HAPPY HOLIDAY PEOPLE! This week on HR's Most Dangerous Podcast...
- Indeed EXIT PLANS are on everybody's wish list
- Careerbuilder gifts us a new commercial, which cannot be returned
- Google for Jobs unwraps it's newest roll-out in Japan
and your employees want to party all the time, Eddie Murphy-style.
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: I have nothing at all witty to say for the opening of this week's podcast. So, welcome to The Chad and Cheese Podcast coming at you from recruiting's underbelly. I'm Joel Cheesman.
Chad: I'm Chad Sowash.
Joel: On this week's show, LinkedIn's been very naughty. Google for Jobs says Konichiwa Bitches, and we run down the top holiday perks employees are begging for this season. Spoiler alert, partying is number one. Shocking, Huh?
Chad: Party.
Joel: Eggnog corporate America will be right back after this word from JobADX.
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Joel: I still love our intro. Is that wrong?
Chad: No, no. You should love our intro.
Joel: One of the best things you've ever done. Shout-outs.
Chad: Yes. We do have a few shout-outs. Right out of the gates, I would like to thank our friend Steven Rothberg for illustrating the exact reason I had a problem differentiating between two lovely redheads.
Chad: So, thanks to Louise and Faith for being so understanding. But, yeah, last week Joel pointed out my faux pas that I had on LinkedIn. Louise actually had a post out there talking about the Chad and Cheese pod, and I thanked Faith instead. I was on my mobile phone. The pictures are much smaller, and they're both very good looking redheads, so there you go.
Joel: Remind me never to take marital advice from Steven Rothberg even after he’s been married forever. I know that if I compared my wife to another woman, I would not probably fare very well doing that. So, Steven, you're a bigger man, braver man than I, and you're married is obviously stronger than anyone else that I know
Chad: Amen.
Joel: Moonlighting in the news, and shout-outs. He talked to Dr. Jeff Garcia, who by the way, if you haven't listened to the interview that we did with him a while back about Crypto, I encourage you to do so, they partnered with Nextdoor.
Joel: Most of you who live in suburban America know this site because all your neighbors are gossiping about everything in your neighborhood, and they're powering the small business advertising segment. They’re Nextdoor. So, congratulations to Moonlighting, who keeps chugging along.
Chad: Very nice. From business to beer. I actually received more craft beer in the mail. So, thanks, again, to our listeners for sending me craft beer. I appreciate it. And we'll enjoy it.
Joel: And you're still not disclosing who's sending you this beer.
Chad: I'm going to go a little bit deeper into it. I didn't want to try to make myself look good or anything. But here's the thing, is that I'm in consulting, this person's in consulting. A big job came my way. I didn't want it. So what I did was I actually referred this person, pulled them in, they got it. They're incredibly happy.
Chad: This is the reason why I'm getting beer. They’re a big listener, but they also wanted to say, “Thank you,” for me pushing business their way. So, I didn't want to go that deep into it. But since you keep fricking prodding me, there you have it.
Joel: Well, we can't be nontransparent with our listeners. If we're going to call people out for it … So, this is great. So this is just some sales shit. Sales guys patting each other on the back, doing favors, right? That’s cool. I’m fine with that. Speaking of salespeople, I got to shout-out to Regi Davis. I think Regi or shark or something. Regi works at Pushnami. Regi exemplified to me some of the worst in sales this week.
Chad: Really?
Joel: I hate when this happens. So, a salesperson connects with you on LinkedIn. Fairly harmless, maybe loosely tied to the industry or … I do some marketing stuff, as well. I'm connected to marketing folks.
Joel: So anyway, literally after connecting, I get a pitch, multiple sales pitches through messenger on LinkedIn, email, because now she has my email address, etc. It just really pisses me off, and I just wish more salespeople would realize, don't try to fuck me on the first date. Like, buy me a drink, tell me a story, like one of my shares-
Chad: Court me.
