Google is Killin' It -- Indeed = Baby Bathrobes?
Searching is so hard. I man seriously you have to type words to search, push ENTER, and then search again. Nobody has time for that, which must be the reason why Facebook and Google are making life more tolerable for recruiters by just serving up perfect candidates without all that searching stuff.
The boys discuss.
- Google Job Search API, NEW Candidate Search API and New product names?
- LinkedIn adds voicemail to messenger
- Uber drops autonomous trucking
- McDonald's reinforces their drive to the kiosk
- Upwork is down wit IPO - Yean you know me...
AND YES -- Indeed baby bathrobes..
WTF? I know right, that's why you gotta listen ... and show our sponsors - America's Job Exchange, Sovren and JobAdX - some big love!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad & Cheese Podcast.
Joel: Yeah, and we're back bitches.
Chad: Ha, ha.
Joel: You're listening to the Chad & Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous. I am Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I am Chad Sowash.
Joel: On this week's show, Google and Facebook are playing the matching game. We're leaving a voicemail for LinkedIn, and baby bathrobes are coming to a trade show near you. Dogs and cats living together everybody. We'll be right back.
Sovren: Sovren AI matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks about each individual transaction. It will find, rank and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches, it tells you how and why it produced them, and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you, so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI matching, visit Sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com.
Joel: We're back.
Chad: We are back, so how was Nashville man? I love Nashville, it's such a great town.
Joel: It's great, but I'm not sure I get the whole appeal of it.
Chad: Really?
Joel: It's sort of like boots, and rednecks, and fried food. Now, fried food is probably my favorite part of the town.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: I mean it's a small, little, intimate city. It's not like a Chicago or a New York, so it's really manageable. People there are friendly for sure. It's sort of a community of folks. It's a growing tech scene I believe. Obviously the music scene is cool there.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: It's all good, but I don't want to move there any time soon. It's a nice place to visit I guess. It was great. Jobg8 was last week. I went down for a couple days. Job boards talked about how they're dying, I mean how they're not dying. A lot of folks who want to partner with Job Board. I mean, there are probably more not job boards at the job board conference than there were job boards, which is sort of a testament to the business. It's always great to see old friends, meet new folks. There are people that are startups and trying to get into the business. It's all good. I enjoy getting out and networking, as I know you do as well.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: You weren't able to join me, so I wasn't held back by the albatross that is Chad Sowash. I was able to blaze my own trail, which is always nice.
Chad: You were taking naps in the corner, is what you're saying. That's what I'm hearing.
Joel: I just put my AirPods in and don't talk to anybody basically. It's a good time.
Chad: When you say that about the job boards dying, or not dying, or what have you, I always think of the Monty Python skit, where it's the black plague and they're like pulling dead bodies out and they're throwing on the cart and they're saying, “Bring out your dead.” The one guy's like, “I'm not dead yet.” It's like the job board industry, “I'm not dead yet."
Joel: Yeah, or if we're keeping with Monty Python, the knight who gets in a fight and his opponent cuts off his legs and his arms, and he's like, “It's but a flesh wound.”
Chad: “Merely a flesh wound.”
Joel: “Merely a flesh wound.” Yeah. They're not dying according to the show. Their stock is rising. They're a strong buy at this point. It's fun. Yes, everyone will always have a help wanted sign in the window, but is it something you want to like get on board with?
Chad: Yeah. It's all about evolving away from being a job board, that's what it is. You've got a shit ton of data. If you're not looking to do something with it, with some of these new technologies, yeah, you're going to be that guy who gets thrown in the plague cart.
Joel: Yeah. Right now it's all about technology, AI, chat bots. It's everyone at the show was trying to partner with, integrate with all the job boards that were there.
Chad: Right. I know. Totally dig that.
Joel: For people who love us during the week, they didn't get their weekly show, so we have a lot to cover today.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Lot of good stuff. Yeah, let's get to shout outs. What you got?
Chad: First off, Kyle Hager over at Hireology, who we haven't heard from in a while. Apparently work sometimes gets in the way of listening to the podcast, which I want to personally go on the record and say, that is horrible and wrong people. Do not allow work to get in the way of the great things in life, like the Chad & Cheese Podcast, and family, and happiness, but mainly the podcast.
Chad: It was really cool, because Kyle has this new hire starting, and she was starting like a week later or something like that, and she says, “Hey, is there anything that I can do to get ready for the job in the meantime?” He said, “Yeah, you need to listen to the Chad & Cheese Podcast.” Big ups Kyle, big ups.
Joel: Thanks Kyle. Mason Wong, long time listener of the show, long time fan of stuff that we've done over the years. He loves THE SHRED. If you haven't listened to THE SHRED, you've got to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, et cetera. It's a snippet of news that's hot during the week, which we usually cover later in the week, with more opinion. If you love sort of your quick bites of news, THE SHRED is great, and Mason loves it.
Joel: I'll also add that his tweet was liked by Jobvite CEO Dan Finnigan, so I guess I could probably say that Finnigan is a fan of THE SHRED, so big ups and shout outs to them.
