If you love burritos, pizza and virtual reality - and who doesn't - then this episode's for you! Or should I say if you love automation, call centers and workforce training, this one's for you? Oh hell, you'll just have to listen if you're not following. What else? Job.com goes shopping and its CEO gets salty with the media. Glassdoor may not be as anonymous as it wants you to believe, and we play a little Who'd Ya' Rather with HireArt and InternMatch.io. Now, put that in your Barbacoa Bowl and smoke it!
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 (24s):
Audio equivalent to a shot of whiskey and a bar fight. Hey boys and girls, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost Joel "digital staffing platform" Cheeseman.
Chad (35s):
This is Chad "hungover in Boston" Sowash.
Joel (38s):
And on this week's show, don't call job.com a job board. Glassdoor is not so anonymous anymore. And a little game of who'd you rather? Let's do this! hungover in Boston, Chad too, too many Sam Adams? What's what's going on?
Chad (55s):
Oh yeah, no. Started off with a few beers. Actually. We did a VIP event with Circa last night. I met a, a compliance event here in Boston. Yeah. And I was on stage with Angela Hood CEO over at This Way Global, friends of the show.
Joel (1m 11s):
Nice sponsor.
Chad (1m 12s):
Yep. Rachel See who's actually Senior Council for AI and Algorithmic Bias. That's her fucking title over at the EEOC. So the big guns were on stage last night. Yeah. So there was booze. There was food, a big thanks to Angel Kathy Patrick and the team over at Circa for hosting. Dude, I gotta say, it's great to be back with people. Food, drinks, time with friends. Seriously.
Joel (1m 42s):
I'll applaud that. Yeah.
Chad (1m 44s):
Too many friends to mention, but I do have to make a special mention shoutout to Tracey Cole, who actually came up to me last night and said, Hey, I've been listening to the show since probably like day one. Why haven't I ever gotten a shoutout? So shout out to long time listener Tracey Cole. Thanks for listening, Tracey. Now get all your friends and your family and everybody else to listen and you might get a shout out. Number two.
Joel (2m 10s):
I don't know if Tracey is on our free shit list, because I look at this list a lot. Tracey, if you're listening, what's your deal? What's your deal? Free shit at Chad and Cheese. Let's just bring it out. Now, before we get into the rest of the shoutouts, you gotta go to chadcheese.com. We're working on some new t-shirts people. We got a new beer sponsor. We got a new t-shirt sponsor by the way, as well. That's a JobGet, we got beer by Aspen Tech Labs and our tried and true whiskey delivery service powered by our friends at Textkernel. So if you haven't got on that list and I don't think Tracey is what I could be wrong. I could be wrong. There's a lot of people on this list, Chad, she has to go out to Chadcheese.com, click the free link and sign up.
Joel (2m 55s):
We appreciate your listenership, Tracey. Very much, very much.
Chad (2m 58s):
It's too easy. Another side note, Julie and I literally, we always travel together, right? Yeah. We always travel together. And in this case, her team is actually here. They have a booth, all that other fun stuff yet. She caught COVID and she is at home. So I literally am wandering around Boston, like a little lost kid, little lost puppy. Cuz I don't have her here with me.
Joel (3m 25s):
Dude, no cheese. No, Julie. Dude, you are lost.
Chad (3m 28s):
I am. I am lost in the fucking sauce.
Joel (3m 30s):
I didn't know she had COVID man. Is she okay?
Chad (3m 33s):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's it's interesting. And I don't know how many, like couples, friends that we've had where one of them have gotten it and the other one hasn't and I'm like, you know, that's total bullshit. You guys like, do you sleep in separate beds? I mean, what the hell? And no, it, it happened to us too. So I don't know how this virus works. I'm not that smart, but yeah, I didn't get it. She got it. She was down for the count from the standpoint of just tired as fuck, coughing here and there, but nothing really respiratory wise, but just, just incredibly tired.
Joel (4m 5s):
Yeah. When my wife had it, I didn't get it either. I don't know if this is our whiskey diet or what we got some sort of defense that they don't have. And the variable I can see is a lot more whiskey than our wives drink.
Chad (4m 18s):
More whiskey and four shots, baby.
Joel (4m 21s):
That's right. Are the Red Sox in town? I guess that's the bigger question.
Chad (4m 24s):
Yes. Gonna be behind home plate tonight. Can't wait to do that. Our friend Gary Cowan actually texted me. He is like, I got a place for you behind home plate tonight with the Red Sox. And he also promised free beer. So, I have an obligation I have to show up.
Joel (4m 42s):
And who are they playing?
Chad (4m 43s):
I have no clue. I don't care.
