2021 Predictions

It's the return of Sackadamus! Industry icon Tim Sackett joins Chad & Cheese for their 4th annual predictions show with an eye toward 2021. Thank baby Jesus 2020 is almost over!

Enjoy this recap of 2020's predictions (spoiler alert: wrong buzzer soundbites aplenty), three predictions each for 2021 and even a listener question. Cheers to a New Year, and more of the same excellence from HR's most dangerous podcast.

All 2021 predictions powered by Sovren, Jobvite, and JobAdX.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:

Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire.

INTRO (1s):

Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman 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 (20s):

Oh yeah. You want predictions? We got predictions and Tim Sackett to boot! What's up everybody? This is the Chad and Cheese podcast and 2020 is almost fucking over!

Chad (34s):

Yes!

Joel (34s):

I'm your cohost, Joel "crystal ball" Cheeseman.

Chad (38s):

And I'm Chad "Sacadama" Sowash.

Joel (40s):

And on this week's show.

Tim (43s):

You can't steal my name.

Chad (44s):

I had to.

Joel (45s):

We're doing our annual predictions with our special guest, as always, Tim Sackett. Get comfy people.

Tim (51s):

The original predictor.

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Joel (1m 54s):

Sacradamus, Tim's never coming back. Never.

Tim (2m 4s):

I know. I was just thinking like you guys get, like, I have to do a takeover show sometime if you guys ever went on vacation and didn't do like 250 shows a year, I could just come in and take my pants off and totally lay the wood to your show.

Joel (2m 16s):

That'd be a, that'd be a high moral ground for our show.

Chad (2m 22s):

It'd be hard to stand up to. Oh, so what'd you guys get for Christmas? Favorite gifts go?

Joel (2m 28s):

Ooh....

Tim (2m 29s):

I got an advent gin calendar.

Chad (2m 32s):

An advent gin counter? That's awesome. Yeah. I love that. Last year I got an advent, a whiskey calendar and that was one of my favorites. So awesome. You Joel?

Joel (2m 43s):

All right. I'm I'm totally going to emasculate myself, but I don't care. My favorite gift I got a pair of

Chad (2m 49s):

yoga pants?

Joel (2m 50s):

I got a pair of Ugg slippers and they're fucking amazing. Like lamb's wool, soft inside. They're like, you know, in Die Hard when Bruce Willis takes his shoes off and socks off and does little fists with his toes because the guy says, that's how you relieve stress. This is like that, all the time. Like it's like little fingers massage. My, my Ugg slippers are my favorite, gift that I got this year.

Chad (3m 20s):

Oh, my God, you see you're. So

Joel (3m 22s):

That's our starting off the show, everybody.

Chad (3m 26s):

I got a couple sets of Beats earphones, which is funny. One is for running and the other word, like the over the, over the ear, hopefully for this year, we'll be able to use them on, on travel during trips.

Joel (3m 43s):

I wear my Beats over the years when I'm curling pints into my mouth.

Chad (3m 47s):

That's a good call. I like that.

Joel (3m 50s):

Good, exercise.

Chad (3m 51s):

And you can do that with an advent calendar.

Joel (3m 53s):

Sure. Let's get this shit going. Cause I know we've got a lot of opinions and we got a lot of predictions. So we always, we always recap.

Chad (4m 1s):

Oh yeah.

Joel (4m 2s):

One the year prior. So

Tim (4m 4s):

Have we ever, we ever gotten one, right? That's the question, right?

Chad (4m 7s):

Right. Yeah. I think that that's debatable, but yeah, this year, this year, I think we actually might've hit one or two. So let's go into that for the first one, Tim in 2019 predicting for 2020 said Indeed would cut UK organic traffic. And I did check with, I did check with, yeah. I checked with some of my friends over in the UK, in the programmatic space, so on and so forth, that did not come true. So sorry about that, Tim. So Joel then predicted Google for Jobs monetizes.

Chad (4m 48s):

That's a big bugger. That's a no.

Joel (4m 50s):

I'm so forward-thinking though that's more like a 2024 prediction.

Chad (4m 55s):

Oh, don't worry. We'll continue to use it over and over. Then my first prediction was multiple chat bot acquisitions that did happen. Job Powell and Allenco threw it out.

Tim (5m 10s):

We'd be out there on the edge.

Chad (5m 12s):

Yeah. Well, yeah. That's, that's the only way you can get those is fishing with a net instead of a spear.

Joel (5m 18s):

And then the rest of them get gobbled up this next year.

Chad (5m 21s):

Yeah. Tim then said, end of human to human interviewing. I think that's an applause, right? That didn't happen. It was more pandemic, I think, than it was anything else. Right.

Tim (5m 34s):

Oh my God. Notrodomos, they knew the pandemic was coming.

Chad (5m 38s):

Then Joel said, Ron Stodd would sell Monster buzzer.

Tim (5m 43s):

Because theycouldn't find a buyer.

Chad (5m 47s):

Yeah. That was the only problem I then said, iCIMS acquires a programmatic vendor. They did a lot of acquisitions, but that was not one of them.

Tim (5m 56s):

They did. That might be a 20,21.