Chad: This is Mason's tweet, “Thoroughly enjoying THE SHRED. Nano episodes of #ChadCheese. Timely, bite seized tight news focused for subscribers.” That last part is key people. If you're not subscribing on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, you might be missing THE SHRED. It's breaking news. It's happening at that time, so you need to subscribe.
Joel: Dude, Mason should be our hype man.
Chad: He is our hype man.
Joel: Really that's some really good copy there Mason.
Chad: That's good shit Mason. We've got Dinah Ribarski at TMP. Quick story. Yesterday I call Grasso because I need some Grasso time, and everybody needs some Chris Grasso time, right? Over at TMP. Anyway, Chris introduces me to Dinah, who I find out is a huge Chad and Cheese fan, and apparently she's the reason half of TMP listens to Chad & Cheese.
Joel: Wow.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: TMP is no little mom-and-pop shop on the corner.
Chad: No, but Gross, you've got to step up your game brother. We love you to death, you're the man. Get the rest of TMP to be listening to Chad & Cheese, and subscribe so that they can get THE SHRED as well.
Joel: Yeah, no doubt. Let's educate the world on recruiting news and opinion. I got a shout out to Melissa Patterson of Roan Resources in Oklahoma City. Melissa is an HR professional, so yes, many of them listen. They're not as vocal. They're sort of the silent majority, but we do have a high degree of HR folks listening to the podcast. She's a huge fan. Says everyone in her office makes fun of her because she's such a geek on Chad Cheese. Melissa, we appreciate you and thanks for listening.
Chad: Love some Melissa. Andrew Harris over at ULoop loves the show and wants to hear more about recruiting industry future state. Luckily Andrew today we're going to be talking about Google Talent Solution and Google recruitment tech future state. Today is your day my friend.
Joel: Nice. I'm going to give a shout out to Lindsay Lohan. Yes, that Lindsay Lohan, who does not listen to the show ever, but apparently there was a new story recently that Lindsay Lohan will fire her staff for wearing shoes that do not match. Lindsay is apparently a savage boss. The fact that she's in any sort of employment news is entertaining to me. Lindsay, you're not listening, but if you are, thanks for listening.
Chad: Oh my god, so last one from me. Nancy from Philly loved the interview with Skill Scout CEO Elena Valentine. A couple of points that I loved was we talked about how job postings suck. Again, these are no bullshit conversations, and how she thinks storytelling is dope.
Joel: Storytelling is dope. All right, my last and final shout out is going to make you really upset.
Chad: Oh god.
Joel: Typically, vendors will send along swag, particularly sponsors. Like we love the swag that we've gotten from Talroo, JobAdX, Uncommon, Next.
Chad: Uncommon. Yup. Next.
Joel: Good stuff, like my kids are at school right now, their first day of school wearing like Job Board and HR Tech swag. I don't need to go to Old Navy anymore for clothes, so that's great. Anyway, this past week ZipRecruiter from Israel.
Chad: What?
Joel: Sent me a care package, I guess you'd call it. There were the typical t-shirts, but there was Israeli candy, which my wife is a total sweet tooth, so she loved that. There was a bottle of booze in my FedEx package. I get this, and I'm thinking, oh Chad got it too, so as we were talking I was like, "Yeah, did you get your booze from ZipRecruiter?" He goes, "What are you talking about?" Zip in Israel, thanks for the booze, and thanks especially for not letting Chad get in on it and get booze as well.
Chad: What a bunch of assholes. How do they not know that I love booze just as much, if not more, than you do? I mean the t-shirts I definitely would love the t-shirts, but the booze. I mean seriously guys? Israel ZipRecruiter, you guys are listening all the time, what the fuck?
Joel: To them I say, [applause]. Very good.
Chad: Bullshit.
Joel: Expect many selfies this weekend, because Chad won't be able to, you know. Anyway, all right, let's get to the news.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: What do you say to that?
Chad: We should do that.
Joel: Holy shit, Google's not slowing down.
Chad: No, and they shouldn't. They are dropping bombs dude, and I love it. I love it.
Joel: What did they do last week while I was at Jobg8?
Chad: They opened up Job Search, it's pretty much a job search API buffet right now, which is fricking awesome. Because all these job boards that are out there who we know guys, and you know this too, you know this in your heart of hearts, your job search sucks, right? It's all fricking keyword, and maybe you've got a little algorithm here and there, but it still sucks compared to Google, and they're making it open for everybody, so you can tap into it. It's not for free, but still, you can tap into it and you can get rid of your sad job search shit that you've had for years.
Joel: Yeah. If you're still serving jobs in date order, and you don't know someone misspells nurse with a Z or something that you don't know what that means, then Google does, and can save your search.
Chad: Oh dude. J&J, they're using Jibe and whatnot, but they've seen a 41% increase in candidates for hard to find positions. We're talking about like scientist, oncologist, those types of positions. 41% increase in candidates for those positions. That's number one, right? Companies who are out there, it's pretty important. We know that iCIMS, and there are other applicant tracking systems, I would assume, that are out there that are tapping into this job search API. If your ATS isn't, get their asses to do it ASAP, because this is ridiculous. These are crazy types of positions, 41% increase.