Joel (4m 45s):
Don't care. Don't give a shit. Well it's great to have friends Chad and my first shout out goes to one of our best friends in the industry. Mr. Hung Lee, which no, you're not signed up for Recruiting Brain Food. What's your problem? Hung gave us a shout out this week on his newsletter, Chad and Cheese are back with a great conversation on assessment with Caitlin McGregor, she's the CEO of Plum, by the way, which dives into history, sociology, and foundational tenants of assessments. That sounds like a British person, doesn't it?
Chad (5m 21s):
Yeah.
Joel (5m 21s):
It's fundamentally an assessment for an individual who we assess in isolation from others when we are social and will eventually work with others. It's a great, listen. Thanks, Hung for listening. And thanks for mentioning us on your newsletter.
Chad (5m 36s):
So brainy that one. Big shout out to another person who loves little Chad and Cheese Jasper Spaanjart over at totalent.eu. Oh yeah. Remember he interviewed us back in may during the E recruitment Congress in Belgium and the interview just dropped this week on totalent.eu. So question to you. What do you remember from that interview?
Joel (6m 7s):
I remember, I remember thinking that we're a bad interview cuz we tend to take over the interview. Like there, it's not questions to us. It's just, we just sort of take over the show. That's what I remember. So my memory isn't very good. You probably remember much greater detail of that conversation.
Chad (6m 22s):
Well, I think between the two of us, we were about 10 Belgian beers deep at that point. We were down in our little special Chad and Cheese green room. We were both actually lying on different couches. We were lying on our backs and we did the interview drunk and lying down. That's all I remember. I read it today and I vaguely remember the responses that I provided. I'm sure I did, but there was yeah, that's a way to go Jasper, go ahead, man.
Joel (6m 52s):
That was a poor case of House of HR entrapment. Because if you put a fridge next to us, full of Belgian beer, you know, what's gonna happen, Chad?
Chad (7m 2s):
Yeah. Drunk.
Joel (7m 2s):
It's gonna get consumed and we're gonna break shit. Okay. So you have been warned conferences of the future. And speaking of warnings, Chad, we've been talking about layoffs quite a bit on the show quite a bit.
Chad (7m 15s):
Layoffs!
Joel (7m 15s):
And this shout out goes to Nick Gordon via LinkedIn. This is what he wrote. Quote "it's with a heavy heart that I announce my last day here at Workstream. I, along with 45 other team members have been affected by the ever growing layoffs that are taking place in the tech world" end quote. Nick ouch, hope you land on your feet. For those that don't remember Workstream is a text recruiting platform. They've raised about $58 million dollars launching in 2017. And at last count anyway, via LinkedIn, they had 260 some employees. So layoffs continue this time Workstream.
Chad (7m 57s):
Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well more, more on the more happy note, shout out to Melissa Bordage over at Career Beacon for being a smart marketer and also showing the Chad and Cheese podcast some love on the socials dude. It is hell yeah. So fucking great to start your day when a listener posts, something like that on social where they're saying they're listening to us, they love us. We're a part of their like, you know, listening routine. They send us emails, they DM, us seriously. I love our listeners.
Joel (8m 30s):
And I love that you're bartering Chad and Cheese swag for like Yeti mugs from, from her company.
Chad (8m 35s):
Of course, yes.
Joel (8m 36s):
Anyway, by the way, just a little note. So, we've done our t-shirt contest three times, this is our third year and we've used 99 designs to do the contest. And just to note about the gig economy and my own little take on this is that the quality of design has gone down precipitously.
Chad (8m 57s):
Really?
Joel (8m 57s):
99 designs. So I was I've oh, I've been really unhappy with the first round of shirts. We're gonna go back to the drawing board. We're gonna get some good stuff, but just for just a, just an FYI, like 99 designs used to be a kick ass creative sort of platform for design. And it is lacking. I don't know what that says. Are people moving over to other platforms or what? But yeah, the t-shirts have been a little less than perfect this time around.
Chad (9m 22s):
Yeah. Well get ready kids. Cuz we will have an awesome design. We're gonna give you four designs to choose from. From our new sponsor JobGets that's right kids. JobGet is going to be on the back of that shirt and we're gonna start, we're gonna start the, the whole process of our listeners voting for what t-shirt, what Chad and cheese t-shirt comes out next. We've been excited about. I mean the first tee-shirts were were pretty awesome.
Joel (9m 49s):
Yeah. Yeah. So we'll we'll get there folks. Don't worry. Don't worry. And it'll be a quality t-shirt it'll be a try blend something you're you're proud to wear. Not a Haynes beefy tee people. We don't, we don't do those, those fucking shirts. Well, we talked about some layoffs at Workstream, but a few guys got new jobs recently. Oh let's give a shout out to new CEOs. Our friends at Communo or Communo.
Chad (10m 18s):
Yes.
