What happens when you put together two meatheads with public school educations and a chief economist with degrees from Yale and Harvard? God help us, we're about to find out. The boys have a nice chat with Josh Wright of iCIMS about the gig economy and the future of work.
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Joel: All right, all right, all right. What's up, everybody? The IQ of this show is going to get to all-time highs today. We're talking to Josh Wright, Chief Economist with iCIMS. My man worked at Bloomberg, the Federal Reserve. He's got degrees from Harvard, Yale.
Chad: He's got chops. He's got chops, dude.
Joel: He's probably very embarrassed to be on this podcast. Josh, welcome to the show. How are you?
Josh: It's great to be with you. I make it a policy not to believe any of my own press or hype.
Joel: So, what did I miss about you that our audience should know?
Josh: Gee, you covered a lot of the highlights. One interesting thing is, before I got into economics, I actually used to work in international peacekeeping missions.
Chad: Oh. That's pretty cool.
Josh: So, a fun fact about me.
Joel: Way to make me feel even worse about myself, Josh. Thanks.
Chad: That's awesome.
Josh: There's a metaphor in there. You know, putting out fires, dealing with chaos, rapid change.
Joel: In my spare time, I save the rhinoceros population of Uganda.
Chad: Ran into a burning building, saved children, many children.
Josh: Okay, yeah.
Chad: No, that's awesome. that's awesome. So Josh, I'm gonna throw this right out to you, right off the bat. iCIMS has a chief economist on staff. Why does iCIMS need a chief economist on staff? We don't really see chief economists really in our industry, so why was it so important for iCIMS to do that?
Josh: Well, one thing you're pointing out is that it's a great point of differentiation. It makes us different from other companies. But also, as the company has grown very rapidly in the last five or 10 years, we have accumulated a large amount of data, but they need domain knowledge. They needed an expert to help them interpret that data. We've got a lot of great technologists here, but not people who have spent the amount of time that I have in trying to understand the macro economy and the labor market from a really high level, and can connect the dots from the trends within the industry, and the trends within the clients' activity and their hiring operations to broader trends in the macro economy, the unemployment rate, that kind of stuff.
Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). We have the BLS for that. Do you work with the BLS? Are you providing BLS data, kind of like gap data that they're really not seeing in the market?
Josh: Funny you should ask about that. We actually are in conversation with the BLS about possibly providing them supplementary data, to increase the geographic granularity of some of their reports, or doing some kind of study on ... It could be a running supplement or it could be a one-off study, to help them understand what's going on out there. Because like a lot of areas of the government, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics is under a lot of funding constraints, and they know that they're not likely to see ... Their needs are growing, but they're not likely to see their funds rise commensurate with that.
Joel: Right. We know iCIMS as an applicant tracking solution. They're certainly getting into other things. What we're gonna talk about today is your recent survey on the myths and realities of, I guess the gig economy, or the contingent workforce. Why is iCIMS sort of positioned to talk about this as an ATS, and why did you guys pick this topic to cover?
Josh: Well, without getting too much into the marketing of it, iCIMS has really been expanding the last couple of years from just an applicant tracking system, to being a whole platform for all things talent acquisition. Hiring an economist was part of that, to take a broader view of what are the needs of organizations that are really large, and have really thorny hiring problems. One of the problems out there is how do you understand your total labor expense, your total labor spend, your total human capital acquisition? And understanding what's going on in the gig economy is a key part of that.
Joel: And based on the survey, you guys are gonna get more into providing services for hiring and managing contingent workforces, although you're probably not prepared to talk about that.
Josh: Like I said, I've gone about as far as I can go in the marketing for the product road map. I've got some wonderful colleagues that I can point you towards.
Joel: Fair enough, Josh.
Chad: Cool. Well, let's jump into the report. I mean, we're talking myths versus realities of the gig economy. So, myth number one. Let's have some conversation around this. People usually start taking gigs or contingent work as a short-term solution, to get a foot in the door while they're looking for a full-time job. So, it's not really something they want to do. They're just trying to get their foot in the door. What's the reality behind that?
