It's Valentine's Day week which means you can hear Barry White and feel the love in the air, even on The Chad & Cheese Podcast.
This week:
We start with a Google Love Trifecta!
Yes there's more LOVE...
... plus more banter and snark than you can probably handle.
Enjoy.
And show our sponsors some love while you're at it. America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly and Catch 22 Consulting are single and ready to mingle ... with customers, baby! Oh, behave!
Don't forget to register for TAtech Europe with the 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: Are you ready to feel the love?
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: Welcome to our Valentine's Day week show. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash.
Joel: On this week's episode, Google for Jobs snuggles up with a Latin lover.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: We undressed why Beyond really changed it's name to Nexxt. And Home Depot tells job seekers to, "love yo damn self." It's warm and fuzzy time, folks. Get ready.
Chad: Self love.
Joel: But first, a little foreplay from our sponsor.
Sponsor: Google, Lever, Entelo, Monster, Jibe. What do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovren technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job, while others use our technology to help companies find the perfect candidate. Sovren has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996 and we can help improve your hiring process too. We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit Sovren.com, S-O-V-R-E-N.com, for a free demo.
Joel: Beautiful, I'm just realizing that our shout outs are kind of angry ... Not very loving. So I don't ... Maybe this is love ... We're doing love the Chad and Cheese way.
Chad: Love the Chad and Cheese way. Yeah, right out of the gate ... This isn't mean. My humble apologies goes to Nancy in Philly because, apparently, she blindingly devoted herself to Team Chad well before Ed did. And she actually showed me screenshot evidence. So Nancy, please accept my humble apologies. Not to mention also ... And she had a good question for you, Joel.
Joel: Yeah?
Chad: You saw that Gr8 People was funded this week and a good amount of it actually came from the Randstad Innovation Fund. Her question is, do you think Monster will play a role in Gr8 People? Because of that connection with Randstad?
Joel: I think companies buy other companies to integrate other companies or kill companies or just loot the talent and yeah. And just walk away. I think in his case, although I'm not an expert on Gr8 People, the GR8 is awful, by the way ... It's like Jobg8's ugly sister. I don't have much of an opinion. You're a former employee of two of those companies. You probably have a much more insightful opinion than I do.
Chad: I would say I probably do, I don't know that it's right. But yeah, I think Monster right now has enough problems of their own and they're focusing on the technology at hand, just at Monster, versus thinking about Gr8 People. I mean, I think there ae some good perspective plays that happened there, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon because Monster has to get their shit together. Hopefully, they'll get good co-presidents on board soon, we can only hope.
Joel: Word.
Chad: I really don't think that, right now, they can be that strategic because they have a ton of development that they have to before they can get their own products up and running and get in the snuff before they can start to look at Gr8 People, which is more of an applicant tracking system, CRM, Drip Campaign kind of. You know, it's got so much that's actually out there. And it's from the founders of Virtual Edge who sold to ADP. So, it's pretty stout product from my understanding. Bad URL, but fairly stout product.
Joel: Monster's in that sort of ... You know when the oxygen drops in the airplane when you're going down and you give yourself the oxygen first before you worry about anyone else. That's kind of where Monster is right now. They need to oxygenate themselves first.
Chad: That is awesome, that is awesome.
Joel: Thank you, thank you.
Chad: So there's your answer, Nancy. And that being said, 'cause I gotta continue to give Philly love, Ed says to Joel Cheesman, 100% that he's that shallow for choosing Team Chad and he also liked the Eli OBJ Dirty Dancing skit as his favorite commercial as well. So, as I had said before, very, very symbiotic .. me and the commercial.
: You and your cronies mean nothing to me, okay my friend? Because ... A lot ... As we found, a lot of this love is not very deep. I got a big ... I got a couple, 'come on, man's this week.
Chad: Yeah, we do, we do.
Joel: So, we get this, I get this LinkedIn message from Remy Jung. It's J-U-N-G. Maybe it's Jung or Jong or Ung. We don't know. I won't mention the company, but he sends me a message that's very nice.
