Mystery Acquisition
Ever been stood up on a date? Yeah, we know the feeling after being stood up by our TOP STORY this week, although we're making lemons into lemonade and point you toward an acquisition. Shhhh, don't tell anyone.
Plus Shakespeare, Wonder Woman, and free flights to Hawaii means this episode has it all. Another active week in recruiting saw more start-up investment, more shots at Dice, more competition for Indeed, and much more.
Enjoy this Shaka-filled edition, sponsored by Jobvite, JobAdx, and Sovren. Mahalo!
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 (21s):
Oh, Thanksgiving surge? In my pants. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast, boys and girls, I'm your cohost, Joel "all I want for Christmas is some Airbnb shares" Cheeseman
Chad (38s):
And I'm Chad "I just want to use a fucking Airbnb" Sowash
Joel (42s):
This week show Indeed, watch it's back and Hawaii wants you and Oh, how I want Hawaii. I need a lay, a Pina Colada and some sunscreen stat!
JOBVITE (55s):
"Jobvite has changed our recruiting practice by making us more nimble. We're able to hire faster, but that means that things like where it would take us weeks to get approval from hiring managers or the next level up, that's now minutes;" "It's one of the best cutting edge tools out there available for talent acquisition today;" "I would absolutely recommend Jobvite to my peers. It allows you to get in front of talent that other tools won't do."
Chad (1m 24s):
2020 is off the fucking rails. Okay. We've got AI machine guns, killing people. I mean, did you see the space X lauch yesterday?
Joel (1m 36s):
Oh yeah. Would you call that a lot? Well, it was a launch not a landing.
Chad (1m 40s):
It was not a landing. That was my point. It was a launch. It was cool as hell. I, you never knew what was happening because it was a different type of landing. It just wasn't one of those straight down landings that had kind of like a glide in and then it swung over so that it could land and...
Joel (1m 57s):
Did the Jersey curve there at the end, just kind of couldn't straighte out.
Chad (2m 1s):
I didn't quite do that. And the, but that was one hell of an explosion though. I have to say!
Joel (2m 7s):
It was, it was! Pass the eggnog. I say, dammit, Christmas is Christmas is coming. Have you guys bought a tree? Like what's, what's the Sowash house household looked like as empty nesters?
Chad (2m 20s):
Yeah, well again, it's just Julie and myself and that being said happy 29th birthday to the executive director of Disability Solutions, podcast co-host of Crazy and the King and my lovely wife, Julie Sowash. We just run around doing whatever we want. It's not really Christmasy around here because we're not that big into decorations in the first place. And since the kids aren't around, I mean, we're not doing it for ourselves, so.
Joel (2m 47s):
So our house looks like the Griswold starter kit. It's kind of a, we have three trees currently up, lights on the house, inflatables in the front yard. The sidewalk is lined with candy canes and some sort of like peppermint swirl little decorations. So it's, we went all out this year and we put it up right after actually, well, we started before Thanksgiving, because we thought, fuck it, 2020, let's get in the spirit. We did it Burger King style and we launched Christmas all early this year. So it's all good. All we need is snow. Dammit. Snow would really complete the picture, but I'm not sure we're going to get that in the Midwest this year, at least in our neck of the woods.
Chad (3m 30s):
Yeah. Well, you're doing enough for both of our homes, so I appreciate that.
Joel (3m 34s):
Oh, sure. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think we're keeping it up until February 14th. Valentine's Day we'll take everything down, everything down. So are you, are you, do you have a buyer for those Airbnb shares? And did you buy some DoorDash, DoorDash shared yesterday? What are you, what are you thoughts on that?
Chad (3m 52s):
First off the door, I'm not going to buy into Door Dash. I think Door Dash is artificially inflated because of what's going on now. It's COVID right. We're going to go back to somewhat of a normal later. And then, you know, everything's going to flush out. Airbnb on the other hand, is something entirely different in their, in their pre IPO. Some of the information came out that 90% of the traffic that goes to Airbnb, the app or the website is totally organic. It's direct, which means they're not spending money on Facebook. They're not spending money on Google and they don't need those other pieces. They are a lifestyle platform.
Chad (4m 33s):
We talk about lifestyle platforms all the time. They have become a lifestyle platform. So I believe them easily. You put some cash into them over Door Dash.
