The wait is over! It's our Halloween show, full of dad jokes and bad soundbites. You're welcome. We even get to some news, covering the iCIMS acquisition, Indeed's pivot to PPA, Voilà! coming to America and Oracle's new Booster. Also, Bloomberg says self-driving cars are headed for a fatal crash, while Bloomberg then publishes articles about Waymo coming to Los Angeles and Intel's Mobileye going IPO. Oh, Bloomberg, such a two-face. Unlike the two faces you really love: Chad & Cheese, the podcast that 'ghosts' it's fans on Halloween week.
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INTRO (3s):
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 (25s):
Oh yeah. You've waited a whole year for our Halloween show. Support yourself a bowl of Franken Berries and all hail Satan. Hey, trick or treaters, you're listening to the Chad Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel "Redrum" Cheeseman. And
Chad (39s):
This is Chad "no Michael Myers here" Sowash
Joel (43s):
And on this week's show, iCIMS has treats, Oracle has tricks and Indeed leaves a flaming bag of dog shed on customers doorsteps. Let's do this. What do you mean? There's no Halloween in Portugal?
Chad (1m 1s):
Think about it. The US commercializes everything so that you can, you can buy the pumpkins, you can buy the candy, you can buy, buy, buy, buy outfits, all that other fun stuff. Just not how they do it down here. It's a much simpler life.
Joel (1m 16s):
Less commercial. Perfect for you.
Chad (1m 18s):
Yes.
Joel (1m 18s):
Perfect for you. I'm excited about Halloween.
Chad (1m 21s):
I do want to say what we do have here, and I was saving this for you.
Joel (1m 25s):
Oh, speaking of Devils, the Devil of Beer straight out of Belgium. A little Duvel. Oh, of course. We record this show now when it's happy hour in Portugal. So.
Chad (1m 40s):
Yes.
Joel (1m 40s):
Chad's take on stuff is a little bit different than when he stateside when it's 10 in the morning. Anyway, we love Halloween in our house. I'm dressing as a convict, as usual. I got an old timey Shawshank outfit. My five year old's going a Spiderman. I know, that's very cliche. My wife's going as a bee. She usually picks some sort of insect for what she does.
Chad (2m 5s):
Yeah.
Joel (2m 5s):
And I think the big kids are just gonna terrorize little kids, at this point.
Chad (2m 10s):
They've got a little brother to terrorize, so that's good.
Joel (2m 13s):
This time of year is the best time of year to be in the Midwest. The colors on the trees, the Yeah. Gorgeous air. It's a really, it's a really good time of year. Other 11 months, eh?
Chad (2m 25s):
Or you can be in the mid seventies here, you know, with a beach. I mean,
Joel (2m 30s):
Yeah.
Chad (2m 31s):
It's a little different. Yeah.
Joel (2m 33s):
Yeah. I'm in my puffy vest, you know, taking the dog for a walk. And Chad'ss on the beach.
Chad (2m 40s):
Shout outs!
Joel (2m 40s):
Shall we do some shout outs? We got a lot to cover this week. A lot of stuff going on. I'm gonna give a shout out to layoffs since it's Halloween and that feels a little bit scary.
Chad (2m 51s):
Layoffs?
Joel (2m 52s):
So our boy Elon Musk, and I'm sure we'll talk about this on the European show cause Lieven can't talk without talking about Elon. So, so my man is buying Twitter. It looks like it's gonna close maybe even today, but probably this week.
Chad (3m 6s):
Right.
Joel (3m 6s):
He's expressed laying off 75% of the workforce, which didn't go very well with the current workforce.
Chad (3m 11s):
What do you expect?
Joel (3m 12s):
The best of the best tend to leave when you say you're gonna lay off 75% of the people, which would leave them 2000 employees from 7,500. He has walked that back. Duh. He's walked it back. But it, here's what I think is gonna happen. All the other tech companies whose shareholders think Elon is smarter than they are, are gonna go through big layoffs. And we're fans of the Pivot show and Scott Galloway, he's predicting Pinterest and Snap going through similar, you know, cuts in their staff.
Chad (3m 44s):
Yeah.
Joel (3m 44s):
Obviously this stuff in affects our business in terms of if all these companies aren't hiring anymore, because that's gonna trickle down to all the tech companies saying we don't need as many tech people. Yeah. And the companies in our space, the unicorns that have gotten a hundred million plus dollars and have hired a lot of engineers, what are they gonna do? Are they gonna lay off these folks? Now, the good news is a lot of startups that can't afford good talent are gonna be able to grab up some of these folks. And the next great startups will be born from this period of recession and doom and gloom. So that's the good news. But there will be some temporary pain. So on this Halloween episode, I thought layoffs would be an appropriate.
