Stick around in this industry long enough and you may see something like a mobile stock trading app called Robinhood acquire a staffing firm. Yeah, that really happened. Hard to top that news, but...
Uber finally treating drivers like human beings in the UK,
SmartRecruiters getting smarter,
Charter kicks wages in the ass
LinkedIn suffering an identity crisis
WeWork? Nope, I'm gonna WorkChew!
Dice innovates... HA!
Zoom-inspired Botox comes pretty close. Plus lots more
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 (23s):
Oh yeah. Shots in arms and money and pockets America. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast on your cohost. Joel "Irish whiskey made me do it" Cheeseman.
Chad (35s):
and I'm Chad "Counting Calories" Sowash and on this week, show Robinhood bought what? Uber anarchy in the UK and Botox is booming! We'll be right back.
JOBADX PROMO (49s):
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Joel (1m 39s):
Oh, shots are the theme of this week. Me doing whiskey shots and your wife getting shots.
Chad (1m 45s):
That's right, baby. Yeah. Julie got on a wait list and here in Indiana, this is so freaky. All the States have like their own way of doing this shot thing. And then it almost seems like the counties are doing their own things as well. I mean, it doesn't seem like it was as easy for you to get shots. I was lucky enough, almost like I had a cheat code where I got in the next day. As soon as it hit, you know, hit the age, it was like, boom, I got in the next day, Julie got on a wait list because this state will not waste any, any of the vaccine. So if somebody cancels, they have a list of people to call and they call and say, can you be here in 30 minutes?
Chad (2m 28s):
She was like, yes. And she was, she ran up the steps. She was glowing and she was off.
Joel (2m 36s):
So I was, I've been on that same list for months. They haven't called me yet, but I'm scheduled next Friday to get my first shot here locally, which is fine. So it's amusing. When you get added to the wait list, they give you two phone numbers, or at least this was my case. They gave you two numbers to make sure we're in your contact list. Ah, so when they called,
Chad (2m 60s):
Yes.
Joel (3m 1s):
You know, whatever showed up or so, so I'm wondering if Julie mentioned putting those in her phone with the name of who was calling and when she saw that call, come in, obviously got excited.
Chad (3m 12s):
She answered any call. And that was, that was her, that was it. It was like, I don't know where it's going to come from. I don't care. I'm just going to answer any call. And I'm actually getting my second shot next Friday. You'll be heading into the opportunities of getting the fuck out of the house. And I will be in my second phase of fuck yeah!
Joel (3m 31s):
I know you're taking a week off. Is that part of the vaccine love tour? That's kind of, (music),
Chad (3m 38s):
Oh dude, we are on Airbnb. We've got all these different trips that are planned, that week is in April where I am actually marrying a couple of my friends in Charleston!
Joel (3m 53s):
Yeah, I forgot you have that distinction now. You're going to be yeah.
Chad (3m 57s):
Clergy.
Joel (3m 58s):
Clergy. That's nice. That's nice. Yeah, we won't mention the name of the company, but both of us got an email today saying, Hey, we're looking at doing an analyst day. We're looking at fall of this year. We're doing a quick survey of whether you'd be up for face to face or you want the virtual thing. And I think both of us answer within two minutes saying like, we're good for face to face. Yeah. We're good for a trip somewhere.
Chad (4m 24s):
Let's do this.
Joel (4m 25s):
We'll do that thing. Yeah. We will be vaccinated and ready to go. So St. Patrick's Day was yesterday. Did you do anything special besides counting calories for your summer bod to make an appearance?
Chad (4m 37s):
Yeah, usually I don't worry about that shit, but during COVID I've been extra indulgent,
Joel (4m 43s):
Extra drinking, extra drink,
Chad (4m 45s):
So therefore I've backed off a tad and, we're focused on getting fit and trim so that we can get the fuck outta here and look good.
Joel (4m 53s):
Boring.
Chad (4m 55s):
Yeah. I'll take that!
Joel (4m 57s):
Aside from a good share of my, of my Guinness here in the house. I had a cavalcade, a parade, if you will, of Irish whiskeys that I sampled and I'm a little hung over. I don't know if you can tell, but this, this is a pretty low energy podcast for the weekly for me, but I mean, it's always a great time to think about Ireland. My grandfather, Irish roots. And I just first shout out for me is I want to just name off some names of Irish listeners that are friends and, and love the show. Adam Chambers of course, Neil Dunwoody, Shane Gray, who's probably in Fiji or Bora Bora right now anyway. So who, you know, whatever Patty Doyle, who we've had pizza with, have a pizza with Patti Doyle.
