Handshake Eyes Europe
The war in Ukraine continues to pull at the fabric of European economies and companies. That's why we invited Neill Dunwoody of Spryt and TechlinkUkraine.org to join the boys on his take and insight into what the war means for real people trying to escape the horrors of conflict and make a living. Lumped into Ukraine, we talk about how the war could be impacting Europe economies on a macro level, including companies who have to deal with employees in both Russia and Eastern Europe who take opposing sides. It's a messy world, but we're only getting started. Even messier, the episode veers into talking about a company offering "masturbation pods" for employees to relieve some stress. Yup, we went there.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
INTRO (6s):
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 (27s):
Oh Yeah. A new survey says 75% of HR workers believe human beings won't have to be involved in the recruitment process at all in the very near future thanks to AI. Enjoy the shit while it lasts people you are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your cohost Joel "WALL-E" Cheeseman.
Chad (50s):
I'm Chad "happy socks" Sowash.
Lieven (52s):
And I'm Lieven "totally forgot about the middle name" Van Nieuwenhuyze.
Joel (57s):
On this episode, Handshake has its eye on Europe. HeyJobs gives us a glimpse into the German labor market and Oreo makers want to double stuff their employers. Let's do this.
sfx (1m 11s):
Europe has a bunch of countries in it.
Chad (1m 12s):
I want to hear about Lieven skiing trip.
Joel (1m 16s):
Yeah. Lieven went skiing. Go.
Lieven (1m 18s):
Oh, I went skiing. We went skiing again. Last skiing trip. Last time it was, oh, it was work. You know, I was invited by, by Redmore thanks Redmore. So this time it was just fun. And we had fun! There was sun, there was snow, there were cold drinks and there was a Russian family and they tried to defend Putin's strategy and they claimed the whole war was necessary for Russian's safety.
Chad (1m 45s):
They were actively talking about?
Lieven (1m 50s):
Russia.
Joel (1m 51s):
Propaganda is a hell of a drug man.
Lieven (1m 53s):
I'm sure they were asked about it. They didn't start itself. But the rest of the bar they claim so it was Russia's rights to do something like that. And after that the bartender refused to serve them. And everyone started to play the bayraktar song under iPhones whenever the guy entered the room or anything so I don't think it was fun to be rich and Russian last week.
Joel (2m 16s):
When Chad and I were kids, every ad in a European ski lift had liked the Swedish bikini team there. Was the Swedish bikini team there, or was that just American advertising?
Lieven (2m 26s):
I've never, ever seen the Swedish bikini team in a ski resort. Damn I missed them.
Joel (2m 32s):
That's a shame.
Chad (2m 33s):
Yeah. You're killing my dreams, killing my dreams.
Joel (2m 35s):
All right. Let's get to our mystery guest shall we?
Chad (2m 39s):
History. Let's do that.
Joel (2m 40s):
He's Neil Dunwoody. He's from Ireland. He's the chief commercial officer and co-founder at Sprite, no legal issues there. I'm sure as well as the head of Techlink Ukraine, which we'll talk about, he has a certificate from LinkedIn on metaverse and NFT marketing.
Chad (2m 58s):
Oh stop.
Joel (2m 59s):
That's so exciting for me. He also says my blue spot is in the mail. We'll see about that, Neil welcome to the podcast.
Neil (3m 7s):
Well, how are you guys? About LinkedIn NFT and marketing, I was bored sitting on the toilet. So it was just something to do for 30 minutes.
Joel (3m 14s):
Oh, well, I don't know where I go from there, but give our listeners a little Twitter bio about you.
Neil (3m 25s):
Yeah. So Neil Dunwoody, 20 years plus in recruitment or recruitment in the middle of the pandemic. So decided I was going to set up a digital health company. And so I have to start up and we work with the NHS and some Antarctic healthcare providers, and then decided to set up Techlink Ukraine, which we're trying to help displaced Ukrainians find opportunities. And we're also trying to help people who are still in Ukraine find projects to work on, as the lads that are related to I'm a massive whiskey fan. I actually part own a distillery in Ireland.
Chad (3m 49s):
What?!
Lieven (3m 53s):
Nice!
Chad (3m 57s):
Oh, yes. That's what I'm talking about. Cheeseman how come we're not in Ireland for this, what's going on?
Joel (4m 8s):
I know Neil's got this going on. And the pandemic kind of squashed the whole, like I'm going to come to Ireland or we're going to come to Ireland and hang out. And he also allegedly mailed me some Blue Spot Irish whiskey, which has not shown up in two years. So somebody at the US postal service got some pretty good whiskey, but yeah, I'm open. The world's okay, man, the airlines don't require masks anymore apparently. So I'm ready. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to party.
