1570 - Hobby Hiring: Platform/Portal?

Foreign. Welcome Dr. James Beckett Sports Card Insight Hobby companies have needs and there are collectors out there, various level of collecting interest and ability, but they also have talents and they're looking for a job or maybe a career in the sports card industry. And I say industry more than hobby. In most of these cases you're talking about a real job, not a show up when you like it thing. But that process is not efficient. The hobby has grown and grown, the money is bigger than ever and it's time to have more of an organized clearinghouse so that the people with the jobs can find the people that want the jobs and get a good match there. I think the time has come for that. I'm doing this as a little bit of an entrepreneurial thought experiment, but somebody ought to do it. And if it's one of the Shark Tank thing that I'm going to be involved with on Saturday afternoon, the national maybe one of the companies will be that a recruiting agency or a training agency or it could be any or all of those things. But anything that pulls together what the needs are for talent and then gives the talent a bridge or a connection to get there would be good. Thanks. Sponsors Tops Panini, Upper Deck Heritage Auctions, Hugs and Scott Auctions, Mike Stadium Sports Cards, burbank sports cards compse.com and Beckett Media Beckett Grading, Beckett Authentication. The hobby has never been stronger. I'm not shocked. I think this is not a well understood thing, but I don't know if we call it a job board, but there ought to be some kind of a clearinghouse or some way that people could go to a central place. I think. Brett McGrath, kudos to him. His stacking slabs is one of my must listens and he's moving to a weekly cadence of hobby jobs episodes. But they stop short of being a full clearinghouse, although he's got a newsletter. And so the first job here is corporate counsel for for comc. Again that's specialized, senior category manager for ebay, Senior customer relations specialist for PSA Social media and content specialist for Upper Deck, Software engineer for David Adams. That's what he has just for this week and I think he's had some others in the past. Just listen to Jeff Wilson's podcast. They're opening their store. They're new Cars HQ in Detroit. They're going to be fully populating that with the new people. So they're going to be hiring. But again it's not all together in one place, which I think would be terrific. As I mentioned, the Mint Collective had this opportunity for A bunch of people to come together with the needs and then the job seekers. The national is something like that. That's an in person thing. But I think most of this is digital. But most of the interviews could be zoom. Certainly if you make a strong connection, you may want to bring the person in to your geography. Flew people into Dallas. Once we identified that, we were pretty sure we wanted to hire them. I had a good initial interview, bring them in to make sure that everybody was on board with that. And so that was good. And I'll tell you what, we didn't have a clearinghouse but a lot of the applicants we got were from just putting something in. Not necessarily in reader's right. But a lot of them were just the owner's box. We said we're looking for people or we're looking for this. And then we'd get a bunch of in those days, snail mail, some emails toward the other years. But we get interest and some of it was from kids. Yu-Gi-Oh you're hiring. So I have some. Chris Ivey came and applied for work at 13 or something like that. I should have hired him but that probably would have been illegal and his dad, who was my friend may not have liked that. But any rate, someplace where the job seekers and the job postings could come together. I think it's a business idea. I think it's an entrepreneurial idea. It does not have my name on it. It would have been something if I were still in the saddle I'd be thinking about doing because it's a real contribution to the hobby and whoever does it. I don't know that you could cherry pick and take the best applicants, but once it's out there, if you're an applicant in the process and the job in the process, there's going to be negotiations. This need for talent is more and more important because of the growth in the hobby and the success of the hobby and the prominence of the hobby, more people are considering jumping over. And I think when we're talking about a talent exchange or a clearinghouse, it's not just full time jobs, it's any kind of part time work, contracting, consulting, advisors, recruiting. I'm advisor but I got that. Virally a lot of it's word of mouth, but this is taking word of mouth and. And building a business of a clearinghouse for the jobs and the hobby. The companies are already doing things but each one probably does their own thing. Of the bigger companies they have job boards or things like that, just ad hoc kinds of things. But it's still better to just think if there was one universal place that'd be Brett McGrath's doing that, but he's wearing a bunch of hats. This is one of his hats. I hope he continues to wear this hat. But somebody needs to and it could be Brett. Take it and, and run with it further and be more, more exhaustive. If this were done right, it would also include some kind of temporary work or peak load problems. Some of the work can be done from home. Even if you were part time, I'm not interested full time. I'm not going to relocate. I think this could handle that. And a bunch of the jobs could be tailored. If you had somebody that could grade cards and was really good and they only wanted to grade five hours a day and they lived 100 miles away, Yu-Gi-Oh I'd send about a week's worth and they have to be bonded and all that. But I just think if you can connect the people with the opportunities then you can negotiate how to get it done. But to me it could be very broad in terms of. It's not just we're looking for a VP