ZipRecruiter? More Like Dip-Recruiter
The boys both turn 50-years-old this week, which means a lot of mature, grown-up, and responsible commentary on the world of work.
Ha! Just kidding, they talk trash about the ZipRecruiter IPO,
...and weed in the workplace.
PLUS Chad needs
Whew! Buckle-up, this is one long-winded, meandering piece of industry goodness. As always, your favorite podcast is powered by Jobvite, JobAdx, and Sovren.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
INTRO (12s):
PHide 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 (32s):
Oh yeah. You down with AARP? You know me? Hey kids. It's Joel "spiraling toward a permanent dirt nap" Cheeseman.
Chad (44s):
I'm Chad, "it's my birthday and I'll drink if I want to" Sowash.
Joel (48s):
And on this week, show ZipRecruiter more like dip recruiter. Am I right? Well, the real canvas, please stand up and pot James Bond and Chad's favorite Jeff Bezos. Hold tight, we'll be right back with what will probably be our last breath.
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Joel (2m 10s):
Happy birthday, bitch. 50 man. How's that feel? Ah,
Chad (2m 17s):
Feels like 40. Yeah, I'm just, I'm not one for numbers. It's funny because Katrina Collier, she continues to like talk about only so many days until, you know, we're 50 and we were born on the same day and I'm like, would you stop the fucking countdown for God's sakes? She's like, no, no final countdown. Yeah.
Joel (2m 40s):
So for those that don't know you and I were born in the same year, a day apart. So as people are listening to this on Friday, the 28th, that will be my birthday. We're recording this on the 27th, which is your birthday. So happy birthday to both of us. This is the birthday show, I guess and remember you're sandwiching in a celebration. You were in Costa Rica for like eight days. And then you're joining me in Louisville, Kentucky, the Costa Rica of Kentucky to drink bourbon and probably forget what the hell we did in Louisville. So Costa Rica, what was that like?
Joel (3m 20s):
You met up with some industry folks like give me the Costa Rica synopsis. Yeah.
Chad (3m 25s):
So thanks. And my beautiful wife, Julie, for taking me to Costa Rica. Yeah. That was a beautiful, sexy Costa Rican trip. And, and no question major thanks to Ethan Bloomfield and his amazing wife, Veronica for having us down to their beautiful casa with a pool, beaches, mountain, top sunset, watching restaurants and the Sora Costa Rica. If you don't know, Ethan, go back. I think as a few months, and we actually did an interview with him. Guy's been in the industry for a very long time, probably one of the biggest sales minds and hustlers in this space. So the guy's awesome. And then, so we had a great time in Nosara, right?
Chad (4m 7s):
It was, it was fun because we took the back roads. And when you say back roads in Costa Rica, they're not paved, they're all dirt roads. You're actually taking a four by four through rivers. I mean, it was, it was a really good time. Got down there, enjoyed it. He's got an amazing house, a couple of horses goat. I mean, it's just fucking crazy. And then we met up with Nick Livingston of Hone It and his beautiful wife Kerryn and his baby girls. And they showed us around Tamarindo, which is a beach town. And we spent most of the week eating amazing seafood, which I know you love, bar hopping, walking on the beach, lying by the pool and having at least one shot of Chile guano at every place we visited.
Chad (4m 56s):
So it was a good time, man. They just, if you get a chance to go to Costa Rica, flying to Liberia, rent a car, it's an hour away. You're on the beach in Tamarindo. Just fucking crazy.
Joel (5m 9s):
No, these, these two guys live there and they're happy there? Like, they're good. Yeah.
Chad (5m 14s):
Fucking outstanding, dude. And once you see how you can live in Costa Rica, I mean, and there's a, there's a big variance in, in degrees for how Ethan owns his own home, has like a farm and horses has a stable across the street. I mean, it is so amazing! And then Nick and his family have lived there, actually, I think I'll year longer in Tamarindo, pretty much on the beach. A little bit different, they've bounced around Tamarindo and renting places, but they're getting ready to build. So both, I mean, both families just love it there and I don't see them leaving anytime soon.
Joel (5m 53s):
So is there a pretty heavy ex-pat influence in Costa Rica? I mean, most, I assume a lot of things are in English anyway, but do you get a sense of like, oh, there's a lot of Americans here or does it still have that feel of central America?
Chad (6m 6s):
Well, it Still has the Central America feel, there's no getting away from that, which is awesome. But definitely no Nosara, I would say there's a great ex-pat community there, even though it's more, I would say rural versus Tamarindo, Tamarindo has a large ex-pat community and I mean, it's just, you can't get away from being in Central America and you don't want to, I mean, the sunsets that we saw there. Took pictures of you follow me on Instagram you're probably sick of it.
Joel (6m 33s):
Yeah, we all saw the pictures Asshole.
Chad (6m 36s):
But they were just too amazing not to share.
Joel (6m 40s):
Like your first pictures had a bunch of love, likes, and then by the, you know, 800 sunset that you shared, it was like no likes. Cause we were all pissed off at you for rubbing it in our face. And what's up with this swing. Is there just a random swing on a tree that people can swing on?
Chad (6m 56s):
So that is on the top of a mountain and you were literally swinging out if you would remember when your kids at the playground and you would like swing as far as high as you could and you would jump off.
