don't have a pipeline of people waiting to come work here.

Exactly. And it takes a while.

People can't do that anymore.

Yeah. It's a whole different mindset shift, but when you have the supply and demand taken care of on both ends. You can sleep much better at night knowing that, okay, I have people over here on the bench that I can pull in if this doesn't work out. Like, you have options. The worst thing at our business was we were running 12 routes. So one guy leaves for whatever reason, and then now we drop down to 11 routes, but then we can't service these routes that we have coming in. And then it's going to sit there for like, you know, a month or two. We try to train someone, get someone over here, and it's a mess. If you have someone you can plug in, it's like, we're ready to roll.

Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that people ask me all the time. So let's say that you're really smaller. Maybe you've got one person in the position. Let's say you decide you need a new service manager because your service manager is not cutting it. People always tell me like, I don't want to recruit a service manager. What if they find out?

Hmm.

What if they find out? One of two things is going to happen. They're going to be mad and they're going to say, why didn't you come talk to me? And you're going to say, I did. Here's what I need from you. And you haven't been able to do it. So I've got to find your replacement. And then you can decide whether you fire them and you deal with the pain, or you know what happens most of the time? They find out you're recruiting for their position and they go, I better shape up. Yeah. Because I don't have a job lined up.

Yeah.

You continue recruiting and then one of two things happens. Either one, you find someone better and you put them in, or they step up and they become the person you always wanted to be. Like, it never— I've never seen it go bad where the person's just like disgruntled, takes 6 of your people and leaves. But we tell ourselves that's what will happen. If I post that role.

Yeah. So if you were to distill it down to like, as an owner of a business, what are like 3 things that someone could do to really like shape that culture or show the culture that would attract people? Like, yeah, you mentioned about the website, maybe some content, but is there like 3 pillar things? Like, one that I could just think of off top of my head is like have transparency with your team and have them bought in and understand where you're going. Maybe that's one. But like, if there was something someone's listening to, it's like, okay, do this and this is going to help you.

I'm gonna give the consultant answer here because a lot of it really depends, but there are 3 things.

Okay, good.

So, uh, have you heard the bus metaphor?

No.

Jim Collins made famous.

Oh yeah. Get the right people on the bus.

You gotta get the right people in the right seats on the bus.

Yeah.

Right. And then once the right people, and by the way, in his book, the right people are your executive team. It's your leaders. It's not your techs, it's not your CSRs, it's your leaders. You get the right leaders on the bus, the right leaders will figure out where the bus is gonna go. They're going to figure out how to maintain the bus and do all that other stuff. And your business is the bus. Well, where the metaphor breaks down is he doesn't really talk about all the empty seats on the bus. There's a lot of empty seats on a bus if there's only 4 people on it.

Yes.

The empty seats are where your CSRs and your bookkeepers and, you know, your technicians and all of those people go. Well, what I found is if people aren't excited about where your bus is going, when the bus breaks down, which it will, You know, key employee leaves, you lose a big account, you switch softwares and it's a disaster. Like there's a whole bunch of reasons your business will break down or the business gets stuck in delays. The economy shifts.

Mm-hmm.

Big competitor comes into town. They got bigger advertising budget than you. Things are outside your control happen. These things will happen to your business and your bus will suffer. Your business will suffer. Do you want your people to get off the bus? Or do you want them to be so excited about where the bus is going, they're like, "Boss, how do I help it get back on?" And when you do this, we've seen people say, "Hey, you know what? Forgo my bonus." "Hey, you know what? I'll take a pay cut temporarily." "Hey, if you got to cut my hours, that's okay, because I'm so excited about where the bus is going. I understand this little hiccup. I want to help any way I can." When people are excited about where the bus is going, they stay on the bus when there's a problem.

Yeah.

That thing that we call, we call that vision. Where are you going? Why should I care? What's in it for me when we get there? Nobody wants a dead-end job. Nobody wants a job where they just can't grow and they can't prosper and they can't make more money. Nobody wants that. So they need to know that you have a plan and you're going somewhere. That's vision. That's one of the things that you need.

So, so for business owners listening to this, One, you need to know what the vision is for your business over the next 3, 5, 10 years. And two, you have to articulate that to your team, maybe in a quarterly meeting, maybe a vision board, maybe even just talking about it at a grand level. That way they know what's going on. It's not just in your head, like the example you gave, the guy doesn't know what's going on. This guy has it in his brain.