Joel: So Chad and I have this private Facebook group where we share show ideas, so I shared this message from Remy and said, "Hey, this is a really nice message." Took a screenshot of the message he sent me on LinkedIn. Well, Chad turns around and sends me the same screenshot, but from his account. So, basically all Remy did was copy and paste the same message and just put my name or whatever, something to me. And then it was like, okay, well, I feel special not at all now.
Joel: And then, David Zanesky from Monster, I will name him because we named him last week, loving on him a lot. He sends me a message, and I go, "Dude, please tell me David did not send you the same message." And he's like, "Yup, he did."
Chad: He totally did.
Joel: Okay, so you guys suck, but a lesson for sales or relationships or networking, don't just copy and paste when the two dudes that you're sending it, are doing a podcast together because there's a good chance they might be sharing that information with each other and then calling you out on the podcast, like I have.
Chad: Joel had one comment after I shared my screenshot, "What a dick". I thought it was awesome. Remmie, David, come on guys. We love you, we love you. You can do better, you can do better.
Joel: They look like millennials. This is such a millennial thing, like, I'm just gonna copy and paste the same message and send it to 100 friends and I've done my job. No, customize the message. Alright, moving on.
Chad: Okay, so William Golden gets a #ChadCheese shout out. He's been listening for weeks, months. Thanks William. Also, Steven O'Donnell. Our Scottish game has doubled, I think, in the past few weeks. And Steven says ... I think this is awesome ... "I had seriously expected to dislike Chad ad Cheese, but heard it for the first time last night and it was excellent." That shit's funny.
Joel: I think most people expect to hate this show when they first, you know, so.
Chad: Yeah, it's funny.
Joel: For whatever reason, if we can turn haters into lovers, that's a good thing. But yes, we are big in the Glasgow, Scotland area. And I'll send a quick shout out to Adam Gordon ...
Chad: Oh yeah!
Joel: ... from Canada.id and if you haven't heard the firing squad of their company, I highly recommend it. Although, I'm biased; it's our show. But, shout out to Adam. We appreciate it. And hopefully we'll see him in Dublin, or somebody from CanadaID in Dublin, 'cause we'll be there in about a month from now.
Chad: Yeah, some pretty cool tech, pretty cool tech.
Joel: Yeah, with TAtech ten, spelled out T-E-N, 18 for a 15% discount if you still have-
Chad: So yeah, I made it easy. Go to chadcheese.com. There's a banner there for TAtech Europe and the actual discount code is below it. So all you have to do is copy the discount code, click on the banner, go to the ... It's done for you, man. I made it too damn easy. I'm not going through the whole WiFI password thing anymore.
Joel: WiFi password? What the hell are you talking about?
Chad: That's what the Tatech discount code [crosstalk 00:08:46] feels like a WiFI password.
Joel: Oh, gotcha. Like, the 28 string password ... Gotcha. I'm with ya, I'm with ya. Sorry about that.
Joel: Okay, shout out to the Job Board Doctor, probably our most loyal, longterm listener.
Chad: Yup.
Joel: He says we should talk more about how staffing firms hate Indeed Prime, Indeed staffing are, I guess, or product. So yeah, Job Board Doctor, you're probably right. We should talk more about that, and by the way, if you are in the staffing business ... If you wanna send us a note, go to chadcheese.com. Let us know how much you hate Indeed taking your money. We wanna hear from you.
Chad: Yeah, staffing companies, I mean, we actually had last week's episode ... They were talking about how there was no way they were gonna give Monster their money because of Randstat ... They were gonna buy Randstat. What about Indeed? I mean their own buy, Recruit Holdings, who obviously has recruiting in their portfolio, not to mention Indeed Prime. So I mean, you're gettin' stepped on all over the place. So I think it's really hard to pick and choose as you move forward. You just have to focus on ROI.
Joel: Isn't it the snake that eats it's tail and then it just dies because it's eating itself. Yeah, that's what it feels like. Anyway ... that's all the shout outs I got. You got anybody else?
Chad: Matt Durney, apparently Indeed loves us in Europe. We got a tweet as he was in transit to Doha. I haven't heard a damn thing from the U.S. offices, but Europe loves us, so that's awesome.
