TikTok is Glassdoor Gone Wild
The winds of change isn’t just a killer Scorpions' tune from the ‘80s. It also defines recruitment marketing in 2022. Pay transparency is trending, TikTok is on the top of every employers’ lips and CEOs actually stand for something … both good and bad, depending on how you view the world. Jump on and enjoy the ride, as Julie Calli, President at RecruitmentMarketing.com President joins Chad & Cheese to dive into what’s hot.
TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level.
INTRO (0s):
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 (24s):
Oh yeah. Reports say around a hundred workers left Twitter after Elon Musk pitched his vision for the business. And Jeff Bezos could not be happier. Hi kids! You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does recruitment marketing. I'm your co-host, Joel "only the underwear is transparent" Cheeseman.
Chad (43s):
This is Chad "Give it away. Give it away. Give it away now" Sowash.
Julie (47s):
And Julie "show me the money" Calli.
Joel (50s):
On this episode, the joy of paid transparency, Totally tubular TikTok tips, and Patagonia gives it up. Let's do this.
Chad (1m 1s):
Totally tubular.
Joel (1m 3s):
Tubular TikTok tips.
Chad (1m 5s):
This to me is very Valley girl Joel. I kinda like it. I kinda like the Valley Girl.
Joel (1m 10s):
Joel Valley girl. She's a Valley girl. Okay, fine. For sure, for sure.
Chad (1m 15s):
Julie, were you ever into the Valley Girl scene? You probably are too young for that.
Joel (1m 20s):
She's too young.
Julie (1m 21s):
Oh, well that's flattering, but yeah, totally tubular. That's a flashback there.
Joel (1m 28s):
Gag me with a spoon.
Chad (1m 29s):
What was the movie that Nicholas Cage was in? That was Valley Girl.
Joel (1m 33s):
It was Valley girl, Yeah. Remember the show square Pegs? Square Pegs.
Chad (1m 39s):
Yes. Sarah Jessica Parker.
Joel (1m 41s):
Yes. Yeah.
Julie (1m 42s):
I think that those movies are responsible for destroying the human language of adding 'like' into every other word.
Joel (1m 50s):
Totally. Totally. Like, oh my God.
Chad (1m 52s):
Yeah. Very nice. Woo.
Joel (1m 53s):
Thanks for the trip down memory lane kids. So
Chad (1m 58s):
Shoutouts!
Joel (1m 58s):
Shoutouts. Love it. I'm gonna go first if that's okay?
Chad (2m 1s):
Okay.
Joel (2m 2s):
My shoutout goes to Jamie Diamond.
Chad (2m 4s):
Oh God.
Joel (2m 4s):
CEO of JP Morgan Chase. One of Chad's favorite CEOs.
Chad (2m 8s):
Jesus Christ.
Joel (2m 10s):
Took to Capitol Hill with a handful of other stuff shirts last week and was asked by representative Rashida Tlaib, a democrat of Michigan, whether JP Morgan has a policy against funding new oil and gas products, Diamond replied, wait for it, absolutely not and that would be the road to hell for America. Say what you want about Diamond, he stays in his lane. And you know that appeals to a certain demographic that loves the red meat that he tosses around. Recruiting and retention Genius. I say recruiting and retention genius.
Chad (2m 45s):
That's the one lane to hell is the lane he's on.
Joel (2m 50s):
It's the Road to Profits baby. That's that road.
Chad (2m 54s):
Gordon Gecko. Julie, what you got?
Julie (2m 56s):
I'd love to give a shout out to the Rothberg family and how at College Recruiter, they were very early adapters to pay transparency in jobs requiring it on all jobs posted on their site. And their purpose for doing that was to close the pay gaps. And that is really great purpose. And now as it becomes law, people are being mandated to do that. But they did it for a greater good.
Joel (3m 24s):
Doesn't saying the Rothberg family sound really prestigious?
Chad (3m 27s):
It does. It does.
Joel (3m 29s):
I'm a friend of the Rothberg family. Yes.
Chad (3m 32s):
Then you meet Steven, you're like, whoa, what's this?
Joel (3m 35s):
Yeah. Not quite the Roth Childs, but
Julie (3m 38s):
Well, hopefully your privileged enough to make their wonderful acquaintance.