Neil (4m 38s):
You can come over and do your podcasts from our distillery and we teach you how to make a bottle of gin you can bring it home with you. And we do a whiskey experience, teach you how to make cocktails, get you drunk.
Chad (4m 49s):
Yeah. That's exactly the type of experience we're looking for. But beyond that, tell us a little bit more about Techlink Ukraine. This seems to be pretty. This seems to be cool. How, how did you come up with this and what is it?
Neil (5m 2s):
Yeah, so basically it started with a girl walking into, I work in a coworking space here in Monon and she walked in, she went to reception. She said, look, she was looking for a job. She just came from Ukraine and just arrive in Ireland three days. And she walked all the way from Kiev to the Polish border and then got a train to Cracow and her friend who was living in <inaudible> Brian from Kracow brought her back. So when I asked her what she was willing to do, she said pretty much she'd do anything. I mean, I said, what was your background back in Ukraine? She was a graphic designer and an qualified lawyer. So in 24 hours, I'd find her a job here in Ireland and or she could work remotely from Monon for an employer in Dublin.
Neil (5m 45s):
And then I reached out to a few techie guys and CTO or CIOs that I know across Europe and the UK. So myself, a guy called Martin Carpenter used to work with me in United Health the area. A couple of other guys. We came together and decided, look, they're technologists. Then I had to build all the tech, in regards to trying to help these people in your Ukraine. I'm a recruiter so I have a lot of connections could ring around and get a lot of companies involved to see what they hire them. And I pretty much started from there. And we built a website. We partnered with a guy who I called from a company called talentpool.io. And he built out employUkraine.org.
Neil (6m 27s):
And which pretty much means that any company can advertise all the roles for free. They can video interview across the platform and Ukrainians can apply and apply for any role. Anybody can search their database of about 15,000 currently Ukrainian candidates matching them up against the roles. And if they want to remotely hire them, they can legally contract and payroll them via the system.
sfx (6m 55s):
Applause and cheers.
Joel (6m 56s):
Good for you man.
Chad (6m 56s):
That's awesome.
Joel (6m 57s):
Are these mostly remote jobs? Are people requiring relocation? Are they mostly sort of knowledge-based jobs? Give us sort of a sense of the flavor of what you're seeing.
Neil (7m 6s):
So we initially started with tech that was kind of the area like I'd spent 20 years in tech recruitment. So I was kind of very we started and then we slowly started to realize that the majority of the people that were displaced weren't from tech backgrounds predominantly, but 80% of those were female. So we have to open it to other areas and are potentially opening to top companies that may be hiring marketing, the HR, accounting, whatever the roles are a mix of in country. So if they come turn to Ireland or the UK to be hired there, or if they're say an Irish and UK, French, German company, then they hire them remotely in the likes of Slovakia, Poland, Romania, wherever the SMB, they want to stay in the 27 member states within the EU and the UK.
Neil (7m 52s):
But we've also had companies out of the U S reach out. We've had companies as far field as Vietnam, tech company in Vietnam. We have a companies in Australia and New Zealand, so pretty much anywhere that's willing to open up their doors to these people and help them. And my biggest ask is that if you're looking to hire these people, they don't have anything. So you have to be willing to potentially pay for rent, pay for flights, potentially give them sign on bonus upfront to help them settle on how do I would put it as not potentially if you're using a recruitment agency, you're saving that fee. So take part of that fee and give it to them. And that's the way we're really pitching it.
Joel (8m 34s):
That's awesome. And are company's open to that for the most part?
Neil (8m 38s):
Yeah. Like I was shocked. We have over 3000 companies have already signed up.
Chad (8m 43s):
Awesome.
Neil (8m 44s):
So it's insane.
Joel (8m 45s):
So far listeners again, how can they find out more? How can they sign up, get some jobs on that site? Where do they go again?
Neil (8m 51s):
If you sign up. So for all the listeners out there, if you want to sign up to www.techlinkukraine.org, and it's completely free. You sign up, you can post as many jobs as you like. If you're a large organization, you can actually have a lot of roles and you can, we work with different ATS providers. So there's an RSS feed. So you can basically feed them directly from your ATS directly onto the job board and you're good to go.
Joel (9m 18s):
That's outstanding. There are a lot of these. So I mean, hopefully the jobs and opportunities are getting to the people that need it. And I, for one, I speak for everyone on the podcast and everyone out there. Thanks for the work that you're doing on this. It's fantastic, it's fantastic. Thank you.
Chad (9m 36s):
techlinkukraine.org. Go there.
Joel (9m 37s):
Awesome.
Chad (9m 38s):
Excellent.
Joel (9m 38s):
Who's ready for some shout outs?
Chad (9m 40s):
Give it to me. Let's do it.
