Ryan Englin Live on Shally's Alley May 16, 2025

Hey everybody, what is up? Happy Friday, May 16th. We're getting close to that, that whole Maypole thing. When is the Maypole? Should be around here at some point, right? Some kind of a traditional day, um, that's celebrated, uh, and like, you know, they do these, these dances and everything. I think we already passed— that was May 1st, wasn't it? Ah man, we're past it. I missed it. Damn it. Well, happy May mid for everybody out there. You are live on Shelly's Alley with our special guest who is also a podcaster. I should say, actually a renowned podcaster, as opposed to the very obscure podcaster that you're listening to right now. And if you're wondering why I have a really sexy rapper voice, it's because I am recovering from a bout of bronchitis and All the coughing, I think, has just irritated my membranes. So, I apologize in advance if I sound a little froggy and also if I might have to mute myself here in order to not offend your ears with my expelling of lung material. So, in the meantime, I will try to do my best to, you know, not do that, right? So, with us today is Ryan Englund, and he is— Ryan is famous for for his contributions to the skilled trade talent pipeline and blue-collar hiring. The blue-collar hiring whisperer, if you would like, from a concept or I guess a methodology called CORE Matters, C-O-R-E Matters. And actually, here is his website, corematters.com, and we'll put a link up later on corematters.com. So with Ryan, I wanted to bring him on. He was actually— Ryan, you were— you probably don't know this, but you were recommended, um, to be on the show by someone that said, you know who I'd love to see? I'd love to see Ryan coming in and talking about high-volume recruitment marketing and blue-collar hiring. And it's something that we, we do, we need. And I don't hear a lot about that. And so, you know, I was like, wow, okay, cool. So I reached out and I thought, this is good for our audience. Not everybody engages in this kind of hiring, but also not everybody engages in the kind of hiring that I do. So it was really good to bring you in as a counterbalance to that and really explore how business owners can kind of ditch job boards and all the outdated tactics of like, I want to say pay and spray, post and pray, all that other kind of you know, carpet the world with advertising and then just see who applies, right? And actually focus on recruitment marketing that is specifically designed for essential workers on the ground, boots on the ground workers, frontline workers, whatever other euphemism you want to call it. So that is what Ryan's specialty is. And I'm just going to kind of let the cat out of the bag with— hopefully I don't steal too much of your thunder here. With Ryan, hiring isn't HR's job. It's everyone's job. And your organizational culture is your magnet. So essentially, something I talk about all the time, which is empowering your entire community to be deputies of your hiring culture is second nature to Ryan's discourse on why post and pray is dead. So why don't we start with that? Can you, first of all, say hi to everybody?

Hi, everybody.

All right. Sorry about that. Can you tell us why, why is post and pray dead and who killed it?

I don't know that it was ever alive, but you know what? It was all we knew, right?

It was a Frankenstein kind of monster, right?

Yeah, it was all we knew. When I—

Well, hey, evolved from like smoke signals, send help.

Yeah, definitely evolved from the coffee grams they used to have at the restaurants, right?

Wanted ad: now hiring baker, needs an apprentice.

Yeah, exactly. The, you know, the thing is, I don't think a lot of people understand how this process really works. They give it to the HR team, who— every HR person I've ever met hates sourcing, they hate recruiting, they just like I want to focus on our people and our benefits packages and our training, and I want to focus on those things, the compliance side of things. They really don't like this marketing stuff, like you said. And so the job boards come around and they go, hey, here's an easy way to market your job.

All right, we'll do it for you.

We'll do it for you. Yeah. And then, but if you think about it, think about this for a second. Indeed, I have a— I don't really have a love-hate relationship. I really just don't like Indeed. Sorry Indeed if you're listening, but their tagline is helping people find jobs. Okay, tagline, helping people find jobs. Their tagline is not helping employers find great people. Okay, so think about that for a second. The people that actually fund Indeed are the employers, but Indeed does not exist to serve them. Indeed exists to serve the job seeker.

Well, I disagree with that. Indeed exists to serve the employer. They just advertise to them. I mean, because it's kind of like, um, it's kind of like that old adage of, uh, if it's free, you're the product. Sure, right? It's literally— if, if, if a job seeker— you might not remember this, or I don't know if you were around back then, but I just had Terry Terhark on here and he reminded me of this— that early days when our, our modern industry of recruitment and hiring was in its infancy. We're talking about pre-internet here. It used to be the headhunter charged a fee to the job seeker to help them get a job. And that changed completely to the other side. So, you know, Indeed's customer who pays the bills is the employer, but their product is the job seeker. So kind of, they do cater to employers. Unfortunately, it's like a two-sided, you know what I'm saying? It's almost hypocritical.

I get it. Like I said, I have a love-hate relationship with Indeed. They're a necessary evil in the world. But I warn every client that we talk to, here's the deal. When you get really involved in Indeed, guess what's gonna happen? You're gonna get a call from your rep and they're gonna say, hey, want more candidates? Pay me money.

Pay me more, more, more, more, more.

Pay me more, pay me more, pay me more. And here's the thing about the job boards. They don't care about quality.

No, they don't.

No. And this is who they are because they've got some of these new contingency-based pricing models.

I was gonna say, yeah, there's these like click, uh, not, not click, uh, tracking anymore, but like apply. So, so you pay us when someone applies, but that doesn't really— all that does is changes from pay-to-click or, you know, pay-for-impression to pay-to-click to now it's pay-to-apply. It really was just changing the the, the needle. But either way, whether you clicked, whether you read it or clicked or applied, still doesn't necessarily mean you're qualified. I think we should have a paid interview. Like, if a candidate gets interviewed, then I'll pay. But everything— everybody else is just traffic.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, in Dee's defense, they don't have any control over whether or not someone's going to ghost. Yeah, they don't have any control over whether or not the employer is someone people want to work for. And that's really my focus.