Josh: Well, the reality is that a lot of people prefer contingent work and gigs. They prefer the flexibility of that kind of job, and in fact, a lot of them have been doing it for years. We found that 40% have been doing it for more than five years, in fact. When you look at the other 60%, it breaks up about 20% each for one to three years and three to five years, and less than that. So, there are a lot of experienced workers out there who actually value having this kind of arrangement, and it works to their advantage.
Josh: We kind of think of the gig economy as being it's all about Uber, and people getting jobs from apps. And a lot of them are blue collar, maybe they're down on their luck, or they've got some special need that they're trying to fill in the short term. But actually, we found that there are a lot of people for whom this is a viable career option.
Chad: Well, I found it interesting that only 15% said they wanted to land a full-time job.
Josh: That's right.
Chad: They weren't even looking for a full-time job.
Josh: No. Now, it's important to remember that there's a lot of fragmentation in this market. You know, these people, there's a lot of diversity in the people who take gig work. In the world of finance, we call this sometimes a barbell structure. You've got people at the top end of the gig economy, and people at the lower end of the gig economy. So, there are these advantaged individuals who've got the knowledge and they've got the skills. They've got the networks and the experience to be able to basically, maybe not write their own check, but arrange their work life around their overall life. Those are the people at the top end.
Chad: Right.
Josh: They're the ones who are not looking for any change. They're saying, "This is suiting me. Great." But then there are the people at the lower end, where they are kind of holding on by their fingertips, and it is more of a precarious position. That's one of the things that gets glossed over in the popular media discussions. Initially, there was a lot of hype about, "The gig economy's so great. Silicon Valley is ... " You know, "It's another big win for revolutionizing our lifestyle." And now we're in the backlash period, where you've got ... The California Supreme Court has come out with a case talking about worker's rights. People are concerned about a whole lot of things, at some of these companies.
Josh: But what's getting obscured there is that there's this other, underlying trend, this underlying portion of the labor market, where things have been humming right along. It has been doing that for a while, actually. For some of these people, it's a very stable situation. They've been pursuing it, like I said, for more than five years.
Chad: Okay. Okay.
Joel: Let's dig in a little bit to the segmentation of this. You talk about educated females in their mid-career being really apt to be in the gig economy. You talk about millennials in the survey. Break down sort of ages and geographic regions, maybe. Break this down into, who exactly is the gig economy?
Josh: Yeah. The gig economy tends to be either older workers, who in some sense have made it, have arrived. They may not have some kind of golden parachute situation, but they're able to set themselves up for something that they like. Those people tend to be mid-40s or older. And then you've got the younger people, who are in their 20s and even younger, and they're just trying to find something to get by on, basically. Those older people tend to be knowledge workers. They're doing white collar kind of work that tends to be creative. They're doing technology and professional services. A pretty wide variety of work, but distinctly white collar. And then you've got the people who are doing transportation and blue collar kind of work.
Joel: So, would it be your contention that women in their mid-career are high because of pregnancy, or would it be something else?
Josh: It's not so much people in their 30s. That's there, but it's more like women and men who are further along in their career. Kind of past that hump stage, you might say. Yeah, it's more middle-aged and up.
Joel: Okay. Because I would have guessed, women get pregnant, they look for alternative work options, and join the gig economy. But you're saying that's not the case.
Chad: Joel is all about stereotypes. Let's just throw that out there real quick. Go ahead.
Josh: First of all, it happens, but second of all, this is the beauty of research. This is why we conduct this kind of study, is to find out whether or not our preconceptions are right or not. And here, we find that the story is a little bit more complex. The other thing is, we have to think carefully about the different kinds of arrangements. So contingent work and gig work, it's not only a great variety of different people and a great variety of different kinds of occupations, but also a great variety of different kinds of contract structures.
