CareerBuilder is a Trainwreck

DUMPSTER FIRE!!

CareerBuilder is a mess right now, according to our sources. We're talkin' execs jumping ship, layoffs, angry sales people and a lot of bitter 'Builders. Tune in for all the latest.

Oh wait, there's more:

- Indeed Crowd is a failure - Ladders tries its hand at referrals - Snagajob is now Snag ... here's why - Monster goes 2-pane - What do Textio, Uncommon.co and Indeed have in common? - Oh, Canada! Indeed acquires Workopolis

And lots more. It's the first show to go over an hour, but we think you'll be rewarded for your time. Just listen to it in 2X and cut it down to 30 mins. Boom!

And check out our sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren, JobAdX and Ratedly. No dumpster fires at these companies (cough ... CareerBuilder ... cough).

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 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: Spring is finally in the air kids. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast where we have our way with the news of the day and HR and recruiting. I like that. That's [crosstalk 00:00:37]-

Chad: That was bad.

Joel: No. That's awesome. I'm Joel Cheesman.

Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash.

Joel: On this week's show, Careerbuilder is an absolute dumpster fire. Indeed, is throwing in the towel, aye?

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: That was awful, and we ask does a Snagajob by any other name taste just as sweet? Buckle up kids, we're not drunk, I promise, but this is going to be a bumpy show.

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Joel: New ads, same silky voice from Sovren.

Chad: Whoa. Yeah. You're dumb so don't worry about trying to outsmart the robot. The robot will take care of all your pleasure and needs.

Joel: Absolutely. This show could tip the scale at an hour, so let's run through shout outs real quick.

Chad: Okay. You were in Erie last week. I've got a quick question, did Ed from Philly jack up any of your interviews? Because he was stalking you for a while.

Joel: No. You know, he talks a lot of trash. I was a little afraid that he might, you know, pop me on the head, you know back of the head during the show, but he didn't even come say hi, so I'm a little sad. Yeah. Ed, next show, man, come say hi, we love our listeners, whether they're team Chad, or team Cheese.

Chad: Ed come on, man. You're team Chad, you should at least put a little smack on his head while he was doing the interview.

Joel: A little karate shop in the throat.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Something, man.

Chad: That's what we expect somebody from Philly, the city of brotherly love. Also, Nancy from Philly said, "No more of the use of off the chain or lit," she said, "Don't do that."

Joel: I'll agree with that for sure. Yeah. Sorry, Nancy.

Chad: Our bad. Job doctor, "Very smart," love this guy. He wanted us to know about 82 labs. They just received eight million dollars in funding to create a better hangover recovery drink, because he knows all of next week we're going to be where?

Joel: Vegas. Vegas, baby.

Chad: Good. Love it. Job doctor.

Joel: You know, I have found, I think, the solid hangover remedy. It's called Fly By, F-L-Y, B-Y.

Chad: Okay.

Joel: It's a pill, and I have tried it as an old white guy, not that white has anything to do with it, but as an old guy my hangovers were hurting, so for what it's worth I've tried a few Fly By is pretty good. I'm going to be taking it to Vegas for sure.

Chad: Okay. I'll be bumming some off of you then. Louise Triance I want to hope that I'm saying that right, she sent a picture to us on Facebook, she tagged us, she's on a beach looking at, I'm assuming the ocean, and she said, "Chad and Cheese, you sound so much cheerier when I'm listening in the sun."

Joel: Now, Louise is English, so I'm guessing she's in the south of France, or Spain, or Greece, or somewhere really nice like that, so glad we could cheer you up there, Louise.

Chad: Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. We've got some big ups for new leaders out there, Tom Kenney, who was the CTO over at SmashFly, and if you listen to Chad and Cheese regularly we just did an interview with him in Ireland while we were drinking Guinness. He was just promoted to CEO of SmashFly. Awesome.

Joel: That's great.

Chad: Big ups, man.

Joel: Thad-

Chad: Yep.

Joel: Thad at our buddies at Jobs2Careers is their new CEO as well, so shout out to Thad over there in Texas.

Chad: Thad Price, man, he's been there forever. Big ups.

Joel: It's not because of his long tenure that he's CEO, the guy actually knows what he's doing.

Chad: Oh, yeah. Maybe I don't know.

Joel: Speaking of dudes who know what they're doing, a quick shout out to Anoop Gupta, who I did interview on the last podcast from ERE, just the dude is super smart, he's CEO of SeekOut.io, he's from Microsoft, he's way smarter than most of the people who get into this business, including yours truly. I just want to thank Anoop for being in the industry, and making it a little smarter, so shout out to Anoop there in Seattle.

Chad: Yeah. If you didn't listen to the last podcast, go back, there are four interviews, very quick interviews, and I believe, Joel, at least two of them have already shown interest in being on firing squad.

Joel: Do they know what they're getting into, is my question?

Chad: I hope not. I want to be able to give a quick shout out to everybody that's out there listening about LinkedIn meltdowns that are happening and we get to watch them, much like we get to watch it happen on Facebook every day, but I actually had an individual reach out to me on messenger, I can't tell who it is, you might have seen him in the stream go crazy and meltdown this week, "Chad, please look over my profile and resume, if you see that you can help me finding some interesting products to work on I cost X, expenses," blah, blah, blah. "Here's my resume. My specialization is turnaround, and startup." I thought, wow, okay, that's pretty cool. But this is how he ended the message, "If you can't help me, drop me." At that point, dude, at that point-

Joel: Drop me?

Chad: Yeah. Exactly. I was like, okay, well fuck you.

Joel: Is he a baked potato? Drop me?

Chad: Yeah. Just off of-

Joel: Did you know this cat?

Chad: No.

Joel: Did you disconnect with him?