Joel (4m 24s):
Shout out everybody.
Chad (4m 26s):
So scary. So scary. My shout out is to Veritone and sponsor Pandologic.
Joel (4m 31s):
Yes.
Chad (4m 32s):
What could, you might remember that earlier this year we dropped a podcast called Deep Fake Recruiting with Ryan Steelberg. He was the CEO of Veritone. And less than a year later this is happening, Kids roll that beautiful bean footage.
Joel (5m 10s):
(Joel speaking in French and Spanish)
Chad (5m 11s):
Now German...
Joel (5m 20s):
Chad (5m 21s):
And Portuguese (Chad speaking in Portuguese)
Joel (5m 28s):
I've never wanted to have sex with myself so badly as I do right now.
Chad (5m 34s):
Oh, that is so fucking awesome, dude. So our new voices are Veritone powered.
Joel (5m 44s):
Wow.
Chad (5m 45s):
French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. It's truly surreal. We know our listeners are from all over the world and many of them, their first language is not English. So we're trying our damnedest just to make sure that they can have little Cheese, little Chad in the morning with their native tongue. So here's the caveat though. Kids gotta remember. Yes, it is incredibly new and it's incredibly cool, but it's ai, which means it's learning and we're learning too. So for example, you know, we had a recommendation, we were at dinner with the TalkPush guys and Luis said, What.
Joel (6m 22s):
The French folk.
Chad (6m 23s):
Yeah, yeah. Well, Luis said, you know, you, you should probably speed up that audio about 1.2 or one and a half times because native speakers are more fluid and they speak faster. So we tried it right there with him at the table and he was like, he gave us the thumbs up. So now we've made that adjustment. So if you're listening, if you are listening in your foreign tongue and you have adjustments or ideas or what have you, send it our way. Last but not least, every weekly show. So we drop a show every Friday, then we're going to have that show translated into four different other additional languages. So you will get that show on the very next Wednesday.
Chad (7m 6s):
So you can go to wherever you listen to podcasts. We're now getting into Apple and Spotify and so on and so forth. So we're very early on. But you gotta ask yourself, Joel, is any other podcast out there? I don't just mean in our industry, any other podcast doing cool shit like this?
Joel (7m 25s):
None that I know of. And we, I know we both listen to a lot of well funded manicured, professionally produced. Not that ours aren't professionally produced, cuz Chad does it, he's a pro at this point, but a lot more resources and the folks at Veritone have been really kind and generous, amazing to help us launch these, these programs. I think we're, we're trailblazers. I think this is gonna be something that a lot of podcasts start doing. And these are separate shows. So if you're in German, you know, German speaking country, whatever, you can subscribe to that show and have it separately in your feed. So you know that all those shows come up. I'm amazed at how they were able to make us sound like we do.
Joel (8m 8s):
It's not like a robot just saying our words in a like a robot voice. It's actually our voices.
Chad (8m 14s):
It's crazy.
Joel (8m 14s):
And the biggest, the biggest challenge for us I think was, is it the Chad and Cheese show in France? Or is it the Chad and Fromage podcasts and we eventually landed on Cheese cuz you know, cheese kind of plays in multiple languages. But yeah, I'm just, amazed that we, that we've done this, that the technology is there and that we have friends generous enough to help us do this. So yeah, big, big round of applause for our friends at Veritone.
Chad (8m 42s):
When, to your point, when you're looking for this show, it's the Chad and Cheese Espanol, the Chad and Cheese Deutsche, the Chad and Cheese Francais and the Chad and Cheese Portuguese. We're trying to make it as much as the native tongue as you can.
Joel (8m 56s):
Yep.
Chad (8m 56s):
Check it it out man.
Joel (8m 58s):
Yep. And shout out to our friends at Evergreen. Every show has a different image, different flag in the background. So you know, we still have that same knucklehead melon look on the image, but a little different flag in background to help everyone figure that out. So thanks to Evergreen for that as well. I have one more shout out and we can get to the good stuff like finding Fantasy Football and birthdays.
Chad (9m 21s):
Oh, Good God.
Joel (9m 23s):
Our friend, our good friend Sir Richard Collins has posted on LinkedIn recently, I quote. So after three years of selling ClickIQ to Indeed, we are finally out excited to be able to move on and do what Beverly, Joan Collins, and I do best disrupting and building some cool HR tech, bring on the Blockchain. Was his little teaser there. I think both of us are getting a little sample of the new technology, but Maserati on Sir Richard and keep us abreast of this Blockchain that you speak of. I'm sure that he'll be on the show soon discussing his new stuff and also a shout out. He put a big image that said 'we out'. I dunno if that was a little hat tip to us or not, but we're watching Sir Richard, we're watching.
