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Little known fact: "Interview Mocha" was born in a coffee shop. Just one of the pearls of wisdom you're going to get from listening to Interview Mocha on this month's Firing Squad. Assessment tests are big business, and this company is throwing out words like "unicorn." Slow ya' roll, players, Chad & Cheese will be the judge on that. Does this startup have what it takes to survive The Squad? Listen to find out on this PandoLogic exclusive. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Chad (0s): Damn Programmatic is hot. Joel (2s): Yeah, it is hot, dude. Pass me a cold PBR. Would you? Chad (7s): Okay. Number one, I wasn't talking about the temperature and number two PBR is a shitty beer time to upgrade to an IPA. Joel (16s): Okay. My bad guessing you were talking about Programmatic Job Advertising being hot. Yeah. That shit is everywhere and all the kids are doing it. Chad (25s): I know man, but there's only one company that's been doing it since 2007. Damn 2007. Hey man, what wife were you on? In 2007? I was on number one. We don't talk about her focus, dude. I'm talking about Pando IQ from our friends at Pandologic, pando IQs, programmatic recruitment advertising platform helps employers source talent faster and more efficiently than ever thanks to predictive algorithms, machine learning and AI Buzzword, overdose alert. Chad (58s): Yeah. Pando was on the cutting edge of programmatic while being deeply rooted in the recruitment industry. Pando IQ provides an end to end Programmatic Job Advertising Platform that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any way, social spending to maximize the ROI on your recruitment spend And their AI enabled algorithms use over 48 job attributes and more than 200 billion historical job performance data points to predict the optimal job advertising campaign! Chad (1m 33s): The machine does all that shit. Joel (1m 34s): That shit sounds expensive. Chad (1m 36s): Think again. Cheesman. Pando IQ provides an end to end job advertising solution that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any wasteful spending. Joel (1m 47s): Sold. How do I get started? Chad (1m 50s): Go to Pandologic.com to request a demo and tell him Chad and cheese set yet. Joel (1m 56s): Ooooo, they have a chat bot too, that we can talk to Chad (1m 60s): Gooood kill me now. Intro (2m 1s): Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, 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 taken into a whole other level. Joel (2m 24s): Oh yeah. I've been in quarantine for two months and I've got a itchy trigger finger to say the least Chad, how are you doing today? Chad (2m 33s): My whole body is tingling right now, man. Joel (2m 38s): And how appropriate that the company we're we're putting against the squad today is, is Interview Mocha. Cause I've had about eight mochas this morning and I'm ready to rock a pleasure to introduce Amit Mishra, founder and CEO of, as I said, Interview Mocha Welcome to Firing Squad. Chad (2m 59s): You're a brave man. Amit (3m 1s): Yeah. Thanks Joel. Thanks Chad. Joel (3m 5s): Calling in from India where they take their stay at home orders very seriously. Chad (3m 9s): That's right, man. If you go outside, you're going to get caned. Joel (3m 12s): Literally at squats they're doing in the streets. Chad (3m 15s): I'm glad they're not doing that here in Indiana because I couldn't get my runs in and my dogs wouldn't get walked. Joel (3m 21s): Americans would revolt if they were forced to do squats. No doubt about that. Yeah. Chad (3m 25s): For anything that has to do with putting down their big gulp God bless America. God bless America. So Amit tell us a little bit like a tweet about yourself. Chad will read the rules and we'll get into the game. Amit (3m 40s): I am competing engineer in India and then with IBM software lab for a while. And then, Danny is back opted to be an entrepreneur, started my journey with an IT services company first because in days outsourcing venture like country landed for five years along with Sujit Karpe who is the internal council and exited it almost five years back and started Interview Mocha a victim problem that we faced while we were running that first IT services venture Joel (4m 16s): You have a dog sleeping in the room with you. It's so bizarre. Chad (4m 18s): I can hear snoring in the background. Joel (4m 23s): Falling asleep on the squad and that's just inappropriate. Amit (4m 28s): I just make sure talk to you. Okay? Chad (4m 34s): Okay. No, leave it there. It's great for background. I love it. Okay. Admit, let me go over the format of firing squad for you and all of those listeners out there who have never listened to firing squad. You will have two minutes to pitch Interview Mocha. At the end of two minutes, you will hear the bell then Joel and I will hit you with rapid fire Q and A. If your answers start rambling, Joel's going to hit you with the crickets, the bell or some type of sound effect. Chad (5m 6s): That's a signal to you to tighten up your game. At the end of Q and a, you're going to receive a grade. What you're hoping for is a big applause. Time to haul in that cash baby. Joel (5m 20s): That's right. Open up a new bank account for that money, the golf clap it's it's okay, but you can definitely do better. That's what she said on your first date or the firing squad. You don't want to pack it in! Close up shop. Dust off the drawing board because this one just isn't going anywhere so that my friend is firing squad. Are you ready to go Amit? Amit (5m 50s): yes. I'm ready. Joel (5m 52s): Two minutes starting. So first Ivan talk about Amit (5m 58s): The problem we are solving within Interview Mocha. Now the scenario is because of information and mobile revolution, the skill metrics of interval as changes. Example take the two big retail companies of US. One is a Walmart. One is Amazon. If you see the old age Walmart against the new age, Amazon serving the same purpose. But if you see the schematics of these two organizations, fundamentally different. Amit (6m 29s): banking is no more a banking. It runs like a technology company running a banking business. So you can imagine cashier job is vanishing and it is getting assaulted by ATMs and online banking. If you see that tolls and parkways, there is no human there to tender change or get the gate open. It's been replaced by RFID, CC, CCTV and other technologies. So what I'm trying to say here is the world is going digital. Amit (7m 1s): 30% of the skills of these organizations have changed already is. And in next 10 years, 65% of the skills will be new. So next gen will work on the skills that don't exist today. As for all the researchers, whether it's Gardner, whether it's Forbes, cap, Gemini, anybody they're saying that the jobs that will be there after 10 years are not existing today. And then, and like as world is changing drastically towards digital, many companies are trying to solve to make sure that skill is provided in time. Amit (7m 39s): Companies like Pluralsight Lynda is. And what do you mean getting it crowdsource for training, but there is no player for skill assessment in this state. Joel (7m 51s): And we're at the end of our 10 minutes, I met just for your sake, where can they find out more about you when they're investigating? Okay. This is where you say interview mocha.com. Anyway, let's talk about the name real quick. How did you come up with Interview Mocha? Is there any connection to what you guys actually do or is it just a cute name? Amit (8m 11s): Sujit and me were sitting in a Sujit, the cofounder and me were sitting in a cafe having a mocha coffee and we were trying to solve the interview problem that time. So interview and we were having mocha coffee, enjoy mocha. Joel (8m 26s): Excellent. Now tell me real quickly about your employee base. Have you guys taken money? What does that currently look like? And how long have you guys been in business? Amit (8m 35s): So we are in business from last five years. We are a 50 people team in India, mostly bootstrap with resident, resident, Angela around assembly, which are, which we are yet to announce with global clientele, especially from us. Joel (8m 53s): So you're making an announcement. Amit (8m 54s): We will be an announcement in the next couple of weeks. Okay. Yeah, he's teasing. Chad (9m 0s): So you're talking about a US client base today. You've been in business for five years today. What percentage of your client base is from the United States versus a UK India, et cetera. Amit (9m 14s): So 60% is from United States, 30% from Euro. And so this tissue and 10% from India. Okay. Chad (9m 23s): So what's the biggest reason to hiring companies should change to interview mocha. Are you seeing that most companies don't have this tech in place, so it's really just you going into educate them or are you trying to displace another piece of technology? Amit (9m 39s): So basically digital transformation is happening across the globe in all the enterprises and they don't have any reliable player to provide the skill assessment for that and Interview Mocha, being the first company, which is Uber of skill assessment. So what I mean by Uber skill assessment, we have the only company in crowdsourcing, this questions and how created 2000 plus skills, which helps every organization transform digitally with talent acquisition or talent management. Chad (10m 8s): Okay. Amit (10m 9s): So in your career, your experience, have you ever been in this industry because it looks like from your LinkedIn, that this is your first foray into recruiting technology? Recruiting technology is the first, but as an owner of the business, IT services, I have seen the problems of hiring managers. Okay. And that's what our core customer is. Chad (10m 33s): Okay. So you've, you've not been in this industry, but you've seen, I mean, I've been a hiring manager before and there are other hiring managers that are out there obviously, but that doesn't mean that they've actually been in the recruiting industry. They're just kind of like a cog in recruiting. So have you actually been in a company who's focused on recruitment technology in the past? Amit (10m 54s): No, not at all. Joel (10m 55s): Amit, I'm curious about your marketing strategy. It looks like you guys have quite a few integrations. Congratulations on that. Cause we always support that initiative, but I have have integrations been the primary way that you've marketed the company? What other marketing strategies are you implementing in the company? Amit (11m 13s): So when we started inbound marketing, especially SEO was our primary attraction channel. And we are leading in three links in almost 2000 plus relevant viewers already. Apart from that, we are a Microsoft partner understanding partner. And through these bigger companies, we go to enterprises to partner gender marketing. And apart from that, we have integration with all the leading applicant tracking systems and a LMS learning management system through which we market our solution. Joel (11m 45s): And curious about your anti-biased product. This is one of Chad's favorite topics. Talk about the product and how it sort puts forward, the anti bias in recruiting. Amit (11m 56s): Okay, perfect. So like first of all, our product has different use cases. I will talk about use cases and then we come to the buyers. Okay. We have recruitment as a use case that span across university recruiting, entry-level recruitment, lateral recruitment, or coding recruitment and in talent management or learning and development. We are digital transformation, up-skilling and re-skilling as the primary channel because our questions are UC compliance, which is equal employment opportunity, complaint questions. Amit (12m 26s): It is weighted and calibrated well and full of candidates. The pool of employees are just on the similar set of complexities of question. So it removes all the biases that happens in the interview process and makes a diverse team, a reality, which is possible. Apart from that, we have a very, I would say, a solid tech for online proctoring, video property, image proctoring, which makes sure that there was no unfair means used or micro-services used while giving that exam in a remote manner. Chad (13m 3s): So it is that testing or that screening of validated testing because you're talking about the EOC. So this is governmental and obviously they have a regulations that they will enforce on an organization. And as soon as you bring in those letters, that acronym of EEOC, or OFCCP, the hair starts to stand up on talent acquisition professionals, the back of their neck. So do you have a validated testing and or screening? Amit (13m 32s): So for other guidelines, there is a disc publisher consortium in U S called as ATP association of this publisher in US who have given us as the top five, you know, where does interesting in US down certain guidelines, which unit to how in your question that should not like conflict and judge a person based on his gender, his ethnicity and other parameters. We do follow all of them. And we have some tools which checks is there a QR audit term that doesn't comply with USI is in our system. Amit (14m 10s): And we check and follow all the guidelines given by UC and ATB association of test publisher. After that we calibrate because we provide mostly technical tests with customers for a particular population. US population wanting to see like it is calibrated to label sections. Chad (14m 26s): okay, gotcha. So back to back to the, the question and or topic of integration integration is a very loose term. It, it always has been, it can mean a sloppy handoff of data, a link in an applicant tracking system that launches a new browser or on the more helpful side, the platform is integrated the applicant tracking System, user interface with the ATS look and feel. Chad (14m 57s): Which ATS platforms are you integrated with? With that last example, where do you tightly integrate with the applicant tracking system or core system UI? Joel (15m 8s): Sounds like you're asking if he's loose and sloppy. Chad (15m 11s): It could be Amit (15m 12s): We are deeply integrated with a greenhouse eight years. iSeem eight years, a lever, eight years, and we are integrated with Taleo for the standard edition apart from smartly group of workable under the, and we have a deep integration. So it's a one big integration of which makes our UI alible into their workflow, into their UI properly. So it's not a shallow integration. It's a deep integration, which has been done in eight years. This is one secret. Amit (15m 42s): We have use cases like have you heard of a company called a chegg Chegg? Yup. Yup. So we are integrated with Chegg even. So check has an internship model and we are a part of chegg callers chegg assessments. So to the one, it looks like it's check assessment, which is connecting the students to the jobs and in backend it's internal mortgage assessment, which actually quantify the skill of those candidates. So when I say integration, which is published on our website, it's a different division and we are really put effort. Amit (16m 12s): We have a team event, which makes if any new APS come up, we upgraded. Chad (16m 20s): What percentage of deals are actually coming from partnerships as opposed to a direct outreach? Amit (16m 29s): So, basically because we have not marketed and marketed it together with eight years, the use case typically happens that customer comes to us and they buy us. And then they integrate because they have been using that. It is so us also . So then they integrate. So we don't get a lot of customers flowing from these ideas, but we get customers who are using them. And then they integrate, Joel (16m 55s): I think I heard a rotary phone ring a little while ago, which gave me a flashback to the 1970s. And I want to say, thank you for that. Chad (17m 2s): Ask him if he has a party line? Joel (17m 3s): It's been a long time since I've heard that sound. And then I, then it was followed with words like loose, deepen, sloppy. So I appreciate that as well. This is a very competitive space, right? Assessment tests, et cetera. How are you guys cutting through the noise? How are you unique? Just there's a lot of noise and assessments. How do you guys cut through that? Amit (17m 25s): First of all, like as I said, there is a white space in the market for the new age or digital skills, does it come into the market? So we have to have 1500 plus skills close to 2000 skills now out of its 700 skills that spans across AI, ML, NLP, cybersecurity, data science and all which are available only with us. And that's the reason enterprises like Eric's and cap Gemini and big enterprises are even, digital transformation transforming their workforce or acquisition to us. Amit (18m 2s): So we are already ahead in the race in terms of number of read, ready skill assessment for the new IT skills. Joel (18m 8s): How do you break down a pricing with the competition? Are you competitive, lower, higher, Amit (18m 13s): We are a bit on the higher side. Okay. j (-): Got anything Chad? Chad (18m 16s): Think of course I do. So when it comes to, if a prospect is between Interview Mocha and then a matching system, because matching tech today is really on the front end of the interview. So like opening.io, hiring Saw, Eyeo for jobs, Eightfold, for those types of platforms. This for some companies is more important because they're weeding the candidates out prior to the interview. Do you think that is more important than weeding out of candidates or do you think just getting them in the system and into the process is the most important? Amit (18m 50s): So first of all, we skill assessment is not a daily affair for the, I would say SMB. It typically starts in a, as a department, whether it's a like L and D or talent acquisition, only if a company is off 1000 employee lives are 5,000 plus is a right sport, actually. Okay. So there, by that time, they look for a screen assessment. They must have eight years already in place. Amit (19m 23s): Okay. But the problem, so it is a for our customers, if it's a customer real enterprise customer, they must have a recruiting workload already for talent assessment to be their priority. But what happens there are different departments within an enterprises. There are different hiring managers and many times the recruiter get them some candidates who are irrelevant. And the recruiter just judges candidate based on the resume. Candidates are very lavish in writing resumes. Amit (19m 55s): If they are working on something even for a week, they make sure that it is as a proficient, I'm a proficient in the skills. Okay. And because of that, that interviewers time, which is supposed to be delivering project spent time on the unqualified candidate and because of that, the hiring manager suffers alone. So we are more a solution for hiring manager. The person who is responsible for PNL of his team buys us and they make sure that they get us into a process. Joel (20m 25s): Amit, obviously the, the world in the last 30, 60 days has changed dramatically. And the effect on employment on a global basis is huge. How is your company adapting to the world of COVID-19? Are you making any big changes? How has it impacted you? Are you pivoting doing anything what's going on there? Amit (20m 49s): Yeah, sure. Like, as I said, we had three use cases. First is hiring new skills that has drastically gone down. So though we are getting a lot of inquiries because everybody's working from home, but no major POC in last 45 days. Okay. No major PO. But if you talk about digital transformation of up-skilling enterprises, customers, enterprise customers started because everybody's working from home to see the effectiveness. So somebody has bought a Udemy course, but one needs to understand that after going through that course - has that person acquired a knowledge which can apply to his job? Amit (21m 27s): So are upskilling a digital transformation use case for skill assessment is increasing hiring. It is going down drastically. Now we are focusing more on up-skilling and we have a very interesting use case. I talked about CHEG right. A student platform the same way. So the same way we have tied up with three recruitment platforms. One is a job woman, which is the biggest in Nigeria and Ghana, because the resume is no more serving the purpose. Amit (21m 57s): They need screen documents. So this APS customers are also growing. So hiring is going down, but up-skilling and this platform players are playing different lemonade and they are trying us. So for that use case finger, cross up-scaling is growing. Joel (22m 15s): So last one from me, what's the end game here. Are you looking to sell the company in the near future public markets? Is it a nice little lifestyle business for you? What's what's the end game? Amit (22m 28s): Joel, the vision with which we started with Internal Mocha is skill assessment should be a synonym of interview mocha like photocopies for Xerox skill assessment should be a synonym of, Interview Mocha. We started with coding and IP skills for talent acquisition. Now we have got into talent management. We are getting into BFSI skills, banking, and finance and insurance skills. So we are here to create a company which is the biggest skill assessment company and not selling it sooner. Amit (22m 60s): The target is to be a unicorn in next five years. Okay. In terms of valuation, we should be a billion dollar valuation company and not selling in the recent future. Chad (23m 12s): Being a unicorn, saying being a unicorn is one thing. Being one is entirely different. I mean, you know, having a trajectory for that is I think you'd be able to see that by now. My last question is where specifically you're a startup, where is your major focus? Amit (23m 33s): My major focus is top hundred IT consulting and services companies across the globe like Accenture cap, Gemini, Cognizant peace data consultancies and top hundred. So this is my major focus. So trying to get them as clients, trying to then get them as a client for the Lydia. I've got as a client, trying to get all a hundred as my customers. Gotcha. Okay. Joel (23m 57s): Ambitious goals. Ambitious goals. Well, that's the bell Amit, which means the Q and a is over. Alright. Chad, are you ready to grade Interview Mocha? Chad (24m 8s): Alright. Emmett, it is a crazy crowded field and your brand isn't that well known here in the biggest market in the world. I understand that 60% of your business comes from here in the US but you're relatively unknown. Now there are plenty of companies who did not start here in the US, they grew here, but they realized quickly much. Like it seems like you are, that your brand needs to be embedded here to be seen as obviously a technology company. Chad (24m 41s): Which is one of the reasons why it looks like your, your contact information is out of California. It's crazy crowded, but it's also a crazy big market, which means tons of opportunity. And in the interview and screening platforms. Those who truly integrate and partner with core applicant tracking systems or CRM platforms will win the day. You know, as, as I asked you about how much revenue is actually coming from those core platforms, if you are deeply integrated, then that's an opportunity for you in a couple of different areas to drive revenue with hundreds or thousands of salespeople from those core platforms. Amit (25m 27s): And also to really understand what adoption looks like. That's what deep integration looks like without adding overhead. Right? But it doesn't sound like you're you're there yet. And that's okay. Overall, I think the opportunity is huge for you! I think your focus needs to be pinpoint, which it seems, seems like it is, which is one of the reasons why I am giving you a golf clap. Thank you. Joel (25m 58s): All right. All right. Well, I'm up, okay. Aside from the snoring dog and the rotary phone of wherever the hell you're doing this interview, I'm, I'm super optimistic about this space. I think the fact that you're thinking in terms of unicorn, and you're thinking in terms of global you're thinking in terms of enterprise, that's all a positive process for me in terms of your company. I think from a timing perspective, you know, in times of low unemployment assessments and you know, skills and creating boundaries for people to apply are, are necessary. Joel (26m 32s): Aren't necessarily a good thing. When unemployment is really high and companies need a gatekeeper to weed out or filter folks that don't, you know, fit certain requirements. Those companies tend to do really well. And I think we're going into a period of pretty high unemployment, where companies are going to want to filter out the massive of candidates that they're getting through the door. I think that, you know, you, where are you thinking in terms of pricing your integrations? I think you're spot on with that. I do agree with Chad that it's a super competitive space and I am no expert in assessments and the science around it and the things that go into it. Joel (27m 12s): But I do, I do, I do suspect that you're on the right track in terms of the science around it. And I suspect that you're on the right track in terms of growth for the company, loved the integrations. I think that investment will come your way. And at that point, you'll be able to grow. You know, European markets, North American markets and global markets much more. So for me, Amit big applause, buddy. Congratulations, keep chugging. How do you feel? Amit (27m 43s): Thanks a lot Joel. Thanks a lot Chad. Chad (27m 47s): You're welcome. Joel (27m 48s): You're welcome. Well, for our listeners who want to know more about interview mocha, where do they go? So I like to meet in person at amit@mochainterview.com Awesome. The CEO gave his email address for sales opportunities. Chad (28m 2s): Just as long social distancing. We'll be okay with that. And you can, you can also go to Interview Mocha. That's M O C H A for those non-coffee drinkers.com. Joel (28m 15s): And with that, Chad, Outro (28m 16s): 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.C H A D C H E E S E.com

The Chad & Cheese Podcast have received a variety of emails / announcements referring to a "partnership" between Indeed and Glassdoor. WTAF? You gotta listen to find out. Big thanks Recruitology for supporting The Shred. Recruitology brings machine learning and AI to virtual job fairs, remember when virtual job fairs were lame? Not anymore, check out how you can leverage candidate matching and programmatic job distribution with a virtual job fair at recruitology.com/employers. For added context listen to Indeed Suffocates Glassdoor?