Joel (5m 39s):
That's the most on Irish or Irish thing ever. Andrea Wade, Johnny Campbell, Dave Ralph, Ivan Stowjanowicz
Chad (5m 47s):
The Irish recruiter.
Joel (5m 48s):
And not a very Irish name. Yes. The Irish recruiter with the most non-Irish name ever.
Chad (5m 52s):
Cause he's from Croatia! That's why.
Joel (5m 55s):
Put a Mc in front of it. And it's McStojavoniwich or whatever. So yeah, love the Irish. We're all a little Irish on St. Patrick's Day. Shout out to our, our Irish fans.
Chad (6m 6s):
I've got to give Ivan big props this week. Number one, he has a tool that's called myrobot.works is probably one of the strongest tools that are out there. And if you're a recruiter, I'm not going to go into, into great detail. But if you're a recruiter and you don't know what myrobot.works is, get your ass there now. Then Ivan also was saying, Hey, you guys are looking to travel. Have you looked at Croatia? And then he started sending me stuff and I'm like, Holy fuck. We're just, we're going to go and bounce around Europe. And Croatia is definitely going to be one of the must attend, let's say, on the tour or the Sowash tour.
Chad (6m 49s):
So at least 30 days in Croatia. So big, big, big props and shout out to Ivan.
Joel (6m 54s):
Yeah, no doubt and big shout out to a Jobvite, sponsor of the show they announced today before we went on that they were officially moving their HQ to Indianapolis the bread basket and the birthplace of online recruiting, for those that are in the know. So glad to have HQ, a big name in our industry established here in Indianapolis. Now we're trying to get them to open up a little sound studio so we can go in and do live shows, but, but that's sort of on the back burner, they got bigger things to worry about, but we'll see if they can build us a studio down there in downtown.
Chad (7m 29s):
Stocked with beer!
Joel (7m 30s):
Live from Jobvite headquarters it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast.
Chad (7m 34s):
As we talk about names, Jobvite in Indianapolis, shout out to Vettery, as it seems, they're finally going to get rid of their stupid name and rebrand as hire.com. The thing that kills me about this is they took far too long. They should have made that cosmetic change, at least from the hire.com standpoint, much faster. I mean, seriously, if you're in marketing and you're in sales and you can get away from, you know, a made up name, fucking do it.
Joel (8m 6s):
Yeah. Shout out to some good looking people sportin' some good looking shirts this week. Christie Moon, super-fan of the show, actually one of the earliest super-fans, she's Mark Fogel. She is OG, sporting some good tea good-looking tees. And if you'd like a Chad&Cheese t-shirt of your own, what do they got to do, Chad?
Chad (8m 27s):
It's really simple. All you have to do is go to Chadcheese.com, click on free, up in the upper right-hand corner or go to Chadcheese.com/free. And we give away t-shirts powered by emissary.ai. But we also have beer from Adzooma that you could prospectively win. David Bernstein actually had his beer hit his doorstep this week, right?
Joel (8m 53s):
Yeah. Yeah. He was loving it! He was a stout drinker. Oh yeah. We actually let you kind of pick what kind of beer you want. So as a stout drinker, we had an ample amount of black beer sent to him and we're still trying to get a zoom tasting on the calendar, but David "Steven Seagal" Bernstein, he's a happy man for sure. And it was all free. Thanks to Adzooma.
Chad (9m 17s):
Thanks Adzooma and then we have whiskey next week with Jill. That's already, that's already scheduled, right? Yeah.
Joel (9m 25s):
And that's sponsored by Sovren. And we got Robert Ruff on the call!
Chad (9m 30s):
Sweet!
Joel (9m 31s):
As well as Michael O'Dell on the call. Both of them are in Nashville. So I don't know if they're going to be a socially distanced and in the same place, or if they're just gonna join the call separately. But yeah. Excited for that. If you want whiskey, beer or a t-shirt at no cost to you, head out to chadcheese.com/free or click that button on the homepage.
Chad (9m 53s):
Amen. So, Joel, I don't know if you know this or not, but we love lists and we have landed on the AI HRS 65 plus global influencers in HR to follow in 2021 list.
Joel (10m 12s):
I missed that. Are we on separately or together?
Chad (10m 15s):
We're on together. They have us at the hip as usual.
Joel (10m 19s):
Bit scary.
Chad (10m 20s):
It's a thing. It's a thing.
Joel (10m 22s):
I wish I could quit you.
Chad (10m 26s):
You had me at hello.
Joel (10m 30s):
Oh shit. Well, are you still doing events?
