If you love financial news, Buy-or-Sell and snarky commentary around those two things, then this episode if your wet dream. The boys are talkin' earnings and Wall Street news from Seek, Recruit Holdings (Indeed.com, Glassdoor), Randstad, Upwork and Dice this week, as well as playing buy-or-sell with Haul, Kevala, JobPixel, Alongside and Mystery. But it's no mystery that this episode rocks, ending with a reality check around pay transparency.
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 (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. You're listening to the broken clock of podcasts. We're going to be right only twice on this week's show. Hey boys and girls, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "TikTok and you don't stop" Cheeseman.
Chad (36s):
This is Chad "Dr. Evil" Sowash.
Joel (39s):
Watch and on this week's show financial news galore, a buy or sell extravaganza, and why you're going to start publishing salaries and job postings, whether you like it or not, let's do this.
Chad (53s):
So that was a much closer game than I had ever imagined.
Joel (60s):
You we're calling for a blowout. You were calling for a beat down.
Chad (1m 1s):
Dude, I saw it happening and it didn't, it did not happen. Made for a much better game.
Joel (1m 7s):
It was a good game, not grand, a the Bengals got to give me on that a face mask on Jalen Ramsey, but Hey, that happens in games like that, that happens in games like that. The better team won and I knew they would, but it was close. Now everyone's talking about the halftime show. Chad.
Chad (1m 25s):
What about that? It was awesome?
Joel (1m 27s):
Everybody loves it, except I guess me, I got some problems. I got some problems with the halftime show and I know I risk losing my gen X, my membership card, but I got three things I want to point out that made the halftime show featuring Dre, Snoop, Eminem, Fiddy and others left me a little cold. So number one, Chad, I thought the song choices were a little suspect. Outside of a In the club and Eminem. There was no Chronic, nothing from doggy style that sort of rubbed me the wrong way. Now that was my least, least like negative thing to say about it. Number two.
Chad (2m 5s):
Okay.
Joel (2m 5s):
We had talked before the show about protest.
Chad (2m 10s):
Yes.
Joel (2m 10s):
The NFL historically has done awful with race relations, particularly among black Americans. And I thought this was a perfect time to protest the NFL. Eminem was the only one who kind of sorta, maybe protested as he knelt by Dre as Dre was on the piano. So there was no coordinated effort. There was no like t-shirts or anything that would stand out. I, you know, my guess is most people didn't even recognize that there was a protest, but there was a little bit of one. Number three Chad, the biggest reason I have a problem with the halftime show is that these entertainers made their career on sticking it to the man. Okay.
Joel (2m 50s):
187 on the motherfucking cop. Right? And now they're just part of the machine, right? It was like watching if the Sex Pistols played at a Queen's dinner or like Rage Against the Machine playing opening day of the Bush Library, right. It just felt wrong. It felt like this should not be happening. And that was what really, really bothered me. I didn't like seeing these people that in my youth were against the man against the establishment. And now they're just part of the machine and that just left me really cold Chad. And get off my lawn while you're at it. Yeah.
Chad (3m 28s):
Yeah. I think it's funny because everybody got on Metallica after like the Black Album, because they went mainstream, but that's when they started making cash. These guys already made their cash. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to bring more, more people to, to, to rap, to hip hop. Right? So you never saw Dre smiling before? Right. Dre was a smile and motherfucker during that entire thing. And I love it. They're different people, man. They're different people. So to expect what you expected out of, you know, 50 somethings versus 20 somethings, I think yet, I think your expectations were off, so.
Joel (4m 2s):
Yeah, I know it's not the popular sentiment. I know everyone in my age is like that shit was off the chain. It was the best halftime show ever. I just, I couldn't help, but just be pissed off watching it. Now I did enjoy the 50 Cent jokes after the performance. You notice 50 was a little bit bigger than he had been 20 years ago, as most of us are. But I don't know if you saw like the memes around, I guess he stayed at the candy store too long and now it's like, and the one was now he's a full dollar now. Cause he went with 50 cent. Those are pretty good jokes. I did. I did like those.
