The world is awakening from its pandemic-induced coma. What does that look like? We’re starting to get an idea, as
Will the job market be back by Q4?
Google & Amazon say "Your office awaits"
Rutgers University make a smart move, employers watch
Buy or Sell with 1) Celential.ai 2) Crosschq and 3) Datapeople
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
INTRO (2s):
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. oys and girls.
Joel (21s):
Oh yeah. Celebrating four years together and Chad still hasn't proposed. Hi boys and girls. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel "no more remote work for you" Cheeseman.
Chad (37s):
And I'm Chad "just watched the Snyder cut twice" Sowash.
Joel (41s):
On this week show, will you join LinkedIn's Clubhouse? Google and Amazon say, get your ass back to the office, and the Ladders launches a new "innovation." And when I say innovation, I'm using air quotes.
Sovren Promo (56s):
You already know that Sovren makes the world's best resume CV parser, but did you know that Sovren also makes the world's best AI matching engine? Only Sovren's AI matching engine goes beyond the buzzwords. With Sovren you control how the engine thinks with every match the Sovren engine tells you what matched and exactly how each matching document was scored. And if you don't agree with the way it's scored the matches, you can simply move some sliders to tell it, to score the matches your way. No other engine on earth gives you that combination of insight and control. With Sovren, matching isn't some frustrating "black box, trust us, it's magic, one shot deal" like all the others. No, with Sovren, matching is completely understandable, completely controllable, and actually kind of fun. Sovren ~ software so human you'll want to take it to dinner.
Joel (1m 55s):
Four years together, man. Have we even mentioned that on the show yet?
Chad (1m 58s):
We have not.
Joel (1m 60s):
March something.
Chad (2m 0s):
We have not and glad you did. Yeah.
Joel (2m 3s):
2016 or '17.
Chad (2m 5s):
About a month in, Holy crap.
Joel (2m 7s):
Remember how much our first show sucked, as if it's all that great now, but anyway.
Chad (2m 15s):
I totally remember.
Joel (2m 16s):
We were totally Ricky, Bobby, like not knowing what to do with our hands. We just rambled on for like two hours.
Chad (2m 24s):
For a first show we thought it was going to take 20 minutes. Yeah.
Joel (2m 28s):
Oh, so happy, happy April fool's day. You pulling any jokes on anybody today.
Chad (2m 34s):
Can't get out to pull any jokes for God's sakes. I'd like to, and hopefully will be soon.
Joel (2m 40s):
Yeah. So last year or the year before I did the old a ultrasound April fool's joke.
Chad (2m 47s):
Oh man. That's so bad.
Joel (2m 49s):
Yeah. It's and it's so cliche, but I just, I did it anyway. And then, and then I got a verbal beating from my wife. So I'm steering clear of April Fools 'cause I only get in trouble when I, when I do something.
Chad (3m 2s):
Yeah. That's a good idea. What you should do is sit down and finally watch the Snyder Cut with Cole on and also Godzilla versus King Kong just came out yesterday. So you have plenty of awesome flicks to sit down and enjoy.
Joel (3m 16s):
So tell the listeners who aren't nerds like you and me, what the Snyder Cut is.
Chad (3m 21s):
The, the justice league Snyder Cut, so first off sack Snyder was the, was supposed to finish the justice justice league movie the first time around, but he had some personal issues or something happened and, and Josh Wheden did it and it turned out to be this powder puff. It wasn't horrible, horrible, but it wasn't amazing. So Snyder comes back and everybody's like, we want the Snyder cut. We want the original vision. So on and so forth. So he comes out with this Epic four hour version that is dark, it's rated R and it is just, it's better than Wheden's. It's not as good as anything really in the MCU, but it is incredibly satisfying to watch.
Chad (4m 8s):
I've watched it twice so far.
Joel (4m 12s):
That's a big applause from Chad that he's invested eight hours of his life in this film.
Chad (4m 18s):
It's good. I can't wait for a Godzilla versus King Kong. I'll watch that thing probably about half a dozen times.
Joel (4m 24s):
Yeah. That one looks weird. Cause King Kong is the good guy and I thought they were both good guys. So it's like Superman versus Batman. I don't understand. I guess not.
Chad (4m 35s):
You don't know, that's how they get ya.
Joel (4m 36s):
I got watch. Well, shout out to my son who turned an age old four. He's the same age of this podcast, which either is it's. I don't know. It's it's a bad omen or a sign of good luck. I don't know what it is, but yeah. Jeremy happy birthday buddy. Four years old.
Chad (4m 56s):
Job Ax four years, four years.
Joel (4m 59s):
It's all gravy from like 4 to 10. This is the good, the good time.
