Disruptive Ideas To Find The Best People When You Need To Hire

October

27

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Why is finding good people to join your team so hard? Odds are there is something missing or out of alignment with your hiring process. My special guest today, Ryan Englin from Core Matters, has a proven hiring process that gets repeatable results. He is back on the podcast for a second time to dig deeper into how you can hire better people faster.

Join Tim Fitzpatrick and Ryan Englin for this week’s episode of The Rialto Marketing Podcast!

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Disruptive Ideas To Find The Best People When You Need To Hire

Tim Fitzpatrick
Why is finding good people to join your team so hard? Odds are there is something missing or out of alignment with your hiring process. My special guest today has a proven hiring process that gets repeatable results. He is back on the podcast for a second time to dig deeper into how you can hire better people faster. I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks to accelerate growth and marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have Ryan Englin from Core Matters with me. Ryan, welcome back, man.

Ryan Englin
Tim, thanks for having me. I always look forward to us getting to chat, and I learned so much from you, so it's great.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Hey, vice versa, man. I am excited to jump into this with you today. Your book is coming out next week. Tell us about it. What do we need to know?

Ryan Englin
The only print copy in existence is right here. And yeah, my book comes out on October 17th. I've been working on this for more than two years now, just the book itself. It'll be available anywhere you can get books. We're going to have an audiobook, Kindle, E-reader, all of those. So I'm really excited to get it in the hands of the people that need it most. I wrote this book because growing up in an entrepreneurial family, my dad was an owner-operator, and I watched him struggle his entire career with building good teams and hiring people and everything else. And I think that there are so many entrepreneurs out there that need the information that's in this book so that they can go out and they can fix and solve all their hiring problems, not just today, but even into the future as they grow.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And the book is called Hire Better People Faster, correct?

Ryan Englin
Correct.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, cool. So as we shoot this, once this is live, the book is already going to be out at that point. But if you're watching live or listening live today, then comes out next Tuesday, hire better people faster. Ryan Englin, go check it out. What we're going to do today is just delve into some of the concepts and the thoughts that you share in the book.

Shifting Recruiting from a Human Resources Function to a Marketing Function

Tim Fitzpatrick
One of the things that you and I are both marketing people. I mean, even though you focus on the hiring side of it, your process is just so deeply rooted in marketing, which I think is one of the reasons why I just love it so much. Let's dig into that. Why do people need to make a shift from recruiting being this human resources function to more of a marketing function?

Ryan Englin
Yeah, I think that historically, we've given recruiting to HR because it's people-related and human resources is about managing your human resources. Well, the thing about HR, if you really dig into it, you look at HR. Hr is about taking care of your people, protecting them. It's about protecting the company. It's about making sure that you're following the rules. So if we distill it down, HR is a compliance role. It's about maintaining compliance.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I was going to say that.

Ryan Englin
If you think about marketing, marketing is all about thinking outside the box and challenging the status quo and doing these other things. This is oil and water here. This is bad. But we've given recruiting to the HR department who really is focused on more checking boxes and making sure we're following the rules and not about being creative. And the biggest challenge that I see with companies in any industry, the reason they struggle to hire good people is because they've forgotten the fact that people don't leave jobs. They leave people, which means people are looking for something in a company that they don't have today, and they want to know more about what it's like to be a part of the team, what the company culture is like, what the leadership team is like, how communication works. They want to know all this stuff. Well, HR is focused on, In this job you do X, you do Y, you do Z, and you get compensated this way. They're not thinking, Oh, how we communicate is important to people. Maybe we should put that in a job ad. Oh, what fun we have around here, maybe we should put that in a job ad. They're not thinking this way, but that's what people want. And if we know that's what people want, we have to put ourselves out there as a company and put our job ads out there in a way that says, This is what we know you want, so we're going to give it to you. Well, the people that are most qualified to put that information together and get it in front of the right people, the marketers.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, you're not HR, right?

Ryan Englin
They're not HR. I tell people all the time...

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's not to say HR is bad, right?