That's a good point, right?

Indeed doesn't— isn't going to say, hey, you know what, you can't advertise on our platform because, um, your Glassdoor reviews suck, right? Yeah, yeah, they're not going to do that.

Nobody wants to work for you.

Yeah, but you know what, that's, that's the thing that I want people to hear on this. And we, we talk a lot about recruitment marketing, employer branding. We talk about this being a marketing activity. At the end of the day, if you're an employer and you're saying No one wants to work. Everybody's lazy. Everybody's entitled. I can't find anyone good. I want you to take a second and just pause and ask yourself this question. Is it that no one wants to work, or is it that no one wants to work for you?

Yeah.

And that's a big distinction, and it hurts, and it's hard. And what I find is that the bigger an organization gets and the farther executive leadership gets away from that—

Yeah. The less they think that they are part of the problem, the more they think people should want to work here. Yeah, like, we're, we're a number one company in our industry. Everybody should want to— they should be lining up to work here. Well, not necessarily.

Well, you look at the marketing stuff. So we do a lot in the blue-collar space, and I, I pick on service contractors a lot because they do this. There is this thing that they do to attract customers that is hurting them immensely when it comes to getting good people. What they do is they post on their website, we're available 24/7, we're available on call, we're available on the weekends, we're there when you need us, we believe the customer is always right, we are here to serve you. What does the job seeker read when they see that on your website? Because you're not marketing. I've never—

I can tell you what I think when you say all that. That's a lot of work. I'm going to be constantly working. I'm overworked.

I'm never going to see my family.

Right.

I'm not going to be able to go to my kids' games anymore.

Right. Yeah.

I mean, all this stuff that I live for is gone if I come work for you. Now, it might be great at filling the board and putting tickets on the board because customers love to see that stuff. But technicians, candidates, they're like, uh-uh, I'm out. I'm going to find someone else that doesn't have that. I'll bend over backwards, do whatever it takes, sacrifice at all expenses to take care of the customer.

So give us a quick, like, I don't want to offend anybody's intellect here, but just in case, give us a quick, like, you know, two sides of the coin definition of what, like, what blue collar is versus whatever else people, you know, some people say blue collar versus white collar, but what you're talking about, this is who exactly?

Yeah. So these are companies where they can't exist. They can't provide their product or service if they do not have people providing it. So that might be operating equipment, that might be building something, that might be troubleshooting versus knowledge work. Knowledge work is I'm not paid for my physical activities. I'm paid for my mental activities. So knowledge work would be customer service. Knowledge work would be, uh, you know, anything behind a computer, developers, uh, research. All of that stuff is knowledge work.

So blue collar is not call center, um, it's not cash register, uh, people, because those are not— so it's labor.

Labor, labor. So I like to say the skilled trades. So electricians, plumbers, Contractors, construction, landscaping.

Whether or not you get paid by the hour, like that doesn't make a difference, right?

No, no, no. Most people that even in those companies paid salary, like they're still out in the field. They're still dealing with that stuff. But it is labor.

So what do most companies miss when they're recruiting in? And by the way, just to clarify again, not to offend anyone's intellect here, but like an organization may very well hire both blue collar and white collar. It's not, if they depend on labor, for doing what it is that they sell, then they're depending on the blue collar. But even if they— even if the organization is like a scientific research organization, there is still blue collar. So, everybody has to hire at some point for this because there are—

Most everybody, most every company has some form of blue collar. So, what are companies missing when they recruit in the trades, logistics, field ops, you know, I think the big thing is, so we do a lot of work in construction, and I think that this would apply to anybody that has blue collar, is we dismiss the value of a blue collar worker when it comes to the results we want for our company. We dismiss that. We just say, you know what, if, if Ryan's not doing a good job, that's okay because I can find another guy to do Ryan's job. Not really that big a deal.

Replaceable. Okay. Yeah.

But if I'm hiring an estimator, which we see a lot of in the blue collar space in construction especially, That's a white-collar job, right? They're behind a computer. They're putting together numbers or crunching numbers. Knowledge work. We value that estimator. We spend time onboarding them. We take them to lunch. We make sure that they— we know their spouse. We know what's important to them. We treat them like a human being, like someone that we want on our team. But when it comes to the blue-collar worker, it's like, well, I only pay them $22 an hour. Why would I invest more in them? And my argument is, are they any less a human being than the white-collar person?

Which, geez, man, by that definition, like, I don't know how much people make in the military in the first, you know, couple of ranks of, you know, E2, E3. I mean, those are essentially blue-collar workers, right? They're doing that. They're the people that are in the front lines carrying the equipment or whatever. So they're not exactly getting paid. They're not knowledge workers. But by that standard, you would say, oh, they're replaceable. But the reality is that in order to get somebody to carry a radio up and operate it in combat or even in the field, there's a huge investment. So it's not the same. I mean, sure, I get what you're saying. If you operate a front loader, right? And you theoretically as a front loader operator could operate a front loader in a variety of different industries, environments. So to you, the employer could also be seen as replaceable. You see what I'm saying? Like, it's a, it's a two-way street.

I think the other thing that they do is we've lost this desire. Like, we complain about it a lot, but we've lost this desire to train people how to do the work. Everybody I talk to wants a guy that, or a gal that's got 5 years experience, they're certified, They've done it before. They don't want to spend time training people.

And the reality is that a strategy to hire entry-level people that you can train, and that way you don't have to pay them more upfront. You can increase their wages as they, as they level up.