Yeah. Well, and I think it should be on your website and it should be some of your social posts. You know what? Your customers do not want to see you close up shop next month because business got tough.

Right, right.

They want you to win too. We had a, we had a plumbing contractor one time. They had a list of 35,000 people on their email list. Oh, and they're like, I just need plumbers. And I was like, why don't you email your list?

Yeah.

They're like, we can't do that. No, we cannot have our customers know that we're short-staffed. They'll stop calling us.

Yeah.

I'm like, you really think your customers want you to lose?

Yeah.

And no, they want you to stay in business.

It's all in the phrasing. Cause we have this objection too when people say we wanna hire, like, why don't 'Why don't we add it to our list in one of our— in our email newsletter?' And it's like, if you just phrase it the way that's like, 'Hey, if you're looking for— if you know someone looking for a great career opportunity, we are actively hiring, and this is a great fit for someone.' Like, yeah, it's not about growing.

Yeah, we want to serve more people like you. Like, there's ways you can phrase it. So, uh, so that's the vision piece. Okay, plaster it everywhere. The other one, and this was something that if you're struggling to attract the younger generation The younger generation is more focused on this than the older generation. Uh, if all you want to do is hire baby boomers right now, that's a whole different issue that you're gonna have to deal with in about 3 to 5 years.

Yeah. Yeah.

But if you want to get the younger generation, the younger generation wants to know that they're doing things that are bigger than a paycheck. We call that purpose. Mm-hmm. That's the one of the other things you need. It, it's your why. And I like to say it like this, why do you as the owner get out of bed to do this work on the days you don't want to get out of bed? Yep. Because we all have it. Oh, yeah. A lot of us owners, like, we're not sick, but we're like, I wish I could just call in today. I've been there.

Oh, yeah, we all have.

And so why do you do this? And usually it's something bigger than a paycheck. Yeah, it's usually bigger than a paycheck. I want to provide opportunities for my family. I want to invest in the community. I love the people we work with. I want to serve our customers. There's a reason why.

Yeah.

Get really clear on that, because this is why people get on your bus in the first place.

Yeah.

They stay on the bus because of where you're going, but they get on the bus because of why you do what you do.

Yeah.

Get really clear on that. Put that everywhere.

Yeah.

And then the third one, and this is probably gonna sound cliché to some people, but you gotta have a set of core values. Yeah. You've gotta have those values. We, they're behaviors. Values should be a verb. Integrity and honesty are not verbs.

Yeah.

You can't have integrity and honesty and teamwork. That's not what people want. Exactly. They are behaviors. How do you behave while you're on the bus? I mean, the bus metaphor breaks it down so well because you want people to behave a certain way when they're on the bus.

Yeah.

You want everybody to be on the bus for the same reason and you want them to stay on the bus for the same reason. So you've gotta get really clear on what we call purpose, values, and vision. Those are the 3 things you have to have. Yeah. And if you don't have those, I, I encourage you either to, they're really hard to do by yourself. I had to hire someone to help me with mine. And I do this all the time. Yeah. So I encourage you, like, read a book or, you know, there's, there's a lot of, uh, website resources. Heck, ChatGPT can probably help you with some of this, but pull out the real raw stuff and turn it into some good marketing material. It's really important.

Yeah, for sure.

If you want to attract those passive job seekers, those people that aren't looking for work.

Yeah. We actually do this thing, uh, it's through, it's EOS, but it's like a people analyzer. So every quarter we go through our core values and then we analyze, does this person show this, not show this or is, you know, not good at it or, you know, not the right fit. And then at the end it's like, would you hire this person again? And then it's like, this is who we need to be actively looking to replace on the team because they're not living out these core values.

I like the people analyzer. I think it's one of the neat tools in EOS. I flip it sideways though, and I'm just sharing this with you. People don't know what this is. Flip it sideways and go down the list and instead of plus minusing the people, plus minus your values. Which ones do you hold people accountable to? Which ones are you actually making sure are alive and well as the leadership team?

Yeah, I love it.

It's a totally different way to look at the people analyzer.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. All right, I wanna talk about one other thing actually. Laura, she put a question in here when she registered for this, but it leads right into our retention question, which is she says, we can hire technicians but can't keep them for longer than 2 to 3 months. And I think there's an issue where it's like we can find people, but then they come on board and then they fizzle out. Um, I'm sure you see this a lot. What, you know, what should someone look at in their process to make sure that this doesn't happen to them?

