2018 Prediction Show -- aka -- WTF did they just say?

A Nexxt Exclusive in partnership with TAtech.org, the boys enlist help from industry expert Tim Sackett to come up with predictions for 2018. Featured are Glassdoor, Monster, CareerBuilder, Slack, and many, many more. There's even a prediction for 2020, so get ready to get woke, mutha huggers!

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Announcer: This, the Chad & Cheese Podcast, brought to you in partnership with TA Tech. TA Tech, The Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions. Visit TATech.org.

Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, rash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad & Cheese Podcast.

Joel: All right, welcome to 2018 boys and girls.

Chad: Booyah.

Joel: Welcome to the Chad & Cheese Show, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman.

Chad: I'm Chad Sowash.

Joel: On this exclusive episode for Nexxt, in association with TA Tech, we welcome industry veteran Tim Sackett to the show.

Chad: Woo, Tim Sackett.

Joel: Yeah.

Chad: Sack man.

Joel: Tim Sackett. We're going to discuss predictions for 2018. It certainly promises to be our balliest show ever with way more talking about football than necessarily. So let's get to it and welcome our guest, Tim Sackett.

Chad: Tim.

Joel: Tim, thanks for joining the show.

Tim: Hey guys. Yeah, I just got off my couching, watching football for like 15 straight hours yesterday, which literally started off with a great game.

Joel: Does your ass have barnacles on it?

Tim: Oh Jesus. What's the over under on the amount of weight you put on over the holidays because it's completely ridiculous.

Chad: I don't even want to talk about it.

Chad: Joel actually, the only thing he got in his stocking was laxatives so he can take care of business...

Joel: I get a whole wardrobe that's a size up because everyone knows I'm going to gain that much weight.

Chad: Oh shit yeah. So no, I'm sitting here wearing scarlet and gray as per usual, right, and after a big kick ass win over USC, which we called. We knew they were going to beat them, but the Big 10, who just dominates all the fricking, cover pretty much most of the spread on all the games and then you got that-

Joel: Seven and one.

Tim: ... that team up north couldn't close it out.

Joel: Way to go Harbaugh.

Chad: Most overrated coach of all time, Jim Harbaugh.

Joel: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: I know. I loved it in the press conference yesterday they actually asked him if this was his last game coaching Michigan.

Joel: What was his answer? Did he bring up the heated up oatmeal again?

Tim: No, he's like, "No, next question."

Joel: He's going to be in Chicago. He's never finished greater than third in the Big 10 in his division.

Chad: We also saw kind of a pre-look at the next Browns quarterback, right?

Tim: Yeah.

Joel: Which, by the way, my first prediction is the Browns will do better next year than they did this year.

Chad: Hell, that's going out on a limb there.

Joel: That's one win by the way for those of you non-football fans out there.

Tim: Yeah. Are they going to go for the USC quarterback or the Oklahoma quarterback? Because they USC quarterback looked awful.

Chad: Yeah, well see here's what'll happen though. I really think that you're right, but he was playing the best defense in the nation so he was going to look awful.

Tim: Besides Alabama?

Chad: Yes, exactly. But when it comes down to it they'll probably go with Baker Mayfield because he's more a Johnny Manziel-ish kind of cat and for some reason they want to sell more jerseys in one season than actually have a whole decade worth of perspective winning.

Tim: Wins.

Joel: I think if Mayfield had won yesterday and beaten Alabama there might be a chance he gets to be the and number one pick, but I don't think that's going to happen partly because of the Manziel tragedy in Cleveland. I think that it's between Rosen and Darnold assuming they both come out. Rosen doesn't seem to be that excited to play for Cleveland.

Chad: No, nobody does.

Joel: Darnold probably isn't either, but I'd probably lean Darnold just because of he's a bigger kid, he's more of an AFC North Cleveland, off-the-lake winter kind of guy. Then I think they pray that the Colts don't take Saquon Barkley and that he lands to them in four and they have their QB and running back of the future.

Chad: Barkley's not going to make it in the NFL.

Joel: Really?

Chad: No, he's not going to make in the NFL. There's no way. He faced an NFL somewhat level of defense with the Ohio State Buckeyes and he couldn't get 70 yards. He's not going to get 70 yards against the Cleveland Browns, okay? So no, it's not going to happen. Saquon, they played a couple of shitty teams, he rolled up on them, great for them, but he's not that good.

Joel: Wow. All right we've gone through two or three predictions without even getting into the prediction chat.

Tim: Should we go-

Joel: Do we actually talk recruiting-

Chad: Yeah, no that'd be great.

Joel: ... or continue with the football talk? All right, we're going to pass it to our guest, because we're just that polite here on Chad & Cheese. Tim, we will pass the mic to you with your first prediction for 2018.

