Welcome back to the Hirewell Hot Corner where sports and recruitment meet. I am your host Dan Spittel joined as always by my Ironman cohost, Louis Morici. Really great to see you again. Episode 45, my man Garrett Cole. Cole 45. Two zigzags. Let’s jump right in. What’s going on in your world and the world of sports today? Well 45, you got to throw it to Michael Jordan.
Baseball number. I think he wore it for nine games or something. And when he came back from retirement in the NBA. Yeah. Michael Jordan well known for number 45. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So with that, what’s going on in sports? Baseball. Lots going on. People are starting to- teams, I think Pirates and Cubs pretty much they’re going to be deciding
are they buyers or sellers at the deadline? We got coming up on the end of the Euro cup and I believe it’s Concocaf or? Copa America. Copa America, there we go. We’re coming up on the end. So honestly, that’s really all about it. We saw NHL draft happen. So, you know, the debt of sports is right now.
Hey, the MLB all star game is next week. It’s not that dead. Homerun Derby. See some new faces in there, still have to announce a few of the players. Here’s hoping that O’Neill Cruz gets the call because that dude hits just straight bombs. But it should be fun nonetheless. An all star game, you should be looking forward to it as much as I am. Not only is Pirates’ rookie Paul Skeens an all star, Cubs rookie Shota Imanaga is an all star. Yeah. Both each other’s kind of stud rookie pitchers.
Granted Shota is a little bit more experienced after playing overseas in I believe Japan or Korea. You know, Paul Skeens is right out of college, essentially had a very minimal time in the minors. But either way, I mean, it’s impressive. It talks about the hopeful futures for both of our teams.
Paul Skeen’s first player taken first overall in the MLB draft to make the all star game the following season. So congrats to him. I mean, he has been, you’ve seen him multiple times as a Cubs fan. I mean, he is- he brings it. He is so good that he’s got the Pirates looking like they might try and buy at the deadline, probably just because of him.
I mean, I heard reports today that they’re in talks to trade for a player right now, and I can’t believe that. But I’ll take it. We’re real hot and cold. A player? Like, is there a specific one? Taylor Ward, outfielder from the Angels. Okay. Would sure up the offense a little bit, but sometimes they score one run a game, sometimes like yesterday, they hit five home runs a game.
Like real Jekyll and Hyde going on, so I would like some more consistency in that. But outside of those guys, I think it’s the year of the rookie, it feels like. With Paul Skeen’s looking like the favorite to win national rookie of the year. Sorry, Shoda. But I mean come on. Fair enough..
WNBA, Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, both already basically superstars in that league. Both all star team as rookies. Angel Reese now holds the WNBA record for most games in a row with a double double. That’s crazy. Caitlin Clark is the first rookie ever to get a triple double. I mean, they’re shooting the lights out.
Yeah, it’s impressive. And as a sport that there’s always been a, why don’t they get the media attraction and all that? Nothing to say for that now. They got these two folks, not only are they in the media a bit, I think it’s Angel Reese a little bit more in the media when it comes to the rivalry of it all. Caitlin Clark’s tends to be a little bit more tight lip, but it has created a lot of talk. They’re playing on ESPN now, I believe they play during the day, which is a little bit weird. But you know, it’s great for that and great for the sport.
And see them both all stars and really making a name for themselves where they’ve already had a name. But in the WNBA, it’s impressive and shout out to them. Congrats. I think they tipped off at like 11 a. m. this morning or something like that. That’s bound to change, I think. But yeah, I mean, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have created already this crazy budding rivalry between the Fever and the Sky.
They’re getting national attention. I think Angel more so because of Caitlin Clark too, but in her own right, she’s playing just fantastic basketball. And it really comes to, you know, these newcomers are just blasting onto the scene in multiple sports. I got to figure there’s a way we can talk about this.
Absolutely. So, we are talking about newcomers making a splash kind of on day one. It brings up, was it expected? We’re kind of segueing this into recruiting by talking about it from recruiting and a new hire standpoint. So did you bring this person in thinking it was going to happen?