Joel: Comment on some stuff. Introduce yourself to me in some way and not just try to get in my pants the first hour that we connect on LinkedIn. I'm sure she's a perfectly fine human being, but for salespeople doing that, take note that a lot of people don't like it, including me.
Chad: And there's another salesperson. There've been plenty of salespeople that are sending these too long, didn't read types of messages, which are just fucking horrible dude. But somebody sent me a video from Success Training Institute, simplysuccess.com.
Chad: So, I'm giving everybody this so they can understand this turned me off from the standpoint of I just connected, I got a too long, didn't read type of message, which I didn't read, and then they sent me a video. This video was one of the worst videos I've ever seen in my life. From a marketing standpoint, I will never be using Simply Success or will I advocate or push a client their way.
Joel: What was the video?
Chad: It was two guys who were fake fighting, and they were fighting for your sales or something like that. It was horrible. It was pathetic.
Joel: Some basic, standard, cheesy sales they get.
Chad: It’s ridiculous. And last but not least, I actually took about 10 minutes one day to help a salesperson do a better job of meaningful outreach because it was so pathetic. I reached out to her and said, “Look, I didn't connect with you for you to sell me shit, although what you can do is you can start to cut and copyright your messages and start to be more meaningful about your outreach.” And we kind of went back and forth and then she tried to sell me and I was like, “Yeah, I don't need that. Have a nice day.”
Joel: I would push our listeners to this guy named Gary Vaynerchuk, who most of our audience probably has heard of, who's a big advocate of getting to know you before asking for stuff. I think he wrote a book called Jab, Jab, Punch. I believe it articulated that. And he goes so far as looking at people's social media accounts, what they like on Twitter, and then connecting with them on something they like, like maybe sports or maybe whatever.
Joel: So, take heed, salespeople, I know you're under a lot of pressure, but you're just not doing yourself any favors with this blasting of stuff on LinkedIn and everywhere else. I've got a shout-out to Alyssa Banks in Chicago, works for Wonderlic, friends of the show. She's a big, big fan, and I just wanted to say, Alyssa, thanks for listening. We appreciate it.
Chad: Big shout-out, probably the guy who gets the most shout-outs other than maybe the job board doctor, Ed from frilly tweets, and I was correct, by the way, he would have had an aneurysm if the Eagles didn't beat the Giants, number one, and Cheesman, nobody cares about your fantasy football team. That was hurtful and funny. All in one tweet, Ed, thanks so much.
Joel: I care about my fantasy team. So, fuck off, Ed. You’re just an angry Eagles fan because they suck it this year.
Chad: It's the city of brotherly love, man. Come on.
Joel: We failed to make another top 100 HR influencers list, so shout-out to whoever the hell produce that list.
Chad: First off, I've never heard of this group in my life, and I love the groups who try to assemble these influencer groups just so that they can get their redistribution, right? So it's like, “Oh, look, they put my name on it, so now I'm going to put it into my distribution on twitter or whatever it is.” Never heard of this company before. If they put me in their top 100 list or 500 list, I wouldn't give a fuck because who are they in the first place?
Joel: This is a total marketing thing. Let's put 100 bloggers on the list and hope that they blog out, “Hey, I made the 100 list.” There used to be a link bait thing, I don't know if you remember this, but companies used to send badges to bloggers saying that they were on the top 100 influencers or whatever it was, and then bloggers would put this badge on their blog and then that would be a backlink for SEO purposes and yada, yada, yada. People don’t blog as much anymore, and they don't do that as much anymore as they used to.
Joel: So now, it's like, let's just go to buzz, whatever, and get a list of top recruiting HR bloggers, and then put out a blog post, and then tag them on our tweets, and then hope that they spread the word and get our company up. It's a pretty good strategy because it works. People are suckers for, “Yeah, I'm important,” me included. But yeah, they should've put us on the list because we are incredibly influential.