Chad (5m 3s):
So thanks to Jennifer Terry Alaina, Jason and the team over at pandoLogic for the bourbon and snacks. They very smartly sent over six airplane bottles of different types of bourbon, pretzels, cheese and caramel corn. And they are perfect for travel, which I am about to do this weekend! Okay.
Joel (5m 28s):
I was going to say, is there a, is there a ticket, a Hawaii in that package like that's a strange care package. Pretty sweet. It's pretty sweet line airline shots. Awesome.
Chad (5m 40s):
It goes with the Goldman snacks. Did you see that?
Joel (5m 44s):
I remember talking about Goldman Sachs recently, but Goldman snacks? Tell me more.
Chad (5m 50s):
So last week we talked about Goldman Sachs and how their 95 hours per week was just fucking crazy, right? Why? Well, while Citibank mandated, like Zoom Fridays, you couldn't do Zooms on Fridays. So Goldman, after this information came out, they sent their entry level peons, I guess, is what they would call them. Snack boxes, like snack baskets or something like that. While everybody else in the industry gets bonuses or Pelotons. I just thought again, this is like rubbing their face in you're going to work here at Goldman Sachs and it's just going to be shit.
Joel (6m 34s):
Who's giving away Peloton damn? That's what I'm talking about. That's raining money kind of shit.
Chad (6m 41s):
Yeah. Yeah.
Joel (6m 42s):
A shout out real quick, Jessica Jensen, you may not know the name now, but you will. Soon. She is. Indeed's new CMO. She takes over. She takes over for Paul Darcy, who we spoke to off the record. Thanks Indeed for that one. And he was actually SVP of marketing at Global Marketing. So I don't know if they've ever even had a real CMO, but she comes from Facebook, Yahoo, Apple. She was at booking.com, Open Table, like some serious chops. So hopefully next year Superbowl ad will actually be something worth watching.
Chad (7m 21s):
So it's funny because Chris Neil and our friend over at Colt Collective posted on LinkedIn, here's the post "hamsters have longer lifespans than CMOs. It's very hard to evoke meaningful organizational change and enhance customer engagement strategies when the new egos and different personalities are rotated through CMOs offices approximately every two years." So enjoy those two years, Jen!
Joel (7m 50s):
Yeah. She's going to get bored real fast, based on her prior experience, working in the job board industry is going to be (zzzz - snore sound effects)
Chad (8m 1s):
Sucks.
Joel (8m 2s):
Hope that check clears.
Chad (8m 3s):
What doesn't suck is a Spotify playlist, kids. Yeah. Yeah. So we have so much content. This is actually episode 653. Good God. We want to give our listeners an easy way to find relevant content. So we started with somewhat of a Netflix approach on Chadcheese.com, creating channels for Firing Squad, Voices, Friday shows and other stuff. But now we've started to create Spotify playlist. The first one is sexy. It's actually called Femm Amp. That's Female being, you know, amplified.
Chad (8m 44s):
So if you're looking for a great female voices to listen, to just search Femm Amp in Spotify, follow it, and enjoy we'll add interviews of more females to come so that playlist will grow.
Joel (9m 0s):
Love it. So I'm keeping my shout-outs to a minimum cause we have a lot to talk about today, but we got to mention free shit!
Chad (9m 8s):
Free stuff!
Joel (9m 9s):
If you want a t-shirt! You want whiskey? You want beer, you got to go to Chadcheese.com/free register. It costs nothing. You're going to get free shit, probably. The level of the level of awesome will go up and down based on whatever the hell shows up. But you got to get on the list to get the stuff, Chadcheese.com/free backslash free.
Chad (9m 34s):
Free stuff who doesn't love free stuff?
Joel (9m 36s):
Special thanks as always to Sovren for the whiskey.
Chad (9m 39s):
Yes. Emissary for the shirts and AdZuna for the beer. Man. That's just good stuff. Not to mention it's it's interesting because we just saw that Matt Alder just received our Christmas card. So guess who knows, who knows? There might be stuff in the mail right now, right?
Joel (10m 1s):
Yeah. Well, it was funny too. Lars Schmidt, by the way, that's a nice segue to the interview we did with him this week. If you haven't listened to that, everybody that's gold right there. Yes. So I sent out Christmas cards and Lars either wrong address or I wrote something incorrectly. His came back, I emailed his December 11th and he lives, I think two States away from us. So the mail is definitely fucked up all over the place.
Chad (10m 29s):
You know what else is fucked up? Equal pay is fucked up. And last week, I didn't understand really what equal pay day was. So one of our listeners, Amy Butchgo over at essay IC. She straightened me out, which I appreciate. So the wage, a white male American makes in a calendar year stopping on obviously December 31st. It takes a white female until March 24th, the following year to earn this same pay nearly three months. And it's obviously much worse for women of color. So thanks for dropping the knowledge, Amy, a couple of dumb white guys are learning every single day.