of sales. There's already executive recruiting business that handles higher stuff that could be included in this too. But I'm really talking about just from A to Z all the different things, all the needs in the industry, especially where industry knowledge is important, where somebody that understands the industry already could come in and make a contribution right away. My concept of this thinking like an entrepreneur is I don't think you're going to get the candidates to pay the big bucks and there may be some fee. You have to have a business model. I think the employers would be willing to pay. There may be sponsors or employers that get not preferred position necessarily, but they'd be sponsoring entities. I think there'd be neat not just for full time positions, but part time. Some of the seasonal stuff. If you were Dan Bliss, he's doing front row, he's going to east coast. Does he need to fly a bunch of his employees or drive a bunch of his employees from California to Georgia or Florida or maybe there's some people who would be interested in seasonal work. This could do that. Just a contract assignment, remote work, internships. When people are doing executive recruiting, it's like vice presidents that are making six figures and so there's a five figure fee. These are five figure jobs. So the business model is tricky, but I think if it was very robust it would really be a positive and the bigger companies ought to have a great interest in this happening. And for the Job seekers. I think it'd be pretty easy. Instead of a generic application, I think you could tailor an application that would indicate with some checkboxes and things like that, you'd indicate your expertise in TCG or hockey or whatever vintage. Any experience you've had with grading. Are you a grader or you do grading or do you just complain about grading? Any customer service technology, what your capabilities are, your education, your show attendance, your LCS attendance. If you go LCS attendance once every three years, that'd be a big negative to me. Your willingness to relocate or to do different things. So again, I think it could be data based in a way that it isn't just this narrative thing that you'd have to read everything. A lot of the monster.com kind of things. They're sort of using Yu-Gi-Oh or programming algorithms. But I think if you were an employer, you'd have access to all the candidates and you could slice it and dice it any way you want to. I don't think it's going to be hundreds of thousands, but there ought to be hundreds or thousands of people that are interested in working. If the card companies and other large companies in the industry and small companies had a chance to look over it and to give feedback. The other thing like I told about when I started this by my friend flunked the grading test. That's a data point. I think he got feedback, said no, you didn't pass. And so I think some of these candidates, what frustrates me, we tried to do this to be honest with a potential employee that applied for a job. So we're not hiring you and they want to know a reason. And you can't always give them a reason when you can give them a reason that you didn't pass the grading test. But if I did pass the grading test, would you reconsider me? Then you'd say, of course we would. We liked you. But you didn't pass the grading test. If you retake it at some point and you pass it, then let us know. So you'd be able to update your deficiencies. It was commented that you'd never been to a modern LCS. You went back in the 80s or the 90s or the the junk wax era. When that is pointed out, you say, okay, I'm going to cure that. Then you put that in there. If I did this, it'd be big on not just reputation rep references. I think the relational aspect of this industry is a big deal. The problem with references, there'd have to be very carefully done that the reference would include how you know this person, do you know them in a working context or a friend context? My friend that precipitated this. I know him mainly as a junior friend. He came through for me a couple times and was helpful as my rep. But I haven't worked with him day by day. But some of the best references I got of some of the greatest employees that I ever had came from references where I really knew the person person that was giving the reference and they said I worked with this guy day after day for two years. This guy is terrific. You're going to thank me for the rest of your life if you hire this person. If you don't hire this person, you are an idiot. I hired the person, he really was terrific and many of you know who I'm talking about and probably he's not the only one. But that was the more dramatic statement was made for that guy. Have a preference that this mainly be for full timers, but I wouldn't restrict that. As I said, I think if you were a floating grader could come in when there's a peak load problem. Wouldn't PSA love to have some pre trained graders who could come in and cut through the 10 million card backlog and hit the ground running? Even though I was critical in the previous episodes about job titles, you could have a category or a list of job titles of these are the ones I'd be interested in. And the companies could say these are some job titles that we generally would have need for. Not necessarily specifically, but just these are some things we're shortage. We need some people that have organizational skills, bookkeeping skills, technology. So it should not be very narrative. It needs to be databaseable so that you can select for certain things. But it's not generic things. It's heavy on the meaningful hobby need and hobby experience. And not every job requires a lot of hobby insight, but a bunch of them do. And it's just an edge. Mainly I'm talking about a digital platform for this. But if this kind of clearinghouse thing happened there could easily be events at the big shows at the West Coast National Fanatics Fest, the National the