Joel: If you have an Indeed company page, call your Indeed rep and ask if they're implementing the Google Search API.
Joel: Now to me the biggest news, the second biggest news, was they may have actually come up with a name for all this stuff. Which at this point I think is the fourth name, but the name that they've come on as of last week is Cloud Talent Solution.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: How do we feel about that?
Chad: It's fucking horrible. I mean, there's no reason, I mean come on guys. Cloud Jobs Discovery. You've got to get jobs out of there, because you've just opened up a new candidate API, which we'll talk about here in a second. Jobs, yeah, it's fricking horrible.
Chad: I'm going to jump back real quick to talk about this jobs API, and how impactful it is. CareerBuilder, which we've talked about, has seen 40% increase in job views on their talent networks. These little landing pages, types of CRM types of platforms that they create for their clients, huge increase. 41% in actions taken off the search results, because the search results sucked, so nobody was actually clicking through and taking action on them. 15% on email alerts, which is big because obviously that's where a good amount of their traffic's coming from. 18% in qualified applicants in specifically top categories. Trying to get that top talent back in using CareerBuilder.
Chad: Once again, CareerBuilder, who has developed recruitment technology, job search technology, for over a decade said, "Guess what? Screw this. Google does it better, we're going to use their shit, which is now called Cloud Talent Solution."
Joel: Cloud Talent Solution. You know Chad, you and I once ran for president of
Monster.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Maybe we should do a little commercial on brainstorming a new name for Google hire with cloud API jobs talent solution, or whatever they're calling it today.
Chad: Yeah. Well here's the thing though, Google Hire, or I'm sorry, Hire by Google, which again has switched around and changed since the inception, isn't a part of Cloud Talent Solution. This is an entirely different segment. This is their API enterprise segment. Then the ATS, Hire by Google, is entirely different.
Joel: Hey Google, people want to use your shit, but HR people need things sort of clearly spelled out for them.
Chad: Easy.
Joel: Go down to marketing, which I'm sure has a few people at Google.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Figure out a name for all this stuff and stick with it.
Chad: Tie it together. I mean seriously, because Google Hire, I'm sorry, Hire by Google, see this shit's all fucked up. Hire by Google uses these APIs, so it really in a sense is a product of. They should all be together. I mean, they want to split shit up, but man, keep it simple, stupid.
Joel: Chad and I talk about this shit every week, and we're confused. What do you think about the average person out there?
Joel: The most exciting thing, I think we agree, is the matching solution that Google's come out with, yes?
Chad: Yeah. I mean it's, so the matching solution right now is only available in Hire by Google. What they've come out with is this new candidate search API. What's happening, much like Job Search, on the candidate search side what can happen is that your candidate search is going to be much better than what it's been. Your recruiters, who are using your database to actually search your resume database in your applicant tracking system, you'll be able to actually find qualified candidates.
Chad: Because in most cases, applicant tracking job search sucks, that's just the way it is. Yellow, who after only seven weeks of using Google's candidate search, they reported that, to their clients, "Quest Diagnostics is seeing a 58% increase in candidate search quality." Bloomberg is seeing a 73% increase in candidate search quality. This technology is helping to surface great talent that you already have, that you've already paid for.
Joel: Yup. Launching private beta enables recruiters and sources to, “Easily discover top talent in their existing candidate databases."
Chad: Crazy.
Joel: You and I think it's only a matter of time before it helps you source and easily discover top talent in other people's databases.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: And other databases around the internet. Coming to a Google product near you.
Chad: As you start to take a look at these two APIs, so you talk about matching, so now you have a job API and you've got a candidate API. You have those two things, now you can start the conversation around machine learning and matching through this. That was actually a part of the presentation as kind of like future state of where Google's going. They need you to have both of those APIs locked in. Definitely if you're an applicant tracking system, you should be hard on this one. Getting these locked in so that the machines can start doing their learning, and they can start the matching process.
Joel: Sourcers, if you're not sharpening up your resume and CV, you might want to do that. However, don't send it to Mcdonalds, because a story out this week by Mcdonalds, or a study on Mcdonalds, says that they're going to be kiosking in the very near future. You won't have to talk to a human to order your big macs and your fries. Chad's recently been to Europe and says basically everyone's out of work there because everything is koisked when you go to Mcdonalds. Tell us about that Chad.
Chad: Yeah. It was pretty interesting, because here in the Midwest I actually jumped into a Mcdonalds, and I noticed the kiosk. I think we talked about this on several other pods. The UI sucks, yada, yada, yada, but they've got like liaison people that are there to kind of shepherd you to these new touch boards where you order on the touch boards, because it's new. Well the family and I, we were in Europe for three weeks this summer. It was funny going through France we stopped, and it was interesting because there were none of these liaisons because guess what? It was standard.
Chad: This is something that they've had in place for a while. Yeah, this is where it's going. MacDonald's, you would have thought possibly would have used the US for this type of test. But apparently, they're doing this in Europe for a while.