Now they do cost a little more because you've got the cost of training. You've got the cost of downtime. You've got the, the opportunity cost of taking a seasoned person out of the field and training this person.

Is that cost or is that investment?

Well, yeah, it's absolutely investment. Here's what I hear though. I don't want to do this because you know what I do? I train them and then they leave.

Well, that's also on you.

Well, am I the problem or not? Like, that goes back to the first thing I said. You can look in the mirror. If you're training people and you're giving them the education and the skills they need to go do this, you're giving them the experience, and then they leave you as soon as they have an opportunity to do, to to get paid more somewhere else, you need to take a look in the mirror and say, wait a minute, a reason. Yeah, there's got to be a reason for this if they— if it's something that consistently happens. And we hear it all the time. So a lot of people have pulled back and said, I don't want to train them, I want to find someone that someone else has trained. Well, that doesn't work either because that other person didn't train them the way you would want them trained, right? And so what we do is we bring these people in, we're like, they said they have 7 years experience, they can't even do this one thing. And then we just dismiss them and we just say, hey, you know what, they're not going to work out here.

So somebody once told me, I don't know if this is correct or not, but they once told me that there's training that like, I don't know, distinguishing training from education or instruction. Like, for example, if you go to work at, let's say, a McDonald's where they teach you a certain way to operate the very specific equipment that's designed for McDonald's food products— fryers, grills, whatever. You can learn how to operate that equipment. It doesn't make you a cook. It makes you an equipment operator. If you go to— if you leave McDonald's to go to Burger King, it's— that is not a transferable skill. In other words, operating the whatever— I don't even know the model names, but the whatever machine that does the— that cooks hamburgers at McDonald's doesn't mean you can go and start day one at Burger King. It's a different machine. It's a different process. Now, what does transfer is things like, um, the ability to operate under pressure, to work on your feet, to solve problems, all these other things that don't have anything to do with the actual equipment but have to do with all the other things around, you know, so that's transferable. So how do you make the argument that it's not worth training them? Because if you're McDonald's, you have, you don't have a choice.

Well, I think that that carries through regardless of whether you're a franchise in restaurants or hospitality or manufacturing or landscaping or home services. I think that Everybody needs to be trained how to do it your way, how to use your equipment, how to use your tools. But I've seen so many people say, hey, if they don't know how to use our software, I can't hire them.

That's ridiculous.

Like, but if they know how to use software, which is your point, if they have the technical aptitude, they have software usage aptitude, right?

It's—

yeah, maybe it takes some—

it's a different software. That'd be like saying I can't hire any recruiters who don't know how to recruit in Workday.

Yeah.

If they've worked in ICEMS or Ashby, then they're unhireable because I can't teach them Workday.

Yeah.

That doesn't really make any sense. So how do you— I'm sorry, how do you defeat that argument? I mean, is— are you— are you even— is this even the solution? Do you work with a company to help them understand that it's not a hiring problem, it's a training problem? Or are you, are you solving it a different way?

So for what we do, we are incredibly objective and incredibly data-driven. It's really hard to argue with data. Most companies, so we don't work with enterprise-level companies. Uh, I find that they, they move a little too slow sometimes and there's just a lot of politics to do to get things done.

Let's take it, let's take a theoretical example of a real-life experience that I had, but I'm just going to I changed the names to protect the innocent. Um, you know what an arborist does? Uh-huh. Okay, would you consider an arborist to be a blue-collar job?

It's interesting. Uh, there are elements of being an arborist that are a blue-collar job for sure.

I mean, they basically are going around to people's homes and, uh, pruning, trimming, doing other things to the trees in their yard to prevent them from wrecking the house.

They are also very highly qualified.

They are highly qualified.

Yes.

So that's why I was bringing this up. Um, but they are— it is labor. I mean, they're basically— if, if an arborist is not working on a tree, they're not necessarily getting paid, right? Maybe, I don't know, but like, I'm just thinking that's what their job is. So take that, for example, in, in that kind of a setting. Um, you could argue that someone who knows how to take care of trees could take care of trees for any employer. Right. Yeah.

But I'm sure science of taking care of trees. Yes.

The science of taking— yeah. The, the arbory part. I don't even know if that's the right thing, but yeah, I know what you're talking about.

I just had an arborist come out here and the arborist, by the way, was the sales guy.

Well, that's how we— that was, I was going to—

yep. And then he had a technician come out who was not a certified arborist, but they understood enough about how to do what the arborist wanted.

So the technician is the blue collar worker.

In that case, yes.

Okay.

Now, if you do have an arborist who does happen to climb the tree and do the root surgery and that kind of stuff, there's elements to both of it.

Yeah. Okay. So let's take the blue collar aspect of arborists.

Yeah.

Not to say, cause I was going to bring that up, but you defeated that one. So they're the ones. No, no. This is actually what I wanted to go with is that there's always a, there's a line, right? Yeah. Where it gets blurred. Like somebody could be, um, a, a blue collar worker laborer that, that has intimate knowledge of a company's functioning in a way that makes them essential to that company that's not transferable, but then they also know trees and that's transferable. So let's take the transferable skill that you could basically take anywhere, right? How do you go after a— I can give you so many examples. Power lines people, right? Line workers. As in not assembly line, but like they work on So there's a bunch of these, right? There's a bunch of these roles that are skilled labor and they're not easy. These people are not on LinkedIn. These people are not— maybe I don't even know if they're even looking for jobs on Indeed. I mean, where— this is my gap here is where do you go to begin this trust conversation?

Yeah. Let me back up for a second and I just want to define this for listeners. So two types of job seekers out there, active and passive. I'm sure you guys talk about this.