After 20+ years of ascending the AT&T ladder, Jenn Terry Tharp is known by everyone in staffing, recruiting, and the rec tech space. Well, she's hit the eject button kids and finally joining The Chad & Cheese to unleash her thoughts on the industry, innovation, tech, success, failure, her loathing of chatbots. and Baker Mayfield? It's an exclusive podcast brought to you by Sovren, software so human you'll want to take it to dinner. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities. Sovren (1s): Sovren is known for providing the world's best and most accurate parsing products. And now based on that technology come Sovren's 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 jumps 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. Sovren (32s): We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren software. So human you'll want to take it to dinner. Intro (43s): 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. Oh yeah. What's up kids, you're listening to the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheesman joined by my fearless cohost Chad Sowash. Joel (1m 15s): Today we are happy to introduce, bring on the show. Jenn Terry Tharp, marketing consultant Jen. Welcome to the show. Chad (1m 25s): Let's go with bad talent acquisition bitch. And because marketing consultant just doesn't do it for me. Just doesn't do it for me. Joel (1m 34s): Don't call our guest a bitch. She hasn't even said anything yet. Chad (1m 36s): She is awesome. Jenn (1m 37s): You can call me whatever you want. As long as you call me, Joel (1m 41s): Please share that awesomeness with them and why we're talking to you and why the hell you're on the show. Jenn (1m 47s): Hi. So thank you. Well, I, at least some of your listeners will know who you are because in my 20 years at, AT&T Joel (1m 54s): we all try to sell to you at some point. Jenn (1m 56s): Well, it's true. Everybody tries to sell, make, and you know, I have a big team and I never do required listening or required reading, but once the Chad and Cheese show came out, like I made you strongly required listening. So I'm certain my AT&T teams listening, Joel (2m 13s): What would you like to say to them right now? Cause I mean, you did the big corporate jail break suckers, right? Jenn (2m 22s): Like at this point I'm a month out. I've been gone for a month. So a month after 20 plus years and you know, I peace there is life after AC, right? Like we can make that trend, it's it really, it, it has been a little bittersweet, right? Like I cut my TA teeth and my marketing teeth at, AT&T, but I like the new world. Right. I'm just doing whatever makes me happy. Chad (2m 47s): So tell me about that though, because I mean, you get sucked into the corporate world. I know I've been there and you feel like, man, I'm in a groove and then you eject and you're like, man, I was in a fucking rut, now you might not have been in a rut, But you do feel that huge difference between the two You're a month out. What what's that feeling? Jenn (3m 10s): Yeah. And you know, it's interesting. And, and I kind of had a long lead and I knew I was leaving until when I left because of my coronavirus. Right. Like, so I knew I was leaving in January and I didn't leave until, you know, may. And so I got to train my replacement. My team said goodbye, like five times, you know? And, and so I sort of had the period of mourning while I still work there. So since I've been gone, it's been nothing but fun. I mean, like listening to other companies talk about their challenges, I've been dabbling in a new consulting gig. Jenn (3m 44s): You guys know, we talked a little bit about I've, I've been consulted with Joe VO and yeah. And then, you know, that's a, that's a really interesting gig it gets to take. So, so back to your other question, Chad. So like when I worked at, AT&T it was really, there was a lot of really good and awesome things that we did. And we did first, right? Like first mobile app for jobs, that was an utter failure. Right? Like it was horrible thing, but I was glad I did it. Right. And, and when you have a company like AT&T technology and vendors that are just like jumping over themselves to do business with you, so you get to try a lot of things, right. Chad (4m 22s): You try a lot of things. So I feel like I got to sort of hone that engineering and entrepreneurial spirits without having any of the risks and putting a little skin in the game and having a little risk. It's kind of nice. It's freeing. Joel (4m 38s): So I love, I love the perspective. And you mentioned the mobile AT&T was, was exclusively the iPhone provider in the early days. And I'm assuming that's the app that you're talking about mobile 10 years on has made a huge impact on recruiting. And I just want to know your perspective as someone from AT&T who sees it almost from the front lines, the first app, just to give me, give me a sense of what mobile has done in the last 10 years in terms of recruiting and what it's meant. Jenn (5m 6s): Oh, wow. It changes everything. Right. So, so in the beginning we thought we were all bad ass, put mobile app, like an iOS app out there. Right. Like we thought we were the bomb. And the reality is, I mean, I don't remember the numbers it's been a lifetime ago, but it, like, if there were a thousand downloads, 380 of them were AT&T employees. Right. Like it was just like a, a wall wall, but it showed me something. Right. It showed me that two things, number one, this wasn't going to stop. Jenn (5m 38s): And if it wasn't going to stop, I better be at the front of the line. I worked for AT&T. Right, right, right. And then the other one was, even if you build it, if everything behind it sucks, it sucks if your application takes like an hour and a half, it doesn't matter if you have the prettiest mobile interface, your application still takes an hour and a half. And so I think that, that for me was sort of the beginning of the customer candidate experience being an integral part of all of the technology. And it was sort of the moment when the things came together for me. Joel (6m 9s): Can you speak to the number or the growth in terms of traffic and applications through mobile, or were you not privy to those numbers? Jenn (6m 17s): Oh, no, for sure. So when we started, like when we had the iPhone app and then immediately after that, within a year, we actually took the site mobile, but not the actual Apple application. Right. It wasn't there yet. And when we started, it was somewhere around 16% finished, 25% started on mobile. And when I left, we were over 50%. Joel (6m 40s): Wow. And we were like, we talk a lot about fixing the mobile apply. And you mentioned Taleo wasn't there yet. So might argue they're still not there yet. We talk about, you know, chat bots, being the solution to sort of applying online through a messaging system. What, what's your take on how to fix the online application through mobile? Jenn (6m 59s): Well, let me start with, I get people love chatbots, but they are pins in my eyes. Like I think that it is the worst experience ever, like, Oh my gosh, pins in my eyes. So, and so I, you know, no, I don't think anybody's totally there yet. And I think that the overlays and the ATS's and how they, how they look and how they interact and all that's afraid. Like that's on it. That's not a path. It's not a path that maybe isn't as quick as we would like it to be, but it's at least it's on the path. Jenn (7m 30s): What I think gets the big goal F to me is like how we set up our applications in our ATS's like, really, like how many required fields do you really need to apply for a retail sales job? Joel (7m 40s): Right. And why are they required in the first place? Because it's not really required information. Yeah. Jenn (7m 47s): I have to tell you one of the things, you know, you'd think it'd be in a marketing role with social media and diversity and all this stuff. You know, if you talked about my top three work accomplishments while I was at AT&T one of them is literally getting rid of the asterix, right? Like if there was so many red required fields, we spent a whole, I mean, like we just went red line in those suckers, is it really required? No. So much so that our application completion rate was above 90% when I left. Chad (8m 16s): Wow. Wow. That is huge. And we talk now a lot about experience, something that we didn't even think about 10 years ago. Right. I do have to say that in working with, with Carrie and working with you back in the days when I was with direct employers and we created really a military crosswalk, that was something that was wrapped around what you guys wanted and needed. Now, it didn't work for shit, but I mean, you guys were like at the forefront of R and D in trying to figure out the solutions to the hard questions. Chad (8m 52s): And I know today, you guys are actually very transparent about the veterans that you hire, the amount of veterans and the individuals with disabilities and so on and so forth. What was the culture that AT&T had to be able to push for more innovation that you don't just don't see anywhere else? I mean, was that something that you saw more often or were you guys usually the innovator in every crowd? Jenn (9m 19s): It's interesting. And, you know, with all of the, all of the protests going on now and being really introspective about my biases and why do I think the way that I think I attribute a hundred percent of my openness to AT&T and their culture, if I could say, as a company, the one thing that I walked away with, like the most immense amount of pride is the way that they value differences. Like bar none. I thought nothing of asking or insisting of you, Chad, back in our direct employer, days that, Hey, you have to find me a way to match veterans to jobs, right? Jenn (9m 56s): Like that was a business imperative. And, and, you know, and, and I look at other companies now, you know, with my outside in lens on, and companies aren't even there now. And that was, I mean, how many years ago? We wouldn't even say. Chad (10m 11s): The thing for me though, is you're seeing outcomes because, because back then you were actually pushing vendors to do what they should have done the first place and not just pushing them, but paying them to actually do it. We have so many, so many companies are out there now saying, well, it'd be really nice to have this. It's like, okay, well, great. Is that a need? Because if it is, then you'll actually pay for it. If it's going to solve your problem, then let's go ahead and do that. AT&T did that, which is why I loved working with you guys. Chad (10m 41s): Most companies don't. And that being said, let me, let me parlay this before Joel gets it. You guys are constantly innovating on the website you guys have on the career website is just imagine what we can do together. And it has this lady in VR are, are you guys, have you been doing anything in talent aquisition around VR at all with AT&T? Jenn (11m 4s): First shout out to Stephanie boys. Cause I know she's listening and she is like the brains behind that website and it is beautiful. Chad (11m 11s): It's gorgeous. Jenn (11m 11s): Okay. So we're going to have one of those conversations where I am going to give a dissenting opinion, right? So here's the deal. Yes. We're doing things in VR, particularly in college and work spaces. Right? Those are all things that make good sense. Follow me for a second. So if people have a headset and they're doing their virtual experience at home, I think that that's one thing, but I think it's a pretty big lift or a pretty big ask for somebody that's just exploring a career. Jenn (11m 44s): Right. So then it becomes like what's the most obvious way to use this? Like before the COVID we would have taken it to a career fair and given you some sort of immersive experience. Well, the reality is it's clunky. It's like time consuming. It's I mean, like it has to make sense and it's like, I never want to be one of those people that just do it to do it. Like it has to be rich and meaningful. So besides tours or job previews, or maybe like a virtual interview, if it wasn't dumb, but it's like, I mean, do I really need to put on a headset and do all that to do a virtual interview? Chad (12m 20s): I could just like, it seems Forced. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Cheeseman Can't wait to put goggles on because he doesn't want to have to deal with another human being on it for three years on this show. You're just hoping never to have to deal with another human being in your life. Joel (12m 39s): Jen, you, you oversaw a lot of the employment branding stuff at AT&T and you've seen a lot of things that, you know, sort of evolve in that time with Glassdoor and indeed reviews and blind and stuff on mobile and apps. I just want to know what your take is on, on the future of PR of employment branding and how we look at it and how important it is, how we track it and monitor it. Cause you were, you were right there on the front lines. Jenn (13m 4s): Yeah, it's interesting. I, I think that there's a group of folks that kind of look at employment branding as its own entity. Right. I'm not in that group. It's part of the marketing for the jobs and it's part of your consideration and it's part of your closure. And so, right. So when I look at it, I look at it just like I would, every other piece of conversion material, how much did it convert? Right. Like, so, I mean, there's all of those things about truth and storytelling and all of those things that sort of go into making a rich experience that would have somebody consider your job. Jenn (13m 41s): Right. Right. Well, if 40% or more of your job applicants never see your career site, you can't give it credit for that. Right. Like, like you just can't. And so I maybe look at it a little more asset and, and sort of funnel based, right? Like attention is to drive consideration for this job, did it. And how many of those convert? So like, I'm really trying to put metrics around the efficacy of the individual employment brand campaigns, as well as the implied value, like a social, right? Jenn (14m 17s): Like social's a big activation component of any employment brand campaign, right? Yeah. We all know that it gets harder and harder and harder to gain space without paying for things on the socials. But there is a, there's a benefit to being on the socials in both an organic way and an employee activated way that gives you exposure that you would otherwise have to pay for. Right. I mean, Joel (14m 40s): So what I'n hearing is there's very little attention paid to review sites and commentary from employees, at least from where your, your perspective was. And if true, then what's the future of those services? Jenn (14m 54s): What I would say Joel is that I there's benefit in those, if those are part of the sales cycle or buying cycle, right by this job work here. So the reality is the glass door shows up in far more searches like in far more attribution paths than it shows up as the final source. So do I care about Glassdoor? You bet. Right. Like I don't remember the percentage, but I made, it was more than 50% of our applicants touched glass door at some point during their cycle. I can't not be good there, but if it were something like, I don't want to throw shades on vendors but if it was some less known rating site not Glassdoor or Indeed. Jenn (15m 29s): They were like, you know, and I have a low score writing. Like I don't care. It barely shows up on my path. Chad (15m 36s): So question around again, maybe Overtown acquisition. And this is why I love having this conversation because I mean, you were over talent, acquisition and branding, and then really had a focus on branding and the experience did you ever collaborate with big AT&T brand and big AT&T marketing? And what did that look like? Did you guys share a vision on how to get things done? How did that, what did that look like at AT&T? Jenn (16m 6s): Absolutely. I know shutouts, Kayla Paskin, Christine Tool, who I know are listening to cause again, required listening. So it really, it was super collaborative. We were like, we were like a people extension of their team, right? Like, I don't know a different way to say that if there was a story or there was an idea or something that really had to do with our people and how, what they did or how they were, that wasn't seems like an us message. Jenn (16m 37s): And so we just sort of, we were sort of fluid in that they were super helpful. They have way bigger budgets than we do. We do. And they were super helpful. Joel (16m 44s): Were you guys able to actually pull some budget here and there, if it actually made business sense, because it was like, Hey look, the individuals that are coming through our career site going through our experience are prospective customers and, or they are customers. We don't want to lose them or we want to get them. Did you make that business case so that you could perspectively get more money from marketing to help you out with better? Jenn (17m 11s): Well, the, you know, I'm more of a shake hands, kiss babies kind of gal. Right? Like, but when I had compelling business things, where our items crossed veterans is a great example of that. Never afforded an employment branding budget to sponsor NCAA football on veterans on veterans day. Like I could've never done it. Right. So, so I think that when it, when it made sense and it sort of crossed over again, the culture things, they were really open and they were, like I said, they were always really super helpful. Like I, I always sort of feel bad when I talked to other companies and they tell me about their woes, especially now that I'm consulting. Jenn (17m 47s): Right. And they talk about their woes with working with and branding. And I'm just like, wow, I was so spoiled. So shout out to my friends in marketing at, AT&T though they were great. One of them actually ended up back filling me. So just to sort of show you how close that connection is, the person that took my place actually came from the marketing department. Oh, wow. Yeah. Awesome. Joel (18m 5s): So, so in light of that, I want to talk about COVID, it's obviously been an impactful, not just for vendors, but the recruiting sort of profession and industry. And I want to know your perspective on, you know, when we start coming out of this, when there's a vaccination, what does recruiting look like? How, how, how impactful is automation for companies are on the fence about, you know, should we go automation or not, you know, will they go automation? When we come out of this, what is the role of the, the recruitment ad agency as we come out of this, what does the world look like? Jenn (18m 41s): So, you know, it's interesting. I think that we were already sort of starting to skew towards some virtualization and more automated things out of necessity for the tight labor market, right? Like things needed to really be on demand. You needed to, you needed to troll deeper into pools to get people cause they were overly employed. And I think it's just going to be the same technology, but the flip of that, right? Like where we were using AI to really find people and put place them in roles and prequalify them. Jenn (19m 13s): Now we're going to use it to find quality people. So it's going to be the same thing. It's just going to be making the pool smaller, not larger, particularly in entry level roles and this fairs to be seen. But my take on it is that in most professional roles, unless it was in support of something that declined specifically because of this like engine, a bunch of engineers, aren't losing their jobs forever, right? Like, like, so some of the tightest data scientists are still in high demand. I was trying to find somebody to do mining and tooling and the other day, and those, those people still are at full on full employment. Jenn (19m 48s): So I think that rather than having to train whole staffs of people to ebb and flow, we can just use automation to sort of help make up those differences. Thoughts on that. Chad (19m 60s): I agree a hundred percent. I think that talent acquisition just overall is, has always been way too damn shortsighted. We forget that there's a cycle. And just because there are, you know, a a hundred candidates coming in, in applying for a job versus a thousand, we think that we can do business differently. We don't scale. Well, I think the technology that we have today allows us to do better scaling. And that being said, what's your thought from an AT&T space standpoint and beyond about remote work, everybody's working remote now. Chad (20m 32s): I think most are actually seeing heightened productivity. They're seeing people actually doing work just as well, if not better than before. Do you think that we're going to stay remote or do you think that it's just going to go back the old 1950s control era? Jenn (20m 50s): It's interesting. Right. Cause I, one of the reasons I left AT&T is, but I didn't want to relocate to our headquarters. Right. So that right in Dallas, just a hop, skip, and a jump and a still hop, skip, and a job. And I've worked remote for 17 years. So I don't know. Right. Like I think that there's still that desire, particularly in roles that require a lot of collaboration. There's still going to be that desire to pod people together, you know, pull them to places, but I don't think it's ever going to be like it was. And I think you see a lot of midsize companies just ditch the office all together. Joel (21m 24s): Yeah. The overhead. Right. And do you think a, do you think age wise, there's a difference. I mean, I've always talked about younger kids or not kids, but younger professionals, you know, wanting to be in a, an office and, and engage with other people and go to the cafeteria and do those things. Whereas older folks that have a home in the suburbs may be less likely to want to go, go to the headquarters. Would you agree with that? Jenn (21m 46s): You know, it's interesting. I think it goes on both ends, right? Like I think I'm at the top of the, I'm at the top of the free range. Let me live in my suburb home and work from upstairs office. I think in general, I'm hearing that the older workers want to have at least some structure of the office. There's, there's maybe an amount of oversight and control and you know, I don't find the same. I, I, you know, I'm, it's interesting. I live in a college town. I don't find the same thing with the younger kids. I think that they make their own community out of something different. Chad (22m 18s): And quite honestly, right. Like in this whole spirit I'm going to do whatever makes Jen happy. I think that that's probably better for their overall wellbeing right there. So the people that they work with, yep. Joel (22m 30s): I'm going to let you out on this. And, and I think you have a unique perspective in that you've seen so much technology, so many vendors that call you and pitch you, their products. I want to just get from you sort of a bear and bull scenario. What, what technology are you, are you bullish on and what are you bearish on? I'm going to go ahead and guess that programmatic you're bullish. If you're consulting with, with Joe VO and I'm going to guess you're bearish on chatbots because you weren't very complimentary of that as a, as an application process. Joel (23m 0s): What else are you bullish and bearish on? Jenn (23m 2s): So bullish also on virtual gatherings, right? Like I want to see a better, do I, do you remember the brazen careerist when she used to have that virtual career? Yeah. Joel (23m 13s): Meaning job fair, virtual job fair. Jenn (23m 16s): And not even job fairs. Right? Like if you think about the COVID and colleges and how much virtual learning is going to be going on, like, I don't just want a booth. I want someplace something virtual where you can gather a group of people. It doesn't have to be career fair related, but good networking in a way that is employer facing. Right? Like today, some of the platforms are really just about the experience, but the reality is we should all be gathering leads and sending followup emails. Right? Like, so something that makes that the virtual meeting space for jobs and I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not super all in on, I hate the chatbots in any variety and maybe the text ones are okay, but they are like, I mean, I know that they have some people love them. Jenn (24m 2s): I'm not, I, you know, I'm not speaking all the truth, you know, I, I feel like, I feel like this is going to be unpopular, but I feel like the niche diversity site, like pick them stand. Right. Like I I'm cool if you had it Joel (24m 15s): So bearish on niche job sites. Okay. Go on, go on. Jenn (24m 21s): So it's so specifically around diversity, right? Like, and so there's some that bring a lot of value in organizations that have substance to them. But if the only thing that you're doing is putting my jobs on a job site where you're putting content that you think is relative to women. If I do that, like I'm just like phoning it in. I should just build that content myself. Amen. Chad (24m 42s): Amen. I have, I have the hardest question for you. So are you ready? I am. So Joel probably doesn't know this, but you are like one of the biggest Baker Mayfield fans. Right. Do you feel as if this is the Browns year? Jenn (24m 57s): Okay. So my husband's a Steelers fan, so it's really unpopular when I'm all in. I feel you on that, right? Like I feel bad when I'm all in on bakes, but yeah, man, I, I hope it is, but let's just be real. I mean, I love you, man. It's probably not happening, but I hope that he gives it a good run and like, I, you know, I love him. So Chad (25m 25s): Yeah. Do you, did you see the video of when, during the draft? I was videoing Joel as the pic Baker Mayfield came in. Yes. For the entire night he was so pissed. Jenn (25m 36s): Okay. So it's been a few years. Has he grown on you? Chad (25m 43s): No. Joel (25m 48s): Okay. So I was, I was, I was super anti because he's small, you know, he's, I think he's hit his ceiling. You know, he was 23, I think when he came to the Brown 22, 23. So I felt like he had hit a ceiling. He was, you know, when you're in, when you're in the AFC North, like you gotta be big, you gotta be a Roethlisberger, you know, like a big arm, big guy to survive. And he's none of those, you know, he's, he's a Texas kid played Oklahoma. The weather doesn't suit him very well when it's bad. Joel (26m 19s): He came in, you know, cocky the police video. Wasn't great. You know, he he's, he's got a chip on his shoulder and, and part of me kind of fell for that thinking, well, maybe he's not what Cleveland wanted, but maybe he's what Cleveland needed. I do think that he's focused now. He's not doing the progressive commercials and he's not doing like the underwear ads and things like that, which I think is good. I he's, he's at least growing up to the point where he says, I have to focus on football. He's got the team around him. You know, he's got a coach that made a, I don't know who the hell it was a good quarterback for a year at Minnesota. Joel (26m 56s): So I think they, I think they make the playoffs this year. I really do. They're not going to beat out Baltimore, but the Steelers are down an the Bengals are the Bengals this year. So they, I think they're, I think they make the playoffs, but is he the longterm answer? No, I think he hdas to have everything perfect. You to have Odell Beckham. And he's got to have Nick Chubb in the backfield has got to have a good line. He's got to have a defense that gives him the ball back and he's going to have all that this year. And he does well, but everything has to be perfect. And it's rarely perfect in Cleveland. Joel (27m 26s): That's my Baker Mayfield take. And we lost like 98% of our listeners. Jenn (27m 32s): I feel like we're done now. Well, we shall see, I, you know, I will be cheering and you know, I, Joel (27m 39s): I just hope they play at this point Jenn (27m 42s): Well. And you saw that. He said, he'd take a knee during the Anthem. So we'll see how that rolls out too. It's going to be a, Joel (27m 49s): Just win football games. And with that, there we go. Oh, wait. I know Jen, thank you for being on the show for the listeners that want to connect with you. You know, where, where do they go? I assume LinkedIn, but you tell me. Jenn (28m 6s): Yeah, LinkedIn is great. And you can also find me on the Twitters @JTerryrecruits Joel (28m 11s): love it. Thanks for finally coming on the show, Jen, Jenn (28m 14s): thank you for finally having me. We out, Outro (28m 18s): This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast, subscribe on iTunes, Google play, or wherever you get your podcasts. So you don't miss a single show and be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible for more visit chadcheese.com. Oh yeah. You're welcome.

It amazing how much the pandemic serves as an accelerant. It feels like we're fast-forwarding 10 years and our predictions are moving at light speed. As such, it's no surprise this week the boys are talking about - Indeed suffocates Glassdoor - Jobvite acquisition supercharges their brainpower - Monster is quickly running out of steam - Broadbean, Joveo, and Recruitics do what? Oh, and some job boards the world doesn't need like Unwoke.hr and FindSomethingNew.org. Can you believe this is week 22 in our #ChadCheese COVID lockdown podcasting madness? Luckily Jobvite, JobAdx, and Sovren bring us back to sanity with support for our group thearpy podcast sessions. We love you guys. 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'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, its time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (15s): Ah, yeah. Layoffs at Monster boy, the energy drink market must really be hurting these days. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast, boys and girls. I'm your cohost Joel Cheesman. Chad (33s): And I'm Chad I can't believe Monster's out of Indy Sowash Joel (37s): And on this week, show Glassdoor bows down to its overlord, job via go shopping and more job sites the world really, really doesn't need. Grab a red bull and fire up for another crazy week. We'll be right back. Jobvite (54s): This summer job bite wants you, you and you to join hundreds, thousands, millions, okay. Maybe just thousands of recruiters, HR, and talent acquisition professionals for a summer. You won't soon forget. It's job might summer to evolve the summer to evolve is a 12 week series of free content to help recruiters brush up on their skills. Learn from industry thought leaders, and see how technology can help them improve, automate, and evolve their recruiting efforts. Jobvite (1m 27s): There will be a chance to share tips and ideas with your peers. And we may even have some surprises for you along the way. I love surprises. So visit thesummertoevolve.com to register for this summer toolbox sessions that suit your needs, Peak your interest or your vote just starting June 16th. It's the summer to evolve the way you attract, engage, hire, onboard, and retain talent Jobvite, recruit with purpose, hire with confidence. Joel (1m 57s): Amber still owes us a voiceover for the other commercial that will play later this year. Just making sure you know that Amber, we didn't forget. Chad (2m 5s): Amber is busy, man. They're out buying companies. They're like making things happen. She's she's got better things to do than deal with our bullshit. Joel (2m 13s): I don't accept that. Hi, how you doing man? And what is it? Week 15 or something of a, the end of the world. I don't remember. Allegedly sports, sports are coming back soon. Chad (2m 23s): Yeah. What sports? I don't see. And we keep hearing about these, like the NCAA football conferences, like shutting down and that's the one I really give a shit about in the first place. And it just doesn't seem like that's going to come back in. That hurts my heart. Joel (2m 40s): Although you don't care about hockey, I thought I was amusing that hockey said we're not playing in America. That shit's fucked up. We're taking, we're taking both both leagues or both divisions to Canada to play out the season. So yeah, so they're in a baseball is allegedly coming back. It's funny that the Mets are offering fans to pay. I think it's $75 to have their face cut out and put in the stands during the games. So, so that's a funny promo, I guess they're they're giving to charity there and basketball is apparently coming back, even though Russell Westbrook, sorry, Adam Gordon. Joel (3m 20s): You don't know who that is, but he's a popular basketball player. He's got COVID. There is hope that sports will come back and there's a new a, there's a new helmet. I don't know if you've seen this for football. Yeah. That's like a builtin face mask within the football helmet to keep, to keep the germs away from those places. Chad (-): No, come one. Really? Joel (3m 37s): So yeah. Yeah. It's like a plastic face shield within the, the actual helmet, Chad (3m 44s): All they need now are like little UV robots on the field with them, you know? And I think that that could do maybe drones. They could do that. Shout out, shout outs. You said Canada and Susan Shay from Calgary connected on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening, Susan. That the last time I was on a plane, it was to and from Calgary. So, and that seems like a lifetime ago, right? Joel (4m 11s): Memories. That was such a fun time. We were, we were so naive and innocent back then in February, Jesus, more, more Canadian news, Chad and cheese sponsored job adx invading who's who's headquartered in Canada. So I'm not sure why this took this long, but they are now targeting a Canadian company. So if you're up in the great white North, check out job, adx for your job, programmatic advertising, Chad (4m 36s): Gotta I love it. Dawn Blender, who actually said my posts were inspiring another social justice warrior. That's what I'm talking about. Joel (4m 46s): Yeah, your posts are inspiring. So Chad, if, if I, if I say robo, Hong, what do you think of? Chad (4m 56s): I don't know. A new porn that is COVID free? Joel (4m 59s): Well, my friend, you would be wrong. Robo Hung. Our good friend, Hung Lee who produces a popular newsletter now has, I guess, sort of a chat bot, but it's built into WhatsApp that you can sort of search queries on what the news was about, whatever, ask questions. He's calling it Robo Hung, which is sure to get an audience that he wasn't expecting, but a shout out to Hung an his robo hung. Chad (5m 28s): Yeah. That thing Is actually powered by Talkpush. Joel (5m 32s): Oh yeah. Robo hung powered by Talkpush Chad (5m 35s): Ah, push it. Joel (5m 39s): Where's the Barry White soundbite when we need it Chad (5m 42s): A bevy of shout outs, I have Victoria Conley, Brent Healey and Micole Garate who are always interacting and sharing and being snarky on Twitter. I love that shit. And last but not least Tim Sackett. I've got a question for, for everybody out there. How can Tim Sackett be so damn creepy, but so cute at the same time? Joel (6m 6s): It's the bow ties obviously shout out to Dean Anmodaris, I don't know if you know, funky, cold Medina or not, but she has a new position at Activision blizzard, which she's been at for years now, but she is now the global director of talent attraction couldn't have happened to a better person. Dina, shout out to you also shout out to Lauren Sharp. Lauren produces the TA pod a podcast about guess what? Talk position pod TA pod. Joel (6m 37s): I don't know. It's it's out. It's it's it's out of Melbourne, I guess. So I don't, I don't speak Australian. So it's top pod. That's what they call it. Top pod Lauren Sharp, shout out. Is it good? Tell me about it what do they talk about Chad (6m 53s): It's actually, well, they talk about TA stuff. It's just more down under, they sound smarter because they have better accents. Another shout out to a podcast, shout out to crazy and the King they're officially a part of the evergreen podcast network. They often drop two podcasts a week. I love listening to them because it's about the Michael Hickson and actually they interviewed his wife full interview. And then there's another one where Julian Torn actually have sound bites and they talk through it's a really, really good stuff, Joel (7m 24s): A big win for Crazy and the King, a big loss, however, for IBM and my shout outs, IBM recently posted a job and required 