Another year down, but what the Hell happened? Chad and Cheese run down some of the best and funniest stories of 2018.
Then it's all about the Naughty.... and some Nice too, especially our friends at Canvas, Sovern, and JobsAdX. They deserve some 2019 champagne after putting up with our asses.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You are listing 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: Ho-ho-Oh. Is it me or does it smell like meat and cheese up in here? Welcome to the year-end finale of the Chad and Cheese podcast, residing on HR's naughty list since 2017.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: I'm Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash.
Joel: On this week's show, we say thank you.
Chad: Thank you.
Joel: We review the news that still haunt our dreams and we break down our naughty and nice lists dark for cover. Get comfy in your throne of lies, we'll be right back after this word from Canvas.
Chad: Get it.
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Chad: I want a culture video so we can text it to everybody.
Joel: Because people want to get texts from us, no. They don't.
Chad: Of course.
Joel: No. They don't.
Chad: No, they do. They want to get pictures of ugly sweaters and yeah, I know they want that stuff.
Joel: Dude, can we clear up the ugly sweater thing before we get started.
Chad: What?
Joel: Why, how much, when, what? I mean, you posted this thing, which is hideous and the feedback was beyond what I could ever imagine in terms of positive feedback. I was waiting for pictures of bleeding eyes and heads exploding, but it was positive. Let people know, what's the deal with that sweater?
Chad: Yeah. It was hideous because it is an ugly sweater, duh. I mean, this is-
Joel: And our faces are on it, which make it rather [crosstalk 00:02:56].
Chad: Which is half of it is really ugly, the other half is just gorgeous. Thank you, but yeah. No. I saw this idea and it was Marvel was doing a superhero of sweaters. I'm like oh holy shit, this would be great, just great from a marketing standpoint. So I threw it out there on social media and people were like tagging each other going, "Oh yeah, this is really fucking cool." I was like you know what, screw it. I'm going to get one done. Why the fuck now, right?
Chad: Not to mention this weekend, we're going to have the first annual Chad and Cheese holiday Christmas/Hanukkah Kwanzaa party. So, that'll be perfect to wear the sweater. Not to mention everybody blew up on social media because it is funny as hell. That's why and Indeed stole my shit. Good on them. Good on them, but mine is better. Our Chad and Cheese ugly sweater much better than the Indeed one.
Joel: Neither you or Indeed came up with ugly sweaters for Christmas to begin with. This is a very old thing. So to say that they stole from you or you still for them is a little bit ridiculous.
Chad: With logos. I stole from Marvel. Then I put it out there and they stole the idea from me because it took like fucking four weeks to get the sweater made and shipped over here from Germany. So that took a while.
Joel: That's German?
Chad: Yeah. Oh yeah. Dude, I went with high quality shit.
Joel: You did.
Chad: I didn't do the sweatshirt with the iron on shit. I didn't do that. I went total mechanized loom, all that stuff. I went for it.
Joel: The country that gave us Mercedes, the Tiger tank is now giving us ugly sweaters. That's just great.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: That's just great.
Chad: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:04:55].
Joel: Could we have asked for a better year than 2018 was for us on the podcast?
Chad: No way, dude. Just to throw some numbers out to our listeners because you guys you're the reason why we do this. 2018 numbers, we had over 90,000 downloads and we put out over 100 podcasts. Listeners, just the feedback on Twitter, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, it didn't matter. Even when we went to conferences, it was constant and it was awesome. We really appreciate all of that because as we both said here behind mics talking to each other, we're not really sure if this shit resonates and you guys have told us that it does. So thanks.
Joel: For the record, Chad does it for the fans. I do it for the money just so you know. Just so you know. Well, we have done to thank yous in addition to what you just made, shout outs, love for sponsors, firing squad, alumnus, our families. The mass amounts of liquor that I'm sure we got it legally through the mail this year, and the endless amounts of schwag that'll care me over and my family with attire for the next 12 years I think.
Chad: And the live shows. We did Hire Comp in New York, TAtech in Vegas, ISIMS brought us out for their influence conference. TAtech in Dublin, all the way to Dublin, Recruit Con in Nashville, ERE in San Diego, HR Tech in Vegas. I'm sure there's some of that we're missing, but in 2019 I'm going to predict that you will see more live shows.
Joel: And more varieties of shows. Look-
Chad: Yes.
Joel: ... we've proven Deathmatch is a big winner. We're doing it in Europe, which is bound to disrupt the whole Brexit, EU, GDPR trend that's going on over there. I think what we found our groove on the podcast. I think we're going to find our groove for the live show and events going into next year.
Chad: I'll be doing all the logistics to ensure that that happens. Joel will show up
with a beer in it all just magically happened.
Joel: Can we give our sponsor some love speaking of taking all this stuff out,
Chad?
Chad: Dude, yeah. Let's do that.
