SmartRecruiters and Checkr Go Shopping

Maybe it's the fact the boys are recording from the Arizona desert this week, but this show is hot, hot hot! SmartRecruiters and Checkr go shopping, Yardstik gets paid, the Valley is bummed about losing workers to Web3 and we finally get some numbers around the metaverse ... including a definition. Pass the sunscreen and turn it up.

This one gets toasty.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:

Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire.

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 (29s):

Oh yeah. Feeling Indiana looking Arizona. Hi kids recording from Paradox HQ and pictureusque Scottsdal, Arizona. It's the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "it's a dry heat" Cheeseman.

Chad (46s):

And this is Chad "ready player one" Sowash.

Joel (49s):

And on this week's show Smart Recruiters and Checkr go shopping, in border takes flight and Silicon Valley fills the staying of Web3. Let's do this.

Chad (1m 1s):

What is Web3? Do we even know what web3 is?

Joel (1m 3s):

We're going to get into that.

Chad (1m 5s):

Okay.

Joel (1m 5s):

Maybe after the second commercial, I don't know, dude. Why don't we record all of our shows like this?

Chad (1m 12s):

We should.

Joel (1m 13s):

Let's get a sponsor to fly us to Arizona for eight months out of the year. No summers, no summers.

Chad (1m 18s):

And we could bounce around. Doesn't have to be just Arizona has to be somewhere nice with a pool.

Joel (1m 24s):

Shaker's our travel sponsor. Let's talk to them about this.

Chad (1m 26s):

Wtih the hot tub and Tim Sackett has to be in the hot tub.

Joel (1m 30s):

On the unicorn floatie, if possible, if possible.

Chad (1m 35s):

Thanks to Paradox for bringing us out here and yeah, I mean, you know, hooking us up. It's been a good time.

Joel (1m 40s):

We both see what's known in the business as an analyst day.

Chad (1m 43s):

Oh, is that what this is?

Joel (1m 45s):

Show us the product. Answer questions.

Chad (1m 48s):

That's what this is?

Joel (1m 49s):

Yeah. Analysts stay under the sun.

Chad (1m 53s):

I have a Corona Corona.

Joel (1m 54s):

Corona, and it's too hot in the hot tub so we're recording in the shade right now. Let's get to the shout outs, shall we?

Chad (2m 0s):

Hit it!

Joel (2m 1s):

Actually, were you the one that sent me the sexual chocolate guy was getting off spot or Spotify. That was, that was fucking awesome. Randy, what's his name? Randy.

Chad (2m 12s):

Rainbow Hudson?

Joel (2m 13s):

Randy Watson from the peanut gallery. That was Tim Sackett with the cultural reference. Appreciate that. Let's get into some shout outs. I think this podcast is the only thing standing between us and a meatless or an endless meat buffet.

Chad (2m 27s):

The meat sweats.

Joel (2m 28s):

The meat sweats and whiskey later.

Chad (2m 30s):

I can't wait.

Joel (2m 31s):

I got a shout out for LinkedIn, Chad. You know, I love me a good LinkedIn poll. Loved me a good LinkedIn poll.

Chad (2m 39s):

You love to ride a poll.

Joel (2m 41s):

Oh man. So two went out recently. One is, one is kind of FYI. The other one is maybe the most important poll ever taken on LinkedIn. I'll get to the appetizer first. So I wanted to know what percent of candidates were ghosting you for the talent community.

Chad (2m 59s):

Okay.

Joel (3m 0s):

Zero to 10, 40%, 10 to 25%, 35%, 25 to 50% ghosting, 17% and whopping 9% said 50% plus ghost them. So 75%, the bottom half.

Chad (3m 15s):

Nobody's Ghosting.

Joel (3m 16s):

Well, there's some ghosting on it. We had 250 votes, no, 298 votes on that one. Now the second one, much more culturally significant.

Chad (3m 24s):

Okay.

Joel (3m 24s):

We got the big game coming up. I said with your wings, ranch or blue cheese.

Chad (3m 29s):

Oh, good call. Okay.

Joel (3m 29s):

Question for the ages. How do you think it played out? Who do you think won that?

Chad (3m 36s):

The classic is blue cheese. I'm a ranch kind of guy. So I'm going to go with ranch.

Joel (3m 41s):

Okay. Ranch was the winner. It was close to 54 ranch and 46 blue. We had 250 votes on that one and yes, anyone from the Buffalo Metro area were very strongly in the blue cheese camp. But anyway, this question is finally answered as far as I'm concerned, ranch over blue cheese.