Joel (7m 7s):
Sure.
Chad (7m 7s):
If you did that, you would find yourself rolling down the side of a mountain. I mean, it was like not a cliff per se, but it was almost that. And we were at a restaurant on the top of a mountain in Nosara and watching the sunset and just getting ready to go have a nice, easy relaxing seafood dinner. It was really cool. Okay.
Joel (7m 32s):
So now those that know you pretty well know that you'll, you'll be leaving the US at some point, or at least that's still the plan. I know we haven't connected in a while, but it, it looks like it's down to Costa Rica or Portugal. And I asked you as you were gone. So, is Costa Rica now in the catbird seat for relocation, and at the time you said, well, ask me after a month in Portugal, this was at the beginning of your trip. Post-trip are you still sort of, is it still up in the air? Is Costa Rica in the poll position right now?
Chad (8m 5s):
I think, I think what Julia and I have have finally come to understand is that we want to live everywhere, right? So we want to be able to take a few years in Portugal, a few, maybe a year, maybe 18 months in Croatia, and then being able to do the same thing in Costa Rica. And if you follow all of those areas that I just mentioned, the cost of living there is pretty amazing, right? So we're not rich by any stretch of the imagination.
Joel (8m 36s):
Right.
Chad (8m 37s):
But it's one of those things where, you know, you'll get one of these on this big blue orb. So shit just, you know, go out the way you want to go out. That's how we want to go out.
Joel (8m 46s):
So as long as you can physically and financially do it, you're just going to globe hop.
Chad (8m 51s):
Yep.
Joel (8m 51s):
Okay. And with the beauty of Airbnb and a few other places you can do that, I endorse that plan. So.
Chad (8m 58s):
I dig it.
Joel (8m 58s):
So which will be first Costa Rica?
Chad (9m 1s):
Probably a Portugal, more than likely still the heavy favorite, but we want to go over and spend probably about a month to figure out where on the Southern coast and the Algarve we want to plant for who knows how long, but we also want to spend a month in Croatia as well. So we'll see.
Joel (9m 22s):
Well, you, my friends suck because I have a four year old and I'm landlocked where I am for quite a while.
Chad (9m 27s):
Dude, they have international schools, they have international schools.
Joel (9m 31s):
That is true. And my wife is a professor gets to go on a, you know, I don't know, learning trips and you know, she goes and teaches places. So I'll get to travel hopefully. But I mean, not like your jet setting life of I'm in Monaco this month and next month I'm going to New Zealand and you know, whatever. So anyway, you suck, but Happy Birthday, nonetheless.
Chad (9m 53s):
Happy Birthday to you man.
Joel (9m 54s):
We'll have a good time in Louisville, I'm sure, even if it's not Costa Rica. So shout outs for me, for sure. You mentioned Katrina Collier, but it's her birthday as well. So Happy Birthday to her.
Chad (10m 8s):
Love her.
Joel (10m 9s):
The robot hater that she is. And, and I saw this as I was looking up anyone on my birthday, which there aren't really any, but I saw that Hung Lee's birthday, friend of the show is on June 2nd. So fairly early happy birthday to our favorite porn star Hun Lee.
Chad (10m 28s):
Shout out to Tyco Von Possen over at VONC for sending me some Glenlivet and Julie, some van Gogh vodka. Thanks, man. Really appreciate the birthday Vonc love, you know what?
Joel (10m 42s):
I Caught the VONC Love in college. I think we established that shot. Other than that. Yeah, I got, I got a different kind of shot for the bunk back in college, shout out to LinkedIn. Who's apparently listening to the show. They launched LinkedIn Boost this week. So if you have a company page and you're putting posts on your feed, just like Facebook used to do, you can push a boost button and without much headache, you can boost your posts to people that are like your followers, or you can target it pretty easily. So I'm glad that LinkedIn is making advertising on LinkedIn a little easier because it really sucks, historically.
Chad (11m 24s):
Big shout out to David Nicola who loves the Christopher Walken out trail. That's right, buddy, where we've actually been talking about doing some other celebrity outros. So keep listening, my friend, keep listening,
Joel (11m 37s):
Shout out to Harry and Charlie, we mentioned this on last week's podcast. So Charlie bit me, the popular YouTube video from, I don't know, 2007, the video went out for NFT as the original one was auctioned off. They for a blistering $760,000.
Chad (11m 57s):
Jesus.
Joel (11m 58s):
Which isn't quite what, you know, 29 million for a cyberpunk or whatever it was. But Hey, $760, will buy a lot of beer. So shout out to Harry and Charlie, I hope that finger is healed. And if not, you've got $760,000 for a new one.
Chad (12m 12s):
Jesus, Shout out to Seek Out that's right, Anup Gupta winner of Death Match. Also winner of Geek Wire's startup of the year. Great job guys.
Joel (12m 24s):
Well-deserved, well-deserved. Shout out to Vimeo, speaking of videos on YouTube, people may not even know Vimeo, but they were a upstart in the video sharing landscape a long time ago, and then YouTube stole pretty much all their thunder. Anyway, they went public this week, which is not necessarily noteworthy, but the fact that they have a diverse woman as their CEO, Anjali Sud. I'm probably not saying that correctly, but anyway, shout out to her and shout out to them. It's a big one to have another female in the C-suite on Wall Street.
