When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton simply replied, “Because that's where the money is.” The same might be said for JobIndex's lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement, claiming the world's most popular search engine is taking their content and publishing it to Google for Jobs without permission. Anyway, the boys dig into this claim and voices, tempers and hilarious soundbites commence. But wait, that's not all. They also dig into cover letters and why AI either does or doesn't make a bit of difference. (Spoiler alert: There's a story about a perfume-drenched CV.) Then ending on a high note, it's Who'd Ya' Rather with CareerFairy and Mintago.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Intro: 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: Oh yeah. No, Parisian bedbugs were harmed in the making of this episode. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your co-host, Joel "Infestation" Cheeseman.
Chad: Chad "FlipDog" Sowash.
Lieven: I'm Lieven "Teaching AI to the HR masses" Van Nieuwenhuyze.
Joel: And on this episode, more Jobindex drama, who'd you rather and a tasty Marmite sandwich. Hey, it's gotta be better than Surströmming, right?
Chad: Oh God.
Joel: Let's do this.
Chad: Anything's better than Surströmming.
Joel: [laughter] Oh, God. Oh, bedbugs and Surströmming. We just lost about 80% of the listeners.
Chad: Oh yeah. [laughter]
Joel: By the way, YouTube's Surströmming, if you don't know what it is, it's worth it.
Chad: It is. It's worth the laugh and the gag reflexes that everybody has. Anyway, anyway.
Joel: Oh, all the videos are like, they take someone from another country and they feed them stuff from other countries. And then they get their take on it even or if it's like, Irish taste bourbon for the first time and then they give their take on bourbon as opposed to Jameson. Always entertaining.
Chad: Always. Always entertaining.
Joel: So the world noted a new war since we last spoke. It will be advanced a little bit when people hear this, but over the weekend when watching the news, I think everybody, Israel declared war on Hamas. Now we have a 20 year war veteran, or not war but Army veteran on the show. And we have a European on the show, most of which Americans don't have access to. So I'm just curious, any thoughts on the impending conflict in the Middle East with Israel and Hamas? Make a noise.
Chad: That, did you feel anything this weekend at all, Lieven?
Lieven: I think the biggest impact will be the way people look at the conflict between Israel and Palestine. I know America is very supportive to Israel, but in Europe, people kind of felt sorry for those poor Palestinian people in Gaza. And they, many people thought Israel was being very harsh on them and they shouldn't be. But now, sentiments has changed, have changed. So I feel, after looking at those terrible images from people shooting, mass shooting dancing youngsters on a festival, this kind of terror is, there's no reason good enough to do something like that. So I think, from now on, Israel has a lot more support here in Europe also. And of course, in Belgium, where I live, there's a very big Jewish community. Antwerp, I'm not sure if you know it, but it's one of the biggest I think, in Europe, live in Antwerp. Germany also have them everywhere.
Chad: They're also being supplied by somebody because they don't manufacture any of that themselves. Obviously, there's always been huge conflict between Iran and Israel. So that this is something that could spin out of control. Let's hope it doesn't. I mean, we already have enough with Ukraine trying to drive its own sovereignty, for God's sakes against Russia. The last thing the world needs is another war.
Outro: Shout out.
Joel: All right. Well, I'll take a little more time to focus on a shout out to our Israeli brethren in the industry, although it's not technically Europe, they do business in Europe. They do business in the US and these are people that frankly, we count as personal friends. So a lot of companies do business out of Israel. Hi, Bob. We talk about a lot. We'll see them at conferences coming up. TaTiO, Chad I know you mentioned you're close with them. ZipRecruiter has a strong AI office over in Israel. Spetz, who was acquired by Paradox, Wilco, who we've interviewed for Firing Squad. Veritone got executives over there, we're close to them. A company called Perfect and Team Me. So there are a lot of businesses and organizations and frankly, just people that we touch that I wanted to focus a light on. I hope stay safe. I hope you're well, your families are well. And hopefully we'll see you soon and things will calm down and we will find peace. We'll see. But shout out to them.
