If you thought last week's show was a blockbuster, wait until you get a load of this week's episode. Here's a taste:
CareerBuilder has a new CEO,
PandoLogic has been acquired
and SmartRecruiters is a unicorn.
Want more?
How about a battle between Kroger and Walmart for who's the bigger douchebag? Still not enough? How about porn stars at conservative Christian conferences for teens.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
INTRO (1s):
Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel (22s):
Oh yeah. Some call Jeff Bezos a space cowboy but Chad calls him the gangster of love. What's up boys and girls at your favorite podcast, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel, "midnight toker" Cheeseman.
Chad (39s):
And this is Chad "is this really going to be the worst Olympics?" Sowash.
Joel (43s):
On this week's show Smart Recruiters goes full on unicorn, Pandologic tells Appcast hold my beer and porn stars at Kroger. No, wait that that's two different stories. Dammit. Where are my notes?
Chad (1m 1s):
First and foremost, I've got to say your, your Canadian soccer team took a loss against the US.
Joel (1m 7s):
My Canadian soccer team?
Chad (1m 8s):
Yeah. Why are you glad to be US now, is Christina allowing you to actually?
Joel (1m 13s):
IDK, Let me check the fridge for my nuts. See where they are.
Chad (1m 19s):
It's the gold cup baby. The US is playing some pretty good, pretty good soccer right now. Or football for our European list ball. We have a running conversation going in this household of what we're or might be the worst Olympics. And we're starting to, I've got my top three, but I want to throw it out to you first. I want to see what Olympics do you think were the worst, top three, including Tokyo.
Joel (1m 49s):
All right. So top three is a little tough. I mean the one that stands out in my mind is 1980. I was a wee lad at the time, but I very clearly remember my father who was a coach by the way, being really upset because we didn't go to the 1980 Olympics due to Russia's involvement with Afghanistan. We decided to politically make a statement and bow out of that Olympics for the summer, I believe it was. So that was one, I think is number one. The other number two that would, I guess be semi bad would be, I guess, Berlin, when the Nazis put on the games, although Jesse Owens tearing it up with certainly a highlight for Olympic history.
Joel (2m 36s):
Other than that, I'm not really an officiant auto on Olympic history. Certainly I'll watch it and enjoy it, but I'm not your guy for like the top three worst Olympics of all time.
Chad (2m 47s):
Well, I'll give you a pass. I mean, this is you didn't this wasn't homework. So don't, don't worry about it. But I got to say that the worst Olympics has to be in Munich in 1972, the Munich massacre, and then 1996 in Atlanta, the bombing, that was pretty bad. And then 2021 in Tokyo, we are in the middle of a resurgence of a pandemic and this is all happening. I get Moscow, but my formula is life over sports. You know what the fuck are we thinking? I get the Olympics is big and we really want to be back and we want everything to be right.
Chad (3m 32s):
But yeah, it's just not happening guys.
Joel (3m 34s):
Yeah. There's a, I think a story in the Wall Street Journal about how this is going to be a $3 billion just disaster for Tokyo, which obviously isn't fun. So do you think it's sort of an event past its prime that it's time to move on from the Olympics?
Chad (3m 51s):
I think it's time to move on from the Olympics. I think it's what we should do is recognize that we are in the resurgence of a pandemic or right in the, still in the middle of a pandemic per se. We need to be smarter about this. I mean, there's no reason we couldn't push this off for another year and make it happen in a much safer, just safer way. It just, it makes no sense whatsoever. Plus you have all these athletes who aren't going to participate because they caught COVID or what have you, I mean, it's just, it doesn't feel right to be doing this.
Joel (4m 25s):
Yeah. So you're not going to watch is what you're saying.
Chad (4m 28s):
I'll probably watch much less.
Joel (4m 30s):
Yeah. So there was, there was a time with, you know, when there were three networks and the Olympics were a huge, huge deal, and everybody pretty much watched all of it. It's becoming much harder to cut through the clutter. And unless you're Michael Phelps, you know, racking up gold metals or Hussein Bolt, you know, with fire under your feet, unless you're really blowing it up, it's sort of a niche audience, I feel like, as opposed to when we grew up, when everybody was hanging on everything that was going on at the Olympics.