Chad (3m 60s):

Excellent. Well, the ranch or blue cheese of the industry we'll call that Glassdoor seems like it's dead or at least that's what a series of TA leaders have been saying over the last few weeks. That's right. I guess the crew over at Glassdoor they're non-responsive whatsoever. You have people calling and this is multiple TA leaders, calling, not getting any response whatsoever. I'm wondering if Indeed is looking to finally pull the cord on this. What's going on?

Joel (4m 29s):

I can't believe they don't even transfer calls to Indeed. They just let it ring off the hook. Eighties, eighties, voicemail style.

Chad (4m 35s):

What did they have? Indeed has the job content. I mean, they don't do anything.

Joel (4m 39s):

The last one turning off the lights at Glassdoor, give us a shout and let us know what the hell is going on over there. Shout out for our friends at jobs.com.

Chad (4m 56s):

oooo! Aaron.

Joel (4m 57s):

Who we're partnered with Aaron Okay. So Triller and job.com announced a partnership that will allow Triller users to discover and apply for open positions with a video resume. We love us some video resumes, Chad, not. Rather than the traditional resume using video transcription and AI matching. This is kind of interesting. The integration will provide Triller users with a job matching functionality where they can be matched with relevant jobs. I'm sure everyone putting on short form video on Triller, can't wait to get their hands on some job postings.

Chad (5m 26s):

So can we finally figure out what the fuck job.com is going to be when they grow up? I mean, we had a credit card. We had a credit card. We had this new

Joel (5m 39s):

Hey Ma! Where's the magic eight ball?

Chad (5m 41s):

I mean, I don't know what they are going to be. Right. I don't know what the fuck they're gonna be?

Joel (5m 49s):

Going to be credit card.

Chad (5m 50s):

The credit card 2% over like 15 per, I mean, not as though

Joel (5m 56s):

Throw some NFTs or some crypto in there to really get our attention.

Chad (5m 60s):

What's next job.com and Kleoverse. There you go.

Joel (6m 1s):

Oh, you gotta let's do that. So the European show, if you're lost on that one, you got to listen, listen to the Euro show. Another shout out HiredScore. Oh, our friends over there. We love us some Athena and Todd, and everybody.

Chad (6m 17s):

Hottest of war.

Joel (6m 19s):

Hottest of War. And apparently AI and employment. So our friends at HiredScore officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement this week with Tupou exciting, a lot, the technology and content provider of all-in-one recruitment solutions in, and this is the key point, Chad, China.

Chad (6m 35s):

Ah.

Joel (6m 36s):

At least they said this deal will enable mutual clients to gain instant benefits from more efficient candidates, sourcing fair and intelligent candidate screening as well as improved employer branding capabilities. And did I mention this was in China, which I think is the most important point to take from this. If you can get into China, make friends with the CPC. I think there's money in those hills.

Chad (6m 56s):

Yeah. And if you think about it in our space, for the most part, you're not seeing investment coming from China into our world as much. Right? And if Athena goes after that huge fucking market, not to mention it's an immature market, right? So you go into this immature market, show up guns, blazing with poopoo or is it Tupu?

Joel (7m 23s):

Tupu.

Chad (7m 24s):

So anyway, I think it's genius. Hopefully

Joel (7m 26s):

My mandarin's musty. So who knows? Yes. LinkedIn's pulling out of China. Athena's going, not just the tip. She's going all in on China. Good for you. Athena good for you, Athena.

Chad (7m 39s):

Excellent. I have a shout out to Peloton who is laying off 3000 employees. The question is, what the fuck did they think was going to happen? They were spending money like drunken, fucking sailors and the pandemic, which juiced their business wasn't going to last forever. So what did they think was going to happen?

Joel (7m 57s):

They had a party and they invited the instructors and the employees didn't quite like that too much. The CEO has gone now though. Apparently.

Chad (8m 8s):

So what's going to save Peloton?

Joel (8m 9s):

They are the most expensive, a clothes hanger, a clothes dryer, whatever? What's going to happen is they're going to get acquired on the cheap by Nike or maybe Apple or I think Amazon was in there somewhere. Yeah. They'll get, they'll get snapped up on the cheap ala Fitbit or what other health gadget you probably own back in 2012.

Chad (8m 34s):

Yeah. Great product, great service. The problem is yeah, they were overextended and fucked themselves. So that's, let's, we'll see where they actually end up.

Joel (8m 43s):

Peloton. Shout out to my wife. I want to be a little bit self-serving here. Yeah. So Dr. Christine, for those that don't know, my, my wife is on the cutting edge of bugs as food. This is a real thing. It's coming to America in the form of pet food, probably.

