Adzuna Shade

Don't shoot your eye out, kids, The Chad & Cheese Podcast is back this week with top news from the world of recruiting. The boys are pulling zero punches on:

- Adzuna's cofounder for throwing shade at newly minted Talent.com

- Indeed may or may not finally be getting TV ads right

- and LinkedIn gives 140,000 reasons to get your kids enrolled in some A.I. 101 classes ASAP.

All this and much, much more, thanks to sponsors Sovren, JobAdx, and Canvas.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:

Disability Solutions' clients are changing the lives of people with disabilities, including veterans with service related disabilities.​

Tim Sackett: Hi, I'm Tim Sackett and you're listening to the Chad & Cheese Podcast. I'm not sure why you are, but hey, you do you.

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 & Cheese Podcast.

Joel: Aw, yeah. Dude, a mall Santa called me a hoe, not once, but three times this week. That's so fucking rude. Hey, boys and girls, welcome to the Chad & Cheese Podcast, HR's merriest bunch of assholes you've ever seen. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheesman.

Chad: And I'm Chad "Garland All Over My Tree" Sowash.

Joel: We don't want to know what else is on your tree. On this week's show, neuvoo, or Talent.com, gets a little shade thrown at it. Indeed still doesn't know how to do TV ads. And well, what do you know? AI is still a thing.

Chad: Imagine that.

Joel: Sit down, relax, grab some eggnog, and don't shoot your eye out, kids. We'll be right back after we pay a few bills.

JobAdx: So how's the hiring going? Find those purple squirrels?

JobAdx: With applicant after applicant, it feels like I'm just getting further from hiring the right candidate. I've got tons of applications, but none of these candidates are even close to being the right fit. Volume is great and all, but my small team doesn't have the time sift through hundreds of mismatched applications. I want more relevant candidates, not just more candidates.

JobAdx: Well, get this. JobAdX has been helping small to medium businesses get their job ads in front of targeted active job seekers by matching your jobs to a candidate based on their search behavior across a vast network of niche job sites and talent networks, and the best part, it's self-serve. No sales reps, no chat bots, no spend minimums. Just fill a form with your name, number of jobs, and a budget you're working with and voila. Your ads are now shown over a growing network over 150 job sites. Better yet, those company videos that showcase the value of being part of a small team can have a new home now within your ads, helping you stand out and share your vision proactively.

JobAdx: Wait, what was that?

JobAdx: Oh, I just signed up for self-serve with JobAdX. What were you talking about?

JobAdx: That fast, huh? Jump start your targeted recruitment with JobAdX today. Visit JobAdX.com, and click that get started risk-free button. It's JobAdX.com. JobAdX, engage, attract, employ.

Joel: Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. Please put a penny in the old man's hat. I almost took a nap during that ad. And speaking of naps-

Chad: Yes.

Joel: Our first shout out goes to Matt Adam and NAS for having the greatest webinar in the history of webinars.

Chad: Killing me.

Joel: Scheduled for this week or next week or sometime soon about the value of naps. Yes. It's about time.

Chad: Well, first off, it's not a webinar. It was actually a DisruptHR presentation, so you must've fallen asleep before-

Joel: See, I need to wake up for these things.

Chad: Yeah, yeah. It was actually, it was a great pitch, and I buy it to an extent because he talks about guys like me who work like, 60 to 80 hours a week, how we need-

Joel: Oh, god.

Chad: ... to pull back, take naps, chill out, be reenergized. But I think this goes lost on about, I don't know, a quarter of the population who only works about 20 hours and thinks they need to take naps, and so yeah, that's not the

case.

Joel: The main point is, when you and I grew up, naps were for pussies, right? You'll sleep when you die. And we've fortunately come around to a place in human development where we say, "You know what? Your brain needs to recharge, you need to nap. It's not a wussy thing to do." And that's a positive thing.

Chad: That's just like saying, "Water makes you weak." The Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans, right? Water makes you weak. Well, no, actually water doesn't make you weak, you need water. But back in those times, the old-timey kind of thought process was it makes you weak, and we know better through science that it does not. But yes, I agree. We need more time away from work.

Joel: No doubt. So let's get these shout outs going so I can get back to my nap time. What do you got?

