Maybe we should have named this episode Three Acquisitions and a Vendor Moving to Crazy Town?
Remember the '80s movie "Three Men and a Baby"? This episode could be called "Three Acquisitions and a Vendor Who's Lost Their Damned Mind!" Silkroad Technologies acquired Entelo, Harver bought pymetrics and Mitratech gobbled up TalentReef. Can you guess which acquisition we like? Gotta listen. Then we take a trip to Crazy Town, where old-timey job distribution service provider eQuest has made the mother of all pivots, and the boys can't quite make sense of it (but want a hit of whatever they're smoking').
Oh, and Home Depot ends the show with a bit of sanity and common sense. Enjoy!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
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 (21s):
Oh yeah. Elon sold nearly $7 billion in Tesla stock this week, which can only mean one thing. He finally has enough money to buy this podcast. Hey boys and girls, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost Joel "Let's get physical" Cheeseman.
Chad (39s):
This is Chad "Grease is the word" Sowash.
Joel (42s):
And on this week's show Harver. I don't even know her! Entelo finds salvation on the SilkRoad and eQuest can't fight the funk. Let's do this.
Chad (53s):
Oh Yeah.
Joel (56s):
That brings back some memories. Doesn't it?
Chad (60s):
Oh, I love it.
Joel (1m 1s):
This is where you do the Olivia Newton John, shout out. I'm assuming.
Chad (1m 4s):
Oh my God. So, okay. First off, let's give some context here. June 13th, 1978. I, and you had just both turned seven years old and I was in a theater watching Grease for the very first time. Now, if you haven't seen the original movie Greece go to your favorite streaming service and add it to your list and watch it tonight. Anyways, this movie was one of the greatest examples of America's greatest export. Pop culture, because the guys were cool and slick, and the girls were horny and rebellious. John Travolta and Olivia Newton John were fucking magic on the screen. And the final scene of the movie, Olivia Newton John transforms from a shy cheerleader into this leather laden vixen.
Chad (1m 52s):
That was the very first time I fell in love or lust maybe.
Joel (1m 57s):
Yeah. You know, like we were talking before the show, she was like Ginger and
Chad (2m 3s):
Maryanne?
Joel (2m 4s):
Yeah. Ginger and Maryanne all in one. She was like the girl next door and then at the end of the movie, she shows the leather, the high heels, like the sex appeal and that was great. For me, you know, the seventies was so connected to like Farrah Fawcett and Charlie's Angels and Three's Company, Suzanne Somers. But to me like Olivia Newton John was up there with all of them in the seventies. And then she blew her heads off a few years later in the eighties with Let's Get Physical and I can remember on MTV watching her.
Chad (2m 36s):
Yes.
Joel (2m 36s):
And a bunch of dudes that look like me now on you know, gym equipment with her haircut, looking all sweaty and sexy. So, so she took a couple of seven year old boys and turned them into men, real fast.
Chad (2m 51s):
Yes.
Joel (2m 51s):
Heading into the seventies through the eighties. So we'll miss you. Olivia Newton John, you had a major part in two young guys from the Midwest's upbringing.
Chad (3m 0s):
Yeah. She was 73. I didn't realize she was that much older. She definitely wasn't 17 years old when she made Grease. But the big shout out to Olivia Newton John rest in peace.
Joel (3m 15s):
Yes. For sure. For sure. She will be missed. And a real fighter for cancer and animal treatment. You know, she kind of faded from the pop culture scene, but she had done a lot of really good things in her life and she will be missed. She will be missed. Let's get to shout outs. Shall we?
Chad (3m 32s):
Shout outs!
Joel (3m 33s):
All right. My first one goes out to Byte Board, only a Google product, Reejig CISO, and WSwitchboard. The Forbes Cloud 100 rising stars list highlights the top 20 cloud startups that promise to be listed among the best private cloud companies in the future. And these four work related solutions made the list, not a bad ratio 4 outta 20. Shout out to these companies, repping the industry in Forbes this week.
Chad (4m 3s):
Not too shabby. So shout out to the US Marine Corps. That's right. This Army veteran's giving the Marine Corps shout out for finally confirming the very first four star black general into the US Marine Corps. That's Lieutenant General Michael E Langley's been confirmed for his fourth star. It's taken 246 fucking years for God's sakes. It's about time. The US Army's first black four star general was Roscoe Robinson JR who received his four star in 1982 way to catch up leather necks.