Chad: If it's from a reputable organization that you've heard of before, it's like, “Oh, man, that's cool.” But I looked at this and I'm like, “Who gives a fuck?”
Joel: We're still ready for the ZipRecruiter top 100 influencers list.
Chad: All right. Continuing on, I've got a couple of quick shout-outs. Adam Godson, who was quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Awesome. Adam, we just did an interview with him. I think it was last month, one of our badass interviews, where we talked about automation, talk about nothing but technology.
Chad: And he was quoted in this Wall Street Journal article talking specifically about that. And then Aida Fazylova, our favorite Russian from XOR, firing squad alumni, wrote a great article in entrepreneur magazines. So, a couple of Chad and Cheese alongs getting some love out there. Pretty awesome.
Joel: Awesome. Let's get to the show. You've got some insider baseball. You and I have been around a while. We all have friends in the industry. None of them want to have their name attached to any of the information that they give us. But you had a lengthy conversation and want to share some of the insight that you got recently from a industry insider.
Chad: It was more than one. I mean, since we've been talking about these Indeed industry policy updates, I've had plenty of people actually reach out to me and want to talk. So, this is kind of like a mish-mosh of all the different conversations that we've had.
Chad: So I tried to make this as easy to get as possible, so stick with me. So we're going to give a little background on the Indeed staffing policy. If you need more background, listen to our earlier podcasts. First, all jobs from staffing companies will be pulled from Indeed's organic in January, citing search quality.
Chad: Yeah. Everybody knows that's bullshit, and Indeed should've been straight with staffing companies and really said right out of the gate, “He, look, you've ridden on the free bus long enough. It’s our new model to charge you, and don't bullshit us. Don't bullshit.” And that's exactly what they did. They were bullshitting them.
Chad: Only paid jobs by staffing companies will be displayed, and that kind of a kind of gave you an idea. It was like, “Hey, your jobs aren't good enough. They’re bad search quality, although if you pay us, we'll go ahead and we'll put those in the paid section.”
Joel: And Indeed defends, they’re going to make a butt load of money.
Chad: In my personal thoughts on this, Indeed saw an opportunity years ago to use this leverage to ring more cash out of staffing companies, and some of these companies I talked to paid two to three to five times more. So, yeah, I think it's one of those things where it's a short-term asshole move, no question, but they got more money out of it.
Chad: So, to all staffing companies, last but not least, if this move surprised you, you haven't been paying attention. And remember, it was free advertising in the first place.
Joel: Formulate that exit strategy.
Chad: Yeah. Well, and that's the thing, is that most of the companies that I talked to and the ones that didn't have an exit strategy beforehand re really focusing on it now. So several of the companies that I talked to are actually planning to first step away from Indeed PPC.
Chad: They've seen the writing on the wall, they've tested, they've scaled other vendors, and as a matter of fact, a couple of direct employers I spoke with are actually pulling together a group so that group of employers can share best practices on how to more effectively get the fuck away from Indeed.
Joel: And have you come around to Indeed becoming more of an active player in staffing?
Chad: A couple of the people that I talked to said there's really no evidence other than that's what they feel like they have all the parts to jump into staffing. I had a couple of really deep conversations about it and said, “Hey, look, CareerBuilder tried it, Monsters tried it, still trying it, right?” But they can't crack into it because, if you take a look at CareerBuilder, and we'll talk about them a little bit later, but if you take a look at CareerBuilder, they're doing so much. And they don't do anything incredibly well other than maybe background check shit. I don't know.
Joel: They're really good at giving us content for the podcast.
Chad: Oh, that's good. Yeah. They're good for the El Chappers of the world. But really, at the end of the day, this comes down to companies are just extremely frustrated, and they're looking for an exit strategy.
Joel: I just find echoes of people wanting to bounce out of Monster and CareerBuilder ten years ago.
Chad: That was actually said several occasions.