Chad (4m 58s):
There's less content back then.
Joel (4m 60s):
There was.
Chad (5m 0s):
Less options, less choices. So everybody watched the Olympics.
Joel (5m 4s):
Yeah. And now I feel like, so one of the stories that, stuck out with me was the Netherlands, I think recently getting fined for not wearing bikinis. Like how is it a rule that they have to wear a bikini and a sporting event? Like that seems really archaic to me as well.
Chad (5m 20s):
I believe it was Norway and go figure the sexualization of athletes. You get all these individuals who work their asses off to make sure that they are lean trim. They are ready. And the next thing you know, the IOC is like, yeah, put on this hot bikini. Oh, not the guys. Yeah. The guys don't have to do this, but yeah. You have to put on these bikini pants. Yeah. And those look hot, we want you to do that. It's like, what the fuck are you thinking?
Joel (5m 47s):
It's not like you remember the shark suits from years back where people were wore full on body suits that were like shark skin in the pool. Yeah. I could see banning those, but to go from bikini shorts to just like boxer shorts or boxer briefs is a little bit crazy to me.
Chad (6m 3s):
Yes. Very Much. So. Very much so big shout out as you, you through Bezos into the intro, big shout out to Steve Rothberg for posting on social media, that Jeff Bezos isn't Jewish, but his rocket surely is, yes. Let me see what you did there.
Joel (6m 22s):
I'm going to do a little flip on the billionaires in space a little bit. Last, last week I got sorta har I got sort of negative on the whole billionaires in space, but you know what? I don't necessarily want to be, you know, the, the European in the 15th century saying like, why the hell are you going out in that boat? Like, you're going to die. You're not going to see anything. It's going to be disaster. Like, I don't want to be a negative, totally negative about this. Maybe traveling into space will lead to really, really good things. So I want to pull back my negativity on a billionaires going into space, at least for this week.
Chad (6m 56s):
Well, I'm going to double down. There's no reason again, what they're doing is they're creating this new amusement park, right? That's really, it's an amusement park ride that costs a shit ton of cash that just, you know, millionaires and billionaires are going to be able to enjoy those monies, obviously could be going toward things that we need to fix here. And I mean, if Jeff Bezos and Amazon was, not to mention Blue Origin, actually didn't get federal government assistance. I mean, actually he received welfare from the federal government, Jeff Bezos.
Chad (7m 38s):
There's so many layers of irony here. And hypocrisy I can't get on board with it. I just can't do it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess time will tell. And unfortunately we'll probably be gone by the time we figure out whether it was worth it or not. To be able to come down off this high, this Bezos high. I want to give a shout out to McCormick, you know, the, the spice company.
Joel (7m 59s):
Sure.
Chad (7m 60s):
They posted a director of taco relations job. And this is genius. As the director of taco relations, you will be in McCormick's resident consulting, taco expert. You will be our official eyes and ears for all things taco, you'll have the opportunity to work with the McCormick kitchens team to "team to develop innovative and delish taco recipes, travel across the country in search of the latest taco trends, dialogue with other like-minded taco connoisseurs across social media."
Joel (8m 35s):
Any word on what automated tool they're using to handle the flood of responses to this job posting, cause they're gonna need one.
Chad (8m 43s):
What they should have used was TikTok. And here's why you have to submit a creative video, showcasing your personality and passion for tacos and why you should be the very first ever director of taco relations. They should have used TikTok and TikTok resumes. This is a part-time limited term engagement lasting up to four months. You're going to be an independent contractor, but I got to say, I saw Torrin Ellis' video yesterday. It is hilarious and amazing at the same time.
Joel (9m 23s):
He applied officially for this position.
Chad (9m 24s):
He officially applied for this position.
Joel (9m 28s):
Well, speaking of TikTok, I have a shout out for them as well. I know we give them a hard time or at least I do with the whole job employment ambition, but a new new research came out really favorable to them for their advertising. So TikTok ads drive higher responses, intent and engagement than promotions on other social media. This is according to a study from TikTok, with neuro insight, which analyzed the neuro responses. That sounds a little scary, a 57 people. That's not a real big, a big universe, but anyway, we'll go with it. 57 people ages 18 to 35. The research also found that TikTok top view and in feed ads had significantly higher memorability than TV spots and digital video.
