It’s Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. So, it shouldn’t be a shock that some industry players are “out to lunch.” Google for Jobs search results have really been wacky for a lot of users around the world, and we’re here to break down why. Indeed, who’s apparently taking an extended vacation, throws some more spaghetti at the wall, and we decide if any of it will stick. And then there’s Goldman Sachs, who’s CEO is permanently at the country club (at least his lawyers are working overtime). It’s not all OOO, however, Instawork raised millions and MOD Pizza is looking to hire millions after doing away with background checks for entry-level workers. Plus, strippers unionize!
God bless ‘Murica!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Intro: Hide your kids lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where 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: Oh, yeah. It's world Dracula day. Commemorating Bram Stoker's famous novel, published on May 26th, 1897. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel, private dancer, Cheeseman.
Chad: This is Chad healthy budget Sowash.
Joel: And on this week's show, Google for Jobs, get sleepy. INSTAR Work makes it rain, and strippers unite.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Let's do this. Portuguese Chad is in full effect today. We got the barb in the background, you are on some island and the tropics or some shit. Yeah, looking good.
Chad: Madeira. Yeah. It's known as the Hawaii of Europe, and Americans don't know about it because the Europeans once again, like to keep the good shit from us.
Joel: Let me guess, the DeSantis Twitter meltdown isn't much news there in funky cold Madeira. Am I right?
Chad: Yeah. And nobody hears about that asshole. I did see them in my feed, and I thought it was hilarious because obviously Elon likes to make everything about him.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: DeSantis wants any stage he can find because he's pathetic, and they had a huge obviously melt down just that... Again, everybody's been talking about how Twitter has been staying up, upright with all the cuts. And it's like, Oh, I put it under a little stress, and I think that's what you're gonna see with DeSantis tude. He's gonna fold like a fucking cheap card table.
Joel: So, I'm assuming you didn't tune in, I actually tuned in 'cause I just wanted to... I just wanted to be part of it.
Chad: Were you wearing your DeSantis t-shirt.
Joel: Yeah, my DeSantis t-shirt is in the mail. The mail is more efficient than Twitter these days, apparently. So I got up 400,000 and it was breaking, it got up to 700 some thousand, and then at 20 minutes people just started bailing and I got to like 150,000, and then he came on. I think it got up to maybe 300,000. But I just... It's hard to believe that Twitter can't handle 700,000 people at once.
Chad: When you get rid of most of your staff and more than likely, they cut infrastructure, if you think about it, he was cutting everything, I mean hell, he wasn't even paying his bills for goodness sakes. So yeah, that doesn't surprise me. I knew that there was going to be an event where there would be problems, and this was a perfect event for a meltdown.
Joel: And this is a perfect event for...
S?: Shoutout.
Joel: Let's get to some shoutout, shall we? So I'm gonna go into an industry, shoutout first. HiringSolved our friends, sponsor at one point is apparently out of business. The hiringsolved.com site is done. I haven't seen anything in regards to messages to customers.
Chad: No.
Joel: But it certainly seems official that they are done.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And for whatever reason, the URL doesn't even go do Allegius who basically bought the company few years ago. So what we know about HiringSolved, started in 2012, Shon Burton co-founder who we know really well, no longer with the company or hasn't been for a while, apparently. They got some investment, they made some good hires with Jeremy Roberts, Jackie Clayton, who then eventually left. We know they got sued big time by LinkedIn back in the day, these are what we know sort of publicly. I'd be surprised if Allegius isn't still writing checks to lawyers for cease and desist letters and LinkedIn shit. But surprisingly, they didn't sell the company apparently like it was just too much of a hassle, or they just didn't have the energy to do it.
Joel: My guess is they probably Allegius took in some of the HiringSolved people that they wanted to keep and just said, "Shut the fucker down" But bigger question, the whole sourcing thing, they did a big pivot a year or two ago, higher tool became higher easy. And became sort of a platform for marketing. HiringSolved look to go into ATSs and be their search engine, and then seek out who has a good relationship with LinkedIn, apparently is still kind of chugging. To me, this is like invariably, to put it short, like LinkedIn won, again. They put Hi-Q out of business, and I think in a long-winded way, they've enabled to put... Or they've been able to put HiringSolved out of business as well.