Joel: Yeah. And the funny thing is Indeed was the exit strategy, ten years ago. Now, everyone's trying to exit out of Indeed.
Chad: Yep, yep. So then we start talking about talent networks. So, that's the next policy. And again, listen to our earlier pods. We go deep into this. So if you're using a platform to collect data before the candidate hits the applicant tracking system, Indeed calls that a talent network, and they could yank your jobs from Indeed.
Chad: So, the first thing, every single customer I talked to was pissed off about this. My most important question was, so how does this make you feel, seriously? And pretty much all said the same thing. Who the hell is Indeed to tell us, who are paying customers, how to do business and what types of platforms to use? I mean, high frustration from everybody I spoke with.
Chad: So, seeing all these different moves from Indeed, I think, really pumped up the search quality or frustration for an exit strategy. And that was parapraxis there because I'm getting ready to talk about the ex-googlers who are leading the search quality team. And so, it seems as if these individuals, for the talent network piece, had no clue what problem they were actually solving for candidates or clients. The only problem they cared about was an Indeed problem.
Chad: So, they weren't looking for about the ramifications for candidates and customers, they were only trying to do something that was focused on search quality and they didn't give a shit about downstream.
Joel: How do you think those year-end customer touch base calls are going on Indeed this year?
Chad: I know how they're going. They don't care. They don't care. Literally, it's almost like, “We're Indeed, this is what it is.” I mean, companies are coming in who spent millions of dollars with Indeed over the years and they're being treated like they just stepped in off the street and they've never met them before.
Joel: We're doomed to repeat the history that we forget.
Chad: Yep. Yep. So other comments about other companies, Zip was working better than most at this point. Zip was actually one of the big cogs in most of the exit strategies. Conversations with product people were incredibly exciting. AI focused tons of cash being spent. I mean, there's just momentum happening right now. And the biggest thing is they treat customers right. Everybody that I talked to who’s using Zip says they're treating customers right.
Joel: That’s great. By the way, there's a little tease. There’s some big news coming out of ZipRecruiter next week, but I'm sure we'll be talking about on next week's show. But if you read my stuff ere.net, I should have something over there next week if you want to jump the gun, but get our opinion on the podcast.
Chad: Last but not least, it seems as if CareerBuilder is working fine. People are actually … They're like, you know …
Joel: These are our customers saying this?
Chad: Yeah. It’s like, we're getting really good ROI. But CareerBuilder's raising prices without upgrading product, which is not on par with the rest of the industry. So, it's like a stale product, but they're trying to ask more from it. And the ROI that they're saying doesn't justify any type of raising of prices.
Chad: So that's kind of normal, end of year, let's see if we can get money out of them. But I think what CareerBuilder is trying to do is they're trying to push people to background check and those types of things. The new CEO, from what I've been told, is actually diverted most of the R&D dollars to the background check product.
Chad: The R&D engineers are pretty much gone for the most part. Most customers are like, “What are they actually selling over there? What are they doing over there?”
Joel: And background checks aren't exactly the most profitable business, but they do have a background check company that they can pimp.
Chad: More exciting.
Joel: It's fine that you mentioned CareerBuilder. I don’t know if you’re ready to jump to their new app or not, but they’re alive. They’ve sort of been dead for a while and they’ve laid off people, and had a new CEO, and bought El Chapo and all this stuff. But they're finally like, things are coming back to life. And they have a new ad, which we actually have the audio from, if you'd like to take a lesson and then we can comment either during the ad and/or after the ad, or both, or however we want to do that.
Chad: Let's do both. Let’s do it.
Joel: All right. CareerBuilder's new ad in three, two. Porn music.
CB ADVERT: I was working the same job for a few years. I had a degree and some experience, but no career.
CB ADVERT: I came to career builder because it's a purpose-driven company. I wanted to change how people think about work. My team spent a lot of time and money posting jobs. We would get a flood of resumes, but finding the right person was nearly impossible. My budget has to stretch, but my time can't.
