LinkedIn, Don't Fear The Polywork
The HR Tech Conference hangover is cured and it's back to business. Fortunately for you, there's a lot of cover. Namely, big funding for Polywork, Atlas, The Muse gets lots of attention, followed by some Buy-or-Sell with Gig and Take, Knoetic and Ashby. Spoiler alert: Selling, lots and lots of selling! Oh, and robots ... gotta talk about robots.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
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 (26s):
Oh yeah. Hey, where's my free trip to Martha's vineyard. Hey kiddies you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "partial mobilization" Cheeseman. This
Chad (39s):
Is Chad "power of the podcast" Sowash
Joel (43s):
And on this week's show Atlas shrugs. Polywork's a cracker and investors find their muse. Let's do this.
Chad (52s):
Dude. What a great week I feel. Do you feel fully detoxed after Vegas?
Joel (59s):
I feel pretty good. I feel pretty good. Yeah. It's good water. We have here in the Midwest. Really cleans out your system. It's good.
Chad (1m 7s):
You need it. And you need it bad. Oh my God.
Joel (1m 9s):
You do need it. Well, you probably had a good time on your anniversary yesterday with your beautiful wife celebrating year 7?
Chad (1m 17s):
6. 11 together, and six married. Yeah. It took her five years to finally say yes.
Joel (1m 28s):
Or five years for you to ask, which
Chad (1m 31s):
Yeah. Could be that.
Joel (1m 32s):
If I asked her what would the answer be?
Chad (1m 34s):
It would be the latter.
Joel (1m 36s):
Okay. Okay. Let's get to some shoutouts. We got a lot of stuff to cover this week. Listeners. We're looking at each other for the first time on a podcast. So this may be a whole new dynamic.
Chad (1m 48s):
I wouldn't say the first, the first time I want of our podcast on other people's podcasts they have videos.
Joel (1m 53s):
Yeah, that's true. I'm kind of discombobulated. I don't know how this is gonna go. So quick Shout out. You know, we love the lists. We love the lists. TA tech, top 100. I'm right above your wife. I don't know what that means in the list. There's no numbers, but you and I are both on it as well as your wife. So team Sowash is fully represented.
Chad (2m 15s):
Represented
Joel (2m 16s):
On the list there. Good for you guys. Honor, to be recognized.
Chad (2m 23s):
An honor, an honor, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what's an honor. Shout out to the Serial podcast. One of the podcasts that really got me into listening to podcasts.
Joel (2m 33s):
That's the new clapping sound bite, Chad, I don't know if we'll keep it or not, but
Chad (2m 38s):
I don't like it. So Adnan Syed walks free after 23 years in jail, the dude was 17 when he went in. He was accused of and convicted of killing his girlfriend. Even after presenting shotty, detective work and evidence full of holes. There was, was a new law that actually just came out. That said, if you were, if you were actually convicted and you were under the age of 18, that the court could reassess your case, well they reassessed or they were going to the process of reassessing. And the prosecutor said, no, we won't even prosecute. They started looking at the evidence and they looked at evidence that was withheld, which is against the law.
Chad (3m 25s):
So there was evidence that was withheld. And this poor 17 year old kid went to jail for 23 years because of a shitty system. So kudos to Serial, kudos to podcasts. And that's 23 years of his life lost, but it's good that he's free. By
Joel (3m 42s):
The way, Chad Cheese Never Convicted was a tagline that we considered early on in the show. Just, we didn't go with anyway. I got The Mom Project (TMP) as a shout out. They're not calling themselves TMP, which I'm sure Radancy loves. Yes, the mom project or TMP as of September, we're in September, The Mom Project says they've attracted and served 1 million moms in search of a better work experience. Thanks in large part to the pandemic. Women have accounted for a staggering 11.9 million in lost jobs and TMP has $116 million in funding and Serena Williams in its corner to make a difference.
Joel (4m 27s):
So shout out to The Mom Project or TMP as the kids like to call them.
Chad (4m 33s):
They should come out with a TMP kinda like McDonald's sign that starts with remember the number where they used to have served millions. It was like so many million served. They should do that and put Serena on there.
Joel (4m 45s):
Remember the mom ads in the eighties, it was like, you deserve a break today at McDonald's and had like the working mom. And she was all in her power suit with the shoulder pads picking up McDonald's for dinner. All the eighties.
