Interviews with unicorns from sports business and their unique stories, dreams, ideas, insights, innovations, flops and career paths. Get a unique perspective of the inner workings of jobs working in sports beyond just pro sports leagues. Hosted by 30-year sports business veteran Matt Farrell, President of Farrell Sports and CEO of Bat Around.
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19. Life of an Executive Recruiter in Sports with Jeff Yocom, Senior Partner at Elevate Talent
Episode 19 of the Farrell Sports Business podcast - Host Matt Farrell talks with Jeff Yocom, an executive recruiter in the sports business industry. He shares insights into his role and the changing landscape of executive recruiting especially in sports business. He discusses his background and how he got into recruiting, as well as the evolution of his career from working for a company to starting his own and eventually being acquired by Elevate Talent. Jeff also talks about the impact of Elevate on his work and the expanded resources it provides. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the needs and culture of clients when conducting a search and highlights the role of communication and feedback in the recruiting process. Jeff also discusses the changing job market in the sports industry and the challenges of attracting talent in a post-pandemic world.
Farrell Sports Business (00:00)
On this week's Farrell Sports Business podcast, we're going to go look inside the life of an executive recruiter who specializes in the sports business. If you like this podcast, please give it a like, please give it a comment. If you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe. Plenty of other topics that we cover. This one is a fascinating one where so many people want to work in sports. Some people even want to transition from non -sports jobs into sports.
And we're going to look at what the needs are and what the job is of an executive recruiter. What trends is he seeing? What is happening in the space? What types of jobs are being created in sports and how as a job seeker, can you work collaboratively with someone who's an executive recruiter? So long time relationship with one of the senior partners at elevate talent who started his own business early.
and eventually sold his business in executive recruiting. Now he's with Elevate Talent, Jeff Yocom
Farrell Sports Business (01:17)
Jeff, welcome to the podcast. Really appreciate you joining.
Jeff Yocom (01:21)
Matt, very good to see you, my friend. Thanks for having me.
Farrell Sports Business (01:24)
So let's start, we're going to talk about what life is like as an executive recruiter, especially in the sports business, but really just a peek inside what your life is like. But I'd like to start with just a little bit about you. Can you, can you talk about your background and then we'll get into elevate and what your role is there.
Jeff Yocom (01:46)
Sure, yeah, would love to tell you a short version of a longer story. I am in the Pacific Northwest. I ended up at Arizona State with no concept that I could ever work in sports, Matt. I I went down there, there was, I didn't know about Ohio U or even Oregon's programs now, UMass, all the programs that have popped up since I became a professional. Didn't know there was really an opportunity. And so I ended up getting into
management consulting, hospitality consulting for a period of time, three years of kind of global travel, doing some interesting things. I don't know anybody in my world that went to school to become a headhunter or recruiter. There's not a major for that as far as I can tell. Maybe I should, you know, create a cottage industry there. But at the end of the day, I tripped into recruiting when the company that I worked for at college went out of business or was starting to kind of hemorrhage. I needed a more stable, secure,
kind of career, found a job in recruiting that I didn't really think was going to last. And I did that for six years, accounting and finance, which I'm definitely not going to bore you with. but I got great training, blocking and tackling of recruiting, which there is that in every business and found my way luckily into sports because I was reading the book of lists. And then one of the fastest growing companies in my state was a company that was in sports training and part of their business was, was recruiting. so, that was.
more than 20 years ago, so I would consider myself a long -term veteran in this industry. I've seen a lot of changes. I've grown relationships and clientele over the last 20 years, part in my own company that I started Marquee Search. I started out with Gameface, which was the company that I found early on. But after a really good run on my own with a small team, we got acquired by a London -based company, SRI, and since then we've been acquired by Elevate, which is now I'm happily owned by North America.
and company now. it's been a long trip to I guess get to a point where I know what I want to do when I grow up and it's fun to be able to serve kind of the needs of the industry through the lens of infrastructure and talent.
Farrell Sports Business (04:00)
So we were talking a little bit off camera before we started about elevate talent that is joining, a company that has a lot of maybe more resources than you've typically had in the past. It, as a company, it seems to put a lot more clubs in the bag, for you and how does, how does that impact you and maybe talk about elevate a little bit.