Yeah, they're applying or they're not applying.

Yeah, they're applying or they're keeping their eye out, right? But remember, people don't leave jobs, people leave people, right? So if we know that, and we know that when someone— a passive job seeker, by the way, which is what I want to talk about here— they're not on the job boards, they don't have a polished resume, they're not doing interviews, training, they're pruning trees, they're walking around, but they go home at the end of the day and they say, you know what, I just had another blah kind of day.

I love trees, but this company is terrible.

Yeah, I just— but it's not so bad that I'm willing to jump into the fire of the job market and deal with all that. But what they do is they go out with their buddies, they tell their friends, they post on social media, hey, if you're looking, if you know anybody that's hiring, I got some feelers out, right? Like they're telling people that stuff, but they are not on the job boards. Here's the thing with passive job seekers. Here's what I found. Is if you want to get in front of them, you have to be there when they're ready to actually talk to somebody.

Because if I, I want to leave, okay, right?

I have to get to the point where I am ready to tell my boss that I've quit. So I tell that people quit twice. People quit every job twice, once in their heart and once when they turn in their notice. We need to be there once they've quit in their heart so that we are the employer of choice. We are the company that they think of first.

Or, and, and, yes, and when they are out with, with colleagues, buddies, peers, whatever, and they tell them, man, I'm ready to, I'm ready to switch companies. That person who works for your company is the recruiter.

Well, let's talk about that for a second. You said it earlier. I loved it. Deputize your entire team. I ask companies, go, how many people you have in your company? Go. 250. How many people are responsible for recruiting? I have two. No, no, no, no, no, NO, NO.

250.

You got 250. Here's what happens. Here's what happens. We do not Equip the other 248 people with the scripts, the skills, the training, how to have the conversation, how to listen for the right things. We don't teach them this stuff. And then what happens is We've got a bunch of people that are unskilled in recruiting, a bunch of people that are unskilled in having a pain conversation with people or even being able to explain what's going on. We have a bunch of people that have no idea what they're doing out there, and we hope they recruit for us. And so I have this cartoon I've shared on LinkedIn a couple of times. Think about this for a minute. If I've got a blue-collar worker, a crane operator, for example, Right, that's kind of the arborist, right? Skilled technician. I mean, they're in an air-conditioned crane cab most of the day. Is that really the same as being an iron worker or a pipe layer? Probably not, but it is something. So let's say that we've got this crane operator. This guy knows cranes, right? He knows how to operate a crane. But then we say, hey, if you know anybody, can you let your buddies know that we're looking for people? So what does he do? He goes home And he's got two things going through his mind. Number one is, do I really want to refer this person? Because if it doesn't work out, that's on me. That's the first thing going through his mind. The other thing going through his mind is, I don't really know how to do this. So what he does is he calls up his buddy and he says, hey, hey, Scott, uh, hey, I know you've been thinking about looking for a job. I wanted to let you know that my company's hiring, and if you are okay And I know it doesn't go like this, but think about this for a second. If you're okay, could you tell your wife that you're going to quit your job that you have today that's paying the bills? Could you tell her you're going to quit your job and come work for my company? And by the way, when you do that, here's the cool part. You ready? Exciting stuff. My boss is going to give me $300 if you're there 90 days. Like, think about that for a second. That is what we were asking our people to do. We're asking our people to go tell their friends and their family, Quit the job that is providing security for your family and come work over here. They don't know how to have that conversation. They don't know how to talk about that stuff. And so we spend no time equipping people how to do employee referrals. We spend no time on those things. And then we're disappointed in the results. I can't hear you all of a sudden.

I may just be exploring an idea here, but can we like, um, can we make sure that our frontline workers are, you know, are equipped to give somebody a, a, a way in referral? You know, like, um, they probably have cell phones. Yeah, most of them. Maybe not the, not the line workers for obvious reasons, but, um, you know, most of the, the people that are out and about doing, you know, manual labor out, they probably still have cell cell phones. And they may not. I mean, they may be working a steel mill where it's not a good idea to have a metal object in your pocket. But the point is, wherever they're hanging out, you know, at the lunch cart, the coffee cart, whatever, they might have their cell phone. Can't we empower them to simply be able to share a QR code or a link with their colleague that might be looking and just say, here, you know, my company's hiring. Here's a, here's a quick way in and it sort of expedites them into the recruiting process.

Well, I guess, I mean, I think if the person's actively seeking that can work.

So for the purposes of the per— so that person has a handhold to get into, like instead of—

We need to equip them with tools. We need to give them tools like what you're talking about. Absolutely agree. But I think we need to take it a step further because what do I do? Do I show up early and scan this QR code?

Or just text me the link or something. I don't know, I'm just thinking.

Yeah, but how do you— I mean, think about this for a second. You're a job seeker, you make $25 an hour, you, um, you, you need that income to support and provide for your family, and then somebody says, hey, scan this QR code. Like, are you willing to sacrifice what you have, the devil you know, for the devil you don't? I mean, employers do not have good reputations in blue collar.

No, I can't imagine anybody has a stellar—

is it, is it as easy as saying, hey, just jump out of the frying pan in the fryer, it'll be okay, I'm not going to catch you because that's not my job, I got to go operate a crane.

But my, my frying pan is Teflon coated and yours is not. No, whatever.

Yeah, but I think so. Yes, we need to give them tools. Um, applicant tracking systems have ways of tracking employee referrals. There are other tools you can use to help that. Give them QR codes that go to a welcome video. Saying something like, you know, the CEO on a video that says, hey, one of our team members gave you this card. It's the only way you found this video. And I just want to say that we love it when our employees refer people and we would love to talk to you. Click this link below, fill out an application, you'll be fast-tracked. And because you came from an employee referral, we guarantee you a first interview. That can go a long ways. We still got to equip the employee with how do we get them to actually fill that out.