Joel (4m 44s):
Yeah. I, I totally agree. I mean, air, Door Dash competition. Well-funded competition. I mean, one of these companies went public because of the virus and one of them went public despite the virus and Airbnb long-term, we were not an investment show. Don't everybody buy a bunch of these things and blame us when they go down. But DoorDash to me is it's just an opportunist in terms of the, the virus. Now they are talking about, there'll be able to deliver, you know, pharmaceuticals from Walgreens and there'll be sort of the last mile for, for things. So, yeah. So we'll see what happens, but, but Airbnb, I mean, they're globally known.
Joel (5m 25s):
You talked about the 90% traffic. I mean, we talk about brand awareness a lot too on the show and these guys have really solidified a solid brand. If people haven't heard our Douglas Adkin series, they should, I'm guessing Douglas is drinking a really expensive wine on a beach somewhere in Italy, because he's a rich man after today. So yeah, I think, and then he looked at the work, you know, the work environment in terms of, you know, what we talk about on the show, look, people are going to want to go to offices, but not like big ass headquarters, like before younger people I think are going to want to be, have flexible workspaces.
Joel (6m 6s):
And Airbnb is sort of really primed to take all this commercial real estate that's empty and turn it into some sort of fun Airbnb workplace, whatever, where you just sign in, pay by the hour or pay by whatever. And I think that's a whole opportunity for them and the experiences as well. I mean, they launched that quite a while ago and it's a huge business. And I think that's only going to get bigger as people get the fuck out of the house and want to do some shit.
Chad (6m 32s):
Yeah. If WeWork doesn't die because of this, they haven't died yet. Right. I think they will see a huge explosion. There will be cheaper office space available. People will want to have quote unquote "offices", just not headquarter type offices. Yeah. I think there's going to be a different appeal to how we do work. I hope, I hope we don't go back to the 1950s. Get your ass in the chair at 8:00 am, right?
Joel (7m 3s):
Yeah. I think they'll have like corporate credits and companies will give employees Airbnb credits for core commercial. I don't know, time at time and offices and whatever, wherever they want to go, whatever they want to do. So I think it's, it's a huge opportunity.
Chad (7m 17s):
Yeah.
Joel (7m 18s):
Speaking of macro economic issues, I, I, I'm curious about the movie industry AT&T Warner Media, HBO Max, this week, or recently talked about, they're releasing all their movies in conjunction with, in this, you know, in the movie theaters. Yeah. It's a gangster move. It's the ultimate sort of subscription movie theaters sort of suck for the most part. And you going to more movies than anyone. I know. What's, what's your take on the whole future of movie theaters at home movies? Like what I assume you like that you can watch Wonder Woman 1984 in your house, or you're going to be the first one in line at the theater when the vaccine goes around?
Chad (8m 2s):
Fuck that I'm not going to, it's so much more expensive to go to the theater in the first place and not to mention, I think Disney plus hopefully has shown us what movies look like in the future. When Mulan came out, now that wasn't a big name, but yet you have to be a Disney plus subscriber to have access to all of their awesome content. But on the new movies like Mulan, you had to pay 30 bucks. 30 bucks is cheap. Man. You can have a, you can have a private screening in your house with all your friends and family. Think of being able to do that with Star Wars or that, or, or what's coming out the new Marvel movies that are coming out right?
Chad (8m 44s):
Black Widow. I think that is something that will help them drive more cash to their bottom line. And it it's obviously siphoning it out of the, the movie theaters now and an entirely different piece is HBO Max. HBO Max is doing this because most people who have HBO aren't streaming HBO Max, which I don't understand. So they're doing this as a free kind of tug to say, Hey, look, download the app. You have it for free. You're already a subscriber so they can boost their subscription. What they haven't said yet is if they do boost that subscription, will they do what Disney plus did on all those other movies?
Chad (9m 28s):
Will they say yes, here we go. You have access to them because you're HBO Max user, but it's going to be $30, 50, 15, who knows how much more it'll cost. But I think that's the future of what we're looking at and going to a big screen. I think those days are still there, but they're not going to be there for long.
Joel (9m 49s):
So Wonder Woman is as I understand it, not an additional fee like Mulan was.
Chad (9m 55s):
No it's not.
Joel (9m 56s):
So do you think that's the future where?
Chad (9m 58s):
No.
Joel (9m 58s):
We're gonna go? No.
Chad (10m 1s):
The reason they did Wonder Woman like this, it's a huge box office hit. They're going to pull all those people who are not using HBO max today into that app. Now, hopefully they'll get smart and actually get it on Roku and the fire stick because they don't have it there yet. Dumb asses. But if they do that, they'll be able to pull their subscriber base on and then they can start doing Disney plus shit.
Joel (10m 31s):
Yeah. So what happens to the traditional movie theater?