Neil (9m 41s):
So I'd like to give a shout out ITUkraine and they're the biggest IT association in Ukrainian. They called Constantine Volnyiv a hundred thousand members there, the best thing, but these guys are still trying to work in a war zone. And if anybody's a recruiter, I'd like to see somebody try and recruit in a war zone.
Chad (9m 59s):
No shit!
Neil (9m 60s):
Good luck to those guys and big shout out.
Chad (10m 3s):
Wow.
Joel (10m 3s):
For sure. For sure. And there in starts our first shout out, Chad.
Chad (10m 6s):
Yeah know, I'm going to hit the second one and we're going to Shout Out to out of office email. So I go figure they're all over the place. I saw a meme last week, demonstrating the difference between European out of office emails versus American versions and take a listen. You're gonna love this. And, I want the Europeans to kind of, you know, tell me if they think this is right. So first the European version of an out of office, email quote, "I'm away camping for the summer. Please email me back in September" end quote. And that's nice.
Joel (10m 39s):
I like that.
Lieven (10m 40s):
Sounds reasonable.
Chad (10m 43s):
It sounds reasonable. Yeah. So the American version quote, "I have left the office for two hours to undergo kidney surgery, but you can reach me on my cell anytime" end quote.
Joel (10m 56s):
That's not good.
Chad (10m 57s):
Is just about in line with what we're used to here in the US.
Joel (11m 2s):
The two Americans can say, that's totally on par with America's out of office. Yeah, that's totally it. So the Europeans is that right on?
Lieven (11m 8s):
I think I was away last week. I was skiing and I tried to remember what my out of office was, but I guess it was sort of like that it was only for one week, but it said something like you could mail me, but I won't read it so you might as well, not something like that, but only for one week not for the whole summer of course.
Joel (11m 28s):
That'd get you fired in America. You better answer those emails within 24 hours or else.
Neil (11m 33s):
The Irish version is slightly different. It's generally, if you can't reach me, please get my wife.
sfx (11m 44s):
I can make you rich.
Joel (11m 45s):
Awesome. My shout out goes to Jacque Paul, you don't know who Jacque Paul is. He's a 20 something from London. And if you're an avid TikToker, you may already know Jacque, but if not, he accidentally attached a copy of his sexually transmitted disease test results to his job application rather than a cover letter.
Chad (12m 8s):
That my friends that's transparency is what that is. Yeah.
Joel (12m 10s):
Yeah. How could such a thing happen? Well, multitasking, of course. He told the New York Post quote, "I was applying for this job while listening to music, checking the news. I was looking at COVID rates and doing something else on the side" end quote. The bad news he failed to land his dream job. The good news, his tests were negative. He landed another job and he found TikTok gold detailing the story and gaining tens of thousands of followers in the process. Do you believe in happy endings? Yes you do. Shout out to Jacques Paul of London. Lieven.
Lieven (12m 48s):
Shout out. My shout out goes to of course, still Elon Musk.
Chad (12m 54s):
Of course.
Lieven (12m 54s):
Keeping us entertained last week with his bidding on Twitter. So for those who went skiing like I did and didn't follow the news, just a quick updates, you know, a few weeks ago, Elon bought about 10% of Twitter. And then he announced he was going to buy the whole company with a 50% bonus. So a typical example of bump and dump and then Twitter announced they wouldn't let them buy the whole company. So he gave up on the plan, but his 10% certainly was worth like a lot more. So I think once again, the guy has proven to be brilliant and they'll probably sue his ass for manipulating.
Joel (13m 29s):
That's how big of a check is a House of HR writing to own a part of Twitter and go in with Elon? Or are you the only Ilon fan?
Lieven (13m 36s):
I think investing in House of HR is much more sustainable than investing in Twitter. So we're just going to buy around shares.
Chad (13m 43s):
That's a good call. That's a very good guy.
Joel (13m 47s):
Can I give you my conspiracy theory on this? No, probably not. Okay. So everyone's talking about he can't afford it. Why would he do it? It's a mess of a company. Tesla's so much more important. So my little conspiracy theory around this is he wants to buy Twitter. He wants to let Trump back on. He wants to get favoribility with the Republicans. He wants Fox news to talk about how great he is about letting free speech reign again. He's hoping that Trump gets reelected. And if Trump gets reelected, you're going to see deregulation on all the things that Elon is doing. You're going to see government contracts come to things like his boring company. You're going to see EVcar credits come to him. He's got a lot of money to make.
Joel (14m 28s):
If he can get ahold of Twitter and get Trump back on. That's my conspiracy theory. Who else is with me? No.
Chad (14m 36s):
I think he just wants attention that that's it. And any way that he can find attention, any megalomaniac out there much like Trump. I mean he just looking for attention. I don't think this is a long-term strategy.
