Indeed's Workopolis Carnage - A NEXXT Exclusive
- Chad and Cheese
- Apr 22, 2018
- 29 min read
LIVE from TAtech in Las Vegas, the boys break some news about what happened at Workopolis after Indeed acquired the company.
"Drop your laptop and company property at the door on the way out."
What else are those idiots talking about?
- Participation certificates - clever millenials
- Careerbuilder dumpster fire update
- Indeed Jail update
- Here's a brand, there's a brand - everyone is rebranding
- Gollum visits
- Anyone need sales people and developers?
- BEER
Enjoy.
And be sure to visit this podcast's exclusive sponsor, Nexxt.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Chad: This, The Chad & Cheese Podcast brought to you in partnership with TA tech. TA tech, the association for talent acquisition solutions. Visit tatech.org.
Chad: Okay, Joel, quick question.
Joel: Yep.
Chad: What happens when your phone vibrates, or your texting alert goes off?
Joel: Dude, I pretty much check it immediately. I bet everyone listening is reaching to check their phones right now.
Chad: Yeah, I know. I call it our Pavlovian dog reflex of text messaging.
Joel: Yeah, that's probably why text messaging has a fricking 97% open rate-
Chad: What?!
Joel: Crazy high candidate response rate within the first hour alone.
Chad: Which, are all great reasons why The Chad & Cheese Podcast love text to hire from Nexxt.
Joel: Love it!
Chad: Yep. That's right. Nexxt, with the double X, not the triple X.
Joel: So, if you're in talent acquisition. You want true engagement and great ROI, that stands for return on investment, folks. And, because this is The Chad & Cheese Podcast, you can try your first text to hire campaign for just 25% off. Boom!
Chad: Wow! So how do you get ths discount, you're asking yourself right now.
Joel: Tell them, Chad.
Chad: It's very simple. You go to chadcheese.com, and you click of the Nexxt logo in the sponsor area.
Joel: Easy.
Chad: No long URL to remember.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Just go where you know chadcheese.com, and Nexxt, with two X's.
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 & Cheese Podcast.
Joel: Who listens to the show? Who knows who the hell we are? That's awesome.
Chad: About five of you, that's good.
Joel: That's awesome!
Joel: So, for those that don't know, we typically start our show with shout outs.
Chad: Typically, yes.
Joel: And, we normally don't start with shout outs at the TA tech show, but we're going to try something new.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: We could fail miserably, but we're going to try it.
Chad: No, I don't think this is going to fail miserably at all, because the first shout out is going to go to-
Joel: Well, tell them how it's going to work.
Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joel: So, at the show, we do a podcast, we can't give away stuff, right. So, here today if you get a shout out, you get a beer. If you don't drink, we have Peeps. So, if you want Peeps-
Chad: You can have a Peep.
Joel: ... you can grab a Peep, and you can take anything from Nexxt that you want.
Everybody understand? We're good?
Chad: Except for Steve Kraut, because nobody wants him.
Joel: And, he's already drunk, so he doesn't need anymore beer. Okay. Alright. I'm ready. I think we're ready for shout outs.
Chad: Yeah. So, if you've listened to the podcast before, you know Joel hates millennials.
Joel: Hate those entitled little bastards.
Chad: Hates millennials, but we got a lot of them listening, and I think they just love the pain of getting through the show as Joel hates on them. Anyway, one of our-
Joel: They have a sense of humor though.
Chad: ... millennials-
Joel: ... which, is good.
Chad: Yes. One of our millennial listeners actually gave us personalized certificates of participation.
Joel: We got a trophy from the millennial generation, which is very nice. So, to Kyle from Hireology-
Chad: Is it Hireology?
Joel: This beer and shout out is for you, my friend.
Chad: Yeah. That was funny shit. That was very funny shit. Good job.
Kyle: I'm actually not old enough to drink. No, I'm just kidding.
Chad: You're in Vegas.
Joel: This Peeps for you, baby.
Chad: This Peeps for you.
Kyle: Thank you.
Chad: Next. Where's Thad at?
Joel: Next, get it, I saw what you did there.
Chad: Yeah. Where's Thad at? Thad's not here? Okay.
Crowd: He's CEOing.
Joel: He's CEOing.
Chad: CEOing. Aw, that sucks.
Joel: That's alright. We'll get him later. Well, we can embarrass him when he's not here, though.
Chad: Yeah. So, he's the only CEO that I know, who does a Gollum impression, and just he loves it. Hopefully, we can get him to do a Gollum impression, like a promo for the show.
Joel: Go up to Thad and say, "Can I hear your Gollum impression."
Chad: And, he gets excited.
Joel: Yeah. He's very into-
Chad: He loves to do the-
Joel: ... it.
Chad: ... Gollum impression.
Joel: Get your Lord of the Rings geek on with Thad the CEO ... the new CEO-
Chad: New CEO.
Joel: ... of the new brand, which we'll talk about later-
Chad: Yes.
