Recruitics Dresses Down Indeed, ZipRecruiter Aims for $1 Billion Valuation, RealMatch, SodaStream an
Dollar dollar ZIP ya'll! Money is flowing into the recruitment tech space like a melting glacier into the Atlantic Ocean.
In this week's episode, ZipRecruiter eyes a new round of funding to the tune of $50 million, valuing the company at $1 billion, or the cost of both Monster and CareerBuilder put together.
Plus:
- Recruitics exams Indeed three major changes already rolled out in 2018
- A salesperson at Indeed employee is pissed and goes off on Glassdoor
- Soda Stream drops a killer advert, but the execution blows
- RealMatch launches pandoIQ, and agencies are losing their shit
- A bunch of companies just got funding
- Workday turns on a start-up homing beacon
And much more. While listening, visit our sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly, Catch 22 Consulting and the Campaign to Elect Chad & Cheese to President ... of Monster.
Don't forget to REGISTER for TAtechEurope - Discount Code - TATECHTEN18
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast.
Joel: Heidi-ho kiddies, welcome to The Chad and Cheese Show, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash.
Joel: Giddy-up. On this week's show Recruitics calls out changes at Indeed in a white paper, no doubt. Recruitment ad agencies are losing their shit over programmatic ad buying, and ZipRecruiter goes looking for a Brink's truck to go hijack. Dollar dollar bill, y'all. Stay tuned.
Announcer: America's Job Exchange is a market leader in diversity recruitment and an OFCCP compliant solution provider. We serve over a thousand customers consisting of federal contractors and subcontractors to SMBs and Fortune 500 organizations. America's Job Exchange specializes in job distribution to over 6,500 state one-stop career centers and community-based organizations, ensures the creation and maintenance of state credentials, obtains veteran preference on job postings, robust outreach management, and supports effective, positive recruitment efforts designed to recruit individuals with disabilities, veterans, women, and minorities. For more information, call us at 866-926-6284, or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com.
Chad: Yeah, if you're a federal contractor, just so you know, make sure that you're checking to make sure that your jobs are getting actually listed into the state job bank for God's sakes. If you're not checking that stuff and you feel like vendor's doing it for you, but you're not checking it, you're probably getting screwed, dude. So check that out.
Joel: Dude, I love how much you love compliance and all this crap. Because if you didn't care about it, we'd never talk about it.
Chad: It's hundreds of millions of dollars.
Joel: Oh I know, veteran hiring, government, that's your lane, man, and I love that you love it. But yeah, we feel pretty good about this show so I say, let's get to it.
Chad: Let's hit it. Let's hit it.
Joel: All right, shout outs.
Chad: First off, Ed is officially on Team Chad, even though he doesn't even know what that means. I love blind commitment. Ed, I love blind commitments and I think this leads to ... before we get into anything more shout out-ish, we should talk a little bit about that Super Bowl.
Joel: Oh, God. Okay, here's what we're going to talk about. The only reason he's on Team Chad is he's an Eagles fan and you picked the Eagles, so it has nothing to do with your intellect or your charm. It's just the fact that you blindly picked against the Patriots.
Chad: Sometimes Ed and I are very symbiotic in our thoughts and it just happened to be that way with the Eagles, and I bet that he would also believe that my favorite Super Bowl ad was his favorite Super Bowl ad. But before we get there, what was yours?
Joel: Favorite Super Bowl ad?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I think Tide ruled it.
Chad: Tide. Tide did well.
Joel: Yeah, Tide crushed it. That's probably the few I only remember from the game.
Chad: Dude, everybody's gonna remember this one. Dirty dancing ... I had the time of my life with Eli Manning, yeah, yeah, and the lift. Dude, that was the funniest. I mean, the Manning brothers do some of the best commercials out there and the NFL knocked it out of the park on this one.
Joel: The Mannings are great pitchmen for sure. Dublin's coming up. We always mention this. Eventually we will get there and not have this as a shout out anymore, but if you're gonna be in Dublin, we'll see you there. If you're not going to Dublin, you need to go. I think we have a coupon code too, which is really long.
