Hello boys and ghouls, it's the Halloween edition of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, which means the boys are counting down everything in recruitment that scared the hell out of them. Hint: The bots are coming!
Plus,
- and Uber is staffing it.
Some call an exorcist, because heads will spin! And visit our sponsors, nuthin' but treats, baby: Sovren, Canvas and JobAdX.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel: Be afraid, be very afraid. It's the Halloween edition of the Chad and Cheese Show, HR's scariest muthafuckers to rock a mic ever. I'm Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash.
Joel: On this week's show, Indeed is making more euros than you are. The LinkedIn gravy train is coming to an end, and we recap the scariest shit from last year's show in recruitment. It's mostly treats, but there might be a few tricks for your eardrums. Stay tuned. We'll be right back after an actual ad, finally, from Canvas.
Chad: Sweet.
Canvas: Canvas is the world's first intelligent text-based interviewing platform, empowering recruiters to engage, screen, and coordinate logistics via text, and so much more. We keep the human, that's you, at the center while Canvasbot is at your side adding automation to your workflow. Canvas leverages the latest in machine learning technology and has powerful integrations that help you make the most of every minute of your day. Easily amplify your employment brand with your newest culture video, or add some personality to the mix by firing off a Bitmoji. We make compliance easy and are laser focused on recruiter success. Request a demo at gocanvas.io and in 20 minutes we'll show you how to text at the speed of talent. That's gocanvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent.
Chad: You will never hear Bitmoji next to compliance in any other ad ever. Oh, that's nice, that's nice. So yeah, that was Amber from Canvas. We've always talked about how Sovren has great in-house voice talent, freaking Canvas just knocked it out of the park. That was awesome.
Joel: Yeah, who needs stinking voice over talent from Fiverr when you've got in-house talent for free?
Chad: No shit.
Joel: Shout-outs.
Chad: Do it.
Joel: HIREConf, we've talked about it before, November 7th through the 8th, New York City. We're gonna be there and we're gonna be tearing up shit. They've given us a discount code for 50%, is that right? Am I reading that right?
Chad: Yeah, dude, it's 50% off.
Joel: Holy cow, 50% off. Use the code ChadCheese. Dude, if you're in New York, Jersey, anywhere on I-95 that can make it up to Manhattan, you need to be there and now is an extra reason to save some money and be there at HIREConf. New York City, November 7th through the 8th. Is it hireconf.com, I guess?
Chad: Yep. It's not Mein HIREConf.com, it's just hireconf.com. If you go to chadcheese.com, we've got a little banner that's there, if you click on that it automatically has the code and it pushes it in, so you don't even have to add the discount code, we've already done that shit for you, or at least Paige did.
Joel: You are the Wix Whisperer.
Chad: Hey, I also hear that Ed from Philly is gonna be there, so I mean, my big question is should we pull together some friends for him while he's there?
Joel: That's what I said. He said he's gonna heckle us, and I said you and all your "friends" that will be there. Those who don't know, give them the back story on this whole friends thing, because it's semi-amusing.
Chad: It's hilarious, right. We finally get to meet him in Vegas and I can't remember ... he had said something about friends in Vegas, and I can't remember how the whole conversation started, but we took it to the podcast and said, "Hey, look. Ed from Philly is going to be in Vegas during HR Tech. He needs friends. So let's get some friends together for Ed in Vegas," and that's kind of rolled in to where we always need to help Ed get friends. That's our thing. We love the guy.
Joel: We became it's just lunch in Vegas. He's like, "Dude, I have friends. It's just sort of a running joke, Ed. We love you man. It's all good. We'll see you in New York.
Chad: Derek Pilcher, thanks for sharing the pod. All the love on Twitter. Todd Markle over at Hello Hire says he's a huge fan, and he's actually just over in Cincinnati.
Joel: Nice. Josh Zywien.
Chad: Oh, JZ.
Joel: I did pronounce that correctly. Shout out to him for giving Indeed some shit about their new staffing firm blockage. He questioned whether or not it was really good for job seekers. Was it really a de-duplication issue or was it just, surprise, about making more money?
Chad: Yeah, and I think that's pretty simple. It's like, "This is a better experience for the job seekers because we're taking these jobs out of the organic content, which could be duplicate jobs," and it's like, "Okay, asshole. If that's the case, then why is it they can pay you to put those jobs back in the feed?" It's not in the organic feed, it's in the paid feed, but it's still in the goddamn feed, so how is that good for the job seeker ... Oh, wait a minute, you're getting money. That's how it's good for the job ... That's bullshit. Total propaganda. Big ups for Josh on that one. That was funny.