Joel (10m 8s):
Oh yeah.
Chad (10m 9s):
And we're rooting for you. Events. Next week I'm going to the web summit with our buddy Keith Sonderling. You know the EEOC commissioner?
Joel (10m 17s):
I do.
Chad (10m 17s):
He's going to be in Lisbon. He's on a "How to Regulate AI" panel with a couple of heavy hitters. One is in Parliament in the UK House of Commons, and the other one is a senior key expert with the "EU International Outreach for Human-Centric Approach to ai". My God, these people need help with titles. And last but not least, the person who's going to be moderating is a tech reporter from Bloomberg. So I'm really stoked next week.
Joel (10m 47s):
Nice.
Chad (10m 47s):
Go to Lisbon and go to the web summit.
Joel (10m 50s):
By the way, we have some, some footage from an EEOC meeting where a company that was behaving badly tried to leave a meeting.
Spooky Voice SFX (10m 60s):
<you cannot leave>
Joel (11m 0s):
That's right. That's what you hear at the EEOC when you try to get out of the clutches of Mr. Sonderling.
Chad (11m 8s):
He says it with a smile though. He says it with a smile.
Joel (11m 10s):
He does say it with a smile. By the way, if you've joined our free list, you cannot leave, you will get free stuff. We're talking t-shirts from JobGet. We're talking whiskey from our friends at Textkernal, we're talking free beer from the folks at Aspen Tech Labs. If your birthday is in a particular month, you might win rum from our our friends at Plum. You gotta go to chadcheese.com/free to get that. It's free to sign up. We just need your vitals, we need your address if we're gonna send you something and text messages if we're gonna let you know that you have something coming to you.
Chad (11m 45s):
Blood type.
Joel (11m 47s):
Yeah, blood type. We don't have semen? We don't want that either. It's all good. It's all good.
Chad (11m 51s):
No semen samples.
Joel (11m 51s):
It's all good. And speaking of birthdays, let's get to to that real quick. So a few fans and listeners are celebrating another year around the sun. Let's get to those folks. And again, you can win rum from Plum if it is your birthday. And November's coming up Chad, so there's gonna be a new winner announced very soon. But celebrating birthdays this week we got Ryan Moffitt, Garrett Friedman, Sean Horton, our boy, Dennis Tupper. Oh, Jeremy Roberts. Also our boy Peter Gold, one of our favorite Scottsman.
sfx (12m 26s):
Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is, if it's not Scottish it's crap!
Joel (12m 35s):
Clap. That's right. Stephen O'Donnell celebrates a birthday and our boy from Sense Pankaj Jindal, was born, although they might not celebrate it in his country on Halloween. So Happy Birthday to Pankaj and everyone else that's celebrating a birthday this month, also celebrating this month the Canadian 🇨🇦 , that's right, who's continue to make a strong showing in fantasy football. Week seven is in the books Fantasy Football sponsored by our friends at FactoryFix. Here's our leaderboard. Number one to last place, Chris Who’s Da Mannion is in the new number one spot followed closely by Serge “Strange Brew” Boudreau 🇨🇦 Oh, and my wife got mad at me for pronouncing it.
Joel (13m 24s):
Serge, It's Serge or some shit like that. We need, we that in the foreign language edition. Number three, your boy Joel “Nacho” Cheesman, Dennis “The Menace” Tupper, Christy “Makin’ a” Kelling, Matt “Mole” Hill, Iron Mike Schaefer, Chad Sowash-ed Up, King James Gilliam, “Average” Joe Wilkie, Jason Vorhees Putnam, Appropriate for the show of Putnam and Dan “Akroyd” Shoemaker who's starting Ghostbuster's Shoemaker. That is the roundup of the leaderboard of fantasy football. Thanks again to our friends at FantasyFix, FactoryFix. Fantasy Fix might be something totally different.
Joel (14m 6s):
FactoryFix our friends there. Thanks for sponsoring. And with that,
Chad (14m 9s):
TOPICS!
Joel (14m 9s):
We got so much shit this week. All right, let's, great. Let's talk about iCIMS. So great. The popular ATS announced the acquisition of skill survey this week. Terms were not disclosed. Skill Survey is a pioneer in skills verification and digital reference checking. They tout 2300 companies as customers. It's patented reference checking solution, verify skills and delivers feedback from references in a much quicker and more candid way that can be used earlier in the hiring processed. Pennsylvania based Skills Survey was founded all the way back in 2001 and had previously raised a grand total of $3.6 million.
Joel (14m 50s):
Chad, another Savvy acquisition by iCIMS or are they just compensating for an ipo that may never happen?