Chad: Yes, so get your writing utensil out and get ready to take this down. It is TATECHTEN, which is spelled T-E-N, not the numbers, and then 18, which are the numbers. So TATECH, with the numbers 18, TATECHTEN18.
Joel: Was shamrock or leprechaun too hard of a coupon code to use?
Chad: As you can see, they're fairly consistent with this coupon code, so I think they've actually created this as our coupon code. I could be wrong. But yeah, it should have been Chad and TATECHCHEESE, right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So before we leave talking about the Super Bowl, first off the ad, the Chad and Cheese-
Joel: I tried to get him off this, everybody. I really tried.
Chad: ... the Chad and Cheese ad, though, man. It was funny because we weren't really sure how Monster was going to take this ad, you know? We thought that they might turn their-
Joel: I slept with one eye open. I slept with one eye open that night.
Chad: I don't believe that. We weren't sure how they were going to take it, but to be quite frank it was really cool, and there was kind of like this moment of silence, I think, and then one of their SVPs actually came out and thought it was hilarious. I think they reposted it, so we started to see a lot of trending from Monster. They really embraced us making fun of them, which I thought was cool.
Joel: It's a new Monster. Everyone that was there is gone, pretty much.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: The new band is pretty fun, so we're going to keep rolling with this I think.
Chad: Yeah, so shout-out to David Zaneski over there. I understand he's a huge fan. He's a huge fan.
Joel: David. We appreciate it, man. David'll be running that place here soon, from what we hear, so way to go David. Christi Moon, our self-proclaimed biggest fan.
Chad: Woo-hoo!
Joel: I was in Salt Lake City this week and Christi is in some city I've never heard of in Utah. It's probably Mormon central or something, but she came up and said hi, which I thought was awesome, because she's such a fan. So Christi, you've earned this shout-out for the two-hour round trip that you made to come say hi and hang out for a little bit.
Chad: Very nice. I had an anonymous comment on LinkedIn about the Super Bowl commercial. Here's what it says, "Saw the video, thought it was very funny, but Monster will never have staffing support again now that it's owned by Randstad. None of us are going to hand over our hard-earned revenue to the competition and trust they will treat our postings fairly or securely." They end up with "Come on, Google for Jobs!"
Joel: He's probably right.
Chad: All rooting for you. I think it's interesting that a lot of these companies use the hell out of Indeed and they don't realize that Recruit Holdings has ... I mean, part of their portfolio, they have staffing. Right? I know it's not a big name like Randstad, but what do you think about that?
Joel: I think it will further prove my point that iCIMS is going to make TextRecruit exclusive to them because none of the competitors of iCIMS want to have their API open to one of their companies, which was sort of confirmed by a certain CEO that we interviewed recently. So we will see about that, but I tend to agree that if it's so blatant as Monster is owned by a staffing company so why would staffing companies get in bed? If Monster became the Monster of old it wouldn't be an issue because everyone would have to use them, but you can sort of not use Monster now and be okay. So, yeah, I kind of agree with his point.
Chad: Okay. Okay. I'm not quite there yet, but I think a lot of it does have to do with optics. There's no question, and I think you're right there. One thing I want to throw out real quick, so, Kelly ... being Robinson Kelly ... he sends us funny shit all the time. Some of it's funny, some of it's not so funny. So, there's a quick segment we're going to call Funny Shit Kelly Sends Us, and this is really a caution to talent acquisitions. Think about this, because vendors are actually doing this and their testing your systems. Here's the story.
Chad: A vendor is getting ready to engage with a client and they're testing their system. In doing that, they apply for a job, which I'm sure you've heard a million times and probably some of you in talent acquisition have done this as well. They apply for a job. The next day, that individual actually received a call from a recruiter. The whole funny part about this whole stupid-ass story is that-
Joel: You did say real quick.
Chad: ... he applied with Big Bird's resume for a dental surgery position. So, this either means that that company needs to do a shit-ton of training from a recruiter's standpoint or maybe we need to step up our game, talent acquisition.
Joel: That's your real quick story?
Chad: That was a very quick story.