Tim: Yeah, I'm going to get crazy and go right out there and say sourcing is dead as a people function just because the technology's so great now. If you think about a normal sourcing person working in a fortune whatever company, the tech can do better than they can right now out of the box. So I'm not talking about the super geeky source con, like nerdfest. You're always going to have a hundred people in the world that can probably source better than tech, right, but I'm talking about the masses. 99% of the people cannot outsource the tech right now. And so for me this is the start of 2018, sourcing's dead as a function and you should just build it into your stack.

Joel: How do you think that plays into small business? Because there's some reports that small businesses are really wanting to embrace automation. I assume that you agree with that. But does it filter to them next year or does it take longer?

Tim: Well, I mean that becomes then how do you build that into a recruiting platform. I'm always amazed. The whole other trend that I see is small businesses actually buying into a full enterprise HCM suite so like Ultimate or ADP or whoever are building these things out. And the talent side of those are crappy so they're not going to have really good sourcing tech in those things for probably three or four more years so that's tough.

Chad: Well, for small business, and I think you guys have already overlooked somebody that's out there who's already doing this for small business, ZipRecruiter. How do you think they actually push all the candidates to these single jobs for mom and pops? And they start on the small business side just posting jobs so they're already doing this and they're doing it incredibly well. Maybe they're just not promoting it? Is that what's happening? But that's exactly why the candidates are making it into those requisitions so damn fast. It's machine learning, it's the Google adoption that they've been able to play as well on the job search side of the house. So this is already happening.

Joel: By the way, there's a ZipRecruiter ad playing right now on my TV, just so you know. It's to this conversation.

Chad: Dude, they're listening.

Tim: You know what's funny? I did talk with the ZipRecruiter folks out at HR Tech and they could care less about what we think as industry pundit kind of folks.

Chad: No, they care what we’re saying... Maybe not the Chad & Cheese show. They listen to this shit, but we get calls, emails, they love our stuff. So you (Tim), maybe not.

Tim: No, but they really haven't reached out in a big way to the industry so say, "Hey, here's what we're doing. Talk about us." And so I think they're behind a little bit in that. I think in 2018 we'll see them come out more, but they get. They get the small business side, they get the marketing side. They're on every fricking TV show. They're on every radio station. And they're just going, "Hey, how do we go out to a super unsophisticated buyer?" And you're like, "Well, put TV commercials on. They still work for idiots, right?" And they figured it out. They're smart. They know how to make money.

Chad: And I think one of the reasons why we haven't heard about them as much on the pundit side of the house is because they've had their heads down. They've been doing work.

Joel: Tim, do you have any thoughts on their acquisition of Jobboard.io? See

Chad? I said it right.

Chad: Good job.

Joel: Or no opinion whatsoever?

Tim: No opinion whatsoever.

Joel: Okay, good. That's good enough for me. Should we move on? Because we have a few predictions and we have a live chat. Chad, you're up.

Chad: I'm going to roll right in right on top of what Tim said. I agree 100%, sourcing is definitely something that is going to go away, but this is what we're going to see. AI overall is going to start to aggressively be replacing sourcing and other recruiting tasks. So in today's world where we don't really understand what AI is, right? We have to break it down into keep it simple stupid terms and something that recruiters will actually push for. So sourcing, obviously, is one piece. Throw a wreck in, pulls great candidates out. Scheduling, engagement with chat bots.

Chad: And you have to remember this is not just about the technology itself, it's all about process and thinking about the day to day that recruiter has, all those small tasks that you can give a ton of time back to them so that they can actually get hires into obviously the pipe. They can do their job so much faster. Plus, the most important word companies should be focused on on 2018 is engagement. If you give the recruiters time back they can be better brand ambassadors for your organization as opposed to just doing these menial tasks, these administrative tasks. And then with products like Crowded, Refresh, the whole gold mine aspect of your applicant tracking system starts to come to fruition. You have all that talent that's out there, AI jumps into it, refreshes that talent, starts to bring back talent that you've paid money for already.

Chad: So I think AI beyond sourcing becomes something that is more embraced because we can take a look at these little tasks and it just makes sense. So keep it simple stupid for the talent acquisition side of the house and for the rest of us human beings who like things simple and it's not just about sourcing, it's about engagement, it's about scheduling, all those things.

Tim: You know what all of this is about? It's about talent acquisition leaders not being able to performance manage and that why AI will actually take a foothold. So because you can't get your recruiter to make a fricking phone call or to make a reach out or to follow up with somebody to schedule an interview in a timely basis-

Chad: Isn't that sad?

Tim: ... and the technology can do it. So I mean ultimately that's what it is, right? Performance management becomes important again, like that's the trend. So to do that we're going to use technology because we're unwilling to ask somebody to actually do the job they're being paid to do.

Chad: Well and they can do it quicker and they can do it more efficient period. If I want somebody to go search a resume database, my applicant tracking system, and five other resume databases to make to the requisition that I just posted to our website or through our applicant tracking system I can have technology do that in seconds where it's going to take a recruiter hours, easily hours to be able to do that. So yeah, I agree, but also if you want them to make those calls, right now they're bitching because they have all these administrative tasks, which I understand, right? But still, give them time back and then there's no excuse. There are calls that need to be make, you should be making x amount of calls today. You're right, performance is everything.

