Will Indeed Drink Ad Agency Milkshake?
As the dog days of summer drag on, industry news remains hot, hot, HOT! This week, the boys discuss:
- Indeed's strategy to stick-it to recruitment ad agencies,
- Programmatic buying spree break down
- Google's latest strike against the likes of HackerRank and Github
- Can companies control their employees social?
- Don't get flamed by your own social accounts
Enjoy and give sponsors JobAdX, Sovren, and Canvas lots of affection.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Jim Stroud: Jim Stroud here and you are listening to my favorite podcast, I listen to it every day, it's amazing, it's wonderful, it's... Okay, help me out. Who are you guys again?
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: All right. Because you are sick and tired of Robert Mueller news, take a break for God sakes. Welcome to The Chad & Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous, so help me God.
Chad: Well, hello.
Joel: I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash.
Joel: On this week's show, is Indeed sticking it to the ad agencies, TikTokers are sounding off on their employers, and Kelly gets cutsie with its latest ad campaign. We have to wait six months till the holidays, but boy does Canvas already have some goodies for you. We'll be right back.
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Chad: ... Oh, yeah.
Joel: This is the last week without football, till April of next year.
Chad: Thank God. There's nothing else to watch right now.
Joel: I'm including the XFL, which I guess we're still calling football at this point.
Chad: Yeah, yeah. Some kind of football, right.
Joel: How you doing, Chad?
Chad: Fucking awesome, dude.
Joel: Yeah, it's been a good week.
Chad: It has been a good week. It's been a good year, let's just put that out there [crosstalk 00:02:42].
Joel: It has been a good year, it has been a good year. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're actually at home for a week.
Chad: Yeah. The world tour has really kicked us in the nuts, every now and again. But it's been a good... I don't know if there's a good kick in the nuts, but anyway. It's been amazing.
Joel: We've been Tim Sacketted while we're on the road, if you will. Sorry, Tim.
Chad: Not so sorry, Tim.
Joel: Shout-outs.
Chad: Shout-outs. Shout-out to our buddy, Torin Ellis. So, we were at RecFest.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: Torin Ellis was onstage, did what Torin does. He captivates, he inspires, he kicks ass, takes names. Well, the guys from Talent Nexus said, "Hey, let's get Torin right after he's done, right off stage, and let's have a conversation." Within that conversation, I had an important question because I know at one time, I was asking myself this. "What can two white guys do about diversity?" Talent Nexus actually delivered a two-minute video that we posted on social, that had blown up, people are really rallying behind it. Because, to be quite frank, if you are a white dude but you do believe that something needs to happen for equity and inclusion, what the fuck do you do? Torin states it very clearly, very easily and I thought it was awesome.
Joel: What Torin does so well is, yes, he slaps you in the face with his message and his honesty.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: But he also does a great job of empathy, putting himself in the shoes of a middle-aged white guy, which is what we are, and thinking, "I'm into diversity and inclusion, I want to do my part. But what exactly can I do, as a middle-aged white guy?" The video really encapsulates Torin's message, but also what Torin is all about. It's actually connecting with people, that don't normally think about this stuff.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Joel: It's great.
Chad: Yeah. So LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, go out to the socials-
Joel: Or the podcasts.
Chad: ... look for me, look for Joel. Yeah, just look for it. Yeah, it's fucking awesome dude.
Joel: Yeah. Video podcasting, it's hip, it's cool, it's the new thing. I love it.
Chad: It's hip.
Joel: I'm going to give a shout-out to SHRM's Roy Maurer, my buddy there.
Chad: Oh, Roy. Love it.
Joel: He writes for them quite a bit and did a story on the Facebook news, about them having searchable ads and what they're doing there. Quoted your boy right here, so that's kind of why I'm giving him the shout-out. But the article is rather good, head out to SHRM.org if you want to check that article out.
Chad: Yeah, it's good. Even though, in spite of Cheesman being a part of it. SO, big shout-out to our friend at Shaker Recruitment Marketing, Mike Temkin. Mike Temkin posted, and it wasn't just specific to us, but it was specific to us. Yeah, where he actually had some data, [crosstalk 00:05:41] some research that showed by Hootsuite, that pretty much 39% of individuals 18 to 64, are reported listening to podcast each month and nearly as much as 47% reported to listen online, monthly.
