Michael Yinger
People think of a square peg in the round hole, that means that the person is wrong. Well, the problem is when you shove a square peg into a round hole, not only does the peg get hurt, but the hole gets hurt.

Jeff Ma
Hello, and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy, podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We are here to talk about business. We want to tackle those topics that most business leaders tend to shy away from, and we believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And as always, I'm looking to have conversations and hear stories from people in the real world talking about real businesses and real approaches. And today, I'm joined by Michael Yinger, he's the co founder and CEO of Resume Sieve, an HR tech startup. And he's a high performance forward thinking executive with 20 plus years of experience in building teams, managing global organizations and providing strategic guidance to C suites, sports directors, and so and so forth. Michael, welcome to the show. How are you?

Michael Yinger
I'm good. Jeff. Happy to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, I always give that formal on paper intro. And then I'm like, okay, but who are you really? So? Fill in the blanks? Michael, who are you? Who's Michael Yinger?

Michael Yinger
Yeah, well, that's that's a, that could be a long conversation. Just in general, I've been in talent acquisition for a number of years. And before that, I was in technology consulting. And before that, I was in transportation, I actually drove ships, mostly in the Pacific, but in some other places. So I've, I've had a pretty varied and exciting career, I think up till now, maybe three or four different facets to it. But you know, it's been, it's been one of of opportunity, and, and I've enjoyed myself as I've done what I've done.

Jeff Ma
That's awesome. I know specifically, though, more recently, obviously, you're in the HR space talking talent acquisition and recruitment, things like that. And that is always a topic that perks my ears up. Because especially in my line of work, and what we talk about here every week, that's a big deal. I mean, that's a big, it's a big factor a big, how we do how we approach or anyone approaches that is critical to building a culture of love or a culture, whatever, culture, you're deeming, or trying to have, and it's often overlooked, or, you know, people are trying to fix what they have, but they don't always look at how to get in and retain the talent that they need.

Michael Yinger
So well, yeah, it's, as you say, it's a huge topic there. And there, there's a lot of work that can be done in some work that people are doing, but it's it is so critical in particularly now where people have choices.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, sure. That seems to be the theme going around. So I'm curious, before we dive into that, that specific piece, what is your what is your passion? Or I guess, where does your drive come from? When it comes to HR recruiting and things like that?

Michael Yinger
You know, what attracted me to the space is, frankly, it's the variety of things that you get to deal with. I had been doing consulting, and one of the hallmarks of consulting typically is you get to do a variety of things, different kinds of projects, different clients, it ends you get to start another one. And particularly the area that I've been in recruitment process outsourcing predominantly, that's exactly what it's like, you've got different clients that have different needs. You're searching for different kinds of things. They're there things that are working for them, there's not a lot of variety. And that just keeps me excited. i There have been times where I'll go months and months and not do the same thing twice in from one day to the next and, you know, some people, no, they're not wild about that. But I like the variety. I like the challenge of having to think through a situation that maybe you haven't had to deal with before. And that's that's been very exciting for me.

Jeff Ma
What is can you describe a little bit what Resume Sieve does or what this sure how that works?

Michael Yinger
We're we have a product suite at the front end of the recruiting funnel. We have a tool that evaluates and ranks resumes. It's intended to add productivity compliance, repeatability to the process of evaluating the candidates, particularly in situations where you're getting, you know, more than a couple, you know, if you're getting 10 20-50 You want to be able to look at them all in the same way. Resumes are all written differently. People put different things in when they apply to the job. We make it easy for the recruiter to do a fair job analysis of the candidates they've got before they move on to the next step of interviewing.

Jeff Ma
Got it. That makes sense? That seems really helpful. I could use that. Yeah,

Michael Yinger
yeah. Yeah, we would. We think it's helpful. And we're getting, we're getting some response. And so looking forward to growing the company.

