Welcome back to the Higherwell Hot Corner, where sports and recruitment meet. I am your host, Dan Spittel, joined as always by my Ironman co host, Louis Morici. Louis, great to see you again. Let’s jump right in. What’s going on in your world and the world of sports today? Well, Tuesday, now June 25th, both of the finals have been completed for the NBA and the NHL, and now we are officially in that period where it’s baseball, golf, thank God there’s the soccer tournaments going on.
But, I have to be without hockey for quite some time. And that’s, a sad time to me. Yeah, congratulations to both of our new champions, both picked by Louie in the last episode, the Boston Celtics and the Florida Panthers. Two series that looked like they were going to go the same way after three games, and one took a sharp right turn as the Oilers stormed almost all the way back to bring us to a game seven.
Fun ending regardless. Celtics took care of business, showed us that they were clearly the deeper team. Episode 44, numbers wise, I guess we’ll start with the NBA and the NHL, Jerry West number 44, , Chris Pronger, as you mentioned, but of course we can’t go without mentioning hammer and Hank Aaron, other guys like that.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Hank Aaron, one of the best in MLB history. Just a moving figure for the sport. Yeah. America’s pastime. No question. And you mentioned the slight lull. I would say slight lull because of these soccer tournaments. They’re keeping us busy. In the golf world, Scotty Scheffler continues to play unreal Golf week in, week out.
I think he’s tied for with Tiger and Arnold Palmer for the most championships through the start of the year already. Crazy. We’ve gotten some absolute chaos in both Copa America and the Euro tournaments. Looking at the Italy Croatia game yesterday , and today we’ve got a group winner in Austria.
I don’t think a single person would have looked at that group with the Netherlands and France and said, “Yep, Austria is going to be the one that comes out of this one on top.” Yeah. I mean, everyone would have figured France, Netherlands one and two, and then Austria and Poland would be fighting for that.
Maybe that extra bid, the final four, if you will. That’s why you play these tournaments is for those moments is the excitement. Obviously me having ties to France, just my favorite footballer, Antoine Griezmann plays on France, but being Italian, that Italy finished yesterday.
Not only was it a photo finish at the end of the game, but it was a beautiful goal and then it got them fully advanced into the next round. So just all the implications and how the games can come down to the last seconds of extra time. And they say, you know, things like “any given Sunday” for football and whatnot, those phrases.
But you look at games like Brazil, Costa Rica ending in a 00 draw last night. Not a world where anyone thought Brazil would get shut out by Costa Rica and a tie for them is massive. I mean, of course you want to win games, these tournaments, but a draw against Brazil is a huge upset for them. And you know, you look at so many of these teams and oftentimes you gotta give them a chance.
They’re happy to be there. Most times they’re kind of counted out from the start and you look at your group and okay, we’ve got a couple easy ones. Anything is possible, especially with such a game like soccer, where there’s very little room for error in such a low scoring, sometimes scoreless game.
You look at Austria as a great example. They got a chance. They proved themselves. Here they are walking into the knockout rounds as the number one. Yeah. I mean, when you think of underdogs, you think nothing to lose and allows players to play just more free. I think looking at it from any sport, really. I mean, we’ll look at it.
The Mavs were definitely the underdogs. Edmonton was worthy underdogs and having that little bit of less pressure knowing you’re probably supposed to lose. It gives you the, just F it attitude and can just play with a sense of urgency, little recklessness, and just go out there and try and make some things happen.
Looking at it from a generalized view of sports, the underdog story is huge. But then you’ve got , we’ll get more into the finite details of like contracts and whatnot. You’ve got what we’d call prove it deals in most sports. Whether it’s an underscouted, maybe it’s undrafted free agent trying to make the team.
Or, an older veteran trying to prove that he’s still got it. You see these scenarios. Oftentimes I would say maybe in the NFL is probably the most prevalent, but it happens in every sport where you get a guy who gets on a, what we’d call a team friendly one year contract. And the emphasis is “show us what you’re made of, prove it, that you are worth a bigger contract moving forward.” And oftentimes it’s on the last year of a rookie deal as well as when you’d see those “prove it” kind of things happening. Yeah. And it’s funny when it comes to ends of contracts, usually guys have just monster years and then they sign a monster deal and then it’s back to just being average.
But yeah, I mean, these prove it deals, they’re hit or miss they’re, , Low risk, high reward, so to speak, you’re not investing millions and millions of dollars in a project or a tested out scenario. So, it’s kind of best for both sides. It gives someone a chance to earn another two, three year contract at a higher AAV or AV, mostly a hockey term, average annual value.
It’s one of those things that, we find ourselves, in the recruiting space, on these prove it deals ourselves. It is a slightly different world out there these days. While we do a lot of things at Hirewell, our traditional model is we’re doing retained engaged searches, typically a few, senior level management, whatever level searches for companies that are looking to add very specialized talent into their teams, into their ranks to expand those teams.
Typically we go after, key positions, key leaders and help them build their teams up from there. What I’ve been seeing, and I know what you’ve been seeing, what we’ve been seeing generally in the market right now is, I know we just talked about this is there’s hesitancy. People are reluctant to sign new agreements and bring on additional help and spend the money when they’re not sure where they’re going to be in a couple months.
So I think, the concept of the prove it deal has become a little more prevalent in the work we’re doing day in, day out right now. Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s been companies that I’ve started working with recently. One, has just reengaged with us. They had went with another firm that is not getting it done.
It’s just not cutting it. And they’ve reengaged us. They’re not retained by that other company. So we kind of are at the hands of their agreement and kind of have to match it. If we want to take a stab at it. So, , situations like that. We come in and we try and set that expectation. Listen, we’ll take the prove it deal for this first one.
