Hangovers and jet-lag be damned! The show must go on. That's why the boys connected after the conference in Ostend this week to chat a little Euro news and breakdown the week in Belgium. Adecco was in the news for bringing on a new CEO. Losing 50 percent of its stock value probably wasn't a good thing for the guy he's replacing. Jobandtalent has embraced acquisitions as a way to spend its hundreds of millions in investment. This time, a Norwegian staffing firm is on the menu. And yes, as promised, the boys wrap-up the conference with takeaways, teaching and teases for next year. Enjoy, and pass the Alka-Seltzer while you're at it.
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INTRO (8s):
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 (30s):
Oh yeah. Hung over jet lag and confused about what day and time it is. Wait, who am I? Why am I here? You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe kids. I'm your cohost Joel, "the 848 out of Amsterdam" Cheeseman.
Chad (46s):
This is Chad "take it easy" Sowash.
Lieven (49s):
And I'm Lieven "missing Ostend already" Van Nieuwenhuyze.
Joel (53s):
On this episode, Adecco replaces it's CEO JobandTalent goes Viking on Norway and the long awaited E-recruiting Congress wrap up. Let's do this.
sfx (1m 4s):
Europe has a bunch of countries in it.
Joel (1m 7s):
So where is everybody today? I'm back in America.
Chad (1m 10s):
You're back in Amerka you got there and you don't know what time it is. I know how that feels.
Joel (1m 14s):
I don't know. At six o'clock my body time. It's noon. Real time. Yeah. I went to bed at 3:00 PM Eastern or European time and I don't know what that gone. And I'm jet lagged to shit and I'm still hung over on Belgian beer. So you will not get my A game today, guys. Sorry.
Chad (1m 33s):
Well, so Lieven your back at home, where is home? We know it's Belgium, but where's home.
Lieven (1m 38s):
There's a saying in Belgium. Home is where my Stella is or something Stella is a kind of beer. So that's where home is.
Joel (1m 46s):
We say heart is in America. It's where my beer is in Belgium.
Chad (1m 51s):
I like that better.
Lieven (1m 54s):
<inaudible> cozy, little town and Belgium.
Chad (1m 57s):
That's awesome. That's awesome. So it's funny because we had tickets to fly out just a direct to Farro here in Portugal here in sunny, beautiful Portugal.
Joel (2m 8s):
Asshole.
Chad (2m 9s):
So Julie looks at the looks at the airport and it's the most Southern airport. So taking the train by itself, wasn't an option. So we were on the train for about 20 minutes and then we were on a bus for about two and a half hours. So then we got on, and what is up with Europeans and loving queues. It's like they go from one queue to create the next queue, to create the next queue and air travel. It's it's like, it's crazy. But anyway, we're here and we're enjoying it. So we're here.
Joel (2m 42s):
I think that's a line for those in America who don't speak Europe like Chad does now. All of a sudden football is now soccer and soccer is I don't even know what's going on. I need a translation tool with Chad.
Lieven (3m 0s):
Stop whining Joel.
Joel (3m 1s):
Stop, stop whining about your steak. It's perfectly fine.
Chad (3m 5s):
It didn't have the grill marks. It didn't have the grill marks.
Joel (3m 12s):
Where's the sizzle man?
Lieven (3m 13s):
I don't like Belgian steaks.
Joel (3m 16s):
There's a reason. There's a reason. Stick with the fish
Chad (3m 20s):
What a spoiled bitch. I swear
Joel (3m 21s):
Everyone listening is like, what in the hell? I'm outta here. I'm on.
Chad (3m 24s):
I think they all get it. Joel, Joel likes his steaks a certain way. And that's Amerkin.
Joel (3m 29s):
I like what I like, what are you going to do? By the way I read it was Mother's Day in Europe too. Right yesterday.
Lieven (3m 37s):
Yeah.
Joel (3m 38s):
So did you guys celebrate any special, you know, special things for Mother's day?
