Three Acquisitions and an Integration
Buy! Buy! Buy! The money just keeps flowing into the employment industry this holiday season, as - Talent Inc. - the folks behind ResumeRabbit, Top Resume, and others - has sold for a reported $100 million. Yowza! Plus...
- Did iCIMS really pay a reported $60 million for Altru?
- Jobvite lands a LinkedIn power move
- Turing raises $32 million, and ZipRecruiter eyes a 2021 IPO.
Pandemic? What pandemic!?!?!
As always, this podcast is proudly powered by Jobvite, JobAdx, and Sovren.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire.
INTRO (2s):
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 (22s):
Oh yeah.
Chad (23s):
Sell, sell, sell...
Joel (25s):
Buy, Buy, Buy. Welcome to HR's most dangerous and jolliest podcast AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel "shitter's full" Cheeseman.
Chad (37s):
And I'm Chad "kick that football" Sowash.
Joel (41s):
On this week's show $60 million for what? $100 million for what? Phenom acquires who? So many questions. Can two podcasters answer all of them? I guess we're about to find out.
SOVREN (56s):
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Joel:
That's always a nice way to start off the show.
Chad:
It is she's so calming. I love it. I love it much like Sarah Fuller.
Joel:
I know the Commodore's the first woman to score a point in a power five game in history. And that was pretty fucking awesome. I mean, you could tell she was hyped. I found out that she's paid the same as all the boys. So there is pay equality in college, college sports. So that's, that's nice.
Chad (2m 23s):
They're all getting screwed. That's for sure. Keeping with that, with that, that theme, I'm going to give a shout out to my Alma mater ball, state. Number one, they're playing for a Mac championship probably the day that this, this podcast drops.
Joel (2m 41s):
And if you, if you haven't seen it, it's the best ending of a game that no one will ever see, but their, their game on Saturday, the ending of it was so insane.
Chad (2m 52s):
It was crazy.
Joel (2m 53s):
For those of you who know, the California vs Stanford game from like the eighties, I think it's crazier than that. The only thing that doesn't work is I will, I won't ruin the ending, but go to YouTube search Ball State vs Western, Michigan, and watch the ending of that football game.
Chad (3m 7s):
Hint, lateral, lateral, lateral. So something else that's being lateraled is a Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. They're they're rolling out.
Joel (3m 19s):
Mike's my sister, my sister got her shot yesterday. That's nice. My sister manages a senior living group of facilities so she has been deemed an essential worker and she got, she got her shot is good. That's awesome. I'm so proud of her.
Chad (3m 35s):
Thoughts on how this plays out for the, the rest of the country. I mean, is this something that's going to be mandated by employers?
Joel (3m 44s):
For big time employers that don't want to get sued? Yeah. For smaller companies that just need bodies to do stuff, maybe not, but the, the big ones certainly will. And no one, no one wants to walk into a Walmart. If all the employees are all, you know, dangerous, right.
Chad (4m 3s):
Nobody wants to get on a plane. I mean, nobody wants, you know, and nobody wants to walk into the office. But I mean, I mean, there are still, and I understand there are still reasons for people to be hesitant for. This is the first RNA vaccine. It's the fastest vaccine produced ever. And so there are those people who have legitimate concerns, and then you have group number two people who didn't even wear a damn mask. You have two separate groups who will possibly be slow to take the vaccine. And the first group might be nudged into the second more radical group, if you know, if they're forced into doing so.
Chad (4m 44s):
So I think it's really important that, you know, we do this smart, we do it with education. Definitely the leaders have to get their shots, but it's going to be, it's going to be interesting because this will be something that's mandated and masks were even mandated throughout the nation, but yet we had such an upheaval of people who were pissed off because they had to put a mask on. I mean, do you talk about fucking sensitive people?
Joel (5m 13s):
I say the government needs to give out a hundred dollar bills for people that get the vaccine. If they really want people to get the vaccine. Going back to my, my family for a second, my father this month, this coming Sunday will turn 81 years, young man, happy birthday. So we wanted to get him a little something, you know, interesting.
Chad (5m 36s):
Yeah.
Joel (5m 37s):
You know, he has everything, he's trying to get rid of shit. So we didn't want to send anything. So we went to, we went, we went to Cameo and funny story. I called my sister and I said, do you know what Cameo is? And she goes, you mean the band from the eighties, that sang Word Up!? and I said, no, not that Cameo, but you are correct. So dad played baseball, his whole life, little league world series champion, little known fact about my father, Pete Rose is one of his heroes. So Pete Rose is on Cameo. He's available for $159. We thought my dad would probably cry. Love it. Pete is not in the greatest shape.