Chad (5m 58s):

Tim said team. He was very specific that Teamable would be acquired. That did not happen. buzzer.

Tim (6m 6s):

I actually recommend them quite a bit to people. And I've had multiple people reach out and go like, they're hard to get ahold of, bad business strategy. Somebody might've went and bought them, but nobody picking up.

Chad (6m 20s):

Yeah. It really sucked not just for acquisitions, but also just for the little thing we call revenue.

Joel (6m 26s):

Yeah. Maybe that's just a response on how bad the leads. Tim, maybe Tim's leads are a bunch of cheap asses who don't buy and just kick tires. So they're like, we don't want any more Tim leads.

Chad (6m 40s):

So then Joel said that Recruit Holdings would by ZipRecruiter did not happen. Buzzer. And then I crowdsourced my last predictions overall, Tom Kenny said, AI bites everyone in the ass, black. And, and I think he gets an applause on this because we saw AI move the needle from black box and to more of a transparency model. Dennis Tupper was on board with Joel's prediction that didn't happen. Google for Jobs starts monetizing. Buzzer. And then Richard Collins, believe it or not, I can't believe this didn't happen he said a major job board goes bust.

Chad (7m 24s):

And this year, I guess we could probably say Dice, but we weren't sure if that was a major job board or not so that don't even make the requirement.

Joel (7m 33s):

No one in Sweden knows who they are. So they're really not a major job board.

Chad (7m 38s):

So that was last year. We got a couple of them, which is much better than we did the year before. We'll go ahead and before we go to break and we get into this year's Steven Rothberg, who was Joel's favorite listener. He had a prediction that...

Joel (7m 54s):

Love you Steven.

Chad (7m 56s):

That obviously in-person conferences would not come back into Q4 and they definitely would not come back at the size and strength that they were in 2019. Let's talk about that after.

Joel (8m 9s):

So his bold prediction is vaccine is released, but we still don't go to conferences. Yeah. All right, we'll be right back. Everybody.

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Chad (9m 21s):

The first prediction comes from our listener, Steven Rothberg. I would say probably our number one listener might be him. Not sure, not sure.

Joel (9m 31s):

Gauntlet to the competition.

Chad (9m 32s):

His prediction was, we will start to see the return of in-person conferences by Q4, but attendance will remain low due to the long lead time. They required a plan and market. Everybody wants to get the hell out of the house. They want to go to conferences. That vaccine is getting rolled out. Do we all believe that in Q4 conferences, aren't just going to explode. Steven doesn't believe that. What do you guys think?

Joel (9m 57s):

I'll let our special guest start.

Tim (9m 59s):

No, I like, I think because, you know, Sherm has already come out and said, Hey, Sherm National Chicago in June. That, I mean, that's the biggest conference out there in our space. And they're already said like, Hey, we're going to do it now. And we all have obviously multiple opinions on the SHERM leadership. The one thing that they've been known is that I truly believe that they're going to try to pull this thing off. If they pull it off, you're just going to see everybody else. And we know that conference season starts in September, so that's Q3. So I would say that's, you know, we're, we're definitely going to see that happening, come Q3. Now, will the numbers be as big? I don't think so. Cause I think a lot of people will stay home, but I still think they're going to start trying to do them.

Chad (10m 42s):

I think it's going to be a vendor sausage party, what it's going to be, because you're going to be the only ones who are looking for leads. They're hungry for leads. Everybody wants to get out. But the problem is I don't believe talent acquisition or at least the people I've talked to are even going to be budgeting for travel this year for conferences.

Joel (11m 3s):

Yeah. I think June is really early.

Chad (11m 5s):

Yeah.

Tim (11m 6s):

Yeah. It seems early.

Joel (11m 7s):

I think they're setting themselves up for failure. I think the real test will be in the fall when HR tech and Unleashed in Paris and some of those conferences happen. I personally think that the big ones will, you know, will survive and sort of probably thrive as we come out of this. I think my question will be, you know, the EREs, the SourceCons, the TA Techs, the sort of the smaller ones where this is, all they do is, are these conferences and they don't exist without the revenue from them. And I'm curious as to whether those smaller niche conferences will evolve into sort of the corporate conferences, which I think have been gaining in popularity for the last five, 10 years, right?

Joel (11m 48s):

Like everybody wants to go to LinkedIn's conference and now it's, now it's more, I want to go to Smart Recruiter's, or I want to go to Jobvite. Or I want to go to SmashFly or Symphony Talent. You know, they've been, they've gotten really good at the sort of niche conference. So I think the big ones come back in a big way. I think they have the resources and power to do it. I think the corporate conferences gain in strength as we come out of this because they didn't rely on conferences for revenue. The real question for me is the, the small niche standalone conferences, like the Source Cons and those guys

Chad (12m 21s):

Do we see consolidation in this space?

Joel (12m 24s):

You should.

Tim (12m 25s):

Yeah.

Joel (12m 26s):

I don't know what assets they have that the big guys don't. The lists are probably the same. I mean this, the sales calls and who they're calling are the same. So I don't know.

