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Work from home is a thing. Maybe you've heard. This means vendors hoping to support employers with a remote workforce have a lot of tailwinds going in the right direction. However, like most things, there are going to be big winners and some big losers, and everything in between. That brings us to BeRemote, a startup hoping to take advantage of this red hot trend. Do they have what it takes to survive Firing Squad? Gotta listen to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Firing Squad INTRO (0s): Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel (22s): Oh yeah. I'm about five cups of coffee and I am ready for some firing squad. What's up everybody? This is your favorite guilty pleasure. The Chad and Cheese podcast. I am your cohost Joel Cheeseman joined as always by my partner in crime Chad Sowash. Chad (38s): Hello. Joel (38s): Today, we welcome a new victim today. We welcome Vivek Nigam. He is the founder and CEO of BeRemote. Vivek welcome to firing squad. Vivek (48s): Thank you. Thank you. Great to meet you guys. Joel (51s): Outstanding. We're happy to have you here. So before we get into the business side of this podcast, let our listeners know a little bit about Vivek. Who are you? Vivek (1m 0s): Sure? My name's is Vivek Nigam. I'm up here in a frigid cold Connecticut and sorry yeah, I don't blame you. Many years ago, I ran a tech startup down in the DC area with, for a nice positive exit. Worked for some big companies for many, many years. I'm married to my high school sweetheart, went to the senior prom together for many, many years and have two kids kind of grown up and although their home and due to the pandemic, but they're grown and on kind of on their own. So. Chad (1m 35s): Nice. Joel (1m 35s): So your life is a hallmark special basically is what you're saying. Vivek (1m 40s): And some people do say that. Chad (1m 42s): It's more like the Walton's there. They're all still at home. Joel (1m 50s): Night, John boy. Amazing. Now let's tell him what he won Chad. Chad (1m 55s): Alright Vivek, you will have two minutes to pitch, BeRemote. At the end of the two minutes, you're going to hear that bell then Joel and I are going to hit you with rapid fire Q and A. At the end of Q and A you're going to receive one of three of these ratings. Number one, big applause, Australia, just granted you entry and you have a great chance on winning the title. Tennis clap. You're stuck in quarantine, but focusing on the right decisions can get you back on the court and last but never least the firing squad, your ass just got sent home. Chad (2m 35s): Don't pass go. Don't collect $200, trash it and move along smartly. That's firing squad. You ready to go? Vivek (2m 45s): I'm ready. Joel (2m 45s): All right. Vivek in three, two. sfx (2m 47s): Ding, ding, ding. Vivek (2m 47s): All right. So the pandemic accelerated the widespread adoption of remote work, but instead of taking advantage of this opportunity to improve how we work, most organizations simply took their offices online along with the bad habits, have permeated them. As a result, employees are feeling more stressed than ever. In fact, a third of workers are feeling disconnected from company culture and their colleagues. 74% of workers will leave their current jobs that they found more flexible options elsewhere and cross team collaboration, which is the number one source of innovation has declined by 25%. For example, if two folks are in finance and they're still working well together, remotely, but now the serendipity of someone from finance, bumping into someone from marketing has plummeted. This is what we have BeRemote called "innovation decay." Vivek (3m 31s): So we created a platform called ReTeam that is designed to reduce meetings, facilitate innovation, improve team participation, and ultimately increase employee retention. And among our use cases, the three most popular are first reduce meetings. So leaders are spending 80% of the day in virtual meetings. And instead of back-to-back in person meetings now they're back-to-back zoom calls. We have several clients that have been able to reduce five hours of meetings every week using ReTeam. Second improve innovation ReTeam suite of tools makes ideation intuitive, effective, and better for hybrid Teams. We use a process called "iterative ideation," and I've found that ideas can be developed in days and weeks, rather than months and quarters. Vivek (4m 15s): And the third is increasing team participation. So increasing employee participation can be directly correlated to an increase in profit margins and retention. And some of our early clients have seen an average of 30% increase in team participation. We have a standalone web app. Our mobile app As available in apple and Android. We've integrated into the Microsoft Teams app store, and we're working on developing integrations with Zoom and RingCentral. And to learn more, you can go to BeRemote.com or drop us an email at info@beremote.com. Joel (4m 49s): Very nice. That was tight. You've rehearsed that obviously. Vivek (4m 52s): I actually wrote a couple of things down. Joel (4m 54s): All right. Vivek my first question is you have a fairly illustrious career in insurance, according to your LinkedIn profile, you were at Hartford, Travelers, Aetna, correct? Vivek (5m 5s): Yep. Joel (5m 6s): So what does an insurance guy get into the employment industry for? What was the origin for this? You seem like you had a nice little life there in the insurance company business. Vivek (5m 16s): Yeah. So contrary to what some of my friends liked to tease me about, I didn't actually sell insurance. I actually managed Teams and did some, you know, technology and IT work. Interesting thing is that when you're in that space, you're dealing with a lot of different cultures and, you know, you do remote Teams quite a bit. And what I was found is that people who were social, they tended to do better and people who weren't, they tend to get left behind. So started this journey about five years ago, just talking about leveling the social playing field across cultures. And that's really where it started. When the pandemic hit, we pivoted and said, you know, we've got the foundation to help with team participation, but we thought there was so much more to do. And so now we focused more on just making hybrid Teams, more effective, reducing meetings and innovation and things like that. Joel (6m 1s): So from the looks of it, this is a totally bootstrapped organization. Is that correct? Or have you raised money that just sort of is family, friends, smaller rounds? Vivek (6m 10s): Mostly family, your friends and angels, we raised about $300K and a good amount of bootstrapping in there too, but yeah, that's been our raise to date. Joel (6m 20s): Now was their plans to raise money or are you going to continue to be a bootstrap organization? Grow organically? Vivek (6m 28s): Our intention is to operate through revenue obviously, but yeah, we will probably do a series A most like in the second quarter of this year and hoping to lead up to that. Joel (6m 39s): Okay. Chad (6m 39s): Well, off of that, how many clients do you have currently and what are your revenues looking like? Vivek (6m 44s): Yeah, so we have, we have about 10 clients today and revenue's are small, so we don't have the exact numbers, but that they're not something that's going to make us a public company, but we're growing. We've got people that are, you know, we've got some large insurance companies, we've got some law firms, we've got some technology companies and we're learning a lot through all of these, these processes and yeah. And we're early in this stage of getting some good conversions. Chad (7m 17s): Okay. Well tell me about your prior exit, what was the product and what was the industry? Vivek (7m 21s): Oh, you're gonna love this. This is so, so cutting edge for, for today, but this is 1994 when the internet was very young and literally our intention was to put yellow pages on the web. Nothing today, but back in the day, people didn't have domain names. They were on like their ISP slash business name, Chad (7m 47s): AOL? Vivek (7m 47s): AOL, exactly. Right. And so really we build technology to spider out and the pages and just determine who is a personal page, who is a business page and then link them to their yellow pages listing. Sounds like nothing. But, you know, back in the day, that was quite a challenge. And, you know, we sold the company to AOL. They wanted us for our business taxonomy of all things and our search capabilities. Chad (8m 9s): Very nice, very nice. Joel (8m 13s): Fair enough. You were Craig before Craigslist is what you're saying. So my initial thought when I saw this thing was, holy shit, these guys just brought a pistol to a Howitzer fight. You have a ton of competition, whether it be Slack and the apps in Slack, Teams, Poly Disco, Work Human. I mean, there's just a lot of competition. Vivek (8m 36s): Sure. Joel (8m 37s): You obviously get the question in sales. Like, how are you different? So what is the answer to that question? Vivek (8m 42s): Yeah. And so let me, let me address a couple of those right there. So like a people like Teams and Zoom and Slack, we don't want to compete with them in that, like we view them as platforms that we can, we can compliment. And so our implementation with Microsoft Teams is actually pretty interesting where we'll let them do the live meetings and we want them to have the live meetings there. What we do is we're based on social science, right. And did a lot of this research before we started the company just to figure out how people interact and what's the best way to get them to interact. And that's all those processes are built into what we do. We're hoping to compliment things like Slack, things like Zoom and build tools that now can take meetings off the calendar and help you communicate and prepare and follow up on meetings. Vivek (9m 33s): Now, a lot of the companies, they are trying to get more meetings and because that's how they get their utilization. We are going the other way. We are trying to reduce the number of meetings to kind of change the management style of it. I think we've got something here. We are, our politics and our implementations are strong, some good positive results. And yeah, I mean, I think it's really a matter of continuing to run fast. Chad (9m 58s): Okay. Joel (9m 58s): So you, you handled the platform question pretty well. Now talk about the direct competition, the Discos, the Work Humans, et cetera. Vivek (10m 8s): Sure, so a lot of the competitors have focused on one or another or a handful of features that there's people that just do a water cooler or people that just do, you know, pure recognitions and things like this. What we're doing is trying to put all these together. And as we've gone through the politics where we're adding to it and building onto it, all of these together build greater what I like to call team cohesion is a little bit too much of buzzwords. We talked about team participation. And so all of these put together have improved the team participation. There's multiple ways to reduce meetings. We think that's an advantage for us. Some of the algorithms that we have underneath are designed to help improve that participation. Vivek (10m 51s): And we're hoping that we can continue to improve it to, you know, to be more effective learning than the competitors. Joel (10m 57s): So when can we expect to see an app on Slack or Teams or some other platform? Vivek (11m 2s): We do have an integration to Slack. It's an arm's length into integration where it's just messaging back and forth. So if you're in Slack and you're in ReTeam, and there's an activity and ReTeam will show up in Slack, not super compelling, we'd like to make that more compelling. Microsoft Teams is live. So if you're in Microsoft Teams, you can search for ReTeam and install it and start using it. And we did that largely because we got challenged from companies are saying that they don't want another application. So now we're saying is, if you're already in Teams, you don't have to install something new. You enable us in Teams, you can begin using it. And that's also the approach to get into Zoom and to RingCentral, we've got a couple of big companies that we're working with that are big brands, RingCentral implementations. Vivek (11m 47s): And I think that platform is actually pretty interesting. Joel (11m 50s): And how are the apps going? I mean, I know I checked the app store on my iPhone and you guys don't have any reviews. I know 10 customers, but what are you saying with the app, the app stores that you're leveraging right now? Vivek (12m 6s): Yeah, so we sell one-to-one. And so really it's not a wide outbound marketing campaign, so we're not looking for people to just to discover us and download and start playing games and things like that. Right? So it's really about, we talked to two customers and then when they download it, they'll use either the app, the web app, or one of the Microsoft Teams implementations. We have a nationwide law firm that's using it that actually is doing all of them. They're in Teams, but so they use it within Teams. And, but they've got clients and customers that are in all of the different platforms. So some are an Android or in Apple, some are on the web. Vivek (12m 48s): So that's really been the more interesting implementation. So again, not surprised we don't have reviews or because we're not, we're not going direct to consumer marketing at this point. . Chad (12m 59s): Okay. So Joel's fine with your platform answer. I'm not. I'm not even close to find because Slack and Teams, which I use, it seems like I can do every single thing. I can create wellness channels. I can create team channels. I can create all these different channels. I can use calling. I can put videos, I can drop emojis, this, I mean, I can do all these things, Vivek. So I guess my question is, are you focusing on all the others who might actually buy you as a feature to compete with Slack and Teams? Because it seems like I can do all of this within those two big platforms. Vivek (13m 35s): Yeah. You know, and aspirationally, I wouldn't be a CEO and, you know, and founding this company without some aspirations say, I think we can be better, but I do believe that we are better. I've looked at all the different components that are in Microsoft Teams. And what we find when we talk to companies, there are a few people that are using some more advanced things, and they're doing the processes that, that we actually advocate, but those are manual processes. Right? What we do is enable you to make those a lot better. So you don't have to always be the one to do every single little piece of it. Chad (14m 17s): Well give me an example. Give me a specific example of how it's easier in your platform versus the manual piece on a Slack or Teams. Vivek (14m 22s): Yeah. I'll give you a very simple one. So we have something called a team video and something we're a big fan of and something that a lot of people use. And the concept on the surface is pretty, pretty simple, which is you set a topic, say, give me an update for, for this Teams meeting, everyone records their updates. We stitch it together into a long video and, or you can watch them individually and there go one meeting on your calendar comes off and comes into ReTeam. A lot of people can get success with that. Chad (14m 55s): Gotcha. Vivek (14m 55s): Yeah. So now that has multiple factors to it. Not just have you taken a meeting off your calendar, but you've improved your participation. You got some additional statistics that go along with what was the effective, what wasn't effective. You can use it for multiple different ways. Chad (15m 7s): So talk to me about your go to market on the sales side of the house. Are you going to bone up and try to go company by company, are you going to go channel partnerships with some of these bigger companies, how how's that going to work for you? Vivek (15m 22s): Yeah. Where we are in our maturity, we are, are going one-to-one right. So we're just, we're building out a sales team and, and expanding that sales team as well. And Billy it's going through contacts and then conversations and meetings with some larger companies. And that's our approach today. We would love to grow into and I think this is an area of growth for us, grow into being a partner. If I can get to be part of the distribution of, you know, RingCentral or somebody like that, and be a part of their standard offering and, you know, kind of do some combined sales with them. We'd love to get there. Vivek (16m 3s): We're not there yet. Joel (16m 4s): What in your mind is the ideal client? You mentioned big companies. Is there an industry that you're maybe targeting, people listening, you know, asking themselves, is this a product for me? Like what kind of target audience are you looking for with this product? Vivek (16m 19s): Yeah. Great, great question. So, you know, initially we started off talking about technical teams, development teams, right. IT types of teams. So, and, and why, because the tapping tend to BeRemote. They tend to be multicultural. They tend to have all these social issues. We, you know, languages and things like that. So that's what we had started. And we do have a couple of companies that are basically staff augmentation companies and development companies that are using this and getting, getting good success. What we found is that, and I think the pandemic probably helped is that people who have hybrid workplaces, there's applications for all of them, and really it's a matter of, you know, do you need to innovate? And are you suffering with that? Do you have too many meetings because now everyone's out of sight. Vivek (17m 3s): So everyone wants to have a meeting all the time and there's an opportunity to reduce meetings. So we think the market is large, but we definitely are looking at hybrid workplaces. So if everyone's all in the office or it needs to be in the office, there are manufacturing, you know, on the floor. We're not an application for them, but if you're a hybrid workforce where you can, where you're meeting online, we think that's our sweet spot. Joel (17m 27s): So you mentioned global, is this a product that can be used in any country? Any language what's the breakdown on that? Vivek (17m 34s): Yeah, so we are English only today. However, you know, some of our developers are, do have a right to left language, right? They're in some of those countries, we've looked at that. Now, a lot of what we communicate with, even though there is a good text base to it, is audio and video. The team participation really just is so much better with audio and video. So it, in some, some respects diminishes the need to talk about implementing language, because you're communicating in whatever language that you want, in those formats. But we do need to expand to multiple languages. We're going to start with some of the, you know, Western languages, you know, Spanish and things like that. Vivek (18m 18s): But we want to get to some of the far Eastern languages as well, still on our roadmap. Chad (18m 24s): Vivek, being a leader, whether it's sales leader or managing tech Teams, whatever, I always hated meetings. And I always reduce them and I didn't have a tool like this. So my point is that if you're a good leader, a great leader, you don't need a tool to reduce meetings. You just need a brain right now from a communication standpoint, this definitely helps, but your pitch feels like you're trying to make shitty leaders into good leaders, and that's not what tech's going to do. Right? It's just really just going to scale the shittiness. So my question to you is, if it's all about just reduction of really meetings and being able to get five hours back that, would you agree with me that has more to do with the human and the choice than it does the tech? Vivek (19m 15s): Great point. Now we are trying not to sell just the technology. We have a process, right? And, you know, we've started toying with the idea of calling it, you know, being your Chief Remote Officer. We want to educate, we want to show how these things could work. Someone actually said to me, you know, you guys are actually promoting a new management style. And I think there's validity to that. That's ambitious, right? That's, that's not it that wasn't the intent. There are processes built in here that will encourage people to, aspirational, I'll say to be better managers, to be better coaches. And you're the kind of led me into one of the items on our roadmap. Vivek (19m 57s): You know, managers need to be better coaches and mentors. And one of the major components in our roadmap is putting a better platform and therefore coaching and mentoring internally. We're not gonna solve all those problems immediately, but we would like to have the team be empowered to take care of itself. So a lot of what you see in the platform is, you know, data and insights that the whole team has visibility to. So they can encourage themselves to be better direct. We're laying the foundation. I'm hoping we don't end up with crappy leaders becoming just crappy online leaders. Right. Chad (20m 35s): Scaling the shit, man. Vivek (20m 36s): Actually, I like that. I want to use that. Chad (20m 38s): It's all yours. Joel (20m 40s): He has it. He has it trademarked already. So you'll have to pay him a royalty for them. Vivek (20m 46s): We'll footnote your name on it. Joel (20m 49s): Yeah. Chad asked about the sales strategy. I want to ask about the marketing strategy. Vivek (20m 53s): Sure. Joel (20m 54s): Certainly as an outsider, just looking in, it seems really disparate. I mean, the site is obviously not cutting edge. I'm probably not telling you anything that you don't know. Design could do some work. You know, you have, you have a link to the blog and the main navigation, and you have a whole of three blog posts in your blog. You have every social media outside of TikTok and Snapchat, which seems really unfocused to me. I'm not sure why you would think Instagram was something that you could leverage. So tell me about your marketing strategy, how you're going to build the brand and obviously compete with some of these high rollers and guys with bigger wallets than you. Vivek (21m 37s): Yep. And all of your insights are accurate. We've toyed with different things as we've grown. And what we're doing today is we are still at the one-to-one, you know, meetings trying to reach out and, you know, it's a very heavy, heavily person and time intensive. We do need to get a broader marketing strategy, we just haven't defined that yet. We'll look for some results. Now, the two major activities going on right now, we have an advisor who is a professor at UConn, and she's been helping us with, you know, validating the assertions that we have and the processes that we're using. And we're got some clinical research going on with University of Miami, Ohio, and Pepperdine, looking at before and after results with some of our clients. Vivek (22m 21s): And so that we can get independent results. Once we have those independent results, we think at that point, we want to do a marketing blitz and all of this is going to get cleaned up. But that at that point, we'll have some clinical research and some results that I think we'd be very proud of. And we can, we can get out there. We're hoping to have that within the next couple of months. Joel (22m 46s): Okay. You mentioned advisor advisory board. Talk about the team. You have a co-founder it looks like, or another maybe developers side. Are you looking to grow the team and exactly what positions are you hoping to fill? Vivek (22m 58s): Yeah. Great. We have, our development team has been intact for some time. That's about 10 people strong. We've been growing our customer success and sales teams. We have about five people on that side today. We need to grow that. Then that's really, when we get to series A, because some additional investment, I want to really focus on the marketing and the sales. I'm comfortable right now with where we are on the development velocity. Right. So how fast we're going and what we're expanding on that side, we'll probably invest more on the data analytics and, you know, we want to operate, be able to use that those data analytics to operationalize sales features in the application. But yeah, the focus is going to be mainly on, I would say on the data side and on the marketing and sales side and we are definitely looking to grow. Chad (23m 47s): Okay. So all of this together, especially when you are trying to bootstrap this baby, you need some revenues. So what's the pricing on this? What's, what's a company going to pay, how are they going pay? Vivek (23m 59s): Yeah. So what we've been charging to date is $600 per user per year. And it's pretty low pricing. We don't want pricing to be an obstacle today, and that seems to be pretty effective. Joel (24m 11s): Sorry did you say 60 bucks per person per year? Vivek (24m 16s): Per year. Joel (24m 17s): Okay. Just making sure I heard that correct. Vivek (24m 20s): I know it's low, right? We're expecting that to increase. And, but at this phase, we are still looking at getting adoption. We're still looking at getting learnings and really understanding and making it better. That's where we today. Joel (24m 35s): Alright. Vivek that bell means you get to face the firing squad. Vivek (24m 40s): Wait let me take cover. All right. Joel (24m 41s): Yeah. Take a little cover. Dig that fox hole a little deeper. I'm going to go ahead and go first, my initial thought in terms of bringing a pistol into a tank fight, I think still holds true. Now, if you had had a series A round and you know, you had $20 million in the bank or something, then that opinion might change. But I think it's a really tough road for you. I think there are established players. I think there are brands that people recognize. And I do think the marketing is an issue. I mean, I think if people go to a website and it looks like something that is sorta chintzy, then that is a point against you. Joel (25m 27s): If not multiple points, depending on who goes, goes to the site. And obviously that's about as simple as it is. I think that if you're going to make this thing work, you're going to have to pivot to a particular segment that you can customize your solution to. Whether that be, you mentioned RingCentral. I don't know if that's a niche that you can do. I mean, there's healthcare, there's manufacturing. Like you have to get really laser focused in a particular area, in my opinion, to make this thing work. Because if you're just going against the people with a lot of money and the brands that people know, I don't think you have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving. So in the current state, you're going to have to pivot really hard somewhere. Joel (26m 9s): I hope you raise the money. I hope you get the talent to come on board in terms of marketing, the sales piece and obviously development, which you're going to have to, you know, bring the A game in terms of competitiveness on that. But for me, it's nothing personal. I'm a been doing this a long time and I've seen a lot of businesses like yours. I think you can turn it around, but as for right now. sfx (26m 34s): Machine gun bullets Joel (26m 36s): You're going to get the guns from me Vivek. Vivek (26m 40s): All right. All right. Appreciate it. Joel (26m 43s): Maybe Chad has a different outlook. Chad (26m 44s): Well, Vivek, I love your passion for this idea, but I think it's about three years too late. And the only thing worse than being too early to market is being too late. And I've said this before on the show, technology cannot solve issues like leadership, right? Technology cannot build a strong team, but it can be the glue of that team. Communication means everything, but you need great leaders and technology cannot build great leaders. Now that being said, remote is the future. It is, and it's not going to go away. But the competition, Slack and Teams, they're talking about the big boys. It's not really your choice, whether you are going to compete with them or not. Chad (27m 29s): That's their choice, right? They they've got the cash and they can go in any direction that they want fast, but it's early for you. It's very early for you. And now that there are many other platforms that are out there who want to compete with the big names, I believe you have an opportunity to be able to partner with those organizations. Not direct, we're talking about partnership, and go to market and really look for a good exit. You've done an exit before. You've had an exit before, not in this industry, but you understand what that looks like. The opportunity is yes, partnering with Teams and Slack from an integration standpoint, but that only makes it much better for all of those others who are not Teams and Slack for you to look for an exit and look for some traction, you are up against the wall, but I'm going to hit you with the tennis clap. Chad (28m 22s): I think there's something there. Remote is big, but your focus has to be laser. Vivek (28m 28s): Very good. I appreciate it! Joel (28m 28s): Oh, he's still alive. Making sure we didn't actually kill him. Vivek man, we love startups and we love shining a light on your business. You obviously have some work to do so I'm gonna let you go. But before I do that, I'm gonna let, give you a chance one more time to let our listeners know where they can find out more about BeRemote. Be Be Remote. Vivek (28m 47s): I appreciate it. Yeah. Go to our website and we'll be working on it. It's a BeRemote.com. And if you feel like drop an email info at beremote.com and one of our team members will pick that up and well talk to you. Chad (29m 4s): Gotcha. I would've thought that Joel would have liked the logo because it looks like a cassette tape. Joel and Chad (29m 9s): We out, we out. Firing Squad OUTRO (29m 10s): This has been the Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese Podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today. That's www.chadcheese.com.

The Cult Brand series of podcasts have been some of the most popular episodes in the portfolio. Yeti, Chili's, Airbnb, and others have joined Chad & Cheese on the mic to discuss the importance of the brand. Post-pandemic, we're back with a whole new attitude and outlook on the employment brand. Buckle-up, boys, and girls. We have a new partner, a new cohost, and a new focus that's going to take the employment brand to a whole new level. Want to know more? Gotta listen to this live-from-a-bar trailer. Enjoy! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (25s): Oh shit. Ok, you ready? Joel (28s): Wait, we're not alone? Chad (35s): We've been recording. We'll be hearing this maybe. Julie (37s): Oh we're live already? Joel (37s): Or maybe the better finish this up before I finished my polar bear kisses 100% stout. What's up Tess? Chad (46s): Polar bear kisses. I'm going to be calling you in a minute, but I got to do it when we're actually recording so that we can get it because you've got to get some test time. Right? Joel (59s): Nascent test time. Julie (59s): Good answer. Chad (59s): She was so reminds me of my daughter. Joel (1m 3s): She has the necklace from men and black. Remember the necklace the cat hat on with the galaxy and the necklace. That's her necklace. Julie (1m 9s): Those are really in now where you put your crystals inside their containers? Joel (1m 14s): Oooo, you're hip. Julie (1m 17s): Yes. Joel (1m 17s): Are you a Wiccan? Are you a Salem's lot. Chad (1m 22s): Support all? Julie (1m 23s): I support all beliefs. Chad (1m 24s): You believed those ladies who should not have been burned at the stake? Julie (1m 33s): Yes. Joel (1m 33s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody. We are live. This is your favorite guilty pleasure. The Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel "polar bear kisses" Cheeseman. Chad (1m 44s): I'm Chad, "give me another wheat ale" Sowash. This is fucking awesome. I love this! Joel (1m 51s): What pandemic? We're in a brewery in Indiana. Indianapolis enjoying some beers and Chad. Chad (1m 54s): Yes? Joel (1m 55s): It's good to be back. Chad (1m 57s): It is good to be back. Joel (1m 60s): Good to be back. And it's even better to welcome a very special mystery guests with us today. Chad (2m 5s): What? Mystery. Joel (2m 6s): What are, what are you drinking Mr. Guest? Before we get to you, this is like the dating game. See if you can guess who it is by her voice saying what beer she's drinking? Is that the dragonfly? Julie (2m 18s): The place that I would prefer to be, Campside. Joel (2m 23s): I like it. Chad (2m 24s): That's a good beer. So we are at Upland Brewing Company in Fountain Square, Indianapolis, if you don't know, Fountain Square, if you have watched HGTV. Yes. I'm one of those guys, the Good Bones, a little red head. I can't remember what her name is. Her and her mom. They're doing like the, all the retro styling. Yeah. Joel (2m 45s): Any HGTV, you know the show, you know this show. Chad (2m 49s): We're literally around here. They probably actually built this fucking, Upland. Joel (2m 52s): This is a brewery that originated in Bloomington where Indiana University is and Chad lives a hop, skip, and a jump away from beautiful Bloomington, Indiana. And we have our own offices. Chad (3m 2s): Yeah, we have our own. Everybody has an Upland here. Julie, do you have a? Joel (3m 11s): Julie drinking campsite? Julie (3m 13s): Am I on this show? I feel like I'm just sitting here watching. Oh yes, that's right I'm here. Chad (3m 22s): Gotta get a sense, right? Julie (3m 23s): Yes. Yes. So hi, I'm Julie Kelly. Chad (3m 26s): AKA Jules. Julie (3m 27s): Yes. Many knew me as Chief Marketing Officer at Recruitex, Joel (3m 30s): The artist formerly known as the Chief Marketing Officer of Recruitex. Julie (3m 35s): Yes, but my role has changed. I am now President of Recruitment at marketing.com, which I'm really excited about is going to be a resource and destination for the recruitment marketing community. I've always been passionate about recruitment marketing. And what I'm really excited about is now I have an opportunity to help others elevate. I would say probably at a time within my lifetime that has been in the most need for people to get some support and how to actually hire people while we're in a talent shortage. Chad (4m 7s): So this is going to be a content platform, social platform, tons of content. People bring their own content with them. You guys are going to have content. How does this whole thing work? Because we all know that let's say, for instance, most of these platforms are actually like on Facebook or LinkedIn, right? So what's going to make this different, how's this going to be different? Joel (4m 29s): Please tell me you're going to curate some of the crap that might show up on this site. Chad (4m 33s): Thanks that was more direct. Julie (4m 35s): Yes. Facebook is the bar, right? It's where we all go to hang with our friends and you know, do the things, you know, let our hair down and relax. And Joel (4m 44s): You don't want to know what Chad and I do at bars. Julie (4m 48s): Is not the place where we're trying to position ourselves in our professional careers, right? We use LinkedIn for that, but that's what LinkedIn is, right. It's where we go and we position ourselves and our professional careers and you know, anybody that's in social media is whether you're trying to be your authentic self or not. You are still managing a perception that the world has a view in social media. But when you really want to connect with people and talk about the things that have to do with your career, but you're also creating vulnerability to learn. You need a safe place to do that. So you may not feel comfortable in that bar setting on Facebook, being vulnerable about your career and the things that you're trying to learn and the evolution that you need to have to help you maintain your career or support your company and their objectives. Julie (5m 40s): And you might not want to put that right out there, you know, shout that out in LinkedIn, but you need a place where you can go and talk to people that are like-minded. Right? You don't, you don't want to be bombarded by salespeople. If you're like, Hey, I'm looking for a new ATS. Next thing you know, you've got 7,000 people inboxing you in your LinkedIn profile. Like, Hey, I can sell you one. Joel (6m 2s): So will there be product reviews? Julie (6m 4s): Yeah. We have do intend to have product reviews that are authentic from the users. Chad (6m 12s): Yeah. I like that. Well, let's go ahead and talk about the second announcement that we have today. Joel Cheesman. We are actually starting up. That's right kids. Joel (6m 21s): Restarting. Chad (6m 21s): My bad restarting. I've had too many beers. Hey, Tess, we'res Tess at. I need another beer. Joel (6m 30s): Get him a Teddy bear kisses, please. Chad (6m 33s): No, God, no. We are restarting the Colt brand series in a new format, kids, new format, and Jules is going to be installed as the third chair. Joel (6m 49s): Guess who's back? Back again. Cult Brand's back. Tell a friend. Chad (6m 54s): Our cult brand series kids. Big applause. So, so we're doing this obviously recruitmentmarketing.com wanted to be involved. Why? A couple of idiots talking about cult brands better. Joel (7m 6s): What better partner to have the new recruitmentmarketing.com to get a parade of professionals? Chad (7m 10s): Parade. I like that. Joel (7m 12s): You like that? I was going to say potpouri, but I went with parade. Parade of professionals to talk about these issues that are important to so many people in an age where work from home, pandemic, diversity, so many issues that companies are worried about. We're going to talk about those issues and get to the bottom of solutions. Yeah. Chad (7m 33s): This series is actually going to take a little bit of an evolutionary turn from the last where we talked to CMOs, we talked to brand leaders, big, big companies, big voices. And now what we're going to do is we're going to focus more on how talents is the center of every single thing we do in every organization, revenue, marketing, everything that we do. And we're going to bring in brand leaders to be able to have those discussions. So this is an evolutionary step. Tell us what you think about that and what do you want to get out of this? Julie (8m 10s): Yes. This, this makes me so excited because it is incredible. The things that many companies have done, so many companies have become so innovative and tried new things. There are so many great stories, untold stories that nobody knows about of these awesome opportunities to do new things, new ideas. People were forced because of pandemic and challenge shortages. The rapid evolution of the recruitment marketing industry and the technology. People are trying new things and these outstanding stories need to get out there so we all can learn from each other from them. I am blessed through the experiences that I've had to meet so many of these great companies, and I am thrilled to join the show and I hope to provide opportunity to them, to come in and tell their stories, but also to share their challenges. Joel (9m 2s): Everyone loves a good comeback story. To me, this is a comeback story. When the pandemic hit, who got hit the hardest and the fastest, it was the brand folks. It was marketing folks and they're back, baby. They're back better than ever. Chad (9m 14s): Guess who's back? Joel (9m 15s): And we're going to serve them up the content that they're longing for, that they need and that they want. And I couldn't be more excited. This is an underdog story that everyone should get behind in my opinion. Chad (9m 30s): And we're excited to be able to do cult brand, because we love brand no question. And we love an opportunity to continue to partner with Cole Collective, the Gathering and obviously recruitmentmarketing.com. This is becoming big, bigger, better, more content. Hopefully we'll be onstage at events talking about this as well. Joel (9m 53s): And we love our listeners. You're welcome. Chad (9m 54s): You're welcome. Yes. Yes. I think they will enjoy every bit. Julie (10m 0s): Let's help elevate and celebrate all of those out there. Joel (10m 2s): Creative professionals who elevate and celebrate. Chad (10m 4s): Which is going to be the title? Let's see? Joel (10m 5s): Julie must be a marketing professional. I don't know. Chad (10m 8s): Jules. I like it. Yeah. Julie (10m 9s): Almost like I've seen a thing or two or done a thing or two. Joel (10m 12s): So I got to know like how long do we have to wait for this? What's going on. Julie (10m 20s): We do. If you go to recruitmentmarketing.com, right now, we do have a page up where we are taking early registration. Chad (10m 29s): Are you vetting people? I feel like I'm being vetted. Julie (10m 30s): I will say, yes. This is a community for recruiting marketing professionals. So yes, we are going to be paying attention to who is registering. Those that come and register now, as we're just getting started, we'll be considered early adopters. Early adapters are what we will consider those people who ride the cutting edge and always want to be first to know what's going on and have all that advantage. Chad (10m 54s): Do I get a badge or what do I get? Julie (10m 54s): So we'll give you yes. So that's our attention with the community those that sign up now and sign up early will get merchandise as well as opportunities to test the new features first. And you know, we plan to do a lot of things for the early adopters because we really believe those people that will come first and come register Joel (11m 16s): Early adopters get a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring is the word on the street. Chad (11m 21s): Be sure to drink your old tea. Joel (11m 22s): Old Tea. Julie (11m 23s): But yes, we are just getting started. So there is a page for you to register at recruitermarketing.com, but we will be announcing shortly the launch and all the things that are associated with that. Joel (11m 31s): And it's free to use, even though you vet folks, no charge and all this, just want to get that out there. It sounds so good. It can't possibly be free, but it is. Chad (11m 43s): It sounds so good. It means that you and I probably won't get in. Joel (11m 49s): We should enjoy this period for a while. Julie (11m 52s): I'll send you a newsletter. Joel (11m 54s): We know Julie on our comments as we try to get into the exclusive membership. Chad (12m 4s): Excellent. So again, Jules is going to be joining as the third chair. We're going to have companies come on Joel (12m 12s): Another JC on the show. Chad (12m 13s): JC. Oh Jesus Christ. Julie (12m 13s): Are we really all three JCs? Joel (12m 14s): No, Unless you've got a secret to tell us? Chad (12m 17s): For Jesus Christ. Joel (12m 17s): He does think he walks on water. Julie (12m 19s): What would JC do? Chad (12m 20s): Oh, I have no clue. Joel (12m 21s): This is going to be fun. Chad (12m 23s): It's going to be a good time. Joel (12m 25s): Welcome to the party, Julie. Julie (12m 27s): Oh, I'm happy to be there as I take that sip of beer. Joel (12m 31s): And it won't be the last sip of beer with us. Chad (12m 37s): Then that being said, where's Tess? I need another beer. Where's it at? Joel (12m 42s): Come on everybody. This is going to be fun. Excellent. Joel and Chad (12m 45s): We out, we out OUTRO (12m 45s): 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. OUTRO (13m 27s): 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.

At first glance, I didn't think this report would be very eye-opening. I. WAS. WRONG. The report stirs discussion around hard questions many HR and TA leaders have been asking themselves like. What happens when HR leaders are severely disconnected from front-line recruiters? What happens when it's harder to find recruiters than developers? What happens when recruiters turn down working for your company due to a shitty tech stack? Well, that day has arrived, and Aptitude Research's new report entitled: Talent Acquisition Technology and the Modern Recruiter only starts the discussions necessary in fixing a broken TA team, company, and industry. Chad and Aptitude founder, Madeline Laurano cover three of the seven key findings in the report. RESEARCH HERE PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (24s): Welcome back to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Guess what kids today we have Madeline Laurano filling in for Cheeseman. Cheeseman is actually sleeping off New Year's. I think he might've had a little bit too much to drink. Founder at Aptitude Research, Madeline has joined us on several occasions. She always brings the smoke when it comes to research, when it comes to new topics, really topics that we don't have a lot of information behind. She always brings the good stuff. And this is another one it's entitled Talent Acquisition Technology and the Modern Recruiter damn Madeline. You can coming out of the barrel this year, smoking hot. Chad (1m 4s): How's everything going? Madeline (1m 6s): Everything's going well, thank you so much for having me back. I'm excited to be here and talk about this new research. I'm really excited about this report. It's a topic we've talked so much about Chad, about the recruiter experience and how recruiters are just not necessarily given the resources they need within companies today. Chad (1m 23s): Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have a lot of ears perk up on this one, especially because we both know right now it's harder to find recruiters than it is IT professionals or developers or what have you, right. You were actually just talking about some information that Shannon Pritchett shared on LinkedIn. Hit the listeners with that. Madeline (1m 41s): Yeah. Shannon shared this blew my mind. She shared that 14,000 job posting for recruiters in one day, this week on LinkedIn in a recruiter experience crisis right now. Wow. Chad (1m 54s): Wow. Yeah. So we're going to dig into that. So first and foremost, the title, first off, I read the title and you're like, Hey, you're really going to like this. I read the title. I was like, am I really? Cause I'm like, what exactly is the modern recruiter? So what do you mean by the modern recruiter? Madeline (2m 8s): So the modern recruiter is recruiters, sourcers people that are actually doing the work. I think so often. And I'm guilty of this too. I'll write research and we'll talk about topics in terms of T leadership, HR leadership. These are the themes that we're thinking about. This report really looks at the people that are doing the work, which is the modern recruiter. Chad (2m 29s): In the trenches, kids. So, all right, we have seven key findings in this report, but we're going to tease it out and only give you three, because first and foremost, you need to read this. It's not incredibly lengthy, but it has a ton of good material. So the first one that I want to share, that was one of my favorites that just jumped out off the page was "Recruiters will leave their job for better technology." This wasn't for higher wages, which they might, but still, this was for better technology. Tell me about this. Madeline (3m 1s): Yeah. And you know, I think what's happening right now is we're seeing companies increase their TA tech budgets, like spending so much on technology right now. And then what we found in the report is that there's a big disconnect between the technology that companies are buying, that IT wants, that HR leadership wants and the technology that recruiters actually want to you that may use that makes their job better. That makes their lives easier. And there's a disconnect there. And if recruiters aren't given the resources, they need to deal with the volume they have to deal with to deal with the stress that they have to deal with. Yeah. They're going to find a job that gives them that technology. Chad (3m 38s): I thought this was very poignant and it obviously jumped out on the page. 58% of recruiters do not believe that leadership understands their role in the organization. And then you start digging deeper into those who were surveyed. And they were asked if they have more jobs to fill this year. I think it was versus last year, right? Madeline (3m 59s): Correct. Chad (3m 59s): 84% of recruiters agreed that they have more jobs to fill only 66% of TA leaders and HR leaders. And only 20% of IT. The difference between strategy and the people who are actually in the trenches. So this, to me uncovers a very serious disconnect in an organization. What about you? Madeline (4m 23s): Yeah. And I think we also asked, like, we can't find enough quality talent this year, 73% of recruiters and sources agreed with that. 39% of HR leaders, TA leaders agreed. And only 10% of IT. To me, this is just a disconnect with understanding the recruiter experience and also validating that experience. You know, I'm not a psychologist, but you have to validate someone's experience. And we're asking the people doing the work to fill positions, to work longer hours, to work harder than they've worked before, but we don't validate that their job is so much harder than it was pre COVID. Chad (5m 4s): Well, how in the hell does IT even know how hard it is to find somebody to fill a position in the first place? That to me feels like a lack of respect to be quite Frank. Right. And we talk about candidate experience and we've been talking about candidate experience forever, and it has taken a priority over recruiter experience over the last decade or so, so, and you'd agreed with that, right? Madeline (5m 32s): Yeah, absolutely. Chad (5m 33s): So we've created this real sterile, I think technical flow term that we call experience to maneuver around the real human element during a pandemic. I think the psyche of workers has changed, they've changed dramatically and the time and money companies are spending should be spending on caring, caring about their humans and truly giving a shit. So, you know, the question is, will this impact your ability to attract and retain recruiters? And the survey says, hell yeah, it will. Madeline (6m 5s): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it, that is what it's showing. It's showing the care aspect of it. And how can we focus on candidate care if we don't show recruiter care? Chad (6m 14s): Yeah. Madeline (6m 14s): And we're not caring for our own employees. So I think it's been really interesting. I mean, even going back to the IT point, it is disrespect to not understand what recruiters do when we're tasking them with so much. But I think also, I don't think it's, IT trying to be offensive in any way. I think it's, they don't know. I think they genuinely don't know. And there's so much information out there of how TA can help inform IT, of what the requirements should be and speak ITs language, talk to IT in their terms. We have to do the same thing. We have to get IT to understand and speak recruiting language too. Madeline (6m 53s): And we're just not doing that. Chad (6m 58s): To me this is a total miss. It's a whiff from TA and HR leaders, because what they should be doing is helping the entire organization understand that the company doesn't exist, the widget, the services, none of it exists without top talent being able to provide it. You can't develop a new product or maintain the code of a new product if you don't have individuals to be able to do that currently. Right? So talent and talent acquisition, HR really need to stiffen their spine and they need to think more around the business and how they impact every single aspect of revenue. Chad (7m 38s): And that's what the C-suite cares about. Right? That's what the CTO cares. If you talk about revenue, they're gonna go, okay, well, the CRO is going to get involved. So now I have to get involved. Right. So, I mean, do you think this is, we're finally getting a great awakening around not just the candidates, understanding that they are essential and they're necessary, but also in awakening of leadership to step the fuck up. Madeline (8m 1s): Yeah, I think so. And I hope it's going to continue because this is the situation that we're in and if we don't have the right talent finding the right talent, the business suffers. I mean, it's everything from not being able to staff campus events, either virtually or in person to thinking about, you know, just your recruiters on the, day-to-day doing their work to executive recruiting, the whole, you know, every single aspect of the business suffers. Chad (8m 29s): Yeah. Well the next point, which I thought was interesting, kind of funny at the same time, because we're always seeing recruiters versus AI, right. But the next point is recruiters are embracing AI. And to me, that's the way it should always be in the first place. I think it was Sean over at Hiring Soft, who first came up with kind of like the iron man example and I'm a Marvel geek so that just kind of made sense to me, that these two worlds actually belong together and recruiters should be embracing AI to make them stronger, faster, better at what they do more efficient on what they do. But it seems like from your survey, they get that now. Madeline (9m 9s): I think they want AI to help them do their jobs in a more efficient way. And I think they're embracing it. They're clearly embracing technology. And it's interesting because I know that a lot of other people like Kevin Grossman have done this type of research, but it shows the candidates also embrace AI. So candidates aren't saying we don't want it either, recruiters aren't saying we don't want it. You know, I think this is coming. We can't say no. Chad (9m 35s): Why would they, first and foremost candidates, you would talk about experience, but also care. This is all about, do we care? Do we give a shit as talent acquisition professionals? Do we care? Experience is kind of a sterile term. Do we care? That's more of a human term. Yeah. We should care. Right. And if we do, then we want to ensure, especially as we scale, we're trying to touch thousands upon thousands of candidates. We know that we can't do that from a human standpoint and candidates don't want to go into a black hole. I think it was a Sherm study that was done a couple of years ago that actually said candidates were fine with getting hit with a chat bot. Madeline (10m 14s): Right. Chad (10m 17s): That wasn't human because what's the alternative? Madeline (10m 21s): Nothing. Chad (10m 22s): Black hole. Yeah, exactly. Nothing. Right. So, yeah, yeah. To me, that's not as shocking as I think it will be for TA leaders. Madeline (10m 26s): Yeah, I think so too. I think so too. And I think, you know, I think we'll see companies embrace AI a little bit more, hopefully a little more strategically over the next year. Chad (10m 36s): So what kind of AI, just between you, me and the fence post, what kind of AI is your favorite AI, do you think will be embraced more quickly just because it's part of the easy flow and it will provide efficiencies quicker. Madeline (10m 48s): Yeah. I mean, we've talked about this before, but AI matching, I mean, I think there's AI matching. That's not done well. And then there's AI matching that actually, you know, companies take a really strategic look at it, it's ethical AI or thinking and committed to it. And that, I mean, that improves the recruiter experience. Like nothing else it's providing that efficiency. It's helping them understand talent in a more effective way, reduced bias if it's done using ethical AI and I think that that definitely plays a role. And then I think the other, the other piece we've talked about too, is conversational AI, right? It's and when it's conversational AI, not just a chat bot, it's saying, can you help take on this work? Madeline (11m 31s): Not we're just going to push the work off and save us time. It's going to take the work on for the recruiters. So they actually can focus on other things and just improve their overall experience. Chad (11m 45s): Yeah. And I see a day in utopia land where, you know, a conversational AI chat bot actually engages with the candidate, gets the information, can push it into a system where the matching engine actually takes place and then starts to make those matches in real time. And then again, we'll continue to not just flush them into a black hole, but allow them the chat bot or text or whatever it is. We'll continue to keep them updated or where they're at in the funnel. If they don't get the job, give them that, Hey, I'm sorry, you didn't get the job, but guess what, here are two or three other jobs or would you like updates for new jobs? Right. It's just those little subtle touches. That really means something and tell somebody that you care. Chad (12m 26s): Right. And I think recruiters are definitely starting to get there, at least the quote unquote "modern recruiter" is starting to get it. Madeline (12m 33s): Absolutely. I think that's exactly the right formula. It's you start with the conversational AI, create that engagement, create that conversation, use AI matching and then feed right back into a conversational AI so that you can continue to build that relationship and answer questions and engage candidates. And some companies are investing in both heavily. So I think, you know, if we can create that experience for recruiters, it's a win-win Chad (12m 57s): And then you have all that money that you spent on that database and caring for those candidates. Now you throw recruitment marketing automation into it, so that it's constantly, you know, at least touching and starting to ensure that those individuals don't feel like they've been left. Right. I mean, there's just so much great tech that's out there and opportunity that's out there that goes beyond the relic we know as an ATS. Madeline (13m 24s): Absolutely. Absolutely. Chad (13m 24s): So last but not least, and this I think is amazing because I never would have ever thought that we would have heard recruiters talking about integration, but integration is, and I'm so glad that we are, but integration is a challenge. Tell me about that. Madeline (13m 38s): This was so interesting to me too, and I almost missed it when I first did the analysis, I sort of kind of glanced over this and just let it be, and then went back and I was like, wait a minute, recruiters and IT care equally about integration. That's their priority. And it makes sense, but the goals are different, right? IT wants integration for what we know and how we've been talking about integration, which is, you know, making sure that, you know, these implementations work that we're saving costs or saving money, the data is consistent, the experience is consistent. Recruiters want integration so that they can actually do their job and that they have a workflow that's consistent and doesn't require them to go in and out of different systems, which they don't have any time to do. Madeline (14m 27s): And if we can think about integration from that standpoint, we need to start asking different questions of our vendors. Chad (14m 35s): Yes, yes, yes, yes. I think the key word there is work flow. We look at a workflow that we've had that we've always done it that way, but it was back when we started to actually take our paper process and make it digital. All we did was take it and whatever we were doing in paper, we just mimicked that in technology, we've come so much further than that, where efficiencies and the availability to ensure that your recruiters are not doing those menial pissy ass tasks that nobody wants to do. And nobody should do! I mean, seriously, we just have a bot do it or have matching do it, or what have you. But I think from an integration standpoint, every startup that I talked to, even every big core system that I talked to, one of our biggest conversations is around integration because I don't know how many recruiters I talked to and they'll do a screen share and they have 25,000 fricking tabs open. Chad (15m 31s): And it's like, what are you? What are you doing? Oh, that's just part of the workflow that we have. And it's like, that would be maddening. Madeline (15m 39s): Right. Right. And then, I mean, you just don't get any work done that way. It's just not sustainable. Chad (15m 47s): So question and this is to obviously all the recruiters and, talent acquisition who listened to the show as, as well as, as vendors. Do you believe that recruiters will be asking during the interview while they're being interviewed to perspectively, come to this new company as a recruiter, what tech stack do you use? Madeline (16m 8s): It's happening already and some in some instances, and I think for some recruiters, they want to know, especially the sourcing tools, like, are you using this, that and the other? And I think we're going to see it happen more and more. I mean, as recruiters start to learn to get comfortable with technology, as they start to expect it in their day-to-day and in their workflow, these are questions that they should be asking. I hope they, I hope they do. And I hope companies, listen. Chad (16m 34s): Well here's a shot over those companies bow, one third of new recruiters are looking for new jobs and this wasn't in the survey, but I'm willing to bet 99.9% of the recruiters that are out there today are being contacted by other, being poached by other companies. So if you have a shitty process, you have a shitty workflow and you don't even know how many reqs your recruiters are managing versus what they were last year, because you have less are their workloads worse. What are your thoughts on turnover for recruiters in the next six months? Madeline (17m 9s): I think we're going to continue to see this crisis that we're seeing today. And companies are going to have to start to pay attention, validate that experience, invest in the right technology and take it pretty seriously. It really is serious. Chad (17m 24s): I think that's the biggest key. So according to the research, 67% of companies have increased their investment in TA tech this year and 73% plan to increase their investment in 2022. What I'm saying, and I want to hear from you, what you're seeing, what I'm saying is a bunch of band-aids, right? They're buying point solutions to be able to layer over something as a band-aid instead of what they should be doing. And in my honest opinion, it should be blowing the entire process up in building it from ground zero. Because first and foremost, what they've been doing is probably decades old and slow and not efficient. Chad (18m 4s): Secondly, they probably have so much redundancy right now that they could perspectively save money. I think the whole bandaid over bandaid over bandaid is something we've done for decades and it's going to implode. What do you think? Madeline (18m 17s): I think 100%, I think there's so much redundancy and I think as you get budget, you invest in something new, even though you might have something else. That's the same thing. Chad (18m 25s): Yeah. Madeline (18m 25s): What I thought was so interesting from this study is a third, only a third of recruiters are involved in technology selection decisions. So it was like, you're having like 70% of companies investing in new technology next year. They're not asking their recruiters to be involved in evaluating that technology or selecting that technology. And they're going to be left with the band-aid approach or a bunch of technology that recruiters just don't want to use. Chad (18m 51s): Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure, but I've always said that, you know, talent acquisition, they can't be experts in everything. And there's so much that's happening today with regard to process, with regard to technology, with regard to compliance, with regard to diversity, equity, inclusion so much that's going on today, do you see a need for really more specialized individuals who focus on really imploding their current process and trying to help companies rebuild tech stacks? Madeline (19m 22s): Yeah, absolutely. And I think to have that in-house, like we've seen consultants do that and do a great job of doing that. We know some that do a great job with that, but to have someone in-house that can do that and really pay attention to what a company needs and not be afraid to just, you know, blow it all up and start a fresh is amazing. What a fun job! Chad (19m 40s): That would be a fun job. It would be a fun job. So I don't know if you're out there? I'm sure there are plenty of you who love the, to play in tech stacks, but definitely everybody who's out there go to aptituderesearch.com and look for Talent Acquisition Technology and the Modern Recruiter. This is Madeline Laurano. Madeline, tell us a little bit more, where else can we find this, where else can they find you to connect for not just this research, but for past research and for future research? Madeline (20m 13s): Awesome! So yeah, the report's on the website and it was sponsored by Hired Score. We're going to be promoting it for the whole month. So you'll find us on social. My social is @Madtarquin on Twitter. We're on LinkedIn. We're on Twitter, @aptitudeHCM. So lots of we'll probably do some sneak peeks too at some future research. Chad (20m 34s): Again, thanks so much for coming on. Take a look at that research. It's pretty eye-opening, it's amazing whether you are a recruiter, you're in TA leadership If you're in IT leadership, take a look at this research, aptituderesearch.com. Thanks so much, Madeline. Madeline (20m 43s): Thanks, Chad. Chad (20m 50s): Excellent. We out thank you for listening OUTRO (21m 42s): 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.

You're probably texting right now, aren't you? And if you're not texting now, you will be soon. That's why text recruiting remains such a hot solution. And that's why industry veteran Ty Abernathy launched Grayscale. But there's a lot of competition out there - hello Canvas, TextRecruit, Emissary, Rectxt, and the rest - so escaping the Firing Squad with his pride intact is no guarantee. Did Ty survive, and what about that name, the one that sounds more like an investment firm or a bad '80s Tarzan movie? Gotta listen to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Firing Squad INTRO (0s): Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel (23s): Firing squad. Boy, I am itchy with the trigger finger today. Happy to be here, Chad, what's going on? As usual, everybody this is your favorite podcast, the Chad and Cheese podcast. And this is maybe your favorite show on the podcast firing squad. Chad (39s): It's mine. Joel (40s): And today we welcome Grayscale and co-founder and CEO, Ty Abernathy. Ty. Welcome to Firing Squad. Ty (50s): Thank you guys. It's good to be here. Chad (52s): Wasn't grayscale what you caught during Game of Thrones? Wasn't that the bad, the bad disease, grayscale. Joel (1m 1s): I thought it was a bad eighties movie about Tarzan? Grayscale Legend of Tarzan. Wasn't that? Greystoke yeah, Ty (1m 10s): Let me just call out that. First of all, I'm the worst at naming companies, but yeah, we were about like three months in and I watched Game of Thrones, but like I started having people, like, are you a Game of Thrones fan? Or like, you know, why, why did you name your company Grayscale? And I'm like, okay, let's not after the flesh eating skin disorder on Game of Thrones, but you know, it'd be cool if I just like embrace that. I think. Chad (1m 34s): Yeah, why the hell not? Joel (1m 36s): Let's get into a little bit about you. And then Chad, we'll go over the rules and we'll get into this company you call Grayscale. Sound good? Ty (1m 44s): Sounds good. Joel (1m 45s): All right. What do our listeners need to know about Ty Abernathy? Ty (1m 55s): Well, I enjoy long walks on the beach. I, my long, long hair is flailing in the wind right now. I'm winking at you. Now, this is off to a bad start a little bit on the, yeah, my background's in recruiting. I started a company called Take the Interview. It's now rebranded Convey IQ in the video interviewing space and number of years ago and stumbled into the world of high volume hiring on that journey. And that sent me down the path of what is now Grayscale. I'm excited to talk to you all about that. Joel (2m 29s): Chad, tell him what he's won today. Chad (2m 32s): Well Ty, you will have two minutes to pitch Grayscale at the end of two minutes, you're going to hear that bell then Joel, and I will hit you with rapid fire Q and A. If your questions start to ramble, or you get just fucking boring, Joel's going to hit you with the crickets. That's going to be your signal to move along and tighten up your game. So at the end of Q and A, you will receive one of three grades and that could be big applause. Big applause means you might be the Ted Lasso of our industry, which means promotion to the premier league of recruitment tech is eminent. Chad (3m 14s): Golf clap. I can hear Roy Kent starting to growl, which means it doesn't look good for you. And last but not least the firing squad. That's right you're relegated. Pack up your gear and get the hell off the pitch. Are you ready to face the firing squad? Joel (3m 31s): He mixed that up just for you Ty so no pressure, but are you ready? Ty (3m 38s): I'm ready. I'm ready. Let's do this. Joel (3m 41s): And you're two minutes starts. Ty (3m 43s): All right. Well, Grayscale is our focus is on high volume hiring for enterprise organizations. So what we do, we work with brands like Amazon and Wayfair, large organizations dealing in really high volume, whether it be for, for warehouse hiring or call center facility hiring. We're designed to help streamline the process, increase efficiency throughout the process. Our product has an a candidate engagement tool. It's SMS first. So it's designed essentially to help the recruiter, who may in the case of Amazon may be working with a thousand candidates at a time, you know, to be able to create a one-to-one experience. So despite there being a one to a thousand ratio, Grayscale is designed to help facilitate a one-to-one feel for the candidate. Ty (4m 32s): And we do that through leveraging SMS and other channels like audio and email, very deep automation capabilities to help the recruiter be far more efficient in their day to day. And to really help eliminate a lot of those challenges that arise in the hiring funnel. From, you know, candidates ghosting you for interviews, from candidates falling through the cracks throughout the process, all the little inefficiencies that come as it relates to high volume hiring, when you're trying to drive candidates through your process very quickly, right? And in the case of large retailers, we work with that might be two or three days, right? You have to get all of your candidates through the door or through your process and hire, right. Ty (5m 15s): Cause it's all, it's the first offer that typically is the one that went. And so we Grayscale is designed to help you drive the process forward much faster, create a far better candidate experience and to help your recruiting team be far more efficient with your highest volume hiring needs. Joel (5m 34s): Thank you, Ty, and real quickly, where can they find out more about your company? Ty (5m 39s): It's a Grayscaleapp.com spelled G R A Y S C A L E A P P.com. Joel (5m 44s): All right. I teed you up for my first question, which is the name we, we joked about it obviously, but what was going through your head when you picked Grayscale and you couldn't even like secure a domain that made sense you had to throw app and then.com at the end of it. I mean, were there other names like, just help me, help me understand, is it hard for salespeople to say, Hey, I'm with Grayscale? I mean, Text Recruit makes sense, right? Like they're a competitor that makes sense, so help me understand the name, man, sell me on it. Ty (6m 16s): Yeah. We just figured if we could confuse our target audience as much as possible, it would somehow serve as well. And so no, I'm terrible at naming companies. Grayscale is a design term and I have some design background. I just, it's a very foundational sort of a design term as far as when you're, when you're designing new interfaces. And so it just kind of felt like we were doing something fundamental and foundational in recruiting. And so, boom, there you go. It stuck. Joel (6m 46s): It's better than ResumeSieve though. I'll give you that. Chad (6m 52s): Well, you know, it kind of, in both of them, feel like you have to get a shot because you might've caught something, but Ty, this isn't the first rodeo in the recruitment space. So what major lesson did you learn from starting up Zuzu Hire? Ty (7m 9s): Well, yeah, Zuzu Hire, that was my first foray. I was doing agency recruiting at the time and started that like on a part-time basis. So that's where I cut my teeth and just, you know, getting a business off the ground and sort of like 80/20, 20ing it, and like being scrappy and not raising any capital, like taking $10K out of your savings account and just like hiring a developer and see what happens. Right. So that was sort of, I learned a ton. It was like a little crash course and MBA, over the course of a year where I just learned a lot about like, just the fundamentals of getting, you know, getting an idea off the ground, really. Chad (7m 49s): So single out the major lesson for us. Ty (7m 54s): Just the, that momentum can, an idea in your head is something that is far better, far better, far better served taking action. So I learned like always have a bias toward action. And by taking those steps, things start to shape and move and evolve. And so I'll leave that there. Chad (8m 16s): So that being said, what did you learn from Convey IQ and how did it lead you here? Because Convey IQ interviewing this is SMS. I mean, what's the same, what's different? How did you make it here from there? Ty (8m 33s): Yeah, I, yeah. So can be IQs of video interviewing platform. We, I, I learned a lot through that journey. We, from basic things like don't raise a lot of money early in the life of your business. It has some interesting forces on the business while you're trying to figure out exactly what you have and what you're building. And so I also learned a lot about the world of high volume hiring. We kind of stumbled into that with Convey IQ with companies using the, you know, video screening tool to assess candidates for high volume call center, hiring, things like that. And so that was really kind of the impetus of where Grayscale was born, but yeah, a lot of learnings along the way, there was a, those were some key ones though. Joel (9m 11s): So a quick view into the past, and we're going to bring that into the future. Text message marketing or texting has forever been high levels of engagement, open rates, just insane. I mean, I remember 10 years ago talking about, you know, 95% plus open rate, I remember, 90 plus percent engaged before 15 minutes or reply, like, what are the metrics right now with texting? Because with messaging and video and so many other things, and even, you know, risks of spam, like, can we expect the same engagement through text marketing that we did 5, 10 years ago? Ty (9m 50s): Yeah, absolutely. And I think even even more so now than before, because you have the SMS is just so pervasive, we text with our grandparents, right. I mean, it's just a very, it's the way we communicate, the way we engage, we get texts notifications about our doctor's appointment coming up right? None of that happened five years ago. Right. So, yeah, I mean, open rates are still, you know, north of 99%. Response rates are like just shy of 50% of 49% is for us globally across our customer base response rate. And then six minute response time. So not only are virtually everyone is seeing your messages and half of them responding. They're getting back to you in six minutes or less. Joel (10m 28s): Gotcha. And how does a company or a recruiter typically engage with the product? I know you have some native apps. I know you have some Chrome extensions, like do most engage on the desktop. Is it mobile? Is it across the board? Talk about that? Ty (10m 40s): Well, one of the things we, we made the decision on early on is like, we don't want to pull you out of your workflow. That you're doing day to day. And so recruiters live in their ATS. They just happen. ATSs are not designed with high volume recruiting in mind. So Grayscale the primary way, a lot of our customers are use us is just a browser plugin that they can use inside of whether it be Taleo or Success Factors or Workday or Greenhouse, you name it. And we just sort of get like super charged them with the ability to text with their candidates, to automate a lot of touch points throughout the process, and to be able to create robust drip campaigns, all these things that you need when you're dealing in volume, to help create a high touch experience that can scale pretty seamlessly with a big brand. Joel (11m 27s): Yeah. So this is a pretty crowded industry, crowded space, certainly listeners will know Text Recruit, Canvas. Now, part of Jobvite, Emissary, some of these are sponsors of the show or relationships we have. Rectxt, et cetera. I assume the question of how are you guys different comes up every day. How do you guys answer that question? Ty (11m 47s): Yeah, that's a good question. I mean a lot of what we've talked about so far is around SMS and SMS is, is certainly a very key component to what we do. Obviously we just talked about the value of why SMS is working in recruiting, but, you know, really the problem, like the job we're being hired to do, for these organizations is to really help streamline their high volume hiring. And so that's all we think about is volume recruiting for enterprise organizations. And I think that looking at it through like the jobs to be done framework like that sort of puts us in a position in a lot of little ways. We're very different from, you know, an Emissary or Text Recruit and not just through SMS, but through voice, through email, we'll be adding video capabilities, but through, you know, creating an omni-channel approach to engagement that really sort of supercharges what the recruiters able to do in a given day while creating a really great experience for candidates. Ty (12m 44s): But, but volume hiring is all we think about. Chad (12m 46s): When are you going to be able to say you are omni-channel because that's not an easy feet putting in WhatsApp and all the other messaging platforms. Ty (12m 56s): Yeah. Yeah. Great question. Yeah, that's very, very true. We're currently omni-channel today. We'll just, we're continuing to layer in additional channels into our offering. And so the, you know, for example, you know, today you can leverage Grayscale for SMS and for WhatsApp and for voice, we'll be adding email capabilities and others down the line to continue to expand the offering, because we see thinking about it, like, again, if our job is to help streamline high volume hiring, there's different use cases where different channels make the most sense. And so we want to make sure it's the right channel at the right time. And then with the right escalation point. So that may start with email and then you get a nudge via text and you get an automated call to confirm if an action hasn't been taken. Ty (13m 42s): So this kind of escalation sort of cascade, if you will, that can really help. A lot of high volume hirings is herding of cats. Right? And so like, how do you effectively herd those cats to the appropriate outcome is effectively as possible. And we think really an omni-channel approach is the key there. Chad (13m 57s): Are you thinking about adding scheduling in there as well since that's just a normal, the normal next step for most recruiters? Ty (14m 5s): Yeah, it's a great question. Well we certainly thought about it. I mean, for us, we integrate really deeply with some of the major scheduling tools out there, just make it really seamless to leverage those tools. And you can actually plug in a lot of different other offerings, whether it be assessments or scheduling tools into the Grayscale platform, just to seamlessly trigger those throughout the process. So we play really friendly with those. So it hasn't really been a need thus far, but certainly something we might explore in the future. Chad (14m 34s): Gotcha. Talking about integrations, let's talk about the big integrations, the ones, the ones that matter most the ones with the core talent platforms, the applicant tracking systems. Talk to us about those. Are those mainly just being able to write off a Chrome extension, are they truly working inside the platform? Ty (14m 55s): Yeah we do offer like really deep API driven integrations with all the major ATSs in the market. I named some earlier, but we go, we go really deep sinking the data. You can, everything that lives in Taleo, for example, lives in Grayscale from a candidate standpoint, we can update the ATS back as well. So, you know, we integrate deep, but usually the interface is going to be, we have a standalone desktop version, but most of our recruiters just opt to use Grayscale via the browser extension inside their ATS. So they have all the capabilities there and their ATS. They're not really having to navigate externally to sort of get what they need. And it just sort of bakes right into their existing workflow. Joel (15m 34s): What do you consider the biggest threat to the business? Something that comes to my mind is the whole chat bot, conversational AI phenomenon. I assume that that keeps you up some nights. Obviously the government is policing and entities are policing spam via text and opt out and all that stuff. So what are the threats to the business that sort of keep you up at night? Ty (15m 56s): Yeah, that's a great question. That was so to the conversational AI component, I actually like that, that I don't see that as a threat at all. In fact, we, you know, you, you look at like companies like Paradox, you know, Olivia for example, like we, you know, I think that's a great tool for the right type of buyer. Like for us, we're kind of philosophically opposed to like outsourcing your candidate engagement to a chat bot. We try to create every, like we to create human to human experiences, just we use automation to scale that. Right. And so we're kind of anti chat bot around here. And so, and a certain type of buyer that really resonates with and others were like, great. Olivia is a great offering. You go in that direction. Ty (16m 36s): Right. And so I don't see that as a threat, looking at threats. I mean, you know, the most obvious one is like, we're in a white hot labor market right now. Like, you know, at some point things are going to cool, right? At some point, you know, you've been, y'all been in the industry long enough to see the penguin pendulum swing back and forth a candidate driven market, and then, you know, employer driven market. And, you know, it's just, it's riding that wave. And I think that there, whenever this, you know, this music ends, you know, whether it's next month, next year know next five years at some point it will end. And just thinking about like on the other side of that what's that gonna look like? That's probably the biggest thing I think about. Joel (17m 19s): Okay. So you mentioned automation, drip campaigns triggers like your solution has a lot of automation, which is obviously hot, but it also sounds like a lot of maintenance talk about that hurdle with companies. I mean, teaching them drip campaigns and triggers, and is all that baked in, or is a lot of maintenance for the customer. Yeah. Ty (17m 38s): Yeah. I mean, a lot of it's, you know, we, intentionally keep it like stupid simple, so that a single recruiter it's designed for like a recruiter to use day to day to manage their workflow. So I think, you know, a lot, like you look at like the CRM market, it's like big lift. It's usually like run by the sourcing team or, you know, a recruitment marketing team. This is, we just designed everything with the recruiter in mind. So, it has to be stupid simple for them just to be able to leverage in their day-to-day. And so for us, that's just like basic stuff. Like, we're not talking about training algorithms here. We're talking about setting up basic if then rules that give you the ability to kind of see what they apply to. Ty (18m 19s): And then, and we've got playbooks that make it easy to sort of roll out these automation rules, but usually for an enterprise organization, we can have them stood up and integrated in roughly two weeks. So the lift comparatively, like I think that's one thing we do really well, is just make it stupid simple to roll out to, you know, and, you know, we had a healthcare company recently start with eight seats on the platform, and then 90 days later we're up to 500 seats, you know? And so just make it really simple to use and help them see value from day one. Joel (18m 50s): I love that you define two weeks is stupid, simple. You have a product on your feature set called text for jobs. What is that? Ty (18m 59s): It's basically just an SMS apply process that just makes it easy to really design, to sort of eliminate drop-off and the apply process and to drive more candidates in the door top of funnel. So we've got, you know, big brands that will use that to advertise openings, whether it be at their facility, you know, their store locations, you know, text, you know, I care to 8, 9, 7, 4, 3, they'll learn more about our opportunities and apply, you know, as you can stick those on all of your Linux LensCrafter locations around the country, or, you know, a lot of different use cases for how you can promote those, but really the, at the essence, it's about driving more candidates in the door for your jobs and really helping eliminate drop-off in the apply process. Joel (19m 39s): Gotcha. Chad (19m 40s): Okay. So I want to dig in a little bit on the anti chat bot/conversational AI comment, because that is obviously the best way to scale. You can't have a human touch, every conversation all the time, whether they're it's the easy, keep it simple, stupid conversations and whatnot. Now it sounds like you do have automation kind of baked in, is that correct? Ty (20m 2s): Yeah. We have some, we have some basic automation, baked in. Yeah. But you know, we don't, we're not going to be talking to you about the technology we're using. We're going to, you know, it's for us, it's like, that should all just sort of like fall into the background. Right. And, I think, the point I was trying to make before is just when every aspect of your candidate experience is driven, is you're interfacing with a conversational AI. We think you're missing a really good opportunity to build relationship when that's, and you can only do that with human to human, right? You can't build a relationship with a conversational AI. Chad (20m 34s): Now you understand, right now it's harder. It's harder to find recruiters than it is tech people. Right. So I understand, totally believe that, but it's not how the market is at, the landscape is today. So it's really hard to be able to have that conversation and have it fall on real business day-to-day ears. Now, obviously you, you know, you've, you've engaged some companies and gone from eight to 500 seats. I guess the big question for me is scale? how do those individuals actually scale more conversations? And they don't have to do the stupid shit, like ask the stupid questions that happen every single day, about 125 million times. Ty (21m 18s): Yeah. Yeah. That's a great, great point. Yeah. Solet's drill in on the Amazon example for a second then. So we start working with Amazon. Single recruiter can handle 150ish candidates at a time, right? Pretty good. You know, candidate volume, they're moving through the process. They set up Grayscale, set up some automation rules and map out their candidate journey and a consistent candidate journey for their highest volume hiring areas. Took them, you know, a better part of, you know, half an hour to set up those rules. And now a single recruiter can handle north of a thousand candidates at a time. And so that the efficiency they're able to see through that makes it to where they can scale that up. Ty (21m 58s): And that the candidate journey is consistent. The human touch only comes in as an escalation point and when there's questions or clarification points, but everything's coming from the recruiter, everything's designed to kind of further the process, whether it be notifications, whether it be next steps, whether, you know, whether it be assessments, but, you know, we are seeing a lot of efficiency while still being able to keep the recruiter in the driver's seat. Okay. Chad (22m 21s): So you just received funding, how much and where are you going to spend it? Oh, Ty (22m 29s): Raised, yes. We just raised capital a little over 3 million in investments. For us it's just about, thank you. I appreciate it. We're continuing to build out the team on, on all fronts, that is to really help support our business as we are growing and growing much quicker than anticipated. So we're excited about building out that team and continuing to expand on the product offering. So yeah, it's going to go toward mostly head counts, which will hopefully result in a product that adds deeper value to our customers down the line. Joel (23m 3s): What does, you mentioned Amazon and some other big companies. Do you guys target staffing agencies at all? And if not, why? Ty (23m 11s): We do not. We do have a handful of staffing agencies we work with, but we don't target them. That's not our core audience for us. It's about TA teams. That's, you know, pretty much all we think about. The reason the problems are similar, but kind of there's nuance differences in the world of agency recruiting versus the world of TA. And so we find for one, we just find the problems in TA more interesting, a little bit hairier, and particularly when it comes to volume and yeah, so we just chosen to kind of focus our business there. I think, you know, a, I have seen firsthand what a lack of focus can do to a business. Ty (23m 51s): So we are, that's all we're focused on right now. And so that means we can't really like we're okay. Saying no to agencies who, the big ones that want to work with us, because our focus is on corporate TA. Joel (24m 1s): I think all of that was Latin for their cheap bastards and a pain in the ass, which brings me to my next, yeah, that's, that's what we do on the show. So that brings me to my next question of pricing. You guys don't publish pricing. Is it a custom pricing? Is it sort of based on size of the company? Like what can I expect as a customer or someone that gets a demo to pay for Grayscale? Ty (24m 30s): Yeah, it varies based on a few factors, but just quite simply, we charge on a per seat basis. It's basically kind of unlimited communication per seat. So we don't have any sort of like overages or caps on usage or SMS fees or anything like that. It's just a per user seats. Pricing can range, a lot of our customers might just get started with a seat and that's going to be the highest per seat price you're going to pay. And then, you know, as you roll out to hundreds, it gets really, really cheap per seat, pretty fast. But yeah, that range can be anywhere from, you know, $250 a seat down to, you know, below $10 a seat, you know, depending on those variables, but that's how we approach pricing. Joel (25m 15s): Right. Good for you for saying numbers. That's good. Ty (25m 18s): I'm going to, I'm not going to just, yeah. I'm going to give you guys some stuff. Joel (25m 25s): Yeah, that's a nice range. 10 to 250 and what's the exit strategy. Ty (25m 30s): I, what is the exit strategy for us? I dunno, this is probably gonna feel a little bit of BS to you guys, but like, we're just, we're focused on building a great business that's delivering value for our customers, right? Like, I'm less concerned with exit strategy that will usually take care of itself. You're focused on the first, if you get the first order problem, right? Like usually the rest will take care of itself. I mean, but I mean, you guys have been in the industry long enough. I mean, who are the, you know, who the likely acquirers, right? It's like, you know, the ATSs in the market. It's possibly CRM. It's, you know, it's a large agencies. It's, you know, that stuff works itself out. I'm not too concerned about that. Joel (26m 6s): And with that Ty, you were done with Q and A, and it is time to face the firing squad. Are you ready? Ty (26m 15s): I guess let's do it, Joel (26m 17s): Chad. Get him. Ty (26m 18s): Get me. Come on, lay it on me. Chad (26m 20s): All right, Ty, dude, I love the experience, the expertise, Zuzu to Take the Interview to Grayscale, you suck at naming things, but if that's the worst thing you do, we'll talk more about that later. Noi big deal. Okay. So focus, you didn't take the bait, when I threw it out there on scheduling, cause I was trying to suck you in to that and you didn't take it. You didn't take the bait on staffing, right? You turn down business that isn't in your focus area. Scale. I love the steps that you're taking to help organizations scale. And it's not just scale, it's all also about recruiter, experience and candidate experience. We don't talk enough about both sides. Chad (27m 2s): Everybody wants to talk about candidate experience, but what you're providing is de-stressing that recruiter, the hardest people to find right now for most companies are recruiters, not developers, right? So you're actually providing tech to be able to de-stress them and help them engage where they need to engage. I think you need to go further. And in that regard with regard to investing in conversational AI and those things, to be able to grow larger, if that's where you want to go. Integrations, this is where I think your name doesn't matter because overall, if you're integrated into all of these different systems and they start to pick you up from a partnership standpoint and perspectively push you, the integrations piece is where the acquisitions come from. Chad (27m 43s): That's what we've seen. That's the roadmap. It's not, if you have a great name, fuck the name, go canvas.io. That's all I got to say. Overall. I think high volume positions are amazing. That's a great focus we see right now, that's exactly what the market needs. Several players in the market, but that just validates the market. And since the market is so large on the high volume side, there's plenty of room. So I was looking for things to pick you apart, found a couple of pieces, but I think you deserve a big applause. Joel (28m 22s): Back up the Brinks truck, baby. Chad (28m 24s): Ted Lasso recruitment tagline. Joel (28m 26s): So it's my turn, no secret that I've loved SMS mobile for a very long time. Chad (28m 33s): Play the sexy sax. Joel (28m 34s): And yeah, you want some sexy sax for when I was a younger man. And the one thing about it is I keep waiting for it to sort of fizzle out, right? I keep waiting for a web based messaging or video or something to displace it, or at least put some chinks in the armor. And 20 years into text messaging, it's still going strong. I mean, people who remember American idol and voting via text and on flip phones, like, and it's still incredibly effective and it's incredibly impactful in recruiting or anything, that's sort of salesy. And you know, I think this is a way that a lot of people could ride. Joel (29m 19s): I think it's probably difficult enough with, you know, cranking up the Twilio machine and the texting and the regulations around it and the different countries that it's sort of a barrier to entry for a lot of people. So I liked that component of it. I love your experience, you know, in the industry and what you did with Take the Interview. We, we joked ironically in the green room of how much video has sort of struck gold with the pandemic. I think texting is similar, similar to that. When people don't meet face to face, they need other ways to communicate. I also love the opportunities internationally, and we didn't talk much about that on this podcast, but we talk a lot about on the show now of growth areas in India, Africa, South America, obviously Europe as well. Joel (30m 4s): I know that there are challenges in all those different markets, that are a pain in the ass, but all of those folks have mobile phones and that's how they communicate. So I think, although we've come a long way texting and this form of communication has not fizzled much at all. And I think globally, there's a huge opportunity to take this thing much bigger than it is. I am a little bit surprised that there hasn't been a huge success story in text recruiting. Maybe it's sort of meant to be a limited business for, for a variety of reasons, but I'm definitely after, you know, being a fan of SMS and mobile for so long, gonna poopoo Grayscale, regardless of the shitty name it as well gets a big applause for me. Joel (30m 56s): So Ty congratulations, man. Ty (30m 57s): Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. My takeaway is like my shitty company name is even shittier than I originally was thinking, but yeah, well Chad (31m 11s): And you knew it was a flesh eating disease from Game of Thrones beforehand, and it's worse than that. Okay. Joel (31m 17s): And I love that you had to say A instead of E when you spelled Grayscale spell it, Ty (31m 23s): That's when, you know, like when you're like having to be like it's with an a that you like, you, you have, you, you're great at naming companies like skin eating disorder and a weird name that can be spelled multiple ways. Like good job Ty. Joel (31m 36s): That's all right, man. Well, congratulations. We'll let you go in and spend some of that new seed funding that you got, but for our listeners, where can they find out more about Grayscale? Ty (31m 49s): At ready guys? Grayscaleapp.com, G R A Y S C A L E A P P.com. Joel (31m 56s): All right, Chad, you know the line. Joel and Chad (31m 58s): We out, we out. Peace. OUTRO (32m 5s): This has been the Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese Podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today. That's www.chadcheese.com

Ho, ho, holy hell it's been a while since Chad & Cheese were on the mic together, but the boys are back in the saddle again, tackling the following topics like only they know how: Facebook shutting down its job board outside North America, Kronos getting hit by a ransomware attack, Turing becoming the latest unicorn, JB Hunt playing Scrooge, T-Mobile playing good ol' St. Nick and the Army kicking COVID's ass. Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol!!! As always, your favorite podcast is powered by great sponsors like Sovren, JobAdX, and Jobvite. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides comprehensive website accessibility testing with personalized recommendations to enhance usability for people with a variety of disabilities or situational limitations. SFX (1s): Hallelujah Holy shit. Where's the Tylenol? INTRO (6s): 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): We're back. Well, if you're listening to this, you're either hung over from the holidays or escaping the in-laws. Hi boys and girls, it's your favorite secret Santas, and you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "nacho Grande" Cheeseman. Chad (41s): This is Chad "back in the saddle again" Sowash. Joel (44s): And on this week show Facebook gets out of the job board business, Kronos pulls a CareerBuilder, and you guessed it holiday unicorns, baby. Chad (56s): Fuck. Joel (57s): Let's do this. Oh shit. Chad (1m 5s): This is it. Getting pumped up! Joel (1m 11s): The boys are back. Chad (1m 18s): Yes! Joel (1m 19s): Oh yeah after a little holiday break. Chad, why don't we let the listeners know what we've been up to? Chad (1m 24s): You know you just got back so the first sound effect is hallelujah. SFX (1m 31s): Oh yeah. Where's the Tylenol. Joel (1m 34s): That's to say that I'm recovering a little bit less than 24 hours after leaving Cancun would be an understatement. So yeah, I, two head fakes in terms of getting the hell out of Indiana. Chad (1m 46s): Thank God. Joel (1m 46s): I was able to go to Mexico with my three kids, by the way, a four year old and Cancun is a whole new level of interesting. I met up with some of our Canadian in-laws, which was great. So it was nice to get away. I think I've contracted a bit of a cold from my kid, who had the snots, speaking of vacation, Christmas vacation, and the dog snots, which four year olds, don't don't ever, you know, pull back sneezes and coughs on their parents. So I've got a little bit of that, but we tested negative for COVID. So at least I'm not Omicron friendly at the moment. Chad (2m 23s): That's awesome. Last Friday, we definitely missed you. We had Peter "Mr. ATS" Gold, who stepped in for you, while you were vacationing, I was still in the fucking fog from being in Europe for three weeks. So hopefully we'll get back in somewhat the saddle again or this week. And it's funny because some people actually reached out and thought we had a breakup or something. I wasn't on the Europe podcast and you weren't on last week's Friday podcast. So everybody is like, Hey, what's up? Joel (2m 58s): Hey, they noticed! That's good news. They noticed that we weren't on the show together. I was nice to just take a little holiday. It's Christmas time. And it's what better episode than to like get our legs back then right before Christmas? Chad (3m 12s): This is the 192nd Chad and cheese episode of 2021. So I'm sure they noticed! Joel (3m 22s): Yeah, it only feels like a million. Well, I think we do shout outs first. Shall we get to that? Chad (3m 27s): Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. Right out of the gate. I've got a quick iCIMS story. We were in the Farro airport going from Farro. We were going to Paris for a couple of days before we came home and Julie going through security lost my iCIMS Yeti. Apparently she had some ice. She likes to put the Yeti in the freezer and then pull it out and put water in it. Well, she got all the water out of it, but there was still a, like a half inch of ice in the bottom. And they were like, yeah, that's not going to fly. And they took the ice and Yeti. I posted immediately to Twitter that a we lost it. And the next thing I know, I get a box and I've got two new iCIMS coolers. Chad (4m 13s): Yeah. A little Yeti, like, and yeah. It's, it's pretty awesome. So thanks. Thanks guys. Joel (4m 18s): So you, you may have just blown my mind. Okay. So Julie puts an empty, empty Yeti in the freezer. Chad (4m 26s): No, It has a little water in it because she likes ice. Right? So she puts the Yeti in the freezer with a little water, which obviously makes ice. So when she gets up, all she has to do is put water in it. It's cold and boom, she's out. Well, she did that and the ice didn't melt and we lost a Yeti. Joel (4m 43s): That blows my mind. I've got a new way to fucking fill my Yeti with cold cold water now. Thanks Julie. Yeah. Merry Christmas. All right, dude. So I've been out for a week. My shout outs are really sparse, but I've got like one really important news story. And you know what that bell means. It means Taco Bell news. So the one that is that actually caught my eye this week, Taco Bell got rid of the Mexican pizza a couple of years ago. Chad (5m 13s): OK. Joel (5m 13s): Probably my favorite item on the Taco Bell items, which I enjoy pretty much all of them. Well, news came out this week. I'm ready to get ready to be blown away, they're bringing back the Mexican pizza, but also Chad, they're adding wings to the Taco Bell menu! Chad (5m 31s): Oh come on! Joel (5m 33s): Holy Shit! Chad (5m 34s): That's just too much! Yes Joel (5m 37s): Happy holidays to me. Chad (5m 38s): That's just too much. Come on. Yes. Happy holidays to Joel. Happy holidays to me. You probably have all of this stuff somewhere in your house, but we've got PillarHR swag, Jobcase, sent three bottles of wine, a handwritten card they're so classy John Thurman, the co-host of the sociat half-hour podcast send a handwritten card and in a coaster, John, you got to send beer buddy coaster's are great but we need beer. Not to mention Santa Joel was in t-shirt delivery mode before setting off for vacation. So I've seen the Chad and Cheese t-shirts landing on doorsteps, mailboxes and in the social media feeds all over the place. Chad (6m 25s): Thanks to emissary.ai. So you, you got those babies out there. Joel (6m 30s): Yeah. I had a goal of these are all going out. So pretty much anyone at least state side should have got on the t-shirt or will shortly for the holidays. And thank you to Emissary. I called up Hugh and I said, dude, we're out of shirts, we got tons of people that want them. Let's do a holiday miracle and get these shirts printed up and get them out. So hands big, big applause to our friends at Emissary for making that happen. Should we mention the Jobcase via vino both got yeah. Chad (7m 4s): Three, three bottles of wine from Jobcase and a handwritten card. That's classy. Joel (7m 8s): So they're there now my wife's favorite company, I said, honey, you need to pick a sponsor, like to actually be your favorite. She's like, Nope, Nope. And by the way, you have to be really secure in your manhood to wear the Pillar sweat shirt. It's a nice shade of pink-ish. So I'll be a sportin that at the local local pub. Chad (7m 26s): As soon as I opened the box, Julie stole it. I don't even have it, I don't even have it. Joel (7m 32s): Yeah. If I wasn't like four sizes bigger than my wife, she might've done the same thing. Speaking of a t-shirts dude, we had some winners that we failed to mention in the holiday break that we had here. So. Chad (7m 46s): Bring it. Joel (7m 47s): We got a beer winner. Our new beer sponsor is Pillar. Speaking of manly sweatshirts, Michael Mullady at UKG actually here in Indianapolis won one. Chad (7m 57s): Love that guy! Joel (7m 59s): Free Beer this month, we'll try to schedule a tasting. And Rob Bursey one whiskey from our friends at Sovren/Textkernal. You remember they were acquired recently trying to get something scheduled with him as well. So congratulations and happy holidays to those folks. Chad (8m 16s): Amen. Joel (8m 16s): And we'd be remiss to not also mentioned our latest giveaway. Chad (8m 22s): This is time sensitive. Joel (8m 24s): This is good. You're on the clock people! Were giving away scotch. We're talking about the water of life out of Scotland. Our friends at CandidateID said, Hey, screw the bourbon we want to give away some scotch this year. So if you just go to www.scotch.win, is there a better URL for that? Although the folks at 3m might come get us. www.scotch.win, put in your address so we know where to send the booze. You can win one of three, $1,000 retail price of Scotch. Even if you don't like scotch, this is going to make a great gift for a loved one. Maybe an investment who knows? Joel (9m 5s): Get out to scotch.win today and sign up. Chad (9m 11s): Don't forget. There's still Chad and Cheese gear, beer and bourbon out there. Gear by emissary.ai. Beer by Pillar. Bourbon by Sovren/Textkernel. There, just go to Chadcheese.com/free register for everything guys. We love to give away shit to our listeners. So go get it. Joel (9m 27s): Oh yeah, we do. And we love seeing those social media posts. So if you haven't put something on LinkedIn or wherever, and you've got a shirt, what are you waiting for? Hashtag us @ChadCheese. If you do that. Well, Chad fantasy football is still a thing and we're down to our final four contestants. Since your final four participants are Chris "Nipsey" Russell who you'll remember was in last place in week one. So fantasy football is a marathon. It's not a sprint. The wonderful Miss Q who's pretty much been at the top the whole time, is a final four. And Jason Putnam, along with, your boy, Joel Cheeseman is a final four participant. Joel (10m 14s): We should have a winner shortly announcing the final two after this weekend. Chad (10m 16s): Ridiculous. I say ridiculous. Joel (10m 17s): Ridiculous, and we've got birthdays. Of course. Chad (10m 20s): Ok. Joel (10m 20s): We've missed a few weeks. I'm going to rapid fire a bunch of birthdays for ya. Fans of the show. We got Matt Miller, Michael J. Cox, Jack Mahoney, Chase Johnson, Lars Koos Holland McCue James Hickman, Matt Grafflin, Angela, Mary Kelly, Nathan Budziak, Alison Padgett, Jeffrey Trayton, whose birthday is on the 25th. That kind of sucks. Tina Davis, Michael Smith, Monica Evgy who sports our t-shirt very well and loves us, even though she's a LinkedIn employee and all the grief that we give them. Joel (11m 8s): Kim Steward, Nick "8 is enough" Bradford, Torin Ellis, and Aaron Matos celebrate birthdays in December happy birthday everybody. Chad (11m 15s): It's a lot of December babies. Wow. Joel (11m 18s): I always felt sorry for people born on the 25th of December. If they are celebrators of Christmas. Chad (11m 23s): Just December period. Joel (11m 24s): Yeah. Yeah. My dad is on the 19th and he's like, I always got screwed. I got nothing for birthday and it just, yeah, it's just a bad scene. Chad (11m 40s): Poor guy. Joel (11m 40s): Yeah, poor guy, poor guy. Chad (11m 44s): TOPICS! Baby this week we got a big one. Our first story comes on the heels of last week's show where Peter, Mr. ATS Gold was slobbering all over Facebook jobs. Facebook jobs partners, vendors who provide Facebook with the bulk of their job content, they received an email earlier this week, alerting them that Facebook jobs would no longer be available coming this February. Imagine working with Facebook on getting everything right with your job feeds and then getting this slap in the face via email? Anyway, then Facebook posted in their business help section and the post pretty much outlined the following: what's changing? Chad (12m 27s): In short, you'll still be able to use Facebook jobs in the US and Canada only. Everything else is getting shut down on the 22nd of February. All of it, the app, the light version, the desktop D E D dead baby! What is not changing? If you're in the U S and Canada, nothing's changing. So, I mean, they have this long ass post, which really details what I just said. They're flipping the light switch off everywhere outside of the U S and Canada. What do you think? Joel (12m 57s): So I'm a little confused on this one. And you mentioned Mr. ATS being a fan. And I knew that there were a lot of fans. So we were actually at the launch in 2017 to TA tech meeting in Denver. If you remember, when Facebook came on and talked about the partners, they were bringing on ZipRecruiter and some ATSs, and then, you know, they reported global growth. The next year, they've added 40 countries since launching in 2017. We've also talked about how Facebook seems to still care about job postings, making feature updates over the past year. Joel (13m 39s): Employers I know have told me Facebook is the first real competitor to like Craigslist and other sort of entry-level type market jobs. And we know that marketplace, where jobs live is really popular, like a billion users a month popular. So this was kind of weird, but ultimately I think this is all about, and you'll love this, Facebook's bet on the Metaverse. The Metaverse to me is an all hands on deck, bet at all situation for Facebook. And they need the resources, the manpower, and woman-power to focus on the Metaverse in order to give it a fighting chance. It may actually be that simple. Joel (14m 19s): I mean, I think that jobs is a pain in the ass for a multitude of reasons, particularly outside of the US, where you have different governmental agencies and regulations and laws. We actually shared, I think, recently something at Riot Games, a job posting scam, where it was super legitimate looking of people, posting jobs as Riot Games, in this example. Chad (14m 46s): Yeah. Joel (14m 47s): They actually have letterhead and discourse accounts that look like Riot Games. Anyway, the point is like, I think there's a lot of layers when you start getting into the job posting thing that Facebook didn't want to touch, particularly on an international scale. Question, I guess, is, does shutting down the API means ZipRecruiter, like an early partner is in the cold now? I guess not in the US but obviously globally, they want to grow globally. I think that is a loss for them if that's the case, it's probably a big one for LinkedIn. It's probably a big one for Indeed, particularly globally and probably Google for jobs on a global scale. Chad (15m 26s): Yeah. Joel (15m 27s): That's my 2 cents. Chad (15m 28s): It's interesting that we're getting all these fucking head fakes from the big names. We had Google who had all these platforms/technologies in this space, and then they slimmed, they shut everything down. Other than just Google for Jobs. Prompts to Richard Collins, a former co-founder over at ClickIQ and currently a strategic advisor to Indeed, he actually predicted this would happen. He also commented that this week on the current shutdown and his comment was, I think the timing is interesting with the whole shift, to Meta, to your point. I can imagine that they are rethinking everything they're doing with an eye on the new future they have set out. Chad (16m 12s): And let's face it, the whole way we hire an advertise is all a bit 1990s. I agree. There's also a bunch of chatter in the groups that say that Facebook will be coming back to jobs, just not in this manner, that they want to make it bigger, that it's actually more hardwired into their platform as opposed to just marketplace. And I have to say, I'm not convinced. I know Facebook wants to be the internet much like AOL was back in the day, which means they need hiring, job search and workforce data. But I also remember 10 years ago when I was working directly with Facebook through the National Labor Exchange and creating the quote unquote "social jobs" Chad (16m 54s): partnership, and it was more smoke and mirrors than anything else, they were looking for connection to government. It wasn't really a real initiative that they put anything behind. So I'm pretty torn on where this actually goes. I can see where it does matter, but then again, you know, you see the Googles, you see the Facebooks and it's like, it just, it's just not big enough for that. Joel (17m 14s): So two questions I have, feel free to chime in. Number one is, are they done in the U S and Canada? They're just postponing that decision. And number two, what does this do to their, you know, gig platform that has been touted for so long? Does that get shelved as well? Chad (17m 32s): Yeah. I don't know. Maybe the US/Canada sticks around and that becomes the focal point on the new product? Right before they roll it out to everywhere else like they did before. It's hard for companies with the brain power and the money and the muscle, like a Google or Facebook to truly understand how hard jobs and hiring is. They don't get it. They don't understand the systems. It's incredibly antiquated and they just can't wrap their mind around it. Not to mention they want to work with everybody, right. They want to be all inclusive. Well, when you do that, you open yourself up to duplication gaming and a bunch of shit that they just don't understand. Joel (18m 13s): Yeah. My guess is there were probably contracts in place with US and Canadian partners and that they're more or less waiting for those to, you know, cancel or not cancel, but to just run out before they shut down the rest of the project? I have no information in terms of what the contracts were. But to me, it's probably like, well, we can't shut down because we have contracts with A, B and C and we don't want to be in court over the next, whatever, so just keep the thing going. So I think ultimately they're going to shut down the jobs component. And I also think that they're probably not going to move forward with any kind of gig platform, of note, because back to the Metaverse question, I think they're all in, on the Metaverse. Joel (18m 54s): Yeah. We know that Facebook is having a harder time hiring good people because of because their reputation, their negative reputation. So they need every hand they can get on this project and they're pulling them away from, you know, projects that don't really matter to them, which is jobs. Chad (19m 10s): Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that was Google's reasoning behind the curtain was that a cloud was so big and that was really where the money was. They needed all hands on cloud. Yeah. Joel (19m 17s): It reminded me of Google plus as well. There was a period where Google was like, everyone, hands on deck, Google plus, we're going to take on Facebook. And then they said, oh shit, that doesn't work. Let's do something else. Chad (19m 36s): Yeah. Screw that. Well to another company who doesn't have great news, this article comes from Fast Company. It was on December 14th. Kronos, a multinational national workforce management platform has been hit by a ransomware attack that, the company said could force its system offline for several weeks. The attack disrupted Workforce Central, UKG, TeleStaff, healthcare extensions and banking scheduling solutions. Holy fuck. Workforce Central is the software that employees use to schedule shifts, log absences, and clock in and clock out. Chad (20m 19s): Kronos has a long list of mega fucking huge companies like Tesla, MGM Resorts, Puma. I mean, the list goes on. The information tech focused website, ZDnet reported that multiple companies were unable to process payrolls though. And other sources said the outage could cause them to miss paychecks leading up to the holiday breaks. Clients get this though, clients were encouraged by Kronos to quote, "implement alternative business continuity protocols," end quote in the meantime. I mean, if you're a mammoth system like UKG, you've gotta be ready for this kind of shit. Chad (21m 3s): Right? Joel (21m 3s): Yeah. So talk about the Grinch that stole Christmas? Listeners, listeners will remember CareerBuilder who allegedly suffered a ransomware attack last year, sending corporate career sites into the abyss. That was a lump of coal for employers. But now we're talking about coal and the stockings of workers. Chad (21m 20s): Yes. Joel (21m 21s): Without paychecks, ouch. Ransomware is a serious problem. I think bigger companies on a bigger companies can fight it. I mean, you mentioned UKG being huge and they are, if they're not Google, they're not Microsoft. Big companies can easily pay off attackers and kind of make it go away even if they were breached. The companies that service Enterprise clients are far less protected. You see healthcare systems being targeted. They have enough to pay the ransom, but they're too small to sort of have the protection that bigger companies do. If you're in this middle layer, you better bulk up your cyber security if you haven't already. Joel (22m 1s): And that's a whole lot of companies in our space. Chad (22m 5s): Yes. Joel (22m 5s): That service enterprise level companies that can really, you know, throw a monkey wrench in the whole thing. If you're relying upon payments and everything going through a third party, you'd better make sure they are secure. So as you're doing your RPOs for 2022, ask that question, how are you guys protected against ransomware? Chad (22m 24s): Don't mess with people's money. I mean, seriously, if I were Kronos, I'd go at this at an entirely different way. I'd have my own set of hackers and mercs to identify the people who are involved, ransoming my shit. And then literally snuff out the situation. Joel (22m 45s): No doubt. We're going to hear more of this in 2022. All right. Let's take a quick break and unicorn alert. Get ready for it, just in time for Christmas. All right. Chad, there it is, we got another unicorn alert this week, just in time for the holidays. Palo Alto based Turing that's T U R I N G, which helps businesses hire and manage vetted remote developers, raised 87 million in a series D at a $1.1 billion valuation. Led by WestBridge Capital, a client company can post a job with specific requirements for technical skills, programming languages, et cetera, entering surfaces workers already screened through interviews and testing for those requirements. Joel (23m 35s): Turing noted its developer pool has grown nine times in the last 12 months, and that it now has more than 1 million developers in 140 countries. The company's customers include Johnson and Johnson, Coinbase, Rivian, and Dell and Disney. Turing supports 15 different job types and more than 100 technologies. Chad thoughts on Turing becoming the latest, but maybe not the last unicorn of 2021? Chad (24m 1s): I love their name and Alan Turing. I mean really defining AI in the 1950s with the Turing test, that I think that was pretty smart. It's pretty smart. I mean, anybody who's in the tech space should know that, right? So that makes sense. But you know, I think I've turned the corner on these types of platforms. Again, again, from the TechCrunch article quote demand continues to outpace supply. By 2030, that disparity will balloon to 85 million positions being unfilled. Okay. So Turing is not providing a solution to that problem. They are providing a solution for companies to test and assess candidates, but that's not the problem? Chad (24m 46s): Now is it? I believe platforms like Turing are great in helping companies get qualified people on board, but it does nothing to bridge the growing demand gap. So to me, this is just another run of the mill testing and assessment platform. And if your company sucks in those areas, when hiring tech talent, then Turing is one of many platforms you can check out, but this is just like putting your finger in the dam with 85 million other leaks springing up. Hacker Rank, Meetcode, Woven Teams, Code Signal, Metal, I Mocha and hell even dinosaurs like HireView have coding assessments. Chad (25m 28s): The answer to this problem is training and development of new tech. So that type of platform combined, training development combined with something like Turing is doing that excites me. And I think that is definitely worthy of a unicorn status. This is not, this is run of the mill. This is happening all over the place. Joel (25m 48s): Well, that's a sell, that's a sell for Chad Sowash, I love that you think 2030 is the goal man, 24 months to go public and get rich. Yeah, they might be thinking about 2030, but they're probably thinking more about 2024, '25. So from my perspective, remote software developers in a work from home world? Check. Helping higher in demand, software developers? Check. And those developers are vetted? Check. An executive team that would make any Silicon valley startup envious? Check. The future looks bright as far as I'm concerned, you're a visionary and maybe you're right about down the road, it not mattering, but these guys are obviously on their way to either being bought by somebody or an IPO, which we love to talk about on the Chad and Cheese podcast, 2030. Joel (26m 34s): Do you think we'll still be podcasting in 2030? Chad (26m 38s): I don't think that's the issue, right? I don't think 2030. I think we're looking down the road. The thing is they are pretty much stating that the demand is the problem. That demand that's outpacing the supply. Well, you're not providing any more supply, right? That's the big solution. If you want to make a shit ton of cash, if you want your valuation to go through the fucking roof, if you want to sell at a much higher valuation than the creation, the manufacturing of that talent, and then being able to onboard that talent. That's the fucking answer. Joel (27m 15s): I still think they're going to get rich. That's just me. Let's talk about the riches of a JB Hunt and T-Mobile. Chad (27m 24s): From the JB Hunt website actually I saw this, it was shared out on the socials earlier this week. JB Hunt Transportation Services, Inc, one of the largest supply chain solution providers in North America, announced that its subsidiary JB Hunt Transportation Inc provided nearly 10 million in appreciation bonuses today to company drivers, maintenance technicians, and full-time hourly employees" end quote. Happy holidays. Right? So this to me, this is just a bullshit smokescreen and $10 million sounds like a lot of money, right? JB Hunt has 20,000 drivers alone. Chad (28m 4s): We're not talking about mechanics and support staff and frontline staff, right? 20,000 drivers. So let's just take that number. Not the rest of them, just the 20,000 number. That's $500 per driver. They were a $1 billion company in 1993. They are now over $9 billion in 2019. So we have to get better at this. As an industry, we have to stop praising these types of charitable exercises and start applying pressure on wages. And here's a great example. $2 per hour wage increase at 40 hours a week is over $4,000 a year. Chad (28m 47s): As opposed to 500 bucks. We're talking about essential supply chain workers. We have to stop being happy with the crumbs and we have to stop allowing this smoke and mirrors bullshit to actually, you know, rise to fanfare. Joel (29m 3s): It beats a gift card to Applebee's I guess? I'll get to agreeing with you eventually. So whenever I hear about year end bonuses, I think of Clark Griswold getting screwed in National Lampoon's Vacation. One of the best dialogues in the history of film. SFX (29m 21s): Hallelujah, Where's the Tylenol? Joel (29m 23s): Anyway, I think you're going to hear more, a lot more about appreciation bonuses in the future. I think you're totally right. I just think companies, companies get a lot of wins with year-end bonuses. We know that employers really don't want to raise wages permanently. There are a lot of things that go with that, that they should do, but they don't, so dangling this carrot of year-end rewards accomplishes a few things for companies. One is it's PR friendly. You get written up in publications for being such a nice company in such a giving and generous company. So you get stories in the paper every year, when you give away $10 million. It's flexible, we did this better, we did better last year, so here's an extra a hundred, right? Joel (30m 3s): So maybe next year they get 600 instead of 500. It aids in retention potentially like, oh, you don't, you don't know how big the year end bonus is going to be. You want to stay till the end of the year to see what that bonus is going to be. And it makes stock buybacks and dividends a little more digestible so investors don't freak out so much versus pay raises. So although we both agree, it's bullshit. And when you start running the numbers with how many employees they have, it's absolutely bullshit. Yeah. But it accomplishes a lot of things for the, you know, for the casual user, if you will, of these companies so they're going to keep doing it. We're going to hear a lot more about bonuses at the end of the year. Joel (30m 45s): God, I don't know, stock giveaways, things that things that will keep people around for 12 months are usually a good thing for companies. And they're going to continue to do it. Chad (30m 58s): I'll tell you what keeps people around all longer. Let me tell you how it's done. T-Mobile has increased its minimum wage to $20 per hour for all its employees. Joel (31m 13s): Yes they have! Chad (31m 14s): In a statement released last week, titled making a great place to work even better. CEO, Mike Seibert wrote "every single employee at T-Mobile, even our newest team members just starting to build their skill base, should have a competitive wage. So we have decided to implement a nationwide minimum wage pay at T-Mobile of at least $20 per hour. This will now apply to every single employee regardless of role or full-time or part-time status. The truth is the vast majority of our employees already earn well above this, especially when including incentive pay, but the move is about inclusion. Chad (31m 57s): And we wanted to draw a line that ensures no employee is left behind." Seibert points out that after the increase, this is the big key, and this is what they're going to get versus what JB Hunt's going to get. After the increase in pay weekly applications to work at T-Mobile jumped from 300 applications a week to 4,000, a 1200% increase. Joel (32m 30s): Can you say that again for the casual listener of the show Chad (32m 35s): So, 300 applications a week to 4,000 a week, which was a 1200% increase, in a market like we have today. And the big difference between what JB Hunt did, which was really just throwing crumbs to the peasants and something like this is, this is going to last again, more than just a month. You're not just throwing crumbs for that meal. You're actually providing food on those individuals tables for as long as they are fucking there. And again, that's the base wage. So everybody starts there, which means when you get a pay increase, what happens? So I think this is exactly what we should be doing as industry mouthpieces or what have you. Chad (33m 18s): We should be talking about the differences between JB Hunt and T-Mobile. Joel (33m 23s): By the way, do you think of JD Byrider when you hear J B Hunt? J D Byrider? Let me know, let me highlight that one again, 300 applications a week, going up to 4,000 a week with this pay increase. So what you could, what you'd be spending in recruitment tech and advertising. Just give it to your workers. It's that much more effective. Yeah, we probably don't talk about T-Mobile enough. You mentioned the pay increases, but so programs like the Lead Magenta Next, that's a cute name, help increase diversity in their ranks and they've invested 22.4 million in nearly 7,000 employees to help them further their education. Joel (34m 4s): They've also increased their physical and mental wellbeing programs and benefits to include free virtual therapy, mindfulness sessions, and stress relief tools. And they're the only wireless provider that offers annual stock grants to every single employee after a year of employment. And they do all of that with their stock, outperforming competitors like Verizon and AT&T. So T-Mobile, spread the love baby. What a great story. Chad (34m 31s): Well, and we talk so much about shareholders. What do you think the shareholders think, right? It, it drives more performance. Not to mention if you can't sell shit because you don't have people to sell the shit. Right? It's tough. I mean, it's so easy. Joel (34m 47s): Yeah. It's shocking. We get people, good people. They stay, we grow them in house. That'd become the future leaders of the organization. Yeah. It's not brain surgery or brain science or whatever rocket surgery. Anyway. Now the advantage they have is their margins are fat. Unlike restaurants that have a tougher time raising wages and pricing in unison. But if you can mirror T-Mobile strategy, if you have weight, you know, margins on your product like that, you should obviously be doing this strategy. Chad (35m 16s): Yeah. I think the difference between those two, that's definitely apples and oranges. Restaurants are still operating like it's the 1940s, for the most part right? Now we have to and T-Mobile's not, I mean, it's more of a tech company, so we'll take a look at restaurants and we say, oh man, that restaurant was, you know, has been around for 50 years. And it's now out of business because of COVID, no, it's not a business because they chose not to evolve and actually become a business of 2021 as opposed to 1956. Right? Joel (35m 49s): Yeah. Chad (35m 49s): We've got to have a better way of starting to frame these narratives. Yeah. Joel (35m 55s): Restaurants have to become tech companies. Basically. This is what is what you're saying. Chad (35m 60s): Flippy, baby. Joel (36m 1s): Flippy baby. Of course, of course. Then you go to steak and shake and it's all cold. Anyway, let's take a quick break. I think I smell the eggnog cooking up and we'll talk about the army. Chad (36m 14s): Go Army beat COVID, that's going to be on the next bumper sticker. You see this article comes from Newsweek, apparently in a few short weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research are expected to announce a vaccine that is effective against all SARS and COVID variants, including Omnicon. Again is effective against all SARS and COVID variants. Holy shit. The vaccine has been in the works for almost two years after the Army received its first DNA sequencing of the COVID virus in early 2020. The military at an early stage attempted to make a vaccine that would be effective against different variants the news outlet reported. Chad (37m 3s): Unlike the other products, Walter Reed's is a spike. I have no fucking clue what these words are. A type of vaccine, which has a soccer ball, shaped protein with 24 faces, allowing it to attach the spikes of multiple COVID variants. It's a new form that will attach itself to whatever's thrown at it. And I fuck I can't wait. Joel (37m 25s): Yeah. So I think this is really inspiring. I mean, we focus as a society so much on private industry and for many, many ways that's for good reason. But we forget about the work government is doing, typically behind the scenes or outside of, you know, the media. You know, my wife is a real world example of government doing really big moonshot type things in her case, DARPA, to do things that private companies couldn't do because of shareholders or just, it doesn't make sense. And very few can do that. So, you know, no doubt warfare of the future will come down to shit like cyber viral space and God knows what else. So it's fantastic to see the military making strides outside of the private sector to tackle, you know, something like novel coronaviruses clearly something that can also be militarized can also be good for society, which is frankly, what a lot of the military has created, cell phones and the like. Joel (38m 21s): Now if the army could just find Santa in the north pole, so I could finally get that GI Joe with the Kung Fu grip that I've been asking for since 1978, that'd be great. All right, tackle that one Army Strong, Chad we're back. Chad (38m 46s): It's time, baby. It's time to get a beer. SFX (38m 53s): Hallelujah, holy shit where's the Tylenol? Joel (38m 56s): And with that Chad, happiest of holidays to you if you celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas, if it's something else or nothing at all, have a great week. Happy holidays, motherfuckers. Joel and Chad (39m 8s): We out. Outro (39m 49s): 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.

Turns out, recording this podcast was the only thing standing between Chad & Cheese and a bottomless bottle of Blanton's to ring in the New Year ... so hold the small talk and get to the point. This show is tight, discussing everything from Paradox' latest unicorn-birthing round of investment, fundraising by Monster - wait, who? - and, well, we had to end the year on some TikTok chatter, didn't we? Happy 2022, ya' filthy animals! As always, a special "cheers" to sponsors Sovren, JobAdx and Jobvite. 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 is most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman 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. Joel (20s): Oh yeah. It's our final show of 2021. And you're the only thing standing between us and a bottomless bottle of Blantons. So we'll make this quick. Hi kids this is your favorite average white dudes, and you are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "crypto punk" Cheeseman. Chad (39s): This is Chad "empire state of mind" Sowash. Joel (43s): And on this week's show Paradox hits unicorn status, Monster raises some cash. Wait, what? And TikTok as if we'd end the year talking about anything else is on this week show, let's do this. New York state of mind, Chad you're in the big Apple or at least around it apparently. Chad (1m 2s): Yeah, I can't get can't get that song out of my head, man. No, it there's nothing. Okay. There might be some things better, but there's very little better than being in New York City at Christmas time. I mean, it is lit up. It is gorgeous and it's not to thank Omicron or anything, but there's hardly anybody in the city now. Usually there, I mean, it's just packed, right? You just can't fucking get around not this time. So, I mean, you could go places, you could see things, some of the shows were shut down, but we did get a chance to go see Wicked, which is awesome. So yeah, we had had a great time in the empire state of mind in New York City. Joel (1m 43s): So you're like Will Smith in I Am Legend. You're just roaming New York with nobody, nobody in the streets, shooting lions and dodging deers and shit. That's awesome. Chad (1m 52s): Yeah. That's the way to live, man. Joel (1m 54s): Well, obviously you got better shit to do than this show. So let's get to some shout outs. Shall we? Chad (1m 60s): Of course, first shout out, goes to a couple of podcasts that included us. You are, you and me in their end of year wrap up. And the first one is Symphony Talent. They did a wrap up and they included our show, which was recorded live in Detroit. Yeah, there you go. And then Christopher, over at the Oven Ready HR podcast, which I think is your favorite name for a podcast. Joel (2m 29s): Sure. What's in the oven is what I want to know. Cause I'm not the father. I'm not the father. Chad (2m 35s): Wrap up that bun baby. Yeah. He included our interview on that one. So we, we did our wrap-ups, which we got some good responses from, but the wrap-ups are good this year. Joel (2m 47s): Nice. So are you, are you on Substack Chad? Chad (2m 51s): No. Joel (2m 51s): So you know what Medium is? It's like a blogging platform. So Substack is the new, the new Medium and everyone's on it. So a couple of our friends and some mystery guests have just joined Substack recently. James Ellis, you know him as the employment branding, dude, he has a new Substack called employer brand headlines. That sounds exciting. And Toby Dayton, the guy I call Sasquatch, cause he's rarely seen, has a Substack he's it used to be the CEO of Jobdig. You remember that? That's an old time one and now LinkUp is where he's doing his business. See over there an heir to the target throne is the rumor. Joel (3m 30s): And he's got a Substack called Diggings on the Job Market. So if you're on Substack or you just like reading some content about the employment industry, checkout, Toby Dayton and James Ellis's new Substacks. There's nothing on Toby's yet. So we, we may not see anything ever. It may just be Sasquatch, Sasquatchesque and never have any content, but I don't know. Chad (3m 52s): I can't believe James Ellis hasn't like, you know, hit us with a 27 different emails on his new Substack that just, Joel (3m 58s): Yeah, he's never going to charge for it. That's what he says. I'm never going to take money for this. Chad (4m 3s): Who is taking money though, is this way global where they are crowdfunding. And that crowdfund over at we funder is up to close to a million dollars right now. So it's interesting that in a time when money is flowing, so fucking freely that Angela and the team over there, I guarantee you, they have VC, you know, PE coming at them that they choose to do this. So it's really interesting, you know, they're doing business their way. Apparently they don't want to any of those VC firms involved. Joel (4m 37s): Yeah, not to, you know, spoil the prediction shows. But I think, I think you'll see a lot more of this into next year. And we saw a little pieces of this with this way, global as well as our friends at candidate ID who raised money through crowdfunding as well. So that's, it's an interesting trend. And I think, I think we'll see more of that, but yeah, definitely shout out to them. Nearly as famous as this way global Paris Hilton is getting a shout out for me. She's in the Metaverse Chad, she's in the Metaverse she's lunching. Chad (5m 7s): Another sign of it going to hell. Joel (5m 10s): She's launching Paris World. No place would I rather be? No word or not if the sex tape is part of Paris World, but she's getting in the Metaverse and today I think I read about Trump's wife, Melania getting some sort of Metaverse thing with her eyes and it's, I don't know it's going crazy. And again, with our prediction shows, I'm sure in FTS, crypto, whatever's going to make it into that episode, but a shout out to Paris Hilton for getting into the Metaverse and launching Paris World. Yeah. Chad (5m 38s): So going from talking about a couple of whack females to Susan Arnold, who has been elected as Walt Disney's first female Chairman of the Board. For the last eight years, Ms. Arnold was executive at Carlyle Group, Procter and Gamble and McDonald's so yeah, talking about those whack shout outs, this is a legit shout out, Susan Arnold, Walt Disney. That's a big fucking name. First female chairman. Awesome. Shout out to her! Joel (6m 9s): That's a big one. Well, I've got a cat Canada, shout out This is news from Canada. Didn't quite make it into the main show, but it's a shout-out Canada based human resource technology company alongside, alongside.com has taken over Moncton, New Brunswick based Career Beacon. New Brunswick is where my wife hails from. So I had to throw that in there also a fellow Canadian Canada based job board, the acquisition, some was not made public, but most of the employees get to stay on with the company. So shout out to Alongside and Career Beacon and Career Beacon has been around for a really long time. I mean, a really long time, like almost as long as we've been in the industry. Joel (6m 52s): So congrats to them and shout out to them. Chad (6m 57s): How Canadian can you get? No, you can all stay. Joel (7m 3s): What do layoffs in Canada sound like? Sorry. Chad (7m 4s): Sorry, sorry. Joel (7m 4s): Sorry. You had a real good job. Sorry. Got to let you go. Sorry. Here's some Molsen on the way out. Chad (7m 12s): Shout out to Door Dash who is asking its employees, all the way up to the it CEO to again, make a delivery at least once a month, but not everyone is a happy Dasher. Apparently a disgruntled Door Dash engineer recently posted a lengthy message on a social media platform. Blind anonymously, go figure. About the monthly deliveries, not being a part of their job description. They signed up to join Door Dash. Dude, put down world of fucking Warcraft,, air up your bike tires and make a goddamn delivery one a month. Come on. Joel (7m 50s): I think that'd be fun. It'd be fun to do that once a month. Chad (7m 55s): I would love that. Yeah. Joel (7m 56s): Good. All right, let's talk about some free shit. You remember last week we talked about a beer winner, Michael Mullady beer from sponsored by Pillar. Chad (8m 8s): Indianapolis Representing. Joel (8m 9s): Indianapolis representative. Yes. Yes. We got free whiskey powered by Sovren and Textkernel Rob Bursey won that last month and we're going to pick a new winner here that we're at the end of December. So if you haven't gone out to Chadcheese.com/free, give us your info and win a chance to win some booze and we'll help kill your liver. And our favorite liver out in Scotland. Adam Gordon has agreed to give some high price scotch away here for the holiday season, each bottle retails for over a thousand dollars. We'll be drawing a, I think the week after January 1st, it's free to join. You just got to go to www.scotch.WIN that's www.scotch.win and put in your address, information so we know where to send the good stuff. Joel (8m 56s): It's free to join. And we're almost up to as many registrants as we did last year with Pappy. So there's as much an appetite this year for the scotch as there was last year for the Pappy. So people lovin' some Scotch. Chad (9m 9s): Somebody's going to be able to start the first of the year with a thousand dollar bottle of scotch. Not to mention, I would assume that registering for this years has exploded on the other side of the pond in Europe, because Adam said that two of those bottles are going to Europeans. Joel (9m 27s): Yup. Yup. That was part of the deal. So it, I haven't looked at the list in a while, but it probably is very skewed a little bit towards the Eurozone, but it does not negate Americans, right? Win a piece of that scotch, there will be one winner of a bottle here in the states. Chad (9m 45s): www.scotch.win Joel (9m 45s): Scotch.w We haven't heard from the 3m people yet. So we're still good on the trademarks. We'll be fine. Let's talk a little fantasy football. Shall we? This is the final week and the final week, the championship round faces off Chris Nipsey Russell with Jason Putnam. So one of those two guys will be the winner. I got thoroughly thrashed by Jason this past week. And Chris beat out a wonderful Miss Q, which I will be playing for third place this week. Chad (10m 18s): That's a big shocker right there. Chris Russell ending up in the finals in the Superbowl, the Chad and cheese fantasy football league. Yes. He went from worst to first. I went from first to worst. So yeah, so Joel (10m 30s): That's how fantasy works. That's how fast you works. Yeah. Good, good call that Aaron Rodgers, a MVP. MVP thing worked out pretty well for you. All right. Well, let's get to some, some birthdays real quick. Actually only one is last week we did all the Decembers, but I think I thought this one was pretty relevant leading into our next story. So Aaron Matos,the CEO of Paradox celebrates the birthday on the day that we're recording, which is the 30th. So major Happy Birthday to him. And there's a good reason why he's celebrating this year. Chad (11m 8s): Topics! Joel (11m 9s): Paradox. Chad (11m 10s): Well, damn. Joel (11m 12s): It might be time to change Paradox his name badge from apex predator and that's right the company this week announced a $200 million series C investment bringing the total raise to a little over $253 million and giving it a $1.5 billion valuation. The round included participation from Workday Ventures, Twilio Ventures, and you ready for this Indeed. New funding will help the company double its team of a reported 400 and accelerate innovation. Launched in 2016, Paradox is headquartered in Scottsdale Arizona with offices in Chicago, Baltimore Televiv Singapore and Vietnam. Joel (11m 57s): Clients include the likes of Unilever, Nestle, McDonald's, CVS Health and General Motors. Apex Predator, unicorn just don't call them a chat bot. Chad, your thoughts? Chad (12m 5s): So we've got to have a Mr. ATS on the show more often because Peter Gold snuggled up to Facebook jobs, and then they announced the shutdown. And then he smacked Olivia around calling the chat bot a splat bot, and now they get 200 million in funding. So that's two for two, Peter and not on the good side. So if you take a look at Paradox, it's $253 million total and funding. First in January of 2019, they got 13.3 from one investor, in May of 2020, they got 40 million from one investor now, 2021, 200 million, 12 different investors. Chad (12m 49s): So with 12 different investors, the big question is how interesting is this going to get with Aaron? Right? Because I mean, Aaron, he's gonna be the guy who obviously steers this ship, which should be, but with 12 different voices, maybe. I think the other two are included in this too, but 12 different voices included in this, you know, how that gets. Do you think that there's going to be any impact on what happens with their focus, mission, anything like that? Joel (13m 17s): They didn't break down the numbers of who gave what? So it's hard to decipher, you know, if I give you 50 million and someone gives you 1 million, my voice should be bigger than the 1 million. And they also, I don't think they announced the board seats, like who was going to be on the board, or if any of those investors would be on the board. Chad (13m 36s): Couple of those, then there. Yes they did. Joel (13m 38s): Yeah. So, and so I don't know the percentage breakdowns, I don't know what Aaron has now. He's obviously the CEO he serves at the pleasure of the board. And if at any point, you know, they want to get rid of him. They can, I don't see that happening obviously. But yeah, it definitely creates complexity to an organization when you take more, more investors. But I don't know enough about the, the breakdown of percentages and the voting rights and everything else to really say how that's going to be. My guess is a lot of people that gave money will not have like a big voice and be calling every day looking to give insight or feedback, or like what's going on with the company. I'm sure there'll be a quarterly meeting, where the board members and other people can come in and get updates on the company. Joel (14m 22s): But I don't, you know, I think it adds complexity, but not so much that it's going to throw the company in the mud, in terms of innovation or being able to move quickly. Chad (14m 35s): Do you think that those voices are strong enough to keep Aaron from shopping the 200 million to perspectively put his name on a sports arena. Joel (14m 49s): I think Aaron has learned some hard lessons throughout the years and do not anticipate Paradox arena, being something that we see any time soon. Chad (15m 1s): So I really think that this type of funding is pretty evident signal. Paradox is not interested in being a point solution. We've looked at Paradox as the conversational AI apex predator. It's beyond that when Eight-fold took their last round, it was a shot over the battle of bigger town acquisition platform. So the same goes here. If Paradox, we're trying to be stealthy before. Well, the cat's out of the bag, this is a shot over the bow of many of the larger TA platforms, period. They are not going to be just a point solution. What do you think about that? Joel (15m 39s): Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think, you know, where they want this to go is they want to disrupt the ATS business. And I think we've talked about a lot of players that are looking to do that MadeFull being one, probably Seek Out. Some of those that, they want to be the place that people go initially, not be just something that is added on to your, to your ATS. So, yeah, I think that's the vision. And if you look at, you know, where the world is going with mobile, and, you know, whether you, what do you think metaverse is going to happen or not like the days of going to a site and typing in words and searching. And that seems more and more antiquated with each year and having an interface where you're talking to someone, messaging with someone, whatever that is, if you believe that's the future, then the bet is probably better on Paradox than it is with an iCIMS or an ATS. Chad (16m 34s): Totally agree. Well, there are definitely, again, teaser here, some predictions that are going to happen around this one. I promise you. Joel (16m 40s): I got three points. Some of will be underscoring what you've said. I think this is a really cool redemption story. There are some people out listening that don't know what jobbing is, don't know who Aaron Matos is. Chad (16m 52s): Yep. And I think it's just worth noting that Aaron started Jobbing back in '99. I think? Raised a bunch of money, had some really great parties at Sherm and then 2008 Put his name on a sports arena. Joel (17m 5s): Sports arenas. Like it was really fun. Like he, he did a lot of like really big stuff. Fortunately, in many ways to the 2008 crash nut punched him in the company in a big way. And they dusted off, pick themselves back up, pivoted into Paradox. I remember thinking like, this is so much smaller than the division at Jobbing, and the fact that this has become, you know, much bigger than Jobbing was, it's just, it's just a really cool redemption story. So for those that don't know the history, I think it's worth noting that's sort of really cool and very appropriate that they are based in Phoenix because much like a Phoenix, they have rising from the ashes to launch Paradox. Chad (17m 49s): Very nice. Yeah. Joel (17m 50s): You like that? Second thing is again, I mentioned Aaron learning a few things in the first rodeo, you know, they raised money the right way. And we spent a lot of time in the past couple of years, talking about Maya and AllyO and some others that took a lot of money and really, I think strangled themselves into not having a lot of runway because of taking so much money. And these guys, you know, bootstrapped for a few years, their first round, like you mentioned, was tiny. They've gotten competitors and growing the business and growing organically, the team that he's built, Jay Z and godson. I mean, we talk a lot about these folks, but they've built a really cool executive team. And I think that's worth noting as well. You know, thirdly, I think too your point, like they want to be the end point or the starting point to the recruiting process. Joel (18m 32s): And you know, right now you go to, you go to a career site that they power with their chat bot on one screen, you see, okay. Type in or drop down menu with where you're located, you know, search a job and then click on the job. But then you see this chat bot, that's like, oh, what are you looking for? What are you interested in? Where do you live? What kind of job? And right now, you know, that conversation just kind of takes you to a bunch of links that you would found any way if you searched. So at some point there's going to be an inflection where companies either go straight up with the search box, or they go with the interaction with a chat bot or a human, Android or whatever. And I'd be really interested to know. Joel (19m 13s): And I don't think anyone does know outside of any of these companies, the percentage of users, that type in a search like traditionally and what percentage opt for the chat bot. That would be really interesting to know. I don't think, you know, do you have ever heard that? Chad (19m 26s): No. No, I, well now what do you mean opt for the chat bot when you're talking about you talking about actually landing on a page, doing a job search versus clicking on the chat bot in the corner? Joel (19m 36s): CVS health is their client. If you go to CVS health jobs, there's the main window is like, Hey, search for a job, right? Like Google. And then there's a little Olivia bubble on the left or on the right-hand corner that says, Hey, I'm Olivia chat bot to help you through your job search. So, and I think it says, what kind of job you're looking for? What are you interested in? So I know some people are using both of them in conjunction, but I'd be really curious to know who's exiting out of the chat and just doing the traditional job search and who is like bypassing the traditional job search and going right to Olivia and the chat bot. That would be really interesting to know. And I don't think that any of that data has been released, but if internally, they know that, you know, 30% went to the chat window last year and 48% now go to the chat window this year, and we're looking at 54% going to the chat bot next year, then the growth is going towards the chat being the prominent way. Joel (20m 33s): But if Chat is like stuck in 5%, 7%, 8%, the advantage is definitely still in the traditional search process. Chad (20m 37s): I don't think it's that black or white, I think it has to do with experience and the types of jobs. So if it's more of the mobile experience and it's somebody who is an hourly type of position, it's automatically into a chat type of scenario to ask for, you know, the information that they need. So, I think it really is predicated on a type of position and also the experience that they're in and you can meld those, right. Not to mention also, you know, I see more of an evolution of, instead of clicking on apply and having to fill out a bunch of shit, you go through the same process just with the bot. Chad (21m 18s): I mean, it's the same thing just about, except when you're going through a form it's really hard to get to FAQ's and then back to the form, you can ask the bot something, right? So, I mean, there's more of an interaction. Yes, you are filling out the same thing. This is, there's more evolution here and that's, and it's also not just predicated on desktop versus mobile. It could be predicated on the type of position. So I see this being huge and I always have, but it's starting to finally get there. That's the exciting part. Joel (21m 47s): Yeah. I think it would be interesting to see if they go to our site on mobile, the default is chat. If they go to our site on a desktop, the default is the search traditional search box. Chad (21m 60s): I think it's more a position than it is anything else. I don't think it because I, I think again, the position almost dictates where they're going to be looking for their job, whether it's mobile versus desktop, Joel (22m 10s): The news is at some point we will engage with some Paradox folks and maybe get to the bottom of some of these answers so forth and interesting is so Indeed is Vesta is investing. They do not invest often. I don't know if I could even name a company that Indeed has invested in, in the last 14 or 18, 24 months. So their investment to me is really interesting. Do you read anything into that? Chad (22m 35s): I think it's one of those diversity type of plays. I mean, when you bet in the stock market, you don't just put everything on one stock, you try to be diverse and you look for some of the startups that are out there that are leading edge, bleeding edge and have a guy like Aaron, who again, I agree a hundred percent, you know, he fell down, but he didn't stay down. Guy got up and he's a fighter. I mean, that's all there is to it. The guy's a fighter like it or not. It doesn't fucking matter. He's a fighter. And he's assembled a crew that I think any company, especially if you're talking about Indeed, if they want to try to put money into this and you see Jay Z and you see godson, you see Alise and you see some of the others that are there. Chad (23m 19s): I mean, it's a given, throw some money in the pot. Yeah. Joel (23m 23s): And it's so rarely happens that I think it's worth noting that Indeed has put money on this. Well, let's take a quick break, not moving at breakneck speed, but maybe the show be a little, little shorter than others. When we get back, we'll talk about Monster. Monster, raise some money. Chad, what the fuck is that about? Chad (23m 45s): No, this is not your grandpa's monster. Joel (23m 47s): So here's the summary monster.com India private limited. Chad (23m 50s): What? Joel (23m 50s): The parent company of Monsterindia.com and a Monster site in Southeast Asia and the middle east has raised 18 million in a funding round that took its valuation to a reported $100 million. The proceeds will go towards investment in product development and marketing in India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Confused yet? Headquartered in Hyderabad Hyderabad, Hyderabad? Chad (24m 18s): Hyderabad. Monster started its India operations in 2001. Quess with two S's acquired the company from Monster Worldwide owned by Randstad in 2018, where I don't think there was any news release whatsoever. Joel (24m 28s): Chad you used to work at Monster and Randstad. Can you make sense of this for us? Chad (24m 33s): Well, first off, I can't make sense on why we didn't know that they were sold in 2018. This, chunk of the business was actually sold. That was odd to me when I saw this, I was like, what the fuck? How did any of this happen? And then start digging in. And I obviously found out that, you know, this isn't, this isn't Randstad. So it's not your, it's not your grandfather's Monster, right? It's a piece of that Monster. I think it's incredibly interesting knowing Randstad and knowing the amount of business that they do all over the world, that they would actually give up such a large portion of the world. I mean, it's not just what's happening now. It's the promise of what it could be. Chad (25m 19s): Right. And I think that's where Randstad's fallen just flat on their face. They haven't been able to tie together tech and this type of database and brand into what should have been a Colossus. I mean, again, the difference between staffing and RPO and talent acquisition is staffing it's their business. In Talent Acquisition it's your job, right? So they're really focused on doing the business of staffing and tech obviously is incredibly big when it comes to hiring today. So watching Randstad, not just fall flat on their fucking face with monster in the first place, but then sell off a promise of something this large man, it is fucking crazy. Chad (26m 2s): I mean, I think that's more of a story than this, this funding to be quite Frank. Joel (26m 7s): Yeah. What was an Andrew Dice Clay? Andrew Dice Clay's line. They needed the money. Maybe they needed the money. I don't know. I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think so either. It was just a headache. Maybe I like the growth prospects in India and APAC. We've talked about that on the show quite a bit big. So the only reason we're talking about this is because Monster's name is attached to it. Remember India's Andella raised 200 million back in the fall. According to our friends at Aim Group, the site says it has north of 60 million active users in India, but similar web indicates it has about four to four and a half million visits per month. And then the '21 Aim Group Recruitment marketplaces annual the site failed to rank them on the top three sites in India behind freshers live. Joel (26m 54s): And Indeed Glassdoor Simply Hired India. So they, they didn't exactly sell it to a juggernaut, whether they can turn it around and make it something worth a hundred million dollars will be interesting. The bigger question to me maybe is if Randstad has shown a willingness to dump parts of Monster, do we see other parts of Monster go by the wayside in 2022? Chad (27m 16s): Yeah. I think if they could have sold it for something that was, you know, worthwhile, they would have, I don't, I don't know why they're hanging on to what they currently have, other than they can't sell the fucking thing. Joel (27m 35s): No buyers. Chad (27m 36s): Yeah. Again, in this market, this demonstrates, I believe how antiquated the tech is. And I mean, how the brand has actually atrophied. Joel (27m 43s): Right? Chad (27m 43s): I mean, it was the biggest brand in the market. At one time, it had the biggest database at one time, it had the coolest tech at one time. None of that exists today in Monster. Joel (27m 55s): Best brand by a long shot. At one point was a $10 billion valuation. I believe on monster. And Randstad bought it for what $600 million ish Chad (28m 2s): Was. It was bargain basement. And now that I think of that, I'm going to make a note. We need to get Jeff Taylor on just to have this discussion. I don't want to talk about the history or all that other reminiscent bullshit. I want to talk about, you know, today and thoughts on what the landscape should look like for something like a Monster. Joel (28m 23s): Yeah. I mean, I don't know, percentage wise size of each market that Monster does business end. But if, if the India APAC portion is a hundred million, I mean, let's say the other two being Europe and north America are another a hundred, 150 than what Randstad bought they have not increased the value of whatsoever. In fact, they're losing value on this, on this company based on my limited math abilities. Chad (28m 48s): Asleep at the fucking wheel. Joel (28m 50s): Jeff Taylor would be a trip to get on the show, for sure. Chad (28m 53s): I'll, I'll work on that. Joel (28m 54s): That. Yeah. By the way, I'm here. I'm finally seeing and hearing some CareerBuilder ads. So, you know, for whatever that's worth, I don't think they've dropped money for a super bowl ad, but at least Career Builder is trying to revive some of its former glory. Chad (29m 11s): I want Sue Arthur on the pod as soon as possible. So we can talk about the first big step in rebranding and new commercials. And as soon as she can, as soon as she can Joel (29m 19s): And I wouldn't hold your breath, wouldn't know algebra, maybe, maybe next year. Who knows? Chad (29m 24s): She'll come on the same day that Art Zeal does. Joel (29m 27s): Yeah. Let's take a quick break in the year on TikTok. I can't think of a better way to do that and then get to our New Year's Eve festivities. Amen. All right, Chad, we got TikTok to talk about. Ooh, we've got three, three new stories from some more relatable to employment than others, but th there, so three things from TikTok got our attention recently. Number one, the site is really, really popular. I know that's not news to anybody, but according to cloud flare TikTok is now the web domain with the most traffic in the world, rising from seventh place last year to now eclipse Google in 2021, that's a big story. Joel (30m 9s): Number two, TikTok is preparing to launch a new service that will turn its viral food videos into meals You can actually order. TikTok is partnering with GrubHub and others to launch TikTok Kitchen. Only restaurants across the United States will have access to this technology. Next year, the menu at the restaurants will draw upon the most popular viral food videos that show up on TikTok, which people can then have delivered to their door via GrubHub. TikTok plans to launch and around 300 locations that will start delivering dishes in March with plans to open more than a thousand restaurants by the end of next year. Number three, a little closer to the employment industry. Joel (30m 54s): QuitTalking is now a thing. What the hell is it? Millennials and Zoomers, I guess that's gen Z they're zoomers now are taking the TikTok to post short videos, shaming toxic workplaces, glorifying their resignation letters, counting down their last days, dunking on employers and glorifying their new unemployment status. The hashtag #QuitTok currently has over 573,000 posts on TikTok and those creating them say, they're not worried about alienating future employers. TikTok is guaranteed to keep us talking in 2022, but what caught your attention most from these three news stories from the last week? Chad (31m 37s): Well, first off TikTok has something that Google and Facebook does not, and that is traffic from China, right? So they have an opportunity to have worldwide traffic, where Google, Facebook doesn't. They're locked out of China, but still incredibly surprising. I mean, to watch TikTok explode the way that it has after being on it for half an hour, and then looking at my watch and going, holy shit, that felt like five minutes. You get it right. The algorithm is amazing. The tech itself is just so fluid, but again, the opportunity to have worldwide versus not being shut out of, you know, a big, a big chunk of traffic like China. Sure. The ghost kitchens, which I think is the best marketing ever. Chad (32m 20s): You just take a look at what does everybody have to do, right. Food, right? You have to eat. Not to mention you take a look at all these fucking shows on Netflix and all over the place. These reality shows that are about what? About food. I mean, it could be about pastries. It is the best pastry chef, the best chocolate chef. I mean, they have found niches for this, right? So TikTok very smartly says, Hey, let's jump into this from a marketing standpoint. Let's not to mention, also engage more foodies. Right? I think they could do this in different niches where people, I mean, they have to gravitate or they have been gravitating. Chad (33m 8s): And then last but not least, if you have not gone to TikTok and actually look for the quit talking piece I did. And again, found myself for half an hour, watching millennials and Zs, mainly Zs, I think go on to store-wide sound systems with like the, in talking into the mic saying, I just want to say, you know, Target shoppers, you know, this place fucking sucks. Jenny can kiss my ass. You know? So it's like, holy shit. And it was one after the next, I thought this happened a couple of times, got a little fanfare. No, this is happening all over the fucking place, in a hell of a lot more, than I ever thought could or would happen. Chad (33m 47s): And it's being driven in, tell me if I'm wrong. It's being driven by TikTok. Joel (33m 52s): Well, the algorithm, for sure. Chad (33m 54s): Well, no I mean the other, the other kids that are out there, the other young adults that are out there are seeing this happening. Fuck that I'm going to do it too. Joel (34m 4s): Sure. Kids do what other kids do, especially if it's popular and it's getting likes and re-shares and comments and everything else. So. Chad (34m 12s): Oxytocin. Joel (34m 13s): So number one, like TikTok and its trajectory and how quickly it has become, what it has become is amazing. And the company will figure out a way to go public. It'll be one of the most valuable companies in the world in the next few years. It's a juggernaut and it's just incredibly impressive. The delivery thing means I am fucked. Like if I can just, if I going to see the video of the nachos and click, please deliver this immediately. I am totally fucked. And TikTok is just going to take all my money. So, so I hope that does not come to Indy anytime soon. Cause I'm screwed. The most interesting part to me is the employment side. Joel (34m 54s): So like so young, so stupid. I hope the social media dopa hit feels good kids because you're going to feel like shit when you're passed over for that dream job, because of your little tock video companies like Fama, check out our interview with the founder from, I think last year or the year before, they're going to find your ass and companies are going to be able to find out what you did and how you quit. Maybe more interesting than that as well is the future of sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, and others. You mentioned Blind who published employee reviews. Yeah. If the future is video and no one gives a shit about anonymity, then why go to some web web 1.0 site to vent your frustration? Joel (35m 36s): The Glassdoor needs to take some of that Recruit Holdings cash, and launch some anonymous video feature or some shit, or at least get some fuzzy audio app to see if they can like penetrate this new audience because it's looking really antiquated to go out to Glassdoor and, you know, type something for 30 minutes when I can just get TikTok famous and tell my boss to kiss my ass. Chad (36m 6s): Yeah, it's too late for them. Joel (36m 7s): It's too late for them. This show's over. Get the hell off my lawn. Happy New Year, everybody. Chad (36m 14s): Happy new year. Joel and Chad (36m 16s): We out. OUTRO (36m 50s): 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.

Chad is reenergized and back after another stint in Europe, Joel is drinking Corona's on a beach in Mexico, and Mr. ATS (Peter Gold) slides into the guest host seat to talk news, moves, and we answer questions like.... Will PageUp's Path in Motion work? Is Stepstone's master AppCast plan working? Does Textkernel now own the market? and some Buy or Sell with: 1) AdeptID 2) VideoMyJob and 3) myGwork Let's do this! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (25s): Gonna be a path in motion. All I need is some page up cash. Take the platform high St. Elmo's fire. Holy shit. I think I blacked out there for a minute. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, where today we will be catching you up on all the news, money and acquisitions you missed out on. Okay. So that's a lot, maybe not all of that, but we'll do our best. I'm your host, Chad 'man in motion' Sowash. And today we are Cheeseless, but I am bringing the gold baby, Peter Gold. That is, and guess what? Mr. ATM, Mr. ATS himself will be joining us. Chad (1m 5s): So sit back, relax and stay tuned because we will be right back. Oh yeah. The eighties Peter, the eighties. Oh yeah. You know, you had that on your playlist. You have it on your Spotify playlist right now. Don't you Peter? Peter (1m 25s): I don't even have Spotify. Chad (1m 27s): Oh my God. Oh dude. So Peter, Mr. ATS Gold. How's it hanging? How are you doing? Peter (1m 34s): Yeah. Yeah. Not bad. Not bad. A bit tired today. Chad (1m 37s): Tired from what, what have you been doing that has tired you out? Peter (1m 40s): I've been at my bike today. It was a bit of an epic ride in it. The thing is I knew it was a big ride, but it didn't quite turn out. Well, it was kind of, it did turn out how I expected and I knew it would be bad, so it was bad. And so, but the problem is I knew I had to get back for you and I left late. Chad (2m 1s): Your left late, but you made it, you made it in your all knackered out. Peter (2m 4s): It was good even though I'll tell you, it was, it was a dilemma. Chad (2m 7s): Oh yeah. How so? Peter (2m 9s): Well, about six hours in, I was saving my cheese sandwich. And have you seen the film, the War Horse? Chad (2m 17s): Yeah. It's been awhile ago, but yeah. Peter (2m 19s): Do you remember the start where you've got the horse and the boy at the farm? Chad (2m 25s): Yeah, uh huh. Peter (2m 26s): That was filmed on location in Dartmoor? Chad (2m 29s): Oh, no shit. Peter (2m 30s): It's called Ditsworthy Warren Farm. And that's exactly where I was going today to have my cheese sandwich, But yeah, time was ticking because I was late and I'm riding along and I'm thinking I'm not going to make it to Ditsworthy and the pub and get back for Chad. And so I'm kind of riding along, I think I'm Chad or cheese? Chad or cheese? And I did not. I thought, hang on. I'm supposed to be Chad and cheese obvious. So anyway, made it to the pub. I mean the last descent down to the pub below is a real humdinger at descent, rocky gnarly, fully off type thing. And you know how you should never think about bad things happening? Chad (3m 10s): Yes, you'd never do that shit. Cause it's going to happen. Peter (3m 11s): You get a puncture coming down here. Yeah, no, I didn't. I didn't go. So I got to the pub, I had my beer. I'd already inhaled my cheese sandwich. Cause I didn't go to the Ditsworthy Warrens cause I had to get back for you. And yeah. So here I am eight hours later after riding my bike I'm here. Chad (3m 28s): That's how important I am people. That is how important I am. We had to come back for Chad. So that's he could, he could guest host on Chad and Cheese. So I am, I'm damned excited to be back on the mic. Cheeseman is vacationing on the beach in Mexico somewhere. I am still in a haze after being in fucking Europe for the last three weeks, which was a blast by the way. So I wanted to make sure listeners out there that I brought a guest on who had some, you know, a good amount of industry experience, but even more so opinions. So that's why I called Mr. ATS, who was just on the show about a month or so ago, was it Peter? Chad (4m 8s): He received some pretty damn good fanfare. I think he paid for it, but no matter it doesn't matter for all those listeners who might've missed the it's Mr. ATS podcast, first and foremost, listen to it after this, give them a quick Twitter bio about you. Who is Mr. ATS? Peter (4m 26s): Mr. ATS is me, obviously. Built an ATS back in 1999. Sold that business, been working in the industry ever since, in blogging, analysts, worked for some of the big vendors. And yeah, and I know I'm just Mr. ATS. Chad (4m 40s): Like who, who are some of the big vendors? Peter (4m 43s): Worked for Loomis and worked for Cornerstone. And I do some consulting work for, Toleo, Job Partners and some of the smaller vendors. Chad (4m 53s): Dropping those names. I love it. I love it. Well, shit. Let's go ahead and transition into shout outs. I want to first go and say shout out to Europe who is doing vaccination passports and proof of testing the right way. We flew into Paris. We spent a week in Malta. We spent a week in Budapest, another week in Tavira Portugal. Then a couple, a few days back in Paris before we came back to the US and I got to say, dude, it was fucking easy. And it was much different than the 1940s version that we have here in the United States, where they're like, show me your papers. It was all on your phone, all digital QR codes. Chad (5m 36s): It was easy shit. So I got to give a shout out to Europe for doing vaccination passports. Right? Have you traveled at all? Have you had to deal with them or? Peter (5m 44s): I've been to Scotland and Wales and they were different to England when it came to a COVID. I mean, of course England, Boris has done an amazing job because he's such an amazing leader. Chad (5m 59s): Dick. Peter (5m 59s): Yeah, completely. Everybody's now panicking and getting the boost or trying to get the booster because there's nobody to deliver the boosters. So I went for my booster yesterday and my 2:30 appointment was going to was delayed by two hours. Chad (6m 12s): Wow. Damn dude. And you guys, I mean, you're above what we are here in the US with regard to a vaccination percentage. And it's weird because we, I think depending on where you are in the states, but I think this is pretty much standard throughout. If you want to go get a shot, you can get a shot. If you want your booster, you're not going to have a problem getting in to get the booster. So it's weird to hear that a country like the UK or countries like the UK are actually having issues. Peter (6m 41s): Yeah, well it's kind of what you'd expect from Boris really? Isn't it? Chad (6m 47s): So you have any Shout outs for us? Peter (6m 48s): Oh, I do, I was going to have a shout-out for Olivia, my favorite splat bot. Chad (6m 53s): Oh yeah. You're not, you're not a, you're not a paradox. Olivia splat bot fan. Peter (6m 57s): I don't really mind chatbots. I just think, you know, if it's not always appropriate and if you're going to use a chat bot at least get it right? Chad (7m 4s): Right. So what's get it right look like? Peter (7m 4s): Don't ask open-ended questions in a single field text box, when somebody's on their phone. You can, some of the questions, like how long have you been in the industry? And that's absolutely fine, you know, a long time or 20 years or whatever, but then say, what is it that you think makes a good XYZ? I mean, it's like, seriously, you want me to answer that to a pseudo human being chat bot? On my phone? Chad (7m 32s): So is there voice, is there availability for voice to text or even leaving regular voice audio messages? Peter (7m 39s): Nope, not that I can see anyway. I mean, maybe there is further down the process. There may be, but I just think at the top end of the application process, if you've got a job that's quite senior and you're not going to get many people apply for it anyway, really all you need is their name, their email address and their mobile number. And maybe ask them two questions. Yeah. Chad (7m 58s): Yeah. That's not really a Paradox/Olivia issue though. Is it that's more of a process? The company? Well, I, yeah, well, I mean the company - the company's process is all fucked up and they're asking way too many questions, especially on the front end. Yeah. Peter (8m 11s): But you would expect the tech vendor when it's using its own tech to be a Paragon of virtue, as far as how you set it up to be. Chad (8m 21s): So what you're saying is Paradox actually doing the hiring themselves. You've gone through that process and that wasn't quite as slick as you thought it would be. Peter (8m 29s): Correct. I thought it would be far better. And that actually I don't. I mean, if you're on LinkedIn, why not just have easier just apply on LinkedIn, but of course there'd be no need for Olivia then. And that's a real paradox, isn't it? Chad (8m 41s): It is a real paradox. It really is. More shout outs on my side. I want to shout out to listeners who connect. We appreciate you guys out there, not just listening, but also engaging whether it's connecting on Twitter, following us or connecting on LinkedIn, Antonio Arias Lopez who's the global head of talent, acquisition, and employer brand at MBCC group over in Germany. He loves the podcast. Thanks for listening, Antonio. Peer Goudsmit over in the Netherlands, connected with me on LinkedIn, said that he's a big fan and we're obviously big with the Dutch. Go figure? Sarah Calorie from Market Drayton. That's over there in England. Chad (9m 23s): She loves the podcast. Thanks for listening. We love our listeners all over the world. Thanks for connecting and following us on social media and keep on listening. Plus get your friends, family, coworkers, and anyone, you know, to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese wherever they listen to podcasts or go to Chadcheese.com. Last but not least. I got to give a shout out to scotch. Everybody loves scotch, right? Peter (9m 47s): I was thinking about them as well. To be honest, he was giving away free whiskey. I've not worked out what I need to do to get some yet, but I did see that was giving free whiskey away. Chad (9m 55s): I'll tell you exactly what you have to do as Adam Gordon would actually put it, not just scotch it's scotch malted whiskey with a value of a thousand dollars per bottle. Go to scotch.win to register for the expensive stuff. Again, a thousand bucks a bottle! We're giving away scotch the expensive stuff at scotch.win. If you want some bourbon, some other types of whiskey. That's cool to go to Chadcheese.com/free Sovren sponsors, free whiskey to your doorstep once a month. Not so much in beer from pillar.hr. That's right. A bunch of craft beers on your doorstep or who knows? Chad (10m 38s): Maybe you want a comfy t-shirt ChadCheese t-shirt again, go to Chadcheese.com/free, or just go to Chad cheese.com click on free in the upper right-hand corner. And that Peter is how you get the free shit. Peter (10m 51s): I'll get some free beer later then. Chad (10m 52s): I love it. I love it. So you ready to talk some topics? Peter (10m 57s): That's why we're here, I think isn't it? Is that it are or are we done now? Can I go? Chad (11m 2s): And you can't go because it's time for topics. All right, right out of the barrel smoking hot Page up acquires Path in Motion. Peter (11m 12s): PathMotion. Chad, no in Chad (11m 14s): Pathogen. I keep hearing the man in motion from St. Elmo's fire. That's why. Okay, so Peter (11m 19s): It's your Spotify list again, don't have Spotify and you won't get names wrong. Chad (11m 23s): Well, that's why I have guys like you to keep me straight. It's not that big of a deal. Okay. So from the press release, here we go. Quote "PageUp acquires PathMotion, a pioneering SAAS platform that allows organizations to create highly relevant employee generated content to attract and engage quality applicants. PathMotion's sophisticated AI powered discussion platform makes it easy for organizations to connect candidates to real employees and share authentic employee content. With a single click, organizations can create and share on brand employee generated content with prospective job seekers. Chad (12m 10s): PathMotion compliments, PageUp's, acquisition of clench recruitment, marketing software." So Peter. PageUp, do you think adding PathMotion, especially after the Clinch acquisition to the portfolio was a must? Peter (12m 22s): To be honest, I've never really understood PathMotion. I've never really understood the real value that it offers. And you know, you're, there'll always be anecdotal examples of where people have bought it and had a play with it. And I've had a look around some of their customers and I don't think it's particularly great experience and I don't see the point of it. And the fact that PageUp is saying Clinch and PathMotion will be integrated with their own ATS, but still available to be bought standalone, to integrate with other ATSs. I can't see that happening. To be honest, Clinch made sense. You know, Clinch is a career site, CMS, and it's kind of expected now of ATS vendors to have a career site, but there's a massive disconnect between what I would call a true CMS and what an ATS offers, you know, and I've been there with Hire Pad that was a full CMS with ATS integration. Peter (13m 19s): So we would build a career site, all the extra pages, feed all of the jobs and multiple ATS into one place. The candidate had a better experience. So people like Tribepad, for example, they try to be that standalone social career sites. When they tried to get ATS integration, you know, that almost killed them off. So I said, well, if you can't beat them, join them. So they did and they became an ATS and the rest of the state's history. But I think PageUp hoovering up kind of wastes and strays won't bring them success. And for me, like I say, PathMotions never made a lot of sense. Clinch does, but PathMotion, I don't get why, I really don't. Chad (13m 57s): So one thing, many marketing platforms are missing is content generation. And this seems to majorly bolster the value of Clinch. Yeah, you can have a career site that you create and then you want to be able to fill it with content. But for the most part companies, they suck at creating content and they're fucking horrible at creating content. So this platform could perspectively help them get past that obstacle and being able to allow their employees to create authentic quote, unquote, "authentic" content for them to actually share not just on their website, but also to be able to press out via the socials. Chad (14m 40s): So do you agree that most of these quote unquote "marketing platforms" are really just infrastructure, they missed the big key of a content generation partner. Peter (14m 50s): You see, I don't necessarily agree that we need loads of content. Chad (14m 53s): What's going to bring people jobs? Is that it is that the only content? Peter (14m 56s): If you look at where the traffic is on a career site, it's all around job search. Now, once people get an interview, then they will go and look at content. But do you think people really believe all the kind of marketing bullshit that companies put on their career site about themselves? No. Is PathMotion the answer? I don't think so because that content needs to be kept up to date. And when I had a quick look at one, in one example, I just thought I kind of expect it to be real time and it wasn't real time. It was kind of, you know, here's a question you can ask, choose who you want to ask the question to and God send it off and they'll get back in touch with you. Peter (15m 37s): But it was just, the whole experience was really clunky and horrible and not really seamless. And didn't really make me think, that's impressive. It just made me think that's a bit 2003. So, and I think this whole authenticity aspect, I don't think people buy it. It's just, for the majority of jobs, people saying, I just want a job. And I think if you get to a point where if you're say somebody on a 80K a year or more, you're quite an experienced person, you're in quite a senior role, then you're more likely to talk to people in the organization and find information out or talk to your friends or go into Glassdoor. Peter (16m 20s): So for me, I think we need to take a step back from this massive content generation element of the career site. And just say, let's make the process as slick and easy as possible. You can look at your traffic, you can look at your data and you can say, how many people come to the career site? How many first timers, how many bounds, how many go to the job search? How many go to the content? And are they returning people which will kind of support the fact that if probably people who've already applied for jobs and they're coming back now, to look for some more information. So I just think we've got it very wrong. And if we can't get the basics, right, which is find a job, apply for a job, maybe use a chat bot to apply, find and apply for a job, get that bit right. Peter (17m 0s): If we can't get the basics, right? What's the point of the content? Chad (17m 3s): I totally agree, but I don't think this is an or scenario, right? I don't think it's content 'or' a slick process. I think what we've done over the years, is we've come up with these marketing campaigns that have been real shit. They might've been too polished. They might not have seemed genuine or authentic, but what we didn't do, which is exactly what you're saying is we didn't have a great process for once. They were interested to get in to the application process or at least into the system. So it's, it's really been a shit UX, no matter how much good content you might've put together. I think personally, this is an 'and' scenario. You need to be able to, from a recruitment marketing standpoint, you need to be able to touch those people who care and they want to learn more about you. Chad (17m 47s): And you've got to do it with good content. Peter (17m 49s): Well, you gotta have the right content. You've gotta have the right content that people want. So for example, hourly workers, and this was done, and this, I've done a survey on this. And they basically said, we'd like a pay calculator. I want to know if I apply for this job doing 20 hours a week, how much will I earn? How much would I take home? That's the kind of stuff those workers want. Whereas people who are going to work in head office, yes. They want to say, have a peek over the fence. They want to say, well, okay, let me look what it's like in your office. Chad (18m 18s): Right. Peter (18m 19s): Let me meet some people. And let me have a look at where I'll be working maybe. Chad (18m 26s): Right. Peter (18m 26s): So content is important, but it's about getting the right content that the target audience want. And I don't think we've got that right. I don't think we're intelligent enough or investigative enough to actually say, you know, this is what our target audience wants, and this is what we're going to give them. Everybody just does the same. Every career site looks the same. Chad (18m 47s): And why do you think that is? Because they're all having agencies who are, like-minded putting them together for them. Peter (18m 58s): Yeah. And everybody and talent acquisition people are sheep. Chad (19m 1s): Okay. So let's, let's move toward PathMotion's, footprint, Asia, PACrim, Europe, the US, they're looking at this broad scope, right? I mean, PathMotion, PageUp is fairly big, but they're not really a household name in the US. Shouldn't it? Do you think that they should focus on specific regions and try to own those regions before trying to get a scatter shot at this? Or do you think, Hey, go for everything? Peter (19m 28s): I think, well, my understanding of PathMotion, of PageUp is that they are very strong in Asia Pac and typically American vendors are not strong in Asia Pac. Chad (19m 36s): Exactly. Peter (19m 36s): So I would focus on that region and become the defacto HCM in that region. Chad (19m 48s): I think a company like PathMotion, more than likely this is a clearance rack type of a buy. It's something that actually fits on the content creation end of Clinch. And again, we both think Clinch was a great buy for them, but I think they need, definitely no question, they need content creation ability, but also they need to focus on the path to application as well. Either way it doesn't matter. There's a great soundtrack for these guys. Chad (20m 29s): All right. Going on to our next story. Okay. Kids. So if you didn't listen to the latest European Chad and Cheese podcast, entitled TextKernel Lands a Whopper, Joel, Lieven and Hung Lee talked about this next acquisition, but I believe they left a lot of daylight in talking about the deal, not to mention Peter, I knew you were coming on and I wanted to hear what you had to think. So here it comes. Dutch recruitment software from Textkernel backed by private equity firm Main Capital Partners has acquired US parsing and matching rival Sovren, also friend and sponsor the show. Chad (21m 12s): Main Capital Partners said a deal that aims to expand its business across North America and Asia Pac and strengthen its technology base. Sovren based in Texas delivers a similar AI software to Textkernel will boost the Dutch firms position in the so-called search and match technology used by recruiters to screen candidates. It's private equity owner, Main Capital Partners said in the statement, the deal is valued at 30 to 40 million euros. That's about around 45 million US dollars, first and foremost, congrats to longtime sponsor Robert Ruff and the crew over at Sovren. Chad (21m 53s): Peter this is a much different conversation than we just had on content. Your thoughts on this space and also this acquisition. Peter (22m 3s): Yeah, I think it's a great acquisition for Textkernel. They're both very solid companies, obviously Sovren a very US centric. Textkernel very much MEA focused, although they have got business in the U S and they've both been doing this for 20 odd years each, so they know what they're doing. Kind of, you always have to wonder, is it two old timers that make shovels getting together to eat out the final remnants of a declining industry? You know, CV parsing, what will that even be a thing in a few years' time? Or will they pivot because the still life in the old dog and they could become the world's largest and oldest with the biggest dataset AI skills engine or something along those lines. Chad (22m 44s): Yeah. Well, one thing that you have to remember is that you can't get the data. If you don't parse the data. And one of the hardest things to do with all this shit data that we get from job descriptions and resumes, what's the worst content that's out there today, job descriptions and resumes, the things that matter most. Well, these two organizations Sovren and Textkernel probably are the best when it comes to parsing that data. And when we talking about parsing, we're talking about making that data available so that it can be consumed by matching engines, by AI machine learning, all that other fun stuff. Chad (23m 27s): Right? So from my standpoint, and again, we're close to this and I'm incredibly biased because this is my favorite segment of the industry. You can't have good matching without amazing parsing. So they're probably thousands. I would say there definitely are thousands of platforms that are actually out there today. And you who are listening today, probably use Sovren or current or Textkernel from a client standpoint, or one of your vendors uses them because they power the whole fucking world when it comes to parsing and matching. Peter (24m 2s): Even some of the big skills engines have a piece of Sovren or a piece of Textkernel in there doing their thing. Chad (24m 10s): Yeah. Yeah. So Textkernel the big dog in Europe, EMEA Sovren, you know, the big dog here in the states. I see this as a huge coup for Textkernel to be able to, they are now there's no question. They are the top dog in the world. And number two is no where in sight, I mean, you've got great companies like DaXtra, and, and, and some, some, some others that are out there, but they're nowhere close to what now what Textkernel is. And then you have to take a look at, go to market, Eight-fold is trying to become a core talent platform. Peter (24m 52s): Yep. Chad (24m 53s): While a new global juggernaut being, you know, Textkernel is poised to power, all of Eightfold's competitors. I mean, from my standpoint, this is a genius way to actually own the market, instead of going out and having the biggest brand and spending millions of dollars on creating a platform that you will compete against the entire world with both of these organizations said, fuck that, you don't need to know my name, but you do need to use my tech. So they they're powering everything out there today. Peter (25m 24s): Yeah. They're not Intel. They will be in every HCM stack. Chad (25m 28s): Yes. Peter (25m 28s): And I think it's where, where else would they go? Because it's not just about recruitment or not, let's say head, office type recruitment matching skills to jobs. It's also, if you think about temporary work or gig workers, freelancers, if you can then look at saying what, okay as say, somebody like Manpower, let's say, or, or Alexander Mann, they've got thousands of temporary workers and they're having to find somebody to do one job. So it's like, Hey, find me somebody to do this one job. Well, if the machine can actually say, well, we can not only find the person that's got the right skills. We know where they've worked before the matching becomes even more finite in actually picking people out for contract type jobs. Peter (26m 11s): I think the opportunity is in the massive high volume, hourly paid space, temp space, freelancers, you know, actually going beyond just, you've got these skills, you could also do this job at saying availability, match, location. All of those kinds of things. Chad (26m 26s): You're talking about 70% of the market is what you're talking about. Peter (26m 31s): Massive. Chad (26m 32s): So yes, I agree. I agree. A hundred percent. And, but I, again, I believe one of the things that we have done as an industry shit is we have spent hundreds of millions, billions of dollars on attracting candidates into our own personal databases. And then we allowed them to sit there and fucking atrophy. They just went into a black hole and faded away. When, if you had tech like this to parse and match against new jobs, new wrecks that actually popped up. That's where the money is people. So I'm pretty excited about this and very excited about seeing what Textkernel has next. So we'll be talking more about this, there's no question, cause this is an exciting space, but until then, we're going to go ahead and take a quick break. Chad (27m 22s): And we're going to be back to talk about threatening things toward the friends over at Indeed. Be right back. All right, Peter. So when we talk about this industry today, Indeed is the major player. Am I wrong? Peter (27m 34s): They are. Chad (27m 38s): Yeah. They're the major player. The question is how did they get where they are today? The next thing that I want to talk about is Appcast versus Indeed. But seriously, it's really a gang effort to be quite Frank, more major programmatic players versus Indeed these days. The next one caught our eye as this update came straight from the smart job board website. It's not an earth shattering announcement, unless you start to connect the dots, and this is a message to job sites, employers and vendors listen close, because here it goes, quote, "Here at Smart job board, we've been working hard to offer an option to import jobs from our partner network, to all of our customers. Chad (28m 24s): It's a great option to populate your job board with jobs. And in case you experience a lack of job content partner networks, such as Appcast will quickly and easily populate your job board by importing jobs from the network to backfill jobs, these jobs will look like native job postings. We will include the job alerts to job seekers and also be counted in jobs by city, state, category, widget." So Peter, why is this a big deal? Peter (28m 51s): I'm not convinced it is to be honest. I don't think, I don't think that's where the issue is going to be. First of all, Indeed are not going away any day soon. I don't see it. Chad (29m 4s): No. Peter (29m 4s): They're too big. And the reason they they're so big as they are frictionless, you know, a recruiter doesn't have to do a thing to get their jobs onto Indeed nothing. Chad (29m 12s): Other than pay, other than pay. Yeah. Peter (29m 14s): Organically don't know. But that's how they got so big. And the organic features always been free. Chad (29m 19s): That was a long time ago. Yeah. That's how they're leveraging money today, but go ahead. Peter (29m 26s): Yeah. So, but there's no friction there and the aggregators, I actually think make the candidate experience worse, not better. So I think the real issue is Facebook or Meta. Chad (29m 39s): Okay. Peter (29m 40s): Because if you look at how their marketplace has grown. Chad (29m 42s): Okay. Peter (29m 43s): They claim to have a billion users on the marketplace and they are growing and e-commerce is part of their future growth. And they've got some, a million shops on their platform already. So they can already tell you about cheap stuff from China that you didn't know you wanted, but you're going to buy because it's on Facebook and in the same way, they could theoretically tell you about jobs you didn't know you could do. And who you didn't know, anybody didn't know, you knew somebody at that company and you didn't know, it's actually closer to get there, then your current job and why it would be a better job all around. And for me, Facebook's AI is really where they're going to start being able to leverage all of that information they have about you as a person. Peter (30m 24s): Not only do they know when you're unhappy, they know when you need more money. They'll know which people, you know, like a saying and who you could get lifts with or whatever. And I actually think that's where the big risk is for somebody like Indeed, because you know, in the same way that Indeed indexed jobs, Facebook can make it frictionless. They could say, yeah, Hey, your jobs are on Facebook. And now you can do whatever you want with them based using our AI and we can help find people for you. And if you've know me, I used to sell loads of old stuff on eBay. I've not used eBay for years, but it also Facebook marketplace. Chad (30m 55s): Again, I don't think this, I don't think this is an 'or' scenario. I think this is an 'and' scenario. Like I said, you know, we're talking about Appcast and we're talking about all the different programmatic players, but remember Indeed and Simply Hired having their backfill wars. Remember that? That's where they gain a shit ton of traction with regard to, and also kneecapping job boards all over the place and being able to provide quote unquote "backfill," which was really just Indeed jobs on that website and that led back to Indeed. The big question is what happened to Indeed IQ? Chad (31m 36s): I mean, StepStone buys Appcast, Recruitics buys KRT, or, I mean, right. Radancy buys Perengo and then what the fuck does Indeed do with Click IQ instead of building a big distribution engine, like Appcast or Pando or JobAdX, what do they do? They actually turn it internal and we haven't heard shit about this. Peter (31m 59s): Disappeared, hasn't it? Chad (32m 1s): Yeah. So we've talked on this very show about customers and how they hate Indeed's tactics. Trojan horse, strong arming, not to mention Indeed just raised their resume product pricing from what I'm hearing about 20%. And they also took away the engagement credits, which means they raise the prices and took away incentives to use that very product. So I see some first and foremost, some issues, much like Monster had back in the day when everybody hated them, but they felt like they had to use them. Then you have the Facebooks, let's say the Appcasts where they're starting to actually build bigger networks. That's where I see a big change happening. Chad (32m 41s): And I'm hoping to see a big change happening so that companies don't have to just hope and pray that Indeed doesn't raise their prices. They have options because today it seems like they have no fucking options. Peter (32m 50s): Yeah. I mean, I saw a post earlier today about somebody saying they were using one of the job boards in the UK and the day before their contract was about to expire, they had a price increase of 30% and they're saying, well, hang on a minute. It's not working. So why would I pay 30% more for something that's not working, but what choice did they have? And so obviously they have a choice of not going with that job board, but there's, it seems to be a lot about a lot of it going on whereby everybody's struggling for candidates. And so they're kind of saying, well, let's just do more of the same. And it's like, no, don't keep doing more of the same, try and do something different, but nobody seems to want to do that. Peter (33m 33s): So we just go down the same old, do more of the same, even though it's not working. Chad (33m 39s): Exactly. So this is not a prediction, but it is awesome to see a company like StepStone who bought Appcast for what? We're talking about a German organization buying this big infrastructure in the U S and to perspectively bleed that out globally. But what the hell are they going to do? I mean, you know, StepStone fucking hates Indeed, right? I mean, this to me seems like the perfect fucking strategy. And again, it's behind the scenes kind of things, but we will watch this. I am excited to see what happens, but I'm also excited about the next piece of the show, which we call get ready, kids, buy or sell. Chad (34m 23s): So Peter, you know how to play buy or sell. And for all those Virgin ears that are out there, you've never heard buy or sell before, here's how it goes. A startup just receive cash. I will describe the funding, give a quick overview of the vendor and then Peter and I will either buy or sell the company. Pretty easy. Right. Are you ready? Peter? Peter (34m 47s): I'm ready. All right. How much money have I got? Chad (34m 53s): It's all, you can buy anything you want, man. Okay. So the first, the first startup up is called Adept ID. Adept ID, the developer of a machine learning power technology, talent matching software that identifies hidden talent in the workforce, announced a raise of 3.5 million in seed funding led by Zeal Capital Partners, Better Ventures, JFFs, Employment Technology Fund, and investors participated in the round. The investment comes at a pivotal time for the future of work. As the pandemic amplifies labor shortages in high growth sectors and increases the need for upward job mobility. Chad (35m 40s): Adept ID closes the labor gap by identifying hidden talent among the 80 million working Americans without college degrees and connecting them with relevant in demand jobs or training based on transferable skills that have been observed and hundreds of thousands of job transitions. Since launching the public API earlier this year, the company has already licensed its AI models to year up generation USA and Enel green power to programmatically improve their talent strategies and facilitate an inclusive approach to discovering and developing talent. Sounds like magic. What do you think Peter, you're going to buy or sell? Peter (36m 19s): Got AI so it must be magic obviously. So these hidden talent, are they going to kind of find them under the table and then sack them because they're hiding from work or are they actually going to give them a different job? Chad (36m 30s): Good question. Peter (36m 31s): Yeah. I do like the concept of finding hidden talent, but there's a couple of issues with it. Candidates or employees may find it a bit creepy and also employers are already really bad at internal mobility. So I think there'll be a lot of resistance from that perspective, but I do love that it makes sense and the machine can theoretically do this. So I'm a buy. Chad (36m 57s): You're a buy on that one. So that is a big, (applause) okay. So it does sound like magic. My bit, my question was after this press release, does it come with a set of Ginsu knives? I mean, it just sounds like they can do anything. It was founded in 2020 by Brian de Angeles and Fernando Rodriguez Viva. The three things that are important to me when quickly assessing will it automate? Yes. Will it scale? Yes. What are the experience that the founders actually have? None, none. Peter (37m 31s): Yeah. That probably applied for a job once and they didn't enjoy the experience and they probably got a garage, a big garage. Chad (37m 41s): More than likely, but let's be honest. This piece of the process, I believe is one of the most important and hardest to master it is the heaviest fucking lift when it comes to platforms. That's why Sovren and Textkernel, who we just talked about have really owned their respective geography because this shit is hard. And here's the biggest key, expectations are high when you're dealing with customers on this, especially after a bullshit press release like that. So yes, the market is validated. iCIMS buys a opening.io. Textkernel just dropped a load of cash on Sovren. Eightfold received shit, tons of funding and is predicated on matching. Chad (38m 23s): But all of that to me is a head fake, because remember companies in this space who have bit the dust like Restless Bandit, Crowded and Entelo is still out there flailing. This is a hard segment. This is my favorite segment, but to be quite quite Frank, Brian, Fernando, I wish you guys luck, but guess what? This for me, (firing squad - machine guns) it's a sell. I can't do it. Peter (38m 50s): Maybe they use Textkernal technology then. Chad (38m 53s): Well then if they do use Textkernal Colonel technology, they have none of their own techno technological assets. What they do have a secret sauce, which I appreciate. But at that point they still don't know the industry. It's a big lift and it's a very technical lift. Peter (39m 9s): When has that stopped anybody from being successful? Chad (39m 12s): That's it? That's my point. That's my point. I agree. Peter (39m 18s): I agree. They won't be the last. Chad (39m 19s): Next a company we both know VideoMyJob. So this announcement comes as a message on LinkedIn from CEO, David Macciocca. Here it goes "I'm excited to share that VideoMyJob has secured $2 million in funding. I am grateful for our incredible team and amazing customers," blah, blah, blah, a bunch of momentum stuff with the new round of funding. We'll accelerate our innovations that continue to make a VideoMyJob, the best video solution for talent acquisition, employer brand and recruitment marketing teams worldwide. The employment market has significantly changed, yeah, that's no shit, and companies are thinking about new ways to attract and retain talent. Chad (40m 2s): We're approaching the great resignation, everybody's using that, and companies are struggling to find new employees to join their business. This is a global problem.VideoMyJob sees a lot of white space and ambitiously wants to be the category owner of video in talent teams. VideoMyJob is a platform that helps employers use video through sourcing employees' stories via their mobile phone video, which means companies can put the power of video in the hands of their people and see what content comes. Sounds very familiar to a little PathMotion, right? So what do you think, are we going to buy, are we going to sell VideoMyJob? Peter (40m 47s): Well, you know, the thing is before COVID nobody was cameras on, whereas now, everybody's cameras on. Chad (40m 50s): Yep. Peter (40m 51s): So in theory, there's no confidence issues about people putting their cameras on. So you could argue now is as good a time as any for video. But the thing is whilst we're happy to join a Zoom meeting and sit in front of a camera, press the record button. And the thing is, most people turn into monologue zombies or want to be thespians. And so I looked at some of the examples on the website and I'm thinking this is all just way too cheesy for me. So although I had to cheese sandwich earlier, I'm going to say this one's too cheesy for me. And I'm gonna sell. Chad (41m 22s): Hello? Okay, well, that's a sell. Well, first off, let's go ahead and let's go to automate, will, it automate? No. eh, but you're in effect crowdsourcing, which can be a source of, you know, powerful automation. And especially if you're sending, you know, authentic content. So that's not a bad thing. Will it scale? Yes, because employees, if you're engaging them, will be doing the work. The question is, who's doing the editing, who's doing the approving? Yada yada yada. There's going to be resources necessary to be able to handle all that content that comes in. And the experience play, yes, David and team, they definitely have experienced not just in technology, but in the recruitment space. Chad (42m 3s): There is only one medium. I believe that's more powerful than video and that's audio. And because audio is more portable, which means it's can be used pretty much anywhere. That being said, I personally, I can't believe that this company hasn't been sold yet. Seriously if you look at iCIMS, we talked about them earlier. iCIMS acquisition of Altru, which was reported at 60 million fucking dollars. If the iCIMS marketplace demonstrated that video was worth buying, then what are all the other core talent platforms doing wrong? Are they even looking at this? That's my question. This is an enriched audio and visual experience. Chad (42m 43s): Not to mention it can be authentic and it should be something that your employees are providing content for. So I believe, for me, this, my friend is a buy. (applause) They don't have a lot of money, already pulled in from a funding standpoint and I don't think it's going to be hard to buy them. So next on the list and last on the list, we have our friends over at myGwork. So report from Sky news 24, Haymarket is leading a 1.6 million pound investment in myGwork at a time of intense scrutiny of employers, diversity and inclusion policies. Chad (43m 27s): myGwork is a recruitment and networking platform for the LGBTQ plus community and is tapping into a prominent network of high worth investors to fund its international expansion. myGwork which counts, Glaxo, Smith Kline, Pearson, and the accountancy firm E&Y among its clients. Based in London myGwork has offices in Madrid and Florida, and also works with companies such as BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world. It was founded by brothers, Adrian and Pierre in 2015. Peter, how you feeling about a little, myGwork? Peter (44m 4s): I couldn't really get my head around what it was or what it is, because it's got a feed of jobs on there from employers, but the jobs are just standard jobs so I don't know if there's any relevance to those particular jobs and the community. So that was the first thing. And then you've got the community aspect and I just think that possibly, and they're kind of trying to target too many different types of people. So I just didn't really get it. And the founders, I couldn't really fathom out too much about the founders. I couldn't quite work out their background. So obviously it's a very topical subject and it's a very important subject. Peter (44m 44s): So I'm going to be a hold. Chad (44m 48s): I'm going to be a hold. Okay. So let's, let's call myGwork, the LinkedIn for the LGBTQ plus community. myGwork is a space for an underrepresented community. Employers want and need to tap into more underrepresented communities. Employers need to demonstrate they're working within under-represented communities, employers like easy. This is easy. Now I don't want to say that I believe that there are silver bullets for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, because I don't believe that they are. Although when companies are exploring options, nothing is more glaring of a buy than myGwork for the LGBTQ community, which is why this to me is a buy. Chad (45m 35s): We've worked with these guys in the past. I see them more as a LinkedIn, which is broad because you know, what kind of job can a person with, you know, an LGBTQ person do? They can do all of them. Right? So again, I think it's, it's more about penetration into a community that you are not currently penetrating. So that being said, we are at our last ad break. When we come back, we're going to talk about some creepy shit. We'll be right back. I always feel like somebody is watching me. All right, Peter Peter (46m 8s): If you sing like that they've arrested you. Chad (46m 12s): I'm working on it, man. I'm working on it. So Peter, what's the creepiest thing your demented mind could conjure up about the workplace? Peter (46m 22s): I probably best not to answer that question to be honest. Chad (46m 27s): Okay. So our last story comes from ZDNet. Excessive surveillance is having profoundly negative effects on the workforce. Yeah, no shit. Remote monitoring and surveillance tools could devastate employee relations, unless efforts are made to put more power into the hands of workers, the author of a report by the European commission's joint research council or JRC warns, Kirsti Bell who spent five months compiling the JRCs extensive electronic monitoring and surveilling in the workplace report, that sounds creepy in itself, says an increase in employee surveillance threatens to undermine the trust and commitment to work amongst staff who are left in the dark about how data is gathered about them. Chad (47m 14s): A spike in the use of quick and dirty monitoring apps prompted by pandemic era remote working is especially concerning. Particularly those who use more invasive techniques to snoop on people working in their homes. Is this 1984, or what? Is this going to continue? Or are governments going to allow this? Peter (47m 29s): Well, the thing is this, there's good tech and bad tech, and you can use anything for good reasons and bad reasons. So let's just look at this from a different viewpoint. What if we flipped it on its head and said, okay, let's look at it from a wellbeing perspective. What if the company can see you're working too many hours, so actually stops the flow of work to give you more time off, or the company sees you are getting tired. So schedule some time off, maybe books, you know, books you at the spa, or God forbid flies you off to Portugal. Could you imagine that? Chad (47m 58s): I would love it. Peter (47m 59s): Is that what Joel did with you? So you're working too hard? Chad (48m 4s): Yes. Peter (48m 4s): Now I know that's a bit utopian. Okay. But what if that was the case? And let's imagine obviously this, isn't hard to imagine for many people, but imagine your manager's a complete and utter Dick. Now, obviously not many are, but there's one or two around now. Not only would the company be aware of this, but maybe they wouldn't need so many managers because some of these managers, you know, they ask you to send them weekly reports and you can say, well, hang on that data's in Salesforce or in HubSpot or whatever. Oh yeah. But I like you to put a weekly report together for me each week and then we'll talk through it. It's like, what kind of manager is that? And the thing is the machine, the surveillance machine would have access to that data and would see how you're doing. And like I say, maybe get rid of some of the managers. Peter (48m 45s): So I don't think it's all one way. I don't think it's just a bad thing, but it depends which way it goes. I mean, obviously if it's used for the wrong reasons, then that's not good. But if it's used in a better way and it's all about helping the employee, then it could equally be used for that reason as well. Chad (49m 5s): Well, Peter, it sounds like you would be perfect to be able to join one of the misinformation slash propaganda wings of the marketing for this type of technology. I don't think human beings have it in us to actually use this type of tech the right way. Are we getting the shit done? And that's the big question. And that's the thing that we have to focus on is, why are we watching these individuals? Why aren't we just looking at performance? I mean, are they on the phone? Are they making calls? Are they hitting their customer service numbers? Are they hitting their sales numbers? Are they hitting project timelines, dates, all that other fun stuff. Chad (49m 45s): That's, what's important. What we're doing here, is we're focused on control. And I wanna, I want to end this whole thing by using a quote from Kirstie Ball who actually pulled this together over months and months, her quote is technology is not a replacement for proper management techniques. I don't think we can allow humans to make this decision because there are way too many dicks out there. What do you think? Peter (50m 7s): Yeah, there are. And maybe the technology, like I say, gets rid of them, but I think you've, I think just looking at it from two ways is important and it doesn't always have to be bad, but like you say, humans are not the greatest species on the planet and we don't exactly kind of get on well with each other. But I like to think that there is a better side to us all and that something like this could be used in a positive way by some companies. Chad (50m 34s): I would like to think that as well, but unfortunately. Peter (50m 37s): You Americans. Chad (50m 37s): The human race hasn't done much for me lately. Peter, thanks so much for coming on the show. I know you're fucking knackered out from eight hours and only a cheese sandwich. Go take a nap, get something to eat and we'll look forward to having you back on the show. Thanks. Thanks for coming on, man. I appreciate it. Peter (50m 59s): My pleasure. Good to talk to you. Chad (51m 1s): You too, man. We out. OUTRO (51m 2s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