Jeff Yocom (04:26)
Yeah, I appreciate that. I I now have an array of partners and array of professionals around me that support the industry above and beyond infrastructure. And so while Elevate Talent serves the industry through the lens of talent advisory and a traditional executive search firm, we're surrounded by a data group that has great deep insights into the industry, surrounded by a creative talent team that creatively are doing things with NFL stadiums in terms of the work
that they can do to create new experiences for our clients to monetize. We have an experiences group that, albeit the US Open for the first time, the experiences group does quite a bit of work with the US Open and a variety of other really large global events. And so at the end of the day, we've got this group of professionals across various specialties within sports and entertainment that I can now pull on for the benefits of my client if they have a specific need that isn't really talent or infrastructure related.
that could be around succession planning, that could be around a new arena, a new venue. I now don't have to refer those to people outside my own network. I can provide that information and those relationships by way of Elevate and the group that we've assimilated here.
Farrell Sports Business (05:43)
I want to go back to one of your comments before of, okay, maybe there's not a neck, a natural course or a track for executive recruiting in, in college or master's programs. But if you were going to look back, I'm sure you get asked this more now than you did maybe even 10 years ago. What are the skillsets you would, you would look for if somebody who wants to go into that field.
Jeff Yocom (06:08)
That's a good question. mean, I think they're similar to other parts of our business in terms of, I always look for people with critical thinking skills. I look for, in terms of solving problems, thinking on their feet. I want people frankly have good judgment that I can trust that has, when the chips are down, you know, I'm not available. They're going to have good common sense. And again, that they've, that kind of envelops credibility, you know, the ability to work with.
an organization and bring this kind of expertise, you know, and, and, knowledge base and be able to share that in a, I'd add, you know, by saying this, the communication skills, so verbal communication skills, written communication skills for top CFOs in the business, for top operators, from top technical people, if they don't have good communication skills, their careers will be limited. Right. So to me, it's, it's a function of all of those kinds of things. And then when you're hiring in certain areas, then it's more about the hard
skills and things that they've actually done. if we just placed a legal counsel, you know, that's not something that I do, but I certainly know how and I my team can recruit for that. That's an area that has, you know, additional experience that you're going to need additional education, finance as well, IT, you know, those certain areas. But when you're talking about revenue, talking about commercial roles, then it often is looking at scoreboards and it's looking at what's your history, you know, what's, what's the past performance look like? Cause that's going to be the best predictor of future success.
So that's the kind of things I look at. And then I contextualize it based on, is it I'm looking for another recruiter or am I looking for someone for my client?
Farrell Sports Business (07:47)
Yeah. So maybe executive recruiting generally of, in the sports industry. Do do you find it has a starting point that it tends to be director and above, where's the, where does it generally kick in?
Jeff Yocom (08:04)
That's a good question. I'd say that we are typically C -suite minus one, maybe minus two. So that's typically like vice president and above for our clientele. There are other recruiters that do managers or directors. I think it gets to be a bit tricky. And I think about this from the candidate perspective, because when I was young and up and coming and growing, I wouldn't really know how to interact with a recruiter. Not an internal recruiter, but someone in executive search. I remember I had a couple of conversations with people long ago when I was introduced
Farrell Sports Business (08:10)
Okay.
Jeff Yocom (08:34)
and I didn't really understand what they were serving in terms of what their job was, right? So I think that the more junior talent may need a little more seasoning and experience before they start having those conversations with recruiters pending the introductions they've gotten or even the outreach. Maybe they did, if they're rising talent, they probably do get outreach from someone that's paying attention to them. So for us, it's typically VP level and above, but there are probably others that do serve that.
manager director level.
Farrell Sports Business (09:07)
So let's say new client signed this afternoon. Just general walk through what a process would look like. You know, is it two months? Is it three months? And what would your steps be?