Chad (10m 33s):
I have an event next weekend. And first off, I'd like to say what a joy it was to have just a back and forth conversation with Madeline Laurano, she is wonderful to talk to. She's much easier than you are, let me tell you. This week, we talked about the state of programmatic with job ads and next week, so we did that podcast this week, check it out the state of programmatic with Madeline Laurano. Now she did research around programmatic and we're actually going to dig deeper into it next week, March 23rd, from one to two Eastern.
Chad (11m 14s):
If you get to hr.com, navigate your way through their webcasts, you can either watch it live or the recorded version later, either way, she does great work. And I think what you and I both Joel, we are big proponents of programmatic performance driven advertising.
Joel (11m 35s):
I can't disagree with any of the stuff you just said. Let's get to topic shall we?
Chad (11m 41s):
TOPICS!
Joel (11m 42s):
So, this is one of the more fascinating news stories, I think that we've reported on in a while. So Robinhood, you know, the online trading app said on Monday, that it would recruiting firm Binc, which I've never heard of out in San Francisco for an undisclosed sum, adding more than 80 employees to help Robinhood recruit talent. Binc will no longer be available to provide recruiting services. So they're basically shutting down their operation unless your name is Robinhood. A San Francisco based recruiting firm was founded in 2002. And according to Glassdoor has revenue of between $10 million and $25 million.
Joel (12m 22s):
I just find this very fascinating. When you think about talent recruiting, getting people in the door, startups and tech companies needing folks, why not just go buy a fucking recruiting firm? I mean, it seems sort of brilliant and obvious, and it feels like a trend in the making. What are your thoughts?
Chad (12m 38s):
Yeah, they could have done that. Or they could have just gone to an RPO. I mean one of the two, I mean, I think this is, this is a weird way of getting this done. Yeah. I'm just going to go buy a staffing firm. Well, why didn't you just go to an RPO and have them as long as you needed them or, I mean, overall, this seems like a very lazy way to say that we need a recruiting function, that's worth a shit. Let's go and just buy it and insert them into our organization. I mean, the problem is they have too much cash obviously.
Joel (13m 14s):
They do have a lot of cash. I don't know. I mean, look, I can go get eggs at the grocery store, but if I have my own chickens, the eggs are maybe a little better. Maybe they're a little fresher, maybe they're a little more organic. I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe there's some, some logic there and by the way, Robinhood knows math, right? I mean, they're making money on spreads and all that good stuff and stuff that's way out of my understanding, but you gotta think somebody did the math around, what are we paying, you know, staffing firms or RPOs versus what we could just keep on our own. And maybe the math adds up. It was cheaper to just go buy somebody and keep those fees than to outsource it.
Chad (13m 53s):
We've seen founders with cash do stupid shit. We've seen that over and over, not just in our industry, in many industries, right? This is, I think one of those situations it's like just, yeah, those guys over there. They, yeah, they look like they could be, let's just buy them. This is probably that we'll just buy them. Then we'll insert them into our organization. Once again, this is interesting because we talk about like tech firms buying like recruitment ad agencies or something like that. You're buying the talent to some extent, right? How long is it going to take for that talent just to walk the fuck out the door?
Joel (14m 31s):
Yeah. I mean, that's any industry for sure. And I doubt that all the recruiters on the company are under contract for any particular time, so they could certainly walk. But I agree that the Aqua hire option here was interesting. You know, talking to Serge and Brian from Canada a couple of weeks ago, I was guest on their show. We talked recruiting post COVID and would companies just rehire all these recruiters or load up or would they go more automation and both Serge and Brian agreed, I know their both recruiters, so take that for what it's worth. But they think that companies are going to load up on, on human beings. So if you're on, if you're in that, if you're in that camp, buying 80 recruiters was a pretty good move to just as opposed to recruiting 80 recruiters.
Chad (15m 17s):
I don't agree.
Joel (15m 19s):
I was surprised that they were shutting down the recruiting business. I was thinking like they could have a scam going where they get the A players and then they send the C players, you know, to the competition. Like they could, they could double dip, while controlling the playing field. Yeah.
Chad (15m 37s):
It's to me again, just seems lazy. And that's what happens when people have money. I mean, it is a, you can throw money at shit when you have piles of it. The harder part is when you don't have money and you have to figure it out.
