All the big boys were active this week.
- Google for Jobs invades Switzerland
- FBI is knocking down MyPayrollHR doors
- and what podcast these days would be complete without TikTok and how it's probably a Trojan horse for the Chinese government.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by
Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HRs 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: Oh yeah.
Chad: Oh my God.
Joel: Time to do it again. Let's get after it.
Chad: Shit.
Joel: Welcome to the Chad & Cheese podcast. HRs most degenerate duo of idiocy. I'm Joel Cheesman.
Chad: I'm Chad Rumspringa Sowash.
Joel: On this week's round up... No one knows what that means, but they will after the show. On this week's episode, Indeed pulls a John Cena. Google for jobs continues to expand, and my payroll HR leaves customers holding a big stinky bag of shit.
Chad: Pee yew.
Joel: Grab a cup of Swiss Miss instant cocoa. We'll be right back after this word from Sovren.
Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job boarder intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner.
Chad: And I do. Maybe for some drinks.
Joel: CEO Robert Rough of Sovren will be joining us at Death Match next week. So maybe it's a good time we shout out to mention TA tech next week in our cavalcade of startups who are going to throw down.
Chad: Damn straight.
Joel: For chance at winning death match.
Chad: Assess first. I can't even say it right now. Assessed various assessments in job.com, pez.ai and our friends over at SeekOut, all sponsored by the people we know and love over at Alexander Mann Solution.
Joel: Let's see. I can check and Quincy is going to be a tough judge.
Chad: Quincy's tough and everything. Just so you know. I've known Quincy for 15 years.
Joel: Yeah. By the way, no one knows chat bots like her, so Pez better button up because they're going to be grilled.
Chad: Yeah, she knows a lot of stuff. I don't think any of them are safe to be quite Frank.
Joel: Yeah, I'll agree with that.
Chad: KRT Recruitics... beer, but anyway, have a big box unbox it. There are four big bottles of Pliny and Elder, and one of them has a hold my beer KRT Recruitics koozie on it. Fucking awesome.
Joel: Now you got to tell them the backstory with the hold my beer because that was all us.
Chad: I did a shred when KRT and Recruitics. They made the the announcement and it was kind of like in a hold my beer moment because we had all of these programmatic companies being bought, and right at the end of that Recruitics and KRT came together and I just felt like that was their hold my beer moment. Oh, I see what you're doing there. I see what you're doing there. I see what you're doing there. Hold my beer. So I did a shred that was pretty much hold my beer KRT plus, you know, Recruitics sequels, hold my beer and they just ran with it. Which is again, one of the coolest things, I think about the podcast, is we see some of these companies who really understand marketing. They key off of different ideas and they just run with it. And it's really fun to see that shit happen.
Joel: Yeah. And leave it to a marketing company to know what's going to get them love on the show: alcohol. The whole industry is just one big enablement to my liver being killed. Thanks everybody.
Chad: Yeah, I'm going to have to do a who did it better because Baird sent us a whiskey and bourbon-
Joel: Whiskey and bourbon combo. Yeah.
Chad: Yeah. And then, and then, you know, KRT Recruitics sent us four big fucking, you know, Pliny and Elders. I mean, that's going to be a hard one. We might actually have to pull our listeners on who did it better.
Joel: Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk about Evergreen. I think that's, it's fairly big news for our listeners and for the podcast.
Chad: I agree. People are asking about it.
Joel: Yeah. So a bunch of dudes from Cleveland called us, which was, you know, our step in the right direction for sure, at least in my book.
Chad: (laughs).
Joel: And so this is a podcast network, Evergreen Podcasts, and they were really loving the show and interested in having us, sort of, join the network and we said, sure, you know, from my standpoint it means less work on our part in terms of production, in terms of sort of a little bit of marketing and whatnot. So I think for the most part it means maybe more shows. So if you love the show it could mean more and more content because there's less, a little less work on our end, especially your end as production to get shows out and sort of join a network where there's a little bit more power and resources to make this thing happen.