Joel: Shout out to Instagram. The research came out this week that says among the kiddies out there, Instagram is now more popular than Snapchat. I think everyone saw this coming, but the numbers are finally starting to come through. Snapchat, it was nice knowing you. Instagram has taken you over with the children.
Chad: Kenny Staubach always gives us love on LinkedIn and I don't think we've ever given him a shout out, so Kenny, our apologies buddy. Here's your shout out.
Joel: He's like ... this will age me, but he's like the love child of Roger Staubach and Kenny Stabler. How does that work? Anyway, Dennis Tupper shout out who loves the show.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: He's got to be a top 10 fan. The doctor is number one and has been from day one, but Dennis Tupper sent us some funny stuff on LinkedIn we'll talk about at the end of the show, but Dennis is always giving us good stuff and I don't know if we've ever given him a shout out, so big ups to Dennis out there. We love your ears.
Chad: We also posted that in a day last week that we had over 1300 listeners. I mean, we're just starting to blow the roof off this thing. Thanks guys for listening. We really appreciate it. But still, get your friends, family, and peers. Get them to listen too. So Tim Sackett says, "This is one of the few podcasts he listens to." And Tim, buddy, so I'm not sure listening to only the episodes you're in over and over and over count, but thanks man. We appreciate it.
Joel: I did love Tim's comment that our listenership has to be attributed to Russian hacking. I'm not denying or confirming that, but you know, it is throwing stones and we don't really appreciate that, Tim. But it is what Tim does.
Chad: Thanks.
Joel: My last one, I think yours too. Go vote, suckas. We're like 12, 11 days here in the States from election day. Journalists are getting hacked up across the world. This is weird times. We got bombs showing up in mailboxes. Go out and vote. Get your voice heard. That's the only way things change if you want things to change, but go vote. And by the way, Uber and Lyft, free rides to the polls on election day.
Chad: Yeah, no shit. And they're ... they've expanded voting days for goodness sakes. I can go vote today. You can go vote today in many states, not all states, but they've expanded the voting days. Not to mention companies, some companies, are actually giving election day off so that you can get your ass to the polls. This is our ask of you, if you do anything for the Chad and Cheese, go fucking vote.
Joel: It's no fun to vote, not on election day though. I just want to say that. It's fun to go and see the whole democracy in action thing. Don't just walk in with a couple people and go ... Anyway.
Chad: Dude, have you seen the lines? Have you seen the lines on some of these though? These early voting? It has been huge. The turnout has been huge, so yeah, if you're in a small town like me, I'm in Columbus, Indiana. That might be the case. But, I don't care when you vote, guys. I don't care. Just go vote.
Joel: Shout outs done.
Chad: Done.
Joel: Can I start my rant?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Rant/prediction. So, it was a little more ranty this morning in the shower. It's kind of faded a little. But, those who are in marketing will appreciate this, I think. I'm gonna take you back, a little history lesson, because I understand a lot of our viewers are younger, Millennials love us, but there was a time, late '90s, early 2000s, let's just say late '90s where if you had email, you loved email. When you got an email, it was from your mom, it was from your best friend, it was from the chick you were trying to hook up with, you really looked forward to emails.
Joel: Then marketers got to emails and fucked everything up, like marketers always do, right. So spam was a huge issue. So I'd say 2000 to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2002 or whenever it was, that didn't really stop the spam, but spam has destroyed email. Fortunately algorithms are better, Gmail and others are pretty good about filtering really, really bad stuff, but spam is still an issue and most people like me, don't really love email. It's just something like, it's a to do thing. You just gotta go through them. I delete probably 80% of my emails. I'm just too lazy to unsubscribe, because I figure, well maybe I will one day want an Old Navy pullover, so I just keep getting these emails.
Joel: So anyway, text has been and is, particularly in the States, a haven for non-spam. For the most part, everything on your phone is you signed up for, it's someone you know, it's legit. Because government has said, "We're gonna fine you to the gills if you spam people on their phones," and to the most part they have. Now historically those kind of spam-y mass text messages have been sent through what's called a short code. A short code is a five to six digit number, you've probably seen text whatever to 22118 or something. It's a shorter number to remember. Those are seriously regulated and to spam through those short codes, you're not gonna have the short code for very long.