Joel: Here's my question for either or both of you, how far does AI take a candidate or group of candidates down the funnel? At what point does a human being actually have to be involved? Is it like the sourcing goes to pre-screening and then once they're pre-screened then a human? Or do you think the actually interview can be done and scheduled through AI? Like how deep does this go in the funnel?

Tim: I think it's dependent upon the position.

Chad: Yes.

Tim: I mean, I think there's certain levels of position that they expect a human to be involved and maybe that's a white collar, tech, whatever, doctor, but then there's a lot of blue collar, service-level jobs that I would say you could take that all the way through the interview process and potentially to offer.

Chad: And I think that our expectations are much different today than they were just two years ago. So I think if we receive and we can do things via our mobile device and we can start to go through the actually process of setting up an interview and so on and so forth. There's a chat bot or text bot that comes back and starts to help us, make sure that we can get that scheduled and we can do the interview, whether it's via the telephone or it's a high review system, a video system. I think you can take it all the way through to that point. The thing is I really believe, prediction for 2018 that goes along with this, is that recruiters are going to have to be more brand ambassadors than they ever were before. They're really going to have to focus on branding. Companies are going to make sure that they focus on brand and the experience that that candidate is having because those candidates are customers and they are actually dollars. Not just in the sense of you paid money to get them in the first place, but they are money down the line with regard to product and services.

Joel: So how long before the robots just interview the robots and hire the robots and we can just put on our VR systems and play video games all day?

Chad: Well that sounds like fun.

Joel: Is that our 2019 prediction show?

Tim: That probably is.

Joel: Love it, love it. All right can I go now?

Chad: No.

Joel: Oh damn.

Tim: Do it.

Joel: All right. I'm keeping my first one pretty simple. I think Glassdoor goes public. Why do I think that? They've gotten 200 some million dollars in funding. No one gets $200 million in funding if there's not an expectation of a big payout. In this case in the $1.5 to $2 billion kind of payout kind of thing. I think they're getting a lot of pressure in terms of LinkedIn potentially getting into the review game. I think Google will potentially get into this, even if it's just an aggregation play. I also think players like Blind are sort of knocking on the door and I think 2018 is probably the perfect storm for Glassdoor to finally go public. I'll go a step further and say that it is a moderately successful IPO primarily because the economy is good and people are looking for an employment play. But yeah, my prediction number one is Glassdoor goes public finally.

Tim: Yeah, I don't think that's much of stretch to be quite frank. I think you're right, I think you're right, but all the indicators are there.

Joel: And the big question, I think, up until now has been the legal battles that they've been fighting. I think that that's something that has been a challenge to go public because they have to sort of disclose that and talk about it and I don't think they want to necessarily and it could be a deterrent from people investing thinking that there's a big legal battle or challenge to their business.But yeah, I just think they can't not go public because of the money that they've gotten.

Tim: Yeah, agreed, agreed.

Joel: By the way our buddies Indeed, when I researched this, Indeed's on the hook for $5 million investment versus the two hundred on Glassdoor so take that for what you will, but Indeed is clearly a little bit more efficient with the dollars than Glassdoor….

Chad: Yes, very much so, very much so. So one quick prediction.

Joel: It's not just quick, it's Nexxt.

Chad: It's Nexxt.

Joel: Yes.

Chad: It's Nexxt. Oh my God. We're going to make a quick prediction and also the Chad & Cheese Podcast will be making a 2018 resolution for all of you talent acquisition types out there. So in 2018 everyone will be adopting mobile and text recruit. The question, Joel, is why text recruiting?

Joel: Chad did you know that text has an average 97% open rate?

Chad: That's ridiculous.

Joel: The average response time for the first hour is 15%. Now you can't get that on email, just so you know, not even InMail on LinkedIn.

Chad: Well, let's face it. You can't get that on a phone call for goodness sakes. Emails, they're not going to be able to give you that kind of response so talent acquisition leaders know that is awesome penetration and engagement.

Joel: By the way Tim I'd wish you'd call me back.

Tim: 100% rate of getting engaged is a punch in the face.

Chad: Oh that's a good one.

Joel: I'm still waiting for Tim to call me back from last year. Also, Chad don't you want all of your recruiters in the same system?

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Of course you do. Imagine trying to manage 20 different Google voice accounts that your recruiters are using for texting. That shit is scary and not even practical especially when, this is your lane, you get audited.

Tim: Yeah.

Chad: Well that's why the Chad & Cheese Podcast are very big proponents of Nexxt's Text to Hire platform. That's right talent acquisition, all of your recruiters can now be in the same system and Text to Hire can help you and your company have more one-on-one conversations with candidates you want to reach out to, instant communication puts you in front of the right people fast, and a smart, simple interface to easily manage and track your campaigns.

