After a bit of hiatus and a stint at the Guiness Recover Unit at the local hospital, Chad & Cheese are back in the groove, sticking it to everyone who, let's be honest, deserve it.
Here's a taste:
- Indeed's new commercial isn't so Sunny.. It sucks... - Indeed makes it official with higher prices - Google beta-steps into candidate search - It's only the start...
- Starbucks closes the gender pay gap - LinkedIn gets its Snapchaty wit-it - A NYC councilman has lost his damned mind - IBM old people keep getting screwed - Weed continues to be a magnet for investment cash, even in online recruitment
... and a boatload more, boys and girls.
Enjoy, and give our sponsors your wallets. Because, we said so. Lots of love to America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly and NKOTB, JobAdX.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
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 boys and girls. The boys are back in town.
Chad: Damn straight.
Joel: Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm Joel
Cheesman.
Chad: And I am Chad Guinness Sowash.
Joel: Amen to that. On this week's show Indeed ruins a perfectly good song from our childhood in their new ad, Google recruitment's love train keeps on trucking, and LinkedIn embraces its inner Snapchat. And oh yeah, we might have a little something to say about Career Builder. Buckle up. But first, a word from our brand new, spanking, shiny sponsor.
Announcer: JobAdX has the best ad tool in the industry, we provide publishers and job boards higher rev share than other partners through our smarter, programmatic platform. In many cases, 30 to 40% greater and more. We're like AdSense, but with a better split for you and added relevance for your audience. JobAdX also offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs, and staffing firms. Real time dynamic bidding and delivery for your clients' postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool, not set and regret. All of this is done with the flexibility of cost per impression, click, or application. We also offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. Finally, JobAdX delivers direct clients, superior candidates through the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. To partner with us, you can visit or search JobAdX.com. You can also email us at joinus@jobadx.com to get estimates or to being working together. JobAdX, the best ad tool, providing smarter programmatic for your needs.
Joel: Getting programmatic with it.
Chad: I heard better than AdSense and then also go to the website or you can go to chadcheese.com and click on the JobAdX logo on the site. We make it easy. Any way you want to get to them, you can get to them. Just get to them.
Joel: I'm just hoping that they don't pull a Nexxt and add another X on their name, so we have to say, "Job Ad Double X".
Chad: Dude, I'm telling you right now, it's going to be a thing because it's obviously worked for Nexxt. So that's awesome. JobAdX. Just one X, guys. Just one X.
Joel: Keep it to one. That's how we like it. Oh man, we're back. Ireland, we're sobered up.
Chad: Dude, I'm so excited. I'm so excited. We've got so much yet to talk about and yeah. We had a great time in Ireland. I mean, big props to everybody that was over there.
Joel: TATech.
Chad: Yeah, TATech and everyone that was there. All the attendees. It was amazing. We were on stage and you asked, "Hey, you know, who's ever listened to Chad Cheese podcast?" And literally, like 95% of the audience raised their hand. So apparently we're big in Europe.
Joel: I hope they heard the question correctly. Maybe it was, "Who hates the Chad Cheese show," but yeah. That was very impressive. Yeah, well, we have a lot to talk about. Let's get to the shout outs. My first one, Wendy Cosmak from LinkedIn, just a big fan, wanted to say that to her. Thanks for listening, Wendy, and keep bringing those LinkedIn folks in because we love them.
Chad: We do love them. We also have Jem from Talent Nexus. He's over across the pond in England. He tweeted a picture of a traffic jam and this is what he said, "Sitting in this for two hours. One highlight is listening to the Chad Cheese Guinness-fueled podcast." God damn straight, Jim. Very nice, very nice.
Joel: Nothing makes a traffic jam in rush hour better than a little you and me in the ear drums. Louise Triance, I hope I'm saying that correctly, she's at UK Recruiter. She's a big fan. Wanted to give her a shout out. Louise, thanks for listening over on the other side of the pond.
Chad: Amazing.
Joel: We appreciate it.
Chad: Love from Japan. You saw this, right? This was some crazy shit.
Joel: Crazy.
Chad: Yoshio Fujimora, I hope I got that right. He tweeted in Japanese, so I had to use the Microsoft translation that's already embedded in Twitter and it actually-
Joel: You're such a Microsoft whore.