Joel: So now you have Twilio and other services that make it super easy to get phone numbers, the 11 whatever, 11 digits, how many digits are phone numbers now? They're 10 digits, right? So 10-digit number and then send messages. That's worked great because you can get a phone number real cheap, you can send messages really easily, but I've seen signs recently, particularly with politics happening and the election happening. My wife, for example, was sent a text randomly from a 10-digit number and it was a survey of who she was gonna vote for in West Virginia, because she still has her West Virginia phone number, but that's beside the point. She got a spam about surveying the political landscape.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I got a spam a couple days ago about voting for our senator that's up for re-election. Totally not signed up for anything. It's a 10-digit number. If this thing keeps happening where people are spammed with 10-digit numbers that aren't regulated like short codes are, then that whole thing is gonna be cracked down on big time. I'm not exactly sure how they're gonna do it. Twilio is gonna be under the microscope with what they're doing with just giving out numbers. You're gonna have to have a number for a certain period of time before you can text on. I don't know what's gonna happen exactly, but I can tell you that if marketers fucked up email, they're gonna try ... they're doing their best to fuck up text messaging, and I see signs of it happening, and I say this because not only from a marketing standpoint but it could totally derail companies like Canvas, TextRecruit, etc who do send mass messages and have capability to send mass messages, let's be honest, automatically through their platforms. That could really squash their business, so sort of a rant, sort of a prediction that I think the whole text messaging with 10-digit numbers that are gotten off Twilio for free en masse is probably short lived and I think we're starting to see the early signs of that in the last few months, at least from my anecdotal experience. Rant over.
Chad: So the effectiveness ... yeah, the effectiveness goes down dramatically when that starts happening right? And that's the last thing we need. But you know, marketing is still gonna fuck it up.
Joel: Yeah. I mean, how mad are you gonna be if you get 12 text messages that you don't know what the hell number it is, who it is, it's a marketing message. People are gonna freak the fuck out if that starts happening.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Not as bad as me freaking the fuck out because we don't need to think about you naked ranting in the shower. Just ... that's not an image I need in my head, okay.
Joel: That's YouTube gold right there. It's too bad our mics aren't waterproof. We could do the show from the shower like Kramer style with the garbage disposal.
Chad: That's another Rockwell in the shower.
Joel: I date us a lot in this show.
Chad: You date you.
Joel: Most our listeners I think are of a certain age where they've seen Seinfeld and know who Roger Staubach is, maybe I'm wrong.
Chad: I think maybe the former, not much is the latter. Yes.
Joel: I know.
Chad: Indeed. You wanted to talk about Indeed, this whole global thing.
Joel: We give Indeed a lot of shit.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And they deserve it, but they are apparently knocking the leather off the ball over in Europe. Recruit Holdings is their ownership. They give public reports and people know numbers. Over in the non-US market, so you've got Europe, you've got the Middle East and you've got Africa, Indeed is destroying it, like crushing it, 66% growth last year, I think 40% growth the year before that. They've doubled their staff. They're building new headquarters, they're in Dublin, Ireland. They're gonna hire 1000 people ... they're gonna get to 1000 people, they're gonna hire another 1000 people in the next year or so. So we give them a lot of crap, but they are doing some really good things over in Europe, Middle East, and Africa markets.
Joel: Now, I think what you're gonna say and what I will say is they better enjoy it. Google's coming, LinkedIn's coming, everyone's coming for that market, particularly Google who just launched in Ireland recently, India recently, we know about Canada, and the UK recently. So enjoy it while it lasts I guess would be my caveat to that statement, but for now, man, pop the champagne. Times are good for Indeed over in Europe.
Chad: Yeah, well I wonder if the European companies are watching what's happening over here with US Staffing, because staffing in Europe is more prominent for companies to actually go through ... I mean, that's pretty normal to go through a staffing company to be able to get any type of position filled. I wonder if they're watching what's happening over here and just kind of biding time on which that ... when that's actually going to change for them.
Joel: Yeah, I don't think they can do it in England. From what I understand, the UK all hiring is pretty much done with staffing companies, and so I can't imagine they could do it over in the UK, but we'll see.