Chad (11m 14s):
We appreciate it.
Joel (11m 15s):
Yes. This podcast is our MBA in case you're wondering.
Chad (11m 19s):
I'm ready for topics.
Joel (11m 22s):
All right. So what is the post pandemic world look like Chad? Well, we're starting to get some answers.
Chad (11m 29s):
Really?
Joel (11m 29s):
If you think it's talking about, so number one reported this a, this week hiring levels should be at pre pandemic levels by the end of the year. So this is a report by manpower group, who we all know and love, or maybe at least we know nearly one-third of more than 7,500 us employers surveyed said the outlook for 2021 second quarter would return to pre-pandemic hiring levels. This is going to happen as soon as July and an additional 20% said the same could occur by the end of next year. Employers in all of the 12 industries measured by manpower group reported positive hiring outlooks with the strongest projections reported in leisure and hospitality, my two favorite transportation and utilities and wholesale and retail on the state level.
Joel (12m 17s):
Hiring projections were strongest in Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and then followed up by Michigan, Vermont and Arizona. That's a pretty random list of States. Only 4% of employers in this survey said that they plan to require employees to get vaccinated according to this study.
Chad (12m 36s):
And that was a pretty legit sample size as well. What was the, what was the percentage of vaccinated? The mandated vaccinations.
Joel (12m 46s):
Only 4% of employers surveyed, planned to require employees to get vaccinated. I think it was 20% so that they were going to create some sort of incentives to get vaccinated.
Chad (12m 59s):
Yeah. See that that's where I think the problem lies is the word planned. Has every company laid out what their plan for work from home, hybrid or back to normal is yet? HR needs time to create standard operating procedures in a ton of these different areas. I mean like vaccinations themselves, if you're coming back into the office, how are they not going to be required? What's the risk associated to not requiring it versus the risk associated to it, the quote unquote "legal risk" associated in making it compulsory. Right. So, I mean, overall, I personally don't believe that companies are planning or have planned, let's say for these, for these, different issues just yet, they might be talking about it.
Chad (13m 52s):
But I don't believe with that 4% number. I think that 4% number is bullshit. The 20% number I think is going to be much higher.
Joel (13m 59s):
This is a progression, right? Remember when Trump was in office and like 25% said they were actually going to get the vaccine. And now that number is like up to 70. I think don't quote me on that. But things are moving in the direction of let's get vaccinated and maybe companies will progressively move into that same direction as well. I think it's going to take some big companies to require them before other companies say like, yeah, we're going to require it too. I thought was what was interesting from the report was basically it's a, we're opening the country and we're getting the hell out of Dodge and we're all moving to places outside of big cities. So you had obviously hospitality, transportation, people are going to travel.
Joel (14m 41s):
You have retail. People are going to spend money, spend those stimulus checks. And then you had like States that are near big metropolitan areas. So you have Rhode Island, New York, you have Wisconsin. So everyone's Chicago is going to move to Wisconsin. Everyone in Chicago's gonna move to Wisconsin. You had Michigan there as well. Vermont, everyone from new England is gonna move to Vermont. And then everyone from California is going to move to Arizona. Apparently. So the States that we think are going to be big, this confirmed it. And the industries that we think are going to be big, this, this study help confirm that as well.
Chad (15m 14s):
I think it's interesting because I've talked to so many people about like live events and, and going back and traveling and so on and so forth. And there are so many people that are, that are so pensive. They're like, nah, I don't think it's going to go back to normal very quick. And then I said, have you watched the news? Have you seen the fucking streets of Miami? Yeah, I understand they're kids, but those are human beings. That's what human beings need. That's exactly what's going to fucking happen. So if we think that things aren't going to just like explode and not, I don't mean go back to normal levels. I mean go back to more than normal levels, right. Going to exceed what we used to see with regard to getting the fuck out and doing stuff.
Joel (15m 57s):
Yeah. I think the real, the wild card is what our company is going to do. So companies are saving a ton of money by keeping people at home. They're saving tons of money by sales calls and meetings and conferences happening over Zoom and whatever else. I don't know if companies are going to be so willing to send people out on business trips and things like that. I could certainly be wrong. As far as personal stuff. I definitely think, Oh yeah. All these boomers that have been cooped up forever, they're going to like get out. I mean, that's, that's going to be, that's going to be crazy. But according to our next sort of trend in a post pandemic world, we were talking a lot about companies work from home, hybrid, a whole new world.
Joel (16m 38s):
But then last week we got word from Amazon and Google. Two of the companies you would think of going totally, totally remote, not so much. Amazon on Tuesday released new details about it's postponed emic plans. Quote, "our plan is to return to an office centric culture as our baseline," the company said in the announcement shared with employees globally. Amazon had previously declined to provide details about a potential expansion of remote work for corporate employees beyond June 30th. Employees in the US will start coming into the office through the summer with most back in the office by year by early fall, Google as well is accelerating reopening plans in some parts of the US with a volunteer basis ahead of September one, a September one return, according to the internal documents that CNBC got.