Lieven (3m 42s):
Well, it'd be mostly celebrate mother's on Mother's day.
Joel (3m 45s):
Like, did you take your mom? Alright. A-holes my mom passed away a couple of years ago. So you guys still have your mother so laughing about it is not cool whatsoever.
Chad (3m 55s):
Now you've got to pull that out. That's not even cool. That's not even cool.
Joel (4m 1s):
Is your mom passed?
Lieven (4m 1s):
No.
Joel (4m 1s):
Oh, well then how do you feel my pain?
Lieven (4m 5s):
I don't pretend to feel your pain.
Joel (4m 8s):
Chad's really good at that. I brought my wife, who's a mother back Belgian chocolate. And I can tell you there's no better gift for someone who loves sweets than Belgian chocolate.
Chad (4m 19s):
No, not at all. Not at all. Yeah. Okay. Shout outs.
Joel (4m 23s):
Shout outs. So let's get into it. I'll go first. So my shout out is to Kharkiv. I think the second biggest city in the Ukraine, Chad, you remember pretty famous photo from the Vietnam era where a a hippie puts a flower in the gun barrel of, I think a reservist gun, an incredibly powerful photo and sort of encapsulated the moment and the time. Anyway, the same thing continues to happen in Ukraine. In spite of being in a war this past week, I believe the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, the mayor ordered or encouraged the planting of tulips throughout the city.
Joel (5m 7s):
So as you go through sort of bombed out Kharkiv, the city has made a statement of defiance by planting tulips throughout the city, which I think is sort of a really beautiful and effective F-you to Putin in that all this war stuff isn't going to defeat us. We're still going to make our living environment beautiful. And you can't do anything about it. So anyway, my shout out to Kharkiv, particularly the mayor and the people there that have made a small, but I think effective defiant message to Russia and Putin.
Chad (5m 45s):
Sunshine, flowers and smiles. Smack in the face. Yeah.
Lieven (5m 48s):
Ah, my shoutouts go shout out, goes to the 24 professionals. He has go teams who today started to shoot each other just for fun. Cause the counter strike world cup started to interrupt, you know, I'm back into e-sports so I'm following it. And I think Putin should take an example. Shooting people for fun is fun when it's a game.
Chad (6m 10s):
Yes. And what he's doing is definitely not a game. No question.
Lieven (6m 13s):
No fun at all.
Chad (6m 14s):
Yeah. Well my shout out goes to a little bit less somber, Easy Jet. This one from the BBC kids, Easy Jet plans to remove seats on some of its planes this summer. I just actually got off an Easy Jet flight to come here so that it can operate flights with fewer cabin crew. And I can hear the leadership meeting now don't come up with your staffing problems. Alison what's your solution. Yank out some damn seats Johan.
sfx (6m 45s):
Oh hell No.
Chad (6m 46s):
It's like, there it is. I mean, you, you, you gotta continue to do business and EasyJet is finding a way to do business. So, so shout out to Easy Jet.
Lieven (6m 55s):
It's creative.
Joel (6m 56s):
I hope they're expanding the current seats because after being on a plane for eight hours yesterday, they're not very roomy at all. And my ass still hurts. So
Chad (7m 10s):
It's called a diet Cheeseman.
Joel (7m 11s):
I'm big boned. Okay. I'm big boned and I have a genetic disorder that makes nachos tastes delicious. But what are you going to do by the way, Ryan Air Ryanair and EasyJet. Like, are they competitors? Is it the same thing? Like what? What's the difference?
Chad (7m 27s):
Yeah. They're both budget airlines.
Joel (7m 29s):
So it's like Frontier and whatever the other one is. Okay. All right. Happy Mother's Day everybody. Nothing else to report. No mystery guests, no travel report. Let's get to everyone's favorite actually I should say Chad's favorite.
Chad (7m 47s):
No it's topics. TOPICS!