Joel (10m 13s):
So a small segment, but Hey, TikTok ads seem to work.
Chad (10m 17s):
No, they do work, but they can't work as resumes for all the reasons why we talked about before. It's just not practical, right? I do want to say one thing that will work. I believe a LinkedIn poll that just closed today had over 3,200 respondents, supporting a four day workweek at 73%.
Joel (10m 43s):
And this was your poll or someone else's?
Chad (10m 45s):
Somebody else's poll that I participated in, but I thought it was a great poll. And I thought, you know, we're talking about, we just talked about the four day work week in Iceland, where they're looking to institute a four day work week. Microsoft had awesome gains when they did their pilot in Japan. And obviously through polling, we're seeing that, you know, yeah, people can do this.
Joel (11m 8s):
I'm shocked! I'm floored that a majority of people would prefer a four day work week. That is shocking to me. What a surprise!
Chad (11m 15s):
On LinkedIn many of those people are managers. And many of those people are entrepreneurs, right so who knows?
Joel (11m 24s):
Shout out to a podcast, I listened to recently the podcast is called Odd Lots. I think it's a Bloomberg podcast. Anyway, checkout an interview they did recently with Omni hotel. It's all about employment, how difficult it is for Omni hotel to find people, to keep people. It's a really interesting sort of inside baseball commentary by Omni about just how challenging it is to keep workers and get workers. And some of the ideas, one of the ideas I thought is worth mentioning. Some of the things that employers or companies and particularly in the hospitality space are looking at is can they, can they have fewer cleaning rooms? All right, that's a time intensive, you know, challenging job.
Joel (12m 7s):
They're looking at ways of saying like, Hey, if, if you opt out of the room cleaning, which a lot of people probably would, if there were incentives, would you opt out of housekeeping if you got two free drink tickets, or if you got 50% off your dinner at the bar or whatever. So companies are looking at unique ways to sort of fix some of the challenges with employment. And it's a really good, a really good listen. So again, that's Odd Lots. And it's interview with Omni hotel.
Chad (12m 36s):
It's very nice. I'm going to jump into birthdays. Are you ready for birthdays?
Joel (12m 40s):
Sure.
Chad (12m 40s):
Happy birthday to David "Steven Seagal" Bernstein over at the JobSync and also thanks to his boss, Alex, for sharing that David is turning 30 for the 20th time. So appreciate it. Happy Birthday and there's nobody who rocks a pony tail in our industry.
Joel (12m 59s):
You know, his birthday cake was under siege. Get it? See what I did there?
Chad (13m 5s):
There's no male who rocks a ponytail like David does, so Happy Birthday David!
Joel (13m 11s):
Quite a couple of other birthdays that I'll I'll note our buddy George LaRoc out with your cock out LaRoc celebrates a birthday. Sir Richard Collins, formerly of Click IQ and now at Indeed celebrates a birthday. Roy Mauer, our buddy from Sherm, celebrating a birthday and Brian Shanie one of our fans over at Indeed for sure celebrates a birthday this week as well. Happy Birthday!
Chad (13m 37s):
Happy Birthday!
Joel (13m 38s):
By the way. If, if it's not your birthday, but you still want goodies coming to you in the mail, you got to go to Chadcheese.com/free. We just had a beer tasting with Barb Francillo out in Arizona.
Chad (13m 51s):
Yup.
Joel (13m 52s):
Very nice woman. She's got very good fashion sense. She was wearing a Chad and Cheese t-shirt, which you can also get chadcheese.com. T-shirt sponsored by Emissary, beer drops sponsored by at Zoona. And of course, whiskey sponsored by our buddies at Sovren.
Chad (14m 10s):
Topics!
Joel (14m 12s):
All right. This one's hot!
Chad (14m 14s):
Wait stop, stop, stop. I have breaking news! CareerBuilder names, Sue Arthur, as CEO of CareerBuilder, go figure. So Irina got the boot, kids.
Joel (14m 29s):
Did this just come across your desk?
