Talkin’ ‘Bad Touch’ w/ Andy Katz, COO Nexxt

What do you get when you bring 65 years of industry experience under one podcast? Press play and find out, as the boys chat with Nexxt’s 25-year veteran Andy Katz. There will be beer on this Nexxt exclusive.

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Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark, buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.

Chad: Today on the Chad and Cheese Podcast, we have Andy Katz.

Joel: Lovely day.

Chad: Andrew Katz now, we're sitting on the porch here at ...

Joel: Indianapolis icon-

Chad: The Veranda-

Joel: ... Harry & Izzy's.

Chad: Harry & Izzy's.

Joel: On the north side.

Chad: I have a bourbon on the rocks. What do you have, Andy?

Andy: I have some Ketel One and seven.

Chad: Ketel One and seven, is it ...

Andy: It's noon somewhere. It's 5:00 in London.

Chad: It's just about noon. It's almost noon here.

Joel: A pint of zombie dust over here.

Chad: Yeah, zombie ... I had my fill of zombie dust last night, man. That shit is awesome.

Joel: You look a little zombie-esque.

Chad: I love it.

Joel: After a night of zombie dust.

Andy: You cleaned out the bar of the zombie dust.

Chad: Yeah, I love it, dude. So we have Andy Katz here-

Joel: It's a good thing this isn't on video.

Chad: And I've known Andy for a few years. How long have we known each other?

Andy: Probably about 20.

Chad: Yeah, probably about 20 years.

Andy: Just a few.

Joel: Did he have hair back then?

Chad: No.

Andy: No, Chad did not have hair, but he definitely looked younger.

Joel: Oh, ouch.

Chad: That hurt, wow.

Joel: That does hurt.

Andy: Sorry about that.

Chad: So for all these new to the industry people, Andy, tell us a little bit about you.

Andy: Sure. I've been in the human capital space for about 25 years. I started my career at Bernard Hodes group, also known as Symphony Talent-

Joel: Were you selling newspaper ads?

Andy: I was selling newspaper ads.

Joel: Nice.

Andy: I was that dinosaur that woke up on a Sunday when I lived in the city and went to a ... There was a newspaper store that got papers from all over the country. I'd go there every Sunday, buy about 40 newspapers, and make sure they didn't fuck up my ad lines and made sure my display ads weren't upside down.

Joel: So for the kids out there, what would have been the most you would have

made on a display ad in a newspaper back then?

Andy: Oof, you talk about full-time-

Joel: That was big money, right?

Andy: ... full-page ads in the New York Times, they were 100 grand a pop.

Chad: Holy shit.

Andy: And they were ordering them for three weeks in a row because they got a 50% discount on the third week. So I mean, those were the days where-

Joel: Cash money, boy.

Andy: ... the agencies were printing money.

Chad: Dude.

Andy: At newspaper, printing money.

Chad: They were printing fucking money.

Andy: Yeah. Boston Globe, I remember the days they had 150 full-page ads to start out their classified.

Chad: So talk about how that whole trend, and you seeing it, how that came to be with the Internet, all these crazy job boards? Because I mean, that just turned everything on its fucking ear, right?

Andy: It did, it did. And it didn't happen overnight. I could, not to keep promoting Hodes or Symphony, but we were one of the first with the job board too, Career Mosaic. That and Monster Board were the first two job boards out there, OCC.

Chad: Yes, OCC.

Joel: eSPAN, don't forget eSPAN.

Chad: Nobody remembers eSPAN, Joel.

Andy: No, Joel, sorry. Yeah, that's in the morgue.

Joel: NAS remembers eSPAN. They're still around, dammit.

Andy: So yeah, it wasn't a change overnight. Some newspapers made the change sooner than later, others-

Joel: And most did both, right? I mean, very few would just say, "Let's just go online."

Andy: Right.

Joel: It was doing both. So probably for a while-

Andy: Absolutely.

Joel: You were making a lot more money, 'cause they were doing split ads-

Andy: We were, there were ad-ons. It was go take out a full page ad and we'll put this job up on this website called Monster Board or Career Mosaic that no one ever heard of back in 1994, '95-

Chad: Oh, fuck yeah.

Andy: For an ad-on for 300 bucks onto your $100,000 ad, it made sense.