Chad: This is a good conversation to have, reach out to Louise or something, to see if the jobs are actually posted on the corporate career sites over there, because if they are then yeah, they could definitely do that. I mean, they could. Since we talked about this big shutting the door to all staffing companies that's gonna happen in January of 2019, I've had plenty of people come out of the woodwork to be able to talk about kind of like from the inside and individuals who have been on the inside about what's been happening there for years. Some of the big staffing companies have had their organic jobs pulled down years ago, but guess what? Those same companies are actually paying more than they did before. Indeed has kind of slow-rolled this whole thing. Indeed just didn't start ripping all staffing jobs down in one day, they started slow-rolling it to see if they'd lose customers, but they gain even more wallet share from others.
Chad: Some organizations, I actually had a couple that were pointed to that I won't name, their spend tripled after this happened, so ...
Joel: We actually have some live coverage from a staffing company when they learned that Indeed was gonna be pulling the plug on their jobs.
SFX: Aaah.
Chad: Yeah, that was the Indeed sales rep laughing as they open the door. Yeah,
that's ...
Chad: Behind this whole thing, sales has targeted companies and they've used kind of like the search quality team as their hatchet men, so if a company wouldn't call their Indeed rep back, their rep would submit a data quality ticket, I think they call it, for the search quality team. The search quality team would then "review" the actual jobs on Indeed and pretty much at that point, they'd get pulled down out of the organic. It was almost like a given that that's exactly the steps that would happen, the jobs would come down.
Joel: I love that you call the search quality team the hatchet men, because you're like the nerdiest, lowest key people you'll ever meet that are doing this stuff. Hatchet men, the search quality team.
Chad: From what they said is they actually just set those jobs to go to nowhere. They keep the jobs just in case they want to start paying, so they don't have to go through and re-index the feeds or anything like that, but they can send them to nowhere which is where all the CareerBuilder jobs, dot net jobs are going, so you know all of those companies that they provide, kind of like the search pages for, for their corporate career site and have the jobs that are on the CareerBuilder jobs dot net domain and so on and so forth, from my understanding, all those jobs go to nowhere on Indeed today.
Joel: Nice. Nice. We actually have another live camera at a staffing company when they learned about Indeed.
Chad: Oh come on. What would you be doing if you were a competitor of Indeed right now?
Joel: Calling every staffing company I could.
Chad: I mean, I would come up with specific programs that were focused on trying to win that dollar, because again, if history shows, and from what we've ... at least what I've been told, is that the staffing companies pretty much just go ahead, pull out their wallet, and say, "Yeah, you got me. I can't do anything about this." Then they just pay, which is ... it just drives me crazy because if you think about it, it's pay per click or it's pay for application. None of that has to do with a qualified candidate and if you take a look at companies like Zip, they're really focused on quality, on quality candidates, not search quality but actual qualified, delivering qualified candidates.
Chad: I just can't understand why companies aren't focused in that area to be able to make it more efficient and more cost effective for their dollar. It just doesn't make any sense to me, because Indeed's not really focusing on that right now. They're just throwing as many candidates at you as they possibly can.
Joel: I mean, there's a big gap between what job sites are charging still and what companies are paying for this talent. The gap is so wide that companies are gonna continue to pay whatever the hell they have to until that gap is closed, which I don't think it ever will because staffing firms make a ton of money.
Chad: They do, but in most cases, they have that talent already in their goddamn resume databases.
Joel: That's no fun.
Chad: I just ... it's already there. It's like ... I just don't get this at all. You've spent millions, millions of dollars in building a resume, especially if you're a staffing company, in building these resume databases, how you haven't focused on being able to surface talent that you've already paid for and then also refreshing that talent and doing that kind of ... I don't understand. That makes no sense to me whatsoever. Oh yeah, I'm just gonna go over here, open up my wallet, pay Indeed so I can get more candidate flow. You're paying for goddamn candidates that you already have in your database probably six or seven times over.
Joel: Yeah, okay. Dude, there are some big winners in this. Like everybody else pretty much.
Chad: Everybody else as in you mean all the Indeed competitors or ...
Joel: Well, if money isn't going to Indeed it's going somewhere, and it's filtering to everywhere else that people are spending money or they're spending more money where they weren't spending before, so to me a lot of the vendor space were probably cheering when Indeed made this move.
Chad: If, if they can execute. That's the biggest issue. Because Indeed has been doing this for years now, slowly picking off staffing companies and then staffing companies either do one of two things, they tell Indeed to go fuck themselves or they pull out their wallet and they pay three times or who knows more, just to be able to get their jobs in there. This is really the call to all of those other organizations that are out there to be able to focus on ... I mean, yeah, definitely staffing companies, but just product overall is not just about the traffic, the active traffic. Shit, you've got so many passive candidates that you can activate in your database, it just makes no damn sense to me. Not to mention, you've got other companies that are out there that, again, if you're looking for traffic shit, they deliver traffic too.