Joel (10m 18s):
Olivier Gachot. God bless French. I'm guessing guest show Olivier Gachot . He replaces our friend and Communo founder Ryan Gill. No surprise, Olivier has deep expertise in acquisitions. Oh, what could be Communo's future? Let me take a guess on that. Yeah. It also made me miss how much I love Banff and how much I hope that we get back there. Yes. If not this year, next year. So shout, shout out to shout out to Olivier and also HireVue, this one kind of snuck through the cracks Chad. Anthony Reynolds succeeds, Kevin Parker as CEO at HireVue.
Chad (10m 58s):
Huh?
Joel (10m 58s):
Who is retiring! Parker is, he's cashin' it in. He's not on the board of directors, he's just wherever in the world. Anyway, we missed this one from February, which means they kind of kept it quiet. There was a blog post on their own site. Parker had been CEO since 2016. Reynolds brings over 20 years of leadership experience in enterprise SAAS. Parker's reign, HireVue board member Ashley Evans said he quote "took HigherVue from a leader in video interviewing to a full talent platform provider" end quote. ShockinglThere was no mention of the clash action lawsuits and Illinois smack downs that occurred under Parker's tenure.
Joel (11m 44s):
Good luck to both CEOs and shoutout to Olivier and Anthony.
Chad (11m 47s):
Yes. And the stupid explainability statements that they came out with just to point the finger at the clients who are paying them to do whatever the fuck they do.
sfx (11m 57s):
What did you say?
Chad (11m 57s):
Big shout out to the Cincinnati Bengal kids for the new unis that are coming out. Have you seen these things? They're going, oh yeah. They're going like white Bengal tiger.
Joel (12m 9s):
It's so is the helmet white and the stripes black or the stripes white and the helmets black?
Chad (12m 18s):
I don't think it matters. Right?
Joel (12m 20s):
No, it doesn't matter. Yeah.
Chad (12m 22s):
That's the whole zebra conversation. Right? One thing though, the Browns are continuing to Brown Baker Mayfield is gone, which I'm sure you you're, you're not mad about, but he is gone to the Carolina Panthers and Deshaun Watson might not even play this year. So who was going to be QB one for the Browns?
Joel (12m 44s):
So this has gone like full 2008 draft, right? For QBs, which is my infamous video moment. So Baker went one, I think Sam Darnold went three, Rosen went nine or 11, somewhere on there. And then of course the best one went after all that I think in Josh Allen. So Rosen is now on the Browns. Darnold and Baker are now on Carolina.
Chad (13m 10s):
Yeah. Weird.
Joel (13m 11s):
And we have shit from, he was the Colts back up.
Chad (13m 13s):
Brissett,
Joel (13m 14s):
Jacoby Brissett so he sucks. Rosen sucks. And I don't even know who the third string guy is. So if Dashaun, if Dashaun is basically bench for the year, just phone it in.
Chad (13m 27s):
Write it off.
Joel (13m 28s):
It's a fantastic lineup minus the quarterback. And by the way, did you see the Nick Chub video of him like squatting 600 some pounds?
Chad (13m 36s):
Yes. Oh my God. It was like a fucking Volkswagen for God sakes. I mean, that's the answer, right? All you need to do is have a guy who can pivot and hand the ball off.
Joel (13m 45s):
Hand the ball, the Kareem and Nick that's basically the strategy.
Chad (13m 48s):
That's it!
Joel (13m 49s):
It was so funny cuz it looked like those loony tunes, cartoons where they lift like the barbell with the two like round and the bar bends because it's so heavy. Like it looked like a cartoon lift.
Chad (13m 59s):
It was like, the bar was gonna snap.
Joel (14m 1s):
Yeah. Nick, Nick is the shit. But if you don't have a quarterback in NFL and by the way, the Ravens still have Lamar and the Bengal's still have. Cool, cool Joe cool. Yeah. And Steelers are always the Steelers. They made the playoffs last year with duck tape and oil.
Chad (14m 19s):
Baling wire.
Joel (14m 19s):
Yeah. So, so I don't know, man. I, just, you know, miss football. I'll say that I'm excited for the season going I'm absolutely positive the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Chad (14m 31s):
Yes.
Joel (14m 32s):
Will be in the running for national champ. And they'll probably have another Heisman trophy winner added to their ranks. But yeah, the Browns are still Browning. They're still a dumpster fire, but God love them. They're my dumpster fire. They're my dumpster fire.
Chad (14m 44s):
Are we ready for events?
Joel (14m 45s):
Let's do birthdays first.
Chad (14m 45s):
Okay. We'll do birthdays.
