Welcome back to the Hirewell Hot Corner. Where Sports and Recruitment Meet. I’m your host, Dan Spittel joined as always by my 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?
Lots going on in my world. Bit of a sad week.
We’re recording this on March the second, and as of February 28th, Patrick Kane, the best Black Hawk of all time, was traded to the New York Rangers. I’m upset. I wish him nothing but the best. But it’s-
It’s been a sad week for me in my life. Surely the end of an era. Stanley Cup champion, probably everyone’s favorite in that area.
It’ll be a sad day in Pittsburgh when Crosby, Malkin, all them get broken up. Somehow we’ve held on to all three of them for god knows how many years. I think it’s like 17 at this point, but, truly an honor to have him play for your hometown team. And of course you wish him all the best on the Rangers as they go all in for the Stanley Cup this year.
Yeah, yeah. I understand why the move was made. It was Kane who kind of drove the bus because he had a no movement clause. And once he expressed that he would like to go and compete for another Stanley Cup, because the Hawks are far from it,
it was completely amicable. There’s whispers that he could potentially just resign with us in the off season, which would be great.
But for right now, still a little bit of an open wound. But, again, definitely a Ranger’s fan a bit now, I will say that. There you go. I’ll stand in with solidarity. I don’t have quite the same experience. I’m rocking my old penguins, Phil Kessel jersey. Love that. Loved him in Pittsburgh when he came, helped us win two Stanley Cups. He’s still rocking and rolling but he’s always been fun to watch. Even for the short time he was here, I became a huge fan, so. But we’re not here to talk about hockey. What else is going on in the world of sports Louie? Well, since the NFL is over,
it’s been over for seems like three or four weeks after the Super Bowl. The XFL has actually kicked off and it’s making a bigger splash than it was the first few times around. People are really excited about it. You know, whenever the Rock Dwayne Johnson is mentioned, you know that things are going to be held to a certain standard and it’s showing. Yeah. What is it? Third time’s the charm for this league. Last time they tried to ramp up in 2020, off to a really strong start. I actually have some XFL merch, from 2020 that I-
I bought into it. It was a good time. The St Louis Battle hawks, bringing football back to that city. They got through five weeks of the season what seemed like a successful track and then covid shut the world down March, 2020. And what’s a five week old league going to do to stay afloat when they can’t play? So hoping that this one, they come back around stronger. As we mentioned, the Rock is in the leadership team now. And they’ve rebranded a bit. So there’s this new XFL as I would say. They’ve moved around a couple markets.
They took the teams out of larger cities, put ’em in smaller markets, tried to build up new fan bases. There’s different rules, different partnerships. They’re really trying to go all in on this side too, so it’s exciting to see. And hopefully, we will have football for them for more than five weeks this time.
Yeah. It’s all seeming to add up to a full season. And yeah, I think developing markets that don’t have big NFL teams, I mean, is a great way to take them out of New York, take them out of Miami, or things like that. To put them in markets where they just don’t get to enjoy live football. Huge first step. It’s almost a no-brainer. You and I probably could have thought of that.
But, just kind of on the topic of rebranding, re-strategizing, you know-
we can even look at our own company kind of segueing it to recruiting is Hirewell. We just did a brand new website. If you’ve been on LinkedIn at all for the past couple weeks, you know that we have rebranded with a new website.
Every one of us did a specific post, really clean, I believe it was using Loom, I believe is the application we use. But yeah, so rebranding, whether it’s just to upgrade or refresh, or just a complete overhaul, new ID. That’s kind of what we’re going to segue, recruiting and sports today.
Yeah, absolutely. One of those, sorry, not sorry, approaches to the amount of LinkedIn spam we had over the past week or two. But a lot of excitement around this new website. Our internal team has done such a great job. Shout out to Brian, our product manager. He’s, one of my local Cincinnati guys here. He did a great job with the website. But the refresh was, it was almost necessary. I mean, we’ve done so much in growing and changing as a company to adapt with the market and stuff. We’ve grown new practices. Manufacturing and supply chain has been a big growth for us. The insurance side, we’re growing a lot there.
And just, new acquisitions, new technology we have available to us. Got to show it off as best we can, and stay competitive, stay sleek in the market, if you will. And the new website looks really good. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, not to say our old one didn’t look good, but when you are growing as a company from what you’re providing, it’s being able to tell that story.
And I think that’s really the big emphasis on why we decided to redo the website, is telling what our story is now. Because in the last three, four years, it’s changed. It’s been upgraded. And companies who are looking to do business with us, they will probably want to know that information and it’s a selling point for us.
It’s definitely something where we had a lot more to display than what we had before. Absolutely. And it just kind of follows into the trends. I think every once in a while, companies in the market rebrand, update, refresh. You see it all the time with the bigger companies changing their logos ever so slightly, as new marketing trends and whatnot take effect. So it was just,
it was the time for that. But, you know, looking at how companies refresh, rebrand once in a while. Why don’t candidates do the same thing? Spot on. Too many times do I go source a candidate and it turns out that their LinkedIn and the resume just don’t match.
Like, it’s simple, but refreshing it, touching it up. Not just when maybe you got let go or you’re looking for a new job, but keeping up to date with it. You may forget things if you’ve been at a company for a few years. Like add those to your resume as you’re going along. Not because you have one foot out the door, but because you’re building your resume. And it should include all of the successes you’ve had the things and the responsibilities that you’ve held, because it’s going to paint the full picture of your tenure at a specific role. And yeah, it’s something that they should add up. Like a LinkedIn and a resume should not be far off from the career progression to metrics, things like that.
