One of these topics is not like other podcast topics.
A new unicorn.
An acquisition.
A startup getting funded.
Google ticks off their workers.
Pay transparency.
Selling farts on TikTok for $1,000 a bottle.
If you guessed bottled farts, congrats. Now listen to this episode, covering all the above, and featuring Seekout, FactoryFix, ZipRecuiter, Bullhorn, and 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 (21s):
Oh yeah. Inflation has increased 7% in the past year. The highest since 1982. And thanks to Door Dash, I've inflated 17% in the last year. Hi kids it's the most famous dose since Lennon and McCartney also known as the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost Joel "Helter Skelter" Cheeseman.
Chad (43s):
And this is "just Chad" Sowash.
Joel (45s):
And on this week show SeekOut hits unicorn status. ZipRecruiter has a warning and TikTokers farting in jars for fun and profit. How could it go wrong? Let's do this.
Chad (1m 0s):
Oh yeah. My, my opening. That was a shout out for Lieven. Just so you know anybody who's not listening to the Europe podcast. This is the last one had to be the best of them all. They just keep getting better.
Joel (1m 12s):
I agree. The chemistry is finally kicking in. I think.
Chad (1m 16s):
Yeah. We had a Gerard Mulder who is the CEO of Textkernel talk a little bit about the Textkernel/Sovren acquisition and Lieven is just, he's starting to open up and he's funny as fuck.
Joel (1m 29s):
Yeah. He's a standup comedian in hiding. Like he's got a second career if he wants to grab that. Well, let's get to shout out shall we?
Chad (1m 38s):
So I have two big employment brand and marketing announcements. You ready? You ready for this?
Joel (1m 44s):
Oh industry stuff. Okay.
Chad (1m 45s):
Here we go. Here we go. So we are bringing back the cult brand series episodes, and we're doing it by installing a new host. So neither you and I, you and I are going to stay okay, but we're going to have a third wheel. I'm not going to tell you who she is, but she is a CMO in our industry and we're going to be recording our first episode with her live tomorrow for the release next week. She's flying in for dinner. We're going to be day drinking and doing a podcast. I feel like knowing that she's already agreed to fly in, dinner day drinking podcast, she's already going to fit in. So I'm pretty excited about that.
Joel (2m 27s):
So shout out and semi news item here Kelly Lavin, a Jobvites former. Now a chief people officer is leaving the company to join a startup called Niche, which is in the educational matching game, huh? Matches kids with colleges. So we'll miss you Kelly in the industry. Maybe you'll come back some day.
Chad (2m 49s):
Congrats, Kelly. We still want to have beers when we go downtown. Okay. So you're still on the list. Another employment branding, shout out the Talentcast with James Ellis is coming off hiatus after a year and a half. Dude took a, a mega break. He's been working on a 2.0 version of his book Talent Chooses You. And he's going to be putting that out via audio. So audio book style, but on his podcast. So be looking for that, he's already dropped episode zero. It's kind of like the getting ready version. And it is funny as fuck. So if you, if you don't know, James, get out of the corner, number one, but subscribe to the podcast, the Talentcast.
Chad (3m 33s):
Fucking awesome.
Joel (3m 34s):
And he has a substack now. So if you'd rather read some of his shit, look for him on, on Substack, nobody
Chad (3m 42s):
Nobody reads anymore.
Joel (3m 42s):
Yeah. Clearly by the success of this podcast. I've got a shout out to canvas.com. The, the one I predicted is being a shit show as a quickly becoming a shit show. The recruiting site has been ordered by a US district judge to drop the use of the domain name over a trademark dispute. We touted them for actually having canvas.com. Yeah. Anyway, learning management platform, Instructure claims the domain name, canvas.com, which is leased and not actually owned and its logo contained elements that conflict with Instructure's canvas product and line of business. Canvas tech reportedly says they will be appealing the ruling.
Joel (4m 26s):
Good luck with that. As of this podcast, canvas.com still does go to canvas.com.
Chad (4m 32s):
Yeah. Probably just going to go ahead and take a step back to jumpstart.me and carry on right and get out of that lease. Go ahead and try to try to get out of that lease. A big shout out to another announcement. Damn so many announcements. Jamie Leonard just announced that Rec Fest is happening this year live at Knebworth park on July 7th. That's right kids Knebworth park the legendary. Yes, I am so excited. Unleashed is going to be happening in the US in late March. And now we have this announcement and RecFest.
