The Bigger They Are...

You like apples? How ‘bout these apples: On this week’s show the boys discuss a $22 billion merger, iCIMS finds their new leader, and Walmart says, “Taco Bell, hold our beer.” And lots more, hosers.

Enjoy and don’t throw snowballs at Sovren, JobAdx, and Canvas.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:

Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities.

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 hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Bottle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.

Joel:

Ah, yeah.

Chad:

Yeah, yeah. I don't even know what that was.

Joel:

Welcome to the Canadian Rockies edition of the Chad and Cheese Podcast.

Chad:

Straight out of Canada.

Joel:

I'm your cohost Joel Cheesman.

Chad:

And I'm Chad, looking at the Rocky Mountain Sowash. This is fucking awesome.

Joel:

On this week's show, a $22 billion merger; iCIMS finds their new leader, and Walmart says, "Taco Bell, hold our beer." We'll be right back after this word from a beloved sponsor.

JobAdX:

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Chad:

Then we're back.

Joel:

Shout outs.

Chad:

First shout out goes to Sarah Stamp from Intel. From my understanding, I'm getting the intel.

Joel:

Super fan.

Chad:

She's a super fan. It's like she takes notes.

Joel:

Mega, super, cultish loving fan.

Chad:

Yes, and these are the types of people that we hold close, and we love.

Joel:

We love you Sarah. Thanks for listening.

Chad:

If you're taking notes, and you're actually correcting people, because, "No, wait a minute. I'm going to pull out last week's notes of Chad and Cheese," you ma'am are, yes, super fan.

Joel:

And I've got another super fan: Michael G. Cox, not to be confused with Michael J. Fox.

Chad:

That is close. I like it, and it's good. I like how you did that.

Joel:

Yeah, I think he throws the G in there just to confuse people. Michael's a fan. Michael, we appreciate the kind words you gave both of us this past week, and thanks for listening.

Chad:

Yes, we are the number one thing that you can actually use to pair with your favorite whiskey.

Joel:

Absolutely.

Chad:

Yes.

Joel:

Yummy whiskey.

Chad:

Amy Schroeder with AgHires over in Ohio. She said, I was surprised that you guys were from Indiana.

Joel:

OH.

Chad:

IO baby.

Joel:

Shout out to Alaine Kalder who reached out to us this past week and shared her love. Appreciate you Alaine. Keep listening, and share it with the 100 of your closest friends.

Chad:

Yes, and more please. D Pit, another super fan by the way. So this is what she actually sent over. She was like, "Just caught last week's pod. This is my world. Batman fucking gets it." So if you haven't heard the Batman podcast, it's pretty simple. It has a bat signal. Go get it.

Joel:

Can't miss it.

Chad:

Listen to it. I think he's going to be a regular.

Joel:

And shout out to Michael Cohen, while we're at it, while we're at it. I'm going to go low hanging fruit. If you haven't noticed, we are currently at the cult Gathering Conference in Banff, Canada. Frankly, we're pretty podcasted out at this point, so we're just-

Chad:

It's crazy.

Joel:

... on fumes. But I would be remiss if I didn't start some shout outs with Ty Weeks and Allyn Bailey from Intel, as well as our new friend, Bill Neff from Yeti;

Chad:

Yeti.

Joel:

Everyone knows Yeti-

Chad:

I've got this big ass Yeti cooler man.

Joel:

... who were all brave enough to come on stage with us and talk talent acquisition and marketing. And look for that coming to a podcast near you. But major shout out to them. We love you.

Chad:

And shout out to Ryan, Chris, Mike Germano, Erinn who is our handler and was amazing, because I'm telling you-

Joel:

Two Ns.

Chad:

Yeah, Erinn, two Ns. She just killed it, beforehand making sure we knew what was going on, why we were here, constant contact. It was fucking awesome. Also want to make sure that we get a big shout out from Elise from SmashFly, Gina from Symphony Talent. Those guys, sight unseen, just heard things about The Gathering, and said, "We're all in." So they were a sponsor this year. And this is the fucking crazy thing, dude. We have the CMO of Coca-Cola came up to us after-

Joel:

SVP actually.