Chad (9m 5s):

Okay.

Joel (9m 5s):

Pet food. And now companies are giving environmental footprints on food and things that you buy.

Chad (9m 12s):

But why bugs?

Joel (9m 13s):

Why bugs? They are easy to replicate or reproduce quickly.

Chad (9m 17s):

Proteins.

Joel (9m 17s):

A lot of protein, a little bit to no space to take up. Yeah. They're, they're easy to manage quick to grow. They grow themselves. I mean, it's quite a miracle food.

Chad (9m 29s):

It's a miracle food.

Joel (9m 29s):

Anyway, to the point you're familiar with Davos probably rather than a lot of our listeners probably are. I'm sorry this is the world economic forum that puts on rich white dudes.

Chad (9m 40s):

Rich white dudes with their own private jets. That kind of shit.

Joel (9m 45s):

Yes. Yes. Those kinds of folks. So, my wife was published in the world economic forum newsletter this week. So when, you know, when she leaves me for Elon Musk or Jamie Diamond, you know, why and she was also interviewed by Wired Magazine. So this is a really hot topic. She's become a bit of a figure head for the bugs is food trend. Shout out to my wife.

Chad (10m 12s):

You go to the Cheeseman house for anything food.

Joel (10m 20s):

Don't eat the cupcakes. If you eat anything bread, there's bugs in it.

Chad (10m 25s):

Bug flour.

Joel (10m 26s):

Cricket flour specific.

Chad (10m 26s):

You've been warned. People shout out to a listener of ours. Sarah, we'll leave it at that. She asked Chad and Cheese who I love that song. She asked Chad and Cheese, I work for a insert, big job board name here, and a good bit of my customers' contacts are turning over. Curious to know whether you think something is going on in HR/talent as in moving to marketing, branding focus versus HR, or if it's just the attrition/musical chairs, we're seeing across the whole labor market? So what do you think Joel?

Joel (11m 1s):

Everyone's taking stock of their lives, I think. I think it's much like the great resignation. I don't think there's a simple answer. I think it's a lot of different things. People reevaluate in their life, people moving to other jobs or just rediscovering new things. I don't think there's an easy answer to that question.

Chad (11m 17s):

There's not, we have a talent shortage already. A lot of that spurred through retirements, immigration. I mean there's a ton of things that are going on right now. Not to mention, I don't know if you've noticed or not. There's a shit ton of startups. And when you have startups.

Joel (11m 33s):

Forty million new companies started last year, Chad.

Chad (11m 36s):

Well just look at our space though.

Joel (11m 39s):

Sure.

Chad (11m 39s):

If you have startups in our space and you have a practitioner who is actually pulled, we've seen this, Tyler Weeks pulled into a position. I mean, they want to build shit because they know what's wrong within their process and their organization and they can't fucking fix it.

Joel (11m 57s):

Yeah. Those people are valuable.

Chad (11m 58s):

Yeah. So they leave! So like you'd said, there's a myriad of reasons why this is happening, but this is the time right now. If you have an opportunity and you get a chance to get some start-up time do it. You might not be happy at the end of it, but who knows? You might get a good exit.

Joel (12m 14s):

Yeah. Speaking of gig economy, this is why travel is so important. Chad, did you see the Uber cars with the ads on top?

Chad (12m 23s):

No, I did not.

Joel (12m 24s):

So this is, you can find out more at uber.com/ooh. But do you remember, like in the early two thousands where companies paid you to put a wrap on your car and then they track mileage and those all kind of died? What, there are, Uber is out here in Phoenix with a digital ad board on top of their car. I'm guessing it magnetizes to the top or out. And then it's all I'm sure digitally put through. And then the driver gets money and obviously Uber gets money. So gig workers are going to make more money than they ever have before, which means less workers for a lot of people to hire, which means the talent crunch continues.

Chad (12m 57s):

So I can drive an Uber and I can put one of these on the top of my car.

Joel (13m 1s):

It looks too, I don't know all the details. Good. I just saw it this morning, but I'm sure that you, as a driver can opt to put this thing on your car and hope, I assume it comes down and pops on and off, and then ads are basically piped into it digitally. And the one I saw was put your ad on this car and you go to uber.com/ooh and then you can buy ad space on these cars. And I'm sure they share the revenue and they make more money as a driver. And you also can just probably just drive around with an ad and make money. And maybe where you are. If you're in a higher frequency area, you make more money on the ad than if you're in the suburbs driving around.

Joel (13m 42s):

So it's pretty genius.

