If you love a heavier Chad & Cheese - and we're not talking about Joel's midsection - then this one's for you.
On this week's episode:
LinkedIn made the wrong decision... Again...
and in our OK boomer segment: TikTok!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
James Elis: James Ellis from, The Talent Cast. You may not be aware of this, but a couple years ago I lost a bet, so now I'm contractually obligated to say nice things about Chad and Cheese. Well, I took that, let's say lemon and turned it into lemonade. I took interviews from Chad and Cheese and turned it into a book, but I added a lot of other people you're going to want to talk to. It's called Talent Chooses You. It is hiring better with employer branding and it is available on Amazon, June 15th, you should go and buy it, bye.
Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman 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: Next up for 2020, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters is attacking New York. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, everybody. I'm your cohost Joel Egon Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad, Black Lives Matter, Sowash.
Joel: On this week's episode, employee unrest at, well, a bunch of companies. IBM saves face. And in our okay boomer segment, TikTok, grab your proton packs, It's about to get paranormal up in here.
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Joel: Say, "Proton packs and paranormal," really fast three times and see how you do.
Chad: You wrote it.
Joel: My weekend last weekend, camping with the family, which includes a three year old, that's probably all I need to say.
Chad: Genius.
Joel: I'll throw in mid to high 80's, in the Midwest, which means muggy and humid. The quesadillas were really good though, that we fixed on the grill. That was nice. How about your weekend? You definitely won that battle, my friend.
Chad: We stayed in the backyard on the patio for a good amount of time. And then we went up to Indianapolis for the Black Lives Matter sit-in and then march, and then enjoyed ourselves on Sunday as well. So yeah, getting out there, enjoying the weather, social distancing. The really cool thing about the Black Lives Matter march was everybody had a mask. It's like, you go out to Kroger today and maybe half the people have a mask on, right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Everybody, there was extremely considerate. I mean, there was free water given out, snacks, it was like, look, we want to keep you guys healthy, hydrated and safe. And I thought that was really cool. The Black Lives Matter organizers, they did a damn good job.
Joel: How do these things get organized? Is it Twitter? How did you guys know about it and know to go at a certain time and a certain place?
Chad: When you have organizations that are as well organized as Black Lives Matter, they have several channels. We found out through Facebook and that popped up in our feed and we also saw it on some of the news channels and whatnot. So it was several channels that we were hit with it by. And that's pretty much how everybody gets their news today, right?
Joel: Got you. So pretty much if you follow Black Lives Matter and it's an actual organization apparently, right? So they organize all these events around the country.
Chad: Right. Yeah. And they'll do sponsored ads on Facebook, right? So if you're in the area, one of those ads might pop up.
Joel: I'm obviously not being targeted by these ads. I don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing. And apparently your wife is making moonshine now. What's going on with that? She's making gin flavors and things, this seems news to me.
Chad: So last year when we were in London, she really enjoyed rhubarb gin and we can't get it here in the States, or at least it's not readily available around where we are. A friend gave us a fairly easy recipe. And within 28 days you have regular gin, which metamorphizes into rhubarb gin. And the two of us took that thing out in the weekend. So it was that good.
Joel: Just one of the many things we can thank the British for, flavored gin, how nice. Let's get to some shout outs, shall we?
Chad: Yes, let's start it out with Lowe's. Everybody knows Lowe's, they've funded $25,000,000 in grants to help minority business reopen. And one of the reasons why I want to focus on Lowe's is because Marvin Ellison is one of only four black CEOs in the Fortune 500. I think we need to focus on the leadership that is happening because such a small amount of the Fortune 500 is represented by black America.
Joel: Yup. Merck is another and the company that makes Kate Spade bags, I'm zoning on the ... You know I'm a Kate Spade bag guy.
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: I'm zoning on the name of the company. And I forget the fourth one, but yeah, I talked about voting and spending money where it needs to be appropriated. And if you want to vote with your dollars, choose those companies to spend because it makes the difference.
Chad: Amen.