The pandemic, labor shortages, and a supply chain debacle have opened our eyes to many subjects like immigration, wages, retirement, remote work, working conditions, and many other factors that impact our everyday lives. These major events have provided clarity around many of these issues and on this episode Andrew Flowers, Labor Economist with Appcast sits down with The Chad and Cheese to start digging into a wide variety of these issues. Because at the center of all the economic banter is, TALENT! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps forward thinking employers create world class hiring and retention programs for people with disabilities. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids lock the doors. You're listening to HR is 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. Joel (20s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody. It's your favorite guilty pleasure. The Chad and cheese podcast I'm your cohost Joel Cheesman joined as always by my partner in crime Chad Sowash. Chad (32s): Hello. Joel (33s): And today we're talking economics, everybody on the show. Andrew Flowers, Labor Economist from Appcast. Andrew, welcome to the show. Andrew (46s): Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here now. Joel (48s): You sound excited. Well, aside from labor economists, what should our listeners know about Andrew Flowers? Andrew (55s): Well, I am a dad, a husband, and a fan of a really, you know, a underdog football team, the New England Patriots. Chad (1m 6s): So, so your new QB is starting to come around. That was a hell of a lot quicker than I think anybody thought would actually happen. So you've gotta be happy as hell right now. Andrew (1m 16s): Yeah. It's going to be exciting. This offensive rookie of the year, Mack Jones, you know, pencil it in. It's a fun time here in new England and Massachusetts, but I'm not all play. I'm not all only just sports up. I do love talking about data and economics and all that nerdy stuff. Chad (1m 37s): Which is what we're going to do today. That's for sure. Joel (1m 41s): Our listeners need to know you're also a former Indeed employee, which we will not hold against you. Chad (1m 45s): But he got out. Joel (1m 46s): Yeah, he got out. Chad (1m 48s): Yeah, he did get out. Andrew (1m 49s): Yeah. And in former former Federal Reserve, 538 guy. So all the places that people sometimes love to hate on, but... Chad (2m 1s): Federal reserve and also ESPN. I mean, that shit just doesn't mix. How did that work? How did that happen? Andrew (2m 9s): It's a great question. I think Nate Silver, when he left the New York Times and started 538 under ESPN, was looking for some people who knew data. And the Fed is one spot where I was a trained. So I was excited to jump ship, because again, you know, while the Fed was great, I'm a sports fan. Joel (2m 28s): We only have top-notch guests on this show. I just want to add that. Chad (2m 31s): That's good. Shit. Let me tell you that. Well, top-notch, who can actually use that big brain to talk about the great resignation? Are we sick and tired of all these greats that are happening in the great resignation? The great reshuffling, the great retirement. What the hell is actually going on? Joel (2m 49s): Explain it to me, Andrew. Chad (2m 53s): 4.4 million people quit last month, right? So can we break that down a little bit? I mean, this all seems, yeah. Joel (3m 4s): Break it down like you were at a cocktail party. Andrew (3m 6s): Yeah. It's quit-y right. The upside of giving up of it, of quitting. And we see just these quit rates, which is just the share of workers in a given month who voluntarily, you know, leave their job. These quit rates are at all-time highs at 3% for all employees across the board, but it's particularly high for workers in lower-wage industries. And COVID sensitive industries to think of like retail or restaurant works workers. You see quit rates above 6% in September. And so quitting is really at an all-time high. And it's a big contributor that this great resignation is a big contributor to the broader labor shortages that I know employers face, that recruiters face, but let's just dig in for a second on like, what is, what is it? Andrew (3m 56s): Because some people think, okay, resignation does that mean people are just giving up on work and moving to a commune to, you know, grow their own organic food and, you know, leave the workforce. No, when people quit by and large, they quit because they think the economy is strong and because they have another job lined up. Chad (4m 18s): Okay. Well also, and let's get into the psyche of workers, right? Because we've called them central. We have all these really minimum wage workers who we've gotten really, I think, into their psyche called them essential. Now they understand that they are essential for the supply chain, but yet they're not receiving essential wages. So do you think that because of, not just because of COVID, but also because of many of these people seeing that they were essential to moving and keeping the economy running, that they believe they deserve more cash and you know, maybe a better existence in life. Andrew (5m 4s): I think there's definitely something to that. That workers, particularly lower-wage workers, those frontline essential workers are talking about. They realize that this is their moment to strike that. Not literally strike though. In some cases, you'd see strikes at John Deere and other places, but this is their moment to take advantage of the leverage that they have given that it's a really difficult time to fill open positions if you're a recruiter. And so the workers in these industries who are switching jobs, we find based on data are actually seeing the largest wage increases, right? So wages are going up in general for all workers, but particularly for lower-income workers, lower-wage workers, and particularly for job switchers. Andrew (5m 46s): So that's part of t you can call it the great resignation. I also call it a poaching phenomenon where workers know that they can get a better job. It doesn't mean that they're leaving their industry per se, but they're taking advantage of the tight labor market and getting a raise by switching jobs. Joel (6m 2s): And what role does the gig economy have on the frontline workers? How many are just, you know, driving Uber's and delivering Door Dash instead of working at a full-time job and how does the government calculate gig jobs if they do it all? Andrew (6m 20s): They really don't. That's a great question. The monthly jobs report that gets all this press attention about, you know, how many jobs we created that headline number comes from surveys of businesses that, you know, are reflecting on their payroll, like the actual full-time workers. And so they don't count gig workers. Now, when you call in other surveys, when the government calls people and say says, Hey, do you have a job? And if they, you know, drive for a delivery service, and so they're a gig worker, they can respond, yes, I have a job and so they're counted in those surveys, but typically in terms of employment, no, it's gonna miss a lot of gig workers. The bureau of labor statistics does do a, what they call a contingent worker survey, a gig worker survey, but it's not regular. Andrew (7m 3s): The last data came out, I think in 2018 or 2019. So it's way out of date and really stale. But to your point, in terms of gig workers and how they're adjusting in this environment, I think it makes good work relatively a really hard sell for a lot of workers, because if you have open opportunities and we have 10.4 million job openings in the U S and a lot of them are in full-time salary positions and employers are just desperate to hire. So why would you necessarily take a gig job if you have those openings to, to choose from? And so it really comes down to do you prioritize flexibility in your schedule? Do you like the fact that you set your own hours? Andrew (7m 45s): And in our data at Appcast, we find that recruitment costs for gig work has just exploded and unsurprisingly, right? Who wants to necessarily drive when there are COVID risk, when there are other opportunities out there. Again, we have solutions for gig employers, but it's just a challenging market to recruit gig workers, period. Joel (8m 7s): So is it your consensus that the gig economy is having very little impact on people leaving the workforce and doing that based on your comment around recruiting, you know, Uber drivers and Door Dash delivery folks is so challenging. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Andrew (8m 25s): Yes. I think the rise of quitting is not really explained by gig opportunities. The rise of quitting is explained by the red hot labor market in the fact that they can get these workers who quit, they can get raises, they can get better pay and in some cases they're reassessing their careers, right? That they're reassessing whether they want to work in a restaurant position, and for older workers, they're reconsidering work altogether. So one thing that's a part of this great resignation is retirement, which surged during the pandemic. And so whether that reverses, whether some of those folks who are near retirement age, who, you know, wanted to say, I'm done with work, I'm retiring now, whether they come back into the labor market, we'll see, but retirement surged in, and that's a factor as well as part of this broader labor shortage. Chad (9m 16s): But aren't we seeing really the definition of work changing now that we have we've all felt this remote work from home situation, I guess you can say. We have reports where individuals are actually working two full-time jobs. I mean, it's like, we feel like to me, this is the great awakening. You have the blue collar types of workers who are essential, and now they know they're essential and they're going to get their cash. Then you have the white collar, remote workers who were told for years that they had to go, you know, into the office. And out of nowhere, they didn't right. They got to work remote. Chad (9m 58s): So, I mean, it just feels like there are so many different aspects of how we work. And as we're talking about gig, why wouldn't we move more toward a flexible project type of situation, as opposed to just FTE and part-time. Andrew (10m 13s): This is a huge issue and I think the answer is yes, that worker expectations around remote work are shifting because the forced experimentation that a lot of the economy had to go through during the pandemic, reduce the stigma around work from home, right. And pre-pandemic, yes, tech workers, white collar workers, higher skilled folks did work from home at reasonable rates, but it was still kind of a fringe thing. Well, post pandemic or knock on wood, post pandemic we'll see if it actually, you know, resolves, but in, in 2021, 2022, the stigma around remote work has if not evaporated, it's reduced significantly. Andrew (10m 56s): And when you poll workers, when you survey remote workers and some economists have done this, and you asked them, Hey, are you more efficient? Are you more productive? By and large they say, yeah, remote work has been a huge success.ZI'm getting a lot more done. I'm not commuting. I can pick my kid up from the bus. I can make it to meetings on zoom without, you know, doing all the transportation and rigmarole around that. People feel who work remotely people feel like they're more effective and so now there's this really dividing line between workers who desire on average to work from home two, two and a half days a week. On average, again, in the aggregate, there's a dividing line between them and the employers who are a little more stingy than their own average expecting they're planning for after the pandemic to offer the average worker, the opportunity to work from home on average one day a week. Andrew (11m 50s): So there's this chasm that has to be negotiated it's a bargaining chip now. Chad (11m 54s): You rule that one day is another reason why people are quitting, right? Cause they're calling bullshit. Right? I worked for five days or even more from home before. So, I mean, it's really interesting that we're having this conversation and there's a negotiation happening where employers still believe they have all the control. Because they don't, they're the ones who actually need to fill the positions so that they can write the code to make the widgets, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Do you feel like the control is going to start to move more toward the employees and will it stay there? Just looking at the numbers? Andrew (12m 35s): I think it already had started to move towards worker empowerment because when you just look at the supply demand, right, economics 101, there's just a fundamental mismatch. I mentioned this number earlier, but job openings in the US hit 10.4 million. And the number of unemployed people is 7.7 million. Well, that's pretty easy math. That gap means that there's almost 3 million more job openings than there are unemployed people. And so this fundamental supply demand mismatch, and it wasn't, it's never been that high that gap has, is the highest in the history of the data that we have. So workers know that. They know that hey, wages are risingm they're up 6, 7% nominally compared to where they were pre pandemic. Andrew (13m 18s): And they're up even more for lower wage workers, they're up 8, 9%. And so they know that workers know that they have leverage in this market. That's part of the reason why they feel empowered to quit their jobs. That's part of the reason why they feel empowered to ask for remote work as a key benefit and how that plays out. Again we've had several decades now where wages have been pretty stagnant. The median wages, you know, worker compensation as just a slice of the pie has declined steadily over the last few decades. And whether the COVID pandemic and recession is a inflection point that starts to empower workers. You know, it's too soon to tell, but it's a possibility. Joel (13m 60s): Curious your thoughts on inflation. And I'm hearing a lot more in the news around, that it's almost a wash that salaries are raising hourly wages are raising, are rising, but so is inflation. And some reports that I've seen recently are that it basically equals out. And when you calculate the cost to now buy a home, which is now quite a bit more than it was before the pandemic and other, other things like cars, I mean, at the end of this, do we just say we've been running in place for the last two years? Andrew (14m 32s): There's certainly something to that because yes, inflation is at a 30, 31 year high, right? Consumer inflation was up a 6.2% year over year recently, that's really anomalous for the last few decades and how it translates to real wage gains, in other words, inflation, adjusted wage gains. On average, you would, when you do the numbers, it looks like it's basically flat. Like, yeah, wages are rising, but inflation is eating into that. But here's where it gets interesting, wages are rising fastest, the lower you go down on the wage spectrum, and they're pretty stagnant they're rising just barely for higher wage workers. So in effect, this inflationary episode that we're living through is reducing inequality in terms of its its wage compression, where actually the lowest wage workers, because they're getting such huge, you know, wage increases that exceed inflation, they're getting real wage gains. Andrew (15m 30s): Whereas middle-class workers, higher income workers, they're probably getting on net, it's a wash or, or they're actually reducing their purchasing power because it's just rising too fast, prices. Chad (15m 42s): So the people that need the money are actually finally getting the money. We've been fucking them over for the last 40 years. And remember, we're not paying, we're not giving them any reparations either, but don't you think that we're seeing that there's more money in bank accounts. There's more, there's more spending power at the lower rungs that obviously along with ships at the docks, right? When, when, when we start to see, when we start to see the ships at the docks, I mean, the wages, the, the beautiful part about the wage gains is that they're going to stay there, right? Knock on wood. The ships at the docks, this is a moment in time that we're just going to have to get through. Chad (16m 22s): So do we see, as we start to get all of those supplies back into the supply chain, does inflation start to then level out. Andrew (16m 32s): That's what most economists, think in how long that is going to take to really unclog these bottlenecks, you mentioned, you know, the ships who are docked off of the port of Los Angeles or docked off of Savannah or these other main shipping centers. And it's taking, you know, months for goods to work their way through the transportation chain. And we have these supply chains that are ensnared in bottlenecks. And so it's going to take a few quarters for this to process out, but a lot of professional economic forecasters do expect inflation to subside as those bottlenecks are worked through. Because when you look at the actual inflation numbers, it's really inflation in goods in things right, appliances and cars. Andrew (17m 17s): And if you have renovated your home during the pandemic, like building materials, those costs are going up. The cost of services, right, haircuts and movie theater tickets and restaurants, those services prices haven't gone up as much as actual goods prices and the reason is, is because of the supply chain bottlenecks, which again, knock on wood, will take some time to resolve themselves and we'll see inflation, moderate that. The key thing to watch though, is the thing that could spiral us into a disaster is if we get, if we get a wage price spiral, and what is that, it's when realize, Hey, the price of gas, the price of milk is going up. I need to have a pay increase. And the employer says, you know what? Andrew (17m 58s): You're right, here's your pay increase. And the employer to pay for that pay increase raises their prices. Well, that just, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. It's a loop where the wages keep getting raised, the prices keep getting raised and so forth and so on. And if inflation expectations of consumers start to get unanchored from where they've been the last few decades, that's where we get in a bad zone of ever rising prices. Joel (18m 23s): I don't think immigration gets enough sort of publicity on this topic. And you have some thoughts on that and your presentation that you did recently talk about immigration and how the lack of new people coming into the country impacts this whole equation. Andrew (18m 38s): Yeah. It's a huge factor in terms of labor shortages in terms of recruiting. And let's break it down into two parts, there's the short-term impact of immigration changes, and then there's the longterm. So just during the pandemic, it's estimated that the Us economy lost about a million workers, just by visa processing slowing down, that when you look at the kind of eligible visas, the temporary work eligible visas that are issued by the US government, well, those visas started to just go to zero, right, because of public health concerns and border closings. Well, a lot of industry suffered because they rely on those temporary work visa workers. Andrew (19m 21s): And so that's the short-term impact. Now, knock on wood we're speaking in November of 2021, just a few weeks ago, our land borders opened up with Canada and Mexico and visa processing will hopefully continue to increase as, knock on wood, the virus subsides. So that's the short-term factor, that's a temporary impediment. But the bigger factor is the second one, is the long-term factor and just, this is where demographics come in the US economy's working age population without immigration, it actually declined last year in 2020. And over the decade from 2010 to 2020, over that 10 years, our overall population growth was the slowest it's ever been, in a decade. Andrew (20m 6s): And so as fertility rates or as birth rates are declining, and as we have kind of immigration not coming in to solve the worker shortage, we're going to face a future where just the pure math, the demographics, mean that workers are ever more scarce. And it's going to empower workers relative to employers in the long run, unless we do something about immigration, because again, our working age population is projected to decline in the US in the future without immigration. Chad (20m 35s): So what I'm hearing is tear down that wall. Andrew (20m 38s): Well, I think you're going to hear it from businesses. I think the U S Chamber of Commerce, I think, I think a lot of recruiters, businesses that even have maybe, you know, conservative inclinations politically, are starting to realize that they just can't get workers unless we tackle our immigration standoff, but politically we need to come to some resolution. Chad (21m 1s): Yeah, well, and taking a look at that, and also supply chain, we were just talking about inflation. Supply chain obviously is a huge impact on inflation. Immigration, we can't have immigrants coming in and actually doing, I don't know, the trucking jobs, the driving jobs where we're having supply chain issues as well. I mean, this all seems to be lining up pretty nicely for us here in the United States to really start to understand how immigration does positively impact our life, our livelihood, how, what we pay for things, right. And also the jobs that nobody wants to do. We have enough American drivers out there, but they're doing other jobs now. Chad (21m 44s): So I guess my big question around this is, do you start to see the picture much more clearly after COVID because all of these things, all these, these crazy pandemics and supply chain issues have pretty much come together, has it made it easier for you to actually see what the problems are? Andrew (22m 4s): It has clarified some things. And I think, you know, immigration and worker shortages is one part of that. And so just to piggyback off of what you said, I want to tell you a pretty wild story. I was speaking to a head of talent acquisition at a trucking company. I won't say who, but this woman said, you know, we had a crazy idea because we were so desperate for CDL drivers that we tried to call the US government and find out where are the Afghan refugee settlements in the US and can we get those refugees if they're eligible to have CDL licenses and become drivers? Joel (22m 39s): That's awesome. Andrew (22m 39s): That's what she told me that they're trying to explore that as a possibility, because that's how dire it is for trucking. But to go to back to your broader point, the pandemic has clarified a lot of things, right? It's shed light on what you mentioned earlier, Chad about essential workers and low pay and working conditions. It's clarified a lot of things in terms of remote work is definitely here to stay. It was a huge success. It has clarified things about supply chains and how fragile they are, and this kind of multi-decade trend of let's have globalized value chains with, you know, just in time delivery that are going to be very efficient. Well, that works great until it doesn't until there's bottlenecks. Andrew (23m 23s): And so it's clear that the pandemic has shaken a lot of assumptions among the economist and the dust is still settling. And it's too soon to tell whether some of these changes are permanent, but that's what makes it so interesting and so challenging in this moment. Joel (23m 38s): We have a lot of recruiters and employers, obviously, who listened to the show and you give some pretty pertinent advice in terms of recruiting. And I want you to talk about your comment that you to play small ball. What exactly do you mean about that? And also on retirement, you talk about retirees coming back to work. So what advice would you give on the recruiting side to play small ball and get those retirees back to work? Andrew (24m 4s): That's a great question. And small ball basically means that there are aspects about recruiting that recruiters can can control. And there are aspects that you can't control. You can't control the fact that there are 3 million more job openings than unemployed people, right? No one company or one recruiter has the power of the federal reserve to set interest rates or to, you know, move the whole macro economy. So when we talk about small ball, we're telling recruiters, Hey, this is really challenging right now we get it. But there are small tweaks that you can do to optimize in this environment, such as making your apply process as efficient and timely as possible, not dragging applicants through a kind of obscure and clunky process, just get the basic information, have a skinny apply flow and move on. Andrew (24m 55s): Also with your job ad content, really paying attention to job titles, selling yourself. If you can offer remote work, selling that as a benefit, or just mentioning your benefits, period, writing a good job description, right? And we have a lot of advice on job ad content. Again, that's a form of small ball, one other important part of small ball that it we've already spoken about is wages, right? Benchmarking wages is a process that HR and talent acquisition leaders go through in terms of, you know, what are we offering? Are we competitive? Are we at market? Well, that process was maybe an annual process or a quarterly process, but the world is moving so fast benchmarking wages just needs to happen at a almost monthly basis now because you're being out competed by, you know, large employers who are quickly raising their wages. Andrew (25m 45s): So those are just some of the recommendations we give out when we talk about playing small ball. And so finally, when you talk about retirement and how to, you know, coax those retirees out of retirement, this is actually an important point because when people think of retirement, the traditional model is you know, you get the gold watch and the handshake at a party, and then you're done, right. But a lot of retirees, like a shockingly high percentage at some point unretire and go back to work for a bit. And I think the key factor there is going to be the virus. I think virus fears as vaccination rates, knock on wood, continue to tick up with, you know, the Pfizer vaccine for children and as just hopefully cases subside. Andrew (26m 29s): I mean, the Delta variant spike this summer was worrisome and probably kept a lot of older workers who are most vulnerable to the virus, those retirees that probably kept them out of the labor force. But if the recent down tick, but again, it's unclear whether it's truly a down a downward trend in the virus. If virus actually gets under control and workers, older workers feel more safe about returning to the labor force, then that can be a factor to recruit those retirees that accelerated, they brought forward their retirement, but you can bring them back in the labor force. Chad (27m 2s): Yeah. So much good stuff, Andrew I'd unfortunately we don't have any more time cause your big brain is needed elsewhere. Everybody this is Andrew Flowers, the big brain economist over at, Appcast. Andrew, if people want to find out more, you've got videos on this. I mean, you go into some really great detail. Where can people find out more about you, maybe connect with you and also dig deeper into some of this information. Andrew (27m 27s): Thank you. It's just been a pleasure to be here, but the two resources I'll call out are one go to Appcast.io, check out our website. We have a lot of great resources in terms of blogs about the labor market videos. And then the second resource is find me on Twitter @AndrewFlowers. Pretty simple. That's my first and last name Andrew Flowers. Follow me, DM me. I'm more than happy to speak with you or find me on LinkedIn as well. And again, this has just been a pleasure, Joel and Chad and I love talking about this stuff. Chad (27m 60s): Excellent, man, we appreciate you taking the time and we'll probably bring you back, you know, maybe dig into some of these a little bit more because we enjoy the economics of what we do and we know that our listeners do as well. Andrew (28m 15s): Thank you. Joel (28m 16s): Love it. Another one in the books Chad. Joel and Chad (28m 20s): We out, we out. OUTRO (29m 12s): 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.

The year that was 2021 didn't turn out exactly as expected. Business travel didn't come back, the Delta variant threw a big monkey wrench in the party that should've been and we'll have to push pause on another Roaring '20s. The industry, however, kept us talking. We were busier than ever, and these are five episodes that really stood out in a year of standouts. This Best of has it all: Indeed, CareerBuilder, feisty recruiters, dumb employers and, of course, the ZipRecruiter IPO. Here's to a great year with an eye toward 2022. Enjoy! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. INTRO (21m 28s): `Yes sir! 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. irls. Chad (32s): Welcome to the Chad and Cheese, top five picks of 2021. Joel's picks. That's right. Joel, cut his nap short today to curate this show just for you. Take it away Cheeseman. Joel (45s): One of the things I look forward to every year is the Superbowl. Yeah, I enjoy the game and I'm sure this is the Brown's year, but I also enjoy the commercials and I really enjoy the commercials when they include companies in our industry. While the days of CareerBuilder and Monster dropping major coin on ads is over Indeed and Fiverr took the plunge in 2021. And this was our hot take on the move. Enjoy. I don't know what that means. Let's get to the news shall we? Chad (1m 20s): Topics! Joel (1m 21s): Chad, you remember 1999, don't you and the first Superbowl ad? Chad (1m 25s): Yeah! Joel (1m 26s): You remember it very well and you've, I think you've told the history lesson pretty, pretty well in the past, but Indeed has decided they're going to get into the arms race. So they've announced the first half of the big game, they're doing a 30 second ad, reportedly at a cost of roughly $5.6 million. There'll be utilizing the hashtag #nowhiring in coordination with the ad, which means every job board in staffing agency in the world is going to be trolling the hashtag #nowhiring up until the game, going for the warm and fuzzy. Actually it's a 60 second spot. Forgive me so they're going to drop roughly 10 plus million on this thing. Chad (2m 6s): Have you seen it? Joel (2m 7s): I have not seen it. It's warm and fuzzy, right? Chad (2m 10s): Yeah. I've seen it. And it depicts everyday people overall. The big theme behind it is, it's called "The Rising," but the song Rise Up is behind it, it's playing in the music bed. It's very well done. It tugs at the heart strings and the product is woven into the story itself. This is really a super flex against the rest of the industry. Hindsight being 2020. Why do this? Joel (2m 36s): So I wrote a post on this over at Poach and historically speaking, and you and I are old enough to have sort of this context to the issue. You know, there was a day in '99 when all this happened, you know, before YouTube, before social media, before really Google was a thing, where the mindset was really, you have to be Coke or Pepsi, or you're just going to be feeding on the crumbs of whatever industry that you're in and a way to become number one or two was well drop a bunch of money on the Superbowl and Monster had this vision of being sort of this monolithic brand that was every job was posted there, right? And they could increase prices accordingly and you know, be the 800 pound gorilla. Joel (3m 16s): Hot jobs advertised sort of for a different reason. Now they definitely shot themselves up into the top echelon of job sites, but then they sold off to Yahoo a couple of years later. So I think they sort of achieve what they wanted to do. Whereas Monster had a little bit of a longer horizon. And for the, you know, next up until about 2008 or nine, I'd say we talked about CareerBuilder and Monster ads on the Super Bowl almost every year. And it was part of that same sort of mentality. Well, the 2008 happened 2009, there've been very few Super Bowl ads since the great recession, probably for good reason, the world has changed. Joel (3m 57s): There's a lot more fragmentation. There's Google, there's Facebook, there's LinkedIn. So it's really hard to sort of justify an investment like that because it's not just the ad itself. It's the making of the ad. It's the followup stuff. It's the branding and things you do after that. So I, I feel like whereas 1999 was more of a, Hey, we want to make a big splash to be number one today. It's more like we want to make a big splash to keep hold of number one for as long as we possibly can, because we kind of feel like the ice is melting under our feet. And we want to get a life raft if we can possibly do it. So to me, it's much more of like a desperation or a clinging to power than it is a new kid on the block. Joel (4m 39s): And we want to be the big swinging dick. Your thoughts? Chad (4m 44s): One thing this does is it provides, it's a job seeker specific commercial, right? The call to action, everything that's happening around it is for job seekers. Indeed has bigger problems than traffic. So this commercial in itself is very well done and on point, but unfortunately we're when hearing from employers using Indeed, they are already providing enough traffic. It's just overwhelmingly the wrong candidate. So Indeed needs to bolster its matching tech and much less ZipRecruiter deliver better match candidates. I mean, companies don't need more, they need more targeted. Chad (5m 27s): So much like Monster, Hot Jobs and CareerBuilder. It looks like Indeed doesn't really understand what the real problem is for customers. And it could be their downfall. I remember when we looked at CareerBuilder and we looked at Monster and we thought, God, these guys are going to stay on top forever. They didn't. Is this predicting the demise of Indeed in 2021? No, it's not. But the crumbling starts when you can't understand what the real problem is. When you spend money on something like this, which really defeats the whole purpose of why an employer's using you in the first place. It's not for quantity. It's for quality. It's for matching, it's for the right types of individuals. Chad (6m 9s): And what we've seen with Indeed is they have no discipline. The Indeed of old had discipline. They had focus, they had strategy. They were the Trojan horse strategy and they've lost all of it. Joel (6m 21s): Yeah, to me, it smells a little bit like jumping the shark. It fits smells a little bit like a peak. I feel similarly about Indeed today, as I did about Monster in 2006 or 2007. Obviously it took 10 plus years for sort of that demise to happen or that downfall to happen. But to me, this sort of reeks of desperation and also a good level of hubris. They have a new CEO, I think, with the organization, so maybe a little bit of him making his mark, could be part of this, but yeah, I, I can't find many good things about this move. Joel (7m 1s): Good stuff. By the way, the Superbowl isn't that far away and a hot economy means there should be more ads from companies in the employment space. The big question is, will we see some of the unicorns from the past year on the big game? Or how about ZipRecruiter who's now a public company? Hell maybe even a background check solution will show up to the party, stay tuned. It's commercial time. Chad (7m 33s): It's show time. Joel (7m 36s): TikTok was super hot last year and made it into our show more times than I can count. However, one story and interview really stood out. Meet Tony Piloseno, know a then senior at Ohio University who was working part-time at a local Sherwin-Williams paint store and mixing paint for his TikTok followers, which then numbered 1.2 million Did Sherwin-Williams, fast track Tony to their executive farm system as a result. No, they fired him. Joel (8m 14s): Crazy Right? This is Tony's story. Enjoy. Chad (8m 25s): Oh yeah, we got paint boy on the show today. Chad (9m 36s): What's up everybody. This is Joel Cheesman of the Chad and Cheese podcast always joined by my Tonto, Chad Sowash. Joel (11m 56s): Proudly. Chad, how are you, man? Joel (12m 38s): We got a follow up to one of our weekly stories. Joel (13m 56s): I can't wait to get into this one now. Chad (14m 59s): He's he's paint, dude. He's not paint boy, because he's in college. Chad (16m 23s): He's a senior. Joel (16m 44s): He's a content creator. Chad (17m 12s): Here's a little bit of an intro from Buzzfeed. Chad (18m 16s): Okay. So an Ohio University, senior who worked a part-time job at a local Sherwin-Williams store was fired after the company discovered he was mixing paint on a Tik Tok channel where it's At @tonesterpaints, which currently has 1.5 million followers. Chad (21m 26s): So that's, that's kind of like the backstory. We talked about that on the weekly show. Let's go ahead and bring it's Tony Piloseno. Joel (21m 26s): Tony, how you doing bud? Hello, Tony Piloseno. Tony (21m 28s): I'm in Ohio. Where are you guys? Joel (21m 28s): Are you in Ohio network? Tony (21m 28s): Yeah, I'm going to Athens, Ohio right now. I'm still at school for the next couple of weeks. Joel (21m 28s): Beautiful, beautiful school, big, big party school. Tony (21m 28s): Yes sir! Joel (21m 29s): It's home of Roger Ales, which is always nice to talk about. Chad (21m 30s): Known for its painting apparently. So, so Tony give us some, give us some, some backstory on this. I mean, we, we hear what's, you know, the Buzzfeed story, so on and so forth, you go in to work and then somebody gives you a call and you're like, what the fuck's going on here? Joel (21m 31s): Were you always a painter dude or was Sherwin-Williams like just, it was a job. Tony (21m 31s): Well, yeah, I mean, when I first started at Sherman Williams, about three years ago, I didn't know shit about paint. I and I fell in love with the job immediately, man. I mean, I love the industry. Loved helping people with their projects, picking out colors, the process. It was all good. My whole career path was going to lead down through Sherman Williams corporate chain doing all that. But last year, last December, I had downloaded TikTok and I saw that other people at paint stores were doing these paint videos, just the process of a mixing gallon paint. And it fell into like the oddly satisfying category. Joel (21m 31s): So was this like, Oh, I don't know. Lowes, paint. Yeah. TikTok account versus. Tony (21m 31s): Oh no, no. They were just some part-time workers too making the videos at the store. Joel (21m 31s): OK, so same thing. Tony (21m 31s): Right. Joel (21m 31s): Okay. Tony (21m 31s): So, you know, the videos took off almost immediately. I think my sixth video got like a million views. Joel (21m 32s): Christ. Tony (21m 32s): So what I, what I tried doing was I wanted to basically change the digital marketing game for the paint industry and just make interesting content to younger people. And SW didn't really like that. And they canned me for it. Chad (21m 32s): Get a little deeper into this, this wasn't like your manager saying, Hey, you're screwing around on company time. This isn't good for us, blah, blah, blah. This was somebody from loss prevention. I mean some, some suit who had no fucking clue, probably what Tik Tok even is today. Well, he probably does today, but probably didn't even know what Tik Tok was. They were saying that you were a harming the brand. Tony (21m 32s): Well, yeah, dude. I mean, I had made a presentation to show to marketing I showed it to my manager and sales rep. Damn. Yeah. I mean, it was legit. I showed it to all my marketing professors here at OU and they said, move forward with this, get it to marketing. And I tried and basically got blown off for it. They didn't even look at the presentation. So I just kept making videos. And then apparently someone had called customer service up in Cleveland at their headquarters and said, was complaining that I was mixing... Chad (21m 32s): Was it the blueberry? Did the blueberry get you in trouble? Tony (21m 32s): It was the blueberry video. Joel (21m 32s): Wow. So talk about the blueberry video. Tony (21m 32s): Well, what I wanted to do is, I did a bunch of research on like the history of paint and they used, they used to use like natural, they call them natural pigments, as like dyes for the paint, like berries, roots. So I figured, it'd be cool for a video. So I bought, I was buying my own paint for those kinds of videos and thought it would be a cool concept to make a video for. And that video took off that one, got like 20 million views. That's how Sherwin-Williams found out about it. Chad (21m 32s): They weren't excited about this, that they were, that their brand was actually getting out and seen by 20 million different viewers. Tony (21m 32s): No. Joel (21m 32s): Yeah. How was the brand represented? Were you always wearing a Sherwin-Williams shirt? Hat? Was the paint always there? Did you always mention like, Hey, the new paint from Sherwin Williams da da da? Tony (21m 32s): Before, I made that presentation, I was literally trying to promote Sherman Williams, like, Hey, come into the store and get these school colors. But then once the marketing thing didn't work out with trying to show off that presentation, I just took away the label completely. And then yeah, they, they still found out about it because I didn't want to be doing videos like that, that wasn't really approved of without what their brand and you know. Joel (21m 32s): Yeah. Yeah. Chad (21m 32s): It's interesting because first and foremost brands are always trying to look at new, new mediums. Right. They're looking at, they're trying to, they're trying to actually get out into new mediums. Joel (21m 32s): Especially consumer companies. Chad (21m 32s): They're trying to gain traction and, and you had a just add water solution. Cause you already had this, this user base who wanted to see this. And Sherwin Williams, I mean, hell they could have easily just grabbed this up. I mean really just taking it from you to be quite Frank, but no, they kicked you out the door. How did that tell me how that felt, man, because I mean, you were really, you're passionate about what you're doing. How did that feel? Joel (21m 32s): You got to think you're on the fast track to like corporate job in Cleveland, which, who doesn't want that. But I mean, the minute you got a million views and had a million followers, you were like, dude, I'm set. I'm going to be corporate Sherwin Williams for the next 20 years if I want it. Tony (21m 32s): Well, dude, I mean my whole career path was going to go through Sherwin Williams, go. I had an internship lined up, was going to go into management sales. I literally loved the job. It almost felt like I got like betrayed. Chad (21m 32s): You did. Tony (21m 32s): By the company. I did a lot for them, I worked there for a very long time. And then I have some dude in, I like to call them the "paint police" - loss prevention. He basically interrogated me, wanted to know if I was stealing, which I wasn't. They found out that I wasn't, but then they pulled some BS, excuse. Like I was like, what was it? Serious embarrassment to the company. And yeah, it sucked. But honestly I think it's almost like a blessing in disguise at this point. Like you said, they probably wouldn't take taken that from me. Chad (21m 33s): Yeah. Let's talk about the blessing. Because as soon as this hit, not who, who, first and foremost who picked it up? And then after it was picked up, it seemed like it just like exploded. Tell me about that, because this does seem like almost like a blessing in disguise. Tony (21m 33s): If they were to take, if they would've went with that TikTok or my presentation now, after all this had happened, they would have made it into some corporate, I don't even know bit saturated with corporate. Chad (21m 33s): They would have fucked it up. Yeah. There's there's there's when it comes to social media and these platforms, you have to have authenticity to it and they would have completely screwed that up. So yeah. Joel (21m 33s): And they still don't have an account right on TikTok? Tony (21m 33s): I don't think so. I don't think they're going to now. Chad (21m 33s): You had, you had this broke and you had a bunch of big brands actually get in touch with you. Tell us, tell us about that. And you found a home, tell us who you picked and why you picked them. Joel (21m 33s): Yeah. And what was the TicTok reaction were a million people like, fuck Sherwin Williams? Tony (21m 33s): Oh dude. It was insane. I made that the initial video that blew up and got a whole, the media got ahold of was the story about how I had gotten fired. That video really took off and people were like bashing Sherwin Williams about it. My goal, I don't know if you guys had seen that initial video, but my goal wasn't even to bash Sherwin Williams and be like, Hey, like screw you guys. It was to basically develop like an emotional connection with my audience. Chad (21m 33s): Yeah. Tony (21m 33s): Basically give them a reason why I do what I do. Chad (21m 33s): Yeah. Tony (21m 33s): And people put two and two together, found out it was Sherwin Williams and took it from there and they got grilled on the internet. Chad (21m 33s): Oh, yeah. So tell us, tell us about those big brands that came to to you and why you and where you went and why picked it? Tony (21m 33s): So I, after that video broke out, I got basically partnership offers and deals from basically every major paint company in the United States, like Behr, PBG, Benny Moore, a few smaller ones. And I went with a company called Florida Paints down there in Orlando. Joel (21m 33s): They didn't want to hire you necessarily, but they wanted to sponsor? Tony (21m 33s): Right sponsor the videos. Joel (21m 33s): Okay. So nobody said, come work for us. It was like, Hey, let's partner. I'll pay for you to post videos and promote our paints. Tony (21m 33s): Well they did, they did offer like mainly year contracts. And after I had graduated, I would graduate they would offer me a job. But man, I wanted to steer away after that whole thing was Sherwin Williams from the big corporate culture. Joel (21m 33s): I don't blame you. Tony (21m 33s): Hey, those big companies, man, there's too much of a chain of command. There's too many people you got to filter through it. Joel (21m 33s): Too many lawyers. Tony (21m 33s): Exactly. And so I went with the company, Florida Paints in Orlando. I met with the founder, Don Strubey and he it's a smaller company. They only have a, I think about 25 to 30 stores down in Florida. And Don had called me and he was the only one only person that I talked to through all these companies that I felt connection, like a shared passion for the importance of paint and the art of it. And that was something that really, I felt like connected with me. And I've wanted to work with them ever since that. Chad (21m 33s): He got you. Is what it was. Tony (21m 33s): Yeah. Right. Chad (21m 33s): You know, this is definitely a message to all of those brands that are out there that we talk to all the time. This wasn't just a consumer play, from the standpoint of Sherwin Williams. This was a guy who wanted to spend his life, give 40 hours a week, plus blood, sweat, and tears over time, all this stuff because he had a passion for what he was doing and they just threw all that shit in a can. And now a company, Florida Paints, I definitely want to give those guys some love. They understood they weren't corporate. They weren't buttoned up in bullshit about this. They understood that you were actually just demonstrating passion in who you were and that's what they wanted in their culture. And that's why you pick them. Tony (21m 33s): Exactly. That is exactly what happened. Joel (21m 33s): It's commercial time! Chad (21m 33s): It's showtime! Joel (21m 33s): Steer your content at all. How has your content changed if at all? Tony (21m 33s): Well, when I go to, I'm going to be moving down there within the next few weeks, but it's basically going to be tones of paints powered by Florida Paints. They're going to give me all the supplies and resources. I need to express my creativity through my content. Joel (21m 33s): Gotcha. Chad (21m 33s): What's the position title? I mean, what are you actually going to be doing for them above and beyond TikTok? Or is it just that? Tony (21m 33s): Well, I'm going to be working like a, almost like a sales associate job, like I was before in the store. But along with that, I'm going to be doing digital marketing. Basically creating content. Joel (21m 33s): Gotcha, awesome. Gotcha. I have to, I have to note Tony, I want to back up a little bit. We have hundreds of companies that would love to blow up like you did on social media. So one of my questions is like, what tips would you give a corporation? You mentioned authenticity, which I think is important, but what are some tips you would give a company to sort of blow up like you did? Cause a million is no is no joke. That's legitimate blown up on social media. Tony (21m 33s): Well, you know, I have always followed three rules of social media after doing research, learning just the platforms and all that. And it really all kind of comes together, no matter which platform you use, my three rules are consistency, you have to post about every day. Quality of content, you got to make sure it's stuff people want to see. And then the third one, is engaging with your followers, making it feel like, they belong there and like they're a part of the page. Joel (21m 33s): Gotcha. Chad (21m 33s): Well, and you mentioned connection though, too, because you said that you wanted to make a connection with your user. So it was the content, but you felt it was really important to make a connection, a human connection as well. Tony (21m 33s): Exactly, exactly. I mean, I hadn't really done that before either. I had basically just been making paint videos and I just, like I said, I wanted to give my audience a reason why I do what I do. I'm not just mixing paint in some basement for no reason. Joel (21m 33s): No, I'm curious as a, because you're a young person, we don't get young people on the show that often, break down for me, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and then, you know, like Facebook and Twitter, like where do you spend most of your time? Where do you see most of your peers spend time? Which ones are sort of like way passe and we're over that. And are there any platforms that we should be looking at in the future to take off like TikTok has? Tony (21m 33s): I mean, dude TikTok I think is, is really in the past year, changed the game completely. It's almost turning into like a, I don't know if you remember Instagram, that kind of, it's almost like I'll TikTok is now. There's not really any like business to or anything, but on Instagram and stuff, now you can shop, you can, it's basically a search engine. Now, Instagram, you can look up anything on there. Joel (21m 33s): Predict you there'll be a day where there'll be a Sherwin-Williams ad come before or after your TikTok on paints. So yes. Are you Snapchatting, like Instagram is still hot, right? Like what's the temperature and all these sites. Tony (21m 33s): I've been sticking to YouTube, Instagram and Tik TOK. I haven't really gotten into Snapchat yet. Maybe Twitter I would get into, but I mean, man, it's, it's a full-time job trying to manage and upload content to all these, all these platforms, but TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, or like the video platforms, which I try to stay, stay with the most. Joel (21m 33s): And where do you sort of, where do you expect to be in five years? If we had this interview five years from now, where to, where do you hope to be and what do you hope to be doing? Tony (21m 33s): That is a great question. I guess what another reason I had chosen Florida Paints is, was cause I'm going to be able to develop my knowledge and understanding of the paint industry and become more of like a respected personnel in it. Obviously my name's already known throughout the industry, but I just want to grow my knowledge. So maybe, I mean, if the digital marketing thing doesn't work out cause things die, but I'm going to keep at it and keep going with that. But maybe like becoming in sales. I, yeah, it's just something like that. You know, just something. Chad (21m 33s): Has that changed that you want to go up through the ranks in the same organization or are you pretty much open to do whatever now? Tony (21m 33s): Well, I'm open to do whatever, whatever, wherever life takes me, how this whole thing plays out. I'm still not really sure. I mean this whole thing has happened. Chad (21m 33s): Quickly. Tony (21m 33s): Quickly. It's not even been a year since I made my first TikTok. Chad (21m 33s): Wow. Tony (21m 33s): So who knows? Joel (21m 33s): Well from my standpoint, you know what you're doing could not have been done when Chad and I were your age. So it's fascinating. It's fascinating to see. And the fact that you have so many followers on a, on a platform that is not going anywhere anytime soon is, is obviously a big positive to your career. And my guess is you'll be able to take that, you know, that portfolio to anywhere and, and create a living for yourself or create opportunity for yourself. So consider yourself lucky, but also you're talented right place, right time. But I I'd love to talk to you again in five years to see where you are because I'm betting that it's going to be someplace pretty cool. Tony (21m 33s): I mean, yeah, I'll be open for it if you guys want to have me back. Joel (21m 33s): I'm setting my reminder now. Chad (21m 33s): We'll come down to Orlando for that one, but seriously, Tony, you know, I think if anybody who is paying attention right now is really getting a lesson in brand, in how to be human and how to more like just step away and allow your employees to really demonstrate their passion, the way that they demonstrate their passion instead of trying to fit them into a box.It's commercial time. Tony (21m 33s): Exactly. Chad (21m 33s): So we appreciate you taking time to come on the show. I mean, this is really short notice. We talked yesterday and I just saw it. Joel (21m 33s): He's a college kid. He's got nothing going on. He's got finals coming up, dude, but seriously, man, thanks so much. If somebody wants to check out TikTok or YouTube, tell him where should they go? Where should they subscribe? Unreal, right? Tony should be a marketing manager at Sherwin-Williams today. Their loss, but Tony seems to be doing just fine. In case you are wondering, Tony still works at Florida paints as a content creator, and he's up to 1.8 million TikTok followers. You can also buy his custom paints now at tone stir that's T O N E S T E R.com. Chad and I first met Rick Carsley over Swedish meatballs at an Indianapolis Ikea, where he was working out of the Philly office. The food was fantastic, but the interview was even better. Joel (22m 14s): So hot that we had to get Rick back on the show in 2021, just a year after our first interview. Now at Freedom Mortgage, we love Rick for his insight and his candor. Dude is all gas, no brakes. Enjoy. I'm guessing the mortgage business is pretty busy these days. Rick (22m 34s): It's absolutely insane. You know, I grew up in the mortgage industry, that's how I learned like what recruiting was, which was just completely random. I don't know if I ever told this story? Right after undergrad, I was a loan officer, like dial for dollars call center. And there was a flyer, it was bright orange and it said $500 referral for any loan officers that we hire. And so I went out, I joined my alumni association. I would go to like happy hours around Chicago and brag about how much money I made as a loan officer, because you're clueless at that age and like in 45 days I hired about 18 loan officers. Rick (23m 17s): I caught the eye of another company who hired me to run their like huge, huge branch that they were building. And the way I got into this show that we call recruiting was, the owner was like, Hey, not you don't just how your loan officers here, you have to hire all the other jobs. And my only question was I'm like, so those jobs have base salaries, right? He's like, well, yeah. And I'm like, well, that's easy. Yeah. I can do that. No worries. Chad (23m 44s): That's like cheating. Right. You're starting with a leg up already. Rick (23m 46s): Yeah. So then like 16 years later, this is how I pay my mortgage now. But the industry just, you know, blew up financial services and essential retail have been like the two things and warehouses that have kept, you know, the economy moving kind of since March. And when you have record low interest rates, when you have rising home prices and Freedom, kind of based on our size, we had to hire and hire quickly. We hired like 6300, 6500 coworkers last year. And the kind of skilled positions in the mortgage industry, underwriting kind of being a huge one, the overall salary of a job like that, you know, a year ago, underwriter was say, two years of experience was on the market for say 70 to $75,000. Rick (24m 34s): That same job now, that base salary is around a hundred and you have quarterly bonuses. You know, that you're all in number. Chad (24m 39s): Is it virtual now, is that a remote job? Rick (24m 40s): Oh yeah. Freedom had always really been remote. So that was kind of our leg up previously. Chad (24m 45s): Fuck Yeah! Rick (24m 45s): But now that everybody is remote, there's like 10 to, like 12 to 15, really big players in our industry and it is a constant battle of us kind of outbidding each other. A candidate for underwriting, if they throw the flag up on LinkedIn that they're looking or toss to their resume on Indeed, they're gonna get hit by like 10 companies in a matter of days. And then your staffing partners, which is huge in financial services, there there's no industry that gets dominated by staffing, like financial services does just because of the volume and the constant ebb and flow, they just drive the price up further and further. Joel (25m 29s): So it sounds like you guys were sort of familiar with interviewing through technology, whether it be video or some other means, would that be correct? And if you're doing that in some companies that are sort of new to doing that, what are some tools that you find sort of invaluable? What may be changed for you with video and I guess longterm wise, it's going to stay that way for you. Rick (25m 53s): I mean, last time I talked to you all, I was just singing the praises of how HireView, which seems to be a reoccurring theme since I stole that idea from the Hilton, back in 2011. And it's funny, the person that runs Ikea now is from the same lineage, but it's completely different. You know, like when you think about just where candidates come from, Ikea could spend $1 on any pay-per-click site and they're going to get 2 million impressions and thousands of thousands of applications a month. Chad (26m 27s): And that's brand, yeah. Rick (26m 28s): That's not the same in financial services, regardless of who you work for. And in our business, the bigger you are, the worst reputation you have, like no one wants to go work for Quicken. So, you know, in my old world of Ikea, you had so many applicants. It was like, well, how do we not take the recruiter's time? And that was just, I'm going to send you that, Hireview, you're going to do it yourself. And I'm going to gauge your participation in our process. And then from there, I'm going to make you take a video game assessment so I can tell the business why I'm making the hiring decision based on math versus you. Rick (27m 10s): That just doesn't work in our business. But you know, the financial services industry, there's times where it's set with the same amount of fraud that you have in your normal C to C game, if you're hiring like international for dot.net developers or whatever. And it, so you're doing zoom video interviews for recruiting, you're still taking them through an assessment, but that assessment is very skill specific for that exact job. So, you know, I really don't have a video based solution outside of Zoom right now. I've been playing with LinkedIn's new ad-on. Did you all see that with the two behavioral based interview questions that you can add in there? Rick (27m 50s): Like when you post the advert directly on their site, have you guys played with that at all? Chad (27m 57s): Haven't played with it. How was it working? Rick (27m 59s): So, you know, the problem with LinkedIn, I don't, that would take like four hours for me to answer my own statement right there. But so, you know, you post your advert and maybe one to 2% of those applications are anywhere near relevant in your job. So what you can do is as part of your application, you can set up to video based questions, but you only have like 25 to 30 questions to actually choose from. So what it's been good for is kind of lower level positions, right? Where you're able, like my whole big thing was always evaluate people and not paper because especially coming from retail, those people aren't resume writers like resumes continue to get worse and worse and worse. Rick (28m 39s): So it's like let's give candidates the ability to push themselves up from the pack and show that they are willing to do the gig and that they want to do the gig. And if you're remote and remote, full-time, you're going to have to interact on video with your manager, with your peers, with your customers. And it was free as part of LinkedIn. And now that I no longer have the Ikea budget free is very good. So it's still, you know, like it's that same old adage, you know, a hundred people apply. If you reach out to all a hundred, you know, knock out 35% that aren't gonna respond because we've made applying so easy. And then just keep going down that funnel. So participation for the pilot, you know, I probably get maybe 18 to 20% of the people actually fill out the video part of it. Rick (29m 26s): You know, what I've seen both LinkedIn do and Indeed recently, for the first time in forever is one improve their interface and to give away things for free. All the years I've been doing this, like if LinkedIn even thinks of a new project, do you see it on the invoice before you've ever even opened up the site? Chad (29m 45s): Don't you think that's based around competition now, though. And not to mention if LinkedIn doesn't go to video before your applicant tracking system automatically integrates, acquires, and then integrates interviewing and video. I mean, they're fucked. So, I mean, they have to beat them to the punch don't they. Rick (30m 5s): It's a cool idea, you know, and I really like it, the one thing, and I don't know if it was really that hard to program, but only giving me like 30 questions that I can actually ask. Chad (30m 19s): That's lame. Rick (30m 21s): You know, like, you know, might as well be like, Hey, tell me about your biggest hero or do you know all these fluff questions? You know, there's stuff where like, you know, where do you want to be in five years? Joel (30m 40s): And three people you'd like to have dinner with dead or alive. Rick (30m 50s): It's so similar to that, but where we've been using it is just to one, when you have a market that you're just not going to find good people in. And when I say good, I just mean have done the, a very similar job before at a competitor. So when you're going to go off of people that don't fit the script from, you know, a to B, then you need something to get in front of the hiring manager. The one cool thing is when you have a big LinkedIn contract, you know, the old hiring manager seats that were just never used. Rick (31m 28s): And it was really just like, oh, I'm sharing profiles. Like you'd always have your executive recruiters do that nonsense. I shared twenty-five profiles with the hiring manager, he wants to talk to three you're like, cool. Does he know that that website has a one part, two, 1% participation rate outside of recruitment. And we're never going to talk to those people anyway, but I hope he looked at those profiles. So with this, at least you can create a project, you can make the hiring manager part of that project and they can actually view the video. So it added a little bit onto that. Rick (32m 10s): You going to LinkedIn too. Did you guys see the new resume builder function that's like plugged into Microsoft word? Joel (32m 18s): Yeah. Rick (32m 18s): I thought that was just kind of a cool add on it sets up for a world of plagiarism in regards to resumes that already existed. And now we just made it one click away. Joel (32m 30s): It's commercial time. Chad (32m 31s): It's show time. Joel (32m 31s): Great stuff. Hopefully we'll get Rick back on the show in 2022 for his state of the industry, hot takes with housing, cooling off a bit and interest rates rising recently, I'm sure his challenges at Freedom Mortgage have changed a bit, but his brutal honesty is most certainly the same. Stay tuned. I've been predicting a ZipRecruiter IPO for years and 2021 finally proved me, right. And to say there was a hot take on the IPO is the understatement of the year. Here's the weekly show that followed Zip's invasion of Wall Street. Enjoy. Alright, so ZipRecruiter finally went public on the New York stock exchange on Wednesday under the ticker, ZIP that sexy and entered the market at around $20 a share, which it went below one point, and then creeped back up to a little over $21 a share, where it's a sort of hovering at the moment. Joel (33m 22s): 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. Some headlines really touted the spike in price one Barron's headline read quote, "ZipRecruiter stock surges on debut" end quote. So Chad, after the Glassdoor head fake pre pandemic IPO, are you ready to buy some ZIP? Chad (33m 43s): So I have to give it to you. You called this about three years ago. Right? Joel (33m 47s): And every year, since then. Chad (33m 48s): Zips 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 2000s 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 that we have to, also elephant in the room, is revenues. Indeed is obviously still killing it, but I 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. Chad (34m 34s): This is the time, right? So maybe early next year, take your buyout and sell all your stock. Joel (34m 43s): 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 (34m 53s): That'd be dumb. Joel (34m 54s): 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, that's an 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 sort of came out in the IPO. There's also a significant competition. Joel (35m 35s): You mentioned Indeed killing it. And they have a lot of challenges in terms of finding growth. Although the economy is growing, I think they're gonna 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 aren't. They're also going to have to, you know, manage the beachhead here in the U S is you have players like Vonq and StepStone sort of knocking, knocking at the door. So, you know, it was sort of a meah, 1st day. My second takeaway was that it was just sort of meah. So Stocktwits was StockTwits, which is a pretty popular site where people talk about stocks and people can follow stocks. Joel (36m 17s): 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 only about 400 people following ZipRecruiter at the end of yesterday, which is less than actually are following Dice. Chad (36m 36s): Wow. Joel (36m 36s): Which I thought was interesting. 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 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 thin they're losing the narrative, that they're not a job board. Joel (37m 20s): I mean, they want to grab the quote marketplace matchmaker, which was a quote that I 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 going to 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, the woman that was hired walks in, like everyone knows these ads, right? Joel (38m 2s): 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. So those are my three takeaways from Zip. I would not, not buy. Not that I give advice. It might be a hold at this point. I think it probably hovers around the twenties for a while, maybe gets up to 30. Joel (38m 44s): If the economy really fires up and they have some good quarterly earnings report, but it was exciting to see an IPO and I think bigger picture is like, is this going to spur, you know, talent.com, who's rumored to be going public, or iCIMS, 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 (39m 21s): Thing. I think iCIMS is going there. No matter what. Yeah. Joel (39m 24s): I Sims is more in that Workday bubble then ZipRecruiter is like Post Jobs. Post Jobs isn't getting anybody excited on Wall Street. Yeah. Chad (39m 33s): They've gotta 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 (39m 51s): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this 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 he got something. So we'll definitely be watching their progress in the months and years to come. Chad (40m 10s): Yep. Joel (40m 10s): So, so fast forward to present day, ZipRecruiter stock is now hovering around $28 a share after hitting the market at around $21. So performance has been better than my initial take back in May. I'm not qualified to give financial advice, but things should be fine for Zip as long as the economy remains red hot. For 2022, look for iCIMS to go public, which we'll certainly be watching as well. What can I say? CareerBuilder is the gift that keeps on giving. If there's one certainty, since we launched the podcast a little over four years ago, it's CareerBuilder is going to keep us talking. What was the highlight of despair in 2021? Joel (40m 51s): Now you got to listen. Chad (40m 54s): Topics! Joel (40m 54s): Oh boy, how long has it been since we've talked about CareerBuilder? Chad (40m 59s): Too long. Joel (40m 59s): Probably about four months, the last time they announced a new CEO. So "industry icon," I say that in air quotes CareerBuilder is rebranding itself, Chad, most notably there's a new logo. Some people are calling this the fourth new one, I'm calling it the third. As part of their new brand identity the company is launching a TV, radio and digital campaign with the trademark tagline "let's job at up," which will be featured on programs like CBS, NFL Sundays, and the People's Choice Awards. CareerBuilder CEO, Susan Arthur said in a release quote, "this relaunch is a celebration of the ways CareerBuilder can support evolving individual ambitions with a modern, empowering brand." Joel (41m 43s): Chad, are you ready to celebrate CB's Rebrand? sfx (41m 48s): Buzzer. Chad (41m 48s): Not even close. So Tim Sackett did a compare and contrast on the new logo against its predecessors. And it was funny, but it's not the point at all. This isn't about how ugly the logo and colors are. This to me is about the new CEO, Sue Arthur. This is about what's broken at CareerBuilder and the color scheme and logo should not be the new CEO's priority. As a new CEO, you cannot allow this type of stupidity to happen on your watch because it demonstrates that you are not focused or you have no control over your fucking staff, from a priority standpoint. Just for a second let's say all of this was nearly or maybe finalized by the prior regime. Right? I can hear that excuse right now. Well, that was all done through the prior regime. Well, it doesn't matter because as the new CEO, you have to understand optics as a customer or a prospect or a stakeholder. Chad (42m 35s): I look at this move and say, this was her first fucking move. I mean, what the fuck is wrong with her? Now I see that Sue Arthur has a wonderful list of brands and positions that she's held over the years, just check out her LinkedIn for God's sakes, but none of them have readied her for becoming the captain of a sinking ship. She's having the staff apply a new coat of paint, the Titanic after it hit the fucking iceberg dude. So that's my rant. This whole logo and color thing is really just a symptom of a much larger problem at CareerBuilder. Joel (43m 15s): Yeah where to start? If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone here it is a common question. So it's very, it's very telling that outside of a ad age and ad week, this news saw no major news outlet cover the story on Google news. That's how far this brand has fallen. Chad (43m 38s): Yeah. Joel (43m 38s): Brands change because of damage control or things are antiquated, they need to freshen shit up. They don't just happen on a whim like they've seemed to happen at CareerBuilder and the original brand, which by the way, they spent millions of dollars, you know, promoting and building with Superbowl ads and tons of other shit. And then by total surprise, they changed it up to like some trivial pursuit pie icon with the C because they were going from a job board to a software company. Joel (44m 19s): Well, that didn't work out so well. So I would have had more respect if they would have gone back to the old logo and said, we're going back to our roots of being a job site and being the best job site we can be, as opposed to, I don't know, looking like an ink stamp on a piece of paper, it has no equity to me, starting over from scratch is hard to sort of fathom. Now they're gonna have to, you know, spend more money on that. Joel (45m 3s): "Let's job it up." I don't know if that really rolls off the tongue that well, we'll see how that goes. The Superbowl ads, are the ads that they have, at least they're sort of being funny. The one thing that I think that struck me really quickly was in the ad that they promoted the guy who's in the break room and the boss is cooking fish or something. The guy, the employee, the disgruntled employee applies to 15 jobs at once on his mobile phone, through his CarrerBuilder app. Now that is not really the message. Chad (45m 3s): Scattershot. Joel (45m 4s): That's certainly not the message most employers want to see. Chad (45m 4s): No. Joel (45m 4s): It's all in all this is lipstick on a pig. I wanna see some innovation out of CareerBuilder that doesn't involve Pokemon Go. To me, that's really going to change the story about CareerBuilder, not a new tagline and not a new logo. Chad (45m 3s): New coat of paint on a sinking ship Fucking diversion. Joel (45m 4s): A few weeks ago, I posted a poll on LinkedIn asking who had actually seen one of the new CareerBuilder ads on TV. I live in Indiana, which isn't exactly a hotbed for commercial activity, so I wondered if my connections in the bigger markets had seen it, not surprisingly, only 4% said they had seen the ad. So CareerBuilder apparently doesn't have Indeed or even ZipRecruiter type money to drop on ad buys. Maybe in 2022, they'll spend some real coin on advertising, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Either way we're likely to continue talking about CareerBuilder and the dumpster fire well into 2022, stay tuned. And thanks for listening. OUTRO (45m 4s): 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.

Joel takes a nap and Madeline Laurano, Founder of Aptitude Research steps up to the mic to talk about her newest High Volume Hiring research. What exactly is High Volume Hiring? Is high volume different than recruiting for gig? Do I need a different system or will my ATS adapt? Why are applicants dropping out at such a high rate? ... and much much more... Quit rates are at an all-time high, 4.4m quit last month alone, and nearly a third of women have left or are contemplating leaving the workforce - reported by McKinsey. Let's face it the workforce, almost in its entirety, is just exhausted. What's Talent Acquisition supposed to do? Listen... PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your bridge to the disability community, delivering custom solutions in outreach, recruiting, talent management and compliance. "00:26.12 Chad This is the chad and cheese podcast and I am your host Chad Sowash. We are cheese free today and you are welcome but in Cheeseman's place we are welcoming guess who kids. Madeline Laurano founder at aptitude research welcome back to the show Madeline what's been going on." "00:47.44 Madeline Laurano Thanks Chad Thanks for having me back. It's always it's always great to catch up with you here." "00:51.54 Chad You have been busy this year I mean this is this is actually your fourth time on the show so that makes four reports. How many reports are you going to have just within this year ah" "00:57.30 Madeline Laurano I know. Yeah" so by the time the year is over. They'll be around 15 and I don't know how but I don't know how we're going to get through it the next month but somehow I will but. "01:13.27 Chad Oh and they are sexy I would say if you have not downloaded 1 of these things who and you need to take some time and enjoy anyway. So I tell you what? let's go ahead and let's have some fun with this new report you good with that? no." "01:29.80 Madeline Laurano Yeah" sounds great and. "01:31.94 Chad Okay" okay let's dig in all right? The state of high volume recruitment data Trends and strategies for high volume hiring success. Okay cool high volume. We hear it all over the place. What the hell is it I mean. "01:46.35 Madeline Laurano Yeah" yeah. "01:50.75 Chad Different people have different definitions. What was your definition going into this because obviously that's the first thing you do right? It's like okay" let's define this what what is it to you? What is it for this report? yeah. "01:55.30 Madeline Laurano Um" yeah yeah it was interesting because I think when I think high volume I always think hourly like that's where I go like that's where my mind has always gone and I think about the industries that I would call high volume industries or retail hospitality food service. And doing this. That's like the first question we asked in the survey like Define high volume and 65 percent of respondents said they have some high volume needs today. So it's not just hourly. You know only a third of respondents defined it as hourly like it's the number of you know applications you receive. It's you know. "02:15.70 Chad M." "02:32.86 Chad Okay" Wow "02:33.41 Madeline Laurano The volume you're doing only ten percent define it as gig I think a lot of people think it's just gig workers. So yeah" it's kind of all over there. Yes. "02:43.59 Chad We're talking financial. We're talk I mean what? what? it's just anything where you have is it high turnover or is it high growth or is it both." "02:52.93 Madeline Laurano It's high growth I think I think it could be both but I think it's you're receiving this number of applicants for each position that some people define it as a thousand some people define it more than that. But it's this You know this volume that I think after the pandemic we're seeing all these industries." "02:53.74 Chad There." "03:00.65 Chad Okay. The." "03:09.67 Madeline Laurano Dealing with both right dealing with retention plus this this huge spike in in their hiring needs." "03:13.67 Chad Okay" so according to the research sixty five percent as you'd said of companies have high volume recruitment needs. Are they using the same tech. What's what's the big hiccup for them right now we're hearing so many things it's wages. It's tech. It's I mean is it an onion. What? what? the heck is it. "03:33.39 Madeline Laurano It's a lot of things I mean I think the first issue is it's so complex like we're taking the hiring process which is already too complex for professional hiring and we're trying to apply that to high volume when you need to fill these positions quickly and you need a simple experience and." "03:35.40 Chad And yeah" yeah. "03:49.33 Madeline Laurano That just hasn't been the case like most of the technology is technology that we're using outside of high volume. So if a traditional ats is going to be like your bread and butter for hiring high volume and you have forty five minutes to complete. Application process. You're going through a cumbersome process. You've got an assessment that's another forty five minutes that's integrated with your ats you've lost everyone and you're not filling those positions in 2 weeks let alone 2 days." "04:07.56 Chad Yeah" ah. "04:15.34 Chad So corporate America can't be that stupid right? They can't they. They've got to understand that and they've got to know right out of the gate that these are entirely different people. Who engage entirely different with applicant tracking systems or whatever right? The entire apply process I mean we even knew this back in the day. Ah when we would have to go in. Let's say for instance like Burger king when I was 15 I had to fill out a paper application. Right? I mean that was different than you know" Maybe 10 years later when I was going after maybe a ah mid level management position. So I mean why we knew things were different back then why are we trying to throw everybody into the same process today. "04:59.17 Madeline Laurano Yeah I think there's a couple different things I think the first is like people don't realize there is better technology like there are like we didn't have that option either when we had like the paper you know applications that we'd go in and submit or the kiosk remember the kiosks like that was the big technology trend. It was like." "05:09.13 Chad Yeah" yeah. "05:16.88 Madeline Laurano Oh now you've got a kiosk and you can enter your information and yeah" exactly um and then you know we've evolved quite a bit and there are solutions out there I mean conversational Ai there's you know Ats is just designed for high volume needs which is very new and very different. "05:18.15 Chad There's a boat anchor. Yeah." "05:26.24 Chad Um" yeah. "05:34.93 Madeline Laurano And I think a lot of companies just gravitate toward the same systems and they don't realize there's this whole market growing outside of that." "05:41.52 Chad Right? right? right? right? Wealth I mean there are gig platforms. There are high volume platforms and then there are your really your core talent platforms I Hate calling them aTSes. They're You're like your real core talent platforms. But they're not the Same. So What I'm hearing from you and what you found in the research is that that that. Old style you know Cryptic Ats That's not enough for what companies need to actually hire for high volume." "06:09.50 Madeline Laurano Yeah" exactly it's not enough and it's providing a really old you know hiring experience for candidates. They're going to leave. They're not gonna they're not going to finish you know and move along in the process and I think people are seeing that like we found dropoff rates where you know a third of them are happening at the apply. "06:16.10 Chad Ah." "06:27.11 Madeline Laurano Process So you're losing just in ah in the apply process you're losing all these people but they happen pretty consistently throughout and it's you know it's everything from the experience is so poor to you know the the finding out about a pay like which is you know another big issue like we find it? "06:36.24 Chad Ah." "06:41.71 Chad Well talk about that talk about that I mean pay we hear all over the place that wages are an issue it. What did what did the report find out." "06:46.42 Madeline Laurano Ah" pay. Yep. "06:50.64 Madeline Laurano Yeah" that like forty six percent of companies are losing talent once they find out about pay and that often happens way down in the process like so you've got you know you've gone through the recruitment marketing or advertising these jobs and everybody's like advertising and spending a ton of money on advertising. "07:05.40 Chad Um" yeah right. "07:10.34 Madeline Laurano You get through the apply you can shorten the apply process you can keep it at forty five minutes whatever you're doing. You've got the apply process. You're moving people along and then they find out when they get the offer that their pay is not and then they're not showing up on the first day or they're getting other offers and. You know companies are doing everything from let's pay someone to you know to take an interview like have you heard this like 1 hundred bucks for people to come in for an interview or you know the the minimum wage is seventeen dollars an hour or whatever it's at and to me it's like an issue of transparency too like can we just have these." "07:31.85 Chad Yeah" yeah. "07:38.60 Chad Ah." "07:43.88 Chad Um" yeah well and how and how pissed off would you be as a candidate. Okay so companies need to think of it and this is where we've fallen down for decades we have to think of it from the candidate side of the house. How pissed off would you be as a candidate. "07:47.26 Madeline Laurano Conversations much earlier. Why do we have to wait." "08:03.54 Chad Going through the process whether you're a gold medalist silver medalist or in six months you might be 1 of those in how you would not ever want to interact with that brand. Let alone buy anything from that brand moving forward I mean right." "08:15.85 Madeline Laurano Um" oh yeah never yeah yeah exactly and think about it even from the manager's perspective. It's like you need you need someone in in 2 days. "08:19.13 Chad This is this is a this is a brain conversation as much as it is a tech conversation." "08:31.10 Madeline Laurano Like it has to be down or 2 weeks or whatever your time frame is you're overwhelmed. You need to build this team and you think that you've moved someone so far along the process. It's a no brainer. They're joining. You've told everybody everybody's excited on your team. Everybody's prepared for it and yet they don't show up on the first day." "08:32.30 Chad Right." "08:46.10 Chad And they don't show up because you weren't transparent right out of the gate. Wow. Okay" so let's talk about quality and what that means to actual efficiency getting people on the door obviously retention those types of things. "08:49.12 Madeline Laurano Yes" yep. "09:00.47 Madeline Laurano Yeah I think you know the metric. We always think of in high volume is like efficiency. It has to be done I mean I've been even talking about that like we would we want 2 weeks we want 2 days. There are all these examples out there and efficiency is so important it's not to take that away but quality is also important and I think people don't often realize that they think it's just." "09:06.40 Chad Yeah" yeah. "09:19.91 Madeline Laurano You know it's just a time. It's just a time to fill metric here in high volume but quality is just as important and you know when companies are thinking about their strategy or how they define quality and the technology they use. It has to be laser focused in on that quality too because we've got the other side right with high volume like we're talking about recruitment." "09:29.18 Chad In." "09:39.24 Madeline Laurano But there's the whole great resignation like retention and whatever you want to call it or talk about but people are losing talent like crazy right now." "09:40.89 Chad Yeah. Yeah" Well I mean candidate experience which you know we talked we talked about that has been a huge buds term in our industry and rightly so but in a landscape like you're talking about now where it's harder to find recruiters than it is to fill tech positions. "09:59.33 Madeline Laurano Who." "10:05.60 Chad We are. We're putting an anchor around recruiters necks number 1 because they we talk about the candidate experience and the process they have to go through if you look at some of these recruiting processes that these individuals have to go through. It's even worse so they have." "10:08.16 Madeline Laurano Right." "10:22.88 Chad Systems that they have to jump from tab to tab. It's ugly I mean and who wants to look at something that's ugly all day I mean come on I have to look at Cheeseman I get sick of it sometimes anyway. But I mean overall why are we talking about recruiter experience as much as we talk about candidate experience." "10:38.80 Madeline Laurano Absolutely and the technology that supports the recruiter experience like where do like a talent acquisition leader is going to buy a set of solutions to support the team but where do recruiters spend time that helps them do their job and provides a good experience for them. Those 2 things are often very different things." "10:42.86 Chad Yes." "10:55.49 Chad Bright and." "10:57.81 Madeline Laurano And yeah and we don't talk about the recruiter experience enough I mean they're reviewing. You know they’re reviewing applicants they're scheduling calls I mean these are all things that are not enjoyable ways to spend hours and hours and hours of your day." "11:05.98 Chad No I hate going to my calendar and trying to coordinate with somebody else's calendar which is why I have a bot right? I mean it just it's I Just don't get I don't understand why this isn't just the process methodology in itself." "11:15.59 Madeline Laurano Yes" yes exactly there you go. "11:25.95 Chad isn't just standard so near future state doesn't this research point to systems that cater more to 1 type of job and providing relevant experience for different positions and individuals." "11:38.92 Madeline Laurano Yeah" absolutely and I think there's some technology that's just really been fantastic for high volume right? Like we talk about this all the time you look outside of the Ats like programmatic. We I think we've talked about programmatic and every podcast I've been on with you because I mean the use case for high volume is tremendous. "11:44.90 Chad Ah" f. "11:51.98 Chad Yeah" yeah. "11:58.57 Madeline Laurano It's saving time saving recruiter's time is providing expertise it's showing value in Roi conversational ai is the same thing. It's like you're using and you know conversational ai to support and assist in all the work that you're doing as a recruiting team or a manager team." "12:02.45 Chad And." "12:16.38 Madeline Laurano And you've got you've got that support system with you and um" you know these areas ai matching is another 1 We've got a report coming out on that too. But that is a way to you know improve that experience. It's not just for the candidate. It's for hiring teams as well. "12:22.68 Chad Ah" nice. "12:29.69 Chad The big question for me is after we we take a look back and and we find it ourselves where we are today and I don't see that we've moved that much with this conversation. Do we think that. Talent acquisition professionals are savvy enough to actually pull this off because we're not talking about a single system. We're talking about multiple systems we're talking about integrated stacks. Do we need to go further into tech and marketing for help on this." "12:58.65 Madeline Laurano You know it's always I think a good idea to go and partner with marketing because they've done this and they've built these you know robust tech systems and and you know tech stacks. Yeah exactly. And." "13:06.88 Chad Yeah" yeah Flea gen. "13:12.23 Madeline Laurano Um" so I think that's always a great approach is to look at what other parts of the business are doing but I do think we're seeing these pockets in ta of companies that have done this you know and are so and are starting to think this way I mean I feel like I always talk about McDonald’s but "13:14.79 Chad M. M." "13:27.98 Madeline Laurano You know I think they've done a good a great job of kind of building out" not just mcHire but the transformation they've gone through and the tech stack they're putting in place is not a tech stack that's going to be used at JPmorgan. It's very specific to what their needs are I mean Lowe's is doing the same thing with Rob Doerty like they you know are very smart and strategic about what he's building. "13:30.78 Chad Yeah." "13:37.98 Chad Yeah." "13:47.55 Madeline Laurano Um" Kyle's doing the same thing at Gm So I think we're starting to see this happen. Um it's you know and the more we have those examples we can talk about I Hope that. "13:50.27 Chad Yeah" yeah. "13:56.92 Chad Yeah" well I hope we start saying McDonald’s has spent money on tech there's no question right? We just I think I think the balances for companies like them. They have to start spending money on people. And that's what the report is actually demonstrating is that you can't just we have to find equilibrium right? You can't just spend money on 1 side of the equation and hope that everything turns out okay because that's just not the world that we're living in. So. Out of this entire report and again let's tease it because I want people to download it and read it read it. What was the number 1 thing that you actually pulled out of this that you would want to throw out to to ta and professionals and vendors today. "14:43.31 Madeline Laurano That's a great question I think the getting back to what you started with the definition of high volume I think there are companies out there that don't realize that they are in this crisis today a high-volume crisis if you will." "14:48.54 Chad M." "14:55.62 Chad Yeah" yeah yeah. "14:57.87 Madeline Laurano Right now in this moment. That's just not how they identify they don't think they're hourly companies I think if the biggest aha for me is that how pervasive this high volume topic is and how companies are still using these very traditional recruitment strategies or candidate." "15:06.73 Chad Ah" so. "15:16.33 Madeline Laurano You know relationships or technology to support that I think the first step is we really have to look at what high volume is and then realize there is a better way. Most companies are not doing the better way in terms of you know treating people like humans and also using the right strategies and technology." "15:26.28 Chad Yeah" yeah. "15:32.80 Chad Yeah" yeah now I agree 1 hundred percent I agree 1 hundred percent. My takeaway was that we as talent acquisition professionals need to adopt quick and we have to fail fast right? I mean that's 1 of the things that we've always been. "15:35.71 Madeline Laurano Yeah." "15:49.20 Chad Associated to risk because we're under HR and we hate to fail but we don't move forward and I think that's 1 of the things that you know I've made fun of McDonald’s over the years for doing but they've been brave enough to fail fast right? and they will trash whatever is not working and they will evolve." "15:59.81 Madeline Laurano Right? right? right." "16:06.27 Chad But what I got from this report is if companies don't understand exactly what you were just talking about understand the a gig economy what high volume actually means and they start to Morph and evolve not just in their brain but in their processes and in their tech and they don't do it quickly. They are gonna lose and they're gonna lose bigly." "16:27.59 Madeline Laurano Yeah" bigly and it's happening right? We're seeing it happen already. These companies are losing and they're missing out and I think the other piece that goes along with all of this and we talk about I mean you talk about this all the time is this candidate care mentality. It's like we saw it during the pandemic. It's like people were. "16:46.83 Chad Yeah" right. "16:47.18 Madeline Laurano A little bit more compassionate and a little bit more understanding to candidates and recruiters but is this going to carry over and continue I mean I hope so but I'm fearful that you know we go back to some of the old ways And yeah." "17:02.70 Chad Yeah" yeah I know I agree a hundred percent I think that we focus on not just nurturing candidates which we don't do well but we nurture employees and we talk. We don't just talk about internal mobility. "17:06.70 Madeline Laurano And we'll see how that plays out." "17:20.49 Chad Actually understand that promoting within the ranks is a necessity I mean there's so many things that we need to do in high volume and in the entire organization. Well Madeline I Appreciate you bringing this amazing report to the show talking a little bit about it. But you know where can people actually find out more about this where can they download it where can they read it and where can they send it to their friends." "17:44.63 Madeline Laurano Oh thanks for asking. Um AptitudeResearch.com. We just got a new website should be super easy to find. It's right under the research tab and share away. It's free." "17:48.89 Chad Man." "17:56.32 Chad Excellence that's Madeline Laurano founder at aptitude research Madeline. Thanks once again" we appreciate it and you've got more coming up so look forward to having you back on the show. Excellent we out. "18:06.68 Madeline Laurano Thanks chad."

It ain’t cool being a jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving, but it's definitely cool listening to the Thanksgiving Day episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast. Again this year, the boys are talkin’ turkey with the queen of chatbots, the one, the only, Quincy Valencia from Hourly. The crew goes through six 'Thankfuls' and three 'Turkeys'. Yummy! Pass the green bean casserole and turn it up to 11. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. sfx (1s): ' Okay. Pretend it's Thanksgiving. And this bread is a turkey. Oh my God. It's so juicy. INTRO (14s): 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 (37s): Yeah, it ain't cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving. Welcome to the Turkey Day episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast on your cohost. Joel "sweet potato pie" Cheeseman. Chad (49s): And I'm Chad "moist Tofurky" Sowash. Joel (53s): And on this episode, we're talking turkey with the queen of chatbots, the one, the only Quincy Valencia, everybody. Quincy, welcome back to the podcast. It's your second Thanksgiving day show. Quincy (1m 8s): Well thanks! Chad (1m 9s): Yeah. Joel (1m 9s): Have you had your mental health checked out? Quincy (1m 11s): I'm starting to feel like it's just tradition. Joel (1m 14s): How many episodes is that of ours that you're up to now? Quincy (1m 19s): I don't know. A bunch. Chad (1m 21s): Probably five. Probably closer to five. Joel (1m 21s): This is close to SNL. You need to get a gold jacket here at some point. Quincy (1m 27s): I'll be waiting. Joel (1m 27s): You and Tim Sackett can get gold Chad and Cheese jackets. Chad (1m 29s): I don't think we have the budget for that. I don't think we have the budget for that, but for all the listeners out there! Joel (1m 37s): Get a sponsor! Chad (1m 38s): For all the listeners that are out there who don't know who Quincy is first and foremost, get out of the goddamn fetal position and actually understand what's going on around you. Second. She's the VP of product innovation over at AMS and currently ranked numbered one in the Chad and Cheese football league. Quincy, thanks for, thanks for coming. Joel (2m 3s): Whose last in our league Chad? Chad (2m 5s): Quincy went from worst to first and I went from first to worst. Joel (2m 9s): I don't think Quincy's ever been in the cellar. I think she's always been fighting from like the middle to the top. Chad (2m 16s): Whatever Quincy (2m 17s): True story. Chad (2m 18s): So last year at this time you were locked up in a cabin in the woods. Unabomber style, your words. Quincy (2m 24s): That's right. Chad (2m 26s): Now you've taken that to a whole new level. So where do you call home nowadays, Quincy? Quincy (2m 38s): The booming metropolis of Brookings, South Dakota. I'm sure you know it. Chad (2m 40s): South Dakota!And you actually had you, they shut down the schools today because of snow Quincy (2m 49s): and oh, okay. Okay. Joel (2m 50s): And she's mad about it as if she lives in Miami or something and didn't expect this. Chad (2m 56s): She went to school in Miami. She knows what that feels like. Quincy (3m 0s): I did. Joel (3m 1s): Do they still have a football team? Chad (3m 3s): No. Quincy (3m 3s): They do by God. Do you still have a fantasy football team? I can redirect like a pro here. Chad (3m 11s): Fantasy versus reality. Joel (3m 12s): I can take you on in fantasy. Chad (3m 14s): Okay. Okay. Okay. On this very show last year we talked about how 2020 was such a fucking shit show, but I believe, and you let me know your thoughts that 2021 outmatched 2020 in the shit show. What do you think? Quincy (3m 29s): I don't know man? I, 2021 has been interesting. I don't know if shit shows the right word? I don't know if it's been? Joel (3m 34s): Bummer? Quincy (3m 34s): It's been booming for a lot of people. A lot of companies say it was their best year ever. So it's hard to say. I think we're going to get into some of that today when we talk about the good, the bad and the ugly, Joel (3m 45s): There's an industry perspective and there's a world at large perspective. Chad, Chad may have been coming at that from the world at large. Whereas Quincy is buried in the industry 24/7. Quincy (3m 56s): I didn't know there was a world outside of the industry, which tells you about my 2021. Joel (4m 2s): Yeah. That's what living in the Dakotas will do to you. Quincy (4m 7s): All right, enough Dakota hate now, you're one listener from South Dakota is not going to listen to you anymore. Joel (4m 13s): That one listener in international falls is really enjoying the show. Chad (4m 17s): You might've heard of that. I believe on January 6th, everyone knew that 2020 was just an opening act for the real shit show. Not to mention all the anti-vaxxers Kyrie, Aaron Rogers, making a stand, doing their own research. So yeah, I think 2021, we might come out of it in Q4, but it really, it kicked 2020 in the nuts. Quincy (4m 41s): Yeah. Chad (4m 42s): So that makes it, let's talk about what's going on with Hourly because last year, 2020, you launched Hourly in a fucking pandemic, but yet it looks like probably one of the smartest moves ever because of timing and look at the market today and hourly employees. Quincy (4m 56s): I mean, who knew we didn't intend to launch it a pandemic, but we didn't intend for there to be a pandemic, but here we were. And it was an interesting time to launch a software product, to help with the hiring of hourly workers, but to your point, it did turn out to be really good. It turned out to be a year where companies started to really see the value that these people who've driven our economy have provided to their business, to the economy at large, and everyone was kind of left, scratching their head, going, wait, what do we do? And we've really been able to get in there and help companies support that hiring that they need to do in a time that's been so incredibly frustrating and difficult. So Joel (5m 35s): Very nice. And your, lone commercial here, here, Quincy, where can they find out more about Hourly if our listeners want to dig into that company? Quincy (5m 43s): Yeah, they can go to, weareams.com and click on digital and they'll see the Hourly product, just the first product to come of many and AMS's new digital division. So more to come there as well. Chad (5m 55s): Ooo. Are you dropping knowledge on this today? What's going on? Quincy (5m 58s): Might be. Stay tuned that's all I have to say for that. Joel (6m 1s): Wasn't there an Hourly domain at one point? Did you get just chunk that? Quincy (6m 8s): Well, no, we didn't buy it. And that's why you said that. Didn't you? You said that intentionally to get in my face. Joel (6m 13s): Yeah I'm sorry. Quincy (6m 13s): I feel so welcome and loved here. Joel (6m 15s): All right. Can we talk a little turkey? Should we get into the show now? Quincy (6m 18s): Let's do it. I'm in. Joel (6m 20s): All right, here we go our Thanksgiving show works like this. Everybody, each of us will give two things that we're thankful for in the industry because we like to keep it on the positive tip and then one turkey from each of us from 2021. That's how the game is played. Are you ready to be thankful and talk turkey everybody? Chad (6m 45s): Let's do it. Joel (6m 45s): Quincy as our guest, you go first. What were you thankful for back in 2021? Quincy (6m 48s): Thankful for a lot actually. But the first thing I'm going to say I was thankful for is this thing we all know as the great resignation, which seems an odd thing to be thankful for. But for me it indicates that people are finally realizing the value they provide to their companies and to the economy at large and standing up for themselves and saying, you know, we're not going to take it anymore basically. Chad (7m 14s): Preach! Quincy (7m 14s): That's right. Joel (7m 15s): We're not gonna take it! Quincy (7m 15s): No the balance of power's been on the side of the employer for so long. I'm really, really grateful that people are truly finally standing up and saying, Hey, we're human beings. We're not, not machines for you. We're not commodities. And there's some things that we're, that we will require if you want us to work for your organization. So I say good for everyone who's been involved in that both at the hourly level and the professional level. There's more to life than what you can contribute to your company. So thank God people are seeing that now and find a better balance in their lives. Chad (7m 49s): Amen. Joel (7m 50s): Can I play devil's advocate on this one. Quincy (7m 52s): No. Chad (7m 53s): Why not? Joel (7m 53s): Oh no. Okay. What if the great resignation and higher wages and I'm not going to take it anymore just leads to automation and robotics at a quicker pace and we're all out of work and five to 10 years? Quincy (8m 2s): That's what everyone's said for years. That's what they said when they invented the cotton gin. I mean, I just think that's, the people will rescale and there'll be different jobs for people to play. And it just was, people are having the opportunity now even to go back and change their skillset, change their value in the market. So you kind of sound like my great grandfather. Joel (8m 24s): Power to the people. Quincy (8m 24s): We have probably no automobiles. Chad (8m 26s): We had problems finding drivers before this. Right. And so it's not like this is a new problem. It's just it's happening in a different scale. So yeah, I mean, I think that automation is definitely going to take over no matter what and it was intended to it's about evolution. Joel (8m 42s): For the record I'm not the oldest person on the podcast. Chad (8m 47s): You just sound like it. Joel (8m 51s): Chad are you ready? Let me cue you up, baby. Chad (9m 1s): Here we go. Joel (9m 2s): All right. Chad (9m 2s): What I'm thankful for is froth baby that's right. Money, money, money. So funding reached 6 billion in Q3 of 2021 alone and nearly 14 billion year to date. Three quarters of 2021 funding More than doubled all of the funding realized in 2020, which was not a bad funding year, by the way. So we've never, I repeat, never seen unicorns in the HR industry like this. We're talking about new unicorns on this very show just about every other week nowadays. But in closing, I am thankful for the rise because it's great content, great stories. Chad (9m 48s): It's amazing to see who is getting and not getting cash. But with every rise there will inevitably be a fall and only then, only then will we see who is ready for the big leagues. So I'm, I love the froth, because that means we're going to have a thinning of the herd later. Quincy (10m 4s): For sure. Joel (10m 5s): I fear that you'll be thankful for the froth next year, but for a different reason that we had plenty to talk about in the crash and burn and the carnage from 2021 or '22. Quincy (10m 14s): Yeah, I'll be devil's advocate on this one. And there, I'm kind of there with Joel. I think it's great that we're getting investment that we need, but not every company deserves a 10X valuation on the money that they get. And I'm afraid that we may have been a little bit overzealous in some places this year. I do like, I agree with you Chad, I like that the money is actually going in where it's supposed to be. And it's all, anything that will contribute to our industry makes me happy, but we'll see what we talk about next year on this show. Joel (10m 46s): Anyone want to make a prediction of like the biggest flameout for next year? Chad (10m 52s): Eight fold. Joel (10m 52s): Ooh. Quincy? Quincy (10m 53s): And I refuse to participate on grounds of I might get fired. Joel (10m 58s): I'm going to say Deel, DEEL. Chad (11m 1s): Really? Joel (11m 1s): That's my prediction. Yes, it is. Yes it is. Well thanks Chad. All right. That was money. There we go. All right, my turn. all right. My thankful for. Quincy (11m 11s): I'm thankful for your pink, fluffy unicorn song. Joel (11m 14s): Thank you. Thank you, Chad hates it. He'll probably edit this out, but now we can't because you mentioned it. Thanks, Quincy. Quincy (11m 20s): Your welcome. Joel (11m 20s): My thankful is the rest of the world. So when I started in the game, I think roughly when you guys did back in the nineties, everything outside of the US was pretty insignificant. Yeah, you had some local success stories. StepStone, Randstad, SeekOut in Australia, but most of the innovation was just copying what we were doing here in the US. If you fast forward to today, the innovation we've seen, particularly when we are doing this show from outside of America has been really inspiring. Hell, we've even been so inspired that we started a Europe show this year, just to talk about all the cool companies and shit going on in Europe. Joel (12m 4s): Europe is now launching shit like crazy. And they're launching crazy shit like an actual recruiting robot out of Sweden. You don't see that stuff coming out of the US say, what you will about the validity of such a product, but it is innovative. And it's not just Europe. Australia's doing interesting things. Israel is a hub for AI and now companies outside of the U S are grabbing up our companies. StepStone is buying Maya, they're buying AppCast. And now companies from outside are making an impact here as well. An invasion if you will think companies like Adzuna coming to our shores, talent.com coming in from a French Canadian territory, they're making waves in our, in the US it's all pretty exciting from my perspective, looking forward. Joel (12m 52s): I think the next meteorite to hit our industry will be the likes of India, Africa, and South America. Chad and I have talked about those briefly on the show, and I think we'll talk about them more and more with companies like Andela leading the way out of India and the rest of the world looks pretty exciting. So I am immensely thankful for the rest of the world. Chad (13m 19s): And Quincy's definitely happy for the rest of the world, because AMS is a headquartered out of Quincy (13m 23s): The UK. Joel (13m 24s): That's right? And Quincy lives in a vast wasteland that is neither a country or a state at this point. Quincy (13m 30s): The bad lands in South Dakota do look like the moon. I will give you that. Chad (13m 36s): I bet they do. We've also seen a shit ton of cash start going to the UK as well. So good stuff. Good stuff. Joel (13m 45s): All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll go into some more things that we're thankful for. Be right back. All right, Quincy, what else are you thankful for in 2021? Let's talk some turkey. Quincy (13m 57s): Let's talk it or tofurky if that were Chad talking, that's right. So yeah, the other thing I'm really thankful for is something that most of us have gotten on board with more than a decade ago, but companies are finally starting to see if they let people work from home or work a hybrid approach the company isn't gonna fall apart. sfx (14m 16s): Applause. Quincy (14m 16s): People can still innovate. People could still get their work done and in fact, in many cases, more so than what they were doing before, because while I liked the break room, coffee pot chatter, as much as everybody else, we can all pretty much say it's distracting as well. And so people going on with the great resignation, people are working from home and they can now, you know, take their kids to school or pick them up from the bus stop or not miss the soccer game and not have to sit in traffic for three hours a day. And I think, you know, companies are really seeing that there's something to this on a different level, from a different angle, how much real estate cost is going to be saved for a lot of these companies, because not having to pay for that infrastructure anymore. Joel (14m 53s): Hell yeah. Quincy (14m 54s): So thank God for that. I think I read something the other day about 74% of people said that they weren't going to consider a new role if there was no, at least part-time work from home option. So this is real guys. It's not going to go away. And if your organization at large is not at least considering it or considering letting people continue it, I think you may be left holding the bag on this one. Joel (15m 17s): All right Quincy is, we've heard recently a symptom of this new phenomenon is the Metaverse. Give me your take on the Metaverse. Are we all going to be sitting around at home with a headset, talking to each other in digital format? Are you a little bit bearish on that one? Chad (15m 32s): Jole hopes that this happens. He hopes this happens. Quincy (15m 34s): That's some strange music to play for that. And now I view you a little bit differently Joel than I ever have before. Joel (15m 39s): That's what you do with your headset. Quincy (15m 42s): No, I don't think so, because the other part of this that you didn't bring up is people are still feeling a little bit isolated in some places and a little bit depressed. And maybe sometimes people want to put pants back on instead of just sweat pants. So I don't think that's going to happen. Oh God. I said, put pants back on. And he played that music. What's going on here? Joel (16m 12s): Moving on. Chad, what else are you thankful for? Chad (16m 14s): Moving on. Well I am thankful for the vaccine and being able to actually fucking travel again. So when early March of 2021, I received my first jab of the Pfizer vaccine and it made me feel almost free again. Then on March 26th, I received my second jab and because of the vaccine, I felt confident enough to travel more importantly, get my ass out to other countries. And other countries they were confident enough and they felt comfortable enough to let me in. Right? So as we, you and I, Joel start packing for Europe and we start an opportunity to start the conference traveling again, I am happy that and thankful that we have a vaccine so that we can get back out for business, for pleasure or any fucking reason we want to get out of the house. Joel (17m 3s): Are you having, have you gotten the booster? Are you a booster boy? Chad (17m 7s): I'm boostered up! Quincy (17m 7s): I'm not boostered yet, but I will be and yesterday I am proud to share. I was onsite with a client for the first time, almost two years, and we were their first client visit. So that was so exciting. I missed that. Joel (17m 20s): Did you fly there? Quincy (17m 21s): I flew and we had to where else we think I have a client in South Dakota. Well, we've been through this. Joel (17m 28s): Well, I'm leading the witness. I'm leading the witness here to say, what are your thoughts, either both of you on business travel? There's been a lot of speculation that, yeah, when we work from home, everything is Zoom. We go to webinars and we go to, you know, online conferences like you guys think we're going to get you back on airplanes. We're going to get back in front of customers and prospects and clients at conferences. What's your take on business travel? Quincy (17m 50s): Without question. I mean so I said yesterday I was with a client on site. Last week our leadership team was together in Toronto again for the first time in almost two years and it was amazing. People are craving it. They want that interaction. And unlike most, I actually never stopped traveling during COVID. Cause I had reasons to, I had to come to South Dakota for crying out loud. Chad (18m 9s): Lucky girl. Quincy (18m 10s): I know. And where, you know, at the beginning of this pandemic, there were times that I was literally the only person on the plane besides the flight crew. And I haven't been on a plane now in a few months that wasn't just absolutely jam packed, overbooked. So I think people are ready for it, that the customers are ready to meet people in person we're ready to go out and get in front of them and have that collaboration as well. So I think it's coming back. Joel (18m 32s): Do you think people are going to go back to conferences? Do you think budgets will open up for that? I understand sales calls and things like that, but how about conferences? Quincy (18m 40s): Yeah, I don't know, that's a really good question. I think people are planning in person conferences. I think we'll see what the attendance will be. I think industry participants will be there. I'm not sure how much organizations will open up their budgets to allow practitioners to go. I think they will eventually but I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. Chad (18m 60s): Yeah. I think we're all hungry for the interaction. And there's no question on the vendor side, they're thirsty for fucking leads. So yeah, I think, I think conferences will definitely come back. We won't see them in full force. I don't think in 2022 and depending how, you know, if we have any other variants that pop up, knock on wood. But yeah, I mean, I don't see getting on a plane, being that big of an issue, wearing a mask for, you know, seven hours to go to Europe, didn't kill me and it didn't kill me on the way back. So I think we can deal. And if we really want to go to that conference or go to that sales meeting, you know, we're gonna do whatever it takes. Joel (19m 40s): Quincy did AMS, go to HR tech this year? Quincy (19m 41s): We did have participants in HR tech this year. Yeah. Joel (19m 45s): What was the review of that?` Waste of time, like I heard there were, there were very few attendees. Quincy (19m 49s): It was interesting to see what was going on in the market. There were a couple of really good keynotes. There were a couple of really bad ones that seemed unprepared as the review that I heard. I was not in attendance. Chad (20m 6s): Ouch. Quincy (20m 7s): But it was interesting to see who the money that people still put in without the participation of years before was the most notable thing. Yeah. Joel (20m 19s): And I assume you'll be back in '22 for HR tech. All right. Well here's my second thankful hubris. Hubris is defined "as the characteristics of excessive confidence or arrogance, which leads a person to believe that they may do no wrong." No, I'm not talking about my cohost. I'm talking about companies in our industry. Again, I'm going to show my age a little bit here, but I'm old enough to remember when newspapers thought job boards were a fad or that newspapers would just go online and crush the job sites. Craigslist who? We know how that turned out. And I'm old enough to remember Monster and CareerBuilder ignoring Indeed until 2008 happened and Indeed arose from the carnage to be the Indeed that we mostly know today. Joel (21m 11s): Well, luckily for a couple of podcasters, hubris is back and making things interesting as always, whether it's Indeed ignoring Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Uber talent.com, well Indeed ignoring everybody really or Sterling and HireRiding ignoring Checkr or the US ignoring the rest of the world or Paradox ignoring Hourly, Predictive Hire. I could go on and on, but human nature's inability to respect the underdog keeps our job interesting and our listeners happy. I am super thankful for hubris. Quincy (21m 44s): That's an interesting take Joel. Joel (21m 45s): Oh, thank you. Thank you. And thanks for that feedback. And with that, let's take another break and get to what everybody's really wanting to hear about the turkey. All right, Quincy, you're done being optimistic. Let's get a little negative. Let's get a little bit like getting in the dirt. Let's dig up a little stuff here and talk about the turkeys of 2022. Who you got? Quincy (22m 5s): All right. Well, I'd like to say this isn't my sweet spot, but come on, you guys know me too well. So this is kind of my sweet spot here. There were so many things I could have picked for this year. And then I decided to roll them all up into one category that Chad's going to give me hell about, cause I named it the COVID Karen. Which can be a whole lot of things, it's individual humans. It's companies who refuse to get on board with the way that things are changing and what they're going to do. It's the people who said, if you don't like flipping burgers, get some training or education, get a new job. And then people did. And now the Karens are bitching because they have to wait a little longer for their latte, right? Quincy (22m 45s): And what are we going to do? And it's the companies who refuse to raise their wages and then they yell at their recruiters, make them cry cause they can't fill jobs even though the recruiter sends them a screenshot of their page one Indeed ad, where the people, you know, the three listings above the three listings below for the exact same job at the company next door is paying three bucks more an hour. People need to stop with that and get a little bit more realistic and understand we've gone through some changes here and largely they're really, really good, but you know, suck it up. People did what you said and now you're paying the price for it. So now what are you going to do to make some changes so you can satisfy your coffee craving without complaining about it and satisfy your customers by being able to stack your store. Quincy (23m 37s): I'm tired of hearing the complaints. Joel (23m 39s): Were you worried about sounding like a Karen complaining about the Karens of the industry? Quincy (23m 42s): You know I was mildly. I was a little bit until I had the hubris to understand I'm not like them. And mine is valid, so there you have it. Chad (23m 53s): Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's everybody's own opinions valid, right? It's it's interesting because it's kind of like, we want to paint shades and Karen being a female is definitely a bad thing, but not only females were being the assholes during, you know, all of this timeframe. So I've just always wondered why the female's name was attached to bad behavior. Quincy (24m 16s): Well, because it's the haircut you see. Remember how this all started, but I want to speak to your manager haircut. And that was a women's haircut. That's the origin story. Look it up. Chad (24m 25s): Okay. I I'm learning here. I just didn't know why. And I thought, I thought I'd ask. Quincy (24m 33s): No, I agree. And that's why I qualified by saying it could be an individual, but it could be a whole organization too. Joel (24m 41s): There's no question that there's a level of civility with the world that is somehow paused or we forgot how to be human and decent. And I agree that whether it's male, female, young, old, whatever, we've been kind of dicks to each other for a whole year plus and hopefully 2022, we can find a little bit of common ground in civility. Fingers crossed. Chad (25m 5s): We're spoiled little assholes is what we are. When we can't go like Quincy and said, well, we can't go and actually get our macchiato our caramel macchiato within five minutes. Or maybe Starbucks has shut down for a few hours cause they don't have staff. You know, again, when you go to Europe, they closed down from like three to seven. I mean you better have snacks on hand guys and nobody gets pissed off then. We in the US for the most part are just spoiled, little fucking brats. And it is just, it is overflowing with spoiledness. Joel (25m 37s): For the record you'd better have snacks for me all the time. No matter what year it is. Chad (25m 41s): Bring your own fucking snacks. Quincy (25m 42s): If people don't stop assaulting flight attendants I'm going to get really mad next time I'm on United Airlines and can't get a bourbon on the rocks cause people can't keep it together for a two hour flight. Chad (26m 4s): Another reason why I fly Delta because I can get my bourbon. Quincy (26m 8s): Absolutely. Joel (26m 8s): All right, Chad, you're up? Who is your turkey of the year? Chad (26m 12s): My turkey is very widespread. There are vendors who are slapping DEI on every fucking platform. So like AI, which we saw, vendors quickly sought out flimsy angles in which to attach diversity, equity and inclusion to their technology. And for all of you hiring companies out there take note here. It's a fucking trap. Quincy (26m 36s): Amen. Chad (26m 36s): And as EEOC commissioner Keith Sanderlings said on our show just a few weeks ago, you hiring company you're on the hook, not the vendor who's supplying the tech, no matter what their fucking marketing material says, right? So here are two things. Number one, vendors, stop this ridiculous bullshit because tech is not the answer to DEI. It doesn't create inequities it only scales them. Number two, hiring companies, do better due diligence, get external experts in the mix. And the most important aspect is clean up your damn job descriptions and blow up your fucking process. Chad (27m 16s): The turkeys here are all of those individuals, vendors and hiring companies that believe there's a silver bullet for DEI. Cause there's not. Joel (27m 24s): Preach! Quincy (27m 25s): Preach I'm with you on that. Joel (27m 26s): And preach. Love it. What a predictions for a hot term of 2022 we've we've been through AI. We've been through now diversity. What's next? Chad (27m 33s): That's a good question. Joel (27m 35s): Remote automation. Chad (27m 35s): I think high volume is now starting to see a huge rise. We're seeing high volume platforms get a ton of cash. We just saw Fountain get 85 million right? And that is a huge need in the market today. So I think high volumes going to continue to be big. And we're going to see a bunch of platforms that have no business talking about high volume going into high volume. Quincy (28m 3s): You know who does though? Hourly by AMS. Joel (28m 6s): She snuck in another commercial. The answer my friends is Metaverse. That's what's going to be hot next year. Okay. My turkey and we'll end with this is Sherwin-Williams. Now stick with me here. TikTok was super hot last year. All right, it's still hot and made it into our show more times than I care to count. However, one story and interview really stood out on the show last year. Tony Piloseno was a senior at Ohio University who was working part-time at a local Sherwin-Williams and mixing paint for his TikTok followers, which at the time numbered 1.2 million followers. Joel (28m 48s): Now did Sherwin-Williams fast track Tony to their executive farm system as a result? Chad (28m 51s): No. Joel (28m 52s): Hell no. They fired him fucked up, right. Tony should be a marketing manager at Sherwin-Williams today. Their loss obviously, but, but a little update here, Tony seems to be doing okay. In case you are wondering, Tony still works for Florida Paints the job and the company that hired him after he was fired by Sherwin-Williams he's their content creator. And he's up to 1.8 million TikTok followers. You can also buy his custom paints at tonester.com. That's T O N E S T E R.com. It's a great story for Tony, but it is a horrible look for Sherwin-Williams and any employer who wants to cover their eyes from social media success and blindly embrace HR policies at the risk of losing top talent. Joel (29m 42s): Sherwin-Williams is a big jive turkey in my book and a lesson for other companies. Quincy (29m 48s): Man, I don't even know that story and now I feel like I need to paint over all of my Sherwin-Williams agreeable gray walls. Chad (29m 55s): You can find a agreeable gray or what I like to call apartment gray. Julie hates that I say that, apartment gray wherever they sell paints and just see if you can get some from Tonester. Joel (30m 5s): And get some custom paint for a minute. I'll throw some blueberries in a can. Some grapes. Get you a nice shade, nice shade to lighten up South Dakota. Or is it North Dakota? Is there really a difference? Chad (30m 21s): Does it matter? Joel (30m 22s): It doesn't really matter. Chad (30m 24s): So well last but never least kids, I'm thankful for you turkeys, the two of you because the industry wouldn't be the same without your smiling faces and quick witted snark. Thanks turkeys. Quincy (30m 38s): I'm tearing up. Joel (30m 39s): And, and sorry, I'm going to muck up the show, but our sponsors, we love them. Listeners, fans, people wear t-shirts and drink our whiskey. We love all you guys. And we're looking forward to an exciting 2022. Quincy (30m 55s): Well, I, for one I'm tearing up, like Kyle Rittenhouse on the stand. Joel (30m 60s): Everybody out there. Chad (31m 2s): You're faking it is what you're saying. Joel (31m 5s): Everybody out there have a great Thanksgiving! Football food nap repeat. And that is another Thanksgiving day episode in the books Chad. Thank you, Quincy. Quincy (31m 13s): Thanks gentlemen. Joel (31m 13s): And as always, how we in the show: we out. Quincy, Joel and Chad (31m 18s): We out. OUTRO (31m 54s): 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.

Video remains one of the hottest technologies around when it comes to recruiting, and one company, Turazo, approaches it in a whole new way, bringing brand ambassadors and "culture carrying employees" into the mix. Sound complicated? It kinda is. See if founder and CEO Pete Cipollone can survive the Firing Squad. 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. Firing Squad INTRO (21s): Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel (22s): Oh yeah. It's time for another firing squad. Your favorite show from your favorite podcast. This is your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always by my partner in crime, Chad Sowash and today we welcome Turazo to the show and their founder and CEO, Pete Cipollone. I said that correctly. I hope that correcty. Pete calling in from San Francisco. How are you? Pete (48s): I'm doing well. How are you guys doing? Joel (50s): I'm doing well. I'm doing well. So give us a little Twitter bio on you and then we'll get into the show. Pete (56s): Sure. Yeah. So I, I had a very non-traditional career path. I actually started out programming when I was about nine years old, but then when I was, when I was graduating from college, I got invited to train for the Olympic rowing team. So I spent 10 years doing that, the last seven of which I actually worked as a programmer and product manager at a company called Factiva. And you know, basically my Olympic career ended in the, like with the dream. We won a gold medal. Joel (1m 30s): So you row crew. Pete (1m 34s): I did. Joel (1m 35s): I know that. Do you know the Winklevoss Twins? Pete (1m 37s): I do. I do. I haven't talked to those guys in a long time. Joel (1m 41s): You seriously do? I was totally joking. All right. Are they, are they, are they as douchey as they seem on TV? Pete (1m 46s): Now they're actually really good guys. Joel (1m 48s): Oh, okay. Okay. Well Chad, tell him what he's won. Chad (1m 52s): Well Pete, you, my friend have two minutes to pitch Turazo. At the end of two minutes, you will hear that bell then Joel and I will hit you with rapid Q and A. If your answers start to ramble or you get boring, Joel's going to hit you with the crickets, that's your signal to tighten up your game. At the end of Q and A, you will receive either a big applause. That's right prepare for launch baby this is a penis shaped rocket ship. Joel (2m 19s): Back up the Brinx. Chad (2m 21s): A golf clap. You're going to have to work on that second stage rocket cause a this one ain't going far, and last but never least the firing squad. Abort, abort, abort. You'd better find something else cause this bad boy, ain't gonna fly. So that's firing squad. Joel, you ready with that timer? Joel (2m 41s): I'm ready. Is Pete ready? Pete (2m 43s): I'm ready. Joel (2m 44s): All right. In three, two. sfx (2m 45s): Bell: Ding, ding, ding. Pete (2m 47s): Turazo is a SAAS platform for private customer branded recruiting and mentorship networks. Through our networks, our customers invite their prospects to connect with company employee ambassadors for informal human-to-human conversations, either video or phone and we do this at scale. For prospect it's a high value experience for learning more about a company culture and it's all within that company's branded settings. For TA teams it's a way to deputize hiring teams and employee resource groups to get great prospects excited about the company while gauging what we call mutual enthusiasm. It's exactly what it sounds like. If employees are excited about a prospect, that's just like a referral. Pete (3m 29s): This process is also inclusive. Since prospects get to choose who they talk to, they can easily find people in their areas of professional interest and who understand where they come from. We use NLP to make recommendations, but that final choice is always in the prospect's heads. Our customers range from 150ish person startups to enterprises like AT&T, Microsoft, Sierra Box, Dell, Under Armor and more. And this year we began expanding into internal mentorship, especially for employee resource groups. It really helps grow retention and internal mobility. And you can find out more about us at www.turazo.com. That's T U R A Z O. Joel (4m 12s): And not Taurasi the famous basketball player. All right, Pete. Pete (4m 18s): Turazo. Yeah. Joel (4m 20s): Let's talk about branding real quick. So you guys had a little, a moment where you sorta changed brands. You got a big customer, let's start with that moment and why you came up with Turazo. Pete (4m 31s): So the name comes from "turus" which is the Gaelic word for "journey" and then that suffix "zo", which is of African origin and it means "spiritual guide." So our focus was on being able to connect talent with people that were really willing to help them advance their careers. Joel (4m 50s): And that shit's deep. Did you come up with that on your own or did an agency? Pete (4m 55s): No, actually we had a contest and a person on our team came up with that. Joel (4m 58s): Oh that's interesting. What was the name before Turazo? Pete (5m 1s): It was called instavizer.com. Joel (5m 5s): Okay. Chad (5m 6s): Very reminiscent to Toleo. So your background Pete, why the hell get into HR talent, acquisition recruiting? Why here? Pete (5m 15s): So, very interesting question. For me, you know, what I really wanted to do was look at, what were the things that like flavored my life experience. And there were two, one was technology. I started programming computers when I was like nine years old. So I was really into programming, but then I had this whole sports experience and it was all about, you know, coaches, basically people who didn't know me, but saw potential and guided me through to ultimate success. And you know, that also happens in the business world, right? People find mentors or they find people who just take an interest in them succeeding. And I wanted to bring the two of them together and really the best place to do that from a business perspective is in the HR world. Pete (5m 57s): Right? So whether it's talent acquisition and candidate experience, or actually, you know, talent retention and, you know, growing people inside your organization. Chad (6m 6s): Okay, well, I mean, this is a brand new term, relational recruiting and adoption isn't high in this space. So what makes you believe this is going to be adopted by companies who, for the most part HR, talent acquisition, they're not really keen to adopt. Change isn't generally in their DNA. Joel (6m 29s): No change. Pete (6m 31s): We've seen both, in the sense that there are companies out there that are really looking for a differentiated approach to reaching talent, especially now when everything's gone digital, right. And the market is really, really noisy. There are so many companies out there that are, oh, we're in the top 100 places to work, but you know who actually believes that? But when prospects have the opportunity to talk, one-on-one with someone inside the organization that, you know, potentially understands their life experience and also isn't in an area they're interested in, that's a whole different level of credibility. The other thing that I would say about that is, you know, a lot of our sales often start through DEI leaders, who are very keen to find ways to get their employee resource groups involved in the recruiting process. Pete (7m 19s): And, you know, especially over the past year and a half, these groups have put up their hand and said, Hey, we want to be more involved in this. You know, how do we do it? And we provide a way for that to happen at scale. Joel (7m 32s): As the job seeker typically interact with the product, is it an invite via email? Is it a text message? Like once I apply to a job, walk me through what that looks like for a job seeker and how I would get to the service. Pete (7m 48s): Sure, so let's say in that particular example you gave, you have already applied for a job. In that case, our system would issue an email invitation directly to you. You know, a named invitation, you come, you fill out a very short profile, so basically you tell us a little bit about you and like what your goal is. And then after that, you have a number of opportunities to choose employees inside the organization for one-on-one conversations. But our customers also use it prior to the application process. So let's say that they're focused on, you know, a specific group of people that they're really trying to improve employer brand awareness with, in that case, they, you know, they may be working with, you know, an organization like the Society of Women Engineers or something like that. Pete (8m 38s): And they can actually just send registration pages out so people can register and then also have those one-on-one experiences. Joel (8m 46s): It sounds like it's less about connecting through the job application process than it is a we're company A, we want to target engineers or something, so then we create a page that an association might market to their members, or you might market to their members in some other way. And then they fill out something and then you have technology that matches them to people in the company. And then they schedule a call and then just talk about employment opportunities. Those people aren't necessarily even looking for a job that use your service? Pete (9m 21s): Most of them are, and companies use it in both ways. Some use it prior to the application process. So if they're looking to, let's say, expand top of funnel in, you know, a specific set of roles or with a demographic group, and then others say, Hey, if you've applied, then we want to give you the opportunity to get to know some people inside the organization as your application progresses. Joel (9m 44s): Okay. Let's talk about the former first. Do I create a landing page and promote that landing page? And then people go and register? How does that work? Pete (9m 54s): Our system actually creates the landing pages and then yes. So exactly as you said, except our system creates those automatically. Joel (10m 0s): Okay. But a company would have to market it. They would have to put an ad on Facebook or email a universe of people, correct? Pete (10m 9s): Yes. Whatever channels they're using today. And you know, one of the advantages of this is that again, you know, in a crowded advertising market, the opportunity to have a one-on-one with somebody inside the organization is a really high value call to action. So we see good conversion rates. Joel (10m 26s): Okay. Now on the employer side, they pick what you call a culture, caring employees. So these are people that the company selects to be in this lineup to be chosen or matched with job seekers, correct? Pete (10m 41s): That's correct. Joel (10m 42s): Okay. And then the employees decide their schedule and when they can talk. Can they control how many calls they make? Do they control how long the calls can be? Pete (10m 54s): They absolutely control basically the frequency of participation and that's what makes it very sustainable. So if you have a hiring director or something, they can say, I'm happy to have everybody on my team who wants to participate, participate, knowing it might be one 20 minute conversation a month right from my desk. Joel (11m 11s): Okay. And the employer can monitor that or manage that in some way too. Correct? Do they have a dashboard where they say, Hey, John has talked to three people for a total of two hours. Jane has talked to four people for a total of 30 minutes. I mean, is that part of the back end as well? Pete (11m 27s): I mean, that's one thing, you know, HR is all about instrumentation, right? They want to be looking at metrics all the time. So yes. Okay. Chad (11m 36s): W it actually says on the website, 70% of employers only need to spend our employees are only needing to spend an hour a month in the system. How does the other 30% look, are you seeing like huge use cases for some individuals within organizations and their time spikes or their availability, or what have you? What does that actually look like? Pete (12m 3s): The system automatically manages availability. And if an employee says, Hey, I'm happy to do two of these a week then like, we'll let them do two of these a week. If, you know, if they get called on that frequently, if other people say I can do one of these a month, then it manages that for them as well. Chad (12m 20s): Okay. So who are you selling to? Because you've said DEI, internal mobility, mentoring, recruiting, and all those different areas generally fall on different departments for accountability, whether it's diversity in recruiting, or it could be an HR. I am, could be an HR. It could be in recruiting, right? So who are you selling to? That's the seems to be kind of like a hard target to hit for the salesperson. Pete (12m 53s): Our sales process usually involves talent acquisition and DEI. So those two collaborating, and one of them will be essentially the lead. And then learning and development is a new space for us that we actually just started working with last year. So that that's a separate use case, but I would characterize talent acquisition and DEI working together as our usual target audience for sales. That's who we market to. Chad (13m 23s): Probably the two non adoption departments in the entire organization, other than maybe finance, I don't know. Who is your competition in relational recruiting? Who else does this? Pete (13m 35s): So, first of all, a lot of our early customers came to us and said, Hey, you know what? We have a handful of people in a spreadsheet doing this today. So that was like our first, you know, sort of known competitor and what they were looking for was a way to scale that process. But then there are also companies out there that do things like, you know, online career fairs and things like that, it's an analogous approach, but we take a very different actual process approach. Joel (14m 4s): Talk about the technology a little bit. Are you guys powering the video and the audio yourself? Are you sort of powered by an additional technology? Talk about that. Pete (14m 14s): So yeah, everything in the system is fully built in. So the audio and video `is built in. The scheduling is built in the goal is to make it such that there's, you know, there's nothing to download or anything like that. Like it just works independently, but we do have the ability to also integrate. And, you know, typically what our customers will do is, you know, they'll say, Hey, this is a new concept. This is really interesting. We want to try it. So it all always starts with a proof of concept. And then, you know, so at that stage, the integration, you know, it might be single sign on in calendars. It might be completely independent. And then, you know, at the data level, at that point, during the proof of concept, it's all going to be flat files and Joel (14m 57s): We'll touch on integration the second. So the conversations transcribed to be searchable. Are you guys hosting these? You're hosting the videos, I assume like how, how long do you host them? Cause I know that obviously gets expensive. How do you sort of control that and great, I guess, content around the stuff that you're recording or do you, maybe it doesn't matter? Pete (15m 19s): No, we don't record. And then yes, the video is run is run through our system. So we host everything, but we don't record it. We don't transcribe it. What we do is at the end of each conversation, we ask both sides to give feedback. And that is how we generate that concept of mutual enthusiasm. So when there's a prospect who says, wow, like having that conversation made me much more interested in excited about working with company X and employees are saying, you know, this is the kind of person I could see sitting next to me, you know, like I would be excited about that. That's the information that the talent acquisition teams are looking for so that they can identify people that they can move on quickly. Joel (15m 56s): And I'm guessing about a hundred percent of the job seekers say, this is an awesome experience and I'd love to work here. Pete (16m 3s): That's not exactly true, but close. Joel (16m 4s): Talk about integrations. You don't, you don't mention them on the website, like is the, is the strategy to integrate with ATSs with more of like general platforms like Slack, talk about your integration strategy, now and into the future. Pete (16m 19s): There are two sides into the integration, you know, one is the, what I'll call the employee efficiency side of integration. So that's single sign on calendar integration. We actually have Microsoft teams integration coming up for customers who want to use that instead of the built-in platform, but then on the data side, yes, it's very focused on basically making the seamless experience for the talent acquisition teams. So we're just now starting to build integrations for things like Avature, Workday and even Microsoft dynamics. Chad (16m 54s): And you chose a video, but why not look at asynchronous video or messaging? So it doesn't have to be direct, but yet we know that candidates will respond to text just as well. Are you looking to expand out into those types of conversations, are you going to stick with synchronized video? Pete (17m 14s): We believe that synchronous video creates just a much stronger human to human connection. And frankly, there, there are a lot of services out there that do asynchronous video or video interviews, as well as text messaging. We do have text messaging built into the platform just for notifications and to make it easy. You know, for example, if you are, let's say you're an employee and you're caught away from your desk, right. You get a notification and you can just dial into the conversation as you know, essentially as a fallback. But I think those areas of the marketer are well-served and really, you know, what we're focused on is that actual human to human connection. Chad (17m 49s): Okay. Okay. So how much money have you taken this far? And are you looking for additional funding possibly, or you're going to bootstrap this bad boy? Pete (17m 59s): We bootstrapped for a long time. And then we raised a small seed round at the beginning of this year, really, to focus on, go to market. So essentially proving that the water flows through the pipes. Cause as you said, talent acquisition is a tough market to sell into so you have to make sure your messages are right on point. And then from there, you know, like, we'll see. I mean, if growth rates keep going, then, you know, we may very well go out and seek venture funding. But the other thing is that these days startups have lots and lots of choices of how to fund themselves. Joel (18m 34s): And what's a small seed round, Pete? Pete (18m 37s): I can't say Chad (18m 37s): It's none of your business is what he's saying. You didn't find it on Crunchbase. Shut up. That's what he's saying. So let's talk about sales strategy, partnership strategy. How are you going to market? Is this direct to clients? Is this through partnership channels? How are you going to do this? How are you going to scale it? Pete (18m 57s): Sure. So we actually started just with referrals and we actually had, you know, customers referring other customers and we have a hundred percent retention across our customer base going back to the beginning. And so then we moved to basically direct, but we also have some informal partnerships that, you know, may one day blossomed into more formal partnerships with companies like Radancy. Chad (19m 19s): Okay. So how big is your sales team today and what are you looking at? Cause everybody's expanding their sales team. What are you looking at from an expansion standpoint for direct sales? Pete (19m 29s): Sure. Good question. So right now it's two of us. I do most of the sales myself still, but I have a partner who works with me on that. He's almost like a sales coach. And then in terms of expansion, actually, we're having that discussion tomorrow, just, you know, as we see, you know, basically these, you know, are the prices and sort of, this is the key market segment and you figuring out is that like an enterprise account executive or is it, you know, a different approach? Joel (19m 59s): Let's dig into the DEI for a little bit. You mentioned the product does enhance sort of that perspective of the recruiting, but exactly how does that work? Is that on the company to select diverse employees to be in the process or in the solution to match with candidates? Is there something in your technology that sort of automatically reads, you know, matching from a diversity play? Chad (20m 30s): Are you talking about facial recognition? Oh my God! Pete (20m 32s): No, we don't do facial recognition. So I'll give you an actual example, but I won't name the company and this is a, this is a common process. The first groups of employees that they will turn to, to you know invite to be employee ambassadors will be their employee resource groups. And you know, again, these are people who are excited to be at the company and who want to know or, you know, who wants to be able to share the story that this is a great place to work. You know, if you come from whatever background, whether it's, you know, first-generation college or let's say military and transition or LGBTQ. So starting there, they build up that inner concentric circle of employee ambassadors, and then they will target their outreach to those audiences. Joel (21m 19s): And are you finding, I don't know if you're tracking this or not, are you finding that, you know, women tend to want to talk to women and African Americans tend to want to talk to other African-Americans like, are you seeing that in the data? Like, can you show that to companies that say, Hey, this is something that's going to happen as long as you put diverse folks on the other side of the connection? Pete (21m 40s): So we don't track at that level, but what we do see, we just see the engagement levels and essentially conversion rates of people receiving an invitation than coming in and having a conversation and being highly rated by employees to be really, really high. I think one way to think about this though, in terms of who, you know, who a prospect is going to choose, is they're going to choose somebody that they think understands their life experience. And they're going to choose somebody who by default wants to, you know, they start out the conversation wanting to see this person succeed. Joel (22m 12s): And what information does a job seeker see about an employee? Did they just see, like, did they see the picture? Did they see the name and like maybe where they graduated and what their title is? What exactly did they see before they schedule some time with them? Pete (22m 26s): So they see all those things. And they see some profile information about the employee who has an opportunity, you know, they can connect their LinkedIn profile, but they can also say a little bit about themselves and their experience, like how they got to where they are. And in addition to that, just their approach to engagement, like how they, you know, will conduct the conversation Joel (22m 45s): And does each employee have to fill out their own profile? Do they like connect with LinkedIn and pull that data in? How does that work? Pete (22m 52s): So we don't pull the data in from LinkedIn today. We may at some point, but right now the employee is just, they can connect or they can add their LinkedIn URL, but they do type in basically their own, you know, about me section. Joel (23m 5s): Yeah. One of the pushbacks that I would see in this product is sort of the time that I would have to spend to manage it, to set it up, to get it going and keep it going, keep, keep employees energized and active. Do you get that pushback? And if you do or did, what would your answer be? I mean, is there a time-saving on the back end because recruiting time as much less? Is it a wash in terms of the time commitment, talk about that. Pete (23m 36s): It actually results in reduced time commitment, especially for teams that were already doing something like this, let's say semi manually. And the reason for that is, all talent acquisition teams really have to do is either, you know, make sure the invites are going out or make sure it's connected to something that's sending the invites out. And then on the other side, you know, check in with the data coming back periodically and the employees essentially do do the vast majority of the work Chad (24m 7s): Last but not least. Let's talk about pricing. What is this going to cost me this? This sounds rather expensive Pete. Pete (24m 15s): So it's the pricing is actually based on just what we call per learner. So it's annual subscription and it's seat based. So you can have as many employees in the system as you want. Right? And as a matter of fact, the more the merrier there. And then it's based on a number of prospects that you're bringing into the system at any given time and that it starts around $50 per seat per year. But one thing to bear in mind is that those seats can be reused over the course of the year. So you may have, you know, three cohorts that are going through at any given time. Joel (24m 49s): All right, Pete, it's time to face the firing squad. Are you ready my friend? Pete (24m 53s): Yeah. I was going to get a blindfold and a cigarette. Joel (24m 56s): I was going to say as an Olympian, this pressure is nothing for you. By the way, who did you beat to win the gold? Pete (25m 7s): The Netherlands, Australia, Germany, Canada, Italy, France, Great Britain. Joel (25m 11s): All right. This one is going to be easy. Yeah, everybody. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and go first because Chad went first on our last show. Okay. There are a lot of things that I like about this company. I like the bootstraps angle to this. I know you've been sort of hammering around at this since 2015, although the current iteration is 2018. One of the things that I like to do in firing squad is I go visit the website and I'm usually pretty good about understanding what the company does, what the opportunity is. I sorta get it pretty quickly. I found that with your site, it was really challenging for me to sort of understand what the business was, which I certainly, I understood after a few minutes. Joel (25m 56s): And then it was like, if I were selling this, what would that conversation be like? How challenging would it be to get this in the hands of companies? And I know that you mentioned a few of your clients on the website, it looks like Under Armour's a big proponent. It looks like College Recruiting is a nice little niche for you guys, but it was really tough for me to get what you do and in the call today, I get it. But man, I just, I think about trying to sell this to TA leaders and recruiters and employers, and how much time, if I'm on the other end of that phone, I would think about having our employees engage with this, activate them, keep them interested, monitoring it. One of the comments, I think on your website was a guy saying, yeah, I talked to five women today that caught me as like a dating component to the website, which I'm sure isn't the solution. Joel (26m 46s): You know, it's left to be seen if you guys can raise money around this. So there's no sort of investor rubber stamp or stamp of approval on what you guys are doing. You know, the pricing I think is probably a challenge as well. I don't, I mean the DEI perspective, I kind of get it, but I think it's a little bit gray, the technology around it, you know, I think it's fine, but not mind blowing. So for me at this point, I'm giving you the guns, Pete. Chad? Pete (27m 22s): You guys are tough. Chad (27m 23s): Ooh. I got to say employees carry the brand as ambassadors. I love it. I think it's also a vanity play. So trying to keep employees engaged, it's a breakout of like their normal day-to-day and you know, maybe have an hour or half hour to actually talk to somebody who wants to talk to me about my job. That's awesome for the 70% of those employees, that's great. What about that? 30% ERGs need to be leveraged more. I agree a hundred percent. They are probably possibly the best ambassadors that are out there. Overall though there's really no market validation yet. Chad (28m 4s): You're a pioneer in this and you know, as well as the pioneers know, that's where you catch the arrows. Will companies in large scale, believe this is a real problem that needs to be fixed? Or is this just something they're okay with same as it ever was, right? Does this create a bigger set of risks where untrained employees are answering questions that could expose the company to possible legal issues? And then there's no proof of what was said. There's no recording. There's no transcript. There's a, he said, she said risk, risk, risk situation, which again, HR TA slow to adopt. Chad (28m 45s): And man, do they hate risk? I believe you have an amazing idea that is before its time and it needs a lot of work. It's not validated by the market at this point. It's not a need that anyone believes they have at least in large scale. And it's pretty much a tough adoption free crowd here in HR and TA. I see this as slow rolling long education, extremely long sales cycles. And overall, I love it. And I would love to see something like this gel. You need a lot more focus and unfortunately you don't have that right now, which is why it's the guns. Joel (29m 31s): We still love you, Pete, and your service to the country. Pete (29m 33s): OW! Joel (29m 33s): He's so mad. We're going to have some crew team show up at our door tonight. Chad (29m 38s): Which is fine. Joel (29m 39s): I'm not mad. I mean, I'm certainly disappointed. Pete, we hope you prove us wrong. We hope you come on in five years and tell us to fuck off because you're mega mega successful. Chad (29m 52s): Yes! Joel (29m 55s): For those that do want to learn more about you again, that URL is Pete (29m 59s): Www.turazo.com T U R A Z O. Joel (30m 2s): That's good. Another one in the books, Chad! We out! Chad (30m 5s): Whoa, wait a minute. It's actually been a few months since recording this firing squad and Pete had an update. So since we hadn't yet published, I thought, why the hell not? So here's, Pete's update on the recommendations we just hit him with! Hit it Pete! Pete (30m 20s): Thanks so much for having me on. It was really, really helpful, even if it was, you know, pretty rough, but so let me just give you some headlines. You talked a lot about marketing and like the website and how difficult it was to understand what it is we do. We made some significant changes there that yielded immediate results. You know, you talked about the challenges of selling to TA in DEI so we really focused our energy on segmenting there and have gotten significantly better results again. And then, you know, the last thing that I would say is you talked about the DEI use case scene kind of squishy. So we have a number of customers who've had really good success with the DEI. Pete (31m 1s): We'll be having some, some case studies coming out in the new year to talk about that. But everything you gave us was spot on and has yielded significant improvements in the us as a company. So I'm really grateful for that. Thank you. Chad (31m 17s): Dude. We appreciate you coming on and also giving us an update because you know, it's important not just to hear where you were, but where the hell you're going. So thanks for coming back. Pete (31m 26s): Thanks so much, man. I look forward to chatting again with you guys in the not too distant future. Chad (31m 35s): Excellent. Talk soon. See ya. 5 (32m 26s): 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.

The Chad and Cheese have been podcasting since March of 2017 and have published nearly 800 episodes! During that time they have never pulled together a "Best of The Chad and Cheese" compilation, which highlights conversations, topics, and their deeply sarcastic opinions. That's just absurd, ... an oversight, ... and something which needed to be rectified. (Drumroll please) Welcome to the very first "Best of The Chad and Cheese". In this episode, Chad picks his top 5 excerpts from interviews in 2021. These conversational segments are merely a sampling of the syrupy sweet podcasting snarky goodness which embodies the 120+ episodes The Chad and Cheese has published in 2021 alone. Kick back, relax and stay tuned for Joel's picks! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community. 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. Chad (31s): Hey, this is Chad. Welcome to my top five picks of 2021. This is actually the very first best of Chad and Cheese podcast we have ever pulled together. So with this podcast episode, I wanted to curate and stitch together moments in time. That would be incredibly valuable to talent, acquisition leaders and vendors alike. We're starting off the top five of 2021 with an excerpt from a podcast entitled Burn, Build, Rinse and Repeat with JCK that dropped just in August. This excerpt highlights something that I cannot beat my drum loud enough about, and that is the symbiotic relationship TA should have with marketing. Chad (1m 15s): It's not just about ownership of an employment brand, rather it's about holistic impact on revenues through getting the best candidates. But in this case, we're just going to nail down the basics as Jenny Cotie Kangas, AKA JCK director, digital experience and talent acquisition at Regis Corp talks about some of the foundational advantages about building such a partnership with marketing, and she kindly shares a fail/slash learning moment as well. Enjoy. Joel (1m 49s): Do you work internally with marketing or your agency, is that something you're doing now or thinking about? Jenny (1m 55s): Oh, a hundred percent. So if you don't, if anybody listening to this doesn't work closely with your marketing internally, y'all go start right now, because they should be your best friend and figure out a way to work with them. Chad (2m 9s): Amen sister. Joel (2m 9s): That's awesome. Jenny (2m 9s): Yeah. I just, you know, when we're looking at what converts and multi-source attribution and telling stories with numbers, our marketing counterparts have done that for a lot longer than we have. And we can learn a lot from them. I mean, one of my really good friends, Mike Lewis, he owns a company that essentially it's customer journey optimization and tells you what's converting and what's what touches are going to convert versus others. And it's like you guys, and he's taught me pretty much all that I know, a lot about this space and it's allowed me to, to play a lot faster and kind of the recruiting world. But like at the end of the day, you need those collaborations because you know, you guys play for the same team. Jenny (2m 55s): It's the name of the front, not the team in the back. And so I work very closely with our internal marketing teams. We've gone through a lot of changes. We had a pretty significant restructuring kind of here recently and now marketing sits very differently, but I'm very, very, very thankful to our internal marketing, marketing, friends. Joel (3m 37s): Any success stories you can share? Jenny (3m 38s): One of our first initial conversations was really just about like, okay, well, we're planning on putting additional content in one of these channels. And I looked at the channel mix and they said, yeah, LinkedIn's not on there and that's a problem. And they had said, like, well, what do you mean stylists aren't on LinkedIn? I said, yep, check your design bias there because stylists are on LinkedIn. And also like, it's free to storytell on there. I'm talking about like traditional, just storytelling. And that's the first place that we should be leveraging before, like the last. And so just that conversation, I think really, really helped too. So they went back and re-strategized and we're working with some outside agencies to help us build out what that storytelling piece looks like. But, that was a really, really good start. I learned my lesson to check with marketing versus, here's a fun story working with one of our vendors who is putting together a video at the technology about we've built. So I brought franchisees to the table last. I was originally brought in to solve a tech problem. And when I came in and started to look into like, what's the problem? I first asked, like, what's going on here? Instead of just like hitting the gates running and came to find the technology, we have this broken, but there was underlying issues if we weren't handling recruiting right. And if we didn't get that right on the front end of our experience, or at least calibrate the problem that like, Hey, y'all recruiting is important if you want to have like somebody to serve your customers. Jenny (4m 26s): When in search while I was fixing the technology, went in search of technology to start to build, to meet our needs. And so brought our franchisees to the table to build that because ultimately I can guess, but I probably will get it wrong. Jenny (5m 10s): And so over the last nine months, we've essentially sharpened the critical tech. And we went to make a video for that technology because it's essentially like Alexa for recruiting and conceptually people just can't understand it or wrap their head around it. And so we had to make a video. I got the franchisee that was local to the table. I got the franchise consultant in the mix like here, I thought I was stepping and checking all the boxes. I did not connect with marketing first, which was a terrible, terrible choice because on the flip side I sent the video which was done and it was amazing to my marketing leader. And she said, I'm going to send you an email. I've got a couple pieces of feedback. And I'm like, oh crap, I get the email. Jenny (5m 50s): And it's like a page long of like this piece of collateral is three years old. This pieces of collateral is five years old. Don't show that because we don't, we don't offer that product line anymore. Like all of this stuff. And I was like, I turned to my CPO and I said, lesson learned when we film anything, we are checking with marketing first and then second and then third, and then we're going to film something. Chad (6m 21s): Nice. Joel (6m 21s): It's commercial time. Chad (6m 22s): It's show time. Okay. So after this next podcast aired, we experienced a ton of engagement from listeners who personally reached out to us and said, these are our people. The podcast is entitled Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out and dropped in March. Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas joined us to talk about their crazy awesome book, Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out. And this segment hones in on how we, as leaders identify and empower those diamond in the rough employees, AKA catalysts, instead of thrusting them into frustration and burnout. Chad (7m 4s): Enjoy. So in most cases, when you feel like you are moving at light speed, you see a lot of shit that's happening around you, you see the dots and you're connecting the dots. But most of the people that you're actually talking with and dealing with on a daily basis, they can't even see the dots, let alone connect them. Right? So what we're saying is those individuals and I've had that feeling my entire life. Those individuals really can burn out fast, but they also have issues because it's hard to work within a team when they can't even understand what you're talking about a lot of times. Chad (7m 46s): Cause it's hard to articulate what's going on in your brain. How, as a leader, how do you identify that? And how do you help that individual? Because the last thing you want to lose is an individual like that. Even though they're not fitting in, what do you do? How does that work? Shannon (8m 1s): I mean, the identification, as I mentioned earlier, when people are reading the book, as people start to understand, you know, the highlight of what it means to be a catalyst, their brain sort of naturally goes to those people in their life because they do stand up, they show up differently. We often get called, you know, get named monikers like troublemaker or disruptor and not always in a positive sense, especially if we're not self-aware to Tracey's point. You know, part of the point of the book is to give the catalyst themselves the skills to be less disruptive, which doesn't mean stopping change. It just means doing it in a way that brings other people along more effectively. Shannon (8m 41s): So it's not hard to identify them. We work with organizations like we can have surveys and self-identification tools, et cetera. One thing that Tracey and I talked a lot about early on when we started this work is, do we want to be the labelers of catalysts or do we let catalyst sort of lean in and name themselves? And we came pretty heavily down on that second one. Like if the word cat, even if you all the attributes fit you, if being a catalyst doesn't resonate with you, then that's fine. And then I think there's a great question there about, you know, as a leader, how do we support them? Obviously myself as a leader, I was a catalyst and so I had to surround myself with people who could translate, you know, that had catalytic capabilities, but could also help me bring the rest of the organization along. Shannon (9m 22s): And so intentionality is a word that we use a lot in all of this work is like, how can the catalyst be more intentional about the work that they're doing, but also how can the leaders intentionally support them, making sure that they're not spread thin chasing all of the new shiny projects or opportunities, but helping them to prioritize, giving them the surroundings and removing some of the barriers that might, you know, get in their way. And I think one of the key things from that perspective is psychological safety. You know, once organizations recognize that they have these VUCA ready people, they will send them on these heroes missions, okay, go out into the world and figure out what we need to do next. Shannon (10m 3s): And by definition, that's usually some kind of divergent thinking from the way the organization currently operates. So they go out, they do their vision quest and they come back, hopefully they can now clearly articulate their vision, but it could cause such cognitive dissonance for how the organization operates that either the idea gets attacked or the catalyst themselves gets attacked. So it's really then incumbent on the leader to help create a space of psychological safety, to have healthy conversations about which pieces of that they're going to move forward with or not. Chad (10m 33s): Yeah and if they're truly catalysts, then if their idea gets attacked, they're being attacked. Shannon (10m 38s): That's what it feels like a hundred percent. It's almost a physical connection to that idea. That's right. But it's interesting because catalysts generally not, not universally, but generally don't go in with an agenda. You know, when they get brought into the organization or the team, or if they're entrepreneurs, they're really just sensing, like, what's the next thing that needs to unfold here as the dots are connecting, as they're doing the sense-making. It's not like it's their horse in the race until they're convinced and have the data, you know, that that is the right thing to do and we can be arrogant about that. Let's let's own that we can be arrogant, that we can see the absolute right path to go down. Chad (11m 12s): Right. Shannon (11m 12s): But I think it's important for people to remember that, you know, we're usually just in service of whatever positive change we think needs to come next. Chad (11m 24s): But it's so frustrating when nobody wants to come along for the ride. Shannon (11m 31s): It's so frustrating. So very frustrating. Tracey (11m 34s): Painful Joel (11m 34s): It's commercial time. Chad (11m 35s): It's show time. Okay. So this next excerpt comes from an episode called Win Friends & Influence Budget. And was number two of a five-part series we dropped earlier in September with Amy Butchko. Now I know that TA leaders are probably tired of hearing me talk about building a business case. Too bad, understanding your worth to the organization and being able to articulate that worth is where we've fallen short for decades. But you got to know, I do it with love as this will bring you a bigger voice in the organization and also give you an opportunity to leverage more budget. Case in point, this next segment with catalyst Amy Butchko, director of talent acquisition solutions for SAIC, Amy went to one of the strongest positions in the organization, the Chief Revenue Officer in this next segment is a great example of how catalysts break down a problem and connect the dots to a solution. Chad (12m 38s): Enjoy. In getting this done. You went to the CRO, were you looking to try to win friends and influence people for more budgets? What was that whole, what was the reasoning behind that? Other than to show them that one of the reasons why we have issues getting people in the door is because of this piece of shit tech that we have. Why did you do it? Amy (13m 1s): To increase candidate flow and improve candidate experience? Chad (13m 6s): So was that budget though, were you trying to win budget from them and show them how bad this thing was? Amy (13m 13s): I was. I was also trying to get them to understand that they were making an investment in something that was terrible. Chad (13m 20s): Yes. Amy (13m 20s): And you know, so like you're spending money over here and this is not a little amount of money. Like it's a lot, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars, no matter what you buy, in this environment, once you get to the enterprise level, right? So you're, you're talking about big bucks and you're going to have to spend these big bucks to make, you know, to get a compliance system you're going to have to get, you know, you're going to have to do it. So what we were looking to do is say, okay, if you're going to spend this money, we think we can help the company do this more efficiently. We think we can help you do it more effectively. And we think that we can make a lot of impact with getting a lot more candidates through the door. Amy (14m 4s): I used to at the time I was a department of one. So that's also changed a lot because my department is much larger now, but you know, as a department of one, you know, I would get these messages. Why am I not getting any candidates? Why am I not getting applicants? And you know, I would just feel like the pressure, just, you know, like the constricting around my neck. And I mean, like, I don't know, you know, I go into the system and I'd be like, wow, well, you know, the system, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, and the jobs didn't get posted and nobody can find it. And you know, and there's no answer. And the vendor is like, has been acquired three times and we don't know where they are. Amy (14m 47s): So, you know, so it became like this whole just swirl of bad customer service, of things going wrong at the wrong time and still making an investment that was far disproportionate. And then also on the other side. So remember when you're trying to get applicants, you can, you know, one of the answers is to throw money at it, right. You buy them, Chad (15m 8s): That's what companies do and have been doing for decades. And then they throw money at them and then they push them into a shitty process. And those people, they don't finish, or they just keep applying over and over and over. So you've, you've pretty much paid for that candidate, like six times over. Amy (15m 28s): Yeah, it's a leaky vessel. Right. And so what we were trying, what the pitch was was that we can fix this leaky vessel if we find the right system. And once we patch up this leaky vessel, you know, one of the other things that's that's happened, that's a very tangible outcome that I didn't know about. I mean, I knew we were going to be able to, you know, plug the holes and get more applicants into the bucket. I knew that. What I didn't know is that, you know, we were going to be able to quadruple our applicant flow and not really increase our advertising budget at all. Chad (16m 6s): Amazing right? Amy (16m 6s): That's been static for years, like my whole tenure. Yep. We'll just keep doing the same thing that's working for us, you know, and now we're able to be a lot more strategic because we know that, you know, when folks are coming to us as applicants, we know that they're going to have a reasonable experience getting in the door. Now what we're working on and where you actually put people through some training this year with the talent board to help us with trying to improve our candidate experience from apply for work. You know, so we're working on that stuff, but that's not system stuff. That's a lot of people's stuff along with the system stuff. But when you go back and look at the system stuff, the return on investment has been so clear that, you know, now the COO one of the cool things is that when somebody from my team or I goes to one of our partners around the corporation, we have a fair amount of credibility, you know, because nobody's looking at talent acquisition going, why can't you bring us candidates? Amy (17m 6s): And, you know, because even though candidates are, you know, it is still a tie. It is now a very tight market. People are looking for work. And if you are looking for work and you're interested in us as an enterprise, you know, we're going to get you into our process. Chad (17m 27s): Listeners know that I am so damned sick and tired of hearing companies talk about diversity, equity and inclusion without demonstrating hiring outcomes, being transparent about their workforce composition, without showing diverse employees, climbing the ladder through promotion and numbers around retention of underrepresented populations, not to mention fucking vendors are constantly slapping new acronyms on platforms like they're the damned magic bullet or something. Well, this excerpt comes from a little episode called Inclusive AAF with Jackie Clayton, who is now the VP of talent, acquisition and DEI at Textio. Chad (18m 11s): Needless to say, Jackie cuts through the bullshit and talks pointedly about the real DEI barriers and how TA needs to open its eyes. Enjoy. Jackie (18m 19s): And so if we can make it easier to find diverse talent, then we can incorporate more diverse talent. Chad (18m 27s): Yep. But Jackie, I'm just not convinced that corporate America really wants to be diverse. Jackie (18m 32s): They don't! Chad (18m 33s): I mean, do they really want to be equitable? I mean, seriously, we put whitey on the moon in 1969, but we can't figure this shit out. So for me, you take a look at the DEI training segment, right? It's like a $9 billion industry. It's fucking enormous, but we don't see outcomes coming from that, from the hiring, retention, promotion, any of that stuff. So, I mean, I don't personally believe corporate America wants to be diverse. So that seems like an uphill battle for you, even though it's the cool thing. It's the cool thing. I don't believe that's what they want. Do you? Jackie (19m 10s): No, they don't. And the reason that I say that is because we're able to find the talent so quickly. So what's the problem. So I don't understand why there's still an issue. And that's what we started looking into. Well, I started looking into years ago, what's going into it and that's, what's so interesting. I think about like, when we talk about the podcast, inclusive AI, like we look at some of these issues, like what's really the barrier? Chad (19m 36s): Right. Jackie (19m 37s): And I think that diversity and inclusion, all the people that are participating in it, one of the challenges is you get this nice to have a dream from your C-level executives. Right? Chad (19m 48s): Right. Jackie (19m 48s): But they didn't even talk to talent acquisition at all to see if it's possible. Chad (19m 53s): Because they never do. Jackie (19m 55s): For example, there's a place that is not nowhere near Texas, but their CEOs that they were going to increase by 30% of people of color, but they only have 5% in the city. 5% people of color. Chad (20m 5s): Yeah. Jackie (20m 6s): So how are you going to do that? Where are these people coming from and what are you going to do? I mean, even more, we've already seen the gap when human resources went from nurturing personnel to protecting organizations and taking the human out. But they take the human out in diversity and inclusion because it becomes like, they look at these like people as, as items, you know, as widgets, instead of understanding what goes into it. So I think we will want to, but they just don't understand what it takes. It's like, you know what to expect when you're expecting or whatever. Like we all have kids, right. And then you read the book and you're like, oh, is that going to happen? You're like, yeah. Joel (20m 45s): There's no conspiracy here to say, oh, you know what? We're going to tell everyone we're going to up it by 30% and hope that no one checks us on that. You think it's more like, they just don't know. They say what they think is the right thing. But they don't really think about logistically, how are we going to do this? Jackie (21m 3s): That's right. Chad (21m 4s): Which means they're not serious. Jackie (21m 6s): Because they don't, they'll say that they want to have diverse talent. But what they don't say is we need to evenly distribute the power around our organization. Right? Chad (21m 15s): Right. Jackie (21m 15s): Or they'll say, oh, we're diverse because we have 50% female. But if you look at what they pay out in salaries, I bet you, that's not 50% male/females. Right? Yeah. Joel (21m 28s): Such a cynic. Chad (21m 29s): So, so why it's hard not to be a cynic because these companies aren't transparent. Joel (21m 33s): Sure. Chad (21m 33s): They don't actually show their workforce composition number one, right. They don't show their pay equity. They don't show any of that stuff and they can do it in large groups. They don't have to do it in a person by person basis. They're not being transparent with the market itself. And that it should be step one. Jackie (21m 52s): That absolutely has to be step one. And I should say, I should back up and say, I think that people want it, but they don't want everything else that comes along with it. It's one of those we have to slow down in order to speed up. Chad (22m 7s): What comes with it though? Jackie (22m 10s): You have to to admit your shortcomings, your failures, you know, you implemented maybe a company culture that wasn't the best, you know, and it takes away especially understanding that you're going to bring in conflict at the very beginning because people don't think the way you do. Joel (22m 30s): It's commercial time. Chad (22m 31s): It's Showtime. I'm ending this episode with a crazy story from a podcast that dropped in February titled To Check or Not To Check? So we hear some pretty amazing stories off mic with our guests in the green room, but the best on mic story hands down goes to Kim Jones, senior director, enterprise talent strategy and instructor at UC Irvine. And no, this is not a True Crime crossover. And there is a learning objective. I promise. Enjoy. Kim (23m 1s): First of all, I would tell you, I appreciate the education that I've had, but nothing prepared me for how humble you have to be knowing that you stand in judgment of whether or not someone will get hired. I have taken that very seriously when I worked for Raytheon in particular, especially for the polar services program, 20,000 people apply for 1400 jobs. It was normal that in a hiring season, I'd have 100 background checks that came back with some type of discrepancy that I had to consider, a lot of which were criminal offenses, lewd and lascivious act against a child under the age of 14, where a guy did prison time was paroled, violated his parole and had to go back and finish his prison time. Kim (23m 46s): And in the question, have you been convicted of a crime? He said, no. And when I spoke with him, he said, he didn't remember going to prison. I would remember that. And the fact that he answered no. So this risk that we are risk adverse or risk mitigation, you have to take that very seriously. One of the situations I shared with Chad is a gentleman that I actually worked at the South Pole, who, you know, leaders later killed his wife. Joel (24m 19s): Did you say the South Pole? Kim (24m 23s): The south pole. When I worked for Raytheon. Joel (24m 26s): Like literally the South Pole? Kim (24m 27s): I completed a six week deployment to Antarctica and I worked there enough to go to the South Pole for three days. Joel (24m 33s): That's awesome. Kim (25m 12s): And so the science lab manager, like I said, some years later killed his wife because he was in a relationship with a new person. She was coming to see him and he did not want the girlfriend to know about his wife and he killed her. The wife's family sued the previous employer saying that they would have never met. And so there was this allegation of negligent hiring because he had a previous conviction for a pretty serious felony. And what they found was he had transferred from one contractor to this new organization that was a contractor and they didn't do a background check, and if they had the offense that he had been convicted of would have precluded him from employment. Chad (25m 18s): And you worked with this dude at one time. Kim (25m 20s): I sat next to him during a recruiting event. And then I met with him while I was at South Pole, because he had some questions about what we were doing with the hiring process to hire technicians for, I think he managed the science lab. So I will honestly tell you, I was creeped out after the story surfaced. And I'm like, I remember sitting next to Al Baker with his, you know, silver, gray hair braided back in a ponytail. The fact that you killed your wife and wrapped her body in a tarp, because you didn't want her to know about your new girlfriend. And then also knowing that he had a previous felony conviction. Kim (26m 2s): And if a background check at been performed, that scenario would have been avoided. Chad (26m 8s): So this type of story is exactly what Joel's talking about, that this happens. And this is grotesque. It is gruesome. It is incredibly horrible, but that then sets a precedent for high levels of risk mitigation and directly impacts back to my story, individuals who can't manufacture dry wall in an area where they can't find people for these positions. They can't find people, but they don't want people with felonies. So there's this overreaction that happens that everybody could perspectively be, you know, a serial, Antarctic killer. Chad (26m 47s): So how do we manage this? Kim (26m 55s): It's rooted in good decision making and good policy. This can't just be a knee jerk reaction. Organizations, your C-suite has to have trust in your HR leadership team to create policies that support responsible hiring and employment. It's not a clinical if one plus one, two, you need a solid infrastructure around how do we collect information and how do we evaluate it? And that process for evaluation has to be done with a great degree of common sense and some wisdom. So to your point, if I need to hire people to hang dry wall, do I automatically reject every person with a felony? Or do you rely on having a really good HR person who understands how to evaluate, how to have conversations with people? Kim (27m 40s): I will tell you to a certain extent, this spirit of discernment, you know, when somebody is lying to you about whether or not they're truly remorseful, I've had had every version of a story. I've had a guy tell me who had been convicted of domestic violence. You know, I won't fight anybody at work cause I only fight my wife. Chad (28m 3s): Oh my God. Kim (28m 22s): So it is this balance of good policy and good HR professionals. If you don't have both, you are typically, you may be an organization who does not manage this well, but you have to have good policy and good HR leaders. The combination of the two is critical. Chad (28m 24s): Was that not crazy or what? Okay. So I hope you've enjoyed my top five picks of 2021. Now, remember these were just excerpts of much longer conversations, not to mention we've published 43 interviews in 2021 alone. So go to Chadcheese.com or wherever you listen to podcast and binge it up. Needless to say, 2022 is going to be one hell of a year. So continue to tune in as we dig for more golden moments like these. thanks again to all of those who have taken the time to join us on the show. Chad (29m 5s): And thank you for joining us on the ride listeners near and far. Sowash out. OUTRO (29m 50s): 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.

Have you read SmartRecruiters' "Diversity Hiring Report"? aka The path to Hell is paved with good intentions... Ya' should, even if it is a little depressing. Chief Customer Officer Rachel Orston joins the podcast and discusses the results of surveying over 400 employers about diversity recruiting. Needless to say, we have a long way to go. Fifty percent of organizations have NO PLAN on diversity. Maybe we could start there. The good news: Lots of room for improvement. 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 (22s): We'll make you famous. What's up everybody. This is your co-host Joel Cheeseman, and you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I am joined as always by my cohost, Chad Sowash. Chad (34s): What's up? Joel (35s): And today we're talking a little diversity, happy to welcome Rachel Orston and Chief Customer Officer at Smart Recruiters. Rachel, welcome to HRS most dangerous podcast. Rachel (47s): Thank you so much for having me. Joel (50s): So I gave you a very little title there in our intro, but what should our listeners know about you the person? Rachel (58s): I've been in the customer success, chief customer officer space for a long time and it's man, it's hard work. You got to work to make customers get value out of the technology that they're investing in and help them achieve their goals. And it's something I love to do, and I'm proud that I get to do it at Smart Recruiters. Joel (1m 13s): And you have a few customers there at Smart Recruiters. Don't yeah, just a Rachel (1m 16s): Just a few, just a few small insignificant unknown companies. Yes, yes. Just a few. Chad (1m 23s): Very nice. And you're a Deadpool fan. Am I correct? Rachel (1m 26s): I'm a big Deadpool fan. Absolutely. Chad (1m 30s): She's already won over my heart. Rachel (1m 32s): It's a family film. I told you it's a family film. Joel (1m 36s): Coming next is an hour worth of Deadpool conversation with Chad Sowash, the only thing he loves more is diversity. Chad (1m 43s): Yeah diverse Deadpool. So first and foremost, I would like to thank you, Rachel. And the Smart Recruiters team for putting this report together. It is enlightening and good, in a quite horrible way. Now I believe the title of the report is Diversity Hiring Report, but I think it should have been a tad different. Are you ready? Diversity Hiring Report: The Path To Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions. I mean seriously, because all I'm reading is the great work that you guys did to do nothing but expose what we've seen over the last couple of decades. It doesn't feel like anybody is budging. Are you seeing something different than I am? Rachel? Rachel (2m 22s): Look, I think you raise a good point. I mean, I think the whole point of the report was saying that we're missing the basics, we're missing the fundamentals and that, you know, many companies, even some of the bigger ones that took our study are missing a basic plan, right and/or a budget for a plan. But it does start first with having this conversation, right? That's why I'm so glad you guys brought, brought me on and are, you know, helping us, you know, drive this conversation a bit louder. Cause until we, I think really aggregated these results in a more cohesive way, maybe, you know, our hope is to shine a bigger light on this on the fact that, you know, there are a number of companies that are still in at the beginning of this journey. Chad (2m 59s): Yeah, no question. Well, one, the things I want to point out right out of the gate was really, there are five areas that we're going to talk about to some extent, first and foremost, you know, barely scratching the surface is one of the key points and key takeaways. And under that, it says "many organizations are missing out on the basic opportunities to share their commitment, to building a diverse and inclusive workforce with potential applicants." And then the next four points are working without a plan. Rachel (3m 34s): Yes! Chad (3m 35s): Budgets, haven't budged neglecting opportunities for internal talent and bias keeps creeping in. So the commitment doesn't exist to job seekers and over the years they've seen this whole diversity kind of facade is a lie more than anything that's substantial and something that they should actually take notice of. So the first thing is we start talking about representation. We start talking about planning. What's the most important piece that you would like to start with first? Rachel (4m 5s): I think the biggest piece is that there is that this doesn't have to be a huge lift, that there are measurable strategic actions that companies can take. There are best practices, right. And part of why we did this report was we also built a toolkit, right? So we could actually say, okay, here's where you are. And by the way, I'm happy to transparently share where Smart Recruiters is because by the way, we took it ourselves and it went and kind of, you know, drink our own champagne, so to speak on the same thing, which is interesting and of itself. And so the whole point to your point is, you know, let's drive a conversation, let's be honest about where we are and where we're not, which you know, to your point is not great. And then let's also see like, what actions can we take? And so I want to be clear that the report was part one of a bigger, you know, initiative of ours, which is really to say, okay, now what can companies do? Rachel (4m 50s): That's where the toolkit comes in, where we've got some very practical recommendations, for example, right? Like, like how can companies just better diversify their career pages? Let's just start with attract. Let's just start with how companies are trying to get candidates in. Right? Are they making any efforts or initiatives to actually modify or target their career pages or their career events towards, you know, towards diverse, you know, candidates. Right? So there's some really interesting opportunities there on transparency. Can they do more on score-carding and how they're creating a transparent, more collaborative interview process? Right. So there isn't like backdoor bias, right? So we kind of outline, I won't go through each one. I'm happy to, but the point is we really started to say, okay, here's some very practical things that companies can do to get started because this doesn't have to be that difficult. Rachel (5m 39s): There are steps that companies can take. Chad (5m 42s): Yeah. Joel (5m 43s): Chad has his own title for this, for the survey. Rachel (5m 45s): Yes! Let's hear it. Joel (5m 46s): I have mine as well. The Big Bummer. I think was my, was my title for this. And what so quickly on the methodology, you guys surveyed 400 or so companies of various sizes and industries to do this and the survey went for how, like, what time span was this survey done? Yeah, Rachel (6m 7s): It was done over several months. I mean, the survey itself takes about, you know, there's about a hundred or so questions, it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to complete. So, you know, we did keep it open for a fairly sizable period of time so we can get, you know, as broad of a, you know, demographic of companies to take the survey, we were looking for, you know, folks across, across the organizations of all. So we were really trying to get as big of a net across sizes and industries as we could, whether they were Smart Recruiter customers or not. So I would say probably about four or five months, I don't know exactly, but it was a sizable amount of time. And then we had to aggregate the data and put the report together. Joel (6m 46s): So this year, roughly post pandemic, so this is post COVID. One of the big bummers of this for me, and Chad and I talked to a lot of people in diversity and DNI. And, we talk a lot about that there are actually budgets now for companies to do these initiatives. And we talk to vendors who provide services to companies to improve their diversity recruiting. But yet in your report, 62% said there was no diversity sourcing budget. Does that surprise you? And what is the major hurdle to getting budgetary outlets to diversity recruiting? Rachel (7m 27s): It's a bit of the chicken and egg thing like I said, I don't know. It didn't surprise us necessarily and I think it goes back to the main point that we made, which is people don't have a plan. How are you going to secure budget? If you don't have a plan, or if you don't have some really practical places. So, so why would somebody fund you if you don't have a plan or a place that you want to, you know, invest in, right? You don't have some very pragmatic approaches. And so again, that's why we kept for going back to, okay, how can we empower companies to start thinking about having a plan? Where should we recommend they start so that they can start to be more aggressive in going after those budget dollars? I believe the budget dollars can be there, but the companies have to be intentional and they have to start getting a plan together. Joel (8m 7s): Which leads me to my next big bummer, which was that 50%, according to your survey, have no plan. How do we get people to that first step? That seems like such a Herculean effort at the moment. Rachel (8m 19s): I think it's about having these conversations, right? And we've been having these, not just through the report, but in, you know, in round table discussions with our customer base. I think it's about talking about it openly and being transparent that we need help because I don't think plans are just going to be made up in a vacuum. I honestly believe that part of the things that we want, whether it's our customers or people outside of our, outside of our immediate customer community to do is just start talking about this and learning from one another. Start talking about what customers, what we do a lot is share what some of our customers are doing with what some of our customers aren't doing. Right? And getting those people to talk to one another and learn from one another, because that's honestly, I think where the good ideas come from his customers, or not just our customers, but companies need to start talking to one another. Rachel (9m 1s): Whether they're in their same industry or cross, TA leaders need to start connecting on this topic and learning from one another. And that's what we're hoping to do obviously by this report is to get that conversation going. Because there are companies that are too, you know, we could talk about the 60%, but then let's also talk about the 40%, right? So there are 40% that are, and we need those 40%. We need those 60% to start learning from those other ones and start, hopefully getting some inspiration. Chad (9m 23s): I think one of the things we don't do well enough in talent acquisition and HR at all, is look at the business opportunity. So let's take a look at representation really quick, only 18% of companies in the report had disability representation on the company website, career pages, blogs, social media, and other collateral. Rachel (9m 45s): I know. Chad (9m 46s): Which means they more than likely don't have disability represented in their company. So do you realize there are more than 1 billion that's with a "b" billion or 15% of the world's population who are individuals with disabilities? That's a fifth of the estimated global total. And let's talk business terms here. Let's talk about profits and loss profits, which is what the C-suite really cares about. Can you imagine the spending power of that humongous cohort. Take a look at Pepsi. Pepsi actually hired thousands of individuals with disabilities over the past few years, 22% of those individuals, around 22% of those individuals were disabled veterans. Chad (10m 32s): This is an initiative where Pepsi partnered with external experts to build talent pipelines, and which also achieve hiring outcomes and demonstrated much higher retention rates. Now, Pepsi can confidently go into the markets to this community, this huge community, and they can start talking about marketing and sales through the eyes of their employees. So, I mean, this is from our standpoint, we're not taking a look at this problem, like business people, are we? Rachel (11m 2s): No we're not. And I think it goes back to leadership, ultimately, I'm sure this is where you're going, but it is a leadership issue in how they view their business, and back to values in term of seeing one plus one equals three, right? I think there are companies that see it, you know, and see how it can absolutely benefit business. And then there are other companies that can't make that connection. And I think it does come down to leadership and some leaders putting their actions where or their money and their actions where their mouth is. And that's obviously what we need more of. I like that example though. I had not heard of that. And I appreciate you sharing that one. Chad (11m 37s): Yeah. Well, and again, as we take a look at trying to make this more of a business case, as opposed to a charity case, that's what we've always dealt with. We've begged for cash as opposed to went to the C-suite with numbers and the opportunity, right, the actual business opportunity. So go back to budget and here's some, some information from the report that I thought was interesting "question, does your company invest in job fairs? 55%? Yes. Job fairs. Does your company invest in community partnership 61% no." Chad (12m 18s): How do they think they're actually going to get well branded and receive a better penetration into more diverse markets? If they're not focused on community partnerships or HPCU events, which 68%? No, they're not even investing in those. Joel (12m 34s): That blew my mind. Chad (12m 35s): Yeah. How do we expect to actually grow and move the needle if we're not doing what it actually takes to move that needle? Rachel (12m 42s): Well, I think it's also goes back to talking to your own, you know, you're getting feedback and talking to your own diverse employee base, right. And including them in the process and getting that feedback and having you, because I think to your bone, it goes back to representation. Is there even a voice inside the company that is speaking and advocating for this? Because I think that that's also where we need to start and bring those diverse employees into the conversation and make them feel heard. Because I honestly think a lot of those employees know the right partnerships. They know the universities, or they know the other places because they've been on the receiving line. They've been that candidate they've been through the process, they know, you know? And so I think that it also starts with listen to your employees! Rachel (13m 26s): Bring those folks into the process because they know, especially in your industry or they know, you know, where those great partnerships could come from. Chad (13m 34s): Well, and then last but not least, does your company invest in market mapping? So we actually talked to a Jackie Clayton who was a DEI expert in this area. She, it actually talked about companies who are making commitments, that they just couldn't keep in specific areas because they wanted 30% of a diverse hiring initiative in a specific area that only had a very low percentage of diverse individuals because they don't have the data and they're not actually mapping toward the opportunity. What should companies do? To be able to, to better set up because they're not planning. Right. So, I mean, I don't know where they should actually start at this point because it sounds like they're not doing anything. Rachel (14m 17s): You mean we're where should they start just in the plans? Chad (14m 20s): Yeah. Rachel (14m 20s): I mean, look, I think it goes back to leadership. It goes back to setting some goals and setting some accountabilities and starting to bring their diverse employees into the process and taking a hard look at what that representation is. And start listening to the few, you know, the people that you have that are committed to your company and come from a diverse background and really give them a voice and a seat at the table to help shape the strategy. I think they obviously perhaps have a vested interest. I know that's what we're hearing from a lot of companies that we're working with is that they're spending more time talking internally and surfacing that, you know, what I call the voice of the employee so to speak in terms of how could they do a better job finding more of those employees. Rachel (15m 3s): And they're also really focusing on internal mobility. We didn't even talk about that, but there's a whole other movement, which is to say, not only how do we get more diverse and inclusive in our recruitment practices, but how do we really bring that into our internal mobility, right? How do we bring those people up into levels of leadership so that they can be in a power to have a voice and drive these initiatives forward? And that's honestly a lot of what we're also talking about with our customers as well, because if those people don't have a voice, or if they're not even in positions of leadership or influence, then you've got a bigger problem Joel (15m 34s): Let's talk about tech for a second, and your fifth key finding in a bias keeps creeping in. You ask the question of what percentages do not let minorities or diverse employees do interviewing? 61% in technology don't let diverse employees interview candidates. In a world where it seems like technology is trying to solve this problem, it seems counterintuitive that tech still has so much problem such a problem with this issue. What's your take on tech and what blind spots may be. Joel (16m 13s): I'm not saying that is making it so challenging for technology to embrace diverse recruiting? Rachel (16m 17s): This whole issue isn't a technology issue. I mean, I applaud Smart Recruiters for trying to, you know, continue to move this conversation and to elevate the conversation, to shine a light on the conversation, but we all know the technology is not going to solve this problem. I think technology can help in many areas. I think the ones that we're very focused on is, you know, things that I talked about, which is, you know, how do you better create career sites and pages that are more targeted to diverse employees? I think hiring manager, inclusion and collaboration, like the bias in the let's just talk, let's just be Frank. The hiring and interview process is not very open and it's not very transparent in many companies. And we're talking about those. Let's just put that out there. So when we talk about technology, I think one of the most powerful opportunities, and it's certainly one that Smart Recruiters is very proud of it as far as our capabilities is we're very committed to our platform, driving a very transparent and open recruitment interview process, right? Rachel (17m 14s): When you got cards down, score-carding, when you can, when you enforce policies where you cannot get a candidate, until you put your feedback in there and it's open and transparent, right? You want to really deter this whole off the record actions that you know, where you see a lot of the bias come in. So for us, it's really about transparency in the hiring process, and a hiring manager collaboration with their hiring teams. That that to us is a big component of it. At least where we feel technology like a Smart Recruiters can play a real impactful role. Joel (17m 47s): So technology isn't going to solve the problems, which will disappoint a lot of the vendors that have come on the show or know the show. It also sounds like resources doesn't solve the problem either. One of the things that surprised me in your study was that companies with 10,000 or more employees, 70% of those had no budget for diversity recruiting, which was pretty much the same as any other size company. What's going on with bigger companies that they're not embracing this, even though they have so much more in the way of resources? Rachel (18m 19s): You know, that's an interesting question to ask, you know, what is in the way I, you know, I think that, I think it depends on the industry. I mean, I think it could be, you know, obviously with COVID and other priorities have taken shape, we've got the great resignation, there's other things that are happening depending on the industry. We're seeing it hit some industries more than others. I'm certainly not defending those positions by the way at all, you ask the fair question, you know, it's really a tough one to answer because you're right. Like the budget should be there, the price, you know, and it's like, what's pulling companies away from really doubling down and in really sharpening their focus, as opposed to not, when you know that they've got, you know, ample budget there to put toward it. Rachel (18m 60s): Again, I go back to leadership, you know, cause to me that's really where the buck stops. So that's kind of my easy, short answer to it, but may not fully answer the question, but that's, you know, that's kind of, I think clearer way to look at it. I do think it's a leadership priority. Chad (19m 14s): Yes. Let's jump back to internal mobility real quick. You touched on it, but there was a question that says, "does your company have an internal posting process that makes all job opportunities available to all employees?" 82% said no. Rachel (19m 32s): I know. Chad (19m 33s): I mean current employees, the humans who create the widgets, provide the services, write the code and deliver products and services so the organization can thrive are the most neglected asset in the organization. 82% are whiffing on the very basics. Rachel (19m 49s): Yes, I think there's a high, I mean, it's probably a longer conversation for another podcast, but I think that there is a real high correlation. I think that that was actually a huge takeaway when I read the report, I said, wow, there's, there's this really interesting correlation between internal mobility investments and just recruitment overall. Like how are companies going to really get themselves out of this, you know, what's the expression, the treadmill, you know, if they can't really stop and really focus on internal mobility as part of the problem too. And seeing internal mobility connected to this to me was a really interesting takeaway that I hope other people, I'm glad that you guys are talking about it, cause I think it was a really interesting takeaway that maybe not everybody got from the report. Rachel (20m 31s): Yes. Chad (20m 31s): You also talked about transparency. So I think, and this is me in my own world, in my own head coming up with solutions so it might not sound like a big one to you. But I think the biggest thing that we need to do to move this ball forward for all organizations is to mandate transparency. So that we know from a workforce composition standpoint where everybody is today and good, bad, or indifferent, at least we know where we're at and where we need to go. At this point, we don't know anything. And as we continue to spend money or put out press releases or whatever it is, we're not moving the needle. Chad (21m 13s): At least we're not moving it fast enough. Rachel (21m 15s): That's right. Chad (21m 16s): Do you think transparency for workforce composition might be a key to something like this? Rachel (21m 20s): I absolutely do. And you know, it brings it full circle to, you know, just in again for Smart Recruiters, one of the things we're also passionate about it, and I'm sure you've had us talk about this before is hiring success. Right. And, how do we redefine the metrics for hiring success? And as you know, one of our big metrics is, is hiring fit, right and let's get transparent about what makes hiring fit. Right. What's a good fit employee. Right. And, how do we make sure that we're focused not just on hiring velocity, right? Which is, you know, important, which is, are we filling the roles when we needed them filled, which is very different than just cost per hire. Right? Chad (21m 54s): Right. Rachel (21m 54s): But, and so when you asked the question earlier about why aren't people? Well, everyone's trying to hire, we know everybody's top of mind for every CEO, everyone's trying to fill roles right now. But the one thing that we're not transparent is, okay, great, we know we need hiring velocity. We know we need to get the bright people in the right seats when we need them, but are we really having a transparent conversation on what does hiring fit mean? Did we get the right individual in the role and what is our focus as far as fit and where diversity fits in that, that to me is a transparent conversation. Cause we could fill roles, but how do we do it in a very intentional way? Again, I think that goes back to some of our core hiring success, methodology and metrics that we talked very much about with our customers and where to start and putting a light on that from a measurement perspective. Rachel (22m 42s): So Chad (22m 42s): So hiring outcomes and then also retention and promotion, I would say might be the additions. Right? Okay. Rachel (22m 48s): Yes. Yes. Joel (22m 49s): One of the more interesting questions that you asked and the responses that you got were the question are the following represented on your company website? which frankly to me should be some of the easier slam dunks or layups in this branding exercise. Rachel (23m 3s): Yes. Joel (23m 3s): So I want to go through a few of these and get your sort of take on this. You asked about religion, which I don't think I particularly ever think about much, but you guys did. This was the highest number that was not represented on the company website at 84%. Why was religion included in the survey? I don't think that's something that we usually think about. I think that we probably should, but what was the thought process internally of including religion? Rachel (23m 33s): Very good question. I don't know exactly why religion was included in this survey, per se. I think our goal was to see, was there a diverse approach to how companies, just for us to open the spectrum a bit, to see where are, I don't think. I think it was really our attempt to say, how are people thinking about diversity and not confine ourselves to just what we see, right? What we see, which is one way of how people tend to think about diversity, but let's make this a bit more multi-dimensional right. And layer in some other questions that might allow us to get a better perspective on some things that people may be focused on that we're not that we're not thinking about. Rachel (24m 14s): Right. So I think it was really our attempt of trying to not just make diversity, what you see, but broaden it in terms of religion and other characteristics as well. Joel (24m 24s): Yeah. So two of the ones that you had that were pretty well-represented, which is where I think most people think about this issue was race and gender. Rachel (24m 36s): Yes. Joel (24m 36s): Which had a very, very high number of representation. And then the other two that I thought were interesting were disability, 82% had no representation on their websites and parental status with 78%. No. And I think that's where the most growth will be. And you see things, I think we talked about the mom project briefly in our green room chat. So I'm curious, is it your expectation that disability and parental status will be something that probably we see a lot more of in the coming months? Rachel (25m 5s): Yeah, I think so. I definitely think so. And I think that's not, you know, that that is something that I think companies are going to continue to focus on. And I think there's just going to be a lot more intentionality in that. And I think, you know, I talked earlier in the back in the green room that I do think it's a low hanging fruit opportunity. Why companies, aren't just looking at their basic career sites and career pages and really updating that to reflect the candidates that they're looking to attract. It is just to me, such a low, you know, an easy opportunity for them to go after. And I think it'll depend on the industry. It'll depend on the product, it'll depend on the company, in terms of what those targeted audiences will be. Joel (25m 46s): And then my last question is, do you feel like there's any fear of, I guess, diversity fatigue in terms of recruiting? In other words, what, I mean, at what point do we draw a line of what's diverse and what isn't? One of the things that I've heard discussed, you know, at some point was, is obesity, diversity, should you have people that are overweight in your representation? Do we get to a point where it becomes too much? And if we do what happens at that point? Rachel (26m 12s): It's an interesting question. I feel like we're a ways away from fatigue at this point. I mean, I think that's a great question to revisit. I think, again, the report and everything we're trying to move is just get companies moving. Let's get to fatigue, let's cross the fatigue bridge when we get to it. But I think we've hopefully in this conversation established that a lot of companies are not there, are not nearly at the fatigue level yet. So we just want to get them in the conversation. Joel (26m 36s): When we get to fatigue we've won. Is that what we're saying? Rachel (26m 38s): Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think we've got a ways away before we, I don't even think we're out of breath yet. I don't think we're out of breath. We're definitely not at fatigue. Chad (26m 47s): Yes. Well, I tell you why I'm definitely not at fatigue after seeing these damn numbers for goodness sakes. I appreciate you, Rachel. This is Rachel Orston, Chief Customer Officer over at Smart Recruiters. Rachel, if people want to check out the diversity hiring report, where should they go and what other kind of toolkits or whatnot could they find with Smart Recruiters? Rachel (27m 9s): I'll make it easy. Just go to SmartRecruiters.com and you'll see the link to the toolkit. It's pretty prominent where we're promoting it. And we encourage people to download and read it and explore the toolkit as well. And we also have a Hiring Success Business Assessment. And by the way, you could still take the diversity assessment as well. So you'll find all of that access on our website, both the diversity inclusion assessment, as well as our Hiring Success Business Assessment. Those are free assessments, and they can be taken online at smartrecruiters.com. So thank you. And thank you guys for digging into this report. These were great questions and appreciate you bringing me on. Joel (27m 48s): You're welcome Chad (27m 47s): Love having you. Thanks so much. Keep, keep, keep at this! Because we need to know the real truth, not just the fluff that we hear in press releases and the TV commercials and all that other fun stuff. So thank you. And thank the crew over at Smart Recruiters for us. Joel (27m 57s): Thanks, Rachel. Chad another one in the books! Chad and Joel (28m 2s): We out. OUTRO (28m 56s): 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.

