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:
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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.
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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.
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