Joel: Nice.

Andy: It made sense.

Chad: That was too easy.

Andy: Yeah, it was an easy sell. And you know, between Monster and Career Builder at the beginning of time, they just took off and everything started moving over there. They both made good relationships with the newspapers and had more of an ecosystem behind them. So it was buy a newspaper ad, get an online posting for free or vice versa, and-

Joel: When did you see the writing on the wall? When did you say like, "Okay, this newspaper thing probably won't last."

Andy: Yeah.

Chad: When were newspaper reps saying, "Oh, fuck"?

Joel: When did you start seeing the gravy train drive away?

Andy: I would say, I'm going to go with early, early 2000. I think we made it through Y2K-

Joel: So the first recession, maybe?

Andy: Yeah, 2002, 2003, probably right around there.

Joel: Okay.

Andy: I think after the world actually continued to move forward when it should have blown up 'cause of Y2K, I think everybody was pretty much status quo the '98 to 2001 and make sure it all lived, and then starting in 2002, that's when job boards really propelled us into the future.

Joel: Yeah.

Chad: So that being said, that was an exciting moment. And Joel always, we always talk about how that was exciting as hell.

Andy: It was.

Chad: We were there, we were watching-

Joel: Superbowl ads.

Chad: And it's like, "Holy shit, dude," blimps, Superbowl ads-

Andy: I want to be a yes man.

Chad: Yeah, I want to be a yes man, that's right. Chimps, all that other shit.

Joel: I want to brown nose.

Chad: But is it not more exciting now? I mean, there's so much shit that's going on-

Andy: It is, it is.

Chad: So much money pouring into this goddamn industry.

Andy: Well, I think that's what people got scared of. They saw how do you take, and I'm being a little facetious with the 100,000 ads, they were there, but they weren't the norm.

Chad: Right.

Andy: But a $5,000 ad was extremely common, even if you were running a secretary ad. So ... And that's in major markets obviously where prices were high, so you know, we saw that, it was exciting, we were printing money, people didn't want to say, "How do I go from a $5,000 print ad to a $1,500 posting package?" And at the end of the day, if you look at it and you own the job board, you got 85% of the 1,500. If you were using a newspaper, you got 15% of that.

Chad: Right.

Andy: So if people really would have thought forward, they would have seen it all equals out, and the Internet is here to stay and it's going nowhere. So embrace it versus try to go around it. I mean, I think the same thing now is with programmatic. People think that's the next end all, be all, and it's extremely big piece of any puzzle, but, and we have to embrace it, it's not exactly the way job boards or agencies want to work, but it is one piece of the overall strategy.

Andy: So I think everything keeps morphing.

Chad: Why wouldn't agencies want that, though? Because I mean, from a complexity standpoint ...

Andy: Right.

Chad: The hiring companies are going to come to agencies when they don't understand shit.

Joel: It seems like agencies are more valuable now than ever.

Andy: the agencies, they're a wealth of information and extremely valuable, and I don't think it's agencies that are saying programmatic is the end all, be all also. It's the easy button right now. You could put all your jobs in one feed, distribute them to 10, 15, 20 places and let it be. But there's a lot more, and I'm not just speaking about at next, it's throughout the industry, you have text messaging, you have re-targeting, you have branding, you have all these other pieces of the puzzle that make up the whole hiring ecosystem, and to say that just one thing, I don't care if you say change my word from programmatic to a job posting or job posting to sending out text messages. One size doesn't fit all. You're not going to reach every audience with one medium.

Joel: And I think from where we're coming from, companies know they have to do these things. They know they have to be in programmatic. They know they need a chat bot.

Andy: Absolutely.

Joel: They know they need AI. But they don't really know what that means.

Chad: Yeah, or how.

Joel: And agencies seem to fill the void of like, let us help you understand-

Chad: They do.

Joel: And guide you through that. Are you seeing that as well?

Andy: Yeah, and they are valuable partners of ours. Without them, we wouldn't exist. So the agencies are ... They're our middleman between us and the customers or the client for lack of better words, and we're finding that even on the agency side, they're learning more and more every day 'cause again, it might be five, 10 years old, but in relation to the overall hiring ecosystem, it's relatively new. So we keep learning. I manage a huge part of Nexxt, I keep learning every day, I keep making us better, more efficient, offering better services to our job seekers and to our clients, and I think all the job boards out there are doing the same and all the agencies are embracing it and it's really about just having a whole arsenal of tools instead of just saying, "Here's one thing that works for everybody."

