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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, cleaned up a little bit, both of us, for this episode. Yeah. Let’s jump right in. What’s going on in your world and the world of sports today?
A good amount of stuff, especially today even, like specifically today, but MLB kicked off, spring training ended. Pirates and Cubs are both coming out of the gate strong. Pirates still undefeated. So congrats to you. Cubs after losing the first two of right field three in a row off. So, some pretty good stuff.
Final four for both men’s and women’s college basketball. And then today we actually saw Stefon Diggs get traded to the Houston Texans. A lot of shakeup, even just today, this week, like pretty recent stuff. A lot to unpack. A lot of early optimism for me as a Pirates fan going 5-0, knowing really darn well that it won’t last, but maybe this year is different.
I think for the Pirates and Cubs, you know, both coming out strong from some new talent. So it’s exciting to see on those ends. Final four, very exciting times for a lot of teams. The women’s side, amazing basketball. Caitlin Clark against LSU. Such a great game to watch. Should be interesting to see what happens there.
Men’s side, some favorites, Purdue, UConn, and then you got DJ Burns and NC State coming out hot through the tournament. So, they’ve been fun to watch. And then the Texans just getting absolutely loaded up on offense for next season. They’re all in on CJ stroud and that offense looks scary. Their five receivers are all everyday receivers.
You know, from the top down Diggs, Nico Collins, Tank Dell, Robert Woods, and then maybe your fifth or your fourth is John Metchie, who is no slouch at that receiver position. Then you got two good running backs, Dameon Pierce and they added Joe Mixon and then Dalton Schultz at tight end. And then the real catalyst to it all, CJ Stroud, who really, really impressed last year.
So they went all in to give him a team around him while he’s on his rookie contract, I imagine. So, that’s my sleeper pick for doing well this year. It’s not much of a sleeper, anymore. Definitely not a sleeper. I mean, we’re thinking top five offense has got to be like the baseline for what they do with those types of weapons.
Any world where John Metchie is potentially a wide receiver for, is just an absurd amount of talent and Bobby Trees at the five. I mean, come on, that’s unnecessary, but I’d love to see it. You know, I don’t think NFL players really do this, but I’d love to see like Stefon Diggs on LinkedIn. How would you go about doing that?
If you get traded, like, Hey, I’m happy to announce I’m starting a new role as wide receiver of the Houston Texans. I’d like to thank Josh Allen for my time and thanks to DeMeco Ryans for-
What does that even look like? I mean, that would be hysterical if like, pro-athletes have that. I mean, some of them do. Like they’re random, very few, but I’ve seen a couple that maybe aren’t the top end, but they’re like, yeah, I’m now playing for so and so team.
It’s just wild. But yeah, it’s funny to kind of take that profession and put it into a LinkedIn world because it’s so bizarre. You know, I got traded to this team for these draft picks. It doesn’t really exist in our world. Like you don’t trade employees. But imagine if we did, that would be wild. That would be a big shake up to how we do things.
But staying on the LinkedIn train, because LinkedIn, I don’t know about you, Louie, but for me, LinkedIn has been a lot more fun lately. You know, I think for a while the market wasn’t good. We were seeing a lot of negativity and, you know, I don’t want to say all doom and gloom, but a lot of people were looking for jobs and posting their journeys on LinkedIn.
Last couple of weeks, I’ve seen a lot more started a new position as, you know, just finished my first day, first week with this company. And a lot of people posting, Hey, my company is hiring for this role. It’s a lot more positive right now. Yeah, a thousand percent, you know, as Stefon Diggs starting a new role, with the Texans, we’re seeing that on LinkedIn.
I mean, even the past couple of days, like to start this week, everything seemed positive. It was like, “Hey, you know, we’re hiring” or, “Hey, you know, happy to announce starting a new role here.” Or, you know, “I left one company to go to the next.” Like you know, we know that this industry, this market is always a roller coaster, but when it starts to feel more positive, believe me, everyone, it kind of comes all together at one time.
