Adecco Ménage à trois

In a shortened holiday week, the podcast is loaded with solid content. We're talkin' acquisitions like..

- Adecco - errrr Vettery - auction sale of Hired

- New York City getting tough on A.I. hiring - Thanks HireVue!

- Unwoke's dip into the deadpool

...and much, much more. Grab some pumpkin pie, put on your fat boy pants and enjoy another active week in recruitment, as always, powered by Jobvite, Sovren 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 (22s):

It ain't cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving, everybody. Welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel "another old fashioned, please" Cheeseman.

Chad (37s):

And I'm Chad "just give me the damn shot" Sowash.

Joel (42s):

On this week's show Hired gets hired, Dice innovates like it's 2013, and Unwoke goes broke! Pass the stuffing and put on your fat boy pants everybody, we'll be right back.

Sovren (55s):

You already know that Sovren makes the world's best resume CV parser, but did you know that Sovren also makes the world's best AI matching engine? Only Sovren's AI matching engine goes beyond the buzzwords. With Sovren you control how the engine thinks with every match the Sovren engine tells you what matched and exactly how each matching document was scored. And if you don't agree with the way it's scored the matches, you can simply move some sliders to tell it, to score the matches your way. No other engine on earth gives you that combination of insight and control. With Sovren, matching isn't some frustrating "black box, trust us, it's magic, one shot deal" like all the others. No, with Sovren, matching is completely understandable, completely controllable, and actually kind of fun. Sovren ~ software so human you'll want to take it to dinner.

Joel (1m 54s):

Fat boy pants, or as I like to call them pants.

Chad (2m 1s):

Oh shit, dude. I got to say, man, I didn't realize that the Philadelphia Eagles were worse than the Browns. Wtf, didn't they just win like a super bowl a few years ago? What's going on here?

Joel (2m 14s):

Dude, there's a whole division that's worse than the Brown Slake, the NFC East is so bad. I can't fathom it. And I think the Eagles are in first place. Like that's how bad that division is. They're three, five and one or three, six, and one, and are in first place from Browns or I'll start off shadows with the Browns, like the Brown seven and three, second place. They're not catching the Steelers, but hell let's go to the playoffs. Let's 2020 this bitch and win a Super Bowl because that would be the most 2020 thing ever. Cleveland Browns, Super Bowl champs in a stadium with nobody in it. That would be 2020 to a tee.

Chad (2m 51s):

Well Victoria Conley, Ed from Philly and all of our, all of our Philadelphia listeners. I got nothing guys. I got nothing. My first shout out is to the LinkedIn poll that I put out there. And the question I posed was will you take the COVID vaccine as soon as it is available? It's been out there for a week. 52% said yes, 48% said no. And I mean, we all have, we all have different reasons. And in Torin actually said, Torin Ellis said "not a chance. Given how the medical system has too often abuse, misaligned, and misinformed, the black community, I'm waiting."

Chad (3m 35s):

This is coupled with the newness of the vaccine, a need to gather more real life data. There's just a ton of reasons why there's no way in hell that Torin is going to take it. He said, he's going to continue to limit movement and wear his damn mask and, and Torin, I love your brother, but I'm sick and tired of limiting my movement. Give me the shot.

Joel (3m 57s):

The shot had to be put in a testicle. I'd be like, pick, pick one, whichever one you want, like vacs me up, baby. I don't, I want to go back to traveling and being out in the world, like, but it's interesting that he brought an ethnic, like race, race part to this.

Chad (4m 14s):

IT's true.

Joel (4m 14s):

I never, I never, I never thought about, I mean, they, they don't, they don't typically release vaccines based on race, but I've just never thought of that angle. Like, Hey, have blacks been screwed with vaccines in the past? I guess so.

Chad (4m 28s):

Just the healthcare system overall. It's like, look, let's just go ahead and push away from the table. I'll wait.

Joel (4m 35s):

Next shout out. Talk Push our buddies that push it real good turn six, six years old. That's not six days, six weeks or six months. They turned six years old. Max and team keep pushing, man. You're doing good stuff. Talk Push it real good. Turn six. Almost ready for first grade.

Chad (4m 54s):

Yep. Yep! Pia over there is killing it on the marketing side. Keep it going. My next shout out is to Collin Parker from Crelate who sent us some Seattle whiskey. I haven't tried it yet, but it was free. So there's no question I'm going to drink it. He wanted to say, thanks for helping him get back up to speed. He left the industry for a bit and needed a crash course, which is what the Chad and Cheese is here to do. So we provided him with a crash course on what the fuck was happening in the industry. Our pleasure, Collin, keep the alcohol coming.