Chad (14m 56s):
Seriously, this is not sexy, but I think it's incredibly smart. As you'd said, SkillSurvey has been around since 2001. They've only only taken 3.6 million in funding according to Crunchbase. And that funding was incremental. Half a million here, a quarter of a million there. And the most funding they received was 1.8 million in 2008 all the way back in 2008.
Joel (15m 22s):
That was a lot of money back then kids.
Chad (15m 24s):
Which tells you somebody's making some money. So we've gotten so drunk on funding over the last three years that we forgot how a stable and reliable business is built. And it's not from us playing the unicorn song. Ray and the crew over at SkillSurvey built a company to last. And if somebody came along with a check big enough, well, you know, they'd obviously sell. As you'd said, they have well over 2000 customers, a great portfolio and an ARR play with only about a hundred employees according to LinkedIn Insights. So this is a great ad for iCIMS and their bottom line.
Chad (16m 5s):
I think it's a big thumbs up for them.
Joel (16m 9s):
I love that after remember, we talked about the Spark Start lawsuit over the video and the acquisition Yeah. That they highlighted in this release the patented reference checking solution. So they're trying to ward off all those lawsuits that could be coming for the reference check. So that was good. Yeah, look, probably no one in our space does the subtle small scale smart fit acquisition like iCIMS. They look at their marketplace, they see what's trending, you know, they see all the things that customers use, what they like and then they go kind of pick out the diamonds that aren't, you know, valued at a billion dollars and then go pick out what makes a lot of sense.
Joel (16m 55s):
They did it with TextRecruit, they've done it with opening.io, they did it with Candidate ID and now they're doing it with SkillSurvey. Whoever's doing the M & A at iSims deserves a raise because they're setting the standard for all the other ATSs that are, you know, buying other ATSs and doing things that frankly are a little bit weird and wacky and really expensive. And doing it right. I think that our friend Kyle Lagunas, who a lot of our listeners know, said it probably best on this. So he said quote via LinkedIn, "The data collected in this process has never been used beyond the final hiring decision. And a big part of that has been the gap between these types of systems and the core system of record itself, ie.
Joel (17m 43s):
the ATS. But this data can be aggregated and utilized at a macro level to drive smarter talent marketing, sourcing, interviewing and on boarding." end quote. Again, a smart buy, not sexy, it's an answer, but it's not sexy. I think it's a good deal. iCIMS keeps setting the standard for those like really smart savvy buys and this is just another notch in their belt.
Chad (18m 6s):
Here's where they're getting it wrong though. And this is the big problem for my, for iCIMS. They don't know how to peacock. They have no clue on how to peacock, spread your damn feathers and show off for God's sakes. And here's a great example. Remember when they bought opening.io?
Joel (18m 24s):
Yeah.
Chad (18m 24s):
And we talked about all the possible applications within the grander scheme of the iCIMS ecosystem. Yeah. And then we've heard little to nothing since. I remember a sitting in the room in New Jersey talking about this Al Smith who is one of the smartest guys probably in our goddamn industry. And they're doing some amazing things. And from what I'm hearing from some of the internal contacts that we have that that tech, just the opening.io piece has been a game changer for them internally. The problem with iCIMS is they do not know how to peacock. They've gotta get out there, especially as they're moving toward I P O. If they want to continue to move toward IPO they have to, they have to seem bigger, they have to seem bolder, they have to push that chest out.
Chad (19m 12s):
They have to stiffen the spine and they have to be the biggest bully in the fucking ring. And we haven't seen that at conferences. We haven't seen that in press. We haven't seen that in marketing. All I can say is Steve, listen to me, big guy, you know, marketing, you know him right. Peacock.
Joel (19m 30s):
Interesting. Take, take some notes from our friend Shannon at HireEazy on how to peacock because ever since she's joined HireEazy, Amazing. They are peacocking like a motherfucker. So take some notes from Shannon on that. I agree our iCIMS is really, really quiet and there's some honor to that I guess of keeping your head down. But in this day and age with podcasts and blogs and social media, if you're not shouting it from the hilltops, it's not getting talked about unless there's a big news item. So I agree with that. Well, someone who doesn't have a problem, peacocking, maybe not.
Chad (20m 2s):
No they don't.
Joel (20m 3s):
But in general is no they don't are friends that Indeed. That's right. So Indeed has had its annual event in New York City, October 12th through the 13th. They've changed the annual event name from Indeed Interactive to Indeed Future Works because they said in the new name quote "that the new name represents a new and fresh approach to its annual marque event." Just what the world was hoping for. A new fresh name for the Indeed event. Anyway, aside from Chad's man crush on Ryan Reynolds keynote in the event, the biggest news one in was Indeed going full on pay per applicant.
