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Asset Management to the NFL: Hiring Smart
by Mike McLaughlin
It's a logical career path: asset management to the National Football League (NFL). Ok, not really.
With NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue ready to resign after 16 wildly successful years, the search is on for his replacement. As it turns out, one of the five finalists is Fidelity Investments COO Robert L. Reynolds. Though Mr. Reynolds was a college football referee for a number of years, his potential leap from Fidelity to the NFL is far from obvious at first glance.
The consideration of Reynolds is just the latest in a sequence of interesting, alternative-looking hires in the world of sports. For example:
- The Minnesota Wild hired a former beat writer as Director of Hockey Operations.
- The New York Islanders promoted retiring goalie Garth Snow to General Manager.
- The Texas Rangers and Boston Red Sox hired Jon Daniels and Theo Epstein, respectively, as General Managers when both were just 28 years old.
What makes these moves intriguing is that they go against the grain of traditional thinking. These organizations overlooked age, experience, and other primary factors in the search for the best candidates. Given the stakes involved in hiring new people, these are bold moves.
The news about Mr. Reynolds and the NFL made me reflect on the hiring practices of asset management firms. Like most others, our industry is incestuous when it comes to finding talent. It's easier to hire the guy with experience from the firm next door than take a chance. We at kasina are constantly asked by our clients if we have leads on people from other firms who might be interested in switching teams.
Too often the problem is that firms end up ignoring the vast pool of talent beyond the industry's borders. Certainly asset management has no monopoly on great people. As firms continue to remake themselves in an increasingly competitive environment, the industry will likely need to be more creative in the way it identifies the individuals it brings into the fold.
We are starting to see some changes.
- The marketing teams at several firms purposely focused outside the industry for recent strategic hires, including people whose backgrounds are in diverse businesses such as consumer products and online retailing.
- Recent college grads are becoming more of a strategic hire at a few kasina clients, infiltrating wholesaling teams and other critical functions.
While these are steps in the right direction, there is plenty of room for creative growth when it comes to finding talent. As with Commissioners in the NFL, the best wholesalers and marketers of tomorrow may be people without an ounce of direct experience but who instead have the intellectual and operational skills to make things happen. Such an open-minded approach to unearthing new hires can be a differentiator to helping firms separate themselves from the industry pack.