Joel: ... of the new brand -it rhymes with kangaroo.
Chad: There he is.
Joel: Alright.
Chad: Come on.
Joel: Thad! Come on up, buddy.
Chad: Come up. Hey, so we've got something for you if you agree to do-
Joel: A little Gollum.
Chad: ... a Gollum promo-
Joel: Just a little Gollum.
Chad: ... promo would you do something. [crosstalk 00:04:58] Yeah? Okay. Give him the mike.
Joel: He's closer to you. Gollum, everyone.
Chad: Gollum, everyone. You got to use your hands.
Thad: I got to use my hands.
Chad: Yeah, because you're freaking.
Thad: (in Gollum voice) Yes, me precious. Yes. Do these precious candidates me wants it so sweet precious. Yes.
Joel: This Guinness is for you, Thad. Thank you.
Chad: He got it.
Joel: Very nice. Very nice.
Chad: I love it! Hey, we need you to do a Chad & Cheese promo for us, too.
Joel: If that doesn't say future IPO, I don't know what does.
Chad: Oh, last but not least, where's Darren from hiQ? There he is.
Joel: Everyone knows they're fighting LinkedIn, right?
Chad: Right.
Joel: Right, in court, and their spending more money than they probably have.
Chad: Public data.
Joel: We think we owe them a debt of gratitude for fighting Goliath ... probably fighting for a lot of you as you stand on the sidelines. Mr. Kaplan this is for you.
Darren: I appreciate it thanks.
Joel: And, good luck.
Darren: Thank you.
Joel: You'll need it.
Chad: Very good luck. Who does not feel like they're going to be impacted by a negative ruling on this?
Joel: Who's a non-scraper, or relies on anything scraped-
Chad: Who doesn't think they're going to get-
Joel: ... previously scraped, or soon to be scraped.
Chad: ... payback right? So, if you're not behind these guys, I mean get behind these guys. They really believe the future of what we do depends on these types of rulings.
Joel: So, we're going to get to the show. Now, we like an active audience, so if you have questions while we're talking, comments, or just want a Guinness, and want to try your shot at it ... or, a Peep ... ask a question, be interactive. We have-
Joel: Seven more, and what doesn't go out to you, comes in to our bellies, so there you go.
Chad: Soon to be six, by the way.
Joel: What are we talking about first rebranding?
Chad: Yeah ... well, let's talk about the new CEO of DICE.
Joel: Sure, we know nothing about him, but they have a new CEO. Actually, by the way, since we're in Vegas right, okay, anyone here from CareerBuilder? Oh, good. We can talk about them. Okay, et's say over under that Matt Ferguson is still CEO in twelve months. Anyone say, under?
Chad: Under hands.
Joel: So, everyone else says more than a year?
Chad: More than a year.
Joel: No one is participating, you all suck.
Chad: Come on.
Crowd: Two years.
Joel: Two years. Okay.
Chad: Two years.
Joel: That's over. Over a year. Okay, one person had the balls to play the game. Thanks everybody. Okay. Dices new CEO, what do we know about him?
Chad: Not much other than he's got-
Joel: He's got a hell of a resume. He's a Harvard grad. Maybe Navy guy. Maybe Air force. Tech guy. Has no experience in our industry. Historically, that doesn't go very well.
Chad: No.
Joel: But, we'll see how it goes.
Chad: Yeah. So, we were at conference earlier this week, and we went to the Dice booth, and what was the reaction from the people behind the booth.
Joel: Well, there was a salesperson, and saw our name badges which is Chad & Cheese, and it was sort of hang head like oh no, Chad & Cheese-
Chad: It was an oh shit.
Joel: ... and she passed us over to an executive, who then pushed us off to PR.
Chad: Because, we asked if we could get the new CEO on the podcast. That being
said-
Joel: We'll get him on. We'll get him on.
Chad: Re-branding.
Joel: Rebranding. Who's rebranded in the last 12 months?
Chad: He got a new logo.
Joel: Geez, what a bunch of active participants.
Crowd: He did.
Chad: Nexxt.
Joel: Nexxt.
Chad: Nexxt.
Joel: Now, do we all know why they rebranded? Bed, Bath, and Beyond called and said here's a bucket of money, and so they sold it to them, and became Nexxt. Boy this crowd is awful, dude.
Chad: Tens of millions of dollars. So, Pando, Snag, now, Talroo ... (What?
Joel: You guys are really down like what the hell is going on? Was lunch that heavy? It was just a salad and a sandwich for God's sakes. Alright we will continue to talk and look at your blank faces. Okay. This is great. We're giving beer out, people. Okay. What do we think about rebranding? Anything?
Chad: So, there's a shit ton of pivoting that's happening, right, and I think that's one of the reasons why we're seeing it. Any other organizations in the room other than those-
Joel: They're not participating. We need to stop saying, "Will anyone vote", or say anything to us. We're just going to talk to you.