Chad (13m 43s):

The new age billboard that we've seen in taxis for our entire fuckin' life.

Joel (13m 46s):

Not nearly as interesting as free shit from Chad and Cheese and Chad, I'm seeing way too many people not sign up and ask us, where's my shirt. Where's my shit. Where's my beer. You can't win people, unless you go to Chadcheese.com/free, we've got shirts from Emissary, whiskey from Textkernal. And we have beer from our friends Pillar Chadcheese.com/free. Shout out to Chami Bailey who won our whiskey draw this week. She works at Boar's Head. One of my favorite meat producers.

Chad (14m 20s):

I got to say she lives in a part of the world where it's not easy to get her whiskey.

Joel (14m 29s):

Lebanon, Tennessee.

Chad (14m 29s):

We got her the whiskeys. Thanks for Joel doing a hard work on that one.

Joel (14m 34s):

You know what? Wouldn't be quicker driving to down there.

Chad (14m 39s):

You know what would be quicker? Cause you can't drive to Belgium, but you can fly and be there in early May get on the calendar right now, kids. Go to Erecruitment-congress.com going to be in Belgium. Erecruitment-congress, Congress kind of says it all. Who's going to be speaking? We've got the an e-sports dude we've got.

Joel (14m 59s):

My favorite Scot is speaking isn't he? I think we're the two old Muppet guys in the balcony, screaming at everybody. Yeah. And that's good. We need a Bitly URL for that, for that URL. It's a little long.

Chad (15m 15s):

We should. Just go to Google and type in E recruitment Congress and I'm sure they'll be fine.

Joel (15m 21s):

Can we do redirects and wix, can we just do Chadcheese.com/brussels or Belgium?

Chad (15m 29s):

Okay. That being said also RecFest is in July, Chad and Cheese on the disrupt stage doing a little MC action there. Drinking some hard liquor, doing what we do.

Joel (15m 37s):

Yeah. Birthdays, birthdays, celebrating a birthday. It's a short list this week. If you want to be on this list, by the way you got to go to Chadcheese.com/free. We got Charles Brett's Jonathan Zoom. I wonder if he's the Zoom, family.

Chad (15m 53s):

Zoom?

Joel (15m 54s):

Zoom, zoom. Maybe it's zoom. Correct? I did this on the plane on the way over there. All right. Jonathan Zoob. My bad.

Chad (16m 3s):

Zoom's my boy.

Joel (16m 5s):

All right. So some of these names might not be right. I got Andrew Mol and Jen Kurtz, sound about right. Okay. All right. Cool. I apologize, Mr. Zoom.

Chad (16m 17s):

He'll be fine. Mr. Zoom.

Joel (16m 20s):

Super bowl. Oh, we got to talk about this. Let's talk about this comments.

Chad (16m 24s):

First and foremost, seeing the Cincinnati Bengals get in, it hearkens back to Anderson. The days of Anderson quarterbacking, the Bengals and then them losing, by the way. Yeah, yeah,

Joel (16m 39s):

But both losses of to the niners.

Chad (16m 40s):

Mostly Killing. Yeah. Seeing them. And then also seeing a kid from Ohio quarterbacking, Joe Burrow. I would love to see the Bengals win, but I don't see it happening. And they're going to be playing an away game in LA stadium. And those guys are hot. Not just their offense, but their defense. And one of the problems that Cincinnati has had is Joe Burrow on his back.

Joel (17m 10s):

Yeah. And Evan Miller Arnold there, the other defensive end.

Chad (17m 13s):

Donald, we talked

Joel (17m 13s):

To Arnold or Donald Donald I'm thinking of Sam Arnold the wrong guy. Yeah. I mean, as a Clevelander, I'm a little torn about the whole Cincinnati thing. I'm not too excited. At least the colors are the same, but I'm a little torn now. Now for our draft Kings listeners, the line I think is four and a half.

Chad (17m 32s):

Huh? Is that it?

Joel (17m 32s):

Do you think that's it.

Chad (17m 33s):

I take that long.

Joel (17m 35s):

You take the take the Bengals at four and given four and a half points. They'd beat the chiefs by three.

Chad (17m 39s):

That, I mean, I think I know, I think LA is going to blow them out. LA's gonna blow them out. Yeah. I think Ella is going to blow them out. Okay.

Joel (17m 49s):

If the Chiefs didn't blow them out, I'm not sure that the Rams.

Chad (17m 55s):

I think the Rams Defense is better.