Josh: If you look at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics ... Without boring you all with too many definitions here ... they break it out into independent workers, on-call workers, temps, subcontractors. And you find a lot of variety within that. So the independent contractors, the people who are kind of masters of their own destiny, those actually tend to be men. So, overall you've got women in this space, but they are not necessarily in the positions that are as privileged and as advantaged as these middle-aged and older men.
Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joel: I also noticed that the highest number of gig workers tend to have some college. Without having stereotypical comments to follow that, why would most of the workers be some college as opposed to none, or Bachelor's degree or higher?
Josh: Well, when you add it all up, if you've got some college or more ... You know, you've completed college, or you get an advanced degree ... that's over two-thirds of the people who have some kind of gig work as their primary job. That's 76%, versus 60% for the U.S. population as a whole. So these people are more educated, and that correlates with doing the knowledge work. You've gotta have the education. You've gotta have the knowledge, in order to be able to access that kind of work.
Joel: But with some college, are they dropping out to do gig work?
Josh: Some of the younger people might. A lot of the younger people are actually still enrolled in school. So, maybe they dropped out. Maybe they're switching over to an Associate's degree. Maybe they're getting some kind of vocational certification. But, they're up-skilling themselves.
Chad: The contingent work is another myth. Contingent work is stressful, because gig workers never know whether their next paycheck is coming from. Right? So, what is the big reason why people actually choose contingent work? The myth says it's stressful, because you don't know where your next paycheck's coming from. But what's the reality there?
Josh: Well, the reality, in terms of the upside, is that it's very clear that flexibility was the number one attribute. We asked people, you know, "What's your top reason for taking a gig job?" And more flexible work hours was cited by 64% of respondents. For every other answer that was given to them as an option, it was less than 30%. So, by more than two times the amount ... You know, the two times higher rate ... flexibility of work hours was cited as the upside.
Josh: On the downside, yes, there were people who were concerned about less job stability, but that was still less than half, and actually 60%, a little bit more than half, they focused more on the issue of benefits. So, a lack of ... You don't necessarily get the retirement benefits. You don't necessarily get the healthcare benefits. Unemployment, disability, vacation, paid sick leave, all the rest.
Joel: Are those issues changing, and do you see government taking a greater role in helping contingent workers with those issues like healthcare?
Josh: Well, I think we ... For the federal government, I don't see a lot happening in D.C. right now in these areas. We've got gridlock over the argument of what should be happening with healthcare, who should provide that. We do have this theory that maybe the states will be laboratories, and to some extent that's happening. But that's very much up in the air, what the government is going to do. I think for employers as well as for workers, the question is, what are you going to work out as an arrangement, purely within the private sector?
Josh: And I think if you're going out there and you're trying to get the top talent, one of the things that you can do, in looking at this report, is think about, "Okay. Some people really like these arrangements. Who are those people, and how do they compare to the people I'm trying to bring into my workforce? Who are the people that I want to hire? If I can replicate some of these aspects, because flexibility is one of the top ones. If I can provide more flexibility to the workers to whom that appeals, and the workers that I care about, then that's gonna be a win. That's an extra value proposition. That gives me a competitive edge."
Chad: Now, is this showing that the workforce is really evolving though, and they're really focusing on that flexibility option? And that if companies would get out of the time clock punching 1950s, that they might actually look more toward FTE positions, as opposed to these more flexible jobs that they're in now, these contingent jobs that they're in now?
Josh: Well, I don't think it's changing in terms of what people want. I think most people tend to want to work to live, rather than live to work, although you do have those high-end grinders and achievers who are gonna always be striving. The question is, what are the norms in our workplaces, and what's the relative power of the workers, in order to kind of get better arrangements for themselves? When you look back at the late '90s, we had a very tight labor market. You had the tech boom. And suddenly you had all these young people graduating with degrees in computer science, and developing coding skills through other means. They were in the position to demand more from employers. That had to do with money, but it also had to do with the things that just made their life at work a little bit better. That's where business casual comes from, and how it spread to many different workplaces, outside of just the tech industry.
