Indeed Sucks
... and Swallows. This week, you get not one but two Indeed dipsy-doo, switcheroos.
First, they're moving away from the PPC model that helped make them a multi-billion dollar business.
Second, they don't really like how employers are engaging with candidates on their event product, so they just shut 'em down from pre-show communications.
Beyond Indeed, the boys are talkin'
a new unicorn CultureAmp,
LinkedIn limits,
a lipstick-on-a-pig acquisition,
Target telling Walmart to stick it, and, oh yeah, Buy-or-Sell where one of our fearless cohosts goes three Sell ratings in a row.
Enjoy this Sovren, Jobvite & JobAdx powered episode.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire.
INTRO (1s):
Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel (20s):
Oh yeah. Two guys who definitely need a lifetime moratorium on evictions. What's up boys and girls? It's the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost Joel, Delta, Delta Delta. Can I help you? Help you. Help you" Cheeseman.
Chad (35s):
This is Chad "honky tonk" Sowash.
Joel (38s):
On this week's show, Indeed flips the script. Target tells Walmart, hold my beer. And how about some good old buy or sell? Oh yeah. How's Nashville, Chad?
Chad (51s):
Nashville is fucking crazy awesome!
Joel (54s):
Crazy, insane?
Chad (56s):
It's crazy. Insane. I am going to have to go through detox after this. Toured the Grand Ole Opry, went to a Nashville sound AAA game, spent a ton of time on broad and we're going back there again tonight had dinner, cigars and drinks with a friend of the show and talent.com's very own Michael O'Dell. I mean, it's been a crazy week. Thank God. I get to carry Julie's suitcase when she's speaking at events. So I love it.
Joel (1m 32s):
Have you seen the He-Haw girls? That's my question.
Chad (1m 36s):
I think they're a little older now.
Joel (1m 38s):
Yeah, they they've had a bout with gravity, for sure. Since the 1970s. Well, let's get to some shout outs. Shall we? Shout out to Kylie Baker?
Chad (1m 49s):
Oh yeah.
Joel (1m 49s):
She's just a big fan of the show. I got nothing else to say, but she loves us and we love you Kylie. Shout out to you.
Chad (1m 56s):
Love you Kylie. Shout out to Symphony Talent's Transform. We had such a blast filming in Lansing and Detroit last week! Doing the live pod! Fire alarms going off! Anyway, if you miss Transform, I believe they still have content on demand at symphonytalent.com/transform. And if you want to get in for free, here we go. Code ST social that's, STS symphony talent and social. You're welcome.
Joel (2m 27s):
Yeah. And shout out to Natty light, which was the beer sponsor for the trip out to Detroit that week and shout out to Hong li our favorite porn star. He's got a job board now, everybody, which, which I wish he would have come to me and asked, asked my opinion of that because I have seen this movie before, but Hey, maybe, maybe this one will end differently. Hung Lee's job board. Check it out everybody.
Chad (2m 54s):
Oh my God. So when the offspring said, keep them separated on come out and play. They really meant it. I mean, it's reported by BBC news that they kicked their drummer, Pete Perata to the curb. They kept him separated when he refused to get the vaccine.
Joel (3m 13s):
God is the offspring still around? To me that was the new story of the news story.
Chad (3m 19s):
Wait and Fred Durst at Lollapalooza.
Joel (3m 22s):
Yeah. His look got him a lot of grief. I looked like he was on an HGTV home flipper show with the new look that he's got going there but the backwards hat is far gone. Shout out to Fleets, Twitter Fleets. Remember those?
Chad (3m 42s):
Oh yeah.
Joel (3m 43s):
They're gone. Twitter's answer to stories has been shelved. We're you know, we're still waiting on word as to whether or not LinkedIn is going to keep their stories, but so far so good. And shout out to LinkedIn, by the way.
Chad (3m 57s):
Yes.