Chad: Guest appearance on Candidate.ID's rendition of Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is Talent Pipeline Automation. It's funny, he kind of had all these pictures of different people, or they put Christmas hats and elf hats and all that other fun stuff on them while somebody actually did this rendition of Mariah Carey, which I thought was hilarious and go figure, I had to listen to the whole thing.

Joel: Which is great, by the way. We forget how awesome Mariah was.

Chad: Oh yeah.

Joel: And listening to that song during the season, just like holy hell, she had some pipes on her. And to have Whitney and Mariah at the same time, we are a blessed generation.

Chad: I agree.

Joel: And by the way, Adam in the Chad & Cheese T-shirt at his local Planet Fitness or whatever they have over there in Scotland. Looks pretty good, man, and the tight shorts are a nice touch, too.

Chad: Yes, those are definitely '80s shorts.

Joel: It's Scotland, dude, I mean, you know...

Chad: We used to call them ball-huggers.

Joel: Fashion.

Chad: So big shout out to Oonaugh Clark, I actually had to look up how to say that first name, Oonaugh Clark over at CrossCountry Consulting in Ireland came to our defense on LinkedIn this week.

Joel: [crosstalk 00:06:11]

Chad: Somebody had actually posted a quote-unquote "solid podcast recruitment list," and we weren't included, so Oonaugh actually said, "It's not a solid recruitment list unless Matt Alder and Chad and Cheese are on the list.

Boom."

Joel: That's what I'm talking about. Hey, I think we should do a top 10 list of the worst lists in recruitment. Because every company, the lists are coming out at a maddening pace.

Chad: Oh, yes.

Joel: And it's getting a little ridiculous.

Chad: So I saw one this week that had, it was like the top HR leaders or what have you.

Joel: Sure.

Chad: And it had people that you and I know, and then it also had Laszlo Bock, right? And I'm like, how do you... What do you... I don't get it. This makes no fucking sense.

Joel: Who is Laszlo Bock?

Chad: He had Google's talent in HR for a long time.

Joel: Oh, yeah. Okay. Right.

Chad: Wrote a book called Work Rules! Yeah, that guy.

Joel: Well, he should probably be on the list.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: The problem is, these sites go to other services that rate blogs and social media presences and stuff, and podcasters don't really get on those lists, I don't think. So we kind of get left out.

Chad: Eh, I don't feel left out. Noura Dadzie, thanks for commenting and listening, and now go and make sure all your peers, your friends, and family are listening as well. We appreciate it.

Joel: Nice, nice. Shout out to Joe Shaker.

Chad: Joe.

Joel: Joe and I, Joe's a Wisconsin graduate, and I being a Buckeye fan, we had a friendly bet last weekend for the Wisconsin-Ohio State game. I gave him the points that Vegas gave Wisconsin, which were 16 and a half. Ohio State ended up winning by 13, so in Vegas, the Badgers won and I had to make good on my bet. So what I did was I sang the Wisconsin fight song online, on social medias, to pay off the debt that I had for Joe for losing the bet.

Chad: Yes. But still, that makes Joe feel a little bit better, but his Badgers lost horribly after a second half where they were crushed.

Joel: 21-7 lead going into halftime.

Chad: Crushed, crushed.

Joel: That's got to hurt.

Chad: Yeah, that's got to hurt.

Joel: that's got to hurt.

Chad: Big shout out to Jazmyn Mijuskovic.

Joel: The names on this week's show, damn.

Chad: Who once again, we've given her a shout out before, she's in employer brand over at Publix and shout out is for her writing a LinkedIn article called Dear EB Newbie, What I Learned My First Year in Employment Branding, and using us, believe it or not, as inspiration.

Joel: What?

Chad: As inspiration.

Joel: Well, if we're anything but inspirational, we should just pack it in. Pack it in. Shout out to Facebook and Google.

Chad: Oh yeah?

Joel: Glassdoor put out their best places to work lists, and for the first time probably ever, I think it's ever, yeah, Facebook and Google were not in the top 10, which is yikes.

Chad: They are not the new hotness, and with all the-

Joel: Not hot.

Chad: ... legal shit that they've been hit with over the past year, couple years or so-

Joel: Yeah, angry employees.

Chad: They're going to get slapped around.

Joel: Firings. Yeah, nasty stuff. So shout out to you guys. Get your act together.