Joel (20m 43s):
Reported by our friend Roy Mayer at SHRM quote "in 2023, employers using Indeed will pay only when a candidate starts or submits an application rather than when they click on a job ad, which is currently the case" end quote. Chad Indeed pioneered PPC in our industry and now they're abandoning it. Next they'll be changing their name to Meta. Right? What's your take on this move?
Chad (21m 10s):
First and foremost, let's give Indeed a big applause for this bullshit. It's better for job seekers narrative. They are so good at this. They find data to be able to back it, but nobody in our space can spit and spin the bullshit better than Indeed. This is, this is a wow moment right here. So first off, let's be clear and start to clear up some of the differences you've got. You have pay per application, which is pretty much the job is on Indeed. And you're looking more at the easy apply method, right? And then pay per started application. So the job's not on Indeed. You click through and you start the application on the corporate site.
Chad (21m 50s):
Okay. Makes sense. Right? And just to set the tone, PPA pay per application is more expensive than pay per click, right?
Joel (21m 58s):
Yeah.
Chad (21m 58s):
Okay. Okay. As it should be. So, this is where it all comes together because these are some evil fucking geniuses behind this move, which literally just adds one click into the process and charges employers more. Take note kids adds a click into the process and charges employers more. Let's go back in the way back machine stick with me here. Remember a time before Indeed's current two pain model where a job seeker clicked on the link and went directly to the company's career site to review the job description. Back then that was called what? PPC. Yeah, it was pay per click then Indeed switched their user experience to a two pay model, which kept job seekers on Indeed to view the job instead of going to the corporate career site.
Chad (22m 50s):
Now, Indeed says if job seekers click apply and go to the career site, that's considered a started application, now known as a PPA, right? Pay per application. When before their two pay model went into play that was called PPC. They just did a switch o fucking change o on everybody. Indeed literally added a click in the process and they're charging companies more for the exact same thing they did 10 years ago.
Joel (23m 23s):
Yeah.
Chad (23m 23s):
The exact same shit. And the evil goes deeper. Okay, so how deep make the apply easier and mandate salaries on jobs? We've been heralding this, but let's dig deep into this. Application sucks so Indeed creates, Indeed Apply for quicker and easier applications. Indeed apply makes it extremely simple to apply for jobs, whether you're qualified or not. Easy Apply will increase applies on every job, whether you're qualified or not. Then how does Indeed increase applies even more? Well, they make salary compulsory on every single job. So yes, mandating salaries is a move to drive more applies or started applies whether you're qualified or not.
Chad (24m 9s):
So what do these moves do? They make applying easier, which is what Indeed's been doing for decades. You can see it in their roadmap, whether you're qualified or not, none of that matters. And what did Indeed change to make this possible? They added one click. You're paying more today kids than you did 10 years ago, because it was named PPC back then. Now it's PPA and you're going to be charged more. Merry Christmas.
Joel (24m 41s):
That's great insight. And I think like you, I've been chewing on this since the announcement and it's led me to a lot of different places. Some dark and damp, others, not so much. But, so I want to take us back and I did this last week, little but a little bit of history here, Pay per click cuz a lot of people may not realize it. Pay per click used to be, there's a company called Overture powered Yahoo and some others. And, and the idea was that if you paid more than the other advertiser, you got to be at the top of the list. So if I paid 11 cents and Chad paid 10, I got to be on top of him. It created a pretty cool like, you know, pissing contest where I'm gonna spend more for the click.
Joel (25m 22s):
And you kept going up and down, Google came along and put an algorithm behind Paper Click. So you didn't really have a bidding thing where I could be on top. They had a thing where, well, if your ad is better, if your landing page is better, you'll get better ranking because it's a better experience for the user. Basically creating a lot of confusion around why am I not the first ranking, I'm gonna spend more money. A lot of confusion Indeed, historically has used Google as a way to like, you know, generate their own business. This is a lot of confusion in the marketplace. Like you said, Indeed pioneered pay per click in our space, when they started doing this, everyone was doing flat price, you know, $300 for a month ad a package of whatever.
Joel (26m 6s):
And they spent a lot of money in resources educating our space on the value of pay per click. While they were doing that in 2006, Google tried a paper basically action model, which works a lot easier in e-commerce because I only, I'm only gonna pay you if people buy the shoes that I have for sale, right? And Google has a lot of really smart people as well as Facebook and others. They've more or less abandoned this model probably for a lot of good reasons that we can't go into time wise on this show. But Indeed grew this paper click model, they educated the industry, they put backfill on job sites all around the world.
