 From our studios, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto studios today for a CUBE Conversation. You know, every place we go, a lot of the conversation is about the future of work. And oftentimes that's really in the context of the tools, whether it's Slack or Asana, or, you know, Facebook groups. Everybody's trying to get into this, but there's a lot more to the future of work and it's really about talent and getting talent in a hyper-competitive talent space. It's about culture and ethics and morals and especially some of the stuff that we've seen recently with what happened at Wells Fargo and obviously what's going on at Facebook. There's a much more complicated part of the story in terms of the people side. We're excited to have somebody who's applying kind of AI and all the technology that we talk about all the time at the shows to culture. And so for the first time, I'd like to welcome Mitch Gijun, he is the co-founder and CEO of TalentFit AI. Mitch, great to see you. Hey, nice to see you, Jeff. Thanks for having me here today. Absolutely. So before we get into it, because a lot of fun stuff, just give people kind of the quick overview of what you guys are all about at TalentFit AI. Yeah, definitely. So we make it easy to find the right person for your context, so your culture of your organization. Basically take an evidence-based approach to calibrating your culture and then quantifying culture fits. So you actually reduce bias from the hiring process, at least through the phases that we take you through. And then ultimately you end up saving time, energy, money, hiring and retaining the right people. So it's both the culture at the company and then it's the culture for the applicant and trying to make a match. Yeah, basically matching their ideal culture, so what they want to get, their sort of fundamental values, their needs, the norms that they have, and then matching that to what the company actually has internally, not what's necessarily written on the wall for them. Right, that's kind of insane. I would imagine the first big point in conversation, so you do like a culture assessment at a company, you come at it from the company point of view or more from the employee applicant point of view? Yes, we actually start by calibrating the culture by understanding what the culture is across the organization based on employee feedback. From that, we're able to extract that. We do some validation stuff based on performance, based on engagement scores, other things like that. And then from there, anybody who's an applicant who's applying, we can actually help the company actually assess, do they actually fit this company culture? Right. So I would imagine it's kind of like reputation, right? You think your reputation is not what you say it is, is what people talk about when you're not in the room. And I would imagine when you're doing kind of a culture assessment, there's one is figuring it out, but I've got to guess it's just a lot of times where the culture data that you collect based on real data doesn't necessarily match what maybe the leadership team of the company thinks it is. Yeah, and it's actually funny, that's kind of the inspiration for having started this company in the first place is actually finished my MBA and joined a company. And for me, it was like, we went through the hiring process, did all the due diligence, and realized once I joined the team that my ideal culture wasn't exactly what the culture was in the organization, not saying it was a bad culture, just saying it wasn't the right place for me. And had the right personality traits and whatnot to do well in the role. At the same time, I wasn't able to actually sort of feel like I got what I needed from the company. And then probably for me too. So it's one of those things, we help you basically not go into the wrong situation where you're not in a good place to succeed too. Right. And you talk about a bunch of things that kind of determine culture. So there's the plaque on the wall, as you walk in the front door, but it's really, and you outlined it a bunch on your set. It's the norms, it's the behavior, it's how people are rewarded. So there's a bunch of real discreet things that you guys can measure through your process that actually define culture in a way that you can put numbers on it and you can compare culture A to culture B. Yeah. What do you see some of the most important things or where do people usually miss between what they think is the culture and where they execute the culture? Yeah, it kind of varies from company to company. So we use the thing called the cultural signature. This is saying that you and I can both sign a check. Hopefully both our checks are gonna actually pass and they won't bounce. But your signature is no better than mine, mine's no better than yours. It's just unique to your own situation. And sometimes you'll see that leadership especially may not be in touch with what the culture of the organization actually is based on their employee's feedback. And so this is what we kind of do. It's kind of like understanding what the culture is, seeing those gaps between what leadership thinks and what it actually is. And in leadership if they do care about culture which most of our customers would, they can start making those appropriate changes to get to their aspirational state if they want to. Right. And then when we first are getting ready to do this interview and I think to myself, well wait, if you're just bringing in people that kind of fit the culture, are you just kind of going birds of a feather? Are you missing the opportunity of what's so important right now in terms of diversity, diversity of opinion, diversity of background, diversity of point of view? But you're saying personality fit and culture fit are two very different things. So how do you look at the difference between personality and getting diversity in the company which is good versus getting cultural misfit which is not good? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, they're definitely very different things. And there are some ties to it but you think of like people often associate with culture fit as, hey, I can sit down and have a beer with you. Or we talked to a couple of companies like, hey, are you a gamer? Then you're able to be able to work with us because you fit our culture. But that's not really what it is, right? At the end of the day, it's about these fundamental values that you have with an organization, what you actually wanted of the organization and that it's matching your needs. So we actually have an advisor who's one of the sort of top diversity inclusion people in Canada for a global organization. And she's also helping us through this process of ensuring, auditing our algorithm, make sure that we're taking the right steps and managing and ensuring that we're tracking demographic data so that we actually do not have bias in our algorithm at the end of the day. So that's kind of what we're about. Yeah, so I'm curious about kind of where are the bounds of the culture in terms of kind of number of people, if you will. So there's obviously, do we fit as an employer, an employee, you get along with your boss, you have a culture. There's kind of like your group that you're intimately involved with who you work with day to day, whether that's, I don't know, six people, 10 people. I'm curious if there's kind of a natural bound and then maybe you're part of a department and obviously if you work at a company like Amazon, just to pick a name out of that, they're over 600,000 people. So where are the limits of culture or can they successfully span from all the way at the top, all the way down to those little micro groups? Yeah, so usually we think of it as there's core culture to the organization and that's kind of things that are aligned across the entire organization, right? So you think of person organization fit is how they define it in the research. You get into like things like person group fit, so this could be the specific team you work on and there's also cultures with these subcultures on the team, so the way we've built our algorithm is actually taking and being inspired by pieces of research that actually look at group fit, look at organization fit, and then be able to match people effectively, sort of both of those. So you look at, so you try to look at it all. But at the end of the day is your probability of success within an organization more determined by that kind of close intimate group or the bigger group, because then maybe you find a different path if that immediate group doesn't work for you. What do you find? Yeah, so right now we're still pretty early stage, right? So we're going to be tracking stats and seeing how people actually fit to the overall organization, how they fit to the groups. Right now we're doing matching to specific groups and teams because there are subcultures within the organization. Those teams will still have those core values of the organization too, but things like their leader may be a bit different the way they manage their people, right? So that's kind of what we're looking at right now. And do you find that senior leadership really understands the importance of culture? Because you mentioned in some of your posts on your website and some of the articles that you referenced that culture can be a great asset, right? I've interviewed Patty McCord with the work she did at Netflix is kind of legendary and everybody goes to that deck, 127 page slides. I don't like slides. I went through the whole deck. It's amazing. But it can also be a real negative. It can be a real problem. And does leadership understand that to the point where they're making the investments to make sure that culture is an asset and not liability? Yeah, and I think it's changing a lot. I think it used to be leadership kind of set the direction and you kind of had to listen to what was going on and you had to sort of abide by the rules of the culture. And if you didn't, you're kind of gone. You know, I think that's shifting a lot because people are more attracted to organizations that they know they fit the culture. They feel they align with the culture. They're more likely to accept job offers. They're likely to actually take a pay cut even a lot of the reachers are showing. So I think those are factors that are coming to the equation now. And companies are realizing that if we want to attract the top talent, great, everybody can pay X amount of money for a candidate to join now at the same time. If you're being recruited by five different firms and they're all offering the same pay, what's your differentiator? And so culture can be a differentiator and especially leaders I think are realizing it could be a competitive advantage. It's going back to the whole talk of like, culture strategy for breakfast. And I think that's an important thing to think about is that companies I think are buying into that