Chad: Okay.
Joel: So, Talroo, we know from talking to Thad from the SHRM Talent conference, is that they wanted to be more of a technology focused brand. Jobs2Careers is kind of a pigeon hole of weird jobs and careers, so they thought we'll take talent and recruitment, bam, Talroo. Makes sense right? Going to be tough to get that off ... anyway that's going to be tough for me to remember, because I think of kangaroo, or I think of something else. And then, Pando is like a panda. So, we're all sort of animals but not animals.
Chad: PandoLogic. Yeah. Pandoroo.
Joel: Pandaroo. That's right. Talroo merges with Pando for Taldo something. Anyway. I think a lot of it is being driven by Google, and getting into the job space, and a lot people realizing that technology is the way that we need to go. So, if you have a job search specific URL, I think, that you're starting to think about how do we rebrand ourselves, and that's at least one example ... well two examples. Real Match kind of says we're matching, and Pando says nothing, so they said it'll be programmatic.
Chad: No. That was different play though, because they were in one market, and then they started to pivot to the employer side, too, right. So, they've been focusing on the vendor side, then they went toward the employer side. So that was a different play.
Joel: Although Pando is making it real confusing, because they have PandoLogic, and they have PandoIQ.
Chad: But, it's all Pando.
Joel: And, if Terry was here, he might be able to explain it, but I can't. I don't understand it.
Chad: He'd just be glaring at you right now.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: But, then you take a look at Snag, which I think ... I mean, that's been an interesting change-
Joel: Anyone from Snagajob here?
Chad: No.
Joel: No. You all know Snagajob though, right? Hourly retail, those kinds of jobs?
Chad: So, I think that's one of the bigger changes.
Joel: So, why did they rebrand?
Chad: They rebranded, I think, mainly to get job out of their name, but to be able to show that their model was changing, and that it's not just about obviously the old world of posting. They call it the uber factor. It just makes sense for some of these jobs ... and, I think it will scale to not just the high turnover or high volume types of jobs ... but, you'll see it scale to all types of jobs, but this is the hardest problem to work on, and I think organizations like Snag, like Jobalign, like Talentify-
Joel: Shiftgig.
Chad: Yeah. I mean they're something.
Joel: The CEO of Snagajob said to me, "Nobody wants to snag a job anymore. They want to snag a shift."
Chad: A gig.
Joel: They want to work for multiple companies. They want to have an uber type experience where they switch. I'm on for working. I'm off because I'm doing whatever millennials do, young people do. And then, businesses, restaurants can say I need seven waiters for tonight, who's on the platform, who's ready to go, call them in, shifts done, snag handles all the payments so the restaurant or the businesses don't have to do any of that. So, they're the most fascinating rebrand to me, because they're rebranding because they're entire business is changing and the way that people look for work in their market is changing drastically.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Say again?
Crowd: Are they going roll out an app?
Joel: Are they going to roll out an app? Yes. So, they are now snag.co, but you will only see it in markets that they are beta testing right now. So, if you live in Richmond, Virginia, or Washington, D.C. will be their first big market, you won't see it, but it will all be app based. Just like Uber if your familiar, when you call a car or you're a driver, it'll all be mobile app native based.
Chad: So, pay through the app ... again, it's one of those situations where you don't have one job at one company, you can actually pick up gigs at multiple companies.
Joel: And, they even have badges. Like they have a burger flipper badge, so if you're thing is making burgers then you'll work at Five Guys and McDonald's, whatever, you can have a badge that says I am a burger flipper.
Chad: Right.
Joel: So, a company, or a restaurant knows that they'll hire you and you've been approved with this badge that you're a good cook, or burger flipper.
Chad: But, we're seeing a change. Overall, from job board kind of ... I guess you could say platform ... and, being able to evolve into Nexxt what was beyond to Nexxt more of a data warehouse, different types of products.
Joel: It really puts the job posting thing on its head a little bit.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Because, you're not posting jobs anymore, you're just going out and hiring people that want to work shifts for a certain job. I don't know if you can do that for nurses, accountants ... pretty much anything technically I guess you could have a model like that. HR Block could say we need 50 accountants for the next three months, and come on in and we'll pay you through the app, and you don't have to be an employee. We'll see if that takes hold, but Snag is certainly putting their money on the hourly workforce being a shift based workforce going forward.
Chad: All on the blockchain. No, just kidding. Just kidding. Oh, by the way-
Joel: Paid with Bitcoin.
Chad: ... where's by blockchain guys at? Okay.
Joel: Who is was in the blockchain session?
Chad: Know how to run PowerPoint.
Joel: Who was annoyed by the PowerPoint not being like finished. Okay. Good. Good. Me too.
Chad: Something as complicated as blockchain, make sure you do the easy stuff well like on the PowerPoint.
Joel: Click here to add text.
Chad: Good stuff.
Joel: What else we got for this vivacious group of folks?