Joel: Shout out to Amman Brar, a friend of show.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Trash talker galore this week on LinkedIn also, but we don't have to get into that. He had a great post on the George Floyd murder. It almost read like a poem. It was really thoughtful, if you haven't read it, go out and search him on, Brar, follow him, try to connect if you're not already and check out that post. It was really powerful stuff.
Chad: It was powerful. I read it at least a half a dozen times. As a white dude in America, we just don't fucking get it. And when we say that we do, that means, pretty much identifies the people who don't. So being able to actually listen to, or read some of these writings or the Baldwins of the world, listening to them debate, is something that we need to do to really better understand what's happening, because we just don't get it.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: And that being said, this is also LGBTQ month. This is Pride Month people. Pride occurs in the U.S to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which occurred at the end of June of 1969. And this is my big shout out to Lady G, aka Lindsey Graham. I think he's about ready to come out of the closet and here at Chad and Cheese Podcast, we support all of those of you who are closeted or uncloseted. You're welcome here.
SFX: Hell yeah.
Joel: So little context, Chad and I talked before the show and we make notes and figure out what we're going to talk about on the show. And he said, "I need a shout out to Lady G." And I was like, "Is that Lady Gaga? Are you hanging out with rock stars now?" And he's like, "No." He's like, "Let me just say it and then you can react to the show." So this is the Lindsay Graham whistleblower, I guess we could call him or her.
Chad: Yeah. That was his code name for the group of male prostitutes who used to service or still do, I don't know, Lady G and in this case, Lindsey Graham.
Joel: Shocked at this news.
Chad: I'm not. Waiting for Mike Pence to come out.
Joel: Yeah. Oh, come on now. Don't tease me. Nike, shout out for partnering with Jumpman, the Michael Jordan logo and apologies to Adam Gordon, who doesn't know any athlete outside of the UK, Scotland, Ireland area. Michael Jordan is a famous basketball player in case you don't know. Nike's dedicating 100,000,000 to diversity causes, to education, a whole mess of things. You can look it up on Google, but I thought $100,000,000 even for Nike and Jordan was a decent statement, especially when we're talking about 10,000,000 and 25,000,000 for some bigger companies. So shout out to Nike. By the way, Nike has an all white C-suite. I know that we jock them a lot, but they could go a long way into making a statement, into putting some diversity of color in their C-suite.
Chad: That's exactly right. Big shout out to our outro voiceover artist, Chester, who is a six year old
SFX: Hell yeah.
Chad: ... son of adamant listener and CEO of Get Optimal, Daniel Fellows. Daniel actually WhatsApped me this week and he's like, "Listen, Chester's getting back to school and he's a little anxiety. Can you give him a boost?" And this is the boost Chester. We know you're getting back into school, man. That's awesome. Get the heck out of the house, go meet some new mates, enjoy yourself and tell them that Chad and Cheese sent you.
Joel: Did you say meet some new mates?
Chad: That's right. Oh, I've got to speak the speech.
Joel: Did you write that or was that greatness. Shout out to Ron Bauer. Ron is an old friend from my Cleveland days. He runs a company called Interview Path, I love it when people just reach out and say, "Hey, we haven't talked in like, I don't know, a decade, why don't we get on a Zoom call and just see how things are going." So I talked to Ron for an hour. I know you do this quite a lot. I don't normally like to talk to people, so I don't do this as often, but it was fun to talk to Ron. So shout out to him. I know I've made him a newly minted fan of the show.
Chad: Excellent. Shout out to Jonathan Reynolds. Remember the center point of the Douche Marketing Podcast we did a couple of weeks ago?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: He actually came on the show, so I got to give him a shout out for that.
Joel: Sure.
Chad: I'm not sure that we can release that podcast, because it really felt like we were beating a puppy and that just never feels good.
Joel: Really? And you don't want to release that for our fans. That's all they care about, us kicking puppies.
Chad: Well, this tells you. You should listen to podcasts before you get on them.