Tim (12m 35s):

Well, I think 2020 proved out to like the virtual conference thing now isn't necessarily, I mean, here's the hard part, is it? Didn't the people who put them on don't make money. The vendors I talked to actually like them because the number of attendees, the lead generation has been huge. But the reality is, is you're not going to see those continue because the vendors weren't willing to pay the money as they were on the in-person stuff. Now that changed over and they were like, Hey, for a 5,000 person list, I'll pay X. Then maybe that would work. But like, we are all in the same stuff. Like we saw that, like we were, we actually spoke at a lot of these virtual conferences and the numbers were giant, but nobody was paying anything to be there, attendee or vendor.

Joel (13m 16s):

Be curious. I'm sure the marketing people liked it, but I wonder how many sales guys and gals said, Oh, these are really quality leads and I closed a lot of deals. Whereas I think the value of the face-to-face is you can build a little bit of relationship. You can, you know, buy drinks and meals, which you can't do via, you know, email marketing. Yeah.

Chad (13m 35s):

Yeah. And I think that any of these conference companies who understand, obviously there's a huge difference between in person and the online, the virtual, but there, there is that lead generation piece that Tim talked about. If we're not just doing PowerPoints and just the same old bullshit, we're actually providing premium content, those guys will win. So I think Jamie in the Recfest crew over there, those guys actually put out awesome premier content and they were experimenting with things, where at other conferences, they weren't as much, they were just trying to keep it as, you know, same as it ever was.

Chad (14m 15s):

And that will not get you what the actual sponsors the vendors need.

Joel (14m 21s):

Thanks for your prediction, Steven.

Chad (14m 23s):

Good one Steven, good one. We love that.

Joel (14m 25s):

So let's get into our predictions.

Chad (14m 27s):

Let's get into Tim's predictions. Smackadamas.

Joel (14m 30s):

That deserves the bell. Smackadamas man, what you got start us off. Yeah.

Tim (14m 37s):

So my first one is, is about SAP and their need to acquire someone in the talent acquisition space. And when I say someone, it's not just a chat bot, it's something bigger than that. So it's like a Greenhouse, a Smart Recruiters in Avature, a Jobvite, a Lever, an Eight-fold, Loxo might be the cheapest one they could go out and get, but I was on a Workday call and Neil was answering a bunch of questions and he pretty much just laid out like, Hey, it's us in Oracle. SAP is so far back. We don't even really consider them competition any longer. And so I think they're going to have to do some acquisition stuff to kind of catch up into that space. Otherwise, you know, Workday and Oracle are just eating their lunch at this point.

Joel (15m 19s):

If you held the keys to the car, who would you acquire or who would be the smartest acquisition for them? I liked the Greenhouse and I like that.

Tim (15m 28s):

Well, except that except they're so, you know, leveraged with money that it becomes super expensive to get to buy them. Avature is still private so I think you could actually get the most bang for your buck out of them. And, and their tech is actually a really, really good. Jobvite is already private equity so we probably could make that deal happen. Lever you could probably get on the cheap. Again, I love Smart Recruiters. I think there are really good tech as well. I, you know, I just don't know, if they want to be acquired.

Joel (15m 56s):

I like the Eightfold too, that could do good too.

Tim (15m 58s):

Yeah, that could really do well. And again, I mean, Loxo is same tech is Eightfold, but it probably a cheaper price point. So again, if they were smart, they would go that way.

Chad (16m 7s):

I would say same on premise, but not same on scale and power.

Tim (16m 11s):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, but again, I, you know, it just depends on what SAP has from a standpoint of how much money they want to spend and what they want to turn into. Again, I would also go if they didn't have already acquired well, back in the day, Success Factors, you know, Cornerstone would be a great acquisition for any of those really. I mean, Workday could really use Cornerstone on their learning side, but you know.

Chad (16m 36s):

Now this to me is interesting, cause you just mentioned in December of 2011, SAP acquired Success Factors for $3.4 billion. Okay. And they could have, if they focused, they could have been up with the Oracles today. If they wanted to, if they actually focused on this segment of the business, what they didn't, they let it atrophy.

Tim (16m 58s):

Yup.

Chad (16m 58s):

At that point or goal Oracle acquired Taleo in 2012, IBM acquired Brass Ring and Connexa in 2012. Do you think this'll trigger that same kind of domino effect for some of those bigger players?

Tim (17m 12s):

Well, I mean it could, I just don't think Oracle or Workday have any desire to go out and make big acquisition around their core HR talent suites. I just don't. I mean, I think they feel good, Oracle Recruit Cloud is a good product. Workday clearly is, is confident in what they, what they have. And I think they're more kind of interested in building out the partnership network at this point, SAP, they, eh, they just have some real like needs. In the next that's factor is just, they never put the time and money into actually making and continuing to, you know, continue to kind of raise their game. And so now at this point now they're like, well, either we totally rebuild success from the ground up or we just go purchase somebody and make it work better than what we know what we can do.

Tim (17m 55s):

So, yeah.

Chad (17m 56s):

Agreed. I mean, that's what happens when you spend a shit ton of cash. And we saw, we've seen this with Monster, with all the products that they bought and they threw in the closet and they didn't pay any attention to that's what happens when you just allow the car to sit in the driveway and rust away.

Joel (18m 10s):

Sacadomus has spoken everybody. All right, now it's my turn.