Chad: No, dude, it was just embedded in Twitter. So it said, "HR has been delayed about 20 years in Japan," and the rest of it made no sense whatsoever. So big thanks to Yoshio and a big come on, man, to Microsoft for shitty translation software.
Joel: So we think Yoshio likes us, right?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: From the ... Okay, well that's good. Yoshio, keep listening.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Shout out from me to Alan Barker who just appreciates us and we appreciate you, Alan, there at Monster.
Chad: Love our Monsters. Shout out to HCMTechnologyReport.com. That is a damned mouthful. Mark Feffer, he's been pulling me into some articles, some round tables and stuff like that, and it's really good stuff. It's funny. One of the quotes he just had from his last article I thought was very Chad and Cheese-ish. "If two or more HR professionals get together and don't begin discussing engagement halfway through their first drink, something's wrong."
Joel: Would it be Chad and Cheese-ish or Chad and Cheese-y? I'm trying to figure that one out.
Chad: Depends on the article.
Joel: Yes. I think you and I are on the road next week separately. We're dividing and conquering, I think. I'll definitely be at Erie and San Diego. I think you're going to be on the west coast as well. What are you doing?
Chad: Yup. I'm going to be at BCGI, Biddle Consulting Group Institute. They've got a summit going on in San Francisco and me and my lovely wife Julie are actually doing a tandem presentation, about an hour and half on how companies suck-
Joel: I'm sorry. Wife talk gets the crickets today.
Chad: How companies suck at recruiting veterans and individuals with disabilities,
Joel. That's pretty goddamn important.
Joel: Fine. When you do disabilities compliance, that's great. Yes, if you're in Cali, you have no excuse to say hi to either Chad or myself because we'll be conquering both sides of the state.
Chad: That's right.
Joel: Also wanted to say, again in April, SHRM Talent in Vegas, TAtech in Vegas, be there or be square. We're going to tear
a new one and make them regret every minute that they invited us to their show.
Chad: SHRM Talent, guys. I mean, if you're on the talent acquisition side, you've a vendor, or you're a talent acquisition professional, how in the hell are you not there? And then wrapping your week in Vegas up with TAtech. What I like to call the Spring Edition of TAtech. We're going to be enjoying the hell out of Vegas a couple weeks from now.
Joel: I know I prefer my Pete and RePete in springtime.
Chad: Those guys kick ass.
Joel: Very nice.
Chad: Couple more shout outs.
Joel: What else you got?
Chad: I've got Job Board Doctor. He was listening and thought it was funny that we were giving Mulberry's millennial CEO shit. And then a long list of just love and thanks: Amy Butchco, I think, over at SAIC is listening. Lauren from LinkedIn, Irish Recruiter, that's Ivan Stojanovic, one of our-
Joel: Big fan.
Chad: Buddies, yeah. WhyApply, Shane at Clinch, Thom at SmashFly, Adam at Candidate ID, Bogomil at Google, Terry at Pandologic, and last but not least, it's going to be repetitious but damn it, mad props to the TAtech boys, Peter and Pete - You guys are kicking ass and taking names.
Joel: For sure, for sure.
Chad: More than I expected, guys. Great job, great job.
Joel: Yep, and definitely the clench boys showed us a good time in Dublin. We appreciate the locals showing us how it's done.
Chad: Jane and Pat.
Joel: Yeah. Ready to get to the show?
Chad: Let's do it.
Joel: Alright. Your favorite whipping boy Indeed-
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Starts us off this week. You're not a real big fan of their commercial. Lay it out for us and what you don't like.
Chad: So I mean, talk about a great song. Sunny by Bobby Hebb released in 1966.
Smooth, awesome. I mean gets you into a mood.
Joel: Low town.
Chad: Yep, but it's a horrible damn commercial, man. I mean it gets you in and you're like, "Wow okay, I'm in the groove." And then it's just a really bad commercial. It takes you through what looks kind of like the first person shooter games that are out there. It's a first person type of video. A guy is getting rejected over and over and over, just having a hard time. Then he goes home, his dog gives him a Java development book. He goes to Indeed for interview tips. And the world opens up for him. I mean it's dumb as shit. But apparently it's gotten them some traffic.