Joel: From Canvas, our weekly show guys Sovren, JobAdX, which have been with us for a long time. Shutout to America's Job Exchange who left us midyear but was an early supporter. It wasn't necessarily their fault. Talroo, who makes Firing Squad possible to NEXXT, Judge, and who am I missing? Uncommon is huge for us.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Joel: Emissary for my nappy T-shirt that I had to wear at HR Tech for two days. Thank you to them. Who am I missing?
Chad: You're not missing anybody, but I think it's really cool because we started out with one show and it was consistent with three advertisers. Then we had other companies coming to us saying, "Look, we want to get behind you." So we had to create more content and more shows because it just made sense. First off because we weren't talking enough up about startups and then Talroo got behind us and said, "Yeah, let's do this Firing Squad thing."
Chad: NEXXT and Uncommon are both helping us focus on getting interviews from top-level individuals. We just put out a podcast with Scott Gutz the CEO of Monster and the chief product officer, Chris Cho. They make that possible.
Joel: Which is awesome by the way. I don't know if we've talked about it, but I think the Monster interview that we just published is our best work.
Chad: That's pretty good shit and mainly because there were no softball questions. We really went deep into it. Then there's Judge. I mean, we wanted to be able to do breaking news in a different way and Judge was behind us for that. The weekly show with Canvas, JobAdX, and Sovren that is obviously a staple in our listeners' diet. Then you got all these other really cool podcasts with different types of content that you can jack into.
Joel: Yeah. By the way listeners if you haven't given a blank check to our sponsors, please do so before the end of the year. I know you guys are working on budgets. Blank check to all those sponsors would be great.
Chad: And the subscriber side of the house in 2018 has blown up. So if you're not currently subscribing on iTunes, Google Podcast, Google Play, CastBox, Spotify, whatever that's what you need to do. Look up the Chad & Cheese Podcast, click on subscribe and all of this glorious content will flow to you in a very wonderful way.
Joel: Our kids are doing it.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: Firing Squad, which one was your favorite?
Chad: Men, so we gave big ups to Uncommon, RoboRecruiter, was that it, and AllyO I think. I think three out of the 12, only three out of the 12 had big applause and I really liked those. I think those guys really picked one-
Joel: [crosstalk 00:10:21], did you mention them? We had Doug on the show. I think they got two good ones. We'll say good to Hire Advisor, Fire Squad alumni that folded it up which I think we both told them they should do that. So we did get that one right, at least.
Chad: I think Hire Advisor might have been the only one that actually received two Firing Squads. I think Woo.io they received a Firing Squad and a golf club tilting toward a Firing Squad. The guts that these startups have obviously there's a risk versus reward here. I go on here and I kill it and I get bigger applause or applause of a golf club, that's so good. But I can go and I can just dive and get the Firing Squad and it's still going out to the public.
Chad: You've got to realize guys that because Talroo was paying us, all these startups come on here, they realize if they crash and burn, that is going out to the public. So I have to give these guys a big applause.
Joel: For sure. For sure, but remember there is no bad PR. So even if they come on the show and get torched, at least they'll be new and noticed by a lot of people that they normally wouldn't be noticed by. So even getting shut down is a good thing and hopefully we'll get some great startups on the show in 2009.
Joel: I want give a shout out real quickly to really both our families I guess particularly our wives who put up with us doing this stupid show and also put up with our traveling, although they tend to benefit from that sometimes. Both have kids that are supportive. Families are a big part of why we're able to do this stuff, so big thanks to them.
Chad: Thank you to the lovely ladies of the Cheesman and Sowash family because they're the bosses in this whole thing and-
Joel: I want to know your favorite liquor giveaway of the year and your favorite piece of schwag from the year that you were given, not that you bought from Germany.
Chad: I was going to say though the Chad and Cheese sweaters are pretty awesome, or if you're across the pod, jumper, just to make sure we clear that up. I have to say that it's really hard to choose on the liquor side because I have gotten so many boxes of beer that are like they are all craft beer and they're all mixed. I mean that was amazing. Continue to do that listeners. I really appreciate that sponsors. That's awesome. The best schwag I'm going to say is the high quality stuff.
Chad: So we just receive or I did, and I'm sure you did, to a full zip up like a Columbia jacket from HiringSolved. We also got a really cool sweatshirt, a hoodie from Uncommon. Has Uncommon on the back, embroidered on the front. So yeah. Not the cheap stuff, but really the kick ass gear and Chad & Cheese up so that they'll wear that for not just a couple of days but for the rest of the year.
Joel: The fidget spinners and the mouse pads are going to get listed on our favorite's list.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Favorite liquor for me I'm going to with a Middleton, Irish whiskey from LinkUp, the gang at LinkUp. Schwag I'm going to second your Uncommon hoodie. I'm going to throw in the NEXXT pullover.
Chad: That's a good one.