Chad (14m 31s):
All right. This is hot news for me too. I came, this actually just dropped a little bit earlier this morning and it looks like yes, new CEO, Susan Arthur, we're going to have to dig into Susan. Susan, we wish you good luck in trying to steer this dumpster fire we know as CareerBuilder.
Joel (14m 52s):
Remember I said, when they got acquired that they'd be thrown into Yahoo and AOL and all those news properties. This is part of that move. I'm telling you, this is part of the rebirth of CareerBuilder. Just maybe just maybe Irina getting canned is only more shocking than four week work weeks getting a majority of people a favor, I think.
Chad (15m 14s):
More news earlier this morning, Pando was acquired by Veritone?
Joel (15m 19s):
Yes. Now this one I know about, the first one he dropped on me and I might have to research that name. Research that name while I'm talking and see if we would find anything about Sue. Okay. So this one's hot off the press is to what? A busy day we have kids. Okay. Veritone buys Pandologic for 150 million in a cash and stock deal. Veritone which trades on the NASDAQ under ticker symbol, V-E-R-I announced it, his signed a definitive agreement to acquire Chad and Cheese sponsor, Pandologic provider of programmatic ad solutions and recent acquire of chat bot Wade and Wendy, which listeners will remember. Price tag is 150 million consisting of up front payments of $50 million in cash and 35 million in Veritone stock.
Joel (16m 3s):
The remaining 65 million in cash and stock is payable based in earnouts tied to financial performance in fiscal '21 and '22. The said deal is valued at three, about three times, Pandologic expected 21 gap revenues. The stock is up almost 10% on the news. So Chad, are you ready to add Veritone to your Robinhood account? This
Chad (16m 27s):
Is very interesting and out of left field and I think we should get used to this. I think we should get used to more companies outside our space, starting to acquire and move into this space. Veritone provides structure to unstructured video and audio through the use of AI. Iit's interesting because we always talk about like with TikTok, how do you, how do you contextualize something that is video or audio, unless you transcribe it, you consume it and then use that data to contextualize it. It seems as if Veritone is doing that and with all of the video and audio that we have available to us, let's just say YouTube alone, to be able to consume and structure that data to make sense of it is, is pretty fucking powerful.
Chad (17m 20s):
But I think we should start looking for more outsiders becoming insiders core platforms need to start taking a look at this space right now because they need to buy or face new competitions from outsiders looking to disrupt this space. I'm big on it. I think, it's pretty cool. I think Veritone has been around since 2017 or something like that. They're a fairly young company.
Joel (17m 48s):
Yeah. It's much easier for us to comment when, you know, StepStone buys Appcast than it is Veritone buying Pando logic. In fact, probably most, most of what I know about Veritone is what you just read to me in this podcast now. So what, so, what I did research is that Veritone is a bit of apparently a poor man's Palentier, which has had a pretty big year after going public, I think late last year. Veritone has a market capital cap of around 600 million, which means this is a pretty big deal for them. And it makes sense why they would sort of put a lot of weight on the earn-outs based on performance. Most analysts` that I read for the story are pretty negative on Veritone.
Joel (18m 32s):
It's had a pretty big drop from, I think, around $40 a share to right around 20 now. And again, I mentioned it's it's 10% on the day. So the market for the most part, at least likes this news and this move. I also think commenting on sort of the dollar amount is interesting listeners, remember StepStone bought a majority stake in Appcast, which most would agree is the Apex predator in the programmatic space. This was in 2019 for $79 million, although it's been sort of disputed on how much Foreman and got out of that deal, and whatnot, but so good for Terry Baker and his team for, in my opinion, landing a premium for the company and the product. I think now it's going to be really interesting to see what happens to a lot of the players in programmatic, like Recruitology and JobAdX who are both sponsors of our show.
Joel (19m 21s):
You got, you got VONQ and a lot of others, it's a pretty limited number of people. So to me, like the price has been set. Now, let's see if we have some buyers.
Chad (19m 31s):
And this is going to force the hands of the iCIMS of the world, who have no core programmatic, what are they going to do? Are they going to acquire? They're going to partner. I mean, this is going to force them to take a look at what's in the market, because as these technologies start to get gobbled up, there's going to be much less of an opportunity for them to provide a distribution, programmatic distribution, performance-based distribution to their clients inside their ecosystem.