Joel: So if you haven't seen it, go to YouTube search, "Indeed Sunny," you'll find it. So my first reaction ... My overall reaction to the advertisements on TV, which is sort of new territory for Indeed who has relied on Google traffic for the most part, but they can't do that anymore, is that how are they branding themselves versus, you know, Google? So when I first saw the commercial, I thought, "Okay. They're branding themselves as sort of a career platform. I can go learn new skills, upgrade my game, and get a better job." Which is a totally acceptable brand against Google, which is pretty cold and corporate, search for jobs. You know, Google is this minimalist technology company and Indeed is trying to be this sort of warm and fuzzy like, "We're your career platform."
Joel: Now when I looked back at the commercial, there are a few things that are confusing to me. Number one is the guy first gets an alert on his phone. I don't know if you noticed this or not. But he gets a notice from Indeed that he has an interview request, okay? So the interview clearly goes badly on all of these jobs. So the first message to me is okay-
Chad: Indeed sucks.
Joel: Indeed's matching sucks because all these interviews this guy has are awful and they're all driven by Indeed search. So that was number one. Number two was the guy comes home and his dog has a coding book. So I'm thinking, "Holy shit. A technology company is promoting a book to go upgrade your skills in technology." And then I thought, "Okay, that's really stupid." But then I thought, "Oh, well maybe Indeed has like some educational tools." Well, they don't. And then I thought, "Okay, I go to Lynda.
Chad: LinkedIn.
Joel: Which is owned by LinkedIn for that or I go to Degreed or I go to, you know, Udemy. So Indeed doesn't have the services to help you learn coding. So I thought that was a big mistake. And then the last thing ... Shit, I'm spacing on this. But the last thing was-
Chad: You mean when he comes in and they're all like clapping because he got the job?
Joel: Yeah, that was ... I guess the two things that got me were like the matching sucks because the first interviews sucked and they were all Indeed jobs. And then the second thing was the coding, or like upgrading your skills. I know there's a third thing but I'm spacing on it. Maybe it will come to me as we talk about more Indeed stuff.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Which is their subscription model, which was officially released.
Chad: Well now, before we get there, before we get there, let's talk about traffic because this is important, too. So because they actually realized traffic, they've been realizing traffic from these ads. So we got some analysis from a listener, which is pretty cool, and this is what we saw. And actually got some data, too, which is really cool. A couple of reasons Indeed still gets it's organic and it is growing. So they've got growing organic right now a very large percentage of their organic is from branding terms. So for example, people are searching in Google for Indeed. So this is growing activity as they spend more and more on branding such as being the primary sponsor on March Madness. This is where they use this ad.
Chad: Here's they key, guys. Indeed, guess what, this is demonstrating that your model is not sustainable. You believe that you can build a brand that will stand the test of time. I give you Exhibit A: Monster. Shit didn't work, guys. They had Superbowl commercials, they had blimps, they had all that other stuff. Guess what? That shit doesn't work. You know what works? Behavior.
Joel: Innovation.
Chad: And these people are going to Google as behavior to look for you. So when your brand fades, which it will, guess what they're going to do? They're going to search jobs in Google and they're going to use Google for jobs. Which you are not pumping jobs into. Idiots.
Joel: So I'm pretty sure I know the person who gave you that and the research that he showed you. One of the things that it reminded me of was ... Can you name the most profitable year in music?
Chad: Most profitable year in music?
Joel: I'll give you the answer because we have a lot to talk about. The answer is the year 2000. Okay? You had NSYNC, you had Brittney, you had Backstreet Boys. Like it was a huge year for music sales, okay? Now if you were in the music industry, you could argue that, "Okay, I'm looking at this Napster thing. I'm looking at this internet thing. And who gives a shit? Like we were more profitable this year than we ever have been and the good times are going to keep rolling." Now if you were a smart person and that was most other people who weren't blinded by the money, you could say, "Okay, dude. Napster and the internet, that is going to totally disrupt your whole world in the next five to ten years." And guess what, it certainly did.
Joel: So to me, spouting off about how much Indeed's revenue is growing and how much their traffic is growing, to me, falls on deaf ears because this thing happens all the time. High revenue and whatever doesn't translate into the fact that your world is, you know, crumbling. You know, this is going to hit them like a ton of bricks whether they get it immediately or over time, it probably will be over time, but it's going to happen in our opinion. You can be blind to it and say like, "Things are good. They're going to get better." Or say like, "Yeah, the writing is on the wall, we need to address that quickly."