Joel: Holy cow. Let's get through shout-outs here real quick. Apparently, there's a Melting Pot owner in Dallas with three or four franchises who listens to this show.
Chad: Really?
Joel: I have no idea how he found out about us, but he listens to learn about recruiting and employment, so whoever you are in Dallas owning Melting Pots, assuming you're listening, big shout out to you.
Chad: Yeah, and Dallas is a huge hotbed for recruiting, TA leadership, that kind of stuff. You can go ahead, and you've got our permission, to play Chad and Cheese Podcasts over the sound system in your restaurants.
Joel: I think their goal is to actually sell food, not clean it up after it's regurgitated.
Chad: Good point.
Joel: Chris Amato from OptiJob is still alive.
Chad: What?
Joel: Shout out to him.
Chad: Dude.
Joel: I didn't even know they were still in business, but yes OptiJob is still around doing the SEO thing, doing the social thing, and he reached out to us. I consider him a friend, I think you do too.
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: It's good to hear from him and hopefully we'll be hearing about new and exciting things from OptiJob in the future.
Joel: All right. You got some commentary on Recruitics this week. What's up?
Chad: Ooh, so we talked about Recruitics and how they look out for their customers. Well, they had actually sent an email out to their customers talking about some of the Indeed changes. They went a step above. They created a white paper and they provided it to everybody, so you can actually go out there and look for this Recruitics white paper. It's called The Major Indeed.com changes to start 2018. People were only in February of 2018 and there have already been three major changes Indeed has made.
Chad: First is the resume database. Did you hear about this?
Joel: Please enlighten me.
Chad: Okay, so Indeed had a very simple model. I mean, you're familiar with Indeed's model. It's a dollar per pretty much resume to be able to see the contact information, and I mean that's fairly simple. You go in, you see a resume that you like. It doesn't have contact information on it. You buy it and then you get the contact information. It's a dollar for a resume. Right?
Joel: That's simple.
Chad: That shit's simple.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Okay, so this isn't really the smartest always to evolve a product, but Indeed just went really crazy and they've gone to a subscription model, which should seem simple, but they've actually raised the rates from told scale that would cost $100 for 100 candidates ... right, pretty simple ... to $250 for 100 candidates. That's a huge increase. But wait, there's more. Because that's easy-
Joel: Is that a 150% price increase, if my math is correct?
Chad: Yes, it's good.
Joel: Okay, just checking.
Chad: This is where shit gets weird, okay?
Joel: Okay.
Chad: When reaching out to the candidates through Indeed, if you receive a negative response from a candidate yet it's still a response, you receive a candidate credit, which pretty much makes that candidate's contact information free. Right? The complexity here is already fun. If you receive a positive response, you receive a three-candidate credit, meaning that the candidate that you obviously reached out to is free, plus you get two additional credits to your contact. So what they're saying is, talent acquisition, and they're doing it in a very weird, complex way as look, we're going to charge you more but if you interact with these candidates better and you get more positive responses, you get more responses, it could actually be less than what you paid before.
Joel: Okay. That sounds really complicated. They're trying to incentivize better outreach?
Chad: Yeah ... I mean, really the whole scheme was created to drive better engagement using Indeed and not pissing off their candidates, which makes sense, but what it's really done is risen the cost about two and a half times and created just a complex system overall. I mean, who's going to true this up over time, and are you going to trust Indeed to say, "Oh yeah, no, you had X amount of positives and X amount of negatives, and who's actually going to tell who's positive and negative? I mean, is there a star system? Again, the level of complexity went through the roof when it was so easy before.
Joel: Are the other two that complex or are they simple?
Chad: The next one's fairly simple. They're kicking job board off the site, right, so cutting duplication, which means job boards you're pretty much screwed. Really, the companies who built Indeed are now getting kicked off Indeed, and this is your favorite-
Joel: Fort Indeed.
Chad: ... Trojan horse method, right? This is what we've talked about over a few podcasts and we're Recruitics, who also provides analytics for these different vendors too, they're also seeing this. Job boards obviously are seeing much less traffic from Indeed and they're really having to focus on seeing what they can do to supplement, and one of those things is being Google for Jobs.
