#242 Becoming the Leader People Won't Leave: A Conversation with Ryan Englin

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me from Tennessee, ryan, england. Ryan, the way I love to do it, I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves, because I believe no one can introduce someone better than themselves. So this stage. 

0:00:14 - Ryan
Is yours Fair enough? Fair enough? Well, I am the founder CEO of Core Matters and we are a training and coaching company that partners with growing businesses, those that want to scale, and help them implement our process so that they can attract, hire and retain better frontline employees. It's something I'm super passionate about, which we'll dig into, I'm sure, nice. 

0:00:38 - Mehmet
Actually, ryan, this topic is always hot topic right Recruitment and hiring and retaining people. So, first of all, if you can tell me what attracted you, to be honestly speaking, because some people they say it's like a, let's say, kind of a headache, oh yeah, yeah, I get it. 

0:01:03 - Ryan
Look, I mean I'm not going to give you the whole long version of the story, but I grew up in a blue collar entrepreneurial family. My dad was an owner operator and I watched him work crazy hours slaving away at the business just like a provide for the family, and really a lot of his personal goals were never achieved because he was never able to get out of the day to day. And I think a lot of that happened because, as I grew up I got to see this he wasn't able to attract and hire a really well functioning team. All the way up until the time where he got to started exiting the business, he still struggled to get people and so I went down in college. I went down this HR route. I really wanted to be in human resources. I love the people side of business and once I got out of college I did not go in that, I went into sales, I went into banking and I did. I got to see how corporate does recruiting. I got to see how corporate hires people and retains them and fires them and reshuffles them and does all of the madness that they do. And so when I started my own business, my goal was really to help entrepreneurs and growing businesses scale their business, originally through marketing and creating great connections with the people that they serve. 

And about four years into it, I had a bunch of clients come to me and say, hey, I can't take leads anymore, I'm stuck, I don't have enough people to do the work and so, unless we can fix that problem, I don't need leads. So I scrambled and put together my years of experience in recruiting and hiring and systems and processes and tech. And I had one client. I called him back a couple of weeks after this whole thing started and I said how's it going? They go. We just hired four people. We got two more texts on the way, turned the leads back on. 

I was like, wow, that was a lot of fun. I actually helped them hire and really overcome a challenge that they struggled in their business. So as I started calling other clients, they all had the same problem. They all struggled with the same thing, which is being able to attract and hire really good people. And so over the next decade I put together a process and a system and I said here's how we do this not just hiring them, but how do you keep them. And that's what we do today is we just help our clients install that process and get it up. I'm not going to use it. I'm going to teach people how to fish for good employees, nice. 

0:03:21 - Mehmet
Nice. Now let's try to dissect the problem. So it's something hard, everyone knows about it. But let's start. What are, let's say, if you say, the top two or three challenges, usually the challenges they face when they want to attract talents or they want to hire? Let's say yeah. 

0:03:52 - Ryan
So you've probably heard this phrase before, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners have. But people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses. We've heard that before. They leave managers, they leave people, they leave teams, they leave toxic cultures. So if we know this to be true and everybody I've ever asked this question to says, yeah, that's true, they leave bad bosses If we know that to be true, then we know the reason that they're looking for work. 

It's not that they want to make more money. It's not that they want a different job, it's that they want a different boss. That's why they're looking for work. They want a different boss. If you go out and you recruit somebody and they're open to talking to the recruiter, it's because they want a different boss. Sure, there's the outliers that, hey, there's an opportunity for a promotion or I can make more money over here. Hey, my, my, I'm not getting. I got overturned for that promotion. 

But most of those things, when you boil them down, are all about finding a different place to work. They want a different boss to work for. And so what happens is I think most companies forget this fact, they forget what drives the people to look for work and they focus on pay and benefits and all these things that nobody really cares about. But if you really want to attract good people, focus on the fact that they want a new boss. Focus on promoting who you are as a leader, what your organization is like from a culture perspective, focus on the things that they want in a new job, and that's going to help you attract better people. 