Jeff Yocom (09:23)
Yeah, I don't want to bore you too much, but I would tell you that we have more rigor than less. So when we get into a process at the beginning, I've got a couple of new searches I'm working on. will share a timeline with a client and suggest, how do you feel about, generally it's a 12 week timeline. They might ask us to do better than that and say, hey, we'd really like this to be in eight weeks. We've certainly done six and eight weeks. It's the trade -offs. Like, what do you trade off for that? There are searches that go on longer because your client, you know,
something else or changes changes the mandate to some degree. So 12 weeks is normal and those deliverables from a search firm typically in our case heavy research on the beginning part of the search. We're making sure that the brief is ready for prime time and by that I mean that we're ready to send out a candidate brief that really has some sizzle to it because if you're recruiting a talent you really need to ensure that the brief tells the story that you're telling as a recruiter because if it falls flat they go, hey Jeff you told me
great story about this job, but it doesn't really line up with the job spec. You know what I mean? So the consistency of marketing materials was, I mean, you're a marketing guy and you recognize the importance of that. So that's the front end of the work that we're doing. And then the, you know, our job is the really early part to build the right pipeline and get to a short list for our client that has the right number of diverse profiles for our client of candidates that have the skillset that are interested, that fit into the money that fit into the
You know, so that's a big part of our job and we're providing feedback for our clientele really that entire time by way of technology a portal into our work But also progress reports. I've had three client calls today where I was reporting the progress of our search I have a team around me and I can let them know this is where we stand Some of those are close to the finish line. We're close to an offer others are just starting but I would say we're very process driven to get to the kind of results that you need because
it's not just let's throw some names in the air you know make a couple phone calls and here's your three people that doesn't work in my world.
Farrell Sports Business (11:31)
So we worked together when I was at USA Swimming, you helped conduct the search for a few positions at the time. And this to me falls into a little bit of the maybe subjective side of your business or maybe the softer skill is a better way to say it. maybe you didn't need to know USA Swimming in and out or your client in and out.
but you had to have a real good feel for the type of person they're looking for the culture that would be a good fit. That seems like to be a real skill in itself of yes, there's the job spec and the comp and location and all that, but there's a more nuanced side of it. would think.
Jeff Yocom (12:20)
I don't look like a swimmer to you, Matt. I mean, don't kidding. you know, well, you know I did is I listened to you. I mean, that's the reality of what we do. The beginning of the process. I probably should have talked about more of our intake process. So we know exactly. Thank you for kind of leading me back to the conversations that we initially had. Cause you were essentially, Hey, are you right for this search? Cause we didn't know each other. We knew each other through social media. And I remember our conversations about, this a search that you should take on? And it was, there was a trust that was being built.
Farrell Sports Business (12:23)
You could pull it off, actually.
Jeff Yocom (12:50)
And it was, yeah, we can do this. And it was because you told the great story or marketing guy, you have the art of storytelling and you narrated like, here's the moment in time that we're at as USA swimming. And this is why this role is so important to us. And so you built like the narrative brief for us. And that's something that we do regularly with our clients is spend a lot of time on the front end to ensure that we know exactly what they need and what they don't need. Cause when you start pressure testing candidates and you start,
we do that, you know, we'll start talking about candidates. We'll say, this person, this person, here's their personality. How's that going to land in this job? And it could be a brand new job. It could be a legacy job where they're taking over for someone. We always want to know what the, as much information as our client can give us about what has worked in the past, what hasn't worked, what are their problems of today? And so, you know, you can find the right skillset, but if you don't have the right personality and culture fit, you know, the other side of the coin, it's going to fall down 90 % of the time.
Farrell Sports Business (13:50)
And then just on the far other end of it, you may help help the company negotiate a compensation package. They may do that themselves. it, mean, it's really a to Z.
Jeff Yocom (14:04)
We should be there doing that, quite honestly, and I let my clients know. We had one last week that wanted to make the offer themselves. That's fine, as long as we don't let them walk into a trap or walk into a tenuous situation. So we are soup to nuts from real cradle to grave from the beginning of the search to the end, because we've built a relationship with a candidate. And if a candidate's got a few things that they are gonna ask for, it's nice to be able to manage that from our perspective and frankly kind of insulate the candidate and our client from tough conversations.
those tough negotiations, we can do that. And then we congratulate them on their new employee and a new employer. That's fun. That's a little bit of a, that's when it goes as smoothly as it should. And that's not always the case because we deal in the business of human beings. And that's not really a business, but you have personalities and you have, you've got to manage the communications that you're getting from your candidate and your clients. So you know, there's only going to be one, mean, Matt, the reality is there's one person that gets the job, right?