12 years experience to this job. However, the technology they were requesting is only six years old. So you try to do the math on that one. Yes. Chad (7m 45s): In that article, there was another company who was asking for four years of, I think it was fast API and the guy who actually created fast API said he wasn't qualified because he only created it a year and a half ago. It's like, come on, tell acquisition. You can't be that fucking stupid. Joel (8m 6s): Yeah. We're trying to help you here. We're trying to help you stop shooting yourself in the foot for God's sakes. Shout out to Jerome, founder and CEO over there at smart recruiters. A great interview that we did with him, Pat myself on the back as well as you, if you haven't listened to that podcast, please do so. It's. It's great. Yeah. Chad (8m 23s): And another CEO, Matt, you Stevenson the Snag a job CEO just dropped today as well. So a couple of CEOs followed by Matt Baxter, the CEO of competitive wedge. We also know as wedgie on LinkedIn, he posted a, an I quote, all press is good press. Finally, someone shamed us for wedgie. I've been waiting five years for this moment, Chad crack kills. Chad (8m 54s): That's what I'm talking about. I love, I love CEOs who embrace the shit that we give and then just give it right back. I love that stuff. So big shout out to Matt Baxter from competitive wedge, AKA wedgie, Joel (9m 8s): just say no to crack kids. That's all we're saying. Ready for events and online archives and stuff. I guess our travel, our travel schedule is limited now. Chad (9m 18s): So the TA global gathering, did you see the stats for this thing? I, I, I love, I love that these digital events Are starting to really, I think, understand it, embrace what they, they, they're more of like a content delivery system, almost like a Netflix, right? So yeah, for, for TA global gathering, they had over 5,300 registrations overall 3,600 attendees from over a hundred countries over 9,200 downloads, over 9,000 downloads and approximately 7,700 hours were watched. Chad (10m 3s): And this was during the timeframe. This was all data from last week. Yeah. During the actual event. So that was just fucking impressive. Joel (10m 13s): Well, and so by the way, they, they, they launched all those@atigglobalgathering.com. I believe you can watch everything if you missed it, particularly if you missed, missed our feature Rama session, featuring next Zuora Jobvite and the eventual winner hiring solved, you should go out and do yourself a favor and check those out. Chad (10m 33s): Yeah, I think you've always said that you just, you're just not a fan of these digital events. And I think what this morphs into again, is that it's it's digital content delivery. We go to live events, partly for the content, not entirely, but this piece, I think you can get pulled together some really awesome premier content and turn into almost like a Netflix for the industry. So you can jump in and you can get fresh stuff. Chad (11m 3s): And, and when they had hell, they had over a hundred speakers for God's sakes. Joel (11m 7s): If virtual events can figure out the networking piece, then I think they've got something. Chad (11m 13s): I think that's where it needs to be split because you, you were expecting the same kind of interaction and that's not the case. So I think companies who understand that this is digital content delivery. This is not a, this is not, you know, sitting at the bar, having a drink. Is there something else that you can do to, to hopefully fill that gap possibly. But first, instead of trying to fill that entire expectation, let's just give them damn good content. And I know from my standpoint, I go to live events. Chad (11m 43s): I miss a lot of the good content and I don't have access to it later in this case you do. So I think we can find a better way to make sure that we get good content out to the masses and stop calling it an event. Joel (11m 58s): Yeah. And I, I haven't heard any feedback maybe you have from vendors and sponsors of the virtual events and whether or not they find it as beneficial or less or equal to a face to face event. My guess would be they prefer the face to face. Although the investment is much less when you do virtual events. Have you heard anything? Chad (12m 18s): I haven't, but not, not to mention also when you're talking about these type of events, especially when you're engaged with somebody like us, where we can do a lot of pre promotion, the live happens, but then you also have the post and with live events. In most cases, you don't have the post where we're dropping podcasts, there's videos, all that other stuff. So instead of just having that one big splash and hoping that people come to your booth, you don't just have to hope that happens. Joel (12m 47s): Yeah. And if they're feeding, you know, if they're feeding leads because there's 9,000 downloads and giving companies a way to either get that information or drive leads through that process, it's probably a good deal. Yeah. Chad (12m 60s): Yeah. I think our expectations need to change. And the only way they're going to change is that for companies like the recruiting events company, who put on TA global gathering for them to be able to shift and package them differently, which they did with this event, I thought it was pretty awesome. Joel (13m 17s): Clearly a window for virtual reality to finally take hold and to our, into our lives. Shall we get to news? Chad (13m 28s): Topics! Monster? Are they still around? Apparently, apparently so. Yeah, they, they dropped 8% from what I'm hearing on the inside and they are shutting down the Indianapolis office. And this is, this is very, very nostalgic because yeah, back in 1999 kids online career center was the technology I repeat was the technology that became monster.com. Chad (14m 2s): Monster had better branding. They had better marketing, but their technology was shit and they needed better technology, which is why Jeff Taylor, we should get him on the show, which is why Jeff Taylor smartly said, Hey, let's go and repaint that OCC thing over there with a bunch of monsters, merge those things together and use that as a new, bigger job site. Next thing, you know, super bowl commercials, blimps, yada yada, yada Andy McCalvi was on a, a Blitzkrieg of acquisitions and spending money at that point. Joel (14m 38s): So, the monster legacy has remained in Indianapolis since that time. And they've had salespeople, customer service, you know, you know this better than I do, but they've been really established here for a long time and have been in many cases, like help foster startups in the area around job, around jobs. So for them to close down in Indianapolis, not only is horrible for those folks, but it's also, I don't know, an end of an era, I guess. Chad (15m 6s): Yeah. And also for all of those companies that are out there, especially the vendors who are looking for great talent, who, you know, can work remote. Indianapolis is flush with not just people who can just do regular sales, but we're talking about partnerships, we're talking about the whole gamut. Very connected. Yeah. So I think that's one of the things that most of, you know, Boston got the love for and Maynard, Massachusetts got the love for, but to be quite frank when we started out as monster.com, Indianapolis kicked Maynard's ass all the time. Chad (15m 43s): And that was from a sales standpoint and we had all the technology for the most part. So yeah, a lot of, a lot of talent here in Indy. Joel (15m 50s): Yep. And, and job byte is looking very smart by setting up shop here in Indianapolis with, with gathering all this talent that's in the area. No doubt. Some of these monster folks from Indy will soon be JobByte employees if they're not already yeah. Chad (16m 5s): Already seeing that flutter of activity on the social. Joel (16m 9s): Yeah, for sure. For sure. So what, what what's next for monster? Any, any thoughts? Chad (16m 15s): Okay. And I hope at this point, Ron Stott understands they are not a technology company. I keep hearing that there are some, some major moves happening, you know, within, within Ron Stott, around transformation, you know, transformational technologies and those types of things. And man, I wish I could believe it because to be quite Frank, we should have already seen that shit. Joel (16m 39s): Yep. And by the way, if you do work for monster energy drink now might be a good time to call up the owner of monster.com and get that domain on the cheap. And you might have to get beyond.com as well as we talked about last week with the death of bed bath and beyond. So you could really clean up with some of these domains and the a, the talent acquisition space. Chad (16m 58s): Yeah. I'm saying, I'm saying, well, keeping, keeping it in Indianapolis Job byte had had some news this week. Joel (17m 7s): Yeah. So I did a, I did a shred on this and our buddies at Job byte Amman, making his first acquisition as a, as CEO. So they, they, they acquired predictive partner. If you haven't heard of predictive partner, you're not alone. It's more or less a bandy, a nice fun group of engineers here in Indian and some other places around the world. I think it's five as the number there'll be joining Job byte, as far as I know, at least the CEO and some of the others that started the company, but it was much more of an Aqua higher than any sort of a domain expertise clients, any kind of brand awareness. Joel (17m 45s): This was all about bringing people to the company and the people that they're bringing in. It's all about machine learning, matching, et cetera. So the, the, the folks that predicted partner first started working with canvas, who we all know all listeners know that Amman founded what 2016. So they've had a relationship with these guys for a long time. It's my take that everyone in this space that has money to do it is going to try to basically automate the entire process up until the point that someone shows up at your office or on your zoom to interview. Joel (18m 20s): And I think the acquisition of predicted partner is going to help a job byte, put that on steroids in terms of getting matching technology, machine learning, all that good stuff in house, get it, get it done faster and hopefully get it done right Chad (18m 35s): More as an aqui hire than anything else did they use the technology? Of course, was this a, a great opportunity to be, to be able to get great talent and then also, you know, get, get some tech on top of it. There's, there's no question, you know, we saw AMS and Karen, you know, it was like, what are they going to do with Karen? Well, I don't think they did anything. I think they actually just use those people to build something more focused on what their needs were. Joel (19m 0s): Yeah, it's interesting. We, so I mentioned a feature Rama and JobByte was one of the contestants on that show. So I jokingly asked who their next acquisition was. And of course they knew they knew exactly who it was, but couldn't mention it at the time. But they also said they've sort of been building from the ground up in terms of the technology. We heard the same thing from, from AMS with, with, with hourly. So this seems to be a trend in acquiring talent to enable you to do that is something that a lot of companies are taking advantage of. You know, it's funny, like we're, we're not talking about COVID directly on the show, but I feel like all the stories that we're talking about, our reaction to sort of the, the accelerator of the pandemic. Joel (19m 41s): So like we talk about, or upon this talk about, you know, things are fast forwarding 10 years. So when you look at the death of monster, you know, Jobbyte sort of accelerating their growth and we'll talk about glass door and what's happening to them and others, like, it feels like we've hyper, you know, hyper traveled 10 years into the future to talk about some of these stories, because this stuff usually happens much slower than it does now. Yeah. Chad (20m 6s): Well, so did go ahead and jump into glass door. In an email provided to a, the Chad and cheese podcast. It was sent, it was sent by glass door to job board partners. The message actually outlines that glass door is discontinuing the sponsored job ads offering from its job board program. So if the job boards are actually paying or aggregators are paying, so to be able to drive traffic to their site, it's a high likelihood that that is going away, even if you're paying for it. Chad (20m 39s): So it's, it's very interesting because, you know, we've seen indeed make these types of plays, right? So this, this isn't something that's foreign for us when we're talking about indeed and indeed Joel (20m 52s): Or workopolis or simply hired. Chad (20m 55s): Yeah. So it seems like, you know, indeed is actually driving the train here because overall glass door needs the revenue. And for all of those individuals who are out there saying, well, job boards are killing candidate experience and all those brands associated, I'm totally not buying it because if Glassdoor wanted to, that could easily create Glassdoor jail. Then they go ahead and welcome those job boards back in. Chad (21m 27s): But they charge a premium instead of the base rate they had before, until they can get that trust retained. Right. And if it happens again, you rinse and repeat, but that's what you do if you need the revenue and glass door needs the revenue. So it really feels like there's kind of like a smothering happening from indeed to glass door and through other job board partners. It's like, let's just go ahead and snuff all these fuckers out. Joel (21m 54s): Yeah. You know, I think, well, you know, Pat myself on the back again for predicting the end of glass door again, I think we fast forward to 10 years and to do it actually happening. And when times are good, you know, talent is, is few and far between companies really, really, really care about their brand and what they look like and their reviews. But when there's 40 million unemployed in the U S they tend to care less about that. And they're not posting jobs. So recruit, recruit holdings. If you're sitting there saying like, Hmm, what do we do with this glass door thing? Joel (22m 27s): Well, what I said, they should have done in that when it's, when it first happened was eventually put all the reviews from glass door over to indeed. You could also put the indeed on glass door, I guess that doesn't really matter. But the job posting is totally duplicitous. And there's no reason that indeed shouldn't be this central place that companies post jobs on a pay per click basis. And those jobs go to simply hired workopolis all the other entities that they have. And, Oh, by the way, there'll be posted on glass door, which is more money. Joel (22m 60s): They don't have to pay the salespeople at glass door. They don't have to pay the customer service folks. I mean, it just becomes a shell. This becomes a shell for indeed, and they get all the profits and all the SEO and everything that's going on, I'm at Glassdoor. So this was going to happen. Eventually. I just think COVID has, has put it on fast forward and we're seeing it happen, you know, in the next 12 to 24 months, as opposed to the next eight to 10 years. Chad (23m 23s): And employers would love to see the death of glass door and the glass door tax. Joel (23m 30s): Ya think? Reall? Oh yeah. Chad (23m 33s): They, they, they, they really, hate playing the glass door game. They've been taken hostage and we actually heard somebody say this on stage taken hostage by glass door. And so, yeah, maybe more than likely that could be perspectively either one or two things going away or taken over by the, the indeed police Joel (23m 55s): yep get used to indeed and pray for Google for jobs. AD (24m 0s): Sovren parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry, the more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. 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. Joel (24m 27s): You know, you're just missing you're mr. Scoop this week. You've got all kinds of scoops. So Broadbean, shit's going down there. Chad (24m 33s): Yeah. So I was lucky enough to get a line on something. So broadbean is getting into programmatic, but not the way you would think they would. Joe VO and recruiting's are piloting their programmatic partnerships with Broadbean this move. I mean, to me just makes sense. I mean, CareerBuilder isn't spending any cash on meaningful tech, and I understand for multiple sources, the idea of programmatic was killed by CareerBuilder on several occasions as far back as 2016. Chad (25m 11s): So, I mean, curb boaters, pumping and dumping at this point, and for broad bean to gain any traction to stay relevant partnership is the only way to go. So is this a, is this like white labeling, the technology from Joe VO programmatically distributing jobs, or is this just broad bean, putting their jobs into recruit X and Jovia to get more traction on their platforms? I think Broadbean is figuring all of this out as, as they're playing with these platforms because you know, obviously different programmatic platforms will do better in different segments, right? Chad (25m 47s): So they'll be able to kind of feel it, you know, for what it is for these types of jobs. Maybe they'll use jovo, these types of jobs. Maybe they'll use recruit X, but here's the rub, no matter how successful these partnerships turn out, CareerBuilder is not looking to acquire, especially technology, which is already market validated with about five or six different acquisitions last year. I mean, if this was another type of technology that wasn't so validated in powerful and expensive, maybe I doubt that career builder would buy it, but maybe Joel (26m 25s): intelligently Broadbean would like try to figure out programmatic and the process of partnering with someone. But I don't see anything that would tell me career builder gives a shit. So they're probably just going to continue to write out the broad bean customer base, as long as they can saying they have programmatic and don't go to our competition. We can do that for you for As long as they can Chad (26m 45s): Okay. How do you get that CareerBuilder anchor out from around your neck? And my, my thought automatically is kind of like a job bite roll-up you know what I mean? Let's see if we can, let's see if we can become more attractive to some of those. Some of those perspective acquisition targets that are out there, we're partnering up with another organization. We ha we broadbean having this huge portfolio of business. We do basic, you know what I like to call dumb distribution. Chad (27m 16s): We go ahead and we get that smart distribution on top of it. How could that be a roll up acquisition for somebody else out there and get us away from this fucking CareerBuilder anchor that is around our neck? I don't know that that's the case, but I just think as I'm starting to kind of like see the dots, those are the dots that, that tend to connect for me. Joel (27m 36s): Yeah. If you want to make a call to career builder about buying Broadbean, I'm sure they'll take your call. And I'm sure that they'll negotiate favorable terms if they can. And whether that's job bite, ICMs, who knows, that's probably a conversation that should be happening if it's not already because broad bean, like you said, great brand great people, they just need to get that anchor off and get some technology and just get some foresight to be competitive in the programmatic marketplace. Because as we've talked about before, there's less than a handful of competitors out there. Joel (28m 9s): So the value of programmatic is huge. So Broadbean would be a tasty acquisition on the cheap for a lot of companies. Chad (28m 16s): Well, especially with the backgrounds of Joe VO and KJ, and then recruit ex with Josh and obviously the KRT team. I mean, those are two incredibly powerful or organizations, I believe, because again, we have market validation, not once, not twice, but like six times over. Joel (28m 36s): Yeah. I mean, anything could happen, but if we're not talking about broad bean acquired or doing something squirrely, I'd be surprised in the next 12 months. Chad (28m 45s): Yeah. Good luck. Dom and crew. And obviously Josh and KJ, you guys just keep kicking ass and taking names. Joel (28m 52s): Yup. And for those that aren't kicking ass and taking names, some really bad job boards hit, hit the world this week. I don't even know which one to start with. Chad (29m 3s): Let's, let's start with the funniest because I'm not sure if we're being trolled or if this is really a thing it's called unwoke.hr. The about us page says, and I quote, the modern workplace has become a hot pot for unchallenged, radical thinking and left wing ideology. Our mission is to advance society based on a culture of enlightenment, beauty truth and freedom through free market initiatives. Chad (29m 38s): First up unwokeing work. Yeah. This is, I mean, this is like white nationalism on an anonymous job site. Joel (29m 48s): That's gotta be a joke. Yeah. But your, your wife has, it's been her mission in the last week to figure out what's going on here. So what has she uncovered? Chad (29m 59s): So We actually, it was funny. We sat on the couch and we started digging into this and she did a lot of the work cause she's crazy when it comes to research and on the surface, they use affirmative action plan and OFC CP, which are specifically American. Right? Yet they also use terminology like CV and they registered their domains through a pro proxy servers in France. So I originally thought this was just a diversion until someone pointed out in looking at the actual code on unwoke.HR, they actually expose candidate data like email addresses in the, in the code, which you can see, which is like an amateur at best. Chad (30m 44s): It's not anonymous. If it's exposed, all you have to do is click and hit a paid source and you can see that stuff. So, I mean, I don't know it, the thing is there are profiles that are on there of real people. And I don't know if they were, were put on there by those people or if they were scraped, there are also jobs on there from real companies. Some other research that Julie and I did is, is you obviously know that you can easily copy and search job descriptions. Chad (31m 20s): In most cases, it's like, well, you know, everybody copies and paste job description. So a lot of them are similar. Yeah. You can say that. But when they're in specific locations, you know exactly who the company is. So you're not that smart, right. That isn't a coincidence. So we reached out to when she reached out to more of those companies, but every company came back and said, Hey, look, we did not authorize this Joel (31m 42s): Shocking. Chad (31m 44s): So, you know, I, so I think we're being trolled, but I don't know. Julie has a ton of conspiracy theories, which you'll probably hear on Crazy and the King. Joel (31m 56s): So, so my take is it's one of four things. Number one, it's an SEO play. And somebody just wants a bunch of back links from this stupid ass site, getting reported on advice and tech crunch and wherever else. And in a year from now, it'll be redirected somewhere. Right. And they'll take the link juice. Number two is, it's a joke. It's just some idiots like let's make unwoke something and then just make it a big joke and like scrape some jobs or whatever. Right. It's a joke. Number two, it's a devilish plan to like get data, resume data and sell people shit and get like, that's probably the worst case scenario or number four. Joel (32m 36s): It's a genius plan from Fox news to finally get into the, the job board game. It's gotta be one of those four in my mind. None of them are good, but that's my take, Chad (32m 46s): I have to say is if they're so proud, why are their operators anonymous? Why are the companies anonymous? Why are the candidates mostly anonymous? Yep. It's funny because the vice article within hours of like a couple of tweets going out, there were actually some people in HR. I can't remember their names, but we should definitely shame the hell out of them who were like, Hey, finally, a job board, you know, for, for, for people like me and these other people on HR, boy, the site was hacked. Chad (33m 22s): There was some, some images that were thrown up then that was, that was, you know, maintenance was taken care of. And then because you can post jobs for free and you can post profiles for free everything and anything you can think of was going up on the site. Joel (33m 37s): Yeah. My personal favorite is, is a nut eater and fuck face. Those are my two favorite Ben Shapiro's underage lover or something was on there. Dick soccer, of course. Professional racist. Yeah. There was some good trolling going on with this site. Chad (33m 55s): I think it's got to be, it's gotta be a joke. Joel (33m 59s): That's we'll go with joke. I hope it's not something really devious where they're just getting data and screwing people over somehow Chad (34m 6s): I did reach out to them and say welcome. We would love to have you on the show. So we'll see how that happens. Unfortunately, what is not a joke is a tax payer funded. I believe it's taxpayer funded. Findsomethingnew.com.org, Joel (34m 24s): Actually.org. It has.org. We should, we should see a, findsomethingnew.com goes anywhere. It probably goes to somewhere trolling hasn't already. So yeah, this is from the brain trust of the Trump organization. Ivanka again, continues to say, let them eat cake, I guess, to the, the Commonwealth of America, but on its face. It's a, it's a nice idea, right? Like if you're out of work, dude, just, just get nursing certification. That's why is that a big deal? Chad (34m 56s): Yeah. Why is that a big deal? I didn't know. So his story actually said on Tuesdays from HuffPost on Tuesday, Ivanka Trump, the 38 year old daughter of a wealthy man who has never once had to worry about finding the money to pay a bill, proudly announced an ad campaign called find something new, which encourages people to get a job by learning new skills. So definitely went to the, went to the, went to the, the sites and in one area it's called find your path. Chad (35m 29s): And that's really just links to online certifications and degrees. Then there was like a programs for veterans I thought was interesting because you can use your GI bill via this MOS translator. You can go to USA jobs, which is a job board or, or you can actually pick a job like aerospace engineering and operations technician. And in the quote says, many employers prefer to hire aerospace engineering and operations technicians who have earned an associates degree in engineering technology or who have completed vocational technical programs. Chad (36m 8s): So this is your basic government website. It's just more flashy than most government websites. None of the shit actually helps the problem of, I need money to feed my family now. And the problem is this again, demonstrates the distance between working class people and the rich elite who cannot understand why food pantries even exist. Remember a large percentage of Americans couldn't afford a thousand dollar emergency without help. Chad (36m 41s): And that was before COVID, it's much worse now and it's getting harder. And then we also see the Jeff Bezos of the world gaining $70 billion while they take wa while he, while he smacks his employees and says, yeah, we're going to go ahead and take your wages back down to pre COVID level. Joel (37m 1s): let them eat cake, by the way, I thought we'd make it through a whole show without Jeff Bezos and dammit, we couldn't do it. What's your take on, so the about us page, you've got supporting partners and you have Apple, IBM,AT&T, Cisco like where these folks just called and said, Hey, you know, we did you a favor. We're going to put your logo on this. Okay. Like I just can't imagine these companies like super getting behind this stuff. Chad (37m 27s): I would never want my logo to be associated with something that doesn't fix the problem. And this does not fix the problem. The problem is very simply, how do I feed my family right now? Trying to get a nursing certification unless now here's, here's what fixes fixes the problem. If the company says, look, we're going to invest in you. We're going to pay for you to get your nurse nursing certification while that's happening. You're going to come in and start doing it on the job training and we're going to pay you for it, right? Chad (37m 59s): So therefore you're getting the skills you need. You're getting the certification you need and you can feed your fucking family. That means something. Joel (38m 7s): Holy shit, now you're thinking dude. by the way. Isn't it funny that our governor of Indiana, as part of the supporting partners, you have the, the mayor of Charlotte. You have Sherm. Interestingly, Chad (38m 20s): John, he's a fucking idiot. Joel (38m 22s): Walmart, Walmart visa. It's a pretty short list, but there are some, there are some brands in there. Home Depot is in there. Chad (38m 29s): I would not want my brand to be associated with something that does nothing for the people who I really want to have a, have a great brand experience with my organization. Joel (38m 36s): Yup. Yup. I have one message from these two sites and that is JobAdX (38m 48s): Stand out in a feed full of boring job ads with a dynamic enticing video that showcases your company, culture, people, and benefits with JobAdx. Instead of hoping that job seekers will stumble upon your employment branding video, JobAdx seamlessly displays it in the job description while they're searching, building a connection and reducing candidate drop-off, you're spending thousands of dollars on beautiful, informative employment branding videos that just sit on a YouTube channel begging to be discovered why not feature them across our network of over 150 job sites to proactively compel top talent to join your team, help candidates see themselves in your role by emailing. JobAdX (39m 32s): Join us@jobadx.com. That's joinus@jobadx.com attract, engage, employ with JobAdX Joel (39m 46s): The clock is running out on tick tock. You like that? I like that. Chad (39m 49s): I don't, I don't quite understand why people are so freaked out about tik tok. Did you see what happened on Twitter yesterday? About the hack? Yeah, the hack and a hundred thousand dollars in Bitcoin was I think it's, I mean, it's like if somebody asks you to do something in Bitcoin that should automatically send off alarms. Joel (40m 13s): No shit. Even if it's Elon Musk telling you to do, which is that much more bizarre that people did this shit, Chad (40m 22s): but yet we're talking about tik tok, not to mention. We also, there are also reports of Facebook and LinkedIn doing the exact same things that the Tik Tok app is doing, that they can like see in your notes on your phone. And, and I should be afraid that the Chinese government can see what notes are on my phone versus the, the U S government. I don't think so. Joel (40m 46s): We probably differ on this a little bit. And, and also newsworthy, Amazon, your favorite company, I guess we couldn't have gotten away from Amazon because of Tik Tok, but Amazon has banned not banned, but has politely asked their employees to delete Tik Tok from their phones. I think more and more, we have to come to the realization that the world is China versus the US just like they don't allow Facebook, Google fill in whatever blank you want. Surprisingly LinkedIn gets in for some reason because they adhere to a lot of rules. Joel (41m 18s): But I mean, China is very open about us companies got not getting in to their ecosystem. We tend to just be Americans and say everybody's in. But I do think there is an element that the government knows about that is putting us at risk. I think Tik Tok itself is not real damaging. I mean, kids lip sinking to eighties. Tunes is not super informative, dog videos, but I think, I think this sort of started with the whole Huawei phone thing, a mobile phone thing, and thinking about the communist China, putting in software and phones that are being sold into Western countries. Joel (41m 56s): And then they're talking about 5G contracts and things like that. So, so I do think there is an element of like the world is coming down to China versus America. And what side are you going to be on? And that comes down to cyber war and digital shit. And I think tik tok is going to get swept up into this world. I think they're trying to do everything they can to get away from that perception. They just, you know, they hired a Disney executive. I think they're going to split up the company. But when we talked about from an employment perspective, like, Oh, why aren't why aren't employers on tik tok, advertising jobs and brand, you know, employment brand, et cetera. Joel (42m 33s): I mean, to me, if, if there's a topic for this show, it's all this drama around tik tok is inevitably killing them as an employment advertising medium. Because if they're linked to China and spying and all this other shit like employers, aren't gonna touch them with a 10 foot pole. So as far as I'm concerned, tik tok as an employment medium. It's dead until this shit gets resolved, which I don't think it is. Chad (43m 1s): Facebook should be too. I mean, everything that happened with Cambridge Analytica, I mean, how, how can you not look at a platform like Facebook in think that they are taking data in a, in a way that they shouldn't be, and, and who knows who the fuck, who they're delivering it to? That's the problem, right? Joel (43m 18s): I don't think that's a national security risk. I think it's a privacy risk and what, you know, GDPR and California laws and things like that will come real, probably come out of that. But to me, like when the Analytica thing came out, you didn't see a Patagonia and home Depot and Walmart say we're going to like stop advertising on Facebook, right? Like it took a black lives matter. It took racism. It took, you know, neo-Nazis having groups on Facebook for them to say, we're not going to advertise or touch this with a 10 foot pole for a month, by the way, they're not doing a, an all out forever ban on Facebook. Joel (43m 54s): I just think they're different issues than national security. And I mean, when companies like Amazon are telling their employees to delete tik tok, I just think as an employment advertising medium, like tik tok is, is done, right? Chad (44m 7s): The, the thing that I'm starting to morph into is seeing the Facebooks and the Amazons of the world as the China's, they have the data, what the fuck are they going to do with it? I, you know, w whether China has it or not, or Jeff Bezos has it, which one is more scary and what's the data, right? I mean, w what exactly do they have access to? But I, I get that. But the problem for us, this is really bad is that we, we can't just focus on like borders, geography, too, to think that that is where our enemy lies. Chad (44m 44s): We have to also take a look at how some of these bad actors, these companies are working. So I totally get what you're saying with regard to China and whatnot, but I think you can definitely paint a company like Facebook possibly, or Amazon, or maybe some of the other bigger corporations with the same, with the same, you know, brush Joel (45m 6s): The other angle to this is, I think, I think a lot of companies hold their nose and advertise on Facebook. The truth is they're, they're basically a duopoly in terms of digital advertising along Google. Yeah. So, so you talked a lot of companies and it's like, I hate Facebook. I'd love for there to be options. So a lot of it is just, they don't have any other choice, but to do that, Chad (45m 27s): Well just remember Facebook at one time, didn't have an advertising platform, but was just killing it when it came to subscript or not subscriptions, but people actually creating accounts, then, you know, they, they, they did it a very smart way. You could see the exact same thing for something like, like Tik Tok and trying to, to bring an ad platform to their platform either way. It's scary. And they're all assholes Joel (45m 53s): Either way we out. Yeah. Outro (45m 55s): Thank you for listening to podcast with Chad and cheese brilliance, they talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Anyhow, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, we out.