Joel (6m 17s):
And he may or may not do your Cameo sober, but shout out to my father for his birthday. And I bring up Cameo in part, because it's interesting. But in part, because Facebook, apparently in the news today is looking to copy Cameo. Could you imagine that. Facebook copying a successful business? So anyway, and my wife's university where she teaches they Cameoed Snoop Dog to give, to give a shout out to all the students for finals week, which is a great use of, of, of tuition funds. But that's a, that's a different podcast.
Chad (6m 54s):
Awesome. Well, somebody who is doing a video right or wrong, depending on, on how you're looking at it is a, the boys over at Carrue. So they did, they did very, remember we talked about the very tantric karma recruit, tra video that, that kind of set some people off. They weren't very happy about it. So they, then published an apology, really not an apology video, which was fun.
Joel (7m 24s):
Sorry, Not Sorry.
Chad (7m 25s):
Yeah, it was so fucking hilarious. And then they put out two more videos. They did a Christmas ear shattering video, like a Mariah Carey Christmas song. And then they dropped a holiday cooking video today. I mean, those guys are fucking hilarious.
Joel (7m 43s):
I would say the new ones. Are they wearing latex in the cooking video?
Chad (7m 47s):
No, actually I was looking for it in the other two videos because they did where in the apology video, they under underneath the shirt, but no. So we will I'm sure see more latex in the future, but probably not until 2021.
Joel (8m 2s):
Yeah. You don't, you don't want to stick that latex anywhere too hot in the kitchen. I can assure you. Shout out to, to Greenhouse the popular ATS, has launched a podcast! That's where they have a shout out. But I think that we'll see more companies here in 2021, similarly to how they all launched blogs around 2009 and 10, we're going to, we're going to see a, a bevy of podcasts from the corporate world here in the next 12 months.
Chad (8m 30s):
In the ones that we have seen over the past two years that came out of the barrel hot have pretty much shit the bed.
Joel (8m 39s):
It's great marketing from a perspective of you interview your clients, which is what Greenhouse is doing so they feel special. Yeah, you can, you can social media, that shit and tag the customers and they'll share it with their friends who are probably potential prospects for your business and around and around we go. You produce good content and you solidify the brand. So it's a good strategy, it's just, it's a shame that companies don't commit to like more than six episodes. If you don't, you don't get listeners overnight, you got to work at this shit. We've been doing this for three years.
Chad (9m 10s):
Or you can just aligned with somebody to do it.
Joel (9m 13s):
Or you're just dead sexy.
Chad (9m 15s):
Or neither Talking about dead sexy. A big shout out to Doug Updike over at Nations Lending in Peoria, Arizona. I didn't know there was a Peoria, Arizona and then Frank Lennon with Tri-Star energy in Nashville, Tennessee thanks for listening and connecting on LinkedIn gents. And another thing that you just don't want to see, you don't want to see Darren Westhall over in Loughton, England. He's the CEO of Pager. Yeah. You don't want to see that dude in his holiday jumper.
Joel (9m 51s):
Yeah. Is that, is that the one with peppermint nipples?
Chad (9m 55s):
Yes. Yeah. So there's nothing sexy about Santa, kids.
Joel (9m 58s):
Oh no. Oh, when you went sex, I thought you were going to go the ting guy caroling a robot. That was good. Shout outs. I was good. So, so tin guy, most of our listeners know this talking head recruiting robot also carols during the holiday season. So if you haven't seen that, go check out their, their LinkedIn page. It's heartwarming in a creepy, scary kind of way.
Chad (10m 21s):
Yes. Jingle bell robot is what it is. Yeah. Shout out to Michael Cox over at Zackworks. And again, Jeremy, Robert Robert's over at Seek Out for showing off their Chad and Cheese swag in social pics. Remember if you'd like a chance to win a free Chad and Cheese, t-shirt go to Chadcheese.com/free and register, not to mention we're sending out holiday cards and a bunch of who knows what you'll get in the mail from our dumb asses while you're registering. Remember it's gift giving season. And the first part of the year's coming around as well. You can always give gifts, go to the swag shop, take a look at the t-shirts beanie caps, ball caps, all that fun stuff, buy some Chad and Cheese swag.