Chad is too busy building his Portuguese real estate empire, we've brought on industry Brainfooder Hung Lee to the show to join Cheese and Lieven in tackling the continent's biggest stories. First, we're talking about the acquisition of Sovren by Dutch-based Textkernel. Then, we tackle the latest funding round by Jobandtalent, a company now valued at over $3 billion. Want some buy-or-sell, European-style? The boys cover Quinyx, Screenloop and Blink - no, not Blink182 - and whether or not they'd be buyers or sellers. Then a Dutch pizza company promised to send an employee to space. Is it just good PR or a sound strategy to recruit and retain the best and brightest? Gotta listen to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Europe INTRO (5s): Some podcasts, do it for the fun. Some do it for the fame, Chad and Cheese they do it for global effin domination. That's why bringing America to its knees was just the beginning. Now they have their eyes set on conquering Europe and they've drafted industry veteran Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze of Belgium to help them navigate the old country and bring HR's most dangerous podcast across the pond to trash-talk like never before. Not safe for work in any language. The Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. Joel (38s): Oh yeah. The Omicron variant is ravaging Europe. The same month Chad is touring the continent coincidence I'll let you be the judge. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Europe, everybody. This time sans Chad, who's busy building his Portuguese real estate empire. I'm your cohost Joel "variant of concern" Cheeseman. And I'm Lieven (1m 1s): I'm still just Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze. Joel (1m 3s): Good enough. On this episode, Tex Colonel scoops up an American competitor, job and talent lands a $500 million investment, and a little game of buy or sell, and don't forget our mystery guests coming up. Let's do this. All right, everybody. I'm going to give you a little hint to our, our mystery guest. Ready? Here we go. Let's start with a little mood music then, sfx (1m 27s): What are you doing step-bro? Joel (1m 30s): Or you know, that sound means there's porn in the house. What's up, everybody. I want to welcome our favorite industry porn star Hung Lee to the show. He has no B game. Welcome Hung. Hung (1m 43s): What an entrance. THungk you for that. THungk you for that intro Joel. I really appreciate it. It helps my credibility and massively. Joel (1m 53s): So polite, such a Brit, such a Brit. So most of our listeners will know you as the recruiting brain food guy. Talk a little bit about that and anything else you think our listeners should know about you real quick. Hung (2m 6s): Okay, cool. So basically that's it. I mean, I write a newsletter every week called the Recruiting Brain Food. You should subscribe to it. And I do a bunch of other stuff around that, including, you know, live streams, videos, podcasts, et cetera, just basically talking to industry people and then supporting the ecosystem as best I can. Joel (2m 28s): And you regularly highlight the Chad and Cheese podcast. So we really appreciate that. Lieven how are you doing, man? Lieven (2m 38s): I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm feeling a bit omicron today, but nothing more. So I guess it's not a real difference. Joel (2m 45s): Give us, American's a bit of flavor of what it's like in Europe right now with Omicron. Lieven (2m 50s): We had to postpone the best festival was not the best Congress in the world. So we don't like Omicron, but it's getting better. It's getting better. Joel (2m 60s): Yeah. That was some bullshit. How about in the UL Hung? Hung (3m 2s): Okay. I think the UK has a slightly different approach. Whenever I speak to like our mainland European friends that have come over, they're usually quite surprised at how generally lax things are over here. But yeah, I think we'll probably get a few more days worth of going out before we all voluntarily kind of shut things down and move into the Christmas spirit, you know? Joel (3m 28s): You're saying I can still get a pint in Britain. Hung (3m 30s): Yeah. A hundred percent. You can walk in and get a pint, no worries. Joel (3m 33s): Life is good. All right, let's get some quick shout outs. My shout-out in this episode goes out to Austrian brothels. That's right. A brothel in Austria is offering free vouchers to adults who get their COVID-19 vaccine at the building. Fun palace, which is what it's called, I'm guessing that's Fun Palace in Austrian is located in the capital city of Vienna is hoping to boost vaccination rates as well as client numbers that have dropped during the pandemic. I'm sure they have dropped. Visitors will be entitled to a free 30 minute session and a quote "Sonic club" Joel (4m 13s): end quote with the lady of their choice if they get their shot. Austria has one of the worst vaccine uptakes in Western Europe. No word yet on how much the freebies are impacting vaccination rates, but I'm guessing they're moving the needle a little bit to the positive side if they're Hungding out freebies. Have you guys been to Austria recently? Hung (4m 38s): Not recently. Three years since I was last in Vienna so I am certainly overdue, although that's nothing to do with that new story. Joel (4m 49s): Nice. Lieven, do you have any shout outs? Anything you want to let the listeners know about before we get into news. Lieven (4m 53s): Okay, we have a shutout to the recruitment Congress, which was the Congress House of HR, which are organizers, so which should have been it's November 25th, but we had to postpone it because of Omicron. And now we have a new date. So does the shout out to the new date is May 6th, 2022. If there is no dollar Sigma or whatever, the events, it will be May 6th. Joel (5m 18s): Yeah. Which I'm sure it's equally nice to be in Europe, in May, as it is in November. Lieven (5m 23s): It's a much better, much better. Joel (5m 25s): Better, much better, much better. Yeah. I need a quick pity party. I, after being cooped up in my house, I was supposed to go to HR tech in Vegas, back in the fall, and my wife had an emergency appendectomy, so I didn't get to go. And then I was really excited to get out of the house to go to Europe and then this thing gets canceled. So I'm hoping that 2022 travel actually happens again. Hung, do you have any shout outs for the listeners? Hung (5m 55s): I do. I do. I have two sports shout outs this week because two exciting and remarkable things happened to two teams I support. So quick shout out to New Castle United football club who secured their first win of the entire season this week. They're still bottom of the league of course, however, three wins, three points is three points. So now joy bottom, which is fantastic and their hope is in the air. And shout out also too at the Detroit Lions, of course, in the NFL, similarly winless until last Sunday, they pulled it off. Hung (6m 36s): And, and that gives me hope. You know, it gives me hope that these horrendous units of organization can pull it together and turn it around and, you know, give the fans a glimmer of some things. So, yeah. Joel (6m 50s): So this is interesting. So I'm going to come at this from an American perspective. We have two or three games a year that, that happened in London. Usually I think Wembley stadium, the teams come in and the stadium is always packed and I tend to default to, oh, that's just Americans over in Europe that want to go see a football game. Now, are you just being nice because you're on our podcast or do you actually keep track of American football? And what is your sense of the English acceptance of the sport? Hung (7m 21s): I'm basically an outlier in the sense that I am a fan of the NFL. So I have followed the NFL for a very long time. So since that's true for, I even played it at a really basic level when I was a kid, cause there was a massive surge of interest in where you guys would call football, over here at around the time when I could play. But the reason why it's packed out is because of genuine fans. There's enough fans, basically in England, certainly to basically make the journey to go to an event, pay a hundred pounds or whatever it is, ridiculous amount of money. Hung (8m 2s): I think it's a big number these days and sit there for three and a half hours to watch these guys play. So, I think it's a genuine fan interest. I think that, you know, you're gonna get 50-60,000 people to watch these things, whether you get it every week, I don't know because it's still like what three or four times, isn't it. So it's, it's still like a big event, but I think that yeah, club will do well over in the UK. Joel (8m 31s): You're all for a London-based American football team. Hung (8m 34s): I would not say so now I wouldn't say so. I think the reason why the fans are interested is because there's the fans of the teams in the U S you know, there are fans of the Miami Dolphins, fans of the Chicago Bears, et cetera. So I think if you tried to create a London team, we'll they, switch allegiance, I don't think that's that clear that they would do that. Joel (8m 57s): Yeah. I guess if, if, I guess if we just added an English, premier football team, there wouldn't be a whole lot of fans in the UK. Hung (9m 5s): Right. Let's see. I mean, the MLS is a good example, right? Let's say there was an MLS team over in UK, in England. Would there be any fans, either side of the Atlantic watching that? Probably not. So I think there's already fan loyalty laid down to US-based teams at the moment. So yeah, whether they do it or not on, I don't know, but it seems like the NFL makes easy money by sending a few teams every year, doing it this way. So I wonder what the value would be to actually create a local team. Joel (9m 40s): Yeah. How's, how's the NFL in Belgium is there, they have games of American football over there Lieven. Lieven (9m 44s): I don't think I've ever seen a game, but I'm sure by watching those American movies, that I would have been a great quarterback. Joel (9m 56s): And I'm going to say probably, probably not so much. All right, gang, let's get into some shit that listeners might actually care about in the news recently, Textkernel buys Sovren. Well Santa came a little early for one of our long-time sponsors. The Dutch based Textkernel has announced that it has acquired Soveren a long time sponsor of this show. So ho-ho to those folks, the combination of both companies will create a stronger player in the AI based search and match technology space, and Textkernel strengthens its north American and APAC footprint with the acquisition. Following in the deal Textkernel will serve over 2,500 clients, including some of the largest staffing firms in the world, working from offices in the Netherlands, US, France and Germany. Joel (10m 46s): Financial details of the track transaction were not disclosed, however, according to a market source cited by Reuters, the deal is valued at 30 to 40 million euros. Tex Colonel is backed by Main Capital, which bought the company from CareerBuilder back in 2020. Textkernel employs about 150 people that's according to LinkedIn. So I know from a US-based perspective, certainly Soveren has been a major player in this space for a long time. Textkernel on your side of the pond, you probably have a little different perspective. Let's start with Lieven, Lieven any commentary around this deal, what it means to resume parsers over in Europe, global perspective, anything on the deal that you found interesting. Lieven (11m 35s): Well, first of all, congratulations to Soveren for getting the money. And I heard about Soveren for a first time in this podcast, I'm sure the buying people from Textkernel also did. So I sold tHungks to you, Joel, that Joel (11m 49s): We're getting no piece of the deal by the way, just so you know. Lieven (11m 54s): That's a mistake. Joel (11m 56s): That's a mistake. Lieven (11m 58s): Well, maybe it'll get, they give you something maybe, but I think it's a good idea. You know, if they want to do something across the pond, as you call it and the U S then they should buy a decent company. It's almost impossible to start your own company, I guess, being European. So if they want to be something in the U S it's a start and Textkernel was a big name, we don't work with them. We work with Matchbox, which is a more funny kind of name I feel. Joel (12m 28s): Did you say magic box? Lieven (12m 29s): Not matchbox. Joel (12m 27s): Magic box was a movie Hung was in a couple of years ago. Anyway, matchbox got it. Lieven (12m 31s): And also a fish called Swallow. Hung (12m 39s): It wasn't. Goodness me. How did you know my film backs the backlog, man? I mean, I thought I'd stripped that from the internet. Joel (12m 49s): Hung do you have any opinion on the deal? Hung (12m 53s): Not a huge amount of commentary other tHung, you know, the fact that basically resumes are just massively resilient and they've been fueling recruitment for the last, you know, several hundred years, let's say certainly within the modern understanding of the document, at least the last 50 years. And, yeah, there's a long way to go on the old all school stuff. So yeah, technology like this, I think is proof of it. Joel (13m 16s): Yeah. You know, if I had to make, I guess, a job board comparison for listeners, to me, this is a little bit like Indeed and Glassdoor joining forces. I think this deal makes Textkernal the 800 pound gorilla of resume parsing and potentially matching as well, going forward. This gives it really great reach globally, which I don't think many of the competitors Rchilli is one that I could think of that maybe moves into the B player player spot. I mean, too many times in our industry deals are, you know, square pegs in round holes and they don't really fit. And you kinda have to do some mental, you know, limbo to try to figure out why deals were made. Joel (13m 57s): Sometimes it's just clearance rack, you know, deals. But this one to me may made a lot of sense. These are two pieces that fit really well together. The whisper number out of Reuters, 30 to 40 million pounds feels low to me, but I also know that Soveren, I believe was entirely bootstrapped. So they don't have the politics to play when you have investors and capital that comes in, in any big way. So, so that, wasn't part of that as well. Do you guys agree that, that Rchilli sort of moves into the B spot or the number two player, the Pepsi in this game? Or do you think Matchbox or another player might come in and take that number two spot? Hung (14m 40s): Not a huge amount. I mean, I'm not using any of these technologies myself, so it's hard for me to kind of comment on it in terms of my own like user experience of it. So I don't think I've got a huge amount say in terms of the, you know, who the second player might be after this marriage, Joel (15m 2s): I'm guessing you have maybe a comment or an opinion on this at resumes tend to be moving more and more into video, whether that's social media or whether that's, you know, video interviewing and, or maybe an automated situation with a, with a chat bot. How does, how does resume parsing adapt if at all, to more of a video formatted resume? Like, to me that seems like a major threat to the business. Do you guys agree with that? Or do you think there'll be able to evolve or are video resumes, total bullshit, which I'm totally down to hear that argument because there's a good one to make there? Hung (15m 40s): I think they're two separate things, man. I mean, a video resume there's like so many companies have tried to do it, but the reality of it is it's a video is too hard to process at scale, whether that's through a technology or a parser or through human parser, you know, you can't sit through this thing. So I think video is like super useful in recruiting, but they tend to be more valuable when it's custom made or for particular purpose rather tHung a resume, which is usually a generic document that you just float out there. So I think the text-based resume is still the default. I don't see it ever going away from text. Hung (16m 22s): And, like I said, at the start of the segment Joel, the health of these companies, I think is a signal of the resilience of that basic text-based format of these types of documents. Joel (16m 37s): I'd say if anything, being able to sort of digest the text resume and making it standardized is a really big challenge, which I think is probably why there are so few players. I mean, there's just the fact that I know LinkedIn, doesn't like to have it's data, you know, pulled from the web and that they're constantly playing whack-a-mole with how they format, you know, their profiles and cHungging that. And trying to always be one step ahead of people that are grabbing resume data from their site. I know that this is a really big challenge, which I think makes the service really valuable. But I know that if you believe LinkedIn is the future and having profiles and resumes, which I tend to agree with you, then these companies will continue to be really valuable. Joel (17m 23s): Lieven? Lieven (17m 23s): Yeah. Well, I agree with Hung. I mean, video is really important and it will only gain importance, but it's just a hassle for a recruiter to watch videos. I mean, if you have to, if you have 50 people applying for a job, you have to watch 50 movies, it will just turn your mad. So just browsing our true, true 50 resumes printed ones. Or of course, digital ones that will go fast. And then in the end, you can, if you have five candidates, you can watch the videos to see if one of them jumps out. But I don't think video will ever just completely, how do you say it obliterate the CVs? Lieven (18m 6s): It's hardly possible. I think not for mass recruitment. Joel (18m 8s): Or some automation tools that we'll disagree with you and hope to solve that problem. Well, let's get to another news item, some pretty big cash flowing into a company called Job and Talent, which I think is a horrible name, but that's beside the point, I guess the Madrid Spain based temporary staffing platform announced recently it has secured a $500 million series E round. The money gives Job and Talent evaluation of $2.35 billion. The company says that it has an annual revenue run rate of more tHung 1 billion euros, which would place it among the top 40 staffing firms in the world. Joel (18m 50s): The company says funding will be used to accelerate the company's expansion into key markets, including the United States, more tHung 1300 companies, including DHL, FedEx, and eBay use the service, which currently operates in nine markets. The most popular jobs being posted for the platform include van and food delivery drivers and warehouse operators. Job and Talent has raised a total of $1.1 billion. That's according to Crunchbase and employs, just north of a thousand people, according to LinkedIn guys, what can you tell me aboutJob and Talent and what odds do you give them to find success in the United States? Hung (19m 32s): Yeah, I'm firstly, I love the name, Job and Talent. Well done branding team. Joel (19m 36s): Bullshit. Hung (19m 36s): I do. I think they're great. I mean, you don't forget it, right? Joel (19m 40s): Can you imagine a salesperson saying, hi, I'm Joel from Job and Talent. I'd like to tell you about our company. Anyway, agree to disagree. Hung (19m 48s): I think that it works, but also, you know, credit to them again. I think I like the fact that this company knows what kind of business it is, you know, it is a staffing firm. It does focus on, you know, at the temporary workforce and it's got the right kind of technology wrapper around the service. You know, I think a lot of when you're looking at a kind of a next generation staffing supplier, what does it look like? It looks a lot more like a Job and Talent provider tHung it would do see, you know, our manpower let's say. Hung (20m 28s): So I think they are a new evolutionary step for a business of this type, not a revolutionary step, but you know what? Evolutions tend to be better tHung revolutions in many cases. So well done on them. Look forward to see what they do. It looks like all this money is going to be U S expansion base. So you can expect to see a lot of those sales guys based out of the US in 2022. Joel (20m 50s): So we talk a lot on the show about companies and other parts of the world that attempt to come to the U S and largely don't make it. It sounds like you're giving these guys a fighter's cHungce to make some impact in the United States. Hung (21m 4s): They just need US sales guys. I mean, the companies that don't make it, the ones that stay out of the U S and try and sell across, and that's just not a possibility. So, you know, I think the investors understand that and, you know, that's the reason why they put the money down, hire a bunch of salespeople. And I think your good to go. Joel (21m 26s): And cHungge the name. Lieven any opinion on this? Lieven (21m 29s): The most interesting parts to me once that BlackRock has investing 75 million and then it switches total peanuts for BlackRock, but still it's good for me to see that they are interested in our business, in our industry. And those are the really, really big players. I mean, according to Wikipedia, they have 9.5 trillion in assets. So $75 million is a pocket cHungge, but still it's good to have them looking into what we are doing. Joel (21m 57s): Yep. Give me a sense as an American, sort of the staffing business in Europe. My sense is you, have, mentioned manpower Hung. I mean, companies that been around for a really long time have relationships have brand awareness. And then these guys come along to sort of penetrate and take away that market share, like, give me a perspective of the staffing business in Europe and how realistic it really is that Job and Talent can put a dent in the market share of companies like Manpower. Hung (22m 27s): I think that ultimately, when you're in this market, which is, you know, as I understand it is high volume, it's temporary staffing. A great deal of it is about your branding, because it's very difficult to differentiate who and what you are to the competitors that we mentioned before. So, you know, we've seen some super resilient, mature players, you know, who are dominant in this space. And, you know, they're the companies that deal with enterprise wide customers. They're the kind of businesses where you have an employer or a client that is a multi-site multinational type of business. Hung (23m 9s): They may want to have like one interface to deal with all of their office working temps, for instance. And it's going to be very difficult for any new company to try and inherit that business, or take that business because they don't have the genuinely aren't able to supply all of those, you know, international needs. So, hence I think, you know, a lot of those old players have got a very strong position, you know, start speaking may call it a defensible moat, let's see, and, you know, credit to Job and Talent. They're going to give it a shot to try and crack a new market, but maybe they're kind of tech led type of vibe, but might be able to lock a few things that the other companies aren't can't do. Hung (23m 56s): So, yeah, I look forward to seeing how they get off. Joel (24m 2s): A billion dollars can help their cHungces quite a bit Lieven? Lieven (24m 5s): For sure. And I must say Manpower is sticking to the old business, I guess, or maybe they're doing stuff I'm not, I don't know about, but this company is a digital staffing agency and this works. I mean, everything is getting digital. It's about convenience and they provide it. And we launched the company three years ago, I guess, or I'm not good in dates, but now jobs, which is actually doing the same, we just launched it from scratch, now we're making 60 million this year, a totally digital agency just in Belgium, right now. We are also active in the Netherlands, but still mostly in Belgium, such a small market and gaining from scratch to 60 million in COVID times it's just a big success. Lieven (24m 47s): So I can imagine if you're in an active market like Spain, and get such funding. Everything is possible. Joel (24m 53s): Yeah 60 million will buy you a lot of Belgian beer, won't it Lieven? Lieven (24m 58s): 60 million Belgium Beers. Joel (24m 58s): Aside from the news much about this company, my guess is if they have a billion dollars to come to the states, I will certainly learn about them. Post haste, who knows they'll maybe even be a sponsor of the show next year, but it seems to me like they've sort of magically balanced contract workers feeling like full-time employees, but while making employers' lives easier, they're basically a staffing firm 2.0, I guess if you were creating a headline for that, I also think that the model could work in the U S especially when you're talking about frontline workers who are on their phones all the time, they want to live through their phones. Joel (25m 38s): They want to schedule where they're working. I mean, all this stuff, and there's a lot of competition around platforms and having part-time workers like this, Snap Shift comes to mind, but there are a lot of others, but like I said, a billion dollars can buy you a lot of marketing, can buy you, a lot of salespeople. I think it'll be really interesting to see what Job and Talent does in the states as we head into 2022. Lieven (26m 6s): They've only been having a positive EBITDA since 2020 or something really recently. So they're making lots of revenue, but spending it all probably on buying marketshare. Joel (26m 16s): And there'll be doing more of that if they come to the US. Let's take a quick break and play a little buy or sell, one of our more fun games on the show. All right, guys, it's a time to play a little buy or sell. I'm guessing you guys know how to play the game. I will highlight news from three companies that have recently raised money. And then you guys will comment on their company and whether you are a buyer or seller of the business. Are you guys ready to play a little buy or sell? Hung (26m 48s): Go for it, man. Joel (26m 50s): All right, let's go into, let's talk about Quinyx first. Let's stick with the contract workers, Swedish based Quinyx. Hopefully I'm saying that correctly announced recently, that is, it has raised $50 million in funding at a $550 million valuation. This brings the total raise to roughly $89 million, which the company says it'll put toward hiring as well as product research and development. Quinyx, which claims to have a million users deliver scheduling, budget forecasting, and shift planning and swapping through its web punch product. That's the brand name, web punch, a dashboard for time clocking employees can record their time work as an alternative to traditional time clocks. Joel (27m 32s): Guys is Quinyx the biggest thing to come out of Sweden since Abba? Lieven are you a buyer or seller? Lieven (27m 42s): We're talking about Swedish movies, maybe you should talk to Hung, but in this case, I'm definitely a buyer. sfx (27m 45s): What are you doing Step-bro? Lieven (27m 46s): I'm a buyer. And I mean, not really because we have Okyo, which is doing the same thing and it's our company. So I'm not buying a Quinyx, but I'm buying the concepts. They're doing something right at exactly the right time. And just to give you an example, COVID was a terrible period to launch scheduling tools because most of the tools are used for the gig economy and gig economy is closely related to events and all those events have been canceled. So we thought, okay, this is going to be a problem. But then we noticed that, just a stupid example, all those vaccine centers had to use scheduling tools for those thousands and thousands of volunteers. Lieven (28m 31s): So there's always a new opportunity and this will only grow scheduling -gig work. It goes together perfectly. You need both. So I think they have a great product. I've been looking into their websites. I would buy them if we didn't have Okyo. Joel (28m 46s): So are you a buyer or seller? Lieven (28m 47s): A buyer. Joel (28m 48s): Okay. Initially you weren't. Alright, Hung what's your, what are your thoughts on Quinyx? And what's your favorite Abba's song by the way? Hung (28m 59s): 100% buyer gimme, gimme, gimme obviously I'm buyer for Abba. No, so basically, and also I never cracked the Swedish film market. I dunno why. But with regards to, sfx (29m 14s): sexy music Hung (29m 15s): Yeah, it's a tough audience. The, you know, they have a wonderful founder story. So Eric, the guy who founded the business, I think he came across this issue when he was himself like a server at McDonald's and in Stockholm somewhere in 2006 or something when he was a kid. And, yeah, you know, there's lots of hidden problems in lots of businesses that typically, you know, lied dormant until there's some sort of moment where the technology is mature enough for a solution to be found. So I think they are attacking a market that is huge. And they've got a great opportunity. Hung (29m 55s): So I think the only threat that I can see to this business is whether the absolute size of the market might actually decrease with increased automation. Let's see. So think about food retail as the example. I mean, these guys are bigger now, supplying scheduling for food retailers, but if you could imagine that markets suddenly shrinking because there's a lot more automation, there's a lot more, you know, self-serve, there's a lot more delivery type stuff. So I think, you know, these macro trends are the things that are going to be a threat to this company, but there's probably enough of that mature market left for them to really make a big difference. So I'm buying Joel (30m 35s): Enthusiastic buy. Yeah. So aside from another shitty name, the story is really impressive to me as well. They have over 300 employees and officers across the US, UK, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands. The shift management market segment is expected to grow from 6 billion in 2020 to 9.3 billion in 2025. That's a lot, that's a big increase, by the way. There is a lot of competition. Quinyx competes with When I Work, who we've also talked about on the show before. Spur, Blue Yonder and Deputy, but Quinyx has managed to carve out a slice of the expanding market with over a thousand customers, including Oatley, Cisco, Virgin Atlantic, and DHL, a few names that we all know. Joel (31m 21s): They're going to need another round of funding, in my opinion, somewhere between around the $500 million ballpark. But Quinyx also is a buy for me. And the answer to best Abba song is obviously Dancing Queen. Our second startup is out of the UK. So Hung we're looking for really insightful commentary from you. The UK Screen Loop announced a $2.5 million seed round of venture capital for its digital interview app. Its founders include former employees from Revolut Clear Score and Stack Overflow. Most interestingly though, Indeed's co-founder Paul Forster is also an investor. Joel (32m 3s): There's a long list of video recruiting solutions, but work from home has also made it exponentially more important. Hung is Screen Loop a buy or sell for you? Hung (32m 12s): Yeah, I'm a big buyer on this. Also I think get in early is the right thing to do. I mean, I look at these guys for a lot of reasons. Firstly, I mean, you mentioned the team they've assembled is impressive. You know, so much of the early stage of any business is how great an access you have to the market that you're trying to sell to. And you can imagine with the lineup they've got, they're going to be able to unlock a lot of those very early clients, which are going to make a huge difference to how they progress as a business. I think also they're very much in the right space as well. Hung (32m 54s): Obviously the shift to remote has created this huge demand to get better at assessing, you know, people who you might conceivably never meet. So anything associated with assessment tech I think is going to be there. And most importantly, perhaps they do some interesting interview analytics as part of their initial product, which I think is a very exciting segment. So this is the idea that, you know, the technology should be used not only to analyze candidates, but also to analyze the interviewer and that they're attacking that market also by having this component, basically means you can start thinking about, okay, are our hiring managers any good, you know, are our recruiters doing good interviews? Hung (33m 40s): Are we biased in any way? You know, why does this guy always cut his interview short, never hire anybody? You know, those types of questions have really been a mystery to business leaders in the analog Europe, you know? But the interview itself, rather tHung being this mysterious sort of place where the hiring manager or the recruiter comes out and says, oh, that candidate "wasn't strong enough" quote, unquote, we are now have the technology to basically transcribe what is being said and do the analysis on how much is being said and what is being said. So I think it's going to be a really interesting segment and almost anybody playing in this space, I'm kind of going to bat. Joel (34m 20s): Interesting. All right. Strong buy from Hung Lee. Lieven what are your thoughts on Screen Loop? Lieven (34m 27s): This is one to watch for me. I'm not going to sell, not going to buy. I'm going to choose the third option, watch. Is it an option watch? I think I can just invent a new option. Joel (34m 38s): What a European thing to do. You're just going to watch. That's how World War II got started. You guys just watched, watched everything. All right. Lieven (34m 48s): You came saving our ass, so in the end it was okay. Joel (34m 55s): All right. So we'll make that a hold for leaving. So I'm a little bit torn. My brain says this company has no chance with competitors like Hire View, Modern Hire, BrightHire, TalView, Humanly, Clovers, and a ton of others. It'll be way too tough in my opinion, to break through. However, however, my gut says, Paul Forster co-founder of Indeed is a really savvy guy who really knows our space. And frankly, betting against him, is probably a dumb thing to do. I'm also guessing that he knows a few potential acquires for this company. Joel (35m 36s): Hint, hint. I could probably name a few, but you probably know who they are. So for that reason, I'm going to put my chips in default, Paul Forrester's investment and where he puts his I'm going to go with my gut and also give Screen Loop a buy rating. All right, our last company, another a London-based company Blink has raised $20 million at a hundred million dollar valuation. The app provides a platform for frontline workers to use and engage with the various IT services used by their organizations. With new funding Blink is planning to relocate its headquarters to New York, to better tackle the US market. Joel (36m 19s): The global opportunity is a big one, with an estimated 2.7 billion people working on the front line. According to the company, Blink currently has some 93,000 users and promised to bring those employees simple ways to find payslips, apps, policies, conversations, and answers to questions. One place, one app, one click is their mantra. Guys, are you a buy or sell of Blink? Lieven (36m 45s): Well, If it was Blink 182 I would buy, but in this case, nope, just too difficult. If you Google them, you will only find punk rock bands. So no. It won't work. sfx (37m 0s): Oh hell no. Joel (37m 0s): But bonus points for the nineties, emo music reference. All right. That's a sell from Lieven. Hung what are your thoughts on Blink? Hung (37m 8s): So I am going to say buy again and I need to check my bank account because obviously I'm the richest guy in London cause I'm buying everything, but I'm definitely buying. I think that they do some thing that is kind of deceptively simple. Cause if you think about, do you remember back in the days when there was such a thing as an intranet, you know, some sort of private space where, you know, a company only eyes and this is where you'd get your, you know, all of your employee information, maybe there'd be some sort of crappy chat function in there or whatever it was the worst websites ever, right? No one ever sort of spent any time on. Joel (37m 44s): EBay was an early adopter of the intranet mobile solution. So yeah, I do remember those. Hung (37m 48s): You remember that. So anyway, this is simply just the mobilized intranet, but it's delivered as an intranet, mobilized intranet as a service, the companies that are not going to build it themselves. And it's going to give the employees, I think some, excuse me, mobile first access to the stuff they need, which again, for frontline workers, like, you know that they're not sitting in front of a keyboard and tapping it and looking into a computer screen, they need it on their mobile device. And I think this product provides that type of interface. It gives them, the employers and the business leaders, the opportunity to understand how engaged their employee base is. Hung (38m 27s): I think lots of interesting information. When you think about, you know, who is interacting with the intranet or with the app who is talking on it, who is doing what you could probably get some really good information as to the overall employee sentiment of your business doing this. So, and obviously the market is massive as well. So this is all about, you know, people who are "frontline" quote-unquote, which I think is the new word for working class, right? So, you know, if you're a blue collar worker, you're driving a truck or you do something that's physical, but you're not in front of a computer screen, are we actually providing technologies to service, this type of demographic? Answer is we've previously really not. Hung (39m 7s): And I think this is a new wave of companies that is starting to do that. So, so yeah, strong buy for me for these guys. Joel (39m 16s): Buying everything when he's not banging everything, that's Hung Lee. All right. So my, my 2 cents on this guys is companies have come to the realization that being engaged with a workforce that is more disparate tHung ever is more important tHung ever. As we work from home, as our executives are sporadically placed around the globe having something where everyone can engage is super important. The question for me is whether or not Blink is that solution to do it. And I can't help, but think most of the features of Blink feel really easily, easily replicatable, in my opinion, I have a hard time seeing a moat around this company. Joel (39m 60s): I feel like a well-designed app, maybe on slack could do a lot of the same things and probably integrate better with a messaging solution that the company's already using. So to me, there are too many threats for this business. I'm gonna, I'm going to sell. I'm going to sell Blink, but love Blink 182. All right. Let's get into space boys actually, just so you know, guys, buy or sell is over. We're getting to our last news story. Guys the time of luring candidates with signing bonuses and competitive salaries is over. In an attempt to hire 500 new employees a Dutch pizza company has launched one of the most outlandish hiring campaigns ever in which it promises to take one employee to space. Joel (40m 50s): Struggling to hire enough delivers Dutch pizza chain, New York pizza, decided to take matters into its own Hungds rather tHung spending more money on job ads, referrals, or relatively standard advertisements. They opted for a campaign with which they hope to hire 500 new employees, quote, "we will send our best pizza deliverer into space." That's from Phillipe Vorst the CEO and founder of the company. Vorst says in 2023 of the company will deliver the first ever pizza to space. With everyone feeling the side effects of the scarcity we're going further tHung anyone else to attract new delivers. Borst said the competition is set to cost the company a total sum of 200,000 euros and is open to all of its employees who have worked at the company for at least four months. Joel (41m 43s): Guys, are you ready to get a job at Dutch pizza chain, New York pizza and go to space? Is this a good move from a recruiting standpoint, a retention standpoint, a marketing standpoint, Hung, what are your thoughts? Hung (41m 56s): So I missed the positive on this show, obviously, and, I love this. I mean, even as a stunt, it's already worth it. You know, the fact, that it's me, Chad and Cheese, gives it this a massive bit of branding at that a, you know, a traditional thing wouldn't wouldn't have achieved. So, you know, the cost of space travel is definitely declining. I think it's pretty close. It's getting to the point where, you know, some millionaires will be able to afford a seat. So I'm guessing that this guy is thinking, you know, give it another year or two. I think that the schedule award is 2023 or something, isn't it? You know, maybe the cost of sending somebody up there will be will be a couple of hundred grand or something, and that will be worth the higher, that will be worth the applicant flow that he might potentially get for this stunt. Hung (42m 47s): Now, are people actually going to apply to the job in order to fly into space? I don't think so. I think people will apply for the jobs, they need a job and they want a job, but this is something that's going to be a fun thing to circulate around around the business for the last 18 months. I mean, think about the jokes or the fun that you can have with this internally. And of course the external PR marketing is huge. So, so yeah, it's a great idea. Joel (43m 15s): Yeah. There'll be able to milk this for a long time. Like imagine the actual flight and preparing for it, like yeah... Hung (43m 20s): Yeah, expect a red bull style documentary going through mean I've never met this guy and I don't know this business and I've never had a New York pizza from Amsterdam or whatever the these guys are from, but I'm pretty certain, the CEO would be of like mind of the, you know, the store sort of, sort of fellow that would enjoy this type of traumas. Joel (43m 44s): PT Barnum is appreciating this move. Lieven what are your thoughts? Lieven (43m 47s): I think it's brilliant bullshit. And I don't think they will ever send someone to the moon or to space, but given the PR it's a great idea, of course, but if you just do some simple mathematics, I mean today, sending someone through Virgin Galactic to space for what is it, 15 minutes or something will cost you $55 million. And they say within two years it will be like $450,000. So let's say they'll fly economy class, and it's only $450 thousands. That means if they sell a pizza for 15 euros, it will cost them about all right, they'll have to sell about 30,000 pizzas. This is totally stupid. I mean, Joel (44m 26s): All they have to do is hire someone related to Jeff Bezos and they can take a free trip on Blue Horizon so. Hung (44m 31s): Send the lifetime sort of award of pizzas to Jeff Bezos, and maybe you get a free seat or something. I dunno if they could probably do something like that. Lieven (44m 40s): And they're going to send their best pizza seller to space and it will explode on their roster, pizza or salad. This is just, cheesy. Joel (44m 48s): Yeah, we got Mr. Sunshine on one end and Mr. Death and despair on the other. So, so obviously this is great PR they're going to sell a lot of pizzas. You know, they definitely have to get new servers because of the flood of traffic that the Chad and Cheese listeners are going to bring to the company. Obviously, they'll be able to milk this thing for a long time. I think it's way more about selling pizzas and getting brand awareness for this company tHung it is actually retaining and recruiting people. I'll put my American hat on for a second and say the thought of a Dutch pizza chain sending the first pizza to space is frankly, a crime against humanity. Lieven (45m 27s): What it's called it's called New York Pizza. Joel (45m 29s): Yeah. I can't think of many things less appealing tHung a Dutch pizza company pimping itself as New York style pizza. This is a slap in the face of New York, of America, frankly, which is the best pizza in the world. And in and other times such posing might've led to a global conflict. I'm going to launch a wood shoe making company in Indiana called Dutch wooden shoes to see how the Dutch feel about that. So, anyway, I'm off my American high horse. I've been talking about pizza, I'm frankly ready for lunch. Guys another one is in the books. Joel (46m 12s): Hung, tHungk you so much for gracing us with your presence. Hung (46m 16s): My pleasure guys really appreciate it. Joel (46m 17s): For those who want to know more about you, where would you send them? How can they connect to Hung? Hung (46m 26s): I would say anybody interested in recruiting you can check it out on recruitingbrainfood.com. If you're interested in my previous career as a porn star, please go to, IMDB. You probably have to do some creative searching, you'll find me there Joel (46m 42s): Very well and guys, if you want to catch up with more European shows, just head out to Chadcheese.com/europe. Lieven another one is in the books. I think we're done all right, without Chad, but we'll be excited to get him back for the next podcast, hopefully. We out. 5 (47m 47s): 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.

Tiger King is back on Netflix, which makes the fact there's even an episode this week pretty amazing, but as much as we're junkies for Joe Exotic, we're more committed to opening HR's lizard brain on a weekly basis. So, here we go: This week, the boys cover news out of Indeed and Glassdoor, as well as funding rounds for Rippling and Workato. Then it's on to The Great Resignation, covering news and commentary around Amazon fines, trucker shortage myths, a-hole CEOs and working for multiple employers, compliments of WFH. We even throw in a Britney reference, 'cause she's free now and all that. Enjoy. 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 is most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right? Where hers complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark buckle up boys and girls. Joel (20s): Oh yeah. Taylor is back, Brittany is free, Paris is hitched and Adele has a new album. I'm as happy as a little girl. I kids at your favorite Cowboys. You're listening to the Chad and cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "Oops. I did it again" Cheeseman. Chad (38s): And this is Chad "king of all media" Sowash. Joel (41s): On this week's show is Indeed killing the resume? Is the truck driver shortage a big lie and dating app bundle swipes right on the Metaverse. Oh yeah. And Tiger King is back kids. Woohoo! Chad (56s): Oh God, what's up Chad? Well, I just like to say that it feels good being the king of all media. Joel (1m 2s): Which leads you into your first shout out, I assume. Chad (1m 6s): Yeah. So, okay. Listeners, we received a really cool message from an industry leader this week and the subject was I've converted. And it goes a little, something like this, I've been a long time, Howard Stern listener, as long as I can remember, my car rides were filled with Stern. I'm going back to the office now a few days a week. And for the last month, I can say the only quote unquote "talk component of my drive has been your show. I think that means I've officially converted away from the king of all media to the Chad and Cheese show. Keep up the great work." Well, we appreciate it. Chad (1m 47s): Big ... where's our big applause at? Joel (1m 50s): I kept going into the lake. I kind of faded into Casey Kasemland there for a second. I remember the letter. So he used to write from listeners. This one comes from a listener out in Toledo, Ohio, Casey. When I first started dating Melissa anyway. Yeah. Shout out for that. That's great. King of all media. Shout out for me for, to Ben Herman, former founder of Canvas, the, I don't know, the three week stint of like drama on our show of what the hell happened at Canvas. Yeah. Well, he's been gone for a while now. He is now the founding partner at Ken Ventures. So any startups out there need some money, give Ben a call. He's apparently got some money to venture. Chad (2m 32s): Big shout out to Phillip Martino over at Factory Fix. I've never heard of this. It's a manufacturing employment platform. So we've got to check that out, Factory Fix. And Jared Donner over at sponsor and friend of the show, Jobvite. Just keep listening, get your peers, listening, your family, listening, everyone, you know, listening. And they can find us wherever they listen to podcasts. Joel (2m 60s): I've had a few Factory Fixed folks connect with me on LinkedIn. So it sounds like we have a new batch of fans there at Factory Fix. So shout out to the entire company! Chad (3m 9s): Dig it! Joel (3m 9s): Shout out for me to Troy Polamalu. I'm sneaking in some NFL shout outs. Chad (3m 15s): He's got great hair. Joel (3m 16s): He does have great hair and he apparently did a little deal with Fiverr last week, if you were going to Fiverr and maybe some of you were, he was out there doing some gigs, he was doing tattoos on himself. He was doing voiceovers, all kinds of good stuff. So, you know, the sports athlete endorsement remains strong and in our industry, shout out to Troy Polamalu, football strong safety, Hall of Famer, Troy. Chad (3m 41s): Oh, nice. Very nice. Well, I've been busy lately and I'd like to shout out to Prez Berendt and the crew over at Talent Alpha for having me join them on their human cloud webinar discussion today, it was pretty awesome. We had Barry Matthews who's the CEO of Open Assembly. He was over in London, Prez in Krakow, and here I was in good old Columbus, Indiana talking about a more open definition for work in systems and how we're actually going to make something like that happen. So if you want to check it out, it was an awesome discussion. You can check it out at talent-alpha.com. Joel (4m 19s): We're going to need a whole new section for your webinar appearances, seems to be a weekly thing. Shout out to Brian Chaney. I know we give a Indeed a lot of grief on the show, but they have some good people working there. Brian is one of the more well-known he is leaving the company after six years of being in their global employment brand guy. No word on his next steps. Although he did say in a LinkedIn post that he will still be trying to get people jobs, just not with Indeed.com. Brian, good luck to you and shout out. Chad (4m 55s): No reflection on Brian, but how often have we heard that in the last like five plus years of individuals who are like inside the Trump administration? Yeah. Oh yeah, he's in, but he's a good guy. It's you know, it's kind of like the evil empire that's, I don't get it. Anyway shout out to Madeline Laurano for inviting me to the high volume hiring webinar discussion yesterday. That's right the hits just keep on rolling kids. Thanks to the Fountain team for pulling it all together. The world of work is changing at speed systems, processes, regulations. I mean, all that shit hopefully will follow quickly because the great awakening is happening and we'll be talking about it on the pod today. Chad (5m 41s): If you want to check out the recording, go to get.fountain.com. Okay. Joel (5m 47s): And speaking of Lightspeed, Chad, our buddies at Paradox this week were named the fastest growing company in HR tech 2021, Deloitte technology, fast 500. And they're also the fastest growing company in the great state of Arizona. So to all of our friends out at Paradox, congratulations and shout out to you. In addition to that, Chad, we got some free shit. Chad (6m 9s): Ooh. Joel (6m 10s): You know how we do, we do shirts by Emissary. And by the way, I went to our buddies at Emissary and I said, guys, we're a little bit short of shirts. It's the holiday season. Can we do another batch of Chad and Cheese t-shirts and they gladly said yes. So shout out to Euan and the Emissary crowd, I'll be sending out shirts during the holidays. And we got some free time next week, which I think we'll talk about in a second. But yeah, some free shirts are going back out, but if you, if you don't have your free shirts, you need to go to Chadcheese.com/free. We have our beer drop winner this past month sponsored by Pillar that's Jeanette Leads. Joel (6m 54s): A lot of listeners will know her from an interview, I think we did at HR tech a few years ago and we do whiskey sponsored by Sovren and Chad you remember the free Pappy sponsorship promo that we did last year with Sovren. Everyone remembers that. Chad (7m 11s): Yeah, I remember it because I didn't get a fucking bottle. That's what I remember. Joel (7m 19s): Yeah, we got Jack shit. But this year I'm going to give you a little hint as to who our sponsor is and what we're giving away. sfx (7m 28s): Welcome to all things Scottish, our slogan is if it's no Scottish it's crap. Joel (7m 33s): That's right. Our friends at Candidate ID, Adam Gordon, he's getting a little sick of so much bourbon talk and this American shit, when his brown water is the original, the OG. It's been around longer than we've been a country. So he's like, guys, let's do some scotch this holiday season. And we are obliging him, coming soon, free scotch. We'll share it via email, everyone of our listers, but we're real excited to have some Peated good, good stuff this year in the form of scotch that big, thanks to Candidate ID, Adam and family for sponsoring that giveaway. Joel (8m 12s): Again, kids, Chadcheese.com/free for a lot of our free shit. Chad (8m 18s): Three winners this year. And I want Europe to know you guys are in this. Get in the free, get all in the free. There's there's a good opportunity here. Do we have birthdays? That's the question. Joel (8m 33s): We do have birthdays. We've got some heavy hitting birthdays. sfx (8m 38s): Happy Birthday! Chad (8m 38s): Wait. All right. Joel (8m 40s): Let's start with Quincy Valencia, super friend of the show. She celebrates a birthday coming up. Jen Levine Riley, Katrina Polanski, Tracey Harmon and Jennifer Sheridan, fans of the show and industry icons, Tony Lee, Matt Charney, and Kevin Wheeler all celebrate birthdays this week! Guys and gals, another trip around the sun. Happy Birthday to those folks. Chad (9m 7s): And just for all of you out there who remember Licensed to Ill by the Beastie boys actually dropped turns 35, November 15th. Joel (9m 22s): And your favorite song from that album is? Chad (9m 26s): Paul Revere. Joel (9m 27s): Okay. Okay. I'm going to go Brass Monkey on that. Chad (9m 31s): Funky monkey. Joel (9m 32s): I might've said Girls, but I might get canceled if I say two at a time. I want girls with new wave hairdos. I want girls. We also have a fantasy football update Chad. We can't leave the week without that. And yeah, this is the highlight for you. All right. Here's our fantasy football leaderboard sponsored by poach.ai and the number one spot to the end. We have number one, Jason Mamoa Putnam. Number one, there we got Q dog Quincy Valencia making her second second mentioned in the show. Number three is your boy Cheese. Joel (10m 13s): That's the guy talking leaderboard right now. Benjamin Button Kuntz, Christy Crescent Moon, Chris Hemsworth Russell, Michael Jordan Cox, Pete Townsend Suchi, Bill and Ted Fanning. And last but not least, Chad. Chad (10m 31s): Dude, Michael Cox tried losing last week. He tried, he had Chubb in, Chubb was out because of COVID. Right? So I mean, it was like, it should have been mine, but this, for some reason, this Chad and Cheese football season, I've been kicked in the nuts so many times. Yeah. Thanks Michael. Thanks for kicking the nuts, man. Joel (10m 50s): Yeah. Yeah. Matt Stafford's decide to have the worst game of the year in my matchup with Ben Coons that a deep six, me and my chances of beating him. But anyway, I'm having fun playing some fantasy football. And if you didn't, if you haven't listened yet, make sure you check out Mr. ATS this week on the podcast. And speaking of sad, trombone sounds we got news out of Europe today. Chad, no Euro trip for you or at least no conference gangsta. COVID our trip to Europe or at least mine has been canceled. Joel (11m 29s): You are still going and you might, there's some silver lining to yours. You'll be in Paris instead of Belgium. But anyway, for those that were excited to see us in Europe, for those who were going to the conference, it is going to be rescheduled. We don't have that date yet, but needless to say, I will be in the great USA celebrating one of our great holidays, Thanksgiving. Eating, watching football and napping while you're in Paris. Chad (11m 56s): You're going to be in hog heaven let's just put it that way. You're going to be in a recliner, watching NFL football, eating a drumstick turkey, drumsticks turkey leg. You're going to be fine. You're gonna be fine. Joel (12m 15s): And I'm going to get a refund on my ticket, I think. Chad (12m 20s): Topics! Joel (12m 20s): All right. It was a busy week this week. So close to Thanksgiving. All right, let's talk earnings from recruit holdings. One of the world's largest staffing firms reported revenue rose 23.2% and this fiscal second quarter ending September 30th revenue and it's quote HR technology and quote segment, which includes our buddies at Indeed and Glassdoor rose a whopping 107.3% year over year in the second quarter. As measured in us dollars, the increase was 100.1%. The company said, quote, "the limited supply of job seekers, looking for work combined with significant hiring demand, continued to increase competition for talent on Indeed and Glassdoor. Joel (13m 5s): And that competition was a significant driver of growth in Q2. Stop me if you've heard this one before, also out of recruit holdings, they say it's a time to ditch the resume. Recruit Holdings says it has a solution to the labor shortage. Get rid of the damn resumes CEO, Hisayuki Idekoba said, quote, "the hiring process is still resumes. Sending resumes, checking resumes" end quote. He added this as a great opportunity for us to move forward from old school and commit resume profile culture to asking what can you do? And instead recruit, suggest posing questions and assessment tests to job seekers, to see if they know how to navigate the specific tasks the job will require." Joel (13m 51s): And added, there are a huge amount of people who can't write resumes or don't have the skills to fill one out. Chad Recruit gave us a lot to talk about this week. What were your takeaways? Chad (14m 5s): I wonder how much revenue they would've pulled in if they hadn't started suffocating Glassdoor, what about a year or two ago? Right? If they actually had products to sell over at Glassdoor. I mean, they could have actually pushed more revenue, I believe. When it comes to this killing the resume thing. Yeah. There's no question, we need to get to a skills based type of a system. You know, he actually said quote, "hiring processes need to adapt to the times." Yeah, no kidding. But you took a search engine and regressed it back into a 1990s job board. sfx (14m 47s): Oh hell no. Joel (14m 48s): Yeah. He's back to the future to job boardland talking about ditching the resume. Chad (14m 54s): Well then he goes into state the obvious a degree for a job in restaurants. No shit. Job descriptions for restaurants that haven't been updated for 20 years yet. No shit. I mean, is that the best you got? We all know this, but what this all came down to for him really was it seemed like a paid ad to be able to talk about the new Indeed elixir, you know, pose questions in our interview system. Chat-based hiring process for drivers. Seriously, this dude is nothing more than an overpaid carnival barker. Joel (15m 34s): Dude, killing the resume has gotten headlines for 15 years. So yeah, it's just a recycling recycling a classic. So yeah, the company has a printing machine that just prints money. Baby. Life is good there and it's going to be good for the foreseeable future 10 years from now. Probably not so much, but Hey, for the next 12 months, it's boats and hoes baby. Secondly, like I said, the resume is dead narrative has been around for a long time. You and I remember Visual CV. Do you remember those guys ever going to kill the resume back in 2006 or so? Chad (16m 7s): Yes. Joel (16m 8s): Yeah, no. You know, for white collar jobs, the CV isn't going anywhere, parsing and analyzing and the technology around resumes and how they're, you know, how they're chopped up and understood will evolve because schools are gonna keep teaching resume writing. Chad (16m 21s): For frontline workers, however, you know, did they really have a resume to begin with? I know, I sure didn't when I was working front line shit back in, back in the eighties and nineties, I remember filling out an application which was kind of like a resume and turning it into the store manager. That's still the case now, except it's an online application and maybe there's some screening questions and some shit there, but I mean, resume or application not much has changed. And I don't think Indeed is going to change that anyway. I think the bigger threat to the resume is the gig economy where people perform jobs on contract, they get reviews, they get stars, you know, they get badges and whatever else. Joel (17m 3s): I mean, that's going to be much more impactful than, you know, the Indeed style pre-screening questions and anything that they're going to be dropping over the next few years, Chad (17m 13s): Everything he talked about was old shit. It's at least 10 years old. And now that Indeed's doing it, it's like, oh, this is, this is a warp speed. Good. No big fucking deal. I was on again, two webinars this week that was talking about different systems that will engage and get individuals into jobs tomorrow. I don't know they're going to continue to make money because talent acquisition is afraid to change. They are risk averse and they will continue to apply money to, that's why the resume still exists because because of old non adopting HR people. Joel (17m 58s): Yeah. It would be better for Indeed to launch like a Kinko's clone and sell resume printing services on high grade burgundy paper or whatever tacky paper. All right, enough with Recruit Holdings, let's work our way to Workato interview based Workato. They automate work, Workato, get a job. It took about four YouTube videos for me to find out exactly how to pronounce Workato to make sense. But anyway, they closed a 200 million series E this week that values the company at $5.7 billion. I'm going to save you the unicorn soundbite this week. Chad (18m 36s): Thank God! Joel (18m 37s): The enterprise platform allows it's more than 11,000 customers to automate business and workflow processes. The new funding comes just nine months after Workato raised a $110 million series D. The company has raised more than $420 million in total funding to date. In addition to helping automate multiple segments of a business Workato promises, its HR automation tools can improve everything from time to hire, user experience onboarding and offboarding. Chad, what you got on Workato. Chad (19m 7s): I think HR and talent acquisition have seen the bright, shiny AI for so long they don't know what RPA is and RPA is the bomb. I mean, there are so many tasks within an organization that do not need human eyes or hands on it, including recruiting, onboarding, nurturing and the list goes on. This is the type of broad based business system that we need to start to do one of two things either see how we can get bigger business to buy it for us, because this is way too big for fucking HR or look for platforms in our space who are emulating this. Chad (19m 52s): The CEO and co-founder told TechCrunch right now, we're focused on and making Workato the company you think of when you think of integration and automation. Those two words, integration and automation, that is the future of just about every aspect of business that we're looking at today. So I felt like this was an important company to talk about because of the business aspect and how we could perspectively ride that wave. Joel (20m 20s): Did we talk to a, was it Max that we talked pretty in-depth about RPA? Chad (20m 25s): Yeah. Yeah. Talk Push is really focused heavily on RPA. Joel (20m 27s): Yeah. So if you wanted to hear a little bit more about that, check out our archives at chadcheese.com to learn more about RPA. So I had to dig a little bit to find out how Workato supported hiring. To me it sounded a lot like if you remember the company, if, if this, then that iftt.com where you just set up, basically RSS feeds to connect with each other, which is kind of what they do, but I didn't know exactly how it worked with HR. So one, one issue in particular, an article they wrote entitled 'HR automation, what it is and how you can implement it' really helped me understand the value proposition. To me. It just, it's simply a Workato sounds like IFTT in a more structured way that's more digestible for companies and it obviously works. Joel (21m 10s): They have a ton of clients, they are getting a ton of money and investment. The question for me is will Workato replace all the specialized solutions out there to be an all encompassing automation platform. For some companies, IT is going to say, oh, Workato can do that so we don't need fill in the blank startup or solution in our space. That's probably a weak HR department In many cases, I think more we'll fight for the employment specific apps that are built just for hiring, as opposed to slapping on some Workato, what they call recipes on their site, which is really cute. You can create little recipes for.... Chad (21m 52s): IFTT. That's what they called theirs. Joel (21m 52s): Yeah. So, so if you're into recipes and cutesy stuff, Workato is probably for you. I think if you're a more serious, serious company, you're probably gonna want specific solutions that fit your specific needs. Chad (22m 7s): Once again, we've got to take a look at the trends, the business trends that are happening within our organization. And again, try to mimic what's happening. There's a reason why it's happening. Joel (22m 17s): All right, next up, we have Rippling Chad (22m 21s): Rippling Joel (22m 22s): Not ripple the stuff we used to drink in the early nineties. Power to the employee! Last month, Rippling announced it raised 250 million in funding at a $6.5 billion valuation to continue scaling up its employee management platform, which enables companies to streamline a variety of tasks ranging from worker training to device, cyber security. With Salesforce like ambitions, Rippling hopes to become a one-stop shop for both SMBs and the enterprise to manage their employees, applications and devices, all in one place. The number of customers using the startups application has more than doubled over the last year. Joel (23m 6s): That's according to TechCrunch while annual recurring revenue increased by 270% off an undisclosed base, undisclosed based. Anyway, Rippling has an employee first approach, Chad, what's that all about? Employee first approach. Chad (23m 19s): If you read into this TechCrunch article, there is so much signaling that's happening here. I like seeing Conrad sending a shot over the Salesforce bow, which was incredibly calculated. In a couple of ways, first compare your company to a mega successful brand. I mean that's not a bad thing, right? We're just like Salesforce. Then call them out to hope that they start paying attention to you for the prospect of who knows acquisition? Because there probably aren't many companies out there that would want, or like to acquire a Rippling. It's pretty much like a little boy who hits the little girl on the playground. Chad (24m 3s): He only wanted attention. It's not a bad strategy, but I think it was a pretty transparent, but one that investors like. The Salesforce comparison, tying customer IDs together with tying candidate or employee IDs together in a single system, sounds like a great idea until you start digging into all of the layers of tech and also antiquated systems that currently hold the employee records. I think this guy obviously has done this before. This is not his first rodeo when it comes to tech. So he knows all the steps and you can see it! Right here. This is not something that is easy. Chad (24m 44s): He's making it sound easy. He's talking about no code, which I think is awesome. The problem with no code situations, are implementation, and continuing to keep those implementation through maintenance tight, to make sure that they're not breaking all the time. So yeah, at the end of the day, will this change anything in our industry? I don't think so. I don't think it's going to change much. Joel (25m 5s): By the way. No code for my money is Pearl Jam's most underrated album. I just want to throw that in there. Yeah. This is a really hard thing to do. No, one's really done it. LinkedIn could probably do it or get as close, but they want to be a walled garden and don't want to do that. I remember talking to iCIMS three years ago and they were going to have like an iCIMS passport where your resume would seamlessly, you know, apply to everything and every ATS and every job board. Chad (25m 35s): Blockchain. Joel (25m 36s): And we haven't really heard much from that initiative in awhile. So yes, a very hard thing to do. I want to talk about Parker Conrad for a second. Cause the dude is a piece of work. So number one, he has customer support on his LinkedIn profile as opposed to co-founder, CEO, which to me is just really douchey. It's like a recruiter saying I'm a, I'm a sourcing ninja or I'm a boolean, you know, ninja. Chad (26m 4s): It's not that bad. Joel (26m 6s): It's pretty close. So he's got customer support on his LinkedIn profile. So dude, co-founded Zenefits in 2012. Talk about a train wreck. For those who don't know Zenefits sold software, they still do, to automate health insurance, payroll, and other HR functions for small businesses. They raised about $580 million in about two years, valuing the company at 4.5 billion, which back then in 2015 was like, unheard of. I know we talk about those kinds of valuations every week, but back then it was pretty non-existent. So then shit hit the fan. Zenefits hired too many people, grew too fast and the company culture spiraled out of control. Joel (26m 50s): How out of control you ask? There were rumors of sex and used condoms in the company's Valley headquarters stairwell in February of 2016. Chad (26m 59s): Like monster.com back then. Joel (26m 60s): Conrad resigned amid concerns that Zenefits rollercoaster-like growth was juiced by giving the finger to regulatory laws governing who is and who isn't allowed to sell insurance. And here we are less than five years later and this cat is back raising the same kind of money. I say good luck to the investors. Does he have the same pool that Jason Goldberg can tap into? I know America loves a good comeback story, but come on man, like Parker Conrad, maybe the worm has turned on you my man, but for my money leopard doesn't change its spots. And I think we'll be talking about Rippling in a few years as another train wreck. Joel (27m 40s): Call me cynical. Let's take a quick break, pay some bills and talk about quitting. Chad (27m 47s): It's quitting time! Joel (27m 47s): America is a nation of quitters. Chad, quit in time, take this job and show it so a lot going on this week with quitters and working and great resignation. Chad (28m 0s): Yep. Joel (28m 1s): Forbes had a great article that sort of encapsulate this encapsulates this that they called "We've become a nation of quitters." 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September, according to the most recent data from the US job openings and labor turnover reported 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September for only one month. This is an enormous amount of people, either quitting their job or switching to a new opportunity. And don't forget the US has 10.4 million job openings at this moment as well. Chad, of all the quitting news this week, what stood out to you? Chad (28m 32s): There's a bunch. And I keep getting asked the same question over and over. What is it? What's that one thing that's making people quit. And it's not one thing. I really think that this is the great awakening. It's not the great resignation. It's not the great reshuffling. We are starting to wake the fuck up as people and people are starting to understand that they wield more power in the workforce. Essential workers finally understood they were essential and their wages didn't reflect it. So, you know, why are people quitting? Chad (29m 11s): Employers wanting employees to come back to the office, that's a good reason. Lack of childcare. Why can't we pass a fucking infrastructure bill for this? I mean, this is big! Wages on average, and this is what everybody's seeing on average CEOs are making 320 times that of an essential worker. Think of this Kroger CEO has a salary of $21 million that represents the wages of 700 essential workers at Kroger. So if the CEO were gone for a month, he probably does it often, by the way, how much do you think that would actually impact Kroger versus taking those 700 essential workers out of the mix? Chad (30m 2s): Right? Joel (30m 3s): Yep. Chad (30m 3s): We're starting to understand. We're looking in the mirror saying, why are we getting fucked? Amazon fined by the state of California for concealing COVID cases, what fucking assholes? Activision and Blizzard back in the news faced another walkout around sexual discrimination. What fucking assholes? Who wants to work for these companies? Then you have the trucking industry who says they're short on truckers, but we have enough truckers about 2 million Americans work as licensed truck drivers. We have CDLs and states issue more than 450,000 new commercial driver's licenses every year. Chad (30m 43s): We don't have a lack of qualified drivers. We have a lack of drivers who want to fucking do the job. Jobs are shitty. We're working for assholes and CEO's just don't give a shit. So that's what I think have brought us to the brink today. Joel (31m 1s): Yeah. You know, people and Americans in particular like simple answers, they like, you know, tweets about explaining something to me. And in this case, it's just not that easy. Chad (31m 12s): No. Joel (31m 12s): Now the inflation issue isn't cut and dry and neither is the work, the work epidemic of quitting and resignation. You've outlined a lot of those very elegantly. I think, you know, you and I get questions a lot about workforce, whatever, when we're at cocktail parties or at a bar, you know, people know what we do. And they're like, what's with everybody quitting? and how do we have so many jobs? And nobody's taking the jobs. And it's like a really hard answer. It's really hard question to answer. But for me, like, you know, quitting, quitting is largely two-sided. One is your frontline workers. And that's where the most of the quitting is happening. Joel (31m 54s): Most of the quitting is happening in your in-person, earning relatively low paid jobs. Chad (31m 60s): Essential workers. Joel (32m 1s): Essential workers. And to me, that's a fairly easy one because of the gig economy, which the article in Forbes really outlines that government data doesn't really take into account contract workers and which is basically gig workers. And if I'm a frontline worker, I'm really open to like driving an Uber, driving a Door Dash, doing Shift, like all the things that I could sort of hustle have my time when I needed it work when I wanted to. And if I can survive on that, as opposed to dealing with, you know, shitty customers and crappy bosses, and I got to go work every day at the same time, and I got to work double shifts and yada, yada, like to me, that's an easy sort of bridge to build as to why those, those positions are so hard to fill. I think the white collar stuff is becoming more difficult to explain. Joel (32m 44s): You mentioned shitty CEO's, you know, I think the Guardian has a great story that was out this week and we've talked about it on the show, where people have multiple jobs, whether that's multiple full-time jobs and the whole work from home phenomenon has enabled people to say, Hey, I've got this job, but hey, I'm also going to hustle on the side, I'm going to do a little Upwork. I'm gonna do a little Fiverr, I'm gonna do a little whatever. And some people are taking that too extreme with having actual multiple full-time employment. I don't know how long that's going to last and how long employees and employers are going to put up with that. I guess, as long as the results are there to keep your job, companies are going to have to get more comfortable with people having multiple full-time jobs. Chad (33m 22s): And should we care about anything more than that though? Joel (33m 25s): I don't think we should, unless it's a competitor, like, you know, if, if someone's working for Indeed and ZipRecruiter, that's probably going to raise some red flags. Chad (33m 33s): Yes. Joel (33m 34s): But if I'm a developer and I'm doing my job and I'm fulfilling my expectations. Chad (33m 38s): Cranking out code. Joel (33m 38s): Yeah, I think employers are probably going to have to get used to that. You know, the Amazon issue, I think is what's funny about, you mentioned how they've agreed to pay $500,000 to better enforce state consumer protection laws. First of all, $500,000 to Amazon is like, you know, when Bezos takes a shit, he's earned $500,000 in interest. Chad (33m 59s): Yes. Joel (33m 60s): On whatever. So that was funny. But I remember back in 2020 when the pandemic was at sort of its height or moving towards that, Amazon said it would give up its entire profits from Q2 of 2020 on worker safety measures and make a sweeping attempt to demonstrate that it is protecting frontline employees, tasked with getting millions of packages to consumers during the pandemic. The company said it would take nearly $4 billion in profit and pour it all into employee safety for COVID measures. Apparently either that didn't happen or didn't really happen as they wanted it to. And it'll be interesting to see if there's some further digging in regards to how Amazon spent the money, or if they even spent it at all or spend it at a level of $4 billion. Joel (34m 48s): So to me, that'll be maybe an unfolding story as we move on. Truckers, that was really interesting to me that we have enough truckers. It's a question of, we, we treat them like shit and the job sucks. So according to the story that we shared in our feed was a third of drivers quit within the first three months on the job. And this reminds me of nursing, which I think the last stat I saw was like only one in four nursing degrees are actually practicing nursing. And those are well-paying jobs as well are in contrast. I mean, you're talking about trucking, like you're on the road forever. You sleep in a truck, you probably have, you got to deal with road rage. Joel (35m 31s): You got to deal with long hours. You got to like take showers in a gas station, you know, bathroom, like that's a shitty job and you'd have to go back to the days of Jimmy Hoffa. Who's a Hoosier, by the way. Anyway, to find when trucking was a great career choice. Chad (35m 48s): Yeah. Joel (35m 48s): That was a long time ago. We talked about Walmart last week, automating and becoming driverless. So the trucking side of it was really interesting to me because you have companies that are realizing, holy shit, we have the supply chain issues. We have stuff in the dock that needs to be shipped. We need to pay better to get people, to drive this shit to where it needs to go. And you're seeing, we're seeing a signup bonuses. You're seeing pretty big increases to the tune of like 25% pay increases for drivers. So, in the same realm that that's happening, you're also having this driverless, you know, revolution. And to me, it's like companies, the more they have to pay truckers to drive the more they have to give incentives and treat them better. Joel (36m 32s): The quicker they're going to say, how quick can we, you know, how fast can we get this driverless truck thing going? Because companies want to get rid of the driver part of the equation as soon as possible. And to me, the sad part is in treating truckers better to get more truckers, there's more incentive to like, fire those truckers and have automated driverless trucks all around the country, which I think is where if my money was going on one side of that bet it would be the driverless trucks as soon as possible. Chad (37m 3s): What kind of existence is that? I mean, you know, maybe if you get a chance to actually be home every night, that's pretty awesome to be with the family, but really what kind of existence is that for a human being? To sit in a truck, eat fucking Cheetos. I mean, it's not, it's not glamorous, right? It's not glamorous. And not every job has to be glamorous, don't get me wrong. But that's why we're seeing so many people getting out. It's not just the wages, it's the job itself. So if we can have automation take over for some of these very shitty jobs and we already have a workforce that we need to push in other areas, fucking do it. Joel (37m 45s): Yeah. And the reason they're leaving trucking is they can get paid the same at a warehouse job or something. Chad (37m 55s): And be home at night. Joel (37m 56s): Yeah and be home at night and have vacation and retirement and dah, dah, dah. I mean that trucking is a really shitty job. Chad (38m 2s): Beating the proverbial dead horse. There's not one reason, but all of these reasons have pretty much had compound interest on the worker. In this case, definitely the American worker for about 40 fucking years. Joel (38m 16s): Jimmy Hoffa, where are you when we need you? Chad (38m 18s): Where are buried guy? Joel (38m 24s): Well, you know what, probably won't be happening in the Metaverse Chad is truck driving, but Metaverse will make its way into other things. And we'll talk about that right after the break. Chad (38m 38s): The Metaverse is everywhere, what the fuck is going on? It just like exploded! Joel (38m 43s): It has. And it's all this perfect storm of like crypto roadblocks, Facebook, and now dating Chad. So no porn this week or strippers, but we have dating in the Metaverse. Chad (38m 53s): OK. Joel (38m 53s): You're welcome everybody popular dating app Bumble said this week, "it is exploring how to integrate the Metaverse and web 3.0. We're both old enough to remember 1.0 and 2.0 Chad, how many point Os we'll see in our life, I guess we'll have to find out. Anyway, they're looking to integrate Metaverse in defining connections with its BFF option. That's best friends for life Chad, in case your daughters have been out of the house for too long. Chad (39m 28s): Best Friends Forever. Joel (39m 29s): What did I say? Best friends for life, whatever. The company recently posted a job offer for someone to lead it's crypto and web 3.0 efforts, while many details about Bumble strategy remain unclear, the Austin based company appears to be taking the Metaverse seriously. Additionally, competitor Tinder also recently discussed a pilot project in South Korea called and you'll love this "Singletown" that has Metaverse elements. Chad, are you ready to be my BFF in the Metaverse? Chad (39m 57s): No, I am not. It reminds me of Ready Player One where everybody's pretty much in the Metaverse and they have the special suits. And I mean, it's just like, how far are we going to go to date? I mean, we're going to date in the Metaverse. Are we just going to meet people there? I mean, I don't understand where reality actually ends or is redefined at this point. Joel (40m 25s): I mean, meeting new people is hard enough in person. Does meeting people as an avatar that's sort of blue with an Afro, make it easier to meet people? I don't know. Chad (40m 35s): This is Second life conversations. Joel (40m 37s): Yeah, I think, it's like second life, a 3.0 instead of 1.0, Chad (40m 41s): With good bandwidth. Joel (40m 44s): So much today makes me feel so old. Whether it's NFTs or crypto or blockchain, or now the Metaverse. I'm longing for the good old days of like, you know, buying a girl a drink and telling her about myself and finding out more about her. That sounds like such an antiquated notion today. But for my children and their children, Metaverse dating might be the thing, man. I think, I think, you know, you've seen the Bill Burr, the Bill Burr stand up where he talks about Americans fucking themselves into extinction? Chad (41m 21s): Yes. Joel (41m 22s): By screwing, you know, robots and everything else. I mean, Chad (41m 26s): Yea, dummies. Joel (41m 26s): He may be onto something. We may be Metaversing and femme-botting and sex robot-ing ourselves into extinction. And that's just our future. Hopefully, probably you and I won't be around for this future. We'll just have to remember the good old days of dating face-to-face. Chad (41m 45s): Yeah, I'm going to lean back on the intro of the movie Idiocracy just watch that. And it feels like it's playing over and over, especially here in America. Joel (42m 2s): Speaking about Idiocracy, did you know that Tiger King season two is out, sfx (42m 6s): Killed her husband whacked him and can't convince me that it didn't happen. Fed em to tigers, they snackin' Chad and Joel (42m 16s): We out, OUTRO (42m 49s): 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.

The world knows Mr. Rogers. Mr. T. And even Mr. Mister if you're of a certain age. But Mr. ATS? Yes, industry veteran Peter Gold has taken up a moniker that a certain podcast cohost dubbed "Mr. VHS" because it seemed so outdated. Well, Gold is on the podcast after that remark and after writing a recent article titled, "Let Them Eat AI," where he decries the trend of artificial intelligence making its way into recruitment technology. If you're on the team that thinks AI is a bunch of malarkey, love a good chat about the past, present, and future of the ATS, and adore a British accent, then this episode is for you. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps forward thinking employers create world class hiring and retention programs for people with disabilities. TRANSCRIPTION COMETH! "00:20.68 Cheese Oh yeah" happy Monday this is your favorite podcast the chad and cheese podcast I'm your co-host Joel Cheesman joined as always by my partner in crime Chad Sowash and today. "00:33.32 Chad Hello." "00:36.64 Cheese We are giddy because u k is in the house Peter gold aka Mr. a t s is here Peter thanks for joining us. Welcome." "00:45.27 Peter Gold Hey Joe thank you very much." "00:50.82 Cheese So Beyond Mr. Ats you've been" you've been around quite a while I know a lot of our listeners will probably know you anyway. But for those who don't who are you. "01:00.68 Peter Gold Who am I Good question. Mr. Ats Well me doesn't that say everything I kind of look at the applicant tracking system it I've been in this world for longer than I care to think and twenty odd years built an Ats many years ago. Tried to fix many times and." "01:04.69 Cheese Says so much and yet nothing." "01:18.76 Peter Gold Still doing it really." "01:18.98 Chad Okay" so Mr. Ats right out of the gate Joel loves talking about branding so let's let's kick this 1 right in the nuts right out of the gate. Mr a s did you do that on purpose to make fun of the industry or did you do that because you. Embrace and love the ats so much. "01:42.55 Cheese It's got to be some good British tongue in cheek right." "01:43.61 Peter Gold But obviously being a thought leader in the world of what you you wanted. The serious answer didn't you being a thought Lee yeah being bit." "01:51.63 Chad Oh I'm sorry" go here I didn't think you were being serious. Go ahead. But. "01:52.17 Cheese Yes." "01:57.92 Peter Gold Obviously being the thought leader in all things ats what else would I call myself I couldn't call myself Mr. applicant tracking system or Mr. e-recruitment system because that's too many words in ah" a url and then. So I just thought yeah that's it. Mr. Ats. It's got to be the only answer this I thought. Mr. Linkedin here is Mr. Linkedin? So I thought well I must be Mr. At s. "02:10.62 Cheese Um" what. "02:17.25 Cheese Okay" how offended were you when chad called you Mr. V h s. "02:22.52 Peter Gold Um" better than when he called me emrats I Have to say. "02:22.68 Chad They." "02:27.10 Cheese Ah" that was that was not nice I'll give you that. "02:28.69 Chad Ah" know was but that that's that yeah but that's your url m rats Dot U K Dot Co O but that's not my fault. Um, so let's talk a little bit about a kicking of the proverbial beehive in the. "02:34.78 Peter Gold I." "02:46.78 Chad Last little short that you did on Mr. ats dot co dot u k called let them eat a I where you pretty much kick ai in the nuts. So. It's almost like the difference between horse and buggy and spaceship right? it's like it's like something that is so crazy out there like ai which you know I there are many discussions and arguments around if ai is really and in tech in recruitment in the first place and then we talk about the ats which is literally. Ah" very small piece of the tech stacks that are around today. So why? why this dissension? Why are you hating within the ranks of recruitment tech. "03:30.66 Peter Gold Um" the figures with ai as as we know it. It's not real yet. Although there are lots of different versions of ai and some people will say. Ah this ai does exist. It's real but the problem is people think that ai is going to solve all the problems I mean only this weekend I dared to comment on. Let the machine do the filtering of the cvs and automatically people go ai won't fix it ai will fix it I didn't even mention ai and I think my problem my problem with all this bullshit around ai is it's not real and it's not actually going to solve the problems that recruiters have and the problem. For me. The biggest problem is we are recruiting today the same way we were recruiting pretty much 20 years ago when I first built an ats and the world as we know has changed dramatically so why the hell are we using an ats badly. "04:15.95 Chad The." "04:27.00 Peter Gold With some fictional ai stuck on top to try and solve a problem that we're not even actually clear what the problem is anymore." "04:31.90 Chad Well" who cares? what the label is first and foremost I mean what ai rpa m l I mean so many acronyms who gives a fuck right? Just as long as we understand what the solution provides and I think the biggest issue that we're having today in our space. Is that we're talking about the tech as opposed to the solution and what it actually does now RPA and whatever that solution is there are some great advantages to be able to provide efficiencies and scale. For recruiters and hiring managers and everybody throughout the entire chain if it's implemented correctly. Would you agree. "05:13.10 Peter Gold Yeah" absolutely and I don't think we use the technology we have today to do a better job and if you look if you look at Amazon okay amazon when was last time you walked into an Amazon store and bought a book or bought a pair of trainers or sneakers as you call them or whatever it may be. You don't you do it all online. "05:18.68 Chad Right? no." "05:28.66 Chad Right." "05:32.29 Peter Gold You go and you select what you want you watch videos. You read user reviews you pick your item you add it to your basket you pay for it. You track it and it turns up yet as recruiters. We don't let people apply for jobs in the same way they apply for. And they they buy things on Amazon. So as an example" if I've got a job. Why don't I have a video of the manager where the manager introduces him or herself and says I'm the manager this is who you'll be working for if you think I'm a bit of a dick then you obviously won't apply for a job but hopefully you won't think I'm a bit of a dick you know and. If you want to apply for the job and you actually think you meet my criteria or our criteria this is the criteria select the time for an interview and we'll interview you and of course everybody will listen go now that won't work because you'll get too many idiot supply. Well you know make it that they if they apply. It's that their cost or whatever it may be but. Use the technology to do a better job to allow the candidates to actually make better decisions and make their own decisions because at the end of the day so often managers or companies. Go oh that person is not right for us based on what? yeah absolutely. "06:36.76 Chad Right? But this is a human problem. Not a tech problem. Yeah." "06:44.55 Peter Gold Yeah" and we don't need ai to do any of that that using a bit of video technology using some screening questions allowing a candidate to select the time for an interview I don't see much ai required there and the problem is because we have all these supposed problems of matching and finding skills and all that malarkey. Because we say oh humans can't do it because they're Biased. We'll throw some ai on top. No don't do that just fix what you've already doing fix the process to make it work rather than try and chuck a I on top that isn't real anyway to fix a problem. You created you humans you configured this problem this shit process. You configured it. The machine didn't configure it itself. We didn't wake up 1 morning. Go hey I'm gonna change myself because I'm not bad enough I can make myself worse. "07:30.83 Cheese Peter I Want to I want to applaud you on 1 of your quotes from your article. It was quote and the peasants know ai alone won't fix a thing indeed ai might not fix anything. We hear a lot and you everyone in this call has been around for quite a while and the. Comment I Hate my Ats comes out of almost every employer's mouth when you start a conversation about their Ats So my question to you is? Why do why? does everyone hate their Ats are there Any Ats is people do love and is this hate. The seed that is sowing all these startups that are getting billion dollar valuations where where's the disconnect here or is there a disconnect." "08:13.28 Peter Gold You could ask the same question about their crm. They'll say the same that they hate their crm and very often for me. It's not the system. That's the problem. It's the configuration of the system. That's the problem and very often back in the days when I was a consultant I would go in. And look at problems within the recruitment process and I would say okay" why is the process like this I don't know would you mean you don't know well it's like that when I joined how long ago did you join for 3 years ago right how long have you had the ats 7 years right so this process is from 7 years ago yeah and you know there's lots of duplication in there. Yeah. So why didn't you change it or didn't know I could or it's not my job or whatever. So the problem is people inherit a bag of shit and that bag of shit just gets to be stinkier over years the more you leave it in that bag. So. It's not the system. "09:01.93 Cheese Is it is it easier to buy new shit instead of fix the shit. That's there is that is that what's going on. It's easier to just write a check and add more shit than it is to fix what's already shitty." "09:13.22 Peter Gold I think this is the problem. What happens is I see people lose faith in their provider. The relationship breaks down and what it becomes is a head banging exercise where the vendor says. Yes" we can change it but we're going to charge you the. Person that's inherited the system says well I didn't want it configuring like that. So why should I pay you to fix it. So ultimately the relationship breaks down and the answer is let's buy a new 1 and of course they then have the whole new project new system the world's going to be wonderful because this is all new. And it's a bit like the Procter and Gamble Heinz ketchup new ketchup all they've done is reduced or new recipe. All they've done is taken 2 grams of salt out of it. But it's all marketing and that's what happens Joel they just buy new because it's the easiest way to try and solve the problem. Because the relationship's broken down I see that over and over again. "10:09.96 Cheese Yeah" you also talk about ah sort of the ceo direction from up top right? And ai I think is is part of that phenomenon where it's a checkbox right? where the ceo says hey I saw this story on Bloomberg or the financial times and we need some ai shit. "10:23.51 Peter Gold Um." "10:28.86 Cheese So go buy some um and if that's the case is ai going to not be a checkbox item at some point. For example” we see you know diversity inclusion as a big checkbox for a lot of companies. And am I right on that where it's something. It's coming from down below and it's it'll pass at some point will ai get to a point where it's not popular anymore. The novelty is gone. It's like SEO in 2000 eleven. "10:55.50 Peter Gold Um" was that a bit of product placement there when you said phenomenon. "10:59.79 Cheese A phenomenon. No" we are not paid for that phenom reference in the question if that's what you're getting. You're such a cynic such a Brit, Jesus. "11:04.15 Peter Gold Okay" and. Ah I think I think eventually yes it will be It's a bit like um when h o analytics was all the thing people were trying to buy separate hr analytics kind of modules and then it eventually became obvious that you just had to merge the analytics into the kind of the platform I think in the same way that. Let's just take an ats can search the database theoretically some still can't and but for those that can that have plugged something a third party search tool into the ats it's just assumed that I can search my database of candidates and that's it nobody says. Has it got ai search in there. Well they probably do actually and but it answer your question I think ai will eventually disappear as a a standalone marketing fray not disappear Beyond I mean and it will become part of the system where people will expect the usability to be improved. They'll expect the usability to be more predictive. Um and a bit like you know when you use gmail if you use gmail it will start giving you suggestions on the rest of your sentence as you're typing and that's the kind of thing we'll start seeing in the systems I believe that it. "12:15.88 Cheese So so Seo is kind of a good analogy here right? like when when people started building optimized job pages and optimized career sites eventually. The ats has said oh we can do that we can make our pages open to google." "12:28.37 Peter Gold Um" yeah. "12:32.45 Cheese Or when everything was mobile and you had to get a third party to create a mobile site eventually. The ats is said oh we can build a responsive site you think ai will be similar to that gotcha." "12:38.00 Peter Gold Yeah" yeah yeah yeah. "12:41.83 Chad So First and foremost ats has really been the scapegoat over the years right for this bag of shit that somebody built in in some cases. It could perform the tasks that the organization needed to do. They just didn't. Know really the system itself. Even the the administrator of said platform didn't know what was going on I mean I've run into that over the years the big question is we have so many different pieces of tech today I mean we really have a tech stack and the applicant tracking system in itself. Is a very very minute piece of how all of that actually works because there are so many different layers. So, the question I have is why aren't we actually focusing on the different variations of technologies that need to be put in place to achieve. The goal that you need as a solution for an hr department or ta department. Whatever why aren't we focusing on that and moving the conversation forward as opposed to having a nineteen ninety s conversation about an applicant tracking system which literally is a very small piece minute piece. Of the technical stack that we have today." "13:58.35 Peter Gold I think that's exactly what is happening and I think as people like workday and oracle and sap they are building their marketplaces because they're saying actually the core element of the that's called of the ats is just purely about data control. It's about a bit of workflow. It's about. Some data control and it's giving the recruiter yeah compliance and it gives the recruiter access to the system. The lie manager the hiring manager of the candidates. The third party suppliers such as agencies. They will never go to." "14:19.20 Chad Compliance And yeah." "14:35.18 Peter Gold What we'll call the ats there will be something else plugged in and it it becomes more like an iphone where there's the core system which is the ats which is where which will become part of your big platform your hcm platform and then the real. The real interest is where. All of the plugins happen whether it be video or let's say search and match or whatever it may be the career site piece might be third party to make it more user. Friendly. The hourly paid hiring piece social media marketing any of those things they will just sit around the compliance engine." "15:02.99 Chad The." "15:11.33 Peter Gold And that compliance engine will be dumbed down and you could argue that the likes of workdays Ats and S aps Ats is already dumbed down which is why they have big marketplaces but I would argue that's been a ah smart strategy. It's like we don't want to build the best highly functional." "15:17.86 Chad Yes" yeah. "15:28.58 Peter Gold Recruitment platform in the world. We just need the core element and we'll plug things in and that then questions where does that leave the niche standalone ATSes because obviously page of people just bought or buying EArcu allegedly looking at what's happening. Company's house." "15:41.89 Chad Um" well you have you have applicant tracking systems that let's say for instance iCIMS is not an applicant tracking system. It's not it is a it is a tech stack with a marketplace attached. "15:44.29 Peter Gold Where does that's another 1 gone into a platform." "15:50.96 Peter Gold Yeah" platform. "15:59.58 Chad But they already have texting ability. They have matching ability. They have all these different abilities. So, it's not an applicant tracking system anymore although standardization from Nineteen ninety we call it an applicant tracking system I think these are different methodologies and and being able to get the same thing done ifap." "16:00.37 Peter Gold Yeah." "16:19.16 Chad Wants to build a more robust marketplace so that they don't actually have to develop it themselves makes a hell of a lot of sense. But then you have the iCIMS of the world who they're taking a different angle where they have a marketplace and they're also developing tech stacks variations of tech stacks. So the question is today." "16:25.10 Peter Gold Um" yeah. "16:38.71 Chad For that talent acquisition professional. That's out there who continues to look in the mirror and hate themselves. But they blame the Ats How do they fucking fix this." "16:48.58 Peter Gold For me" they've got to go back to the basics and say what are we trying to achieve here and how can we improve what we've got to help us move closer to what we need to achieve. So for example if you're hiring people to stack shelves. Why do I need. To go through a forty five minute application form why don need to scroll and scroll and scroll and answer loads and loads of questions that shouldn't be the case but there are some retailers are getting right mean. For example my daughter applied for a job with 1 of the big grocery stores over here because she's she's a student within 2 weeks. She started 2 weeks. "17:21.73 Chad Me." "17:27.60 Peter Gold Applying to starting. That's how it should be yet I know of other retail organizations where 2 weeks you would probably wouldn't even get your application form looked at so the first thing for me is to say what have we got? What do we need to achieve and is what we've got. Optimize to its maximum to help us move in that direction and rather than the talent acquisition person being told. Ah" but that's the way we've always done it well that was before we're now after the pandemic we're during the pandemic the worlds changed. You can't recruit. In 2043 as if it's still 2015 and so that's the first thing I would be looking at what I've got and saying how can I improve it because I can guarantee you can improve what you've really got without spending a lot of money without adding ai on top. "18:15.42 Chad Yeah I take it I take it a step further and say how do I blow this motherfucker up and build from ground zero because more than likely you have an old process methodology for a ton of different reasons right." "18:28.51 Peter Gold Yeah." "18:33.17 Chad Whether it was built 10 years ago yada Yada whether it's the same process methodology for a sales manager that it is for somebody who's stocking the shelves I mean it to me today. We just need to blow it up and start from ground zero." "18:47.20 Peter Gold Agree but you can't always do that. So if you can't blow it up then at least you can improve because for some reason some organizations are saying you just can't go and blow it up So prove what you've got or start with saying what if I blew it up but you have to you can still make changes without blowing it up entirely." "18:50.95 Chad Why not just." "19:06.22 Peter Gold Sometimes internal politics dictate that you've got to play a bit of a game and you've got to do a little bit at a time and so that's what I That's ah" a bare minimum blowing it all up is ah is I Yeah love you from the military and you're American I Mean that's what you do But yeah but without blowing. "19:20.46 Chad Ah" good point. "19:25.76 Peter Gold And up entirely. You can still make improvements." "19:27.49 Cheese Peter I want to pivot back to marketplaces for second and you mentioned it's sort of being like an iphone and I feel like right now things are pretty hunky dory with the Marketplaces consumers get the products they want. Um." "19:34.61 Peter Gold Now." "19:40.89 Peter Gold Um." "19:45.90 Cheese ATSes have a broader feature set and the vendors are happy because they're getting access to more customers but the iphone as we've seen has a dark side right? Whether it's we're taking too much profit from what you're selling to. We're just going to copy the popular apps. And just make them our own and we're seeing a little bit of that with ats is now where companies are white labeling certain features or now you know carrying more money from vendors where does the Market. What is what do marketplaces and ATSes look like say 5 years from now. And would you agree that there is a ah dark component to where this thing might go." "20:25.24 Peter Gold Yes there's definitely a dark component and not all marketplaces are equal and not all members of those marketplaces are equal either. So what I mean by that is there are what onces a third -party vendor is heavily integrated with the core system. it' a bit like you drive a calf off the fore court and it depreciates overnight you implement you go live with that integration and potentially it's out of sync with both systems almost overnight because it's almost hardcoded so you've then got other partners in that marketplace that aren't. Standard integrations and they're not supported by the vendor. They're just ah" here's our api the way you go build a custom integration. So first of all marketplaces are not as great and equal as you think and yes there is a dark side and those dark that dark side is. Very dark the bigger you go so the bigger you go hcm wise the more you pay for the privilege in some scenarios. So it's not as yeah there's the outside looking in. Oh we've they've got a marketplace and they've got all these vendors in there. Fantastic. We'll buy that ats and then come come. Day when you say let's go implement. Well it's going to take a bit longer than plan because you want four of our integration partners that aren't really integrated but we call them integrated so there's all that element to think about 5 years’ time who knows who knows ai will fix it all in 5 years time of course "21:46.56 Cheese Yeah" and also yeah so I think what you're saying with with some of the vendors are like well we'd rather be our own platform and you know chad and I talk about. You know the seekouts of the world or the paradoxes of the world basically recreating what it means to go through the hiring process and the funnel and managing candidates. Do you see a day where the ats is take a backseat to some of these new platform wannabees if you will or these guys. Snake oil salesmen and they're going to fade in the ether at some point. "22:25.34 Peter Gold I think a bit of both I think taking you know just workday as an example" they will focus on having their core compliance engine call it recruitment platform. Whatever with good connections with third -party systems and over time they will be able to eradicate the. Competitor ats is in their client base because they'll say well hang on you've got you've invested in workday single strategy. Um and therefore you should take our recruitment system and we know it's not as good as Whatever else you've got but you plug in these genuine integrations. Third -party platforms. Whatever all the kind of the paradoxes this world who take over all of the modern candidate experience piece therefore why do you need your specialist a yes. So absolutely I think I think the danger lies not for the let's call them the app. Vendors or the isvs the likes of paradox the likes of higher view I don't think the danger lies for them I think the danger lies in the middle. Those those people in the middle that are standalone ats vendor that are not big enough to take to to do all of the integrations because it takes time and effort etc. They've probably been around a long time. "23:34.69 Chad M." "23:36.78 Peter Gold And I think that's the piece that will disappear and it will be interesting and then actually if you're a small organization will get to the point say well if I've got 2 or 3 specialist products that do most of the hiring process. Why do I even need what we used to call an ats I don't and it's the middle that will get squeezed." "23:53.33 Chad So what about organizations like eightfold who have taken a shit ton of cash and to be quite Frank They can't be seen as anything other than really a competitor for an applicant tracking system right now. So are those the types of I mean that." "23:57.27 Peter Gold Um." "24:12.99 Chad Is new more of the newer technology. Do do o those unicorns per se get squeezed." "24:18.49 Peter Gold Well they are of course the ai ats and so or do they squeeze from the other end. Do they squeeze from the front back and and reverse into a workday or an oracle or an s a or an iCims or smart recruiters." "24:29.16 Chad Ah." "24:38.36 Peter Gold Do they? So do they actually really sit at the front and they actually compete in some ways with Phenomenon beamery in that let's call it. The talent marketplace is is that where they sit and is that actually where the future is and their unicorn horn keeps getting bigger." "24:43.62 Chad The." "24:56.89 Peter Gold As they take more of that Frontend Market share. Do they absorb the lights of paradox. Do they absorb the likes of higher view into their ecosystem." "25:03.71 Chad So you mentioned unicorns in the in the article. So I'm gonna a quick excerpt. So with all the money being thrown at hr tech the unicorns will eventually need to show a return hence the tech ain't cheap. And the more shiny new tech. We plug into the ats the more money ta needs just to make it all work and as Joel said before and we peasants know ai alone won't fix a thing indeed ai might not ever. Fix anything so we're seeing a frothy Market. We're seeing money being thrown at these unicorns and we're looking at ta throwing money back into the system where where's it all going right. That's the question because everything we're talking about right now is really just fucking chaos. Where's this going right." "26:01.67 Peter Gold Well I think that's a good question I don't think it's going right? anywhere at the moment. It's kind of and um" what is required to fix it I think the problem is there's so much tech and talent acquisition have budgets from 2010 yeah and so. "26:16.45 Chad Yeah" yeah. "26:19.11 Peter Gold You can't you can't expect a business department unit call it what you will to keep on doing things better with technology but not give them any money because these unicorns need to get a return so therefore their text not cheap and if their text's not cheap. The only way I can get it is to have a bigger budget. But then you. And so how do you pay for that and for me the the business will go. Okay I'll go and survey my internal managers and say how great is our in-house recruitment department. How great are they finding as people and unfortunately they're going to not get a very good review. So therefore the business eventually will say well Amazon don't have any front people they don't have any people doing that customer service piece at the front of Byger process. So why do we have people recruiters doing the bit that they do and for me. Tech will replace a lot of the human element because a lot of the frontend piece recruitment is highly transactional and if you take the humans out of that piece and let's just say we can get tech configured in the right way to allow candidates." "27:14.51 Chad Ah." "27:24.46 Peter Gold To actually get through the process and good and the quality candidates get through the right matcher candidates the diverse range of candidates get through the process then if you can get technology to do that the way you pay for. It is by getting rid of some of the people Now you can't hire. You can't find good recruiters. Whatever they look like these days anyway because they're all riding unicorns at the moment." "27:35.58 Chad Um" yeah. "27:44.28 Peter Gold So therefore if they don't Exist. You can't hire what doesn't exist. So it's no there's no point saying oh well if you put technology out of people. You're taking people out jobs that's Bollocks. You can't get the people so you're not taking people out jobs because they're not filling the jobs anyway. So that to me is where you got to start seeing the the move and then. When you get to the human element of the line manager saying we need to discuss these 3 interviews and we need to make sure that we need to police the process with human intervention. That's where in-house recruitment offer the most value because that's the piece she probably wouldn't want to automate and it's just understanding. What can be automated realistically to allow you to take people out the equation that don't exist because there's not enough them around and actually give the people that you have got in the right steps doing the bit that technology realistically can't do very well." "28:32.23 Chad Yeah." "28:33.34 Cheese All right? Peter I'm going to throw some British cynicism at you I'm going to turn the tables a little bit here so you are Mr. Ats so it seems like it's in your best interest to poohpooh all the great technology to poo-poo automation. Um" to poohpooh taking people out of the equation who are your customers like isn't it a little fair to say that you're anti all this stuff because you are Mr. ats and at some point you don't want to become Mr. ai or Mr. conversational ai or Mr. fill in the blank. "29:08.36 Peter Gold No" not at all. It's always it's evolution and so what I'll do I'll e evolve into Mr. Conversational ai once I've killed all the ATSes off. So it's just part of and grand master plan. "29:18.91 Cheese Ah, you heard it here. Folks Peter's going to kill all the all the ATSes. Mr. Ats thanks for coming on the show. Peter. "29:25.88 Chad And that is Peter gold Mr. ATS dot co dot u k peter if people are listening today and they haven't connected with you. Where's the best way for them to connect with you and also to. Read up on your stuff." "29:43.75 Peter Gold Well if they want to read about recruitment stuff. They can go to WWW dot MRATS dot code at U K if they want to talk about more interesting stuff. Just go to gravel biking dot code U K because I spend more time on my bike than I do talking about technology." "30:00.44 Cheese And that'll be our next show everybody until then Peter Thanks for joining us Chad we out." "30:06.61 Chad We out."

Have you hugged a veteran today? As we record on Veterans Day, Drill Sergeant Sowash breaks down ways to go beyond "Thank you for your service" and personally honoring vets you know. Reality check over! On this week's show, the boys talk about: Bullhorn's wallet share acquisition with cube19 Fountain springs a geyser Buy or sell? w/ Mogul, Seasoned, and Hirewell Walmart shows us that truck driving may not be a long-term career choice The show ends on a high note - pun intended - with the GOP apparently leading the charge on the legalization of marijuana. Profits over politics, kids! Just so No was so '80s anyway. Like, gag me with a spoon. 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): eneHide 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. In Texas, a monkey belonging to a UT football coach's stripper girlfriend bit a child on Halloween. Hey, Texas gunna Texas y'all. Hi kids, it's your favorite Cowboys and you are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost Joel "steers and beers" Cheeseman. Chad (41s): This is Chad "robo driver" Sowash. Joel (44s): And on this week, show Bullhorn prefers cubed over crushed, Fountain wants to help hourly workers, but they'd better not be a delivery driver at Walmart and a little buy or sell kids. Let's do this. sfx (58s): Holy Jesus. What is that? What the fuck is that? Joel (1m 4s): All right. So that, that intro wasn't what I originally wanted to do. I wanted to do sort of a nice little Veteran's Day homage thank you. And I ran it by Chad, as I do most things before the weekly show and, and he squashed it. Chad, what's up with that. Why do you hate Veteran's Day so much? Chad (1m 23s): Probably went along with me, squashing it because I am a veteran. I would assume that's probably the reason. sfx (1m 28s): No shit. Chad (1m 29s): So first off I want you on all of our listeners out there to understand and take this with the love that I'm sending it. Okay. Just so you know, this is all good vibes and this is education. So sit down, open your ears, open your heart a little bit. So when you say like, thank you for your service, what's the end game there? I mean, why do you say it? Joel (1m 53s): I mean, I think it's an acknowledgement of, I appreciate what you've done and the service that you've you've made to the country. I don't think that it's in a negative connotation. Chad (2m 3s): I say it was a negative connotation. I said, who, I mean, do you think that you were actually doing it for the veteran or yourself? Because I think most people do it for themselves and they get that hit of oxytocin for the day and they check their box and they thank their veteran on Veteran's Day. So here are a couple of things that I would suggest that you do instead of just saying, thank you for your service. First and foremost how about sitting down for a coffee and learning more about that person and how their military experience actually shaped them? I mean, if you care and you really want to thank them, then buy them a cup of coffee and have a chat and you know, it might be an uncomfortable conversation, but it's not about you, right? Chad (2m 45s): It's about the individual that you're, trying to, again say thank you to. And then number two, do number one more than just on Veteran's Day, do it regularly. So when you came out and said, Hey, I want do a thank you for your Veteran's Day thing my head kind of dropped because it's like, look, this isn't a one day thing. they're over there and they are there every single fucking day. So to thank them on one day, really kind of sticks in most veterans craw. And again, but it's good for the person who's saying it. So I just, say, I just thank them for their service and now I've checked my box for the day. Right. So think about them more than you think about you. Chad (3m 26s): The oxytocin hit is awesome. I totally get that personally. I would rather have uncomfortable conversations around, I don't know, the defense budget and how we spend more than the next nine countries combined and what we can actually do to help homeless veterans, or maybe, I don't know, give veterans healthcare as opposed to, you know, them going around without. So we should have more of those conversations as opposed to just thanking somebody, checking a box and feeling good about ourselvs. Joel (4m 1s): Now, when you see, obviously today, a lot of people are posting pictures of relatives that served or people they know, or even loved ones, like to you, do you drop your head when you see that also? Chad (4m 13s): I don't think any of it's a no-no. First off I think you do things the way that you do things, but I want people to understand how it's received and if they do really care, then they should probably do a little bit more. No, I mean, they're proud of those people. My mom might post something with me and you know, my uniform or who knows. Right. That's cool. You're proud and I get it. But what we always do, we're such a cosmetic, we're such a surface kind of society that we need to take it deeper. And if we do care, let's care for more than just a day. Joel (4m 48s): It's sort of equated to Valentine's Day, right? Like you should love your spouse or your, whatever, the person you're with every day, not just one day a year, is that sort of, I guess, a parallel to what you're advising our listeners. Would that be correct? Chad (5m 3s): That's good for a relationship, obviously. And again, I'm not trying to tell anybody how to enjoy their Veteran's Day, but coming from a veteran and talking to veterans at the bar, this is what we talk about. Joel (5m 15s): Fair enough. So listeners, if you know of that out there, buy him a coffee or even better the alcoholic beverage categories, are probably good too. Chad (5m 23s): And do it on the regular. Joel (5m 24s): Dig in more about issues that they care about, I guess. Thank you, Chad. This is why our show rocks. I have a few shout outs for Veteran's Day. Number one is my Uncle Les! Uncle Les, Les Cheeseman passed away a few years ago. He served in World War II, fought in Okinawa. Chad (5m 42s): Wow! Joel (5m 44s): He used to tell stories about fighting the Japanese and foxholes at night and never sleeping, which are scarier than any Halloween story that I've ever heard. My uncle, Uncle Gene, who lived in Seymour, just south of you, was a Vietnam Vet. And unlike my Uncle Les, never talked about Vietnam. I heard stories about him coming home and not being able to sleep in a bed for a year because of the experience. And he actually died a few years ago as well. Although much younger than My Uncle Les, agent orange was never proven, but certainly he was around it. He had a COPD late in life and, and passed away from that. Joel (6m 25s): He was also a very regular smoker. Uncle Gene was always a mountain of a man to me, I guess, if you could marry the Marlboro man with Abraham Lincoln, that would have been my, my Uncle Gene. And lastly, another podcast, which I do recommend regularly History This Week. One of my favorite podcasts, if you listen to the more recent one entitled The Last Battle of the First World War, it talks a lot about America's involvement in World War One. Apparently when World War One broke out, we only had about a hundred thousand or so troops serving, which quickly escalated to 4 million troops that went over to Europe to fight the axis powers. Joel (7m 5s): So that was sort of the beginning of our, I don't know, super power efforts in the 20th century. So that's my first shout out, a little veteran inspired thank yous and shout outs to people that I know and love. Chad (7m 19s): I love it. I love it. A big shout out to the Sonderling family. If you remember, the EEOC commissioner was on the show just a couple of weeks ago? Joel (7m 29s): Love that guy. Chad (7m 30s): Keith Sonderling just had his first kid, little baby boy named Baron. So congratulations. Big shout out to the Sonderling family and Baron. Joel (7m 42s): Baron clearly named after the Trump kid. Chad (7m 45s): Wow! Had to pull that out. Joel (7m 48s): Yeah, yeah. Sorry, go Gators. Shout out to ZipRecruiter and Fiverr. If you didn't, if you weren't paying attention, both reported earnings this week, ZipRecruiter blew up a reporting 107% growth year over year. Fiverr also blew up this week, reporting a 42% growth year over year. Shout out to those companies in our space that are doing kind of well kind of, well. Chad (8m 12s): Not too shabby, not too shabby. Congrats to our Canadian sister and brother counterparts, Shelley and Serge for completing their 100th episode of the Recruitment Flex. Joel (8m 29s): Rookies. Chad (8m 29s): Joel scoffs at anybody who's under 500, but it's not easy committing to a podcast and most don't even make it past 10 episodes. So it's a feat! Congrats to the Recruitment Flex and here's to your next hundred episodes. Joel (8m 42s): I'm just lucky that you make it so easy to do a podcast Chad, you make it so easy. Shout out to just our space. Crunchbase had a story this this past week, reporting that since September 1st, that September of 2021, startups in the HR tech sector have seen nearly 2.8 billion in venture dollars. Come their way to put that in perspective, that is more than the total amount of the venture capital the industry saw all of last year, when 2.2 billion was invested. So just a little perspective that our industry is red hot and continues to be so, and we like reporting on it too. Joel (9m 22s): So shout out to the industry. Chad (9m 25s): Talk about bloated. Oh my God. Joel (9m 27s): Double-time. Chad (9m 27s): Last shout out for me. This is for our friends over at Cornerstone on Demand. I believe the new cat anus logo that they've rolled out is actually probably the best marketing campaign they've had in history. Probably more attention than they've ever seen, but on the heels of the new colors and logo rollout, they've rolled out a new product called Explore. Did you hear about this thing? Joel (9m 52s): Oh, tell me more. Chad (9m 54s): Okay. So I've actually received rumors internally that that very tech Explorer just announced that they won't be able to actually demo or sell it for another three to five months. sfx (10m 7s): Oh hell no! Chad (10m 8s): On the heels of going from public to private, getting a new cat anus logo, now they have new tech that's not going to be ready. It's released with the press release, but not ready for three to five months. sfx (10m 21s): Well, no shit. Joel (10m 21s): All right. I got a couple of big tech shout-outs here that I'm going to combine. Number one is shout out to Snapchat. The company has answered ahead of TikTok as the preferred platform for US teens per a recent Piper Sandler survey. Instagram is now preferred by 22% of teens compared to 25% of last year. So they're dropping Twitter and Facebook come in at a distant fourth and fifth with just 2% of teens favoring those platform. And that rolls me into Twitter blue. Chad (10m 54s): Oh, God. Joel (10m 55s): If you haven't heard of Twitter Blue kids you can pay Twitter a little bit of money for some big time features. Let me tell you more. The Twitter Blue subscription service has been expanded to New Zealand and the US following its introduction in Australia and Canada earlier this year. Individuals who pay the $2.99 charge each month can read some ad free articles, sort, save tweets, view long threads in a more reader-friendly environment and edit content before posting. Who's ready to spend that $2.99 per month for Twitter Blue? sfx (11m 33s): Oh, hell no. Chad (11m 34s): You gotta spend money for a better user experience? That is the worst business model I think I've ever fucking heard. Joel (11m 40s): And speaking of great user experience, Chad, have you heard about free stuff on Chad and Cheese? Chad (11m 44s): No, I have not. Tell me. Joel (11m 48s): Well, I'll tell you more. You can get free shit from us. We're talking t-shirts from Emissary. We're talking beer from our new sponsor Pillar and we're talking bourbon, our buddies at Sovren, and also shout out to Ross Granger at Paradox for being this month's bourbon winner, Zoom call soon to be scheduled. We're still waiting to hear back from our beer drop winner, who I won't name if they never respond. So we'll give them another, another 24 hours or so otherwise we're going to another beer drinker. All right, now let's run into our fantasy football update. Chad, everyone loves a good leaderboard and this one's sponsored by poach.ai. Joel (12m 31s): From top to bottom, here we go with this week's football fantasy leaderboard. The wonderful Miss Q finally makes it to the top spot after teasing that spot for a few weeks. Jason Bateman Putnam comes in second, your boy Cheese, that'd be me everybody comes in third, followed by Benjamin Franklin Koontz. Chris Nipsey, Russell, Christy man on the moon, Michael McDonald Cox, Pistol Pete Suchi, Bill I'm not even supposed to be here today Fanning and last but not least in our hearts, Chad, is last. Chad (13m 9s): From, first to worst, from first to worst, baby! Joel (13m 13s): It's a marathon Chad. It's a marathon. And with that, let's get into some birthday shout outs. Celebrating a birthday this week, fans of the show, Jamie Carney, Victoria Conley, and someone near and dear to your heart. Chad and I know she's a big fan of the show, Kennedy Cook. Chad (13m 31s): Oh yeah. Joel (13m 32s): I hope you got her something. Chad (13m 40s): She's enjoying life in Budapest. She's fine. Joel (13m 45s): Yeah, she's fine. She's all good. Chad (13m 48s): Topics! Joel (13m 48s): All right. Bullhorn. Chad (13m 49s): Hello. Joel (13m 50s): Writer of software for staffing firms acquired cube 19, a London based provider of analytics and reporting software to staffing firms using Bullhorn. This is Bullhorn's 14th acquisition since its founding in 1999. You remember 1999 don't you Chad? Chad (14m 8s): Prince! Joel (14m 9s): Bullhorn noted cube 19 has been a long-time partner in its Bullhorn marketplace. cube 19 currently employs around 40 people and members of cube 19'a executive team will join the Bullhorn leadership team. Terms of the transaction were not announced bummer. Founded in 2011 cube 19 has raised around $5 million according to Crunchbase. Chad, what do you make of this move by our friends at Bullhorn? Chad (14m 36s): Can you say wallet share? Bullhorn is primarily a platform for staffing company. So companies like cube 19 are an easy add on for staffing firms who need to be more efficient. Remember for talent acquisition recruiting is a job, but for staffing companies, it's a business, meaning they need a better way to focus on efficiencies, identify the best sources of hire and much more to drive better margins. So this is an easy one for Bullhorn, which would add nearly a hundred thousand dollars of ARR per 100 recruiters at the cube enterprise level. Chad (15m 16s): Also cube 19 is deeply integrated into Bullhorn, meaning Bullhorn can see just about everything that's going on from a revenue standpoint. It's a great marketplace play I believe. Joel (15m 24s): Chad did I mention that Bullhorn has been around since 1999? Chad (15m 28s): You did. Joel (15m 28s): A great year. Yeah. As you mentioned, Bullhorn is an apex predator when it comes to staffing software and they claim to have more than 10,000 companies on their platform and employ 1200 people. Now, I like to bang on Bullhorn for charging thousands for vendors to join their marketplace, which they have every right to do, of course. But I want to note that cube 19 was prominent in their marketplace, as they mentioned in their press release. Marketplaces as we know Chad, basically serve as incubators for companies who have features that platforms should add. So I only wonder, Bullhorn, how many more cube 19s are there that you could acquire if only they didn't choose a different platform to build on instead of yours? Joel (16m 15s): Answer, maybe a lot. Free the marketplace Bullhorn, free the marketplace. Chad (16m 19s): I say keep charging. I think this is actually a great guide for startups. Look at cube 19. cube 19 was incredibly disciplined and stayed focused on the staffing industry and their relationship with one of the biggest staffing platforms in the industry. They only took 5.2 million in funding, which means they weren't out of Bullhorn's reach for acquisition. Unicorn cash isn't always the answer kids. I think that's one of the things that we should be looking at when we see these acquisitions happen, we should be able to take a look at, okay. So how did this happen? There's a recipe that we've seen, week after week after week and I think these guys nailed it. Joel (16m 59s): Yes. If you're a startup and want to get acquired, find a marketplace where there's no competence or little competition, they don't have a native solution. And in Chad's case, put your eggs in that basket and do it really well and good things can happen to you without getting hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. Let's move on to Fountain Chad. Oh, you're doing a webinar with them soon. Aren't you? Chad (17m 22s): This week, yeah, I'm doing it with Madelyn. She'll carry me like she always does. Joel (17m 28s): Yeah, she's a good kid. All right. San Francisco based Fountain, a hiring platform for hourly workers has raised 85 million in series C, bringing its total to almost 119 million that according to Crunchbase, “The world of hourly workers has never seen a more challenging environment like the one we are in now,” says Fountain CEO, Sean Behr. That's what he told TechCrunch. And he also added, “There was some hope amongst our prospective and current customers that once COVID-19 was over, whenever that was, that hiring would just become easy again. That is completely wrong.” end quote. Working with over 250 customers like Chipotle and live ops Fountain has processed more than 16 million applicants in the past 12 months and help customers hire more than 2 million so far in 2021. Joel (18m 16s): Chad, are you ready to jump into this Fountain? Chad (18m 19s): Yeah. I mean, this is the biggest underserved segment in the US right now and obviously it's hot, right? So this is from the Techcrunch article, quote, "Fountain’s technology also whittles down the median days to hire to 8.70 from the industry average of 36 days," end quote. So 36 days is an, was always ridiculous. The question is, can Fountain move from nearly nine days to hire to, I need someone tomorrow. That's what we're getting to and we're getting there very fast. So Fountain currently for most clients, they have a shared database, meaning they pretty much own the candidates themselves, which is, you know, incredibly important if you want to move to a more nimble model, like a gig platform, hint, hint. Chad (19m 10s): So this means embracing gig 1099s and FTEs. They'll have to grow. They have to have a shit ton of cash. So there's a good opportunity there because this segment obviously is not primarily FTEs. You're going to be looking for giggers as well. You need one platform that covers them both. Joel (19m 26s): Yep. To me, there's a little bit of a battle brewing in one corner, you have the gig economy and a lot of businesses are wondering if they'd be better off just contracting workers when they need them. And I liked that Fountain sees this threat and is sort of building, I guess, a hybrid model. Andrew Zloto, a director at SoftBank investment advisors told TechCrunch and the story quote, "sourcing and hiring hourly workers have been transformed by the rise of the gig economy, which has shortened the process of hiring and onboarding from weeks to a few days, Fountain has built on an essential toolkit for companies to keep up with and compete with this new hiring environment, by simplifying, optimizing, and automating the candidate journey to decrease time to hire. Joel (20m 12s): We believe the company's partnerships with large employers like Chipotle is a stamp of credibility of their further innovative platform and ability to execute." Surely there'll be some that prefer gigs. Some that prefer the full time or part-time traditional workforce. And there'll be companies like Fountain that sort of balanced both of those worlds. And I really like, I like what they're doing. And clearly a series C going from, I don't know, they raised roughly 10 to 20 before the $85 million round. Clearly they're doing something right. And one to keep your eye on and check out that webinar with Chad, there's probably more Fountain goodness, if you attend that. Chad (20m 51s): Fountain goodness research that aptitude research performed around high volume hiring, and we're going to be talking about that. So I think there's no question. This market is being disrupted and it's not just being disrupted by technology it's being disrupted by need. And that will actually push these these platforms very quickly. The question I have though is within these organizations, you have your full-time staff and then you have your giggers right? But then you also have corporate. So how many different platforms are you going to have to sew together to make this happen? When will or will there be platforms that can do all of this? And I'm wondering if Fountain's looking at being able to provide. Joel (21m 36s): Let's take a quick break, let that big brain of yours take a break here and we'll come back for a little buy or sell sfx (21m 46s): Holy Jesus. What is that? What the fuck is that? Chad (21m 49s): Is that a jelly donut? Joel (21m 50s): What a great movie. Chad (21m 51s): Yes. Joel (21m 51s): Just the first half of it is just amazing. All right, let's go to, well, our listeners of you don't know how this works. We take three startups that have gotten money this week. Some are not startups as you'll see, but they've gotten money recently. We do a little summary and Chad or I either buy or sell the company. First on the list we have Hirewell, a Chicago based staffing firm announced a $21 million strategic investment by technology firm Prytek as part of the deal Hirewell, will acquire ICV, a Tel Aviv, Israel based software company. Joel (22m 31s): ICV software scans public data records to build candidate funnels. It was founded in 2017 by Guy Bender around Rand Weiss and Ron former captains in the Israel defense forces. A little bit of Veteran's Day focus there. Hirewell is focused on providing staffing in the IT sales, HR, marketing, finance, accounting, and real estate segments. In the first 10 months of 2021 Hirewell says they've helped over 300 companies hire over 1700 employees. Founded in 2001, Hirewell employees, 86 people, according to LinkedIn, a 120% increase in head count from just last year. Joel (23m 12s): Chad buy or sell, Hirewell? Chad (23m 15s): You know what we're talking about here is an old time recruiting firm that is now starting to tech up. So will it automate? Yes. Will it scale? Yes. Do they have experience in this space? 2001? Yeah, they fucking do. So for smaller recruitment firms to survive, they will need to build a standardized tech stack and in this case they want to be more efficient with recruiters time by adding tech, that will speed up getting qualified candidates in front of clients faster with less of the recruiters time spent on sourcing, the recruiter then can spend more time with the human part of the recruiting process and give a better white glove service to the candidate and also the client. Chad (23m 58s): So if performed correctly, candidates will get into seats faster, more recs can be taken on because of less time spent on filling each rec, but let's just hope Hirewell, doesn't use this tech as an excuse to double the number of reqs recruiters handle. At one time, all agencies, all agencies should be doing this. So this one to me is an easy buy. sfx (24m 28s): Applause Joel (24m 29s): Oh gee a Midwest staffing firm. That's been around for 20 years and just raised money. How boring can you get? Well boring, unless you think longevity and profit are boring and they've apparently just found technology. So maybe real growth is just around the corner. This is a sleepy buy for me, but a buy nonetheless. Thank you for doing such a lengthy introspection of this company, because mine was pretty short. All right, let's get to Mogul. Diversity recruitment solution Mogul raised an undisclosed sum. Undisclosed? Yeah, that's bullshit. And this latest funding round to expand its global presence and innovate products for talent acquisition. Joel (25m 11s): The investment came from SoftBank, which is Mogul's largest investor to date. SoftBank joins Hearst corporation. Get a load of this list Chad. Gary Vaynerchuk, Will Bunker co-founder of match.com, Michael Wolfson co-founder of the knot.com. Julian Brodsky co-founder of Comcast, little company most people have heard of, and others who are backing the company. Founded in 2014 and based in the US, they have a headquarters in New York. Mogul gives its clients access to 400 million diverse candidates across 195 countries. The site currently lists more than 920,000 jobs through its online community site candidates can connect with each other and with employers. Joel (25m 54s): Mogul also provides executive search services. They employ just over a hundred people. Holy shit. You're buying this one, right, Chad? Chad (26m 6s): OK. We set the tone with this quote from the article "patent pending software filters." Sexy, if it was in 1999. I read the story and I cringed when Will Bunker the founder of match.com called it match.com for top employers and candidates. That's the death kneel for any company in our space. I mean, what happened to e-harmonies for jobs? It's dead`. And what about all those Tinder apps? They're pretty much all dead or are on their way to dead. Then I went to the site and dude, oh fuck. I really want these platforms to kick ass and take names. They have a hell of a database, but employers are not going to be comfortable going to a quote unquote "hiring site" Chad (26m 53s): that looks like a hookup platform. They've got all the numbers, all the big jazzy names. They have no experience in this space. It's not going to scale. It's not going to automate easily. It's a sell for me. Joel (27m 7s): Oh Chad, if only all that stuff mattered. Listeners know diversity solutions are red hot right now. In the time I said that it just got hotter. As more companies actually budget for this stuff. The Mogul model looks like it's a pretty comfortable position for people to buy. And I love that they have a focus on executives. Let's stop the swapping spit and start hiring externally. Yeah. I just think it's a big wave. And as long as they have a pulse and a website that works, they're going to make money. Joel (27m 50s): A buy from me, man. sfx (27m 51s): Applause. Joel (27m 51s): Let's get to Seasoned. Cause I'm getting hungry. Seasoned announced an $18.7 million funding round for its talent platform for hiring restaurant workers. It brings total funding to more than 30 million raised since the company was founded just a year ago. The company reported it has connected with more than 300 national and local restaurant brands and is being used by more than 250,000 restaurant workers. There are two sides to the app. One a free community for industry employees to review openings, schedule interviews, and connect with peers. While a subscription-based hiring tool for restaurant managers works to lower onboarding costs and accelerate the timing between application and hire to within three hours. Joel (28m 32s): So Chad, are you ready to get a little flavor with Seasoned? Chad (28m 35s): So about the flavor will automate? Yeah. Will it scale? Yeah, I think so. Do they have experience? While they're CEO, you're going to love this. Joel, their CEO is an ex VP over at The Ladders. He was at The Ladders for six years. He spent a little time at Yelp. Joel (28m 52s): He's smart enough to leave. Chad (28m 53s): Yeah, he was smart enough to leave. He spent a little time at Yelp. So between that experience that he had at the Ladders, he found out what he shouldn't fucking do at Yelp hopefully being able to better understand the industry much like Fountain, Seasoned is in a hot sector that needs help quickly. Unlike Fountain, this is an app based platform that boasts, a community aspect as well. I believe Fountain should take some of that $85 million and start looking to acquire something like Seasoned. I buy it. Joel (29m 29s): Okay. Thinking it was a potential buy for Jobcase. Maybe that's just me. Chad (29m 37s): Oh goodie. Joel (29m 38s): Remember back in the summer, when over 4 million people, quit their job. Chad well, restaurants saw the highest level of quitting among restaurants and hospitality about 892,000 workers threw in the towel, leading to a 6.7% quit rate that month. I've mentioned my local BW3's was recently closed during lunch because of a lack of workers. I don't necessarily think Seasoned is lighting the world on fire. But I think so many restaurants need people right now they're in so much freaking pain that they're just going to write blank checks to Seasoned and anyone that they think can get them employees. Joel (30m 19s): So for me, another great wave to be on. Buy, buy, buy. Chad (30m 25s): Did you just buy all those? Joel (30m 26s): I bought all of them. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in a very nice, good mood today, I guess. All right. Let's get to a huge gigantic corporation that hasn't gotten money in a long time Walmart. Walmart and Silicon Valley based Gatik, a company that specializes in autonomous trucking or operating two autonomous delivery trucks in Arkansas without a backup safety driver. Yes, Chad, I said without a safety backup driver. The two Gatik box trucks are shuttling goods for 12 hours a day, along a seven mile loop between a Walmart fulfillment center and a Walmart neighborhood market. Joel (31m 6s): It's the first time a self-driving truck has removed a safety driver from a commercial delivery route between a warehouse and the store. The program began last December after approval from the Arkansas state highway commission. The backup driver was removed from the route in August. Gatik, which specializes in B2B short haul logistics claims a 100% safety record across its operations in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Ontario, Canada. Walmart also aims to begin AV deliveries along a 20 mile route between New Orleans and Metairie, Louisiana in early 2022. So Chad, I guess I should scrap that career in trucking at this point. Chad (31m 49s): Yeah. And this is only the beginning kids, a New York Times article said the biggest kink in America's supply chain is not enough truckers. The unemployment rate in Arkansas, which is where the story is happening is 4%. The bureau of transportation in 2019, as we start to say, well, you know, do we trust these robots driving? I don't know that we can trust humans driving for God's sakes. In 2019, there were 6.7 million car accidents, 2.7 million injuries, 36,000 deaths. Chad (32m 31s): So now instead of pointing our finger at AI and blaming it or these robot trucks, they might actually be the answer to having a more safe environment around us. Joel (32m 42s): So trucking and hiring truckers is a shitty business. We've detailed some of that shittiness over the years, I've mentioned my brother-in-law who is in trucking. And we have this driverless argument all the time. Chad (32m 52s): Oh do you? Joel (32m 53s): He thinks there's no way it's going to happen. Chad (32m 55s): Really?! Did you send him this? Joel (32m 57s): But stories like this, tell me, yeah, it is. No, I have not sent him this. He's not really a throw him a link and read an article kind of guy, but that's a different that's about guys. Truckers don't get FaceTime with customers. So it's easier to automate them than it is say a cashier. All the data says they're safer, like you mentioned, than humans and the cost savings and headache relief from hiring and managing truckers say the future of self-driving trucks can't get here soon enough for businesses. Sorry, BJ and the Bear, seventies reference there, time for a new career. Joel (33m 45s): Self-driving trucks are going to happen probably quicker than we think. And the amount of impact this is going to have on all kinds of industries is, is insane. Indeed alone has around 500,000 trucking jobs on its website. Schools that rely on accrediting drivers, people who make trucks. I mean, it's gonna impact so many, so many people in businesses and it's gonna happen really fast, I think. Chad (34m 2s): Agreed. Joel (34m 2s): And we'll talk about it on the show. Chad (34m 4s): Yeah. And you take a look at the supply chain issues that we're having right now. This is just going to move it to warp speed. Joel (34m 13s): YUP! And then you get that final mile shit, things rolling up to your house. Robots dropping shit off. Like it's happening people. Chad (34m 19s): YUP! It's happening. Joel (34m 21s): All right. Well, you know that final story that we talk about, Chad, I'm going to leave everyone in stitches. I'm not going to say what it is. You'll just have to wait till after we pay a little bills. Chad (34m 40s): I've got to inject something really quick. I just received this from Vos in the Netherlands. Apparently an Austrian brothel is offering free sessions to customers getting a COVID jab. Joel (34m 51s): I'm sorry. A session for just getting a shot. The risk reward on that is pretty unbalanced. I got to say, I got to say, I got to say, only in Europe. Okay. Chad (35m 2s): I love it! Joel (35m 4s): Okay. Chad, do you remember Nancy Reagan's just say no campaign? Chad (35m 8s): Unfortunately yes. Joel (35m 9s): Yeah. Well, Ronnie and in particular Nixon, who sort of started the war on drugs, may be rolling around in their graves this week reported by Forbes, marijuana moment one of my favorite publications revealed last week, a draft bill called states reform act is being led by Republican Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, which would federally reschedule marijuana and create a regulatory blueprint i.e. make it legal. The draft legislation would federally reschedule marijuana from the list of controlled substances and it would impose a 3.75% excise tax on cannabis sales as marijuana would be treated similarly to alcohol, the treasury departments, alcohol and tobacco tax and trade bureau known as the TTB Chad would be the chief regulator for this market. Joel (36m 3s): Chad, this is not your daddy's GOP. What the fuck is going on? Chad (36m 7s): Well, it's about goddamn time. If you think about legalizing marijuana, let's talk about again, the issues that we're having, finding people to actually do jobs. And let's also talk about, you know, I don't know, maybe taxes. So if we decriminalized, we legalize and decriminalize. Imagine all the individuals who are sitting in jail today, who can actually get out and start doing a job and start earning a living for their families. Number one, right? Number two, California shattered marijuana tax revenue records in the last fiscal year. Chad (36m 52s): State reports collected $817 million and adult use marijuana tax revenue during 2020 and 2021 fiscal year. In January of 2021, marijuana sales continue to skyrocket in Colorado reaching $187.5 million. And the state of Nevada sold more than $1 billion and marijuana in 2021. What does that all mean? That means new jobs. So we start talking about a couple of ways that this could actually impact, directly impact the US. It could do it in jobs, and it could do it with individuals who shouldn't be in prison in the first place. They could get out, they could actually get good jobs and they could be productive citizens. Joel (37m 32s): Okay. So you're saying profits over politics, basically. Chad (37m 34s): The only thing that moves this country is profits. Joel (37m 36s): Cash money, baby. Yeah. All these truck drivers are going to need a job and maybe weed will be there to fill the void, which is good news. You know, one of the, one of the cool things about America is we have this, like, we have 50 laboratories where shit can be tested. And if it works out, the federal government can come in and say like, okay, let's just make this federally acceptable or legal or whatever. And I'm forgetting exactly when Colorado was sort of the first state to legalize recreational marijuana. And I remember at the time everyone is like, the state's going to go to hell. The world is ending. There's going to be crime increases. Joel (38m 16s): Kids are going to be addicted, yada, yada, yada right. Chad (38m 20s): 2012. Joel (38m 20s): More serious drugs are going to be abused as a result. And none of that should happened as far as I know. And so, so more and more states adopt it. This was bound to happen. I'm gobsmacked that this has happened in my lifetime. When I say, as a kid in the eighties and/or seventies as a young kid, like drugs are bad. Just say no, they're a gateway to all things, horrible. Documentaries and PSA's that I had to go through. This is just 30, 40 years ago. And it's now going to be legal and my kids are going to be 18 plus, and it's going to be acceptable and legal and accessible. Joel (39m 1s): It's just crazy. It's just hard to believe in my lifetime. My dad, who's 82 shits when he hears about this stuff, because he's more, more old school even than I am. But anyway, yeah. Money, money, money, people out of jail. People being able to manage pain better, glaucoma, cancer patients. By the way, if you haven't seen Dopesick on Hulu, it's a great show. Michael Keaton, one of the more underrated actors in my lifetime. And if you haven't seen Mr. Mom, you know it to yourself to do that. And Gung-ho was very predictive of the world, the world today. And as I'm talking, I'm really getting the munchies and I'm realizing that it's time for lunch. Joel (39m 47s): So Chad, that's all I've got on weed. And as far as I'm concerned in regards to this show, I'm going to play one more sound bite from full metal jacket. sfx (39m 60s): Wow. No shit. Joel (40m 1s): And say, Chad (40m 2s): We out. OUTRO (40m 40s): 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.

Every company is looking to discover rare breeds, whether they be in the company already, or roaming the pastures of commerce externally. But the HOW tends to be elusive. That's why Chad & Cheese brings Rare Breed author Sunny Bonnell on the podcast to dive into what companies can do post-pandemic to retain and attract the kind of talent that can take an organization to new heights. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. 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 know what time it is? Chad (24s): Yes! Joel (24s): What's up everybody? This is your favorite podcast on your cohost Joel Cheeseman joined as always by my favorite person, at least for the next hour, Chad Sowash. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. Today We are happy to welcome Sunny Bonnell to the show. She is the chief vision officer. Yeah, that sounds impressive. She's also a best-selling author of the book, Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different. She's a keynote speaker and all kinds of other shit. Sunny, welcome to the show. Sunny (51s): Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and what a wonderful introduction! Joel (55s): You betcha so for listeners, what did I miss in the intro that we should know about you? Sunny (1m 2s): I'm a musician. I grew up on gospel and bluegrass and started playing when I was just about eight years old and was a professional musician by the time I was 12 years old and started playing out in clubs and venues as a teenager and well into my early adulthood. Enrolled in college and ended up dropping out of college to launch a branding agency, threw all my hopes and dreams away of being a profound musician and double down on becoming a brand strategist, brand and culture and leadership expert. Joel (1m 36s): Can you play the banjo, Sunny? Can you play Deliverance? Chad (1m 43s): Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait, you, you dropped out of college. Sunny (1m 47s): Yes. Chad (1m 47s): You dropped out of college. You were already an artist for goodness sakes and you thought branding was going to be easier in this mad men world? Is that what I'm hearing? Sunny (1m 58s): A little bit. I think that. Chad (1m 60s): Okay. Sunny (1m 60s): You know, I, so, so back up a minute and I'm a 20 something year old female in a small South Carolina town where the majority of ad agencies are ran by the old guard. Chad (2m 12s): Oh yeah. Sunny (2m 13s): There's only a few of them at the time. And I was moonlighting just to kind of put context around this, I was moonlighting as a graphic designer for other musicians. So while I was enrolled in pre-vet, I was a theater major or philosophy major, I had my hands in a lot of different things, trying to sort of figure out where I wanted to go. And meanwhile, moonlighting as a graphic designer on the side for other musicians, including myself and was doing all of this self-taught. And of course, when you're in an industry like that are beginning to, you know, scrape the surface of an industry like that, you're paying attention to what's going on around you. And what both myself and my co-founder Ashley and I started to take note of was that there was a lot of homogenization going on and there was a lot of sort of boring work. Sunny (3m 1s): And we said, why don't we just do something different? And I think we set out with a bit of an audacious vision that we thought we could dismantle the conversation going on and perhaps make a dent in our small town. But what we ended up doing was launched a moonshot. You know, that obviously took us out of South Carolina into Dallas and then ultimately New York. So we were two women who were sort of up against some pretty tough odds, you know, a lot of people told us we would fail, probably almost laughed us out of town. Joel (3m 32s): What's the timeline on this? Just so I know. Sunny (3m 35s): This is 2005. Joel (3m 36s): Okay. Sunny (3m 36s): And you know, when yellow page ads were still all the rage. Chad (3m 42s): Yes. Yes! So, you were once thrown out of a meeting because you asked if people really care if they get a free blender with a checking account? So, I mean, it was, you were starting your agency, I would assume at that time, is that correct? How did that fuel you to say those fuckers aren't going to win? Sunny (4m 3s): I think the amount of doubt, you know, we have a saying that that's how the rose grew from the concrete. You know, the rose grew from the concrete, be thankful for small minds. It's how ceilings are shattered and battles are won. And I think that we were so doubted, and so, you know, sort of underestimated that it made for an easy target for us to have something to focus on and say, well, surely there's another way. And so our initial business was built around, honestly, just curiosity. You know, we were going to companies and they were saying, oh, you know, we're interested in a logo. And we would say, but why, you know, why does this business matter to you? What is the purpose of this company? We were asking these sort of fundamental questions that we realized at the time was about purpose-driven branding. Sunny (4m 49s): And didn't realize that we were actually doing that until, you know, seeing it catch on later in the industry. I think we were actually one of the spearheads of that phrasiology, you know, of purpose-driven branding being a real thing, because we started doing that back in 2005 before purpose was really a cool conversation. So, you know, the fact that we sort of built the business around that and started to claw our way towards some sort of redemption, you know, I think it gave us a way to fight against something and fight for something at the same time. And that's what we did. Joel (5m 19s): So you mentioned yellow pages and classifieds at the time, but in 2005 was a really a pretty interesting, exciting time to sort of be in this. You had some voices like Seth Godin, for example, people preaching, you know, zig when everyone else is zagging social media, sort of the birth of that was around the same time, web 2.0, if you will. If you could sort of quickly talk about what life in your business look like 2005 and maybe how it's up to 2019, a quick summary of like the business and how it's changed in that 15 years. Sunny (5m 53s): Well, I think that the first few years were very difficult, you know, in terms of, we were very broke, we didn't have money, we didn't have investors, we didn't have financial support. And we were trying to make a name for ourselves in a very small town that didn't really understand us. So, you know, the first few years of running the company were very hard. So you mentioned yellow page ads, and there were some, some innovation going on around that time. So actually what started to take place was direct mailers. Chad (6m 23s): Oh God, Sunny (6m 24s): Yeah. Joel (6m 24s): Not direct email? You said direct mailers? Sunny (6m 25s): Direct mailers. And what was really interesting was, you know, we were probably a year or two into business, probably a few weeks within closing our doors, we were not able to make ends meet. And we had just a little bit of cash left in the bank. And we created, we had this idea where we created this garbage can and when you pulled the lid out, it was literally dye cut and fluted. We spent every dime that we had on it. Bought a list of people that were local businesses and regional businesses and we were in this tiny little warehouse in what you would call an incredibly shady part of town. And we spent every dime we had on it, bought this list, printed this mailer. Sunny (7m 5s): And when you pulled out the lid, all it said was trash the ordinary. And then it just had our website and our phone number on it. And back then, you know, things were where people would actually show up to your office. You know, they wouldn't call, they would just actually come knocking on the door. And what was so fascinating about that was we mailed it out to a few thousand businesses. And within 24 hours, not only was our phone ringing, but we had people showing up at the door with the mailer in their hands. And they were like, who are you? Chad (7m 31s): Here's the thing I want to dive into many companies that we've talked to over the years, look in the mirror and say that we're not Coke. We're not the LA Lakers, not Apple or Google. Your first client from that trashcan was a dentist? Sunny (7m 48s): Yes! Chad (7m 48s): A fuckin dentist. Right? Sunny (7m 50s): A fluent one at that, yeah. Chad (7m 52s): So how did the dentist find a reason? Instead of an excuse and all you companies out there listen very deeply please. Joel (7m 59s): And was he on MySpace at the time? Sunny (8m 4s): No, but we were. No, I think what was interesting about that was he actually showed up, he was our very first paying client. He showed up and he had the mailer, him and his wife, they were family owned business. And he said, I'm so tired of the way that dentists and dental offices brand themselves. At the time a lot of, and I think that still happens today, where a lot of people in those industries, which have not really been disrupted, I mean, I think they've become a little bit more disrupted, but you know, back then, like you would go to a template place and you would, you would get a boiler plate website with you know, an appointment setter and some generic language and some big photos. Sunny (8m 44s): And that was your brand. And he came to us and he said, I hate every bit of that. And he said, I really want to do something extraordinary. And he said, I just want to defy the odds. I want to think, you know, defy the odds. I want to think outside the box, I want to do something that no one else is doing. And so he hired us on the spot. It was so inexpensive, I think it was like a few hundred dollars. But we went in and we not only branded his space, but we even thought through the way that he could entertain his patients. So in other words, like thinking about TVs and sort of Luxe atmosphere and thinking about how brand was reflected, we did all of the signage and it really was the thing that sort of put us on the map because then word got around. Sunny (9m 28s): And again, this is just a local market, right? We're just starting to sort of, people are catching wind of us. And then we started having more people saying, Hey, can you disrupt this industry? So we started disrupting industries that were typically very generic or very unordinary like law, audiology, dentists, you know, things that were construction, real estate, things that were not at the time, very innovative. And we were disrupting those categories left and right, and became known for that very early on. And that's ultimately what kept the lights on a little bit longer and kept pushing us. And then we also entered in another big pivotal moment for us was in 2007 when we entered into a women's business conference, a business women's competition, where we had to go before a panel of esteemed women entrepreneurs who were some of the best in the industry and pitch our business on stage in front of thousands of people in front of media and press and everything else. Sunny (10m 23s): The funny thing was we were the two youngest women there, in the practice round, and we ended up freezing, couldn't remember the name of the company, what we did, how much revenue, we didn't have any revenue and completely bombed. And the one of the judges at the time, like just filleted us. Like she was like, you don't belong here. You don't know your business. You don't know what you, you're not in the right setting. Come back when you've got this together. And we were just almost going to leave and ended up rewriting the pitch on a napkin in the bar that same night and came back the next morning and got a standing ovation. And won the whole thing! Joel (10m 57s): Is a national competition or local? Sunny (11m 0s): It was national. There were people from all over the country that had come in and had been, you know, people that had been in business and were, you know, 90 million in revenue. You know, I mean, I think we had just a few thousand dollars in our bank account at that point. But what you won was a line of credit from American Express. You got an IT package, like you got all this media and press. And that also set us off in the direction of these two young women kind of rogue coming in and sort of putting these people on their ear. And I think that was a sort of these little pivotal moments that we were sort of taking charge and leading the conversation in new ways, I think was the thing that started to move us forward. Chad (11m 38s): That was really a genius strategy though, because you came in and you really on purpose gave them a bad show and then you came back and blew it out of the water. Come on. That was the strategy, right? Sunny (11m 50s): I'd like to say it was, but it wasn't, we just completely froze. Joel (11m 55s): These are underdog stories. When did you become a sort of the heavyweight champion? What was the turning point of that? Sunny (12m 1s): There were a lot of little moves that were taking place, you know, a lot of times when we could have taken the punch or thrown the knockout punch, and I think we were taking the punches, but also coming back and counterpunching, and not giving up and not quitting. And I think that tenacity and that sort of audacity of wanting to do things differently and not be afraid of that and really leaning into who we are was I think a very pivotal change in ourselves and in our business. And, you know, obviously it became the name of our book, which went on to become a best seller. And then obviously has now become the thesis of the workshops that we're doing and the shows that we're leading. And those are a little micro moments that happen along the way that I think make or break you and define you. Sunny (12m 42s): And those certainly we had certainly many of those opportunities where we could have folded like lawn chairs or we could get back up and grab that mic and say like, no, you're wrong about us. And that's kind of, I think where strength comes from is in those moments where people doubt you and you prove them wrong. Joel (13m 1s): So when did employment or hiring or workplace branding come into play. Sunny (13m 8s): So that's probably happened in the last couple of years. So we wrote some, just kind of dialing it back again to connect the concept of Rare Breed. So Rare Breed was given to us by my dad. So we were a few years into business, hit a low point, thinking about quitting around that 2007 time period. And, you know, we were just like, we just do not fit. You know, we're like a square peg in a round hole or misfit. We're an outlier. Nobody wants us to succeed. We just had this sort of self doubt going on. And it wasn't just our own sort of negative talk. It was the talk going on around us. You know, we had been sabotaged by other businesses and, you know, people were trying to run us out of town and that's the truth. And, you know, we just hit a really low point. Sunny (13m 49s): We kept getting fired for the same reasons we were hired and we couldn't understand why that kept happening. So we had this sort of pivotal conversation with my dad where we said, you know, you just feel like quitting. And he said, well, you two are a Rare Breed. He said, of course not everybody's going to understand you. Of course not everybody's going to get you. In fact, some people may hate you or try to sabotage you. He said, but you have to succeed because of who you are, not despite who you are. Your counterintuitive gifts, these things that make you rough around the edges, the fact that you and Ashley are sort of rebellious and throw brass knuckles to the status quo. He's like, that's why, and ultimately why people are going to hire you, you just don't know it yet. Sunny (14m 30s): They're already doing it. You're just, you just, you just don't realize the gift that you're actually giving. And it was in that moment that really became pivotal. And, you know, we tucked that phrase away in 2007, ran our company now have been in some of the biggest brands on earth. We now have clients as big as Google and Hershey's and Microsoft and 20th Century Fox and now Virgin. And the funny thing is, as we wrote this book in 2019, which we wrote it for our younger self, we wrote it for the change maker who had always felt like an outlier who had never felt like they fit in because so many of us don't have a book. We don't have anything to go to. Every leadership book that you read is about changing the parts of yourself so that you can fit in so that you can climb the corporate ladder. Sunny (15m 15s): And we wanted to write the anti-thesis of that. You know, what, how do we actually succeed because of who we are, not just the pretty parts, how do we, how do we embrace all of who we are? And so we wrote that book in 2019 Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different. And within a few months, we were leading a workshop for the head of leadership team of Microsoft and working with their leadership team to not only help them better understand Rare Breeds, but also how to create the conditions and the environment to allow Rare Breeds to thrive. And so what we saw happening with the book, which was so exciting was that the changemaker was reading that book and then taking that book to the top and saying, we need this kind of thinking inside the company. Sunny (15m 55s): And not only do we need this kind of thinking inside the company, we traditionally pushed this type of thinking out. We don't know what to do when the Rare Breed is presented to us. And so that has now allowed us to now go inside of the biggest companies on earth to share the sermon, you know, and have people coming to church to hear it. And it's one of the most exciting things we've ever done. Chad (16m 14s): Well. So here's one thing that we've noticed. We've actually worked with companies for 20 plus years on both sides. Joel and myself and marketing has a huge fucking blind spot. Sunny (16m 25s): Yes. Chad (16m 25s): Real quick when's the last time you actually have applied for a job at a company? Sunny (16m 34s): Well I was fired from every job I ever worked. Joel (16m 36s): It's been a while. Chad (16m 36s): Okay, okay... Here's the punchline. It fucking sucks. It takes forever to apply screening questions. If you're lucky, you might have to do a very incredibly impersonal video interview or just, they just never get back to you and your you're in a black hole. And yet that's the experience that every individual is left with. Other than that one person that was hired. Sunny (16m 58s): Right. Chad (16m 58s): So, right. Do you think that experience for a company like Intel who receives a million applications a year, do you think that impacts their brand? Sunny (17m 8s): Meaning that the type of people that they hire impacts the brand? Chad (17m 14s): No! Their brand, their holistic brand. How people actually think of Intel, whether it's Intel inside, or maybe even buying a Coke and switching to buying Pepsi? Sunny (17m 22s): Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the key here is innovation, right? It's become, it's a word so central to success that it's almost becomes sort of talismanic, right? We think of all of these images of, you know, Nikola Tesla and, you know, Jobs and Waz, and you know, all of this sort of innovation and it is the engine that's powering today's economy. But I think what a lot of people don't understand is that they don't actually know how to not only acquire this talent, it's almost like a checklist like, well, you know, are they black? Are they brown? I mean, they're not actually thinking or hiring for diversity of thought. Ultimately hiring impacts everything you do from an innovation standpoint, from a culture standpoint, from a brand standpoint. Sunny (18m 5s): So they're all interconnected. I mean, at Motto, we believe that there's a trifecta, which is leadership, culture and brand. And we have to be thinking of all three of those things almost as if they are one and a lot of companies don't, they leave hiring to HR. They leave firing to HR and they leave brand to the marketing department and leadership at the top never really communicates their vision down throughout the company so that everyone else can actually embody that and understand the flag that they're carrying and the hill that they're marching towards Chad (18m 32s): You got a white guy at the top, or a whole bunch of white guys at the top. So who in the hell is going to change it. If HR doesn't change it and all your hiring managers are white dudes, who's going to fucking change it. Sunny (18m 44s): I think it's like force of pressure happening around, I mean, this conversation's happening. We wrote an article recently for Fast Company that actually went viral. I think something like 6 million eyeballs on it. And it was about companies fire for these same traits when they should be giving bonuses. What I think is happening is people at the top who have long been in these positions where there has not been a creativity or the mindset to change, they're going to be forced to change or either going to innovate or you're going to disappear. And the people below you and around you are going to force you into this conversation, whether you want to have it or not. Joel (19m 19s): So I can hear a mass grown by all the recruiters that are listening to the show, thinking, get the Rare Breed. How do we attract the Rare Breed? These folks are just keeping their head above water to fill seats with just people that intake oxygen and can do the job. Sunny (19m 36s): And you need that. There's a place for those people. That doesn't mean that every single butt that you fill has to be, or every seat that you fill with a butt has to be a Rare Breed, but you need Rare Breed thinking in your company. There's no other way. Chad (19m 52s): But that's tactical. Sunny (19m 54s): Yeah. It's not that you don't need people that kind of keep things running smoothly. I don't think that's the goal here. It's not either or. It's and. You know, it's those people AND you're looking for those types of Rare Breeds who don't fit the mold, you know, who stand out against the herd, who look at the status quo and punch it in the eye. You know, you need visions who think outlandishly, rebelling against business as usual. Joel (20m 18s): How many Rare Breeds do you need If it's a percentage, is that up to the executives to go out and hand pick who they think are Rare Breeds? Is this up to the people writing the job description and what should that entail to attract people who are rare breeds? Sunny (20m 31s): I think it starts at the top. You know, I think it's leadership and vision. I mean, it's about creating the conditions in the environment to know who doesn't always say yes to you. And if you're not a visionary leader, how do you surround yourself with people that are? And so I think it starts there first and foremost, like what's the Clarion call that you want to have? And then how do you then put people in place even at HR positions that might traditionally be seen as boring or, you know, looking for those stable types of employees, but rather how do you actually put people in HR that are also going to think counterintuitively and say, maybe our job descriptions should be a little bit more interesting than senior project manager, you know, looking for somebody to manage our projects. Sunny (21m 15s): Like maybe you're looking for somebody who to come in and do that, but also to design the way your clients are experiencing your projects and your project management, you know, who's a design thinker, someone who's going to challenge the way that you've always ran your projects, you know, and there's a certain person that you're looking for. So sometimes the questions that we're even asking are not the right questions, you know, even at the HR level, at the, at the first entry point, it starts with the job description. It starts with who's hiring them. It also starts from the top of what kind of culture we are actually trying to create, what kind of thinkers and people do we need within it. And they can't all be the ones that look like us. Chad (21m 55s): Purpose. Sunny (21m 55s): Absolutely. Chad (21m 55s): That overall is the biggest discussion we have because marketing has failed the employment side of the house period for 99.9% of organizations out there, which is what actually created this thing. We call today, recruitment marketing. And we even have employment branding specialists because marketing's fucked all this up because they just have a blind spot. So, I mean, that's the hard discussion. And I don't think that there is, you know, a black and white answer to this because some of those who don't have purpose or they have a specific way of doing business, they're just not going to get the Rare Breeds, right? Sunny (22m 39s): I think that it is about also helping your team and organization and culture think with a Rare Breed mindset, which most people don't. Most organizations look, I've been in thousands, hundreds of thousands of them at this point in my now 16 year career, I've been in the biggest brands on earth. And I can tell you with a thousand percent certainty that many of what's happening, where the innovation starts and stops is through every bit of red tape that exists on the way to creating extraordinary ideas. There's so many bullet holes by the time they get to where they need to go, that it's unrecognizable and change, isn't allowed to even take place or happen because of budget restrictions or too many people, or this person has got to do. Sunny (23m 18s): You know, you've got all this stuff going on. And so what we're going and doing is also trying to help organizations at the operational level think first and foremost, with a Rare Breed mindset, because without that, you can't affect anything else that's happening around you. You have to first start thinking counterintuitive to how you've been thinking. And that's really hard to get most people to do so, but there are organizations out there. There are companies out there, we've been in them, we've worked with them we've changed them. That will adopt this thinking and have adopted this thinking and have had massive breakthroughs and competitive edges because of this type of thinking, you know, and deploying it, not just in little silos, but actually throughout their entire organization and rewarding people who think in that way. Joel (24m 2s): I was gonna ask the path of least resistance for you. HR is historically risk averse, right? Their job by nature is to keep us out of court, like keep us out of trouble. So when you go into these big organizations, who is most open to this conversation and talking about recruiting and growing our own talent and internally, and finding the folks that are going to be the future leaders. Is it the executives? Is it marketing? Is it HR? How do you bring all those together? Talk about that. Sunny (24m 32s): Yeah. I mean, we will, most of the work that we're doing now is we're doing facilitated workshops where we can let people have a safe space to communicate how they feel. There are a lot of people actually at these levels, HR leadership, executive VPs, even of brand marketing, you know, HR culture, even CEOs and founders like who are they have hunger for this? You know, they want to change. They want to do things, but no, one's really given them permission to do it. And number two, they don't always know how. And so first you have to identify what you're looking for. You're not looking for. And when we, when we say Rare Breed, I want to be very careful, right? These are not people who come in and trash your organization and create culture carnage. Sunny (25m 15s): These are people who accentuate all the right things that you're doing, but call out injustices and problems and also bring solutions to the table to help you fix them, in new and exciting ways. You need those types of thinkers. You need people who are not there to completely destroy the culture, but rather to help make those culture stronger, more effective, more innovative. So it first starts there of knowing what you're looking for and what you're not. And that's why we go into great detail in the book about the dark side of these, they're called vices for a reason, right? First, you need to harness them within yourself, which is why so many change makers are reading the book because they're trying to understand, okay, look, I've always been sort of dangerous and defiant and different. Sunny (25m 57s): It's got me into trouble. It's also opened a lot of doors that perhaps would otherwise have been close to me. So some of that double-edged sword is really kind of fascinating because you can have these vices working for you, but you can also have them working against you. So the book really goes into great detail about how to navigate life as a Rare Breed, how to lean into the positive sides of those traits, not the negative. You don't want them to destroy and destruct you. You want them to give you a superpower, to be able to use some of these things like rebelliousness and obsession and audacity and emotion, all the things in the book that we talk about that are typically seen as negatives. Sunny (26m 37s): We flip these around to a positive and told you how to navigate the world with one of these as your primary dominant virtue. Chad (26m 44s): Right. So talk to me about friction. Why is it so important? Sunny (26m 48s): I think that it's important because it gives you another way to communicate. But what I think Rare Breed does is it gives a new definition to words that have typically been used as a slight. When you are called a misfit, when you are called an outlier, what does that say about you? It means you're on the outside looking in, you're the ugly piece of fruit. You don't belong here, you're outside the pack. And I think that we, as a society, this starts very, very young. We're creating this conditioning from the moment that we're born. This is happening in the parent, the eyes of our parents, you know, our teachers, our friends, our mentors, as we continue to grow up under the watchful eye of people who love us. Sunny (27m 30s): Sometimes we are taught to grind down those prickly points. And so what I think Rare Breed does is not only reframe a negative into a positive, but it is a badge of honor. I think people who identify as one, or if they, if they've ever been called a misfit, I would love that they chose a word like Rare Breed instead, which means unordinary among the kind, it means that you there's nothing like you out there and that's something to be very, very proud of. I think that in a lot of teams, what breaks down teams really good ideas that are packaged wrong and poor language, and also from misunderstanding. And so I like that Rare Breed offers a little bit of context for one another, to identify and work with the traits that are among your team so that you can work more effectively and efficiently. Sunny (28m 16s): And it breaks down those silos because it gives you another way to understand each other in a way that's, non-threatening. Joel (28m 20s): There you have it! (Applause) Sunny Bonnell everybody, chief vision officer at Motto, best selling author of Rare Breed, you know, speaker and all kinds of other good stuff. Sunny for our listeners who want to know more about you, your book, or your agency, where would you send them? Sunny (28m 36s): So you can find a little bit about Motto at wearemotto.com and you can also learn more about Rare Breed rarebreedleaders.com and also take the quiz, at RareBreedquiz.com, but you can also access it from a RareBreedLeaders.com. But those are really two areas that you can check us out. And then also we're on Instagram and LinkedIn at WeAreMotto and at This is Rare Breed. Joel (29m 2s): Take the quiz, Chad, you'll find out that your hot blooded. Chad and Joel (29m 6s): Check it and see! Check it and See. We out. OUTRO (29m 59s): 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.