CB ADVERT: I was ready to make my mark, but I didn't know how.
CB ADVERT: Using technology to solve problems, that's my job. And I was tired of using 12 vendors. Then I learned that career builder has everything, data to help us plan, [crosstalk 00:20:43]a single source candidates, marketing tools to engage them, and the fastest back on screening on the market. So we made the switch.
Chad: There it is.
CB ADVERT: I opened the career builder app and found an awesome job. It even built a resume for me with skills I didn't know I had. I applied with attack.
CB ADVERT: It isn't what we do, it's what we do for people. Now, we get the right person faster. It's not just efficient, it's smart. We're making work, work better.
CB ADVERT: And I start on Monday. CareerBuilder, Work can Work.
Joel: Clever.
Chad: I've seen, not this commercial, but a version of this commercial on MSNBC a few times. And word from CareerBuilder is that, they're just getting started. So there's going to be more of this happening in January. The ad itself, I think , it's kind of sterile, it's kind of blunt, but they are pushing more of their solution set per se. So, that's interesting.
Joel: Yep. So I have a few takeaways. It's interesting that they would combine three different demos in one ad. So, you have the job seeker, who, apparently, is an actual CareerBuilder user, although he sounds very, not like actual person. He sounds very scripted.
Joel: To me, the best was the actual employee. Sarah, Amanda, I forget her name, she comes off as very good. I think, in the ad, the comic relief in this ad for me is they have an actor playing an HR person and the actual ad has a disclaimer at the bottom saying, “This is not an actual HR person or this is not an actual customer,” but it's something that a customer would say, which to me is, could you really not get an actual employer to come on the add to talk about their experience.
Joel: So, to me, that was kind of funny. The actor was very funny that they did that. And then, yeah, pushing, they do everything. They’re trying to be an end to end platform. We're going to take on Google, LinkedIn, and all the other big platforms. So, we'll see.
Joel: I didn't get much out of the ad outside of the person actually works at CareerBuilder sounds like they’re with it. The job seeker was, I could take that or leave it, and then the HR person, that was totally hilarious because it was an actor, and they told you it was an actor.
Chad: If our customers loved us, they'd say this.
Joel: Well, yeah. I mean, there are plenty word data's ads where you know they're not HR people but they're talking about HR stuff and like we failed. So, it's just kinda funny. If you're going to do that, just get a real customer, like you’re CareerBuilder. You have tons of customers, right? Get one of them and the company people know and put them on the ad.
Chad: Yeah. And I don't want to hear that you couldn't find one because of all the legal bullshit, blah, blah blah.
Joel: It's total bullshit. And how many companies wouldn't love to have their name on a national ad campaign and have somebody actual at the company. Anyway, but yeah, CareerBuilder’s alive. Hopefully, we'll see more of them because we love talking about them in the new year. That's all I got from the ad. You got anything else?
Chad: No. We'll see what they have. If they go from end to end and then they continue to try the end to end play, that's wonderful. But the only problem with that is that they're not going to do anything incredibly well.
Joel: I didn't love that the job secret talks about mobile and didn't talk about the augmented reality feature. I found my job on my mobile phone. I just pointed downtown and found jobs. Anyway …
Chad: I was walking downtown and I-.
Joel: If you go to their YouTube channel, there's a minute and a half video of just the mobile, and it talks about the augmented reality stuff, which is amusing, to say the least.
Chad: It's a waste.
Joel: Let's talk about one of our favorite companies, and sponsor of the show, Canvas. Let's hear a word from them, and we'll talk about Google for Jobs on LinkedIn.
Chad: Do it.
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Chad: Can't imagine a company right now, and if you are one of those listening, smack yourself, who is not using some type of messaging, it's not just something that you have to do now. It's something that's going to be a part of your process and flow for the rest of pretty much your career, period.