So that's not the problem then, is what you're saying.

So what was it Gallup said? Lowest in recorded history since Gallup has been recording this 50-some years. We have the lowest engagement rate across all industries in the world, 27% of your employees are engaged. 27%. And I, and it depends on who you talk to. They don't get in this, but somewhere between 20 and 30% are actively disengaged is what I've heard. So let's say it's 20%. So that means we've got 50%, 47% of your people that are actively engaged. And dis— actively disengaged. So that means we have 53% of the people that work for you that really don't care if they work for you or work for someone else.

Somebody else, right?

And they don't care. 53%. That's the problem we need to fix. Those 53%, they're not going to say great things about you. They're not going to say bad things about the other. You're going to be like, here's the QR code if you want. Good luck. I don't know who you'll be working for. Got it. They are not going to be having that conversation. They actively engage the 27%. They might be out there going, I like working with friends. If I got friends, I'm going to have them come over here. And then you got 30% or 20% that says stay the hell away. So we only have less than a third of our employees that would actually do this on their own and be confident doing it because they're actively engaged. Everybody else, the other 73%, of our employees, they aren't helping. We have to train them how to have these conversations. We have to train them what to listen for. We have to train them who to look out for and when to say and when to do it.

So this is that what you like, get everybody together and I'm assuming pay them for their time, put them in a classroom and teach them how to do it.

Yeah. Why not?

I don't know. I'm asking. Yeah, that was my question.

We roll out a brand new employee referral program. What is— what do most companies do? They roll out an employee referral program, they make changes, they send an email, they post it, they put a paper on the board and they say employee referral programs don't work.

Because they didn't tell anybody. They didn't tell anybody. Nobody knows.

Think about this for a second. Employee referrals. I mean, that's a, that's an outbound sales team is what we're looking for. We would never do that to our sales team. Here's the commissions for the month. Good luck. No, we bring them in. We huddle every morning. We talk about it. We make a big deal. We practice. We role play. I'm not saying—

but employers, blue-collar employers treat hiring like a, like a chore.

Oh, they hate it.

It's not a— you know, you said that it's not a business growth strategy. So doesn't it start there? Doesn't it start with like, if you are hiring blue-collar workers, you need to think about hiring blue-collar workers like you would have been thinking about bringing in the raw materials to make whatever it is that you make? I mean, in the knowledge economy, they know that hiring software engineers generates revenue because they program the software that the company sells. But you're talking about in the crane operator industry, they think of it as, "Oh my God, we got to replace this person with another person." They don't think of, "We could be bringing somebody in that could like operate the crane faster, better, be a magnet for other people that are crane operators, be a good crane." I mean, Why aren't they thinking that?

I love that word. Magnet. Become a magnet.

Why aren't they thinking that?

Yeah.

What's the challenge?

It's not what they do.

But no, but I mean, what, how, I guess, why is HR seeing it as a chore instead of seeing it as a value add?

Because that's a marketing activity. But no, that's why HR is not marketers. So think about the HR world.

So you're saying marketing should be—

marketing should be doing that, not HR.

But, but marketing is marketing to customers.

Why can't they do both?

Because they don't.

Well, you're right, but why can't they do both? So think about that. I told you about that website that says, uh, you know, 24/7, always available, will be there on the weekends, all that. Imagine you flip that script. Imagine that you come to someone's website and it says, here's why you hire us, because all of our guys are background checked. We only hire A-players. We put them through regular training on how to take care of the customer. We make sure that they are completely respectful and explain to you every step of the way. We take pictures, we provide follow-up reports. Here are all the things that we do to make sure we have the best technicians on the planet. That's why you want us to come help you. Now, if I'm an A-player tech and I see that, I go, my boss ain't doing any of this stuff. Giving me scripts, teaching me how to be a better salesperson, how to be a better technician, training me every single day. I want to play on that team. What do we do? We just flip the script, and instead of making it customers yes, employees no, we just said, here's the kind of people we hire. And when I'm a passive seeker and I see that, I want to join that team. But guess what? The customer sees that, that's who they want in their home or business. Why can't marketing do that? Besides, they don't think about it.

So I had a guest recently that, um, was discussing basically, basically that. Uh, you might, you might know him. His name is Dart Lindsley. Uh, you know, he and I used to work at Cisco 5 careers ago. His, his framework is about rethinking work itself, not as a job that needs to be filled, but it's an experience that needs to be designed and sold to employees. It sounds like what you're saying is what he's saying. You're coming at it from two different directions but arriving at the same conclusion. His point was that, you know, we should treat employees as a customer, basically.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, make the employer, make the employee. Sorry. Did I say employer? I meant employee. Make the employee a customer, just like you're saying, make the customer. I think it's the same thing. So almost like, I think we should want people to want to work here as opposed to you're replaceable. But that seems like it's a mindset change that would be way, uh, starts at the top, right?

Like that has to come from the top and you mentioned the word experience. We actually call that the employee experience. And I've talked about this before. There are 3 types of experiences in every company: the brand experience, what people see; the customer experience, why they buy; and then the employee experience. And I use an illustration of an apple. So when I buy an apple at the store, I buy it based on how well it looks on the outside, the skin of the apple. That's the brand experience. But what I'm really after is the flesh of the apple. I want a snack or I want to bake something. And so, as long as that's good, the customer experience is good, the flesh of that apple is good, I'm going to buy and I'm going to repeat and I'm going to tell people and all that. But the core of that apple, the thing that makes sure that apple is healthy, is the employee experience.