Chad: So it's either via phone, online, either way. But podcasting is blowing the fuck up. If you haven't heard our interview with Mike Temkin, just google The Chad & Cheese Podcast/Mike Temkin, an awesome interview. Guy's a stud.
Joel: Yeah. I love that we're benefiting and profiting from the dumbing down of society. No one's reading anymore, they just put headphones in and listen to the news and the commentary.
Chad: Woo!
Joel: All right. shout-out to Ken Lazarus, CEO of Scout. Sort of a hidden gem in the HR Tech space. You might remember they raised $100 million last year, so we talk to Ken on one of our latest podcasts and get down to what they're going to do with that 100 million, and what exactly is going on.
Chad: Pretty awesome, pretty awesome. So we're getting ready to do a partnership, just going to tease this partnership with The Gathering, the event that happens in Banff.
Joel: You're such a tease.
Chad: Fucking amazing, by the way. But it's funny because we're starting to do some recording and there were some bits that didn't make it to the actual podcast, and we wanted to be able to share some of those with you today.
Joel: Ready?
Chad: Yeah.
Sibyl: Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again. Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again. Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again.
Chad: Okay.
Sibyl: Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again.
Joel: Damn it. I like the '80s sort of... [crosstalk 00:07:23] definitely.
Chad: It is, yeah.
Sibyl: Sorry. Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again.
Joel: I'm ready to put on some leg warmers and Jazzercise.
Sibyl: Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again.
Chad: I know. So the guys from The Gathering, actually these were outtakes, as they were doing some recordings. They actually packaged this up, obviously, because Sibyl is the one who's doing the voicing.
Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chad: But they sent it over to us because it's funny as fuck. We generally don't play outtakes and it was like, "Why the hell not?" So, shout-out to The Gathering and to Sibyl over there, for great outtakes. We appreciate it.
Joel: Yeah. One, we should do something like this.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And two, yes, we are stupid because we just listened to that for like five minutes and just laughed our asses off. We'll probably listen to it again after this podcast and laugh some more, like Beavis and Butt-Head style.
Chad: Of course.
Joel: Shout-out to Gerry Crispin. Gerry Tales, our fourth installment of the epic Lord Of The Rings-esk podcast interview with Gerry. Number four is up, it's as awesome as the first three and as awesome as the next two.
Chad: It's Gerry. That's all I have to say. Candidate.ID, shout-out to those guys because they are killing the crowdfunding game. They've nearly doubled what they've asked for and they still have about 30 days left. If you guys are into, obviously nurturing and building talent pipelines and that kind of stuff, they were on Firing Squad. I don't know if you remember or not, Joel. Remember?
Joel: Yup. And Death Match.
Chad: Yup, and Death Match. I gave them a rousing applause, Joel gave them a golf clap. But dude, I'm a huge proponent around companies like this. Getting out and actually demonstrating, "Is this idea really worth it? Will the community get behind this?" Not to mention, this is great from a PR standpoint. Right?
Joel: Yup.
Chad: So, big shout-out to Adam in the team over at Candidate.ID, this is a winner. If you want to check it out, go to crowdcube.com/candidateid, all one word.
Joel: Do you know the numbers behind that, what they were hoping to raise and what they've actually raised up to this point?
Chad: Yeah, it was 50,000 for starters and they're over 100,000 to date, and they have nearly 30 days to go. That's in pounds, by the way, so they're actually over 100,000 US dollars. 57 investors, their target was 50,000. Yeah, so it's looking good for those guys. Like I'd said, if you're a company that really wants to demonstrate that, the community is getting behind this. Why the hell not? Either talk the talk or walk the walk or get the fuck off.
Joel: By the way, disclaimer, we are not financial experts. We are not recommending that you buy this company or say that you'll make money buying this company.
Chad: Thanks for that.
Joel: I don't want to get in trouble for someone losing their pants, investing in Candidate.ID or any company in the HR Tech space. I will say that, with the regulations around investing in companies, in this way sort of becoming loosened around the world, I think it'll be really interesting as we move into this next phase of startups and companies raising money. How that goes, how much money they raise, and getting away from the traditional VC, how companies raise money will be interesting and something we'll be talking about, I'm sure.
Chad: I haven't yet, I will put some money in Candidate.ID.
Joel: Will you?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Okay. Well keep us informed about the big payout. When you're sipping fruity drinks with umbrellas in Portugal, we'll know why.
Chad: I love it.