Tim (18m 15s):

Do I get a commission fee on this, by the way, come on, everyone that got mentioned, give me something, bottle of gin.

Joel (18m 22s):

My prediction is no. How about that? That's my prediction. This is probably a little bit further down the road, but what the hell I'll go ahead and predict it for next year. I think that Airbnb launches Airbnb Work. Knee jerk would be okay this is like a Rework thing. So WeWork was onto something with, with what their business was, obviously it was a train wreck and a lot of different ways where I think that they probably overextended themselves was that they were actually buying the properties or leasing the properties that they were then turning around into workspaces. I think what Airbnb is going to do is look at all this commercial real estate, all these owners that have leases that are going defunct or people that are just going away.

Joel (19m 6s):

And they're going to try to figure out how do I lease this space? How do I get butts in seats? How do I, you know, get money in the door? And I think Airbnb is going to create, leverage their platform for these commercial real estate vendors to create even if, even if it just desk by desk or workspace or conference room for people to be able to go and just basically rent, you know, for the day for a couple hours, whatever, to leverage Airbnb's technology to go in and leverage this commercial real estate. That's going to be just not in use from the pandemic and they're going to make that work. And then I think that companies will then buy credits for their employees or their contract workers to then leverage Airbnb, to go into the office for a day or whenever they want to and use those credits accordingly.

Joel (19m 56s):

So my prediction number one for next year is that Airbnb Work is launched and that's, that's what it is.

Chad (20m 3s):

Hmm

Tim (20m 3s):

I like that, it's actually two predictions in one though. Cause you're also then predicting that this remote work thing is going to continue and companies aren't going to want their people to come back, which I think is complete bullshit.

Joel (20m 14s):

Right.

Tim (20m 15s):

Which, I think is complete bullshit. I think what we're going to see is like bad business results in Q1 Q2, and that the CEOs are going to stand up and go, Hey, remote work failed, get your asses back to work and let's get some shit done. So,

Joel (20m 27s):

So, so a couple of things, one, I think a lot of companies will be like that, but I think some companies won't want to pay for the real estate that they're paying and every everything that comes with that. But you can also say, Hey, we're going to give you X amount of Airbnb credits and you need to use them. You need to be in the office. So there is a way that you could sort of be on both sides of that coin and say like, Hey, we're going to be virtual, but we are going to require you to be in the office and be amongst each other for a certain period of time.

Chad (20m 55s):

Okay. So they're, they're not actually, they're not putting up the overhead?

Joel (20m 59s):

And they're not buying these commercial spaces. They're giving the people who own them and need to fill them up. And the easier way to fill those spots through technology and Airbnb obviously has the best technology as well as the best brand to get that done.

Chad (21m 13s):

Yeah.

Tim (21m 13s):

It's a Wework model without owning the real estate. So it's yeah, it makes sense.

Joel (21m 18s):

Yep, without any long-term leases by the folks that are in the company. So yeah, I think, I think it's a no-brainer really.

Chad (21m 24s):

I think it's gone smart for anybody who doesn't understand Airbnb's mission. Cause this is not Airbnb's mission. Airbnb's mission is belong anywhere and they want to be able to ensure that they actually drive people into spaces where they feel like they belong. So I like that idea with regard to being able to do this in other people's homes, just like they have Airbnb now, but being able to go into a corporate structure, I don't think that aligns with their mission. And then they just become again, another WeWork. So I like the idea. I just don't think this is an Airbnb idea because it doesn't align with their mission.

Chad (22m 5s):

And they've been very solid in disciplined with their mission.

Joel (22m 10s):

Well as a public company their new mission is to make shareholders happy. So we'll see if they stick to that, to that warm and fuzzy.

Chad (22m 17s):

Imagine an old white man saying that.

Joel (22m 22s):

All Right, Chad, you're up buddy?

Chad (22m 23s):

Oh, you're going to love this one. Okay. Kids now I actually, actually did some, some coordination and some crowdsourcing for all of mine. So this one was sent in from Dennis Tupper and his prediction, which I believe is Glassdoor's going to take a dirt nap. So all signs point to the demise of Glassdoor revenues are down. Their best revenue stream jobs has been handed over to Indeed and Indeed has more reviews and will take over the reviews mantle as well. So I think what we're seeing is indeed strangling Glassdoor with the pandemic happening.

Chad (23m 5s):

They've automatically started that atrophy not to mention they don't have that revenue source that they had before. So overall the glass door brand, dies in 2021.

Joel (23m 17s):

So there's the prediction that if I go to glassdoor.com, I just get redirected to Indeed like there's no Glassdoor Branding whatsoever.

Chad (23m 24s):

Kind of like that Simply Hired model. Yeah. The simply hired or what they did with Workopolis. But to totally deep six the Glassdoor brand I think is a stretch.

Tim (23m 34s):

Hey, do we know how much they paid for Glassdoor?

Joel (23m 36s):

1.6 million? Something like that.

Tim (23m 38s):

Now do you think you could sell that to like a LinkedIn or a Microsoft or somebody like? That would say, Hey, there's so much value in that brand, we think we could actually keep it as the Yelp of Jobs and still create it because of that traffic, is that worth 2 billion or whatever?

