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):

Yeah, Activistion, Blizzard, you know, they do the really cool ass video games. They're back in the news. They had a walkout over rampant sexism and discrimination, which was reported by the Verge.

Joel (23m 20s):

They were inspired by the Burger King crew that walked out.

Chad (23m 22s):

Oh my God, Jesus.

Joel (23m 24s):

A couple of weeks ago.

Chad (23m 25s):

There aas a Sherm poll said 67% of remote workers, supervisors considered remote workers at their organization more easily replaceable than onsite workers, according to a poll, a poll by Sherm. It's obviously easier to kick people to the curb when you don't have to look them in the eye. Apple is policing their Slack channels we get into that, the Vikings fire an assistant head coach, also the offensive line coach, Rick Dennison for refusing to get vaccinated. Shake Shack mandates vaccines, not only for employees, but for patrons who want to come in, this is in two states, but still, and then last but not least federal workers, seems like, which is a large, large workforce is going to have a vaccine mandate.

Joel (24m 14s):

Yeah. Yeah. That would be the Minnesota Vikings for our listeners overseas. That's a USA football team, which is going through its own bit of growing pains.

Chad (24m 25s):

It is.

Joel (24m 25s):

Some stars like Deandre Hopkins saying that they may skip the season. They may retire because they're being forced to get the vaccine.

Chad (24m 33s):

He's not gonna retire, Bullshit.

Joel (24m 35s):

There's too much money in the league to like play around with COVID. Yeah. They're all getting the shot. Whether they like it or not, which is insane. The stuff that football players probably put in their body. And they're afraid to get a little, a little jab of some vaccine is crazy, but of these bullet points. What like sort of stands out to you is?

Chad (24m 52s):

Let's talk about the NFL rules real quick. If you're not vaccinated, you're going to be named and shamed. I mean, they will know pretty much.

Joel (25m 1s):

Your teammates

Chad (25m 1s):

The public will know who's not vaccinated number one. If the team has a COVID breakout, right? They have to forfeit the game. That's a loss. And also fined if that team gets the one that gets the loss, because they had the COVID outbreak, they also have to pay the salaries for the other team. So, I mean, this is really aggressive.

Joel (25m 29s):

The NFL ain't playing, they want games on Sundays. They don't want to postpone stuff, reschedule stuff. They want shit back the way it was, printing money and everybody getting paid and a few players that are standing up against this, they're making it very hard not to get the shot.

Chad (25m 46s):

Yeah. And they don't need, fine don't get the shot, but you're going to be named and shamed. And if any of this happens and you, and you're not vaccinated, I mean, just the ramifications overall.

Joel (25m 57s):

The ball is rolling on this. You've got the federal employee mandate that Biden is putting through, which makes total sense to me. You've got the NFL, you're going to get every sports league.

Chad (26m 7s):

Shake Shack. It is hard to find employees in retail and restaurants now, right. And the CEO is making a hard and fast rule, which I gotta say I love, but I'm not sure how long he's going to be able to do it. Number one, from the standpoint of employees and getting enough people who are vaccinated to come work for him, but also people who want to come in and get a burger and eat in your restaurant. You've got to prove that your vaccinated.

Joel (26m 35s):

Yeah. And look, we're hearing that a lot of people aren't going back to work because of fear of COVID. So does it make sense to say, look, all of our employees are vaccinated and all of our customers are vaccinated, how you police that will be interesting, the two cities that are doing it, I think have plans around that. But if they can get more people back to work who are afraid of getting COVID, then this is a good sign to get people, people back to work.

Chad (26m 58s):

Well, and that being said, the whole remote work, Apple is policing slack channels. And apparently there was some internal Slack channels that were having very heated, remote work arguments, because they wanted, they wanted to be treated like adults. They wanted their freedom. And there are other individuals I'm sure, supervisors who were saying, well, no, that's the first and foremost, not your choice. Right. I mean, there's just, there's a, there's a lot of heated discussion. And it seems as if Apple is just going to shut that down.

Joel (27m 32s):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, from my perspective, look, from my perspective, this is going to get really messy over the next 18 to 24 months. Companies are going to have to decide what team are they on? They they're either a hundred percent work from home, Shopify, Twitter, a couple of the ones that are there are well-known I've already been on record as saying, we're a hundred percent virtual. If that's what you want in a workplace, they're going to recruit those kinds of people and that's going to be very good for them. As a result. I think more companies will announce we're a hundred percent work from home. You're going to have the Apples that are hybrids. And for people that want that, they're going to stay at Apple or other other companies. And then you have a growing number, by evidence of the Wall Street Journal story this week about most companies are going a hundred percent.

Joel (28m 19s):

Most companies are the bosses saying, get your ass back to work.

Chad (28m 22s):

Wow.