Chad: Are you seeing a big movement from duration-based ads to performance ads, or is that just kind of like trickling right now?

Andy: It's trickling. You still have some of the major players out there doing duration postings, and they're businesses. Sure, it's not where it was in 2007 or '8, but who's is, right? So they're still surviving, they're doing well off of them. I think it's slowly morphing from duration to performance. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're a client and you have $500, would you rather put it towards something that you don't know what the return you're going to get or would you rather say, "Okay, for $5,000, I'm pretty much guaranteed 100 apps"?

Chad: So why isn't it moving faster that way though? I would think-

Joel: Fear.

Chad: ... from the standpoint from an agency-

Joel: Don't like change.

Chad: From an agency though, from an agency-

Joel: True.

Chad: An agency can say, "Look," and that's why you have the agency there, is to be able to usher you into these new lands, even though we're still 10 years behind the marketing industry. Why aren't we seeing more of that? Because you would think that that push would happen on the agency side.

Andy: Well, I don't think you're seeing any new players come into this space making a duration posting, right?

Chad: Right, okay.

Andy: So everybody new is performance. You have a few legacies that are doing duration, and it works for them, and-

Chad: So it's withering is what you're saying.

Andy: It might be, and they're also morphing their businesses and other services to either compensate or move-

Joel: Acquisitions.

Andy: ... to performance, but it's one of those things I said earlier where not one size fits all, and duration postings still have a place. Sure, they're not where they were, again, 10 years ago, but they're still there now.

Chad: Well, and there's still newspaper ads, right?

Andy: And there's still newspaper ads.

Chad: So, you know, to say that duration posting-

Joel: What's a newspaper again?

Andy: That's that black-and-white thing you open up on Sundays.

Chad: Yeah, exactly, that-

Joel: What's your read on the consolidation that we're seeing in the agency business? So you have Shaker buying up Arland Group, you have Monster buying KRT, right?

Andy: CKR.

Joel: Or CKR, sorry.

Andy: Close.

Joel: Is that a healthy thing? What's your take on what's going on there?

Andy: Yeah, everybody loves competition. Competition validates you and you need different players for different ... Not everybody can handle a behemoth of a fortune 10 company, right? The smaller agencies might not be equipped, so they're going to handle maybe an SMB market. I'll say the same thing about job boards, I'll say the same thing about any of the CRM providers out there, talent community providers. There's a market for everybody. Now when you over saturate that market with too many players, that's when you spread yourselves too thin and nobody makes money except for the top three.

Andy: Where if you consolidate on making a number up from 20 down to 12, that's healthy. And consolidation is the crux of this entire country and economy forever, people always acquire and build and grow from there, same thing will happen with the smaller players.

Chad: So what about the UX side of the house? So candidate experience has always been a bitch. It's always sucked. But there's a lot of money that could prospectively be there to ensure that you're obviously getting the right talent, they're not ejecting before getting into that 20 minute application process into your ATS. So do you see a movement door down that path, or where does it go from a money standpoint? Where is the money moving?

Andy: I think you're right, the UX still sucks, but I'm going to keep going back to not the number of years, but in relative, it's still a newish technology and way of recruiting. When someone figures out truly how to make a mobile apply mobile, that's going to be one of the winners of this whole endgame, and they don't have to do it themselves. They can license out that technology to 20 other players. The biggest-

Chad: Didn't Indeed buy a mobile apply company?

Andy: I think they might have.

Chad: And they still haven't figured this shit out?

Andy: Because the difference is, you might be able to get it in on the front end, but getting it in through the back end of the ATS when you have 50 different ATSs that gather information differently and APIs are different, it's impossible to bring it all down to one common denominator to make you be able to apply to all of them. So you might be able to solve for the top three or four at one time, but the long tail's huge still now too.

Chad: Well, that's customized work though and that's money to be able to implement for like, somebody who has a Taleo and to be able to get it right. And I understand there's a shit ton of maintenance that has to happen on those APIs and so on and so forth-

Andy: Oh, yeah.