Joel: We're way too stupid to be the test market for this. I will add that I think mobile ordering will also be huge in the coming years. I know that at my local McDonald's, which I rarely go to as you know, you can order on your phone, you pull up, they have slots in the parking lot for mobile ordering. You go there and it knows that you're at the McDonald's and it says, "Are you here?" You say, "Yes," and then within five minutes your order comes out nice and hot in a bag and you say, "Good-bye." There's no going into the store, there's no sitting in line at the drive-thru. It's a pretty nice system. Yes, food is quickly and probably will be the first to be automated and get people acclimated to how this stuff works.
Chad: Like shopping at Walmart, dude. Right now, the way that Julie grocery shops is, she goes online, puts all the stuff in her cart, sends it, takes the cart, opens up the trunk, signs something on a pad, they load it up and she comes back. There is some job creation that's happening there because you've got actual personal shoppers doing that work instead of the cashiers who now generally just go through the self-serve. So there is some swapping that's happening there in the job creation, or actually not really job creation, just the migration of where the jobs are within that ecosystem. It's really cool to watch.
Joel: How far is she from wanting at-front-door service for that stuff?
Chad: If she could get that done, it would be done because she hates grocery shopping.
Joel: Because I think that's where eventually a lot of that stuff will go and they'll probably be delivered by a drone created by Jeff Bezos and come from Whole Foods. But I digress.
Joel: However, there's also a story, although we're high on automation and see this thing happening in real time, Uber is in the news. Tell us about that.
Chad: It's weird because there's a ton of opportunity in the trucking environment for autonomous trucking delivery because obviously we don't have enough truck drivers. We talk about it all the time. There's a great opportunity to make a shit ton of cash in autonomous driving. We've seen companies embark in Waymo and all these different companies who were doing this because they see cash is there. But Uber said, "You know what? We're getting out of this and we're shifting all of our resources to the car portion of our autonomous driving." It just doesn't make sense to me from a business standpoint.
Joel: Now, to you, is this a testament to Uber, to self-driving trucks? Like, to me, I think trucking is in such a tight labor market that, to me, that has to happen. Trucking has to become autonomous. Maybe Uber just thinks, "We're not the one to do it, let's focus our resources on the consumer-based car stuff." I think Waymo, although we rarely hear much about it or talk about it, because they're really quiet, I think Waymo is kicking ass on the self-driving consumer cars. I also think, it was in the news recently that Apple has like five thousand people working on autonomous vehicles, which is not insignificant. To me, maybe it was Uber saying, "Look, trucking is great, but we've got these consumer things. We've got Apple, Google breathing down our neck, right here at home. Let's focus resources on that." Or, do you think it is, "We're getting out of autonomous altogether and we're just starting with trucks?"
Chad: No, they won't, they will not get out of autonomous. The thing is, and you think of this in building a business, that you go where the money is first. And you know the money ... and where it's easier to actually get to that money. So, it's the path of least resistance, "There's cash, boom, go get it." And then, what I can do, and that's trucking. Because trucking is much easier, believe it or not, traveling thousands of miles in a truck on highway is much easier than navigating in New York City or Indianapolis or anything like that. The opportunity to arrive at scale will be at the trucking industry when it comes to autonomous. That will be number one because it is easier. That's the hard part for me because if it's easier, you go there, you obviously sell and boom, the next thing you know, you're making cash which funnels back into the harder portion of your business which will be the cars. That's just my thinking and obviously they're incredibly smart people, but they're ejecting out of trucks which is the path of least resistance to cash.
Joel: Yeah, it's much easier to do a deal with Peterbilt or whoever, for trucking and get a bunch of trucks on the road quickly as opposed to doing a deal with GM or creating your own whatever. You and I have both seen these Waymo cars out in California, look like little bubble cars. I agree that the path of least resistance is trucking. And it makes me think we should get someone on a podcast to talk about automation driverless cars and trucks to really better understand what's going on in trucking and automation for cars in general to see where all the players are. Because I don't think I have a good sense of all the players and who's going to strike the right balance for what companies. So maybe it's something we dig into on an exclusive.
Chad: That might be a little fun. That might be fun.
Joel: I agree. Speaking of fun, Facebook is also rumored to be getting into the matching game. We just talked about Google getting into the candidate matching game, we talked a little bit about LinkedIn recently, I think, with their small business solution where you post a job and then LinkedIn magically gives you candidates that they think fit the job. While I was at JobG8 this week, Matt Charney, industry expert, longtime blogger, was the keynote and talked about ... he's under embargo actually, but still revealed it anyway, that Facebook is in the near term, coming soon with a similar matching solution where you post your job on Facebook, Facebook scours its three billion users and provides you with the candidates or users that it thinks match your job the best.
Joel: To me, this is really huge just for the fact that Facebook has the most people, they don't have as much data, for sure, as a LinkedIn does. We don't know much about the algorithm of how it matches. I'm assuming that it's people that are close to you as opposed to far from you, it's maybe education or where they went to school, maybe it's whatever work stuff they have, maybe it's stuff that they like. If they have an engineering degree and they're liking a bunch of engineering stories, maybe that's part of the algorithm. But it's pretty interesting to me that the big three didn't take very long to leverage their power of database technology to start matching folks with job postings that you're putting on there.