Chad: Yep. So shout out to the boys over at Rectxt for Tweeting a story about “Jawn is Dead.”

Joel: You got to explain this, because most of our listeners-

Chad: Yeah, I'll get there.

Joel: Jawn, who's Jawn?

Chad: The story, and it's Jawn, J-A-W-N, Jawn is Dead, the Philly word's journey from quirky regionalism to overused cliché. Ed from Philly replied, "For the record, Chad used the word in the right context. Joel, not so much." So Jawn is a word that can be used, and it came out of Philly, born out of Philadelphia, and was used as a noun, as a verb, it could be used, which it's kind of hard to think that there's a context that it couldn't be used in, but apparently you know how to fuck things up. Overall, it had gone beyond Philly and at that point, that's when Philly people get pissed off and they stop using it because you can't have their shit.

Joel: So Ed from Philly-

Chad: Yes.

Joel: It's the holiday season. The world is full of wonderful scents, right? Cinnamons, pumpkin, turkey. Get our nose out of Chad's ass for five minutes and like, take in the holiday season and the smells around you. That's all I'm saying.

Chad: You don't have to hate on a guy who knows what he likes. And-

Joel: I'm just passing along some valuable information to the kid.

Chad: You're hating is what you're doing. And that's unfortunate.

Joel: Well, you know who's not hating is St. John Properties, my shout out.

Chad: Oh, god, yeah.

Joel: And no one will know who these cats are, but talk about a retention tool and a holiday bonus, holy shit. They had $10 million and they spread it out around 100 or so employees, to put it in easy math terms, each employee at this company got around $50,000 each as a Christmas bonus.

Chad: Yeah, yeah.

Joel: And I can't think of a better gift for a company to give some employees than 50K. Big shout out to St. John Properties.

Chad: When we're talking about the economy being great, this is a great way to be able to show it, is to actually pay your fucking employees, even though increasing the wages or bonuses to be able to give back to the people who actually either create your shit, deliver your shit, service your shit. Those are the people that matter. You had a great idea, you had a concept, you started the company, but guess what? You're nothing without those people, and these guys get it. What do you think their retention rate's going to be moving forward? Not to mention, how do you think it's going to work for recruitment?

Joel: Yeah, no shit, like do you think everyone told their friends and do you think-

Chad: Fuck yeah.

Joel: ... the local press talked about these guys? I mean, if we caught wind of it, for sure they are the talk of the town-

Chad: That's right, that's right.

Joel: ... in their local markets.

Chad: Who else is the talk on the town is just watched a little video, music video, from OnRecruit, and it was hilarious because I started watching it and I'm like, man, this is horrible, but yet I feel nostalgic because it reminds me of the '80s MTV videos, the very first ones that came out, you remember those?

Joel: Well, yeah.

Chad: They weren't polished. They weren't great overall, from a music standpoint, but it's embedded in my soul. So I've watched it like, six times.

Joel: Yes.

Chad: I've laughed for the most part.

Joel: Someone dug out an eight millimeter camera or an original Android phone or something to record this thing, but yeah, it's almost like an SNL parody of an SNL parody, and somehow it kind of works. So I guess if you want to, what, it's about a minute and a half or so, go to YouTube and search I guess OnRecruit recruiting video.

Chad: Yep.

Joel: It's probably the only video they have up, but yeah, it's interesting. A bunch of white people rapping is really fun for the holiday season.

Chad: There is a woman of color in the actual video, okay?

Joel: There is, there is. I'm just saying, there's a lot of... Anyway. Anyway.

Chad: Yes.

Joel: I don't want to get in trouble during the holidays, because Santa's watching us. Talk about big companies fucking up, but making us laugh. Last week we talked about horrifically, this one isn't in as bad taste as this, but we talked about Amazon selling-

Chad: Oh, jeez.

Joel: ... an Auschwitz Christmas ornament.

Chad: Oh, my god.

Joel: So to one up that, Walmart, this past week it was reported, was selling an ugly sweater of Santa in front of lines of cocaine-

Chad: Yes.

Joel: ... with the line basically saying, "Let it snow." I can't make this shit up.

Chad: No, you can't.

Joel: So the company apologized. It got through the cracks somehow, but it's so blatantly ridiculous that I just can't believe big companies do this shit.