Chad (5m 13s):
And just another bit of news. That's dropping Joel. I don't know if you know this or not, but the Chad and Cheese will be emceeing the disrupt staPe in July at Knebworth park. We are fucking stoked.
Joel (5m 29s):
And when they ask us to leave the event.
Chad (5m 36s):
I'm not leaving.
sfx (5m 36s):
I'm not fucking, leaving!
Joel (5m 38s):
By the way, I heard that Boris Johnson will be there without a mask. So exciting for that, as well.
Chad (5m 44s):
He goes everywhere without a mask.
Joel (5m 45s):
Apparently he does. He may not be prime minister by the time I get there anyway, a shout out to Snag a Job. Geez. When was the last time we talked about them? Anyway, they got the loan. They went to the loan sharks and hook got hooked up Runway Growth Capital a provider of growth loans to both venture and non venture back companies seeking an alternative to raising equity closed a senior secured term loan. I don't know if that's different than like a teen secured loan or a child secured loan. Anyway, a commitment of $65 million. A news release said the loan will enable Snag a Job to continue investing in its technology and drive growth on the tailwinds of an evolving hourly jobs market.
Joel (6m 27s):
Good luck with that Snag a Job. Shout out to you.
Chad (6m 32s):
Yeah. I've heard from many startups who are looking for funding that some of the VC terms out there are fucking ridiculous. So I can see why Snag white might be doing something like this.
Joel (6m 44s):
I'm just so happy that there'll be advancing their technology because they're such innovators.
Chad (6m 51s):
Shout out to Sepideh Nayeri, hopefully, I'm getting that right and Christie Moon, who are both looking great in their new Chad and Cheese tees, kids. That's right. Joel working, they get free. T-shirts
Joel (7m 7s):
Are you kidding me? Chadcheese.com/free. Free t-shirts, free whiskey, free beer sponsored by the likes of Emissary, Sovren, Textkernel and our folks at Pillar who was just on a zoom tasting with us this week. Lovely people they are.
Chad (7m 22s):
Good stuff.
Joel (7m 23s):
If you haven't signed up, it's free. It's easy. Chadcheese.com/free. Shout out to Betsy Norris, by the way, who is this month's whiskey winner.
Chad (7m 34s):
Yes!
Joel (7m 34s):
And most excitingly.
Chad (7m 36s):
Yes?
Joel (7m 37s):
We did a drawing this morning with our friends at candidate ID for three really expensive thousand plus dollar bottles of scotch.
Chad (7m 45s):
Malted, scotch whiskey. Get that right? Yeah. Come on.
Joel (7m 48s):
Amazing stuff. My bad, my bad. I'm a rookie on the scotch. Okay. So our winners on that, we had to two euros and we had one US-based winner. Alan Clark of Randstad is a winner of a really nice bottle of whiskey. So big applause for that. Neil Foams from the UK and Oliver Beckett, a lawyer out there in the UK as well. So a couple of limeys and one yank we got as the winners. So shout out to them, enjoy that. And we will, if they're listening to this and haven't heard from us, we will get in touch, get that scotch to you, and hopefully schedule a zoom call with all of us and have a good time.
Chad (8m 31s):
Is limey an offensive term? I have no clue, but it sounds like it.
Joel (8m 35s):
Most Brits have a pretty good sense of humor around all that stuff. So I'm not too worried about offending them.
Chad (8m 41s):
Not, that you would, not that you would worry anyway, I'm just
Joel (8m 44s):
Saying yanks, yanks is not real offensive to Americans.
Chad (8m 48s):
Yeah. Yeah. Just, cause we don't really give a shit big shout out to Monica Evia, Cheeseman, you mispronounced her name a couple of weeks ago and she nicely guided you through the audio feature on LinkedIn to help you with future pronunciations. So yeah, don't, don't take it personal, Monica Cheeseman sometimes fucks up the pronunciation of Miller. So thanks for listening and supporting that Chad and Cheese t-shirt we love it.
Joel (9m 16s):
You know what? That's on me. I'm gonna own that. I'm going to own it as a teachable moment. If you are a CEO or someone who's interviewed or talked about on podcasts, like this, use the LinkedIn feature to say how your name is pronounced. It's kind of a neat feature. I'm going to own the mistake, go to LinkedIn and say your name so that podcasters like us don't fuck up. Then we get it right.
