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. Episode 43. We’re going with my personal favorite Steeler of all time Troy Polamalu as the athlete of choice for the number.
Let’s jump right in. What’s going on in your world and the world of sports today? Love that Troy Polamalu. Frigging incredible, especially when it comes to his head and shoulders commercials. Amazing. For me, 43, I guess, Quinn Hughes, captain of the Vancouver Canucks, one of the best defensemen in the league, probably not as well known as Troy Palomalo, but that’s what I’m going with.
As far as, what’s going on in sports? We’re dwindling down to NBA finals. We got a 2-0 series lead for the Celtics. NHL, we got a 2-0 lead for the Florida Panthers, both in the championships. And then obviously, we got baseball and golf. Golf is starting to be a lot more entertaining for me than even watching baseball.
Your championship predictions for both sides are looking pretty good right now. As far as baseball goes, the NL Central four of the five teams are separated by half a game currently. On June 12th, the Pirates are the team highest of the four, but that certainly won’t last. And last night, a Reds fan got tased on the field.
So a lot of excitement going on in the NL Central. Love it. In the sports world, otherwise, I’m sure you saw Mike Tomlin signed a three year extension with the Steelers. Steelers organization continuing the line of keeping coaches with extreme longevity. Despite the fact he has not won a playoff game in quite a while, but he has had above average seasons throughout.
On the other side of that, Danny Hurley, the head coach at UConn running his dynasty in the college basketball world, turned down what seems to be a dream job in the NBA, coaching the Los Angeles Lakers. Yeah, I have a bit of a bias here because I don’t like LeBron James. Just going to throw it out there.
I have my reasons. Some are appropriate. Maybe others are not. But I understand it. It’s a big jump, but for someone who’s got two back to back titles, you got to keep going. You kind of owe it to your players. That’s a little bit of unfinished business to leave on top when you got a dynasty thing going.
And let’s face it, I think he’ll be able to join the NBA whenever he’s good and ready. That mixed with the fact that you’re going into an organization that is not run by the organization, it’s run by LeBron James. He dictates the coaches. He’s gone through them. He has a whole graveyard. So personally, I think that’s a great idea.
Yeah, quite frankly, why leave the dynasty you’ve just now built up at UConn? It’s already been proven he turned down any coaching opportunities with Alabama to go to a bigger school in college. He now turned down the Lakers. He’s showing that money isn’t everything for him. I will say UConn is probably giving him a nice big raise now in order to keep him happy over there.
But, on the face value, you’d think head coach to the Los Angeles Lakers is like the premier job in the NBA. You peel that back and grass isn’t always greener on the other side. You touched on it. This incoming, probably first time head coach in the NBA is going to be dealing with 40 year old LeBron James, who is probably getting signed to another max contract. An aging roster who made the playoffs and got smoked, probably going to have to draft Bronny James in order to keep LeBron happy. It’s a franchise that the fans, the culture, they’re not comfortable with taking multiple years to grow organically.
Danny Hurley built this out of UConn because he built it from the ground up when he got there. They don’t wanna take three years to go bring on talent. They wanna use LeBron while they have him, use AD while they have him, and they’re looking to win quickly and that’s not his style, and I don’t think anyone who comes in there is really going to be situated in a great spot.
Absolutely. And, you brought it up, the grass isn’t always greener. Let’s segue from that topic into, what we’ve seen. MLB, going to a different setup for their jerseys. Bringing in fanatics, doing some sort of overhaul and it being absolutely terrible. See through jerseys. You can see, you know, guys, athletic supporters through their pants. Like different piping on jerseys for the same team and the same game. And if that’s any indicator, the NHL is supposed to switch to fanatics this coming year from Adidas. The Adidas have been incredible. Best in the past 30 years.
And if, they’re going to fanatics that I would imagine people are like, they’re not worth the price of what we’re going to be paying for jerseys. No, the grass isn’t always greener. Sometimes maybe it is better to pay a little bit more money, strictly speaking, from the jersey standpoint, instead of going to something new.
Why don’t you segue that for us into recruiting? Even Nike already admitted that the new jerseys have been a failure and they are going to adjust them for next year for Major League Baseball. But yeah, grass isn’t always greener. Looking at it from a recruiting standpoint, I think the easiest way to align that is somebody who’s already gainfully employed but considering their options.
Surveying the land, if you will. Seeing what else is out there. Maybe they’ve been approached by a recruiter like ourselves. Maybe they’ve been approached by someone at another company with what sounds like a really great opportunity for one reason or another. Bigger company, bigger opportunity, bigger paycheck, whatever it might be.
And they’re trying to debate, well, is it worth it to stay where I am? Or is it worth it to jump over and make a completely different move? So you know, you got to look at a number of different factors as far as “The Grass is Always Greener” when you’re hunting in the job market and preface it with all these different things we’re going to say, everything comes down to individuals. Any of these factors, level of importance, value, priority, it all comes down to the individual person, but there’s a number of things you’ve got to look at in terms of what makes sense for you and what is going to be probably a realistically a pretty big life decision in changing jobs.
Absolutely. And yeah, it’s very easy. You know, someone wants to pay a 30, 40K more base salary than you’re getting right now. I’ve seen not only speaking with so many candidates, but even in, personal relationships I have, they get poached away from a scenario they’ve been in by a dollar amount.
And nine months later, they’re back on the wagon. And again, this isn’t to knock on some of the bigger companies, the Facebooks, the Metas, all that, or whatever you call them now, but they have the revenue to be able to hire and if that person doesn’t work out, they can send that person packing and rinse and repeat. With their, known factor in the market and just society.