New Grad Hiring during a Crisis? Protect Your Brand is a Limited Podcast Series. The Chad & Cheese call on a real cast of experienced characters including Gerry Crispin, Principal & Co-Founder of CareerXRoads, Deb Andrychuk, VP of Client Services with Shaker Recruitment Marketing and Steven Rothberg, Founder and President of CollegeRecruiter.com to answer the questions employers should be asking themselves. Lead question: How are employers protecting their brands and talent pipelines by adapting their new grad hiring programs? Support provided by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing - COVID might keep us at home but it won't keep us quiet! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. VIDEO AVAILABLE HERE 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 it hurts where 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): Hey, I'm Joel Cheesman of the Chad and Cheese podcast and I'm joined by my partner in crime, Chad Sowash. Chad (37s): Well hello Joel (38s): Also joined by Gerry Crispin recruiting soothsayer and sightseer. I threw that in there and founder of career crossroads, Debra Andrychuk, industry veteran and VP of recruitment branding goodness, over at Shaker recruitment marketing and proud sponsor of the Chad and Cheese podcast, travel sponsor, and last and least Steven Rothberg, president and founder College Recruiter. Welcome everybody to the Chad and Cheese podcast. HR's most dangerous podcasts by the way. Joel (1m 8s): Well, let's dive right into it. We're going to talk about grad hiring on this episode. So I'm going to send this out to Deb, Deb, this one's for you. How are employers protecting their brands and talent pipelines by adapting their new grad hiring programs? Deb (1m 26s): So we are seeing, I'm actually really excited to see this, that companies are very keyed into the fact that they know they need to do the right thing. They are to Gerry's point in an earlier session, we were talking about how, you know, if you are making offers, you can't resend. The majority of our clients are keeping the folks that they have made offers to in the internship program, same thing. And then they're just pivoting and they're making sure that they're able to provide, you know, meaningful content via online. Deb (2m 4s): I think that's the toughest thing that these clients have had to do is, you know, take whatever they typically train for and turn that into online curriculum. That's not simple to do. And not only that, but we all know that, you know, the whole zoom fatigue, it's a real thing, trying to really pay attention every minute because you know, people can see you. You're, you're trying to look for the, the verbal and facial, all those cues that you, you don't get when you're not sitting across the table from someone, all of that really taxes you as an individual. Deb (2m 42s): So I think, you know, they're trying to, to throw in some fun, and then they're also trying to make sure that in lieu of, you know, the water cooler talk and being able to hang out with people that you would have worked with, like right next to them, they're trying to make sure you get some semblance of that And so they're doing the HR happy hours, but we're also seeing where there are executive sponsors who are spending, you know, an hour on, on, you know, video chat with new grads or with interns and, and having those conversations and keeping it a little lighthearted, making sure that it's a little more casual because they really want to try to humanize the entire experience instead of feeling, you know, very robotic Joel (3m 30s): Chad, wasn't you that sent the link of companies hiring magicians and comedians to come in on zoom, zoom calls, Chad (3m 39s): Oh yeah, and there is goat to meeting as well, where they actually bring live animals, llamas. And yeah, I mean, it's a thing. It's, it's the whole entertainment section. Gerry (3m 52s): We we've all seen each other's dogs and cats far more than we want to also can always see more dogs, cats, not so much Joel (4m 1s): On a serious note. Chad, you and I interviewed a Chipotle a few weeks ago and they're making some really interesting inroads with mental health benefits, as well as expanding healthcare, protecting workers, you know, serving food much better, creating six, you know, six feet distances between customers. So we're really seeing a lot of different variances of how companies are, are reacting to make sure that internships and any employee Bill's safe. You guys seeing anything else from companies? Gerry (4m 35s): All over the map, the thing that I try and do, which I can't do very well is, is to put myself in the shoes of some of these kids who are graduating. And, and it's hard. It's been a while for, for actually everybody on this call and 50 years for me. So, but I, but I do happen to go back and talk to kids at college on a regular basis. And most of them are truly invested in this full time job. Gerry (5m 5s): They're invested from an ego point of view invested maybe in a year or two years as an intern, they've gotten to know and build a relationship with kids who are also going to that company. Their parents are proud of them. You know, they finally are getting them out of the house, maybe. So there's this incredible kind of activity that's going on and now we have COVID. And so the whole issue is I'm frightened. What does that mean for me? And I think we talked about the fact that communication now becomes really critical the way in which we now are communicating with those students about what our thinking is. Gerry (5m 44s): Even before we make the decision as to whether or not we're going to be sinned or not rescinded, et cetera. So they get excited when we've decided not to rescind, but maybe it's going to be a delay, a delay for two or months, maybe a delay for even longer. Maybe there are a reduced issues in terms of how I'm going to be onboarded and the kind of projects I'm going to be involved in. And that might impact my pay. Or maybe I can show that there's some benefits that I can give you while I'm delaying companies or coming up with more and more innovative ways. Gerry (6m 20s): The key is that the company cares about doing this well more so than I've ever seen. You know, I remember the most recent 2008 a variation in which lots of companies were automatically rescinding their offers. And then suddenly the media was giving them such a hard time. They suddenly decided, well, maybe we don't resend everything, or maybe we just delay, or maybe we do something else. So they were, they were playing catch up because they made bad decisions too quickly. Gerry (6m 53s): Now they're making better decisions, but it takes time to make those decisions. And what they're doing when they're doing it really well is keeping the kids involved in the course of that timeframe. And, and the, the best of them are even engaging the parents of those kids as well. Joel (7m 15s): One of the ideas that sort of gaining traction is this idea of hazard pay. And I know we talked about internship pay in a previous episode, but it seems to me if you're in an essential worker and that's not just healthcare, but any, any, any job where you're in harms way of this virus that at least companies, government, at least government starting to talk about hazard pay, and some companies are doing it. Is that something you see getting traction? Is it something that you're seeing in the marketplace? What are your general thoughts on hazard pay for internships? Gerry (7m 42s): I don't, I don't see that happening too much for interns and or early hires. I see it much more in the hourly apprenticeship kind of thing. So if you're, if you're a laundry worker in a hospital, I gotta tell ya, I would be looking for some serious hazard pay. And, and I'm aware of the fact that almost half of all the people who are offered that job don't show up and, and a good portion of those who do show up, leave on the first day, because, because that's not going to, you know, you need that kind of hazard pay for those kinds of things and, and the pay and the job and the future of somebody in that job is way different than that of an intern who can, or early hire, who proves himself or herself and, and the experience that they have and the skills they're going to be able to develop and fine tune in a crisis situation are probably gonna serve them really well from a successful point of view for the rest of their lives. Steven (8m 50s): Yeah. Yeah. So one thing that, that these 21, 22 year old grads are going through is that a lot of them feel like punching bags that at some of their earliest memories were the start were, are this country going to war? And you know, that just sort of, as they became aware that the world was more than just them in their mommy and daddy, we were already at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Steven (9m 25s): So they've, they've never known a time when we weren't at war another early memory for these 21/22 year olds is the 2008, 2009 recession, where a lot of them saw their, their parents or maybe older siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts, lose their jobs. Some of them becoming homeless or having to leave their homes being foreclosed on. And now 12 years later, or 11 years later, you know, here we are again. And it's sort of feels to a lot of them, like they've lurched from one massive crisis to another, I'm a gen Xer we didn't have any of this shit, you know, bullshit. Steven (10m 5s): You know, we just had, what are you talking about? We had some, but we, we didn't have anything like 08 recessions Gerry (10m 17s): drugs Steven (10m 18s): that wasn't an existential threat facing all of society and turning it upside down in the course of weeks or months. It just, it, it just paled in comparison. Yeah. We had the Soviets and we knew that we could be incinerated in a moment, but that was something that we lived with for our whole lives Chad (10m 39s): Were you in Canada at the time, Is that what the problem is? Gerry (10m 42s): I think it's, I think that's the answer. Yeah. Steven (10m 45s): And it's true. I mean, they're there, but you know, Canadians Canadian certainly would, would, would understand that if, if the U S were to get nuked, then Canada's, but this generation has gone from one massive crisis to another far more than the generations before it millennials or gen Xers. And another thing that I think we need to keep in mind is that a typical 21, 22 year old would rather be just about anywhere else than a spare bedroom in their parent's home. Steven (11m 20s): And when they are completing their senior year, have to leave school, probably go back to their parent's home, maybe complete their classes online, don't have a graduation, and then can't go to their job of choice in May or June, and maybe have that deferred, you know, like when I graduated. And so if my employer had said, Hey, we want to defer your start date. By three months, I would have been doing cartwheels. If I was physically ever capable of doing them, that would have been great shit. Steven (11m 54s): Yeah. I'll Go travel for three months. I'll do this. I'll do that now. What are they going to do? Watch Netflix. I think that they're impatient to start. They want to get there the rest of their life underway. They don't remember a time when they weren't in school. And now they're on the cusp of joining the real world. Joel (12m 12s): The great Billy Joel, who said the world's been burning since the world's been turning Deb. I got a question for you on the, the marketing side and branding side of the house. Are you seeing companies want to build a brand, a profile page career site with, you know, masks and how we're protecting our employees and gloves. Stephen, are you seeing profile pages? And if we're not, should we, and when will we, if we do? Deb (12m 37s): That's a great question. So we actually are getting requests from clients to go in and, you know, update their pages, LinkedIn profiles, Glassdoor profiles, help them build out, you know, quick turn micro-sites that are COVID related. So we just did one for Lowe's that launched. I think we did it in less than a week. No pressure there at all, but I think, I think what's been really cool to see is that these bigger clients, they really get that they need to address it in some, some fashion. Deb (13m 16s): Like it doesn't have to be perfect, but you need to have the messaging out there. And I think too, the other thing is that I've loved the community spirit and the way that these companies have come together, where if you are a company that's furloughing and laying off, like one of our clients has Hilton and, you know, they laid off thousands and thousands of people. And I thought it was so cool that they partnered immediately, you know, with some of the essential employers that are out there. Deb (13m 46s): They're, they're partnered up with CVS, for example, and also Lowes. And, and I think just the fact that these companies are willing to work together. I don't know to me, that's that smells of change. And that makes me happy. We should have we, I agree. It is a big deal. And we talked about it on the show Hilton and what CVS actually did the whole experience for somebody obviously losing their job in a crisis in most of these individuals that that's a need income, right? Chad (14m 24s): And they're going to remember that Hilton helped them out, but they're also going to remember that CVS welcome them with open arms. You go to that landing page, and there's a, there's a letter from Jeff Lackey saying, welcome. You know, we need people like you to be able to operate. Why has it taken us to be in a crisis to be able to work like this because, AT&T can't hire all the people that are that actually going Into their applicant tracking system, they go into a black hole or wherever they go, why couldn't they work with Verizon to be able to ensure that these, these people are getting placed. Chad (15m 2s): I understand talent and top talent, but Holy hell, you have all this overflow of people. We have to wait to we're in a clock crisis before we can work with other companies. I don't know, Joel (15m 14s): Would it stick? And would that stick? Cause my guess is once things go back to fair normalcy that we go back to being the American way and sticking it to the competition. Gerry (15m 24s): Well, it's, I think it's one thing for Hilton to refer its employees to CVS, first of all, over the top, awesome. For both organizations doing the right thing for their organizations, doing the right thing for their people. Chad, you said that, you know, those, those employees will always remember that they will always, always remember that. Plus the 200 people that they know well, each of those, I mean that story of how Hilton took care of me and how CVS welcomed me with open arms that is going to be retold over and over and over again, that's going to be Thanksgiving dinner conversation for years. Gerry (16m 8s): And I mean, whoever it was that came up with that idea, you know, they should have a monument to, to, to that person was just, but to say that Verizon should partner with AT&T a direct competitor. That seems a step too far to me. First of all, Joel (16m 29s): If the Canadian says that it's Gerry (16m 33s): Years ago, by the way, don't forget, I moved to the U S you know, so, you know, but, but if you're, you know, if the candidate applied to AT&T and for whatever reason was, was rejected, they're going to have a Scarlet letter on them. When they go over to Verizon, Verizon is going to be like, Oh, well, this they're not good enough to work for AT&T are they good enough? Why, why would we want to hear that? And that's probably not fair, but I think it's just going to be part of human nature that we don't want the second hand goods. Gerry (17m 4s): I think it's really different where if you were a guest services manager and now you're going to be going over to a CVS and you're going to be the store manager, they're not competing. They're very complimentary. Well, there's also one is furloughing. And wants them back, and CVS is surge hiring and will not need them beyond surge. So, so lackeys, happy to tell, you know, Sarah, that I will walk them back when, when the duration is up and in those kinds of deals. Gerry (17m 40s): And those, those two really made the best deal in pardon, because Lackey was able to break down a lot of stuff in between. But the fact is Hilton has nearly 50 Partners that they go direct with now. And CVS has 70 partners. So the, the, you know, the reality is there's a lot of job boards that aren't making any money because they're not, there's no in between. Right. Chad (18m 5s): There's a lot, Gerry, Gerry (18m 6s): there's a lot of things, stuff in between that isn't in between, right? Steven (18m 12s): You say that Gerry, because, because we talk to some of the companies that were surge hiring before, some of this stuff became public and the answer was sort of vaguely we're not going to need help. And it's like, what are you smoking? You just, announced that you need to hire 50,000 people yesterday and you don't need help? It's like, okay, you don't need help from us. Fair enough. You've got another good source. It turns out they did, they had, you know, a hotel partner, a restaurant chain or, or whatever. Steven (18m 45s): And Gerry (18m 45s): they had each of these heads of TA yeah. Been around for 20 plus years and fundament and fundamentally they know each other at this point. And so when, when somebody suddenly realizes that in three or four days, I've got a, I've got to let go how many people, 50,000, a hundred thousand or whatever, Holy crap, I need a whole different paradigm for how I'm going to operate. Gerry (19m 16s): You know, what they do, they call, they call people who are like them Marriott talks to Hilton talks to whatever. And that's how that gets passed on. And that's how it happened this time. Steven (19m 31s): Well, and this framework doesn't just have, have to happen in crisis because this ebb and flows happens all the time, right? Gerry (19m 39s): Not to that level, but, Steven (19m 41s): But it still happens. And whether it's trickling from here to there or not, it it's, it's a much better experience for anybody who's, who's being, you know, furloughed or they've got a downsize or whatever it is for that brand. And then being reintroduced to, to another brand, because we also have to remember that these individuals and their, their 200 closest friends buy stuff. Right, right. Are they going to go to Walgreens or they're going to go to CVS? Are they going to go to Hilton or are they going to go to, you know, the next competitor that's incredibly important for any of those brands Gerry (20m 17s): Which Is why I absolutely believe that the job board model has to, has to elevate itself in being able to offer more than simply the transaction, but also the, something more about the relationship movement. And I don't know what that is. I think that's up to, up to them to figure out, but it's going to have to take a new turn. I think there will be a pivot in some of the technology tools out because they recognize That we've got to do more than simply have a job that somebody can have that a hundred thousand people can apply to. Gerry (20m 56s): And one person gets, it's not going to be sufficient in the future Steven (21m 1s): to be so lucky to get a hundred thousand people to apply not maybe, but, but you know, the, the, the new, the, the communication, the marketing for an organization, like a Hilton that did such a fantastic job in taking care of its people. When they go on campus next fall, or recruit virtually whatever it is that they're going to do, it should try to reach those seniors. They're going to have a compelling story to tell, Oh yeah. Steven (21m 32s): A lot of employers will say, we take care of our people in good times and in bad. Yup. Hilton will actually be able to prove it they'll have a video of full virtual experience. I've happily, Gerry (21m 46s): you almost said virtual reality. Steven (21m 49s): Okay. I was, yeah. I was trying to pull back so you wouldn't get too excited. Joel (21m 52s): Deb, last one from me, we know that our brand is a lot of the times outside of what we say our brand is, and I'm imagining that Glassdoor and indeed reviews and whatnot are lighting up. So to speak of companies that are doing poorly with coronavirus and taking care of their employees and things like that. I know you guys track that to some degree. Are you seeing that, and what advice would you give a company who's maybe seeing a spike in negative reviews because of how they're handling the COVID-19 crisis. Deb (22m 22s): Yeah. We're definitely watching it closely and monitoring it and, you know, just, it just depends on industry. And, you know, I would say it, it does depend on the type of role, but we're seeing it from experienced hires to where, when they're furloughed or lay it off they're, they're ranting on glass door. And I think in defense of some of these companies, it wouldn't matter how they delivered, you know, the, the message, if you're going to a 17 year, you know, bet in your company, and you're saying, Hey, you know, today's your last day, pack up your box and go, it does it doesn't matter how delicately you give that message. Deb (23m 5s): They're still going to be upset and they are, they are going to go to glass door and, and these pages and they aren't going to, you know, leave a review. And it stings. I think the best thing that we can do as employers and what we have been telling our clients to do is, you know, make sure that you are doing the best job, that you can make sure that you are really digging for every type of alternative before you cut the cord with somebody. Deb (23m 36s): But then also spend some time on figuring out, you know, how do we kind of balance out that negative with some positive? And so it's digging some of those really positive stories and some of the things that they're doing that would resonate and, you know, carry over and carry them through. I guess Outro (23m 55s): I'd like to thank Gerry. Thank you, Steven, for joining us. Again, this is our protecting your brand series. You can find it on Chadcheese.com a shaker, or have it. Gerry will be passing it out at the MCL and Steven Rothberg. You know, you know, it's going to be on college recruiter.com. Thanks so much, guys. We really appreciate you spending time with us and on that, we out. Outro (24m 28s): Well, cool. This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast, subscribe on iTunes, Google play, or wherever you get your podcasts. So you don't miss a single show and be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible for more visit Chadcheese.com. Oh yeah. You're welcome.

Snagajob has enjoyed its success, but it has also experienced churn and Snag market confusion. Mathieu Stevenson helps us cut through all of that with an insightful and raw conversation. Brought to you by our friends at NEXXT. Remember that next with the double X, not the triple X hiring.nexxt.com. 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 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 & Cheese podcast. Joel (21s): Yeah, what's up everybody. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheesman joined as always with my fearless co host Chad, Sowash. Chad (31s): Well Hello. Joel (33s): And today we are happy to welcome Mathieu Stevenson. Newly minted CEO of snag a job, man. Mathieu (45s): That's a good French accent, I like it. Thank you for having me. Joel (48s): First off, Fabio Rosati has to be one of the coolest names ever. We've actually met. You mentioned it on the podcast Do you have to have a cool name to lead snag a job? Is that one of the that's right? Mathieu (59s): That's rights, that's a, that's a prerequisite. Joel (1m 1s): Excellent. Well, give us a little, a little bit about you, man. Mathieu (1m 4s): You know, per personally I half French, half American grew up overseas as a kid and came back to the, to the U S and then today, I'm married. Wife is Australian who actually met in Dubai and I've got three little kids around. Yeah, I've, I've, I've been a few places over the years. And then professionally, I basically spent the first half of my career at a consulting firm called McKinsey and then left to go do a quasi startup called HomeAway, which is now part of Expedia called VRBO, and then just fell in love with sort of technology and marketplaces. Mathieu (1m 38s): And then I got introduced to snag a job through a, a friend who knew Fabio Rosati. Who's now our executive chairman. And when I sort of heard about the mission and the vision for the company, I remember getting off the phone, I was supposed to talk to Fabio for 30 minutes. We talked for an hour and a half. I got off the phone and told my wife, even though I promised her, we wouldn't leave Texas. And just said, we've got to go do this. So that was a, that was two, two years ago. I think I drove, I guess a year and a half ago. Joel (2m 7s): So first question, before we get to snag a job, you lucky you, you joined the company that services hourly workers and this meteorite called COVID hits the world. What's what's what was that like? What's the current state of hourly work and sort of what's your near future view of what's going to happen? Mathieu (2m 28s): Yeah, yeah. As you can imagine, I think different from maybe, you know, the great recession this time around, I think hourly work was the hardest to get hit and hit first. And I think as, also, as we're now seeing the first reemerge, but, you know, overall it's sort of the trough, like hourly jobs were down 50%. They've now since recovered. So they're down about 34% year over year, but we really just had this fundamental shift in sort of labor across sectors, right? Mathieu (2m 58s): Like, you know, retail, restaurant hospitality, incredibly hard hit and sectors like grocery warehousing and even sort of on demand or gig that have really grown and upwards of 40% or more just since the beginning of March. Joel (3m 12s): Yeah. So what's the future look like? Mathieu (3m 14s): Well, I think, I think we're already starting to see the signs in my mind of a pretty strong U shaped recovery, you know, very similar to, I think what we've been seeing in China, if you think about China as being sort of a proxy a couple of months out. And so just since the beginning of June jobs are up more than 11%. 88% of our clients and firms who typically sort of hire over the summer are still planning on doing so, you know, we've seen a number of sort of our core clients in restaurant and retail. Mathieu (3m 47s): Who've now started to rehire again. And even if you think about like activity levels in our ATS, those are actually now back to pre-crisis levels. Wow. And so I think we're seeing a number of things that say, Hey, this is pretty encouraging long way to go, but pretty encouraging in terms of the rebound for hourly. Chad (4m 6s): So talk about rebound. You guys, actually, You put out this, new, is it, is it like a suite? What is it? First and foremost, we saw it come out and I thought, wow, this is, this is pretty cool. And then we haven't heard anything about it since then, number one, and number two, I go to the website and I hit employers and I would expect this like big glossy rebound to pop out and smack me in the face, but I couldn't find it anywhere. So tell me if, was this kind of like a, a flash in the pan kind of a thing that you're talking about rebound, is it a suite of services as it's something that you guys are going to carry forward? Chad (4m 42s): What what's it all about? Mathieu (4m 44s): Yeah. Yeah. So, so it is, it's basically a solution made up of three different services. It's in sort of a recognition that even though you're seeing this economic recovery and this U shaped recovery in my mind, they're sort of like three things that employers are trying to navigate. One is just the fundamental, like scale of the rehiring, right there, there are an awful lot of companies that are rehiring, you know, almost entire companies or entire staff and the challenges in an environment where you're having to use a phase rehiring approach. Mathieu (5m 17s): You know, how do you even reengage or continue to engage your furloughed workers who you can't rehire back immediately. Two probably the biggest thing that I continue to hear is just around the uncertainty and demand, right? It's easy for me to say, Oh, well, we're following a China like recovery curve. If you're a local operator, you you're just trying to navigate, like, how do I like what's the right staffing level? Cause if I get that wrong, I have a huge cost overhang. Mathieu (5m 48s): So that uncertainty and demand is a huge one. And then the last one is the one that I think, I think people talk about a lot, which is just the sort of safety concerns, but on the part of workers and employers and how that influences for the hiring process. And so in our mind, we tried to say, okay, how do we solve those? And it's not, it's not necessarily just a June thing, right? I mean, it's something that people are going to be navigating for the next six months. So one, we launched a new offering called talent pools, which basically says, how do you enable employers to pick up shifts or to fill shifts almost on demand, right? Mathieu (6m 25s): Like last minute you realize you've got more demand than you expected. How do you fill a shift? This allows them to basically tap into existing employees, furloughed, and alumni as well as sort of a snag a job qualified worker pool. Okay. So we're, you know, you say, okay, I don't have to rehire everybody. I can assess things. And when I have a demand, let me just go and fill it to sort of prebuilt hiring campaign. Mathieu (6m 56s): So again, you know, if you think about it, like markets are gonna reopen at different stages and you're going to see recovery in different ways. Go ahead. And just pre-build your, your campaigns, meaning I've got 10 different kinds of roles I want to hire across 20 markets. And basically as you see the need, you just flip the switch for those roles in the markets that you need to really do hire one and where you want so much more sort of targeted. Chad (7m 21s): Gotcha. So from a scaling standpoint, I mean that, that's where I think we overall, whether it's high volume or even if it's enterprise, nobody saw COVID coming. They got slapped in the face with it. I know obviously employee levels are down dramatically, but yet that's going to snap back. So therefore we have to understand scale better. And the only way we can scale better is through technology. So my, my question to you about the talent pools piece, is that kind of like, is this an app work? Chad (7m 51s): You know, I can just, if, if I'm at a restaurant and I'm a manager and I know that I need people, I can pull it out and I can start to, to add jobs into how does it, how does that actually work in a practical sense for the person on the ground? Mathieu (8m 4s): Yeah, so we had sort of a permutation of it really over the last 18 months or so. And there it was basically an app. So let's say you're, let's say you're a restaurant manager and your dishwasher calls in sick, or, you know, you just have a scheduling gap, you'd go on the app. You basically tap like dishwasher on your phone. And we match you to a qualified dishwasher who shows up. So it is, it is on-demand in the truest sense, just like getting an Uber driver, you don't review resumes, you trust sort of our algorithms and our qualification, that the right person is going to show up in about 95% of the time. Mathieu (8m 44s): If you think about like from the customer satisfaction scores, we get that right. Really now the sort of talent pools is just saying like, Hey, we recognize, in some cases you want to do that with your existing employees or your alumni or furloughed employees. That's incredibly valuable as a way to sort of keep them engaged with your brand and now, but also going forward, right. Even post rebound. Like I think it's just a different way to think about how you manage and engage talent. Joel (9m 9s): So I want to add some, some context to how we got here and, you know, Chad and I have been, I've been in the industry for a long time. You a much shorter period, but snag a job used to be sort of this unsung hero in the hourly space. We talked about, you know, monster and indeed, but, but things seemed to be really chugging along nicely. And then 2018 hit CEO, Peter Harrison, who a lot of people knew was, was gone. They launched a snag.co, which was an app sort of a, a platform like an Upwork or whatnot. Joel (9m 40s): And then Fabio comes in who has Upwork experience. And then you come in and, and I think Chad and I thought, well, you know, they're gonna reset or try to figure it out. And then the news comes out, you guys raised $8 million and you come on. And I think we were kind of thrown back like, Holy shit. Like, is this a renewal or is this is, so my question is in light of the context, you have $8 million now looks like you're going to grow the company. I'm curious about Brian Schmidt, who's on as your chief revenue officer, he has TripAdvisor experience. Joel (10m 14s): And he was at Google, I believe that's right. So, so what, $8 million new CEO, like, what's the plan what's going to bring this company back to life? Mathieu (10m 23s): Yeah. I mean, maybe, maybe I'll address the 2018. And again, hindsight is 20/20 on these things. And it predates me, my sense is, you know, when you're a couple hundred person organization, focus is important. And I think, you know, my sort of reflection is, you know, Peter and others, incredibly smart individuals, but we were probably trying to do too much relative to the size of the business. And so part of, part of what Fabio really sort of stepped in to try and do was say, Hey, really sort of, what is the focus for the company? Mathieu (10m 57s): What are our core businesses like, where do we invest? And then the second, which was the reality of the situation in 2018 is frankly, we had a cost structure that we couldn't support even in a, even in a high growth environment. And so there was, there was a pretty powerful reckoning in 2018, right? There's no way to sort of sugar coat that. But I think, I think now I think you'd say, you know, I'm really credit goes to Fabio, right? And, and Upwork is, is a pretty like relevant analogy for, I think what we are trying to create, right? Mathieu (11m 28s): We've got two core businesses. One is the marketplace, right? The snagajob.com that, you know, grew up in the 2000's and then the software business, right. Which is, which is a couple of ATS's. And for the marketplace, like for us, it is really becoming a true on demand marketplace for full time, part time and gig based shift work very much akin to an Upwork model. Meaning, you know, you as a worker, you have a profile just this week, actually we're launching public profile. So now hourly workers will have a public profile akin to like what you or I might have via LinkedIn, but much more specific to hourly. Mathieu (12m 7s): And that enables you in some sense to like market yourself in a way that you've never been able to do. And for you to be able to receive right fit opportunities, just as much as you sort of seek them out in the traditional, like a job board. Joel (12m 19s): Sort of a LinkedIn for the hourly workforce. Mathieu (12m 22s): That's right. That's right. Because if you think about it like this, this is where it's really different to, in my experience, from like a HomeAway, you know, when you're looking for a job, whether you're passive or active, there's not a lot of serendipity in the search, right? Like nobody enjoys looking through 50 jobs. It's not like looking at a vacation house that you're interested in. Joel (12m 41s): That's a wild Friday night in my house. I don't know. Mathieu (12m 45s): Sadly, I probably do enjoy it, but you'd hope you'd have, that'd be the case. You guys are lame. But, but for me, for me, the opportunity has always been like, how do we put people in the right fit roles? Like using the profiles. You're now able to better link people to through true, like machine learning, to be able to say, Hey, here's really what we think are the best roles. And, you know, we, we now surface the five best roles for you. Mathieu (13m 16s): And by the way, two of those might just be invitations to go ahead and interview, right? Cause again, that's, that's incredibly powerful for somebody. And so it's a much more akin to what Upwork has done, but in our case, in what is, what is it the end of the day, lightly skilled labor you technology can actually play a much greater role in automating them, just like we do on the gig based shift side where the literally there's no human interaction you could today do that on a full time hire set. I don't think the market is ready to completely eliminate the interview, but I'm actually pretty confident. Mathieu (13m 48s): We've been, we've been using sort of a hybrid AI cognitive games based solution to do candidate assessment on top of somebody for profile data. You can get it just as right as, as even a professional recruiter. Chad (14m 6s): We will get back to the interview in a minute. But first we have a question for Andy Katz, COO of Nexxt. So for those companies that are out there today, who are kind of hesitant because they're afraid of texting, what do you have to say to them? Andy Katz (14m 22s): Get with the program. People are texting these days. You know, I will say that I'm in a different generation, a different point in my career that I agree I would be hesitant, but there are obviously millions of millions of people that are in that demographic that want to receive them. So it's again, know your audience and be able to deliver a message to your audience that way they want to receive it. Chad (14m 42s): For more information, go to hiring.nexxt.com. Remember that next with the double X, not the triple X hiring.nexxt.com Chad (15m 19s): When it comes to, when it comes to tech and it comes to high volume or blue collar. I mean, whatever segments you want to try to try to try to own process is everything for these smaller organizations, right? You have obviously larger organizations, but some of them might be franchised and you're still, you're still looking at something that's really not an enterprise overall from a process methodology standpoint. So from snags standpoint, if I'm, if I am a small franchise owner or just maybe blue collar looking for construction workers, can I do what does end to end look like with your app? Mathieu (15m 33s): So think about it. Like, let's say you're a store manager of any kind of independent business franchise, etc. Let's say maybe, you own a coffee shop and you need a barista. Well, today I think about it the way it works, right? Like you put this on job description out there. You see what sort of comes through in a lot of ways in my mind, we have sort of digitized the offline process. And I think over time we've continued to automate Joel (15m 58s): Well, the problem is, I think we tried to digitize the offline process exactly the way the offline process was, which is why it sucks so badly. Mathieu (16m 8s): That's true. Chad (16m 9s): So, I mean, what are you guys doing to make sure that, because those are, these positions need filled today or tomorrow, right? So what are you guys doing to be able to facilitate that whole thing? Mathieu (16m 17s): Yeah. So think about it. And this, this, we will launch later this year, we call it sort of like our top three candidate experience, but let's say you need to hire a barista. You sort of toggle as opposed to now saying, Hey, post this job description, you have an opportunity to just say, what are the three best baristas or the three, like top fit baristas for me. And let me just go ahead and invite them to interview. Or if you feel confident enough in our algorithms, like go ahead and make them an install. Mathieu (16m 47s): And that for me is a very, very different approach. Chad (16m 52s): Right? Well, I mean, if you're, if you're looking at, let's say for instance, some of these positions requirements are very simply I think check boxes and if you can check all the boxes then why even, and I think this is what you're talking about, why even go through the interview. So the question is, do you believe that most of the industry today is actually moving towards, especially on this high volume side, moving toward no interviews, just do you meet, meet the requirements? Can you show up, can you do this? Chad (17m 22s): Is that what you, you believe or that's what you're feeling and seeing, or is that what you're just pushing for and hoping for? Mathieu (17m 29s): Yeah, probably somewhere in between. Like I, I think of it in two parts, like one is the elimination of the concept of just the application. And I just fundamentally believe a worker profile should replace the application. Right. And there's some complexity around like how you integrate with different ATS, et cetera, to enable that on the enterprise and mid market side On the interview. Again, we see it on the gig based shift side of the business, that in combination with the data that you have in somebody's profile that we layer on again, I would call it like an attitudinal assessment, which is sort of hybrid of, of using AI plus cognitive gains that you can assess like dependability ability to work in teams, et cetera, that ability, like, I think that can absolutely replace the interview. Mathieu (18m 21s): And I think that's actually transformative for obviously the employer, there's a real opportunity cost, but even more meaningfully on the hourly worker. Right? If you think about like the opportunity costs for them to go to an interview for the vast majority who are relying on things like public transportation, you're talking about two hours of time, but actually a hard cost of like having to take the bus, having to find somebody to take care of your child. Like that's a meaningful, meaningful cost to frankly, a segment of the population that can't afford it. Mathieu (18m 51s): Right. Joel (18m 52s): You currently have a on Glassdoor, a 62% rating as a CEO. Curious, is that something that you look at or are you concerned about it? It is only eight, eight ratings or eight people that have chimed in, but I'm curious how important that is to you if at all. And if it is, what, what will you be doing internally to sort of get that number back up to the eighties, nineties if possible? Mathieu (19m 15s): I honestly, as a first time CEO, I'm probably trying to figure out like, how, how should I be thinking about that? I'd say probably a couple of thoughts. Like one, you have to have certain amount of conviction around what you're doing and where you're going. I think glass door and anything you do in terms of employee surveys are really valuable just to candidly, like identify blind spots that you may have. And so I do, I do read them to understand and listen, like some of the decisions that we had to make, particularly in March and April, as it related to COVID? Mathieu (19m 54s): Cause we were very quick to take action. You know, I think, I think some people would say run popular. Yeah. They, for sure weren't popular. Right. Do I believe that they were the right decisions to ensure that the business could weather the storm a hundred percent? Unfortunately, Chad (20m 11s): Let's take a look at, you're talking about the sugarcoating before and I see a part of that sugarcoating being snag.co. There's this big brand that's launched new colors, new URL. And there's like this brand whiplash that happens because it wasn't announced, but it's obvious that, you know, snag.co got kicked to the curb. Now there's a brand whiplash for not as much, I don't think at the market as there is, there is the employees. Joel (20m 41s): Right. You know, Peter, you had, you had Fabio come in, then you had, you know, obviously you come in with the marketing background. Can you tell us a little bit about that decision? Because from an employee standpoint, purpose means everything. And when we hear this new big brand new purpose, blah, blah, blah, you get all excited and then it's like the whiplash happens because it's all gone. Right. So tell us a little bit about that. How did you manage that? Was it really a big deal or, or not? You just transitioned right back into, into snag a job very easily. Mathieu (21m 13s): Yeah. Yeah. I wish I could say it wasn't it wasn't a big deal. I think on balance,I think it was very well received by the organization. Like here, here's my sort of reflection on it. Cause it was something that, that we did relatively early in my tenure is, you know, I, I can understand sort of the reasons why a year previous, somebody would have said, Hey, you know, even though snag a job has a lot of equity in the marketplace, like there's value in a different name because the word Snagajob can in some way be limiting. Mathieu (21m 46s): Right. Right. And so you might say, Hey, a name like a snag or whatever else provides you more optionality around like where you take the company going forward. I think the challenge is like in any rebrand, not even specific to snag a job, like there are a few things like you really have to invest to make it successful. My sort of reflection is we sort of we're somewhere in the middle. Like we were still Snag a job to consumers. We were snag to employers. Mathieu (22m 16s): I got co we didn't actually even own the rights to snag.com and minor detail until you just looked at it. And you said like, Hey, you know, being stuck in the middle, sort of like the absolute worst case scenario here. Joel (22m 31s): Yeah. Yeah. Well, as a CMO, how did that make you feel? Because I mean, being, you know, a big brand like snag and then not being able to snag the.com it, it was, it was, it was cool that there was a new brand coming out, but not so cool that you couldn't really play on top tier. Right? Mathieu (22m 49s): Yeah. I mean, just, just think about it, like practically, like our social handles were like snag. And so we would communicate with workers via snag, which was a name that they had literally never heard of. Right. Cause they know snag, it's like a job.com, which was still the consumer site. So it was creating like frankly, a fair amount of confusion and complexity. And so when we looked at it, you said like, okay, well I've got two paths, like one a double down and invest in snag. Mathieu (23m 20s): Or I roll back to Stag a job.com. My view was like, we didn't have rights to Snag.com, sang.co had call it like some challenges with it and to do it right was going to be an expensive proposition. That's how I just said like, listen, like, I don't think it's the right use of several million dollars, of company's money to really try and make snag work when I've got a brand, frankly, that has a ton of equity in the market. And doesn't necessarily have some of the negative associations that actually snag as a word and does. Mathieu (23m 53s): So when we actually did research, it actually didn't come out very favorably. So we just said like, you know what, like this is, this is not the right time and place. Like the best thing for us is to go back to what has served us well for the last two decades. Joel (24m 7s): Absolutely. Well, I'm going to let you out on this one, we covered a story this past week about employers having, you know, employee employees, sign NDAs or agreements that if they get, if they get the Corona virus, they're not going to Sue the company. I'm just curious your thoughts on how are companies that employ a lot of hourly workers, seasonal folks, et cetera, going to evolve in this new arena and how is it going to affect hiring. And does it increase sort of the, the acceptance or evolution of automation replacing hourly workers if they're such a pain in the ass for so many companies? Mathieu (24m 44s): Yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, from a hiring process standpoint, you're seeing everybody move in the direction of our virtual hiring again, for a lot of reasons. Like I actually think the coronavirus is a catalyst for good. I actually think net net, that is, that is a real benefit just for all the reasons we talked about in terms of opportunity costs in terms of adapting. You know, I, I will say I've been pretty proud of, you know, the employers that we've been talking with about just how much they care about workplace safety and how they're evolving every element of their operating model to ensure workplace safety around. Mathieu (25m 22s): Like, does it drive longterm automation? Maybe I think, you know, I think certain sectors of the economy, we're likely to see that over the next 10 to 20 years. So it may be more of an accelerant of a trend that we would likely have seen. Yeah. But again, I think even in some retailers now, as an example are moving to more for a smaller footprint stores, just recognizing this example, like e-commerce is now again, not a new trend, but has been accelerated. Mathieu (25m 54s): They still need the stores. They're not saying, okay, I need fewer employees per store, but actually now it's actually even more important that I have the right fit employees because they're even more an ambassador of my brand than they were before. So I'm going to three or four employees as opposed to eight or nine per store, but they, they need to really showcase the brand and be the right fit. Chad (26m 13s): So last question for me, Matt, we have indeed acquired sift. We've heard nothing from them since then. Uber work, Uber work is pretty much dead. Zip took a huge hit. And again, we're talking about, these are all platforms that are really focused on the SMB and also more that high volume space kind of like the Snag a job space. Do you see this as you know, this is a good thing because are getting smacked around or I mean, is this market validation that maybe this is a hell of a lot harder than everybody thinks it is? Mathieu (26m 51s): It's probably a little bit of both, right? Like I think on all the gig based in the gig based shift side, which there's been one, a quarter billion dollars of investment over the last few years, like this is forcing a reckoning right in here, you're going to have a number of companies that I think the last few months just are going to be unable to make it. I was, I was actually surprised you WeWork was actually the first. They certainly won't be the last and the re and the truth of it is even, this is what we're seeing. Like SMB is not recovering as quickly as mid-market and enterprise. Mathieu (27m 23s): And you can imagine why. Right. They just aren't like capitalized as well. And so, again, for me, it's a reflection of, you know, one probably needing sort of fitting of, of sort of the competitive landscape, if you want to think about it that way. Mathieu (27m 38s): And the other, like, yeah, it's not as easy as it appears on the outside, right? The economics, you gotta make sure that you, you have those right. And, you know, I think if we learn something from 2018, it's yeah. Even when you're in a growth stage as a company, you still have to have a sustainable cost structure. And folks who may not have had that as they entered March, that was a really tough spot to be in. I think we were really fortunate that we did, and we had investors that were committed to the business and, and continue to invest in us. Joel (28m 10s): Matthew Stevenson, everybody CEO, good job, Mathieu, for our listeners who want to know more about you and the company, where do they go? Mathieu (28m 19s): Head over to the Snagajob.com. Fair enough, Jacqueline. Thank you, sir. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Outro (28m 28s): Hi, I'm Emma. Thanks for listening to my dad, the Chad and his buddy Cheese. This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google play or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show. Be sure to check out our sponsors because their money goes to my college fund for more visit Chadcheese.com.