Chad: Big companies are working so hard, and I mean, these are the two companies that are working so hard against each other, so Amazon and Walmart, they're working so hard to steal from each other's market share that this shit gets through. Because they're just looking at pushing product, man. They're looking at pushing, in this case, cocaine. And it's just, it is ridiculous, but yet I say, my prediction, we'll see more of this.

Joel: Yeah. And I'm surprised they're not blaming AI or something else, because don't blame the humans for this shit is the smart route. Also behaving badly in this holiday season, Monster has apparently discovered really bad spam tactics.

Chad: Yes.

Joel: Because our own ChadCheese.com website, which has a little contact form on it, has gotten contacted by a Monster rep, throwing in basic language saying, "Hey, if you're hiring this season, contact me, blah, blah, blah." But this is so blatantly bad for a historically reputable company-

Chad: Yes.

Joel: ... that it definitely makes the shout out list and definitely makes our naughty list for this holiday season.

Chad: Monster's in trouble. Monster's definitely in trouble. When you start seeing things like this, this is more than just...

SFX: That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over.

Chad: This is more than just amateur hour at this point.

Joel: Yeah, yeah. Not a good sign, at all.

Chad: And topics.

Joel: Topics, let's get to the news.

Chad: Topics. Okay.

Joel: We talked about neuvoo. I probably did not say that correctly, smartly changing its brand to Talent.com, paying a bunch of money to do that, and everyone sort of, to the person, appreciates the idea, thumbs up, likes it.

Chad: Right.

Joel: But the co-founder of Adzuna, not so much.

Chad: Yeah. Doug Monro, co-founder of Adzuna, said on LinkedIn, and I quote, "Talent.com is a fab domain. Surely expensive. Can't get it in every GO, question mark? Sub-domains, question mark? Not that helpful of an SEO term. Hard to build a brand personality around a generic domain, for example, Job.com. I kind of like neuvoo, but maybe that's just familiarity, nostalgia, smiley face." So first off, before we just go into this shade, what do you think about his points there? You're talking about money, being able to possibly do sub-domains, SEO term, talent, it's a general term. How do you build a brand personality? What do you think about those things?

Joel: So we could digest each one of these individually, but I want to say one word, Indeed.com. Indeed is the number one brand in our industry. There's no GO-specific thing about the word. It's generic. It kicks ass in SEO, aside from the fact that Google for Jobs kicks ass in SEO, so none of this makes sense. And I could throw in Amazon for buying shit, I could throw in eBay for options. The name of something, and we even talked about this briefly, is in today's world, it's the brand of the word and not so much the things that he talks about that are as beneficial.

Chad: Right.

Joel: So I don't get where he's coming from on this at all. And neuvoo, from a sales perspective, if I'm a sales person saying, "Hey, I'm Joel from neuvoo-"

Chad: Yeah. Horrible.

Joel: I'd much rather be saying, "Hey, I'm Joel from Talent.com."

Chad: Yes.

Joel: So yeah, I don't get where he's coming from on any of these. I don't think any of these are good criticisms.

Chad: Yes. And as an SEO guy, I would've thought that you might've said, "Yeah, maybe from an SEO standpoint," because it is a generic term, but yet, I think from my standpoint, it all comes down to having something, especially from a marketing and a sales standpoint, that you can stand behind very easily and neuvoo isn't that. You got to spell the fucking thing every five minutes because people don't know what you're saying. Talent is very simple. It's a dot-com. They paid a lot of money for it, but I think it could and it should be worth it. That's the big key.

Joel: Yeah, that might be the main criticism, is what they paid for it, and they were open with that, right?

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: $1.8 million. Now, they could probably easily resell it if the world falls apart for them for a million dollars. So let's take a little bit of the price in, because there's value built in there forever. The other thing is I guess brand personality around a generic name, like I kind of agree with that monster Indeed in our industry, it was sort of easy to stand out because they didn't have anything to do with jobs, whereas talent will be tougher, like a job or careers or something else. But I don't think these are big criticisms and I don't think Talent.com should lose a wink of sleep because of it.

Chad: They're not. I guarantee you, they're not. This to me, Doug, buddy, pal, is nothing but you throwing shade at them because now, something that is probably not easy for everybody to spell, Adzuna, was competing with neuvoo, which was harder to spell. Now your competitor just really is going to be blowing your brand out of the water very easily just from the very simple fact that it's easy to fucking say, to market to, and when somebody says, "Hey, where do you work?" "I work at Talent.com." "Oh." It's not, oh, can you spell that 50 fucking times?