Joel: Yes, so that's my point is that he didn't know what he was walking into. So it's hard for me to feel sorry for the guy. If you don't do your homework before going onto a show that you know could be adversarial. So anyway, shout out to him. But I say we publish that bitch.
Chad: Okay.
Joel: Shout out to Bailey Fields.
Chad: Huh?
Joel: Yeah, I know. So, on LinkedIn where it recommends people, based on either your school or where you've worked before, or who you're following. I got a recommended contact, Bailey Fields, who is a current student at my alma mater, Ball State University, aka testicle tech. And she is currently an intern at Paradox, our buddies over there. I don't think there was any connection when they were recruiting her that Cheeseman and Ball State. And so she earned it on her own. I had nothing to do with it, but shout out to Bailey, Ball State represent in the industry, watch out.
Chad: Nice. Well, I'm going to finish out shout outs for two gentlemen who have actually started their own podcasts. Kevin Kirkpatrick, recruiting manager over at Humber River Hospital, started his very own podcast called Primary Care Unpolished. It's brand spanking new. If you're in the healthcare space, definitely check it out. And then we've got some love from Craig Fisher for pimping our podcast on LinkedIn. He has a podcast called, Tide Talent, so check those boys out.
Joel: Did you say, “Hammer river?”
Chad: That is probably better than the real name.
Joel: Yeah. I was going to say, launch a podcast called Hummer River and watch the listeners flood in. My final shout out goes to my wife. And this is legit. She's a professor. Yes, she takes pity on me and my little brain. Anyway, she was awarded the 2020 Research Frontiers Trailblazer Award. Now what the fuck is the Research Frontiers Trailblazer Award, you ask? Well, established in 2010, this award recognizes outstanding IUPUI researchers, which is where she's a professor. People in Indiana will know this, it's a collaboration of Indiana and pretty universities. These are for researchers who show promise in becoming nationally and internationally known for their research and creative activity.
SFX: Hell yeah.
Joel: She's showing the promise, so once she is internationally known, she's going to dump my ass and I'll be on the street again. But anyway, that's my final shout out of the day.
Chad: Events. Okay. So next Wednesday at 8:00 AM, no shit, 8:00 AM. I'll be debating Adam Gordon on Facebook's bullshit cost of living salary adjustment. Remember Adam is in Scotland. So that's a tad early for most of you, but look for the replay. Then right after that, no shit, same day, 10:00 AM Eastern. I'll be on a discussion panel with [inaudible 00:13:57.13] and owner. I've got to get this last name right.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: [inaudible 00:14:03]. This panel is called The Future of Recruitment Tech. They'll both be live from Amsterdam while I'm here in good old Columbus, Indiana. Then on June 24th, I'll be moderating a panel at Job Gate Summit. So go to jobgate.com, it's free. They have a full day summit happening. And last but not least for the team that brought you breakfast, that bring you breakfast every year, they're bringing you TA global gathering, July 8th and 9th, with 100 plus speakers, for all across the world.
Joel: Everybody.
Chad: We have a new competition called, Feature Rama. That's something Joel came up with.
SFX: Hell yeah.
Joel: Thank you. So yes, Feature Rama, it's a little play on Death Match, but we didn't want to do Death Match. Because we already do that. We wanted to give established companies a platform to come on and talk about their new shit, because a lot of really cool companies that you know and love are doing new shit all the time, but you just sort of forget about it, because they're in blog posts or little emails to their customers. So we're going to give them a platform to come on and talk about their new shit, which I think is really exciting and can't wait to get. The companies that we have on, we have three out of four confirmed. I'm pretty sure we'll get the fourth one confirmed by the time the show airs. But we're talking about XOR, we're talking about HiringSolved, we're talking about Nexxt on the show. And I won't mention the next one until they confirm, but we're going to have four awesome companies talk about new features. We're going to have the judging panel. I don't know if we have the third judge confirmed yet, but it's going to be awesome. The winner will get a cool piece of hardware. We're going to divert from the chain and go a different angle, but it's definitely going to be awesome. We're excited as hell to do this. It's the first ever. Make sure you tune in.