Chad (4m 38s):
Yeah, no, that was good. I'll tell you what it was off the chain was a finally being back in front of a live audience, doing a show. We were at Sun King Brewery last night in downtown Indianapolis. It was a blast man, Pillar HR. We had Mark the CEO of Pillar and we sat down, had beers, had a crowd. It was like a VIP event. And it was a blast man. I'm really looking forward to more of that.
Joel (5m 10s):
As much as I hate people. I really love people at the same time. It was nice. And when you have beers that makes people that much more nice to be around.
Chad (5m 20s):
Yes.
Joel (5m 20s):
So thanks to Pillar for hosting that event and thanks to Sun King. If you don't know Sun King, hopefully you will at some point it's in Indiana.
Chad (5m 27s):
Oh damn.
Joel (5m 28s):
I'm sure most of the country has no clue what Sun King beer is, but hopefully they will soon, but they do know Chad. They know LinkedIn. So I got a shout out to LinkedIn. So a couple of things, Wall Street Journal editorial this week, proclaimed quote "let's face it. LinkedIn might be the best social network right now" end quote. The editorial sighted. Number one, trust LinkedIn is the most trusted social media by a long shot. They're at 40% trust. Number two at 14. Yeah. I said 40. And then all the way to 14% is Instagram. So trust is a big one and there's apparently a surge in gen Z usership. So big shout out to LinkedIn.
Joel (6m 10s):
Take that TikTok. And number two, they're adding a political kill switch. Chad, I don't know if you saw this, but available now in the US if you don't want any more Trump talk anymore Biden talk, any more politics whatsoever you can flip the kill switch and have all political talk off of your social media feed on LinkedIn. And to me, that's a shout-out!
Chad (6m 33s):
It's perfect because it's happening before all the political, I mean, it's getting ready to heat up. This November we're going to have elections and it's going to start getting heated. It's going to start heating up soon. So I've already hit the kill switch. I saw it. I went. Hit it. It's done. So hopefully we will see many people hitting it. Hopefully we'll see that across other social platforms, because if LinkedIn can do it shit, Facebook can fucking do it. Anybody can do it.
Joel (7m 2s):
And they gave you the choice, Chad. If you want politics have at it. If you don't flip the switch, it's beautiful.
Chad (7m 10s):
Flip the fucking switch. So a big shout out to IRA Wolf and Jason Cochran over at Geeks, Geezers and Googlization podcast. I was on a couple of weeks ago, they posted it this week. The podcast name is Plan, Integrate and Automate. It was a fun time.
Joel (7m 28s):
Awesome. I'm going to go back to the Super Bowl for my next shutout! Chad there were a lot of ads. Most of them sucked. You probably won't be surprised to know that the top ad had no stars whatsoever. Had no budget whatsoever. All that it featured was the QR code.
Chad (7m 47s):
A bouncing QR code.
Joel (7m 49s):
No stars, no money. Chad.
sfx (7m 51s):
I've got balls of steel.
Joel (7m 52s):
That's right. They looked at the tradition, the face. This is a big win for QR codes, right? And when we know it is because some of the data from the commercial, right, Coinbase shot up from 186th place to number two on downloads in the app store overnight. And they got a whopping 20 million hits just during the commercial in the time that it ran, it crashed the site. QR codes are back baby. And I couldn't give a bigger out than the one that I'm giving to Coinbase.
Chad (8m 29s):
Very nice. My favorite commercial though, was the GM Dr. Evil, where they're focusing on Dr. Evil is now the number two ranked threatening the world. He's not number one anymore. Number one is a climate change, global warming. And now he's set to help with GM. Now that he's taken over GM to save the world so that he can be number one again.
Joel (8m 53s):
So did this displace Alexa for you on the favorite Superbowl ads?
Chad (8m 57s):
The full Alexa ad is awesome, but they didn't play the full Alexa ad. They had a different version. It was a shortened version. And I didn't like the cuts that they had on that one. So I like Dr. Evil better. Yeah.
Joel (9m 8s):
We'll Chad here in Indiana. It's raining. I don't know if it's raining where you are, but it's a pretty gloomy day. So I've been dreaming a lot about Arizona, which is where we were a week ago and thinking a lot about some of the experiences we had in that made me think about the Uber story, the gig story that we came upon, we didn't share. We shared the whole mobile advertising thing play that Uber is looking at, which we think is great. But do you think there's some real life stories that are worth giving a shout out to? So number one, we have an Uber driver that you and I are both in the car for.