Joel: Yeah, and from what we've seen early on is it pretty much replaces Indeed traffic, so they don't really care that they're getting bounced off from what I can tell.
Chad: And it's free, at least the traffic that we've heard-
Joel: For now.
Chad: ... thus far, yes, for now.
Joel: So that's two changes, or was that three.
Chad: No, that was two. Number three ... hey employers, we're not a search engine anymore. We talked about that a couple of podcasts back. The real big change is that Indeed is really going through regression. They started out as a pure search engine, pure search engine.
Joel: Google for jobs was their mantra.
Chad: Yeah. They were a pure search engine. They didn't have a resume database. Then guess what? They had a resume database, and then they obviously added complexity to the resume database, and now they've added this whole new two-pane scenario which-
Joel: Did you say T-Pain?
Chad: Yeah, no, not T-Pain. Two-pane. It was close though, it was close.
Joel: Two-pane, got it.
Chad: So instead of one click to actually go and view the job on your site, it's two clicks now, and you pay for candidates who never even hit your site. So that first click you're still getting charged for even though they're not hitting the job on your website, and you'll pay more, which is one of the things that I think you saw is that the user experience is much faster for a job seeker, but what that means is they can just click more things faster, which means it's going to cost a hell of a lot more money for employers.
Joel: You're going to see a lot less traffic from Indeed because of this, but the traffic that you're going to see are people that want to apply, so I'm sort of torn between is it better to send traffic that's less but it's more applicants or people are going to look at their traffic analytics and go holy cow, Indeed's traffic dropped off the cliff?
Chad: Yeah, I think-
Joel: [crosstalk 00:16:53] candidates.
Chad: I think a lot of it has to do with short term versus long term when it comes to employers thinking about their brand and thinking about experience. Even if that individual is needed qualified for that position, can I get them into my database because they might be perfect for another position or six, eight, 12 months down the road they might be perfect for another position or maybe even this position? Who knows. That's the thing. They've paid for that candidate view, and for all of those idiots that are out there that say, "Well, I don't want unqualified candidates anyway." Bullshit. You're paying for those individuals, get them into your database, and then start to use them the way that you're supposed to be using them. Against other requisitions and future requisitions. Don't be idiots.
Joel: Plus, if you spend a lot of time making your career site awesome with videos, which we'll talk about after this, but if you've done the work, well now you don't even get the traffic because they're just going to look at the job posting on Indeed, if they're not interested just go to the next job down and keep sort of machine-gunning through the job postings. So yeah, I don't know. I think ultimately it's better for the job seeker to sort of quickly go through all these sites instead of go to each one, but there's going to be ramifications in terms of people who are on and posting Indeed and losing out on traffic and losing out on the things that they're used to.
Chad: And again, I think it has to do with our relationship to the job seeker. Do we think it's more just quick and easy wham bam thank you ma'am type of transaction or is it a longterm relationship where we continue to keep them engaged and hopefully we can find an opportunity in our organization.
Joel: So you came across a review on Glassdoor about working at Indeed, which that was interesting because someone at Indeed is posting on Glassdoor instead of posting a review on Indeed, but that's beside the point. The reviewer had some really interesting comments. What were some of those?
Chad: Yeah, so I was actually having a conversation with one of Indeed clients and I said, "Man, I mean you guys have got to be really pissed." He's like, "Yeah, there's no question. All of me and my compadres, we're not happy about this, but the person I'm incredibly sad for right now are my sales reps because they are taking it from all flanks" and it really must suck to be an Indeed sales rep right now, and then somebody else actually sent me a review on Glassdoor that was from a sales rep. Now mind you, so Glassdoor has five stars, right? They're a five-star review. This was a four-star review, and this person picks Indeed apart.
Joel: Maybe they didn't understand the star system.
Chad: Who knows. Maybe they wanted to try to float this in where Indeed thought, "Oh, this is four stars, that's fine." But anyway, here's one of the quotes, "Tech teams are untouchable, even when a client has valid issues. This creates unbelievable expectations on the sales team to keep the client happy with no power while your quota and livelihood is tied to this insanity. I've been in sales for most of my life and luckily I've been able to grow into being a sales kind of liaison in overt technology groups for a while. This is the kind of rub and friction you do not want in your organization.