Chad: Taglobalgathering.com, it's free, go sign up. There have been already 1500 signups, a shit ton of attendees. It's going to be a great event, over 100 speakers. So get out there taglobalgathering.com.
Joel: Did you say free?
Chad: I said, "Free."
SFX: Hell yeah.
Joel: Now to the news. LinkedIn, mutiny on the bounty, what happened to LinkedIn this week?
Chad: Yeah. LinkedIn, they have an issue going on. So earlier in the week, their new CEO started, Ryan Roslansky, right?
Joel: Welcome to the job.
Chad: Yeah, he took the helm on Monday, and on Thursday, his racist employees started climbing out of their holes. Well, he gave them a platform. They had a virtual town hall and he allowed anonymous comments. Here's some of those wonderful comments, mourners were there obviously to be able to really get their emotions out, which is incredibly important and necessary. But their employees had comments like, "Blacks kill blacks at 50 times the rate that whites kill blacks, usually is the result of gang violence in the inner city. Where's the outcry?" And another employee said, "As a non-minority, all of this talk makes me feel like I am supposed to feel guilty of the color of my skin. I feel like I should let someone less qualified fill my position."
Joel: I've been thinking a lot about sort of the wave of companies taking leadership positions in the current state of things. And I feel like it's a sad state of our union when companies feel almost like they have to be the beacons of right and wrong and justice and everything else. Because I think they feel that way in light of our government being so broken, divided, on both sides so stringently. And I know that if you look past some of the commentary at LinkedIn. And LinkedIn people are educated folks, right? These aren't knuckleheads. And I feel like if you look deeper in that, you're looking at a lot of opinions that are probably very mainstream in a lot of America. I mean, one of the comments that you didn't read was that, "LinkedIn is built on Ameritocracy," and ideally companies should be, right?
Chad: I don't agree.
Joel: And if we're looking for companies to be the leaders and the voices in this movement, that's fine. But I think you're going to be disappointed. I think that government needs to really take the leadership role on this. And like I said in last week show, "Voting is the way that we're going to fix this stuff." And Nike giving 100,000,000 or any company giving whatever amount of money will help the problem. But in many cases, I think it's a bandaid. The root of this issue is the systemic racism that happens when life has started, with this group of people. And our school system is broken, our educational system is broken, our communities are broken. And Nike giving X amount of money is going to help that, but it's not going to solve it. I've been thinking about this issue and this isn't necessarily LinkedIn specifically. I do think that the similarities to the Nixon election and law and order, and silent majority are eerie similar, but I feel like it's just a weird time to expect companies to carry the burden of social justice. Does that make sense?
Chad: It does, but I don't agree at all. I think, yes, there are bandaids for the ... The dollars are bandaids, there's no question. You have to be able to do something that's more systemic, right? That's, whether you're giving a whole class at Howard university their debt-free education. That is awesome. It's a great way to anoint all those kids go out without debt, but it stops there to an extent, right? Systemically, where do you change the system? And I think you're a 100% wrong when it comes to corporations versus government. I think they are both mutually responsible for ensuring that all of this happens. So yes, LinkedIn is responsible for their culture. The president of the United States is not at all responsible for LinkedIn's culture, right? They have to, as leaders, take that responsibility and they can't just shirk it and focus on, hey, let's just make money, right? That's not their job because the way that you make money is through your people. And if you're not treating your people right, if you're not paying them right, then this whole systemic thing continues to happen. It's not just government. It's also on the corporate side. I do think, and I said in The Shred that, I think that LinkedIn had a great opportunity when Jeff Wiener stepped down as CEO. They could have found a person with color to be able to fill that position. I know that Ryan Roslansky had been at LinkedIn for 11 years. No question, qualified for the position, I would say more than likely, but I guarantee you, there was a person of color that could have taken that position.
Joel: Sure.
