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. Let’s jump right in. What’s going on in your world and the world of sports today? Well, you know, we got a lot going on.
We have NBA, NHL playoffs, just full steam ahead. Obviously, I have a bias NHL being the more entertaining and competitive of the two. That and the MLB season, you know, about 30 or so games into the season. My Cubs are in first place. So happy to report that. And NFL draft just finished up.
So I feel like both the Bears and Steelers had very good drafts. At least that’s how I would feel about it. I can’t disagree. I obviously know a little bit more about the Bears draft, but I think both teams have definitely made strides to be a lot better this coming year. Steelers went heavy on the offensive line, which certainly is needed. Grabbed a sure handed wide receiver while they were at it.
So I’m very happy overall. I would agree with you. NHL playoffs are more exciting than the NBA playoffs. I already got my fill of basketball with March Madness, for the year, so we’re good there. And baseball season, we’re, you know, one month down. Starting to learn things about all the teams. The Pirates, have fallen kind of already back into place, as we expected.
But I’m kind of hoping the slump is early. They’re in last place in a very contentious NL Central. I don’t think that there are that many games that separate all five of the teams, so, it’s been some exciting baseball already. But I think the biggest news for the Pirates hasn’t even been in the major leagues.
I think the biggest news and all the notifications I see on my phone are about Paul Skenes’ number one pick in last year’s draft. He continues to just rip through AAA baseball. Made his longest start of the season, six innings, scoreless ball, throwing every pitch just about over 100 miles per hour.
It’s only a matter of time before he gets the call up to the big leagues. Yeah. Yeah, and I think he might even be more famous for the fact that he dates Livvy Dunne, the LSU gymnastics superstar. But, yeah, I mean, when we were talking about it before the show, the fact that his last pitches of his outings in the sixth inning are still coming in at 101.
That’s some heat throwing when you’re at pitch 75 and you’re still throwing 101. It’s time to bring them up, you know, and they’ve been patient and that’s kind of the theme of the show today. It’s time to bust them open into the majors. Yeah, I think it’s been really smart on them to you know, kind of stretch out his workload in AAA, don’t just rush him up to the pros.
You know, this has been like, one of the highly touted prospects and pitching since probably like, Stephen Strasburg from a decade ago. And so I think the pirates organization is really being considerate of, okay, what makes sense? When do we get up here? We’re not trying to one and done this. Like, he’s looking to anchor the rotation for a long time.
The bats have been a little quiet recently, the pirates record shows that. So, maybe right now isn’t the best time to bring them up. You know, if they’re looking long term, not just we need to get wins in the next month or so. Don’t want to overextend them early, but it’s going to be sooner than later, but great segue on your part.
Let’s talk about the key of patience in the world of recruiting in the job market right now. Absolutely. And as always, we’ll look at it from a recruiter standpoint, employer, and a job seeker standpoint, starting with recruiting, what we do. We’re seeing the market turnaround. So the patience from an overall perspective, when it comes to seeing more jobs, filling more roles, more candidates open to work, all that we’re seeing that right now, kind of stemming back to our last show.
When it comes to recruiter, I know a lot of times and it’s something I’ve struggled with. Patience is not in my wheelhouse. It’s not always a virtue. When you’re working on interview processes with clients, you want to know answers right away. One thing I was taught is, recruiting is a very small part of hiring managers days, usually their sales or VP, where it’s our complete day. So you have to understand, your email, even though it’s in their inbox it’s not the first thing they’re going to see and respond to. So, be tactical when it comes to your reach out about feedback about moving forward. You know, do it from a consultative, how can I help sort of approach instead of listen, I need answers right now, so to speak.
So that’s the one way from recruiting. Hiring managers aren’t always going to hire the first person. Very rarely will that happen. So make sure you’re putting your effort into getting multiple people in play, giving them options because nothing’s worse than kind of putting all your eggs in one basket.