Waters Create Dallas Card show, the Philly show, the Strongsville Show. Vintage. If somebody's looking for vintage that's where I would go. But it needs to be databased in a way that you can easily select out in a way that you could get some candidates, but you'd want to have some physical events where there were some meetups where the hiring entities were able to connect with the people. Maybe it's like speed dating. Here are the hiring managers and here's the employees and they're going through their one or two minute introduction. You can get a first impression, you can ask a couple of questions and then you can go to round two and you see what happens. The difficulty, the reason that this hasn't been done. In fact, a guy come to me in my pro bono consulting said I got the greatest idea, nobody's ever done it. And I said the reason it hasn't been done, it's been thought of, but it hasn't been done because nobody's figured out how to make money from it. And you haven't either. And again, you can't charge the candidates. You can charge employers, but you can't charge them that much if they're not high level positions that are six figures. On the other hand, strategic positions where you have a shortage and that shortage is costing you. If you could find a way to surface graders ready to go graders or with minimal training could get going. PSA would say, count me in and what is that going to cost me? Because. And I'd say they're losing money, but they have an opportunity. Loss of cards there that they can't even get them in the door. They are so Beckett up, they're in the foyer, they're in the anteroom, they can't even process their incoming mail. That's how many submissions they're getting. So I'm not picking on them. But any company that has great need, their willingness to pay for a service like this is based on how serious their need is. And look at the Yu-Gi-Oh poaching people moving from one of the big companies to another. Anthropic is pulling from OpenAI. And so I'm really not talking about that. I'm just talking about if there's a central place. So this is not a poaching thing. It's not LinkedIn. I'm here, but here would be a situation I'd be interested in. That's the way I'd look at it. And here's some needs we have as a company. Unless you had several major companies in the industry that said we're going to back this and there may be some small fees for people who are looking for jobs, but most of the money needs to come from sponsors or from the placements, the benefit the employers would get. Another reason this hasn't been done is the industry is just very fragmented and you've got natural rivalries that don't always cooperate and sometimes litigate, that's problematic. But again, this would be a fair process. The candidates would have no reason to bypass the program if it's not costing them anything. And any company that said, you know what, don't apply through this platform, just come see me and then we'll save the fee. To me, that'd be a lack of integrity. That's no bueno. I think the other cost that I'm underestimating is that you have to verify the references. So If I gave 10 references and you could sample two or three, and if they came back just perfect, then you might have some confidence. But if you've got to check 10 references, if that's 10 phone calls, it can't be a phone call. This has got to be hands free. And you probably have to have a situation where the listings don't get stale, either the companies or the job seekers. You get three months and then you gotta go off and re recalibrate or relist. Otherwise, if a job has been there for a year, a person's been there for a year, it just looks bad. In fact, that's what they do with the mls, with the housing. If a house is for sale and it's been on the market for 900 days, that's just a negative. And so what they do, they take it off the market for 30 or 90 days, something like that, and relist it for a slightly lower price and then it looks like new on the market. Maybe that's tricking the system. But you don't want it to be stale and you want the employers not wanting to bypass the platform. Maybe there's some loyalty points or something, but employers that really use the platform more and hire more people get some preferred standing. So I'm putting on my shark tank hat and I'm saying I think this is not a good business for somebody that wants to make a lot of money. But I think it'd be a great opportunity for something to do for a contribution to the health of this industry. So I'm happy to be a pro bono consultant on this idea. I'm not going to run with it, but it's not going to be a billion dollar idea, maybe not even a million dollar idea, but I think stuff like this is part of the glue that really would help the hobby get to the next level. If we're 10xing this needs to happen. If we're going to 1.1x and grow 10% a year, which was what that means, then fine, let's just keep doing what we're doing but 10x and that's what Fanatics if Fanatics said yes, somebody ought to do this we're in who else is in. That's the kind of thing or collectors another big or ebay saying this needs to happen. We're going to put some financial resources toward it and dedicated person to assist with this. That'd be cool but can't make anybody do anything. It's an idea I hope happens and I hope everybody has a great time at the national. I think 99% of the people at national are not looking for a job. They're looking for cards. And me, I'm looking for cards. Plural. People say what card are you looking for? That is not the right question for me. I'm looking for cards and quantity of cards but cards that I want that I get to pick out the ones I want. Just like the job seeker. Job seeker. Not looking for a bunch of jobs. Now it might be nice to have more than one offer but they want to get a great fit. I'm not looking for a great fit. I'm looking for many cards that I'm going to enjoy. So I'll be back and I love this hobby. Is doing dollar right.