Chad (12m 55s):
Shout out to an Illinois McDonald's who are so desperate for staff that they are giving away iPhones to new recruits if they stay for six months, all right. Way to go, McDonald's and then my last shout out is to Delta Airlines, my airline of choice. Thank you. They say mullet hair anti-vaxxers need not apply. Currently. 60% of Delta employees, roughly 74,000 employees are already vaccinated. And to help maintain that vaccination trajectory, Delta will mandate that those joining the company be vaccinated, unless you have an accommodation.
Chad (13m 37s):
I love seeing companies stand firm on this. Especially companies like Delta, where we could be transferring the virus obviously to other countries. So good job on Delta.
Joel (13m 48s):
Yup. And you, you know what I love to see? Whiskey, beer, and t-shirts in my mailbox. So if you love free shit, we say it every week, you got to go to Chadcheese.com/free. We've got t-shirts from Emissary. We've got beer sponsored by AdZuna and our favorite whiskey powered by Sovren. Yes, with that Happy Birthday Bitch! All right. So you were out last week, but you've, you've got, you've got to vent a little bit about this whole chat bot feeding frenzy that went on. To set the table for you, pandoLogic acquired Wade and Wendy StepStone acquired Mya, I don't know what else do you want me to go into it?
Joel (14m 33s):
You can listen to the archives if you want to know my opinion, but Chad, what you got?
Chad (14m 39s):
It was funny because, and I don't know how you feel about it now, but it was almost kind of like, you know, you were somewhat confused. Why the hell Panda would buy Wade and Wendy? Are you still there? Or have you come out of that a little bit?
Joel (14m 51s):
I mean, I get it.
Chad (14m 52s):
Personally, I think this is a gangster move between the two, I mean, pando buys Wade and Wendy StepStone buys Maya. We'll go into that here in a minute, but I think the pando buy is a gangster move because employers suck at experience. And now at the very top of the funnel, not only are you targeting candidates better with programmatic, but now you're providing a better experience. Plus you can feed the conversation into the machine, learning beast and digest, even more signals to help better target candidates moving forward. So this to me is definitely an experience play no question, but it's a much larger data play for pando.
Chad (15m 37s):
And I think this is where StepStone could perspectively be getting it wrong. So StepStone buys Maya. And I think that this is an elementary kind of like step forward for Total Jobs, which is a job board that nobody knows here in the US right. But that's it. It's really just an evolutionary play for a job board. Oh, okay, cool. I would be more interested if they bought Maya and integrated it into AppCast, which I'm sure Chris Foreman would love to, but now pando can take more data, more signals. They can actually take all the data that they will be getting out of this chat bot, apply it to better targeting and they might actually jump ahead of AppCast because they'll have better signals in the programmatic space.
Joel (16m 27s):
So I agree with all that. And I think just, I think the technology is going to be something that most sites have to have much, like, I think text recruiting, although that hasn't quite integrated like I thought it would. For most companies, but you know, the, the thing that I found was terms not disclosed on both of these deals. I would have loved to have seen what kind of numbers these companies went for. You'll know that Maya raised 52 million, Wade and Wendy had raised 11.5 million. Whereas AppCast was a big deal at 75 million and something else, it was basically like a hundred million dollar deal. It looks like these, these weren't as big or else they would have announced that. So I was kinda down on the space for a little bit, and then I got an email from an agency who said that there'll be announcing a chat bot who they could not name, although the list is pretty short, we could probably come up with it.
Joel (17m 20s):
They were soon going to be announcing a new round of $15 million in capital. I'm going to go with Zuora on that one. Aida, if it's you, congratulations, preliminarily, if not, we'll get the announcement and talk about who it is. Might be a Happy Recruiter over in Europe. Who knows? They were a sponsor for a short time on the show. So, yeah, I think it's smart for both of them and something that a lot of companies should have. I just would've liked to have seen those companies announce a new round of funding because their evaluations went up because I think we were both really bullish on the chat bot technology, but it looks like it's a tougher industry than we thought.
Chad (17m 56s):
I think the big difference here is one's going to be used strategically, the other one's going to use more tactically. Right? And you're talking about used pretty much on an island on a job board of total jobs, versus being able to perspectively build a much larger weapon in pando for programmatic, for a global, for global use. And I know from AppCast standpoint and from StepStone being able to start to invade the US through AppCast and that I think myself that would have made a hell of a lot more sense, but again, not every chat bot is the same and maybe Maya just a wouldn't have been the right fit for being able to feed the right information into AppCast?
Chad (18m 38s):
Who knows, who knows?
Joel (18m 40s):
I think the consensus is that a paradox is the apex predator of the chat bot world. We'll have to see?
Chad (18m 46s):
They definitely are now. There's no question.
Joel (18m 48s):
Yeah, they definitely are now. I was surprised you mentioned the European growth in the part of the press of StepStone was like, we're going to launch this in Germany and we're going to launch it in Britain, the UK, I was kind of surprised that they didn't, maybe it was a strategic thing, but not tout more of an in to the American market with the purchase of Maya who has a fairly strong awareness in the US as well as some customers that they could start leveraging for StepStone but that might've been more strategic than anything else. They're coming. Folks, they're coming to America.