Joel (3m 58s):
I don't know how we missed this. I guess, it had been rolling it out, they're putting limits on the number of connection requests that people can make. It's only a hundred per week now.
Chad (4m 11s):
Wow.
Joel (4m 11s):
So all of those connection requests from insurance agents and car salesman in my local hood have dried up. So shout out to LinkedIn for doing that. I'm sure there are a lot of recruiters using some automated tools that aren't real happy about it, but never fear, recruiters always find a way around.
Chad (4m 32s):
The best ones do. Shout out to John Graham, I've got my copy of Plantation Theory, started reading it in the bar here in Nashville. And I couldn't put that damn thing down. It's an easy read. It's I think like 150 pages or something like that. It is fricking amazing. So we'll probably have John on talk about the book.
Joel (4m 55s):
Shout Out to Whiskey Publication recently sent out the top markets, i.e. States for whiskey consumption. Care to guess the top five?
Chad (5m 7s):
They've got to all be in the Midwest and close to Kentucky because that's where it's at.
Joel (5m 11s):
Kentucky is number one, obviously. Indiana number two, West Virginia coming in at number three, North Carolina, number four, and number five, a little bit of a shocker for me, Missouri. Missouri rounds out the top five of whiskey consumption in the US.
Chad (5m 31s):
They're all pretty sad states other than maybe North Carolina. So I get that. I get that. I really get that shout out to Jerome and team over at Smart Recruiters who announced a week long shutdown to give employees a break. That's very European of you, Jerome. I fucking love it.
Joel (5m 48s):
Yeah. Yeah. Bumble did that a few weeks before Smart Recruiters announced it gave people a week off to, I don't know, recharge themselves. So this might be a trend. This might be the first part of a trend where everyone gets more time off. Who knows? Who doesn't need more time off are government agencies fighting the COVID vaccine and the Delta variant. And they are looking to TikTok to find a cure. So this is from the New York Times: the White House has teamed up with TikTok stars with some states paying local micro-influencers up to a thousand dollars to promote pro-vaccine campaigns.
Joel (6m 31s):
Those with 5,000 to a hundred thousand followers are the ones that government agencies are targeting to promote the vaccine. I don't know, just pay these dumb asses to get the shot instead I say, instead of giving it to spoiled rotten TikTok influencers, what say you Chad?
Chad (6m 48s):
I say just mandate the motherfucker and put it in everybody's fucking arm. I was how I did it in 20 years in the military, they would track your ass down. They would put it in your arm and you go off and you do your thing. Have a nice fucking day.
Joel (7m 3s):
And if you've already gotten the shot and you can get out and enjoy yourself, make sure you sign up for free shit from Chad and Cheese. If you haven't gone to Chadcheese.com/free, we got t-shirts by Emissary. We got beer by Adzuna and we got whiskey, speaking of whiskey from Sovren. So if you love free shit, Chadcheese.com/free.
Chad (7m 23s):
Love it I have had so much whiskey this week. Jesus Christ.
Joel (7m 27s):
That's good stuff.
Chad (7m 28s):
Check out our interview that we dropped this week with Jeff Wald, former CEO of Work Market, which was sold to ADP for a $130 mill baby. The guy is a fire hose of experience, opinion and F bombs, which made him perfect for the show. The episodes called The End of Jobs with Jeff Wald. Listen anywhere you get your podcast, or just jump over to Chadcheese.com and check it out.
Joel (7m 54s):
The guy knows his audience. Let's say that. Let's say that. A couple of birthday announcements, Neil Costa friend of the show and see CEO of Hire Clicks celebrates another year around the sun. Jessica Lee recruiter, extraordinary, and I guess cohost of the HR Famous podcast.
Chad (8m 15s):
She's the one who carries that show.
Joel (8m 17s):
Pretty much.
Chad (8m 17s):
What is she like 25 now for God's sakes?