Joel (15m 51s):
Yeah. Well I think it's creative and I think it's a trend. We'll have to wait and see. Twitter announces they've acquired a staffing company. Okay. Well, who doesn't need a staffing company? Actually they do, but Uber is in the news. Holy shit, every week we're talking with them. So we're talking about them again. So they have, they got a big case in the UK. Uber said 70,000 drivers in the UK will now be treated as, in quotes "workers, earning at least the UK is national living wage and other benefits," Uber reported "the worker classification is unique to UK labor law, workers are not employees, but are entitled to the minimum wage holiday pay and a pension,"
Joel (16m 34s):
which is interesting. An Uber rep said, "Uber drivers will receive an earnings guarantee, holiday pay and a pension and will retain the flexibility they currently value" end quote, Uber said an estimated 99% of UK drivers already earn the minimum wage and also noted UK drivers will be paid holiday time based on 12.07, which is really a specific percentage of their earnings paid out every two weeks. Drivers will also be automatically enrolled into a pension plan with contributions from Uber. These contributions will represent approximately 3% of a drivers earnings. Fan or not so much, Chad?
Chad (17m 13s):
I'm a big fan. I mean, we need to be treating people as if they matter and Uber didn't have to treat these individuals as if they matter. I mean, they're just throwaway, to be quite Frank. So overall they have to work within the actual lines, right? They were coloring outside the lines for a while. Now this isn't just for Uber. This is anybody who is at based gig economy based. So yes, this is great that Uber is actually coming out and saying, okay, yes, we're starting to figure this out. No shit. You spent $200 million with, you know, Lyft and some of the others in California to try to get this thing defeated.
Chad (17m 54s):
We knew that you could figure it out, but guess what? In the U S here, our votes are bought and paid for, right? Over in the UK, they've showed us how the shit should work. So hopefully we will actually muster the fucking courage, to look down at these organizations and say, no, you can't treat people, like shit. You have to treat them like human beings. So that, and then I also want to transition to giving a shout out to Charter Communications where yeah, this week Charter announced they are raising its minimum wage, starting to $20 an hour for all employees in 2022.
Chad (18m 40s):
Charter established a $15 an hour, starting wage in 2018, announced in April of 2020, that it would permanently raise its starting wage to $20 an hour. And today it's at $18, they have 3000 positions in 41 different States. So I think this, this is great from an optic standpoint for Charter, but also they have 3000 positions open. There's competition. Right? And they need something like this I think.
Joel (19m 12s):
Yeah. And I think competition is sort of the key word there. And I think that, you know, Uber's about a 10 year old company give or take, you know, it's about time that there start to be some sort of a compromise, some sort of a government-friendly, worker-friendly, business-friendly solution. And this, whether it's a San Francisco or California or the UK, this thing is sort of morphing into a hybrid of full-time work and contract work. And I think that it's really almost, it's good for Uber in a lot of different ways, but it's good for the sense that they have to start giving incentives for drivers to choose Uber over Lyft or Door Dash or whatever.
Joel (19m 51s):
So the gig economy now is becoming less about just hours that you work and money that you get paid from a platform or a provider. And you're getting, you know, if I'm getting 3% contribution to, you know, my retirement from Uber and I'm getting zero from Lyft, I'm going to do more Uber driving, for sure. Right? Like I'm going to be more committed to them. So now Lyft is going to have to come forward with something that is friendly in terms of a retention or recruitment tool. And this is just going to like spiral into all the solutions. So I think we're getting to a place where everyone's winning here. I think the workers, the people driving are winning. I think the companies are winning, maybe not as much as profitable as they like to be, but I think they're also pacifying government entities and everyone is sort of, you know, getting a balance into this.
Joel (20m 38s):
And I think that's really healthy. Whether us adopts it or not, I don't know. But I think you're going to see more of this.
Chad (20m 45s):
And that's the difference in taking a look at the UK versus the U S the Charter Communications in the U S the company made the decision, right? And that's one organization. How many organizations are there, here in the US so definitely applaud Charter for that. But we, as a nation have to make a standardized decision that we do not want our citizens living in poverty. And that's one of the biggest issues that we had before COVID. During COVID, it's gotten worse and worse. Luckily we have checks going into the bank to help those individuals out, but still that's a bandaid.
Chad (21m 29s):
We need a long term solution.
Joel (21m 31s):
Yep. And you know how I know that the big, the big boom is coming Chad, the big, the version 2.0 of the roaring twenties, you know how I know?
Chad (21m 38s):
How's that?
Joel (21m 40s):
ZipRecruiter ads. I'm seeing lots and lots and lots of ZipRecruiter ads! And that means the good times are coming. Folks, trust in Zip as the barometer of that. Geez, let's take a break.
Sovren Promo (21m 53s):
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"
Sovren Promo (22m 37s):
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.
Chad (22m 53s):
All right. So staying on the side of the UK, big question, did you have Cole apply for that Minecraft landscaper position that I sent sent ya?