Joel: It's really one. T-shirt wise I'm going to go Canvas. Although I don't normally look good in purple, the T-shirt is so comfortable. Yeah, I love it. So the schwag was a good year, hopefully we get more good stuff into 2019.
Chad: Amen. Amen.
Joel: Thank you for everyone putting up with our shout outs. It's a good 10 minutes of every show. For some reason, you guys like it so we'll continue to do it. Chad if you're done with shout outs, let's hear from JobAdX and we'll get to our year interview.
Chad: Let's do it.
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Joel: The year in review.
Chad: Here it come. We're going to rip.
Joel: Rapid fire style. We don't do rapid fire anymore. This year end show, we'll do a little rapid fire. You go first.
Chad: Rapid fire, what we're going to I talk about a good amount of the subjects that we went over in our podcast. We ripped about 20 of those out. We're not going to spend a lot of time on them, so here we go. First foremost, Chad and Cheese ran for presidents of Monster.
Joel: And lost, although I don't think there was any official ballot for the election of president.
Chad: Yeah. No.
Joel: Scott Gutz is now the CEO. So I guess he's technically the new president of Monster. Congratulations to him.
Chad: Yeah, and there is obviously more opportunity down the road for all those organizations who don't have presidents in place to have a co-president setup of the Chad and Cheese.
Joel: I will add that we were not able to go to the HQ and Canvas for votes. So, I feel like it was a little bit cheated, a little bit scammy in terms of us losing that election but anyway-
Joel: ... a lot of money flowed into all kinds of stuff. So ICIMS got a bunch of cash. TextRecruit got a bunch of cash. ZipRecruiter got a bunch of cash. Global Takeovers, some of these sites ZipRecruiter will be interested to watch this year. Slack got more money than God last year. The money flowed and we're getting some sniffs that 2019 won't be quite as prosperous for the investment side, but we'll have to see. We'll have to see how the economy behaves.
Chad: We shall see. This year, earlier this year Indeed went full exclusion of job broad content. Wow Google for Jobs stepped in and said guess what guys, we're here to help. So it was a flip of Indeed saying screw you guys. You're not welcome anymore and Google saying, "Hey, that's fine. You're welcome over here."
Joel: I need that journey sound by open arms for that one. I love this one Beyond.com sold its domain to Bed Bath and Beyond and became NEXXT with two Xs not three.
Chad: Two Xs, not three Xs.
Joel: We thought three Xs would perform a lot better for them in search results but they didn't listen to us, but that was a quirky little story from 2018.
Chad: Yeah, it was and I think it was incredibly smart taking that money, selling Beyond.com for a shit ton of cash. Taking that money, pretty much buying your company back and then doing whatever the hell you want to do.
Joel: Sure.
Chad: So, good on NEXXT for that one. Hire Maturity, which most of you probably don't even know even existed, they launched and almost immediately died.
Joel: Like figuratively. No one actually died because when you say Hire Maturity you think maybe it's just a bunch of old people that started something and then died, no.
Chad: It could have been.
Joel: Just the site died which was interesting. Tracking and microchips were big in 2018. Amazon tracking people. Companies are putting microchips in their employees so they can make faxes faster. Companies still have fax machines apparently which is bigger news than getting microchip, but that was a big story that I find troubling, but I guess we'll see more of it going into next year.
Chad: Well, the microchips, the haptic bracelets that Amazon was using in the UK, I mean all this tracking shit, to be a human being and being a job especially with the employment rate the way it is right now. Just tell those companies to go fuck off for god's sake, I mean it's-
Joel: Was it Amazon where people were urinating in bottles and stuff?
Chad: Yeah, and trash cans and it's like "Yeah, I got to make sure I don't leave my post because I might not make my quota," or some shit like that.
Joel: Robots don't shit, so we're at a disadvantage there as human being.
Chad: Yeah. Well we'll talk about that a little bit later. CareerBuilder was a total fucking train wreck.
Joel: Thank God it was good for us.
Chad: Changed dramatically in 2018. Just the face of CareerBuilder changed dramatically and they gave us El Chapo.
Joel: Yes. Love El Chapo. Yeah, literally they've changed their face. The CEO Matt Ferguson of 14 years was let go and they brought in a CFO in placement. Sure that will work out great as evidenced by the augmented reality in their mobile app which is killing it.
Chad: Yeah. I have better days, but Monster really didn't change enough I think. You see all this change happening on the CareerBuilder side and I mean slow and steady I guess is really what we're seeing for Monster. Maybe that's not even baby steps at this point. I think it's like baby crawl.
Joel: We better see some big things out of Monster next year. They can't just throw ads on TV. They can't just take banners off their site. They've got to really shoot for the moon next year if they're going to compete with some of the big names, Google, Microsoft at all that are in the space right now.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Recruit Holdings, Indeed's parent, acquired Glassdoor for $1.2 billion. That was big news this year.