Josh: I think one of the things that we're going to see now, in this tight labor market ... I mean, the continued strains and pulls towards people with hard programming, and tech and data science skills, is ... They're gonna want to accommodate those workers with more flexible work schedules. The question is how much that diffuses out to affect the rest of us, those of us who don't have as strong of a bargaining position, kind of one by one.
Joel: Josh, I've talked about on the show how I think a downturn in the economy will be a good thing for sites like Upwork or Uber, sites that are platforms to have gig work. Would you agree with that contention? If another great recession happens, are we gonna see a flood of people flock to the contingent workforce, and assuming that we do, will they stay there when the economy gets better?
Josh: I'd say yes to the first question, and probably not to the second question. The reality is that we don't have ... Despite the great work that we've done in this survey, we don't have a complete picture of how the gig economy works. But the current belief amongst the experts in the field, is that this is more cyclical than we believed just a couple of years ago. What we do know ... We've got a long history of this ... is that part-time work is a very cyclical phenomenon. By which I mean, if we go into a recession, then yes. Employers don't hire people full-time as much, because they're more uncertain about the outlook, so they hire them for just part-time positions. Following that logic, they're very likely to go out and hire people more on a contingent basis, in addition to a part-time basis, when we get into a recession and in the aftermath.
Josh: However, because we don't have a complete time series, we don't have a full history of data looking at just contingent work, we don't actually have the proof to support that. That's why it's important for places like iCIMS to go out and fund studies, promote the conversation, so that we can all learn more about this issue, and keep it top of mind as we go through the economic cycle. And whatever else the years may bring, we know to keep our eye on this. Because you're right. It's going to be very interesting, what happens when we have a slowdown, if and when we have a slowdown, how employers will respond.
Chad: Let's take a look at the economy now. I mean, yeah. When it slows down, I can definitely see it's much easier, because you can pay as you go. But right now, it's hard to get people in the first place. It's hard to get people to actually finish the projects you have going on. Doesn't it make sense for employers now, to be able to change their scheme, and stop looking for FTEs? Because they're not out there, number one. And number two, there is talent that's out there. Finding a marketing professional, I know I can go to Communo. It's a marketplace for marketing individuals. I can get my projects done. And from your research, it actually shows that many of these positions are indefinite contracts, anyway. So I can have them on pretty much as an FTE, without the benefits, and they can still be on indefinitely.
Josh: Yeah. In a tight labor market, it's all about getting creative. You know, can you find the pockets of talent that other people haven't found, and can you appeal to them?
Chad: Yeah.
Josh: So, I definitely think that it makes sense to go to all kinds of alternative sources. Whether they are different websites, whether they are different apps, and other kinds of providers that specialize in different fields, or specialize just in contract labor in general, even if it's not within a specific profession or domain. Those are definitely important tools.
Josh: Also, taking a look at different populations. The reality is that there continue to be a lot of disparities amongst different social groups in our society. It's very clear. You just take a look at the unemployment rate. There was a story in the Wall Street Journal, just a week ago, talking about how this tight labor market has led to lower unemployment for people with disabilities. They had a couple of really interesting stories about people on the autism spectrum. Who, employers were so desperate, they had found ways to accommodate the needs of this population, and were able to exploit the strengths of this population.
Joel: Josh, I'm gonna try to get sort of geeky here on you a bit. I know you're an economist, so I think I can ask it in a way that you'll have a good answer. As the world becomes a single marketplace, right? Some are like Upwork. You have developers from all over the world, competing for work all over the world. What do you think that does to the standard of living, for one, in the third order developing countries, as well as the standard of living for developed countries like our own? And particularly in our country, will people gradually have to take less money, because the number of people who do that job worldwide are accessible? Or do you think the lower economies come up to our standard of living?