Chad: But still.

Andy: Every client's ATS is sort of configured differently, right?

Chad: Yeah.

Andy: If every Taleo client had the exact same Taleo set-up, you can build an API, you can build a functionality, you can get everything through a mobile. That's not the case.

Chad: No.

Andy: Once you have one client do any customization to it, you're kind of fucked. So I think that's what people need to solve for and I mean, there's a lot of smart ... Much smarter people out there than me, and they haven't figured it out yet, so.

Joel: So Nexxt offers a lot of services and solutions being in the industry for a long time, so you've seen things come and go. Five years from now of the new stuff, what are we still talking about? What are the big success stories in the future?

Andy: Sure, I think it is going to come down to performance marketing. Everything is going to be performance. People want to pay for what the value they're getting. You know, text messaging, again, that's going to keep growing.

Chad: I want to talk more about that.

Andy: Okay.

Chad: So let's put a pin in that, but keep going.

Andy: Yeah, so I will say the text messaging's huge. I think retargeting's huge. The bounce rates on client's websites from job seekers is huge.

Chad: Oh yeah.

Andy: And we don't know every single step of the way why. There are actually companies out there right now that are working on that to show you where the gaps are and why people are bouncing where they are and how to recapture them, but retargeting's huge. If you can drop a cookie on your user and you can know where in the process they dropped off, you can then retarget them at the right time with the right messaging.

Chad: But a lot of those cookies and the targeting and all that other fun stuff with GDPR and all these new regulations, new regulation was just put out yesterday-

Joel: Chrome.

Chad: About ...

Andy: What?

Joel: Chrome security on Google, they'll tell you how you're being followed, 'cause it's following you.

Chad: Yeah, all the stuff, new legislation just pushed in Illinois yesterday. Do we feel like we're going to be able to collect enough data to continue to do those things? 'Cause right now, it's still the Wild West.

Andy: Well, I think you have two ... Well, that was going to be my support to you, where GDPR is ... It's standardized across the European nations, right? Where in the U.S. we're not standardized, I mean, California has one set of rules, Indiana has one set of rules-

Chad: But don't you have to like, develop a program for like the hardest set of rules?

Andy: That's the way it should be, right. And then you have to have people opt in, double opt in, and then if you do that and you're in compliance, then you can drop your cookies. Every time you go onto a website, it's going to say, "We collect cookies. Are you okay with this?" If you accept it, then you know, and we can re-target it. So you know, you've got to go back-

Joel: Will employers be comfortable with that message when people go to their site? That'll be an interesting dilemma, right?

Andy: Well, let me ask you, have you ever left a site because it said it was collecting your cookies, or do you just go and clear your cookies out afterwards if you didn't like it?

Joel: No, but I'm not an HR person who doesn't want phone calls or messages from job seekers saying, "Why are you following me?" Or "How are you following me?"

Andy: Right, well-

Joel: That may not be the most comfortable conversation.

Andy: There's a stalking way of following somebody and then there's the way of re-targeting subtly.

Joel: But if I'm an HR person, do I want to explain that? I don't know.

Andy: I don't know. You know, you're talking about five years from now, right? Today, I'm agreeing with you. Five years from now-

Joel: Okay, keep going.

Andy: Again, the landscape changes. Right? So how do you reach the passive job seeker or the active one that maybe have interest but just didn't want to go through your 20 page application? But you have enough data on them from whatever pages you did collect, and say, "Damn, this person's a great candidate. How do I go back after them?"

Chad: So okay, I'm going to pivot back to texting, because you guys have how many-

Joel: You forgot virtual reality, by the way.

Chad: Oh, Jesus.

Andy: Augmented reality, [crosstalk 00:15:47]

Joel: Virtual reality.

Chad: He's still hanging on to Second Life like you wouldn't believe.

Joel: I'll-

Chad: So he's ...

Joel: I will be redeemed one day, trust me.

Andy: I heard MySpace is coming back, too.

Chad: And friends, sir, if you ever go to Second Life and you see a fairy unicorn, it's

Joel.

Joel: Shh, don't give away my identity.

Chad: So back to texting.

Joel: I'm the only one there.

Chad: Back to the texting side of the house. You guys have how many to date? You have like a database of like-

Andy: Almost 8 million.