Chad: Yeah, that blew up your IPO prediction. That was pretty big.
Joel: They filed dude. I was totally cracked in that prediction, just because Recruit swooped in and bought them before they did.
Chad: Yeah. Well, that's just like going to the starting line and not finishing the race. You didn't hit the finish, man. So therefore unfortunately, no prediction for you.
Joel: Well, we're going to do the prediction show later. We'll see how I did. Stay tuned for that one.
Chad: We talked about this earlier, Snag, Monster, Dice, all new CEOs in 2018. There was probably more that route there, but just off the top my head more new CEOs popping out to be able to change the landscape and pretty much how those companies operate. Unfortunately, we just said that the Scott from Monster interview with us and then Art ran like a little puppy dog with his tail between his legs when we tried to do ... We reached to the PR team. They're like, "Yeah, sorry, but we're going to have to decline."
Joel: Yeah. All those companies are going to have to kick some ass going into next year if they're going to survive Snag will be interesting. The whole on-demand workforce staff is getting interesting for sure. As we talked about in the recent show of Microsoft and Upwork getting together, and that's where that could go on that end. We talked about Zip but technically 50 million got real aggressive R&D. Engineers off the Wahoo, AI off the Wahoo, Israeli office going global. ZipRecruiter spoiler alert say that they're going to on my IPO prediction list for going the next year for sure.
Chad: And it makes sense, and it makes sense until somebody swoops in and buys them at the last second.
Joel: Which can happen.
Chad: GDPR scared the shit out of everybody this year. Didn't know what it meant. Didn't know how it was going to impact. I think we are at the point where people are starting to figure it out, but I'm not 100% sure. So all these wonderful regulations that we're finding, not just in the UK, but we're going to see happening. Starting in California in 2020, guess what guys get your shit tight and understand what's happening from a regulatory standpoint because it will impact your platform.
Joel: Yeah. We have a long way to go. Remember it was HiringSolved to dump 29 million profiles in Europe because it was easier to do that than actually try to figure out how they could deal with GPR. So, I think that's the just starting and Facebook is fucking up every privacy for everybody in terms of privacy. ZipRecruiter, God again, sponsored the biggest podcast in the world, Serial. We're still waiting on their money to come to us but so far in a no go on that. But yeah podcast got some big-money love from our industry this year.
Chad: Yeah, podcast did and that in itself, Zip doing all of that on TV and this morning shit, I saw probably 10 CareerBuilder commercials. 30 second ads, I mean they are hitting the market hard end of year trying to get the name out there, trying to the brand out there, and the whole messages you have you probably have like 12 different vendors that you deal with right now. Just come to CareerBuilder. Come to us.
Joel: The message as we can get an actual client to be in a commercial. So, we're going to pay an actor to pretend that they're a client of ours and hope nobody notices.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Very clever CareerBuilder. Very clever.
Chad: The thing is most stupid humans won't notice.
Joel: No they won't.
Chad: Google spread Google for Jobs across the pond which was pretty awesome.
Joel: Like a virus. Like a virus. You got to love that they put a stake in Japan which is where Indeed's holding company resides. Not that Japan isn't a good market but it was a nice little gesture on their part to put launders down in Indeed's home [crosstalk 00:25:26] this year.
Chad: Top buy market. GP wise, they're dealing with that market much different than they are the U.S. market or Europe. So I think they're really taking their time to understand how to penetrate these different markets, the best way to do it. So yeah. That's pretty cool, but yeah, that was definitely a big fuck you to Recruit Holdings and Indeed.
Joel: Yeah. Up next I can tell you that the LinkedIn Kool-Aid was delicious and cool this year for me. LinkedIn continues to kill it. Got in the SMB space, the matching space there. They've got insights that kill everybody, predictive stuff in terms of where to hire, open up your new office, et cetera. They've proven without a shadow of doubt that getting acquired by Microsoft was not a bad thing. They have really hit the ground running, put on the turbo boosters and they are killing it and I expect them to continue to do so going into next year.
Chad: I still don't understand the acquisition of Glint. It was like $4 to 500 million. That's how much CareerBuilder and Monster received by the way. What the fuck is that all about?
Joel: Well, I'm glad you asked, Chad. When we get to my naughty and nice list, I will help expand on this whole Glint thing.
Chad: Okay.
Joel: But employees and candidates are big winners this year and that companies really care about what they think. They really care about keeping them on staff. I think that if you see a weakness in LinkedIn, it's the continuing to be a part of the workforce after you hire. I think Glint, for whatever reason, health. You have 400 spent it I guess, and moving over to more on boarding retention type tools and for whatever reason Glint was what they went with. I guess they could've probably built so of that shit in-house for a lot less money but whatever.