Chad (9m 38s):
Yep.
Joel (9m 39s):
Obviously we strike up conversations around, how long have you been doing this? How do you like it, et cetera.
Chad (9m 44s):
Yeah.
Joel (9m 44s):
This woman's story almost brought us to tears and that's hard to do Chad cause we're tough guys. But anyway, she'd been running a call center for a long time.
Chad (9m 56s):
15 years!
Joel (9m 57s):
She was rocking 70 hour work weeks. She had high blood pressure. She was on meds. During the pandemic she said, or was she laid off? I'm forgetting.
Chad (10m 5s):
She was laid off. She started driving for Uber. Then when they asked her back, guess what she said?
Joel (10m 12s):
She said, sit and spend, basically what she said. She's off her meds. She can spend more time with their kids who are at home, by the way. She can make her own schedule. All the things you hear about being an Uber driver, this was real life stuff. And I think this is you and I both think that this is happening on a broad scale.
Chad (10m 29s):
Yes.
Joel (10m 30s):
In many places. And the second story in terms of the gig economy that we have is we ordered alcohol. I know this is going to surprise everybody. We ordered alcohol on Drizzly, when we were in Arizona, because the Airbnb didn't come with, you know, just fully stocked bar. So we called Drizzly, Drizzly shows up and I go out to help or go out to meet the driver. And it turns out the driver is the owner of the liquor store because they didn't have enough people there to drive the liquor to us. She, the owner, drove the alcohol to us. So talk about a tightening of talent. The owner is delivering the alcohol. That's the state of the world that we're living in.
Joel (11m 14s):
And we thought it was worth sharing with the listeners.
Chad (11m 18s):
Yeah. And to add on to that Uber Drizzly story, I have an OnlyFan story. So very close friend of mine actually does taxes. And he had a young lady come in and she had a $70,000 gross to come from this company. And, he just started asking, you know, what what's this company do? And it was OnlyFans. She netted $50K on OnlyFans last year as a side hustle. So as we look at the way the world is changing, these are three stories that, again, we talk about every week, how the world of work is changing.
Chad (12m 0s):
This is how it's changing.
Joel (12m 3s):
Do we know what she does and what her OnlyFans URL is?
Chad (12m 6s):
No. And no, but I can tell you it's going to be, it's going to be more on the adult side.
Joel (12m 13s):
All right. Well, I've got one more, a shout out here, and I'm going to give you a clue.
sfx (12m 18s):
Can you feel the tension in the air right now? I know I can. I can feel it all the way down to my plums.
Joel (12m 26s):
All right. Well, I think all of us got a little box from Plum this week. Our friend is, is there Jason Putnam also the winner of the fantasy football league on Chad and Cheese. Anyway, box showed up with, I guess, the traditional giveaways, right? Pens, notebook, was there a mouse pad in there? I don't remember. Yeah. It was a typical stuff, but worth the shout out, Jason, thanks for thinking of us. And it gave us an opportunity to play one of our favorite sound bites.
Chad (12m 59s):
Amen. Amen. Big shout out to Collin Parker over at Creelate, who was looking good in the new Chad and Cheese t-shirt.
Joel (13m 4s):
Oh yes he was. With the kid. No shame.
Chad (13m 7s):
He's not looking as tired as you would think you would look. Cause he was holding his six month old baby. We might need to look at getting the Chad and Cheese onesie out there because man, there are babies everywhere. I'm going to call it the Corona baby boom.
Joel (13m 23s):
Chad and Cheese degenerates come in all sizes and shapes and ages. For sure. We should consider a onesie by the way, Chad. He got that t-shirt for free because he signed up at chadcheese.com/free. And if you want to get something free, you need to go there. You're going to get t-shirts from Emissary. You're going to get beer from our friends at Pillar, and you're going to get whiskey from our homeys at Textkernel. So if you haven't done that yet, please make the move. Chadcheese.com/free. Which all of these birthdays that I'm going to talk about, have all done. Chad. Oh, celebrating a birthday this coming week.