Neil (14m 48s):
I think the fact that he admitted to couch surfing on his friends, coaches instead of maybe staying in a five-star hotel or actually buying houses in San Francisco. I generally just believe the guy is an attention seeker more so than anything else. So look, he'd probably get bored. I mean, it's like a child, so he's probably gonna turn his attention to TikTok next.
Joel (15m 12s):
And speaking of hogging and wanting attention, Chad and I are back on the road soon. We're going to be in Lieven's backyard of Ostend, Belgium on May 6th leaving tell the listeners. I can't imagine no one knows, but if they don't, what's going on May 6th.
Lieven (15m 28s):
We're getting close. Right? May 6th you're making me nervous.
Joel (15m 30s):
Yeah that show will be live. I think if my math is right.
Lieven (15m 36s):
Alrighty, it could be.
Chad (15m 37s):
We'll be in Belgium when we do it, we'll probably just be doing it at a bar.
Joel (15m 42s):
We're gonna try to be on a yacht.
Chad (15m 44s):
Good call.
Joel (15m 44s):
We'll see how that works out. But yeah. Tell him about the Congress Lieven.
Lieven (15m 48s):
Oh wow. You'll probably be doing it from Casino KURSAAL where the whole event will be. So it's the E-recruitment Congress. We've been talking about it for almost a year right now I guess. It's by far the biggest and the best congress on digital recruitment in Belgium, we have tons of speakers, many people who have been in the show, we are focusing on e-sports. We are focusing on virtual recruitments, all kinds of digital stuff. But if you want to be there, look at erecruitment-congress.com on Google and you'll find it. You can still buy some tickets. And if there was still a COVID thing, we would have been sold out by now because we reserved for 400 places in a room where you can set 2000 people, but now we don't need the space anymore so we can fill every seat.
Lieven (16m 41s):
So everyone is welcome. We have about 400 people participating already. So it's a big success. Yes. Belgian standards, of course.
Joel (16m 47s):
And Neil has agreed to supply the liquor for the event, which is great. Thanks.
Lieven (16m 52s):
Yeah. Are you able to meet Chad and Joel who will be giving a live comments on everything happening?
Joel (16m 59s):
And you can also find out more. I think it, Chadcheese.com where you can see all of our other travels within Europe over the next few months.
Neil (17m 7s):
You're only an hour and 35 minutes from Belgium to Dublin. So.
Lieven (17m 10s):
You are also welcome.
Joel (17m 11s):
Is there a bridge? Can I walk there? Is there like, can I get a bike or a
Chad (17m 21s):
You're not walking
Joel (17m 28s):
A visual submarines or
Chad (17m 29s):
A lime scooter he can take?
Joel (17m 30s):
Get me a lime scooter. That's nice.
Chad (17m 31s):
Topics!
Joel (17m 32s):
All right, guys, let's talk a little bit of news. Let's talk about Handshake, the platform for recruiting college students announced last week that it acquired Talent Space, a European platform or managing career fairs, both online and in-person. As Handshake's first ever acquisition Handshake says talent space will strengthen its suite of virtual offerings and accelerate their entry beyond the UK office and into continental Europe. What?! Talent space was founded in 2017 and will continue operating from its offices in Berlin, Germany. Quick reminder for our listeners, San Francisco based Handshake recently landed $200 million in funding and is valued at $3.5 billion.
Joel (18m 22s):
That's right. All right, guys, is Europe going to embrace Handshake's entrance into Europe? Or just say talk to the hand, do people still say talk to the hand?
Lieven (18m 32s):
I never said talk to the hand.
Joel (18m 33s):
Virtual. And in real life career events in Europe, what's the story.
Lieven (18m 36s):
I've been looking into this until I get it right. They are approaching a revenue of $100 million. I feel it, they started somewhere $100 million. They didn't state exactly how much it was, but approaching $100 million and they are valued over $3 billion.
Joel (18m 54s):
Yes, three and a half.
Lieven (18m 55s):
Okay. If I follow this course, this means House of HR, which has a revenue of $2.2 billion at my company or our company, 2.2 billion. We should be valued like 60, $60 billion or something.
Joel (19m 7s):
$60 billion
Lieven (19m 8s):
And I'm sure we are worth it, but I don't know about them. $3 billion with a revenue of approaching one hundred. Okay. Nicely done.
Joel (19m 15s):
So House of HR has a lot of companies. Do they have any that are focused on events, whether virtual or in real life, have you looked at companies that are doing this and have looked the other way? Like how big of an opportunity is it in Europe?
Lieven (19m 29s):
It's definitely starting to grow. And I mean, when I read the article, I saw Handshake and I taught this isn't the best name to use during COVID crisis. Because if there's one thing people want to avoid, it's a Handshake. But I understand, I understand.
Chad (19m 47s):
Fist bump.
Joel (19m 47s):
Well, fist bump was taken.
Lieven (19m 49s):