Joel: Grand predictions, which by the way, if you haven’t read Circa 2118 by Peter Weddle, make sure you pick that up at Amazon. We did An interview with him this week. That's coming out soon. Well, Chad, if you want to make a statement with your neighbor, take your dog to take a dump in their backyard.
Joel: To me, the news that Google for Jobs has launched in Japan, had some sort of similarities to that in that Indeed's parent company Recruit Holdings is headquartered in Japan. So, what better way to make a statement to your competition than to open up shop in the home country of your owning company?
Chad: Oh, yeah. Now, that's legit. And I think the irony, there's two pieces of irony here. First and foremost, you telling people to pick the book up, Circa 2118 and read it, that's irony. And then also, obviously, Google for Jobs getting into this in Japan, and given Recruit Holding’s a big fuck you.
Joel: Yeah, thanks for the call out there. Can I get a mini-side rant real quick? I hate my internet brain. You and I have been on the internet roughly half of our lives, and I cannot focus and just slow down and read like I used to.
Joel: I don't know if you're the same way or others are out there or something, but I find the internet has screwed my brain up, and I don't think I'll ever get it back. So, anyway, back to the show. Google for Jobs is in Japan now. They're doing a little bit differently. They're not partnering with recruitment sites or job boards like they are in other countries. They're collaborating with Japan's number one applicant tracking system, a company called HR Solutions, I guess.
Joel: So, Japan is kind of weird, right? I'm not an expert on the country and recruiting, but I know that it's much different than the rest of the world. So Google for Jobs had to accommodate the cultural needs of that country to sort of launch the business, which says to me it's a lot tougher to launch in Japan. So, good for them on taking the extra effort to launch in that country.
Chad: Yeah. I'm not sure from a regulation standpoint and also antitrust what they have to deal with. I mean, it took a while to be able to get up and running in the UK, just from an antitrust standpoint. They needed to think about that here in the US, you know, becoming a “monopoly” and pushing all the job boards out.
Chad: So, including the job boards in Google for Jobs as part of the process, it's almost like a deathmatch on Google for Jobs, who has a better experience, who doesn't have drop off rates, those types of things.
Chad: So, they're actually pushing, I think, our industry here in the US to do better from a job site standpoint, but in Japan, they might not have to deal with that. I'm not really sure. So they're just going direct to the original content because it's all in the applicant tracking system. So, there you have it.
Joel: I think it's also significant because Japan is, I'm pretty sure, still a top five economy in the world, so it puts them in a very active economy, where there a lot of money to be made, a lot of things that are happening.
Chad: GDP wise, top 10 and-
Joel: Is it five or 10? I’m pretty sure it’s five.
Chad: Oh, yeah, might be top five. I just know it stopped in for a fact that I'm just not sure if it's top five. And I think it sends a signal to the Recruit Holdings of the world to the just that they're going to be everywhere. And this isn't going to be a surprise to Indeed or Recruit Holdings, or anything like that.
Chad: But I do like how they are doing business differently in Japan. I'm going to have to do a little bit more research on that to see why, because I would assume Japan has job boards too. So, why not also partner with them? Maybe they will. Who knows?
Joel: Well, the easy thing to do would have been to be like, “hey, it’s different. You know, it’s not in our template, it’s not how we scale, so let’s just not deal with your pain right now.” The fact that they did the extra mile or made concessions because of the market says that they continue to be very serious about employment and making big waves in this industry.
Chad: Yeah. But that's actually easier. If you're going directly to applicant tracking systems, you have less to actually index. You get feeds directly from an ATS, who represents … I mean the original content for hundreds of thousands of companies, and it makes it easier.
Chad: So, you don't have to take more feeds from all of these different vendors, you take less feeds you know that it's original content. So, I don't know. Again, I have to do a little bit more research on the Japan side listeners. If you're out there and you know more, frickin ping us, man. We’d love to hear it.