Chad (9m 44s):
Before we get to the fantasy football winner, because I was in the basement. I just want to say that I win the funding bet as a HCM carries the 2021 funding year, which means tonight you're buying the cigar and booze at Nicky Blaine's.
Joel (10m 5s):
Fair enough. Fair enough. Are we, can we, can we move this to next year? Can we just have the same?
Chad (10m 14s):
Okay. We'll roll it again.
Joel (10m 16s):
We'll roll it again. All right. Fantasy football. The winner, in case you didn't know Jason Putnam of a company called Plum.
sfx (10m 26s):
Really? Can you feel the tension in the air right now? I know I can. I can feel it all the way down to my plum.
Joel (10m 32s):
All right, Jason, congrats to you, buddy. Hopefully you'll sign up again next year. I think we'll do it next year, don't you?
Chad (10m 39s):
I enjoyed myself in this league. I was dead the last in my other league. I won. I have no fucking clue how this thing works.
Joel (10m 50s):
No fucking clue. Hopefully our audience knows how subscribing to podcasts goes.
Chad (10m 53s):
Amen.
Joel (10m 54s):
And we'll make sure that they catch the Euro show from this week that you mentioned already. You said our best show yet, don't necessarily disagree. Great guests, great insight into the old country and incredible comic relief with our friend Lieven, which we didn't really expect to happen. We also got some birthdays, Chad.
Chad (11m 14s):
Excellent.
Joel (11m 15s):
Great ones. This this past week, we got Joanne Lockwood who doesn't love Jo? And she better be at a Recruit Fest. I'm sure that she will. Here's one that I'm going to mispronounce Muir. MacDonald. M U I R.
Chad (11m 32s):
Yeah.
Joel (11m 34s):
He is Scottish. And you'll love this. He's the head of resourcing at Scottish power.
sfx (11m 44s):
Welcome To all things Scottish. If it's not Scottish it's crap!
Joel (11m 45s):
Scottish. All right. Happy birthday. Muir. Rob Arndt, Tom Bartle. Steve Jewel, Geert Jan, that's your buddy. I know. I mispronounce that. How do you pronounce it? .
Chad (12m 0s):
Know John. I mean it's GJ. Yeah.
Joel (12m 4s):
Yeah. Why don't people just go by their initials. All right. Stephanie Krishnan, Mark Fogel. Zachary Larson. Matt Katz, Chris Grosjean Jill Patterson, Michael O'Dell, and the mad scientist of recruiting Chris Russell celebrates birthdays this week. Michael O'Dell, by the way, is not signed up for free shit on our site. And I'm a little offended. I'm a little offended that Michael O'Dell is not signed up for free shit from Chad and Cheese.
Chad (12m 37s):
He's a giver. He's not a taker. He's a giver. That's Michael O'Dell. Topics!
Joel (12m 44s):
All right, Chad, you know what this sound means?
sfx (12m 48s):
Fluffy Unicorn music.
Chad (12m 48s):
Yeah. Every week.
Joel (12m 50s):
That's right. Our friends at SeekOut announced a $115 million series C funding round this week led by Tagger Global Management. The round values, the Seattle-based company at more than $1.2 billion SeekOut noted it has doubled its customer count to more than 1000 enterprises over the past year. Co-founder and CEO, Anoop Gupta friend of the show said, quote, "with this financing round, we'll be investing deeply in innovations that extend our leadership position in talent acquisition, and power new solutions for internal mobility, employee retention, career pathing and learning and development."
Joel (13m 33s):
SeekOut had announced a $65 million series B round just last March. They've raised a total of $199 million and some change. Chad, are you in or out on SeekOut?
Chad (13m 45s):
Definitely in . We definitely have to be in, I mean, they were a Deathmatch winner for goodness sakes. So on the stage in Austin, Anoop Gupta, he did his pitch and we all agreed that he was the winner. And obviously, you know, the funders looking at the tech, looking at the background, looking at the landscape, all of that, you know, I think there's no question. There's a great opportunity in this segment. Now there are other players, but you've got to remember, there's so much market to be had. It's good. And not to mention, it's also validating, plus I definitely want to get Anoop on the call.
Chad (14m 29s):
I'd like to know what was the driving force behind the 300% growth in revenue and the ARR from, you know, going to $25 to 50 million. That's a big range by the way. But I mean, what's the driving force other than just the landscape itself.