Joel: And you can try your first Text to Hire campaign for 25, am I reading this right? 25% off? That's insane.

Chad: What?

Joel: It's a 2018 resolution gift from Chad & Cheese. Just go to chadcheese.com and click on the Nexxt logo in the sponsor area or go to Nexxt, N-E-X-X-T.com C-H-A-D-A-N-D-C-H-E-E 25, Nexxt.com/chadandcheese25 to get your discount now and get with 2018 and start texting your candidates instead of calling them on the phone.

Chad: And your thoughts, Tim, on text recruiting?

Tim: Oh, it's changed our business completely. It's crazy to me when to talent acquisition leaders and then they'll say, "Well, our recruiters are using their personal phones to do that." And I'm thinking you're losing so much data that you'll never get back. So it's crazy that you would ever even let that happen, but even then just the response rate alone and how fast things have to [crosstalk 00:18:08] is crazy to me that people aren't using this across the board.

Chad: And think of the liability. And okay, I'm going to put my corporate hat on, think of the liability your dumb ass is putting out there, the risk. You're allowing your recruiters to actually use their own phones to do this stuff. You don't know what their saying, you don't know how it's been ... I mean you have to pull everything together to ensure that everything is being boarded and reported on just in case our lovely OFCCP jumps in and says, "How are you actually engaging these candidates?" You can't do that in the current systems or lack of systems that you have today, which is one of the reasons why this is important.

Tim: Screw the liability. What about just the ability to go back out there and say, "Hey." I'm texting a candidate, they're like, "I'm not interested, but should you ever have anything in Austin I'm great." That recruiter forgets about that conversation forever and then all of sudden three months later you have a position in Austin, you can't remember where they're at. If have this stuff, all of this data in one location that's going to be searchable, taggable. You could actually take advantage of all that information you're getting.

Chad: Yeah. Tim just went rogue. He said, "Screw the liability." Screw the liability. Screw you and your liability. Now we have to wake Joel up from his nap because this is all high level stuff.

Joel: Oh I'm sorry. Were we talking about compliance again? Oh brutal, brutal.

Chad: No, this is generally corporate risk mitigation. Yeah, go ahead.

Joel: Whew, okay. So my notes say that I actually have the next prediction. Is that correct?

Chad: Yeah, that is correct.

Joel: Which may be the only thing that wakes me up from talking about compliance. I'll go a little more off the reservation on this one. I'm going to predict that Amazon gets into the enterprise workforce area and they make a big splash doing that by buying Slack in 2018. I think Bezos backs up the Brinks truck, buys Slack, and Amazon becomes a real player in employee.

Chad: So what was the last evaluation on Slack? I can't remember it was so high. It blew my mind.

Joel: $5.1 billion I believe.

Chad: Billion, BILLION!

Joel: Which, by the way, is like Monster and CareerBuilder and Dice times two.

Chad: But Joel, the question is how are they going to use Slack to get into the workforce space?

Joel: So they already have Amazon Web Services, right? They already have Cloud Play. I think Alexa comes in there somewhere. I think Bezos is looking at LinkedIn getting bought by $26 billion. By the way the company that's in his backyard in Seattle called Microsoft and I think he's saying, "How do I get into this business?" And I don't think it makes sense to launch Amazon Classified or Amazon Workforce Messaging or anything like that. I think with Slack he can probably get a few thousand enterprise customers immediately thinking about Amazon as a workforce solution and then he can use Slack to start integrating things around web services and cloud. Maybe there's another acquisition play in there somewhere, but I think Bezos's ego is such that he can't sit there and watch Microsoft get into this, watch Google get into this, and watch Facebook get into this without getting into it. And I think Slack is sort of the easiest, biggest splash he can make by getting into this space quickly and in a big way.

Chad: Think of the data play though, right? We're always talking ... These are data companies and to be able to actually apply AI and machine learning and all this other fun shit that we talk about all the time you need the data. You need all those data points. Slack has so much data, content to be able to help your organization and to be able to have a company like Amazon to be able to crunch on that. I just can't believe they haven't been bought yet. That's the thing that's blowing my mind.

Joel: There's also an advertising play. Like we don't talk about Amazon very much as an advertising platform because Facebook and Google are so prevalent in that, but I think that if we were making marketing predictions one of my predictions would be that we start talking about Amazon as a legitimate advertising platform in the same way that we do Google and Facebook and Slack is a way to get ads in front of people.

Tim: Yeah. I'm wondering if our buying behavior gives away to what we do as a career, right? Probably, in a lot of ways. So they would also have that data to be able to say, "Hey, by the way here's an entire one million nurses that you can now advertise to in terms of your jobs or whatever." You know that stuff comes out in our buying behavior.

Joel: Yep, I agree.

Chad: Yeah, so if you want to get an ad in front of Joel all you have to do is use the retargeting for neck pillows.

