Hiring for The HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Trades Is A Piece of Cake! with Ryan Englin

www.bluecollarculture.com

www.thecorematters.com

Hiring HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Trade Employee Is A Piece of Cake!

Tersh Blissett: Hello everyone out there in Podcast World. I hope you’re having a great day. You’re listening to or watching the Service Business Mastery Podcast. I’m your host Tersh Blissett sitting virtually next to my co-host, Joshua Crouch. So today we’re going to talk about the thing that is like, I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation because it’s like the easiest thing in the world to do. You know, we’re going to talk about hiring and retention of key employees, front line employees, or the ones that we’re always hiring for your office, staff, dispatchers, CSRs and service technicians. We’re going to talk about attract, hire and retaining them because I’m sure we’re going to talk about this. And that’s the cost of replacing an employee if we don’t retain them. Super excited to talk with Ryan before we get started. The Core Matters is his website. One of the things that that he’s mentioned before and I think it’s extremely [00:01:00] valuable is the fact that hiring is marketing. So you had a marketing company before and digital marketing or a marketing agency, and they had an issues with not being able to keep up with all the leads that were generating, which that says something in itself, because there’s been times where I just have the phones just died and I didn’t have leads coming in. So to have so many leads coming in that you can’t keep them. You know, taking care of that’s that’s saying a lot. But so he transferred over into hiring and recruiting and it is true because one of the things that I’ve learned over the past couple of years is the fact that you you need to treat hiring like it’s marketing and always be hiring at the same time. Even if you don’t need a position, still hire.

Josh Crouch: So I just had this conversation with somebody last night. This is my last call of the day, and we were talking about it [00:02:00] because everyone waits until. Oh, crap. I need to hire someone for this position because it’s open now or I have too much work, and now it’s already too late because you’re behind the eight well, so

hopefully that’s what you guys take away from this episode today with Ryan is learning how to continuously keep that cycle open and treat it like it’s marketing.

Tersh Blissett: Josh How long? Thinking back. Way, way, way, way back when you were in the contracting world, how long did it take you? Do you recall? To get from the time you said, okay, I need to start hiring until you actually put someone in the seat. How long would you think that was?

Josh Crouch: I mean, honestly, usually that’s it’s a couple of months because you had to go through because honestly, a lot of times the first resumes you get aren’t really that great. And if it is, you’re very lucky you have to and you have to have it on such a multifaceted approach. Facebook, LinkedIn, indeed Ziprecruiter, whatever [00:03:00] place you use. And if you and if you wait until it’s busy, like when it’s summer for HVAC or plumbing, whatever that busy season is, stuff like that, you’re good luck because people are working 50, 60 hours a week. They’re not they’re not going to have time for an interview.

Tersh Blissett: The the thing one of the things that I’ve always said is if you’re looking for a job during the summer, I don’t want to hire you, because if you don’t have a job right now, you suck at this now. And that’s assuming that you’re a service technician and all that. You’re not coming from a different industry or you’re not looking for a job because you were overworked. You know what I mean? But if you got released from your duties, you are not a very good person. So that’s that’s the other fear factor of it. And then when and then the other side of it is like, what happens if I hire somebody like right now and then like today is 85 degrees. [00:04:00] But what happens if like next week it’s back in the lower seventies or even in the sixties, you know what I mean? So you have a guy sitting around, but obviously you have onboarding and stuff like that that you should be doing.

Josh Crouch: It’s a large conversation. It’s not just when do you need someone, but you need to have a system in place to operate your business. So that way they can stay busy 12 months, a year.

Tersh Blissett: Obviously, this is going to be a lot of talking about a lot of things. And if anybody has any questions that’s watching us live, don’t hesitate to to put those questions in the chat. And once I’m selfishly completed. Just interviewing Ryan with all of my personal questions, then I’ll get to your questions. So but with that being said, let’s go ahead and get started with the show.

Announcer: Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate [00:05:00] through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources and so much. Let their nuggets of wisdom gold guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.

Tersh Blissett: Hey, Ryan. Welcome to the show, man.

Ryan Englin: Oh, thanks for having me.

Tersh Blissett: Absolutely. It’s our pleasure. Honestly, it’s going to be how do I say this? Very self seeking.

Ryan Englin: So I heard the.

Ryan Englin: Warning in the in the pre show.

Ryan Englin: Yeah. You have been warned.

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. No, I’m kidding. But I’m definitely, definitely [00:06:00] interested in hearing your story and what you have going on. And give us a little bit of background as to why you’re an expert in what you’re doing.

Ryan Englin: Sure. Sure. Well, I mean, to give you the full background. So I grew up

my dad was in blue collar world, like he was in manufacturing, owned his own manufacturing plan. I always thought, hey, how cool to be a business owner. And then as I got older, I’m like, So that’s where he’s at late at night and on the weekend.

Ryan Englin: Right. Right.