Joel (5m 28s):

I have tried it. I will say that Northwest whiskey is a little bit different. It's a little, little earthier, a little more, little more biscuit, sort of flavor and sense. So yeah, I'll be interested to hear your opinion on, on something outside of the, the middle of the country here, so close to Kentucky that we enjoy. Shout out to Shaker got an email from them today actually. Shaker, we can say new website, support of the show, but yeah, sending out popcorn and I don't know if we're supposed to share this because maybe it's just for clients and friends, but fuck it. Yeah. Go to shaker.com/holiday-gift to put in your name for some free popcorn and who doesn't love some free popcorn.

Joel (6m 9s):

That's what I'm talking about.

Chad (6m 10s):

That's what I'm talking about.

Joel (6m 11s):

Yeah.

Chad (6m 11s):

Big shout out to Leandro Gomes da Silva Senior Recruiter over at Recharge.com. Thanks for connecting and listening Leandro. We enjoy our listeners connecting with us. I know Joel, you know, when he wakes up from a nap, he loves to see the notifications of people trying to connect with us, not to mention having discussions, kind of like sidebar discussions, definitely connect with us individually on LinkedIn or Twitter. Just look us up on Facebook. We have a Chad and Cheese page, so like it and enjoy.

Joel (6m 45s):

No doubt, no doubt. Shout out to Quincy Valencia the queen. If you haven't heard the episode of the Thanksgiving episode, you got to check that out released earlier this week. Quincy, thanks for amusing, you know, humoring us and coming on the show.

Chad (6m 59s):

Thanks man. Yeah. Thanks for classing up the joint. Big shout out to John Thurmond over at HR social hour, he knew that I was getting thirsty. So he sent to an HR social hour bottle opener. And this thing's legit. Did you get one of those?

Joel (7m 15s):

It weighs about eight pounds. I got it in the mail. Like how, how did this get here with just a one, you know, one, a first class stamp. They must have connections at the post office or something. Shout out to Slack. God, we've talked about these guys forever. They're allegedly in talks with Salesforce to get acquired. So this, this, this drop today, this will be something I'm sure we'll dig into a little bit more next week, but shout out to them in, in Salesforce, it looks like is getting into the enterprise messaging business in a big way. So yeah, it's finally happening. Slack is getting bought.

Chad (7m 51s):

They need to, they really do. Big shout out to Aja Eric and Elise over at Symphony Talent for sending yet another bottle of Blanton's kids!

Joel (8m 2s):

We're not worthy. We're not worthy.

Chad (8m 5s):

They know what helps us get prepped for another transform. And that being said, we've got an event coming up. As a matter of fact, we just taped our session. Symphony's transform is happening on December 3rd. And I have to say that when you register, do yourself a favor and pick the insider experience. I actually got my box today. My VIP box today, legit swag in the box to heighten the experience, just Google Symphony Talent transform, treat yourself and enjoy.

Joel (8m 39s):

And, and for self promotion purposes, make sure that you check out the Pinterest keynote session and especially the intro for that, because my ass still has some sweat in the crack because I would sit next to the fire for so long videotaping that goddamn intro. So you better watch it people. you better watch it.

Chad (8m 59s):

That's what happens when I make Joel do about 27 takes.

Joel (9m 3s):

You make me make me well Blanton's won't fit in your pocket, but you know what will? Chad and Cheese will, if you don't have this in your pocket, make sure you text CC. That's the letter C N C to (833) 799-0321. That's Chad and cheese in your pocket. Tech CC to (833) 799-0321. Good stuff.

Chad (9m 24s):

And we have a beer drop winner. Don't we?

Joel (9m 27s):

Hell yeah, we do!

Chad (9m 28s):

Adzoona up, bringing you beer drop. If you haven't won beer drop and you want to get free beer on your doorstep, contactless, Chad and Cheese wants you to as well go to beerdrop.net. Thanks to AdZoona for powering this, but we've got a new winner.

Joel (9m 47s):

Yeah. If you get a, if you can find a drum roll soundbite, put it in here.

Chad (9m 51s):

drumroll

Joel (9m 51s):

The winner this month is Bo Higgins! Is there a more Southern name than Bo Higgins? He's a veteran recruiter at Amazon, Virginia grad. So we're going to talk some military shit, some, you're going to vent about Amazon probably to him over our zoom, Zoom tasting.

Chad (10m 11s):

Oh yeah, no question.