Chad: I don't know him we're just linked like you are with many people on LinkedIn, and he's just like pretty much, like, hey, if you can't help me get a job then just drop me from your connections. Everything was great til then, then I looked back and I started looking in my feed and he just had a total meltdown on LinkedIn, so yeah, this is a great example of what not to do on a professional network. Now, if you want to treat LinkedIn like Snapchat, or you want to treat it like Facebook, understand there are going to be more than likely ramifications that are different than if you do that on Facebook.

Joel: This had to be a millennial.

Chad: No. Dude, I don't think so. I really don't think so.

Joel: Did you reply to his, drop me if you're not going to help me?

Chad: No.

Joel: Or did you drop him before he had a chance to drop you?

Chad: Dude, I don't have time to go through all that shit, if he wants to he can find a way to drop me.

Joel: Right. We have LinkedIn etiquette, occasionally on the show. Yeah. Don't reach out to someone you don't really know just because you're connected and say, help me, or drop me.

Chad: That's just dumb as hell.

Joel: All right. Speaking of LinkedIn, on the positive side, a shout out to Nick Nick Kroshus who I met in San Diego, a big fan there employed at LinkedIn, shout out to Nick, appreciate the listenership.

Chad: Love the LinkedIn. This is just for fun, a shout out that came from Ron Pearlman to Mark Zuckerberg this is his tweet, “Is it just me, but every time I hear Mark Zuckerberg talk I feel like Jim Henson's got his hand up his ass.”

Joel: Zuckerberg who had testified in front of Congress-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: This week, actually sat on a booster chair, you didn't believe me when I told you, but go search Zuck Congress booster chair, whatever, and he's literally sitting on a booster chair.

Chad: Is it like a phone book? Is it like an old standard phone book?

Joel: It's like one of those seat cushions you would get going to baseball games, and sitting in the bleachers, you want to pad your butt a little bit. It's like one of those booster chairs. It's not like one of the ones at the restaurants for the kids.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: It's not quite that bad, but somebody wanted him to be elevated, so he looked more powerful, I assume. Anyway, my last shout out goes to Brian Mercer who is also at ERE, a fan of the show, he's head of the digital HR tech over at Mercer Healthcare, so thanks for listening Brian, appreciate it.

Chad: One big thing, where are we going to be next week? We're going to be in Vegas. What are we doing?

Joel: SHRM Talent, we're just going to break shit and scare-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: People, I think. Then TATech probably the same thing, although it'll be a repeat performance of all of our TATech shows, so it won't be quite as nice.

Chad: Yeah. I think-

Joel: [crosstalk 00:09:35] I guess.

Chad: We've tempered the crowd at TATech and they understand what's going to happen, but SHRM Talent, I mean, literally it's going to be a fun time for us, let's just say that.

Joel: It's going to be like the movie Weird Science, where the motorcycle gang kind of breaks into the house and eats all the food, and trashes everything, and then Kelly LeBrock comes in and fixes it, but up until that point I think that's going to be sort of us at SHRM Talent next week.

Chad: That being said, last but not least, I want thank Disability Solutions, because Disability Solutions understands that everyone, even the hard of hearing and the deaf need a little Chad and Cheese in their life, so thanks again to Disability Solutions for making sure that transcription of this podcast and all the other podcasts are available.

Joel: Can we get to the show, now?

Chad: Yes, please.

Joel: All right. Great. Okay. I'm going to take a breath before this. Okay.

Chad: Here it is.

Joel: I'm going to start, here it is, Chad is just going to sit back and listen. There's a Careerbuilder story that I've been working on writing for ERE for over a week now, and I want to express that the opinions that I'm about to drop are not the opinions of ERE who I write stories for. They're totally divorced from what I'm about to say, and comment. A lot of it will be the same as a story, but a lot of it will be sort of my own opinion, but they are not responsible for anything I say. Now, that, that is out of the way.

Chad: Wait a minute. Nobody tells me or Joel what to say. Period. These are our opinions. It's our show, and if you don't like them, stop listening. If you love it, then share the hell out of it, but other than that ERE doesn't have anything to do with us. I mean, even our sponsors, or our conference partners. We let them know right out of the gate, this is our shit, if you don't like it you don't have to be a part of it. The thing is, they enjoy it, and hopefully you do too.

Joel: Thank you, Chad. You're right. Nobody tells us shit.

Chad: Fuck yeah.

Joel: And we don't listen anyway. A little back story, a couple of weeks ago I get a text, all these sources are going to be anonymous, I will say none of my sources are scrubs. They typically are upper level management type folks, so take that for what it's worth, but I get a text from someone that basically says, Careerbuilder has canceled their annual show for sales people. They have a conference every year in multiple places around the country, apparently called, The President's Club, where sales people that perform really well are rewarded appropriately. As many of you know, Careerbuilder was acquired last year by Apollo Global, who is a private equity firm. Now, when private equity firms buy a company, it's not like Randstad buying Monster, like a staffing company kind of synchronized business models. Private equity firms have one job, and that's maximize profitability, which is what Apollo is doing. Now, when you maximize profit some eggs get cracked. Right? You're making omelets-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: You're making the most money, things are going to get broken, so a lot of things have been canceled. Executives are leaving. It's a little unclear in terms of are they being fired? Are they resigning? Quote on quote. Are they actually just getting the hell out of dodge, because they don't like how the furniture is being reorganized. We also have really mad people in sales. We have engineers exiting. Anyway, I get a text that sort of starts this whole flow. I check with sources at the company, people I know, and people that they know, et cetera. Right? This thing starts unraveling. I get an audio clip, which we're going to play-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: After an ad, because we're going to talk about the executives, first, then we're going to talk about the engineers leaving. I get an audio that's just gold in terms of media perspective, but it's basically their head of sales, or someone high up in sales saying that this sales trip is not canceled, it's postponed. He goes on to blame really unique reasons as to why they're not going to Mexico, which was the original plan of the company, and this contradicts the plan that-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Their CEO had said, the trip is canceled. Okay?