Joel (14m 46s):
Ok birthdays. So we had a long list cuz we missed a couple weeks. This list is much shorter, but no less quality, no less quality in our listeners. Happy birthday to Dustin Carper, Jeremy, I guess it's Breit. It's B R E I T. It's Breit or Breit, I guess? I know Jim Schneider who we know longtime recruiter. Crystal Miller Lay, Marin Hogan celebrates another birthday. Our podcast buddy Sege Boudreau. Oh
Chad (15m 14s):
Serge!
Joel (15m 15s):
Yes. Serge is in the house. Jason Beier and this one's out for you, Joe Lanane family member of team Sowash who I guess is..
Chad (15m 27s):
It's Lanane
Joel (15m 28s):
Yeah. Cheesman, Chees-man. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. What's in name. Is he still roaming the country?
Chad (15m 35s):
He is. Yeah. So he's my brother-in-law, little brother, and he and his wife, I think they've been out RVing all over the country, literally doing their, their job remote from anywhere probably for like about a year now. And it's pretty awesome. They have a house in Austin that they're like renting out and dude, they're just, they're just living the dream. Good for them.
Joel (15m 58s):
Living the dream man. Yeah. Fucking millennials man. Fucking gen Zers. All right. Where are we going man? What's our travel schedule look like.
Chad (16m 11s):
Okay. HR tech in Vegas on September 13th, then Inspire HR on October 5th in Nashville. So we've got Vegas, Nashville. Oh my God. Then clutch the pearls kids. We've got Unleashed World on October 12th and gay Paris baby. Oh yeah. Yes. I mean that is a fucking lineup right there kids.
Joel (16m 30s):
Nice. Nice. And thanks to Shaker Recruitment Marketing for powering our travel activities I guess we could call them. We're being, if we're being safe for work our activities. Thanks for helping kill our liver Shaker. We appreciate it. We appreciate it.
Chad (16m 44s):
Love me some Shaker and Shaker backpacks and luggage. I mean they got us the good shit. They got it, my we've had it for how many years now and that shit's still going strong?!
Joel (16m 55s):
Yeah. Which is great. Cuz yeah, my wife and I were in Finland. I think we mentioned that she just bought a new bag from, you know, I don't know. She's kind of cheap like that she'll go to Marshalls or something. Right. And her fucking strap broke. So guess who gets to carry her luggage through Finland while whatever. So yeah, the backpack, the suitcase still in good shape. They bought the good shit. They don't skimp just like they don't skimp on their recruitment marketing advertising.
Chad (17m 35s):
Amen.
Joel (17m 35s):
Love you Shaker!
Chad (17m 36s):
TOPICS!
Joel (17m 36s):
All right. job.com announce the acquisition of Princeton One, a New Jersey imagine that Princeton One in New Jersey, a based talent solutions provider with an emphasis on recruitment process outsourcing, you know, that is RPO Chad and permanent recruitment services this week. Founded in 2002, Princeton One has a nationwide footprint supporting pharmaceutical biotechnology, manufacturing, retail, and more. This is all a part of job.com's growth strategy focusing on acquisitions. You might remember. They acquired HireVergence in 2020, Fortus Group and Endevis and QCI Healthcare in 2021, more notably however Chad was CEO Aaron Stewart's rant on LinkedIn underscoring, a report that labeled job.com a quote "job board instead of a digital staffing agency"
Joel (18m 29s):
on his post. Stewart said quote "no paid to post ads here. No homepage, banner ads, no mass database email shots that everybody hates. You can leave that to the CareerBuilders of the world. Nope. Just staffing done digitally" end quote. Chad what's your take on the news and maybe more importantly Aaron's rant?
Chad (18m 50s):
Didn't he also run parallels with Uber. Like they're like the Uber of? Right. Didn't they, he do that. So, I mean, Aaron's got a point, you know, they are not a job board, although I wouldn't compare job.com to Uber. I mean Uber's model wasn't about buying cars. Like job.com is buying staffing agencies. Rather Uber is building an operating system that could displace taxi service. Right? So Aaron hasn't built an app for the industry. He's forcing it into the staffing agencies he's buying. So yes, the article was wrong in saying they're a job board, but Aaron trying to liken job.com to Uber.
Chad (19m 34s):
He's wrong as well. So I guess everybody can be wrong, Aaron it's okay. Not a big deal. Move on.
Joel (19m 41s):
Yeah. It reminded me of when snap went public. I don't know if you remember this. They were a camera company. Okay. Yeah. And when Fitbit went public, they were a quote "platform", not a commodity hardware because you say you're something doesn't mean that the market won't think that you're something else. It's in look it's in job board. It's in job.com's best interest to not be a job board or be perceived as a job board if they ever want to go public or they wanna sell the company down the road, job boards get much less, you know, in the price tag than say digital staffing firm.
Joel (20m 21s):
So he says they're a digital staffing platform, but nowhere on their homepage, does it say digital staffing platform, the homepages title tag is "your job search starts here". Does that sound like a job board? There's a search box on the homepage that says "find jobs".