Chad: I think they're waiting for the meat, which is CareerBuilder.
Joel: Oh, CareerBuilder? Who's heard our podcast on CareerBuilder, and kind of knows what's going on at CareerBuilder, or has worked at CareerBuilder and knows what's going on at CareerBuilder, and just wants to ... Okay.
Joel: So, CareerBuilder is kind of melting down. A lot of sources that I have, and Chad have, have talked to us about what's going on at CareerBuilder. For those of you who don't know, they were bought by a private equity company called Apollo Global about a year, year and a half ago I guess. They got a Groupon. Got the business at about half price. We talked about that at one of the shows. They got a good discount on the business.
Joel: So, anyway, as private equities companies will do, they walk in, where's the cost, where can we cut, where can we maximize profitability, and apparently that process is happening in a pretty bad way. So, the first thing that I got wind of was a lot of executives ... like long term ... If, you're a member of headhunter.net, CareerBuilder bought them in the late 90s maybe 2000 to 2001, they had employees like Richard Castellini, Chris Foreman ... I think is another one ... no, that's not right. I'll look up the name real quick, unless you have it there.
Joel: So, they're losing executives that are long time executives, or they're shifting them into other roles, which is pretty drastic, because the culture there ... if you know CareerBuilder ... it a little bit fratty. The upper level guys they kind of have an all boys club demeanor about them. A lot of them are going away, which is probably why I think Ferguson won't be there much longer. I'm sure he has a contract that says, you'll be here for this amount of time, and then, I'm assuming he'll be gone. That's my guess. I don't know for sure.
Joel: The other thing that we know is that their development team ... what I've heard ... is about down to 50% of what it used to be-
Chad: Who needs developers?
Joel: ... and, the ones that are left are looking for a job pretty aggressively, and will be gone as soon as they get another job. So, yes, if you're looking for developers go search the Atlanta, Georgia area, which is where a lot of them are. I don't think they'll have trouble getting jobs. My guess is Apollo just doesn't really care. My guess is all the businesses that they have, that they've purchased over the years, the WorkTerras, the Broadbeans, that they'll be gone. They'll be auctioned off to the highest bidder, and they'll maximize profit with the corps business being job postings. At that point, I think they'll sell it to ... who knows? Indeed,
or I don't know.
Chad: Their portfolio, they have 70 different products. I think one of CareerBuilder's biggest issues over the years is they really have messaging for 70 different products. How easy is it to sell four or five different products, let alone 70, right. There has been focus from here to there, but they continue to change product names, combine products, morph them into something entirely different. I mean, just from talent acquisition friends that I talk to, I mean it's like they don't even know what's being sold. So, it's like the target is moving constantly, and messaging just sucks, marketing sucks. If that sucks, well I mean sales is going to be harder. They are very tenacious, very large sales group of what now? Like 800 or so?
Joel: Oh, the sales group? So, the last round that I heard ... I think at their height, I heard about 1400 sales people. Some of you can probably confirm or deny that. The latest round of what I heard, they had 800 sales people, and the lay off was of 120. There's some really bitter mofo's from that 120. I've heard comments about these are people that bled blue and orange. They were fired by an automated message apparently. They were let go without really much care or concern. So, there are a lot of really mad sales people. Again, if you're looking for sales people, go to LinkedIn, see who's there. Even if they're still there, they probably could be looking because they're probably fearful of their job's future.
Chad: Who does firing by automated messaging? Anyone in this room?
Joel: It's very efficient though.
Chad: Okay. I was just going to make sure that we didn't have to shoot anybody. I mean that's the dumbest shit ever, right. Seriously. What's that? [crosstalk 00:19:56]. And, bye, have a nice day, right.
Joel: I mean, the President fires people through Twitter. What the hell. Speaking of firing, should we move on from CareerBuilder, and talk about Workopolis' blood bath?
Chad: Not yet.
Joel: Okay, we'll hold off-
Chad: We're going to get there.
Joel: Alright.
Chad: So, the El Chapo thing, I thought was funny-
Joel: Okay.
Chad: ... as Hell. So, there's a minute of like [crosstalk 00:20:24]-
Joel: Alright, who's the El Chapo audio from the podcast?
Chad: El Chapo audio? Okay.
Joel: It's pretty entertaining.
Chad: Some of you. It's really funny. I mean, they're talking about President's Club-
Joel: Which is an annual trip.
Chad: Annual trip-
Joel: That they pick to reward-
Chad: Supposed to go to Cabo. Supposed to go to Cabo. And, we can't go to Cabo this year guys, sorry, because El Chapo is not there anymore. No shit. This is what he says. El Chapo is not there anymore, and the whole region is destabilized because this cat is not in the region. It's laughable. I mean, even on the recording, you can hear sales people laughing at this bullshit reasoning behind it.
Joel: The delivery was pretty funny, too, not just the content.