Joel (14m 40s):
Yep. I agree. It'd be great to get Anoop on the show and just sort of get an update from him. Maybe we'll get out in the world and see him face to face, which would be nice. Cause he's a pleasant man to me. I think, to me, it's very apropos that we're talking about SeekOut achieving unicorn status roughly a week or so after we talked about Paradox, reaching unicorn status because to me, while they have sort of very little in common right now, they're both sort of on this trajectory of being a new generation of recruitment platforms or employment platforms. I think the key to that comment is Anoop's quote from the story, which says, you know, "extend our leadership position in talent acquisition and power new solutions for internal mobility, employee retention and career pathing learning and development."
Joel (15m 34s):
So he's got his eye on a much bigger picture than just search for people. And it's going to be really fun and Paradox, I think has the same sort of vision of the future. And it's going to be really interesting to see how both of these, I don't know, babies in, in route to teenage platform and, beyond how they start competing more evolving more to me that's really exciting. I expect to see maybe app stores or marketplaces start showing up on these different platforms and seeing exciting new features and technologies, and then acquisitions from that.
Joel (16m 14s):
So to me, this is like version two of the platforms and really interesting companies in Paradox and SeekOut, looking to stake a claim in that new real estate, which is not the metaverse by the way, it's the real world.
Chad (16m 28s):
Yeah. They, they don't have time for marketplaces. They're going to have to identify and acquire quickly. So they don't have time for that marketplace. Bullshit just yet. They're not an iCIMS right. They haven't been around for 10 years and they need to show growth and I mean, so they don't have time for marketplaces. I don't see that happening at all. One thing I do see, and I do like the parallel with Paradox because that's exactly what's happening. We're taking a look at the old relic of an applicant tracking system of what we used to know. And we're looking at something new being created and you know, these tech stacks, which are incredibly different, which I like to call a core talent platforms because that's really what they are.
Chad (17m 8s):
And they are so ever changing from customer to customer to customer. The question is which one would you rather be a part of?
Joel (17m 14s):
Let's play? Who'd you rather who'd you rather Paradox or SeekOut? Leadership is interesting. So if you look at the jockeys, you have one that's like super brain work for Bill Gates. Microsoft probably sees the world in a really different way than anybody else or most people do. And then on, in this corner, you have like industry veteran understand the landscape has executives that are sort of support that. So which one of those would you rather have? I'm going to give the slight edge to the industry folks. They can hire more brains or bigger brains it's harder, and you know, they can hire veterans too. But I like the veterans over in Paradox, a little better.
Joel (17m 54s):
I think the executive team over there and I like messaging a little better than I do searching profiles as a base from to start from. So if, if we're playing who'd you rather it's super close. It's, you know, hairline difference, but I give a little edge to Paradox and you? You gotta play too.
Chad (18m 13s):
I mean, Paradox and SeekOut. See the thing is that again, there aren't many of these new age types of platforms that are going in this direction, right? There's plenty of room in the market for both of them easily. I see them crushing some of the legacy platforms that are out there and I'm going to be rooting for them both. But between the two again, I mean, you've got a guy who was the right hand to Bill Gates for God's sakes. And then you've got Aaron, you've got Jay Z, you've got, you know, Adam Godson. You've got all these amazing brains, not too much in a shit ton of grit and experience. There's no way in hell. I would choose between the two of those guys. I think they both fucking rip and they start crushing the competition that's in front of them.
Joel (18m 56s):
So you're not going to take a stand.
Chad (18m 59s):
Nope.
Joel (18m 59s):
You're not going to pick?
Chad (19m 2s):
They might even, they might even lock arms just so that they can, they can obliterate the rest of the market.
Joel (19m 7s):
Alright. Alright. Kind of weak, but we'll take it. By the way. I think I do think SeekOut has an easier glide path to acquisition and falling in the arms of a Microsoft.
Chad (19m 16s):
One thing I would like to say, though, this is a message to all the platforms out there. And I, you know, after reading the press release from SeekOut and all these new press releases. Stop with the DEI marketing speak, no platform can fix a company's shitty process or hiring bias, right? You can't fix that, Ned is a racist, so stop it. Okay. Focus on your solutions that you're providing. If you do provide a diverse array of candidates, that's great, but you can't say that you are the easy button for diversity. You just can't do it.
Joel (19m 56s):
By the way, if your name is Ned, he's not talking about you. It's a totally different Ned.
Chad (20m 4s):
Or maybe I am.
Joel and Chad (20m 5s):
Or maybe I am.