Chad (3m 43s):
Wonderful. Especially faith. Especially Faith. My shout out to is get get ready, Julie. Recruitment marketing.com has new digs, so, Oh yeah. Julie, you and the team made a major upgrade to the look and feel of the site. So first and foremost, big, big ups for that. Thank you. How many contributors do you guys have on the site now writing for you, providing content? And last but not least, how can recruitment marketing and branding leaders request to contribute?
Julie (4m 14s):
Yeah. We have over 50 people in the industry who've contributed to content already. These are individuals who work in the space, who have some kind of experience in some area of recruitment marketing, and they're telling their stories. How did they get involved with the recruitment marketing? You know, what do they wanna share with the world? We're all trying to learn from each other and I think the best place to learn this rapid evolving industry is from each other. So thrilled to be providing a platform that elevates and celebrates recruitment marketers. So if you're interested in contributing, just email us@inforecruitmentmarketing.com.
Joel (4m 54s):
What will we see next? Any teasers on new additions to the site? Hint hint. Wink, wink.
Julie (5m 2s):
So we recently launched an event page, which allows you to look at all the events that are going on in the industry. And if you go to the event page and you see that you have an event or you know, an event that is not listed, you can submit that to us so we can add it to the index. It is free to have the events listed there. Why? Because how else are you going to look for all the things that are going on in the industry to decide what's best for you? You need one place to be able to find that.
Joel (5m 32s):
Yeah. Stop emailing me. Stop emailing me about events that you should go to. Go to recruitmentmarketing.com. They're all there. Jesus, they're all there. Can I interest anyone in some pay transparency? Oh, Julie recently published an article entitled The Benefits of Salary Transparency. Hello good SEO Practices. Hello, ood SEO Practices. In it, Julie outlines everything from improved workplace happiness and better diversity, while also highlighting a handful of companies doing it the right way. Julie, tell us about the article and a little bird told me a webinar on the topic recently took place as well.
Julie (6m 18s):
Yes. Pay transparency and required disclosure is quite a topic right now for people who work in recruitment marketing. This article was all about the benefits. There's so much to talk about in pay transparency, but a lot of companies are trying to convince, you know, people that are working in employer brand and recruitment marketing are trying to convince their companies why this is valuable. Why is this important? So this article was primarily put together as a resource to help people talk about why this is a good thing. The primary purpose to why pay transparency is becoming mandated is because we still, after 60 years of putting in the Civil Rights Act and creating equal opportunity and equal pay for all.
Julie (7m 7s):
60 years later, we still have not closed the gaps. So more laws are coming into place to help close those gaps. And by disclosing compensation in the job descriptions, we, it is believed that this is going to help close some of those gaps.
Chad (7m 22s):
So I love reading this. I love the subtle kinda like sweet approach. We're not there a hundred percent right, from a regulatory standpoint. Mainly this is the carrot versus the stick. But do we really believe that lining out the reasons why paid transparency, salary transparency, will move the needle? No, not a bit. For, for example, we've heard for years that diversity helps companies drive innovation and bottom line profits. Growth, but the needle has barely moved on diversity. $9 billion with a B dollars spent every year in training alone and nothing kids zip zero nada. The case has been made over and over and again, little to no movement.
Chad (8m 5s):
So, you know, we're looking at female CEOs, really no bump there. We get one or two every now and again, we applaud. Nothing happens, right? So laying out the facts doesn't move old white men, the C-suite or the board of directors like Jamie Diamond, who really doesn't give two shits about what's happening other than his profits, right? So where salary transparency does work is shaming. Another example of the US Women's National Soccer Team found pay parity with the men's national soccer team only after through transparency, they sued and then they went public with their voices about fair and equal pay.
Chad (8m 47s):
They laid out the reasons why pay parity was necessary, but nothing happened until the shaming started. I only see one way forward, and that's legislation that makes pay transparency compulsory. I love the layout, but I just don't see the carrot working. We need the big stick of the government to force everybody into pay parity.
Julie (9m 10s):
Yeah, I would say if pay equity is about fairness, pay transparency is about accountability to fairness. Because right now, yeah, most companies, well, cuz you can have, you can be transparent and expose how inequitable you are, right? That's why most companies do not expose that. We did a survey in our webinar about pay transparency. It's about how many companies have done pay equity analysis and it was less than half, right? So how do you know that you're being equitable if you've, unless you've actually done an analysis to make sure that you are right. Is someone sitting in a room saying, Yeah, we're being fair?