Joel (20m 1s):
Yeah. Do they wait to do that until after going public? So in other words, get money from public entities and then go by these folks and say, well, see, they were valued this much on the market. So now our market cap goes up because of that acquisition. I think they'll probably look to do that as part of an add on after going IPO, but we'll see?
Chad (20m 21s):
Pando has, they've been in the market for a very long time. They were a real match. And then obviously switched over when branded to Pando of the acquisition of Wade and Wendy, I think helps this deal dramatically from the standpoint of more streams of data to feed the beast. It's all about, at this point, we have to start looking at signal liquidity who can gather signals faster, make sense of those signals and use them to deliver relevant content, data actions. And it goes further than that. So from looking at Veritone and what they're trying to do, again, consume content that hasn't been consumed before it in a way that it's never been consumed and then provide signal to it, I think is amazing.
Joel (21m 10s):
Yep. Well, moving on to a little bit of more money in a bigger story, big story until this one came on, our buddies at Smart Recruiters are on unicorn alert everybody, the one platform to rule them all rages on popular ATS or whatever we're calling the one-stop shop recruitment solutions these days, Smart Recruiters announced new funding this week raising 110 million in series E at a $1.5 billion valuation led by Silver Lake Waterman. Total funding is $205 million according to the company. Founder and CEO and friend of the show Jerome Ternynck told TechCrunch, quote, "recruiting is coming out of the administrative function and into value-add and sales and marketing"
Joel (21m 55s):
end quote. In the last 12 months, the company added 200 plus Enterprise customers, grew revenue 50%, and experienced 70% bookings growth. Can you say IPO? Chad, your take.
Chad (22m 9s):
Question is who do they buy with this, right? You know, they bought Job Powell not too long ago. What do they, buy to add into the ecosystem?
Joel (22m 22s):
perhaps programmatic?
Chad (22m 23s):
Don't know, but that's the question because as you start to round out and become incredibly integration-focused with partners, but also know that there are huge markets, much like a programmatic advertising, what do you do? You know, where do you go? That's the hard part. And they are seeing dramatic growth. I think Smart Recruiter and we're going to talk about Greenhouse here in a few minutes I think these are some of the new guard in the applicant tracking system game. They are faster, they're much more nimble. And I think to be quite Frank, they they're doing a damn good job. It's awesome to see this.
Joel (23m 4s):
Yeah. You know, I first met Jerome, I think just when they launched and he came up to me and said like, yeah, we're launching an app, a totally free ATS. I said, well, good luck with that one. It has turned out pretty well for them as they've evolved to me this. Yeah. I just think I'm ready for the IPO market arena. I think iCIMS is probably going to go first and then you're going to see Jobvite, Smart Recruiters, maybe Greenhouse all hit the public markets and then it's game on. We'll have a lot of fun shit to talk about.
Chad (23m 39s):
Yeah. It's a Jobvite's turn to buy something next.
Joel (23m 44s):
We'll be watching and reporting on it. Let's take a quick break. That was a lot to digest for our listeners. Well, you mentioned Greenhouse. So yeah, they're in the news Greenhouse this week introduced job ad market, a new functionality that offers customers instant access to thousands of global job boards from within Greenhouse. users save time while sourcing and receive data-driven recommendations to find high quality candidates across large and niche, job boards, John Strauss, president, and co-founder at Greenhouse said in a release quote "data-driven job advertising," is that a nicer way of saying programmatic? "Is an important part of a company sourcing strategy when searching for high performance who have a specialized skill set"
Joel (24m 29s):
end quote, what exactly is going on at Greenhouse Chad?
Chad (24m 33s):
In the press release, here's a quote "using the Greenhouse job ad market, recruiting teams are provided recommendations that help identify the best source for candidates" end quote. So, first off, when I read this, I was like, there's no way Greenhouse built this from the inside out. All of the benefits that they cite are really powerful. And it takes a lot of data and a lot of time and they haven't acquired a programmatic vendor or anything like that. So then, I went over to LinkedIn and Garrett Starr who's the VP of partnerships at Greenhouse posted on LinkedIn about this major announcement. In this post, he thanks a bunch of people from the Greenhouse team for making this possible.