Joel (26m 46s):
People made money when people clicked, there was an ecosystem that they profited handsomely from and now they're changing direction. And to me, you gotta ask why would they do that? They've become Indeed on this pay per click model. People understand it, people get it. Why are they changing? And to me, it it, the core of this is in the fact that when you talk to people at Indeed around what are they most scared of? What's, what's taking the biggest chunk out of their bottom line. It's not Google for Jobs, although there's a little bit of concern on that. And if Google has a pay per click thing, that'll be interesting. But the thing that scares Indeed most is programmatic advertising.
Joel (27m 29s):
They cannot compete in an aggregate ecosystem where people are paying less for a click and that they're optimizing those clicks in a global ecosystem that's not Indeed, they can't compete on a pay per click basis in that model. And all the agencies that represent all the Fortune 500 companies, Fortune 1000 companies that are spending dollars on advertising, all the agencies are smart enough to say, Look, we're way better off cost-wise going with AppCast or Pando or Recruitology or whoever than we are with IndeedIQ, which is formerly, you know, ClickIQ our friends Sir Richard as I mentioned earlier. So, Indeed to me is like, we can't compete with programmatic, all the Fortune 500,000 are leaving us and spending less with us because of that.
Joel (28m 15s):
We have to pivot to something that is not that, that we can profit from. Confuse the marketplace, confuse the customer, and to me, this is where they're going. It reeks of hubris, it reeks of, we're the biggest, you know, gorilla in the jungle and people are just gonna bend to what we want them to do. Historically that does not work out. Just to ask our friend Mark Zuckerberg and META what it's like to change sort of what you're doing and confuse the marketplace and confuse the buyer. So I think there's a lot of layers to this and we're not in tune with the Indeed meetings and what the discussions were, but this just reeks of desperation and fear.
Joel (28m 57s):
Companies pivot like this when they're scared, not when they're in a strong position. So for me it's like, Indeed, good luck. I don't think it's a good move. I think it's desperation and I think the marketplace is gonna smell this and act accordingly.
Chad (29m 11s):
I just don't think they will. I think that they're still on the crack, unfortunately. But again, I just wanna throw this out there, kids, they did one thing, they added a click into the process from what they did 10 years ago. And they say that they're trying to make this easier and better for you and they're charging you more for it. And guess what? You're gonna pay it. And that is the sad thing because we need to, as an industry, whether it's recruitment marketing agencies or direct clients, Fortune 500 companies, we've gotta back away and we've gotta look at new ways to actually not just try to target talent, but also to manufacture talent, which we talk about all the time on this show.
Chad (29m 53s):
We need to get out of what we've been doing for the last decade because it's not working and it's making us slaves, these evil fucking geniuses over at Indeed.
Joel (30m 14s):
Voila. Chad, we're on Canada News Alert baby. All right. It's a Canadian news alert straight out of Quebec workforce management platform. Voila. Has raised 13 million Canadian dollars or nine and a half roughly US dollars in a series A round. This funding round will allow the company to further its mission to help businesses combat labor shortages and accelerate the company's growth in, you guessed it, the United States as well as the rest of Canada. Released in 2016 Voila, delivers workforce optimization tools to simplify schedule management, staff replacements, as well as time and attendance tracking the Quebecois are coming.
Joel (30m 59s):
Chad, your thoughts.
Chad (31m 0s):
Having access to your schedule through an app that also allows you to send messages, take on extra shifts, ask for time off and, and perform most of the mundane and yet important task on your mobile phone is essential today, especially for shift workers who aren't usually pinned their computer. It feels like the pandemic made these types of platforms even more necessary as we're moving more toward a crowdsourced scheduling version of work. And I think that's awesome.
Joel (31m 31s):
Well, first of all, what is it with companies in Quebec and names that Americans can't spell or say? So first we had New VU or New VO, Neuvoo or I don't know what the hell it was. Now we've got Voila
Chad (31m 44s):
Voila
Joel (31m 45s):
Voila by the way, because I care about this shit. The URL is voila.app. If you go to voila.com, it redirects you to a dot.ca and it's apparently a grocery store food delivery service in Canada. So anyway, Voila. Next, give us something we can spell and say Quebec please, Americans aren't that smart. So tell me why you've heard this before. Chad. Voila is an all-in-one workforce management platform, helping busy managers save time, engage employees, and increase profits. Sound familiar? Like everyone else in our space. So there's a great line and die hard that we love to quote.