But once we come in, fill this role proof, what it’s like working with us and why a retained search, it’s really not that big of a commitment to us as far as, getting credited towards the back end success fee anyways. It’s, A low risk, high reward. You’re getting a retained company that is bought into your hiring needs and we’re getting the result that you’re looking for and you just have to pony up a few dollars ahead of time.
We’re fine in that scenario because we believe in what we’re able to do and do it better than the rest of the market. Yeah. The idea of a retained search is not, from a, ” We need your money upfront type of thing.” It’s very much, we want to ensure that our team has bought in and we want to show that your team has bought in.
If this is a serious hire you need to make, and you’re committed to hiring someone into this capacity, why not spend a little bit of money upfront? It doesn’t change the realistically doesn’t change the total outcome from a financial standpoint of what you’re going to spend on an agency to find someone.
But it gets skin in the game on both sides, and it allows us to work with, additional avenues, advertising budgets, posting jobs, utilizing those tools that we have at our disposal but it’s a really great first step forward to ensure the relationship between the recruitment team and the hiring team goes very seamlessly.
People are a little reluctant just to spend money in general. And I think that’s where we’re seeing more of these contingent proven deals. I think a lot of people look at them as a daunting task. Hey, we want you to find someone. We need someone for this role and we’ll pay you once we hire them, but we’re not going to put any money down until you do.
We get it. We don’t love it. Nobody wants to work- it’s not for free, but nobody wants to work for free up front. A lot of times companies will ask for a deposit, for event spaces or contractors or whatever it might be, same thing. But I think we welcome the challenge.
I think we thrive off of that level of competition because I don’t want to sound conceited, but I think we know that we do what we do really well and we know how we stack up against our competition. So if that initial Engagement, however we have to do it, is going to show you what we’re made of and what a relationship with us looks like.
It doesn’t change our process. We still follow the same steps. We still build out the cadence of communication. We do a proper intake call. We don’t skip anything because there’s not this couple thousand dollars up front or whatever it is. It’s just, this is how we have to do it the first time.
That’s great. We’re gonna show you what it is and we’re going to knock it out of the park. And when we do, let’s go back to our side of the field. Yeah, absolutely. And, the engagement fees, like you mentioned, yes, they’re looked at in a negative way, but it does give us that buy in. When it comes to the breakdown of our team and recruiters in general, the one thing that we have limitation is our time and where we’re going to divide that time. If it’s something that is retained compared to something that is just straight up contingent, we have an obligation to the folks that are buying into our system. Not to say that companies who were on contingent aren’t, but our time is valuable and we can’t get it back. So we can spend five hours trying to find candidates, screening, sourcing, submitting all of the stuff that we go through.
And if we’re not retained at all, like. “No, we’re not interested. We’re on hold.” That’s five hours. We cannot get back put into another client. So, the whole skin in the game again, it’s not like we’re asking for a full fee up front. It’s just enough to make sure that our costs are covered from a time perspective.
And we have a 97 percent fill rate on return retained searches. But, the theme is the “prove it deal”. And I think it’s just something we’re seeing in the market nowadays. And we’re okay with that. Like I mentioned, our capabilities. I think it’s a great way to start a relationship.
You want to know that you’re going with the right firm. Who’s going to get the job done for you. We want to know that you’re going to be a good partner. Who’s going to hire effectively and work with us consistently throughout the process. So. You know what, if that’s what it takes to kind of reach that point, by all means, and honestly, I mean, competition, like pressure, that’s what we do anyway.
That’s our thing. That’s why we exist. So why not bring it on? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, two minute drill. Take it home. Best recent prove a deal you’ve seen in sports. I mean, this one’s as easy as it comes for me. The guy is my screensaver on my computer, on my cell phone, Patrick Kane signed the one year, I think it was like 2. 1 million, somewhere around that nature with the red wings, almost a quarter into the season after he had his hip resurfacing injury, he had surgery on it. It’s a injury that we have yet to see someone come back and have a longer, tenure after of not only production, but just from a games played perspective, he averaged a point of game the rest of the season, and I’m so happy to hear that.
So prove it deal. He’s gonna probably make four to six million next year, depending on where he sides. Yeah, that’s, that’s pretty okay. Uh, I think any deal on these lower level ones that are very like incentive laden are always fun for me. Watching like week 18 football and following along with who needs, however many catches and touchdowns, what not to make more money is always really enjoyable.
I like it, especially when it’s these cheap deals for quarterbacks. It makes me think of like the Taylor Heineken’s of the world who got a ton of money for getting the commanders to a playoff appearance. Recency bias, Joe Flacco last year. They brought him off his couch as an insurance option.
He ended up leaving them to the playoffs and looking pretty good while he was doing it in his late thirties. So I wouldn’t even call that a prove it deal. It’s close enough. It’s more of a, “Hey, we need you to be game manager.” He proved he is much more than a game manager still. So I’m going to stick with my flag in that one.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Super Bowl winner. There was a whole, it’s Joe Flacco, elite. I still don’t think so. Don’t think he ever was, but you need a guy, meat and potatoes, come in, manage a game and then some, he proved that. I believe he beat the bears last year. So can’t really say anything to that.
Certainly not elite, but he more than got the job done for what they needed out of him. Absolutely. Playoffs, like enough said. Well, on behalf of Louie and myself, thank you once again for tuning into the Higherwell Hot Corner. Please do join us again for our next episode. And as always, stay classy, LinkedIn.