Joel (14m 3s):
Ryan Philmon, who is a former winner of free shit on Chad and Cheese. Yeah. Jessica Multhaf, Maria Ania, Ross Grainger. Kevin Burgess, my boy. Charlotte Ulvros of Tengai, hopefully celebrating a nice Swedish birthday. Happy Birthday to all of them who will be celebrating another year around the sun, this coming week.
Chad (14m 32s):
But not least kids. Events. We have the E recruitment Congress happened in Ostend, Belgium in early May got Rika Coppens, Dee Coakley, Bas Van de Haterd, Hans "the man" Mengleschots, Adam Gordon. And obviously Lieven will be there, but go to Erecruitment-congress.com, go get your tickets. If you're in Europe, you got to be there. If you're not in Europe, take some time, go to Europe. Enjoy!
Joel (14m 58s):
I can tell you're morphing into a European because you're saying those names a lot better than I would as an American
Chad (15m 8s):
I'm practicing. Then we have Unleash America, which actually same venue, MGM Vegas.
Joel (15m 13s):
Vegas!
Chad (15m 13s):
Vegas Baby. Although the date has changed to late May, which I think is very damn smart because by late May crossing my fingers, we should be in a much better place for live events. At least here in the US go to unleash.ai, click on events, and get your tickets and last but not least never least. We love this place. RecFest, July 7th at Knebworth Park, we will be emceeing the Disrupt stage and I'm lining up some guests to come in and help us out.
Chad (15m 53s):
So we're really excited. Search RecFest 2022 on Google. Get those ticks today.
Joel (15m 56s):
Not just guests, Chad, special guests.
Chad (15m 58s):
Special guests. TOPICS!
Joel (15m 59s):
Holy shit. We got some Wall Street news from like everybody. Okay. I'm going to run through these as quickly as I can. And then we'll comment on what stood out. So number one, let's start with down under our friends at Seek reported earnings this week. So strength at home helped Australia based Seek record a solid first half result in the 2022 financial year with revenue, earnings and profits, all recording, double digit growth. The company also paid its highest ever dividend to shareholders. Revenue increased 59% and the stock was up 8% on the news. Now going to Recruit Holdings who as you know, Chad own Indeed and Glassdoor, they continue to enjoy increases in the postings of job ads across the US, Canada and Europe during the third quarter of 2021 driving gains and recruit holdings of which they account for around 30%.
Joel (16m 53s):
Recruit Holdings has a lot of other businesses, revenue surge, 81.3% year on year to $2 billion in US dollars for Q3. However, the growth moderated quarter on, I said, however, Chad, however, the growth moderated quarter on quarter due to the holiday season and COVID-19 which pushed the stock down nearly 10% after reporting.
Chad (17m 20s):
Hmmm.
Joel (17m 20s):
Let's go to Upwork, which posted a 29% year over year increase in total revenue in Q4 taking the total figure to $137 million. They also surpassed $15 billion in lifetime talent earnings during that quarter.
Chad (17m 37s):
Damn.
Joel (17m 37s):
That's the freelancers. However, profit came in below consensus, which sent the stock down 7%. Randstad, our friends over in Europe and elsewhere reported fourth quarter earnings that beat analyst forecast and revenue, that topped expectations, they cited significant growth and perm and RPO services. Monster.com. Remember them Chad? Revenue was up 12% shares were up nearly 5% on the news. Now we'll end this with Dice. Chad who needs innovation Dice's board of directors authorized a new stock repurchase program of up to $15 million in common stock.
Joel (18m 17s):
This will commence following the completion of DHI's previous 20 million stock repurchase program shares popped 8% on the news. So let's review here. We've got Seek, we've got Recruit Holdings. We've got Upwork, we've got Randstad. We've got Dice. That's a lot of financial news. Chad, what stood out to you?
Chad (18m 38s):
The stuff Upwork people. I mean, everybody, shareholders were not happy with Upwork. And this seems to be kind of like the mindset that we have. Upwork was increasing the money spent on research and development, marketing, especially on administrative costs. They're trying to focus on long-term as opposed to, it sounds like their shareholders are looking at short term. It's really hard to see a brand, try to evolve and even try to see around corners. You need to spend money to make money and when they're making money, this is the time to do it. Right? So I think what Upwork is doing is incredibly smart. When it comes to all the different recruiting companies, there's an article on recruiter.com, where they expect a $50 billion increase on spending on hiring 2022, which I would like to call the idiot tax.
