What a week.
- Millennials need to get freak-nasty or we go extinct,
- Natty Light beer needs partiers, and much, much more.
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 & Cheese Podcast.
Joel: The Sowashes are back from their European vacation. What's up, Clark? And we're ready to do this weekly show thing. Welcome to the Chad & Cheese Podcast, HR's most global weekly roundup of new news and opinion from the world of recruiting. I'm Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash.
Joel: Did you learn any Portuguese while you were there?
Chad: I did not, but I did learn that is nothing like fucking Spanish.
Joel: On this week's show, millennials need to put down the Xbox controllers and grab their real joysticks, CareerBuilder loses another VP in our rumors segment, and we get serious about facials. Grab a Natty Light and hone those party skills, kids. We'll be right back after this word from JobAdX.
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Joel: I'm pretty bitter that I go to Lisbon the same time you do. While I'm there, it's rainy, it's cloudy, it's a little cool. The second I leave, the sun comes out, it becomes 80 some degrees, and you're there for about another three, four days. So I hope you had a good time, asshole.
Chad: It was gorgeous. Yeah, so we were, a little time in Lisbon, went to Sintra, went to Porto, stayed a couple of days, a few days in Porto. Dude, it was so awesome, and yeah, I'm sorry you didn't get to share all the wonderful sunshine, but we drank a ton of wine for you and I also brought back by request exactly what you were looking for, a very good port wine. Yes, you're welcome.
Joel: Yeah. We give a lot of shit to each other, but deep down, there's feelings.
Chad: There's feelings.
Joel: By the way, it's notable that your wife, who's very picky about where she travels and where she wants to live in retirement has chosen Lisbon, I guess Portugal, as a top three retirement destination. So for those of you kids out there looking to get out of wherever you are, Portugal might be a place to check out.
Chad: Yeah. TAtech Europe did more than just bring us to Portugal. It might be a retirement place. You never know.
Joel: Julie needs a new blog or something. Like Julie picks for retirement, where to retire and where not to retire.
Chad: That's a good call. Also, Isabel from JobAdX. She was the awesome Portugal trip advisor, so thanks, Isabel, because she really hooked us up on places to go check out while we were there.
Joel: Isabel may be my favorite millennial. It isn't saying much, but she is a walking trip advisor.
Chad: Isn't your wife a millennial? Wait a minute.
Joel: No. No. Barely not, but yeah. Yes, I married so young from where I sit.
Chad: Shout to Alex Gotoi I know I'm fucking that up, from Bucharest. He is spreading the Chad and Cheese love. Alex, you spread it man! Spread it! Spread that love!
Joel: Spread it wide, Alex.
Chad: That's the way I like it.
Joel: Spread it far and wide, baby. Yeah, he recommended us and actually, in his tweet recommendation or LinkedIn, wherever it was, called us inspirational, which makes me a little bit leery of his mind, but hey.
Chad: I love it.
Joel: Spread that love, Alex. Good stuff.
Chad: And we are.
Joel: VideoMyJob shout out. If you haven't seen the DEMOpocalypse with the kids there, Kristen and Steven, that's well worth your time. Interesting product. Video is the thing all the kids are doing, apparently 80% of the internet by 20-something will all be video, so you gotta get on board. Check out the VideoMyJob DEMOpocalypse.
Chad: Yep, and also we'll be pushing out audio from RECex thanks to Stephen O'Donnell and the team over at MyJobViddy. That's an interesting name. We'll be putting out some great content that we had from the stage of RECex. So that was a
good time when we got there, even though I was late.
Joel: We will not be publishing the RECxxx audio, though. Apparently that's
a little bit too much for even our audience.
Chad: Is that when you called everyone eurotrash when you stepped on the stage? That was fun.
Feffer: Such an asshole.
Joel: Yeah, that was good.
Chad: Big applause and shout out to our deathmatch competitor.
Joel: So solid.
Chad: Eric from Mya, Elin from Tengai, Adam from Candidate.ID, and I didn't said AI though.
Joel: You almost did a Joel there.
Chad: Yeah, I know. Andreea from Opening.io. Four awesome, I mean awesome fucking pitches all the way around. Awesome products all the way around, and we actually had, the judges had to have an extra bottle of wine. This was a hard one to judge, so in the next few weeks, we'll be putting out Death Match podcast where you can listen to every single pitch, so look for that.