Chad: Everybody listening in and actually following us, they understand. Two guys in 2019, we've worked our asses off. We've been everywhere. We've done a lot of shit and to be able to scale something like that, doing it like we're doing it right now, it's not sustainable. We had to look for partners that had the same kind of thought process that we did about the actual industry itself. And we did, we had plenty of podcast networks, come pretty much knocking on the door and these guys, we really felt, jived best with us. And for all those who had questions out there, no, we were not acquired. We still have total control of our content and we won't be dropping the F bomb any more or less. So nothing will change from that standpoint, but there will be some things that we will be announcing in the very near future. So -
Joel: Yeah, it means exciting things for the industry. So stay tuned. This is just the first step march to dominance in this space.
Chad: Talking about dominance. So let's give a shout out to Hung Lee who loved the Dan Pink interview. He's taken recruiting brain food to another level. And I know that they've started to do a podcast on their side-
Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chad: -and hopefully, we might be working with those guys a little bit too.
Joel: Yeah. And a choice or a chance, if you haven't heard the Dan Pink interview, we've got a lot of love for that one. Go back and check it out in the archives. It was a great chat.
Chad: Great stuff.
Joel: We're always good for a top ranking or listing of best podcasts in the industry. Top five ranking. We were number one, they didn't say it was any particular order but we were number one on the list, and that was the candidate ID lists, right?
Chad: Yeah. Top five and we're suckers for lists. We've said that.
Joel: Everyone's a sucker.
Chad: Yeah. It was interesting because there was another list that was out there that pretty much reused Hung Lee's Recruiting Brainfood list and it was like the top 100 it's like what the fuck man. I mean that was literally just clickbait. So no, you're not going to get a shout out for that list because you're just using Hung Lee's work first off. But yes, Candidate.ID Siobhan, I think is how you say her name. Brady, thanks so much. She's on marketing over at a candidate ID.
Joel: Well done. Well done. Amber Ferrari at Canvas, so I guess maybe she's a job bite employee now, but she was-
Chad: One of the best names. I mean, come on Amber Ferrari.
Joel: That is true.
Chad: At first, I was like, come on. I mean that's not really, no, that's, yeah, no, it's Amber Ferrari.
Joel: Yeah. She's not allowed to get married. She has to be Amber Ferrari forever. Also, she gave us some great love. We were out there last week for the a Recruiter Nation Live conference. Had a great time with those folks and always accommodating, always nice. Amman Brar, if you haven't heard the keynote speech from him, I think we published that earlier this week. That was a great insight into not only their company, but I think the industry as a whole and where it's going. So make sure you check that out and thank you, Amber.
Chad: Yeah. And this is a shout out to all of those companies, especially our sponsors. Take, come to chadcheese.com, take a look at the sponsors on the site. All of these brands understand that you get behind something that has the same kind of focus and or purpose that you do. This is a partnership. This is where you get into a relationship where you do things more than just podcast, right?
Joel: Yeah. We're bringing services and buyers together. Feel the love, everybody.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah, it's not just a fucking transaction, people.
Joel: So I have a a surprise shout out. It wasn't on our list, but I was remembering it as we were talking. So we get reviews on, I think every podcast platform. We have a really solid 4.5 out of five on them on iTunes with about 35 or 40 reviews. But one came in last in July actually, that I thought was pretty funny. So they gave us one out of five stars, which frankly, for the fact that we just have microphones should give us at least two stars out of five. That should be at least, like the litmus test, for having at least two stars.
Joel: But anyway, so the review was pretty entertaining. So he said, I found a list of recruiting HR podcast. So we were on another list. I guess that's good. I really tried to like, but content not actionable with a paid for TV who will be sending me to source convo and then this is you, which I really love. Chad's tangents can be frustrating, also not worth your time. So random an anonymous reviewer, thank you for that. That was much appreciated.
Chad: And what I love is, and again, if you don't like the show, this is beautiful. Don't fucking listen. Everybody's not going to like you. Let's just put it that way. Everybody's not going to like you, and we embrace that. So the one star out of five, thanks so much and fuck off.
Joel: On the road again. Just can't wait to get on the road again. Where are we going to be next week?
Chad: Very Austin-like. That's a Willie Nelson and Willie, an Austin guy. Yes. We're going to be in Austin, Texas next week for, as we talked about, Deathmatch.
Chad: If you're going to be in Austin. If you're already in Austin, if you want to be in Austin, go to fucking Austin and then come to Deathmatch, check out the TA tech. Obviously go to TA tech.org, check out what's going on. A lot of great stuff. A lot of fun. A lot of parties. I mean I think there are more parties during this TA tech than I think I've seen before.