Jeff Ma
I think more and more companies, were they're looking for what I would call a culture add, not just a culture fit, but a culture add to their organization, some people to help them become more than what they currently are, and not just fit into a mold. I think some organizations are starting to see that some are not obviously, some are still on the other end of that. But how do you how do you view that? Where are you on on that conversation of finding those people will kind of approaches that are for that? Well,

Michael Yinger
I come from the perspective that I'm responsible for the culture, as a member of the team as a member of the organization. So how I act, how I interact are elements of that culture. And so I think it's an interesting exercise, although a difficult challenge, to hire people based on their cultural fit. Sure, there are assessments that you can do and things like that. But most often, you need to find somebody who can do the job, you need to be able to communicate what your culture is, like, so that people can make informed choices around where they are going. In the future. I just I question whether people can really do a good job, figuring out how I am going to impact their culture, that's I haven't seen, you know, I haven't seen a lot of writing on that I understand the concept. It seems to me in a way of abdicating the responsibility for creating the culture that you want, maintain the culture that you want, making that available to people, so they can make the choice to be a part of it.

Jeff Ma
So what have you found to be the best way to even get close? Or assess that even up front?

Michael Yinger
Well, certainly there are, there are questions that you can weave into your interview around activities that people have done, there are some assessments which look at things like, you know, disc analysis, for example, you can you can look at the kind of person that you're getting, and there are people who add that to their recruiting process. And, you know, it's, it's like anything else recruiting is recruiting is dating. And so people are thinking about how do I answer that question? You know, the whole thing about a lot of those those assessments is do them as honestly as possible? Well, yeah, but I want this job. Why? How do they want me to answer the question, How am I going to fit into the organization, so there's a little bit of, you know, tendency to skew it, I would say that it adds a significant level of complexity to the recruiting process, because, one, you have to find the right vehicle that is assessing what you want to look at. And then to you have to include that in your evaluation process, which means that your recruiting team has to know how to use those tools. Use the outcome of those tool sets. It's an interesting challenge. Definitely.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, for sure. I think one of the things that we practice in our recruiting is that we have our recruiters basically become the candidates best friend, or basically their biggest advocate, in the sense of, if you're about to meet with, you know, the CEO, or VP or whatever, you go ahead and tell them all the tips and secrets like the CEO likes, this doesn't like that, they tend to do this or have joke about this in all these little ways, like, like an inside kind of best friend on the inside. And the reason we do that is so that when the candidate comes, and if they didn't use any of that information, first of all, they did and great, because there's a way to see how we connect, see how they relate to those things. And, and, and a lot, I think a lot of recruitment processes focus on putting people under like negative pressure, or kind of seeing how you deal with the hardships and things like that. And a lot of times we're looking for people to be set up for success and how do you how do you perform when you're given the tools because then you understand how coachable they are or how you know how well they listen essentially, and how well they want to kind of work with the team and involve themselves. That's an approach we took. What do you think of that? Are we doing that right?

Michael Yinger
i There are two aspects of that, that I really like. The first is inherently what you're doing is you're working to build rapport and connection with the candidate. And in today's market, I've worked with some recruiting companies where their entire focus is on the relationship between the recruiter and the candidates. Candidates have choices, and you want to you want to be the company that they want to go to. And so that's the first step in that. The second step is, and you basically said this, you give people pointers. One, it tells them a little bit about the culture, but two, you're giving them the chance to use or not use this data. And what they choose to do tells you about Well, are they coachable? Are you know, are they going to fit because they understand what those things mean? So I I working anything you can do to work with the candidate. And I like the concept of on a positive basis, you know, that the negative reinforcement? How many ping pong balls can you put into 747? Right, you know, all those crazy kinds of things? Or, you know, you're in a blender, and you're only five inches tall? And how do you get out, you know, what had all of those, all those things, you know, stress inducing? Well, that tells you a lot about the organization. So I, I think your process is telling the candidate about the organization, and it goes back to what I'd said, originally, the candidate gets to make the choice of whether they fit in the organization, you're gonna get some pointers to, and it's helping them understand what they're getting into. If they don't like, you know, to be able to touch and feel and be part of the organization, well, then you might not be the company formed a workforce. That's, I think that's it. It's more time consuming, I betcha and it's the candidate touch is usually what distinguishes a good candidate experience a good recruiting process from one that isn't because so much today, the recruiting today is so overwhelmed with all the resignations, all the replacements, all the number of people applying to jobs to get back to work, that they're they're not dealing with the candidates, I talked to one executive who applied to 300 jobs, that 10 negative responses and one interview after 300 300 applications, not even to tell you, you know, forget it, you don't fit or, you know, we didn't really look at you, but we looked at somebody, um, any kind of thing that tells me you care about your candidates and candidates are going to understand that now, some may not choose to join, that's a different issue. And people want to know that you care about them, when they have choices, that can be a deciding factor.

