Text us your comments or topic ideas for future shows. We share what’s next tomorrow. The KeyHire Small Business Podcast is evolving. We’ve been building something designed to bring you broader conversations, practical ideas, and more resources to help you grow. Look for our announcement tomorrow. In a soft market you get to ask a candidate why they want to work for you. At 4.1% unemployment, they get to ask you the same question. In this episode of The KeyHire Small Business Podcast, Corey Harlock breaks down the August jobs report and explains what three straight months of positive job growth really mean for small business owners who need to hire. The headlines sound encouraging. The economy added 162,000 jobs, unemployment held steady at 4.1 percent for the second month in a row, and the labor force grew by more than 600,000 people. But as Corey explains, a stronger jobs report does not automatically make hiring easier. Some industries are adding jobs while others are shedding them, and the people leaving information and financial services are not necessarily the candidates a manufacturing, construction, or food service business is trying to hire. Understanding where the jobs are actually coming from matters more than the top-line number. Corey walks through what different unemployment rates signal for hiring, from an extremely tight market below 3.5 percent to a soft market above 6.5 percent where applicants outnumber jobs. At 4.1 percent, small business owners are sitting in a tight, nearly full employment market. The key takeaway is one every owner needs to remember: strong candidates have options and are usually already employed. If you are excited about a candidate, at least one other company is too. In this market, you are competing, and the question is not why the candidate wants to work for you, it is why you would want to work for them. That reality leads into the heart of the episode: hiring is a discipline, not something you squeeze in when you have a gap in your calendar. Corey lays out the three things small business owners struggle with most, time, process, and priority, and shows how solving for all three creates a hiring process and candidate experience that lands transformational talent. He shares the statistics that prove candidate experience is your number one recruiting tool, including how many excited candidates walk away after a slow, informal, or disorganized hiring process. From there, Corey delivers a practical blueprint. He explains why one person should own the process and screen every candidate with a consistent scorecard, why generating candidates is the easy part and not worth a 30 percent recruiter fee, and why the hiring manager should conduct the first interview instead of sitting at the end. He covers how to run an efficient on-site interview with your best people asking different questions, why the best candidates are off the market within two weeks, and why the first and best offer usually wins when paired with a great experience. This episode is especially valuable for small business owners hiring in a tight labor market, competing for employed candidates, or trying to build a repeatable hiring process that actually works. Corey also offers a free small business hiring playbook, the four C’s of hiring, available by text through the show notes. If you want to read the jobs report correctly, avoid costly hiring mistakes, and build a process that helps you win great people, this episode is a must-listen. As Corey says, stop grinding, start growing. KEY TAKEAWAYS The jobs report is encouraging and the hiring market is still tight: 162,000 jobs added, unemployment unchanged at 4.1% for two months running, a labor force up 683,000, and July revised from a loss of 31,000 to a gain of 21,000. Three months of growth in a row means the pendulum is not swinging back toward employers any time soon. Layoffs in one industry do not help you hire in another: information lost 23,000 and financial activities lost 11,000, while the growth landed in food service, local government education, construction, manufacturing, and healthcare. The people leaving a finance job are not your manufacturing candidates. You are competing with the industries that are adding, not benefiting from the ones that are cutting. Know what your unemployment rate actually means: below 3.5% is peak warm body syndrome and wage wars, 3.5% to 4.5% is tight and nearly full employment, 4.5% to 5.5% is balanced with real applicant flow, 5.5% to 6.5% is softening and you can start getting picky, and above 6.5% the problem becomes sorting volume. At 4.1% we are squarely in the band where strong candidates have options and are already employed. If you are excited about a candidate, so is someone else: in this market the question is not why do you want to work for us, it is why would I want to work for you. You are in sales mode, and the interview is as much your pitch as theirs. Hiring is a discipline, not a task you fit into a gap: if you have ever called someone to push an interview because something came up, that tells you where hiring really ranks. Solve for three things and the rest follows: time, a process, and someone who owns it. Speed is the whole game at the top of the funnel: generating candidates is the easy part now, with job boards and AI sourcing tools running around $49 a month rather than the 30% a recruiter charges to hand you a database you already have. What separates you is reaching out immediately, and by text rather than a call that puts them on the spot at work. Wait 48 hours and someone else has them. One person pre screens every candidate for every role: same person, same questions, same order, 15 minutes against a scorecard with an 80% threshold. It is not a culture conversation or a resume walkthrough, it is do you have what we need. Over time that person learns what good looks like in your company and builds a real baseline. Put the hiring manager first, not last: if your team spends three hours per candidate and the decision maker cuts half of them at the end, that is fifteen wasted hours for every ten candidates. Worse, when the decision maker sits at the end, the team starts throwing volume at the wall. When they go first, the message becomes I like this person, I think we could hire them, and everyone downstream interviews differently. Design the on site round like a progression, not a repeat: only your best people, two or three of them, never substituted in or out, each assigned a specific topic. A peer opening with can you walk me through your resume, after the pre screen and the hiring manager already covered it, tells the candidate nobody is paying attention. Move on the clock the candidate is on: ten days from first interview to offer, an offer within 24 to 48 hours of the debrief, and a check in from your process owner if it slips even a day. The best candidates are off the market in two weeks start to finish, so pushing someone a week is effectively deciding not to hire them. First and best offer wins, but experience breaks the tie: a candidate who was treated well will take less money to go somewhere that made them feel like a priority. The candidate experience is the number one recruiting tool a small business has. Volume is not skill: Corey compares it to hitting 10,000 balls at the driving range and still being a bad golfer. If you hired ten people last year and two are still there, that is not being good at hiring. Doubling your hit rate means hiring five people instead of ten, and spending the difference on running the business instead of refilling seats. LINKS & RESOURCES Get the KeyHire small business hiring playbook, built on the four C's of hiring: text the show using the link in the show notes and ask Corey to send it over, free and no strings Connect with Corey Harlock on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyharlock/ Learn more about KeyHire Solutions: https://www.keyhire.solutions Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-keyhire-small-business-podcast/id1643962763 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1FT9oqXSek3jMfiKrZPLQs EPISODE CHAPTERS 0:00 – Introduction: three months of job growth and what it means for your hiring 1:45 – Big news coming for the podcast, and where to watch for it 2:49 – Looking back at Barry Moline on influence and Bill Hammett on benefits 4:52 – The August jobs report: 162,000 jobs, 4.1% unemployment, a labor force up 683,000 6:16 – Where the jobs are: food service, education, construction, manufacturing, healthcare 7:00 – Where the losses are, and why they do not help you hire 7:42 – What each unemployment band actually means for an employer 9:52 – Where 4.1% puts you: strong candidates have options and already have jobs 10:24 – If you are excited about a candidate, so is someone else 12:53 – The three things to solve for: time, process, and priority 16:49 – Generating candidates is the easy part, and why not to pay 30% for it 19:00 – Why the first outreach should be a text, not a call 19:44 – One person pre screens everyone: the scorecard and the 80% threshold