Joel (17m 28s):
Offices will reopen in a limited capacity in April. This is April 1st based on vaccine availability and a downward trend in COVID-19 cases. But by September 1st, they're looking at a big, big move back into the office. If you want time outside the office. I think this is, this is really interesting. If you look in for more than 14 days per year, you have to formally apply for it. This is in a note that was released, employees can apply for up to 12 months in, in the most exceptional circumstances, but that the company could however, call employees back to their assigned office at any point, for any reason, the note said, so that's a big thing.
Joel (18m 8s):
Like I have to apply to work from home now at Google. That seems not so progressive. And if Google is doing that, I gotta think most companies are gonna say, get your ass back in the office.
Chad (18m 19s):
I don't think so. I think anybody who's actually competing against Google, this is, this is a market differentiator for them, right? So I think this is a big control move from two big companies who want to control their people. They obviously haven't learned anything from this pandemic that they can actually have a happier employee, employee base and also get shit done at the same time. They want to revert back to 1950 style, you know, go ahead and punch that clock. So I think, I think that just because these big brands have made this move, I think all the other challenger brands will do the exact the opposite.
Joel (19m 5s):
Yeah. And we already know from a lot of surveys that workers like being at home better. I mean, certainly some want to get back to the office, but most want
Chad (19m 14s):
Autonomy.
Joel (19m 15s):
Yeah. All the things that come with working from home that people like. I think you're also struggle struggling with the challenge as a company of like, Hey, we've spent a lot of money on real estate and leasing space and everything else and Amazon and Google, I can't imagine what they've been spending on that stuff. So they're trying to balance or struggling with, okay, we have all this space. What are we going to do with it? And people they're at home. And so what are we going to do? So I agree. It's going to be a tug of war. Ultimately the company, I guess the market will win because if competitors are getting better people because they can stay at home, then that becomes a competitive advantage, but we'll have to see.
Joel (19m 57s):
Schools on the other hand, our third post pandemic trend looks like they're going to be requiring students to get vaccinated and get their ass back to school. Rutgers is set to require students to get vaccinated before coming to campus in the fall. This is going to be a trend. I think my wife works in education at the college level. I know students by and large want to get back and experienced the college environment, the college experience. I know from her perspective that professors prefer in person study, in person classes, obviously labs and research have to be in person.
Joel (20m 39s):
But for a lot of people, Google is here with a certification program that came sort of public or promoted this month. I got an email a few weeks ago from Google that said, quote, "the wait is over new, Google career certificates are now available. Google career certificates are fully online job training designed to help you start a career in project management, data analytics, UX design, and IT support. Alongside these certificates we are also launching a new course to help you prepare for the Associate Android Developer Certification. At under 10 hours of study per week on your own schedule, you can be prepared for a new career within six months.
Joel (21m 22s):
The program built by Google is designed to give you the foundational skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a growing career field. And if you're in the U S once you complete a Google career certificate, you'll be able to connect directly to over 130 local and national employers to jump start your job search." I think this is a huge development, and I'm really excited to see how the Google certificate program grows. I love the fact that 130 employers are already sort of plugged into it because that's a big question going forward, but it looks like the, you know, the well-to-do and the people that want to go to college can, and the people that don't can still get a hell of an education and get a damn good job and not be in debt at the end of it.
Chad (22m 4s):
Pretty amazing that universities have the balls to actually say to mandate a vaccination, but employers don't. Then on the certificate side of the house, I mean, this is, if you look at the program, you'll notice that some of the companies involved are staffing companies and they're jumping on this train very, very smartly. Identifying needs in their regional markets, then they find Google cert asserts that align. They sell their employers on the certs, and then they start pipelining talent through their doors. The amount of employers hiring, companies that are involved in this is so small.
Chad (22m 48s):
I can't believe it. I would have expected to have hundreds of organizations lined up. I would have thought that this would have been, this would have been something that, you know, they could have gravitated toward, but it doesn't look like that's happening. Unfortunately.
Joel (23m 5s):
Yeah. TA is really bad about being the first at anything, but they're usually not fast followers, but I guess moderate to slow followers. So once a few big companies, I think start doing this and like, it's going to be a process, right? Kids and people who get this certificate have to know that it's going to be legitimized by the workforce or by the employers. And the employers have to be, have a high level of certainty that people are, that are educated in this way are going to be great employees. And if those two things align and come together, I mean, I think this is going to be a big part of how people get an education in the future. Yeah.
Chad (23m 40s):
No degree necessary. You jump in. And, and I took a look at most of their courses on Coursera except for the Android developer course, which obviously is on the Google platform.