Joel (23m 54s):

No.

Chad (23m 54s):

They wouldn't because the traffic that's being driven there now is hitting Indeed jobs. Right. So it's masked right now instead of having Glassdoor. Yeah. Instead of having Glassdoor jobs, they have Indeed Jobs. And they're the only thing I think right now that is worth anything are the actual reviews pieces. And that's what's driving a lot of that traffic, right? So it's kind of like you can't rip one away from the other. So they've got to come together. I think it, it would stay if it did, they would do a Simply Hired model like Joel was talking about. But overall, why have so many fucking brands? Get rid of that shit, own it yourself.

Joel (24m 31s):

Well, the other addiction that Indeed has is organic search traffic and Glassdoor is still a cash cow if you will, of organic traffic and even Simply Hired is still I think a cash cow of free traffic. So that would be hard for them to say goodbye to as well. And those reviews are nice juicy content for search engines.

Chad (24m 49s):

They are juicy. They're juicy.

Joel (24m 51s):

All right, let's go to round two of predictions. I'm leading off this round. I believe that we're going to see an incredible amount of investment acquisitions. Consolidations happen the low rock meter in terms of dollars that come into this space are going to blow up as we start to reemploy people and get people back to work. But I wanted to throw out three specific acquisitions. Again, again, Tim, I'm getting greedy. I'm putting like multiple predictions into a prediction, but fuck it.

Chad (25m 22s):

He's casting the net wide.

Joel (25m 25s):

This is my podcast, by God damn it. So, so number one, I think, I think Seek out of Australia acquires Talk Push in Vervoe. They're already an investor in Vervoe and they've just partnered with both of them. I think that that acquisition would be very smart for them. And I think it happens next year. I think the other thing that happens is that Dice goes private. We've talked a lot about dice on the show, their stock prices virtually done nothing since our, our boy Art Zeal took over. I think they're going to be continually just stuck in the quick sand and the only way to sort of get out of it. They should go private. They should probably get private equity to come in, fix the company.

Joel (26m 5s):

If they go private, I think they can start making bigger bets around tech community, testing that we're seeing, frankly, they're getting lapped by so many other startups that are out there that are helping companies employ engineers and because I predicted that Recruit would acquire Zip last year. I'll just go ahead and, and re predict that. So the spin on this is the word, is the word is that Zip is going to go IPO in 2021, which they definitely have to have a liquidation event because of all the money they've taken.

Chad (26m 36s):

So you think that was bait

Joel (26m 37s):

So I think they're going to pull a Glassdoor. I think they're going to pull one of these, like we're going public to get a price for what the public or the market thinks that their value is. And then they're going to take that to Recruit and say, Hey, Recruit for this price tag. You can create a triple headed monster against Google, Google for Jobs and Indeed, Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter.

Tim (27m 2s):

Where do you guys think that the valuation is going to land on zip for the IPO? Ultimately?

Joel (27m 7s):

They want $3-5 billion?

Chad (27m 8s):

Yeah.

Joel (27m 9s):

Glass door is the number two player and they got 1.6. So they're basically asking for double plus as the number three player versus the number two player. The other, the other challenge that Zip has is that, you know, according to Yelp, a hundred thousand plus small businesses have tanked in the last year, right? So those small businesses were ZipRecruiter's, you know, bread and butter, and now they're going to have to make up whatever that revenue was.

Tim (27m 36s):

Yeah. Depending on, well, depending on when that IPO hits, I can, I still think that they'll be valued more than what we think is just been an insane world over the last, you know, 12, 14 months.

Joel (27m 46s):

How would you spin it? Would you spend it as an AI?

Tim (27m 49s):

Part of it's programmatic built-in right. So there's, I mean, there's a little MarTech, you know, involved from that, but God, I don't like, again, you know, they're kind of next generation job boards, so it's difficult to kind of say how you would spin that. But I agree. I mean, Joel, they are what they are. Right. So it's hard to

Joel (28m 6s):

Is it a stock that you would buy?

Tim (28m 7s):

I mean, if I could get in on the IPO price, I would probably buy.

Joel (28m 10s):

Way to dance around that one, Tim, nice job.

Chad (28m 15s):

If Seek wants to be more than than Australia, and Indeed they need an acquisition like Talk Push and Vervoe that brings tech to them that Indeed doesn't even have. Dice in itself is dead no matter what. Art has made sure that they are going to die a very slow and stupid death and Zip's going to go IPO just because again, I think the valuation is high. I do think that Indeed in many, I think Recruit Properties could use the type of tech that Zip has, but I don't think they'll buy it. I don't. So I think they'll end up going IPO.

Joel (28m 53s):

And is that a stock you would buy, Chad?

Chad (28m 55s):

No, I wouldn't buy it either. I can get pre IPO prices. Yes.

Joel (29m 1s):

Tim Sacket. So that is a possibility. Chad you're up, man.

Chad (29m 6s):

All right. Okay. So this was Actually inspired by Angela Hood and Richard Collins. It's not their prediction just inspired by. I am going to predict that black box AI and facial recognition will be quote unquote "outlawed" in 2021 to provide guard rails, to drive hiring companies and vendors out of their wild, wild west patterns of discriminatory hiring behaviors. Companies will be able to explain their algorithms and defend hiring decisions while ensuring bias tech and humans aren't provided with more tools that will make them more fucking biased. So we saw what happened with Illinois and facial recognition with Hirevue right?