Germany's new chancellor is named Olaf, which is also the name of the snowman from Frozen. Where are we going with this? No clue, but this episode of all-things-Euro is packed with goodness, including France's Freelance.com going all-in on growing operations by gobbling up everything in sight, apparently. What else? Rich companies in the EU are leveraging government policy to get cheap and free labor from poorer countries to join their ranks, while the EV business is set to dislodge some 500,000 auto workers from the European workforce, which makes re-skilling that much more important. Or maybe apprenticeships, powered by unicorn-in-training Multiverse, has the answers. Hard questions. This calls for another round. Prost! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Chad (0s): Technology is great. Well, until it isn't. Anyway, we had a slight recording glitch, which zapped the first five minutes of Lievens audio. So we made audio lemons into lemonade by substituting sound effects for Lievens responses. God, I'm good. Enjoy Chad & Cheese Does Europe INTRO (25s): Some podcasts, do it for the fun. Some do it for the fame, Chad and Cheese they do it for global effin domination. That's why bringing America to its knees was just the beginning. Now they have their eyes set on conquering Europe and they've drafted industry veteran Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze of Belgium to help them navigate the old country and bring HR's most dangerous podcast across the pond to trash-talk like never before. Not safe for work in any language. The Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. Joel (57s): Oh yeah. European gas prices have surged to all time highs. And after this plate of wings, gasses, surging in me too. What is up vrienden? You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your cohost Joel "Olaf" Cheeseman. Chad (1m 14s): And this is Chad "What do you mean I can't work from home?" Sowash Lieven (1m 17s): I'm still just Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze. Joel (1m 21s): And on this episode, France gets freelancy, too many European Utes are jobless and EVs are about to slash half a million jobs on the continent. Apparently freelance in French is also freelance. Who knew? Let's do this. sfx (1m 36s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel (1m 38s): No mystery guests today. Who's got a shout out? Chad (1m 42s): Well, I've got a shout out right out of the gate, friends to Oras Al-Kubaisi you remember this cat? Joel (1m 47s): That's a name. Chad (1m 47s): He was over at jobdescription.ai. He was actually on a firing squad a couple of months ago, but thanks Oras for digging up the following search metrics where we're seeing Google search term volume is exploding with the search term quote unquote "remote jobs." It surged 49% in the US, 71% in the UK, 71% in India, 60% in Canada, 31% in Australia (we'll talk about that in a minute) and 49% in South Africa. I'm sure the low 31% for Australia is because they just want to get the fuck out of lockdown. Chad (2m 31s): And they don't want to think about working from home. I don't know? Joel (2m 35s): That's right. Google is exploding and searching. You heard it here first on the Chad and Cheese podcast. So I got a shoutout for TikTok guys. So we know it's incredibly popular globally, but European operations are especially blown up. According to CNBC this week, the company's headcount in Europe, rose by over a thousand people last year, going from 208 in 2019 to 1294 in 2020. And that's undoubtedly going up as TikTok is now up to 1 billion active users. Pretty soon they'll have as many European employees as Facebook has PR people and lawyers here in the US. Chad (3m 14s): You got to ask what's the, you know, reason behind the surge, the staff surge in the EU. I mean, are they looking to try to gain favor? Because you know, obviously China doesn't have great favor with TikTok right now and Byte Dance. Joel (3m 28s): Yeah. Well, they obviously need salespeople to sell ads to agencies and speak the language if you will, of the countries. Now what's interesting is TikTok has what they call 996 culture, which is apparently really popular in China. What 996 means is you work nine to nine, six days a week. Which if I know Europe is, I know Europe 996 is not going to work very well. Lievin is that right? Is a nine to nine day for six days a week gonna work out in Europe? sfx (4m 4s): buzzer. Joel (4m 4s): No. So they got to make some culture changes there in Europe. If that's going to work? Chad (4m 9s): Shout out to Portugal, there was a New York times article that was entitled "In Portugal, There Is Virtually No One Left to Vaccinate", 85% fully Vaxxed, but 98% of all of those eligible in Portugal are vaccinated and the last Friday Portugal released all of their COVID restrictions. Joel (4m 34s): So do they not have Fox news in Portugal? What the fuck is going on, man, get Fox news out there. Chad (4m 40s): That's my question, is when does the rest of the world and the countries actually look at countries like Portugal with high VAX rates and say, Hey, they're fully vaccinated and they're getting back to normal. I mean, I was there for five weeks, the only thing we had to do is wear masks inside, but everything was, was fairly normal. Yeah. Joel (4m 59s): Yeah. People not dying should be a real good clue for following their example. We'll see. Chad (5m 6s): Fox news. yeah, yeah, yeah. I got another, another, another shout-out. So we talked on the last show. I think about Germany's election by which I thrashed our Europeans for not knowing shit about the German election. So you're an expert on it now. Right? Think about it. They have a new chancellor. His name is Olaf Schultz, which Olaf is a cartoon character in a Disney movie called Frozen. So that'll be easy for me to remember cause I have a four year old. The new chancellor apparently is a left of center candidate versus Angela Merkel, which was a right of center candidates. Joel (5m 47s): So I don't know if you have thoughts on that Lieven, but if Germany is the engine of Europe thing to give a shout out to, but I have no other insight other than they have a new chancellor named after a snowman from a Disney film. Chad (6m 0s): So you put him on the spot again? Seriously. I don't know if you have anything else Lieven, but Rica is listening so therefore let's go ahead and put you on the spot again. Let's talk about travel. Where are we going? Joel (6m 17s): We're going to Europe. Chad (6m 18s): So tell us, what are we going to be out there? What are we going to be doing Lieven? What is, who's going to be on stage? What are the big topics? Lieven (6m 28s): I get to promote my Congress again? Nice, nice. November 25th 2021, we have to HR Recruitment Congress, as I said, last edition of the show. It's in Ostend, Belgium. It's a whole day of recruitment technology, 12 breakout sessions. If you want to stay in the know then come to the Congress. REGISTER: https://www.erecruitment-congress.com Joel (6m 46s): It sounds like for the Muppet fans out there, we're, we're the two guys in the balcony, screaming, absurdities and sarcasm. Chad (6m 52s): And drinking. Joel (6m 53s): And drinking yes. Chad (7m 6s): And to Joel, that is very sexy. Joel (7m 7s): I mean, us, us in a rooftop bar, like that sounds sexy to me. Chad (7m 12s): Yeah. Pretty stoked though, to get back to Europe, I feel like it's been forever since I've been there, Joel (7m 20s): Dude, I was so pumped to go to Vegas for HR Tech and that got polled. So I like - a total tease and I'm not getting too excited about Europe because I'm afraid it's not going to happen, but I'm so pumped to get out and see people and humanize. Chad (7m 35s): No matter what leave and I'll be there. And if we have to have a blow up Cheeseman doll. We can make it happen. It's all good. Joel (7m 50s): Again, Don't say deep, fake pornographic Cheeseman cause that just might blow ups and caster or software. Yeah. Very excited for that. And if you can make it out there, please do so we'll be podcasting. So if you can't make it, we will have Chad and Cheese in your ear from Europe, no matter what. And with that, sfx (8m 14s): Shall we play a game? Joel (8m 15s): We talk a lot about Upwork and Fiverr on the show, but maybe it's about time to add freelance.com to the list. The French based freelancing platform is in the process of closing a deal to merge with Swiss payroll company, Helvetic payroll group. The transaction is part of freelance.coms, continuing growth following the recent acquisitions. God, these guys are on a hiring spree. Co-workers TMC, France, and INOP already servicing the UK, France, Germany, Morocco, Switzerland, and Singapore. The company said its eyeing global growth while reiterating a target of achieving 1 billion euros in revenue by 2025. Joel (8m 57s): Okay. Boys with Upwork and Fiverr already a big deal and startups like Andela being a newly minted UNICORN this is a wave worth riding, right? Lieven talk about your point of view on the European freelance market. Lieven (9m 11s): It's big. I would first like to congratulate Freelance with their name. I mean freelance.com. I wonder if they bought it's really early or just paid a lot for it. Chad (9m 22s): They were founded in 1991. So I would say that probably bought it very early. Lieven (9m 28s): That's another reason to buy them. Joel (9m 31s): And like I said, freelance is freelance in French so it worked out. Lieven (9m 34s): Fantastic. That's a great name. And freelance is huge! And we just did a survey on the intentions of young people now. And apparently people who are young graduates now are 30%, at least are contemplating becoming a freelancer. So this is more than doubled in three years time. So the freelance market is going to boom and a recent study of Fiverr Scholtz. That's in the US I don't have the numbers for Europe, but in the US, the total freelance income is 750 billion. So even if your margins are extremely small and they are normally one you're payrolling and they bought a Swiss paid rent company, even with smaller margins on such an amount it's still huge. Lieven (10m 18s): So I guess the freelance marketing combination of payrolling, digital payrolling is a hit! Chad (10m 24s): It sounds like they're doing this incredibly smart from stand point of co-worker, coworkees. Co-workees, that's a horrible fucking name. That was a competitor that they merged with. TMC France, a training and managing from, for salespeople and sales managers, that's a big area of growth. And then INOP was a network of 70,000 digital experts and they had about 84 million Euro revenue in 2019. And then they want to build infrastructure for payments into their freelancers. Right? So I think, they're doing a ton of the right things to be able to provide a very full kind of like portfolio for freelancers. Chad (11m 13s): Yeah. Joel (11m 14s): You mentioned Chad, the 1991 founding, which I'm guessing they weren't an internet company back then. And they've obviously seen the wave sort of percolate over the last few decades. And now it seems like the time is right to try to build this thing. They're super tiny by Upwork and Fiverr standards. So just some metrics around this founded in '91, '92, they have about 200 employees and their market cap, they are a public company is around 300 million. Although they have aspirations to build that up to a $1 billion or 1 billion Euro company in just four years, Upwork and Fiverr right now are $6 billion market caps. So these are huge companies. These guys definitely have their work cut out for them, but the wave is the right time to ride and I think they're doing some of the right things. Joel (12m 2s): My question to Lieven is if freelance, isn't something that's sort of, you know, familiar to you in your own backyard. What are the gig platforms or the freelance platforms that are well-known in Europe? Lieven (12m 16s): It's once again, very fragmented. There's no such thing as a European Fiverr, we launched Gighouse ourselves, which is more, still a local company, but focusing on freelancers and each company probably has its own small platforms, but there isn't one jumping out. And so the freelance.com of course it already has the name and it tells the ambitions, I guess. We'll have to see. Chad (12m 40s): Oh, you think that, I mean, just from a European standpoint, French love French companies, right? Is that the same for every other country that's there? I mean, if it's something that you see grow out of Europe, is there more of a likelihood that you're going to at least give it a chance versus an Upwork or, or Fiverr or any of the other gig platforms that are coming out of the US? Lieven (13m 3s): Well, the French probably are the most chauvinistic within Europe. So it's true French love French companies, French people love French companies. I don't think it's the same thing for the other countries, but sometimes even it's difficult to grow in your own country because it's harder to be taken seriously in our own company if it's American or if it's something else then it must be a good company, Joel (13m 24s): French love French companies, cause there are three of them, they're easy to keep track of. So I'm curious from an acquisition standpoint, Chad, we've talked on the show in recent history, Fiverr acquiring, Working Not Working. Chad (13m 40s): Yeah. Joel (13m 40s): And we also had Career Gig acquire Moonlighting. So I'm curious the potential for like a StepStone or someone in Europe to buy a freelancing platform, to take on, you know, the Upwork and Fiverrs and really gain a foothold in Europe. What are your thoughts on that Lieven? Lieven (13m 54s): They should have done it already I guess. You have LinkedIn who is going to take the markets, they're building a platform and very global spirit, global player. So I think companies like Fiverr have the advantage already. They are huge and everyone is using them. Same with Workplace. LinkedIn has the opportunity to launch something which is kind of different because they have this huge database. But for a new company it won't be easy. If you have a local approach, you know, the local people, you know, the local companies, the local candidates, and you can offer service. That's something the global companies probably won't be able to do. So there are two types. Lieven (14m 35s): You have the global approach offering one type for everyone. And they have those local companies offering everything like also the payrolling and finance, because all those legislations are different. And if you're working in Belgium or Germany, Texas will be different and you'll have to get different advice. And our company guesthouses focusing on the service, they're tying people to them just by offering service and that's something which will probably make it feasible to exist and to compete against companies like LinkedIn and Fiverr et cetera., Joel (15m 9s): And I'm guessing some of the FED or the governmental legislation would keep an acquisition sort of stalled. Right? So as Italy and other countries think about, you know, is Uber an employee or are they a contract worker that, that might keep an acquisition from happening because of uncertainty with each country's legal system? Is that fair to say? Lieven (15m 29s): I don't know their thoughts, but it's certainly won't help. Chad (15m 34s): Yeah. But if you take a look at this, this can actually be a pretty awesome staffing play. If they're smart about it, staffing automatically is going to, let's say for instance, from a temp standpoint and, again more may need some more, you know, intel from Lieven on this, but here in the states, you take a look at temp staffing, this is a perfect opportunity to roll into that same kind of model. You're just doing it virtually, right. And they're being paid, not as FTEs. So depending on how you model this and again, staffing, especially in UK is much larger. I think more of a, a larger percentage than the in-house corporate recruiting in the UK. Chad (16m 17s): This might be an awesome model to roll out, but to do it under the guise of quote unquote "tech," but yet it's still under staffing. Joel (16m 24s): I mean the name alone, they have a fighting chance in America if they put money behind it. I think so to me, the name alone, the name alone is pretty good. I mean, a lot of people don't know Fiverr, Upwork. So I think there's still, I think, I think the market is still young enough that they could come in and spend enough money and get freelance.com a solid brand in America. Chad (16m 42s): I don't know that they're big enough to actually spend a ton of cash in the U S they might be, they Joel (16m 48s): Are not big enough. They'd have to go raise money or do something. Chad (16m 52s): Well, no, I mean, if you think about it, if they become the platform, we've talked about this before. If they become the platform for staffing agencies, then they don't have to, it's all transaction-based. Right? Joel (17m 4s): Yeah. Chad (17m 4s): So it's all about the model. Where do they go? Do they try to go to the, the commercial model and then they have to spend shit tons of cash for people to know who they are, or do they partner with organizations who do not have the technical infrastructure and/or, you know, payment or whatever it might be to actually do their business in 2021, especially with all these people who see the promise of staying, working from home and being able to do it as a gigger. Joel (17m 35s): Yeah. Chad (17m 35s): That's where I see the opportunity versus Hey, freelance.com is a great name. Fuck that. Look at the actual strategic wealth of getting behind some of these staffing companies who are decades behind in technical infrastructure. Joel (17m 55s): I say the name matters. sfx (17m 59s): buzzer. Joel (17m 60s): Let's take a quick break. sfx (18m 1s): Oh hell no. Joel (18m 1s): And we'll talk about utes. sfx (18m 3s): Europe a bunch of countries in it. Joel (18m 4s): All right, guys. Yeah. Have you seen that movie, Lieven? Lieven (18m 7s): Which one? Joel (18m 7s): My cousin Vinny, Joe Pesci Lieven (18m 9s): Taunting. So Joel (18m 10s): There's a movie with Joe Pesci, very famous movie in America, at least and Joe Pesci is a lawyer and he goes to court in the south and he says utes instead of youths. So anyway, so utes is sort of a nomenclature here in America and funny. So everyone's laughing, that's listening for sure. COVID-19 is Delta blow to Europe's young folks leaving many jobless and highlighting disparities. So now the EU is devising a new program called ALMA to help out of work youth, get job placements abroad, ALMA stands for Aim, Learn, Master and Achieve. Lieven (18m 51s): All in English. Joel (18m 52s): ALMA will target people, struggling to find a job, people living with disabilities, people with insufficient skills and those with a migration background. Participants will receive an allowance to cover travel, accommodation insurance and other basic costs during their time abroad. They'll get coaching before, during and after placements. An estimated 15 million euros, that's about $17 million, in EU funds will be allocated for ALMA, for its first year. Critics say this as a scheme for richer countries to access cheap or free labor. Boys, are you selling or buying ALMA? Chad (19m 28s): Well, hooray for Belgium, right? This is a great way to counter pretty much counter program against the UK right now, where the UK is being seen as isolationists and they're missing opportunity for great talent. So if I was in Europe and I saw the shit that was happening with Brexit and the UK, I would be doing the exact same thing. Now, having the conversation versus unpaid intern versus paid intern is I think important to broach as well. Lieven (19m 55s): I've got a big problem with the unpaid internship. Chad (19m 58s): Good. Lieven (19m 58s): Definitely. I mean, it's not like the companies aren't willing to pay. They definitely are willing to pay for talent, but if they are offered a way to not pay, they won't pay. Chad (20m 9s): Of course. Lieven (20m 9s): So I'm thinking it's a bit cheap from Europe to offer a way to, just to, to claim we're doing something nice for the, for the young people and we are not going to pay them, but it's a lot. It's a program. Joel (20m 23s): If you're an unemployed college graduate in Spain and you have an opportunity that's paid for, I mean, you may not get paid, but you have an allowance for food and shit like that. Would you rather have that, that open door and opportunity, or would you rather, you know, roll the dice in your home country to eventually get a job somewhere? For me, I'd prefer the opportunity to get my foot in the door somewhere, as opposed to sitting at home, hoping that someone calls for a job. Lieven (20m 55s): Yeah. But the problem isn't that big. I mean, back after the financial crisis, let's say 2017 in Greece, there was a 40% of unemployment with the youngsters, Spain, 38, Italy 34. I mean, today, it isn't that bad. It's already getting better. Joel (21m 8s): They're all over 20%, Italy, Greece and Spain are all over 20% for 25 and younger, Lieven (21m 12s): Which is still better than it was a few years ago. It's good that Europe is doing something, but I don't think this is the approach. And in my opinion, they should let the companies arrange it. Chad (21m 26s): Yeah. Lieven (21m 26s): They need to talent. Let them organize something to exchange notes and to say, Hey, Spanish people, we need you. Joel (21m 36s): How much of this is keeping peace in the EU. In other words, if I'm Germany, France, et cetera, I don't want Greece, Spain, Portugal, et cetera, revolting, right? And young people without jobs and no future tend to up rise more often than young people who are happy, employed or have purpose in life. So is any part of this, the government saying, we need to keep, we need to give these people hope and this is a program that can do that. And by the way, we're going to help our companies get cheaper, free labor as well. So everyone wins. The government keeps the peace. Young people get an opportunity and corporations get to get cheap labor. Is that, am I reading that right? Or no? Lieven (22m 16s): Today Western European countries are paying a lot to Europe to help companies like countries like Greece and Spain, to certain extent to overcome the economic problems they used to have, or they are still having. And now it's a way to offer them something back and they are arranging those young people to be able to work for them. And you don't have to pay them. Europe will arrange something. So it's a way of paying those rich companies, countries back. I don't really like the not paying internship thing. Chad (22m 46s): Offering unpaid internship says a lot about your company. And it says that you don't value the person's time and you don't believe they have bills, they need to eat, or they even need to sleep. Now I understand that, that obviously there isn't the, the huge influx of debt that we have over here in the US because, you know, kids have to, you know, they find themselves 40, 60, 100 thousand dollars in debt because of college. Although we're setting a bad precedent by saying, you know, you have no value because you are learning, not the case. Lieven (23m 17s): They say, we offer you an opportunity to get some experience because people, young people are mostly rejected because of a lack of experience. So those big companies say, we don't really need you, but we'll make room anyway, come over and we'll give you an opportunity for free to get experience, but it's just starting to things around it. Shouldn't be like that. They definitely need them. Joel (23m 40s): I have a probably dumb question Lieven, in America, let's say you're living in a state that doesn't have a lot of opportunity, right? It's really easy to get in a car and drive to a state and get, you know, get a living, you know, get a residence and like set up shop and look for a job in a state where there might be opportunity. Is it fair to say that European people don't have that same opportunity? Like if I'm in Portugal and I say, you know what, there's there, there aren't any jobs here. I'm going to drive to Germany and look for a job there is that easy? Or is that a really hard thing to? Lieven (24m 19s): There is just one difference and that's the language. Joel (24m 21s): Okay. Lieven (24m 21s): Because within the European Union, you can travel across country, across boundaries, across whatever, without having to think about paperwork, you just can travel and you can work. You have the right to work in each country, in the European Union, the moment you're a European citizen, Joel (24m 34s): And I can buy a home there. I can rent an apartment. I can buy a car. Like nothing changes. As long as I stay in the EU? Lieven (24m 41s): Exactly. The only problem is if you go to France, you're supposed to be able to speak French in most cases. And that's someone from Portugal isn't going to be able to do. Joel (24m 53s): So I just wanted to enter a company called multi-verse got funded recently, and their concept is apprenticeship. So maybe apprenticeships are part of the solution. At least some investors certainly think so. So UK based multi-verse.io, which matches job-seekers with apprenticeship opportunities has raised $130 million in a Series E round, bringing total funding to $194 million and a $745 million valuation. They'll probably be unicorn status soon. Through multi-verse apprentices, without a college degree can receive experience and hands-on learning. It's completely free for the apprentice who can earn around $25,000 in a US plus salary while learning on the job. Joel (25m 37s): So there are two rules of thought here, you have government intervention, and then you have private business trying to solve this problem. Do you have a horse that you'd bet on in that battle, or it can both work together to kind of solve this unemployment issue? Lieven (25m 55s): It's all about speed and the government hasn't got the best reputation for speeding up procedures and that's something companies can. I'm going to give a simple example in Belgium when there was a refugee from Afghanistan or Syria, when he was accepted as a refugee, then it took the government five years to give them their first job. So that's five years of living without. Yeah. Okay. And then there is a company, an NGO in Belgium Job Roads, and they said, we're going to take those people the moment they enter Belgium and are registered as a refugee. They're going to pick them up, and they are going to put them into companies? Lieven (26m 37s): And they're going to learn the language by working. And it only took them a few months to get them their first job, but that's a huge difference. And people, their value is often their job. They feel valuable if they are able to work and they're becoming part of a community. Joel (26m 54s): It's a great point that you said speed. Multi-verse is eyeing expansion into the US more than into Europe. And I think your point is in terms of speed, deregulation, less red tape is why a company would sort of have eye growth in America before they would Europe. And it probably hurts Europe in the end a lot of these companies don't focus on the continent. They go to America or somewhere else. I mean, obviously that's a negative for people in the industry nationally who are looking for work in Europe. Chad (27m 27s): Yeah. Well, as you'd said, we talked about this topic on last Friday show with Andela, who just reached unicorn status and Andela much, like Multi-verse sees a silver bullet moment happening for them because companies are crying about talent or skills gaps. And they're not filling them themselves, they're waiting for somebody to fill their gaps. The only issue that I see here is that there are seven courses provided by Multi-verse, right? That's not going to cover most organizations, especially with where their needs are. So do I think that these, the state and corporate America can run together and work together? Chad (28m 10s): I do. I think obviously, you know, the state and or nation isn't as nimble, but they could be if they started to have these types of partnerships, but much, like, I think Lieven was talking about earlier, this is a corporate responsibility. This is not a nation responsibility. Right. But yet, but yet there are issues from country to country where nations have to get involved. And I think that's where you're seeing an overlap. Lieven (28m 35s): But I think the government should be involved and they should be facilitating those young people to work. And I'm going to give an example, let's say, instead of getting them an allowance to go to from Spain to Brussels, and to start looking for a job there, why not just offer tax reductions to the companies who are hiring those people, and then they will be able to pay them and give them a Joel (28m 57s): Love it. Chad (28m 58s): They need them anyway. No, they need them anyway. That's total bullshit. Don't give them any tax reductions. They're already making enough profit as it is in the first place and they need people. We're letting them off the hook by providing corporate welfare. It's total bullshit. There's no reason to give them a tax abatement. Joel (29m 15s): There wouldn't be 20% unemployment if they needed them now. Chad (29m 19s): No, they do need them. Now, do you not see that the UK is having a huge issue? The EU is having a huge issue with trying to fill positions. They're not training, right? They're waiting for a handout. Lieven (29m 31s): The blue collar workers still. But I think in the UK now. My problem is the government is now paying for the houses. For example, if you are going to relocate to, from Spain to let's say, France they'll will offer you some kind of housing. Don't offer them housing, just make sure the company is paid and they will be able to rent their own apartment. Joel (29m 52s): I'm with Lieven and let's make Europe, Florida. Damm it, no taxes. By the way, Chad, you mentioned Andela. I mean, it's the same thing, right? Like they opened up an office in New York. They should have been like, Europe is in our back door. We need to grow the business there, but they chose America. So that shows me something structurally wrong with Europe and regulation and how tough it is for businesses. Although you have pockets with Ireland, which are tax havens more or less, but there are different stories. That's a complicated continent for sure. Chad (30m 28s): There's more money here for startups. We've seen that. So that's easy not to mention. Everybody speaks the same language again. And you're just talking about easing the complexity and making the smart move. Joel (30m 42s): Let's talk about EVs, something that everyone loves electric vehicles in Europe. There will be a fallout from the revolution. However, the European commission has proposed an effective ban on new gasoline and diesel cars from 2035. The shift to electric vehicles will force huge changes in the auto industry and require EU backing for rescaling programs. According to a new study by Boston consulting group, which said "by 2030 European jobs at manufacturers and traditional suppliers focused on combustion engines will drop 20% and 42% respectively between them shedding a cumulative half a million jobs. Joel (31m 23s): The good news employment at suppliers focused on zero emissions technology will rise by 300,000 workers. Workers building combustion engines will need new skills. But the question is how?" Thoughts? Chad (31m 36s): It's the same conversation that we just had. Automakers have warned that jobs, that conventional combustion engine plants will be particularly at risk and have called for the EU to mitigate this right. Well, 2035 is over a fucking decade away. Plus we've seen this slow moving EV locomotive coming at us for fucking years. So this isn't a surprise and the transition is already happening at least from a planning standpoint, to be able to switch combustion and compression engine manufacturing to EV. So if the companies are planning for changes in manufacturing, hardware, and software, why the fuck aren't they planning and starting the process of getting their workforce up to speed? Chad (32m 20s): Once again, they're looking to the EU for a fucking handout when they should be doing this shit themselves. Lieven (32m 30s): Yeah. And like those, those car manufacturers in Germany, they have a problem. Certainly they're going to have to change to shift from those combustions workers to electronic engineers, et cetera. But the problem will be, it's not, it's not the problem, it's not going to be for the workers because there is still a lot of skilled mechanics needed in other industries, HVAC, maintenance, et cetera. Those people definitely won't get a job. So they don't probably all of them don't want to get re-skilled and they won't have to, the problem will be, where will we find those skilled electricians? And I was wondering, let's say the schools where people are learning to become a car mechanic right now, are those schools up to speed yet? Lieven (33m 12s): Are they shifting totally to electronics? Or are they saying no, because we don't have the knowledge and maybe the next, the coming 10 years, those people will still be able to work on the existing cars today. So normally the education is running behind. And I guess in this case, it will be the same problem, but you're talking about 2035 in Europe that's true. But in Norway, for example, it will be 2025. They are making it much faster. Chad (33m 41s): But you said find and we're not going to find something that doesn't exist right? Lieven (33m 47s): True. Chad (33m 47s): We need to manufacture. That's what I'm saying, whether it's, you know, 2025 or 2035, we know what the problem is. We're not going to find something that does not exist, which is why we have to manufacture talent. Lieven (34m 1s): Yeah. And that's re-scaling, but it will also be re-orientating. Some people just probably are not interested in becoming an electronic guy. Some people are maybe not able to, it's a different thing. So that's what would be a problem, but like Germans say we are shuffling us, I guess? Joel (34m 20s): I'm curious about sort of the union influence here in the US the US tends to lean, you know, the US where the automakers used to be a huge, huge union are basically more or less non-existent now. We have a culture of sort of rugged independence, like, okay, the jobs are going away, you know, get yourself together and go somewhere else, get re-educated somewhere else. The government is not as active as maybe they should be. But I feel like Europe has a pretty active government. That's also tied to pretty strong union. So if I'm an auto union in Europe, I'm thinking about how do I keep power? How do I keep my dues coming in? And part of that is sort of this story of, oh, we're going to lose this. Joel (35m 2s): We need to re-skill and keep these people in the auto industry, keep them in the union. How much of an impact is the union on this story? Lieven (35m 14s): I'm pretty sure they're talking about it right now. I mean, let's look at Germany. Germany is the car manufacturing, company, country, sorry, in Europe and the German metal union has over 2 million members. So if there is a shift to electronics, that union won't be happy because that's not the metal union anymore so I'm sure they're trying to get a big finger in it. But look at Tesla, for example, Tesla is now entering Germany, and they're going to build belts. They call it the giga, sorry, factory Berlin, Brandenburg. It's a huge, huge, huge factory, sorry, and near Berlin. So I can imagine the unions are best off totally because it's something new. Lieven (35m 56s): On Tesla hasn't got the best reputation for talking to unions. They mostly make fun of them. Joel (36m 4s): No shit. So was that the government siding with Tesla and not the unions. And is that a big battle? Lieven (36m 12s): It's a difficult one. You should think the German government is trying to protect its own big brands like AUDI, Mercedez, Volkswagen, et cetera. And by allowing Tesla to open such a factory near Berlin, that's stepping their own car brands in the back. But then again, it's not because there are going to allow Germany to be the EV manufacturer of the future. And it will be like a new ecosystem for EVs and once again, it will be Germany. So there's, I think it was the CEO of Volkswagen who said he was actually pretty pleased. He said, okay, it will be a tough competition, but we will stay in the car manufacturing country in Europe and be able to just help each other out in one way or another. Joel (36m 56s): So full circle. Keep your eye on Olaf for that EV question, because Olaf will have a lot to say about that. Chad (37m 2s): Can you start singing something from Frozen now? I haven't seen it, but I think that's a good way to go out. Joel (37m 10s): We want to keep our listeners Chad. We want to keep our listeners, not drive them away. Guys. It's been fun as always can't wait to do it live And in person. If you want to hear more Euro, goodness, guys, check out Chadcheese.com/Europe. We keep it simple. Lieven, enjoy that tree house and the Belgian beer that you're obviously tapping in a keg there. And Chad as always, it was fun. And we out. All (37m 45s): We out. OUTRO (38m 25s): 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.

We're usually pretty skeptical about company sponsored surveys. Not surprisingly, the data usually turns out to be a self-serving pile of hot garbage, or a half-assed attempt at getting some love from the media. And then there's Talent Alpha's new global talent report, "The A3 Work Revolution: Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere." We dug it so much, we had to have Talent Alpha CEO (and Firing Squad alum) Prez Berendt on the podcast to highlight some of the survey's finer points and nuances. After that, we dig into a recent acquisition out of the Nordics, claiming to be the most important thing to happen in Scandinavia since the Viking Age. Skol, um, maybe. Then what Chad & Cheese show is complete without something about strippers, porn stars or gun-toting robots, so we have one of those stories too... this time, out of the UK. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides comprehensive website accessibility testing with personalized recommendations to enhance usability for people with a variety of disabilities or situational limitations. Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Europe Intro (6s): Some podcasts, do it for the fun. Some do it for the fame, Chad and Cheese they do it for global effin domination. That's why bringing America to its knees was just the beginning. Now they have their eyes set on conquering Europe and they've drafted industry veteran Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze of Belgium to help them navigate the old country and bring HR's most dangerous podcast across the pond to trash-talk like never before. Not safe for work in any language. The Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. Joel (39s): Oh yeah. American Airlines canceled close to 2000 flights over the weekend. Thanks mostly to labor shortages. Welcome to the Metaverse motherfuckers. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Europe. I'm your cohost Joel "live from Glasgow" Cheeseman Chad (55s): And this is Chad "straight out of Krackow" Sowash. Lieven (59s): I'm, once again, just Lieven. Joel (1m 1s): And on this episode, Assessio says, if you ain't Dutch, you ain't much. The UK is war on strip clubs and it's a work revolution up in here. Y'all and there ain't no revolution like a European revolution. Let's do this. sfx (1m 16s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel (1m 20s): Mystery guest! Chad (1m 21s): Mystery guest. Okay. Kids here we go. Get ready straight out of Krackow. That was my hint, a Harvard business school, executive grad in business marketing strategy and leadership development. He spent four years at Proctor and Gamble in user experience, seven years as a managing director and VP at Luxoff. And most importantly, he is a firing squad alum. Today he is the CEO and founder of Talent Alpha. Give it up for Przemek Berendt aka Prez. Welcome back to the show Prez, what's up? Przemek (1m 56s): Good to be back Joel (1m 58s): Prez is here for sloppy seconds. He came back. Very nice. Very nice. Chad (2m 3s): This is, this is going to be a little less stressful possibly. I don't know, Lieven's on the show. It might be more stressful than the firing squad episode. Tell us what you've been up to man. Przemek (2m 14s): Well, I've been building Talent Alpha since the last time we met in back in, I think it was 2018 still when we were just starting out, right now, the business is booming and the pandemic has been really the accelerator to this. Enjoying all of the turmoil on the local markets and the 38 countries where we already operate and looking forward to the show. Thanks for having me. Joel (2m 36s): Look at you. And they've grown up so much since 2018. Is that when we talked to you? Oh, they've. Chad (2m 41s): So much. Joel (2m 41s): They get me teary-eyed so much. Yeah, so much growing up to do. Chad (2m 45s): So little, I remember how small they were back then. Joel (2m 47s): Such a little tyke when we talked to them and look at them now. So sexy. I've got to shout out everybody. Chad (2m 55s): OK, hit it. Joel (2m 56s): Freelancing is my shout out. Maybe this is what happens when everyone has a government funded healthcare in Europe, time to quit that crappy job and gig for living. So last week, LinkedIn announced that after signing up some 2 million Americans to its new gig platform, that it would roll out to the rest of the world. Well, hello there European Union and the UK where some 170 million folks are on LinkedIn's platform. LinkedIn posted revenues of 3.1 billion during the last quarter. A year on year jump of 42%. Also we talked about France based freelance.com recently, which is a public company and they're crushing it. Joel (3m 36s): Last month the company reported revenue growth of 60% in the first half of the financial year bringing the France based gig sites, total revenue to 212 million euros. Want some more gig news everybody? Upwork announced last month, a 32% year on year revenue increase for the third quarter, taking its total earnings to $128 million. So shout out to freelance nation, coming to a recruitment strategy near you. Chad (4m 6s): Kind of gives you some insight on why LinkedIn started that platform, right? A big shout out to Cornerstone on Demand. So during our last European show, we said that we would be looking for some big moves from Cornerstone on Demand after moving from public back to private. Meaning acquisitions, for the most part. We expected their big moves to be acquisitions. Well, I received some internal pictures and their big move seems to be, wait for kids, changing their logo and color scheme a-la CareerBuilder. Chad (4m 46s): Real quick, real quick I've got a quick message for Cornerstone. Come close Cornerstone. Listen. Hey buddy, you don't need a new coat of paint. You need new texts. So I'll stop applying lipstick to that same old fucking pig and start building for the future. Okay. Don't follow CareerBuilder. Joel (5m 6s): You just got Chad-ed. sfx (5m 8s): Oh, Hell no. Chad (5m 8s): Lieven, talk to me about your favorite man. Lieven (5m 12s): Elon Musk. Elon my hero, had just announced that if the United Nations started a food program from the United Nations can convince him that his $6 billion can change the world. He will donate it. And I know you don't believe it. And I know you think he was going to try to get out of it, but if Elon can be trust, I believe it is going to do it. Chad (5m 32s): This is in response to the what was it? The UN's food program or something like that. They actually said if they had 2% of Elon Musk's worth or some shit like that, that they could actually, you know, feed the world. And he came back and said, if you prove it to me, I'll give it to you. Is that where we're going with this? Lieven (5m 55s): Exactly. And I think they won't be able to prove it, but he'll do anyway. Joel (5m 59s): You know, Hertz, Hertz just bought a hundred thousand Teslas and like 50,000 of them will be Uber drivers. Most Europeans would probably want more Teslas than they would the 6 billion to save the planet. But maybe that's just me Lieven (6m 13s): Am my I right, to become president of the United States you need to be born in the United States? Okay. So Elon will never become your president. He was born in South Africa, I believe. Joel (6m 25s): Yep. Chad (6m 25s): He can be the president of the world. Lieven (6m 28s): Yeah. Even better. Joel (6m 29s): He's a real American success story, baby. Chad (6m 32s): Prez, what do you think about Ilon over there in Poland in Krakow? Przemek (6m 36s): I've definitely, he's been the one that has many eyeballs on him and people are watching, you know, he's whereabouts. I saw that tweet where he committed that 6 billion. And I thought, oh, if anyone can do that, he might be the one to pull this off, but he would call the United Nations kind of accountable for the money he gives. You know, I also followed the US, kind of topics when they say tax the rich. And I think there is some truth to that as well. Right. So let's see what these guys are up to in the 2022. Joel (7m 6s): The kicker is it's going to all be in Dogecoin there. Lieven (7m 11s): No, but if he says it's going to be in Dogecoin. Joel (7m 13s): May or may not be worth that. Lieven (7m 14s): I don't know, it might rise if he says so. Chad (7m 17s): Yeah. Or he'll go on Saturday Night Live, and then it'll rise. And then it will tank. Prez you got some shout outs? Przemek (7m 26s): Absolutely. So as the ambassador of the Central and Eastern European region, I wanted first to shout out to the Central and Eastern European talent, specifically to all of the female and male software engineers who have been making our market's so hot for so many decades. The market has been absolutely crazy over the 2021 and the Shout Out goes through them. My number two goes to actually falling on the Ted Lasso shout outs in the previous show, I wanted to shout out to the fans of that The Great and the season two premieres in three weeks. Haazaa to everyone who is really watching that show. I'm a big fan, and can't wait for this to come. Joel (8m 5s): How many Halloween costumes did I have to endure of Ted Lasso? Przemek (8m 10s): And my number three is actually an anti-shout out if you guys accept these? I want to Chad (8m 15s): We call them rants though. We call them rants. Przemek (8m 18s): Rants, all right, let's run some rants of the central banks and governments for letting the inflation out of control. You guys have fucked it up in a beautiful way. Romania 6.29%, Estonia, 6.6, Poland, 6.8, right? Russia, 7.4, Ukraine, 11%. You know, if our markets were attractive because of the cost arbitrage, I think these days are gone. Thank you. Chad (8m 45s): Ouch. Joel (8m 45s): I'll ask a dumb American question. Are they in the G20? Przemek (8m 48s): No, they're not. Joel (8m 50s): Okay. Because the G20 is all, all agreeing on, like a minimum tax rate for companies, right? Is that good for Poland? Cause they're outside of that realm, are they going to pull in a lot of tech companies now? Przemek (9m 2s): There is a fair presence of tech companies over here, and it's been growing over the years, right? Lately the foreign investments have been stagnating slightly that's because of our internal politics and also some of the battles between the Polish government and in Brussels, meaning the EU. Joel (9m 19s): So you welcome a minimum tax on companies in those countries. Przemek (9m 22s): Of course we do. Right. Because a lot of that is being transferred out. Right. You know, to Ireland and then to other kind of tax havens, so. Joel (9m 32s): Yep. Now it's coming to Poland, baby. Time to party. Chad (9m 36s): This is a great transition into the future of work report. You got something there Cheeseman? Joel (9m 41s): Yeah. Yeah. Let's mention first though, that Chad, you and I are going to Brussels this month to celebrate American Thanksgiving. Chad (9m 50s): Yes. That's right! Joel (9m 51s): Yeah. If you, if you want to come join us, the URL is escaping me. Lieven (10m 1s): Erecruitments-congress.com. And then how do you call it? dash-congress.com. That's the one. Joel (10m 4s): Chad and I'll be there. A couple of our friends of the show will be there. It'll be a good time. We'll get some good content. So make sure that you look out for that. Chad (10m 12s): Prez is going to be there. Przemek (10m 15s): I am coming. Yes. Lieven (10m 18s): Are you coming? Yeah, indeed. I saw someone from Poland actually registered. So that's you? Przemek (10m 25s): That was me, yes. Lieven (10m 25s): Cool! Joel (10m 26s): He's so sharp, someone from Poland is coming. Holy Shit! Lieven (10m 29s): You do realize that most of the speaking of being dutch. Przemek (10m 31s): Chad and Cheese will be there and we are going to have our Duvell competition. Joel (10m 39s): A little competition. Say more about that. Can I win some Duvel? Lieven (10m 43s): Drink as much as you want. Joel (10m 45s): Okay. Then I'm in on that competition. Yeah. Sorry. Let's get to some actual. Chad (10m 55s): Thank you. Joel (10m 56s): I guess. Chad (10m 57s): Topics! Joel (10m 57s): All right. This is a report done by our friends at Talent Alpha who Prez represents, so called the A3 work revolution. The A3 means anytime, any place, anywhere. The annual future of work report produced by the company is now available for download at Talent-Haifa, excuse me, talent-alpha.com. It analyzes the challenges and opportunities arising from changes in the way work is performed, from flexible working hours through new forms of employment, to the ability to match talent and demand from all over the globe. Prez this is your baby. Take it away. What does this report reveal? Przemek (11m 38s): Well, first of all, it reveals that we are experiencing a super acceleration of trends, right? Clearly 2021 has shifted so many things around us, forcing many companies, both small and big to really change the way they think about, about talent and talent acquisition. So every year when we write the future of work report, we invite industry experts, analysts as well, the executives from the different parts of the market to help us kind of look at the market holistically. And this year we are looking at a couple of topics, starting with the A3 revolution itself, where we break it down into what it really means and how companies can get ready for that. Przemek (12m 19s): Then diving into the talent shortage and really saying that, you know what we have been experiencing over the past, say nine months is here to stay, right? And it's not going to go anywhere anytime soon, especially when it comes to tech talent. And then we talk and dive into some of the remedies for the challenges that the businesses face. First, we talk about open talent, how the different talent platforms can help it, the gig work, the freelance work that you just mentioned, all of the announcements in the shout-outs. And last we talk on how companies should adjust to all of these changes and how they should think differently about their strategy, basically telling them you don't need to adapt or die because they old world is not coming back. Chad (13m 1s): It's not coming back. Are we sure of that? We know that employees right now, it's an employee market. So the market powers on the employee side, do we really feel like this is permanence or will it shift dramatically when the power is back on the employer side of the house? Przemek (13m 18s): I don't think it will come back to the old normal as we knew it prior pandemic. I agree with you that we might be kind of on the extreme side of the pendulum and the pendulum would definitely swing back at some point in time when the market and the economy shifts. But I think some of the new habits that talent around the globe kind of now imprinted into themselves, they are there to stay and some of their expectations and requirements as well, such as, you know, some of the data that we quote in the report that: 75% of employees want to maintain flexible hours after the pandemic. Right? So even if the market shifts, right, and to know me as a talent on the labor market, I have two offers. Przemek (14m 0s): One that offers me to basically work from home anytime I want and the one that requires me to go back to the office, which one would I choose? Right? So I think some of these things are here to stay regardless of the market condition. Joel (14m 12s): Prez, one of the things that we talk about regularly on our show is the great resignation. I commented this past week about just how much of a complicated issue the great resignation is. Some people say it's just a money question, right? Just pay people more money and problem solved. But it seems like there are other issues, deeper issues with people, whether they hate going to work, they hate working in general. They want more flexibility to work from home. A phenomenon obviously is impacted folks. What are you seeing or what did you see in terms of the great resignation and takeaways from the report? And what's sort of your viewpoint on what's going on with everyone leaving jobs. Joel (14m 54s): I mean, the percentages of people that say they're leaving is almost comical. What's your take? Przemek (14m 59s): Well, I think the great resignation is a fact, right? And I think what is not being discussed enough is what is new kind of in this cycle? And what's really has what has changed throughout the pandemic is that a number of barriers that we used to have back in the days are no longer there? Right prior to the pandemic companies used to recruit in the 30 mile or a 30 kilometer radius from the HQ, right now, what we do see is companies are recruiting basically all over the place anywhere, right? And that's where the big part of the report is. It's not uncommon for companies from Silicon Valley or Los Angeles, right, posting jobs on Krakow local job sites offering US salaries just to work for them remotely. Przemek (15m 43s): Right? And this is something that, you know, two years ago was not something you would think about. I think there are many other forces at play. The inflation that we've mentioned also is kind of driving talent to consider, you know, how they can increase their income. I think the tech talent gap. And again, I do believe that it's here to stay, especially when it comes to IT and software development talent, is also shifting the market really what we are experiencing is the market where we have over demand. And it's, you know, some of the stats and the analysis we've done is that it's 17 times greater by 2025 than what it used to be prior to the pandemic. Przemek (16m 24s): Whereas the supply remains fairly kind of stagnant. It grows, you know, anywhere between 3 to 4% year over year and in a market where you have sort of so much demand and so little supply the market, tries to find equilibrium by increasing the price. Right? So it's not uncommon in the markets where we operate to see the talent, the software engineers coming and asking for pay raises not every 12 months as they used to, but every three months, right? Because at any given point in time, they have, you know, five other offers on the table. Joel (16m 53s): Prez following up on the comment about Los Angeles and San Francisco companies, you know, posting jobs and hiring workers in Krakow, Romania, et cetera. What are you seeing in regards to the relationship there? Is it a contract relationship? Are they hiring full-time employees? And then based on what they're doing primarily, how are they managing those workers? Are they doing it through a company like Upwork, or are they using a remote.com or some of the new remote work solutions? Przemek (17m 24s): So the contracts vary, right? Some of them would be hiring directly as contractors on the B2B contract. The others do it through agencies, right? So hiring actually a company, we call them software houses when the plenty of that talent would be available for hire. And companies tends to actually not only tap into individuals, but entire teams. There are leveraging platforms such as Talent Alpha, where we are actually bringing the two sides of that ecosystem together in a B2B to be a enterprise gateway model or posting the available skill set on a website, such as Upwork and Top Tall. Przemek (18m 6s): So the ways in which the talent is connected with opportunity are plenty. And the market is really trying to figure out which ones are the best, whether you go direct to these clients or whether you hire directly on the local market. And I think that battle is still in the air when it comes to how they collaborate. I think, you know, for many of these organizations, because they've been serving international clients for so many years, when it comes to the toolkit, they are just going with, you know, what they have been going with in the past, right? So it's teams or Hangouts to communicate. It's a different types of systems to manage the workflow. Time started still, you know, it's still is a challenge, but you know, some of the consultants who are actually engaging in those types of relationships, they even tend to shift their working hours so they can have more face time with their customers. Chad (18m 58s): Well, I've got a quick question for Lieven now, the report, here's a quote from a head of talent acquisition team in Poland, quote, "as specialists can work from anywhere now, for example, from Poland directly for companies in Germany or the US the salary expectations are growing, we need to urgently revise our compensation ranges to attract good candidates" end, quote. Lieven with being a part of a large organization like House of HR this is interesting to me because we're talking about wage equilibrium throughout the globe. What are you guys seeing? And is this a conversation you're actually having at the top in leadership meetings? Lieven (19m 42s): It's a really interesting question, now, we actually were talking about it recently. There is a concept social dumping, and normally it was like this, if we, for example, if you hire truck drivers from Romania or Poland, that's the local wages and we let them drive for a Belgium company. Normally we are obliged to give them the Belgium wages because they work for a Belgium company. So what happened to us? Some shady companies were launching a truck driving company in Romania, and they hired people and then they let them drive in Belgium. And that's what we call social dumping. Some companies where I'm abusing the system. Lieven (20m 21s): And of course, it's a terrible wrongdoing to those people because they are driving around in Belgium. They have to, for example, if they have to stay in Belgium, you have to pay the local rents, but they are paid and in a wage which matches the Romanian or Poland system. So it's not legal, but it happens. And I'm thinking this platform economy could launch a new kind of social dumping and much more difficult to track. So it could become a big problem. Chad (20m 53s): Don't you think it will actually start to drive equilibrium because the expectation for somebody let's say, instead of drivers, let's say, it's somebody who's an engineer? Right, maybe a software developer? They could start to expect bigger wages because of what they're actually seeing from the shores, maybe of the US, or maybe other areas of the world, where they're actually seeing their wages rise, that they can get working remote. Do you see that perspectively happening on the remote work from home types of jobs? Lieven (21m 27s): And the best scenario? Yes. And in the worst scenario, things will turn around, like for example, a graphic designer working in Belgium, a Belgium guy, he's no, he's got to compete two graphic designers in Pakistan and all over the world. And on Fiverr, for example, there are still so much more people offering services than there are companies hiring people. So it puts pressure on the daily rates. Joel (21m 54s): It's that race to the bottom. Lieven (21m 54s): Yeah. And I think there'll always be someone more desperate and willing to do it for less money. And that's a real problem. Joel (22m 1s): I've got one for Lieven as well, Lieven, we talked about Facebook a while back and how they pledged to hire 10,000 people in Europe, which are going to be a lot of obviously technology folks. Chad (22m 15s): Lies! Joel (22m 15s): And your comment was, oh, great, now I have to deal with Facebook, you know, competing with Facebook recruiting engineers. And when you hear stories about, or Prez talking about, you know, Silicon valley coming after Eastern European tech talent and other European tech talent, what is sort of your take on that? Cause as an American, I think like, oh yeah, you know, it's the marketplace and it's, you know, a new open market. Do you look at it and go, oh shit, we got to deal with Americans now coming and giving American wages to our workers. Now how are we going to compete with that? What sort of your perspective when you hear Silicon Valley is posting jobs in Romania? Lieven (22m 53s): Well, I don't think they're going to pay the Silicon Valley wages. I heard, even in the United States, they're not paying the same wages if you're not living in Silicon Valley. If we're living somewhere in the suburbs, they're bound to pay you less, but I don't really care about the Americans hiring people. And I know that I'm a bit anxious about companies like Facebook actually trying to hire 10,000 engineers. We don't have enough engineers. That's a problem. Joel (23m 18s): Yeah. So wages have to go up. They may not be Silicon Valley wages, but the wages are going to go up, right? Lieven (23m 24s): No, I don't know. Maybe, they will say it's going to be a good motivation for people to study engineering, Chad (23m 31s): That would be a great motivation for companies to actually start manufacturing their own engineers, as opposed to waiting for them, just to pop out of nowhere. Joel (23m 43s): Re-skilling. Lieven (23m 44s): And it does the future of work that's re-skilling. And so constantly re-skilling and retargeting people. Przemek (23m 48s): Yeah. When I saw that, I was wondering how they plan to pull this off 10,000 engineers on any market, you know, especially if they landed in Ireland, I wish them good luck. Right. So I don't see, seriously, like in the current market and their brand and all of the kind of social issues that have been discussed across Europe, I would say to a large extent, I think this is close to the mission impossible. So might be just smoke and mirrors too, you know, to be nice to the European Union. Chad (24m 19s): Amen. Amen. Joel (24m 20s): So Prez, another question about the survey. This was a global survey, correct? Not just Europe. Przemek (24m 24s): That is correct. Yes. We are pulling insights from all over the place. Joel (24m 29s): Speaking of, there's not enough talent to go around. Chad and I talk quite a bit about the emergence of Africa, India, and South America as well. Do you have any opinion on, or did your study find any research around the growth of those areas or what we should expect in terms of recruiting and work from home and sort of targeting those folks? Like, are we far from Silicon Valley, you know, posting jobs in Ghana, for example? Przemek (24m 57s): I think, you know, the, the, the market will force us to consider that at some point in time. Right. But probably not. I would say within the next year or two, however, both, you know, that the markets you've mentioned India, Latin America, Africa, I would say it's probably still emerging on the global map, but they have been very hot as well. In fact, you know, we did speak to a client out of India who is looking to hire talent in central and Eastern Europe because they couldn't find it on the local market. Right. And it was an kind of pretty hot challenger bank. Right. Who do you think that on the local market, they would be able to attract the talent, right? Przemek (25m 38s): So there's plenty of talent in India and of when you look at the numbers, right. But they are being employed. Right. And the same market forces apply there as well. Right. You have a couple of the large players, such as the big outsourcers. There is a plenty of the mid market companies who are working with clients around the globe. So I think it all comes down to, again, who pays more, who's got better, more interesting work, right? What is the work culture? And can I work from home? The one thing we did notice is that India really has turned itself around when it comes to getting ready for remote work. Prior to the pandemic, it used to be an issue and they really struggled when the pandemic started and then they closed that gap very, very fast. Lieven (26m 23s): Did you notice, by the way that a LinkedIn launched new search filters, remote hybrid and onsite is now an actual choice on the LinkedIn shop database. Chad (26m 37s): Innovation, Lieven innovation. Lieven (26m 38s): That's a good one. Joel (26m 39s): Lieven with the scoop on the European show, everybody. So anyone who wants to check out that survey then go to talent-alpha.com. And I think they can download it for free. Correct Prez? Przemek (26m 51s): That is correct. Chad (26m 53s): 26 pages of goodness, baby. Joel (26m 54s): That's true. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk some acquisitions and UK strippers. sfx (27m 1s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Chad (27m 3s): Did you say UK strippers? Joel (27m 4s): I did. I did, but you're going to have to wait for that. We have an acquisition, we have perhaps the most important acquisition in the history of Europe, gentlemen. News out of Sweden, hasn't been this important since Tengai, the recruiting robot was born. All right, Stockholm-based Eelloo has acquired Dutch technology company, Eelloo - E E L L O O. The press release says this is a data-driven recruitment revolutionizing the HR landscape across Europe. In case you don't know, Assessio provides E-assessment for recruitment and development. Joel (27m 44s): While Eelloo is a 30 year old company out of the Netherlands that offers recruitment selection, talent management, and labor market matching. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, which means it must have been too large for our modal brains to comprehend. Oddly, I couldn't find one news outlet willing to cover such an impactful marriage of two companies. So I asked the Europeans was this deal as huge as these two companies make it out to be or what? Lieven (28m 13s): To be honest, I never ever heard about Eelloo. And it's probably my mistake. Joel (28m 17s): It's a 30 year old company come on. Lieven (28m 19s): Yeah, that's huge. No, no, no. They never called me. They never said Lieven we are looking for your business. Never ever. No? What they're doing is pretty interesting, but I've written many press releases myself in my days and people tend to exaggerate, you know? So I feel it's maybe not the biggest deal in the history of HR, in the Netherlands, but it's interesting. Chad (28m 45s): I'm going to say it's definitely not earth shattering. Although I did reach out to Bas Van De Haterd for some insights on this one, because he's our assessment expert, at least in that part of the world. And first and foremost, you probably didn't hear about ELLOO because it was a Randstad company for most of those 30 years, I think they just changed their name maybe a handful of years ago. It was actually a management buyout around the 2016 or something like that. They've got a great portfolio, multiple government contracts with the Dutch, a great background with tech, user experience with a relatively small team estimated under a hundred people. Chad (29m 30s): Here's a quote from Bas. "So EELLOO is a big player with relatively low costs. I expect Assessi to start acquiring more specific suppliers like Arctic shores, you've heard of those guys, already working with ELLOO and probably more local players" end quote. So what I'm seeing here from our friends at Main Capital is big wads of cash. And they're looking to go from the Nordics to mainland Europe. So could this be an innovation? Joel (29m 58s): Did Bas confirm that it is pronounced EELLOO instead of EELLOO? Chad (30m 1s): I didn't ask. I can't even get his name right for God's sakes. I mean, Joel (30m 8s): Yeah. From what I found, I don't know these companies Main Capital is legit, the investment arm of this. They do have a billion plus dollars to spend on buying companies. That they acquired Assessio back in 2019 and ELLOO, as Assessio's second acquisition in two years. Tex Colonel, who we've talked about on the show fairly extensively is also a portfolio company of Main Capital as are few other workforce companies. So not, earth-shattering, not revolutionizing, definitely not a Tengai, but it is probably something worth keeping an eye on if you're over in Europe. Chad (30m 41s): And got a shit ton of cash. So yeah, I would definitely watch. Przemek (30m 45s): Well I'm with you on the camp that I've never come across these companies before. And I have been studying the assessment market quite a bit because we've built some of the kind of big five personality tests and creative behavior personality tests into our platform. The way I look at it is the private equity play, right? Where the Assessio from what I understood was a management buyout backed by the Main Capital. So typically in those scenarios, you're after growth, right? Then one of the strategies to show growth is by acquiring revenues, right? Which I assume the ELLOO transaction could have been bear in mind from what I've read, we are marrying a 60 year old company assessor and a 30 year old ELLOO. Przemek (31m 34s): Right. So I hope there is some innovation in there, but Chad (31m 38s): Assessment companies, yeah. Assessment companies around forever. Right. And I think what we've seen here is all over the world, is the ones that have the ability to adopt technology and provide great interfaces, cause that's really what we want. We want to be able to visualize whatever that data is coming across the screen and from my understanding ELLOO's actually doing that well where most of the other players aren't. Przemek (32m 0s): A lot of that is the toolkit using these solutions, right. This is not proprietary. Right. So you need to ask yourself is what is the unique value right then in the interface. Okay, cool. Right. Chad (32m 19s): Tableu Joel (32m 19s): All right. Let's get to the story that everyone's been waiting for. UK strip clubs are under attack. Apparently strippers in the UK have it pretty rough these days. In a lengthy report, we came across last month strip clubs throughout the kingdom are under attack. First, the pandemic put a lot of entertainers and establishments out of business. Then set a lot of laws called the Policing and Crime Act, which forces venues to reapply for a license to operate every 12 months. In 2010, a club owner said that process costs anywhere from 4,000 pounds to 30,000 pounds in the U S that's between $5,000 and $40,000 and gave local councils more power in dictating the fate of strip clubs. Joel (33m 7s): Emboldened by the legislation anti strip club groups have since ramped up their efforts to push for what's called nail cat bands across the country. A press secretary for the United sex workers said United sex workers has a union guys, okay, said "effectively, nail cat bans, shut down any existing strip clubs and prevent any future clubs from opening" end quote. In the last decade alone cities, including Chester, Swansea, Exiter, Blackpool and more have cracked down on strip clubs, putting strippers out of work. Refraining from making a comment about the quality of English girls not named Posh Spice. Joel (33m 47s): What's going on here, guys? Przemek (33m 48s): I guess that was the fine print of the Brexit campaign that many of the UK lads didn't read him? Chad (33m 54s): That's what it sounds like. Przemek (33m 56s): But on a serious note, they know it's a huge industry, right? And as any industry has its own problems, you know, with sex trafficking being part of it. But my take is that banning never really helped any industry right. Nor killed it. Right. So I'm not sure if this is the right strategy. Chad (34m 15s): War on drugs, how that work? Przemek (34m 18s): Yeah. Joel (34m 19s): Welcome to the Metaverse motherfuckers. The pandemic, isn't the enemy here. Feminists and Bible beaters aren't the enemy. The real enemy is OnlyFans. The real enemy is PornHub. The real enemy is VR, at least so says Mark Zuckerberg. But the reality is young girls who would normally strip and deal with slimy bosses and handsy customers are flocking to the internet. Strip clubs, unless we're talking about Vegas or other destination cities are dying. They don't have a lot of, I dunno, forces counteracting the people who want them closed. To me that's the whole story here. The internet is killing strip clubs, not Bible beaters and feminists. Chad (35m 1s): They're both killing strip clubs. Are you fucking kidding me? Did you read this thing? Of course it's Bible beaters beating back the fucking strip clubs. Of course it is. Joel (35m 11s): Who's beating what? Chad (35m 11s): And well, it depends on why we're talking to you or not, but, and we also have OnlyFans. So remember OnlyFans announced kicking sex workers off their platform. That didn't work, right? Because it was so popular. Not to mention most of those sex workers said that it was more safe for them. It was a more safe environment for them to do their work, not to mention the content that they can create that, you know, they can have libraries full of who knows what kind of content? but anyway, remember the OnlyFans nurse who quit her job, she was a nurse. She quit her job and she was making $30,000 a month. Now, if I'm her or I'm any of these sex workers, and I have these Bible thumping pieces of shit, giving me a hard time, fuck them. Chad (35m 57s): I'm going to go online and I'm going to do this and actually make more money. So, you know, I see this as an evolution of sorts of possibly not having strip clubs, unless you're in Vegas. Joel (36m 9s): You know, Lieven has got a comment. Lieven (36m 10s): I don't really have much sympathy for the UK strip clubs since I was thrown out of one when I was 15 in SoHo and they actually took all my money and put me on the streets. So since then, I've never been in UK strip club again. Joel (36m 24s): What'd you do? Lieven (36m 25s): Nothing that's the whole point. Joel (36m 28s): Did you insult the queen? Lieven (36m 29s): No. We entered just a, me and a friend of mine, we entered in the afternoon looking forward to the first real strip club experience. And then when we sat down, some kind of a waiter came and said, are you 21? Of course, I'm not 21. I'm 15. Okay. Can you give all your money and leave? That was the end of the story. Joel (36m 47s): Prez do you have a good strip club location country that you can send Lieven to since he can't go to the UK anymore? Przemek (36m 55s): Well, as I was shouting out to the central and Eastern European talent, there are good places to go for sure. What I want him to to comment on is that this reminds me a bit of the retail industry, right? Where we had the brick and mortars trying to fight the online retail and e-commerce right. I think this is the same powers are in play, but I think what the retail industry didn't have is, you know, all of these activists, you know, trying to shut down the brick and mortar from the site. Right? So it'll be interesting to watch how this evolves. Joel (37m 36s): Are you saying that Bezos' penis rocket may be a foreshadowing for sex industry coming to Amazon? Is that what you're saying? Przemek (37m 41s): As I said in the beginning this industry or the other. Joel (37m 42s): I got nothing else, guys. Przemek (37m 43s): Excellent. Joel (37m 43s): Prez. Thanks for coming onto the show, man, for anyone who wants to follow you or know more about your company, where it is, send them? Przemek (37m 51s): Follow my Twitter @PBerendt, or you can also follow me on LinkedIn. You can also find me on talent-alpha.com. Thanks for having me. Joel (38m 6s): Love it. We'll see you soon Lieven. Lieven (38m 9s): Bye see you in Ostend! Chad and Joel (38m 9s): We out. OUTRO (38m 50s): 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.

The Great Resignation. Heard of it? Of course you have, and that's why you're hoping you can find a way to keep your best employees from jumping ship and going to your competition. Never fear, WorqDrive from industry veteran Tracey Parsons is here. But they have some stiff competition from the likes of Eightfold, Gloat and Fuel50. Can this little engine that could make it up that hill and survive the Firing Squad? Gotta listen. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Firing Squad INTRO (0s): Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel (22s): Oh, I love the smell of startups in the morning. What's up everybody? This is your favorite podcast. The Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always by Chad Sowash Chad (32s): Work it! Joel (33s): And today on Firing Squad we welcome Tracey Parsons from Worqdrive. She is the founder and CEO. Tracey. Welcome to Firing Squad. Tracey (44s): Good morning everyone. Joel (46s): Oh, lovely voice. So sunny. So sunny that Midwest sun coming in Tracey (51s): Just shine and vitamin T all over you guys. Joel (56s): Vitamin T two, man. She's on a roll. Hey Tracey before we get into the nitty gritty of Worqdrive, give the listeners a little bit about you. Tracey (1m 5s): Oh my goodness. Well, I sit here in the sunny Midwest and I've built a really long career in recruitment marketing and employer brands. I've worked for some amazing companies like SmashFly, TMP Worldwide, Radancy. I've got my own consulting firm and we've just recently we'll have some software! But I love what I do and I get out of bed every morning, trying to figure out how to make more A players fall in love with different employer brands and make sure that they can find their dream job. Joel (1m 33s): And you love listening to TV Girl, a new band that I just learned about. Tracey (1m 36s): I do you love listening to TV Girl. We might go see them again at Ace of Cups. Chad (1m 42s): TV Girl. Wow. That's great. Great branding. That's easy. You can spell it. I hope they have the.com or Cheeseman won't like them. Joel (1m 47s): Yeah, I won't. It's two separate words by the way. Chad, this is Firing Squad. Tell her what she's one. Chad (1m 55s): You see, you will have two minutes to pitch Workqdrive with a q. At the end of two minutes, you will hear that bell then Joel and I will hit you with rapid Q and A. If your answers start to ramble or you get fucking boring, your going to hear the crickets, that's your signal to obviously tighten up your game and move it along. At the end of Q and A, you are gong to receive a grade from Joel and myself. First and foremost, a big applause. you might not have William Shatner on board, but we predict you boldly will go to the moon with this business. Golf clap. We see a lift off, but it's doubtful you'll even reach the Karmen line without some changes to your business. Chad (2m 41s): Or last but not least the firing squad, no amount of little blue pills will get this penis rocket off the ground. It's probably time to hang up that red shirt and live long and prosper. Are you ready? Tracey (2m 58s): Okay. Mostly, but my watch just told me to breathe based on that description. Joel (3m 4s): Sowash is a word smith now. Love it. Love it. Tracey (3m 8s): He is on fire. Joel (3m 9s): He is on fire. Tracey, are you ready for your two minute pitch? Tracey (3m 16s): I'm ready. Joel (3m 16s): And in three, two. Tracey (3m 16s): So Worqdrive is an internal mobility platform that makes it easy for your best people to stay. And in my lengthy 20 year career in talent, I've had the opportunity to work at some amazing companies. And every time I wanted to move internally, I was told we have a plan for you. And every single time I heard we have a plan for you. I left because I didn't know the plan. It wasn't my plan. I didn't have confidence that there actually was a plan and it was never shared with me. And none of my peers knew their plan or how to move internally either. And we'd all get frustrated and leave and we really kind of wanted to stay. We just didn't know how. So LinkedIn told us that 94% of people would rather stay at their company if they invested in their development. Tracey (3m 56s): And we see internal mobility as that investment. 69% of TA professionals believe internal mobility accelerates new hire productivity, but our data is showing us that an internal employee is five times less likely to apply on the internal job board than an external candidate. So it's like, how are we not getting this right? Well, in our research, we see employees feel held back by talent hoarding managers. They feel like they don't have a shot because they aren't someone's favorites. They don't know how to do it and frankly, we've always built programs to serve the organization, not the employee and our software kind of flips the script and changes all that. So with Worqdrive, your employees can be set up and matched to internal jobs In minutes. Tracey (4m 37s): They can apply for a job with one click because we already know them so they don't have to jump through extra ATS hoops. And your talent is anonymously matched to recruiters, open reqs, to be tapped for new opportunities, keeping your talent anonymous, so your recruiters can focus on the best skills for the job is what makes Worqdrive special because we're bringing real internal equity by eliminating bias in internal recruiting. We're really suitable for organizations over 500 employees because we found that that's where companies start to lose track of their talent. Our CTO has more than 20 years in tech and we currently have 25,000 employees across the globe, actively managing their own careers and their own plan and we launched in May of 2021. Tracey (5m 20s): We believe we've built a platform that makes it easy for your best people to stay by setting and executing their own plan. And you can learn more by visiting www.workqdrive, W O R Q D R I V E.com. Joel (5m 36s): I was a little lenient on the time there Tracey, that's that's for you. Tracey (5m 43s): Awww thanks! Joel (5m 43s): I have to start every Firing Squad with this. Let's talk about the name for a second. Worqdrive. Dig it. My favorite car song is Drive by the way, that's not here or there. Tracey (5m 53s): Nice. Joel (5m 53s): So it's spelled with a Q. So you have to kind of let people know what's going on. Now. If I go to workdrive.com today, the domain is for sale. So I'm curious, did you try to buy workdrive.com? Is this something that you will try to obtain in the future? Are you concerned about competitors going ahead and buying that and screwing you over? What's the deal with work drive with a Q Tracey? Tracey (6m 15s): So the cost of work drive with the K was beyond our budget. We're a bootstrapped company. We thought it would be interesting to go with the "q" for a visual aspect. Yeah, of course. We're worried about competitors buying up things, but we're trying to get ahead of the marketplace. Even when we talk about the one click apply, it's C L I Q apply, we're to use the "q". You know, I just worked, you know, we did the best we could with what was available to us and from a budgetary standpoint, we jumped on the "q". Joel (6m 47s): Good. Now let's talk about the idea. So you've been in the industry for awhile. You mentioned SmashFly you have a consulting business as well. You are well versed in this space. What was it about this idea and this opportunity, as opposed to some of the other ones that might have been swimming around your head that made you say we got to go after this. Tracey (7m 6s): It was really interesting because the consultancy helps companies reimagine their entire talent experience, right? So we were actually redesigning one of our customers talent experience from awareness to promotion. And we started looking at the data and we noticed that the original design like their future state design, when we executed, it was generating a 54% conversion from website visit to completed application because we've completely redistributed the friction in their candidate experience, right? So we've put more friction upfront in the candidate experience, lowered it in the application and what we saw was we saw people screening themselves out before they got to application, but when they got to the application, they were converting. Tracey (7m 47s): And then when we were designing the back half, so once somebody works here, how do they find their next opportunity? We found that they were converting at 11%. So their internal talent was five times less likely to convert than their external talent. So we were actually sitting on a software technology that we had shelved from 2014 that was designed to re-imagine the resume as visual and anonymous. And we'd launched it in 14. It was called CrowdHive. We had about a thousand, 1200 people using it. 40 employer hires were made, but we couldn't figure out how to make it easy to visualize your work and that's on us from a UX standpoint. So we had this code base, this code base actually was tried to two companies, tried to acquire it, both acquisitions were turned down. Tracey (8m 30s): And so I went to the customer. I was like, Hey, we've got this code over here. What if we repurposed it? Instead of being visual and anonymous, made it skills based and anonymous. And we use your employee data to kind of fill this in. And our roadmap was telling us that we wanted to do internal hives for people. So we just launched this for them and it turned into more than we could ever imagine from a productization standpoint. So we were like, this works, let's roll it out to the market. Joel (8m 58s): Gotcha. Chad (8m 58s): So I love the plan, right? I love you talking about the, you not understanding the plan. I do have a slogan for you though. You should write this down as we're using it. Joel (9m 10s): I'm writing it down. Chad (9m 11s): As we're using the "q" Worqdrive fuq the plan. Fuq is spelled FUQ the plan. Got it. Okay. That, that was free. You're welcome. Tracey (9m 20s): I wrote it down. Chad (9m 21s): You're welcome. We'll see if it's used. Yeah. Right. Tracey (9m 25s): Thank you. Chad (9m 26s): Okay. So the big question is how do you define internal mobility and who owns it? Tracey (9m 31s): Well, this initial cut at the product was owned in a dual partnership between talent acquisition and talent management. What is internal mobility is a much bigger question because I think if you look at every software vendor in the HR tech space out there, they're going to tell you we have that. And really what they mean is that they have the ability for somebody internal to the company to apply for a job, right? Everybody has that. You can do that today. But what we're trying to do is, we are trying to allow and empower employees to drive and craft their own plan. And when we found that when you do empower employees to move that ball forward for themselves, to actively manage their own careers, the ones that want to stay will stay. Tracey (10m 17s): We're seeing that right now with our early implementations. So internal mobility could mean up. It could mean over. It could mean elsewhere. It could be down, but that needs to be driven by the person who owns the career, the employee. And historically speaking, it's always been organization driven like succession planning or mobility plans, like we have a plan for you. Well, if it's not my plan, whose plan is it? What's the organization's plan? Well, guess what? I'm not always on board with what the organization wants. I'm on board with what I want. Chad (10m 47s): So how do you get companies to actually drive toward transparency? The biggest issue here is transparency who actually wants to go where? I don't want to stay in sales my entire life. I want to go to marketing or I want to go to product. Are there projects available to me? Who are my mentors? I mean, how do you actually get all of that opened up without internal politics and friction, because there's a shit ton of it there. Tracey (11m 10s): Well, and that's why I keep telling people that what we've done in the past is never going to work because you're trying to take a top down approach. Right? And look at all of the tools that are out there. The number one question I always tell people and the question I want everybody to ask me is about adoption, right? How many people are actively actively using this? You know, how many are using it? How frequently are they using it? How are they using it? Are they adding things to it? How are you making it sticky? Because what always happens and the same thing happens in the candidate experiences as it does the employee experience. If you make the rules, you're expecting people to follow them. If you let them make the rules, they're going to follow them. Tracey (11m 50s): Right? And so it's just this coaching and counseling to encourage the stakeholders that it's like, Princess Leia, you know, the harder you grip, the more star systems slip through your fingers. This is how people are viewing their talent and look at what's happening today. Right? They're trying so hard to hold onto the talent that they're not letting the talent have the power and they're going to leave. And that's the conversation that we have with hiring managers all the time, who may be reluctant to get on and have their people use Worqdrive because they're like, well, they're going to leave. I don't want them to leave my team. They're going to go leave, I'm like honey, they're going to leave anyway. They're just going to leave for somebody else. So do you want to keep that institutional knowledge or not? Tracey (12m 31s): Your call. Let go. Chad (12m 32s): I'm just happy that the Princess Leia thing had nothing to do with kissing her brother. So quick question on building tech, are you guys building your own tech? There's a lot going on here because if you want to match, you have to parse and to be able to go through just the parsing technology itself to build that. Are you working with partners to help you do that? Or are you building your own? Tracey (12m 57s): To a channel my inner star Lord, a little bit of both. We do have the basis of the parsing technology via a partner, but we've built our own proprietary tech on top of it. Fun fact, our CTO was the head of escalation for Microsoft's first search product. So this is a guy who understands search and matching and algorithms and making shit work. Chad (13m 22s): So what about the employee data? Where are you getting the employee data from? There are obviously all the HCM systems, et cetera, et cetera, but generally they don't have the data that you want to be able to match them against jobs. So where are you getting the data and what is that data? Tracey (13m 36s): So we get the data from the HCM. If the data doesn't exist, it's as simple as uploading your most recent resume. We parse it. We parse it out for your skills. And then one of the fun things that we do is, you know, there are a lot of technologies out there and I'm a huge fan of robots. Like I love when robots can do things that I don't want to do. It's one of my favorite things. But when it comes to my skills and my direction, I do not want the robots to match me to a job, which is why one of our setup pieces is taking a look at all of your experience, parsing out the skills, and then asking you as an employee to tell us, is this a core strength? Is it something you love doing? Or is it something you want to grow? Tracey (14m 18s): And then we use that data against the matching, as well as your aspirations. And then we use the growth to kind of see that learning and development that's going to need to happen as the next module that's rolling out and Worqdrive is that connection to L and D. So if you tell me that you want to grow in JavaScript, I should be able to serve you up learning and development around that help you get where you want to go. I do not want the robots to say, Tracey, these are your skills. You should look at these jobs. No, no, no, no, because there's might be skills that I don't want to use anymore. Joel (14m 47s): Tracey what triggers the employee to give you that data, whether it be upload a current resume or what skills have you garnered or what kind of changes in your career are you, are you hoping to make? So if you're not using bots, you're counting on the individual to do it. So what's the trigger? Tracey (15m 2s): Yup. So beyond the first setup, right? So as you get set up in the account, that's the first trigger, but we've actually created some really fun stickiness in the system. So there's this component called advocacy. So I don't want you to confuse this with like a LinkedIn endorsement. It's basically who at the company has your back for these skills, right? Who can say, give you a thumbs up. And so we're seeing these advocacy requests fly back and forth all day long in the system. And people are asking their peers and their managers for a thumbs up on their skills. We're also finding lots of people, selecting skills and saying, no, I'm not going to give this person a thumbs up. Tracey (15m 43s): So it's really showing an authentic read on that person's abilities. But that's one of the things that keeps people coming back is these advocacy requests. So advocacy requests, new matches to jobs because the what's in it for me and internal mobility is where I'm going to go next. Advocacy requests, new job matches. And then as internal sourcers see jobs that you may match, they will send you an alert via email. So there's three separate communications that go out to people to say, Hey, come back in and update your skills. But then there's also a twice month, every other month, we email everybody in the system. Hey, don't forget. Come add some skills and update your background. Joel (16m 23s): Gotcha. Let's pivot to the competition for a second. Tracey (16m 24s): Yeah! Joel (16m 25s): I don't know if you've heard this, but you have a few well-funded competitors. Tracey (16m 29s): So many! Joel (16m 30s): I'm going to go through a little short list here for you. Gloat $159 million invested, Anthill $4.4 million, Fuel 50, $36 million. And then you have the sort of the companies that have been around a while that have built this into their systems. 8fold, Jobvite, Phenom are a couple that come to mind. Now you are an itty bitty company. What is your plan around the competition? Is it we're going to go raise a similar amount of money? Is it we're going to zig when they zag talk about the competitive landscape and how you plan on impeding? Tracey (17m 9s): So those are all amazing companies that we truly do and genuinely admire. Our differentiator is that anonymity piece. We see this is going to play out in terms of adoption, really strongly in our favor. People will use what they trust. It's very difficult to trust when the organization sees what you're doing and knows who you are. So this is one of those angles that we really are focused on, is the anonymity. And quite frankly, we've demoed the people that demoed the competitors and they keep telling us over and over again, yours is just so easy. So while we may be itty-bitty, we're so focused on the user experience, we're so focused on ease of use and simplicity that will drive the adoption that we're looking for. Tracey (17m 57s): How we are planning to go to market. We are planning to drive everything we can. And all of our efforts into building really strong partnerships with the HCMS and the ATS is we're currently the only internal mobility tool in the iCIMS marketplace. So we intend to grow via our partnerships. But I think that over time, people are going to start to see that the adoption is going to be the driver of what actually happens to make this internal mobility, the promise of mobility work or not work. Chad (18m 31s): So talk about anonymity, but the company is still paying for this. So I get it. Yeah, I'm anonymous but am I really fucking anonymous? I mean, seriously. So how do you get past that? Because we don't trust systems today. We don't trust Facebook. We don't trust them. There's just no trust. So how do you actually gain that trust? Tracey (18m 50s): Well, it's fun because we do, we, again, we are live. We do have a lot of people using this tool. I will say that we've received more thank you notes and love letters from employees than support tickets, which is good. I think that's a good thing. The bulk of our support tickets are really fun because they're all, Hey, I don't know my employee ID and our team goes back to them as, Hey, we can't tell you that. And they, and when we tell them, we can't tell you that, they know that we can't tell you that because we don't have access to your data. And if we don't have access to your data, then the company doesn't either. Now the company will be able to tell you your user ID, but the admin screens that our clients have, they don't even see their employees. Tracey (19m 38s): They just see the counts. And going into it, this is one of those instances where a company is going to have to roll the dice and let it go and really prove that they're letting it go. We're happy to send screenshots to any of the employees that use our system to say, this is what they actually see, but we can't see it. So they can't see it. Chad (19m 60s): So now Joel is actually singing Frozen in his head. Tracey (20m 2s): Let it go. Chad (20m 4s): What are the major hurdles you're actually up against adoption is obviously huge. Tracey (20m 9s): Competitors! Chad (20m 9s): But what specifically are the major hurdles? You think it's competitors? Tracey (20m 13s): I do, I mean, we are up against some really deep pockets. We are up against a market that has unbelievable obsessive shiny object syndrome. This industry loves the shiny object, right now. And we've all been talking about it all year is internal mobility. That's the shiny object. This is the thing we're talking to. And the thing that we are really up against is status quo and not making a decision and deciding that what you have is good enough or deciding to wait on some of your existing techs roadmap to be executed. That's what we're up against. Like, we're, the industry loves to talk about the new thing and then never buy it. Tracey (20m 55s): And then two years later go, oh, well, that didn't work. So really we're up against, you know, strong, strong market, big competitors. But for me, having a lot of deep pocketed competitors just means that we've proven the market for it, right? This exists for a reason, but really our biggest challenge is status quo. Like we've never had to pay for mobility before. Why are we paying for it now? And then I send them to our ROI calculator and go, okay, so what was your number? How many zeros did it have based on what's walked out the door so far for you this year, can you afford not to? Chad (21m 33s): You see, and just clarifying you see competitors more than adoption as your biggest hurdle. So what's the biggest, what's your go to market model at that point? Because you are bootstrap, you can't throw a lot of cash at it, right? You have to be smarter. You have to work harder. What is your go to market model? Tracey (21m 49s): Yeah. So our go to market model is that partnership route. So we want to begin in as many marketplaces as we can, to be that partner of choice that's automatically integrated with the systems that either say they do it via an internal job board, but we offer a better solution. And they know that. And we're intending to go to market via partnerships, Joel (22m 11s): We did an interview, I think last year with the Sherwin Williams TikTok guy. I don't know if you are familiar with this. You, you talked about it in an interview, I believe, but for those listeners that don't remember essentially, a Sherwin-Williams employee was publishing TikToks to the tune of like millions of viewers, where he would mix paints. He would put in, you know, fruits and paints to get, you know, different colors. And he would sort of do this, I think, at the Sherwin-Williams store. Well, they ended up firing him. Obviously, your argument is that that was an opportunity... Tracey (22m 42s): Huge! Joel (22m 42s): To have someone really talented, you know, move up in your organization and, and hold on to them. So I'm curious, how would your tool have identified this employee and put them on the fast track to success within the company, as opposed to, gee let's fire the guy with millions of TikTok followers? Tracey (22m 60s): Well, and we refer to that, like, we refer to that in all of our marketing materials as finding your hidden figures. He did, they didn't even know that they had a digital marketing goldmine on their hands. So what would happen if they had Worqdrive is that this person would have their immense social media, TikTok skills, their penchant for creative and creating and being a creator. And they could be matched to jobs in the marketing team that might've been opened that they could have applied for. In addition, the recruiters could have said, oh my gosh, this person is a TikTok aficionado, this is something we need to go. And they could have tapped him for new roles without any hassle on either side of the fence. Joel (23m 40s): In describing our product just let me get this right. So other employees would have recognized this employee as someone special, and they would have created notes on him in the system that he's special and he's doing really incredible things. And they would've found out early that this was going on, or am I getting that right? In terms of how it Worqdrive would have identified this employee? Tracey (24m 1s): Not exactly. Joel (24m 2s): Ok. Tracey (24m 2s): He would have self identified by his skills that he would have inserted into the system and how he would have, how he would have been marking himself as something that was passionate about social media, passionate about TikTok. And then that could have matched him to jobs that he could have seamlessly applied for. Now, he could have also obtained a lot of advocacy for his TikTok skills, which would have put him at the top of the list if any recruiter were in there searching for somebody using social media or TikTok. Joel (24m 33s): Gotcha. How do referral programs fit into this technology? Because to me, it seems like a really ripe opportunity for people to be incentivized, to create notes on people or endorsements, and then refer people to jobs internally. Is that a technology that you're looking to add? Or is that something, am I off base there? Tracey (24m 52s): No, you're definitely not off base. It is 100% on the roadmap and we kind of to be really transparent haven't fleshed it out yet. One of the things that is next on the docket is alumni. What do we do and how do we handle people that have left the organization? How do they keep their Worqdrive accounts? And how do we mark them in the system as somebody we would like to recruit back, for the recruiters and how do we keep them engaged, but referrals and mentorship and learning and development are all components of our go-forward roadmap. Chad (25m 25s): So besides competition, what is the biggest threat to internal mobility in the next 18 months? Tracey (25m 31s): Companies continuing to ignore the great awakening that's happened with their talent and people in general. If we just continue to ignore it and keep our head in the sand, nothing will change and we'll continue to lose money and talent acquisition and talent management will continue to barely tread water in the eyes of leadership. I think that this is a huge risk that companies are not paying attention to, with their wallets. Joel (25m 59s): Tracey, is raising money, something in the future for you, or are you going to continue to bootstrap the organization? Tracey (26m 5s): I've had a really horrifying experience trying to raise money in the past. Joel (26m 8s): I think you just answered the question. Tracey (26m 11s): Yeah. So we're going to continue down this current path. It's not out of the question. We did get a ton of amazing interests after PitchFest at HR tech. A lot of really nice investors, you know, made the stop by the little mini booth and had some conversations with our team, but it's not something that we're actively pursuing. We've developed a really nice pipeline of sales as it exists, and we see a pretty solid path for growth ourselves. Joel (26m 42s): Good for you. So let's talk about pricing for the product, and I guess, is there an exit strategy? And it sounds like there isn't one, it just sounds like a nice little business, organically grown, and we'll see what happens. Tracey (26m 56s): Don't get me wrong. You know, we're always listening and the same thing with investors like we're always listening. We are profitable today. We have about a year's worth of runway on this product so far, which is amazing to us! In terms of pricing, pricing is typical SAAS model. There's a small setup fee. And then it's based on the size of the business. We're looking at an average and I'm super transparent about this, but at the pricing today, midsize like, you know, 10-15,000 people, it's probably $80,000 a year to have your Worqdrive. We try to price it so that if you save, you know, three or four to 10 people, it's paid for itself. Tracey (27m 36s): And that's what this product is designed to do. It's designed to save people from leaving your organization and therefore it should be an ROI positive investment for an organization. So it's typical SAAS, like the larger the employee count the larger the fee, but we want to keep it at a level that's priced for people to use, because we definitely think that this is something that, you know, everybody over 500 employees should have. Joel (28m 6s): All right, Tracey, that's the bell. You know what that means? Tracey (28m 10s): It's time! Joel (28m 11s): It's time to face the firing squad. Are you ready? Tracey (28m 16s): I mean, yeah. Okay. Joel (28m 16s): Chad have at it. Chad (28m 17s): So Tracey, first and foremost, I don't think your biggest obstacle are your competitors. Most of those companies have no focus and they don't know what the fuck they're doing, but, I think finding someone in TA or HR to pull internal mobility out of the quote unquote "great area," and then take full accountability for the program will be a major feat. You have to find someone with vision and a spine, which really isn't easy in this industry. So once you've achieved that fee, you'll have to then worry about internal politics, squashing, broad based adoption managers don't want their people, which we talked about. They don't want their people to leave and basically it's the daily routine of guarding against internal moves, which as Chicago, once sang, it's a hard habit to break. Chad (29m 4s): But on the bright side, "I am" is feeling stronger every day. The tech to me is the easy part because it's all out there. The big question revolves around building your own or partnering with vendors and building a fluid experience and you talked about building that secret sauce. And that's the key because today, if you think about it, do you really need to own the tech? I mean, who today, what company today actually owns their own servers. That's how we're evolving and I see that that's where you guys are actually focused as well. The addressable market is huge and since internal mobility is a big topic right now, look at the fucking talent market landscape with all the quits. Chad (29m 47s): You've got a strike while the iron is hot, because this moment, which you said, this opportunity will not last without gaining a foothold within the next 18 months or so with core integrations to talent platforms like iCIMS, you talked about, within the next 18 to 24 months. So last but not least pulling all this together and executing it all focuses on experience, leadership and connections. Because knowing the terrain and obstacles in this industry is the biggest factor of all. And needless to say, Tracey, this is just another Saturday in the park for you. So this to me is a big applause. Joel (30m 27s): Way to go Tracey! Tracey (30m 29s): Woohoo! Joel (30m 29s): Chad and I have been around a while and we know that just getting a lot of money does not equate to success. In fact, in many cases, the worst thing you can do to a company is give them a bunch of money and hope for the best. So I have a soft spot in my heart for businesses that bootstrap, that grow organically, that do the hard work that do the day in and day out. I love the fact that you're sort of working with your husband. I enjoy that dynamic. We really didn't get into it on the show cause it's sort of irrelevant for the business, but your story is great. Your experience in the industry is deep. I think you understand what the employers need. The tech, I think you're probably gonna have some challenges with keeping up with some of the big funded players out there, but it sounds like you have a pretty good hold on technology. Joel (31m 19s): I would love to see some automated tools that help you understand where an employee is going. Just some basic scraping and getting updates on employees would be interesting. But that said, I think that this trend of keeping the people that you have is only going to be more and more important. Hiring in a work from home environment is only going to get tougher and more frustrating for employers, so keeping the folks that you have is going to be that much more important. We're seeing trends of younger and younger people leaving jobs sooner and sooner. Obviously the allure of the gig economy is one thing that's going to be a challenge for companies to keep people on board. I would like to see you raise some money, but if you don't that's okay and that shouldn't be a prerequisite for success on the Firing Squad. Joel (32m 7s): So for me, as well as Chad's sentiments, I'm going to give (applause) Worqdrive and then hope that you get those funds to buy the Work with a "k" drive in the near future. Chad (32m 27s): Stick with the "q" Joel (32m 28s): Otherwise, congratulations, fuck the "q" with a "q" I say. Chad (32m 30s): FUQ baby. FUQ the plan. F-U-Q the plan. Joel (32m 32s): Tracey, congrats. How do you feel? Tracey (32m 34s): I feel relieved. Thank you guys so much for this opportunity to talk about this tool and this product and this journey. And thank you so much for the kind words I've actually made a tremendous amount of notes from your feedback and you, I appreciate your support and how you know, how you're looking at this market because it is, you guys are right. It is the relationships, it is the partnership, and it's all about keeping the talent here and happy and the only way you do that is by trusting them. It's just, you know, we have this, we have this thing that's written on our wall and if it's not good for the employee let go. Joel (33m 9s): I see you, you've already got the big applause. You don't, you don't need to keep pitching the business. Tracey (33m 19s): I know. Joel (33m 20s): Just tell our listeners where they can learn more. Tracey (33m 23s): Yeah. www.worqdrive.com. Come visit our site, check out the ROI calculator, see what we can do to help you. Chad (33m 31s): Beautiful. Joel (33m 31s): Chad, another one in the books. Joel and Chad (33m 33s): We out, we out. Firing Squad OUTRO (33m 38s): This has been the Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese Podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today. That's www.chadcheese.com.

The industry remains as hot as ever, which is good because there's some Halloween weight I'm trying to burn. Anyway... Indeed leads off the show with the kind of tomfoolery that would even make 2007 Monster blush. (Yes, they're still who we thought they were.) Greenhouse marries a sourcing solution you've likely never heard of... Errr... Fiverr tells LinkedIn and Upwork, "Hold my beer." A scorching round of Buy-or-Sell w/ 1) Multiplier 2) When I Work and 3) Ladder Sam's Club is crushing the retention issue plaguing so many organizations, ...and a mathematician teaches a masterclass on marketing: Sex sells. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community. 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 (24s): Minneapolis residents voted no on defending the police this week, but voted yes on the Chad and cheese podcast. Hi kids, it's your favorite guilty pleasure. This is your cohost Joel "silent majority" Cheeseman. INTRO (37s): And this is Chad "they are who we thought they were" Sowash. Joel (41s): On this week's show Indeed is up to its usual Tom-fuckery, climbing the ladder with a little buy or sell in a certain mathematician on a certain porn site shows us just how marketing is done. So let's do this. It's beautiful in the Midwest Chad, this is one of my favorite times of the year. Chad (1m 0s): Beautiful, yet a little cold. Joel (1m 3s): Right. Chad (1m 3s): It needs some warm apple cider. Joel (1m 5s): It's time to embrace the hot toddy. Chad, I need to introduce you to the hot toddy. Chad (1m 11s): A hot toddy. Yeah, that sounds great. I hope it comes with an umbrella. Joel (1m 15s): A little bit of spice, a little bit of cinnamon. That's what I like. Chad (1m 18s): You know, who likes spice? Max Armbruster likes spice the CEO over at TalkPush. The thing is he is now a proud Papa, so there's not going to be much spice and or sleep in that man's life. Congratulations with that new baby girl, Max we're we're excited for you, man. Joel (1m 36s): This is first born, you know, Max a little better than I do. Chad (1m 38s): This is number one, baby. Number one. Joel (1m 40s): So you can't just have one, it's like potato chips. So you gotta, you gotta have more. Shout out to Facebook. Chad (1m 48s): Who? Joel (1m 49s): Facebook is shutting down its facial recognition technology, which we've talked about and they've gotten sued over. Chad (1m 55s): A lot! Joel (1m 56s): They've decided that knowing who's in that picture, that you posted, isn't all that important. They're stopping the technology and they're deleting all the data. At least that's what Zuckerberg is telling us. Chad (2m 8s): You know who doesn't lie that new chief people officer over at Smart Recruiters, Lisa Sterling, she just picked up the new role on the heels of everybody might remember that Rocky Howard just left the CDO position for a new CPO position over at the Mom Project. So we've got great talent moving all over the place. Joel (2m 30s): All over the place. Speaking of talent, how about CareerBuilder in my shout out list? Chad (2m 35s): Come on. Joel (2m 35s): We talked about their new ad campaign on a recent show. Well, I was curious because I'm used to seeing ZipRecruiter ads where I am, I'm used to seeing Indeed ads, have not seen the CareerBuilder ads. And since they're in Chicago, I thought that was a little, little weird. Maybe I'd get a little bit of CareerBuilder flavor. So I put on a LinkedIn poll to see who out there has actually seen this ad on television. So my poll has gotten about 8,000 views, 200 votes, 96% say they have not seen the CareerBuilder ad. So the market must be real limited into where they're actually distributed in this thing, but they're not apparently unleashing it on the world to any grand scale. Joel (3m 20s): CareerBuilder, shout out.` Chad (3m 23s): Probably as boring as fuck as is along with that new logo, they have. That's great stuff. Ooh, shout out to Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka. So since they were strong enough to actually bring up the uncomfortable topic of mental health, it allowed players like Calvin Ridley of the Atlanta Falcons this week to step away from football to actually focus on his mental health. We're starting, I think we're not there yet. We're starting to understand that broken bones and torn cartilage are definitely injuries, but we can have different types of injuries and Calvin Ridley and he showed that this week. Chad (4m 4s): So he stepped away. And I think there's a lot to do with that with Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka because they pretty much broke that same line. Joel (4m 14s): Well, speaking of, out of the game with injury or COVID in this case, Aaron Rogers makes my shout-out lists. Chad (4m 21s): What an idiot. Joel (4m 23s): Americans will know him as the Green Bay Packers quarterback. He agreed to take partial salary in Bitcoin this week, and we'll also be giving away a million dollars in Bitcoin to fans just to get a little extra promotion in his decision to do so. Bitcoin is all over the place. Crypto is everywhere. I'm sure you've seen commercials with everyone from Matt Damon to Tom Brady, pimping, trading crypto, Aaron Rogers is the latest to get on board. We'll see how many more players look for Bitcoin salary. You'll remember Tim Sackett on our yearly show predicted more and more people would be requesting payments in Bitcoin. It looks like Tim was right too. Chad (5m 4s): If you're a millionaire and you have money to throw around, why not? I mean diversify. So yeah, but I don't think normal Joe is asking for Bitcoin. Okay? What they are asking for Joel is there. They're asking for new chatbots and a marvel.ai integrated with Wade and Wendy and dude, the chat bot is named that they created it's, it's a visual video chat bot. So it's integrated with Wade, Wade and Wendy has this amazing audio quality to it. And the chat bot is named Chad. So they actually made a Chad bot and it looks, it looks nothing like me. Chad (5m 46s): What the actual fuck? I mean, I'm totally going to go up the chain of command on this one. This is ridiculous. Joel (5m 54s): It's a video, it's a visual and audio experience. Is that what we're saying? Chad (5m 58s): Yup. Yup. So you can be on your phone and you can use your microphone. It asks you questions and you can reply right back to it. Joel (6m 7s): Ah, that's very interesting. We actually had a story in the feed about companies creating visual, I don't know, concierge for the Metaverse and that's kind of what I thought when you, when you said that. And I also thought, I think you're a fan of prophecy, right? Yeah. Scott Galloway. So you listen to his, his podcast is Standalone Thing. He also mentioned it in pivot with Chad (6m 30s): Kara Swisher? Joel (6m 32s): Kara Swisher. So he's, he's really, he hates the whole, Metaverse, the Facebook thing,the face plate in the eye, but he really thinks that the future is in the ears where that sort of your AI and that's your, that's your Metaverse being able to connect through audio. So interesting that, Wade and Wendy is making this play in the video and audio segment. Interesting future trends to watch Chad, another trend, Lever. Chad (7m 2s): Cash, baby. Joel (7m 2s): Yes. Popular with a lot of the kids out there announced a $50 million raise in series B funding this week, bringing the total to $133 million total. Chad (7m 14s): There you go. Joel (7m 15s): But the show is so packed with shit this week, that is a shout out $50 million, just gets you a shout out on this week show. Chad (7m 22s): So I know this is going to sound odd, but it seems rather light, right? I mean, with all the unicorn cash being thrown around, I would have expected double that at the very least, especially in a series D and also for global expansion, because they talked about global expansion, so I'm not sure. It sounds like it might be a setup for acquisition. Joel (7m 44s): Does it feel like a bridge, a bridge fund, a bridge? Like, Hey, let's just get you to the acquisition. Let's just get us to whatever. Chad (7m 54s): Yeah, a little validation through funding and then a glorious vision that is painted by the CEO. Right? I mean, it just, it's one of those things that just, there's something that's not right about that. Joel (8m 4s): Yeah. It's a little, bridgey, it's a little bridge. I'll give that to you. We're watching you Lever, we're watching you. Chad (8m 13s): Well, as we're talking about Lever, we talked about the new Cornerstone on Demand logo on the European show earlier this week. If you haven't checked it out, check it out. So we received comments after that show, that referred to the new Cornerstone logo as the cat anus, what? And then I went to the site and I was like, yeah, yeah, Cornerstone's new logo looks like a cat anus. This is, I can't unsee it. This is, I don't know who was in the marketing behind this, but yes, this is horrible and true. Joel (8m 51s): All right. For our listeners out there that have a certain skillset in Photoshop, please send us a cat ass with Cornerstones new imagery. And we will gladly post it onto social media, whether or not you want your brand or your company to be associated. You know, we'll honor whatever you want. But if anyone out there can make a cat ass as the Cornerstone logo, we will, we will hook you up with some social media love. By the way, you've seen Meta's new logo, that thing got the Photoshop treatment, one I saw it as a penis. I saw it as a pair of boobs. I saw it as nuts, like people had a lot of fun with that. So let's have fun in our industry with the Cornerstone logo. Put that thing on a cat. Joel (9m 34s): We want to share that on social call. And speaking of sharing, Chad, nothing is sharing and caring like free shit. If you haven't signed up for free stuff from Chad and Cheese, we got t-shirts from Emissary. We got beer from our new, our new sponsor for Beerdrop, Pillar, pillar.hr, Adzua who was our former beer drop sponsor. They've moved up there to the weekly sponsorship. Pillar's filling in for beer. And as usual, Sovren is a is killing our livers with whiskey. You can get it for free, but you can't unless you go to Chadcheese.com/free and fill it out. Chad (10m 16s): That's right. And we have an event coming kids remember? You've got to come and have Thanksgiving in Belgium, with Chad and Cheese. We already have a WhatsApp group created with about 15 people that we're going to meet in Ostend, Belgium for the Congress. We already have dinner scheduled the night prior. It's going to be a damn good time. Probably no turkey, there might be, but I, I don't know. Check out the speakers register for the event@erecruitment-congress.com. And if you're attending, hit us up on the socials and we'll see if we can actually get you into the fancy dinner that Lieven reserved at the Royal sailing club. Chad (11m 1s): That's right. Posh, baby, posh. Joel (11m 2s): The Royal Sailing Club. That's nice. That's nice. I'm going to have, I'm going to have Duvel flavored turkey on Thanksgiving. Well, Chad, speaking of a group of fine folks, it's time for the fantasy football update sponsored by Poach. I'm going to go from first to worst here on our leaderboard. Number one, Benjamin, worst to first. Do you remember Benjamin was in last place a few weeks ago, way to go, buddy. The wonderful Miss Q just can't get over that hump to the number one spot she's been sitting in the number two place for quite a while. Jason and the Argonauts. You remember that one don't you Chad? Joel (11m 42s): Putnam is next. Followed by Cheesy does it, your boy here, Christy bad moon, rising. Pistol Pete Suchi, Bill race to the bottom Fanning. Chris, the football team, Russell, Michael Keaton Cox and Chad the bottom of the barrel Chad (12m 1s): Suck it. Joel (12m 2s): Is you. And that is your fantasy football leaderboard update. Chad (12m 6s): Oh shit. Do we have birthdays? Joel (12m 10s): We got birthdays, baby. Listeners, fans, and just friends of the show. A happy birthday to Jarvis Corel. Steve Juul, Graham Ferguson, Louie WHAT?. Chad (12m 23s): Excuse me. Joel (12m 24s): Yeah. David Jorg, Chloe Rada and Jeff Webb all celebrate birthdays this month. Another trip around the sun, everybody. Chad (12m 35s): Bunch of November birthdays. That's awesome. Joel (12m 38s): A lot of sex going on if my math is right, would that be September? Anyway, anyway. Chad (12m 47s): Topics! Dude. Joel (12m 48s): Two weeks with Indeed starting the show. Chad (12m 49s): Oh fuck. Last week we updated on Indeed throttling, unpaid jobs, regressing from a search engine model to a job board model. It's pretty simple. If you're not paying for jobs or kicking you off the site, or at least they're hiding the jobs, right? That was what we talked about last week. This week, we have more Tom fuckery to report. Here's a message. I'm just going to read this off because it's so good. Here's a message we received from a leader in the talent acquisition space quote, "our friends at Indeed are up to their tomfoolery yet again, after conditioning users of their resume search tool over the last few years to earn contact credits two for positive responses, one for negative responses, Indeed, we'll be doing away with that functionality in 2022. Chad (13m 40s): Resume users will allegedly earn credits by executing interviews on their interview platform." They're jamming this interview platform down people's throats. Anyway, of course, back to the quote, "of course their timing is fantastic, as many clients, especially Enterprise clients have either committed contract spend to them or at a minimum budgeted for what they are expected to spend. This puts high volume clients in a particularly shitty position as some efficient users that could use five to 600 contacts a month on their credits will now have to spend an additional $800 to $1000 per month to contact those candidates with quote-unquote shared contacts, but don't worry kids don't worry while they are taking away some features they're also raising the prices in the new year. Chad (14m 36s): At least Indeed is apparently worth more" end quote. sfx (14m 38s): They aren't what we thought they were. And we let them off the hook. Joel (14m 41s): They're exactly who we thought they were, but we're not letting them off the hook. Dude. We've seen this story before. Chad (14m 48s): Yes. Joel (14m 49s): But Indeed seems to be taking it to new heights. Chad (14m 53s): Yes. Joel (14m 53s): They are Monster 2.0. One of two things is happening here, I'm not sure which. Either one, they clearly think their customers have no other options and are soaking them as much as possible, think Netflix without, you know, perceived competition or two they're seeing greater attrition and need to get as much profit as possible out of the current customers before they don't have any left. I think it's very telling that changes were made after so many customers have already committed for the year. You can only soak your customers for so long before they revolt. And I think the time may be coming for pitchforks and fire, kids. Chad (15m 31s): Yeah. So we have always known who Indeed was and is, right? so I guess we can't be surprised when they show up to the party dressed as the evil empire. This has been the way for them for over a decade. And once again, I blame the recruitment advertising agency space. They had the power to change Indeed's trajectory, years ago and they just sat back and did nothing. And as Dennis Green said, sfx (15m 57s): But they aren't what we thought they were. And we let them off the hook. Joel (16m 2s): I blame Monster and CareerBuilder who could have nipped that shit in the bud. And we wouldn't even be talking about Indeed 15 years, hence, but either way, here we are. Chad (16m 14s): That's on Sal right? It really has got to be honestly. Fucking Sal. Joel (16m 18s): Indeed we're watching you and we'll continue to comment on your Tom fuckery, Chad (16m 22s): More listeners, more listeners, give us more feedback. We, I had so many messages this week. This is just one that we read through because it was incredibly pointed, but continue to give us intel and thoughts on what you're seeing here. Joel (16m 35s): We appreciate it. And we will keep you anonymous if you choose to be anonymous. Well, let's go to a Greenhouse continuing with the news stories of the week. A couple of New York City based companies are getting married, Chad. A greenhouse, a popular ATS provider announced late last week it has acquired sourcing automation provider Interseller. The acquisition enables Greenhouse customers to do their talent sourcing natively within Greenhouse. Greenhouse co-founder and CEO Daniel Chit said, quote, "our decision to buy Interseller came after an extensive review of the market. Interseller absolutely stood out because of their rigorous approach to email, deliverability and innovations that ensure high quality candidate interactions." Joel (17m 21s): How often do you see email and innovations in the same sentence? Founded in 2016, Interseller looks like it was totally bootstrapped and employees about 14 folks. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Chad, what do you make of this move? Chad (17m 38s): I'm glad to see Greenhouse, getting out there, acquisitions, looking at this type of tech. I just wonder what happens when LinkedIn locks them out. I mean, what will the platform be worth then? Innerseller nor Greenhouse owns the rails on this one, LinkedIn owns them. Right? So even though I like the aggressive move, I'm wondering about the long-term viability also. Why are systems like Greenhouse focusing inward when it comes to candidates? Companies are spending shit tons of cash acquiring the same candidates over and over and over. You already have them. Joel (18m 18s): Yeah. Chad (18m 18s): I would think that a company like Greenhouse, like iCIMS with the acquisition of opening.io would move to make recruiting more cost-effective instead of feeding the LinkedIn recruiter seat, beast. That to me, I don't know if it was just cheap and it was something that might've been a cool add on from a feature standpoint. But overall I think strategically it's not the best move. Joel (18m 36s): It's it's an interesting move. So at first glance, I thought it was a lot like iCIMS buying Text Recruit, right? Chad (18m 42s): Yeah. Joel (18m 43s): That is too much. Keep an eye on the most popular apps in your marketplace and then go make a buy to add that tech to your catalog as a native solution. Right? So in that case was iCIMS bringing text recruiting SMS to their platform. Greenhouse has many sourcing solutions already in their marketplace. A lot of names you'll know, our listeners will know, SeekOut, HireTool, Fetch, et cetera. Many of whom have raised a lot of money and would have cost Greenhouse a premium if they had gone to buy one of those. However, I don't see Interseller in their marketplace. So either they took them out after the acquisition or they've never been in there. So that makes it very interesting to me. Joel (19m 23s): Both of these companies are in New York, so it feels a little bit like the LA deal a while back or a couple of weeks ago when they were like, oh, let's Hey, we met at a bar, they had this sourcing tool thing. They were pretty cheap. So we decided to buy them. I don't know if that's what happened, but it kinda smells a little bit like that. Greenhouse has taken over a hundred million dollars in investment, which is a lot, so it's not, but it's not enough to make big moves, like buying SeekOut, who's raised about the same amount of money. Chad (19m 52s): Yeah, no. Joel (19m 53s): I think a move into sourcing had to be made and I think they'll continue, I think a trend will start just like with chatbots where a lot of these ATS is and platforms feel like, oh, we need a sourcing tool. And let's be honest. There are a lot of sourcing tools out there that are probably for sale, probably up for not a lot of money outside of a few of them. So my question is also is sourcing, becoming a commodity. Now your spin on that is different in that LinkedIn owns the rails and the profiles. My take is sort of profiles are everywhere and they're sort of there for the taking and if they are there for the taking, is it a commodity? Joel (20m 35s): Is it just a check box that companies will have to tick off and their ATS will help them do that? In this case, Greenhouse with Interseller? Ultimately I think it's probably a bad sign for companies like SeekOut that Greenhouse chose to make an acquisition kind of off the clearance rack. To be honest, I had never even heard of Interseller before this deal and I like to think that I know a lot of the sourcing tools because we talked to a lot of people in sourcing. So interesting deal. I feel like it was on the cheap. I feel like it's that they probably need that solution, but they have a ton if you go to the marketplace there are a ton of sourcing solutions. Joel (21m 15s): So this deal is really kind of strange. It feels like, oh, it was on the cheap. We needed a native sourcing tool that we could monetize, screw the other sourcing providers and make this move. But it's confusing to me. It doesn't feel like a round peg in a round hole. Chad (21m 31s): No, we did talk about Interseller a few years ago, I think maybe when they got some funding, but they've been silent since, we really haven't heard anything. And I think for the most part, they were more on the sales contact side of the house before they actually got into recruiting. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's interesting. I'm glad to see the aggressiveness and acquisition, but it's more than likely was a clearance rack. Joel (21m 56s): Yeah. Do you agree that we'll see more acquisitions in this space or you think this'll be a one-off? Chad (22m 3s): Yeah, no, I think there will be acquisitions in this space. I think there'll be more high powered. I also think that there will be more matching and also, you know, again, I'm biased on the candidate ID side of the house, but you know, we don't have any like Marquetto systems in this space. We have like one. Right? And to be able to market to candidates that you've already paid for. I mean, you think of it from the standpoint, if you were a COO and you paid for a shit ton of leads, right. And you did nothing with those leads, you probably wouldn't be CMO for long, right. You've paid millions of dollars for those leads. So what HR is doing is they're paying millions of dollars for leads that they're fucking doing nothing with, how are they keeping their jobs? Chad (22m 50s): How are they actually getting more money for recruitment marketing when, who they're bringing in, they already have. I mean, I just don't get it. So I think the matching side of the house, the be able to that the nurturing side of the house is where it's at. Joel (23m 6s): Yeah. I really thought we would initially be reporting, you know, like Microsoft buying SeekOut for half a million to half a billion dollars or something. And then from there Hire Tool gets acquired and HiringSolved. Chad (23m 18s): That's how Dominoes goes baby. Joel (23m 20s): And everybody else, the fact that it's sort of like at the bottom and maybe we'll work our way up, but it usually doesn't start like that. So again, I think that's a bad sign for the industry, but we'll have to watch and find out. Well, speaking of an industry, that's on fire, let's talk about Fiverr announced this week, Fiverr has acquired Stoke Talent in a $95 million deal. Stoke Talent is a freelancer management system that provides tools that enable companies to manage their freelance talent. This includes onboarding, payment and tracking budgets. Fiverr founder and CEO Kaufman said, quote, "the Stoke acquisition made complete sense on multiple levels" Joel (24m 4s): end quote. The deal enables Fiverr to engage with much larger customers offer software solutions to firms that already have freelancers and gives Fiverr access to the offline freelancing market. Stoke Talent was founded by Shahar Erez and Hillik Paz. It's headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel and has almost 30 full-time employees. Chad, what's your take? Chad (24m 31s): Where's my Glenn Fry playlist, baby cause the heat is on? Fiverr right now, as you'd said, it gives Fiverr access to the offline freelancing market that it's still orders of magnitude larger than online freelancing. So they're trying to expand, they're moving upstream into Enterprise. I wonder why that is any guesses? Maybe LinkedIn, or maybe they're just trying to continue to gain ground on Upwork? Either way this is great! That the market's frothy and I think Fiverr and organizations like Stoke and hopefully the Communu's of the world who, you know, haven't taken a shit ton of cash can get a good payout and get, get their portfolio into a big name, like Fiverr or Upwork? Joel (25m 20s): Chad in that 28 seconds that you talked about it, it got hotter. That's how hot the image is, the LinkedIn is jumping in, we talked about that. They're going global with their solution. Upwork is doing incredibly well. Their quarterly earnings knocked it out of the park. Facebook has been rumored for a while to get in. I'm not going to be surprised if, and when they do. Now, it's an arms race and this acquisition helps prove that thesis. Fiverr was born as this quirky site where you could get little things done for five bucks. I think, give me a logo or a banner ad for $5 and now it wants to be a soup to nuts platform for organizations of all sizes online and offline to manage their contract workers. Joel (26m 5s): It's very exciting. It just makes a lot of sense. We've talked a ton about the great resignation and people being unhappy. People wanting flexibility, people wanting, you know, different opportunities and the gig economy lets them do that. Or at least lets them support a lifestyle until they figure out what they want to do with their life. I'm interested to see the trend around the brick and mortar side. I think, you know, servers, construction, healthcare, that's going to be a really interesting space and people like Nomad Health. It seems to be sort of niche. Chad (26m 34s): That's (Nomad) fire though... Joel (26m 35s): Do these guys get gobbled up? And by the way, Task Rabbit has been really quiet lately. I don't know if it's because they're now owned by a bunch of Swedes, but I want to see some Task Rabbit activity. Chad (26m 50s): Good luck with that one. Joel (26m 51s): Let's take a quick break and buy or sell. One of our favorite activities. And I think what is it like three weeks now that we've done buy or sell? Chad (27m 1s): I think so, with all the money. Joel (27m 3s): Buy or sell, we get back everybody. Buy or sell baby. You ready to do this? Chad (27m 12s): Yes. Joel (27m 12s): All right, everybody, you know how this works. We talk about three startups that recently have received funding and Chad and I will either buy or sell that startup. Number one, we have Multiplier. Global recruitment and employment management startup Multiplier has raised $13.2 million in a series A capital four months after snagging a seed funding round of around $4 million. Founded just last year in Singapore, Multiplier helps employers onboard, pay, and manage distributed workforce, in 150 plus countries. It's online section talent wiki features details about talent acquisition sources in foreign countries, in addition to PayScale and other markets specific employment information. Joel (28m 1s): With a hundred plus legal experts, m=Multiplier manages issues related to local compliance, labor contracts, payroll systems, employee benefits and taxes. Chad multiplier buy or sell? Chad (28m 9s): Onboarding sucks. Payrolling sucks. Compliance sucks. I sound like a fucking broken record. I've said this. I don't know on how many podcasts. Will it automate? yes. Will it scale? Yes. Does it cut out shit that nobody wants to do? Yes. The founder experience isn't in talent acquisition, although it is in FinTech for payrolling. So I think speed to market is Multiplier's super power. To be able to help all those companies that are out there who want to get into emerging markets and they want a partner that can help them get into these new countries. Chad (28m 53s): It's too easy. So speed to market, Multiplier's superpower. It's a buy for me. Joel (28m 57s): Multiplier's a buy. All right. The gig economy is hot and this space is hot too. Competitors like Deal, Remote and Employment Hero have all raised over a hundred million dollars in this sort of remote management space. As companies go remote and more global, they need solutions to dot the I's and cross the T's of all those things that you wax poetically sucks so much from a `fundraising perspective, Multiplier is putting itself in a good place. I think making it a more digestible acquisition than all the competition that's raised a hundred million plus dollars. I think these guys are going to be acquired pretty soon. Joel (29m 36s): I can't believe they're only a year old. Chad (29m 40s): Yeah. Joel (29m 41s): Multiplier's a buy for me as well. When I Work. Chad (29m 45s): Let's talk about that. Joel (29m 46s): Do you, the interesting company with a funny name, Minneapolis based Chad (29m 52s): Joel uses the app when I nap. Joel (29m 55s): When I nap. That one's on speed dial for me. Chad (29m 58s): It's good. Joel (29m 58s): All right. Minneapolis based when I work a SAAS employee scheduling time tracking and team messaging platform this week announced it has secured a $200 million growth investment from Bain Capital. The funding will enable When I Work to rapidly expand its suite of software solutions, pursue acquisitions and enhance its market position. Since its founding in 2010, more than 10 million hourly employees have used the platform and view and swap shifts, clock in, view hours worked, request time off and communicate with managers and coworkers. Joel (30m 37s): Today more than 200,000 workplaces, including Hickory Farms, Siemens and healthcare providers are using the, When I Work platform. Chad, When I Work buy or sell? Chad (30m 47s): Will it automate? Yes. Will it actually scale or help your workforce scale? Yes. Right? The CEO was a Ultimate Software was at Ultimate Software for over six years and has a background in our space. This one is kind of close to my heart cause I have practical experience with this app. I love this app. When I was working as a kickboxing instructor, a couple of years ago, we used, When I Work to manage schedules, trade shifts and just do the basic hard bullshit of shift work, it was amazing, intuitive, and effective. And knowing that's exactly what managers and shift workers need. Chad (31m 27s): This is an easy buy for me. Joel (31m 31s): I'm going to say, this is the first start-up on buyer sell that you've actually used. Like we actually have real-world experience and hands-on experience with. All right. I love these stories. While we talk incessantly about chat bots, AI, and the Metaverse. There are companies that quietly provide products and services that positively impact industries like kickboxing or whatever the fuck you were doing that we rarely notice. This isn't some three month old startup getting $200 million. This is a decades old organization doing the hard work of getting and keeping clients. The pandemic and the ubiquity says their time is now. Joel (32m 12s): When I Work solid buy for me as well. Chad (32m 17s): Too easy. Joel (32m 17s): Let's talk about Ladder. No, not the Ladders, Ladder. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to name a company in the same space, the same name, but anyway, Ladder a San Fran-based professional community platform, Hello, LinkedIn want to be, has raised 3.7 million in seed funding. Notable angels include the CEO of Door Dash NBA scrub Matthew Dellavedova, former Cleveland Cav and executives from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Uber, and Robinhood. On Ladder "members can join professional communities, consume high-quality career content, engage in fun discussions, land their dream job and form meaningful relationships with peers and mentor." Joel (33m 4s): That's according to their press release. The platform aims to become the go-to professional social network for gen Z. Chad as a card-carrying gen Xer are you buying or selling Ladder? Chad (33m 17s): So you get the feeling right out of the gate when creating a Ladder profile, which I did, that it was created just for college students. The experience sucks. I used Google. I, well, I used my Google profile to start creating my Ladder profile. What's your most recent education? sfx (33m 39s): Oh, hell no. Chad (33m 40s): Bootcamp, grads, dropouts, and students of any kind are encouraged, but the drop-downs are hyper-focused on degrees, ran out of the gate, which doesn't make any damn sense when we're moving toward an experience and skills based market, it feels like Ladder would have been a great idea 10 years ago. Will, the automate no. Will it scale? No. Does the founder have experienced in this space? He's 12 years old for God's sakes. No, he doesn't. So what we have here is an incredibly smart and well connected to Sequoia, kid who has no clue what's happening in the market and the market is so fucking frothy right now that they will throw money at anything that relates to jobs and workforce. Chad (34m 28s): This to me is an easy and big sell. Joel (34m 33s): Alright. Facebook is losing users to Snap and TikTok. For some reason people think the same thing will happen with LinkedIn, but what's the purpose of a professional network. It's not about cool or dancing or karaoke, it's about connecting with those who can actually help you professionally. i.e. sell some shit, get a job, find a mentor, et cetera. If I had joined a professional network in my twenties that was full of other 20 year olds aside from getting laid, I'm not sure it would have done anything for me until about 20, 10, 20 years after joining. Chad (35m 5s): Unless there was a getting laid network, right? Joel (35m 10s): That's that's called Tinder, that exists. All right. So LinkedIn, would have plugged me into everyone I needed to know instantly. Young and old LinkedIn will not be TikToked. A ladder much like the Ladders for me is a sell. And that brings us to the end of another buy or sell. Chad, are you a member of Sam's Club or Costco? Chad (35m 34s): Yes. Joel (35m 35s): Yes. Which one? I feel like they're kind of like West Side Story. You're either one of the other. Chad (35m 43s): Costco. Joel (35m 43s): Costco. Okay. I'm a Costco guy too. Well Sam's Club was in the news recently basically saying what labor shortage? Sam's Club CEO says it has reached full employment at the Yahoo finances, all market summit. That sounds like a party. Sam's Club CEO Catherine McClay said Sam's has been at full staffing for probably over three months in their roughly 600 stores. McClay said the secret sauce for Sam's Club has been a combination of higher wages and a clear pathway for career advancement. They're at $15 an hour at minimum wage, but the average wage is actually around $17.30 an hour. Joel (36m 24s): 70% of Sam's Club leaders have worked their way up from the frontline. The recipe for keeping workers happy, appears to be working for Sam's Club who's same-store sales rose 7.7% in the second quarter, on top of a 13.3% gain a year ago. Second quarter operating profits, rose 11 and a half percent from a year ago, Chad, everyone's bitching about, I can't hire anybody. And then you get a story like this from Sam's Club. What do you make of it? Chad (36m 56s): What I'd like to see research around retention for companies that are run by female CEOs. I think there's more empathy, more authenticity, but I mean, we're seeing that possibly at Sam's Club, they started with the $15 minimum wage. I think a couple of years ago, they tried to actually ratchet up to that and they've gotten there. Their average, which really don't know what that means, you don't know, you know what they're meaning if that's just frontline average, you know, it's over seven, $17. I'm still having a hard time praising organizations for finally paying a fucking living wage. Chad (37m 37s): But that's where we're at. I really think though I would love to see research on how female led companies and even teams within organizations are doing from an attrition standpoint versus their male counterparts. Joel (37m 49s): And I want to say some research around megalomaniacs and penis rockets, running companies and how that's going. Yeah. Most, any company, most, any company can move wages higher and provide bonuses, benefits, et cetera. And we're starting to see that finally with organizations. Where I think Sam's Club gets it right as the culture, you can't just switch culture on and off, right? You can't just say, we're going to give you more money. That's a culture has takes decades in this case to grow. I think there's immense benefit to being a new employee, talking to your boss that was actually in your shoes five or 10 years ago. It gives you something to look at as terms of where I'll be in five to 10 years. Joel (38m 32s): I think that's really important. I think that we discount that a lot of times. It says the company values you and wants you to grow within the company. Amazon in contrast, doesn't seem to have that kind of culture whatsoever. Treating people is a good move. Unlike Amazon, where there's actually been stories where they feel like they're getting pushed out at a certain point, because they're going to an another level of salary and Amazon, would rather not pay you salary and they'd rather bring in somebody else to take your spot. So props to Sam's Club and I think it's been paying dividends. It's a successful business. I think we could probably say the same about Costco. And I know that we've talked, was it the Costco TikToker that was talking about the benefits of the workplace and how much they love Costco. Joel (39m 16s): I mean, that's the kind of thing that you get with culture. And most companies, the majority of companies aren't willing to put in the time investment to create a culture, like the one that we see at Sam's Club. So hats off to them, the investment is paying off. Chad (39m 45s): That's right. And anybody out there who has a research on female CEOs versus male CEOs, and attrition in their organization, I'd like to see that. Joel (39m 57s): Let's take a quick break And we'll talk about addition on PornHub. Yes. All right Chad, another week, another porn hub story. Wow. Popular porn destination porn hub, which none of our listeners are familiar with serves up 2.4 billion visits on average each month. It's a top down site that they don't really talk about because it's porn. That's a lot of visitors Chad. Marketers are always looking for large numbers of potential customers and they're always looking for ways to cut through the clutter, enter a math teacher named Chang ??? Who noticed something was missing amidst all the TNA goodness. Joel (40m 39s): Math. Chad (40m 39s): Calculus. Joel (40m 39s): The Taiwanese math teacher provides online math lessons and fully clothed and safe for work videos at pornhub.com. The teacher said quote, "since very few people teach math on adult video platforms" like are there more than one? "And since there are so many people who watch videos on them, I thought that if I uploaded my videos there, a lot of people would see them" end quote. He has tried taking his lessons to other adult platforms like X videos, but those sites apparently don't allow non adult clips. They have too much, too much morale, I guess, or too much morality. Joel (41m 19s): PornHub is much more welcoming. Under the handle ChangSUmath666. I'm not sure why he put the sign of the devil there in his name, the 34 year old math teacher is verified account has netted him over 1.7 million views and features the slogan play hard, study hard. Yeah. I bet that gets some searches. The goal is for viewers to sign up for Chang Su's online course, which nets him over $250,000 a year, which he uses to pay his staff and produce the math videos. You said staff. I said, staff, I don't know how he is at teaching math, but he's a hell of a marketer. Chad, what's your take? Chad (41m 59s): Okay. So I haven't performed the demographic research on this one, but I would assume most of the clicks on his videos are people who are looking for naughty teacher fantasies and not learning calculus. I could totally be wrong. And if I am that makes this guy a fucking marketing genius, but I'm going to play the skeptic here and say that for the most part, all the clicks that he's, he's getting a thereby they're not by accident. They're really looking for teacher fantasy. Joel (42m 33s): Yeah. Well, Chad, we've, been debating whether or not to go video for this podcast. And I think that this insight just may have given us enough ammo to say, we should be publishing videos on porn hub. What could be more on-brand than that? And with that, another one is in the books sfx (42m 51s): But they aren't who we thought they were and we let them off the hook. Joel and Chad (42m 53s): We out. OUTRO (42m 53s): 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. OUTRO (43m 34s): 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

If you're numb over unicorns, well, get over it. This week, the boys highlight two more newly minted members of the Billion Dollar Valuation Club. Yup, welcome Hibob and Karat to the unicorn party. Also on this episode: Canvas and Luma, er, Pillar are in the news (or suffer growing pains, depending on your point of view). Snagajob says "Everything Must Go!", LinkedIn unplugs from China (kinda), and back by popular demand: Porn! Stop watching The Squid Game and enjoy another riveting episode of HR's most dangerous podcast. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides comprehensive website accessibility testing with personalized recommendations to enhance usability for people with a variety of disabilities or situational limitations. 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. Another episode, closer to cancellation. Hi kids. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast, the real heavyweight champion. This is your co-host Joel "flight cancellations" Cheeseman. Chad (35s): And this is Chad phasers on stun" Sowash. Joel (38s): On this week's show a double unicorn extravaganza! LinkedIn rethinks China, and librarian is the number one search term for PornHub in the state of Montana. Big Sky indeed. Let's do this! Big week, Chad. Chad (56s): Yeah, I, I gotta say whoever thought of Captain Kirk on yesterday's flight was a fucking genius, right? Joel (1m 5s): Well Bezos, obviously. Your buddy. Chad (1m 7s): I really doubt that and you know why they put Shatner on that launch, right? Joel (1m 12s): Oh, please tell me. Chad (1m 13s): All anyone was talking about during the last launch was rich white billionaire spending money on space toys instead of something, you know, like poverty or something like that. Now, all they're talking about is Captain Kirk. It was a brilliant diversion. It was fucking brilliant. So they learned from the first time now they just put somebody, you know, a 90 year old icon on the, I mean, come on. If Kirk goes out, if it blows up in space, which I was hoping it did not. I mean, can you think of a better way to fucking go out as Captain Kirk? I mean, this was a no brainer for him. Joel (1m 50s): Well, that would have been bad PR, had that happened. My two takeaways where we now know why the head of the penis is so big because those fucking windows are huge. It's like a living room in that thing, the windows are so big. And the second thing was, I mean, really heartfelt to me, the interview he did with Bezos and, and thanking him for the trip seemed to me really, really genuine, really heartfelt. William Shatner is a 90 year old dude who got to go up in space. I could feel the genuine, just joy in William Shatner's face. So to me, that was really heartwarming. And I don't think I've ever really felt a desire to go to space like that until I saw Captain Kirk so excited. Joel (2m 29s): I mean, this is the guy that has seen just about everything. He's partied with the you know, the biggest names in Hollywood. He's made love to supermodels and green women. I mean, he's seen it all and this just, just heart warmed his heart. So that was nice to see. Chad (2m 46s): Yeah, well it didn't warm my heart. Well, no, it did was when the Raiders kicked fucking Gruden to the curb that, that warmed my heart too. Joel (2m 56s): Those who aren't football fans. John Gruden is a very volatile coach, I guess you could say some emails came out that were, Jesus, they were racist, sexist, xenophobe, I don't know, he definitely did not discriminate against who he was discriminating against because everyone seemed to get a piece in the emails that he threw out. So what was your takeaway from that other than happy? Chad (3m 18s): The NFL is having a problem with brand. They've had a problem with brand and they're trying to clean it up. The players are the ones that everybody comes to see, not Roger Goodell and not any of the fucking coaches on the sideline, even though they're brilliant, but they come to see the athletes play the game. It's one of those things where I think in America, at least in the US we're starting to have an awakening and I hope it doesn't stop. Joel (3m 41s): Yeah. I think you could do a whole show on all the things that sort of this thing, this event touched on. For me, just to make quick of it, it was really heartbreaking because really to me, nothing more than sport should be a meritocracy. You and I both played high school sports. We weren't good enough to go beyond that. But for me, for example, I went to a pretty diverse high school. I played basketball. I play with black guys, Latino guys, Asian guys, and it didn't matter what color you were, if you could ball, you could ball. And that didn't matter. So when you see something like sports and that this is so apparently predominant in that environment. Joel (4m 23s): To me, it's just really heartbreaking because if any, if any environment should be colorblind, it should be sports. Chad (4m 30s): Yeah. Well, and I think you're remembering is much different than mine because I remember the coach's kid getting to play whatever position the coach wanted him to play, whether he was the best, there was no meritocracy. That's totally total bullshit. So I think it's funny that you try to color everything with meritocracy, but that's probably just your whiteness showing. Joel (4m 52s): Agree to disagree, Chad, but sports has been a longstanding example of people getting along where they normally wouldn't in society. Speaking of getting along though, Chad, my stomach and I have a great relationship and I was really happy to see Portillo's my favorite Chicago eatery. If you haven't had an Italian beef wet from Portillo's, you're missing out, they're filing for an IPO here coming up. And I think I've probably made them as profitable as I possibly can with my own. And also want to bring up Raising Cane, who doesn't like some fried chicken? They were in the news this week staffing is so tight at Raising Canes they asked people in the HQ to fill in as cooks and cashiers. Joel (5m 38s): And I think I read about a third of people in the HQ volunteered to serve up some chicken, which is heartwarming as well. I love it. Chad (5m 47s): I mean, as a startup and they're not a startup, but as a startup CEO, you have to do everything. You're doing fucking demos. I mean, you're helping with a UX design. I mean, you're doing everything that you possibly can to be able to be an organization of that size and say, look, it's time to get back to startup status and understand that we're not going to be able to move on without everybody actually pitching in. So get out of that leather chair. Joel (6m 12s): So if we pivot back to sports, did you catch the heavyweight fight on Saturday? Chad (6m 17s): Nope. Joel (6m 17s): Yeah. So I normally wouldn't. I was at my sisters and brother-in-law who was just a big fan, actually bought the fight. So I was able to watch it. Tyson Fury, this dudes like 6'7", 320. I mean, he, he gives a new definition to what heavyweight is and he gives, he gives real inspiration to the dad bodies of the world, because if you're remembering heavyweights as Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Evander, Holyfield, those guys were ripped. This guy looks like he just got out of a Portillos. So it's really, really nice to see him rip it up in the ring. Tyson Fury, shout out to you, my man. Chad (6m 54s): So what was the result? Joel (6m 56s): Well, Tyson won in the 10th. I believe TKO, but it was a great fight. Tyson got knocked down twice in one round. I mean, it was just, it was what you think of as a heavyweight bout, right? Like you can actually hear and feel the punches as they land and you feel for the guys that are in it. It was great. It was great. If you saw the fight, you, you most likely loved it. Chad (7m 15s): I don't want to get hit by a guy who weighs 300 pounds. Joel (7m 22s): No, no. Chad (7m 23s): Shout out to JobSink you wraskily wabbits for grabbing up Leah Daniels as their new chief commercial officer, former app castor, and one of the smartest people in our industry. Good job guys, over a JobSink and congrats Leah on the new gig. Joel (7m 42s): And aren't we a permanent stamp on their marketing campaign? Chad (7m 45s): I don't think so. Joel (7m 45s): Maybe that's Appcast I'm thinking of. Anyway, moving on, let's talk about LinkedIn real quick. We'll talk about them more in depth in today's show as we normally do. This out of Mike "Batman" Cohen, he says that LinkedIn is not allowing you to use the site if you're logged on in different locations, call it a spam fighter or just call it annoying. Mike "Batman" Cohen is not a fan. So LinkedIn you're in his cross hairs as you've been probably for the last 10 years. Chad (8m 14s): Yeah. And you can't log out of the other device either, which is a, yeah it's a real pain in the ass. A big shout out to Owen Diaz. So Tesla was ordered by a jury to pay $137 million to Owen over racist treatment during his time as an employee at Tesla. Now 137 million is not much for a company like Tesla, although this could be seen as a damn good precedent. And if workers who have experienced the same kind of racist treatment start coming forward, that million dollar figure could actually turn into a billion. And hopefully it'll drive actual change at Tesla and more importantly, send shockwaves through corporate America. Chad (8m 60s): To the point they see that this behavior is not something that is going to be put up with and it's not risk slapping anymore. It's actually something that could really hit their bottom line. Joel (9m 11s): Awesome. You got anything else before we talk about free shit? Chad (9m 16s): Yes. Big shout out to George LaRocque who reported that global investment in WorkTech exceeded 6 billion in the third quarter. Another record setting quarter for WorkTech. It is blowing up the money is gushing. Joel (9m 42s): And speaking of Gushers, let's talk about free stuff. Chad, if you haven't signed up for free, t-shirts free beer and free whiskey, you need to head out to Chadcheese.com/free. We announced two of the new winners from this last month. You could be this month's winner. We've got t-shirts by Emissary, beer from Adzuna and we have whiskey sponsored by Sovren. Get out to Chadcheese.com/free and sign up today. Pretty next up. We've got some fantasy football updates sponsored by poach.ai. Here's the rankings as of week six, heading into week seven. Number one is Bill "football" Joel (10m 22s): Fanning for the second week in a row, as well as the wonderful Miss Q number two, she stays in that spot. Next up, Jason "Vorhees" Putnam. I come up in the fourth spot, which is a nice. Chad (10m 35s): He was last like two weeks ago. Joel (10m 36s): He was last two weeks ago. And I was last, last week. And I mentioned I was going to be like rat out of the cellar. And I, I went to number four. "Breakin Benjamins" Kunze, which was, was that Kunze? Anyway, Chad (10m 52s): Koontz. Joel (10m 52s): We'll go with Kunze. Okay. Breakin' Benjamins Kunze. You remember he was last or he was second to last or last, last week. Chad (10m 59s): He was last. Joel (10m 60s): But he had the most points so he's up in the rankings. You follow him. We got Kristy "dark side of the moon." After that we got Michael J. Cox, Chris "Viva Las Vegas" Russell. And in last place, Pete "don't call me douchey" Suchi. That is the fantasy football leaderboard. Chad (11m 22s): Roy fucking Kent is in the cellar. That sucks. Joel (11m 24s): Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you didn't listen to our podcast from this week, we had a fantastic interview with Namely's CEO, Larry Dunivan, go check that out if you missed it. And we have some birthdays, fans of the show, we got Mark Jenkins, Denise Adams, Gary Gray, he had some creative parents, and Madeline Laurano celebrated a birthday. Chad (11m 56s): Yep. And I have a special one. My daughter, Emma Sowash actually turns 20! 20! Joel (12m 4s): How's that feel? Chad (12m 6s): Fucking crazy. I mean, it's ridiculous. I've got to say really proud of her. She's actually starting on her birthday this week. It was Monday, she's starting a new job and she's training to be a phlebotomist at the local hospital. And I'll tell you what, what we need more of as healthcare workers. So I think there's was a smart pick. We'll see. Joel (12m 34s): Can you spell phlebotomist? Chad (12m 35s): Vampire V A M P I R E. Joel (12m 42s): hahaha. Chad (12m 43s): Topics! Joel (12m 43s): All right, Chad. It's that time of the month. We got crazy unicorns to talk about. All right. Let's start with Karat with a K. KARAT an interviewing platform and Seattle-based Karat announced a $110 million series C round that values of the company at $1.1 billion. Chad (13m 6s): Oo. Joel (13m 7s): Karat's platform includes a network of interview engineers that clients can contract to provide technical interviews for software engineers via video. All the kids are doing it! Karat is more than doubling revenue and the number of customers year over year. It has eight companies spending more than $1 million per year. Chad, are you buying this unicorn? Chad (13m 27s): Okay. So seeing this through the eyes of a hiring company, who's hiring engineers. I believe this is brilliant. I mean, don't take my engineers away from their jobs and allow others to actually do the interviewing. But my first problem with this was scaling with humans who perform the interview because this isn't tech scaling, this is actual human engineers doing the interviews. So this process actually takes engineers out of the job market. It was, it was meant to actually be used almost like a side hustle. You know, you're an engineer, you can do a side hustle, make some money, but some engineers are making $250,000 doing this full time. Chad (14m 9s): So I'm sure Karat can sell a white glove service. And they're doing that now, right? Especially in this market, but when the asset, the interviewing engineers who could leave the platform tomorrow, what do they actually do? I mean, seriously, the contracted talent is really the secret sauce here or what happens if demand explodes. And there isn't enough human engineers to actually perform the interview. So to me, I believe the human variable is the situation that doesn't make me a fan. So I'm glad they have the money they're going to need it. I'm sure companies will be buying in left and right. Chad (14m 50s): But I'm just not confident in their ability to scale again, if this explodes, what do they do? How do they actually meet demand? Not to mention, not to mention what happens when platforms that don't need humans are just kicking their ass, right? So this is, this is, this is the hard human versus robot conversation. Joel (15m 10s): You're saying, if there a gusher, there could be problems. There could be a problem. Something like that. Indeed is a client, I'm just going to throw it out there. So for if we're predicting, maybe acquisitions going into next year, I might make this prediction. Indeed is using their shit. Chad (15m 25s): Well, you know what I think, Recruit, I think Recruit buying them because they are on the recruiting side of the house. This could be perfect for Recruit Holdings. I don't see this for Indeed, but I do see this for Recruit and staffing, but you take a look at BrightHire who just raised 20 million last week, right? They're not a, they're not a unicorn, but from a scalable standpoint, a scalability standpoint, they're there and they can, they can expand and contract with the tech, not with humans. Joel (15m 52s): Yeah. I think it's pretty interesting. I'm not as, as bearish as you are. So these guys, this company is led by a former director for X-Box and a guy who previously was chief of staff at Melinda Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. They have about 200 employees. And I guess stop me if you've heard this one before, but they're on a hell of a wave. So this company covers, you know, the shift to remote work that's hot, the acceleration of digital transformation, i.e. everyone is hiring software engineers. The increased attention on diversity Karat says it removes bias from interviews, that could be a separate discussion and the great resignation. So when you talk about RAD companies, these guys are on that cutting edge. Joel (16m 35s): So I'm probably a little more bullish on these guys than you are. I think they got a lot going for him. Chad (16m 42s): They're missing the A in your RAD, and that's where they're fucked. Joel (16m 45s): That's true. That's true. Two out of three ain't bad, Chad, which was a great song for back in the day. Well, let's talk about, Hibob, our number two. HRIS Solution's Hibob announced a $150 million series C funding round this week. The round brings total investment at Hibob to 274 million since its founding in late 2015, giving an evaluation of $1.65 billion. Chad (17m 21s): Wow! Joel (17m 21s): Hibob's clients includes five include Fiverr, Vayner media and others. It's HR technology platform enables companies to send shout-out messages to employees, poll employees, create onboarding workflows, track time and attendance, manage compensation management and manage performance reviews. With this recent funding Hibob's plan is among other initiatives, acquire complimentary technologies and expand their global presence. Chad are you more bullish on this unicorn? Chad (17m 50s): Yes. Hibob is a mid market play and most of these organizations would enjoy getting into a system that costs much less than most ACM dinosaur legacy enterprise companies use. Right? So Hibob covers multiple pain points, which is shit nobody wants to do like coordinating time off, payroll, onboarding, benefits, and the list goes on. Joel (18m 15s): Don't forget, shout out messages. Chad (18m 16s): Yeah, it does a lot of the shit work that nobody really wants to handle and it automates, which means it scales. So it does those two aspects that are important to me, not to mention this is one of the things that I think is incredibly important, where you start to see a big vendors that are legacy tech, they're paying so much in a technical debt right now. They need systems like this to be able to refresh them. If they're not bought, I see them being a much larger brand. Believe it or not, Bob, a brand in this industry. Joel (18m 55s): It reminds you remind me of Ask Jeeves from back in the day. Yeah. So a few things real quick. Hibob proves that names obviously don't matter. So whatever I say in firing squad, just disregard cause the name clearly doesn't matter. I can't fathom a Salesforce. Hi, this is Joe from Hibob. This is a really interesting company, was founded in Israel is now looking at the United States. They recently hired Candice Miller as their head of global demand generation. Candice was previously at Intello/Convey IQ. And from talking to her occasionally, you know, they have a real eye to north America and now they have the money to do it. Joel (19m 38s): So any of, any of the Americans in the audience today, if you don't know Hibob today, you'll be saying Hibob at some point, if you're in that mid level market. So to me, it's incredibly interesting. My thought process is like, who would they buy? Because they're pretty transparent around wanting to make some acquisitions. So my head kind of thought about who would that be? And we'll just have to watch and speculate on who some acquisition targets might be. Cause there are quite a few in the US they could probably gobble up and get a nice little foundation here in the states. Chad (20m 16s): Yes. Especially if they want to get into the talent acquisition side of the house, which they, I mean, they're not yet. So, you know, there there's room for growth there, but I mean really if they just focus on a market acquisition right now and they grow, then they could be a huge acquisition target for some of these again, legacy tech vendors. Joel (20m 44s): Yeah. That'd be a hell of an acquisition based on their valuation. But stranger things have happened in our business. All right. That's enough for our unicorn segment of the show. Let's talk about Canvas, canvas.com. I'll highlight that friend of the show Canvas is going through some changes. I'm not going to call them growing pains at this point, but after raising $50 million last month in a series C, most notably Ben Herman is stepping down as CEO and moving into a full-time board of directors position. The reason the company wants to bring on a seasoned leader to take the company to its next phase of growth. Joel (21m 28s): In the interim co-founder and chief revenue officer, Adam Gefkovicz and chief people, officer Tariq Meyers will become co-CEOs. Chad, what's your take on this move? Chad (21m 36s): Well, I think it's smart for Ben being the CEO of a startup. And we know that for the most part, if you're early stage or you're in startup mode, you have a different CEO for different stages and different transitions. So I think it was probably good. And we know great CEOs who knew when to move on, whether that was to a different position in the organization or whatever it might've been. I mean, think of Colin at iCIMS, right. And Steve actually stepping in, they went to IPO from there. Right? So I mean, this isn't a bad thing. The thing that, that bothers me is that they didn't have somebody to step into the position when he left. Chad (22m 22s): So this is abrupt. Right. And then also to say that we have co-interim CEOs, I've heard of interim CEOs before, but co-interim CEOs. I hope, first off that Ben, his family are great. And anybody who's out there looking for, oh, you and I should run for co-CEOs. I just thought of this. Joel (22m 42s): That was my first point, Chad Chad (22m 44s): And I have co-interim CEOs. We could just be co-CEOs. Joel (22m 48s): Yeah. For those listeners that remember our Monster campaign to be co-CEOs of Monster I'm thinking we could be co-CEOs of Canvas. We can do this, we can do this. Chad (22m 60s): A couple of white guys we're in charge of DEI. Joel (23m 5s): Heading up a diversity play. Yeah, that'd be good. That would, that would go over like a screen door on a submarine. So Ben proudly puts high school dropout on his LinkedIn profile in terms of education. He is not your average cat. Right. He's barely in his thirties I think. He's a serial investor, entrepreneur. Chad (23m 22s): Yes. Joel (23m 23s): You know, hats off to him for realizing like, you know, what him stepping down makes a lot of sense. We talk, we talk so much about CEOs that stick around too long, Mark Zuckerberg. That just can't you know, give up power or can't give up control. So hats off to Ben for that. But I do agree that the exit was quite abrupt. It seems like they just put him on the board to sort of be a figure head instead of just totally kicking him out of the company or him leaving the company. So that is certainly not great for a company that just raised a bunch of money. I would've liked to have seen someone step in that, you know, had some gray hair, had some experience in the industry. Joel (24m 4s): So this, this move reeks of a little bit of a chaos. And I hope for their sake that they get that chaos under control because it's not a good look co-CEO. Chad (24m 15s): Well, and I'm hoping that one of their funders isn't going to step in as CEO, if that was the plan, I think that would happen pretty quickly. So hopefully that's not the plan. Joel (24m 28s): We will be watching Chad and speaking of watching, you were at a special event in Indianapolis celebrating a Indianapolis based company. Tell us about that. Chad (24m 40s): Yeah it was pretty cool. The company formerly known as the artist, formerly known as Lumateams.com is now pillar.HR, and they were having a relaunch/rebrand. Other than that, I mean, I think the new CEO wanted to put his stamp on the company, which I appreciate. And Mark Simpson, who's the new CEO, the guy has a ton of chops and exits, which is important. And they are funded by a High Alpha in Indianapolis. Joel (25m 9s): So full disclosure and a little bit of a news, a news break Pillar is going to be our new beer drop sponsor, and Adzuna is going to move to a bigger advertising spot. So we speak of Pillar with that in mind, and this is a cool local story, but it's sort of an odd story. So High Alpha, as I understand, they have sort of two different levels of investments. They do, like from the idea stage and then they sorta let use all their resources and they grow the company, but they take a pretty big chunk of it in that, in that scenario, the other scenario is, Hey, we've got a product, we've got some customers, you know, we're ready for like a series A or something significant from a seed perspective. Joel (26m 0s): Luma was one of those incubator early, early stage companies. And they're hardly even a year old. I think they were founded in 2020 that summer of if I'm not correct. Chad (26m 11s): Yeah. They're young. Joel (26m 13s): Yeah. So one of the co-founders her name is Grace Tyson, she left in May of this year and they brought in Mark from there and he's got a ton of experience. Grace is now VP of Sales, I think at a east coast company, her tenure was really short-lived, which is really weird for a co-founder. So that was a little bit strange. And then I was like, well, the name change is, is odd because Luma's not awful, but so why change to Pillar, which isn't awful either. So I was curious about the trademarks, like, does someone have Luma as a employment trademark? So I dug into trademark. Yeah. Joel (26m 53s): It turns out a company called Dovetail Software in Austin owns a trademark for hiring software under Luma. Although the law firm that secured that trademark is out of Indianapolis. So something weird is going on there, in terms of the name change. I know they're selling it as a rebrand or like a relaunch or a rebirth, but something is a little bit strange there. And it reminded me of a company I worked for in the oughts called background information services. They were background check company who I've eventually ended up working for, and they sold to Sterling. I've talked about them a couple of times. Anyway, background information services was a trademark. So they had a decision to make of either, well, do we fight the trademark and give six figures to a lawyer and hope that we win, or do we just change our name and go about our business and rebrand? Joel (27m 40s): Which is what they inevitably did. The domain was employee screen. So they just tagged on IQ at the end of their name and became employee screen IQ. I'm not saying that this is what happened to Luma, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was something sort of trademark related or ownership related that made them say, fuck it let's just rebrand as something else. Chad (28m 4s): I got nothing. 'cause I mean, nothing. I mean, nothing in the platform has changed. I mean, again, I think this is more of more momentum and again, a team trying to take a platform and make it their own. Yeah. Joel (28m 21s): So the tech obviously works. The leadership team now is experienced. A new brand. So we know those issues if they were there, are gone. So we're rooting for these guys and they're an Indianapolis based company. So they're sort of on the home team here in Indiana. So we'll be rooting for them. Well, let's take a quick break Chad, we'll talk about a company we haven't in a while and talk about a company that we seem to talk about every week. We'll be right back. Chad (28m 50s): Snagit, Joel (28m 50s): Snagit jobs. Chad (28m 51s): Snagit jobs, snag it all right, here's the news. And we'll get to the commentary after workforce and inventory solutions, provider Fourth, that's the name of the company is acquiring Snagit jobs, applicant tracking, and onboarding solutions, which are branded people matter and hiring manager in a deal backed by Marlin Equity Partners. The financial terms were not disclosed. Shocker. People matter in hiring manager employees will be retained by Fourth and all 3,500 customers with approximately 60,000 locations will experience no interruption in service. Under the new parent company. Chad, there was a time when Snagit job was somewhere between Craigslist and ZipRecruiter and Hourly hiring influence. Chad (29m 36s): What's your take on this news? Shouldn't Snag be expanding, not contracting right now? Joel (29m 40s): You'd think so. Chad (29m 41s): I mean, the market is so hot. I would have expected Snag to be strapped to the nose of the penis rocket yesterday. I mean, it's just, that's how the market is. Right. I couldn't understand Joel (29m 53s): That's a Snagt his penis rocket doesn't want to see. Chad (29m 57s): That's exactly right. So I couldn't quite understand this move, but then I listened back to our interview with a Snag CEO, Mathieu Stevenson, and started thinking about the rebound product we talked about. And then also what type of tech does a company like Snag really need to help hiring companies be more nimble? So Snag doesn't need legacy tech, the kind of tech that they got rid of, applicant tracking system, and then also onboarding? They don't need that. Right? And as a matter of fact, paying the technical debt for an ATS in onboarding, I would assume that's got to be sucking them dry to some effect, right? Joel (30m 40s): Yeah. Chad (30m 41s): So unlike CareerBuilder, who sold off interconnected components that drove other aspects of the business. I see this as, this is a great way to shed legacy tech while the prices are high. So they're selling it the high and then building for the future. I see them moving more toward, as we talked about on the interview with Mathieu an app based product. So I think Fourth was sold a rusty old VW bug. And they're happy about it. Joel (31m 15s): Yeah. Yeah. We talked to Mathieu, I guess it's French, back in 2019, after I guess a failed platform launch, they launched an app called Snag, which was sort of, I guess, a hourly worker based platform where people could actually get badges for flipping burgers or having certain skillsets in the hourly workforce. And we kind of applauded that move. Unfortunately, it didn't work out very well. And the app is gone. The CEO who launched it is gone. And Mr. Stevenson at the helm has been there for a couple of years. Obviously I agree with you. They should be seeing incredible growth in that space. People need hourly workers. Joel (31m 55s): This is a Snagit jobs, sweet spot. But part of me thinks the world is, is sort of passing, passing, snag a job by. And I think part of that fear is like, let's get back to our core business. What do we do best? What do people really want? And let's sell off the pieces or get rid of the pieces that are fat in the business and try to recoup and grow from there. I was curious, I went out to Glassdoor and some other review sites and some of the comments around their turnover in senior leadership, somebody talked about people leaving left and right. So clearly not all is great at Snagajob. And if they're losing executives and people, then you know, the time to Batten down the hatches and start doing what we do well is nigh. Joel (32m 40s): And it sounds like, sounds like that's what they're doing. The question for me will be, you know, too little too late or just in time. And only time will tell, and we will be watching, but you don't hear much about Snagajob anymore. Chad (32m 57s): No, you don't. You really don't. Definitely reached out to Mathieu, to be able to get some clarification on this. Again, you're selling two systems that are driving revenue, although again, it might not be the future for the organization. So we'll see if we get a response, maybe we have them on. Joel (33m 15s): Yep. Sounds good. Well, let's talk about a company that we rarely talk about. Wink, wink. LinkedIn! Chad (33m 22s): Wow. Joel (33m 23s): This news came across the wire as we were preparing for this week show, so we actually bounced a story in light of this one. So we talked about China last week, basically bowing down to the Chinese government, censoring, some journalists that were on the platform. So this announcement, well, it didn't take long. So we talked about that last week. And today, as we record this on Thursday, Microsoft said it would pull LinkedIn its existing professional network website in China and instead launch a jobs only version later this year. Joel (34m 3s): The new website called InJobs that's creative, will not, I repeat, will not include a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles. Chad (34m 15s): Yeah. I got to say this deserves a big applause. As you said, you know, we talked last week about LinkedIn blocking profiles, censoring content really from the Chinese LinkedIn version. In effect, LinkedIn was bending the proverbial needs of the Chinese government. The conversation around, wow, how does Microsoft do that? And then our banter was well it's profits. Google's not there. Facebook isn't there. Many of the other platforms aren't available in China because they have strict regulations on speech. Pretty much, you know, if we don't want you to say, you're not going to say it. So LinkedIn is one of the only major platforms operating in cashing checks while the other big names are out. Chad (35m 1s): Well, LinkedIn, apparently they were pushed too far. And this to me again, is a big applause. I appreciate a company, I don't care if it's an American company, I don't care where they come from, but actually sticking behind, not bending the knee. Joel (35m 15s): Yeah. Yeah. You and I were, I think we all appreciate the, the rock and the hard place that companies, you know, lie between when they make decisions to deal with China. And I agree that the applause is necessary. I think LinkedIn was probably going to be bounced from China eventually, whether that would have taken months or years, I don't know. But eventually I think China would have eventually said you're out of here. Applause to LinkedIn and Microsoft for making the move. China was their third biggest market for LinkedIn. So there was a price to pay financially for this, but the price for your soul, I guess, was more valuable to them and their decision to get out is certainly a good one. Joel (35m 55s): Look, China doesn't play. And if you dance with that devil, it could hurt and it could come back to bite you. So I think it was a good business decision because I think it was eventually going to happen. Anyway, it was a good PR decision from that, that business side. And it was a good position, I guess, politically and just for a democracy and freedom, loving people, Chad. America, fuck. Yeah, Chad (36m 21s): I think they saw the writing on the wall and they might as well went ahead and pulled the plug themselves as opposed to waiting for the Chinese government to cut it. Joel (36m 35s): Yep. LinkedIn had been there since 2017, so they had a pretty short run of communist China. Well, let's take another break Chad and we'll move from communism to pornography, which is just what our listeners expect. Chad (36m 50s): Search terms, search terms. Joel (36m 53s): So Chad, we veered off from porn, pornography and prostitution last week and deep fake sexting and whatever else. So we decided to go back. Chad (37m 4s): Because it was out there. Joel (37m 6s): A site our listeners know nothing about, obviously, they serve up porn and every year they publish their most search keywords by state. Not surprising to me. Asian is a keyword is hot on the west coast. Lesbian is a keyword is all the rage down the middle of the country. And the Midwest prefers their moms with milk being the top search term in most of the Midwest states, but some were less obvious. Chad, what were some keywords and states that stood out to you, Chad (37m 48s): Oklahoma with goth hospitals, I have no fucking clue what that even means. Joel (37m 52s): No clue, but it sounds very Oklahoma to me. Librarian and Montana, that was interesting. Droopy balls in Colorado, racist in Michigan. What the fuck we got to get Sackett on the phone about that? Chad (38m 7s): I'm going to say this is the, this has gotta be an onion version of pornhub's search terms. Joel (38m 13s): I don't know. It might be fake news, but damn, it's fun to talk about. Florida with boats. And then the south, Ebony was the number one search term in most of the Southern states. And Kevin James was one in Connecticut or something. Chad (38m 36s): No, in Tennessee. Joel (38m 39s): Even better. Kevin James and Tennessee. So that, that was your PornHub most served key phrases from the past year. I got nothing else, Chad, except to say we out. Chad (38m 53s): We out. sfx (38m 53s): We are experiencing technical issues. There is no cause for alarm, please be at ease. OUTRO (39m 35s): 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.

