Hire gold medalists
Yallen pulled from his sprinting background in order to take the next step in turning Inter/Media around. While many employees were encouraged by the calm instilled, other positions were left open when offices had to be closed when accounts were lost.
So as Yallen began bringing in a few new people, he started thinking of new hires in more athletic terms. That’s not to say he began only hiring his collegiate athlete buddies. Instead, he focused on hiring competitors and winners.
“We look to and love athletic backgrounds,” he says. “I love people who have competed at a high, elite level, as well as the military, because there are certain things that are instilled within an elite athlete and someone in the military that you just can’t find anywhere else.”
The point is basic: Checking resumes for people who have been in and handled high-pressure situations will behoove you.
“In our business, we’re just like the travel, hotel and airline industry, what we sell today we can’t sell tomorrow,” Yallen says. “Imagine being Wal-Mart and everyone one of your items that’s on your shelves disappears the next day. So it’s a very difficult business in that we need to maximize every day, and that means being able to move at the speed of light. There are people that can’t work in our organization because they can’t move and think that fast.”
That doesn’t just limit him to former athletes or military personnel, by the way. He says the idea is finding someone who is passionate about life in general because you can spark that person.
“I look at extracurricular activities beyond sports (on a resume),” he says. “Looking at a rounded person, the more a person does, the better they’re going to be able to communicate with others, so I really like somebody who has a heavy emphasis on something other than just having a 4.5 GPA."
Yallen doesn’t keep stats on how much better his company has done by looking for passionate people — something he says you can find by simply asking about what sparks someone outside of work— but he knows it makes a difference.
“Do I have quantifiable data? No,” he says. “Could I do it? Yeah. I can tell you that the people in our organization, or any organization for that matter, that are well-rounded — and well-rounded to me is more than book smart, it’s experience, it’s having multiple disciplines and multiple interests — are more passionate. Look at people, what hobbies do they have? It can be wine tasting, but they have passions for things. The one thing that I won’t accept in anybody that works for me is somebody who doesn’t have a passion.”
