Two years ago former NBA player Vinny Del Negro, then working as the Phoenix Suns assistant general manger, sought Mackay’s counsel. He wanted to be an NBA head coach. But he had no previous head coaching experience. Even in grade school.
The lack of coaching experience concerned Mackay but didn’t sideline his belief that he could help Del Negro. In fact, he “guaranteed” that Del Negro would be a finalist for every coaching job he applied for because Mackay was confident of his student’s ability and dedication to apply the concepts he taught him.
Del Negro’s story is the subject of the first chapter in Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door: Job Search Secrets No One Else Will Tell You. Mackay details how Del Negro applied for but didn’t get the Phoenix head coaching job but only a few months later was hired as rookie coach of the Chicago Bulls.
Last spring Del Negro’s Bulls captivated basketball fans when they played and lost a classic seven game playoff series against the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics. Two games went into overtime, one was a double overtime and another a triple overtime. The underdog Bulls were led by a first year coach whose determination Mackay describes in the book as “unscalable.”
The will to succeed is something Mackay preaches in Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door: Job Search Secrets No One Else Will Tell You. The book jacket proclaims: “You can never be sure your job will exist in five years—or five weeks. So you’d better think of your career as a perpetual job search. That demands a passion for lifetime learning and the skills for relentless and effective networking.”
Mackay’s latest book is a how-to on both career development and maintenance. It’s filled with tips on interviewing, negotiating, rejection, technology and, of course, networking (he’s been a Rolodex champ for decades). You will also read about warning signals in the work place that can indicate termination is near.
The book even comes with a guarantee. Mackay will refund the purchase price if after six months you conscientiously apply the book’s principles and still don’t find a job. (More details in the book).
What does Mackay consider the most important must-do for sports owners and executives to consider when hiring coaches or managers? The answer is identifying winners, according to Mackay. That means detailed research on candidates, investigating with such thoroughness that Mackay refers to it as CAT scanning the prospective hires. “At the end of the day you really should know how many cavities they have inside their mouth,” he said.
Then Mackay talked about having patience once a great sports hire is made. He said eventual Super Bowl winning head coaches like Jimmy Johnson and Chuck Noll only won one game in their first NFL seasons. In recent months the press wanted to fire Del Negro, the director of last spring’s near miracle upset. Del Negro answered back, Mackay said, by making NBA history when his team won five consecutive road games against teams with above .500 records.
Mackay loves athletics. His book includes former NFL coach Tony Dungy who Mackay helped recruit to the University of Minnesota to play quarterback, and if you look through the index you will see references to former Gophers coach Lou Holtz (another Mackay recruit), Muhammad Ali, Bob Knight, Shaquille O’Neal, Red McCombs and others associated with sports.