Joel: Can only hope. Lieven?
Lieven: My shout out goes to the European AI Act. 'Cause as you probably know, the European Parliament came up with a proposal for the first global version of a comprehensive law on the use of AI. And they are negotiating details with a bunch of countries Europe has, and with a bit of luck, they'll reach an agreement by the end of this year. And they defined three different risk levels on the use of AI, usage of AI. It's like, the unacceptable risk, the high risk and the limited risk, and I'm very happy to tell you that so far the use of AI in employment and worker management is only considered a high, but it's not a totally unacceptable risk. So we're still in the game.
Chad: We're still in the game.
Joel: Still in the game everybody.
Chad: It's not psychological warfare, which is obviously much above a high, the unacceptable risk. What is incredibly psychological, in a very good way, is the 2030 Football World Cup has been announced. That's right kids, get ready. It's going to be in Portugal, Spain and Morocco, who will be hosting. And I have from news reports out of Portugal that the Benfica, Sporting and Porto FC stadiums are going to be used for the World Cup. So 2030 baby, can't wait. Coming to my hometown.
Joel: That's right. Who wants to sponsor Chad and Cheese World Cup adventure from Portugal where we're taking bids now everybody, we're taking. Taking bids.
Chad: A little early, but it's okay. You can you can still go ahead and lock it in.
Joel: Do we want to talk about travel?
Chad: Yeah, we've got TAtech happening in early December, that's in London. I'm gonna be MCing the stage with Kirstie Kelly so the TAtech Europe events, which I believe is like two and a half days long. So check it out, go to tatech.org. You can register there. You can go to chadcheese.com/events. Not to mention yes, it's next year but still pretty excited to go to Amsterdam to see...
Joel: Yes sir.
Chad: To see Lieven and crew. And Rika. Hell, we haven't seen her in forever.
SFX: All right, all right, all right.
Joel: Love House of HR.
Chad: E-recruitment converse, baby.
Lieven: Yeah, March 19th next year. Counting the days.
Chad: Put it on your calendars. Go to chadcheese.com/events and register register register.
Joel: See you there. Topics. All right guys. So last time we recorded, Jobindex, a job site based out of Denmark was suing Google for copyright infringement for taking their content and publishing it to Google for Jobs. The CEO has been corresponding with Chad on some of the details. So let's dig into what Chad found out, if anything.
Chad: So first and foremost, I definitely like to thank Kaare, is that how you say his first name? Is it Kaare?
Joel: Kaare or Kaare.
Chad: K-A-A-R-E Kaare Danielsen.
Joel: Mr. Danielsen, how about that.
Chad: Kaare Danielsen. Yes, founder and CEO of Jobindex for the correspondence of the past couple of weeks. He provided us with a document that laid out his talking points around the lawsuit with Google and it's Google for Jobs product. Kaare states "Jobindex has asked not to be a part of Google for Jobs and we do not give any of our content to Google. Nevertheless, Google still copies a lot of the job adverts from Jobindex through some of their partners." So now as you dig deeper, you find out in fact, Google is not scraping Jobindex's jobs. Rather, other job boards like JobGrab from Singapore and jobdanmark.dk from Albania are scraping those jobs and having job seekers directly apply to their sites instead of Jobindex.
Chad: So this isn't Google scraping Jobindex as they would have you believe. In effect, Jobindex is suing the wrong company and/or companies. So JobGrab and JobDanmark are stealing the Jobindex content and passing it to Google to drive more traffic to themselves. This is an old trick by the way, kids. This has been happening for a very long time. Jobindex is really in a bind from the standpoint is that they can't shut off the scrapers from Google. Why? Because Google owns over 93% of the job search market in Denmark. If they did that, they'd be committing traffic suicide at that point and then Kaare provided the document that tells the real tale, I think. And and he writes, "For Jobindex, this means increased advertising costs since the organic traffic from Google has dropped 20%."