Chad (19m 20s):
They are coming in
Joel (19m 21s):
Neil Diamond style.
Chad (19m 22s):
They need properties though. So I still believe that StepStone will need a property to gobble up like a Monster, which I think is ripe for the taking on the clearance rack versus CareerBuilder, who Apollo's not going to take clearance rack cash that's for sure.
Joel (19m 39s):
Yeah. Yeah. I would be surprised if there weren't some conversations with our buddy Scott Guts about a Monster.
Chad (19m 46s):
And also I gotta throw this over at Ron Stodd. Ron Stodd had money from the Ron Stodd innovation fund in Wade and Wendy. Right? And I thought, I really thought that they were going to gobble up Wade and Wendy to be able to provide more efficiencies for all of their clients on the RPO side of the house. But then that shit just felt flat. So yeah. If you need a pill for that Ron Stodd. Yeah.
Joel (20m 11s):
No doubt. No doubt. All right. Well the big news, all right, ZipRecruiter finally went public on the New York stocks stock exchange on Wednesday under the ticker Zip, that sexy and entered the market at around $20 a share, which it went and below at one point, and then creeped back up to a little over $21 a share where it's a sort of hovering at the moment. ZipRecruiter management thinks the stock is worth around $25 a share, which will give the company a $3.3 billion valuation. It seems like things have settled at a roughly $2.8 billion valuation.
Joel (20m 52s):
Some headlines really touted the spike in price one Barron's headline read, quote, "ZipRecruiter stock surges on debut," end quote. And so Chad, after the Glassdoor head fake pre pandemic IPO, are you ready to buy some Zip?
Chad (21m 8s):
I have to give it to you. You called this about three years ago, right?
Joel (21m 12s):
And every year, since then.
Chad (21m 14s):
Zip's going IPO, I've got to say setting this up Zip is far in a way, the best brand in our space, period. They have the best brand. I, and I've also said on the show many times, I also believe Zip is a better, more evolved platform than Indeed. This is what Indeed should have become, right. Instead, Indeed, regressed into the early two thousands job board that it is today where Zip is more of a relevant delivery system of talent. So that the difference in their tech and models are stunning. Right? The big difference I think that we have to also elephant in the room is revenues.
Chad (21m 58s):
Indeed is obviously still killing it, but I'd buy there's no question you buy it now, buy it. Now, buy it fast because you have to remember, there's a lot of jobs that are going to be needed to fill. This is the time, right? So maybe early next year, take your buyout and sell all your stock.
Joel (22m 19s):
So this is when we say Chad and I are not financial experts or advisors, and don't take stock tips from us. Don't call us or tweet at us. Or sue us for God's sake.
Chad (22m 29s):
That'd be dumb.
Joel (22m 31s):
All right. So I have three takeaways from the ZipRecruiter IPO. I'm not nearly as bullish as you are. So my first take is, you know, this was not a disaster, but it also, wasn't a major firework show either. And I think that's indicative of the market we're in now in terms of you being a job site. And, I'll talk about brand for a second. And I think number three, but anyway, so this wasn't a disaster. You know, one of my takeaways was, you know, if Glassdoor sold for 1.5 billion a couple of years ago when I think investors. So I think investors are struggling with putting a $3 billion valuation on ZipRecruiter. And I think that sorta came out in the IPO.
Joel (23m 12s):
There's also significant competition. You mentioned Indeed killing it. And they are. So they have a lot of challenges in terms of finding growth. Although the economy is growing. I think they're going to have a nice 12 to 24 months to do that. They're also dealing with, we mentioned people coming to America. So whereas in ZipRecruiter is going to have to grow internationally where established players are. They're also going to have to, you know, manage the beachhead here in the U is you have players like Vonc and StepStone sort of knocking, knocking at the door. So, you know, it was sort of a meh 1st day. My second takeaway was that it was just sort of meh. So the Stock Twitch, was StockTwits, which is a pretty popular site where people talk about stocks and people can follow stocks.
Joel (23m 56s):
Now this is not a scientific commentary, but it was very telling that a name like ZipRecruiter, which is a brand name, people have seen the ads, they've heard the ads. They know, they know the name. There are out there. There are only about 400 people following ZipRecruiter at the end of yesterday, which is less than actually are following Dice.
Chad (24m 14s):
Wow.
Joel (24m 14s):
Which I thought was interesting people, people like Roadblocks and Slack and some of the more recent names have tens of thousands of followers. So I thought that was sort of telling of the market just saying like, eh, a job board. Okay, great. I think people would rather invest in Roadblocks or Snowflake or Snap or even Bitcoin. I think a job site IPO in the nineties, it was cool. It was.com. It was, you know, where the, where the world was going. There was no social media, there was no AI and all this other shit. So today I just don't think it's that exciting. Number three is I think this goes back to your point of tech, is that I think they're, I think they're losing the narrative that they're not a job board.