Ryan Englin: And so growing up, I’m like, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be a business owner. This is crazy. You work 80 hours a week and you’re always struggling to find people. It’s just nuts. So. So I did like any good son would do. I went into corporate, you know, I didn’t go into the family business. And I learned a lot about recruiting processes, systems. And so when I started my own agency more than a decade ago, that’s what I was obsessed with just processes and systems and even my own challenges, not knowing how to hire [00:07:00] as an entrepreneur. I had to learn a lot of this stuff, but I’m building the processes and the systems and then yeah, it was about six years ago I had a lot of home service clients who came to me and said, Hey, I can’t take on any more leads. And I remember one in particular as an HVAC contractor. It was in July in Phenix. So for those that you don’t know, July in Phenix, like 120 is pretty normal, right?

Tersh Blissett: Mm hmm.

Ryan Englin: And they were booking three weeks out.

Ryan Englin: Wow.

Tersh Blissett: And people were actually, like, taking.

Ryan Englin: That could wait that long. Well, what was.

Ryan Englin: Happening was people would take it because they’re like, I don’t know if anybody else is going to be that bad. And then once the next guy showed up, got the work done, they’d call in, cancel.

Tersh Blissett: Like or never cancel. And then you just show up. Oh, we got that fixed two weeks ago.

Ryan Englin: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, like, this is dumb. We’re wasting a lot of money on leads. And I said, you know, I know how to recruit people, know how to hire people. And it’s a marketing issue. And I was marketing company at the time and like, so why don’t we just pivot a little bit and let me help you hire some techs? And then three weeks later they called me [00:08:00] and they’re like, we got the two techs we need and we got two more trucks on order because we found enough techs. I was like, Whoa, cool, let’s do more of this. And so it took a couple of years to figure it out. But in 2018, I rebranded, I pivoted and I said, Hey, we’re just going to do recruiting full time for these home service contractors and really helping them build this process internally and essentially teaching them to fish for good employees.

Ryan Englin: I love that.

Josh Crouch: Instead of someone, have them do it for them. Let’s create a system where you learn how to do this over and over and over again. So that way you can continue to build your business.

Ryan Englin: Absolutely.

Josh Crouch: Love that. So what that’s interesting because realizing that there was a problem in the market and then transitioning your business from marketing side where you’re generating leads to where you’re generating recruiting. Can you talk more about that, like where you started trying to figure out where these people hang out, where like your [00:09:00] potential employees start to hang out and stuff? Because I think that’s a lot of people go to like indeed and stuff, which has a lot of great candidates. But how do you find where people in your market are hanging out?

Ryan Englin: Yeah, so is that is a couple of things there. So the first thing we always do because nobody comes to me saying, hey, I need to hire in three months.

Ryan Englin: I never say that.

Josh Crouch: Usually it’s yesterday.

Ryan Englin: Yeah.

Ryan Englin: Like a tech. Just walked off the job yesterday. I don’t know how many get these calls done. Right. And so, so indeed. And the job boards, I mean, those are your active job seekers. Those are the people that are looking for work. They may be unemployed, like Tersh said, you know, sometimes you just got to take those people, Summer, they’re unemployed.

Ryan Englin: You’re like, Hey, I got it.

Tersh Blissett: Sometimes it’s just a quirk that they had and they just didn’t get along with the other people at work. And if you can learn there, why? And then it might be you might find a little golden nugget there.

Ryan Englin: You know, and that’s interesting you say that, because I actually have this belief that past performance is not an indicator of future success. Which [00:10:00] is contrary to what a lot of people would tell you, like a guy to get the resume. Got to ask about their performance at their last job. I’m like their boss might have been the biggest jerk on the planet. You don’t know that.

Josh: Well, I’m hoping and this is total side topic. Davante Adams. Him moving from the Packers to the Raiders. I’m hoping that’s true. I hope his future performance is not near what it was with the Packers.

Tersh: So wait a minute. Let’s clear the air here. Since you’re leaving the place that just generated so much of your life and your wealth and everything about you, Joshua. And you’re moving to the arid desert area. Does that mean that you’re leaving the Packers also?

JOSH: Oh, no, that’s in that sounds.

Tersh: That’s in my life. I’m moving to the Raiders here.

Speaker5: No. Hell, no. Not good. Not going to be a Cardinals fan.

JOSH: I’m not going to be a Raiders fan. Hell, no, no.

Ryan Englin: The good news, no one here [00:11:00] is a Cardinals fan. Unless.

Speaker5: Oh, good. Because you guys are never good.

Ryan Englin: Well, no one’s from here.

Speaker5: That’s true. That’s true. A lot of transplants from the other states. Yeah.

Tersh: Okay. All right. Sorry to derail that entire conversation, but. Yeah, back to where you were going with that. I mean, the I love what you said there. The past performance is not an indication of future successes. That’s a motto that we could all live by, because there are so many times that even with ourselves, honestly, like we kick ourselves for mistakes and failures that we’ve made and things we could have done better or we feel like such a failure because I didn’t do X, Y and z. In reality, we can improve each day and learn the mistakes that were made and and improve on them essentially for the following day.