Joel: Any experts in the Japanese market hit us up at chadcheese.com. Going on to another mega company in our space, LinkedIn has been bad. What they’d do to-
Chad: Ireland’s data protection commission, they had complaints, and they conducted and concluded an investigation of Microsoft owns LinkedIn, originally prompting a complaint in 2017 where LinkedIn's practices regarding people who were not members of the social network.
Chad: So what they were doing is 18 million emails addresses of individuals who are not LinkedIn members, they targeted them. So, from our standpoint, that's pretty common practice, right?
Joel: Yeah. For those that don't know, you can, on companies or platforms like Facebook, you can go in and plug-in email addresses of your customers, for example, and submit ads and they'll still see ads from your company. However, how did they get those emails, I think, is in question.
Chad: Yeah, and it's pretty ironic because we don't know where they got the emails, first and foremost. They probably bought them from somebody and then they matched them up against their database, the database that they don't want anybody having access to.
Chad: They don't want companies coming in and playing off their data because they want to focus on data privacy for their users. Although, they want to be able to flip the script and do business pretty much the same way everybody else is and not abide by those data protection laws. So, this is against GDPR, and they got slapped on the wrist by it. They were lucky they were caught before everything really went into enforcement.
Joel: Yeah. And to their credit, they did take out the emails or did whatever with them. They're not continuing to run that campaign. Now, the irony in all this is how protective LinkedIn is of their profiles and not letting other people access profile data and they're super wigged out by that and the high Q case, etc. So, the fact that they got pinched for this is ironic and humorous, to say the least.
Chad: It's definitely funny. This is what happens. And you think of the whole, yeah, they made concessions. It's because they were caught. That's why they're making concessions, and they were really just in the asking for forgiveness instead of permission mode.
Joel: Yeah. Pretty much every business in our industry is going to be affected by privacy laws and things like this. So, it'll be a story that continues through 2019.
Chad: yep. In 2020, even more, strict laws go into effect in California. So, if you are US-based and you dropped all your profiles from Europe because of GDPR in 2020, it's not going to matter because if you're going to do business in California, pretty much the US, it's gonna happen everywhere. You better have your shit together and have it tight.
Joel: I'm going back to cali, cali, cali. Let's hear from Sovren, and we'll close out the show with some VR and some holiday perks.
Chad: Oh, my god.
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Chad: Really looking forward to going down to Austin later 2019 for TA tech. In meeting, all of the Sovren west world androids. I'm looking forward to that. I can't wait. It's going to be a fun time.
Joel: Austin is fun time without anybody. Companies being there, it'll be additionally fun with Sovren and the gang, who, by the way, if you're an HR tech, they are the ones passing out free bourbon shots to everybody. Tom, here's your lucky day. You get to hate
on a VR company. Go.
Chad: Yeah, java bowl, mail it and immerse your candidates in your experience. So, this thing is like a cardboard kind of a setup. The company mails it to you, and what you do is you download the app at that point, or go to a video, one of the two things, and then you put your phone in this cardboard VR headset thing.
Chad: You put it up to your face and you are immersed in a VR tour of a company or you can go into gamification mode, whatever the company's done through this app. But I thought that this was perfect for you because we were talking about how the holidays are coming, VR is all out there. I just think we look like a bunch of idiots with these things plastered on our faces.
Joel: To me, this is a little bit like Ai. Everyone says something as AI but not really, but saying if they AI is pretty cool. This is a VR. Sure. But to me, it's more like, do you remember the 70s, you have that little viewfinder and you had that little disk thing?
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: And then you clicked it and you went to another picture then you put it up to your face. To me, this is like a new version of that. You put this thing on and then it shows you a video basically from your phone. I don't see this thing being very interactive. I can't talk to someone else. I can't interact with people. I don't know if this is true VR.
Joel: I think you can pitch it as VR, but is it really virtual reality? I don't know. It
looks more like put your phone up to your face and watch a video. The other thing that reminded me of this is, there was a time when not every computer had a webcam or camera on it. And, there was a company back in the day that they would actually send webcams to the candidates that were branded with the logo of the company-
Chad: Green job interview.