Joel: Do we still kind of think Indeed will become a staffing firm at some point, or they will have something staffing related?
Chad: I think if they're moving that direction, they're gonna lose.
Joel: Their owner, that's what they do.
Chad: Yeah, in Asia. But this is an entirely different.
Joel: They know how to do it, they know the model.
Chad: They know how to do it in Asia, dude. It's an entirely different world, I guarantee you.
Joel: in Asia? I understand there are cultural differences, but I mean they still talk to each other and interview each other and call each other on the phone and shit.
Chad: I totally get it, but it's an entirely different landscape. I just ... I just don't see that happening.
Joel: With Indeed's hubris, you don't think they just think they could pull it off?
Chad: No. I think they can try, I just think they'll fail and from my standpoint failure being top five, I don't think they'd ever be able to get that big.
Joel: And when they fail, we'll be there to talk about it. I think we've hit our Indeed quota for this week's show, what do you think?
Chad: Thank God. Let's talk about Zip.
Joel: Zip. Going mobile, going AI. Launched Job Seeker Profiles, which is not the most creative name in the world. So essentially they have seven million or so iPhone, iOS, Android users. Now when they use ZipRecruiter they'll be directed to submit sort of this profile/resume. You've uploaded a resume, you can PDF or whatever, it will take the data from the uploaded resume and autopopulate your job seeker profile. Its AI technology will make recommendations to stuff to add or language to change, etc.
Joel: It's not huge news. It's not super sexy like mobile is it feels like almost a story that should have been out in 2012 or something, but I do love the AI component, the seriousness about it. We've talked about it a few times. This to me is just another step to say, "We're gonna continue to roll out AI features. We have 200 employees, engineers, working on AI. We've got a new facility in Tel Aviv with 50, 20 to 50 folks working on AI questions," so to me this is just sort of the ongoing onward AI strategy of Zip that we both find pretty interesting.
Chad: Yeah, and again, there are very few organizations that are out there today in our space that are dedicated to delivering qualified candidates, and I'm not sure that Zip they're really going down that path and they're going down that path quickly, especially within AI, being able to parse information out of a resume and then provide context and then ... there's just so much that you can do at that point. We don't ... we just don't see enough of that happening as it is, so I really believe that yeah, this is a nice little piece that I think is starting to close the linkages for more of like a Zip ecosystem, per se. A nice add for companies, the SMB side of the house, to be able to reach new and different candidates faster. So just adding more information into the profiles, being able to target better, but I think they're moving in a different direction than many other organizations are and I believe personally they are moving in the right direction, because it's all about quality.
Joel: Keep in mind this is on the heels of raising $156 million at a billion and a half I believe valuation, so Zip is definitely one to watch. I still think they're a huge acquisition target for somebody, or a few companies probably, because as a standalone it's gonna still ... it's gonna be tough long term to make it on their own, but they're doing the right things and definitely adding a tech layer to their offering increases their value. It's not just job postings, which we know from history is not worth a lot.
Chad: Nope.
Joel: And the people and the tech and the data, that's where a lot of the value is and they are definitely building that if nothing else.
Chad: They are.
Joel: Speaking of awesome tech, let's hear from our sponsor, Sovren, about what they're up to.
Chad: Parsing.
Joel: Parsing, and all that good stuff. They are real AI, white hat AI.
Chad: White hat AI.
Sovren: Sovren is known for providing the world's best and most accurate parsing products, and now based on that technology comes Sovren's artificial intelligence matching and scoring software. In fractions of a second, receive match results that provide candidates scored by fit to job, and just as importantly the job's fit to the candidate. Make faster and better placements. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N dot com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates, like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner.
Joel: Love it.
Chad: White hat. You were riding up in that white hat.
Joel: What did they call it? Was it white hat, like white AI, black AI. I don't know [crosstalk 00:28:50]
Chad: Yeah, I think what you're starting to see now is they're talking about white box versus black box.
Joel: Oh yeah, that's it.
Chad: Yeah, so there are ... like Google is black box. You don't know why you're receiving the type. You don't know what the algorithm looks like, you can't see the algorithm. Google just says, "Hey, this is the best return that you're gonna get," versus some of the other ones that are out there like the Uncommons of the world who have more of a white box kind of scenario so you can see exactly why.