They’re going to always have people that want those jobs. They can offer more because they have it. But you really have to go into understanding where you’re going to fit within this organization. Is it stable? And that is the, probably, the biggest piece to everything is stability because anyone can make more money for a flash in the pan, but being unemployed for 7 months could also be a big problem.
And there’s nothing wrong with being money motivated. It’s what makes the world go around. It’s what makes salespeople so successful. Oftentimes, in a commission heavy or whatnot, entrepreneurs, you’re wildly successful by yourselves, but also the revenue you’re generating.
And we’re not saying that shouldn’t be considered. Of course, you need to think about money, especially in the always changing economy with inflation and whatnot, money is important, but Danny Hurley was offered 70 million dollars over a three year deal to go to LA. And he didn’t take it. That’s not how much he’s making now.
He’s going to make something close to that, I’m sure, to stay at UConn. But he looked at everything. He looked at moving his family across the country. He looked at the current roster that he was dealing with both in Connecticut and in L.A. He looked at the people, stakeholders, he’d be working for and what the actual culture fit was and what longevity he might have.
Maybe he looked at that and said, if I don’t win in the first year or two, they’re going to kick my ass to the curb anyway. And then I won’t have this dynasty that I built in the northeast. So looking at those different factors when making this decision, it really is comes down to what matters most to you.
And you touched on a little bit, stability is a big part of it. You got to look at culture. You look at career progression. Is this move something that’s going to help me in the long term advance my career, get me closer to my professional goals? Or am I making a lateral or maybe even downward move in the name of the end dollar?
I’m just in this party where don’t let the dollar amount cause you to not think clearly because it very easily can. A short term bump in pay is not going to always be the best solution. Now, when it comes to, the things to consider, culture, huge.
The role of the advancement. Huge. Being in the positions that we’re in, from a place of being consultants in this space, there are so many underlying factors that need to be considered and you got to get as close to what your ideal profile is for a job as possible. If you find all this and they’re offering more money, that’s the best case scenario. Does it always happen that way?
Unfortunately, not. So really make sure you’re asking the right questions. From a sales standpoint, the OTE number they’re offering, is anyone actually making that right now? Are people hitting targets? You really have to find what’s underneath the surface.
If you’re looking at it from like, an iceberg, you know, you see the nice pretty, but what’s underneath? Hopefully, it’s just more of that good stuff, but you got to ask the right questions. Yeah, absolutely. You find the purple squirrel, unicorn, golden goose, whatever you want to call it, is the perfect job culture, it’s the next step in your career progression, and they want to pay you some more money to do it, we’re not telling you not to do that.
That sounds fantastic. Why wouldn’t you ever consider that? But, there’s probably a reason where you’re not actively shopping. You’re not throwing a million applications out a week because you’re happy where you are. You like the culture, you like the people you work with. There are multiple studies that say people don’t leave jobs because of money.
They leave jobs because of people. And so having a little wad of cash being waved in front of you, you got to ask all the questions. You got to make sure the person you’re joining, the team you’re joining, the company the leadership, it all lines up because if you have a little more money, but you absolutely hate the people you work with, or you hate the job you’re doing, it’s not going to be for you.
And you’re going to get burned out extremely quickly. And it’s not going to be the right move from a long term standpoint. And that’s really what we’re talking about is what is best for you in the long run. Totally. It’s different for everyone, quite frankly, it’s just about making sure that the motivating factors, what’s actually bringing you into a job is something that is feasible and stable and isn’t just, again, a flash in the pan.
I know I keep saying that, but, again a 10, 15K more base salary for 6 months. It’s really not all that much in the long run. All this to say is don’t get stuck on the sticker shock of the dollar value that comes with it. Do your research, be smart about what you’re looking at, consider all factors and ultimately do what’s best for you, for your career, for your family, whatever matters most to you.
Thousand percent. Two minute drill, Louie, let’s take it home. What would be your dream job in the sports world? Well, being, the premium athlete that I am currently at the age of now 32, as of yesterday, love to still be a right wing for the Chicago Blackhawks. Granted, that’s probably not as realistic.
So, I’d probably say the coach or the GM of an NHL franchise, preferably the Blackhawks. I think if not the Blackhawks actually had this discussion with just my buddies, shooting the shit, be cool to be at Madison Square Garden or another one of you know, the big markets, maybe the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Blackhawks are still in rebuild mode. You might be able to get some good minutes for them. They could probably use your services. You’re staying fresh. I know you are, so. We’ll have to add at the Blackhawks on this episode. Is one phone call away folks. On my end, I would love to say dream job would be to do something in front office of the Pirates.
I love baseball, but man, with no salary cap and fighting teams like the Dodgers and Yankees. It’s just an uphill battle working for these small market teams. So I’m going to have to go GM, front office, Pittsburgh Steelers. We just talked about their longevity. They’ve had three coaches in their entire tenure.
Culture of success, six Super Bowls. Tomlin hasn’t had a losing season. It doesn’t hurt that they’re my hometown team. Bleed black and gold would be such a dream to go support them and that type of thing. Sometimes I think some of the decisions I would make would be better than they do anyway, but of course that’s neither here nor there.
I have to say working in a meaningful role with the Pittsburgh Steelers, helping my hometown team continue to succeed would absolutely be a dream. Absolutely. I mean, there’s no bias in our choices here either. Not at all. None whatsoever. Well, on behalf of Louie and myself, thank you once again for tuning into the Hirewell Hot Corner.
Please do join us again for our next episode. And as always, stay classy, LinkedIn.