Chad: So I understand that what you're doing is you're trying to reflect back on pretty much some of the things that I'm sure you guys are dealing with, they're not going to have to deal with it anymore. So they're not a part of the stupid name club anymore.

Joel: Look at you putting on your psychiatrist hat, calling out jealousy and envy. I love it.

Chad: So Doug, dude, love Adzuna, love anybody who can actually push up the ladder, but my suggestion would be go find another URL. Go find another domain yourself, and make it easy. As a matter of fact, I saw on one of the Facebook groups this week that one of the IO domains was only going for about $10,000, and it was a common word.

Joel: Hiring.io, I think.

Chad: Yeah. It was something like that, Hiring-something.io. That's cheap and it's hiring, now, it's not a dot-com, totally get it, but you sound like you're cheap anyway because you didn't buy Talent.com, so go ahead and get that one.

Joel: So let's all agree that this criticism is...

SFX: That is one big pile of shit.

Joel: Oh, yeah.

Chad: Exactly.

Joel: And speaking of piles of shit, let's talk about Indeed's new commercial.

Chad: So this one is... It was so bad, it was good for me, okay?

Joel: Was it? Okay.

Chad: Yes, it was pimping online skills test tools to help employers find the right candidates, and once you find the right candidate, it also comes with a groundhog, and it shows this groundhog who's making its way under the carpet or some shit like that. And it pops out by the hiring manager, and it is a creepy-fucking-looking groundhog, okay?

Joel: Yep.

Chad: But it was so funny because it was so bad, and I was like, okay. I remembered that. It's really hard for me to remember any of Indeed's other commercials because they were just forgettable. This was so bad, I thought it was good.

Joel: So the message was basically if you're a hiring manager, not only does the pre-screening work but this groundhog shows up to let you know that this is the right candidate to hire, right?

Chad: Yes.

Joel: Okay. So I have a few comments about this. Number one initially was like, I thought of one, the CareerBuilder monkeys, which to Indeed's credit, this is a computerized groundhog. It's not a real groundhog. So no groundhogs were harmed in the filming of this commercial, so that's a good thing. And then the second thing that I thought of was the Caddyshack groundhog.

Chad: Oh, yeah.

Joel: And Bill Murray [crosstalk 00:23:22]-

Chad: I'm all right.

Joel: So to me, it would've been funny if they'd had a puppet groundhog, kind of like the Caddyshack groundhog, instead of the computer-generated groundhog. Okay, so that's my initial thoughts on the commercial.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: The second thing was it goes very different from the theme of the commercials that they've had, right?

Chad: Yes, yes.

Joel: The trend of their commercials has been sort of thoughtful, trying to get emotional, real-world kind of stuff, right? So the kid that just graduated but isn't looking for a job and his parents are pissed, or the woman who's getting passed over for a promotion and then she gets a little hit on her mobile device saying, "Hey, you've got an interview with so and so." Those are sort of inspirational and I guess heartwarming.

Chad: But forgettable.

Joel: But forgettable, sure. We remember because we're in this industry. So hell, throw some animals, throw some babies at your ad and people will hopefully remember them. But yes, the Indeed groundhog is now apparently going to be a thing, so at conferences you're going to get stuffed groundhogs. On Groundhog Day, there'll be a special deal. This is apparently Indeed's new thing, so I'm just going to have to get used to it.

Chad: Indeed, ride this groundhog. Ride this groundhog.

Joel: It is at least an animal that companies haven't gotten on board with yet, so it was available.

Chad: It is creepy as hell, but it is, again, just so bad it's good.

Joel: Yeah.

Chad: And I think if they stick with this kind of a theme, not really the groundhog, but so bad, so good, almost like the music video that we were talking about earlier, it's just so bad that I've watched it like six fucking times.

Joel: God.

Chad: Maybe this is a genre, right? I think it is. It's called B-movies.