Joel: By the way, Uncommon also a sponsor, unveiling some cool shit in the next couple weeks. Just a little teaser out there, but if you're not on the Uncommon bandwagon yet, it's definitely time to get on.
Joel: Uber staffing, this kind of came out of nowhere, but maybe not, it makes a little bit of sense, yeah.
Chad: It does. I mean, Uber Works is I think the actual, the banner that it's gonna
be under. It sounds really cool. I mean it says Uber is quietly developing a short term staffing business called Uber Works to expand on demand model and additional types of temporary work, like waiter, security guards, just all these different areas that just from my standpoint though as I read through it, it was like, "Okay, are you using the base of individuals, like your drivers, as your talent pool?" Maybe they want to also do waiting jobs, like on demand waiting jobs or maybe security jobs. Who the hell knows right if they're qualified? But I didn't really understand where their talent pool was going to come from aside from those individuals who currently drive for them.
Joel: Yeah, I think it's ... I think someone at Uber or a few people at Uber said, "Oh my god. Look at the talent base of contract workers or gig workers that we have." It's probably the most in the world. It's probably more than Snag and others that have been doing it for quite a while and someone said, "How do we get them connected to other opportunities, and how do we make a lot of money doing that?" And they already have the infrastructure. People can already use their app, turn themselves on for driving opportunities. It's not gonna be super tough to be like, "Oh, hey, are you open to other opportunities? Like go deliver groceries. Do you want to go deliver dry cleaning? Do you want to go wait tables? Do you want to ... like whatever it is, Uber has the infrastructure and the head count to actually do this thing, so I think it's pretty fascinating. It's a real sort of left turn from where they've been going. I know they're looking to go public soon, so this is like another thing I guess they could build in terms of revenue opportunity and growth, but yeah, it's definitely worth watching. We talk a lot about the gig economy. If anyone is sort of prime to leverage the giggers and mobilize them to opportunities, it's got to be Uber.
Chad: So Uber should actually buy Snag so that they can have that database and push it into their system. If they really want to go after something like this, that would make a hell of a lot of sense, wouldn't it?
Joel: I don't know if they'd have to buy Snag. I mean technologically they don't. I don't know if Snag has that many more workers.
Chad: I'm just talking about on a database standpoint.
Joel: Uber doesn't do a lot of acquisitions that I'm aware of, I mean, Uber's not really our lane, but you don't hear much about them. They sort of build it themselves, but yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's just a skunk works project and they'll do a test in San Fran to see what happens and if it works, great, if not, they'll just chunk it.
Chad: I like the thought of them spreading out because they are already giving jobs, flexible jobs that are driver jobs, or Uber Eats delivery jobs, to individuals, but being able to expand does provide for a better story for IPO.
Joel: Yeah, I mean why can't you hire people for temporary work or gig work on Uber, just like you get a driver? I mean, it's sort of the same. Uber could be like the utility for everything you need work related.
Chad: Yeah, and that's what we've been talking about for with Snag, we've kind of seen them possibly moving in this direction of being the Uber of the segment, and they better get their shit together if they're going to be.
Joel: Yeah. I mean, Pared with restaurants, Uber Eats, a lot of those relationships are already being forged, but yeah. We're watching you Uber, you're coming over into our space so we're gonna pay attention.
Joel: Someone that's been in our space forever is LinkedIn, and there was an interesting blog post by a guy, Tim Queen, I don't know, he's a LinkedIn traffic guru I guess, marketing guy. Had a blog post out basically saying that the gravy train of traffic that people have been enjoying on LinkedIn is coming to an end.
Chad: Wait a minute. Is this ... Are we talking about LinkedIn or are we talking about Indeed now? Because it seems very similar here.
Joel: Yeah. Gravy train is over for everybody. It is LinkedIn, so anyone who has marketed on social media or at least has posted and seen numbers do what they do knows that Twitter was really nice because there weren't a lot of people on Twitter and it was usually interesting people and like the commentary was interesting. Their algorithm has not really changed. They're trying to change it and they've sort of suffered for masses of people and whatnot. Facebook didn't want to come under that same scrutiny so they created an algorithm based on likes and engagement and what kind of content they know is more favored, a little bit curated because of the fake news thing, so you used to get a ton of traffic on both of those and you've seen that fade a little bit, unless you really post some good shit.