Joel (28m 22s):

I would venture to say, if you're not a tech worker, a knowledge worker, you're not going to have much of a say in terms of whether your work from home or not, your ass is going to be back in the office like it was before the, before the pandemic. I think another thing to mention on that, you talked about the Sherm study, which I think is one of the more interesting things that came out this week. So more than two thirds of supervisors of remote workers consider remote workers of their organization more easily replaceable than onsite workers. 62% believe a full-time remote work is detrimental to employee's career objectives and 72% would prefer all of their subordinates to be working in the office.

Joel (29m 3s):

So we're seeing a trend rise of people saying, look, you need to be in the office because if you're not, you're more replaceable. You're more likely to get fired. You're not going to get promoted. And we talked about this this week here at the Transform filming is that I think there's going to be a movement to say, look okay. You can work from home if you want, but you're not going to, because you're going to find yourself in a rut of not getting promotions. You're going to be left behind. You're probably going to see your cohorts that are working from home, get fired more frequently. And it's, there's going to be motivation to come in the office. I used to work for a company that had a vacation policy of just take however much vacation you want.

Joel (29m 43s):

Like we're not going to police it.

Chad (29m 44s):

Total bullshit.

Joel (29m 45s):

What happened is nobody took vacation because everyone felt guilty. We should be working. Imagine these zoom calls where, you know, a third of the people are in the office, they're together. You're going to feel like a real outsider being at home in your pajamas with other people that are in the office. So I think ultimately most companies are going to be a hundred percent, whether they officially say it or not.

Chad (30m 6s):

And if they do allow, and there isn't, let's say for instance, again, it's all about performance, right? It doesn't matter where you work. It's all about performance. If this is the case, and we have the supervisors who don't want to treat adults like adults, and they want to fire them because they work from home. The EOC will have so many cases open. I mean, they will be crawling up these big brand's asses. And we'll talk about it in another discrimination case next, but this in itself, I dare companies to start doing this because the EOC from an enforcement standpoint, especially under this administration, under this administration, go ahead and get your ass crack ready big boy, because coming up.

Joel (30m 53s):

Yeah, it's going to get ugly. It's going to get ugly.

Chad (30m 55s):

I can't wait, because you stupid assholes who won't treat your employees like adults. You don't deserve to have them in the first place.

Joel (31m 3s):

Culture Chad. It's all about culture.

Chad (31m 5s):

Culture Control. Well that being said, that's a good, that's a good transition into a mad men. So tell me a little bit about this story.

Joel (31m 14s):

Yeah. So two white male creative directors at a top London advertising agency have won a sex discrimination claim after a female director vowed to quote obliterate it's mad men reputation of being full of straight white men. Chaz Bayfield and Dave Jenner, both in their fifties and renowned creative directors at the J Walter Thompson or JWT agency were among five men axed from the agency, which is part of WPP because bosses, quote "urgently wanted to address its poor gender pay gap." A tribunal court ruled the men were dismissed in November of 2018 shortly after the firm revealed a median gender pay gap of 44.7%.

Joel (32m 0s):

The agency's then executive creative director, Lucas Peon described the pay gap statistics as quote, "really, really horrible. In the world cup of sucking at pay gap numbers we made the final." Peon an Emma Hoyle, the company's human resources director called a meeting with Bayfield and Jenner to discuss their concerns. The tribunal heard that that bosses thought the men were challenging the diversity drive. Within two days of the meeting, it had been decided that Bayfield and Jenner would be made redundant. I guess that means fired in England. The employment judge Mark Emery said the men were treated in such a hostile manner it amounted to victimization.

Joel (32m 43s):

No one said equality. Wouldn't get a little messy. Reverse discrimination is an issue here and it's as it will in the future. But what's your take on, on these two dudes winning this case, we're going to see more of this.

Chad (32m 53s):

I think, I think it's fairly simple. You know, we have to be smarter about how we do business and if we determine there's a pay gap right, I have three easy steps. Number one, make up the gap, pay those women more.

Joel (33m 8s):

Stop with your common sense, Chad.

Chad (33m 10s):

Don't get rid of the highly paid white dudes just pay the women what they're being paid. Right. So, that's number one. Number two, focus on hiring in a more diversified way. Look for more people of color, more women, et cetera, et cetera, right? Because you're saying it's very madman, very white male, straight white male, heavy. Okay, well rectify that you can only do that by, you know, you're hiring and then last but not least ensure that you are paying equitably moving forward. So you start bringing new people in, don't go back to your old standards and fuck this thing up again. So it's really simple. Don't get rid of all the highly paid white dudes, don't get rid of them.

Chad (33m 52s):

Right? Pay, the women more.

Joel (33m 54s):

Yup. Yup. And while you're doing that, don't say stupid shit in public like you're going to deep six, all the white people or all the white men in the company, like keep that to yourself. That was the big mistake I think that they made there.

Chad (34m 7s):

And this is just, you say a black eye for anybody who, you know, is looking to diversify and focus on pay gaps. I mean, just the story itself. It's like, oh my God, well, we might as well do nothing because they did something. And it's like, no, it's not that they did something. They did something very fucking stupid and they didn't do what they should have, which is, you know, raise those women.

