LinkedIn Crushes Monster
Remember when you thought Microsoft had lost their collective mind when they dropped $26.2 billion for LinkedIn? HA!
Well, it looks like Microsoft is going to have the last laugh because LinkedIn is crushing it. And who’s not
crushing it?
How about Monster? Shocker, right?
Of course, there’s more WFH and COVID insanity that the boys cover. How about some MadMen, 2021-style? Got that too. Oh, and Walmart does some good (suck it, Amazon!)
Give it up for our friends at Sovren, JobAdX, and Jobvite!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire.
INTRO (1s):
Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. .
Joel (35s):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Two guys who will never put their mental health ahead of this show. We're live in Detroit rock city for this one. What's up boys and girls. It's the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "eight mile" Cheeseman.
Chad (50s):
And this is Chad "speak for your own damn self" Sowash.
Joel (53s):
On this week's, show LinkedIn crushes it, the boss wants you back in the office, like now, and job.com calls JG Wentworth 877-cash-now, 877-cash-now! When did we last do a face-to-face show?
Chad (1m 13s):
I can't remember.
Joel (1m 14s):
Columbus.
Chad (1m 15s):
I can't remember. It's been a while.
Joel (1m 17s):
A long time man.
Chad (1m 18s):
When we pulled the mics out, we sat down and I mean, we've done them in bars. We've done them in lobbies and he's always fun. Doesn't matter.
Joel (1m 25s):
That's the morning after.
Chad (1m 26s):
Warning after is generally in the morning, after which much drinking.
Joel (1m 30s):
Rubbing the sleep out of our eyes.
Chad (1m 31s):
And that being said, we're now in downtown Detroit, in the Western, thanks to Symphony Talent. They brought us up and we enjoyed some time in Lansing. Got to go and surprise Tim Sackett.
Joel (1m 46s):
Beautiful Lansing.
Chad (1m 47s):
And give him some beer. And that was a good time. Debbie, Gina, Aya, Gabby, and the rest of the Symphony Talent crew, we did, there was a lot of work that we did in pulling together content for Transform.
Joel (2m 4s):
Transform.
Chad (2m 5s):
If you haven't registered for Transform yet, go to SymphonyTalent.com, find Transform, register. You're going to love it. They are doing so much amazing fun work. Good to see Tim. Good to see obviously,
Joel (2m 22s):
You know, easy JZ makes a special appearance.
Chad (2m 26s):
Josj Zywien, Julie and Torrin, obviously they came up, they came up with us. So it's been a good time.
Joel (2m 33s):
And thanks to the city of Detroit. Thanks. We're seeing the Renaissance firsthand. The city is pulling itself out of the rust belt brand. It's quite a nice setting. Now, if you come here, it needs to be in July, August. Oh gosh. February. Wouldn't be quite as delightful, but this has been a great time.
Chad (2m 52s):
Talking about what else isn't delightful. This Olympics is still holding strong as my number three worst Olympics ever, whether it's COVID, whether it's, you know, people pulling out, the marijuana fiasco and this is just turning out to be that Olympics that will have not just an asterisk, but like multiple asterisks.
Joel (3m 15s):
No, one's watching this Olympics. Really? The ratings are horrible, man. Not no surprise.
Chad (3m 22s):
Fire alarm. This is the kind of stuff that happens on the live Chad and Cheese.
Joel (3m 29s):
Do you wanna take a break and edit this out?
Chad (3m 31s):
We'll take a break. Yeah.
Joel (3m 33s):
Or keep going? And so my first shout out in relation to your Olympics comment, I talked about the 1936 Olympics last time, and I listened to a podcast called This Week in History by the History Channel. And if you, if you want more information on the 1936 Olympics, this one coincided with our discussion, they talk about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Nazi Germany. They talk about Jesse Owens and Mack Robinson, who is Jackie Robinson's older brother. Yeah. That is awesome. Yeah. They both in the race, they ran both broke the world record Jesse one by then two tenths of a second.
Joel (4m 13s):
And just the aftermath of the Olympics coming back to a country that was segregated and the challenges there. So yeah, if that's something that's interesting, it's this week in This Week in History by the History Channel, wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Chad (4m 28s):
Yeah and that being said on the same line, there's a new movie that came out like two, three years ago or something like that called Race. And that is an amazing story about Jesse Owens. And there's a little Ohio state love there, obviously, but it was a great as a great movie.