Jeff Ma
Absolutely. That's one of our guiding principles, I think in our organization was is that people need to feel welcome. People need to feel like they belong and that they're wanted there. As a high level. I want to ask you, I guess almost a bit of a zoom out, since you just mentioned it. What is your take on, you know, the current situation of the job market in general? Obviously, you mentioned the great resignation. But where do you where do you see us now as you know, as employment is rapidly kind of evolving, changing what people want? And where do you see it going?

Michael Yinger
Well, there's a couple of aspects of that. The first is just sort of a market activity. The, with the with the change in in the way people think about the job with a great resignation, with the mismatch, but still significant mismatch between the number of jobs available and the number of people who are available to take those jobs. There's still it's still a buyers market, right? It's it's a candidates market. And then you add to that some of the cultural changes which appear to be sticking of people wanting certain things out of the organization. I'll give just give you one example. And this isn't intended to be political. But there was an announcement last week that they changed the back to work policy for Virginia state government workers, 300 people quit those that indicated why they quit. All of them quit because of the back to work policy. They wanted to be able to continue to have their flexibility. So we'll see how those things sorted out. But I think that those things are here to stay and organization that we're going to have to deal with that we're going to have to be prepared for. Can we work in a hybrid situation, Elon Musk made an announcement that raised a lot of noise that everybody has to come back to the office. Well, it wasn't exactly what he said. What he said was, everybody who is in our factories, has to go to work every day at the factory, because that's the nature of factory work. Anybody who supports the factory should have to work the same way they do and be in the office. That's not everybody in the organization, but that's what people heard. How are you communicating? And are you asking your folks what works for them or what doesn't? I was talking to a CEO who took advantage of the real estate market during COVID and bought a new facility and refurbished it and announced to her team, Okay, we're back to work. And they said, No, we're not. I moved, I don't live in North Carolina anymore. I live in Virginia. I like being at home because I can take care of my kids. I'm doing my job, I've been doing my job for two years, I'm not coming back to the office, and this woman was beside herself, because she'd gone out and done the real estate thing. She didn't ask anybody. She didn't check with what was going on with their team. That's where you run into problems that a lot of this stuff is is around communications and understanding what it is that motivates your team is not everybody, you know, some people like working in the office, and some people will will fit back into that, it's being open to that conversation and listening to what people are telling you. And all too often, we do, you know, we management, we do a lot of telling, we don't do a lot of listening.

Jeff Ma
I love the way you put that. Something we I mean, you're talking specifically about this, this, this environment we're all working in and dealing with but what you said kind of resonate to me like as a whole, whether you're talking about recruitment, or anything at all, like leaders in general, are now more than ever, but always should have been practicing listening whenever possible. And I think we've always preached that. So you, you're really resonating with me in what you're saying. When it comes to this level of empathy is how I kind of define what you're describing? Have you worked with consulted or coached people on how to do that better? Like maybe more tactfully? Or specifically how to develop these listening skills or methods to do that?

Michael Yinger
I have I did some work myself on personal empowerment and understanding what makes me tick. And so on a on an individual level, not on a consulting level, but on an individual level people who've worked for me, it's being in the conversation around, what is it that we are doing as an organization? What is it that you want to do as an individual? And how do you fit in there? What what scares people often about that conversation is that they're going to hear something that says, Well, you know, we're a, we're a recruiting company, but this person wants to be a chef. Great, how can I help them be a chef? Right? That's not a natural reaction, I would say most people, you know, oh, my god, I gotta change their mind, or I don't want to know what they want to do. I just want them to do their job. And so my personal approach is one of conversation. And I mean, I said it, it's listening, it's not, it's not telling my one of my analogies that I use a lot is that I, I've done well, with the whole concept of a square peg in a round hole, meaning suiting so that someone fits even if they're not a perfect fit, because you know, people think of a square peg in the round hole, that means that the person is wrong. Well, the problem is, when you shove a square peg into a round hole, not only does the peg get hurt, but the hole gets hurt. And so are you really thinking about how you're using your people? Are you open to putting someone where they bet where they fit, or recreating something that works for them. And it's it you know, it's it is a labor of love, it's a labor of, of often one at a time to make this happen. And, you know, I think that you the end result is you have people who are a happier, be more productive, and see begin to replicate that that kind of thinking with their team, you know, it's contagious. It you know, particularly when you see the positive results that come from it.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, absolutely love that. When you look at your, the world you work in the things that you deal with, and you think of the word love, where is the first place you get where's your mind go right away.