Chad: Yeah. I don't. I Think you give way too much credit to LinkedIn. I think you should give all the credit to Allegius. Their inability to actually manage technology, that's generally the biggest issue. They can't focus, and I've seen this in RPM when staffing for years. They think they wanna get into technology, they get into technology shit just fucking implode. So the LinkedIn thing for them could be a huge diversion as HiringSolved was really moving back away from that and they were trying to actually dig into, which I thought would have been perfect for Allegius, the database, their candidate database. They have a huge fucking candidate database. Now matching off of that to current recs, man they can be popping. I mean they could be easily. But again, the staffing in RPO world, they're so focused on the old world of doing business, the new world just kind of like just slips away from them.
Joel: Well, irregardless of that, HiringSolved out of business.
Chad: My first shout-out is to a movie. When we're talking about AI, what could be better than a movie that actually shows almost the extinction of the human race, it's called The Creator. The perfect timing for the AI extinction junkies out there. It's a movie about AI, how it lives with humanity, the perspective fights back and forth, the extinction possibility, just go to YouTube, search on The Creator, watch the trailer. It drops in September. We've seen these types of movies before. Where obviously AI takes over, the robots take over, so on and so forth, but this just from a timing standpoint. Nothing could be more perfect.
Joel: Yeah, what's your favorite technology end of days movie.
Chad: I think War Games, because again, you're talking about a computer that literally... And this is backing me shit in the '80s, right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Where a computer hacks into the mainframe. And again, this is AI, way back in the day kind of like foreseeing, what's happening? So I love that movie, it has a lot of intrigue kid who actually is the hacker that gets into it, it's just... It's a really cool movie. So if you haven't seen War Games, dude, you gotta check it out.
Joel: Ferris Bueller hacks into the national defense system. That's great, that's great. Great. Cameron's in it. It's great fun, it's a lot of fun.
Chad: Of course. Of course.
Joel: So 2001 was was great, Space Odyssey, that was sort of the first film where machine kills people. Terminator for me, like 13 years old...
Chad: It's amazing.
Joel: Go to see Terminator, scare the shit out of me.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: That was Terminator, the first Terminator always is gonna be my favorite machines kills humans movie. Not a machine though Chad?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Jim Brown.
Chad: No, he was a machine, he was told being machine.
Joel: He was the terminator on the football field, for sure. If you see some had old footage, he was the Terminator on line backers back in the day. So Tina Turner passed away yesterday. I know that's on top of mind for everyone.
Chad: Best legs in rock and roll baby.
Joel: As a Brown's fan, Jim Brown passed away football player and questionable three-time NFL MVP Rookie of the Year, eight times for a C mall pro, 8-time NFL rushing leader. Arguably, the best lacrosse player in college history arguably.
Chad: They had to change the rules because of him.
Joel: Played in a Syracuse basketball game where he scored 50 points. Like random and off the street, Hey, Jim you wanna play some basketball. Score 50 points in a game. He was a civil rights leader.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: It's a complicated history. But we've lost Bill Russell in the past year or so. Two years, Jim Brown, obviously, Muhammad Ali, before that Karim, is sort of the last of that group that's still alive. He was actually in MLK's funeral. He was one of the few that actually got to go in. He got Crips and Bloods together in the early '90s, the LA riots, got them together to chill on the violence that was going there. So football and icon, but also civil rights. Complicated history, there are a lot of podcasts on it, if you wanna listen, but Jim Brown gets a shout out for me, any Browns fan will know the greatest Brown of all time, Jim Brown will be missed, and if you haven't seen, I'm gonna get you Sucka from the '80s. Jim Brown was also a movie star...
Chad: Yes.
Joel: And a great scene with Chris Rock ordering ribs. Anyway, if you haven't seen, I'm gonna get you Sucka. I encourage you to do that as well. If you learn nothing else about Jim Brown, watch, I'm gonna get you Sucka.
Chad: Watch the Dirty Dozen.
Joel: And the Dirty Dozen.
Chad: That is an amazing Jim Brown, he's one of the cast of characters, but amazing film watching.
Joel: Left after nine seasons, similar to Barry Sanders, but he left because that movie, that movie was running longer, he was getting fine $5 a day by the Browns organization, and Jim felt dissed.
Chad: He's like fuck off. Yeah am out.
Joel: He felt dissed by that and said I'm fuck I'm out, I'm out and you could still walk late into his life, so good for him.