0:05:21 - Mehmet
Yeah, that phrase is very famous, of course, but, yeah, like you know, I never saw someone who left the company, because you know if they are happy they would do it, they would stay right, so they would not change. Yeah, like the people who usually, you know they were running only after money. I've seen them crashing very badly, yeah. So so now let me ask you because, as I was mentioning to you before we start, like you know, we focus on tech companies and even like small businesses. So let me put it in this way, because do you think that there is a scarce of, you know, proper talents that these startups and small businesses that can hire, or is it just a image? 

0:06:19 - Ryan
I think it's easier for companies to play the victim and say, oh, there's no good people out there, than it is to really look inward and say maybe I'm the problem. Here are industries that have labor shortages. We do a lot of work in the blue collar space, so think construction and the trades and plumbers and electricians and all of that. And, like I was telling you, I have 20 years I spent in IT before I started doing this. I'm really I love the tech space, but I think that the fact that they can't find good people or they can't find anybody here's a brutal truth that I think a lot of people listening need to understand right now. It's not that there aren't any good people out there. What it is is that the good people they probably don't want to come work for you. So when we talk about attracting people, if you're not attracting good people, consider that you might not be attractive to good people. And I think that's the big shift that a lot of companies need to make is they need to make it less about the pay and the benefits and the what's the employee going to do for me as the employer, and it needs to be more on what am I going to do for you, and not just always your career, but personally. 

The number one reason people look for new work right now, or the number one thing that attracts them to a new job, is personal training and development. People want to become better people. They don't want to just become a better coder or a better support desk manager or help desk manager. They don't want to become better at that. They want to become better people. So how can you train and invest in them? And where I think most companies mess up is they promote oh, we're going to do all this training and all this stuff and you're going to have all these great ways to learn, and then, when the rubber hits the road, all of a sudden, it's well, I'm only going to take care of that training because that benefits me as the employer. I'm not interested in what you are interested in what is going to benefit me, and that's where we end up running into problems. 

0:08:29 - Mehmet
Yeah, but let's also see it from the other side. Do you think also sometimes that the job seekers themselves they have something on their side also as well? Maybe they are not doing enough work to be in the front of these recruiters, that they are trying to find the right skills and the right talents? 

0:08:54 - Ryan
Oh sure, yeah, I think that it's a dance. It's an employee-employer relationship for a reason. I think that there is a lot that job seekers can do to really better promote themselves, but it all comes down to branding, like. At the end of the day, it's all about branding, and if a job seeker has a bunch of pictures on their social media showing them doing keg stands and partying all weekend or making fun of their boss or those kinds of things like that's going to hurt their prospects. But I think what happened was the internet. The proliferation of social media and the internet has really made the conversation change, in that people are able to now have a conversation without fear of immediate consequence, because the conversations happen so fast. 

And I think with COVID, what really happened there is it exposed the fact that employers have been treating employees pretty poorly for a long time, and we saw it in some certain industries where the employees were just treated like garbage during COVID, and the employers did very little to back them up. Now, I don't want to say it was everyone, but a lot of them. It was real poor. And so with the gig economy, with technology, with the things that are out there right now, employees have options. They don't need a nine to five, they don't need to work 40 hours, they don't have to drive two hours and rush hour traffic to come to your office. They have a home and as employers, we need to understand that we have to be better than those options and if we don't take the time to do that, it's going to be a real challenge to attract the right people. 

0:10:31 - Mehmet
That's a good point, ryan. The options are more available for the job seekers or the employees, let's say. But we still see, unfortunately, I would say, some employers or some companies that they insist, for example, no, I want you to be in the office, I don't accept hybrid or full, remote or these kinds of things, and I think this is why we start to hear about the people. They want to leave actually the corporate world and start to be on themselves and so on. But still, I believe there still should be that kind of companies, businesses, because the world cannot run only on individual contributors, if I would say. But one thing I saw when I was preparing the episode and this term attracted me and I wanted to understand from you what is it, and then I will tell you because you put it as a challenge. So what is applicants ghosting? What is that term, ryan? 

