Welcome back to the Hirewell Hot Corner where sports and recruitment meet. I am your host, Dan Spittel, joined as always by my Ironman co-host, Louie Morici. Louie, great to see you again. We have a guest today. Please welcome in Samantha Heger, from Nixco Plumbing. One of our Hirewell clients, and also an avid sports fan.
Sam, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you guys for having me. I’m excited. Absolutely. Sam, you want to give a quick rundown of your credentials for us and we’ll jump in? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So currently I am the marketing and operations manager here at Nixco Plumbing, who Dan just recently helped us hire a customer service representative or administrative assistant.
So we’re super excited to have her on board. But for myself, I’ve been here since 19. I started in marketing and I’ve kind of grown into it. I actually have a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in sports leadership and management. So somewhat irrelevant to what I’m doing now, but very relevant to what we’re talking about today.
Love that. Love that. Well, I know we brought you on the show, talk about the Women’s World Cup. You’re a big US women’s national team fan and women’s soccer fan, so hoping that you can kind of let us know a little bit about the field. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, I’m super excited to talk about that. They start playing Friday, or the women’s team does, at nine, so I’m already nervous about that.
But, yeah, there’s a lot of new people on the team this year and some returning veterans, so we’ll see how they do. How are our chances looking this year? Who’s off the team and who’s on the team, like any, what are the big names that maybe didn’t make the cut or injured or something like that?
Yeah, so, biggest injury I think would be to your back line, which would be Becky Sauerbrunn, who’s out. She’s been like your veteran defense holding down that middle. So she’s been replaced by some newbies. And then you’ve got your standards, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe. You got new ones would be Trinity Rodman, Alyssa Thompson, who’s only 18. Sophia Smith, who’s like your top scorer in the NWSL right now.
So I think our chances look pretty good, but we’ll see how they do. I think there’s a lot of depth in the roster too, which is always good. So see how they go. Okay. And shameless plug for the local Cincinnati talent, you were telling me, of course we have, Rose Lavelle, and then you said there’s another this year, right?
Yeah, there’s a backup goalkeeper. So it’s Aubrey Kingsbury, so she’s from, both went to high schools, local high schools in the Cincinnati area. So super excited to see how they do. Excellent. And, Nixco a newer client of Hirewell here in the Cincinnati area, leading in their industry, the plumbing industry.
So we’re very excited to be able to have a great relationship and yeah, get a little Hirewell Hot Corner action out of it as well. Sam, how does the field look, outside of the US this year? Yeah, I think like looking back at other World Cup years, the competition is a lot tougher this year.
I think the popularity of soccer has grown, for men’s and women’s, but I think that’s made other countries really put more money and invest more into it. So I think we’re going to have some trouble. There’s Sam Kerr, who’s with Australia, who’s just like killing it on all fronts. You’ve got England who’s got a ton of solid players. Let me think. Got Germany as well. And then in our group, I think our hardest competition will be the Netherlands. So if we can win that game, I think we’ll win our group. Awesome.
Let’s hope for it. The US is usually very strong. I believe they’re the favorites to win the World Cup again this year so, hoping for that success to continue. Oh yeah. Louie, how do we relate this to recruiting? How do we relate it to recruiting? Well, what we do here, Sam, is obviously we would take sports topic and spin it to relate it to recruiting. So in this case, we’re going to talk about promotion and recognition. High performers, the people that get the recognition and this case get to play for team USA and kind of bringing that to the recruiting side people internally, who go way above and beyond goals, metrics, things like that.
Yeah, for sure. As we all know that this is not anybody’s full-time job playing in a World Cup or playing for your national team. They all have careers outside of this. So not only is it an honor, it’s a privilege to be able to be selected to play for your country at arguably one of the largest, and most coveted sporting events, in their craft. So, definitely cool to see. Very much an honor to be selected for that. Maybe playing multiple World Cups, the US fortunately on the women’s side to be able to win World Cups.
So, definitely a very interesting topic we think as recruiters, maybe Sam you might not agree, but, just being able to talk about soccer too, so. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, as we usually do with Hirewell Hot Corner, we like to talk about recruitment topics from both the recruiting side as well as the client or employer side.
So from a client perspective, we’ll usually start there. How does this relate to you as far as high performing employees? What do you see in your company and your industry that sets people up as high performing employees? Yeah, for sure. So I think from our side, the people that stand out are the higher performing employees here are the ones that are more intrinsically motivated.
Yes, we have external factors here that we use to help motivate or encourage, but I think when you look at everybody here, it’s the ones that want it for themselves or have a higher sense of purpose. They put bigger reasoning towards their job or their role. I think they see here that by doing what they’re doing, they’re helping others and helping their team, helping their customers.
So I think those are the ones that come in here with that sense of purpose every day. And that sets them above the rest of them for sure. I was going to say, so like those are folks that you kind of see internally, those things you learn over time now. Hiring perspective what is your thoughts or how would you go about trying to identify those before you actually get to see them do their role? Yeah. I think it’s super difficult to like identify that, those types of traits or anything, when you’re just talking to somebody. But I think you really have to look and kind of listen to what they’re saying and try to find that stuff where, oh, I did this, or I stayed late to do this.
Or I think you can hear when people talk about what they’ve done in the past, if they take a sense of pride in that. And I think that determines how they’re motivated, and then how they’re going to fit in your company as well. I think you really have to listen and kind of read between the lines when you’re talking to somebody or interviewing them. To see if they’re going to be a good fit for you and if they’ve got the motivation that you’re looking for to be better and succeed.