Joel (20m 5s):
Okay. Well from new tech to old shit, that's still talking. Let's talk about Bullhorn showy. Bullhorn announced this week. It has acquired Able the artist formerly known as Employee Stream and a Cleveland based provider providing onboarding automation software for staffing firms. Able is already a member of the Bullhorn marketplace and is also available in the Salesforce app exchange. Able CEO, Gerald Hetrick and Chief Product Officer Dustin Brewer will join Bullhorn's leadership team. Able's 40 or so employees will also be employed by Bullhorn as well. Plans also call for the Able brand to remain for its operations, to continue and for its operations to continue in Cleveland, terms of the transaction were not announced founded in 2014, Abel had raised a total of 11.5 million.
Joel (20m 58s):
Beautiful, lovely Cleveland, Ohio has produced a successful startup. Chad, are you buying or selling this move?
Chad (21m 3s):
I'm buying this move. I thought it was interesting. I went to the website and I was like, man, this looks familiar. It looks like one of the old home Depot layouts and colors and whatnot. It's simple, it's straightforward. And it makes sense. And Able could help Bullhorn staffing clients manage their employees much better. So if a large staffing company has thousands of employees on projects, currently, most of them are managing it somewhat manually, which does not allow the staffing firm to scale very quickly, thus they lose money.
Chad (21m 43s):
But if the staffing company can easily identify through those thousands of thousands of employees who is getting ready to complete a project and then get them queued up to move to another project with a little downtime and without the need to hire more employees to fill roles well, less overhead, quicker time to start projects means more cash all about efficiency and increasing margins. I think if they learn how to implement this well and they can help their staffing clients implement this well, this will be, it could be a game changer for them being the staffing industries platform.
Joel (22m 27s):
Game changer. Well tale of two companies a little bit, we talked about another old guard in our shout outs. When I mentioned Snag A Job, which has been around for a long time, Bullhorn has been around for a really long time. And one of these companies has really stayed focused and sort of loyal to the customer and the needs of the customer. The other one kind of took its eye off the ball, tried some crazy ass shit, had to fire CEO and now are sort of, you know, getting loans from, from Guido on the corner to keep the lights on. And the stable one is Bullhorn obviously. And we probably don't talk enough about Bullhorn because this 20 year old company has really done a remarkable job of staying on top, mostly quietly for so long in their niche.
Joel (23m 12s):
I think they've done a nice job of evolving without alienating their users. Let's be honest, a customer base of staffing people and recruiters is not the easiest herd of cats, you know, to control. I think they know their lane, the recent acquisitions that they've had, you might remember they bought Cube 19. Recently. I know that we talked about that. They typically bring in solid talent, provide new features to the service that are probably one really popular in their marketplace. And also in demand from their customers who are asking this stuff Bullhorn. Isn't the sexiest company out there, but sometimes boring can be really nice. And Bullhorn to me has been sort of the poster boy in our industry of being that in our industry.
Joel (23m 59s):
So I too applaud this move, but also applaud Bullhorn as well. I know I gave him shit for their pay to play marketplace, but the marketplace is producing some pretty good acquisitions for them. So.
Chad (24m 12s):
Yep.
Joel (24m 12s):
All right, let's get to a ZipRecruiter. Good God we've got to talk about them on a show. So our friend and birthday boy, Chris Russell shared the following on his blog this week, ZipRecruiter's publishing is warning job boards to step up their traffic game or risk being ousted from its partner network. A recent email allegedly sent by ZipRecruiter said to an underperforming publisher quote. "This low level of engagement is unfortunately not sustainable. And it has a direct impact on our ability to deliver high quality job seeker, traffic to employers. This message is to bring this engagement to your attention and to notify you that if job seeker traffic remains low, we will no longer be able to continue the partnership and we'll need to deactivate all relevant placements affiliated with your organization."
Joel (25m 4s):
Sounds like a move from Indeed's playbook. Chad's what your take?
Chad (25m 9s):
Man. Somebody is feeling the squeeze right now over at Zip. Right?
Joel (25m 14s):
Ouch.
Chad (25m 15s):
And do you think that Ian knew that this message went out? I'm going to bet he didn't because this doesn't seem like his style. I don't know Ian personally, but a guy who actually fires staff when he did early 2020, or sorry, 2021. And he did it himself. He had to do it over Zoom because of pandemic, but he did it himself. This just doesn't seem like his style. And it is very Indeed-like there's no question, get your shit together or we're kicking you off the bus. This is not how you treat the community that helped propel you to success. And it's not great for building long-term relationships.