Chad (5m 2s):
Just the start to the fast food industrial complex we know today, kids.
Joel (5m 6s):
Yep.
Chad (5m 6s):
Big shout out to our friends at Vonq, they're hiring industry, heavy hitters. They've got Richard <inaudible> of CareerBuilder fame, and also Doug Reese guys have been in the industry for a very long time. And this is big because Vonq has invaded the US. And you haven't heard anything about this.
Joel (5m 29s):
It's spreading. The virus is spreading.
Chad (5m 31s):
The Vonq is spreading in the US. Well also, I was actually watching one of the iCIMS videos of some of their newer releases. And they're talking about their job distribution, like their job distribution backend, and I'm watching it. And I'm like, that's Vonq. That's Vonq.
Joel (5m 52s):
You can't hide, man. You can't. When hide, when you pull off the undergarments, you see the Vonq, it can't, you can't hide from it. Yeah. There's some big, you know, what energy going on with the personnel at Vonq, it's quietly becoming quite a roster of vets and experts. So keep your eye kids on the Vonq and wear protection whenever you do.
Chad (6m 16s):
Get your shots. Shout
Joel (6m 16s):
Shout Out to what I'm gonna call OG Americans. Ah, for the first time in 230 years, Congress has full us indigenous representation. That means they have a Native American, an Alaskan native, and a native Hawaiian in the House of Congress fully represented the United States, indigenous people for the first time ever. Suck it old European white guys, shout out to OG Americans.
Chad (6m 45s):
It only took how long?
Joel (6m 47s):
230 years.
Chad (6m 48s):
Jesus Christ.
Joel (6m 48s):
How do you feel if you're in Hawaii and some white dude is your representative. I don't know. We've come a long way America.
Chad (6m 58s):
Shout out to secret admirers. Now I got home from Vegas, actually went to this weekend and took a trip to Ohio to visit the fam and got back and had a box. It was, it was a box that was filled with Blanton's goodness with gold edition Blanton's. There's no card. I looked at the return address. There's pretty much nothing that you could actually see where this came from.
Joel (7m 26s):
Well, you messaged me and asked if I got the same thing. And of course I'm like, fuck you. No, I didn't get the same thing. So yeah. Go ahead with your story.
Chad (7m 34s):
I'm just saying secret of admirers out there if you did send me this very expensive bottle of Blanton's.
Joel (7m 41s):
Was it your wife?
Chad (7m 41s):
No, no, no, no.
Joel (7m 42s):
I thought it was an anniversary present.
Chad (7m 46s):
No, when I said that on Facebook, obviously nobody was taking credit so she automatically did. The incredibly smart woman that she is.
Joel (7m 54s):
Well, look, I'd be getting some questions if I got a blank, you know, bottle of you know, Blanton's at my doorstep.
Chad (8m 2s):
For what?
Joel (8m 3s):
Who's that from? Well, I don't know, shit because I have so many secret admirers.
Chad (8m 9s):
Yeah. So secret admirers. Yeah. Yeah.
Joel (8m 10s):
Like so many in the kitty.
Chad (8m 12s):
Come on. I mean, it's one thing to send me, like, you know, some Makers Mark or something like that, but this is, this is an expensive bottle of Blanton's that I believe comes from Japan. So
Joel (8m 24s):
Yeah. That's no joke, dude. Yeah. If you're out there listening, keep it a mystery or let us know. It's kind of more fun as a mystery, but
Chad (8m 31s):
It is, send another one.
Joel (8m 32s):
I'd love the mystery to come to my doorstep. If you're listening well.
Chad (8m 36s):
Whoa, By the way. Yeah. I, I don't know about that one.
Joel (8m 39s):
Not Chad's mystery. I want a new mystery. Give me a new mystery. Scooby doo mystery for me
Chad (8m 45s):
Row row raggy.
Joel (8m 46s):
All right. Let's talk about free shit, cuz we got more free shit than ever before. All right guys, you know the deal go to Chadcheese.com click the free link. You gotta sign up to get a t-shirt. We have new ones sponsored by JobGet we have whiskey. We had our lucky winner post picks this week. That's from our friends at Textkernel. We got Aspen Tech Labs helping us to send out free beer to everybody. We got Plum sponsoring rum, which we'll get to birthdays in a second, but we got all kinds of people wanting to give our listeners stuff for free, but you can't get it unless you go to Chadcheese.com/free.