Joel: Are we okay revealing the winner?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: In this weeks show?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: So Opening.io was our champion, but as Chad mentioned, it took a lot more wine than we thought to help our judgment, which is a little bit counteractive, counterintuitive. Anyway, but so we came up with opening.io. Ireland won this world cup, I guess, and very impressive outing, all of our startups, companies were great. I love how they go above and beyond the performance bar with Viking costumes and kilts and music intros. It was a great event, and looking forward to doing it again in Austin in September.
Chad: Yes, very, very excited to do that, and my last shout out before we get to the t-shirts selfies piece is Matt Alder. He was obviously Chad and Cheesed during one of his interviews at TAtech. My bad, Matt. Sorry about that, brother.
Joel: He got Chad and Cheesed.
Chad: You got Chad and Cheesed.
Joel: Can I throw in our Philly trip in the mixture?
Chad: Oh yeah.
Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly.
Joel: So yeah, we're heading to Philly next week-
Chad: Next week. Get your tickets.
Joel: Chad's overnighting. I can only handle a day trip to Philly, so I'm not going to stick around, but big fan base in Philly. Looking forward to seeing those knuckleheads and putting on a show for those guys.
Chad: That's right. Week after that, we're in Boston for Jobcase live, so we're doing a live gig at Jobcase, and they're taking us to a ballgame, so that's pretty cool. After that, Transform Live, which again is going to be in Boston. It's a SmashFly joint. We're going to be talking about recruitment marketing, and Joel and I are just going to talk about blowing shit up like recruitment marketing.
Joel: Yeah, the Cleveland Indians are rumored to be in Boston that day.
Chad: That's right.
Joel: For the game, so I need to iron my Jim Thome jersey so I can talk shit to Bostonians when I'm out there. That'll be fun.
Chad: Last on the events, we are on the main stage. We're actually headlining RecFest in London, and literally guys, it's our job to break shit when we get there. So yeah, look for that. It's going to be, we're going to have a blast. The bar opens at noon. I think we take the stage at 4:00 or after 4:00, so everybody's going to be perfectly intoxicated for our fucking show.
Joel: I still like Yanks Gone Wild, even though you don't. Anyway.
Chad: That is...
Joel: It's beautiful.
Chad: You should be, it should be Wanks Gone Wild.
Joel: Yeah, we are definitely Wanks Gone Wild and speaking of...
Chad: Just keep checking out our social feeds, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Got all these people, Tim [Meehan 00:09:48], Jamie Leonard, the whole Tengai team and Chad and Cheese t-shirts. Now, if you want one of these things, you gotta be at one of these events that we're showing up. So come get a t-shirt if we have any left.
Joel: The t-shirt thing is out of control.
Chad: It is fucking awesome.
Joel: I got a kind of bow down to you on this one, because you were the lightning rod to get this t-shirt thing up and running and done, and I thought, no one would wear our t-shirts. I'm glad I was wrong. Our t-shirts are flooding the webs, the interwebs, and it's very humbling and very cool.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: So keep those pics coming.
Chad: Big, big shout out to Emissary.ai who paid for the fucking t-shirts. If you're not texting in your recruiting, you're dumb. Go to Emissary.ai.
Joel: Which I think is their new ad that they're putting together. If you're not texting and recruiting, you're dumb.
Chad: That's right. Emissary.ai. Hit it.
Joel: All right, can we talk about facials now?
Chad: That'd be great.
Joel: I agree. I agree. Okay, so we've been talking and not at length, necessarily, but we've touched on the whole facial recognition thing, how it's pretty scary as hell, and fortunately, San Francisco has banned it. So San Francisco becomes first city to bar police from using facial recognition. It won't be the last city to consider a similar law, I'm sure. So on the face, we like this. However, you, for example, love the quickie check in at airports. There's a company called Clear that uses facial recognition to check you into flights and whatnot pretty quickly. So it's a little bit of a double edged sword, I guess, in that it sounds good to say, we're going to ban facial recognition, but then it also hinders maybe innovation in companies that want to use that to make our lives better.