Joel (23m 5s):
So, yeah, I love that jobs are being put out for virtual repair. Like we can't even fix our own shit. Now we got to fix the virtual world, but no, I think, I think he's off Minecraft. And I think, I think he's on Fortnite now or Call of Duty. Minecraft is like for kids, I think he's off that.
Chad (23m 25s):
The company that actually did this, the name of the company is called What Shed. And here here's a taste of the actual job description. "There is no denying the popularity of Minecraft, in 2020, there were 126 million players as X-Box, PlayStation and Nintendo and Switch.
Joel (23m 43s):
That's huge!
Chad (23m 44s):
So anyway, we thought we'd take our gardening passions into the virtual world. So really what they're doing here is they're starting to implement their brand into these kids' brains. WhatShed actually has like real, real live sheds, not just virtual sheds, sheds that you put in your backyard, right? So will you be using sheds that are branded WhatSheds to build out your landscape in Minecraft, and then when you are, you know, old enough to actually, I don't know, buy a fucking house, what kind of shed do you think you're going to buy?
Joel (24m 25s):
I love that we've moved from red bull and like cool shit to pimping sheds on young kids.
Chad (24m 32s):
Does it not fit seriously?
Joel (24m 35s):
What are the, what are the child labor laws around virtual work? Like, are there, have we cracked down on that yet or not? Geez. That's and how do they pay it? Are they paid with NFTs or a doge coin? Like how power payments sent to them?
Chad (24m 51s):
TBD TBD.
Joel (24m 52s):
So many questions, so many questions. We're just figuring the Uber stuff out. We need to figure out child labor on the internet. So many things to deal with. Well, fortunately, shout out quick to Dice, the innovation machine continues on. So this past week, I don't know if you missed it, but they added self assessment. Helping people find their voice with 12 minutes, you can find yourself on Dice, kids. They've partnered with human intelligence to help your career goals. And also Clarence Jobs who they own launched meetings, this is an integration that allows recruiters to link their calendar with the job boards platform, then invite candidates to set up appointments for a live chat, video, phone, or in-person conversations.
Joel (25m 37s):
The innovation machine continues to chug along at Dice kids, shout out to them.
Chad (25m 43s):
Any of those worth a press release? Anyway, I'm moving on to Smart Recruiters, press releases, this is bullshit.
Joel (25m 48s):
Don't get me on Silk Road. Don't get me on Silk Road.
Chad (25m 51s):
I didn't even know they were still alive. I thought that company was dead?
Joel (25m 55s):
That was the press release. They sent out something like, Oh, we've added text messaging. And I think both of you and I said, Silk Road is still around. Holy shit. So yeah. Shout out to them for living. Forget about text messaging. They're still alive. Good job.
Chad (26m 10s):
All right. Read us into Smart Recruiters.
Joel (26m 14s):
Smart Recruiters this week announced the launch of Talent Discovery. That's with a capital T and a D. This is an automated matching tool designed to help talent acquisition teams, more effectively source and stock rank existing candidate profiles. Talent Discovery uses NLP and machine learning to surface applicants in a way that goes beyond the traditional resume. Employers can look for applicants with non-traditional backgrounds or experience, including uncommon career paths or uncommon degrees. These are categories that people are stacked into and unearthing uncommon candidates is pretty interesting. For example, a restaurant manager that was laid off might be a really good candidate for a customer service manager.
Joel (26m 59s):
So you've got some insights scoop from some Smart Recruiters folks what's going on there.
Chad (27m 4s):
Actually, I think I woke Terny up this morning.
Joel (27m 7s):
It sound the same nap schedule as I am?
Chad (27m 9s):
I think so. I think he's counseling. No, but seriously, we've talked about this on several occasions. This type of tech needs to be core and standard in every single core platform that's out there, an applicant tracking system, CRMs, those organizations need to have this type of technology matching type of technology, parsing matching bread. I mean really into the system. My first question to him was this a collaboration with a partner? Or was it in an internal build? Yeah. And it's an internal build. Now that's, again, that's a decision, right? You either build, buy, or partner, and they're looking to build at least thus far, you know, and, and being able to standardize data sets and those types of things.
Chad (27m 58s):
So you can have the arguments last discussion around whether partner, build, or buy, are the best. I just liked that they're doing it. Why that's it, they have to be going in this direction and they are. We always, we beat this horse till it's dead, and then we continue to beat it. You have to think of, again, the Amazon scenario. And as the press release actually says "this technology Talent Discovery," which we'll get into in a minute "Talent Discovery learns role requirements and hiring success criteria specific to each employer." Okay? So there are so many varieties of Holy shit, just in that short, that short sentence.