Joel (7m 49s):
All right. Let's start with Adecco Group last week announced a new CEO in help me with this, Lieven, Denis Machuel.
Lieven (8m 1s):
Sort of, Denis Machuel.
Joel (8m 2s):
Denis Machuel?
Lieven (8m 3s):
Denis Machuel.
Joel (8m 3s):
Okay. Who will take over the top job from current CEO Alain Dehaze. Oh, that's not bad.
Chad (8m 11s):
You're getting good. You're getting good.
Joel (8m 12s):
I'm getting better, man. I'm getting better on that. This will happen on July first of this year, the announcement came as the company also reported Q1 earnings Machuel most recently served as group CEO of Sedexo. The new CEO will be based in Zurich, Switzerland. Gee, that sucks. However, while the company focused on the new sheriff in town, the bigger news might be why the soon to be ex CEO was shown the door. Guys. Any insight here on what's going on at the Adecco Group?
Lieven (8m 43s):
One can only assume of course, but you must admit Adecco hasn't been doing very well to recent years. I mean, in a market like this, not growing, it's kind of pathetic and they haven't been growing. I mean, Randstad is the biggest one now think it used to be the biggest one. So I guess it's like in football when the team isn't performing as they should in the end they change the trainer. So that's probably about happened here, but I don't have any real formation. It's just my idea.
Chad (9m 14s):
Yeah. You're right`, if you're in this landscape and you are not blowing the numbers out, there's a problem. And if you're, if the challenger brand in this case, Ranstad takes over as number one, then you definitely have a problem. I thought it was interesting though, Lieven that the current CEO is the Dehaze, his background seemed more impressive as a political positioning type of individual. He didn't look like he was CEO material for at the time, the biggest staffing company in the world. So is there a lot of political positioning that needs to happen from country to country? Why do you think you pick a guy with this type of background.
Chad (9m 56s):
We'll get to Denis here in a minute, but why would you pick a guy like the current CEO?
Lieven (10m 1s):
If you look at his dedication, he used to be our Estella's of course and an engineer, commercial engineer, which is kind of a good start to BCU. I mean, I think, our CEO is also a commercial engineer. So his background is definitely good. And I think he has done some great stuff during his career. No idea what went wrong at Adecco. I know some people, but we are polite enough not to ask these kinds of questions. So I'm not going to ask my former colleagues who are working at Adecco now, people why are screwing up like this?
Joel (10m 34s):
Well he sure as hell spent money like a politician, a slew of acquisitions followed his CEO tenure. Just a few of them. I'll rattle off here. AKA technology, Brussels engineering, a consulting firm, QAPA - Q A P A, a sourcing and matching tool out of France, BPI group, Hired and you remember Hired, invest or acquired Vettery last year or two years ago. All of this was big vision stuff. That was a lot of money that simply didn't pan out as the company had planned and Lieven you mentioned in terms of the company isn't doing well, that's an understatement.
Joel (11m 16s):
If you look at the stock performance, the price per share 12 months ago for Adecco was roughly $33 a share. And now it sits just south of $17 a share. If my math is right, that really sucks. So you can't survive. You simply can't survive as a CEO. If you make these bold moves, write a bunch of checks and see your stock go down in half and survive. And to me, that was sort of like the crux of the issue is that the dude had to go cause it wasn't getting done. And that's how public companies roll. And that's how Adecco has done it. And now Machuel has the reigns and I imagine the acquisitions will pause for awhile.
Joel (12m 1s):
There'll be some cost cutting and trimming the fat. And hopefully they'll get things back on track, but yeah, not a good, not a good tenure for Mr. Dehaze.
Lieven (12m 13s):
But you have to give the guy some credit. I mean, probably each company has lost a few lots of money the past year, but the problem with Adecco is they have been losing stock value the past five years. And that's not normal. If you look at the last six months, probably each list of company has lost something, most of them. But if you have been losing like for five years, and if you look at a stock, the share price five years ago, it was about 80 euros. How much is it today?