Chad: 8 million? Okay.

Andy: 8 million opted in text messaging job seekers.

Chad: So text messaging is to me-

Joel: They were brilliant early on.

Chad: Fucking crazy.

Joel: By the way. Very early on, they had an opt in for resume postings to get text messages.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: And that's been a very profitable business for you 10 years later.

Chad: Well, when you see the returns on text-

Andy: Right.

Chad: ... responses, and that hasn't changed-

Andy: No, it's actually getting better.

Chad: Yeah, why-

Joel: Damn.

Chad: Why isn't every company doing texting? We nail this all the time.

Andy: Right.

Chad: It's like, if you're not texting when you're recruiting, you're fucking dumb. I just don't get it.

Andy: So I got to go back to slow to adopt, right? Five years from now, everybody's going to have some type of text messaging.

Chad: But everybody needs top talent now.

Andy: Everybody needs it now and you know, not everybody's going to survive. For whatever reason, and that might be one of the reasons-

Chad: Well, that even means you, HR director or TA director. You might not survive because you can't get the talent fast enough because you're not using texting or some of these other programmatic tools or what have you.

Andy: They are, and I think anybody would be remiss to say, "Let's not try everything and see what we get from it," because there's enough providers out there to say what works and what doesn't work. My best analogy when I'm talking to clients is, "If you had a million dollars to invest in a stock portfolio, are you going to put it all in one company?"

Chad: No.

Andy: And granted, yeah, in foresight I could have put it all on Amazon, Apple, Google, any of the fang stocks, right?

Chad: Yeah.

Andy: But my crystal ball's broken today. So my answer is, you're going to take your million dollar recruiting budget and spread it across 10 partners and move money around based on who performs best. And quite frankly, if Nexxt wasn't one of the ones that were performing for some crazy reason, 'cause we always perform ... That was a little plug.

Joel: Obvi.

Andy: You know, then they should move money out of our stock.

Chad: Well, and that's where we were talking earlier about the agencies. They're like the consultants to be able to-

Andy: They're your financial advisor.

Chad: To help you make the right decision for those 10. Not for one-

Andy: Right.

Chad: But for the 10.

Andy: And not for 40.

Chad: Yes, exactly.

Andy: Because you also don't want to be spread too thin. You have to have the right number of sources for your budget and for your recruiting needs and to make, again, I mean, I truly say this when ultimately we all really are looking out for the job seeker and we want them to have the best user experience, but we want to make money doing it.

Joel: Aw.

Andy: We do, we do. I know.

Chad: He's so sweet.

Andy: That was sweet.

Chad: I'm going to give him a hug, give me a second.

Joel: He's a tough guy, but he's really sensitive.

Andy: Aw.

Joel: Yeah, isn't he?

Andy: Okay, I'd better order another drink.

Joel: Are you sensing that companies are moving more toward a marketing competency? Are they moving too slowly? What's your sense on that?

Andy: I think, especially the major companies and the top fortune 500, are moving ... I mean, most HR departments have an HR marketing department associated with it, right?

Joel: Really?

Andy: I think corporate marketing and HR marketing are becoming more and more prevalent working together, because they go hand in hand.

Chad: Isn't that just splintered out though? Should marketing understand how they're touching all of these types of people, not a bad touch by the way, a good touch.

Andy: Right.

Chad: How they're ... Seriously-

Andy: A touch-

Chad: Yeah, there's a bad touch. There's such ...

Joel: Chad knows.

Chad: And that's what we're saying from like, employer branding and the HR marketing side of the house-

Andy: Sure.

Chad: It's like, they are a symptom of a fucked up brand or a fucked up marketing department, and that's not saying bad, anything bad about employment branding, because we need those people because all those brands, probably 99.9% of the brands, suck. Right? I guess my question is, how does this become an opportunity for us to be able to ensure that the candidate does have a great experience?

Andy: Right. Well-

Chad: Even with the fucked up marketing department?

Andy: Well, and I think why marketing is such a huge component of this going forward, especially, not to sound trite from, you know, that we're so old, but in the digital age, everything touches each other, right? So you might be a job seeker, but you're most likely a consumer of that company's product of some sort, right?

Chad: Yeah.

Andy: So if you have a-

Joel: Because everyone gets that.