Joel (4m 46s):
There's a great statue of Jesse Owens in Cleveland, which I think is where he grew up. And yeah, Hitler would not pose for a picture with Jesse Owens. No surprise there.
Chad (4m 55s):
Go figure.
Joel (4m 56s):
But the Olympic committee told Hitler, apparently either you take pictures with everyone or you take pictures with no one and he took pictures with no one.
Chad (5m 3s):
Yeah.
Joel (5m 3s):
From that point forward.
Chad (5m 5s):
Cause he's that asshole. A big shout out to Teg Grenager. Remember that guy?
Joel (5m 10s):
Yeah, Teg!
Chad (5m 11s):
Remember Dave from Uncommon.
Joel (5m 13s):
Teg your it!
Chad (5m 15s):
He's the CEO now over at Joinable, believe he's one of the co-founders as well. And they just raised 1.5 million in seed funding. So congrats Teg. It's not in recruiting and marketing.
Joel (5m 28s):
Which is smart.
Chad (5m 29s):
Yes. Yeah.
Joel (5m 31s):
He learned from that mistake.
Chad (5m 32s):
It's like, yeah, let's, let's get the fuck out of this. So congrats, congrats, Teg.
Joel (5m 36s):
Well, speaking of new faces, a shout out to Sue Arthur. We mentioned her as the new CareerBuilder CEO. So a little bit about her. She's a tech industry leader who's held senior positions at Hewlett Packard and electronic data systems or EDS as it's more popularly known and most recently oversaw $10 billion technology division within the United Health Group. So she's got a little bit of tech chops. So we'll see if she can turn things around there at CB.
Chad (6m 5s):
Yeah, because they really don't have much left. I mean, they sold everything right. And everything's pieces parts. So they're trying to sell off Broadbean now. So I mean, you know, maybe that changes with her coming in and they don't look to sell it, but all the vibes that I've gotten is that they're trying to sell it.
Joel (6m 21s):
You think she's coming in to sell?
Chad (6m 22s):
I don't know where it goes, man. I don't know.
Joel (6m 25s):
I'm still on the comeback. Still betting on the Yahoo comeback.
Chad (6m 28s):
They could have stayed with Irina because for God's sakes, that's all she did was sell shit off. Right. So she's proven that she can do that. So this move to Sue is I think it's incredibly interesting, which they could be changing strategies. You talking about the whole Yahoo connection. I think that's all bunk.
Joel (6m 46s):
I mean, they gotta be looking at all the money going into this space and thinking maybe we should rethink that strategy. Rethink that strategy.
Chad (6m 54s):
Shout out to EEOC commissioner Keith Sonderling. He's making some waves in a very good way. He asking the hard questions in an AJC column where he faces down discriminations for veterans, hiring discrimination for veterans and asks if veterans should be a protected class. And this is something that in our space we've been talking about for a long time, should veterans be a protected class? So we, I mean, we'll at least start having that discussion at that level, at the EOC level, the commissioner level.
Joel (7m 28s):
Shout out to the artist, formerly known as the Cleveland Indians, who I'll talk about their new name in a second, but shout out to them for taking the bold step of erasing the name Indians and the derogatory.
Chad (7m 41s):
They kept the dians though.
Joel (7m 43s):
Yes, they did the Dians. They should have just been the Cleveland dians. So shout out to them for making that move. That was a strong move of support for equality. Now to the name. I hate it. I think it, it sounds like an arena football team. Okay. It's very localized. Guardians of the Galaxy comes to mind. A lot of people.
Chad (8m 4s):
I was fighting for the spiders.
Joel (8m 5s):
Which was one of the original early 1800s names. Now a lot of the local vibe was that the spiders team was one of the worst teams in major or baseball history, so they wanted to stay away from that. But I loved being going, reaching back to the past and bringing in the old name. Not hot on the Guardians. Don't like it, the visualization, the ball with the wings, looks like the old Angel's logo. I could go on for another hour. I will not, but I just want to state, I don't like the name.