Joel (12m 47s):
17.
Lieven (12m 47s):
17?
Joel (12m 47s):
It was 33 a year ago. So we're talking 80 to 17 in five years?
Lieven (12m 51s):
Okay. Okay. But wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm looking at the, you're probably talking about dollars. I'm talking about Swiss francs. They're less than in their own currency. So it was 80 or something some time ago, five years ago and now it's a 33. So now
Joel (13m 14s):
It's still bad. Still not good.
Chad (13m 15s):
Swiss francs. It's not good.
Joel (13m 16s):
Not good.
Chad (13m 16s):
Okay. So let's take a look at the new guy, Denis. Denis. He has 18 years, or I'm sorry, 14 years. He has been the CEO and also chief digital officer over at Sedexo. Again, we're talking about an organization that is not in staffing. They do deal with people obviously, but it's not staffing, as much. Why go outside the industry? I mean, you did comment that, you know, Rika had the same kind of education, but she's also been, she's somewhat grown up in this industry right? I don't see that happening with the CEOs that Adecco is choosing.
Chad (13m 56s):
Do you think this is a good thing or that's just what they look for?
Lieven (14m 1s):
The guy has been a CDO, chief digital. That's a start. That's always a good start. Chief of Digital.
Chad (14m 11s):
Coming from the CDO of House of HR.
Lieven (14m 13s):
That's strictly a coincidence, purely coincidence. No, no, but he's also, he studied back in the days, I think somewhere in the eighties, he's a bit older than I am, but he used to study computer science in those days already. So the guy has some technical backgrounds and he has a lot of experience and it's always a good start.
Joel (14m 35s):
Yeah. I mean, Sedexo has 400,000 employees, in 56 countries.
Chad (14m 38s):
Big fucking country.
Joel (14m 39s):
He has definitely gotten his feet wet in terms of being able to handle a company like Adecco. It'll be fun to see, to see it pan out.
Chad (14m 46s):
So let's talk real quick about like tech they've bought. They bought Vettery for a hundred million dollars, right. And then they bought Hired, Vettery bought Hired, but I mean, really the Adecco group bought Hired a little bit later and Hired
Joel (15m 2s):
Was it the other way around?
Chad (15m 5s):
No Vettery bought hired.
Joel (15m 6s):
Okay.
Chad (15m 7s):
So, I mean, you're pretty much taking a look at a technology Vettery and then you have Hired, but you paid a hundred million dollars for that, for that piece of tech. And now Vettery's gone now. It's pretty much the Hired the platform. Do you think that that a hundred million dollars just kind of was a kick in the nuts as well for shareholders and board members?
Lieven (15m 31s):
Not very enthusiastic about it.
Joel (15m 34s):
That hurts in any currency.
Lieven (15m 34s):
Yeah, it's, it's a lot, but I'm not sure ever to have such a bad idea to, it was a bad idea to buy Vettery if you look at what it's now, but the idea was probably not even that bad. I mean.
Chad (15m 49s):
Yeah. Great idea.
Joel (15m 50s):
Bad execution maybe.
Lieven (15m 52s):
Execution.
Chad (15m 52s):
Well, they finally found what they wanted obviously, which was hire.com, which they pretty much scrapped with Vettery and Hired is now the platform. So that's interesting, but they just a lot of differences for Adecco and obviously in a market that should be booming for Adecco they are seeing losses.
Lieven (16m 11s):
Yeah. But if you, it's probably we're just looking at our competitors. If you look at RGS Staffing, they have Indeed. If you look at the Randstad, they still have Monster. And I guess Adecco wanted to do something stupid as well.
Chad (16m 29s):
That's a perfect segue for an advertisement.
Joel (16m 33s):
It is a perfect segue. And from one company falling apart to one kicking ass from all accounts.
sfx (16m 39s):
Europe has a bunch of countries in it.