Chad: Yeah, delivery was funny. But, you talk to the coms guy, and he said they are not going to have-
Joel: Yeah. So, there's some conflicting story. So, the one story is there was a company called ... with Ferguson talking about hey the annual trip is canceled this year apparently sales people were given money in return for the trip. Allegedly everyone was okay with that. I guess some of them were. Some of them weren't. Which, why the audio that we have contradicting the cancellation, and saying it was just postponed until El Chapo's dismantling of the Mexican government or whatever happens. So, it's going to happen. So, we have some real conflicting data. Anyone here from CareerBuilder or used to be at CareerBuilder that wants to confirm what happened, that's perfectly fine with me, but that's the story that I've gotten from my sources.
Chad: Ridiculous. Oh, so that being said-
Joel: And, they also canceled the auto allowance I've heard.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: For the sales people. Apparently there was like a $5,000 auto allowance for gas, miles, whatever. And, sales people counted on that income right, $5,000 extra in income, they just axed that without any warning. I do know that they have a new COO, who I'm sure is an Apollo lackey.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: And, she came in and they typically give raises in July and December I
believe, and they said, "Well, we got to hold off until April,"
Chad: Postponing.
Joel: Postponing for postponing the raises.
Chad: Yep.
Joel: So, everyone was kind of cool for a few months. They announced the raises, and apparently they were much lower than what people had ever expected, or was sort of traditional, which led to much of the exodus ... particularly with the development team-
Chad: Needless to say, morale is low-
Joel: Morale is in the shitter.
Chad: Who needs sales people? Who needs sales people? There's a pool out there now, right. Pool of blood.
Joel: I've had multiple competitors tell me that they have CareerBuilder people in their interview process. [crosstalk 00:23:08] You might be too late at this point.
Chad: I doubt it.
Joel: Well. There'll be more.
Chad: More rounds to come. So, yeah. Indeed jail.
Joel: That's your lane. Go for it.
Chad: So, we talked ... earlier this week, it was funny. Just an impromptu conversation with Tim Sackett, you know Tim Sackett he's been in the industry for a very long time on the talent acquisition side of the house, and he was thrown into Indeed jail. What does that mean? You guys probably know. Who here has been thrown into Indeed jail?
Joel: For a beer, what's Indeed jail? Anyone?
Chad: Anyone? Nobody knows what Indeed jail is?
Joel: Yes.
Chad: He know-
Joel: He knows.
Chad: Come on. Come get it. Come get it, because we talked about it.
Joel: Tell us what Indeed jail is.
Chad: Indeed jail.
Joel: He's not going to say.
Chad: He's not going to say.
Joel: People are so scared of Indeed, like they have a bunch of mobs.
Chad: [crosstalk 00:23:56] afraid of Indeed, they've already kicked you out. I mean why ... why fucking be scared.
Joel: This is for you because you told us.
Chad: Come on up!
Joel: You don't have to say anything. I just want to give a beer away.
Chad: So, anyway in this case, and I've heard many cases especially on the vendor side. Obviously they're not going to take your money anymore.
Joel: Cheers.
Chad: Not going to take your money anymore, because of quality issues, right. Quality issues, which means they think your jobs suck. That was the case with Tim Sackett and his company, but they said you can rectify this. He asked first, hey can I rectify this? Tell me what's wrong, we'll fix it, and then we won't have these quality problems, and they're like no we can't do that. It's almost like it's part of our algorithm-
Joel: It's out of our hands.
Chad: ... yeah, it's out of our hands. We can't do that. That tech says no. Unless, we do what? You pay us. Unless you pay us. Unless you sponsor. But, that's the first step to what? To getting your ass kicked out in the first place, right. So, we're seeing this with companies who are paying and in this case they are-
Joel: Tim's a staffing.
Chad: They're on the staffing side. So, first we saw vendors go. Staffing is definitely on their way out. And, we're also hearing from sources on the corporate side, that if you're not paying enough money, your jobs are going to go dark, which means you're going down.
Joel: Yeah. So, even if you're paying, and you're okay, they want you to pay more by telling you it's the black email, right. They get an email, your jobs have gone black, or dark.
Chad: Yeah. Gone dark.
Joel: So, you pay more, and they'll come back to light. Indeed is doing some really crazy shit.
Chad: Bring it, what do you want [crosstalk 00:25:46]. I'm just amazed. John's like how the hell-
Joel: True or false. Black emails.
Crowd: Not sure.
Joel: Shutting off paying customers in the staffing industry.
Crowd: Oh yeah.
Joel: Shutting off job boards who are paying for placement. Absolutely. Thank you for confirmation. You want a beer?
Crowd: Yeah.
Joel: Alright.
Chad: Yes. And that's legit right there. Good man. So, again, there's opportunity to be had.
Joel: Thank you [crosstalk 00:26:19].
Crowd: Cheers.
Joel: You are a brave man. Did you notice what he just did?
Chad: I love it.
Joel: Okay. Alright.