And you what you want to have is three or four they could probably offer the job to you want to be clear in your communication with a candidate and not you know lead them astray But you also can't let them sit there for two weeks and their spoilage of like well, what's going on? You know, I haven't heard from anybody you start people are smart. They read the writing on the wall, right? They understand that maybe they're not the top candidate And so it's our job to make sure that we're we're there with them We're letting them know as much information as we possibly can and if they're the top candidate we're doing our
Farrell Sports Business (15:24)
Yeah.
Jeff Yocom (15:34)
best to get them to the finish line sooner than later because if we do have to pivot for whatever reason you don't want to pivot to somebody who's already left the building.
Farrell Sports Business (15:42)
Yeah. So I want to go back to like the, companies that you founded like game face and even marquee. let's for simple math, let's call it 10 years ago of trends that you see maybe a couple of different directions to this. First, I want to ask you the types of jobs that you're seeing now that you didn't see then. And then separately, anything maybe about the process that's really different now than it was then of how a candidate.
comes into the fold.
Jeff Yocom (16:12)
Yeah, I didn't found Gameface. I'll give that credit to Rob Cornelis, but I will say things look so much different now than 20 years ago as anyone that's been the business long can appreciate. And I'd say that, you know, five or 10 years ago, you were looking at the highest level CRM or data or BI person in an organization might've been like, it's a manager or director reporting into, you know, a chief of staff or that probably wasn't even around a finance person. Now you have chief strategy officers, have, you
Farrell Sports Business (16:16)
Got it.
Jeff Yocom (16:44)
You have information and data that is rich as a marketer, know the value of this data. And so there's some data smog out there too. There's so much of it. But how do you interpret it? How do you use data to be smarter? And we're talking really about teams at the moment, but you talk about brands, you know, talk about organizations that want to increase their sponsorship portfolio. All of them want more and more information, not less to make good decisions. I'd say that's
function area has grown dramatically. would tell you that the infusion of private equity and you know there's news even today about the NFL, the infusion of private equity into the business good or bad is not going away. It's not going to stop. It's come in more, Elevate has private equity investors as well and so to that end the expectations have gotten higher for everyone. Any time PE is involved you know there's less of a running a business as your hobby. You know might have a
owner, there's a still handful of owners like that, but a lot of those owners have been able to sell to other organizations or you've got, you know, public traded companies or you have private equity. And that means that the expectations of running the business have gone up. And so while you can't win on the field, you don't always control that. you can control the front office, you can control the people in. And that means there's been a flow of people from outside of sport, from technology, from, you know, best in class kinds of employers.
into the sports industry that doesn't always work. There's plenty of stories that, you know, you've seen CMOs and you've seen other people presidents imported from another industry and then they leave within a year or two and you kind of go, that probably didn't take it. Doesn't sound like, and there's always a reason for her story, but the end result is you now look outside of sport because if I would have given you advice 10 years ago, as someone trying to get in sports, my other industry say probably not going to happen. You know, in most cases it might've happened in finance or leave.
again or something but in most cases like well you didn't start in sports you're not going to be you know be in sports that's completely different conversation these days
Farrell Sports Business (18:51)
Interesting. Because I've always been, it's like it can, sports can be insular and the Olympic sports can be insular. The Olympics can be even more insular college athletics, you know, those silos, but anything, and I don't mean this in a good or bad way, anything different about candidates from 10 years ago to today, expectations different to what
anything has changed from the candidate perspective that you see.
Jeff Yocom (19:22)
Yeah.
From my seat, I don't see the long, long line that used to be waiting outside the door for jobs in ticket sales to jumpstart your career in sports. mean, the Game Face Academy, I worked there 2002 to 2013. I was leading a search division within a company that helped people get their first job in sports. And now number of those people are now presidents of teams and running really big operations. And by the way, they started in ticket sales. I don't know that that business exists today.
of an organization that can develop entry -level talent to take their first job in sports. I say that because I've got daughters that are in the working world now that they like sports, but they like other things too. And at the end of the day, when you see the packages you get from tech companies and the benefits that you get and the hours are little more normal and you have your nights and weekends, sports isn't the end all be all anymore. I love the industry and I would never want to work anywhere else. I don't think.