Michael Yinger
First thing I, I think of is the, the concept of sort of mutual self respect of appreciating what the other person has to offer, or the organization has to offer, you know, if you, if you love your company, they're doing things which which you really appreciate if your coworker loves you, it's because you've, you've synced these are the kinds of things I think about that you've synced in a way that that makes your working environment more positive. And it really is it's a mindset Are you know, are you open to the the kind of feelings that come with that because it's, you know, particularly in a work environment? You know, we I would say that, in some ways, we're conditioned to stay away from love because, ooh, what does that mean? And am I now crossing some line or something else? It's it. It can It can be a balancing act, but it's it really speaks to connecting on a an emotional level as opposed to just on a day to day work level.

Jeff Ma
Yeah. And in your experience of assuming you've seen it all right, I mean, organizations who, who, who do that well and do it poorly, what what to you are the signs are the hallmarks of, of both ends of that spectrum?

Michael Yinger
Well, some of them are pretty obvious that the organizations that that aren't in the the loving frame, you know, the conversations are testier. They're more terse, perhaps you don't see the the big events, the, you know, the working, doing things outside of work. And the so you flip it the other way around organizations that, that really have demonstrated that they love their people and their people love them. They they have great parties, and they they have great successes, they work through challenges as opposed to succumbing to them. And yeah, I certainly have seen examples of those across the spectrum. Ironically, sometimes the lack of loving organization just through sort of dictatorial activity, can can survive and can be successful, but it's tough. If you have higher turnover, you know, you have that whole stress thing that goes on with people. Those are those are pretty, you know, visible signs that you're not operating in this sort of mindset.

Jeff Ma
Guess what? Sorry, I'm bouncing around quickly, because I just have so much different things to ask you. No worries. When it comes to I guess, you're so we've been talking about kind of recruitment and you know, the, the candidates and the recruiters, but what about in your like your own, like organization in terms of not maybe your current one, but in the past, as you've worked with recruiters and with, like, within the walls of that HR space, like within the people who are responsible for others experiences and culture, things like that? What kind of learnings do you have in terms of this, what we've been talking about, they're like, love and and I'm just curious, because that space is so unique, that spaces where the burden of all these things fall on you, whether you're talking about, like the AI and all those things, are you talking about just just just satisfaction within the walls of the organization, it's a lot to think about and work with? What is culture look like in that space to you?

Michael Yinger
Well, one of the things that we did what, for many years, I was in charge of implementation. And so what that means is, somebody would sell an outsourced recruiting opportunity, and I would be the one that was responsible for setting it up. And part of that was creating the training for the recruiters. Now, the recruiters need to know about your company, if they're new hires, the end, they also need to know about the client company. And that includes culture. And so what we would do in those kinds of situations, is we would ask representatives of the organization to come and speak about the culture. And we would document that so that the recruiters understood what it was that they were putting forward. And, you know, I think it was a telling success in that there's an award every year, it's called the candy awards for the organizations that have the highest rated candidate experience. And we regularly had four or five companies who would win those awards. Now, the company won the award, we were the ones who were providing the service. So obviously, there's a relationship there. But we didn't take credit for it other than we would go and we'd have a party with the with the company that won the won the award to go go with them to accept their award, because, you know, they have to be committed to delivering this kind of service. But it's it's education, it's training. And it's getting the recruiters recruiters inherently are communicators, they are good recruiters, they understand that their job is to connect with the candidates and the hiring managers. And every thing you can do to reinforce that relationship to show them that this is about how you connect with the person is really going to have an impact on what they think about the organization and whether or not they choose to join so there's a lot of training that goes into it. There's no question for one thing, you've got to be able to articulate what is your culture? What is it that you want people to to understand about you? And a lot of organizations still, you know, they they don't they they might know what their brand is? is what they do they really understand what their culture is they you know, it's not the words that are on the wall. It's how people act, how people treat each other on a day to day basis. That's my point at the beginning, where I'm responsible for the culture that I'm living in. That's, that's an interesting lesson for people to learn. Because it's not necessarily intuitive. You can spend months creating a bunch of code words that talk about what your culture is. Do you live that? Is that? Is that really the way you are? Yeah. Because, you know, some of those are really challenging. If you just think about the word in and of itself, you know, accountability, honesty, transparency, those are great words, deliver on that. Where's where's, you know, at what point? Don't you tell people what's going on? And there it goes, transparency out the window. I'm not saying it's not possible I it, there's a commitment to it. People have to be willing to work at it.