Chad: I think from our standpoint, you have to have the choice for something like this to an extent. So facial recognition could definitely help find missing children, identify and catch criminals, and then obviously also, as you talked about with Clear, speed up travel. We actually saw this during our trip home from Portugal. We went through Amsterdam, and they have facial recognition, pretty much little lines that are set up where you put in your passport, the camera comes down, identifies you, and then you're through and they stamp your shit. They don't ask you any questions or anything like that. It's just boom, boom, boom, and it was really fast. It freaked Julie out, because she hates this facial recognition stuff. We saw it happening in, I believe it was Detroit with one of the Delta terminals, and she was like, oh shit. I don't want to do that.
Chad: Then here we are. She's already in line for this thing in Amsterdam, and she went through it and it worked pretty well. So yeah, I think it could help in those areas, but there are these different liberties and privacies and freedoms that we should be able to opt into. If we want to do something like that, I think paying a company like Clear or going through a TSA precheck or something of that nature where you're opting into it, it makes sense. You shouldn't have to do something like that, unless, again, it's in the case of a missing child or trying to catch a criminal. That's something entirely different, but it is, go figure and I hate this term, it's a fucking slippery slope on being able to utilize something like this. All I have to do is say, The Patriot Act. That was a fucking slippery slope, dude, and they were doing shit to our calls, listening in on calls and all of this other stuff because-
Joel: Freedom.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Safety, security.
Chad: Yeah, well, it was a release of our freedoms. It was a tamping down of our freedoms so that we could have security, or at least the prospect.
Joel: Oppression's best friend is fear, Chad, like you know.
Chad: Yeah, oh dude. As we know, we should know, because it's coming from the top of our fucking country now. That's all it is fucking fear mongering constantly. You can't stop it.
Joel: I love the paranoia of your wife. No DNA test, no facial recognition. She's filed off her fingerprints so they can't track her that way. Brian Hofer, Executive Director of Privacy Advocacy, the group called Secure Justice said in the article, quote, "Facial surveillance technology is a huge legal and civil liberties risk due to its significant error rate, and it will be worse when it becomes perfectly accurate mass surveillance, tracking us as we move about our daily lives."
Chad: Yes. So what is the price for misidentification? And this is happening more with black and brown people than it is for white people. That's what the statistics show. So yeah, I think it's nice and it's easy if you're going through and you're paying for a Clear program, but it's much different when the police have this tool in their tool belt, but yet it's still high misidentification rates for some of our population. That's, I mean, and we already have a high incarceration rate of black and brown people as it is. So how the fuck does this help us there?
Joel: We've been going beyond the whole criminal element. Are you comfortable seeing advertisements based on your face? If your face is recognized to work at a certain company, do you start seeing advertisements promoting jobs at your competitors and other opportunities and maybe bashing the company that you currently work for? This is a real thing. I mean, I've talked to sourcing companies that are testing out facial recognition solutions where based on whatever database they're using, can track who's wearing what and what company portraits they've been in or what social media settings or what conferences they're going to, and then based, recruiting or sourcing those folks on that.
Joel: So this is a real thing beyond criminal and doing bad stuff. This is probably going to impact you in many ways of your life, in ways that you may not want to, so-
Chad: Yeah, and Facebook has a hell of an algorithm right now because you post a photo into your feed and it automatically knows who's in the god damn photo because we trained the algorithm to notice who we are and who our friends are. So we're training these algorithms and who knows what Facebook is going to do with this long term?
Joel: Yeah, you won't be able to go into an airport or a shopping center or a
downtown area with a lot of people and not be impacted by facial recognition technology.
Chad: Nope.
Joel: More than likely.
Chad: No.
Joel: So anyway, facials are all over the place, and we'll be keeping a tab on this for everybody.
Chad: They're not going anywhere.
Joel: Speaking of facials, LinkedIn has some new updates this week, I guess. It's a nice little mix of job seeker enhancements as well as some employer enhancements, although frankly, none of them is real crazy new for job seekers. You got new instant alerts, the job's home is redesigned for more mobile friendly user experience in applying for jobs. Maybe most interestingly they've made salary insights someone that everyone on LinkedIn can use. It used to be a premium feature, so now everyone can now view salaries on LinkedIn in the job postings. So that's sort of new. Launching soon, they're going to have skill assessments. Skill assessments give members the ability to assess, validate, and showcase their skills to more effectively stand out. They will also serve as a tool for recruiters and hiring managers to reliably vet candidates.