Josh: It's a great question, and in many ways it's one of the great questions of our time.
Chad: Yes.
Josh: Yes. Way to go. Score. One of the things that we have to think about here is, yes. There's a simple logic of, when you've got more people in the talent pool, then you're going to have more competition. The question is, how do you respond to that? Really, it's about differentiation. I don't think it's a question of simply accepting passively some fate of, there's a larger labor pool, and now you're going to get paid less. The question is, what are you going to do in that environment to differentiate yourself? That's you as an individual worker, and that's us as a society.
Josh: It's not impossible to see the writing on the wall all the time. You can't know it all the time, but you certainly can see some trends, and make some educated guesses. And when you see where the trend lines head, what are you going to do to support the people around you, in developing what I refer to as labor market literacy? You know, you don't want to be in a position of trying to compete with garment workers in Bangladesh. That's not a great career move right now, to take an extreme example.
Josh: Moving into the area of data science, whether or not you're actually a data scientist, that's not necessarily the game, because that might not be your greatest strong suit. But if you're really good at ... Well, I'll give you a great example, my sister. She's got a degree in photography and fine arts. Doesn't sound very technical, but she figured out that if she just added a little bit of cognitive psychology, and a little bit of tech savvy, and a little bit of data science ... And she's certainly not a data scientist, by any stretch of the imagination ... But with combining those skills, she's been able to reinvent herself with a great career in user experience design, the way humans interact with visual information, and the way they interact with computers. So, that's a really smart move. Taking the strength that she has in creativity and the arts, and the way humans respond to different kinds of visuals, and combining it with just enough technical know-how to really engage with where the economy is headed.
Chad: So, let's take that question, and kind of compound it a little bit. Andela is an organization that's funded by Al Gore's foundation, and they're actually training developers in Africa right now, because of the lack of developers that we have here. They're actually paying them a much larger wage than normal in that population, which is great, obviously, for that community. But once again, once the cycle turns, we have more competition that we've actually created, outside the United States. Why aren't we taking these same types of programs and actually instituting them into our current workforce, to be able to skill them up, to ensure that we do have the labor market literacy that we need?
Josh: It's a really great question. The reality is that we ... Our best understanding is that the private sector is starting to step up and do that. I continue to hear about anecdotal evidence, to suggest that employers are reaching to find those alternative pools of labor, provide extra training to up-skill the workers, and create the workforce that they need. That's a very positive development. And to the extent that the government is not stepping up to do this kind of work, it's really important that the private sector do that. And if you want to compete for talent, and if you want to get your products and your services out to market faster than the other person, then it's really important to think about that as part of your strategy, for not only how you manage people and manage talent, but how you actually develop what you're offering to your customers and clients.
Chad: Now, is this really on the government to do, though? I mean, because the people are actually going to work for these organizations in the first place, and the organizations are making the money off the people's backs. So why do we always look to the government to actually solve this, when in most cases, corporate America knows what they need? They know the skills, and they know how to actually train those skills.
Why are we always looking to give them a handout?
Josh: Well, we're getting a little bit abreast of economics here, and into political science. It's a question for us as citizens, whether or not we want the government to provide that. As an economist, I can tell you about what the market forces tend towards, and what that's gonna drive, and also something about what the role of the government could be. But ultimately, it's a kind of ethical, political choice, what we want to demand as voters.
Joel: Automation is a topic on our show all the time. Who's gonna be out, who's gonna be replaced by robots and bots, et cetera. I'm curious. In the gig economy, are there any gigs that are safe from being automated? Or, are there any current full-time jobs that can't be gig jobs or contingent jobs? Teachers, doctors, et cetera, do you see
those safe from becoming gigs?
Josh: Okay. For the first question, what can and can't be automated, I feel like that is a trap. Because someone's gonna play this clip back in 20 years and say, "We figured it out."