Julie (9m 50s):
The only way to know that is to actually look at the data. And companies are often so surprised when they look at how much they have gaps. Gaps because of age, race, disability. You know, it's not just about men and women. It is about all types of discrimination that happen. And I'm an optimist. I believe in the good of people. I do not think people are out there intentionally paying people differently because of this person or that, but I think that things happen that create unconscious bias. I think that there's flawed process and there is a lack of accountability.
Chad (10m 25s):
Well, if they can get away with it, they will. Yeah. If they can get away with it, they will. Now, we also need to differentiate between the salary transparency that's going on jobs, like college recruiters doing, we've seen Indeed do, versus actual the individuals who've been working for those companies and demonstrating pay transparency within the organization. There's a huge difference between the two. So this is really just small little trickles into seeing what new people are getting paid. You have no clue what the person beside you is getting paid. That'se another step forward that we need to take.
Julie (11m 1s):
Yeah. Well, from a thousand of miles away, a mountain looks small, right? But as you get closer, it's gonna get bigger. And this is, I mean, Colorado talking about mountains, you know, they were the first and shout out to Colorado to be the first statewide required compensation be disclosed on the job description.
Joel (11m 25s):
Who else we got Colorado, New York City?
Julie (11m 28s):
Well, right now,
Joel (11m 29s):
I know we've talked about on the weekly show quite a bit.
Julie (11m 32s):
Right now, there are states that require disclosure upon request for certain circumstances and that's Connecticut...
Joel (11m 39s):
New York City.
Julie (11m 41s):
Maryland, Nevada, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Toledo, Ohio, not the whole state. And then Rhode Island is gonna start on the first of the year. But those are only during certain conditions, the ones that are requiring it on the actual job posting. Colorado was the first, we had New Jersey. Jersey City get added this year in April. New York, Ithaca was the most recent on September 1st. We have West Chester County on November 6th, and that's in New York. And then New York City, November 1st. But California, there's a law pending right now with the Governor. He has until September 30th to sign it. And that will really change things for California because they are not only the first to disclose it on the job description.
Julie (12m 28s):
They actually, in California on this bill, are proposing that companies have to disclose their pay equity gaps. That's a first.
Joel (12m 39s):
There's always unintended consequences when laws like this are passed. I think that we talked about Colorado where companies just said, Okay, we're not gonna post jobs in Colorado, which obviously doesn't help anybody. Where there's new laws, there are loopholes, there are companies that get a try to get around these things. What's your take on how companies are going to try to avoid, you know, following this law?
Julie (13m 2s):
Yeah, first I gotta say it great intentions, right? These laws are put in place for great intentions, but that does not mean it's gonna be easy, right? Technically, financially, operationally, companies may not be ready to do this. And I would say Colorado was the first one. I was in seat, I remember the moment someone came up to me and said, this is happening. And I knew the tech stack for a very large employer I was working with, who has very high levels of compliance required. And we didn't know how to solve it with the tech stack that they had. They did not have a way to only put salary on the Colorado distributed jobs.
Julie (13m 43s):
So we had to solve for, to close the gap and then just be compliant right away. We just stopped sending jobs that were available nationwide to Colorado because we didn't have a way to put it on there. We couldn't distribute it to the whole nation. So just don't send it to Colorado. Well,
Chad (13m 60s):
They could've easily just posted a, a specific position to Colorado. That would've been an easy fix.
Julie (14m 5s):
Well, they had hundreds of jobs they would need to read.
Chad (14m 9s):
I mean, they want, if they're looking for talent. So what? I mean, they're all these damned excuses for companies not to do the right thing. That's bullshit. I don't want to hear that. You have resources do it.
Julie (14m 21s):
Yes. Well look at, you can see tha it's a problem. There's so many job postings where in the bottom of the job posting it says, excluding Colorado.
Joel (14m 31s):
Wow. Wow. Wow. That's a note for the vendors. That's for the vendors too, Chad, not just the employers, vendors need to make it easy.
Chad (14m 38s):
Well, the only way vendors are gonna do it is if employers push them to do
Joel (14m 43s):
Yeah, yeah. And, it's the Spider-Man gif, right? Where there's three Spider-Man pointing at each other, Spiderman's, Spiderman's, whatever. So everyone's like, it's the vendor's fault. No, it's the employer's fault. They're not telling us to do it. It's the state's fault. It's the government. Like,
Julie (14m 55s):
Well, in the end, it's the employer. The employer is responsible for being compliant and they need to disclose it. So where I think, you know, tech companies be warned, that's where the employer's gonna come forward and say, Hey, I pay for this tech and it needs to do this.