Joel: Shout-out to the hashtag yoga. I don't know if anyone heard last week's show but iCIMS, as part of their Media Analyst Day, is offering a yoga session. I challenged listeners to hashtag out "yoga"...
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: ... or "no yoga" as whether or not I should do it. Obviously, "Do the yoga," is the reigning leader, or the leader right now. I don't even think "no yoga" has a vote.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: So at this point, I don't know, I might have to head out to Lululemon, get some yoga pants. Get a little sweatband going and some wrist bands, wrist sweatbands and limbering up a little bit.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I might be having to do some yoga in Phoenix.
Chad: Yeah. I have already committed to do the yoga, so in the registration process they ask what you would like to do.
Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chad: I've already committed to it because the listeners want us to do it.
Joel: If we could at least organize some beer to be at this yoga session, to take
away some of the pain, that would be great.
Chad: Beer yoga, yeah. That would be great. You know what else is great?
Joel: Tell me.
Chad: Chad & Cheese, The Movie.
Joel: Sundance, here we come.
Chad: Yeah, I don't know if it's quite great yet but we just received the link and I got to watch the first couple of minutes before we jumped on the podcast. Looks amazing, the guys over at Talent Nexus, go figure, they make us look good and that's not easy. So I'm looking forward to screening it, not to mention the promotion to get it out. Yeah, so there you
have it. Look on social during the next couple of weeks or so, and we'll be pushing it hard.
Joel: Yup. Robert Redford, we're coming for you. Sundance, 2020. Let's do this.
Chad: Events powered by our travel sponsor, Shaker Recruitment Marketing.
Joel: Who, I hear word they're making three-piece suits for us.
Chad: Yeah, they should. With just Shaker all over them. That would make so much sense, it would.
Joel: The backpacks are awesome. They're beyond age, gender, sex, race. Everybody loves a good backpack.
Chad: That's exactly right, and I'm taking mine to Malmö, Sweden where we're going to see Tengai. That's right, the interviewing robot. Also, TNG Staffing here at the latter part of August, pretty stoked about that.
Joel: Right, I'm ready for some salmon and capers and cheese, or whatever else they're eating there in Sweden [crosstalk 00:13:42].
Chad: They told you that they don't do capers. We just saw them in London and they said, "We don't do capers." So...
Joel: Oh. Someone sells capers in Sweden, I'm sure.
Chad: We've got TA Tech in Austin, Death Match where Job.com, asses first, I mean Assess First and a couple of others, soon to be named, are going to be on stage. The big sponsor...
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: ... is Alexander Mann Solutions.
Joel: Outstanding.
Chad: So I'm stoked about that.
Joel: Outstanding.
Chad: You did some work this week, on the actual trophies. Do you want to talk about that or are we just going to tease it?
Joel: Let's just say that the winner will get something spectacular, when they win. Something that will blow up the socials and be something that you might take to your grave. Let's just put it that way. Yeah, it's that amazing.
Chad: It's going to be retroactive, so we've got to make sure that we put one in the hands of Aman Brar at Canvas/Jobvite. Yeah.
Joel: Canvas, yup.
Chad: Then one in the hands of Andreea Wade at Opening.io. So, looking forward to that, as well as HR Tech in early October. We're going to be on stage two days, in the expo hall. Listeners, if you want $300 off ticket-
Joel: Chad Cheese.
Chad: The discount code, very simple. Discount code Chad Cheese.
Joel: We make nothing, so even if you hate us, save some money.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: We don't get any of it, it's all good.
Chad: Yeah, it's all good. Then, the latter part of October, 22nd, 23rd, we're going to be in Paris. That's right, SmashFly is sending us to unleash in Paris.
Joel: [French 00:15:24].
Chad: Yeah, where we're again, going to be in the expo hall, on stage. Just making a shit-ton of noise.
Joel: [French 00:15:30].
Chad: I'm out.
Joel: News time.
Joel: We love inside information, don't we? We love talking to the sources that know the nitty-gritty and what's going on.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: We had the pleasure, this past week, of talking to two high-level insiders about two interesting topics.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Programmatic and what the hell is Indeed up to?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I'm happy to discuss either one first.
Chad: Yeah. Let's go ahead... I think they all come together, but what one insider said was Indeed is going direct, to companies. This is something that we saw from Monster, something we've seen from CareerBuilder, we've seen this from many companies. Where they're like, "Let's keep the 15-20% ourselves."