Joel (10m 11s):

But Bo, you are a winner buddy. He picks the stouts for this month. He's a stout guy. So.

Chad (10m 17s):

I'm looking forward to it.

Joel (10m 18s):

Look out for that Bo and happy Thanksgiving to you.

Chad (10m 22s):

And if you're not a big fan of the beer, that's okay, because maybe you're just more top shelf kind of person, right? And you're looking for the free Pappy Van Winkle. Well kids guess what? Chad and Cheese and Sovren are giving away two bottles of Pappy Van Winkle, was it family reserve like $2,200 a bottle?

Joel (10m 46s):

Two family reserves retails at $2200. You'll pay more on more than that in the secondary market and a bottle of Blanton's exclusive Japanese import. That's the losing bottle of a bourbon! So you can't lose. Bo Higgins was upset. He wanted to know, can I win beer drop and the Pappy's?

Chad (11m 10s):

Take the goddamn beer. It must be a Marine. I mean, Jesus Christ.

Joel (11m 14s):

You must work at Amazon.

Chad (11m 16s):

You never give a what? You never give back free shit, Bo. And that'd being said.

Joel (11m 21s):

Army, Army, Marine, Army Marine talk. Here we go.

Chad (11m 24s):

I don't know what he is yet. Just sounds like a Marine.

Joel (11m 27s):

He is a Marine. He is a Marine.

Chad (11m 28s):

And if you want more free stuff, I don't know. Maybe Chad and Cheese holiday cards. We send stuff out to listeners and we're going to more in 2020 that's rig

Joel (11m 39s):

Logoed Speedo.

Chad (11m 39s):

That's right, Logo Speedo. Go to Chadcheese.com and just click on free register there, for t-shirts, a bunch of different stuff. And again, I have to give big props to Shaker Recruitment Marketing. If you check out the new website, what we've been able to do is because we're getting close to 600 episodes now. As we've categorized much of that content, now you can go into it and we've surfaced a lot of the awesome interviews, stuff around cult brand, females. We actually created a category around uplifting female voices as well.

Chad (12m 22s):

So go to chadcheese.com, check out the new site and thanks again to Shaker!

Joel (12m 27s):

Get yourself a box of wine, and on this holiday weekend and binge on some Chad and Cheese. That's what I'm talking about.

Chad (12m 34s):

Amen Brother. Topics!

Joel (12m 36s):

Topics!

Chad (12m 37s):

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. This is, this is, this is not a topic, but it's like a mega shout out. I got to do this. So remember when we interviewed Patrick Sheehan, the CEO over at Circa?

Joel (12m 50s):

Yes, I do remember.

Chad (12m 51s):

Okay. So he said that he wants Circa to be a leader in driving equity for clients, blah, blah, blah. We hear fucking companies, vendors say this shit all the time, right? And it's usually a load of bullshit. So during the podcast, I personally challenged him to display circus workforce composition, put it right out there for everyone to see, because transparency is the first step to accountability. Now, usually CEO's are like, "Oh, sure. I'll do that." And nothing ever happens. Guess what!

Joel (13m 22s):

What?

Chad (13m 23s):

Patrick did that shit. They actually put their workforce composition out on circa.com. And beside is a quote from Patrick I'll read quote "here at Circa we wanted to fully disclose our DEI statistics to be transparent with our customers, business partners, prospects and employees. We are a company that is currently in the infancy stage of DEI and are working to move the needle to become a more diverse company. We believe teams have the power to transform business and we'll continue to work towards internal and external DEI goals." End quote. This people right here is the first step in actually providing any type of unbiased or any type of diversity or individuals with disabilities, type of product or service.

Chad (14m 18s):

You have to be transparent yourself. You have to demonstrate that you believe in DEI. You can't just give us the fluff because here at the Chad and Cheese, we're not going to take that fucking fluff. And Patrick came to the challenge. Good, good job, Patrick.

Joel (14m 33s):

Yeah. Usually some 24 year old marketing person gets thrown under the bus and they blame them if you don't get the numbers. And Oh, I thought I told that I told Bob to do that. He didn't get to that. That's that's a shame. And by the way you said circa.com, isn't it Circaworks.com or did they buy circa.com?

Chad (14m 49s):

I think your right.

Joel (14m 51s):

Okay. Okay. Little clarification there. Good call. In the news. I'm confused. I don't know what a double, double bell, if there's a super shout out or would it okay. All right. So, so Hired who we, we talked about recently, we talked about their CEO, bailing sort of, disappearing. I guess he, he was thrown off the Island survivor style and we look up and there was a story about their shopping, the business, blah, blah, blah. There's some conflicting reports. And then we wake up one morning and we get the news that hired.com has been acquired by Vettery. So that's kind of how that, how that kind of Adecco, right.