Ryan Englin
HR is not bad. It's just not the right people for that. I'm not a big finance guy, but I absolutely believe we need to have finance people in the business. But I would never give a prospect to my bookkeeper and say, Hey, can you close this? We never do that. It doesn't mean finance is bad. It just means they're not qualified to be a salesperson, usually. And it's the same thing here. HR is not bad. It's just they're not qualified. It's not what their skill set is. It's left brain, right brain stuff. It's not what they're uniquely equipped to do.

Tim Fitzpatrick
My guess is this is why, because this recruiting function lives within HR, my guess is that is also why most job ads, they're the same shade of... They're the same color, right? Slightly different shades of yellow or red or whatever, but they just say the same boring stuff and they don't really have a message that's going to resonate, engage, and attract the people that that company really wants.

Ryan Englin
Absolutely. I mean, if you think about compliance, compliance is about following a stated list or a process. It's checking boxes and making sure we're doing what we're supposed to do from a compliance perspective. And the reason we have laws and compliance and governing agencies to make sure we're doing the right thing is... What it does is it puts it on the employer to act in a way that's consistent with what they want. So if I've got to fill out an equal employment opportunity audit report, guess what? I'm going to do the same report that every other company in the country is going to do, because that's how compliance works. And so if I'm HR and I'm thinking, Well, I got to put an ad out there. Well, at my last job, we had this bulleted list, and my job before that we had this bulleted list. And my attorney says that based on the way the laws work, we've got to have a bulleted list, right? All of a sudden, it's compliance. And so we put together this bulleted list. We put it out there, and it looks exactly like everybody else's because that's what's expected when we talk about compliance.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. If this is resonating with people, and I hope people are... This is syncing in. If you want to stand out, your job ads need to be different. They need to be written to the team members that you intend to and want to attract. I want to take a step back. If this is resonating with people, it seems to me that the first step you really need to understand is who you are as a company and who your ideal team members or employees are. Am I getting that right?

Ryan Englin
Yeah. So in the book, I walk you through all seven components of the CoreFit Hiring System, which is the process that we put together. And if you look at the model, right in the middle, you're going to see the word core. And in the middle of your entire process is your vision, your values, your purpose, how you behave, how you make decisions, why you do what you do, and the story that you tell. It's all the marketing stuff. I call it the employer brand. That's really what we're looking at, is what's the employer brand? That's center. That's the hub of everything that you're going to do with recruiting. And then the first step that you got to do when you attract somebody, when you want to look at the attraction component, is you've got to figure out who the right person is. I ask this question all the time, so I have a keynote. I'm actually getting ready to go deliver it tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. It's called How Learning to Fish taught me to recruit employees. And it's this idea that when I go fishing, if I bring the wrong bait, I'm going to get scunked. When I go fishing, if I bring the wrong gear, I'm going to have a real tough time catching something. When I go fishing, if I don't know what I want to catch, I'm going to catch whatever is hungry, and it might not be what I want to eat. And when we think about this, who do we put this message in front of? We have to know who the right people are. We have to be able to define them from a behavioral perspective, from a psychographics perspective, from a demographics perspective. We need to let go of all of the rules that are out there and says, Nope, we got to just fit it into a box, and that's it. It's like, Tell me about the people that you want on your team, the people that are going to thrive here. Let's learn about them. And then let's take those two things, the employer brand and what we call the CoreFit profile, let's combine them and go write an ad that is designed to attract those people with who we are, with the bait, if you will.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So the CoreFit profile is very similar to an ideal client profile or a buyer persona on the marketing side of things, except it's for team members or the employee that you intend to attract.

Ryan Englin
Yes. However, you have to remember that when you put together an ideal customer profile, or you have an avatar, most of the time what you're looking at is demographics. They're this age. You create this persona of someone, you're like, This is Jill. Jill is 42 years old. She's got two kids in high school. She drives this car. She lives in this neighborhood. She goes to this church on the weekend. If you think about all the things that I just said, half of those are protected classes. So when you put together a CoreFit profile, you can't say it's male or female. You can't say their religious status. You can't say their family status. You can't say a lot of these things that go into a customer profile. So when we create the CoreFit profile and we think about the person, we think about the behaviors. I want to know how Jill thinks. I want to know what Jill values. I want to know what's important to Jill personally. I want to know where she hangs out on the weekends because that's the stuff that I'm going to use in creating a CoreFit profile. I want to know how she's going to show up and integrate into our culture. That's important to me. And so that's what the CoreFit profile looks at, are those things.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Got it. Yeah. And I would say on the marketing side of it, the psychographics that you just talked about are equally as important. It helps us get in our ideal clients' head. It helps you get in your ideal team members' head, right?