Joel (9m 27s):
And while you're at it, go to your favorite podcast platform and give us a review. We love those.
Chad (9m 34s):
Exactly. That's right. Aspen Tech Labs bringing beer to your front door, Textkernel two bottles, two bottles, kids of whiskey. And you gotta love JobGets, they are powering the new Chad and Cheese t-shirts. Joel, when are we getting the Chad Cheese t-shirts cuz they didn't make it to HR Tech. Supply chain issues. That's what we're gonna claim. That's what we're gonna claim. When are we gonna get t-shirts?
Joel (9m 57s):
T-shirts are in.
Chad (9m 58s):
Oh.
Joel (9m 59s):
Eight boxes came to my house. Speaking of boxes, coming to your front door. None. None contained whiskey by the way. Oh, okay. But we have t-shirts I ordered a little little card to go into the bags.
Chad (10m 14s):
Oh, okay.
Joel (10m 15s):
Telling people basically thanks for listening. Visit our sponsored JobGet post a picture on social media, et cetera. So those should come today. So we will start packing these babies up, going into the weekend and next week. So those will start dropping next week for those that have signed up. Be patient. They don't all, we're not a warehouse. Amazon warehouse. Like it takes some time have some patience, but yeah. Shirts will be going out soon.
Chad (10m 43s):
So you don't have a trash can in your garage that you're made to piss in because you've gotta get ahold of these put out.
Joel (10m 49s):
No, we only do diapers at our house. We only do diapers size five is what, what we have here at our place.
Chad (10m 57s):
Okay. Okay. Yeah. So you have to pin a few together to make that work?
Joel (11m 6s):
No, just it's like a cup. You just put a cup, little rubber band around it. It's nice. It's like a red hot chili peppers album.
Chad (11m 15s):
All right. Alright. All events, events, events brought to you by Shaker Recruitment Marketing.
Joel (11m 22s):
Yes.
Chad (11m 22s):
My new trucker cap is legit. I love it. Yeah. So shout out to Keegan, Joe and the crew over Shaker. We are here very soon kids going to be in Nashville. Yes. We went to Vegas. Now we're going to Nashville, which is this side of the world's Vegas.
Joel (11m 39s):
Yep.
Chad (11m 40s):
October 5th through the seventh with Keith Urban concert, Vango Immersion Experience and Sixth and Peabody whiskey tasting. You have all of this going on. Obviously the content happening during the day. I mean, that's, you know, at least what you're, why you're telling your boss you're there. But if you're a practitioner and you would like a comped ticket, listen kids. If you're a practitioner and you would like a comped ticket message, Chad and Cheese, we can get you a link. We can get you some comp tickets because if you're close to Nashville or you just wanna fly in, enjoy some time in Nashville, get some credits, all that other fun stuff. Do it, go to Chadcheese.com. You can register there. Or you can just reach out to us and we can help you out with a link to comp tickets.
Joel (12m 24s):
Before you get to Paris, I have a question about Nashville. Okay? Dude, is Elvis coming back from the dead and doing a concert because hotel rooms are ridiculously expensive in Nashville when we go there?
Chad (12m 35s):
Yes.
Joel (12m 35s):
When we go there, something has to be going on. If you're a listener in Nashville, like hit us up on what. Is Johnny Cash back from the dead? Maybe they're touring together. I don't know what's going on, but, but man, like thousand plus dollars for some of these places. I'm staying in a gutter, I guess on Broadway is where I'm gonna be staying.
Chad (12m 55s):
Which is normal, which is what we're used to after a good night on Broadway.
Joel (13m 1s):
That's true. Tennessee whiskey goes down really nicely sometimes.
Chad (13m 3s):
Here's here's the problem. We only have a couple of days after that, then we're gonna both be jumping on planes to go to Paris kids, September 12th and 13th. You can catch the Vonq with Chad and cheese in Paris. First and foremost, we're gonna have a rooftop pre-conference party overlooking the Paris skyline. More details coming your way soon.
Joel (13m 26s):
Yep.