Chad (4m 46s):
Way to catch up.
Joel (4m 48s):
Nice and quick shout out for me to Mark Seaman. You don't know Mark, but Mark and I went to school together. We were in the fraternity Sigma Chi together and he was a ROTC guy joined, joined full-time after school and he is now a one star general in the army. So, oh, I got some friends in high places Chad, don't fuck with me.
Chad (5m 10s):
Brigadier.
Joel (5m 11s):
Very cool. Very cool. Almost as cool, Chad.
Chad (5m 13s):
Yes.
Joel (5m 14s):
As this news from Chick-fil-A.
Chad (5m 15s):
Oh my God.
Joel (5m 17s):
As if Taco Bell bringing back the Mexican pizza, wasn't enough? Rumors of a Chick-fil-A testing bone in chicken wings in Nashville blew up the internet this week. The OG chicken sandwich got a little tired of all the posers. So now they're going to flex on everybody that serves wings with some of their own. What's next? Turning nuggets into wine. Shout out to Chick-fil-A and here's hoping they bring those wings to Indy soon. Although Nashville's not too far away.
Chad (5m 48s):
It is not. We'll be there soon, by the way. Shout out to James Whitlock and the Marketing Rules podcast. So every time I see his podcast cover art, I think, wait a minute. Did Joel start another podcast? Because the cartoon of him.
Joel (6m 3s):
Oh, God.
Chad (6m 4s):
Looks just like your stupid cartoon head. Exactly.
Joel (6m 8s):
Yeah. Did we trademark my head? I might follow a cease and desist against that guy. I mean, damn damn. That's not cool. That's not cool. Speaking of other podcasts, I know you're a Malcolm Gladwell fan, he's one of our favorite authors.
Chad (6m 22s):
Yeah!!
Joel (6m 22s):
Well, he thinks remote work is hurting society and that a recession will likely drive employees who are "sitting in their pajamas" end quote, back into the office. He said this as a guest on the Diary of a CEO recently, quote, "it's not in your best interest to work at home". He said, "I know it's a hassle to come into the office, but if you're just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work life you want to live? end quote. Now I know who's speaking at the JP Morgan Company picnic this fall, Chad.
Chad (6m 54s):
Yes. Yes.
Joel (6m 54s):
Shout out to Malcolm Gladwell who I think is painting a pretty broad stroke of what it's like to work from home. But anyway.
Chad (7m 2s):
I love Malcolm Gladwell. I love, you know, his revisionist different angles of history and those types of things. But you gotta remember this guy actually creates narratives for a living. It's a corporate narrative that it doesn't surprise me though cuz he gets paid to do a lot of shit.
Joel (7m 17s):
To me. It's interesting because Douglas Atkin as well, I think is a fairly anti work from home person because of company culture and what he talks about, getting people together, rubbing them together and getting sticky. It seems like there's a group of sort of older statesmen in corporate America, whether it be marketing sales, etcetera, who are championing sort of the old way of working from the office and the old traditions or that are getting older as we speak. But yeah, there is a group of cohorts that I think we both respect greatly.
Chad (7m 51s):
Yeah.
Joel (7m 51s):
That haven't got on board with the work from home movement. Hopefully it's just a matter of time before they come to their senses.
Chad (7m 59s):
One day. Well, during that time they could perspectively join the FFFF, that's right kids, the FactoryFixed Fantasy Football League with the Chad and Cheese. I'm stoked to announce that we will be launching a fantasy football signup page soon where you can register to possibly join the league. This season's gonna be a fucking blast. We've been already talking to the FactoryFixed crew. Some of the things that we're going to do, it's gonna be a blast. And I can't wait. I can't wait for football. Number one, but fantasy football. I'm stoked for this.
Joel (8m 33s):
I was trying to remember who won last year's league?
Chad (8m 35s):
It wasn't either of us.
Joel (8m 36s):
Was it Putnam? Was it Jason?
Chad (8m 38s):
It might have been Putnam.
Joel (8m 39s):
I can't remember who it was. I think it was.
Chad (8m 41s):
Which means it definitely has to come back for the season.