Chad: Yes, agreed. It's not sustainable. So now to resume subscription.
Joel: Yeah. It's official.
Chad: Prices are up. The newly launched model is out. And apparently this product was delayed two months, at least this is what I'm getting from sources, because they wanted to, "Let enterprise customers get ready," which sounds like a load of bullshit. It's more like Indeed has pissed off a lot of big customers with this announcement. So they wanted to wait a quarter, let the proverbial dust settle, and then try to stealth it in there. Because you and I both know many vendors out there try to sneak stuff in when talent acquisition leaders are not paying attention. Because they're so goddamn busy in the first place, so they just say sneak it under. So yeah, companies were pissed off.
Joel: Yeah, and you have some contacts telling you like prices going up two to three times what they were previously, right?
Chad: Yeah, actual ... I mean, here's some customer quotes, "They are the absolute worst," they being Indeed, "We saw a 2-3x increase. Not worth it." "I hate Indeed. Their reps harass nonstop." Last but not least, "It's a mess and a big miss."
Joel: Yeah, that's crazy stuff for sure. And you know, the strong arm sales tactics by Indeed have been there forever.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: I'm kind of still surprised with change in leadership and whatever that hasn't changed, but apparently according to your sources, they're bastards.
Chad: I remember in the early days when I was VP over at Direct Employers, and I would have our members call me and say, "Hey, can you get these Indeed sales guys off my back? They're calling me every day."
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: But I mean when you're seeing prices raise like that, I mean, just the regular subscription model from a dollar to $3. And then they had this complex kind of buyback engagement system which, from an intent standpoint, oh that sounds all well and good, but it's not practical. And to try to keep it, I mean you're going to need an actual individual who is focused on trying to make sure that you keep that shit clear on the credits that you get back and what you're paying. It's complex and it's bullshit, and TA doesn't have time for it. And Indeed hopes talent acquisition doesn't have time for it as well because again, they make more money, right?
Joel: Yeah. And Indeed's pushback would be, "Well, we became a billion dollar company in five years so screw off with your criticism of our sales tactics." And they probably would be a little bit right on that. LinkedIn. Video.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Embracing video big time. Embracing their inner Snapchat was one of the first stories that came out this month. We now have LinkedIn with filters.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Some of our subscribers or listeners maybe don't use Snapchat. I use it very minimally just to keep track of what the hell the kids are doing.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: But if you are familiar with filters, you can put little signage on your video, you can put like where you're videotaping from. Snapchat takes it to a whole nother level and LinkedIn has some really pared back filters, but filters nonetheless, which says to me they're trying to keep hold of the younger user. Maybe attract younger users because I know I'm not going to use any of the filters probably on any videos I make for LinkedIn. What are your thoughts?
Chad: Video is incredibly smart, not to mention the way that video is gaining traction in LinkedIn. I think you're saying it better in the actual results. A shit ton of views. I mean that's just content that LinkedIn wants to pull in so they're really giving you bonus views and whatnot for it. So that's awesome. I think you're 100% right when it comes to the actual filters and I think the correct word would be, "LinkedIn video with filters is lit." "Off the chain."
Joel: Off the chain, baby.
Chad: But yeah. I think it just makes sense. I mean you got to, as we've been talking about, there are different social platforms for different demographics. The individuals who are using Snapchat are incredibly different from those who are mainly using a LinkedIn or mainly Facebook. I mean there's ... Obviously LinkedIn is there, I wouldn't say a major player on the social media side of the house as a Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, you know, Instagram. I think that's where it all lies. So they're trying to ingrain some of that, which I think is smart and you know, with Facebook and all the bullshit that they're going through right now with Cambridge Analytica and all this data.
Joel: Privacy.
Chad: It's turning people off. We'll see if it's enough to send them to other platforms, but I think it's a good move for LinkedIn. I won't use filters, but you know, I think younger demographics definitely will.
Joel: Yeah, I totally agree. And also I think released today, they announced video for company pages and also sponsored video for their advertising product. So they're certainly seeing the engagement, because they're spending time developing for it. I want to see them come up with live video. I know every time that we do a live show, we sort of default to Twitter, which I think gets minimal engagement. I would really love to see LinkedIn launch a live streaming video service where I can go see conferences, streaming video, or things that we do. I got to think it's around the corner but I certainly hope that's on their roadmap because I know that we would certainly use it at our conferences because it is more of our demographic and target audience.