Chad (19m 33s):
I actually recorded a podcast earlier this week with Serge and Shelley from the RecruitmentFlex about this companies like Randstad, Seek and Indeed will continue to see huge lifts and revenue all due to employers, not focusing on retention initiatives like internal mobility, employee engagement, fair wages, wage equity altogether, childcare. And then we flip over to the acquisition side of the house. Still have shitty candidate experience, horrible candidate care, no nurturing is happening. And actually if they would leverage the candidate database that they spent millions of dollars building, they wouldn't have the problems that they have today.
Chad (20m 13s):
So all these surges are happening because employers are fucking idiots. This is an idiot tax.
Joel (20m 18s):
You've stated many times that if you can't make money as a job site in this environment, you should just pack your shit up and go home. I don't think anyone is going out of business based on these reports. I think that there are clouds on the horizon as an investor, we've got Russia, we've got inflation, we've got energy you know, concerns that I think are pushing all growth stocks down, which I think is why there's no room for error. So when you see, you know, a little bit of traffic decrease or a little bit of a forecast altercation or change, you know, investors are gonna freak out, which I think is why you saw the dip in Upwork and Recruit Holdings.
Joel (20m 60s):
I think Seek probably has a little bit of geographical protection in terms of where they are, and they're less likely to get hit for as a regional comp or geographically specific country or company. And you have Randstad, which is a big ass Titanic with a lot of diversity in their business. And you're going to see growth in some places in this case, RPO and perm work and the monster business, not so much in some of the other digital aspects, not so much. Dice man for all the shit we give our friend Art over there.
Joel (21m 39s):
He is a financial engineering genius because that stock, since 2001 has 3Xd from where it was over a year ago, it's gone from like two something to over six now. And that's not growth. That's not innovation. That's not anything, any secret sauce. That's just buybacks and making cuts and being financially, you know, sort of responsible and
Chad (21m 59s):
Smoking mirrors.
Joel (21m 59s):
What they want to see. Yeah. How much longer can that last, I don't know. But Dice stockholders are, have been pretty happy for the last year. We'll see if we'll see if that keeps going on, if you'd rather, you know, if you played it, who'd you rather between ZipRecruiter and Dice, Dice wins and the landslide on that, even though we give ZipRecruiter a lot more pub.
Chad (22m 23s):
I see Dice as the Peloton of our industry. I mean, they they're going to make money in this kind of environment. They should make money in this kind of environment. But when it's not this type of environment anymore, again, I think it's all smoke and mirrors, but good for them.
Joel (22m 37s):
I was also shocked to see Monster only at 12% increase.
Chad (22m 40s):
Yeah. Well that tells a tale.
Joel (22m 43s):
That's an anemic increase for a site as big as that.
Chad (22m 47s):
Exactly.
Joel (22m 47s):
All right, cool. Let's take a quick break. That's a lot of financial news. I need to catch my breath there, but there's no rest for the wicked because we've got the buy or sell of all buy or sells. Come ask when we get back. And we're back Chad.
Chad (23m 7s):
We have never had a buy or sell this big. Now we don't have unicorns this week. And that's okay because we have a bunch of new tech. I said we don't have, no we don't. We don't. We have a amazing new tech that's coming out and getting funding. So let's have some fun.
Joel (23m 28s):
Yeah, let's have some fun here. All right. Let's start with trucking. Okay. Let's talk about Haul that's Haul. Who's ready to gig a five. The trucking industry hall announced a $10 million investment bringing total funding to $13 million. We'll read co-founder of ZipRecruiter is an investor in the company, is the brainchild of two former Uber freight employees. Under it's system Haul becomes the driver's employer of record and basically leases the driver to a trucking company. No more full-time employees, no more having to own your own truck. Chad, are you buy or sell on Haul?
Chad (24m 7s):
So first off the name Haul loved the Haul, hate the URL haulwith.US. I think they could have some fun with like a great marketing campaign around Haul and Oates. Kidding.
sfx (24m 19s):
Oh hell no.