JOSH: Yeah. I have a question, Ryan, that. It’s [00:12:00] a live question, so I’ll read it. So that way anyone listening can can hear it. But hey, guys, question for you whenever you get to it. I’ve been advertising on indeed in social media. All the applicants I’ve had choir are green with no experience. So question is how can I best recruit experienced talent? I’ve also been passing up recruiting cards every time I see a service truck.

Ryan Englin: So there’s a couple of things you can do. So Tersh, you had mentioned it in and Josh, you had mentioned it too. Like, finding these guys is hard. Like, where are

we looking and. There’s a there’s an element of our program where we actually help you figure out where to find these people by getting really clear on who these experienced, high quality techs are.

Speaker5: If you go, well, I’m.

Tersh: Sorry to interrupt you. Would you would you say that in the marketing world, you typically have your avatar or your targeted clientele that you’re going after? Do [00:13:00] you go through the process of developing your avatar of your technician that you’re trying to search for as well? First, you.

Ryan Englin: Just finished my sentence. This is awesome.

Speaker5: Now. All right.

Tersh: But I just.

Ryan Englin: Do my job. We call it the corporate profile, and it’s really getting clear on who your avatar is. Now, don’t go to your marketing team and say, build me an avatar for who I’m going to recruit, because.

JOSH: Please don’t do that.

Ryan Englin: Everything they’re going to give you.

Speaker5: Is.

Ryan Englin: A protected class.

Tersh: Because, I mean.

Ryan Englin: Well, you can’t you can’t say, hey, I want to promote to people under the age of 40. I can’t promote to just men. I can’t promote to like, you know, certain

influence levels. Like there’s all these things that are protected in the recruiting world that you can’t promote. If you think about an avatar in marketing, it’s like, here’s Jill. She’s 42 years old. She’s got three kids. She goes to church on the weekends.

Speaker5: Like, you.

Ryan Englin: Can’t say any of that.

Tersh: Stuff. [00:14:00] That’s very, very true. I mean, that’s yeah, you get in big trouble for doing that kind of stuff.

Ryan Englin: So what we do is we help you to focus on the behaviors. And what I mean by that is I surveyed a lot of people and I said, you just told me you can’t find good people. And what I want you to do is I want you to define good for me. And what do you think they say?

Tersh: They can fog a mirror.

Ryan Englin: Nobody ever says, oh, they can read gauges or they can recharge a system or they can unclog a toilet. No, they say they show up on time. They they look the customer in the eye and don’t come across creepy. They know they can have a conversation. They clean up the job site. They collect payments. Like These are the things people want.

Tersh: They don’t collect payment cash.

Ryan Englin: Yeah. They don’t steal from you. They don’t wreck the truck. Like none of this has to do with the quality of of them being attack. [00:15:00]

Tersh: Honestly, you’re describing a unicorn at this point, so. No, I’m just kidding. I have some oh, my guys are exactly like you described. They’re amazing people.

Ryan Englin: And us say that.

Tersh: They are they are.

JOSH: All sitting there listening.

Tersh: Oh, I hope they are listening. You’re wonderful. I appreciate everything that you do every single day. And I’m not being facetious at all for real.

Ryan Englin: That’s how you define good, is all these behavioral things. So when we put together an avatar, we look at behaviors. And the cool thing about behaviors is once you understand good behaviors. It’s a lot easier to go figure out where people with those kinds of behaviors are hanging out.

Tersh: Oh, yeah, that’s a great. Oh, man. That’s a mic drop in itself because. Yeah. I mean, you think about the fact but doesn’t that. I know I haven’t completed a sentence here in the last 30 seconds, but it’s very much like, ah, we. Putting [00:16:00] ourself in a situation that we might miss somebody because we’re targeting people with this behavior.

Ryan Englin: I mean, those are the behaviors you want. Isn’t that who you want to target?

Tersh: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, that’s. You’re very, very right. It’s just not what I normally think about. It’s not the normal thought process, which is obviously why it’s successful for you. But I just I don’t know, it’s it’s leading to a whole bunch of other questions in terms.

Ryan Englin: It’s interesting. So we worked with a commercial refrigeration company. They did a lot of restaurant type stuff. And I remember I was like, so tell me about your interview process. And I forget what the thing was because I don’t I didn’t know. And they’re like, they showed a picture of a thingamajig and they’re like, What is this? What does it do? And how do you know if it’s working? And if they couldn’t answer the question. The interview is over.

, [00:17:00] I’ve.

Tersh: Gone through that interview before. And and the guy that was giving the interview, like I knew the answer to the question playing this day, it was like about a capacitor. I understood a capacitor. I know how a capacitor works. I knew I knew the incorrect terminology. I knew the incorrect things that were that are used to describe a capacitor. And this guy was trying to figure out if I said any of those things. And I was I took offense to the fact that he he was, like.