At the end of the day, this industry for young people, I think lands differently. And part of it's clearly consumption. mean, you probably could talk to a lot smarter people than me about this, but I'm a dad of kids that don't necessarily have cable. My wife is like, why do you have cable TV anymore? Sports, you know, I mean, I don't have to, but I'm an old dog and I liked, I liked my cable TV. But that's not normal these days, especially for up and coming professionals. And so I worry a little bit about the existential crisis of where the talent comes
Farrell Sports Business (20:41)
Ha ha ha.
Jeff Yocom (20:53)
from in the future to fill some of those jobs that are really the blocking and tackling that make these organizations successful. So that's a big seed change, don't you think?
Farrell Sports Business (21:03)
I, completely agree. Do you think what was the COVID period, any type of a catalyst of, that work from home became, that was jet fuel to work from home and remote work was COVID a significant changer in the sports industry?
Jeff Yocom (21:23)
It was, I mean, again, I don't want to be too esoteric or autobiographical, I guess, to me, but people moving for jobs in our industry now will simply have people that say, I'm happy to listen to that opportunity, but I'm not going to move. I'm very comfortable where I am. I've realized post pandemic, I don't have to relocate for a job. And so we've had a harder time moving people to markets that in the past were attractive, quite honestly. And that's really more property driven, you know, the sports teams where you really can't do
the job remotely anymore. We've filled a few jobs for clients that had executives that didn't want to come back to the city. And as a result, they had to move on from those people and hire people that were going to be in the office again. I think if you don't want to work in the office, you don't have to work in the office and you just work in a different part of the business or you find another job. And I think that definitely the catalyst was the pandemic and the ways of working, you know, then and what was important to people. And now you've got CEOs and public traded companies that
ago. We need to build culture. We need to get back to the office. And you've got a lot of young professionals that go, that's not going to get it done for me. That's not the culture I want to build. See you later.
Farrell Sports Business (22:32)
Yeah. This is more just curiosity. Well, first of all, you teed it up by using the term headhunter because I was going to ask if that's if that's cool, not cool, but any misperceptions about your field that you find yourself explaining and like, no, that's not really what my job is.
Jeff Yocom (22:45)
Thank you.
yeah, I think that some of it is earned in terms of headhunters. You've got some people that like to play God in my business, because they, their bad behavior was rewarded or they work for a big brand. can think of a lot of people that have massive egos in my business and that's, that doesn't interest me. You know, I, my clients are first, they're the ones in the spotlight. I'm uncomfortable in the spotlight. I'm not sure that my clients there. I love to be impactful. I love to have influence in the industry and give good advice.
and guidance to candidates and clients. But I think if you're talking about headhunters, it's not a pejorative, it might have been at some point. But I think that there's some bad behavior of ghosting candidates, of not communicating clearly, and I'm far from perfect. But I do my best to ensure that I pick up the phone and I call someone, let them know what's going on, give them feedback as best I can to the degree that a client will want us to give that kind of feedback. But I think that the
nature of the headhunter relationship some candidates think you're you know you're working for me at the end of the day you know I try to recognize the client is the person paying us which is our client or the organization hiring at the end of the day though that candidate experience is really important and that's I hear horror stories all the time about a candidate experience which by the way doesn't reflect only poorly on the recruiter it reflects poorly on the company that hired that recruiter and so that's my norah star is like I don't want to look my clients look bad my
I get a phone call or they know like that Jeff Yocom guy is a Yahoo, he sold me a bill of goods or three months into the job, you know, he doesn't take my call and you know, this isn't the job that he told me it was going to be. Again, I'm far from perfect, but I can't sleep at night if I'm not giving somebody some sort of feedback or at least ensuring that I'm doing the best I can to make these kinds of tricky placements happen.