Chad: And that's exactly what we need to start seeing as leaders, when we have four CEOs in the Fortune 500 that are black men, we have zero black female CEOs in the Fortune 500. That's saying something. We as corporations have to change, we can't always wait for government to regulate our change.
Joel: Yeah. I think your point of the decision of who would be CEO would have made a huge statement.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: Where they're going as an organization. And in that case, you're looking at board of directors, you're looking at shareholders and those can be directed to look more like the quilt that is America. And I think more and more companies are doing that. I mentioned Nike who has an all white C-suite, their board of directors, from what I understand is pretty diverse, really tough. This is a cancer that's been with us for hundreds of years.
Chad: Yeah. Well, which is why we need to rip off the fucking bandaid.
Joel: We need to go in. And this needs some surgery and some chemo, like this is beyond.
Chad: Well, here's a great example. Reddit CEO, Alexis Kerry Ohanian, says he's trying to set an example for other leaders by stepping down. Reddit, the social networking site he founded 15 years ago, gave birth to a lot of the shit that's happening out there online, racism, hate, those types of things. But now two years after stepping away from his day-to-day duties at Reddit, a white man is resigning from his company's board and asking that he be replaced with more diverse choice. Ohanian is married to Serena Williams and cited his family as one of three reasons for this decision. He tweeted, "I'm saying this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks, what did you do? This to me is what needs to happen." Not everybody's in this position, right? He's already rich. He can step away, but he's making a decision. And he's asking to be replaced, who he was, by Y Combinator CEO, Michael Seibel.
Joel: When I read this story, I thought about my blogging days, in the early days of blogging when anonymous comments were a thing and people get sort of just unleash hell on each other. And in many ways, I felt like, why am I, or how does it feel to sort of be the platform that people can just be angry with each other and insult each other? So on a very, very small scale, I felt some guilt and felt some remorse over what the platform had become in some cases. I can't fathom what this guy and what Reddit is with neo-Nazis. I mean, like extreme, extreme shit.
Chad: I get it. But you're missing the point. A white dude stepped down and said, "Put a black dude in my place." That's the point.
Joel: Sure.
Chad: Not the cesspool of racism that was created, is that he actually took a leadership position because he has a black daughter, and he has a black wife, he made that decision. Those are the types of things that we need. And hopefully, Michael, I think it's actually, Siebel, he sold Justin TV for about $1,000,000,000 and we know it today as Twitch. I'm sure he has some ideas on what to do with Reddit. But we also saw in Portland, which is a very liberal city, their police chief resigned Monday, promoting a black Lieutenant to serve as her replacement amid protests in the city, following George Floyd's death. What I thought was interesting about this was it was a female, it wasn't a white dude, it was a white female. And she even recognized that, hey, look, I got to push my whiteness out of the way and I have to actually make this decision because it's going to be better for our city.
Joel: And I apologize if I didn't say, "I agree with you." I do on the Reddit story, I just wanted to put in my own little personal experience, because I like talking about me. So I apologize if that didn't come through. Yes, I get the point and agree with that. I just wanted to throw in my own little 2 cents in there.
Chad: Yeah. Or just, I didn't say you couldn't have a story. I was just saying that there was a point and you just missed it. So yeah, I mean, I think these are great examples of what we should be looking forward to. Now, not just people taking themselves out of the way, but when new CEO stepped down or anybody in the C-suite, then boards need to be looking at people of color, period. And if there aren't white people in that pool to be able to choose from, so be it, because more than likely your entire board and C-suite is already white. Right? I thought that was incredibly interesting, two people that took themselves out of the game, because they knew that they could have somebody else, a person of color take over their position.
Joel: Yeah. And I think, obviously police is a government entity. So I think seeing things like this should be more common place than even say the responsibility of public companies or private companies. But yeah, let's take a quick breather. It doesn't get any lighter as we get into the show, but let's take a break and we'll talk about more heavy shit, sound good?
Chad: Heavy shit.