Chad (8m 35s):
And you're still going to buy jerseys. They're just not going to say Guardians on it. They're going to say Cleveland.
Joel (8m 40s):
That's exactly right.
Chad (8m 41s):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so no worry about that. You're still gonna get the schwag. You're still gonna get the gear. Shout out to gen X-ers. So apparently it's becoming harder for those 45 plus to find jobs mid-career workers are seen as having weaker skills than younger workers. Do you get this shit? What a great way. And this is another way that corporate America is engineering a narrative, and this is such bullshit and has nothing to do with skills. Rather, the dollars older workers demand for their experience, their connections and their basic value. So, you know, this is where all the smoke and mirrors of the skills gap is engineered.
Chad (9m 21s):
I gotta thank, you know, our Columbia professor of economic Suresh Naidu for opening our eyes to that bullshit. I mean, you knew it was engineered, but how did it actually impact? Right. A skills gap and so on and so forth. We're seeing it right before our eyes.
Joel (9m 39s):
We're not the cool kids anymore, Chad.
Chad (9m 41s):
We're the expensive kids.
Joel (9m 42s):
We're the outcasts.
Chad (9m 44s):
We are the expensive kids. Yeah, we've always been the outcasts.
Joel (9m 47s):
We don't run things and we're not cool anymore. So we're in this no man's land of hipness. And I quote the great, great Nirvana when I say, oh, well, whatever, nevermind. Shout out to free shit, everybody. We just announced the winners from this, or last month, we're going to redrawing a new couple of names out of the hat. So there's still time to put your name in, go to Chadcheese.com/free. We got shirts by Emissary. We got beer by Adzuna and we got whiskey powered by Sovren. If you're not there, what's your problem?
Chad (10m 24s):
Well, yeah. What is your problem? It was funny. Jonathan Zilla from a recruiter actually posted that. He keeps trying to like go back and register again and again, and the form won't let him and it pops up and says, you've already registered.
Joel (10m 40s):
Yeah, you don't get any better chances if you reregister, sorry. J-Z out of Philly's trying to work his poach subscription to winning a, some free stuff. So totally random guys. I'm telling you, we go to random.org. We put in the numbers and it spits out a winner.
Chad (10m 57s):
Too funny, too funny.
Joel (10m 59s):
Well, speaking of winners, let's talk about birthdays real quick. A birthday is celebrating here this week or next Maren Hogan of the industry.
Chad (11m 7s):
Oh Maren!
Joel (11m 7s):
She's a turning another year older. Jim Schneider, Crystal Lay, my buddy up north Serge Boudreau.
Chad (11m 14s):
Serge!
Joel (11m 15s):
Kipp Birtwistle is a big fan.
Chad (11m 20s):
Kipp Birtwistle
Joel (11m 21s):
Kipp Birtwistle that's a mouthful. His company is a big fan of the show. They wanted us to send him a happy birthday. So KIPP have a couple on us buddy. Happy Birthday.
Chad (11m 34s):
Yeah. and when you're out with your buddies, Todd and Chet have a beer for us. Topics!
Joel (11m 45s):
Before we get to topics, we have a sad note that we need to highlight. So John Malore, lot of the industry folks will know. He founded Jobs in Sports, out of Arizona. It's about a 20 year old job site.
Chad (12m 0s):
Yeah. It has been around forever! Just sold it.
Joel (12m 4s):
Yeah. He just sold it. And now it's maybe, maybe understanding why apparently John lost a battle with cancer this week and has left us. I've always respected him. He's always been a really nice guy. He's always had sort of an aw shucks, like just salt of the earth mentality. He's always been humble and polite to me. So heart's out a heart goes out to him and his family in this hard time, but he will be missed.
Chad (12m 34s):
There was never a time at a conference that seeing John Malore didn't make you smile. Cause you know, you got to see him again. You got that, but just handshake.
Joel (12m 43s):
Just a big teddy bear.
Chad (12m 46s):
That big smile, you know, and it just going to miss that such a great guy. This is a huge loss, and if we're obviously family, friends, but also for an industry that, you know, we need your guys.