Chad (13m 26s):
In the meantime you get can go to Chadcheese.com and click on events in the upper right hand corner. If you register through our website, you'll get 20% off. And if you're not already going to Paris and you're in Europe, what are you waiting for? It's Paris. It's Unleashed. It's amazing. It's probably one of our favorite conferences. What do you think? Are you psyched? Are you stoked?
Joel (13m 48s):
Totally stoked. Yeah. Three years since we've been in Paris. Yes?
Chad (13m 54s):
Guess. Yeah. For this
Joel (13m 55s):
Maybe favorite city. Definitely top three or four for me. We're going in October. Yeah. Trees, you know, it's changing little, little crisp in the air. Yeah. I'm totally down some Bordeaux on in the cafes. I might even start smoking cigarettes. I don't know. That's that's how inspiring Paris is.
Chad (14m 13s):
It would be very European of you.
Joel (14m 15s):
And I'm excited to see Lieven. It's been a few months since we've seen Lieven.
Chad (14m 21s):
Yes.
Joel (14m 21s):
Our Euro homeboy. He's all. He's all fired up to hang out with us in Paris.
Chad (14m 24s):
Oh, he's stoked. Oh yeah. And he's got his tickets to the Moulin Rouge, everything. So this is going to be an exciting time. If you don't have tickets to Unleash, get tickets to Unleash, go chadcheese.com. Click on events. Have at it kids hope to see you there. And not to mention, we are also going to be in the podcast pit on the Unleashed expo floor joined by, you might not know this yet, Joel. Matt Alder that British guy's gonna be with us.
Joel (14m 54s):
There you go. That British dude. He better have scotch or some gin.
Chad (14m 59s):
Yeah. Matt, listen up, man. Bring some scotch.
Joel (15m 1s):
All right. You want birthdays or fantasy football first?
Chad (15m 6s):
Let's do birthdays and then we're gonna finish it off.
sfx (15m 7s):
Happy Birthday!
Joel (15m 8s):
All right. Celebrating a birthday this month. And we have a few cuz we didn't do 'em last week cuz we were hung over in Vegas.
Chad (15m 16s):
So very hungover.
Joel (15m 17s):
Again. Thanks to Plum for sponsoring a lucky winner every month for a bottle of rum celebrating this this week. Randall Emery, Eli Carson's Betty Norris. Robert St. Jacque.
Chad (15m 31s):
Ooh.
Joel (15m 31s):
That name is gotta be hot with the girls at the bar. Karen Heatwoleo . I think she wrote that in right into our database. Michelle Palermo, Shannon Siri, John Sumpser, old timer. Allison Holbrook, Katrina Kibin, Kelly Robinson, our friend of the show. Kevin Plantin, Eva Zils. Is she still doing videos? I don't see her videos anymore.
Chad (15m 56s):
I don't either. Since she left France and she went back to Germany. I don't know if Germany's not big on video, but I haven't seen, I haven't seen them.
Joel (16m 6s):
Germany's big on video. We know what you are doing. Craig Silverman and Theresa Ferris, all celebrating happy birthday another a trip around the sun, which I guess leads us right into fantasy football. Chad. Ugh, where you, you saw a drop, but we'll get to that in a second. Yeah. From first not to worst, but you're on your way. All right. Week two of fantasy football with ChadCheese in the books. Here's your leaderboard powered by our good friends at FactoryFix. Number one this week, Christie "don't call her moon" killing it. The only woman in our league is in first place. Imagine that?
Chad (16m 45s):
Killing it.
Joel (16m 47s):
So followed by Broadway Joe Wilke, Jason "and the Argonauts" Putnam, "Hailey Joel Osmit" Cheeseman. I like that one. "James Dean" Gillum. Dan "the magic man" Shoemaker. Chad, "not just a country in Africa" Sowash. Christopher "man down" Manion. Serge "second fiddle to Shelly" Boudreaux. Matt "king of the hill." "Pass the mic" Shafer and Dennis "basement bitch" Tupper. Oh, round out the leaderboard of our fantasy football league sponsored by FactoryFix.