Ryan Englin
Absolutely.

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Pivoting towards Turning the Interview into a Part of the Sales Process

Tim Fitzpatrick
And that's how we can actually start to create messaging that's going to attract and engage those people. Okay, so we've talked about this shift from recruiting from HR to marketing. What about this? Why should we be pivoting towards turning the interview into a part of the sales process?

Ryan Englin
Yeah. So if you think about... So let's look at marketing and sales right now, and we will probably disagree on some of the nuances, but marketing is about getting the right message in front of the right people at the right time, like when they're ready to buy. That's marketing. Then they raise their hand and they say, Hey, I think I want what you want. Well, now you need to have someone that can come in and have a very personal conversation with that individual to see if you're the right fit. That's really what we're looking for in the sales process. Do you have a problem that we can solve for the amount of money that you want to spend?

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Ryan Englin
Well, the same thing happens here. You do the marketing around recruiting, and someone raises their hand and says, Hey, I think I want to join your team. And then what you do is you have someone come in to have a personal conversation. Are you able to do the work that I need done for the amount of money that I want to pay you? It just flipped. In that situation there, you're the buyer. In the other situation, they're the buyer. But it's still a sales conversation. It's still understanding their needs and their goals, and can we accommodate and can we deliver, and can we do it for the money that we're going to agree on. And so many people forget this or what they do, and I want to be very careful with this, or what they do is they think as the employer, I'm the seller. The person comes in who raised their hand and goes, Let me tell you why this is where you need to be. We do this and we do this and we do this and we do this. And they're like, I don't care about those things. And then they walk out and they're like, Well, a good one got away. And it's like, Shut up and let them sell you on why they're the person you need to bring on your team.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's fascinating, man. How do you feel about... So resumes are coming in, right? There's plenty of companies that are using, you know this terminology better than I do, but automated systems to screen resumes, I've always felt like there are a lot of times where HR is a roadblock to people that are great fit actually getting through. Do you... What are your thoughts on that? And is that something that you take into account as part of the core fit hiring system?

Ryan Englin
Absolutely. So a lot of the work we do is around front-line talent. So these are sometimes entry-level, sometimes skilled, sometimes labor, but they're usually not leadership roles. They're usually not, or they're not roles that require advanced degrees or anything like that because those people usually aren't looking for work. So we're thinking about people that are looking for work. One of the things that I tell people to do is just dump the resume. Don't require a resume. Don't even request a resume. And here's why. I used to say there are two types of resumes out there. Well, now there are three. And if you want about the third one, you can go look me up on LinkedIn because I did a video about it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, cool.

Ryan Englin
But the first type of resume are those resumes written by professional resume writers. You can do a search on Google and say, Write me a great resume and for 300 bucks, someone will interview you for 15 minutes, and then they'll write a resume. Well, we all know that if that resume doesn't work, doesn't get you the interview, that person's not going to have a job for long. So they embellish, they elaborate, they come up with things that aren't real. So you can't trust professionally written resumes. The second type of resume is those written by people who don't know how to write resumes, which is the general public. No one ever taught them how to write a resume. So they do their best to put the information in there that they think you want to know about, but they're going to avoid data, they're going to avoid key information and everything else. You can't trust that resume.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Ryan Englin
And then the third type of resume, I'll give you all a little, but if you want to see how it works, go check out my video. The third type of resume is those written by AI.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay.