Joel (15m 33s):

So Adecco bought Vettery two years ago. I believe?

Chad (15m 37s):

Yup! In 2018.

Joel (15m 37s):

We got irrelevant to the story, but to me it just, it felt like a nice vanity brand that they get to use. And I fully expect Vettery to become Hired in the next 12 months. But other than that, there's not a ton for me to say on this one, that's important. Do you have anything like groundbreaking on this one?

Chad (15m 57s):

I'm gonna coin, this the Adecco menage a trois play. First off, Adecco and again, we have to take a look at this more in the grander scope of strategy, Adecco needs to find faster ways to provide talent and value because high volume competitors like Alexander Mann solutions in Hourly, in smaller players, like Sonic jobs offer a direct to market alternative without the staffing intervention. So this is a clearance rack acquisition. It was actually an auction by the way.

Joel (16m 31s):

Was it?

Chad (16m 33s):

Yeah.

Joel (16m 34s):

Do we know the final price or was it a silent auction?

Chad (16m 37s):

I believe it was and again, these are just rumors, but I believe just above 25 mil, and I'm not very bullish on a staffing company, like Adecco actually innovating, because if you think about it, it's like Monster tied to duration based postings and getting out run by a startup who was a hungrier. Adecco is not hungry and they won't innovate. They'll just buy a hammer and wonder why it won't work as a screwdriver. So I'm not seeing this going far for Adecco. So player number two, Vettery acquired in 2018 by Adecco.

Chad (17m 17s):

I find it interesting that Vettery's employee base has declined by 39% in the last year and 49% in the last two years. So it really feels like Vettery is slowly being just absorbed into Adecco itself.

Joel (17m 35s):

Yeah.

Chad (17m 36s):

And then last but not least Hired. So Hired head count dropped by 53% in the last year now hired as a tech talent centered platform. So COVID is not an excuse for the major loss. They had about 45 million in revenues in 2019 and dropped to under 20 in 2020. And again, you kind of ran through the quick TikTok, but I'm going to do it again. Three to four weeks ago, hired CEO slipped out the back door. And I say slipped out because he was gone and Hired still had them displayed on their website, sneaky little bastard.

Joel (18m 13s):

Clearly the sale was almost done by the time he was gone.

Chad (18m 16s):

Something was happening, but seriously, Martin Burns actually shared that the CEO dropped the mic on a zoom call. I mean, can you get more 2020 than that?

Joel (18m 26s):

Yeah.

Chad (18m 27s):

Then last week we talk about the CFO informed some shareholders. The board had unsuccessfully attempted to sell hired since the start of the year and its cash reserves were dwindling. So that was an issue. And then I have a quote from one of the Hired's clients and here's the quote, "the wider picture problem is software engineers don't need this stuff. If they write a post on LinkedIn saying they are available, they will have 10 interviews by the end of the day." And personally, I, I just think the best asset that they're getting out of this is the domain.

Joel (19m 9s):

Yeah. I don't think there's, we don't know the price, right? but yeah, Hired is a great domain. If nothing else, it'd be a nice addition to the Adecco portfolio. The press release on this thing, you know, was as, as interesting as they tried to make it. Basically talked about forming quote, the largest global AI driven marketplace for high intent technology, marketing sales, and finance talent. How many buzzwords can you get into a headline? I do also positive, I guess, was the presence in 23 cities across the U S Canada, UK, and Ireland and France. And this will help spur more growth in the business for Vettery. But for me, like, you know, we talk so much about companies that, you know, somebody comes in that had some startup in the consumer consumers, you know, stuff, and, and they, they think they can make a viable product in employment.

Joel (20m 1s):

And then they get a bunch of money because they're tied to Silicon Valley and then they spend a much of money sort of stupidly. And this is what happens. You know, if within five to 10 years, the founders are gone or they're not interested anymore because selling to HR is a bitch to, to say the least. They hand it down and sell it, I mean, the investors want to get out of it. And this is just a story that we keep telling. It's, it's almost a non story to me.

Chad (20m 27s):

No, I think, I think this is a great story for startups that are out there to understand. The model was shit, period, guys, the model was shit. First and foremost.

Joel (20m 38s):

It wasn't necessarily shit in 2012, the problem was that they, they stayed in that model when things evolved.