Was it a requirement that they’re coming in maybe with knowledge of the space, roll a decks to bring to the table. So we’ll talk about it from things we see from our clients. Sometimes it is unexpected and what this person’s doing to hit the ground running this fast that maybe came out of the blue. And then also on the other side of the coin, why clients are like well, we need someone who has this knowledge, experience level, whatever off of day one.
Yeah. I think it’s important to kind of identify the major difference here because we talk about newcomers in these sports. Caitlin Clark, Paul Skeens. They’ve been playing this sport basically their entire lives. I mean, they’re newcomers to the level of professional sport that they’re playing, but it’s not like they’ve never done this before.
I mean, Caitlin Clark was the best basketball player in college basketball for the last two years. Paul Skeens won the golden spikes award for the college world series MVP at LSU in his season last year. We say newcomer because they’re both rookies. I mean, this is their first time in professional basketball, baseball, whatever you want to call it, but it’s a little different than the career aspect.
I mean newcomers in a career, chances are they’re fresh out of school, have never done this before. This is their first taste of like real life. Yeah, absolutely. So when we’re speaking about it from that point of view, and you know, someone who maybe comes out of college and hits the ground running and maybe a sales capacity, and they do really well pretty quickly. Those things you look at are how were they trained? Is internal training really well?
You know, again, I speak from sales. So do they have the personality? Can they get over the fact that you’re calling people that really don’t know why you’re calling or want to hear from you? Can you get over that hump of rejection? And I’ve seen it happen where people hit the ground and they’re very good off the bat.
I’ve seen it the opposite way where it takes a little bit more handholding, but a lot of that comes in as to why that happens. It could be a personality, it could be internal training. And then just speak to it from the more experienced folks. I guess you could call the Caitlin Clarks of the world who are rookies to a new organization.
You know, not that they are rookies to basketball. But are they coming in with contacts? Do they have a Rolodex of folks that they can call up, bring to the table, almost on day one with their new product offering and say, “Hey, I’ve made the switch over to them. This is what they do. I think based on what I understand about your business, you could be a definite partner, client” whatever.
So that’s kind of the two prong approach. It’s two different avenues. But I think it really creates a good experience or a good informative session for the people that watch our show. Absolutely. Let’s talk about one of those first, you know, helping clients figure out the need for the newcomer.
We say newcomer and newcomer means a lot of different things. In this regard, sometimes we’re talking about newcomers who are, again, new to the industry, new to careers, period. Or it could just be new to a business. A lot of that is for these clients that we work with, it’s determining the need.
Do they need to hire someone who is experienced, who’s been around the block, just hasn’t done it for you or in this industry yet? Or are you really looking to kind of shape a young mind who you see a lot of potential in coming out of college? Yeah. I mean, we’ve seen it both ways. Companies like Cintas, who just do a lot of new hiring from a pretty wide offering, you know, of different backgrounds.
And they feel like they can take a ball of clay and really mold it to be successful at Cintas. Or in your case, WorkLeo, you need to have someone who has those expansive relationships in that industry, and I think we’re seeing a lot more of that. Obviously, the level of the role comes in. An entry level SCR role is not going to have someone who has
10 years of experience compared to a VP role where it could get very specific. Like I’m working on one for a client in the aerospace and defense industries. That compared to someone who sells software, they’re two different people. So having that Rolodex, people they can bring in on day one and sell to in an aerospace defense capacity, it does get a bit more refined.
So in that case, we’d probably push them towards the more experienced person in that industry. Sure. I think we find ourselves handling more of the more experienced search side of it just typically from kind of how we do our jobs and the clients we tend to work with. A lot of these companies hiring like founding account executives or senior or manager or people who’ve been doing this a long time, maybe they’re in the position to hire their first key salesperson or someone to lead and build out a sales team.
Well, you can’t bring a newcomer to that because they haven’t done it. They need to have the Rolodex. They need to have the relationships. They need to have the boots on the ground experience. But you talk about Cintas. We do work with a lot of companies who do that more of the widespread young hiring, as you would call, or new hiring.