Joel (17m 58s):

So that'll be the X factor. The line sucks. So when it's string note in our industry, it looks like there will be no job sites, employment sites, LinkedIn, whatever advertising in this year's Superbowl, do you take anything from that?

Chad (18m 10s):

That's telling I think. I think it's telling him, cause you have ZipRecruiter, who's spending a shit ton of cash on podcasts.

Joel (18m 17s):

Indeed advertised last year.

Chad (18m 18s):

Advertising. I mean, but, but you also have to take a look at what was it like $7 million per 30 second ad? So I think they're taking a look at that and then the ROI from before and saying, look, we can probably spend that money throughout the year and do a better job. I don't know. But I think it's telling either one, one or two ways, either for our industry or the Super Bowl, they've just gotten way too rich.

Joel (18m 41s):

Yes. I wouldn't have been surprised if one of these unicorns that we talk about regularly just said, fuck it. Let's roll the dice on a super bowl ad and build our brand like a motherfucker all in 1999. Because you know, any one of these tech, B2B, whatever employment sites, that's not a job site, did a Workday style ad on the Super Bowl they'd instantly be a name that people would know.

Chad (19m 6s):

Yeah. They would definitely be a name that people would know. I'm just not sure they would get out of that, what they think they would get out of that. So. Topics!

Joel (19m 22s):

Alright, Smart Recruiters has acquired London base Attrax. That's A T T R A X, a provider of career site software that lets companies build, you guessed it, career sites. Founded in 1999 into my research Attrax looks like a totally bootstrap business. The acquisition will result in an integrated offering called Smart Recruiters Attrax that's clever. Designed to help customers build data powered curated career sites that enhance the candidate experience and improve hiring outcomes. Smart Recruiters CEO, founder, and friend of the show, Jerome Turnock said, in a release quote, "we chose Attrax for its impressive technology and proven ability to help customers build award-winning career sites.

Joel (20m 6s):

The integration of Smart Recruiters and attracts provides truly intelligent career sites that operate in tandem with the ATS deliver, deliver hiring success." Terms were not disclosed. Attrax employees around 20 people, no announcement on what's happening with their executives.

Chad (20m 23s):

So I used to think that this type of tech was pretty much table stakes for any applicant tracking system, but in the day and in today, or I should say today, these products, when they're built internally are really shit and they're not done well. Then we have, you know, the whole point solutions and being able to choose your own. And then you just integrate with our system. So I'm not sure, you know, if this is a great and smart move for, for Smart Recruiters, to be able to just have that ready and available, or if they should have just kept them as a point solution, unless they got them cheap.

Joel (21m 5s):

Yeah. I think layers is the keyword here. I think ATS is hate layers. I think they hate layers of services on top of their service and to the degree that they can buy those and make them their own. I think that they're going to do that. And we're seeing that more with white labeling of technologies saying, Hey, this is the Greenhouse programmatic solution, not the Appcast or some other provider and customers, I think, feel comfortable using the ATS's product or what looks like the ATS's product as opposed to someone layered on top of it. I think the other thing is, there's clearly a trend of recruiting following marketing solutions and these sort of do it yourself, landing pages, microsites, you know, I think in marketing is incredibly popular.

Joel (21m 53s):

It's been a thing in our industry, but it's always been, oh, someone else creates those for us or someone else provides those it's an agency or whatever. And I think that more of that company or people are learning to do it themselves and want to have solutions that do that. One startup that I talked to out of Australia called Shizamme. And yes, they've had issues with the movie with Shaq in it, I think called Shizam. Does the same thing. They do sort of do it yourself, landing pages, career sites, et cetera. So I just look at it as if we can control more of the layers that go on top of us, the better it's going to be. Anyhow terms were not disclosed.

Joel (22m 33s):

This might've been a serious sale. They've been in business since '99, according to my research so they may have been just one to get the hell out of it and called up Jerome and a deal was made.

Chad (22m 46s):

But we've been doing this since the early aughts. I mean, Talent Brew was created.

Joel (22m 49s):

Was it do it yourself though? I always thought they had to have somebody do it.

Chad (22m 53s):

I think they had the, the setup where it was like, Hey, you can do it yourself, but nobody wanted to do that. Right? So they knew being TMP rate and say at this point that, you know, they would lean on their agency and it just made sense. Right? And that made sense. The average years of the world, all these quote unquote "CRMs" that we started talent communities with, those were all really predicated on, you know, landing page pages and better experiences. So this isn't anything new. I think I see it full circle, but my question back to you with regards to like white labeling, you know, you can white label something like this. You don't need to buy it.