Joel: Well, that's good. Yeah, the U.S. doesn't hate us. They reached out to me this week. They have reached, apparently, 250,000,000 visitors per month on their job board. That's pretty amazing. Ten years ago, it was around 15,000,000 and they've increased that exponentially. So, you know, good for them.
Chad: With all the gouging they've done with pricing lately, they better have something to show for goodness sake. So, yeah, I would expect some shit like that, right?
Joel: You're such a hater man, such a hater. Do you sleep with one eye open? Because ...
Chad: No, I'm not scared of-
Joel: I mean, maybe the Indeed mafia's gonna show up ...
Chad: I'm not scared of ... Okay-
Joel: I'm not scurred.
Chad: So, last but not least, I've gotta say, I've gotta say, Soda Stream reached out and last week, we gave them a hard time. They did an amazing ad and then it just kind of fizzled because they didn't do some kind of execution pieces right. So first and foremost, props to Soda Stream. No, no, no ... Props to Soda Stream for adding careers link to their website. I know, I can't believe I'm saying it either. Especially after a ton of cash got me excited to join the revolution. And then I didn't know how to join the god damn revolution. So they actually added a careers link to the bottom of their website.
Joel: Corporate, corporate site?
Chad: Yeah, yup, yup, yup.
Joel: Well, if I had the firing squad fake clap loaded up, I would play it right now. That is ... I don't know if it's a good, great thing that a company of that size is finally putting careers link on their website. But hey, here we go 'cause I got it and you're excited about it and I know you're drinking from the Soda Stream right now.
Chad: And last, but not least, wait a minute, Disability Solutions, Disability Solutions, if you go to chadcheese.com, you'll notice all of our podcasts, at least over the last three, four months or so, have been transcribed. So, that's all through a sponsorship with Disability Solutions. Thank you Disability Solutions for that sponsorship because everyone, even the hard of hearing, deserves to partake in the stupid shit we way. Everyone!
Joel: Yes, yes. Stupidity should not be a right of just the able people. Alright, can we move on to the show now? As we've hit the 13 minute mark on this damn thing.
Joel: Alright, Google is just continuing it's world domination of the employment space. SO, we've got a myriad of Google stuff to talk about. Which one do you want to start with?
Chad: Let's go with the TMP piece that you found.
Joel: Okay, so TMP, for those who don't know, is an agency that has a lot of media buying and management of companies' stuff. They're putting together, and have had put together, I guess ... They are doing a webinar next week, but they have put together a teaser of some of the information that they're finding out about Google for Jobs and how it's impacting user behavior.
Joel: I wouldn't say there's anything mind-blowing in this. It's kind of stuff we thought would happen, like fewer people are going to the Corporate site because they can get the whole job on Google; the can quickly get it all on Google. But, one of the things that I think both of us found interesting was that 38 ... So, of new job seekers landing on job-level page, so they're going to the job site as opposed to like the homepage or like an intro employment branding page. So, it went up from 38% to 50%, so more new job seekers are landing on job-level pages in their job search queries, which is a good thing. I think ultimately Google wants you to have less steps to accomplish what you wanna accomplish. And it look's like 38 to 50%, they're starting to do that.
Chad: Well, if you don't know who TMP is, you should flog yourself at this point. They're only, I think, the biggest advertising agency in the recruitment space.
Joel: Hey, we have some newbies in the audience, man. I mean, they don't know.
Chad: So, they should still flog themselves.
Chad: So, I think the apply click behavior was huge. S0 since Google for Jobs launched, 35% of the job seekers clicked the apply button and that was a 20% jump. I mean that's huge, right? So being able to be better connected to job seekers, to jobs around them, and get to more relevant jobs, that's really the mission of Google Jobs. Instead of just throwing links out there, that send you to indiscriminate pages that are amazingly SCOed, right? They're actually focusing on delivering jobs that are relevant to your search quires.
Joel: What I'd love to know, and I don't if TMP has this data, but I'll just go ahead and put it out there in case they do. I wanna know which job boards, because we know that when you search for a job, it'll show you all the places you can apply. So you can go CareerBuilder, Monster ... Whatever the job is. I wanna know which job board ranks the highest and in order from up to down of which ones are the most preferred by job seekers.