Chad (10m 34s):
What happened to the drive-in movie theaters?
Joel (10m 37s):
They died. There was one, there was one per town in the Midwest where there was still land available.
Chad (10m 44s):
There was, there was. Not any more kids.
Joel (10m 47s):
Part of me thinks like the IMAX experience could still work, like to still have a screen as big as, you know, a billboard and 3d and surround sound like that people will still do that. And the other part of me, like the dining and movie thing and drinking, right?
Chad (11m 5s):
Yeah.
Joel (11m 5s):
Let me, it's like a night out. It's like a date night or it's, you know, it's something unique and special. Those two things I think could work. Otherwise there's nothing about a movie theater that's better than your house.
Chad (11m 18s):
No. Yeah. I think more upscale. Date night, big, big movies. Like again, star war, star Wars movies. You could see those, like, you know, synchronous drops where they're going to an IMAX and they're also on Disney plus they're, they're obviously you're going to be all those people who want to dress up like Boba Fett to go see it at the IMAX. That's cool. You know, but it's going to cost more. There's no question than it used to. And you'll also be able to have all your Boba Fett buddies over to your house and watch it on your TV for a hell of a lot less.
Joel (11m 51s):
Yeah. And speaking of making movies and experience, I'm committed to watching Wonder Woman 1984, with my 1984 flock of seagulls hairstyle. So that's how, I'm how I'm celebrating this momentous occasion.
Chad (12m 6s):
All right. That's awesome.
Joel (12m 8s):
Shout Out to Hyundai!
Chad (12m 12s):
Hyundai?
Joel (12m 13s):
Honda Honda, Honda Hyundai, Honda. Jeez. Who's apparently going to be the sixth or seventh or 20th owner of Boston Dynamics, the makers of the freaky deaky robot dog that has scared, scared internet viewers for almost a decade now, I think they're barely buying the company for $1 billion. Keep in mind, Google bought this, this, this company a while ago and then said, we're out of the business. So what does, is this, is this a statement on robots? Is it a statement on Boston Dynamics just doesn't get it right. As opposed to someone like I robot, who just says, we'll have a robot vacuum your house instead of like kick your dog to the shelter.
Joel (12m 56s):
What, what are your thoughts?
Chad (12m 57s):
Yeah, I'm thinking military. That's all the only thing I can think about these types of companies, because they're on the cutting edge of what's going to be next and being able to go out to the American population or any, any country and say, Hey, look, we don't have to fight wars with humans anymore. Isn't this a great thing? Hyundai getting into it much like Honda's into it. I don't understand, other than maybe every new Hyundai Sonata comes with a robot chauffer? I don't, I don't know.
Joel (13m 34s):
Well, obviously there's some smart people there that could maybe help self-driving stuff, but I'll, but also Uber just abandoned it's self-driving initiative, I believe this week. So driverless stuff and robots, I don't know the verdict is still out on that stuff. And you mentioned sort of in the opening, the AI drone machine gun thing, you saw that, right? Like what the hell was that about?
Chad (13m 59s):
Yeah. I mean, technology is fucking scary. It really is.
Joel (14m 2s):
The Iranian scientist who was assassinated, apparently AI and machine gun, drone machine gun, was responsible for the death or something.
Chad (14m 10s):
Yeah. And everything was from at least news reports and you can never fucking know was via satellite. So, you know, having all the geo position, positioning and whatnot, and the scientist who was killed, his wife was right beside him. He was pumped full of lead and so was his body guard who jumped in front of him. But she wasn't hit. That is scary because that's fucking accuracy.
Joel (14m 36s):
That's AI.
Chad (14m 37s):
Yeah. 11 shots.
Joel (14m 38s):
I got nothing. I got nothing. Shout out to William Shakespeare. No, not that William Shakespeare. So England started to shoot up their residents with the vaccine. The number two guy who got a shot was named William Shakespeare. I don't know if there's anything more British than that. Some dude named William Shakespeare. The second guy after him was Winston Churchill. And then after that was King Henry or something like that's a, I don't know, they do it different out there in England, I guess,
Chad (15m 9s):
Shout out to, to Talent Function and Elaine over there at Talent Function, they were acquired by CLO. This is all about consulting baby. And obviously consulting brings cash into in-house and, CLO has been trying to figure out how to do that for years. So that's your answer. Go buy a consulting company, bring them in house.
Joel (15m 30s):
Shout Out to Spotify lists. I don't know if you've seen this, but people are sharing their Spotify hot list for the year.
Chad (15m 36s):
Yes.