Joel (32m 26s):
It's when Bruce Willis says, "Welcome to the Party pal." Well welcome to the party of Voila. You're gonna be competing with a lot of well-funded, well-resourced businesses and you've got nine and a half million US dollars to compete in the US. Another great movie we love to quote, "You're gonna need a bigger boat" unless you've cracked some nut that only Quebecois can understand. It's gonna be tough row to hoe to come to America. You're gonna need a little more funding. Like Chad, I love the idea. It's a great wave to be on. People in America love Canada. We love your quirky little technologies and your little names, and we generally love what you do.
Joel (33m 12s):
So we will welcome you with open arms, but you're looking at a country that's a lot bigger than yours with a lot of companies trying to elbow out some space. Good luck. Go raise your Series B and come back to me when you've got a hundred million.
Chad (33m 27s):
Well, just some advice for an organization like that. Be specific in niche and then own that niche and then start to build off of that. I mean, that's the the easiest way to actually start, not just obviously gaining more revenues because you're focused on that specific industry, but also going after more revenues for broadening your tam.
Joel (33m 50s):
And though I'm a little critical, I love Quebec and I'm rooting for them.
Chad (33m 54s):
Oh yeah.
Joel (33m 55s):
And because if I don't, my in-laws won't bring me good Canadian whiskey for the holidays. So I am rooting Voila.
Chad (34m 5s):
Is there really good Canadian whiskey?
Joel (34m 6s):
There is.
Chad (34m 7s):
Oh, okay.
Joel (34m 7s):
Okay. There is. You can only get it in Canada or, I mean, you could probably get it in, I don't know, Vermont or some border town, but yeah, you can, Alberta has some nice ones. Quebec has some great, great whiskey. Yeah, you can, It's not bourbon, it's not Laphroaig, but it's good. It's all right. It's not Aberfeldy, but it's alright.
Chad (34m 30s):
Do they have any self-driving cars or taxis there?
Joel (34m 35s):
Oh, self-driving cars, Chad. Well that's scary.
Scary Voice SFX (34m 38s):
<you cannot leave>
Joel (34m 39s):
That's right. You cannot leave this issue. Conflicting news coming out of the self-driving car space this week, Chad.
Chad (34m 46s):
Oh, oh.
Joel (34m 47s):
On one hand, self-driving cars are heading for a fatal crash. A Bloomberg article says quote "Six years after companies started offering rides in what they’ve called autonomous cars and almost 20 years after the first self-driving demos, there are vanishingly few such vehicles on the road. And they tend to be confined to a handful of places in the Sun Belt, because they still can’t handle weather patterns trickier than Partly Cloudy. State-of-the-art robot cars also struggle with construction, animals, traffic cones, crossing guards, and what the industry calls “unprotected left turns,” which most of us would call “left turns.” However, also in Bloomberg, Google's Waymo announced new service in Los Angeles this week, and Intel's self-driving company Mobileye went public this week at a 23 billion valuation.
Joel (35m 45s):
The stock opened at $26 and 71 cents and closed at $28 and 97 cents, almost 40% above its initial public offering price. So Chad, who's right? Bloomberg or Bloomberg?
Chad (36m 3s):
I'm gonna go with Bloomberg.
Joel (36m 4s):
Okay.
Chad (36m 4s):
This is too big not to work. And let me explain to you.
Joel (36m 10s):
Explain it to me.
Chad (36m 11s):
I'm gonna explain it.
Joel (36m 13s):
Chad splain it.
Chad (36m 17s):
The market size of just the taxi and limousine service is around $41.7 billion just in 2022. So that's just a taxi service. But we have to remember the end game here isn't the taxi industry. It's the car industry, logistics and defense, for starters. Again, car industry, logistics and defense, huge fucking industries. And a lot of those industries get money from the US government. They're just using the data captured from the taxi experiment to feed more lucrative prospects, right? I mean, that's what is happening here. So this is too big of a nut not to crack.
Chad (36m 57s):
This is not about taxis. This is definitely about the car industry, but it's much bigger than that. And the biggest nut to crack here is defense. And they definitely want to crack that nut.
Joel (37m 12s):
Too big and too sexy, Chad. That's right, that's right.
Chad (37m 15s):
That's what everybody called you in high school. I get that.
Joel (37m 20s):
Big sexy. That's right. So let's talk about another Canadian company that I think we all, we all know and loved at some point. So Blackberry and iPhone, a little history here. There's a, a book called Losing the Signal that I recommend. It's about sort of the phone wars back in the early 2010s when the iPhone came out and Android. But there's a mostly focus on how Blackberry lost the war to the iPhone. And when the iPhone was being talked about, everyone at Blackberry thought it can't be done. You can't have a full screen, full colored touch screen phone. You can't have battery life long enough.