Chad: So, shout out to Chris Grosso over at TMP man, I know you have your fingers in lot of data. If you have that data, my friend, let's share it with the world 'cause that's good stuff.
Joel: Let's get him on the show.
Chad: Oh, god yeah. Love Chris.
Joel: We'll learn more. Oh, actually, he doesn't wanna come on, right? 'Cause of some corporate thing? Or he doesn't want to embarrass the TMP brand.
Chad: I think if anybody could give TMP a wonderful, polished brand, there's no one better that Mr. Chris Grosso.
Joel: That's probably true.
Joel: Alright, so good information coming out. I'll add the news that Google for Jobs is open for be business in Latin America. Our friends in ... Wow.
Chad: Lalalalalala.
Joel: Oh my god. Now the real mafia is gonna come visit us. Not the Indeed mafia.
Joel: Alright, anyway. So yeah, I think Mexico all the way down in terms of pretty much everywhere in Latin America ... If you search for a job now on Google you're gonna see ... Basically what you see for jobs in the U.S., North America, you see in Latin America. So, clearly to me, this says Google's kind of serious about this whole thing. The initial tests in the U.S have gone well. They're starting to roll this thing globally. Was it you that said Europe is a little bit scary. They're a little bit hesitant probably to unveil this in Europe because of the privacy laws?
Chad: Yeah, 'cause of being sued and monopolies and ... That's why I think the switch in how they're serving up jobs and how you can apply to jobs is such a differentiator because instead of just providing jobs from companies from the corporate applicant tracking systems. They're doing this myriad kind of effect that the job seeker can do whatever the wanna go do. Wherever they wanna go through, if the wanna go to the applicant tracking system, if they wanna go to Glassdoor, if they wanna go to Indeed ... Well, they can't go to Indeed because they don't have their jobs there. But anyways, they have the pick, right? So there's not this whole monopoly thing going on and they're really feeding more traffic back into the market, right? So, I think smartly, very smart fr them, and a lot of this I think i coming from the lawsuits that are happening in the U.K.
Joel: Yeah, I'm not sure what conclusion you came up with there. But yeah, Latin America, Google for Jobs. Have fun with that.
Chad: It's the process.
Joel: And lastly, you love this, resume search, AI. All the kids are doing it.
Chad: Yeah, all the kids are doing it. So, apparently, OnGig, they posted the seven reasons why Google Hire is kicking ass and taking names. And I mean that's really more like a propaganda piece for OnGig to get out there.
Joel: I was gonna say, we have debated that, and Google for Hire has some issues.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And we'll talk to Bogomil in Dublin over a few Guinness's and find out what's going on. But yes, their search, you really love this part.
Chad: Yeah, number five was resume search's AI based. So, thus far, we know that the Google for Jobs, or the Google Jobs Discovery API has been there. We know that CareerBoard is using it. We know that Jibe is using it. We know that the companies are actually using it. And we know that it's giving much better contextualized type of search-based results which is awesome and that's exactly what the job seekers want and need. THey need more relevant job search.
Chad: Now, we've been talking about ... and this is for months, when Google started coming out with this, that they're going to flip this and they're going to start doing AI search, machine based search for resumes. And that's what OnGig is saying here. They've been in the system; they're doing resume search and it feels like the same kind of API is happening, but it's just for resume. So that's pretty amazing.
Joel: So one could guess that API for searching resumes is around the corner?
Chad: I wouldn't count it out, that's for sure. I don't know 100%, but if I was a betting man, I would say hell yeah. 'Cause it just makes a hell of a lot of sense. And for companies like iCims ... So iCims is using the Google search for jobs. Google does search better than anybody, so why the hell wouldn't you use Google for resume searching as well? So, I think it just makes a hell of a lot of sense. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's unveiling in the coming months.
Joel: Yup, iCims and Early Doctor, Career Builder, ZipRecruiter... I wouldn't be surprised to see it on their backend stuff. So yeah, that's a good analysis by us. I think that's something we can expect in the future.
Chad: Agreed.
Joel: Ready to move on?
Chad: I am.