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Chad: All this talk about Nike, and Adidas actually put out a press release this week that said they will invest 20 million in black communities. "We will increase the funding for our programs that support, empower and elevate black communities to $20,000,000 over the next four years in the U.S ." They also said that they will invest in university scholarships for black employees. And this is the big one, will increase the number of black employees, a minimum of 30% of all new positions in the U.S at Adidas and Reebok will be filled with black and Latinx people. That's a big one.
Joel: Which a lot of people thought it was great. And then there was a story that came out, entitled, Adidas Black Employees Say CEO Response to Race Issues Is "Laughable". When you shared the story on our feed and I thought, okay, that's great, another company stepping up. And I mean, if we're being honest, Nike and Adidas largely make their living on athletes of color promoting their shoes and doing contracts and that being their consumers, these are sort of like layups for them, I think. And I was a little bit taken aback by it being laughable. And I didn't know if it was because as well, Nike has given 100,000,000 and we're only giving 20,000,000 or if it was a numbers issue. And then I thought it was just simply, this is a negotiation, and this is smart negotiating by the part of, it's a black coalition, 13 member representing 200 Adidas employees, cards are on their table in terms of they hold all of them. To me it was like, okay, that's your first offer, let's push for more. I looked at this move of just simply being really good negotiating tactics to try to get Adidas to move further into either more money, or more programs, or whatever it is, because they're in a position of strength. And it's just really smart negotiating at this point. I expect Adidas to do more in light of sort of the walkout or the protest that's going on there internally with their employees. I also think it's interesting to note that they were talking about Germany being sort of the biggest offender, in terms of race diversity. And we focus so much on America in this show and America is evil and bad, but this shit happens everywhere and it's worth noting sometimes, that it isn't just an American problem.
Chad: It's interesting because, the group, the actual employee coalition delivered a presentation, a 32 page deck presentation dubbed Our State of Emergency. Now this was seven days before the Adidas press release and they were coming to Adidas saying, "Hey, look, we want an apology to the black employees, we want 30 million or greater committed to invest in black students." And some employees were concerned that the black executives were not included. So this kind of more white group think that was happening, not to mention the 30% is, I mean, that's something to talk about, number one. But to talk about diversifying that 30% in all levels, right? Not just in our retail, right? In C-suite, everywhere throughout the organization. I think this was a huge miss by Adidas. And the reason being is they had a group that came to them and said this is what they want. You're right. This is not a negotiation. They are holding the cards. Adidas has plenty of money to be able to do this. And they should have just welcomed them in with open arms. Instead of playing this back and forth game, they should have just said, "Yes, we agree, this all makes sense, let's pull you in and let's devise something together." But they didn't do that. They had to play this corporate bullshit game.
Joel: So as my diversity sherpa, can I ask you a question?
Chad: I'm the best you've got. Let's just put it that way.
Joel: What is Latinx?
Chad: That's a good question.
Joel: Ooh. I just Googled it. Latinx is a gender neutral neologism, sometimes used instead of Latino or Latina to refer to people of Latin American culture or ethnic identity in the U.S. The ?-x? suffix replaces the standard ?-o/-a? ending of nouns and adjectives that are typical of grammatical gender in Spanish.
Chad: So it's everybody.
Joel: So it's kind of like a non-gender Latino, Latina.
Chad: It's everybody. Yeah.
Joel: Yeah, exactly. We figured it out together. See, we can come together and figure this shit out. Google is the answer. IBM, holy shit, we're talking about technology now. Still in the same way. IBM, basically the news is they're discontinuing their facial recognition department or development that the company, which by the way was a growing profit center for the organization. But they believe so strongly that it will be used for bad, that it wasn't worth sort of the negative impact on civilization or society to keep the program going. So IBM, huge kudos for them to can this program. Keep in mind though that, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft and others are still aggressively looking at facial recognition technology.