Chad (28m 44s):
Number one, it's learning role requirements and hiring success criteria, which means human behavior. Tech isn't biased, humans are humans make bad or biased decisions. And sometimes they are bad and biased. The hard part is if you have an iteration of this for every single one of your clients, can you imagine, trying to manage that? That's going to be something that the companies are going to have to invest in from an auditing standpoint, from a validation standpoint, those types of things.
Joel (29m 20s):
Yeah. Look from my perspective, this is an arms race, and you've got Smart Recruiters. You've got Greenhouse, you've got Jobvite and you got iCIMS and then you have the bigger boys above that, but, and they're all jocking to be in that position. And in the one platform to rule them all, this arms race means you better build shit yourself, or you buy somebody to integrate into your stuff. I think partnering is probably not in the cards for most of these companies. They just put up app stores and marketplaces to provide stuff. And then when it becomes popular enough, they just buy it or, or build their own solution. And fortunately, with the tools that are available now around, NLP machine learning, you know, organizing big data provided by companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, et cetera.
Joel (30m 8s):
I don't doubt that Smart Recruiters built this homemade, but they probably had some help somewhere from one of those big companies, and those platforms, sort of being the underlying technology, to a lot of this, means you better build this shit yourself. So I love this. I love that everyone's moving beyond, Hey, upload a resume and we're EOC compliant and they're going to awesome tech. And I think that's going to continue. I think the consolidation is going to continue. So yeah, all the kids are doing it. All the kids are doing, you know, matching in this way and Smart Recruiters just put their own flavor on it. And here we go, the arms race continues.
Chad (30m 48s):
What they didn't do in their own flavor was name it. Talent Discovery, which is the exact same thing that CareerBuilders product does called Talent Discovery and it's funny because you kind of laugh it off because this, this is almost like one of the bigger players now in the market, looking at CareerBuilder, who was, you know, the biggest, you know, one of the bigger players and saying, you guys are dying. We know it. And we don't give a fuck. We're going to name this what we want to name this.
Joel (31m 18s):
Yeah. Yeah. It's weird too, because smart sort of lends itself to marketing, right? Like everything they do could be Smart Something, whether it's Smart Discovery, Smart Match, Smart Whatever. So yeah, whatever, I'm sure the marketing team had no awareness of CareerBuilder when they named this product. But yeah, stick it to CareerBuilder is always fun. And we were able to put CareerBuilder into the show, which they weren't originally. So that's always a good thing.
Chad (31m 45s):
Got to love it.
Joel (31m 46s):
LinkedIn got your attention, speaking of companies that we have to throw in the show every week, what are, what are they up to those squirrely son of a guns?
Chad (31m 55s):
This week? I received a screenshot that LinkedIn is asking hiring companies to claim their jobs. So it seems that such a small amount of their overall composition of jobs in the system are direct from companies and nearly all of them are from aggregators that they want the companies because their deduplication sucks so bad. They want the companies to actually come in and through their own task, weed out the real from the fake jobs. So to me, it was like, wow, LinkedIn owned by Microsoft, supposed to be a leader in the market.
Chad (32m 35s):
And they're going through this manual, do it yourself bullshit. As opposed to being able to identify which jobs are coming from where, which ones are original sources and which ones are not. I mean, it's almost like they got in the game yesterday. This is something that I would see Facebook doing, who really is in the game very late. Right. And doing an amateur job of it. This is fucking amateur hour from LinkedIn.
Joel (33m 7s):
Yeah. You know, from a historical perspective and you and I are old enough and we'll get to the Botox story in a little bit. But you know, there was a time, I don't know if you remember this where LinkedIn had sort of their own postings, like native postings. And then they partnered with Simply Hired.
Chad (33m 24s):
Yeah.
Joel (33m 25s):
To have like additional like, Oh, also from the web!
Chad (33m 28s):
Backfill.
Joel (33m 29s):
Like the tab backfill. And I always thought like, why don't they just fucking buy Simply Hired? Like they're in the same neighborhood. They can probably get it for, you know, a good deal. And then they can just be an D and D competitor. And then they can just have like all the jobs and then they can say, Hey, you know, I dunno, sponsor your jobs if you're already on LinkedIn. And then they can like make pay-per-click money from that. And they never did it. And they just, they continue to sort of focus on post your jobs in your account. And then like you got this whole aggregation thing and it's just, I wish 10 years ago, they would've just said, you know what? Let's just take on the aggregators. Let's be one ourselves buy Simply Hired, bring their talent over.
Joel (34m 9s):
And that's our game. And I feel like they are still trying to figure out, what the fuck they want to be when they grow up in terms of job postings. And this just sort of highlights the cluster, fuck that's going on over at LinkedIn when it comes to job postings. Which is something they should have figured out 10 years ago.