Joel (13m 4s):
Yeah. Look, this industry is built on people. Our business is built on people and we have some of the best people in the world that play in our space and we're honored to be part of that. And we'll definitely miss the folks that we've gotten to know over the decades. Well Chad a lot of folks thought Microsoft was nuts for paying 26 billion for LinkedIn, but it's looking like they may have gotten a bargain. As part of its quarterly earnings announcement a Microsoft official said revenues from its LinkedIn subsidiary were up 46% compared to the year ago, quarter driven by strong advertising demand in marketing solutions to the tune of 97% growth year over year.
Joel (13m 48s):
Microsoft doesn't disclose exact LinkedIn revenues or profits, but officials did say the LinkedIn advertising business did surpass $1 billion this quarter for the first time. Microsoft added LinkedIn is now a $10 billion source of annual revenue. Chad, are you finally ready to drink some LinkedIn Kool-Aid?
Chad (14m 10s):
The LinkedIn Kool-Aid is being gobbled up by talent acquisition and recruiter seats all over the world. Right?
Joel (14m 18s):
Gotta have it.
Chad (14m 19s):
Yeah. I still believe that they are not an innovative organization. Right? They're doing and again, in talent, acquisition and recruiting, you really don't have to be innovative. I mean, how long did Monster hang around? CareerBuilder? I mean, we talk about CareerBuilder hanging around and they did not innovate at all, still aren't. So, you know, the big question is how long do they hang on to this kind of market share? But the growth marketing solutions up 97%? LinkedIn advertising business over a billion dollars, like you said this quarter for the first time ever. And you know, we wonder why so many people want to get into the recruitment and hiring game in the marketing space, right.
Chad (15m 7s):
The market, which is pretty much a feeding frenzy right now.
Joel (15m 11s):
Yep.
Chad (15m 11s):
Everybody sees it. LinkedIn and these numbers demonstrate it. Right. So that's why we're seeing so much money that, the first six months it was over $7.5 billion dumping into it. This is the reason why.
Joel (15m 25s):
Yeah. Yeah. And all that started with Microsoft's writing a check essentially for $26 billion. And that was one of the comments of our industry or comments, comets, asteroids. That's easier to say. In our industry and a little bit of context, this makes LinkedIn bigger than Twitter. Makes it bigger than Snap, a little context there. They're they're well, on their way to 800 million members, they still have a link into China, which other social networks don't enjoy that level of access. So as far as I'm concerned, when I talked to two companies, it's geez, we hate LinkedIn. It's too damn expensive, but yeah, we gotta be there. And I don't see that changing anytime soon, as long as they have the people.
Chad (16m 7s):
Yeah, totally agree. You've got to remember though, back 10 years ago, everybody was, God, I hate Monster, but we got to have it. And we're like, okay, so what's the ROI. Well, the ROI doesn't really make sense, but it's something that our people just feel like they have to have. I think this is the same kind of scenario.
Joel (16m 29s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It would have been nice for Monster to have someone like Microsoft out. It's sort of just integrated things into that system. So that's a nice,
Chad (16m 36s):
a 800 pound gorilla
Joel (16m 38s):
that LinkedIn has at its disposal. And don't forget they own Get Hub, which is a treasure trove of tech talent.
Chad (16m 44s):
It is, but we haven't seen any type of the integration that we thought we would. You know, so there's really nothing happening there that's innovative. And we really thought that something was going to happen innovative in that space.
Joel (16m 58s):
True. True. We have not seen the integration on either of those platforms into Microsoft, that we thought that we would. We're going to another, some other employment industries that are having a good go of it. But we'll talk about a little bit of stagnation in that picture here in a bit. So if you don't believe the world is back, both Randstad and Adecco reported impressive numbers this past week, Randstad reported second quarter revenue rose 38% year over year, while second quarter revenue at the Adecco Group rose 29%. Big numbers, but Monster is still stuck in the mud. Randstad reported the Monster job board business is quote, "showing positive year over year momentum,"
Joel (17m 42s):
whatever that means, but they did not disclose any numbers. So Chad big growth at the mothership, not so much with the children.
Chad (17m 51s):
Yeah. If this isn't a troubling sign for any business in our space, if you are not seeing growth and I'm not just talking LinkedIn growth, right. I'm just talking growth overall. These guys are really, I mean, they're flatlining and they're happy to be flat lining that's that's the horrible part about this, right?