Ryan Englin
So you can literally go grab a job posting online. I went and I grabbed one for a company, and Amazon had one online, and I went and threw it in there and I said, All right, write me a resume that guarantees me getting an interview for this job. And it's like, Oh, you know how to do this? And you know how to do this? And you know how to do this? It actually even came up with insert company name here. I just had to make up the company name and I could submit it and get the interview. Now, it was an extreme example. The idea is AI can do this for you. So these resumes are garbage. No one knows how to write a decent resume. And how many times, I've heard a lot, but how many times has someone hired somebody because their resume said something and then you turned out they didn't really know how to do it? We just can't make decisions on our resumes. So you're right, HR gets in the way because in their mind, if I'm going to hire somebody, I need a resume. It's the same thing with reference checks. I'm not a huge fan of reference checks. Now, there are some roles where reference checks are absolutely critical. Any position that's handling money, any position that's handling sensitive information, those kinds of things. But when you're looking at your front-line talent, what are they going to do? They're going to give you the names and numbers of the three people that are going to say good things about them.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, of course.

Ryan Englin
Or they're going to put on their resume the bosses that are going to say good things about them, and there will be some gaps. And so I'm not a big fan of reference checks. Now, like I said, there's exceptions to every rule, but for the most part. But what does HR do? Well, we got to check references. So HR puts them into this bucket that says we have to go through these steps. And when you think about the interview process is more about relationship building and more about understanding the needs of the individual and the needs of the company and making sure that there's a match and having that conversation, you flip the interview from a compliance piece to sales conversation. And yeah, the tool that you were talking about is called an applicant tracking system, by the way.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, yeah.

Ryan Englin
It's an applicant tracking system. It's like a CRM, except it connects the job boards and manages all the applications that come in. And these tools have AI built into them now where they can screen a resume, they can screen an application, they can say this person is going to be a fit or not going to be a fit. And so there's all this stuff to do. And I actually had someone the other day ask me on a podcast. They said, So, Ryan, if I'm a job seeker, what advice would you give me to get around these things? And the advice for job seeker is exactly the same. But the idea is these systems are built around a set of compliance rules that they want to see before they let someone in. And the reason these systems were built, it's catch-22 here, is because the majority of applications that employers are getting are garbage. I ask people all the time, Would you rather have four applications and you want to talk to everyone or 400? But the perfect person is somewhere in there.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it's like a needle in a haystack, right?

Ryan Englin
Yeah. Well, everybody says I'd rather have the four good ones than the 400 with the one great one because they don't have time. That's what these systems were built for. So you've got to build this process so that you know-how to screen people. You know how to screen people, you know how to talk to the right ones. And when you get there actually having a good conversation because at the end of the day, when you hire this person, you make that offer and they show up. And three weeks go by and you're like, Who is this? This isn't the person I interviewed. Now I got to start all over again. You're just wasting everybody's time.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So the CoreFit hiring system will help people avoid a lot of the common pitfalls that most companies run into.

Ryan Englin
Absolutely.

Finding and Attracting Great People

Tim Fitzpatrick
But as if people can't already tell, a lot of your ideas around this are pretty disruptive. They go against the grain that most people talk about. What other thoughts would you like to share with us today around finding and attracting great people?