Chad: Well, like they tell you the next shout-out it's gonna love coming after Jim Brown and Tina Turner. Mike Fit Simmons over at cross-check, so we didn't get a chance to actually sit down for a drink and chat at unleash in Vegas. So he sent me a fine bottle of Woodford Reserve double oaked Bourbon. I promise we will sit down for a chat as soon as I'm back, Mike, thanks. And I shout-out to we forget. Back in the day that we had to find different classy ways. I remember I did as a sales guy, just to be able to get in the door, just to be able to get a chat and appointments a call.
Joel: What was your best like gorilla sales tactic?
Chad: Best gorilla sales tactic.
Joel: To get in the door.
Chad: Yeah, easy, the stuff that we would do today. And we would send packages, we literally would find out depending on... I was in radio, in radio sales, so it was all about promotion. So we could actually put together packages and send them off, which nobody else did, and with a little card in it, Hey, we'd love to sit down some time and have a chat. Worked 100% at the time.
Joel: FedEx is great 'cause you would be alerted when it was delivered and then you could call and say, Hey, I just wanna make sure you got the package anyway Still works today Kids.
Chad: It's perfect.
Joel: FedEx Still works today.
Chad: It's perfect. Yes.
Joel: So I gotta get this shout out in quickly, you've probably... Well, I don't know if you do fast food anymore, but in fast food restaurants now, they have like a juke box for soda and you can get any flavor of anything that you want, push a few buttons. So Heinz ketchup up in the Heinz company said, hold my beer and have released the Heinz remix machine. So now they have ketchup, buffalo sauce, barbecue sauce like anything you want the Heinz remix machine is coming to a fast food restaurant near you and I cannot be happy, oh my friend.
Chad: Remember when we were young, we would take the glass and we would go for the soda.
Joel: The suicide.
Chad: And we would get the, Kamikaze right? The suicide. You could do the exact same thing with this right?
Joel: I'm so excited.
Chad: Last shout out to Kamikaze beyond. We're talking about brainfood, if you haven't subscribed kids to brainfood, you gotta check it out, it is a weekly curated list from our friend Hungley, who actually does a hell of a job, we were showcased on last weeks, but it doesn't matter if we're showcased or not. Great content. Go check it out. Recruiting brainfood with Hungley, do a search. Sign up.
Joel: Always love the love from our favorite porn star. Thanks Hungley. And some of our favorite people are people listening to the show Chad and it's time to remind them that they can get some free shit from us.
Chad: Oh.
Joel: If they go to chadcheese.com and click the free link, we're talking teachers from job get bourbon selection from each one of us, from our friends at TextKernel. Aspen Tech Labs is helping us give away beer, and plum is helping us give away birthday Rum. Each month, so it would behoove me not to mention that to our listeners and... Did I just say. Did I say birthdays as well dude.
Chad: I think yeah.
Joel: I think I said, birthdays didn't I?
S?: Did you feel the tension in the air right now.
Chad: Yeah, I can.
S?: I know, I can, I can feel it all the way down in my plums.
Joel: Alright, birthdays are sponsored by our friends at Plums, celebrating another year around the sun is Bruce Carrie, who whined about not being a shout out last week. The Bruce...
Chad: It wasn't whining.
Joel: So Bruce there you go, buddy. We'll make you famous. James Maley, Tom Hunley, James Andrew Chuck. John Johnson, Travis Windling, I believe. Katrina Kaya, who shares your birthday, by the way Chad, and our favorite Canadian. That's right. Shelly Billing Harris of the flex podcast. Celebrating another birthday. And most importantly Chad you and I celebrate birthdays this weekend. Chad is May 27th. I'm May 28th, we're on the same year, little known fact about us on this show, you can send your e-gift cards from at wooden Cork to joelcheeseman@gmail.com, and I'll make sure that gets his bottles as well. But that is another. Maybe my favorite birthday shout out of the year because we're both on it.
Chad: Oh, my favorite thing is events, you know I love to travel Joel, and we are going to RecFest in the UK, July 6th, knebworth park. Kids you gotta remember, if you've never been to a RecFest, you gotta be to... You gotta go to a RecFest, and this isn't just about you going and learning, this is about you taking your entire fucking team, take the entire team and it's an all-hands day, enjoy the day, learn, have some beers together, bond. This is good for what? Team cohesion. That's right, team cohesion. Not that kind of team cohesion, Cheeseman. Then in September RecFest is happening again in Nashville. Same motif, just changing the location. Both of these... Both of these Chad and Cheese are going to be MCing the disrupt stage all technology all day. So again, if you're in the UK, if you're in the US, go to RecFest, actually good at chadcheese.com, click on events in the upper right-hand corner. And this is the first year for Nashville in the US. So we have a 50% discount code kids click on register here or whatever it says on the header, you get 50% off for your entire team. Go make it happen. RecFest UK, US. See Chad and Cheese there.