Joel: Oh, and clearly animals and kids work.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: People remember that shit, whatever. We remember it. So hell, roll with it. And it's hopefully going to work for them because also on the news wire this week about Indeed is that they're growing in their hometown or one of their hometowns of Stanford, Connecticut, one of its two global headquarters, the other one being in Austin, so the new offices that they've leased have 24,000 square feet floor space and will serve about 200 staff, this is according to the Stanford Advocate. They're located only a few blocks from the company's original offices in downtown Stanford, the huge metropolitan area. Currently the company employs around 1,000 workers in Stanford, mostly in sales and customer service. The company said it plans to boost that number to 1,700 employees in the future. So for their sake, I hope this groundhog really takes off.

Chad: But my advice going from what you just said, Joel-

Joel: Yeah.

Chad: I think you should definitely buy the rights to Kenny Loggins' I'm Alright, and do the whole groundhog thing. Ride the groundhog.

Joel: Yes. And if Punxsutawney, that's how you say it, right?

Chad: Punxsutawney Phil.

Joel: If Punxsutawney has sponsorship opportunities on Groundhog Day, you should definitely jump on that.

Chad: Hell, you should own that little town.

Joel: Yep, yep. And speaking of fantastic sponsorships and smart marketing, let's hear from Canvas and we'll talk about some AI shit when we get back.

Chad: Canvas.

Canvas: Canvas is the world's first intelligent text-based interviewing platform empowering recruiters to engage, screen, and coordinate logistics via text and so much more. We keep the human, that's you, at the center while Canvas bot is at your side adding automation to your workflow. Canvas leverages the latest in machine-learning technology and has powerful integrations that help you make the most of every minute of your day. Easily amplify your employment brand with your newest culture video, or add some personality to the mix by firing off a Bitmoji. We make compliance easy, and are laser-focused on recruiter success.

Canvas: Request a demo at GoCanvas.io, and in 20 minutes, we'll show you how to text at the speed of talent. That's GoCanvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent.

Chad: Ooh, texting at the speed of talent and I just saw this in my Facebook memories, you're going to love this, Joel Cheesman, two years ago, this is the post, "Pumped to welcome Jobs to Careers, now Talroo, as a Chad & Cheese Podcast sponsor, #suckers."

Joel: Ooh. And you know who's still a sponsor? Talroo, yes.

Chad: Knock on wood.

Joel: Because we fucking have an ROI like a motherfucker on this show. Hell yeah. Knock on wood, yeah. 2020 budgets are being written out right now. It's a good thing we sent them a lot of Christmas cards, or holiday cards.

Chad: So this AI is a thing apparently.

Joel: There might be some legs on this AI stuff.

Chad: So MarketWatch article on Tuesday, career and job site LinkedIn, you might have heard of this-

Joel: Heard of them.

Chad: ... released its annual emerging jobs list, which identifies the roles that we have seen the largest rate of hiring growth for from 2015 through this year. Number one on the list, artificial intelligence specialist. Typically an engineer, researcher, or other specialty that focuses on machine learning and artificial intelligence. This again, does nothing... We continue to ask the question, is AI really a thing in our industry? Is AI a thing? People, it's a fucking thing. It really is.

Joel: Yeah, and let's not forget how much the salary commands for this position.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: Typically $140,000 a year or more. So I can tell you with

three young children-

Chad: Fuck yeah.

Joel: ... I'm going to do my best to push them into this skillset, because that's apparently where the money is.

Chad: And Indeed also has a list talking about Indeed, the 25 best jobs in 2019, named machine learning engineer as number one, citing a 344% increase in job postings in this year. So once again, people, this is a thing.

Joel: No doubt. And we'll be happy to talk about it probably for as long as this show exists.

Chad: Well, and going back to the LinkedIn top five real quick, number two was robotic engineers, robots, sucker, robotics is going to be everywhere.

Joel: So until a robot with artificial intelligence replaces Chad and Cheese on the Chad & Cheese Podcast, we'll probably be talking about artificial intelligence.

Chad: That's a fact, Jack.

Joel: That's a fact. And you have another story in our AI shit category here on this week's show, a quote about human bias being much harder to repair than machine bias.

Chad: Yeah, yeah. So this is out of the New York Times. In one study published 15 years ago, two people applied for a job. Their resumes were about similar as two resumes can be. One was named Jamal and the other was Brendan. In a study published this year, two patients sought medical care, both were grappling with diabetes and high blood pressure. One patient was black, the other was white. Both studies documented racial injustice. In the first, the applicant was a black-sounding name. They got fewer interviews. In the second, the black patient received worst care.