Chad (20m 35s):
Yeah.
Joel (20m 35s):
Does that sound like a job board? If you don't wanna be labeled a job board, then you kind of gotta look in the mirror and say, what are we presenting to the world? Because if it looks like a job board, smells like a job board, sounds like a job board. Don't be surprised when the media, more likely, calls you a job board.
Chad (20m 59s):
Well, and also I think you're welcome, Aaron. What we're doing is we're actually pointing out a huge fucking gap in your marketing. And when you have confusion in the market from, you know, staffing industry analysts who should know what you're doing, then again, I think Joel's a hundred percent correct. You gotta look in the mirror, big guy. People don't know if you're a job board, you're a staffing agency. You're trying to be this Uber kind of thing. You really need somebody to help you with your narrative, design and marketing.
Joel (21m 29s):
Yeah. How many companies in the branding question say, oh, we're a fill in the blank, but the public says we are fill the blank. Chatbots are a great example of this, right? Like the public calls you a chatbot, even though you call yourself whatever. Your branding, isn't what you say you are, it's what the public says you are. So don't blame the public, blame yourself and look in the mirror and make some changes on a marketing perspective and at a minimum put digital staffing platform somewhere on your homepage if that's what you are.
Chad (22m 1s):
Yes. And I also have to say, Aaron is probably one of the sweetest guys
Joel (22m 6s):
Love that guy!
Chad (22m 6s):
You will ever meet. He's a sweetheart. He just needs help. Oh yeah. He just needs help getting some of this shit together.
Joel (22m 14s):
Oh yeah. Total sweetheart. This is not personal at all. We love Aaron. We love that guy.
Chad (22m 19s):
Yeah.
Joel (22m 20s):
Okay. Well speaking of job boards, Chad, or at least those posing as an anonymous employee review site instead of a job board.
Chad (22m 28s):
Okay.
Joel (22m 29s):
Glassdoor's in the news as a not so anonymous service, maybe? The company has been ordered to reveal the identities of negative reviewers to a New Zealand toy maker who made the company sound like a terrible place to work. While the company is in New Zealand, it was a California court that ordered the identities to be revealed by California based Glassdoor. New Zealand has stricter defamation laws versus the US who has much broader free speech protections while Glassdoor wins most of these cases globally, this is a blow to its brand and could spell trouble for future international cases. Chad, what's your take on the Glassdoor news?
Chad (23m 9s):
This literally makes no sense to me. Why is an American court weighing in on a New Zealand matter? I mean talk about government overreach. I understand Glassdoor is a California company, but they have to have operations. They have to have operations in New Zealand and if they don't, then New Zealand can just shut the fucking site down if they want to. I mean, I just to me, this literally makes no sense while we're passing judgment on something that's happening in a different country that literally we're talking Glassdoor, we're not talking about, you know, human rights and shit like that. I mean that that's important stuff, right? I get where a country can say, that's bullshit, you shouldn't be doing that.
Chad (23m 51s):
But Glassdoor? I mean, you've got bigger fish to fucking fry courts here in the US.
Joel (23m 57s):
Yeah. And neither one of us are lawyers. We should point that out. I'm not sure what the jurisdiction is when a New Zealand court orders an American company for data and what the US court's responsibility is? But either way Glassdoor had to give up the identities of some of the posters on what happened in New Zealand and New Zealand is not China, right? Like it's a liberal democracy.
Chad (24m 21s):
Yeah.
Joel (24m 21s):
So there are some interesting parallels, I guess, to what the future could hold for Glassdoor. But for me, like, I've been talking about this, I guess, Perfect Storm. Since you're in Boston, I got Perfect Storm on the mine, which is a great movie watched. They're dealing with a lot of headwinds. I mean, number one, companies who were thinking about suing Glassdoor might now be empowered to do so with, with certain precedents maybe, but there are, there is now a winning case against Glassdoor to reveal the anonymous comments. I mean, number two, millennials and older who might have posted on Glassdoor may now think twice, if they do a search on Google about court cases Glassdoor and see that there's been a reveal, they might think twice about posting, wondering if they might get outed at some point.
Joel (25m 9s):
People who work for international companies will probably refrain with some trepidation about what might happen. And what if your company in America is acquired by an international company? Are they now under international precedent? I think that's an interesting dynamic to this, but ultimately for me, and I've talked about, this is younger people who have lived their whole lives on mobile devices and social media. Aren't writing lengthy reviews with text online anymore, and they're not even doing it anonymously. I mean, they'd rather bash you on TikTok where they, where they can get the dope ahead of likes and more followers, and not deal with what, like what's privacy? And what's what are these words?