Joel: RecFest is going deep. This year Chad. And if you have to mention, Carl Cheeseman, Leaven and Steven McGrath are all apparently gonna be in the house by the way.
Chad: You better have a T-shirt.
Joel: How soft are the Scotts. We mentioned on a show that Steven is our favorite, Scott and the Scots came out of the woodwork to whine about how hurt they were, that they weren't our favorite Scott. Who knew the Scotts were so.
Chad: Work harder. Gotta work harder.
Joel: So soft and I Chad without you kinda... I'll explain why I'll be at SHRM National in June. I'll be in the Erin booth. That's E-R-I-N. The Erin app. They're getting cardboard cut-outs of Chad Sowash to make sure that I feel at home and that I feel like... That I'm warm and fuzzy in the booth, we're talking Chad heads, cardboard cut-outs and a full body Chad in a bathrobe with sunglasses in Sweden, so if nothing else, if you're going to SHRM, come by the Erin booth, take your picture with cardboard Chad and the real Joel Cheeseman. It's gotta be special Chad, it's gonna be fun.
Chad: Well tell Mike after this, I'm going to trade mark my likeness, just so he knows.
[laughter]
Joel: Trade mark, my likeness. Good luck with that my friend.
Chad: Topics.
Joel: Alright, Google for Jobs. We've never talked about them before. Alright, what's going on at Google for Jobs? A listener in Germany hit us up this week with the following "Something weird is happening at Google for Jobs. Most clients I work with have seen a huge traffic loss, if you do a search for new jobs, you get zero hits, some smaller EU countries are hit really hard" Chad. What do you make of this? Let's call it a hiccup.
Chad: Or just an app, first off, Dylan Buckley over it directly apply, he originally turned us on to this issue then Oras Al-Kubaisi, and then we got a post from Alexander Chukovski on LinkedIn. He actually went through and had some ideas, a hypothesis of what it might be, it could be an algorithm update, a technical issue. Google Ads roll out, so they're actually looking to try to roll those ads out or the killing or reducing traffic to Google jobs or what I think is they could just be fucking with everyone to be quite frank. I mean, seriously, this to me is nothing more than understanding that this product is still an alpha and we really feel like Google should have their shit together. We should know better by now. Google doesn't have their shit together. It's gonna take a while for them to get their shit together when they do, then they're gonna be dangerous, so there's no question. But they're in Alpha kids, not to mention, think about this, shifting resources to the future, which is now Google's new gen AI search doesn't quite fit in with the current Google for job search mechanism as they try to switch over the new generative AI, and you've gotta remember what they did with Google for Hire, Google for Hire was actually...
Chad: Or Google Hire came up as an applicant tracking system, they were getting some great traction, and then cloud needed resources, they needed to focus because cloud was going to have a hell of a lot more cash coming in, so they took all of those resources, said, Oh, we're gonna shut down Google Hire, see you guys, and they push those resources to cloud. If you think about it very simply, they could easily be pulling resources and just leaving kind of like a skeleton crew, if that maybe 20% time with the Google for job search as they're focusing on this new generative AI engine that could have jobs associated with it as well, so those are just opinions, but you've gotta take a look at history and what they've done before, and all of this is true. So there's plenty of opinion, plenty of fun, but I've gotta say, no matter whether it's Indeed, Google, no matter, you can't put all your eggs in one traffic basket, kids, you gotta diversify.
Joel: And don't forget to mention how much Google loves the, your EU and all the fines that they put on one you. Anyway. Yes, I don't think this is a shutting down of Google for Jobs, this is not a, we're back tracking. It's gonna be gone. There was a big updated march of the algorithm taking me a lot of duplicate content, a lot of crappy content that may just be filtering into their vertical search, which is jobs, and let's be honest, there was a lot of crappy job sites that were just created to spam the shit out of Google for jobs, a lot of shitty sites, a lot of just scams, a brief perusal of Google for Jobs this morning. Most of the application sites are reputable names now, it's LinkedIn, it's ZipRecruiter, it's a company website. So it may just have been like the Google update got into jobs and now a lot of the crappy sites or the spammy sites are now gone, that could be the easy explanation, maybe Europe trailed because they're not as attuned to what's going on there, the language differences, who knows, but it seems like Europe got hit a little more.