Andy: Right.

Joel: Not.

Andy: Exactly.

Chad: They don't. They fucking don't.

Andy: I sense the sarcasm there, Cheese.

Joel: Yeah, sarcasm. Tongue in cheek.

Andy: So they don't get that, and I think if you have a bad user experience and you're a retail or an eCommerce company and you have a job seeker that's coming to you and you have a horrible experience for them, they're not going to want to buy your product. They're not going to want to walk in your story. And I think marketing-

Chad: The Virgin media business case has been out there for years.

Andy: There you go.

Chad: They lost $6 million because they treated candidates like shit, and then they had an opportunity to prospectively on the Delta go like 13, but I mean it's like, dude, this has been out there, and I just-

Andy: And it's common sense. That's the crazy thing.

Chad: Oh fuck, yeah.

Andy: I don't even need your case studies or your data to support what I'm saying.

Chad: I know, right? It's like, oh, well there's a case study now, it's like but that made sense before.

Andy: Right.

Joel: Are you seeing more marketing departments embrace recruiting or are you seeing more HR recruiting companies saying, "We need to embrace marketing"?

Andy: I think I'm seeing more ... So marketing always had the cloud. HR was always the ugly redheaded step child, right?

Joel: [crosstalk 00:21:27]

Andy: Because they were a cost center.

Chad: It's the money, yeah.

Andy: When marketing is ... It's a cost center, but it's also the first thing that any of your consumers see whatever you put out there, right?

Chad: And they drive leads for sales, which drives revenue, which the CEO likes.

Andy: Exactly.

Chad: That's the big fucking key.

Andy: But I think, I mean-

Joel: So more marketing is coming over to recruiting and how do we ...

Andy: They're embracing them, 'cause I think HR would have always embraced marketing to some extent, because sure, I want to tap into your dollars. I want to co-mingle with you and do some branding on both the consumer and recruitment side at the same time.

Chad: Co-mingle kind of seems like a bad touch though.

Joel: I like that, though.

Andy: But bad touch isn't always bad.

Chad: Bad touch isn't always bad. That's what the name of this podcast is going to be. Click bait.

Chad: So back to texting, give us more about what you're seeing on that side of the house, just because, I mean, I am-

Joel: Yeah, how can it get better?

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: It was already pretty perfect to begin with.

Andy: Yeah, how do you get better at 160 characters? It is what it is, right?

Joel: Yeah.

Andy: So, and that's-

Joel: 95% open rates, 90% red rates.

Andy: Exactly. But it's about also hitting the right audience, okay? I don't know that I want to be text messaging doctors, okay? But I might want to be text messaging nurses because they're on their shifts and they're on their phone and they're going to open up, you might want to ... Text messaging for retail workers or E-commerce warehouses. That's huge, because these people aren't going home and spending time on their computer. They're not going to, going home searching on Google for jobs. They want them in your face. How do you hit them?

Andy: So I say this all the time, again, shameless plug for Nexxt, is the way we present ourselves is we have all the tools for recruiters to hit job seekers where they need to, and we have all the tools for job seekers hit them where they want to be reached. So if you want to be reached in text, you want to be reached in email, you want to be reached in the re-targeting, we will hit them everywhere versus a lot of job boards, and I like to think we're more of a recruitment media company, but job boards usually have one or two tricks up their sleeve, we have eight that we could fit into.

Joel: Where do you put chat bots in the texting, messaging realm?

Andy: Yeah, I mean, they're big. They're big, but that's not really to me a recruitment strategy, that's a supporting technology for whatever you have, right? So I don't think that's part of the overall I'm going to go text, I'm going to go email, I'm going to go do an employer branded email. This goes for each one of them.

Chad: It's a user experience more.

Andy: Right. So it's more like video or I'll put a chat bot in there where it's a supporting role to whatever your strategy is, it's not a strategy. But I think they're becoming key, especially ... It's like text messaging. If you're on a chat bot and someone asks you a question, you got your first 50 canned responses. But text messaging and chat bots are only as good as the user on the other side that's going to be able to customize that answer to that person if they ask an out-of-the-box question.

Chad: So what about video? We've heard about video for 15 years-

Joel: It killed the Radio Star, is what I heard.