Chad (25m 56s):
So somebody is feeling short-term pressure and they're going to fuck up some long-term strategy.
Joel (26m 1s):
So is the pressure to produce more traffic and revenue and they're putting the fear in and job boards to drive traffic?
Chad (26m 7s):
Yeah. Traffic Is revenue. Yeah.
Joel (26m 8s):
Okay. To me, the question is why I totally agree with your, with your pressure, like to produce revenue and holy shit, that kind of happens when you become a public company. People start asking like, how do we squeeze more money out of places? I'm curious if they shut a partner down from monetization of their feed, does the feed still work? So in other words, they're still getting the jobs, but they're not getting paid. And how long will they notice that if you're really small, you might not notice it. I don't know. Number two are these partnerships a real pain in the ass? Like you have small publishers, they want you to do stuff they're on, you know, on the phone. And we know that in many cases, it's the smaller customers that are the bigger pains in the asses than the bigger ones.
Joel (26m 51s):
So I don't know if it's a drain on resources and the company has bigger fish to fry than to deal with little publishers. The other thing I wonder is, is it a damage to the brand? I mean, ZipRecruiter is trying to get out of this we're for small businesses and post jobs and like these small things, we want to be more enterprise. We want to be more AI. And does our brand on these little sites, many of which, you know, may be sort of questionable in terms of their content. Does it make us look bad? Does it make our brand look sort of chintzy or lesser than, you know, our competition? Or maybe it's a little bit of everything that we've mentioned.
Chad (27m 29s):
This whole message was about traffic, nothing with regard to content, not to mention, you have to remember these organizations were built on the long tail. You know, having the, all your eggs in one basket for one or two traffic providers is what really is going to fuck an organization, which is why you need a long tail. And with the landscape being the way that it is right now, not many people are getting the traffic that they had a couple of years ago. Right? So again, this is more of a short-term squeeze not to mention didn't Zip just talk about their first junk bonds to try to raise $500 million?
Joel (28m 6s):
$500 million.
Chad (28m 7s):
Yeah, there, I mean, there's a squeeze happening here and I'm not sure if Ian knows it yet. Maybe he does now. It just doesn't seem like this is the way that you react.
Joel (28m 19s):
All right. Let's take a quick break and talk about a little bit more money coming into our startup space. All right, Chad, our friends, huge fans of the podcast, friends at Factory Fix have a little bit of news this week. The recruiting platform that helps manufacturing companies hire skilled workers as announced a $10 million series A round of financing this week. The company has raised $16 million to date. Revenue grew 400% last year. And their talent network has grown to over 300,000 skilled manufacturing professionals. CEO and founder Patrick O'Rahilly said, quote, "the manufacturing industry is facing a crippling labor shortage with over a million jobs sitting open right now,"
Joel (29m 6s):
Chad, we all know that you hate college. So you must have a huge boner over this news on Factory Fix.
Chad (29m 15s):
I hate college debt, not college. It looks like Factory Fix is trying to build almost a core talent platform for manufacturing, much like DriverReach does for truckers and logistics. The big difference I believe is that Factory Fix is a destination location for job seekers as well. So you have two revenue models, one platform. Pretty smart not to mention being able to be hyper-focused in one specific arena, makes it so much easier for developers, for salespeople, for marketing and for targeting, high value targets. Right. You know, who is in manufacturing and could be a perspective client. Organizations like this hyper-focused yes, all of your eggs are in one basket, but I'm gonna tell you right now, that's the basket I would want to have right now.
Joel (30m 4s):
So I chatted with Patrick, the CEO yesterday.
Chad (30m 7s):
Excellent!
Joel (30m 7s):
They love the show and they're listening. So shout out to you guys. We appreciate it guys. And gals, he basically said they forced the company to listen. So maybe they hate us because they have to listen. But anyway, they are listening. So I kind of imagine a group of missionaries in Callahan Autoparts t-shirts, as I think about these guys, we talk a lot about the need to do the difficult work of engaging with teens and young people and letting them know there's another road to take outside of college and what route to take if they want to get there. This is a startup of a bunch of Midwesterners with mostly Midwestern investment money solving problems that impact everyone, but also seeing particularly crucial in the middle part of our country.