Joel (25m 51s):
Things like Glassdoor is so antiquated at this point that it just feels like this inevitable slide to the abyss for them until they get, you know, integrated into Indeed. I know that I've been calling for that for quite a while, but I think it will happen into TS Elliot.
Chad (26m 6s):
Uh-huh.
Joel (26m 7s):
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. I feel like we're gonna eventually just not notice that Glassdoor is around anymore because of these little cuts to death by multiple fronts.
Chad (26m 20s):
Yeah. The weird thing though, is that you take a brain like Simply Hired. It's still alive. It's still out there. Right? I mean, so yeah, I can see where this can be kind of like a skeleton company for, you know, to some extent, but I am fairly perplexed on why these brands still even exist.
Joel (26m 43s):
Google. I mean, as long as Google indexes, those pages, and as long as they're getting ranked, well, like they're gonna get traffic.
Chad (26m 50s):
It's about footprint then, right? It's all all about SEO footprint.
Joel (26m 53s):
Sure. Which fuck, which again goes to the future of Google, right? So if, if video is the future, how do you index video? If it's not on YouTube's platform and you have to transcribe everything, do you even get access to TikTok or Instagram? Like the future of how you sort of get reviews and this goes into Yelp, the future of Yelp and other things is that the text based sort of, I'm gonna sit down on my computer and type out what I think about this restaurant is, is something for old people. Young people don't do much of it anymore. Anyway.
Chad (27m 26s):
There you have it.
Joel (27m 30s):
Get off my lawn, Chad. That's what I'm saying. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about one of our favorite topics.
sfx (27m 38s):
Oh my God. I'm love Chipotle. Chipotle is my life.
Joel (27m 40s):
That's right we're talking Chipotle when we get back from the break. Automation, Chad. That's right we got more automation commentary news.
Chad (27m 47s):
It's coming, baby. It's coming.
Joel (27m 49s):
All right. More bad news for the service industry this week. If you call a local Dominoes Pizza to place an order, do you, do you order from Dominoes Chad? You're probably too fancy for that.
Chad (27m 58s):
I do not. Yeah, no, I do not.
Joel (28m 2s):
Yeah, you may. You may be routed to a call center. Who doesn't love being routed to a call center. Am I right? Dominoes says the practice impacting around 40% of US stores has freed up workers to deliver pizzas amid a driver shortage that has plagued the company for well over a year. The effort while clever Chad may be having a minimal impact in terms of addressing loss sales from the labor shortage. Domino's reported delivery, sales crashed 11.7% in the seven second quarter versus a year ago. Meanwhile, Chipotle is investing in two startups through its $50 million venture fund Cultivate Next.
Joel (28m 45s):
Most notably, the burrito chain has invested in Hyphen, which automates plate and bowl portioning to the tune of up to 350 meals an hour. This isn't Chipotle's first four way into automation investment. Listeners might remember that last year, the company invested in Neuro an automated delivery company and this year, the company piloted Chippy from our favorite Miso robotics, an autonomous machine that cooks and seasons Chipotle chips. Chad, what's your take. And excuse me, while I take a bite out of my Barb-a-co bowl on this topic,
Chad (29m 21s):
Miso-horny robotics, those guys are kicking ass and taking names. And we we've seen this from Dominoes. They've been playing around with robot deliveries. They wanna get rid of humans because again, humans are a pain in the ass, especially when you have a landscape like it is today. And to be quite Frank, the job sucks. So of course you're gonna get humans that are pains in the ass because they hate their fucking job. So yeah, give it to the robots. I mean, give me a break. We've got all these jobs that need to be filled. Let's see what we can do Corporate America. Let's see what we can do to actually get these individuals into training programs.
Chad (30m 1s):
And you can actually manufacture your own talent instead of whining about a fucking skills gap. All of this stuff to me is necessary because that's a horrible life to live. I mean, seriously, just play you love going to Chipotle, but I can't imagine working there.
Joel (30m 15s):
Here's a chance for me to talk about my favorite subject, me and my kids. All right. So it summer's still here. The kids are still outta school. So I have 'em this weekend, took em to McDonald's. I know that shocks you, right Chad?
Chad (30m 31s):
So bad.
Joel (30m 33s):
Yeah. So, so our local McDonald's has gone through a major transition from, I guess, what you would think of as a McDonald's from, you know, 1995 to one where it's like kiosk, take a number, we'll deliver your food. Cetera, which I enjoy. I'm totally fine. Not standing in line behind someone that doesn't know what they want, et cetera. Right. We've all been there. Okay. So we order kiosks, great. Pay credit card, sit down. Food comes it's nice and hot, but they've also gotten rid of the self serve soda machine Chad. And I I'm guessing this is a COVID thing, right? They don't want people like hands or whatever, grabbing straws. They don't want any sort of germs being passed around. But so you have to go to the counter to get a refill, which to me is just a total pain in the ass.