Ryan Englin
Well, I'll share some hard truths with people, and this is going to be a challenge for some. But if you remember, people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses. So that goes for you, too, which means if you're struggling with retention, they're not leaving you for a dollar more an hour. They're not leaving you for better benefits. They're leaving you because they have a problem with their boss. And if you're their boss, it might be time to look in the mirror and say, Okay, why are my people not staying? The other side is if you know that people are leaving a boss, not a job, when you're looking for new people and people are applying, remember, they want to know what it's like to work there. They don't care about the work. Most of the time, they don't even care about the pay. People will take a pay cut to go work for a company where on Sunday night they don't have that feeling in their stomach and like, Oh, why don't I feel good today? Oh, I got to go to work tomorrow. People will take a pay cut to avoid the pain of that. So that means that when you're out there and you're interviewing people, you need to be authentic and let them in and let them know what it's like to be a part of your team. Don't fake it. Remember, people want a new boss. People want a company that they feel like they're connected with, and that comes down to authenticity. Be authentic. If you're a little screwed up, be a little screwed up. It's okay. Be a misfit. I'll never forget, real early on in this, and this was five, six years ago, I had a client. And I'm watching him interview this... It was an office manager position, I think. I'm watching him interview this gal about 20 minutes in the interview, he just drops an F-bomb just out of the blue. And then he drops another one and another one. And I stopped counting after 20 or 25 of these, I was just taken back. Of course, she did not accept the job. And at the end, he looks up and he's all proud and he stands up and says, What do you think of that? I said, I have questions. I have to do that. And he goes, Well, the industry we're in, we all swear a lot, and it's just commonplace for us. And I need to make sure that someone can hack it. I need to make sure that that's not going to be a problem for them. And I said, Well, don't you feel like you just wasted time with this lady? And don't you feel like you wasted her time? He's like, Yeah, but that's because she's not going to be good. I go, What if instead of this, we were a little more authentic upfront? What if instead of just surprising them during the interview, we put in the job ad some F-bombs? So in the ad that you post on Indeed, you drop some F-bombs in there and you say, This is who we are. And he just went white. He's like, You can't do that. And he says who? He's like, I'm going to ask my HR person who was his controller at the time. She's like, You can't do that. So it's okay to do it face to face with them and surprise them and make them feel uncomfortable when it's harder to get away than it is to put in an ad and say, This is who we are? But we see it all the time, right? People want to create this persona that they're perfect and that everything is awesome, and they forget to be real. I think being real is more important. I think that's something that we've lost in our society because so many people talk about first impressions and so many people talk about what you wear, and how you look, and all those things. And people make judgment calls in the first five seconds. We're so obsessed with speed right now that we forget to take the time to get to know someone. And because of that, we believe that people don't want to take the time to get to know us. And I'll tell you that in all of the work we do, people come out of the interviews going, wow, that was amazing. I wish more companies interviewed that way. We actually have this happen where candidates will say, I'm not the person you're looking for, but I know that now because you spent the time with me. You're authentic. You're real.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's a different interview process than they're used to.

Ryan Englin
Yeah. Absolutely.

Tim Fitzpatrick
it's so funny you talk about being authentic, being real. I was reading something the other day on the marketing side of things, and it was... I can't remember what they call the effect, but it basically said that when we, as marketers, are putting ourselves out there, it's okay to show that you're imperfect. It's okay to admit your faults. And when you actually do that, it attracts people to you more than if they think you're up on a pedestal, right? Because we all know we're all imperfect. But when you have that authenticity and actually say, hey, and correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing you say is like, hey, in the hiring process, if there are issues within the company that are going to impact this particular position that you're interviewing for, it's okay to talk about those in the interview process. Am I hearing you correctly?

Ryan Englin
Absolutely.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, cool. I think it's the same effect on the hiring side. When you do that, you're actually showing people that are like, Oh, my gosh. Wow. I'm not going to take this job and then two or three weeks in find out about all this crap. You're actually telling me this upfront. I appreciate that. That's the type of company that I actually want to work for.

Ryan Englin
Absolutely.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's such a simple thing, but so many people just are not going to do it. That's another thing that I think is so awesome. I mean, you're sharing a ton of information here. The reality is like, Dude, people are going to listen to this, they're going to read the book, and they're not going to do anything. That's what happens with 90-plus % of people. So if you're taking this information in, I can't tell you how many people I talked to on this podcast too, one of their main issues is finding good people. But people just keep doing the same crap over and over again.

Ryan Englin
Well, that's why I say stop looking and start attracting.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Ryan Englin
Don't go looking for people. Instead of being out there roaming the inner city looking for people, why don't you say, hey, why don't I put the energy from that into becoming a more attractive brand, a more attractive company, a better leader? We had a client a couple of years ago, they lost their office manager. I was like, I got to know what happened. I called her up and I said, Hey, this isn't a formal interview. I'm not doing anything like that. I just got to know why did you quit? And she goes, We talked a little bit, and what it came down to was one thing. Her boss didn't know how to say thank you. She was like, I was tired of putting myself out there, doing things that weren't asked of me that needed to be done that were better for the company, doing things that was helping drive things forward to help him achieve his goals, and not once did I get recognition for the work I did.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Just a simple thank you for doing this.