Joel (23m 29s):

If you buy it, you get all the profits and all the control. And maybe that smart people even wanting to hire, and they're in the UK and Smart Recruiters got a bunch of money and they want to go public. So having some new toys to play with, I don't know.

Chad (23m 43s):

Could be, could be.

Joel (23m 46s):

All right, let's go to the background check game, which is always exciting. So we're tying a little checker and yardsticks. Let's get to Checkr for a San Fran base. Checkr is growing its footprint north acquiring Modo a Vancouver Canadian-based background check company. The crown jewel is Modo HR ScreeningCanada that's trademark Chad, one word. ScreeningCanada, which provide background checks in both English and French. The acquisition will allow Checkr clients greater access to Canadian background. Checkr data listeners may remember Checkr founded in 2014 has a valuation of $4.6 billion.

Joel (24m 28s):

Numbers on the deal were not disclosed. Shakur Modo HR employees about 40 people. According to LinkedIn, Crunchbase says Moto HR founded in 2017, had previously raised two seed rounds, both with undisclosed sums. What are your thoughts on the Checkr - ModoHR deal? Chad. Yeah,

Chad (24m 51s):

Smart with regard to, you know, first and foremost, they have $559 million in funding. So you have that. They're, I'm sure not doing bad when it comes to revenues. Right? Growth

Joel (25m 0s):

Still doing background checks. Yeah.

Chad (25m 2s):

Last time I checked. So how do you gain market? Eh, you either go in into those different markets, spend a shit ton of cash to, you know, penetrate that market and try to win, win business, or you just buy them fuckers. Yup. And that's what they did here. And I think that's incredibly smart go it's it's the same line of business. All you're doing is really pulling in new clients, new portfolio of clients.

Joel (25m 27s):

Yep. New clients get some talent and what we don't know, I echo all your sentiments now what we don't know. And, and I thought instantly of Indeed's acquisition of Workopolis back in the day, which was allegedly a cock block ZipRecruiter. So I'm wondering if Checkr called checkmate on someone else trying to loop into the Canadian market and snatch these guys out. So yeah, for all that money, got to go public gotta be in Canada. If you're an American company, this seems like a no brainer to me.

Chad (25m 58s):

I'm interested to see where they go next. And again, I do not believe it's smart to go into, especially with the kind of bank role that they have, the wad of cash that they have. It's not smart to go in and try to penetrate a market from, from jump, go in and acquire somebody if you can.

Joel (26m 19s):

Well, speaking of penetrate, Chad, let's talk about Yardstick. Oh, okay. Which was my nickname in college, by the way. But that's a different podcast. They've raised 8 million in Series A funding. The Minnetonka, that's in Minnesota, Chad, based startup provides employee screening most interestingly for gig marketplaces. Yardstick will use the financing to support its growth, which has taken the company from 38 customers in 2020 to 131 customers in 2021. Founded in 2019 Yardstick previously raised 4 million in a seed round. Yardstick has around 25 employees with ARR of around 3 million. Chad, are you buying background checks for the gig economy?

Chad (27m 0s):

If I was Checkr, I would just go ahead and buy these fuckers now.

Joel (27m 5s):

Yeah. Go to the couch, get some, get some spare change and go buy a yard stick. I use Upwork quite a bit for employing designers and developers. And really the only background check you have is the number of stars on the jobs that they've done here, reviews, which is a perfectly fine system, but you can have a five-star review and still be an ax murderer. So I I'm a fan of easy background checks in this industry. It doesn't have to be the gig economy from a digital perspective. It could be the guy coming over to put my grill together from Task Rabbit or any other babysitter like this kind of quick, easy digital, online background check for the little people, I think makes a lot of sense.

Joel (27m 49s):

So Yardstick, there you go. Let's take a quick break and digest the Yardstick if you will and we'll be back with little trouble in paradise.

Chad (27m 58s):

The valley Chad is in dire straits. Remember the Valley Girl, the whole valley girl thing that we went through in the, was it the eighties?

Joel (28m 9s):

Nicholas Cage?

Chad (28m 9s):

It was a movie.

Joel (28m 10s):

It wasn't. Remember Moon ZAPA. Yeah. I'm a valley girl. Okay. Fine. For sure. For sure.

Chad (28m 14s):

Yes.

Joel (28m 14s):

Valley girl things have changed. Yes. Yes. The valley moved up north from the days when we were rolling and apparently Web3. This is the second time we've mentioned Web3 on the show. It won't be the last. It's fucking everything up. This is from Business Insider, recruiters say workers are leaving Silicon Valley giants for crypto and Web3 endeavors. Why you ask? Well, one recruiter said it's because people want to work on what is most exciting in technology. And right now that's crypto and Web3. Oh yeah. And it might pay to follow the money with a scarcity of engineers focused on the space.