Joel (16m 47s):
All right, guys, here's that time in the show when
sfx (16m 50s):
Pink happy Unicorn music.
Joel (16m 52s):
Unicorn JobandTalent, based in Spain, the digital temporary staffing platform announced that it has acquired Jobzone, a staffing firm based in Norway, according to LA informacion, the price of the transaction was estimated at approximately 50 million euros. Jobzone. Headquartered in Oslo was founded in 2002 and describes itself as the largest Norwegian owned staffing company. Jobzone has over 40 local offices with a total of 150 employees in Norway. Guy's JobandTalent seems to be going full on Viking throughout Europe with an eye on the rest of the world, your thoughts?
Lieven (17m 31s):
Ah, Norway. I happened to like Norway and it's really small. It's small, it's like 5 million inhabitants. So I looked at the numbers and I thought, okay, if they are the biggest one in Norway, that's pretty small. I mean, 40, 40 offices isn't that big. If they were sold for 50 million, there may be, have an EBITDA of six, 7 million I guess, something like that. So there isn't really, if they are the biggest then probably are really fragmented or it's just a really small market. The funny thing is Norway is an extremely rich country. There are smaller, only 5 million people, but the number one on the people happiness ranking, of 5 million off happy Norwegians, they are extremely rich.
Lieven (18m 16s):
They have gas, they have oil, they are feeling a bit embarrassed by the three billion extra euros they may it's because of Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Joel (18m 25s):
And like Sweden and Finland, they have that Bulletproof vest called NATO.
Lieven (18m 29s):
Yeah, they have, they were actually finding partners of NATO and I can imagine why. They also border Russia in the north somewhere. It's a really thriving country and it's really small and they have lots of mountains, lots of lakes, lots of snow. So it probably, isn't very easy to travel around and that could explain why agencies aren't bigger there.
Joel (18m 51s):
So early this year, we talked about the fundraising that our friends at JobandTalent did.
Chad (18m 59s):
2.3 billion dollars.
Joel (18m 60s):
Valuation of $2.35 billion for our, your listeners. That's 2.05 billion euros. It's also been reported that the company plans to go public. When you got that kind of dollars, when he got that kind of money in this point, over $500 million dollars, you go shopping, you go buy some stuff, you go gobble up, some market share. And that's clearly what JobandTalent is doing in this market. No one is safe. And the economic conditions maybe tell us that companies are currently or will be on sale. Certainly if a publicly traded companies like, you know, Spotify, PayPal, or Uber, et cetera on sale. I'm sure a lot of companies in our industry that are private are going on sale and might be looking for buyers.
Joel (19m 43s):
Someone like JobandTalent is going to continue gobbling up market share in Europe, as well as I think, get an eye toward the U S of A and start maybe making acquisitions over here. But these guys are a great white shark and the feeding frenzy is just beginning. It'll be a lot of fun to talk about these guys in the months and years to come.
Chad (20m 4s):
Yeah. I think it's one of those things where we talk about taking too much money. That's that's one piece that I'd like to point out to me, $1.3 billion US is just fucking ridiculous. They did say in their March press release, we are in a great position to launch our platform in the US and offer a great value proposition to workers and employers there. The thing that I'm just getting incredibly confused on is tech companies, buying staffing companies. There's a lot of overhead. Yes, there's definitely profit. But when you're talking about, and we talked about this with job.com, the exact same conversation. When you're trying to build the next evolutionary step of staffing, why do you go by fucking staffing companies?
Chad (20m 49s):
We've seen this week with House of HR, you guys are looking to like break from within to be able to evolve from within, but to go and buy a new staffing organization or new staffing organizations. And I think they just bought one in the U S earlier this year as well. To me, it just doesn't make sense. And, again, we talk about focus for many founders, right? To be able to have this much money, to literally have no focus whatsoever, I think this is a bad thing for JobandTalent. I had high hopes for them at one time right now. I'm just not sure.