Chad: If you've got the money, spend that shit. Amazon shut down their misogynist AI candidate matching project. So that was interesting, not to mention it also starts an entirely different narrative for talent acquisition out there when they're looking to use "AI". That discussion for me is so exciting because there are so many black box types of algorithms that are out there versus some of these new white box algorithms. That's I think going to be an incredibly fun conversation to have as we move into 2019 and people start to understand what's the difference between transparency and literally the void of transparency.
Joel: Of course my favorite virtual reality finally its stride and became huge in 2018. I'm glad that that finally came true for me. Oh wait-
Chad: What?
Joel: ... that's not right.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Chatbox are everywhere and matching is finally cool yes and maybe it actually finally works. We've been beating up on matching for years and thanks to big data and technology, matching may actually start to work.
Chad: yeah. Matching was a really hard process from the standpoint of you had to have a ton of field data that would match up with the other aspect of field of data. So a job description needed to be fielded out right. The profile of an employee and/or a candidate had to be fielded right to be able to make that matching work. Today with all the parsing and "AI" whatever you want to call it yeah, I think we're seeing some amazing things which we'll talk about a little later.
Joel: I was going to say I think we're done. Unless you have anything to add, we're hear a word from Sovren and we'll get to the good stuff on naughty and nice list.
Chad: I wanted to say last but not least, Circa 2118 scared the living shit out of us by the way. If you haven't picked this book up, I keep peeping this book. We're not getting money for it, I'm telling you right now, but I'm telling you, you have to read this book. It is scary up front, but it has a good ending. You've got to check it out.
Chad: The robots taking over, what does that actually look like in all different respects. It's a damn good book and it's not just about the recruiting side of the house or the hiring and employment side of the house. It's about pretty much the entire landscape, but there is a good focus on the employment side.
Joel: I'll throw in, equally scary for me is Tinder for jobs is still a thing. Here's a word from Sovren.
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 produce 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.
Chad: And that's how AI takes over the world so everybody knows. You have sexy sounding AI who wants to take you to dinner, that's how the shit starts people.
Joel: As soon as she can do a podcast, we're done. All right. Naughty and nice list, I came up with my about midnight last night so it's going to be really incohesive. Are we starting with nice lists first? Is that what we're going on?
Chad: Yeah. Let me start this out.
Joel: Sure.
Chad: Number one, and get ready to take shots buddy. Chatbots, Chatbots, Chatbots. Here's the thing. I believe chatbots are starting to help TA focus on process instead of the bright and shiny tech. They want to know about chatbots but as Quincy Valencia from AMS told us on our interview with her on one of our bad ass interviews that when you start diving deep into these new technologies and we need to have a chatbot, well why do you need to have a chatbot? Then that's where the process conversation starts.
Chad: Most applicant tracking systems and process methodologies that companies have today in their "stack" is for shit because they're focusing on the tech before they do the process. Many of them still have 1990s processes that all they do is take the paper and put that process into tech. Once you start to revitalize and understand what the process should be from an efficiency standpoint, not because this is the way we've done it since 1999 or what have you but because it makes sense, I believe chatbots are starting to make that conversation more prevalent.
Chad: So companies like Canvas, AllyO, Amaya, Olivia, RoboRecruiter, Talkpush and all those other chatbot platforms that are out there, they are my nice list because they're getting talent acquisition to start to focus where they should be focusing in the first place. That's process, not tech.
Joel: Very nice. Can I put you on the spot and ask for a prediction for chatbots for next year?
Chad: Yeah. I really believe that chatbots are going to start to integrate into the platforms more. So it's not just going to be a chatbot platform. It's going to be a chatbot. That is it's all ingrained into itself. So instead of having ... I think this is smart. We saw SmashFly and Olivia they partnered to be able to ensure that there were chatbots Emerson within the SmashFly platform. I see companies starting to acquire and make that a part of their platform instead of just partnering with it.
Joel: Consolidation and acquisitions for sure. I see that as well. I do think there will be a little groundswell of consumer punch back over chatbots. There may be little seeds planted around. We're not really hip about talking to a robot, but we will see.
Chad: Yeah. I don't see that happening though because it's between going into a black hole where you hear nothing and talking to a chatbot. We've seen surveys that actually show that job seekers would rather have some form of feedback versus no feedback whatsoever. So I don't personally buy into that.
Joel: Good enough. Good enough. Well, my number one on my nice list I'm going with Microsoft. For over a decade Microsoft, well two decades maybe, Microsoft was this old crusty in a DOS prompt Windows 95 dinosaur. With new leadership, they have become quite the juggernaut and in addition to that have really taken root into the employment space.
Joel: We know that two years ago, they acquired LinkedIn. We thought a lot of that was just a pissing match to the Salesforce and Google away from their property, but they've actually been invested heavily in that company as well as continue to invest in the space. They acquired GitHub this year as well which was pretty big news. Obviously, the hottest platform for techies to go in and hang out. So, I fully expect next year integration with GitHub and LinkedIn will happen, greater integration with those into Microsoft's Office product will continue.