Joel (34m 30s):

Yeah. I think part of, part of the story goes to look, companies are going to want agencies that look more like the world, that look more like their customers. And I think this is going to be a trend where all agencies that look like this are going to have to diversify. They're going to have to look like the market that they're catering to because companies aren't going to deal with all white agencies anymore who don't understand diversity.

Chad (34m 56s):

Dude, think of the demos. And it being, I was in broadcast before I got into this space, the biggest demo that spends is on the female side. Right? And if you don't have females who are actually in charge of campaigns around anything, right?

Joel (35m 15s):

Cars.

Chad (35m 16s):

Makeup, I mean, just anything, right.

Joel (35m 18s):

Yeah.

Chad (35m 19s):

Then you're not going to be targeting those women who are spending money. Right. Also individuals of color also. I mean, it just goes on and on trans people, so on and so forth, we're starting to see more of that in advertising today, but that will be much more genuine if you actually have those types of people on your team.

Joel (35m 42s):

Sure. By the way, that inspired me to, to highlight an eighties classic, Mr. Mom, which took place here in Detroit, that features a woman who goes into an ad agency and changes things up because she brings a real mother's perspective to the agency. So if you're looking for a classic movie that sort of, I dunno, foretells this issue, check out Mr. Mom, which is also pretty damn funny.

Chad (36m 7s):

Or Tom Hanks in Big cause he was a kid.

Joel (36m 10s):

Yeah. Let's hire kids everybody, only if they're in an adult body.

Chad (36m 16s):

Yeah. Let's take a break. Whoo. Are we really going to talk good about Walmart?

Joel (36m 23s):

Let's end the show on a positive note.

Chad (36m 25s):

I'm all for it.

Joel (36m 28s):

So Walmart is removing all costs related to its employee college tuition program, investing $1 billion over the next five years to cover the full price of tuition and books for some 1.5 million employees. The nation's largest private employer will waive the $1 a day fee, which was put in place in 2018 for it's Live Better You program starting August 16th and a bit to boost enrollment. Executives say "the goal is to remove the barriers that too often keep adult worker learners from obtaining degrees."

Joel (37m 12s):

The program has seen more than 52,000 associates participate and 8,000 earn a degree or certificate. As of this summer, nearly 28,000 associates are active in the program. The strategy is this, an executive said in an interview quote, "our education offerings tied directly to our growth areas of Walmart. And what better way to build a pipeline of future talent than with our own associates?" That's poetry.

Chad (37m 40s):

Huh? Okay. So first and foremost, just to make sure that we get this, you know, out there, just to make sure that they're also paying a living wage, right? That's the thing. This is big. I love this. But also those individuals in different areas of the universe, I mean, Walmart's a big fucking company, right? To make sure that there's a living wage that's being paid. Yeah. I mean, 52,000 participants, 8,000 earned a degree or certification, like you said, this is how you build leaders and provide transparent career paths. When somebody sees that you support them and you believe in them, right? That's when you get loyal employees, they'll stick with you.

Chad (38m 21s):

Then when you see that there's a path, there's a path for me to grow here. That's when you keep people and you have great retention numbers and those types of things. So, you know, I think Walmart incredibly smart, they already have a lot of cash. We've noticed that during the pandemic organizations like Walmart, their gains went up dramatically. Right? So this just makes sense reinvest in your people. That's where we, that's where we in the US, I'm going to talk about the US cause I don't know about the rest of the world on this, but this is where we've got it wrong for decades now where we're sending that reinvestment to stockholders instead of reinvesting in our people and making our foundation much stronger.

Joel (39m 7s):

Yeah. And look, Walmart is doing a really good job of become of being the anti Amazon. So I think we talked about Amazon recently about the churn. They don't give a shit that there's a ceiling on how far you can advance. This is an exact opposite of that strategy. And I'm not exactly sure, but I'm pretty sure the CEO of Walmart started as a bag boy, or he started at the bottom. I'll have to check that, but the story of Walmart is much different than the story that they're building there, is one of come here. We'll grow your career, we will enhance you, we'll make you better. And you're right. Loyalty retention are going to be through the roof.

Joel (39m 47s):

And I think that good for them if they start pulling Amazon employees who want a future and not just a paycheck, cause this is the strategy Walmart is executing on.

Chad (39m 57s):

And they don't want to piss in garbage cans anymore. They want to be able to go to school. They want to be able to know that they've got, you know, an opportunity that's there. Not just now, but later. So I know that kudos to Walmart.

Joel (40m 8s):

Maybe if they get rides in the penis rocket they will get people to stay up at Amazon.

Chad (40m 16s):

Oh, I think that's a we out.

Joel (40m 19s):

We out.

OUTRO (40m 17s):

Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode.

OUTRO (41m 1s):

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.