Joel: For hiring managers, new recruiters, and jobs, they're making the core talent product even smarter. Launch brings together LinkedIn Jobs Recruiter and Pipeline Builder into a single platform. We kind of saw this coming and will continue to see it coming. Then they added screening questions, which is not a new thing for most sites. Indeed launched their screening questions a couple years ago, I think. But anyway, with screening questions, hiring managers can collect yes/no information about applicants to review with a clear understanding of the needs like if you're comfortable with the commute or confirming your educational level. This also helps recruiters and job seekers more quickly know if they're a fit.
Chad: Yeah. All these things should've been done a while ago, but so they're being done now, so that's awesome.
Joel: At least LinkedIn now is copying job sites instead of just copying Facebook. At least now they're copying actual features that mean something to recruiters and-
Chad: Yeah, it starts like they're starting to give a shit or something. So yeah, I like the whole getting to the job faster for the job seeker if they want to be able to opt into getting to feeds of jobs faster because, yeah, I mean, again it's all about timing. So that's awesome, but also on the getting to the talent faster, they're trying to get their tools pretty much up to snuff with some of the shit, some of the startups that are out there for goodness sakes who can help identify talent in seconds as opposed to taking hours, minutes or hours. So good for them. It's good that they're starting to catch up.
Joel: Also to their credit, I think that they probably understand better than most that winning the quick apply battle on Google for jobs and being a quick way for people to apply, I've already got my LinkedIn account. It's easy to apply to these jobs. That's going to help them in their optimization of Google for jobs over time as well as condensing the jobs app that they got rid of and now they're sort of bringing it all into one house. I think that's smart. I mean, I don't think it's a huge deal, but I think over time, being mobile, being the ability to quickly apply to jobs is going to help them on a lot of fronts.
Chad: Yeah, I think Google will penalize them for too easy an apply process just from the standpoint of being able to scatter and smatter and splatter employees with, or employers, with profiles. I mean, it's all about being able to get the right type of individuals to the job to be able to apply. So if they're applying some really good first and foremost content, and then the opportunity to get the employer what they want, then yes, but if it just turns into this mess of applying for everything and making it too god damn easy to apply for everything, that might backfire on them.
Joel: That's an interesting take, because it's obvious to say, yeah, Google's going to reward the companies where people apply. It's very interesting to say, it's sort of a thought 180 for them because they're used to people buying stuff and conversions are good and applications are good. That's all good stuff. It would take a change of attitude and understanding of our space to say too many applies done quickly could actually penalize your SEO. Yeah, that's an interesting take.
Chad: Well, I mean spam, right? I mean, they could be seeing the spam, so therefore, that's something that they deal with already as it is, but also remember who would be Google's biggest adversary in this space? Possibly Microsoft/LinkedIn, so it could give them a very good reason to say, smack them down from this practice.
Joel: I certainly agree with that, although they'll never publicly come out
and say-
Chad: Well, no.
Joel: We're banning LinkedIn jobs or downgrading them because of our competition with Microsoft.
Chad: Yeah, they would never say that. It would just happen. It's kind of like when they rolled out Panda and everybody's SEO got fucked.
Joel: Now I'm waiting to see LinkedIn get on the whole chatbot, prescreen these folks through a conversation as opposed to a questionnaire, however they're doing it now. I think that's an evolution that needs to happen.
Chad: Yeah, I would've gotten excited about something like that if they would've actually acquired an organization or partnered with an organization to make that happen, but I mean, being able to do these basic screening types of element? I mean, so fucking what? That shit's been happening for well over a decade. Good for you. It's glad that you caught up, but it's just, big fucking deal.
Joel: By the way, while we're talking about technology, we have another live view from the ladder's innovation lab. Keep up the good work, ladders. Love you.
Chad: Good job, Mark.
Joel: All right, speaking of companies going in the shitter, CareerBuilder in our rumor segment here this week, Michael [Piermont 00:23:23], I'm probably saying that incorrect. Piermont, Piermat-
Chad: Piermont.