Joel: I think that their recent partnership with Upwork means that they'll be getting into the freelance economy as well. So, LinkedIn is primed with Microsoft's leadership to be the platform for everything from professional workers to contract workers to keeping your tech department well-stocked. So big on my nice list this year was Microsoft. I really appreciate what they've done in the space and hope that they continue to do that and spend money.
Chad: Yes and they have. They along with Google and to some extent Facebook have really I believe moved this industry forward so much faster than it has in the past decade. So yeah. Good on them. If you see competitiveness, you to do something about it. You got to react. So all of the other competitors that are out there now are trying to react and they're trying to in some cases figure out how do you either play with or defeat a lifestyle platform.
Joel: Yeah. They really started the arms race that we get to report on almost every week.
Chad: Yeah, that's fucking awesome. Good job guys. Number two on my nice list, you're going to notice a theme here, it's matching systems. I believe intelligent matching systems are starting to make TA think about their candidate database which is pretty much in most cases an atrophy right now but these companies have spent millions of dollars building great databases with awesome talent.
Chad: Companies can stop advertising and start spending cash trying to acquire talent who is already in their goddamn database. Now they can focus on re-engagement and surfacing those qualified candidates in seconds instead of days. So companies like HiringSolved, Intelo, Uncommon and all the other smart matching platforms are on my nice list. The theme here is these vendors are making companies think in a much different way, in a much smarter way about how they should be doing business more effectively.
Joel: Yeah and don't forget Google launching a candidate discovery in their platform as well LinkedIn launched it. So, this is becoming sort of if you don't have this, your way behind the eight ball. This becoming something that you need to have. So yeah. I agree. Matching has had a great year and will continue that trend in the 2019.
Chad: Yeah, and if you're one of those big database companies that was a job board and you've got this huge database and you haven't partnered with somebody on the matching side of the house or you're trying to "build your own", good luck with that. But just make sure that you get that shit in 2019 and fast because the focus is going to be on surfacing qualified candidates much faster, not just clicks and bullshit apps.
Joel: You're not calling out Indeed when you say clicks, are you?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: We'll get to naughty list in a second. Number two on my nice list I'm going to go with candidates and employees. I think they were big winners in 2018. Some of the reasons you mentioned reviving candidates that have been around for a long time with
companies like Crowded and Envoy, et cetera. I think that's been a big win for them.
Joel: I think chatbots have been a big one for candidates. The resume black hole that we talk about all the time is slowly fading. If it takes robots to do that, then so be it. At least people feel like they've actually connected and are connecting with companies where before they sent a resume and never heard anything. Maybe a postcard or an automated email. That's a big win.
Joel: I think that employees, both past and present, continue to attempt to win big. In 2018, we saw Glassdoor who, let's be honest, Glassdoor's value is in the reviews that are on the site. It's not the jobs are posted or the companies that are using it. So, it means it you're the voice of the employee really matters. I think the billion-dollar buyout of Glassdoor really helps solidify that. We've seen Indeed you ramp up their review section. We see Comparably and others really play in this space.
Joel: We see women getting a voice with sites with Fairygodboss and her site that they've heard before. We also look at engagement tools. I mean, those were huge this year. Companies that give perks to employees, they give you referral benefits and dollars to two employees to retain them and recruit them. Those have all been huge trends and I think the ultimate winner in those are the job candidates as well as the employees that work there. It's high time that the pendulum swung to the employee and the worker. I think that it did that in a
big way in 2018.
Chad: Totally agree. Last but not least on my nice list is we talked about them already, so you knew it was coming, ZipRecruiter.
Joel: Zip?
Chad: Zip raising money, kicking R&D ass, and I bet they'll be hitting the enterprise side of the house very soon. ZipRecruiter loves podcast, so why the hell can't we love them? But I mean if you take a look at the process methodology of how Zip works, they are using matching in a very simplistic way behind the scenes. They started doing this on the SMB side of the house because SMB really has lower expectations than enterprise.
Chad: So, you post a job, it's very simple. The system identifies that the requirements in that job, goes into their huge database and sends out automated emails to activate those candidates and get them to you faster because they know that they're already either qualified or close to qualified to an extent.
Chad: They're getting to a model, a much faster model of sourcing than anybody else's at this point from an end-to-end standpoint, just the sourcing piece. So good on them. I see companies in 2019 trying to model after ZipRecruiter. If you are not trying to model after ZipRecruiter and you have job postings onto your site, you're a fucking dumb ass.
Joel: I love how Zip sits in this bubble zone of it's definitely not Google or Microsoft or LinkedIn. It's climbed its way above the tier of the Monsters, the Dices, the CareerBuilders and it sort of resides in my mind with Indeed as this sort of are they going to punch through or are they going to fade back into the ether of where the other old friend guys are. For me 2019 is going to be really interesting to see where ZipRecruiter goes from here.