0:11:39 - Ryan
So ghosting. It's a term that actually came out of the dating world, but it's basically when someone ceases all communication with you without a reason. So in the employer world, what happens is, let's say that someone applies for a job with me and I reach out to them and I was like, oh my gosh, I love your resume, this sounds great, can we schedule an interview for two o'clock tomorrow? And they're like, yeah, I'm so excited, I'll be there Two o'clock tomorrow. Rolls around and they don't show, they don't show up. And then I text them or I email them or I phone call them and I can't get ahold of them and they don't return my messages. And then a week goes by and I'm still chasing them like I was really excited, I thought you were really excited, and then nothing. 

And we are seeing this employers are seeing this more and more than ever before and where they just stop all communication for no reason whatsoever. And in our research and in the work we do, we found that there are a few different reasons why that happens, but the biggest reason it happens is that employers don't give the job seeker something to lose by not showing up. They have no skin in the game the job seeker doesn't care about you as the recruiter because you didn't give them a reason to care about you as the recruiter or as the entrepreneur. They didn't. You didn't give them a reason. 

See if you could personally connect with someone. You don't ghost your friends. You don't ghost the people you care about when you have no personal connection. Remember, people are looking for a new boss, not just a new job. When they don't connect with the person they're talking to or scheduling the interview with, they've got nothing to lose if they just stop communicating. In fact, for a lot of people it's easier because they know how desperate employers are. You're going to pull out all the big guns and do what you can to twist their arm to get them in there, and they just don't want to deal with that. 

0:13:28 - Mehmet
Cool, let me be a little bit kind of the devil advocate here, but people complain sometimes that it happens from the other side as well. So basically someone maybe he does the initial call and then he get to set up a call with the hiring manager and then things stops and disappear. Oh, don't get me wrong. 

0:13:52 - Ryan
Don't get me wrong, employers cause this. I don't blame the job seekers one bit. Employers have trained an entire generation of workers to believe that we don't care about them. We've trained them. Two thirds of people that apply for a job will never hear back from the company. Well, what happens are number four. That's 되 motive. We'll never hear back. Employers have been ghosting job seekers for decades and now they're whining because job seekers like wait a minute, we can do this too. And so yeah, don't get me wrong, I don't blame the job seekers one bit. We conditioned them that way. We trained them, we showed them hey, we don't care enough to tell you we're not offering you the job, so why should you care enough to say you don't want the job anymore? So yeah, you don't have to get with me on that one. The employer screwed that one up. 

0:14:41 - Mehmet
No, it's either way. Like I'm kind of I like to be balanced and to be fair with both parties. Because, by the way, I heard also stories, ryan, to your point, where a company, really seriously, they look after a guy, they even do some research about him or her and they said, yeah, like this is a good talent for us, and then they are OK, they are ignorant, yeah, I will do it, yeah, I will join the call, but they don't, and yeah, so sometimes I blame the employers, but it's not like I don't blame also sometimes the applicants, because some of them they are just, and there's this kind of people who just apply for jobs for the sake of applying for jobs. Like I think, do you call them? I don't know, did I turn for that also, ryan? 

0:15:38 - Ryan
I don't know that there's any specific term, but I know a lot of people that are applying. The job boards made it really easy for job seekers. Most people have a love-hate relationship with the job boards, like Indeed, for example. You have to be there, you have to be a part of their ecosystem, because that's where all the job seekers are. But, at the end of the day, indeed exists to help people find better jobs. Indeed does not exist to help employers fill jobs. It's in their vision, their mission statement. They exist to help people find better jobs, and so everything Indeed has done is around the job seeker and their perspective, and so they made it super easy to apply for 20 jobs in a couple of minutes by just checking boxes. This was the idea. 