Joel: The the list of attendees is stellar, particularly the list of international and attendees are our friends from tin guy. I'm assuming the robot will make an appearance in Austin. A lot of people that we know around the world are going to be at this show, so yeah, I'm pretty pumped to go down. Plus, my dad and step mom live there. Hopefully I'll get a chance to eat some tacos with them.
Chad: Oh yeah. My brother in law lives there and we have a couple of friends coming down from Indiana. We're actually spending the weekend. So you get time to go to Austin, you spent time in Austin. And not to mention gem and Thomas from Talent Nexus.
Joel: Oh yeah.
Chad: They're coming down renting Harley's, because they're going to be in Texas, and I believe we're going to go ahead and hit a shooting range while we're there because they're from England. They don't get to fire weapons.
Joel: Yeah, that's good. And I think the Swedes are going to like four football games while they're in town. So that's a, that's their bit of Americana. Soak it up, Europeans.
Chad: Love it. Love it.
Joel: America.
Chad: Then right after that, we're going to Vegas. So HR Tech on the stage in the Expo Hall, two days in a row, Wednesday, October 2nd at 1:15 and Thursday, October 3rd, 11:15 and when we're not on stage, I guarantee you we're more than likely going to have one or two things in our faces, not those, who are going to have either a mic or a beer slash bourbon in our faces at that point because we're in fucking Vegas. So there.
Joel: The show that banned us last year is having us onstage this year. You got to love that. You got to love that. And then we got France, right?
Chad: On the leash orally. Yeah. Paris, France.
Joel: This panel is insane.
Chad: Dude, this is fucking awesome. So we've got it all shored up. October 22nd at 1145 Paris time on the influencer stage. Paris Convention Center. We are going to have Brandy Ellis, head of recruitment, marketing and strategy at SmashFly. Chris Wray head of recruitment at Sainsbury's and Adam Yearsley. Yeah. Adam Yearsley, global head of talent management at Red Bull. So big fucking people on stage. Hard questions in France, should be a blast.
Joel: In France, we're hoping to get some great interviews outside of that. The show's really accommodating with who do you guys want to talk to while you're out here? And some of the brands that are there are just stellar and someone from Heineken is there, which they're going to have beer. So we got to talk to the Heineken guy. He is going to be there, Spotify. We should be able to get some really good interviews with some really top TA executives while we're there.
Chad: I agree. I agree.
Joel: Onto the news.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Indeed Prime, their tiptoe into the staffing business, which we've been talking about for how long now that they're going to get into this thing and they're owned by a staffing company and they're scared shitless of Google for jobs. So they're looking at getting into the staffing business and if you were questioning it up until now, I think all of your skepticism should be destroyed because they just launched Indeed Seen. It's Seen powered by Indeed. So the polo John Cena you can't see me and launched Seen.
Chad: Yeah. Indeed Prime is now Seen and you can go to this new Seen site at beseen.com and it is primarily for tech talent. It's a subscription model. Their plans allow for unlimited hires, but this is all around that. The contacts, you only get so many contacts per month unless you're in the unlimited contact arena and it's not really that expensive. You're a company who is currently using staffing companies and you want to get away from the per, you know, 20%, 15% model. This seemed to be much cheaper.
Joel: Yeah, they have a nice little, not surprising roster of companies using this service, particularly for tech hires, which I think it was mainly what Prime's goal was. But you've got all state Twilio, Overstock, Grubhub, eBay, Capital One, a lot of the usual suspects. Now what my question is, does Indeed not have enough money to just go by seen.com, and was I the only one who thought of Monster's failed, BeKnown when I saw Be Seen? Did you think that too or was that just me?
Chad: I did. But here's the thing, it's pretty much forgotten by now by most of the industry. Yeah. I would think that Seen itself would cost a pretty penny Be Seen, not too bad. Two words that you can pretty much spell pretty easily. I think it's interesting from the standpoint of, you know, it's a subscription model, makes it easier, has a matching component. So what they call Fast Match is it's kind of like this little matching assistant thing that that contacts candidates that match your profiles and your roles, and then they go straight to screening. So this is interesting, right? And how that applies against your subscription and all that other fun stuff. You can get the details there. But overall, I see this is, personally, I see this as Prime really trying to break away from Indeed, to an extent, and create its own brand because we all know Indeed has a shitty reputation for fucking people.