Joel: Dice is fucked still. Their stock is not going up as they search fo a CEO and a buyer for the company, so things are still pretty bad there. So HackerRank, something Dice should have been 5 years ago, or before that, just got $39 of investment money and they continue to rise and Dice continues to fall. It's a real, it's a real sad story.
Chad: It's ... yeah.
Joel: It's a real tragedy.
Chad: It's a real Shakespearean tragedy. Yeah, HackerRank is the reason why Dice is dead. I mean, even if DIce ... If they don't know they're dead yet-
Joel: GitHub, I mean, there's a few of them, but yeah.
Chad: Well, I mean ...
Joel: Yeah, no doubt.
Chad: I mean this is really the silver bullet right here, this puts them out of their misery. The thing that gets me is that Dice actually partnered with HackerRank. And it's interesting because I think, just from a parasitic standpoint, you know, to be able to try to drive all the candidates that are going to Dice into HackerRank makes a hell of a lot of sense. Because the way that the system works, you practice coding, you compete, and then you actually go through and find jobs. And that's a great way for companies to actually find candidates and their slogan, which is pretty cool, is to make the world flat, which means it shouldn't matter where you're located, what school you went to, what, you know, religion or you know, gender or any of that stuff. If you can code, you can code. It's more of a faceless skills-based process. And I think that is genius as we take a look at trying to hire into the future.
Joel: I believe the educated among us like to call that Ameritocracy, if I'm not mistaken.
Chad: Possibly.
Joel: Based on your skill level is how you will be judged around the world. And HackerRank has tapped into whatever the psyche is of a developer, they have a underlying competitiveness that I think a lot of people don't think about. HackerRank has definiely tapped into that. I forget the company that we talked about a few weeks ago that is trying to do that with salespeople ... is trying to tap into that as well. And congrats to HackerRank and GitHub as well, the sharing economy, the open source projects that are out there. The tech recruiting space is such an interesting area. And it's really kind of unfortunate that Dice couldn't see the forest through the trees, I guess, and missed a lot of opportunities around this recruiting area.
Chad: Yeah, they're dead in the water.
Joel: Alright, let's hear a quick ad from our buddies at America's Job Exchange and talk about self-service at Home Depot's recruiting department.
Chad: Love self-service.
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Chad: Love it.
Joel: I just love self-service, Chad.
Chad: I know you do.
Joel: Grocery shopping, gas ... I do a lot by myself.
Joel: Anyway, Home Depot is taking self serve to a whole new level. A story came out today actually, on the wires. THey're essentially, by pre-screening candidates, et cetera ... If they pass the pre-screening, they can self-schedule an interview at the company. And what's funny is ... So, for the audience, Chad and I were talking about this and you're like, "Oh, that's really cool." And I said something like, "It's automation, baby!" And you said, "It's not that automated, actually." And I said, "It is for the employers." And you said, "But not for the candidates." And I said, "Well, who cares about them?" So basically-
Chad: That was all you said.
Joel: That's basically the mentality among companies. Anyway, but yes, I think this is really cool. So instead of the old, you know, like ... Most people currently, they go through an interview and well, when can you come in? And they apply. And like the whole process. Just let the job seekers decide, you know, when they wanna come in. And then have someone on the recruiting side, "Oh, well we'll be here from 12:00-5:00pm." Pick a time for ten minutes and then let them decide it. And I think it even takes out the whole chat bot, like when can you come in, it sort of piggybacks on that, but sort of gives the job seeker more control, I don't know.
Chad: Yeah, I think that they're doing a good job; there's no question. They're kind of tippy-toeing into this, but it's good. They first started with text apply, so they've got like a 15 minute application process now that you can actually text to apply and they saw a 50% increase in candidates looking for jobs because the types of individuals that they're looking for are text driven.
Chad: Now we've seen ... Now this is interview scheduling, which is obviously that next step. And we've seen products like GoodTime.io, which is another firing squad that we had. But there are other platforms that are out there that really pull this together in a very nice package that are specifically focused on the Home Depots of the world. So the Talentifys, the Jobaligns ... And then we also talked about Cealo and their high volume program.