So, they made it really easy and as employers, we get the brunt of that and we have to deal with that because now we have to go through all of this. We have to go through all of these people that have applied that really had no right applying Correct, but yeah. But I think it's a two-way street. They're both equally responsible for it. Our focus has been if we can help the employers do this stuff better, job seekers will take notice and go wow, that's a different kind of company. I want to know more. 

0:16:57 - Mehmet
Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. Now, ryan, that's a little bit. So we talked about where to find people, we talked about the talent issues. So now let's say, ok, things are going on the right track, now we're going to go into the hiring process. So the hiring process is not, I think, always the best way it should. I want to hear your opinion because you've experienced in this domain. So, first, why sometimes the hiring process is broken. It's lengthy, how it can be fixed and optimized. 

0:17:39 - Ryan
Well, I don't have a problem with a long well, let me rephrase that I don't have a problem with spending a lot of time with someone before you hire them. I do have a problem with delaying the inevitable of making them an offer, telling them it's not a fit. But I think the biggest place where it broke and we really saw this in probably the last five years or so is employers became so desperate to just fill a position and recruiters are compensated or rewarded based on how many positions they fill, not the quality of people they fill with, because quality takes too long to figure out. It's just did we put a warm body in the seat, and so the shift has really been towards can we just fill the position as fast as possible, which means I'm not going to spend time getting to know them. I'm not going to spend time letting them get to know me. I'm not going to make sure that there's a culture, fit, we're actually going to like each other when we do this whole thing. I'm not going to spend the time. I just need to put a warm body in the seat, get those extra set of hands and get them moving, and there's been this shift towards that and I think that it hurts both sides, but that's been. 

The problem is, we don't slow down and realize why is it that people want to come work for you? It's not the paycheck. The paycheck has been used as a tool, almost weaponized as such, to get people to ignore the fact that you're a crummy employer, that you have crappy jobs. That's what we use the money for. It's like oh, you don't want these jobs. What if I pay you enough? Like at some point you'll be able to bribe them with enough dollars that they'll come work for you, instead of looking inward and saying how do I become the employer that people want to come work for? How to become that employer of choice? That needs to be the focus, and it's not through unlimited PTO and paid benefit plans and great 401K or stock options or any of that stuff. How do you get people to really want to come join your team and spend time with you? That needs to be the focus 100%. 

0:19:44 - Mehmet
I was reading a book the other day about building teams actually building startups by Tony Fadeldo, who's the guy behind the iPod, the iPhone and he dedicated a chapter regarding how to build teams and he was saying it's not about the perks and the things. It should be about getting people who are aligned to your mission and to your vision and let them feel that they are here working with you for a purpose over there. So this is what you said just reminded me of that part of the book. Now, anything technology Ryan can do to enhance the whole process, whether it's from finding the talent, let's say, matching the talents with the companies and if it can enhance also what we just discussed now the process, I mean the hiring process. 

0:20:47 - Ryan
One of my favorite tools and if you got anybody that's listening, that's larger company. They probably have this stuff. But I noticed a lot of small businesses don't even know these things exist. But it's called an applicant tracking system. And for those of you who don't know an applicant tracking system, it's like your CRM. It's like a customer relationship management tool where it tracks all the people that are in your pipeline, helps you communicate with them, automates follow-up schedules, reminders, those kinds of things. Except it does it on the applicant side, it does it on the hiring side, and one of the real neat things about this is you can post the job once in your applicant tracking system and it'll send it to all the job boards for you. You can run all of your job board ads through the applicant tracking system and then when the applications come in, they go into one system and you can assign them out to your team. You can bring people in from your team and say hey, can you take a look at this? If you've got a hiring manager that needs to take a look at another branch or in the field or something, you can just shoot them an email and say here's the applicant. And they have all the history, the notes, everything. Just like a CRM. You can also automate communication. You can set up your pipelines, workflows Like I geek out on applicant tracking systems for hours. It's a great tool but, just like any tool, it's only good if you know how to use it. 