Chad: I have to say that Facebook has already proven their matching skills with matching Russians with political candidates. They already have this thing down so why not bring it to the employment space. Seriously, content in itself in a social platform, we have so much time that's spent on social platforms and there's so much behavior that's sucked up into the platform, they have plenty of data to be able to target on. Yeah, this makes a hell of a lot of sense. The question is, where do you think LinkedIn, being a social professional whatever network aligned with Microsoft is at to be able to do the same types of things?
Joel: I think that, in terms of AI, automation matching, relevant searches, related searches, those three companies have a big leg up on anybody else in our space. I think, to me, it's partly the data. We know that LinkedIn is heavy on professional, we're not quite sure that they have the small business environment or the profiles to help small businesses although I think they've got to go after it. They're seeing ZipRecruiter growing, they're seeing Facebook getting into this, Google's going to get into this. Small businesses don't have HR departments, they don't have recruiting teams. So for them to be able to post a job and have magically, "Here's 25 candidates and oh, by the way, do you want to send them an I message, do you want to send them a message on LinkedIn and start prescreening these folks and maybe scheduling interviews?" That's a godsend for small businesses.
Joel: So to me, that totally makes sense. And both of those have the platforms with messaging and with prescreening and automation chatbot type stuff to really make that a reality. And it's happening really fast. All these guys are full speed ahead on the Enterprise Workforce Solutions and it's really exciting. I think the next couple years are going to be really amazing in terms of the things that we're just talking about like prescreening, setting up scheduled interviews, maybe hiring people through these platforms if they fit the bill on high frequency stuff. By the way, quick shout-out, we're doing a webinar with Talroo about high frequency hiring with NAS. Hopefully, part of the topic will be this automation piece and how that fits into high frequency hiring. But, to me, that's all very exciting. I think they'll all be part winners. I think at some point, LinkedIn has to spend some money, ZipRecruiter style and Deeds style, to talk about how they are a small business solution.
Chad: They are right now, on XM radio.
Joel: Oh, are they?
Chad: On XM radio. That's what I was going to say is that now LinkedIn is starting to do the ZipRecruiter thing which is spend a bunch of money on XM radio. And it's specific to SMB as well which is incredible.
Joel: Yeah, ZipRecruiter set the playbook a few years ago, like be everywhere, radio, television-
Chad: Podcasts.
Joel: ... to get in front of these business owners, podcasts. Yeah, I think that's great. I think at some point Facebook has to advertise too, like either find a job on Facebook or hire people on Facebook because once they start advertising, I think it really starts to take off.
Chad: Very nice, very nice.
Joel: By the way, interesting point. Facebook recent quarterly reports, I don't know if you saw this, we didn't talk about it before, but they're kind of sucking right now. It looks like growth is stalled or plateaued in North American and parts of Europe. In looking at that, Facebook has to be saying, "Everyone who can be on Facebook is almost on Facebook, particularly in developed countries. So how do we start twisting that revenue dial higher and higher?" Video, obviously, I think is where they're going to go in part of that. But I think part of it, as we've seen with their messaging, their Slack competitor and what they're doing on the jobsite is, "Let's get into Enterprise Workforce hiring shit and help us recover some of the money that we're losing on advertising due to a lack of growth." Just my two cents.
Joel: Let's take a quick break and hear from our buddies and budettes at America's Job Exchange. When we come back, we'll talk about, whoa, LinkedIn and Indeed, two companies-
Chad: What?
Joel: ... we never talk about. I know, odd.
AJE: America's Job Exchange is celebrating our tenth year as an industry leader in diversity recruitment and OFCCP compliance. We've been helping our thousand plus customers comply with OFCCP regulations that directly support positive and effective diversity recruitment designed to attract and convert veterans, individuals with disabilities, women and minorities. And empower employers to pursue and track active outrage with their local community-based organizations.
AJE: Want to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at: www.americasjobexchange.com.
Chad: Get your compliance on people!
Chad: Okay, so I sent a message over to Avi in Israel before we got on the podcast. I said, "Come on, man, what's going on?" This is what he sent. Just so you guys know, whenever Chad gets something-
Joel: Tell people who Avi is.
Chad: I will, give me a second. Whenever Chad gets something, I always make sure that I take some to Joel whether it's a Talroo or it's a ZipRecruiter. That's doesn't matter. So this is Avi, who's pretty much in charge of all the cool ass tech that ZipRecruiters has over in Israel, says, "Was supposed to get to both of you. Ask Cheese to save you some of the alcohol," since he sent two bottles.
Joel: There's one bottle. No.
Chad: Aha.
Joel: That's crap.
Chad: Just so everybody knows, if you send schwag and you just want to send one box, send it to me because I'll make sure that Joel gets some. You can't send it to Joel because he fricking bogart's the entire thing.
Joel: I got one bottle. That's total bullshit. Total bullshit.
Chad: I don't know man.
Joel: Yeah, that's crap. And you're more than welcome to partake if you come and visit me at some point this summer. Yes, you may have some. But for Avi to say that there were two bottles in that box is bullshit. Throw me under the bus.