We don't have a hiring problem in the trades. There is no labor shortage. We have a retention problem in the trades. You don't believe me? Go ask your bookkeeper how many W-2s you issued last year.

Yeah.

And look at how many people you had on payroll last year. Yeah, right. Um, we, we do, we have a retention problem. And the retention problem gets solved through better hiring. We talked about earlier, if your hiring practice is to hire anyone who shows up or anyone that says they have the skills or anyone that can fog a mirror, and you don't do things like the creep test and you don't ask 'em like what they're obsessed with and you don't understand the person, which is the most critical part.

Yes.

You're gonna deal with turnover.

Yes.

But beyond that, let's say that they are making good hiring decisions. Let's say that they are qualifying for culture and position fit. And they are setting proper expectations and they're onboarding well. Let's say all those things are in place, which that's a big tall order right there. But let's say all those things are in place. They're still not keeping them. There's this thing called engagement. And we've studied a lot and employee engagement is an all-time low across the world. Like 20% of employees are engaged.

Hmm.

In the US it's closer to 30%. An engaged employee is one that shows up, does what you ask, does more, takes care of the business, takes care of the customer, takes care of the team. Like they're there to work. Every single person on your team that you wish you can clone is an engaged employee. And engagement is not something that accidentally happens. It's not something that the employee is responsible for. You as the leader are responsible for. So here's what most likely is happening. Most likely what's happening is the employee, the candidate comes across your company. They apply for a job because they see it as a better place to work. They see it as a place with a stronger leadership team. They see it as a place with a better reputation in the marketplace. They see it as an opportunity for them to grow and prosper in their career. So they look at your company as a great stepping point in their life. Mm-hmm. And then they show up on day one. Nobody knew they were starting that day. Their truck's not ready. Right. Yes. And then they look around and they go, I might have made a mistake.

Mm.

And from day one, you are now, you have to help them dig out of this hole that you created.

Yeah.

And they're leaving because what they thought they were getting is not what they got.

Yeah.

And they realized very quickly that their expectations weren't going to be met. Yeah. Now I'm sure that whoever asked that question, I'm sure she's thinking, oh yeah, you don't know the people. Like they just want more money. That's why they left. Maybe, maybe. And there are some people that will use you as a stepping stone to buy some time until they get their dream job. We had one company, they hired this, this woman and oh my gosh, like on paper in the interviews, like she is the unicorn that you wanted. And, um, she, uh, she didn't tell anybody and I don't even, I, I, I have to be really careful what I say, but, uh, she was there about 6 weeks and then she turned in her notice and they're like, what happened? Well, a year and a half ago she applied to work for the CIA. And she got the phone call. Like, there are times where he's like, there's nothing you can do.

Yeah, definitely.

It was like her dream job. And, um, she got the phone call and they offered her the job and it was this whole thing. She thought it was over with them. And so she's like, I gotta go get a real job. Yeah. So there are people that, you know, will use you as a stepping point or life circumstances will happen. But I'm gonna guess that the majority of time it's because expectations weren't met. By them, and then they're like, this is the same stuff that I had at my last job, and I was looking for something better.

Yeah. Um, I actually— so I, I worked at probably the number one retention company in the world, and I can say that hands down. So I, I started my career at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Oh yeah, $37 billion family-owned business, and they only promote from within, all the way up to the CEO of the company.

Oh, their, their management training program is just world-renowned. Like, yeah.

So if you're listening to this some of the things that they did to retain great talent all the way up to the CEO, like a $37 billion business. And they only hope— they only hire like entry level and train them and build them. So it's all retention. Yeah. So first they gave us a 12-month roadmap when we came on board of every single month, this is what you need to learn and it's on you to figure it out. You have to ask your manager these things.

You have to see employee-led onboarding. I love it.

Exactly. You have to seek out this information and this is your checklist to know what you need to know.

Yeah.

Because at 12 months you actually have a grill where you're gonna sit down with someone and they're gonna grill you on these answers and needs to know them.

Wow.