I've had a lot of people tell me oh, we got this applicant tracking system thing and it sucks. And I was like, why does it suck? Well, nobody knows how to use it. Well, the problem isn't the tool, the problem is no one took the time to learn how to use it. That's the problem. And being that you're in the tech space, I mean I'm a techie and I love technology. I love new software, systems and tools and I've demoed probably close to a hundred applicant tracking systems by now, because they just take them and at the end of the day, they're all the same. Some do some things better than others, but every chance there's a new tool out there, new software, new application. I want to go check it out and but I can tell you I've bought a lot of systems in my time that I never, never got my return on or never got value out of, because I never took the time to really get to know how to use them. 

0:23:01 - Mehmet
Right, right, and, by the way, just because I'm thank you for bringing you know the part of automation and you know how you can integrate things with each other. So, because you know, we hear sometimes and we see this even on social media, linkedin, mainly because this is where recruiters and you know, job seekers they meet on social media. Yeah, like you know, we receive like hundreds thousands of applications per day. Okay, fine, I can understand this, but what I, you know, I argued some one day with someone. I said look like, if you have a safe, what if I can tell you, for example, I'm sure, like if you're using a tracking system, even an Excel sheet? I said it doesn't have to be a proper thing. 

I said you know that you can actually just, you know, have two cells applicant name and then follow up or don't follow up, and the moment you select don't follow up, you can send an email to that person you know and saying, hey, thank you for applying. You know the very famous email that comes when they will tell you that they will not be continuing the application with you. Because one thing, ryan, and you know, I love to hear thoughts about this, especially because you are in this space. A lot of people tell me look, we don't have problem if we apply to a job and then we receive you know an email or you know that. Okay, thank you very much for applying. Your profile is good. We're going to move to someone else. But what irritates them is what they never hear back. And they try to reach the hiring manager no response. 

0:24:46 - Ryan
So when they get ghosted. 

0:24:49 - Mehmet
Yes. Yeah but, but. But you know I need you to repeat again and sorry for for letting you repeat yourself, but because I want this to be, you know, taken into consideration by fellow entrepreneurs, because at some states they're going to grow their teams. You know they're going to grow their. You know, if they are even a business owner today and maybe they are in kind of an SME space, small medium enterprise or small medium business you know why they should care about these things. Yeah. 

0:25:22 - Ryan
You know the, especially when you get in the tech space. I mean, the reality is the industry is small, everybody knows everybody and if you start burning bridges because you don't get back to people, it's not going to be long before no one wants to come apply at your place because they did two years ago and you never got back to them and if you're not tracking that, you'll never know. But yes, you're absolutely right, people apply, they hear nothing. We actually encourage all of our, all of our clients, anybody that's in our program, to treat an incoming application like you would lead, like you would a customer lead. 

And I asked people at the time like how long will you let your sales team sit on a new lead? And someone will inevitably say an hour. And then the CEO will be like are you kidding me? Five seconds, right, then he gets one of those things. And I'm like so why would you let an applicant sit in your inbox for a week? Why would you never get back to them? You'd never do this with a customer. So what makes you think it's okay to do it with an applicant, when most people tell me right now it's easier to get customers than it is to get people to apply for your jobs Good ones to apply. 

So we encourage everybody, within 15 minutes of receiving the application that person gets a response, to let them know if they're moving forward or not. Moving forward doesn't have to be anything fancy For a lot of us, a lot of our clients. They'll automate that 15-minute follow-up where 15 minutes will go by and the system can actually look at the way they answered some questions. You can almost quiz them a little bit and the system will actually say hey, we really like what we see here. We'd love to schedule for you for an interview. Click this link to get on our calendar and the next couple of days, or however it works, or for a phone screen, or whatever. 

That is whatever that process looks like you can automate that. Then when you're going through the system and you're like, yeah, I don't like this one, don't like this one, don't like this one, and you reject them, the system will automatically send the rejection email for you. So you don't have to feel bad about doing it. All right, a lot of the systems will actually have it set up that when you reject someone, you can delay it. Do you want to delay it one day, three days, five days and everybody's like delay it five days. 