Chad (29m 50s):

And I think that companies are definitely going to have, and we've seen it this year. Many of the AI companies who actually, we're saying, well, the algorithm is just way too complex for humans to understand. Well, this year we didn't get that excuse anymore. It was more that they were trying to move to something that was more explainable. I think companies are going to move that way, but there's going to be the big Senate leaders, the Elizabeth Warrens and whatnot of the world are going to go after this really hard, because the bias is very high.

Joel (30m 24s):

And there are a lot of lawyers just foaming at the mouth for a class action lawsuit against everybody. And we saw, you know, Facebook, I think they were, what were they fined? 500 million, not a lot, right? Like it was, it was something out of Zuckerberg's couch cushions. Right. But, but when they start going after, you know, mid-sized companies that will be out of business with such lawsuits, you're going to see companies just not do it. And I think that facial recognition and that shit, they're going to come to roost pretty quickly on that. And I think the antitrust lawsuits that are coming to fruition in 2021 are going to like pull off the veil of what these companies are doing in terms of facial recognition.

Joel (31m 8s):

And the public is going to get scared. And like Chad said, Congress is going to act and that's it's. Yeah. The whole facial recognition thing is interesting. It'll play out next year. Probably.

Tim (31m 19s):

Does that have an impact on cause so right now you have Amazon, Walmart, two largest employers in the world for the most part hiring without interview, right. Using technology at different levels in the low skill, no skill arena.

Joel (31m 33s):

That's easy though.

Tim (31m 35s):

But like, I think they're constantly trying to figure out how do we increase the quality of hire in that same kind of process of a no touch kind of interview or not interview, but no, no touch selection process.

Chad (31m 46s):

Yeah.

Tim (31m 47s):

So you would think that they have a stronger desire to continue even, even deeper into that. Hey, how do we, how do we screen, you know, individuals in a really robust way versus the other side? I hate that when our government tries to put legislature around technology, because you have, you know, ancient old fucking dinosaurs out there that have no, they can't even use their iPhone, let alone figure out what the hell an algorithm is to try to, you know, put a law around that.

Chad (32m 14s):

Like, that's just the worst. Oh yeah. Well, if you read the Illinois, if you read the Illinois legislation, it was, it was like a kindergartner fucking did it. But the problem is that it's the wild, wild West out there. And we are not, we're not actually putting those guardrails in place ourselves. Right? So unless we start to demonstrate that that's going to happen and we won't. They're just going to go ahead and come at it and do it, do it anyway. So that's, that's the hard part. And when it comes to Walmart, the turn and burn that they have for those low, those low wage positions in the first place, they don't care. I mean, they really don't care.

Joel (32m 50s):

So specifically, do you think being able to interview on video and being able to see, you know, facial things about I'm lying, or like, do you think that will be outlawed?

Chad (33m 1s):

Oh, yeah.

Joel (33m 2s):

Or we'll have to get specific sort of approval to use that tech before they even start talking to a candidate?

Chad (33m 9s):

Well, okay.So let's just talk about the, like the touchless recruiting all the way, like Tim was just talking about all the way to hire. There's going to have to be an explainability factor there. Why were these five people hired and not these 25 over here? Right? So there's gotta be some type of explainability so that you can defend. And that's what it's all about because, enforcement in this administration is going to look much different than it did the last four years. So overall, it's going to have to be something that you can explain. It's going to have to be something that's easy. So I suggest if you are a company, any company, and you're doing any type of high volume hiring, any type of hiring at all, if you don't know what your algorithm is doing, and you can't explain it, you can't go in and say why these five people made it to interview and the rest of them didn't then, that vendor does not deserve your dollar because they didn't train you well in the first place or the tech just doesn't do it.

Joel (34m 7s):

Enough said. Tim. You're up.

Tim (34m 10s):

I am? All right. There's only three us right? So my second prediction is that right now, we know we have a lot of private or even publicly held organizations, employers going out and making orders for vaccines, to make sure that their employees can get the vaccine, when you know, the timeline works, whatever. I have a feeling that we're going to see, organizations are going to dole out the vaccine based on performance. High-performers we need you to make sure you get the vaccine so we can keep you working. If you're some, you know, dead man walking in the bottom, 10%.

Joel (34m 46s):

Good choice of words.

Tim (34m 48s):

We're going to wait to first, see if you just die from the virus or at the least, you know, we'll wait until you get the vaccine at the end. But I think we're going to see some weird stuff happening with employers and vaccines, and who gets that because you can, like, at first you go, oh, well, if I'm an employer of a thousand people, I bought a thousand vaccines for my employees. You go, okay, the executives are going to get theirs first. And then all the way down, I think you're going to see a lot of organizations really struggle with how do we dole out the vaccines and how, and how do we do this and not going well, we have Sheila over a year, she's old. And then Timmy, he's fat. So let's give them, they're not, I mean, they're not gonna want to do that kind of thing. So they're going to go, Oh, well, how do we do this?