Joel (23m 52s):
Yeah. I love that you mentioned Coursera who, if their IPO hasn't dropped yet, it's coming pretty soon. So I'm really interested to see publicly how that company's growing and where they're seeing growth and what, like, I think that is a trend that's going to happen. And Coursera, obviously along with Google and others are going to be on the forefront of this movement, but it's exciting.
Chad (24m 12s):
Yeah. And who else is on the forefront? Is LinkedIn!
Joel (24m 15s):
LinkedIn, or maybe Clubhouse is a sexy one. I don't know. So LinkedIn, this week revealed that it is developing a Clubhouse-like feature for those of you that don't know Clubhouse or are on Android and can't use Clubhouse. It's sort of a live audio conversation amongst people and listeners. I guess it's sorta like a conference session on your phone, just listening. Anyway, the new service will connect to a user's professional network. It comes as a company, lets users set their profiles to creator mode allowing others to follow their stories, live videos, and more.
Joel (24m 56s):
I've a few questions about this or comments. Number one for me is, is Clubhouse really the future? Is this really as hot as I guess, Silicon Valley and the media is making it. I know that we did a buy or sell on Clubhouse a few weeks ago and I sold it. I think you did too. And I still would. Like, I have it. And I've been on a few of the conversations. I just don't get it. I guess they tend to be real random. I get alerts saying, Hey, there's so such, such as a Clubhouse cause I follow them. If I jump on halfway, I've totally missed everything that has gone on it. They tend to ramble. There tends to be no sort of structure as there would be with like a presentation or a panel.
Joel (25m 40s):
So I don't know. I think the jury is still out on it. I think in some ways with LinkedIn, if you can get companies, business pages and have their followers, like come in on clubhouses about the company and what's going on, that could be kind of interesting, but as a random, like, Hey, let's get a bunch of TA people and talk tech TA stuff. Yeah.
Chad (26m 0s):
I think we're in the, on demand age and that it's not on demand. You know, if they, if they do something that let's say for instance later as a recording and it's on demand, but then again, we're also in our era of quality, right? So when we do podcasts and we listen to podcasts, if it's not great quality and it doesn't sound good and it hasn't been produced, then we might not listen to it. So, you know, again, I think those are, those are two areas that Clubhouse would have to change. It would have to record and ensure really good quality, not just the sound, but also rambling and et cetera, et cetera.
Chad (26m 41s):
LinkedIn, I mean, they want everybody to believe they can chew gum and walk at the same time, but we can't believe that. I mean, not with a garbage bin of jobs as a primary product and initiatives like asking their clients to clean up their fucking mess. So LinkedIn is throwing all the spaghetti at the wall at this point. And remember they also announced a freelancer platform and a new video cover stories, which is just another great way to thrust bias into the hiring process. So, I mean, these guys are doing so much shit that just doesn't make sense.
Chad (27m 22s):
LinkedIn can't figure out whether they are a social network or a professional hiring platform and I think they have to choose.
Joel (27m 29s):
Yeah. And I guess we, I think we can probably think Facebook for this whole like copy everybody. And because we have scale and members and whatever that we can just launch the same thing and be competitive. And so you have not just these, I mean, Facebook is copying Clubhouse. Twitter has already launched a Clubhouse competitor, which for me is actually superior to Clubhouse. At least it is today who knows in the future and then you have LinkedIn and I assume like Snap will do it. And maybe Tik TOK will have some Clubhouse thingy. I mean, it just, it's sort of dizzying how the industry and startups have evolved, used to be able to launch something and have a couple of years to like, you know, figure it out and, you know, grow sort of unfettered, grow organically.
Joel (28m 16s):
And now it's like, if you're, you know, if you're going to be featured on tech crunch, you know, you're going to have a competitors, you know, by the end of the weekend. And that's a really hard way to, to build a company.
Chad (28m 27s):
Well, especially when the big brands with all the resources can turn something around very quickly and just copycat your shit right out of the gate, which is exactly what Facebook does.
Joel (28m 37s):
Yeah. And it hurts because Clubhouse, like, as far as I know, they're not on Android yet, you would know more than me, but they're not an Android yet. They've rolled this thing out sort of Gmail style, which was really great when Gmail came out. But when you roll things out by invitation, well, if you do that, it's kind of slow. And everyone that can copy you will, more quickly than you can add users to the platform, so that kind of fucks up that strategy if you have a good company. But yeah, I think, I think ultimately the Clubhouse thing will fade out or just become, actually Spotify as well, bought a Clubhouse competitor. That's like sports talk. So there might be some fringe, some niche niche offerings for this, but yeah, maybe I'm just too old.
Joel (29m 21s):
I just, I just don't get it
Chad (29m 22s):
On demand and quality. That's what everybody wants. And that doesn't seem like that's what Clubhouse is.