Another one was lunch with the area manager. So the area manager would take them out to lunch and just get to know them. Like, huh? Yep. Take them out to lunch. And then one-to-ones weekly or biweekly, basically setting goals for the quarter, making sure that we're all on the same page, making sure you feel confident. And then the last one was on their desk day one had to be like some type of like welcome package, care package, you know, all the stuff that acknowledges that we knew you were going to start and here's your welcome package here. Yeah. So good.

That is, that is awesome. I, you know what, you've inspired me. I want to go learn more about it now because it's so in line with what we do. We all want our people to step up and do more. We all want them to have ownership. We all want to do that. And then what do we do? We say, hey, go do this. And then they, and then they're like, okay, I've done that. Now what do I do? I got to go find the boss and go ask for the next thing.

Yeah.

And we had a, we had a company, they hired this person and we just started working with them and they hired a director-level person. Oh, and she was only there about 6 months. And when she quit, we asked her, we said, what, what's going on? Like, why did you quit? And she goes, well, it all started on day one. What?

Yeah.

She's— and her thing was crazy. She says, I didn't get an office tour, so I wasn't introduced to anybody. They didn't even show me where the bathroom were. I didn't know what a supply closet was. Like, they, they walked me to my office and that was it.

Yeah.

And she goes, and at that point I felt like I didn't belong here. And it took her 6 months to find something else and she Wow.

I want to open this to Q&A. So if you're live with us, you know, drop a question and we'll have Ryan answer it. I have a couple other questions here that people submitted. So what interview questions reveal character and fit? If you were to say like, hey, we talked about, you know, character and culture fit, but is there like a question or a way to phrase it like the one that I said, like, give me a time when you did this or something that you like from that?

Well, once you have your values figured out, those are behaviors, all your questions should be around that.

Okay.

Uh, one of the things we talked about the CoreFit profile briefly, like one of the things in the people section, we call it disqualifiers. So what are all the things you don't want in a person? Right. And we all know it because most of the time we are really good at telling people what we don't want. We're not very good at telling what we do.

Yes.

But let's say, for example, you want someone who's punctual. Don't ask them a question. Don't ask them if they're on time.

Are you going to show up on time on the first day? No.

Are you going to be here on time? Don't ask them that. No, tell me about a time you were late and what'd you do? No. Um, you know what you do, uh, for that one, you don't ask a question. You tell them in the phone screen, hey, over here, we believe that early is on time and on time is late. You may have heard that before. Military saying. And, uh, so your interview is at 7 o'clock in the morning. What time do you plan to be here?

Mm.

Well, my interview's at 7. I'll be there at 7. Okay. The question, the first checkbox is, did they show up at 6:50 or not?

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, you showed up right on time at 7. Got it. Oh, that's not what we talked about. Uh, so I'm a big fan of process during the interview. Uh, we had, uh, we had an electrical contractor one time. This was funny. Did residential electrical work. And there's not a lot of 4-way switches in residential electrical. And he's like, I want to, I want to see how this guy thinks. So he gave him a piece of paper and a pen. He said, draw a 4-way switch. And he just sat there and watched, and it wasn't about whether or not they got it right. It was, how do they think about this? Yes. I like that. You know, uh, so those are some questions, but the disqualifiers are a good one. Uh, you know, if you're hiring salespeople, one of my favorite things to do is, it's not a question, it's a statement, is, you know, you've probably heard people say, sell me this pen, right? Like, yeah, just see it. But what I like is, uh, to talk to them about top performers and you're really looking for a top performer. And then pause for a minute, think to yourself and say, I'm just not really hearing top performer.

Mm-hmm.

And just shut up and see what happens.

Yeah.

And you'll have salespeople go, yeah, I know I was always number 3 or 4, and they give up. They wimp out, right? Like you just gave them an objection and told them no all at the same time. Like, let's see them get out of it. Yeah.

I love it. It's funny, I went into enterprise corporate sales and they did that exact thing. Like they gave me objections like that throughout the sales process. And it was, it was really cool to see because it was like, oh, this is actually a part of the sales process that they're trying to see how I handle this situation. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I like that. All right. Another question. This one's like common hiring red flags or like gaps in resumes or, you know, any thoughts on those things?

So there's 3 types of resumes out there and they're all garbage.

Okay.

So don't trust resumes. And here's the thing, unless you're hiring a resume writer, Do you really want to ding people for spelling mistakes? Yeah, it kills me. We had a, we had a company one time, they were hiring, they were hiring technician. I forget which one it was, mechanical or something. They gave him a typing test.