Chad:

SVP-

Joel:

I looked him up. But still someone smarter than us-

Chad:

From Coca-Cola-

Joel:

... at a big organization.

Chad:

... in marketing came up and said, "Your guys' session rocked. I couldn't believe everything that I came away with." And Symphony Talent and SmashFly are the only talent acquisition technology company that is here represented. Such an awesome opportunity for them. And I think next year we'll see more of those companies, because this is a space where we need to invade.

Joel:

Pretty confident SmashFly and Symphony are going to put a stake in the ground here in Banff for our regular sponsorship. And also wanted to give a shout out to Elena of the Elena and Abby Cheesman combo there at-

Chad:

Skill Scout.

Joel:

Skill Scout.

Chad:

Love them.

Joel:

Dude, does anyone dress hipper-

Chad:

Mo.

Joel:

... than Elena Valentine?

Chad:

No, never.

Joel:

No, we're talking about gold fanny pack, multi-cloud colored camouflage, the hip sweatshirts. I'm just in awe. So aside from being an awesome videographer, frankly an awesome person, she's an awesome dresser, and this shout out is for you Elena.

Chad:

We love you. We love you. A big shout out to Talkpush. They put together this-

Joel:

Push.

Chad:

... nomad program. And what it is is all their employees are raffling to live in another area of the world. They can pick between Manila, Mexico, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, New Delhi, or Kuala Lumpur, and Talkpush, the actual company, will pay their two months to live in that country. I thought that was a awesome fucking perk.

Joel:

Now, which one of those would you be picking?

Chad:

I think Costa Rica. I think either Costa Rica or Kuala Lumpur.

Joel:

I was going to say Costa Rica. That sounds fairly nice right about now as we're freezing our arses off in Canada. so I'm good with outs. What else you got unless-

Chad:

Event.

Joel:

... we get to traveling.

Chad:

Events baby. We have UNLEASH and the TAtech mega conference.

Joel:

Jolly good, going to London again.

Chad:

In London in March, currently we have Death Match. And we've been here all week, and I know there've been some startups who've been trying to get that last spot, so hopefully we'll get those guys locked up. But we do have Job Sync, Optimal-

Joel:

Get Optimal.

Chad:

... Get Optimal, and S-B-O-J, SBOJ-

Joel:

SBOJ baby.

Chad:

... jobs-

Joel:

It's going to be all over the stage.

Chad:

Jobs spelled backwards.

Joel:

Spoj.

Chad:

So there's only one spot left. If you want to get into it, you should get into it. But if you want to win the Chad and Cheese chain of champions, that's what you want.

Joel:

And who doesn't?

Chad:

Everyone-

Joel:

You know what I'm saying? I just ordered them this past week, so we're good to go.

Chad:

Get your tickets tatech.org, and unleashgroup.io, chadcheese.com. Just click on the event. You'll see you can go there and just click through there as well. Make it easy.

Joel:

And a little bit premature, but I'm going to be in Vancouver as we're in Canada-

Chad:

Vancouver.

Joel:

... I'm reminded. I'm going to do some sort of recruiting event on April 6th or 7th.

Chad:

Recruiting.

Joel:

Our buddies at Rectxt.

Chad:

Love them.

Joel:

Yeah, the gorilla aficionados of marketing-

Chad:

I love them.

Joel:

... out there, R-E-C-T-X-T, they're going to have me come out a will with one of their recruiting organizations, and I'm going to talk about who knows what. But if you're in Vancouver on April 6th and 7th, I'll be there. Come out and have a beer, eh? You hosers.

Chad:

And if you are a listener and you want to meet us, we want to meet you, definitely face to face. Hopefully we have our new tee shirts out in the next couple of months or so. Go to chadcheese.com; click on events; see where we're going to be at. We definitely want to meet you.

Joel:

We promise no bad touch.

Chad:

Well, okay. I'm not going to promise that. Topics!

Joel:

Oh man. So this one actually came at the end-

Chad:

Body moving. Body moving.

Joel:

This is what came at the end of last week, and we were like, "Do we talk about it or did we save it?" We saved it.

Chad:

Saved it.

Joel:

But this story is crazy. The Body Shop-

Chad:

I love it.