Chad (17m 21s):
I blame Tommy over at FactoryFix for my loss last week. I was way out of focus because I was laughing so hard after the FactoryFix video. Obviously Mike was in Vegas. Guy actually goes everywhere with a green screen with him for God's sake. The guy's a pro. Mike and Tommy if you haven't seen the FactoryFix fantasy football league updates, they are fucking hilarious. Check 'em out on LinkedIn. They're all over the place, but check 'em out. They're fun.
sfx (18m 0s):
TOPICS!
Joel (18m 0s):
All right. Chicago based Atlas technology solutions firmly known as Elements Global Services. I guess that's a good change. That's they were elements global services up until this past June. Well they raised $200 million in a series B. This brings total funding to $220 million. This is where the unicorn soundbite comes in.
sfx (18m 21s):
Pink Fluffy Unicorns.
Joel (18m 23s):
Founded in 2015, the company is a cloud-based human resource management platform that aims to ease international expansion initiatives for companies. Atlas operate subsidiaries and 160 countries and will use the funds to enhance their platform's capabilities and add more self-service and automation features, they employ 308 people according to LinkedIn. Chad, what are your thoughts on Atlas?
Chad (18m 47s):
So you said their name was Elements Global Services?
Joel (18m 50s):
Yeah. And Atlas Technology Solutions they thought was better.
Chad (18m 55s):
Yeah. Okay. So Atlas technology solutions and the URL that they went with kids was Atlashxm.com. They changed their name. And then when they went with that shitty ass URL, I guarantee they knew that the money was coming in. So that's kind of odd. Anyways, this is a rapidly growing and broad segment edit. Is it focuses on helping companies scale quickly by hiring wherever the talent is in any country. So the Tam is huge from a global standpoint. Now Atlas, it's thrown its hat in the ring against other startups like remote.com with about $500 million in funding Oyster with about $225 million in funding and DEEL around $680 million just to name a few.
Chad (19m 36s):
So this space
Joel (19m 38s):
It's actually minus about $10 grand for their booth, Chad.
Chad (19m 40s):
For their 10 by 10 booth. Yeah. This space is, is crowded. It's starting to get crowded, put it that way, but it is extremely hot. Are we finally getting to a saturation point with the global/remote work platform, do you think?
Joel (19m 56s):
I was reminiscing, not just cuz we were at HR tech and got to see Jerry Crispin, but I was reflecting on, remember the old additions of career crossroads, the book of top job boards. Yeah. This came out in the nineties. They stopped doing it around 2001 or two I think because it got too crazy,
Chad (20m 18s):
Too fast.
Joel (20m 18s):
It got too much of a headache for Jerry and company to write this book every year about job boards, because there's so many fucking job boards. This is what this feels like. There are too many global platform. One to rule them all. Velocity's in there. Velocity Global, Eightfold you could argue is in there.
Chad (20m 42s):
Nah.
Joel (20m 42s):
This space to me is overfunded. It's time to prune some hedges. I'm surprised they're still getting money, frankly, based on what the investment community, you know, news is like and what we've seen in our own in reporting, but money keeps going in but less so of the 200 plus a hundred plus million Flavor. And I just, I just think it's too much, man. I just think like these guys are gonna run outta money at some point soon they're gonna get consolidated. It's gotta be confusing for customers. That's period. I mean, look, I quoted, I wrote down a quote from the CEO. Quote, "the future of work thrives across borders and cultures.
Joel (21m 23s):
Atlas is enabling companies to seize the opportunity to be competitive, flexible and borderless." You could pretty much plug in any CEO of any of those companies you mentioned and it'd be the same fucking thing. Exactly. They all do the same thing.
Chad (21m 36s):
Yes.
Joel (21m 36s):
They all have a ton of money. Look, you talked about zigging when everyone is zagging on the European show.
Chad (21m 41s):
Yeah.
Joel (21m 41s):
Somebody in this group needs to zag because everyone is zigging and it's hard for consumers to figure out who should I use? How are you different? What's going on? It's kind of a mess and it'll work itself out in the next, I think two or three years. And we'll have fun talking about it, but it's a cluster as far as I can tell.
Chad (21m 57s):
Yeah. Well it's gonna be, it's definitely gonna be interesting. As we see some companies focus on remote/hybrid and being able to, especially in European countries, being able to go cross borders and make it easy, especially if you're American and you're going into Europe, you need some type of an infrastructure to do that. Companies like Atlas and all the other companies that we just listed do that. The question is satura