Joel (28m 55s):

It will likely also pay off to take the high risk and get in early, our friend had HackerRank CEO, Vivek Ravisankar added quote "developers like new things. They like new shiny objects."

Chad (29m 11s):

They do.

Joel (29m 12s):

Chad, that's just one part of the story though. We mentioned Apple paying out bonuses of $180,000 to developers and it looks like Amazon paid attention to that move. According to GeekWire Reports, Amazon will boost its maximum pay base base pay to $350,000 for corporate and tech employees. This is up from $160,000 previously. As part of an overall increase in total compensation intended to help recruit top talent and retain existing employees. No word yet. If employees will be offered a trip in Bezos penis rocket, Chad Silicon Valley's in trouble.

Chad (29m 57s):

Yes.

Joel (29m 58s):

What's your take?

Chad (29m 60s):

First off Amazon is also not Web3 and Web3, the new hotness, the cryptos, the NFTs,

Joel (30m 7s):

The metaverse. Say it.

Chad (30m 9s):

The metaverse yes.

Joel (30m 10s):

Apparently just changing your name to Meta doesn't keep the engineers.

Chad (30m 14s):

When you're, when you're really not the metaverse. So it's pretty interesting because there was, there's an internal memo from Facebook entitled. Why is it so hard to hire right now? And I love this quote actually coming from one of their recruiting leaders. Quote, "all of you are now starting to experience that major in balance between supply and demand and it doesn't feel good." It doesn't feel good. And the thing is when candidates were easy to get, we paid them $160,000 a year. And that was the top base for Amazon. And they went to 350. So what does that mean? It means they weren't just underpaying warehouse staff, right.

Chad (30m 54s):

Even though their warehouse staff still not making enough.

Joel (30m 57s):

Sure.

Chad (30m 57s):

The shit that they do. But my question to you, if you were making 160 and again, there's no transparency on what anybody makes in any of these companies, unless you're in HR and you can see that shit. And you were making 160 and you see this shit, do you go in and say, okay, yeah, I think 325 is good.

Joel (31m 20s):

I go to apply to whoever's paying 300 thousand or, I mean, I'm sure Apple got an influx of resumes when they started paying out $180,000 in bonuses to developers. I mean, look, this is the evolution of things. And if we're talking early eighties valley girls, you know, Culture Club used to be a fucking awesome bad-ass band.

Chad (31m 46s):

Do you really want to hurt me?

Joel (31m 46s):

And things evolved and everyone moved to Guns and Roses. So then you made me very similar to that and they made you cry as a result. The Karma Chameleon will get you Chad. And everything goes around. Now they have all the money they're making payments. They're putting their money where their mouth is. So that's when you have that to work with. It's a nice thing. And I, you know, do NFTs does metaverse does all this stuff become huge or do people, does that flame out? And people come back? Time will tell.

Chad (32m 16s):

This is a huge course correction though. I mean, it really is. And if I am working for Amazon, this just signals to me that you knew you were fucking underpaying me. So if I don't get a pay raise number one, or even if I do, I really just want to get the fuck out. You know, I have a fuck you man mentality at this point.

Joel (32m 36s):

And a lot of people have. And I also think one of the things, part of the story is the compensation for a lot of those folks was in stock and for the last year or so, Amazon stock has been pretty meh. So if I'm looking at companies with stocks that are going to the moon, that's also an incentive start looking elsewhere because my Amazon shares aren't quite what I thought they would be at this point. Yes. Agreed. And you know, none of this talks about the CEO wages, which is fucking crazy Your panties are all in a bunch.

Chad (33m 10s):

Dude. So earlier this month, Starbucks announced their plan. And I want to tie this together real quick because we we've been talking about inflation. Inflation, and we've been tying it to wages, oh, wait a minute we've got to pay these people more so therefore we've got to up our prices. So Starbucks earlier this month announced their plan to hike its prices this year. It's the third increase.

Joel (33m 44s):

It's already pretty low.

Chad (33m 43s):

Pretty cheap. It's the third increase since October! As large US restaurant chains try to blunt the impact of most ferocious inflation in decades by passing costs along to its customers. The Seattle coffee chain CEO saw his overall compensation grow, listen, kids 40% from $14.67 million to over $20 million last year. So we've got an incredibly.

Joel (34m 17s):

Imbalanced?

Chad (34m 22s):

Imbalanced landscape, which we're seeing

Joel (34m 23s):

It's an injustice Chad.