Chad: So I mean, Home Depot, they're stepping into it slowly ... I appreciate that they're stepping into it at all, but there're platforms that are out there that will do this for them if they just embraced it, but you know, they're slow to embrace it, but they are embracing it. And I've gotta give Home Depot kudos for that.
Joel: They're hiring 80,000 spring workers.
Chad: Yeah, I know man.
Joel: ... for the season. So if you stop to think about the time they're saving by letting the candidate self-schedule, it's gotta be huge. It's gotta be millions of dollars that they're saving. So, if you are a high frequency hiring company for seasonal whatever ... If you're not getting on the automation train, you're way behind.
Chad: And it makes no sense, especially for these types of positions ... You can cut out so much administrative work from the apply standpoint, from the interview scheduling standpoint, from the actual interview ... Remember, we were at Canvas just a few weeks ago talking about text interviewing. And then hone it with the one-time voice interviewing. So there are so many awesome technologies that are out there that you can leverage to make this easier on yourself and your hiring managers and so on and so forth. And again, the Jobaligns or the Talentifys ... There are already platforms that are there to be able to help you do high volume stuff. So it's there, man. You just gotta go get it.
Joel: Look at you name dropping, like you're a Hollywood agent dropping Hollywood stars' names. Love it.
Chad: They gotta know that they're out there. If we don't tell them who to go see, you know what they'll do? Nothing!
Joel: You know what? We are the start-ups' best friend because we're letting ... You know, we've got a firing squad. Who else does that? Who else is mentioning these guys in shout outs. Like come on, no one loves the start ups like us. So, there you go.
Chad: We love start ups.
Joel: So let's talk about a multi-billion dollar company, Unilever, and multi-billion dollar advertising platforms, Google and Facebook, for our next little sidebar in podcast. So you got a story from Unilever that you found really interesting, so what's up?
Chad: Okay, so the big byline here is Unilever spends 9 billion dollars, over 9 billion dollars in advertising. They have a shit-ton of products. They own a shit-ton of companies and they're pretty much telling Facebook and Google, blatantly, you can't fuck off because ... Here's the quote from their CMO, "We cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain, which at times, is little better than a swamp in terms of transparency."
Joel: Ouch.
Chad: That's from the CMO of Unilever. Yeah, talking to Google, talking to Facebook ... Facebook really had better get their shit together. We see on the job side that it feels really disjointed, but their entire platform, their entire ecosystem right now is just, it's wrought with shit unfortunately.
Joel: Ouch.
Chad: It is.
Joel: So, essentially, Unilever, who makes soaps and a bunch of other consumer products, don't want their products to be beside fake news, videos of ... A lot of stuff has come out recently ... I guess there was this YouTuber who makes a lot of money talking about suicide ... video, and there's this sort of cesspool of all this sort of user-generated crap that is ... Unilever is taking it's ball and going home.
Joel: Unilever is not a small advertiser at all. Now, they can't ignore digital advertising. And I think ... One of the things I continue to be interested in is sort of this voice-assistant technology. I kind of poo-pooed it initially, but I find myself using it more and more. You know, Apple's HomePod recently was released to the consumers. We use Google Home at our place. I know you do as well, but you know ... And I tend to look at things as a marketer. And I think, man, I could ... If I had Alexa and, you know, we use Amazon a lot, right? So if I tell Amazon, "Hey Amazon, order detergent, laundry detergent", right?
Chad: Yup.
Joel: Think about ... If you go to Google today and you search laundry detergent, right, there's like five, seven, eight, ten ads on that keyword. Like how valuable is it to be that laundry detergent that people buy when they say, "Hey Alexa, renew my ... or get me some more laundry detergent", or "I need more dish washing soap", or "I need more whatever". Right?
Joel: So to me, maybe Unilever is really ahead of the curve here in saying, look, the digital opportunities are going to expand way beyond keyword search and newsfeed on Facebook.
Chad: Yup.
Joel: So, that's kind of what I was thinking when I heard the story. They can't ignore digital advertising, but what are they gonna do aside from that? Snapchat is no better in terms of curated ... I mean-
Chad: No, no.