Chad (25m 18s):
And the last two names in that post, one of them was a founder and the other director of partnerships at Vonq. So this is obviously a white labeled Vonq solution. You and I months ago talked about Vonq in one of their press releases saying that they want to use some of the capital that they received to come across the pond. Guess what kids they snuck up on you. Here they are.
Joel (25m 46s):
Yup. Yup. So yeah, to me, this is a little bit like a Spotify versus Apple <usic for HR. Spotify may be a superior music service just like Appcast or Pando, or others might be superior in terms of programmatic, but you know what, Apple Music isn't that bad and the functionality kind of works better than better with my iPhone. And Siri knows my favorite playlist, so I'll go with that one. So for, for users that don't know the brands that are in the marketplace, it's going to be really easy and native to them to post a job or do things within Greenhouse and go, oh, Greenhouse has another feature like, yeah, I'm going to do that, I'll check that box.
Joel (26m 27s):
And they can funnel all of those users into their product, which they already know is an in demand product based on the marketplace and what people want.
Chad (26m 37s):
Right.
Joel (26m 37s):
So if I'm in the app store and I'm a competitor now two Greenhouses white label programmatic or whatever, our distribution is, you know, I don't know how I feel about that. It places a bigger importance on my brand and making sure, that people like the brand and we'll bypass the Greenhouse product to use my products. So that's going to be an interesting unfolding as I, as I look the next move, I think that will be interesting is do Greenhouse and others bundle all of these quote unquote native services to really get an advantage. So in other words, can you buy distribution, programmatic, chat bot, whatever that's all Greenhouse branded and save money because they're bundling all of that together.
Joel (27m 21s):
And then that really puts the pain on the single providers, for that. So also Greenhouse gets all the revenue. I'm sure that's, I assume they get the revenue versus the companies in the marketplace where there's actually no revenue share as far as I understand. So that's, to me where it gets really interesting of how the marketplace companies feel about this move, do they, are they really able to funnel a big amount of customers and to their native solution? And do they bundle these services to really put pressure on vendors? Our listeners need to understand first that this is a, and this is a big data point that hiring companies will spend more on recruitment marketing in a year than they do on actual tech, like an applicant tracking system or a CRM.
Joel (28m 8s):
So that's point number one, point number two, for the most part, the ATS and the CRM are not getting any cut on that big revenue stream, right? This could perspectively be a cut on that revenue stream. So Greenhouse isn't getting the money, right? It's going through a white label, although they're getting a slice of it. This makes it much easier. As we talk about Pando getting sucked out of the market, it makes it much easier for the iCIMS of the world, for the Smart Recruiters, for the Jobvites to actually take a look at a white labeled solution like this and say, okay, first and foremost, I don't want to work with all those fucking publishers.
Chad (28m 48s):
That is a nightmare. The maintenance on just keeping all those job boards, job sites, performance, all that shit is a nightmare. I wouldn't want to fuck with that at all. So why not partner outsource white label, all of that, and still get a piece of the revenue. I think overall Vonq becomes the rails in this scenario, the distribution operating system for the applicant tracking systems and the CRMs in the market. And if they, if they put a few more of these together, you can't, you can't buy them out. They are already too fucking big because they're tacked into the market.
Joel (29m 29s):
Yeah. You're going to see a lot of vendors now rethink their business models to try and get into the ATSs as a white label solution so that they can be viewed as a native solution and nail down probably exclusives, probably nailed down long-term contracts, probably nailed down some, I think significant rev share has gotta be part of, of some of these deals or most of these deals. So you're going to see a lot of vendors go to the, you know, conference room and talk about how do we, you know, what's our move here? Do we try to white label or do we keep, you know, keep the brand first and front and center? That'll be an interesting conversation. A lot of vendors are going to have in the next six months.
Chad (30m 7s):
Think of the amount of transactions that happen through one applicant tracking systems for wrecks that are opening on a daily basis. And every single one of those wrecks, let's say they post automatically through as a process methodology through a Vonq, at a dollar a piece, how much do you think that's going to be per day?
Joel (30m 28s):
It'll buy a lot of beer Chad, trust me.