Oh my God.

What? Yeah. Why are you doing this?

They're not even going to have a thing. They're going to have iPad and click around or voice.

Here's a big mistake a lot of people make. CSRs.

Mm.

99% of the time the CSR is on the phone. But what do we do? We interview 'em face to face. Why do we do that?

Yeah.

So they come in and they're bubbly and they got great body language and great presence and we connect with them and we click and everything else and they're amazing. And then we put 'em on the phone and we're like, oh my God.

Wow.

Who'd I hire? Stop interviewing your CSRs face to face. Bring 'em into the office. Put them in an office, say, in 30 seconds this phone's going to ring. Here's your opening script. See if they can follow instruction. Yeah, here's your opening script. And we're going to have a conversation. We're going to do the interview over the phone.

I love it.

Phone rings, they pick it up. Do they read the script? Check, right?

Yes.

And then now let's do the interview and see what their phone presence is like. Because if their phone presence sucks, you don't want to hire that CSR. Yeah, that's a big mistake a lot of people make.

Yeah. Alright, I love this question. So with like PE coming into home service, private equity companies, and they're offering higher pay, how do I compete against that as a smaller company if I'm trying to attract good talent?

Yeah, if you're competing on pay, you're always going to lose on pay. Stop competing on pay. Wow. People don't leave jobs for more money. They leave jobs for a lack of opportunity. They leave jobs for poor leadership. They leave jobs where they don't feel like they belong on the team because they're not a culture fit. Nobody leaves for more money because people know, even if it's subconsciously, they know that the reason they're paying more money is because it's a suckier job. They know that. Right? When the job sucks, you gotta pay more money to get the people interested in the job. And I've never met a tech that's like, I went to work for PE and it was amazing. It was the thing I always wanted. No, no. Because PE doesn't care about you and people want to be cared for.

Yeah. I completely echo that. And I think that as small business, as family-owned business, it's actually a huge advantage that we can get to know their spouse, get to know their family. Live in the same area as them and really like, you know, build that relationship on a personal level. That's not just like you're a unit of production, you know, that kind of stuff.

If you're not including their significant other in the interview process, you are missing out.

Mm-hmm.

We had an HVAC contractor does emergency on-call, right? And especially in the summer, it's crazy. And their techs would always quit in the summer. They'd go work for someone that didn't do emergency on-call. And we're like, well, I know what the problem is. How many of your techs have a significant other? All married. They all got kids at home. Yeah. She does not want him bringing the on-call phone home. So what they did was part of the onboarding process was the president and her husband went and had dinner with the tech and his significant other. And they went to dinner and she explained to the spouse why they did on-call. And they had a story that, I mean, they had a personal story for why it was important to them. And it's about, hey, When the AC is down and it's 100 degrees outside and you've got children at home, like that's dangerous for them, especially if they're really young. And they explained it to the spouse and now the spouse understood.

Yeah.

If you're not including spouse, the number one influencer in your employee's life is not you, is not a friend at work. It is the person they go home to at the end of every day.

They have to sell them on this big transition. They have to sell. There's a lot of things at stake for this to make sense. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Cool, Ryan. Well, this has been great, man. Where should people go to learn more about you? And, you know, I would say this— you just gave the recipe, and at some point it's like who, not how. You could try to figure this out on your own and implement it. And of course, like all the stuff you just said, but at a certain point it's like you need someone that can implement this on your behalf so that way you don't— you can focus on running your business. So where should people go to learn about you and your business?

Yeah, corematters.com. Is our website. You're going to learn a lot about our process, our program, all of these tips that we've talked about. We have a great resource center there, lots of training tools, but like you said, when you're in the thick of it, when you're running your business, it's hard to take a step back and focus on these things. I mean, I'll admit it. I had to hire someone to help me with my values. I coach values all the time, but I couldn't do it myself because I got my business to run.

Yeah.

It's the same thing here, but corematters.com. You can learn all about us. Learn about our programs, how that works. And then if you just want to connect with me, follow me. I'm really active on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is a great place to reach out. Just DM me if there's anything I do to support you.

I'd love to. Awesome. Well, thanks, man. Always good to get together. Appreciate you sharing everything and look forward to continue the relationship.

Thank you.

Yeah, man.