Chad: So it's, I mean it's serious. I mean the companies who actually built Indeed job boards, staffing companies, those are companies who built Indeed, indeed, fuck them. Too easy, right? So what happens is, what you do is you're like, okay, don't look at this over here, this pile of shit reputation. Don't look at this. Look over here at this new reputation, this Seen. Now I love what they've done thus far. The big question is, will they be able to pull away from first and foremost, Indeed as a brand number one and second, you can do that. But if you don't actually start treating companies or treating your customer the right way, it's not going to matter what new colors you have, what new name you have. None of that shit matters unless you actually demonstrate that you are different.
Joel: That is a great point. And my question when they first did it was why go away from the Indeed brand? I mean it's, it's still employment. It's not like, you know, you're starting a robotics company or something, right? So to get away from the Indeed brand was really curious to me. And I can only think of things like, you know, well it's a totally different business what job secrets they give Indeed they don't want them to think about that in terms of the new brand.
Joel: But your point I think is right on as you were saying it, like they have such a bad reputation from a sales perspective with so many companies over the years. It's going to be much easier for a salesperson to call up and say, I'm Joey with Seen. Let me tell you about what we do. As opposed to, Hey, I'm Joey with Indeed Prime. I know that we screwed you over a year or two ago with the normal paper clips thing or the whole water war we're doing. So instead of getting hung up on, at least the company will give a listen to what the new company is and they can sort of leave the Indeed brand behind from that perspective. So that was, I think that's spot on by you.
Chad: Well, and also if you take a look at what they're looking to do, they're looking to scale staffing with a platform. Right? And you have a subscription model, so you have less human friction to an extent.
Joel: Yeah. And it's a business that Google will never get into.
Chad: Oh fuck no.
Joel: So they're, they're at least strategically doing the right thing in terms of doing something that there's no chance that Google will ever get into.
Chad: Yes, definitely. Yeah. They don't want to risk the antitrust shit when they can make all this money around search and everything else that they make money on.
Joel: Yeah. Yeah. And this is a very people-heavy business that Indeed is getting into. So I will caution some bit of excitement because this isn't the nice lean and mean money machine printing money in the corner office. This is a real tough business to be in. So good luck. We'll see how it goes.
Chad: Yeah. But I think they're going to take a shot at making it more lean and mean, less people friction and they're doing that around tech types because tech types, in most cases, I'm going to generalize, they don't like fucking humans. They don't like people, right? They like technology. Start with this platform. Hopefully we see an integration with Sift and then you can start to see where this could perspectively be scalable in some industries without all of the headcount.
Joel: Yeah. It's tough to launch a new brand. It'll be fun to watch this thing evolve. Let's talk about another 800 pound gorilla. LinkedIn is in the news this week.
Chad: Some assessments they rolled out globally this week. These assessments are short multiple choice tests that users can take to verify their knowledge and areas like computer language, software packaging and other work related skills. And when it was in beta they had 2 million tests that were actually taken. So it's pretty amazing. I mean English languages test covering 75 different skillsets. So pretty big.
Joel: Yeah. This is really similar. Upwork has been doing stuff like this for quite a while and I'm sure other sites have too. But basically as you're looking through candidates to talk to a recruit, knowing that they are proficient in English, are they a native English speaker or are they proficient in certain coding languages and things like that. Like to already sort of have these tests done where they're getting graded as proficient or not in certain skills. It saves the recruiting team a lot of time. And this also is a little bit of a leap frog of services like HackerRank where you give people the test as you're interviewing them. If you know that they're proficient ahead of time, that's sort of a nice, a nice thing to have as you're recruiting. So definitely not a new thing that they're doing, but it is a nice to have and a nice feature both for recruiters as well as for job seekers to stand out if they really do have good skills in these tests.
Chad: Yeah. So they're going to show this on your profile that you actually took tests and it's going to be the in the skills and endorsements area. The big question is, is this data scrapable? So we're talking about the whole high Q, right? So there's more data that's being added to your profile through these tests and LinkedIn, through proprietary tasks and those types of things, are actually providing all of this new data. Is that scrapable? Apparently it is. Because that is your profile and the test that you took. So what do you think?