Joel (11m 9s):
Trucker hats for everybody I say. And speaking of little housekeeping here, if you haven't registered for beer drop, we're giving out chances for free beer. We're in a little bit of a delivery delay for December, but we will be, we will, we'll be doing the Beau Higgins zoom tasting here soon. Hopefully, go to beerdrop.net to register. And we're also giving away Holy shit. Two bottles of Pappy's Family Reserve bourbon, as well as a chance for third place. Everyone's a winner. Blanton's Special Reserve import from Japan.
Joel (11m 49s):
Ooh, my God. We're talking about $2,200 retail bottles of whiskey. Take advantage of that by visiting freepappy.com. That's free P A P P Y.com. We'll be doing a drawing. I think we've timed that around January 3rd or fourth. So time is running out for that free Pappy opportunity.
Chad (12m 11s):
Register now, that's powered by our friends at Sovren.
Joel (12m 16s):
Beerdrop is powered by AdZoona.
Chad (12m 18s):
T-shirts by Emissary.
Joel (12m 20s):
Websites by Shaker.
Chad (12m 21s):
Good Jesus Christ.
Joel (12m 22s):
We're for sale people.
Chad (12m 24s):
Yeah, last but not least. Adam Gordon. Thanks for allowing Rory to voice our new outro. I've heard so many people say they love hearing Daniel fellow's son Chester and his English accent. Well, now we also have a Scottish accent of Rory to throw in the mix. So thanks Gents, the child labor laws are obviously, are less stringent in Scotland and England than they are here in the U S. Thanks guys.
Joel (12m 54s):
Love it. Topics.
Chad (12m 57s):
Topics!
Joel (12m 59s):
Oh man. Acquisition city!
Chad (13m 1s):
A hundred million dollars.
Joel (13m 2s):
Let's start in just descending order from highest to lowest. Here we go.
Chad (13m 6s):
So a hundred million dollars.
Joel (13m 7s):
Yeah, man.
Chad (13m 9s):
885,000 people apply for unemployment just this week. Okay. So think about that. Think about that. Now, here, here, here, it comes kids. Talent Inc. was founded in 2014 as a resume writing service and has grown to offer related services. Its brand includes Top Resume, Top CV, Top Interview and Resume Rabbit. It uses a network of freelance contract and staffing writers, including a team, based in South Africa to produce resumes and CVS for job seekers. Not to mention they get job seekers ready for interviews, Resume Rabbit, blasts those resumes out to a bunch of different websites.
Chad (13m 55s):
So now I kind of get an idea why BV Investment out of Boston bought them. The hundred million dollars though. That to me is a lot of money because I think Top CV or Top Resume, at least the numbers that I saw was about 3 million in annual revenue.
Joel (14m 18s):
This just came across our desk today. I don't know if you can even find anything on it, aside from AIM Group who, who tipped us off to the news.
Chad (14m 28s):
Peter Zollman, baby.
Joel (14m 29s):
Yeah. So Jeff Berger, who we've known for over a decade, I think.
Chad (14m 34s):
Yeah.
Joel (14m 36s):
He's always congenial, classy, nice guy. But I feel like I've never really talked about his business with him because I just didn't give a shit like resumes are super boring. The Resume Rabbit thing. I remember the deal with Simply Hired. Do you that where they partnered with Resume Rabbit? So you mentioned 2014. I think that's when they raised their first of three rounds of 5.3 million and another 1.5 in 2016. But Holy shit, I mean, a hundred million for this business is really wild because you look at so many dynamics in terms of resumes are going into like gig, you know, gig sites. So resume writing is a little bit antiquated when you have LinkedIn profiles, you have gig platforms and you have manual parts of this, right?
Joel (15m 24s):
So they literally have writers around the world who are helping you write your resume. So it's really manual heavy. So the trend of automation is going to really take a piece out of the manual, resume writing business. I think, it just feels like so many trends are going against the traditional resume. That my guess is these guys sold at as close to the top as possible. So good for them.
Chad (15m 49s):
Oh, yeah.
Joel (15m 49s):
One thing that also stands out to me is that wasn't in the AIM article, they bought JobFox back in like 2011, 12. Do you remember this?
Chad (15m 58s):
I don't remember them buying JobFox, so I'd have to ask them why the fuck they bought JobFox, but go ahead.