Joel: Actually Squatty Potty would be better for me, to get your ad in front of me. Or maybe that fryer that has no fry oil. That might be good.

Tim: Yeah, the air fryer.

Joel: Yeah, the air fryer. Yeah, that's a good one.

Chad: That's a good one. I like that one too. All right, so my turn. This is going to be a change of pace. You're going to enjoy this. This year, 2018-

Joel: Hey, “F YOU” by the way, "Change of pace. You're going to enjoy this.", right after my prediction. You dick.

Chad: What?

Joel: Oh after Joel's dumb ass prediction here's one you're going to enjoy.

Chad: Oh yeah. I didn't have to say that out loud, but since you did. Careerbuilder and Monster start surging back. And you might laugh.

Joel: Oh I am.

Tim: This is 2001 trends by the way.

Chad: Change is good for both of these brands. I mean Careerbuilder was acquired 2017 by Apollo and that organization, from what I'm hearing, is actually forcing Careerbuilder to focus on themselves. Careerbuilder currently has over 70 products in their portfolio. Did you guys know that? 70 products. So Apollo smartly wants to focus on those products before pedaling other products. And if you think about-

Joel: Name three of them.

Chad: ... it makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Tim: You can't because they change the names every three months.

Chad: Well that's the problem, right? Okay, so here's the thing, this is the thing that Careerbuilder needs to get right, which they're going to get right this year, packaging and messaging. If they can do that they can focus on making a 100% of the money instead of having to go out to partners all the time and just making fractions of that or percentages of it, right? I really believe that Careerbuilder, they have the products, the product sets, all there. The two things they've done incredibly bad over the years, packaging, messaging, that's what they've done bad.

Chad: Now, the next big one. And this is harder one to swallow, but yet listen to me. Monster is an entirely different story. It was bought by Randstad, which we all know is the number two staffing contingent globally. Out of the gate they felt-

Joel: That screams innovation. Keep digging Sowash.

Chad: Out of the gate we saw Monster fall flat on their face with an expensively produced commercial featuring a purple monster which was really just a Bugs Bunny rip off. But what Monster is doing now and what we've seen from an actual talent kind of move is they are doing a ton, and they're very top heavy, on the products side of the house. So what that's telling me and what I'm hearing is that they're putting a lot of time into taking a look at everything that they have in their portfolio, much like Careerbuilder, to be able to turn around products that are simple. And you guys have to remember they're not going after Google, they're not going after Microsoft and Facebook, they are trying to win back their share from Indeed. And Indeed right now is struggling. Not from a revenue standpoint, but they're struggling from a long-term trajectory standpoint. These guys actually have products within their portfolios that Indeed cannot match. They will have to acquire or build to be able to keep up with these guys.

Chad: So I think 2018 is the year we start to see a surge from Careerbuilder and Monster. It's a boomerang.

Tim: So what I hear Chad is that you think Monster is coming back with that Superbowl commercial in February?

Chad: No, I'm not saying that they're going to have kids on the Superbowl commercial. They should though because that was a hell of a commercial, but no.

Joel: I don't even know where to begin. Careerbuilder I can buy. I think there's some serious changes going on at Careerbuilder and we'll see how that plays out. But like Monster is ... Whew, that's a stretch. I did a post last week, end of last week about a new partnership that Monster's announcing with Text Recruit by the way, talking about texting. But in doing that blog I went back and I looked at Monster's press page on their site and it is a ghost town. Like they have done nothing in terms of new features, launching new products, partnering with people, acquiring people, they've done jack. So the floor is pretty low and they have room to grow into doing something. And at this point it looks like maybe partnering with people is going to achieve that because back in the day they would build stuff and buy people, if you remember BeKnown and Trovix and TalentBin. So that's a real stretch to me and Monster, but we'll see what happens.

Chad: Any thoughts on that Tim?

Tim: I'm a CB shop and we use them. In fact, I've paid to use CB for 15 straight years in my own shop and the one thing that they just step on, continue to trip themselves up is they can't come up with what the name of product is and stay with it for a year. Like it's every quarter they coming out with a new package, a new this. They have a great sales team. It's like the used car sales force of them HCM world is Careerbuilder. And I'll tell them this and we kind of make fun of it, but the reality is is it's insane to me that they can't figure that side of it out. So we'll see. They've been trying to figure this out for three years and they can't so we'll see what happens.

Chad: See and here's the thing, I don't really think they have focused on these two areas, packaging and messaging. And when we're talking about messaging obviously it's marketing and it's sales as well. Those two have to be conjoined at the hip. I believe with Apollo and the focus that they've really been hammering the staff with is that that's what's going to happen. If it happens now I think they have a chance. If they wait another 12 to 18 months I think they're dead in the water, but I think they'll do it now.

Joel: We shall see. Tim, you're next dude.