Chad: It's all a trap.
Josh: You know, my basic thought is to not underestimate human ingenuity, and not underestimating human ingenuity means not underestimating what the robots that we build will someday be able to do. But we do have a good sense of what kinds of things are tough for robots. Manual dexterity is really tough for them. Creativity and empathy are really tough for them. We do see the rise of chat bots, and all kinds of actual physical robots, who are doing increasingly sophisticated things. But those are areas where you can think about, there's a human advantage.
Josh: In terms of what can't be made contingent, in principle, there's nothing that couldn't be made contingent. I think the reality though, is that there's a lot of value in having a long-term relationship. Whether you are a teacher, like you mentioned, who needs to have some kind of continuity with a student, in order to judge the progress and figure out, "What does this person need to achieve their learning goals?" Or for an organization. You can get by with a lot of people on the periphery of an organization, potentially, but you're always going to need some people in the core, who have some institutional memory, who've got the relationships, and know how to drive the change, rather than just contract out for some of the tasks.
Chad: Well, I'd like to point to one of the parts of your research that actually demonstrates that Gen X ... Go figure ... are the ones who are doing all the goddamn work. 35 hours a week, Gen X. Boomers are obviously on their way out. They're doing just as much hours-wise as the millennials. Lazy asses. And Gen Z's, you're looking at 23 hours. I mean, they're really just getting started. They should be doing more, though. Is there any more depth that you can provide us, when it comes to really just looking at the different segments of the population from an age standpoint? And what should we see, especially with the millennials being such a large population, what do you think we'll see
in the gig era? Will they grow, or will they just turn into boomers?
Joel: I'm guessing Josh is a millennial. Am I right on that?
Josh: Yeah. I'm cusp-y, just in context.
Chad: He's cusp-y.
Josh: I think there's a lot of power in numbers, and as the millennials move through the workforce, they're going to change it. They've come of age with different expectations from prior generations. We might not see the economy itself get gig-ified, or the workforce get gig-ified, but I think that the full-time jobs that millennials want will be more gig-like. And so, it's more like the full-time positions are going to end up looking a little bit more like gigs, than actually as much of the work being transformed into gigs. That's my current view.
Joel: This was a pretty extensive survey. You guys surveyed 1,000 Americans who held at least one contingent job as their primary or secondary income, from also the companies that you guys work with. What stood out to you, or what surprised you most from the survey that you did?
Josh: That is a tough question, because there was a lot that was surprising in here. I think probably just how strong that top end of the market was. 69% to 81%, depending on how you measure it, focused in knowledge work, and how many of these contracts were open-ended. You know, 59% had totally open-ended contracts. 69% were six months or longer. So, that means less than a third were working on contracts that were less than six months. And for me, one of the big takeaways of this report is that there's an alternative brass ring out there. I mentioned this idea of labor market literacy before, and I don't think that people realize that this is something to aim for. It's not just about the corner office. It's about the home office, too.
Josh: And I think if more people understood that that was a possible and attractive option, they could make better decisions, to set themselves up for that someday. It's not for everyone, but it's gonna be out there for some people, and probably more people than we realize. And the takeaway is that you've got to invest in your skills and your network, and take a long range, long-term view on how that's going to set you up for it, if you are attracted to that kind of lifestyle and that kind of work/life situation. What are the ingredients, and how are you going to acquire them over time?
Josh: Because, as the old saying goes, I may be cusp-y towards the millennial, but I still remember the old ad that said, "You, too, can be a winner at the game of life." And if you want to win at this particular game, this survey tells you something about what it's going to take. You need to have the people who are going to be your sources of projects in the future, because so many of these jobs are found through referrals. We found that it was usually three or more contracts for jobs being held at a time, and you've gotta have someone else in the hopper, in case one of those contracts finally comes to a conclusion. Someone else to give you your next job.