Joel: What's becoming more and more legally scrapable? The question will be if LinkedIn's whack-a-mole defense strategy against scrapers can keep them away from this data and I think that'll be a continual challenge for scrapers. Legally, it won't be their data per se, but it'll be really, really hard going forward to actually get it off of LinkedIn. Let's get a quick word from our friends at JobAdX and talk about Google.
Chad: Google.
JobAdX: Nope, not for me. All these jobs look the same. Oh, next. This is what perfectly qualified candidates are thinking as they scroll past your jobs. Just halfheartedly skimming job descriptions that aren't standing out to them. Face it. We live in a world that is all about content, content, content, so why do we expect job seekers to react differently while reading paragraphs and bullets in templated job descriptions?
JobAdX: Stand out in a feed full of boring job ads with a dynamic, enticing video that showcases your company culture, people and benefits with JobAdX. Instead of hoping that job seekers will stumble upon your employment branding video, JobAdX seamlessly displays it in the job description while they're searching, building a connection and reducing candidate drop-off. You're spending thousands of dollars on beautiful, informative employment branding videos that just sit on a YouTube channel begging to be discovered. Why not feature them across our network of over 150 job sites to proactively compelled top talent to join your team? Help candidates see themselves in your role by emailing. Join us at J-O-B-A-D-X.com that's join us at J-O-B-A-D-X.com attract, engage, employ with JobAdX.
Joel: Have you ever been in Switzerland, Chad?
Chad: I have not been to Switzerland.
Joel: Neither have I. It looks beautiful though.
Chad: I'm open to it.
Joel: Yeah, they have mountains there, I guess. No snow and Google for jobs is now available in the country known as Switzerland with about eight and a half million people. So by no means a large market.
Chad: No.
Joel: But another step into global domination by the folks at Google for jobs.
Chad: Yes. Yeah, so when we were in Sweden less than a month ago, we were talking about Google for jobs and until it gets there, everybody's like, yeah, is it really going to come here? So yes, it's going to come here. Sweden has about 10 million people, smaller companies, Switzerland a 0.5 so yeah, there is no question.
Joel: Country.
Chad: It's rolling. Yeah, it's rolling out everywhere. And Google has, it seems they've partnered with Job Channel and Job Channel has an entire landing page dedicated to Google for jobs or as they would like to refer to it: Google job search experience.
Joel: That's right. A Jog Channel's Kristoff Arthur though, cool name, says that the site reaches roughly 700,000 users per month with job advertisements. So Google's making it happen. They're not, they're by no means closing shop like they did with Hire by Google with this whole Google for jobs thing.
Chad: And the way that you defend this is that it's just search. It's content that's being searched and people search for jobs.
Joel: Ah, I see. What you did there. Like Google for jobs is the Switzerland of job search. So they had the launch in Switzerland, right?
Chad: Had to, had to. So it's interesting because Job Channel's doing something, it's almost like they're taking a page out of KRT marketing's book. KRT had a Google for jobs or has a Google for jobs resource center and it's like that's what Job Channel is creating. They have a white paper, you can go learn more about Google for jobs or the Google job search experience and they want to be the place where everybody comes for that info because again, they're not in a very large country, so therefore they probably don't have that much competition. So it was probably easy for Google to kind of attack these guys on the shoulder and say, hey, what do we have to do to make this happen?
Joel: Yeah, it's like opening a shop in Illinois. Not too hard to do. Not too hard to do. So let's talk about the shitbags at MyPayrollHR this week.
Chad: How, how can that shit happen?
Joel: How can it happen? It's pretty easy to happen. I don't know why these crimes keep happening in our space. It's just another in the long line of fucking like dirt bags that are screwing people over. This one is particularly behead.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Okay. So MyPayrollHR, I never heard of them. They're by no means a big deal, but they really help small businesses with their payroll services, right? So the diner down the street, the short cleaners, those kinds of businesses. So this company essentially made sure everybody got paid, the business paid into the end of the payroll service, just like paychecks or any other kind of company that you might use.