I'm like why You're going to reject them. Let them know now, rip the bandaid off, say, hey, we got your application, thank you, but we're going to free you up to go apply for other jobs. You don't have to sit around waiting. I've never understood why people are so hesitant to tell someone no, and probably because they don't like to hear no themselves, right. But you know what, After you do hear no, it is so freeing to know that you can move on, that you don't have to sit there and wait anymore. So why they choose not to do it? I think it's fear. You know there's some people that'll say, oh, my attorney says you can't do it and there's some legal compliance stuff. But you're never going to get in trouble by telling someone hey, you weren't a good fit. 

Right Now if you tell them they weren't a good fit and you give them some protected class reason, like you could get in trouble. You know, I didn't like the way you looked or something that's a problem, but yeah, you're not going to get in trouble by just saying, hey, we decided to move on and pursue other candidates who more closely fit the job description, which that, I think, is one of the big issues that a lot of people have is they don't really know what the person's supposed to do. They're like oh, we need someone to do this, like great, what's that mean? They're like oh, they're going to do X, y and Z Great. How are we going to know if they're doing a good job? 

Oh, you know, people are like I don't know if they're going to do a good job. We don't know how we're going to grade them or how we're going to score them. We just need someone to sit in the seat. We'll figure it out later. And I think that's where a big problem comes in is that when we don't know exactly what that person's going to do, how we're going to grade their success or measure their results, when we don't know those things, it's really hard for us to make a decision up front if that person's going to be a good fit or not. 

0:29:17 - Mehmet
Right, like shifting a little bit right. So now let's talk about after-hide. So you mentioned about how to keep the person right and you know doing trainings, but you know you talk because you know when, again, I was preparing. So you talk about, you know, the Rockstar employee. So how to identify who is the Rockstar employee and how to find them. 

0:29:44 - Ryan
Yeah, so you know this came out of Radical Candor. It's a book that talks about some of these processes, and in the book the author mentions that there's a difference between a Rockstar and a Superstar. And I think a lot of people they want to hire a Rockstar Like that's what they really want, but they're so overwhelmingly impressed by the Superstar that that's who they make the job offer to, and then they're mad a month later because it's not working out. And so the Rockstars they're the rocks of your team. These are the people that are amazing at what they do, but that's all they want to do. They don't want to move up, they don't want the promotion, they don't want to manage a team, they just want to do the work you hire them to do. Superstars, on the other hand, they're the people that they want to move up fast. If they're in a position for longer than six months, you're either moving them up in your organization or they're going to go find another organization to work for. And so what happens is these Superstars bounce around a lot, and when we're looking for a Superstar, we're frustrated by them because they had six jobs in the last two years. We're like we don't want that Because they're just going to leave us. Well, the reason they left you is because they're left the other person is because they weren't getting what they wanted. So can you give them Rockstars? On the other hand, they don't interview very well and when we see a Rockstar and we actually hire them, we want them to come out of their shell a little bit more. We want them to take on more things like hey, are you a team player? If you're a team player, then you'll help us do this. Well, that's not a good thing to ask Rockstars, because Rockstars want to be really good at what they do. So your Rockstars. 

The easiest way to identify them is when you bring on someone new in a role. Who's the person that you introduce them to first and say this person here will answer all your questions. They'll be able to help you with any issues that you have. They know the ins and outs of the role. They can do this. They know who to contact. Who is that person that you introduce the new person to? Because the person that you're introducing them to, that's the person that you're Rockstar. 

Those Rockstars have all this tribal knowledge. They know all the ins and outs of your business. You'd be lost without them, and you know it. But because Rockstars don't like to rock the boat, they don't like change, they want to stay doing the thing They've been with you for six, seven years. And so you become complacent and you think, well, they haven't left in six years, they're not going to go anytime soon. And we forget to invest in them and we forget to take care of them. And then all of a sudden, one day the Rockstar has had enough and wants to go somewhere else and you feel lost without them. 