Chad: The bigger question is, like you mentioned, the generative AI, the Open AI. The barred question, what are we gonna do in AI that's where the resources are going? My guess is this hiccup happened at jobs, a couple of days went buy and someone said Shit, we gotta get somebody on this to fix this shit, they went in and sort of dialed back and flipped whatever switch to fix it, but I don't think Google for Jobs is going anywhere, I think it is... I don't wanna say it's a side project, but when you think about the AI battle that Google is gonna have to fight, that's where their resources are, that's where their best people are, the people over looking Google for Jobs are probably 21-year-old interns out of Berkeley who knows? But they wanna monetize it. It's a decent product. People seem to use it. So I don't think there's anything to freak out over here about this thing, it's just a little hiccup with things that are going on at Google, which are getting curiouser during curiouser thanks to generative artificial intelligence.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: So let's go to another evil empire, company that we love, all right Indeed budgets. Let's talk about that. Starting June 1st, Indeed is implementing a minimum budget requirement for each job posted on their platform, previously companies could set any budget they desired, the introduction of "healthy budgets" means that advertisers must meet the minimum budget requirement for each job they post on Indeed. Don't come to Indeed with your measly $25-job posting budget, Chad, what do you make of this news out of Indeed?
Chad: So it's interesting because we actually got this information from the, were critics blog, and from that blog post, I'm gonna do a little translation for everybody, it's out there, "Indeed aims to increase job posting budgets to effectively achieve hiring goals" Translation Indeed aims to focus or force higher budgets to increase revenues, they don't give two fucks about any of this, effective hiring goals. They don't care about any of that shit. They are doing nothing but trying to make more money, so what happened, we had cost per application took a shit, cost per started application took a shit because they didn't roll it out like they normally do in chunks, they try to do it all. They tried to jam it down everybody's throat. It didn't work, right? So in Indeed's plan to force employers to CPA and CPSA model failed, so they're looking for a new way to generate more revenue. It's just that simple. So to be able to try to put a spin, which I love how Recruitics does, 'cause they have to be diplomatic.
Joel: Switzerland.
Chad: I appreciate that, but that's not what's happening. They're just looking at different ways, squeeze, whether it's low-end, high-end, more cash, and remember the cost per started to apply that they're still gonna try to roll out kids, is literally just the repackaged cost per click for Enterprise. Because Indeed knows that Enterprise has much higher budgets, and they wanna soak those big companies with higher prices for no reason, so that's a long-term strategy, this is just a band-aid to try to get to that CPA, CPSA.
Joel: Brother we have some footage from a Indeed strategy meeting around this decision.
SFX: 60% of the time, it works every time.
Joel: Remember the good old days when it was like 25 cents a click, that's like, that was the maximum per click, whatever your budget was, it could be a dollar, you get four clicks. Remember the good old days of Indeed. Yeah, so much of all they do is throw it at the wall, see it sticks if people freak out, let's throw some difference. We gotta hit the wall. I gotta think that in a per application, per interested candidate world, if people have below budgets, they're gonna get very few clicks, interest applications, whatever to Indeed business is small, smaller companies, mid-sized businesses...
Chad: Transactional.
Joel: People just wanna... Like they wanna test Indeed, they wanna give it a spin, see how it goes. How much of it is programmatic? Programmatic, we know is pay per click, we know that the budgets can be whatever, we know that there are a lot of flexibility and things are optimized to get the most bang for your buck. This seems more like, you're gonna give us X, whether you like it or not, there is no... We're the big 800-pound gorilla. What we say goes, and we're gonna get at least this much out of you, whether you like it or not, I don't know if companies will hate it. It depends a lot of what the minimums are, nothing I saw on the news was what that minimum would be. Is it $100? Is it $500? Is it $1000? They'll certainly probably screw that up and then go back to something lower higher, who knows what will happen there, but, yeah. Indeed continues to throw shit at the wall, it seems very desperate and confused as usual, it seems fear-based decision-making, panic maybe at this point, but yeah, whatever Indeed, it's another week and other weird sort of decision that you're making, the days of focus are gone at Indeed that's for sure.