Either Glassdoor is starting to take a page out of Indeed's playbook or Indeed is just running all of Glassdoor's plays. I'm betting on the latter. You gotta listen to find out more... Big thanks Recruitology for supporting The Shred. Recruitology brings machine learning and AI to virtual job fairs, remember when virtual job fairs were lame? Not anymore, check out how you can leverage candidate matching and programmatic job distribution with a virtual job fair at recruitology.com/employers.

SmartRecruiters founder and CEO Jerome Ternynck is a true industry veteran, who's forgotten more about the business than most of you will ever know. Anyway, he just wrote a book called "Hiring Success," which helps CEOs navigate recruitment, and the boys thought enough of it to bring the old dog on the podcast for a little chat. Powered by Sovren with AI so human you'll want to take it to dinner. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Sovren: Sovren is known for providing the world's best and most accurate parsing products. And now based on that technology, comes Sovren's artificial intelligence, matching and scoring software. In fractions of a second, receive match results that provide candidates 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 S-O-V-R-E-N.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren. Software so human you'll want to take it to dinner. Intro: 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: It's another episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. I am your cohost, Joel Cheesman, joined as always by Chad Sowash. Chad: Hello. Joel: Today we are honored to welcome Jerome Ternynck to the show, CEO, founder of SmartRecruiters. And we'll get into this, Mr. Ted. But previously to that, Jerome man, we've known you for a long time. Welcome to the show. I can't believe it's been this long since you've been on, but you're pimping a new book, which was the reason to come on the show, but we're going to cover a broad level of topics. How are things in your world? How are things with the company? How's the COVID situation where you are? Jerome: Everything's good. I'm happy to be on the show. I can't believe I had to write a book to get invited, but so it is. Chad: Let's just make this clear, Jerome. Your PR people came to us and said, "Jerome wants to come on". Jerome: Oh my God, it's even worse. Chad: And we said fine, we'll put Jerome on the show, but he's got to talk about Mr. Ted. But seriously, seriously, we're really happy to have you on. And how remote was your workforce before this? Because obviously it's incredibly remote now. How remote was it before and what's the impact been? Was it easy to make that change? Was it not easy? Tell us a little bit about that. Jerome: The workforce was distributed not completely remote. We have about 300 people at SmartRecruiters across five offices and about half US, half Europe. So we were all distributed. So that was easy to manage. We actually did have quite a few folks in the office and it's very surprising how little people miss the office. They actually don't care. And so we've been able to transition over, everybody has your laptop and we just carried on business as usual. And we haven't seen any service disruption per se. Jerome: But actually we are, I think this is opening up a lot of opportunities for how we organize as a company and what does the future of work look like for us, obviously for our customers. From an organizational standpoint, it's actually a very interesting thing. Chad: Okay, well, we'll get into the future stuff, but I want to dig into your deep, dark past, sir. That's right. So you graduated from Saint Sierra as a valedictorian and accepted an offer to join the paratroops elite forces as a Lieutenant, which I found was incredibly interesting. Joel: Impressive. Chad: It says that you led troops, soldiers. Overall, it sounded like you were doing basic training. Were you in basic training, were you actually executive officer? Tell me a little bit about that. This to me is interesting because on my side, I'm sure you know, I was also a drill Sergeant in the US army. Jerome: Yeah. Bootcamps was my job. So as a lieutenant I would take new recruits, mandatory draft in France at the time. So every two months we would get a couple of buses full of young kids with long hair and hopes and fears and within the next 60 days we would turn them into soldiers, ready to do whatever they needed for the good of the country and the good of their team. And that's a very interesting experience for me leading people through that transformation, pushing the limits of my own leadership and kind of pushing the limits of what hardship, camaraderie, teamwork can actually create when you really put people through a difficult situation and let them emerge as one, as a team. And the army is obviously a very strong environment for that. Chad: Yeah, so how did that experience shape you? I know from my personal experience, it did a lot to actually shape me, good, bad or indifferent, just ask Joel, but how did it shape you and how did it prepare you for corporate life or did it? Jerome: Yeah, it certainly did. I would say it gave me three things. First, and it's very topical, but it made me aware of my white privilege. I grew up a white guy in a nice neighborhood with cool parents and I never questioned why this was like this, right? It was just normal. But going into the army and finding myself doing boot camps here, especially the paratroops in France is like a semi disciplinary environment. So they would send their older kids that like had criminal records or had difficulty in youth. And so that really kind of gave me a very, very different perspective that I guess I needed heavily at the time. Jerome: Second, it actually taught me that your limits, your personal limits, are a lot further than where you think they are. That living on the edge of your personal limits is where the fun starts and you can really push yourself and push people to way, way, way, way beyond what they think they can, they are capable of, which is interesting. And then the third one is that it gave me confidence in my leadership and confidence in my decisions and say, okay, if I want to lead people through difficult times, I actually can do that. Joel: Yeah. So from there, you become a recruiter at some point, correct? And then in 2000 you start Mr. Ted and in your book, it says, don't ask me how I got the name Mr. Ted. So I won't ask you about the name. Chad: Ask him! Joel: But talk about the environment, the genesis of the idea, sort of paint a picture for those who were not around in 2000 like we were. Jerome: So actually, after the army, I started my recruitment agency. I moved to Prague in the Czech Republic. This was '92, just after the Berlin Wall fell. And I wanted to create a company, I was like, well, I'm an entrepreneur, I'll try something, right? I didn't speak Czech at the time at all. And I just was going around and asking people like, what can you do in this country? And they're like, yeah, you can do anything, man. This is an entirely new system and you can do anything you want, but gee, it's hard to find good people. And I said, huh, this is actually an idea. I could do a recruitment agency. Jerome: And so I did, I mean, I had $2,000 of student savings in my pockets so I wasn't going to go into the telecoms industry anytime soon anyways. So I started a recruitment agency and that worked well and we expanded that agency to several countries. And we ended up having like 200 plus people in the company. And then the internet came and Monster arrived and I'm like, gee, this is going to change the way people hire. If you can apply on the web, this is crazy. We're going to need to track these people. Jerome: And so I did what every other ATS entrepreneur at the time did because that's the time when Teleo and Brass Ring and ICM's were all founded at the same time. I went on and I raised some money from Accenture and others and we built a software to track applicants. Like we effectively automated the file cabinet if you will, right? Because that was the opportunity. Joel: Yeah. So you mentioned Monster, you talk in the book about meeting Jeff Taylor, the founder of the company. Talk about that. Chad: That's a trip. Jerome: Yeah, that is a trip there. The one memory I had was him standing on stage and talking to a 200 plus search consultant that had just been acquired by TMP, TMP having got acquired Monster a couple of months before. That was when Andy McKelvey was in an acquisition spree of acquiring businesses here. And he looked at all these search consultants and he said, "Recruiters, they've looked at the future and they prefer the past." Okay, you're that kind of guy, okay. Chad: Yes. Jerome: Yes. Chad: Yeah, no. That's definitely Jeff, there's no question. You've been in the industry for so long. How do you continue to be passionate about an industry that crawls toward progress instead of walks or runs? Jerome: It's very simple. The problem hasn't been solved. Chad: Yeah. And the problem hasn't been solved because in most cases, hiring companies won't adopt, the adoption rate in this industry is slow. It's like molasses in January, that's got to batter at passion, especially for a company that is focused on innovation. Talk about that. How do you stay passionate when adoption is right there at your fingertips, but you just can't get it to happen sometimes? Jerome: You know, adoption is a challenge for technology and what else? I mean, if we don't get adoption, is it because we are perfect and the people using it are idiots or is it because we don't know how to turn that innovation into something useful or if we don't know how to actually measure out outcomes? In recruiting, I think the main challenge today is we do not measure our outcomes. What are the measures of recruiting? Time to fill, cost per hire. Faster, cheaper. What does that have to do with recruiting? Recruiting is about hiring amazing people, okay? So why do you want to measure it by faster and cheaper? Jerome: And I think we have here a really interesting, fundamental debate in our industry as to how do we actually help the TA buyer step up, because the CFO, the CEO's in particular, they wake up every morning and they say, I want to hire the best people in my industry. I want to go and I want to out-hire all my competitors, I want them to suffer, I want to have the best talent in my company. And then they turn around and they give this to HR who passes it through TA who is like a staffing agent and they say faster and cheaper. How does that actually correlate to the CEO's vision in the first place, right? So I think that gap is what we have to bridge. Chad: When people say the best talent, I think you're 100% right, I don't think they understand what that actually means. Is that the best skilled? But that's not really what is meant in most cases, because the best talent is the one who adds to your culture. Yes, they have the skills, they have the abilities, but they add to your culture. And it doesn't simply just keep it the same. You're consistently trying to challenge each other. When you as a CEO are looking to impact your culture, it's not about hiring people like you already have hired. How do you challenge your staff and how do you continue to keep them uncomfortable instead of getting comfortable? Jerome: I think you challenge your hiring in two ways. One, if you want to make a good choice, you need to have a choice. Like this sounds really stupid, but how many hiring decisions are made by default? Well, yeah, this is the best one we've seen. This is the only one we have. Let's hope it works out, right? So first, and this speaks to talent attraction, right? First, put yourself in a position where you actually have a choice. Jerome: Second, if you're talking about, okay, now I have a choice now, which of these amazing candidates am I going to choose? Then you can actually achieve a lot by using a hiring team and a collaborative hiring approach. I do think that hiring is a team sport. I don't trust my judgment on hires. I don't think any hiring managers, any individual human being is able to make a proper hiring decision on their own. You need a proper hiring team. You need collaboration. You need good like scorecards focusing on most achieves, not on must haves. And who you put in your hiring team is actually going to dictate a lot of the outcomes. Jerome: So we look very strongly at what is the scorecard must achieves, not must have, right? Must write amazing Java code versus must have a degree from Stanford, right? So much achieves. So like a future performance based assessment. And then second, who is on the hiring team and I put a lot of emphasis on having diverse hiring team and hiring teams that include peers to the candidate. And if you have those combination, you actually end up with amazing hiring decisions consistently. Joel: I want to go back to what Chad focused on with sort of staying energized around what you do and the industry. And there's a part in the book where you talk about sort of the past and how the past still maintains itself here in to present day. And you talk about how Taleo remains the number one ATS 20 years hints. And I would imagine that that's a frustrating experience for one of their competitors. So talk about cutting through or getting through the frustration of things moving so slowly in our industry and the incumbents remaining in office for decades. Jerome: I don't see this as frustration. I think the rate of change in an industry is defined by the pace of innovation by other available solutions. I don't know that there has been a decent alternative to tell you. This is why I actually I started SmartRecruiters, right? I'm like, okay, what's next? If you take a blank sheet of paper, what is the generational successor to the ATS? And I put there very simple requirements. Actually, I can give them to you. I said, if you want to make a great hire, and if you want to achieve hiring success, you need three things. One, you need to be able to attract great candidates, that speaks to candidate experience. Two, you need to work with your hiring managers and hiring teams in a collaborative way to drive the right hiring decisions as we were just saying. Jerome: And three, you need to be organized, compliant, effective as a recruiting team. So recruiter productivity. So now does Taleo help you find candidates? Nope. Wasn't designed for that. Do hiring managers use it every day with a smile on their face? Absolutely not. So your entire process runs offline in spreadsheets. And so are recruiters happy and productive? No. And every customer that we take through the journey, I look at their smile, I look at the NPS that we have, we're at positive 27 NPS on our customer base. And that gives me nothing but pleasure and joy and energy to actually keep driving innovation and change in this industry. Joel: Gotcha. So we know why you started SmartRecruiters. I want to talk about the book. What was the genesis behind writing it, and most specifically, you are writing it to CEO's as opposed to say recruiters or HR, or one of a targeted demographics. So why the book and why just CEOs or why target CEOs? Jerome: I target CEO's to bridge that gap between I want to hire amazing talent and hey, can you make this faster and cheaper? That is the gap that I'm trying to close in the book. And it is a book written for CEOs or for the C suites, for execs in general, which basically makes the case for great recruiting. And it basically says, if you want to perform as an organization, you need to have the best talent. We all agree. Yes. Okay. So how do you actually get the best talent? Well, it's not hard. You need to attract the right ones, you need to select the right candidates. So how do you actually do that? Jerome: It's a sales and marketing function. And if you invest in recruiting to acquire great talent, just like you invest in marketing to get more customers, or you invest in R and D to get great products, if you think about it as an investment, then your world changes and your business performance, your business outcome changes. And that's literally, I tried to write the book in a way that's like, oh, I'm a cheerleader, I'm going to give this to my CEO for Christmas. If she reads it, then I'm going to get the higher budget and a proper advocate. Chad: Well, Jerome, I know diversity is very important to you and in this heightened sense of turmoil, I mean, just yesterday, we laid to rest George Floyd, what can hiring companies do better in leveraging technology to make a real impact on their culture and their diversity hiring? Jerome: There's a lot that goes into that question. I think it starts with a realization that being non-racist for diversity for inclusion is not enough. That you actually need to be actively anti-racist, anti-discrimination, anti exclusion, and therefore you need to be an ally to the African American community and fight for them, with them, internally and externally. And when you take this and you say, okay, now I'm not going to be a passively acceptable member of that community, but I'm going to be an active agent of change, then you can drive a lot of change as a team leader in particular, because it starts with jobs and access to jobs and access to opportunity in many, many respects. Jerome: In the book, I talk about how to optimize your diversity hiring and it's pretty simple. It's one, go for diversity sourcing. So expand your sourcing, reach into communities that you would have otherwise overlooked. And this can be with specific websites, specific events, partnering with people that are from underrepresented groups in your company. So make a special effort to market to the diversity sources. Second, remove bias in your screening. Like this is so easy to do and it's today still so bad. African American sounding name, a white American sounding name, the same resume, the white person gets four times more callbacks than the black one. Chad: Right. Jerome: And that is today in your company. So if you're listening, like go and look at those stats and change that. And you can change that easily. You can adopt systematic screening approach. You can actually use AI in that way, right? The data science, reading resumes, summarizing and making recommendation doesn't have bias, right? So this is a place where AI can actually reduce bias significantly, and then change your selection process and implement a transparent interview process that has a hiring team, that includes diverse members. So a diverse hiring team that has a structured scorecard that people must fill, and that they must fill in full transparency with a cards down approach, right? So you only see your feedback after you submitted, feedback from others after you submitted yours. Jerome: The core, crux of discrimination in hiring is it happens behind closed doors. And it happens with a hiring manager that is making solo decisions in full or without any transparency. And yes, sometimes you have really bad behaviors from people and they intentionally discriminate. But the reality is most of this is actually just bias. It's just unconscious and it's normal. We all have bias and bias is part of who we are. Jerome: The three of us having been in recruiting for so long, guess what? We meet in a bar, we're going to have a great time. We're going to chat, we have a lot of reference point in common, we can joke about the history about the industries and so on. That's bias, right? That is absolute bias. I'm going to think you guys are friendly and this other person that works in another industry, I'm going to be like ah, who are you? I don't have anything to talk to you about, right? So we actually all have bias. We need to recognize this bias and use this to our advantage to implement a transparent and fair hiring process. Chad: So Jerome, I think transparent is key. And I don't believe that companies are transparent enough and actually sharing their diverse hiring data. Not to mention outcomes is another word that you used that I use in just about every conversation when we talk about veteran hiring, diverse hiring, or what have you. That is something that is incredibly important because there's a lot of lip service that's being had out there. And it has for decades. As a CEO talking to other CEOs, how can you challenge them to be more transparent, to be more accountable for the numbers they have? Whether they're good numbers or they're bad members, what can you do as a CEO in being able to work as an example, and then also challenge your clients? Jerome: I think that the transparency is the first thing. So internally I have said, guys, I want to see for every job a objective scorecard, interview scorecard. If there is no scorecard, then we're just not going to start hiring for that job and you're just going to have to wait in line. So I made that a part of the process. And then for interviewers, I said, you submit your feedback in writing in that scorecard and if you cannot do that, guess what? You're not going to be interviewing on behalf of SmartRecruiters anymore. Jerome: So I've made structured interview feedback mandatory, period, no exception, nothing. Now suddenly you have the fully transparent, structured, written feedback from the three or four people who have interviewed the candidates on a specific job. The transparency is complete and there is no cheating that process. That's a very easy step to take. And if you go into most companies nowadays, interview feedback, yeah, I got it. Yeah. How was it? It was fine. Okay. And then there is no feedback, there is no transparency, there is no structure, and this is where bias and discrimination exists. So start by adopting a proper transparent interview process would be my just simple number one advice. Joel: So real quick Jerome, you say diversity is the cake in your book. What do you mean by that? Jerome: I think that people look at diversity in parts for what Chad was saying. It's like yeah, I want to share my diversity number, right? We have more women in engineering than our colleague sand whatever. And that makes it sound like it's the cherry on the cake. It's here to decorate, that it's the second afterthought. And the quote is not from me, actually. The fact that actually diversity is the cake is because diverse teams perform better than non diverse teams. Joel: Gotcha. Jerome: It's as simple as that. Joel: Yeah, you're pretty bullish in the book. You talk extensively about advertising and two things that sort of struck me was number one, you say that a job ad is an ad. Wow. It should actually sell. And then you also seem to be really bullish on programmatic job advertising, which we talk about quite a bit on the show. So talk a bit about job descriptions and why you're so bullish on programmatic. Jerome: Yeah so a job ad is an ad. I think we've gone from a regulatory standpoint to posting job descriptions and we call this job advertising, but it's actually not the job advertising. If you want to advertise your job, it's actually an ad. And the goal is to attract people, to express interest so that you can get into a conversation, qualify them and bring them in for interviews and maybe hire them. And I think we need a reminder of that. Even if for regulatory reason, your full long job description needs to be made available somewhere, they do not in my mind constitute a good way to attract qualified candidates. Jerome: And programmatic, the transition towards performance based advertising over maybe over programmatic, but just really performance based advertising, I think that industry is going to continue to evolve fast, particularly in the wave of this economy crisis or downturn. Because you're going to be getting a thousand applicants per job. And that's really not what you need. Jerome: So I think we're going to see not the end of job posting as we know it, but it's going to get seriously challenged because at the end of the day, why would I advertise my job or my job description to the world whereas I actually could advertise it only to my talent pool or advertise it to qualified candidates? There is a regulatory aspect to it yes, but the efficiency and experience for candidates and for recruiters pleads in favor of a more streamlined way of doing it. Chad: Right. And you do mention, obviously, we lived in a talent economy in January. Do you think that's still the case today? Do you still think we're in a talent economy with the unemployment in the state that it is? Jerome: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean the talent economy just kind of says people are the main difference. Like if you want a good business, you need ideas, money and people. Of those three things, what is the hardest to get? I mean, there are ideas and money everywhere, right? It's about the people. We live in the talent economy. Now with the downturn, it actually gives you access to talent that you maybe otherwise wouldn't have access to. Great, right? But it doesn't make the talent less important. Jerome: On the contrary, I might say, if you have less resources, then the quality of the people you have on the team becomes even more important, right? If you had 20 engineers and now your budgets are less and you have 15 engineers, well, you better make sure that those 15 can do as much as the 20 before, which is easy because an amazing engineer produces five times more than the average one. So you just got to get amazing engineers and that's going to solve your problem. So I think people are critically important in our circumstances. We just now have a better access to talent than we had six months ago. Chad: Right, but in this type of economy, employers tend to get shortsighted and then they start treating candidates that they don't hire like shit. I mean, they throw them into a black hole, they don't get back with them, they're not transparent with them. What can we do as an industry with better technology to ensure that candidates get a great experience, no matter what economy we're in? Jerome: I mean, the first thing you should do is if you're listening to this, go to your ATS right now, look at all the jobs that you have posted that you are not hiring for and un post them. I mean, I get that you think yeah, I'm pipelining for the future, but there is a way to pipeline and in our jargon, we call this a CRM, right? You just create talent pools, you nurture those people and you're ready. And this is proper pipelining. Posting a fake job is not talent pipelining. It's actually misleading and it's fake advertising. So that's an easy thing to do. If you're not hiring for those jobs, just un post them and you're going to save a lot of people a lot of time and you're going to save yourself a lot of brand damage and time as well. Jerome: Other than that, I think we, we do have to raise the bar of how we match people to jobs. It's like you would say, anybody can live in this house, you just need to apply. And once you apply, we'll let you know if you qualify. If this was the offer of a real estate person, they would get thousands of applicants and everybody would be disappointed because they didn't get the mortgage or finally it was too expensive. But actually in this market, you actually tell people how much is the house cost. Are you going to qualify? You can check if you qualify before you apply, right? So we need to actually help people, frankly, we need to help ourselves to get less candidates that are more qualified. Because the spray and pray of jobs, which is matched by a spray and pray of candidates is just the wrong way to go about it. Joel: Jerome, the last chapter of your book is entitled the future of hiring success. And you talk about four different areas of where you think technology is really going to disrupt what's going on today. The first part is the end of the resume. Then you have reputation is everything. And you kind of touched on that in your previous answer. And then you have my personal AI headhunter and automated sourcing. I'll let you pick which one of those, it can be all of them, that you'd like to touch on. But I think a lot of them based on what we talked about on the show is really pertinent and I just to hear from you how those things are going to change in the future and why they're important to recruiting? Jerome: 10 years ago, if I had told you, hey, Joel, Chad, why don't we go to Moscow for a long weekend next week because there's a good party and let's just grab an apartment and rent it in two clicks on our phone. Joel: Did you say Moscow? Jerome: Yeah, I said Moscow. Joel: Sure, why not, Moscow. Chad: Let's do it. Jerome: How did it become so easy to rent an apartment in rural areas in Russia that you can do it on your phone, on Airbnb, in two clicks? And why is the market of recruiting not easier? And I think it has a lot to do with how the market is organized. And I do believe when I say the end of resume, I think the resume's a imperfect way of establishing a transaction between a person and a company. And I think resumes are going to get challenged. They're going to get more and more digital. They're going to get more secure. They're going to get more verified. So there's a lot that goes into the resume that you basically, your resume says nothing about you and then every time you speak to a company, you have to start from scratch. Which is like, okay, really? Jerome: And then on the flip side of that, the sourcing, automated sourcing and automated headhunter, we're starting to see some of that surface in the market. But I think in a few years, you'll be like, yeah, I'm on the market for a new job and so there's going to be a piece of software that organizes interviews for you. And if you're a manager or recruiter and you need to hire somebody, you're going to just point it out and watch your shortlist of qualified candidates come to you. There is no reason why it's as difficult as it is today, really. There's no material, technology core reason why it's that difficult. Chad: Yeah, well that's why everybody needs to get the book Hiring Success, How Visionary CEOs Compete for the Best Talent. That's right, our guest, Jerome Ternynck, the CEO of SmartRecruiters wrote that book. Where can they find it? Just go to Amazon, look for hiring success? Jerome: Yeah, exactly. Amazon hiring success or on the actual website, hiringsuccess.com, which has the book and a lot of content about the hiring success methodology. It has a definitive guide, a hiring success masterclass. So you can actually take a class and certify the overall hiring success methodology and help drive TA transformation at your company. Chad: That's exactly what we need, Joel. We need our own Chad Cheese masterclass. Thanks, Jerome. Joel: That's right, we need that SmartRecruiters corporate retreat in Moscow comrades. Jerome: There we go, Comrade. Chad: we out. Joel: We out. Jerome: Yeah. Chad: This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show and be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit chadcheese.com. Oh yeah, you're welcome.