Tersh: Yeah, that’s the whole conversation. He was like, Well, what about this? And he tried putting it into a bad situation. And I’m like, Are you serious, guy? Like, for one, it’s a capacitor. So we’re getting very, very basic here. And for like, don’t try and end this interview before it has even started. Just because to feed your ego, to show that you’re the smartest guy in the room.

Ryan Englin: Well, I asked him. I said, so let me ask you a question. So the interview’s over. That tells you he doesn’t have the experience that you’re looking for. Whatever. How long [00:18:00] would it take you to teach him the answers to those three questions? And he goes, he looks at me and he’s like, 7 minutes.

Speaker5: Pretty exact. Like, you.

Ryan Englin: Just bypass the tech who may have only worked on residential units but has all the all the skills you need because you don’t want to teach him for 7.

Speaker5: Minutes.

Ryan Englin: Yeah. And I have a little soapbox I want to go on about the capacitor thing.

Speaker5: Because.

Ryan Englin: This drives me nuts. So a lot of guys, what they’ll do is they’ll have an old unit that they took off of someone’s house and they have it in the shop and they’ll send the guy out and they know that there’s something wrong with the unit and they’ll be like, Hey, can you fix it? Figure out what’s wrong with it. Like a little troubleshooting test. We had one one company we talked to, we didn’t end up working together because they were like against this. But, you know, they had the run the run cap was the issue and then they knew it. But what they did was instead of putting a run cap on it that looked like it was 20 years [00:19:00] old, like the unit was.

Tersh: They had a.

Ryan Englin: New one way run.

Speaker5: Cap.

Ryan Englin: Fresh out of the box and they put it on there and they’d fail the guys if they didn’t test them. Like the run cap looks brand new.

Ryan Englin: Why would I test that?

Tersh: Yeah, that’s tough. Yeah, that’s definitely tough on there. Yeah. And I mean, if on one hand, it can teach a good lesson of, hey, don’t assume that it came from the factory. Good. But the other hand, like, you have to give some grace because you assume that it came from the factory and that it’s good. That’s one of the challenges that I have with technicians in general now, because when we have callbacks it’s like, well, we just installed that. So I assume that was the problem. And it’s like.

Ryan Englin: It’s a double edged sword, but when you’re interviewing people, you don’t fail them.

Tersh: Because you can’t cancel them out of the whole conversation.

Ryan Englin: Because they didn’t check that first.

Speaker5: Yeah. Yeah.

JOSH: And I’ve shared this story before on a different podcast. One of the best hires we [00:20:00] ever made at the last company I was at was somebody who had never they honestly weren’t even like the most mechanically inclined person you’d ever find. But they had the personality and the qualities and traits that you were talking about. So we hired Green, if you will. Going back to that question, green isn’t bad. Like we have to stop looking at greenhorns or green people, people that don’t have experience as a bad thing because honestly, they may teach us something new and they may be way better at the customer service end of things, which allows you to charge your premium price for your products and services. But he literally has the most glowing reviews. He sells like crazy because everybody loves the guy. He’s so down to earth and he just connects with people. And like I said, he was a college theater teacher or college theater director. That’s where he came from and he was 42. Totally different industry changing everything. You taught an old dog, new trick type of thing, but we [00:21:00] taught him our way internally and he’s he’s still there and he’s great. Well, that’s.

Tersh: Exactly.

Tersh: That’s exactly like Noah with with a frog. We were just interviewing him. Was it last week? It feels like a year or two ago, but.

Tersh: He was he’s not from the trades. He’s not even from the marketing side of things like with us. And so whenever you’re talking to him about anything to do with the trade, it’s like, Well, why are you doing it that way? He brings a fresh perspective to the whole conversation. So with that being said in General Ryan, how long like when someone’s hiring based on personality and not based on skill necessarily? What what are we should we expect? As far as training and stuff like that. Like what how does that conversation go when you’re when you’re talking to someone about that?

Ryan Englin: Yeah. So just to be clear, you still need to hire, experience, tax, [00:22:00] like if you just lost your top two or three experienced techs, you know, or you just took on a big job, like you still need some experience guys, but getting experience guys a lot harder than getting the guys that are green. Yeah. I mean everybody, I mean, even that that question was I get a lot of people with no experience. Yeah. And what I would say is find you can’t hire everybody. You can’t have everybody with no experience but find the one or two people in that group that stands out, make them a second seater, put them in a truck with another guy for a couple of months until you know that they can get out and go do some basic troubleshooting calls.

Tersh: So what happens if, like, you’re a small company and your one lead guy doesn’t do everything the exact proper way? And then you have these other people who have great personalities. They want to learn. They’re easy to learn, but they ride along with this person and they learn habits that aren’t the best. While you’re also training in like you have your technical training, [00:23:00] weekly meetings, call it.

Ryan Englin: Yeah.