Chad (20m 45s):

You had human intervention in career counselor types of people where the technology should have actually taken over. How many career counselors have you connected with when you've used Fiverr, right?

Joel (20m 60s):

They have career counselors at Fiverr?

Chad (21m 2s):

Because they don't need em! Right? That's the problem. When you have human intervention into technology, that just means your technology's shit and/or the product and/or model is shit. So overall, there are a few things that were working against them, maybe in 2012, tech people actually wanted to try to find jobs this way. They aren't today, because they don't have to, number one. Number two, having that human layer in there actually defeats the technology in itself. Right? So overall, yes, I understand that a Hired does have, you know, from what I've heard, halfways decent tech, what I have to say is, prove it, get rid of those fucking people and see if it can land and scale on its own, if it can, than it is.

Chad (21m 51s):

If it can't, you're full of shit.

Joel (21m 54s):

Yeah. And I want to say too, like I reported on Vettery years ago when they, when they launched and they were really big on, like, we're going to kill staffing agencies, we're going to kill recruiters. And like, it's really hard to make a successful business when your message messages, we're going to kill staffing and we're going to kill the staffing business. That's a hard mountain to climb in terms of sales, because most of these recruiters think if you're a tech company, you're out to replace them anyway. And if it's actually in your messaging, that's a really hard, hard to, to be on.

Chad (22m 23s):

And Indeed Flex is going down that, that exact same fucking road.

Joel (22m 28s):

History repeats itself all the time in this.

Chad (22m 32s):

Well, let's talk about VONQ, which sounds like something I caught in college on a Saturday night Shot in your Johnson for?

Joel (22m 39s):

Dude, she gave you the VONQ! So VONQ has acquired IGB, who I never heard of.

Chad (22m 46s):

Yeah.

Joel (22m 47s):

So the news on this, you've got some programmatic stuff. You've got automation. VONQ is a programmatic advertising and recruitment analytics, job distribution company. And so is IGB, for the most part, they talk about them being an automated job posting and programmatic solution. So I'm guessing this is kind of like two of the same combining sort of the same core competencies, hoping that they can produce a better product. Again, I don't know anything about IGB. I don't know if they were funded. I don't know if this was a fire sale. This was just, let's get the hell out. So I'm limited on my knowledge of this, but it just sounds like, Hey, you do the same thing as we do.

Joel (23m 31s):

Oh, you're looking to sell, Oh, let's combine forces and let's make a bigger elephant than what we've got. Yeah.

Chad (23m 37s):

So remember back in October last year. So about a year ago, VONQ sold 54% of the company to capital D with their eyes on growth and invading the United States. So they now have capital. And remember the U S is at 21, is $21 trillion in GDP. Whereas the UK plus France plus Germany is around 10 trillion. So sewing all of the EU together is not an easy task, number one. So I've got to give it to them because that's, what they've been trying to do for years is to try to sew together all of the money that's there.

Chad (24m 18s):

And then looking across the pond at this pool of $21 trillion in GDP being the US. So that's, that's VONQ in capital D. But you're a hundred percent, right! I mean, who is IGB? I sent messages out to several friends across the pond and said specifically, who the fuck is IGB?

Joel (24m 40s):

IGB who?

Chad (24m 41s):

And most, most of them responded with I D I have no fucking clue, right? But one responded with IGB is an unknown Dutch player, but they process and post approximately 10 million jobs each month. In fact, IGB may not be well-known, but Ron Stodd Adecco and manpower do rely on their programmatic advertising, which can measure the result in cost per click, cost per applicant, or cost per hire. So this might look small from the outside, and I'm sure that's exactly what VONQ wants you to think, but they

Joel (25m 23s):

Have deadly company.

Chad (25m 25s):

They have their eyes on a global platform.

Joel (25m 29s):

That was talked about in the release. It said VONQ combined with IGB will be ideally positioned in this environment with the right product mix to accommodate the needs of both corporate and staffing customers. IGB will profit from the addition of media purchasing to their business model. While VONQ's job marketing platform will be strengthened by IGB's programmatic technology. The combination also allows for greater expansion internationally.

Chad (25m 52s):

The hard part for VONQ in for anybody coming across the pond to the U S is some of the compliance measures that we have to deal with, OFCCP, posting measures, those types of things, and understanding that if you want to try to duplicate something like that, it is a bitch. So they're going to have to look at acquisition or partnership. That's all there is to it. If they try to build something, it's going to be difficult for them, but it might be a, a big problem to have, but the US has a big nut to crack when it comes to revenue. So I think their focus first right out of the gate is taking down vendors like are competitors like Broadbean.