How can hiring companies build real talent pipelines? Protect Your Brand is a Limited Podcast Series. The Chad & Cheese call on a real cast of experienced characters including Gerry Crispin, Principal & Co-Founder of CareerXRoads, Deb Andrychuk, VP of Client Services with Shaker Recruitment Marketing and Steven Rothberg, Founder and President of CollegeRecruiter.com to answer the questions employers should be asking themselves. Lead question: How are employers protecting their brands and talent pipelines by adapting their internship programs? Support provided by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing - COVID might keep us at home but it won't keep us quiet! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. VIDEO AVAILABLE HERE Announcer: 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 & Cheese Podcast. Chad: I'm Chad Sowash with the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Joined by ... Joel: Joel Cheesman, the cheese segment of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: Yeah, everybody can remember him. Gerry Crispin, the recruiting soothsayer, I think somebody has called you that before. Gerry: I'm here. I'm not about to call myself that. Joel: Soothsayer and sightseer. Gerry: I'm like a tiger of some sort. Joel: Tiger king. I like it. Chad: Tiger king of recruiting crossroads. We have Deb Andrew Truck. She is the industry veteran and VP of, I said recruitment branding goodness. I feel like that is Deb in good recruiting branding. Deb: That can be, I'm going to change my business card to say that. Chad: I like it. Joel: I like it. Chad: Over at Shaker Recruiting, Joel has a logo there to share. Last, but never, but always least, Steven Rothberg. Nobody can have a college recruiting discussion without Steven Rothberg actually popping his head in. Joel: Steve Rothberg Canadian. Welcome Steve. Chad: President, founder, collegerecruiter.com. The theme of today's discussion is protecting your brand in the realm of college recruiting. Steven, this one's going to you, buddy. Steven: Hey. Chad: Are you ready? Steven: As always. Chad: How are employers protecting their brands and talent pipelines by adapting their internship programs? Steven: Most of the large employers understand that their college recruiting programs, whether it's internships or new grads, are strategic. That's where their next generation of leaders come from. This small number who look at interns as chief sources of labor, or basically temporary help are doing a terrible job of protecting their brands. Those are the ones where we're seeing the biggest layoffs. Small startups who brought in a bunch of interns because they've got a project that needs done, and they had no intention of converting those interns into, well, we have to come up with a better word, permanent hires. No hire is permanent. The vast majority of the large employers, and it's the large employers who hire most students and recent grads. That's where the bulk of that hiring comes from. The vast majority of them I think are really trying hard to do the right thing. They're trying to do the right thing, not just because they're trying to protect that student, that grad, and do the right thing for that person, but they're also being mindful of their own business. Steven: By doing the right thing, you're doing the right thing for the candidate, and you're doing the right thing for your business. If they were to turn around and rescind their offers, then they lose this year's class, and they're probably also going to lose next year's class and the class the year after. Because every one of those students that has an offer rescinded, or just has the employer treat them like shit, is going to tell 5,000 of their closest friends on Facebook, Twitter. Joel: TikTok. Steven: Oh, you stole my thunder man. I was going to say, there's going to be Tik Tok videos with people doing little dances, talking about how they had their offer rescinded. As disturbing as that would be with just the dance thing, to lay that over would be even worse, but word will spread very quickly. You'll have career service offices counseling students to not accept an offer from the terrible employer A, and instead accept an offer from employer B. These big brands, I think it took them a couple of weeks to grasp the monumental problem that they faced. They have a huge cash flow problem. They have a huge problem in adapting the work so that these people can do meaningful work from home, but I feel like they almost all realized they needed to do it. Steven: I've actually been really amazed pleasantly at how unusual it is when we hear of big brands not doing it. They almost all are rising to the occasion. It's been very encouraging. It's been very collaborative. Joel: Gerry, one of the things with my military background, the Army, Navy, Air force, Marines, always amazing recruitment. Right? The process might not be great, but amazing recruitment. One thing I can't understand from companies is why they haven't started their ROTC programs, the Reserve Officer Training Corps types of programs, where they put them in and say, "Look, you're a recruit. You're coming in. You're going to be a developer at my organization. We're going to stick with you through these years, whatever it takes, but your hours, and we're going to pay for tuition or whatever that is. Why haven't companies adapted to be more advanced, because that is advanced, and that is true pipeline. Gerry: It's a long time since I've heard ideas like that, to be honest with you, probably 20, 30 years. What happened about 20 or 30 years ago was we stopped developing people. We want to hire people who can work today. Joel: Right. Gerry: The intern program is really the closest thing we have to job shadowing, but I get a chance to see and to buy later on. What Steven was talking about is not only do you lose the ability to get interns next year, if you screw up with the interns this year. That intern class that you have this year is actually where you get your early hires. Financial services probably the biggest example of that. Nearly 90% of all of their early hires come from their intern classes, their own intern classes in many cases, not just their competitors intern classes. The impact of this pipeline, if you will, is really intern to early hire. The truth of it is though that some companies could be doing some extraordinary things if they brought people in and made some promises for a longer term capability of developing that. Gerry: Now there are examples of that. In fact, in the city that Deb is in, you've got Enterprise Rent-A-Car. It's a great example of a company, that a huge percentage of their total hires, it used to be almost a hundred percent, basically come in at a single job. I wouldn't call it early hire because even if you retired and wanted to go work for Enterprise, that's the job you would get. Then from there, you can grow in a variety of different directions and from a development point of view. They could show that if you look at any mid-level or C-level person, the majority of them all started in the same exact place, in a store where they learned how to deal with the business at its base level. Those kinds of models though, are few and far between, and the majority of folks who do join companies from college often are gone within two, three, four years. Gerry: Some companies probably should be doing an ROI on what is the value longterm of bringing kids in, in that first job, because the investment in all of that doesn't really pay off for years. If companies did a better job of rethinking how they develop people for the longterm, they'd realize that they've lost a little bit of that investment possibility. You've raise a really important question. Corporations have to think more in the future about buy versus build, and early career hire interns are part of the build decision strategically. They should be thinking more longterm from that perspective. Joel: Chad, you're talking apprenticeships. Chad: Yeah, to an extent. I mean, we see this on the tech side more than we do anything else, but there's no reason why it can't be rolled over. Again, like in the ROTC program where the college is being paid for, and when you pop out of college, you are now in a three-year or four-year contract to be a developer on this level. During that timeframe, you've gone through some training, so when you come out you already know about that company. You've already been through training classes, probably certifications, corporate certifications, those types of things. At the end of that, you have a paid degree. You have a brand that you're going into, and again, that's a true pipeline. Joel: To me, most companies today are saying that they want to eliminate college degree as a requirement for a job, which offers a tremendous opportunity for a lot of people who've gotten good experience doing a lot of things, military, Peace Corps, a lot of other kinds of things, to coming into corporations, and then being part of a much bigger opportunity for apprenticeship, and college, and all of those things. Chad: You say companies want to do that. What's stopping them? Joel: A lot of talk and probably not enough walk is one thing. Chad: Okay. Joel: Everything we do in change is very slow, and you have tremendous resistance to change. The people who do the talking also need to step up and take risks to push that point of view. Deb: There's a large consumer packaged goods company that we all know that always has relied on new grads. I don't know this for a fact, but just watching them evolve over the last five or 10 years, we're starting to see this company start to lean more heavily on more experienced hires, right, and bringing in people from all different facets of work life. I think it goes back to the fact that I think when you are cultivating talent, I mean, Enterprise does it really, really well, but I think sometimes you can get into a situation where you end up turning out people that all are homogenous. Right? We all look, and talk, and do everything the same. Inclusivity and diversity is so important right now. I think companies are starting to recognize that they need to start tapping different silos to bring in the right people, and also to stay ahead of the technology and just how quickly things are changing. I don't know that when you only have homegrown talent, that you can always do that. Chad: Yeah. Well, I agree. I think though, we're talking about one piece of the pipeline, which is the pseudo entry level. Right? You have the experienced recruiters, and the C-level recruiters, and so on, and so forth. Everybody should be focused on and have goals, and be transparent with regard to diversity, period, whether it's veterans, individuals with disabilities, gender. It doesn't matter. Race. I mean, we should be more transparent. I think that's one of the biggest reasons why, my personal opinion, why we have pay inequity, because nobody knows what everybody's getting paid. It's behind closed doors. If everybody knew, I believe we could actually start to bring those up to where they were level if we had transparency, but we don't. Steven: In the spirit of transparency, no. Gerry: In the spirit of widening the net, I'm curious, your thoughts. One of the beautiful things about work from home is it scales pretty well from an educational standpoint. Right? It doesn't matter how big the classroom is in some aspects. In a work from home world, and I assume we're at least going to start leaning that way after this period, do internship programs get larger with more interns, and if not, why not? Chad: Interesting. I'm not sure if they would get larger because like Gerry was alluding to earlier, the internship program, but the companies who do them well, is the source of new grad hiring. If you're going to hire 200 people a year as new grads, 175 of them probably came from your own internship program. I think the size of the internship program is really driven by the number of new grads that you're looking to bring on. A couple of changes that I think we're going to see, is I think it's going to, in some ways, level the playing field, rural urban. If you live in a rural area it's really, really hard to get an internship. Joel: Yeah. Chad: On the other hand, I think it's going to increase the barriers socioeconomically. You have to have pretty damn good wifi in order to do an internship remotely. You have to have a good computer. You have to be in an area where high speed internet is available. One of the things we're finding out right now is geographically, the majority of the country really suffers from really, really poor internet access. People in remote areas, in rural areas, are just really hurting right now. They're not able to watch Netflix the way we are. Gerry: I understand the tech argument. If you were going fishing, wouldn't you rather fish in a lake with more fish than less fish, even if you had a quota that you needed to fill? Steven: Yeah. Yeah. I think from an employer's standpoint, there are pros and cons. From society's standpoint, there are pros and cons. Yes, if you're going to have a largely remote internship program, you can cast that net a lot wider. I think that that gives you a greater opportunity to attract the talent. If you're an employer in St. Louis, just to stick a recruiter on an airplane and fly them up to Alaska is challenging from a cost standpoint. Now, you can hire that candidate in Alaska just as easily as you hire the candidate in Kansas City. That's going to help those people in Alaska. On the other hand, if you're in rural Alaska, you probably don't have good internet. You have good fishing. Joel: You're going to be able to fish from a lot of places is the point, as opposed to the one place you've been going all the time. Chad: Yeah. Gerry: I think that's, so we're going to see the potential for more diversity. I say potential because Steven's point, I think, is really an important one is that whether it's rural or whether it's from associate economic point of view, I don't have a computer. I haven't paid the money that gets me all of the wifi that I could be getting. Those companies are going to have to provide some subsidy just as they might subsidize where you live. If you moved someplace as an intern, then they are going to have to provide a subsidy to make sure that you have the proper technology or whatever else they need from a communication point of view. I don't see any reason why that wouldn't happen and why most companies would do that well. And so Chad: You do think, Jerry, that internships could expand. Gerry: Oh, without a doubt. Chad: More companies might be able to do more internships in more places if they concentrate on a balance of virtual versus face-to-face thing out of this thing. Gerry: Yeah. Chad: I believe that they're going to learn a hell of a lot this summer with the interns that came on in May, or June, because typically that's when they're coming on. They're going to learn an awful lot about how to do that better. I suspect that they'll struggle a bit, but the projects, how long those projects should be, what the cost of all of those things should be, all of those things I think are going to provide them with the ability to build a business case for what percentage of our interns should be this way and what percentage should be another way. I think the large companies will do that. I think there's still a lot of companies that in effect say to interns, "We're not going to pay you." Right? We don't see that in large companies, but there's entire industries in advertising, if you will, where, unless you're wealthy enough to do the internship, you're not going to get it. That's going to be more visible, I think, more and more as we build better opportunities for more and more people. Joel: Deb, where are you on that fence? Deb: Part of me thinks that yes, the classes could be bigger, or, if you're condensing the length of time, I think maybe some of these online programs, you could shorten them potentially just because you're making more efficient use of your time. I also think also, it really depends on how long this lasts, and how much damage it does to some of the companies that are out there. I was talking to an insurance company the other day and they were saying, "We would really have liked to been able to rescind all of our offers, and cancel, because we're hurting." People aren't paying their premiums. People are pulling money out of their 401K's. Things are just not great. I think it's all going to be dependent upon how long this lasts. I still do think that to Gerry's point, when you look at folks from a socioeconomic perspective, there definitely is going to be some imbalance. I do think underrepresented groups of folks are going to take the backlash of, they're going to take the brunt of it. Deb: I mean, really, when you look at, in the last recession, unemployment for African Americans was, I think, 13.4%, something like that. More than double what unemployment for a new grad today is. I mean, we know it happens. That's the thing that I worry about the most is the inequities that are going to come out of this. It does concern me. Chad: Those inequities have been there. The thing is that this crisis is bubbling them up to the top, and they're making them larger. I hope that we, as a society, start to care about that because they were there before. I hope this crisis actually moves us that way. Thanks, once again, for joining us everybody. Everybody out there in TV land, don't forget, there are other segments in this discussion. Check them out and go to chadcheese.com. Check out Little Shaker, Little College Recruiter, Gerry listening to some sooth saying of Gerry at CareerXroads. We'll see you next time. Joel: We out? Chad: We out. Announcer: This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show. Be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit chadchees.com. Oh yeah. You're welcome.

COVID-19 is a bitch for business, but it's making us adopt and evolve faster. Protect Your Brand is a Limited Podcast Series. The Chad & Cheese call on a real cast of experienced characters including Gerry Crispin, Principal & Co-Founder of CareerXRoads, Deb Andrychuk, VP of Client Services with Shaker Recruitment Marketing and Steven Rothberg, Founder and President of CollegeRecruiter.com.to answer the questions employers should be asking themselves. Lead question: How should large employers adapt their hiring of students and grads if those employees cannot work remotely? Support provided by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing - COVID might keep us at home but it won't keep us quiet! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. VIDEO AVAILABLE HERE Intro: 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: Hey, what's up everybody? I'm Joel Cheesman and I, as usual, are joined by my esteemed cohost- Chad: What's up? Joel: Sowash. What's up, Chad? Good to see you. We are also joined today by Gerry Crispin. Gerry: Hey. Joel: Recruiting soothsayer. I guess that's your official title now [crosstalk 00:00:46] Deb from Shaker, Steven from College Recruiter. Welcome guys. We're talking college recruitment, internships, all that good stuff today. I'm going to start with the first question here with ... This one's for Deb. Deb, how should large employers adapt their hiring of students and grads if those employees cannot work remotely? Deb: So I believe that if your students cannot work remotely, or new grads. A, unless you're in healthcare, or hospitality, restaurant work, whatever, your business continuity person should probably be fired, or you need to hire one. Because when you think about it, I mean, even our company, we were thinking about risks long before COVID hit. So, kudos to our team and our IT folks who recognize that something could happen and they put a plan in place long ago. And voila, and we were actually able to roll it out this year. Deb: But I mean, that's the first thing is I think, the readiness piece. If you're not ready, you better pivot as fast as you can. You better get a team together and get going. If it is indeed some type of role where it's hands on and you have to bring people in, then I think, man, that's just ... That's going to be tough. Because we still are going to need to social distance, you're going to have to supply PPE, you're going to have to be deep cleaning stations every night. Deb: You're probably going to have to scale back the number of students or new grads that you can bring in at a time, or you're going to have to get really crafty about scheduling. So maybe it's staggered starts, maybe some people are during the day, some are at night, some are on the weekends, and ... Which is going to mean for folks that are supplying the training, they're going to sacrifice some. Not going to be fun. Joel: Yeah. And I guess it's interesting, to think ... So you mentioned healthcare, restaurant. I mean, there's certain jobs that you can't do- Chad: Essential. Joel: Virtually right? Essential jobs. But even past that, I mean, the Peace Corps, I don't ... Jobs, association charities around the world, construction jobs, these aren't virtual jobs. So I think maybe the first element is who does that include? And if you think about it, it includes a lot of people. Gerry: It includes a lot of people, a lot more than most people think. We think, "Oh, okay. IT folks can figure out how to do development work independently." Yes they can. But there's an awful lot of other kinds of engineers besides software engineers, and they're working on materials that you can't have at home for the most part. And so all of the things that Deb just talked about are going to have to be rethought in terms of the physicality of where they're going to be. That's one issue. Gerry: And I think it's probably the biggest issue with one exception. I think spouses, significant others, parents, particularly as we ... As it relates to college kids, are going to start weighing in very quickly on where their kids are going to be going to work if they physically have to go do that. And that, I think, the influence of others, if you will, I think is going to have a bigger weight. Joel: That's right. Gerry: If my son or daughter were thinking about going to some crazy company that wasn't doing all of the things that Deb itemized, and sharing that well in a way that I could understand, I would be a much more pain in the ass father than I would otherwise. Joel: Well, Gerry, Gerry we've had helicopter parents for a while now, right? So I think what you're saying is we're going to have those same types of parents, but they're going to be layered in with even more criteria- Gerry: Parachuting in, is what I'd be doing. Forget that helicopter stuff, I'd be jumping up and down on whoever it was that was out there. It just, it would be a natural issue. Because I, obviously, this is a life and death for some people. Joel: Steven, you've heard the helicopter parent piece before. Steven: Yeah. Since 1990. Yeah. Joel: Yeah, so I mean, so kind of rebounding off of that. How does this actually morph into something different from that aspect of making the decision? Steven: Yeah, I do think that there's going to be significantly increased pressure on employers to adapt, in the short term, the employment that these early careers people are doing. So for example, I'm 54, my brother-in-law's a little bit older than I am, one of my brothers in law. And he is the Safety Engineer who runs the store, in charge of safety for a gas production facility. You can't do that from home. Steven: But if he had, and I don't know if he does or not, but if he had an intern that was going to be working side by side with him this summer, I bet you anything that that intern would be given different work. So even though the facility is ... And my brother in law's job would be essential. He would have to be on site every day. It doesn't mean that that intern who was going to be onsite needs to be. And it might be that that intern four days a week can be doing work remotely, and one day a week be at the facility. And if you do that with everybody, now you've reduced onsite head count by 80%. And then you can get that social distancing much more easily. So you might be able to break up the work. And for the next couple of months, maybe the next six months, you look for work that these people can do that is more remote and not bring them on site. To build off of- [crosstalk 00:07:04] Go for it, yeah. Joel: Do any of you see geography as a variable here? So think of the military, right? We don't just send people to Afghanistan or war zones. We send them to bootcamp, which is a safe environment that they're not going to get shot, hopefully. I mean, could a company New York say, "No way in hell are we going to bring people to New York City with the current state of COVID-19, but we're going to open somewhere in Boise, Idaho, or somewhere in Montana where it's almost a non-threat. [crosstalk 00:07:37] Steven: Some of the sporting leagues are talking about doing that, right? Major league baseball is talking about basically having all of the season played as if it's Grapefruit in Cactus League. So all of the games are going to be in the Phoenix Metro and all over Florida. I'm sure the baseball players are super excited about playing in Phoenix, 120 degrees, a double header, day, after day, after day. That's ... I'm sure they're super excited about that. [crosstalk 00:08:11]. Steven: But to answer your question, Joel, one of the things that some of these larger employers do is provide housing for interns. That housing is typically college dorms. Colleges are closed, there are no dorms. How do you bring in ... Some of these companies have 200 interns. And they'll basically, they'll take over a dorm building at UCLA or whatever. How do you house 200 people? You can't. If you're not going to do it in a dorm, and if you defer the start of the internship program until it's reasonably safe to do that, and it's October and that student's going to school now in Philadelphia, how does that work? So, yeah, I really think that adaptation is important, and that remote- Gerry: A lot of hotels have vacancies, a lot of hotels will take them. Steven: Yeah, but what's the liability for the employer too, right? I mean, if I'm Deb's intern and Deb says, "Hey, you got to come and live here in Chicago and you're going to go stay at XYZ hotel," and I get sick, who's liable for that? Right now, it's really unclear. Gerry: And what does a company after to make sure if they're sued that they did require masks, that they did require hand washing, that they did require all these things? That's something companies will have to take in consideration as well. Steven: Yeah, I mean if my choice is getting fired or getting sick, I think there's significant liability there. And I, quite frankly, I think it's only a matter of maybe a couple of weeks before there's a law passed that absolves employers of that liability. Gerry: Let's hope not. Steven: So that cost is going to get shifted to employees. Gerry: No, not at all. There's enough laws on the books to protect employers who do the right thing. And there's enough lawyers making money right now, advising their companies on every freaking benefit that you can possibly imagine, and the work arounds around that in terms of what they've got to do. I've been on some of those calls and fallen asleep. So it's no question that that's going on all day, every day, and trying to remind every HR person how to do all of this kind of stuff. I got to tell you, that's going. Gerry: But I don't think it's the interns that we have to think about. Because I agree with you, I think most interns are on the virtual approach at this point, and there's very few differences. But the early hires, that's going to be really, I think an interesting issue. Because obviously they will be moving someplace new for the first time, and the kind of concierge stuff that you would give to an executive you're probably going to be needing to do for those early hires because they're clueless, and you just don't want them wandering around every neighborhood looking for an apartment, or someone that they can bunk in with, I'm just saying. Steven: Yeah. Something that we're seeing with a lot of employers, whether it's interns or the new grads, is a lot more project based work. As difficult as it is to adapt the work for somebody so that they can do it remotely, I think it's just as difficult for the management of that work to be adapted. Managers often manage by process. Are you at your desk by 8:30? Were you until 5:00? Did you make so many sales calls? Whatever. Steven: And I think that we're going to see who the good managers actually are, it's going to be a lot easier. Because we're going to see outcomes. Did you actually hit your sales goals? Not meaning number of phone calls, but dollars. They need- Gerry: They're constrained, some of those managers. Because they are managing by visual inspection if you will, rather than by performance metrics. And the truth of the matter is if they really are doing it the old fashioned way, they're not going to appeal a hell of a lot to the interns who will want to then work there full time, to be sure. Joel: And they never really have. I mean, I think in many cases we've taken a look at the job market, and when there weren't that many jobs, you got really good talent even with shitty jobs, right? But you weren't going to retain them when it flipped. And I think that's one of the things that smart employers learned, and I agree 100%, Gerry is ... And I think this is more leaning toward the leadership than it is management. Joel: Because if you're a good leader, you understand all those different aspects of that individual so that you can motivate them to be able to hit that goal. They don't need to make as many calls. They don't need to be on the phone as long, because they're actually hitting their goals. But back to the remote piece of this, I've actually been on calls where some companies sent their employees home with personal computers, not laptops, actual monitors and CPUs- Gerry: Gateway computers. Joel: Yeah. And so we were so ill prepared for this. My big question is moving forward, do you feel like we've... Anyone, Deb. Deb, do you feel like we've learned our lesson? Deb: I think so. I think companies are really recognizing, like I said, I mean if you don't have a business continuity plan, or somebody in charge of that. If you're a large company, I bet you will after this is over, you're getting one right now in place. And I also think that, to Gerry's point, I think companies are starting to recognize that they need to back up just a little bit and realize that people are at home, and when you look at that age range, a lot of those new hires, those new grads, a lot of those ... I mean, those ... They're living at home right now. And so, I mean, I know families that have kids who are four and five years old, but they've got all the way up to grandma, who's 93, living under the same roof. Deb: So there's a lot going on, and I think that companies are really starting to understand that we've got to be more flexible. We have to be more understanding. And to Gerry's point, let's look at the outcome and I think assigning work and then letting the person go and have a specific amount of time to get it done, whenever they get it done, who cares as long as they produce the work? I think that is a better indication of whether or not somebody can be successful than if I can hammer out 65 calls in a day. I mean, you and I both have lived that nightmare. Gerry: What's going to be important though, for those managers to learn how to ask the people that work for them, "What can I do for you? Tell me a little bit how you're feeling. Tell me a little bit about your family." Deb: Yeah, I think you're hitting on something that's ... Yeah. Gerry: Some of that kind of stuff is not useful for most H ... Most managers out there don't think of those kinds of things, they want to just deal with the work. But if you look at what's happening right now, that's impacting our society, is more and more people are first asking each other, "How are you? How is your family? How are you managing?" And before we get to work, assuming that you've got the motivation to go get the work done, dealing with the anxiety, the fears, et cetera, is going to be, I think, a permanent part of how better managers will manage. Joel: But we're in crisis now. And that's ... I mean, everybody kind of is hyper focused on, "How are you doing?" And what I'm hearing from you, Gerry, is you feel like that's going to roll over. That were really ... Because managers really didn't give a shit before. You think that they're going to care, moving forward? That's a big evolution. Gerry: I would like to create the world that I would like to live in. So I admit- Joel: That's a fun world, baby. Gerry: That maybe I might be overreaching, and I've been told on occasion that we could revert back to bad behaviors, lousy candidate experience, and a lot of other kinds of things. So I do think that the critical component as to which way we fall is really how long this all works. It's been two months. And if you look at the Great Depression a hundred years ago, that was 10 years. God help us all if it's the same here. Gerry: So the point is I would hope that it's a much shorter period of time, in the terms of months, but if it gets to be eight, nine months, even a year, I will tell you, it will change the weighting on what we value by a huge margin. We still have ... We'll still put a lot of values up there. I need money, I need this, I need that. But I will tell you that, yeah, the shift as to what's most important will revert to security, safety, et cetera. Chad: Hey Steven? Steven: Mm-hmm (affirmative)? Chad: Actually, maybe for anybody. But I'm curious because we sit, communities sit outside their homes at 7:00 and they clap and bang pots and pans for essential workers, which more or less means healthcare workers. Are you seeing an influx of nursing resumes? Are people looking for nursing opportunities? Deb, are you seeing healthcare facilities that you work with see an influx of people that want to be nurses from this time period, or no? Deb: Actually, I have not seen an influx of folks jumping at the opportunity. I've seen the opposite with a lot of my ... I have a lot of girlfriends who are nurses who told me flat out, "I am so glad that what I do is attached to elective surgeries, and so I'm not a part of this right now." I've had a couple friends say that they were called upon to volunteer and jump in, and they did it, but they didn't want to. And they were scared. And I think when you look at how many people have died, and especially how many people in our country are immunocompromised. And I mean, the littlest things could make you susceptible. Chad: So that has not been good recruitment marketing from your perspective? The entire community clapping. Deb: And it's funny because everyone thinks that if you are a healthcare organization, that you are just killing it right now and hiring everyone. But the truth is, is that many of these health systems are furloughing people because of the fact that maybe in their community, COVID, hasn't been overwhelming their system. And so they don't need the nurses because they're not doing the elective surgeries. But that's starting to come back now, so I think it'll turn. But I've seen a lot of our clients who are in healthcare do furloughs just in the last, I'd say three, four weeks. Joel: I do think that that clapping is impacting the 10 year old, the 12 year old, the 14 year old. I think ... I do think that it has an impact. And I think it's a longer term impact in terms of the kinds of careers that actually make a difference, and the kind of people that do that. And I do think from Deb's point of view, there's the folks who are not risk ... Who are a little bit more risk averse. And there are plenty of folks who got in to it not to be risk averse, but to live up to some imagined view of how this impacts the world. Joel: We had Intermountain Healthcare, which is a large healthcare system in Utah, literally sent a plane load, 130 doctors and nurses to New York City to go direct to the New York Presbyterian Hospital at the worst time, when they were overloaded. And they showed up. That's not a small number of folks who suddenly volunteer to put themselves in a life or death situation. So there's some interesting stuff out there that I think inspires, if you will, another generation of folks who talk about showing up when it gets ... When it's important. Steven: Yeah, Joel, to kind of go back to what you were thinking. I'm not seeing a huge shift other than for people searching remote. So our site and some others, if you type in the word word, remote, it'll come up with home-based, work from home, telecommute, whatever, different synonyms for that. And that's not all that uncommon anymore, where the job boards are able to do a pretty decent job of identifying those jobs. So that's a big difference, but I think this is really, really different than after 9/11. Steven: After 9/11, you saw people who never would have joined the military enlisting. After Pearl Harbor, same sort of thing. And I think people could see at that moment that this was a strategic problem that we had. And so changing your career trajectory made sense. We were going to have this situation for years. I don't think that most Americans think that this is a problem we're going to have for years. I think that most Americans are fooling themselves and thinking that this is a problem we're going to have for weeks, maybe a few months. Steven: I mean, we're all in our own little bubbles, but I've been fascinated in reading articles about how liberals and conservatives view all of this very differently, and on how people in rural areas view this very differently than urban areas. I really don't think that most people see that this is going to be something that we're going to be living under some kind of lock down for months, and months, and months. Steven: And so I don't think you would switch out of being an accountant and go into nursing. Because by the time you graduate from a nursing program, this is ancient history. But enlisting in the military after 9/11, that absolutely made sense because you knew that by the time you got out of bootcamp, we were going to be in a shooting war. Joel: Interesting. Deb: And it depends on if you're ... I think it depends too if you've been impacted personally. If you've known someone who has had COVID or had ... Or God forbid has died from COVID. I think that has a lot to do with your viewpoint. Gerry: Which suggests that there is a change coming. Deb: Absolutely. Gerry: As a more changes- Steven: As more people who aren't just positive, but who actually are sick. Those are two different things. As we all get to know more people, those changes will become more personal. I see a lot of people saying, "I don't know anybody who's sick. I don't think this is a big deal." And then when your cousin, or your brother, or you get sick, all of a sudden it becomes a big deal. Joel: And that is going to be a problem with some companies in protecting their brand, but we're going to go ahead. We're going to wrap this up. Don't forget to check out our discussion segments, this is one of four. It'll be posted at ChadAndCheese.com, probably over at Shaker, College Recruiter, Gerry's going to be giving them out at Christmas. We really appreciate you guys and we'll see you next time. Until- Chad: That's as bad Santa, right there. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Outro: This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show. And be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit ChadCheese.Com. Oh yeah, you're welcome.