Joel: Dude is an entrepreneur according to his LinkedIn profile, and he somehow thought it was a good idea to join CareerBuilder as their VP of Global Growth. He backtracked on that pretty quickly. After only 10 months, he has allegedly left the company. So Michael, man, go back to that entrepreneur thing, because that's a much better gig than CareerBuilder at this point.
Chad: Yeah. CareerBuilder right now, I would believe, is just a grinder. I mean seriously, just it'll grind you up and spit you the fuck out. We're seeing that from industry veterans, right? Who I'm sure have pretty big price tags on their head to keep them around, been in the industry for a while or they've been at CareerBuilder for a while. So it makes sense to just kind of nudge them out or hit the eject button, get rid of them, but we just haven't seen much come from CareerBuilder that they haven't been doing for years, and not doing a great job of for years, right? So none of this surprises me.
Joel: No, it does not strike me as a place for entrepreneurial type folks at all. This is a churn and burn grind business now. We'll see how it goes when augmented reality, and I can point my phone downtown and see who's hiring. That's the height of innovation now. This is not an entrepreneurial friendly company at this point.
Chad: Yeah, when Monster and Monster Studios is actually outshining what you're doing, you really have to take a couple of fucking steps back and rethink your strategy.
Joel: Well, you know who doesn't have to rethink their strategy and is always on top of the height of innovation is Chad and Cheese sponsor, Canvas. Let's hear a little bit from them and talk Slack wars, nothing but Slack wars. You like my Bill Murray? That's nice.
Chad: No.
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Joel: Slack aims to be the most important software company in the world, says their CEO in a recent article in TechCrunch. Well, it sounds a lot like Ian from ZipRecruiter. Maybe those guys eat lunch together or go bowling.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: But it sounds familiar.
Chad: I think it's funny that, I mean, Stewart Butterfield, they created Slack internally to be able to message each other, but that was not the core product they were trying to build. The core product they were trying to build sucks and nobody was buying into it, so they're like, fuck. We gotta sell something, and this is very, very much how Stewart Butterfield has built companies throughout the years. Same thing happened with Flickr. Flickr was not the product that they were building. They were just trying to get capital, and it was like, oh hey. Let's build this and try to sell this and get some capital out of it.
Chad: So it's interesting that he has such a great vision for something that wasn't even created as a visionary product, at all, but they're looking to go public in June, valued at 7 billion, 10 million users in 150+ countries, more than 600,000 organizations that are using, but only 88,000 of those businesses are actually on the paid plan. 130 million in revenue, which is up like 60, almost 70% from Q1 in 2018. So I mean, Slack isn't losing a ton of cash like Uber is, but it's also not close to profitability either. So this is an interesting story because everybody hates email, much like everybody hates their ATS, but yet this just feels like a different form of email. I mean seriously, what the fuck different is it? I mean, how's it different?
Joel: Well, to me, it feels like you may or may not remember when GoPro went public.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: GoPro, when they went public, they weren't touting the fact that they were a camera that you could take on your bike and skydiving or whatever, right? They were promoting it as a platform, an entertainment platform, like they'd have these channels and whatever. So Wall Street didn't buy it, right? They understood the whole hardware video thing, like phones are whatever are catching up to GoPro. They understood that, and then you had Snapchat go public, and they didn't talk about disappearing text messages and photos. They were talking about the camera and the hardware and being an entertain.
Joel: So to me, Slack coming out saying, we want to be the most important software platform in the world tells me that they understand that the whole messaging thing is getting commoditized, that they can't really compete in that market long term, and that they have to pimp themselves as this monolithic software company. I'm not quite buying it. I think long term, this thing is going to get commoditized. It's going to get eaten up by Microsoft and others, and they're just sort of playing the game to get as much out of Wall Street as they can until the party's over.
Chad: So really, and using Slack, and I've used Slack. What makes it more productive? It's a method of communication. Maybe it's more instant?
Joel: You don't have to weed through spam. To me, that's the, I don't have to weed through marketing messages in my inbox or spam. I can have pretty direct access to people that I want to have direct access to. That's the main value in my opinion.