Joel (16m 5s):
Yeah. So if you want to go back in the archives, go to YouTube and search Cheeseman, Jeff Berger. And I did an interview with them about it, but JobFox for the kids that don't remember was Rob McGovern, founder CareerBuilder's site that failed. It was, I won't go into it, but.
Chad (16m 22s):
Horrible.
Joel (16m 22s):
He got into a lot of trouble with like, not paying resume writers, stiffing folks, being sued. And Jeff Berger comes in and picks up the brand, all the technology that was there, the writers that they had, he also picked up all the legal debt that they had. So I don't know what they did with all the lawsuits that were going on. It was also a pretty shitty brand. So I think if you go, if you go to jobfox.com, now it redirects to, I think, Top CV, but the brand is still sort of available. But these guys have been cranking out business decisions and obviously making money for a long time and good on them. I think they sold at the top and at the right time. And I'm excited to see what, what Jeff Berger and the company does next.
Chad (17m 3s):
I have to agree that a lot of this manual output piece, is, it's interesting that somebody would put this kind of cash into it, not to mention they have 1500 on demand career experts, right? So this is a human network. This is not a technological network.
Joel (17m 22s):
Yeah.
Chad (17m 22s):
But overall again, I mean, if, you know, if the song and dance works, obviously it did. BV investment, out of Boston thought they're going to invest in it and they're going to see what they can do with it. I don't know what they can do with it.
Joel (17m 34s):
Yeah, I mean, if it's making 10 million a year, you could probably milk this business for another 12 to 15.
Chad (17m 40s):
Yeah. If you take a look at the amount of people that are out of work, now this is the time to actually buy this business.
Joel (17m 47s):
And so another one we're trying to make sense of is what Tech Crunch reported was a $60 million price tag for Altru in terms of iCIMS paying price, which kind of struck you and me as a little bit high.
Chad (18m 3s):
Yeah, yeah, no, it was, I actually reached out to the reporter to talk to them about that. And this was a single source who said that they had documentation about the sale. But I mean, I just don't understand how? There's no way that Altru had the revenues to support that valuation. So number one, do you think the number is real? I've actually got some insider information that the number's not what 60 million, but do you think the number is real number one and number two, if it is, why would they pay that much money for a video platform?
Joel (18m 39s):
Yeah. So the first part of that is I don't believe it was 60. I think these guys raised about $1,500,000?
Chad (18m 46s):
At $1.4.
Joel (18m 47s):
At $1.4 it. So to say that would be a premium, would be an understatement revenue wise. I can't imagine that they were anywhere near $60 million or even, even if you valued it out, that it would equal add. So to me, maybe they added a zero by accident. Cause if you tell me this was a five or six kind of deal, then I might believe it. Yeah. But at 60 it's it's ridiculous. And I know that the new CEO, you know, he came out of Marquetto, he's used to dealing with a lot bigger numbers than maybe the employment industry is used to dealing with. But yeah, if he dropped 60 million for basically a user generated videos for companies, I'd say like, he needs to, he needs to have some psych evaluation or come on the show and explain why the hell they paid $60 million for user generated videos for employees.
Chad (19m 37s):
Yeah, I mean, in their, their acquisitions up to this point. So think about an opening.io earlier this year was acquired by iCIMS. This is a heavy lifting matching tech that can be a major part of the iCIMS infrastructure. So that is an easy fuck yeah. Buy that.
Joel (19m 55s):
Love it.
Chad (19m 56s):
The easy Recruit Acquisition, once again, heavy lifting with video interviewing and creating a much larger footprint in the EU. So that is a must. Then we get Altru, which I really like don't get me wrong, but it's a vanity play more than heavy lifting. And adoption won't come as easy. Imagine pulling together all the videos provided by employees, editing, reviewing, and all of that takes a lot of work to get to the video that you want to go live. So I'm sure Altru makes it easy, but it's not automated, which means there's still going to be work to do, which we know the friction points suck.
Chad (20m 38s):
So Opening does the work, Easy Recruit does the bulk of the task work and they're not going to see that with, with Altru. So we got, I got a shout out to Hallam Beckett at Delta airlines who loves Altru and she asked me via Twitter, why I thought it would take so long to adopt. Cause I said, I thought, you know, this might be a good long-term five-year adoption kind of trend. And those are my reasons I'm sticking with them. I just don't see this as an easy adoption. I think early movers, like you, will do this, you will take part in it, but the rest, the mass of the lemmings that are out there, there's no way in hell they're going to want to touch it.