Chad: So he's specifically citing that they're paying for Google search engine marketing on one hand and they're denying free traffic from Google for Jobs on the other hand so do you want traffic from Google or not? Remember? I started out the statement from Kaare with a "Jobindex has not... Has asked not to be a part of Google for Jobs and we do not give any of our content to Google." Now, Google for Jobs is a product of Google, but you still are providing access for Google to index your jobs. You need and you want that and you're actually talking about having to pay more to Google for search engine marketing, right?
Chad: So do you want the traffic or not? I mean, that's as you take a look at it, it is so contradictory and I reached out to a couple of people who are in the search market and this is all I heard. It's a PR stunt. They want to be able to go after a big name and they want to escalate their brand in the EU and you know, going after Google right now is is kind of you know a trend in the EU, so why not.
Joel: Lieven, you have a bit of a counterpoint on this?
Lieven: Right, at this time, I don't really totally agree. I looked into what Kaare was writing and he said writing a job advert takes on average five to seven hours, thus this is a piece of high-quality writing that has required a lot of work and should be subject to copyright. First, if you spend five to seven hours on writing a job advertisement, you should be or fired or nominated for a Nobel Prize on literature. But anyways, this is irrelevant. If Jobindex doesn't want to get listed in Google for Jobs, that's their decision. Whatever the reason they don't want to get listed and if Google is listing Jobindex's vacancies without their consent, then Jobindex definitely has a case and they're right. There is IP, intellectual property on vacancies also, why not? They have handwritten them, so to speak, so there's an IP on it. And if they take the copy from and with they I mean Google, if Google takes the copy from obscure scraping sites without checking if there is an IP infringement...
Lieven: That's Google's problem. That's not Jobindex's problem/ Jobindex shouldn't be proving that their vacancies were or shouldn't be complaining that their vacancies are taken by Google. Google just shouldn't take them. And by the way, scraping is more or less legal, call it a gray zone. But scraping of commercial databases and spreading the content is a very very black zone in Europe and this is actually what Google is doing right now. They are scraping commercial databases and use it for their own commercial profit and this is definitely a black zone and there Google is wrong even though they claim we don't scrape directly, we do it through a intermediates.
Lieven: Solution. They should be checking if they are not spreading content which should be IP protected. And they don't, so they're wrong. And I think they have a case. And I think Jobindex could make lots of money out of this.
SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Joel: Okay, let's dig into the psyche of this guy a little bit. I don't know him, but from the interview that I had with him, he's very adamant about, we've been doing this for 27 years. We were doing this before Google. The only competitors in Denmark are us, LinkedIn, and the government site. So, it sounds to me like for 20 some years, this dude has had green pasture to probably charge as much as he wants for his job postings. He hasn't had to deal with outside interference. He's not a big market where, Monster, Indeed are probably a big deal. And along comes Google, who by the way, I'm sure he was enjoying some free traffic and continues to enjoy free traffic from Google. And then they launched this Jobs thing. And then he starts seeing a bite come out of his traffic, which he admitted on the interview. He says, "I don't care about Google." But then he goes on to say, "I've had a 20% drop in traffic since Google for Jobs." So what is it?
Chad: And I'm having to pay more for it.
Joel: Either you don't care or you do care. I'm guessing he cares. And this 20% means he has to lay off people. He can't charge as much. And in fact, if you look at some of their LinkedIn data, their company data, they've slashed sales headcount, some design workers and HR to the tune of about 5%. And I'm sure that he's saying that that could be a lot bigger if this trend continues.
Lieven: He might even have to sell us his third boat. [laughter] If he has been in this business for 27 years, he's been making a lot of money.