Joel (8m 20s):
I don't know. She looks, she looks amazing. She looks amazing. And on the other side of looking amazing, Brendan Cruickshank celebrates a birthday. Jason Sidon, another industry, mucky muck and Peter Clayton who never met a mic he didn't like. Happy Birthday everybody.
Chad (8m 41s):
Well, and last but not least Jason Putnam over at Pandologic. I can't believe you forgot him. Remember the guy who sent us all that fucking whiskey?
Joel (8m 51s):
Yeah, it was his birthday?
Chad (8m 51s):
Yeah! Next week.
Joel (8m 52s):
My bad, my bad. Happy Birthday, man. Happy Birthday. And by the way, guys, we don't say this enough. If you like the show or you hate the show, leave a review, go to iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, wherever you listen to us, give us some love or hate. We don't really care. We just want that algorithm to show us some love and get us at the top of the search rankings. And with that
Chad (9m 18s):
Topics!
Joel (9m 21s):
Oh, that was good. You kind of scared me a little bit with that topics. Have you been drinking today?
Chad (9m 26s):
I have not yet, but my God, a guy should just give myself a headache? Oh,
Joel (9m 31s):
This shit Indeed is in the news. We got two stories from them this week, both from reputable sources. I'm guessing you want to start with the cost per apply start news.
Chad (9m 42s):
Yes. C-PASS.
Joel (9m 44s):
C-PASS.
Chad (9m 44s):
Isn't that the thing that you put on when you sleep at night? I don't understand.
Joel (9m 49s):
That's a C-PAP I believe I just use a breath right strip. It works pretty well for me. You get an invisible color, no one even knows you're wearing.
Chad (10m 1s):
Oh my God. Yeah. So apparently Indeed is the had to make some adjustments with all the cookies that are being stripped out of Chrome browsers and Google and just all over the place. I mean, everybody's saying, look, this tracking thing, not good privacy, right? Not good. So they're transitioning from CPC cost per click to this new cost per apply start. They're starting to transition from that. They have their Indeed IQ platform, which is going away. It's actually going to be fully engulfed into their new quote unquote "hiring platform." So I believe this means candidates must, must, must register to apply even for jobs that are going direct to the applicant tracking system.
Joel (10m 50s):
Interesting. So IQ is going away?
Chad (10m 53s):
Yeah. It's just going to be absorbed into the actual platform itself.
Joel (10m 57s):
What's our buddy, Sir. Richard gonna do without IQ there? Geez. He might have to
Chad (11m 2s):
Continue traveling the world and doing what he was
Joel (11m 4s):
Selling. He might have to sell one of his Maserati's. I don't know. That's I'm worried. I'm worried about him. So, so what is cost per apply start? So this is the website, an apply start is when a job seeker clicks on the apply on company site, but on the job description page. This signals that the job seeker is starting to apply to that job as clicking on that button will take them to the application process. So it's really convenient to blame it on cookies.
Chad (11m 35s):
Yes.
Joel (11m 36s):
Call me a conspiracy theorist. But I think it's a little bit about programmatic and cost per click and that whole game being commoditized. And if Google, I mean, not Google. Well, we'll get to Google in a second. If Indeed is having a hard time having discussions with why they're charging so much per click, because I'm getting a lot less per click on programmatic solutions, then you got to rethink what the product is. And the new product sort of gets away from CPC and you don't have to have that discussion because you are taking a step towards cost per application, right? Which is the holy grail, for our cost per hire, sorry, cost per hire.
Joel (12m 19s):
We're taking another step towards that. So to me, it's a little bit of smoke and mirrors. You love the, you love the mote analogy. But to me, this is a lot of like uncomfortable conversations about cost per click and why Indeed is so high. And how do we get away from that?
Chad (12m 36s):
Well, and they've spent a decade educating the market on cost per click, and now out of nowhere, they flip over into C-PASS it. It's an interesting flip, right? You would have thought they might've been able to kind of like transition a little bit differently maybe, but I think overall, and again, this is from talking to many employers from talking to publishers, from talking to individuals actually inside of Indeed. Not, not once, did I get a clear vision of what this thing fucking was? And in some of the publishers, I threw it out to them to ask them what their response was on it?