Yes, there are still those companies that go through layoffs and there is unfortunate stuff, but from a general standpoint, we’re seeing a good shift here. It’s a spike in the right direction. Between that and my optimism for the pirates right now, I’m like riding an all time high on like the morale train.
From a candidate and a company perspective, let’s talk about this. You know, what do you do in this change in the market and the uptick we’re seeing in new hires, hiring, all that fun stuff? So from a company standpoint, I think a lot of it is, you know budget’s starting to kick in, a little bit bigger than they were in 2023. Still the aftermath of covid in a way. You know, they still had razor thin budgets for the most part, you know, because they were planned in 2022.
They were real tight for 2023 and now they’re like, all right, well, you know, things are very much in the rear view. We have a brand new budget now, expecting growth plans. So budget comes into play. Expansion, maybe taking on new product lines or just growth, in general, from head count.
Or acquisitions, you know, I have a couple of clients that have purchased companies to work under their banner and it’s opening up more opportunities within their organization and restructuring and overall growth from a revenue and from business and what they can provide. So, these are a lot of the things that I think are leading to this change in the market that we’re seeing.
I think, everyone took a little bit of a hit in 2023. I think some people, you know, buckled down and maybe turtled a bit to kind of shield themselves from as best they could. And, I think, you know, we’re starting to see that uptick in the market across the board where people are popping their heads out and going, “Oh, actually, you know, we’re in a pretty okay spot. You know, we survived this now it’s time to kind of get back to where we were hoping to be previously.”
And so, yeah, we’re seeing, you know, larger budget plans. We’re seeing more advantageous, more aggressive expansion in certain areas. One area and I know you’d love this, the area I’m seeing a lot of new hiring and a lot of new roles is sales. I’m seeing a ton of new sales roles and you know it might not always be the company that you would expect it to be but I feel like every other person I’ve talked to lately is, we’re hiring for salespeople right now.
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, you’re investing, I guess, a smaller amount of money in a salesperson because a lot of their take home is commission based, so they’re driving revenue in. So, it’s kind of a double edged sword. Their base salaries are not usually as high because there’s that bigger commission piece.
So not only are they making less on the books, like guaranteed, but they’re also bringing in money to your company. So, you know, when it comes to growth, the bottom line is, do you have the revenue to support the rest of the company? And that’s where sales comes in. So, you know, I think that that’s a huge piece of why, again, sales is being an industry or, a role type that we’re seeing expanding at a rapid clip, because, it’s a revenue producing role, very end of the day.
Yeah. And it’s one that makes for safe growth. You know, if your sales team is blowing the doors off this thing, then you have more wiggle room to work with, to make those expansions. You kind of grow as demand exists. And so having a sales team, building out a sales team, bringing on new sales people, it’s kind of a lower risk, higher reward type opportunity, because, if the market’s not there for it, you’re not missing out on as much as if you have to go build up a team that unfortunately, you know, bring it back down to scale, so.
It brings up an important thing from a candidate side, and I think as we transition from the client talk to the candidate, as we always do in the Hirewell Hot Corner. From these sales jobs, I feel like, and you’ve had a lot of experience with this recently, the sales jobs that I’m seeing are not the ones you would expect to always see.
I think tech sales and like SaaS sales were a big thing a couple of years ago. A lot of the companies I’m talking to who I’m seeing jobs in the sales side are blue collar, industrial, manufacturing, and I know you’ve got a lot to talk about on that side. Yeah, I went and visited a client of mine today, Great Lakes Industrial, we’re working on a sales role for them right now.