So the easiest way to identify them is who do you introduce the new person to? That's usually your Rockstar, and then you just need to pour into them and find out what they want to grow. In A lot of times Rockstars want to grow personally more than they want to grow professionally, because professionally they're solid, they're top 10%. There's not a lot of place for them. Maybe there's a certification, maybe there's an exciting project they can work on or something like that, but it's not like you're going to get them to climb the corporate ladder, it's not like you're going to promote them and get them to run teams. And so a lot of them want personal development, and that's one way you can really retain them is by helping them grow personally. 

0:33:01 - Mehmet
Yeah, now, ryan, I know you have a book, so can you tell me what is it about and what drove you to actually to write this book? 

0:33:16 - Ryan
Yeah, well, I've got two books. I have a brand new one that is coming out right around the time. This show is going to go live, which is awesome. The first book I wrote is called how to Hire the One you Won't Want to Fire, and it's a real short read. It takes about 45 minutes to get through. And it's just a primer on the interview process, because what I found was that the biggest mistake that most employers make is they don't do the interview well. 

There's so many opportunities to really set someone up for success in the interview and find the right employee. So I wrote that primer to do that, and that was back in the early days of COVID, so I mean that book's been out for a few years now, but my brand new book is called Hire Better People Faster, and inside of that book we dig deep into our entire Corfit hiring system, which is our process for how you attract, hire and retain rockstar employees Everything from how you set your culture to where you go find them, to setting up automation through ATSs and other tools, to the interview process, onboarding them, engaging them and finally, how do you know all this stuff's working Like? What are you doing to assess it? How are you reporting the data? And I know a lot of people in the tech space love their data. We are heavily data-driven over here at Core Matters and our process supports a lot of data-driven decision-making. 

0:34:42 - Mehmet
Cool. Now if you can run I mean Ryan with you know basically what is the main offering. So like what exactly? You help your customers. So I know that you have an apprenticeship. You know model right, so can you tell us a little bit about? 

0:35:01 - Ryan
that Absolutely. So my goal always is to teach someone to fish. Always, I believe that as the employer or as the department head, you were going to make better hiring decisions being in it than a third party is ever going to. It's why most staffing agencies and recruiters and that kind of stuff don't always work out very well. Because you're in it, you're the one that can sell it, you're the one that you're building the relationship with. So I would rather teach you do this stuff than to go do it for you. 

Now, that said, most people call us and they're short staffed, right Like they need people, so they don't have enough people to take off some of the workloads that they can spend a lot of time doing it. So what we do with our clients is, when we partner with them, we actually take our tools. We interview them, we take our tools, we modify them, we help them implement them inside their business and then, once they're implemented, once they're up and running and they're getting results, then we start teaching their team how to use it, how to make adjustments, how to tweak it, how to identify when something's not working, because I mean, you saw this with COVID and you see this with economic change and political change. You see this all the time. The job market changes so fast, just like you were talking earlier. Like you're in the tech space, you don't have time to produce stuff weeks or months out because things change so fast. 

It's true, in the people space there's a new gig, a gig worker that comes in that says, hey, you can work part-time when you want, where you want, and make this kind of money All of a sudden shows up in a certain industry and that changes things. So we wanna make sure that people know how to modify, make adjustments, evaluate, make sure this stuff's working. And then, of course, there's a ton of coaching that goes into this being able to have a conversation with a job seeker when you're scattered and you've got a hundred fires burning, to take the time away and sit down and have a really good conversation with them during the interview. Sometimes that takes some coaching, it takes some training, and so we do that as well when we partner with them. So really take the load off so that they can get the system implemented and then just be there alongside them coaching their team, helping their team, supporting their team, making sure they're getting the results they want. 

0:37:16 - Mehmet
That's great, and I think a lot of businesses will benefit from that. Before I ask you where people can find you, I remembered something, and this is not a tricky question Is there anything that we have missed we should have discussed? Is there any question you wish that I should ask you? 

