By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
(from the archives)
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter offers some thoughts about some of the benefits of working with third party recruiters as part of your recruiting efforts.
Accepting Less
Hi, this is Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter and welcome to No BS Hiring Advice on blogtalkradio.com. You know, when I was growing up, I grew up in New York in the borough known as the Bronx. And as someone who grew up in the Bronx, 167th Street in the Grand Concourse, I was but a few blocks away from the old Yankee Stadium. I played little league baseball at the site of what is now the new Yankee Stadium.
So, I had a special affinity for the Yankees. Playing little league ball on that field, I remember times where Mickey Mantle would come back from an injury and you would hear the sound of the crowd explode with excitement at some point in our game, but late enough that you knew it was later on in the game. And we would all smile to ourselves, saying that, well, I guess the Mick came through as a pitch hitter.
And he had. Now, let’s fast forward past the Steinbrenner years, or actually into the Steinbrenner years. And we’ve had a series of ballplayers come up through the Yankee minor league system.
I’ll refer to them as the core four plus one. And we’re going to look at how the Yankees handled these ballplayers to hold them on to their team. And I think there are lessons that can be learned from what the Yankees did with . . . I’m going to start with the core four.
Andy Pettit, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter plus one, Bernie Williams, to keep them on the team and valuable for as long as they did. So, before I go into the details of the show, I just want to say that this episode is brought to you by two sponsors. The first one is consultingassignments.com, which is a site where you can find and fill consulting assignments, full-time consulting positions, temp to perm and contract to hire opportunities anywhere in the world, completely free.
So, where I last left you, I was talking about the core four plus Bernie Williams. And I think there’s some wonderful lessons about staff retention from their stories.
Let me start off with Williams, who was a minor leaguer at the time that the Yankees had a center fielder named Roberto Kelly playing for the team. Now, Kelly was a good ball player for them in his early career. He was playing well for them, adequate defensively.
And the Yankees saw something in Williams. They thought he might be able to become that kind of a hitter, as well. But they also saw that he was a better defensive player.
So, what the Yankees did is trade Kelly for . . . as part of a deal where they got Paul O’Neill, who became a staple in right field, and promoted Bernie Williams to center. Now, the lesson here is the importance of making room for talent in an organization. Now, I’m a baby boomer.
I’m in my 60s now. Yet, I look at so many of my generation blocking the path of people who are coming up the ranks. They’re not training or coaching them.
We’ll get to that a little bit later in the Yankee story. So, what the Yankees did was they made room for a young ball player. And they’re holding down a job and they’re doing well, but there’s no mentoring going on.
There’s no space being made for the young to enter the workforce. The Yankees made space. They got something good from making the trade, but they made space for a young ball player.
Who Gets Your Attention?
Where can you be making space? Where can you be, at the same time, transferring someone to a different part of your organization that they might enjoy as well, but one where they’re not quite indispensable? You know what I mean? That role that they’ve done for the last 10, 15, 5 years, that they do very well. But you know what happens when you do the same thing repetitively? You get stale. So, the Yankees made room for Williams, who they judged to be a better ball player by getting rid of someone.
Here’s another wonderful example from our recent retiree, Derek Jeter. Now, go back to, I believe it’s 1996, where Joe Torre is a first time Yankee manager, not well regarded as a manager yet. After all, he’d been fired from previous jobs and his teams had not done particularly well.
And they had a mediocre shortstop playing the field and they decided to give Jeter a chance at short. Now, coaches looked at Jeter and they said, he’s an adequate, at best, defensive player. We don’t know if he’ll ever get any better.
And he’s a singles hitter. He’s not going to hit a lot of home runs. That would be absolutely true, as was the part about him being an adequate defensive player, at best.
So, Jeter was fired from his job. He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job.
He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job.
He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job.
He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job.
He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job.
He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job.
He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job.
He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job.
He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job.
He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job. He was fired from his job.
He was fired from his job. He was fired. He was fired from his job.
career,毛 seen in this generation has. Let’s give him a chance. At worst, we can always go back and get another player to play short later on.
But let’s give him a chance. He’ll probably start off at the same place as for me, but he has an upside to him. Now, let’s fast forward years later, five World Series championships, another appearance as well in 2001 where they didn’t win it.
Jeter, clearly a backbone of the Yankee organization growing up to become the captain of the team, because of the values that he represented through his conduct. He’s a ballplayer that you never heard scandal about in an age where scandal was so prevalent. Never, ever an iota of an issue with him.