Jeff Ma
Man, amazing. I love the way you said that. Speaking right? To me, I mean, number of number of times, I've seen organizations with the intention of adjusting, fixing and improving culture released a whole new, like bible of of values and mission statements. And day one, it does more damage than, than help because people's BS meter just kind of goes just kind of go off right away. And they're like, our new value is trust. I don't trust a single person around me. Would you want me to do this?

Michael Yinger
The first time they see someone acting against those values? Why should I Why should I play this game? Because my boss isn't and his his or her boss isn't? It's just, yeah, it's there's a commitment to it, there really is a commitment around the organization. What do you what do you truly stand for? And how do you how do you live that that's the key. It's not the words, it's the the actions.

Jeff Ma
Exactly. One thing we always kind of live by and also share with others is that like, these values need to be clearly not just communicated, but they need to be communicated clearly that they are aspirational. For the most part, like you have to have a level of vulnerability as an organization to say, we're not there. And there's power in saying, Here are values we want to be, here's some steps you want to take to get there. But we're not necessarily there. And it's like, people can hear that and be like, fair, like, at least I get it, like I hear you, we aren't perfect, and that's okay. And people can rally behind that and even help and support rather than saying, here's our new values, you guys are gonna love it look forward to amazing things. And it's like, but nothing has changed or nothing. None of these things mean anything if you're not kind of supporting us through a change.

Michael Yinger
But that obviously, there's a journey there and people don't mind being on a journey as long as they know that it's a journey. What you said just resonates so much that we just we just by fiat, okay, here are new values. Well, what's the demonstrated proof that we're already living by those values? And you know, often you know, particularly if it's fundamental change, there won't be any proof because you haven't been living by those values, which is why you put the values in in the first place. It's, it's in some of the stuff it just it seems so intuitive, but everybody wants a shortcut. You know, we got to have values the border director says we need new values and we got to move forward you know okay, well it's yeah it the journey is is as important as the summit because there really is no summit with this stuff. You know, I've been a hiker in a past life not so much now but in the past and you know, it's there's always another summit there's always something higher it's actually a tenet of Buddhism that you never you never reach the top there's always something more it because you're constantly learning and evolving and culture and values are the same way and organizations that recognize that and call that out. Have an opportunity for people to get on board and all row in the same direction and organizations that don't well then you see what happens it just words on the wall.

Jeff Ma
Well, if feels like you've been speaking my language, this entire episode, the time has flown by. But it's just been like just straight 25 minutes of you like saying exactly what I feel in my heart. So it's been it's been this refreshing, refreshing moment of just hearing you articulated so well. And, Michael, I really appreciate you taking the time today to come and drop that wisdom. Affirm some things for me but definitely for the audience share some some something to think about and some insights for them to take back. Especially if they work in that space. But I think for everybody,

Michael Yinger
uh, Jeff, I enjoyed the conversation. It's the, it's the side of things you don't often get to talk about, you know, so much of its, you know, tactical or other things. But this is, this is important, because this is the stuff. You set it right at the beginning. This is the stuff that keeps people this is retention. And if you're not thinking about this, then you're always you're always going to be dealing with churn. And that's expensive. No, yeah, this this, this pays for itself. If you stop and think about it for a moment, it just pays for itself.

Jeff Ma
Absolutely. So with that, Michael, thank you for all of your time. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this and other episodes, we come up with new ones every Wednesday. Please do check out the book if you haven't Love as a Business Strategy can find that on Amazon, others other places drop review for that this podcast, all those things, tell a friend with that. Have a great week. Thank you again, Michael and we will see you all next week.