Joel (21m 24s):
It's such a downer. It doesn't make sense on one level, Chad, we talked about how tough it is to get clients in this market. And it's really tough to sell to HR and employers and if you buy a staffing company, you get customers automatically. So I think from that perspective, you're seeing a lot of staffing companies getting gobbled up because they have portfolios of companies that are already spending money. And if you can cut some fat, get them create efficiencies and get them onto your technology then maybe it makes sense. But I do agree, like it is very counterintuitive to think that these tech companies and these high growth businesses are buying these old dinosaurs but I do think that the customer acquisition maybe makes it worth it.
Chad (22m 6s):
Yeah. Well, we'll see you again. We're going to step back and watch, but I see no focus here whatsoever. We're going to the U S oh, wait. We just bought Norway. You know that, okay.
Lieven (22m 16s):
Yeah, you haven't done. Norway happened to be for sale, so.
Chad (22m 19s):
It might also be a Jedi mind trick. They might never come to the U S and just, you know, go after everything they can eat in Europe. Right.
Joel (22m 28s):
It may just be, here's a bunch of money now go spend it. This just happened to be in the classified section that they were looking at. All right Lieven and we talked about the Congress for weeks, months, and we finally had it finally completed it. How do you feel and what are some of your takeaways?
Lieven (22m 48s):
I guess, people listening a little bit glad it's all over. So we don't keep promoting it.
Joel (22m 53s):
Well, at the end of this, we're going to talk about next year so we can already start talking about 2023.
Lieven (22m 59s):
Try to fix a date as soon as possible so we can start relaunching. Takeaways. Let me think for me, it was now an opener to see Jim Carroll, the futurists saying 70% of current students will be working in jobs that don't exist yet. I thought it's hardly believable, but I started thinking I'm 45 myself now. And when I was young, the jobs we are doing didn't exist either. So it's probably always been like that. Yes, the future is coming and it's taking its time to come and it's taking its time and suddenly the future is there. And that's the reality. It's true. And from time to time, we have to just think about how are we going to adapt to what's coming? And it's coming so fast. And we always think five years is a long time to go, but suddenly it's there.
Lieven (23m 42s):
So that's one thing we need to prepare for what's coming. You need to hire people for jobs that don't exist yet. You need to hire people to rescale them for skills that don't exist yet. And I believe to a certain extent, it's true. The guy also said something about don't steal my powder. He was talking about a snowboarder and the snowboarder was an engineer and he got a great offer. And yet he refused the offer. Yeah. And the director was surprised, why would you like not to take this offer? It's a good offer, dude. You're messing with my powder because the guy was supposed to be in the office during daytimes, but he wanted to go snowboarding in the afternoon. And that's the reality to post COVID.
Lieven (24m 22s):
People don't want to go back to the office. I just write an article about some hot shot at Apple who resigned because now he had to come back to the office at least two times a week. And he thought it was too much. And then the fun part is, if you look at the offices of Apple, they are wow. And the big circle, the flying saucer and I'm sure you've seen. If you definitely have seen the pictures, it's impressive. But even with an impressive office, people don't want to go back. And that's something you have to take into account too. If you want to hire people and you want to keep them hybrids, at least that's something to keep in mind. Yeah. And then digital presence, that's something I'm always pushing for.
Lieven (25m 2s):
You have to have a great digital presence and it has to be everywhere. It's in the way you have zoom meetings. And it's of course the website and search engine marketing, et cetera. But digital presence are digital employer brand. It's something most companies just don't do enough with today. I'm more interested in how you thought it was because you can compare to American things like Unleash and Las Vegas, et cetera. How did we do?