Chad (30m 30s):
Exactly. So I do want to do a little historical kind of like throwback and reminisce that Equest in Toledo. At one time, they did one of these things and it made John Malone rich, or let's say more rich. Okay. He did an exclusive right out of the gate with Taleo, which was the biggest applicant tracking system at the time. And he was the embedded distribution engine, not performance driven, obviously just dumb distribution, but distribution engine for Taleo. It was one of the smartest plays I've seen in the industry period.
Chad (31m 11s):
This, if this can be pulled off in multiple applicant tracking systems without exclusives that's so much bigger.
Joel (31m 21s):
Yeah, it's going to be fun to watch the land grab here.
Chad (31m 23s):
I love it.
Joel (31m 24s):
Let's let's get onto another land grab. Kroger and Walmart are in the news. Kroger, your favorite. So we'll start with Walmart and let you get fired up, as we talk here. So a federal jury in Wisconsin on Friday awarded more than $125 million to a former Walmart employee with down syndrome who the EOC claim was fired because of her disability. Though, the award is likely to be reduced to $300,000. Let's do the math there, $125 million to at 300,000. Why only 300,000? Well, the award includes 150,000 in compensatory damages and 125 million in punitive damages. However, 300 K is the cap on damages in cases brought under the Americans with disabilities act.
Joel (32m 10s):
Chad, this is more your lane than mine. What the actual fuck is going on here?
Chad (32m 14s):
Yeah, Let's be clear. Our society and laws make individuals with disabilities worth less than that of so-called fully abled individuals. We are unfortunately still in the prehistoric days in the United States when it comes to treating humans fairly. I mean, that's it I've had discussions with the EOC, not specifically about this topic, but I've had discussions with them. And I have to say, they've only been this administration's only been in place for six months. There are new players with real world objectives. I believe the EEOC will start to take these major wage and treatment inequities on.
Chad (32m 58s):
The question is how fast will we see change? Again, $125 million awarded to, and it took six years for her to get here $125 million w and they say, oh, I'm sorry. The biggest organization, the biggest corporation in the world, or at least in America, they're going to pay you $300,000 instead because we don't believe your worth it.
Joel (33m 23s):
Yeah. Yeah. There is maybe some silver lining, an EOC spokeswoman said. And the story that appeared in Reuters that the $300,000 cap does not apply to back pay front pay litigation costs or interest, which will be decided by a ledge, a judge at a later date. None, none of those are going to be big payments, but at least some of that will be added. So maybe it'll be like 350,000. No it
Chad (33m 47s):
Won't be anywhere near $125 million.
Joel (33m 53s):
Well, you know, who has $125 million and most of it going to shareholders, Kroger's in the news, Chad, what the hell is going on with them this week?
Chad (34m 1s):
So remember Kroger closed stores in locations where they were being forced to pay a $4 per hour hero pay for essential workers. By the way, Kroger said, those locations were failing by the way, that's why they closed those locations. This the Kroger CEO McMullan got a $6.4 million raise, more than 45% in 2020, which was over $20 million. A Brookings Institute report showed the first half of 2020 that Kroger's profits were up 90%, 90%. So this isn't a, we don't have the money or we work on slim margins, bullshit, excuse they're making major bank.
Chad (34m 48s):
Now using those profits instead of instituting a $4 an hour hero pay for their essential workers, the people who actually do the jobs and look the community in the eye, instead of doing that, Kroger is planning a billion dollar stock buyback. So the Brookings Institute report also says, quote, "we find that while top retailers profits have soared during the pandemic, pay for their frontline workers, in most cases have not. This is not capitalism. This is neo-liberalism. This is more driving plutocrats than it is anything else.
Joel (35m 28s):
What surprised me from the story? And I didn't realize this, that buybacks were illegal basically from 1930 ish to basically Ronald Reagan in the eighties who killed it. As you said, by short of the trickle down economics policy that ruled the day back then. And if so, make, make no mistake. I mean, politicians as well are getting rich from public companies and that's a whole other podcast where politicians can actively buy stocks instead of like, oh, I don't know, put it in a blind trust where they don't know what they're buying. So to me, like, unless there's a, a huge grassroots movement that takes hold, nothing is going to change here. The rich are going to get richer.