Tim: All right. So I'm actually going to do something real that everybody can use out there that's listening what you guys do.

Joel: Ouch.

Chad: Oh damn.

Tim: No, so this is super old school, but employee referral automation I'm such a huge fan of and I'm always shocked. Jobvite launched this like six or seven years ago and then roll points come in. Teamable was launched last year and they're probably employee referral automation 2.0. But for me, as the biggest RIO of any kind of tech you can actually get within TA Tech and yet it still has a pretty low adoption rate. So in 2018 I finally believe that this is going to start to get legs and everyone's going to take adventure.

Chad: You really think ... This has to be a really keep it simple stupid kind of platform. It does. It has to be. So do you really think that it's time, that talent acquisition gives it enough space to be able to understand it because just from what I've learned over the years is that it's been way too complex. It's not a one, two, three, boom you're done kind of scenario.

Tim: Yeah, I think the new stuff is. I think when you take a look at some of the newer platforms that are out there it's become a lot easier. Then the other piece of it is they finally learned ... If I'm getting to get an employee referral I don't want my crappy employees to give me referrals, I want my best employees. Or if I need more diversity hires or I need more women or I need whatever, now you can segment out those and say, "Hey, I'm only going to say my top performers are only going to be the ones that I allow to refer or that I send this automation to." And so to me it just makes more sense on how it's being used.

Tim: But I always talk to every TA leader and I'll say, "Well what's your number one source of hire?" And it's like Indeed or ... but within the top three it's always employee referrals. And then we'll go, "Okay. What's your number one quality of hire?" And across the board number one is always employee referrals. And then I'll go, "Okay. Well, how much money are you spending on employee referrals? On actually tech, not gibing out bonuses for someone who refers somebody." And it's always zero dollars. And then I'll say, "Well, talk to me, then, about your LinkedIn spend?" And they'll be like, "Oh, that are number one spend and that's our number seven source of hire." Like well what the hell are you doing? And it hits your face really quick and they're like, "Oh my gosh, we're stupid, right?" And like yeah, spend $25 or $30 grand and put this in play. It will pay for itself in the first 15 seconds.

Joel: We've talked historically about players in this space like H3, even Jobster, a few others that on paper this makes total sense, right? Put a job up, make it like an affiliate thing, refer someone you know, if we hire them we'll pay you a bunch of money, but none of those models work. They've never worked. Why do you think historically this has just been a failed experiment with referrals?

Tim: For one is the entire employee referral automation program has always failed across the board in every corporation and it's because it just doesn't have legs, it doesn't have anybody that's there pushing this stuff out on a daily basis, on a minute basis, where it's one click and go. It probably wasn't mobile. There's too many step like we talked about, in terms of getting these things all aligned. And I think they've figured that out over the last six years I think it's just gotten better and better to the point now where if I'm running a TA shop I can just ... literally it's like a marketing machine. It's almost like CRM for your own employees to be to continue to shove this stuff down their throats and you do enough of it and little by little you're going to get more and more referrals. The companies that are using and actually doing it really well it comes back. They're showing a 20% increase in employee referral hires the next year. And that in itself easily pays for whatever investment you're going to make and it continues to go down.

Tim: I just think the technology's gotten to the point and I think probably people are more comfortable now actually engaging their social networks. Before we always had this life, right? When we first started, when Jobright first came out with this, people were still like, "Ugh, Facebook is Facebook and I'll never talk about work on Facebook. It's my personal Facebook." In fact, we had people ... recruiters would have two Facebook profiles. They would have Tim Google recruiter and then they would have Tim Sackett. And now they figured that out was like, "No, just live one life." And so I think we've gotten more comfortable and say, "Hey, I'm going to have one social footprint and I'm going to personal stuff and then do professional stuff there."

Chad: Transparency, transparency. Not to mention I think a lot of it has to do with timing. Is the market ready for it and then execution on top of that. So remember back in the day before Facebook and many of these big social networks that we use today, the LinkedIn of the world, Jeff Taylor and Monster came out with Monster networking. The execution was horrible, the idea, concept, was great, and the timing sucked. I think now is the perfect time. Obviously we've seen that it's the perfect time for some of those to obviously flourish. The question is at this level once again, you have to make it keep it simple stupid type of scenario. It has to be part of your lifestyle or it's a behavior. And the big question is can they make it a part of that.

Joel: I'm skeptical.

Chad: At best.

Tim: Well, you know that's why it's a prediction. I'm hopeful that people will take advantage of the tech and use it for good.

Chad: And I have to applaud you for not making easy predictions like Glassdoor is going to get bought. I mean ...

Joel: Or Monster's going to come back.

Chad: That's a hard one man.

Joel: My notes say Chad is next. Is that right?

Chad: Yes. Here's another big one guys, again another big one. The ATS is going to make a comeback.

Tim: Why does Chad keep making like 2003 predictions?