Chad (25m 30s):
I'll tell you what, first and foremost, it is amazing to be back at live events. I mean, it was wonderful. The content, being able to connect with some great people, some incredibly smart people. The location was amazing. The auditorium was amazing. The content was amazing. And obviously the beer was amazing. The e-sports to me, sent it over the edge to be able to start to and again, not all the answers are there yet, I think for, for e-sports, but I think it is so incredibly interesting when we're starting to talk about how do we actually get into the heads of some of these individuals, these kids, and how do we get them to think more about our brands, about opportunities in more than just playing games.
Chad (26m 19s):
Right. So I thought that was amazing. And I could, I ran out and got my food as fast as possible because for all the listeners, we were in an auditorium watching two teams, a Dutch team, and a Belgian team go after each other, e-sports style for the house of HR or the cup of, or was it the house of HR cup?
Lieven (26m 40s):
Finals of HR Cup.
Chad (26m 41s):
The cup, the finals of that. Now how many teams did you actually have doing this? Was it just those two at the end, the finals? Or did you have other teams playing too?
Lieven (26m 49s):
There were many teams, but we sponsor the final. So the idea, so it's a student cup, you have the student leagues in Belgium and in the Netherlands and it's university leagues. So all those university students play against each other and the best two teams were invited the best Dutch one, the best Belgium invited to play on stage at our Congress. So Belgium against the Netherlands. It's always fun. Yeah.
Chad (27m 11s):
Yeah. Well, I love, cause we're always talking about VR and AR and the metaverse and all those things. And here is like sports that are actually bigger than the super bowl. Yes. They have more people watching than the Superbowl. How can companies perspectively, you know, be a part of that and not, you know, in a genuine, in a genuine way. And I thought House of HR did an amazing job being incredibly genuine in actually hosting it during a conference, you had 400 people that were actually there who had an opportunity to get some food, come and watch it. That was to me was incredibly fun. And again, it was something that you're not going to see at any other conference this year.
Lieven (27m 50s):
And that is the whole idea. I mean, everyone can put <inaudible> all he can stage or anything. Yeah. And it's a safe bat, you know, putting something about e-sports on a Congress around recruitments, it's something else. And it is a bit of a gamble. I mean, I won't know how people really get real reacts, but I'm sure it's important. And we want to share these kinds of insights with our clients, with our own colleagues, with everyone.
Joel (28m 20s):
What I find so interesting about your conference, is the conferences typically happen in really big cities. They're put on by companies that frankly do this for a living in most cases. So there's a lot of pomp and circumstance. There's a lot of sort of general interest and a lot of the topics remain the same. Granted we haven't traveled in two years, but I'm guessing like a lot of the same things that we're talking about in 2019, we're going to still be talking about this this summer and fall in 2022. What I love about what you guys have done is, is you've taken sort of a global view, but in a localized event setting. So no one's going to have a show in Ostend no one's going to have a show in Ghent typically, but because that's your guys' backyard and it's where you guys play, you're able to put shows there in a unique way.
Joel (29m 9s):
And really, I think, talk about stuff that you guys just want to talk about. You're willing to go outside the box, you know, like this is my second show. That's, it's only your third total, but I can remember in the second show, when you had, you actually had a hacker onstage that was like infiltrating databases or how to do that and grab people's email addresses and passwords, and that was pretty, pretty dangerous shit. And you guys took a chance on showing how that's done and this show, obviously the esports, no, one's even thinking about that. No, one's even really thinking about, okay, how do we sponsor? How do we advertise? How do we engage with this audience? And just the fact that you guys sort of have the blank check, because it's your show and you're a company that makes your money elsewhere, that you can throw, you know, flyers out there and see what sticks and get real sort of feedback and engagement.
Joel (30m 0s):
They're not for me, that's how you're different than most of the shows that Chad and I go to, and we go to quite a bit. In regards to sort of some takeaways from me, here's my bullet point list and I'll get to a bigger point, a few things that quickly stood out. Monster is still a thing. Apparently one of the presentations had sort of the most popular job boards in the two areas, mainly the Netherlands and Belgium. Yeah. Monster was listed, which was kind of funny and interesting.