And they do something similar to like a management trainee program. I know we’re going to touch on the other side with the training piece. But that’s just another area that companies have identified, okay well this is, we’re looking for newcomers, but we’re looking for that high potential newcomer
to shape into what we think will end up being this really strong experienced person. Yeah, you kind of look at more of the intangibles. Do they have more of an outgoing personality? Have they held some sort of role where they have to be very client facing, whether that’s maybe serving tables, being a bartender. You have to draw those segues given the type of role and the level of it and you can work with that. If you’re looking for someone to be a sales capacity, that is a hermit that likes to stay to themselves and be behind a computer or whatever, it’s probably not going to be a great transition. So that you have to find those intangibles. And that’s actually a lot of where I started my career is finding entry level sales folks who come from bartending, hospitality, customer facing, retail. And seeing those intangibles and thinking, hey, with the right kind of training we can make them very effective inside sales, kind of corporate America type folks. And that brings up a great question for a lot of employers who are looking to hire new or younger salespeople. How do you identify a newcomer and how do you know they’re going to perform immediately?
I think ultimately you can’t predict the future. You don’t have a crystal ball that says, this person is going to sell this much in the first year because of this. But we do have, you know, some ideas of some tells, I would say. From your experience, I think you’ve touched on a little bit, but motivations and tangibles, a little bit of the background side.
Yeah, you can’t predict it. Spot on. You can’t. But you can put everyone that is a newcomer in a position to succeed and do that by good training. Whether depending on the role, not only role training, company training, and doing everything you can to get them ramped up and comfortable as fast as possible. Because in both of our careers, I’m sure that we’ve seen or have spoken to people who have gone to situations where they’re thrown to the wolves on day one.
It’s not an effective way. I’m not asking this person to be handheld for three, six months, but there has to be that internal training. That’s a process. It’s hashed out. And I think you’re going to find yourself seeing more of a quicker ramp, maybe not day one, but maybe day 30, where they’re producing at a clip of someone who’s been there for six months.
And that is solely based on their training and obviously some of that internal motivation. Yeah. And when it comes down to training or it comes down to the need, sometimes it just straight up comes down to dollar bills. Really looking at how much can someone pay a new person? What do they really need them to do? Everything we talked about,
I think it’s a consistent notion. Everything’s case by case. I mean, we work with clients of all shapes and sizes. There’s no correct solution. Whether you find one or the other, it’s just about figuring out what’s best for you and kind of mapping it out from there. Absolutely. Absolutely. And a lot of that can be dictated, but it depends on the requirements, depends on role.
And it’s not a one size fits all. But that’s kind of what we do. We’re consultants in our recruiting space and try and educate our clients on what exactly is needed in this role? And obviously listening to them, if it’s something very much a requirement, but either way, I think that’s part of the value that Hirewell brings is our knowledge of the space and what candidates are capable of.
Yeah. Shameless plug complete. Time for the two minute drill. Always. What’s your favorite rookie- we’ll say rookie debut that you’ve seen. Rookie debut. Well, Chicago guy, Patrick King, Connor Berdard, both won rookie of the year, and then Derek Rose. Rookie of the year. So let’s start there. Favorite debut, like single game, Austin Matthews. Toronto Maple Leafs scored four goals in his first NHL game.
And still continues to score goals at a clip that is Gretzky like, so that’s got to be number one for me. What did he hang up, 70 this past year? 69. Didn’t hit that magic 70 marker, but believe me, he’ll be right back there next year. Oh, for sure. For me, aptly with the episode we’re on, I was in the house for Garakol’s debut for the Pirates.
Still a damn shame he doesn’t pitch for us anymore, but everything happens for a reason. Now we have Paul Skeens. Garakol drove in two runs as the starting pitcher of that game. What a great game to be at. But I mean, man, watching Paul Skeens start his career pitched against the Cubs twice to start and was just lights out against him both times.
Sorry, Louie. It was a lot of fun to watch. He’s very much a filthy pitcher and he should be for a very long time. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he’s good. There’s no other way around it. Yeah. Well, unfortunately I’ll have to see him quite a bit over the next 10, 12 years. You’ve had yours. It’s time for ours. Well, 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.