Chad (24m 19s):
So it's important to start off with the fact that as you had said, both co-founders come from Uber freight division, right? So they understand the problem. Tech solution. And I believe the timing's right, which is huge. This is a, from the Haul blog "driver churn is a real problem in trucking with drivers changing fleets, 10 to 15 times in a career costing fleets upward of 10 to $15,000 to recruit, qualify, and onboard each new CDL driver. Since its initial 3 million seed funding last year Haul's revenue has grown 30%."
Chad (25m 2s):
This is Uber for truck driving currently just in Cali. I do love the website doesn't push you to job search. Rather it asks you for your phone number and just drives you into the process. I think they're going to need more than $13 million to grow rapidly, but I think this is what staffing companies look like in the future. Are they too early? I don't think so. I think timing's right. This is a buy.
Joel (25m 31s):
Echo your sentiments and it was a great podcast. I'm spacing on what show it was, but they interviewed a woman who, you know, saw a commercial on TV, get your license, get employed today, make a bunch of money, see the country, et cetera. And she joined this class, got all the appropriate licenses. And then the company really sort of forces you in to being your own boss and owning your own truck. And the woman in the interview did that and ended up, you know, owing too much on the car, getting billed from the company, which she didn't expect. I mean, it was a money pit and not a money-making opportunity.
Joel (26m 12s):
So I'll be really interested to see, ultimately I think a lot of truckers want something that the Uber driver and Arizona and the giggers, and that we've come across want. You know, they want flexibility. You know, what is my route? I want to be able to control this, but they don't want to have the problems and headaches of being an entrepreneur slash owning your own truck and, , you know, having contracts and paying bills and all that stuff. So Haul is here to be that middle area where, you know, if you don't wanna do the full-time employee thing, you want to have more flexibility, but you don't want to own your own truck and have all that, that pain. We are an answer for you to still truck and have more control over your life.
Joel (26m 55s):
So I think this is a huge buying opportunity for me. I'm kind of surprised this doesn't exist. Yeah. Everything I read there was, there was no competition really for these guys. So I think it's green pastures. All right, let's go to, I'm going to pronounce it. Kevala?
Chad (27m 22s):
Kevala, that's how I see it.
Joel (27m 18s):
Yes. K E V A L A Seattle-based Kevala, which helps healthcare facilities find and manage workers as raised $12.1 million for a total of 21 million Kevala software enables healthcare facilities to schedule workers as well as tap into a pool of more than 1000 registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and certified nursing assistants located in Washington, Oregon, Utah, Montana, and Texas, obviously looking to grow into every state in the near future. Chad, are you a buyer sell on Kevala?
Chad (27m 50s):
This is Haul for healthcare facilities with a focus on senior living and skilled nursing. So what we just talked about with hall, this is another niche which is badly underserved and needed. So instead of having to be FTE, you know, you could be hybrid, you could work part-time, you could work for many different, many different organizations in your area, right? So I'll say it again. This is what staffing companies look like in the future. It's a buy.
Joel (28m 25s):
So my sister vantages a facility like this multiple facilities, and by far, her biggest headache is staffing. And I know that she has money to spend. I know that she has a growing customer base, ala baby boomers, who are not getting any younger. And that talent piece is the thing that is really missing. So Kevala is in terms of timing, in terms of demand is hitting this thing. At the right time, people are going to spend a lot of money to help ease their staffing woes in this business. So Kevala for me also is a big, a big buy. I don't think they can grow fast enough in other states.
Chad (29m 5s):
This is a big shout out to Ken over at Practice Link. You might want to gobble this thing up, man.
Joel (29m 14s):
Good call. Good call. I love it. When you spend other people's money, it's so much fun.
Chad (29m 19s):
So much easier.
Joel (29m 20s):
Let's get to Job Pixel video hiring platform Job Pixel has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round from Nama Ventures. Chad, this is a run of the mill video interviewing video resume solution. I don't think I have to say more than that. Are you a buy or sell on Job Pixel
Chad (29m 42s):
Founded in 2020, starting during the pandemic. One of the co-founders Omar has a sales strategy background, which for me is huge. Why? Because most founders are techies and they're usually very bad at marketing sales and anything that drives growth. I mean, funding partnerships, you name it right. Anthony the other co-founder has a background, which includes a stint at LinkedIn for five years as director of engineering for careers. So I like the founder background. I also like when you layer in the fact that Altru was acquired by an iCIMS for $60 million, Job Pixel is slick and it can sell itself to all core talent platforms as a much needed piece of the recruitment tech stack.