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: We'll get to that in a second. Anyway, as I dig deeper into this story, more and more people come out, because I was writing a story in ERE that was in draft form, it wasn't ready for primetime. ERE was legitimately hacked probably by WordPress SEO people and the story went live, unexpectedly, not on purpose. It has since been pulled. Of course, it was in Google's cash, good old Google grabbed it up. The story was still available and still made the rounds. I don't know if it's in Google, still, but it might be. Finalized version of that story should be coming out soon, if it's not already out by the time you listen to this, but the story got out, so when the story got out, more and more people came forward to tell me what was going on. I think most notably some top executives are leaving the company. You and I know most of these guys, like Richard Castellini is a former headhunter.net guy-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Who's been there for almost 20 years.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: He left for a little bit to join the Groupon phase, when everyone was into that, it was a site call like Coupon Cabin, I think, but he quickly rejoined Careerbuilder and he's been there for a long time. There's another guy, Colin Field, who was a headhunter acquisition he's vice president of infrastructure, he has since left the company. His LinkedIn profile has been updated. He's now at New Relic, apparently. Jim Butler, not a headhunter guy, but he was former senior director of governance, risk and compliance, not a flimsy title. He's not COO at a company called, NetWatchman according to his LinkedIn profile. Kevin Knapp, who is or was CFO, apparently, according to my sources been gone for quite a while, even though his LinkedIn profile says that he's still at Careerbuilder, so I'm not sure about that. These are really important people that-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Leaving the company. Old time people, part of the culture. Part of the fabric of Careerbuilder. Apollo brought in their own COO it looks like at the end of last year, Irina Novoselsky, if I'm saying that correctly. I don't know if she was brought in to ax people and upper level stuff, I don't know. The first piece of this story is that executives are leaving that have been with the company for a long time, and I have to attribute that, and the sources that I've talked to, attribute that to what Apollo's doing with really just cutting stuff up. Sources I've talked to said, "They wouldn't be surprised if all these sort of businesses that we talked about in the past will either be auctioned off, chopped up, closed, you know, shuttered in the future," but it's a problem. CEO, Ferguson is still there. He's been there for a very long time. I think he was a headhunter guy, too.

Chad: I'm wondering how long that's going to be, though?

Joel: Yeah. I mean, my guess is, this is my own opinion is he's probably under contract to sort of get the ship to port, and then do whatever you want, but I think similarly to how Sal left Monster, a little bit different, but Sal's gone, Dice is looking for a new CEO, I would not be shocked to see Careerbuilder looking for a new CEO this time next year.

Chad: I agree a 100%. Again, what we're seeing is we're seeing some heads be lopped off left and right. It's interesting because I think one of the quotes that you had actually said from director of global communications he was talking about Castellini the quote was, "As with all expat assignments, visas have expiration dates and he is returning into the states in April." There is no senior level executive role based in Chicago office, in the Chicago office available at this time, and he will be leaving Careerbuilder. I mean, it's like, yeah, we'd love to have him back, but we really don't have a slot for him. I think that's bull shit. If you've got a guy that has that kind of cred, that kind of experience and he's done shit all over the world for you, it doesn't matter, you're going to find a place for that person. Period. Right? This was overall, yeah, you're done, and you're done.

Joel: Yeah. That is, we'll get the Careerbuilder communications guy, Michael Irwin in a second, particularly with the sales side when we come back from the ad. That's sort of his job is to sugarcoat, or spin the news it's like, "Yeah, you know, his visa ran out. He came back and we didn't have a spot for him, so he's going to go elsewhere." I'm like-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: But he's been there for three months, he was just on a little project and now he's leaving, like this is an almost 20 year executive-

Chad: Yeah. I mean, from a transparency standpoint that just doesn't jive. The sniff test, I mean, it doesn't pass at all. Yeah. I get that Irwin it's his job to make a piece of shit smell good, but I mean, come on man, you've got to do much better than that. Transparency is going to be important for the organization, and if you're making changes then make the God damn changes, and have a spine for God sakes, and say why you're making the changes. If you're going to make those changes, and you have business reasons behind it, you have business reasons, but guess what? Don't be spineless. That's all I'm going to say. Be transparent.

Joel: Yeah. I think, additionally, the fact that there was no statement from Richard Castellini saying-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: "I've had a great run with Careerbuilder. I've made a lot of friends. I've progressed as a human being. I'm leaving because of A, B, and C. Appreciate the time here."

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: "Nice, great knowing you," kind of thing. There was no, these people just basically left. There was no statements from these folks. It just stinks. I won't go as far as saying, unprofessional, but they certainly could have handled the exits of the executives a little better. I'm sure they hope that people like me wouldn't-

Chad: I know.

Joel: Get wind of it, and write about it, or talk about it, but that's not the case. Yeah. They've handled this pretty poorly, I think. It gets a little worse for Mr. Irwin as we talk more, here, today. I think it's probably going to get worse before it gets better for them, which we'll talk about, which leads me to the engineering team at Careerbuilder had a fairly high up person in engineering contact me after the leak story from Google Cash, he says almost 50% of the engineering team is gone. He says, most of them have left on their own freewill. Apparently from what I can gather the new owners, Apollo, are into the core business, what makes money. They understand the job posting stuff. They understand-

Chad: Right.