Chad: Oh, God. Dude, they're reeling, they really are. They're cutting shit to, come up with this shit to be able to come out and try to push the narrative of "healthy budgets" That's what this is all about. This is all about you. We're just trying to get you what you need to fill that role. Fuck you. That's total bullshit. You're trying to squeeze me for more cash, right? You're looking at the lower end, you know that the smaller companies, you probably have a little bit more wiggle room with, but you gotta be careful 'cause that she didn't work with CPA either. You fuck that up. So you gotta be careful going into it with these minimum budgets, which is exactly what what Recruitics is calling it, because that's what it is, it's not a healthy budget, so they're trying to play this narrative game on, we're trying to help you when no you're not.
Joel: That's right, kids. Take it for me, anything healthy is bad, including healthy budgets, we'll be right back. INSTAR work.
Chad: INSTAR POK.
Joel: In the news, the San Francisco-based company that connects hourly workers with available shifts has raised $60 million in a series D-round to enhance its use of AI and machine learning, this brings the total funding for INSTAR work to $160 million with a valuation of $760 million. Oh, I wanted to play the unicorn sound bite, but I cannot unfortunately. INSTAR work plans to use the funds to develop AI-powered training and certification programs to help workers up-skill and access higher paid job opportunities, another win for the essential workforce. Chad, what's your take on the news.
Joel: Do we really need AI for job matching in the hospitality space? Really is hospitality really that complex that we need AI. No, we don't, but that's where INSTAR work took advantage of an opportunity and went after the AI cash that's floating out around there, which might be smart, because if you need more runway and you can lean heavy on the, "We're gonna build AI into our platform" You're gonna find suckers out there with money. Everybody wants to spend that ChatGPT cash. How are we gonna do that? It's good for them, but you don't need AI for matching in the space because the requirements for those positions are very basic. Now, if they were focusing on conversational AI that would drive scheduling, engaging employees to pick up shifts and those types of tasks, then I would say that makes a hell of a lot of sense. But matching, no. To me, it was a cash grab it's they saw an opportunity for more money and they went after it, so good for them, but to be able to say that this is around matching is total and utter bullshit.
SFX: That escalated quickly.
Joel: So remember when Handshake raised money and said it was to take on LinkedIn. Yeah, sometimes companies need a reason to make more money from their investors. Look, this is one of those things that we've said for a long time, it's a good idea when Snagajob launched their app called Snag, that was basically like, Hey, look at opportunities today. And what do I wanna do today? And build credentials and badges around, Hey, I'm a great burger flipper or whatever, and I can go take my skills to any burger place in town and pick whatever hours I wanna do it. It's a good idea. It's flexibility, it's like, what I wanna do, I don't wanna drive and I wanna deliver food, like I wanna cook, or I wanna wash clothes or car. Whatever it is, right? It's a good idea that Snagajob maybe too little too soon or too late. I don't know. There are other services here that, this is gonna get competitive. Snapshift in our backyard here in Indianapolis, Quick is another one, obviously Uber, DoorDash, all of those are trying to get into the marketplace and build engagement and brand awareness. To me, this is simply, they need to consolidate these companies, and frankly, I think they're gonna use the money that they've gotten to go buy up a Snapshift or Quick or some of the smaller one, some are dedicated just to restaurants, some are dedicated just to certain things. I think the money needs to be used to start consolidating these competitors, 'cause ultimately...
Joel: Just like with Uber and Lyft, there's gonna be a Coke and a Pepsi, and INSTAR work needs to make sure that they are at least Coke or Pepsi, otherwise they're Fanta. And nobody likes that unless they're on vacation in Madera, apparently based on the bar in your background. But anyway, yes, I think AI was ML whatever is a lot of like cloud cover for what their real aspirations are, which I think is the gobble up as much market share as possible. Maybe grow on internationally, they're still pretty much a US-based effort, and I think there's a lot of opportunity around the world, but yeah, they're gonna need a big boat to do that, and I think the money that they got is gonna help them do that.
Chad: So I think there are great platforms that are out there that are doing this, right, one of them being Hairy, which is literally kind of like a point-to-point solution. They're building an entire ecosystem within that platform, and then our friends over at HourWork. But companies need to understand that it's not just about reaching qualified candidates, just ask MOD Pizza.