Joel (8m 43s):
Yeah. I think we owe it to the winner to make sure that they come back to try to defend the crown. I think you got last place. Didn't you?
Chad (8m 51s):
It was either.
Joel (8m 52s):
You or Fanning?
Chad (8m 53s):
It was almost dead last or second to last. But I was definitely in the basement.
Joel (8m 58s):
God. Well, you know, who's a winner, Chad, no matter what is Mark Katz? Fan of the show and the winner of free whiskey.
Chad (9m 8s):
Oh, love that.
Joel (9m 9s):
Kids. If you haven't signed up for a chance to win free shit from Chad and Cheese, you gotta go to Chadcheese.com click the free link. We're talking t-shirts which we're in the process of getting new t-shirts we've got a lot of new stuff going on here, Chad.
Chad (9m 22s):
Yeah.
Joel (9m 23s):
T-shirts fantasy football. We got new sponsors, Aspen Tech Labs supporting our beer giveaway. Textkernel is still our whiskey. Whiskey daddy. And then we got t-shirts sponsored by JobGet so guys a lot of cool new stuff going on, but you gotta go to Chadcheese.com to get that. And while you're there, think about leaving a review on the podcast platform of your choice. We love getting feedback. Whether it be good or bad, it's our oxygen. Let us hear from you. Cuz we love you and talking to a mic really isn't all that human.
Chad (9m 53s):
I love all these podcasts that that say, Hey, go to my site and you know, give me a five star review. No, just tell us what you think. I hate that shit. If you think we're a five star. Awesome. If you don't awesome. That's cool.
Joel (10m 9s):
As long as you listen, that's what we care about.
Chad (10m 11s):
That's all it matters.
sfx (10m 14s):
Happy birthday!
Joel (10m 15s):
All right. Let's talk about birthdays Chad. A lot of fans are celebrating birthdays this week on the list are Kevin Kirpatrick, Bill Peterson, Jason Putnam, who we just talked about. Peter Simandl, Amy Chapin, Johnny Campbell, out in Ireland, Jason Sykes, Peter Clayton, the OG podcaster, I guess. Does he even have a podcast? I know he publishes audio anyway. Carmen Hudson, longtime recruiter and no relation, Abby Cheeseman! All celebrate another trip around the sun.
sfx (10m 54s):
Happy Birthday!
Joel (10m 55s):
Again, not my sister, not my wife, Abby Cheeseman celebrating a birthday.
Chad (11m 0s):
And that's Pete Simandl by the way, it was good. I know the guys. So I know how to say. Yeah, I know how to, to say his name Simandl, yeah.
Joel (11m 8s):
I'm still waiting for Seymour Butts or you know.
Chad (11m 13s):
Well you can wait while we are at an event. That's right events and our travel powered by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. That's right. When we look sexy on the travel that's because we have that Shaker.
Joel (11m 28s):
Always look sexy today.
Chad (11m 31s):
Shaker trucker hats, Shaker shirts, Shaker backpacks by Patagonia, luggage, all that other fun stuff. They outfitted us to ensure that we get to where we're going and we look great while we're doing it. September 13th through the 16th, we're gonna be in Vegas. Imagine that? For HR Tech, you guys have heard of this one before HR Tech. It's gonna be big October 5th through the 7th, in Nashville at InspireHR. Two party places, man. And I mean, I don't know that you can get 180 degrees, more different party place than Vegas than Nashville, both party places, but entirely different.
Joel (12m 10s):
My liver's already on boycotting. It's not good. My liver's already mad.
Chad (12m 15s):
And then we're talking Vegas, Nashville and then Paris. That's right kids.
sfx (12m 21s):
What did you say?
Chad (12m 23s):
Unleash World! October 12th and 13th in gay Paris. If you haven't registered kids? Again Vegas! Again Nashville! Again Paris?! I mean, what are you waiting for? Go to Chadcheese.com, click on events. All the stuff's there you can register. And we'd love to see you.
Joel (12m 39s):
Chad. You're remember the band Ready For the World? And the hit song Oh Sheila.
Chad (12m 43s):
Yeah.
Joel (12m 44s):
Well let's just hope the world is ready for us all.
Chad (12m 53s):
TOPICS!
Joel (12m 53s):
Alright.