Chad (30m 30s):
All they have to do is point at what iCIMS did and start to prospectively targets acquirers. So for me, I liked their chances. It's a buy for me.
Joel (30m 43s):
I was a little torn on this with remote you know, video recruiting, remote recruiting, you know, video is taking a higher level of importance than it has in the past. However, I've hated video resumes forever, and I'm not going to stop now. A resume scan is around six seconds or less with a piece of paper or words on the screen. No one is sitting through video resumes. I don't care how much you think they will. They have a quote on their site from a recruiter at Ashley Furniture who said, quote, "Job Pixel made our hiring faster and way more fun."
Joel (31m 23s):
Seeing a video of applicants, beats reading a resume every time. I'm sorry, what? This is a sell for me, Chad. Well, let's go north of the border to Moncton, Canada, where Alongside Moncton has raised 8 million in Canadian dollars. That's about $6.3 million US springing the total raised to around 8 million US dollars. Listeners may remember they acquired Canada job site Career Beacon back in December, if you like your HubSpot for recruiting solution to have a little Canadian humility sprinkled in Alongside might be just for you. Chad, are you buy or sell on Alongside?
Chad (32m 4s):
Think about it, man, Alongside customers could already post to career begins since 2014 Alongside could see the activity since everything was flowing through their system. And they were enjoying a little bit of the profit right now you have a try and true brand like Career Beacon, making money and fueling its own growth. And now it's ramping up development and also sales. So Alongside the entire organization, they're really focused on propelling growth. Now that they have this pretty much this tech stack that they're building. Also a notable is a hire to the team, Serge Boudreau, who we know over at Recruitment Flex is now their head of sales.
Chad (32m 50s):
He has experience running sales for Workopolis and a little company called Indeed both were for the entire western region of Canada. And I think this to me is an easy buy because they're starting to do some things in Canada that, I mean, nobody else is really doing. I mean, even Indeeds having a problem, cracking that part of Canada.
Joel (33m 13s):
Yeah. I, again, echo your sentiments. I think that there aren't enough sort of these marketing platforms I called it HubSpot for recruiting. There just aren't that many, I mean, CandidateID, these guys, and there are some others, but to me, there's a huge opportunity, particularly on the automation side and if these guys can get that right I think that'll be really important to their growth. Whereas most Americans look down on European companies and other companies from the world coming into America. There's just a friendliness about Canada. And I think that their opportunity to come south and provide their happy Canadian services to Americans gives them a better shot than most European companies.
Joel (33m 54s):
My big big thing with them is, raise your prices for God's sakes. Like this thing is so fucking cheap, man.
Chad (34m 5s):
They'll get there.
Joel (34m 7s):
Like it almost, it almost makes your product look cheap because it is so cheap. So just raise your prices and people will assume that the quality is in line with what it really is. So just fix the prices. And for me, this is also a buy. So we end buy or sell with Mystery. That's right founded in 2018, Mystery started as an event automation tool for consumers, which matched couples to experiences based on their shared interest. Users would have a date night where they would know where they were going until they got there.
Joel (34m 47s):
Well, COVID kind of fucked up that whole business model. So Mystery began selling to companies one off experiences, such as virtual get togethers and corporate gift boxes and added engagement tools to measure what was most popular. Now, the company is valued at a hundred million dollars, according to a source after raising $18.5 million in a series A recently led by Greylock. Chad, it's no mystery that you probably love this company. BUt is it a buy or sell?
Chad (35m 24s):
So Mystery helps, they say, onboarding connectivity, connecting with leadership, collaboration across teams, but it all sounds incredibly redundant to the systems that already specialize in those areas. So I understand the need for connectivity, although I don't believe the market, especially our market, the recruitment talent management side of the house believes they need a separate platform in their stack to accomplish this. I, to me, it's a mystery, how they received $18.5 million. I'm selling.