Chad (13m 17s):
They had no clue this was going on. So, you know, it's interesting. And again, more I got to say, this is more Indeed. Like it is more a Trojan horse. So I've got to give them that. But you know, this flies in the face of Google for Jobs, new guidelines, I feel enforcing an apply on Indeed or registration on Indeed. And then hoping that the zap info, you know, integration actually works to the applicant tracking system where they can send the data over there and not have that candidate apply again. So I would say for the most part, especially right out of the gate candidates are going to have to apply twice, which means Google.
Chad (13m 58s):
They're not playing with Google anyway. Right? So overall, they're just, this is a big middle finger to Google. This is a big fuck you to employers and saying, Hey look, all the money that you're spending on us is going to build our product even bigger. And when you come back for renewal next year, it's going to be twice as much probably.
Joel (14m 20s):
Yeah. Which they'll be able to justify because they'll have that many more resumes in their database because they're forcing everyone to basically become a member of Indeed by doing this.
Chad (14m 29s):
This is job board 101.
Joel (14m 31s):
Yeah. It's sort of back to the future on a lot of this stuff. And, and you know, if the paper, if the per click thing on the sort of downstream is hard to communicate or strategize? Upstream is even more difficult because you can't really, you can't really start charging per application the ATS because nobody, I mean, nobody, I mean, filling out the ATS is a pain in the ass so they're losing money if they have a cost per application, because they have to put their code on your site or on ATS sites that doesn't work for them and then the hire thing is that much more of an issue? So this, this cost per app Apply Start is really the only thing that they could do strategically, but it's pretty fucked up.
Chad (15m 20s):
It is pretty fucked up. Again Indeed is rewriting the rules. Good for them. They're creating an ecosystem that you have to play in, not to mention, don't forget about the interviewing system. They're just going to have to make all of this, something that is pretty much a mandatory process to use Indeed. And if you want to use us, this is what you have to do.
Joel (15m 41s):
The elephant in the room for a lot of people is click fraud. You know, click fraud tools are generally, if not always a third party solution, that's tracking clicks and policing. You know what you're charging me for a click or what you're telling me, the number of clicks is versus what my tool, my click fraud tool is telling me. You have a way to police the pay-per-click solutions to say, no, my solution says, it's this you're telling me this it's way off. If Indeed is the judge and jury of where the clicks happen. There's no third party they're going to let on their site to track clicks on the apply process.
Chad (16m 20s):
No need.
Joel (16m 21s):
I mean, they can kind of make up whatever fucking number they want and.
Chad (16m 25s):
It's all black box.
Joel (16m 26s):
Yeah. And good luck auditing them and trying to figure out if that click number is right, because they can always say, Hey, the clicks happened. They just didn't fill out your app, they just didn't finish your application process, so it's your fault because your shit sucks. While they can, you know, I'm not accusing them of this, but it's going to be really hard to police how much Indeed is charging you in this new system, because there's no, there's no policing the police on this one.
Chad (16m 51s):
It has to be something employers are aware of, period. Right? Yeah. If it's a black box scenario, it's gotta be something that you're aware of. So we'll see, I'm excited to hear what publishers have to say. Employers already hate Indeed as it is. I don't know how many employers that I spoke to about this said, I can't fucking wait until Google for Jobs starts to monetize so that we can plunk our money over there instead of this shitshow.
Joel (17m 22s):
Yeah. Yeah. And how many publishers would love to be able to put in Google content as opposed to Indeed content? All right. More, more Indeed we'll watch this carefully. So some more Indeed shit. This is from a reputable source, who will be un-named because that's how they roll, but very reputable. So he commented us on LinkedIn quote "in a virtually unheard of move, for anyone other than Indeed, they found yet another way to fuck over employers. In the not so distant future, they are no longer going to be providing candidate RSVP info prior to events, being virtual job fairs on their platform.