Chad: Going on it says, "Everything operates in a shroud of mystery. They intentionally keep departments away from each other and their favorite word to a client is no. Be prepared for no more than you've ever experienced before just because they're locking things down. It took me four months to figure out pricing." This is a sales person. "It took me four months to figure out pricing because there is no pricing really schema. It is what can you get out of the customers." That was in quotes. "What can you get out of the customers," which is why I think this shroud exists and quite frankly right now it's working because talent acquisition does what? They find out what has worked in the past and they beat it like a dead horse, man, and they don't look at their ROI. That's the biggest issue.
Joel: Dude, how much does this sound like what a salesperson would have been saying in like 2009 working at Monster or CareerBuilder?
Chad: And that's what we keep saying, man. Indeed leadership, okay, I implore you, change your shit. This does not work, and if you think trying to play this silo game, not to mention also trying to manage by chaos ... we've seen empires like yours crumble, remember that, and they crumbled when a little startup took them down. You don't have to worry about a little startup taking your dumb ass down. You've got to worry about Google and you've got to worry about Facebook, and some of these other startups that are actually banding together to be able to attack your fucking flank.
Joel: LinkedIn.
Chad: They're kind of big.
Joel: All right. Do you feel better after your weekly Indeed rant?
Chad: I just want to see them do better, man. This is bullshit.
Joel: All right, well we have a very special advertisement from our greatest sponsor ever, us.
Announcer: The following message was paid for by the Campaign to Elect The Chad and Cheese as Co-Presidents of Monster.
Chad: Hi. My name is Chad Sowash.
Joel: And I am Joel Cheesman. You know us as-
Chad: The Chad-
Joel: ... and Cheese Podcast at chadcheese.com.
Chad: We are aware Monster's new owners have lopped off the heads of old Monster leadership and have focused on filling those positions with fresh ideas and new proven leaders, which is why-
Joel: Let them eat cake. Get it? What? Lopped-off heads, Marie Antoinette, aw come on, man.
Chad: Which is why The Chad and Cheese are officially running for co-president of Monster.
Joel: The Chad and Cheese understand the current vulnerability of Indeed in a market that is crying out for a new platform for and of the people.
Chad: Really? The baby sound effect ... again?
Joel: You know it's my favorite.
Chad: Yeah. You do love that damn thing.
Announcer: The Chad and Cheese pledge to build and drive cost-effective recruitment options through a new Monster vision.
Joel: Yes, and The Chad and Cheese also want to answer your longstanding questions like what ever happened to Monster Networking, Chief Monster, Jobber, HotJobs, Gozaik, JobPilot, TalentBin, Trovix, Tickle, and that blue collar thingy ... what was that called? I can't remember
Announcer: The Chad and Cheese promise to get you, the people, answers.
Chad: And we also promise not to make boneheaded decisions like buying Tickle instead of LinkedIn.
Announcer: Yeah, that actually happened.
Joel: Oy. Chad and I are asking for your support in our bi to co-president Monster.
Announcer: Vote for The Chad and Cheese for Co-President of Monster because you deserve a new Monster, and we don't mean that purple Bugs Bunny cartoon ripoff thing, either.
Joel: It's a new day.
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Joel: And Cheese as co-presidents of Monster.
Female Announce: This ad was approved by The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Look, there's literally no way in hell these guys are getting this gig, but they have a pretty amazing podcast, honestly, so visit chadcheese.com. Paid for by the Campaign of The Chad and Cheese for Co-President of Monster.
Joel: Those guys are idiots. What do you think when I say PandoIQ?
Chad: So RealMatch-
Joel: Who you do know.
Chad: Yeah, Terry launched-
Joel: Yeah, Terry. Shout out to Terry. I saw him this week. They're launching PandoIQ, which is essentially their sort of self-serve Appcast, Recruitics challenger programmatic ad buying. Basically, for those that don't know, programmatic is essentially a plug your jobs into our platform, we're going to put your jobs in multiple places, we're going to manage your budget as we algorithmically figure out which positions on which sites during which time of the day, et cetera, work best, and thus you get the best results for the best bang or biggest bang for your buck. This would seem pretty straightforward, but it's got quite a few people in a tizzy for probably debatable reasons, which we will get into now.