Joel: Oh, great segue, Chad. Great segue, which leads us to our next story, MOD versus DJ Sol, or also known as Goldman Sachs. So it's a tale of two companies in one corner, we have Chad's friends at Goldman Sachs who have agreed to pay 215 million to put it into a long-running class action lawsuit that accused them of systematically under-paying women. DJ Sol and the legal team struck a deal with 2800 female associates and VPs. It's a feel good story, if you will, Chad, let's go to our second contender, the tail of two cities, if you will.
Joel: One of our favorite companies, and certainly one of my favorite pizza makers MOD is eliminating background checks for entry level roles. Chief People Officer, Dayna Eberhardt recently told an audience that MOD's goal was "To Be The leading employer of individuals who face barriers to employment." Chad, your thoughts on Goldman Sachs and MOD and a tail of two companies.
Chad: Yeah. Oh, I think this is perfect because this is definitely the Yin and Yang of companies, so you got the assholes over at Goldman Sachs, and then you have MOD Pizza. So you know where I stand. Let's dig into this. So 2800 women impacted. Overall 215 million is close to $77,000 per person. That seems pretty pretty big. $77,000. Still not enough kids. Goldman Sachs...
Joel: Did you take out the legal fees on that calculation, did you take out the third that go to...
Chad: Still reported net revenues of Goldman Sachs in 2022 was 47, over $47 Billion, and their net earnings are $11 billion for the year ended in 2022. So $215 million is fucking cash out of the coins, out of the Goddam couch for God's sakes.
Joel: Yep.
Chad: So we need to... If we're gonna take a look at actually providing... This isn't a fine. This is squaring up what Goldman Sachs fucked up. They need to square it up. That's awesome. They need another billion dollar fine on top of this from the US government going into the actual coffers to be able to stop companies from doing this stupid shit. Goldman Sachs isn't gonna stop. There's no reason for them to because you hit them with a little piss it fine. On the other side of the fence, you've got MOD Pizza background checks, they've taken around out background checks that hire individuals with criminal records, helping them expunge criminal records, individuals with disabilities, background checks slow down the process.
Chad: When it's not necessary and it's a waste of money time, you lose candidates, when you lose candidates and you can't fill positions, you over extend your current staff, your current staff gets pissy. They treat customers like Shit. Churn starts happening, and the cycle of lost revenue gets worse, then you are a asshole owners be the phrase, people don't wanna work anymore. Well, MOD Pizza is only doing the logical thing, they're getting positions filled faster, they're extending their talent pools to Second Chance candidates and individuals with disabilities, just to name a few, so that they can fill positions and not over-extend employees, which keeps employees happy. Current employees happy, and it makes for a better customer experience, more return customers, more revenue. So it's a very simple. MOD is just being smart and they're taking advantage of talent pools that nobody else is even trying, they feel like there's too much risk for it, they're even helping expunge criminal records. The loyalty there is amazing, the individuals who have been involved in the justice system, that's what they call it, have a higher rate of retention, higher promotion rate, and higher engagement rate across the board. From a mobility standpoint, MOD is talking about things like Bachelor's degrees, High School completion.
Chad: Career development and growth within the company and outside of the company. This is how you actually create a culture that wants to stick around loyalty because they feel like you give a shit about them and the actions of MOD actually demonstrates that they do, even though it's good for business, if you take care of your people first, and that's job one, then the revenue, if you got a great model, the revenue is gonna come.
Joel: On the Goldman story, I'm convinced these big companies have a play book, whether it's Facebook or Google in Europe or...
Chad: Okay their attorneys do.
Joel: Yeah. They're... In law school, there must be a class of the bullshit guide book or something, where like if were sued, step one is the, step two is this, that three is this, and we keep hammering them and wearing them down, hopefully, and if they don't worry down and we know that we're gonna die or we're gonna be in trouble, then let's make sure the calculus around that and what we're probably gonna have to pay is in line with what we can do very easily. So there's very little fear with executives to do things, it's sort of like, Do whatever the hell you want, we at the legal team, we'll make sure that the fines will be negligible, that the backlash and the press won't be detrimental to growth or...