Joel: Anyway, while Facebook is having shitty revenues, you have some news that says LinkedIn isn't suffering from the same problem.
Chad: Yeah, dude. Up 37%, what's that say? That's no small doing. They're already pulling a shit ton of revenue as it is, but up 37%. This is what Microsoft obviously wanted to see. This is one of the reasons why they spent 26.2 billion dollars for LinkedIn. And this is just a start, I believe, because as we just talked about the small business side of the house and they start to go after a market they have never touched before, really, they really haven't penetrated. They get into that market and then they start doing bigger, better Enterprise solutions, this is a great opportunity for Microsoft and LinkedIn. And hopefully, not screwing the talent acquisition market with high crazy prices.
Joel: You accuse me all the time of slurping on LinkedIn and drinking the Kool-Aid and maybe you're finally understanding where I'm coming from. When they start turning the dials on the Enterprise stuff, the integration with Microsoft product and services, they start rocking the AI, they start Insights, becomes big thing, their video product is becoming popular, I think they have yet to turn the dial on advertising in any significant way. I think people forget the fact that they're a social network that's actually in China. LinkedIn is poised to be a juggernaut even more than it is. I've been talking about it for years and maybe you're finally coming to the light that I've been seeing for a long time.
Chad: No, I was just giving you shit because you got a LinkedIn tattoo. That's the only reason.
Joel: I have a LinkedIn tramp stamp, I don't even know what the hell ... yeah, anyway, back to the '90s.
Joel: They've got to be careful not to get comfortable. They've got to be careful not to become douchebags like so many companies have in our space, but they are, yeah, they're going to be a major big three player in employment. But they also, in addition to revenues, they continually add new features and they're adding new products. They added voice mails this past week, I believe, and it's getting mixed reviews. Essentially what happens is, it's a native application. When you send someone a message, as opposed to texting out your message in an email or whatever, you can leave a voice mail.
Joel: You first heard about this and gave me a big ... however, I kind of like it. Hung Lee, recruiting Brainfood guy, who loves and watches the show ... shout-out to him. I don't know if we give him enough shout-out love, but shout-out to him. He's a big fan of this. Are you still bearish on it? Are you coming around? Is it just going to be something no one cares about?
Chad: I would say that no one is going to care about this, much like the Facebook voice recording messaging, whatever the hell you want to call it, that they have on Messenger. I don't know anybody ... nobody sends me voice messages on Facebook, not to mention, you've got to remember, this is a professional network. Now, guess what. Not only do I get these messages from sales people who are trying to pitch me via the text version, I'm going to get these fricking long voice mail bullshit ... Dude, I don't want that.
Joel: All right. So time out. All right. And I agree, sales people will eventually fuck this up and marketers will fuck this up. But right now, if I want to get to an HR person to sell a product, I have to call them over and over, leave multiple voice mails. When they listen to the voice mail, they don't know who I am, they probably don't know who the company is, they just probably erase voice mails altogether. So this is at least a unique way that I can get a voice mail, I can hear what they have to say, I can see the person on LinkedIn, I can go to their profile to see who they work for, I can go look at the company. I can dig a little deeper than I can just picking up the phone and hearing a voice mail that says, "Hey, this is Bobby Joe with such-and-such company. You've never heard of us before or heard of me, but buy our product and call me back."
Joel: At least this is a way to cut through the clutter of a regular voice mail and give some sort of information about who I am and who I work for that didn't exist before. Hung Lee's thing is, he thinks voice mail, traditional voice mail, is going to die and that this is the way that we will leave messages for people in a b2b type environment. Only time will tell.
Chad: If I don't listen to voicemails on my phone, this is still on my phone, okay? It's in an app on my phone, it's the same damn thing that I don't want right now. And you're just putting it in a messenger that I use and I like. So no, I don't-
Joel: A lot of people won't even answer the phone if they don't know ... like they'll just deny the call, send a text like, "Hey, can't talk right now," or, "I don't know who you are, leave alone." This could be a way to get LinkedIn push notification, like you have a voicemail or a message to communicate with people and get through to them where you didn't before.
Joel: Now, again, this will work for about a year and then people will be like, "I hate these things. I get 10 LinkedIn voicemails a day." And LinkedIn will eventually allow you to turn it off. And people will turn off and then will go to something else. But for at least a year, I think, marketers have an opportunity to do this and cut through the clutter and actually get to people that they didn't get to before.
Chad: Yeah. I think it sucks.
Joel: Well, what doesn't suck, depending on your perception or perspective-
Chad: What the fuck?
Joel: Are baby bathrobes. Yes, I said baby bathrobes. I'm scrolling through Instagram recently and I follow Indeed, they're a fun company, right? They got t-shirts, they're in different parts of the world, they're always doing stuff. Well, anyway, I saw one pic the other day that made me do a double take. It was a baby in an Indeed bathrobe. And not an adult bathrobe, a baby bathrobe, like it fit a baby. So, I'm thinking to myself, if this isn't a jump the shark moment, I don't know what it. If your company is so comfortable that they're spending money to put babe sin bathrobes, it might be time to reconsider your marketing project.