Joel (29m 29s):
By the way, speaking of LinkedIn and, and quality and legacy systems, like it really pisses me off. Like it should be so easy as like a company page to share something and then like boost it to the people who follow you or people that are related to them or some sort of like, do you remember when Facebook had, Hey, boost this post and you like click boost. And it was like $7 to boost the post. Super simple. They took it away. I'm not sure why, but like why LinkedIn, like LinkedIn, if you want to boost a post, you got to start a whole ad campaign. You have to go through all the fucking hoops to do that. Like just make a boost link, put in your credit card and then save it.
Joel (30m 10s):
And then just like let people boost their posts to their followers anyway, rant over. Let's take a break and we'll do a little buffer yourself speaking of rants.
Jobvite PROMO (30m 21s):
You know, Steve, it feels like we keep getting pushed to hire more and better candidates with no more budget. Right? I wish there was a way to get better results from what we're doing. Actually, I heard in episode of Chad and Cheese about this framework from Jobvite. Oh yeah. Evolve. It's a technology agnostic framework to help TA teams get better results from their recruiting efforts. And we don't even have to be a Jobvite by customer to use it. I bet we would get better results if we orchestrated all of our efforts. You mean like a centralized process and all of our channels working together? For sure, whether it's job boards, social, or even texting with candidates. Let's do that. jobvite.com/evolve.
Jobvite PROMO (31m 1s):
I'll send you the link. Cool. I'm going to finish watching this episode of Bridgerton.
Joel (31m 6s):
Buy or Sell baby! You ready? We got three startups. It was three startups this week. We'll go through a brief discussion of each and buy or sell it individually. So number one up, we have Celential. Hopefully I'm saying that correctly. I got hazed by our European listeners for saying Visage and correctly so y'all can fuck off.
Chad (31m 29s):
Visage!
Joel (31m 31s):
Gosh. Okay. Founded in 2016, Celential is an AI powered software engineering recruitment platform based out of Sunnyvale, California, a nice place to live. They raised 9.5 million in a Series A funding, a GSR ventures led the round and was joined by investors, including Spider Capital and TSBC. The company also appointed Amer Akhtar, a former Yahoo small business president and ex CEO of ADP China, as the company's new CEO. The biz was founded by founded by former product leads at Salesforce VM-ware and Zynga. The solution is designed to match hiring managers with engineering candidates by essentially simulating human experts.
Joel (32m 15s):
The startups, AI driven virtual recruiter finds vets and engages passive candidates behind the scenes resulting in what Celential claims is a 70% present to interview ratio. Celestial says it's on track to notch, double digit millions in annual recurring revenues by 22, after growing revenues by seven times in 2021
Chad (32m 38s):
wholly!
Joel (32m 39s):
Buy or Sell? Celential?
Chad (32m 41s):
I didn't see any pricing on the website, but just from their tech backgrounds, I'd say they're probably leaning toward a SASS pricing model with staffing like a delivery, meaning it's cheaper than staffing and more efficient. It's Uber niche and focus specifically on engineers. And again, if you take a look at the backgrounds of the individuals, the leaders in this organization, you'll see why, I'm going to buy.
Joel (33m 9s):
I got buy on that one. Yeah. Look I talk all the time about the wave. Are you on the right way for the wrong wave? Look, the software industry will experience a shortage of one point million engineers. Meanwhile, the employment of software developers is projected to grow 21% through 2028. So the world needs engineers. Companies are going to pay a lot of money to software solutions that help them fill that need. For me, this is a big buy for Celential. Next up we have Crosschq it's spelled C R O S S C H Q founded in 2018.
Joel (33m 50s):
Crosschq is a San Fran based recruiting software company that raised 13 million in Series A funding this week. Tiger Global Management led the round and was joined by investors, including GGV Capital, Bessemer, Venture Partners, Slack Fund, SAP, Intersect Capital and Rocket Ship VC. That sounds fun. Total funding is 23.6 million. Interestingly, if you're a sports fan, unless you're a sports fan or sports fan in Scotland, like our buddy Adam Gordon, you will know some of these names, that are investors. Golden State Warriors, Klay Thompson, Chris Middleton of the Bucks, Aaron Gordon, Isaiah Thomas. I'm not sure if that's the hall of Famer, Isaiah Thomas or the short guard that played for the Celtics for a little while.
Joel (34m 38s):
PGA pro Cameron champ, MLB player, Nolan Armando, Seattle, Seahawks wide receiver, DK Metcalf. So they got a lot of big names behind this play. It's a diversity play. A quote from the release. "Crosschq provides a SAAS platform featuring a core engine that contains three models to help companies source, screen and onboard talent while providing a fully connected analytics suite that enables on-demand access to quality of hire data. Cloud-based data-driven reference checking and talent analytics platform powered human intelligence hiring is how Crosschq pimps itself. Chad, buy or sell Crosschq?