Chad: What's happening is they started taking a look at actual algorithms today in healthcare because they're pretty prominent on the healthcare side of the house, and they found these algorithms have a built-in racial bias, and this is how they got the data, and this is pretty interesting. These individuals had similar levels of sickness, but black patients were deemed to be lower risk than white patients. The big reason why is they were using the healthcare expenditures as one of the main pieces of the algorithm where white people were actually getting more dollars paid toward than the actual black patients, which again, they have the same sickness, just because one has more money than the other one or healthcare benefits than the other one doesn't mean that one is less sick, right?

Chad: So that was a problem, and they could identify it and actually change it within the algorithm. But when it comes to people and how we do things, that's much harder.

Joel: Yeah, on many of our stories that we cover on this show, many of them are really interesting to you and you read them and some I read some, and so we kind of bring this together and usually we both read the same stories. I did not read this one, and as you were telling me that patients of color got worse care, I sat there thinking, why the hell would that be? That's really strange. And the fact that it's because of the money is a sad state of affairs, but it makes sense now. I didn't know where you were going with that, but wow, that's sad.

Chad: But that was an algorithm that they could identify and they could actually change. Changing people's hearts and minds is no simple matter, so implicit bias training that we always hear about, that has had modest impact from companies. But changing algorithms is obviously much easier if you're on top of it and you're auditing it, and you can identify exactly what's going wrong and change it.

Joel: I think for me, when you tell me there's bias in hiring, I get that, right? People are people, and that's going to happen. But when you think about bias happening in healthcare and the repairing of people, that kind of blows my mind. I don't think I've ever thought about that, so yeah, that's kind of a sad state of affairs.

Chad: It is, and one of the things that we continually do is, and we hear it, just about every conference we go to, we heard it last week in Dallas at TalentNet where people were talking about how pretty much the algorithm isn't perfect, and it's like, well, are you fucking kidding? Have you looked in the mirror? We're humans. We're not perfect. We're not going to be perfect, and even last week on stage, you said, "Well, self-driving cars are killing people." And it's like, yeah, but 1.25 million people die in road crashes every year because of other human beings, or themselves, right? We want automation to be perfect, but that's our expectation, but humans aren't perfect. We have to take a look at how we get better through automation without expecting perfect, because today we don't live in a perfect world.

Joel: By the way, Chad is teasing our naughty or nice show that will be coming up on Christmas week, I guess. So that's good on you, Chad.

Chad: Good ad.

Joel: Yeah, that's good that you're still thinking about that. Well, speaking of self-driving cars killing people, you saw a story this week about a self-driving semi that made its first cross country trip without killing anybody, apparently, which is good news. Company called Plus.AI created this technology, yeah, zero disengagement. So we're getting closer to it being a reality for sure, and this story's just another example of man... You think about trucks being self-driving, to me those are the most difficult things to imagine not having a driver.

Chad: Yeah.

Joel: So the fact that this is happening kind of blows my

mind.

Chad: Well, and there are five levels of autonomous driving or vehicles, right? The fifth level is the highest level, that's where there's no driver involved at all. It is just a truck, there's no driver, period. This level was level four autonomy, which is pretty fucking amazing that we're there already. It drove from California to Pennsylvania and delivered Land O'Lakes butter.

Joel: Yeah.

Chad: 2,800 miles, and primarily in autonomous mode. The startup told Roadshow there was zero disengagements, as you had said from the autonomous system, and the only time the human driver took over was for federally mandated brakes and refueling.

Joel: By the way, there's a picture of the truck on the story and it's the Plus.AI logo. Why the hell Land O'Lakes didn't get on this in some form or fashion, like, the whole bed should've been a stick of butter.

Chad: You know why?

Joel: Like Land O'Lakes AI.

Chad: No, no, no. What if that truck killed somebody? That's why.

Joel: Well, it's full of butter, so it would cushion and taste delicious if it did kill someone in the process.

Chad: I think maybe the next round, or maybe a couple years from now, you'll be able to see, you'll see that. But this goes back to one of the movies that I love, Logan, and they're driving down the road and the only trucks that are on the road with them are autonomous trucks. It's the future. It's going to happen, and we're at level four a hell of a lot faster than I thought we would be.