Chad: Yeah. This is what leadership looks like though. This is what right looks like. If somebody has to step up and say, "This is wrong and why is this happening now?" Well, AI researchers and technology scholars continue to warn about facial recognition software, particularly how some of the data driven systems have been shown to be racially biased. For instance, the MIT Media Lab has found that the technology is often less successful at identifying the gender of darker skin faces, which could lead to misidentification. Then back in 2018, this is awesome, the ACLU found that the software mistakenly identified 28 members of Congress as people who have been arrested for crimes. Now I would contest, since they are politicians and they should probably ask about crimes against humanity, maybe the AI got that one right.
Joel: Was that it?
Chad: Maybe.
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Joel: Well, we're going to lighten it up a little bit, I think. TikTok.
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: This was spurred by a post on LinkedIn by Daniel O'Neil, Daniel's a VP at Bayard Recruitment Advertising Organization. He asked, "Okay, boomer," which was a nice, fun way to get attention to his question, basically why hasn't TikTok, taken off huge numbers, huge usership? And he's totally right about all that. And then he asked Chad and I to come in and give our 2 cents as to why TikTok isn't a thing. I said, "Basically for a few reasons, number one is that employers are still trying to figure out Google." Chad and I in the mid-2000's were trying to educate companies on Google, they're still trying to figure it out. We're still doing podcasts on Google. So TikTok is way too novel to think about companies aggressively going after that. You have the whole COVID-19, unemployment, you have uncertainty. You have, in my opinion, Snapchat, being mostly a huge failure in recruitment advertising, it sort of got some steam early, but with McDonald's and some others. I don't think anyone wants to risk anything on TikTok after Snap sort of falling from grace. No one's going to get fired for using Facebook/Instagram and Google to advertise, but they might get fired for putting the bank on TikTok or Snap. And the third one was a gray area, but the whole Chinese spying communist shit just scares people. And I think they're just a little bit uneasy with China and the news related to TikTok. Those were my reasons as to why TikTok has not, and probably will not in any foreseeable future become a strong recruitment advertising mechanism for employers.
Chad: Does anyone care that, I mean, Facebook and Google and Snapchat, I mean, they're all spyware for God's sakes. I mean, I don't know about if anybody's heard about this Cambridge Analytica thing. I don't see a company, for the most part hiring companies. I don't see hiring companies doing this because they don't have time not to mention they adapt so slowly. But we did have a senior director of talent acquisition ask about that. I'm just going to wait until somebody figures it out. And it's like, well, you can do that, but you probably have people on staff who use TikTok. And why not have conversations about it? And then start to have the discussions instead of just waiting, right? We wait too much. We're always on defense in talent acquisition. We're never fucking playing offense. So start playing offense and start having the discussions, have the discussions with your advertising agencies. If you're an advertising agency and you don't have somebody doing R&D around this big ass social platform, these are the things that you should be doing. You should be doing the R&D pieces. You should be ... This is the reason for your being. But again, back to the talent acquisition side, have the discussions about these platforms, how they could be used, how do you currently use them? How would you use them for recruitment? Would you use them for recruitment? Those types of things are important because, shit, when I get on TikTok, I'm probably on there for 30 minutes, watching dog videos and shit like that, because that's the stuff I enjoy. And that's what the algorithm feeds me. But don't just sit back and wait guys do this shit.
Joel: I apparently really love animals fighting each other in the wild videos, for some reason. Just make sure that it is R&D budget, it is experimental budget. And when it's thrown down the drain, you can say, "Yes, well, this was experimental." Because if you're putting real dollars that you expect an ROI, you're probably going to be disappointed and maybe in trouble.
Chad: You're not telling them to go to TikTok and spend the next three hours on TikTok for God's sakes, but just have the conversation.
Joel: Time is money. And if you're having conversations, you are utilizing resources to do that. We can just disagree on that. It's not free for people to talk.
Chad: That's a difference between management and leadership.
Joel: What are you saying?
Chad: It's fairly simple.
Joel: You calling me a manager?
Chad: If the clipboard fits.
Joel: I just need to have those super tight latex coaching shorts, if you're going to call me a manager. End with that.
Chad: Whew. Thank God. We out.
Joel: We out.
Chester: Thank you for listening to podcast with Chad and Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Anyhoo, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.