Chad: I love it. So, anyway. There's dollars to be had out there, is what we're trying to say. There are engineers. There are sales people. And, there are dollars to be had out there, because there are plenty of pissed off people who have money. People who are spending 75 grand a month, 25 grand a month ... it doesn't matter I mean there's ... Yeah, I know. Exactly. I almost choked. $75,000 a month. Sorry.
Joel: Did someone really tell you 75?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: A month? A month.
Chad: A month. Sorry.
Joel: Wow, okay.
Chad: Last night when we had beers on the roof, I got some really good intel. When you have beer, you get good intel. So, yeah, those are some of the things that we're seeing from Indeed. So, that's an interesting shift, because they just are saying they don't want your money, and they're obviously not playing well with Google, which means their jobs are not in Google, and they're spending a shit ton of money on advertising. We saw them on the Final Four. From my standpoint, where is this sustainable. That's a lot, and most of that traffic came from where? Where's Alex at? Where'd that traffic come from, that Indeed traffic? It was a brand of traffic from Google, right?
Alex: Branded terms.
Chad: Branded terms.
Joel: Branded terms.
Chad: People were going to Google-
Joel: To search Indeed.
Chad: ... searching on Indeed jobs. So, what does that mean long term? It means you have to continue to spend that money to get ... because, everybody is going to go to Google in the first place. We talked about ... we do it. It's what we do. It's behavior. So, therefore, if we're going to Google, and it demonstrates with all those branded terms that people are going to Google, you're going to have to continue to pay the cash. How did that work for Monster and the blimp, and the Super Bowl ads, and shit, how'd that work? Anybody remember?
Joel: He must have flown in the blimp. He's having a good time over there.
Chad: Anyway, that's a lot of what we're seeing with Indeed. You want me to talk about that, or you want to go to-
Joel: Also, I think it's changed the referral model. An update on that.
Chad: Alright.
Joel: For whatever reason, the referral model makes perfect sense, at least to me. You have a friend, they need a job, this company is looking for a job-
Chad: Most people.
Joel: ... to fit your skills. Hey if you refer them to use, they get a job after 90 days, we'll give you five grand. To me, that makes perfect sense. That should work. That's an affiliate marketing program that should work. Unfortunately, it does not work in our space. Some of your are old enough to remember H3, Refer.com-
Chad: Jobster.
Joel: Jobster, the original Jobster of the 20 business models they had while Jason Goldberg was there.
Chad: $46 million.
Joel: And, Indeed, two years ago launched Crowded ... or, Indeed Crowd, whatever it was-
Chad: Indeed Crowd.
Joel: ... which was a referral model. They emailed you jobs in your area. If you knew someone, you forwarded the job to the person. If they applied, and got the job, you got anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 I think was the height of their payment, and this past month as of May 17th, I think they're shutting it down totally. So, if Indeed can't figure out how to make a referral model work, I don't know if anyone can. However-
Chad: Who's in the referral business here?
Joel: ... Ladders, anyone from Ladders? Ladders has just launched their referral marketing program with payments of ten grand to paid referrals, so maybe ten grand is the lucky number and they'll make it work, but history is not on their side.
Chad: Yeah. You talked to Hans. He was the CEO of H3, it came down to you can lead a horse to water. I mean, you just can't make them refer their friends to goddamn jobs. Unfortunately, that's the way it works. Nobody has been able to obviously tap that.
Joel: So, if you're thinking of a referral business, don't. Yes?
Crowd: Regarding referrals, I've been in the staffing business for ten years, I can tell you the problem is not money because we paid referring [inaudible 00:30:22] to, right, because you don't want to refer a friend to another bad friend or bad entrepreneur or bad ... you know so there is referral within recruiting, to recruiters, {inaudible}
Chad: Right.
Crowd: But, I think in the self serve job [inaudible 00:30:35] space, you're really looking at who are you referring [inaudible 00:30:41] and what's going to happen. That's why you really can't figure it out.
Chad: So, trust, essentially.
Joel: Was that a question or just a comment?
Crowd: It's a comment slash question. I'm getting back to that. How do we raise the trust on job seeker?
Chad: Good question. Come get your beer.
Joel: I think it's tough like if you have a friend who's single, you know what they look like, you kind of know if they're fun or whatever, and you know they're a single person ... like there's a level of trust that you say, you'll get along with them. In jobs, oh I know if you're an accountant, but I don't know if you're a good accountant.
Chad: A date could last one night though. That's the short term job is something different. Not to mention, a lot of these platforms expect non-recruiters to get in the system, and actually work the system. And, we've got other shit to do. That's just not going to happen. [crosstalk 00:31:38] let's crowd source this.
Joel: It doesn't scale very well either. You got to wait 90 days. I mean the tracking of a human being has to be involved with sort of the quality of the candidate, and I mean it's just a bad ... It obviously doesn't work. I don't know why exactly. It technically should but it doesn't, and my guess is that Ladders will close up their thing in a year or two, and someone else will try it.