Joel: The basic business. The R and D of the company, which is what the developers love-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Right? They love the new stuff. They love the experimenting, is gone. I think that probably plays a big part in it, but apparently compensation has played a much bigger part in terms of the exits of the engineering staff. Apparently, compensation is reviewed every year around it looks like raises happen in January and July, so I guess there are two phases of raises. When Apollo took over in October of last year, they brought in the new CEO, they postponed reviews and compensation increases til April, which apparently most people were cool with, but when they came out with what the raises were going to be they were significantly lower than what people were thinking they were going to get, or expected to get, or certainly what was sort of consistent with history of raises that were given at Careerbuilder and engineers are not happy. They've left in exodus, I mean when you cut almost half of your staff and engineers that's kind of a bad thing. The other ones I understand are looking for work, they're not happy, and will be gone eventually. My guess is it won't take long. I had one of my sources, who's an executive at a competitor tell me that they have about a dozen candidates-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: In their queue from Careerbuilder, so that's not just engineers that's probably a mix of folks. Yeah. I think from an engineering side that's bad not only from losing that kind of talent as a tech company, but also it doesn't bode very well for future products, and new features, and innovation.

Chad: Back to Irwin, this is the kind of shit you're going to have to deal with. If you're going to try to blow smoke up our ass, this is the time of transparency. The public, not just us, the public's going to find out exactly what's going on, so you either embrace it, stiffen your spine and take care of it, or keep playing these games, and you're going to have issues like this and they're going to continue to become a train wreck for the organization.

Joel: On Irwin, quickly, when the leak story came out online, I went and got clarification on some of the facts from the story, things that I had written in the story, for clarification. He was fairly quick to answer, now he spun his answers, for the most part, like the one in Castellini, it was the visa, it wasn't anything. He did answer me, now, when I got a flood of people come to me after the story was sort of unexpectedly released-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: I went back to him to clarify those facts, right?

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Or those statements. He came back and basically said, "I clarified the stuff from the first story, this is not consistent with what we expect from ERE. I will not be answering anymore questions, or giving you sort of the pleasure of asking me more stuff," which is really bull shit, because if it's your job to communicate with press, you should do it. The only reason you wouldn't do it is you don't want to answer the questions. It's sort of a Trump move, like let's-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Just move on to the next thing. This is way beyond you guys, this is fake news, this is crap. You guys should be out of business. I should probably be let go, et cetera. Yeah. PR from a multiple perspective has dropped the ball at Careerbuilder, and I don't know if it's Apollo pulling the strings, or if this is business as usual at Careerbuilder, but yeah, it's definitely a sour taste in my mouth from dealing with the communication folks at Careerbuilder.

Chad: He literally just told you, I'm going to run and hide. I'm going to find a corner, I'm going to get in the fetal position, and I'm going to put my thumb in my mouth, and I'm going to start sucking on it, and hope that all this shit goes away?

Joel: That's one way to look at it, for sure. You can speculate all you want, but they clearly don't want this story to be out. They don't want this to be talked about. I'm sure they're hoping it will just go away, but of course it won't. Yeah. Instead of saying, you know, hey, let me address each of these things, yes, we've lost 50% of our engineering, because of this, this, and this, or hey, yes we had this sales comment, this did happen. The layoffs happened like this, or they didn't. There's no clarification, or even sort of confirmation of the facts, so if they're not going to answer all I can go on is what my sources tell me.

Chad: Yeah. Again, it's about transparency. If what you're being told can be contested, it should be contested. If it can't be, you can obviously run and hide, like this individual obviously is and he represents the organization, so is the organization running and hiding from transparency? That's all there is to it.

Joel: Yeah. Let's take a quick break, and we'll talk about the sales side of the story. Sound good?

Chad: Yeah.

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Chad: Big love to JobADX.

Joel: JobADX. All right. Back to the Careerbuilder story. Let's talk about sales, which is apparently a total mess. A couple things, so I mentioned-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: I mentioned the sales trip that happens annually, so that was in the original story that got published, unexpectedly, and that was part of my email to Irwin was to clarify what had happened with the trip. Now, he comes back, and basically says there's never been a company trip to Mexico.

Chad: Wrong.

Joel: Okay. I do a little digging, it turns out social media is a great way to clarify or confirm stuff, so I dig around Instagram, and if you search the hashtag, CB Trip 2015, there are clearly pictures from Mexico of sales people at Careerbuilder enjoying a nice time. Everything that Mexico has to offer in these pictures. I go back to him, and I say, basically, "Instagram says differently about this Mexico thing."

Chad: Right.

Joel: He basically comes back and says, "Oh, yeah. There was a trip for sales people in 2015," and then he goes back to his line of, "We didn't have a trip, but sales people were given a cash reward," or some sort of compensation, and the feedback was positive, but the mere fact that he went from saying that we've never, no one at Careerbuilder has ever taken a business trip in mass to Mexico, and then me catching him on Instagram and him backtracking and saying, "Oh, yeah. There was that trip in 2015," is really funny, and for my money, homeboy has no credibility from what he's doing anyway. Anyway, that happened. The trip is sort of a menial side story. Right? Like I don't really care, take sales people on a nice trip, okay, cancel it, because its too expensive, and the new owners don't want to do it. The bigger story around sales, to me, again, sales people came out, and sort of shared some of this stuff-

Chad: Right.

Joel: With me and I cross referenced some of the stories, so a 152 sales reps, apparently, were let go by an automated phone call.

Chad: What? No fucking way.

Joel: That their position no longer exists at the company. Yeah. The comment that one person gave me that was great was, they dragged a 120 people that bled orange and blue, which is the corporate colors, or used to be, they're entire professional careers and slaughtered them without notice. They preach all these different values, they're plastered all over every wall, and they're the biggest bunch of hypocrites I've ever dealt with. That's a really crappy way to let people go. I don't know exactly if they knew a call was coming, if it just came, or what, granted it's an official way to let people go, but it's a real crappy way to do it.