Chad: Yeah, and what they should be sending out are prison jumpsuits to all these companies that they're throwing in Indeed jail. That's what they should be doing.
Joel: Oh, that's awesome. I'm thinking like action figures, like, "Congratulations, welcome to Indeed jail."
Chad: Right, no shit. Right?
Joel: They could have a little shank, they could have-
Chad: I mean, that's more real to life. Really, Indeed is not this warm, fuzzy, terry cloth kind of feel. They are a prison jumpsuit kind of company.
Joel: They are barbed wire, sand paper pair of underwear people.
Chad: Except, I think, for the Canadians. You think the Indie Canadian group, I think they're a lot softer.
Joel: I don't know if Workopolis folks would say the same thing.
Joel: Tim Sackett is wearing sand paper underwear.
Chad: Tim Sackett has an Indeed jumpsuit on right now.
Joel: Okay, so also, Indeed launched four new ads this week. The sunny ads. If you haven't heard that episode, go listen. But they maybe listen to us 'cause we like the new ads a little more. Thoughts?
Chad: Yeah, no. The new ads are much better. They are 30 second ads, 15 second ads, they're tighter. I think they're smarter. They are very much more akin to what Monster is doing right now. So I think they're almost taking in some of the mOnster recipe on what Monster's doing well. Which is not that stupid purple monster thing, it's the little 15 second ads, are you half in, half out kind of thing.
Chad: So I think they're being smart about it and they've gotten away from the ... I love that song Sunny, but now they screwed it up for me.
Joel: Yeah, I agree with the short sort of, the snippet of ads, the 15 second, great for social media, great for YouTube viewers, et cetera. Now, Monster takes a much more comedic approach to their ads, which historically, has been really popular.
Joel: These Indeed ads look like they're ready for the red carpet at the Oscar's. They are high level HD, pretty people are in them, the visuals are great. The long one where the guy's on the elevator, looks like he's quitting his job, and he's starting anew job, that looks like a Scorsese piece. Si agree the shorter time set is very Monster-like and very common. But these guys really very touchy feely, they're not like Zip Recruiter where, "Oh, post your job, candidates come, they fill positions." They're very warm and feely, touchy, Oscar, Emmy nominated, wanna-be type ads that we like. I don't know if they'll do the trick and save them from the big G. But for the time being.
Chad: Yeah, the big question is, what are they gonna do with all the stuff that's going on with Google? The new candidate API and whatnot. Are they gonna finally join in somehow with Google to try and win back some of that traffic that they lost? You think they are just way too far down the path?
Joel: What they will do is they will put their ads on Glass Door, which they bought a while back. .and Glass Door will still be playing nicely with Google, and that's the way that they will Trojan Horse Google by leveraging Glass Door. Although, I am looking closely to see if Glass Door disappears from Google search results, because that would be a clear message that's says, "We're totally pulling everything off of Google and we're totally on our own." But until that case, we'll see what happens.
Chad: We'll see. We'll see.
Joel: Let's take a quick break. We're running long as we knew we would because we have a lot of stuff to cover. But let's hear a quick word from our buddies at JobAdX, who by the way, were at Nashville at Job Gate. It was great to see them.
Chad: Love them.
Joel: Let's see what they're up too. Be right back.
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JobAdX: JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter pragmatic for your needs. Oh, and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK too.
Chad: I think it's brilliant that they say, "and you've been wondering about the British accent." It's like no, I really wasn't but oh, now you're in the UK! That's pretty awesome.
Joel: Yeah, I'm waiting for the German accent and the French accent. Canadian accents, but yeah. Met with those folks out in Nashville, and according to them, a majority of their inbound leads come from the Chad and Cheese podcast. So the sponsorships working which is great for everybody.
Chad: Kick ass, baby. Kick ass.
Joel: Cashing checks and snapping necks. Well-
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Upwork, which we rarely talk about, if at all, and we probably should, has apparently filed for an IPO, quietly. Upwork is born out of E-Lance and freelancer or something like that. One of the sites I actually use regularly, whether it's with Ratedly, or other projects. Like it's great, it's a market place. So you can hire everything from developers to marketers to sales people to designers, they're reviewed of course. You're reviewed on their end, payment is processed through Upwork. If you look at the gig economy and where things are going, people working on contract, people working on project basis, Upwork to me is the major player in all of that. And if I were looking at a company ... you know, if you told me would I rather invest in Upwork or Glass Door going public, I think I'd pick Upwork all day because that's where the growth ... and they're more or less a monopoly in this space.
Joel: You have someone like Fiber and a few others that are niche with certain skill sets, but Upwork to me, I'm really interested to see them go public because I think they are a sleeping giant with a growing gig economy around the world.
Chad: That bears no question. And I mean, they're growth, I think they're like in over 150 countries and they have over a billion in revenues. Dude, they are, I believe, a success story. And a model for how we should be looking at really this new market. It's how people are going to be getting jobs, kind of Uber-ish. But I think it's incredibly cool, it's easy to use on both sides. Whether you are trying to find talent or you are talent, in payment or receiving payment. And that's what it all comes down too, it's all about the ease of use. And being able to find who you want quickly and make sure that they get paid and you get your work done.