Chad: How many pivots has The Ladders been through? They're still doing a ton of content. They're adding this.
Joel: They're doing the TMZ thing. So, if you to The Ladders on their new section, they literally have a journal ... they have a team of journalists that write articles that are sort of
TMZ-ish, but they're for the recruitment space or for job posting.
Chad: Which you like.
Joel: Well, it's content. I mean, look, for many years you guys had job postings which served as content, which served as traffic from Google, right.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Google would index this stuff, people could find it, and there's traffic. So, Google for jobs launches and that goes away, right, so you have to find a way to get content that people will continue to go to your site and hopefully click on jobs, and apply to jobs. So The Ladder strategy was simply, let's hire actual journalists to write stories about jobs and careers, and what knot. And, they TMZ it a little bit so people share it, it gets viral, hopefully get it from that. I think it works. I think it's super expensive to have a team of journalists writing good copy, original copy, but for The Ladders that is their strategy currently.
Chad: Does anybody have content ... I mean just driving your own content ... other than jobs? No. No. Bueller. Bueller.
Crowd: Yeah, we had podcasts and other content.
Joel: Podcasts are great content.
Chad: Amazing. Especially if you do transcripts. That's very smart.
Joel: Yes.
Crowd: Yes, we have a podcast. We do transcripts. We do six events a year, and we have website articles about job hunting [inaudible 00:33:35].
Joel: And, are those good traffic drivers from Google?
Crowd: They are. They are big, big factors in growing our audience. And, the podcast ... you and I were talking about this last night, and the unexpected benefit where original job for it ... it created a national audience for us. 85% of the downloads from the podcast come from out of state-
Joel: So, you've been around a while. Is it fair to say that the traffic that job postings used to create has sort of faded, and you've been replacing that with stuff like content, original content?
Crowd: The content supplements the job posting. Job seekers ... they're drawn by the ... well, the newsletter of job postings that drives them to the site, and the jobs themselves.
Joel: How important is email to the business?
Crowd: Really important.
Joel: Do you send out-
Crowd: It's our second source of traffic after organic. We collect referrals. We've got a weekly newsletter.
Joel: Yeah. Email for a lot of job sites has taken the place of [crosstalk 00:34:27] it's like how many emails can we send out and generate buying lists, et cetera.
Chad: Workopolis.
Joel: Workopolis? Any Canadians in the room?
Chad: I don't think Thunder Bay counts.
Joel: So, you know Workopolis.
Chad: I don't think Thunder Bay counts. [crosstalk 00:34:49]. Just so everybody knows, beer is provided by JobAdX.
Joel: And, the Peeps too.
Chad: And, the Peeps.
Joel: Don't forget the Peeps.
Chad: And the Peeps.
Joel: So, Indeed acquired Workopolis recently. Workopolis is a pretty well known Canadian job site. Is that fair to say, well known. It was sort of a mystery to me as to why they did it. Some information has come to light is as to why, it seems to be a little bit of a competitive thing. The word is that there was at least one other Indeed competitor vying for Workopolis [crosstalk 00:35:27] that Indeed did not want. Well, we don't exactly know.
Chad: We don't know.
Joel: Sources tell us Zip Recruiter was probably in the bidding. It makes a lot of sense for Indeed not to want Zip Recruiter-
Chad: Look at him smiling. He is smiling his ass off. He's like yeah. You're right. You know it. No comment. You didn't have to comment. I saw that smile from way over here.
Joel: Sources say that ... and, it does make a lot of sense.
Chad: Come get a beer, Matt.
Joel: Or, a Peep.
Chad: Or, a Peep.
Joel: So, yeah. The sad story about this is there were about 50 Workopolis employees apparently that went into work. They kind of knew something was up, but they were given their walking papers that same day. Apparently there was actually a lot of employees to get their packet of bye-bye information. They were given some bit of a severance. I think it was three weeks for every year-
Chad: From what we hear it was definitely fair. It's just how it was done was just ... it was very interesting. It was an all hands meeting. Alright, everybody come in. We've got a new owner right. We've got a new master, so everybody's coming in kind of unsure, on pins and needles-
Joel: This is Linda from Indeed.
Chad: Yeah. From my understanding, Indeed didn't even show up. It was just done-
Joel: Oh, nice.
Chad: It was done right there-
Joel: Not even a video conference.
Chad: Nope. Nope. Well, why? I mean, you just bought somebody, hey you go fire your people. [crosstalk 00:36:49]. They didn't send an automated message. That's exactly right.
Joel: What's better no message, or an automated message? Okay.
Chad: Yeah. Exactly. They're never really good, but still. Anyway it was pretty much on your way out of the door, we're going to be collecting your laptops, your badges, your whatever the Hell. It was right then, and I can't imagine the shell shock that some of those employees still have.
Chad: So, if you're in the Canadian market, obviously there are some very good people that used to work for Workopolis.