Chad (12m 53s):
Oh she okay. Wait, wait real quick. Real quick. Yeah. I received a DM this morning that said this, and this alone, everybody panic and sell!
Joel (13m 5s):
That was it?
Chad (13m 6s):
Yes.
Joel (13m 7s):
I got, after this news, I got a text saying if two corpses get close enough together, can they both come back to life anyway? All right. Let's, that gets us to our first story everybody. Chicago based SilkRoad Technology has acquired San Francisco based Entelo. Terms of the deal we're not disclosed. Entelo provides source to hire automation technology while SilkRoad provides what it calls "red carpet onboarding software". Ooh! The acquisition will help SilkRoad add candidate search and recruitment marketing capabilities founded in 2011 Entelo employs 63 people according to LinkedIn and raised a total of $40.7 million in its history.
Joel (13m 48s):
SilkRoad founded in 2003 has raised just over $200 million and was acquired in 2021 by High Bar Partners. SilkRoad employs around 350 people. The consolidation continues, baby. Chad, what you got?
Chad (14m 4s):
So we've had a lot to say about Entelo over the years and, this story is more like a telenovela. Founded in 2011, as you'd said, Entelo has floundered for years trying to understand just what they wanted to be when they grow up. While companies like Sovren and Textkernel cornered a white label market for parsing and matching behind the scenes. So back in 2019 Entelo was limping around and then someone had a great idea to acquire ConveyIQ. I say it was a great idea because of the vision that they created by acquiring another system that could move into more of a platform conversation and which also came with, guess what?
Chad (14m 49s):
Kids more funding at that point, everyone knew Entelo was on life support and that buying ConveyIQ, AKA 'take the interview'.
Joel (14m 59s):
Yeah.
Chad (14m 59s):
Which was, as we thought more of a smoke screen than real business move. If Entelo couldn't execute on their original concept, who the hell thought they could create a grander vision and then execute on that? That will then soon after in 2020, Entelo kicked their CEO/founder, John Bischke to the curb automatically, we thought, Hey, Danielle's gonna be the new CEO. Nope. They hired a product guy, Robert Sal from Jobvite. Okay, you need a product person on product and you need a CEO, someone who can actually make noise and drive execution in the CEO slot.
Chad (15m 43s):
Anyway, soon after that, the CEO, obviously Danielle didn't get the CEO position, so she was gone soon after that. The CEO ejected in early 2021, the CTO ejected in May of this year and the new head of sales lasted only eight months before ejecting a few months ago in June.
sfx (16m 4s):
Oh hell no.
Chad (16m 5s):
So to me, this is a house of cards. Why would you buy this?
Joel (16m 12s):
Because it was on sale and it was cheap. Yeah. This, you know, I actually interviewed John Bischke, founder of the company back when it was founded. And it was a pretty cool, disruptive, innovative idea and the idea was of the company was, let's look at LinkedIn data and anyone who has updated their profile or change something, maybe Twitter profile. So it used aggregate data to sort of guess who is more likely to leave their company. And we found in 2011 with a lot of other companies, particularly those that built their business off of Facebook, that the rules change at platforms. By the way, there's a ton of startups that used Twitter as well.
Joel (16m 55s):
That suffered a similar fate. LinkedIn pulls the rug out from under, you know, utilizing LinkedIn data. Entelo had already had already taken money. So there they were in a position where like, holy shit, what do we do?
Chad (17m 6s):
Pivot!
Joel (17m 7s):
Pivot galore. The whole thing seemed like a wannabe poor mans. You fill in the blank, seek out, hiring solved, et cetera. They tried to be many different things. Nothing quite caught on. You mentioned the hail Mary with the ConveyIQ. Again, that was sort of two corpses thrown together to create a vampire. I guess that didn't work out. Bischke gets kicked out. Danielle leaves shortly thereafter, you mentioned the roll call of exits. The time was run out. You know, they had run out of time in terms of the investment that they had gotten. They brought in someone to sell the company. SilkRoad was a big enough sucker to take the bait and here we are.
Joel (17m 48s):
It feels desperate for sure. It's just not good for any of 'em. I don't know, know a ton about SilkRoad, but to them, it just sounds like let's get some tech on the cheap. A lot of people are doing what we're doing and they do a lot more than what we do. So we need to add, we need to tack on some tech, that'll hopefully keep our customers around longer than if they would otherwise. And my guess is 5 to 10 years from now, we're talking about SilkRoad getting acquired by somebody on the cheap, just like this.