Joel (30m 55s):
So I think they should be applauded for that and that mission. They have a long road ahead. Look, it's not easy to go to high schools and get them involved and educated. And I mean, there are a lot of high schools out there, so they have a really hard job and long road ahead, but frankly, I think we should all be rooting for their success. And hopefully this series A is just , a series A and series B and C are coming. And these guys can grow in a way that that helps young people find career tracks that are appropriate for them.
Chad (31m 27s):
Two quick points of advice, Patrick, you're listening. I know you're listening Patrick. So first and foremost, when I go to the site and I click on pricing, give me pricing. Number two, number two, definitely reach out, love to have this conversation, you should be dipping into, piping into the U S military. All of those individuals who are transitioning back that more than likely have a lot of these skillsets would be a great fast track for most of your clients to be able to get great hardworking people.
Joel (31m 58s):
And they're all big Chicago Vears fans. So maybe Justin, maybe we'll be shipping you a Justin Fields Jersey and in return for that grade A
Chad (32m 6s):
I want the orange one. I want the orange one.
Joel (32m 9s):
You want the orange one? Well yeah, sure. They could work that out. Well from one startup to a not so startup, Google is in the news this week. From the Verge, Google is giving four of its top execs a significant pay bump raising their salaries from $650,000 to 1 million.
Chad (32m 31s):
Come on!
Joel (32m 32s):
Just weeks after the company told staffers, it wouldn't automatically adjust salaries to account for inflation.
Chad (32m 40s):
Say what?
Joel (32m 42s):
What's more, all four executives are eligible to participate in a maximum $2 million annual bonus program based on contributions to Google's performance against social and environmental goals for 2022. According to an SEC, filing Chad, does something smell a little weird in Mountain View?
Chad (32m 58s):
I mean talk about double-dipping number one, because you're giving yourself a raise and in some case almost like double raise and then number two, you're also getting a lot more stock options. I mean, it's like, and you're not paying your people. So you have the people again, I'm going to continue to say this over and over and over who do the work daily to provide and build new products, to provide services who actually do the hard work and are the reason for that revenue growth. You're not the reason for that fucking revenue growth. The people who are on the job every day are the ones who are actually making that revenue grow.
Joel (33m 39s):
Google's doing some weird shit lately. You remember they adjusted salaries based on how far you were from like the headquarters and the offices that you were working. We know that their labor union is one of the most, I guess, powerful in the country in terms of getting things done at the business. And then now this right, like let's announce to everyone that there's no raises and then turn around and give some executives some big raises like almost 2X raises. Silicon Valley, just roles differently, I guess sometimes because we also have news out of Apple that they're dropping bonuses up to $180,000 to keep their best engineers.
Joel (34m 19s):
So if I'm a developer at Google, I might start giving Apple a look. If I never had before, right? Google has every right to pay their execs big bucks, but they risk ticking off their frontline engineers, which really are the heart of this business. And having them go to Apple or the competition. So this is a really weird move. It's not smart. It's not Google-y. The ivory tower isn't much use if the lights aren't on. So Google get your shit together
Chad (34m 52s):
And Reddit, actually shift to a shifted to a location agnostic pay model so that they could start getting those people who were pissed off. And again, everybody's quitting nowadays. There are better opportunities that are out there. Gobble 'em up.
Joel (35m 10s):
Poacherific baby. Poacherific. Let's go from Mountain View to New York City.
Chad (35m 15s):
New York City?
Joel (35m 16s):
Hey, this news out of the big apple, the city council approved legislation recently to require employers to list minimum and maximum salaries on all job openings in New York City. The bill applies to any employer with four or more employees. The only exception to the 4 person rule are employers of domestic workers. I guess that's rich people with maids and shit. And the bill applies to advertisements for private and public sector jobs, as well as promotions and transfer opportunities. The council voted 41 to 7 in favor of the bill.
Chad (35m 49s):
Nice.
Joel (35m 50s):
I'm guessing you're loving this one, Chad.
Chad (35m 52s):
Yeah. I mean the only way that we get to pay equity is through transparency. That's the only way that we get there. Period. I don't want to hear any bullshit from "well, it's hard to get all the wage data." Bullshit. That's why you have all of those systems. You should be able to compile that. And if it takes forever for you, that's on you. Pay transparency is how we get to equity, especially on the pay equity side of the house. And then you take a look at, from Yahoo finance, a total of 81 states and cities will be raising their minimum wage in 2022.
Chad (36m 31s):
That sounds good, man. It sounds awesome. But then you take a look at the actual home rental data and one salary, even with the raises, can't cover housing at that rate.