Chad: These people, I mean, are they getting calls at home? I mean, these are automated calls, which really blows my freaking brain in the first place, but where are they getting these calls?

Joel: I don't know. I'm not sure it matters.

Chad: Okay.

Joel: My guess is that it was probably a day at the office-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: It may be their cell numbers, before the day began, and saying, hey, when you come in, if you do know more about this, feel free to reach out to us at chadcheese.com and let us know any specifics, but all we know at this point and it was not, I gave Careerbuilder a chance to say this was BS-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Which they failed to take that opportunity. What I can tell you is that they received automated phone calls that their job was done. From what I could tell they weren't given, actually, they were given, I believe, a month of severance for every year that they had served at the company, and I'm not exactly sure about that, so they were given something, but they-

Chad: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:31:12]-

Joel: We were given notice that they we're being fired. Apparently, some of the sales people were pretty good from what I can muster, they weren't like the worst of the worst sales people.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Apparently, morale is really taking a hit because of this, so one of the quotes I had in the story was, quote, "This past year we had our idiot sales leader," which we'll get to in a second, get us all involved to tell us that we were having our car allowance taken away, because we were tight on expenses." Now, this car allowance was apparently really a big deal. My source said, quote, "It was factored into our salaries, that's $5,000.00 that we all depended on to utilize for trains, or gas, or whatever. It was part of our salary that made our compensation a bit more competitive without notice gone," end quote.

Chad: There's a lot without notice happening, here.

Joel: Yes. Back to this trip thing and back to the original commentary about it being canceled or postponed. We have a source telling us, telling me, that CEO, Matt Ferguson went on a conference call to the company saying that the annual sales trip would be canceled. We have the global head of communications confirming that the trip didn't happen, but the people were given money for their troubles, and that they were happy about that, however, we have audio from John Smith who's I think chief revenue officer, let me verify that, when we come back, but the tape, the recording was sent to me, this is a company sales call as to why the company was not taking a trip to Mexico. Let's listen to that real quick and then we'll talk about it. I'm going to-

Chad: Roll the tape.

Joel: I'm going to mute us, because we can't listen to this without laughing.

Chad: Yes.

Joel: It will detour from the effect. Without further ado, Careerbuilder.

Careerbuilder Sales Tape: Lastly, trip, yes, there will be a trip. I just don't know when and where, yet. As soon as I will know, you will know. Know this, where not sleeping on this, it's not like we're not focused. We actually had a trip done, and sold out three weeks ago. We had a great hotel in Cabo. We had dates confirmed. Problem is, Cabo has become completely destabilized. They've literally, this holiday season they've had over 50,000 reservations canceled. Evidently, when El Chapo was incarcerated, the code of ethics said he is still in Cabo and throughout Mexico has gone away. There's no code of ethics. There's no code of honor. All of a sudden there's a war for power, so you're seeing things happen that you haven't seen in the past where people, gangs, drug dealers, were actually going into restaurants and shoot up the place, that never happened before. Bottom line is this, I wish I could sit here and tell you we-

Joel: And that's all I got.

Chad: And that was not us laughing by the way. That was-

Joel: No.

Chad: That was actually sales people who were on the call, or wherever they were, they were taping this, and they were laughing, hashtag, El Chapo.

Joel: Honestly, we're not exactly sure who's laughing.

Chad: Yeah. That's a good point.

Joel: But it's not us.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Which is the point.

Chad: Yep.

Joel: Yeah. According to that recording, the trip was just postponed, we're waiting for El Chapo to face the justice system, or whatever, and things to calm down in Cabo, which was a little bit different from Careerbuilder telling me that we're a little tight, or telling sources of mine that money's tight, and the trip isn't going to happen.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Basically, on the trip front there's a lot of different stories, and I'm not exactly sure, I don't think it's that important, frankly, I think the way people were laid off, I think the morale of the company, and what's going on with things like car allowances being taken away are a way bigger deal, but these sales people in your, you were in sales, right? These folks-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Love these trips. They work really hard to take them. I've heard that Rolex's and whatnot were given to the best sales people, so this was something that people looked forward to, and it was taken away.

Chad: At the end of the day, it's all about messaging. Right? Again, what we're seeing from the actual international com's guy, or whatever the hell he is, and his inability to actually message, and then we've got this, where we're talking about, we're blaming everything on El Chapo, I mean, this just seems like a comedy of errors.

Joel: Yeah. It's a little bit of keystone cops there in Chicago, and Atlanta, and everywhere else that Careerbuilder is spread around.

Chad: Three fucking stooges.

Joel: I will end, because I'm frankly tired of this story.

Chad: Yes.

Joel: Because it's been hanging on me for weeks, now. It is a bit of a statement on the job board industry. It is a bit of a statement on when you get acquired by private equity what's going to happen to you, and my guess is Monster is on a similar short leash, even though their masters, now, are a little bit different than a private equity company.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Who's sole mission is to maximize profit, get rid of things that don't matter, or don't make money, get rid of people who are too expensive, et cetera. But this is a word of warning to anyone who works at company who has a private equity firm come in, or have a new owner come in like this happens pretty regularly it's not exclusive to Careerbuilder, and I think it's a little bit of a statement on the job board industry, and how it's almost become like a commodity of hey, let's just juice as much profit out of this thing as we can, get rid of it, flip it, go public, whatever it is, but the name of the game with job boards now is not high growth, it's about buckling down, maximizing profits-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: And getting rid of the fat. That's kind of the state of the industry right now. You ready to move on?

Chad: Please.

Joel: All right. Let's talk about Indeed Crowd, and their referral reward.

Chad: Yet, another company flames out in their try, in their want, and their need to get another referral space.