And nobody eats that.

Nobody eats that. So, we don't pay attention to it. But do you understand that if you take care of the core of that apple, It will produce a healthy apple. It will produce healthy seeds, which you can then go plant and make more trees and have more apples and abundance and abundance and abundance. And here's what happens when you take care of the employee experience and you put all your effort on that. You better call her, especially who provides your customer experience.

Yeah, sometimes it's the blue-collar worker. It's the employee. Yeah.

So if the employees are happy and they're engaged and they love it and they're bought in and they're sold and they You know, they're committed. Guess what they're gonna do? They're gonna take great care of your customers. So we don't need to put as much effort on the customer experience. We can put on the employee experience.

Got it.

So I think, yes, we are saying very similar things.

We are. I wanted to ask you about the garbage applicant flood. But I'm realizing that that's really not— that's really not what you're about. And it's not going to help us.

We deal with it.

Yeah, I think that's not the problem. So let me ask you the other question that I wanted to ask you about, which is ghosting. You are probably seeing much more ghosting, um, in skilled labor than, than most people even realize exists, correct? There's a very big— like, I don't even know if this is talked about or not, but there is a vanishing act that is very common in skilled labor. People literally just don't show up to work one day. And this— and I'll tell you, I'll give you a little bit of a taste of an experience. My daughter is of age now where she's looking for work, summer jobs, you know, places. She's a late teen, 17 basically, um, and she's had 2 jobs that she got fired from through arguably no fault of her own. The first one, the person who hired her and said, yeah, you look, yeah, you sound like the right kind of person, love to have you work here. The person who hired her, she never saw that person ever again. On the first day that she shows up to the job, there's nobody there. No training, no, not, she didn't even know how to report her time.

Yep.

And then somebody shows up on her second or third day that, you know, is like, oh yeah, I'm the manager of this place. And that person again doesn't give her any training. And then 2 weeks go by and she gets fired via text because she didn't know how to do the job. And she's like, what? I— no, nobody even— so that's one experience. So then she went to go work for a, um, fast food company that pretty, you know, let's just call it fast casual. And she had a great manager there that like trained her and was really taking her under their wing and was like, here's all the things you could do. If you see this, do that. And, you know, she— this is blue collar. I mean, she basically is working in the kitchen in a restaurant, right? And he's like, these are the things that you can do to get ahead. If you call this out, if, you know, if you clean the grease trap, people will appreciate it. You don't have to, but if you do it, you know, you get noticed and stuff like that. And then she shows up one day and he's not there. And then she's like, well, what's my schedule? Nobody knows. When am I supposed to come in next week? Nobody knows. Who do I report to? Nobody knows. The person who ran this operation left, like just didn't come to work. And I'm hearing that happens a lot. Yep. What is going on?

So there's two things. So we see ghosting a lot in the recruiting process, scheduling interviews, right?

Right.

People apply, they never hear back, they no-show interviews, they no-show day one, right? Within the first few days, right?

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Yeah. So here's what I've learned. If someone quits in the first 90 days, someone leaves in the first 90 days, either you ask them to leave or they chose to leave, they ghosted you, whatever, you have a hiring issue. You're making the wrong decisions. You're vetting people the wrong way. You're, you're moving too fast or too slow. Here's what I've seen. There's two things that we do to combat ghosting, especially early on. After 90 days, if someone just walks out, that's a different issue. But in the first little bit, if someone ghosts you, there's two things that are going on. Number one, remember that people do not like looking for work. It is incredibly stressful. Employers do not respond to people. They do not— they're not transparent with people. They use the, hey, we'll be in touch if we—

my daughter was so discouraged by both of these experiences. Yeah, one, she got fired not through her own— I mean, they didn't train her, said she wasn't— and the other one, she didn't— she never got fired. Yeah, the boss just stopped showing up and she didn't have hours on the schedule.

Yeah, so now she's not going to put a lot of effort into the next one because it's probably going to be more of the same, right?

Bingo! That is exactly where I was.

And so what's happened is we have taught This is the root cause. We have trained or taught an entire generation of workers that we do not care about them.

That's right.

That's what we've done. And that's what you're saying here. There are a bunch of different ways to onboard people, and what you're talking about is one of them. Show up. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody knows how to get you into the system. Nobody knows any of that because the person that hired you isn't involved in the process. You have a disastrous process and communication inside the company, which, by the way, if you're a job seeker, should be a huge red flag.

It's her first job, so—

yeah, no, I know, but if it's that bad, run.

Yeah.

Um, but we taught them we don't care about them, and we've done it through things like lack of onboarding. We've done it through things like— this one kills me, we see this all the time— well, I went through the pipeline of candidates, no one calls me back. Well, how long are they sitting in the pipeline? Well, I mean, I was busy, we're short-staffed, it took me 2 weeks to get to them.

Right.

These people are actively looking for work. They moved on. They got an offer somewhere else. If you don't move fast enough, they will. And what are they gonna do? They can call you, hey, I got another job. I thought I'd be respectful. No, they just move on.

No, you never called me. I'm not calling you.

Yeah, who ghosted who first? So that's one. The other thing that we see when it comes to ghosting is, remember, people don't leave jobs, they leave people. They're looking for a connection. They are looking for places to belong. When we talk about employee engagement, look at Gallup Q12 and you'll understand how engagement works. It's not the things you think. It's not the pay and the benefits. I know, but when I show up on day one and no one knows I'm supposed to be there and no one's there to onboard me, what I hear is, you don't care about me.

You don't matter.