And then at the very end, they’re like, well, we’d like to see more and you have to go for 3 weeks of keeping that first candidate warm. So get people in play, and make sure you’re providing options. So I think from a recruiting standpoint, that’s where patience comes in. Don’t rush it. You know, I think it’s a really important piece to note and you touched on it that, you know, for us, recruiting is 100% of the work we’re doing. And oftentimes for hiring managers and teams internally within companies is a very small portion and one that’s often not prioritized. That’s why we exist. That’s why our company exists.
And I know we’ve talked about it in a couple episodes recently about how the market’s continuing to turn and we’re starting to see more job postings, more people getting into new roles. So it’s an exciting time and it’s hard not to be excited and for us to just get amped up and want to continue to see results quickly and get communication, keep the process moving.
But we exist because these hiring managers don’t have the time. All the time the world is to interview and hire people and that’s why they brought us in the first place. So, you know, it’s about being a little patient on our end, you know, understanding their process. And, you know, that’s why we do so many calls and we maintain a cadence to understand what’s the priority, what does your process look like, how quickly can we expect, and we try to set those guidelines for them on our end and try to understand how it’s going to look for them, for us. And you made it a clear point, we’re not trying to rush through the process.
Obviously, it would be great if they hired a rockstar candidate that we send them immediately. And we get the process to continue to move past that one role, but we are not going to push for someone to fly through the process, get the hiring process wrong and have to do this again. We are not transactional.
We’re not, you know, churn and burn, hire someone, give us our money and we move on. Everything we do is relationship driven. Longevity is our focus with all of our clients. We’ve helped so many companies grow, you know, ramp up multiple departments, teams, offices. Kind of see them go from one early stage up to high level of success.
And so that’s our goal. Maybe that requires us to show them a little more, a few more candidates, get a few more interviews. The process might take a little longer, but the end result is going to be far more successful, both for them and for us. Absolutely. And before we jump into the employer side, it’s funny, like, I was going through two interview process these weeks where I’ve had candidates close to finals and moving swiftly, but I’ve had other candidates that I also thought were good that I kind of fiddled.
Do I send them? And maybe, stop the process, but in the back end, it’s like, well, I want to provide the best options. And if that’s maybe messes one option up, that’s kind of a front runner. I’d rather have a plan of attack if something were to go wrong with that person than not. So that’s always something we tinker with, now to look at patience from an employer standpoint. Do not rush the process due to an urgent need. Yes, as a recruiter. I just said that. Obviously, we want things to move quickly, interview one day, hire a next. It’s not always going to be that way. It’s probably never going to be that way. So with that, you know, there’s two different ways to look at it.
Moving through an entire process as it’s been laid out quickly is one thing. Cutting out steps that are crucial in vetting candidates is a separate thing. The first part I’m all for you can move someone through a process. You can get things scheduled, but you’re not steering away from the steps that you want someone to go through.
You’re doing your complete job vetting them. If you’re just cutting out steps, because of all the rigmarole and, you know, I want this person. So we’re going to have them just speak with one person compared to three, that’s where I think we tinker with that and I prefer the first compared to the 2nd. I think it’s as simple of an analogy as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole type of thing.
You know, you have the process built out for a reason. Typically you have that process and you continue to fine tune it, but the process is a certain way because it has worked for you in the past, most likely, or you’ve seen it work for other people, or it’s a process that we’ve helped you build out because you’ve looked to a recruitment company, like a Hirewell for the consultative piece and the process piece.
So, you can’t just force them into that position. Oftentimes those multiple conversations will help you kind of unlock something because different perspectives, different viewpoints, different people in different roles will have different questions, have different opinions on things and will help you uncover kind of a full scope, full picture of what this candidate will look like, what they have done, what they’re going to do.
Yeah, you don’t want to force anything. I mean, more times, if you come off pressured or I need an answer, let me know, I want to hire you, like you’re going to steer them away or even worse, they accept. And then a week, two weeks, three weeks in, they leave. Because they didn’t do the vetting, there wasn’t enough conversations. Don’t do anything that makes folks feel like there’s a rash decision they’re making, they want it to be educated, on both sides of it. Which I think again, segues us into the job seek your part of patience. It’s continuing to improve, more jobs with more companies every day.