Joel: I wrote this story yesterday and at least one agency person reached out to me, one agency person reached out to you. They may be the same person, but who knows, and they have some pretty strong opinions about this. What was your guy saying? Or gal.
Chad: Well, I actually reached out to my agency person, so they didn't reach out to me because I was trying to get a feel for this.
Joel: So you're doing real journalism.
Chad: Okay, yeah, a couple of vendors and a couple of agencies I reached. This person's take was that the world doesn't need another job board network or programmatic network. None of these guys get premium inventory on most of the sites unless you maintain a bid as if buying directly. Most buyers don't, so they end up serving just as backfill so you end up on page nine or something like that. That was the agency kind of thought process.
Joel: My feedback was that because RealMatch in particular has a network of partners that they are going to sort of favor those sites as opposed to other sites and that there was a direct conflict of interest because of this setup, which I think is totally fair. I could say, well, if our network gets you the best bang for your buck then so be it, it's just our algorithm figuring out where to place ads, et cetera. But I do definitely see where double dipping may take place where we're getting money on the front end to post the ads and then we're getting money on the other end because we're the ones that are putting the ads up.
Joel: I think bigger point potentially is that agencies are a little bit scared, which is doth thou protest too much ... throwing Shakespeare into the conversation, which will probably never happen again. People tend to scream when they are hurt and agencies have a direct interest in continuing to buy ads for people because that's kind of what they do beside from the warm and fuzzy and point of branding and other things like that. If you take away the job posting piece and where should we put our ads and what should the ad say and et cetera, then programmatic ad buying really hurts agencies who aren't really doing incredibly well anyway.
Joel: This is going to be a battle that wages on. Which side of debate do you think will come out on top? The programmatic kids or the agency ?
Chad: Well first, I think they're both going to come off well and here's why. Talent acquisition, they don't want to deal with this shit, so what are they going to do? They're going to hand it over to their agencies. So yeah, there could be this kind of frictionless platform that set up, but still talent acquisition is not going to want to jump into that shit and do it. It's going to take a while. It's going to take a while. I mean seriously, we talk about it every week. Talent acquisition, they're a jack of all trades, they're masters of none, really. To be able to take a look at this and say oh agencies, this is going to hurt agencies ... I really don't see that because of the behavior we've seen for decades.
Chad: Now, one of the things that I have seen and when I was talking to one of the vendors is something actually popped out to me that I thought was interesting because RealMatch, it made it sound like that they have an actual opportunity to take a look at the inventory of all of these job sites to balance inventory and prices and all that other fun stuff. I reached out to a couple of vendors and one of them reached back and said, "It's categorically false that RealMatch has access to inventory. It's kind of like the vaporware kind of thing. I mean, with some vendors it might be that way, but not all.
Chad: I think having these types of platforms, and as we talk about AI and machine learning and all of this stuff, it's going to evolve, so don't expect perfection out of the gate, but also don't expect that some of these claims are going to happen throughout the entire industry.
Joel: The presentation from RealMatch actually that 1% or probably less of advertising in recruitment right now is programmatic, so we have a long way to go before this moves the needle on anybody in terms of their bottom line. I tend to agree with you in terms of most employers will say like, "We've heard we're supposed to be programmatic. We don't what the hell it is, can you guys do it for us." Agencies will be like, "Yeah, we can manage your programmatic ad buying. So I think, yeah, ultimately agencies will probably be fine, I think the programmatic solutions will be fine, and as usual it will be the employer picking up the tab on everybody being fine.
Chad: Yeah. In RealMatch, I think this is a very smart move for them because they've been developing technologies on ad placements, partnerships with different distribution points throughout the web, so I think this is a good move for them. You know, you need to move forward and this was I think just the most logical step for them to take.
Joel: Yeah, look, because we talked before, look at what marketing is doing, and in five years that's what recruitment is going to be doing-
Chad: Exactly.