Chad: I think LinkedIn as a platform, they're having scalability problems. Just because when you go into it, sometimes it lags. I mean you try to post a YouTube video and it won't even post correctly. It won't give you the video caption or anything like that. So I think they're trying to scale and it's not happening the way that they want to. So going live is going to take a little longer, but there's no question, we would definitely use it.
Chad: Here's the danger guys, two dangers. First and foremost, when you start to allow the younger generation, let's say, to use LinkedIn like they use Snapchat, all the shit that we talk about and we get pissed about, "You shouldn't put that on LinkedIn." There's going to be a hell of a lot more of that, guys. More of the, "Personal not professional," stuff. Second, video resumes. We're going to be seeing people on this goddamn thing doing what they see as a "video resume" or ... Exactly, exactly. LinkedIn is going to go into a, "Oh, you can do your video resume." If they go that direction, I don't think it's going to fare well.
Joel: No, no. If you're listening, LinkedIn, and we know we have some listeners.
Chad: Don't do it.
Joel: Do not go down the video resume path.
Chad: Don't do it.
Joel: Because you will feel our wrath.
Chad: Don't do it.
Joel: Okay, moving on. This one's in your sweet spot. Starbucks is doing some gender pay gap adjusting. What's going on there?
Chad: Don't we have an ad first? I thought we had an ad.
Joel: According to our notes, no. I can go to an ad if you want to like really set yourself up for the Starbucks stuff. Why don't we hear from Sovren and you get prepared to talk about Starbucks. Maybe have a cup of Starbucks before we talk about it.
Announcer: 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 dot com, for a free demo.
Joel: So one of the things that our listeners love about us, we put this show together like 30 minutes before, we throw notes in, and sometimes, this case included, things get mixed up and we miss stuff and whatnot. So basically, Chad, you have our notes, what would you like to talk about after the Sovren ad?
Chad: Google.
Joel: Google. Okay. Let's talk about Google. Did we talk about the Gmail integration?
Chad: I think a couple weeks ago we did, but I think it's pretty amazing to start to see. A couple of weeks ago, they launched a seamless integration with Gmail. That's pretty damn big, right?
Joel: Yeah. Gmail is used by a few people, last I checked. Like a billion.
Chad: Yeah, yeah. It's fricking crazy. But now we're talking about the entrée into really people search and matching with Google Hire. And you wrote a little something about this.
Joel: I did. The beat goes on. Now you and I have been talking a long time about having an Entelo hiring solve type where they go profile hunting around the net. What they launched this week was sort of more logical. They have basically Google search technology within the Google Hire product, which is essentially an applicant tracking system, for users. So you know, I posted this on LinkedIn and someone replied, you know, "This is the same thing that our ATS has, like what's different?" I said, "Well, Google does search better than anyone else and your ATS does not. That's why this is different." So Google is going to be Google-fying your resume search in terms of related searches, candidates that are similar, trying to predict what you're looking for based on the job. Presenting candidates before you actually even search for them. I mean they're going to Google-fy the whole process.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: And you know, you and I believe that's eventually going to be in sort of a search the web component as well where they bring in, like, "Here are your candidates, here are some others around the web that we think match that as well." You know, "Would you like to send out a message to them? Would you like to schedule on Google?" And you and I are fortunate enough to hear Bogomil from Hire with Google at the TAtech conference. And the vision that he laid out for everybody was sort of this entire soup-to-nuts AI powered search matching, scheduling, you know, interviewing process. And this just to me is another step into the grand vision of where Google is going.
Chad: Yeah. And so we've ... Take a look at Job Discovery first, the API that they've put out with Job Discovery, that has been incredibly successful. It's machine learning, AI, whatever you want to put into it, right, but it's been incredibly successful and it's probably going to get out of beta here in the next few months or so. That is amazing for a Google product to be in around 18 months and then be out of beta. They are seeing some amazing strides with Johnson & Johnson with Career Builder, that is a jobs API that is machine learning AI, right?