Andy: It did, I heard that, too.

Chad: [crosstalk 00:24:33] I love the Buggles. So-

Joel: Here's hoping it doesn't kill the podcasting star.

Chad: Just so we know, this is all going to get cut out. So anyway, back to video, what happens with video? Everybody's so excited about it, but the adoption rate is incredibly low. We see Monster create Monster Studios through Video My Job.

Joel: Instagram for Jobs.

Chad: I still think that's going to be very low adopting just because there's steps that need to be taken. It's easier than it's ever been, don't get me wrong ...

Andy: Right, but there's also a lot of privacy concerns. Like if I opened up a video interview of you, just as ugly as you are, I couldn't hire you. So is that discrimination?

Joel: That's what I'm talking about.

Andy: Where do you draw the line?

Chad: I am sexy, goddammit.

Andy: You are, you are.

Joel: So it's probably more viable as an employer to present themselves in a video format-

Andy: Exactly.

Joel: ... than it is a job seeker to present themselves.

Andy: I do believe you're talking right now-

Joel: Of a higher view solution.

Andy: Of a higher, right. Now, they've been talking ... I mean, there's obviously top video companies out there for years in our space, and they do well, and I believe an employer presenting themselves in the best light in a video is the best way to do it, 'cause let's face it, people don't want to read. They don't want to read shit anymore, right? If I can watch a 30 second clip or read an article for five minutes, I'm watching the 30 second clip.

Chad: Okay, so let's jump to Shark here and go directly to Tengai.

Joel: Easy, Fonzie.

Chad: Have you seen the Tengai robot interview?

Joel: Have you had nightmares, is a better question.

Chad: What do you think about that? Because it was interesting, we thought right out of the gate, "Oh my god, this is fucking creepy." And then we met Tengai in Portugal, and I'm like, "That's pretty fucking cool." I want to take selfies with this goddamn thing. I want to tell my buddies about this.

Andy: But are you doing it as a novelty or are you doing it as it really is a viable business model?

Chad: I don't know that it would matter at this point.

Joel: I believe governments will be the first to embrace this thing, because if they can talk about a totally unbiased recruiting process, to me that's where this will, where Tengai will take off.

Andy: Yeah.

Joel: So what do you think?

Andy: Yeah, I don't know enough about it to say. It's relatively new.

Joel: Yeah, oh no, super new.

Andy: I mean, I saw it like a couple weeks ago.

Chad: Super new.

Joel: Super new. Whatever super in Sweden is, that's what it is. It's Abba new.

Andy: I would say ...

Chad: It's Abba.

Andy: In a relative term, I'm going to use it lightly, I've been successful because I've always embraced new things until they've proven me otherwise versus not embracing them until everybody else adopted to them. So I find it interesting. I think that there's a place for it. I don't know what the adoption rate will be, but I would absolutely be supportive of it. I'm supportive of anything new that's going to connect people quicker.

Joel: Good for you. Another "aw" [crosstalk 00:27:15]

Chad: This is where a big applause line comes in.

Andy: Boy, I sound like a sappy ass right now, but either way, I say what I got to say.

Joel: Such a softie.

Chad: Okay, so you're not in the agency business now, but you still work with agencies.

Andy: Sure.

Chad: Many agencies are becoming, which you well know, technology providers. What are your thoughts about that? Because technology providers versus unbiased [crosstalk 00:27:43]

Joel: It feels like they're less so than they were 10 years ago.

Andy: Break down technology. Are you saying reseller or are you saying builder?

Chad: Builder.

Andy: That's a great question. And here's where my answer is and I've not necessarily been asked this question in this same context, but if you can't be the best at something and you're not going to put all the resources behind it to compete with the people that are taking in 50, $100 million of equity to compete with it, stay the hell out of it and go partner with them, okay? I don't believe I truly have that mentality of buy versus build, and I buy what I can't-

Chad: Or partner versus build, right?

Andy: Well, yeah, that's buy to me, but yeah sure.

Chad: Oh, okay, gotcha.

Andy: Partner, buy, or resell, whatever you want to call it. If you can't be in the Top Echelon of what you want you're going to do, stay the fuck out of it, because someone's going to eat you alive and you are just burning resources in cycles on a team that could be doing something that's more core to your business. So you know, it's one of those things where everybody's going to make their own bed and we're going to see where they lie, but I think there's some great technology providers out there that I would partner with in a second.