Chad (35m 30s):

Performance baby, yeah, I think they're going to, I think they're going to have to, I think they're going to have to take a look at the, the government guidelines on how they're rolling it. And they're going to have to adopt those, but either way we can all sit back, pop some corn and watch.

Tim (35m 43s):

Like it's fight club, Monday morning at the office. All right. Whoever beats over who eat your vaccine first, let's go.

Chad (35m 50s):

And it's going to be illegal shit show that's for sure.

Joel (35m 53s):

Holy Holy lawsuit, Batman. I mean,

Tim (35m 55s):

Oh sure.

Joel (35m 56s):

If companies dole out vaccines based on performance or potential, I mean they're gonna get their shit sued.

Tim (36m 4s):

Joel, if we can think about it, they're going to do it.

Chad (36m 6s):

That's we? Yeah. We know it's gonna happen.

Joel (36m 8s):

They can't make it public.

Tim (36m 10s):

Instead of your 15% bonus, we'll give you the bonus or we can give you the vaccine, which one would you like?

Joel (36m 15s):

They'll make it look like a lottery.

Tim (36m 17s):

I love the lottery idea. That's awesome. Because you could tell the guy going to be in my HR office going, okay. I just picked Joel, Joel, come on down. You're the next one up.

Joel (36m 26s):

The constitutionality of employers requiring people to have the vaccine will be another lawsuit thing waiting to happen. It's going to get ugly.

Chad (36m 35s):

The government will get behind that one though.

Joel (36m 37s):

Yeah, probably. All right. Let's take a break. And when we come back, our final predictions.

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Chad (37m 12s):

All right, last one.

Joel (37m 14s):

Love it! Chad.

Chad (37m 17s):

All right. So this one comes from an anonymous listener.

Tim (37m 20s):

Wait a minute Chad, before you start. Can we just say Joel, like, fuck for Christ sakes, Chad doesn't do any work for this. He just went out and stole the ideas from everybody up.

Chad (37m 30s):

I didn't steal them. I'm giving them props.

Joel (37m 32s):

I just want people to know when, when Chad gets on me about I nap too much, or I'm lazy. Like just remember shows like this where Chad just outsources all of the ideas.

Chad (37m 41s):

Exactly, just because I'm smart, smarter than both of you doesn't make me wrong.

Joel (37m 45s):

Thanks for bringing that up, Tim. I appreciate it. All right, Chad, what does your network say for 2021?

Chad (37m 52s):

So I had to make sure that everybody understood that this one is not from me, but I did like it. Microsoft acquires iCIMS to understand their true potential in the recruitment space. Microsoft doesn't have the expertise to understand the attraction to recruitment space. It needs a global team and tech that can lead the initiative. So iCims dipping. They started dipping their toe into the global waters with the acquisition of opening.io, added a very small non U.S. footprint, but massive power to their system. And then about two months ago, they landed a big deal with Easy Recru, a power player in the EU video interviewing space.

Chad (38m 34s):

So I believe the tech time and the team is right for this acquisition and the next six to nine months.

Tim (38m 41s):

I don't, I actually liked that because I had one of mine cause we got, we kind of go back and forth. Right. And I had like a list of like seven and one of my, one of them that I didn't write down was LinkedIn's going to acquire. And to me it was like a big, like they could finally get a full ATS, like involved in LinkedIn. Cause they're so cause if you think about the TA world in general, where we're just so drunk on LinkedIn, we can't even stand ourselves anymore and that's just continues. But like the thing that we need then is a full blown ATS built into LinkedIn, which they don't have. So I, they iCIMS acquisition makes sense.

Joel (39m 13s):

Yeah. We talk about this on the show and I agree. I think the only thing that, that is a hangup is the LinkedIn buffer and LinkedIn did launch an ATS a few years ago. No one I guess noticed. So the question will be okay, do we drop, you know, X billion on an ATS or do we build it in house? And I think that could be the only hiccup, but for sure, LinkedIn, what they're missing is what Tim and what you guys say is a full-blown sort of ATS. And if they did have that, you know, watch out because then they've got about everything, right. Then you bring in all the fucking Microsoft shit. Yeah.

Chad (39m 46s):

That would fuck things up. So yeah.

Tim (39m 49s):

Why wouldn't LinkedIn just by ZipRecruiter too? You know,

Joel (39m 53s):

or Dice

Tim (39m 55s):

No, no.

Joel (39m 57s):

Two-for, with Monster. Monster and Dice, they have a Groupon for that I think running right now. We all agree on that one. All right. So it's my turn. So speaking of big, big gorillas, one of the big news items of 2020 was Salesforce acquiring Slack. The more I think about this, the more I really like it. And I, I really kinda think that Slack will be the main brand of the company in five years. And I think that when you look at, you know, who bought Slack being Salesforce, there's a lot of history there of Mark Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce being at odds with both Microsoft and Google.

Joel (40m 41s):

And I think his sort of secret underlying ambition is to kick both of those companies in the nuts. And I think in a company like Slack, he really has the engine to do that. And I think that one of the big moves and something I think Slack should do is create basically Slack profiles, similar to your LinkedIn profile or what might've been a Google plus profile or a Twitter profile, like you'll have a Slack profile and that messaging platform will follow you to any job that you have. Any project that you get into, it'll be a personal messaging device as well. So in one fell swoop, Benioff, we'll be able to create a LinkedIn competitor as well as a Gmail competitor.