Joel: Yup.
Chad: But the thing is, when does that ever work?
Joel: It works for a while, maybe. But in the long-term, I think it's sort of shooting yourself in the foot because too many companies are just like, "Agency, you handle it."
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And if agencies aren't making their cut, they're going to slowly stop recommending you as a source for advertising.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah.
Joel: That's the way it works.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Now, Indeed thinks their shit don't stink enough to think, "There's no way that an employer will not use Indeed," but that's giving a lot of employers a lot of credit. Thinking that they'll go outside of their agency, to go directly to Indeed for that advertising solution.
Chad: I don't see Appcast rocking the boat or StepStone rocking the boat and saying, "We're going to do things differently." I think this is a great opportunity for StepStone to start realizing revenue in the US and continue to do what they're doing in Europe, while pressing more performance-based ads, as opposed to duration-based. I just think, from the StepStone standpoint and from a German standpoint, they're going to be more methodical about this. More of a standpoint of, "No, we don't need walled gardens, we're just going to go ahead, continue to do business and grow the network."
Chad: On the other side, personally, because we know what Indeed does, is that they'll look at doing whatever they can to do one of two things. Either just push their product more, and other products, and force companies to buy their other products as well. We also heard from an insider that if you're pushing job fairs or anything of that nature out there, Indeed will automatically pull those down and say, "You have to buy our Job Fair Product." Right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So, I see Indeed rocking the boat because that's what they do. But the big question is, do we need Indeed?
Joel: Yeah. I think for TMP as well and any other agency, we've heard agencies tell
us like, "Hey, we spend a shit-load of money with Clickcast."
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And if you're TMP, looking at, "Why don't we just keep all of it? Why not keep all the profits and take the cut that would be ours, maybe lower prices or become more efficient?" It's not only a strategic, looking at what's going to happen with the competitors and losing control over that. But it's also, "Geez, we're going to keep a lot more money if we own the programmatic solutions."
Joel: Our insider, I think we agree that buying Perengo was a great decision for TMP, that'll pay dividens in a lot of different angles. I'll be curious to see if another agency comes in and buys a JobAdX or a Joveo, or something like that. Our insider seemed to think that an ATS would be a buyer at some point.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: We both agreed Jobvite and iCIMS have a history of buying up cool technologies or emerging technologies. So I don't think either one of us would be surprised at that, if that happens in the next six months or so.
Chad: I believe that when you take a look at, obviously, how Indeed's treated the market over the years and the numbers that we've received from some of our programmatic friends throughout the industry. Is that, they only comprise about 15%, around 15% of the overall candidate deliverable.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: So what can you do, to be able to... And again, this is contingency planning. Right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Because we know Indeed's history, what do we do to contingency plan for that 15%? Programmatic is obviously the only way to go because you're leveraging a large network, versus just really focusing on that one pipeline.
Joel: I was pretty surprised that Indeed only served 10-15% of the sources, of candidates that companies got. I would have thought it might be quite a bit higher. Were you surprised by the 10-15% number? I thought it would be up near 25 or 30.
Chad: Yeah, no I was. But I think that's the thing, is that programmatic provides such a wide spread of the opportunity to pressure jobs into all these different areas and do it from a performance standpoint, not in all cases but in many cases.
Joel: Yeah. I also remember one of our informants, if you will, talk about I guess Zip Recruiter is beefing up their agency team. SO they're taking a different tack, in terms of getting in bed with the agencies.
Chad: Smart, yeah.
Joel: As Indeed exits the agency business.
Chad: So yeah, why would you want to bloat your organization with more and more and more direct sales people, when you can partner with agencies. Not just one agency, but agencies and have them be your sales people.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Now I understand from a control standpoint, they're not just going to sell your shit.
Joel: Yes.
Chad: But one again, that's exactly what you want. You want that non-bias. So if you are proving to, not just the agency but the end user, the direct employer, that you are worth it then that should work out for you. Now, if you're not, there's a problem.
Joel: Yeah. As Zip Recruiter gets more and more into enterprise, more into AI and technologies, the agency play makes total sense.
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: The fact that they're coming in while Indeed exits is just really great timing, on their part.
Chad: The beautiful part from StepStone is that Appcast pretty much owns the agency, the recruitment ad agency infrastructure, today. Right?