So why should I care about you? Yeah, I don't matter. Why should I care about you? Why should I care about your needs when you don't care about my needs? And so one of the ways we've combated ghosting is we implement a prequalification or a phone screen process. And that phone screen process has nothing to do with the work, has everything to do with the person.

Oh, okay.

What are your hobbies? What do you enjoy? What do you like doing? We had one client that they had a 90% no-show rate. So centralized recruiting, they were sending out to the GMs 90% of the time. The GMs knew the person would not show up. Just totally ghost them. So we pulled some of the calls that they were making, and to these candidates, and we listened, and they were the most monotone, robotic, pencil-whipping checklist things that I've ever heard. And I'll never forget this one. This guy is talking, uh, they're asking questions like, can you work overtime? And he goes, he goes, yeah, except for Friday night. And they go, oh, okay, that's interesting. We don't work Friday. And then he goes, because I play in a band. And they're like, okay. And then they ask another question. He goes, yeah, I can't do that because I play in a band on the weekends. And like, he just wants to talk about playing in the band, right? Create a human connection with this kid and he'll show up. So we coached them on this and they started changing it and they said, let's make these about connection calls and see if this is someone we want to spend more time with. And they 180 degrees, like literally 90% of their candidates were showing up now. They were calling them back within 15 minutes of the candidate application coming in. That's one of our rules— 15 minutes, they get a human response, not a thanks for your application, we'll be in touch. They get a human response within 15 minutes. They were scheduling those phone screens and they were connection calls. They were connecting with the candidate, and all of a sudden they started showing up. It's crazy.

That's pretty cool.

It's all about the human element.

Do though—

what?

It seems like I would be— I'm just thinking out loud— 15 minutes. I mean, wow, it's kind of hard to do.

We do high-volume hiring, but we don't do high-volume turnover. You see?

Yeah, I follow what you're saying. I'm just thinking like, somebody's got to be like— you get a text message with somebody apply or something? Like, how would you know?

They're sitting in front of the ATS. Okay, this stuff's instant. Like, that's their job. It's, it's kind of like when you have an inside sales team, if a phone call comes in, it's a lead.

Okay, got it.

Straight to somebody.

Somebody's watching this is what you're saying.

Somebody's watching. Somebody's being alerted on it. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that makes more sense when, when that stuff comes in.

So what happens if somebody applies at 2 in the morning?

Well, usually there's an automation that happens. So there's something that happens. Automation. They come in at 8:30 in the morning, first thing in the morning.

Okay.

Yeah. And so what'll happen is those emails will say something like, hey, if you've applied after hours, we want to let you know we return all our calls between 8 and 3. Would you reply to us and let us know the best time to call you tomorrow?

So we're going to do it. So you get a— yeah, that's great.

So there are ways to get around these problems. But what I was saying was you talked about— I forget what you— what'd you call it? The garbage applications or something?

Yeah, right. So the garbage flood.

The garbage flood.

Yeah.

The job boards have made it easy to go check all, apply all. It's got your profile and you can apply for 40 jobs all at once. Because they're all about helping people find jobs. And Indeed knows that a big chunk of companies are not going to respond, so they have to give them lots of volume.

Yeah.

And so what we've done is— and this is where we get in trouble with Indeed— so they tell us that they hate our job ads. They hate them. Every time the rep gets on the phone with one of our clients, they're like, hey, if you want more candidates, you need a much shorter job ad. 'Cause some of our job ads, 1,200, 1,800 words.

Okay. But what if you're describing what somebody do?

I mean, well, we don't describe the work. We describe the company. We describe the boss. We talk about the company culture. If we know that people don't—

again, whatever you're describing, that's my point. You're describing something. You need words to describe.

You need words. But see, Indeed is not saying if you want more quality applicants, what they're saying is if you want more applicants. Ah, and so our focus is quality. What we found is that a 300-word application will get me a lot of candidates, a lot of that garbage flood. Yeah. A 1,200-word application, 80, 85% of the candidates that come in, I don't get as many, but 80, 85% of the ones that come in are people I wanna talk to.

Yeah.

It's a big difference. And when we take the time to hire right and onboard right and do the things that we need to do, people don't leave. So now all of a sudden we're not constantly turning people and having to backfill. We just started working with a company, they have to hire 10 people to get one to stick.

Um, are you kidding? Like, I— yeah, that seems expensive. I can't even— I don't even—

what's interesting, when he told me that, he goes, what a waste of time.

That's not common, is it, in the trades? Yeah, 10 to 1.

In construction, 7 to 1, 10 to 1, 6 to 1. I mean, I've got companies we started with 10 to 1 is, uh, because in, in the, in construction, especially if you show up, I just hold up a mirror. And if you fog it, you're hired. Like you showed up.

Okay. But hold on a second. No, I got, I heard what you said, but what about, what about this? Is that, is that a hiring practice or is that a recruiting practice? In other words, I'm saying, We'll basically hire anybody, and if you can cut it the first day, we'll keep you.

So strategy— no, they don't use that as a strategy. They just don't know any better.

Oh, okay.

It's not a strategy. We do have, um, we have—

that might be a strategy—

that have done a 3-day, like, uh, probation, or— yeah, it's a 3-day thing. We're gonna know in 3 days if you can cut it. Um, Amazon did this, uh, back in early COVID. They did this, uh, if you applied, you got an offer. I had a friend that worked at ZipRecruiter, and he was telling me what the Amazon warehouses were doing because they needed so many people because everybody was ordering Amazon. Now, if you applied, you got an offer, and in the offer it said your start date is next Thursday. And what they would do is they would send this out to 500 people, and they just made offers to everybody because they found it was easier to do that and then put them in 3 weeks of training and let them scrub out, and whoever was left got to keep the job. They found it was cheaper to pay one trainer to onboard 200 people and let people drop out as needed than it was to hire a bunch of recruiters to pre-qualify people. So they made 3 weeks of onboarding. That was the interview process, essentially. We're going to teach you the ropes. We're going to teach you that blah, blah, blah. And at the end of it, they'd start with 500, 200 would show up. By the end of it, they'd have 30 new employees at the end of 3 weeks, which they found was more cost effective. Than having recruiters, which when you're doing that kind of volume hiring makes sense.