Chad (15m 11s):
Yeah, it needs to comply with the regulations and it's not, and that's on you. And we're seeing regulations like as we talk to, like Commissioner Sonderling and the E E O C where they're talking about different regulations that are happening locally that will actually keep the vendors will start to pull the vendors under the microscope, which I think is, which is big.
Julie (15m 32s):
Oh, I'd say, you know, this is where the trifecta comes into place, right? Recruitment needs an ATS. HR needs to be compliant and marketers need to market. We need ad tech. So ATSs are not built to be ad techs. And and that's where you could say, Hey, we need to run different ads than the ATS. The ATS, many of them are built one rec, one posting and they can't understand that one rec may need 50 different ads, one for each state to have different compliance and different laws. It's still one job. It's the evolution to ad tech meeting recruitment tech.
Joel (16m 13s):
I'm optimistic as is Julie. So cfo.com article came out recently that said 62% of companies are planning to disclose pay rate information. Now planning to and doing it are two different things, but that's at least over 50% if you're being pragmatic about this issue. We saw that LinkedIn reported that when people put remote jobs or work from home in the title of their posting, the number of views went way through the roof. Is there some argument to say like, this is just a good business strategy?
Chad (16m 43s):
It is!
Joel (16m 43s):
If you put pay, you know, if you put salary range on a job posting, you're probably gonna get more traffic and you're probably going to attract the right people who know that they command this salary. Or you know what, that's way too low for me. So you're actually pre-screening with salary ranges. Like, are companies getting this or not?
Chad (17m 5s):
But this is like a kid who won't eat his peas. The peas are good for you. Now when mom tells 'em to go out to the tree and get and fetch a switch, then guess what they start doing? They start apologizing and then talking about how they're going to eat their peas. That's how all this shit's working.
Joel (17m 22s):
Did you say fetch a switch? What is this 1942?
Chad (17m 26s):
Yes
Joel (17m 27s):
Fetch a switch.
Chad (17m 28s):
Fetch a switch.
Julie (17m 29s):
Well, this is the same coin, but with two sides, right? We're companies, this is fact are now going to be mandated to disclose compensation on jobs in certain states or locations right?
Chad (17m 44s):
Here comes the stick.
Julie (17m 45s):
There you go. There's a stick, right? So you're gonna have to do that as an employer. You have to, it's the law. But if you flip the coin around the other side and you say, Okay, now what about your employees? What does it say that you're going to disclose compensation to the public, right? Cause once it's on a job description, it's out to the world. Everyone can see it. Your competitors. Job seekers. Maybe even your customers, see what you're paying your people. But then what does it tell your employees? If you don't tell your own employees what the compensation potential is for them in an organization? Are you going to leave them to shop your competitors and what jobs they could have there and make more? Or are you going to create a path to increase compensation based on a plan that you can communicate and control inside your organization?
Julie (18m 32s):
So, there's gonna be a lot of question of trust. If companies only disclose where it's mandated and they don't provide that trust to their own employees to see that information. That that's what's on the table is these same coin, two sides. These things are interconnected.
Joel (18m 49s):
By the way, the CFO article outlined the, the number one reason for companies not giving a salary range, it was administrative complexity, was the number one reason.
Chad (19m 0s):
Total bullshit.
Julie (19m 1s):
Yes.
Chad (19m 1s):
Why they weren't doing it is what it is.
Julie (19m 4s):
It's hard.
Chad (19m 5s):
No, it's not. You don't know how many companies I've talked to and their ADP systems don't buy that shit. Do not buy it. It is not as hard as everybody wants to make it seem to be. It's an excuse.
Julie (19m 18s):
The larger organization, the more difficult it is. I
Chad (19m 21s):
I've worked with companies that are 200 hundreds of thousands of people. That is total craziness.
Joel (19m 26s):
All right, you too. Take your corners and we'll be right back. Let's take a breather and we'll talk about TikTok.
Chad (19m 35s):
TikTok? Did somebody mention TikTok?
Joel (19m 37s):
All right guys. More content gold from our girl, Julie Calli. She published an article last month on How to Get Started with Recruiting on TikTok. She outlines how to build an audience, the power of storytelling, dives into the algorithm and much, much more. Julie, tell us about the article and wasn't there also a webinar about this topic?