Chad: So that being said, now we take a look at Google Hire and they are launching something called Candidate Discovery. This is a way, and this is from my standpoint, this is a very smart way to start to baby step into more of an enterprise API like the Jobs Discovery API. So Google and Gmail ... Think of it from this standpoint. You got the data around jobs now that you've done all this mapping and whatnot for Jobs Discovery. You can use that data against the actual people data that you have now within Hire. One of the things that I love about technologies today versus five, ten years ago, is that we didn't even screw with candidates that were in our database. They went into the black hole, and the black hole was the black hole, and that's just ... It is what it is. Google Hire, Candidate ID, I mean we're seeing all these companies that are starting to ... Crowded.
Joel: Yeah, Crowded.
Chad: Starting to revive the candidate resume database because these are individuals that you have already paid for. Instead of going out and paying for them again or paying for others that could perspectively have like skills, go ahead and rejuvenate the ones that are in your database, match them against open recs that you have now, before you go paying for new ones. Number one. That is amazing. It just makes good sense. For anybody that thinks that their ATS has the exact same type of process, in the same class of Google? Yeah, you're fooling yourself. We're going to see applicant tracking systems once this becomes an enterprise API, we'll see ATSes using it, we'll see companies like the Career Builders of the world using it. It just makes damn good sense. And here's the thing that kills me, it cracks me up. I was pounding Bogomil from Google during our interview, and I was like, "Where's the people API?" And he just kind of smiled and then guess what? A week later they launch it. So it's not the API, but it's, I think, a baby step into an enterprise level API.
Joel: Yep. Google is being very methodical, calculated, probably trying not to step on too many toes too quickly. You mentioned Career Builder and how much they've embraced the Google train and you know, Career Builder has a product called Talent Discovery, which sounds a lot like Candidate Discovery, right? So you know, Google's doing the Google thing and you know, we'll see how that plays out but if I'm at some of these companies that have embraced them, I'm thinking a little ... I'm a skittish maybe about what's going on, but maybe I expected it and I'm just, you know, I'm waiting it out until I find out something else to do when I grow up.
Chad: Think of the products that you can plug in for Google. I mean you've got Google Analytics, you've got Google Sheets for you know reports and things like that. There are so many different opportunities to spread this out and to be able to use this data. I mean big data was a big term for a very long time, but it didn't matter because we didn't have the machine learning and AI that we do now.
Joel: Yep. Moving on or anything else to say about Google?
Chad: It's good stuff.
Joel: We're watching Google. And by the way, if you haven't heard our interview with Bogomil from Ireland, I encourage you to look back at past episodes and listen to that. It's only about 10 minutes long, but pretty insightful stuff, although he was very diplomatic in most of his answers.
Chad: Chadcheese.com. Go there.
Joel: Chadcheese.com, baby. Alright, do you want to talk about Starbucks now?
Chad: Yes, yes.
Joel: Alright, Starbucks. Okay, man. This is your sweet spot. Starbucks. Gender pay gap. Go.
Chad: So they're reporting that they're closing, or they've closed, all gender pay gaps in the US. And they're planning to do it worldwide. This is big because we're talking about equality, we're talking about talent, right? So this is very big for any company. So it's funny because when I posted this, you know, there are critics that are out there and the retail industry shouldn't have much of a big issue because you know with pay gaps, because they're pretty much aligned as it is. And it's like, okay. So there are a few things to kind of unpack there.
Chad: If that's the case, I have two points veiled in questions, probably because I watch too much Jeopardy. If it's so easy for a sector like retail to do this from a pay gap standpoint, why the hell haven't more companies declared they fixed the problem? If it's so goddamn easy, then why isn't it fixed on the retail side? I mean more companies, more brands should be standing up and saying, "Yes, we agree. We've got this fixed." That's number one. Number two, if Starbucks culture made this a nonissue, which is one of the points as well, made this a nonissue, don't you think that's a pretty goddamn good story in itself? "Yeah, well, yeah, well. You know, Starbucks culture, yeah, that was easy for them because of their culture." Well shit, dude. That's a big fricking story. If they automatically were really focusing on equality for all of their employees, doesn't that make for a big damn story?
Joel: Yeah, and it's probably a pretty good recruiting and retention tool, as well.
Chad: Yes. What about product, though? You think about brand, who buys Starbucks, right? Pretty much everybody does.
Joel: Everybody.