Chad: I love that. Don't burn resources in cycles, because that is happening all over the fucking place right now, and not just-

Andy: Absolutely.

Chad: ... startups everywhere are burning like you wouldn't believe. Burn rates are crazy.

Joel: We talk a lot about the arms race particularly between Microsoft and LinkedIn versus Google. Where are you putting your bets on those two Goliaths?

Andy: Well, if you look at share numbers, and I don't have them in front of me, I think Google has like, 60-something percent of the search results and Bing is behind that with like 20 or something. I might be off whatever my numbers is, but it's like a three to one-

Chad: Yeah, I think Google's higher, yeah.

Andy: It's higher than 60-something percent? Okay. I'm a little outdated. But anyway, I think there's a place for everybody, right? I don't think that it's winner takes all.

Chad: No, I'm good.

Andy: So I think LinkedIn and Microsoft, I mean, Bing's a great search engine, LinkedIn has a great product. Google's a great search engine, Google for Jobs is a great product, right? Does that mean they're the only two to survive? More importantly, does that mean those two are the only ones that survive and kill out every job board underneath them? Absolutely not. I think there's going to be consolidation in that market in the next three to five years that we probably haven't seen in the last 30 years for the better. But I don't say is it Google or is it Microsoft, I say it's both.

Joel: Is there a giant in waiting that maybe you see that others don't?

Andy: Ooh.

Joel: I like to talk about Slack, for example.

Chad: Amazon. Only if Slack is bought by Amazon.

Joel: Which I've been predicting for years and is bound to happen eventually.

Andy: Did you predict Tableau was going to be bought by Salesforce?

Joel: I did not, I did not.

Chad: And Google acquires Looker?

Andy: Did you know Amazon was going to acquire Whole Foods? All right, then getting off topic.

Joel: No, but the food industry ... Although food is my business, the food industry is not so much.

Chad: Eating it is your business is what you're saying.

Joel: Eating, yes, I'm very good at that.

Chad: Eating portions.

Andy: Okay, do I see any sleepers? No, I can see where you're going with Slack, I think data is key, Chad, you brought up Amazon. I don't put it past Amazon to own everything, and that's not a good or bad thing. It is what it is. But considering they're probably if not the largest employer or hirer right now, it would make sense for them to do something in this space. It would streamline the process for them, but I'm not on that side of the world. I'm ... Jeff Bezos I think is a little smarter and probably has a little bit more money than me. He'll figure it out before I do.

Chad: A tad.

Andy: Just a tad.

Chad: A tad.

Joel: What's on Nexxt's road map that you might be giving us a sneak peek into?

Andy: One of the things I want to do, which again, it's a sneak peek and I'm not going to go into too many details, I really want to partner with talent communities and drive leads into talent communities, because I believe they have great technology but like any other database, unless it's filled with something useful such as job seekers, they're kind of only as good as they are. So I think there's ... I think talent communities' CRMs in general are going to be, if they not already have replaced them, the first iteration of an ATS, ATSs are the endgame. Talent community's in the middle ground, and getting people in there.

Chad: They're the cosmetic layer, right? The user experience and hopefully-

Andy: One's a compliance thing, one's a sourcing.

Chad: Yeah, exactly.

Andy: Right? Maybe that's a better way of saying it.

Joel: Dude, all this talk about Whole Foods and food is making me really hungry.

Andy: So you want to order food, right?

Chad: I need a shrimp cocktail.

Joel: I agree.

Andy: Wow.

Joel: I agree. Andy, dude, thanks for this. This was fun.

Andy: Thanks for having me, thanks for not beating me up.

Joel: For people who want to know more about Nexxt or you, where would you send them?

Andy: I would send them to either Nexxt.com or feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and I will always respond.

Joel: And that's Nexxt with two Xs.

Chad: Not the triple X.

Andy: No, definitely don't go triple X. You're going to get a surprise on your computer.

Joel: No, that's the one on my private browser at home.

Andy: Yes.

Joel: We out.

Chad: We out, later.

Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. Thanks for listening to my dad, the Chad, and his buddy Cheese. This has been the Chad and 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.

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