Joel (18m 3s):
Employers will now only get access to this information after the event takes place. Employers will no longer have the ability just to do their own outreach to candidates prior to the events on the Indeed platform. They are hiding behind it's what's best for job seekers once again." I just, I don't understand why they would stop communication prior to events happening.
Chad (18m 27s):
I have no clue. I have no clue. I'm sure there are fringe instances where individuals who were signing up for job fairs are getting spammed, right? I'm sure that is something that could happen, but that's something they can police and that's something they should police. They shouldn't do something broad base like this, right? You get somebody in your platform. Who's using the platform. If they're a bad actor, you kick them out of the fucking platform. You don't screw the entire platform up. You don't make it harder for a client, who is a good actor and trying to use the platform in which it was made to try to prep those candidates for possible interviews, or what have you, or at least do some research on the individuals who are coming.
Chad (19m 15s):
So I think this is definitely a dumb move by Indeed, but Indeed loves to make these types of moves when they have some fringe experiences they can point to and just make it easier on themselves, as opposed to doing what they should be doing and policing their goddamn platform.
Joel (19m 34s):
It's what's best for job seekers, Chad. That's what's best for job seekers. All right, let's get to Culture Amp.
Chad (19m 42s):
Hello.
Joel (19m 42s):
Unicorn alert everybody. Culture Amp announced it has raised a hundred million in series F funding. The round bumps the company's valuation to $1.5 billion, more than double what it was after the company's series E round in 2019. Starting out as a survey platform, Culture Amp has grown to encompass analytics for managers like turnover, prediction, and team goal tracking. It also has a sizable online community where users connect and book workshops, including ones run by diversity equity and inclusion experts. Founder and CEO Didier Elzinga said quote "I think for a long time, the HR space and HR tech space have been viewed as not that interesting or important.
Joel (20m 30s):
But what we see now is that people are the most important thing that most companies have," end quote.` The company launched in Australia in 2009, and about two thirds of its revenue come from the US, the new funding will allow it to target growth in Europe. Hello, Chad. Another unicorn, are you buying this one?
Chad (20m 49s):
Yeah. I mean, we're talking about they're already service 4,000 organizations with a total of 25 million employees. And this is an area HR has never done well, employee engagement, performance management, employee development, usually HR not great in those areas, or at least they're not consistently great. So getting the pulse of your organization through surveys, and then having a system grind on the data and then move toward taking action in one platform is an easy sell for most HR types. I'm buying this just because I know there's nobody in my organization that can do this shit, and we suck at it now so I need for lack of better, better terms.
Chad (21m 34s):
I need a fucking silver bullet to throw in there.
Joel (21m 37s):
Yeah. And I love that unlike someone like Remote, these guys have been around for over a decade, starting with a fairly simple concept. A series E round is progressive amount of funding. I think timing wise, you know, I mentioned in the summary there that they've doubled basically their valuation since 2019. And that's a lot of the work-from-home movement and COVID and where the world is going. And this is just another of a work-from-home moonshot that we talk about on a regular basis. A couple of other competitors that they have with Lattice, Glint and Qualtrics are also getting a lot of attention. But look, as long as workers are at home, companies are going to be challenged to engage workers.
Joel (22m 22s):
I love the sort of predicting turnover, product that they have as well. People are going to want to try to predict the future, look around corners, monitor their employees as best they can. And Culture Amp obviously is at the cutting edge of that movement. And I think this new funding only proves that it's where you want to be, man. Yeah. work-from-home.
Chad (22m 45s):
I truly don't think work-from-home has a lot. I think it has a lot to do with the funding, no question. The market has a lot to do with the funding, but employee engagement for performance management and employee development has always been shit. Whether we've been in the office or not. So this makes it easier for an HR professional to say, Hey, look, we never did this well, and we're doing it even worse now. Right? So I get that. And here's the money quote, "Culture Amp saw more employers addressing DEI in surveys" end quote, DEI babies. It's the magic word. And that's where the cash is flowing right now.