Joel: For a long time, LinkedIn has been great for things like if something is liked, it's shared on that person's feed, sharing was like ... they just paid a lot of attention to getting engagement with users and everyone kind of knew that the traffic train was going to come to an end and that you would have to pay for the traffic or you'd have to be really creative and that seems to be happening. Video was a great example, and you and I lived this because on ... was it draft night or Superbowl night of this year, you and I posted a video on LinkedIn which was really stupid, it was just us saying ... I don't even know what we said, like, "Hey, from Chad and Cheese. We're here watching the Superbowl." Whatever. And it got like thousands of views and it was ridiculous.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Those days are over. You can't just post a video and get a bunch of traffic. You actually have to have good content in order to engage, so anyway, it's now time to move on to ... I don't know, Snapchat or Instagram or somewhere else because the traffic gravy train is coming to an end at LinkedIn for crappy content.
Chad: So here's a question though. I mean are just companies going to be challenged to kind of Facebook boost on LinkedIn or is this going to be an individual thing? Because most people post as individuals. This is just like our video. It might be company stuff, it might not be company stuff, who knows, so I wonder if this is gonna be like individual account based or how that's actually going to work, because LinkedIn is really used in a much different fashion than Facebook is.
Joel: One example I think that the post talked about was if you posted like a blog style update to LinkedIn, which is great, and it typically gets a lot of engagement, if you're not ... so they have ... basically they have premium users or like people that have been approved, sort of the blue badge folks. Those people will continue to post and I think still get a ton of engagement. The average Joe who just posts a blog on LinkedIn, unless it's really good, is not gonna get a whole lot of engagement, and the reason that they pushed that initially was they wanted people to post so they got more exposure and people posted, now they're used to posting and they hope that people still do that.
Joel: The same as with video. Anyone who posted a video got a lot of engagement to make people post more videos, but now just because you post a video doesn't mean you're gonna get engagement. Now I do think it's interesting to think that Facebook used to have for personal users, a little boost button and for $7 you could have your birthday announcement or your wedding engagement boosted throughout your network. They've taken that away, because either I guess nobody used it or it was confusing or people didn't like it. I could definitely see a thing for LinkedIn where you boost something and you get exposure where you didn't before or you've lost exposure. I do think they're trying to get more companies engaged. Their new insights have branding. They just bought Glint for $400 million. That's a company solution right that you'd use on LinkedIn, so I think they want them ... companies to post more, they want to get people ... companies to get more followers, and that could be part of where the algorithm goes, but yeah, I think it will affect everyone, but I think if you're a personal user and you've been really enjoying the engagement and the traffic that you were getting on LinkedIn, I think that that could be short lived and you may have to start paying for the exposure that you used to like.
Chad: That fucking sucks.
Joel: Welcome to capitalism baby. If it don't make money it don't make sense.
Chad: Kill me.
Joel: But what does make sense is JobAdX. Another awesome sponsor. Let's take a break on them and then we'll get to the scary shit for the Halloween season in recruitment.
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Chad: Smooth as butter. I mean we did ... those ads, Sovern, Canvas, JobAdX, I mean they're smooth as butter.
Joel: Can we get to the scary shit?
Chad: For everybody out there, Joel, this is like Joel's favorite time of the year I think, because when we start talking about Halloween and talking about scary shit, it's almost like he lights up on the microphone. If it's anybody's time right now, this is Joel Cheesman's time. So let's all listen.
Joel: I like the holidays in general, like from October to January 1st, it's just like the best time.
Chad: It is.
Joel: It's eating, drinking, the holidays.
Chad: Napping.
Joel: The temperature changes. The trees change. Football season, baseball World Series, basketball starts, hockey starts. It's the best time, and Halloween just rockets that off. If you have young kids like I do, Halloween is especially great because kids care and they dress up and they carve pumpkins and they go to the hay ... whatever, the farm, and they do corn mazes and all this Midwest shit that a lot of people don't appreciate, but yeah, it's a great time of year and I twisted Chad's arm to be like, "Dude, we gotta do a Halloween segment. Let's talk about some of the scary shit that we've talked about in recruitment over the last year or so."
Joel: I don't know how you want to do this. We could each take one or just-
Chad: Let me start off with Sophia is the creepiest thing I've seen this year. Period.
Joel: All right, give the people who don't know Sophia or women named Sophia out there, tell them what you're talking about.
Chad: So the android thingy that whoever ... whose robot is this? I can't remember now.
Joel: I don't know. It doesn't matter.