Chad (36m 7s):
One of my favorite podcasts, Billionaire and Pitchfork economics podcast host Nick Hanauer said, quote, whenever a corporation whines about paying raises, just Google the name of the company and stock buybacks. And you'll see where all the profits are actually going. It's going into the hands of the rich, as opposed to the people that are actually doing the work. It's, it's not that hard to understand. And when we talk about individuals who say, well, that person's a CEO of an organization, they deserve it. Inequity at its best. When we say something like that, the people who are doing the work on the ground deserve to have living wages and to be able to continue to bolster.
Chad (36m 56s):
And I want to throw your favorite place under the bus here, but when Chipolte says they're raising their prices because of raising wages and then their CEO takes a $38 million salary, you know what that is the worst optics. And that is a total fuck you square in your face to workers, right? We wa we raised your wages. Now we've got to raise prices. That is total bullshit.
Joel (37m 28s):
Yeah. And to me, most people, if you told them, we're raising costs to pay for our employees, most people would be okay, paying that extra 29 cents, you know, for, for a burrito or whatever it is. And I think Kroger missed an opportunity to say like, forget the-what was it? $4 extra an hour. We're going to go six and use it as a PR tool to get people to think favorably about Kroger. Instead of all these issues of like these companies suck, they're run by a bunch of dickheads,
Chad (37m 58s):
But don't say, that's why we're raising the prices when your CEO's getting paid 350 to 400 times,
Joel (38m 7s):
Don't turn around and line the pockets of, yeah. Anyway, well, speaking of lining pockets, I'm going to check my Robinhood count and we'll be right back about, with a story about porn. All right, Chad, you're you're a Brandy Love fan, right?
Chad (38m 22s):
Oh, she's like hall of famer is porn hall of fame either should be not, should be if there's not. And you and I could probably name at least half of the people hadn't need to book anybody. Who's been a 12 year old boy should be able to do that.
Joel (38m 39s):
Anyway, Brandy Love, if you don't know, just Google it. I guess a porn star who identifies as a strong conservative was initially welcomed as a VIP. She had bought a ticket at a Florida event by right wing, by the right wing group, turning point USA. So the group sort of focuses on on teens and young folks, which is kind of, will be important here in a second. And so Love initially showed up at the Tampa convention center on the weekend, posting an enthusiastic photo of herself on Twitter with the caption quote. "It's good to be around so many young conservatives gives me some hope in quote, the conference claim. They were protecting the children at the event, which were mostly teens.
Joel (39m 22s):
A while Love claims she was there as a private citizen and not a porn star. I can say that after a little bit of homework, the post, the photo she did post were not very, you know, pornographic. She was, I think, in a sun dress or something. So conservatives criticized cancel culture, but are they failing to walk the walk by canceling Brandy Love?
Chad (39m 46s):
First and foremost, optics, this was a youth group. Is that what I'm hearing?
Joel (39m 50s):
Yes. Teens and young college students, I think.
Chad (39m 54s):
Optics Not good, not good beyond the optics hormones, not good, not good. Most of the boys in there probably know who you are.
Joel (40m 4s):
Which totally goes against what the organization is, which is a Christian conservative group. So you have, you have all these opposing forces, right? You have these teen Christian conservatives, who should not know who Brandy Love is, so it looks bad for the organization when they do recognize her. And then you have a porn star, which by the way, is a legal occupation in the United States, a strong conservative, which she is exemplified for her whole life as far as I know. She comes in a conservative dress, you know, she's not there in a bikini trying to get guys to photograph with her. She's not taking selfies with anybody at the conference.
Joel (40m 45s):
And then you also have this element of speakers at the show. And this was part of the news story, as well as talking about how bad cancel culture is and how conservatives are independent and rugged individuals and yada yada yada, and criticizing, cancel culture and wokeness. And then at the same time, kicking out Brandy Love because she's a porn star. So there's so many perfect storm. None of this stuff should fit and the conference made the decision to kick her out. Was it right or wrong? I guess it depends on what side you're on.
Chad (41m 17s):
What would Jesus do?
Joel (41m 20s):
We out.
OUTRO (42m 17s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.