Joel (31m 20s):
So I'm sitting there waiting three minutes to get a refill that should have taken me 10 seconds. I used to be really cynical about automation. Now I'm all for it, man. Let me do what I need to do. Automate the ordering, the whatever food coming out. If no one was in a McDonald's, I'd be totally fine with that. As long as I can do everything that I need to do, bring on the robots. I prefer the self serve at Kroger. I'm fine scanning my shit and paying for it. I prefer the mobile checkout at Sam's club. I prefer mobile pay at restaurants. Now I think some brands will suffer from automation. The small businesses are not gonna be able to pay the kind of money that McDonald's and Chipotle can for this stuff.
Joel (32m 1s):
But I say, bring on the robots. If it means I get my pepperoni and jalapeno pizza, more efficiently, full stop man.
Chad (32m 12s):
Full stop. I have to go back to this is to me in an American problem. In Europe, there are so many restaurants in little bitty towns and they're not expensive, right? But they are a much better experience and they're better food than fast fucking food. Right? I think this is something that, you know, we have a fast food industrial complex here in the United States and a complex moves toward one thing. And one thing only. That is robots. I mean, that's all there is to it. You have to be more efficient. This portioning thing, this is because, you know, obviously humans are either giving too much or not enough or whatever it is.
Chad (32m 54s):
I mean, this is exactly where an industrial complex goes. Just like we talked about the defense industrial complex on our last podcast. When you know, we're like, Hey, bring in the robots, right to the battlefield. Right? You're gonna see this happening in big business across many industries.
Joel (33m 12s):
Europe is much more experiential than America. America is like, get your shit and get out. Europe is, Hey, sit a while, have a coffee. Oh, you wanna order something? Great.
Chad (33m 23s):
Enjoy your meal.
Joel (33m 23s):
America's like, drive your car, get in, get out. Let's go. Yeah. Different, different mentality. But the robots are coming for Americans. That's for sure. That's for sure. Well, Chad, we, we play a lot of buy or sell on the show, but let's play a little who'd you rather?
Chad (33m 36s):
Ought Oh.
Joel (33m 37s):
We're gonna name two companies that recently got funded and you, and I will get to choose which of the two we like better. It's called who'd you rather? Are you ready to play?
Chad (33m 51s):
Let's do it.
Joel (33m 52s):
All right. Our first company is HireArt. The company announced a $26.25 million Series B funding round. Recently the New York headquartered company provides access to talent, curated from job boards, staffing companies, and a network of job seekers. The funding will go toward expanding its network of staffing firm partners, which the company automatically distributes roles to its network firms. If it sounds a little bit like what job.com wants to be? Well, we'd have to rewind the show and go back to that part, but let's get to do the next company InternMatch. The intern placement company has raised $10 million dollars in a Series A. The cash will support intern matches expansion into Canada the US and the UK.
Joel (34m 37s):
The eight year old Australian based company says it has placed 10,000 students globally. The company makes money by charging colleges for internship placements, as well as receiving a recruitment fee if the company involved hires the student. Okay, Chad, who would you rather HireArt or InternMatch?
Chad (34m 55s):
So if I was in a bar at 2:00 AM and these two were the only choices, I'd probably go home alone. But I have to choose HireArt literally this is a failed assessment company that needed a huge pivot to keep investors forking over cash. And it's a huge, huge miss if they actually had somebody in their organization or maybe, I don't know, had some industry analysts or what have you, in their ear, then they might not have made this stupid of a pivot because they're actually going into competition with staffing firms. Nobody needs another assessment company. Okay. Yeah but the last thing we need is another fucking staffing company.
Chad (35m 39s):
They could have been the operating system for staffing companies. They've missed the fucking boat. InternMatch they're using tech to scale and match internships, which really isn't a big deal and/or sexy, but they're seeing it through to the actual hire. So they are becoming a staffing company in a niche that I really don't think exists because I mean, who is doing staffing for interns, right? So this could give a company the opportunity to slim down their university relations team and just start working with a vendor. Right? So this is more kinda like an RPO model where you're just gonna go ahead and pull in an organization that does it. So, you know, it's not sexy, but it's a hell of a lot better than HireArt.
Chad (36m 23s):
I'm gonna, I'm gonna rather on the InternMatch side.
Joel (36m 27s):
Okay. Okay. Interesting. Well, for me, like where's the beef on both these companies?
sfx (36m 30s):
Ma ! The meatloaf Fuck.
Joel (36m 32s):
Yeah. Ultimately I'm not super high on either one of these and now might be a good opportunity to talk really quickly about the number of companies getting money is getting fewer and farther between thanks economy, by the way, this is what we are relegated to talking about. InternMatch and HireArt. Anyway, I hate InternMatch for these three reasons. Number one.