Chad: It has to make a comeback. There's this boomerang effect. Not to mention you've got remember that you cannot live without it if you're a major Fortune 500 company or federal contractor. Literally you'll get fined into oblivion and ATS is your system of record. Not to mention with companies like Crowded.com the ATS will become an actual resource where over the years it hasn't. Applicant tracking systems have had shitty search, they've had shitty experience, and with all for these different organizations like Jibe that are providing kind of a better experience for the job seeker. Not to mention applicant tracking systems now being able to use the Google API search now you've got more of an opportunity to really get a good experience and then start to utilize those candidates as they come in. They don't go into a black hole anymore. You've got the Crowded.com’s of the world that are helping these applicant tracking systems actually become useful.

Chad: So yes, when they came out of the box they were tracking systems. They weren't meant to be used for what we're trying to use them for today. With all these different new appendages that they can kind of pop on, like the Crowded.com’s of the world, the Jibes, the Google APIs, so on so forth, the applicant tracking system will once again and it will continue to be the hub for where everything happens.

Joel: So it is your opinion that ATSs are currently dead? Because it must be if you think they're going to come back?

Chad: No, I think that they were on, really, just a steady decline from the standpoint of the perception of the market. And you see posts out there all over the place why you don't need an applicant tracking system anymore and it's all bullshit man. You need an applicant tracking system. You need the recording, you need the reporting, but what you also need is you need better experience and you need better technology to access some of these things. Again, the applicant tracking system wasn't built for much of what we ask it to do today. So these different technologies will help it come back. So whether you seen an iCIMS where they've got a hub strategy where they partner with companies to actually do this or other applicant tracking systems that might actually go out and develop and/or acquire. So tons of mergers and acquisitions.

Joel: Do you think they'll be fewer ATSs a year from now?

Chad: Yes.

Joel: Okay, I can agree with that. I think the technology's getting commoditized and I think a lot of players are going to go away.

Chad: Yeah. And you have to take a look at the level though. So Google Hire and JazzHR and some of these small business applicant tracking systems that's an entirely different discussion versus the higher end, the Fortune 500 side.

Tim: Well, we continue to see more and more of that ATS space being take up by HCN talent platforms. I mean Workday's growing crazy, shouldn't, Ulitmate’s is growing like crazy, shouldn't. So we see more and more of those customers like their ATS are getting kicked to the side because IT's telling them, "Hey you have to use now full module." So that's concerning I think across ... That's a trend we haven't talked about that I think is super concerning because we're basically talent acquisition leaders to take a step back like three to five years in terms of potential technology they could use on the HCM standpoint. I think for the ATS isn't coming back, it's growing up. It's turning into a recruiting platform end to end, right?

Chad: I like that, the recruitment, it grows up. And here's the thing. Talent acquisition they have to actually more and focus on the dollars and sense. Not just the budgets that you're given every year, but what that actually means in return to the organization. Not just in candidates and production and retention because those are business numbers that you can actually use, but also the types of candidates that you're touching which are customers and now you're engaging them to prospectively embrace your brand and buy your products.

Joel: And I think becoming a platform is going to be paramount for these guys, becoming an app store for all these startups and technology companies that are coming along. Like the one with the biggest app store is probably going to win.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: I'm next, with two x's. All right, I think voice assistance, Alexa, Siri, Google, Cortana, whoever, will finally become a thing in employment in 2018. To me there's no reason why I can't be watching TV, see an Apple ad, an IBM ad, a GE, whatever, and not be able to say, "Hey Siri, Alexa, send my resume to General Electric." And it does it.

Chad: I agree. And on top of that same, mobile is going to be the big help to this. Because we're so used to, right now, using our mobile phones, asking our mobile phones for navigation advice, restaurants near me, that kind of shit, right? So being able to now start to push these devices, like I have a Google Home, I think you have a Google Home, in our homes and start to use that against my Chromecast and ask to watch something on Netflix. As it starts to become a part of behavior, and that's what this all has to come down to guys, it has to break down into an everyday part of your behavior and asking, not just your phone, but your device, your home device, to do simple tasks for you. So I do agree. I think the gateway to that is our mobile phone because we start using more voice on the mobile phone.

Tim: I can definitely see a hiring manager at some point in the future going, "Hey Siri, I need a front end developer." And then that's it. And Siri takes off and comes back and says, "Hey, I found Joel and Joel's interested in interviewing next week at Thursday at 5:00 pm," or whatever. Like are we that far away from getting to that point where that's going to be voice enabled. And at that point ... that's my 2020 prediction, recruiting's dead because Siri's taking over.

Joel: Oh, you heard it here first everybody. That's what we do here on Chad & Cheese man, we go way beyond. No, I like that, all right. So we started with Tim, we're polite like that. We're going to end with Tim.