Chad: Everybody does. So from a PR standpoint, from a brand standpoint, from an employment product sales, I mean, that's the thing that I don't think talent acquisition really has gotten a handle on over the years, is that they affect the brand. They play this bullshit employment brand thing, which I don't believe in. They impact the brand. The brand is bottom line. It's sales. I mean candidates are customers, and if we don't treat them like customers, guess what? We're going to lose their sale. And we saw that with the Virgin media report that they put out and losing 6 million dollars because they treat candidates like shit because they didn't treat them like customers, yada, yada, yada. But anyway, this is a key point. If your brand is not taking the lead on many of these issues, then screw your brand because it sucks.
Joel: How much do you think politics plays into decisions like that? Because Starbucks historically is a pretty liberal organization. I don't think Howard Schultz has much fear about the Trump organization at this point. Like do you think that plays into it and why Walmart and others don't come out because of political reasons?
Chad: No, I don't think it's really political reasons as much as it is an overall holistic sense of understanding your product and understanding how you're seen to your customers. And I'll give you a great example. So Starbucks was very heavy on hiring veterans. Thousands and thousands of veterans. They put their stake in the ground and they killed it. And they're still killing it. That translated, and remember, when I was active duty, I was deployed. I was on Fort Benning, Georgia. There was a Starbucks that was probably, you know, another half mile further away than the closer coffee shop. I always went to Starbucks, man. I knew that they cared about us. That was the brand. That was what our community felt. That's exactly the smart thing for any brand to do. And for you to say that, "Oh, it's easy for them to do that." You know what? I'm done.
Joel: Okay, you're done. I'm going to ring the bell. And we're going to hear a word from our favorite compliance sponsor AJE, unless you have anything else to add. Alright.
Announcer: America's Job Exchange is a market leader in diversity recruitment and an OFCCP compliant solution provider. We serve over 1,000 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, insures 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: Another thing on the America's Job Exchange side of the house, one of the things that they're actually pushing, which I agree with 100% is their new byline is, "Compliance is Mandatory, Diversity is Essential." And I really think that Starbucks is trying to embody. Pretty cool stuff. Good job America's Job Exchange.
Joel: Good job. Alright, man. We're going to bring back something that we did a while back but haven't done. I don't think this will be a normal thing, but we have a lot of news, so we're going to go rapid fire hit on some of these stories and just make some brief comments and then move on to the next one. So do you want to tackle the first one? It's one of your favorites.
Chad: I don't know if it is or not. Let me see what we have here. Okay, yeah. So New York councilman introduces a bill that will prohibit bosses from requiring employees to reply to an email after work. This bill would impose a $500 fine for employers.
Joel: What?
Chad: For the first offense. Employees would be entitled to like a $250 per violation. I mean okay, so at the end of this, and I think this is crazy, it's an overreach. Total load of bullshit.
Joel: Well, it would ban it from requiring people to reply. You can still send the emails, just don't expect them to answer it until work hours. This is so un-American it makes me want to puke. You also didn't add, also from the story, if an employee experiences retaliation from the boss, they're due $500 like per violation. And then they're due $2,500 if they're fired for not replying to emails after work hours. Like this is so ridiculous, and there's just no way. Like this probably wouldn't even pass in France this is so like communist.
Chad: It's ridiculous.
Joel: But yeah, it is New York City, and things are a little crazy out there sometimes. Okay. Next story that we have, Hire Maturity, which we talked about a week, two weeks, three weeks ago, and sort of made fun of them for being a blue haired job board reminding us of eons.com back in the day. We talked about them going out of business, but apparently you have word that they literally are like going out of business. What's up with that?
Chad: Yeah, I mean if you go to hire-maturity.com.
Joel: Great URL.
Chad: Because you never would unless I actually asked you to, there's a message, "Due to unforeseen circumstances," it seems like there might be a non-compete issue or something like that that's going on here, but I mean, really at the end of the day. This model overall is dead in the water. And like Joel said, we talked about it a couple of weeks ago, check it out on the podcast. It's not worth much of our time now.
Joel: Good enough. But what is if we're talking about old people, IBM last week or recently cut more than 20,000 US employees aged 40 or older, which includes us, Chad, by the way, in the last five years. This was according to a Propublica investigation. I've never heard of Propublica, but I assume they're legit. The publication alleges that IBM did not provide older workers with paperwork they're legally entitled to and showed an age bias when implementing layoffs. Propublica also says managers encourage some staff to apply for new roles while also telling the hiring departments to not employ them. The report claims the moves were part of broad cost cutting measures that allowed the firm to bring on younger workers on lower salaries.