Did you know bathing in beer is taking Europe by storm? Yeah, that's the kind of show you can expect as you push play. Volonte CEO and founder Daniel Masata join the Euro crew to discuss beer bathing as well as two continental unicorns that just got funded. Then they dig into more funding as record amounts of cabbage flood the industry. If it's Facebook news you want, we have that too, as the social media giant has announced Europe can expect thousands of new jobs over the next five years ... but is Facebook just playing PR and bribing the Old Country? Maybe. Gotta listen to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Europe Intro (6s): Some podcasts, do it for the fun. Some do it for the fame, Chad and Cheese they do it for global effin domination. That's why bringing America to its knees was just the beginning. Now they have their eyes set on conquering Europe and they've drafted industry veteran Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze of Belgium to help them navigate the old country and bring HR's most dangerous podcast across the pond to trash-talk like never before. Not safe for work in any language. The Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. Joel (39s): Oh, it's the show with zero supply chain issues. But boys, my colon backed up this morning after that bowl of Lucky Charms, magically delicious my arse. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your cohost Joel "bottleneck" Cheeseman. Chad (56s): And this is Chad "red light, green light" Sowash Lieven (60s): And I'm once again, just Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze forgetting to find a new nickname. Joel (1m 4s): And on this episode, Facebook goes full court press on the old country, unicorns, money, more unicorns, and more money chi-ching oh, and Chad VR, baby. Hell yeah, let's do this. sfx (1m 20s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel (1m 22s): What's up guys? Chad (1m 23s): Oh dude. I'm telling you right now Joel (1m 25s): It's our tenth show if my math is correct? Chad (1m 28s): Really? Joel (1m 28s): We're on show number 10. We made it this far. Chad (1m 31s): Carry the one. Joel (1m 32s): Congratulations. Chad (1m 32s): Yeah, no, that's right. That's right. Joel (1m 34s): Certainly 10 more episodes. Chad (1m 37s): Let me check real quick is Lieven their? Lieven are you there? Lieven (1m 40s): I'm there. I'm still there. Chad (1m 42s): I got to give a shout out to sound effects right out of the gate because last week's show the first five minutes you were in your kid's treehouse. And we had actually some back and forth about that. That didn't make the show because your audio for that five minutes didn't record. So I had to go in and actually use sound effects to replicate a Lieven's reactions. My question, do you Lieven, did I do an okay job? Lieven (2m 7s): Probably nobody noticed any difference. So that says a lot about me, I think. Joel (2m 13s): Well, we have a special guest guys. We didn't have one last week, so we're not really happy to introduce Daniel Masata he's the founder and CEO of Volonte and longtime HR services, tech human capital geek, and he promises to give us some German accent at some point, Daniel, welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Daniel (2m 34s): Thanks so much. Thanks everyone for having me on. Yeah, we'll get back to that German thing later, for sure. Joel (2m 42s): Yes, it is Volonte German? Ah, that doesn't sound German. What the heck? What the heck does that company do? Daniel (2m 49s): It's not German. It's a good question. The name is inspired by the French language. You know, I spent a few years in France as well, so Volonte. Chad (2m 59s): So sexy. Oh yeah. Lieven (3m 1s): Does it come from vole? Stealing? Daniel (3m 6s): Lieven nice try. But no. No, it's Volonte for willpower. You know, we built a workforce agility platform and we're really helping people navigate change better, you know, in order to navigate change, well, you need some good strong willpower and you got to understand like what to focus on. So it's all about willpower, Volonte not stealing, Lieven. No. Sorry. Lieven (3m 31s): Could have been, could have been. Joel (3m 32s): And, where are you calling in from today Daniel? Daniel (3m 34s): I'm calling in from beautiful Long Island, New York. Chad (3m 37s): New York City? Joel (3m 39s): Another European that came over here to mess things up. Love it. Daniel (3m 43s): There you go. Yeah. Another one of those. Chad (3m 45s): Yeah, because that's not what our history was set upon. Joel (3m 51s): Well guys, how about some shout outs? Chad (3m 53s): Do it. Joel (3m 53s): All right. I got a shout out for, for beer. Is there a better shout out than that? Chad (3m 58s): No there is not. Joel (3m 60s): Apparently bathing in beer is the hottest thing going in Europe right now. According to an article from Vice Belgium's first beer spa just jumped up in Brussels. We're Chad and I will conveniently be next month, by the way. So I'm just saying the Chad, Cheese and Lieven live from a tub of Duvel. I don't know, maybe in our future? Inside the spa, guests are invited to a hot based scrub before hopping into large tanks of brewing liquids butt naked. You can pick your favorite hop, which you can use to exfoliate your skin, which I know is important to Chad. Chad (4m 35s): Yes. Joel (4m 35s): It's good for your skin, full of antioxidants and hops are also part of the hemp and cannabis family. So you'll be nice and relaxed. What's to hate about bathing and beer. Shout out to crazy Europeans bathing in my favorite brew. Chad (4m 50s): Lieven. What is this about? You guys make some of the best beer in the world and you're going to waste it in a tub? Joel (4m 56s): The best! Lieven (4m 56s): At least we wash. Chad (4m 58s): Wait a minute, wait you're from Europe and you're saying at least you wash. Oh, I'm sorry go ahead. Joel (5m 4s): No, have you done this or know anyone that's done this? Lieven (5m 7s): I've never heard of story as stupid as that one. I've never seen someone bathing in beer or maybe I have, but some different situations. I should have give it a try probably. It sounds fun. Like, yeah. Joel (5m 20s): Sounds a lot of fun to me. Try it one picture the picture had a tap right next to the beer, tub of beer. So Daniel (5m 26s): I don't even know. I don't know why this is so, so strange to you guys. We do this all the time in Germany. I don't know. You know, Lieven (5m 36s): On Sundays, Sunday beer bath. Chad (5m 37s): Yeah, but we're not talking about bathing and beer with regard to how much you drink Daniel during October. You're talking about getting in a tub. Yeah, Daniel (5m 47s): I misunderstood then clearly. Yeah. That's different. That's what Belgians do. Oh, that's what you said, right? Yeah. Lieven (5m 53s): Yeah. I've got a shout out. Shout out to Play It! Play It is a Belgium game-based learning platform. And basically they create a virtual lookalike of a company in which avatar can walk around and then they use the surroundings to train people from home, which has been working great during COVID. But now recently, one of their clients, which is a big grocery chain, they trained older employees in resuscitation, you know, heart massage and mouth to mouth, et cetera. Recently, a customer collapsed in the store and was successfully resuscitated by one of the employees claiming he got the skills by playing the educational game. And I think it's a great idea to keep your clients alive so probably a very good investment. Lieven (6m 35s): Shout outs to Play It! (https://playitsafe.eu/) Joel (6m 37s): Here's the heart massage, everybody. Chad (6m 40s): It just seems like total bullshit to me. I don't know how many CPR classes or like combat lifesaver classes I've gone through. I just, to be able to find out where you need to put your hands and your mouth and all that stuff, to be able to think that you can do it on a video game to me, if you can. That's awesome. But it just seems way foreign. Joel (7m 0s): I had a dollar for every time I got smacked for asking a girl if she wanted a heart massage, but I'm just trying to help. Chad (7m 8s): Yeah. I think you're talking about breast exams. I have a shout out to Ted Lasso, baby. They're about to step up their game. That's right after receiving 20 Emmy nominations, four wins and most definitely the surprise feel good show of the COVID season. Ted Lasso has struck a deal with England's premier league that will allow the series to use premier league footage, logos, and trophies. So I can imagine where Jason Sudeikis and his Merry band of writers will use the hell out of these goodies. Daniel do you watch a Ted Lasso at all? Daniel (7m 45s): Believe it or not, but I have not watched it yet. No. Obviously it's in the news everywhere. Sorry. That's I know watched it yet. Now. I certainly will. You know, today's a day for sure. Chad (7m 59s): So you've got two seasons that you can binge through. So right after the podcast, I, we expect you to go ahead, unplug everything else and just go do it. Joel (8m 6s): And we have to start prescreening our mystery guest. We can't have a Ted Lasso-less guest on the show. Chad, your infatuation with Lasso is part equal parts, refreshing and equal parts a little creepy. Chad (8m 19s): I can see that! Joel (8m 20s): You're probably sad this season's over and you have to wait until August of next year for a whole new round of, Chad (8m 25s): Julie and I love it when we hear the Mumford Sons, you know, intro it just like automatically joy just enters our heart. Joel (8m 34s): So I understand that there's only one season left and they're done right. Is that, Chad (8m 38s): I don't know that that's the truth? Joel (8m 41s): But I'm pretty sure that they said three seasons max. Now if the money's good enough anything could happen. Chad (8m 47s): That's right. Daniel (8m 47s): And then isn't it always, like they say, they're done and then comes the prequel and then the prequel to the prequel. And so I'm sure there's a long runway ahead of you. Joel (8m 55s): And one guy gets his own show and then there's an offshoot of another show Chad (9m 0s): Beard's going to be next. Joel (9m 2s): Yeah. Clearly, clearly Roy Kent should have his own show, right? I mean, clearly Roy should have his own show. Daniel, anything from you, shout out wise any special someone, or? Daniel (9m 13s): You know what, I'll just I'll make you yawn probably because it's not Ted Lasso. But you know, just to my team, you know, Volonte is, sfx (9m 26s): crickets Daniel (9m 26s): You know, we're not even two years into this. It's complete startup madness very often. And you know, they're just hanging in there doing all this great work while a fantastic first customer. And it's just madness sometimes. So I have to give this one to my team here, Karen and Simone and Brooke. And Minisha, and the whole crew, you know, just shout out to them! Chad (9m 48s): How big is the team and why did you do it? Daniel (9m 52s): The team is a group of seven to eight now, you know, depending on how we flex up and down and why I did it, I spent 15 years with Adecco group. You know, the big, big guys here in the space. Yeah, there you go. Had 15 fantastic years there. You know, worked my way all the way up from working student recruiters helper while I was still at university in Germany. And then, you know, just worked my way all the way up. And after 15 fantastic years had to try myself on this entrepreneurial path. And you know, I think that we have a problem out there when it comes to career change and change in the workplace. Daniel (10m 36s): It's just not managed well and handled properly by most companies. You know, you have all these crazy stats. I think just last month, McKinsey came out again saying 70% of company change initiatives fail. And we just set out to, you know, solve for that. So, you know, for us it's all about turning workplace and career change into more positive and empowering and you know, proactive experiences also. So that's the why in a nutshell, just had to do this. There's so much to be done in this space. Chad (11m 10s): So where can you find out more about the Volonte? Joel (11m 14s): Volonte. Daniel (11m 14s): There you go, I love it. How you say it? Volonte.co, Volonte.co is our website. You can see everything there. We have a little explainer video and then of course, you know, hit us up on, on LinkedIn. We're pretty active on there as well. Joel (11m 30s): And Chad and I do voiceovers Daniel, if you love the way we say Volonte, we're happy to take your money and say it in a recording. Daniel (11m 38s): I might take you up on that because I have to say, I've listened to the Chad and Cheese podcast so many times, and I'm so impressed, like how your voices can actually sound this nice. You know, I thought it was all like enhanced and you know, equalizers times 10. I don't know. Joel (11m 56s): T-Pain mic, but yeah, I might take you up on that. Be careful Chad (12m 1s): I'm into it. Joel (12m 2s): Well Chad, you know what that music means. Chad (12m 5s): I'm coming Baby. Joel (12m 6s): We're coming to Europe. That's right. We'll be spending one of America's favorite holidays in a country that couldn't give a shit. Europe. We'll be there for Thanksgiving. Lievin, tell them about the conference. If they want to attend, Lieven (12m 21s): I'm going to repeat myself. I'm afraid, but Chad (12m 23s): It's called marketing, Lieven. I don't know if you've ever yes. Repetition, repetition, education. Lieven (12m 30s): Okay. Repetition is good. And I'll get, so basically to 25th of November we're organizing and we are, that means House of HR is organizing the biggest e-recruitment conference. And it looks, it's a Congress, some international top keynote speakers. Also Chad and Xheese will be there. Topics like e-sports for recruitments. We have lots of Belgium beers. E-sports that I mentioned e-sports yet? I'm very into e-sports, but that's going to be great. Then search engine marketing of course, we have programmatics. We have lots of other stuff, remote work. And you're going to meet some many fans from the show, which already appeared in one of your episodes. Chad (13m 18s): It's like a beautiful area. Ostend is, am I saying that right? Ostend. Lieven (13m 25s): Ostend Chad (13m 26s): Okay. It looks gorgeous if you're in Europe or you're in the U S and you want to spend Thanksgiving with the Chad and Cheese, go to E recruitment-congress.com. Check out the speakers, register, get a flight and get your ass over there. We might not have turkey, but we will have beer. Well, no, we will have turkey, cause Joel will be there. I forgot. Joel (13m 48s): By the way, I love how Lieven says we have many well-respected and knowledgeable speakers and then Chad and Cheese will be there. This man, Chad (13m 59s): I love it, he's on he's on point. Lieven (14m 2s): There has to be a difference, you know? Joel (14m 10s): All right, well Chad (14m 13s): Topics! Joel (14m 13s): All right. My favorite soundbite, here we go. We got unicorns everywhere coming out of Europe, everybody. All right. So we're going to highlight two companies first and foremost, Personio a German based HR tech services provider Personio has raised $270 million in a series, a funding round to improve automation of recruitment and human capital management processes for SMEs across Europe. The new funding brings the company's total valuation to $6.3 billion. Personio founded in 2015 and headquartered in Munich offers a wide range of services from recruitment application tracking to onboarding payroll management development and data analytics. Joel (14m 60s): It has a thousand employees and also offices in Madrid, London, Dublin, and Amsterdam. Guys this sounds like a European juggernaut. Lieven (15m 9s): Sounds a bit like Volonte, So Daniel, you know what to do? Daniel (15m 15s): Yeah. A little bigger right now, but that's going to change obviously very soon. No, you know what? I will say, I've heard good things about these guys end up based in Munich. There's a lot of good beer there too. So I'm not too surprised that good things come out of Munich, but you know, seriously, the thing is that I'm not surprised about this significant traction over in Europe, also for companies like Personio and the significant growth there, just because, you know, it's what I've been saying, you know, basically my whole life, right in this industry, the focus on the employee, on people and on their contributions to a company's success, you know, we're still only at the beginning of that. Daniel (16m 1s): And so when Personio puts a good product out there, you know, they really build a platform that I would argue in certain ways is, you know, similar to like a Workday over here or UKG and so on. I'm not surprised that they're getting a lot of attention, so kudos to them, you know, well done. Chad (16m 20s): So they reached unicorn status in January of this year, you can check out our podcast from late January called the "Personio Rides the Dinosaur." They've grown from 3000 to 5,000 customers in less than a year, $524 million USD with a valuation that went from in January 1.7 billion to now 6.3 billion and here's the biggest point they do not need the cash. Literally Personio is the hot girl at the bar that never has to buy a drink. Right? So this is amazing. There's so much money that's out there, but companies like this, you got, you've got to be salivating, Daniel, you've gotta be salivating right now. Daniel (17m 4s): It's true. You know, I mean, to be fair, you know, some of these stats like the client count, you know, I mean, you really have to dig into this sometimes. Chad (17m 14s): You think they're bull-shitting. Daniel (17m 15s): Here. I'm not necessarily saying bullshit and you know, but there's a big difference between winning a big enterprise customer and like your mom and pop shop around the corner. Right? We all know that. But still it's a great star, you know, again, good for them every, every bit of more attention and focus on human capital and the value of people, you know, in companies, success stories is good for everybody, including Volonte, you know? And, and by the way, all of this obviously is about digital transformation, right? Because Personio is a digital platform that wants to take care of all of these workflows and processes that, you know, have to do with employees and people in organizations, that's digital transformation right there. Daniel (17m 58s): And that's, you know, where we come in with Volonte, where we say, we want to help organizations and their employees succeed throughout this digital transformation. And you know, how they work, how, you know, they can leverage automation. And this is all good. You know, it's I'm cheering for them. Lieven (18m 17s): You said something about the mom and dad company but it's actually, they aim mid-sized businesses. They don't do the big corporate institutions, just the mid sizes. And I think it's a good, a good choice because those companies, they outgrow, they have outgrown the Excel sheets and all those little tools they were using and they need some kind of a platform communicating altogether. So they'll be reached out at the right time again. So it's, it's a good client base. And also it's better in my opinion, to have many small customers than just a handful of big ones. If you lose one, it's less hard. Chad (18m 53s): Daniel to Lieven's point, we're talking about SMEs, right? Joel is pretty much a hater on the SME side of the house, cause they're hard, man, you got it. You've got to corral all those cats, you've got to herd all those cats versus versus going whale hunting. So I guess the question is could Personio actually be, I don't know, successful without this type of cash in the first place? Daniel (19m 20s): Yeah. You know what I think so. I think there is a need for, you know, good platforms out there that do what Personio does. Right? So, I don't, you know, and you said it earlier, it doesn't even seem like they need all this cash. My, point is, and again, I'm not, I'm not arguing with their success story at all, it's just, you know, client count is a number that needs some, some double clicking, right. And then obviously, obviously, you know, the smaller, your average customer size is the more expensive it is also to find them. So maybe that's why they've taken on this additional money because, you know, it's really expensive to acquire those customers out there. Daniel (20m 4s): I don't know, you know, I don't know all the details again. Great success story overall, I think. Joel (20m 12s): It's also worth noting a Personio job postings get distributed on nearly 500 job sites and boards, including StepStone, Indeed, Zing, LinkedIn, and Monster. So part of the in with a lot of SMEs, I'm sure you know, is like, we'll distribute your jobs and don't worry about multiple boards. We'll take, we'll take some of that off of your plate. I'm sure that's part of the hook to get into smaller businesses. Chad (20m 36s): Oh yeah. Well, and we've got more SMEs to talk about. Joel (20m 40s): All right. So Personio may be an old timey unicorn, but we have a fairly newly minted one. If you listen to the weekly show, you'll know about Hibob with a strong presence throughout Europe and offices in London and Amsterdam, H R I S solution Hibob announced a $150 million series C funding round last week. The round brings total investment at Hibob to 274 million since its founding in late 2015, giving it a valuation of $1.65 billion. With this recent funding Bibob's plan is among other initiatives acquire complimentary technologies and expand their global presence. Joel (21m 25s): I'll go ahead and start with the commentary. One thing I'm more cognizant of since doing this show is there are two types of companies in Europe in our space, those who want to roll the dice in America and those who do not. With Personio there seems to be zero interest right now in America, even with that valuation. Whereas, Hibob, wants a piece of the world's biggest economy. I think it's very difficult for European companies to come to America. Maybe it's the weird accents and the skinny jeans. My prediction is European companies in our space will sour on trying to conquer America. And the new normal will be conquering and being quite happy in your own backyard. Daniel (22m 10s): First of all, it must have something to do with the skinny jeans. There's no question, right? I mean, Chad (22m 15s): You never want to see Joel in skinny jeans, I'm telling you. Daniel (22m 19s): Yeah. You know, I don't know if I ever want to see anyone in them. But anyway, it must have something to do with that. Outside of that, I agree with you. And you know, I think that maybe not all, but many European-based companies, you know, need to buckle up before they come over here because you know, the level of investment and funding available to both emerging and already established companies over here is mind-boggling. And that means there's a lot of resources here in this market already to defend against, you know, people and companies who come from overseas. Daniel (23m 2s): So I'm always in the camp of, you know, taking these decisions on, you know, globalization and reaching out across borders in a very, very conscious way. You know, you can hurt yourself pretty bad if you do that too early. Chad (23m 17s): Right? The, well,the total addressable market Personio actually said, as they have 1.7 million SMEs targeted themselves, but there's 25 million SMEs in Europe overall. So I think, I think Daniel, you're probably right on that there's a ton of market to be had here, in Europe, if you can do, if you can do that and you can actually gain that traction, I understand there's a big pot of gold across the Atlantic, but why spend all the money to build that fucking bridge when you have pots of gold in Europe? I mean, that's when Hibob said that they were at least at least inkling to come to the U S that to me just flashed, they were trying to use that for funding. Chad (24m 4s): I don't know if that'll actually happen. Joel (24m 6s): Yeah. And I think, I think it goes both ways. I mean, we've talked about on the show house ZipRecruiter's, you know, is a big brand in the US but it's basically invisible according to Lieven over in Europe and very few companies that have been huge in our space in America, Indeed comes to mind, maybe Monster back in the day. It's really hard for Europeans to come to America. And it's hard for Americans to go over to Europe Chad (24m 34s): Acquisition. Daniel (24m 35s): Yeah. That's certainly one way. Yeah. I think part of what is on the estimated a lot also is, you know, we're talking about people industries here, right? We're talking about HR tech, we're talking about human capital, recruiting HR services. And you know, this whole element of just, you know, intangibles in how you do business with people and focused on people and people-centricity between, you know, two different continents has been underestimated, you know, many times. Now that at the same time also means that there's always opportunity and like trying to export a business model or a new piece of technology overseas, for sure. Daniel (25m 20s): But I think, you know, some of those differences and intricacies in how you really deal with people or build a people-centric piece of technology have been on this estimated and are part of the reason why it can be really hard for companies to make that leap across borders or even across the big pond. Chad (25m 41s): So Lieven have you guys thought about House of HR doing any acquisitions or even trying to build that gold bridge across the Atlantic? Lieven (25m 48s): We've been talking about it a lot, I think, but for the moment we are focusing on Europe and as you said, there are plenty of companies in Europe, plenty of business in Europe. So no needs to build the expensive bridge. Joel (26m 2s): And let's be honest, most Americans are assholes. Chad (26m 5s): It's the truth. Joel (26m 6s): I guarantee you when Americans see favorite written with OUR instead of OR, they're like, well, fuck those assholes, can't speak our language. Chad (26m 17s): They're just using excessive vowels over there, we can't do that. Joel (26m 21s): But a bunch of pompous, skinny jean, French wearing cologne, assholes they are. So you got to get it just right and Americans, we're dicks, man. It's hard to make us happy. Daniel (26m 32s): Is this where we're getting into the German language chorus here that you teased at the beginning, is this the moment? Joel (26m 39s): Scheißekopf some, what is there? Daniel (26m 42s): There's this there's one word. You know, whenever the topic comes up with friends and you know, I was the over here in New York. There's one word that puts everybody to the test. So I'll share it with you. And then, you know, Lieven probably knows what it means, but it doesn't even matter what it means. You just have to pronounce it. Okay. So here you go. The word is sfx (27m 15s): crickets Daniel (27m 15s): Come on. You didn't even try. Lieven (27m 16s): Yeah. From, you know, from the new, nice song. Chad (27m 24s): Well, guys, all I have to say is this is a perfect bridge to, I don't know the next topic after this quick break. sfx (27m 38s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel (27m 41s): Money, money money Chad (27m 42s): Money. Joel (27m 43s): All right, guys, our buddy, our buddy George Larocque who opines on the investment goings on in our space, says the cash register continues to ring. George said in his Q3 2021 report that WorkTech VC investment set another record in dollar volume and deal count exceeding $6 billion in Q3 and $13.7 billion has now been invested globally in work tech during the 2021 year date surpassing the record set in 2019, by more than $8 billion. This sustained surge of VC investment in WorkTech reflects a deep level of interest in the changing future of work and the continuing wave of innovation now upon us. Joel (28m 26s): While the US still remains and retains the lion's share of cash, Europe is no slouch. Some highlights, UK leads the continent with 16 deals closed. Germany second with seven deals. The rest of the continent represented 14 other deals. Among the biggest European companies include Multi-verse, which we talked about in our last show. And ULife out of the UK. Coachhub and Meister out of Germany and Factorial out of Spain. Guys, what do we make of all these maybe lack thereof, euros being thrown around the world? Daniel (28m 59s): First of all, I'm really curious to know what Meister is now. Can you pick a more German word or a name for it for a company, right. Chad (29m 10s): Yes. Daniel (29m 10s): I'm really curious there. I think this is a good development, right? Seeing Europe catch up at least to some extent with the funding levels here in the US is a good development also to be fair. You know, when we listen to these numbers, I mean, the US is a much bigger market, right? I mean, off the top of my head, I would say that just in terms of the population, you know, in the US versus Western Europe, you're probably talking about like, almost twice as many people, right? So it's not really surprising that there's more, still a lot more funding over here, but the catch-up effect in Europe is great. And I think we're going to see more of that. Lieven (29m 51s): Daniel, is that the reason why you moved to the US? I mean, you could have launched our company in Europe as well, I guess. Daniel (30m 1s): Yeah. Great question Lieven. You know, I moved here long before I started Volonte. You know, I moved here, it was more like the traditional situation where you move with the big companies. So that was still back with Adecco Group, like 10 years ago. I mean, now that you ask me, you know what I have launched the same company in Europe or would I have wanted to move over here? It's a good question. I don't know if I can answer it, but you know, generally speaking. Yeah. I think it's still somewhat easier to get something started over here compared to Europe, but, not always. So good question. I would have to think about that a little more. That's a good question. Lieven (30m 38s): Yeah. Joel (30m 38s): What are the major hurdles? Like we talked about Multi-verse last week, who does apprenticeships and they seem to be eyeing the US which has a lot less sort of red tape around gig work and contract work, et cetera. Whereas we've talked about Europe in length about, you know, are they going to be gig workers? Are they employees? Are they contract workers? And different countries have their own rules? Is that what you see as the main hurdle for these companies? Or do you see more than just regulation in regards to money coming into Europe? Lieven (31m 12s): As the whole climate? I think it's so many little things. It's like the sheer number of startups. There are so many startups in US more than Europe. It's another mindset, I think. So the whole investment climate is different. People aren't as afraid as in Europe to invest money. In Europe when we go broke, that's something to be ashamed of. Or when we go, is it called broke? Joel (31m 36s): Bankrupt. Lieven (31m 36s): Bankrupt, that was the word I was looking for, indeed. So in the US it's like, okay, you've done it once a second time you'll do better. And Europe, once you've been broke, you probably will not get a second chance as easily. Joel (31m 50s): So it's a cultural thing. Lieven (31m 51s): It's a climate, it's a cultural thing and also it's as the climate, the government is promoting it more in the US, I think there are many more funds available in the United States. So it's a whole bunch of things. Daniel (32m 6s): I think you're spot on there Lieven, for sure. Fully subscribed to that. You know, another way to look at this is also that, you know, it really depends on which problem you're trying to solve. Right. So you just mentioned Multi-verse right. I mean, I love their model and I think it's going to work or continue to work very well over in Europe, you know, here in the US you know, this whole topic of apprenticeships and the acceptance of it, and how does it really fit into the work ecosystem is just, you know, really different animals. Daniel (32m 46s): So, so yeah, sometimes I think it's important for companies to really, you know, not sometimes, I guess always, it's important to really think through these things through, you know, very thoroughly before, again, this question of globalization and taking this leap over here, or vice versa is taken. Some of that I think limits successful execution of these plans here. Joel (33m 13s): Quick note, apparently Multi-verse is headed up by Tony Blair's son. Do I have that right? Chad (33m 18s): Yes you do. Joel (33m 20s): That's interesting side note there. And it seems like culturally based on the number of startups, the UK is more open to risk and startups and giving money. Would that be correct? Daniel (33m 28s): Yeah, I think so this goes back to what Lieven just said, right. In terms of just, you know, the willingness to take risks and this idea of okay, you know, you're on your own. So, you know, you kind of go for it and, you know, go big or go home. Right. You know, this better than I do. So, so, so yeah, I think that's definitely part of it, for sure. Yeah. Joel (33m 53s): Cool. Well, speaking of crazy cultures, let's talk about Facebook for a second. Big news out of the EU, Facebook will hire 10,000 people in Europe over the next five years. Announcing its plans in a blog post the social media giant stated that it was quote "a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of European tech talent" end quote. "Facebook under increased regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic," says the Wall Street Journal "will focus on hiring highly skilled engineers to create a metaverse, which is an online platform where users engage with one another using virtual and augmented reality. Joel (34m 35s): The company previously referred to it's VR based work meetings app Horizon Workrooms as a metaverse project." Facebook has said, focusing on VR will reduce its reliance on other hardware makers. Guys, thoughts on the Facebook move to come to Europe? Daniel (34m 52s): Yeah. So is this actually focused on Europe? So these 10,000 jobs will be created in Europe? Is that what you're saying? I read the news. Joel (35m 0s): Yeah. They're a little cloudy on where. Their headquarters is in Ireland. Chad (35m 4s): Sounds like a bribe to be quite Frank Lieven (35m 8s): Indeed. Joel (35m 9s): A little tease, little carrot out there, like, you know, keep up the antitrust cases and we may not come to Europe, but most of the projections and the most excited group of people are the Irish, because the Facebook headquarters is in Dublin, I believe. Lieven (35m 25s): And the Belgium newspapers, they said it was to be all around Europe. So probably they are spreading different press releases according to the country they are sending it to. Chad (35m 35s): Imagine that right? Joel (35m 36s): Also a mix of remote work and office work. Lieven (35m 39s): Most of the bribe, the bribe actually is a pretty good guess, I think, Hey, we're going to provide 10,000 new people with jobs. Joel (35m 48s): Such cynics on this show. Chad (35m 50s): And Joel, remember when we had Miranda Bogan on and she was with, she's a senior policy director with a nonprofit called Upturn and her focus, a lot of her focus was the AI recommender based tech at Facebook. And she was, I mean, she was allowed voice against Facebook. Remember how they shut her up? Joel (36m 9s): Refresh my memory. Chad (36m 11s): They hired her. I mean, again, this is something that Facebook and big corporate America has been good at for years. Right. This is, to me, it shouts of nothing but bullshit and bribes. And again, who are you going to trust? Facebook? I think they're probably one of the brands that you don't trust, whether it's in Europe, it's in the U S wherever they're at. Daniel (36m 32s): Yeah. I think, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm old school with sometimes when it comes to this stuff, but I have a 13 year old and a 15 year old at home now, you know, and as much as I think, you know, that what the describing there, what Metaverse is all going to be about. And as much as I know that, you know, even for my kids like to be on top of some of these technologies, I also find it, you know, scary to imagine that they're going to spend even more time in front of the screen when in reality, I think it would just be really nice for them sometimes to grab their bike and head down to the beach or do something out there. Daniel (37m 14s): You know? So I guess I'm undecided on this whole topic here. You know, we'll have to figure this out yeah. Joel (37m 20s): Well, the jury is definitely out on VR. It's clearly not a proven technology as much as I would love it to be. It has a long way to go obviously. I think to Chad's point, you know, Facebook has more lobbyists and PR people than they do engineers, I think was last, last quarter, they have 900 PR people. This is sort of their game, right? Let's create some good PR. Obviously in the states in particular, they're under scrutiny with, you know, 60 minutes around the whistleblower and what they're doing to teens and, and all that. They had the outage a couple of weeks ago. So they need some good PR and why not in Europe, where by the way, we have a ton of lawsuits and antitrust issues to deal with. Joel (38m 3s): Facebook's mantra seems to be, if we're going to win, first we have to win some hearts and minds. And to do that, let's employ some people, or at least let's put out the promise of hiring people to make good with local governments and countries. Lieven (38m 21s): Yeah. And normally people would say creating jobs can never be wrong and creating 10,000 jobs is a great thing. My only small problem with it is they're going to create 10,000 very interesting engineering jobs. And they will take away 10,000 tightly skilled engineers from 10,000 necessary engineering jobs. I mean, every company in Europe is screaming for engineers. And when Facebook is claiming we're going to hire a 10,000 of them, the other companies won't like it probably. And it's the problem will solve itself. I mean, within five years, those people will learn a lot in Facebook probably and they will go to other companies. Joel (38m 58s): It sounds to me like some new visas will be distributed. Lieven (39m 2s): Probably they'll have to. And I also hope Facebook is going to promote a STEM education is targeting, you know, science technology. Okay. Education in Europe, because they have the leverage. If one company can promote something like STEM, it will be Facebook. So they can use their own channels to do something good for a change. Chad (39m 23s): Yeah. They want to do something good. Let's see them actually do something good. As opposed to just throw, press releases at countries. Joel (39m 32s): Chad, I'm not going to hold my breath. Just so you know. Daniel (39m 36s): You know, just fair point on the press release topic. You know, I don't know if anyone followed this, but Amazon put out this, this big press release just a couple of weeks ago, talking about, you know, tuition reimbursement and creating the future of work by helping people upscale and rescale and so on. And so to Lieven's point, you know, these big mammoth tech firms out there have the potential to do really good things, but so far, you know, it's still the smaller, not small, but smaller companies. Joel (40m 14s): Breathe Chad. Chad (40m 14s): Yes, No proof. Joel (40m 15s): You can't throw that grenade at the end of the show, Daniel, Daniel (40m 19s): I had to, I saved the best for last. Joel (40m 22s): The best for last is you Daniel. Thank you for joining us on the Chad and Cheese podcast. sfx (40m 28s): Applause. Joel (40m 28s): For those listeners who want to connect with you and know more about your organization, where should they go? Daniel (40m 34s): Definitely, you know, Volonte.co, as I mentioned, earlier we have volonte.co and then, you know, follow us on LinkedIn, give us some love there. We'll give it back and would be happy to, to share more about what we do and our mission here of, you know, creating better workplace and career changes. Joel (40m 54s): Love it. Chad (40m 56s): Excellent. Joel (40m 56s): And if you want to listen to more Euro goodness, checkout Chadcheese.com/europe. Guys, it's been fun. It's been real. Let's do it again in a couple of weeks. Joel, Chad, and Lieven (41m 8s): We out. OUTRO (41m 45s): 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.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: HR tech company gets buckets of money. Well, the song remains the same this week, as companies like BetterUp, Deel, and Wonolo keep ringing the register. Also, Cornerstone OnDemand goes private (that always works out well, right?), and a little buy-or-sell with Continuum, Interviewing.io, and Reejig. And if you thought robotic dogs that could open doors were scary, how about ones with guns attached to their backs? Yikes! Listen before civilization checks out for good. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides comprehensive website accessibility testing with personalized recommendations to enhance usability for people with a variety of disabilities or situational limitations. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (22s): Oh yeah. A new research says the Vikings landed in north America exactly 1000 years ago. Suck on that Christopher Columbus! Hi kids you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. The real conquistadors. This is your co-host Joel "20% Scandinavian" Cheesman. Chad (39s): This is Chad "trick or treat" Sowash. Joel (42s): On this week's show Cornerstone on demand needs a little privacy, BetterUp gets one hell of a deal and buy or sell. Oh, and more pink, fluffy unicorns. Chad (56s): Everywhere! Joel (57s): Do you in Valhalla Skoal, let's do this episode 700 and something Chad (1m 5s): Like 760 or something like that. I think we'll find a groove someday soon. I'm hoping. Joel (1m 9s): Yeah. How did we make it this far? Chad (1m 12s): Don't ask. Joel (1m 12s): It must be the shout outs in my first one goes to WeWork. Yes. The, the much, much maligned company finally went public today. Under the ticker symbol "We." Creative, right? The stock jumped today is we are recording this as high as 12% at being mid down Thursday. Chad, this is a business. I think whose time has come and the pandemic has supercharged, flexible work places. WeWork. Chad (1m 42s): It's all about timing, right? And that being said, timing it's Halloween. So if you have a Netflix subscription and you're-- if you're listening to this podcast, you probably do. I have a recommendation for our listeners. The movies that made us, they, they go beyond Halloween, but they dropped three of the newer episodes that were around the movie, the making of the movie and the background of Halloween, which is my favorite Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. So treat yourself, go to Netflix, look for the movies that made us. Watch those three. And I love it because it's always like a throwback feeling for me. Joel (2m 22s): Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen the new Halloween? Chad (2m 25s): I have not. Joel (2m 26s): Where they dig up Jamie Lee Curtis and like the entire cast of the first movie. Chad (2m 32s): Did it even come out yet? Yeah. I mean, when does it drop? I can't remember when it drops, but she, Jamie Lee Curtis is a bad-ass number one. And if anybody's going to kill Michael Myers, it's going to be Jamie Lee. Joel (2m 47s): One of my fondest memories as a youth was Jamie Lee Curtis is Boobies on Trading Places where she plays a prostitute and doing a 180 from boobies on screen, shout out to Pillar who sent us some dope ass swag this week, we're talking mouse pads. We're talking king size, Yeti, which I know you have a shout out here, this might segue into that. A t-shirt and some sort of a weird backpack thingy. I'm not quite sure what that last thing was, but yeah. Thanks to Pillar. Love it. Chad (3m 21s): No question, but I want to see you wearing that backpack thingy. Yes. I'm going to go ahead and transition into another Yeti type of a shout out. Shout out to Pandologic. Apparently Julie, my wife, and co-host of Crazy and the King. She won a drawing and it was a Yeti cooler on wheels and four Yeti tumblers delivered to our front door. Damn, that's a prize worth winning. Thanks Jen, Jason, Terry, and the Pandologic gang. Also even bigger. Shout out for Pandologic. Jen Rivoli. Joel (3m 59s): Yeah. Chad (3m 59s): I think I believe CMO. I mean, she's like the head cheese over there on the marketing side. She just had a new baby girl. Her name is Samantha. Why are you playing sexy music? When we're talking about babies? Joel (4m 15s): How do you get babies, Chad? Chad (4m 17s): That's not you are one creepy fuck. That's all. Anyway, we have a new listener and that is worth shouting out. So thanks, Jen. Joel (4m 24s): Now we just need to find a sponsor for the Chad and Cheese onesies that we can now send out to people. Well, we love Pando, but you know who we love more Chad? Facebook. That's right. That's right. Chad (4m 38s): Love to hate. Joel (4m 38s): Facebook is in the news this week. They're apparently changing their name, changing the façade. So Facebook will obviously still be there, but they'll have more of an umbrella company similar to how Google Google created Alphabet. Although although Facebook might be more akin to Philip Morris changing their name to Altria because we all knew social media is the new smoking. And interestingly Metaverse is sort of the theme of the new name. So I'm excited. And I know you are Chad about the new name of Facebook allegedly coming out next week. Chad (5m 16s): I literally don't care. What I do care about is a big shout out to companies using old school recruiting tactics. They're going to love this Coca Cola bought a billboard outside of a Smith and Wesson plant that touts that the jobs are $24 an hour with benefits. And, and the reason why they're targeting Smith and Wesson is because Smith and Wesson is moving 550 jobs from Springfield to Tennessee. Another company, even more, I don't know that they don't want to say more, more guerrilla Tacticky. That's a word, tactically. They parked a moving billboard outside the plant, which says "not ready to pull the trigger on Tennessee, stay here and work with us." Chad (6m 1s): I love seeing this kind of stuff. Joel (6m 4s): That is nice. Speaking of gorillas Chad, I didn't put this down as a shout out, but I took the big kids who are on fall break this week to Cincinnati to see the zoo, one of our destinations. And you might remember Harambe from a few years ago, the kid, the kid who fell into the gorilla enclosure. Chad (6m 22s): How old are the kids? I mean, are they three and four now you're taking them to the fucking zoo. No. Joel (6m 28s): Yeah, you haven't, you haven't visited in a while. Chad they're 15 and 12 now. So Chad (6m 32s): Yeah, yeah, no, that was my point. You're taking them to the zoo. That's awesome! Joel (6m 37s): Hey, the zoo's great. This was great. And I took them to the Cincinnati Reds museum. I don't know, which is worse for a 15 and 13. Chad (6m 43s): That sounds like a hell of a day trip that they won't remember. Good for them. Joel (6m 49s): yeah. Well they got some Skyline Chili, that'll make it all better. We have talked way too much about Cincinnati. What's your next shout out? Chad (6m 58s): Events! Join Chad and Cheese for Thanksgiving in Belgium. That's right. We're going to be in Belgium during Thanksgiving, November 25th. That is pretty sexy. If you are in Europe, in and around that area, Hey, go to erecruitment.congress.com and register. If you're here in the US and you want to get, eh, different tastes than Turkey, maybe beer, go ahead and check it out to Erecruitment-congress.com. Check out the speakers, register, get yourself a plane ticket and come have Thanksgiving with us. Joel (7m 32s): Yeah. Europe has a bunch of countries in it. If you know, you know, well, Chad, we both love a good side hustle, but side hustles may have officially jumped the shark this week. So posted onto Instagram, a young industrious enterprising young lad has offered people the chance to kick his ass for money. So his ad reads and I quote, kick my ass to impress your girlfriend. Are you tired of your girlfriend thinking you're a pussy? For just a small fee, you can prove her wrong and show her how much of a bad-ass you truly are. Just set up a time and a place for me to come harass your girl. Joel (8m 14s): And then bam, you come and rock my shit. He's got different pricing tiers. Chad, his weekday fee is $50. He pumps it up on the weekends. He's obviously a busy guy that goes to $60. If you want to impress your girlfriend and kick this dude's ass. I think side hustles have officially jumped the shark, but shout out to this enterprising young man. Chad (8m 37s): Yeah, no, that kid just doesn't understand what a sustainable business model looks like, that's the problem. Joel (8m 43s): That's going to be a hard to scale. Well, not hard to scale is free shit from Chad and Cheese. Chad, if you haven't signed up for free shit, we're giving away t-shirts, we're giving away whiskey and we're giving away beer. Shirts by Emissary beer from Adzuna and whiskey from Sovren. Just head out to chadcheese.com/free. It's free to sign up free everywhere. chadcheese.com/free. Get your shit. But you got to sign up to do that. Fantasy football Chad. Chad (9m 18s): Oh Good God. Joel (9m 19s): Sponsored by poach.ai. Oh, oh, the, the leaderboard is just chaos here. Chad (9m 23s): It is chaos. Joel (9m 24s): Here's our rundown from one to 10, the wonderful Miss Q, Quincy takes the number one spot, which you know, she talks shit so good for her. Bill "football" Fanning drops to number two after losing to your boy who climbs to number three, that that'd be me. Followed up by "Benjamin Buttons" Kuntz, don't call them Kunts. Next up is Christy "fly me to the moon," Jason "and the Argonauts" Putnam. And then you follow him after that, Chad. Next up Pete "Maravich" Suchi comes out of the cellar. Good for him. You follow him. And then next is Michael J. Cox and bringing up the rear, he was there in week one and he's back everybody. Joel (10m 7s): Chris "let's go Knicks" Russell is back in the cellar. Let's hope that he can play like rat and come out of the cellar all on 1984. Chad (10m 15s): Not going to be a good week. That's for sure. This is, this is they call the buy apocalypse. So many, a shit ton of teams, good teams are on by. So this is going to be a bad week. Joel (10m 27s): And you and I take on each other this week. So that'll be fun. Yeah. Chad (10m 33s): Go fucking figure. Jesus Joel (10m 35s): Well make sure if you haven't listened to our podcasts from the week, we did our Euro show, which I think we all agreed was the best Euro show to date. Make sure you go check that one out. And then I sat down with an old coworker from Cleveland to talk about some of the marketing efforts around recruiting, Chad (10m 53s): Sexing up the trades baby. She was helping companies sexy-up trade positions. And that's what you get in Cleveland. I mean, there is a very, you know, obviously hefty professional vibe around Cleveland, but you can't get away from the laborers, which is awesome because you know, we need that. It's nice to actually make shit in the US and they do that in Cleveland. Joel (11m 16s): They proudly wear that blue collar down baby. Well proudly wearing some, some birthday outfits this week, Dr. John Sullivan. Chad (11m 25s): Not who I want to see in a birthday suit. Joel (11m 29s): I know that's, that's not good for anybody. Maybe an improvement over that is Jeremy Roberts celebrating a birthday this week and Peter Gold, who literally has dubbed himself "Mr. ATS." I don't know if that's to pick up chicks or just a, a real, real badge of honor, but Peter "Mr. ATS" Gold, Dr. John Sullivan and Jeremy Roberts celebrating a birthday this week. Chad (11m 58s): It's like saying, you know, I'm Mr. Horse and Buggy. I mean, ATS is like the relic of our entire industry. And you want to name yourself that come on, Peter. Joel (12m 23s): Mr. Betamax, Mr. VHS gold. All right. Chad (12m 25s): Topics! Joel (12m 26s): All right. Cornerstone on Demand, Santa Monica based learning and talent management software company needs a little privacy, Chad. Shareholders' recently approved a $5.2 billion deal to take the company private. In an all cash transaction Clearlake Capital Group takes ownership of the company through a combination of equity and debt buying the outstanding shares at $57.50 cents per share. Adam Miller, founder and co chairman at Cornerstone says the move is designed to give the company more flexibility, to pursue avenues of growth that might be unpalatable, "interesting choice of words" to shareholders that expect growth on a quarterly basis. Joel (13m 6s): Yes, God forbid, shareholders expect growth. Companies in our space have a disastrous history of going private and totally crapping the bed. Chad, will this deal be different? Chad (13m 16s): Not sure that it will be? First and foremost, Clearlake has a shit ton of cash. My God, but this does free Cornerstone up to do what they really need to do and this is one of the things that, you know, stockholders would not have wanted them to do, is implode and rebuild different aspects of their system, because that takes money, right? And spending money eats into margins and stockholders like the EBITDA so Cornerstone really has to do something to be able to flex, because what they were doing and trying to ensure that margins and EBITDA is really that's their focus. They couldn't focus on what they needed to, especially in this market, which is growth, which is building something again, getting away from Relic, ancient fucking tech, rebuilding, maybe even acquiring things to come back to, you know, a tech that not everybody sees as horse and buggy tech these days. Chad (14m 11s): So I think this is good for them, whether they will shit the bed or not I think that gives them the freedom to make the moves that they need to. And I think it's smart. Yeah. Joel (14m 26s): Going private rarely goes well. CareerBuilder has been a nonstop source of content for us since going private. Yeti may be the only really training star of companies going private and being successful. So the stock price was at $65 a share before the pandemic, it dropped to about $20 and has climbed back since, like I mentioned, the news selling for 57 and a half. Selling may be a timing thing, looking at the previous peak a little bit about Cornerstone. They provide end recruitment services. They have deals with Indeed, CareerBuilder, Bounty Jobs among others. They have about 6,000 clients and 75 million users. Joel (15m 7s): That seems like a lot, in 180 countries. So clear, like has their work cut out for them. But I think they got a pretty decent asset in Cornerstone. Clearlake has zero properties in employment. So that makes me a little bit skittish on totally rubber stamping this as a good thing. I'd say time will tell. There's no track record of these guys chopping up companies and selling them. But there's really no history of getting into this business, as you and I both know, tends to be tougher than you expect. So we'll be watching this to see what the hell Clearlake does with Cornerstone on demand. Chad (15m 47s): I have no clue where they're going to go, but they could go in any fucking direction. I just think for them, this is probably their best move. Joel (15m 57s): Yeah. Pursue avenues of growth that might be unpalatable to shareholders. Let's see what kind of unpalatable moves they make in the coming months. So. Chad (16m 5s): That means spending money kids. Joel (16m 10s): Yeah. Let's make some acquisitions, Cornerstone. That's what, that's how we want to talk. So, and we love also talking about Unicorns, baby. That's right. We got Chad (16m 19s): This fucking song it's just playing all the time because we have so much goddamn money that's coming into this industry. It's fucking crazy. Joel (16m 30s): Yeah. This thing just auto repeats itself, in my head mostly. Alright. BetterUp announced a $300 million series E round of venture capital at a new $4.7 billion valuation for its mental health and coaching app. This brings its total raise to $569.8 million. BetterUp becomes a unit, became a unicorn in Q1 of '21 after its $125 million series D round at a $1.73 billion valuation. They have grown their customer base by 80%, recorded a net revenue retention rate of over 170% and reached a hundred million in annual recurring revenue. Joel (17m 12s): That's known as ARR Chad, as of July of this year. Chad (17m 17s): Hello. Joel (17m 17s): BetterUp also reports to have grown its coaching network to over 3000 coaches, expanded the number of behavioral scientists by 50%, doubled corporate employee head count over 500 and today serves more than 380 enterprise businesses. Take a brad, are you ready to ride this unicorn? Chad (17m 36s): This is the silver bullet. Companies have finally employers have finally started to understand that they have to pay attention to the human condition. Remote work and being locked inside, takes a toll on employees. Being a parent takes a toll on employees, especially when they had to do it for like 18 months, right? Joel (17m 58s): Oh. sfx (17m 58s): Oh hell no. Joel (17m 59s): Inequity in the workplace takes a toll. You know, my fear is that companies are just looking for a silver, silver bullet to solve these hard problems. Now that's great for BetterUp. And I see blue skies for BetterUp, but this may not be addressing the real issue that employees have. Chad (18m 17s): I think there's no question BetterUp is going to be that silver bullet, whether we like it or not. And whether it works or not, this is going to continue to get cash. Correct. Joel (18m 28s): Perhaps Cornerstone on Demand is just making room for a new IPO from BetterUp, which is bound to happen in the next 12 months. It's RAD baby. It's RAD. My favorite acronym. The pandemic has supercharged this industry, coaching, mental wellbeing, BetterUp is riding that wave perfectly. Stop me if you've heard this one before. The question going forward for me is can the quality of coaching scale on a global parameter as the number of coaches increases all working across multiple customers. When you deal with people, that shit's hard to scale, right? And you have different cultures and different things that come in to everything. Joel (19m 7s): So do enterprises lean more on sort of in-house or localized help? And I think a lot of them will eventually ask the question of that. And interestingly, our friends in Philly, we love Philly, so they had a little, a little Zoom call last week with our friend, Isabel Kent. And they had a startup, the startup's called On the Goga yeah. On the goga. Chad (19m 36s): What? Joel (19m 36s): But their business is localized mental wellbeing. And actually, you know, talk in Philly to Philly Philly folks, which, you know, they like to hear John and in their language now. So do companies eventually look for more localized, you know, culturally in-sync businesses. And this becomes more of a cottage thing than one big monolithic business, like BetterUp. I'm sure there'll be space for both. And maybe the smaller businesses go for the localized stuff and the big enterprises go with BetterUp, but clearly mental health coaching, all that stuff is going to be around for a long time. It's not going to go, go away with the pandemic. Joel (20m 17s): So BetterUp IPO up baby. Cause these guys are on a fast track to doing that. As well as Deel. So Deel that's D E E L, a San Francisco based company, provides payroll compliance tools and other services to help businesses hire remotely has raised 425 million in a series D funding round that gives it a valuation of $5.5 billion. Chad (20m 47s): Damm. Joel (20m 47s): This follows almost exactly six months after raising $156 million at a $1.25 billion valuation. The company TechCrunch has seen its global customer base jump from 1800 to over 4,500 and employee head count grow from 115 to 400 since April this year. It was only in September of 2020 that Deel raised $30 million in a series B. Deel claims to allow businesses to hire in less than five minutes. And it gives companies the ability to pay teams and more than 120 currencies with just a click. So rocket ship alert. Chad, not sure if Captain Kirk is on board, but are you ready to blast off? Chad (21m 27s): This is definitely a penis rocket. Let me tell you so welcome to the remote worker wave. Yeah. Deel hit unicorn status what six months ago and much like Personio, which we talked about on Wednesdays European podcast, if you haven't heard it, listen, it's awesome. Deel didn't need the cash, they're like another hot girl at the bar who doesn't have to buy their own drinks. Everybody's looking at those guys. Nine Xd its number of customers in 13 months. This is fucking crazy . So this is a hot segment. We've talked about remote.com and it's pulled in close to 200 million boundless, which is still in baby startups stage. I think that most eight cm companies that are out there, or maybe even just, you know, core talent platforms that are out there right now should be looking at this because you want to be able to have this as a part of your tech stack because it is going to be obviously hot. Chad (22m 28s): Remote is hot, but the hard part about it, go figure, has all these goddamn regulations and on these goddamn countries or these goddamned states, right. These guys have figured it out. And that's the biggest key right now is to be able to integrate into the remote work segments. If you can't do that, it's going to be hard for you in many industries unless you're in manufacturing, actually. Joel (22m 52s): Yeah. So Chad, you and I have a bet. I think that was made in January about who would get more money HCM versus Talent Acquisition. Chad (22m 60s): Yeah. Joel (22m 60s): My side of the bed is not looking great at the moment, but there's still a few more months to go in the air. So totally RAD, dude, stop me if you've heard this one before I echo everything that you said, the pandemic has changed shit, probably forever companies that support this new reality of remote work are going to blow up a Deel is another beneficiary of good timing and a pretty cool product. Frankly expect an IPO as well at some point. And we'll really see what all these companies are made of, but this trend is not going away and more money's getting pumped into these businesses. It's fun to talk about. Chad (23m 38s): It really is. We always ask ourselves, you know, did they take too much money? You can't think realistically that they're going to be their own platform. I think right now they're perfect and prime for an eight CM who has a shit ton of cash to be able to pull them in and add new brand new tech to their stack. Joel (23m 56s): Well, you know, I know that a, it's not a lack of money that kills companies, it's too much money that kills companies. So the only thing more fun than talking about these guys getting tons of cash, we'll be talking about them burning out and dying. Chad (24m 13s): Ouch! Joel (24m 13s): But in the meantime, let's take a quick break and talk about buy or sell, which I don't think we've played in a few weeks excited about that. So Chad, before we get to buy or sell, we got another, another investment, another exciting company, Wonolo think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Wonolo blue collar gig platform Wonolo announced a $138 million funding round bringing total funding to more than 200 million. More than 1 million workers known as Wonolors have used the mobile platform to connect with jobs since the company was founded in 2014, Wonolo's clients include firms such as Uniqlo, Aramark, Peloton and Drive Line Retail. Joel (25m 4s): Are you a pretty excited about blue collar gig platforms Chad? Chad (25m 9s): Welcome to the labor shortage wave baby. So remember market timing is probably the most important anchor or booster to any organization, especially startups. So Wonolo has been around since 2014 and laborers have always been in high demand, just not this high of demand. So Wonolo kind of like the Uber of temp and part-time workers, I think they're hitting this obviously at the right time. They were seeing growth before, I think the hardest part to their business model is they're in 27 cities now, right? What do they do with this money? You know, and they have a million individuals in their, a million users in their system. Chad (25m 48s): They have to look at mega growth now into different cities and obviously growing that base of a million, at least 5X. Joel (25m 60s): So this is one of the more interesting trends of the past few years, in my opinion. So Wonolo on this, but they have competitors like Snapshift, actually Her Local, we talked about Paired, which is sort of strategic to the restaurant industry, InstaWork was just funded to the tune of $60 million recently. And this is somewhere between, I guess, full-time employment and driving an Uber. I think it makes a lot of sense for both employers and workers, people in the pandemic have said, you know, sort of step back and think what do I want in my life? And more people are saying flexibility, more control and these platforms allow workers to do that. And I think it allows employers to do that as well. Joel (26m 42s): I think if I were running a facility like a restaurant and we were short staffed, or I didn't have enough people, it'd be really nice to just go to this platform and put out this opportunity. It's market driven. I pay sort of based on demand and how busy my restaurant is in this case. It's just one of those things that just make sense. It's just a question of, do they hit critical mass? Do they get to a point where both restaurants or businesses and workers sort of all get on this plane and figure out this is a way that jobs are obtained as opposed to heading out to Craigslist. So, to me, I think this makes too much sense not to be the new norm at some point for a lot of workers and a lot of companies who need flexibility in their shifts and getting people on board. Joel (27m 31s): So Wonolo good for you guys! I think this is a trend that's only going to get hotter. It's interesting you mentioned timing and we talked about Snagajob, I think last week and Snag was early with one of their platforms that they tried to sort of launch and get out there. Timing for them was probably bad and these other guys sort of have stuck with it and are reaping the benefits. So there is something to be said for patience and diligence. Chad (27m 57s): Discipline as well. Joel (27m 58s): Indeed and speaking of all of those things, let's play some buy or sell Chad. Shall we? Chad (28m 6s): Yes. Joel (28m 6s): All right. You know how we play, guys, we're going to talk about three companies. We'll give you a little bit on each one. And then Chad or I will either buy or sell that company. So first up is Continuum. New York City based hiring marketplace Continuum has raised 2.9 million in seed funding. Officially launched just this month Chad, the company has been quietly developing a tool that matches venture backed companies with executives who have been there, done that, but don't want to be tied down again to a full-time position. Continuum's model does the outbound work for companies and presents a list of executives within 48 hours of people who are available to start work that day working 15 to 20 hours per week, executives create a profile and set their availability and rate and can accept or reject an opportunity. Joel (29m 3s): Continuum charges a 15% fee on top of that, Chad, by or sell Continuum. Chad (29m 8s): So this is a version of what the Ladders should have become. Well that's if the Ladders actually had leadership, that was worth a shit. These guys, I believe are starting to baby step into the executive recruiting space, right? And you can do that in a model like this, and then start to grow. I like this. I like the idea. I do know that there are many individuals that are in executive positions who do nothing, but take interim executive positions, or they just work as advisors. This would be a great network to be able to start the growth of a community. Chad (29m 53s): And that could grow into something much larger again, which Ladders should have become years ago. So for me, this is a buy. Joel (30m 0s): Speaking of Ladders, Chad, let's, let's check in on their R and D department real quick shall we. sfx (30m 6s): Crickets Joel (30m 7s): Oh yeah. This smell like it always is. All right. Well, Hello Boomer. I love this idea. So I have a fraternity brother who frankly got rich placing this kind of contract executive at car companies after the 2008 crash. So I know this, this idea can work. Aging execs want to stay busy, and there are more aging execs now than there ever have been and there will be more in the future. It's a pretty big generation, but they don't want the headaches of the full-time job. The whole gig thing, they wanna like have flexibility, you know, live in Portugal for a while or whatever. And this platform, I think, allows them to do that. Joel (30m 46s): And for startups being able to access some gray hair at an affordable rate and without a big commitment, I think this thing is definitely they they're going to have to screw this up pretty badly to make it not work. And I think it's probably going to be a pretty interesting acquisition target for some company, not named the Ladders to add to their portfolio. You could certainly see LinkedIn doing something like this at some point, but that may be five years down the road and Continuum will have gotten too big for them at that point. Joel (31m 33s): So for me, Continuum is a buy. Let's go to interviewing.io. San Fran based interviewing.io a solution that came out of beta just in June has raised 10 million in series A with total funding at around thirteen million. With interviewing.io software engineers can book mock interviews with a roster of hiring managers from companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google. Top performers, regardless of their background, get fast-tracked for interviews at member tech companies, the twist, those interviews are anonymous. Only once candidates pass the technical interview does the company get access to information about the candidate? Joel (32m 15s): The company says this approach saves companies 220 hours of recruiter and hiring manager time per hire. Chad, are you ready to take this interview? Chad (32m 20s): I looked into the actual background of the individuals who are the founders and they do have industry background. That's a check mark. That's awesome. And they've got really deep industry background, so that's that's awesome. Next question is, will it help companies hire faster? There's no question. Yes. Where they fail is the scalability, because there are actual human beings that are going through hours of interviews to be able to ensure that these individuals, that they're pushing forward to hire, that they're ready. Right. They're ready and they're pushing out the right people. So I think the model is really incredibly cool, but until they automate, I'm going to sell. Joel (33m 5s): Chad is going to sell interviewing.io. Well, if we had a hold rating, that might be what I'd opt for. But since this is buy or sell all I'll nibble on this company, a bit. I like the anonymity. I like the tech recruiting angle. I like the pre-interviewing. However like you, what I'm skeptical of is just how much competition there is in this space. We talk a lot about hacker rank and the others. I'm a little concerned about scaling, since they're using actual engineers from brand name companies, where do these guys and gals find the time? Joel (33m 44s): I also feel like, only the most desperate engineers are going to sign up and go through this mock interview anonymous process. So for me, it's a bind, but it's a real tentative buy. And next up, Chad, we love us, we love us some Australia and we love it when companies come to America. So let's talk about, Rejig Sydney based rejig that's R E J I G that'll that'll be fun for salespeople has raised 4.5 million us dollars and a series a to expand its workforce intelligence services beyond Australia and New Zealand founded in 2019. Joel (34m 29s): Rejig helps companies and businesses hire, retain, and re-skill workers. The AI based talent acquisition software integrated with an organizational HR system, considers quote "everyone from current employees, grads and interns to public profiles and past applicants" end quote for job openings. Notably the latest funding will allow the business to expand to new markets, including the US. Last year, Rejig raised 1.6 million in US dollars, that's seed funding. So Chad, are you ready for a little down under to make its way to America? Chad (35m 7s): Their eyes are bigger than their stomach unfortunately. Building a core talent platform from the ground up in three years is an amazing accomplishment. But as Daniel Masata said on Wednesday's European show, they need to buckle up before trying to invade the US you can't just jump into the U S because it's a single language country with tons of cash. The US also has the fiercest competition in the world. So I really like what Rejig is doing, but $6 million will not get them very far at all, especially against brands that they intend on competing against. Chad (35m 49s): Right? So I believe this overall is a great idea, but it's going to be a strategic fail because their eyes are bigger than their stomach. Joel (35m 59s): That's a sell from Chad and God damn it. I hate it when we agree. All right, worker retention is hot. We recently chatted with WORQDRIVE. That's WORQ with a "Q" who provides worker retention solutions, no spoiler alerts in that statement. And there's a ton of competition. Gloat has raised $102 million, Anthill around 4 million, Fuel50 $36 million, so I like the space. Question is, do I think this company can be Crocodile Dundee and conquer America? Well, to that, I say, hold the bloomin' onion and put down the Fosters. Joel (36m 42s): Conquering America is no cakewalk like Chad said, and these cats are bringing a boomerang to a gunfight. Stay where you are mates. Rejig for me is a sell. sfx (36m 48s): Oh, Hell No. Chad (36m 50s): That's not a knife. Joel (36m 50s): That's a knife. All right, let's take a quick break. And, Jesus, what a great segue go from boomerangs to robot gun, toting dogs. Stay put. Chad (36m 59s): All right, Chad. It was just a matter of time. Everyone loves everyone loves dogs, right? Yeah. So robot dogs, robot dogs are all the rage. They're small, nimble, and able to conquer environments that wield machines just can't handle. So of course it was only a matter of time until someone put a gun on one. The verge reports US based, of course, it's US-based, Ghost Robotics has developed a robot dog and put a custom gun by small arms specialist, Sword International on it. Joel (37m 33s): Jesus, Ghost, robotics and Sword International. What could go wrong? Dubbed the spur or special purpose unmanned rifle. It's not clear whether or not Sword International or Ghost Robotics are currently selling this combination of gun and robot. But if they're not, it seems they will be soon as the marketing competent copy on swords website, boasts quote, "the sword defense system spur is the future of unmanned weapons systems and that future is now" end quote. Boston Dynamics, who we've talked about quite a bit, best known for manual manufacturing a four legged robot called Spot has a strict policy against weaponizing its machines. Joel (38m 19s): Other manufacturers, obviously aren't so picky. Chad, you served, what do you think about arming man's best friend? Chad (38m 25s): As you had said it was only a matter of time and it'll all be framed as quote unquote, "this will lessen the need to send Americans onto the battlefield." And, I get that, but it also means since there is less of a human toll that will be paid. It'll be much easier to start and wage wars. They'll just say, send in the fucking dog. So this robo dog only currently has small arms capabilities. You wait till they start arming it with fucking rockets. This to me is going way beyond where we should as humankind in allowing something like this to happen. Joel (39m 4s): Yeah. And the dogs will eventually become elephants with guns and Eagles and shit there. I'm going to keep this quick. There's a line in Terminator 2 We talked about eighties movies earlier. Yeah. And I assume most of our listeners have seen T2, but John Connor says to Arnold Schwartzenegger quote, "We're not gonna make it. Are we humans? I mean," end quote and Arnold Schwartzenegger says, quote, "it's in your nature to destroy yourselves" end quote. I'm hopeful that I won't see the end of days in my lifetime. That's about the best I can say for this story. Who's ready for a beer after that one. Joel (39m 46s): I know. I sure as hell am. Chad (39m 49s): Go watch black mirror. Joel (39m 50s): Kids, Black Mirror and Murders in the Building is a good one too. Yeah. Everybody have a good weekend. Good week. We love you, Chad and Cheese. Chad and Joel (40m 0s): And we out. OUTRO (40m 35s): 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.

What's scarier than ghosts and goblins on Halloween? LinkedIn looking to slice up Fiverr and Upwork, The Great Resignation heads to a Denver airport and - horror of horrors - Not one, but TWO Canadian startups in Buy-or-Sell w/ FloCareer, SkyHive & Bridgit It's a razorblade hidden in an apple headed straight for your eardrums, boys, and girls, as we also cover robots in your McDLT and your buffalo wings. Witches get stitches on the latest podcast, featuring your two favorite warlocks! Boo, indeed. Er, I mean, boo Indeed (yeah, we torch them too). PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. INTRO (10s): 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 (30s): Oh yeah. A 33 year old electrical engineer revealed that he spent $150 a year to eat all of his meals at a local Six Flags amusement park. Who wants red velvet funnel cake for dinner kids? What's up everybody you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "fried Oreo" Cheeseman. Chad (52s): And this is Chad "what do you mean I'm too old to trick or treat?" Sowash. Joel (57s): On this week's show LinkedIn officially goes gig. Who wants bots with their burgers and Buffalo wings? And it's another buy or sell maybe with corn dogs this time. Let's do this. Chad (1m 12s): Ah, dude. So we talked about Halloween Kills last week and Jamie Lee Curtis not holding up. That's all I've got to say. She's still a bad ass bitch, just so you know. Joel (1m 21s): She is a bad ass. We need Sigourney Weaver and her to do a film where they beat up like murderers and aliens and shit. That's what. Chad (1m 29s): That'd be awesome. Joel (1m 30s): Well, those screams mean Halloween is coming up, Chad. What are you empty-nesters doing this year? Chad (1m 38s): I don't know. This is a not safe for work podcast. So I guess I can go into that, but I'm not. Joel (1m 45s): So it's going to be one of those kind of Holloway nights. Chad (1m 50s): Oh yeah. You know where you have the costumes that are like always like the, the hooker costumes and it doesn't matter what it is. You got the nurse hooker, you got the, the construction hooker you got. I mean, it's just like, I'm going to get one of those. Joel (2m 4s): Well, I'm having a family friendly Halloween this year. Chad (2m 7s): Good for you! Joel (2m 8s): I have a four year old who's going as Spiderman. I will be a convict from roughly the forties, I guess. And the wife is going as a deviled egg, which means she's an egg with horns with double horns basically. And the bigger kids are moving on. They're hanging out with friends, playing tricks, whatever. Chad (2m 28s): Yeah, I love it! Joel (2m 29s): So we've sort of officially lost two of the three kids and it'll be the four year old around the block a few times snatching up some Snickers and Reeses. Yeah. Chad (2m 39s): That's the way it's supposed to happen. Just so you know, they're supposed to get the hell out and go do their own thing. Joel (2m 48s): I agree. I agree. Oh shit. Yeah. Well, let's do some shout outs here on the eve of all hollows. Chad (2m 56s): So I'm going to shout out a couple of quick shout outs to Matthew Swanson over at Radancy. He loves the podcast and he hates the unicorn song. Join the club, Matt, more unicorns to come, but we've got to find another sound effect track for that one. Shout out to Mark and Alexa over at Pillar for the swag and the popcorn. It was so salty and sweet. That's good stuff, baby. Joel (3m 20s): Indiana popcorn, by the way. Chad (3m 21s): It was good. Good catch. Good catch. A big shout out to Eric Anderson who loves the podcast and isn't even in our industry and this isn't the first time we've had listeners reach out that say that they don't understand half the shit that we talk about. Nonetheless, we're pretty fucking entertaining. So that being said, feel free to share the pod with your peers, family, friends, in your social streams. And also give us a review. That's not asking for much, obviously for all the time, love and tenderness that Joel and I put into this podcast just for you kids, just for you. Joel (3m 55s): And our favorite reviews are yes, indeed. Shout out to Governor DeSantis from the great state of Florida who took poaching to a whole new level by offering cops from outside of Florida, moving expenses up to $5,000 to come police in Florida if you don't feel welcome in your current state. That was as if Florida needed more unvaccinated workers. Chad (4m 20s): Yeah right! That's exactly what they need. Fucking idiots. Joel (4m 22s): Who is not an idiot though, Chad is our friends at Hertz, formerly bankrupt Hertz, Tesla and Uber. The companies have all gotten together. Hertz is agreed to buy a hundred thousand Teslas over the next few years. And Uber has plans to offer 50,000 of those to drivers, to rent by 2023. So you're going to see a lot more Teslas on the road. Chad (4m 47s): Rolling in a Tesla, being an Uber driver. That's not a bad perk, right? Joel (4m 50s): I do like that. I wonder how they pick the Uber drivers. Like is it seniority? Is it a first come? Lottery? That'll be interesting. Okay. Chad (4m 57s): That's a good question. That's a good question. A big shout out to Roberto over at Recruitology for sending us new gear as well. I got a t-shirt, got a polo, got a very cool winners zip-up vest kind of Ted Lasso thing, which is really cool, not to mention two COVID tests, which I think is awesome because we're about ready to travel to Belgium. And that's what we're going to need before we get on that plane. Joel (5m 24s): I'm not sure what it says about us, that we got a COVID test. Everybody's getting them. They need to make these with like corporate logos on tthe actual tests. There's a business idea. Chad (5m 34s): Before you come to see us take this test. Joel (5m 36s): We'll Chad you know, nobody likes a good pair of Spanx, like I do. And my next shout out this bank CEO, which is quite a heartening entrepreneurial story, just got like a billion and a half dollars from a big investment firm. So she celebrated by giving all our employees two first-class tickets to wherever the hell they wanted to go. Chad (5m 59s): Love it. Joel (5m 60s): As well as 10 grand spending money. So get on those Spanx and enjoy a trip around the world wherever you want and look good doing it Spanx employees. Chad (6m 10s): Gotta dig that. Gotta dig that. Joel (6m 13s): Next one is, you remember Vinita? Chad (6m 15s): Yeah, she was over at Maya. Joel (6m 17s): Yeah. She has landed at SAP Success Factors. She was always a big fan of the show. I assume she still is. So shout out to Vinita. Chad (6m 27s): Yep. So kids it's getting closer. That's right. You gotta go to Erecruitment-congress.com and register to spend Thanksgiving with the Chad and Cheese and Ostend, Belgium. If you're in Europe, hop on a flight or get in the car and join us for great speakers, amazing content, and of course beer. Now, if you're in the U S and you got nothing better to do, we got, you know, a little cash, hop on a flight, and join us. We'd love to see you! Speaking of beer though. Joel (6m 57s): Yeah. Chad (6m 57s): Ryan Philmon received his beer drop this month. Compliments of Adzuna and he seemed pretty fucking stoked on the socials. When can we get a VIP beer tasting set up with that cat? Joel (7m 9s): Oh, it's already on the schedule Chad. Chad (7m 11s): Yes, that's right kids, not only free craft beer delivered to your door, but you also get an hour beer tasting with the Chad and Cheese. Joel (7m 24s): Facetime. Chad (7m 25s): Just go to Chadcheese.com/free beer from Adzuna, bourbon from our people at Sovren. Got to love those cats and maybe a free t-shirt depending on your size right now from emissary.ai, Joel (7m 36s): Nothing easier on the eyes than a FaceTime with us! sfx (7m 38s): Oh hell now. Joel (7m 39s): By the way, if you're going to Europe bonus points, if you fly through Transylvania. All right, let's get to some fantasy football. Chad. sfx (7m 50s): Bring it. Joel (7m 51s): Sponsored by poach.ai. Oh, look, who's in first place. Chad, after a drubbing of you last week, I'm in first place followed by the wonderful Miss Q "Quincy", Benjamin Franklin Koontz, Jason Vorhees, Putnam like he's in any other costume this weekend, besides Jason, Pistol Pete Suchi, Bill "Football" Fanning, "Criss cross applesauce" Russell, Christy "man on the moon", then you Chad, then bringing up the rear Michael "don't call me hung" Cox. And that is your fantasy football update. As we reach the halfway point to football season. Chad (8m 30s): It's about to get interesting. Joel (8m 32s): Birthdays, Chad birthdays. We do not have a Halloween birthday in the fan club, unfortunately, but we do have lots of birthdays, Dennis Tupper, big fan of the show, Sean Horton, Garrett Friedman, Ryan Moffitt, Steven penis chair. O'Donnell funniest social media post of the week by far, if you know, you know, Libby Sartain and our sourcing friend Shally Stekrel. Happy Birthday to all those folks. Chad (9m 5s): I haven't seen Shally's like under a bridge somewhere or something. Joel (9m 7s): And he's got a full-time job, man. He doesn't have time for people like Chad (9m 13s): Quick thanks to, to Jasper Spawnyard over at Tow Talent for picking up and writing about our podcast or at least aspects of our podcasts that we dropped just this Monday, where we had the EEOC commissioner, Keith Sonderling the podcast is entitled EEOC talks AI. We talk about tech regulations and enforcement here in the U S but it's more and more broadscale too, because obviously everybody's talking about how AI is impacting hiring and what is the regulatory landscape gonna look like? This is a great conversation. I was pretty stoked with this one. Joel (9m 55s): And with that, Chad (9m 56s): Topics! Yes, I've got a couple of quick updates. Just let's let me get through this update and then rant, and then we'll go ahead and get to topics. Okay. So first and foremost, quick Canvas update. They just like pulled in 50 million or something like that. Right? So we reported that Ben Herman co-founder and CEO of Canvas ejected a couple of weeks ago, without having a replacement, which seemed kind of odd? You don't generally see that when somebody leaves, you know, in good standing, let's say. Then we heard that there are co interim CEOs, which added another layer of what the actual fuck are they doing over there? Well, I just learned earlier this week, that friend of the show, Maya Grossman CMO left the same day Ben did. Chad (10m 44s): So the hunt for the CEO, new CEO has just launched and we will be watching this very closely. Joel (10m 52s): Sounds like a horror story over there! Chad (10m 54s): I have no clue. So here's my quick Indeed update. So an agency reached out to Joel and I regarding the lack of Indeed traffic, his clients were saying, so while searching for a very generic term, account coordinator posting in Atlanta on Indeed, they noticed that the job search metadata showed that there were over 120 openings, although only eight were showing in the search results. They did this type of search for other jobs. Notice the exact same thing around throttled results sets. Meaning if you're not paying for jobs on Indeed, you're likely not on Indeed. So why is this an issue? Chad (11m 34s): Well, remember when Indeed was the Google for jobs, all jobs, one place? Joel (11m 38s): I do. Chad (11m 39s): Indeed talks a big game, when we're talking about, we care about job seekers, but Indeed doesn't give a shit about getting America back to work kids. This is all about making money. And you know, it's one of those things, but they've regressed even further into a 1990s job board with more of like a pay-to-post model, right? So this is interesting just watching Indeed and watching them throttle to be able to get more cash, squeeze more cash when people need traffic the most. But I've got to say this last, but not least my rant would not be complete without saying I blame recruitment advertising agencies for allowing this to happen. Chad (12m 19s): When Indeed morphed further into a job board model with their two pain design, you all did nothing. When the clicks that used to be delivered to the clients, job postings on their career site went away. You did nothing. Now, Indeed is regressing even further because they know you won't do a fucking thing. So if we want to point at anybody, we can point it. Indeed. They are the evil empire. We totally get that. But the one set of organizations that could have, keep these motherfuckers in check where the recruitment ad agencies and they didn't do their job. Joel (13m 0s): Yeah. Chad, we have a live look at Indeed customer service. Let's let's listen on that real quick. sfx (13m 7s): You Cannot Leave! Joel (13m 7s): Oh shit. Oh shit. I have a conspiracy theory. Can I unload a conspiracy theory? Okay. I got to get in the mood here. Okay. So according to our source, Indeed is by all accounts, still scraping these jobs. Chad (13m 21s): Yeah. Joel (13m 21s): They're in the database somewhere, they just choose to show them or not. Part of it is hoping that people advertise those jobs, flip the switch on and start paying for the clicks. But the other theory here that I thought about over over wings for lunch, is what if Indeed does a get money from the job seeker play? And if job seekers are willing to pay, you know, $4.99 a month, $9.99 a month, they flip that switch on. And those job seekers for a fee can see all the jobs that Indeed has in their database. I'm just saying they could make a lot of money by doing that. We'll just have to see if it comes to fruition. Chad (14m 3s): Yes. They're already the most hated brand in our industry, as it is. Imagine if they did that. Wow. Joel (14m 13s): Ladders part two. All right. Let's get into our first story. Nice scoop on those from you. LinkedIn is rolled out its freelance services marketplace globally after picking up 2 million users in a smaller us beta it's about time. America started pushing it stuff on everyone else. The offering aims to match freelancers with jobs and we'll compete against Fiverr and Upwork. Chad, the water is warm. You're ready to join team LinkedIn aren't you? Chad (14m 39s): Does this mean that I can get poorly matched gigs now? I mean LinkedIn's matching tech sucks for regular jobs. Why would it be any better for gigs? And do we believe LinkedIn has a big gig population already? Joel (14m 54s): 2 million baby! Chad (14m 55s): The question is how do they acquire more giggers and you know, luckily they have the cash to do whatever they want, but how are they going to go after that? They're going to do a shit ton of advertising. Are they going to acquire somebody who knows? They've also announced new search filters. Oh, that's innovative. And also company vacs recommendations. I mean, gee, they're blowing me away with the fucking innovation over at LinkedIn. Joel (15m 19s): Let's be real. LinkedIn is crushing it. Revenue was up 42% year over year. And it's fiscal first quarter to three point 14 billion, an increase of 39% in constant curse currency. According to Microsoft Incs earnings report released on Tuesday, but they got to keep the growth machine going and taking a piece of the, I don't know, let's call it seven to 8 billion or so market cap in the gig economy. Doesn't seem like a shitty idea. Additionally recruiters are learning that they don't need a recruiter account to be successful. As tools like Seek Out, Hiring Solved and others are taking share, and the automation tools are coming, no matter how much LinkedIn wishes they wouldn't. Joel (16m 1s): Gig make sense because LinkedIn can undercut Fiverr or Upwork and others. They don't need to subs, if they subsidize the fees to hire giggers and give giggers a bigger piece of the pie Upwork, and others will find it hard to compete in the longterm, whether or not LinkedIn does that, we'll have to see, they should do it. They have the money to do it, but just like Monster should have done to Indeed back in 2008, I think LinkedIn might be making a move to crush Upwork and Fiverr before they get too big for their britches. Chad (16m 30s): Yeah. I think if LinkedIn wanted to do this right, they would have done it in segments first. They would have looked at specific segments like healthcare let's say, and they would have done that right, and then rolled out from there. They did a beta, but this is more general beta. So to me it doesn't make sense. And remember you just mentioned Monster, but remember when Monster and CareerBuilder were raking in the cash, those were the days, right? And this is a market where if you are in this recruitment industry and you are not raking in the cash, that should tell you something, everybody else is. LinkedIn is killing it because they've got a great brand. Monster back in the day CareerBuilder back in the day because they had a great brand. The problem was they got lazy and they took their eye off the ball. Chad (17m 14s): They felt invincible. Where are they now? I would love to see them acquire, like you saw Fiverr acquire Working, Not Working. I would love to see, you know, LinkedIn acquire a Communo. I would love to see them acquire, a gig platform that was specific to an industry and just roll it out. Right. Because I don't think you can do this broad base and do it well. Joel (17m 38s): Yeah. Look, LinkedIn has a long history of having big visions or aspirations and really falling on their face. Anybody remember the LinkedIn ATS? Chad (17m 49s): Nope! Joel (17m 49s): No one remembers the LinkedIn ATS and I've tried to go through many others and see similar, similar issues. Now certainly the market from their perspective thinks that LinkedIn is a pretty big threat. Fivvr for example, is down about 5% over the last few days. So the market does think this is a real threat and it, I mean, they should be able to pull this off. They have the profiles, they have companies that are using services like this. They can plug into the Get Hub community to help, you know, gigs and plug in tech, people into gigs. Chad (18m 21s): Why didn't they start there? Joel (18m 24s): I don't know. Again, I don't see any discipline in this organization. They had like some type of fleet story thing that they shut down. I mean, again, this all just looks like they're throwing spaghetti at the wall. There's no strategy. And there's just no technical expertise to be able to tactically put these things in place. Yeah. I agree. Do you agree that the recruitment dollars long-term do you feel like those are, those are a threat. Those are at risks. Chad (18m 48s): Oh, no question. No question. I think this is a smart move. I just don't like how they're executing. Joel (18m 54s): Yeah. Yeah. I think they have to get into the gig stuff. So we'll see. Well, companies getting into all kinds of shit means it's buy or sell Chad. Chad (19m 4s): Yes. Joel (19m 4s): We love buy or sell can't leave it. But all right, you guys know how this works. We pick three companies, we do a little news blurb and then we comment and either buy or sell the company. Chad (19m 15s): So excited! Joel (19m 16s): First up we have Flocareer. Well, if you're, if you're the only one who thought of Flo from Progressive, you're not alone. The Indian based interviewing startup has raised 5.7 million in series A capital to develop its business in the U S and accelerate growth in India. Founded in 2018 Flocareer conducts video and telephonic interviews for job seekers and technical backgrounds, such as cloud tech, data analytics and job on behalf of employers, it has a team of 3000 industry experienced freelancer interviewers, and a hundred experts for screening candidates from across the world. Chad, are you buying or selling what Flo is dropping? Chad (19m 60s): Today video interviewing platforms are a dime a dozen. And in my pretty much my quick assessment that I use and looking for these a buy and sell. Will it automate? Yes. Will it scale? Yes, I believe it will. Does the leadership have any industry experience? Little to none. But my major issue with this company is that their eyes are bigger than their stomach. And with less than $6 million in funding, they don't have enough to break into the U S market without sucking them dry. Plus, they're looking to expand outside of their core competency of tech, going into pharma and financial. It really feels like a company that lacks discipline. Chad (20m 41s): There's a ton of opportunity where they sit right now or even breaching out or broaching out into Europe. But again, here in the US it's going to take a much larger nut than $6 million. Plus you can't stay disciplined on just tech. This is a big sell for me. Joel (20m 58s): Got to have big nuts. That's one of your grading scale grading things. Isn't that right? Chad (21m 7s): Big nuts. Joel (21m 8s): Okay. So a little background, the company says it has conducted a 150,000 interviews amounting to 7.5 million minutes. On paper this should totally work. They offer a lot of solid services for companies who want to outsource recruitment. What they call interviewing as a service, which is kind of clever as well as providing some newer automation solutions. However, I echo your sentiment, we've talked a lot lately about how difficult it is for foreign companies to make it in America. And I think these guys are in the same boat, which you have already waxed poetically. My gut tells me this one is dead on arrival. Once it hits the shores of New York or Silicon Valley or wherever the hell they land. Joel (21m 54s): So for me, this is a sell. All right, SkyHive. Get used to hearing talent analytics, if you haven't already. SkyHive is a Vancouver, Canada and San Fran based workforce reskilling platform that helps workers recognize and fill their skill gaps. Sky Hive has raised $40 million in series B funding bringing total funding to $48 million. SkyHive says that they can compare a company's workforce with industry benchmarks at the individual, departmental and organizational level to identify gaps and trends. Joel (22m 34s): Employees can upload resumes, create profiles and take skills assessments, which the platform uses to match them with learning resources. Chad, are you ready to get sky high with SkyHive? Chad (22m 49s): So SkyHive doesn't really help automate. It could help scale. The question is, do they have the industry knowledge to be able to pull this off? No, not even close. They have some very smart people, no question, but this industry eats smart people alive. They should just name this platform, SkyNet for HR to be quite frank. Remember when Amazon's algorithm went rogue and started using using data exposed from the web, along with human behavioral decision-making to source only men for tech positions. Joel (23m 21s): I do. Chad (23m 23s): This sounds worse. Plus here's a quote from the article in VentureBeat "while people analytics is a new domain" oh that always goes over well. "HR is a new domain for HR departments. 70% of company executives cite people analytics is a top priority" end quote, citing as a top priority and adopting Skynet are entirely two different things. And as an industry with incredibly slow to no adoption rates this is an an easy sell for me. Joel (23m 54s): So I took a little bit of a different spin on this one. You mentioned 70% of company execs cite people analytics as a top priority and you also have only 42% of companies saying that they were ready to address it. Translation in my mind means growth opportunity. Although there is some stiff competition SkyHive claims to be engaged with 59% of the Fortune 100. That's a pretty good percentage. I think that's a majority and they're enjoying revenue growth of 300% year over year, since 2018. For me, this one is a buy. Joel (24m 35s): Which brings us to another Canada based company. Eh? This is Bridgit, spelled B R I D G I T, a Toronto based workforce intelligence technology company that's focused on the construction industry, announced this week it has raised $24 million in series B funding bringing its total to $36.6 million. The company's flagship solution called Bridgit Bench is a digital cloud-based platform that helps general contractors plan and grow their workforce, leverage project data to improve bidding and staffing decisions, and forecast project pipelines to increase productivity and profitability. Joel (25m 18s): Chad, no one likes a good pipeline like you do are you ready to buy Bridgit? Chad (25m 21s): Bridgit? The weird girl you knew from high school. I'm a big fan of talent pipelines. The thing is, will this help automate? No. Will it help scale? Yeah, I believe so. What's the industry knowledge within the organization? None. I mean, they have some incredibly smart people, that both the co-founders I believe are in the Forbes, 30 under 30 Jesus fucking Christ. A very slick platform and even slicker marketing, which is a huge plus the platform helps identify talent faster and helps companies create a bench before landing a project. So workforce planning is a real problem in all industries, including the construction industry. Chad (26m 6s): But I believe a much larger problem is having actual bodies to do the job. It's like painting a car that has no engine. It looks good, but it's going nowhere. I wanted to like this. I really did. The problem is they're not addressing the real issues in the industry itself, which is manpower. This is a sell for me. Joel (26m 30s): Well, you are salty on the doorstep of Halloween, Chad. I love it. All right. Again, I differ on you, differ from me on this one. I have three words for you build back better. I'm not sure how much the infrastructure bill will be, but I do know a lot of construction is going to happen as a result. And I know there's a housing shortage around the globe. All of that is Latin for anyone who supports this ecosystem is a winner. Bridgit Bench, not a great name, but I'll go with it has helped the company double in size and increased revenue by 140% since its last funding round. And it's just getting started. Joel (27m 11s): I'm going to have some ketchup flavored potato chips and give this a buy rating. Chad (27m 16s): I love companies who say they have grown by 140%. They're brand new. We have no fucking clue what that even means. Joel (27m 23s): Ketchup flavored potato chips. That's what they eat in Canada, Chad. Let's take a quick break and talk about the great resignation. Chad (27m 30s): It's a good thing. We love our jobs so much. We're not quitting. We're not quitting this, I'm not quitting you. Joel (27m 40s): Yeah, you can't quit me. Our wives won't let us. The divorce would cost too much. But people are quitting, Chad. Chad (27m 46s): Yes, they are. In a survey of 1200 tech and IT workers in the US nearly three quarters, that's 72% kids said they intended to quit within the next year. Data from the bureau of labor statistics show that quit rate in the U S hit a record high of 4.3 million in August, 2021. While data from Bankrate, the same month suggests that approximately half of the US workforce plans to leave their jobs within the next 12 months, people are fed up. What are we going do? Joel (28m 24s): You know, there's an old saying, the more I learn the less I know, do you know that one? Chad (28m 28s): Yeah. Joel (28m 29s): It comes into play as you get old like that, we do. And that sort of sums up my feeling on all this resignation stuff. Cause there's so many conflicting data points out there. People are quitting. There is a great resignation, but exactly what is going on is really hard for me to grasp. And we talk about it almost every week. So the stories that we shared on our feed this week, like rural states people are quitting. We have people who don't want to commute from Maryland to DC so they're quitting their job to get a work from home job. So that means people are now officially leaving DC for Maryland. Joel (29m 11s): And I assume people work in Chicago that live in Wisconsin. For metros. I assume that people in rural states find more or see more opportunity in places where they can drive an Uber or deliver food with Door Dash, as opposed to working at the local Taco Bell. So you have all of this going on and then you have tech workers that my God, what was it 72% said they intended to quit the next year? I mean, that sounds a lot like all the people, when Trump was elected, who said, they're going to move to Canada. Well, they actually didn't that much. So I have a hard time envisioning 72% of the workforce, the knowledge-based technology workforce, leaving their companies. I mean, that's a little bit crazy to me. Chad (29m 50s): Are you missing the 4.3 million people who actually quit in August? Did you miss that part? Joel (29m 54s): But those all weren't all tech, right? Chad (29m 58s): It doesn't matter. I mean, we're seeing it happen. Joel (30m 3s): Like, why are they quitting? Who's quitting. Like, where are they going? It just, all of this seems really contradictory every week to what's going on. It's just, it's hard for me to wrap my head around it. And until like. Chad (30m 11s): I get that. Yeah. Joel (30m 14s): It's just hard to know exactly. Like a couple of weeks ago, I think I mentioned my wife had an appendectomy, right? So we had two cars at the hospital. I drove one home with her and then I took an Uber to get the car that was left at the hospital. Chad (30m 25s): Yeah. Joel (30m 25s): Well, I like, I'm pretty chatty, so I'm talking to my Uber driver and I say, oh, you know, how long have you been driving? You know, the COVID thing, the mask thing. How do you like that? So it comes out that she actually has a social worker degree. She was doing the social work thing. She was getting paid to less. She has a kid at home. So she drives an Uber because now she can be at home with the kid, although she has a degree in social work, but now she's studying to be a nurse. So I feel like that's a microcosm of like what everyone or so many people are going through right now. It's like, let's take a time out. What the hell are we doing with our lives? Where are we going? Where do we want to live? And it's just hard to make sense of all of it to me. And these stories come out every, every day almost, about everyone's leaving and why are they leaving? Joel (31m 7s): And what are they doing? And it's just, we live this every day and it's hard for me to keep track of it. Chad (31m 16s): Yeah. It's fucking crazy. And people are just fucking fed up with the bullshit long hours, bullshit tasks. And after, you know, you've busted your ass to deliver without a breath, without being able to take a breath, you're expected to do it again. Right. So it's like at the end of the day, we've all been able to step back because of COVID and say, what the fuck have I been doing? Right. Not to mention how many of these people have actually been told for years, probably decades that, oh yeah, your job, that job can not be done from home. And then instantaneously it's done from home. Then the next thing you know, the company is like, Hey, we need you back in the office. Chad (31m 58s): Again, I think we're starting to find equilibrium with employee versus employer power and that's market power, right? So, you know, the top three states, as you would actually mention, Georgia led all states with 35,000 quits. Kentucky, and then Idaho, which are all red states, which is another interesting point of conversation that we don't need to dig into. But I think we saw a big change in the eighties when we changed our taxing structure, to be able to not provide incentives for better wages and putting money back into the company. And 40 years later, this is what it's atrophied into. Chad (32m 40s): It's atrophied into a bunch of people who have shitty existences and they're fed up with it. Joel (32m 44s): I'm sick as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. Well, let's go down to Denver. Chad (32m 51s): Oh my God. Joel (32m 53s): For some more freaky shit. Okay. So Denver's airport held a job fair last week to plug it's huge labor shortage. They need people to Chick-fil-A. An exec said he hoped 5,000 people would come to the job fair, but only a 100 showed up. Chad (33m 15s): Our concession company said that it needed to fill 38 jobs, but that only two, two Chad people even applied. Jobs range from entry-level positions to top management roles. Is everyone in Denver, too busy getting high? Like what the hell is going on here, Chad? Joel (33m 30s): First and foremost to fire that exec, I guarantee he's got a fucking pocket protector. 5,000 expected, a hundred show up. It sounds kinda like a Trump rally these days. Job fairs are the epitome of inefficiency. And after seeing just how well tech can help companies drive better interaction, experience and efficiencies, the job fair as we know it should just go the fuck away. So your consensus is that it was just the face-to-face, come down to the come down to the airport, which by the way, is not that convenient to anywhere in Denver, come down and get out of the airport, apply to apply to Chick-fil-A jobs and Chili's to go and, and make a living. Joel (34m 15s): If it's just a tech issue, then that's easily remedied. Do you think part of this though, is the great resignation and I don't want to work at an airport or work at any job? Chad (34m 24s): Well, I think a lot of it's convenience too. I'm not going to go there to see if I can get a job at Chick-fil-A, right. Or, you know, I can sell Jesus' chicken somewhere else. It's a 30 minute fricking drive at least from downtown Denver. So what's the convenience to actually going to a job fair, getting myself all dolled up, right. Getting my paper resume ready. I mean, it's just, again, it is so 1950s, if we could just move away from this, everybody would be much happier. Joel (34m 59s): Well, Jesus makes great wine and he sure as hell makes some great chicken. Well, when we get back, speaking of chicken, we'll talk about robotics and automation in the food industry, Chad (35m 13s): Robot chicken. Joel (35m 13s): Two of my favorite restaurants. But I have a personal anecdote here before we get into the end of these two stories, I think these are really important stories. So there's a restaurant in the Midwest called Steak and Shake. It's probably elsewhere, but it's sort of a staple here in the Midwest. If you haven't been to a Steak and Shake, think about like a fifties style diner meets McDonald's. You go in, there's a lot of servers, there's a little bar at the front where you can order and get food. Everyone's in white, so it's sort of like a clean in and out sort of environment. It's bustling usually, it's really noisy and it's sorta crazy. So my family and I ended up there last Sunday and I walk in and it's a very different feel at my local Steak and Shake. Joel (35m 59s): They have about 10 to 12 kiosks where they had none before. They have three employees total in the restaurant, they have someone flipping burgers, they have someone at the drive-through, and they have someone to say "order 52 your orders ready," or "number 52 your order's ready." So this to me was a, a lightening, a light bulb to say, this is what the dining experience is headed toward. They have cheap food there. So I'm sure cutting heads, you know, slicing head count was a priority. I said, slicing for Halloween, but I will say that it was although efficient and fairly friendly and easy with the kiosks. It was, it was like eating in a ghost town. Joel (36m 40s): It was very, just very cold and corporate. Wasn't sort of a good feeling at all, as I would expect from a restaurant. So I think if this is the future, that we need someone friendly to go around and ask how our meals are, or maybe just a robot to say, can I get you anything else? But anyway, I'm not super excited about this future, but I think it is the future. And our two stories here that we're going to close with I think, accentuate that reality. So McDonald's revealed Wednesday of this week that it's turning to IBM to accelerate growth of its automated voice, ordering technology. As part of the agreement, IBM will acquire McD tech labs, which was foreign following the burger chains, 2019 acquisition of Apprente, a leader in voice-based conversational technology. Joel (37m 31s): McDonald's was testing automated voice ordering solutions at 10 restaurants in Chicago. The tech resulted in 85% accuracy and employees only needed to step in roughly 20% of the time. In short, say goodbye to the drive-through person. Story number two out of Buffalo Wild Wings, one of my favorite restaurants as well, Amiso robotics, the makers of Flippy who we've talked about before. It's the robot burger flipper has announced its newest product: Flippy Wings, pretty creative, huh? Flippy Wings is the only robotic chicken wing frying solution designed from the ground up for high volume restaurants, including Buffalo Wild Wings or B Dubs as the cool kids call it. Joel (38m 13s): Chad BW3s began testing Flippy Wings at the inspire brands innovation center this this fall. Translation on that one is by by to the fry chef. Chad, are you ready to get down with the automation at the restaurant? Chad (38m 25s): Yeah, I mean, this is happening and it's smart to happen cause they're shitty jobs in the first place, but you got to love that Watson, which was being touted as the big name in AI just a few years ago is only getting 85% accuracy on people who are ordering a number one or number four with cheese. Joel (38m 48s): You've never, you've never been with my dad at the drive-thru apparently. Chad (38m 51s): So jokes aside, why Watson? I mean, Google must have better accuracy. If you take a look at all the data that they gather through Android and NLP and machine learning programs, there have to be much better partners than International Business Machines. That's right kids. That's what IBM stands for. Joel (39m 14s): Big blue. Chad (39m 15s): And Watson. So from a business standpoint, I thought it was interesting that they were going toward Watson and Watson could only achieve 85%. On the Flippy side that I think the big story here is that the company Miso created a instead of a SAAS model, a RASS model, a Robots As A Service model, which is genius. Knowing many franchises can't afford the upfront cost of the equipment they are now doing a RAAS model. So this is you being an old man and being uncomfortable with, you know, how your Steak and Shake the experience was that's because you're used to 30 years ago, right? Chad (39m 55s): We're now in 2021, we have to be able to move forward. Is this what it's going to look like in five years or 10 years? No, it'll get better, but we're in a point of disruption and change. And are we going to be uncomfortable? Yeah. Because it's different than what we're used to, but are you still going to get the food and is it still going to taste good? Yeah. Joel (40m 16s): So my other anecdote is that my local BW threes a few weeks ago was closed for a week during lunch because they didn't have enough people to make those wings. So for me, I'm okay with the utility of grayness and silence. As long as I get my hot wings, you know what I'm saying? Chad (40m 34s): That's what matters. Joel (40m 35s): Like that is, that's the priority. So if it's a robot or a 16 year old dude dropping my wings in the fryer, I could give a shit as long as they go in my belly. Chad (40m 48s): I wouldn't say a robot is much more sterile. Joel (40m 54s): Yes. I agree. Well Chad, Halloween show is in the books. Have a great weekend with whatever sexy outfit your wife wears. Anyway, Happy Halloween, everybody. Chad and Joel (41m 10s): We out OUTRO (41m 55s): 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.

The weather is getting cooler in America, but we can lucky still stay warm with the hot embers of the ongoing CareerBuilder dumpster fire. This time, our favorite old-timey job board is rebranding with a new logo and ad campaign. Mmmm, toasty. We also dive into the new investment at The Mom Project and play some buy-or-sell with a couple of internationally focused companies and one "Salesforce for recruiting" wannabe. Watch out Gem! To end the show, we take a break from porn and prostitutes to focus on the growth of Africa and Big Tech's continental invasion, featuring Google, Facebook and Microsoft. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your bridge to the disability community, delivering custom solutions in outreach, recruiting, talent management and compliance. 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. Forget Facebook if any organization needs a whistleblower, it's the show. Hi kids you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast the real teen alternative to Instagram. This is your co-host Joel "Mr. October" Cheeseman. Chad (37s): This is Chad "Toto" Sowash. Joel (40s): On this week's show a big win for moms in the workforce. Buy or sell. And the CareerBuilder, dumpster fire is back, baby. Let's do this. So our week is better than Facebook's Chad, if nothing else. Chad (54s): That's not saying much, not saying much And I would, I would say probably not, because I think their revenues are probably still okay. So you've heard before all PR is good PR well, their fine. Joel (1m 7s): Yeah, I remember all the companies that were boycotting Facebook for like 48 hours that didn't have much effect. We'll see, we'll see, some people are calling this their jumping the shark moment though. We'll see. Chad (1m 18s): But shout out, shot my first shout out to Facebook though, and conspiracy theories. So Francis Haugen, former Facebook employee, for all of those who've been locked up in a closet for the last few days. She comes out for an interview on 60 minutes and says she has tens of thousands of documents. She's getting ready to testify in Congress. She has tens of thousands of documents and the very next day Facebook goes down for six hours. So, so what, what's your favorite conspiracy theory? Joel (1m 48s): I'm going to keep it simple. I think Zuckerberg is just saying, all right, you fuckers keep messing with us and we'll shut it down forever. So he's given us a little tease of what could happen if we keep messing with the Zuck. That's my conspiracy theory. Chad (1m 60s): Yeah, shutting it down forever means he loses billions, so that's not going to happen. Mine very simply was they did a lockdown and they thought they said six hours. That's nothing. We make more money than God anyway. So let's shut it down for six hours. Let's find, you know, at least start sleuthing around and seeing if others are actually starting to pull documents much like Francis did. So I think this was more of a security situation than anything else. How do we find where other perspective leaks are? So if you are internal to Facebook right now, you got to know, they're watching you so close. Joel (2m 38s): So is this the Bill Cosby conspiracy, once one woman comes out, they all come out and Facebook is worried that one whistleblower leads to more whistleblowers so let's dump as much data as we possibly can through the digital paper shredder? Chad (2m 55s): Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, if you think about it, everybody loved Bill Cosby until this started and everybody hates Facebook even before this started. So thinking of it from that standpoint, coming out against Bill Cosby, that's one thing. Coming out against Facebook that's too fucking easy. Joel (3m 13s): My first shout-out goes to Vonq, our favorite STD in the industry. They celebrated 15 years in business this week and that's, that's not an easy task to do. So shout out to Vonq! Chad (3m 27s): That's pretty legit. I gotta say that's pretty legit. Shout out to Christopher Taylor for interviewing me on the Oven Ready HR podcast. I didn't need to have oven mitts or anything. The episode was titled Blow Up Your Recruitment Process They Probably Suck Anyway. I dropped this week and I got to say, Christopher has the most silky, smooth and calming voice I've ever heard on a podcast. Then you combined that with his English accent and I didn't want to leave. I just wanted to continue to record it. It was that sultry Joel (4m 3s): It's called out of the oven? Chad (4m 5s): Now, not out of the oven. It's called Oven Ready HR Joel (4m 11s): Oven Ready HR. Okay and it's not about cooking. That's interesting. Speaking of a silky smooth voices, I got a shout out. I've mentioned this podcast a couple of times in the past. It's This Week in History and we talk a lot about females, sort of overachieving in a male dominated world. And I encourage you to check out "Night Witches" an episode about a Russian, yes, the era. It was the nickname the Germans gave to female aviators in the Russian army in World War II. It's a really inspiring, inspiring story. And I'll throw in another podcast about women over overcoming. Joel (4m 55s): This is a diversity and a female play. If you've ever listened to the, How I Built This podcast. Yeah, it's great. They talk to founders. Well, the most recent one and you and I, this one's close to our hearts. It's the Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey. Uncle Nearest was a former slave in Tennessee that taught Jack Daniels how to make whiskey and a female her name is Fawn Weaver, visited the original distillery from the 1800s and basically brought the brand back. And if, if you think about it for a second, there aren't too many more white male dominated industries than the American bourbon industry. Joel (5m 46s): And her story of overcoming the obstacles, the history telling the story is really cool. So if you like business startups and then a story around, you know, females overcoming and a diverse, a woman of color overcoming, it's a great podcast. That's How I Built This with Fawn Weaver of Uncle Nearest Bourbon. Chad (6m 5s): Trying to segue off of that nicely. I want to shout out to the Bruce family. So in 1912, Charles and Willa Bruce purchased beach front property in Southern California and turned it into a resort open to black customers. But in the 1920s, the land was taken from them and absorbed into Manhattan beach. Now worth $75 million, new state legislation is returning the property back to the Bruce family. So no, they're not going to get reparations for the last a hundred years that they've lost from their resort business, although they are getting their family heritage and seventy-five million dollar beach back. Chad (6m 53s): So good for them. It's not enough, but it's a move forward. Joel (6m 57s): Yeah interesting. So I'll keep it on the diverse play. You'll be proud of me on this. So Sarah Silverman, comedian and podcaster, which is a pretty good podcast, she brings up an issue that I've never thought of. And I just want to put it out there. She brings up the issue of Jewface. We talk about blackface on the show and people are familiar with a lot of things in the news around blackface, but Jewface is apparently getting some more criticism. And it's basically where historical characters in history that are Jewish are played by non Jews. So this is an issue in the Jewish community. And I thought it was really interesting. Joel (7m 38s): So if you want to learn more about that, check out Sarah Silverman's podcast, she's regularly political and critical of sort of the world that we live in with a nice comedic twist that Sarah Silverman can only bring. Chad (7m 54s): Who I'm not critical of is United Airlines. Nearly 600 United airlines employees have lost their jobs because they were not vaccinated against COVID 19 and 175 people were fired from a North Carolina hospital network while California starts to crack down on their unvaxxed citizens as well. The writing's on the wall, kids writing is on the wall. I think it, it sucks that we have to get to this point when other countries are just like amazingly Vaxxed and they're doing it because they know it's for their best of their community. We have to fire 600 fucking people. This is crazy! Joel (8m 32s): Yeah. And I know it's LA, but is it, do you know if it's the entire state of California or just the city of Los Angeles, it's going all mask? Chad (8m 40s): LA LA, but you know that this is going to start rolling out, maybe not into Northern California, but you can see this happening. Joel (8m 48s): Not in Texas. I can predict that or Florida. All right, I'm going to spin it back to business here in our shout outs, we talked a while back about Sterling back checks, IPO, and, and they've gone public and have been not super exciting, but just where we predicted sort of boring and slow growth, but HireRight? Probably their primary competition just announced that they'll be going IPO in the near future. So what's good for the goose is good for the BackCheck Gander. Shout out to HireRight and just came across the wires, Chad or buddies at BrightHire, who doesn't love a good Teddy Chestnut reference? Chad (9m 30s): My favorite country singer. Joel (9m 31s): Has announced it has raised 20 million in series B. And I just have one thing to predict there. I sense the unicorn coming out on BrightHire we'll be paying attention. Teddy, let us know. Chad (9m 48s): Gotta love a startup that is deeply entrenched in the industry. Teddy's been in the industry for a while. LinkedIn, some other places. That's awesome. Staying in a shout out to the industry, shout out to the year 2000! HireQuest acquires RecruitMedia. So a staffing company buys a job board. It feels like Y2K all over again, because I mean, Joel, you were actually with Espan or Job Options when Spherion bought them. Right. And that didn't work out so well. So why will this work out? Well, Joel (10m 23s): It didn't work out for job options and it didn't work out for me because I was laid off with everybody else in 2000 hours fairy on, well, they had bigger problems than buying our little, our little job board. Chad (10m 35s): You think, you think it'll work? I mean, a staffing company buying a job board. It hasn't worked throughout history. Randstad, Monster, right? Joel (10m 44s): Yeah. Yeah. What, what happens is they flood the whole job board with their own jobs and then they become a turnoff to the job seekers and they eventually leave. So history is not kind to this relationship and I don't expect this one to be any different. Chad (11m 2s): Agreed, agreed, here too. So my last shout out is to PWC, who said it will allow 40,000 US client service employees to work virtually in live anywhere they want. That deserves a big applause, but wait, but wait, but wait, they, they also want to pay people less who are working remote. Here's a shocker. sfx (11m 28s): Oh, Hell no. Chad (11m 29s): I expect this from corporate America trying to focus, you know, the narrative on cost of living instead of the actual deliverable the worker provides, but it's 2021. People are doing a job and they provide a deliverable and it's none of your fucking business where I live or where it's being performed because I'm doing what you need me to do. My biggest problem though, today is that there are a few people that are out on social media that are saying I would do my job from home for less money. Well, that's nice, but you're not speaking for the entirety of all of your peers. And this is getting sucked up by the corporate machine. Chad (12m 10s): And people pointing at these privileged workers who can afford to take less money, but not everybody can. So if you're one of those who say, Hey, I'll take less money. How about just shut the fuck up? Joel (12m 22s): It reminds me of the most popular Netflix show in history that's now the hottest thing going right now. Chad, have you checked out the Squid Game? Chad (12m 32s): I have not. Joel (12m 32s): Okay. I won't ruin it, but there's a scene where people have to choose one or the other. And that reminded me of that. You got it. You got to check out the Squid Game. I'm only two episodes in, but I'm totally hooked. And so is the world, according to social media. So check that out. By the way, it's a Korean made film and is there any country hotter than Korea? You got a Parasite, which was huge. You got the Squid Game. You got K-pop, which you know, I cannot get enough of. So Korea is having a moment. Good for them. And who else is having a moment? Chad, we got some new winners for whiskey and beer, two of our favorites. All right. Joel (13m 12s): So Ryan Fillman who we actually highlighted last week. I think in China, these are, these are random beer winner. I swear to God random.org. I put the numbers in and these that spits it out. Our whiskey winner, Kevin Hager, wait, that's not right. Kyle Hager, he won whiskey. He's already received it. We've already got the what's he wearing a smoking jacket with the two bottles of whiskey or? Chad (13m 37s): Okay. It looks like a Terry cloth like robe. And then he has a glass of whiskey in his hand. That's going to be the one that we use for the promo. Joel (13m 46s): We have three pictures from Kyle one. He's in like a wife beater tank top. One he's in a smoking jacket. I mean, I don't know what's going on at Kyle's apartment, but it's happening, man. It's a happening. Chad (13m 56s): I love it. I love it. Joel (13m 57s): All right. All right. By the way, if you want free shit, you got to go to Chad cheese.com/free. We got t-shirts from Emissary, beer from Adzuna and we got whiskey from Sovren. You can't lose. Don't wait. And while you're there, leave us a review on your favorite podcast of choice. That's it for shout outs. Let's get to some fantasy football. Chad, where this week you were, you were ousted from the number one spot. Number one now we've got Bill "football" Fanning. The wonderful Miss Q at number two, Chad, you falling to three, but I like your chances to move up this week. Chad (14m 37s): I'll take it. Joel (14m 37s): Michael J. Cox is next. After that Christie "Dark Side of the Moon" is next up, Chris "There's Always Next Year" Yanks Fans" Russell. Pete "don't call him douchi" Suchi is taken on me this week in the next spot. That's that'd be Cheese "call me RAD" because I'm out of the celler from last week, followed by Jason "Vorhees" Putnam and following up the caboose "Breakin' Benjamins" Kunze. That is your fantasy football update sponsored by poach.ai. Thanks everybody. Chad (15m 11s): I got to say, I got to say Benjamin is in the cellar, but he has scored the second most points in the entire, I mean, so it's like, he's got a hell of a team. He's just when he's playing certain teams, he's getting a loss. So he's got a good team. So I'm playing him this week and he'll probably fucking beat me. Joel (15m 31s): Yeah. And at which point he'll move up to like three on the leaderboard with that many points. So yeah, fantasy football is a fickle mistress, everybody. And these things will not be what they are at the end of the season. We got some podcasts to mention if you haven't listened to the European show, we got some good shit there. Some freelance goodness in France and other places. And then make sure you listen to Workplace Whiplash with Tracy Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas authors of Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out.: The Catalyst’s Guide to Working Well. And we have a few birthdays. Chad are one of our favorite Brits. Joel (16m 13s): Daniel Fellows celebrates a birthday this month as does fans of the show, Tim Larson and Paul Jacobs of John Graham down in New Zealand! Chad (16m 22s): Nice. I can't wait till they all get Vaxxed and they are out of lockdown so we can visit them for God's sakes. Joel (16m 32s): Yeah, no shit. Chad (16m 34s): That being said, we are going to Belgium kids, the e-recruitment Congress happening on November 25th in Ostend, Belgium spend some American Thanksgiving time with Joel and myself in Belgium. The modem VAX rate is currently 72.5%. So a hell it's a hell of a lot safer than staying here or maybe some of the other European countries. But if you are in Europe, register, grab a cheap flight, come over, have drinks, and we'll have a great time go to E-recruitment-Congress.com Joel (17m 2s): Chad, you know how good you felt to get out of the house after the pandemic going to Europe and yeah, I've still been in the cabin. So I'm ready to get the hell out and show Europe the best of me, if you will. I don't Chad (17m 17s): Know. I don't know if you're ready for that. Joel (17m 25s): I don't know where this, this shit's going. Let's let's get to the news, shall we? Chad (17m 29s): Topics! Joel (17m 29s): Oh boy. How long has it been since we've talked about CareerBuilder? Chad (17m 35s): Too long! Joel (17m 36s): Probably about four months the last time they announced a new CEO. So "industry icon", I say that in our air quotes, CareerBuilder's rebranding itself, Chad. Most notably there's a new logo, some people are calling this the fourth new one, I'm calling it the third. As part of their new brand identity of the company is launching a TV, radio and digital with the trademark tagline "let's job it up," which will be featured on programs like CBS NFL, Sundays, and the people's choice awards. CareerBuilder CEO, Susan Arthur said in a release quote, "this relaunch is a celebration of the ways CareerBuilder can support evolving individual ambitions with a modern, empowering brand." Joel (18m 22s): Chad, are you ready to celebrate CB's rebrand? Chad (18m 25s): Not even close. So Tim Sackett did a compare and contrast on the new logo against its predecessors. And it was funny, but it's not the point at all. This isn't about how ugly the logo and colors are. This to me is about the new CEO, Sue Arthur. This is about what's broken at CareerBuilder and the color scheme and logo should not be the new CEO's priority. As a new CEO, you cannot allow this type of stupidity to happen on your watch because it demonstrates that you are not focused or you have no control over your fucking staff from a priority standpoint. Chad (19m 6s): Just for a second let's say all of this was nearly or maybe finalized by the prior regime, right? I can hear that excuse right now. Well, that was all done through the prior regime. Well, it doesn't matter because as the new CEO, you have to understand optics as a customer or a prospect or a stakeholder. I look at this move and say, this was her first fucking move. I mean, what the fuck is wrong with her? Now I see that Sue Arthur has a wonderful list of brands and positions that she's held over the years. Just check out our LinkedIn for God's sakes, but none of them have readied her for becoming the captain of a sinking ship. Chad (19m 48s): She's having the staff apply a new coat of paint to the Titanic after it hit the fucking iceberg dude. So that's my rant. This whole logo and color thing is really just a symptom of a much larger problem at CareerBuilder. Joel (20m 3s): Yeah. Where to start? If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone here it? Is a common question. So it's very telling that outside of a ad age and ad week, this news saw no major news outlet cover the story on Google news. That's how far this brand has fallen. Yeah. Brands change because of damage control or things are antiquated. They need to freshen shit up. They don't just happen on a whim like they've seemed to happen at CareerBuilder and the original brand, which by the way, they spent millions of dollars, you know, promoting and building with Superbowl ads and tons of other shit. Joel (20m 49s): And then by total surprise, they changed it up to like some trivial pursuit pie icon with the sea because they were going from a job board to a software company. Well, that didn't work out so well. So I would have had more respect if they would have gone back to the old logo and said, we're going back to our roots of being a job site and being the best job site we can be, as opposed to, I don't know, looking like an ink stamp on a piece of paper, it has no equity to me, starting over from scratch is hard to sort of fathom. Now they're going to have to you know, spend more money on that. Let's job it up. I don't know if that really rolls off the tongue, that well. We'll see how that goes. Joel (21m 30s): The Superbowl ads or the ads that they have, at least they're sort of being funny. The one thing that I think that struck me really quickly was in the ad that they promoted, the guy who's in the break room and the boss is cooking a fish or something. The guy that the employee, the disgruntled employee applies to 15 jobs at once on his mobile phone, through his CareerBuilder app. Now that is not really the message. Chad (22m 1s): Scattershot. Joel (22m 1s): That's certainly not the message most employers want to see. Chad (22m 5s): No. Joel (22m 5s): All in all this is lipstick on a pig. I want to see some innovation out of CareerBuilder that doesn't involve Pokemon Go. To me that's really going to change the story about CareerBuilder, not a new tagline and not a new logo. Chad (22m 22s): A new coat of paint on a sinking ship. Fucking diversion. Joel (22m 26s): But we haven't talked about CareerBuilder in a while. So that was fun. All right. And our listeners love it when we talk about CareerBuilder. Let's talk about moms! Chad (22m 35s): Hello mom. Joel (22m 36s): Another thing, everyone loves our friends at the Mom Project, by the way, check out our interview with them that's in the archives. They're in the news! The Chicago based company founded in 2016 has secured an $80 million series C funding round bringing the grand total to $115 million. Chad, I don't know, right around the corner, the new funds will be invested in product development, distribution, and team growth to advance the platform's goal of connecting moms with more than $1 billion in economic opportunity in the next two years, they serve more than 500,000 moms and 3000 companies through its suite of hiring education and retention solutions. Joel (23m 22s): Oh, and they count Serena Williams as their strategic advisor. Chad, are you ready to get down with the Mom Project? Chad (23m 28s): Who is? Joel (23m 28s): By the way, I was rated PG on that one. I could have gotten a lot of different ways with you getting down with mom. Chad (23m 38s): Anyway. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. I believe the money invested in the Mom Project is, is purely focused on potential because there is so much potential here, not just on a job board or the hiring piece, but the Mom Project has promise to become a hub for this community itself. And this is a community that every company wants to tap into, which means providing guidance, support, and the opportunity to actually drive hiring outcomes for moms all over the world, not just in the US so this isn't just a funding exercise, a feel-good funding exercise. Chad (24m 19s): It's about the promise. Now, the hard part it's up for Alison and staff to execute on this promise and this momentum. And while I mentioned staff, I also have some additional breaking news. You ready for this? Joel (24m 34s): I'm ready. Chad (24m 35s): So, you know, Rocky Howard, over at Smart Recruiters, she has just left Smart Recruiters to take a chief people and diversity officer position at the Mom Project. So, I mean, think about it $80 million in fun and new funding and afternoon tea with Serena Williams. Hell yeah, I'd do that in a heartbeat. Joel (24m 56s): As a former latchkey kid of the eighties, Chad, I, I know firsthand what working mothers have had to sacrifice throughout the years and how much work over motherhood has been an issue with getting women back into the workforce. Particularly in our country, America has sort of forgotten this demographic in terms of business. Thankfully that's changing companies are realizing they can access an educated, highly viable asset as long as they remain flexible with things like childcare, school, et cetera. And the Mom Project to me is hitting things at the right time with COVID underscoring, the need to support moms who have been let's face it, mostly moms have been burdened with at-home schooling, childcare for the last 18 months or so like, the timing is right for this business. Joel (25m 44s): Society's ready for it. And you got to applaud an effort to get moms more in the workforce and get companies finally on board with helping them and compromise with that, giving them more time back to letting them work from home and you get great, great, let's be honest human resources in return. It sounds like a win-win and the Mom Project is going to be right in the middle supporting that trend. And it's good for everybody including society. Chad (26m 11s): Yeah. We need to get Alison back on. I definitely would love to see an organization like this become an advocacy group and prospectively a lobby group. Who knows? Yeah. Joel (26m 20s): Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break. Chad (26m 20s): And we'll do a little buy or sell one of our favorite activities. Joel (26m 22s): Buy or sell. Chad, are you ready to play one of our favorite games and pastimes? Chad (26m 25s): Oh, am I. Joel (26m 32s): All right? Let's get to it. All right. Let's start with Ontop. Chad (26m 37s): I liked the name. Joel (26m 39s): We're following Ontop after the Mom Project. I don't know what that says about us, but anyway, yeah, you liked the name born in Colombia, but now Miami-based Ontop is a global hiring and payment startup that's raised $20 million from Tiger Global and SoftBank among that brings total funding to $26 million. The company automates international hiring payments and taxes, onboarding and payroll management for global teams. Ontop, started out by connecting us companies with Latin American talent and its customers were mainly tech startups, but very quickly companies in Europe and other places around the world were reaching out, wanting to hire people everywhere because talent is everywhere. Joel (27m 24s): Ontop charges companies, $29 per month for each employee manager, plus a fee equaling 1% of the size of the payment. So for example, an employer would pay Ontop $49 for an employee making $2,000 a month. Chad, are you going to buy or sell Ontop? Chad (27m 40s): It helps they are international when pitching remote work because companies are building strategy around those combined areas. And it also helps they are young. They haven't taken a lot of cash thus far because all the core talent platforms and HCM platforms out there might want to add, or maybe even refresh old dilapidated tech that they currently have with some new stuff. And since money is flowing like water buying up, this startup could be cheap and easy. They're backed by Y Combinator, they have over 200 clients, operating in 150 countries with 90 local experts. Now that could all be marketing fluff because we've seen that before. But I've said, you know, when I'm doing these rapid assessments of startups, there are the three things that I care about: first and foremost, is it a shitty task? Chad (28m 29s): Yes. To take these things off of TA and HRS plates, right? It's more than one thing they're doing more processes. Number two is the product scalable? It seems to be, they need to take a deeper look, but it seems to be, and last but not least are the roots of the founders in this industry, meaning do they understand and have connections within the industry? Because if you're looking to get acquired, you need to have them. If you're looking to get integrated, you need to have those. So the answer is no, unfortunately, which means, you know, having the quick connections to prospective acquiring entities platforms, it's just going to be a suck. It's going to be a slog. Chad (29m 10s): So unfortunately I love the idea around this. They need to get some people from an advisor standpoint up in a very high level to help them where they need it, which is industry experience and connections. But until then, this is definitely a sell for me. Joel (29m 26s): Sorry, boys. All right. Really? Okay. Well Chad, when Tiger and SoftBank invests along with, you mentioned Y Combinator, you need to pay attention. We'll talk about Africa in a little bit, but the trend we're noticing is opportunity, not only in Africa, but in India, in South America as well. And there really hasn't been sort of the growth and the opportunity in those countries since there's been a digital workforce and work from home is supercharging the trend. Listeners will remember Andela from last week in Africa and you're going to see that I think in South America as well, and these guys are sort of on the fringe of that trend. I think Ontop is in a good position to take advantage of that trend. Joel (30m 9s): Founders aside, I think moving to America was probably a good idea in terms of more investment, more talent, more, more roads into folks that can help while also maintaining a link to South America and the rest of the world. So for me, I'm going to diverge from you and I'm going to be a buyer of Ontop. Let's get to ModernLoop, not Modern Family. The San Fran based ModernLoop, another Y Combinator, this is in their winter '21 cohort has announced a $3.3 million in seed funding. ModernLoop helps companies automate and streamline recruiting operations. Joel (30m 49s): Like Gem, it's probably fair to say ModernLoop is hoping to be another Salesforce for recruiting. Founders include a guy from Slack and a gal from Facebook who saw an opportunity to help recruiters get off the spreadsheets and come into 2021. The company employs around 14 folks, according to LinkedIn, Chad, are you a buy or sell on ModernLoop? Chad (31m 15s): This one's a baby man. It was founded in December of 2020. So number one, the shitty task litmus test? I don't think it passes it because I don't believe most TA leaders believe this is a problem. Plus it's probably already quote unquote, "baked into their current core talent platform," whether it is or not it doesn't matter because you have to convince the people who are actually buying. I mean, just the adoption piece here, I think is hard. Second scale, will it scale? Yes. I think it passes the scale test, but once again, does TA believe they need it? Chad (31m 55s): No, I don't think they do. I think they have things that they believe that will go ahead and bridge those gaps. Leadership CEO, Lydia Hahn has an impressive list of companies that she's worked for as a product manager, Slack, Facebook, and Salesforce, and her co-founder's a CTO spent eight years at Facebook as well. So they don't check all the boxes for me. So it's definitely a sell. Joel (32m 21s): Okay. I'll say much of the same thing to keep it shorter, no industry experience, entrenched competition that is highly funded with high levels of brand awareness and a lot more money in the bank. They seem to be targeting SMBs and small staffing firms. From what I can tell, which frankly sucks. These guys are a knife in a gunfight. I'm a big seller on modern poop. I mean, ModernLoop. All right, let's get to buck. That's Buk. Chad (32m 57s): BUK it. Joel (32m 58s): Founded in 2017, Chile based Buk, which has developed a human resource management platform for Latin American companies announced that is that it has raised $50 million in a series A funding round that values the company at $417 million. Holy shit. The platform handles paying salaries, professional development, employee surveys, performance evaluations, recruiting and attendance. Buk has more than 4,000 clients and power's payroll for over 400,000 employees on its platform. And they saw a ARR increased by 151% in September compared to September of last year, Chad what's buy or sell in Spanish? Chad (33m 37s): To me, it is buy, buy, buy, baby. I love this because it's focused if other HCM platforms and want to own the Latin market, what's an easier thing to do, but then to buy Buk, right? So they pass my litmus tests, doing the shitty work, automating at scale, being able to be focused enough to actually own Latin America with regard to tech that is perfect because you now have an acquisition bullseye on your back, which is a good thing. sfx (34m 15s): Applause Joel (34m 12s): Yeah. I can't recall a 50 million series A that resulted in a $417 million valuation. This company is obviously a rocket ship and investors are seeing that. I mentioned the growth in South America that we're going to see in the next decade plus, and these guys clearly are on the cutting edge of that trend. So yeah, Buk up, baby. That's a big, big buy for me. That concludes by herself. sfx (34m 38s): That was fun. Joel (34m 39s): All right. You got some news out of LinkedIn and China. sfx (34m 42s): Thanks for sharing this story Bas. If you come across stories and you believe that, you know, we might like them. Share them, send them to us. So this tweet is from B Allen Ebrahimian quote "I woke up this morning to discover that LinkedIn had blocked my profile in China. I used to have to wait for Chinese government censors or censors employed by Chinese companies in China to do this kind of thing. Now, a US company is paying its own employees to censor Americans." sfx (35m 24s): She received a long note telling her that pretty much the content of her summary was something that was not going to pass muster for a Chinese government. Chad (35m 35s): But when you go to her LinkedIn profile, you see that she's an Axios reporter in charge of covering China. As you read further down her profile she's in deep and has uncovered leaked documents in China over the years, and is writing a book for Harper Collins around much of this content. So the question is when Microsoft and American company bends the knee to China, where does it end? Joel (36m 2s): This has been a subject for a while. Chad (36m 6s): Yeah. Joel (36m 6s): For those that don't know, Google's not in China, Facebook is not in China and Twitter is not in China. For some reason, LinkedIn has been able to dance between the raindrops, if you will, and be accessible in China, it's their third largest market for LinkedIn. And China does not have freedom of the press. Maybe that's news to some people. And if you want to play in China and access its billion plus citizens, you have to bend to the Chinese way of things and part of that is silencing dissension of the government. So in other words, companies have to decide, is it people over politics? Profits over politics? It's a hard, it's a hard decision to make. Joel (36m 48s): And unfortunately, if you want to play in China, you have to play by their rules, just like any other country and LinkedIn is doing that. Chad (36m 57s): So this is a new form of sovereignty, digital sovereignty. And it's something that we are going to have to be taking a look at as technical organizations, technical analysts, whatever it might be. We have to be aware of these things. And I thought this was an interesting story, knowing that we use and talk about LinkedIn all the time to see them bending the knee. And it's more toward profits. Joel (37m 24s): Sure. And, and for me also, you know, the Afghanistan debacle, I guess, you know, really raised awareness when you saw the pictures of, you know, beating women and, you know, bullying citizens, you know, we talked sort of freely and on our podcast about the Salesforce CEO, you know, bitch slap in Texas over its legislation around abortions. And we should feel lucky every now and then that we live in a country where a CEO of a company can talk trash about a state government without that state government, you know, putting him in jail or kicking him out of the state or kicking the whole company out of t`he state. To me, it's kind of a moment to appreciate the country we live in as much as we bad mouth it. Joel (38m 7s): We do have it pretty good in comparison to much of the rest of the world. As far as you know, I mean, it's a hard question. Do you pack up your bags and leave China sort of in revolt or do you play by the rules and continue to make money from that? And that's our question to answer Google to their credit, I guess said, we're out, like we're not going to play by the rules. And as a search engine, it's very hard to, you know, close out certain, content and make things unsearchable by certain populations. So for them, that made sense for LinkedIn, at least for now, it makes sense to silence a few journalists if it means, you know, we can keep making money from our third biggest market. Chad (38m 57s): So for all those international listeners, we understand here in America, we don't corner the market on freedom. So most of you have the exact same opportunities to speak your mind. We're starting to see again that the Russia and China, and some of those that aren't, we know the question is what are we going to do as a society, not just in America, but just as a community to be able to have these hard discussions. Joel (39m 21s): Yeah. By the way, you know, China is tightening the vice on its citizens. I'm curious when the breaking point is, I mean, at what point, you know, we laugh about taking video games away from kids, or, you know, doing things like that, but their government has done so many things recently with the Jack Ma thing with Alibaba coming down on corporations. And I mean, it just as an outsider, I'm really curious if and when the people of China finally say enough, and the straw breaks the camel's back and the people revolt in a significant way, but maybe they won't, maybe the government will continue to have such controls and, you know, things will be the way that they are. Joel (40m 1s): But to me, that's sort of the story of the next century is how China's people reacts to, to kind of the vice tightening that the government has been doing in the last couple of years. Chad (40m 15s): I can say in all confidence that you won't be able to listen to this episode of Chad and Cheese in China. Joel (40m 24s): We're banned in China. I love it. As long as we're continually huge in Copenhagen. That's what I care about. Moving from China and American politics we're going to go down to Africa for a little bit Chad after a quick break. Chad (40m 40s): All right, Chad, we don't talk enough about Africa. We broke the seal with Andela last week, but let's talk a little Africa because I think as I think you agree, we're going to see real fantastic creativity, innovation sort of freedom of markets and commercial advancement in places like India, Africa, and South America. Joel (41m 3s): Apparently Google agrees. Google has announced its investing in, in the continent at the very first Google for Africa event this week, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet announced a plan to invest $1 billion over five years to support digital transformation in Africa. The investment focuses on enabling fast, affordable internet access for more Africans, building helpful products, supporting entrepreneurship and small business and helping nonprofits. Additionally, Twitter's opening up an office in Ghana. Facebook has already been in the continent as well, investing in high speed internet around the entire continent. Microsoft is also there some numbers around Africa because I'm sort of a Virgin in the African know-it-all-ness. Joel (41m 52s): Before the pandemic five of the world's fastest growing economies were in Africa led by Ghana. Africa makes up 16% of the world's population, but only 3% of the global GDP, that GDP by the way, is expected to reach 4.5 trillion by 2025. Follow the money kids and keep an eye on Africa. I say. Chad (42m 12s): There's a lot of growth to tap. And here, obviously in Google is spending this money for several reasons. How many new users could Google acquire from these measures, right? Not just, I mean, just, just the easy stuff. How many users, how many Google users could, could we actually get eyeballs so on and so forth? How many new businesses making transactions in Google digital storefronts? Right? But mainly I believe that African talent is the new oil and making sure that this talent can engage digitally is big for companies who believe India and Africa could solve their talent woes today and in the future. Chad (42m 52s): And once again, I want to call back to, you know, our interview with Vivek, the CEO of HackerRank, who said there is no shortage of talent. Well, I believe him. And I believe this move by Google cements, that statement for years to come. Smart companies, aren't just poaching talent, they are manufacturing talent. And if you're one of those companies that believes LinkedIn licenses are the talent fuel for your company, your horse and buggy just got lapped. So I wish Google would actually do the same thing here in the US as well because our internet speeds are atrocious and what we pay for those internet speeds? Chad (43m 35s): It's shameful. It's ridiculous. Joel (43m 36s): You know, we mentioned we had, we mentioned China and the LinkedIn story. And you know, to me, the, the global power struggle ultimately comes down to an Americanized future or a Chinese-centric future. Obviously you're going to have allies on both sides, but to me, you look at South America, you look at Africa and India, that's where the battleground of where sort of the, the minds of the people of the future are going to lie. And I know China is doing its damnedest to get into Africa and sort of the Middle East and build these relationships. So to me, the bigger picture of African and South America and India as well, is to drive more commercialism, American style, capitalism, freedom, et cetera. Joel (44m 26s): I know that it's idealistic and sort of cheesy, but if it's Google and Microsoft, et cetera, carrying the flag and our way of life to Africa and other continents, I say it's much better than the Chinese focused future where we have authoritarian government. So for me, I hope that we do good in Africa and it's good for the world as a whole. Chad (44m 54s): Yeah, just as long as we start to set fair wages and we're not using this as another way for cheap labor. Joel (45m 5s): And just as long as we keep getting to play the Toto soundbites. Chad (45m 9s): Please! Please. Joel (45m 9s): And with that, Chad, another episode is in the books. Chad and Joel (45m 12s): We out OUTRO (45m 12s): 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.

Technology has been a great thing for recruiting, but there's a dark side. Namely, artificial intelligence. A.I. has made companies more efficient and effective, but it's also been a roadblock for job candidates and a hindrance for hidden workers to get ahead. EEOC commissioner Keith Sonderling joins the boys to give a high-level education on the current state of how the government is dealing with the questions around tech and employment. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. 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. We've got the EEOC in the house. Everybody what's up at your favorite podcast. This is cohost Joel Cheeseman as always joined by my co-host in chief Chad Sowash and dude, Chad, we're so excited by this guest. I'm going to hand it off to you to take it from here. Chad (41s): Nobody is excited when somebody says E E O C, but I'm going to tell you right now on this podcast, this episode, you're going to be excited. So welcome Keith Sonderling, Commissioner at the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That's the EEOC. Yeah. You know, me three years prior at DOL at wage and hour division acting and deputy administrator there. So I should say the main reason why we wanted to get you on Keith is because you have recently written articles and done podcast on AI. We'll get there, but we're really excited because we have not, I repeat, we have not had the engagement that any of us, I think in our industry have wanted from government around technology. Chad (1m 30s): But before we get into that, that's just a little teaser. Give us a little background about you. Who is Keith? Are we talking about long walks on the beach? Keith (1m 42s): Well, thank you. And for those, when you say EEOC's in the house, most people would run away from that house or immediately turn off, but stay on please, because I'm very excited to be here. Joel and Chad, thank you so much for having me. I've listened to your podcast. You've been a tremendous resource for me as I dive into technology on AI for just the next 45 minutes let me tell you how great both of you are, but in all seriousness, we will get the technology. And I do appreciate what you both do and bringing to light all of these different various technologies that employers are using and employees are being subject to. But first a little bit about me. Keith (2m 22s): I'm a commissioner on the US EEOC. I was confirmed by the Senate last September, after going through the Senate confirmation process, which took around 14 months, which is his whole own separate podcast. Chad (2m 36s): That would suck. Joel (2m 37s): It sounds like a colonoscopy. Keith (2m 41s): You know, in a way you have to look at it and sort of pinch yourself that you are interacting with this process that you're dealing with the United States Senate, that you've been nominated by the president. So as much time as it took, it was just a very, very cool experience. But before he got to the EEOC and I've been here just around a year, I was at the Department of Labor, the Wage and Hour Division would you said, which does the minimum wage over time, the family medical leave act and then some of the immigration and agricultural laws. But what drew me to the Department of Labor is that I was at Labor and employment, where in Florida, that's all I've ever done my entire career. I was at a, a Florida based law firm doing labor and employment, defending corporations and labor and employment suits on the litigation side, but also working with HR and working with companies on best practices, policies, and procedures relating to labor and employment. Keith (3m 34s): So when the opportunity came up in 2017 to join the Department of Labor, to me, it was not only a once in a lifetime opportunity, but I looked at it as like I'm a labor and employment lawyer. I can go to the mothership, the Department of Labor and get, essentially get a PhD in labor and employment right when you're doing it at that level. So I left Florida. So I'm no longer technically a Florida man, although I will always be a Florida man. Joel (4m 1s): Go Gators. Keith (4m 2s): That's right. Thank you very much. So I'm proud to be a Florida man in DC. So when I joined the Department of Labor, I really saw a national perspective on how these issues affect employees and employers, and not just from the Florida perspective that I was dealing with before. And I was able to do a lot of really very cool things that the Department of Labor, whether it was opinion letters, whether it was changing the overtime regulations. So that was a really great experience. And then I was nominated to the EEOC and for labor and employment lawyers, the EEOC is really the premier agency for civil rights. Chad (4m 40s): The premier league. Keith (4m 44s): That is football is for another, for you two to talk about. Joel (4m 48s): Ted Lasso. Keith (4m 50s): So that's great show, I haven't seen season two yet only season one, but you know, the EEOC really, when you think about labor and employment and modern day issues, that affect employees on a daily basis, it's not the Department of Labor, which deals more with the health, safety and wages concern. It's not the National Labor Relations Board, although that's very well known and that deals more with union issues. The EEOC gets to the core of it. It's the agency that deals with all civil rights in the workplace. So think about pay equity, disability discrimination, the entire #MeToo movement, pregnancy discrimination, age discrimination, all the big ticket stuff. So when you say personally, what it means to me from having had that experience about Department of Labor and now at the EEOC, it's just more than I could ever ask for. Chad (5m 38s): So, so once again, you've written articles and you've been on podcasts and you've actually been talking about artificial intelligence, AKA AI, and you've been very vocal about the impact of AI or the prospective impact of AI and hiring firing and the managing process. So what incidents got the EEOC more importantly, you, cause it feels like you're leading this, I'm interested in AI in the first place. Keith (6m 5s): Well, let me answer that in a few different parts. Generally commissioners at the sea have their own projects or areas of law that they specialize in. You know, one commissioner really led the charge on LGBT discrimination. One commissioner led the charge on age discrimination. So it's not uncommon for commissioners to pick a specific topic and really champion it. And for me, that is, as you said, artificial intelligence in the workplace, for a whole host of different reasons. First and foremost, that is out there is being used. It's not one of these discussions about, let's talk about how robots are going to replace humans and there's going to be no more workers and we're just live as a society of robot workers, right? Keith (6m 52s): That's what people want to think about when they think about AI and as you know, that's not what it is. It's technology that's out there right now. So the conversation needs to happen now. And, you know, coming from practicing law and dealing with corporations who need to hire workers who want to genuinely diversify their workforce and take out some of the bias in recruiting, these issues need to be addressed right away. And there's been a lot of interest before I got here, there was interest from Capitol hill, senators wrote letters to the EEOC, demanding that the EEOC take up this issue. There's been a lot of advocacy groups asking the EEOC to look at this topic. Keith (7m 34s): So technology, first of all, really interests me, but more importantly, there's so many benefits to using technology in the workplace that I want to see it flourish and not get subject to certain government regulations that are not going to make it work because we're already too late, it's happening and it needs to be addressed now. So because there's no regulations out there because there's no guidance on it. Because as you know, technology generally gets very far ahead of the government. It's a time where we can all really work together. Everyone from employee groups, to employers buying and using the software to developers, to create a standard that actually allows these products in this AI to help diversify the workforce, help get the best candidates, but also not put on burdensome regulations that take it down or subject it to a massive federal investigations or class action lawsuits. Joel (8m 27s): Keith can you talk about sort of how we got here, because the phrase, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I feel like we got to this tech heavy recruitment process sort of not on purpose, but it just sort of happened that way. And what's your perspective on just how we got here? Keith (8m 47s): I think obviously the default answer and the easy answer is the pandemic really pushed this forward, but it was being used before then. And I think for larger corporations, think fortune 500 company companies that need to hire hundreds of thousands of workers. How do you deal with that process? How do you deal with the amount of applicants and how do you have enough employees internally in HR that are actually going to be able to interview these people? So I really think that's where a lot of this came out from that you have thousands and thousands of resumes and a human just doesn't have the capacity, or you just need a lot of them to sift through them. So I think that's sort of the basis of where a lot of this came out from, but then when Silicon Valley and tech people started getting involved and sort of adding in the AI to a lot of that, that's when a lot of these decisions that I've been writing about and I've been talking about are really coming to forefront. Keith (9m 43s): And that's more recent. I think that's in the last three or four years. And I know on your podcast, you talk about how much money is going into these AI technologies. And for me, obviously, you know, that's a good thing. If we're getting funding, if we're getting better products and investors are looking in this, that's good. Let's just do it the right way so it all, doesn't go down in flames because of misuse, either by bad actors or by bad design. So that's really how I look at this, is that it's brimming with potential, but at the same time, if somebody in my position doesn't come out and say, here are the best rules of the road. Here are the best practices. Then it could be really subject to some very serious lawsuits. Chad (10m 24s): Are we missing the forest for the trees though? I mean, because I think most people understand that AI, they misunderstand that the decision AI is making doesn't stem from AI itself. Rather it stems from human decisions. Humans are biased, always have been, always will be. Although when you, the human being program that bias into systems, processes, and in this case, AI, you start to reach scale, meaning that your bias could impact thousands instead of dozens. So from my standpoint, as we talk about regulation, I almost want to say, look, you know, when we're talking about bias, the bias is there, it's programmed in, we already have regulations to enforce bias. Chad (11m 8s): And these decisions are just really being taken to another scale with AI. But these are human decisions. So are we pointing our finger at AI instead of Jeff Bezos? Are we pointing them at the wrong person or the wrong system? Keith (11m 23s): That's really a great point and what I talk about. This is it's not about the algorithm, although it could be about the algorithm because I'm a lawyer, I have to disclaim it, right? So there's two ways to look at this. And there's been so much of a focus on the algorithm and the secret computer coding that's discriminating, that even if the three of us saw, we would have no idea what it even said, because it's probably all math formulas. Right? Chad (11m 47s): Right. Keith (11m 48s): That's not what it's about. And you just summarized it perfectly. It's either number one, the data going into the algorithm. And you know, and there's the two classic examples about this, which I've written and spoke about. The first is that very public Amazon when they used AI and they wanted to, they gave the computer, their ideal candidate, which is based on their historical applicants and their workforce. And then, because that was mainly males, it started downgrading everyone who wasn't a male. So it automatically started downgrading you if you went to a woman's college or if you played a women's sports. Chad (12m 24s): Field hockey. Keith (12m 25s): Right. And that, that wasn't because the AI has misogynistic intent, which a lot of people would just want to say, you know, the AI is discriminatory. It was simply because of the data fed to him. And another example, and I know you both will get a kick out of this one. One firms said, go find me the ideal applicant. I want to diversify my workforce. Here's my top performers. And the algorithm spits out "your ideal applicant is named Jared who played high school lacrosse." Thank you. I mean what does that say? What does that do? But whose fault is that? That the inputs that gave you the bias, the bias inputs give you the biased outputs. Now, what I did disclaim is that there are situations where it could be, I don't want to say a biased algorithm, but a bias tool, right? Keith (13m 11s): So if some of these programs are poorly designed and then, you know, carelessly implemented by the employer and they allow you to screen out certain race, gender, age, or do sort of brackets like you would target other advertising, then that could be a discriminatory tool within itself. It doesn't matter if the data is, whatever the data looks like, the data could be, you can have a completely diversified work force, potential workforce. And then if you have a tool that allows you to sift through it on protected characteristics, that's the scaling discrimination like we've never seen before, right? Chad (13m 44s): Right. Keith (13m 44s): Because now you have a tool to do it. So for the most part, I completely agree with you. It's not about the algorithm who cares, what the algorithm, how it's designed, what we're going to look at, and what employers should be looking at is what is the results of what you fed the algorithm? Because that will tell you a lot about the data you put into it. Joel (14m 3s): Should we be pointing the finger at the employers or the software developers or a little bit of both? Keith (14m 9s): Well, first of all, we don't point fingers. We assess situation under applicable law. Chad (14m 17s): Yeah Joel. Joel (14m 17s): Sorry, Chad, and I point fingers. Keith (14m 20s): That's fine. And of course, we look at every investigation individually and would not point fingers at anyone till we have reasonable cause. But in all seriousness, the who, the employer, and now I have to do sound like a lawyer for a minute. The employer is liable. There's no question under our loss that the employer using these tools to make the decisions will be liable for the outcomes of the AI. Whether or not, whether they bought the AI to really diversify their workforce and eliminate bias or help employees up-skill and re-skill, if it has that discriminatory output, the employer's on the hook. Chad (14m 57s): We've talked about black box versus white box AI on the podcast for years. And for all those listeners who haven't heard it before, black box easily, it's just something that's not transparent so you can't see what the algorithm's doing versus white box you can actually see it, tweak it and explain it, which is the most important thing I believe for any employer, that's out there to be able to see how it's working and why it's doing what it's doing. My question to you, Keith. I mean, because an employer can choose whatever they want, but at the end of the day, the outcomes are where the EEOC comes into play. Right? Do you see black box AI actually surviving the next decade? Keith (15m 38s): You know, you may not like the answer to this, but I'm not advocating not to have very transparent algorithms, but at the end of the day, it's going to be the results that we're going to look at. But as far as the actual being able to see what's in the black box, you know, at this point, it's really up to individual legislators or legislation or regulators to make that determination and what you're seeing absent a federal standard right now, which is something else I've been talking about is you're going to get a lot of different laws and regulations on this. So in Illinois, they've passed a law, banning facial recognition technology. Keith (16m 20s): The city of New York now has a proposal that if you're being subject to AI, that not only are you being disclosed as an employee before you take the test or being assessed by it, you're being told, you're being AI is being used in this process. And here are your rights and remedies under the New York civil code. So absence national auditing standard, or you're going to see a lot of these individual states, local governments and state governments start to say, you know, here's what we actually want to see. Here's the auditing requirements we want to see, but right now it's sort of all over the place, not just here. And I know you have a lot of listeners in Europe and you deal with a lot of those issues. Keith (17m 0s): They're really also getting ahead of it. And I know from the data privacy side, that's one issue over there, but for them, they've already said that using AI in employment, in their proposed legislation is going to be in their highest risk category, the same as critical infrastructure and emergency services. They call it the high risk. So that's sort of a long-winded way of saying everything is all over the place right now. And that's why I'm here. Joel (17m 26s): And this is a low, a high, this reaches into a huge number of companies. I mean, talking about the Harvard study, I think from this year, last year, it said 99% of Fortune 500 use technology in their pre-screening 75% of all U S employers. In light of that I think one of the things, and to piggyback on my last question, was it showed that nine out of ten executives rely on software and believe that it is unfairly rejecting candidates. So you say that, you know, the employer is on the hook for this, and I think it's important to just sort of underscore that because so many things that it's messed up, and are they blaming vendors in that process. And I think that a lot of employers need to look in the mirror and figure out that, we're the ones that are liable to these and the tools that we use and let's make sure that we're dotting our I's and crossing our T's. Joel (18m 17s): Would that be correct? Keith (18m 19s): Yeah. And that is a great point. Just like they're liable for, if an HR personnel or a manager makes that decision, right. It's just, we're doing it much more high-tech on a much larger scale, but HR tech can be much more transparent than trusting a human brain, right. So when you talk about this whole black box and AI black box, we don't know what's going on. Well, do you know what's going on in your hiring managers head across the various divisions across the country? Chad (18m 46s): No clue. Keith (18m 48s): No clue. You know, and you don't know what they've seen. You know, and one of the examples I like to give on the benefits of AI in recruiting in that, in those first steps is that, you know, an HR manager or a hiring manager, talent acquisitions, they can see that somebody is of a certain national origin. They can see that a person is disabled or pregnant, right. And let's say, use a disabled and pregnant example. You can't ever unsee that. And although it is totally illegal, highly, you know, unlawful to not give somebody a job because of that, right? In the back of their mind, no matter what they're thinking, how much is this going to cost me? Keith (19m 28s): If this person, if I have to make a reasonable accommodation for somebody who's disabled, you know, how much is that going to cost me? If somebody is pregnant, how much is it going to cost me in health care or leave? And then if you have 10 other candidates, it's easy just to say, okay, we're going to move with these same highly qualified candidates as well, where they're eliminated at that very early stage. Right? Chad (19m 50s): Right. Keith (19m 50s): Versus AI, all I'm looking at is your qualifications. All the computer's looking at as a qualifications, or, you know, some programs even eliminate the name or take out any gender references. Right? So a lot of that, it's a plus because you're getting much further down the line than potentially getting screened out by those initial managers. So in that sense, it is very, very good. But to go back to your question about that stat, you gave about the people getting rejected by computer or now, whatever the stats are about how many employees are not actually going to get in the door because of that computer. Well, we talk about from an enforcement perspective, and from a litigation perspective, you don't, you haven't seen many cases on this at all. Keith (20m 32s): And which is generally unusual because we live in a very litigious society. And we have a lot of federal law enforcement agencies, like the one I'm a commissioner at, who were normally very aggressive in bringing these kind of cases. But if you don't know you're being subject to this technology, or if you don't know you ever, you didn't even get an opportunity because you were subjected to an algorithm that screened you out, even from showing you a job offer, how are you going to complain of discrimination? How are you going to exercise your rights under the law? And I think that is really why we're not seeing a lot, where opposed to, before you just assume, you know, that somebody didn't like me, or if we had any evidence for a reason, then you could bring a charge with the EEOC. Keith (21m 13s): So in that sense, I think people are starting to get hip that they're being subject to this, but a lot of people still don't know what's out there. Chad (21m 19s): I think that we're just used to it, no matter what, again, it's the human condition that we've been dealing with. My big question is that we saw in the, you know, Bush era, where they brought in for the OFCCP, they started huge amounts of funding for the OFCCP. They started bringing in statisticians and they really started going heavily after enforcement. You can see that in just the fines that were, you know, leveraged against major government contractors. So the question is knowing that bias is going to scale, it's going to happen because we're now employing these technologies, these platforms, these systems, AI, whatever you want to call it, it's going to happen. Chad (22m 1s): It's going to happen in a huge scale. Is that going to make it easier for you guys to pinpoint, or are you going to have to also play the same kind of game and start to do what the OFCCP did back in the two thousands and start playing the game at a more evolved level and start using AI for your own reasons? Keith (22m 21s): You know, that's an interesting question. And you see a lot of back and forth about the number, about the amount of budget for these agencies, excuse me, how much investigators are being hired and a lot of that, or what the priorities are at the time. So it's really hard to tell right now, as far as what the current priorities are, as you know, we don't even have a budget right now, or on a continuing resolution. The White House did call for an increase of over $40 million to the EEOC budget for this year and similar to DOL OFCCP, you know, they're going to get a lot, but a lot of what drives those on a national level of enforcement is what the priorities are of the current administration, what the priorities are of the chair. Keith (23m 7s): And to your point as well, is that now, no matter what your priorities are in the EEOC, whether it's it's gender discrimination, pay equity, racial discrimination in the workplace, religious discrimination, it's all going to be magnified, right? To levels that we have never seen before if AI is not used properly. So I can't comment on any immediate, actionable investigator increase or additional enforcement in this area, because generally I'm not allowed to, but I can tell you and I think this raises a really great point. I really appreciate you bringing this up. That no matter what the issue of the time is and the way the EEOC is designed, we're always kind of dealing with what's in the news, right? Keith (23m 50s): So when the Me Too movement happened, the EEOC has guidance on that has been a leader in that with the US women's soccer team, pay equity, the EEOC, that's right in our wheelhouse. And then when COVID and all the disability issues related to COVID or now the religious issue. So the EEOC really from a national perspective, sort of has to pivot of what the national news story is. And you see dealing with our issues like race, color, religion, sex orientation, pregnancy, it's national news stuff, right? When it gets to that level. But I am very cognizant and very aware that AI now is going to be behind the scenes for a lot of these decisions. That's just something that all of us can't ignore anymore. Joel (24m 31s): Keith one of the things that you said that stuck stuck in my brain there was that there hasn't been any sort of major case around AI and hiring and being screened out. Although you think that there will be in the future. So when I look at, you know, 9 out of 10 executives, think, you know, believe that people are getting filtered out unfairly. What is the incentive for them to change? Because if there's no major fine, there's no perp walk. Chad (24m 57s): Where's the stick? Joel (24m 58s): What's going to happen. And we talk, you know, we talked about Activision on the show recently and the sexual harassment case and I think pregnant women were part of that as well. You know, the $18 million fine, like at the end of the day, don't these big companies sort of do an algorithm of catastrophe and say like, well, let's just keep it as is and if we get pinched, we write a check and we're done. I mean, what's going to change behavior? Keith (25m 23s): That that is a great point. And then there is the look there's the carrot and the stick example and let me just go over both. For me, I believe that enforcement alone will never be enough to meet our mission. And I believe that when I was at Department of Labor as well, that educating employees about their rights and educating employers about what their obligations are under the law is far greater to me than enforcement. Let's prevent the discrimination from happening in the first place. So in an area like this, where there are not clear guidelines, that the EEOC does have the tools, look, our laws are old from the 1960s born out of the civil rights movement, but they're not outdated. Keith (26m 11s): And they applied with equal strength to the decisions made by HR people in 1960s. Is there going to be computers in 2050? Right? So that's why I feel it's my job to start to talk about this as much as I can. To go over how each technology, whether it's a recruiting, whether it's the facial recognition or the voice programs, or even, you know, some of the AI being used to promote and terminate employees and say, here is what here's, what the rules of the road are. And if it's used improperly, there can be serious consequences. So I want to do that first and in this industry, what I've seen is that there's really a desire for that, that a lot of people believe in their technology and they want it to work and they don't want it to be taken down by enforcement or class action lawsuits, whether it's by us or other plaintiff's, lawyers out there. Keith (27m 6s): So, but going to the enforcement and I do have to address what you're saying is that, where is the enforcement? Why isn't it happening? I do think, like I said earlier, there's a lot of reasons why we haven't seen it, that people just don't know that they're being subject to this. So that's really where the federal government should step in and find these cases. There is a unique, well, our jurisdiction at the EEOC is a little, it gets a little complicated in the sense that where other law enforcement agencies can just kick the door open and say, we're here. You know, like in the movie. Chad (27m 39s): Yes, the EEOC has to be ushered in by somebody with a case, right? Joel (27m 43s): Do not have a badge. Keith, do you not have a badge? Keith (27m 46s): I don't need a badge. Watch it. I do not have a badge. But because the EEOC has that jurisdiction where it needs to be subject to an employee, it's difficult here. EEOC, can't walk in, you know, where like the Department of Labor, OSHA can walk into anyone, just to do an inspection, right? And same with Wage and Hour, they can go into, you know, any facility and check time roll records. We can't do that here, but we do have a very unique tool. So when Congress designed the EEOC and put those limitations on an employee having to file, we call a charge, a charge of discrimination for the agency to have jurisdiction. Keith (28m 26s): It carved out what's called a commissioner's charge. And essentially said, if you're confirmed by the Senate and a commissioner, you have the ability to start an investigation in your own name and have the full force of the EEOC investigation, which comes with subpoena power and eventual litigation. So. Chad (28m 48s): Oh, damn. Keith (28m 50s): Yeah. So to me, this is, you know, it's very serious as if a commissioner using this seat is going to tell the EEOC to investigate an employer. Commissioner charges are generally a very big deal. And a lot of the commissioner charges in the past that had been very successful, have come from a commissioner watching 60 minutes, the commissioner reading, investigative journalism and starting a case from there. So this is certainly something I'm interested in, and I do want to be very balanced here and, you know, for your listeners and for all of you, that's why I started with, we have to address the guidance. We've got to put the rules of the road out. It's not necessarily fair. Although the law is the law. Keith (29m 32s): If it's not the federal agency that's going to do, the enforcement is not giving best practices and guidelines. And that's something I'm very committed to doing. But once that's, you know, out there too, there's also the enforcement side, which carries significant weight that also can get to that point where if the people who are not going to listen to your guidance or who are going to design AI to intentionally discriminate, to give that employer maybe a competitive advantage, or allow them to do these bad things, that's where we should be focusing our efforts. Enforcement should be really, on bad actors who are designing AI properly, or conversely using AI the wrong way. And that's something I'm willing to do a commissioner charge on. Keith (30m 15s): It's just, you want to find the right way to do it. So if I'm going to use that stick and address the concerns that both of you are raising, that from a business perspective, we can use these programs for as long as we want, because it's unlikely that there'll be enforcement on for the whole host of issues. You know, that that's something I'm committed to doing that I want to do. You know, I just, I want to set the example if I'm going to use those resources on AI, that is really being used the wrong way. Really being used to harm people with either disabilities or national origin or gender age, whatever our protected classes, if an AI is built or being used in properly, that's where I need to be. Chad (30m 60s): So let's go ahead and I'm going to flip the script and go old school on your here for a minute, because I don't think AI in itself is, is the base and root of the issue, as we talked about human decisions before. And I think some of the human decisions that are almost carved in stone tablets for goodness sakes are called job descriptions. And they have requirements on them that aren't even close to necessary. Right? We have a bachelor's degree for being in an entry level sales position or something of that nature, right? So I think this is a much more deeply rooted issue and what we've been doing for decades. We've had these bias issues for decades. Chad (31m 42s): I only believe that we're starting to see them at a much larger scale because of the AI. And we're starting to see that these blips in the radar are starting to happen because AI is actually pointing them out because the bias is not a little pinpoint anymore. It is a huge bubble. So the question is, you know, is the EEOC going to do a couple of things? First and foremost, help on the education side with employers to help them understand that, Hey look, your base root and foundation of bias starts here. And I'm just using the job description as an example. Do you go through those types of like road shows before you start actually hammering away at, Hey, okay, we told you about this, you're doing it wrong. Chad (32m 29s): You haven't fixed it. Now we're coming. Keith (32m 31s): And the penalties get more severe in those areas. But you know, there's AI now to deal with every aspect of the employment relationship. So you talked about job descriptions and I completely agree with you and this is something we can dive into for an entire hour on job descriptions alone. Chad (32m 51s): We'll do another one on this. I promise. Keith (32m 53s): It's very important topic. And there's a lot of, you know, all of our laws as you know, apply to applicants as well. Not, you don't need to be working somewhere to bring a charge of discrimination. But now there's vendors out there that offer AI to look at job applications and postings and job descriptions, and they will tell you what terms are using to deter, you know, to make it more gender neutral. And so they'll give you a job description, they'll scan all the words and say, well, it's more likely that males are going to apply than females, and here's how you balance it out. So that's a way AI can be very good, right? To sort of deal with those issues. Keith (33m 34s): And that's why, you know, I like tech, I'm all for tech. I really think tech can, can help eliminate, you know, a lot of the bias. And I think that's a really great example, but from my perspective at the EEOC, and I know in your role, listening to your podcast, you sort of get it as well. That how much different tech there is in just HR alone and how it touches all different times that I know the vast majority of the hot parts to talk about is in recruitment, but it really it's so much more than that. And when I'm looking at this, from what I want to educate on, is where tech is being used in the entire life cycle of the employee. Keith (34m 15s): And that starts with the job description. And then it starts with the thought of recruiting. And are you going to do active recruiting, or are you going to passively, you know, try to get people who are not actually looking for jobs and you know, what are you basing that on base now that you have your resume and to try to screen them out to interviews by done by chatbots or by facial recognition, and then having a gamified assessments through the decision using AI to hire through the decision to what are you going to offer that employee for money, for compensation. And then AI will tell you if they're based upon their resume, if they're likely to accept it and what offer. Keith (34m 58s): And then there are some really interesting programs out there that are way outside of our wheelhouse here, jurisdiction wise, but like that can then predict what kind of employee that person is going to be versus then they're hired than they're there. Chad (35m 12s): And isn't that crazy though? I mean, seriously, to predict what kind of employee that person's going to be, not knowing the type of manager that individuals had before, not knowing the type of environment that they've had to deal with before, but yet taking all that historical quote/unquote "data" and trying to predict what a human's going to do. Joel (35m 33s): That's why you and I will never have a full time job again, Chad. Keith (35m 36s): Exactly, it's even more than that. So then you're there. And then, you know, we're using AI to potentially monitor employee's chats and emails to see, you know, their job satisfaction, if they're likely to leave or not. And then other programs saying, you know, you have this employee in this group doing this job, but based on the resume, she would be so much better in sales in this part of the country. And then what I wrote about most recently in the Chicago Tribune, about AI then assessing workers on more than just how much widgets they're making that day based on every aspect of their job, and then potentially automatic notifications that they get a bad performance review or they're fired. Keith (36m 21s): So it's really the entire life cycle for me. And that's, I can't just focus in on the recruitment piece. I can't focus just in, on the upskilling and re-skilling piece. I have to look at every single part of that and I need to talk about every part of that. I need to give best practices on every part of that. And then when, where it's going wrong, I need to then enforce on all the different parts that are just not working. Joel (36m 49s): If, Chad can go off script a little bit, I'm going to pull a curve ball as well, but there is a bridge here, I promise. We've talked about facial recognition. We just talked about job descriptions and sort of how to promote those. And I want to pivot over to social media for a second, and pre-pandemic, Facebook went through a pretty big change to the way that they allow employers to market their jobs. So Facebook, if you've never used it, you can target by age, location, education, there are so many ways that you can do that well from a job posting perspective and promoting jobs that's can be a really bad thing. Joel (37m 31s): And they found a lot of companies were targeting, let's say, young men for their engineering jobs. And Facebook can no longer do that. And if you try to post something, it looks like a job or advertise something, it looks like a job, they have pretty strict regulations, believe it or not. Facebook does have strict regulations on how you can market those jobs. And when that happened, I was sort of expecting Twitter to suffer, not suffer, but have the same regulations, I expected Snapchat and then obviously TikTok. And TikTok now is getting more into marketing jobs and resumes and things like that. So I guess broadly, what should we be expecting? Or what is the EEOC really taking a close look at in regards to social media? Joel (38m 14s): Is it resumes be it video on TikTok? Is it promoting jobs, descriptions and how they target that? What is sort of in your crosshairs hairs right now in terms of social media and job promotion? Keith (38m 27s): This is another great example of how a new issue, but old loss. So the Facebook is an excellent one. One that I talk about, one I write about, because the mindset of the social media, which are largely advertising platforms, right? It is to, narrowly tailor your experience to what you are interested in, what you want to buy, things you like, and that has to be done by your age, by your gender, by potentially your national origin. And that works in the advertising context, no problem, but when it comes to people's livelihood and their opportunities to succeed, it doesn't work. Keith (39m 9s): And I know that was a very public example and we know they changed it there, but that it certainly is an example of how easily scalable and dangerous this technology can potentially be. But it is unavoidable that a lot of this is going to be through social media and, you know, for the advertising practices now in social media, obviously they can't be limited by age, but this also gets more into a bigger issue. And now it's just amplified because it's on tech about advertisements for, you know, who want recent college graduates, right? Although a recent college graduate could be any age, right? There's no, you see stories of people going back to school and being ninety years old and getting their bachelor's degree. Keith (39m 53s): Generally, what is the result of that kind of policy gonna be? Who are you going to get applying? Joel (39m 59s): Youngins, "yutes" (youths). Keith (40m 1s): And your desire to do that is not necessarily to exclude people over 40, which is what the law protects, it just, you know, maybe these are entry-level jobs, but putting a limiter in there will, you know, certainly have that disparate impact and although you didn't want to discriminate, you're still going to be liable because our laws we enforce don't require that intent. So where I'm getting to is isn't in the TikTok example, which has been largely reported on that. You know, employers want to do advertise a job applications and resumes through TikTok. There's nothing wrong with that. Keith (40m 41s): There's nothing illegal about that or unlawful about that. But at the end of the day, from the EEOC's concern. We're going to look at the results of that. And if that requires you to do it, a TikTok video, and highly produced on your phone, on your newest iPad or iPhone, is everyone going to have that opportunity? Is that just going to limit the applications to certain people of certain race or certain gender, certain age? How are people with disabilities going to be able to, you know, make fancy video resumes? Is there another way for them to apply outside of doing that video for somebody who is maybe technologically challenged? Keith (41m 23s): Right. So the EEOC is going to look at that like it would any other job application are those limiting factors in there that are going to screen out people of a certain age or a race gender. So that's what we're gonna look at. But again, it doesn't matter if these companies just want to make applying for jobs cooler, right. And that's sort of what it is, or how do you get this new generation of workers to actually engage with employers, to come work there by doing all those cool things. At the end of the day, the EEOC is going to say, did that neutral policy have the effect of excluding? And I think largely in the TikTok case, it would be older workers, right. Keith (42m 4s): Is there a way they can also apply to the same jobs without having to do back flips in your videos and dancing right? So again, it's not different than job descriptions evolved when you're saying, oh, we want people with one year of experience, right? What is the effect on that? Joel (42m 21s): Never a dull moment. Chad (42m 23s): No. So when there's never enough time, we still have much more to talk about Keith. We want you to come back on the show. We won't talk about social media. We want to talk about wages, AI, DEI, age-ism all that other fun stuff, but until then, I want to say, thanks again. Keith Sonderling, Commissioner at the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Keith, if listeners want to find out more about what you've been writing about, or maybe you want to connect with you, where would they do that? Joel (42m 52s): What's your TikTok, Keith? Keith (42m 54s): No, I can't do the TikTok. Maybe the three of us we'll do one together at one of these conferences, but I'm on LinkedIn. You could add me there, follow me there. I post a lot there as well as on Twitter. So I'm really looking forward to engaging with everyone, Joel and Chad, thank you for having me on the podcast. And like I said, there's a lot of topics to talk about and really appreciate your platform. And I'm definitely looking forward to coming back and talking and going over some of these specific issues. And again, to show that there's a proper way to do these. And also here are the risks that I know for my position, not only as a labor and employment lawyer, but as the regulator now in the space, I want people to know there's resources out there. Keith (43m 43s): And if you want to do it the right way, you have unlimited tools available for you. But if you want to do it the wrong way, I also have other tools available for you, which you're not going to like so that I really do appreciate this platform to talk. Joel (43m 58s): We're the government and we're here to help. Chad (44m 2s): Excellent. Keith (44m 3s): I said we're here to help first. Joel (44m 4s): Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Chad, this was awesome. We out. Chad (44m 8s): We out. OUTRO (44m 54s): 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.

Believe it or not, a lot of ad agencies who don't target recruitment do recruiting marketing work. One such agency is Point to Point out of beautiful Cleveland, and we invited CEO Megan Kacvinsky on the show to talk about a recent campaign they did for Ferguson to help attract more young folks to a trade profession. The social media of choice to get in front of this audience? Gotta listen to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. INTRO (2s): Hi is your kids lock the doors. You're listening to HRS most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where hers 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 (23s): Oh yeah, what's up everybody. It's your favorite podcast? Joel Cheesman. These podcasts rolling solo today in beautiful majestic Cleveland, Ohio sitting down with an old friend from way back in the day who is now on to bigger and better things. CEO of her own agency. Everyone welcome Megan Kavinsky to the show. She is CEO. At point to point, they are a B2B marketing communications agency focused exclusively on the building materials and industrial manufacturing categories with a little angle to employment, which we're going to touch on today. Megan, welcome to the show. Hey Megan (1m 1s): Joel. Great to be here and great. Great to see you. Joel (1m 4s): We haven't changed a bit in 20 years almost of his sleigh obviously, but it's a podcast. Megan (1m 10s): Yeah. Joel (1m 11s): I have a face for podcasting. I've heard. Well, what did I, did I miss anything about you or point to point that the listeners should know about? Megan (1m 19s): No, I mean, you said it really well that we're a B2B marketing communications agency. We focus really in the manufacturing segment and within manufacturing, building materials and industrial manufacturing. So I like to say that we market to the segments that keep the economy going, you know, architects, designers, contractors, building owners, property managers, you know, really important segments that you need to have a unique understanding to be able to get the right message to them and the right channels. Cause it's, you know, it's niche for sure. Joel (1m 52s): Chad and I were coming up to the headquarters here in Cleveland and I was a resident here for 10 years and I kinda just thought, what are people doing that might be relevant to talk about? And I came, I came across Megan and found out her agency had helped an organization called Ferguson, which I'm going to guess none of our listeners know what Ferguson is so we can talk about that. But also the, the case study that you had in your website was specific to employment, which is what we talk about on the show. And I think there are a lot of lessons here that are, some of our listeners could get from what you guys did with Ferguson to help them paint a more positive picture on the trades and, and who you were targeting for the campaign, what you did. Because I think a lot of companies like Ferguson are trying to find their way around, how do we get more plumbers and pipe fitters and whatever other professions that I have no idea what they are to fill. Joel (2m 43s): So let's start with, with Ferguson, who are they just real basics? How long have they been around? What do they specialize in? And then we'll get into sort of the, the employment dilemma that they had. Sure. Megan (2m 53s): Well, Joel, I think you might be underestimating your listeners. Ferguson's pretty big. So Ferguson is the largest plumbing wholesaler in the United States. They have beautiful showrooms that hopefully some people have gone to because they do a really great job showcasing, not just plumbing fixtures, but full kitchens and bass lighting. And they really have some gorgeous, gorgeous products in them, but they also have plumbing counters. They have water works, you know, things that go below the ground, you know, so there's a lot to their business. They're pretty, they're pretty big. And they rely a lot on skilled trades to get their products in the right places Joel (3m 31s): I imagined. Did they come specifically to you for employment help or do you help them with everything? And then they said, Hey, we have this employment issue. Can you guys help us out with that? Megan (3m 40s): A lot of our clients, Ferguson has an internal marketing team and an agency kind of within their, their, their organization when they come to point a point it's for projects that are either overflow or things that they feel like they really need someone with industry perspective or, and that's what this one was. It was, we are looking to help raise awareness of the trades as a whole beyond some of the channels that we're more used to using, or not really sure exactly the best way to go about doing this. And they wanted someone with better industry perspective to help them figure it out. Joel (4m 13s): So how did, how did it unfold? What was the conversation like? What sort of the mission of the campaign? Was it just to create a better image? Was it actually sort of, we want applicants, like we want to call to action. Like what exactly was sort of the, the initial conversations about you remember Megan (4m 30s): The initial conversations were that it was more about the industry as a whole. So this is an coming out of their corporate social responsibility budget, and it is focused more on raising awareness of the value of a career in skilled trades. It wasn't about driving applicants for Ferguson. It actually wasn't even about promoting their brand at all. That was like a tertiary component to the campaign. What they were looking for is who should we be reaching in terms of, is it kids in high school, kids in college, their parents who's the right audience for a campaign like this, what messages would resonate with them? How do we best get a message in the market? Because Ferguson, like a lot of our clients is really heavily invested in important organizations like skills, USA and others that help people who are already interested in a career in the trades be able to achieve their dreams, but there's not enough people that are interested. Megan (5m 25s): And so it was trying to create a better funnel, like a level above where they had been investing their dollars. Joel (5m 31s): So you mentioned kids in high school. So the target market was let's call it 16 to 24, something around that, that level. So there's no desire to get old people that it may be left or retired back into the industry. Megan (5m 45s): That's a problem in the industry actually, is that like, I think it's a quarter of the industry is still people that are over the age of 55. And so, you know, nearing retirement. So they're really looking to what is the future of skilled, skilled trades. And so that's why it was 16 to 24 year olds was the target. And in our research, we found that you have to target both the 16 to 24 year old and their parent that it's still not a decision that someone is making autonomously at that age. So we were trying to get kids that were maybe on the fence about going into a trade program at their high school or had gone to college and figured out it wasn't right for them. Megan (6m 25s): And the parent is still heavily involved in like the what's next or where am I going with my future here type conversation for kids that age. Joel (6m 32s): Sure. And that's a challenging problem. I know that we've talked on the show about a high percentage of that age group, want to be, you know, influencers on social media and they think that that's the way to get a job. So that's something really sexy. The trades are, are definitely on the opposite side of that was the, was the goal of obviously with video, you can, you can relay a visual image, was the message. Mainly this can be sexy too, or like, Hey, you can start a career, build a foundation, look that tick talk influencer careers. Probably not kind of workout now that you said that, but I think it would be a significant problem. I assume that you, you thought about, geez, these guys have, you know, they can be a DoorDash driver. They can be, you hope to be an influencer. Those are things that would be really hard. Joel (7m 13s): I think to message out and get them on the trades road. Was that thought about in the campaign when you were looking at, how do we message this thing? Megan (7m 21s): There's a lot of stigmas around a career in the trades. So, you know, one being that it's male-dominated, another being that it doesn't really require a lot of intelligence and other one that you don't make a lot of money. So we definitely, we wanted to use a mix of data-driven headlines that pushed back at the misconceptions of what a career in the trades would look like along with imagery that would then support that it is a diverse field. You know, that a lot of different people have career options. And so it is an edit. You mentioned, you know, against influencers, you know, that is it's hard. You know, the, the images do show what it's like to really have a career in the trades. It is, it is a physical job, but it is not something that really everyone can find a role. Megan (8m 6s): There's a lot of different options. Joel (8m 7s): One of the campaign target, was it a national campaign? Was it regional to the Midwest or Northeast? Like talk about the targeting in terms of geo? Megan (8m 17s): So there were, it was a national campaign from a digital perspective. And then there were portions of the campaign that at point a point we did, and then the proportions of the campaign that we turned to assets over to the Ferguson team to deploy. And so they did a lot more with some PR, some out-of-home and select markets and particular, the paid social component. There was advanced TV, there was Snapchat. All of those things were done at a national scale. Joel (8m 41s): You mentioned that that Ferguson was involved. I think a lot of times they just give it to the agency or the, the, the S the service and just say, figure it out. So the fact that they were involved as interesting w were there elements on their side where they would take maybe the video and embedded into their career site or job descriptions or their main site, like, did they actively push the video to their traffic? Their visitors Megan (9m 5s): Don't know the answer to that question, don't know. Okay. Joel (9m 7s): But I'm sure you recommended that they get the most out of their, out of their content. So you, you make the video. Did you guys make it in-house? Did you outsource it? Talk about that process. Megan (9m 18s): Yeah, we made the video in house, so we do a lot of video content development like this internally. There's some great stock imagery that relates to construction that is really starting to show a more diverse population. So Getty images did some work a couple of years ago to really show more about diversity equity inclusion, help create a better base of content for brands to choose from. So that's definitely been helpful, you know, really just edit it together to create a short form video with, you know, heavy, heavy superscript music bed, you know, really compelling visuals to engage. And we do a lot of video content that way we still do shoots, you know, there's a really great shot shoot in a mine that we've done. That's on our website and, you know, a lot of product photography, but we find that this for social content in particular is a really good way to cost-effectively get things done. Joel (10m 7s): In terms of length of video, do you have sort of a sweet spot that you found as an agency that a video should be in link? Because I think there's some, there's a lot of debate around, should it be six seconds? Should it be six minutes? Like where do you guys fall in terms of how long a video should be? Megan (10m 21s): Well, if you're paying to promote it, sometimes there are caps on the length, you know, based on certain social platforms. And we really recommend that you have to have a paid component to what you're doing, because the social media channels don't prioritize brand presence or corporate presence. So you're not gonna really get the bang for your buck, you know, the return that you want, unless you put some dollars behind it. So most of our videos I would say are in like the minute to 90 seconds range, you know, nothing's really beyond three, definitely nothing longer than what is compelling for your message. So if you're not interested in anymore, stop talking, Joel (10m 59s): And you mentioned, you mentioned stock video, and there's a lot of a debate, I think in our space of should use actual employees. Like how gritty should the film be and how should it, should you just hold it and talk? Or should you have a professional film crew come out? And it looks like you've done both. Is the stock content primarily a cost decision? I know this wasn't specifically a Ferguson video where if it was maybe you would actually video Ferguson employees doing plumbing and all the things that they do, like, do you have any opinion on stock versus sort of real life or real real folks and how companies should sort of decide which one should we use? Megan (11m 37s): And in the case of Ferguson, they don't employ the plumbers or the mechanical engineers of the people that are installing the product, you know? So, so there, I think it just depends on what your messages and what you're trying to communicate. You know, so a lot of our clients actually have some great imagery of store employees or things like that, that we can use when we go to create these short form videos. And I think it just it's who are you trying to reach and how will they receive that message, you know, is this the best way to communicate with them? Okay. Joel (12m 6s): So let's talk about the actual campaign and distribution of the video. Like what platforms did you use, what was sort of the thought process of who, who should we be using? Obviously with that age group? I think it would become pretty obvious that you're not going to be on MySpace or LinkedIn. So, so what was the thought around, where are we going to put this video? Megan (12m 25s): As we wanted to reach both the 16 to 24 year old and their parent, and a lot of them still live together in the same home, advanced TV was a great way to really target that population. So we used advanced TV. We used paid social because Facebook, Instagram, you know, parents and kids are both there. And then for the, the specific, the 16 to 24 year old demographic, we did use Snapchat to reach them as well. So it was really more of an omni-channel mix trying to, you know, make sure that they saw the message in multiple different channels, multiple different times, really driving them to try and engage with the content was what we were looking because the campaign wasn't about driving applicants for Ferguson, it wasn't about driving people to skills USA. Megan (13m 10s): It was really about just raising awareness of the benefit of a career in skilled trades. Joel (13m 16s): That's a haul. So when you say engagement, the engagement you were looking for was likes, shares, follows that kind of thing. Megan (13m 25s): Yeah. The length, making sure people watch the entire video, you know, things, things like that. Joel (13m 30s): So you have a few metrics from the campaign. What, what did you find in terms of views and your internal metrics? Megan (13m 38s): Yeah, we got over 7 million impressions of the campaign as a whole, which was, you know, the client was thrilled because it was about scale. The other thing that we got was over 250,000 engagements within social media. And that was really even more impressive than the scale of what we got, because that shows that the message was resonating with the audience that it was intended to reach. And that was really what we were trying to do. Joel (14m 2s): So as a, as an agency, what are sort of working in the trades is definitely a different strategy than if you were working with tech companies or more hip, I guess, organizations Money is cool people. So just curious from a marketing perspective, your overall thoughts on where social media is going, what platforms are up and coming, what are sort of fading? I have my own attitudes, but I'm just curious where, where you see the future of marketing and what we should be looking at. What's next, I guess basically is my question. Megan (14m 35s): Well, funny, you should mention it. I don't even think you know this, but we recently did a study about where is building products, marketing going in the new economy. And, you know, like you said, it's not exactly the hippest, you know, and because of that, it was really behind the digital evolution. You know, we're a lot of other organizations had been. So what we're seeing is that it's the digital evolution for building materials is finally here, you know, and we see a lot of clients investing in improving their web properties for architects, interior designers, contractors, because they're using them to replace what we're in person still largely an in-person sale. And so they need the product content to be able to feel comfortable to, you know, begin new product adoption or convert a spec or, you know, begin stocking a new product line. Megan (15m 23s): The other thing that we're seeing is that they're beginning to use more contemporary marketing channels, like social media, more often to engage. And you know, most of our clients about 18 months ago would have been saying things like, are you sure that my contractor, my architect, my, you know, property manager is wanting to engage with me on social media. Like they're all consumers. We know that they're there, but like, are they open to a brand message? And now the conversation has changed to how much more engagement can I get with insert audience segment in here because they are there. They're getting the engagement through social channels, largely, still Facebook and Instagram are the biggest followed by LinkedIn. Megan (16m 5s): And then also some Pinterest just driven by the visual nature of the platforms and the types of industry that we're in. Joel (16m 11s): Interesting. So you're a, you're a small business. How many employees are you up to now? 21. 21. Okay. So how has, how has COVID impacted you as a small business owner? How will your workplace look post COVID? I know you've, you've made some changes, but for all the small businesses out there that can relate, how was 2020 for you? Megan (16m 31s): Well, 20, 20, well, it was my first full year of business ownership. Joel (16m 35s): You timed it just right. Global Megan (16m 37s): Pandemic and global recession. I'm super, super grateful that, you know, point a point is in a segment of the economy that actually has done really well during all of the tragedy and trauma that you know, has, has occurred. We see that our team did a great job during COVID working remotely, and then we still delivered, I think, some amazing campaigns and, and, you know, best creative that we've ever done, you know, best targeting strategies that we've ever done evolved our capabilities, recruited new team members. But we do think there is some in-person human interaction that is important in the go-forward. So what we're doing is a hybrid model for our team, and we are going into a, a new space. Megan (17m 22s): That's kind of like a, we work, but we it's a little bit bigger. So we do have two offices, our own conference room, and four desks behind a door with our logo on it. But everything else is a flexible workspace. So it's more of a shared office environment. And we are an anchor tenant. We're one of three anchor tenants that are actually in the building. So it's, I mean, 500 square feet of anchor space, you know, and we were in 5,000 square feet before. So very different. Joel (17m 51s): So where those 20 hires all made in 2020 are most of them, Megan (17m 54s): Well, it was an existing business before, so I bought an existing business, but we have definitely grown in the back half of that. Joel (18m 2s): There were interviews made on zoom, or, and what were your takeaways from that? Or were there any tools that you use that were invaluable to that process? Megan (18m 11s): I don't know about tools in particular that were invaluable. I mean, certainly having a strong recruiter on your team is a great tool, but what we really have tried to do is hire for culture. So about two years ago, we started using a methodology called entrepreneurial operating system. It is, which is why they call it EOS, I think so that you don't have to say that every time. And we have been using that methodology and the core values that go with it and recruiting off of that has really helped in terms of who we build in culture that we have at point a point as a whole. So this week actually, and we, we did, we hired out a market for the first time. We never would have thought about that before. Megan (18m 52s): So we've been able to get some great talent that has experience in manufacturing and in building materials that pre COVID, we would have thought like, oh, they don't live here. That's, you know, not a possibility. And, but everyone, all of our remote team is in town this week, which is really exciting. And we're doing a team event tonight for the first time in 18 months. Just no agenda other than just come and be a human, you know, Joel (19m 17s): We'll head her tonight at progressive to check out again. So it sounds like you sort of fell into the employment side with Ferguson. I don't know if that was your expectation to do that. Do you think that more companies will come to you in your business in regards to recruiting retention? And is that something that you guys will embrace and do more of? Megan (19m 38s): Ferguson's not the only client that we've helped with a campaign around the benefit of a career in skilled trades. And we do a lot of other work as it relates to more promotion of training programs. Usually on the contractor side that exists for across our client base as a whole, because it's not just what you get at a trade school or the apprenticeship, you know, a lot of times there's product nuance that goes along with it. So a lot of our clients offer that what we're seeing different is a lot more clients investing in straight up recruitment marketing. So Ferguson was trying to raise awareness of the trades as a whole, not trying to drive applicants for Ferguson, but now we see a lot of clients, their marketing communications teams working in stronger partnership with HR to really help try and fill vacant positions that have really long lead times to fill, and then still not getting the candidate pool that they're interested in. Megan (20m 32s): So we're, we're seeing a lot more and, and trying to get a more diverse background of people as well. So, you know, really trying to go beyond, you know, who, who may work there now to have a more diverse employer base employment base, Joel (20m 44s): Megan, Kavinsky everybody. Megan, it's been such a joy sitting and talking with you and visiting again for our listeners who want to know more about you, or point to point, where should they go? Megan (20m 54s): Point to point.com Joel, Joel (20m 56s): Easy as that, is that the number two or Tio? Megan (20m 59s): T O I N T T O P O I N T.com Joel (21m 4s): We out! OUTRO (21m 7s): Thank you for listening to what's it called the podcast with Chad the cheese and we 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 chase, not one cheddar blue nacho pepper, Jack Swiss, so many cheeses and not one word. So with any ho 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. OUTRO (21m 52s): And while you're at it, visit w w w dot Chad cheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. There's some weird we out.