On this week's show, COVID-be-damned, HRwins reports big dollars are still coming into the employment space. PLUS: CareerBuilder settles a sexual harassment case Startup Organise proves this isn't Jimmy Hoffa's labor union anymore Atlassian understands the employee is JOB 1 Amazon driver quits via Twitter while Bezos earns $40B+ during COVID and Slack makes an acquisition that should make LinkedIn a little nervous. As always, the podcast is powered by sponsors Jobvite, JobAdx, and Sovren. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities. Tengai: Hi. This is Tengai, the unbiased interview robot. You're listening to The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I love these guys. Intro: 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: The Ivy League has canceled sports for the fall. So what the hell are we supposed to do without Dartmouth football? Oh, the humanity. Welcome to The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel "Jay Fiedler" Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad "still in fucking quarantine" Sowash. Joel: And on this week's show, COVID be damned, money keeps coming into the recruitment space. This isn't Jimmy Hoffa's labor union anymore. And CareerBuilder settles a sexual harassment case. Chad: Ouch. Joel: Grab a family member and toss around the pig skin, because that's the only football you're going to see this year. And enjoy this message from Jobvite. Jobvite: This summer, Jobvite wants you. Jobvite: You. Jobvite: And you. Jobvite: To join hundreds. Jobvite: Thousands. Jobvite: Millions. Okay. Maybe, just thousands. Jobvite: Of recruiters, HR, and talent acquisition professionals. Jobvite: For a summer you won't soon forget. Jobvite: It's Jobvite's Summer to Evolve. Jobvite: The Summer to Evolve is a 12-week series of free content to help recruiters brush up on their skills. Jobvite: Learn from industry thought leaders. Jobvite: And see how technology can help them improve, automate, and evolve their recruiting efforts. Jobvite: There will be a chance to share tips and ideas with your peers. Jobvite: And we may even have some surprises for you along the way. Jobvite: I love surprises. Jobvite: So visit the summertoevolve.com to register for the Summer to Evolve sessions that suit your needs. Jobvite: Peak your interest. Jobvite: Or float your boat. Jobvite: Because starting June 16th, it's the summer to evolve the way you attract. Jobvite: Engage. Hire. Onboard. Jobvite: And retain talent. Jobvite: Jobvite. Recruit with purpose, hire with confidence. Chad: summertoevolve.com. Joel: Oh yeah. summertonotwatchsports.com. Chad: We were just talking about this Stanford killing 11 of their sports. Especially, when they have like $30 billion and an endowment, and make it kind of push a few coins toward the sporting side of the house. Yeah, no. Screw that. Joel: Yeah. My wife and I had a debate as to whether or not sports would be played this fall, particularly football. And I said, "Until the SEC says there's no football, someone's going play to football." Because if you talk about a conference that lives and dies by the money generated by football, the SEC is at the top of the list. Chad: Yeah. Risk mitigation for that though, that is going to suck. Joel: Yeah. Chad: It just is. I talked to a friend the other day. His kid dives for school. And they're going back at least two weeks prior, so that they can go through their quarantine, and whatnot, to ensure that everybody is COVID-free per se or, at least, they're through it before they actually start to meet one another and get in their own little sporting bubble. Joel: Yeah. Fortunately, pool water is the nicest disinfectant. So, at least, the diving team has that going for it. Chad: Let's hope. Joel: Shout-outs. Chad: Shout-outs. Okay. So we've got a few popping out here. One is [Jodi Branstetter, connected on LinkedIn and says she loves the podcast. And so does Brianna Campana. Joel: Love is good. Love is good. I'm going to give a shout-out to Bed Bath & Beyond, the popular retailer. And that there is a connection to our space, which I'll remind you of. The company has hit hard times, quarterly report of 50% decrease in sales. They're closing much of stores, bankruptcy, whatever. So the connection is, for those that don't remember, Nexxt with two Xs used to be beyond.com until they sold that domain to Bed Bath & Beyond, who promptly did jack shit with it. It was supposed to build some sort of a subscription thing which may have saved its business. But anyway, Bed Bath & Beyond, shout-out. Maybe time to sell that beyond.com domain back to Nexxt. I don't know. Chad: Yeah. Well, shout-out to Chris Kneeland from the Cult Collective on this, because he always slams the couponing. And he just posted on LinkedIn that COVID obviously did have something to do with it but so did their fucking couponing. Stop couponing, people. You're undervaluing your own shit. Joel: Yeah. My favorite Chris Kneeland quote from his presentation was "What is Old Navy going to do, pay you to come to the store eventually?", because they can't have that many more discounts, for God's sakes. Shout-out to Twitter, as well. I don't know if you heard about this week, but Twitter had a job posting. And who knew you could learn so much about a company's strategy, then, through its job postings? Posted that they needed someone to manage or build their subscription business. Of course, the news outlets went nuts thinking that Twitter was going to go subscription model, which I still think they should, and they probably will. The job description was edited, and that part was taken out. But the cat is out of the bag. So to speak, it looks like Twitter is going to go subscription in some form or fashion. Chad: Yeah. That's something that Scott Galloway talks about all of the time. And he's- SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: ... a shareholder, so he might have some insights. Big shout-out to Max Armbruster. You might remember him. He was actually on our very first Death Match. CEO of Talkpush. He is starting his own podcast called The Recruitment Hackers Podcast. Just one word of warning, Max. It's much harder than it looks and/or sounds. Joel: Yeah. Is he doing it in French or English? Chad: He can probably do it in a variety [crosstalk 00:06:24]. Joel: He probably could Japanese. I don't know. He's very worldly, that Max guy is. Shout-out to FedEx, pressuring the Washington Redskins. Chad: That's right. Joel: An obvious, I don't know, lay-up in terms of brands that should be put to bed forever. FedEx owns the rights to the stadium where the Redskins play football. Mr. Gordon is going to hate this episode, because there's so many American sporting references. But anyway, shout-out to FedEx for pressuring the Redskins to change their name, which I think is definitely going to happen in the next six months. Chad: Well, and you might not know, but FedEx CEO, Fred Smith, is also a minority owner in the Redskins. So there's some additional pressure that's there. It's not just from the company who's paying naming for naming rights. It's also the minority owners. And that being said, Netflix. We've heard a lot about Netflix giving back to the Black Lives Matter side of the house. And also now the community, they are investing 100 million into banks supporting black communities. So there you go. Good job there, guys. I got to say, from our standpoint as a couple of white guys, I was really hesitant to entitle last week's podcast Black Hiring Matters. But my man Torin Ellis told us to speak up and speak the truth as allies. We can be white dudes and speak our truth, but that's exactly what we did. So big shout-out to Torin Ellis and many of the others out there like Regina Allen-Mosley, who shared the podcast and gave a lot of love to us. So we really appreciate that. Joel: Lovely. Absolutely. Shout-out to Harley-Davidson who had a round of layoffs recently. Someone shared this on Twitter. Apparently, they actually branded the layoff strategy and sort of rethinking their organization. They called it the rewiring. So when letters went out to folks about the layoffs, apparently, it was branded the rewiring. I'm not sure layoffs are something you want to brand. Your thoughts? Chad: It hurts to think about a cult brand who thinks so hard about their brand. And I mean, that's what's happening. Joel: Yep. Chad: Right? They're thinking, "How do we do this in the right way?". And it's almost like they're thinking too hard about doing something humane. I don't know. I'd have to dig into this a little bit more. But I mean, Harley-Davidson is a cult brand. There's no question. They have cult followers, period. When you get into that groove and that mindset, as a brand, sometimes you can think too hard. I don't know if this is the situation, but I think just from surface that I think they're thinking too hard. Joel: Life was good until the rewiring. I also thought about the movie, The Doors, where Jim Morrison and the band are told that they can't sing, "Come on, baby. Light my fire." And Jim says, "How about 'Baby, bite my wire'?". I thought that would be a proper response for employees who were laid off during the rewiring. Chad: The rewiring. So we did some rewiring. We actually had some time with Gerry Crispin, Steven Rothberg and Deb Andrychuk. They joined us for a series of podcasts that were called Protect Your Brand. There are four discussions. We've dropped two thus far. The newest one called Adapting to Remote. You can check them out. The newest one will drop this Sunday. But again, just trying to bring more voices into the discussion, not just around COVID, but obviously around business and how we react and also respond to what's going on around us. Joel: Absolutely. Good stuff. Bret Feig, I want to give a shout-out to. Hopefully, I'm pronouncing that last name correctly. He loves the show, a recruiter out of New York who is looking for work. So if any of our tri-city listeners need some recruiting help, give Bret Feig, F-E-I-G, a look. He's on LinkedIn, obviously. Chad: My last shout-out, which I missed last week, sorry, Chester, is my little buddy voiceover expert, Chester Fellows, out of the UK. He actually made me a friendship bracelet that says "Chad Cheese" on it and sent it all the way across the sea. And big thanks to his dad, Dan Fellows, who, if you remember, was a part of one of our latest Death Match series with Get-Optimal. Joel: Yeah. Chester, I didn't get a bracelet, man. Thanks a lot. That hurts man. That hurts a lot, but I still love you, Dan. I- Chad: You didn't send him a personal video telling him that it was going to be all right with school, that they were starting school. Chester and I, we got it like that. Joel: That's not creepy at all. My last shout-out goes to Glenn Martin, a fan of the show, and also a podcast to himself with The #SocialRecruiting Podcast. Chad: Well, hello. Joel: And by the way, Glenn is up for the Best Beard in the Industry Award, which I don't think is an official title, but he would certainly be up for it if there was one. Chad: Yes. Big shout-out to Glenn. And as we roll into the event that we just finished up, The Recruitment Events Company, through one hell of a content delivery, fast with a TA Global Gathering digital event. We did Featurerama. We did four segments with Aida from XOR, Andy from Nexxt, Zack with Jobvite, and Shon over at HiringSolved. We're going to start dropping those podcasts. The videos are already out there. They're probably out there with the recruitment, or on YouTube or something like that. But we're going to start dropping the podcasts here in the next couple of weeks. So just a little teaser. Look for Featurerama, which was a blast. Joel: Should we talk about the winner or just- Chad: Sure. Joel: ... tease it out? So HiringSolved won our first ever Featurerama. Chad: Shon Burton. Joel: It went to to them. They have the badass belt of tech coming their way. The design is getting finished up as we speak. We got him a medium. I think that's about the right size knowing Shon. So yeah, that's coming, buddy. Put it on the wall with pride. The badass belt of tech is coming your way. Chad: I hope you got it from BabyGap. Joel: Geez. Nice manners, babe. Nice manners. Chad: I love Shon. Topics. Joel: CareerBuilder. Chad: Wow. Joel: Sexual harassment case. This is two years in the making. Our buddy- Chad: Lori McInerney. Joel: Lori McCleney. Forget her name. Chad: McInerney. Joel: Little background on this. She's been at the company since 2002. She was sales. She went to, obviously, events with the company. I won't name names on the side of who sort of crossed the line in terms of the harassment, but she filed suit against the company. It was settled this week. June 30th, it was filed. Obviously, there are no details in terms of what she got out of the settlement. According to the complaint lawsuit quote, "For more than a decade, Lori McInerney had a successful career and was a highly valued upper management employee at CareerBuilder. During that time and as experienced by most other women employed by CareerBuilder, McInerney endured a corporate culture which turned a blind eye towards the sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying of women employees." Ouch. Chad: Yeah. And if you are a brand like CareerBuilder and there are these bro culture things that are happening, how are you ever going to get females to come work for you in leadership? Not to mention there was also other females in the organization that, or female in the organization, that was in leadership, who was a big bully as well. It just, overall, did not seem like an amazing culture. And I can't imagine that any of that has changed, but you never know. Joel: Certainly, the optics sucked. And part of the lawsuit, as well, was Lori got harassed apparently from a female superior, as well. So it doesn't just land on the men's side. Women can do it,too. So hopefully, this is settled. I think most of the people there, as part of this lawsuit, are gone from CareerBuilder. And hopefully, they are building a better culture with the few employees that they have left building up from the depths of layoffs and whatnot. Chad: Yeah. The smoke and mirrors that they put out the last press release, I think, was about new tech and mobile apply or something like that. Joel: Yeah. It said "Welcome to 2017," or something with all their new editions. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I think we've been talking about these guys just slowly dying over the years. They're milking everything at this point. They've already made money on the acquisitions that have happened, MZ and then some of the other ones. I'm just incredibly surprised they haven't done one or two things, either spent money on Broadbean to do better and actually become programmatic, which will never happen because they're not spending money, or just sell it off. I mean, there's just so much that's there. It's interesting. And also Textkernel. Joel: I'm sure they're glad to get the case out of the papers and move on to their stuff. Unfortunately, they're not alone. Indeed, as we talked about fairly recently, also a harassment case currently pending on their docket. As soon as that gets news out, we'll let you know. I was still trying to get interview set up with Taylor Gilbert, I think is her name, still an employee. But trying to get an interview with her lawyer, which should be a good to have on the show and figure out more of what's going on with Indeed and their current culture. Chad: One culture that seems to be flourishing is Slack's. SFX: Hell yeah. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Chad: It just acquired Rimeto. Rimeto? Rimeto? Rimeto. I think it's Rimeto. Joel: They're changing the names. Don't worry about it. Chad: Yeah. God. They better, because it sucks. Rimeto seems like they're trying to be a version of LinkedIn. An advanced profile and directory that will integrate into the Slack Directory itself. And if you've ever used Slack, one of the things that really gets confusing, for yours and then you have access to another one. It's like how do I manage all of this stuff? It's not the easiest. Not to mention people. How do I connect with these people? And how do I connect... Maybe I don't even know the people, but I want to connect into a department. I don't know who to talk to in marketing. Where do I go? Okay. This is where you go. So it's a directory of sorts, which I think, there's no question, Slack needs. But it's almost like it's a LinkedIn-ish type of directory, which is incredibly interesting. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. For a long time, we've been talking about Slack moving beyond messaging. And when they went public, they talked about Microsoft as a threat, which seemed a little bit odd because they were a messaging company. We talked about them killing email. Well, it looks like they're going to go out and try to kill or take some of the market share of Microsoft and LinkedIn. So I thought this was really huge news in terms of them getting into the profile business directory space. It looks like from the news that they're going to keep it as a separate brand, although they are rebranding it. Maybe, it'll be Slack Directory or something along those lines. Joel: But ultimately, this data of people is going to start seeping into Slack's main messaging program. You'll be able to search people from other companies, obviously, be able to contact them i.e. recruit them at some point. So to me, this is a major step in Slack's evolution of going directly at LinkedIn's dominance in this space. And time will tell if they can make a dent. But I kind of like their chances as an alternative to LinkedIn, which by the way, most people in our space hate. Chad: Yeah. Well, and think about it. Every company that currently uses Slack, they're going to want to have this interaction. They're going to want to have these directories, which automatically builds all of this out. And it also has the profiles of those individuals, much like LinkedIn with regard to background, skillsets, education, all of that stuff. So think of like a Slack reverse engineering LinkedIn. And I think that's really where they're going. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. I think they have to keep it as separate, at least, for the time being, because people won't want to make their internal directory public through Slack. But if it's a separate brand, people will be much more likely to join it, and it'll be much more used as a public database, as opposed to your internal messaging on Slack. But at some point, the two are going to morph into each other. Chad: Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how they navigate that hurdle of, "Hey, I don't want to put all my people out there in the open to be sniped at or poached. Right? So yeah, that could be one hell of a tool to be able to do something like that. So it'll be interesting. Watch this space. Joel: Very interesting, indeed. Also, very interesting what our sponsor, JobAdX, is doing. Let's take a quick break, and we'll talk about Amazon drivers. Always a fun topic. JobAdX: Stand out in a feed full of boring job ads with a dynamic enticing video that showcases your company culture, people, and benefits with JobAdX. Instead of hoping that job seekers will stumble upon your employment branding video, JobAdX seamlessly displays it in the job description while they're searching, building a connection and reducing candidate drop-off. You're spending thousands of dollars on beautiful, informative employment branding videos that just sit on a YouTube channel, begging to be discovered. Why not feature them across our network of over 150 job sites to proactively compel top talent to join your team. Help candidates see themselves in your role by emailing joinus@jobadx.com. That's joinus@jobadx.com. Attract, engage, and employ with JobAdX. Chad: It's nice to know I am not the only person who hates Jeff Bezos. Joel: Derick Lancaster is not having it, my friend. Chad: He's not having it. A Detroit area Amazon driver, on Monday, I think actually earlier this week, said he abandoned a van full of packages at a gas station. And in a tweet that went viral, he let Amazon know where it was at. Joel: Yep. Chad: I mean, he quit his job on Twitter, filled up the gas tank, left the keys in the ignition. It's a "Come get your shit." Joel: Yeah. I love this tweet. "I quit Amazon. Fuck that driving shit. I left the van on 12 Mile in Southfield. You all can have that shit. And it's full of gas with the keys in the ignition." He was tired of working 13-hour days and being, basically, a slave behind the wheel. But I can't blame the guy. I feel for him. But man, what a way to quit and stick it to Amazon. Chad: He said in a video that it definitely was an unfair treatment and that he was going to look for a $15 an hour job cutting grass, so it would have been easier than working for Amazon. But here's what the ad actually says. "The job pays $15 per hour and employees can expect to work 10-hour shifts for up to five days a week." The listing says, "Amazon offers competitive compensation, employee benefits, community interaction," and states that "Every day is fun and different." Joel: Man, fuck that driving shit. Chad: Dude. And this also tells you there are protesters that were outside of Jeff Bezos' house with the guillotine. Joel: Guillotine. Chad: With the fucking guillotine. And you can understand why. So pre-COVID, Jeff Bezos was worth $113 billion. Today, he is worth $157 billion. This is the guy who took away the wage increase and drop the bullshit bonus into the worker's laps. Guillotines, pitchforks, those are all great, dude. But I'm telling you right now, that motherfucker needs tax. Joel: Yeah. My favorite new hashtag is #DefundJeffBezos. That's my favorite new hashtag. Chad: What a fox dick, dude. I mean, seriously, he is making so much money and, yet, to work... The guy's a driver, right? That cannot be a fun every day kind of scenario. It's boring as hell. It's 10 to 13, 12-hour shifts, which is what this kid was doing. And he's getting paid $15 an hour. We've done the math. Go figure. That's around 30,000 before taxes. Dude, come off your fucking pile of cash and pay these people. Joel: I got nothing else, man. That's the funniest story. Well, you'll love this move by Atlassian, who'd most people, or at least I knew as the makers of Trello, the popular collaboration tool for technology folks. Chad: Yeah. So, you talk about Amazon, and then you also hear so many different things about companies and culture and things of that nature. And as a matter of fact, we actually, this week, just dropped another Cult Brand podcast with Douglas Atkin- Joel: Nice. Chad: ... entitled "Don't Fuck Up the Culture". And it is magnificent. Mainly, because you and I only speak for about five minutes within the 45-minute podcast, because Douglas is just fucking amazing. But what they did, Airbnb seems to be somewhat of what Atlassian is modeling between balance. And I found it was really interesting because they say, "We're trying to build teams where people can bring their unique viewpoints informed by identities that they hold and their own experiences," those types of things. You hear that from companies all of the time. But then they point to a Harvard Business Review article that actually talks about diverse teams feel less comfortable, and that's why they perform better. Homogenous teams feel easier, but easy is an easy way to perform badly. Right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: And they also are so transparent, and they focus on belonging. Joel: Yeah. Chad: And the only way that you can really belong seriously is if you bring your whole self to work. And again, that's something else that Douglas talks about in his book, The Culting of Brands, and talks on our podcast. But they are transparent from the standpoint of actually showing the percentage of women, black people, different roles, that type of thing. And this is, from my standpoint and what we always talk about, where we need to get to. Next. It's the Patriots' transparency piece, right? Joel: Yeah. I love this. It's almost like the Atlassian manifesto- Chad: Yeah. Joel: ... in terms of what they're thinking internally. You can find it at atlassian.com/belonging. My favorite part of it was sort of the "Think structural" piece. And we talk a lot about the systematic sort of exclusion that happens in the education system and our communities. And they sort of hit it head-on by saying, "We know that the systematic exclusion of certain groups, including black Americans, women, and people with disabilities, from the tech industry is structural. And so we need to develop structural solutions to these problems." To me that says there were really thoughtfulness and not just paying lip service to people like you and me. Chad: Another piece out of the Harvard Business Review that I thought was incredibly interesting, we're always talking about how diverse cultures, they perform better. Right? They actually get better results. And a quote from the article says, "Among groups where all three members didn't already know the correct answer, adding an outsider versus an insider, actually doubled their chance of arriving at the correct solution from 29% to 60%. The work felt harder, but the outcomes were better." And the biggest issue that I think we have is we always talk about hiring people that looked like us, because that's comfortable. I mean, it is what it is. Hiring people who think like us. Right? Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: And generally look like us in many cases, because that's comfortable. The problem is comfortable is not where innovation happens, uncomfortable is. That doesn't mean you have to be yelling at each other or those types of things, but yet you have to have diverse opinions and experiences and backgrounds. And that is exactly what Atlassian's talking about. They have 30% of women in senior leadership roles, 3% black in the US offices. They can do much better there, but they're putting it out there for people to see. 20% of women in technical roles, that's a little higher than the average. But again, whether they're doing great or not, they're putting it out there. They also published information across the teams, including gender, race, and age. Now, I'd like to see more around disability, veteran hiring. Well, but this, at least, they're getting out and setting a base for everybody to see that this is what we believe in. Joel: I quote the Spice Girls who said, "Spice up your life." Spice up the company, baby. The more flavors, the better the pot. You know what I'm saying? Chad: Is that what you really, really want? Joel: Let's hear from Sovren and talk about cash money. Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.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: Money. Joel: All right. Favorite Spice Girl? Go. Chad: Posh. Joel: Posh? Chad: Definitely, Posh. Joel: I like Baby Spice. I like the- Chad: That's because you're weird. Joel: Money. Money. Money. Chad: Money. Money. Joel: All right. So our buddy George LaRocque sent out his quarterly reports of companies that got money. So we have three this week that are getting cash. And I think they're sort of relevant to sort of an overall theme of who's getting cash. So we'll start with Work Shield who got four million this week. Work Shield is sort of a technological way to manage and monitor harassment issues internally at companies. So they're taking away sort of the "I got to go see my HR rep and tell them what's up," and replaces that with sort of a technology system, which I think is really interesting in light of talking about CareerBuilder and Indeed's sexual harassment issues. We have Competitive Wedge whose logo is just Wedge. So that's what am I- Chad: Wedgie. Joel: That's what I'm going to call them. Either it's a salad or getting a wedgie. I don't know which is more humorous. But they got one million, and they are a video interviewing platform, essentially. Chad: They sound like Vervoe's, Redhead and StepsOn. Joel: Yeah. Vervoe's going to give them a wedgie, I think, at the end of the day. Very not Australian, probably. But lastly, Organise with an S, so you know it's got to be the UK or Canada maybe. So they got 700k in US dollars for... What I usually think is interesting is sort of the technological means to create labor unions. So this is a way that workers at a company can organize. Stick it to the man. It's Jimmy Hoffa 2.0. And it's two nice women that are founding this, so they're going to go hardcore, which I love. So Organise, Wedge and Work Shield. What do you think? Chad: All three of them, I think, go back into George and the HRWins and their funding. They're all focused on areas that are currently getting funding, because we're going to be working remote. So Work Shield, from the standpoint of being able to really resolve and also report harassment, discrimination in the workplace, where the workplace is going to be much different than it was before... And you can still have that harassment. You can still have the bullying. You can still have all of that, even though you're not face-to-face. How are you going to report it? How are you going to make it better? How are going to make it easier? The Work Shield can do that. Chad: Competitive Wedge. It's very simple. I mean, we're talking about video interviewing. Right? And assessments was one of the top areas of funding in George's report. But Organise, I think, it's just too simple. I mean, with Black Lives Matter happening, with females not getting paid as much as white men do, I mean, there's just so much disparity that's out there. How can you be Jeff Bezos' fucking nightmare? This is how you do it. You create tools that ensure those white, rich dudes who won't come off their fucking cash will come off their cash somehow, some way. So a great way to grassroots organize, or just organize, overall. I think it makes a lot of sense and is in tune with the money that George reported out. Joel: And I think what was interesting about the money flow in the past quarter, even though we had obviously COVID challenges and the dollar amount is certainly well off the Q1 2019 number, the deal flow is actually as high as it was back then, even though the dollar amount is quite a bit less. So let's call it a billion six, compared to a billion this past quarter. So money is definitely still flowing. The lion's share is going to your HCM companies, so your benefits, your onboarding, all that good stuff. Talent acquisition is still up there with talent management coming in third. Joel: Globally, the US is still where the lion's share of the dollars are coming, but we're seeing a good amount of variety within Europe, Australia, even South America. I was surprised at the diversity of areas that we're getting funded in our industry. I mean, countries like France, Australia, Germany, for example, remain pretty hot. But those are my takeaways from it. I think times are really good. We'll see what the next quarter holds, because a lot of these deals were done really before COVID. You already took hold, a lot of the negotiation, and whatnot, had been done by the time these deals happened. But we'll see what Q3 holds. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So far so good from a money perspective. Chad: Yeah. So its core systems, HCM, and then vendors who can embrace this crazy new world we live in. Go back to an interview that we actually just had with Vervoe's CEO, Omer Molad, where they actually pivoted from SMB to enterprise, and then started servicing industries that they really hadn't before like nursing. And that wasn't their core competency, but it became their core competency. So instead of trying to fight what's happening or waiting it out, they're going with the flow, and they're going where the money is right now. That's not easy for a lot of these older companies, like, again, the Monsters of the world, let's say. Because all the technical debt and everything that they have in place, it's almost brick and mortar. Joel: But dude, Monster has a new landing page for nurses. That's going to save them, I think. Chad: That'll do, pig. That’ll do. We out. Chester: Thank you for listening to podcast with Chad and Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.