Chad: But here's the thing, and it's actually a quote from Alicia Liu, who's a software programmer. By lowering the barrier to initiate communication, the hidden side effect is that Slack has the quiet capacity to exponentially increase communication overhead, resulting in much more voluminous, lower quality communications. So many people, it's so easy to get into this and just kind of communicate that there's too fucking much of it. It's one of the things that I've noticed in using Slack. You get into a group and you start obviously chatting and sharing documents and so on and so forth, and there's just too fucking much of it.
Joel: Yeah, and note the fact that with the app store, you can send stickers to people. You can send good, attaboys and good jobs to people, so yeah. There's a growing amount of clutter in Slack that is making it not much better than email.
Chad: Yeah, so you're talking about the spam. These are the people that you want to talk to. I totally get it, but there's so much shit that's in there, and think of it from this standpoint. I'm actually, there's a group that I'm in that has around 10 people. So the conversation that's happening with those 10 people as everybody's trying to provide their points, right? It is almost impossible to keep up with unless you're sitting there and just watching the screen, and then you have to scroll back up, scroll, I mean, it's just, it is ridiculously crazy. So I think our want to get away from email so badly is going to send us into a direction that is not going to make us more productive.
Joel: There are so many ways to communicate with people. It was kind of, I feel a little old saying this, but it was kind of nice when email was the only way, because you and me, we're all Facebook messenger. But most people with me, it's text messaging, email for people that I'm not as close to. I've got LinkedIn messages from people that are professional based. I've got Twitter DMs and whatever going on there, Instagram, I've got to add to the mix now too because I'm getting people to contact me that way. So it's like I kind of long for the days and I feel like the old classified advertisers who, remember when it was just the newspaper that you could look for jobs. Now it's like, I kind of long for the days when I could just go to my one inbox and see messages from everybody. Of course, marketers fuck that up, but that was kind of a nice little system, and email still works.
Chad: Yeah. Gmail kicks a lot of the marketing shit out for me into different tabs.
Joel: True.
Chad: So it's not as bad anymore, but let's kind of, let's switch the conversation for a second. Microsoft Teams is hot in this space, and they see Slack as their number one competitor. They have over 500,000 organizations using Teams. They're focusing their attention not just on the organizations that are using the dynamics suite, but also focusing its attention on non-desk workers, which means it's going to be more mobile.
Joel: Yeah, I mean, I think we both believe some combination of Microsoft and Google will rule the corporate everything, and messaging and corporate communications is going to be part of that. I don't, it's hard for me to see a world where Slack can catch up on the software side and have docs and everything that goes on in there quicker than Microsoft can kick Slack's ass with something like Teams. By the way, Facebook's Slack competitor has 2 million paying users, apparently, or 2 million users. So they're going to get hit on a lot of sides. We've talked about open source solutions that are free for people to use, like messaging in and of itself is a commodity. Slack, I think, is going to have a hard time competing in a world where they're being squeezed with free messaging on one side or cheap versus the big 800 pound gorillas like Microsoft providing messaging to their already existent customer base.
Chad: Then you ask yourself, does Facebook Workplace even have a chance, and is it too late? I mean, shit, June 20 is when Slack's supposed to go IPO. For somebody to reach into that and offer a shit ton of cash. I mean I don't know. I don't know, or just let it sit there and wither on the vine as you try to steal market share from it
because it doesn't have the infrastructure that Microsoft does.
Joel: Yeah, and I feel, I mean, sorry, Facebook has been derailed in their employment initiatives because of the whole privacy thing and just what they're going through on a much bigger scale. I know we've talked about them integrating with ATSs for job postings and things like that, but I think they've been much, their attention is elsewhere because of privacy issue and being sued and GDPR and all that good stuff. So I think right now, it's Microsoft and Google's race to lose and Slack is a wannabe at this point.
Chad: Yeah, I think Facebook's a wannabe and they never really focused on the workspace, the Workplace or the workspace, workplace enough in the first place. I mean, just in saying that they're integrating into, I think they named one applicant tracking system or maybe two? Okay, big fucking deal. I mean that is table stakes for all of these types of organizations. Tell me what the next big piece of strategy you're getting ready to launch. The integration's, that shouldn't be it. Again, that's table stakes.
Joel: Yeah, it's just a matter of getting as many ATSs and direct jobs as possible into their database, and then they have a messaging system. They could do prescreening questions. They could do chatbots.