Joel: What was the really bad '80s Emilio Estevez truck movie?

Chad: Oh, Maximum Overdrive.

Joel: Yeah.

Chad: Stephen King.

Joel: All right, yeah, it is. Okay, I'm all AI'd and '80s'd out.

Chad: Okay.

Joel: Let's hear from Sovren and we'll talk about a big asshole CEO.

Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order 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: Oh yeah. Big shout out to Holland Dombeck, by the way, because I just saw that she responded or replied to something on social media. We haven't talked about her in a while. Holland, where you been?

Joel: Love Holland.

Chad: Yeah, she's great, she's great.

Joel: And we love Robert Ruff, CEO there at Sovren, and he's getting some good content out from him. But one CEO that is not cool-

Chad: Yes.

Joel: ... is the Away luggage company, we talked about him briefly I guess last week-

Chad: Her.

Joel: But he's resigning. Oh, it's a her?

Chad: Yeah, it's a her. Yeah.

Joel: I must've been really hungover last week when we talked about it.

Chad: Remember, she is engaged to Stewart Butterfield, who is the CEO of Slack.

Joel: Oh, okay.

Chad: So this organization only uses Slack, doesn't use messaging other than Slack, doesn't use email or anything like that, and she had access and could really... We were talking about sentiment analysis, but she really wasn't going that far. She was just getting into some of the private discussions that were happening and just having volcanic fucking outbursts. And you would think from a luggage company that there wouldn't be that much stress, right? You're making fucking luggage. Nobody's going to die. I mean, seriously, nobody's going to die, hopefully, because your luggage... They do have those lithium batteries, so you got to take those out when you go in. But-

Joel: Hey, if you lose someone's tighty-whities, it ruins their whole day, okay? So let's not make light of this. But I loved her apology on Twitter. Apparently this is how people up top communicate with the world now. So she said, quote, "What you read in the article," which was by the Verge, right? The Verge wrote this article. So, "What you read in the article doesn't reflect the company we want to be. I want to be clear that the Away I am committed to is one where we set the highest standards for how we treat our people and help them grow." Playing a little damage control there.

Chad: I want to reminisce a little bit. I remember the early days of DirectEmployers Association, and Bill Warren, who was the executive director, would actually come and talk to me constantly and ask me this one question, why don't they love this company as much as I do? Or we do, right? He'd always pull me into it. And I always gave him the same answer, he never liked it, but I said, "Dude, they love it. But they're never going to love it as much as you do because it's not theirs. You can't ask somebody to give 12 hours a day, right? You can't ask somebody not to take vacations."

Chad: This lady was actually saying, she was fawning over the people who weren't taking vacations, weren't taking their kids' birthdays off, they weren't... Because they were working for the Away customer, and it's like no they're not. They're working for your dumb ass. That's who they're working for.

Joel: Yeah. So when I saw this was going to be a story we were going to talk about, I went over to Glassdoor to see what's going on.

Chad: Oh, god.

Joel: And the company has pretty good ratings. I think it's above a three.

Chad: Okay.

Joel: But the CEO has a rating of 80% of favorability, which is pretty good. So I was like, well, what's going on with that? So I started reading some of the reviews and I didn't get too deep into it, but one review certainly stood out, and I'll quote here, "Also don't believe everything you read. The CEO asked a select group of people to write positive reviews. Requests were made in a private Slack channel," again, we're going to Slack. "Also the communications team responds to all of these messages, many employees are under NBA and aren't comfortable posting reviews."

Joel: So as most things, there's two sides to every coin and every story, and it looks like there was a little bit of manipulation to make her and the company look a little better than the Verge article paints.

Chad: Yeah. So if there's a lesson, and there are plenty of them out there for CEOs, co-founders, startups, to big companies, this is something to watch. Again, we talked about the company that gave out shit-tons of cash, profits to their people because they took care of their fucking people. If you don't take care of your people, this is the kind of shit that's going to happen. You become a megalomaniac and nobody fucking likes you. So give away those riches and love your life. And they'll probably love you for it.

Joel: Otherwise they'll go online and talk shit about you.

Chad: Yeah. Yeah sometimes that's not bad. We out.

Joel: We out.

Walken: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast, with Chad, the Cheese, brilliant. 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. 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. Any-who, 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. So weird. We out.

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