It does make sense. So let me tell you what happened with my daughter, um, before we close out.

You wanted me to keep this, um, yeah, we could probably go for a while.

Yeah, so we can— we could. This is awesome. Uh, so, you know, after quite a bit of downtime because she just was very discouraged and we talked about it and talked about it, she finally kind of got the courage to go back out there and start you know, applying again, found a job that she was really interested in. And, um, they, they invited her and she applied and they, they call her right, right away. I mean, same day, right? Which, that was what the one first thing you said about the, the new rules. Then she shows up for the interview and it's not an interview, um, about qualifications or skills. It's really just a meet and greet. Hey, how are you? What do you do? What do you like? You know, it's so literally what you were talking about. And I think they have a— this is not something where they read a book. This is just a mom-and-pop business and that's just kind of how they do things. So, they met with her and then they said, okay, we like you. Do you like us? Yeah. Okay, how about this? Come back on Thursday from 12 to 2 and we're gonna put you to work in doing the job following somebody that's doing it. Like, we're literally going to give you a 2-hour work interview. It's not really an interview, but more like, could you, after 2 hours of doing this, could you see yourself doing this for 8 hours? Like, really, do you want to do this? So she goes back, does a 2-hour work interview, comes home and goes, it was awesome. I loved it. And I'm like, well, did you get the job? Like, well, they haven't told me yet. I'm like, okay, well, it seems like you probably did. And then, you know, by the end of the day, that day, They're like, here's your work schedule. You start Saturday. It was like done. And she loves it because they met her. They didn't interview her. They met her. Then they showed her the job and she kind of did the job. 2 hours of free labor. But I'm like, come on, how many hours do you spend on interviews and all that? I'm like, that's not that big a deal. And it wasn't really free labor. I mean, it was an interview really. Yeah. And then she got the job and it's been such a different experience. I think that's kind of What you're, what we're both describing here is, um, for these kinds of situations, it might be better to just have someone come in and figure out if they want to do this job because we call that a test drive.

Like what you're talking about, we call it a test drive. They're going to test drive us, drive them, and we're going to see if it works, right?

And then if there's some training needed, I get that, right? There will be, there will be. Now she has a manual and a handbook and now there's training, but they didn't do that. You know, at the beginning.

So, oh yeah, no, it's great. They treated her like a human being, not a cog in their machine.

Yeah. And it's a mom-and-pop business, but it's a big company. I mean, it's a small business, but, you know, 300 people or something like that. So, oh, okay. Um, yeah, so it's not like a tiny, you know, 4-person shop.

Yeah.

So, um, well, man, this has been— I, I wanted to let everybody know that there's— you've got a, a book that you wrote, and, um, as a special Thank you for being on our show. You're, you're, uh, letting everybody have a copy of it. So if you want a copy of the book that Ryan wrote about blue-collar hiring, go to corematters.com/freebook. corematters.com/freebook. Free book. And get your copy there. Ryan, it was awesome. I wish we could go on and on and on about this topic. I know we both Definitely could.

Maybe we'll do a part 2 in the future.

Absolutely. You're on for sure. One thing I don't let everybody— I don't let anybody leave without doing is telling me who should be our next guest.

You know, I've got a, I've got a really good friend who talks about the other side of the trades and getting, you know, people that are considering the trades as a profession. How do you get into their mind, into their psyche, and how do you understand how to market and promote to them? And he spends a lot of time with companies helping them get in front of new techs and everything else. So he takes a little bit different angle on the recruiting thing. Uh, he wrote a book called Blue is the New White. I think he would be a great guest for you. His name is Josh Zolan.

Got it. All right, I might seek an intro from, from you on that.

Check him out, like, he's an amazing guy.

And yeah, I'll reach out and he might not accept, but we'll see. Yeah, it's a good idea. So, um, any final thoughts that you think we should really think about over the weekend as we re-listen to this podcast and people, you know, from other parts of the world tune in later? Something that we should ask ourselves, but, you know, a question to ask ourselves to learn about this topic.

Yeah, I'm going to repeat it again. You know, is the problem really the job market or am I the problem?

Am I treating candidates as replaceable and cogs? Yeah.

Okay.

And if so, then call Ryan. Is that kind of what we're saying?

Yeah. If you want to change it. If you're like, yeah, I'm the problem and I don't care. Right.

That's right. Right. I'm the problem, but how do I fix it? Then check out the book, check out corematters.com, and just kind of think about it. Is it— do you really have a recruiting problem, or do you have a we-don't-care-about-these-workers problem?

Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks a lot, Ryan. Appreciate it. Appreciate you being on the show, and hopefully I will definitely invite you back. Hopefully you can make it back next week. Our guest, for those of you that want to come back is Ben Blundell. I hope I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. But regardless, he is the sourcing strategist behind some of the biggest growth stories in tech, behind ChatGPT, DALL-E, Sora, a bunch of others. Like, he's a strategy. So very similar to kind of what I do as far as sourcing strategy. So we, you know, he's going to be here talking a little bit about how to scale, building pipelines, you know, AI tools, metrics, stuff like that. So hopefully we'll see you back here. Until then, thanks again, Ryan, and everybody be kind to yourselves and think about, are you the problem?