Joel: And by the time this happens will be beyond this and whatever building and whatever in the database or our ad product will be far superior in return for the small fee that we're gonna have to incur. So I'm convinced there's Algebra around this and that companies just don't give a shit, and until their purp locks. Until DJ Sol's in an orange outfit, Orange jump suited the behind the DJ table, not much is really gonna happen, we're gonna have these stories going on and on and on. MOD Pizza. Big ups to them. We first talked about them, I think when their ad ran with actually an ankle monitor on one of their employees in the ad, like, Holy shit, a company actually did this, not in a press release, but I actually put it on network television, that was huge. And we continue to talk about them, I love the term they use justice involvement, someone who was justice involved or involved with justice. That's much better than like ex-con or whatever the hell language I've been using for the last senior, so I gotta get justice involvement in my lexicon. But you're right, in terms of retention, recruitment, think about how many people that have a record never even apply to a job, maybe they apply to a couple, and it's like, Well you're an ex-con, we don't hire them. How many of those people just say, Fuck it, there's no hope, right?
Chad: Yeah yeah.
Joel: And along comes MOD and says, We're not even gonna do a background check on our entry-level jobs, the number of people that that probably appeals to that have never even considered going into the workforce is huge, and it's an incredible community service really that MOD is providing, and it's unfortunate that we're not talking about more companies following MOD's lead, and we watch this stuff, so we would know, but yeah, big ups to MOD. Totally courageous, gotta get them on the show and talk more about this. Shine a light on what's going on there. And by the way, there's a Blaze Pizza and a MOD Pizza. The Blaze Pizza is closer to me, but I always go to MOD because of shit like this, so it does do something, and I spend a lot of money on pizza Chad. So it does do something...
Chad: Oh, I know.
Joel: It does do something to the bottom line, but yeah, major applause to MOD. DJ Sol, does he even know about this? Probably not, he probably got a little...
Chad: It's... It wasn't a big enough blip on the radar for him to give a shit, Yeah.
Joel: We'll be right. Alright, Chad.
Chad: You have too many sound effects on that boy.
Joel: Let's talking about that I need to prune the edges on the sound bites. Alright, dancers at the Star garden topless dive bar. That's a mouthful, pun intended. In Los Angeles have voted to become the only unionized strippers in the US. The National Labor Relations Board announced that the employees at the strip club voted 17 to zero. 17 to zero, it was unanimous in favor of joining the Actors Equity Association, the Campaign at Star garden highlights issues such as sexual harassment, unresponsive management, and an unsafe working environment, which I've never seen at a strip club that I have attended Chad, none of that is is present, it's very present in all of them. Anyway, topless women are people too Chad. What's your take on this news.
Chad: Yeah, it's fairly simple, 17 to zero. There's obviously a problem in this place, in many places, the question is, can we actually get more of this happening from Unionizations standpoint, not just strip clubs, I mean, this is an opportunity for the people themselves to be able to get together and have some of a collective bargaining agreement, we know that wages and livability, I guess you can say, is incredibly low in this country in the United States, because the corporate machine which we've built GDP on for God's sakes, has been printing out cash, keeping it for themselves, pushing it to the rich stock holders and ladies like this, there's two things that they can do, they can continue this and get into a union, or they can go to only fans. They can go to only fans where they don't have to worry about that asshole who has had four tequilas and is getting grabby. They can scale what they do as opposed to when you're doing that dance on the stage, it doesn't scale what happens in the moment. That's it. But if you're doing only fans and you can record it, you can scale it. We're starting to see one of two things happening, that live show is starting to die and go to only fans, which I know is sad for you.
Joel: It's very sad for me Chad. You're right, the local strip club is a staple in every community that should be cherished and the loss of it would be just detrimental to everyone, so this is a great retention tool, okay, if you can go to a strip club that's unionized, and you know that your brother not brothers, your sisters, I guess in this case, are fighting for you in a group as opposed to being on your own and you showing up. I think it's a great retention tool, it's not like scabs are gonna come and take your jobs, it's not as if strip club artisans go like, Oh, there's a whole group of strippers right here ready to take your place, so there's a real loss of money. If these owners don't sort of support unionization and support the strategy. And frankly, Chad, I don't care how attractive you are, if you're not happy in your job, the work is just going to suffer. And that's not good for anyone. These ladies are doing God's work, and I'm going to do all I can to commit my harder earn dollars to the unionized boobies. If I know a strip club is unionized, I'm gonna go support it, and I urge all of our listeners to do the same.
Joel: We out.
Chad: We out.
Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey. Or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.