Joel (15m 36s):
And, and many folks have us this damn show at the top of the list. Adam Gordon comes to mind. So we appreciate the listeners and the Spotify listeners as well. You can hear us on anything, but Spotify is the only one that's been smart enough to like get some social media action out of their top list this year. Yeah.
Chad (15m 55s):
They're they're smart. Dennis Tupper and also Grant Clo grant had us ranked above Joe Rogan. So I'm waiting for our a hundred million to come in from Spotify any day.
Joel (16m 9s):
Dooo. Shout out to Apple's new head phones. Yes leave it to Apple to have a pair of headphones that cost about the same as a PS5. I think they're up to PS5 now. So yeah, that's that's brand brand power, baby, pricing power at Apple. I'm doubting that won't be under your tree this year.
Chad (16m 30s):
It cracks me up because Scott Galloway says that buying anything Apple's an IQ test. And in this case I agree a hundred percent only dumb motherfuckers are buying those.
Joel (16m 39s):
No it's people that want to show off their intelligence. And
Chad (16m 44s):
They're called fuck you money is what it is.
Joel (16m 48s):
They're superior DNA over Android, Android users. That must burn you up. When he talks about Android users in such degrading terms.
Chad (16m 57s):
He's a fucking academic. I mean, he looks down his nose at everybody who doesn't do things exactly like he does. I mean, you know, it's like, I would love to have a conversation with him, but every other sentence I'd be like, fuck you, Scott, but that's cool. That's fine. That's fine.
Joel (17m 11s):
That's who we are. That's that's the world, baby posing our opinions. Shout out to Transform. I don't know if anybody was, was watching, but you and I made a cameo appearance, fire and bourbon and Santa hats and all kinds of stuff. But that was a lot of fun and Transform knows how to, how to put on a virtual conference like nobody else. That was a lot of fun. And by the way, that the woman who introduced us as the Chad and Chase show that that brought me down to earth big time. So I had the Spotify list and then I had the Chad and Chase show. Ah, Nope, Nope. My name not Chase it's Cheeseman.
Chad (17m 51s):
Not easy being Chase. Let me tell.
Joel (17m 53s):
You it ain't easy being cheesy baby.
Chad (17m 55s):
Topics.
Joel (17m 59s):
All right.
Chad (18m 1s):
So, have you ever been stood up on a date then texted the next day with, sorry about that. My bad. Yeah. Welcome to the top new segment we recorded and then had to cut because we were stood up. Anyhow. We thought we'd make lemons into lemonade and give you a hint, just a little something for you to grind on until the news is actually broken. Here's the hint, a major player in our space is about ready to snap up a video platform. What kind of video platform, a platform dedicated to video interviewing? Maybe? What about video resumes?
Chad (18m 41s):
That's a thing. Video branding. I've heard of that. What about video power, job fairs? Those are popular, or maybe it's a version of video. I haven't even mentioned. Ask yourself who needs video? Who wants video, who is gonna get video? Watch for a Chad and Cheese shred a bite, a breaking news to drop with that answer and until then enjoy our regularly scheduled program.
Joel (19m 15s):
So, so we agree, this is a little bit of an odd acquisition.
Chad (19m 19s):
Yes, I like it. I just think, I think it's going to be good in about five years.
Joel (19m 25s):
Yeah. Interesting. Well, video is, is continues to be hot. Also announced this week, My Interview, I got 5 million for video interviewing. My interview has been used by more than 2000 companies, mostly in the United States and UK. They have a strategic partnership this is kind of their big one with reed.co.uk. The largest job search site in the UK.
Chad (19m 49s):
That's big.
Joel (19m 49s):
So far more than 2 million candidates have used My Interview. So video is high.
Chad (19m 55s):
For me for any core platform that's out there. This is table stakes. If you don't have this and you don't have like a key partner to be able to help you do this. I mean, you're not even a part of the conversation anymore. So I think anybody who has a core platform, whether it's a CRM or an applicant tracking system, this, I mean, they have to have these platforms, these names, My Interview on many of the other ones, they have to be like constantly in contact with them in really gauging how many people are using them. I mean, the partnership with Reed I think is big.
Joel (20m 32s):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I, you know, to me, a lot of these feel like they're ripe to just be destroyed by someone like Zoom, right? Like 15 years ago, do you remember job boards had their own video platforms? Right? Like, remember My Jobbing Video or something, and like people had video their own stuff. And then YouTube came along and said, Oh yeah, video. Like we're free. We're HD. We have better reach. We can do all these things. Like it's not going to take much for Zoom or someone that really, really, really gets video really well to start providing APIs or like plugins to these things, to where that's the default that people use for video.