Joel (24m 55s):
I mean, they want to grab the quote "marketplace matchmaker", which was a quote that I had said in many interviews, but I'm not so sure the market is buying it until they're viewed as a tech company, they're gonna have a hard time capturing the interest of today's investor. So all these ads that people know of, you know, the bar owner with the flags of colleges in the background saying, Hey, I posted a job on ZipRecruiter. And I had, you know, the woman that was hired walks in, like everyone knows these ads, right? They need to, they need a marketing campaign to get people thinking of them as, you know, Workday or LinkedIn or a tech. Because as long as they're in this job board posting thing, I think it's going to be really hard for them to break out of that.
Joel (25m 39s):
So those are my three takeaways from Zip. I would, I would not buy. A that, not that I give advice. It might be a hold at this point. I think it probably hovers around the twenties for awhile. Maybe gets up to 30 if the economy really fires up and they have some good, some good quarterly earnings report, but it was exciting to see an IPO. And I think bigger picture is like, is, is this going to spur, you know, talent.com, who's rumored to be going public, or iCIMS, who's been who's been rumored to go public. Does this motivate them to do it quicker? I don't think it scared them, but I don't think it was awesome. I don't think it was, oh shit, we got to do it today. Kind of thing.
Chad (26m 18s):
I think iCIMS is going there. No matter what.
Joel (26m 20s):
Yeah. iCIMS is more in that Workday bubble then ZipRecruiter is like post jobs. Post jobs Isn't getting anybody excited on Wall Street. Yeah.
Chad (26m 30s):
They've got to be seen as, instead of a board, which is really a single dimension into more of a multi-dimensional type of platform. That's what people want to see, the tech the platform, instead of just like Trump's social media platform that turned into a blog.
Joel (26m 50s):
Yeah. Marketplace, marketplace matchmaker. That's kind of sexy, like push the hell out of that and show how it works, you know, like magic to match people to jobs and I think you got something. So we'll definitely be watching their progress in the months and years to come. So more in the news Jumpstart is now Canvas. Yes, Canvas. Diversity recruitment platform or DRP, I guess that'll be something I'll have to give to used to. I guess Jumpstart has rebranded as the new Canvas. Now listeners will know Canvas as a text recruiting solution. So Canvas was a bit of a strange rebrand from that perspective, although the brand Canvas that we know is more or less dead, the URL gocanvas.io now goes to job Jobvite.
Joel (27m 35s):
On a high note, the new Canvas actually owns canvas.com.
Chad (27m 41s):
Yeah. Having $20 million come in that doesn't hurt.
Joel (27m 44s):
It wasn't cheap, but you know, it was, is probably where that, so in addition to the rebrand, the company also announced 20 million in new funding led by Lachy Group and Sequoia Capital with participation from Four Rivers Capital. Prominent customers include Airbnb, Bloomberg, Coinbase, Lyft, Pinterest, Plaid, Roadblocks, Audible, and Stripe. Canvas intends to use the new funding, to expand the platform into other industries and verticals beyond technology and address the recruiting process for later stages of people's careers. The company currently has 70 employees and expects to have a hundred by the end of 21, the company was founded in 2017 and has raised a total of 32.7 million, according to Crunchbase.
Joel (28m 26s):
Chad DRPs. That's your lane, thoughts?
Chad (28m 31s):
Yeah. Obviously Jumpstart, now Canvas is they're trying to hit that DEI nail right on the fucking head, which, which, which I love. And generally I do not like additions or categories into our space because generally it just doesn't make any fucking sense. People are making things up. But in this case, the diversity recruiting platform, we don't have many of those. Now everybody wants to say that they can help, but companies like Oleo and possibly Verseeda are ones who really could fit in this niche. And there are so many companies who really focusing or they're focusing on DEI now I think that this is to me is a very welcomed category.
Chad (29m 14s):
Now, one word of warning for listeners and leaders who want to become more diverse, a tool and or platform by itself can not make your company diverse. And I say that from experience in building hiring platforms and programs more over watching Julie and disability solutions, the industry leader up close and personal actually help enterprise brands hire thousands of diverse individuals from, a talent pool. This is something that can help incredibly amplify your ability to target and hire diverse talent. But tech is never a silver bullet.
Chad (29m 56s):
So as we hear this from company after company platform, after platform, everybody's at adding DEI, this is one that I think is different. Don't get me wrong again with Oleo and VERCIDA, but overall, if your team is not ready, if your company's not ready to do business in a different way, no tech has gone to help. Yeah.
Joel (30m 17s):
What struck me was their client list. I mean, if you can tout Airbnb, Bloomberg Coinbase, Lyft, Pinterest, Plaid, Roadblocks, Audible, and Stripe, you're obviously doing something right. And I think for me, we sort of remember the anniversary of, of George Floyd and what happened last year. You know, I think some of us, some people thought, you know, the energy around DEI would subside that some, this would sort of be, you know, issued is your Trump out of office that this would sort of fade. And I don't, I don't think that it has, we've seen continuing engagement with the community and more money that goes into sort of curing this, this problem. And I think there's a generation, you know, behind us, that's really, really gonna push this initiative.
Joel (31m 1s):
And I think it's incredibly healthy. So, and, you know, in light of remembering George Floyd, I think it's fair to say that this is a movement that has taken hold and that companies that are supporting this initiative and companies like this that are getting on board. That it's hard to deny that this is where things are going and that companies that are providing solutions around DEI are going to be successful as long as they can provide what they're saying and deliver on what they promise.