Joel (36m 42s):
Yeah.
Chad (36m 43s):
We talk a lot about inflation and then we want to blame it on wages. But the thing that we don't do, much like we just talked about Google, is we don't focus on the pay that is happening in the executive ranks, not to mention profit margins. We are still churning fucking profit left and right. But yet we don't want the people doing the work to get the pay. We want that to go upstairs.
Joel (37m 5s):
Yeah. I agree. I mean, I think you're going to see a lot more of this, particularly in blue states and blue cities in terms of pay transparency, I'm going to focus a little bit on the industry side of this. So now, if I post jobs nationwide, which many are, now with work from home, if that job shows up in New York, then it sounds like the posting has to have a salary range in New York. But if it's posted in Chicago, not necessarily. If I'm paying someone more in Chicago than I am in Toledo, I don't know how that happens technologically, employers are gonna really bitch about that programmatically.
Joel (37m 46s):
Where's they're not, you know, where they're like programmatically, there's not a direct relationship with the employer, right? So jobs get posted everywhere. And how does that work? Technologically companies are going to get, companies are going to get sued and they don't even know the job is being posted in New York. Like that's going to be a huge pain in the ass. Do technology companies, just not post jobs in New York because it's too much of a pain in the ass and their customers are too pissed off. And if that's the case, we're limiting opportunity in New York because we're not posting those positions in New York, which no one wants to have happen. The devil is always in the details and this legislation as well meaning as it is opens a big can of worms for a lot of tech providers and employers, that'll be interesting to watch.
Chad (38m 30s):
I don't think this is hard at all because all the jobs are location specific. So therefore they sit in New York and therefore only the New York postings will actually have a pay range on it. So I don't think this is an issue at all.
Joel (38m 43s):
How many people post jobs and those jobs get on sites that they don't even know exist?
Chad (38m 47s):
Yeah. But the location is still is New York. Right? And that's the thing is that we're tying the actual salary range to New York City. I mean, it's even, it's even smaller than that. So it's New York City. So any job that has New York City on it automatically has to have a pay range. So within the actual job description itself, there's a pay range. Now, all the other job postings, they don't have pay ranges. So this, I don't see this as an issue for technology at all.
Joel (39m 11s):
You agree, at least that companies might start saying, well, I'm not going to have salary range. So don't post a job in New York.
Chad (39m 16s):
Well, if they want people to actually apply for the job, they're going to have to post jobs in New York.
Joel (39m 21s):
But if it's a national job and they say don't post it in New York because of whatever, like we saw that we see that in Colorado, right? Because they wanted Door Dash and Door Dash said, fuck it, we're not going to.
Chad (39m 36s):
If it's a remote job and they listed as a remote job, therefore it's not specifically posted to New York City, then there's no reason to actually put a salary on it. So, I mean, it's, I think, I think if you just break it down to the simplicity of it, if it's remote, it's remote, it can be anywhere. So therefore it doesn't have a salary on it. But if it is specifically for New York City and you are targeting New York City, yeah. There's gotta be a pay range. So I think it'll be easy.
Joel (40m 5s):
Okay. Let's let's take a quick break and talk about some real news. Farting in Mason jars.
Chad (40m 11s):
What?
Joel (40m 12s):
All right, Chad, we finally have the great resignation answer. We finally know why workers aren't going back to work as we used to know it.
Chad (40m 25s):
Tell me.
Joel (40m 26s):
People are apparently getting paid to fart in Mason jars. Okay. Stephanie Matto, apparently she's a reality star that a show I've never seen claims to have made upwards of $200,000 selling her farts in jars. She apparently went viral on TikTok in December by documenting her lucrative fart, selling business garnering, hundreds of thousands of followers with quote "day in the life of fart jar girl" content. Can you smell what the TikToker is cooking Chad? What's next for Stephanie? She's selling fart jar NFTs. Holy hell. Chad. I got nothing other than I hope there's a market for old guy farts. As my kids get closer and closer to college age, or maybe they'll just go to Factory Fix.
Joel (41m 13s):
I got nothing.
Chad (41m 14s):
Humans are stupid.
Joel and Chad (41m 15s):
We out, we out.
Chad (41m 17s):
I'm not Lieven.
sfx (41m 17s):
I'm not fucking leaving.
OUTRO (41m 18s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird.
OUTRO (41m 59s):
We out.