The boys welcome Namely CEO Larry Dunivan to the show to talk industry history, leadership, issues of diversity and inclusion, as well as a growth strategy and whether or not an IPO is in the offing. It's rare to find a CEO who has worked from the bottom to the very top of the HR software industry ladder. It's even rarer for a CEO to have industry experience combined with the ability to understand software, systems, sales, marketing, and infrastructure since before the days of mainstream internet adoption. Larry Dunivan is that rare CEO. Corporate leaders, wannabe leaders, DEI proclaimers, and every HR and recruiting industry vendor should have this interview on a continuous loop. You're welcome! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides comprehensive website accessibility testing with personalized recommendations to enhance usability for people with a variety of disabilities or situational limitations. Larry (1s): But the reality is the one thing that is still not happening that we've been talking about for 30 plus years is the answer to the question "how can HR be more strategic?" INTRO (13s): 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 (34s): Hi, my name is hi my name is. What's up everybody? It's your favorite podcast the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always by my partner in crime. Chad Sowash. Chad (47s): What's up? Joel (48s): We're just, we're just giddy to welcome Larry Dunivan CEO at Namely to the show. Chad (55s): You've been giddy a lot lately. Joel (57s): Larry is an industry veteran to say the least we're talking Ceridian. We're talking. Jeez. He's he's brought up some really old companies. He's a Kellogg guy living in New York. Larry welcome to the show. Are you still there? Larry (1m 9s): Thank you. Yes, I'm delighted to be here. Joel (1m 11s): We haven't scared you off yet. Larry (1m 13s): Nope. Joel (1m 13s): Usually when really smart people come on the show, they freak out a little bit. Like what the hell did I get myself into? But you are an avid listener, but Chad is geeking out over you and your history. So before we get to Namely, I'm going to let Chad geek out on a little bit of history here. Chad (1m 29s): First off, I want to hear a Twitter bio from Larry. So for our listeners who don't know who you are, Larry, give us just a Twitter bio of you, and then we're going to dig in. Larry (1m 39s): Sure, no problem. It all started when I was running cars at the Hertz counter in downtown Chicago in the early eighties and at a job, I despised one, beyond all others. And one of my best friends who I worked with there kept telling me, please do not be here 10 years from now. Like I have been, my husband has this company that does payroll stuff. Do you want to work there? And so that's how it started. That was over 30 years ago. And you know, my Twitter version is I've done everything you can do in an HR software company from customer support to implementation, to sales support. It's been twenty years in product management and product development. And then when I went to Ceridian decided I wanted to be a CEO, the only way to be a CEO is to run a sales organization so I did that. Larry (2m 24s): After I left there, I did some board work and interim gig at think at HR now Mineral, to Namely. Joel (2m 29s): You've seen how the sausage is made. Can we say that? Larry (2m 34s): And I've made it. Joel (2m 36s): Okay, good enough. Chad (2m 36s): And a lot of that sausage probably started in the mid eighties at Cyborg, but we're not going to go into that. So is Lawson still around? Larry (2m 44s): Yes, it was acquired by Infor. Joel (2m 46s): Tell the listeners what the hell Lawson is. Larry (2m 51s): Lawson was, you know, original, you know, Eats founded in '75, ERP software company that had built an HR product. The company thrived through the Y2K phase, built a huge business in healthcare among other industries. Chad (3m 6s): Yes. Larry (3m 7s): Full suite of products was acquired by Infor, in 2011 and products still live on today very, very, very well. Chad (3m 12s): This is back in the day when you actually had to load the software onto a client server, this is not where you could actually just hit the internet and everything was just there and available for you. You had to have a mainframe system. Joel (3m 26s): You loaded up AOL as you loaded up your Lawson. Larry (3m 28s): Well, we said, we're going to talk about Cyborg, but I mounted tapes. Chad (3m 34s): Wow. See, this is what I'm talking about, Larry. We don't get, we have so many like newbies, we have so many fucking newbies in this space, it is amazing to actually get somebody who has been around since the tapes days, which predates Joel and myself. So we're bowing to you. You can't see it. So talk about what you're seeing today, which has, let's say for instance, like we just talked about client server versus like obviously web enabled, what have been the biggest changes that you've seen in your career and what today still stays the same? Larry (4m 14s): Yeah. You know, it's funny that the way I talk about this is that, you know, I've lived through three complete reinventions of the HR technology landscape and by the way, have no intention to be here for the fourth. What has happened and this is really important because I think people miss this point, what has happened is people have innovated on the product, but people love to talk about it as if it was the technology that changed. Right? We went from mainframe to client server to the cloud to SAAS, but none of that mattered. It was just really smart people who cared about a lot about serving customers, build better products, thanks to those technology innovations. Chad (4m 57s): OK. Larry (4m 57s): They fueled it. And you know, this is a unique industry because you have to have these products. It's unlike these, you know, nascent segments that are coming out of nowhere, that either might be ad-ons to things we do or outside of HR, you know, all the stuff you hear about like e-commerce et cetera. You know? So at the end of the day, when a discontinuous innovation hits the market, it creates a wave of replacement. And that is what has happened, you know, three times in the last 35 years. Chad (5m 24s): So one thing that has not changed, and actually I think today is even worse than it was in the late nineties, early two thousands, is that thing we call vaporware. Am I right? Is it something that has just exploded over the last five years or did it just never go away? Larry (5m 42s): I don't know. I mean, listen, we had our, I also refer it off in this shelf where, you know, there's all of this stuff that people just never use. There's no difference. You know, everybody buys a bunch of stuff and they have all these savings from using them and then they never do. Or in the case of, you know, maybe a more vapor oriented view of the world, they just sucked. I mean, they were never good to begin with, but they were, you know, they were sold in large quantities, fueled by great marketing. I have all kinds of respect for great marketing, but there's a lot of really bad products out there that can get somewhere thanks to marketing. But the reality is the one thing that is still not happening that we've been talking about for 30 plus years is the answer to the question "how can HR be more strategic?" Larry (6m 26s): It's still struggling to do that. Joel (6m 27s): As a veteran, or you are even you surprised at how much money is flowing into our space right now or not so much? Larry (6m 34s): Well, listen, it's a broader trend in the investment community. I mean, I spent a lot of time talking to investment banks and investors and the investment community. You know, there is just so much money out there that every half decent idea can get funded. It's no different than any other industry, but we see a great deal of it because there are these, you know, kind of niches where there's a lot of interest in moving the needle. Joel (6m 55s): And how does it end in your mind? Does it end well or not? Larry (6m 59s): It's just going to go, they'll just be another cycle of it. You know, there's no end. No, there's more you just start over again. Chad (7m 9s): So back to your HR strategy piece, right? I personally believe HR talent to be quite frank is the core, is the engine of every fucking company. You cannot create new tech. You can't develop new software. You can't create widgets. You can't manufacture. You have to have, at least today, you have to have people, although HR is fine, talent acquisition is more fine to be able to continue to show themselves as a cost center, as opposed to a productivity center. Why is that? Larry (7m 46s): Well? Okay. So now we're getting into a area where I have a very strong opinion. Chad (7m 53s): Good. Joel (7m 54s): Yeah. Larry (7m 54s): Consider this, consider the last head of people that you encountered that came either outside of HR or through the core HR functions, whether that be employment relations or HRS or whatever, compared to compared to the head of HR who came up through recruiting. They are completely different human beings, they can argue sometimes they're alien with one another. And it's why the talent acquisition space is so interesting because if you are dealing with a company where HR is recruiter led versus where HR is not, it's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And so, you know, I have met so many, especially in recruiting leaders, you know, talent acquisition heads, that many often came out of, you know, the head hunter world. Larry (8m 38s): They have a completely different view of the universe, which is why you see so much point solutions in talent acquisition because they, especially in the labor markets we're experiencing. Now, they have the power within the org to support that while you couldn't certainly make a case that, you know, good information management, you know, well executed technology would do that within very tight integration to the system of record. But frankly, find a company that has built both, a great system of record and a great recruiting system. They don't exist. Chad (9m 13s): Well, why, why is that? Joel (9m 15s): And which one's better? Larry (9m 18s): Well, it's really hard. They're both really hard because they're both massively different. Like I said, the mind of the end-user, they don't, they can't even communicate with one another two thirds of the time. Chad (9m 32s): I agree. I agree. The problem seems, and we have this discussion all the time is who is responsible and accountable for different aspects of hiring and/or onboarding, et cetera, et cetera. So when we're talking about recruitment marketing, why isn't marketing involved in this? And then we're talking about internal mobility. Who owns that as an HR, or is it TA? It's almost as if there are these gray areas so that people can just do a shitty job for no reason. Larry (10m 2s): Here's another filter to look at it through. Who has the power, right? And that is going to change based on what industry you're in, if you're in a professional services organization that has, you know, super in demand skill set requirements compared to your manufacturing organization. The nature of that, the approach to it, the way you think about it is going to be radically different, but yet vendors are trying to serve, you know, both of those customers and often they'll serve one well, and the other poorly or both terribly. Joel (10m 34s): Every CEO that we hear talk at at conferences and webinars talks about how people are their greatest resource and asset. Do you agree with that? Or do you think it's a lot of lip service? Larry (10m 42s): Well, I mean, it's listen, I can't get anything done if I don't have great people with great motivations and the right skills, so sure. I don't need to turn it into some, you know, flag I carry all day long because at the end of the day, the most important thing is what kind of values do you lead with and how do those values affect people's behavior, because that will drive their motivation to do great work. And I'm happy to have, you know, a B plus player that is wildly motivated and loves what they do. The odds are I'm going to get a great experience out of that person as I am, you know, an A player. And of course what distinguishes me from a B plus that's a ridiculous conversation. Chad (11m 27s): Yeah. It depends on the person. So you took over Namely as CEO in July of 2019. And to continue this conversation about people, you have put a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, and now Larry, we've heard this shit from CEOs forever. Okay? Yep. The needle's not moving and we haven't seen it move, right? What are you going to say to the listeners to actually make them believe that you do care and what are you doing within Namely? Larry (11m 56s): Well, first of all, I'm going to tell you what you said is wrong. Just to assert that, you know, quote unquote, "I put a focus on diversity and inclusion." I think that would be too generous. Chad (12m 6s): OK. Larry (12m 8s): But what I will tell you is this, what I have done as a CEO has been to first go deep within myself to ask the question, "what kind of leader does it take in 2021 to earn the right for people to be willing to spend some portion of their career working at this company?" And so that has of course, many, many dimensions. In our case, you know, two thirds of our employees are in New York City, the average age is well under 35, that generation cares a great deal about the quality of that experience. We also have a very large African-American population in our sports center in Atlanta. And when you look at what went down in 2020, at the end of the day, you have to figure out what kind of leader you have to be in order to earn the right for people to continue to work with you. Larry (13m 2s): And for us, a key element of that has been to be deeply accountable all the way down to our values, to do those things that we think are right. And for that, a key element is making sure that we are creating a great environment that responds and addresses everyone's unique differences. Joel (13m 24s): Chad, Chad mentioned you've been there since 2019, but the company's been around since 2012. What was it about this opportunity as a veteran, I assume there were other opportunities on the table. Why this one, or are you just to settle masochist that you can't get out of the recruitment industry? Larry (13m 39s): Oh, that's a funny question because I was living in New York City in 2015 when Namely was on every billboard, every taxi, every subway station. I thought wow that's a cool company I want to work there. And the founder at the time ignored my inquiry. And then, you know, two years later, I dunno, three years later, you know, you can do any Google search and find out he was terminated for a behavior unbecoming a CEO. And I, when I heard about that, I'm like, there's the destiny I'm supposed to run this company. My dream had always been to run an HR software company and live in New York City. There's only one game in town. It's Namely. Joel (14m 15s): Yeah so it just landed on your lap. Well, you pursued it. The opportunity opened up. That's, a unique story. So you guys have raised around $217 million. When's the IPO? Larry (14m 29s): You know, we raised $217 million. We haven't taken any capital and you know, almost both going on three years, you know, so who knows? You know, I don't think that the whole, I look at iCIMS. I mean, how long did it take them? And they finally announced this week. Joel (14m 46s): 1999. Larry (14m 46s): Yeah. So there you go. So who knows? Joel (14m 48s): It only took ZipRecruiter half that time. Larry (14m 48s): Employees ask me that question all the time and I'm like, you know, if we get to a place where, you know, we think that's the right thing for us to do, I'll be sure to let you know, but it's just not a big deal. I mean, there's a million ways we can raise capital. An IPO? You know, I worked for a publicly traded company. That's not high on my list to be a CEO of a publicly traded company. Joel (15m 10s): I can't imagine why not. So you're scaling the team, you have a new VP of marketing, for example, talk about that, building the team around that. And I guess for a new, a new world, right? I mean, COVID has changed everything. Feel free to talk about how it's changed Namely. Larry (15m 28s): I think that when it's all said and done all the enormous negatives aside, the pandemic will be good for Namely. You know, our new VP of marketing is a woman that's been with the company for six years. She started in sales support, she's amazing! You know, I have had the good fortune to be able to develop a number of people. I have made only one outside, well, really two outside C-suite hires. One the head of people who is basically my work wife and I've known her for 15 years, we've worked together at a number of companies and a head of sales. What we've been doing is just being super insularly focused about what kind of company we want it to be coming out of the pandemic. So we retrenched quite a bit early on. Larry (16m 9s): We conserve cash. We, you know, put ourselves in a position to maintain our destiny, regardless of what was going to happen, short of complete catastrophe, which we, which the world so far has mostly avoided, I suppose, depending on your perspective. And then just got super focused on who our ideal customer is that we can be wildly successful with. You know, whereas before, when we were in crazy growth mode, you know, be all things to all people all day that just wasn't going to work in 2020 and into 2021. And so that focus has paid off handsomely for us and the board is delighted with the outcomes. Chad (16m 43s): So with that kind of growth and also the focus on diversity, I mean, that's hard to manage sometimes, especially when you get into a groove and that groove might not be as diverse as you'd like. So how do you actually drive outcomes on the hiring, the retention and the promotion side of the house? How do you get your team rallied around that? Larry (17m 4s): Yeah. Great question. Well, first of all, well, let me rewind a little to right after, you know, March, April, May 25th, 2020, you know, it was clear we were not going to be doing much hiring. Yeah. The world was crazy around DNI. Well, I wasn't going to solve any problems inside a Namely based on being more proactive about who we hired, because we did very little hiring in the second half of 2020. You know, so I asked myself hard questions like, well, what can we do? So one of the programs we had was, we had this pretty broad mentorship program where we brought 15 or 20 people into a group and we created a mentoring experience. And I decided to take that one step further and we created a more accustomed mentoring program for a small group. Larry (17m 44s): That first cohort was five people, which I lead personally, where I spend a ton of intimate time along with our head of people who creates the programs behind it to really do career development. And the conscious choice we made for that cohort was that it was only open to people of color. So we made that very conscious choice first cohort, the timing was right. It was appropriate. Chad (18m 5s): Any resistance to that? Larry (18m 9s): Yeah, there was some. Chad (18m 10s): How do you deal with it? Larry (18m 12s): I didn't, I don't care. That's great. I appreciate your input and I'm always open to hearing people's feedback. I'm a CEO, sometimes you just have to make decisions. It was an easy choice for me. Let me tell you, it was an amazing experience for me personally. And I think if you talk to, we had one dropout, but the four that completed the program, I think had an amazing experience. We started a second cohort about a month and a half ago, we opened it up to everybody, but we did end up, we selected five people, three were people of color. And, I think that, you know, it wasn't, it's been very eye-opening for me in so many ways. Now we're growing head count a lot more now. So we did actually also then implement a series of steps, to hold us all accountable. Larry (18m 54s): I report to the company at every all hands meeting about how we're doing. I will tell you we have not broken yellow in terms of traffic leading our progress. And then more importantly, every time we do a above a certain level, think of it, maybe middle of the pack and above that, my leadership team, myself and a representative from our ERGs, all meet to discuss the search, discuss and be transparent about our efforts to create a diverse candidate pool. And then all agree that based on the candidate pool we created, the sense of urgency needed to fill the position and the recommended candidate that everybody buys into making that choice, whether it's a person of color or not. Joel (19m 31s): Right. Right. A lot of companies are, are struggling with the work from home question. What are you guys doing at Namely? Are you a hundred percent work from home? Are you hybrid? What are your thoughts on that? Moving forward? Larry (19m 41s): Yeah. Well, we'll be a remote first company going forward. I happened to be in our office in New York today, which is, you know, 40,000 square feet with five people here. Joel (19m 53s): You're looking for sub leasers is that fair? Larry (19m 55s): Fifteenth is closed. That's another thousand square feet. And there are no sub leasers to be found in New York City at the moment. Chad (20m 2s): Yeah, I bet. You talked about employee resource groups and you have a ton of them now, did they exist prior to you getting there? Did they ramp up? What kind of attention do you take to those groups and are they instrumental in driving your DEI efforts? Larry (20m 21s): Yeah, I, I credit Elisa Steele who I believe started them originally. They might've been there prior to that, but they really came to life while she was the CEO. She was our first independent board director became CEO briefly, and then I replaced her. And so we inherited that very rich group of EOGs and they played a significant role in helping us all kind of, for those that wanted to, educate ourselves in those ways, places and spaces that we were, you know, given all, everything was going on, where we felt the need and desire to learn more without turning this into, Hey, please let's make sure all the black people teach all the white people, what they should know about treating black people well. Larry (21m 3s): But it is our, each of our individual jobs to do that, not look to someone else to do it. And so the ERG is, you know, certainly did though, help facilitate some of that. You know, we meet with them all the time. Interestingly, our greatest challenge with our ERGs is getting people to volunteer, to lead them. You know, there's no issue with supporting them there, we get decent participation. But what my biggest struggle with them is the same people have been leading them for a long time and nobody wants to step up to take them over. That's our biggest challenge. Chad (21m 38s): Well, here's a question. And seeing how ERGs in some cases have turned into part-time jobs, depending on, you know, what types of projects are happening with inside the ERGs. Is that actually a part of that individual's 40 hour a week job description then? Or is that an additional duty? Larry (21m 57s): You know, it's all relative. Where we have all we have certainly said, we will make accommodation for that. And we added a stipend, to compensate people for it. You know, it's not gonna change your life, but I can't honestly say that I've bent over backwards to say, you know, here's all the things you no longer have to do, so you can be the ERG. Chad (22m 18s): Is it important enough to actually have somebody dedicated to running the ERGs overall? Larry (22m 22s): Oh, you know, we had a director of DNI, you know, at our, at our crazy Cashburn Peak that, you know, had a salary that would take your breath away and you know, was it effective? I have no idea? For a company of our size, absolutely not. And it is my job in partnership with our head of people. You know, the thing that drives me crazy about the stuff that I've been reading, especially there's, you know, I follow a Facebook group around, you know, small and medium-sized HR people and how many posts were like the CEO came into me and told me to solve the DEI problem. Are you fucking kidding me? You know, here's the mirror, that's the tool you need. Chad (23m 1s): It is a leader's job. There's no question, but you're a white dude. How does that actually, how does that actually impact the optics? Because that's what some people worry about. Oh God, I can't go into this. I can't go into this ERG and say I'm behind it. You know what I mean? It's an optics type of scenario now, not to say that you don't believe in it, but again, you know, that's kind of, that's the landscape that we're in. Larry (23m 21s): Yeah. I like to jokingly say I get half a point cause I'm white, but I'm gay. So, But listen, I lived in the closet until I was 36 years old. I know a little bit about this, but at the end of the day I'm a white privilege guy. Let's not confuse it for one minute. And I reiterate that at every turn, you know? So my job is to create an environment where it can thrive, but for sure do the kinds of things a leader has to do to make that happen. And honestly, sometimes, and I get accused of this with some frequency. It sometimes will appear as if I am, you know, giving some sort of preferential treatment at times and places, you know, to various constituencies in the business that are tied to that. Larry (24m 6s): And I just don't care, you know? And I don't, I don't make any claims about my right to be anything other than a privileged white man. Trust me. It's not my it's on my mind all the time. Chad (24m 21s): I appreciate that. Both Joel and I can appreciate that. Yes, Larry (24m 25s): I have 2 very progressive 30 year old daughters who are checking me all the time. But let's not fool it let's not joke around there either because they come from white privilege. Chad (24m 35s): Yes. Larry (24m 35s): They've got a pretty good view of the world that, you know, has helped me immensely get reality checked on occasion. Chad (24m 41s): Let's talk about how we actually move the ball forward. Personally. I think it's through transparency, whether you're a public company or you're not a public company, I believe that you can only be accountable if you are transparent around workforce composition. What does your workforce look like right now? Yes, you have these programs in place, but if we can't see the ball move, how the hell do we know if the ball's moving workforce composition,` pay and equity, those are things that today they're hidden. What do you say about that? Larry (25m 10s): We are happy to discuss it with candidates when they ask, we haven't put it on our website per se, but we don't have it. We know. And by the way, not very many candidates do ask FYI, but I've, you know, I've had one or two conversations with candidates about it, you know, and I, I couldn't agree more transparency is absolutely what you have to do good or bad, you know? And, you know, in our case, for example, we have done a great job with workforce mobility within our teams in Atlanta. But guess what, those are our service teams. They have the highest turnover, they're the lowest paid, but there's been a lot of mobility thanks to a combination of turnover and growth. But you know, then you project that on top of our engineering organization, you know, that's in a completely different classification when it comes to comp and we're not doing nearly as good a job. Larry (26m 1s): And the reason is because the talent pools are harder to diversify. Now for us, that was a big problem in New York, which is why we no longer just recruit in New York for engineering. We recruit nationally and that's helped immensely. This BS story that says, well, I could, you know, I only got white and Asian applicants for my engineering positions therefore I can only hire white and Asian candidates, that's just horse manure, you know, you have to diversify the candidate pool. Chad (26m 29s): How do you create your own? Because I mean, overall we've seen, whether it's small, you know, SMBs who work directly with community colleges or high schools, or even bigger organizations like the United States military who have ROTC programs, they are funneling their own into their talent pipeline. How do you do more of that? Larry (26m 48s): Yeah. I mean, I think that it's a critical question. We were for a few searches we have actually gone to the opposite extreme, and we've done retained searches and said, until you find us a qualified candidate of color, we're not filling a position and we'll pay for it. You know, so we've done that. I'll be very, very selectively because it's super expensive. It's unsustainable, across a broader swath, you know, and then we are super aggressive whenever we see candidates, diversity candidates that get presented to us in whatever form they come, you know, we're not doing enough hiring, with enough pace that we have to like really build the kinds of long-term infrastructures, like you've alluded to whether it be high schools, colleges, et cetera. Larry (27m 30s): Right. But when that day comes, you know, we'll figure out how to make those investments. Joel (27m 35s): You mentioned being part of a group of small and mid-size business HR folks, and that's sort of your sweet spot as a company. What specific challenges do you have that may be a Workday doesn't and maybe what are specific advantages that you have amongst your competition? Larry (27m 52s): Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, if we talk about our target customer, and Workday's a great comparison because, you know, if you're in a Workday shop, the thing, you have the moat that's of the most significance for these end-users is you almost always have an internal team who are Workday experts. You know, you hired somebody from Deloitte. You know, somebody worked with Workday for five years. Their only job is to help the end-users use Workday better. Now, of course, there's all the work that has to be done to configure it, blah, blah, blah. That's that's a huge effort that warrants those people. You come to a Namely account, you've got one HR person, one payroll person, maybe head of people, maybe a CFO, and there's no one there to help them understand how the product works. Larry (28m 36s): There is no time to develop that expertise. There's barely enough time, there really isn't enough time, to even read the emails we send you, especially the important ones about the things you have to do. So it's a radically different environment. And this was a huge shift for me when I went from selling Enterprise, you know, Lawson and Ceridian to selling, you know, small and medium business at Namely, and so what I've done and I think is something we've done very, very well is we have been very, very specific and deliberate about getting inside the head of that person, which is why I allude to this Facebook group I follow so closely because those are our people. The only time they understand is just in time, meaning when they need to change the product to do something different, they gotta figure it out in that moment, but yet they don't have anybody they can call to do it. Larry (29m 24s): You know, so what that means for us as a software company, we have to find that perfect balance between flexibility and functionality, just enough functionality to get the job done, but without too much flexibility to make it impossible to administer. Joel (29m 40s): So we shouldn't be expecting a marketplace on Namely to be opening up anytime soon. Larry (29m 44s): Yeah. 74 ways to calculate overtime. Joel (29m 46s): How did Covid affect your business? I mean, I assume this was maybe the one product they had to have or did you see something different? Larry (29m 54s): No, we we're very fortunate. You know, we definitely, I mean, we definitely lost a lot of customers to financial issues. We watched our overall, you know, payroll census decline, of course, you know, so it didn't matter what we sold that was new if you know, 50 customers had just reduced their head count by 20%, which of course is exactly what happened. You know? So we just got very inwardly focused. You know, we eliminated all of our external spend. We did bare minimum marketing. We did not hire a sales person for months. We just really hunkered down and said, we're going to use this time to enhance our product and improve the way we serve customers. Larry (30m 35s): And then when the story is better, we'll jump back into the heavy duty, go to market stuff, which is exactly what happened back in December. Back in November, December, we started hiring salespeople again, we started hiring SDRs again, we started spending on marketing, you know, so we're spending, I don't know, triple at least what we were spending a year ago today. Joel (30m 57s): Wow. And talk about the growth strategy, a global footprint, any acquisitions in the offing or kind of companies that you're looking to to acquire? Chad (31m 4s): I can't believe you didn't just hit him with the Chad and Cheese sponsorships. I mean, come on. Larry (31m 10s): I'll do that in the green room. We're always looking for interesting stuff as add on some of the things that interest us are, you know, richer workforce management functionality, maybe an engagement platform, maybe a wellness platform, you know, right now we do just fine with those with partnerships. But the thing about this target customer is if the more you can give them with a great solution, the happier they'll be. The one thing I will not embark on to write from scratch is a recruiting system. We have worked brilliantly with the folks at Jazz HR for years. I love them. I love their specialty. They have built a very clean, effective cost efficient model for most of our clients. Larry (31m 54s): Many of them will go to the Levers and Greenhouses in the world, which is just great too. But I will never build another recruiting system as long as I'm working. Chad (32m 6s): Or Jobvite who now owns them. Larry (32m 7s): Correct. Look at it. You know, the CEO of Jazz HR got all the goods. , Joel (32m 12s): So yeah, Larry what keeps you up at night? Larry (32m 14s): Always sales results. You know, you never get to stop that. I choked when I left Ceridian and I would never carry a quote again, as long as I live. Joel (32m 22s): All right, I'll ask it a different way. What's the biggest threat to your business? Larry (32m 27s): I think the biggest threat is losing sight of that customer. Number one reason companies switch systems is customer support. And with this customer segment, the switching costs are low. You know, retention is way lower in this market than it is in the Enterprise space for that very reason, you know? So you just have to keep the trust and confidence of your clients. And if you don't the rest of it doesn't matter. Chad (32m 52s): Larry, I got to say, I truly appreciate you coming on the show, a diverse range of topics today. And from a guy who's been in the industry since they actually used tapes. I, that just blows my fucking brain. Joel (33m 8s): What was your first concert? Larry? Larry (33m 11s): Oh, shoot. You're going to, what was my first concerts? America Chad (33m 17s): A horse with no name baby. That's right. Larry Dunivan everybody, CEO of Namely. Thanks again, Larry. We appreciate it. And geez, that's another one on the books, buddy. Joel (33m 26s): That's right, Larry for those who want to know more about Namely, or you, where would you send them? Larry (33m 34s): Larry@Namely.com works great. Chad (33m 37s): Outstanding Chad, another one in the books, as you said, Joel and Chad (33m 40s): We out. OUTRO (33m 41s): 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. OUTRO (34m 24s): 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.

The last time we brought Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas - authors of "Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out." - on the podcast sparks flew and listeners couldn't get enough. So we're adding to the Move Fast and Break Shit hits with COVID Workplace Whiplash! Check out more information and their free e-book at catalystconstellations.com PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your sourcing and recruiting partner for people with disabilities. Tracy Lovejoy (0s): For emotional whiplash in the workplace. The number one thing that we see helps is when you really have a space for connection and in true communication, INTRO (9s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (29s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody. It's your favorite podcast the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheesman joined as always by my partner in crime Chad Soash and today, we are just giddy, giddy to have Tracy Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas, back on the show. sfx (50s): cheers and applause Chad (51s): Again?! Joel (51s): Again, again, again, they're the authors of Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out: The Catalyst’s Guide to Working Well. Probably our favorite book title of the year. They're also with Catalyst Constellations, Tracy and Shannon, you came back! Have you had your mental health checks? Chad (1m 7s): There's so much feedback. So much feedback from our first conversation we had to have you back! Joel (1m 11s): Literally. Oh my God. It's so much love. Are you kidding me? Chad (1m 18s): It's sexy kind of love Joel (1m 21s): So much love. Chad (1m 22s): I literally had half a dozen calls where your book was in the background and I was like, what? What's going on? They're like, oh yeah, dude. I loved that episode. They were talking about me! Seriously. That's how my brain works. Right? So there are all these people who listen to podcasts actually bought the book. They enjoyed it and I was like, shit, we've got to have you guys back. So thanks for coming back. Tracy Lovejoy (1m 44s): Thank you for the ego stroke. Wow. That was amazing. Joel (1m 48s): What's got you guys all juiced up these days or since we last talked, Tracy Lovejoy (1m 52s): The thing that has us the most wound up lately we just gave a talk last week when we did a summit, we call it emotional whiplash, right? Certainly in the US we've seen this, this crazy time where in June, the Gallup organization put out these statistics about how Americans felt like they were thriving for the first time, certainly since pre-pandemic, but it's the highest that they have recorded in 13 years of checking this as a statistic. And then in July, we had all these headlines begin to hit, right? That Delta across Africa was unstoppable. That organizations like Apple and Asana and Amazon and Google were all delaying their returned to the office from fall till a little bit later, even into 2022, we begin to see lockdowns in Australia. Tracy Lovejoy (2m 42s): We're seeing the CDC go back and forth with, you know, mask regulations and so there's this emotional whiplash that starts happening for us. And by the end of July, Gallop did a different poll. And they said, you know, do you feel like COVID is getting better? And they had asked that same question in June and 3% of American adults that were, you know, the population sample said, we think 97% of us think it's getting better. And then by July only 50% feel like it's getting better. So we see this huge gap. Chad (3m 14s): Yes. Yes. It's horrible. Tracy Lovejoy (3m 16s): It's horrible. Chad (3m 16s): Let's throw back real quick for all those listeners who didn't get a chance to, yet to listen to the first podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself, the company in the book, because when you say we were talking about everybody, but also we want to talk about how it's affecting catalysts, right? So go ahead. Tracy Lovejoy (3m 34s): Perfect. So, Hey, I am Tracy Lovejoy. The very proud co-CEO with Shannon Lucas, who is also here with us. And we really focus on people who are natural change-makers in the world that we call catalysts. We published our first book, as you mentioned in October of last year, move fast break shift burnout, which is our ode to catalysts, to the firestarters out there in the world. And it's the depth of understanding from the research we've done of what is it that makes us tick and how can we be more effective in this world where we really see all these opportunities to make positive change. One of the big challenges we face as a population are really frequent cycles of burnout because we're running so hard all the time at these things that we see. Tracy Lovejoy (4m 19s): And so in the book we're talking about, how can you continue to do these things that feel you're born to do without the depth of burnout and without the frequency? So it's a little bit about us. Joel (4m 31s): But enough about you. Let's talk about Chad, our favorite topic us. So you mentioned the head fake, and I think that's super, super interesting because for me, I was, I was talking about the summer of love on the show, right? I was like, we're all going to be Vaxxed. It's going to be a party. It's going to be concerts again, sporting events and lo and behold, not so much. So now I'm dealing with, and I'm sure everyone else is that thought the same of like, eh, maybe not so fast. And I fear the day if the world goes back into lockdown, cause I think there may be pitchforks. And you know, like I, Tracy Lovejoy (5m 8s): I agree. I thought that too. Joel (5m 10s): Dogs and cats living together, I'm really fearful for that. I'm sure you guys are too. Tracy Lovejoy (5m 14s): That's been happening for the last 18 months. Shannon (5m 16s): Totally and Australia is really struggling. I mean, their lockdowns have been intense and you know, I have family there and it's really intense. I think more so psychologically what they're going through. I did go to one outdoor concert and that's what I was thinking, Joel, I was just like, we needed some release valve and we may have to, you know, like Tracy was saying, you know, what we thought might unfold in the fall? Sounds like it might not. But at least we had this little reprieve. I think one of the interesting things that this means in terms of the workforce though, is, you know, when we first entered the pandemic, there was a lot of talk about, well, we've been talking about the future of work for a long time and remote working and digital transformation and all of that stuff. Shannon (5m 56s): And why weren't companies more ready for that? And you know, this last year has been companies having to grapple with some of just the basics, right? Like, do we have the technology in place? Do we have the management practices in place to enable remote working all of that stuff? I think one of the things that we're seeing now is we're like, okay, there is no known end in sight. I was just reading something today that said, this might be our new normal for five years. Right. So we just don't know. And so as we're getting brought in to talk with leaders about how to navigate this, I think there's this super interesting thread about the future of work. Yeah. All of those sort of basic technological and managerial practices have to be in place, but really now it's about which companies are going to be the most human or humane. Shannon (6m 39s): And you know, we're getting brought in to talk to this leadership group and that's what we're focusing on with them. It's like if you guys can't support each other as whole humans showing up as a leadership team and dealing with each other's burnout and dealing with this emotional whiplash, like, it's tough to set a strategy and then have to change it six weeks after you set this strategy when you're the one holding the bag for the whole company, right? Chad (7m 3s): Isn't it really hard though, because we say leadership and really we've been leading, like it's still the 1930s, 1950s, right. We haven't changed and that's all leading toward profit. It's not leading people. It's not focusing on the people it's focusing on the bottom line. Shannon (7m 21s): A hundred percent. Chad (7m 22s): So is this finally an opportunity where we can start to surface the conversations that we've needed to have for decades to change this fucking vehicle that we've been in, which has been a horse and buggy and jump into a goddamn Tesla? I mean, this is, to me, it's ridiculous. Shannon (7m 39s): I think you're right. And what's really interesting, in addition to all of this, which all sort of like economic science would never have predicted there's some as great resignation from, you know, the sort of bottom of the, you know, economic scale to the top of the economic scale. Blue collar workers to senior executives are saying, I refuse to work under these conditions anymore, even though the unemployment rate is ridiculous. And so there's this huge pause as people are like, okay, life is short, the pandemic has taught us that I want to have meaning and impact. And so to your point, the leaders that are going to win the talent or are the ones that are going to do this pivot fastest, which is say, we need to show up as human beings. Shannon (8m 19s): We need to provide the support and recognize they're not just cogs in the wheel, they're not human resources. They are actually people in our organization that are making up these organizations. And interestingly, since we talked, Tracy and I published an ebook where we highlighted 11 different stories of companies that thrived actually during the pandemic, didn't just survive but thrived. And this is where we go back to the catalyst part of the story, because there were catalytic leaders in these organizations and pretty universally, one of the sort of C-level takeaways that of each of those stories is how they were meeting their employees, where they were as people and supporting them. Because if you don't have that sort of sense of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Shannon (9m 1s): Like if you don't have those bottom things taken care of you certainly can't help your company navigate this crazy transition we're going through. Joel (9m 8s): And who do you guys think is sort of hurting the most? I mean, we're going back to school. So I automatically think about, you know, working mothers and parents, particularly single mothers, where this was a huge issue. And if they have to go back into lock down or back to homeschool learning, that's one group that I think of is being really challenged right now. What are some other groups that you guys are seeing are sort of extra challenge right now? Tracy Lovejoy (9m 33s): Statistically, you can see that folks that don't have college educations are struggling the most, that even though there's a large number of jobs, there's still a population that struggles to find work because of the jobs that are available. So that's really present. That's not the emotional whiplash necessarily. That's a persistent problem. Shannon (9m 52s): But I think that's the right vein. And the other thing that I would add too, I'm on the advisory board for the Barbara Bush Family Foundation for Literacy. And before the pandemic, I was helping them with their tech strategy about how do you cross the digital divide to address really systemic literacy issues that we have in this country. And as you all know, when you can no longer go to school and that's an option that digital divide actually has, like, you know, 10X, a hundred X implications, depending on how you slice and dice it. Chad (10m 22s): Yeah. So let's talk about the whole conversation cause there's whiplash, but then there's also the conversations that companies aren't having about coming back into the office being hybrid. It's almost like, you know, the communication of these major organizations are just total shit. And then they change their mind because they made a bad decision. I mean, how does that actually affect the workforce? Shannon (10m 46s): But they made the best decision with the information that they had at the time. And we are guilty of this too, where like, look, things are opening up. And so we were like, we want to do a retreat. We heard that our community really, really needed it now more than ever. And it looked like that was a total reasonable possibility. And then a short six weeks later, you're like, no, we can't reasonably do that. So I just want to give some grace to the leaders because this is tough to navigate through. Chad (11m 13s): So, but there were so many jobs before the pandemic that company said, we cannot do these from home. Oh, guess what? We're doing all these fucking jobs from home. Right. So, so overall I think it has a lot to do with the companies, not taking the time to focus on the human, but again, focus on the real estate they've paid for and/or the management style that they have because you got to have a butt in the seat if there's not a butt in the seat I that can't manage that. But, well, aren't you, the worst manager that there is for 2021 or 2022 and beyond? Tracy Lovejoy (11m 48s): It's tough. I work with a fair number of CEOs. And to Shannon's point, there's just managing the disruption to everyone's business for some it's positive disruption, right? Depending on the area you're in. Chad (12m 0s): Isn't that what we're always looking for though, aren't we always looking for an opportunity to disrupt and there've been great companies who've done, done well. Tracy Lovejoy (12m 10s): Absolutely to the ebook. And just the compassion part. The, you know, question you're asking of who's struggling that it's easy to demonize leadership. It is, and yet CEOs are responsible for the running of a business and not having it go under. And so there's kind of two veins that we have to acknowledge. There's how do we keep the ship moving? And how do we do that to your point, recognizing that there's a revolution happening that we have to fundamentally think more about what the work environment is and what the benefit is to the workers, more than a paycheck. And so there's this balance that has to happen and yet in a very finite amount of time. So I don't at all disagree with you. And my favorite leaders are doing this, and this is what you see in the ebook that Shannon's pointing to, that we just published, that the companies that simultaneously we're like, we have to totally rethink who we are as a business, but we know we can't do that without taking care of you and your mental wellbeing and making sure you feel safe in your life and here at work. Tracy Lovejoy (13m 12s): Yeah. Then those were the companies that we see thriving, but it's hard. It's hard to do that. Joel (13m 7s): Can we dissect the word burnout for just, just a second? I think historically when people hear, burn out, they may be, think, you know, like, oh, what a pussy, like, suck it up and like, you know, rub some dirt on it and get back in the game. Whereas today I think we're reevaluating, like this is a real mental challenge. This is a real thing people deal with. Tracy Lovejoy (13m 34s): Oh yeah. Joel (13m 37s): So can you talk a little bit about what burnout is in terms of your definition and that it's a real thing and not just a, you know, rub some dirt on it. Tracy Lovejoy (13m 46s): Yeah. And that's evolved for us over, over the course of the pandemic because there's a definition that exists, right. And the World Health Organization has classified burnout as a thing, a diagnosable thing in 2018 it was added to their identifiable list of issues that we can experience. And it was tied to work place. It was tied to a feeling of dread in getting up and not wanting to do work. It was tied to a sense of reactivity. It was tied to, you know, not feeling like you have support from your management. There are very specific definitions. When we hit the pandemic what you're pointing to, is we have this more holistic set of things that were impacting our energy, our mental well-being, our physical and emotional energy, things like fear and uncertainty, things like isolation, things like lack of novelty for our brain. Tracy Lovejoy (14m 35s): And so it had to expand that we don't necessarily have better new language. And when Shannon and I would do workshops with organizations, we talked about it as burnout plus. Right? even different than how we had it in the book is in the book we were using a more classic definition. Joel (14m 50s): Do I get free shipping with burnout plus? Tracy Lovejoy (14m 52s): Yeah, no doubt. That's exactly right. And so it's this acknowledgement that there's all these forces that we don't have a lot of control of and that we don't have models, even in psychology to speak to the type of trauma that we're experiencing as a global body. Right? And so companies for the first time, as you're saying, have to move it past the soft Fluffy's of like, oh, you're a little tired too. Not only are my people resigning, but my people can't do their job and everyone's performance is suffering. And therefore my company is suffering, let alone that I'm sick and I'm, you know, actually have COVID and I'm out, but people can't show up and do their jobs. They're breaking down emotionally. Right. Rates of depression and stress are at an all time. Tracy Lovejoy (15m 34s): High is reported from psychologists, suicide rates have been going up across all populations, especially young people. So we can't ignore it. Shannon (15m 41s): Gun violence. Tracy Lovejoy (15m 42s): Yeah. Violence and aggression across the board. Absolutely. Chad (15m 46s): Yeah. And we see that on airlines. Shannon (15m 50s): Airlines right. Right! Joel (15m 50s): OMGod. Chad (15m 50s): Can you talk about the Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka? Tracey (15m 55s): Yes! Chad (15m 55s): I mean, Naomi Osaka pulled out of the French open because of, it seemed like burnout, right. Also the same thing with Simone Biles and both of them were looked at as again, Joel had said, rub some dirt on it. Can't you just do your job? And I think this has brought a new, I don't know. Joel (16m 18s): Spotlight. Chad (16m 18s): Yeah. It's not just a spotlight. It is really accelerated conversation in this COVID time. Right? Joel (16m 22s): Right. Tracy Lovejoy (16m 22s): And it's interesting with Simone Biles that what we saw across the week after she pulled out of the first event, that she then was talking about the physical impacts that she was experiencing related to this? Right. That she wasn't able to physically land. She wasn't able to physically keep her balance and that's not part of the burnout definition. And yet we see increasingly the physical manifestations and the health impacts that are tied to burn out, but usually we separate. Because if someone has pneumonia, we give them all the grace in the world to recuperate. Shannon (17m 1s): I do want to bring in too there's an interesting conversation, it was part of this clubhouse conversation and people were talking about, you know, are we going back to work? And what does that mean for us all, et cetera. And there was an African-American woman on the panel who brought up a really good point as people were trying to sort of, you know, universalize, if that's a word, the experience that we have during the pandemic. And she said, actually, and this is her reporting, I haven't seen the research, but she said, statistically black women are actually more interested in working from home because it's, there's just less of the friction that they have to navigate in society in different ways when they're in the workplace or in these different environments. And I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole, but I do think it's interesting that it's two African-American women who stood up in their power and said, no, I'm not doing this to please anyone else, my mental health trumps all of that. Shannon (17m 49s): And just the burden that we carry and, you know, Joel, you were talking about single moms and think it's like we, as leaders, we have to look at, you know, yes, there needs to be equity among how we're treating all of the people, but we also need to meet people where they are in their individual lived experiences. And that's something that no manager is taught to do. Right? I mean, we get some pretty generic management skills about how to make an effective workforce. Joel (18m 15s): So where do you think we're going? So in terms of, you know, diversity inclusion, equity, you've been pointed an African-American woman who feels more secure working from home, but you could also argue, right. That everyone being in their own little silo is not necessarily good for all of us getting together and learning to sort of interact with each other. So where does the world, as it is in terms of diversity and inclusion stand in terms of where you guys sit, does the head fake that we're talking about the whiplash impact negatively or positively where that reality is going in terms of where we are. Shannon (18m 47s): I connect this back to the leadership conversation that we were just having, which is, I think Chad, you were saying like, is this the time? Is this the time that we get to actually get to where we should be in terms of leadership and organizational structures and how we're showing up as humans? And I hope so. I think we, I think we have to, I don't think there's another choice. And so implicit in that is sort of what you were talking about and sort of building on my last point, you know, you can't treat all employees the same at any given day. Like one of the companies that we highlight in the ebook, they would have regular check-ins with people throughout the company built kind of a feedback system so that, you know, when one person was experiencing their own, you know, their own personal, traumatic experience throughout the pandemic, they would engage with them at that moment right there. Shannon (19m 33s): And they would know, oh, that person likes flowers, or that person would like a card or, you know, it's a smaller organization, so they can do that. But it wasn't, you know, LinkedIn did a different version, which is like, everyone gets a week off this week, we're shutting down the whole company. Also good, but it's a different way of the company that I'm highlighting was thinking about meeting people where they are. And I think that feeds into the diversity thing too, like that those are conversations that we haven't been taught or safe to have. Haven't been taught how to have them safely. And so what are the different needs of your different employees? Because we all come from different backgrounds with different challenges. Joel (20m 9s): Where does Wall Street fit in, fit into all this or shareholders? Cause I mean, my sense is that they could give a rat's ass as long as, you know, the bottom line is what it is. But is Wall Street coming to grips with a healthier workforce means a better company or could they care less? Tracy Lovejoy (20m 27s): I don't know, I don't know at what level. Right, right now I can say that we see good indicators that large organizations, if that's your proxy for Wall Street are recognizing that they have to listen to some of the demands that have existed for a long time, that they've been able to ignore, right? Places like McDonald's beginning to offer childcare, right? Like unheard of things shifting. How long will employees, the power that they do right now? I don't know. Will that really create a larger shift in how, you know, kind of power is distributed in the United States? Tracy Lovejoy (21m 8s): It feels unlikely, but I don't know. I don't see evidence right now "we've toppled the man," if that makes sense? Joel (21m 15s): I think they're grappling with what companies will be successful based on work from home or technologies that can supply that can support that. But I think they have yet to sort of think about what does that mean to the worker psyche and which companies are supporting that better than others and does it impact the bottom line? I think we're not there yet. Shannon (21m 31s): I would love to go down that rabbit hole for a minute because there's a couple of interesting points there. So the business round tables, redefinition basically of, you know, moving to stakeholder capitalism is a first good step. And they include thinking about the employees and their wellbeing, as in part of that conversation. We're sort of, at that moment, you could make the correlation to the sustainability movement 20 years ago, like how much of that is lip service? They, you know, came up with that on their own so there is some external pressure for them to be articulating that at least as a vision, even if they're not moving into it. I do think pretty quickly and giving this sort of talent place that we're at, it will prove out, so like if you looked at companies that had stronger commitments to sustainability reporting, just the reporting alone, they were outperforming their competitors on the Dow sustainability index. Shannon (22m 22s): So you start to get the metrics that then justify from the early adopters that then justify, you know, why different companies should be making different investments in that. I would also say the thing that's very alive and present this week is the IPCCs, you know, latest report on "were fucked from a climate perspective." And you can't disconnect this from employee wellbeing. Like I was up all last night thinking about it because in Colorado, I literally can't breathe outside. You know? Joel (22m 49s): Just to clarify the fires, the fires? Shannon (22m 51s): Yeah. From California, I'm in Colorado. Joel (22m 54s): We have a huge global audience. So they may not know what's going on in Colorado. Shannon (22m 59s): Yeah. Chad (22m 59s): Yeah. Well Greece is burning as well right? Shannon (23m 1s): And Turkey. Yeah. I mean, it's bad. And so I think, if you come back full circle, like our wellbeing as a species, businesses can no longer ignore. And so the case is being made like the most adaptive agile leaders are the ones that are going to help, hopefully. Tracy Lovejoy (23m 16s): Yeah. Shannon (23m 16s): Humanity navigate through all of this. Tracy Lovejoy (23m 18s): And this is a distinction, and to your question, Joel, again, I don't know if it's at what level it is, but Shannon and I see this a lot because there's a certain type of leader that brings us in. So there's companies that I can read about that are looking at like, okay, what is it that is going to attract talent? Check, check, check, let me put it in place. And then there's companies that are saying, what do we need to fundamentally shift in our culture to sustain and create a safe environment for constant innovation and to be ready for the next disruption. Tracy Lovejoy (23m 59s): So those are two different pathways. Joel (24m 0s): Interesting. Chad (24m 0s): Yeah. Yeah. So in starting to wrap up, I'd like to get some tips for catalysts that are out there and then the managers of catalysts, because we are, as you would said in a state of whiplash and it was bad enough being locked down in COVID in the first place, but now we're, we don't know where we're at and we're in the state of whiplash. So what are your tips for catalysts? And then what are your tips for people who actually have to manage those individuals? Shannon (24m 29s): You want to take one Tracy, and I'll take the other? Tracy Lovejoy (24m 34s): Yeah, I'll start a bit broader for humans. That zoom has been a really strange environment to support connection. And so for emotional whiplash in the workplace, the number one thing that we see helps is when you really have a space for connection and true communication. And when you have a, "I have 60 minutes on the calendar and we have this to get done, and then we log off" a lot of those conversations that would happen in the hallway, that would be more casual can't happen. And so ensuring that you are looking at what are ways to connect people is number one. For catalysts in particular that psychological safety, this is of course good for all humans, but you cannot support your people who are going to help create change and support disruption and help you be ready in the now and ready for the future. Tracy Lovejoy (25m 20s): Without them being able to feel like they have a space to speak their truth, even if that's, oh my gosh, I'm so tired today. I think I'm going to collapse. And there's not a lot of places that that's allowed to be said back to the point of, you know, brush it off. So for catalyst in particular, if you want the change makers in your organization, if you want to facilitate a place like that, you have to begin this work. Shannon (25m 44s): The other thing that I would add to that is compassion, compassion for self. This is hard. No one, no one's had to navigate anything like this. So just compassion for self. And then as a leader, bringing that compassion and the depth of understanding that we were talking about, about what each individual's experience is and related to that is building up like Tracy said, the naming of the emotions, like bringing that conversation into, you know, with your colleagues, with your direct reports, et cetera, this is what I'm modeling it "Hey, this was a rough week. This is what I'm feeling. How are you guys doing?" Joel (26m 16s): Yeah. So I'm glad that we brought up climate change. And I think that it would behove us not to at least touch on politics, with what's going on in terms of the state of the nation. And when you guys talk to companies, what is sort of their management of politics and how they let their employees discuss politics? Or are they, politics is off limits? Are they more open to discussion or less? Do they encourage it? Where I feel like we have to touch on politics somewhere and what your companies and clients are talking about right now? Tracy Lovejoy (26m 50s): I don't know that I have a good answer to that if at all? Joel (26m 55s): So are companies just ignoring it, hoping it'll go away? Tracy Lovejoy (26m 58s): Inclusivity right there, there's a tension in what you point to and I'm just trying to think if I have any concrete examples and I'm not sure that I do. Inclusivity is part of psychological safety and part of getting to the positive statistics Shannon was talking about. And so that means creating space for all points of view. But there's a line that companies are struggling with. I was doing an offsite yesterday and it's a company that one of their core values is inclusivity. And one of the leaders was like, I don't know how to draw the line? We need a few more guidelines because the other day an employee showed up and it looked like she had no clothes on whatsoever. Right. And so, you know, it's like, okay, if she's like, if she tells me, that's how I feel like my most authentic self, what does that mean in the face of inclusivity? Tracy Lovejoy (27m 43s): It's to your point of, you know, what do we allow? Where's the conversation as we are, you know, Shannon and I are advocating you have to create psychological safety. You have to let people bring their true selves. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Joel (27m 57s): A couple of examples I can think of. One is you, you may have heard the story about Basecamp? Tracy Lovejoy (28m 4s): Basecamp that's an app! Joel (28m 5s): You had a leadership that was pretty open about conservative viewpoints. When some left viewpoints started to come into play, they shut off, they shut it off. And then, so that there were issues there. People left the company. So obviously that was something where politics were actually came into play. I think it was Spotify or maybe Shopify. He was really direct about no politics. Like we're here to make money. Our, who was it? Was it Spotify? Chad (28m 30s): Shopify. Joel (28m 31s): Shopify. Chad (28m 31s): This is not a family. Joel (28m 32s): Yes. We're a team, we're not a family. We're here to make money. So I was just wondering if, I have to imagine companies are struggling with those same questions because these political issues are popping up in work. And as we work from home, I mean, our ability to chat with people outside of work is probably greater than it used to be. And I just, I just wondered if you guys had, had any opinion based on some of the more newsy items with politics getting into the workplace, but it sounds like not so much? Tracy Lovejoy (28m 60s): Great. Yeah. I don't have great insight. It hasn't come up in the work that I'm doing with them. Joel (29m 6s): Well rarts. Tracy Lovejoy (29m 6s): Yeah. Sorry. Joel (29m 6s): We'll just have to have a third show and hope that there's some other. Tracy Lovejoy (29m 12s): Collecting stories for you Joel. Joel (29m 16s): As long as the world keeps burning and turning, we'll have more stuff to talk about. Chad (29m 21s): That's Tracy Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out: The Catalyst’s Guide to Working Well. Also, you've got a new ebook out that we're just talking about. Where can they find all of these books and where can they find you guys? Tracy Lovejoy (29m 35s): They can find us at our website, www.CatalystConstellations.com and all of that good stuff is free to download there. Chad (29m 44s): I also like movefastbreakshit.com. That's a pretty fucking awesome! Tracy Lovejoy (29m 47s): Isn't that awesome? Shannon (29m 48s): Isn't that great? Tracy Lovejoy (29m 48s): We kind of became domain hoarders. Yeah. Joel (29m 50s): That is sexy. Chad (29m 51s): Excellent. Thanks so much for joining us again. And who knows? We might be talking very, very soon. Tracey (30m 1s): We can't wait for it. Thanks for having us. Joel and Chad (30m 4s): We out. Outro (30m 6s): 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. Outro (30m 48s): 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.

We throw the kitchen sink at this one. Three IPOs, five startups in rapid Buy-or-Sell, a new unicorn, LinkedIn taking on Upwork and Fiverr with its evolving gig marketplace, and the People's Champion is apparently a former Walmart employee. “F**k management, and f**k this job, I quit.” Power to the people, powered as always by our sponsors Sovren, JobAdx, and Jobvite. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. . Joel (21s): Oh yeah. Tim Cook says employees who leak memos do not belong at Apple, we know that because of a leaked employee memo. Hi kids! You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "bring on the bears" Cheeseman. Chad (37s): This is Chad "Olhao. No Olhao shit. I don't know how to say it" Sowash. Joel (43s): Oh, Ohleeeeooo! This week show Adzuna is going public. LinkedIn is going freelance and Clovers is going well. Okay, we're not really sure where they're going, but we have an entire show to figure it out. Let's do this. Chad (60s): Ah, Joel (1m 1s): I'm sorry to, to pull you away from sunbathing, Chad. That's we got this show to do. Chad (1m 6s): Not a problem. Pool's only a floor away. I can jump back up there and being back in that position in no time. Joel (1m 12s): Has your liver quit yet? Has your liver like resigned? Chad (1m 16s): Not yet, but I only have a week. So I'm working on it. And also this later this weekend, going to meet with Louise Grant, if you remember from the back and the Jobgate day, she's coming down to, she come down to Portugal for the weekend and we're actually going to meet up for dinner. So good. Going to be good to see her. Joel (1m 33s): Really? Chad (1m 34s): Yeah. Joel (1m 34s): She left Jobgate last year, right? Chad (1m 37s): She did. Joel (1m 38s): And what what's she up to or is that part of the meeting? Chad (1m 40s): She's apparently bouncing around the world. We'll find out though. We'll find out. Joel (1m 44s): Okay. Sounds like a new Chad and Cheese joint might be in the works. Chad (1m 48s): Could be, could be. Joel (1m 49s): Shout out from me. If we're getting to those, if we're done with the smalltalk, we got a long shot to get through Cindy Songne she's got a new gig. She's now a SVP at Talentcare. What the hell is Talentcare? I'll go ahead and explain it as sort of an employment branding, HR tech, ATS hybrid. Chad (2m 10s): Wow. Joel (2m 11s): I miss Cindy. Chad (2m 12s): I miss Cindy too. She's awesome. Big shout outs to, she deserves more than a shout out, but to Julie Sowash it is our fifth anniversary. We've been together for 10 years. I don't know how she puts up with me. sfx (2m 26s): Applause and cheering Chad (2m 29s): Thank you, honey. I love you and Happy Anniversary. Joel (2m 32s): Wow. She's a bigger woman than every other woman in the world. In light of that. My next shout-out goes to one of my favorite eateries. Little kids voice (2m 43s): "Oh my God, I love Chipotle. Chipotle is my life" Joel (2m 46s): We talked about Taco Bell last week, introducing it subscription model for a free taco or for a taco every day. Chipotle says, hold my beer, they're introducing brisket to the menu and no one loves good brisket like I do. Chipotle big shout outs to you. I'll be there immediately after this podcast. Chad (3m 5s): No shit. Well rebounding off of that one. It's big shout out to Liz Wessel over at WayUp. She wants us to keep the food subscription and the food news coming. She went right out the Taco Bell to get her subscription right after the announcement. So Liz she's our kind of people. So she'll probably be going to Chipotle as well. Joel (3m 27s): All right, well, I'm going to keep the fast food shout outs coming to Shake Shack. One of my favorite burger joints there, they're killing their four day workweek. They say it's on pause because of COVID, but I'm betting it's never coming back until the robots start flipping the burgers! Shake Shack this one's for you and your four day work week going buh-bye. Chad (3m 51s): True. True. So this one goes out to somebody who works at my favorite pet website. It's not pets.com. She's the AD over at Chewy.com. Her name is Nicole Vinci Adamson, and she says that she learns something new, every show. And Nicole you're making me misty over here. Thanks for listening. Joel (4m 10s): She also called us a maniacal recruitment podcast, which I feel like we missed our naming opportunity for that one. Michael Yinger also was very complimentary on the socials this week. So Michael was in a firing squad episode. And if you haven't listened to that, check it out, Resume Sieve. One of my least favorite names in the world. Chad (4m 34s): Sounds like he needed a shot after that. Joel (4m 36s): Anyway, Michael said, quote, "guys, just so you know, I've gotten more connections, more congrats, more recognition, and even a lead from your show than all the others I've been on combined." Yes, our podcast can beat up your podcast. Thanks Michael. Chad (4m 54s): And another Michael, Michael O'Dell down in Nashville, he's representing talent.com. Last week we put out the two new acronyms. We've got a, you put out the RAD and I put out the CTP, the CTP, the Core Talent Platform approach. And he loves that rather than the old ATS bullshit nineties narrative that we've been pushing. So thanks, Michael. We're going to continue to do what we do and call it out where we need to. Joel (5m 22s): O'Dell is so radical. Chad (5m 24s): So RAD. Joel (5m 26s): Hey guys, we got free shit to give away. If you haven't signed up, go to Chadcheese.com. We got t-shirts from Emissary. We got beer from Adzuna and we got whiskey from Sovren. If you haven't done that, please do so. And also feel free to leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. We love getting feedback and we need more of it, I think. Chad (5m 49s): Yeah. Always need good feedback. Shout out to progress kids. The US Soccer Federation announced Tuesday that it's offering the respective players unions for the men's and women's national team the same contract proposal. The decision reflects an effort to align the two senior national teams under a single collective bargaining agreement structure. And here's the big part pay structure, women and men getting paid the same, even though in this case, the women should actually probably get paid more. Joel (6m 26s): Yeah. One team is a little bit more accomplished than the other. Chad (6m 29s): Easily. Easily. Joel (6m 31s): And speaking of teams that are doing better than others, let's get a quick fantasy football update sponsored by our friends at Poach. Chad, you lost your number one spot, but it is only week two. Chad (6m 45s): I told you it's only downhill. Joel (6m 46s): The current number one, Pete, "don't call me douchey" Suchi is now. Number one, Miss Q kicked my ass last week and is in the number two spot. Chad, your number three, still respectable. Chad (6m 60s): I got bronze. I'm good. Joel (7m 0s): You got that bronze metal. We got "Breakin Benjamins" Kunze following you. We got Chris "got Gamecocks" after that, Christie "don't call me Jackie moon" follows him. Chris, "what do you mean? I can't draft Derek Jeter" Russell is out of the bottom spot. He's happy about that. I guess he whipped your ass this week man. Chad (7m 22s): It happens. Joel (7m 24s): Bill "football" Fanning is next. And I am near the caboose, but not quite at the bottom. The bottom is awarded to Jason Vorhees Putnam this week. Wow. That's your fantasy football update. Sorry to the internationalists who watched an entirely different football, but we're Americans dammit. Chad (7m 44s): I've been watching that football the entire time I've been here and it's glorious. My last shout out goes to four new podcasts who joined the Evergreen Podcast Network and the HR channel, the Recruitment Flex, Inclusive as fuck or Inclusive AF, the Hiring Partner Perspective and last but never least Talent Rebelcast. You can check all those out at evergreenpodcast.com and we've got some cool stuff coming your way very soon. Joel (8m 15s): That's a good lineup. In addition to the firing squad, I mentioned that we also released this week, the latest European episode, which featured our friend out of Sweden Elin and the recruiting robot. If you haven't listened to that, please check it out. Chad (8m 30s): Elin took she took a bashing because there were a lot of Sweden stories that she had to defend. So yeah, she did a great job and it was great to have her on, but it was not a great week for Sweden on Chad and Cheese. Joel (8m 44s): That is true. She, she carried a carry the load for them so to speak. this week birthdays, we got Jim Lowe listener to the show. Randall Emory, you like Karstens, Betsy Norris, Ava Zills favorite storyteller on social. Kevin Plantan ERE employee, who I don't know what he's doing now, but he's a friend of the show, Kelly Robinson Katrina Kibin, my step mom Glenda Cheeseman celebrates a birthday this week. Chad (9m 15s): Nice. Joel (9m 15s): Want to give her an applause and industry icon, John Sumser closes out our birthdays of the week. And with that Chad (9m 27s): Topics! Joel (9m 30s): Adzuna! Chad (9m 32s): Hello Joel (9m 32s): Big Chad and Cheese sponsor and UK based job aggregator Adzuna is planning to list on the London stock exchange with a valuation of up to a hundred million pounds. That's around $137 million in the US this is according to a report from British newspaper the Telegraph, pretty reputable. Adzuna was founded by our friends, Andrew Hunter, and Doug Monroe who still run the show, by the way, back in 2005. They operate in 16 separate countries and connect with hundreds of job sites to list around 12 million jobs each month. Oh, and they give you guys free beer every month. You lucky bastards. So Chad is your Robinhood account about to blow up with some British stocks. Chad (10m 16s): I'd like to say probably not yet. I've also got to give some credit to the AIM group for this story as well, where I found an awesome quote. So here's the quote "Adzuna has worked as a partner with the UK government on its find a job online job board, which played a vital role during the pandemic and with the office for national statistics ONS on labor market data use to track vacancies and to monitor the impact of the pandemic on the UK economy." So these types of moves, not only are they in 16 countries, but they're providing, you know, market labor data, which is exactly what we've seen Indeed do over the years. Chad (10m 57s): So I love seeing what they're doing instead of saying a buy or sell on this, I would like to ask you, Joel, would you rather buy Zip or Adzuna and why? Joel (11m 9s): Oh, well, one has a much bigger valuation and one is on the, you know, the NYC or NASDAQ and one, I'm not even sure I can get to with my Robinhood account, but anyway, probably man, you're going to put this on me. Yeah. I probably got to go Zip just from a brand recognition play from that. But I think, you know, to me, to me, the keyword here is timing, you know, 10 million job openings in the US as well as many millions more across the globe, which Adzuna is targeting. You mentioned Zip, their IPO was obviously not a epic failure. Joel (11m 50s): It's going to lead to more and more of these IPOs, which by the way, we're talking about on show, a few of them Adzuna has been growing globally. They opened up an office here in the US a couple of years back. They're leveraging our show to get sort of brand awareness in the states. And also back in 2015, they had a crowdfunding effort that raised $2 million from 500 investors giving up about 8% of the business. So some sort of liquidity event was bound to happen at some point, I think is largely in response to this initial public offering. 2005 this is one of the quiet success stories in our industry. Joel (12m 31s): These guys both came from Gumtree, a pretty successful company back in the day. So yeah, I'm gonna watch this carefully. And I think we have a Doug hopefully scheduled to be on the European podcast. Chad (12m 45s): Yes! Joel (12m 45s): We can kind of dig into this a little more here in the future, but yeah, Adzuna congrats sponsor of the show. We're glad to see that success. Chad (12m 53s): I think Adzuna is they're already more of a global player than Zip is out of the gate. And Zip needs to be more global Adzuna also has become a global player over the years without spending millions in commercial advertising. And we've talked about brand atrophy before. Right. So instead of growing something organically like Adzuna has, you can do something artificially, like Zip has and much like much like Indeed. And I mean, they've actually spent a lot of money. Now Indeed did grow organically first, but then they started just throwing a lot of cash at it. So I think overall, who has the best foothold right now? I think it's Adzuna. I mean, I think Zip is a great organization, but I think from a gross standpoint, looking at what Adzuna has been doing and how they've rolled out, it's been more organic. Chad (13m 42s): And I think they've got more of a longterm play unless Zip starts buying footprint in other countries. Then they start leapfrogging and they start winning. Joel (13m 53s): I think you've been in Europe too long. You're starting to sound like a European cheerleader. I love it. All right. Who'd you rather split on that one? Let's get to a Sterling, background check company. Sterling Check is launching its IPO today, as we record this show, Chad. So we've got to maybe check on that at the end, if they have actually gone public, which they probably haven't. At that point, it plans to list on the NASDAQ under the symbol S T E R. The NYC based company plans to raise $300 million from the sale of 14.3 million shares of its common stock at a price range of $20 to 22 for the 12 months ended June 30th, the firm's platform booked $545 million in revenue and conducted more than 75 million searches for more than 40,000 clients. Joel (14m 43s): Assuming a successful IPO at the mid point of the proposed price range, the company's enterprise value at IPO would be approximately $2.4 billion. Chad, are you buying this one? Yeah. Chad (14m 57s): We've talked about this on several podcasts. There is money in helping people scale and doing the boring shit. And Sterling does the boring shit. It's background checks, right? And they help scale background checks, which is scaling boring shit. Nobody wants to do the boring shit. So yes, definitely. Sterling is something I would buy because it's going to continue to happen. We're going to need background checks and at probably a much higher clip than what we have over the years, just because of all the hiring that needs to happen. Yeah. Joel (15m 28s): So we talked about Checkr a few weeks ago or last week. So Checkr is funded to the tune of a $4.6 billion valuation, which makes them more valuable than Sterling, which I say poppy cock English slang is lacking. So Sterling certainly actually bought the background check company that I worked for back in 2015. They also laid me off about six months later. So take that for what it's worth, but I know a little bit about these guys and they're fricking huge, a huge company. If you believe that brand awareness has value and brands have immense value. I mean, these guys really are the apex predator in the background check business. Joel (16m 11s): And I know we talk a lot about Checkr and how sexy that is, but once you get a background check company that you're happy with, like it's hard to leave and people like these sort of trusted names, they're not going anywhere. The market and the background check businesses estimated to be a 4.2 billion as of 2020 and is forecast to reach 6.4 billion by 2028. And Sterling is going to get a big chunk of that. So I agree with you. Like, I don't talk about buying shares of stock on the show very often, but if you're looking for something that's probably going to be pretty stable for the future, something that's probably going to pay some dividends at some point, like Sterling is in a really good position to be a pretty solid public company. Joel (16m 56s): So that one is pretty interesting and should lay the groundwork for Checkr to join the public markets at some point in the future, which we will undeniable talk about on this show. Yes, Chad (17m 6s): Of course. Joel (17m 7s): So let's talk about Freshworks, our last sort of IPO player, and they actually have gone public. So Freshworks whose software competes with Salesforce and others like Zendesk and helps companies manage hiring onboarding time off employee data and HR workflows in one place went public earlier this week and saw share spike 32% at the opening of their NASDAQ debut on Wednesday, they trade under the ticker symbol, F R S H that's so fresh isn't it? Was founded in India and moved to Silicon valley to be closer to its 52,000 customers. Joel (17m 47s): Chad, is this one to buy for you? Chad (17m 49s): This is a buy because it feels like a Google shadow company to be quite Frank. Google has a lot of money in it. They obviously see, you know, somewhat of a nemesis in Salesforce. So they're actually, they're using FreshWorks as a sale or as a thorn in SalesForce's side, or they're just running this as a shadow company. You know, I'm not really sure that Google will buy them just because of there's so much antitrust shit that's going on right now. But this feels like a Google shadow company. They moved to Silicon valley because that was where all their customers were. Bullshit. That's where your fucking that's where your major fucking funder was. Joel (18m 28s): Yeah. I mean, we've talked a lot over the years about how these big platforms, this sort of tag on an HR component because they have existing relationships for sales and whatever will make a dent in services that are more focused and it doesn't seem to, to happen in most cases, vendors are integrating with greenhouse and Jobvite not so much the likes of Salesforce or Zendesk. That said, they'll still take a big chunk of business just for convenience sake. If you're running my sales operation and my everything else, why not one at HR? You know, and I think there's something also be said, you mentioned the move to Silicon Valley, but this is really to me, an Indian success story. Joel (19m 12s): And I think it's a theme that we'll be talking about for the next 10 years as China becomes a political rival, hopefully not a military rival, we're going to empower and push more capital into the world's largest democracy. They still have a huge workforce in India. And yeah, I think it, if this was buy or sell, it's certainly something I'd look at. Being a Salesforce competitor is not necessarily the best place you want to be right now. But yeah, if you know, with Google's backing it certainly is a company worth watching. Chad (19m 43s): Yes it is. Joel (19m 44s): And speaking of companies worth watching, one that we watch on the fucking show every week is LinkedIn! You mentioned AIM group on a previous story and they were hot on this one as well. Chad (19m 57s): You gotta subscribe to those guys if you haven't. Yeah, Joel (19m 59s): For sure. For sure. It's well worth the money. They're probably the best global research on all things classified in the world. And I mean that. They don't give us any money whatsoever, although they do, they give us a complimentary subscription. So we'll disclose that anyway, LinkedIn has quietly gone live with a new gigs feature called services marketplace. Access from a grid button that opens quote "more LinkedIn services on the sale on the site's navigation bar. The feature showcases LinkedIn members who have provided, who provide freelance services and who have indicated on their profile, that they are open for business. Joel (20m 40s): The marketplace focuses on 16 categories of white collar work from accounting to writing. There are plenty of pros available because it's an extension and rebranding of a pre-existing platform called LinkedIn ProFinder," which we've also talked about on the show, "it's early days, but LinkedIn is obviously going after gig platforms like Fiverr and Upwork." Thoughts Chad? Chad (21m 4s): Yeah. I love the idea and it makes sense as Fiverr and Upwork revenues and valuations have skyrocketed during the pandemic, but, and you knew there was a, but coming, LinkedIn has to get their technical house in order before launching new shit. It was, it would be great if LinkedIn upgraded their old dusty ass tech, like, oh, I don't know, making sure that matching actually works in their system, you know, jobs against your profile rather than coming up with features that are supported by afore mentioned, dusty ass tech. And then sunset months later, like Stories. To me, I don't mind the throwing shit at the wall, but when you're doing it on a not so solid foundation, it just doesn't make sense. Chad (21m 49s): Get your house in order, get your tech tight, get smarter around your data and then start to put these things out. The problem is, I see this going away unfortunately. I think it's a great idea though. Joel (22m 1s): Jazz, not a fan. Yeah. LinkedIn's track record on this kind of stuff really sucks. Remember it's ATS? No, no one does. Is it even still around? I don't know. You mentioned Stories getting killed it's live video and events product is pretty average at best. It does however, have almost a billion users. So there are buyers there and they also have pricing power, which means they can pay freelancers more of a percentage of profits and they can charge buyers less if they want to. And people will move where money is and where money can be saved. It doesn't carry fees at this point, although it certainly will at some point. Joel (22m 44s): LinkedIn reportedly intends to implement fees along with a payments tool in the future. And I also am curious about GitHub's integration potentially with something like this, GitHub, which Microsoft also owns, could value greatly from GitHub professionals in the tech space, getting into this platform, which Upwork and Fiverr currently kind of have a strong hold on. So if they can adequately integrate some of the GitHub folks into this platform, I think it has a chance. Chad (23m 16s): The GitHub folks are about as anti LinkedIn as they come, but that's oil and water. So I don't see that happening at all. If GitHub wanted to do that separately, I think they have a better chance. And it's smart. Again. I think this idea is incredibly smart, but when you're building on shaky ground, it just makes no sense. Joel (23m 36s): The only thing GitHub users love more than they hate LinkedIn is money. So if they can make some money off of this, they'll do it. And speaking of money, let's take a quick break so we can pay some bills. And when we get back, we'll do a little of your favorites buy or sell. Chad (23m 56s): Money, money, money. Joel (24m 2s): All right. Yeah. We got a bunch of fricking companies to buy or sell. A little rapid fire buy or sell. All right. Let's, let's get to Clovers, Danny Clovers. Oh, that's the wrong Clover. Danny Glover's. Clovers.ai a video interviewing platform has raised $15 million in seed funding. The tech integrates with a number of ATSs, as well as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and the like. The company said funding will be used toward product development, talent, acquisition marketing. It looks like they're staying away from automation like the ones you see in solutions like Vervo and Paradox and will be taking on the likes of Hirevue, Vid Recruiter or Willo and SparkHire. Joel (24m 42s): Chad buy or sell? Chad (24m 45s): This type of tech is popping up all over the place but I believe the difference in whether a startup like this sinks or swims comes down to experience and discipline. Clover's CEO has experienced from HireVue and Cornerstone on Demand and held has held CRO roles prior. So, you know, sales is going to be a major driver plus the SVP of sales and VP of design are both from Cornerstone On Demand. So I like the experience, the connections and those connections to cash. So for me, this is a buy. Joel (25m 25s): Yeah, the founders are interesting in the issue to your commentary. The CEO of Comparably is in there as well as the former founder I think of Cornerstone On Demand as well. So I like the jockeys that are on this horse. The pandemic has made video more important and probably is not going away. So companies are going to be looking for options on the video front that maybe they weren't before. You're going to see people who hate HireVue. And there are quite a few who are looking for new options and Clover's is gonna gobble up. A lot of those people are looking for shiny new options. Chad (25m 59s): It's gonna be cheaper than HireVue too. Joel (26m 1s): Yeah. I mean, pricing comes in there as well. They have to, I think they have to get the global piece, right. Which I think they eventually will. They really play at diversity and I'm still not convinced how video interviewing can be a diversity play, but everyone is diversity. All those things said, I liked the jockey. I liked the wave that they're surfing. I will buy Clovers as well. Well, let's get to Nomad Health, a platform that matches travel nurses with health care facilities. They announced a $63 million round of funding. This brings total funding raised at the New York based firm to more than $100 million. Joel (26m 44s): The company said the funding round comes and mid growth during the COVID 19 pandemic. No shit revenue at Nomad this year to date has already more than doubled full year 2020 revenue. It also reported the number of transaction in its marketplace has grown seven fold since the start of pandemic in February 2020, Chad buy or sell Nomad Health? Chad (27m 5s): So finding nurses, especially during and after a pandemic, that's fucking hard. So Nomad Health is incredibly focused on nurses and clinicians, and have now over a hundred million in funding with their approach of helping clinicians find more rewarding jobs all over the country. To me, we've talked about Nomad before they just received funding. I believe it was earlier this year. This is a buy all day. Niche, discipline right in my area. Joel (27m 37s): A little side note, you mentioned some of the team there at Clovers. Nomad also recently hired Jeff Simon as their VP of product. Jeff comes from Indeed where he served as head of product. So I think some good products might be coming to Nomad here in the future. A total no-brainer. The pandemic has taught us that we need nurses and we need flexibility when it comes to nurse staffing, baby boomers, aren't getting any younger and COVID apparently isn't going away. Thanks red states. This looks like the apex predator among gig platforms if you will, for nursing a super strong buy from me on Nomad Health. Chad (28m 19s): Too easy. Joel (28m 20s): Let's get to Apna. And we got a year, a unicorn alert. A Bengaluru India based company that provides an app to enable workers to connect with jobs. Announced, Chad (28m 34s): Say that again? Joel (28m 35s): Bengaluru is that what you wanted me to repeat? Chad (28m 38s): Okay. Yes. Yes. Joel (28m 39s): All right. They announced a hundred million series C round this week, the funding round values of the company at 1.1 billion US dollars. Chad (28m 47s): Hello! Joel (28m 47s): The company is still in diapers at 22 months old and is focused on blue and gray collar workers in India, helping them learn new skills and land jobs. The company claims to be India's leading professional app and was valued at just $570 million in a series B funding round in just June. Buy or sell Chad? Chad (29m 9s): A mother fucking Indian rocket ship baby. So here's the Apna ingredients to success: high and unemployment levels in India, a mobile driven society and a population of 1.3 billion. So Apna is taking the app based talent platform and making it fucking rain. This to me, baby, get out your credit card. Buy buy buy. Joel (29m 37s): Yep. Indian cities are home to hundreds of millions of low skilled workers who hail from villages in search of work. Many of them have lost their jobs because of the pandemic and they're going to cities to look for work. And Apna is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this. Billions are going to be made in India. Freshworks Smart phone penetration has finally arrived in India, which means the timing is perfect for this company. Jesus, another strong buy from me. Chad (30m 10s): I know this is like we're going on the goddamn shopping spree here. Joel (30m 14s): Yeah, yeah. Too bad. It's our money. WurkNow? Or is it WurkNow? It's W U R K now or maybe it's Work no? Anyway, Riverside, California based WurkNow, a recruitment and people management site for hourly workers has raised $10 million in a series A. Founded in 2017 the startup lets recruiters post jobs over multiple channels, attract job seekers using video and social media, tags and pulls applicants by skills, ratings, and geolocation, parses resumes for client review, and matches applicants using you guessed it a AI. More than 125,000 active hourly workers are currently using the platform Chad buy or sell? Chad (30m 59s): Love the hourly space, but hate the SMB focus on this one. This is a sell. Joel (31m 5s): I can't help, but hate this space, like you, always have. Cheap clients going out of business constantly, still putting out help wanted signs and posting on Craigslist. Staffing agencies are fickle. Platforms are tough business if you don't have the dollars and 10 million really isn't going to cut it. I'm selling WurkNow. All right. Crosschq, or is that Crosschq? CRO S S C H Q the Danville, California based Crosschq has closed a 30 million series. A round founded in 2008. Yeah. Not, not cheap. Founded in 2018 Crosschq provides pre hire, candidate assessment, and reference check services. Joel (31m 50s): It also runs a candidate referral network. Its customers include Upwork, Glassdoor and Slack. Chad buy or sell? Chad (31m 59s): I hate the fucking name just from the standpoint of a spelling. I mean, come on. If you're gonna pick a name, pick something that somebody can spell or anyway, it doesn't matter. When you're talking about again, boring ass tasks and taking them off your client's back, they're going to use the money with this to boost employees. They only have 18 employees right now to 50. Yep. And they're going to focus on go to market, marketing in sales. So from my standpoint again, if it's about scale, if it's about taking boring ass shit off of your employees, and you can scale that at the same time, it's a buy. Chad (32m 42s): I mean, this one was hard for me. They fit the criteria. Joel (32m 46s): Yeah. Yep. All right. 30 million is not chump change. They're doing something right. They have good investors. They have some great partnerships, a good integration strategy in terms of a ton of ATSes. They have good clients. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and buy a CrossFit. I mean Crosschq. That is the end of rapid fire buy or sell big break and collect ourselves. All right, Chad Chad (33m 17s): GenZ baby. Joel (33m 18s): As far as employee resignations go one Walmart's employees decision to quit over the store's loudspeaker is certainly quality. And one of the wildest we've seen. Beth McGrath from Louisiana posted a video to her Facebook profile on Tuesday in which she can be seen in her black uniform, taking a deep breath before speaking to everyone in the store, over the PA system. She said, quote, "Attention, Walmart shoppers and associates." I'm glad that she started out as an official announcement. "My name is Beth in electronics. I've been working at Walmart for almost five years and I can say that everyone here is overworked and underpaid. Joel (33m 59s): We are treated by management and customers poorly every day. Whenever we have a problem with it, we're told that we're replaceable. I'm tired of the constant gaslighting. This company treats their elderly associates like shit." She went on to pummel management and ended the rant with quote, "fuck management and fuck this job. I quit." Beth Awesome! sfx (34m 26s): Applause Chad (34m 26s): There you go. When did take this job and shove it come out? Was it late seventies, early eighties? I can't remember this job. sfx (34m 34s): Take this job and shove it. Chad (34m 39s): This to me is the gen Z take this job and shove it. And I love now that there's more transparency where you can see these types of things happen because that's going to embolden other employees who are getting fucked and are being treated like shit. And she also said something about her manager being a pervert I think. Anyway, this is about treating your employees, right. Paying them. Right. And having more of a transparent society, even with wages. Right? So to me, I love this shit. And Beth from electronics, we got to get her on. Joel (35m 16s): Jeez. All right. Let's all right. Let's take a step back ever. So like if my kid did this, I would lose my shit. Because once you do something like this, your options for career advancement are a little bit more limited than they were before you decided to do this. I know it's a nice rally. It's a nice like. Good on you. Way to stick it to the man. But Beth McGrath now is eternally on the web. She is forever going to be searchable by future employers. And she's going to miss out on opportunities that she wouldn't have otherwise. So I'm glad for her that she got this out. I'm sure that her social media shit blew up. Joel (35m 56s): I'm sure traffic to the platforms went insane. I'm surprised that a young person did this on Facebook as opposed to something more hip. But yeah. Yeah. It's fun to talk about on a show, but for her probably not the best move in terms of her career. Chad (36m 15s): Yeah. This is 1989. Joel, when you had that job at Mr. Hero or some shit like that, this is an entirely new way of looking at jobs. And there are actually people that are out there today. I guarantee you're like, that's the kind of girl I want. She didn't just stick up for herself. She stuck up for other people, right? That's who you want. That's a leadership quality. So yeah, for an old white man, of course you don't want somebody like that, but there are plenty of people, plenty of people who want that kind of Moxie and they want that kind of care for their community to work for them. Joel (36m 52s): That's an interesting take. I'll also add that talked extensively about employees sort of ranting on other social platforms. I mean, this is a real issue for employers. And I think that they're totally sort of a blind or they've got their head in the sand about this being an issue. But social media and technology are presenting a whole new level of like employee feedback that people are. I mean, most companies are still trying to get their head around Glassdoor profiles, right? The world is so much beyond like I'm going to sit down and write, like I have time to write a negative thing about my employee or employer. Joel (37m 33s): This is way more fun. Right? Like put it on fucking TikTok, get likes and get shared and get picked up in some, you know, media publication, like that's where reviews and feedback is going. And I think companies by and large are unprepared for that. And if anything that they get from this story and the others that we've talked about is like, geez, we really got to get our head around our employees and what they're saying about us. Chad (37m 56s): It's a brand new world kids. And if you don't get your head around it, this kind of shit is going to happen. And guess what we're going to talk about it. Joel (38m 4s): As long as we never hear something about this happening at Chipotle. Chad, what is this your last week in paradise? Chad (38m 18s): Yes. I'll be back in the saddle again on US soil. And I will be a hell of a lot tanner than I was when I left. sfx (38m 25s): Oh, hell no. Joel (38m 27s): Also I'll be at a HR Tech next week If you're still listening to the show, if you're out there in Vegas, hit me up, we'll be doing stuff, come by and say hi. So next week show could be interesting. I'm on the road and you're sorta coming home. So we'll figure something out. Chad (38m 42s): We'll make it work. Joel (38m 42s): And with that, Chad and Joel (38m 45s): We out. OUTRO (39m 41s): 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.

You want some PPC? How about Porn, Politics, and Canvas. Boy, this week's show has it all. Firing Squad alums Canvas (no, not that Canvas) and Humanly grabbed some investment money and some juicy new valuations, while Glassdoor makes a fishy acquisition that Chad compares to Dice's dumb stake in The Muse. A battle is brewing between traditional ATS's and the bots of the future. Who ya' got? Chad & Cheese sound off. Also, Salesforce messes with Texas and gets political, as they have a tendency to do. Of course, we had to end on a story, a cautionary tale, deep fakes and revenge porn 2.0. Creepy? Oh yeah! This cornucopia of goodness is brought to you by Sovren, JobAdx, and Jobvite! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. 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 (20s): Oh yeah. Two guys who will never win a recall election. What's up kiddies? It's your favorite Gavin Newsome lookalikes, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "Turd Ferguson" Cheeseman. Chad (36s): This is Chad "just chilling" Sowash. Joel (39s): And on this week, show Glassdoor smells fishy. Salesforce messes with Texas and get ready for revenge porn 2.0, and you thought Bitcoin was complicated. All right, Chad, I'm going to introduce a new segment called where is Chad in Europe? We all know you're in Portugal, but give us the deets on what's going on with Chad this week. Chad (1m 6s): Yes, I am in a little town called Tavira, which is just east, about half an hour east of Farro, If you take the train. Just loving it! It is old world. It is cobblestones, has a river right down the middle of town. There's beach. There's great food, wine. I mean, I just, I can't get enough, man. I just can't get enough. Joel (1m 32s): So I mentioned in the green room that you've gone from like happy vacationer to you've crossed over into just this is zen-like state that you may never come back from. So I'm equal parts, happy and jealous that you found this new Chad. It's interesting. I'm willing to explore the new Chad, Applebee's misses you though. Applebee's misses you. That's that's the problem. Chad (1m 56s): I don't miss Applebee's one fucking bit. Joel (1m 60s): One thing you might miss is college football, which is going to lead me to my first shout out. I don't know if you even saw this or not, but did you see the cat at the University of Miami football game? Chad (2m 11s): I did not. Joel (2m 12s): You did not. Okay. That's why I brought it up. Okay. So, the Miami Hurricanes are playing a big game, obviously. And there's a cat. I don't know how cats keep getting into professional venues or sports venues, but they do. So it's a cat and it looks like it got into, I don't know the luxury suite of some alumni and it's literally hanging like by its claw on the edge. I'm like, hang on the edge. Right? It's gonna fall. They can't get to it. Everyone in the stadium sees this cat hanging for its life and someone below it. I'm going to say 25ish feet below. So it might not have killed it, but definitely would have, would have injured it. Joel (2m 54s): Someone had an American flag and they did like the old style, like firefighters, where they had the trampoline at the bottom of the building. So they spread out this flag and the cat fell into this flag. Unharmed. It was magical. I thought you, he missed it. He missed this. We'll get a big applause. You know, I'm kind of a cat guy. Anyway, this was humanity at its best. And I wanted to give him a shout out. Chad (3m 23s): That's fucking awesome. Joel (3m 24s): Save the pussies. Chad (3m 27s): Always, always. I want to give a shout out to fantasy football since we're talking about fantasy football, because I blew everybody away in week one and that's, it's all downhill hill from here. So I quit, that's it. I'm done. I quit. Joel (3m 43s): I think you've kind of quit on everything at this point. Chad, every photo I get a view on a beach drinking wine in your bathing suit tells me that you're quitting. Chad (3m 52s): That's not quitting. Joel (3m 54s): Out to lunch. Yeah, we'll get to fantasy in a second. We'll get the leaderboard. I want to give a shout out to Taco Bell. You probably missed this one too, over there in Europe. So, so Taco Bell is launching its taco lovers subscription service. That's right. For $10 a month, subscribers can pick up one taco per day for a 30 day stretch. Chad. I'm in heaven. Chad (4m 18s): That's smart. Joel (4m 19s): That's the taco lovers subscription. $10 a month gets you free tacos every day. Chad (4m 24s): So do they have a Joel Cheeseman nacho supreme subscription? Because I could see you getting into that. Joel (4m 30s): I have my own line at the drive through basically. Get the free cinnamon twist ready. It's in it twists. Chad (4m 40s): So you love Taco Bell. Well, I love our listeners. We received a great message from Chase over at CHG Healthcare. Sorry, buddy. You missed out on the fantasy football cut, but there's always next year. And yes, as soon as we start doing live events. I promise you we'll sit down for a beer or whiskey and that's an open invite to any of our listeners. If you want to buy us beer whiskey at the bar, we are here for you. We will drink with you. That's who we are. Joel (5m 8s): No doubt. And you probably miss this one as well. We love our listeners and we love our sponsors. Symphony Talent sent me some brownies. I assume that there's some waiting for you at home, if your house guest hasn't eaten them all, already. So thanks for the thanks for the sweets Symphony. We appreciate it. Chad (5m 25s): Yeah. They might have. More than likely who knows, who knows? Shout out to the Job Board Doctor this week. He, he validated our what? The actual fuck thoughts on DHI, Dice's parent company for throwing 3 million at the Muse. Again, a head-scratcher not just for Chad and Cheese, but pretty much for everybody who is who's listened to the podcast thus far. Joel (5m 51s): Yeah. And I think Adam Gordon was it, kinda defended the move. I'm forgetting exactly who or what he said, but he's drinking a lot of scotch apparently from where he is in the world. I got a couple of LinkedIn's for you since I don't think they actually make any of the new stories this week. Number one, LinkedIn articles for pages. Yes. You've been writing articles on LinkedIn as a person, but now you can do it as a company. And I'm going to go off on a little tangent here, but every company listening to this probably has a blog section on their company page. This is the vendor side, not necessarily the employers, but most people are writing blogs and they're emailing their list and everything else. Joel (6m 37s): And as someone who's been doing it for a long time, I can tell you that the exposure that your posts get on your own site now is shit in the days of like no social media, like SEO and people search shit, and that you could share something and actually got exposure. Those days are gone. If, if you, if you're not publishing on the platform that you're on, if you're linking out from a post that you're sharing, you're getting about a 10th of the exposure that you would normally get if you posted on the platform. So my word of words of wisdom here is that if you are a company, a vendor that's blogging on your own site, that might be fine, but I would seriously consider posting on whatever platform you want. Joel (7m 22s): And let's be honest in our, in our world. LinkedIn is where everybody is and you should consider posting those articles on LinkedIn, because they're going to get a lot more exposure because they're actually on LinkedIn. So if you're doing it old school blog on your site, reconsider posting these things actually on the platform. Off my soap box. Thanks for listening. Chad (7m 44s): I, there are a couple of things here. I think the first off it's your content, but you're giving it to them. So you've got, you've got to be cognizant of that first and foremost, second, I think there's a better way from a marketing standpoint, to tease in articles on LinkedIn, and then draw people back to your website. There are different ways to do it. Not to mention from an SEO standpoint, it doesn't hurt either, right? That having those backlinks. So don't just, I don't think it's an "or" situation. I think it's an "and" situation. You don't want duplicate content. What you do is you massage it differently for LinkedIn and you make it shorter and you lead into something longer on your site. Chad (8m 24s): And you know, maybe we start doing that with transcriptions, a little mini transcriptions on LinkedIn, which actually bolster more site traffic for us. Maybe we'll check it out. I don't know. Joel (8m 33s): Yeah, look, you need to rethink it. If you're doing it like it's 2011. If you can play the game correctly, then you can win. But you can't, I see too many companies that just repost a link on whatever and they're done. And if you go to their main site, there's no comments. There's no likes. I mean, you can tell there's very little engagement, so just rethink your content marketing strategy. Chad (8m 58s): I agree. What else do we have at LinkedIn? Joel (9m 1s): So I've got another LinkedIn thing. So every now and then I throw on a little poll, which I think are kind of fun. I should, I have a question. So you and I have been talking a lot about, does a developer and, you know, Mishawaka, you know, does he make the say, or she make the same as someone in Minneapolis or Seattle or so. So I've been kind of coming to your side of the fence on this, that, okay. You know, if we're going to go all remote, then kind of, yeah. It's hard to post a job and say, okay, well, depending on where you are is what you're going to get paid. So I threw the question out on LinkedIn. It was basically will a developer in rural America make the same salary as a developer in Boston or Seattle by let's say 2030. Joel (9m 43s): I had 415 responses, which isn't bad. That's George LaRoc territory in terms of significance. Chad (9m 49s): Not too shabby. Yeah. That's good. Joel (9m 50s): So we got 30, 35% said, yes, but we had 65 said no. So I thought that was worth mentioning that we're still a ways away from people accepting the, you can live anywhere and make the same salary as someone in a high market Chad (10m 7s): Here in the US we've been conditioned to think the way that companies want us to think. I mean, we've been taking the narrative of whatever the company says as this is how life works and we're starting to see, I think 30% is great to be quite Frank. I mean, because we're nothing but a bunch of fucking robots at this point. Oh, you're going to pay me what? Oh, I'm so, so thank you. Thank you so much, sir. We're out of that now. We're like, fuck you work. I'm going to go somewhere else, especially in this kind of market. So I think 30% is good. And we're starting to understand that, you know, we're working our way out of that you know, being conditioned by corporate America narrative. I mean, it's just, it's total bullshit. Chad (10m 48s): It doesn't matter where you do the work. It's the work, it's the same work. And it's about the person's value. Not about where they choose to live. Joel (10m 56s): Enough said. Shout out to Jessica Lee. Oh, she's a long time. Or she's been promoted to SVP of Global Talent Development at Marriott International. Chad (11m 6s): Big applause. Joel (11m 7s): But she is climbing that ladder. Go Jess go! Chad (11m 15s): And big shout out to Erik Kostelnik over at postal.io, CEO, postal.io. You might remember him for selling a little company to iCIMS years ago, but he just got $22 million in funding for postal.io. So go, Erik, go! Joel (11m 35s): Nice. So those that don't know, postal.io is old school direct mail, basically. I mean, there's some other pieces of it, like donating to charities and stuff like that. But when he started the company, I thought that doesn't make sense on its surface, but yeah, like direct mail, like you get so few junk mail pieces, at least I do that. You kind of pay attention to most of it. Whereas the email gets filtered out. You delete it without even looking at it. So there, you know, take a look at direct mail if you've not looked at that. Chad (12m 8s): Postal.io, you can do gifting, and schwag. And I mean, there's all kinds of shit that you can send through the platform itself. So it's definitely a sales slash marketing mechanism that is in real life instead of just sending emails. Joel (12m 24s): Yep. And in light of the email discussion, shout out to MailChimp, one of the OGs in email marketing, and they've evolved into more of a platform for all things, including direct mail. Intuit bought MailChimp for $12 billion this week. So, Chad (12m 43s): Wow! Joel (12m 43s): If MailChimp is worth 12 billion, you can do the math and consider what some recruiting companies that do the same thing are worth. And shouldn't Text Recruiting, be worth more than direct mail anyway, or email. Anyway, anyway, $20 million is a lot of emails. So congratulations to MailChimp. Chad (13m 1s): Yup. Great "How I Built This" with Guy Roz podcast about MailChip. Listen to that and it'll give some pretty great fucking contexts. It's good stuff up. And tell me about free stuff. Joel (13m 13s): Free stuff. Well, if you haven't signed up for free shit, we got t-shirts from Emissary. We got beer from Adzuna and we got whiskey from Sovren. You need to go to chadcheese.com/free to get that. And also, while you're doing that and thinking about us, leave a review on whatever podcast platform you enjoy. Chad (13m 34s): Oh! Yeah! Joel (13m 35s): It's our oxygen and give us feedback, let us know we're doing a good job or what you want to hear more of. Or maybe if you hate these shout-outs, tell us in the review that you leave on whatever platform that you want. Chad (13m 46s): We'll give you a shout out. Joel (13m 48s): And I have a melancholy shout out. I don't even know if you heard this one being in Portugal, but Norm MacDonald, SNL fame passed away this week at 61 after I guess, ten year battle with cancer. If you're not familiar, we got some youngsters listening. If you haven't seen Norm McDonald's Burt Reynolds, impression of Jeopardy on SNL with Will Ferrell is some absolute awesomenous. So take a break, go to YouTube and search that and have a good laugh on us. And then let's get into fantasy football. You touched on it there at the beginning. So it's sponsored by Poach. Joel (14m 29s): That's an insiders deal here. Chad (14m 30s): A reeach around. Joel (14m 31s): We're playing fantasy football. Week one is in the books. Here's the leaderboard. Are you ready? Okay. Number one is you heard Chad, so he's I guess, out of the league now. Cause he's going out on top. Number two, we have Pete "don't call me douchey" Suchi. Number three is Christie "don't call me Jackie moon" behind her is Bill "fantasy" Fanning. I'm right behind Bill, which is where I love to be. Next up is Chris "got game" Cox. Ms. Q is who I'm calling "Chatbot Queen" Quincy. She's in there. After that. Next up is Makin' Benjamin's Koontz after him as Jason "punter" Joel (15m 11s): Putnam and back in the rear. If you know what I mean is Chris "I love Aaron Rodgers" Russell who, Chad (15m 20s): Wow! Joel (15m 20s): as a Virgin picked a quarterback first, which is never a great idea. It's also not a great idea when your quarterback has turned into a emo, a musician can get you three fantasy points in week one. So hopefully he bounces back against I think Detroit this week, but Chris, you got nowhere else to go, but up and fantasy football, we're having a good time. Chad (15m 44s): And the best fantasy football team name goes to Pete Suchi. Roy f-ing Kent. Joel (15m 52s): You would, you are obsessed with that show. And I'll end my segment here with birthdays. We got Lucas Roscoe works at Factory Fix and we got to Olivia Marquette. Who's basically a zygote listening to our show. She was born. She was born in the first of the month. So we missed her, but she was born in 1999. Chad (16m 14s): What?! Joel (16m 15s): Works for Lifetime Fitness? Olivia, thanks for listening. And assuming you don't know who norm McDonald is, make sure you go back to YouTube and watch some of those clips. Chad (16m 25s): Roscoe sounds like the guy has a barbecue joint and also sells used cars. That's awesome. Topics! Joel (16m 38s): Don't call us goCanvas.io. Canvas. Chad (16m 43s): Yes. Canvas. The world's first DRP diversity recruitment platform announced a series C round of 50 million. That's right kids, five zero million and a 400 million valuation led by Al Ventures with participation from a little goup you might know called Sequoia. Lachy Groom, Zoom apps fund. Hi, Sage Ventures, Bam Elevate, and Fifth Down Capital. All I got to say is DRP baby DRP. Joel (17m 20s): So the grand total now is 82 million that they've raised apparently 400 million. That's a shit ton of money. So they were founded back in 2017. They service companies like Lyft, Headspace, Airbnb, and Dropbox, and their play is diversity and you also should mention that they were a Firing Squad alumni. They were on the show. Chad (17m 39s): Ben was on the show. Joel (17m 40s): I believe that they got golf claps from both of us. Is that correct? Chad (17m 45s): I think I know I gave him a golf clap. Joel (17m 47s): Yeah. So I mentioned the European show and we talked on the European show about sort of diversity and the globalism of diversity initiatives. I think that we tend to be a little bit shortsighted in the US, imagine that we think only of ourselves. And it was really clear to me in talking to our European guys that this is an initiative that's global and we see money flowing into it from companies. This is legitimate sort of strategy. This isn't just lip service, you know, to the Wall Street Journal. And the proof is in the budgeting, right? So money's going into these services and is, and as long as diversity is legitimate and it's the real deal in terms of strategy companies that are building technologies to service diversity recruiting are going to be big winners. Joel (18m 34s): And clearly Canvas is sort of at the forefront of that movement. So yeah, I think this is a space to watch. I'm sort of calling it a new, a new acronym. Chad, you ready for this? I'm going to call them RAD companies. So right now, if you're, you better be remote, automation focused, or diversity focused, RAD. You like that. Chad (18m 57s): So eighties. Joel (18m 58s): Yeah. So we're gonna, yeah. We're watching these RAD companies for the future because this definitely seems where things are going and Canvas also, I'll note that they actually own Canvas.com. Chad (19m 10s): They did. They bought it with their last funding round. Joel (19m 13s): Yeah. They're not myCanvas, you know, dot.ai or something. So like good on that. And if Aman's listening from Canvas, if he had just gotten the.com, he might've gotten 10 X what he got from Jobvite, that's a different part, Chad (19m 28s): Doubtful Aman, doubtful. But Canvas also announced the launch of a new product, Canvas Diversity Analytics and Benchmarking already adopted by companies like Airbnb, Bloomberg Lyft, yada yada. But how does analytics help Canvas score 50 million with all? Guess what kids new sec rules, baby. That's how, and these are 30 years in the making today. Public companies must divulge human capital metrics considered to be material and an understanding of the company's business, including diversity and inclusion, which makes Canvases total addressable market solid baby. Joel (20m 8s): That's Tam for another acronym. Chad (20m 10s): Oh my God. So yeah, you've got the RAD Tam. So you're not just talking about budget. You're talking about forcible budget. SEC is going to force this shit. So the budget just exploded Joel (20m 22s): Yeah. So Chad, we, I think we both gave him a golf clap, I think. Is it fair to say that on this news, we might both go rousing applause for Canvas.com at the moment. Chad (20m 32s): The federal government is mandating that you do this. Yes. Joel (20m 39s): All right. Well let's, let's move to another firing squad alumni. We're on fire this week. Chad (20m 44s): That's awesome YES! Joel (20m 45s): Yep. Yep. So Seattle-based Humanly. I think they're humanly.io. So they got close has landed $4.2 million to help companies automate parts of the interview process. Total funding to date is 5.3 million launched in 2018 and co-founded by former Microsoft and Tiny Pulse employee Prem Kumar. Yes rumor has it the idea was hatched at a White Castle anyway, Humanly's technology aims to reduce the time it takes to find talent. Dad jokes, that's what you get here. Provide a better experience for potential employees. Once a company engages with a candidate, Humanly automates repetitive conversations at the top of the funnel before a human steps in to complete the hiring process. Joel (21m 30s): Chad, this one got arousing applause from both of us. Chad (21m 35s): Unhuh Joel (21m 35s): I assume this one is no surprise to you. You're still a fan of Humanly. Chad (21m 40s): I'm a fan, but I gave him a golf clap. So in October of last year, we spoke with Prem, right? The CEO and the dude is super smart, has industry background and I gave him a golf clap because of one piece that he needed that I didn't think he had yet, but it was incredibly important, it was validation. And that validation would be cash. Guess what? Kids, he just got it. Now he gets a big applause for me. Awesome. sfx (22m 8s): Applause Joel (22m 9s): You just made Prem smile, I think. Chad (22m 11s): Yeah, I'm sure. But remember, remember kids we've been talking about this, do the boring shit, do the shit that people don't want to do. And scale! Humans don't scale well, but tech does. So Humanly does screening, incredibly boring engagement. It's not boring, but humans can't scale it well. Records check, nobody wants to do that shit, that's boring as fuck. Employee engagement again, scale. So what they're doing is they're looking at different areas where they can hit and they can actually go after budget because it just makes good sense. Especially right now in this market, when you can't find fucking recruiters, what are you going to do? You got to use tech to scale. Joel (22m 51s): By the way, Prem, if you haven't called up a Anoop at Seek Out there in Seattle, you guys should hook up at a Starbucks. I think they have a few in Seattle and have some coffee and talk about the things you have in common and where the future could go. Anyway, Chad (23m 5s): Microsoft. Joel (23m 7s): Yeah. You know, if Canvas is riding a wave of diversity, Humanly is another RAD company as well, right? In the automation space. So to me, there are, there are the riding, the right wave. This doesn't surprise me at all, this move. To me the question is we've sort of seen conversational AI or let's call it the chat bot trend and how that played out. So you had like version 1.0 and the Mayas, the AllyOs, the Wade and Wendy's et cetera, were all acquired. There was, there was no additional funding rounds. There was no big terms disclosed. Chad (23m 39s): Clearance rack, mostly. Joel (23m 40s): So does version 2.0, the Humanly's, the Predictive Hires who we've talked to out of Australia, the Hourlies, the Talk Pushes, et cetera, is this wave going to catch on? And I feel better about this wave of companies than I did about the first one. Chad (23m 57s): I do too, even though I did love the first ones. I think there's no question. You say it all the time. The pioneers get the slings and arrows, right? They get the arrows. The thing is about this group and that is different than the first group. The first group got so much money so fast they were incredibly undisciplined. They were all over the place. They had no focus and they were trying to do everything for everybody. Joel (24m 19s): Yeah. Chad (24m 19s): This group, I feel, I could be fucking wrong and I hope not, but I feel these guys are more disciplined. I feel like they're not going to try to please everybody and do everything, but they're going to focus and they're going to do what they do well in their lane. And I think that that is key for any startup. Joel (24m 36s): Yeah. And paradox did a lot of things right. But one of the things that they did particularly right was taking a little money, bootstrapping, as long as they could, they didn't have sort of that downward pressure that a Maya had and an AllyO had really early. So yeah. Similar to how Indeed was really focused and disciplined around funding and all that good stuff. Speaking of Indeed, let's talk about Glassdoor. Chad (25m 2s): Oh my God. Joel (25m 3s): So we actually debated whether or not to cover this one, but our listeners love a little Glassdoor banter. So here we go. Recruit Holdings, parent company to Glassdoor, and Indeed has acquired Fishbowl, an app that gives users an anonymous option to provide frank employee feedback as well as joint interest based conversation groups to chat about work and search for jobs, Glassdoor, which has 55 million users is already integrating Fishbowl content into its main platform. Although Fishbowl with its 1 million users will also continue to now operate as a standalone app. Terms of the deal we're not disclosed. Shocker, but Fishbowl founded in 2016 has raised around $8 million. Joel (25m 47s): TechCrunch said "integrating Fishbowl into Glassdoor could attract a population of users out there looking for a new kind of LinkedIn" end quote, Chad, you tried out Fishbowl. You're not a fan. Your thoughts. Chad (26m 2s): Yeah, I think it's horrible. I also think it's pretty much akin to the employer forums that we had back in the day where it should just went crazy and me because there are anonymous con comments that can happen. So what you're doing is if you start to, if LinkedIn starts to add this kind of chaos to their platform, they said that they're not, they're going to run it separately. But if they start to add this kind of chaos of their platform, it's just going to blow it up. It makes no sense to me. I would add this one to the list for possibly winning a Darwin award for acquisitions for Glassdoor. This is just fucking stupid. Joel (26m 42s): All right. So we talked about a Dice giving The Muse $3 million last week. And now we have this news, which is the worst move by a company Dice or Glassdoor. Chad (26m 56s): That's a hard one. That's a hard one. Obviously you didn't ask me this before. Joel (26m 59s): You don't know the price tag of Fishbowl so that's hard to answer without Chad (27m 5s): I'm going to have to say it's a draw. These are both. Some of the stupidest moves that I can see from either side DHI with the Muse, Adam Gordon might think this is smart. I think he's gone nuts. And then, and then when we're talking about Fishbowl, adding the pro the possibility of chaos into a system right now, LinkedIn, which already has enough chaos in it as it is, but there are names attached to it so, therefore, it's kind of managed chaos, right? So I think equally stupid. I don't like either one of these moves. Joel (27m 38s): So, so here's my take. So isn't an interesting how Indeed isn't mentioned at all benefiting from this deal. This was a Recruit Holdings acquisition. Although they chose to spun it as a Glassdoor thing to the media. So Recruit dropped $1.2 billion for Glassdoor in 2018 and the platform is I think losing market share, not only companies like blind ZipRecruiter, ZipRecruiter partnering with Comparably, which we talked about, that's gonna inject some energy into that company. And more and more even social media sites like TikTok. I mean, whereas where people are sounding off about their company, but to me like small bets, like this probably makes sense for them. Joel (28m 26s): You know, while you still have 55 million engaged users, you might as well add some tech that might energize them. And if you can bring on maybe some fresh development blood that's okay too because I think since the acquisition innovation at Glassdoor has pretty much died. So if this can help that, then that's nice, but. Chad (28m 46s): Why don't they just fucking buy it 4chan. They should just buy 4chan. I mean, I mean, come on seriously. This is the same shit. Annonymous chaos. It's stupid. It's fucking stupid. Joel (28m 58s): Hail Mary let's. Let's take football's themes this week. Okay. Let's take a quick break. Get into some battle bots, I guess ATS versus versus bots. We'll be, we'll be right back. Chad (29m 12s): We talked last week about recruitment automation and there's been a discussion. That's been a running rampant through recruiting circles about the ATS, not being able to auto reject someone. Now here's where those two things collide us talking about it and recruiters talking about it as well. Our buddy Mason Wong, who is in recruiting over it at Lyft had a tweet thread that was 18 tweets long. That started out like this quote thread "a recent Harvard study about hidden talent is reframed by the Verge as a automation, mistakenly mistakenly, rejecting millions, then echoed by Joel Cheeseman and Chad Sowash, as how some systems automatically reject candidates. Chad (30m 3s): This perpetuates a myth that needs some clearing up." There are 17 other tweets after that, but first and foremost, making them Joel (30m 12s): Comments just to clear that up. These are like 17 a row that Mason put, okay. Chad (30m 16s): Thread. Yeah. So first and foremost, Mason, love you brother. But remember we actually made fun of the Harvard study. It was a bumbling attempt to gain our attention, which it did because of the Verge article. So I guess the mission accomplished, but at no time, did we perpetuate a myth? And let's say, well, I guess, unless you're part of the throngs of recruiters who are saying that the ATS doesn't reject candidates, which is a rabbit hole that sends you back to the fucking 1990s for fuck's sake. I really believe we should stop this old fashioned talk about ATS because we live in a world of tech stack within that world are varying degrees of tech and capabilities. Chad (31m 2s): For instance, iCIMS acquired opening.io, a matching system that could easily screen qualified candidates out or in. Paradox and Talk Push are evolving into systems that really can't be called an ATS, but can they screen candidates in and out? Yes, they fucking can. Humanly could quite possibly be in that same bucket of new and evolving tech. HelL, Canvas trademarked, DRP, because they are more evolved and they do not want to be labeled as an ATS. Right? So my point is that this entire discussion is a false narrative. Chad (31m 42s): We've moved past the ATS as we knew it a decade ago. And we're now looking down the barrel of a multitude of variations in a tech stack. I can't believe I'm saying this, but companies like Paradox, Talk Push, iCIMS, Jobvite, Humanly, and even the DRP Canvas, they need to be labeled as something more than an ATS, something like a core talent platform. So you had an acronym and now I have an acronym, a CTP, a Core Talent Platform, a term that allows evolution and stupid diversionary conversations like this are rendered null and void. Chad (32m 23s): We've got to evolve as the tech has because our brains haven't, we're having the same conversations we had 10 years ago. Joel (32m 30s): Yeah. I think, you know, you and I being old guys, you know, we remember the days of newspaper ads and transitioning over to the internet. And part of that was price. Part of it was, you know, more content or more, you know, you could put more in a job description online than you can in a five line, add a newspaper. What really drove the transition was the user. Job seekers, particularly tech job seekers, at the time that were really in high demand, we're online. So to connect with them, to have something online, made a lot of sense. So companies started to transition over to the internet. Well, if I can put a job on a job board, I can also create my own job board on my own website. Joel (33m 11s): So all these corporations figured out, oh, I can have my own job site. And this thing called an ATS will allow me to post jobs, take applicants, manage them, et cetera. And for 20, 20, 25 years, we've never really questioned that dynamic. I remember talking to a CEO of a chat bot early on in this evolution and asking the question like, okay, at what point does the candidate go into the ATS? And the answer was, it doesn't yet, and does it really have to? And I thought about that for a second. I thought, well, I guess it, it doesn't. I mean, if you're gathering the information, it goes into a database that's searchable, et cetera. Joel (33m 52s): It doesn't have to necessarily be an ATS. It can be this chat solution. And so as, as I've come to see this and companies, companies do it, I think, holy shit, this is becoming the next platform for hiring people. And as I look at the latest video from Paradox, and I encourage listeners to go check this out, it's literally, I'm asking about, you know, maternity leave or parental benefits and you know, windows pop out from the chat bot or chat window with videos that I can go like, look at a video. And I can actually go see locations and view the office virtually. And like, so, so this whole thing is going from, oh, I'm chatting. Joel (34m 33s): And here's my name and here's my date of birth and upload a resume to like, I can actually customize what I want to know. And it serves it to me as I ask these questions. And I think it's pretty, pretty interesting, pretty miraculous how we've seen this evolve. I think you and I are on board of saying like, this could be the future. And in 10 years it may be what job search looks like. Chad (34m 54s): There are so many different layers and you talked about conversational AI, but within that conversational AI, there's also a lot of parsing that happens. There's also a lot of matching that happens. There's also a lot of intelligence and contextual information that is pulled together to make sure that you're having the right type of conversation. And throughout that entire process, Mason, and all you recruiters out there, guess what? Yes, decisions are being made. It's the humans setting bullshit and stupid parameters, for an example, looking at job descriptions and requirements that are out there. The robots only take those decisions, that horrible data that humans have already made. Those decisions that humans have already made and they provide scale. Chad (35m 37s): That's how this works. So to say that, well, the ATS doesn't make the decision. Okay. Let's talk about the tech stack. And let's talk, start talking about a Core Talent Platform that is a stack of tech, where guess what? Kids, the humans are making the decisions at scale through algorithms. This is not 1999. Joel (36m 0s): Yeah. And we haven't even talked about the scheduling piece, the onboarding piece, like from, from cradle to grave. So to speak a conversational AI can take a candidate through the whole process. It's really fascinating. Well, Chad, moving on worlds are colliding. Politics and business are engaged, like I've never seen. And it's going beyond what our Superbowl ads say. This time, Salesforce and its let's call them combative CEO Mark Benioff are telling employees in Texas where a very conservative anti-abortion law or strong pro-life law, depending on what side you're on has been enacted that they've agreed to relocate staffers based in Texas who have concerns about their reproductive health. Joel (36m 45s): Ohana. This is a quote from Benioff. Ohana if you want to move, we'll help you. Exit Texas. Your choice. Ohana is Hawaiian for family. In our own home state, Indiana where Salesforce's name is on the tallest building in downtown Indy. Yup. Could benefit, right? Chad (37m 6s): Yeah. In 2015, Indy got slapped by Salesforce for making some stupid fucking decisions, some religious decisions. And Mark Benioff said, Look, we're going to pull money out of your fucking state. If you don't start changing your shit. But you know, we have to understand that not all companies will react this way. And as an employee, you have to make a decision. Do they fit within your moral and ethical beliefs or not? So if you're looking for a non-action type of organization, well, Salesforce probably isn't the place for you. But there are companies that are going to stand for something, which is, you know what I believe turns brands to be into iconic brands, while others pretty much find a corner, get into the fetal position and wait for the whole storm of stupid to pass. Chad (37m 58s): We did also see Uber and Lyft set up legal defense funds to cover a attorney fees. If drivers get entangled with Texas' new tattletale law around anti abortion. So the people in Texas who live in Texas, who don't believe in what is happening and they believe in the right to their own body, they're going to leave. And I hope they do in droves. So that actually shows the state they're going to lose workforce. Hell we can't even get females back to work right now. Do you think this is going to help? Joel (38m 31s): So just out of curiosity, I wondered where else in Salesforce, at least in North America, an employee in Dallas, Texas is, which is where they are in Texas could go to? Alternatives, include Atlanta, Chicago, DC, our own Indianapolis, Boston, New York City, San Francisco, or as labeled on their website, Canada. So you kind of have to dig into Canada to see exactly where in Canada. They treat it like it's just one big state, but it's basically Toronto, Halifax or Vancouver. Anyway, all of those potentially sound better to me than Dallas, Texas. But anyway. Chad (39m 11s): Yeah. Joel (39m 11s): You mentioned 2015. So you and I sorta sorta saw this firsthand in Indianapolis, which was basically a law that businesses could turn away customers based on their sexual preference. Chad (39m 23s): Right. Joel (39m 24s): Salesforce, in addition to a lot of other big companies here in the area, I think Angi's list, Eli Lilly, there are quite a few particularly tech Chad (39m 33s): Cummins. Joel (39m 33s): Tech businesses that are in there, cummins was in there, that took a stand and Salesforce actually canceled their sales event or their company event that was to take place the next year, and took it somewhere else. And the impact was that the law was actually amended, although maybe not as strongly as some others had hoped, but the law was amended based on a lot of the pushback. So the question is, is Texas Indiana? No. Chad (40m 0s): No. Joel (40m 0s): No, not only culturally, but also just by population size. Chad (40m 5s): Yeah. Joel (40m 6s): So it's obviously, it's a great stand to take. How many will take him up on this? I don't know. There's also a nice little PR piece of this that he gets. He's going to get headlines, you know, for doing something like this. It's a great recruiting statement. It's a great retention tool as well. So I mean, it's part marketing is great, but, but companies that believe in this stuff can actually make a difference. There's again, there's going to need to be a lot more in Texas to make a difference, but it can happen. And it probably will move a few employees to reconsider the state they live in. If their company is willing to relocate them, which is pretty expensive by the way, to a, to a different location. So, you know, I applaud the move on a lot of different levels. Joel (40m 48s): I'd like to see a lot more companies be political. I don't have a problem with companies being political, frankly. There was a time where they wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, but those days are gone. Chad (40m 58s): And you have the companies who want to be, they want to stand for something. I totally get that. And then you have the companies like base camp who just don't. Joel (41m 6s): By the way, Texans Torchy's Tacos is now in Indiana. So if you need a reason who knows Water Burger might be here next? I don't know. I don't know. People didn't leave the US in mass to Canada when Trump got elected. I don't know if they'll be leaving Texas in mass because of this either. Chad (41m 22s): It took a few years, but I'm in Portugal right now. So I don't know. Joel (41m 27s): Good point, good point. Well, let's take another break and get creepy on your ass. All right, Chad, this one's from MIT, so it's pretty legit. Disturbing knew this was going to be a short one, but hang with us here, there's a lot to uncover. Okay. A district I disturbing new AI app swaps women into porn videos with a click, I guess it does the same for men. Deep Fake researchers have long feared this day would come. The article wouldn't even name the site for fear of giving it too much promotion. They just called it "y" in the article, the tagline of the website, proclaims its purpose, quote, "turn anyone into a porn star by using deep fake technology to swap the person's face into an adult video, all it requires is the picture and the push of a button," Joel (42m 21s): a research company Sensity.ai estimates between 90 and 95% of all online, deep fake videos are non-consensual porn. That's crazy. And around 90% of those feature women. There have been other single photo face swapping apps. You've probably seen them on Facebook called like Rephase or Zile that place users into selected scenes from main street movies or pop videos. I know you were in that, in that scene from the Godfather recently with your face on Marlon Brando, but as the first, but as the first dedicated pornographic face swapping app, "y" takes this to a whole new level? Joel (43m 1s): The results are far from perfect. Many of the face swaps are obviously fake, with the faces, shimmering and distorting, as they turn different angles. But for a casual observer, some are subtle enough to pass and the trajectory of deep fakes has already shown how quickly they can become indistinguishable from reality. Creepy, scary shit, but something HR is going to have to face at some point. Chad (43m 27s): Yeah. This is where again, with technology, when we see things happening, whether it's there or not. So they just talked about them. This is a great example. So they just talked about the tech not being that great, cause it was kind of glitchy and it wasn't like perfect. Well, it doesn't matter. We know where it's headed, right? We've got to stop that much. Like we were just talking about ATSes and robots picking and not picking or kicking people and rejecting people, whether companies are using it in mass or not. We know the tech exists. Some companies are using it because they have to scale. We have to do something about it. To be able to sit back and say, well, it doesn't exist in broad base so it's not a big deal. Chad (44m 8s): No, it's a big fucking deal. This is an issue we need to take care of it. And I, any type of regulation we could put in place that actually says any deep fakes that are not of yourself are illegal and could be punishable by law. That's what we should do. Joel (44m 24s): Yeah. I mean, the challenges is going to be cross border. These sites are going to be hosted somewhere else. Like this is going to get pretty ugly. Chad (44m 31s): I'm ready to hit the pool. Joel (44m 32s): So just what we do here on Chad and Cheese, we prepare people for creepy shit. Chad, enjoy Portugal. I know you're halfway to coming back home. I know your dogs, miss you. Chad (44m 45s): Yeah. Joel (44m 45s): Yeah. And the Applebees and everybody else misses you. So enjoy your final few weeks in Portugal. And I'll just be sitting here in my Midwestern, abode, humble abode, waiting for you to get back. Chad (44m 57s): But you'll be eating Applebee's so that you will be one up on me. Joel (45m 1s): Dude. I got my Taco Bell subscription. I'm going out for a taco right now. See you there. Joel and Chad (45m 9s): We out. OUTRO (46m 0s): 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.

Think your pandemic policies and practices were a lot to deal with? Try cat-herding a 30,000-person company. That's just what Commscope faced and Head of Global TA Julia Levy is on the show to talk about just how they did it, and shares a lot of the questions still unanswered. It's a candid discussion on a challenge a lot of companies are facing, but are too afraid to talk about. Julia puts it all on the table and it's a discussion anyone in the world of HR and TA should not miss. Brought to you by those texting fanatics over at Nexxt. Do you need better engagement and deeper penetration into your talent pools? Call Nexxt! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Chad (0s): Were there managers that said during COVID no, I need to see these people for coffee? Julia (6s): Yes. There were. INTRO (10s): 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 (30s): Oh yeah. What's up boys and girls. It's your favorite podcast? This is your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always by Chad Sowash and today we are happy to welcome Julian Levy "don't call her Lee-vy". She's head of Global TA at Commscope. Julia welcome to the podcast. Julia (52s): Thank you. Glad to be back. Chad (54s): What's going on. We haven't seen you. What? It's been a year and a half plus it was on the stage at transform in Boston. What have you been up to you've changed jobs since then! Julia (1m 5s): Yes. I left Fiserve and in October of 2019, I joined, Commscope. Got to travel the world a little bit before the world shut down, but I've been helping transform the TA function at CommScope. And I'm sure most of your listeners have no idea who Commscope is. Joel (1m 28s): They're probably saying she's mispronouncing comScore. So yeah. Tell him what Commscope does it, it sounds pretty important. Julia (1m 37s): We're one of those brands that everybody uses, but you just have never heard about, I have an affinity for that when I was at Fiserv people thought I still had little blue pills. Chad (1m 50s): And I got your shot by the way. That's awesome. Julia (1m 53s): Right? So Commscope is communications technology. So we have the technology that enables game-changing discoveries like 5g or just the internet of things. Gigabyte speeds. So we are just that brand. If you use wifi in a hotel, if you go to Dallas Cowboys stadium were powering the technology there. Joel (2m 19s): There you go name dropping. Julia (2m 22s): But a lot of the big sporting events, school systems, hotels, we power towns, hospital systems like through COVID. We donated products to help have that in-building wireless connectivity to help support some of the COVID patients. We did some pop-up wifi centers and donated products to school systems so that children had access to technology. So I think it's a pretty cool gig. It's about half of our employees are manufacturing some of the cables that get planted in line or above ground, and then half of it are the engineers and, you know, the rest of the team that make the magic happen. Chad (3m 8s): Don't the Cowborys play in AT&T stadium, are they a competitor? Julia (3m 14s): Oh, AT&T uses some of our products. So all the big wireless companies do. And when I was interviewing and I looked at the portfolio of customers across all of our different applications and business units, it's, you know, pretty much every name brand that you can think of, we power their data centers. It's pretty cool. Chad (3m 38s): So I got great five G now that I've got the Commscope shot, the Pfizer shot. So it's awesome. Yeah, I appreciate that. Joel (3m 48s): And how many employees? Julia (3m 49s): About 30,000 employees globally. Joel (3m 51s): Oh a startup. Little small company. Chad (3m 54s): Holy crap! Why the switch first and foremost? Secondly, and what are your big priorities nowadays? This whole, I don't know, return to work thing happening. What are you guys working on? Julia (4m 7s): Oh gosh, we just rolled out a new EVP. So we've been putting that out throughout our employer brand, clearly the shift to a more remote work environment through COVID and then coming out of COVID, returned to office where it's safe and flexible work arrangements has been a priority. And then of course we're focusing on budget and media as well. So there's a lot of things. Internal mobility is on the top of mind. Chad (4m 40s): Everybody's talking about that, but nobody is doing it well, it's almost like diversity recruiting, right? It's like, oh my God, I did diversity recruiting is so important. Internal mobility is so important. What are you doing? Well, we really don't have a great program. So what are you guys doing? Julia (4m 58s): So we really don't have a great program. Chad (5m 4s): I love it. I love it. Ok. Julia (5m 5s): No jokes aside where we are in the early stages, I'm going to be helping lead the charge on what we do and how we do it. And we're in the process of trying to figure out what is our meta analysis. So really trying to understand and listen to our employees to hear what they want and to also talk and listen to the leaders to understand that what they want. And then how do you balance that and come up with what would be a win-win for everyone? It's I think a combination of project work, there's always opportunity to help develop teams and give people the ability to learn new skills or stretch their skills on projects, short term. Julia (5m 49s): And then you have that internal job posting and how do you break some of the silos that naturally happen within an organization? Chad (5m 57s): Yes. Julia (5m 57s): How do you highlight them and then provide the feedback? An employee might say, I want to get into project management and I'm an HR person. How do I do that? Or how, what skills do I need? And then how do we tie it into our learning? We just launched a new learning platform called Thrive. How do we integrate whatever internal mobility programs we have with the content that's on Thrive so that people can get a certification or take classes in different topics to help get them there and then work on projects that might be available across the organization. Joel (6m 33s): So I'm going to open up a can of worms with these 30,000 employees that you mentioned. That sounds like a work from home nightmare. That sounds like a vaccination requirement nightmare. That sounds like a coming back to work nightmare. So talk about that pandemic, which you guys did, what you're doing now, thoughts on other companies and how they're approaching it, what's going on from that perspective. Julia (6m 59s): It's a great question and it's definitely a big can of worms. Half of our employees are in our supply chain business and manufacturing business. They need to be in work every day, like in order for us to get our products to our customers. And so our supply chain team and our environmental health and safety teams have gone through some, you know, I'll say heroic efforts because I can't even imagine what they've gone through to keep our employees safe as a first priority and keep the lights on and the business operating as the second priority. And because we're a global company, I think we had some benefits of trying to get ahead of the virus as it was traveling across the globe in the sense that we have duplicated lines, right? Julia (7m 48s): So when China was really getting hit at first, some of those lines shut down, but we were able to increase operations in other regions. And so they've been playing what I think feels like a shell game of having people in the facilities working. From the salaried kind of non floor employee, then you have the you know, we're working from home and making sure that our infrastructure set up properly for that. An example, our intern program, we pivoted very quickly at the beginning of last year, as things were getting shut down and still had a really great intern program virtually. Julia (8m 30s): And we were able to keep that and keep the programming. So I think people have, have shifted pretty well from that perspective. And we were able to make sure we have the systems up that our servers weren't crashing when you had more people working from home, trying to get in. I mean, that would be horrible if we're keeping the world connected and our servers went down. I didn't notice any issues. Chad (8m 53s): How many positions prior to COVID, we're pretty much all in office, they have to be done from here and then now they are moving to more of a remote maybe hybrid versus onsite? Julia (9m 8s): It was probably 70/30 between people that either were remote completely or worked in an unofficial air quote "hybrid" mode. It's significantly more than that and probably closer to 50/50, just because we have that manufacturing population and we just instituted and rolled out a new flex at work program. And so that's really exciting that it's more of a formalized program because we know that the work that we do and the value we deliver is really independent of where it's performed. And we know that virtual collaboration can work. Julia (9m 49s): It's powerful, but there really is something about being together in person having that more purposeful proximity to speak, and that it helps spark ideas and have more meaningful interactions when you actually have the ability to sit with someone across the table from them. So we're trying to figure out how to best flex, to enable people to be in office safely, where it makes sense and be remote when it makes sense as well. Joel (10m 19s): So we've been, you've been talking about a lot of companies who have employees that don't like that so much, they liked working from home. Are you guys getting any pushback from employees? And if so, how are you responding? Julia (10m 30s): A little bit because it is a change. I guess, a change from the last, the last bit. But I do think that it will put people at disadvantage if they live near a site and don't have don't come into the office at all. When you think of the conversations that happen at the water cooler and the ability to network and make connections with people to get someone who's your advocate that might help you with your career advancement. I think things like that are important to build the relationships that we're all on zoom fatigue right now, and that, you know, remote working might not always afford, but as a company, as an HR organization, we have to make sure that we're focused on continuing to build whatever the culture morphs into, but that connection with individuals in that more remote workforce. Chad (11m 26s): Are you having discussions around this, a great resignation about the prospect of losing great talent because of maybe prospectively having people come back onsite and not giving them the opportunity to work remote? Julia (11m 42s): Well, I think we are giving people the opportunity to work remote, but we're trying to make it more flexible so that they can be in office when it makes sense. But we are having conversations around the great resignation. We are starting to see some higher attrition and are having conversations with HR, our HR colleagues, and our business leaders to figure out because the retention isn't necessarily a TA responsibility, but then we get saddled with the leaky bucket, right? Chad (12m 17s): Yes. You guys have to have some type of, you have to be a part of the conversation, right. Or no? Julia (12m 22s): Yes, for sure. We're probably a little late to the game and really raising it. I don't know if I think some of our leaders are seeing it because I'm starting to get some emails, especially from one of our business units around, Hey, here's another one that just came up and here's another one. So I'm seeing probably once a week from one of the business units, one of their VPs, including me on some of those messaging. So we definitely have some work to do in how we communicate the flex at work. And we do have remote. We've got three, we've got those that really need to be in the building. Those that can be flexible 1, 2, 3 days a week. Julia (13m 3s): And then those that are fully remote. I think that is a benefit because when you look at a lot of other companies, I think of Wall Street right now where they're, you know, demanding everybody be in the office five days a week. That's not the right decision. And they're going to pay for that. I think that the flexibility that we're offering will benefit us. We need to get in front of it and communicate it. So someone hears, oh, I've gotta be in the office. I don't want to be in there. We can talk through some of those benefits of why it makes sense and why it's a good thing to go in, depending on the job. It isn't one size fits all. Joel (13m 40s): Specifically what the policy is. For example, I think Apple has decided, you know, three days a week, people are going to be in on Monday and a certain day. Like have you guys had, do you guys have an official policy? Is it like per manager? Do you have a specific policy that you can talk about? Julia (13m 56s): Yeah. So what we've put out there as this, the I'll say I'm air quoting "standard" would be, I think a weekly schedule of some three, two to three designated in office days, and then two to three designated remote working days. But there is this openness to each of the business and function leaders that they'll engage with their employees and determine what's most, what's the most suitable option for their employees. So while we're putting out some basic guidelines, it is not that you have to be in this specific box. For example, when I started, I'm not, I'm an in-office employee, but I was only going into a physical office maybe one day a week. Julia (14m 40s): And not more than that. And that's not going to change based on my role. Joel (14m 45s): So if your CTO says, it's okay if our engineers or software developers are remote. Is that something that the company would accept? Chad (14m 53s): Yes. Okay. So those managers, and this is another big conversation because many of these managers are old world, I've got to see your butt in a seat, eight to five, what's being done to, to be able to educate the managers and also, you know, respectively weed, some of those old timey managers out, because this is a new world. And with the autonomy that most companies are going to start allowing, what do you do to ensure that your managers inside your organization don't become that iron fist? Julia (15m 31s): It will be a challenge for us because we have manufacturing roots and, you know, in those facilities, people need to be there and we've manufacturing roots, but then we've acquired more high tech business. So our, our culture is a little bit of a jumble of them. I think it's going to be a lot, communicate, communicate again, communicate again. It's going to, it's all around communication, basic change management principles, having those dialogues, having my team escalate when you've got a manager that's really digging in and making sure that we have the right escalation points, not just to me, but then I can go to that managers manager. And I think that our more senior leaders have bought in on this. Julia (16m 13s): So not just having it come from HR, but also from the business, the importance to have the flexibility and not just in when people are coming in to work, but even in our recruiting processes of, I need to shake someone's hand and look them in the eye in order to hire them. That's very antiquated. Chad (16m 32s): Yes. And do you have any stories of those? I mean, you don't have to name names, but I mean, were there managers that said during COVID no, I need to see these people for coffee. Julia (16m 43s): Yes. Yes. There were! There were ones that said, I need to fly this person in to X location. And we said, no and what we talked to some of them into, although probably a little bit grudgingly was to do some virtual tours of some of our facilities. Although we did have candidates asking the question, you did have some applicants that said, I really want to meet someone or see someone. So you did see it on both sides and then we just tried to come up with some creative solutions. Nexxt (17m 20s): We'll get back to the interview in a minute. But first we have a question for Andy Katz, COO of Nexxt. Andy, if a company wants to actually come to Nexxt and utilize your database and target texting candidates, I mean, how does that actually work? Right? So we have the software to provided two different ways. If an employer has their own database of opted in text messages, whether it's through their ATS, we can text on their behalf or we have over eight and a half million users that have opted into our text messaging at this point. So we can use our own database. We could dissect it by obviously by geography, by function, any which way some in sometimes we'll even parse the resumes of the opted in people to target certifications. Nexxt (18m 4s): So we really can dive really deep if they want to hone in on, you know, just give me the best hundred candidates that I want to text message with and have a conversation back and forth with versus going and saying, I need 30,000 retail people across the country, and that's more a yes/no text messaging back and apply. For more information, go to hiring.nexxt.com. Remember that's Nexxt with the double X, not the triple X hiring.nexxt.com Joel (18m 41s): Are you seeing a lot of candidates talk about remote work? Are you guys adding it to job descriptions, more aggressively? Talk about that. Julia (18m 50s): Yes. We're in the process of doing all of that or more official flex at work program launched two weeks ago. So we are working on the content that can be added to job descriptions. And within our career site, we do already have a remote category on the career site. We have some systems updates to do so right now the employee categories are just either you're fully remote or you're in office and there's not that flex. And so that's getting added into the system now, so that we'll be able to better identify and manage what's going on. But for sure, this is especially when you go up against some of the companies that are saying, no, you have to be in five days a week, being able to talk about our flexibility and share those stories will be very powerful and an attraction to those that want it. Joel (19m 45s): How are you approaching salaries? If I'm an engineer, can I earn the same amount of at Commscope that I would in Toledo, that I would in a New York City? Julia (19m 56s): It's an evolution, but we still do have some salary bands that are, we hire a lot in Silicon Valley and that's a very separate salary band, but we are trying to make sure that it's as equitable as possible. And that it really shouldn't matter. We should be paying for the work and the job and not necessarily by the location. Chad (20m 20s): Amen sister. Joel (20m 21s): I like that. Julia (20m 23s): But I'll tell you, I lived in, I've lived in Atlanta, I've lived in New York City. I was not, when I first moved to New York city, the salaries were not that much more. And maybe that's an HR thing that HR professionals just aren't compensated to the same amount of our value. Chad (20m 40s): Yeah, it's a brand new world, right? I mean, these are conversations that we really weren't having before that we are now. We're forcing the discussion. Another discussion I would like to force is around AI, efficiencies and being able to get rid of a lot of this minutia that maybe your staff or you had to deal with. During this timeframe, we noticed companies implementing more tech, more new age, evolved tech versus their old, clunky applicant tracking systems. What did you guys do, or what have you done, or what are you looking to do to utilize AI and prospectively, leverage it more? Julia (21m 20s): I'm a big proponent of automating where it makes sense and, you know, thinking a lot about the, not just the candidate experience, but recruiter experience and I can be to blame in past lives where we did all these little ad-ons and it wasn't cohesive. And I know some of it has to do with what ATS we might have and what its capabilities for integrations are. And I'm always trying to be mindful putting my old recruiter hat on for us, you know, dusting it off, putting that mindset of as a recruiter, how many systems am I expecting them to log into and how, and so that's always a challenge depending on what ATS you have, or, I mean, I'm always inheriting systems that are already set up. Julia (22m 5s): So how do I unwind, maybe some not so smart or efficient decisions that past leaders have made. And so we did bring in two tools, not because of COVID, but they were ones already on my mind. And the first one being Tech CEO, and the second one being SeekOut and I've used Hiring Solved in the past as well. And we haven't integrated SeekOut yet, but that is on the plate for later this year or into early next year, just depending on other and business needs. It's been helpful in a lot of ways, but again, it is this dependency on recruiter capabilities and how you get recruiters comfortable. Julia (22m 54s): And if I think about SeekOut, for example, it's people are so comfortable with LinkedIn and LinkedIn recruiter, and they're struggling against using a tool like SeekOut to me. I'm like, how do you not see the value in this and look at what it can do. And it doesn't cost $10,000 a seat, but there's this comfort level and maybe a little bit of laziness in, you know, I'm going to continue to do what I've always done, and it's worked for me until it doesn't. Chad (23m 21s): Right. Joel (23m 22s): What are some other HR tech tools that you can't live without? You mentioned some of the new ones, what are some that you use every day and love? Julia (23m 30s): I mean, those are the two that I love and especially TechCEO recruiters have really drawn to them. What I want to use, that we haven't had the ability to purchase yet and some of that's due to budget, is like one of the AI chat and AI features. Chad (23m 50s): Conversational AI. Julia (23m 51s): Yep. And, helping people apply because our application process isn't as smooth as I want it to be. But to have some of that conversational AI to get at the application questions and integrate in, so that it's a much faster, more seamless. And to be able to answer some of the questions of content that we already have on our career site, that's there, but candidates aren't searching for. Some of our process questions, benefits, questions, Q and A tech support, all of those things that will take away some of the minutia from the recruiters, but then also give candidates a better experience. Chad (24m 30s): On SeekOut, when you talk about integration of SeekOut later this year, are you talking about integration so that it actually searches against your applicant tracking system database? Julia (24m 42s): Yep. Chad (24m 42s): Okay. Julia (24m 43s): Candidate rediscovery is so critical because Chad (24m 47s): You're brilliant. Julia (24m 50s): Well, I know. It's so critical because why, and listen, I'm a recruitment marketing and employer branding nut, right? Like I love all of that and I want, but I want to be smart about the money that we're spending. And if we're spending all this money doing programmatic advertising and LinkedIn and all of that, and we have this database of a million people, why aren't the recruiters going there first? And the ATSes never make it easy for you to rediscover past candidates. It's not their forte. And so that is exactly where I want to get with SeekOut so that we can get at all of that talent that's in there. And maybe the recruiter never got to because they had already found the right candidate and had a good pool by the time that person applied. Julia (25m 37s): Although we should have unposted the job, right? To not have people in the candidate black pool, but how do we stay engaged with candidates and how do we rediscover who's already in our ATS before we send a job out to LinkedIn or, you know, programmatic? Joel (25m 54s): Are you currently suffering from ghosting. And if so, how are you combating it? Julia (25m 59s): We are, and we still ghost people, unfortunately. So, you know, Chad (26m 5s): She's telling the truth today. She's telling the truth. I love this. Joel (26m 8s): We love it. Julia (26m 10s): We still do. I will say that the candidate black hole is, is not as the, the time in the black hole is as much shorter here at CommScope than it's been at other companies that I've been at. So I'm proud of that, but we can always do better. And some recruiters are better than others at managing their rec loads. And some of that's on me as the leader to make sure that they have the proper rec load or support if they're feeling overwhelmed. And so I'll take that one. But I think some of it is the, how we communicate with people and with SeekOut, they have some messaging which has similar, I call it CRM light because we don't have a SmashFly or a Symphony Talent now, or an Avature. Julia (26m 56s): We're trying to use Intern on Success Factors CRM but we're not there yet. But SeekOut has this candidate messaging so you can set up those drip campaigns. So when the recruiter can send the message and then if they don't hear back from the person, four days later, it's sending the second message that has something different. And then however many days later, it's the next message. The messaging also we're running through Textio and it's, and some of it's the personalization that you need to put in there. If you're just sending out the, Hey, Joel, tell me, I have this job, would you be interested or who do you know?w You're going to hit delete and never look at it. Julia (27m 36s): But if I'm messaging you to say how impressed I am about your background and that I want to learn about your career aspirations and do it more in a networking aspect and getting to know you and sending you valuable content that might be of interest to you of, you know, Hey Joel, I just heard about X, Y, Z company merging with this other one, or, Hey, I just, I just heard this Chad and Cheese podcast I think you should listen to it. Joel (28m 1s): You mentioned employment branding, and I couldn't let you go without sort of digging into this. Employment. Branding used to be sort of straight forward, right? You looked at a Glassdoor, you looked at Indeed and other sites and it seems to me like the game of monitoring and employment branding is really getting fractured thanks to social media. We talk about TikTok on the show, getting into jobs. And apparently it's driven by a lot of, I guess, commentary and resume posting and people trying to jobs. And certainly on these social media sites, usually via video people are spouting off about their employer, which is really challenging to sort of get your hands around. How are you guys looking at sort of employment branding going beyond Glassdoor and how are you tackling that? Julia (28m 46s): So that's a great question. We started with listening and serving our employees, our candidates to understand our real EVP. So we did a more formal refresh of our EVP. And then when we think about employer branding, listen, like we're not, we can't be everywhere. And we're looking at Glassdoor reviews and responding and Indeed, and then there's, you know, there's 10 other sites that have those responses and we can't boil the ocean. And so we're trying to understand where our employees and candidates and prospects are on the web. Julia (29m 26s): And then we're going to just pick one or two and be really good at that and continue to listen. But I, my team, I have one person on my team who's our recruitment marketing and branding specialist. And then it's a passion of mine so she gets probably more of my time than some other areas do, because I'm so passionate about it. But we're just starting small and we can't compete with the Wendy's or McDonald's or Google's or Facebook's and some of these companies that have teams of 15 or 20 more budgets of, I was, I was telling Chad about an old colleague of mine that I caught up with. Julia (30m 9s): And he's at a company where their budget is like $6.5 million and they do 3000, 3000 hires. Chad (30m 18s): Somebody has budget envy. I can feel it. Julia (30m 21s): Yes I do. And like a team of 20 sourcers plus all the recruiters and the recruiter bench load is like 10 to 12 recs. And part of me thinks, gosh their process is so inefficient. I want to fix it. And then part of me has this envy of gosh, if they're providing this white glove experience, that's, you know, rolling out the red carpet. Oh my gosh, how amazing and could I, why do I want to work for that company? And so I don't have that budget. My budget is significantly less and I'm trying to rub pennies together, you know, to create a nickel. So I've got to pick and choose. I can't afford Altru. So we have a tool Videyard and we're creating, we're trying to do some of it home grown and then using an external vendor to help supplement some of that. Chad (31m 12s): That's amazing. Well, and knowing that not everybody has that kind of budget. Joel (31m 20s): Not everybody's going to space Chad. Chad (31m 23s): Yeah. Not everybody's taking the penis, rocket the space, but I got to say, Julia, I appreciate you coming on, talking about all this fun stuff. We gotta have you back on because we've got so much more to talk about. But for the listeners who don't know much about you maybe, or maybe even Commscope, where would you send them to link up with you or even find out more about the company. Julia (31m 46s): I am on LinkedIn. So Julia Levy, not Lee-vy on LinkedIn and I'm RecruitingJulia on Twitter and Instagram and julia.Levy@commscope.com. I'll give out my direct contact anytime. Feel free to reach out with questions. If you're a search firm vendor, please don't try and sell me. I hate that someone says, do you have any needs? Yes. I need my car washed. I need my laundry done, but no, I'm happy to hear from people. I'm happy to hear from anyone with questions. And you know, I would love to be on the show anytime to talk shop. Julia (32m 29s): It's a passion of mine to share the trials and tribulations I go through to help others not have to go through them Chad (32m 35s): And we love it. Joel (32m 38s): Can you bring Jerry Jones on the next show. Just kidding. Chad, another one in the books baby. Chad and Joel (32m 45s): We out! OUTRO (32m 41s): 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. OUTRO (33m 26s): 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.

Love unicorns? This episode of your favorite podcast has two, baby! That's right, Gem and Andela have joined the ranks of the $1 billion club. And by the looks of a few others on this week's show, more could be coming with Syndio raising $50 million this week and Cocoon getting a plump Series A. We also ask whether or not chatbots are all the same, or are some just posers in life's big taco stand? Then we welcome October the right way with Amazon scaring the hell out of us for the low, low cost of $1,000. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides comprehensive website accessibility testing with personalized recommendations to enhance usability for people with a variety of disabilities or situational limitations. 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 (22s): Oh yeah. That uncontrollable sobbing you heard earlier this week, that was Chad reacting to the inevitable flight back to America. Hi kids you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel appendectomy" Cheeseman. Chad (37s): And this is Chad "football is life" Sowash. Joel (41s): So on this week show, Jim is not just a really shitty cartoon from the eighties. Cocoon isn't just a really shitty movie from the eighties and Astro isn't just a dog from the Jetsons. It's apparently back to the future week on Chad and Cheese. Let's do this. Chad (58s): So duded, you're supposed to be in Vegas at HR Tech right now. WTF happened? Joel (1m 6s): Yeah. So the only flights I've ever missed in my life are because of a connection that that was too long. You recall us running through Atlanta a couple of years ago and almost killing me, but I chose, so there are two flights out of Indy that go direct to Vegas and they're Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines, neither of which are really considered the apex of service and timeliness. So anyway, apparently there's a rule on Spirit where if you check in more than 45 minutes before the flight, you can't get a ticket. You can't like check in and you and I both know the Indy airport. Joel (1m 48s): You can get through it in like 10 minutes to your flight, so it's super easy. I've gotten there 15 minutes before, you know, a flight takes off and made a flight. Anyway, I couldn't get a ticket. So I was like, well, this fucking sucks. So I rescheduled as I'm rescheduling, I text my wife and I say, you know, I can't get out of Indy, like bullshit. I've never missed a flight and I'm complaining. So anyway, she had, she had felt what she thought was maybe gas pains that morning. She hadn't gone to the ER, getting checked out because the doctor said so. She ended up having an appendix that needed to be taken out. Chad (2m 30s): Ouch, appendectomy. Joel (2m 32s): An Appendectomy, yes. So if you don't believe there's a higher power, maybe steering the ship on all this stuff. Like I couldn't go to Vegas, but as I couldn't do that, my wife had an emergency appendectomy. I'm happy to report that she's fine. I thought with maybe modern science, she could maybe be on her feet the next day. Not so much, especially with a four year old, you know, managing that is really hard to do when you're healthy, let alone when you've gone through surgery. So. Chad (3m 2s): Yeah. Joel (3m 2s): She's still at home recovering, you know, a week that I should have been at the Caesar Sports Book, you know, drinking an old fashioned and more shrimp than I can count was spent back here in Indianapolis, which you happily got to come back to. So you got to come back home and I got to stay home this week. Chad (3m 23s): Yeah and neither one of us were very happy about it. So being in Portugal after five and a half weeks in five different locations throughout the Southern coast of Portugal, drinking, great food, amazing fucking beaches and getting the best tan I've had in the last 20 years. I've actually for decades, my brain is finally centered, my priorities are reset and I am fucking happy. I don't know what these things are in the sky here cause we didn't see those in Portugal. I think they call them clouds. But yeah, we didn't have those. This is a yeah. It's a readjustment, let's just say that. Joel (4m 4s): We have a little overcast skies here in America. So how much SPF do you have to put on that dome of yours to keep it red free? Chad (4m 12s): Luckily, Julie was on me and big applause for her because I am one of those idiot men who like, I don't need that shit. So she had SPF 50, I think it was. And I got the best tan of my life. Didn't peel, none of that shit. It was perfection in five and a half weeks. I seriously, it was a good time. Joel (4m 34s): So I feel safe in saying you've been to Costa Rica, you know, you've done a stint in Portugal. I feel safe saying Portugal's kind of the winner of the two places. Would that be correct? Chad (4m 45s): Oh yeah. Especially since it is in Europe. And one of the things that we want to do is do a ton more exploration in Europe, not to mention, I mean the cost of living in Portugal is amazing. But the lifestyle just in itself is amazing itself. Not to mention, I mean, they actually have history, right? We're building history right now in the US they have history to be able to walk through those little towns. Joel (5m 14s): Bridges built by the Romans. Chad (5m 15s): That kind of shit, man. That's pretty awesome. Joel (5m 19s): It's so romantic. Chad (5m 20s): It's sexy to say the least. Joel (5m 21s): And God willing we will be there in November for a conference in Belgium. Although my wife and I joked she's had her gallbladder taken out. She's had her appendix taken out. The only thing left is her tonsils. So we're pretty sure there'll be a tonsillectomy sometime around November. That will keep me from Europe. Chad (5m 40s): Jeremy, better be self-sufficient by then. That's all I got to say. Joel (5m 43s): And hopefully Canadians can come visit, you know, via car by then. All right, enough about us. Let's get to shout outs shall we? Chad (5m 49s): We shall. And I'm going to start out with, I said it last week. I'm going to say it again. Louise Grant actually had a wonderful evening, dinner and drinks in Villa Mora last Sunday, and really looking forward to seeing what she's going to do next year, because she's coming back to the industry. She took some time off. She was at Jobgate for God over a decade, I think and now she's coming back. So it will be good to see her. It was great to see her and more to come. Joel (6m 17s): So you can confirm Louise is coming back to the industry, but not exactly sure what she'll be doing. Chad (6m 24s): Not exactly. Not exactly. Joel (6m 24s): Okay. That's a scoop. We'll take that as a scoop! Scoop, shout out combo on that one. That's good. I'm going to give a shout out to the recruiting team. They were the team that was sort of funding my venture out to HR Tech. They were real sweethearts during the whole appendectomy thing. So for Roberto, Mike, Kara, the whole team, sorry, I couldn't make it out hopefully next year. And they were just real sweethearts. So I wanted to give them a shout out. Chad (6m 52s): Yeah. It's kind of hard when, you know, your wife is going, you know, emergency surgery to say, get your ass out here. But yes, I appreciate that. That's awesome. Joel (7m 0s): Literally I got a doctor's note. I haven't done that since high school, just to show the HR Tech folks. So if they don't get a refund or a credit on that ticket, that's some bullshit. So HR Tech, if you're listening, make sure that a that's credited to the Recruitology team, Chad (7m 17s): Steve, hook them up. A big shout out to Garrett Friedman over at Jobcase kids for the promotion to SVP congrats, Garrett. We hope to see you guys in Boston in 2022, because a it's been a long damn time. Joel (7m 34s): I was going to say, I hope there's a salary increase on that because Boston is expensive. Damn shout out to Joe Shaker, speaking of expensive. Joe needs to stop placing bets on Cleveland, Chicago games, that's all I'm going to say, Joe Love you, man. Shout out. There's always next year. Yeah, Chad (7m 55s): That one hurt. We're talking nine sacks for poor old Justin Fields. Joel (7m 60s): We're talking one total yard passing for Mr. Fields. That was not a good day. Chad (8m 2s): Not a good day, not a good day. It's all downhill from here, baby. So big shout out to Michael Smith. That's one of the most original names we've had on the show, a talent acquisition specialist over at Berkshire Gray. You connected with me this morning on LinkedIn, says he loves the podcast. And I thought, you know, this would be a great time to say, Hey guys, girls, anybody who's listening them, connect LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, wherever you do that, give us feedback. Add your reviews on Apple podcasts, engage with Chad and Cheese. We love it. Whether you like us or not. It doesn't matter. We just want to hear it. Joel (8m 43s): Yeah. Another big fan Ryan Filmin of Charlotte loves the show as well. And I have a couple of a corporate shout-outs if you'll humor me here. So one is to LinkedIn, got to get them on. The show is a TechCrunch reported this week that LinkedIn is overhauling its audio and video, which frankly kind of suck and will roll out changes in the coming months. So will there be events, paid events, tickets through LinkedIn? We'll be watching that. Also Slack is reportedly rolling out Stories for company updates. You know, Stories has a long illustrious history on Twitter and LinkedIn, just a shit canned their Stories, Stories option for their service. Joel (9m 27s): Shout out to a weed. Washington post reported an estimated 321,000 Americans now work in the legal cannabis industry. No word on the illegal cannabis industry. The numbers, outnumber dentists, paramedics and electrical engineers. So a lot of the service folks are bypassing Applebee's and serving weed. So shout out to the green stuff and also recruiter.com launched a job board for recruiters this week. I had to double check the date on that and make sure it wasn't, you know, 1999, but yeah, good for them, recruiters need another space to look for jobs and they can do that at recruiter.com and last but not least for me, we made a list as we always do top five from Fountain submitted this week, they had us at number one, they didn't, they had us first, but not necessarily number one. Joel (10m 16s): I'm going to go ahead and just say, we're the best because we were put first. Chad (10m 21s): We're not. Joel (10m 22s): I'm also always amused that we're right after Matt Alder, that British guy and our review is always like maniacal, not safe for work, opinionated, sarcastic. And his is always like thoughtful, revealing, intelligent, you know? So it's a real dichotomy, our two podcasts, but somehow we both end up on the "best of" lists all the time. Chad (10m 45s): It's the yin and yang of HR, the most dangerous and the most bleeped out. That's us. Joel (10m 53s): Kinda, it's kind of a metaphor for the British American, you know, dynamic, I think. Chad (10m 60s): Somewhat. Yeah. Carry on the lists. Tyco Von Pawson who's one of the co-founders over at Vonq listed his top three podcasts on LinkedIn and they were number one Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, that's a big one. That's like top 10. Number two, Masters of Scale with Reed Hoffman. And then number three, the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (11m 28s): Yeah. Boy, by the way, next time you see him, tell him I loved his hit take on me from the eighties. That was great stuff. Chad, we have free shit that we mentioned that yet? Chad (11m 37s): We did not no. Joel (11m 38s): If you haven't gotten free shit from us, you got to sign up. You got to go to Chadcheese.com/free. We got t-shirts by Emissary. We got beer from Adzuna, and we got whiskey from Sovren. We do this every month. We spread the love. We don't show up directly, but we, we in spirit deliver the goods to you for free! Chadcheese.com/free Chad (12m 4s): Contactless delivery. We are doing this the way that it should be done. We respect you. And we're going to be responsible to be able to get you the good bourbon. That's two bottles of bourbon, by the way, from Sovren and Chad and Cheese and shit. What a case plus of craft beer from, you know, sponsored by Adzuna. I mean, come on guys. Yeah. Joel (12m 24s): We're never in your face, but we're always in your heart and we're always killing your liver. Chad (12m 30s): Amen. Joel (12m 30s): We got some fantasy football updates. You ready for that? This comes from Paul J yeah. Okay. I bet you are because you're back in the top spot, Chad. Yes. I don't know how that happened, but you were back in number one. Number two, we got Michael "got Gamecocks". Number three, Pete "don't call him douchey" Suchi. Chris, "AL East winner" Russell comes in after him. Bill "Football" Fanning. The beloved, Miss Q. "Breaking Benjamins" Kunze. Christie "don't call me Jackie Moon" Jason "Vorhees" Putnam, and bringing up the caboose baby. You know him, you love him. Now it's me. And in my defense. Joel (13m 12s): I can't be expected to win when two of my starters go out without even a point earned and I'm in it to win it, baby. So let's do this. Chad (13m 19s): All about it. Not to mention, let's throw this out there real quick. Quincy's last two, I think, out of three thus far. And they were like the slimmest of margins, but yet I think she's like top three in points scored. So you're not really the one getting fucked. She is. But I have to say that Pete Suchi, who was in the league last week, I kicked his ass this week and Roy fucking Kent, one of my favorite names for a football team, didn't do so well. And we all have those. We all have those days. Joel (13m 55s): I made a good pick with Stafford as my QB. That's looking like a potential MVP decision. And I couldn't even, I couldn't even overcome a four touchdown day for Matt Stafford. That's how challenged my team was this week. But I'm coming back this week. I'm taking on Chris Russell. He's primed for a loss, and I'm going to take his ass down. Although the Aaron Rogers pick is looking better than it did week one it's looking better now. Chad (14m 21s): Okay. Last but not least. We want to make sure that everybody checks out the Julia Levy podcasts that we put out this week. She is true talent. No bullshit. I love it. We talk about the recruiting tech. We talk about different recruiting processes and she lays it out there. You know what they're doing? Well, what they're not doing well. And it's a great conversation. Joel (14m 49s): So let's get to some birthdays before we get to the news. Chad (14m 53s): Birthdays! Joel (14m 54s): Stella Cheeseman. My favorite daughter celebrates a birthday yesterday, actually. So a happy birthday to her she's the big 12, big 12. She's officially the tween! A tweener, I guess. I don't know exactly Casey Dockendorf. Who's my sister-in-law. So it's real. It's been a real family affair this month. If you need employment law advice in Canada hit me up all I'll connect you with Casey. She's a bad ass, or at least as bad-ass as a Canadian can be celebrates a birthday. Robert St. John's a fan of the show, which is one of the cooler names that we've had on the show. Lucas. Roscoe was that, oh, Chad (15m 27s): The barbecue guy. Joel (15m 29s): Yeah, those are good. We got some good names on the fan base. We got Ling Wu, Alison Holbrooke old timer in the industry and who doesn't love Lieven from the European show. Chad (15m 46s): Van Nieuwenhuyze Joel (15m 42s): My man Lieven celebrates a birthday and industry vet Kevin Grossman, all celebrate birthdays. Happy birthday to all those folks. And without any further ado, Chad (16m 0s): Topics! Joel (16m 0s): Unicorn alert, Chad. Chad (16m 1s): Oh, that's gotta be what it feels like to actually get all that fucking cash. Right? Joel (16m 12s): We'll never know Chad. Chad (16m 15s): Fingers crossed. Joel (16m 18s): Andela born in Africa and headquartered in New York City. Andela, which helps companies build distributed engineered teams, raised $200 million in a Series E financing this week at a $1.5 billion valuation. The company founded in 2014 says that we'll use the new funds to develop products for simplifying global hiring and diversify beyond software developers, a soft bank investment. Andela operates in 80 countries across six continents and have placed more than 1000 engineers servicing over 200 companies. They employ about 300 folks, all of which are remote and have raised a grand total of $381 million so far. Joel (16m 59s): Chad, it's a big world and Andela wants a piece. What are your thoughts? Chad (17m 5s): Let's just say Andela is rad baby. We've got remote work is the fuel that made this rocket ship lift off. No question. Quick high level kind of like model overview. Talent is vetted, trained and matched with hiring company. So the training part is where most staffing solutions fall down because they just don't fucking do it. Not to mention Andela is focused on underrepresented countries in tech, like Africa. So Andela has over a hundred thousand individuals in their learning, matching and placement platform. So that's kind of like the basic overview. We talked about Andela back in early 2019, and I was a big fan of the platform and the model back before COVID and the need to move to remote is obviously a necessity for many organizations, needless to say, I love it even more right now because you know, obviously building a remote economy is where we're moving. Chad (18m 8s): Remember when we spoke with Hacker Ranks CEO and he commented on the developers shortage, by saying there is no shortage of developers because in the global talent economy and in this model, if you're short, it's your fault. I'm big on the upside of this, just from a concept than a model standpoint. And I'm glad to see such huge growth because the last time we talked about these guys, they had about a thousand individuals who were in their training program, et cetera, et cetera. Now they have over a hundred thousand. Joel (18m 36s): First of all, I'm really happy to see RAD taking off and I want to take credit for all that. But anyway, yeah, look places like India, Africa, Brazil are going to fill a lot of needs in the developed world into opportunities, which you spoke about from, at HackerRank. And the pandemic has made remote teams more palatable for a lot of companies, companies that wouldn't touch, you know, folks in Africa or developed countries now are open to that. Right? The challenge is working with developers on places like Upwork. It takes a lot of hand holding and patience, and that's not necessarily just from a time zone perspective or even a language perspective. Joel (19m 17s): And it looks like Andela takes a lot of care around making sure developers know English pretty fluently and making sure that some of those obstacles are as alleviated as possible. And I also love that Andela really promotes its white glove service expectations. So it sounds like, okay, we're going to help you get a global workforce that works remotely. And we're going to walk you through that process. You're not just going to be on your own, which I think is what Upwork and Fiverr kind of let you sort of sink and swim on your own. I think so that really fills a need from that perspective. A great quote from the CEO in terms of the release quote, "now that the world has come to embrace remote work, Andela has become the obvious choice for companies because we can find better talent, faster." Joel (20m 3s): Companies that build bridges, like that are gonna are really exciting to me. I don't, I wasn't super blown away by some of the numbers, you know, 200 companies, a thousand engineers for, to be a unicorn and have sort of modest numbers like that, means that there's a real bet here on the potential of this company. I expect them to be on hyper-growth, so to speak over the next 5-10 years and be really, really impactful because the borders of the world are breaking down and the world is rad baby. And these guys fill the, R spot with remote work and it's exciting to watch bringing, people out of poverty too, by the way, which is nice. Chad (20m 43s): It's definitely exciting. And when we talked about them before, they're actually talking about how they're paying a much higher wage than what you're seeing in those countries. So again, being able to really drive, you know, economic power for a country or countries that need it, right. Not to mention, you know, from the actual website itself is a quote, brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity isn't. We exist to unlock the human potential at scale. I think overall, I know what you're talking about with the numbers, but we have seen some pretty dramatic growth from at least the talent standpoint for them not to mention they're in a niche, this is more technical than it is anything else. Chad (21m 28s): But to be able to watch the scale happen and then also the concept itself, because once again, you know, Vivek from HackerRank saying, look, we don't have a talent shortage, we have a shortage of companies who want to embrace the opportunity and the talent and where they live. That's really what the issue is. Now that COVID has happened. That is kind of been an obstacle that has either been moved or it's much smaller than what it was before. The thing is that the US in itself, I think, is falling behind because the big brands are not building these types of pipelines themselves. Chad (22m 8s): So they say that there's a talent gap, but if there is a talent gap, that's because you allowed it to happen, employer, you allowed it to happen. You're not building these talent pipelines yourself. You're not training these individuals. Companies like Andela see that happening and they're going to also offer a very diverse workforce in the same platform. Joel (22m 30s): Yeah. And like, as water, you know, water goes through the, you know, where least resistance is. And, you know, politically we have issues with, I mean, China is going to be an issue for the next 20, 10- 20 years, at least. So I suspect a lot of investment into countries where there's either democracy or there's an openness to working with us. And the second dynamic is the closed borders. We're making it harder for people to come to America and companies are gonna suffer from that, so they're going to go where the talent is, and that's in places like India and Africa and pockets of South America. So this is a trend that's going to only heat up over the next few years and as the Chinese question hangs out there, more and more companies are going to embrace these markets and companies like this are gonna are going to flourish. Chad (23m 22s): Agreed. Joel (23m 23s): Well, we've got another surprise! Chad (23m 26s): It's a double! Joel (23m 27s): It's a double unicorn, Chad that's right. Gem announced a hundred million dollars in series C funding Tuesday at a $1.2 billion valuation. The new capital brings the company's total funding to $148 million founded in 2017 by a pair of Dropbox and Facebook alums. Gem says their dream is to be the quote "salesforce for hiring" the cash will be used for expansion into Western Europe and parts of Asia Pacific. It also wants to grow sales and marketing teams, the company, which can be found gem.com and not go gem.aai or something claims 800 customers and employees nearly 200 people. Joel (24m 8s): Chad, is this a rare gym worth buying or fool's gold? Chad (24m 13s): That's the artist formerly known as Zen Sourcer. Don't forget about that. So Steve Bartel and Nick Bushak, I believe it is the co-founders. They both have really impressive backgrounds with Facebook, Dropbox, MIT, middle school. Yeah, you might've heard of, but they don't have any TA or recruitment chops. So, you know, that's going to be interesting. I think what we're seeing from, you know, these co-founders a, this coming from TechCrunch and actual quote, "you used to be able to measure the value of a company by its factories, raw materials and goods but today that is measured in people. Chad (24m 53s): Companies are competing harder than ever for top talent. And our vision is to be the salesforce for hiring" close quote. So that to me bleeds of a front man from a great rock group that knows how to write a song and what VCs actually want to hear. But seriously, he's on point and then dropping "salesforce for hiring," comparing your platform with one that drops about 21 billion in revenue a year, these guys, they are very polished, no question. And they are singing to the VC. The question is, you know, are they actually going to be able to sing this song to an industry that doesn't adopt? Chad (25m 38s): It's not really nimble and it's not really incredibly innovative. Right? That's the big question. Joel (25m 43s): Remember when Indeed was the Google for jobs? Chad (25m 46s): Yes. Joel (25m 47s): And then Google kind of became the Google for jobs. What happens when Salesforce becomes the Salesforce for hiring, then they've maybe got a problem. Chad (25m 56s): Maybe. Joel (25m 57s): So to me like this is another platform of the future want to be. I think we talked last week about the antiquated notion of the ATS, that maybe it's time to rethink the whole notion of nineties tech still being the standard for job seekers and employers. And more and more, maybe it's not and Gem, I think, wants to be, you know, they want to be sourcing. They want to be the CRM. They want to be the analytics. They want to be a diversity. They want to be all things to probably all people. That's a really hard place to be, particularly when a lot of people and companies with a lot of money are trying to do the same thing. But these pockets of sort of features that everyone's trying to fill in the gaps. You know, we have one, you know, we have conversation about, we still need CRM or we have CRM, but we need the sourcing piece. Joel (26m 40s): And we know, so it's like, who's going to bring all this together and be successful. None of us really know, but it's going to be fun to watch the fight. And it's going to be a lot of fun to report on it. But as of this week, Gem has a lot more guns in the barrel if you will, to take that fight to a lot of the companies in this space. You are right about the polished, it's a great name, great brand that they can build around as long as the tech is there and they can build a salesforce and grow globally. Like I like their chances to have a pretty sound position in our marketplace. Chad (27m 14s): I think you're correct in saying that they're going to try to be all things to all people. Here's a quote from TechCrunch "companies like LinkedIn provide the talent and Workday manages and tracks someone to hire, but Gem operates as the link between them enabling companies to do that proactive hiring, sending hundreds of emails, hosting events, running branded email campaigns, and ad spending to engage with talent" close quote. So here again, very polished. What they've just done is they've brought in two big companies, LinkedIn, Workday, and said, Hey, you guys don't do this. And if you did, you sure the fuck didn't do it well. Chad (27m 59s): So the question is, and I think this is what you're saying, they are polished and they are presenting themselves to VC incredibly well. Now on the other side, having more ammo, they're going to LinkedIn. They're going at the Workdays of the world because they're looking to get acquired. What do you think? Joel (28m 18s): I think acquisition is some liquidation event is going to happen. Whether that's a sale or they go IPO. I'm sure they'd love to be acquired by Microsoft or Workday. I'm sure Phenom would be the same, feel the same. And I put these guys kind of in the same category as what Phenom is trying to do. Yeah. There's no question that either IPO or an acquisition and based on their history, like yeah, an acquisition is probably more probable than going IPO and they're probably highlighting those companies because they're big enough to buy them at this point. But the number of buyers is dwindling quickly as they raise more and more money and become more and more valuable. Chad (28m 56s): Yes. Hence why they targeted LinkedIn and Workday in the quote, because those are two companies who have a shit ton of cash. Joel (29m 5s): Indeed. And they probably have StepStone on speed dial as well. All right, Chad, let's take a quick break and we'll get to some less valued companies, but no less valuable on our show because we love all the companies on this show. Chad (29m 19s): Okay. Well, not all companies on the show, but I definitely love this one. Joel (29m 25s): And you love saying it to Syndio or Synd.io I don't know. All right, Syndio! Chad (29m 30s): Because I love saying Maria's last name, even more Colacurcio Joel (29m 35s): Colacurcio. Yeah. All right. Syndio, the analytics platform with a mission to ensure fairness and equity are part of every employment decision this week announced it has raised $50 million in Series C funding bringing the total, the grand total to $83 million. The company founded in 2012 and based in Seattle. So they've tripled annual recurring revenue every year for the last two years and is forecasted to deliver a similar growth rate in 2022. CEO, Maria, how do you pronounce it Chad? Chad (30m 7s): Colacurcio Joel (30m 7s): Who we interviewed last year said quote, "every day, the pressure from employees, investors, and governments grows to close persistent workplace gaps to ensure that companies achieve enduring success in the 21st century" end quote. Syndio's platform is used by 200 companies, including NerdWallet, Nordstrom, Salesforce, and General Mills to measure the pay for over 2.6 million employees in the US. They employ around 200 folks, pay equity through analytics and data. Safe to assume you're a fan boy, right Chad? Chad (30m 41s): Every Fortune 1000 company should buy into this platform period. Pay inequity is an issue and everybody fucking knows it, which is why this feels like a silver bullet for companies who have made little to no advancement in this area while starting to get called onto the carpet, possibly by the US government about what they are doing to identify inequities and move toward parody. There's no question big congrats to Maria and the team over at Syndio. I think it's probably the time where we get Maria back on to talk a little bit deeper about this. Joel (31m 17s): It's no mistake that she mentioned governments in her quote. That was pretty strategic. Maria you are so RAD baby. And so this is an, I mean, it's a no brainer like you're taking, you're using technology to support initiatives by governments, companies where like real budget is being spent. Real money is being spent, not just by investors, but by companies that are budgeting for DEI initiatives. She mentioned the government, you mentioned the government, that stuff is coming down the pike. You know, that was your world for a long time. Like you understand government sort of regulations much better than I do. So you said it, you said it best, but this is going to be one of those must haves for a lot of companies. Joel (32m 4s): And it's only going to increase as government regulations, pressure publicly. Societally all come down the pike. This is going to be something that companies will want to show, you know, proof of we got it, we got this covered and here's how we do it. This is going to be one of those things that I think companies are going to have to show proof of proof of purchase if you will. And Syndio is in the pole position to be one of those technologies that fills that need for companies. So yeah, big ups to them. I expect nothing, but I don't know. Do we see a future rainbow or maybe unicorns? Chad (32m 38s): Possibility if they're not, if they're not acquired before they hit that status. And I think any core talent platform that's out there today that wants to be able to again, push forward. And you're talking about the platforms of tomorrow that we see today. This is one of them, this is definitely one of them. So if you're building a portfolio of great tech, this is, you've got it. You've got to get this Joel (33m 3s): Chad did you see the movie Cocoon in the eighties? Chad (33m 6s): Too many times. Joel (33m 7s): It hasn't aged well, but anyway, if you haven't seen it, I'm not going to recommend it. Yeah. Chad (33m 13s): Dad jokes. Joel (33m 14s): Yeah. Dad jokes. Sorry. Got to say, I'm not sure I even knew employee leave was actually a thing, but here we are. San Francisco based employee leave platform could Cocoon founded in June of '20 has raised $20 million in Series A funding, bringing its total just $26 million. The platform launched a Wednesday across all 50 states and it's designed for any type of employee leave, like parental, medical, caregiver, or bereavement. It factors in all company, government and insurance benefits and manages all facets of the leave from compliance to claims management to payroll calculations. Joel (33m 56s): For employers, Cocoon handles compliance and payroll complexities and employees use Cocoon to input a leave from beginning to end via an automated process. Chad is this Cocoon a butterfly waiting to happen? Chad (34m 6s): It very well could be. I mean, seriously, try calling the state of California and getting a quick and easy answer to a parental leave question. Shit, try to call any fucking state in the union. Employee leave is a pain in the ass. It's number one, shit nobody wants to do. And number two, being able to manage this at scale is something that is incredibly important and what every platform should be focusing on. That's why I love it. Hits those two areas, number one, shitty tasks, number two, doing them at scale. I wish the co-founders have a little HR experience. We're seeing a lot of that, but you know, they do have some, some time at Stripe and Square, but it's literally a simple, super simple platform that does, that does complex shit. Chad (34m 54s): Unlike that of Gem earlier, where it's complex and it does a whole lot of shit that most companies aren't even sure that they need yet. Right. That's the difference between those two platforms, right? Joel (35m 8s): Yeah. It's cute. I really had no idea it was a thing. Did you leave, man? Chad (35m 12s): Yeah. Oh yeah. Joel (35m 14s): Okay. I think it reminds me of good time scheduling. Obviously something, everyone needs, it's a pain in the ass, but is it a feature as an actual product? Good time seems like a successful company. They're growing sort of organically. They're integrating into as many platforms as possible. They're getting, you know, investment money. So to me, this is like good time for the leave universe, you know, will it be gobbled up? Maybe will people just build this thing? Is it that hard to do? I don't know, but to me, yeah, it's a cute little company. It's I guess a pain in the ass process. I guess the tech has gotta be sound. Joel (35m 54s): But for me it's like, it's a nice feature. It'll be a nice integration into your favorite ATS. You won't pay a ton for it and more competitors come out and it'll be a pricing game, I guess we'll go for the cheapest option. So yeah, it's a cute business. We'll see where it goes, but you know, I'm not buying that stock so to speak. Chad (36m 16s): Received how much? Joel (36m 18s): They received 20 million and they've raised a total of 26 million, which is a lot of millions. Chad (36m 23s): It's a lot of money, but again, it's a complex problem for large organizations. So if you are an Enterprise, it's more on the HCM side of the house. They have a ton of cash and to be able to, instead of trying to build this complexity, bullshit, just buy it. Make it easy. Joel (36m 42s): There's a lot of money in the system. Chad (36m 47s): There is! Which is why they should buy it. Joel (36m 51s): It makes no sense, Chad, which is why we should talk about sense. Chad (36m 55s): Yes Joel (36m 56s): San Francisco based Since announced the launch of their platforms, AI chatbot this week, speaking of commodities maybe. Is AI chat bot better than conversational AI, by the way? I don't know. It's like a hybrid of chat bot and conversational AI. Anyway, the company says it's AI chat bot "offers a seamless integration available immediately upon activation that sources and screens more qualified candidates faster while still providing white glove personalized candidate focused experience." Stop me if you've heard this one before are chat bots, just to commodity? And when is Chadcheese.com getting our own Chadbot or is that AI chad bot or chad bot? Chad (37m 34s): We're podcasters, we don't need that shit. So originally I was going to pummel Sense for having, you know, this basic bitch type of chat bot. But I think, I think it's a bigger discussion than that. I think it's more about, you know, we talked about the core talent platform and building on that. Everybody's gonna want a chat bot. They're either going to build it or they're going to buy it. Everybody's wanted DEI. So what do they do? They find some variation. It's all about that checkbox, right? It's all about that RFP checkbox. So I think we're seeing now the variation of we call DEI the new AI, because everybody wanted to have it. I think we're finally getting into that conversation, which we did a couple of weeks ago that it's finally fashion forward to have a chatbot. Joel (38m 27s): Chad every town has a taco joint, right? Chad (38m 31s): Yes. But do they all have subscriptions? Joel (38m 34s): You have players and you have posers and the players like Chipotle. sfx (38m 37s): Omy goodness I want Chipotle. Chipotle's my life. Joel (38m 39s): So just like that, you have chatbots that are players and chatbots that are posers. Ultimately the market will decide, which is which, but you have your apex predators, which we've talked on the show. Your Chipotles if you will, you know, that are spending real money, creating really interesting products, integrating video and integrating search and like really cool as shit, like might be the platforms of the future. And then we have the posers, which are more or less decision trees, right? Like sort of chatbots circa 2018, '17, et cetera. I'm going to go with since being on the poser side of the chat bot world, I think it is a checkbox like you said, it reminds me of SEO back in the day, right? Joel (39m 23s): Like, oh, it's a checkbox. Nobody really understands SEO. But as long as I can tell my boss, we're doing it, then I can keep my job and keep, you know, click punching my time clock. Everyone had social sharing and social integration and some people really did and some people did not text messaging is kind of like that chatbots are the same thing. I'm not real impressed with what I see from sense on anything they do with whether it's texting or chat or whatever. To me, this is like, let's check it off. Let's let's have another reason to call people. Let's have another thing that we can email them about and get back on the phone with, and hopefully sell some stuff. But to me, this is poser, not a player. sfx (40m 3s): Yeah. Checkbox baby. Joel (40m 4s): Maybe let's take a quick break from our playing and posing and talk about some Amazon shit. Your favorite topic Chad so speaking of old movies, you've seen WALL-E, right? Chad (40m 14s): Yes, I have. As a matter of fact, I keep telling you, you need to watch it. Joel (40m 19s): Yeah. You're, you're pretty convinced that I'm the fat guy, card around on my scooter, eating a Chipotle eating all day. By the way, I mentioned this, their brisket is fabulous. So if you're in a market where they have the brisket at Chipotle, I endorsed the brisket. It's fantastic. All right. Now, back to Amazon. So you've seen WALL-E now imagine if WALL-E starred in the new Exorcist and you might have an idea of what Amazon's new Astro is all about. Yup Amazon has built a $1,000 personal robot that promises to patrol your home with cameras and Alexa. Joel (41m 0s): What could possibly go wrong? The robot can also beat box. It even comes with eyebrows. Yikes. Amazon has designed Astro to become smarter and more capable over time. Gizmodo sums this up perfectly saying people are about to start buying 20 pound robot servants for their homes that can recognize their faces, learn their habits and even use third-party accessories to take their blood pressure. How far are we from the Terminator? Astro also comes with a microphone and camera kill switch, which is nice when you have to get freaky in your house, I guess. So Chad will Astro be joining the Sowash household as your fourth pet? Chad (41m 42s): No. No and fuck no. I mean, if you think about it, they're trying to make this thing cute so that you will put a camera and a microphone in your house. We've already heard that Alexa, they listen in. Now this thing can actually roam all the way around. Not just listen in, but take pictures. This is fucking crazy not to mention what if this thing is hacked and I don't know, we've seen that shit before. Joel (42m 6s): What do you mean what if? It's when these things are hacked. Chad (42m 9s): Yeah. Good point. When they're hacked, they actually get the insight to every inch of your home and where the shit is that they want to get to. I mean, to me, this makes no sense whatsoever. They're trying to make it cute so that you think, oh, this is a great gift. And I'm going to give it to Nana or some shit like that. No, don't do it. Joel (42m 32s): Yeah. You have dogs. I have a dog and cats. The dog follows you everywhere. It's cute. You know, it's cuddly it, you know, it's fun. Right? Cats, cats, when you're taking a shit, want to come into the bathroom, for whatever reason they want to play with the toilet paper. They're like, this is kind of cute. Right and frolicky. Imagine a little, little wheeled robot doing that, following you around the house, ducking its head in when you're taking a dump, seeing how you are after your shower. I mean, you know where this could go, right? It's just really weird. I don't think the voice thing has taken off as well as people thought. Joel (43m 12s): I don't think the portal thing has taken off. Like people think this sort of combines the two and puts wheels on it. I just, I just don't know, man. Does it go upstairs? That's creepy. It has eyes and eyebrows. Like it could get mad with the eyebrows and I don't know. It's just, it's just bad. By the way they've also said this is not their last robot. So they're just going to like build robots. This is a big, I don't know. This is a big thumbs down. I don't even know that's even nice. Amazon stick to stick to packages, stick to products. Chad (43m 47s): And all you kids out there. Go watch WALL-E that's WALL-E. And you'll see, that this was actually, this was actually crystal ball. This is foreshadowing. What we're seeing today. Joel (43m 57s): Yeah. I forget. Is there a penis rocket in WALL-E? Chad (44m 2s): That might've been the other, WALL-E. The porn version that you saw. Joel (44m 10s): Well watch some WALL-E and have some real bourbon, which apparently you did not get in Portugal. Chad (44m 16s): Not enough. Joel and Chad (44m 16s): Baby, we out. We out. OUTRO (44m 56s): 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.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Sweden has been an outlier, hoping that bypassing lockdowns and instead, bracing herd immunity would win the day. Well, it hasn't worked out very well, and the country is grappling with next steps. That's why we've brought Sweden's Elin Martenzon, Tengai Unbiased CEO, to discuss the state of her country. You'll learn why Sept. 29 is such a big day. Then we travel to Italy, where the continent's first COVID passport mandate is about to be implemented. The answer to whether or not the rest of Europe will follow suit may surprise you. You want acquisitions? We got acquisitions, covering Amsterdam-based Impraise getting gobbled up by San Francisco-based unicorn BetterUp. 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 (5s): Some podcasts, do it for the fun. Some do it for the fame, Chad and Cheese they do it for global effin domination. That's why bringing America to its knees was just the beginning. Now they have their eyes set on conquering Europe and they've drafted industry veteran Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze of Belgium to help them navigate the old country and bring HR's most dangerous podcast across the pond to trash-talk like never before. Not safe for work in any language. The Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. Joel (38s): I watched every season of Vikings to prepare for this episodes, mystery guest, skull motherfuckers. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast as Europe. I'm your cohost, Joel "see you in Valhalla" Cheeseman. Chad (51s): And this is Chad "Red October" Sowash Lieven (53s): I'm Lieven, "we don't have any submarines in Belgium" Van Nieuwenhuyz. Joel (57s): In this episode, Italy says no work for you without a COVID passport, Sweden says, get your asses back to the office and an American company gobbles up an Amsterdam based startup. Amsterdam it really is more than just hookers and weed. Amsterdam-based sfx (1m 17s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel (1m 21s): What's up my friends as the lone American on the podcast, I say good day to everyone. Chad (1m 26s): So, I'm now, Portuguese, is that what you're saying? Joel (1m 30s): Well, I'm saying, I'm saying, you know, yeah. It's, you're slipping in. It's sort of like, have you seen Dances with Wolves? Chad (1m 37s): Yeah. Joel (1m 37s): So this scene where the, Union soldier captures Kevin Costner and says basically like, you know, you've gone injun boy or whatever the line is. And then Kevin Costner gives his name Dances with Wolves. That's kind of like where you are at this phase, you sort of slipped into Port, you're gonna start speaking Portuguese on these shows. I'm sure you probably have a Portuguese name. Don't you like Rinaldo Sowash or something? Chad (2m 1s): "Dances with wine in the sand" Yes Joel (2m 3s): This is with wine and Michelin restaurants. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's bring in our mystery guest. Chad (2m 10s): Who is it? Joel (2m 11s): Listeners will know her Elin Mårtenzon CEO at guy, you know, Tengai as the recruiting robot. Elin. Welcome back to the show. It's been a minute. Elin (2m 22s): Thank you so much. Yeah. It's been a minute. It's been a whole pandemic, I assume, right? Joel (2m 27s): Yeah. Yeah. So for our listeners who don't know you, give us a little Twitter bio, and we're going to talk about your company in the show, but give us a little bit about you and living in Sweden. Elin (2m 38s): Yeah, of course. Yeah. So I'm the co-founder and CEO of Tengai, which is an interview intelligence platform. And we're also the creators of the first ever use robot for interviewing, without being affected by unconscious bias. And just this year we launched a new digital version of our product and we are now experiencing growth due to that need for automated interviews. Joel (3m 2s): We'll get to the company a second. We're looking out for you. You are a CEO in the best sense, but yeah, you have a couple of kids, live in Sweden. Elin (3m 12s): I do, I live in the south of Sweden Joel (3m 14s): Enjoying the fall there. Chad (3m 15s): Are you actually in Malmo or are you just close to it? Elin (3m 18s): I'm actually close to Malmo, so it's basically between Malmo and Copenhagen in Denmark. So it's a really close to Copenhagen as well. So down here where I live, we have nice beaches. Nowadays it's actually, as you said, it's turning into fall. So the air is crisp, the birds are moving and we're lighting loads of candles. Joel (3m 41s): The birds are moving. Chad (3m 43s): They're going south. Get me the fuck out of here. Joel (3m 49s): I like that. Elin (3m 50s): Yeah. Joel (3m 51s): Well let's go from all peace and love. And my first shout out, I just want to talk about France getting pissed off. Chad (3m 59s): Oh yeah. Joel (3m 59s): They're getting tough on the US after America apparently canceled a $66 billion submarine contract for Australia. And they're mad at Belgium too, which I guess Lieven's to talk about that. But the new pact between the UK, US and Australia dubbed AUKUS, which is great, caused France to recall their ambassadors from the U S and Australia. Not since freedom fries has tension been so thick. Lieven what's your take on this global action? Lieven (4m 30s): Apparently no one wants to buy anything from the French and they're a bit angry. Australia was supposed to buy submarines, we were supposed to buy our airplanes. We didn't and Australia didn't and now the French are angry. That's basically the whole thing. Chad (4m 45s): But France, they cried for European sovereignty, but neither the Aussies or Brits are part of the EU. So I mean, what fucking sovereignty are they talking about? Lieven (4m 58s): Yeah, but they were supposed to be partners and they broke their words and, and now they're not partners anymore. And so they recalled her ambassador and, and now they're sulking. Joel (5m 9s): They're mad that they're losing their position in the world stage, I Lieven (5m 13s): Think mostly to billion dollars they lost. Yeah. Joel (5m 16s): And the $66 billion. That hurts too. Chad (5m 19s): Not fun, not fun. So Ted Lasso, baby for killing it, at the Emmys. So a year after the final season of Schitt's Creek, which had taken up the mantle of Emmy comedy gold, Ted Lasso jumps in and emerges as the heir apparent. We keep telling you people over in Europe, if you're not watching it Apple TV or Apple Plus whatever the fuck they're calling it. Now you got to check it out. Ted Lasso, stupid American, comes over. He's the best guy in the world runs a football traditional proper football club in London. It's hilarious, it's fucking awesome. Elin (5m 59s): Actually, one of my favorite shows. Chad (6m 1s): Have you seen it Lieven? Elin (6m 2s): Yeah, I have. It's one of my favorites. Joel (6m 4s): Does it play in Swedish there or do you have to watch an American with subtitles? Elin (6m 8s): We watch Americans. Joel (6m 10s): Oh, ok. Chad (6m 11s): They're smarter than we are Joel. Joel (6m 14s): These are questions we want to answer on the show. Are there subtitles? Elin (6m 18s): Yeah. There are subtitles, but I'm not sure that everyone uses them though. Joel (6m 22s): Sometimes you know, I go to Europe, I see Friends and it's dubbed over in whatever language. Lieven (6m 27s): Only when you go to France and maybe Germany as well. But most countries in Europe, they use subtitles, which is better to learn languages I guess. Joel (6m 35s): There you go. That's the information we want to know on this show. Chad (6m 38s): That's how it is here in Portugal, man. I hear British music, but I mean, I think what we've done as Americans, at least we did well in the eighties and we're still doing pretty well now, is we have great pop culture and everybody wants to watch the movies, listen to the music, that kind of stuff. And that's how a lot of these kids are actually learning English. Lieven (6m 58s): Exact. Joel (6m 59s): I learned to speak Swedish by listening to Abba in the seventies. But that's a different show. Lieven (7m 4s): I learned German by watching porn. Chad (7m 10s): I can't top that. Okay. Joel (7m 13s): Thank God Elin knew what she was getting into when she agreed to be on this show. Chad (7m 17s): Lieven has a shout out. Lieven (7m 20s): Yeah, indeed, indeed. Ikea. It's not about Elin. It's about Ikea and apparently they are going to launch a whole e-sports line, gaming line and I just bought, so I've got twins, so I just bought two expensive secret lab, gaming chairs, terribly ugly things. But that's it. Joel (7m 38s): That took eight hours to put together. Lieven (7m 40s): Afterall. Joel (7m 41s): Don't even get me started. Lieven (7m 44s): And indeed, but now Ikea is going to launch a gaming line and gets all over the world. 3 billion they say are going to buy Ikea on gaming stuff. Or why do I mention it? What's the link for recruitment? Because I've been saying for a while, the debts e-sports is going to be the next recruitment plaza. And at the house of HR Recruitment Congress on the 25th of November, today already mentioned it. We're going to do a big topic about e-sports because it's booming and it's indeed a great place to hire people. Joel (8m 15s): Who's speaking on the topic? Lieven (8m 16s): Yeah. His name is Steven Learnen and he's a co-founder and CEO of Metta and Metta is a big gaming agency in Belgium and the Netherlands. But back to the Belgian standards, there are pioneers in e-sports and let's say the, it looks and probably even in the U S they've been. Yeah? Joel (8m 34s): And COVID willing, Chad and Cheese will be interviewing my man on e-gaming. So stay tuned for that episode cause that'll be a fun topic. Chad (8m 42s): I can't wait. Joel (8m 43s): I mean, how many chairs can you make for gaming? It's just that goofy U-shaped chair, right? What other furniture is there? Lieven (8m 50s): Oh they have all kinds of accessories. Joel (8m 54s): Accessories. Okay. Lieven (8m 56s): Like stuff no one needs to put your mouse on and stuff no one needs to put your headphones on. And other stuff no one needs. Also has RGB lightning so it looks cool. Chad (9m 7s): Ah, that's a good point. Yeah. It's like, it's just like the hoop T-Mobile that Joel had when he was a kid, he had lights under it. Joel (9m 17s): My Pinto was a chick magnet, man, stay off the Pinto baby. That shit was a baby blue. And it was popular with the ladies. Anyway, you mentioned the Congress, which is on Thanksgiving Day, also known as November 25th and the rest of the world, COVID willing, as I said, will be there. So far I can still come. And Chad, I assume, may not even leave the country or the continent, will be there as well as another American Steven Rothberg and Faith I think you're going to be there. And Adam Gordon, is he still slated? Lieven (9m 50s): Yes, he's coming and a Canadian guy, Jim Carroll has also joining. Okay. He didn't care about Thanksgiving because apparently in America it's one month early. Joel (9m 58s): It's a different day. Yeah. And maybe Elin can pop in and hang out at the Congress in Belgium for a couple of days. Elin (10m 6s): Maybe? Chad (10m 6s): Maybe Tengai can come by too. Who knows? Joel (10m 11s): Well, speaking of that, let's get Chad (10m 16s): Topics! Joel (10m 18s): Alrighty, then we're going to talk a little Sweden. Talk about Tengai. We haven't seen the robot in a while. We miss it. I guess you won an award recently. Give us a state of the union there at Tengai. What's going on? Elin (10m 34s): You know, the union. Well, that's the, I said, you just briefly mentioned we earlier this year, we launched a new digital version of the product and due to that, I think it's also like a result of the pandemic, and everything we've done on online and so on and so did interviews over the last year. So we're now actually experiencing some growth in that area. And also I think that the need for automated interviews focusing our soft skills has become a new need for at least the companies in Sweden. So yeah, basically it's kind of good. We won an award in May, which basically was an innovation award on the Swedish market. So we were proud of that. Elin (11m 14s): And things are looking good I believe we're opening up Sweden as well, which naturally we'll bring some more, more business along the way I think. Joel (11m 22s): And you launched English about a year ago, right? How's that going? Elin (11m 26s): Yeah. So we're mostly using the Swedish version in Sweden. So, but the English version is mostly used for a Swedish company on an international level. So basically we're still, we're still working from Sweden and now we're actually hoping for getting outside of Sweden to new COVID passes. Joel (11m 45s): And when you say obviously going digital opens up a whole new opportunity, is digital Tengai, a chat bot? Is it more smarter than that? Like talk about exactly what you say when you mean digital. Elin (12m 2s): It's more of it's more than a chat bot actually. It's more of a, like a two way interaction with an avatar or a robot. Then the automated two way situation where you can sort of have a much, much more, I believe, greater experience from your interview. So it's still focusing on like the early stages of the process. And now we actually do just did a few integrations as well towards ATSs in Sweden. So we did with an ETS called Tintae just recently, which is a really nice platform in Sweden, focusing on automated situations as well. So we just did that integration. So now we can actually see the results of the first stages of automated processes in a sort of a long run. Chad (12m 50s): Now it sounds like you've pivoted kind of, to an extent, because a year now an interview intelligence platform and because there really was no need for quote unquote "physical interviews" or much less need, you guys went virtual, right? You went to more of a virtual platform. Elin (13m 8s): We definitely have the pandemic to thank for that because it's been a part of our roadmap since the beginning actually to go on the digital flight as well. But one, one part was that, okay, people are still used that used to do interviews physically. Right. So, and I don't know if that's a typical Swedish thing or whatever, but before the pandemic, most people are actually sitting face to face during interviews. So when the pandemic hits and people were forced to sit at home doing like virtual interviews, everyone was like, okay, so now what? So this was basically a thing that we could do. So they sort of experienced that it was like yeah, a better way of conducting interviews. I think that we can see now that people are actually moving towards the virtual interview stage as well, even after the pandemic. Joel (13m 55s): So not only virtual interviews, but we talked about the metaverse, if not on the last show, the one before that, and certainly Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, if he had his way, we'd all be, you know, icons in this metaverse and we all have meetings as digital representations of ourselves. I'm guessing that you're bullish on the metaverse or virtual reality and how Tengai could fit into that digital world as a recruitment. I don't know, persona? What are your thoughts on the metaverse and Tengai's place in that? Elin (14m 29s): I don't know if I've ever had any at all. I'm thinking that we need to create experience for candidates that are fun, unique, and engaging, and that might be a solution for that as well. I mean, just look at the future, it might be like AI avatars, that's being the CEO of the company or with the digital version, basically anything can happen, right? It's more of creating a situation where candidates can feel safe, secure, engage, and so on. And so I, I don't, I'm not saying that that is the natural way for us. It's more, I think it's more a situation where we need to be very aware that we can make sure that we're create experiences for the candidates as well. Joel (15m 13s): Let's pivot to the state of Sweden. Now that we've talked to the state of Tengai now, most of the world here heard about Sweden not getting down with lockdowns. It was more of a herd mentality strategy. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, sort of, talk about what Sweden's response was to COVID and maybe the state of Sweden right now, and what's going on with the pandemic. Cause it seems like it didn't work out real well. Elin (15m 39s): To say the least Joel. I mean, yeah, we did have like the society open, we didn't go into lockdown as most of the world did during last spring. However, what most people basically don't know is that we've actually been in sort of semi locked down since November last year. And so it's been more of like, okay, we need to do this anyways. Since I think that they understood quite, quite like, like strictly after the summer, last year that, okay, this, this strategy isn't working, we need to do something more. And then we went into sort of like a semi lockdown. Elin (16m 20s): So the schools have been opened, restaurants have been opened, but restricted and a larger public gatherings hadn't been allowed, larger private gatherings haven't been allowed and so on. So that's basically the situation at the moment now as well. But as of September 29, then most of the restrictions will actually be eased. Chad (16m 41s): So after watching what's happened in the US, this total shit storm that is happening. And Sweden's only like around 61, 62% actually vaccinated. Right? So you guys aren't even close to herd immunity. Elin (16m 57s): Oh no. Chad (16m 58s): Is there any, I mean, is there anything from like a TNG and from Tengai from like your world or universe where you guys are having conversations around this and saying, look, this is probably not a good idea from what we're seeing from all those idiots over in the US? Elin (17m 15s): Yeah. Yeah. I think that we definitely need to like focus on like what model we will have after September 29 when it comes to, are we forcing people back to the offices or not? Are we still, since everyone's not received their vaccine yet effects have had governed their vaccine yet? I think that we definitely need to be restricted when it comes to keeping distance, still washing our hands. That's a good thing though, and all of those things. But I think that in terms of like, looking at the Swedish strategy overall, I think that we can all just come to the conclusion that it was a crappy strategy, but I think that a Swedish citizens somewhere had had sort of hoped that the Swedish model will be successful. Elin (18m 2s): But now the opposite has definitely been proven. And we've been actually defending the strategy of herd community by believing it was to protect the economy, economic growth and to save jobs. However, it, that also turned out to be wrong, right? So since both economic growth and unemployment rates had suffered from that. So on the other hand, like keeping the society open, might to some argue that we have contributed to like a more happy citizens overall, I guess that we need to wait and see what the future holds in terms of mental health issues though. Chad (18m 36s): We are always looking for the bright side. Every time, everything you ask a Swede, they're like, no, it's the best. No, it's the best. Elin (18m 44s): in our culture Lieven (18m 47s): A colleague of mine is living in Sweden right now, he's our copywriter. And by the way, shout out to and he left to , or he moved to Sweden because his wife is an organist. And apparently in Sweden, if you play the organ, you get a well-paid jobs at a Swedish church or some way. Elin (19m 3s): Yeah, definitely. Lieven (19m 5s): They need organ players so she was a very good organist and she was invited to Sweden to get a well-paid job, whatever. So at my copywriter moved with her to wherever he's living in Sweden, but he told me about the whole pandemic that the Swedish people are very disciplined and that they keep distance that you don't need to force them and blah, blah, blah. And in Belgium, we were very jealous about discipline Swedish people, but in the end they screwed up anyway. Elin (19m 34s): Yeah. Chad (19m 35s): Hey Joel, you can play the organ. Why don't you, why aren't you in Sweden? Joel (19m 41s): Well, I can fuck it up on the organ. Don't don't mess with me. By the way. I have a little story about Sweden. So when Chad and I went there a couple of years ago, Elin was nice enough to pick me up at the airport and drive me to the conference. So we're driving and we're almost all doing the same speed limit. We're all in the right hand lane or the same lane. And then as someone passes us, Elin mentions how rude it is to be passing on the freeway. And I'm like in America, this bitch is Thunderdome. Like it's mad max on the freeway, everyone's passing everyone. So that gives you an idea of the, I don't know, the orderly manner of most Swedes, which brings me to, I want to dig into the September 29th deadline, where basically the recommendation to work from home if possible will be lifted by the government, along with the other pandemic restrictions that you mentioned. Joel (20m 39s): So the question is, you know, can your boss force you to return to the workplace? Apparently they can. I'm curious in terms of culture, are all Swedes going to go back to work? Are other things like government subsidies or money from the government has that been happening and what will that stop on September 29th? What's going to happen? Is a bomb going to go off or is everyone just going to go back to work and go back to normal? Elin (21m 2s): I don't think that anyone will just go back to work, we're talking a lot about like a hybrid models at the moment, and like the larger companies in Sweden being in the forefront of that. I mean, companies such as like Spotify and so on. They have like ordered their employees to stay at home for at least the end of the year, as a safety precaution. So I think there's a lot of discussion going on what will actually happen on the 29th. But I'm guessing that we'll be seeing more of these like hybrid models and when it comes to like the government, if they're putting in more money and so on, that will also pretty much end at the end of September. Elin (21m 46s): So I'm thinking that from the government side, they will sort of try to get things back to normal, but I mean, still we're only 62% rights that are vaccinated. So, we'll see what happens. I know that there've been talking a lot of like vaccine passes and so on as well for larger gatherings and so on to make sure that we could like have gathering safely. Lieven (22m 11s): Do you think there's a link with the new migration act? I mean, Sweden was or used to be the most migrant welcoming country in Europe, I feel. And now suddenly there are very restrictive, is it because of COVID? Is there a link? Elin (22m 25s): I don't think it's because of COVID to be honest, there's the new migration act in Sweden is what's basically a temporary law that established in 2016, just after when we had like large immigration from Afghanistan and, and so on. So it's been, I think, it was like a necessity to find a ways to limit that like large immigration in some ways to create some sort of system stability. But now that that temporary act has now become permanent. So it definitely becomes more important in terms of like talent acquisitions and so on as well. Joel (23m 2s): Yeah. Which is another great segue. So this is a big issue also called the aliens act in Sweden, apparently. So it does apparently push out PhDs. So a critic critical argument has come out that said, this thing has created impossible conditions for PhD students to pursue a career in Sweden.` Critics say the new requirements that came into force on July 20th of this year, severely affect foreign doctoral candidates and researchers in Sweden. It waste several years of tax funded investment in research by expelling thousands of foreign PhD students and researchers from the country. So it sounds like just everyone, including PhDs are going to be pushed out of Sweden, which I'm guessing you think is not great for the economy. Elin (23m 49s): I definitely do not. And I think it's, it's problematic from a talent acquisition perspective as well. I mean, it's, it affects a temporary work permits that might risk not be extended to permanent work permits and residency. So it might affect the long-term supply of talents coming to Sweden. And I think from the perspective of that, we also, I mean, just last week, the largest skill shortage in 15 years was announced in Swedish media and paradoxically enough, unemployment rates is an all time high as the . So there is a, now a large debate around skill shortage and skills gap in Sweden affecting certain areas, such as logisticS, manufacturing, production, IT, sales and marketing. Elin (24m 31s): And at the same time, Swedish employers are actually stating that the number one threats to their growth is recruiting the right people for the job and that soft skills are more important than ever. So it's kind of a difficult situation. Definitely. Joel (24m 45s): Yeah. A little more context to this. According to the Swedish higher education authority, 37% of the total 17,000 doctoral candidates registered in 2020 are from foreign countries of whom 6 in 10 leave Sweden after graduation. So definitely a brain drain situation you guys have there. Other reports suggested that 66% of the non EU slash EEA researchers previously eligible for Swedish permanent residency are considering leaving Sweden. So I hope you guys figure that out. Elin (25m 19s): Yeah. I mean, and for us, and I think that the companies like us helping out with screening, for yeah, basically the soft skills and so on, we're where we need to get a, like a diverse workforce to make sure that we could like shorten the gap. I think that it's super frustrating for everyone. So we've been this like message for the past 10 years where we might, where we thought that we might be sort of suffer from this major skill gap in the future. And that future is now and now more than ever, it's important to recruit like the right soft skills for your company as well, and then act massively to work with upscaling, knowledge and so on to suit that needs. Elin (25m 59s): But like Swedish employers and organizations like need to step up and take responsibility for their own future. Joel (26m 6s): Awesome. Well, let's take a break from Sweden and let's take a quick break and we'll travel down to Italy for our next segment of the show. sfx (26m 15s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it Chad (26m 17s): Italia Joel (26m 18s): Italia, alright, Italy is making COVID health pass mandatory for all workers. Does that get a round of applause on this show? Yes it does. The Italian government approved earlier this month, some of the strictest anti-covid measures in the world, making it obligatory for our workers either to show proof of vaccination, a negative test or recent recovery from infection. The new rules will come into force on October 15th. Any worker who fails to present a valid health certification will be suspended with no pay, but cannot be fired. That's so European. People who ignore the decree and go to work regardless will face a fine of between 600 to 1500 euros, which for our English/American listeners, that $705 to around $2000 and the sanction for employers will be 400 to a 1000 euros. Joel (27m 15s): Is this a blueprint for the rest of the world? Or is this government control run a muck? Chad (27m 23s): It's fairly simple. We need to, if citizens, obviously aren't going to get the vaccination. There has to be something to be able to poke and prod. And there's only so much that can be done, right? So until mandates are compulsory or whatever word you wanna use actually happens. You have some countries who are taking the jab without those, but not all. I mean, look at the US. Look at look, I mean, we just talked about Sweden at 62%. Joel (27m 51s): I mean, Chad, we, we agree as Americans that this would not fly. Chad (27m 56s): I don't think America would that's I mean, we're in an utter calamity right now. Joel (28m 1s): Okay. So we do agree that that cats and dogs will be living together and mass hysteria would take place if the government did this. What says the Belgian and the Swede? Lieven (28m 9s): We don't like forcing things or no, let's make a different, we don't like being enforced things, but I don't think the first two years it will be a subject in Belgium. Most people in Flanders where I'm living, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium are getting vaccinated. So it's not a problem. Only Brussels is falling behind, a lot of anti-vaxxers are people just not caring enough to get vaccinated, but I don't think it will be forced upon us. People would be very annoyed. Chad (28m 36s): It's a mandate that we have polio vaccine. It's a mandate, right? All these things that were mandated that we have to do as Americans, this mandate is just it's, this is all political, it has nothing to do with health or social or community. It's all political. Joel (28m 51s): Cool. Chad (28m 52s): Alrighty. Well, and certainly the Swedes align up for this. Right. Elin (28m 57s): I definitely think not because I think it's definitely something that's according to like citizens freedom and so on that will, I'm guessing just, but I'm, I don't think that will never, that will never be Chad (29m 10s): Quick question. Quick question. Does your individual freedom outrank all of the community that you could make sick and perspectively they would die? Does that, is that how Swedish? I mean, is that how it works? Elin (29m 20s): I think it's more difficult than that? Because we have like, there's laws of freedom in Sweden. So it's really hard to, it was actually hard for the Swedish government to even come close to a lockdown because it's against Swedish law and it's against the freedom of movement and so on. So I think it's a lot of those things. And just to comment on the, like the other vaccine programs that you have in the US for measles, and so on the, in it's in Sweden with these programs, it's not mandatory though. It's a recommendation. So it's actually still, we had a lot of people coming outside of Sweden, into Sweden that weren't vaccinated against, like for example, measles. Elin (30m 4s): And so we actually had a, like a situation where measles were starting to spread because we have like such an open society. It's not mandatory, it's only recommendation. But as a Lieven told, said earlier here that when, when the government in Sweden says something, people listen. So it's like, okay, this is the recommendation. Could you please just go and get the flu shot? Or could you just go and get the vaccine? And people basically do. Lieven (30m 31s): Yeah. The only reason why Italy gets away with it is because so many, and this sounds rude. It's not meant to be, but so many people died in Italy two years ago when it all started. And Italy was the first European country where COVID spreads. And there were the biggest spreaders in Europe and most of Europe didn't appreciate it. But we all remembered the things on telly with people dying and the hallways of hospitals, because there weren't any rooms left and that's something nobody wants to see happening again in Italy. So they take it. But in the other countries, the situation was bad, but not that bad. So Joel (31m 6s): So Lieven, do you believe that Italy will be the only country in Europe to make such moves? Elin (31m 11s): I think it's a really bold move to like put it in the law or something like that might be not the only one, but I don't think that all of Europe will follow. Joel (31m 20s): Who else do you think would be a candidate to do this? Elin (31m 23s): I'm not sure. Yeah. Don't know. Chad (31m 24s): Germans? Elin (31m 25s): Germans might be . Joel (31m 27s): So-so. So I'm guessing, you know, like we've talked about France on the show and France, as I understand it basically said, if you want to go to a cafe and drink coffee and wine and have a baguette like, you have to be vaccinated. Is that where more European countries are going to go where it's not forced universally, but if you want to do the things that may help you enjoy your state of being, you're going to have to be vaccinated? Elin (31m 51s): And we already have like the vaccine passes, but, I think just like in Denmark, they are using it that way. Like, if you want to go into this restaurant or into this museum, you need to show your green pass. Lieven (32m 4s): It won't be mandated but if you don't have a vaccine, life will be miserable. So they're going to enforce it on you without enforcing it. Elin (32m 13s): Yeah. Chad (32m 14s): Without mandating it. Joel (32m 16s): Yeah. I mean, just take away beer and Belgium and it's cured. It's done everyone's vaccinated. So why, how have you guys gotten to such high levels of vaccination? I guess Sweden is an exception, but most of Europe has done a pretty good job. What would you attribute that to? Lieven (32m 32s): Of the lockdown? Nobody wants to live through another log down, so they will get vaccinated. Okay. If it really is necessarily to get a vaccine, something like that. Joel (32m 42s): Chad, I don't know about you, but I'm kind of surprised that the response from the European side is that this wouldn't fly. I thought I kind of thought more countries would get in line with Italy. Are you surprised as an American? Chad (32m 53s): No, I, I think, I think Lieven and Elin they just articulated that the best diplomatic way to stay in office and this is the way, obviously we see it in the US as well, is not to mandate things, it's to make your life miserable to where you have to do it. Right. So, I mean, that's, and again, we have to remember these are political moves. These, they should be health related, medical related moves, but they're not they're political. So therefore we have to have quote unquote "nuance,". Lieven (33m 29s): Indeed and if there hadn't been a lock down and if the doctors would just have said, look, people there's terrible disease coming. And if you get vaccinated, like you've got vaccinated against measles and the other stuff, then you'll live. Probably many people would have taken the vaccine without complaints, but now after the lockdown and after the feeling that government was restricting things we never should have allowed. People wont be so easy in accepting a new restriction or a new obligation. So I think maybe in a few years it will just be another vaccine, which will be given to people whenever vaccines are given, but now it's not the time. Joel (34m 7s): Well maybe if the virus wore swastikas and goose stepped into Europe, things would be different, but that wasn't the case. Let's get to an acquisition in Europe. Chad (34m 17s): Money! Joel (34m 17s): BetterUp acquires Impraise. In light of a one point $73 billion valuation back in February, industry unicorn BetterUp an employee wellness solution that has thrived in the pandemic has gone shopping, acquiring San Fran based Motive and Amsterdam based Impraise whose main product is helping managers boost their insights on employees. Founded in 2014 Impraise has raised a total of around $12 million. BetterUp a San Fran based company, founded in 2013 is looking to use its new toys to support an EU expansion. The news comes just months after BetterUp announced its plans to expand into the European market, launching offices in Munich and London. Joel (35m 1s): The company noted that with the acquisition of Impraise, it adds the Netherlands to its list of European offices. It also notes that it plans to use Impraise's tech to help customize the BetterUp product to the European market. The employee wellness business is hot and it's coming to Europe in a bigger way. Who's buying and our interview selling this move into Europe by BetterUp and is Impraise a thing, by the way? I've never heard of them. Elin (35m 29s): Yeah. And Impraise, I'm not really, I just, before this, I haven't heard about it. So, but I'm definitely into like the BetterUp the platform for creating soft skills. Joel (35m 41s): So we can take the angle of American companies buying their way into Europe. Any opinion on that or seeing more of that? Is it frowned upon? Is it accepted? We could take that angle to this question. Elin (35m 54s): It's definitely accepted I think. I think that we need more of like the American companies moving into Europe as well. I think that might be a situation though, with the data privacy act, that might be difficult in terms of complying to a European law. So it might be a situation there depending on where, where the data privacy act lands during to the just recently the new cloud act. Lieven (36m 24s): Impraise isn't really well known probably in its own circles it is but not broadly spread. And we definitely don't mind some American money entering Europe. We encourage Chad to spend all his money in Portugal Joel (36m 40s): And he's obliging trust me. Lieven (36m 42s): Yeah. I've seen the pictures on Facebook. His wife even invited him to a Michelin star restaurants. It's a good thing. But the problem is always, if you have great technology, if you have something new than people don't really like it when American's buy it. So we should keep our own crown jewels to ourselves, something like that. It depends. Chad (37m 2s): Yeah. Well, I tell you what BetterUp is kicking ass and taking names. They're at a hundred million ARR with 380 clients. Okay. So I do a little math here. That's about $250,000. It's actually higher than that, but it's a quarter million dollars per client to reach a hundred million ARR. It seems like we're all in the wrong industry. Lieven (37m 26s): It's not like they're the only company doing something like that. So it's definitely the time to sell your company if you have one. So prices are crazy. Joel (37m 34s): In terms of regulation, is it easier to buy a European country to get a foothold versus just opening up offices as an American company or someone outside of Europe? Lieven (37m 45s): How much time you have and how much money you have, if you want to, to go fast, you have to buy, if you have the time to do something, like I was always wondering, Kelly services, which are a huge in the US I think. And they aren't really growing in Europe. I was always thinking they're going to buy something in Europe, but they never did or nothing really substantial. I mean, they did buy some stuff, but so I dunno, maybe people just aren't interested in some . Joel (38m 12s): It sounds like ZipRecruiter trying to break into the European market. Chad (38m 16s): There's a lot of money that's here in the US that they just don't feel like they've tapped into enough yet. Lieven (38m 21s): Could be. Joel (38m 22s): Yeah, I think it's, I think it's fair to say the Americans are coming, in terms of this space and BetterUp as a tip of the iceberg. Chad (38m 29s): A hundred million in ARR with 380 clients. That's fucking ridiculous. That's all, that's amazing! Joel (38m 36s): And eventually ZipRecruiter will be big as well as the Dave Matthews band in Europe. Elin (38m 42s): We actually love the Dave Matthews Band. Joel (38m 46s): I want to thank Elin for joining us today. Chad (38m 49s): Yes! Joel (38m 49s): Elin for our listeners who want to know more about you or Tengai, where should they go? Elin (38m 54s): tengai-unbiased.com or I just visit my LinkedIn Joel (38m 58s): Excellent. Gentlemen and lady. Another one is in the books. Joel and Chad (39m 3s): We out. OUTRO (39m 59s): 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.