Joel: Now, we should have some historical perspective on this, because you and I have seen so many of these things come and go, and in theory they're great ideas.right? Like, hey, you know a friend whose in sales, we have a sales position open, if we hire that person on your referral we'll give you a bunch of money, like it makes perfect sense in theory, but-

Chad: Right.

Joel: No one can make this work. You and I remember H3 from back in the day. We remembered Jobster, we remember refer.com.

Chad: There's a bunch.

Joel: A handful of them. Right? Yeah. Indeed, launched Crowd two years ago, I thought, well, if anyone can make it work Indeed can.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: You know? They got a ton of users.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: They're user friendly.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: It can work. Announced this week, they're shutting it down in May. It was an experiment, quote on quote, that they tried and just didn't work out, and they're moving on. If you're out there thinking about creating this business, just don't, because it apparently just does not work, even if we have social media-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: We have easy ways to share stuff, and email. People do not share jobs with people. Period.

Chad: Hans, who is CEO of H3 had a great quote, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, and in this case, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make them refer their friends for jobs. It's a very small percentage and we always hear that referrals are like one of the number one sources for organizations, that is, it's not easy to scale because there has to be a want, and/or need to do it. To be quite frank, I mean, I don't want to sit around all day and look for jobs to refer my friends to. If I see a job, or if I'm in an organization where I think there's a great fit then I'm going to want to pull that talent in, because it's going to benefit them, and more than likely it's going to benefit me, too.

Joel: Yeah. And the scalability is a great point, because you have to get people involved, they have to approve the-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Candidate that you're submitting. There's usually a 90 day period where the person has to stay employed. You know? I mean, there's so many hoops, it's not simple, it doesn't scale. It just doesn't work, however-

Chad: Ladders.

Joel: Our friends at Ladders formerly The Ladders, just The Facebook they thought that would be fancy to do The Ladders. In the same week they pretty much that Indeed announces that they're getting out of the business, The Ladders has announced their own referral business, but their payouts are in the 10 grand range, which they think will make a difference. Now, Indeed got up to as high as 5,000 and couldn't make it work, so can a fringe site like The Ladder's, or Ladders at 10 grand make it work? I don't know if there's a sweet spot for money, but let's try 10,000 and see if that works.

Chad: Yeah. I think, you know, if you can actually mobilize recruiters, independent contractors, that's not a bad payday, especially if you can go out and do what you normally do, and do referrals through this system, the only way that you can scale this thing is to hope that people who are actually interested and passionate about getting people jobs will want to be able to help, because in most cases the rest of us have other shit to do.

Joel: Enough said. Textio-

Chad: Yes.

Joel: Has a new thing. We'll talk about that. Diversity, Indeed is bringing diversity reviews into their platform in Uncommon, as a way to create better job ads, so this is a little bit of a segue into job postings, and diversity. I guess we can talk about Textio, first. You're pretty high on their new product.

Chad: I'm just high on the concept overall, because I see this happening no matter what. Textio, very smartly gets into the space and says, hey, they say exactly what we all know, your job descriptions suck, not to mention they probably focus on one gender bias versus another just with specific types of words, so what we can do is, we can help you balance them out, and/or if you're looking for more female engineers, we can try to help you use different words, different phrases, things like that to focus more on drawing females in than possibly the male side of the house. That made a hell of a lot of sense on the job description side.

Chad: Now, they're pushing this into messaging, so emails, and things like that. Now, we see this already on my android, or Facebook, or what have you, you get pretty much AI responses to conversations that are happening, this is pretty much, it looks like composing parts and/or all of a message for you, which is incredibly cool. I see this happening more on most of the texts that we do now, whether it's texting, whether it's Facebook messaging, WhatsApp, emails, not all humans write well. To be able to have kind of like a cushion, or at least a piece of AI machine learning type of technology help us with that, I think is smart. Obviously, Microsoft and being able to help with my spelling, just isn't enough.

Joel: Now, look, historically when people post a job they go to Google and they say, you know, "Sales job description search," and they pull out the best thing they can find, copy and paste, change some words around and go on with their life. Very few people start from scratch to post a job. Yes, we're copying and pasting jobs from probably the early 2000s like caveman language. Right? Like, for job postings. The fact that we're getting some technology around improving these is a great thing.

Chad: Yes.

Joel: Uncommon.co, who we had a firing squad with recently and is now actually a new sponsor-

Chad: Yay.

Joel: Thanks to them, we like those guys a lot. They have also just released a way to submit your job into their system, and then they have a little like meter-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Like green to red, and green in the middle. It tells you if your job posting, the keywords, and description is too vague, or if it's too specific, and it gets you hopefully right in that sweet spot. We really haven't seen a ton of technology.

Chad: No.

Joel: Around making better job descriptions, so it's good to see Textio and Uncommon, create some solutions to help us write some better job descriptions, and more inclusive [crosstalk 00:43:51]-

Chad: I've got a byline for tag over at Uncommon, I think this is great, Uncommon.co, scoring your shitty job descriptions. I think that'll work, I think that'll actually really pull people in, and you'll sell a hell of a lot.

Joel: Uncommon. Make your jobs not suck so much.

Chad: See, we're talking about real transparency. Everybody knows they've got shitty job descriptions. They need help. Go after those people.

Joel: They need help.

Chad: Go after those people.

Joel: Wrapping the sense of some diversity as well, you really like what Indeed has done with pulling in some diversity review sites like Fairygodboss for women, and Her Site comparably another one to pull some of that data into their company descriptions, talk about that.

Chad: Yeah. You won't hear me say much on the positive side about Indeed, lately, but I think this is a great move from the standpoint of being able to position themselves better in the market on the review side, and to be able to help individuals who are more diverse, to better understand how the work environment is, so Fairy God Boss, whether it's on the female side, and I think that's a great place to start. If there are already review sites and you can aggregate that information, and make it usable, and beautiful then that's really freaking cool, but again, I see this as an opportunity for them to really bolster not just their reviews, but to be able to do a little aggregation and focus, so that they can start to compete better against Glassdoor. Not that they're doing a bad job against Glassdoor, but to be able to start to kind of carve in and to be possibly more specialized.