Chad: Exactly and that's what it comes down to. That's what it comes down to. Cost cutting measures IBM's getting their lunch fricking fed to them by now bigger names. IBM used to be the name on the block, now it's not even a part of the conversation a lot of the times. So what do you do? You look at your top earners who have been in the company, have been trustworthy, and they've been there loyal, and you go ahead and just cut their heads off.
Joel: Do you think this is really age bias or just the fact that IBM is sucking as a business and they're cutting costs and over 40s are the most well paid? Do you think that was more of it than just actual straight up ageism?
Chad: They're not targeting 40+. I don't believe that they are, at least. I think what you've hit is really the nail on the head. Take a look at the tenure in the company. Obviously if you're younger you're not going to have much of a tenure versus, you know, if you've been around for 20 years, 10, 15, or something like that. And the salary that you have, that base wage, is going to be much larger than somebody that you can bring in. So in most cases, I've seen this with some companies, I don't know if IBM did it, where you can cut one head and then replace it with two individuals who are coming straight out of college or have just a little bit more kind of entry level, and still pay less. So twice the manpower, which is what they would say, and you keep going forward. It doesn't generally work that way because of expertise and getting shit done. If you've been in the seat for a while you know how to effectively get shit done. But yeah, that's fairly the norm.
Joel: I think Raphael [Espani? 00:40:51] from New York City who introduced the email bill should also introduce the ageism bill where you're fined $500 for every 40 year old that you lay off. Anyway, alright, so moving on. Quickly on Career Builder. Okay. This one hits home for me. I am in the process of writing a story about Career Builder and sort of the state of things at the company, which I will say, seem to be in turmoil. The story I was working on was accidentally published it's since been pulled. But the story is like an onion that I keep peeling and it gets a little stinkier each time. So I know that there's stuff out there, but we're going to hold off a little bit until we get the whole story and we'll come with you with sort of the whole thing that's going on and everything that's going on there. So I know some of our listeners are like big time fans and know that this article's out there. I will just have you temper your excitement for probably one more week until we get the full story, and then we'll come out with everything that we know that's going on at our friends at Career Builder.
Chad: Hashtag El Chapo.
Joel: Alright. We're flying along here. Some people raised some money. Frankly, I have no idea what they're doing. Do you?
Chad: It says AI, so they're automatically going to get money.
Joel: Oh, of course. So AI, automation, chat bot, here's $14 million, okay, good luck to them. Vangst, probably out favorite startup because they are pot.
Chad: Weed.
Joel: They're getting weed people jobs. God. They've got 2.5 million. Any day now I'm waiting for the feds or Trump or whoever to be like, "Nope. No more weed." And the feds will walk in and put all these people out of business.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I don't think it will happen maybe, but it's certainly a risky endeavor. And lastly on our rapid fire is Randrr, which is a horrible name. R-A-N-D-R-R.
Chad: Yeah, it's horrible.
Joel: I guess R-A-N-D-E-R was taken so they're Randrr.
Chad: Or E-E for Randee.
Joel: Randee. I don't know what Randrr has to do with anything is sort of silly. They bought a company called anonymous, who was originally Poachable, which kind of got some buzz early in the days. So it looks like the two founders Poachable, they changed the name, they did some other stuff, and then they sold this company to Randrr. And then I think the two guys from anonymous, like they work for YouTube or Google or something. So they basically, like they just dumped this thing on Randrr and we'll see if they do anything with it. But that's our rapid fire.
Chad: I've got one more.
Joel: Oh, you've got one more. Let's go.
Chad: One more, I've got one more. Dutch Staffing Firm, young capital announced today it is planning to offer job candidates a joint, a marijuana cigarette or a shot of alcoholic beverage in order to get them ready for the job interview.
Joel: What's strange about that is that's sort of our strategy before we start the show, to get the best out of our show. Maybe there's something to giving candidates a shot of vodka or whatever before they do the interview. Wow. What a crazy freaking world we live in.
Chad: I love it.
Joel: I got nothing else, man. How about you?
Chad: I'm out.
Joel: Alright, we out.
Chad: We out.
Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. That's for listening to my dad, The Chad and his buddy Cheese. This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show. Be sure to check out our sponsors because their money goes to my college fund. For more, visit chadcheese.com.