Tim: Cool. So I'm going to think in 2018 you will be hiring somebody that you traditionally hire with a college degree that doesn't have a college degree. That's just pragmatic because we're at 3.9% unemployment. Thank you Trump. But the reality is I'm hoping at this point ... I mean we know we're going to do it just because we have less options because now we have low employment. But I'm hoping that as unemployment starts to balloon up again, which it will. It's cyclical like everything else. That eventually we'll learn from this and say, "You know what? Hiring somebody with a degree has no correlation to quality of hire." We need to decouple those two things. I think we're getting smart enough with data to be able to prove and show that.

Chad: So the big question is why did we start slapping fucking college degrees on all these God damn jobs in the first place?

Tim: Because we're lazy. It was an easy way to filter people out.

Chad: Exactly.

Tim: You're like, "Oh my God. I'm going to put a thing out there for a recruiter. Oh by the way, you have a Bachelor's degree in HR to be a recruiter." Like it makes no sense. Bachelor's degree.

Chad: Exactly.

Tim: But I didn't want to deal with 5,000 applications I wanted to deal with 500 instead. It's stupid.

Chad: Exactly, exactly. So what we've done is ebbs and flows where we see that we're getting this huge amounts of candidates that are coming through and we're getting pummeled by candidates what do we do? Instead of actually finding ways to find the best types of people we start slapping requirements onto a job that shouldn't be a requirement on the job. And then when the market shifts we don't shift and we don't strip that out. It just stays on there. It stays on there. And then we start throwing hands up and saying, "We can't find people because they're not qualified." No asshole, they were qualified in the first place. They were qualified in the first place, but your dumb ass threw these stupid requirements on there and now all these great people, this great talent that could be doing this job are being filtered out.

Joel: And I think we all have kids in various ages and I forget the exact numbers, but it's something like 50% of the jobs that our kids will have don't even exist yet and 50% of the current jobs that exist won't be around when our kids group it. I know your kid's older Tim.

Tim: Yes.

Joel: But the environment is such that we're hiring for jobs that you can't even have a college degree for it. When I was doing SEO 10 years ago there was no SEO degree. There was no Masters in search engine optimization so I agree with that. And a little side note, I did some traveling over the holidays and drove by my sister's small town Indiana high school and there was literally their shop class was sponsored by Auto by Tel or AutoZone. I think it was AutoZone. So companies are getting better at integrating with school systems to teach people so they can just come right out of high school and start working in a field that they want to work in, which I think never has really happened before because we've gotten away from that shop class kind of stuff.

Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. When you take a look at carpenters, electricians, those types of things, when I went to high school I went to what they call a comprehensive high school which had a vocational wing, I guess you could say.

Joel: And you learned nothing by the way.

Chad: I didn't take that route. I probably should've. But being able to actually put coding into that and to be able to ... and that should be sponsored by, as you said, the companies that are their local. And that's what happened with the auto body and the carpenters and so on and so forth, the unions, they knew exactly where their talent was coming from. Companies are getting fat and lazy once again, as we talked about, with filtering. In this case they're waiting for the universities, the systems' government to send them perfect candidates. Hey guys, that's not going to happen. It's your job, you know what you want, get out there and actually create programs that drive specific talent into the jobs that you know you're going to need now and in the future.

Joel: Grow them.

Chad: It's on the companies.

Tim: Well, it is leading companies to kind of come up with a new apprenticeship kind of program as well. We always think of apprenticeship as carpenter, electricians, plumbers, but we're going to start to see those in business analyst role, in a nursing role, whatever. Like you're going to see apprenticeship programs happening across the board in roles that we never even thought of because, again, you don't need a four year degree to do this, but you need somebody to show you how the hell to do it.

Chad: Well, it's like social media, right? If they want to get into a social media marketing type of background and they focused on different business aspects they might've gone to college later, but they knew that there's certain aspects they can actually do and perform without a college degree. So those are the different things you can go to be able to prospectively propel them into jobs. And then later if they choose to go after a degree, they choose to go after a degree, depending on what the career path they want to take.

Joel: <Bell Rings> I had to do it Chad, sorry.

Chad: Damn it.

Joel: I couldn't go a whole show without the bell. And we're literally closing in on an hour, which I'm sure is destroying our listenership as we speak.

Chad: Everybody loves us man.

Joel: Any predictions we want to throw in before we end the show?

Tim: Global warming got solved by Trump because it's minus four in right now.

Joel: The Chad & Cheese Podcast gets canceled for language or content or just sucking.

Chad: Yeah, none of that's going to happen. I'm going to predict ... I'm going to do a Joel prediction that the Browns will suck next year.

Joel: They'll be better though. Hey if the Niners can turn it around with one guy it is possible.

Chad: Yeah, but still suck.

Joel: But we can all agree that Michigan sucks, right?

Tim: Yeah.

Chad: Amen.

Joel: All right.

Tim: That Harbaugh will lose in the Citrus Bowl to North Carolina State. Is that your prediction for 2018?

Joel: He'll lose to Ball State. All right guys, we out. Have a good year.

Chad: We out.

Tim: All right.

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