Chad (20m 4s):
Webinars galore.
Julie (20m 4s):
Yeah, talk the talk.
Joel (20m 7s):
Ooh,
Julie (20m 7s):
Talk the Tok. We, I mean everybody has been messaging me. I mean this is like a very common question. My boss told me, I need to get our ads up on TikTok. How can you help me? What? Right. That is the most common thing that people are just trying to follow up with is that their boss told them that they had to get up there. Why? Why do you need to be on TikTok?
Joel (20m 28s):
By the way, you can't just post jobs on TikTok, right?
Julie (20m 32s):
No, you cannot. It is not a jobs platform. But I understand why, right? There's so much media attention has been given to TikTok because of its incredible rise in such a short period of time. It has over a billion active monthly users, over 552 billion videos viewed each month. That means 167 million views per minute. Yes, there is an audience there. So fish where the fish are, there's a big pond fully stocked right there.
Joel (21m 7s):
And Chad and are only 2% of those views by the way. So what was on the webinar? Was it just the how-tos? And so talk about some of that stuff.
Julie (21m 15s):
Well a lot of people just need education on like, what is this? Right? Can I expect it to be like LinkedIn or Facebook? Is it like YouTube? People are trying to understand what is it similar to and where is it in the market? And I would say that it is more similar to YouTube than it is to Facebook or LinkedIn.
Chad (21m 38s):
Say Instagram.
Julie (21m 39s):
Yes, it's a form of entertainment really, primarily the users are there for entertainment and it's short form video, which we, you know, are finding that people are digesting in tremendous amounts. Because it's short form you can watch a lot of videos in a short period of time.
Chad (21m 55s):
Didn't they just extend it to 10 minutes? They're talking about actually having 10 minute videos? Which is weird because you're used to just flipping through and seeing like the next video, the next video, the next video. So that could change the algorithm, which I think is their secret sauce.
Julie (22m 13s):
Yeah, they're testing that 10 minutes.
Chad (22m 16s):
The best algorithm in any social media I think that's out, there cuz they just feed you what you want. Now that could be feeding you hate, it could be feeding you joy. It could be feeding you Joel's favorite big booty Latinas/
Joel (22m 30s):
And bug fights
Chad (22m 31s):
And bug fights and bug fights. But I think, their algorithm is just far beyond what anybody else has out there.
Julie (22m 36s):
Yeah, well, you know, as humans we just wanna constantly devour new things, right? Try and taste sample. I mean, look at our streaming activity. Do we just sit down and watch one episode of something that's streaming? No, we stay up all night and we binge watch the whole thing. That's what they're doing, they're feeding that nature of us looking to constantly consume. And they've been doing it in short form bites and yeah, they're testing 10 minutes because I think what they are finding is people want more context into what they're viewing sometimes. And that 10 minutes might provide that opportunity. So
Joel (23m 7s):
I think the algo is a really great opportunity and something that really sets sort of traditional social media apart. Because companies generally think, Oh God, I have to build an audience, I have to get followers. You know, I have to do all these things before anyone will actually see my video. Well, with TikTok you could have nobody following you at all and have a great video with great content and the algorithm will make sure that your video gets viewed. And I don't think companies realize you don't have to build a huge following to have major impact on TikTok. And whether it's, you know, our boy at Sherwin Williams that was doing paint, you know, paint videos, it got him fired. But that's a great example of like, if you just create good content that people want to consume, you can have a tremendous platform on TikTok.
Joel (23m 53s):
But I'm also curious about, TikTok was making a lot of noise around getting into the employment game about a year or so ago. What do you know have an idea of where they are with that now? If they still care about employment, like they said they did?
Chad (24m 7s):
TikTok resumes.
Joel (24m 7s):
Yeah. Like what's going on on that front? Any idea?
Julie (24m 11s):
Yeah, there were a few, I'd say very large consumer based organizations that they brought into a very private beta last year to test out doing, you know, using TikTok for recruitment. It was very exclusive. I happened to, you know, be very close to an organization that was in that beta and it had a tremendous response. But it is overwhelming, right? We don't, we're very used to in this space digesting applicants and in ATS using all of those tools to identify the right candidates and bring them through our process. It is very hard to take short form video today and turn that into a process that we ingest.
Chad (24m 55s):
It's not scalable. It's not scalable right?
Julie (24m 59s):