Chad (34m 25s):
Easily. And this just illustrates their model is shit. When it comes down to this product. And I didn't realize it, but also received more research that many of the aggregators that are out there receive a shit ton of traffic directly from LinkedIn. And that tells me two things. Number one, obviously backfill is smart. And number two, obviously LinkedIn doesn't have shit for real jobs that are posted or taking feeds from direct from hiring companies. So therefore this backfill is really the lion's share of the jobs that are being interacted with from LinkedIn users.
Joel (35m 9s):
Bingo. Yeah. And I mean, the fact that the fact that I don't go through my LinkedIn feed and see like sponsored jobs, that match, you know, my profile, is a crime against advertising. Yeah.
Chad (35m 21s):
And that's an entirely different discussion though, too, because they're matching is shit.
Joel (35m 25s):
Yes. But they could have figured that out if they had Simply Hired!
Chad (35m 28s):
I know!
Joel (35m 28s):
yeah. Okay. All right. So we agree, they fucked up. They miss it. They missed the boat. Now it's like, what the hell do we do? Maybe they can get a Work Zoo back into business or Jobs Zoo. I don't know. Anyway. So we're pretty bearish on LinkedIn this week, but we're super bullish in the world of investment that we think is very exciting.
Chad (35m 53s):
I love this! I'm gonna buy this!
Joel (35m 54s):
So the company Workchew, and then chew as in what I do at lunch, dinner and breakfast time, minority owned biz, black woman, which is awesome. Cindy Gallop, if you haven't heard our interview with her was a big proponent of minority starting their own businesses. And so that, that off, you know, to start this thing is great, but Workchew Started the turns, hotels and restaurants into on-demand flexible workspaces. Let me say that again, a startup that turns hotels and restaurants into on-demand flexible workspaces, announced this week, that it has raised $2.5 million in an oversubscribed seed round, which I'm not exactly sure what an oversubscribed seed round is.
Joel (36m 38s):
Maybe you can explain it to me. Harlem Capital led the deal. So with Workchew, company employees can access workspaces wherever they are, whether in an urban corridor or a suburban outside, or a suburb outside of a major city. Workchew is currently in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Chicago, and is looking to open soon in New York city, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle LA, and Denver. Indianapolis is not on the roadmap, unfortunately for us. Workchew offers an alternative to coffee shops, libraries, and places, like We Work. So yeah, basically you can daily or weekly give your workers the ability to go to a restaurant.
Joel (37m 21s):
They partner with restaurants. So you don't have to sit there, like I got to order food. You're actually like part of the Workchew network. They promise you wifi, they promise you a power source, if you do reserve a table in one of the restaurants. I think this is fucking genius. I feel like, why didn't I think of this? It's beautiful. So good luck to them. I think this is a story that we're going to be looking closely at in the next few years. And I think they're going to, they're going to get some competition, for sure.
Chad (37m 50s):
Yeah. Yeah. So for $50 a month for an individual, you have unlimited access to workplaces, 10% discount off of food, bottomless coffee or tea, access to Workchew member perks and cancellation at any time. From my standpoint, this allows the remote workforce, which I really believe we're going to expand into after COVID. We will continue to have a large percentage of the workforce composition will be remote. Instead of working in our homes all the damn time, you will be able to bounce out to several locations in the city and actually do work. Now, the cool thing I think is is you have a We Work model and then this Workchew model.
Chad (38m 34s):
They both drive money into different areas. Number one, being obviously buildings, where we're going to see more than likely companies won't return, so there's going to be empty space. How do you get people in there? How do you get revenue in there? WeWork as a great opportunity. And that is for more of, I think like a group collaboration where Workchew is really just more from an individual standpoint, being able to allow those perks for that individual to go out, get the hell out of their house and go work somewhere. So I really, really dig this.
Joel (39m 12s):
Yeah, right business, right time. I love it. And I love where it could go. I think it helps restaurants, fill seats. I think it helps people engage that they wouldn't have normally. I'm sure at some point, if a company buys into Workchew all the employees are there and you can see who's at what restaurant, or you can set up little work dates or work meetings in a restaurant. Obviously you're going to buy food, which is great for the restaurant, which has had a pretty tough year this year. I think the commercial real estate market, those guys probably start filling that space with restaurants or interesting workspaces that could plug into, to Workchew's model. So I love this.
Joel (39m 52s):
I think this is, this is a home run. I would do it for sure.