Nobody likes boring, but you will enjoy some highly profitable tech sprinkled in with a little messaging cool shit here and there. On this week's pod: Background check solution (zzzzz) Checkr now has a $4.6 billion valuation after raising $250 million. Workstream and TalkPush are making big waves in the messaging space - one of which hopes to turn Instagram into a recruitment juggernaut! Then Solo, a well pedigreed and funded Seattle-based startup that is empowering gig workers to make more. And who wins the DARWIN AWARD this week? ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn? Enjoy another enlightened episode, powered as always by Sovren, Jobvite, and JobAdx. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. INTRO (2s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (21s): Oh yeah. China just announced kids can only listen to three hours of Chad and Cheese every week. Chad (28s): What not cool. Joel (30s): What's up kiddies. It's your favorite Minecrafters and Fortniters, the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "Pac-Man fever" Cheeseman. Chad (39s): And this is Chad "Portugal wins" Sowash Joel (42s): And on this week's show Checkr yourself before you record yourself, the stories remain the same at LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter ready's for a good old fashioned power bomb. No, that's not a cocktail, but it sure as hell should be. What's up. Mr. Portuguese man of war? Chad (59s): Dude last night, was sitting at this beautiful restaurant, overlooking the beach here in Puerto Mao and watching Portugal come back last night against Ireland, they were down zero one came back two goals, late goals. Renaldo had a header. I mean, it was just like, the place went fucking wild. Joel (1m 21s): You know, like the real footballs getting ready to happen. Chad (1m 23s): Right. Joel (1m 23s): I'm really disturbed that you're bringing up Ronaldo with the college football season coming up this weekend lost you're lost soul, man. You're a lost soul. Yeah. So I mentioned China in my intro. So if you haven't heard China is limiting children to three hours a week of video games. Now, if you want a revolution, China, that might be the way to do it. I know my kid would revolt if I limited him to three hours a week. Chad (1m 52s): Wow! Joel (1m 53s): Yeah. Chad (1m 53s): How do you do that? I mean seriously, how do you, so I guess everybody goes online. They use their online accounts so they can be monitored that way. If we were doing it old school, like with Nintendo and we were popping in cartridges, nobody would fucking know, right? Joel (2m 9s): Ooh. The return of analog video games in China. I think that's a thing. That's the thing buy that Nintendo stock. Chad (2m 17s): Look on eBay. I bet they're going for high prices right now. Joel (2m 20s): Probably are by the way, football talking of, you've been out of the loop here, but this was interesting. Ohio State, incoming quarterback, Quinn viewers out of Dallas, Texas, by the way, he has a mullet from 1987, which is really impressive. He signed a $1.4 million sponsorship as an incoming freshmen. So this is part of the new college players can make money. Dude hasn't even suited up yet and he signed a $1.4 million contract. I'd say that's pretty good for Ohio state's recruiting efforts. What about you? Chad (2m 52s): Yeah, that doesn't hurt at all. He's he's taken like the Ricky Bobby approach to football. He's going to go out, he's going to highlight sponsors all over him. Joel (3m 2s): Shake and bake. Chad (3m 6s): All right. Shout outs, baby. I've got a Mel Skansen. She's in compliance over at Fastenal. Thanks for listening, Mel. And I do not. I repeat, do not take any compliance advice from Cheeseman. You've been warned and if you haven't already check out Crazy and the King podcast, they're a smart, more of a compliment to the stupid shit we pull over here. But thanks for listening. Keep listening. Joel (3m 32s): Smart compliment. Speaking of smart, Steven O'Donnell is first-class with his breakfast choices. We wanted to mention this dude can rock an English breakfast. I don't know what a Portugal breakfast is, but English breakfasts are okay in my book pass the baked beans, Chad (3m 51s): Baked beans is not good for breakfast. As a matter of fact, I sent him the blazing saddles, campfire snippet, where they're eating baked beans and they're all farting all over themselves. Yeah, that's, that's what it's like to be at the O'Donnell residents in the morning for breakfast. A big shout out to Jay Arnold, NTA ops over at Continental, thanks for listening to the guy. He's a big fan of the shred. He's obviously a breaking news kind of guy. And if you are not subscribed to the Chad and Cheese, you're probably missing our late breaking news podcast called the Shred. So you need to go find Chad Cheese, wherever you listen to podcasts and hit that follow or subscribe button to get all the good shit. Joel (4m 38s): Yeah, let's talk a little VAX chat. I got a shout out to Tyson foods. You've had their chicken. You love their chicken. They're giving away $10,000 a week for five straight weeks to employees who have at least one shot of the VAX. So chicken makers out there enjoy that $10,000 if you win it, get that shot kids. Chad (5m 2s): Yeah. And look at where Tyson, I can't say where all of their Tyson facilities are, but I remember spending some time in Arkansas and they had a huge facility or facilities there and I know Arkansas is way behind the VAX rates. So yeah. Good for them. Way to go. And this is, I think the only way we're going to get anybody to get Vaxxed in the south is either they give them money or mandate it, one of those things or put it in, you know, Natty light, maybe that's it. Joel (5m 32s): Yeah. The character or the stick or in this case, the chicken or the stick. Chad (5m 37s): Shout out to George Laraque who had a premature fungilation this week. Guy couldn't even keep it in his pants. He couldn't wait till the end of the quarter. He was so fucking excited. VC funding for Work Tech approaches $12 billion. And as I had said for nearly over a year now, if you're not gaining ground in this market, or you're not getting funded in this market and you're in recruitment tech, you're doing it wrong kids. Joel (6m 7s): There's a reason we call him LaRock out with your cock out. Sometimes he gets just a little bit too excited. Chad (6m 13s): Premature fungilation. Joel (6m 15s): Nike is on the trend of closing its office for a week to get, give everyone a mental rest period, I guess before the fall cranks up. So Nike folks enjoy that week off. You're in good company with a lot of other companies doing the same thing. Chad (6m 31s): Well, let's hope that starts to be like a standard because it's like, this is almost like an optics play at this point. It's like, oh, let's give them a week off. COVID and then three years later, there'll be like, remember when we gave you that week off, get that shit done. Get back to work. So let's hope this becomes a standard as opposed to just a blip in the radar. Joel (6m 50s): Yeah. I agree. Smart Recruiters in our industry is a trailblazer for those weeks off. Chad (6m 55s): Yeah, I can. I can see that though, they will make that a standard. Big shout out to Gergo Vari. He's the CEO over at Lensa. Joel (7m 4s): Bless you? Gergo Gary who? Chad (7m 6s): Gary Vari CEO at Lensa. That's where our buddy Joey Stubbs works. I love it. When CEO's challenged, the bullshit that's out there in this case, Gergo he posted on LinkedIn challenging CEO pay that's averaging 350% more than aligned worker right now. So gotta love it. When the guys on top are saying, look, this is bullshit. This is out of line and CEOs like Dan Price, who we talk about all the time and Gergo from the top, but they're calling it. That's awesome. Joel (7m 43s): Nice. Shout out to a couple of a deals in our industry that didn't quite make the main news, but we thought we'd mentioned them. Recruiter.com acquires Novo group, this is on-demand recruiting to help you scale up and down those recruiting efforts and also Compa a job offer management platform, raise 3.9 million in seed money this year. Kind of an interesting idea of knowing exactly how much you should pay people, what the competition is, offering those jobs. I think a lot of people have questions about that. So if you have questions yourself, go out to a Compa for offer management information. Chad (8m 17s): Cam you imagine if we had a transparent society where all that shit was out there and everybody knew it. I mean, we wouldn't even need platforms like this. That's how fucked up our system is right now kids. Joel (8m 28s): Yeah, I thought PayScale did that, but hey you know, whatever. Chad (8m 32s): Shout out to David Working, 43. Dude's 43, and he won a lawsuit against his parents. Did you hear about this? Joel (8m 40s): Yes but please, please, please go on. Chad (8m 43s): So working lived at his parents' home for 10 months, after a divorce, obviously, you know, we all fall down, we need to get back up. Sometimes we need help from mom and dad. But before moving to Muncie, Indiana, after he moved, he learned that his boxes of films and magazines were missing. Those were films and magazine of porn kids. So Working's father wrote him an email saying, frankly, David, I did you a big favor, getting rid of all that stuff. I eat porn. Well, a judge in Michigan didn't see it that way. And he ordered his parents to pay $30,441 to their son all over that porn. Joel (9m 25s): That gives a new meaning to the term Working it. That's this kid last name by the way, Muncie, Indiana home of the Ball State University fighting Cardinals who I predict will win the Mac conference this year. And you've heard it here. First. Will beat Penn state in a couple of weeks. When they go to happy valley. Chad (9m 45s): Ow, that's a hard one. I hope it happens. I hope it happened big shout outs to guys who don't get shout outs from us often. Our sponsors and believe it or not. Joel (9m 55s): Oh, hell yeah. Some new ones. Chad (9m 58s): Well, we'll give some love to some old ones first. You know, we've got Sovren, Nexxt, Jobvite, Recruitology, JobAdx, Shaker, pandologic, Emissary, AdZuna and introducing the Intelligence Group, House of HR, Hiring Solved and This Way Global, thanks so much. We really appreciate all the sexy love that you bringing. Joel (10m 20s): And if you love listening to our dumb asses, you should thank them too, because they make it all possible. By the way, if you haven't signed up for free shit, you got to do that. Go out to Chadcheese.com/free. You can win t-shirts from Emissary, beer from AdZuna or whiskey from Sovren. And there's a new competition Chad, we've been talking football, all shout outs. If you love fantasy football and who doesn't, we're playing fantasy football this year, we've talked about it I think for two years. Chad (10m 52s): Yes. Joel (10m 52s): We're finally doing it. Join us, go out to a poach.ai. They're sponsoring it. My company, it's a little bit of an inside job, but anyway, I got to poach.ai. I'm going to put up a little football link, click that put in your email address for a chance to play fantasy football with Chad and Cheese. We'll be posting the leaderboards every week. It'll be fun. Chad (11m 12s): Yeah. Yeah. I don't think they call that an inside job. I think they call it a reach around, but yeah, is it time for topics? Joel (11m 20s): Yeah, I got nothing after that. Let's get to topics! I forgot birthdays. Can I do those real quick? Chad (11m 28s): Let's do it. Joel (11m 29s): All right, birthdays. Chris Hoyt for a Crossroads. Our boy Bill Borman that's a big one. Send him a birthday. Shout out this week. Chris Murdoch at IQ Talent Partners, a long time industry vet. Our boy James Ellis, fellow podcaster and network member. He's over there at Roku and Gautam Gosh, if you're in India, you know this cat he's speaker, blogger, just pundit extraordinary. Gautam, Chris, Bill, double Chris, James, Happy Birthday. his coming week. Chad (12m 3s): Happy birthday. Joel (12m 6s): Now let's get the topics! Chad (12m 10s): Topics! Joel (12m 11s): Chekr Yourself before you wreck yourself. All right. San Francisco based background check solution Checkr. There's no "e" at the end of that has raised $250 million in a financing round that more than doubles its valuation from earlier this year, they're now valued at $4.6 billion, which yeah, that's more than ZipRecruiter who we talk a lot about, launched in 2014, Checkr says it performs 30 million background checks a year and has revenue well above $200 million background check industry veteran Jason Morris, my former boss says he expects an IPO in the next six to 12 months. Will that be another one to add to your stock portfolio Chad? Chad (12m 54s): No shit, Jason, this is an easy one. I mean anything and we've talked about this several times over the last fuck year or so, if it's boring and people don't want to fucking do it, that's where you want to invest because that's the tech that people are going to want to implement quickly. And nobody wants to do background checks. They want something that is implemented into their system. They want something that's proven it's easy and Checkr's been around for a very, very long time. So yeah, if it's boring, start looking at it, start looking at the prospect of putting it in your portfolio. Joel (13m 31s): Well, very long time is a little bit subjective. 2014 isn't that long ago. Chad (13m 38s): 2014? Oh wow. Joel (13m 38s): That's what's the news. Yeah. They just feel like they've been around forever cause it's such a boring industry, but I was at Employee Screen IQ. You might remember for about a year back in 2015, I remember a Checkr got a round of money back then. I thought this is kind of a pretty good idea. Like this could really take off in the background check industry is just, is it's boring, but it's really, it's kind of nutty. There's so many like antiquated, you know, county records and like courthouses that are stuck in 1932. And like getting records is a pain in the ass. Chad (14m 11s): Shit people don't want to do. Joel (14m 12s): So you have these huge players like Sterling and HireRight that has a huge market share. But then you have a ton of these mom and pops like private investigators that do this. And Checkr came in and said, we're going to put in technology, we're going to streamline this process. We're going to make it a self-serve industry and it's obviously worked for them in a big way. Jason also added, in our conversation that they are a rocket ship and a unicorn in the truest sense. So if that's not a buy rating, I don't know what is, but yeah, these guys are, are really, and they're kind of alone in their space. They're really the only one that's sort of taken tech to the background check industry and really just lit that industry on fire. Joel (14m 53s): So yeah. Chad (14m 54s): Yeah, this is ridiculous, right? I mean, from the standpoint of owning a market and then you take a look at your total addressable market, it is Hug-fucking-mungus if you can actually automate portions of it? Right there are process process pieces, but there are also the other pieces that, you know, you have to actually have humans do. And that's what, you know, Checkr gets into as well. But overall, if you can, if you can integrate into all of the different applicant tracking systems and or the HCM systems as well, I mean, you got to going on, right. And if you're one of those old antiquated piece of shit platforms that is very, very hard to integrate with, well then guess what Checkr it up? Joel (15m 38s): Yeah. It's a strange industry. I mean, there's a whole network of people that will go look at county records for you. It's a really weird industry. And you also look at, and we've talked about this in the past about social media, you know, being a more important component to background checks and what are people saying online? And I think Checkr, you know, you know, has the pole position on sort of doing that stuff as well. So yeah, this is a juggernaut and everyone needs background checks, right? No one wants to be sued. Chad (16m 6s): Well, I wonder if a Checkr buys a company like Social Intelligence, remember we just talked to Bianca Lager a few weeks ago around Social Intelligence and how their system helps to be able to mitigate the prospect of your recruiters going online and taking a look at obviously doing their own quote unquote "social background checks," having them wrapped into something like a Checkr, I think would be pretty cool. Yeah. Joel (16m 35s): And who's the one you always remember this, but I don't, it's like fam or Fama. Chad (16m 39s): Fama. Joel (16m 39s): They do the Twitter stuff, right? That go back and say, there's the money that they've raised. I think the CEO actually sort of hinted that there might be some acquisitions in there. So I would certainly expect some of those moves to be made in the future. Chad (16m 54s): It makes good sense. Joel (16m 55s): All right, well, let's go to look something a little more sexier than background checks, San Fran based Work Stream has raised $48 million in a series B. The race comes a little over one year after Workstream raised $10 million in a series, a notable notably they added Jay-Z's Rock Nation, Will Smith's Dreamers, VC, Andre Agua, Dala, James Harden and Joe Montana's Liquid Two Ventures as part of the investment group. What's work stream you ask? Chad (17m 27s): Wow. Joel (17m 27s): Think text-based automated recruiting, screening, sourcing, job or distribution scheduling and onboarding for the desk-less workforce. They tout 1500 customers across 10,000 locations, including our favorite frickin Jimmy John's. Chad, is it time to start talking about Workstream in the same breath as Paradox? Chad (17m 50s): Yes, because Paradox is actually moving that way. There's going to be a convergence of many of these texting, messaging, RPA types of platforms overall. So I think this is just again, another signal to the rest of the market. This is important. If you take a look at the market itself, where are we having problems hiring people? I mean, in bulk, we're looking at high volume, we're looking at hospitality, restaurants, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So how do we actually reach those people? And how do we turn that engagement into a scheduled or maybe even an interview on the fly? How do you do that? You're going to do it via text. You're not going to be giving them a call. Chad (18m 30s): You're not going to be asking them to go to a desktop or meet at the local Jimmy John's, you're going to be doing this shit via text. So yes, watching Paradox do this, watching Workstream and we're gonna be talking about it a little bit later as well, this is a, there's a convergence and they're going to be many, many platforms that are going to be hitting the high volume side. Joel (18m 51s): You and I have been talking, you know, privately before the podcast about mobile's impact on recruiting. And I think everyone sort of knew it was going to be a thing, but exactly what it looked like, we didn't cry quite know. And, you know, Text Recruiter was sort of the first wave of that sort of the bi-directional chatting with candidates and now automation has come in, and chat bots and it's really evolved into what it is now with the Workstreams and the Paradoxes and some of the other ones that we talk about on the show, so that the world is mobile. How that was going to look in recruiting, I think is really starting to show itself. And look, most companies aren't Microsoft, they're small companies, you know, they're not at a desktop, they're not a laptop all the time, and job seekers are the same thing. Joel (19m 33s): And by the way, job seekers don't want to look for a job on the work computer, right? They want to be away from the peering eyes of their boss. So mobile just makes sense on so many different levels. And if you can create a environment where it's like a chat, as opposed to, you know, download your resume or log in with your LinkedIn profile, then I think that's something much more organic. I think, you know, bigger picture. What is this platform trend look like for companies like Craigslist, which has been really a staple for small businesses and hourly jobs for a long time. I think this is a real blow to their business. And I think, you know, Facebook is sort of uniquely positioned to take advantage of this trend. Joel (20m 17s): I mean, they already have messenger. They already have WhatsApp and some other messaging platforms, like to see them come in and buy an organization like this and plug it into their marketplace and jobs to me makes a lot of sense. And so we'll see what happens there. Someone, an industry vet mentioned something interesting who has access to some of this data, told me that Facebook is the first real threat to Craigslist on the SMB side. So Facebook adding some components like this, whether through acquisition or just building it, I think is something that we should watch as well, going forward. Chad (20m 48s): Well, and again, Facebook is a lifestyle platform. People live, they spend a lot of time on Facebook, so that that's there. There's no question that that's a threat. I see this in this conversation being a more, more of a threat to the traditional applicant tracking system. If the ATS doesn't pivot in turn into hyper mobile for everybody, not just for high volume, for everybody, they're going to lose. I mean, on average, it takes, you know, over 20 minutes for candidates to apply to a job in this market, that's never going to work for hospitality or for developer, right? And these technologies need to be, they need to be layered with other relevant pieces, it's one of those things where you have to know your audience and that's how you build your stack. Chad (21m 36s): And I really believe this is another shot across the bow of the applicant tracking system that they have to flip their model quickly. Joel (21m 45s): Yeah, that's kind of the big question for the next decade in our industry. Like do these platforms overtake the traditional ATSs, did the ATS has pivot into more of these business models? To me, that's one of the more interesting questions and trends that we'll be watching over the next decade in our industry. Let's take a quick break. You can go get some more octopus or squid or whatever the hell it is that you're eating there in Portugal. Chad (22m 10s): Wine. Joel (22m 10s): We'll talk a little bit more messaging stuff and More tech. Chad, remember when Monsters Jobber was going to be the Instagram for jobs? Chad (22m 20s): Yes. Joel (22m 20s): Not so much our friends at Talkpush, however, have just released the first ever recruitment chat bot that lets candidates search and apply for jobs without leaving Instagram. Talkpush is already just about every messaging platform, so this was bound to happen, I guess, especially when Facebook recently announced the expansion of the messenger API access for all businesses on Instagram. With over 1 billion monthly users worldwide Instagram is one of the most popular social platforms today, particularly among young professionals with the bulk of their users, aged 18 to 34. Chad Talkpush's Max Armbrister is your boy. Joel (23m 4s): So what are your thoughts on this move? Chad (23m 6s): Yeah, I'd say that I'm going to be a little biased because I do have a few options with Talkpush. Joel (23m 12s): Full disclosure. Nice. Chad (23m 14s): And we don't talk about these guys enough. They are big on in Asia, PAC and, and Mexico dealing with big companies like Walmart and McDonald's. Max understands one thing incredibly well, when fishing you go, where the fish are and Instagram is the number four social media platform worldwide behind number one - Facebook, two - YouTube, three - WhatsApp, and he's already integrated into all of those number. Number five is Facebook messenger, he's integrated into that one too. But every day there are 620 million Instagram users that spend on average about an hour on Instagram. Chad (23m 58s): And that time 200 million users explore at least one business profile daily, making Instagram an effective platform for candidates to discover brands. So this is a big recruitment marketing play for the younger demo. If that's who you need to go to, you have to fish where the fish are. And you have to also understand how to use Instagram from a marketing standpoint and then from an engagement standpoint. Joel (24m 26s): Yeah. Do you remember there was a site called ping.fm back in the day? Chad (24m 31s): Oh yeah! Joel (24m 31s): And it's gone, I think, but the basic gist was put up one update, social media update, and it would blast it out to Twitter, Facebook and at the time there were probably like a million different sort of Facebook wannabes and they covered everybody. And when I think of Talkpush, like they fucking cover everybody, like every messaging app that, that makes sense, these guys cover. So if you're looking for the broadest distribution, the biggest, I guess, pool, if you will, if you work for using fishing analogies, like Talkpush is, killing it, and you mentioned the global reach, you know, obviously we're focused on North America and to a lesser degree, I guess, Europe, but yeah, Asia, South America, these guys have really, I think, you know, staked a claim in those markets and from what I can tell are really doing well. Joel (25m 21s): And I also think that the benefit of the messaging strategy is you don't have sort of the text messaging headaches that you have with SMS. And I know they do that as well, but with fees and regulations and things like that, it's a real pain in the ass to do just text messaging all over the world. Whereas internet based, WhatsApp, Instagram, et cetera, is much easier and much less of a hassle to take advantage of. So I think they're really on the, you know, they're really on the front end of getting away from sort of that antiquated system and getting with the newer systems that people think of when they think about messaging. Chad (26m 0s): Oh yeah. Yeah. When we were talking about conversational AI and being able to do this at scale, this is what I was talking about earlier with regard to applicant tracking systems needing to pivot. Talkpush, I don't know. I know that some companies use Talkpush as an applicant tracking system. I think this is like the Paradox, the Talkpush, and again, Talkpush more of a global player. This is something that we need to be looking at very closely, because this is where the convergence is happening. We're talking about all these new conversational AI messaging types of platforms they're evolving into the newest form of an applicant tracking system. Joel (26m 46s): Yeah. I mean, look, there's a generation and generations coming up that, you know, going to a website, doing a search, clicking apply, uploading a word doc or something like that's becoming sort of what, when we started our career of going to Kinko's and getting printouts of cover letters, you know, it's, you know, messaging is so much more organic to them and much more natural. So I feel like, you know, time is sort of moving in that direction. If you're not doing that, you're, you know, you're going to be left behind. I do love that Max in their press release called it a chat bot and not conversational AI. Although I think they put that like most conversational AI solutions stay as far away from the word chat bot as possible. Joel (27m 30s): And the fact that chat bot was in their press release headline was pretty awesome. So Max, we appreciate that. Appreciate that a lot. Chad (27m 38s): Gotta dig it Joel (27m 39s): How many languages are they in now? Do you know off hand? Chad (27m 41s): I have No clue. I have no clue. I just know that they are all over the Pacific Rim, Mexico, South America. I mean, they're pretty much everywhere. And that's the thing is we don't see them much here in the U S because they're gobbling up market share and in other countries. Joel (27m 59s): Well, moving from the Pacific Rim to Seattle, let's talk about Solo. Seattle-based Solo has announced a $5.5 million seed round founded by two former Uber employees, Solo aims to help gig workers by providing hour by hour earnings predictions over the course of a week. The idea is to give workers a better understanding of when, where, and what job to work across the various platforms, Door Dash, Uber, Lyft, et cetera. Solo is so sure of its data that the company offers a guarantee making up the difference for workers if they end up earning less. Solo has a number of well-known investors, such as former Amazon consumer CEO, Jeff Wilkey, and former Uber general counsel, Sal Yoo, there are more than 1000 workers on Solo today. Joel (28m 45s): The five person company plans to expand beyond Seattle later this year, the app is free to use for now. So Chad, this is pretty cool, right? Chad (28m 54s): No, this is pretty amazing. This is a gig aggregator. I mean, you don't have to switch between apps. I mean, that's at least what it sounds like to me. Now they're getting, because of, I think their pedigree, they're getting a hell of a lot of fucking money right out of the gate for seed, because they only have a thousand users. Right now they're obviously showing some great gains. I think one of the guys actually saw a 30% increase in his wages and using Solo over, going from app to app, which is awesome. I'm not sure how long this guarantee will stay in place. Although I think it's smart. I don't know of a gig aggregator that's out there. Chad (29m 35s): And if they are the first, I mean, this is going to be interesting because will Uber allow this? Right will Instacart will all these gig platforms allow Solo into their walled garden? Joel (29m 49s): Yeah. Yeah. That's obviously a big question. One that Indeed and others looked at when they first started as well, certainly way to nip this in the bud would be to regulate access to their stuff. But this is, to me, this is fascinating. Basically, imagine, you know, before it was like, oh, I'm just an Uber driver. And it's like, okay, I drive Uber and I drive Lyft. Now I drive Uber, Lyft, now I do Door Dash, I do Instacart. Like a lot of these drivers do multiple services and then they just have their phone on their dashboard. And then look at rides that come up or pick ups that happen. So this app basically tells you, like, what hour of the day, what trends, what fees are spiking? Joel (30m 33s): What platform is going to pay you the most for this certain time period? I don't know how much of it is local at this point. So for example, if there's a big concert in New York, do you know Uber, Uber is more profitable because there's more people trying to get to the show. Like, I don't know. I don't know how localized it is from that perspective. The revenue model seems obvious. Like if I'm a gigger and I can pay these guys 20 bucks a month or whatever, and then I'm making an extra 200, like that's a no brainer for me to pay for that. So, your MRR is obvious in my opinion. I also think if, if all these platforms do allow this aggregation to occur, it could increase, you know, fees. Joel (31m 15s): It could increase, you know, money paid out to gig workers. If Uber knows it has to up its money to compete with Lyft during certain times of the day, I think that's more money that goes out. They're also looking into getting into benefits and, you know, really fascinating to me also is there's a social component to this where, you know what other drivers are making. You can chat with other gig workers. You can see, you know, what they're doing to kind of mirror their success, which could lead into like unionization components. Like all these people joining together against companies, they can chat about their experiences. I'm sure they tell funny stories about, you know, rides that they've given to people. Joel (31m 59s): So the social aspect of this is really interesting as well, really fascinating company. We need to keep an eye on Solo cause I think they have big things in store, unless all these guys shut the shit off and then they just die on the vine, which would be a shame. Chad (32m 14s): Yeah, well, this is transparency, right? This is something that we don't have in our workforce today. And as a matter of fact, employers try to suppress any type of transparency whatsoever. Apple is getting hammered in the press right now because they're fucking idiots because they don't want their employees to know what they're making, because they know that there's huge inequities that are out there. They've seen it in UK. They don't want the press to see it here in the U S so it's going to happen. It's going to happen. And if it's these gig platforms lead the way, I don't care how we get there, we just need to get there. Joel (32m 49s): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it could also be a sort of a new Glassdoor for the gig economy, right? So if all these drivers and whatever are rating services and rider, I mean, it could, it could be really interesting. There's a lot of ways this could go. Well, let's take a quick break and get to our fun stories of the week, featuring ZipRecruiter and LinkedIn. Chad, remember back in 2019, when CareerBuilder sponsored the WWE survivor series. Well, ZipRecruiter just said, hold my beer. Zip will serve as the official sponsor for events, including UFC's Dana White's contender series on ESPN plus, select pay-per-views and other UFC live events. Joel (33m 35s): ZipRecruiter will be integrated into UFC content showcasing how job seekers in various industries have successfully found a new role by using a leading online employment marketplace. UFC tout 625 million fans, and 166 million social media followers. The organization produces more than 40 live events annually while broadcasting to nearly 900 million TV households across more than 175 countries. So Chad UFC and Zip a match made an octagon heaven, right? Chad (34m 8s): This makes no sense. Help me understand this because the UFC skews young and heavy on the male side. Right. And, that was my feeling, then I started doing research and it was, yes, it was like 80% plus on the male side of the house. So for all those companies looking to diversify, why would I want to go to ZipRecruiter when they are pretty much just hammering away at young white males? It doesn't make any sense. Now, I think they're going to have, they could possibly have some very funny commercials with some of the UFC fighters or they could bomb, but overall, I just don't see this as a win for ZipRecruiter. Chad (34m 52s): I see it as a huge win for the UFC, because obviously the cash involved, but for ZipRecruiter, I just don't understand the demographics because as a company that's, unless, unless I'm looking for automotive repair people, which are generally heavily male, probably not going to use ZipRecruiter. Joel (35m 12s): So a few things stood out to me in this and the terms weren't disclosed, at least in the press release. So we don't know exactly what the price tag was for this. My guess is the NFL was sold out. But what stood out to me was, you know, maybe Zip is finding that the TV advertising sort of the traditional thing isn't paying off as much as it used to. So they're looking for sponsorship deals that are be honest. I mean, it's a lot of people, a lot of people do watch this. It's not just motorheads that are doing this. And I think what also stood out was the, the amount of countries that UFC. Joel (35m 52s): So 175 countries I mentioned, and as we know from our European show, which if you haven't tuned into that, you should, Europe is a huge focus for ZipRecruiter and they have very little market share. So assuming that UFC has a presence in Europe, this is a way to sort of get a foothold into new markets. But yeah, my initial thought was is UFC that much classier than WWE. And we kind of just totally barbecued CareerBuilder for that deal. So I dunno how we could apply this one. I agree diversity is not probably at the heart of this deal. I think it's more about our, our current strategy we've sort of milked it for all it's worth, we got to get into different segments and I think the international flavor played into it. Chad (36m 37s): They should be looking at acquisitions at this point, who have they acquired in the last year? Right? Especially in Europe, if they want a footprint in Europe, go acquire and be smart about it. I do not see this as a great step for them at all. They apparently have way too much fucking money and they don't know what the demographics of, you know, the needs of their clients are. I mean, that's just, again, I could be totally wrong in ZipRecruiter. Please send us messages, LinkedIn, whatever it is, and let us know why you did this because on the face of this, and this is me being an avid UFC MMA kind of guy, this makes no fucking sense. Joel (37m 20s): Are you saying that the job board.io acquisition wasn't enough? Is that what you're saying? Chad (37m 25s): That was more than a year ago wasn't it? Joel (37m 27s): Or was it job Borneo? Oh, that was a long time ago. And that was their first acquisition anyway. Yeah. They don't really do acquisitions nor does a LinkedIn all that much. So let's talk about Stories. Stories are disappearing videos more or less have been huge for Snapchat and Instagram, but not so much for LinkedIn or Twitter who just discontinued their stories, which they called Fleets. In a blog post LinkedIn says bye-bye to Stories on its platform. Quote, "we introduced stories last year as a fun and casual way to share quick video updates. We've learned a ton. Now we're taking those learnings to evolve the Stories format into a re-imagined video experience across LinkedIn that's even richer and more conversational. Joel (38m 16s): We want to embrace mixed media and creative tools of Stories in a consistent way across our platform while working to integrate it more tightly with our professional identity." Translation Stories just don't play to our users. Chad, you're pretty depressed about the disappearance of Stories on LinkedIn, right? Chad (38m 36s): Dude, LinkedIn Stories is like bringing Twister into an old folks home. It just doesn't make any sense. Joel (38m 42s): Bringing what to an old folks home? Chad (38m 47s): Twister You can bring twister in. You know, grandma is not going to play twister. It's not going to be something that is adopted because it doesn't make sense by the users. So yeah, this and we've talked about it before, this was a total bomb from day one, will this new rich video experience be something? I doubt it. I really think that what LinkedIn should be doing is putting their focus on their main product, which is shit when it comes to delivering relevant jobs to their job seekers. Right? And that being said, if you can do that in a much better fashion, guess what the actual, the value quotient goes up dramatically for anybody buying this shitty product. Chad (39m 33s): And I understand that they're making tons of money and people are saying out there right now, Chad, LinkedIn's making would like 10 million billion dollars or some shit I get it, but they still need to evolve and get better. And they're not. And they haven't. So this kind of shit to me, just falls on deaf ears. Joel (39m 49s): Yeah. Forever. They've been sort of a poor man's Facebook or any other cool social media at the moment. And they've always sort of been half, if not less than half of what those offerings are. So I remember when LinkedIn first introduced gifs and there were like, there were like eight gifs you could choose from. And then they had like stickers and there's like 20 stickers that you can choose from, while the big boys have filters and I can be a puppy or a shark, or, you know, like there's just so much more in terms of engagement and fun that you have on those. And then they just, they just try to take that trend and sort of shove it in to a professional network. Joel (40m 34s): And while gee shocking, you know, the 42 year old sales manager, isn't going to adapt it as well as a 17 year old teenager. So yes, they continue to do this. I applaud them on some degree of trying stuff. I applaud that they're getting rid of it after they found that A) people aren't doing it, creating content and number two) people, people apparently aren't watching it. Chad (40m 57s): Fail fast. Joel (40m 58s): I think companies probably leverage them better than people. Companies have actual marketing teams that can do stuff like this. But I mean, I can tell you, I produce Stories for the show. Like when we do shreds and shit like that, like I'll throw up a story. And you know, I have a decent network, 10,000, some people. And if, if my story gets 50 views, it's like a big deal. So apparently from just my own experience, stories have been a dud. And if people are getting similar numbers as I am, they're definitely not that encouraged to do more stories. Chad (41m 34s): Going to play taps on the way out. Joel (41m 36s): Love it, dude, we'll talk again soon. And with that, we out. Chad (41m 42s): We out. OUTRO (41m 43s): 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. OUTRO (42m 28s): 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.

Who should own the employer brand? HR? Talent Acquisition? or maybe, oh I don't know... MARKETING!?!? Brandon Linn oversees employer brand marketing and social media while reporting to Marketing. It's a refreshing look at the past, present, and future of the EB profession, with a sobering perspective on how to sell marketing on recruiting, and vice versa. Enjoy this exclusive brought to you by the mad A.I. parsing and matching skills of Sovren. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. Brandon (1s): How much money they are saving, could be saving, you know, by way of making smart marketing decisions. Like that's the way to win attention, time, budget, and buy it. And an interest is basically connect things to bottom line. INTRO (17s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman 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 (38s): Oh yeah. It's another manic Monday on the podcast. This is Joel Cheeseman. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm joined as always by my cohost, Chad Sowash and today we are privileged to bring on Brandon Linn VP, Employer Brand & Marketing and Social Media at Freedom Mortgage. Because when you think mortgage company, you think hot social media, Brandon, welcome to the show. Brandon (1m 7s): Hey, good morning. Happy Monday. Joel (1m 9s): So what did I miss? Give us the Twitter bio on you. Brandon (1m 13s): Yeah, absolutely. So I, like you said, run both Employer Brand and Recruitment Marketing as well as Social Media. And I'm happy to do so at Freedom Mortgage, which is the nation's sixth largest lender. Joel (1m 29s): Listen to you. You must be in marketing with all this number. Brandon (1m 33s): I prepped, I'm doing my job. I'm a brand ambassador 24/7 always be selling, Joel (1m 39s): Always be marketing, Brandon. Brandon (1m 41s): Always be marketing. Chad (1m 42s): And marketing means you should be closing cause I need some fucking leads. Overall though you are in Employer Brand, although you don't report to talent acquisition, you report to marketing. Tell us a little bit about that. Just not about today, but also you've been in Employer Brand for a while. How has this been different from the past, better, worse, different talk to us? Brandon (2m 6s): Yeah, so I think at some ways this is an interesting experience in almost being able to see the other side of the spectrum, where I was focused solely in the earliest days of my career on straight recruiting, like hand to hand combat recruiting all the way back to literally hiring the janitorial staff for a hospital and healthcare network. I mean like ground up, understanding all of the nuances of interviewing, filling butts and seats, and then slowly but surely I became a system admin for an ATS, which I won't name, but that was a horrendous experience, but a necessary one. And I was able to overlay the technology and understand both through interviewing and the human side and the technology side, where there was a massive disconnect in any kind of humanization storytelling, streamlining, education, filtering people in or out based on any real or authentic content, forget social media. Brandon (3m 2s): So at that point, you know, being a creative guy, I just started to really think about this massive hole between HR and marketing. What is HR marketing or marketing of HR, this talent brand employer brand stuff that is still sort of being adopted slowly but surely, but not really understood. Chad (3m 21s): Well, you saw marketing, this was a blind spot for them. Am I wrong? I mean, for the most part, marketing, they don't even pay attention to all of the shit that happens in recruiting,` talent acquisition, the systems. I mean that, that segment just seems like an entire blind spot overall. Was that your experience as well? Brandon (3m 41s): Yeah, I think philosophically, they completely get it, but literally it's not part of their remit nor their goals. Right. So they're basically saying the functions of marketing and the funnel and the psychology of bringing somebody in and it makes complete sense, but it's literally not in their goals. So all of the activities that I'm doing on the surface completely made sense to them, but understanding the ROI and candidate journey versus a customer journey, you know, it took some time to educate folks on what the return on investment is. And now that they see it, it's literally like, oh my God, we've got a lot of work to do, which is why, you know, I was brought on. Brandon (4m 23s): They knew that. Chad (4m 24s): Uh, huh. Brandon (4m 24s): But it's also very apparent to folks that when you start to peel the onion layers back, that a lot of organizations are still missing this, have maybe somebody that I'll just, you know, knock my own nickname. I was using a minute ago, the creative HR person. Oh yeah, I can do it. I'll do it. Right. You know, or they're the person that's just stuck around and has the institutional knowledge, they just get thrown, you know? Oh yeah, yeah. Can you like make this pretty? And you know, somehow maybe figure out Google analytics along the way. Right. And it's the side, side, side project for people. Joel (4m 57s): It felt like the pandemic wrought havoc on the employment brand profession, as in, they were the first to go, is that your perception? And is coming out of COVID reshape how marketing feels about employer brand. And do we hire people that have marketing backgrounds going forward? I mean, what does employment brand look like going into a post pandemic reality? Brandon (5m 24s): That's an awesome question. So I think from my perspective, I was very fortunate in that our industry, the mortgage industry was inversely. Joel (5m 34s): Load up. Brandon (5m 36s): Affected by the slump in the economy. So interest rates came down our business to the best it ever did in 30 years. Right. So we were on, you know, people say the cliché of hyper-growth and make a growth and hiring like crazy. We were literally, I mean, I'm talking, I got there late 2019 4K to 5k employees, by the end of 2020, we were at 10,000 employees. That's how much hiring we did. Chad (6m 4s): Hello? Was that an opportunity for you to help them understand how this was impacting their brand? Was that really kind of like the impetus or were you trying to work on this beforehand? Brandon (6m 15s): So I was trying to work on it beforehand, but it's essentially like a rental car agreement in the airline, you know? Right. You're on like the Toyota aisle and you get there late your flights delay and everything's sold out and they're like, well, you know, the only thing left is this Mustang that goes really, really fast. And so we've upgraded you basically. And what I mean by that is we were doing tremendous work and then the pandemic hit and then the market sunk and then the rates flipped on, you know, to our advantage to be able to save folks money and refinance them. And they were basically like everything you're doing, do it like six times as much and as fast then, then the data sets, all the denominators were bigger. Brandon (6m 55s): Right. So I could see, you know, just in general, the excitement around, if I said there were a thousand views this week, versus what we saw, you know, 5,000 views, it just, everything was bigger and more exciting and still is. So it was just a really interesting time. I mean, to put it lightly, right. But for us, we were rolling this thing out and then we were also rolling it out and it's the best year in the company's history. And you were asking me earlier about, you know, what, the first part of the question that what is the deal with marketing folks and employer brand, and where's everything going from here? Well, I'm bringing this back to data and I hate to use the cliché, but marketing folks not only use a lot of data, but to be able to tie that data to both short-term and long-term wins for the business and show how much money they are saving, could be saving, by way of making smart marketing decisions. Brandon (7m 51s): Like that's the way to win attention, time, budget, and buy in and interest is basically connect things to bottom line. So in the earliest days of employer branding, you would go all the way, top of funnel all the way bottom funnel, which is traditionally what recruiters only have time for, which is, you know, we have this site and it's doing all these cool things that in a vacuum we think are pretty and beautiful and hyper sanitized and it equals this many hires. And you're like, okay, that could have been a thousand external forces and factors, but here God, you can look at heat maps and funnels and who's clicking on what, and who's staying on what and how many people are getting through the different points and you know, where they're dropping off and why they're dropping off. Brandon (8m 35s): So it's like a huge switch into experimenting. Joel (8m 40s): Marketing likes to sell stuff. So the numbers are there, but okay, we have this many more views of jobs. Does that translate into actual mortgages? How does that connection? I get the numbers work, but how does it translate into sales for marketing and you guys in particular? Brandon (8m 55s): So now you're talking to them, the bigger picture is, do we need, you know, more people or certain skills or certain technologies. And so that's where, yeah, when you bring this all together, you get to the point where you're looking does more equal, better, and I'll start all the way at just the candidate journey. Before we even talk about who we're hiring to produce and to sell, you know, we're looking at things like more applicants, and this is again, become a little bit of a cliché, but more applicants certainly doesn't equal better. It's a waste of time. So you're thinking now about, and this will tie back to the pandemic. You're actually trying to filter people in and out and buy out, I mean, you're using a little bit, if not very much more authentic, raw verbiage pictures, because you know, now post pandemic life, we can't get to studios. Brandon (9m 47s): We can't get, you know, full Hollywood documentaries. And it's a great thing. We're just showing Zoom recordings, right. And selfie videos. And that's what people want to see. You know, no makeup. Chad (9m 58s): Are authentic. Brandon (9m 60s): Yeah. Authentic because we literally cannot produce it. I mean, you could throw filters on, you know, and you could send it to an editing suite, or house, but the new norm people are requiring authenticity. And the example of that is, you know, since we're all seeing each other's pets and kids and homes and mess, that way is cool and okay. It has to be, and that's the kind of media that you're seeing produced. So you're filtering people out now because they're getting to know you and the real you and you're real organization by the people who built it, not the infrastructure, you know, the coconut water and the ping pong tables. It's not there anymore. It's just the people, the intellectual property and their personalities. Brandon (10m 42s): And that's what the culture should have always been built by it. But that is it. Now it's stripped to its most simple parts and pieces, which are, you know, the people. Chad (10m 51s): Well, talk about the experience then, because again, you know, you have a pretty much a reputation one way or the other, it's either shit or it's great with regard to a candidate actually getting through your process, whether you want to make it harder, which is something that Intel does to be able to screen people out, or you want to make it easier so that you can get more individuals in number one, then number two, there's the famous black hole. How do you guys, how do you pivot away from everybody being dumped into a black hole to make it more scalable so that they have a better experience and thus, you guys have a better reputation, then hopefully those individuals possibly come to you to do mortgages. Brandon (11m 32s): So I want to add a caveat here. And I think it's really important that by no way, shape or form, do we have it all correct or right. Or we're not done mission accomplished. Sure. So, you know, to come on a podcast and say, oh, you know, doing all this amazing stuff, we're winning, you know, we're killing it. We trust me. Like there's a lot more work ahead of us. Joel (11m 52s): Such honesty from a marketing person. Are you sure you're in marketing? Brandon (11m 56s): Yeah. But you know, for real, I mean the candidate relationship management stuff that you're getting into now, that's kind of where we're going next. And so even the folks that I used to read case studies on goods, like, you know, we got this entire new product and it will, you know, follow you every step of the way. And you have this AI mentor, you know, none of them worked like ever, we would, as any good mystery shopper would do. We'd apply to the roles. Right. And we'd see how it worked in like, to this day. I mean, I'd love for somebody to hit me up and show me something that works. Please don't try to sell me. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, but, you know, but like we don't have that down yet. And that's what we're headed to next. But let me just say that it would be shame if I didn't plug the social media part of this, but what we do have as part of not falling into the black hole is we do have a huge emphasis on social media, which is not the scalable, you know, chat bot that, Hey, where's my resume? Brandon (12m 51s): Did you mean you'd like to apply to a role, you know, and we definitely have human beings answering messages and putting out a ton of recruitment marketing content. So it's not you just hitting up a corporate account about your products and services and saying like, Hey, is there anyone that cares about hiring here? No, it's a lot of recruitment marketing, a lot of active recruiters on social media and a lot of real time feedback looping. So for better, for worse, we don't have the scalable CRM yet. Yet I would say my buddy, Rick, who you guys, you know, know and love from the show, he is working on a lot of remarketing to the ATS to sort of awaken the older applicants or resumes and profiles to at least do that part of it. Chad (13m 38s): Using ID to jump into your old ass people click system. Yeah, I totally get it. Brandon (13m 44s): Exactly, exactly. Chad (13m 44s): Let's jump back into the, kind of like the marketing versus HR side of the house you've been in both, you now report to marketing. Why do you believe, or you don't believe that that's the right place for all of this to live instead of living at talent acquisition should employer brand, actually live in marketing and why? Because marketing doesn't seem to get the whole employer thing at all in the first place. So, so why should they own it? Or why, why shouldn't they? Brandon (14m 12s): I think I love where I'm at right now, because I think this possibly could be a template, not for perfection, but for what works generally well, is you have to have had some experience in recruitment, talent attraction, talent acquisition, to really be able to at least translate, you know, the lingo not be, on some of the cool new tools and technologies that might be cool, but you, you can understand systematically what they can and can't do versus what you can and can't do in-house. So I think it's got to be someone that has experience on both sides or meaning that they've come from one world to another. Brandon (14m 55s): They can't just be somebody who, I guess they, they could essentially be somebody who's spent their life in recruitment or in HR. I just think it will take a little longer for them to fully gain the knowledge and the lingo from the marketing end, and also gain the trust and to be able to exercise, you know, some of the projects and programs and budget really from marketing. So for me, it's, you know, spent eight, nine years in HR and recruitment and various employee engagement, plus talent branding efforts. And now I come over to marketing and I'm getting to do social media, both for candidates and the consumer brand, which is a huge undertaking and an exciting one too. Brandon (15m 37s): Cause I can funnel all that learning back into how we speak to our candidates because I know what we're doing as a business. And mainly my goal when I talk about the employer branding world is to help be a translator and an ambassador for all the things HR is trying to do that they need to get done through marketing. So that translation skillset is huge. You'll just get left behind if you can't understand both. Joel (16m 1s): It's commercial time. SOVREN PARSER PROMO (16m 2s): Sovren is known for providing the world's best and most accurate parsing products. And now based on that technology comes Sovren artificial intelligence matching and scoring software. In fractions of a second receive match results that provide candidate scored by fit to job. And just as importantly, the jobs fit to the candidate. Make faster and better placements. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's sovren.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human, Sovren. Software so human you'll want to take it to dinner. Chad (16m 46s): It's show time. Joel (16m 47s): You mentioned social media. I want to pivot to that real quick because I think historically recruiting would love to leverage social media, but they don't really get it. And historically there used to be a separate account for employment and there was a separate account for the company and everything that they put out as an employer was about like, Hey, we have jobs open or, Hey, here's a picture of our ping pong room. And it was totally disparate from what the company's main marketing message was, ewe with social media. So I'm curious, how do you guys approach social media? What platforms are the most important for you? What's the messaging mix if it's just one account versus two, et cetera. Brandon (17m 26s): Yeah. So my take on that is I've always found it funny to have these small little broken off social media handles and profiles and programs from not only recruitment versus consumer brand, but then you start to bifurcate Northwest regions, recruitment Facebook, right? And I think it comes back to when you start to understand the power of marketing terms like network reach, which is really complicated way of just saying word of mouth. You'd want to have your audience be bigger, to be able to spread the message farther. And with more connections in there from simple math, my goal is to send all of our recruitment and marketing messages through the main stage of our corporate accounts, because if we have 80,000, 90,000 people getting that message, and they're not the direct audience, well they're cousin, mother, sister, brother, roommate might be interested in pivoting getting a new job, starting a career. Brandon (18m 21s): And just maybe by the power of word of mouth, they'll share that message. And that network reach, you know, times, however many people they're connected to that'll see by way of the algorithm, however many people they share it with. You know, so I always thought, why not use the power of the numbers to propel your message as far as it can, rather than have this sort of like tiny life ad account where most of the time you see people have like, unless you're a massively known brand with a lot of people lining up at your virtual career fair booth, you have like a few hundred people that are the intern class in the summer, that's come and gone, all the recruiters, family members. Brandon (19m 3s): Right. And it's like, it just seems like an echo chamber that leads to pretty minimal results. And so what we do is, as I mentioned, two things we have in our corporate accounts, content calendar, we embellish it with recruitment marketing to go out to the main audiences. And I would think again from a reputation standpoint or maybe a, you know, call me a marketer truly through and through, that it would psychologically be cool for your consumers to know they're hiring, right. They're actually somewhat on some clip growing, trying new things, bringing on new talent. You know, if your consumers were to completely ignore the fact that you're throwing out employer brand content, cultural content, maybe cultural contents, not the best example, because that would be cool for them to see too. Brandon (19m 48s): But jobs that's a good signal. There's this big like, oh no, no, no, we can't send jobs out or recruitment marketing out to our consumers cause that that's not relevant to them. Yeah. I kind of disagree with that because yeah, they'll fly by it with the flick of a thumb, which these days is no effort. Right. They'll just miss it and skip it. But I don't know, I have this sort of bullish take on that, that there will be a small, significant spark ah like, oh, that's cool. Like they're growing. You know, it might be an interesting role we highlight or some things to say, they're not going backwards. Right. Joel (20m 22s): Let's extend that a little bit and bring in Glassdoor and Indeed reviews. And I think where a lot of employment brand people live in that world and most marketing people could give a shit. So how did you guys build that bridge? Is that an important element for you? The employer review sites? How does that work in your organization? Brandon (20m 46s): Yeah, it's a necessary kind of thing. I've been working with the Glassdoor relationship since the earliest days of my career and I own the relationship today. So we are really keen on making sure we look at the numbers and look at the competitive set of data. And we report out on an actually every single week. So we really care a lot about our reputation because, you know, coming back to this keyword of reputation, it is completely understood as the analog to what consumer brand looks at when they're looking for their brand reputation across sites. Like if you're a consumer brand or even a service these days, you know, your Yelp score, your Google score, your, my better business score. Brandon (21m 30s): So they totally understand, and we've embraced Glassdoor fully and try to maximize it as both a content platform, but also yes, as a reputation platform. Chad (21m 42s): Let's talk about new quote unquote "new tech" marketing has embraced programmatic advertising by about, I think like 85% of most shops on the marketing side use programmatic. And they do it in a very data intensive way. On the other side about, I don't know, 5% of HR talent acquisition actually have embraced programmatic job ads now understanding their different, buying a pair of underwear is entirely different than changing your entire career and your livelihood. Totally get that. But still there is this new way of actually targeting more cost-effectively and probably being able to target more qualified individuals. Chad (22m 26s): Two things, are you guys using programmatic number one and number two, is this something that you think should be catching traction much faster than it has? Brandon (22m 35s): I would say yes, it should. I mean, we'd love to be in the employer brand and recruitment marketing world with the times at all. For me, I will say again, this is an area where we are slowly getting into we've had some stops and starts with programmatic advertising, but the benefit for my ownership of employer brand and social media is that we've actually done some really interesting social media advertising for our jobs and, you know, with different sort of targets and lists and just cool content. We've actually been able to see some really interesting results because A. there's still not a lot of people doing truly systematic employer, brand recruitment marketing, then even less of those folks doing it on, you know, exercising their advertising through social media marketing, and then think about for my industry right now you have like us and maybe some of our biggest competitors. Brandon (23m 30s): So certainly I would say the first answer is I, I would love for us to get back into ramping up programmatic advertising, but in the meantime where we are doing some really cool experiments in the social media advertising world. Chad (23m 44s): Brandon Linn, everybody! Thanks for joining us, Brandon. For those listeners out there that want to know more about you or refinancing their house, where would you send them? Brandon (23m 53s): I would welcome you to hit me up on LinkedIn and for any and all home refinancing needs or to join Freedom Mortgage, for sure. Just check out freedommortgage.com and click on the careers tab. Joel (24m 9s): Fair enough. Chad, excellent epi Monday. Joel and Chad (24m 12s): We out, we out OUTRO (25m 6s): 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. Anyhoo 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.

Welcome back to VOICES w/ Amy Butchko SAIC's Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions. This is the final episode of this 5 part binge-able series. We pick up the conversation around a debate in HR about augmentation vs. robots enjoy. TOPICS: - Augmentation over Robots - Building Recruitment Teams - Wage inequity solutions - Moving Fast and Breaking Shit! 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. BINGE all 5 episodes with Amy 1 - The Struggle is Real 2 - Win Friends & Influence Budget 3 - Last Sourcer Standing 4 - Treat A.I. like a Puppy 5 - Moving Fast & Breaking Shit Amy (0s): Where I just kind of imploded and just quit being effective at my job, because I was just like my attitude tanked. And I mean, just all the things that can happen when someone is burnt out, you know, you say the wrong thing in the wrong room. Voices INTRO (18s): Voices. We hear them every day. Some voices like mine are smooth and comforting, while on the other hand, the Chad and Cheese podcast is like listening to a Nickelback album, you'd rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, y'all now listening to Voices a podcast series from Chad and Cheese that features the most important and influential voices within the recruitment industry. Try not to fuck it up, boys. Chad (52s): It's Chad again, welcome back to voices with Amy Butchko SAIC's, Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions. This is the final episode of this five-part bingeable series. We pick up the conversation around a debate in HR about augmentation versus robots. Enjoy. Joel (1m 12s): Your opinion on the robots is obviously pretty clear from this interview. Curious about your thoughts on if you're bearish on automation, where are you on augmentation? In other words, creating tools that help enhance a human being's ability to do something quicker, faster, more, you know, more, I dunno, deeper where they're going. Like I always think of a lot of the sourcing tools, the Seek Outs and the Hired tools, their success has been built on augmentation. So instead of you having to go out and search Google or whatever search engines, like they bring all the candidates into one place. So where are you on augmentation in the future of that? Amy (1m 49s): Bullish on augmentation, because it works. I mean, it works! So, let's break that down into like, what does that actually mean in the job? So back in the day, if you were a sourcer, which I was, you know, you had to know how to write a Boolean code string into your, you know, into whatever, you know, the kajillion browsers that you can, you know, use to go find your specialized people to do the stuff that you gotta do. And, you know, because Google does one thing and the other, you know, and they all do different things to keep you in their walled garden and keep search and their algorithm working their way. Amy (2m 29s): Right? So you had to know how all those different things worked and how to code your search. Just so, the software does that for you now. And it has completely transformed how efficient sourcing can be. You know, another example of where augmentation is effective is text messaging. So used to be, if you wanted to send text message, I'd pick up my phone, open my app, put your number, in type you a note, and wait for you to respond. Now I can do that at scale, I can send kajillions of text messages, to kajillions of people who have opted in to my system. Joel (3m 13s): That doesn't sound spammy at all. Amy (3m 15s): Well we don't actually do it because the kinds of candidates that we work with. Joel (3m 17s): I know I'm giving you shit. But when you say a kajillion that's a lot, but I guess, Amy (3m 21s): But it's augmentation, but I could do it. Joel (3m 24s): Yeah. Amy (3m 24s): And you know, and what we were talking about before with the chatbot thing I'm telling you, you can't do it. I'm gonna tell you what, like, that's probably not gonna work. This you could do it. Joel (3m 35s): So yay on terminate or no on Terminator. Yay. On Robocop. That's no Schwartzenegger, we're going Robocop. Amy (3m 41s): Robocop is the answer. Joel (3m 43s): I like it. We like to funnel everything to the eighties Amy, when we understand stuff. Amy (3m 47s): I don't understand anything before or after. sfx (3m 50s): applause. Joel (3m 51s): Oh shit, she just earned a second applause. Way to go Amy. Chad (3m 57s): Yes! Yes! Joel (3m 58s): Any pro '80s commentary gets an applause. Chad (3m 60s): So yeah. Now we've got to get into you know, the, shall we play a game kind of scenario. So the algorithms are generally trained off of humans, which are biased. Right? But yet we expect the algorithms not to be biased. Well, how have you seen just the conversation go around matching biased in the different algorithms that are out there for organizations like yours to find better quality candidates and not be a bunch of old white dudes. Amy (4m 37s): We don't use a lot of that. Chad (4m 39s): Okay. Is that because of the perspective, bias or what? Amy (4m 43s): Yeah. The potential for, you know, so I work in an environment that is very focused on like information security. And so one of the components of information security is identity. So anything that potentially breaches the identity of the individual is going to be questioned in our world. The search that we do is pretty careful, and we have a lot, we have humans doing it. So do we use the tools? Yes. Do we rely on those tools to handle every component of that search? No we do not. Chad (5m 22s): Right. So augmentation. Back to augmentation then? Amy (5m 25s): Yes, definitely back to augmentation. Joel (5m 28s): We briefly talked about scaling, scaling a company in terms of talent acquisition in a post pandemic world. Obviously there are new challenges in that. Have you, have you given much thought to that and how people should sort of rethink building an organization quickly in a post pandemic world, is, do things change much or do they change a lot or somewhere in the middle? Amy (5m 51s): Yeah, that's a good question. And I haven't thought about it specific to post pandemic, probably because I think talent acquisition to me, but to me, talent acquisition has always felt like a place where people come and go and it's, you know, COVID was a time when not a lot of people came or went, if you were, if you had a job, you could keep your job. If you can, you know, if your company downsized your recruiting department, then you know, I know that that was a gosh, the spring of 2020 was rough for a lot of people. And for us, we were able to retain and keep chugging along. Amy (6m 35s): Government contracting was pretty stable. So post pandemic, we have started to see an uptick in turnover, just like everyone else. And you know, some of that may have been, as I discussed, pent up, you know, might've left last year was thinking about making a change, blah, blah, blah. And some of it is because, you know, compensation is, you know, some of the offers are really good. I have been hearing things, you know, from some of my peers out there that are making me wonder, shouldn't my phone be ringing? I'm like, wait a minute. Cause there's some pretty nice and pretty sweet deals. Amy (7m 16s): But I think that for me, in terms of building a team and growing a team, we started this team three years ago and started kind of scaling it up around 2018. And now the team is much larger than it was, but that it feels to me right now, more like that building phase when we were starting from scratch. And it was like, wow, you know, I'm going to be interviewing all the time. I've gotta be always, you know, making sure that I'm taking care of my people that are here and, you know, and we do have a good emphasis here on what is our quality of work-life balance? Amy (7m 58s): What is the, you know, is it, how are we treating each other? How, what is the burnout level? How are we taking care of ourselves? And, you know, bringing that wellbeing work. So I think, you know, I think that that last part is new post COVID where that mindfulness of being human, that we're human, that part is kind of new, but the rest of it, you know, the, the growth and building something is familiar to me. Chad (8m 27s): When it comes to wage inequity, talent acquisition has a lot to do with that. HR has a lot to do with that because we're the ones actually pushing the deal across the table, for the most part. Right? How do we, and if you take a look at talent acquisition as a whole, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's a very female heavy department and/or industry. So why are women allowing other women to get shafted? And why has this happened for decades? Joel (9m 0s): And you thought this would all be softball questions. Amy (9m 3s): No, I know, I thought we'd be talking about robots and easy things. Chad (9m 9s): We already did that. Joel (9m 10s): Search queries. Amy (9m 11s): So a couple things on, you know, and this is just speaking strictly, this is just Amy. And this is as you indicate HR, not so much talent acquisition, though, I can say is not female dominated, right? Like there's a lot of men. I mean, we're currently I'm out numbered on this call. Joel (9m 40s): Not in IQ points, Amy, not in IQ points. Amy (9m 43s): Well, I, so I think that there's a couple things that are, that I would say that have to be addressed in this, around wage, around wages and around women, in particular. One is the historical pay gap, how much you make, when you start working largely sets, how much you will make forever, right? Because the increases that you get, the, the amount that you make, it can be set by that very first job, right? And often we know that women are paid less, but I also think that around that, you've got the fact that that pay is not transparent. Amy (10m 31s): And I actually, I saw an article. This doesn't have to do so much with women in particular, but the Wall Street Journal this past week had an article that was something like, there are companies out there who are apparently advertising their jobs, that they can be worked anywhere except Colorado and why is that? Because Colorado has a law that went into effect early 2021 that said that companies must post compensation for the jobs that are either remote can be worked anywhere or are based in Colorado. And so there are companies out there and by the way, SAIC complies, we post our compensation for jobs that can be worked in Colorado, or that are in Colorado. Amy (11m 19s): And we have both. So it was like, it was a huge hassle to like, make the change out from a technology perspective, like getting that fixed and, you know, so that it works. That was a thing. So the robot is helping us there. So point for the robot. But when you look at, you know, why would a company, like, what are we doing here? If we're keeping things in the black box where nobody can know what, like, I can't know what you make and you can't know when I make, you know, we just kind of have to guess. And a lot of times, you know, you're lucky you feel lucky to have a job. And so you're not necessarily going to want to rock the boat. Amy (12m 2s): And I think we know historically women also, you know, another statistic that you can go find them on the internet, but I don't, I can't remember who did the study, but you know, there was a study done where women will only apply to jobs where they feel they're a hundred percent qualified. Whereas a man, I can spell that, you know, I can, you know, I'll apply to that job. I mean, and sure, both people might be equally able to do the job, but the woman is more, is less likely to apply. And then if you think about that same mindset going into an offer negotiation, you know, if you put her back on her heels and be like, well, have you ever made a chat bot? Amy (12m 45s): And she'd be like, no, like maybe I should just take less money right, to do the job? Right. I mean, just think about it, right. As a person, you know, in the middle of a negotiation, what's going to happen to you. So last thing you know, around gender and pay is there is a, another known phenomenon where there's actually like a premium that happens when a profession is male dominated. And as soon as more women start to join a profession, the wages start to go down for everybody. And so, you know, and if you look at like teaching, right, potentially HR, I don't, I don't really, you know, right, like the wages start to go down, whereas male dominated professions or professions that are thought of as male dominated are, you know, can be more highly compensated. Amy (13m 41s): And this is just kind of how our brains work apparently. So Joel (13m 46s): You touched on how male and females view job descriptions differently. And there are a lot of solutions out there well-known, and startup that are trying to solve that problem of creating equality and job postings and the actual description. Has SAIC done anything in the past a few years to change how they do job descriptions? Are there solutions that you sort of rely on to help you do that? Do you find that effective? Because I think it's something that people just sort of, you know, copy and paste and we're done, but I think companies have to take more thought into what their job descriptions say because of these studies that are being done. Joel (14m 27s): What's sort of your take on that. Amy (14m 28s): Yeah. So we still mostly manage that with humans and we have looked at some of the solutions and have found them promising, but not, you know, I think you're getting into a place where the language of a job description, it's not standard, right? Like every job can be different. And so the software, when you have, you know, like right now, like we could probably have 1300 jobs open, you know, you can go look out on the internet and each one of them is different and software just, hasn't caught up to enterprise scale on that. Amy (15m 9s): So it kind of works, but, or we haven't gone forward with that type of a solution for that reason right now. Can't wait for them to get all the vendor pings. Joel (15m 20s): Yeah and I know we talked about jobs to web earlier, and how much does SEO come into play when you're writing description? Cause there's a certain amount of, I guess, maybe think like a search engine, but also think like a human being and how do you balance that or do you? Amy (15m 37s): We do so a couple things that we do is we do train our recruiters in the kinds of things, to like the do's and don'ts, especially with job titles where, you know, it can, you can break Google really quickly by, you know, sticking a bunch of acronyms into your job title and, you know, and Google goes what? And so we do train our recruiters to do better with that. And in terms of other mechanisms, we also use a little bit of automation with our advertising agency has the ability to do some sort of like AB testing and stuff with our jobs that are sponsored and we have pretty good results that way out of advertising, so there's another, you know, another point in the robot column, Joel (16m 27s): I think you're saying there's a lot of nuance in your job, Amy. There's a lot of nuance. Amy (16m 33s): There is. And that's part of what makes it interesting for me, as a human. Joel (16m 37s): And that's a point for the humans. Nuance. Amy (16m 39s): And that's a point for the humans. That's exactly right. Yeah. I don't think, I don't think that a robot could do my job yet. Chad (16m 44s): We actually had Tracy Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas on the show to talk about their book, Move Fast, Break Shit, and Burn Out. And it was centered on catalysts, pretty much, I would say a silo of individuals who do just that. They move incredibly fast, they break shit because they're moving so fast and then they burn out, right? And how to actually manage that. So I found it somewhat enlightening for myself to be able to have that conversation and almost feel like I found my people. You obviously gravitated to it as well. Why? Amy (17m 21s): Probably because ultimately I recognize the burnout cycle and I saw the, you know, it's almost like it can be manic, you know, when you're building something or when you have a concept or an idea that you're trying to bring to fruition and, you know, and I'm so fortunate with this role where I've been able to build things and build teams. But in my career and you know, now that you know that I'm an expert on the eighties, you know, that I didn't just start here. I've had some cycles where I just burnt out. Amy (18m 2s): And what ends up happening is there's a couple of ways that that's kind of manifested for me, you know, and one of them is, has been health problems. And the other one has been where I just kind of imploded and just quit being effective at my job because I was just like my attitude tanked. And I mean, just all the things that can happen when someone is burnt out, you know, you say the wrong thing in the wrong room. Your attitude tanks, you know, you become the kind of person that other people don't want to work with and they are the people you don't want to work with anymore either. That's the kind of, you know, sort of that cycle of things was something that I recognized and as I've matured in my career, I've kind of gotten to the point where I've been able to manage that more myself, but kind of reading that perspective and just spending time thinking about the concept of a person as a catalyst and what it really takes to move an organization was just fascinating to me. Amy (19m 11s): And so I, to kind of felt like I found my people, but you know, that whole concept was just, I was like, wow, okay. So I'm not the only one over here moving fast, breaking shit, and burning out. Chad (19m 25s): What about managing people now? I mean, because after that, right, you kind of find your people and then you see other people and you're like, okay. I think from a mentorship standpoint, I might be able to help them. How has it helped you? Amy (19m 41s): Yeah, so I did, I actually had a conversation with Tracy and thank you for that introduction, with Tracy Lovejoy about that. And, you know, I have a couple of catalysts, you know, people that I would describe as catalysts on my team. And in terms of managing that person, there's a couple of things. One is being really respectful of what they're bringing to the table, even though it's not something that you can act on right now. If you can't act on it right now, then how do you give the idea it's do? You know, give the concept, you know, the proper error for what you can do right now, or the proper investment so that you can figure out how to grow it forward. Amy (20m 26s): And then also on the flip side of that, recognizing that that person also probably burns really hot. So when I say burns hot, what I mean is, that's the kind of thing, that's where the burnout can happen and, you know, and being like, okay, how is this person doing on their leave bank? How have we all had a vacation this year? You know, and being really mindful of watching out for signs, like getting texts at nine o'clock at night, every day? Chad (20m 57s): Right. Amy (20m 58s): Not okay. Right. Like that's the kind of stuff that, that managing really smart people who can see the future, which is how I would kind of like sum up what I think a catalyst also is. How do you manage those folks and help them be successful in your organization? Chad (21m 19s): No, I was just going to say, I call that the dots concept, because most individuals can't see all the dots. They'd just like, they're not aware to all the dots, let alone, they don't have the ability to connect the dots. So, you know, those are things that they're seeing in the market and they see the dots connecting in the market itself. So it's not like seeing the future, but it's kind of like seeing the future. Yeah. Joel (21m 41s): And Amy, we don't want you to get burned out on the Chad and Cheese podcast. So thank you for coming in and spending some quality time with us, for those listeners who want to know more about you connect your organization, where would you send them? Amy (21m 56s): They can find me on LinkedIn or on Twitter. I'm at Amy Butchko. So just AMY B U T C H K O on Twitter and on LinkedIn that's also my handle. Joel (22m 6s): This has been a treat. Amy (22m 8s): Thank you. Joel (22m 9s): Chad we out. Chad (22m 11s): We out. Yeah. Thanks for listening to the Chad and Cheese Voices series with SAIC's, Amy Butchko. If you like what you heard, there are more great interviews with amazing people ready and available. If you're not already subscribed, look for the Chad and Cheese wherever you listen to podcasts and hit that subscribe or follow button. Thanks for listening.

Welcome back to VOICES w/ Amy Butchko SAIC's Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions. This is episode 4 or a 5 part binge-able series. You're gonna love this episode! TOPICS: - The Great Resignation - Talent Pipelines are not instant - Where are the robots?!? - AI is a puppy 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. BINGE all 5 episodes with Amy 1 - The Struggle is Real 2 - Win Friends & Influence Budget 3 - Last Sourcer Standing 4 - Treat A.I. like a Puppy 5 - Moving Fast & Breaking Shit Amy (0s): I'm just here to tell you that none of this stuff has a toaster. You don't get it out of the box and plug it in and then get toast. INTRO (10s): Voices. We hear them every day. Some voices like mine are smooth and comforting, while on the other hand, the Chad and Cheese podcast is like listening to a Nickelback album, you'd rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, y'all now listening to Voices a podcast series from Chad and Cheese that features the most important and influential voices within the recruitment industry. Try not to fuck it up, boys. Chad (44s): Welcome back to voices with Amy Butchko SAIC's, Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions. This is episode four of a five part bingeable Netflix type of series. You're going to love this episode. Let's dig right in. Joel (1m 0s): Can we talk about the great resignation? Do you have any opinions on that? The trend of all these people leaving the work place? Chad (1m 7s): Did you hear that sigh? That Oh... Joel (1m 11s): I did. Amy (1m 12s): Oh yeah. Well, it's real. It's real. And I actually, I sat in a Gartner webcasts this past week and they were talking about how, not only are people resigning, but people are expecting up to a 10% leave. What do you, I guess that's all like a leave premium. Like if you leave your job, you can get 10% more if you just changed jobs. So, you know, the folks that I've talked to say that they think that's a conservative, like 10%, what do you mean? We're hearing some really crazy things out there in the market. Chad (1m 53s): A lot of the impact that we're seeing is because most companies have really not focused on internal mobility at all. They're really focused heavily on getting that new, fresh talent in the door. But once they get them in the door, they kind of atrophy and they don't see new opportunities. They don't see lateral opportunities or even an opportunity to get into, to new departments or what have you, new projects. Can you talk to that at all? Or is that something that you guys, you need to do better at as well? Amy (2m 23s): We do. We need to do better. We, you know, I don't think anybody's really got it nailed. I think that, what you've got right now is a combination of market forces, to the extent that you have what would be called pent up demand, right? People who probably would have left their job last year for a variety of reasons and didn't because COVID, and now you've got that, that pent up attrition. The attrition that would happen is happening. And then you got this other phenomenon where you've got people who increase their wages. They can get a different opportunity. Amy (3m 4s): Internal mobility is not ideal, probably in most organizations. There's lots of reasons for that. You know, whether it's, I don't want to lose Chad, because if he goes over to this other department, then I'm stuck. But you know, nobody thinks about the fact that all you have to do is go on the internet and you can find a department outside of your employer and go do that. Like, okay, if you won't let me move around, I'll move around somewhere else. Chad (3m 30s): Yeah. But I couldn't move around somewhere else outside of the company, which is what we see a lot of people do. Amy (3m 36s): So if you've got this internal mobility issue where it's, we've made it easier for people to leave than to stay, I think that's the tweet. Right. And the other thing I think you've got going on here, Chad, and I've heard you talk about this in the past is about how internal development of employees doesn't like, we would, we would rather go buy it then we would rather build it as a society. Not just where I'm not just where I work. It's, you know, I want this ready-made done. I want the person to come in. I need them with all the right experience. And I want them to fix my business. Whereas a different point of view is what would happen if we built these people ourselves? Amy (4m 19s): What if we invested in those folks and do it that way. And I, I have some pretty strong feelings about this. They're they're not always. Chad (4m 28s): Talk about it, come on. This is where you're doing right here. Amy (4m 33s): What, like, why do we think that you can make people out of thin air? You just can't, they don't come from thin air there's, there's a limited talent pool in most of the high demand skills right now. So why, you know, why are we not investing more? Chad (4m 53s): Yes. Well, and again, I don't want to, I don't want to lean too hard on this cause I always do. And I'm going to do it again. Army ROTC. Amy (5m 3s): I knew you were gonna say that. Chad (5m 6s): And I see it happening here locally with plumbers, HPAC, you get an individual, they come in, the company pays for the certification and they're on contract for three years. Right? So, and I understand, but still that's not a, you know, a top level developer and that's what we're looking at, Chad. Yeah. But that's where they start. Right? Amy (5m 29s): Right! Chad (5m 30s): We are an area of the company that thinks at a moment's notice, we don't plan for longterm and talent pipelines are not instant. They are something that you build and we are not builders. Amy (5m 46s): It mystifies me. I mean, you know, and in the world where I work, you know, it's, there's the technology shortage, you know, technology skill shortage in terms of being senior enough to have certain skills, you know, but that we haven't always cultivated people. Right. You know? And so there's that. The other thing that I was that I do want to say though about the cleared community is we don't do a very good job of cultivating folks with clearances either. And we honestly, we do rely heavily on military recruitment to get those clearances out of the box. But when you start getting into the super high level clearances, you don't always find them. Amy (6m 28s): So finding ways to, you know, and it's that intersection, right. And that's a, you know, my brain just shorted out a second ago, cause it's like, there's, there's this thing where you've got the skill bucket that's depleted and then you've got the clearance bucket. That's, you know, only going to take a certain type of person and is only going to take a few people through that process. And then when you have that intersection, you end up with a pretty scarce talent pool. So it is frustrating to work in a world where, you know, it's not just internal mobility, that's the problem. It's all types of development that needle the other look, in my opinion. Chad (7m 12s): But what you're talking about is clearances. In being in the military, I had a clearance for 18 years. Do you know why it's so easy to clear 18 year olds? Amy (7m 24s): Well, they haven't done much. Chad (7m 26s): They don't have a fucking background. Right? So overall, if companies, I mean, if we're talking about building our own pipelines, we need to think at the root of the situation, right? We shouldn't think of this a, well, I need a senior developer today. Well, that's your fault for not thinking about that? I don't know, 10 years ago, or five years ago start building today for tomorrow. Steal from others right now, but you've got to get something in place today. Joel (7m 55s): And I think that Chad's commentary is really pressant in the fact that if work from home is a thing that sticks, then the resignation is not going to be a one-time big event. It's going to be an ongoing thing that companies have to deal with because work from home as good as it is in many cases, feels like a long distance relationship. You know, you're never quite as invested with the interrelationship as when you see them every day or see them on a regular basis and they're at a distance. So do you agree that that Chad's comments are more important because this resignation issue is going to only get worse as work from home sticks? Amy (8m 33s): I don't know about the commitment aspect, Joel. I would. I think you're probably right, but I think it could have to do also with the fact that now most jobs have a national pool of candidates, not a local pool of candidates. So once managers kind of get a taste of, wait a minute, I can find great talent in Indiana compared to, you know, my backyard and wherever the heck I am. You know, it opens up so many different ways of thinking about things that a lot of folks just haven't done before. Amy (9m 14s): So I don't really know if like, I don't know if it's all going to be like, if there's going to be one, cause and one, you know, one reason, but I think the effect is definitely going to be there. So I think we agree, but maybe for different reasons. Joel (9m 28s): So do companies work harder to keep people or do they not care because there's a bigger pool and they can just go play shuffleboard or with all this talent, swapping spit has been a popular statement on the show recently. Like, do they want to keep them more or replace them more? Amy (9m 45s): I think when you look at statistically, what you hear and you know what I think we know to be, if we can accept as true, that attrition is expensive because you lose your internal knowledge, right? You lose, you lose that knowledge that's been built inside your organization. So it goes bye bye, and then you have to bring somebody else new in which has a cost associated, just the brand has the cost associated. And then you got the cost of training that person, you know, as well. And you know, one of the things that one of my former bosses talked to me about, and it stuck with me, especially around hiring recruiters. Amy (10m 32s): Cause recruiters lot of times, you know, we can be kind of rolling stones, right? We don't sit very long in one place. And so it's not unusual to see somebody, you know, after a couple years just, you know, pick up and move on. And you know, and my LinkedIn profile is certainly evidence of that. I mean, I've been here for almost eight years, but that's like, you know, a record. But when you look at that tenure piece, you know, what he always says, you know, you get these recruiters who have one year of experience 10 times and they think they've got 10 years of experience. And wow, when you really think about it and you start seeing how people kind of operate inside organizations, that ability to persist and do the problem solving within organizations and within jobs, whether you move up or not, right? Amy (11m 27s): You know, there's, you know, I don't maybe you're you want to be a recruiter forever, or maybe you want to be a sourcer forever, or maybe you want to be a manager forever? Who cares? But that ability to kind of persist, do the problem-solving, work those relationships through because you know, work is not always just, you know, peace and light, but that, I think that that's something that is another factor with that attrition problem, because you lose people with that problem solving. Joel (11m 58s): Yeah. Retention is a problem without work from home. Now it's an even bigger problem. And so I'm guessing what you're saying is services and solutions that help you keep employees are going to be at the forefront in the foreseeable future. Chad (12m 13s): But we got robots to take care of this shit though, right? Amy (12m 16s): All right. Well, where are the robots right now, Chad? Chad (12m 20s): Good question. You tell us, where are the robots? You've built your stack from ground zero, right? So in building that more efficient stack, how have robots helped and are they living up to all the hype? Amy (12m 36s): The robots help a lot. So we have built a stack that has, you know, a CRM layer. Joel (12m 44s): When you say robots, just for the listeners. What do you mean exactly? Amy (12m 47s): What do I mean, that's a great question. So what I think about when I'm referring to a robot is a tool, a technology tool that automates something that a human could do. You know, and in the case of the automation, that's working is things like a job distribution engine that pushes jobs out efficiently and gets, and then collects applications for workers, that's automation, right? I mean, it's very basic automation and it's automation that we've had forever, but it's also automation that's not always working that well for every company. Amy (13m 29s): So, when we fixed ours, we were able to plus up our applicant flow by four times, just by changing out the system and getting more efficient job distribution and, you know, a bot, an engine that does that, and then building a better mechanism to accept those applications. So that's a robot that's working really well. Other robots that we've worked with, are things like automating our referral program or doing, you know, building a chat bot, which has not yet happened yet, but will be happening soon. And those things require enormous amounts of human labor behind the scenes. Chad (14m 11s): Now, are you building your own, you going to a vendor and they're obviously collaborating and building it with you? Amy (14m 17s): The latter. Chad (14m 17s): Okay. Amy (14m 18s): The latter, but I'm just here to tell you that none of this stuff is a toaster. You don't get it out of the box and plug it in and then get toast. Chad (14m 28s): Most companies don't understand that though. Amy (14m 30s): Oh my gosh. It's I didn't understand that. And when I had my first, it was a couple of years ago when somebody said, you know, well, we should get a chat bot. And I was like, well, let's talk about that. And it was a vendor and I asked to see it and I was like, well, so, so how does the robot know what to say when somebody says, tell me about your benefits. Right. So pretty simple question. And they were like, oh, well, you'll train it. I'm like, excuse me, wait a minute. Wait, what me? Amy (15m 11s): So the robot that you build is only as smart as you are. Chad (15m 16s): Yeah. And the data and the information that you can feed into it so that it can learn. It's like you said, it's not a toaster when it comes out of the box, it doesn't just automatically do what you want. It's more like a kindergartner. Right. And you have to train it to do, you know, it has to go through school. Joel (15m 33s): Here's your new puppy. Amy (15m 35s): Yeah. I, yeah, Joel kindergartener is way too sophisticated for what my experience is with this. Yeah. I would go with puppy. So it's true. I mean, you know, it's sit, no sit. Chad (15m 51s): Don't pee on the rug! Amy (15m 53s): All of those things. Yeah. That is completely, that is completely a great reference, a great analogy. And that's certainly been my experience with robots. So that's kind of where I would say the push toward automation, maybe creating more labor in the process of removing labor. So I'm kind of in the camp, you know, and I know that there's sort of a continuum of people who say that, you know, robots take jobs. I'm not sold on that. And, and we may have to agree to disagree, but how do you guys feel about that? Are robots taking the jobs or robots making the jobs. Joel (16m 30s): HR tech? It's not a toaster. Amy (16m 33s): Yeah. Yeah. Right. Look at us. We're here. Trademark. Joel (16m 37s): Your comment about here's what's working and here's what isn't and none of this is magic bullet stuff. I mean, I think the job distribution stuff, I think the automated sourcing and matching stuff is more toasterish. Yeah. I think like chatbots, chatbots, aren't a one size fits all thing. And I think, you know, we've talked about us on the show that look at, if chatbots were a silver bullet, we wouldn't be talking about so-and-so being acquired for an undisclosed amount of money. We would be talking about a new round of funding, you know, to the $100-150 million investment. So it's clear that there's a challenge with that sector of the economy or that sector of the business. Joel (17m 17s): So I think your, your point of like, look, some of it works really well, like flip a switch and things are awesome and others are like, holy shit, it's like, I have a new puppy now, what do I? Chad (17m 27s): Well, I think a lot of it has to do with operator error though. So much, like Amy had said most companies believe and I think a lot of this has to do with salespeople as well they make you feel like it's this magic button, but there's, there's a lot of work to implementing technology to ensure it works the way that you want it to. And you, I think you really have to look, look in the mirror and make sure that, you know, how you want the experience to work for your recruiters and your candidates and your hiring managers and so on and so forth. So if you haven't stripped all of that down to the bare bones and rebuilt it into much more efficient experience, you're just going to slam something into your old process methodology that is just going to suck and it's going to continue to suck. Amy (18m 18s): You know? Yes, all of that is true. And I will give it an exclamation point to the point of saying that some of my experience around technology vendors is that it's built by really smart people who never worked as recruiters. sfx (18m 40s): Applause. Amy (18m 41s): Aw, thanks. Joel (18m 41s): You're welcome. That's all you get. You get one. Enjoy it Amy. Amy (18m 48s): So the really smart people, sure. But you know, the folks that can really come in that you need a Smee, you need somebody who has done the whole recruiting process, who knows the compliance aspects, who knows, you know, the kinds of things that people actually ask in the process of finding a new job. You know, those are the kinds of things that are typically missing. And what we've also found, is that when you get into, okay, so maybe you can automate a process, so you can create an engine that that collects applicants, let's say, but then once you start needing to report on it, things are also a little bit muddy. Amy (19m 31s): So the reporting piece of it and the data piece of it, like there is so much data to be had and so much complication with just translating that information into anything that's not a CSV file. Because when you talk to the vendors, a lot of time, all the reporting is built in. Well, what the reporting actually means is that you're going to get a CSV file and good luck sister. So, and that's what you get. Chad (19m 59s): Hiring companies also need to know that they are going to get shit for data, unless they really do their due diligence to understand how they're going to receive that data. Is it parsed? Is it contextualized? How do I receive this data? And how can I make sense out of it, past just being able to take it into your system? Because I agree, many companies and you hear this on the pitches, you're going to get so much information, so much rich, enriched information from the conversations that you have with job seekers or that you have with recruiters or whatever it is. It's like, okay, we've got all this quote, unquote "enriched data" Chad (20m 39s): how do you contextualize it? How do you actually put it in format, structured format, so that it's useful to me? Amy (20m 48s): Right. And it does not, there's still not a mechanism that can say, you know, this person fits this job or this job fits this person. Chad (20m 60s): Right. Amy (21m 0s): So, you know, the people aspect of that and that's where I think Chad, when you and I have spoken before, you know, talking about, you know, potentially, you know, automating recruiting, I just think that, that people still need people in recruiting. And I think there's going to be parts that we're going to be able to automate. But you know, one of the things that we've started to do is use RPA, which is Robotic Process Automation in other ways, to try to make certain processes more efficient. And what we've found is that yeah, it works. But the project that you get into that actually can get off the ground fairly quickly are the ones where the data is really clean, which is almost never. Amy (21m 49s): And you know, it does exist, right? So it's a subset and I got into smaller subsets, you've got the data that's really clean and that is completely predictable. It always shows up exactly the same way. And you know, and that's where, you know, so you can maybe automate a process that takes, you know, a report that, you know, that says, you know, this person was hired and then sends them a letter, right. Hired letter, hired letter. And that type of automation can work or hire email, hire email, whatever text message, you can automate that. And you know, but it's super simple. And you know, when you start looking at resumes, for example, there's no standard language. Amy (22m 33s): So what do we have? We have a non-standard process. So what do we have? You just broke the system. I mean, it just it's so, so you're not gonna get the same type of output that you're going to get from a human, because the human has context and the human can do that contextualization. And I don't know, you know, if you'd asked me five years ago or three years ago, you know, I would probably have been more bullish on the robots, but I've met all the robots now. Chad (23m 5s): Keep on bingeing the final episode with Amy is ready and available. And if you're not already subscribed, look for the Chad and Cheese, wherever you listen to podcasts and hit that subscribe or follow button.

Welcome back to VOICES w/ Amy Butchko SAIC's Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions. This is episode 3 or a 5 part binge-able series. We pick up the conversation around building a Talent Solutions team from the ground up - enjoy! TOPICS: - Building Teams - Is AI sourcing the futrure? - Overbuilt job descriptions - Does social media drive hires? 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. BINGE all 5 episodes with Amy 1 - The Struggle is Real 2 - Win Friends & Influence Budget 3 - Last Sourcer Standing 4 - Treat A.I. like a Puppy 5 - Moving Fast & Breaking Shit Amy (0s): If you're looking at high volume, simple, easy to scope roles, you don't need a sourcer for that. I mean, you can always do volume faster with machines. VOICES INTRO (11s): Voices. We hear them every day. Some voices like mine are smooth and confident. While on the other hand, the Chad and cheese podcast is like listening to a Nickelback album. You rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, y'all now listening to voices, a podcast series from Chad and cheese that features the most important and influential voices within the recruitment industry. Try not to fuck it up, boys. Chad (46s): Welcome back to Voices with Amy Butchko, SAIC's Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions. This is episode three of a five part series. We pick up the conversation around building a talent solutions team from the ground up. Enjoy. Let's go ahead and start talking about how you actually build a team from the ground up because you were a team of one, right? And at that point, you know, what was your position at that point? And then, I mean, you've, you've made it to director, so, you know, you're still on your way up. Can you tell us that story a little bit? Amy (1m 24s): Well, yes I will. So I started as I was a principal recruiter for a long time and I thought, you know, I've got a good job. I love recruiting and I don't want to manage people, I know that for sure. So that was kind of where I was probably, you know, 10-15 years ago. And when I got to SAIC in 2013, in fact, they were looking for a director or someone to manage the sourcing operation. And I said, no, I'll work on the team. And I did. And eventually I ended up as the only sourcer or left. And they kind of put me in a role where I was now also in charge of the jobs to web system. Amy (2m 6s): And frankly, I think if I'm being completely honest, it was because I was the only person who had any patience with it at all and understood what it did. So, you know, so that may have actually made my whole career. And so, but ultimately, you know, I fell in love with the tech, that's what happened. And then what started to happen after that was I needed to scale. And in order to scale, I had to grow personally, you know, and learn how to build a team and to lead. And so getting to, you know, director, you know, I still think I have the best job at this company. Where I get to do creative things, I get to work with systems, I get to evaluate new technology I get to, and now I get to even make decisions about it. Amy (2m 53s): Wow! You know, that's like, you know, pinch me. So it's a great role. And it's also a great time to be in this business. I think that if it were 30 years ago, in this business, I don't know if I would have survived. I don't, I would, I'm not a yellow pages, Rolodex phone recruiter. Joel (3m 13s): It's interesting, our friends that Talk Push had a great blog post recently about how recruiting is moving from sort of what you mentioned, right, desk smiling and dialing, and becoming more of like the silent ninja profession where you know how to work databases and source candidates and use tech. And it sounds like that's your experience as well. You mentioned that you were the last sourcer standing, I'm just real curious. What are your thoughts on the future of sourcing as is it gonna all be automated? Will there still be really good ones employed? Will it go back to what it used to be before the pandemic? What are your thoughts on sourcing as a profession? Amy (3m 52s): Good question. I'm going to tell you my aspirational model. So I think that there is a place for automation. I think that there is a way, there's things that we're just not going to be able to not automate. Right? And eventually the technology will catch up and be intelligent enough, hopefully to be as smart as a person. Where I question if automation could completely do this work is, you know, most people I know don't like to talk to robots as much as they like to talk to people and as long as we're still employing people to do work, I think that the sourcing organization has a place. You know, cause if you look at the way, you know, and I think it might be worth even getting kind of boring for a second and figuring out like, what is a sourcer, compared to what is a recruiter? Amy (4m 43s): And you know, for me, it's about which parts of the process you're involved in. You know, so if you've had a recruiter, let's take that role because that's kind of the central one. You know, my, in my version of that, you know, that's a person who could manage a recruiting process from sourcing through onboarding. Chad (5m 2s): I see sourcing in itself is a function, the front end function before you actually can get into the recruiting aspect of it. I mean, you have to it's kind of like the research portion of research and development. Right? Amy (5m 16s): Right. Joel (5m 16s): But, they're not closing the deal I think in most cases. I think they're doing the finding, but they're not closing the deal. Amy (5m 23s): Right. I think that's right. Joel (5m 24s): So your point is, could the finding be automated or you're saying that no, there will have to be humans in sort of the scouring the web and looking at the every nook and cranny. Amy (5m 34s): Well, I think the tools aid drastically in the scouring of the internet, right? I mean, you know, the ability to write a Boolean search would, that was another thing that I was able to do really well back in the day, but now I wouldn't even need to know how to do that. Chad (5m 49s): Yeah. Amy (5m 50s): So, but I think here's the thing if you're looking at high volume, simple, easy to scope roles, you don't need a sourcer for that. You don't. I mean, you can always do volume faster with machines, than you can with people. It doesn't matter what it is, whether you're making hamburgers or you're filling jobs. It doesn't matter. Where things get interesting is where you have specialized roles, you know, your real knowledge workers, your real technical talent. All those folks are not cookie cutter finds. Chad (6m 28s): They're easier to identify though, aren't they? Amy (6m 30s): Not if they have a high security clearance. Joel (6m 33s): What percentage are on LinkedIn, that are employed by you guys? Amy (6m 35s): That is a good question. Probably about two thirds. Joel (6m 39s): Okay. I would have guessed more. So that's, that's all lower. So you had to find those folks in different way. Amy (6m 44s): You have to find those folks in different ways or Joel, if they're on LinkedIn and maybe their name is there, you would not have a way to identify what they do, without further enrichment of that data. Chad (7m 0s): Talking about enriching data, your database. I would assume that you have a very large and in charge database. And so again, we're talking about, in many cases, specialized talent pools, you probably already know most of, if not all the individuals that have those specialized skills that you want and/or need. How much of this is really around branding, trying to build relationships and pulling those individuals in and using your own database itself, as opposed to going out and spending money, trying to find these individuals? Amy (7m 40s): Yeah. So Chad, I see this as two questions. You know, the answer to your first part is about 80% of it, we can do through brand marketing our own database, about 80% of it. Chad (7m 52s): Okay. Amy (7m 52s): And the rest of it, I think boils down to there are just, okay, so we're talking about the change in our world. Like our talent acquisition, TA tech, you know, what's happening in our world. The same thing is happening to every technical discipline, some of them even faster than our world. So what does that mean? What that means is let's say there's somebody that, you know, sure, maybe they've been in my database for 10 years. Maybe I have them as a unit systems administrator back in the day, what are they doing now? Not that. Chad (8m 31s): Right. But you've got the tech to be able to enrich that in many cases. Right? Because you know where the profiles are at. Amy (8m 38s): Yeah. But, but it doesn't, it's not that linear. Joel (8m 42s): Yeah. It seems to me the future is like Robocop. We'll still be human, but we'll have things that enhance our ability to do it better and augment. Chad (8m 50s): Ironman. Joel (8m 51s): Ironman, Robocop, Million Dollarman. Amy (8m 54s): Does it have to be a man? Joel (8m 56s): Hey, we're not making the shows, Amy. We're not making the shows. Chad (8m 59s): Bionic woman. Amy (8m 59s): The bionic woman. Joel (8m 60s): The Bionic Woman. Oh yes. Mr. Seventies references comes through. Thank you, Chad. Chad (9m 9s): There it is. Joel (9m 11s): Curious about sort of pivoting into employment brand cause I think that's a place where you live every day. Amy (9m 17s): It is. Chad (9m 18s): SAIC is such a sexy brand. Is that why you want it? Joel (9m 23s): So you guys are, you're an "engaged employer" and I put that in air quotes on Glassdoor and you're involved in Indeed, are those sites sort of a necessary evil, do you find real benefit in using them and building brand through that? Amy (9m 40s): Good question. And I'll approach this from a couple of different angles. First angle is to go back to the other part of our conversation about whether or not I report in to marketing and the answer is no, but we partner closely. And that Glassdoor profile is a place where we're very intimately tied to make sure that we're on point with our marketing folks and the folks that are in our actual external communications department. So we work very closely to make sure that those sites are managed and that we stay engaged. Joel (10m 16s): So were you pretty involved with them in terms of what image are we putting in the header and is the language that we say in the sidebar and what? Okay. All right. Amy (10m 24s): All of that. Yes, definitely. You know, and I think that what I have found, that's been kind of interesting is because I was always kind of like Glassdoor eye role, but what I have found value in lately is that our Glassdoor ratings actually tie pretty closely with some of the other feedback we get around like, net promoter around our internal engagement survey. So our internal and external brand actually Glassdoor is a really good barometer for that. And so if I start seeing that going in a particular direction, I watch it. Joel (11m 7s): Is there any sort of strategy around asking employees to leave a review or trying to hit them when, you know, they're probably happy? Like their 90 day review or something like, Hey, now that you've got a real job and you're official like feel free to leave a review on Glassdoor. Is there any strategy around that or do you just let things happen as is? Amy (11m 28s): There is a strategy, I mean we're not, you know, we're not like aggressive praise seekers, so, you know, we do make sure, you know, we want honest feedback and that's also why, like, I feel like I can look at that and I can say, okay, I can, I can more or less trust that if I look at my Glassdoor profile and then we survey our employees or we do some other mechanism to measure our brand, that it's going to be consistent, so we're not gaining it. So that is true. And we also do have a couple of touch points, like when someone has an anniversary, we ask, you know, when they're, you know, and I think there may be a couple of other touch points. My team works with our internal comms group to partner on how those are done. Joel (12m 10s): I'm going to applaud that. I think that's a savvy strategy. Amy (12m 15s): Yeah. Chad (12m 15s): To ask, you know, does the CMO also because you, you went to the CRO to go through experience. I would assume that the CMO cares about the experience as well and were they a part of the discussion around rebuilding the experience and then also, you know, what everything looks and feels like on the site and, you know, mobile, et cetera, et cetera. Amy (12m 39s): Yeah a hundred percent. We partner very, very closely with our comms team. And we're actually in the process of a rebrand right now. So there's probably some things on a career site that may not look completely consistent and that's because in the next week or two, they're all going to change. So we work hand in glove and I've always said, you know, so SAIC is a little different when it comes to employer brand, because we do not have a beverage that people consume or a product that people can pick up at the grocery store. Period. We have an employer brand and then we also have an external brand to our customers, which, you know, is the federal government by and large and other government agencies. Amy (13m 18s): So it's a little bit of a different flavor of employer brand, a brand in general, but we make sure that we are locked step with that team. And especially as my team has grown, you know, making sure that those relationships, whether it's internal communications, external communications and our external communications would be our marketing department and group, is just as important relationship to us as the relationships that we have with our cyber group, with our procurement group, you know, with all the groups that we need to work with to be both good corporate citizens and just to be effective. Chad (13m 60s): Let's talk about job descriptions real quick, cause this is always a fun one. And it goes with the employment brand and also branding marketing experience. So many companies have like overbuilt their job descriptions into either just way too much fluff or way too many, you know, lopped on requirements. You guys are looking for really specialty types of individuals, but I'm assuming that you're also looking for non-specialty as well. Are you constantly tweaking the job descriptions? Do you see that that is, like to be quite Frank, the main thing that everybody's going to hit and look at and experience first and understand that there has to be some marketing behind it? Amy (14m 46s): When you say marketing behind it, do you mean attention to detail about the job description itself? Chad (14m 51s): Yeah. And messaging, you know, staying on marketing vision, those types of things. Amy (14m 56s): Yeah. So one of the challenges that we have is because we are a big company and many of our programs kind of also have their own special culture. So, you know, for example, like our corporate culture might not be exactly replicated at a customer site. And so figuring out how to communicate that, is one of our biggest challenges. And also, you know, just be truthful about, you know, what a job is, but also be able to tell a story about what our corporation is about. And so that's really one of this year's biggest projects for us, is to start to tell more stories that way, you know, we're beginning to use video more. Amy (15m 47s): We just, you know, finally got an application to be able to do that. So you know, more to come, but telling those stories in different ways is a top priority. The job's descriptions themselves can vary widely. You know, we actually had a situation last week where we needed to do some sponsoring of some jobs where we need a little bit more attention and, you know, and that's one of those nice things about being in this role is, you know, we can see real clearly where we've got line of sight to a lot of applicant activity and where we know our sourcing team can go find people and if there's gaps, we know where we can very strategically target investment. Amy (16m 33s): So in doing that though, we said, okay, let's take a look at these job descriptions and make sure that what's out there is exactly what we intend. And there were some changes made. So, so yeah, so I think it's, it's all of that. And it is just a daily exercise to work with the recruiting team and, you know, tie into that marketing message all at the same time. It's a challenge. Joel (16m 60s): Yeah. Amy, you touched on a video, which I think is as important in this segue. And you've been around long enough to know really the dawning of social media and the impact, whether it was the promise of social media or the reality of social media. I'm sure that you remember the days when, you know, every company had to have their own Facebook page and then every company had to push out every job with a million hashtags, you know, on Twitter. Chad (17m 23s): Twitter baby. Tweet my jobs. Joel (17m 25s): What sort of, yeah, exactly. So, now we're, you know, and this week's show, we talked about TikTok for Jobs, like they're getting into this. What's your general feel about social media? How do you guys look at that? How do you use it tactically to connect with candidates? Talk about social media's impact on SAIC's recruiting. Amy (17m 44s): So back in the day, when you would look at the results of social media, like I could not find a hire, that I could legitimately credit back to social media. Joel (17m 58s): You are not alone. Chad (17m 59s): How hard was it to source that kind of stuff as well into your system and to get it all pulled together. I mean, in itself, who knows how many people came from social media, but it was just, it seemed just like a melee, right? Amy (18m 14s): It was it. Yes, it did. So I will be completely honest that I kind of came to social with a lot of skepticism, you know, and when folks would say, you know, we'd need to do this big hiring campaign and what are you doing on social media? I'd be like, who cares? So, right? Because like I can't measure it. I'm really skeptical that anything is actually happening out here. I'm skeptical. And what we've really been able to do is I actually added a couple of people to my team who have transformed the way our social is done. Amy (18m 56s): And there's a couple places where I would say, you know, if you're gonna do social, be very specific about what you use it for, you know, for us, we use it around our virtual events, which are enormously effective for us. Our virtual events are one of the best places to convene talent with recruiters and get results. They're tremendous. Joel (19m 21s): Is that through advertising or do you have a ton of followers? Amy (19m 25s): Social actually drives a lot of that traffic. Joel (19m 28s): Is this paid or is this? Amy (19m 30s): No, this is our great transition though. So a lot of what we do, so there's two parts to it Joel, part of it is automation. So Chad, you said tweet my jobs, but they're now known as CareerArc. And we actually use that tool to help automate a lot of our social job postings. And we use it to leverage the LinkedIn networks of our staff. And so that part, that leveraging the network part and automating that has actually converted me. So yeah, you can get results out of social. Amy (20m 12s): There are ways to audit, to use both automation and real targeted campaigns where you make people go post off and get results out of it. Joel (20m 23s): So I heard an, I guess, an endorsement for Twitter and LinkedIn. How do you feel about the other? Like where is the hierarchy? Like I don't even touch Snapchat. That's nothing. Amy (20m 34s): Yeah. Never hear endorsements out of me. Joel (20m 38s): Sorry, Sorry. Implied endorsement. Amy (20m 40s): What's your, what's your here at what you will hear from me is that today there are places where social platforms can be effective and Joel, Chad, I don't, you know, one of the reasons I listen to you guys is because I don't believe that what I'm doing today is what I need to be doing in a year. I am listening to hear what I need to be thinking about next. Joel (21m 4s): That sounds like an endorsement for Chad and Cheese. If you don't give endorsements, that's pretty damn close, Amy. Amy (21m 10s): My presence is an implied endorsement, but you know, for real, like if folks really want to know what the future is, you've got to find sources and you've got to keep your ear to the ground because, you know, let's take another bucket of stuff that lives in my world. You know, what's the next great sourcing automation tool. I don't know. I know what we're doing now is that tool going to be the thing that we're going to be using in the future? You know, I think it's very possible, Joel, that in, you know, two, three years that we're talking about SAIC's TikTok strategy. We don't have one now. Chad (21m 47s): Joel is going to hemorrhage. If you say that again, Joel (21m 52s): Please come onto the show and talk about your, your TikTok strategy. Amy (21m 56s): Well, you remember you interviewed the Ohio U grad who got fired from his job for, I was, I listened to that and my heart hurt for him. Joel (22m 6s): Yeah. Chad (22m 6s): Yeah, it doesn't now though, because he got new job down in Florida. Joel (22m 10s): He's living in Florida! Chad (22m 11s): And it was sexy. Joel (22m 13s): Still is sexy. Amy (22m 14s): I want to tell you, I got your Poach postcard. Do you remember that? Joel (22m 18s): That was me. Yeah. Amy (22m 20s): I nailed it. And I wanted to tell you something real quick. So that first postcard, my husband took it out of the mailbox, put the Poached postcard at my spot on our kitchen island where I usually eat my dinner. And he said, you know, that is some aggressive marketing. And I said, what? And he was like, yeah, that is aggressive and he said, that is the first time anyone has told the truth about what you do for a living, Amy. Chad (22m 47s): What was it? I didn't get a card. What did it say? Joel (22m 51s): It was just the logo and then it was, you know, a stock photo of a woman. And it said, I recruit, therefore I poach, but I didn't think it was aggressive. I hoped that it would get attention. Amy (23m 3s): He works in a different industry, but no aggressive was actually, it was, I mean, aggressive is only an insult if you're female. So no, it was good. It was good. Joel (23m 12s): OK. I'm going to send another mail mail piece today. Chad (23m 18s): Keep on binging episode four with Amy is ready and available. If you're not already subscribed, look for the Chad and Cheese, wherever you listen to podcasts and hit that subscribe or follow button.

Welcome back to VOICES w/ Amy Butchko SAIC's Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions. This is episode 2 or a 5 part binge-able series. We pick up the conversation with me challenging Amy on hiring company "special self-inflicted needs" when it comes to technology and yes I just used air quotes - enjoy! TOPICS: - Imploding your hiring process - Engineering a new apply process - Marketing infused nurturing and hiring - CROs are people too... and they have budget :) 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. BINGE all 5 episodes with Amy 1 - The Struggle is Real 2 - Win Friends & Influence Budget 3 - Last Sourcer Standing 4 - Treat A.I. like a Puppy 5 - Moving Fast & Breaking Shit Amy (0s): What I didn't know is that, you know, we were going to be able to quadruple our applicant flow and not really increase our advertising budget. VOICES INTRO (10s): The struggle is real voices. We hear them every day. Some voices like mine are smooth and comforting, while on the other hand, the Chad and Cheese podcast is like listening to a Nickelback album, you'd rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, y'all now listening to Voices a podcast series from Chad and Cheese that features the most important and influential voices within the recruitment industry. Try not to fuck it up, boys. Chad (45s): Hey, it's Chad again, welcome back to Voices with Amy Butchko Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions. This is episode two of a five part binge-able series. We pick up the conversation with me, challenging Amy on hiring company, quote, unquote, "special self-inflicted needs" when it comes to technology. And yes, I just used air quotes. Enjoy. So are those special needs generally self-inflicted though? Because many companies that I've worked with over the years say, well, we do things differently and that's only because they choose to do things differently and generally it's crazy inefficient and it's stupid, but yet we do things differently. Chad (1m 28s): So do you think that some of those are really just self-inflicted wounds when they say they have special needs? Amy (1m 34s): No, I don't know. Chad (1m 35s): Okay. Amy (1m 36s): So, you know, if you're going to apply to a job in let's take one of the legacy ATSs. Pick one. Chad (1m 43s): Taleo. Amy (1m 43s): Okay. If you want to do that, I think we all know that if you want to apply for a job on Talejo, there's not a way to do it without a username and password. Am I right? Chad (1m 54s): Yeah. Yeah. Amy (1m 55s): That is not a special need, guys. Chad (1m 58s): Yeah, I agree. I agree. Amy (1m 60s): So if I'm wanting to apply process, that's not that, and I'm using one of these legacy ATS platforms, which applicant tracking system platforms, which has a very valid need to have identity information collected a certain way. You know, I think what you're, what you're really talking about is the special need is you've got your, the compliance side of the house, super important Chad. I mean, you come from direct employers. I don't have to tell you about compliance, you can tell me about it. But then on the other side, you've got folks who just want to apply for the stinking job. Let me give you an example. So the platform that SAIC uses doesn't require a log in to make an application. Amy (2m 42s): And therefore it takes three to five minutes on average to get people through. And we've, we complete a huge amount of our applications. Our process is super efficient. So, you know, and guess what, I built that process. We built that process, our business decided that was what we wanted. Last night, I was at the grocery store and there was a job posting and I thought, my daughter who's, you know, looking for, she was looking for something to do this summer, in addition to what she's doing right now. And I shot her a screenshot of like the ad at the grocery store. She was like, well, how do I apply? I'm like, this is hilarious. Right? So I'm like, so I go to the grocery store's website and I found the job and I hit apply, just to see what it was like. Amy (3m 29s): Right? Because now I'm like, I'm all in and I want to know it's like. And it was a system not, Talejo, it was a different one. I won't call it out, but it was one of the big enterprise systems. And it was asking her for a username and password. And I thought to myself, wow. So this is what we're asking our grocery store, it was a pharmacy tech job. This is what we're asking them to do. And it's not easy. It didn't just say, give me your name, your resume, and how we can get ahold of you. Joel (3m 57s): So, Amy, on SAIC, I'm applying to a job and you first had, it's step one of seven. So your first is applicant agreement. It sounds like it's a contract, which is a little bit foreboding, but you're getting first name, last name, email, and mobile phone. Phone is optional and then a drop down for getting text messages, which I think is fantastic to build up. And I'm curious what your database is of mobile numbers that you can contact. Amy (4m 26s): It's large. Joel (4m 27s): It's large. Okay. We'll go with that. Chad (4m 29s): It's large! Joel (4m 30s): So if I accept step two, then I get into the prescreening stuff and then the application. So is the, is this first page, essentially your basic CRM, you're getting them in the system. You're marketing to them with this information, because I think this is an important step that people miss the sort of marketing information. Am I right? Am I right about that? Or, and how did that happen? Chad (4m 55s): You're right. You're right. But it's a both/and, because what you're filling out is getting you into our CRM and a skit and it's your application. It's both, we don't ask you to do it twice. Joel (5m 4s): Yeah. But I find it interesting that you don't say, Hey, join our talent community or, Hey, do you want to, you know, get in with the community. It's like, this is step one, give us some basic information. And then if they don't make it to step 4, 5, 6, 7, you've got them. And I think that's an important element of what you're doing. Amy (5m 22s): Right so they're in my talent community. Chad (5m 23s): You don't have to really make that distinction, right? Because the person's coming through to you, you don't have to say welcome to the talent community, cause they didn't come to join a talent community, they came to apply for a job. Amy (5m 36s): Right. Chad (5m 37s): And I think that's, again, this is probably something that was created by vendors. Go figure, there was a need to try to capture all those individuals who weren't, they were rejecting before they actually got through the a hundred percent of the application. But tell me about the process of re-building. Cause what you did was you imploded your current process and your tech and you built from the ground up, which is what we talk about on this show just about every damn week. I'm so happy to hear and have you on the show to actually talk about this. So what did that actually entail? Amy (6m 17s): The first thing that it entails is relationships. The way that a large enterprise, so I told you, 26,000 employees, it's a big enterprise, there's a lot of corporate functions. So I had to really build a bridge all the way from our executive office, you know, to get funding, you know, to be able to say, okay, this is important. You know, how to tremendous amount of support from our HR organization. Then though it was a matter of really building relationships in our IT organization and those relationships endure to this day. Amy (6m 57s): And it's just a tremendous partnership. But don't forget you also have to be able to bring on board your procurement folks, because these contracts are complex. Everybody has different parts of stakes in the game. Embedded within, but part of the IT office also is cyber and our cyber concerns and our concern with risk are primary. So anything that we went after had to be something that was going to have, I mean, things as deep in the weeds as, are your servers in the United States? Chad (7m 38s): Yeah. Amy (7m 38s): That's the kind of stuff, so Joel, when you go to our application and you're like, wow, your application, you know, this thing is really heavy on compliance language. For our applicant, Joel, that's a comfort. Joel (7m 50s): And I love the choices or options you give folks. So when I can upload a resume, you actually have integration with Indeed and LinkedIn and I think a few others. Amy (7m 59s): Yeah. Joel (7m 60s): That was really smart cause most people are just like, Hey, upload your word doc. So give them options is great. I want to jump back real quick to the texting thing. Do you use texting as a marketing tool as well as an outreach or interviewing tool? I like talk about texts. Cause I think that's an important part of a recruiting today. Chad (8m 21s): The experience. Amy (8m 23s): Yeah. And so text is, you know, one of those things that I felt like we were probably a little late to the game on it. And the reason is because, you know, it felt like a lot of, you know, the fancier, you know, consumer brands were already doing stuff like that. But, you know, for a brand like ours, we were, had to be real, real careful to make sure that we're using it the right way. And so the primary mechanisms that we use text for today are one-to-one outreach, which can include some scheduling, we don't have a scheduling mechanism. Our calendars are, you know, again, this kind of gets into where you end up having to touch systems that are very, very close to the firewall. Joel (9m 10s): So meaning your recruiters, when your recruiters are looking through candidates, they have an option to message them through your system? Amy (9m 18s): Yeah, exactly. Joel (9m 19s): What else? Amy (9m 20s): You know, we had just started right before the pandemic to do a lot of inbound text, you know, to attract people at events and get their resumes and engage them that way. We had just done an event at BEYA, the Black Engineer of the Year Awards event and then of course the pandemic happened. You know, but we had pretty much figured it out and you know, so we use a lot of inbound, but that's going to become much more of a thing once it's not a pandemic and people are actually out and about, and they can see the signs. So you're right. So I think you have to, you know, as we're moving forward, we have to think about inbound, but then, you know, from an outbound perspective for our candidate pool, you know, and this is also something that's going to be unique to our business, my business, is, you know, our candidates, especially the ones that are difficult to find, they're going to be the ones with the super duper security clearances, you know, your top secret TSSCI folks with even more credentials than that, you know, we're not going to blast, we're not going to put them on blast because there's only a couple of them who do all of the things that they do. Amy (10m 41s): Like, you know, it's like, if you think we're in a niche within a niche, within a niche, they're really, and they don't want to be found. So you gotta be real careful how you deploy text that way, because it's not just a matter of, Hey, I got, you know, 5,000 veterans that I can go and text to do this job. It's like, you know, there's a subset of those and we'll go from them and use text that way. Joel (11m 7s): So texting as well as, I guess let's get into chatbots a little bit. But so there's a real trend toward automation where instead of a one-on-one, there's an automated one-on-one message to them, they come back and that's totally automated. Is that based on your audience, something you won't do or don't want to do? Is automation in the plans in terms of texting or mobile apply? Amy (11m 29s): Automation is on the roadmap and it will be deployed very selectively, among audiences. So there is a group within my team that is working on automation. We've got some RPA, robotic process automation projects in play, but they are very selective. You know, if I were ever employed in an enterprise that could do volume, I would use the heck out of it. Chad (11m 60s): Yeah. Amy (12m 0s): But you know, the 26,000 people that work for us are all really different people. Like it, there are, I mean, I would hate, I wouldn't even call them buckets, I call them bowls of people. I mean, they're just there, the skills are pretty specialized by and large. And so to get into automation, like, yeah, we're looking at it, but I don't want to break anything either. Chad (12m 27s): Okay. So in getting this done, you went to the CRO, were you looking to try to win friends and influence people for more budgets? What was that whole, what was the reasoning behind that other than to show them that one of the reasons why we have issues getting people in the door is because of this piece of shit tech that we have? Why did you do it? Amy (12m 52s): To increase candidate flow and improve candidate experience. Chad (12m 56s): Okay. Was it budget though? Were you trying to win budget from them and show them how bad this thing was? Amy (13m 2s): I was. Chad (13m 3s): Okay. Amy (13m 3s): I was. Well, I was also trying to get them to understand that they were making an investment in something that was terrible. Chad (13m 10s): Yes. Amy (13m 11s): And you know, so like you're spending money over here and this is not a little amount of money. Like it's a lot, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars, no matter what you buy in this, in this environment, once you get to the enterprise level. Chad (13m 25s): Right. Amy (13m 25s): So you're talking about big bucks and you're going to have to spend these big bucks to make, you know, to get a compliance system. You're going to have to get, you know, you're gonna to have to do it. So what we were looking to do is say, okay, if you're going to spend this money, we think we can help the company do this more efficiently, we think we can help you do it more effectively, and we think that we can make a lot of impact with getting a lot more candidates through the door. I used to, at the time I was a department of one. So that's also changed a lot because my department is much larger now, but you know, as a department of one, you know, I would get these messages. Amy (14m 8s): Why am I not getting any candidates? Why am I not getting applicants? And, you know, and I would, you know, I would just feel like the pressure, just, you know, like the constricting around my neck. And I mean, like, I don't know? You know, I go into the system and I'd be like, wow, well, you know, the system, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, and the jobs didn't get posted and nobody can find it. And, you know, and there's no answer. And the vendor has been acquired three times and we don't know where they are. So, you know, so, so it became like this whole just swirl of bad customer service, of things going wrong at the wrong time and still making an investment that was far disproportionate. Amy (14m 50s): And then also on the other side, so remember, when you're trying to get applicants, you can, you know, one of the answers is to throw money at it, right. Chad (14m 59s): That's what companies do and have been doing for decades. And then they throw money at them and then they they push them into a shitty process and those people, they don't finish, or they just keep applying over and over and over. So you've pretty much paid for that candidate, like six times over. Amy (15m 18s): Yes. Yeah. It's a leaky vessel. Right? And so what we were trying, what, what the pitch was was that we can fix this leaky vessel if we find the right system. And once we patch up this leaky vessel, you know, one of the other things that's that's happened, that's a very tangible outcome that I didn't know about. I mean, I knew we were going to be able to, you know, plug the holes and get more applicants into the bucket. I knew that. What I didn't know is that, you know, we were going to be able to quadruple our applicant flow and not really increase our advertising budget, at all. Chad (15m 57s): That's been amazing right? Amy (15m 58s): Static for years, like my whole tenure. Yep. We'll just keep doing the same thing that's working, it's working for us. You know, and now we're able to be a lot more strategic because we know that, you know, when folks are coming to us as applicants, we know that they're going to have a reasonable experience getting in the door. Now what we're working on and where you actually put people through some training this year with the talent board to help us with trying to improve our candidate experience from apply forward. You know, so we're working on that stuff, but that's not system stuff, that's a lot of people's stuff along with the system stuff. But, when you go back and look at the system stuff, the return on investment has been so clear that, you know, now one of the cool things is, is that when somebody from my team or I goes to one of our partners around the corporation, we have a fair amount of credibility, you know, because nobody's looking at talent acquisition going, why can't you bring us candidates? Amy (16m 57s): And, you know, because even though candidates are, you know, it is now a very tight market. People are looking for work. And if you are looking for work and you're interested in us as an enterprise, you know, we're going to get you into our process. Joel (17m 13s): Let's dig into that a little bit, Amy. So getting people in the system, I think you've, you've done really well on. And now one of the things that we hear a lot about, particularly in the high-frequency hiring, is ghosting. Talk about how you guys combat that. Is it different when you're having, you know, it sounds like you have a lot of highly educated folks, unique folks, you're trying to recruit. So how does ghosting impact you and how do you solve that problem? Amy (17m 42s): That's a good question. Unfortunately, we probably don't get it right all the time. And it is something that we work at every day. So how do we do that? Well, one of the things that happened, Joel, was when you take your system, and now you, I already told you that we're putting about four times more people through that system as applicants, right? We still have about the same number of recruiters. So ha ha! Now I've got a little bit of a problem, right? Because now I've got to make sure that four times as many applicants are getting the white glove treatment, if at all possible. And so what we've done is take the approach of, as I said, you know, we're working with the talent board. Amy (18m 24s): We've gotten some training, we have automated some parts of the process where we can, you know, there are some business constraints. So yes, Chad, there are some special things about highly cleared hiring that you just can't. Chad (18m 39s): Oh yeah. I totally get that. Amy (18m 44s): So, what we're doing is we're kind of trying to dial into different parts of the process. One of the things we learned really early after we kind of realized that there are parts of our process that are a black hole, is that we needed to have a mechanism for our no thank yous that was more than, you know, peace out, we're not interested. And so now what we do is if you're not a fit, so Joel, if you did actually apply to a job, when you went through the process just now, and you are not selected, you will get some type of a message that says, thank you for your application, you weren't selected for this, but here's some resources that might help you next time to prepare for a virtual interview, to work on your resume, to practice, you know, practice fielding . Joel (19m 35s): I was too concerned about automatically becoming CEO that I didn't want to finish the process. Yeah. I don't want that kind of responsibility. Amy (19m 42s): Well, they didn't, you weren't selected at Monster. Joel (19m 46s): What? Oh yeah. Or Chad, Chad brought me down on that one. I could have easily lifted myself to that title, but anyway, I digress and I interrupted you. I apologize, Amy, please go on. Amy (19m 58s): That's ok. No, I actually, so yeah. So did I think, I mean, that was really, that's how one of the things that we're doing is we're just, we're going through the process and we're taking each chunk of it and systematically. Right, you know, so I'm branded as the quote unquote "solutions team," but you know, when you look at how we're actually going through and doing this stuff, it's systematically. Chad (20m 21s): Keep on binging. Episode three with Amy is ready and available. And if you're not already subscribed, look for the Chad and Cheese, wherever you listen to podcasts and hit that subscribe or follow button.

Hey it's Chad, it's been a minute since we've had a deep dive VOICES series and after speaking with Amy Butchko, SAIC's Director of Talent Solutions I knew a single 20-minute podcast wouldn't be enough and instead of dropping these one podcast at a time we're doing it Netflix style so you can easily discover and binge the entire series - enjoy! TOPICS: - Internet Recruitment 2000 - From Rolodex to automation - The rise of Jobs2Web? - Why don't employers fix their shitty UX? 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. BINGE all 5 episodes with Amy 1 - The Struggle is Real 2 - Win Friends & Influence Budget 3 - Last Sourcer Standing 4 - Treat A.I. like a Puppy 5 - Moving Fast & Breaking Shit Voices INTRO (0s): The struggle is real voices. We hear them every day. Some voices like mine are smooth and comforting, while on the other hand, the Chad and Cheese podcast is like listening to a Nickelback album, you'd rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, y'all now listening to Voices a podcast series from Chad and Cheese that features the most important and influential voices within the recruitment industry. Try not to fuck it up, boys. Joel (36s): What's up everybody? This is Joel Cheeseman of the Chad and Cheese podcast joined as always by my cohost, Chad Sowash and this is another episode of Voices. Today we're welcoming, with her resting Butchko face Amy Butchko. Here we go to the show. Amy is director of TA solutions at SAIC. Amy welcome to the show. Amy (1m 2s): Thanks Joel, I'm so glad to be here. Joel (1m 4s): May God help you. Amy (1m 5s): Yeah, you know, I was cautioned that you all might be a little hard on me. Joel (1m 12s): Come on, warned, whatever. Chad (1m 15s): We're sweethearts. Joel (1m 16s): Were so warm and fuzzy, you're on the you're on the Voices. This is the lightest of light of our shows. Chad (1m 26s): This is the light of natural light. Joel (1m 28s): No bullets, probably no booing. It's very, very well warm and fuzzy. So we know that you're director of TA solutions that SAIC what's, I SAIC stand for, by the way? Amy (1m 39s): Science, applications, international corporation, but it's not, that is not part of, all our identity. Joel (1m 46s): That's all kinds of a sexy brand. That must be fun to market. Okay. So in addition to being director of taste solutions there, what else, what else should our listeners know about you Amy? Amy (1m 57s): Listeners should know that I run our recruitment marketing and sourcing operations, serving an enterprise at SAIC that hires around 6,000 people a year and we are 26,000 employees. So it is a pretty large enterprise. And my group is the engine behind the marketing and the hunt for our internal, what I kind of refer to as our internal staffing agency. So it's a pretty unique job. Joel (2m 30s): So, which do you, which do you report to marketing or the recruiting side? Amy (2m 35s): That's a great question, Joel. Joel (2m 36s): What we do here on Voices. Great questions. Amy (2m 38s): Yeah. I report to the vice president of talent acquisition. Chad (2m 42s): When it comes to talent acquisition solutions. It sounds like you are deep in tech all the time. Is that, is that the case? Joel (2m 49s): Sounds like you get about a hundred calls a day from vendors. Amy (2m 52s): Including you, Joel. Joel (2m 54s): What? I don't have any idea what you're talking about. Amy (3m 1s): Okay. How long did we make it before I got that? Joel (3m 4s): That's all right. That's all right. I had plenty of fun with Butchko before the show. Amy (3m 9s): That's all right. Yeah. So I do get a lot of calls and I am pretty deeply steeped in technology. And it's one of my favorite things to talk about. It's actually how I found you all. I, you know, I consider you to be one of the better sources, you know, certainly from a podcast perspective, the best source of good information. Joel (3m 32s): Go on. Chad (3m 32s): Say more, say more. Amy (3m 35s): You know, this industry is changing really fast and I've been in it now since, you know, I started as a recruiter around the year 2000 and I grew into a consulting environment where, you know, I was working with a lot of different clients through the .com boom and then of course, that went pop. So, right. So had to kind of find a, you know, much like my short-lived journalism career, you know, that I, you know, I got my degree right, as the newspapers started going out of business. So I kind of took my curiosity and my love of technology and design and ended up as a recruiter. Amy (4m 22s): And so I thought what I was going to be doing was recruiting technologists for a living forever. And then what happened as you all know, is the technology started to kind of infect our jobs and we had to learn how to use that technology to stay relevant. And I felt that deeply, like I felt that viscerally as a recruiter. And so Chad (4m 45s): Well talk about how that happened, changed what you were doing though, right? Because you're not doing column inches anymore. And I mean, you actually were coming in when everything was really starting to pop with, you know, monster.com had had just launched in January of '99 and there was this big push to get everybody online. So I try to explain, you know, kind of like the tools and learning and how that is so much different today, or is it different today? Joel (5m 13s): Tell us about the difficulty of copying and pasting an ad to multiple job boards? Amy (5m 19s): Right? So keep in mind so I am maybe not as old as I sound, I was a junior recruiter at that time. So it was my, you know, I was receiving those tools, at that time. And so, you know, I learned, you know, so I got my Monster account, you know, I mean, all the stuff that you would, you would go and you would type in the words and find the people. But my first recruiting job was we weren't actually allowed to touch the internet because the guy that owned the staffing agency, by the way, I cried at my desk almost every day, at that agency, but he didn't believe in the internet. Amy (6m 3s): So, I learned. Joel (6m 5s): He's still in business. Amy (6m 6s): He's not actually. Right. So, but a lot of the, you know, I learned how to recruit from recruiters, real dyed-in-the-wool headhunters people with actual Rolodexes and fax machines on their desks. And, you know, and I learned the technology from the ground up, you know, my first job, I, you know, where I was like recruiting technical people. I was, I had to learn the difference between an Oracle DBA and an Oracle developer. And wow, that's great to know now. Right. So, you know, so, so making the transition, what, for me, Chad, wasn't really about, like, I didn't see all of this stuff happening as it was happening. Amy (6m 50s): What ended up happening for me was I started gravitating toward wondering things like how could I automate and get all of these names off of this job board every day and have them delivered to my desk. Right. I was trying to hack those systems to make my job easier. Once I got the job where I was allowed to use the internet, which I obviously was. Chad (7m 14s): You were in a staffing company. So that was what every single staffing company was trying to do. And what all the job boards and the resume databases out there were trying to fight against once it started the crawling and all that other fun stuff. Yes. It made it easier. But also that was revenue that was lost every single day by those sites. Amy (7m 36s): Oh my goodness. They lost so much money. I mean, cause if I can figure it out seriously, but yeah. I mean, it was the wild west, but it was, so that was so fun to be like, you know, back when you could like scrape LinkedIn with abandon, you could, you just, all of it. And now of course, you know, the web is a very different place and a lot of people have figured out how to aggregate that data and make it smarter. But I think, you know, when you look at, you know, where we were to where we are now, it's a quantum leap. If you do it like that, but there are still places where businesses are operating, like it's 2005 and you know, and that's really been where, you know, my role, especially in a government contractor where it's very, you're very risk averse. Amy (8m 28s): You're very cyber conscious. You know, the bad guys really are out there. I mean, we just saw this week, you know, to be topical a gas pipeline has, has created all kinds of ripples throughout our entire society because it was hacked. Right. So the, you know, the struggle is real and you know, so in my role, I am really balancing, you know, how do we find the people? How do we engage the people? Right. So, cause my job is two sides now. And that's really where I think I have a unique role is that I it's two-sided because I'm doing the marketing piece and the group that does the hunting also sits in my organization and the way that we have used technology to automate and make the attraction piece really efficient means that the folks that are sitting on the search side of the house have a real specific mandate, and the heart, you know, so they go find the real, you know, the unicorns, the people that can't be found. Joel (9m 37s): Yeah. So, so Amy, I appreciate that you've been in the industry for quite a while, by the way, when you said Rolodex about half our audience pushed pause, and went to go Google Rolodex. So we appreciate that curious, you just sort of outlined Rolodexes to hacking job sites. Amy (9m 55s): Right. Joel (9m 55s): And I feel like 2008 was the destruction of a lot of what happened from 2000 - 2008. And what was born out of that was social media. There was Indeed, the rise of Indeed there was the death of some, you know, monster, you know, eventual death of a lot of the job boards that we use today. Amy (10m 14s): My version of 2008 is wow, I'm really glad to be in government contracting because there's a lot of industries that are suffering right now. And, you know, I felt the same way in 2020. You know, it's a very resilient industry. Now from a recruiting perspective, you know, I think that if you want to take social media as its own thing, you know, and maybe the advent of the smartphone, you know, I think is, is pretty intimately connected with that. You know, it changed everything. You know, if you look at, you know, a great example of, I think a technology that was absolutely the best of its time, and we haven't really seen anything since then, that that is so singular, the advent of jobs to web, and right around that time, that product was the best you could get to do this, you know, to, to try to engage the internet and do the social sharing to the degree that was possible. Amy (11m 13s): But, you know, do you agree? Disagree? Chad (11m 16s): Yeah. I mean, Doug, Doug actually took something that Joel is very intimate when it comes to a HR SEO. That was the name of his company. He actually did this, but seeing what Doug did and how he built a platform to automate that. Yeah, it was definitely, it was definitely revolutionary for our space. Amy (11m 38s): It was unfortunately the company that I worked for was still using it in 2018. Right. Joel (11m 50s): We laugh, but the number of companies still using that was innovative in 2005 and 6. Chad (11m 56s): Monster. Joel (11m 56s): Probably a lot more than we think. Chad (11m 58s): CareerBuilder. I mean, people are still using those. I mean, those products, right? I mean, at least those products and then also Taleo, which is pretty much on its last leg, you know. Joel (12m 9s): Someone's probably posting a job on Toledojobs.com right now. I promise you. Amy (12m 16s): Yes. Yeah. So when I look at it, edit that way, you know, trying to figure out how to modernize and take the good stuff because there's things that jobs to web did that nobody has actually done, is doing better. Still. Like there, there are certain parts about the way the web tracks, and there's also certain restrictions that we have now that we didn't have then that, you know, I kind look back and I'm like, Hmm. You know, maybe I shouldn't, you know, she complains too much? But you know, when you look at how, you know, if you want to take social, right. So you've had the systems that then could sort of automate and do more of that social stuff, but you didn't really have the reach that you have today, back in 2008, in my opinion, you know, and I, you know, there wasn't an iPhone in every pocket or an equivalent device in every pocket. Amy (13m 10s): Today there is. And so, you know, I think that where the transition and really getting no lift out of the things that were developed in 2008, we're just seeing it now where it's become table stakes to be relevant in the marketing aspect of this business. Chad (13m 30s): That everybody has, we shouldn't say everybody, there's more access, there's easier access, you would think that companies understanding that would provide a better experience. But we're still seeing the same shitty experience that we saw back in their early two thousands, where you still have to register to apply for a job. You go into a black hole. I mean, there are so many different, horrible experience points that we still have that we, that we had decades ago. And you being obviously a part of the TA solutions group, what are you guys doing to try to fix that? Amy (14m 7s): Good question. Joel (14m 8s): He's saying you're part of the shitty experience, Amy. Chad (14m 11s): Or not. I don't know. Amy (14m 13s): No, I hear you. So good question. It's, you know, I, you know, if you think my mic was running hot before, wait till you hear me now! The candidate experience is like my entire reason for existing and figuring out how to make that better, is, you know, if I stopped today, that would be one of the things that I did for the company that I worked for now, SAIC, that has made a difference. So let me tell you how this has happened. So we had jobs to web and we had this languishing system, you know, it suffered from, you know, everything from, you know, logging into a talent network, double log in to do the, apply to the Tallejo and non-responsive design, which meant that my mobile application rate was 0.0001 %. Chad (15m 4s): Please. Amy (15m 6s): True. So we ended up doing an RFP to make some replacements where those types of factors were key. You know, we were looking for, you know, a recruitment marketing platform that had a good content management system, CMS, and also a good apply flow that would get our candidates into our system faster. And so today, you know, we've gone from, you know, an apply process that took 25 minutes. No kidding. And you know, that was actually one of the ways that we were able to get rid of that old system and make the case, was I sat down with our CHRs at the time and ushered her through an apply process at our company. Chad (15m 56s): How'd that go? Amy (15m 57s): It was awful. I had to throw my outfit away and I tell people, I sweated all the way through my outfit. It was 25 minutes of watching her try to do it on a laptop. And then she'd try to do it on her mobile phone. And it was awful. That was how we got the funding to do the RFP and find a new vendor, which we have. So we did that transition in 2018 and our current system gets us, you know, less than five minute apply. There's no login. Chad (16m 35s): Yeah! Amy (16m 35s): Heyo! And we've been able to quadruple our applicant flow. Joel (16m 43s): There's people out there asking how do they do it? Give them some tips and tricks. What'd you discover on efficiencies? Amy (16m 50s): So efficiencies, get rid of your log-in, just, you don't need it. Most of the career site, there are leading career site applications out there, you know, and Chad, I think give you a chance to give a plug because I actually just downloaded the talent acquisition technology guide for an enterprise from it. Tell folks who that was from. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's tremendous. Go there and look at it. Chad (17m 16s): Oh, you're talking about Madeline Murano's yeah, Aptitude Research. Yeah. She's she puts a great research. So you talk about the, the applicant tracking system, like the hundred and 20 page applicant tracking system research that she did. Yes. It is amazing. Amy (17m 33s): Yeah. But it's the ATS plus, you know, with an eye towards CRM capability. Chad (17m 39s): Yeah. But that's what we're starting to see though with ATSs is that they're starting to want to be the all-in-one right? Amy (17m 45s): You, yeah. I've got real next year, you know, is that, that can be the next time we get together. Joel (17m 52s): It can be today, Amy, because I think it's an important topic. I mean, there's a race to be the one platform and it sounds like you're not so into that. Amy (18m 1s): I am Joel, if it would work, I would be all about it. Chad (18m 6s): There it is. Joel (18m 7s): But it doesn't. And why doesn't it? Amy (18m 10s): One of the things Madeline said, and I will, I will echo her here and I love being able to echo a woman in tech and thank you for listening to us women in tech who have a perspective here. What she said was that each enterprise, each business has to know what they need. You have to sit with yourself first, you have to sit with your business first and once you know, what your business needs and what your candidate pool will tolerate, then you can come up with a solution and your solution might be, yep, just let me open up the box that has all of the ATS, CRM, CMS, the referral platform, the training platform, the, all of the HCM stuff in it, all of it out, just open up the box or plug it in. Amy (19m 2s): But in my experience, I've never worked for a business that didn't have some special needs. And so that's why I'm skeptical. Chad OUTRO (19m 10s): Keep on binging. Episode two with Amy is ready and available. And if you're not already subscribed, look for the Chad and Cheese, wherever you listen to podcasts and hit that subscribe or follow button.