Chad (31m 30s):
Well, and remember, we were hearing companies, I, we were just talking about, iCIMS talk about how they want to move to more DEI. To be quite Frank, I don't think they're ready, but this organization I think is, because they're built for it, right? It's, there's a difference in adapting and being built for it. Because remember, most people do not self identify during the application process. Most veterans, don't self identify most individuals with disabilities, race, gender, you, you, you're not getting the full picture of who's actually applying for a job. Although Oleo has done a great job in cracking that self ID issue, I believe Canvas has as well.
Chad (32m 10s):
And I believe Canvas is actually taking it a step further in being able to create an ecosystem where you can be found as well. So there are these great pieces of tech that are out there that want to say that they are quote unquote diversity enabled, or what have you. Right. But they weren't built for that. These types of platforms are actually built for it. So there's a big difference.
Joel (32m 35s):
Yeah. It's, it's not quite apples to apples, but it was sort of like, you know, jobs to web being SEO friendly. And then everyone else saying like, oh, we got SEO too. We did that shit too. But it was, it was in their DNA. And I think the companies that have the DNI in their DNA are going to be the ultimate winners in this wave. Nice.
Jobvite PROMO (32m 54s):
You know, Steve, it feels like we keep getting pushed to hire more and better candidates with no more budget. Right? I wish there was a way to get better results from what we're doing. Actually, I heard in episode of Chad and Cheese about this framework from Jobvite. Oh yeah. Evolve. It's a technology agnostic framework to help TA teams get better results from their recruiting efforts. And we don't even have to be a Jobvite by customer to use it. I bet we would get better results if we orchestrated all of our efforts. You mean like a centralized process and all of our channels working together? For sure, whether it's job boards, social, or even texting with candidates. Let's do that. jobvite.com/evolve.
Jobvite PROMO (33m 34s):
I'll send you the link. Cool. I'm going to finish watching this episode of Bridgerton.
Joel (33m 39s):
So you're not bingeing anything now, I assume?
Chad (33m 42s):
Just the Mare of Easttown. Yeah, yeah. Doing that. We started rewatching Modern Family again, because it's gotta be one of the funniest sitcoms ever. And I love it. So yeah. I mean that kind of stuff, waiting for new stuff to pop out on HBO Max and Netflix. We did watch Army of the Dead. Did you watch that?
Joel (34m 2s):
No, I haven't seen that yet. Okay. Definitely going to.
Chad (34m 5s):
Yeah. I think it would be a great dad and Cole, just you two. It is very violent, but I think that'd be awesome.
Joel (34m 14s):
Nice. We're watching, are you are watching Atypical?
Chad (34m 18s):
oh no.
Joel (34m 19s):
Okay. It's about a kid with Asperger's or anyway, it's good. I think it's on Netflix. Atypical. If you're looking for something. So more to the news. So listeners may remember this company Bright Hire and its CEO, Daddy Chestnut on firing squad. Check it out in the archives, if you haven't at Chadcheese.com, I won't ruin the episode, but we both were pretty okay with the company. So in the news this week, Bright Hire based in New York has raised 12.5 million in funding. Index ventures led the round with participation from next play ventures, which is led by LinkedIn chairman and former CEO. Jeff Wiener, interestingly and previous investors include Flybridge Capital and Ground Up Ventures.
Joel (35m 4s):
As well as HR experts, Laszlo Bock, and Rosanna Dorothy. Founded in 2019. Bright Hire had previously raised 3 million over two funding rounds, Bright Hires, technology records interviews, transcribes them and analyzes them with the goal of informing more equitable hiring decisions. With the new funding the company says it will invest in new tech integrations to meet users where they already work, which we obviously applaud and double down on how the technology can better, provide more equitable hiring with best practices. Interestingly, Bright Hire data revealed that when men interview women Bright Hire found that they, one take up 13% more of the total top time in the interviews.
Joel (35m 45s):
Two Speak 30% more words, overall. Three, have more have conversations that are 9% less interactive and four run with 6% longer monologues. Yes. Men suck. So Chad, we have another DEI play. You in?
Chad (36m 2s):
I think this is definitely more than DEI and Teddy and team have massive experience and connections in this space, which is something that you and I love to see because we see so many people from the outside coming in thinking that can change the world and then they take a dump, right? So just to mention of Laszlo Bock, Rosanna Dorothy, Jeff Wiener, I mean that doesn't even do them justice because those are some fucking amazing names, but Teddy and team have a much deeper connection with this space than most. So I see Bright Hire as more of an evolved version of HireVue.
Chad (36m 43s):
It's synchronous and asynchronous allowing a human to do the interview, have the discussion transcribed the video taped. To say that it's diversity, I don't believe because a lot of that has to do with training, right? It's just a tool. This is one of those where this is not built for diversity. This is built for efficiencies. This is built for better process methodologies, this is what we should be using tech for, but this is not a diversity play.
Joel (37m 11s):
Will according to their news release.
Chad (37m 13s):
Everybody's trying to spin, yeah, I love it. Don't get me wrong. I love it. I think it's great. If you listen to the firing squad that we did with Teddy.