Joel: I agree. The enterprise solution is just going to happen. It just has to happen and can they penetrate the markets that you'd normally think of as now I guess Google and LinkedIn? Can they go beyond, "Hey I need to fill a waiter position at my restaurant this week," to "Hey, I'm going to staff up my entire IT department with ZipRecruiter?"
Joel: So I agree. ZipRecruiter would make my nice list. I knew they were going to be on yours because you drink the Kool-Aid as much as I do LinkedIn, so I left them out. So definitely agree with ZipRecruiter. My final nice list recipient goes to Slack. Yeah, I kind of threw an audible on you there.
Chad: Do tell.
Joel: Slack it's just the most potentially interesting company in our space. Microsoft has listed them as a now competitor which don't think anyone ever would've thought that this sort of enterprise messaging system would become a competitor. But I see so much potential in Slack and what they been able to do in raising money, penetrating the markets, client acquisition, global growth. It's already out they're going other than IPO next year.
Joel: An IPO will give the money to go after those acquisitions to maybe by ZipRecruiter or make a big splash in terms of the employment space. But I'm just saying that they're so prime and they've had such a great year and they're such a newbie on the scene still that are newbie on the scene that I had to just put them on my nice list because I think we're going to see really, really cool stuff from Slack as they go public and go into next year.
Chad: Good to go. Well why don't you start out the naughty list? So I got to start out the Nice List.
Joel: Naughty list.
Chad: Naughty.
Joel: This is what everyone has been waiting for. No one cares about the nice list. Number one with a bullet on my nice list or naught list, excuse me, was job scams. Good lord, okay. These scams have been around forever before the Internet of course, but the Internet has supercharge these folks.
Joel: Jobs have always been historically a place where scammers sort of hide in the shadows because people who are unemployed are very susceptible to getting scammed. They want to believe that they have a new job. They want to believe that they have an opportunity and scammers really come out in droves.
Joel: I think that 2018 for whatever reason was a much bigger year than usual for scam artists. I don't know if this is the growth of the Internet or what, but we had star jobs was a story that we covered. This was a four-month report by AIM Group that uncovered a site that was leveraging legitimate job postings and backfill from I guess ZipRecruiter was one, who knows who else they were using.
Joel: But when people applied, they got funneled into mortgage debt information, marital information, just really deep stuff that they shouldn't have to give for a job. Then once they submitted their information, they were bombarded by emails and text messaging through 10 digit numbers that kept changing, so they couldn't opt out of it easily. That was bad news.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Better Business Bureau had their 12 scams of Christmas posted recently and the seasonal jobs were top of the list. Again because it's the holidays. People are short of money. They're spending too much money. They're running up credit card debt. They're looking for new jobs, new opportunities. Obviously the work at home, the gig stuff is also an opening for scams.
Joel: Better Business Bureau highlighted veterans as susceptible more than most. You as a veteran I'm sure can appreciate that. You get folks that served their country. They have spouses that put of a lot of sacrifice to serve our country. These people aren't getting hired as they should. So, they're looking at opportunities that are off the roadmap and are getting targeted by scammers. My naughty list number one is scammers, man. I wish you folks would find something better to do than screw people over.
Chad: Fucking assholes, man. Mess with the old people, now messing with veterans. I mean just the targets, it's ridiculous man. It'll piss you off. All right. My first naughty list. Get ready.
Joel: I'm ready.
Chad: Any company using Tinder for Jobs. This thing, like you've said earlier, just won't go away.
Joel: Dating does not equate to job seeking.
Chad: It does not. Just because you can swipe means nothing. It's funny like
because we just did a firing squad with Tilr and Carisa did a good job but it was funny because she had to push in there that yeah, we're kind of the Tinder for Jobs. I'm like oh, now you just went too fucking far. It seems like people want to put those, these buzzwords, AI, machine learning, block chain, Tinder for Jobs and guys I'm going to make it incredibly simple for you. Don't fucking do it.
Chad: eHarmony couldn't even get eHarmony for jobs to work. How you think Tinder for fucking jobs is going to work? It's not. On my naughty list, all you assholes using Tinder for Jobs in any sales field.
Joel: Yeah. I'll add that Bumble, one of the more popular dating sites apparently out there launched Bumblebees quite a while ago and they've I guess fallen flat on their face as well. You don't hear much from them. If you go look at Monsters reviews on their mobile app, people do not like swiping left and right for job postings.
Chad: No.
Joel: Yeah, don't do it. We're still getting startups that are pimping themselves as Tinder for Jobs.
Chad: A lot of these startups coming into the space and they just get slapped in the face with "Yeah, asshole, getting a job is not like going on a date."