Joel: Yeah. And frankly, you know, Google For Jobs, as well, is pulling in review data in terms of the number of stars in their search, so it makes sense for Indeed to sort of not only have-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Their own reviews, but also how do we build more context around companies and hiring diverse candidates. Yeah. I agree, this was a great move from Indeed. Let's hear a quick ad from our boys at America's Job Exchange, and talk about Snagajob.

Announcer: America's Job Exchange is a market leader in diversity recruitment, and an OFCCP compliance solution provider. We serve over a 1,000 customers, consisting of federal contractors, and subcontractors to SMB's, and Fortune 500 organizations. America's Job Exchange specializes in job distribution to over 6500 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.

Joel: Just remember, compliance is mandatory, diversity is essential.

Chad: wow. Mind blown.

Joel: Snagajob is a success story that we don't talk about very often, just because I guess we don't cover the hourly retail sector very much.

Chad: It hasn't been as exciting, though, really. I mean, Snagajob really hasn't, they haven't done really much exciting from a change, or anything like that, so it's kind of been business as usual. That's why I would say that we haven't really-

Joel: Yeah.

Chad: [crosstalk 00:47:25] on that.

Joel: If you don't think growth, and revenue or exciting I guess they've been pretty boring. Anyway-

Chad: Good point.

Joel: They-

Chad: Well taken.

Joel: After 18 years in business, I believe, they are rebranding, and they're not just rebranding because they sold their domain, or-

Chad: Right.

Joel: Just because their CEO had a bad breakfast, or something. They're changing their brands, because the market itself is changing. That the comment that the CEO gave to me that I thought was great was, he said, "People aren't looking to snag a job anymore, they're looking to snag a shift." We look at the guys of Shiftgig, and we had those guys on a X exclusive webinar, recently.

Chad: Yep.

Joel: The world of work is changing, and these guys are changing their brand to snag.co primarily mobile based platform, so people that are on the hourly, seasonal, retail sector they can get up similar to Uber-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Check themselves if they're ready to work. Employers can say, hey, I need four waiters tonight, go on the platform, bring four in, pay them through the system-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: I mean that's kind of where the world of work is going, as opposed to, yeah, I just work at Cheesecake Factory, and that's it.

Chad: Yep.

Joel: In this case, I work at four different restaurants, and I can choose my own time, I can select the employee that I like better over the other one if their shift, if they're dueling shifts. It's really pretty interesting, it's just very interesting how the world of work is going, and someone that's been around for 18 years like Snagajob believes that it's important enough to change their branding, and their platform to accommodate.

Chad: Yeah. I think the brand change, first, I'm going to hit the brand change, because this is big, we've talked about Indeed, Monster, and I mean all these different sites who they don't have job in them or career in them, or anything like that, so they can do multiple things, they can pivot, they can do some really cool things. I think it was smart for Snagajob to go to Snag as opposed to Snagajob. Snag.co, I hope they can acquire the dot.com sometime soon, but I think Snag, that was a very smart pivot, and then being able to focus on, and I agree with this a 100% taking a look at Shiftgig out there, take a look at

Moonlighting, I mean, there are all these different sites that are really-

Chad: Really being able to push what work or gig work means, and really, I think, aspiring to be the Uber of all of these different segments of gig work. Right?

Joel: Uber for hourly jobs.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Yeah.

Chad: It's freaking amazing. I think they've got some really funny shit that's going on, like badges, you know? I don't think that we need any stinking badges, but that's okay that could be a quote on quote certification. I think, it was funny, the CEO gave an example of Snag created a bun dresser badge for burger joint, Five Guys, so all the restaurant know a particular worker is fit for flipping burger patties at all of their locations. It's like, okay, I probably could have gotten a better example, but apparently they need a shit ton of burger flippers, so maybe that makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Joel: Right. Part of the point was, you know, some of these are different franchises-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: They have different owners. Some of them are corporate owned. In the case of like a Five Guys, if you're a franchisee, and someone works primarily at maybe a corporate owned restaurant, they already have that seal of approval that they can step in right now at your restaurant and start making burgers because they've been approved, because they've done it in multiple Five Guys restaurants, or wherever. Yeah. I think the badges are cute, kind of fun, but I do think it does have some pertinent asset or value to a hiring manager.

Chad: The biggest way is how you get paid. I mean, that is the most interesting, and cool thing, because from an Uber standpoint you don't have to worry about all the money changing hands and all that other happy horse shit. What happens is you get paid through the app and no matter whether you've got a Five Guys, or White Castle, or wherever you're going, it doesn't matter, everything gets paid through that app.

Joel: Yep. I did talk to, also taxes, and all that stuff is handled just like an Uber and Lyft, et cetera, from the app, or from the platform. I will add, because you mentioned the dot com, they are in negotiation to acquire the dot com, I know that, I think, they're into like seven figures for it, so-

Chad: Oh, yeah.

Joel: [crosstalk 00:52:08] to do, if they can do it. I also think that in a mobile app world, having the dot com isn't quite as important as just going to iTunes, or Google Play, and searching Snag and seeing the app. Anyway-

Chad: I agree.

Joel: Let's talk about pains. One of your favorite topics. Monster is getting into the T-pain, or the two pain game.