Chad: That was more than double of a rate. I mean, referrals were 65%. Job boards was number two, at only 32%. So referrals, more than double that of job boards, which I thought was pretty amazing.
Joel: It's not what you know, it's who you know.
Josh: Exactly. That truth hasn't changed. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Another point of comparison there is finding this kind of contingent work through online apps, or just apps on your phone, only 17%. So, really isn't about Uber.
Chad: Well, I know, but Uber is coming out with an expanded app called Uber Works, which is going to do more than just drivers. Then there's Tiller that's out there, Wonolo, Communo for marketing, 99 Designs, Freelancer, Fiverr, Upwork. I mean, it's growing. And from our standpoint, Josh ... I mean, we are constantly looking at tech, but also the workforce as well, to be able to see which tech actually makes sense. And most of these platforms, we are very bullish on. Would you be, as well?
Joel: That was Chad's final attempt to sound smarter than the guy with the Harvard degree, by the way.
Chad: It never works.
Josh: Very good attempt. Let me see if I can wriggle free here. As an economist, I'm not an equity analyst. I don't take positions on particular companies. But I can say that with the long term trends, as I see it, clearly we're going through a technological shift here. There's a distinction between how much of the work is changing, versus the way that work is found. It's hard to imagine that we're not gonna see a continued shift towards using these applications, because so many things are moving online. They've already been moving online for two decades now. So, there's no reason not to expect that this is going to continue. This shift is going to continue here, as well. The question is, from an economist's perspective, what's the natural end state, or what's the end game here? Is it going to be a market that's going to have two or three top providers, and you've got to figure out who those are? Or is it going to be a lot of different specialists, and you'll actually have a dozen or two dozen really successful apps?
Josh: But certainly, it seems like a really attractive space to go and try and solve that problem. You know, if you can come up with a better answer to that, then you can make a better investment decision, and you're the one who's gonna make the money.
Chad: There it is.
Joel: And with that, Josh, we thank you for your time. Josh, if someone wants to know more about you, your organization, or find the survey, where should they go?
Josh: You can go to www.iCIMS.com. If you add a slash, hiring dash insights, you'll find my blog and a lot of other great material. We've also got a monthly hiring indicator that you can check out that's found there, that gives you the latest job trends according to our data, based on over 4,000 customers, four million jobs, and over 75 million job applications a year. And you can find me on Twitter @jwrightstuff. That's Wright like the brothers, @jwrightstuff.
Joel: You are a great marketer. Susan Vitale would be proud.
Chad: There it is.
Joel: Chad, we out.
Chad: We out.
Stella: Hi. This is Stella Cheesman. Thanks for listening to the Cheese and Chad Podcast, or at least that's what I call it. Anyway, make sure you subscribe on iTunes. that sill Android thingy or wherever you listen to podcasts. And be sure to give buckets of money to our sponsors, otherwise I may be forced to take that coal mining job I saw on Monster.com. We out.
Chad: Okay, okay, okay, okay. Before we go, remember when I asked you about the whole reflex and check your text messages thing?
Joel: Yeah, you know all about reflexes. And then I brilliantly tied it to text messages, 97% open rate. Then I elegantly, elegantly tied it to a better experience for your candidates. Don't laugh, Chad. I can be elegant. Can't I?
Chad: Whatever, man. I know it's redundant. You already heard about Text2Hire, but you're still not using Text2Hire from Nexxt.
Joel: What?
Chad: I know, man.
Joel: Come on, man.
Chad: Since advertising takes repetition to soak in, I just thought I'd remind you again, this is all by elegant design. It's all about Text2Hire, and it's all about Nexxt.
Joel: And elegant design. So go to ChadCheese.com, click on the Nexxt logo, and get 25 ... Yeah, I said 25 percent off your first Text2Hire campaign.
Chad: Woo.
Joel: Engage better. Use Text2Hire from Nexxt. 2 Xs.
Chad: Boo yah.