Chad (39m 56s):
Oh yeah. Just for the free ice tea and wifi, but yeah. Get out of the house, meet some people. Yeah. I think it's great. Good for them. Good for them. And, if they can start to coordinate with bigger hotel chains, right. And bigger restaurant chains and those types of things, if they can do that, this will spread like fucking wildfire. And the question would be why wouldn't big hotel chains and big restaurants not want to do this because you are virtually just putting bait out there for people to come spend time. Yes. There's bottomless coffee. I get it. And I'm going to have to go over and wait on them.
Chad (40m 37s):
And they're not really spending a lot of money, but what's the opportunity of somebody actually having breakfast. They're having lunch there.
Joel (40m 44s):
Yeah. My niece runs, she's a hotel manager and when COVID hit, they turn their rooms into offices where you could go in for the day and you know, they scrubbed it hard and disinfected, but same kind of thing. They have rooms, unfilled, business travel's going to be, you know, tough. And the next, you know, 24 months, probably. This is right. We do that. You could take all this commercial real estate, you could have test kitchens in there where you have interesting restaurants, workspace. Yeah. I mean like the opportunities just right time, right place, right business, are really incredible. Your comment when we were offline was like, I can't wait till they go public I'm buying this shit.
Chad (41m 26s):
Oh, I'm buying this shit. Yeah. Not so much. And I've already reached out to both founders. I was like, can you come on the show? I mean, I want that connection. Now.
Joel (41m 36s):
I want that discount at the Cheesecake Factory, baby! Come on, bring it, bring it. Let's take a quick break. And we'll talk about Botox.
Jobvite Ad (41m 45s):
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 Ad (42m 25s):
I'll send you the link. Cool. I'm going to finish watching this episode of Bridgerton.
Joel (42m 30s):
Okay. So it's hilarious that you said Cheesecake Factory, it is probably just a very smart segue. I'm gonna say, but this week I received a text from Rick Carsley. He sent me a TikTok. He sending me TikTok's all the time. It's a job seeker applying to a job at Cheesecake Factory and then getting hit with a Myers Briggs test. The background music is Mad World. And it sends you into this like, you know, kind of like, Oh my God, that person's gotta be on suicide watch, but seriously, Cheesecake Factory giving a person a personality test for what?
Joel (43m 13s):
I mean, this is fucking ludicrous.
Chad (43m 17s):
Yeah. This is employers just losing their shit when this shit happens. And speaking of losing our minds.
Joel (43m 23s):
Yes.
Chad (43m 24s):
ABC news reports this week on Zoom fatigue, obviously we've all been through hell this past year, some of us more than others. So in the Zoom fatigue era, we're seeing rising interest in plastic surgery. Botox is back baby, in addition to many other things, these Zoom boom, as plastic surgeons refer to it as is a huge increase in people who want Botox. Now, why do they want Botox? Because they're on fucking Zoom all day. And, and the, the fascination that scientists has found out is that when we're on Zoom calls, we look at ourselves. And when we look at ourselves, we think, Oh, wow, I've got wrinkles that I didn't know.
Chad (44m 7s):
I had, I got bags under my eyes. My lip is a little too, whatever it is, right. I don't think about plastic surgery cause my face is perfect, but I know other people have these issues. So there's a big boom in Botox. And also the study showed up. It was a selfie study. So they found that wearing masks, they did a thousand photographs of selfies with a mask and without a mask. And they've actually found that most people look more approachable and engaging with a mask, over the course of the year.
Joel (44m 40s):
Before that anyone wearing a mask in the U S was like, what the fuck is that dude up to, that's no good. Now it's like, if their mask, if they're masked one, they're responsible, they care about your safety. They've learned to sort of talk with their eyes, which I think I have as well. Like if I see someone I kind of squint instead of like smile or say hi. So this masks are making people more, more appealing to others. And if they all get Botox and that means their forehead will be nice and smooth and they won't have widow's peaks or, or crow's feet. So I don't know. Good, bad. It's just, it is what it is. Botox is back baby. Buy stock in that.
Chad (45m 19s):
We've never had to look at ourselves this much ever.
Joel (45m 24s):
We have a face for podcasting.
Chad (45m 26s):
That's what it is. It's funny because as soon as Julie got her first shot yesterday, she came back. She was like, I'm so much closer to a manicure, pedicure and getting my Botox done.
Joel (45m 37s):
I said the same thing. It's crazy. Yeah.
Chad (45m 41s):
But you're getting other parts of your anatomy, Botoxed.
Joel (45m 44s):
Eh, we don't have to talk about on this show. We out!
Chad (45m 48s):
We out!
OUTRO (46m 7s):
This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast, subscribe on iTunes, Google play or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show and be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more visit Chadandcheese.com. Oh yeah. You're welcome.