Chad (35m 19s):
Pat, I'd like to buy a vowel, please. That's one of the worst fucking names I've seen in a long time. So I quote from the press release "the pioneer of a new software category for the recruiting industry called human intelligence hiring," fuck you starting off with a release, trying to create another label for an industry that doesn't need additional fucking labels totally turned me off, right out of the gate. Then I backed up, I took a breath and then I jumped into the co-founders LinkedIn profiles, you know, just to see what kind of cred they had. And I didn't see any recruitment Tech or industry background at all.
Chad (36m 1s):
Plus the CPO is a graduate from the team up North, which was not a good thing. The very last straw is what looks like an attempt to enter the ATS space while calling it human intelligence hiring. So shitty name - strike one, human intelligence hiring - strike two, competing with the ATS - strike three. This is a fucking sell for me.
Joel (36m 26s):
Everything you said. And as a Cavaliers fan, there's no way that I'm going to buy any company that has Clay Thompson associated with it. So for me, sell Crosschq. Okay, this is one you might like. So number three up, we have Data People. Founded in 2016, Data People is a New York based company that sells software designed to make recruiting more equitable. This week, they announced an 8 million raise across two funding events, including a 5 million around that happened in mid 2020. Uncork Capital, Next Few Ventures and First Round Capital led the round its initial product.
Joel (37m 8s):
What data people cause language analytics, scans, job postings, offering suggested edits to customers to help them attract a more diverse group of applicants and coming shortly data people is rolling out what it calls recruiting analytics, like they made that up, a service that provides a high-level view of companies aggregate recruiting efforts, the recruiting side of it, software service we'll keep tabs on diversity data such as the pace at which a company's job posting attracts women against related jobs own performance. Among other bits of data focused reporting. Buy or sell Data People?
Chad (37m 44s):
This is definitely a better name. There's no question. Yeah. First and foremost, I love any platform that helps companies optimize their shitty job descriptions. Plus Data People also helps recruiters create better email messages. So, that's pretty good. They lost me on using this new raise for DEI hiring through analytics. Candidates, usually do not self identify when going through the application process. So if you do not have the data corresponding to the analytics, you need to make the decision. How can you provide any worthwhile insights with such a shallow pool of data?
Chad (38m 25s):
For the most part, we don't have the data. Yes. From a job posting standpoint or a resume standpoint or an email standpoint, we can do the right thing to be able to, to try to, to provide the nuance, whether masculine or feminine. But when we're trying to actually say that we can help hiring, that's an entirely different conversation, which means they're going to be spending a lot of money on something that they can't impact and I'm going to sell.
Joel (38m 55s):
Yeah. I hate these kind of startups. Like you go to the website and you feel like you need a PhD to figure shit out. I like the startups where it's really focused. You know what they do, you know, whether it's recruit engineers or like whatever, like just be real specific. These guys throw everything at the fucking wall. Look, I think they're on the right wave. I think, you know, diversity inclusion, like every company worth a shit and worth any significant size is going to have to check off the box for diversity and inclusion. I just think like it's such a huge problem. It's such a hugely competitive market.
Joel (39m 35s):
You know, the first round that they, the 5 million or whatever that they got in 2020, like they didn't even mention the, how much they raised back then they only mention it now because they, they got a total of eight or whatever it is. So like, they're not quite sure what the fuck is going on. I don't know anyone that's running the company. I didn't do my homework like you did on LinkedIn profiles cause I just don't give a shit. So for me, like right lane, but like, this is a fucking jalopy when it needs to be a Ferrari and $8 million, ain't going to get it done. And I don't see any sort of road that's going to put them in the a hundred million plus dollar raise amount. So fuck them, man. I got one buy this week Celential and you too and we're selling to diversity, wannabees, Crosschq.
Joel (40m 18s):
And I buy a vowel and Data People. And that is another round of buy or sell! A growing popular segment on the Chad and cheese podcast.
Chad (40m 27s):
It is. Yes it is.
Joel (40m 28s):
Everyone loves Buy or Sell. So do we want to take a break or do we want to talk about monitoring first?
Chad (40m 34s):
Let's talk about monitoring real quick.
Joel (40m 36s):
So a story out this week, a company called Tele-performance. It's a global company. Holy shit. They employ 380,000 people, which is nuts. So they plan to use specialist webcams to watch their staff. Oooo employees will be monitored by webcams. Webcam sounds so fucking 2004, doesn't it? Anyway, webcam's to check whether they are eating, looking at their phones or leaving their desks. I guess they better start painting those bottles, everybody, while working from home! The cameras are also connected to an AI system that will randomly scan for breaches of work rules during a shift.