Joel: Yeah, and I think they're just starting to scratch the surface of the enterprise opportunity. Because I see more and more bigger companies have managers who don't manage internal work forces, and they manage Upwork contractors and Upwork freelancers and their goal is they're on Upwork and they're managing their team, via Upwork as opposed to their own slack, their internal system, or email, or whatever trail that they're using.
Joel: So to me, a great skill set to have is being able to manage an Upwork work force. Because I think that's where, both by necessity and by just by costs, because you don't have to pay health insurance for these folks, they work all the time, around the clock, around the world. It's a great business, so I'm really excited actually to see how Upwork does. What kind of numbers they report, what kind of growth they're seeing because I think that'll be a really great news story.
Chad: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, and we should talk more about Upwork because they're doing a damn good job.
Joel: Yup. And we'll really know how good once they go public, 'cause they'll have to record that shit.
Chad: Which is probably why Snag, old Fabioian, he was the CEO over at Upwork, wasn't he?
Joel: He was. I think he was the founder of E-Lance, or one of those companies. And when they merged together or whatever and became Upwork, he was the CEO. And then eventually, moved over on the board of Snag. So yeah, I expect to see good things from Snag under his leadership.
Chad: Yeah, no kidding, no kidding. Having a guy of that caliber stepping into a leadership position is nothing but good for a brand and a company like Snag. Because again, there is so much opportunity that's there, he has the background at Upwork. This just makes a hell of a lot of sense and is incredibly smart for Snag.
Joel: Yeah, I think we both agree that Snag's new model of sort of Uber for hourly workers is a great one. It looks like Peter, the former CEO wasn't the guy to do it. His Glass Door rating, his CEO rating was 41%, which is not good.
Chad: Sucked.
Joel: So apparently, internally there were some issues. He wasn't getting it done, but I think we both like the idea, we like the brand. So hopefully they can make that work because they're getting a lot of competition from Parrot and others.
Joel: Canvas, I guess we can talk about whoever closed this bad boy up. But our buddies at Canvas, here in Indianapolis, unveiled a new, what I would call millennial inspired, unfortunately millennials ar inspiring everything but they're adding Bitmojis to their messaging platform.
Joel: I don't use Bitmojis, do you?
Chad: I don't use Bitmojis, I use GIFS.
Joel: Yeah, you and I have entire conversations with GIFS.
Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chad: So I mean, I could see ... and it makes a hell of a lot of sense because the millennial work force, I think now, bigger than the boomer work fore, which obviously is falling off the implement cliff at this point because they're retiring and they're doing what they do, good for them. So yeah, they're gonna be the targets. How do you they actually communicate? Is it through Bitmojis, to me doesn't make sense, but again, I'm not a millennial. So, I don't know man.
Joel: Yeah, I think it just promotes personality, a face, some emotion to the conversation, some humor maybe. So those for who don't know, we have a lot of old people like us listening, so Bitmojis are basically animated caricatures of yourself that you create.
Chad: Avatars.
Joel: From messaging, avatars I guess. And these Bitmojis are animations that look like you. We'll have certain situations where like maybe they're at a water cooler saying, "Great job." Or they're at a fax machine, I guess they don't use that anymore, whatever it is. Whatever business people do, they're in a cubicle, maybe they're in an office setting somewhere, doing something fun, that's a Bitmoji. Like to me, that is pointless. And I will admit that my father, whose much older than a millennial, my sister turned history on to these and he loves them. So maybe it's just boomers and millennials alike are using this.
Joel: I do think it shows some personality to Canvas as well. So if I were choosing between Canvas and a competitor, if Canvas has this fun little animated thing, like I would think, "Okay, that's kind of cool. It's a differentiator. Maybe it would sway me to use Canvas over a competitor."
Chad: And Canvas has had two big announcements lately. The Jobvite integration with Jobvite and then this one. And again, if you're looking for organizations, and this isn't a Canvas commercial for goodness sakes, but if you're an organization and you're trying to get out there and have good PR and obviously have a story to tell, these are the types of things that you want, man. You want that big name integration and you want little kind of silly things like just to talk about. That perspectively, really impacts a huge portion of the work force.
Joel: Yeah, and I think the whole messaging thing is just getting started. I mean, TextRecruit laid the groundwork and continues to innovate. Canvas, Emissary we've talked about, Talk Push is one that I think we'll be talking about going to the future. Of course, Facebook with their messaging. Does Slat get into messaging candidates at some point? It's a big deal.
Joel: So we'll stay on top of it, but until then, I have nothing to add. We're close to an hour on podcast. So I'm ready to say, "we out," if you are.
Chad: We out.
Stella: Hi, this is Stella Cheesman. Thanks for listening to the Cheese and Chad podcast, or at least that's what I call it. Anyway, make sure you subscribe on iTunes, that silly Android phone thingy, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And be sure to give buckets of money to our sponsors. Otherwise, I may be forced to take that coal mining job I saw on Monsters.com.
Stella: We out.
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