Chad (18m 18s):
Yeah. So it speaks volumes that you don't know that much about SilkRoad since they've been around since 2003. They have modules for recruiting, onboarding, learning, and performance. But from my experience, nobody buys SilkRoad for their recruiting prowess. That's for damn sure. So why does a SilkRoad, which is not known for recruiting buy a clearance rack, failing recruitment technology company? None of that makes any sense. Yeah, they got it on the cheap, but for what? I mean, to be able to buy a jalopy that's not working or selling in the first place, you're gonna try to do what with it?
Chad (19m 3s):
To me reminds me of Hirevue buying AllyO and everybody's saying, oh, this is gonna be great. It's gonna be transformational for HireVue. Yeah. From my understanding, they have used literally one aspect of AllyO in that platform because the rest of it, they just couldn't use. Yeah. I see the same thing happening here.
Joel (19m 24s):
Yeah. I mean, look, acquisitions are hard. Integrations are hard. I mean, putting one tech into another is hard. Putting one culture into another culture is hard. Putting employees in duplicate systems is really hard. So a lot of these times the deal can just come down to either the price or we need to make our investors happy. We need to make them think that we're growing and this is one way to do it. The clock had run out on Entelo. So it was either like, sell it for parts, close it down, or get a buyer on the cheap to help everyone safe face and move on? The CEO I believe is joining the board over at SilkRoad I think, so he's got a job! Who knows what he'll do from this, but all the, all the main pieces from Entelop look like they're gone.
Joel (20m 8s):
So this is a fire sale. As far as I'm concerned, this is, you know, Jobster getting bought by whoever they got bought by back. Look, the story goes on and on and this will not be the last time that we hear this stuff any. And if you go back into CrunchBase and, and do a search for like 10 to 12 year old companies, 8 to 12 year old companies in our space, watch watch the dominoes start to fall in terms of companies that are gone.
Chad (20m 40s):
Again, just look at the runway. And that being said, Pymetrics, who had funding in 2018, do you think they ran outta runway?
Joel (20m 48s):
Sure. Well, let's get to that story. And then we can comment on that situation. So Boston based Harver, not Harvard has acquired New York based pymetrics. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Shocker. pymetrics provides unbiased soft skills assessments while Harver helps companies with high volume recruiting needs. The acquisition will enable pymetrics to become part of Harver's set of talent assessment solutions. founded in 2011 pymetrics employs a hundred people and raised $56.6 million while Harver had raised around $29 million and was acquired in 2021 by Outmatch for an undisclosed sum.
Joel (21m 29s):
The company then rebranded as Harver. Your initial comment on this deal, I think was 'that's dumb'. So tell us how you really feel Chad.
Chad (21m 45s):
Yeah. So pymetrics they took what $56.6 million? acquired by Harver, AKA Outmatch, AKA Rubicon Technology Partners listen, closely kids. This is gonna get crazy. Also Frida's LinkedIn today, said that she will be staying on board as Chief Data Scientist. So, throw that in there. I don't think she'll be around for long, maybe 18 months or so just again, just my opinion what's gonna happen. But anyway, Outmatch acquired Harver about a year ago, and then outmatch rebranded to Harver. Outmatch two words you can spell very easily.com.
Joel (22m 21s):
Yep.
Chad (22m 22s):
Had acquired eight different startups from video interviewing to background checks. Now everything had shifted to the Harver brand. They literally chose Harver, a made up name over Outmatch. Oh. And Rubicon acquired Outmatch you know, back in 2020. Yeah. There's a lot of moving pieces here.
Joel (22m 44s):
Yeah.
Chad (22m 45s):
pymetrics latest funding was $40 million back in 2018 and it feels like their runway was getting shorter. And, here's a bit of tasty intel that was given to me last night.
Joel (22m 59s):
Sure.
Chad (22m 60s):
Whenever a company hires and fires a lobby group, they have to report it and Politico lists those reports. Well, three weeks ago, pymetrics split with their lobby group. Yes.little pymetrics had a lobby group.
Joel (23m 12s):
Interesting.