Joel: So they basically close shop. No one knew about it, clients didn't know about it. Michael Mann, who is their CEO is in upstate New York. It's sort of closed shop, took for the Hills. They don't know where he is. The FBI raided his place this past Monday. They have about 13 employees who I assume were just thrown out on the street. The big thing though is that there were like $35 million in funds from companies that were into the system that have not been recovered. So all these people that work in large part paycheck to paycheck are totally screwed. All these businesses that are probably bootstrapped as it is now, they need to come up with the money to pay their employees. It's just a real big shit sandwich. And if Michael Mann is, you know, in Bora Bora right now with $35 million, then fuck him. He's a dick.
Chad: Well fuck him anyway. I don't care where he's at. I hope he's hiding in some corner somewhere in the fetal position. Fuck him wherever he's at. But yeah, this is interesting because it is impacting like around 4,000 small businesses. So whether we knew it or not, it's still impacting a lot of people. And the big question is, what is the faith in platforms being out there, right? I mean, because we take a look at this, right? In a company, a company focuses on being able to utilize a payroll system like this. And I mean this was totally bullshit. There was, there was no message saying, hey, we're going to shut close down shop. You need to roll into another system. Nothing like that. But yeah, even when companies do it the right way, like Hire by Google, you have companies who are putting a lot of time and a lot of effort in these platforms. How do you know, even with a big name at Google, that it's going to be fucking legit?
Joel: Yes, it's hard and it screws over every sort of legitimate business that really does care about making a good product and making customers happy because you do get pinched and it does make people gun shy about using new services. Although a lot of these small businesses they don't think differently about that. I got called from this company or I found this site on Google. They must be okay because they're on the first page of Google. Don't trust things that are really, really important to you to start ups or companies that haven't been around for a while or who are reputable or have a lot of money and investment. It's very risky and buyer beware on a lot of this stuff, unfortunately.
Chad: Well and this company had 4,000 businesses so it's not like, hey, we have 20 businesses on the platform, you can trust us. They had 4,000 businesses, so once again it's really hard to be able to say, hey, we don't know the name of this company. It doesn't matter. They had a shit ton of businesses using their system from a small business standpoint, but then you take a look at what Google just did. That's a big name. That's a very big name. Users are paying them now. They they are scaling it down I guess you could say the right way by actually going through and giving all the notices and things like that. You have a year to get off the system, but still, the time and money spent to be able to jump onto a system like this goes beyond that monthly subscription or whatever it is. I mean, it's, it's the faith and trust that we're really fucking with right
now.
Joel: It's, it sucks as 4,000 companies and all those employees that are expecting to get paid.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Be right back.
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Chad: Amber, Ferrari, everyone.
Joel: Ferrari, the voice of Canvas advertising. She's just such a rock star.
Chad: You know where I bet Amber is right now? She's on TikTok.
Joel: (Laughs). She's working diligently to advance the interest of Jobvite and its other companies. I'm sure.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. And one of those platforms, from a partnership standpoint, might be TikTok.
Joel: Yeah. But we've taken a little look at TikTok and some stories that have come out and there are some warning signs that we should all be aware of. So TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, which I don't think a lot of people know. I'm sure very few people know. I didn't really know it until a couple of weeks ago. If you think that the government isn't sort of listening and also collecting or has access to the data on TikTok, you're probably mistaken. So they're a little bit of of fears here of like what's going on and this platform is just growing like a fucking weed. If you're Facebook, you're super concerned about the growth of, of TikTok. So you know this is from the story. This caught my eye from one of the stories that we looked at.
Joel: So quote, "Facebook faces a serious global rival from China in TikTok. In 2018, TikTok ranked fourth worldwide as the top non-game app, downloaded at 663 million behind only Facebook, which was at 711 million and its related apps. WhatsApp and Messenger," this is from Sensor Tower data, "TikTok's in roads in India and it's young, mobile-savvy population is a big reason. It's soaring about one quarter of TikToks downloads come from India. That's interesting.
Chad: Wow.
Joel: TikTok added 188 million downloads in the first quarter of this year. Surpassing Facebook, but only trailing WhatsApp and Messenger. So this thing is a monster.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: And it's time that we kind of take a look at the dangers of it and the risks of using it.
Chad: Yeah. If Joel Cheesman is waiting for a flight, he's watching TikTok.
Joel: It is oddly addictive.
Chad: No, it's totally addictive. But the thing is, TikTok uses an algorithm that pretty much dictates the entire feed. So if you take a look at Netflix and Spotify and YouTube and so on and so forth, those are our recommender systems and they will recommend things. TikTok not so much. So I mean it pretty much chooses what is going to be in your feed. You have some, obviously, opportunities to like things and then it helps the algorithm but it doesn't really recommend, it just forces things in your face.
Joel: It is, it is super smart and I think it does show some of the advancements that China has probably made on an AI front that's effective and also a little bit scary I guess. But I also think if you're thinking you're going to use TikTok to source candidates, I think you're wrong. There's no search for, you know, who went to Stanford.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Or search for any particulars. So if this is the future of social media and how we create content online, I think sites like LinkedIn, how do they adapt to this new world? Because if this is how young people are going to interact, they're not going to fucking go to LinkedIn and type out lengthy profiles and engage with people that are sharing news stories in that way. So very interesting. We'll see how it pans out. But if you're a recruiter hoping to like leverage tick talk to source, I think you're going to be really disappointed.
Chad: If you're in branding, this is your platform. So this is what you should be looking at. You should be looking at, so let's say for instance, you're with Skill Scout or you're with VideoMyJob or something of that nature and you're using those types of platforms. How can you create these segments, these viral video types of segments to show your company or your jobs or whatever it might be. How can you leverage this platform? Can you search for candidates? No. Can you brand the fuck out of yourself?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Yes. So, look at the mechanism in which you might be able to use TikTok and if you are a company, you should, as I said before, the NFL, it's a company. They have users, they have brands, those types of things. That's what you should be looking for.
Joel: I hope at the gathering, there's some sessions in terms of this whole platform and how to build brand in this whole world of quirky, short videos on mobile devices.
Chad: We'll be having discussions about it. I guarantee that.
Joel: Let's go from high tech to no tech with our next story. You found this one in-
Chad: Rumspringa.
Joel: Incredibly interesting. Yeah. So explain to people what that is.
Chad: So Rumspringa, if you don't know what that is, the Amish community.
Joel: It's not the surf strumming that we've been talking about.
Chad: No, that's not the nasty fish. Rumspringa is in the Amish community. There's a time, I can't remember what the year is, but there's a time in which they allow their kids, getting ready to go into adulthood, to go out into the rest of the regular kind of community and try out new things. Go get drunk, go to a fucking techno party or whatever the fuck. Anyway-
Joel: Put on some parachute pants and party.
Chad: Yeah. Use electricity, ride in a car. So apparently two Amish males, I believe we're experiencing Rumspringa were pulled over by a cop. They were drinking spiked ice tea. I guess when you don't generally have something to drink you go for something that you might like. So spiked ice tea then a case of Mich Ultra on the top of their buggy.
Joel: Yeah. That probably tipped off the cob. If you're driving around with a case of beer on your hood, you're going to get pulled over. They must've been in a really fucked up.
Chad: That's not why the cop pulled him over. The cop pulled him over because he saw a stereo in the back.
Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chad: A stereo. It's like-
Joel: You don't read a lot on horse and buggies anyway.
Chad: No.
Joel: Or ever.
Chad: Yeah. So pulled them over and they were drinking, obviously, and they bolted.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: They're gone. Yeah. They run into the end of the tree line. So they went into the woods.
Chad: They impounded the buggy and the cops are like, look, we understand this Rumspringa thing happens, but hopefully you come and get your horse and buggy. I can only imagine these two kids and having to go to Jedidiah and Ethel, mom and dad, and tell them what they actually did.
Joel: Sir. Can you explain the two youths that you saw? Yeah. They were wearing black with little beards and that's all I saw. These dudes aren't going back to the Amish life. They're going to move to New York or Philly and become Rebel Rousers.
Chad: I disagree. I think that these kids will be scared Amish. They will go back to the Amish life. They will live the Amish paradise life.
Joel: You had to work that in, didn't you?
Chad: Well, that's a pretty weak Rumspringa is what I'm saying. We out.
Walken: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? Podcast with Chad the cheese. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people. You don't even know. And yet you're listening.
Walken: It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepperjack, swiss. There's so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.