Tersh: And you’re teaching the right way to do things, but then someone else on the team is teaching them quicker way to do things. Like obviously, like I would, I wouldn’t say, you know, immediately fire that lead person because then you literally fire your lead person. Yeah. I mean, how would you how would you talk to someone about that conversation?

Ryan Englin: So I guess it would depend on how much of a problem it’s creating. Gotcha. Like the guys that are in the field, like if they’ve learned some ways not I’m not saying like poor workmanship type of cutting short cuts. Right. I’m just saying like, hey, we figured out if we do it this way, it’s a little bit quicker. It’s probably not the way the boss wants it done, but we still get the same outcome, right? I’m less worried about that stuff. That’s a little bit of a coaching stuff. But if you’ve got someone who’s like, I don’t care what the boss says, I’m going to do it my way. The culture problem there is, that’s where I was just going to go. There’s a values problem like your [00:24:00] value system

and their value system don’t line up and you got to fix that. And most of the time, fixing it means finding a new lead tech.

Speaker5: Dagger to the heart. That’s what it is.

Ryan Englin: And here’s the funny thing. I’ve never, ever, ever. Ever had a client who fired a lead tech or a key person and regretted it?

Tersh: That was that was damaging their culture.

Ryan Englin: That was damaging their culture.

Ryan Englin: That person was bringing down the whole rest of the team. And it’s amazing what will happen. Your team will step up in ways you didn’t think were possible to fix.

JOSH: The anxiety and just because then you’re constantly as a as an owner, you’re thinking about that at night and in the morning, you wake up and you’re like, Oh, God, what am I going to do about this person?

Tersh: And they’re going to ask, Have you ever owned an air conditioning company? Because there are a lot of other things to think about to.

Speaker5: Well, if I’ve had toxic. [00:25:00]

JOSH: Toxic people and honestly, it’s like the whole bad apple spoils the bunch thing.

Speaker5: And they’re all real bad.

Ryan Englin: Your company is like being held back by this bungee cord, and as soon as you cut them loose, like your company can.

Speaker5: Slingshot.

Ryan Englin: Forward. Yeah.

Speaker5: And it’s.

JOSH: What did you put in your coffee this morning? Dude, you’re, like, wide awake for this early.

Speaker5: That’s a monster. Monster. Okay.

JOSH: All right. We stepped it up this week.

Speaker5: Yeah, so?

Tersh: So, Brit, Brit, Brit. Ridley is asking a question. Brant, it’s a good buddy of mine. He’s actually the the one of the host of the Tool podcast. And his actually we released an episode yesterday today I’m sorry, released it today with my wife and Brent’s wife and Brian or his wife. And they were really fun.

JOSH: Funny. It was a really funny episode, if any.

Tersh: It’s good stuff. Yeah, it’s good, good stuff. But Brent’s asking, how do you get people to show up for interviews? He said he set up six interviews in the last month and only two [00:26:00] people have showed up.

JOSH: And I’ve seen this in numerous places. The same question get asked by different people.

Ryan Englin: So we meet with our clients regularly. And the number one question right now is not how do I get more people? It’s How do I get people to show up? Candidate ghosting is everywhere, and that’s exactly what we’re talking about here. I just did a 30 minute fireside chat with a company that runs applicant tracking systems, and we get

down to the fireside chat people like we have around to like. I got more questions, but here’s the bottom line. Switching jobs or even looking for work is very stressful for job seekers, period. It’s one of life’s most stressful events.

Ryan Englin: So it also is something that once they make the decision, they want to get out of that period of stress as fast as possible. So you need to be as quick as possible to get to people. So what happens typically and I don’t know what’s going on in this situation, but a lot of times what happens is the application will come in, it’ll sit in in-box for a day or two. Actually, the [00:27:00] average is almost eight days in home services. It’ll sit in the inbox for a day or two. They’ll finally get an email, says, Hey, we really like it. Can we schedule a phone screen in a day or two? Phone screen happens and then you’re like, Hey, this is great. Let’s cut meet for an interview in a day or two. In the meantime, there’s a competitor who’s responded to that guy in 15 minutes. Skips the skips any of the formalities says, why don’t you come in and we meet and he’s already talking to him before you even responded to your email. So you’re up against that right now?

JOSH: Yeah, so can I. Especially with it being 2022 and Tersh and I, our next show that we’re recording today is all about like automation and processes. So this kind of actually dives into like it’s a little bit of a Segway with Ari, but and I started doing this with my last hiring cycle. It wasn’t I still had a little bit of delay when resumes came in because I didn’t want to go through like 100 resumes that came in and like 24 hours. But do you have any recommendations [00:28:00] on things that people can do to resume comes in, have some sort of system or process where at least we’re reaching back out to those people really quickly. And maybe if we’re asking some follow up questions to kind of like filter down the list of 30 or 50 or 100 candidates, they can do that, but do it really quickly. So as soon as someone sends in their resume, they get this next thing. So that way they kind of go further down the process. And if they don’t fill it out, obviously they don’t really want this job. You kind of filter people out that way too. Do you have any suggestions?