Farrell Sports Business (24:45)
Well, you've been part of a few different evolutions from working in a company to forming your own company to being bought and merging. Where was a great break along the way and any piece of great advice that you got along the way?
Jeff Yocom (25:02)
the advice probably was a kick in the butt, Matt, quite honestly, it was when, I remember like 2011, 12, 13, it wasn't a really great time financially coming out of the financial crisis, TARP and the housing crisis then. and I, and my daughters were younger. I've got a young one still, but I had young daughters and you know, I was making decisions based on being pretty conservative and I was working for a company again, Gameface and Rob were great to me. had a really good run, but the business had changed and his focus was different.
And as a result of that, I knew that I wanted to double down on executive search and do nothing but that. I had my friends and clients, my wife, they said, why don't you go out on your own? What are you doing? Just go do it yourself. And I'm like, I need to make sure that my employer is taken care of. they're like, you just quit worrying about this. And so I had a really good conversation with my company at the time. Told my plan, we had to work out of the right arrangement to let it happen. But I'm like, I'm going to be doing this. Let's go. And so I started that in 2013.
I had built a beautiful brand because I had really good people that could help me do that. I was able to hire people like Tyler Nelson and others in my company that really helped us, frankly, be a challenger brand that punched above our weight. The advice I took was bet on yourself. What are you waiting for? I was really an accidental entrepreneur because I grew up in the 80s with Michael Douglas Wall Street. The bigger was better. Working in Wall Street was sexy.
at the time. So I thought big business was the way to go. I never thought I want to own my own company. want to start my own thing. I never thought that. I was never that way. I was thinking I want to work big business. I want to be a CEO. And once I recognized what I could have in my own company, it all kind of came naturally. But it took a couple clients going, we don't hire the company. We hire you. They smacked me in head. So I needed that.
Farrell Sports Business (27:00)
funny, we got there different, the same result, but different paths. And you know, some chain life professional change was forced on me with pandemic and golf channel and, you know, created my own business out of fear. Yours, thankfully was maybe a little more bust down the locker room doors excited. So that's it. But two different paths, we got to the same place. So
Jeff Yocom (27:23)
a of fear though, Matt. mean, you need people around, your network, the people that you trust that you go to when the chips are down, they're amazing because that's when you're looking in the mirror and you're like, do I have this in me? And your people are telling you, no problem. And then you do it and you go, boy, I just needed to better myself apparently. So, think maybe we're liking this. There are other people that are serial entrepreneurs that listen to this and think I'm full of crap. And that's because they're serial entrepreneurs. But that wasn't me. That was never kind of how I was built. So I found my way. It took a little while, but I found my way and I'm doing
what I should be doing.
Farrell Sports Business (27:55)
Well, Jeff, I appreciate you joining. It's fascinating. I really enjoy hearing about your perspective on the industry and your role and your path. so, and for those watching on YouTube know that you can Google Jeff Yocom and Matt Farrell, and there might be a video of me doing your podcast a few years ago.
Jeff Yocom (28:16)
You had a different backdrop. I got a pretty good memory about that.
Farrell Sports Business (28:19)
Definitely. This is the office. Work from home was not for me. So, Jeff, thank you so much. Thank you,
Jeff Yocom (28:23)
Yeah, understood. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it, Matt. Thank you. All right, take care.
Farrell Sports Business (28:30)
I always appreciate Jeff Yocom He's just such a pro and always just generous with his time, whether it's working on a search together that we did in our past days or just generally catching up and keeping track of what, what's going on in my life and his life. And so I appreciate him. So we do have some other podcasts. If you liked that, there's one recently with Steve Ditmore who talks about.
what type of an education you might want to pursue to get a job in sports. So that's, one of the more recent ones. And then some others back in the back catalog or the vault, if you will, Olympic themed, talked to Chris Wilson with, with the CBC in Canada, Jill Geer the communications and marketing chief for USA gymnastics, Mel Stewart, who heads up a, swimming media site called swim, swam.
And even Marisa Wigglesworth, who is the CEO of the U S Olympic and Paralympic museum. So hopefully you enjoyed the conversation with Jeff and feel free to check out some of the back catalog of interviews as well. Like follow and subscribe on YouTube.
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