And we actually just finished a hiring process with Nixco as you mentioned. What were some of the key things that stuck out to you in the interview process that really set who we hired apart from anybody else? Yeah. I think just talking, with the person that we hired, you could see that they were motivated to always be better and want more for themselves.
And I think that will carry over and no matter what role that they’re in, they’ll always want to continue to learn more, do more, grow as well. And just by listening to them talk about the different positions they had been in and the work that they took on themselves shows that I think that they’re going to do really well here and continue to grow.
And whatever role we deem or whatever role that we want to work together and put them in, I think. Awesome. And we touched on the promotion, recognition. What does Nixco do specifically that these high performers, what can they achieve and what kind of opportunities are they afforded, specifically with your company?
Yeah, yeah. So I think with Nixco, I mean, obviously for certain positions there’s different roles here. Our service techs, they have bonuses that they meet with sales goals and different things like that. And then we have our outside crew who are just getting through and doing their new construction jobs and seeing that being built, I think is a sense of pride when you can walk by a building and say, I built that.
And they continue to move up the ranks here as they get their license. Pay goes up with experience and different things like that. And then our office staff in here, as they take on more roles, there’s that sense of achievement and then as well, it’s hit with a pay raise as well.
But we really want them to feel like they’re achieving something here and there’s a purpose and that they’re helping here. And that’s what we’re really striving for. Awesome. Louie, flip it over to the recruiter side. How do we identify these folks that say they’re high performing just from a resume or from the interview process?
Yeah, well, I think Sam touched on it a bit. Sales, it’s a, I think, it’s a little bit easier to understand the high performers if your goal is a hundred percent and you’re hitting 170%, that tells you a lot, regardless of where those goals lie. So, understanding the quantifiable things makes it a little bit easier and in my line of work, being in sales recruiting, that’s huge. Track record of success is probably the number one indicator of success granted, if it’s maybe a little bit different industry, there’s some yet to be seen. But the traits to hit goals and stay motivated and continue to grind, it shows that motivation that again, that Sam, attested to.
Now flip it back over to you, Dan, when it doesn’t come to sales roles, how do you even do it? Like I am racking my brain, like how would you be able to be like, “Hey, this is a top performer.” Yeah, definitely having numbers, goals, things you can quantify are very helpful for that. But it comes down to the intangibles as well.
And Sam hit the nail on the head with this one, through the interview process. There’s only so much you get out of reading a resume. You have this experience and this role, you have this education. You did these extracurriculars. Great. There’s having that, and then it’s getting into a conversation, where you can learn so much more from actually talking to a candidate than you’ll ever get from reading their resume, their LinkedIn profile, whatnot.
It is our job as recruiters to take the information they’re giving us, the story they’re telling us. Those intangibles about how motivated they are, the things they do to go above and beyond at work, what they’re looking to gain out of a new role, growth, leadership potential, whatever it is. It’s our job to I guess make it sound better, and articulate it properly to our clients. Tell their story for them in order to get them in front of our clients to interview and basically give the same conversation. So it’s a little harder I would say, but it is just kind of pulling the best qualities and those goals and motivations out of a candidate while talking to them, to be able to properly articulate it and moving forward, throughout the whole interview process.
Sounds hard. There’s a reason that recruiters have jobs in the world. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Sam, we usually end our episodes with what we call the two minute drill. Okay. This one will be pretty easy. We’ll go predictions for the World Cup. What do you got? I mean, obviously I’m going with the hometown team, with the US but I think it’ll be tricky and I think there’ll be some nerve-wracking moments.
And I think you’re going to see, hopefully not, but I think you’re going to see penalty kicks, unfortunately, I think we’re going to go into the dicier moments of the game. But then I guess if I didn’t want to pick the United States, I’d pick-
I’d probably pick England. Or I would love to see Australia win if I wasn’t from the United States. All right. We can’t really go against the hometown team it would be very unpatriotic to pick anybody to win this, but the US. In Men’s World Cups previously my go-to has been to root for Germany after the US gets eliminated. So I guess I’ll follow up as my secondary option, but really pulling for the US team here.
And you mentioned penalty kicks. My wife was a division one goaltender. So I think those are not only the most exciting in the sport, but I think she really gets an extra kick out of those. Cause after everyone, she said, I would’ve done it this way, or I would’ve done that. So Louie? I mean, I’m going to follow suit pick in USA.
Granted, I know absolutely nothing, about the Women’s National Team, Women’s Soccer, but I love the fact that everyone who represents USA, they’re all behind this team. We’ve seen it in hockey, men’s soccer, everything, Olympics, like when you’re a country and you get to back your country all together, it’s not like you’re rooting for a different football team in different states.
Like we’re all in on USA. And then my other default, if not USA would be Italy. I’m a hundred percent Italian, so the men’s team hasn’t been in the World Cup and I think the past two. I’ll pick the Women’s Italy team as the runner up, if you will. There you go. I like all of our secondary options.
We spread it out a little bit without straying off from the favorite, so. Yes. Sam, absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us on the show today. It’s always nice to have a client and a fresh face saying all the same things that we say. You picked it up real naturally, so great job to you.
For everyone else, on behalf of Louie and myself, thank you once again for tuning into the Hirewell Hot Corner. Please do join us again in two weeks for our next episode, and as always, stay classy LinkedIn.