So these are all positive things, all around. Yeah, perfect, perfect segue. People seeking jobs for the most part you’re not stuck in one process. You know, there are a lot of jobs out there recently. If a company is pushing through the process and they’re getting you along quickly, that’s great.
But, if they come back and say, we’d like to offer you the job you have until tomorrow to decide, probably not realistic. Look, maybe it’s the first job you were offered and maybe it’s your dream job. Maybe it’s the perfect fit for you, company culture, compensation, benefits, everything fits perfectly. I’m not telling you not to take the first job you’re offered because it may be that scenario. But, I feel like we’re in more of a position for candidates to be patient, be considerate of maybe multiple opportunities that they found that kind of align with what they’re looking for.
Yeah, by no means are we saying the first offer is not one that you should take. It’s something that needs to be understood that you’re not taking a job because it’s the only offer. You’re taking it because it’s the right offer. There’s a difference. You can have 10 offers and accept one. You can have one offer and accept one.
It’s just what fits you. And I know in previous, episodes we talked about just find what’s important to you in a role. And as long as that company that you look at as must haves, and as long as that company is checking those boxes, I would say, yeah, you can roll with any offer that’s brought to the table.
As long as you feel that it’s good and it’s something that you’re going to be enjoying. So, you know, patience is a virtue. I know that sometimes it comes down to, well, I need money coming in, I get that. I get that. So, you know, if you can be patient, be patient and make sure it is the right role for you.
I imagine there are probably some people out there who watch this and go, well, it’s easy for you to say you have a job right now. Maybe I don’t. But, you know what? Don’t get discouraged. We’re seeing more and more jobs posted every day. Something is going to come along that will be the right fit for you.
So, just stick with your process that we’ve built out. I know we’ve done episodes on process too. Stick with your process. Follow it. You know, the right thing is going to come along. Absolutely. So two minute drill, Louie, take us home. What does the next month look like for the Cubs? What does it look like for the Pirates?
So Cubs, and I think we’re doing a lot of small ball, fundamental baseball, where, you know, we’re not just living and dying by the long ball. I don’t think we have just pure long ball hitters in our everyday lineup. So I’d love to see our offense kind of stick to that. And I think Craig Counsell is a big advocate for that type of baseball.
Another area is our starting pitching has been pretty lights out. I think Hendricks has been our weakest link. I think it’s time to put them out to pasture, if you ask me. But our bullpen, it has been so unstable. Like, we’re getting 6, 7 good innings of low scoring, you know, baseball, and then our bullpen comes in and all bets are off.
So I’d like to see that improve. And and I’m saying that from the top of the NL Central. You know, it feels like a very similar issue. Surprisingly enough, starting pitching has been a strong suit for the pirates. A lot of young guys coming in and they’re getting the job done. They brought in a couple of wily vets who seem to be figuring it out there.
Jared Jones, who was the unsung prospect, pitching prospect, has come up and been amazing for the pirates. You know, Mitch Keller’s rolling back into his normal self, even Bailey Falter, who we figured would be the weak point has been better than anticipated. So the bats have been quiet. That’s been an issue.
The bullpen has been a little shaky. We thought that was more of a strong suit than the opposite way, but, the bats have been quiet and that’s been a real problem. We’ve lost a lot of low scoring games. I think they need to make a call up immediately. And it’s not Paul Skenes. I think they need to call up Nick Gonzales.
The kid’s hitting the seams off the baseball and AAA, I think he’s hitting like 400 right now. And where his position is, he’s a second baseman. The current second baseman is batting like 220. I like the guy, but we need more offense in the lineup. So I think that’s an immediate need. I do think Paul Skeens will get called up in May.
I wouldn’t hate it if it was June. The starting pitching has been pretty good and I’m cool with them waiting, but I think it’ll be very soon. Hey, more power to you. I mean, Cubs/Pirates, it’s only right that we’re discussing this, in the same division. I don’t think we’ve played each other yet this year either.
So that’s plenty of opportunity for that. Absolutely. 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.