Joel (37m 22s):
Don't ruin the episode. Make them listen to it, but these guys are definitely ones to watch. Congrats to them on one, the, I don't know the bench of talent and brainpower that they've collected with folks and what they have. So yeah, we'll be watching Teddy Chestnut, not related to Joey Chestnut, the famous speed eater.
Chad (37m 43s):
Or Mark Chestnut, not the country star.
Joel (37m 45s):
Mark Chestnut, there you go. Okay. Not related to any of those famous Chestnuts. He's blazing his own path of fame, Teddy Chestnut, and speaking of burning your own path. So remote working and pot in the news. So following a mad dash for employees to adapt to working remotely could the future of work be even more complicated? Many companies are trying to adapt to the new hybrid working world. Some are ruling out work from home on Mondays or Fridays while others are concerned about offices being too crowded on Thursdays. Meanwhile, recruiters say they're having difficulty finding workers who are willing to work five days in the office. Other workers are complaining about vague work from home policies or pandemic era work promises that have not been held.
Joel (38m 32s):
A CEO of Washington Media wrote an opinion piece this week, that business leaders had a strong incentive to change the status of staffers who are rarely in the office from full-time to contract or meanwhile job postings that offer quote "remote work have skyrocketed over the past year," according to an analysis from LinkedIn's economic graph team, as of May 20th, the percentages of paid remote job postings on LinkedIn grew 457% from the year earlier, the media and communications industry holds the highest percentage followed by software and IT. Overall 9.7% of listings across all industries now involve remote work up from barely 2% a year earlier.
Joel (39m 16s):
So Chad, what do you make of all this work from home chaos?
Chad (39m 19s):
Yeah. There's so many mixed messages we're seeing from the market, from employers, and then we're seeing all of these companies who don't want to pick between, you know, work from home, hybrid, I even saw an article this week around don't allow your employees to choose when they work from home. It's like, it's again, we talk about control versus autonomy, right? And the smartest thing here is to be able to provide autonomy. If you have employees who deserve the autonomy, the ones who are actually producing and they're doing their thing, provide them the autonomy to do what they're doing.
Chad (40m 1s):
The company who actually said, I think the, Washingtonian media, who said that they're looking at, you know, the prospect of changing full-time employees to contractors, that to me says nothing more than I hate my fucking employees. And, here's the thing employers out there listening today, step back, take a breath, a deep breath and realize that you are not in control here. This is something that you share with that individual. And when you try to be in control, so damn much, what you do is you push them away, which is probably why you're losing great talent and why we've heard that huge percentages of people are already looking at getting the fuck out as it is.
Chad (40m 52s):
So if you can't understand that your greatest asset is the talent in your organization, you want it. You will, you think your software is the greatest asset. No. Who actually fucking creates that, maintains it, obviously builds new features, so on and so forth, it's not the fucking software. It's the people, the people we have to understand is the heart to every single organization, not the fucking widget that you're putting out there, not your fucking stockholders, not your board, the people who are actually doing the fucking work, focus on them, understand that you treat them like humans and provide more autonomy and allow less control.
Joel (41m 34s):
Yeah. So, I've already referenced since we're turning 50, this week Back to the Future, I'm going to reference Ghostbusters. So there's a great scene in Ghostbusters where the scientists are locked up, the Ghostbusters are locked up and they play with the mayor to let them go. And Dr. Venkman says basically that the city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. And then the mayor says, what do you mean? And then Dr. Ackroyd's character says what he means is old Testament shit, brimstone coming down from the sky rivers, boiling, shit like that. Right. And then of course Murray's character comes in and says human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.
Joel (42m 18s):
So this feels like, man, this feels like that scene in the movie where nobody knows what the fuck is going on, advisors or whatever saying they think they know what's going on. When we first started this work from home thing, everyone was like work from home forever. Right? Twitter came out all these tech companies and it was like, you know what, get your ass back in the office. So then we had, you know, unions and organizations rise up and say like, you know what? We don't want to just come back to work or we don't want to have to petition, you organization about when we should work from home or how we should be able to work from home. And they don't necessarily want like, oh, we'll get Monday and Fridays off like Friday casual day.
Joel (42m 59s):
Right? So you have this force of the company that have these leases and they want control and they want the power and they want, you know, granted they want creativity in the office and they want all the good things that come with that. But then you have the workers who are like, you know what, that year at home, that was kinda nice. You know, being able to do what I want, eat from home, make a steak on the grill, whatever. So now it's cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. And I don't think how, I don't know how this is going to how this is going to play out. I guess every company is going to have their own thing. Companies with knowledge workers will be different than those with like, you know, warehouse workers and how that pans out. But this is indicative all the different sides of this story of how fucked up this issue is.
Joel (43m 45s):
And, I don't think we're anywhere near coming to some sort of settlement or standard with what work from home looks like.
Chad (43m 52s):
Yeah.
Joel (43m 53s):
So as a result Chad, it's no surprise that workers are getting high to take a little edge off from all this ruckus. The number of American workers testing positive for marijuana continues to rise according to the Wall Street Journal, about 2.7% of the roughly 7 million drug tests that go on with a company called Quest Diagnostics that were performed for employers in 2020 were positive for marijuana compared to 2.5 in 2019 and 2% in 2016 drug test, while less prevalent than in previous decades thanks to a shifting legal backdrop and changing cultural attitudes are still standard in some industries for new hires.