Chad: It doesn't matter. Anyway, it's an android-ish type of ... kind of plastic face that has the facial smiles and it just ... it is as creepy as shit, go to YouTube, we're gonna be saying this a lot during this segment, go to YouTube, put in Sophia robot and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Creepy as shit.
Joel: Yeah. Her brain is glass and you can see the cords and the wiring. Again, on the YouTube while you're searching her, throw in Will Smith in there. He has a date with her and [crosstalk 00:42:09]. She interacts with him as an AI robot and he's Will Smith so it's pretty entertaining. So yeah, Sophia scares the shit out of us.
Joel: I will add on the robot category Boston Scientific, you need to quit it. The first robot was kind of cute, it looked like a dog. It basically jumped a little bit and it kind of walked. Now the robots look like scorpions and they climb walls and they shoot guns and they're creeping me out, big time. Scientific, Boston Scientific, quit it. You're scaring me, goddammit.
Chad: Yeah, that shit is scary as hell. So there is an episode, a "Black Mirror" episode where these dogs are actually sent to kill humans. That is some freaky crazy shit, and they look like these Boston Scientific dogs, let alone these fricking robots who are like ... I mean they look like militarized almost robots that can go like anywhere and do just about back flips and shit like that.
Joel: Dude, the '80s is the future.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: RoboCop, Terminator, anything you want to know about the future, just go watch movies from the '80s.
Chad: Yeah. So, the next one is one of my favorites, because I love the movie "It."
Joel: What was the robot ... it was on a tread, like a tank tread and it had arms.
Chad: It was like Johnny Five is alive.
Joel: Yes. Five is alive. Because he got struck by lightning.
Chad: That's a stupid fucking movie.
Joel: In the '80s.
Chad: So yeah, creepy clowns. From Hurts Donuts, we talked about this last week. This is the coolest thing and the funniest thing in the world, but yet, go to YouTube, I told you I was gonna say this, go to YouTube, look up creepy clown Hurts Donuts, that's the name of the company, Hurts Donut, that's fucking awesome too and look at. Dude, it is the funniest thing ever. They send these clowns into the office with donuts to deliver and just scare the shit out of people. It is fricking hilarious.
Joel: It's totally hilarious and every business should do something like this because it's awesome. But yeah, creepy clowns delivering donuts. Awesome. All right, dude. This is brand new scariness. Our boy Tupper sent this. Job posting on Facebook for research scientist, which isn't threatening, research scientist virtual humans.
Chad: What?
Joel: Facebook is apparently developing virtual human beings because they don't have enough human users, they want virtual users too, but this is gonna be like 3D. It goes way beyond hologram. This is you in virtual form showing up to work, or this is you ... Anyway, this is all really creepy stuff because robots aren't enough to think about, now we've got virtual humans roaming the halls of the workplace, roaming the mall, whatever.
Chad: So holograms, I mean that's the thing that we're talking about, right?
Joel: Facebook's virtual humans. Let's just leave it at that and we'll keep an eye on what goes on.
Chad: Are they working with Cambridge Analytica on this so that they can have like virtual trolls as well?
Joel: Let's hope they're not working with Boston Scientific, because then I'm just leaving the planet.
Chad: Yeah. Bullshit.
Joel: Last but not least, I always feel like somebody's watching me.
Chad: Watching me. I have no privacy.
Joel: Oh. All right, more '80s references. Rockwell, the hit song, "Somebody's Watching Me." The last thing that scares the hell out of us, Google is now on their G-suite watching you and whether or not you're using the software.
Chad: Big Brother, man.
Joel: Yeah, so if you're using this to recruit, if you're using Google Hire, whatever, your boss will find out if you're not using it so you better use your freaking Google licenses.
Chad: I don't know if you remember this, but we earlier this year actually talked about Slack doing the same thing, so Slack, because that is ... again, that is used in many organizations, is starting to better understand sentiment and some of the messages and some of the documents and things like that to better understand how happy or sad your employees are and, possibly, if they're getting ready to leave. So those types of things, it's like, you've got to be ... really?
Joel: Yep. So everyone's gonna be popping Xanax's so Big Brother doesn't know how they're feeling and what they're gonna be up to.
Chad: Yeah. Beautiful.
Joel: We out?
Chad: We out.
Tristen: Hi, I'm Tristen. Thanks for listening to my stepdad, the Chad, and his goofy friend, Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out on all the knowledge dropping that's happening up in here. They made me say that. The most important part is to check out our sponsors because I need new Track Spikes, you know, the expensive shiny gold pair that are extra, because, well, I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com.