Chad: Yeah. What was reported from Ireland was true, and it was funny, because we were on stage and we were talking about Indeed and this whole two pain thing that they're doing, and somebody was like, "Hey, Monster's going to do this, too," and they were actually testing it in Europe when we were in Europe. Monster, their job search switches from that nasty ass, NASCAR logo driven job search results, and now they're going to more of a new frills Indeed look. I think it's definitely good for candidates and good for employers, and here's why it's different for everybody, and it's also different from the Indeed piece. It's an easier way to find jobs, one of the things that you noticed, when we were talking about Indeed doing this, is that it was very easy to browse jobs. You don't actually have to go from page to page, to page, to page, it just pops open a pain, and you can browse really easily, and it makes it much easier from a user experience standpoint to try to find, and quickly glaze through all these different types of jobs.

Chad: Now, the big difference is and we got clarification from Monster on this is on all of their CPC ads, the only time that a client actually pays for a click is when the candidate clicks apply, not on the job description that shows the job, which is different from what we've heard from the Recruitics Whitepapers, and all those other things from Indeed. I think that is good for the job seeker, obviously the candidate, and great for the employers. Here's the big thing that I want to push out, and the thing that Careerbuilder, and Indeed, and many of these other companies that we smack around a lot are really getting wrong. Monster, is really trying to engage, and they're trying to help us understand, and they're trying to help others understand, obviously in some case through us, what's going on? They're being incredibly transparent.

Chad: On LinkedIn last week one of the VP's of product posted a screenshot of this new two pain thing that they've got on the calling combined search, and I started asking questions, because if you're going to put it out there in public, you better be able to start answering questions on it, so I got contacted through this and they started, they actually provided answers to the questions from the SVP of product, Nathan, so it was like, look, we understand that you're curious and we want to answer those questions, so we're going to engage you, and we're going to help you understand. You might not like our answers, but guess what? We're going to give you the answers," and they gave it to us both barrels whether we liked it or not. In this case we liked it, we might not like the next ones.

Joel: Not like Careerbuilder.

Chad: Not like Careerbuilder. Not at all.

Joel: By the way, what a concept to create something that benefits job seekers, and employers at this date and time. Very cool.

Chad: Just makes good God damn sense. Again, this is a culture thing, so we see a difference between organizations who don't reach out to try to engage us, and be transparent, and then we see an entirely different feel from this new Monster leadership, and again, whether it comes out to be an amazing product, and they make a shit ton of money, or not, you're starting to see a huge cultural shift over there that is more toward transparency. Now, if it continues to go that way, obviously, you know, we're going to talk about it, and if it doesn't we're going to talk about it, but to me that's refreshing, more than what we're seeing from this guy who's in the fetal position over at Careerbuilder, or anybody.

Joel: Good enough. All right. We have an acquisition, and we're done.

Chad: Boom.

Joel: Indeed, has acquired, or their corporate company-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Recruit whatever out in Japan, a juggernaut north of the border in Canada, I'm not really sure what to make of it, what are your thoughts?

Chad: I wasn't very sure, either, and I think Steven Rothberg threw out to me is like, you know, this might be more of a defensive tactic, being able to buy up a competitor to really focus on sustaining foundation, instead of having another competitor come in and buy it up, because they have been around forever, they do have market share, there is a database that's there, so it's more kind of like securing your area in north of the border.

Joel: Yeah. You know thinking about it, I don't think Google For Jobs is yet in Canada. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think they are. I think they're just in the US, currently. That being the case, Indeed saying like, hey, let's gobble up as many distribution points that we can at a reasonable price, and Workopolis is a well known brand in Canada, as we both know. To gobble up a brand, put your jobs on it is increasing job distribution. We believe that Indeed is under increasing pressure to get-

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Traffic to the site, because of Google For Jobs. Buying advertising on TV is expensive, so maybe somebody did some math and said, Gee, it's going to be cheaper to buy companies that are already established in other countries than it is to go buy ads in Canada. To me, this is a total Google For Jobs move, to get ahead of that, and try to maintain as much traffic and relevancy as they can in different countries.

Chad: If you're in Canada, and you can do a search, and let us know if Google For Jobs is actually working, please do so, that'd be great. Then, second, again, I see this as a short-term thinking, I mean, they're looking for the types of traffic that's going to go away, it's not sustainable, it doesn't matter, you're going to go buy that brand, but still you're going to have to continue to pump life into that brand. Now, if you absorb that brand, then obviously you're still going to have to continue doing what you were doing to be able to pump life into your Indeed brand in Canada.

Chad: It doesn't matter, because as soon as you stop doing that, we saw this with Monster, we saw this with Careerbuilder, that brand doesn't beat out how I do business every day, or how I just as a human being how I use the web, and I use Google, so if I'm not thinking of you, and it's funny, because we saw that the lift in traffic that Indeed has been seeing is through Google is organic, but it's all branded Indeed sales, Indeed this, or Indeed that. Once that goes away, and we're not using that, guess what? We're not going to Indeed anymore, so this is not sustainable. It doesn't make sense. If you take a look at what Snag just did, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. It's talking about turning what you're doing into a different way of lifestyle, and if you can't find your way to do that, you can't pack up and go home, but you better fucking find one.

Joel: I got nothing after that.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: I think we've surpassed the hour mark for the first time on a show. Maybe we should relieve our poor listeners-

Chad: We out.

Joel: And just say, we out. Now, tell us real quickly who our guest announcer is today. This is my stepson, Tristan, who describes himself as extra and I have no clue what the hell that means.

Chad: All right. We out. Here's Tristan.

Tristen: Hi, I'm Tristen. Thanks for listening to my stepdad, the Chad, and his goofy friend, Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss out on all the knowledge dropping that's happening up in here. They made me say that. The most important part is to check out our sponsors, because I made new tracks by it, you know the expensive, shiny, gold pair that are extra, because well I'm extra. For more visit chadcheese.com.

#Indeed #TheLadders #Snag #Monster #Workopolis #Textio #Uncommon #Careerbuilder