Ryan Englin: Yeah. So the tool you’re talking about is an applicant tracking system.

Speaker5: Is that it sounds better than what I would call.

Tersh: This. Might be a little segway here.

Speaker5: Yeah.

Ryan Englin: It’s an applicant tracking system. It’s like a CRM, but it’s just for recruiting.

Tersh: Okay, now, where do we get where do we get this?

Ryan Englin: Well, there are thousands of them out there. And it’s actually one of the things we do when people work with us is we say, let’s find you the right one. We’ve got one that we recommend [00:29:00] a lot. It’s called Applicant Pro, if you want to go check it out. And what it does is, first off, what it does is it connects to all the job boards for you. So when you’ve got that new HVAC tech ad that you need to post, you put it into the ATS and the ATS sends it to indeed Monster Ziprecruiter CareerBuilder. All of these job boards for you for free.

Tersh: Get out of here.

Ryan Englin: The first thing it does. The second thing it does is it automates your recruiting process. So when somebody applies, there’s two things they can do. One is there’s questions that you can ask as part of the application process. Do you have a driver’s license, for example? And if the guy says no, the system will automatically reject them for you and send him an email that says, hey, we’ve decided to pursue other candidates. So those 100 applications that 30 of them didn’t driver’s licenses. [00:30:00] You don’t ever got to look at it again because they never even land in your inbox.

JOSH: Guess who’s going on a rabbit hole hunt.

Tersh: I’m over here trying to scoop my brains up over here because my heads don’t exploded.

JOSH: I didn’t even know there was something like that out there. I mean, I guess.

Ryan Englin: Most of and most people don’t, especially in the trades, because there really isn’t one that says, hey, we’re built for the trades.

Speaker5: Right.

Ryan Englin: You know, they’re they’re highly complex. They’re meant for HR teams. A lot of them aren’t meant for small business owners. And so that’s why in our program, one of the things we do is we set it up for you so you don’t have to learn this thing. But here’s the cool part. So when they apply, let’s say they get through that filter, they get an email, says, Hey, we love what we see, can we schedule a phone interview and it’s got a calendar link in it?

Ryan Englin: And they click the link and they land right on your calendar right away. You don’t do anything.

Josh: And then Kaitlyn Lee has reminders and alerts for text message and email. So they constantly are getting.

Ryan Englin: The zoom link with it. So if you want to see the guy [00:31:00] and like, Hey, let’s skip the phone interview and just go right to a face to face for 30 minutes or 20 minutes like you can do that. You don’t have to do anything.

Tersh: You’ve already set up the zoom to automatically record it. So then you have that for the future so that you can see how it went. Good or bad.

Ryan Englin: Yeah, just like recording a sales call. You can go back and go, What did we do wrong? Where did we lose them? Mm hmm. And. And then from there, you can move them through your pipeline, just like you do a CRM, you can have pipeline stages. And so when you move them to in-person interview, the system can automatically trigger another calendar invite or it can trigger an email. Hey, we’re excited to see you at

3:00 on Tuesday. All automatic. So for these people, they’re like, I don’t have time to recruit, which is the number one thing we hear. We don’t have time to do this. So I’m short staffed. We had one client just started wearing this couple months ago and we said, Hey, we’re going to put you on a system that will go from application to schedule to interview. You [00:32:00] don’t touch it.

Ryan Englin: In a week of launching. Save them 20 hours a week.

Josh: I can only imagine because I started going. So it was 102 resumes, less than 24 hours when I posted the last job and I was like, I’m sitting there. I turned it off first thing in the morning when I got up and I’m like, Oh my God. I’m like, I do not want to go through 102 resumes. And I did my best. I think I got to like 60 or 70 and I’m just like, okay, I like to send something out to these people. I didn’t really have it built from the beginning, so it did wait a couple of days. But I love, love. What you’re talking about here is amazing.

Ryan Englin: I’m going to share with you. Not everybody is going to sign up for an ATS. I can tell you that because there’s a monthly fee and there’s a few hundred bucks a month and so it can get expensive real quick. But the the thing is, here’s an easy way. So let’s say you just posting on indeed. Or Craigslist or wherever you’re at and you want an easy way to filter. Add an Easter egg to [00:33:00] your job ad.

Speaker5: Oh, yes. Oh, I’ve heard that before, and.

Tersh: I forgot about it. Oh, thank you.

Ryan Englin: Let me explain what that is. Let me explain what that is. So, yeah.

JOSH: Because I’m totally confused.

Speaker5: Over here. Do you want to?

Tersh: That’s all right, guys. That’s all right. I got you. Josh, I got you.

Ryan Englin: Tersh is good. He’ll explain it offline, so.

Speaker5: No, no, just get out. Just let me explain it.