Joel (38m 1s):
You can't have like the chips, like it's just everyone at Blackberry I convince themselves that this just can't be done until Apple did it right? And then once Apple did it, everyone figured out, okay, here's how you do it and blah, blah blah. And of course nobody did it as good as Apple. I feel like the self-driving car industry is like that. You have a lot of people saying it can't be done, it's too hard, it's too expensive, whatever. And you have some people that are abandoning the initiative, but there's gonna be somebody, there's too much money in this, to not crack this nut. Somebody is going to figure out how to do it. And we keep talking about it can't be done until it will be done and there's too much money to be made in this for it not to be done.
Chad (38m 42s):
Yeah.
Joel (38m 42s):
It may not happen this week, it may not happen next year, but sometime in our lifetimes, I believe self-driving cars will be a thing. It'll be normal. We'll drive to, you know, to our parents' house, two hours away and we'll we'll sort of be in the behind the wheel, but the car will be doing the driving. I think that we talk about trucks at Walmart in Arkansas taking that little trip at night in the truck, like that's gonna be a thing. So I'm on the side of Bloomberg as well, that Waymo and Mobileye, and these companies are gonna figure it out just like Apple figured the iPhone out and killed Blackberry and became a big winner.
Joel (39m 23s):
There's too much money in victory here not to get her done.
Chad (39m 26s):
Yeah. Yeah. Well I I will not be one of those guys cause I enjoy driving too much. So I will be driving a stick shift and I will be driving Miss Julie until I die. It's just the way it is.
Joel (39m 42s):
Stick shifts are a dying breed.
Chad (39m 44s):
Not here in Europe. They're not.
Joel (39m 46s):
Oh really? Okay. Well, no, no Halloween, but you have stick shifts. That's right. That seems like a fair, fair transition.
Chad (39m 51s):
And plenty of this.
Joel (40m 0s):
And Duvel. Yeah. We do have in the states as well, but Yeah, Yeah. You ready for some booster? Chad?
Chad (40m 7s):
Did you say Rooster?
Joel (40m 10s):
Rooster Booster Juicer. I don't know what the fuck is going on? Oracle. Good God. Oracle has launched its new talent acquisition product and it's called Oracle Recruiting Booster. That's right. Get that shot right in your arm. Recruiting booster promises to help talent acquisition teams improve engagement with candidates, build talent communities, accelerate the hiring process and personalize the recruitment experience for all candidates. It includes the ability to create event listings, registration pages, and pre-screening questionnaires as well as send SMS messages. In other words, it does all the stuff we've been talking about others doing since we started the show back in 2017 and before that.
Chad (40m 55s):
Wow. Yes.
Joel (40m 56s):
What we were talking about in bars and pubs around the world. Chad, wake up the rooster and jump on the booster. What do you make of this event?
Chad (41m 9s):
Avature called from 2004 and they want their talent community back. This is fucking ridiculous. But wait, there's more. Quote" The idea here is to make it easy for recruiters to create event listings, registration pages, and pre-screening questionnaires for specific job requisitions." End quote. Saying easy doesn't make it easy. Okay. Especially when you're piling on 2004-like tasks. These things, it's almost like, what did they do? Did they wake up Rumplestiltskin again for God's sakes and say, What would you like in your recruiting platform?
Chad (41m 51s):
They do mention though two-way messaging, but it makes me think that, you know, they're talking about walkie talkies.
Joel (41m 58s):
Yeah. So we have Recruit Rooster and now we have the recruiting booster. Don't confuse the two. Although they sound very similar
Chad (42m 5s):
They both suck.
Joel (42m 6s):
So this is a little bit of the anti iCIMS, you know, who builds stuff on Oracle's clusterfuck of a marketplace? It's big companies with a lot of resources to deal with the red tape and the bullshit that is building stuff on Oracle. You know, who doesn't build stuff on the Oracle marketplace? The other 80% of companies.
Chad (42m 25s):
Innovative companies.
Joel (42m 26s):
They are building on Greenhouse and iCIMS and companies that make it much easier to build shit on their platforms. It's also the ones doing cool shit that Oracle just decided to kind of build on 20 years, 10 years later. Because their customers are clamoring for this stuff. They have to have an answer. And the answer isn't, let's make the marketplace easier, more accessible to companies. It's, Hey, we have a ton of engineers, let's just build this shit ourselves and then give it to our customers. You know, hot garbage on a silver platter. They're gonna love it. I promise they're gonna love it.
g
Joel (43m 6s):
So, Chad, the odds that Oracle's Recruiting Booster is worth a shit, Zero. The odds this podcast is over and I'm gonna go trick or treating 100%.
Chad (43m 20s):
Fuck Yeah.
Joel (43m 21s):
We out.
Chad (43m 22s):
We out.
OUTRO (43m 23s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode.
OUTRO (44m 6s):
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.