Joel: Let's agree he's not a 20-something startup guy. If he's been doing this for 27 years, he's probably looking to get out. He's probably got some lawyer friends that he had lunch with and said, "Hey, this whole Google thing, they're pissing me off." And they said, "Look, Europe hates Google. Google wants this stuff to go away. I think we can get them to write a check for whatever just to make this go away." So the guy says, "Sweet. I got some friends down at the Danish media group. Why don't I get them involved? So there's like a big name. And then we really scare the shit out of Google. We all make a nice little sum of money." Look, he can shut off Google. You look at his robots text. There's nothing there. There's no strategy around do not index our site, Google, which is super easy to do. And he's saying that these sites, these foreign sites...
Chad: Singapore and Albania.
Joel: Yeah. Taking his shit, making it their own, and then they're loading that shit up into Google for Jobs. But there's no... There's clearly no strategy around how do I block these countries and or these sites from scraping our site? Look, there are clear ways technologically to take sites that are taking your stuff and restrict them, redirect them somewhere else, make it difficult. And granted, look, these sites are scraping everybody. If Jobindex turned off tomorrow, I'm sure they could give a shit. What is it? A couple thousand jobs, maybe. I don't know. But they probably wouldn't even notice. But there's no effort to, like, restrict these companies and these sites and countries from visiting their site. So he could clearly, from a technology standpoint.
Joel: And by the way, they have 538 employees, according to LinkedIn. They must have some tech people in that company that know how to do this shit. This is not a two-person mom and pop they're at their residence running this site. This is a real business. And they have people that should be able to restrict these spiders from getting their stuff. If they want to cut off Google, they can. They obviously don't. They just want a payday. They want some PR. This guy probably wants to retire. He probably wants a big check from Google. And then he can maybe sell the company to somebody. And he can go retire and live the good life and have his employees, 500-some strong, still be employed, still be relevant, and be able to set off into the sunset.
Lieven: We'll see.
Joel: The danger is Google will have to write a lot of checks because these little job boards will come out of the woodwork and everywhere, nook and cranny in Europe, and want money. So there is a good chance that Google says, nope, we're going to fight this shit because we don't want to pay every Tom, Dick, and Harry job site $10,000,000 to go away.
Lieven: Because it's the only source of income those little job sites still have. But it's like suing Google. And I agree totally with Joel and with Chad, but from a legal point of view, it's irrelevant. I mean, you say they could block Google. They could block those robots.txt. They could use it to block those scrapers. It's like saying if you don't lock your house, it's your own fault when people break in. And that's true. Maybe it's true. But still, it doesn't justify breaking in. And if he doesn't want to be listed in Google, that's it's right.
Chad: But he does want to be listed in Google. This is so contradictory. It's total bullshit, Lieven. He's bitching and moaning because he lost 20% of traffic. And now that he has to pay more to get more traffic from Google. That's bullshit, contradictory stuff. Okay. You take a look at everything that's in that document. And at the end of the day, as Joel said, they've been around for 27 years. He keeps harping on that. Well, then you should know better. You should have tech people who can block IP. You should go into Cloudfire, toggle it on, right? There are so many things that he can do, not to mention he's suing the wrong people. It's like, if you're going to create this narrative, then you've got to do it right. And these guys, they're all over the place. They're contradicting themselves. I don't care about Google, but wait a minute, I lost 20% traffic. Oh, now we've got to pay Google more. Oh, I don't want, it's like, dude, just make up your fucking mind. Do you want Google traffic or not?
Joel: He is suing the right person, Chad. When John Dillinger was asked, why do you rob banks? He said, "That's where the money is."
Chad: That's where the money is.
Joel: The money is in Google.
Lieven: He also tried to at least talk to the people from jobdanmark.dk, which sounds very legit but it's basically the job site which is owned by a Mr. Intel in Tirana in Albania. So those people don't react. And there's another site which happens to be in Africa, but they didn't specify where in Africa. So it could be anything.
Chad: Block IPs.
Lieven: Probably it's Russia.