Chad (34m 25s):

We're seeing it with Amazon. And now we're seeing with CEO pay. And that all goes into now they're spinning it into this bullshit narrative that, oh, wait a minute, we've got to raise our prices. And the problem is we have bloated margins, CEOs and executives and board pay is out of fucking whack and Americans demand too much. They're looking for cheap and they're looking for 24 7. And these, the companies and boards know this. So they're ripping it out and saying, well, this is what you're asking for. And we have to pay our people more so therefore you have to pay higher prices.

Joel (35m 1s):

Was supply chain not mentioned in this story at all, as a reason why? Chipotle's CEO did this recently? Didn't he?

Chad (35m 12s):

Yeah.

Joel (35m 12s):

I got to pay more for burrito. So Jack ass in the ivory tower can have another yacht basically. Hey, that's capitalism. What are you going to do now? In fairness, Kevin Johnson, CEO of Starbucks, most of that increase was bonus stuff. His relative salary increase was 6.2%. Now I'm curious with the stock market being very challenged right now. And most analysts say it will be through the entire year. Are we talking about these raises in 12 months? If we still are, there's something curious.

Chad (35m 41s):

How much of a bonus to the baristas actually get the ones who are doing the job day-to-day looking the people in the face there in the community. How much of a bonus did they get? A bupkis, right? They, other than maybe a couple of free late.

Joel (35m 58s):

Don't they get free college at the University of Phoenix

Chad (36m 1s):

Free lates or something like that.

Joel (36m 2s):

I'm sure they get all the cafe lattes they can drink.

Chad (36m 6s):

Starbucks said revenue in the most recent quarter jumped 19% to 8.1 billion. We have all this backwards and Dan Prize, one of our favorite people that we love to talk about on the podcast, he's the CEO of Gravity Payments. He's the guy who paid everybody in his company, $70,000, including himself. This is what he said on Twitter. Companies are doing a great job rebranding corporate greed as inflation. Let that sit with you.

Joel (36m 35s):

Let's take a break and let that digest. And we'll we'll come back with metaverse. Fuck. All right, Chad, let's talk about the metaverse.

Chad (36m 45s):

Ok, it's like every other week!

Joel (36m 46s):

So, so yeah, I know. I love it. And I don't even own an Oculus, someone, some company out there buy us an Oculus and put your logo on it. And we'll we'll do social media posts anyway. So Gardner very, very reputable company says, says in four short years, 25% of people will spend at least an hour a day in the metaverse. That's one in four people, Chad. For work, shopping, education, social and entertainment, which I put porn in that entertainment section, which if I think about that, then I could get 25%.

Joel (37m 28s):

But anyway, Marty Resnick, a research vice president at Gartner said, quote, "enterprises will have the ability to expand and enhance their business models in unprecedented ways by moving from a digital business to a metaverse business. By 2026, 30% of the organizations in the world world will have products and services ready for the metaverse," end quote. Ready player one is just around the corner. Chad, are you ready?

Chad (37m 51s):

Nope. I'm going to tell you right now if PornHub goes metaverse, it's going to be way before 2020s and there's going to be more than 25%. Number one. So the big question is what is the definition of metaverse right? Are we using kind of like this broad scope in a stroke of the, not just the Oculus, but also what's happening with Sony PlayStation, all the gaming, you know, the X-Box those types of things. There's a lot of, there's a shit ton, millions of dollars that are actually spent on those platforms on the daily.

Chad (38m 35s):

Right? So does that count? They talk about work, right? I think that personally our work metaverse is going to be completely different than our play metaverse do you agree?

Joel (38m 50s):

Well, I'm glad you asked Chad because Gartner actually defines the metaverse for us. They define it as quote, "a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. It is persistent, providing enhanced immersive experiences as well as device independent and accessible through any type of device from tablets to head-mounted displays."

Chad (39m 11s):

Ah, so this could be, so again, this is a very broad brush, which is why they got the 25%. And I don't, I think that we, if we look at today engagement in the, just the gaming platforms, I would like to see what percentage that is, because to know that as a baseline would be done, understand how quick we could get to 25%.

Joel (39m 38s):

So you're saying there's a big spectrum between I'm attending a virtual class and I'm buying land on decentral land next to Snoop dog. Okay. Exactly. Well then the numbers maybe make sense. They, they might, but not nearly as much sense as us getting another beer and putting our Tutsis in the pool and watching the sunset together. Think about that. Kids.

Joel and Chad (40m 7s):

We out.

Outro (40m 2s):

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. We out.