Tim (41m 25s):

Did you guys see the Slack shoes that Cole Haan produces? Seriously? So Cole Haan actually had four versions of Slack shoes. So like if you're like either worked for Slack or if you just were like head over heels in love with Slack, you could have your own Slack shoes. That was going to be one of my predictions was going to be Apple was going to release shoes. Cause I would definitely have Apple shoes to go with my Apple calmer, my Apple watch my Apple dildo, like everything, you know.

Joel (41m 51s):

The Apple car's coming.

Tim (41m 52s):

Oh for sure, can't wait.

Joel (41m 54s):

Apple, Apple dildo. Is there something you want to expand upon, Tim?

Tim (41m 59s):

I mean, any, anything Apple sells? So like, I mean just keep, you know, keep producing it, right.

Chad (42m 4s):

As long as it has a Bluetooth available to it's fine.

Tim (42m 7s):

But Joel, don't you don't you discount Microsoft Teams because people are so addicted to email Teams is in there. They could, they could do the same profile. I just think they have a hard time disrupting, Slack does, because Teams came out so hard because of the pandemic.

Chad (42m 22s):

Well, and Salesforce, Salesforce doesn't give a shit about recruitment now the Gmail piece. Yes, I get that. Do they want to disrupt LinkedIn? I don't think they give a shit. I think they are more focused on Teams than they are anything when it comes to LinkedIn.

Joel (42m 36s):

Think there's an immense value in a directory of people or being a network of some sort. And so I don't necessarily think Job Postings or Recruiter, you know, the counts. But I think that they'll create some sort of a network.

Chad (42m 49s):

I do like the transferable profile piece. Like this is the one thing, you know, and then also, you know, I use both, right? So on Teams I'm a Slack user that you can do your entire world in Slack, whether it's it's work, it's I have like a hobby or whatever, like, you know, conference stuff. It could all be in one place and Teams hasn't truly, really figured that out yet. Yeah.

Joel (43m 8s):

Yeah. And the app infrastructure, there is something that email has never really done. They're on a lot of cool sort of email applications that people are using. And Slack has sort of tapped into that. And I think they could leverage that going forward.

Chad (43m 20s):

Whatever did my Bitmoji, right in.

Tim (43m 25s):

Oh, Bitmoji.

Joel (43m 28s):

Alright Tim, what was the, this one?

Tim (43m 31s):

In 2021, we're going to see a large enterprise company actually give their employees the option of getting paid in Bitcoin. Now we've seen employers at a very large level, allow people to say, Hey, we're going to do a one-time spot bonus, or you could take that in Bitcoin, but we haven't seen full payroll go Bitcoin yet. And I have a feeling that, you know, based on the, just I think how Bitcoin has become like the cryptocurrency it's actually, you know, from a financial standpoint, you know, just gained so much more respect over this 2020 that we're going to see Bitcoin become the currency of payroll in some large enterprise.

Tim (44m 14s):

And I, if I had to guess it's either going to be Uber or Tesla.

Chad (44m 18s):

I think Tesla might as well just go ahead and start printing their own money with Elon's face on it, because that'll be an easier sell than Bitcoin.

Joel (44m 27s):

I think you're saying your salary will be in Bitcoin.

Tim (44m 31s):

Yeah.

Joel (44m 32s):

Okay. So, so I think that the challenge of that is the, I guess one part is the mainstream of that. The second one is, you know, to, to use Bitcoin and I'm no crypto expert, but as I understand it to use Bitcoin to buy stuff is super challenging. Do people want to be paid in Bitcoin, I don't know. Will they want an annual bonus in Bitcoin? That seems interesting. I think the more feasible option will be, Hey, as part of our 401K program, you know, one of the funds you can invest in is Bitcoin.

Tim (45m 2s):

Yeah. That's bold.

Joel (45m 4s):

That's what we do on this show.

Chad (45m 5s):

This year has been bold predictions. I have to say.

Joel (45m 8s):

And in 2021, after the year we've had, why not make some bold ass predictions? And that's what we did. My friends Happy New Year!

Chad (45m 16s):

Happy New Year!

Tim (45m 17s):

Happy New Year!

Joel (45m 17s):

I do hope that we do some face-to-face drinking time in 2021. That's a prediction that I hope we can all agree on.

Chad (45m 24s):

Please, God, please.

Joel (45m 26s):

And get that shot in my arm as soon as possible.

Chad (45m 30s):

In line, you're not in the high performers. So I don't know if you'll get it.

Tim (45m 35s):

II told him my wife I'm going to volunteer to give shots to people just so I can get it. And she's like, you don't, you couldn't even give a shot without passing out. And I'm like, well, they'd have to give me mine first. You know,

Joel (45m 45s):

And with that. Tim lead us out. With a we out.

Tim (45m 50s):

We out.

Joel (45m 50s):

We out.

Chad (45m 51s):

We out.

OUTRO (45m 51s):

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. 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.

OUTRO (46m 35s):

And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.