Chad: You know when there's a load on your servers, okay? I was in the indexing game for a very long time, guys. Okay? We've been blocked. I mean, when I was with DirectEmployers, we first started this, we got, we had the whole FlipDog thing that was going on that was bad. You can block IPS, you can do all of these. This should be normal for what they're doing. Normal operating procedures. But yet, no, you know what the normal operating procedure is? Let's go try to get money out of that big hill of cash called Google.
Lieven: So what do you say? It's like some photographers which aren't very good photographers, they just take tons of photos, they dump them on the internet and hope someone's going to copy paste them, use them somewhere, and then they use software to track who's been using my photo. And then they send them a bill.
Joel: Now what's happening is these sites out of Africa, Albania, wherever are stealing these jobs. They're posting them on Google as their own, and then traffic's going to them, and then they're making money on traffic, ads, banner ads.
Chad: He's mad because those job sites are getting the traffic off of his IP, which I totally get. But that is why isn't he going after those job sites? Just because they can't find them. Okay, then go ahead and block the IPs.
Lieven: Yeah, but if Google wasn't providing Google for Jobs, those job sites wouldn't be there in the first place. So Google for Jobs is the reason.
Chad: That I think you're stretching that. We've had this problem well before Google for Jobs, Lieven. Well before Google for Jobs.
Lieven: But Mr what is his name, didn't have this problem well before Google jobs.
Chad: Back in 2008, right? When we were like in the thick of this with indexing and whatnot with DirectEmployers, this was the same problem. There were these things popping up all over the place. This is not a new problem.
Lieven: Okay. And I agree from a normal point of view, you're totally right. But from a legal point of view, I think he might get a case because of the spreading of a protected database for commercial reasons, and they're using it and they shouldn't. When House of HR has an app it's called Swap, you swipe through jobs swap. And we also scrape jobs and we had a very big lawyer agency looking into this because it's, as I said, it's a gray zone using other people's content to get traffic and to find candidates. But, and they said, you'll get away with this no problem, as long as you don't touch commercial job boards. As long as you don't touch commercial databases, then there won't be a problem. But the moment you start using job vacancies from commercial databases, you'll be sued. And I think this is what's happening here.
Joel: I think this is where Europe and US kind of diverge in that.
Lieven: Maybe.
Joel: Like we have pretty strict rules around FTC FCC, whatever, that if you're a search engine, you can only show so many characters unless or else it's stealing and you have to link back. And like, there's certain laws in this country that are probably more stringent in Europe. Because if your lawyers are telling you don't touch commercial property, just touch the government stuff or the association nonprofit, then there's a probably a reason why. Whereas America, I don't think that's an issue.
Chad: And again, they've been in the game for 27 years. They know how to stop this. They don't wanna stop this.
Joel: I'm not sure they wanna stop it. I think they want that check, baby. They want that check from Google.
Lieven: Probably.
Chad: I don't know.
Lieven: And I don't think they want the check from Google, but I think Joel is right. And he's going to, he's looking for an exit. He wants to sell his company and now there's the big threat of Google for Jobs and the value of his company suddenly dropped because of Google for Jobs. So now he wants to have a case and Google, you shouldn't be touching me. So my company gets its old value back. Something like that.
Joel: Think about if he's in talks to sell the company and whoever the buyer might be is saying, you know what? This whole Google thing scares us. Your traffic's down 20%. Like we're gonna just hold tight. You don't think he's pissed as shit, he had that deal maybe on the table. And then Google comes in. It's personal now, he made it personal.
Chad: Joel's coming up with fantasies right now. Joel's coming up with fantasies that there's this fantasy deal on the table. Okay, let's just talk.
Joel: He wants boats and hoes, baby. That's what he is looking for. That's what he wants.
Chad: We know for a fact. We don't know that there was a deal on the table. Joel has a fantasy deal. We know for a...
Joel: I said, can you imagine, can you imagine?
Chad: Which is what I'm saying, it was a fantasy. So we do know specifically his traffic dropped 20% and he's mad that he has to pay to be able to get that traffic back. And yet he says he doesn't want to play with Google for Jobs, right? So much contradictory bullshit that's happening here. I don't understand what the guy wants.