Joel (18m 11s):
They're not shrinking. And by the way, you remember, remember this story. I don't know if it was in fortune or Forbes about how Monster was going to reach juvenate itself and target younger workers. I wonder if that's the momentum that Randstad is talking about that article, that bullshit advertorial that was in Forbes or Fortune. Whichever one?
Chad (18m 30s):
It was definitely an advertorial to be able to prop Monster in, and Scott Gutz guts up, you know, to be able to try to maybe that was the momentum who knows. Yeah. But overall, I mean, seriously, you take a look at Monster, we talked about a little bit earlier. When you are not innovating when you have it and you really can't at this point, here's why you have old ass tech and you have technical debt that you're paying every single day because you did not 10 years ago rebuild right from the ground up with new models, like an Indeed model or something like that. Right. When you don't, when you take that car and you don't service it, or you don't do any of that, it's going to blow up that they can't do what they want with this old jalopy.
Chad (19m 16s):
Now that remember the video, my job Monster studios integration, right? That was a demonstration because it took like six months a demonstration of what a jalopy they have.
Joel (19m 29s):
And we're still waiting for Instagram for Jobs, by the way, from the job acquisition. And you mentioned innovation, but don't forget the branding piece of that. We're looking at probably the strongest brand in our space, 20, 15, 20 years ago. They've lost that to an entire generation who thinks Monster is an energy drink and has no association with Monster as a job site. So Monster is getting on, on both ends, no innovation, and they're losing their brand equity.
Chad (19m 53s):
On the outside of this industry. When people would ask me what I do, my easy line was I was with Monster before it was Monster. And I've had literally millennials say, oh, I love that drink. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no Monster.com. And they look at me sideways, like, what the fuck are you talking about? Right. What Monster, what? And you know, it's, so I can't even use that anymore. It used to be a staple now in our industry, people know you can do that stuff, but outside that brand as has atrophied and it is pretty much dead.
Joel (20m 26s):
And gen Z starting to come into the workforce. And that's a whole nother generation that it's an energy drink, not a job site. Well, we've gone from a rocket-ship to stuck in the mud to maybe full on, pull the rip cord and get off the bus, kids.
Chad (20m 43s):
Could be bad.
Joel (20m 44s):
So we got a letter from a source, a copy of a letter that went out to vendors of job.com that our customers basically saying that they had sold, job.com had sold their receivables to a third party. So for those in America that no JG Wentworth, this is what I thought of. So JG Wentworth, if you have an annuity or a legal legal claim where you're owed cash, then JG Wentworth would come in and they'll buy your debt for a little bit less than what you would get. And then there's usually like a loan and it's so basically job.com said, we need money now.
Joel (21m 24s):
So let's sell our future earnings to someone in return for that instant cash. It's clearly not a good sign of business health.
Chad (21m 34s):
It's a payday loan.
Joel (21m 34s):
When you do that, it's basically a payday loan. It's not a good sign. So job.com again, we both love Aaron as a person, great guy. And this was a company that, you know, you might listeners might not remember. You know, they came out with the model of job seekers are going to get 5% return on their first year salary. They were flipping the whole script on recruitment fees. They had a credit card. They were going to give you, I mean, there were, there were a lot of big visions and big plans for this company. And they've, since they've just become a job site, and if you go to their site, now, they basically said, okay, all this innovative stuff, let's scrap that we're going to be a job board and drive traffic and then go back to the way that it always is.
Chad (22m 19s):
Yeah, overall, it's like, if you're trying to do something that is innovative in this industry, you had better do it very slowly in baby steps. So that pretty much, you know, the industry can digest it and then adopt it. Yeah.
Joel (22m 35s):
I mean, dude came in with a sledgehammer and I'm not sure the market was ready for that kind of aggressiveness
Chad (22m 42s):
Are ready for is for us to take a break and have another drink of coffee for God's sakes. And we are back. So man, this back to work thing.
Joel (22m 53s):
Shit's getting hectic. You got some rapids bullet points on what's going on, man. What's what's on your list that people should should know about?
Chad (23m 3s):
Blizzard. You know, the famous company.
Joel (23m 6s):
Activision
Chad (23m 7s):