Joel:

... is hiring basically the first applicant to any retail job, no background check, no blood sample, no urine. If you can pass three tests-

Chad:

The three questions.

Joel:

... Yes. legal in the US, I think-

Chad:

Yes.

Joel:

.. can lift 50 pounds, and stand on your feet for eight hours-

Chad:

That's exactly right.

Joel:

... you've got a job.

Chad:

Yep. If those three questions are answered, then we will give you a chance to come to work in our distribution center. So I think the cool part about this is that retailers are really hurting for people. They are. With really the crackdown on immigration, we talked about that a little bit this week; people are really afraid to get out there in some cases. Not to mention, they're also looking to work with individuals who were formally incarcerated, which makes damn good sense. Most of what we do today is, we're almost like in a cashless business in most cases. So it's like, "Oh, I'm worried the people are going to steal." It's like, "Come on guys. They've served their debt. Start to allow these people to get back to do what they want to do, and that's just live life. And the only way you can do that is to actually pay for a roof over your head, pay for your family." So I love this man. This is fucking awesome.

Joel:

Yeah. So both of those pieces in terms of needing to fill jobs, I think there's a nice little PR spin on this as well. They're getting some nice free marketing. So apparently this started with a bakery out of New York or the New York area. And the folks that The Body Shop caught wind of it, and in addition to everything that you just said in terms of benefits is, apparently it's an amazing retention tool. Not only the bakery, but also The Body Shop had seen retention rates increase significantly. So turnover rates in the 60, 65%, those went down into the 12, 14% ranges for these companies.

Chad:

You know why? These people aren't getting chances man.

Joel:

They're grateful.

Chad:

Yeah.

Joel:

Yeah, totally.

Chad:

So we are at the gathering of cult brands, and we're talking about how companies actually create, devotees, devotees. How do you create these cult followings? One of the things is to be able to give those people a chance. Especially in these types of jobs, if you can answer those three questions, why the hell can't you get the goddamn job?

Joel:

Yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see if more companies follow suit on this, until someone comes in with a chainsaw, and it's a really now a bad idea, and nobody does it anymore.

Chad:

I don't know that that's going to happen. Next story is a big story for us, because we're fairly close to the people over at iCIMS. When Collin was elevated, I guess you could say, not stepping down, but elevated to chairman of the board, you and I, we automatically started hearing signals, warning signals.

Joel:

The private equity warning signals.

Chad:

Private equity comes in, the strangulation starts to happen, and that's never good. And we don't want to see that for a brand that we've known and the people that we love for so long. But Steve Lucas, this is a big fucking pool dude.

Joel:

Yep. So we're at a marketing conference, and we could probably survey 1,000 attendees and ask them if they know Marketo-

Chad:

Easily.

Joel:

... and more than 90% would know Marketo even though-

Chad:

They'd probably know Steve.

Joel:

They probably do know Steve. And although our industry doesn't know Marketo like this segment does, to me this is a huge story, because iCIMS, an applicant tracking system, could have really picked any one probably to come lead the company: a geek, a pencil pusher, any sort of what we've seen from the likes of CareerBuilder or Dice bringing in, and those types of people. But they brought in a marketing software CEO who sold the company to a little company called Adobe Solutions. So to me, this is sort of the ultimate verification that if you don't think recruiting and marketing is starting to blur, this should be validation that it definitely is.

Joel:

And I'm really excited to see what iCIMS is going to come with in terms of marketing solutions mixing with recruiting and how that turns out, because I think it's going to be really fascinating. And I think we're seeing this as well with Aman Brar at Jobvite, pulling this guy who knows marketing and technology, and the mobile pieces, and things like that. To get the head of Marketo to now take over ICMs, and the fact that he even was interested in that position to go into human capital management, is really exciting. So I think this is a huge story. Even though we have a $22 billion merger in our stories, to me this is a bigger story longterm.