And what the difference here is, management went the bat for someone. And it was the young ballplayer and they said, we can always adjust later on. But let’s give him a chance.
Roadblocks. Perseverance. Adversity. Resilience. Determination
How many people do you give chances to? Again, part of the idea of making space for someone young comes in the Derek Jeter story, and his fire and his determination when important games were on the line. Religion. Was he a perfect ball player? No, he’s really good ballplayer.
Mariano Rivera, the all time saves leader in Major League Baseball. And this is also true of Jeter, as well. They were never the highest paid players at their position.
But through the treatment that they received by management, they engendered loyalty, or management fostered loyalty in these players. So at the time that Alex Rodriguez signed the $25 million deal with Texas, Jeter went to management, he said very simply, I want to be paid fairly given the market. I’m not asking for the most money.
I’m asking to be paid fairly. It’s time to increase my salary. How many of you ordinarily would do that for people where someone goes to you without a gun put to your head and increase their salary to market rate? Very unlikely.
In Rivera’s case, the best closer in the history of the game, never was paid the most dollars for his position. He was always treated top of the line. But he loved being a Yankee.
So the Yankees treated him in a particular way that allowed him to be compensated. Well, he’ll be coming back just like he did this year, the spring training, just like I’m sure Jeter will and Pettit and all the rest of them will. But when all is said and done, two beloved figures in the organization treated well, not at the highest rate, but compensated fairly.
How many of you do that? How many of you force your employees to go out and change jobs, and then suddenly rush back and go, we’ll give you a counteroffer? Yes, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Why aren’t you proactive? Because you have policies? The policies are wrong.
Change the policies. Do things differently. And suddenly, you have loyal employees.
Posada. Posada, when he came to the Yankees, was a minor league ballplayer. The first level catcher was the man who eventually became manager of the team, Joe Girardi.
And Joe functioned as a coach mentor for Posada in his first his his initial season with the Yankees, and helped Posada become from an atrocious defensive player to a marginally adequate one on the team and was always a very good hitter for his position. How many of you have coaches and mentors for your young talent to teach them the rules of the road, to mentor them and help support them getting ahead, integrate them into your organization? Do you have new hires? Do you have mentors assigned to them that they can puppy dog with? Or are they just left to figure it out on their on their own? Now, you can do it that way, like you always have. But, lo and behold, when you take a young person and mentor them, when you take a veteran employee and mentor them into the ways that your organization operates, a lot of good comes from it.
Here’s the final example I’ll give you, Andy Pettit. Pettit, Yankee through and through, but there was a stage in life where he said, I want to be home with the kids. So he left pitching Houston with Roger Clemens, another Yankee pitcher.
They both went off to Houston. They had excellent careers there. But there was a point where Pettit’s kids were more grown.
And he decided that he was going to keep pitching. He wanted to pitch for the Yankees. Now, this is the idea of having people leave with good reasons and keeping the door open for them to come back.
Stay Interviews
Many firms I know don’t do that. They say you can come back. But once you’re out the door, they’re done with you.
They don’t want anything to do with you. Not the case with the Yankees. There were guys with character and with questionable character.
I’m putting Clemens in that category, because although he’s been acquitted, there’s enough, there’s plenty of comments to suggest he was a steroid user while on the team. But the Yankees kept the door open for two talents to consider returning. They didn’t burn bridges.
They always maintain cordial relationships. The fans may have gone crazy at their departure, but the Yankees respected the decision, didn’t necessarily like it, but respected it and maintained the relationship that allowed them to come back. You can get excellent talent if you don’t burn the bridges.
So those are a couple of thoughts I had about the Yankees and how they can . . . some of their conduct affects staff retention. And I just want to simply say, I’ve been a search professional for more than 40 years. I’d love to help confirm staff positions.
I fill positions in 49 out of 50 states plus areas of Canada. If you’d like my assistance, reach out to me at JeffAltman at TheBigGameHunter.us. That’s J-E-F-F. You know, like my name over there.
Jeff Altman, all one word at TheBigGameHunter.us. Reach out to me. I’d love to help you firm staff positions. If we’re not already connected on LinkedIn, send me a connection request at LinkedIn.com forward slash IN forward slash TheBigGameHunter.
I accept connection requests from people worldwide. As long as you’re not in the country known for scams or spam or as long as you’re not a third party recruiter. So this is Jeff Altman.
Hope you found today’s show helpful. I’ll be back next time with more no BS hiring advice. Take care.
Have a great day.