Matching is hot, but no one has cracked the SMB market. Enter The Sieve. Yeah, we know, horrible name, but how's the tech, strategy, and team? COO and co-founder Michael Yinger, an industry veteran who's done time at PeopleScout and Randstad, thinks he's got some good answers. But listeners know Chad & Cheese will have the final word on this startup that's looking to face the Firing Squad unscathed. Does he come out alive? Gotta listen to find out. Firing Squad is brought to you by those crazy programmatic geniuses over at Pandologic. Get better results with a more targeted approach to attracting candidates? Check out Pandologic.com! 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): Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel (22s): Oh yeah. Feeling fine and cherry wine, everybody! We're back on firing squad. It's been a while. Chad, as always this is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheeseman joined as always by Chad Sowash. And today we welcome Michael Jaeger CEO and co-founder of the Sieve. Michael, welcome to the show. Michael (46s): Thanks to be here. Looking forward to it. Joel (48s): All right. Before we get into the nitty gritty, give our listeners a little quick Twitter bio about you. Michael (55s): Sure. I've been in the talent acquisition space about 20 years. Technology implementation, client delivery, sales, product management, and pulled all those things together to help with the founding and running of the Sieve. That's what I've been doing for about the last 14 months now. Joel (1m 13s): And you hail from Charlotte, which is a beautiful city from what I understand, Michael (1m 17s): It is a beautiful city, lots of green. This year. We've had lots of rain, unlike other people who haven't had enough, but boy, it's hot and steamy out there. I spent two hours waiting in line outside of DMV this morning in the sun. Joel (1m 31s): That's only the beginning of your misery today my friend, cause you are on firing squad. Chad, tell him what he's won. Chad (1m 37s): Well Michael, you have two minutes to pitch Resume Says AKA the Sieve. At the end of two minutes, you're going to hear that bell then Joel and I will hit you with rapid fire Q and A. If your answers start rambling or you just get plain old, fucking boring, Joel is going to hit you with the crickets. And that is your signal to move along and tighten up your game. At the end of Q and A, you will receive either big applause. That's right kids prepare for a launch this baby is a penis shaped rocket ship! Golf clap, you're going to have to work on that second stage rocket cause this ain't going far, Michael, and last but not least the firing squad abort, abort, abort. Chad (2m 27s): You'd better find something else because this bitch ain't going to fly. That's it for firing squad. Are you ready? Michael (2m 35s): Boy, I'm ready! Joel (2m 37s): All right. Your two minutes starts right now. Michael (2m 42s): Okay. Resume Sieve. First product out the gate is the sieve. Our focus is to improve the productivity of the recruitment process. And we do that by using a proprietary algorithm and a little bit of artificial intelligence to break down the resume, put it into shape that it can be evaluated on a consistent basis by whoever's doing it. Meaning it's not just the recruiter these days who's looking at the resume. Sometimes small business owners. Sometimes it's the hiring manager. Sometimes it's HR. Our focus is on companies that are lagging behind in technology because they can't afford it, because they can't understand it. We made an easy to use platform that comes in and helps people go through the process of evaluating the folks that they're bringing in, evaluating the folks that they've got in their organization. Michael (3m 31s): And of course in today's job market, looking at people, they looked at in the past to see if they missed anything and want to go back to it. Substantial improvement of productivity as much as 70% reduction in time spent on reducing resumes. As much as 40% time spent reducing the time to fill for requisitions. We've been live for about three months. We've got companies in beta test, we've got some individual sign-ups continuing to run a free trial for people who want to just come in and see how it works. And we can be found at resumeseive.com. That's https://resumesieve.com/. Joel (4m 14s): Keith, my man threw in the HTTP. Chad (4m 17s): Oh my God, you just totally dated yourself man. Joel (4m 20s): Are you from the future. What the hell is that? Michael (4m 24s): You know, it gets people. They try to stick the www on the front of it. And my webmaster says, no, no, no. That gets them to the wrong place. I follow directions. Webmaster says, I say, okay. Chad (4m 35s): You need a new webmaster. Joel (4m 36s): Yeah, you need a new webmaster, first of all. Chad (4m 39s): All they need to do is redirect that shit. Michael (4m 41s): You know when you're a startup, you do what you can. Joel (4m 45s): All right. All right, Michael, the name dude. The Sieve? The Sieve? I literally had to look up. I didn't know what it meant. It was a, it's a cooking thing, right? It sifts the a flour. So it makes sense, metaphorically, I guess, for what you do, but you had to have some better names in the kitty, didn't you? Like, how did you land on the Sieve? Is that a pain in the ass for salespeople to call and try to explain, or spell that? Get me through the name first. Michael (5m 14s): Sure. Chad (5m 14s): And also sounds like something Joel got a shot for in college shots. Joel (5m 18s): Multiple shots. Yes. Michael (5m 21s): Naming is such an awesome experience. We've never been through an official naming process. This was dreamed up, the original application was built for an internal use. And three of my founders brought it out of the company that they were working in and, you know, they had named it and they had patented it, they had gotten the URL. We couldn't get the Sieve as a URL. So, you know, we're taking resumes, we're putting them through a filter. So, you know, it's a metaphor, it's a, it's a metaphor. It's where we're at. You know, that's it. Joel (5m 53s): What else is on the table? Like Booger and Bad Tire? Michael (6m 1s): Well, if you've ever tried to get a URL these days, it's really tough to get anything, even close to what it is that you want to do. And particularly our main focus is around the evaluation, ranking, resumes, really tough to find anything meaningful in that area. And so, you know, we came up with this metaphor of the Sieve and we ran with it. Chad (6m 24s): Michael, I'm going to give you a pass because you don't have really branding and marketing in your background. I look at your profile and I see years of experience in RPO and implementation, which to me means you're focused on helping companies solve a business problem. And you know, the difference between real solutions and vaporware. So I'm going to hold you to a much higher standard, my friend than most startups CEOs, because you have industry experience, business experience, and tech/integration experience, which most startups don't enjoy. So what real business problem are you trying to solve here? Michael (7m 5s): Sure. The real business problem we're trying to solve is to speed up the time it takes to evaluate resumes when you're in a resume evaluation environment, let's not confuse it with the other parts of tech that do some other things. Cause reality is only about 50% of the people are using an applicant tracking system or some other technology to evaluate the resumes. They're doing it the old fashioned way. They're printing them out and they're looking at the paper. And so that's the business problem that we're solving the primary business problem. There's some other use cases that I can go into, but the primary business problem is helping people who are still evaluating resumes by printing out the paper, or maybe looking at it on the screen, trying to figure out, does this person have Java? Michael (7m 47s): When's the last time they were a product project manager, whatever the case may be. What's their average tenure. What job are they in today? All the things that are spread all over a resume, because there's no standard format for a resume. We take all that heartache out of it and allow them to focus just on what's the criteria that you want in the person that you're going to hire. That's what we're at. Chad (8m 8s): What area of the market are you actually focusing on? Because most of the fortune 500 companies I've dealt with over the years, they're not printing shit out. So what's your total addressable market look like? Is it SMB? Is it enterprise? Is it everything? What are you guys focused on? Michael (8m 25s): The main focus is in the SMB space and it's in the SMB space in the 100 to 250 employees. Logic being, you get much below a hundred and what's, you know, what's your job flow? It's pretty small. You get much above 250 and then you're going to find people starting to use, you know, whether it's Zoho or Jazz HR or Breezy HR, or one of, one of the other smaller applicant tracking systems. But those people in that 100 to 250 employee range, generally there you send me an email. They're pulling resumes off Indeed manually, or they're posting jobs on Facebook. That's how they're finding their people. And then they're going through those things manually trying to figure out who's the best person, no standard practice, no attempted compliance. Michael (9m 9s): And then no repeatability. Joel (9m 11s): How about sort of globally? Is this specifically a north American product? Are you guys looking to grow globally? Can accompany in, you know, Germany used the product today? Michael (9m 23s): Today were English only. the architecture is set to add other languages as we find the demand. We're actually working on a partnership with a company that's headquartered in India right now, where English is obviously the predominant language, so that will be a natural fit. So as long as you're processing resumes in English, we can handle that. Joel (9m 40s): Gotcha. So I want to talk about fundraising for a second. And you guys have taken a pretty unconventional, although I feel like it will probably be more conventional, say a decade from now, you guys, you look like you got, it looks like you got a 500K or so seed funding round or somebody's friends and family. And right now you're, you're on WeFunder, which is a crowdsourcing or crowdfunding platform. Right now, you're at about $21,000 of year, $125K goal. Talk about goals and funding. Why go the crowdfunding route? What are you going to do with the 125? Assuming that you get there. Joel (10m 21s): Talk about the funding piece of this business. Michael (10m 25s): I'll answer the crowdfunding question first, where we are in our life cycle. We've, we've talked to dozens and dozens of different funding sources. And, and I have bumped up against funding, mergers and acquisitions in various points in my career. We'd be eaten alive if we went after equity funding at this point. And so crowdfunding allows us to continue to raise money through sort of non traditional funding sources, right? These are non traditional investors. They're every man, right? These are people who are interested in being part of the game, but they don't qualify as certified investors. The initial goal we set for 125 was to see how we could do in crowdfunding. Michael (11m 7s): Our, our target is about a million between crowdfunding and some additional friends and family that we're working on. The use of funds falls into two primary buckets. One is marketing, that's the largest portion, about 40%. And then about 35% goes to product development. And then the other 25% just keeping the business running. Right. You know, we gotta pay Microsoft for our working environment. We've got to pay Google for our email. You know, we gotta pay our inside sales for making phone calls, that kind of stuff. Joel (11m 39s): Yep. So let's talk about your biggest piece that you mentioned there marketing and Chad and I know from experience that marketing to that small, that SMB level that you're talking about getting is very, very tough to get in front of. I'll let you know that we typically hate that demographic or that target market. So tell me how you're going to market to these folks and get them to a use your product? Michael (12m 2s): So we're using a multi-channel approach, which is to say, we're trying to, we're using different methods to get to them. So we've had some success reaching people via advertising, both Facebook and LinkedIn. We're doing things like this podcasting as a way to get our name out, we've done some conferences. We were an HR Tech. We did a tech conference in Singapore, which yielded us one client. So in all those different kinds of channels. And then, then we're doing fundamental research, looking for the business owners, through LinkedIn, finding their connections, reaching out to them that, you know, at this point, cost of sales is crazy. That don't get me started, in the long run in the long run we got to bring cost of sales down. Michael (12m 46s): But at this point, it's whatever it takes to acquire enough, to have, you know, sort of advanced grow from. Chad (12m 52s): Okay. So from the site, it says, allows recruiters to process candidates faster, manage more requisitions and identify higher quality hires. Explain how, what actually is the process? Michael (13m 5s): Sure. Chad (13m 5s): That in itself, and what's going to save them time. And why aren't you talking about recruiters? Because for the most part SMBs, you're not going to be talking to recruiters, right? Michael (13m 15s): It's a struggle putting the right word against it because it really should be anyone who's doing recruiting, which is anyone who does recruit as five words is too many words. Right? Okay. I'll give you a real quick story that that'll show you. We posted a customer success lead on LinkedIn and Indeed using the free posting. In five days, I got 296 resumes. It took me two hours, but I downloaded all those to my desktop. I loaded them into the Sieve. I had the job already created in the Sieve and I ran them through the Sieve, that latter part of the process uploading, running them through the sieve 15 minutes. So I evaluated 296 resumes in 15 minutes, came up with the four people that we then went to interview. Michael (13m 57s): That's how people save money. We're evaluating them against a standard set of criteria. Oh, you, oh, you changed your mind. You don't want that skill. You want to try a different skill. Well, let's change it and run them through the Sieve. It's instantaneous. If you think about the way applicant tracking systems by and large, not exclusively by and large applicant tracking systems, evaluate the candidates based on pre-screening questions. Well, once you've asked a candidate, the pre-screening questions, you can't go back and ask them again, because they've already answered them. But in our case, if we say, well, you know what, nobody has this skill. Let's see if there's a different skill that everybody has? Rerun them, you get through it faster. So you're able to go through that evaluation process much more quickly. Michael (14m 37s): And then you have time to focus on, is it the right candidate? Did they have the right experience? You know, it's one thing to say that they got the skill, but then they use it in the right place? I'm trying to hire a salesperson right now. I got a resume that in theory meets all my criteria, except that, no offense, but the guy has been selling solar roofing material for 12 years. That's not SAAS product. That's not software. Chad (15m 1s): Right. Michael (15m 1s): But he's got a 12 years sales experience. So he makes it through the basic process that Indeed provides and so I still have to evaluate. Chad (15m 9s): Yeah. So the question is, do you see yourself as a full out platform or are you just a very large feature that needs to be inside of an applicant tracking system? Michael (15m 22s): Good question. And I'll break it down a bit. We see ourselves as a platform, but not to become an ATS. For example, I talked about the company in India that we're talking about partnering with, they do interview scheduling. And so you use the Sieve to figure out who you want to interview, and then you feed them into the scheduling module. And then you do the interview scheduling, right? So we're looking to add tools to allow people to be more effective as being recruiters. We're not trying to replace an applicant tracking system. We're not really competing with an applicant tracking system in the sense that there's no workflow beyond loading your resumes and evaluating them. So we don't have any of that kind of process in there. Michael (16m 1s): Now, that being said, we are also working on integration with ATSs as another channel that we're working on specifically integrating with one of the, the mid-market ATS is now. And because we've got a specific customer who says, look, I love what your tool does, but I don't want to have to download all my resumes from my ATS and then put them into the Sieve. If you're integrated into my ATS, I'll use you. Chad (16m 27s): Exactly, exactly. Michael (16m 29s): We are working actively in the process of integrating to that particular ATS. Now, if you know the ATS market, you know, pick a number 200, 150, you know, you can't, you can't integrate to all of them. So we're, we're going where the market goes. We're, you know, looking at the ones that really cater to these small businesses and also ones that don't already have some sort of, and I'm doing air quotes. You can't see my fingers, "some sort of evaluation process". Some of them do, although mostly it's based on what's in the application, not necessarily their full skillset, which would be contained in their resume. So. Chad (17m 3s): Well, integrations, mimic sales, right? But overall, the biggest question for you is because you only have a defined set of resources. What is your major focus right now when it comes to sales? How are you doing it as a direct client? Is it channel? Is it through, I mean, what are you focusing on? Cause you can't do it all right now. Michael (17m 26s): We are attempting the impossible, which we're focusing on two specific channels. We're focusing on direct sales, through LinkedIn research. We're using one of the AI tools to find people's names and addresses and reaching out to them, right. We're doing the hard work that way. And then at the same time, we're working on the channel process of partnering with, and I've talked about this company in India that we're talking about partnering with. So to develop another channel through the partnerships as well. So we, we are attempting, what is, I know it's difficult and it's where we're at. We're doing both at the same time. So we've got inside salespeople focus primarily on the outreach. And then the partnership stuff is being handled primarily by the board. Michael (18m 9s): A couple of the board members along with me are very active in identifying and developing partnership opportunities. Joel (18m 15s): In your pitch deck you talk about sort of integrations with job sites. What would that look like? Both, I guess, logistically and from a user perspective and how they would use the product. Would it be white labeled? Talk about that. Michael (18m 30s): Yeah. The objective, but we haven't achieved it yet, the objective would be to integrate with, for example, something like an Indeed or LinkedIn or something where the user is collecting resumes. And then instead of having to download the resumes and upload them to the Sieve, they can transfer them directly over. That's the channel we're approaching. It's not easy. Joel (18m 52s): Yeah. Michael (18m 53s): You know, most of the time they, you know, what people don't realize is that the way the job boards actually integrate with the applicant tracking systems is that when you find a job on a job board and you go to apply that you're going to the applicant tracking system anyway. So there's really no, it's kind of funny, there's really no integration there per se, unless you're looking at something like a, you know, ZipRecruiter, which is going out and finding people, but those aren't applicants, those are candidates. Those are passive. So our objective is to find a way to be able to, to enable people, to pull that data directly out of those underlying systems. That's our long-term goal. Joel (19m 28s): Do you view the sourcing tools like a Seek Out or a Hiring Solved or Hire Tool as a competitor or do you believe that you could be sort of a partner with them as well? Michael (19m 38s): Yeah. Depending on what it is that they're doing, we could be a competitor. If what they're doing is they're bringing back the best candidate, right. They're using the job description and they're coming back using particularly the ones that are using AI. They're coming back with, with people who are pre-screened. The difference of course, is that most of those are still operating by their going out and finding candidates. They're not finding applicants. The difference with the Sieve is it, presumably these are people who've applied to your job and so you already know that you can talk to them. You already know that they're interested in your job. You send out one of those, one of the AI tools to find people, you still have to convince them to apply. Michael (20m 18s): We all, definitely overlap. I think that's safe to say. Joel (20m 22s): So are there, are there people you consider direct competitors if they're sort of on the fringes, are there any ones that you specifically think of as compared to competition? Michael (20m 30s): The full service applicant tracking systems are definitely competition for us because if somebody has gone to the trouble to bring in an applicant tracking system, they're less likely to bring in something like the Sieve unless, as you've already pointed out, and as we already know, unless we're integrated and enhance our, our desire, move down, that integration channel. Beyond that the primary competitor for us is the same thing that everybody has the HR tech space. They're just a boatload of applications out there, different capabilities that, you know, we ran across one the other day that on the surface looks very much like ours, except that in our case, you get to either upload or create your job description, but, you know, whatever works for you. Michael (21m 10s): In their case, you feed them the resumes and you, you pick the job description from their library, and then it evaluates that candidate based on a standard job description. So it's not exactly the same, but you can see that it, you know, we're competing for mind share to accomplish the same work, even though we're not doing it the same way. Chad (21m 29s): You guys use a scoring system, correct? Michael (21m 31s): Yes, we do. Chad (21m 32s): Okay. So most scoring systems are black box they're they're, they're not transparent at all. Can the client see specifically how you are ranking these candidates? Michael (21m 42s): Well, okay, so at different levels. The score that the candidate gets is visible. In our health documentation we talk about how the score is created. I mean, I'll describe it for you. It's a thousand point scale 800 points are applied to requirements. 200 are applied to preferred criteria, and then the user has the ability to weigh all those in however they see fit. Chad (22m 8s): Okay. Do you show it? And if you do, can they go in and tweak it? Because it's on them, right? You're the tool here, but do you show it, do you make it available and transparent for them to actually go and tweak. Michael (22m 19s): The way you're describing where we're, we're pretty open with how it, how it works, but it's, it still is an algorithm in the background that the only manipulation that they can do is they can weight the individual criteria and they can change the weighting on the fly. Obviously they get to decide what's required and what's preferred. And then we have a further factor, which is recency. They can turn recency on and off to decide whether or not that's skewing the results of a particular candidate. Chad (22m 47s): Gotcha. Okay. So very important, is now, especially with the, the EOC and the OFCCP, depending on the, whether they're a federal contractor or not, it's incredibly important for them to understand how you got to score X, right? Whether they did it, you did it. Either way the algorithm needs to be transparent from the standpoint of defendability and explainability. So obviously that's not something that you have built into the tech today. For smaller organizations. It's not going to be as much of an issue, but this is going to be a standard moving forward, I promise you. Michael (23m 26s): Yeah, no. And, you know, we've actually talked about patenting our algorithm, and I've learned some interesting terms from the legal Eagles and their basic advice was, we don't think you can patent this, but if you just call it a trade secret, and I said, well, what's a trade secret. He said, well, it's something you don't tell anybody. Oh, thanks for your help. $375 an hour for that bit of advice. Chad (23m 51s): Yeah. Go get used to that, if you keep paying for consultants. From the site, it says up to 30% reduction in hiring costs. Now you guys are just in kind of like a beta past beta mode right now. So how did you get to that number? Is that a client aggregate number or a single client case, or just kind of like a concept? Michael (24m 12s): Well, it's a combination of two things. One, it's an aggregate number from the people who have tested for us, but two, the application was in use for several years on a standalone basis within an IT staffing company. They analyze their stats over time and we're able to do determine what those actual savings were versus their original baseline before they started using the application. Joel (24m 38s): The team that you have looks like according to LinkedIn, you have about eight employees. What does the team look like? What's the skill set? Michael (24m 45s): We've got a board and they've got both IT as well as staffing and startup experience. Some of the board members like me were, we do what we do, day-to-day work. The day-to-day folks, our IT operations lead, the customer success lead, and then the bulk of our folks, we've got another nine people on the development side. So in total, we've got 18. The nine folks on the development side are all worked for our technology partner and they all sit in India. Chad (25m 17s): Well on the site, some coming soon points that I wanted to throw out to you. First and foremost, scan social media profiles. You gotta, you gotta be fucking kidding me? Right. Michael (25m 28s): I know. I, you know, you know, the funny thing is, you know, you talked about my experience, right? I've been in the talent acquisition space a long time. And so I cringe, I cringe at those things where, you know, some of the, some of our team, you know, they've been in different, different parts and they don't see the problem with that. So there are some things that have to be vetted before they can be put into place and that certainly is one of them. And, you know, it's one thing to determine if someone has a social media presence, it's another to evaluate that social media presence and certainly you have to have permission and all those kinds of things to do that before you get there. Chad (26m 4s): Michael you're the CEO, you can put the kibosh on stupid shit like that. Okay. So the next one, you review position benchmarks and education ranks. Now this actually got Amazon into a whole bunch of fucking trouble because they were using historical data, that set benchmarks that actually started kicking females out the back door. So reviewing positional benchmarks as, I mean, those benchmarks that's historical data, and we know humans are biased. So why are we doing that? Michael (26m 35s): Well, because you know, part of it is because those are the kinds of things that people ask for and you gotta be, and I know you got to be a little careful giving people the things that they ask for. Chad (26m 44s): Yes. Michael (26m 44s): The benchmarks that we have in mind are things like, you know, can we help the recruiter with salary negotiations by providing salary benchmarks, as opposed to skill benchmarks and those kinds of things. And you're hitting on the tough ones, the ones that are the most problematic and the ones that people struggle with the most. There's no question about it. Chad (27m 1s): That's my job. Michael (27m 2s): Yeah. That's good. You're digging in. Joel (27m 4s): All right. Let's talk about pricing. Okay. SMBs are cheap. They suck to sell to this. Thing's gotta be super cheap, right? Michael (27m 13s): So we are at the moment running what we call founders pricing. It's twenty-five bucks a month. And if you come in at the founder's rate, which is half of what we intend to charge, once we get some traction, you get to keep that rate. As long as you stay on the package, get a discount for life if you're interested. Joel (27m 30s): And what is that rate? Michael (27m 32s): 25 bucks a month. Joel (27m 33s): Is that per person? Michael (27m 35s): That's seat. You can bring in your hiring managers to collaborate with you. No cost for the hiring managers. That's for anybody who's actually doing any "sieving." So that would be the people who are doing the actual recruiting. But if you, if all you want to do is be able to, to show the results and do what if thing with your hiring manager, no charge for that. Joel (27m 58s): All right, Michael, time to face the firing squad! Chad (28m 1s): Here it is! Joel (28m 2s): Are you in the Charlotte Heat ready? Michael (28m 4s): IDK if the Heat are ready, but I'm ready. Joel (28m 7s): Alright, get 'em Chad. Chad (28m 8s): Okay. Michael, first and foremost, you got to stop calling this advanced AI powered candidate evaluation platform. It's matching. Michael (28m 16s): Too many words? Chad (28m 17s): There are so, so many platforms that are out there today that are incredibly powerful, that have been doing this, that have already been bought and integrated into applicant tracking systems. It's matching, right? So just embrace who you are and big guy. And you got to take control of this penis, rocket Michael, no social media profiles, no benchmarking against bias data. Man, put your foot down, tell those people, we don't do this because it is in your best interest that we don't do the stupid shit. Snap. The SMB market is a hard market to target and direct sales will kill you because unless you are ZipRecruiter spending a gazillion dollars on podcasts. Michael (29m 2s): $60 million in 10 years. Chad (29m 4s): Yes, it is going to be incredibly hard. So remember you are doing the heavy lifting. There's no question. Your tech is amazing when you're talking about matching or at least the segment of tech, every applicant tracking system needs it. That's where I believe obviously your focus needs to be. So ATS integration is a must. You mentioned jazz HR, those types. I feel like you are in a space, SMB, which is going to be incredibly hard, although many of those SMB applicant tracking systems, they're not going to build this. And if they do build it, they're not going to do a great job. Chad (29m 44s): So you have a great opportunity in the future. If you focus and you get your priorities straight and you start kicking these idiots in the face, when they start talking about social stuff. So that being said all around, because this is my favorite tech in the industry. I'm going to give you a golf clap, man. Michael (30m 5s): Thank you. Joel (30m 5s): Hit him, hit him in the head with that penis rocket Michael. So when we evaluate companies on firing squad, there's two pieces that I look at, one is the horse and one is the jockey. The most important piece in that to me is the jockey. And in your case, the breadth of experience that you've had in the industry, I can tell just talking to you that you sort of get it. And I think that although having a startup in many cases is sort of, you know, finding your way around the dark until the light comes. I think that's kind of where you are as a company. So I can tell you if you were a 24 year old kid that had never done anything in this space, I would shoot you down without any hesitation whatsoever. Joel (30m 48s): But because you have the experience that you have, I think that speaks volumes to where this company will go. I think that ultimately what, when in Chad's commentary about, you know, going to integrations that that is going to be where you guys find success. I think that, you know, your comment about 40% goes to marketing. I think that needs to go into integrations. I think you need to dive into every platform you possibly can. I know you mentioned, you know, 200 or whatever ATS is. It's probably more than that globally, but I think you start, start with a list of hierarchy. Maybe you go after the ones that specialize with some of the smaller companies, those are usually easier. Joel (31m 30s): You know, the Crelates of the world, those guys are usually easier to deal with anyway, they'll actually promote you to their people. So maybe that's where you kind of focused. I think that you'll get to your fundraising goals. I mean the 500 is, is nice. It sounds like you're looking for another million to get to a place where you can go for a for series A so if I were judging the business today, and if you were, you know, much less experienced, it would be, it would be the gun's no problem. But I think with your experience and where you'll probably end up, you're going to find a level of success and probably be an acquisition target for one of these ATSs or CRMs that Chad mentioned need, you know, this technology. Joel (32m 11s): So for me, it's like continue to build the tech, It sounds like you have a team that you trust, take the money that you raise and integrate, integrate, integrate. And I think you'll find success, but that's not what I heard. It's where I think you're going. So for me, you were at a golf clap as well, my friend, but a little, a little tweak here and there. And I think you'll be on your way. Michael (32m 32s): I appreciate the feedback. And you do get caught up in your own things sometimes, and it's good to have somebody look at it and give you some feedback. I appreciate it. Chad (32m 40s): We're here for you, Michael. Michael (32m 42s): I love it Joel (32m 42s): And change the goddamn name, but until you do that where can they find you, Michael? Michael (32m 48s): Okay. So you can find us at https://resumesieve.com/. I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Michael Jaeger, easy to find, or you can even email me Michael@resumesieve.com. Joel (33m 2s): Fair enough. Chad another one in the books. Joel and Chad (33m 7s): We out. OUTRO (34m 1s): 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.

Are Gig Workers Full-Time Employees? Debate Playing Out in Europe. Whether or not gig workers will eventually be considered full-time employees is an ongoing debate in parts of the U.S. - think Prop 22 in California - but in Europe, many of these decisions are playing out for us, and the boys dig into this and other topics with special guest Matt Alder of The Recruiting Future Podcast. Also covered is how Google has been illegally underpaying thousands of temporary workers in dozens of countries, including many in Europe. Lastly, the show dives into the recent investment in startup Applied, known for its unbiased hiring service, and whether or not the trend of diversity hiring hits the same in Europe as it does in the U.S. and elsewhere. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. C&C does Europe INTRO (-1h -1m -26s): 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. Some podcasts, do it for the fun. Some do it for the fame, Chad and Cheese they do it for global effin domination. C&C does Europe INTRO (14s): That's why bringing America to its knees was just the beginning. Now they have their eyes set on conquering Europe and they've drafted industry veteran Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze of Belgium to help them navigate the old country and bring HR's most dangerous podcast across the pond to trash-talk like never before. Not safe for work in any language. The Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. Joel (39s): Oh yeah, Germany will have a new chancellor this month. That's always worked out pretty well. Right? You are listening to the Maginhad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your cohost Joel "Magino Line" Cheesman. Chad (52s): I'm Chad "Vaxxed and relaxed" Sowash. Lieven (55s): I'm still just Lieven. Joel (57s): On this episode. Google's mantra used to be, don't be evil, but breaking the law might be a better one today. Giggers are starting to be recognized as employees in the old country and diversity recruiting isn't just an American thing. And speaking of diversity, we have four middle-aged white men on today's podcast. Party, like it's 1957 shall we? sfx (1m 23s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Chad (1m 26s): We have a mystery guest right this, this week? Joel (1m 29s): Yes. Chad (1m 31s): Okay. Straight out of Europe, kids straight out, straight out of the UK, straight out of Scotland at 27 Stones. I don't even know what that is. How heavy is 27 stones? Joel (1m 45s): Weighing in at 32 pints. He's that British guy, Matt Alder everybody. Matt (1m 53s): 27 stones is a lot more than I actually way to set the record straight at this point. Chad (2m 2s): How much is a stone? I don't, I don't understand what does a stone weight? Matt (2m 6s): I don't know. I don't know what it is in newfangled weights measures. I'm afraid. Joel (2m 10s): Well then let's get to who you are Matt. For those who don't know, Matt (2m 14s): I am Matt Alder and I am the host and producer of the Recruiting Future podcast, which is a proud member of the evergreen HR podcast network. Like, like the Chad and Cheese show. Unlike the Chad and cheese show my podcast is very safe for work. Chad (2m 35s): And everybody loves Matt Alder, let's just say that there are plenty of people who don't like Chad and Cheese that's for sure. Joel (2m 42s): He's very British and hard to dislike. Chad (2m 44s): Yes. Yes. Joel (2m 47s): Shall we get to shout outs? Chad (2m 48s): My first shout out goes to you, Joel, are you ready? Joel (2m 51s): Oh, I like that. Chad (2m 53s): How does it feel to be in the most backward country in the civilized world right now? The US is that 54.5% vaccination. The UK represented by Matt Alder 66%, Belgium represented by Lieven 72% and Portugal 80%. Are you fucking kidding me US? Joel (3m 16s): The last I heard the, the entire continent of Africa was like 1% vaccinated. So I take a little, I take a little offense to that. Okay. Just Africa while you're at it. That's nice. All right. That's all right. That's all right. I, I want to, I'm going to trade in my shout-outs for two questions this week. I'll ask the first one and then you guys can. Chad (3m 38s): Let's ask the judge. Is this allowed? Okay. He says it's okay, so go ahead. Joel (3m 42s): I don't know who the judge is. It's our fucking show. Anyway. So my first question is, and I mentioned it in the beginning is that Germany is getting a new chancellor, which means zippo to most Americans, but Germany is the biggest economy in Europe, as far as I understand. So I want to ask the Europeans, what does Germany getting a new chancellor? What does Angela Merkel leaving mean to Germany? What does it mean to Europe, particularly from an economics perspective? Who do you guys expect to win? What's going on in Germany? Lieven (4m 15s): Matt do you have a clue? I don't. Matt (4m 17s): I'm not a close follower of German politics to be perfectly honest. And I think this kind of underlines the fact that Europe is a lot of different countries. So whilst, you know, we completely understand the significance of the German election and the significance of the German economy within Europe. I couldn't really tell you much about who the runners and riders are. Joel (4m 42s): Now I'm going to call out Europe then because Americans get a lot of shit for being stupid and not caring about the rest of the world and not caring about anyone but ourselves. And now you two Europeans, come on our show and don't know shit about the German election, the biggest economy in your continent. So as an American, like that says a lot, like we're not as bad as Europe. Maybe we're a lot alike, which is sort of this, which is sort of the whole point of this show is how similar we are. Quit bashing America, Europe. Chad (5m 16s): It's just so easy right now. Lieven (5m 17s): You are so happy. We didn't know about the German politics. Joel (5m 22s): I'm surprised. I thought you guys would be able to tell me more about American politics than I would. And the fact that you don't even know what what's going on in Germany is sorta heartwarming as an American. Matt (5m 34s): I can probably tell you more about American politics than I can about German politics right now. I do have a shout out though. I would shout out to Scotland. The Scottish government announced a couple of weeks ago that they are going to trial a four day working week in some parts of the public sector. So that's exciting news. Chad (5m 53s): Oh that's awesome! Joel (5m 54s): Yes. Does that include podcasters? Matt (5m 56s): I only worked four days anyway. Joel (6m 1s): Chad won't let me work four days a week. Chad (6m 3s): Because you only work two. Joel (6m 6s): Lies. Lieven (6m 8s): It works for days when it's really, really busy. Joel (6m 10s): Lies. Lieven (6m 11s): Here I've got to shout out too, I understand I'm going to shout it out. My shout out goes to Evander better. He's the president of my favorite soccer team, a Gant and according to newspaper the tent. he's about to sell his HR company Hudson for the second time and accidentally I told him it's an interesting story. He founded Devita Morel in 1982, sold it to IWA in 1995, he sold it to TMP worldwide in 2001. And then in 2003 TMP was split up and Monster. And then Hudson Devita Morrell was merged with Hudson and Monster was sold to around stats. And now even bought in, bought this company back in 2018 for a dime. Lieven (6m 52s): And now at age 73, he's selling the company back again to Randstad. Chad (6m 58s): Yes. Lieven (6m 58s): They bought the wrong part of TMP in 2016 and want to make up for it. And I think started going to Monster again. Joel (7m 7s): I think that's what we call in America double dipping. Chad (7m 10s): Double dip, baby. Ooh. And while we're talking about double dipping, so the 1st of July of this year, the rules of paternity leave in France have changed. Now, new fathers are entitled 25 days leave. That seems pretty awesome to me. I don't know why we can't all get 25 days leave. Lieven (7m 34s): Why not get 50? Joel (7m 37s): Yeah. Canada's, Canada's insane. Canada's like six months or something. Canada's like equal to the woman, which sounds really sexist and we'll probably get canceled to that comment, but how many days it is in America? Zero. Chad (7m 51s): Okay. So first off. Yeah, just biologically, I've never carried a baby or performed labor, but it feels damn hard. So you would think that mom would want some time off or at least a little bit of a break if dad's going back to work as soon as humanly possible, that just doesn't seem good for the family overall. And I don't know, maybe divorce rates, is this something that we see in Europe as kind of like a standard or are the French kind of like leading in parental leave for men? Do you guys know? Matt (8m 25s): Yeah. It's different in every country, but it's the principle is fairly standard. So in the UK you actually have shared parental leave. So you can, either parent can kind of, sort of switch in and switch out, so you can kind of share the time between you. Joel (8m 44s): And everywhere, it's all government mandated, right? Yeah. Whereas in the U S it is not. Chad (8m 49s): Freewheeling capitalism. If it doesn't get paid. Fuck it. Joel (8m 54s): So I'm going to get to my next question. So of my two questions, one is of global importance and the other sort of light and airy. I'll let the listeners figure out which question is which, but I have a question for our stylish European guests. I hope you've seen this. Facebook is launching new glasses, smart glasses if you will. They've partnered with Ray-Ban. You guys remember Google glass, you probably remember you probably remember Snapchats lenses or whatever they had. And now Facebook is coming out with their version, which they've probably backed up the Brinks truck to Ray-Bans, headquarters, Luxotica, or whoever owns them. Joel (9m 35s): Anyway, I know that I'm not going to wear them in America, but I don't have the fashion sense that you Europeans do. Is Europe going to embrace Facebook's Ray-Ban smart glasses? Yes or no. Lieven? Lieven (9m 49s): `Nuts Joel (9m 50s): What'd you say nuts? Lieven (9m 52s): Like you're a general in 1944 in Bastonia. Chad (9m 57s): Nuts, nuts. Joel (9m 59s): Matt. You're pretty stylish guy. Are you going to be first in line for the Facebook glasses? Matt (10m 4s): I actually wear Ray-Bans the glasses I have got on at the moment are Ray-Bans so, you know, it's kind of, it sounds like an upgrade, but I don't think I'll be upgrading. Joel (10m 14s): I don't know. That sounds like a maybe Matt, that sounds like a maybe. Chad (10m 20s): Joel just loves the VR. Matt (10m 23s): Privacy implications of letting Mark Zuckerberg look through my eyes is a bit too much for me. Joel (10m 29s): Oh, you're so naive. Chad (10m 31s): Joel just wants to play Fortnite and not look like an idiot. Joel (10m 36s): I can't even spell Fortnite correctly. Asked my son, ask my son. Well, let's talk about travel real quick, Chad. Cause you and I are still scheduled to be in Europe on Thanksgiving, which is a little bit offensive to an American like me, but I'm still on schedule to be there Thanksgiving Day in some Bayside town in Belgium. Lieven, you can give us some specifics on what's going on, but Chad and Cheese will be in Europe in November. Lieven (11m 6s): Oh, I get to promote my Congress again. Nice, nice. November 25th, we have to eRecruitment Congress, as I said, last edition of the show. It's in Oostende Belgium. It's a whole day of recruitment technology, tweaky notes, 12 breakout sessions. If you want to stay in the know and come to the Congress. Joel (11m 27s): And if there are no other shout-outs, let's get to the news shall we? Chad (11m 36s): Topics! Joel (11m 36s): Google's been naughty. You guys, this is from a huge story in the Guardian in case you want to Google it and find out more. Google has been illegally underpaying, thousands of temporary workers in dozens of countries and delayed correcting the pay raise for more than two years, as it attempted to cover up the problem. Documents uncovered by the Guardian show big G dragged its feet to correct disparity after learning it was failing to comply with laws in the UK, Europe and Asia. Google execs have been aware of since at least may of 2019, that the company was failing to comply with local laws of the top seven countries affected all, but one is European and the UK having the most contract workers at Google are affected the most. Joel (12m 18s): Given the high turnover rate of temporary workers, the number of workers affected by Google's failure is estimated to be in the tens of thousands. Well, let's start with the representative from the UK, Matt, what is Google doing? It's pretty bloody bad, isn't it? Matt (12m 35s): It is pretty bloody bad. And that's where, one that does send me a way of describing it. I think what was interesting here is it really underlines the complexity of employment law and labor laws across the world. And you know, that complexity is essentially what they're hiding behind and the big implications for what they and other large companies might be, you know, trying to try to conceal and not deal with. But also on the flip side, I think is interesting that, you know, sometimes we talk about global talent pools and recruiting people all around the world as if it's a really, really easy thing to do. Matt (13m 19s): And I think this just kind of really underlines the complexity of, you know, running a global business. Chad (13m 27s): Yeah, but you can't tell me that Google doesn't have an army of accountants and lawyers who knew this was happening. Matt (13m 32s): Oh they do. Chad (13m 32s): I mean, especially in companies with pay parody laws, now maybe 10 years ago, but they're much more mature globally. So yeah, they're hiding behind shit. But the big question for me is which country is actually going to slam the hammer down on Google with a real fine, and not just some pittance because we've seen countries hit Google and Facebook was small fines. And all that really does is send a signal to all the other companies out there saying, okay, yeah, no, that's affordable. I can pay that tax. Joel (14m 7s): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some context for Americans, there are more than 30 countries, including the UK, many EU states in India and Taiwan that have enacted these pay parity laws, which are basically equal treatment laws that require temporary workers to be treated equally to full-time employees who perform the same or similar work. So to Chad's point, you know, I really think that particularly in big tech where there are global businesses, like whether it's Facebook combating, you know, facial recognition issues here in the US, or whether it's Google fighting media in Australia and other parts of the world, I think that the accountants get in the room and say, okay, let's do an analysis on what it's going to cost us to, you know, take this back to court, to pay the fines, to bend the law, file another appeal, et cetera, basically time this out as much as we can until we have to pay a $10 million fine, a hundred million dollar fine. Joel (15m 7s): I think Google's highest is in the billions, which is still sort of couch cushion money for them. And by the time they've, you know, by the time they have appealed these laws, you know, their stock is up 40%, which makes it much easier to pay the piper if you will. So the math and the algorithm on these fines and these legal issues with Google and other tech companies to me, is just a math problem to them. And unless a country comes in with like a huge, huge, huge, fine, nothing is ever going to change, this is just going to be the way it is. Matt (15m 41s): I think that's an interesting point because it's kind of like how big is a huge fine? Because you know, a huge fine for, you know, for the likes of Google and Facebook and these other companies is just vast. I mean, I was just looking back to see, who'd been fined in the UK, for sort of various things and I found that, you know, Facebook were fined half a million pounds for Cambridge Analytica harvesting data in 2019. Half a million pounds, I mean, that's just a rounding error isn't it. Joel (16m 13s): And my guess is there are probably limits to how much a fine can be in a lot of European countries. Whereas, in America, it's a very litigious culture. You can sue everybody for anything and you could probably win tons of money. But my guess is, I don't know, I'm not a judicial expert, but my guess is a lot of these countries probably have limits or rules around how much a fine can be for certain crimes. And that dollar amount is probably nothing compared to what these companies earn in revenues. Chad (16m 43s): Well, take a look at just the revenue in the US, it's like $161 billion and that was from a couple of years ago. To be able to take a serious chunk out of that billions of dollars out of that is when they start, when they start to actually notice and then they will change behavior. But you know, the US is not going to do that. Right. So, you know, back to Matt and to Lieven, do you think that any of the EU at all, any of the countries within the EU have the brass balls to actually smack Google hard enough for them to actually give a shit? Lieven (17m 20s): I'm pretty sure they will someday. Chad (17m 24s): No, not no time soon. Lieven (17m 27s): Maybe the successor of Angela Merkel in Germany, whoever that might be. Joel (17m 32s): My money's on France. Lieven (17m 34s): To me, it's strange that there is no such thing in the U S as equally pay. I mean, it's all about women and men getting paid equally and about our racial stuff, et cetera. But in my opinion, it's normal that a temporary workers should be treated equally to full-time employees. Chad (17m 50s): Yes. Lieven (17m 50s): Why isn't, why isn't it the case in the U S? It's weird? Chad (17m 54s): Yes, because of margins, it's very simple in the U S we are very focused on one thing, the all mighty dollar that's for the past, at least 50 years, that's what the focus has been. Lieven (18m 5s): Yeah. But I mean, why just don't pay them all less? Joel (18m 9s): I think a lot of it is, you know, like we treat small businesses differently than we do bigger businesses. And so if you have a certain amount of workers, are they full-time workers, are they part-time then you have to pay them health insurance, which I think is probably where this, the answer really lies is that the line at which someone has to pay health benefits is usually dependent upon how many full-time workers they have. And they don't have to pay full-time workers, health insurance. So there tends to be more healthcare or more, more temporary workers or part-time workers because of that. So a lot of it, I think is limits on, at what point do you have to start paying? At what point do you come under regulations that make it harder to do business? Joel (18m 50s): And in America, we try to, we try to put people in pockets to where we don't have to pay health benefits. We don't have to pay other benefits and other things. So my short answer is I think a lot of it stems through our healthcare system. Chad (19m 4s): Yeah. And the things that you guys automatically have embedded into everyday work life, which is what we don't. Lieven (19m 13s): But I'm working for the temping industry. So I'm a bit biased here, how we get for as far as it's much better if everyone gets paid equally, of course, it didn't be, it wasn't like that's some years ago. So we changed too. But I think for the company culture, it must be devastating. If you have two types of employees, let's say we have an A type around own employees and we pay them one and we give them benefits. And then you have the B type, which are temporary workers. It's crushing for the company spirits, or, but you're a temporary guy you can go away. Joel (19m 46s): I think we've always done it that way. And we probably don't see it the same way? Lieven (19m 51s): Maybe. Chad (19m 52s): Because of margins. Matt? Matt (19m 54s): Just on that fine and which country. This is, you know, this is what the EU's for. The EU as an entity is kind of big enough to go off to Google. So I, think it would be interesting to see what happens at that kind of EU level. Chad (20m 12s): I think there's too much bureaucracy that would actually have to happen between all those different countries to be able to smack Google that hard or do you think that that's, it was pulled together nimble enough to be able to actually do something like this? Matt (20m 26s): Well, that's the question, I don't know the answer but I suspect, I suspect you're right. Lieven (20m 32s): I think I put my money on France in this case. Matt (20m 36s): Yeah. Lieven (20m 37s): They'll be the first to try to get some money out of Google, Joel (20m 41s): Some real money. Lieven (20m 43s): Give it a try. sfx (20m 45s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel (20m 47s): So we talk lot on the weekly show about California's prop 22, which would mean gig workers on platforms like Uber and Door Dash will have to be treated like employees. Hundreds of millions have been spent on media campaigns by said platforms to make sure the proposition doesn't become law. But in Europe we have our first examples of giggers as employees. In Spain, after less than a month of debate, the Spanish Congress approved the writer's law, which presumes writers to be employees. The response from platforms shouldn't surprise anyone.. Anyone Deliveroo announced it was ending operations in Spain, which will result in more than 3000 writers losing their jobs, Globo, the largest delivery platform in Spain indicated it would only hire a relatively small part of its workforce, 2000 out of the 12,000. Joel (21m 35s): Uber Eats has reached agreements to subcontract its writers from third-party distributors, essentially washing its hands of a direct relationship. Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, nearly 4,000 Uber drivers are now considered employees. The judge who ruled said, quote, "real self-employed workers can determine their own rate and determine how they carry out their work. This is not the case with drivers who drive for Uber" end quote, as a result of the ruling Uber must place its drivers on the payroll and pay according to the collective labor agreement for taxi transport. Shockingly, Uber will appeal the ruling in the UK Uber has already been defeated three times until the British Supreme court finally settled the dispute earlier this year. Joel (22m 22s): About 70,000 British drivers are now entitled to the minimum wage, paid holidays and other protections. And in Belgium, the Belgian taxi Federation filed a lawsuit against Uber because it is a quote, "hidden taxi service." What a mess guys, let's dig into this, Matt, it seems the Brits have accepted this fate, how'd they pull that one off. Matt (22m 42s): Well, it's interesting, and it's something that's been going on for quite some time. So yeah, February, it was kind of ruled that the Uber drivers are entitled to workers' rights. So that's things like holiday sick pay, all those kinds of things. Interestingly and apologies if I've got this wrong cause it's a very fast moving thing. So my understanding is deliveries are exempt from that, at the moment. So if you're a gig taxi driver, then they have to give you employment rights. If you're a gig delivery, food delivery driver or biker or whatever, then, then they don't. Matt (23m 31s): So Uber taxi drivers get employment's rights, but Uber Eats drivers. Don't yeah, it's interesting. It's an ongoing, you know, there's lots of, kind of ongoing court cases and I'll give him some counter-arguments around it. But I think the, the direction of is very, very clear in terms of, you know, more employment rates for gig workers. Chad (23m 51s): Yes. Well, and here's, here's what I think is important from the article quote, "the employment relationship in the end is who owns the digital tool" as long as Globo owns the application and its algorithm, which are the means to connect clients and writers and calculate the prices of the delivery. Even if these can be site slightly adjusted, there will be subordination and thus an employment relationship. That to me, whoever owns the tech in this case, which means you can't subcontract this shit, you can't do anything outside the lines, which it sounds like Uber and, some of these companies are going to try to do, but it doesn't sound like they're going to be able to because they own the tech. Joel (24m 36s): One of the things that stood out from these, this variety of stories is when I think about how, who would most mirror America, it's the Spain response. If this ever became law in the U S you would see companies pull out of certain states, you would see a third parties come in to alleviate sort of the direct relationship. We would do everything possible to skirt the law. And we see this in the trucking industry here, because, you know, today, when someone goes through trucking school and they get their license, they get the opportunity to either be a full-time employee or be their own driver. And they are highly encouraged to be their own boss, to have their own, have their own truck to went to which they get their own LLC. Joel (25m 22s): They get their own truck, which then they have to pay money on. And then they invoice the trucking company and become their own basically company. America is going to skirt this as much as possible if it becomes law. Although I think there's a culture here of sort of rugged independence that people are that this isn't going to happen other than states like California, Washington, New York, maybe. But I think the Spain example is what really stood out to me. It sounds like from Matt's comment in the UK, to me, it sounds like the taxi union is just a lot stronger than the other union for Uber Eats or whatever it was. Joel (26m 5s): And that's why that became the situation in the UK. Am I, am I off base on that? Or am I right on? Matt (26m 10s): It's something to do there's a technicality about whether you can substitute riders. So there's kind of a legal, a legal kind of loophole around it. I think delivery went public in the UK actually a few months ago. Joel (26m 27s): Delivery is based in the UK. Right?` Matt (26m 29s): So, so interestingly, yeah, Delivery was it's either has, or has gone, you know, he's going for an IPO. And so there was a, you know, there might be question marks about the UK government's hand in this in terms, you know, a US company, you know, having to abide by employment law,, but the UK won, not having to. So I don't know. It's interesting. And am I right in saying that the taxi union, or there's a taxi union in the UK and it's probably really strong and influential? There there's lots of things going on. So it varies from city to city. So taxis are licensed on a, on a kind of a city basis. Matt (27m 11s): So what we were finding before this ruling was that the rules for Uber were different in different UK cities. So at one point Uber lost his license completely in London because of some of his working practices, but it appealed and appealed to it and got it back. And then Uber and other British cities has to work a slightly different way. So it's not kind of one or powerful union is lots of different, different kinds of regulations. And it's because taxis are licensed by the local government or the city council effectively. And Uber's constantly arguing that they're not a taxi service. And then that's kind of what it comes down to. Matt (27m 51s): Or obviously in London, you've got the, you know, the black cabs have been, you know, very, very vocal in their opposition to Uber. And, you know, they have to abide by, you know, a number of rules and regulations and Uber didn't. So it's kind of an argument that's been sort of happening on a city by city basis in terms of whether Uber is a taxi service and should be licensed accordingly and the employment workers' rights thing is, is actually almost a separate national issue about the definition of the gig economy and who's actually employed worker and who's, you know, just a contractor or someone using, using a platform you know, to find bits and pieces of work. Joel (28m 40s): So, Lieven as our token Belgian, do you have a take on the taxi federations lawsuit? Does the taxi union have a really strong presence in Belgium? What's your take on their case? Lieven (28m 55s): They succeeded in blocking Uber for quite a long time. When I go to Paris because we've got offices in Paris, we always take Uber, but in Belgium be used to take taxis until very recently, it was just illegal to take an Uber and drive In some cases. Matt said something about a taxi drivers being vocal that's still okay in Belgium they were pretty aggressive, not only vocal, the taxi driver called an Uber and when the Uber guy came, they kicked his ass until we were drivers gave up. Chad (29m 27s): Wow, that sounds like olden days, kind of union disputes and shit. Joel (29m 31s): The mean streets of Belgium Chad (29m 32s): The scabs, maybe they pulled those scabs. And so here's a question now that these individuals are employees. How do you know if they're not gaming the system and running like all three different apps? And is it okay just as long as you log enough time per app, I mean, this starts to create different rules in the gigging landscape, right? So what does that mean? Do we know? Matt (29m 57s): I think that's interesting. And these are relatively new rulings. You know, this is not over yet. This is going to run and run. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out, but this will be back in the courts before too long. Joel (30m 13s): We'll be watching. All right, guys, let's get to a startup in the UK. Mathis is in your lane. We customize our shows for our guests if you didn't know that. UK based rec tech startup Applied known for its unbiased hiring service has introduced a job board feature to build up its database of applicants. Founded in London in 2015, Applied replaces resumes with assessments and provides end to end recruitment services to employers and recruiters. Applied as raised around $6.6 million US so far, in addition to not requiring gender age, ethnicity, and other characteristics when applying. The solution also considers other ATS led data science for anonymous skill-based hiring. Joel (30m 59s): Applied says predictive validity of its work sample tests, structured interviews and cognitive ability tests are far better than the old school resume based shortlisting approach, based on education reference checks, and years of experience. Listeners might remember June co raising 10 million, the acquisition of diversity jobs by circa and the merger of Way Up and Yello. So is diversity recruiting here to stay, or will it eventually go the way of Facebook's new Ray-Bans? Matt another UK story, baby? What are your thoughts? Matt (31m 35s): Absolutely. You cover it all on this show, everything from, I wish I'd researched UK city taxi licensing before I came on. Right. I could have given you a more definitive answer. Chad (31m 48s): I'm kind of glad that you didn't to be quite frank. Joel (31m 51s): And so are the listeners. Chad (31m 53s): Yes, yes. Matt (31m 54s): I was recording another podcast, I just didn't have time. I just didn't have time. Yeah. I've not come across this, this, this particular solution before. It sounds interesting. Obviously, there is a huge investment in these kinds of tools going on all over the world at the moment, like with anything, I would be interested, in case studies and how that's worked in practice. One of the things that worries me slightly about the proliferation of, you know, in investment in tools in the sort of the front end of the funnel, is organizations thinking they can solve diversity, in their company by ticking a box and buying a technology solution, rather than addressing it much more strategically and looking at equity and inclusion and you know, everything across their business. Matt (32m 58s): So I'm not, as I say, I'm not familiar with the organization, I'd be very interested to find out more. But I would hope that this was a tool that was used as part of a much broader corporate strategy, rather than looking at it as a tick box or a silver bullet. Chad (33m 20s): Yeah. DEI is fashion forward, baby. It's the new AI, everybody's doing it. US-based Canvas today actually announced they received $50 million in funding with a valuation of 400 billion, million. There's nothing more sexy than DEI right now, kids. Companies are, Joel (33m 40s): Getting cash. Chad (33m 41s): Getting cash, that's what I'm saying. They're getting cash because they know that there are more restrictions. SCC just actually made some changes to a reporting information, so instead of just reporting in the US, what your workforce, the number of employees you have in your workforce, they're starting to focus on diversity as well. So workforce composition, what do you need? You need platforms that focus on diversity to actually get them into your organization, not to mention also analytics so on so forth, but there are a few things that we have to focus on. Number one, companies who have been putting on a good show, like they always have waving the diversity banner saying they love diversity with no hiring outcomes, shitty retention or no promotions of underrepresented individuals. Chad (34m 32s): They're the ones who are going to get there. They're the ones who are clamoring to buy something quick. And they feel like it's a silver bullet. Like I think Matt was talking about, and none of this is because it's all about the company, the practices and the purpose that they're putting out there. So, you know, this is, I think it's awesome for Applied. I'm not a big believer in their tech. There are some holes in it, but I would love to see it, get a demo of it. But overall DEI is it. Joel (34m 59s): Yeah. I think I like to say on the show that the answer to all of your questions is money. Not only money going into these companies, but budgets being allocated at companies to buy products and services and to, you know, hyper charge activities at companies and initiatives to actually see change at organizations. And certainly my question, I guess, would be certainly in the states, we've had a long, complicated history with slavery and race relations with Europe, which Europe hasn't quite had the same amount of complications or history. So for us, I think there's a lot of this being a really important and really a focal point for organizations and our country. Joel (35m 49s): I'm curious from the Europeans on the show, how important is it? Is it as important in their world as it probably is in ours? I mean, George Floyd was killed in Minnesota and I know that the echoes of that went around the world, but I don't know to what degree it is in Europe. So I'd love some, some sort of color around, around that from our Europeans. Lieven (36m 11s): I think it's less important still than it is in the US. And it's kind of being forced upon us from the U S but there are many differences between the Eastern part of Europe and the Western part. We, in the Western part feel it's important and we should be doing something with it, and we are slowly getting there, but then the more Eastern European countries, people just don't take it. They don't want it. And each company should be able to decide for themselves is what they feel to hire who they want. And it's getting even more right-wing than it's going to DEI. Joel (36m 46s): Interesting. When you say forced on you by, did you say by America or America's companies? Lieven (36m 51s): Both. I think it's under public opinion is slowly getting steered by, you call it Californication. Joel (36m 59s): That's an interesting way of putting it. So, you believe a lot of your diversity initiatives are being driven by the US? Lieven (37m 5s): I think so Matt (37m 6s): it's incredibly important in the UK and has been for, you know, it has been for a number of years, but has obviously been particularly amplified in the last couple of years, but it's, you know, something, every single employer is looking at very, very carefully and very, very strategically and trying to try and do better. Are they addressing it properly and solving the problems? Probably not. But, but in terms of the, the way it's talked about and how serious it has taken, it's, it's incredible. Joel (37m 37s): Are you seeing budgets allocated in with, with UK companies? Matt (37m 43s): Yeah. Like it is here. Yeah. Chad (37m 45s): Dude, fashion forward. The only thing I've got to, I've got to say is that any hiring company who wants to stamp out bias and they think tech is the answer they're going to be wrong. They they've got to get an expert in there. It's just like the tech stack. It's a part of the tech stack you've got to get in there, focus on process methodologies. You've got to focus on job descriptions, the very basics of what we've been doing wrong for decades. Hell! That's what we have to do. We can't think that the silver bullets going to get it done. So we have to use these tools in the right way. And that the only way we do that is to get experts in the room to be able to help us do that, to navigate through and get these hires better retention and promotions within the organization. Joel (38m 31s): Amen. Well, I learned a lot today. I hope you guys did. And our listeners did too. Big things to Matt, that British guy Alder for joining us, Matt, where can listeners find out more about you? Matt (38m 42s): Thank you. And you can find me on LinkedIn obviously, but you can find my podcast at recreatingfuture.com. Joel (38m 48s): Awesome boys. Another one in the books, Chad and Joel (38m 51s): We out. OUTRO (38m 52s): Thank you for listening to what's it called podcast, the Chad, the cheese, and we 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, but one cheddar blue nacho pepper, Jack Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any ho 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. OUTRO (39m 37s): 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.

Football is in the air and Hail Mary's are flyin' all over the place this week. Dice pumped $3 million into The Muse ... can you say midlife crisis? Indeed's master plan. Yes, the seeds of CPAS can be found as far back at 2016 (yep, we did the research) ...but then they neurodiversity themselves - so dumb. What else? Amazon is encouraging its contractors to bypass weed background checks, Trucking gets a good dose of tech with YouCruit's Lanefinder, and Harvard says automation is to blame for our unemployment problem. It's another touchdown episode powered by our biggest cheerleaders, JobAdx, Sovren, and Jobvite. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (21s): Oh yeah. Are you ready for some super spreader events? I mean, are you ready for some football? What's up kiddies? It's your favorite guilty pleasure the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "take Ball State and the points" Cheeseman. Chad (36s): Chad "Bartender, I'll have another Mojito" Sowash. Joel (40s): On this week's show Dice finds its muse. Is automation to blame for our hiring lows? And high High Times at Amazon. It's a happening baby, hut hut. What's up my Portuguese man o'war? Chad (55s): Nothing but mojitos and Portuguese wine. I mean you just can't, you can't beat it. The two things I'm going to have to get used to, first off getting bourbon here, I'm going to have to get a guy. That's all there is to it. Cause it's not easy to get bourbon. And all the bourbon that you can get is pretty much shit. Joel (1m 12s): Is it basically Jim, Jack and Johnny? Basically? Chad (1m 17s): Well, the guys you don't want at your party. And then the beer is tolerable, at best. So I'm just getting better at, you know, mixed drinks and wine. And I'm going to, wherever we land, I'm going to set up a bourbon guy. That's all there is to it. There's going to be a underground bourbon tunnel. Joel (1m 37s): I have visions of you like Chad's whiskey bar and just shit from America that's hard to find, or you can't find, or you don't get there. And, and it's boats and hoes, man. Chad (1m 49s): I can do it. Joel (1m 49s): I've already said they don't body shame out there. So I'll come out with my Speedo and we'll sell some whiskey baby. Chad (1m 55s): That's what I'm saying, baby. So I'm now an Albufeira probably saying that wrong, but this place I shit, you not is like a mix between Vegas, Nashville and Miami. Just better clubs and better beaches. It's amazing! Fucking crazy, dude. But, yeah so it's been a blast. We were in Faro Portimão. Now we're in Albufeira, got a few more weeks, a couple more locations where we're loving it Joel (2m 24s): And you've never looked as relaxed and happy as ever. And I still hate you. So let's get to some shout outs. Shall we? Chad (2m 31s): Football. Joel (2m 31s): Hell yeah. Well, by the time you listen to this, the Buccaneers will probably have beaten the Dallas Cowboys. So by the way, I called it again last week, but I'm gonna say it again. Penn State potentially upsets or sorry, Ball State potentially upsets Penn State this weekend at Happy Valley. Chad (2m 46s): Okay. Joel (2m 47s): This is the same ball, same team that won, won their bowl game last year. They had a pretty decent showing week one, Penn State's ranked number 11. This would probably be the biggest upset in Ball State history, which I'm alumni of for those listeners that don't know. So I'm going to be watching that game pretty closely. Chad (3m 4s): What you're saying is take the points? Joel (3m 5s): Take the points! 22 and a half, I think is the spread like take, Ball State in the points you won't be sorry. Chad (3m 12s): Well, shout out to Bill Bormann who actually threw out a term on the socials this week that I thought was fucking perfect. That's called herd stupidity. I think it's the perfect label for all of those who aren't Vaxxed while having the opportunity and ability to actually get that done. Thanks for sharing, Bill, more labels is what we need not, but it was funny anyway. Yeah. Joel (3m 36s): So I have a quick question. So Joe Biden is apparently gonna come out and say, if you're a federal employee, you got to get vaccinated. But also if you're a federal contractor, you have to be vaccinated. Now you come from that world much more than I do, although you're removed from it quite a bit. What kind of impact is is saying, if you have, if you're a federal contractor, you have to have employees vaccinated. What kind of impact is that gonna have on them? Chad (3m 59s): Most of these companies, I mean, we're talking about huge billion dollar organizations, who really are feeding off the tip of the U S government with federal contracts. I mean, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, the federal government comes out and says, Hey, look, if you're taking money from us, here are the standards of which you are going to do business and you don't have to it's your choice to not do this, just so that you know, those contracts are going to dry out. Joel (4m 29s): So is it really a good chance that we're going to see Boeing, Northrop, Grumman? Like all these companies announce, we're all getting vaccinated because the government has said, if we want to keep our contract, we're going to have to legislate vaccinations in our company. Chad (4m 42s): It was funny. I think it was like around 2009, 2010. One of the heads of Talent over at Facebook came up to me at a conference and said, Hey, we just found out that we're federal contractors because the federal government pays them so much money, like in advertising. I think it's like Army or, you know, the services. And they're like, you know, we're a federal contractor. I'm like, well, you can turn that money down. They're like, we're not going to do that. So what do we need to do? Right. So you know, all these companies that you, you definitely the defense contractors, of course, but there are so many companies that you wouldn't even think that are federal contractors that take money from the federal government that is going to be a huge, huge impact. Chad (5m 25s): And I hope it happens fast. Joel (5m 27s): Yeah. That'll be interesting. So let's go back to football real quick with my shout outs. So we're playing a little fantasy football this year, powered by Poach, no insider trading there. So we have our lineup. Now we had our draft last night, but I wanted to give a shout out to our players who many of our listeners will know. So we got Quincy, the Queen of chatbots, she's playing this season. Jason Pottnam from Pando. Bill Fanning from This Way Global. Ben Kunz from Jobcase. Christie Moon, who I'm just going to say is a super fan of the show. Michael Cox, Chris Russell, and Pete Suchi, as well as you and me are playing fantasy. It should be a good time. We'll go through the leaderboard every week and we'll have something special and on brand for the winter. Chad (6m 13s): Gotta say my auto-draft is looking pretty damn good. Joel (6m 20s): Then we both get graded a C though. Chad (6m 22s): No, I got graded a B, you got graded a C. I do not know how the fuck Fanning got graded an A, I don't know. I looked at his lineup. I'm like, that's not an awesome fucking lineup. That's a C+ plus at best Fanning, I'm going to kick your ass just so you know it. Joel (6m 37s): It's not where you start. It's where you end, in fantasy. That's all I got to say. Chad (6m 41s): Yes. So shout out to our buddy Shane Gray, who is sailing the high seas. Joel (6m 47s): Your idol based on your photos. Chad (6m 49s): Yo dude hopping from island to island. I had a call with him earlier this morning. I was out on my terrace, overlooking the pool and he pulls up his video, he's on his fucking boat. So I'm like, yeah, you win good one. That's awesome. Shout out to Shane, guy's enjoying life. And again, we'll get one of these, guys, so it's time to enjoy. Joel (7m 12s): Living their best lives as well as some of our winners from this month, Chad, we give away whiskey and beer every month. And we announced our winners. Michelle Warg from Nexxt is our beer drop recipient and winning some whiskey is Justin Spencer from ZipRecruiter. Guys if you haven't signed up for free shit from us, go to Chadcheese.com/free. We got t-shirts from Emissary, beer from AdZuna and whiskey from Sovren. We'll be setting up those zoom tastings pretty soon with Justin and Michelle. Yes. Chad (7m 44s): Justin got hooked up, man. You sent him Eagle Rare and I sent him something that is an easy, perfect, wonderful drink as well. The Maker's 46. Joel (7m 54s): Your fave. Yeah. Eagle's tough to get. I was surprised to see that on the shopping list. So yeah, Justin enjoy that, my man. Yeah. Chad (8m 4s): So shout out to Shelly and Serge from the Recruitment Flex Podcast for having me on their kickoff episode for season two, entitled a Trip to Bullshit Mountain. You're going to enjoy that one, so check it out. Shelly and Serge from the Recruitment Flex Podcast. It's pretty much a rip off version of Chad and Cheese for Canada. So it's much nicer. Joel (8m 27s): I love it when you drag the Canadians down, to our level. Speaking of Canada, though, we have a story about this week, a Canadian out in Vancouver of all places, decided to pee on a Dairy Queen countertop after being told to wear a mask when he didn't want to. So Canadians act a little rambunctiously as well as Americans can. Chad (8m 48s): Hard to believe. Joel (8m 49s): And also shout out to a Panera employee. Chad (8m 51s): Oh God. Joel (8m 51s): Who outed Panera for having bagged soup. When apparently they're pitching it as homemade soup, this is on TikTok, which I'm telling you employers, if you're not concerned about employees talking shit on TikTok, you should be, because they are. Chad (9m 8s): Here's something else to watch for though, kids. Facebook is moving toward Google for Job types of guidelines for jobs that are actually in their platform. They're not forcing this, but what they're pretty much telling you is that you're going to get preference. If you have salary, address, remote type, whether it's FTE or temp benefits schedule type, whether it's day, night or flex. They're trying to, I wouldn't say crack down, but they want more information from the employer because you guys aren't really good at providing information to the people who are looking for fucking jobs. So how bout we do that better? Joel (9m 46s): To the metaverse with you, I say, to the metaverse. Happy Birthday to Matthew Adam, fan of the show and industry vet out there at NAS. Chad (9m 58s): Matt Adam, Happy Birthday, my man. Happy Birthday. And with that, Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Before we get into the topics, we've got to pimp the Voices that we just put out, Netflix style, baby. Joel (10m 11s): Let's go. Chad (10m 12s): With Amy Butchko who's Director of Talent Solutions over at SAIC. Five episodes, all dropped at once. Check them out. Subscribe. If you want to hear industry veterans who literally have been in the trenches, as recruiters and worked their way up to leaders in Talent Acquisition, Amy is one of those people. Joel (10m 35s): Yeah. Got some good feedback on that. And you dropped that shit Netflix style. You just dropped all five episodes, like no waiting at all. I enjoy that. All right, man. Chad (10m 46s): Topics! Joel (10m 48s): All right, this one just warmed my heart. Okay. Dice's parent company DHI (ticker DHX if you're playing Robinhood) is making a $3 million investment in the Muse, a job board with a focus on employer branding. Wait, Dice has $3 million? Anyway, the company said the investment will be used to support the expansion of the Muses product development and sales efforts to meet the increasing market demand for its unique values-based employer discovery offering. Terms of the plan transaction are not being disclosed at this time. So I don't know, maybe later we'll get numbers. The two companies will work together to develop joint sales thought leadership and product solutions. Joel (11m 31s): Our buddy and your boy, Dice CEO Art Zeal said "technologists are increasingly focused on the culture and values of potential employers as they make career decisions." So the employees who sit in the dark with headphones now care about culture. Chad help me with this one. Chad (11m 49s): I got nothing, man, I got to say though, congrats to the Muse. I mean, they got cash, but this shows the lack of discipline that DHI has. Properties like Dice are getting their asses handed to them because of their sheer lack of discipline and not understanding the market. This does nothing more than signal to the market, once again, DHI has no clue what they are fucking doing. And to be quite Frank, I mean, it's a diversion. It's a misdirection play. I just don't understand why they aren't focusing on the actual community themselves. Those individuals don't want warm and fuzzy culture fucking videos, or, you know, splash pages or marketing, those types of individuals see through that shit. Chad (12m 39s): Right? They want coding challenges. They want you to be able to help them open source. I mean, there's so many things that Dice could be doing right now, they are falling flat on their fucking face, again. Joel (12m 50s): Yeah. This one, had a few knee jerk reactions for me. One was, yeah, they have 3 million to throw at the Muse. And then it was like, why wouldn't they spend that on technology or hiring people who could make cool shit at Dice? Or maybe like buy a really young, I dunno, text recruiting company or chat bot organization or something like that. Chad (13m 14s): Coding? Joel (13m 15s): And then it was like, well, maybe this is just a midlife crisis for Dice. And then it's like, well, you know, Monster has lost at least one and a half generations now. I mean, they're an energy drink if you're a millennial or gen Z. Chad (13m 29s): Yeah. Joel (13m 29s): Dice is probably what, like online gambling or something too new generation? So to me, it was a little bit like when Yahoo bought Tumblr to try to look cool again and maybe jumpstart its brand. This is, this to me is like Dice buying a Tesla and a pair of Allbirds. It's trying to be a cool kid. And I don't see it, man. It feels like, you know, you or me going out and buying a Ferrari, like, it just doesn't make a lot of sense, but it makes you feel maybe warm and fuzzy. Now I do think on the Muse side, what does it say about them? Chad (14m 2s): Desperation? Joel (14m 3s): And I don't think it's good, right? Chad (14m 5s): No! Joel (14m 5s): Like we know that we know that from the pandemic, like the first people to go was the employer brand managers, the people that like all that warm and fuzzy stuff, kind of went by the wayside. And, I'm guessing that the Muse was hurt by that. I mean, they've been around since 2011, they've raised roughly $32 million. Maybe they're a little bit in a squeeze and in a bit of a financial corner and they called up Dice and said, Hey, grandpa, you want to, you want to get cool? Come put some money in us and it'll be all good. So it makes no sense? The market didn't react real optimistically about the move. So I guess maybe there's something greater at work here that we're not privy to, but it falls pretty flat. Chad (14m 48s): It was like somebody taking Twister into an old folks home. I mean, there's just no match. There's no adoption. People aren't going to use it. It's going to sit on the fucking bookshelf. Right? So to think that there's going to be some alignment of business strategies between these two organizations. It's not even hilarious. It's not even funny. I mean, it's sad, more than it is anything else. Joel (15m 13s): Yeah. I've got to really stretch myself to figure out how this makes sense. I don't know if it's like let's play some bets on companies that we think will be for sale later, that are high growth. But I mean the Muse is not at the top of the list for anybody. Chad (15m 28s): What I've got to say to DHI right now is go ahead and kick Zeal to the fucking curb, pull in Chad and Cheese as co-CEOs and we will fix that in less than 18 months. Joel (15m 41s): Well, at least they're not buying Wave companies when they do that, then Art's definitely got to go. Well, let's talk about a pivot that does make sense. Let's talk about Ucruit so demand for truck drivers continues to be just insane and drivers find themselves looking for better opportunities. So enter a recruiting software company Ucruit , who has built an app called Lane Finder to offer drivers "an efficient way to explore available opportunities." Tulsa, Oklahoma based Ucruit announced recently received an $11.5 million investment to support the continued growth of its trucking industry marketplace application. Founded in 2012, the company has raised 20 and a half million dollars total. Joel (16m 23s): CEO and co-founder Mats Holmback highlighted how you create was born as a general recruitment marketing tool focusing on multiple industries. But since last year had a one industry focus trucking. Are you ready to truck on down to Lane Finder? Chad (16m 41s): That's one hell of a pivot, but I got to say, it's what it really is, it's a staffing company, veiled as a tech company. Don't get me wrong, it's actually pretty damn smart because if you tell companies, come use our platform for free and only pay us when you hire drivers. Well, that seems like a good incentive. I mean, it's not revolutionary tech by any form or fashion, but does it really have to be when it's the trucking industry? No. So, you know, you get a free hiring platform. It's like an ATS lite, free job postings and a free career site. Just pay us when you get hires. It's the definition of getting a company hooked on crack. Now here's the genius part. Chad (17m 21s): ATS and CRMs for years have built a separate candidate database for every single one of their clients. Not in this model, using the free jobs and their clients as bait to attract candidates while building an all-you-can-eat database. When you only pay, when you hire people, they have found a way I believe to go around what we've been used to for years, which are these, oh, well, that's my candidate. It's the key to that ownership conversation, right? You don't own the candidate motherfucker. It's a free platform. It's my candidate. Right? So overall, this isn't revolutionary tech by any means, but the model is, it's pretty damn smart, I think. Joel (18m 4s): Chad, Where are the self-driving trucks they promised us? Chad (18m 7s): They're not coming anytime soon. Joel (18m 8s): Yeah, no, anytime soon. So my brother-in-law is actually in the trucking industry and it's a fucking cluster. I mean, it's like so many moving pieces, parts of the year that are busier than others. Shipments that come in when you don't expect them, you've got owners of trucks. You've got drivers, you know, like people work for companies and contractors. Chad (18m 27s): Crazy! Joel (18m 27s): I mean, it's just insane. So the marriage of mobile and technology and the gig platform phenomenon is like, no other industry comes together better than trucking. And you've got people that, you know, only want to truck certain times of the day or only want to do certain parts of the world or certain states. They want to take their dog with them and they want to be able to do shit. Like it's really crazy. So to have a technology like this makes total sense. And you know, I think if you were, if we were going to play who'd you rather, and it was Dice or Lane Finder. Lane Finder would get my rose for sure. Chad (19m 7s): No question. Remember BJ and the Bear? Remember that show? Joel (19m 11s): Of course, of course. The monkey, the seventies man, where it was okay for grown men to hang out with monkeys and truck across country. Chad (19m 20s): That's who they need as their, I don't know, figure heads, BJ and the Bear, bringing it right back back. Joel (19m 28s): Yeah. Yeah. They want to appeal to that gen Z candidate, BJ and the Bear. It's like a Grizzly Adams. Yeah, grown men and animals, that was kind of a thing back in the seventies. Let's take a break as we opine on the seventies and we'll come back, we'll talk about automation and Indeed. So Chad let's talk automation, let's talk Harvard. A new report from Harvard Business School was not very kind to recruitment automation saying automated hiring software is mistakenly rejecting millions of viable job candidates. The report said such automation programs are used by 75% of us employers. Joel (20m 9s): And about 99% of the Fortune 500, adding technology has made it easier for people to apply for jobs, but also easier for companies to reject them. One example in the report, highlighted how some systems automatically reject candidates with gaps of longer than six months in their employment history without ever asking the cause of this gap. Nearly nine out of 10 executives surveyed said they knew automated software was mistakenly filtering out viable candidates, with some saying they were exploring alternatives to automation. Aside from going back to 1991, I don't see how anything changes. Too much cost and too much time. How does this get fixed Chad? Chad (20m 51s): It seems like we have to continue to tell the Amazon story. Joel (20m 54s): Is this about peeing in trash cans again? Chad (20m 56s): No, not that story. That was a good one though. We'll talk about that later. When Amazon created an algorithm that looked at market data and then looked at the, I believe the actual hiring behaviors, historical hiring behaviors and became bias. It was looking at human behavior. It was looking at markets. I mean, if you're doing this without any type of oversight, then you're doing it wrong. And to be able to think that we can just push a button and this works is ridiculous. Now in all reality, let's just be incredibly honest here. The algorithm is only doing what humans have been doing for years. Chad (21m 38s): So to say, oh, that algorithm is biased. Well, yeah, but so are humans, they're just doing it at scale, that humans can't do it at. That's why we notice it. Instead of doing it in onesy, twosies, they're doing it in tens. They're doing it in hundreds. They're doing it in thousands. So to point at the algorithm and say that the algorithm is the problem, is a hundred percent wrong. You need the algorithm. You need the ability to scale. Period, right? What you are not doing, is you are not providing oversight, you are not auditing it because you are hoping it's a silver bullet. That's your decision, human being, talent acquisition, HR. Chad (22m 21s): That's not the fucking algorithms. Joel (22m 24s): Yeah. So what I loved was that 9 out of 10 executives surveyed said they knew automated software was mistakenly filtering out viable candidates, translation nine out of 10 executives hate their vendors. They hate the solutions that they're using. Chad (22m 38s): Whatever. Joel (22m 38s): So to me, it's like the burden is on the vendors, the software solutions to fix this shit. Chad (22m 44s): It's not. Joel (22m 45s): But I don't see companies fixing it themselves. They're going to just tell software to fix it somehow. Chad (22m 52s): And if your Talent Acquisition, VP of Talent Acquisition, or VP of HR, isn't astute enough to actually work with this type of tech, you need someone else. Joel (23m 5s): So, let's take the example of if someone has a six month gap in their resume, that right now we filter that person out, right? So your solution to that would be what? Chad (23m 15s): The solution to that is we did it before. It's a process methodology that the company came up with, not the vendor. This is not a part of the quote unquote vendor algorithm. This is something that is a process and standard operating procedure for companies. They've been using this and doing it for decades. Again, the only reason why we're noticing this is because it's happening at scale. Companies have been doing this for years. So to point at the algorithm or the vendors and say, oh, they're at fault is total bullshit. Joel (23m 46s): I agree with you. I just think the burden is going to be on them to fix it because I don't think companies want to look in the mirror and say, how do we fix this prescreening question of six months gap? Or how do we say, how do we fix that filtering that we've set in there. So to me, it's like, they're going to ask your chat bot solution or conversational AI to say, okay, we see that there's a six month gap in there. And the conversational AI is going to say, Hey, why is there a six month gap from the last time you were at work from here to here? And then whatever answer is given is either going to filter them in or out to continue to be in the process or to be considered for a job or not. So I just think the company is going to say, Hey, software solution, you need to fix you, like, how do we fix this filtering to not be a filtering question anymore? Joel (24m 33s): Or how do we dig deeper into this? Essentially creating nuance around the interviewing process, whether it be through conversational AI or I'm uploading a resume and doing a pre-screening test on my ATS. I just think that's how it's gonna work out. I don't think companies are gonna look in the mirror and fix it themselves. Which goes back to the, how 9 out of 10 say that their software sucks. Chad (24m 55s): Well, yeah, because they want to point the finger at someone else. I agree a hundred percent Talent Acquisition you've got to take responsibility because the onus is on you. Period. That's all there is to it. You're using a tool. You are blaming the hammer for not being able to screw in a screw. That's what you're doing. Joel (25m 16s): If you're a vendor out there this is a great opportunity for you to make some money. Chad (25m 20s): This is a great opportunity for you to educate your stupid fucking clients. Joel (25m 24s): But they don't think they're stupid, Chad, that's the problem. Chad (25m 28s): They know their shit. Joel (25m 28s): They're all geniuses. They work at Fortune 1000 companies or 500 Chad (25m 33s): Or 500 anyway, Joel (25m 35s): Speaking of geniuses or at least those who think they're genius. Let's talk about Indeed. And you've unearthed some interesting shit there, Indiana Jones. Chad (25m 45s): I think we have. This is a, we're going underground on this one. As you'd say, I think we've unearthed Indeed's cost per apply start playbook. It comes from. Joel (25m 56s): A blueprint. Chad (25m 58s): A blueprint, yes. A good call. It comes from a 2016 article on Indeed titled, Study, which companies offer the fastest online job application processes? The article outlines topics like, "your application could be driving away the best candidates and a study found that 30% of candidates won't spend longer than 15 minutes on an application. Our research shows, companies with 45 or more screener questions," oh my God "are losing the vast majority or 88.7% of their potential applicants who abandoned the process before completion" close quote. So here's what it comes down to kids, nothing has changed in the last five years. Chad (26m 41s): This is research from 2016 and now Indeed are being forced into a walled garden and a cookie list type of platform. What the fuck are they supposed to do? If the market is moving toward cost per application, CPA or CPH, cost per hire, and then the corporate hiring system, the applicant tracking system is a shitty experience that drives high rejection and low completion rates. What's Indeed supposed to do? I think this is the writing on the wall to be quite Frank. They had no choice because they saw the possibility of their profits dropping because of going to CPH and CPA, they needed to make a change ASAP. Chad (27m 23s): And seriously, if I was Indeed, I would dig up the 2016 article and I would use it to create narrative that justifies the move to this new product because their current narrative is shit. I don't know if their marketing people have changed since then, but your marketing people were better in 2016 than they are now Indeed, so I would take a look at that old stuff. Joel (27m 44s): Dude, you're only going to get this kind of research on the Chad and Cheese podcast. Like we act like we're a bunch of knuckleheads, but really we're researching this shit. We're digging in kids. Only, this show provides that kind of backdating research, describe or explaining the future state of what's going on. So Chad, I personally, and I think all my listeners as well are all listeners applaud. Chad (28m 10s): Thank you. Joel (28m 10s): You puttin' on your Indiana Jones hat, your whip, and heading out into the desert and finding this kind of information. So I want to go to Indeed. Chad (28m 19s): Wait a minute. Here's who should really applaud aggregators, recruitment ad agencies, and programmatic platforms because they are the ones who are in dire need of changing, because Indeed's about to whip all of their asses. First and foremost, aggregators, it's very easy because they either band together or get blown the fuck up. Period, because Indeed is going to own them if they don't start to create unholy alliances, that's all there is to it. Recruitment ad agencies, I don't know how many of them have actually come to us and say, do you really think Indeed is going to become a recruitment ad agency? Yes, Monster did it. CareerBuilder did it. And they weren't even as close as evil and or geniuses as Indeed. Chad (29m 3s): If you don't think that this is going to happen, then you haven't been paying attention for the last 20 fucking years. Programmatic platforms, it's called a walled garden. They're going to stop taking your feeds guys. They're going to stop taking your feeds. Listen to me when they stop taking your feeds, where are you going to go for traffic? Joel (29m 25s): TMP? Chad (29m 26s): Yes. Joel (29m 28s): So aggregators, recruitment ad agencies, and programmatic platforms, you all need to start creating unholy alliances because if you take a look at these designs and what could perspectively happen, you are all fucked. The enemy of my enemy, is my friend. Chad (29m 42s): There you go. Joel (29m 43s): Can we talk neuro-diversity? Chad (29m 45s): Do we have to? Joel (29m 48s): We won't spend too much time on it. Chad (29m 51s): Okay. Okay. Joel (29m 52s): So Indeed.com and blockchain algorithms, which sounds really cool. Right? And when I saw blog, I was like, okay, here we go. So they launched a guide! That's exciting. They launched a guide and a set of special questionnaires to help facilitate equitable hiring. The guide is for hiring managers to ensure that they don't miss on job applicants because of diagnoses, including autism, ADHD, Asperger's syndrome, dyslexia, and dyspraxia. I don't even know what that is. The toolkit includes explanations of neuro-diversity, provides practical advice for hiring managers and HR teams, as well as a sample job description. For example, people with dyslexia can be outstanding performers in fields, such as molecular biology, engineering and computer graphics. Joel (30m 37s): Who knew? As they have augmented abilities of three dimensional thinking. Kind of like you, Chad. We talk a lot about diversity on this show, is it time to add neuro-diversity to the equation? Chad (30m 48s): Diversity is diversity. Disability is disability. And this, my friends is the Indeed we've come to know and love because this is stupid as fuck. I mean, what the actual fuck are these guys thinking? The company is hitching their wagon to a sports betting company? I mean, this is the blood. That's what this blockchain company does, right? It's a sports blockchain betting company. So I asked Julie because she's the expert in hiring individuals with disabilities, especially the big brands. And I asked her about this, we read it, we had a conversation about it. And her response pretty much was, why the actual fuck do they need blockchain for this? Chad (31m 29s): It feels like they're checking the neuro-diversity and blockchain boxes. Joel (31m 34s): Oh yeah. Chad (31m 34s): In their marketing department. It again, Indeed's marketing shit, compared to five years ago. Joel (31m 42s): But it's always fun to put your brand name and blockchain in a headline. It's destined to get read by people like us. Chad (31m 50s): Yes. Destined for people to make fun of you. Joel (31m 51s): So your wife is way more connected to this stuff than I am. My knee jerk was like, oh shit neuro-diversity. And I was like, okay, who owns neuro it's time to launch neurodiversityhiring.com. So me being who I am, I went to neurodiversityhiring.com and sure enough, it redirects to a company called Myntra. Who's a sub subtext is bring your neuro-diversity to work. So then I went to Google and search neuro-diversity hiring and of course there's like a handful of companies that all specialize in neuro-diversity. So in asking if it's going to be a thing, it apparently already is a thing, we just haven't quite got on board yet. Chad (32m 30s): Yeah. But Indeed again, checking the blockchain and neuro-diversity boxes. Joel (32m 36s): Yeah. Chad (32m 37s): Merry Christmas guys. Joel (32m 38s): And I love that it's a guide. It's not like a technology or something integrated into this site or posting a job. We just created some paper for you to read and get some samples. Chad (32m 53s): Worst marketing department ever. Joel (32m 55s): Well, all this neuro-diversity's making me a little naturally high, Chad. Let's take a break and we'll talk about Amazon pot smokers. All right, Chad. All right, Chad. We've ended with strippers for a few weeks in a row. I think it's time to time to mix it up. All right. Recruiting automation is not killing Amazon's high, however, a recent reports say the company is suggesting its contractors prominently advertise that they don't screen applicants for marijuana use. That's right, Amazon is advising its delivery partners, the moms and pops that operate the ubiquitous blue Amazon vans that are driving around your neighborhood to prominently advertise that they don't screen applicants for marijuana. Joel (33m 36s): Apparently doing so can boost the number of job applicants by as much as 400% while screening for marijuana cuts the perspective worker pool by up to 30%. Not everyone is sold though, Chad, one contractor who requested anonymity because Amazon will kill him if he's discovered, might be a she, who knows? He said, if one of my drivers crashes and kills someone and test positive for marijuana, that's my problem, not Amazon's. All right, Chad, where do you stand on screening for weed in states where it's illegal? Chad (34m 9s): Don't do it. It's fairly simple. It's like alcohol, you create a standard operating procedure. If somebody doesn't abide by it, then it's on them. You have them sign. If a driver is drunk while they're behind the wheel, what happens? Right? Same type of ramifications. But here's something that I never thought of. Amazon delivery contractors are often outbid by school bus companies where drivers can make more than $20 an hour. And our home for dinner, Amazon contract drivers typically earned $17 an hour and often work late into the nights to keep up with demand. The question is, are the school bus drivers getting tested for weed? Chad (34m 51s): Cause if they're not getting tested for weed, then I mean, come on, nobody should be getting tested for weed. Joel (34m 57s): And are they loading up the buses with packages? I'm very concerned by this. Very concerned by this. Chad (35m 3s): You could double up on that, couldn't you? Oh, that's smart. Joel (35m 6s): The wrinkle is if it's in a state where it's illegal, like I don't know how that seems like a pickle to me. Like liquor it's it's legal, so there are laws against it. If it's totally illegal, then I don't know. I appreciate the concern of, you know, getting sued and getting screwed in that way. I think an easy way is if the feds would just make this shit legal. Chad (35m 27s): It's illegal to drive drunk in every state. Joel (35m 33s): But not every state, But alcohol is legal in every state. Chad (35m 37s): It's illegal to drive drunk in every state, that's the thing, he's talking about driving while high, if he has a crash while he's driving while high it's illegal. If he has a crash while he's driving while drunk, it's illegal. Joel (35m 49s): All right, Chad, I'm going to blow your mind here. Okay? If the US wants to get people back to work, maybe they should legalize marijuana. Chad (35m 56s): I think that's a great way to end the show. Joel (36m 2s): Enjoy Portugal my friend, State Ball is back. I'm loving it. Chad and Joel (36m 6s): We out, we out OUTRO (36m 59s): 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.

What do you get when you mash-up 4 podcasts into one? Lots of voices and even more opinion. > Debbie Tuel from The Joy Podcast > Julie Sowash and Torin Ellis from Crazy and The King podcast > and Tim Sackett from the HR Famous podcast join the boys to talk about: - Why are recruiters so damn hard to find? - Does recruiter experience matter? - Why is Europe a decade behind on the US in DEI? - When will women come back to the workforce, specifically recruiting? - Are companies doing enough in DEI? - It's People, Process, Technology dummy! - Working harder is not a sustainable business strategy This show coming to you pre-recorded from Transform Detroit LIVE brought to you by Symphony Talent. Enjoy! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Joel (0s): Oh, yeah, what's up everybody. This is Chad (5s): OMGod it's Cheesman. Joel (7s): I thought you were stopping me. Shit. I was on a roll. I was on a roll. You felt like it was like the 1970s rock station vibe. Chad (20s): Okay. So who is at the table today? We have a crossover podcast. Good. Joel (27s): This is exciting. This is a bomb. This is going to be a bomb on the podcast universe. Chad (33s): A good bomb. Joel (34s): Like a cherry bomb. Chad (36s): Like that. That's better. That's it? That's better. Okay. Okay. Joel (38s): Should we go around the table and everyone introduce ourselves because we're going to show up on a lot of different podcasts? People don't know you, me, our audience doesn't know some of these folks, so I'll go first. My name is Joel Cheesman of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (51s): Chad of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Debbie (54s): You've got Debbie Tuel here of the Joy Pipeline Podcast. Tim (58s): Tim Sackett of the HR Famous Podcast Julie (1m 1s): Julie Sowash of the Crazy and the King podcast, Torin (1m 4s): Bringing up the rear, breaking records, Torin Ellis, Crazy and the King. I am the king. Chad (1m 11s): We're all here in Detroit for a reason. There's this whole Joy road trip thing that's going on. They got like this ice cream truck thing. Debbie (1m 19s): We call it a road show, we are on a road show. The road show is road tripping. I mean, we are a taken the truck on the road. We started in Dallas. We are here in Detroit. We are going to New York City. I have just learned that we may even get to meet the mayor of Baltimore on this trip. Chad (1m 37s): What? Torin (1m 37s): Come on now. Debbie (1m 38s): All right. I mean, this is, this is going to be big. And then we're going to take it overseas to London. How we get the truck there? Good question. I'm thinking not the same truck, right? Tim (1m 47s): I think it floats, Debbie (1m 49s): That's a great idea. Chad (1m 50s): You need the mic Tim. Tim's a rookie. Joel (1m 52s): The reason we're in Detroit is Tim Sackett with the proximity to him. Tim (1m 56s): I was saying like, instead of like the Joy truck, ice cream truck, you know, you could just have like one of those London taxis, like the cool ones. Joel (2m 2s): Sure Double Decker bus. Tim (2m 3s): By the way, the first time I ever went to London, we got talking to taking that taxi from Heathrow into London. That's $180 proposition, like, okay, great. Debbie (2m 11s): And there is a train that takes you the exact same distance, very fast and much cheaper, lesson learned. Joel (2m 17s): But when you're stars like Chad and Cheese you get the limo service from the airport, just saying. Tim (2m 22s): Didn't they get filmed the last time that they were over in London, like somebody was with a camera with them in the vehicle and all of that. Joel (2m 29s): You remember? Debbie (2m 30s): The guys over at Talent Nexus. Chad (2m 32s): Talent Nexus. Well let's okay. So let's break it down first. We're going to talk about Europe. We're going to get there, maybe a little Asia pack and whatnot, because I mean, you guys are going all across, you're road trippin'. Debbie (2m 43s): We are road trippin' on the road show Chad (2m 45s): Road trippin' on the road show. Okay. Here in the US, we actually, we had a great discussion yesterday with Tim and Tim was talking about how hard it is to find recruiters. Why do you think that is? Tim (2m 59s): No in fact. We know like Danielle Monahan, she was at Amazon and she's at Uber now, or NTA. She had made a comment to you that it never heard like 25 years of leading TA teams as she had had it harder finding recruiters. And then there was another stat out on Twitter this week. There's actually more recruiter openings right now than software engineering openings. I, you know, I think the pandemic, obviously teams got lean. And then all of a sudden, now I have to hire, again, real quick. Software engineers, they didn't really get let go. Like they kept working and they just worked at home, you know? So we have this bubble of hiring, but you know, a lot of people are like, Hey, I don't want to go back in the office. You can recruit from anywhere. Yeah. But the recruiter experience for most of these people are terrible. Chad (3m 39s): Debbie, let's talk about recruiter experience because at Symphony, you guys have to focus. Debbie (3m 45s): Yeah. They are our end users, right? The recruiters are the end users of our software. And I think oftentimes we do forget the end users. We have a focus as the industry on the candidate. And we forget that the person that's delivering that candidate experience is the recruiter oftentimes in conjunction with the hiring managers and others. But we need to build software that is easy for them to use. And then we need to connect the software together with the other tools that they're using so that it's a, streamless, you know, it's an easy work stream for them. And you guys have seen it and talent acquisition technology we haven't done a great job of that. We build tools in silos. We don't make it easy. Everybody thinks their tool is the best. Debbie (4m 26s): And so they're like the recruiters should be using my tool. And so they're going to log, yeah, they're going to log in to my dashboard. And I was like, ah, no, what is their system of record that they should be in every day that they're measured inside of, for their performance. And then how do we get the rest of the technology that's gonna make their lives easier, all embedded into that one piece of tech? Joel (4m 49s): Why is there a shortage of recruiters? Are they having a heart to heart with themselves and saying, I don't want to be a recruiter anymore. What's going on? Tim (4m 58s): I think there's a number of factors. One we just missed, she just created a brand new marketing term that we'll be using for like the next two years. She was going to say seamless. She said streamless. And I'm like, not for now. And every like HR tech company will be like, we're streamless. Oh my gosh. It's amazing. What does that mean? No one knows no one cares. Chad (5m 15s): It's streamless! Tim (5m 16s): Exactly. Someone's going to use that. I'll tell you our HR tech will be there in a few months and it's only to be like, we're, streamless. Like, I can't believe you stole Debbie's tech term, 2 million women, not in the workplace right now, still from the pandemic. Think of the recruiter, like demographic it's much heavily more women. So there's a part there, right? Where a lot of them have to go home, they gotta do childcare, they gotta do all these other things and they can't just recruit. Chad (5m 38s): Is the experience, I mean, does that prospectively push them out too? Because it sucks. Let's say for instance, from a process standpoint, having 27 tabs open, do you think that has any impact on whether your job sucks or it's joyful? Tim (5m 52s): Yeah. No. I think, I mean, I think that whatever tech you have, and I think what a lot of people found was like, Hey, you're a recruiter, you got shoved home and now you have to continue to recruit and they didn't give you anything that worked really well. And it became a major pain for you to actually produce and do as well as you were in the office for whatever environment they had. So I think that's one Joel, back to your question, you know, as women, you know, obviously not in the workforce as much, and we're hoping that returns. You know, the other piece of it is I think there's some leveling up going on, right? I think recruiters go, do I really want to put up with this crappy job? Hiring managers that don't respect me or Hey, by the way, I can go make the same money doing something else. Torin (6m 32s): You know, with you starting with technology as the primary consideration. And then the leveling up is the secondary. You know, it just reminds me of how many people think that there's some sort of fairy dust to do diversity and inclusion. And the technology is going to make them necessarily a better recruiter. And this is not to suggest that technology is not important because it's very important, but it's not a fairy dust solution that we're looking for. Debbie (6m 54s): No, you always go back to like people, process, technology, which comes third? Technology, right? Let's focus on the people, let's get the process in place. And then let's find the technology that matches that process. And oftentimes we find people trying to take the shortcut and go straight to technology. They miss the other two and they fail big time. And I think it goes back to what your question was, is we to have a problem of women leaving the workforce. We also have a problem of burnout and their burnout because of exactly what Tim mentioned. We've got less recruiters, they've got higher rec loads that they're working on. And then it goes to the usability, right? They they're burnt out of all of this tech. They're supposed to be using the, what they're measured on changes monthly based on what they just bought. Joel (7m 36s): Well, it sounds to me like they don't need new tech. They need more support as a mother, raising kids and getting to school and worrying about those issues as Julie rolls her eyes. Debbie (7m 47s): Rolls her eyes. Joel (7m 47s): Or shakes her head. Maybe she should chime in on this issue. Should companies be giving more support to women in order to fill those recruiting spots? Julie (7m 54s): Yes, we should be re-looking at our benefits, our flexibility, our with them, why should a woman come and work for me? And I can tell you, we're hiring at Disability Solutions right now. And I'm working with our recruiters and they are uploading. They're using 10 different tools. It's completely inefficient and it's causing delays for me, but it's causing my really talented recruiters to be exhausted. And they can't possibly help me find great diverse candidates if they're exhausted and they don't have that time because they just don't. And then on top of it, we can't get the data out that we need. Torin (8m 29s): Did she just say diverse candidates again? Debbie (8m 30s): I did, I did. Underrepresented candidates. Torin (8m 34s): Hey, I will tell you that there's, there's a piece of this that I think I work with TA leaders constantly. And I'll come in, I'll say, Hey, give me, I want to see three, four or five pieces of data. And they look at me with like deer in headlights. Like, I don't know if we have that. Let me see. I think our, I think we can pull that ever ATS or whatever. And, but here's what happens with not having that data as your TA leader, because all of a sudden hiring turned on for every industry, every market within the US, we have obviously it's different around the world. And the CEO comes in and says, Hey, by the way, we were going to hire a hundred in an August. Now we have to hire 500 and they go, okay, we'll just work harder. Work harder is not a sustainable strategy. Chad (9m 11s): No. Tim (9m 11s): You have to have the process, the technology to people, all of those things in place. But if you don't have data, you can't go and say, Hey, by the way, Mrs. CEO, we're never going to make that happen. You can't create a here's here's our capacity right now. And you're asking for this capacity is not going to happen. And so they don't do that. So you just go and you beat on your recruiters. You like, you whip them a little bit harder, right? And by the way, short term, it works, you can whip a recruiter and they'll produce more short term, and then they totally burn out, fall off the cliff, and quit. Debbie (9m 40s): They have more opportunities because everybody's short staffed. So guess what they are being recruited to. Chad (9m 45s): Do you think the recruiter experience Debbie with some of your clients, do you think how much different is it for them working in the US versus Europe, knowing that you have to interconnect all of these countries, a much different than obviously interconnecting states. You have language issues. I mean, there's just, what's the recruiter experience for somebody, one of your clients in Europe versus the US? Debbie (10m 10s): Yeah. You know, it's really interesting. I actually think we do a better job of the experience in AMEA than we do here in the states. Chad (10m 18s): How so? Debbie (10m 21s): There's a couple of things that play into that one. Their compliance issues are a little bit different than ours. Chad (10m 28s): Okay. Debbie (10m 29s): And so there's less hurdles to jump through for the recruiter and getting a candidate in their pipeline and into their process. The other thing that's different is they can be a little bit more forward-thinking with the brand and the way they represent themselves and the process, which would they go to market from a brand perspective, and they tend to be ahead of us in that aspect. And then third, they are still really heavy on third party contingency firms. Chad (10m 55s): Very much. Needs a flip really. Debbie (10m 57s): They are. So it is, it's an interesting kind of switch over there. You see more of the employment brand, recruitment marketing being in-house and the actual recruiting being done outside of the house. And so it's, you look at the recruiter experience differently over in AMEA, at least for our customers than we do here in the states, but they tend to be a little bit easier to service. Chad (11m 21s): Are you working with staffing firms? Debbie (11m 24s): We absolutely do work with staffing firms. We work with a lot of, we tend to do more business with the RPOs because they tend to be, you know, focusing on how do they support a specific client. And a lot of our technology is geared towards specific clients, but we work with it all. But I'd be curious to hear from the rest of the group, if you guys are seeing that too, if you think that's the case in a mirror or other, other things that are different? Chad (11m 49s): All of the languages and whatnot, but here in the US we're putting so much money into DEI over the last few years, right? We talked about this last night dinner Torin. Do you see a difference in Europe and their DEI outreach? Does that mimic what we're doing here in the US do they care as much? Are they paying attention to what happened with George Floyd and really the momentum? Torin (12m 13s): So, first and foremost, I always want to kind of shy away from the George Floyd reference only because when we think global, I don't want people to build their strategy and considerations around North American centric issues. And so I try to force clients that are global to think global, if you will. So I don't minimize George Floyd. I just try to make sure we don't center George Floyd, number one. Number two, when we think about DNI, yes they're concern, but Joel, they are like five, seven, maybe even 10 steps behind where we are, as it relates to DNI. Like, I can give them some strategy from 2012, 2014. And they're like, yo, this is like a steak dinner. Torin (12m 54s): And I'm like, literally, this is I something I said a decade ago, and I'm not minimizing where they are, I'm not being judgmental about where they are, but they really are 10 steps behind us. But I think the one thing that I found interesting, and what Debbie just said is that it's easier to get the candidate in the system, even with GDPR, it's still easier for them to get the candidate in the system. Debbie (13m 17s): You got to remember that GDPR is all about keeping them in the system, not getting them into the system. It's giving the control to the candidate of, Hey, I have opted in and I want to stay opted in, but they don't have to go through any EEOC questionnaires. They don't need to worry about any of the compliance aspects of it. I mean, it, it kinda goes to the fact that they are 10 steps behind us. I don't know whether it's good or it's bad, but they don't have to ask for as much information from a candidate to get in. Do they need a little check box of I consent? Absolutely. But even that can be done later on in the process. Joel (13m 52s): Question about budgets. And I think from our perspective, we hear a lot about companies creating budgets for diversity and inclusion. You guys live this every day, what are companies really doing in terms of dollars and cents to make a change? Chad (14m 5s): And are they making a change? Debbie (14m 7s): In short they're not making enough change. Joel (14m 9s): Does that mean enough money? Debbie (14m 11s): Let me speak specific to disability. So we're seeing finally an investment in our community. We doubled our number of clients in 2020 during the pandemic. We're able to have a really strong conversation about the importance of intersectionality and understanding that we are a part of every community. Chad (14m 29s): Make sure we understand what intersectionality means for the listener. Julie (14m 33s): Yes, so I am a white woman who has a disability. Torin is a black man who is a veteran. Black women with disabilities, have the highest unemployment rate and also the highest pay gap in the country. And it's at the intersections where companies really need to find those opportunities to make a difference. So yes, investment is happening, but it's still too much at the, let's just do a training. Let's just, you know, kind of check that box. It's still not a strategic part of the recruitment and talent acquisition process in the way that it should be. And until that happens, we're not going to be to the place where we're good to go. Tim (15m 10s): Let's get back to your like recruiter experience on that issue alone. Do want to talk about why recruiters are burning out is because they're saying, Hey, by the way, go find us some people with disabilities that we want to hire. Chad (15m 19s): And they're not experts. Tim (15m 20s): They're not experts, and they're not giving you any resources to do that. Yeah. I mean, and you guys Debbie will see this, obviously on the Symphony Talent side, when I go in and meet with a company and we talk about budget numbers, and let's say just random, where they're spending a thousand dollars a month on recruitment marketing, which is super light. I would do, I would come in and for the most part, I see that your provide 10 times lower than where you should be. If you're at a thousand, you should be at 10,000. If you are at 10,000, you should be at a hundred thousand and they look at you like, I'm never going to get that. And I'm like, well, then you're not even playing in the same ballpark as the team that you're trying to compete against. Julie (15m 51s): Absolutely. You know, I find it so fascinating that a lot of companies have invested in chief diversity officers. And usually they have zero budget and it is striking that they have zero budget and zero headcount. Oftentimes. Joel (16m 5s): Is that just to, again, I hear a lot about checking the box. Is that just a checkbox strategy to say, see, we have a head of diversity, leave us alone. Julie (16m 14s): Yes! Joel (16m 14s): Is that sort of the strategy? Julie (16m 15s): From what I have seen. In my experience. Torin (16m 17s): In some ways, Russell Reynolds put out a report in March of 2019, and the report is titled finding your next chief diversity officer 12, 18 pages in length. But the salient points in that report, number one are that most chief diversity officers are under-resourced and they are under supported, underfunded, like Seminole findings in the report. And you can find that from Harvard Business Review, McKinsey, Deloitte, Catalysts, Boston Consulting Group, it doesn't matter. So part of the checking of the box really is what can we do? Public facing that simply says, we've put a bandaid on it. We're doing it. And for most people, Joel, it hinges on unconscious bias training. Chad (17m 1s): So you said it earlier today, I heard you say that the focus should really be outcomes oriented, right? Hiring retention, promotion? That's what we should be focusing on. As opposed to all this money that's spent, and companies are pretty much just pointing at the bottom line saying, well, we spent X for training, or we're using X tool for DEI, right? But there's no outcomes associated to it. Why aren't we focusing on outcomes? Shouldn't we be? Torin (17m 30s): Well, we absolutely should be. But again, it's the prescription at so many people are looking for. They think that if we just bring Julie in, because she focuses on people with disabilities, that magically, we're going to begin to do this thing the right way. Intersectionality, as Julie said, it is so many different layers of whatever it is, so Julie gave you two, she said a white woman and has a disability. She said an African-American male, who's a veteran, but father and this and the intersectionality is incredible. And so when you really think about doing DNI the right way, you got to break the thing down and say, there's no best practice that's necessarily going to work for me or for our organization that we have to find something that is really germane in how we do it here. Torin (18m 16s): It's going to work for how we do it right? Tim (18m 18s): There are two fundamental things there that are foundational. Is, think about, who's actually creating those metrics to be measured against. It's the people doing the job they want to be successful because that's how they bonus. So they're never going to create a measure that is going to push them to the point where they don't get paid. So they're going to create something where they're going to be successful. And also you're the CEOs and the C-suites are going to look at those and say, well, wait a minute. We don't want to actually measure something that we have to report on that makes us look bad. So yeah, those two foundational things that they're working against all of them. Debbie (18m 46s): Well, and I keep laughing as you say outcomes, because in order to measure your outcomes, you have to have a baseline. And the majority of them don't have the baseline. Chad (18m 55s): They do but they don't want to share it. No, it is there, they do not want to share it. Torin (18m 59s): Plausible deniability. Chad (19m 1s): Exactly, exactly. So, okay. Debbie, how many companies are coming to you today? Because today DEI is the new AI. Everybody has it. Everybody wants it, right? How many companies are coming to you looking for that DEI silver bullet? Debbie (19m 16s): Every single one of them. They are and they are looking for a silver bullet. I will say it is typically a bullet of their requirements list. It is not what is leading their evaluation, but they are looking for a silver bullet. And I am also seeing in the market in general, a lot of vendors that are saying they are the silver bullet, that they are going to assume diversity of candidates. Chad (19m 43s): Vapor Ware. Debbie (19m 44s): And I feel like we are going down a very, very slippery slope in that regards. Yeah. So yeah, Tim (19m 53s): No, it's one of the big ethical AI issues that we're facing in recruiting technology right now, is that the AI where we can ask somebody, Hey, Torin, are you black? Are you disabled? Are you whatever? But the AI has enough data. They can, they can pretty close figure that out with a high degree of variability where they're going to go, Hey, we know he's a black veteran and that's where they're coming up with this stuff. But the problem is, is you're going, wait, whoa, wait a minute. We can't ask that stuff, but the AI already knows it and then they're going to assume. Debbie (20m 23s): Yeah. And now you're assuming based on name. I mean, now we're oh, there's, everybody's shaking their heads right now. Joel (20m 30s): Yeah. It wasn't that long ago that Facebook got in trouble for allowing companies to target certain demographics that got them in big trouble. And now they have to ask questions about job postings. So I think part of the AI question is like how soon before we get in trouble, how soon before we're Facebook or we're HireVue analyzing facial? Yeah. I mean, like, I think there's a fear to build the technology around this because we're going to be in trouble at some point. Debbie (20m 54s): The list goes on and on. So yeah, on the flip side, there are things we can do, right? We can start by taking baby steps of looking at the language that we're using and is there inherent bias in it. And let's fix that. We can start by doing things of like, if we are marketing to groups, are we using imagery or employee stories of likeness to that group that we're trying to attract? We can look at, are we doing employee resource groups that are supporting the audiences that we want to attract to make sure that once we do get them in the door, they're going to feel like they're at home at this place of employment. But very few of what I just mentioned are silver bullets, right? It's a collective group. It's making sure that you're focusing on both. Debbie (21m 35s): What is the attraction strategy and what is the retention strategy? Julie (21m 39s): So it's a strategy that gets implemented. It's not a one-off, it's not a piece of tech, it's not AI. Right? Chad (21m 46s): Layers. Julie (21m 46s): And that's the thing about Facebook. I had a call with the EOC commissioner last week. And I said, look, the thing about Facebook is that the answer was to cut off the opportunity to target. That was the wrong answer. And so, as we think about as tech experts, as diversity experts. Chad (22m 3s): Why is it the wrong answer? Julie (22m 5s): Because we used it to target job seekers with disabilities and get them fucking jobs. Chad (22m 10s): Use it for good not evil. Tim (22m 12s): That's what it was. That's the problem that they were like, wait, we're going to take it away because people could use it for evil. Chad (22m 15s): Knee jerk. Tim (22m 16s): But we could use it for good too. Chad (22m 17s): His knee jerk. Well, that's where audits come in and you have to actually watch what's happening and they don't want to watch what's happening. Joel (22m 24s): Or you take away the options of targeting by age and you only make diverse candidates. Torin (22m 30s): But again, what Julie is saying is we want to be able to target by age in a good way, because ageism is an issue. So we want to be able to go after candidates, applicants, prospects that are 50 and older. Joel (22m 41s): Maybe I framed it incorrectly. So take away the restriction of age. So to say, I only want 25 and under like, make that impossible to do? Chad (22m 52s): No, make it auditable, make it auditable. Well, if you want to target that, that's great, but you are responsible for how you're targeting in creating your workforce, right? And then you have to be more transparent about your workforce. Tim (23m 5s): Because if I'm an employer and now you're like, Hey, I have all these young people and I want to hire someone that's over 55 or whatever that might be. I want to be able to target that advertising for good, but if I'm doing it and my data shows that, Hey, I'm only hiring people under 25, then I should be called out for that. Joel (23m 22s): Cause from Facebook's perspective for them to just tell the media, oh, well, we just get audited so don't worry about it. I think that's a hard thing for them to sell. Chad (23m 30s): They should self audit and also companies should audit. That's the problem. We don't have enough transparency to be able to demonstrate what we're doing and what we're not doing, and it's not mandated so therefore we have all these companies who are trying this whole optics bullshit game of spending money, and they're not actually demonstrating what their workforce looks like. Joel (23m 49s): How would Facebook audit? Chad (23m 51s): I didn't say Facebook. I said the company, right? The company has to be auditable. It should fall upon the company. Debbie (23m 57s): So if I'm using Facebook, Facebook should have something that is maintaining the searches that I'm running for a two year period that I can then pull into for any audit. And most job boards have this when you're running searches across them. Tim (24m 11s): This is what I love about having four podcasts, because you go everywhere. And this is like, if we're at a conference, like we are here for Symphony Talent in Detroit, and we are sitting around having a cocktail or coffee, this is the conversation how it goes. Chad (24m 26s): Yes, yes. Well, I first off, I'd like to thank Debbie and Symphony Talent for having us all here. Crazy and the King, Tim, we came off for you big boy. And so it's all about you, but thanks so much. Any, any parting things that we should know, not just about Symphony Talent, but what's going on with the roadshow? Debbie (24m 46s): YEAH! So if you have not joined us on this road show, yet, first of all, they've been wildly successful and that's large part to our audience, our customers, our prospects, people like yourselves joining in, and we're going to continue the road show. And our goal is to continue this road show here domestically, internationally, and taking us all the way to our final return of a live transform in 2022. So visit. Yes. Oh, for those that don't know, this is five years. And so everyone that is joining us on this podcast got a five-year robe, Torin, Julie, you haven't actually received yours yet, but you do have one. Debbie (25m 28s): They're pretty legit. Maybe for happy hour tonight, we all pull out our robes. Joel (25m 32s): It's that kind of party. There's no party like a Symphony party. Chad (25m 34s): Oh, it's that kind of party. Joel (25m 40s): Join us, go visit the joypipeline.com, where you can find all the details, you can register. But I appreciate you guys all getting together. This was a lot of fun. We out. Debbie (25m 50s): See ya. OUTRO (25m 51s): 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. Anyhoo 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. OUTRO (26m 36s): 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.

Video recruiting is red hot right now. All the kids are doing it, which also means only a few will get to sit at the cool table at lunchtime. Which leads us to Euan Cameron and Willo, a spunky startup from Scotland who thinks they can bring video to the masses. Automation? A.I.? Machine learning? Nah, that's not the play. Instead, free forever and an aggressive integration strategy are at the heart of this company. Sounds nice, but will it pass the Firing Squad? Gotta listen to find out. Firing Squad is supported by the genius-level programmatic jobs and performance-driven platform we all know as PANDOLOGIC! Target the right candidates and spend less cash by using Pandologic today! TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community. Pandologic (0s): Hey HR, have you joined the programmatic revolution? If not, you're about to get schooled on how to take your organization to the next level. Check this out. 95% of CMOs use programmatic advertising, but only 5% of CHROs are using it to advertise their jobs. Where's the disconnect? PandoLogic uses powerful automation to drive higher performing job ads without the bloated budget. It's time to transform the way you think about job advertising and join the revolution. Learn more at pandologic.com/revolution FiringSquadINTRO (35s): Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel (59s): Oh yeah. You know what the guns means? It's time for another Firing Squad. What's up everybody? I am Joel Cheeseman out of the Chad and Cheese podcast, joined as always by my faithful sidekick Chad Sowash and today, we are pretty excited, pretty excited to welcome Euan Cameron of Glasgow, Scotland. And he's also co-founder and CEO of a startup called Willo. Euan, hopefully I'm saying that correctly, how are you? Euan (1m 28s): Hi Joel. Hi Chad. I'm good. Thanks. Thanks for the intro there. I'm all good. Joel (1m 33s): I mentioned Scotland, but give us sort of a quick Twitter bio on you and we'll get to the good stuff. Euan (1m 40s): Sure. So living in Glasgow, being in Glasgow for 15 years, my background is actually in digital marketing and Willo will be my fourth startup. Co-founded Willo with a good friend of mine, Andrew Wood, and he's based in Manchester. Chad (1m 55s): Excellent. So who do, who were you cheering for during the Euro 2020? Were you in the Glasgow's square with an Italy flag? sfx (2m 5s): All things Scottish are crap. Euan (2m 8s): Well, obviously it started sponsoring or supporting Scotland, but that obviously didn't last very long. And then I actually controversially switched my support to England. Chad (2m 19s): I'm surprised they didn't kick you out of the country. Euan (2m 23s): Me too. Yeah, no England got my support so it was quite tense Sunday night for me and my household. Actually. What about you guys? Chad (2m 32s): Joel was rooting for Italy or for England because he has to. Joel (2m 38s): I'm genetically required. Chad (2m 39s): Some bullshit genetic 23 and me match that nobody gives a fuck about. And I've had several Italy jerseys because you know, they do soccer well. So I thought England was going to win though dude, it was a whole match, they had the easiest, they had an easier draw, I mean they had an easy throughout the entire thing and the keeper came up on the Italian side. That was just amazing. Euan (3m 8s): Yeah. Joel (3m 8s): Chad has a lot of Italian jerseys because he lives right by a Puma outlet mall. So don't make him think that he's some big Italian, he's Italian Jersey wearing because it's 75% off at the outlet. That's why Chad is wearing Chad (3m 23s): And they look good. Blue looks good on me. Joel (3m 27s): All soccer jerseys look pretty good. All right, Chad, tell him what he's won here on the firing squad. Chad (3m 35s): At the end of two minutes, you will hear that bell then Joel and I will hit you with rapid Q and A. If your answers start to ramble or you get boring, Joel's going to hit you with the crickets, that's your signal to move on and tighten up your game. At the end of Q and A, you will receive either a big applause. That's right. Prepare for launch baby. This rocket ship is going up. A golf clap. You're on the launch pad, but you're gonna need more elbow grease to get this baby into the sky or last but never least, the firing squad. Chad (4m 22s): It's a failure to launch, pick up a blue pill and try something different. That's firing squad, baby, are you I'm ready? Euan (4m 29s): I'm ready. I'm ready. Joel (4m 31s): Only the cheap scotch for you. If you get the guns Euan. In three, two, ding, ding, ding. Euan (4m 38s): So Willo is a one way or asynchronous video interviewing platform to help organizations hire candidates remotely at scale in significantly less time. As we know, the traditional hiring process typically takes multiple rounds of interviews and screening before a decision is made on new to hire. What's crazy is that each interview typically takes 15 minutes to schedule, rarely has any structure, and there's a huge opportunity cost for both the candidate and the employer. We also know that traditional interviews by their very nature discourage applicants from even participating. Candidates dread the interview because they've been asked into an office they've never been to before, to sit in front of someone that never met and ask questions have not been asked before, all whilst lying to their current employer by going to a dentist appointment. Euan (5m 23s): So we decided to change all of that and give candidates control with a remote friendly virtual interview process, which can be completed anywhere. With Willo people answer questions and record video in their own time to create the most enjoyable interview experience ever, no scheduling, no travel and no stress. One of the key ingredients of Willo is our focus on device and browser compatibility. The platform works in 99% of browsers and devices as well as solid genetic connections and we've removed all that technical jargon so that it passes the mom test. We also decided to make Willo free, this gives small business owners, a chance to experience the benefits of Willo. Finally anyone can integrate with our public API. Euan (6m 4s): We have a number of users who white label the platform and embed into their own applications. All of that has resulted over 4,000 customers in 135 countries using Willo everyday. From our passionate team across Europe since day one, we have tremendous focus on turning customers into loyal fan and users and apologies for my dog in the background. It wasn't actually my dog, it is someone else's dog which is even worse. Joel (6m 34s): Are you done? Euan (6m 34s): I am done. Joel (6m 35s): All right, where can they find out more? Euan (6m 38s): Find more? Willo.video. So it's WILLO.video. sfx (6m 41s): ding, ding, ding. Chad (6m 44s): So Euan, you used to be called, was it? It was Weave so why change to Willo, especially with Willo, without the willo.com is a kid's robot toothbrush. I don't understand the actual, I don't want to understand the change of the name when you couldn't get the.com. Joel (7m 6s): It's also in his wife's dresser drawer, but that's another podcast? Chad (7m 8s): Good call. Euan (7m 10s): So we'll give you a background on Weave first. So Weave was a really nice name. We thought, you know, Weave building things, bringing things together, weaving things makes things stronger, right? So we thought we'll build teams and make teams stronger with our technology. Weave then it comes up with a trademark issue in France. So we didn't have any choice, unfortunately. So we had to change it quite quickly. I think we were like three months before launching to the world. And it was like, we needed to pick a name that would actually work. You know, what names are like is difficult to find the name we'll find a web address in particular. So we actually ended up going with Willo and Willo was basically, it's really not very exciting story but I'll tell you anyway, because we haven't got any better to talk about then this stupid name, which everyone always asks. Euan (7m 57s): And I really needed some of the better story for this, but basically it was my co-founders street. So you lived on Willo Lane. Chad (8m 2s): Without, without the w? Euan (8m 3s): No with the w. It would be cool if it was without the w, that would be a good street name without the w. Chad (8m 9s): Well, nobody would be able to find it because that's not how you spell Willow. Why did you change the name again? I know it's hard to find a brand name, especially when you're talking about in Europe, because you have to think about multiple countries, but overall, I mean, that seems like a snap judgment are, let me ask this question instead, are you open to changing the name to something that is, that is spelled correctly and has a.com? Euan (8m 39s): No, anytime soon. That was a good question, but no, not anytime soon. Chad (8m 42s): Gotchya. Joel (8m 42s): With the right amount of investment money, he'd be more than happy to change the name. I'm sure. Euan (8m 46s): I hope the VCs they're listening. No, no. It's Willo for sure, for good. I mean, Willo is a nice, short name is one syllable. It's quite tight, we like that. Joel (8m 56s): To exacerbate this you're a marketing guy, right? It would be one thing if you were just some geek and just pulled some name out of the air, but you're a marketing guy. So one I'll get off the Willo name cause I think we've beaten that dead horse, but I'm curious what makes a marketing guy sort of have the ability to come into the recruitment space and create a company that's successful? That seems like a really big void to cross. Euan (9m 20s): Sure. Yeah, I guess that's a good question. So we came at it from a different angle. That was really the kind of the thing that I brought to this business. So between me and my co-founder, my co-founder, his background is recruiting and my background being product, conditional marketing, I said, let's come at this from a different angle. So my angle was really how do we make the best solution to a problem? And I obviously understood the problem of recruitment and hiring, having hired people over my career. And I'd always find that it was a real pain point of mine. I had to, you know, invite people out to this office. I used to work in a really like random remote office that was out of the way, it was outside of Glasgow. And it was difficult for candidates to get to and I always felt like that was a real barrier to meeting these candidates that had to start dragging them out of the city to come and meet me for an hour, for a job that they potentially wouldn't get anyway. Euan (10m 12s): So that was always a bugbear of mine was this whole interview process. It felt really crappy to me. So I understood the problem. And then obviously joined up with Woody and decided that our skill sets actually could build a solution to the problem that was a bit different from what was already out there. That was really key. The key thing that we wanted to do was create something that was different. Obviously there is other video interviewing technologies out there. We wanted to put a different spin on it. Joel (10m 36s): We'll get to that in a second. So you've, you've raised about $200,000- 250,000 in seed, is that correct? Euan (10m 42s): Yeah, that's right. 250,000 pounds. And we're just, Joel (10m 46s): Is that like 400,000 in US? Chad (10m 49s): $375USD Joel (10m 50s): $375 I'm pretty good. Okay. My math is awesome. So what have you sort of done with the money? I assume there's going to be a real round here in the future. Talk about the money situation and what you're planning on doing with it. Euan (11m 5s): Sure. So huge amount of that money went into product marketing, as you would expect. Obviously my marketing background is really all about pushing the marketing. And I'm trying to basically just tell as many people as we possibly can about our offering, our product. Our product is strong, but we're happy with the product, it is in a good place, but we need more eyeballs on that product to really push it forward. So a large, a large amount of money is gone in those two areas and it's all been digital marketing and our core markets be UK, US and Australia for us. Joel (11m 33s): What's been the most effective marketing on the digital side, like as a certain platform that's performed really well or? Euan (11m 39s): Yeah, that's a good question. I think the key platforms for us are really Twitter and LinkedIn and we get a lot of our customers are small to medium sized businesses and I find a lot of them on Twitter. And then we do a lot of outreach on LinkedIn as well. Chad (11m 53s): So why asynchronous only? Euan (11m 55s): Asynchronous only. So they come back to the problem is I've discovered the interviewing and the problems that interviews have just in general. When you switched to an asynchronous interview, you take away a lot of the issues that candidates have a lot of the frustrations the candidates have. And so we spent 2019 and 2018, basically speaking to candidates and the over the overwhelming majority of candidates to make the interview better for them, wanted to be in control. And the easiest way of putting people in control in the interview process for us was to make it asynchronous. So they are in control of when and where they're answering those questions. That was really the biggest learning curve for us. Euan (12m 36s): So it was all about control. Chad (12m 37s): Okay, well, I've also seen that the questions are text-based, which pretty much means that it feels like as a user you're talking into a void, or are you looking at perspectively allowing hiring managers to record themselves and asking questions on video to be more personalized, more human, to provide a better experience? Euan (12m 57s): Yeah, you almost, you almost said it like I was going say it. Yes. Is the answer to that. And it will provide a better experience and it will remove a lot of the talking to the void. The reason we haven't done it yet. And tthis may be interesting to you guys, the reason we haven't done it yet is that we're trying to implement it in the most accessible way possible. And the moment you can, for example, use screen readers with text-based questions, and at the moment, you can also, for example, change the contrast on those questions and make the font bigger, doing that with a video based question or an audio based question is more difficult, introduces different accessibility challenges and that's what we're working on now. Chad (13m 31s): So subtitles, I mean, that seems like a pretty easy answer to a video providing subtitles. Euan (13m 39s): That's pretty much like 99% of how we're going to achieve it is actually allowing the user to edit those subtitles, make sure they can type them in how they want. And because then what we do is we actually allow them to translate that into different languages as well. So there's a few different pieces that we need to kind of figure out there, but that's the roadmap for the future. Chad (13m 55s): Okay. So you're still currently the founder of EAC, a digital marketing agency. Is that on the shelf right now, while you're building Willo, are you trying to juggle both at the same time? Euan (14m 7s): It is on the shelf, unfortunately. It was not possible for me to continue doing that at the scale I was doing it before, especially after the past, you know, the past year digital marketing has become something that's really in demand. And so I wouldn't have been able to juggle both. We both went full-time in Willo in October of last year and I dropped everything else to go full-time with Willo and go all in and make it a success. Joel (14m 30s): Talk to me about from a job seeker's perspective. When do I, or when or how do I engage with the product? Is it an email with a link? Can a recruiter just send a link anywhere, like through text message? Euan (14m 42s): Sure. Joel (14m 43s): Is it in a job description, like talk about how a job seeker would typically engage? And this is also probably a good bridge to talk about your integration strategy, which is pretty robust. Euan (14m 54s): There's two specific, specifics or areas that you could use Willo in. The first is right up front, so at the kind of application stage for a lot of our users will fit Willo in the actual job posting. So behind the apply now button, or as a link in indeed ads or LinkedIn job ads, and that takes them straight into Willo. And then you're actually using Willo more as an application process, which is really cool because that's right upfront. And that's actually removing a lot of the traditional application frustration barriers that are in the process. The other place that you're most likely to interrupt Willo is on that first run of interviews. So you've got a bunch of CDs or applications then the recruiter is then going to invite a number of those applicants or sometimes all of those applicants. Euan (15m 34s): And through Willo, they just invite them through like a CSV upload or they can invite them with a common link, which they can just share with all the candidates. Joel (15m 42s): And your integration strategy. Talk about that. Euan (15m 44s): Yeah. So integrations has always been core to what we're doing. We don't want it to become, for example, an ATS. We don't want it to become a larger part of the hiring process because we know that every company has a different hiring process. We don't have the authority maybe to change those hiring processes so our integration strategy is to become part of a bigger process. And the easiest way of doing that obviously is to integrate with what people already use. So we have, you know, for example, the Workable integration, the Greenhouse integration, which are both native and we're working on Team Taylor at the moment, which is another nice one coming up. And then we have our Zapier integration as well. So you can actually plug Willo into your process depending on how your hiring process looks, which I think is the most flexible way of doing it. Euan (16m 26s): You know, when we have sales calls, people often ask us, you know, how is this going to work? I do this and this and this. Cause they're really maybe set in their ways with the hiring process and they're happy with it. And we can always come back and say, well, you can plug it in here and you can also plug it in here and this is how other people use it. And it just makes it really flexible. Chad (16m 42s): So how big is your team currently? Euan (16m 44s): So at the moment, our team has 17 people. Four of them just started, so they're salespeople, but yeah, 17 in total most what most of them in the UK have got a couple of people in Europe. Chad (16m 55s): Okay, how many clients are actually using the platform right now? Euan (16m 59s): Good question. So at the moment, as in like right now, today, just under 4,000 and that's across 135 countries, Chad (17m 7s): 4000 recruiters, meaning seats or 4,000 actual brands? Euan (17m 12s): That is seats. Chad (17m 14s): Okay. So out of those seats, how many brands are out of those seats? Euan (17m 19s): That was a very good question, which I don't have the answer to it on the top of my mind. Joel (17m 22s): Okay. Are you profitible then because with that many people at only 250 seed money, either you're bootstrapping the hell out of this thing or you guys are pretty profitable? Euan (17m 30s): No. So we won't be profitable until the later part of 2022. And to answer your funding question, we are fundraising at the moment for our next more significant runs. And that allows us to basically to grow the team that that's all about salespeople and customer support and stuff. Chad (17m 48s): gotcha. So what version gets more usage from candidates and recruiters, mobile or desktop? Euan (17m 54s): So last month, 80% mobile, which is quite high. When we started last year, it was about 60% mobile, but it's been creeping up really quickly for the past six months. So we're looking at 80% mobile in July or sorry, June. Chad (18m 9s): Gotcha. Are those mainly through your platform directly or are they using this through an integration through a core platform, like an applicant tracking system. Euan (18m 21s): Again, going back to the June numbers, they just run those recently. 20% of our users are coming via an integration, which I don't know what the statistics are, but that feels like quite a good number. You know, we're, we're trying to grow that obviously, but to be integrated around 20% is a good place to start. We know that obviously integrations are good, more sticky, more loyal customers. Joel (18m 41s): I've always considered video to be more of a feature than a product defend this as a product, or is it a feature that you just either hope to flip it one day or just become a piece of all the ATSs that you possibly can? I mean, do you think of your product as a feature? Euan (18m 58s): And that's a good question. We think of it as a product at the moment, it doesn't mean to, it can become a feature in the future, depending on how the ATSs treat it and having to integrate more with them natively. But at the moment we see as a product and the reason we see it as a product is that the majority of our users are using Willo as a standalone solution to their hiring problems. So obviously I mentioned 23% are integrated. The others are not integrated they typically don't have a solution. So you'll know that lots of obviously lots of businesses hire from a spreadsheet or they hire from Trello. And so Willo is actually replacing a lot of those really rudimentary solutions to hiring and managing your candidates. So we see it as a product at the moment. Joel (19m 38s): In terms of threats. What are, I guess, what keeps you up at night? I mean, cause you know, I look at the chat bot space, that's getting into more video, I'm looking at other standalones, like Vervo that are specializing in video. And obviously you have the big daddy, you know, HireVue and others, like which of those keeps you up at night? Or are you a totally unique animal? Euan (19m 59s): No, so I definitely don't sleep as well as I used to. The things that keep us up at night are mostly product related. So we always want to be ahead of the game in terms of product and innovation, but staying ahead in product and innovation is one of the most challenging areas for us. You know, there's huge amounts of money going to those areas and other businesses and competitors, is a biggest challenge for us is staying ahead and product for sure. Joel (20m 24s): Okay. Chad (20m 25s): But, well, let's talk about sales because for the most part, that is one of the biggest nightmares most founders and CEOs have. So overall what's your sales strategy? Is it partnership through integrations? How's that actually working? Are you looking at direct to customer right out of the gate? Euan (20m 45s): So up until this month, our sales strategy has always been an inbound sales strategy. So digital marketing, generating inbound leads, and converting those leads. But what we're looking at coming forward as a partnership and unstressed piece of what that means is really going out by, and, you know, sort of the usual LinkedIn, phone, email channels, and also going out and doing more partnerships. Partnerships, not only with ATSs, but also partnerships with larger marketplaces for offering solutions to businesses and becoming part of a larger marketplace offering. So that's the sort of strategy at the moment. Chad (21m 24s): Excellent. So you have transparent pricing on the site, which I, I fucking love it, but it also says it's free forever. So why the pricing and I mean, to be quite Frank, your pricing, the way that it's set it's set right now, it's almost free? So it's like you're giving a free option, but then you're giving an almost free option. Why are you giving a free option first and foremost, I guess it would just be to try to buy. But if you're doing that, why is it so damn cheap? Euan (21m 52s): Okay. This is a good question. So let me talk about free and why the hell we did free. So when we started doing our research, this was just last year, very early on last year, what we realized was a video interviewing. And this obviously is not new to you, but as a concept video interviewing is a new concept to a lot of our audience, a lot of our business owners and managers that come to Willo. So what we decided to do was create this free version to actually help us educate and sell the concept. And once people have used, Willo a few times and made a few hires on Willo, they understand the concept, then they start to pay for it. So it's really, it's an educational acquisition strategy, which we're playing at the moment. Euan (22m 37s): It doesn't mean to say that it will be free forever because time moves on and video interviewing will become more of a commonplace thing. Chad (22m 44s): It says free forever on the website. Euan (22m 47s): It does. Well, if you sign up for free today, it will be free forever, but we may take that option away. Joel (22m 55s): So, by the time you hear this podcast it maybe. Euan (22m 58s): We're changing the website later on tonight, I know it will be, it will be free forever as far as we can, as far as we can really maintain that. But it says it's more of, yeah, it's more of an educational strategy. Like obviously a lot of the audience listening to this as well will be familiar with video interviewing, but honestly every single day, we're speaking to people, they have never heard of the concept. So trying to sell that into them is a hard thing to do. So making it free, it definitely just breaks down some of those barriers. Joel (23m 23s): Speaking of new concepts for people, I think you're one of the few startups, I think that have come on the show and not mentioned AI to any. Euan (23m 30s): Sure. Joel (23m 31s): Any big degree. Chad (23m 32s): Big applause. Joel (23m 33s): But in terms of, yeah, in terms of, you know, automation, you know, transcription piece, it looks like there's some of that in there scheduling automation, like either if this isn't on the roadmap, will it be sort of where are you on some of those buzz terms around automation and AI? Euan (23m 50s): So I didn't mention AI because I feel like it's, everyone mentions, like you said, so we're leaving AI out of a conversation, but in terms of automation on AI, the things that we are looking at doing is all around scheduling is the only thing that we really want to be doing AI around at the moment, so scheduling most likely the next interview. So when you use Willo, for example, you're doing the asynchronous interview, we want to actually helps the recruiter and the candidate find a time for their next interview, which may be a two way interview over Zoom or Skype or Teams or whatever. So using that as probably the only area that we can foresee at the moment, there was obviously a lot of people out there doing AI around diversity and inclusion and even behavioral analytics. We are at the moment, not focusing on that because it goes against what we're actually trying to do here, which is obviously connect people with people and create opportunities and actually adding in a layer of computing and, you know, algorithms just doesn't really sit well with the offering at the moment, because it's obviously all about people. Chad (24m 47s): So using technology to improve diversity in the workplace, why do underrepresented populations have a better chance of getting a job with video interviewing? You can see that it's a female. You can see that it's a person of color. Why do you think that helps take bias instead of out of the process, instead of inserting it into the process? Euan (25m 9s): This is a really interesting area and it's this one that we speak about almost everyday, again with customers, the real reason that we believe, and we know that it removes a lot of the biases that every candidate that goes through the one-way interview as Willo is answering the same set of questions in the same environment in the same time frames. So we have, for example, four questions each a minute each, and those people are all answering them in the same time, in the same environment. So it actually removes a lot of the uncertainty and the inconsistencies that typical interview may have. So for example, if you're a biased person, you might give the person that you want to get the job more time in their interview, for example, or you might ask them different questions or easier questions. Euan (25m 50s): So there's a huge amount of bias actually comes from the way that the interview is structured and conducted, but by making asynchronous and consistent, what you're actually doing is removing a lot of the options that score bias. And then on the flip side, because asynchronous interviews are recorded, having that record of all of the interviews, again helps not only remove bias, but also holds accountability. So if you, for example, are a bias person and you hire five people, your organization or your HR team can actually look at those and say, well, you hired like five white males over the past two years, which is clearly a bias thing because he also interviewed a whole bunch of other people, you know, females and males and people in different countries and different age ranges that you didn't hire. Euan (26m 32s): And you can start to see and hold people accountable for their bias. So it's really about creating a consistent interview process removes a lot of the opportunities for bias to come in, in the first place, because everyone is just head and shoulders on a screen, answering the same questions. And then on the flip side, we also are recording and creating a log of these interviews so that it's much easier to look back and hopefully identify bias. Chad (26m 53s): Okay. So I've seen two separate numbers. So help me with the confusion on this. Willo reduces your time to hire by a third. And I also saw another video that said it by 40%. So is it 33%? Is it 40%? And do you have published business cases to be able to demonstrate the reason behind these numbers? Which one is it? 33? 40? Do you have business cases? Euan (27m 19s): It's 40%. And that is the most recent number. So we did a study on timing and it's basically we can share, we can share this in the notes on the afterwards, but what we looked at was the time to hire at all of the different stages. And under the two biggest stages of time basically spent is in scheduling and conducting interviews. And when you use Willo obviously that time drops quite significantly. So we mapped out, I mean, actually we have a full time to hire based on users from around the world as well. So we didn't specifically look at one country or anything like that, we just looked at an average of our users around the world and how long it took them when they introduced Willo into the process versus before, we looked at the amount of time it takes. And when we can, we can quite clearly see as well, I mean, it is quite significant and quite clearly see that the time to hire is reduced just by using a tool like Willo. Joel (28m 6s): Curious about sort of managing costs. I mean, hosting a lot of video, especially when your product's free forever can get pretty costly. How do you guys manage the hosting of videos? Euan (28m 17s): Yeah. That's something else that keeps me up at night. That's a good question. There's a shit ton of videos now in the cloud, but the way we handle that is obviously through compression. So we do a lot of encoding and compression and which helps reduce those videos down. And then we actually have a retention policy of six months. So we only hold those videos for six months before they're disposed off, and that just helps keep a lid on the data requirements Joel (28m 40s): Is six months a number you came up with or customers sort of behavior wise. Are there any regulations that you'll be dealing with? Euan (28m 47s): It was actually, we came up with it because of GDPR. So GDPR in Europe, we looked to that and said, well, what's the best amount of time that we can get away with since GDPR is not too long, but it's also not frustratingly short for our users. And six months, we've seen as a correct amount time. I'll give you a quick background on that. If you hire someone into a job you normally have about three months of kind of probation, where you figure out whether it's going to work out. You want to keep the videos for at least three months, probationary period, in case you need to hire someone else. And then we keep them another three months, which is basically just to make sure that person's vetted, and you've actually downloaded those videos if you needed to for like storing them and in sort of a personnel file or something. Six months keeps that lid on things and it's GDPR, it really forced us down that road. Joel (29m 30s): Gotcha. Gotcha. sfx (29m 31s): Ding, ding. Joel (29m 32s): Oh shit. It's the bell. Euan (29m 34s): I'm up? Joel (29m 34s): You know what that is. Euan, are you ready to face the firing squad? Euan (29m 38s): I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Joel (29m 41s): Put on your Willo William Wallace hat, here we go. Chad get 'em. Chad (29m 45s): You and I got to say integrations, no question, key and definitely should be the focus, I love that! Pricing with a freemium model definitely works because you get the clients hooked on the crack, then you focus on your sales strategy through partnerships. I love all of that. What I don't love, free forever. Willo talent.com would it's not even spelled right, but just Willo, right? 33% or 40% dude marketing is your jam. You should be nailing all of these things, right? So you got to clean that up, if there are old videos that are out there that are stating old statistics, that just don't work anymore, pull that shit down. Euan (30m 29s): Yeah. Chad (30m 30s): Right? And then also my recommendation start branding as Willo Talent ASAP because that's your .com. You can do the Willo.video and do a redirect or whatever you want, but you're a marketing guy, you know, better. Okay. I don't want people going to a kid's robot toothbrush when they should be coming to my fucking site, right? The key to this industry is not vision. It's not because you have a great idea. It's experience, it's connections and it's leadership. There are thousands of great concepts that are out there. I love, love video interviewing, but not many have all three of those important components. Chad (31m 16s): You've got a long way to go. I hope you get there. But at this point, man, I got to give you the guns. Euan (31m 24s): Ouch, ouch. Joel (31m 28s): Ouch. Ouch. All right. It's my turn. You and the sun might shine in Scotland today after all. Let's see. So, so the, the world changed in 2020. I'm not sure you got the news or not, but there was this little thing called a pandemic that made everybody go home, thus inspiring causing the work from home movement, which I think most of us agree is at least going to partially be part of behavior going forward. And as such video recruiting video interviewing, et cetera, is going to be a thing. Certainly there are companies that are way ahead of you. HireVue obviously I think some of the chat bots, Olivia's doing some interesting things with video, Vervo, I think down under, also is making some tremendous strides and those guys are really, they're ahead in terms of AI automation, all the things that I talked about that we didn't focus on a whole lot with the company. Joel (32m 27s): So I think you're in a you're a small fish in a big pond. I think the strategy in terms of going after small businesses is interesting. Although I think that's a really frustrating road to travel. Obviously offering it free if they like the product and then continue, maybe you can add features that they can add on that they'll pay for maybe it's automated scheduling or new features that you add. You can make money from them that way. So you're a small fish in a big pond, but you're also riding a wave that is probably the right wave. I think a major key for you is, is that A round that I think you're probably very actively seeking right now. Joel (33m 12s): And I got to think that with the money that's there and the growth you guys have had, and then the team, hopefully the team that you've built around, that sounds very sales heavy. I think you need to get a lot more geeks, although you may have, you just didn't focus on that. Get a lot more geeks in there to balance out your sales and marketing expertise. I think this could be a niche with small businesses or some other, maybe regional business. I don't know what your, what your definition of success is depending on your A round that will probably define what success is. So for me, there are a lot of unanswered questions, but I think the industry that you're in the wave that you're riding is the right one, you just have to put in some pieces to make that work. Joel (33m 56s): And I think that's ultimately going to come down to money and getting the right people on the team to make that happen. So for me, it's a little sunnier than Chad's, it's a golf clap. Euan (34m 8s): Ah, thank you. Joel (34m 8s): Which by the way was invented in Scotland. So apropos. Euan (34m 12s): That seems familiar to me. Well, I'm happy with your feedback Joel, but also Chad, I think your feedback is very valid and valuable. So thanks. Thanks a lot Chad. Joel (34m 24s): And lastly, what is your favorite Rod Stewart song? Euan (34m 27s): I'm too young to even really know who Rod Stewart is. Chad (34m 31s): Do you think I'm Sexy is always the answer. Joel (34m 35s): Maggie May is always the answer. Chad, another one in the books. Chad and Joel (34m 41s): We out, we out. OUTRO (34m 41s): This has been the Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese Podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today. That's www.chadcheese.com.

The recruiting industry behaves like a chess game sometimes. Pieces can move slowly or quickly, pieces get taken off the board and some get added over time. And like chess, the players who see many moves ahead tend to be the biggest winners. This week saw a lot of chess gamin’.and the most impressive move was made by Paradox, but Job.com and Compono made moves too. Another player in iCIMS filed for an IPO to help it reload. Additionally this week, Apple was in the news, along with Uber and Lyft and OnlyFans made its way into the podcast for its second straight week. Enjoy another masterpiece powered by Sovren, JobAdx, and Jobvite. TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community. 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 (20s): Oh yeah, the podcast that will never, ever get full FDA approval. What's up kiddies? It's your favorite global phenomenon, the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost, Joel "I can't get no satisfaction" Cheeseman. Chad (35s): This is Chad " I'm drinking a super Bock, and am relaxed as fuck" Sowash. Joel (40s): And on this week show iCIMS falls for its IPO, Paradox puts a round peg in a round hole and OnlyFans does a 180. Or is it a 69? Yeah, you'll just have to stay tuned. What's up man, you're in Portugal? You look more relaxed than I've ever seen. Chad (1m 0s): Oh dude. And we landed last night at 5:30 local time, a few blocks away from the ocean here in Farro City. So we're in city center and we threw down our fricking luggage, went to a restaurant and the restaurant owner just moved from Rome and it was amazing. Great food. Go figure it was Italian food. Great food. Here's the funny part. I gave a little more than a 20% tip because it was amazing food, amazing service and we have a friend for life now. She couldn't believe that we provided a 20% tip. Chad (1m 44s): So we're starting off. Well, we're starting off. Well, not to mention also this is, if you're going to come to Portugal, this is your place. This specific Airbnb is right across from an Irish bar. And last night at two o'clock, I got up to take a piss. And as soon as I opened up the door, the alley was full of drunks, singing Irish drinking songs. It was, it made me smile so big. I was like, this is where I belong. Joel (2m 19s): So I'm glad you're on the a US reputation repair tour there in Portugal. That's nice. Keep giving those 20% tips and making us look good. Chad (2m 27s): I'll do my best. Joel (2m 30s): I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous. Yeah. If you look at, if you're falling, Chad or are connected on Facebook, like the pictures are gonna be coming furiously and the dude just looks so happy. So I'm happy for him. Chad (2m 41s): Ah, Joel (2m 43s): Shout outs, Chad (2m 44s): Shout outs. Joel (2m 45s): So I'm going to bring it down a little bit. Shout out to Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones drummer. He passed away this week at 80. Chad (2m 54s): Ah man. Joel (2m 55s): If I had to put money on the first Rolling Stone to go, it probably would not have been him. Chad (2m 59s): Keith Richards. Joel (3m 0s): Yeah. Shout out to him and the Stones. What's your favorite Rolling Stones song, Chad? Chad (3m 4s): Yeah. I Can't Get No Satisfaction. I mean, that's just the way, the way it is, but, but I am right now. Joel (3m 10s): Yeah. I want to throw in She's a Rainbow. Quite a nice summery tune. If you're in the mood. Chad (3m 17s): Paint it Black, I mean those, I mean the sixties, the sixties, like Vietnam era songs, Rolling Stones just killed there. Charlie, I mean 80 years old, man, they were still touring. Joel (3m 30s): And they still are without him. Yeah. They're going to replace him. So they, they keep trucking, man. Holy Shit. Chad (3m 35s): Yeah. No. And that's what Charlie would have wanted. I can now I don't know the guy, but I can almost guarantee you that's exactly what he would have wanted. And what I want is I want to give out a shout out to all of the new evergreen podcasts that are joining the HR channel, get ready kids. Joel (3m 54s): There you go. Chad (3m 55s): Katrina Collier from the HR Partner Perspective podcast, Shelley and Serge with the Recruitment Flux podcast, Alynn and Tracy with Talent Rebelcast, and Katie and Jackie with Inclusive AF, AKA as fuck, dude. We're building this network with amazing and diverse voices and I am fucking stoked. Joel (4m 20s): Well, they don't have a podcast yet, but if the boys at Caroo who made popular the HIA, the van sine, you need a BJ, BJ meaning Better Job have a new video ad. I don't know if you've seen this, but they give a hat tip to one of my favorites Oasis panning their hit. Don't look back in anger with don't feedback in anger. So if you haven't seen that one, kids go to LinkedIn and search Caroo and check out their version of don't look back and anger. Chad (4m 50s): C A R O O. Those guys are funny as fuck. Joel (4m 57s): Yes, they are Chad. This may be the most important shout out I've ever made. Chad (5m 2s): Ought oh. Drum roll. Joel (5m 5s): LinkedIn has solved the DEI recruitment challenges. Chad (5m 10s): I feel sarcasm. I feel sarcasm. Joel (5m 12s): They've saved us. Chad. Their new feature on LinkedIn Recruiter allows hiring managers to hide names and photos of job candidates to ensure employment decisions are based on qualifications rather than race. Chad LinkedIn has solved the diversity recruiting problem. You must be excited! Chad (5m 35s): It's amazing that they can add a feature that is what like 5 to 10 years late? I think every major platform that's out there has the ability to what you call blind profiles and LinkedIn? Again, this is just another example of a huge player that is not innovative at all. I mean, not even to innovative, they, their search is shit. Their targeting is shit their.... I mean, pretty much their holistic product itself is shit. Now the network is awesome, but this is a shit product that is going to continue to make ass-loads of money. Joel (6m 14s): So you're in favor of it? sfx (6m 16s): Oh hell no. Chad (6m 18s): Yeah. I'm just glad they caught up. What I am not in favor of is Jonathan Duarte getting six fucking screws in his shoulder. So apparently he and his son were mountain biking in Colorado and he took a tumble and he's going to need a bunch of rehab again. Six say, I think it was six, well, six screws in his shoulder and I think this is time, Jonathan buddy listen closely. You need to take up competitive napping with Cheeseman, get in the fantasy, the fantasy napping league. Chad (6m 58s): And I think it's time, brother. Joel (6m 59s): Yeah. Time to give it up. And you know who else is time to give it up? This came out this week. The baby from Nirvana's iconic album cover album. Chad (7m 10s): Nevermind. Gimme a break. Joel (7m 11s): Nevermind, is suing them for child pornography. The lawsuit states that the guy has suffered lifelong damages with the defendants, having knowingly benefited from their participation in his quote, "commercial sexual exploitation." Now, if irony comes to mind here, the cover and for our younger listeners who may not know the album is of a baby swimming in a pool, chasing a dollar bill, that's on a hook. So 30 years later, the dude is still chasing money that's out of reach. And this is total lunacy. It's got to get kicked out from the courts, but it's worth a shout out just for it's irony. Chad (7m 56s): Yeah. Well, I, the only thing I can follow that up with is shout out to Pfizer getting FDA approval for the COVID vaccine kids. That's right. So it's time for the US to step it, the fuck up and get their shit together. And I'll give you a personal story because over the past few weeks I've been fretting coming to another country. I've gotten vaccinated, but still, I just wasn't sure if they were going to let us in. So I started checking Portugal because it was like, oh, wait a minute. If we get over there and they have low VAX rates, what's it going to be like, well, like earlier this month in August, they actually hit their goal of 70% with the first jab, which they, which they had set for September 1st. Chad (8m 45s): So they nailed it. I looked this morning, they are at 82% first jab vacs that is over 10% in the last few weeks. And the US is having to have Biden push employers to mandate. Then he's also mandating for military. And pretty much anybody who's receiving federal funds. I mean, we've got to do something to press this because apparently Americans are fucking idiots. Joel (9m 14s): Yeah. And shout out to all the companies that are coming, you know, forward requiring vaccinations or creating incentives or disincentives financially to not do. So. I know Delta came out this week, Delta airlines saying that if you don't get the jab, there's going to be additional $200 a month tagged on to your healthcare. So companies are stepping up and also shout out, shout out to nurses for a second. I mean, I don't think we talk about them enough. Chad (9m 42s): Yes. Joel (9m 42s): But good God. They went through a year of hell, hoping that, you know, the world would come to its senses, get vaccination and the world will go back to normal. We'll holy hell. If things, if the nightmare hasn't sort of restarted for them, if you know a nurse live with a nurse, whatever, give them a hug, give him a thank you. Like I can't, we can't shout out enough to nurses and the job that they do in light of sort of American stupidity and politicizing the vaccine and dealing with the new variant. Chad (10m 13s): Yes. We got to get this shit. Right. And one person who's getting shit right is Matt O'Donnell who's gift game is stepping up on Twitter. So big applause to Matt, appreciate the engagement, not to mention, trying to keep up on the gift game, man. That's awesome. Joel (10m 29s): Yep. And shout out to, to Airbnb, you mentioned Joe Biden. So Airbnb has stepped up and said that they will provide free housing for up to 20,000 Afghan refugees around the world. That's a lot of free housing. So shout out to Airbnb for stepping up for the Afghan refugees. Chad (10m 52s): Yeah. I, and as I sit here in an Airbnb and I will be in a Airbnb for the next five weeks, I will continue to give them my money because of purpose and getting behind human beings. To me, there's nothing better than a brand who says something and then does it, and then does more than what you expect. So shout out to Airbnb. No question. Joel (11m 16s): And if you are an Afghan refugee, Chad is currently out of his house for the next month. So hit him up, if you need a place to stay and you want to check out beautiful Columbus, Indiana. Chad (11m 28s): Everybody wants to do that. Everybody. Joel (11m 30s): Yeah. I've got a couple of company ones real quick. Joeveo, I got a shout out. They've earmarked more than 24 million to grow its business in India, where it recently signed contracts with some of that country's largest employers. KJ and company continue to rock it. And Wespire a Boston-based provider of employee engagement software, which is a hot topic on our show, raised 13 million in series B this week, shout out to those companies, keep doing what you do. And as always, if you haven't signed up for free shit on ChadCheese, head up chadcheese.com/free. We got t-shirts by Emissary. We got beer from AdZuna and we got whiskey by Sovren. Joel (12m 14s): And if you haven't left us a review on your podcast platform of choice, please do so good or bad. It's our oxygen. It feeds us into what you want and what you like and helps keep us on track. Chad (12m 27s): Love it! And last but not least shout out to Steven and Faith Rothberg. Stephen actually was just one of the winners of Sovren's bourbon, but they're posting pics from, I believe they're in Quebec. And I spotted Steven out having dinner with Faith and he was all dolled up. He had a Chad and Cheese t-shirt on. Joel (12m 51s): So did she? Didn't she? Chad (12m 52s): She probably did. Joel (12m 53s): Okay. She, I think she was too. Yeah, that's a that's nice. And Quebec, I have not been, but I hear it's beautiful. I hear it's the most European city in North America and we got some birthdays, Chad, you know how we end up in the shutout? So shout out to my wife, Christine Cheeseman, who celebrated a birthday on Tuesday, my 14 year old, soon to be 15 year old, Cole Cheesman celebrates a birthday. Our buddy, Aman Brar from Canvas/Jobvite celebrates a birthday. Joey Stubbs, Joe's Stubblebind wherever in the world, he is celebrates a birthday. Bradley Clark, one of our favorite Kannucks from RecText and funky cold Dina Modaris industry veteran, all celebrate birthdays this week. Chad (13m 39s): Love that. Joel (13m 40s): Shout out to all those folks and friends of the show. Chad (13m 43s): Little extra love goes out to Christine Cheeseman, for putting up with your ass. So yeah. Joel (13m 49s): No doubt. No doubt. Chad (13m 52s): Happy Birthday Christine! Topics! Okay. Kids it's time to clear the air real quick. We talked about job.com and we weren't sure because we got a factoring letter from one of their vendors. And generally, not always generally that sends up red flags one, one way or the other. So we, you know, we were thinking that the job.com might be having some issues. Well, apparently they were factoring in using that focus on acquisition. So future revenues against acquiring new companies, because they just acquired staffing firms, Fortis Healthcare Resources, and Endevis. Chad (14m 39s): So I reached out to Aaron when we're talking about the factoring and he said, no, we're going through acquisition. And I said, okay, when, when you go through acquisition and you get it, let me know. And we'll, we'll make sure that we'll put it out there, but he said, yeah, we factor our books, it's normal stuff. Just self-funding our acquisitions as much as possible. So overall, great move. I'm still not a hundred percent in on the go to market strategy that job.com has, but it doesn't matter they're buying shit. Joel (15m 10s): Well, it's good to know that when we're wrong, that it's nice people that were wrong about. It's good to know that the payday loan that we speculated was not the case. So Aaron, you guys keep trucking along and acquisitions have always been their strategy. So yeah, pull out the, pull out the checkbook and start buying some companies. So we'll continue to report on job.com. However, the bigger news to start off the week with is our friends at iCIMS finally did it. They've filed to raise $100 million in an IPO. Listeners know the company that provides talent management software to enterprise level companies, i.e. Joel (15m 52s): ones that pay over a hundred grand plus a year for the service TLNT, which will be the ticker symbol has grown through the pandemic, but has significant debt and some concerning metrics according to an analyst as of June 30th of 2021, iCIMS had 43 million in cash and 770 million in total liabilities, yikes. A free cash flow during the 12 months ended June 30th, 2021 was $7 million. They're seeking cash to pay down a lot of debt, which is sizable as a likely result of its private equity firm ownership. The primary risk to the company's outlook, according to one analyst is the ability for larger companies i.e. Joel (16m 37s): LinkedIn to bundle such software into their other offerings or Microsoft, thereby putting downward pricing pressure and potentially boxing iCIMS out in the process. So Chad, are you going to load up on some T L N T? Chad (16m 53s): I probably won't. I'll probably be loading up on Airbnb. We saw this happening. It just makes good business sense. And I mean, that's why they brought Steve in, right?That's why we're there doing these acquisitions. So yeah, I mean, overall, you know, it's something we knew was going to happen. I was surprised it didn't happen sooner to be quite Frank. Joel (17m 14s): Yeah. Yeah. So the dominoes are falling pretty consistently as we sort of predicted. So ZipRecruiter was the first domino. We talked pretty at length about Doximity last week, basically network specifically to physicians. And iCIMS I think we kind of believe would be the first ATS to go IPO in light of those and let the dominoes keep falling unless iCIMS really falls on its face. I mean, I think both of us expect, you know, the Jobvites, the Smart Recruiters, the Namely's of the world to eventually go IPO as well. I mean, my concern as an investor would be just, obviously the debt, which has probably specific to iCIMs, but ATS is, you know, they grow kind of slowly, they're kind of these big Titanic type companies. Joel (18m 10s): So one of the challenges that the analyst mentioned in an article was that, you know, the high growth that you would expect in a SAAS business, they're just a little bit short of that. So to me, it's like, you know, money to pay down debt is great, but I think they got to start making some, some big acquisitions. And iCIMS, hasn't been shy from making big moves, like the ones they did with, you know, Techs Recruiter or opening.io. But if they're going to grow, you know, to me, these ATS is really have to make moves and acquisitions, which I think is what we're seeing because they grow so slow because, well, they're so expensive. And the enterprise level companies are kind of few and far between, so they tend to say. Chad (18m 54s): I think you're going to have to, for them to be able to be more global and much, you know, on the enterprise side of the house, they're going to have to do more acquisitions like they did with Easy Recru. It's gotta be something that is a foreign. It just makes sense because it's already just add water from a technology language and portfolio standpoint. So, you know, I think it's smart for them to grow through acquisition. But one thing you have to remember is, you know, as you look at portfolios or at least I look at mine, you've got to have some stability in there, right? You can't always have these high growth, high risks types of stocks. Chad (19m 35s): And I wouldn't see iCIMS as that type of company. I just wouldn't and that's, and that's not a bad thing. Joel (19m 40s): Yeah. I mean, they may just be a, you know, grow a few percent a year, pay out a dividend to investors, and it's just sort of a nice safe stock. I also think, and we talked about this or touched on it with, with sort of the, the Vonq stuff with better monetizing. I think it was Smart Recruiters or Greenhouse that they partnered with. So that, I mean, most of these ATSs are not profiting from their marketplaces. And at some point that's going to be an issue for these public companies. So I wouldn't be surprised to see iCIMs either starting to take a share of profits from companies in our marketplace or requiring, you know, more fees to play in the marketplace. Joel (20m 20s): So that'll be interesting. And something to watch. Chad (20m 22s): If you're In the marketplace yourself, I don't think it should be on iCIMS to bring you an idea. That's a revenue share opportunity. It should be your job to bring them the go-to business, you know, opportunity. Because again, the thing that you're looking for as a smaller organization, is you're looking for distribution into a much larger portfolio of clients. So overall, we're talking about Vonq. What Vonq is doing incredibly smart is they have a huge total addressable market from recruitment marketing, right? And they know that let's say for instance, an applicant tracking system usually is not going to get any of that revenue whatsoever. Chad (21m 7s): So what they do is they start the opportunity of channeling revenues into iCIMS, through tapping into recruitment marketing, to all of iCIMS clients, right? And again, this is something, this is something that they could do. They're not, I don't believe they're currently doing, especially with Vonq, but I know that organizations like that need to be looking at how do you leverage and or white label what you do to be able to first and foremost, not have to create a huge sales operation, but use your partners to be able to juice your revenues. Joel (21m 45s): As long as they don't take a cue from WeWork and start buying wave companies. I think though, I think they'll be okay. Well, speaking of growth companies, don't call it a chat bot, Chad conversational AI solution. Paradox said it will require the mobile first assessment platform, Tradify who, by the way, is home of one of our Pappy's winners from last year. Chad (22m 6s): That's right! Joel (22m 6s): Shout out to her Tradify delivers visual based assessments that can be completed in less than two minutes terms were not disclosed. Tradify is already integrated into Paradox and Paradox CEO Aaron Maita said the deal was spurred by customer demand. This one seems to make a little too much sense to me, Chad, what say you? Chad (22m 30s): So Whisper numbers, 40 million. Look at the market. Where's the biggest opportunity for vendors? Biggest, quick hit opportunity for vendors right now it's high volume. And to be able to shift to more of an hourly type of model, you start to encompass the opportunity to work with humongous organizations. I don't know, like McDonald's who they already work with, in bigger, you know, restaurant corporations and anything that's high turnover. It just makes a hell of a lot of sense. Now there's a lot of transaction that goes on here. That's fine. Joel (23m 5s): But if you're doing large bulk of transaction and you're doing it in a SAAS model, I mean, you can charge a hell of a lot of dollars for enterprise. So the signal to anyone in the hourly hiring space is you're going to get pushed out unless you get your shit together. Because Adam Godson, who's the chief product officer and former CLO talent wizard and tech God, I guess over there, he's done this for years. He's actually pulled together platforms with duct tape and baling wire from a bunch of different vendors that he had to work right now. Joel (23m 46s): He is in charge of that product. So it's not about duct tape and baling wire. It's what he can focus on and build. So what he did before was amazing, outstanding, and better than anybody else did in the market for the most part. And that's back in 2016, '17, and '18. What he can do with Paradox on the high volume side of the house, I think is amazing. The big question here is can they stay focused on high volume? Because yes, they have money and they're getting, you know, some, some, some very good traction, but can they stay focused on high volume? Because if they take their eye off the ball, they could really fuck this up. Joel (24m 28s): Yeah. I just love it when you give Adam a nice tongue bath. That was nice. Chad (24m 32s): Love that guy. Joel (24m 33s): A couple of things that stood out to me first, I thought was when I look at Tradify as product, I think about Instagram. Like, I feel like these guys have really figured that like the visual and mobile thing out and also the sort of quick assessment test or the pre-screen. And I always think about like Jobber Monster bot. Chad (24m 56s): Jesus Joel (24m 56s): Many moons ago, who was going to be the Instagram for job search, which they never really were. So I think Tradify has sort of nailed that component. And my first thought was, when we see so many acquisitions in this space, that sort of, kind of maybe don't make that much sense. I mean, they kind of do, but not really. We think like, well, it must've been on the clearance rack, so they picked it up. This one to me, made like perfect sense because this sort of like quick visual mobile first, you know, pre-screening thing, assessment test should be something that a Paradox should have in their arsenal. So that made perfect sense versus, you know, building it. 40 million is a pretty big price tag and I want to say Paradox has raised just a little bit north of that. Joel (25m 42s): So unless they are incredibly profitable, they've either got money in the kitty that's there and they haven't announced it yet, or they will be soon, but that's a chunk of money. Melissa was all shares or we'll pay over the next 50 years or something. So that kind of struck me as interesting as well. I think Paradox continues to be the last man standing, the apex predator in this conversational AI technology. And I keep thinking about, you know, how we we've speculated, you know, the Seekouts of the world, these guys being, you know, a platform similar to an ATS and being like the new ATSs, and I think this is one more step toward being that platform. Joel (26m 25s): And it's incredibly interesting and they also add some really smart people to the Paradox team that's gonna pay, you know, tons of dividends to the product. So I have nothing bad to say about this and I think it forebodes very well for them. And it's something to really keep, keep eye out on in the future. Chad (26m 44s): This will be, well, this is a shot across Alexander Mann solutions bow with their product Hourly because Tradify is integrated with Hourly. So what happened here is a company, Paradox is taking a piece of tech off the chess board, right? I don't think they're going to pull Tradify from Hourly. Although if you think about it, if one of your competitors is paying you to utilize your now new service, right. What does that do other than continue to bolster you? This is like back in the day when Monster was paying Indeed for traffic, right? So it's incredibly smart. And this isn't the first time that we're going to be talking about it, to watch an organization like Paradox, pull a player off the board. Chad (27m 32s): And if you think about it once again, talking about from an applicant tracking system, I really it's, I think it's more evolved than that. If I can actually engage a candidate, I can take them through the steps, through, you know, chat, messenger, whatever it is, and get you into an interview or even interviewed in under 10 minutes. Fuck man. That's that is the game changer. Joel (27m 57s): Yeah. Yeah. You know, we probably don't talk much about our, talk enough about the, the high school level dynamics that come into play in our industry. But I can tell you Hourly is going to hate putting money in Paradoxes pocket by having Tradify beyond their platform. So it'll be interesting to see what happens and, and in contrast, I'm sure Paradox, enjoys profiting from Hourly as well. So it is a lot like high school and our industry. Sometimes we don't talk much about that, but it's a thing. Chad (28m 28s): It's a kick in the ass and that's good for the entire industry. Joel (28m 32s): Sure, sure. And by the way, Zaur who we don't talk about much, seems to be fading quickly from the scene. And they've lost a few executives. Chad (28m 42s): Aida where yet what's going on out there? Joel (28m 45s): Aida hit us up. Well, let's go to two companies I've never heard of, but there was another acquisition in this point, maybe you have, I don't know. idibu HR software company Compono has announced the acquisition of candidate sourcing platform idibu for an undisclosed amount, the acquisition we'll see idibu candidate sourcing pipeline and insight technology integrated into the Compono HR tech platform, specifically the idibu platform is used to cross post positions to major job boards and integrate into CRM systems, saving clients, time and money as part of the acquisition, the idibu brand and all its staff will continue to operate as usual founded in 2007, idibu has over 300 clients and two offices in the UK and Spain. Joel (29m 39s): The acquisition of idibu by Compono enable the company to expand its current products into Europe while broadening, broadening idibu reach into Asia. According to Crunchbase, idibu was founded in 2007 and raised no VC capital LinkedIn says, says they employ about 17 people. Any thoughts on this one? Chad? Chad (30m 2s): Yeah. 2007 and 300 clients. That to me is a warning signal. Yeah. That's a warning signal. I mean, it's right. Yeah. I've heard idibu before, but it's very sparse. They are, I guess you could say a very small, broad bean. So it's, it's just job posting distribution, I think, to be quite Frank, you know, because they didn't take any cash. Maybe they got a good payout, but overall you have to make the decision to go after big funding to be able to supercharge or go after that acquisition. Right? And get targeted to be acquired. So yeah, I think it was a smart move on both sides. Chad (30m 46s): Compo themselves, I don't like their go to market strategy because they are SMB and enterprise and we always see that doesn't work out. But overall, you know, adding this to their portfolio is, I don't think it's hurtful. I don't think it's going to send them over the edge either into the enterprise oblivion. Joel (31m 7s): No, there probably wasn't a whole lot of risk in this. And I, you know, part of me when I see these stories, you know, the old days of acquisitions and, you know, like the old strategy of growing into new markets was really challenging because it was mostly by job boards or ATSs right? But when you have technology, it's much easier to go into other markets. However, you know, from our European show, which you haven't, if you haven't tuned into that, I encourage you to do so because it's been a real education for me. And I think for you as well, but growing into new markets, there's a lot of legal issues, there's a lot of just like, you know, there's a ton of issues. Chad (31m 46s): Basic language, shit. Joel (31m 47s): So, yeah, so what's what struck me in this deal was that you've got an Asian company, an APEC company and a European company and if one company wants to get some traction into a new market, a new continent, the acquisition play is a one effective way to do that. So I think that probably had a lot of underlying reasons for a Compono to make this move and gets them into. Let's be honest, are a big market in Europe and a way to grow. Right? Chad (32m 18s): Well, we were just talking about the revenue opportunity for recruitment marketing, that most applicant tracking systems and other, you know, recruitment tech, they don't get to, they don't get to enjoy. Now Compono will get to enjoy. The big focus for them is trying to drive this new segments because there's probably more of an upside from the recruitment dollars spend, recruitment marketing dollar spent every year then they will actually see or have opportunity in, on the non recruitment marketing Tech. Joel (32m 49s): No doubt. So speaking of tech, you shredded something from our friends at ThisWay Global what's going on with them? Chad (32m 57s): Yeah. Big announcement for them. They were actually accepted into Google startup accelerator. These accelerator programs in itself, just the name of Google. It's like that stamp of validity, right? It'll help them stay, upscale the team, build a brand, raise funds. I mean, Google actually provides resources to these startups to be able to help them focus and you know, do business right. Now we all know Google isn't amazing in the recruitment space, although having their brand behind them is not a bad thing. Chad (33m 36s): I thought that this was the very first company in the recruiting space that Google had in the accelerator program. I was wrong. Thanks, George LaRoc for pointing out Kanarys, who has actually been on the show as well. They were in this program as well. So there you go. Joel (33m 53s): These Guys are just sort of quietly, methodically building a really great product. They partner with Salesforce again, sort of quietly. They told us about it and we did a show on that, but they continued to just really do the right things and whereas they're not as flashy as an Eightfold or raising, you know, those kinds of funds. I think that these guys are doing it right. I think they're gonna have a nice payday in the near future and Google recognizing what they're doing and being willing to help them out. I think only sort of solidifies the point that ThisWay Global is worth is worth watching. You know, again, If they focus and they can actually, they can get more white labeling partnerships together, much like Salesforce. Joel (34m 41s): I think they can knock it out of the park. Chad (34m 43s): Well, let's take a quick break and we'll talk a little bit of Apple, Uber, Lyft, and others. Joel (34m 49s): All right, Chad, your favorite, your favorite company after Amazon, Apple. This is from the verge this week. Apple insists it does not have a problem with pay inequality. Skeptical Apple employees have been trying to verify that claim by sending out informal surveys on how much people make, particularly as it relates to women and underrepresented minorities. But the company has shut down three of those surveys, citing stringent rules on how employees can collect data. Now, multiple labor lawyers tell the Verge, the company may be violating worker protections. The surveys can be considered a form of labor organizing under US law employees have the right to discuss pay. Joel (35m 36s): Recently, employees tried to start a pay equity survey, but we're told to take it down because it included a question on gender. When they created a new survey without the gender question, Apple allegedly said it had to be shut down because it was hosted on the company's corporate box account. Oh Chad, what does Apple have to hide? Chad (36m 1s): I believe Apple has a problem. So companies in the UK are required to publish information about gender pay gaps. Apparently Apple's report on mean, and median gender pay gap for employees was 12% in favor of men, which is 5% below the overall gender pay gap in the UK. So they are seeing that they're having issues where they have to be transparent right now. They're saying, no, we want to be transparent. No you don't. This is total bullshit. This is Apple playing an HR game, right? There's no reason why that we do self-identification all the time within organizations to be able to better understand what our workforce composition is. Chad (36m 44s): We just don't make the information required. If somebody is going to do a pay transparency survey, you obviously should be able to get as much information as possible. Just don't require the information. Right. And then disclude anything that doesn't have that data. Okay. In the US we are going to have to by law, make this a requirement. And whether it starts with, they know a contractors and government contractors who take money, millions or billions of dollars from the federal government, it doesn't matter, but we're going to have to mandate this to actually make them the needle move because companies like Apple are going to continue to play these bullshit games. Joel (37m 29s): Yeah. Yeah. Look, Apple is a 40 year company. They have pretty loyal employees from what I understand. There's a wide variety of pay and salaries at this company that are longstanding. And knowing that it, you know, if they have to make good on, on pay equity and equality, it's going to cost them a lot of money and that's going to hit the share price of the company. And so to the degree that they can stifle this information, getting out, they're going to do it. It's not right, but I understand it. Ultimately, it's going to come out. What's really interesting to me is the union perspective on this. Joel (38m 9s): And if the perspective is they're hindering us law and the, you know, ability for people to get together, you know, create unions, I think is a really interesting question. And I think this goes back to what we've talked about with Google's union and frankly, probably being the most successful union in the last 10 years, is Google. So if you're sitting there in Silicon Valley and you're working at Apple, and you see Google's, you know, Google's union being really successful, well, hell we should unionize too. So, you know, I suspect that that, whatever Google's facing is gonna hit Apple. It's going to hit Facebook. Joel (38m 49s): It's going to hit everybody. And this issue is going to come to light and Apple's gonna have to do good on it, make good on it. And it's going to cost them a lot of money and hit their stock. But they're just, they're just putting off the inevitable, in my opinion. Chad (39m 2s): Which is what I don't understand, because if you look at what we just talking about with Airbnb, if you take the right purpose driven edge at this, and you focus on not just the optics, but doing what's right for the people, yes. You're going to take, you're probably going to take a hit on the stock right out of the gate, but that is going to be short term. What you should care about is long-term. And long-term means that you keep the best people who can help you build the best product. This kind of bullshit is going to drive those individuals to other organizations, whether it's Google or not. So I think this is short-term bullshit thinking from a bunch of bitches who need to get their shit in fuckin' play. Joel (39m 42s): And not that you would know this check because you wouldn't buy an iPhone if you know, your wife's life depended on it, but they usually release a new phone this time of year. And from a PR perspective, this story couldn't be hitting at a worst time. So to your point, get the shit cleared up, release the new shit just in time for Christmas. And, you know, make people forget the hit to the stock price. Chad (40m 7s): Come on Apple. Joel (40m 8s): Speaking of hits to stock prices. And who knows what else? Prop 22 is back in the news. Uber took a big hit this weekend, or last weekend after a state judge ruled against a ballot proposition, which would have allowed the companies to continue classifying drivers as independent contractors. Prop 22 passed by a wide margin in this state when most people voted in favor of it in last year's November elections. Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and Door Dash poured in $220 million into campaigning for prop 22 in order to, in order to overturn AB five and the move clearly worked in the rulings. If the ruling stands a gig companies like Uber and Lyft may have to spend hundreds of millions paying for healthcare and other additional benefits for their drivers. Joel (40m 55s): At the moment though, prop 22 is still in effect and good companies are already planning to appeal. So Chad, who you got in this epic battle? Chad (41m 5s): So the judge actually wrote the prop 22 appears only to protect the economic interest of the network companies, having a dividend unionized workforce, which is not a stated goal of the legislation. So it's, it seems like a technicality overall. I could be wrong, but for me, the people have to win over the company period, because this is about ensuring that our people are protected and they have benefits. The hardest for me to understand this, you know, if we're a land of the free, then why can't we allow the people to choose whether they want to be an FTE or a gig worker? Chad (41m 47s): Take it out of the hands of the government, take it out of the hands of the company and actually say, look, you have a choice. And obviously if we discriminate against you for that choice, then obviously, you know, we can, we can be taken to court as well, but you know, some people want side hustles and they already have a full-time job and they have benefits. So this doesn't make any sense for them while others need the benefits. So I just, for me, I just don't understand why this is so fucking hard? Are we going to have to enforce this to ensure that there is no discrimination? Yes. Can we do it? Of course we can. Joel (42m 24s): Yeah. Yeah. I'm impressed to hear you say that let the people choose and let them decide whether they want to have a side hustle. Now, obviously a company isn't gonna offer full-time employment, probably if they don't have to. What I think would be interesting is if, you know, if, if Lyft wanted to appeal to a specific kind of driver and lure them away from Uber, it would be to give health benefits and the benefits of full-time employment. And to me, it's more of a recruiting strategy that they're missing than anything else, because from everything we hear, they're having a hard time getting drivers and having drivers, you know, in any kind of scale. Joel (43m 6s): So to me, that's, that's something that I would like to see, but ultimately PR specifically, particularly in California, I tend to think that eventually these guys are gonna have to get full time employment benefits to drivers, and they've threatened to leave California, which I don't think they're gonna do. They're gonna have to pay up and what, you know, let's just figure out what other blue states, I guess, are going to start implementing this, the Washingtons of the world, the Oregon's it's going to happen. But I think that when you, when you think about this and other industries and I think about trucking, so there's a great podcast, I think on Planet Money, which I think we both listened to where they talk about going to driving school for, for trucks. Joel (43m 47s): And then after you get done with your education, you get your licenses. They say, okay, do you want to be a full-time employee? Or do you want to be an independent business? Right. And they really push you to that. And then you end up being your own business and they give you an LLC and dah, dah, dah. So I think that the rat, the loop in this, that they get around it is that if they do lose the full-time employment court case, that they're going to just do the trucking route and make all these people, their own businesses and just pay them, pay them that way. Chad (44m 18s): Yeah. Again, I think it should be a choice of the people, but I think that's going to have to be something that's regulated. So the government actually says, and there's lines that are out there drawn in the sand tht say, look, company A, employer A you don't have an opportunity to be able to classify them yourself. Now back to the trucking issue, that's an education process and problem. I think those truckers and I could be wrong they did become their own business, but they could sell that truck that they bought. They could, you know, get out of hock for all that and still go drive for somebody else. Chad (44m 58s): So there's still a light at the end of the tunnel for them, but we definitely do have to have safeguards in place to ensure that kind of shit doesn't happen. Joel (45m 5s): Just provide universal healthcare America. And we'll, we'll solve a lot of these problems. Chad (45m 9s): Come the fuck on. Joel (45m 11s): We'll speaking of side hustles, let's take a quick break and talk about OnlyFans. Chad, this is the second week in a row that we've ended the show with OnlyFans. I don't know what that says about us or our listeners, but you may remember Allie Rae who clear $65 to 75K a month. Chad (45m 30s): How can you forget about her? Joel (45m 31s): The platform OnlyFans as a former nurse anyway, late, late, last week after we recorded only fans announced it was going to clean up its act and would restrict sexual content, which is a little like your local liquor store announcing it's only serving soft drinks. They did this sighting pressure from banks and payment companies like MasterCard. However, the company did an about face saying they received assurances from banking partners that they will allow the platform to continue allowing sexually explicit content. Chad (46m 8s): Yeah. Joel (46m 10s): Chad, with more than 130 million users, 2 million content creators and a reported 150 million in free cash flow last year. I think the bankers made a right decision. Don't you? Chad (46m 23s): Yeah, no question. Not to mention for the safety of sex workers. I mean that, that's something that I think is incredibly important. And then we found during COVID during the last, you know, 18 months, 24 months, that there's an opportunity for individuals to make possibly more than what they made before at whatever sex work job they did before, whether they were stripping or whatever it was right? But giving those individuals an opportunity to have more of a safe place, and then also create content that they continue to, you know, receive revenues off of. I mean, and again, not that not to sound pedestrian or anything, but if you're up on stage doing a dance, your revenue opportunity is only there when you're in the club, right. Chad (47m 9s): When you're on OnlyFans and you're creating content, whatever that content is, people can consume that content whenever. And we're talking about content that might've been there for months, right? And you can still be getting revenue off of that content, which is why Allie Ray obviously is getting anywhere from 65 to $70,000 per month because she's creating that library. And obviously, you know, that that draw. Joel (47m 36s): Chad, there's a hole here that needs to be filled. And if it's not OnlyFans, it's going to be someone else, you remember Tumbler many years ago said they were going to go clean. Well no one's heard of Tumbler since then OnlyFans same thing if they go clean, someone else's is going to pop up and here we go. So if not OnlyFans, it's going to be somebody else. This is something apparently in our human nature, that's going to happen and applause to OnlyFans for, you know, sticking with it, doing the 180 and continuing to provide, quote, unquote "creators", a place to create. Joel (48m 15s): God bless OnlyFans. Chad (48m 18s): Amen. Joel (48m 18s): And with that, Chad, you enjoy Portugal. You enjoy your weekend. We'll talk to you next week. Chad and Joel (48m 24s): And we out, we out. OUTRO (49m 19s): 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.