Chad:

I agree. I think there's a bigger upside to be quite frank. And again, it's fresh in our brain because we're still here: we've been hearing for at least a few years that if you're in recruiting and you're not focusing on marketing, you're probably not going to have a job pretty soon. That's the thing is that we need to continue to learn how to provide a better experience for these individuals who are coming through. Because they want to come work for your brand, and if they have a bad experience with your brand, that's not good for the overall organization and bottom line. So I think we in talent acquisition need to understand that the employer brand is one thing, but we need to start to mesh and work better with marketing, or some of the shit's going to be taken away.

Joel:

Let's take a break and get a word from one of our beloved sponsors again, and we'll talk about this $22 billion acquisition or merger.

Sovren:

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Chad:

And we're back.

Joel:

We're back.

Chad:

Kronos plus Ultimate-

Joel:

UltiPro

Chad:

... equals big fucking platform. So this is a story from our buddy Feffer over at HCM Tech Report. He knows a lot about these types of platforms. So we see that Ultimate, Kronos are both controlled by PE firm Hellman and Friedman. They're going to merge them. So again, there's a PE firm coming in, and so there's warning signals there. Let's just start there. Kronos CEO will become the CEO and chairman of this new combined company. The Ultimate CEO, Adam Rogers, will end up transitioning out. They're going to rebrand this company. So the first warning signal to me is PE, and the merger of two brands really to pinch pennies. I guarantee you, "We can do this under one marketing department. We can do this under one brand." And I guess the question is, and it is; it's a math question. Can you make more money with two brands, which I think you can, but is the overhead that you can save by merging going to just cancel that out, and just make it easy and make it one brand?

Joel:

Yep. So some of the specifics of the deal. So upon closing the combined company will have revenues of approximately $3 billion, not too shabby, 12,000 employees worldwide, and an enterprise value of 22 billion. They plan to grow the company an additional 3000 employees over the next three years. The Kronos chief executive officer will be the chief executive officer and chairman of the combined company. They will be jointly headquartered in beautiful Lowell, Massachusetts and Western Florida. You can imagine more people wanting to flock to Florida maybe. With dozens of offices around the world. To me this speaks to the larger issue of consolidation, and it's a competitive world out there, and the one platform argument, and taking duplicitous services and bringing them into one organization. Desperation?

Chad:

This just feels like IBM BrassRing Kenexa and turning it into a shit show. It just does. When you have platforms of this size, and breadth, and scope, being able to integrate these things, it's not going to be easy. The technical debt that they're paying, I guarantee you the infrastructure they're on is not 100% new code. So-

Joel:

There's a little bit of two dinosaurs snuggling together to survive the asteroid.

Chad:

This is hard. And I just see, again, as a PE firm, they got off their pencils, sharpened them up, and said, "You know what? Let's go ahead, and let's just see if we can do this more cost effectively under one brand." The thing I don't understand is why they are rebranding.

Joel:

Yeah. If they drop some stupid ass, "Human capital energy," or something, that's going to be really stupid.

Chad:

Yeah. I, again, just don't understand. If you have these brands, you have these customers, loyal customers, maybe that's the problem. Maybe the loyalty factor is not there, and they want to try to create something new. I don't know. But from my standpoint, I don't like this. I don't like it at all. But again, when PE gets involved, doesn't fucking matter.

Joel:

Do you have any winners in this scenario? Workday comes to mind, I guess, some of the other big platforms.

Chad:

Oh yeah, any of their competitors. It seems like you've got this now huge monolithic platform, but you don't. What you've now created is a crazy amount of chaos. You've got this restructuring that needs to happen. You've got an old CEO that is going to be transitioning out, the a new CEO. You've got to rebrand. There's so many moving parts. If I am a competitor, and I am focused, and I am disciplined, and I'm on my road, man.

Joel:

Yeah, and you're calling the clients of those two-

Chad:

Oh, fuck yeah, yeah.

Joel:

... companies to bring them on board of the competitive service.

Chad:

Now I'm just going to remind people, you remember when IBM bought BrassRing and they bought Kenexa? There are many other stories, but those are big names, and they just turned those logos, those brands into shit overall.

Joel:

Yeah. I'm sitting here thinking, "I can't think of a positive story in our space that started with private equity acquires."

Chad:

Anybody out there, if there is a positive, please tweet us #ChadCheese. We would love to hear it.

Joel:

Yep. Hit us up at chadcheese.com, because I can't think of any, but it's been a long week, and I'm pretty tired.