Joel: He may not know what he wants at this point, except...
Chad: Cash.
Joel: That Google money, baby. And speaking of money, let's take a break. Hear from a sponsor or two, I don't know. And we'll talk about who we'd rather. All right guys, before we get to who'd you rather, we'll end on a climactic note, if you will. Let's talk about cover letters. 'Cause we never talk about that. Dubliner.
Chad: There's a reason.
Joel: James Malley recently shared his thoughts on AI's role in creating cover letters that piqued our interest, referring to them as the Marmite of the application process, meaning some like them and some do not. Malley said, "AI isn't yet able to extract the why piece of an applicant as the data crumbs you have left in the past can't articulate why you envisage human skill, that is, this role and why it's perfect for you." Chad, thoughts on AI in the role of cover letter creation, and more importantly, are you thumbs up or down on Marmite?
Chad: So why are cover letters still a thing? I mean, I just don't understand that. I mean, these are truly a vestige of a bygone era. Back in the day when you handed somebody your resume and you had a cover letter, because at that point we hadn't scaled and people weren't getting a lot of resumes. So you could actually take time to look at the resume and then you could look at the cover letter. We don't have that anymore. This makes no sense to me at all. I mean, it's like horse-drawn carriages and Marmite, which I think is fucking horrible by the way. The only thing worse is Vegemite.
Joel: I wanna listen to Men at Work right about now.
[laughter]
Joel: The Australian band, not European. Yeah. Look, Chad touched on the history. I'm gonna go a little deeper in that. Like, we're both old enough to remember the days where you went to get the Sunday paper, you looked at ads. They had an address, phone number, whatever. And then you would, in a big envelope, you'd go to Kinko's, you'd get your resume printed up on really nice like gray...
Chad: Nice paper. Oh yeah.
Joel: Or manila paper. And then you would literally write a custom cover letter for that job.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: There was no like copy and paste. You had a word processor. Some people had a computer. You'd actually go to Kinko's where they had a computer. You'd write up your cover letter, they'd print it out for you. Then you mailed the thing. If you were smart, you sent it via like FedEx or UPS when you knew they got it and you wanted to make a splash, and then you were alerted that they had it. Then you called and said, "Hey, did you get my shit? When can I come in for an interview?" And then like the whole process of calling, ghosting, all that stuff happened. The internet made it feasible to blast your resume to hundreds, if not thousands of companies if you wanted to. Which made cover letters obsolete. And frankly, most recruiters that I know don't look at cover letters. They're looking at skills. I guess if it's a writing job, you wanna look at some of that stuff.
Joel: And now we have ChatGPT, which can write it for you. They're already writing letters for recruiters, whether it's thanks for playing but we went somewhere else, or like, this is gonna be mainstream. Why in the world is anybody writing a cover letter? By the way, there are new tools that we're gonna be talking about on the show, that people can blast their resume. Like go through the pre-screening process, right? Like we set up these pre-screening tools to stop this mass application. We like, "Oh, let's put some gatekeepers up." Well, guess what? The new AI is gonna be able to like, go through the pre-screening, answer questions. Like it's gonna be, you're gonna see applications happen like you've never seen before.
Chad: Already does. Yes.
Joel: Yeah. Ghosting is gonna go through the roof. No one's gonna give a shit about cover letters. It's gonna be like, "Oh my God, how many applicants did we just get? How do we control this? How do we stop this?" And if you just say, "Hey, it requires a cover letter." Who cares? It's gonna be a ChatGPT. Everyone's gonna do ChatGPT, they're gonna get around any whack-a-moles that you wanna say, who's ChatGPT and who isn't. Like, there are bigger problems than is your resume written or your cover letter written by a robot or an actual person? They're gonna be much bigger problems with automation and how people are gonna be applying to jobs in the future than the cover letter. And I've never had Marmite, so I can't comment on that.