Joel (41m 16s):
So no, no Jeffrey Toobin there at work, everybody. If one is detected, a still photo will be sent to a manager and stored for up to 20 days, according to documents sent to staff. Yeah, this is getting creeper and creeper the move triggered warnings from unions and MPS about the normalization of home surveillance by employers as growing numbers of workers, move away from being office based. Holy shit, I'm scared. I'm glad I don't work for a company that puts a webcam in my house.
Chad (41m 45s):
This story reeks of Bezos. Is this an Amazon subsidiary or something? I mean, this is, this is fucking creepy crazy. And they're framing this as you know, well, we're sending these cameras so that you can participate in team meetings and training. But the AI is also going to be there to make sure that you're doing your job. I mean, this kind of shit, much like we were talking about with Google and Amazon, before, the autonomy to do your job, you have business metrics. You have certain KPIs that you have to meet. If you meet them, you meet them. If you go to their website, you go to Teleperformancecareers.com the first thing you see is best place for people.
Chad (42m 36s):
Total Bullshit.
Joel (42m 38s):
Dude, this is the most dystopian. I mean, this is on par with the injecting chips into people like, yeah, this is the most dystopian thing I've heard at least this week. Can you pick your nose? Does it take a picture and send it to my manager? Can I like, you know, scratch my butt. Is that going to be construed? As you know, I'm I'm tubing on the job until the robots take all the jobs we're going to, we're going to do the best we can to make the people into robots because people are going to work their entire day. Looking at this webcam, scared to death, that they're going to be photographed doing something that might be construed as bad. I hate these stories. It's a, it's a shame. It's a shame. Take a break, take a break.
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Joel (44m 8s):
Yeah, Chad it's been a while. Yes, we have not checked in on Ladder's R and D department. Let's get a live look from the Ladder's R and D department real quick.
Chad (44m 20s):
Snorring crickets sounds .... zzzz.
Joel (44m 21s):
Yeah. It's about what it was the last time we checked on them. Well, we're actually talking about these chuckleheads this week, they launched a new innovation called apply4me. And that's all one word with the, with the number 4, which is very 2004 of them. So apply4me, the new letters feature relies on humans rather than machine learning or other automation to actually apply to jobs for people. So, as I'm imagining this, and we're looking at the images on the site, but you have to be a premium member to use this service. Everything the Ladders does is to funnel you into paying the money as a job seeker. Anyway, as I'm looking at a job, there's a button that says apply4me.
Joel (45m 2s):
And I click that and then I have to fill out a basic form. And then from once I do that, then actual people will apply for me, which was kind of hard for me to understand because applying is basically pushing send resume. So they're not interviewing for me. They're just applying for me. But applying is as easy as just pushing a button and sending your resume. So call me cynical. But this seems like a real money grab. And you're utilizing, I guess, the ignorance of the job seeker to think that somehow these people that are applying for you is going to be better than you applying yourself.
Joel (45m 42s):
I don't get this at all. Aside from the fact that the Ladder is trying to make more money off their job seekers.
Chad (45m 49s):
Well, that's how the Ladders have always made money. So you think the right? Do you think the same thing, right? Yeah. This is the, this is the most ridiculous. It's like, yes, we're not using AI to do this because it's just, we can't trust AI to be able to make sure that there aren't going to be any errors. Okay. Assholes humans. Make errors. Okay. The reason why you're not using AI is because you don't fucking have it. Number one. Number two, you have no technology. Yeah. This is fucking ridiculous.
Joel (46m 21s):
So here's, here's how it works based on their website. So they have a three, three step process. So number one is provide Ladders with your job application information, once basically give us your resume. Number two Ladders will fill out all job applications with your information for you. And then three, we'll send you email confirmations while you sit back and relax with a picture of a woman who's drinking coffee in bed.
Chad (46m 43s):
What are you paying for? If they're filling out the entire, I mean, I guess if it's going to the ATS and that's a 45 minute process on the ATS, I guess that's something I'll pay for. But they're going to ask questions. They're going to ask questions that, that person's not going to know the answer to. Yeah. So I mean, this is the biggest crock and load of shit.
Joel (47m 9s):
So you have to be a premium member to do this. They're not real forthcoming shocker on the pricing of stuff. So I kind of had to dig around the web to find out what that was. It's roughly about $180 or $200 per year for this premium membership. So again, it's like this facade of we're providing something magical that's going to save you time and you can just stay in bed and Netflix chill while we'll get you that new job, doing all the application for you. Business as usual at the Ladders. And with that, We Out.
Chad (47m 44s):
We out.
OUTRO (48m 6s):
I'm Rory from Scotland, the country, which brought you electricity! Thank you for listening to podcasts with Chad and Cheese. Brilliant! They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Nada Niente. Anyhoo, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.