I’m a big proponent and I’ve been even a little bit more blunt with candidates. Like listen, these don’t add up. And if a client sees this, they’re going to have a lot of questions and maybe not even move forward because your stories don’t match. Absolutely. My current client has been very honed in on, well, we want to see their LinkedIn profile for these candidates. We want to see this progression that matches their resume. These stipulations and these discrepancies can be an issue. We want to avoid that. We want to know who we’re getting in terms of a good candidate.
But, I was actually just talking to a close friend of mine who’s been with his company for a good while, very happy in his role. But there’s been layoffs in the tech space and he saw it as an opportunity. He said I still have my job. I’m very thankful for that, but I should probably use LinkedIn once in a while because it hasn’t been touched in four or five years maybe.
That’s actually, kind of started a domino effect, at least in my friend group. People who are updating their LinkedIn profiles and adding new skills that they’ve acquired since they last looked at, and
“Oh wow, maybe I should have this out there for other people to see.” So I know we touch on LinkedIn a lot more in our roles as recruiters. We’re on there much more than most people. I’ve noticed mainly, people in the tech side don’t actually use LinkedIn nearly as much as people with maybe more client facing roles. But you know, from a recruiter perspective, since we’re working with people mainly through LinkedIn, what would you recommend to clients in terms of refreshing their LinkedIn profile? From a client standpoint, new headshot. Simple as that. Like, I have people that either don’t have them, which I don’t understand why you’d be on LinkedIn without one. It creates familiarity, puts a name to a face sort of thing. Especially with a lot of interview processes and things being virtual, like knowing who you’re about to meet just by having a picture that’s up to date.
It does go a long way. Making sure that again, they match. Like if you’ve been at three roles in one company, show that on your resume. Show that on your background. It’s one of those things. There’s a lot you can do, it’s just about making sure that they align. Refresh, up to date, all of that.
Yeah, I mean, and sometimes it’s as simple as updating your picture. Sometimes it’s simple as updating your tagline, your bio, these things that you know while you add the job description, your responsibilities within the actual work experience side. I’ve seen a lot of times where people’s bios, those quick little taglines are out of date and it just gets overlooked a lot of the time.
But it’s where you can, I know we go back to this a lot, but tell your story. Paint your picture. Get creative with it. Talk about your passions. What you love doing, what you’re looking to do. Just really go that extra mile above. Here’s what I do, here’s my job description.
Yeah. I remember one of our colleagues was like, making fun of me because as soon as it was announced that I was going from a recruiter to a lead recruiter even, I changed my LinkedIn like right away. He’s like, wow, you didn’t waste enough time. I was like, you know what? Something I’m proud of. And it remains accurate. Staying up to date.
Touching up the bio a bit. Expanding upon what you’ve done. I mean, you’re building out your experience and convey it. Let people know, hey you never know what’s going to resonate with someone, whether it’s a potential client, candidate. If you know you’re looking for a new job, like you never know what hits home.
So painting a bigger picture of not just maybe your work, but the day-to-day responsibility who you are as a person, it can only help you with your exposure. You know that statement of you never know what’s going to hit home. That really is such a true statement. My friends will make fun of me because of my tagline says stuff like, craft beer enthusiast and karaoke. You wouldn’t believe how many of my LinkedIn messages I get from candidates, from
people from other companies. It’s an ice breaker they include a conversation piece about that, it starts a conversation. And I’ve had some really great conversations with potential candidates, potential clients that just appear naturally out of something so simple.
Yeah. Yeah. I think one of mine is hockey player, turned recruiter or recruiter hockey player, something like that. And it resonates with people. I’ve had numerous conversations that go beyond recruiting because we’ve made that parallel about hockey and other things as well.
Absolutely. All right, Louie, we’re going to try and wrap this up. We’ve been pretty long-winded these last few episodes, so two minute drill, take us home. When it comes to LinkedIn, your resume, your rebranding, accurate. Make sure they are the same. I keep harping on the LinkedIn and resume. Let them tell the same story.
You might include a few extra bullet points here or there, but again, don’t let it be a reason that someone passes on you or you don’t get an interview is because they don’t tell the same story and it causes confusion. The market is flooded with a lot of people and they will look to weed out people for even the smallest thing.
Absolutely. The XFL is rebranding themself as a developmental league. They’re making partnerships with the NFL. It’s just another opportunity that some of these lesser known people have a chance to shine and appear and move up in the world. There’s always ways to do that in a professional setting.
Find your way to make your name for yourself in maybe a smaller setting that might lead onto something bigger. Who’d have thought in 2023 we’d see Jack Coan as a leading quarterback in a football league. Go Notre Dame. But you never know what’s going to come about. You never know what little thing you can do that’s going to make you stand out, and might lead to your next step. Exactly. Exactly. Paint your picture, tell your story and just make sure it’s parallel with all aspects of it, resume, LinkedIn, interviews, things like that. Couldn’t agree more. Well, on behalf of Louie and myself, thank you again for tuning into the Hirewell Hot Corner.
Join us again for our next episode in two weeks, and as always, stay classy LinkedIn.