Ryan Englin: So here’s what we teach you to do. If you don’t want to get on ATS and you got 100 applications coming in. One of the easy things you can do is give them instructions in the ad that says when you apply, do.

Speaker5: X.

Ryan Englin: And then when you get those applications coming in. If they didn’t do X, they instantly go to the bottom.

JOSH: Yep.

Ryan Englin: Because now you know the person that read the ad, I mean, that’s person that’s invested because most people don’t read ads. I mean, how many times have you got an application? Like, do you even know what you applied for?

JOSH: You know, it’s funny when you respond to people, they’re like, What job was this again? [00:34:00]

Speaker5: Yeah.

JOSH: I’m like, I get it. You’re trying to find a job and you’re, you know, you’re.

Ryan Englin: Clicking boxes and you’re just going fast. But a couple of Easter eggs that are really easy. Like if you’re on Craig’s List, people are emailing you. So that’s an easy one. Put X in the subject line, like come up with it, you know, put you know, put happiness factor 11 in the subject line. And then now you know, if they had it in the subject line, you’re solid. If you’re using something like indeed, you know, you can set

up a couple of questions to prescreen them. Put something in the ad that says, I like this one. I say, when you submit your application and we ask you for the link to the image. The image we want you to give us a link to is if your favorite Disney princess.

Speaker5: Or just a random.

Ryan Englin: Off the wall has nothing to do with it, you’re looking to make sure they followed.

Tersh: Instructions. I’ve also heard one that is. Send your resume to this email address instead [00:35:00] of the one that’s just like the easy click submit resume button. And then you can track that they actually follow the instructions to send your resume to that email address versus, you know.

Ryan Englin: I like I like the ones where you filter out the subject line or something.

Tersh: Yeah, that sounds good to me.

Ryan Englin: Way easier.

Tersh: Yeah. Yeah. You don’t have to create a alias email address.

Ryan Englin: Now, your second inbox. I don’t know about you guys, but my inbox is blown up all the time. I don’t need a second one that’s blown up.

Tersh: Oh. Oh. Josh has got a little secret about his inbox. He uses his.

Speaker5: I actually have.

JOSH: I actually have. Yeah, I actually have someone that we interviewed actually on the podcast. I signed up for their service. It’s an email assistant, really, and it’s helped me organize my inbox for productivity versus having like 150 emails that just kind of sit there with like newsletters and stuff. I don’t really do anything with it, but when those

applications came in, I literally had to turn off the email notifications [00:36:00] because it literally I would I would have like a 30 minute call and I would go in and be like 30 emails and I’m like, Good Lord. Like, this is just way too much for me. Yeah, I have a question. So this last hiring cycle, so we did that. We, I sent out like a Google form with some questions. I should have built it before. I didn’t. So I kind of filtered down to like 20 or so candidates. And then what we did, because a lot of our calls and our clients, we do zoom right, just like most agencies and stuff do these days. So I had them create like a short video. Just tell me who you are, why you want this job, send it to us. And I kind of like the instructional thing. First of all, I want to see their presence on camera, how they speak and communicate, because it’s super important to us. But it did filter us down to like just a few candidates. And I almost I were really excited about the gal that just started this week because she right away from the video I could she was like bumped up to the top like I could tell right away. [00:37:00] And so and even the team when they watched it was like, yeah, this, this is this girl is impressive. But is there like a filtering too much before we get to that stage where you kind of want to steer clear of or any tips on that type of thing when you’re filtering candidates?

Ryan Englin: Yeah. So for the home service contractors listening, they’re like, Josh, I hate you right now because I don’t get 20 applications.

Ryan Englin: Then I’ll get 100 applications in 30 minutes. I think they’re they’re they’re mad right now. So I would say when you’re getting that kind of application volume, I don’t believe there’s any too much filtering you can do as long as people are still going passing the filter test. Right now, let’s say that you put a filter in, all of a sudden it’s crickets and no one’s passing the test. Well, now, you probably went too far.

Josh: I almost I almost decided because there was a couple of candidates that I really did want to talk to, but they didn’t do the last step. And I’m like, I wanted to like, do it anyways, but I’m like, well, if they’re not if they’re not following the this process now, what is going to happen later? [00:38:00]

Tersh: So what about this? So playing devil’s advocate, what happens if that step was

missed in like maybe you didn’t communicate it as well as you thought you had and so you like you went back and said, hey, by the way, I really love your application, but we forgot about this step here. Would you mind sending it to me? And then they sent it to you and they blow you away? Yeah. Basically, that’s like when when a technician doesn’t show up like brant ass, like they don’t show up. One of the things that that Mike Agugliaro taught me was that usually I used to write them off. I was like, all right, you didn’t show up. You’re dead to me. Like, I’m done with you. Here’s like one of the things that he said was, what happens if he was coming to the interview and he got into a car wreck?

Ryan Englin: Yeah.

Tersh: Wouldn’t you feel terrible about that?