Joel: Yes, very naughty, very naughty. Number two on my list is Dice. Man which was sort of highlighted by the fact that GitHub was acquired for $7 billion I think. That should have been Dice. Dice should be GitHub and the fact that they missed out on those opportunities is really tough to swallow for them, but really naughty in terms of where I'm coming from.
Joel: They brought in a new CEO. We've mentioned Art previously on the show here who won't come and be interviewed by us which is there but yeah, we're a real show. We get real CEOs on the show. We'll be tough on you but we're not total assholes. So he won't come on the show. Their earnings are down. They've left Europe for the most part.
Joel: The first earnings call for Art, he talked about getting the site up to speed or more modernized site, more user-friendly site that they would offer. If you got to the site now, it's pretty much the same thing. You still see the banner ads, the skyscrapers, the 460 by 60s, the old stuff that just sucks. I didn't even see backfill when I did searches. So. the jobs are pretty sparse.
Joel: They're really pushing the sourcing thing and the staffing staff, but man, Dice man, what a bummer. A total naughty list recipient this year. I hope they turn around next year but 2018 was a bad year for Dice.
Chad: Well, hearing all that, no wonder Art is hiding in the corner with his thumb in his mouth for goodness sakes. On my number two naughty list, I'll have to say, is Cambridge Analytica. Delay, deny, deflect, and then this newest information that Netflix and Spotify had access to our direct messages on Facebook.
Chad: Facebook has been incredibly naughty this year, not just from the standpoint of knowing what was has been going on, but not fixing it and then lying about it. So, they've had millions eject out of Facebook just because of the trust issue. It's not looking good. Do I see Facebook tanking tomorrow? No, but if this continues Zack it's going to very hard for him to stay at the top of that pyramid.
Joel: You think so?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I'll add that in terms of AI space, I think it takes their eye off the ball for employment because if they have these really big societal issues to think about and take care of, they're probably not that concerned about beating up on Craigslist and becoming the new SMB's provider of choice. From my standpoint, the naughtiness goes into not only what you just highlighted, but it's probably going to fall into the employment side and not being as innovative as we see Google and LinkedIn being going into next year.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah.
Joel: All right. Well, my final naughty list recipient goes to really robots and not the digital robots, but the actual scare the hell out of me robots. I'll highlight number one, Tanguay unbiased. I don't know if I'm saying that right. We've talked about these guys. They may see us in Lisbon.
Joel: We may actually get interviewed by this thing, iRobot from the Will Smith movie and the Barbie hairstyle like think that your daughter had to burst off and just styles its hair. It just sits there and there's a digital face and you can pick different faces and this thing interviews people. Like that is so scary to me. If I walked in an interview and saw a robot questioning me, I'd really like freak out. If this is the future that we're looking at, it's really scary. I think the stuff that if you look at Boston or Boston-
Chad: Dynamics.
Joel: ... Dynamics, that's some scary shit. Robots that can open doors, can fire guns, can jump 10 feet in the air. That's frightening. I'll bring up the whole Circa 2118 book, which highlights a very dystopian scary future. In interviewing Peter, we talked about warfare, we talked about policing folks and building walls. It's just very frightening. The whole robot trend for me gets a big naughty.
Chad: Thinking Robocop, thinking-
Joel: Terminator.
Chad: Sophia, that right.
Joel: Sophia, yeah.
Chad: And then Terminator and then also Black Mirror. There was this one episode on Black Mirror like the Boston Dynamics dogs were hunting humans. It's like yeah. If you were to get scared about this kind of shit, it's out there. It shivers down my Circa 2118 looking back. Last but not least.
Joel: Last but not least.
Chad: Naughty list, everybody saw this coming. It started happening the first part of this year. So first there was doubling paying click stealing. So clicks on jobs were not going to your website, they were staying on the site and then raising prices 30+%. Staffing policy which is kicking the organic and sent our friend Tim Sackett into Indeed jail. Another policy for Talents Networks saying that look, if you have a talent network and you force individuals to go through and I register through a talent network, we won't allow you to use Indeed.
Joel: And they stole your sweater idea.
Chad: And that motherfucker stole my sweater idea. All of these things are evil genius ideas just so you know, but evil naughty Indeed is my big naughty for 2018.
Joel: What else is there to say? Indeed get your shit together. Be nice. Play with Google for Jobs. I want to see that in 2019.
Chad: No. I do not want to see that.
Joel: All right, man. Well, damn that took way longer than I thought it won't. Dude, here's to 2018. It was a great year. Let's rip it up again in 2019 and unless you have something to add, I'm out.
Chad: We're out.
Cole: I'm Cole Cheesman, it rhymes with Joel Cheesman, so my dad can easily remember who I am. Thanks for listening to my dad and his follically-challenged friend Chad. Make sure you subscribe to this show on iTunes, Google, 8-track cassette tapes or wherever you enjoy the podcast. Be sure to support our sponsors because if you don't I angry feel like when I'm angry.
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