Ryan Englin
Thank you. Thank you would have kept his office manager... I mean, her leaving set him back six months.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Ryan Englin
And if he would have just learned to say thank you, and when I told him this he goes, Well, that's not me. I'm like, Well, maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe you just need to learn to say thank you. One of the things that, like you said, most people aren't going to do this stuff. It's so true. Because as easy as it is to do, or as simple as it is, it's not easy sometimes. Sometimes you have to humble yourself. Sometimes you have to be vulnerable. When you were talking about that, putting yourself out there and letting people know it's not being perfect. I thought of Brené Brown and her research and vulnerability and why vulnerability is one of those things that we don't want to do it ourselves, but we so admire it in others. And she gives this example. She goes, I'm standing on a stage right now with 500 people staring at me. She goes, Do you think I'm nervous? Yeah. Do you think I'm scared? Yeah. She goes, If I were to stumble and fall right now, would any of you laugh at me? And they're like, No. And how many of you admire me for being up here and being able to do this? And all the hands go up. And that's how people would think about you doing the same thing. But we forget that. We think there's no way I could do that.

The Impacts of Marketing in Finding and Recruiting Good People

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. It's super easy to overlook. Okay, I'm probably going to have a few more questions, but the next one I want to ask you is it's self-serving on the marketing side, but because you view marketing is so important on the hiring side, does the overall marketing for the company impact their ability to find and recruit good people?

Ryan Englin
Yes.

Tim Fitzpatrick
In what way? Break that down a little bit.

Ryan Englin
Yeah. One of the things I found years ago was that we could run ads, so I work with a lot of home service contractors. We could run ads targeted towards future potential employees. So these are hiring ads, recruiting ads, find out what it's like to be a part of our team, tired of being scared to talk to your boss. These kinds of ads. We could run these ads on social media, and we would get applicants from it. People would click and apply. The crazy thing was, and I did not expect this, is customers would kick-click on them too, and call. Because the customers saw that ad and said, Wait a minute. They're putting themselves out here. They're being authentic. They're being vulnerable about who they are as an organization, and they're attracting the people that align with this. They may not have been processing these words this way, but their reaction was, That's a company that I want to come into my home. If they're hiring these people, that's the people I want in my home fixing my stuff. And so I was not expecting it, but we found that if you do ads for recruiting, and there's a certain way to do them, those same ads could actually attract more customers. And so we had a couple of clients to test this. We actually redid their website, all of their marketing, and we talked more about the company culture and more about the way we communicate and our values and why things were important, less about all of our features and benefits and more about who we were and why we were a cool company. The same material, the same content that's going to attract good people attracted good customers.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Ryan Englin
And so we had some clients that just said, You know what? I'm done with marketing customer acquisition. I'm going to put all of my marketing efforts into employee acquisition. And what ended up happening? They ended up getting both still. And so when you ask the question, does your overall marketing impact? Yes. The answer is yes, in both sides. I think it's so important and something that so many people miss because they're so focused on, Well, my competitor says this, this, and this, so I have to say this, this, and this to counter them. But people are tired of that. They're tired of the first impression, the fake persona that you create. They want the authenticity. They want the real. Nobody expects perfection. Why? Because they all know we're run by people, and people aren't perfect.

Tim Fitzpatrick
The way I think about it too is just like on the client side, on the employee side, people aren't... They're not just looking at the job ad or they're not just getting a referral from somebody and sending an email. They're going online and doing research. And if what they see and find is not resonating with them, then they're not going to go any further. So we're running this all the time. There's plenty of businesses out there that are generating all their business from referrals. That's great. But just because you're generating business from referrals doesn't mean that it's okay to have a website from 1995.

Ryan Englin
Or 2015, right?

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Ryan Englin
One of the first things I found in the reputation space was Yelp, and Google ranks Yelp very high. So if someone searches or Googles your company with the word jobs at the end, a lot of times your Yelp profile shows up too, especially if you don't have a lot of content out there. And what we found was that the way you respond and the types of Yelp reviews you have and the Yelp rating you have directly correlates to the quality of people applying for your jobs. People don't think about it like that. But if I'm a job seeker and I see your profile and you've got 2.7 stars and the last three bad reviews you reamed the person, guess what I'm thinking? That's not a company I want to go work for.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Nope.