Chad: They could.
Joel: They could do scheduling for small businesses to interview people. They could do all that. I just don't think it's on their radar compared to the other stuff they got going on. By the way, younger people aren't using Facebook, so that's a bigger problem then, they can have all the jobs in the world, but if young people that are desired by small businesses aren't on Facebook, that becomes a real problem. So they got to fix that first.
Chad: Yeah, and Facebook, one of the biggest advantages for a company to use Facebook was the ability to exactly target your ads, and they're doing away with a lot of that shit. So I mean, they're doing away with a lot of the pros on one of the reasons why I'd want to fucking use you in the first place.
Joel: Yeah, that's a great point. You can't even advertise jobs now basically on Facebook.
Chad: Yeah, not worth a shit.
Joel: And their advertising can't target, and okay. All right, so we're clearly bearish on Slack today and Facebook today and bullish on Microsoft and Google.
Chad: It continues.
Joel: It continues. All right. Well, what isn't continuing is people getting their freak on and having babies in the US. A story this week talked about too few babies being born in the US. Fewer than 4 million babies were born this year, provisional data shows, the smallest number in over three decades with potentially lasting effects on the future workforce. The declining birth figures, which have fallen for 10 of the last 11 years suggest that without immigrants, build that wall people, the future workforce may be too small to support the growing number of retirees. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Some analysts expect the birth rate to rise again, however, as the millennia cohort moves through their 30s. So basically, millennials get to getting on and get some babies in this country so we can survive.
Chad: Again, it's about us understanding first and foremost, we have how many individuals that are still living with mom and day because they're trying to pay their college debt? I mean this is a much bigger problem, broad scope for our nation and culture, and then obviously globally. But then they're not getting their freak on because they live in, he's living in mom and dad's basement. Okay, that's not sexy, so yeah, I get that. Or they're not looking to actually marry because again, they're worried more about debt than anything else, and then again, the whole build the wall bullshit. I mean, we need people to do these fucking jobs people. The robots aren't here yet. We need people to actually do those jobs. We need to be understanding about all of these things.
Joel: Well, frankly, to expect the millennials to bail us out on this is frightening in and of itself-
Chad: Not going to happen.
Joel: So I wouldn't put much stock in that. What we need is people still want to come to the US, not just the southern border but in terms of students that come here and then we kick them out. If you get a degree in this country, it should be like rubber stamp, you're a citizen, and the fact that we have people getting educated in this country and then leaving and feeling not welcomed is just really stupid. So to me, it's not let's count on the millennials to get freaky deaky. It's a matter of, let's make it easier for smart people and people who want to work into this country so we can move forward and successful in the new century and centuries beyond.
Chad: We have individuals who have H1B visas who they're making it harder for them to actually stay in the country. It's like, okay, these individuals, we are training up to do these jobs. Why in the hell after having somebody in the country for three years or two years, who the hell? Why would we get rid of them? We need them. That's why they're here in the first place.
Joel: Here's your PhD. Congratulations. Oh by the way, here's your American citizenship. Welcome to the country.
Chad: Yeah. Too fucking easy.
Joel: By the way, when the sex robots come, there's going to be no procreation, so immigration is really the only way that we're going to survive the future.
Chad: Thank god. Humans are dumb.
Joel: All right, let's get a quick word from Sovren and we'll talk money and beer.
Chad: Excellent.
Joel: What's better than that?
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Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly.
Chad: You'll get to see that famous Ed from Philly if you go to Recruit Philly next, is it next week? Yeah, next week.
Joel: 23rd. May 23 in Philly. Come out and see us and Ed, too.
Chad: Yeah, you'll get to see Ed.
Joel: All right, so money continues to flow into our space. It surprises me every day. So I don't have the numbers in front of me. I think you may or may not-
Chad: I do.
Joel: We'll just wing it if not. So SeekOut, who, by the way if you haven't heard our interview with their founder and CEO, recommend doing that. They got 6 million-ish?
Chad: They did, 6 million.
Joel: Did they? So we have ENGAGE Talent, 2 million, I think?
Chad: 3.5.
Joel: Okay, that's close. Carrot was the big one I think with a lot-
Chad: Carrot got the big cash, 28 million.