[laughter]
Lieven: It stinks. It really stinks.
Chad: You're lucky. You think it'd be good 'cause it's the yeast...
Joel: It looks like chocolate.
Chad: From beer.
Joel: It looks like a candy.
Chad: Oh yeah, not for me. No.
Joel: Lieven, cover letters. Do you guys still get them at House of HR? Require them? What's up?
Lieven: First up with Marmite.
[laughter]
Lieven: I tried it during COVID because suddenly it was all over the news that the British were very anxious about Marmite not being in the stores anymore because of the, during COVID there was a problem with the, how do you say it, delivery problem.
Chad: Yep.
Lieven: So stores were out of Marmite and this was a big thing. And I never heard about Marmite. So then I went to my local store and I found Marmite and I tried it, and I was really happy about it. This must be really good. And I opened it and it smelled, it stink. And I tried it, and it tastes maybe not disgusting, but just not good. So I think, to get back to the point, I think cover letters are going the same way for me as Marmite. The last one I remember was one, and actually this is true, which was perfumed. I loved it.
[laughter]
SFX: Ay papi.
Joel: No way.
Lieven: Yeah.
Joel: What was the job?
Lieven: Yeah. Just someone working on my team in a creative job. And they made it as a love letter and I loved it. And it was perfumed. Yeah, it was creative.
Chad: Was her name Candy? That's the question.
Joel: Yeah.
[laughter]
Lieven: It should have been Candy. Damn. It probably wasn't.
Joel: Well played, Sowash.
Lieven: I would've remembered.
[laughter]
Lieven: And I also remember a cover letter which was inserted in a balloon with helium, so you know a flying balloon. And they hang it to my office, the opening...
Chad: The door?
Lieven: I'm not sure what the word is in English. Yeah, the door.
Chad: The knob, the doorknob?
Lieven: Yeah the knob, the doorknob. That's the one. And there was a balloon hanging up my doorknob. And someone put a letter inside and I had to cut the balloon and read the letter. But those were the two only letters I remember. And I don't think I've seen many since. But I used to like motivation mails because it gave me a very quick idea about the intelligence of people. Being able to write a short mail with the essence was a way to say, are people able to tell me a story which is convincing in short amount of time, which is an asset. But now, as you say, with ChatGPT, I'm definitely not going to read whatever has been written by ChatGPT. It's just, it's no use. So now this is gone. Once again, a nice memory from back in the days.
[laughter]
Joel: I love the delivery. Like there is something to be said for zigging when everyone else is zagging. So if there are job seekers out there, like, yeah, it's not the cover letter, it's the presentation, the delivery.
Lieven: Definitely.
Joel: The creativity is what's gonna get you noticed.
Lieven: The most creative one I think was and probably this is a classic, but this is the only case I know. Someone bought my name as a Google advert thinking all those agency workers, those managers at agencies have big egos and they Googled their own names, which of course I did. And I saw, Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze, I want to work for you. And I clicked on the ads and that was someone's application. And this was so cool for a digital agency and the guy was hired. So that one was a nice one too.
Chad: It works.
Lieven: But of course, it works only if you are applying for a very creative job. If you're looking for a, let's say if you're applying for an accountant job, we don't want our accountants to be too creative.
[laughter]
Lieven: I don't think you would be hired then. But for those agency jobs, I liked it.
Joel: Perfumed resume.
Lieven: Yeah.
Chad: Better than Marmite, my friend.
[laughter]
Chad: Better than Marmite.
Joel: Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Well, on that note, let's play a game of who'd you rather, everybody. Here's how we play it. We read two companies that recently got money and we choose who we'd rather in our assessment, starting off with.