Chad (23m 17s):
The Raven Group. So why does a startup need a lobby group? I mean, that just sends bad signals to me. If you have to spend cash on a lobby group to be able to help try to form regulations, it's probably not a company that I wanna fucking buy.
Joel (23m 33s):
Yeah.
Chad (23m 33s):
That to me is messy.
Joel (23m 34s):
Yeah. You know, as soon as I read the headline, I, I started scanning the rest for Frida. I was looking for Frida.
Chad (23m 41s):
Of course.
Joel (23m 41s):
Where's Frida, where's Frida? And then, yeah, there's a quote from her that basically says excited to continue building upon our shared blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. But there are no specifics. So she probably got a lot of questions about what are you gonna do? Are you gonna stay on? And the LinkedIn post makes a lot of sense. I think you're right about the 18 months, you know, Checkstr, one company we know, he was around for eight months, so 18 might be optimistic. I don't know. He pulled the cord at eight months. This company is a hot mess, dude. It is so like, Outmatch is now Harver. But if you go to outmatch.com, outmatch.com is still there.
Joel (24m 21s):
It doesn't redirect to Harver.
Chad (24m 24s):
But it says they're now Harver. I mean, it is so weird.
Joel (24m 30s):
Just redirect to Harver. And then like Checkstr still goes to checkstr.com. But then like first person does redirect to Harver. So there's some real, it's a real cluster fuck at this organization. The company's trying to build what it calls a hiring experience stack, but that's not what Harver says it is. So if the main company doesn't say that, but it says it Outmatch like if I'm a customer or prospect of this company, I'm totally confused about what's going on. That had our new COO in '21. The whole thing just looks like in complete cluster fuck. I don't really know what to make of any of this. They should just rebrand. The whole company is Keystone cops, jobs and stuff, LLC. Cuz I don't know.
Joel (25m 10s):
I don't think anybody knows what the fuck they're doing and whoever the COO is needs to like figure this branding shit out. They've had a year to do it. Like what's what's the hold up? What's the problem?
Chad (25m 25s):
I personally think Harver bought a bill of goods that they will likely never be able to use, especially in a hyper regulatory arena like interviewing in soft skills. So molding regulations to suit your vision through a lobby group, probably number one isn't great for optics.
Joel (25m 43s):
Yeah. This one is really, really hard to get my head around. Anyway so we need a break to figure our shit out and then come back and talk some more kind of strange mid dealings by companies. By the way I was remembering a conversation about pymetrics and the insight that I got is that they had been trying to sell the company for 18 months. So the price must have gone down quite a bit and the desperation went up quite a bit in that time period. But anyway, let's talk about our next acquisition. Austin based Mitratech® has acquired Denver based TalentReef. Terms of the deal we're not disclosed.
Joel (26m 26s):
Gee, I get tired of hearing that. TalentReef is an applicant tracking and onboarding platform. The press says the acquisition will enable Mitratech® to better service their customers hiring needs. Founded in 2008, TalentReef employees around 165 people and had raised 4 million while Mitratech® is a provider of legal and compliance software for companies. Mitratech® has been around since '87.
Chad (26m 57s):
Yes.
Joel (26m 57s):
It was acquired by the Ontario teacher's pension plan in 2021. Chad is this reefer madness, a savvy acquisition or something in between?
Chad (27m 5s):
Well, first off I think it is incredibly weird that the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan owns this number one.
Joel (27m 13s):
Remember they're part of the CareerBuilder deal with Apollo.
Chad (27m 18s):
They apparently like the talent space, but the way that I see this is kind of like a compliance backing into recruiting. And I like to see things like that happen. So instead of trying to force compliance into a platform, the platform was created for compliance and everything wraps around it. So that's a great message when selling against other platforms, especially for hourly and decentralized workers. So high volume hiring is sexy right now. Everybody's talking about it, even doing podcasts and shit about it too, and ensuring you don't have to worry about compliance isn't just nice.
Chad (28m 3s):
It's a damn must. TalentReef has been around since 1997 and they've only received $4 million in a single round of funding back in '97, according to CrunchBase. So we haven't heard much from TalentReef over the years, but they're a scrappy group that I believe quietly received a good payday. I don't think it's gonna be an amazing payday, but I think they got a good payday out of this. I don't think it was clearance rack sale material. But if my Mitratech® can effectively sell to enterprise players who need high volume obviously platforms, they can also sell a myriad of other legal advisory and compliance solutions.