Lieven (30m 33s):
It was less than the last one, 26% if I remember correctly of the people consider maybe using Monster when looking for a job. So it wasn't really flabbergasting. Yeah.
Joel (30m 44s):
You just don't see Monster's logo in presentations much anymore so that was kind of fun. Government job boards are very influential in Europe. In both instances, the government job site was sort of the most trafficked, which you don't see in the U S at all, really. No one knows who's ZipRecruiter is which didn't really surprise me, but that was, that was confirmed. Europeans have better eyeglasses than I do. The incredibly stylish. I don't know where the hell they buy this stuff, but you just can't get it here. At least not where I shop.
Chad (31m 15s):
And that's for you, Elka.
Joel (31m 16s):
Stay away from Belgian rib eye steaks. I did learn that. That wasn't really the conference, but I thought I'd throw that out there again. And then overall, like Chad and I, and we talked about this at the conference with Rika, you know, Chad and I've been doing this for almost 25 years now. And there was a time where Europe wasn't even like, talked about right. If it was Europe, it was like, okay, Monster's, going into Europe, all these companies are going to Europe to conquer it. Right. Yep. And then, and then the great recession happened and then you started to see sort of these little seedlings of companies and ideas start coming out of Europe. By the time we started thinking about this show, we could see where the trend was going.
Joel (31m 58s):
We could see where the puck was going. We could see ideas, startups, money just start trickling in to Europe, which has only accelerated in the last two, three years that we've since done the show or think, you know, thought about doing something in Europe. And I think for me to actually go to Europe after two years of not going anywhere really, and being on the ground, talking to people in the marketplace, talking to companies and startups that were at the show. I mean, to me, Europe is just ready to bust and grow in immense ways and have creativity, aside from like, you know, the Russia, Ukraine or Ukraine thing, just totally going out of control. Assuming that, that piece is eventually realized in that area.
Joel (32m 42s):
If we're not talking in 2023, about some of the most exciting, biggest companies with a lot of admits funding going into the employment sector in Europe, I will be really shocked because I just think this thing is trending upward. I know the European economy from a, you know, a Wall Street perspective is really challenged right now. But I think if you, if you settle down Ukraine and Russia and peace comes to Europe, you're going to see this space as well as others just really blow up. And it's exciting to sort of be back and this conference for me, sort of encapsulated where Europe is and where it can go. And it's really exciting.
Chad (33m 20s):
Amen.
Lieven (33m 21s):
Amen.
Joel (33m 22s):
So Lieven any teasers for next year?
Lieven (33m 23s):
Okay. So we could be doing this in Paris or in Berlin, but I'm kind of lazy and it's much easier for me to do it in Ostend. So I think I agree so we'll be doing it Ostend again, we'll see, but no, no seriously. So I'm already thinking about some new topics. I'm not going to say anything about it, but we want to be at least as creative as we used to be. I'm still not sure if the location would make such a big difference and maybe we're just going hybrids and stream everything in as professional possible way. But I kind of like meeting people in person, as you also said, it's nice to be live again.
Chad (34m 2s):
Yes.
Joel (34m 2s):
Amen. Oh, it was good seeing you guys. It was good seeing you guys and getting out. Lieven are you going to join us in, in London for Rekfest and a couple of months?
Lieven (34m 12s):
Probably and Rika is doing something Las Vegas and you're always making fun of Lieven Las Vegas. I'm going to Las Vegas.
Joel (34m 27s):
You're coming to Vegas. Yes. Oh shit. It's on now. Lieven in Vegas.
Chad (34m 30s):
Excellent Yes.
Joel (34m 30s):
All right.
Lieven (34m 30s):
I'll be there.
Joel (34m 33s):
That's it. I'm going back to bed and Chad's going back to the beach and Lieven's going back to work.
Chad, Cheese and Lieven (34m 43s):
We out.
OUTRO (35m 29s):
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.