Chad (36m 57s):
Yes.
Joel (36m 58s):
We're taking on well funded organizations. Like I don't know, Handshake, good luck with that. Number two, they want to conquer America. Well, good luck with that. And see, number one, wanna talk about Handshake. History is not so kind to foreigners coming to America and succeeding. I don't give InternMatch much of a shot either. And number three, I hate college recruiting businesses. There's high churn, students leave, colleges are fickle and they're antiquated as shit. Fewer kids are taking the college track. Plug in whatever reason you want there, but it's just a shitty business. So when you ask me, who'd I rather?
Joel (37m 41s):
Yeah. I'm like you I'm going home alone, but HireArt is the one I would pick.
Chad (37m 45s):
Oh.
Joel (37m 45s):
So we differ, which is fun. We might have to play who'd you rather? Again, because Chad and I differ sometimes. All right. Let's take a quick break, pay some bills and we'll come back to talk about VR baby. Stay tuned.
Chad (38m 4s):
Yeah. This was not making it past a show. I mean, this had to be in the show. It just had to!
Joel (38m 13s):
Yes. For many reasons. All right, Chad, who's your daddy? Who's your VR. We like to talk about Indiana and specifically Indianapolis as the birthplace of online recruitment and the city just might take us into the future. Meet Vision 3, who recently announced the launch of V3 Connect an $80 million dollar initiative. That's right $80 million that seeks to place VR career labs in every high school community college and university in the state of Indiana by 2025, which is right around the corner Chad. Vision 3 CRO Heather Jackson, Mrs. Jackson, if you're nasty, set in a release quote, "you can't be what you can't see".
Joel (38m 58s):
Let me say that again. "You can't be what you can't see." "V3 connect closes that gap directly connecting the next workforce generation to relevant, engaging in career focused experiences" end quote. Pivot CX a show favorite and formally known as Work Here. I say that sarcastically is a corporate partner. All right. Chad job training with VR throughout the Hoosier state. Your thoughts.
Chad (39m 21s):
think this is great. Especially getting in into the hands of kids because VR, the way that it is today, it's not great. You will have some, some great experiences. I've had some great experiences, but I've had some really shitty experiences. So I think if we get this tech into kids' hands, they're gonna be the ones who change it, right? They're gonna be the ones who make it better. They're gonna make it more applicable to learning, usage and whether it's VR AR doesn't matter. So I think, I think this is awesome. I think we should be pushing tech into schools more like this. And you know, will the first round be successful in job training with VR?
Chad (40m 4s):
Probably not. Yep. But this is how you start, right? You don't start with perfection, you start with getting it out there and then starting to hone it, to tune it and to do those things that you need to evolve a society. This is not purely about jobs. This is about being able to evolve us.
Joel (40m 25s):
Chad likey, look at that. A VR story that Chad's behind. I love it. All right. So, this sounds like a, a story outta California. So I was really surprised and happy that it's from our own state of Indiana, but this one checks all the boxes. It's like, we're helping kids. Governments love this shit. Companies love this kind of shit. Colleges and universities love this shit, cuz they can show shit in a catalog, on the website and YouTube about look at our, this is really the new computer lab of the future, right? Instead of like, Hey, we got computers, we got headsets and you can learn how to do whatever job you want of the future. I mean, colleges are gonna eat this shit up. These labs are gonna be in every university because there's gonna be stories here locally about, you know, college X puts this in and now every other college wants to do it.
Joel (41m 12s):
So I think this is checking all the boxes for the feel good, you know, story of tech of the week, at least. And I think they're gonna be a lot of companies that see this shit gonna, they're gonna spend money by the way, part of the costs would be offset by fees, charged to the companies who place content on the system. So if I'm, you know, name a company and I wanna train colleges and universities and I've been pissed about how they train them currently. Yeah, I can, I can put my shit in the VR computer lab or VR lab and have people go in and train about how to be, you know, mechanics or whatever it is that I need. So this to me like is a perfect storm.
Joel (41m 52s):
If Glassdoor is a perfect storm of decline in death, this is the perfect storm of like growth and prosperity because it's checking all the boxes. Is VR the future? Yeah, we don't know, but what, what other bet are you gonna place it on other than VR and putting this shit in colleges and getting governments to back it and making kids and parents feel great. I too applaud VR story. It's like Chad and Godammit it's lunch time.
sfx (42m 26s):
I wantlove Chipotle. Chipotle is my life!
Joel (42m 26s):
And Chipotle sounds pretty good whether it's cooked by a human or a robot.
Chad (42m 32s):
Doesn't matter.
Chad and Cheese (42m 34s):
We out.
6 (43m 14s):
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. 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.