Joel (44m 35s):
However employers say removing marijuana testing is one way to quote more easily recruit workers. You think? In 2021. So Chad, you ready to toke up? Yeah. I'm surprised it's as low as 2.7% like that's a news story.
Chad (44m 51s):
Yeah, that's fucking crazy. But I mean, seriously message to employers stop testing for marijuana. I mean, it's fairly simple. If you're not doing a BAC test for alcohol, when somebody is coming through the door, don't be dumb. Just stop testing for marijuana. There's no reason for it, right? If somebody comes in the door and they smell like alcohol, what are you gonna do? You're gonna send them fuck home. Right? If somebody comes in, they smell like they've been token up. What are you going to do? It, send them to a fricking beanbag chair, give them some Cheetos about an hour and then send them off to work. They'll be fine, Jesus!
Joel (45m 26s):
By the way, just like we don't give financial advice, we also don't give legal advice. So please, don't create your background check policy based on this podcast. I'm sure anyone who's hiring teachers, bus drivers, truck drivers, don't listen to us. If the lawyers tell you that background check for a shit like that, then...
Chad (45m 45s):
Fucking fucking attorneys. Man, that's, that's one of the biggest issues we have in the workplace today
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JOB AD X PROMO (46m 37s):
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Chad (46m 45s):
So real quick, you were talking about atypical earlier, as well as a series that just came out I think with season two, that Julia and I love called Special. And if you haven't watched it, Joel, you and Christine? You and Christine watch it. It's about a young gay dude who has cerebral palsy and it is one of the funniest fucking sick. I mean, it's hilarious. You will die laughing.
Joel (47m 16s):
Nice, by the way, Atypical is autism not Asperger's. So when it gets on the spectrum, because I've got to see Julie this weekend and if I fuck up the wrong, you know, you know what I'm talking about? I don't want to get canceled, but if I piss off Julie, it's going to be a bad week. I don't want to get it's autism. Everybody watch Atypical for autism.
Chad (47m 38s):
Atypical or Special, do them both. Yes.
Joel (47m 41s):
Now we'll either of these be on our next new story. Amazon buys, there you go, MGM, the lion dude. This is gangster move dude, by your boy, Jeff.
Chad (47m 55s):
Yeah, I gotta say man, on his way out, he's definitely doing, he has a gangster move. We're talking about 4,000 movies and 17,000 TV shows. Now this in itself, I don't think it was a full response because the content wars are on. There's no question. Netflix is winning that right now, but Amazon had to do this because AT&T who's trying to catch up as well announced that Warner media would be spun off and combined with Discovery. The deal brings together a bunch of different brands like Warner Brothers, Discovery channel, HBO, CNN, HGTV. It's about to heat up.
Joel (48m 35s):
Oh, it's red hot baby. So, so the, the crowning jewel of this deal was a James Bond, but also included Rocky, the Handmaid's Tale, Robocops, one of our show favorite, Legally Blonde and the epics TV Network.
Chad (48m 53s):
Wow!
Joel (48m 54s):
8.4, $8.5 billion is a lot of cabbage. Yeah. The world seems to be coming down to who owns your attention. Yes. And nothing gets attention like great content that you and I binge on on a regular basis. If companies can leverage content for a monthly recurring revenue and can talent and continue selling you shit via their platforms, then it's it's winner take all. You know, Disney, Apple, Amazon are just three that in addition to content, they sell you shit, right? They sell you hardware. They sell you packages, you know, shit that comes to your door. They sell you trips to Orlando and they all gain in two ways of, yeah, you're paying monthly revenue, but now you're also buying their shit. And it's fun to watch Apple originals and how much Apple shit gets into these shows.
Joel (49m 38s):
If Amazon can raise pricing, for example, on their 200 million prime subscribers, another let's call it 20 to 25% over the next decade. Then this was a deal that costs them nothing, because they're going to make that money on recurring revenue, just from people using Prime. I think you mentioned Netflix being in the pole position. And I think that you're right, but I think it's getting to a point where too many of these companies like peacock and a few others, it's like they're bringing a pea shooter to a Howitzer fight. And Netflix, I think, has to make a move like by Roku or by the rails in some degree to make their position solid. Because these companies that own the world, let's be honest, are making some really big buys to take aim at Netflix.
Joel (50m 22s):
So I think they have to make a big move at some point, but they're definitely in the discussion as well. But it's very interesting to watch. It's sad that that all these services were built on saving money and I'm paying like two X. What I used to pay for Direct TV. It's like such a racket, but yeah, we all pay.
Chad (50m 43s):
This into context real quick. So 4,000 films, 17,000 TV shows less than 8.5 billion. And how much did Microsoft pay for LinkedIn?
Joel (50m 59s):
$26.2 billion.
Chad (50m 60s):
Think about that. All that content, less than 9 billion, LinkedIn, more than double MGM and the catalog.
Joel (51m 8s):
And would you rather have James Bond or Jeff Weiner?
Chad and Joel (51m 15s):
We Out.
OUTRO (52m 8s):
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.