Joel (21m 17s):
Yeah, it's an acquisition that's very out of character for iCIMS, in terms of their previous acquisition. So I I'm open to believing that they know what they're doing, but on its face, I'm very cynical at this point about the Altru deal. Even if it was much less than $60 million.
Chad (21m 34s):
So who did Feena Hum acquire?
Joel (21m 37s):
Somebody in Europe, the Netherlands. And I assume you pronounce it Endouble?
Chad (21m 43s):
Endouble?
Joel (21m 43s):
Endouble. And I don't know if you're, if you're French. So this one, this one Phenom announced terms were not disclosed, but this was based on all the press that was out there was all about European growth. So Amsterdam based Endouble is a company known for enhancing the candidate experience again across Europe. I think the word Europe was in the press release about 18 times, so they wanted to really underscore that. Endouble was founded in 2006. So these guys have been doubling for quite a while. Privately held. It looks like they've got no venture capital. Frankly, I've never heard of them.
Joel (22m 25s):
Maybe, you know, a little bit more about them than I do? But to me like no money, 2006, it sounds a little like a couple of founders that wanted to get the hell out of the business. I'd also caution people who are touting this acquisition by saying that if you go to Endouble's website and look for job opportunities at the company, they don't have any. Which says to me, there's not a whole lot of growth going on there.
Chad (22m 50s):
Yeah.
Joel (22m 50s):
And that's, that's a red flag for me. This looks like something that a Phenom got off the clearance rack there in Europe.
Chad (22m 58s):
This is a Phenom's second acquisition of the year. They acquired My Ally in September and right out of the gate, I was like, wait a minute doesn't Phenom already have the ability to create career sites? I mean, I thought this, why aren't you buying?
Joel (23m 15s):
It's about Europe.
Chad (23m 16s):
This just didn't make that much sense to me. Then I thought about, well, maybe it was on the clearance rack and they had a bunch of logos that that could be, you know, an opportunity. Then it did a little digging and Endouble owned or was under RGF staffing, AKA Recruit Holdings. So this was a recruit company and to my understanding, and to the opinion of many sources, Endouble was in big trouble, good rhyming. According to LinkedIn insights, they've dropped 50% of their staff, during just the last year, they filed for 160,000 euros from the government for support this year.
Chad (23m 58s):
And rumor is that they were really having issues sourcing for current projects and weren't able to take on new accounts and to be quite Frank, Recruit, just can't put up with that kind of shit. Right?
Joel (24m 11s):
No.
Chad (24m 11s):
So overall this was Recruit saying,
Joel (24m 14s):
Bye, bye.
Chad (24m 16s):
Yeah. And it's interesting because in a quote from Phenom CEO to Technical.LY the quote was "we're excited to begin working with Endouble's customers." So if that doesn't tell you where their mind is, nothing will.
Joel (24m 35s):
Think I'm Endouble do
Jobvite Promo (24m 41s):
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Chad (25m 13s):
So that was a great segue because we're going to talk about JobVite in LinkedIn. So Jobvite's ATS will be the first applicant tracking system to provide their customers with all three LinkedIn integrations, unified search recommended matches and apply connect. So with unified search and really the matching piece, you know, I think those two are pretty big. The apply connect piece we should have been doing 10 years ago. The unified search, recruiters can easily select the most qualified candidates by searching top talent from both LinkedIn network and Jobvite record using a single search through LinkedIn or Jobvite.
Chad (25m 58s):
That's good stuff, not to mention the matching automatically happens. So this to me, those two in them themselves, this is the future of all integrations. And I mean, vendors need to listen up and watch because if you cannot provide a robust bi-directional API to allow for real-time access of information inside the core hiring platform, either it's an ATS, or maybe it's in some cases, CRM, you're totally dead in the fucking water and a big props to JobVite, because I've heard from many vendors, that core platforms, different ATS do not have the speed and power to keep up with fast paced vendors.
Chad (26m 42s):
They just don't have what it needs to grind on all that data. So core systems need to allow the free flow of validated vendor data get inside their system so that recruiters don't have to go back and forth and use third-party dashboards. It sucks. And whenever we talk to recruiters, it's like, how many dashboards, how many tabs do you have open with all these different dashboards that you feel like you have to use? It all should be consolidated.