Joel (23m 25s):
Yeah. Yeah. So they a double whammy, they got to work-from-home and they've got DEI, all they need is virtual reality now to really, really hit it hit out of the park baby. Augmented reality. Yeah. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk more. We'll talk some acquisitions and do a little buy or sell. So Instawork, not to be confused with Instacart, which brings my Doritos every Saturday, by the way. Talent platform Instawork announced this week, it has acquired Drafted. Network recruiting platform that helps businesses hire by leveraging referrals our favorite.
Joel (24m 6s):
The acquisition will enable Instawork, to help grow its pool of skilled hourly professionals. Terms of the deal were not disclosed that's always a red flag, but anyway, the deal follows an announcement last month that Instawork raise 60 million in series C bringing total funding for them at a `hundred million. The drafted platform will support as to work for recruiting and rewards program, and also provide tracking and management tools to streamline and drive efficiencies within the referral and hiring process. Your thoughts?
Chad (24m 38s):
Instawork is a talent marketplace platform. Let's be Frank here, kids, every fucking staffing organization in the world should already have one of these, but they don't. So I love these platforms because they can catapult staffing and RPO further, faster while providing better margins. Now Drafted on the other hand is a referral platform. And when I dug into it, I could only think of one thing. This is the ugly fat guy that landed the hot chick. Right. You know what I'm talking about, right?
Joel (25m 11s):
Why are you looking at me when you say that?
Chad (25m 14s):
I'm not looking at anybody. Why are they together? I mean, is she having a crisis of confidence or something? I just don't Instawork seems sexy. It seems something that, you know, staffing RPO needs now, the referral side. And then you take a look at the URL, explore.drafted.us. I mean, that's even ugly for fuck's sake.
Joel (25m 38s):
You stole my thunder on the domain. Dot.us, you don't see those very often. So the keyword there is terms not disclosed. And also as part of the news, the drafted team will be all joining Instawork. Drafted will no longer be taking new clients. So, you know, part of it is a little bit of tech, part of it is probably the price, probably, part of is probably just we can add a referral? we can kind of check that off and bring house. I mean, Instawork seems to be hitting it on all cylinders. I mean, founded in 2016, targeted sectors include food and beverage, hospitality, retail, and warehouse logistics. They're in more than 25 markets in the US and growing.
Joel (26m 21s):
So yeah, it's, it's pretty sexy. Drafted just feels like, you know, a little can on the road, they decided to pick up and put in their briefcase.
Chad (26m 30s):
Instawork is the hot chick and Drafted is the fat guy and you're wondering why are they together? This makes no, fuckin sense.
Joel (26m 37s):
Yeah. By the way, cause I play in this space a little bit. So Drafted has a layoff list.
Chad (26m 45s):
Layoffs?
Joel (26m 46s):
That's somewhat semi-popular. They claim 7,000 subscribers to this list where they send out rumors and news about companies going through layoffs. I'll be curious to see what happens to the layoff list as they get sucked in and consumed by Instawork.
Chad (27m 4s):
Hey, Instawork, you can do better. Call me.
Joel (27m 9s):
Speaking of doing better, how about a little buy or sell? Which I don't know. We haven't, I haven't really done in a while. Have we?
Chad (27m 17s):
Yes.
Joel (27m 20s):
Okay. All right. First up is Talview. Oh, founded in 2017, Palo Alto based Talview has raised 15 million in series B funding recently, totaling 21 million. That's according to Crunchbase. Funding will accelerate development of the company's video AI platform to enable global 1000 companies to make smarter bias-free talent decisions. TalentView says it's had a strong year tripling its customer base growing revenue more than twice, and launching a remote and live proctoring solution for education and certification institutions. TalentView, Chad buy or sell?