Chad (28m 46s):
So this to me sounds smart from Mitratech® . The only thing that I'm not sure of is if they can execute on this new platform, cause this is not what they know.
Joel (28m 58s):
Yeah. Yeah. Big applause for an acquisition that makes a little bit of sense. So yeah, you mentioned the one side of it in terms of, you know, TalentReef companies needing all kinds of legal advice, which Mitratech® can provide. But the other side of that works works as well. So Mitratech® says it serves over 12,000 law firms, right? These are law firms that probably aren't getting called by the, you know, traditional ATS salesperson.
Chad (29m 26s):
Yeah.
Joel (29m 26s):
They all need ATSs. They don't know what the fuck to buy. They're probably calling Mitratech® saying, who should we use? Do you guys do this? And Mitratech® said, okay, well let's just buy our own ATS, plug in our 12,000 law firms into that system, take TalentReef's people, plug it into our services and then voila, you got an acquisition that makes sense for both parties. My guess is they'll probably probably keep the TalentReef brand as opposed to wrap it into Mitratech® , which sounds like a bad Michael Bay movie. But you know, time will tell on that. Yeah. This one makes sense.
Joel (30m 7s):
I like it. The whole Ontario teachers thing is a little bit bizarre to me.
Chad (30m 14s):
Yes.
Joel (30m 14s):
Those crazy Canucks must know something we don't! There's something in the water or the snow up there in Canada that makes them so pulled toward employment and workforce tech. It's kind of bizarre, but more power to 'em.
Chad (30m 27s):
Yeah. What what's even more bizarre is this eQuest news.
Joel (30m 34s):
Oh, it's totally bizarre, dude. Okay. So let's get into this eQuest Media announced this week that it will be expanding its advertising and marketing division into, you ready for this, worldwide music publishing. This will include licensing compositions for use by films, television, advertisements, and other media, monitoring, song usage and collecting and distributing royalties to clients. In case you missed it eQuest is historically a service that distributes jobs globally and has been doing it since, oh, I don't know the nineties? Chad, please help us make some sense of this move.
Chad (31m 11s):
Yeah. So I guess if you can't beat him, then get the hell out. I have admiration for John Malone, the founder and CEO of eQuest. Very early on in the days of the applicant tracking systems, John signed an exclusive deal with Taleo, the biggest ATS at the time. And the deal was for eQuest to be tightly integrated with Taleo and their only source for real job distribution. Now you gotta think about this kids! Back in those days, job distribution was going to each job board and posting manually.
Chad (31m 52s):
And this partnership put eQuest on the map because now you could do multiple job board distribution through one touch. Unfortunately eQuest got lazy and sloppy as competitors like BroadBeam came out of the woodwork, tightened up their game and the Taleo exclusive contract ran out. So instead of using the market position to make a stronger platform and prep for the end of the exclusivity, he chose boats and hoes, you know? So this step into music should be a step out of recruiting and job distribution, but much like Monster in Taleo, eQuest has had its time in the sun and I don't think it's gonna be coming back to the recruitment landscape anytime soon, or at least at the top of the mountain for job distribution in the recruiting landscape.
Joel (32m 34s):
Yeah. This is as weird to me as when Michael Jordan left basketball to try to play baseball. The difference is he could come back to basketball. I'm not sure eQuest can come back from this? This makes no sense to me. It's like us deciding we want to add knitting or makeup tips as part of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Okay. So, so one, what the hell do we know about knitting and makeup? What the fuck do they know about music? Second, there are already podcasts on those topics, I assume, I don't listen to them that do a lot better job about knitting and makeup tips than we ever could. And then number three, our current listeners would think we'd gone mental and leave the podcast.
Joel (33m 15s):
So that's basically what this feels like to me. They're doing something that they don't have a core competency on, they're confusing their customer base. It's just bad on all levels. I don't know what their smoking at eQuest because I want some of that shit, cuz it's really strong and must be really good. Holy shit. Is this on the Onion? I can't believe this is a real story.
Chad (33m 37s):
I can't either. It was sent to both of us, I believe. AndI literally clicked on it thinking that again, I was being pranked.