Joel: My own speculation is Google for jobs is not in Canada yet, and this was also partly a way to build the motor around Canada as well as they could by not letting Zip or whoever else into the market place.
Chad: Yeah, I think it was more of a defensive measure on Zip. I don't see them fending off [crosstalk 00:37:44].
Joel: And Indeed or Google. There might have been a little bit of that. Google's going to get into Canada.
Chad: Oh, yeah. They're going to be launching in Canada probably ... from what we hear ... in the next couple of weeks. So, Google for jobs in Canada supposed to launch in the next couple of weeks.
Joel: Will they have a two pane job search?
Chad: Oh, Jesus. Where's are Indeed guy?
Joel: He left. He's out.
Chad: What the hell is up with that two pane job search bull shit? So, Monster is doing the same thing. I think we did ... maybe the clarification will come through. We believe, or at least we thought at first, that they were actually doing payments ... for all their PPC stuff ... it was going to happen on the apply click, which makes sense, because again you're sending the job seeker there, so you have an opportunity to actually acquire that job seeker, because it left the site-
Joel: Everyone understand two pane search? Yeah, kind of, sort of.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Basically instead of like ... Indeed used to click a link and then you go to the job site of that job and then you probably stay there, you might go back to Indeed. Two pane is you stay on Indeed, they open up a separate window on Indeed and you just click through and see the jobs on the second pane-
Chad: Which is very cool from a user standpoint, because you can really flip through jobs. I mean, you can pop, pop, pop, pop. I mean really get through it really quick-
Joel: And, it's great for a pay per click business, because you can knock out those clicks real fast.
Chad: So, Indeed, we know ... there's the pay per click is happening, and they're getting a shit ton more clicks and go figure ... what we hear is revenue is up ... I mean yeah, because it's much easier, which is not a bad thing on the candidate side, but for the employer who is trying to acquire candidates ... and, maybe that person is not perfect for that job. That's well and good. It should be my option, as an employer, to be able to pull that person in, and prospectively push them to another job, or at least invite them to apply to another job. That's my candidate. I'm paying money. Give me my goddamn candidate. That's not happening on Indeed. We're not sure just yet, we're looking for verification from the people over at Monster. And, Monster ... I mean, to be quite frank ... they've been very transparent about what they're doing. Sometimes, you know, it's not easy trying to get information out of people.
Joel: It is a whole new Monster. We give them credit for that.
Chad: Yeah. It is a whole new Monster. It's definitely a whole new Monster.
Joel: Questions? Two more minutes? Anybody want a beer?
Chad: Got two more beers.
Joel: Got four beers left.
Chad: Ask a question. Come on.
Joel: And, a bunch of Peeps for questions-
Chad: [crosstalk 00:40:16] I want a beer, I'm just not going to ask a question.
Joel: ... comments.
Chad: I'm going to go up in front of this crowd. This is bullshit. Okay.
Joel: Question about AI automation, chat bots, so any major player.
Chad: One of the funny things actually said earlier today-
Joel: Start ups we like. Anything.
Chad: ... was John, when John said, "What's the scariest page on the internet?" And, he popped up Google for jobs right.
Joel: That's actually Chad's LinkedIn profile.
Chad: Google for jobs. Wait a minute, my wife is on there. That's not cool.
Joel: She's on your LinkedIn profile?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: That's weak.
Chad: I mean she's better looking than I am.
Joel: That's weak.
Chad: What's that?
Joel: Brass rings- [crosstalk 00:41:02] is the scariest page on the internet.
Chad: Oh, is the scariest thing. That's a good call.
Joel: Any questions, comments.
Chad: Any intel?
Joel: This is Vegas, folks. Nothing.
Peter: Okay, you guys had your chance. Let's have a round of applause for Chad &
Cheese.
Chad: Okay, okay. Before we go. Remember, when I asked you about the whole reflex and check your text messages thing?
Joel: Yeah, you know all about reflexes. And, then I brilliantly tied it to text messages 97% open rate, then I elegantly tied it to a better experience for your candidates. Don't laugh, Chad, I can be elegant.
Chad: Whatever, man. I know it's redundant. You already heard about text to hire, but you're still not using text to hire from Nexxt.
Joel: What?!
Chad: I know, man.
Joel: Come on, man.
Chad: Since advertising takes repetition to soak in, I just thought I'd remind you again, this was all by elegant design. It's all about text to hire, and it's all about Nexxt.
Joel: And, elegant design. So, go to chadcheese.com, click on the Nexxt logo, and get 25 ... yeah, I said 25% off your first text to hire campaign.
Chad: Whoo!
Joel: Engage better. Use text to hire from Nexxt. Two X's.
Chad: Boo-yah!
Chad: Thanks to our partners at TA tech. The Association for Talent Acquisition solutions. Remember to visit tatech.org.
Chad: This has been The Chad & Cheese Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss a single show. And, be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more visit chadcheese.com. Oh, yeah, you're welcome.