Joel: And that's curated, I guess they could move more stuff over to Snap. Twitter is kind of the same cesspool, I don't know-
Chad: Horrible.
Joel: ... how you would get beyond that. But yeah, this is an interesting story and I'll be very interested to see how Unilever moves forward with advertising on digital platforms.
Chad: Yeah, no, I will too. And I agree. I've been a huge proponent of voice technology. I mean, most of the texts that I send ... I mean, I voice a lot of that stuff. I don't type it. Why the hell would I wanna sit there and type that shit when I can just voice it?
Joel: By the way, this is semi self-serving, but, I mean, podcasts.
Chad: Well, you can go anywhere.
Joel: You can go anywhere.
Chad: And here's a great example.
Joel: Go ahead.
Chad: Here's a great example. So I was talking to Jay-Z over at SmashFly yesterday and he said he listens to our podcast on Alexa. So, he just tells Alexa to play the new Chad and Cheese podcast. I mean that is cool as shit. Not only your mobile phone, right? But to tell Alexa or to tell Google Home, you know, play the newest Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel: So, podcasts as well, I just wanna throw out. Seth Godin. If you're a marketer, you know Seth's name pretty well, but Seth is a big time blogger. He talks a lot about marketing in the new-age of digital ... And he launched a podcast this week, which I listened to, and you should too if you like marketing. But what was interesting about this was that ZipRecruiter, who is obviously in our space, is the only launch advertiser for Seth Godin's podcast. And I listened to it, today actually, and it has Ian, who's the CEO.
Joel: So, the ads are actually very different from the CNBC or MSNBC ads that you might see, or the Limbaugh ads on radio. SO they actually had ... it was sort of content marketing driven, so Ian came on the show and said, "Hey, ZipRecruiter, blah, blah, blah", but then he said, "Hey, at the end of the show, we're gonna tell you why eyebrows are so important to business." So at the end of the show, the tip was, if you're telling an idea to someone and their eyebrows go up, that typically means hat they like the idea. If you tell someone the idea and they kind of scrunch their eyebrows, they don't like the idea. And that eyebrows don't lie.
Joel: So it as kind of interesting that ZipRecruiter picked this blog, that they picked sort of content marketing to advertise on this podcast, but certainly, podcasts should be part of digital strategy if you're sick of Facebook and the content since that's around YouTube as well.
Chad: Yeah. And I think he stole that from Shakira, because the hips don't lie.
Joel: And ... for that one.
Joel: Alright, well speaking of change and getting rid of the swamp and the cesspool-
Chad: That's right!
Joel: ... brings us to our next sponsor.
Sponsor: 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'm 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 of 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 'em eat cake! Get it?
Joel: What? Lopped off heads, Marie Antoinette ... Oh, 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 and a market that is crying out of anew 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.
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Joel: Yes, and the Chad and Cheese also want to answer your long-standing questions like, Whatever happened to Monster Networking? Chief Monster? Jobber? HotJobs? Goziak? Job Pilot? TalentBin? Trovix? Tickle? And that blue-collar thingy. What was that called? I can't remember.
Chad: The Chad and Cheese promise to get you, the people, answers. And we also promise not to make bone-headed decisions like buying Tickle instead of LinkedIn. Yeah, that actually happened.
Joel: Chad and I are asking for your support in our bid to co-president Monster.
Chad: 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 rip-off thing either.
Joel: It's a new day.
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Sponsor: This ad was approved by the Chad and Cheese podcast. Look, there's literally no way in hell that these guys are getting his gig, but they have a pretty amazing podcast. Honestly. So visit chadcheese.com. Paid for by the Campaign for Chad and Cheese for Co-President of Monster.
Chad: It's like fine wine, it gets better every time.
Joel: I mean, I unmuted you too fast and I got some sniffles there at the end. So yeah, Chad's milking a cold or something so we apologize for the sniff there at the end as you listen.
Joel: So I'm reading through news from the Philly Enquirer, which I frequent all the time.
Chad: A lot.
Joel: And there's a story about Beyond and why they changed their name to Nexxt. And it was fascinating. The summary is basically ... They bought Beyond in like '03 or something.
Chad: Right.