Joel: It was at the company? I don’t know, a couple of them did it. And then you would have a little keepsake from the company in the form of webcam and then you would do a video interview with the webcam that the company sent you.
Joel: So if at some point cameras on computers become the same as they are now, where nobody buys a webcam anymore because all the computers have cameras on them, if VR becomes as ubiquitous as that, then I think VR has a real place in recruitment.
Joel: You and I can argue whether VR will ever hit that plateau. But for now, this is a pretty ridiculous company. It’s great to brand yourself as the VR company and hope that VR really takes off. But if VR does not take off, these guys won't be around for much longer.
Chad: Awesome, on the viewfinder, by the way, I had one. I loved it. That was amazing. But yeah, I mean, we saw the video interview. The video interview company more was a software company, but they needed everybody to have a webcam so they just send them out in the mail. So, they were ready for the virtual interview before anybody else was.
Joel: I guess they never said that if this company was actually sending out Oculus Rift to people, then there'd be something, but the fact that they're setting a cardboard, basically, masked to people is not the same as sending … because people could actually use these webcams that were sent by companies. And that was actually the cool thing but they're not going to sit at home with this cardboard face mask and use VR, they actually have to have real VR systems.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah. So the Oculus, and I haven't put it on my face, and I'm sure I'll check it out when I hit best buy or something like that. But, I mean, it's a piece of rubber that you're strapping to your face. You still look like an idiot. I don't care.
Joel: Fair enough, man. We disagree on VR. We’ll see what happens, but we can probably agree on some of the perks that have been listed. They have six here. The holiday season is here. Companies are throwing parties. They're giving away money like trips and all these things. So, Spherion did a survey of a thousand or so of their customers to find out what are the top holiday perks that employees are begging for this year. So, are you ready for the list?
Chad: Yes. Bring it.
Joel: You want to go from top to bottom or bottom to top?
Chad: Bottom to top.
Joel: Okay, let's do that. All right. 18% gift exchange. The secret Santas. Yeah, we love that. Another 18%. We've got a tie at the bottom. Company paid holiday meal. Love that. That catering from QDOBA coming in at 20%. 22%, were moving up. Office closure between Christmas and new year's day. Now, I’d like to get on board on that.
Chad: Yeah. From a sales standpoint, that shit ain't gonna happen.
Joel: We'll let the engineers go home for a while, except a few people that can keep the lights on. We're moving up to 26% holiday bonus.
Chad: We can take that.
Joel: Some people get pissed off if they don't get a little buddy at holiday time. 28% wanted extra time off. Okay, good. Few weeks, regular, like give me another week or something. I guess that'd be a nice perk. And number one, we don't have a drum roll sound bite, but if we did, we could use it, holiday party at 36%.
Chad: Holiday parties suckers. That's right.
Joel: I love that that’s above time off and more money. Like, let me party. Let me get into that trouble. That sounds like a good idea.
Chad: It’s not a great idea. The worst things are office parties. You get bruised up and you do stupid shit around people that you shouldn't be doing stupid shit. Or you end up hooking up with people. I mean, it's not a good idea.
Joel: Yeah. There aren't many great things that can happen from holiday parties, but there are a lot of bad things that can happen from holiday parties. I suspect in the #MeToo era a lot of parties aren't even happening because companies don't want to go down that road, which is probably a good idea. Give them that $50 gift card to Best Buy instead.
Chad: Yeah, and if you have any great holiday party stories, send them our way. We'd love to hear them.
Joel: And we’d love pictures as well or video. Video’s even better. Send it our way at chadcheese.com.
Chad: Oh, I wonder if CareerBuilder is having El Chapo at their Christmas party.
Joel: I'm going to say that's a long shot. And then I'm going to say, but we out.
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