Ryan Englin
I want to go work for the company that's got the 4.6 stars, and even the bad reviews are, Oh, my gosh. How can we fix it? How can we make it better? How can we help you? And it's so crazy. People don't think about it, but all of your marketing impacts your ability to recruit the best people.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. You know what, man? That's so interesting that you bring that up, Ryan, because most people never even take the time... Outside of going to buy the book, the second thing I want you to do is open up whatever search engine you use, type in your company's name and see what comes up in search results. I think you will be shocked at some of the stuff that comes up there. That is what people are seeing, whether they are potential employees or potential clients, when they google your name. Done. So very easy to overlook, really important to make sure that you're doing everything you can to make sure that what shows up there is what you actually want to show.

Ryan Englin
We don't talk about it in the book, but for anybody in our program, when we're helping them do this, we have a process where we actually record us walking through what we call the job seeker journey. And so we Google them, we pull up all their profiles, and we say, if I'm a job seeker thinking about what is it to join your team? And then we work through it out loud, and we provide recommendations and examples of things that they need to change and things they need to work on so they can become more attractive to the right people. So exactly what you just said is something we do in our program.

Conclusion

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. Any last-minute thoughts you want to leave us with today, Ryan?

Ryan Englin
One of the things I like to do is make sure that everybody walks away from one of my interviews with an action item, something that they can do. And yes, you can go to my website at corematters.com. You can learn more about us. You can get the book there. There's so much resources we have there. But here's one tip I want to give everybody. If you are struggling right now to hire good people, whether you're not getting enough applications, or you're not getting enough of good applications, or you're hiring people and they're just not sticking around, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to the couple of people on your team that get it, the ones you wish you could clone, and we've all got one or two of them, go to them, take them out to lunch and say, If it was up to you to recruit for us, if that was your job, which I get it's not, but if it was, what changes would you want to see us make? What would you want us to do differently? How can we better support you in being able to refer your friends and family to us? And get it from them. And I see you smiling because you're like, Well, that's what we tell people to do, is go to their best customers to learn.

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's exactly right, man.

Ryan Englin
It's a marketing problem, right? There it is. Go to your best employee, have the conversation. Just shut up and listen, because I know the easiest thing to do is to justify why you're broken. Stop it. Just listen to what they have to say and then say, What can I do to support you in referring the one or two people? That's the one thing I've learned is very rarely does someone come to me and say, I need 50 people. Very rarely. It happens. It's happened a couple of times. But usually they come to you and say, Oh, if I just had too good text, or if I just had two good operators, or if I just had two good help desk people, whatever that is, it would transform their business. I'm like, You're only two away. What would you do if someone came to you and said, Tim, I just need two clients. If I could just get two clients, I'd be sad. You'd be like, Oh, my gosh, here's the easiest path to getting two clients. And it's probably not something you normally think about.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. It's easy to overlook.

Ryan Englin
But it's easy. It's easy. Easy. Sit down with that key employee, listen, let them talk, let them tell you. And then when you do go make changes, run it by them. Let them know they were heard. Let them know that you've listened and that you are implementing the changes they recommend. It'll transform your business.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. Ryan, thank you, man. Good luck with the book launch. Those of you that are watching, listening, go to Corematters.com, check out the book, Hire Better People Faster. I love everything you shared today, man. I know people are going to get a ton of value out of it. So thank you again. You're welcome back anytime.

Ryan Englin
Thank you, Tim.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Those of you watching, listening, I appreciate you as well. We've been talking a lot about hiring today, but as you can see, there are so many similarities with hiring and marketing. They really do go hand in hand. So if you're struggling with your marketing, you can always connect with us over at rialtomarketing.com. And if you want to know which of the nine Revenue Roadblocks are slowing down your growth, you can do that over at RevenueRoadblockScorecard.com. So thank you so much and thank you so much. Till next time, take care.


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