Joel: Yeah, and that's a serious, they raised quite a bit of money, and I frankly hear very little about them or know little about them. It's more of an education thing than a recruiting thing. Then HeyJobs, my favorite name of the four that we're talking about out of Berlin raised a little cash.
Chad: 12 million, yep. Yep, so let's go to the top and start with SeekOut, real quick. Anoop Gupta, awesome, incredibly smart guy. He was actually an advisor direct to Bill Gates. SeekOut is incredibly interesting because they interface with LinkedIn and GitHub. They have some incredibly powerful search tools. The big question here is, what happens if the GitHubs of the world or the LinkedIns of the world shut him down, right? Shut him off, and that's one of the things that you always have to worry about if you are a platform where your success is predicated on somebody else's success and/or allowing you to have access. So that's interesting, but 6 million, good for them.
Joel: The whole sourcing space is challenged to me right now. We're hearing rumors about Entelo, who I guess you could call one of the granddaddies in this space. They can't sell to anybody. No one wants to buy that. Our buddies at HiringSolved, they released Prophet version two point whatever. It's free, it's as good as probably anything on the market. The whole sourcing automation thing and will people actually search for folks? I just, the sourcing model as it is is really challenged, and I have no doubt that the gang at SeekOut is really smart, but when you look at privacy rules and what is just happening in sourcing and automation, I hope they have a plan B that they're working on to take the company to the next level, because in their current iteration, it's going to be really challenging to be successful long term.
Chad: Yeah, I think these platforms are the most exciting to me, just because they take sourcing to an entirely new level of efficiencies. But the thing is, and again, my opinion, just some advice, if you are not working with bigger platforms to become the brain of their platform and then looking for obviously acquisition, then you're probably going to lose. If you don't have people in your organization who are deeply rooted in partnerships and alliances on the revenue side of the house and you're trying to go just direct to clients, onesie, twosie clients, it's going to be a hard slog all the way through.
Chad: I think unfortunately, in some cases like the Brilents of the world and whatnot, they're not from this industry. Very, incredibly smart people, Facebook, data scientists or even Entelo, just incredibly smart people, but a lot of it has to do with that revenue strategy right out of the gate. That isn't always the first thing that they focus on. It's always about the tech, which I totally get it, but that tech has to be fueled by something, and that fuel is going to be cash.
Joel: Yeah. Remember our buddy Johnny Campbell who says, "98% of recruiting or sourcing should be automated today."
Chad: Yeah, the future. No reason why it shouldn't.
Joel: All right. Our last story. We're finishing with beer as we should probably every show. Natty Light-
Chad: Nasty.
Joel: Easily one of the worst beers in the world-
Chad: Horrible.
Joel: Is looking for an intern or has an internship opportunity for you to hone your party skills and, I don't know, party and drink and spread the Natty Light gospel, I guess.
Chad: Yep. You have to be Natty qualified and this means that you will be attending sporting events, do guerrilla marketing, travel to cool places, manage their social media channels, and do a weekly blog. I think this is just pure genius from Natty Light-
Joel: Don't forget the line item, design some sick swag that gives consumers all the feels. That's actual part of the job description.
Chad: Exactly, man. I love it, dude, and the thing is, I think so Natty Light is just known for shit beer. They're not known for a great company to work for, and I think this is just this so tongue in cheek, it's really funny and I wish companies would think more about what their brand really is and yeah. It's funny to say, I want somebody to go party, but at the end of the day, you're creating a product which really does that. It gives, it makes people happy.
Joel: Not only is laughter a great medicine, it's also a great recruiting tactic.
Chad: God damn.
Joel: You failed to mention the qualifications, which I think are great. So aside from being 21 years old, you have to be outgoing, but not annoying. There is a fine line. Be able to spell protractor, and just be cool. Good luck in your search there, Natty Light. You're bound to find some winners in your resume stack.
Chad: And you're definitely bound to find some losers.
Joel: Speaking of losers, we out.
Chad: We out.
Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. Thanks for listening to my dad, the Chad, and his buddy Cheese. This has been the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show. Be sure to check out our sponsors because their money goes to my college fund. For more, visit chadcheese.com.
Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly.