LIVE from sunny Arizona... Ummm wait., no that's rain-soaked Arizona for the iCIMS iNFLUENCE conference. We're talking:
- Google for Jobs LIVES
- Indeed goes gig
- Slack takes it in the nuts - again
- LinkedIn has its sights on the Supreme Court against hiQ
and we do an iCIMS tech and strategy round-up.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
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Intro: 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.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: When's it going to rain?
Joel: From the rain-soaked desert in Scottsdale, Arizona, you're listening to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, a.k.a. The Chad and Cheese Podcast, a.k.a. Right Said Fred and Seth Rogen. I'm your co-host Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad Right Said Fred?
Joel: I'm too sexy for my shirt. On this week's show, is Indeed going full gig? Slack continues to take it in the nuts, and, "Hello, Supreme Court. It's us, LinkedIn." Yep, I just dropped a Judy Bloom reference. We'll be right back after we pay a few bills.
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Chad: And we're back.
Joel: And we're back here. Recording at the iCIMS yearly analysts/VIP/
Chad: Influence.
Joel: Customer event.
Chad: That thing.
Joel: And it just wanted to rain in Scottsdale, Arizona. One of the 30 days a year that it rains here, we get two of them. Whatever.
Chad: Not good for my golf game, not to be able to get out there.
Joel: But my massage game is rocking with this indoor activities. Got to give a shoutout to the masseuse that worked my tight-
Chad: Jerome?
Joel: Areas.
Chad: His name was Jerome, right?
Joel: Jerome and Bubba worked me over. Man, it's been a long couple days.
Chad: It has.
Joel: So, shoutouts.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Big shoutout to iCIMS, obviously.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: Class organization, class people, class product, always have a good time with them. You get the Jersey attitude with-
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: The soft touch of tech.
Chad: In literally opening the kimono. Susan just said that on stage.
This is where we open up the kimono-
Joel: It's kind of a naughty thing. I'm surprised in the Me too era that we can say "open the kimono so freely."
Chad: Susie Vitale can say whatever she wants.
Joel: That's true, she can.
Chad: She can do that. Big shoutout today to Matt Charney, it's his birthday. So he's turning 70.
Joel: Stay young and live forever, Matt. We love you, Man.
Chad: Stay young, Matt. This next one is kind of weird. Robert Half, big shoutout to the number one job board on Robert Half's new list?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Big shout, guess who it was?
Joel: Was it Robert?
Chad: It was Robert Half.
Joel: I didn't even know you could look for jobs on Robert Half's website.
Chad: All of the different, there's a huge staffing company, so they have to use all these platforms.
Joel: Great.
Chad: And then, to be able to rank themselves number one, on a list, I thought was fucking outstanding-
Joel: Usually, you try to be a little more incognito when you do these lists and want to promote yourself, but-
Chad: Yeah, you're in staffing, you just do what the fuck you want. That's just how shit works.
Joel: I mean, yeah, pity the fool that reads that and doesn't make the connection that it's self-serving. Man, who else was on the list?
Chad: I don't know, I just, I had to stop right there because that just blew the whole list for me.
Joel: Yeah, I think somebody commented, "Hello, 2012 called. They want their job board list back," or something.
Chad: As if Robert Half's job board was even on a list in 2012.
Joel: No doubt. Shoutout to Colin Day.
Chad: Colin, yes.
Joel: iCIMS CO was kind enough to have dinner with us yesterday at the event. Always nice to see him. Success couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, so Colin, shoutout to you.
Chad: Colin's a great guy. I mean, he is one of the industry leaders who, he was a recruiter, and all the way up through the ranks, I mean, they just stuck to their guns, on the applicant tracking system and what they do, and they will say that, "Hey, we haven't done it right all of these years, but we feel like we're getting it right now." That's really cool for somebody to just be, again, that transparent and talk about where they feel like they were off the rails for a minutes.
Joel: Yep. I love that, this may bleed into iCIMS round-up, but I might forget, I love that his sort of opinion of new tech and where things are going is sort of a wait and see approach. He's very calculated in terms of what they do technologically, and it's really easy to get sort of caught up in AI and ML, and the automated, and programmatic and everything and just start launching stuff willy-nilly and they don't do that. His comment, I think, in the presentation was, "Look, when the clients are bringing out the pitch forks, that's usually about the time that we should building and launching products." I appreciate that approach.
Chad: I don't... 100% agree on that one. Long list of quick shoutouts, just so that you guys know, you feel free on LinkedIn or Twitter to follow us or connect with us. Will Capper over at Direct Apply, Karyn Lurie at Live Hired, James Anderson at Peachy Mondays, yes, that's a company. Mike Ferlaino, I think it is, over at Zip, and a bunch of people this week, actually connected. That happens all the time. I don't give enough shoutouts to that, so I wanted to be able to say, "Feel free, we love the engagement."
Joel: Absolutely. Shoutout to the Job Board Doctor.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: Who's been quiet for a while.
Chad: He was napping.
Joel: He came out of the woodwork and enjoyed last week's commentary on Paul Forrester and some other things, so Doctor, good to have you back, shoutout to you, Brother.
Chad: Shoutout to Kristi Robinson. So she is the head of TA from Esurance.
Joel: Well, hello, Mrs. Robinson.
Chad: Hello, Mrs. Robinson. Yeah, so she actually did a pod with us. We're going to be launching that who knows, maybe in the next month or so but really appreciate her coming on and after listening, it was hilarious, because she agreed to come on the show, and then I asked her, "Have you ever heard the show?" She just kind of looks at me. I'm like, "Okay, go listen to a show before you get on."
Joel: Did you pick the show that she listened to?
Chad: Yeah, I did.
Joel: Oh you did, okay.
Chad: Yeah, it was one of the more-
Joel: It was the CareerBuilder, WWE segment that got her giggling.
Chad: And so that set the bar pretty high. [crosstalk 00:07:56] So anyway, we had a blast with that.
Joel: Adam at Applichat, Chad, that guy just cracks me up.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: His firing squad drop this week.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Needless to say, we have opposing opinions on his business and what he's doing, but that kid just cracks me up every time I see his picture. So, Adam, here's to you, Buddy, shoutout.
Chad: Yeah. Not about what he's doing. I love what he's doing, and I love that he's a 22 year old kid, starting a company. Oh my god, it's amazing.
Joel: Yeah, we just love that he's a 22 Irish kid and living in Mexico City.
Chad: But I felt it was my obligation to be able to-
Joel: Sure.
Chad: You'll hear it on the firing squad.
Joel: Father figure in full effect with Chad Sowash.
Chad: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Topics, you think we're ready for topics?
Joel: Let's do the show, Man.
Chad: Okay. So we're going to jump into the iCIMS round-up.
Joel: Sure.
Chad: And as, pretty much when we got to Scottsdale, obviously it's an entirely different feel than going to New Jersey.
Joel: A little bit, you think? You think?
Chad: So iCIMS making that big change and they've got beautiful headquarters, right? Making that big change and then also really melding their clients with us, the quote, unquote analysts.
Joel: Yep.
Chad: I thought that was really cool because we had an opportunity at lunch and breakfast and at drinks to talk to their clients and not just about what they're doing, but also about the content that was happening on stage. It was more of an immersive type of experience, as opposed to how it was in last year's.
Joel: Sure. Analysts get tired of hearing each other talk. It's good to have a second opinion on some of this stuff.
Chad: Yep.
Joel: Obviously, they survey the attendees and we'll see if they cross the stream again next year. But I would be surprised if the employers don't prefer an intimate meeting with just them as opposed to loud mouth analysts and opinionated bloggers and podcasters.
Chad: Yeah, I don't know. Okay, we'll figure it out, we'll see.
Joel: We'll figure it out.
Chad: We'll see how it turns out next year.
Joel: Yes, if we're invited back, we'll see, which his very much in limbo at the moment.
Chad: Yeah, I think Susan's already said, "You're not allowed."
Joel: Yeah, I'm pretty much blackballed from iCIMS events.
Chad: One of the cool stats that they shared with us, and we're going to have to get deeper into this, is that it's $680 per day, per job that is open for a company. That's an average that they've been able to pull together with their clients. I thought that was awesome because when we're talking about talent acquisition, and we're talking about the actual company's bottom line, we don't talk enough about numbers. And the bottom line. This is actually a figure that, let's figure out how they came up with it, but it's a figure we can start taking to the C-suite and saying, "Hey, this is what you're losing because you're not doing X, Y, and Z."
Joel: Yeah. It reminded me of the UNLEASH panel where Sainsbury, I forget his name, mentioned-
Chad: Chris Wray.
Joel: You're numbers guy's your best friend and if you want to get a seat at the table, bring them along. To me, this is iCIMS giving you some ammunition to go to the C-suite and get a voice in terms of dollars and cents for getting HR at the table.
Chad: I think that was $147 million dollars that Chris Wray, over at Sainsbury's actually had calculated that their candidate experience could cost them that amount of money in consumer goods because they are a grocery store.
Joel: Your memory is better than mine, we'll just go with that. We'll go with that.
Chad: That is amazing. But again, those are the conversations we need to have. Those are business conversations.
Joel: Yep.
Chad: Not the cost-per-hire bullshit that a CEO doesn't know about or even care about. They need to know how much money they're losing on a daily basis from a production standpoint, what have you, and also from a consumer goods and services standpoint, from experience.
Joel: Yep. Another standout highlight for me during this event was, I had talked about Bullhorn's new marketplace in last week's show and I have a strong opinion on making people pay to be on the platform. iCIMS was very quick to respond to say that theirs is free, which it hasn't always been. I think that's somewhat of a new thing but when you get someone like iCIMS, which is big, it's a huge ATS, say, "We're going to allow people in free," the only hurdle they have to clear is, they actually have to have an iCIMS client using their product. Which I think is a fair hurdle that people should have to clear.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: But, to me, this says to every other ATS out there like, "Hey, we appreciate the fact that start ups can make apps on our platform. You should take some of the barriers out of your, whether it's pricing, whatever it is, to get people, enable people to put products and services on their platform is a fantastic thing." I also think, you know you and I talk about the one platform to rule them all and it's hard to think, "Oh, Google's going to be the one platform, or LinkedIn and Microsoft." But when you start talking about an ATS platform where every third party service that you use and enjoy is on that one platform, maybe changing your mind that there can be a one-stop shop, as long as the platform is robust and everyone's welcome.
Chad: Yeah, I think their unified platform, so this marketplace is pretty awesome because like you'd said, they have made the only barrier to entry is that you're working with one of their clients. At that point, this becomes a awesome strategic play for M&A. You have all of these companies, whether they're start ups, not start ups, to be able to get into the iCIMS platform in a standard integration, or a prime integration. I would definitely say if you can get to the prime integration, get there because you're sharing much more data, and they can see. Especially if you're looking to get acquired but yeah, overall, I just think it's incredibly smart.
Chad: From the start ups we've talked about, or we've talked to, over the years, we've always said, "Get these integrations. Get them in deep." This is an awesome example of exactly what we've been saying. They're monitoring how you are doing.
Joel: Yep. Going back to my comment about Colin being very prudent in terms of what they launch, the app store enables them to see what's growing, what's successful, what clients want, and enables iCIMS, in this case, to make an acquisition as opposed to building it themselves. To me, that's a sound strategy. We saw that with TextRecurit, we saw that with Jibe, this past year. That's, to me, a smart idea and it makes allowing people to put apps on your site or on your platform for free that much smarter because it's insight into your next acquisition and your next growth strategy.
Chad: Right, right. I think around the programmatic, companies don't really understand it. Which is why they go to their agencies to do this. They're not going to come out with the pitchforks like you were saying. I think this is an entirely different kind of an anomaly to their current strategy, where hey, the people will vote on it and what not. Well, they don't even know what it is and it's out there. But it can save them a shit ton of cash. I think this could be a great opportunity for them to standardize programmatic in a core platform. I think, I really think that their strategy is sound, no question. But you have to take a look at some of those anomalies that are big out there.
Joel: Yeah, plus no one loves data like you do. It's one thing to hear people like us say, "This is the future." It's another thing to say, "Hey, based on our marketplace, here is the future and here's what we should get involved in."
Chad: Yeah. Yeah. I do love that.
Joel: I will also mention that if you're ever at the Four Seasons in Scottsdale, make sure you have the carne asada because it's amazing.
Chad: It is freaking amazing.
Joel: I've had some beef in my life and this stuff was very nice.
Chad: The Ignite UX is another, well, UI for their user experience, is another big change. Some of the analysts weren't really big on it. I can understand from the standpoint of usability, just as long as they aren't adding clicks, just to make it more pretty. That makes more sense. I don't think they're doing that. I could be 100% wrong, but I do... back in my quote, unquote, short applicant tracking system life, when Wow employers, one of the worst names ever, came out as an ASP, one of the very first ASP applicant tracking systems, I went to a client. Thing was set up to look like Microsoft, Outlook, kind of like Microsoft products, which really were ugly as fuck.
Joel: Sure.
Chad: I went to a big perspective client that we're going to hopefully drop a big contract on, and they said the usability was great, the thing that really sucked was, it was hard on the eyes. To be able to have a system that you're looking at eight hours a day, or maybe even more?
Joel: Sure.
Chad: That actually comes into, that comes to impact the decision. I, until that point, never thought about really being in a system that long, and I think this is a great decision for them. What do you think?
Joel: Yeah, I agree, updating. Let's agree, iCIMS has been around for a long time.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: I mean, they've never been trailblazers in design, to say the least. But in addition to the recruiter side of it, I think rethinking what the job seeker's experience is is even that much more important because as consumers, good design is the lowest bar that you need to clear. If the representation of companies' career sites is shit, then people's opinion of the company site, as well as your platform, is going to be shit. The redesign was welcome but I also think a necessity in this world that we live in, of everything has to be fucking Uber, everything has to be Airbnb, everything has to be cutesy and easy and linear, as Colin, I think, mentioned. Everything is, "You can only do this, and you can only do this," and then go to another page and you can only do this. But it has to look good and they've made strides to do that, which is great.
Chad: Yeah, I think Ron asked a good question. The current president and interim CEO, he asked, "Who has a great experience out there that we should look at?" I mean, we all just kind of thought, "Yeah, what does look good?" Uber was one of those, Lyft was one of those, because it is fairly simple, but thinking about the actual user experience that you do have, and enjoying that experience, what platforms do you use? I'd like to hear from our listeners on that one.
Joel: Yeah, and particularly mobile. I mean, more and more job search and interaction and engagement is mobile, so making sure that experience is kick ass is really important.
Chad: Indeed.
Joel: Indeed goes gig, maybe.
Chad: Indeed goes... so we've talked about this a little bit. We kind of saw this happening with SYFT.
Joel: Yep. And we've seen Indeed throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall in the past year. Which-
Chad: They have to.
Joel: To their credit, good.
Chad: They have to and good for them.
Joel: Their forefathers did not do similarly when Indeed was kicking their ass, so good for them. But yeah, spotted by our buddy Chris Russell, since June of this year, Indeed quietly launched Gigs.Indeed.com. No announcement, we assume, it's just sort of a test thing.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I don't know how he got wind of it, although he's always sticking his nose in places he shouldn't. It's by no means an Upwork, Fiverr sort of platform, or what you think of a gig site would be. It really sort of a job board with jobs that are sort of historically thought of as gig jobs. Dishwashers, real estate agents, things like that. Also, there are very few jobs on it. Literally, less than 1000. So this is either somebody throwing shit, or as Chris speculates in his post, that with the acquisition of SYFT, maybe this is part of a bigger thing that Indeed will launch at some point in terms of taking on the gig economy. We'll have to watch that, but they've definitely launched it. It's not on a weird URL or anything. I mean, it's on Indeed, so this is something to watch into the next year.
Chad: We will be watching.
Joel: Do you think it's a smart move?
Chad: Yeah, I think it's always a smart move to take a look at the different ways people are working.
Joel: Yep.
Chad: Whether its helping somebody find a side hustle, or whatever it is, I think it's a good idea, especially if you're in the world of work. They have been really focused on FTE, your traditional types of jobs. I think it's smart for them to do that, especially, again, if you have a platform like SYFT, this is going to be, this is really going to be how I would assume you start to transform Indeed into something entirely different, which would be really cool.
Joel: Yeah. To me, it'll be interesting. I think this is definitely somewhere that they're going to go, whether or not it's a full-on, "We make, we pay them, and you put money in to leverage workers," whether or not they go full bore into like Upwork competition, or Snag, which we've talked about before.
Chad: Right.
Joel: I think it's to be, will be interesting, and I think secondarily, do they keep the SYFT brand and grow it out to this new platform? Or do they just take the tech from SYFT and put it on this new gigs.indeed.com URL?
Chad: Which is... it looks like it's in Beta. It has the basic search, kind of like browse functionality for specific types of like home healthcare and that kind of thing.
Joel: It's bare bone shit.
Chad: Yeah, it is.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: It's the very start of something that might never see really the light of day.
Joel: Yes, it may never be promoted but, to me, this is a place they probably should go.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: It's a place where, if you're looking at, "Where is Google for jobs not going to go?" It's probably competing with Upwork and Uber and things like that. From that perspective, it's probably a good strategic move to get into the gig economy.
Chad: Excellent. Who do we need to hear from?
Joel: Who do we need to hear from?
Chad: I think we'd need to hear from Sovren.
Joel: I love Sovren.
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Chad: We're back.
Joel: We're back.
Chad: Last week on the weekly show, I actually asked, because of the whole Google coming into the space-
Joel: I feel like not having beers for this show is a bad thing, but I guess it's too late at this point.
Chad: They came into this space like mad men. I mean, they had three products and they were slamming them down.
Joel: Triple threat.
Chad: Yeah, and then, now, they pull Hire off the table, even though we hear that it was a good, if not great product.
Joel: Sure, go back and listen to our interview. With-
Chad: Yeah. Framestore.
Joel: Yeah, Framestore loved it.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Loved it.
Chad: It was a product they were really excited to be in.
Joel: Yep.
Chad: That won't exist next year at this time.
Joel: Correct.
Chad: My question was, I'm not really feeling that much from Google for jobs or anything like that. I might have spurred Chris on, I don't know, but Chris Russell then wrote a post, and he was speaking with some staffing companies and some marketing companies and what not.
Joel: And Chris has his own sites, as well that he monitors.
Chad: Yeah. So he had this one quote from Matt [Lozar 00:24:59], friend of the show from Haley Marketing. He said, "He can confirm that our clients for Google for Jobs, peaked in July but has decreased the past few months." Could just be cyclical at the end of the year.
Joel: Or cyclical.
Chad: Yeah, cyclical, cyclical. It's about three percent for traffic source. Kind of getting some inputs from organizations who have multiple clients I thought was pretty interesting.
Joel: Yeah. All the job boards that pay attention to Chris and love Chris love hearing these kinds of posts.
Chad: Oh yeah, I'm sure they do.
Joel: For sure. However-
Chad: They're not going to enjoy hearing this.
Joel: Colin Day here at iCIMS gave a keynote or presentation yesterday and one of my questions to him was, "Look, last year you were super bullish on Google for Jobs. What's your opinion today? Are you still bullish on what they're doing?" His comment was, "Absolutely." Basically, what he's seeing is a slow march, Google for Jobs keeps getting bigger and bigger and more important, in terms of traffic driven. He said they'll go in, look at the top sites, and a year ago, they were number six. Then, a few months later, like, they population up to number five, and so forth. Susan Vitale, CMO, mentioned after he spoke that Google for Jobs is now the number three referral for jobs on their clients' websites. This is real data, this isn't speculative. Followed by LinkedIn and then followed by number one Indeed.
Joel: But, rest assured, from the ATS perspective, an iCIMS perspective, Google is marching on this steady growth for Google for Jobs. My personal theory is that job seekers are learning to go directly to the company site because more times than not if they go to a job site, they have to go back to the company site, anyway. So the behavior of Google for Jobs users is, "I'm going to find out what the direct link to the employer is, and I'm going to click on that to apply, which wold lead to less traffic to the job boards, which is primarily, I'm guessing, who Chris Russell is talking to.
Chad: Well, he did talk to a staffing company and one thing you have to remember is that early on, not a whole lot of companies got into Google for Jobs. Whether they were vendors, or staffing companies, or what have you. If there's a small pool of actual jobs, you're going to get a greater share of the traffic. Fairly simple. What's happening is, all the mark-ups and everything like that, iCIMS gets involved, they throw thousands of customers into that. I mean, if you're seeing a drop, that drop could be, that's organic. I mean, because you have more in the system. Just makes sense. Not to mention, I really believe that too many companies are looking for that silver bullet where they don't have to buy Indeed anymore. That's just not going to happen. Especially right out of the gate.
Chad: Is Google for Jobs something that you should be involved in? Of course. But you also need to take a look at these other programmatic platforms and look at different ways to diversify your traffic because if you're not doing that, and you're just waiting for that one big site to come up, all you're doing is continuing the cycle of dependency where, before it was Monster, and that was the number one. It was like, "Oh, no, no, no." Then CareerBuilder, and then, "No, no, no." It's like, stop doing this to yourself.
Joel: Yeah. I believe the decrease in traffic to job boards is part of Google's master plan of like no click search.
Chad: Tarquin's here, we'll ask him. He won't answer.
Joel: He won't answer us. The writing on the wall, in terms of if you're a job site, to say, "How do I get traffic in more, different unique ways?" You should have been doing that long before this, but that is really important now and underscored because what happens if Google starts aligning themselves with all the ATSes and saying, "How do we build one click apply right directly to the ATS?" So then I'm a job seeker, I'm on Google for Jobs, I'm looking at the entire job, and then there's like a one click button right into the ATS that I can start. I can have a Google account profile and then that sends my stuff directly to the ATS, directly to the company. At that point, the job boards are severely screwed because you're not going to the job board site, you're not applying through the job board site, you're just staying on Google, and applying directly from them.
Joel: I think that's probably something that they've thought about.
Chad: I don't think they have. I don't. I think that it all comes down to the best experience overall, and they're tracking the experience. So if the experience is better on a job site, then that job site's going to rank better because it's all about the experience, no matter what. The content is the content, but the experience is entirely different. I believe what job boards, job sites, whatever the fuck you want to call them, what they should be doing right now, is focusing on their experience. Not having candidates go through hoop after hoop after hoop, but making it a great experience for them, and that's how you win.
Chad: I don't personally believe that theory.
Joel: Just build an awesome virtual reality solution and people will flock to your job site. I also think there's going to be a lot of anti-trust issues.
Chad: That's what Chris said.
Joel: Google's moving beyond... this is a bigger Google story than Jobs.
Chad: But this is search.
Joel: Yes. Google's anti-trust headaches have mostly been pay-per-click. But it's moving into... they're screwing over Yelp, they're screwing over any weather site, rental site, reservations. No one's going to these sites anymore because Google has all the content on Google. If there's anti-trust that comes out and the courts decide that Google can't just take site's contents, and just make it available on Google without having attribution or sending people to the sites of origin, then that's not going to happen on Google for Jobs. But if they don't get anti-trust cases, yeah, we'll see what happens. But in a perfect world, I don't think Google wants you to leave Google ever.
Chad: No, but I also think that their big play for defeating anti-trust in this space, was killing Google Hire. Not being that full system, that one system that rules them all, because that is a monopoly at that point. Right now they can go back and say, "You know what? We could've gone there, as a matter of fact we were, so we stopped, and we're just focusing on what we do, and what we do is search."
Joel: "We're just making publicly available content-"
Chad: All we're doing.
Joel: "Available on our platform."
Chad: That's exactly right.
Joel: Yep.
Chad: Talking about anti-trust is... one company that I don't think comes up enough, they're smartly, I think, dodging a lot of this, maybe because of-
Joel: They have experience.
Chad: They do. They do have experience.
Joel: In anti-trust.
Chad: Microsoft is eating Slack-
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Like a fucking boa constrictor, Man. Just slowly and just choking them to death, and then they're just going to eat them whole. That's it.
Joel: Yep. So, a little context here, we talked a little while ago about Microsoft teams surpassing the traffic in terms of daily users of Slack. Slack has about 12 million users, at the time when we reported it, Microsoft had surpassed them and gotten 13 million. It just came out recently that they're at the 20 million users mark-
Chad: 13 million wasn't that long ago.
Joel: Yeah, it wasn't that long ago, so, yeah. If I'm Slack, it's going to be really challenging. But Microsoft, anti-trust issues, I don't know. Facebook has a competing product, as well. It's not as if people don't have options in terms of messaging at work. But in terms of Slack, Man, that's a tough battle to fight because Microsoft product is integrated into companies already-
Chad: Yes.
Joel: It's flip a switch, now we have a Slack-like product. Certainly there'll be a good group of rebellious companies that say, "We're never going Microsoft." But in terms of growth, good God, Slack has got its work cut out for it. If the stock continues to dive, like it did this week, somebody's going to come in and grab them up at clearance prices. That could happen next year.
Chad: Sit back and wait. Watch the fricking Microsoft train roll and just watch that fricking stock tank, and then wait for the clearance items, Man.
Joel: That's right. My prediction of Amazon buying Slack could still happen, Folks.
Chad: Could still happen.
Joel: Could still happen.
Chad: Excellent. So I think what we're going to do, is we're going to take a little time for JobAdX, and then we'll be right back, and we're going to talk about LinkedIn, and what is LinkedIn doing, or asking of the Supreme Court?
Joel: Yikes.
Chad: What the?
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Chad: And we're back.
Joel: We're back.
Chad: LinkedIn asks the Supreme Courts of United States, a.k.a. SCOTUS, to look at the hiQ ruling.
Joel: Yep.
Chad: LinkedIn plans to ask the United States' Supreme Court to review a ruling that requires the company to allow its site to be scraped by analytics company hiQ Labs and, just for everybody else that's out there, probably about 10,000 other small companies who do the same damn thing. Not the same thing, but scraping-wise. Back to this, the Microsoft-owned social networking service disclosed its plans, in court papers filed Thursday with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who they haven't had a good track record with-
Joel: Nope.
Chad: LinkedIn is also asking the Ninth Circuit to pause the lawsuit until the Supreme Court decides whether to hear the case because they know they're going to get smacked down like a bitch by the Ninth. The battle between the two companies began in May 2017 when LinkedIn demanded that hiQ stop scraping data, and hiQ is the David in this David and Goliath. I mean, they literally... I can't imagine how many funds they've had to put out to be able to try to fight this over two years.
Joel: Two questions. One is, "Does the Supreme Court take this on?" I'm not enough of a legislative nerd to know if they will. Obviously, in this country we know that the Supreme Court takes on really big issues, really big questions, and tries to answer those questions based on the Constitution. That's the first question. I tend to think that this, if it's framed as, "This is online data. What happens to it? Who has access to it?" It is a big enough question that the Supreme Court would listen to this case. The second thing is, "Will they win?" If it does go to the Supreme Court. You have to look at the make-up of the court. Very conservative, siding with Big Business. I think you could probably make that argument and in that world, I think LinkedIn probably has a pretty good chance to win the case.
Joel: I do think that whatever ruling, if they take this on, is going to have widespread, very widespread implications to sites and scraping and who owns data and server traffic and how all that stuff is organized. If they take it on, it's going to be a super interesting thing to watch heading into next year. I'm kind of hoping that it does go to Supreme Court.
Chad: I kind of do, too. I think it'll go the other way, and here's why. Small business. This is how small businesses actually... they're not using LinkedIn's data because that's not LinkedIn's data. That is the candidate's data. Therefore, they're actually using that data to be able to, again, whether in hiQ's standpoint predict certain things or what have you, this could perspectively negatively impact thousands of small businesses.
Chad: If you go into the Supreme Court with, again, more of a conservative panel of judges, then you can really say, "Hey, look, we're talking about a Microsoft-backed company." We're talking about a huge, big corporation that is trying to stamp out not just one little guy, thousands of little guys.
Joel: Yeah, I think that'll be a big question for the Supreme Court, is how does this stifle innovation?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: We're looking at a world-
Chad: Very much.
Joel: Where a handful of tech companies are prime to basically own everything that innovation dies in that world.
Chad: Take guys like SeekOut who just won our Death Match.
Joel: Correct.
Chad: Right?
Joel: Correct. Impacts a lot of companies.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: All over the place. I do hope this goes to the Supreme Court. I'll be watching it closely and then hats off to hiQ for, again, taking on this battle.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: I'm not sure how they're bankrolling the legal bills, but good for them for fighting this good fight. They may go down in history as a serious David to the Goliath of Microsoft and LinkedIn.
Chad: If you're one of those small companies that is scraping data from LinkedIn, and you are not giving money to hiQ for this law, this court battle? Then, that's what you do right now. You give them a call, you write them a check because they are fighting for you, and your business livelihood.
Joel: That's right. When you're making out the holiday cards to your VIPs and close friends this year, make sure you send hiQ a little love this holiday season in their fight against LinkedIn and Microsoft if you're in support of what they're doing.
Chad: That being said, we out.
Joel: We out.
Walken: Thank you for listening to what's it called? PODCAST! with Chad, with Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts to people you don't even know, and yet, you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper jack. Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anyhoo, 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.