Joel (35m 54s):
That's rough. Well, I think culture is a huge issue with the work from home phenomenon that is COVID. So in our interview with Mark CEO of Pillar, and I don't want to, you know, give away anything and you should listen to that when we drop it, whenever that is. But we asked him about culture and building culture in a work from home world. And I think a lot of companies are struggling with how do we, you know, get our people together, rub around and make them sticky and build that culture. And I think as a result, companies are going to try to answer that question with technology, because I think for the most part, we agree that a lot of companies, majority companies, aren't going to go back to the way things were. So they're going to be looking for tools and cutesy ways and unique ways and novel ways to get their employees engaged, to get them excited, to get their employees to say, wow, this is a really cool thing that my company did.
Joel (36m 51s):
And I think Mystery is going to be at the forefront of being one of those companies that gets the RFP to provide solutions, to build culture in remote teams. So for that, I'm a buy on Mystery, no secret about it.
Chad (37m 4s):
That's just horrible. That's just horrible.
Joel (37m 6s):
Historically 85% of these companies are all going to fail anyway. So I don't know why we don't just sell all of them, but anyway, let's take a quick break and we'll talk a little bit about pay transparency. Chad, let's talk about one of your favorite topics, transparency, including pay transparency. So this is from Santa Ana this week.
Chad (37m 32s):
Oh, okay.
Joel (37m 32s):
Story was here's what happens when salary is actually included in job listings. Any guesses is for their findings? Okay. First a little context, only about 12% of postings from US online job sites even include salary ranges. This is according to Julie Pollock, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. And that's an increase from 8% in 2019. Wow. 4% in two years, laws are starting to change that though Chad listeners will know about New York City, Colorado and more states and municipalities are following suit. And it doesn't look like the end of the world, making salaries apparent and job postings.
Joel (38m 14s):
For employers posting salaries can attract job seekers many of whom have salary as their number one motivator plus it can screen out people who will not in any way, shape or form be in the universe of what you're paying for a job, which saves time. Oh yeah and it creates trust from the start and what company couldn't use a little more trust? For job seekers, knowing salary doesn't just narrow down your search, saving time, but posting salaries means equal pay for equal work. One of your favorite lanes Chad. It's also good for existing employees who might learn there, that they are underpaid and easily negotiate pay raises based on such data that is easily accessible.
Joel (38m 58s):
They might also leave the company altogether if they don't know what kind of salary they should be looking at, you love this stuff. Chad, please comment.
Chad (39m 11s):
So this goes deeper than just talking about, you know, being able to get the salary on a goddamn job. A 2019 McKinsey study explored how these and other inequities have reduced the nation's wealth. The nation's GDP could be up to 6% higher by 2028. If the racial wealth gap is actually closed. This next quote is actually from McKinsey. Quote, "lawmakers must pass targeted policies that boost household income for black Americans In order to address the issue, the country has over a trillion dollars to gain from this effort" end quote. Overall, we look at this as a way, or we've been told that this is a way that we negotiate.
Chad (39m 58s):
When at the end of the day, what happens is this is the way that we suppress individuals wages. White women make at least 20% less than white men do. And then you start adding different races to that female to that gender may make even less, sometimes 40% less than white men for doing the same job. How do we expect them to actually get anywhere close to being equal? When we have issues, or these obstacles in play? From the federal reserve it shows that from 1995 to 2016, white households net worth grew 43%, black families household net worth stayed flat.
Chad (40m 48s):
This is, this is one of the big triggers that's going to actually help equity happen. And when we hear all of these excuses on why we can't do it, you have to understand it's bullshit. I've talked to, I don't know how many talent acquisition and HR professionals that say we could do transparency on pay tomorrow. All the data's in our system, we could publish it. And we wouldn't do it, it would be anonymized obviously, but yet we could still do it if it's not being done it's because we know that we can actually make more money off of the backs of individuals who are not white men.
sfx (41m 33s):
Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
Joel (41m 37s):
Chad, one of your favorite sayings and I'll probably butcher. It is something along the lines of there's no disinfectant like a little sunlight.
Chad (41m 45s):
Amen.
Joel (41m 46s):
And that's what transparency does and making that statement makes me miss Arizona even more. Chad.
Joel and Chad (41m 53s):
We out.
OUTRO (42m 24s):
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.
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