Joel: Zurich based CareerFairy, a live streaming platform connecting students with employers. Think, virtual job fairs and stuff like that. Has secured an undisclosed yet significant investment from Dublin-based Mediahuis Marketplaces. The funding will support CareerFairy's global expansion, focused on other DACH and Benelux regions, touting a workforce across multiple European locations and 200 paying clients. CareerFairy believes their future is nothing but up and to the right. Founded in 2019, the company employs 25 people. And in this corner, Mintago. London's Mintago has raised $4.75 million in funding. Founded in 2019, the company provides a financial wellbeing platform designed to help employees tackle their most pressing financial needs, such as managing pension contributions. The company intends to use the funds to further enhance its platform and accelerate its growth across the United Kingdom. They currently employ 42 people. That is the face off. Chad, Mintago or CareerFairy. Who'd you rather?
Chad: Yeah. So Mintago, to me, it, seems like it's definitely a problem, but I don't think it's a big enough problem, where CareerFairy can be seen as a necessity because identifying candidates earlier is key for most organizations today and in building their talent pipelines. So to me, this starts to solve a talent pipeline problem. The employer understands and they will pay for it. So I am all in for CareerFairy over Mintago.
SFX: What are you doing step bro?
Joel: Well, I hate the name CareerFairy. First of all, it's a horrible name.
Chad: It's two words you can spell.
Joel: It's a little bit memorable, like your cologne or your perfumed resume. But I generally hate student, connecting students with employers companies. They come and go, handshake, like it's just a shitty business. You gotta stay cool and relevant to the kids, which is not easy. There's always a new company that wants to come into the career services. We've got a cooler TikTok account or we've like, whatever it is, students are fickle, targeting them is just a bad historical, or bad business historically. However, let's look at the financial health of employees around the world. According to BenefitsPRO, financial stress costs US companies 4.7 billion per week. Imagine that on a global level, and particularly in Europe, there's a low percentage of savers. Only 20% say they have basic financial literacy. Most people don't have $1000 in the bank for an emergency. My kids aren't taught finances in school, and it's a big problem. If they're not gonna learn it in school, they might as well learn it as an employee. By the way, it's most of these kids that are going to CareerFairy, they're gonna have this crazy debt on their head for going to college that will need Mintago to help with their financial stress.
Chad: Not in The UK, but in the US. Carry on. I think you forget what show you're on. Go ahead. Yeah.
Joel: Yeah. I know how much apartments are in Paris. Anyway, for me, this is pretty obvious. I hate businesses targeting students. This one is...
SFX: Just the tip.
Joel: Mintago all the way. Lieven.
Lieven: Do I really have to choose one?
Joel: Is it neither or you like both of them?
Lieven: No. It's neither. No, no. But, I think about Mintago can be very short. I mean, the easiest way to save money is not to spend it on Mintago. So, that's done. And then we have, CareerFairy. I like the name but probably for different reasons. But I feel, it was launched in 2019. Live streaming was the perfect activity during COVID and they probably gained some ground, but now we're post-COVID and they're still hanging on to the live streaming. But because of COVID so many companies as ours, they had their own streaming studios installed. So they don't need companies like that anymore. Three years ago, four years ago, 2019, if I would've liked the professional streaming, I would've used a company like that one. But now we have our own streaming studios, so we don't need them.
Lieven: And getting in touch with students isn't that hard. We do campus recruitment, we need it, but we don't need a platform like that. The only reason why I might prefer CareerFairy over Mintago is because Mediahuis, they're Dublin based. But in fact, the holding above Mediahuis is a Belgium company which I happen to know very well, and they are a newspaper publisher and they have very good newspapers in Belgium and the Netherlands and some other countries. So they might use that as a leverage to launch CareerFairy on a bigger scale so it could work. Otherwise, I would never invest my own money in it. I wouldn't even invest House of HR's money in it.
Joel: Lieven breaks the tie, the win goes to CareerFairy. Chad and I are coming to Europe. If you're listening to this, you might be at Unleash in Paris, right about now. Make sure you stop by and say hi. We'll be in the Textkernel booth. Until then, we out.
Chad: We out.
Lieven: We out.
Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of The Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could've used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.