0:37:43 - Ryan
Yeah, I think the one thing that would be really helpful to anybody listening right now if they're struggling to hire people is to consider that the majority and in the tech space it's probably close to 100%, but the majority people, 90 plus percent of people are gonna Google you before they apply for your job. So go Google yourself with the ignorance of someone who knows nothing about you, with the ignorance of a new job seeker. Google yourself and see what they see. Do they like? Do you like what you see? Would you want to come work for you? And so employer branding is a real critical piece to this, because if you don't have the mechanism to attract people, all the rest stuff's not gonna matter. If the right people aren't applying, the interviewing, the onboarding, the retention, none of that matters. You gotta fix that first. I think that employer brand is so important. 

We see a lot of people that have really bad Glassdoor reviews because, honestly, who's gonna review you on the employee side? It's gonna be the ones that are mad at you, the good ones. You have to ask them for a review that don't think about it Right. So we run into a lot of people who have really bad Glassdoor reviews and the reality is, if you type in your company name, jobs, Google is gonna look at Glassdoor and go oh look, they're on Glassdoor, let's see what their reviews look like. Same with Indeed or any of the other job boards. So Google yourself with the ignorance of a job seeker and see what they see and ask yourself what I wanna work here and, if not, fix it. 

0:39:19 - Mehmet
Right, 100%. This is very good advice, I would say, and thank you for sharing this, ryan, where we can find more about you and your offerings, ryan. 

0:39:32 - Ryan
Well, I am available on LinkedIn, very active there, and so anybody can look me up on LinkedIn. But my website is corematterscom. You can find out all about our programs. You can find out I've got a masterclass that you can take a ton of free resources, downloads, everything else. I also am gonna have information there about my new book. Anybody that purchases my book can log in and download 12 free tools the tools that we actually use inside of our coaching and training program that will complement the book. Pdf downloads you can get that information as well. And then, finally, for listeners of your show and I hope you can put this in the show notes but if you go to corematterscom forward, slash CTO-show, I've got a free gift for your listeners. 

Oh thank you very much, ryan. Yeah, yeah, not only are they gonna get the first two chapters of my book, not only are they gonna get access to an abridged version of our masterclass a 10 minute deep dive but we also have what we call the recruiting roadblocks scorecard, and what that is is it's a survey. It's a 14 question survey. They can take, look at all seven components of our system and help them identify where they need to start, and so they can go in there. They can answer these 14 questions takes about two minutes and they get a customized report that says here's where you need to start on solving this recruiting problem. 

0:40:57 - Mehmet
Thank you very much, ryan, for this generous gift for my audience. Guys, you will see the links that Ryan mentioned in the show notes, of course. So whether you are listening to this on any of your favorite podcasting platforms or if you're watching this on YouTube, so in both cases the links will be there. If you want to connect also with Ryan so the website is linked in link profile as well will be there. Ryan, really I enjoyed and I love these. I had the other day Marquis and we said I love. It is a tech show, an entrepreneurship show and it's like the hustling, but I love these human conversations because recruitment and your domain is all about human interaction and human conversation. So this is why I love to discuss this on the show and I was very honored to have you today here with me. Ryan, thank you very much for all your insights and sharing your experience with us and, as usual, this is how I end my show. This is for the audience. Guys, like please keep the comments coming, please keep the feedback coming If you want to. 

You know, suggest something, you want to suggest a topic? I know, like the other day someone sent me about. You know, can we have other guests, for example, for the start, a pitch deck thing. So I'm trying to do that also as well. We're trying to diversify as much as possible so we're not like monotone. And also, if you are yourself, you know, interested to be on the show, you have an idea, you have a topic which is you think it's should. Everyone knows about it. Don't hesitate, reach out to me. I'm active also on LinkedIn or, you know, you can send me an email. You can see the details on CTO show website, which is MehmetCTOshow and yeah, thank you for tuning in. 

We'll meet again very soon. Thank you, bye-bye. 

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