Joel (33m 45s):
Yeah, this is I'm getting punked. Somebody in the industry sent this to us, thinking that we would think is real story, but sure enough, it's on their site. It's on their blog. Nothing on the main site says music anyway. It's not worth spending any more time on this. It's totally stupid. Let's take a break and catch our breath and talk about something that makes sense.
Chad (34m 6s):
So on the last week's show, we talked about Tesla creating their own core talent platform instead of buying an ATS off the shelf or off the market.
Joel (34m 21s):
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad (34m 22s):
You said that you expect more of this to happen as companies see the price of off the shelf ATS systems are pretty fucking expensive.
Joel (34m 32s):
Yep.
Chad (34m 32s):
Well, this week I was forwarded Home Depot's path to pro platform. You can check it out at pathtopro.com and it's a career portal for the trades, carpentry, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, welding, and many other trades. You can click into any of the listed trades and Home Depot provides an outline of what to expect when pursuing these trades as a career. Starting salary, number of jobs currently available, and the cost and timeframe breakdown of going to a trade school versus a four year college. Then they direct you to quote unquote "free training". They also have the most important information, a page for your parents. This is one of the things that you see with the military a lot, because everybody wants their kid to go to college, right?
Chad (35m 19s):
And not every kid wants to go to fucking college. So the military for years have had these pages and they've had these promotional slicks for parents to be able to help them understand how this is a great path for their kid.
Joel (35m 37s):
Yep.
Chad (35m 38s):
Unfortunately, America, you bunch of fucking idiots. We have counted out tech schools for years and now Home Depot is trying to help parents understand why this is a great career path for their kids. So thoughts on Home Depot doing this and other companies perspectively doing this in other industries in the market?
Joel (35m 55s):
Yeah. So I think it's brilliant. You know, typically when we talk about this it's company training people for technology or being able to do a coding job that I need done at this company. The problem with that is you train 'em to do a job they don't necessarily have to work for you. Now they might be under contract and we've talked to some, or we've talked about some companies or services that will put people under contract for a certain time period once you educate them. But after that, they can go wherever the hell they want. The genius of this is.
Chad (36m 29s):
Yes.
Joel (36m 29s):
Home Depot trains people to do jobs where they need shit that guess what they can buy at
Chad and Cheese (36m 35s):
Home Depot!
Joel (36m 35s):
And there's some loyalty to Home Depot because by golly, they got me the experience I needed to get this job. So they, Home Depot, are creatively finding a way to get customers for life pulling in the parents and making them feel good about Home Depot because well, shit, they need some drywall and some two by four, two at some point, right? So they're gonna be customers of Home Depot, oh, by the way, we're gonna create this thing as a foundation, we're gonna raise money for it and we're gonna do a little tax break, whatnot with this foundation. So I'm sure they're getting some tax breaks from it. I'm sure they're making friends and high places in Washington and state legislatures by having this educational resource for the people who vote for these politicians.
Joel (37m 20s):
It's great PR, there's so many good things about this and it's so brilliant that I can't help, but just really applaud.
Chad (37m 25s):
Yeah.
Joel (37m 26s):
And as a, as a story to end the show, Chad, that isn't based on porn or OnlyFans or fried chicken, I just feel good about it. And I'm excited. And I'm glad you shared that story with us on the feed this week.
Chad (37m 43s):
Yeah. I gotta say, if you are looking for ways to re, to actually connect your brand to people and or create a cult like brand, this is a fucking template. You're a hundred percent, right? This is about, first and foremost, we have gaps in our society today where we don't have enough plumbers, carpenters, you name it, right. We don't have enough. So Home Depot says, Hey, this is good. Not to mention, we can create these individuals or at least help get them to training so that we're associated with it. And they started a career and they do have to buy things. So again, you're right. This is a perfect way to connect to a brand and then create a cult brand.
Chad (38m 28s):
It's not a kneejerk, it's not something that will happen to tomorrow, right? This is something where they're building for the future. And we do not see companies do this in the careers area.
Joel (38m 41s):
And that's why we're launching path to podcasting from the Chad and Cheese podcast foundation. We're taking donations. Let us know if you'd like to give. And with that, we out.
OUTRO (38m 52s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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 (39m 32s):
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.