more than ever now. But ultimately it's about execution. You got to execute it. You got to walk the walk and talk the talk. And clearly when it works well, it works really well. And one of the examples we use around here just because it's so easy in your face is the Warriors. Perennial losing organization lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. They get a change at the top before you know it. They're the premier brand in the NBA right now that's really been top down driven by Joe Lakeup all the way down to the players. But I wonder is it more of a stick or more of a carrot? Is it because employers now have to do this because of the employment market is so tight? Is it because they're trying to get the younger kids who are coming out of school who are much more mission driven than maybe I was when I got out of school. I just want to get a job and get going. Or are they really thinking more holistically kind of lifetime value of that employment relationship with these people? I think it's a bit of both to be honest. I think they obviously see the benefit from the, hey we can attract the top people here, but they also see the business benefit of it now too right? And I think that's the one thing that has often forgotten the past. And I love the example, the Warriors right? And I think this is one thing that kind of like the hole is greater than the sum of the parts is another, I like using these kind of phrases right? But the Warriors are a great example because they have five A players on their team if you want to call them A players. And they're able to work together for the most part. Although earlier this season, they had some issues with their culture and if you probably look at the winning record there is actually pretty, it was pretty low probably during those times when they're having issues internally. So I think it's one of those things you can also help players even level up. So it's like you don't have to recruit that A player every time. You can actually make a B player on the right team that they fit into, you turn into this kind of A player in that situation, in that context. Yeah, last question before I let it go because I think it's another kind of interesting, interesting thing that's happening is this blurring between kind of professional life and your regular life. And we've seen it with ours, right? Nobody's working eight to five anymore because you've got meetings with Europe, you got meetings with Asia Pacific, you got meetings with East Coast from here so people are on and off their, the meetings all the time, you're on and off your phone, you're getting Slack notifications all through the day. And at the same time, people want, their employees to be engaged and feel part of that. They want them to retweet the company line but they won't necessarily give them the rights to retweet in the name of the company. So how do you see kind of the motivation of people in this blurring between professional and personal life and yet companies want employees that are bought in that are kind of emotionally invested into this mission-driven cultures. Do you see more conflict there? Is it working or what should people be thinking about? Yeah, I think it really comes down to what people want at the end of the day too, right? If you don't want to be tapped in all the time then you probably don't want to fit with that or you're probably not going to fit with that kind of organizational culture. And there's lots of other companies out there that maybe not like that, for instance. So I think it's one of those things you really just have to understand like what do you value as an individual? What does a company's value? And then how do those things align for you? And do you want to be on your phone 24 seven or do you want to have the flexibility to be able to take holidays when you want? Or do you want that nine to five job that's more structured? And so what we're doing is giving that transparency to both the job seeker and the company now to say like, hey, is it a fit right up front? And if it is, okay, let's start taking you through the hiring process. And then if you don't, that's okay with us because we're both not going to benefit from this. This is a two-sided street, right? So it's building that transparency and helping people find the place that they'll ideally match with. Well, Mitch, it's a really interesting story and we didn't really talk about deep into AI but you guys are using big science and big data to try to basically increase the probability of success because a miss is expensive for both sides. Yes, yeah, it's really costly, right? Some of the estimates can be up to three times salaries, what it costs when you make a bad hire. Companies, I think it was like 85% of companies say they've made a bad hire in the last year. And from the job seeker side, it's like they're more likely to accept job offers. Even at lower pay from companies that they feel they align with the values of the organization. And it would be pretty nice now to be able to say, like, hey, you actually aligned and the data shows this too. This is all based in top tier research too. All right, Mitch, well, thanks for sharing your story. We'll keep an eye as you keep growing and best of luck to you and the team. Awesome, thanks Jeff. Really appreciate you having us today. All right, he's Mitch. I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at Palo Alto Studios. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.