Joel: Yes.
Chad: That was brilliant. They're looking for a play in the US. Instead of building job boards, fuck that, there's enough job boards, get into programmatic and make money off of that network.
Joel: Yeah. I will say that one of the things that I thought about was the two biggest programmatic plays that aren't in play yet but could, with the flip of a switch become a play, are Google and Facebook.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Which, as we know, are the two biggest online market places for advertising in the world. The minute that you can post a job on Google and then promote it out to their network, AdSense network, that becomes a huge play. They become the biggest programmatic player, and Facebook as well, if they ever decide to do that, would be a huge competitor in the "programmatic advertising business".
Chad: Now it's interesting that you mention Google because...
Joel: You like that segue?
Chad: Yeah. In a TechCrunch article, Area 120, which is Google's lab for experimental projects, launched Byteboard. If you want to know what Byteboard is, it's like HackerRank. Okay? For something that's been out there. It's a new tool that aims to make the technical interview experience less tedious and more effective.
Joel: Look, if anyone knows recruiting, employing tech people, Google's pretty good at it. If you want somebody to build something that's efficient, effective, easy to use, intuitive, something that tech people understand, you could do a lot worse that Google. So the fact that Google has essentially created a home-made interviewing tool for techies-
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: ... that they're releasing to the public, is awesome. I think you and I both agree, that it's just a matter of time before they roll this solution into their hire product. To where you can use your ATS and your talent funnel, to now interview people through Byteboard.
Chad: Oh, yeah. So the big question is now, who's going to buy HackerRank? Because we've been talking about that, Dice should have bought them a while ago. Right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: But HackerRank is a community, it is focused on it being able to provide realistic types of interviews, through coding.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: From my standpoint, when you're looking at trying to provide interviews for the future and we know development is not going away, this is an entity that everybody should be looking at.
Joel: If Microsoft is looking for a bridge between LinkedIn and GitHub, which they bought last year.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: They could do worse than HackerRank, to sort of bridge the gap between LinkedIn and GitHub, and provide a recruiting solution that benefits both audiences.
Chad: Exactly. Total funding for HackerRank, $58.2 million.
Joel: Okay. So that's probably out of iCIM's and Jobvite's shopping cart.
Chad: Possibly.
Joel: You think so?
Chad: Possibly.
Joel: Okay. But not Microsoft's.
Chad: No. Not even close.
Joel: Indeed?
Chad: Indeed would need to have an applicant tracking system, to be able to plug into something like that, that would make it worthwhile.
Joel: They do, it's free.
Chad: A real applicant tracking system.
Joel: Ouch. Anyway, we'll keep an eye on this and we'll let you know. Subscribe to the show so you get the shreds, we'll definitely shred this baby out when HackerRank gets acquired.
Chad: Hell yeah.
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Joel: Did you know Google now has nine products with a billion plus users?
Chad: Fucking ridiculous. Yeah.
Joel: Isn't that crazy?
Chad: It's awesome, yeah.
Joel: That's crazy, right? Photos is the latest one, can you name the other eight?
Chad: Gmail, Calendar, Docs, not Hangouts?
Joel: YouTube, Search, Chrome... Two you mentioned, so Drive, you said Docs, Drive actually does, I think.
Chad: Nice.
Joel: Google Play and Android.
Chad: It's amazing just how entrenched... Again, they're a lifestyle platform. That's it.
Joel: Yeah, we're going to talk about Snapchat and Tik Tok right now, and not even close to any billion-type numbers.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Joel: Google has nine products with a billion users. It's crazy. All right, so yeah. It wouldn't be a show without TikTok, so let's talk about TikTok. But let's talk about Snap real quick, Snap had a comeback quarter, releasing numbers this week. For the first time in their history, they had 200 million monthly active users. We had kind of written them off, we thought Instagram had taken them out.
Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joel: Younger people that I know, and there aren't a lot, had told me Snapchat was done, like it was over. Apparently not, people are still back, or people are coming back to Snapchat and using it in greater numbers. As we discussed, TikTok... I think TikTok is the only top 10, most popular app right now, that isn't owned by Facebook or Google, or is Snapchat.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: It's the only one outlier there that's not public.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: We wanted to bring up something new that we saw on TikTok, is there's a guy on TikTok that works at Walmart. His user name is what? Tom at Walmart, or something?
Chad: Yeah.