Chad:

That's right.

Joel:

Speaking of, let's take a quick break, and we'll talk about Walmart paying the peeps.

Chad:

Paying them.

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Joel:

We should record our podcast beside a fireplace and the Canadian Rockies every week, damn it.

Chad:

Literally, I'm looking out my window, huge Rocky Mountains. Joel turned on the fireplace. We have on ambiance going on here. This is good stuff and so much on ambiance. This next story, I think that there's a positive in there.

Joel:

It's as warm and fuzzy as we are right now.

Chad:

It might be. It just might be. So we talked about Taco Bell $100,000 jobs. That was a pretty big deal, and I said, "You know what? Being a GM, I don't think that's enough, but awesome. Great for them." And now Walmart's coming out and saying $175,000 jobs.

Joel:

Hold my beer Taco Bell.

Chad:

That's right. "Walmart store manager might not be one of the gigs that comes to mind when thinking of high paying jobs," says CNBC, "but according to Walmart's first environmental social and governance report," wow, that's horrible, "released-"

Joel:

Way horrible.

Chad:

... "Wednesday it's UD store managers earn an average of $175,000 per year and received benefits including parental leave, health benefits, and 401K contributions. That's more average salary than a dentist or lawyer."

Joel:

Yeah. And keep in mind, this isn't just out of the good of Walmart's heart. This is good business. And we've talked to at least one fast food restaurant here in Canada, and it's a jungle out there.

Chad:

It is.

Joel:

It is a literal war for talent. And just giving away Chotchkie's from the company party to employee of the month isn't really going to keep people there anymore. And you're competing with Starbucks baristas with healthcare and college education, Walmart paying for college, and career tracks of $175,000 a year, Taco Bell GMs making 100,000. If you're in the service industry, this is upping the ante to the Nth degree. And I think it's a great thing, and we're to see salaries rise. We're going to see companies have to step up to keep the best employees and service their clients.

Chad:

And I love this, a quote again from CNBC, "An open position for a store manager in Dearborn, Michigan, for example, requires qualifications including bachelor's degree and two years of general management experience, or without a degree, four years of general management experience." So you can tell it's tight now, because you really don't need a degree to be a manager per se, especially if you have the experience. I love that. That is awesome. That helps. I think not just Walmart, but the rest of the competitors start to look at this and say, "Yeah, we should probably back off some of the quote unquote requirements that we have that we really don't fucking need in the first place."

Joel:

Now if we could just combine The Body Shop with Walmart and say, "If you're the first to apply, we'll pay you 175 a year," I think we got something.

Chad:

Boom! There's a little bit of negativity here. Now let me jump in to the ring.

Joel:

Bring it down.

Chad:

So earlier this month seat CNBC reported that Walmart is testing a new employee structure, which means there are going to be less of these store managers, which is why they are going to be paying them more. So this might not last for long. They have so many managers now. Can fewer managers still do the same job? This could be kind of like the Microsoft four day work week in Japan. It's a Guinea pig type of a thing. I don't know.

Joel:

Or hopefully Target comes along and says, "Okay, we'll match you Walmart," and other retailers and other service industries follow suit. So my hope is that this starts a chain reaction, and people are paid better, and the world becomes a much nicer place.

Chad:

Yeah. I don't think that the biggest problem is this level. I think it's Walmart's average is like $11 per hour starting wage. So again, depending on where you live, that might be good. But in most cases 15 is probably better. It's interesting that Amazon challenged the rest of their competitors, "Raise your wages to $15 an hour." And it's like, "Yeah, Jeff. Do they get their own trashcan to piss in as well?"

Joel:

Yeah. And let's see him have that sentiment if Amazon starts getting taxed in the same way that Walmart and other retailers do.

Chad:

Yes, because those motherfuckers need to be paying taxes.

Joel:

And on that note, I'm ready for a Molson.

Chad:

Amen.

Joel:

I'm out.

Chad:

We out.

Walken:

Thank you for listening to, what's it called? A podcast. The 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. There's 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.

#Walmart #iCIMS #UltimateSoftware #Kronos #Merger #software #Technology #Wages