Joel (21m 17s):
Like, I just feel like these, these solutions are going to get crushed.
Chad (21m 20s):
It goes beyond video, though. It goes into transcriptions. It goes into being able to share and rank. I mean, there's so many different pieces in one of these video interviewing interfaces that you can't just plunk video into a platform and go, there you go. So Zoom would actually have to work on building an interface for HR and talent acquisition. And I don't see that happening.
Joel (21m 45s):
No. No. How about Slack that has a video platform and Salesforce?
Chad (21m 51s):
It's too much of a pain in the ass.
Joel (21m 53s):
LinkedIn video?
Chad (21m 54s):
Yes, Maybe LinkedIn, because this is their space. Yeah.
Joel (21m 58s):
I knew I'd finally get to one. So they, weren't the only one getting money this week, Code Signal caught our eye. What happened with them?
Chad (22m 7s):
I love these guys. So twenty-five million in series B, 37 million in total Code Signals, a technical assessment platform dedicated to helping companies go hashtag.
Joel (22m 19s):
Go beach tag.
Chad (22m 21s):
Go resumes in tech recruiting. I love when that's put out in the press release,
Joel (22m 26s):
I know right more hashtags and press releases. Goddammit guys.
Chad (22m 31s):
I mean, they, they, they put out that employment of engineers is projected to grow by 22% adding approximately over 300,000 new jobs in the U S and from my standpoint, for any company that does development front end back end, any type of coding whatsoever. This is the silver bullet platforms like this, right? You have, you have Code Signal. You have Codify, you have Woven Teams here in Indianapolis. Hacker Rank. Because if you think about it, these technical recruiters they're for the most part, they're not, programmers.
Joel (23m 8s):
You didn't say Dice, Chad, did you forget about Dice?
Chad (23m 11s):
I'll get to that. I'll get to that. So most of these technical recruiters, they don't know how to program. So these coding platforms get them to the point where the recruiter already knows. Yes, they know how to code. They've passed all these tests, right? They've been certified. Now we can have the conversation with this individual. This is what scalability in technology is about. And it is so smart because talent acquisition doesn't know this and they're looking for a silver bullet, and one of these types of platforms are perfect for this.
Joel (23m 43s):
You know, we mentioned a Jobvite a little, and we just did a, an interview with them in regards to their survey that they put out every year. And one of the, one of the data points that really sort of surprised me was the 20% decrease in usership of LinkedIn. And I know a lot of that is because of Seek Out and sourcing tools. But I think a lot of it too, is there just, aren't very many engineers on LinkedIn and people are using services like this in terms of where am I going to spend budget to find technical folks. And these guys, I think, continue to take chunks out of the pie that, that LinkedIn enjoys and will continue to do. So some of our customers include big names like Instacart, Robin hood, Upwork, and zoom, who we just, we just talked about.
Joel (24m 27s):
So they're, they're no joke. They they're legit for sure.
Chad (24m 30s):
Yeah. Well, two weeks ago I tagged Dice and DHI as 2020s Turkey of the year, because this is exactly what they should be doing. And they're being outflanked by a bunch of more nimble and smarter startups. So Art. Art buddy, listen up , Dice should acquire these guys are a platform like them. Unfortunately, I feel like I'm talking to air because, you know, they won't. And if they did, they would just totally, fuck it up anyway. So just forget what I just said. Older, platforms like Dice, I don't know how they didn't see these things coming. I don't know how they didn't become this.
Chad (25m 10s):
They had the community. And then the community said, guess what? We don't want what you have anymore. We want something different. And this is it.
Joel (25m 19s):
Hubris is a nasty thing. I mean, at least pull some Zuckerberg shit and just copy it and see what happens. You know, like TikTok, let's just launch Reels and see if we can compete with these guys. They don't even have the innovative genius to copy all the stuff that's innovative.
Chad (25m 35s):
Come on Art.
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Joel (26m 52s):
Watch out, Indeed. Watch your back. Watch your back. Sorry. Our buddies at Jobiak.
Chad (26m 58s):
You're actually saying it right!
Joel (27m 2s):
Joe. Okay. Jobiak who we know as being optimized, your jobs for Google for jobs, we did a Voices series a with them, if you haven't checked that out, go to Chadcheese.com/voices. It's a great interview. Yeah. And I don't remember if he mentioned this in the interview or if it was sort of like when the mic was off?
Chad (27m 22s):
It was when the mic was off. Yeah. Yeah.
Joel (27m 24s):