You know, they’re a company that a lot of this topic is derived from is they’ve purchased a few companies in the local kind of Midwest region and they’re just kind of starting to understand how they have to staff. Do they need to staff up? Do they need to remove some people? But overall, they’re growing and we’re seeing it in this space because although COVID took a big chunk out of the tech market, it didn’t take as big a chunk out of manufacturing because this stuff is all still very much needed, you know. When it comes to building, when it comes to, you know, factories and or whatever, these types of products, the show goes on. You know, the tech market, I think we’re still seeing a little bit more of instability.
It’s still kind of having its bigger ups and lower downs, but you know, we’re starting to get into a point where those are coming, but I will say the consistent hum of the industrial manufacturing is, hasn’t dipped off too high, hasn’t just spiked incredibly. It’s stability and I’m thinking, and I’ve always pushed candidates reasonably.
Stability is the name of the game. Absolutely. And, you know, we’re ringing the bells. Help is on the way. There are more opportunities coming every day, but you make a good point. The roles and the industries that you may have been looking in, or you might have stuck in for a long time might not be hiring, but there are jobs out there. It’s just about finding out what those are. Maybe it’s a slightly different title. Maybe it’s an area you didn’t think to explore. There’s jobs. There are some interesting jobs in, in just the perusing we do for the business development side. You know, I found some jobs in areas or with companies I would have never thought that they would be hiring for.
And so I think as a candidate, a lot of it is doing your research, going out and finding those different areas because things are opening up. There are jobs and it could be your ideal role in a company you never thought you’d work for. It could be an ideal company in the role you didn’t think you’d work for.
It’s just, you know, being open and willing to adapt with the market. Yeah. Yeah. Just maybe get creative. Think about responsibilities that you enjoy in a daily role and look to target companies or roles that have those responsibilities, you know, and it might not be in, you know, the sexy, you know, software that, 700 other companies also have.
Like, you know, it might be in an industrial role somewhere where it’s a smaller organization, but, either way, get creative and jobs are on the way. Keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, turn on open to work. Recruiters are looking, keep your resume up to date so you can get it off pretty quickly. Help is on the way type of thing. All right. Two minute drill. Take us home, Louie. We got the final four and the NCAA tournament championships coming up soon.
We can go back and look at our failed brackets. I know you had UNC going all the way and I had Houston and neither one of those are sitting here at the final four. So, what do you think is going to happen? Pretty obvious choice for the men’s, UConn. I mean, they’re so good. They score at a crazy clip.
They haven’t been really in a close game just yet, and they’re firing on all cylinders. And then, let’s ride the wave here. I’m going Iowa for the women’s. Caitlin Clark is incredible. She shoots the lights out in the gym. She shoots from the parking lot. It doesn’t matter. She’s-
I don’t see her dropping less than 30 a game, the rest of the way. The fact that UConn hasn’t had a really close call in the last two tournaments is absolutely absurd. The fact that they can score at will, sorry, Matt Massucci, but they went on a 30 to nothing run against the Illini. That’s like unheard of. I mean, c’mon. So, you know, they were the favorite coming in.
They still feel like the favorite. And on the women’s side, I got to agree with you. Caitlin Clark playing absolutely crazy. Even when you cover her, she does still have teammates on the floor. So she makes plays happen. It’s hard to bet against these two teams. That’s what I think is going to happen.
What I want to happen. I love DJ Burns. Give me the NC state train to keep it moving. Wolfpack all the way. Even better would be an NC State sweep. Both of their teams are in the final four. Wouldn’t that be quite a sight to see? Yeah, I don’t know how much time we have left here, but as soon as I saw NC State beat UNC in the ACC championship, I had NC State going all the way to the Elite Eight.
And I didn’t have him go into the final four, but they’re a team that needs to be reckoned with clearly. And they are. They’re riding DJ Burns because he’s fun to watch. He’s a big boy and he has such a good touch around the net, it’s wild. And it’s deserves all the hype he’s getting. How could you not love him?
Well, on behalf of Louie and myself, thank you once again for tuning into the Hirewell Hot Corner, please do join us again soon for our next episode. And as always stay classy, stay LinkedIn.