Speaker5: I was like, Dang, it. Might like, what made you go? Why are you going to say that? Yeah, that too. We talked about that, too. So.

Ryan Englin: So if you would give a guy a second chance on the job site. [00:39:00] You got to give these applicants a second chance.

Speaker5: Sure.

Tersh: That’s true.

Ryan Englin: The guy gave me second chance. And I would say, Josh, to your question. Those people that you want to remember looking for work is stressful. They got employers beating down their door, making them offers or ghosting them, you know, like they’re dealing with all this stress and everything. So if there’s a couple of people, you’re like, I really like this one. Hang them.

Ryan Englin: If you get crickets, then move on. Yeah, but don’t hurt your company or your team because your process is so rigid that you don’t want to go out and pursue

these people that aren’t pursuing you.

Tersh: That’s a great point.

JOSH: So have a process, but be flexible.

Ryan Englin: Yeah, absolutely.

Tersh: So basically what I’m hearing is have a process, but don’t follow it.

Ryan Englin: No.

Speaker5: Just what you heard the word.

Ryan Englin: Flexibility into your process. I can imagine if you fired a tech for not collecting payment that one time. [00:40:00]

Ryan Englin: You have a process, but it’s flexible.

Tersh: Yeah, 100%. I agree, Ryan. You also have a podcast. Can you share about that?

Ryan Englin: Yeah. So it’s called the Blue Collar Culture Podcast. And the whole purpose is to get people excited about their business again. Because I meet so many owners that are in the trades that are just like, I’m fed up. Like, this is way too hard. And so we bring a lot of subject matter experts in. We’re doing a lot on hiring right now. So we’re bringing in owners of applicant tracking systems and behavioral assessments, and we’re bringing people in that can talk about these things. It can help you with recruiting. But we also bring on some other experts, marketing expert, systems experts, those kinds of things. But the whole point of our podcast is by the end you’ve got two action items that you can go apply in your business by the end of the week and get incredible results.

Tersh: Yeah. And I had the honor of coming on and, and being interviewed by you. I didn’t get drilled [00:41:00] as hard as you’re drilling me. I mean, we’re drilling you, but that’s what happens whenever you come on our show after I came on yours. So. Got it. What was it? Do you remember the takeaways from our conversation? Well.

Ryan Englin: We talked a lot about was going paperless, having remote workforce, being able to reduce all that overhead and being able to build a culture with people that are remote, which is.

Speaker5: Tough.

Ryan Englin: Really foreign to the trades.

Speaker5: It’s hard.

Ryan Englin: But here’s the irony in that whole thing. We work with a lot of construction contractors, a lot of subcontractors. People don’t want to admit this. But when COVID hit, guess who wasn’t impacted by all of that? We got to work remotely now. The industry that’s been working remote for 50 to 8000 years. Construction has been remote workforce since its inception.

Josh: Don’t think about it that way because we think we have the shop, the warehouse, all that kind of stuff. Literally, it’s been a mobile workforce [00:42:00] and remote for a long time.

Tersh: 100%.

Josh So where can where can people learn more about your system and work with you if they want to discuss the practice?

Tersh: They want to get this applicant tracking system set up.

Ryan Englin: Yeah. I mean, they can contact us through our website. I can connect them with Applicant Pro, get that all set up, help them with that. The core matters, it’s been running in the ticker, the whole show, and I’m sure it’ll be in the show notes for people listening. But the core matters. And for anybody that wants to, we actually have a free masterclass that we host. There’s a banner right at the top of the site. They can click, get registered, learn all about our systems and processes. And we actually teach them two of our tools that we do in our program. So they’re going to walk away with those two action items, things that they can go implement right away at the end of the master class.

Tersh: Well, that’s awesome, man. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing with us. This is like Brant. It’s [00:43:00] everybody that has commented here. It’s very frustrating at times for us, especially if we don’t know why we’re not having success with it. It’s when you have a KPI or a metric that you’re like, okay, I’m failing here or I’m not doing great here, but you can actually see why you’re not doing great and you can fix it. That’s one thing. But then to come in with something like this and it’s like, I don’t know why, but it just is not working. It’s super frustrating.

Ryan Englin: Let me leave you with this. If you want to attract good people. You must become attractive to good people.

Tersh: Well, that’s why I get so many good people.

Ryan Englin: You’ve got to have an employer, brand and employer presence that is attractive to the people you want to.

Speaker5: Attract.

Joshh: That’s a great point, too, and I think that’s a valuable takeaway. Now, man, this was this was great. There’s some things in here I’m definitely taking away [00:44:00] just for myself. So hopefully anyone listening gets the same takeaways or more, because I think this was a great a great topic and a very timely topic because we’re kind of right

before summer. So everyone’s looking for techs and stuff like that now. Yeah. So thanks for coming on the show, Matt. This is great.

Announcer: Thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery Podcast. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Leave a rating and share it with other owners as well. Visit Service Business Mastery Podcast to learn more.