Joel: He started the company in '97, '98. Rich Milgram, who's the CEO. Anyways, so in '07, they got an investment infusion of about thirteen and a half million dollars from a company called Safeguard ... something.
Chad: For a minority.
Joel: Yeah, for a minority stake. The world ended in 2008, right? So there was a five year period where, you know, unemployment was huge. Everyone in the employment space sucked. So, Rich raised money at the right time and they were sort of able to weather the storm, which might have been a lot tougher had they not had the money. So the economy improves, things are good. Safeguard, which typically has a five year roadmap for getting their money back, or getting a return on their investment. They're really pushing Rich to sell the company, right? Rich doesn't wanna do it; he doesn't wanna lay off the employees, which by the way, they have some of the most colorful employees in the market who have been around forever.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: So, that would have been a real shame.
Joel: So anyway, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, apparently, had been calling, raising the stakes in terms of what they would offer for the domain, beyond.com. Ultimately, they made an offer that Rich couldn't refuse. He said ... Oh, so I will also say, tensions apparently got pretty high with the investor and Rich according to the news story. So anyways, Rich came up with a plan to say, "What if we sold Beyond to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, we took the money from that, paid off the investors ...", as well as, there's also a note there ... I think they owe them ten million over the next three years or by three years from now.
Joel: So anyway, you and I both think ... We're probably very skeptical as to why you would change a name from Beyond, which is a common spelling, easy to remember .com to Nexxt, which has two x's. It's a autocorrect nightmare to do that. And now, what they were telling us was, "Well, we're moving beyond job postings, you know, we're moving on to what's next. So that's why we're changing our name". I always thought that was fishy; I think you always thought that was fishy. So we have news now, as to why, they actually went from Beyond to Nexxt.
Chad: This makes sense now. This now makes sense. And it makes a hell of a lot of sense from a business standpoint. I mean, yeah, it sucks to go from Beyond to Nexxt with two x's. From the standpoint of really being able to get that monkey off your back and then pivot. I mean, they were going to have to do something to pivot anyway because they were known as just a job board, really, company. A job board distribution company. They wanted to pivot into a data company, so they had to do something. So I think, the stars just aligned and Rich probably woke up in the middle of the night in cold sweat and said, "Eureka! I see exactly what we need to do". And they did it.
Chad: So I mean, in the end, I think it was an incredibly smart move and this isn't just because they're one of our sponsors. I thought it was kind of weird before. But now, I think it's smart from the standpoint of, they did need to pivot. Job board and the job board kind of ecosystem itself that they had and they were really promoted and known for, that was, felt like, withering. This data play is strong. And being able to get a new name associated to it, pivoting and getting that monkey off your back is, I believe, genius.
Joel: And I also think that the timing was right in terms of, Amazon is eating up everything retail. And every traditional retail store is trying to combat that. So you see Walmart buying Jet.com recently. So Walmart is upping their game with free delivery and you're seeing ads on TV pretty extensively. And so I looked at Bed, Bath, and Beyond because you know, I never go there regularly.
Chad: Lies.
Joel: So what they're starting at Beyond is this ... it's a $29 per year membership where you get exclusive discounts, et cetera. So I fully expect that you're going to see beyond.com ads on TV and everywhere promoting this sort of membership service at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. And this deal may not have gone through if Amazon had not put so much pressure on retail shops to sort of up their online game. I don't even know what Bed, Bath, and Beyond's URL was before this. Was it bedbathandbyond.com? 'Cause that would be really horrible.
Chad: Yeah, I think that the Beyond piece ... the new Beyond, kind of, plus program that they're putting together, which is like you're talking about. More of, kind of, a delivery type of membership service. So, I don't know that they're gonna change URLs to an extent, so I think this is a program ... We'll see as it rolls out, but I think this is a program to ... much like Walmart and some of the other brick and mortar types of organizations, how they're going to combat the Amazons.
Joel: Alright, man. That's all we got. Go get some Sudafed, take care of those sniffles-
Chad: Chicken soup!
Joel: ... and yeah, happy Valentine's Day week.
Chad: Happy Valentine's Day.
Joel: Yeah, all warm and fuzzy. We out!
Chad: We out!
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