What is "culture"? Most companies talk about culture even before they understand what culture actually means, let alone their own flavor of it. In this Cult Brand episode Douglas Atkin, former Head of Airbnb's Global Community and the man who wrote "The Culting of Brands", which virtually created the entire Cult Brand segment, takes us through his culture journey at cult brand Airbnb. This will be a treat for Brand professionals and enthusiasts all over the globe. Thanks to our friends at Symphony Talent for supporting the Cult Brands Series of podcasts. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. Announcer: 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 & Cheese Podcast. Chad: Hey, guys. We have Douglas Atkin with us today. That's right. Talking cult brand and how not to fuck up your culture. If you don't know Douglas's work, first and foremost, where the hell have you been? Joel: Can't get enough. Chad: Yeah. He's a cult brand expert, former global head of community at Airbnb, held a position as partner in chief community officer at meetup.com, and literally always one of the smartest people in the room. Douglas: Oh, you guys, you guys. Chad: Yeah. That's right, that's right. Joel- Joel: We're the best unpaid hype masters in the industry. Chad: Yeah, no kidding. Right? Have I mentioned Douglas actually wrote the book on cult brands? Joel: You have mentioned that once or twice, yes. Chad: Dude created the category for God's sake. This is the fifth installment of Douglas's How to Live Your Purpose series, which these podcasts are intended to be a compliment to what he's writing over on medium.com. You can go to the pod notes on chadcheese.com, click on the link and you can read and listen. Welcome back, Douglas. Joel: Welcome back, Douglas, from the sun-kissed landscape of Tuscany. I'm sure sipping on some fine wine while you chat with us. Chad: I don't know if you can tell I'm excited. Today's show is centered on don't fuck up the culture, so Douglas let's start out with the very basics on this one, shall we? What is culture and why is it so important? Douglas: Right. That's a really good question. What is culture? Because everyone talks about culture, and I think a lot of people think they know what it is. But the moment you try and say, well okay, define it then, people kind of go and say "um, um, um" and then say, "Well, it's sort of fun in the workplace, I guess," which, to be honest is absolutely what it's not. Yes, you can have fun in the workplace, but that's not really a good definition of culture. Douglas: There was a moment at Airbnb in 2015 where we noticed that the culture was getting wobbly. It had been famously strong but there were cracks appearing. I wanted to figure out why, and then I realized, well, hang on a second. We talk about the culture, it's wobbly, and investing in it. But what is it exactly? What is this thing we call culture? Over 2015 I'd been there for about three years I guess, the company had grown at two to three X, meaning that it was twice and three times as many, between twice and three times as many customers, hosts and guests, revenue, bookings, and the people to run it all. Douglas: That's a massive, massive growth, hyper growth, which is great. But when you're growing that fast it's going to create strains especially internally, and especially to things like the culture. The culture is something that, as we've talked about before, the founders have taken extremely seriously and invested literally millions of dollars into it. And they've not done things in order to preserve the culture. They didn't acquire Wimdu when it was dangled in front of them by the Samwer brothers in Germany, which was a turnkey operation copycat site that the Samwer brothers, this is their modus operandi, had built in Europe just for the purpose of getting Airbnb to buy it. Douglas: But the three founders met them, two of the facilities, met all the people and said, "No, we can't do this because it'll probably not just not fit our culture but destroy the original, because this place is so different from us and we think more toxic." So that was a big decision by the way, because that was a turnkey operation with millions of customers and a whole network of employees and offices around Europe. So not buying it was a big decision. Ebay and Groupon had bought their copycats from the Samwer brothers in their time, but Airbnb decided not to simply because of the culture. Douglas: It made business sense to buy it in the short term, but long term not to do it. So the culture was valued extremely high at Airbnb. And they'd done things like One Airbnb, which I've talked about before, which is when we fly in millions, not millions, thousands of employees from around the world to basically hang out for each other for a week. That's its main purpose is to get people to meet each other, engage with each other, get to know each other, create the sort of... the thing which I think culture is basically. Douglas: It's basically a sort of rich social soup with many ingredients in it. But basically it's the result of all the millions of interactions between people as they decide things together, interrelate with each other, engage with each other, all those things. Critical moment happened in the fall of 2015 when an advertising campaign was posted on posters in San Francisco, and immediately there was an outcry literally within an hour or two hours of it being posted. As people were coming into work, the internet went ablaze about this campaign. Douglas: If you look at the campaign now, you probably think, well, why was there so much fuss? But for the people in the company it seems totally alien to us. It didn't seem like it was coming from us. It was very confrontative, a little bit arrogant- Chad: Ah. Douglas: That was in the campaign, was to change a political opinion basically about a ballot measure that would essentially have banned Airbnb in its home city in 2015. And so it was to try and change hearts and minds, but it was doing it in a very, what felt, alien way to us. So within hours it was pulled down, and there was a big inquiry. We had a meeting in the main meeting room with Airbnb with hosts and with as many employees as could attend with the founders. Joel: Why was it so aggressive to the employees? Was it the messaging? Was it just the activity of- Douglas: The tone of voice was very adversarial but also very arrogant and sort of snide. So people looked at that and said, "But that's not me. That's not us. We're not like that." The hosts were furious because they felt it wasn't like them either, and they felt it would jeopardize their position legally in the city. Anyway the reason I'm mentioning this is that it was an event that was waiting to happen, because during the course of that year I'd been hearing a lot of grumblings and moaning from people who'd been there for a while. Douglas: And when I say for a while, a tenured employee at this point was one who'd been there for a year or more. Most companies a tenured employee would've been there for five, 10 years, 20 years. But anyway these people were saying, "Oh, my God. We're growing so fast. In the haste, we're putting bums on seats without really checking thoroughly enough that they're a good cultural fit." One of the things that created the most complaints was seeing a lot of engineers, in particular we think it was, walking around with Facebook T-shirts on or Google T-shirts, or Pinterest T-shirts on. Douglas: Our visceral response was we don't care if you worked at Facebook or Pinterest or Google. They're not as good as us, and they're different. And the fact that you think that it's a good thing to wear that T-shirt means that you don't get it and you don't belong. The tenured employees visceral response, because in everyone's mind there is a very strong culture and it's very different from those companies. So why wear their T-shirts? Have you got nothing else to wear, for crying out loud? You're an engineer. You're paid a fortune. Douglas: Anyways there were these sort of grumblings and things. Joe asked me, Joe Gebbia, one of the three founders. True, he's seen as the sort of heart and soul of the place really, the one that cares the most about these kinds of things. He asked me to go out and start talking to people to see if there was an issue with the culture. And when I sat down to do that, I thought, huh. I asked lots of questions actually, one of which was the one you asked a moment ago, which was what is culture? Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Douglas: Because if I'm going to be talking to people about it, what am I talking to them about? Anyway these are the questions I realized I had to be asking of myself and ourselves, which is what is culture? If it's so important to use and we're investing all this time and money into it, shouldn't we know what it is that we're investing in? Chad: Exactly. Douglas: We know what product is. We know what people is. But there's this nebulous, vague, misty thing called culture and we haven't even defined exactly what it is. And how is it made? How do you make more of that culture? Chad: Yeah. Douglas: And also how do you unmake it? How do you destroy the culture? Chad: How do you fuck it up? Douglas: How do you fuck it up? Yeah, we'll come to that in a minute. And what I realized it's definitely not fun in the workplace, which is that default chronically unhelpful definition that most people use. And then I was also asking the question is the culture as strong as we keep telling ourselves it is? Or if not, what's hurting it? And then finally what is our culture? How is it defined? Is it caring? Is it aggressive? Is it nurturing? Is it sink or swim? Douglas: When people responded to that advertising campaign and said that's not us, well, what is us? We should be able to define ourselves to ourselves, our culture. So I went back, I talked to a few people, then went back to both Joe and Brian and said, "Yes, there is something wrong going on, and I want to go back out there and interview some more people." Let me go back to a moment to this whole don't fuck up the culture. I called the piece I wrote in Medium How to Live Your Purpose: Don't Fuck up the Culture because it's a phrase that was used a lot in Airbnb, especially by Brian Chesky, the CEO and co-founder, but by all of us really. Douglas: And that's because Peter Thiel who is famous or infamous in Silicon Valley, he was co-founder of PayPal then has a huge venture fund. In 2012, he handed over a 200 million dollar check to the founders. It was one of the biggest single investments the organization had had in its young history. As he was handing it over, Brian asked him for advice. So think of that for a moment. You've got this guy who's made billions, who's been incredibly successful, who's invested in what became incredibly successful companies. This founder is asking him for advice. Basically he's saying, "How do we preserve and grow your 200 million?" Douglas: And the thing that Thiel responded with was don't fuck up the culture, which is not what most people would have responded with. Most people would've said make the best product you can, hire the best people, all the normal stuff you hear. But no. He decided... What's your runway? All these kinds of things. He obviously considered culture was the most important thing that they could fuck up, but also could be one of the biggest things that contributed to a big return on his investment. What most leaders do actually though, they don't put that as a priority. Douglas: Culture has become a sort of nice if you can get it thing. It's not something that's on the top three, four priorities that a CEO of a leader of any kind- Joel: I love in your story where you say culture is typically an investment by HR to have some fun things in the office and it'll take care of itself. Douglas: Yes, exactly. That's what most leaders are focusing, quite rightly, on things like the best product and all these kind of things. And they sort of hope the culture will be a nice outcome of it all. Maybe a little happy outcome of running the organization well. And if there's a problem, just throw some dollars at HR and they'll run a few parties and put a beer keg- Joel: Go buy a ping pong table. Douglas: Yes, and a beer keg on Fridays or something. Chad: I like that one. Joel: Yeah, I like that one too. Douglas: Peter Thiel and the founders before and since then have had the right attitude to culture, which is it requirements investment as much as the best people, investing in the best product, product development, research, all these kinds of things. All the things you see as a leader as the things you should be investing in, they put culture very near the top if not the top as something that needs conscious attention and application of dollars, time, and energy to be successful. Douglas: So I wrote an email actually to Brian and Joe over the Christmas break in 2015 saying the culture is fucked. Because as Joe had asked, I'd gone out and talked to some people, and I came back and realized that things weren't good. The truth was I was saying the culture is fucked as a bit of an emphasis point. The truth was it wasn't fucked. It was still very strong, but it was getting wobbly, and getting wobbly was not something that we would ever want to tolerate. Chad: I think it'd be great for companies to understand how you identified the culture was getting wobbly, because you say it, but it's like how did you know? And then what then did you do about it? Douglas: Okay. Good. I went out and did this tour with this colleague of mine, Dave O'Neill, around the world to many of our offices. Interviewed over 300 employees, making sure that I was interviewing people of all tenures, people who joined just a few weeks ago to people who'd been there when there was... back in 2009, 2010, whatever. Also, every discipline, engineering, marketing, partnerships, whatever. Different nationalities and geographies, and different levels, from the most senior people in the E staff all the way down to the most junior. And I asked the same questions of everyone and got them to do the same exercises. Douglas: One of the first things we did was I basically said... I was trying to find out is the culture as strong as we think it is. One way to find out is to ask a really open-ended question, which is why are you here? You could probably get a really good, better paying job elsewhere, because at the time we weren't paying that much. Because we had a strong culture, everyone wanted to come and join. Especially in Silicon Valley and in London, it's a very competitive market. So I said, "You could probably leave and get more money. Why are you here? And why are you staying?" And I gave them cards to write down the top two or three reasons. Douglas: And so every time, apart from one person, just one person out of the 300, said I'm here for the money. Chad: Just one? Douglas: Just one. Yep. Chad: Wow. Douglas: I think he was kidding himself, to be honest. That what he was telling himself. But anyway, he shall remain nameless. Everyone actually wrote the same things, which was, and I'm just looking at some of these cards now that I took photographs of, people, culture, values, the mission, and things like I can make an impact, I really love my colleagues. Here's an example of one: Why am I here? I love the vision, and I'm very sure that Airbnb's mindset is the right way to go long term. I love that Airbnb cares for their employees and makes sure everybody lives the vision. The vision. The culture. I'm here for the culture. Douglas: That was good. That was encouraging. That was qualitative evidence. I also had quantitative evidence. Twice a year we run this survey called Murmur where we ask a ton of questions. There's a very high rate of filling these things in, these surveys, believe it or not. It's like 95%, 96%. Chad: Wow. Douglas: 89% of people agreed that I am proud of the culture at Airbnb in the fall of 2015. So clearly the culture was very, very strong. But as one of those respondents said in that Murmur survey, I've written it down here, he said, "After all the talk of not fucking up the culture, I can confirm that it is thoroughly fucked." Okay. So, yes, it's strong but there were signs like that, that people were getting nervous about the culture wasn't as strong as it used to be. Chad: Yeah. So was this individual... had they been around a while and they'd been able to see what the culture was like and where it was going? Is that how you could gauge some of that? Douglas: Exactly. Obviously the people with more tenure thought there was more of a problem, because they had been like I had. I joined when there was about 150 people in HQ. The founders are in every meeting. You basically see each other all the time and interact. It's a small group. 150 is what's called the Dunbar number. 100 or 150. Named after an anthropologist, I think, or a sociologist that's called Dunbar. He said that's the maximum number of people that you can remember the names of in an organization. Douglas: It's the reason why the Romans had centurions and sentries. They had 100 soldiers with one centurion because they could create strong bonds. You knew each other, you depended on each other, there's a mutual reinforcement, all those kinds of things. So obviously the tenured people, yes, they could see more of an erosion of the culture. The next thing I wanted to do was to find out, well okay, I will need to know two things. What built the culture? What erodes the culture? Specifically at Airbnb, what is making the culture stronger, if anything? And what is making it weaker, if anything? Douglas: So the best way I... This culture is this amorphous thing. This miasma. This fog called culture, and no one could really touch or grasp it. I had to use a metaphor, and the metaphor I used was a balloon, a normal party balloon. And I said imagine that you have a balloon in front of you and the air in the balloon is Airbnb's culture. So you can make more of it. You can blow more air into the balloon and have more culture and a bigger balloon. Equally though, leaks can occur in the balloon and the culture will leak out. What I want you to do is draw a picture of a party balloon, which they did on a big piece of paper. And I said I want you to identify the things which are making more culture. What is the stuff in the air there that's making the balloon bigger and stronger? Douglas: And then also identify the things which are making the culture leak out. So I'm just looking at one of these right now, one of the hundreds that were drawn. And I'll read you some of the things that this particular person put in, in terms of inflating the culture. All right? The first one is our mission. Our mission is the purpose of creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere. Good people, mission driven people. One Airbnb, which is that big meeting, annual meeting I was telling you about where we all get together for a week of getting to know each other. The founders, big contributors. Douglas: What else? Drive, ambition, big ideas, and opportunities. That kind of stuff. Then I asked what are the deflators? There were things like leaders and E staff. E staff is the management team, the department heads who report to the founders. Leaders in the E staff who just don't get it, and then under that, people who don't live the values. Lack of trust with all these new people. We don't really know where they're coming from. And let me have another look here. Hiring non-mission oriented people, putting business before the mission. Douglas: So what had been happening actually... Once they did all these things, I went back to these inflators and deflators and said let's talk about those a bit more. So you're saying putting business before the mission. Can you give me an example? And there were several common examples that were quite controversial in 2015. On of them was a big bet they made about expanding vacation rentals. They hired a guy from Google, really nice guy, good guy actually. And they wanted to expand the number of listings in vacation locations, so things like ski areas and seasides. Douglas: The trouble with that is that those properties tend to be purpose built and run by property managers. They're not necessarily the homes of real people which they're letting out for a few nights, or a bedroom, whatever. Okay? Property managers aren't like hosts. Hosts are personal and local, and they're spending as much time not just making sure you've got a key and beautiful place to stay, but making you feel welcome, making you feel like a local- Chad: They want you to belong. Right? And the property managers, not so much. Douglas: That felt like a big investment that was not just not forwarding the mission but possibly undermining it by hiring non-belong anywhere hosts basically. And then another one of those big business decisions was one called 100% instant book. Now on the surface this looks like a really good thing for users, which was just like a hotel you could find an Airbnb host and listing and instantly book it. You didn't have to wait the normal 24 hours for them to respond that you often have to do. Douglas: So that sounded like a good idea, and it was a good idea from a business point of view too, because we had a pretty low what's called browse to book rate. It was a conversion rate of about 60%, so 60% of people who browsed then actually made a booking. So we wanted to increase that rate obviously as any business would. But a lot of people felt it was undermining proper matching between guests and hosts, guests who would get on with hosts and would like their recommendations on restaurants, or gigs to go to or places to go, and an interaction between the host and the guest that was very, very important. Douglas: So there was that. Plus also some people had been hired in E staff who people generally felt were not living the values. They weren't the core values, which we'll talk about in another podcast. The core values are very, very important to building the culture and to achieving your mission. And they felt these people didn't take them seriously. There were two or three of them. Just in their day-to-day interactions. For example, one of them was "be a host", one of the core values. They felt that some of these leaders weren't host-y enough. They weren't there to help you do your best. They weren't there to make you feel like you belong and part of an important team. They were in it just for the money. Douglas: So there was a lot of that. Now, all of this... That was quite a good technique in both identifying what built and undid the culture, but also defining what Airbnb's culture was too. Another technique I used that was really good, really helpful, is what I called advice to the founders. I said to these people, "Look, I promise you that whatever you write down I will show the three founders," which I did. And I said, "I want you to write at the top of the page advice to founders, and then I want you to write what you want them to continue to do, what you want them to stop doing, and then what you want them to start doing." Joel: Very cool. Douglas: Which is good. When you work in a company, you never get to talk to the leaders often, and especially give them a piece of your mind. What you want them to start, stop, or continue doing. Anyway, the advice to founder were things like continue to constantly reflect on and prioritize the culture, stop talking a big values based game but then prioritizing short-termed values-less projects with the resources and attention. So that was an example, that last one, of you say you're living the values but then you go and do things like vacation rentals, which don't have any values in them at all. Douglas: So you're talking out of your ass basically. Another one was advice to founders: continue to make values driven decisions and holding others accountable to do the same. When they're talking about others here, they're particularly talking about the people who work for you the founders. Hold these department heads accountable to making values driven decisions because we don't think they are. Chad: We'll get back to the interview in a minute. Building a cult brand is not easy, which is why you need friends like Roopesh Nair, CEO of Symphony Talent, on your side. Joel: It's easier than ever before to create video. Yet, companies seem confused about how to use video to build and employ your brand. What is your advice to companies who want to leverage video? Roopesh Nair: Keep it very, very genuine and the only way you can keep it genuine is by making it basically come from people who actually work for you and actually not very tailored. The more you can leave it loose and let people express themselves using video, the more genuine and connecting it would be. Yeah, it's good to give people guideline on how they want to communicate about the brand and ensure that you're hitting the top points out there, but frankly, getting it out here to ensure that your co-creating your videos with your employees is the right way to go. And then bringing that content into your engagement as you think about it. Roopesh Nair: And I'll give a shout out to our friends at Altru here. I think something like that is the best way to actually achieve really bold videos than necessarily doing video shoots and things like that. I mean, video shoots have their place when you build those corporate videos, but if you really want to use video as a marketing content then it needs to be curated in a very genuine way. Chad: Let Symphony Talent help activate your brand and keep relationships at the heart of your talent strategy. For more information, visit symphonytalent.com. Douglas: On the same sheet actually someone said start, here we go, start holding other executives and leaders accountable when they fail to operate with a values driven mindset. These are all open-ended. They could've put anything down there. These employees could've put down there I want more money, I want a better restaurant in the building, whatever it was. No, they put things down there about the culture, the values, and the mission. So I was able to go back to the three founders in the spring of 2016 saying I can tell you most of the things I now think we need to know. Douglas: I can tell you that the culture is strong but it's getting wobbly. And I can tell you why it's getting wobbly, and then we can then have a discussion about how to fix the wobbliness. So what I was able to say was what's making the culture strong and we need to do even more of is, number one, the mission. Having a mission, which is belong anywhere, that went beyond business goal to making the world a better place, was a massive draw to people working at Airbnb and staying and working really, really hard. It's why they got up in the morning. Douglas: The values were really important, that we had some and that we tried to live by them mostly seemed to be good. But there was a problem with the values which I'll come back to in a minute. Having founders that really lived the missions and the values and who prioritized the culture was a huge inflator. There was a feeling, by the way, that the founders were doing almost everything right. The only thing they were doing wrong is not holding their direct reports accountable to the mission and the values and the culture. Douglas: So the people thought that Brian, Joe, Nate were making business decisions that built and achieved the purpose and the culture. But their people weren't. And then other things, having mission and values driven colleagues. What they called the missionaries rather than the mercenaries. Having a workforce of missionaries who believed in the purpose and the values as much as you did, rather than having a bunch of people who were there just for the money, mercenaries, was what would make a strong culture. Douglas: And then experiences, things like One Airbnb, and the world and so on. But these were the culture destroyers that we had to fix immediately, otherwise the culture would start disappearing out of the balloon rapidly and the whole thing would deflate. So we said you've got to deal with the leaders who do not live the mission and the values. They either need retraining or re-incentivizing or firing. I can report that within a year, 18 months of that conversation the three big offenders had left the organization, which was good. Douglas: The colleagues who don't live the mission or values, I think actually that was a misunderstanding amongst the employees. Even some of those people wearing bloody Facebook and Google T-shirts were there for the mission and the values. It's just they hadn't done their laundry or something. I don't know. Anyway, we gave them Airbnb T-shirts and they wore those instead. And then the other big thing I mentioned before, non-mission and values led big decisions. They revised the whole vacation rentals thing. The 100% instant book goal was also revised. And I'll come on to it later but other metrics which valued the mission were given more equal priority, which I'll come back to. Douglas: Now, the core values is the other thing, which is really important. People said we're here for the core values. They make the mission possible. They make the culture strong. But they're not good enough. We have real problems trying to put them into action. Sometimes they were even abused. There was one called embrace the adventure. Embrace the adventure meant basically that you should be bold. Do things that have never been done before. Be courageous, all these kinds of things. But leaders sometimes, even on the E staff would say things like, "I'm sorry. To get this done we've got to work the weekend. But hey, embrace the adventure." Douglas: That's not using the values. They were totally abusing them, which made it even worse. That made many people think, well, screw this. If he or she is not taking the values seriously, why should I? So some of these next steps were totally in the hands of the founders in things like, for example, changing the big goals to reflect achieving the mission, the big business priorities, and reviewing the leadership to make sure that they were also on track with the values and the mission. That was in the hands of the founders. Douglas: The other thing that we could do together though was make the values better, because as I said they were good but not good enough. People thought that there were too many of them, which to where we had six. The most that people could remember were five. When I asked them, "okay, tell me what the core values are." And they go, "Be a host, champion the mission, embrace the adventure, um, uh." There were too many. And also some of them were, like embrace the adventure and cereal entrepreneur, were sometimes a little too cutesy and not specific enough at defining the behavior that was required of people. Douglas: So we went on a... The next year I went on an adventure to do a whole zero basing of the core values and redefine them and rebuild them, which will be the subject of another podcast. Now we come back though to... That's what we did in terms of finding out what was building the culture, what was hurting it, and then the action we took to address those things. But I want to come back to two things which I haven't really, I don't think, talked enough about. One is what was the definition of Airbnb's culture, and then secondly, what is culture itself? Douglas: Because I found, I learned through this experience to have I think what is a better definition of culture that most companies might be able to use more easily than what's around. The thing I learned about Airbnb's culture was basically that through all those exercises I did, Airbnb's culture could be defined as being one that's totally focused on delivering the mission and it is very caring and very daring, meaning that this whole idea of being a host was expressed in that value. It was not a culture of fear. It was not a culture of intimidation. It was a culture of making you feel like you belonged, and in doing so that you would do anything to be able to make you be the best you could possibly be, nurturing you to the point where you delivered your best. Douglas: Unlike some cultures which could be things like scaring you to the point where you delivered your best, ours was caring. Not scaring. And daring was another part of the culture, which is we keep doing things that have never been done before. In every department in every way we would, as I've talked about in another podcast, we would do plan B's, not plan A's. We would forge our own path and do things that'd never been done. We were always daring ourselves and daring others to do stuff that had not been done before. So it was a very entrepreneurial culture basically, but one that was very caring. Douglas: Plus, there was this freedom to be myself. Because I was welcomed and recognized and loved for who I was and felt like I was part of a team who liked me and celebrated me, you're in a safe space. It enabled you to relax a little bit and blossom. You were basically trusted and given the space to get the job done in the way that you felt that was the way to do it best, which was fantastic actually. Very few companies deliver that. Douglas: So what is culture then? What is the purpose of culture? The purpose of culture is to deliver the purpose primarily, and it does this by creating and incredibly driven, motivated team of people who are very cohesive, meaning that they are extremely good at working with each other to deliver on the mission. Why? Because they all value the same things. They all share the same personal values, which are enshrined in the core values. And those core values have defined a way of working with each other, how you behave, how you make decisions together, that's known. Sort of, duh, of course we need to do it that way, because we all know that. That's what it is. Douglas: This culture is this, as I said before, incredibly rich social soup where everyone knows why they're there, and what they're doing, and how they should relate with everyone else, and everyone knows that we're all in the same boat together, all going in the same direction. So you've got this driven, focused, direction given team to make the purpose a reality. Rather than places without a strong culture are often places where you're arguing over and over again about the same things, fundamental, basic things, like why are we here? What are we doing this for? How should we make our decisions with each other? Douglas: You're not wasting any time doing that anymore. That's all been decided. Now you're just part of this team focused on making the purpose a reality. So what is culture? Let me go be back to describing what that is. I actually think there's both visible, tangible things of culture and invisible. Invisible are actually ultimately the most important bits, and they're what I call... By the way, where this definition is coming from is I and a couple of others looked at all the academic definitions of culture that are around, and then some of the definitions that companies have used and so on. Douglas: And I either found them too academic and obscure or too simple. There was nothing that I could or that we could use as a method, like a template for culture that we could all use and know what we were talking about. So that's why I took the best bits of what I found and came up with this. The invisible and visible. Invisible aspects of culture are the shared assumptions that we all have about how we behave with each other, relate to each other, and decide things together. It's those unwritten things, unspoken things that make it like a of course we know how to do this. We all know this. We're all in the same boat. Douglas: Now, those shared assumptions about why we're here, what we're doing, how we're relating to each other, they are driven by very undefined... These invisible aspects and shared assumptions are defined by very visible things, specifically the purpose and the core values. The purpose is this very visible thing. In our case it was creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere. And it says that's why we're here. If you want that to be reality, come join us and be part of the team. If you want to do something else, that's great. You can find that in another company. Douglas: But we are here for this reason and this reason alone, creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere. And then the how, we're going to get that, is our core values. And we have these core values. There were six. Now there's four. And these are the guardrails, if you like, or the definers of those shared assumptions. They define how we decide things together, how we relate to each other, how we talk to each other. Things like be a host. The core values now have three behaviors each, which are very specific about... very good at defining exactly the behavior that is expected of you. Douglas: Being a host is all the things I mentioned before. Work with other people to bring out the best of them by making them feel they're in a safe space, and that they belong and they're part of the team. That kind of thing. The first and most important visible aspect of culture are the purpose and the core values that should be written down, be everywhere, talked about by everyone all of the time, which we'll get on to in the next podcast. The next visible aspect of culture are the leaders. Douglas: The leaders should be like the high priests, if you like, of the culture. They should be the ones that... If the core values are defining how you should behave, they should behaving according to the core values all the time. So for example, when we didn't have leaders on the management team who were being host-y, that was a big problem because they weren't living the values themselves, which made people think, well, if they're not being hosts, why should I? Chad: Right. Douglas: Actually, what people thought was, "Goddammit, why aren't they being hosts? They don't belong here." Is actually what people thought. Joel: Yeah. Douglas: So they need to be exemplars. And the reason why the leaders are so important is obviously they're leaders. They're very visible. So they need to be living exemplars of the values and the purpose. But also the decisions they're making are also the biggest and most visible decisions that the company makes. And those decisions need to be seen to be living the purpose and the values as well. That's why the leaders are so important. Douglas: Now, in some companies and organizations the physical, the space you're working in, the architecture, the way people are dressed, the design of the products, the design of your presentations even, they all are there to reinforce the culture. So for example, in Airbnb's offices all around the world, I mean, you can literally go from one office to another and you'll see, they're not exactly the same, but you'll see the same themes and the same architecture and design. And the design is all about, I'm sure people know this already, but all the meeting rooms are exact recreations of hosts' homes somewhere in the world. Chad: That's so cool. Douglas: So every single meeting room in Airbnb, like for example, the ones in San Francisco, there was an airstream trailer that was a meeting room. There's this amazing kitchen from a listing in Paris with all the knives on the wall, the recipe books and everything else. First of all, they're really wonderful places, but the way the architecture was working to reinforce the culture was saying that every time you're having a meeting and deciding things you're literally being dunked like a teabag into the host's life. Douglas: You're literally having a meeting in their sitting room, or their living room, or around the table. Chad: That's fucking brilliant. I mean, it literally is fucking brilliant. Douglas: You can never forget that this is what you're doing here. You're creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere because you're doing it in an environment where people feel they belong in hosts' homes. So the physical manifestations are very important. But also we could always tell when people were having tours of the office, you could see these groups of people walking around. They were dressed differently. They wore jackets and had work shoes and stuff, whereas we were all wearing T-shirts and jeans and what have you. You could just tell. Douglas: So the physical is very, very important. The next important thing is experiences and rituals. So these are the things that will emerge over time. For example, there's a ritual every week for new employees in every office, which is after we've had our big world meeting, which is in some offices that are remote will be live streamed, then all the new employees have to stand up and say who they are and sing a song or something. But then what happens is they have to run through the human tunnel, and the human tunnel is where all the members of the office form this human tunnel and the new employees run through it and then leap onto a big Airbnb couch, and they're given an Airbnb T-shirt. Douglas: No one can remember how that started. It's a bit silly and fun, but it's actually a pretty good ritual and a fairly classic ritual that's saying to people you belong here now. Once you're running through literally every person and coming out the other end, you're different at the end than you were at the beginning. You now belong. So those are really, really important. And the experiences like One Airbnb, super important. Bringing people together, reminding them about the purpose and the values and doing fun things to make that more apparent is a huge part of Airbnb. Douglas: In fact there's a whole department today at Airbnb called ground control whose job it is to create these experiences and rituals in every office, ones where the culture is reinforced and the purpose and values are reinforced. Joel: Is that an HR component or marketing? Douglas: Now it reports to HR but it used to report directly to Brian actually for the longest time. Ground control also used to do other things that are now done since we've grown so big by other parts of the company like fitting out the buildings and stuff. But no, now it's focused very much, as I say, on creating these experiences. Joel: Yeah. Douglas: Reinforcing the purpose and the mission to everyone. Chad: So those meaningful moments, is that what they are really revolving around as well? Douglas: No, meaningful moments tend to be... Well, they can be. Like One Airbnb for a lot of people are meaningful moments, because it's a huge investment to the company, spending millions bringing you around the world to not do your job for a week basically. You're not writing code for a week. You're not creating partnerships for a week, instead spending the week with your friends in this big event. And all the accommodation in San Francisco. You can imagine it's huge. So for some people that is a meaningful moment. The reason why it is a meaningful moment, you're right, is because it's a decision that's often costly in the short term, but long term lives the principle. Douglas: The principle basically that the founders are living and the reason why they decided to do it is that there's a massive investment in the culture and they want everyone to be a host to each other and you can do that best by making new friendships and getting to know each other better. There are other meaningful moments and every company, I think, has them. They're the moments generally where a big bet has been made, often a risky one where sometimes it can be existential, an existential threat. The first one that I actually was part of was in 2013 in the fall when the attorney general in New York issued a subpoena to us to give him all of our hosts', it was 15,000 people at the time, all of their information. Names, addresses, phone numbers, everything, the amount of revenue they'd earned on Airbnb and so on. Douglas: And after thinking about it long and hard for a week, we said no to the attorney general. We won't do that. We're going to take you to court and squash your subpoena. At this time Airbnb was not well known. It's not the brand that it is today. In fact, their lawyers at the attorney general's office said, "Do you know what you're doing? Do you know that no one says no to the Airbnb?" And they even said, "Do you have any lawyers? They should tell you this." We actually had one lawyer on staff at the time and a couple of people that we'd retained. But the point was we thought this was an existential moment. Douglas: God knows what the attorney general could do when we said no. He could've turned around and said, "Okay, you have to cease and desist. You can't operate." And at the time New York was by far our biggest market. It no longer is. Now, I think Paris, or I don't know, maybe somewhere in China is. But then it was our largest market and the threat was there to basically close it down, which would've had a dramatic effect on our future, as you can imagine. And so this was a really, really tough decision, backs against the wall. Douglas: And at the end of the day we said we have to do the right thing. And the right thing is to stand right next to, shoulder to shoulder within our hosts and be in the same boat with same threat, which is being closed down by the attorney general of New York. We said to them, "We're not going to give your information. This is a massive data overreach. He's fishing to see if there's a problem there. He doesn't know that there's a problem, and we refuse to do it." Douglas: So these meaningful moments are ones that often short term create a very expensive and very risky... One of the biggest things that we knew that we had to do as a result of this was we had to spend a lot of time with lobbyists and lawyers dealing with the attorney general to squash it. But also we had to, a large part of the onus was on me actually, end of the day, to mobilize the hosts in New York to take physical action and fight for a change of law and squash the subpoena and everything else, and change culture and attitudes towards Airbnb. I spent basically the next six months full time with a team of people doing that. Douglas: So that was a huge, high, massive cost, whereas most companies, in fact every company that the attorney general has issued a subpoena to simply complied and then wouldn't have had to face those costs. But we did it because, as I said, it was the right thing to do. Now we look back on it and say, well, that was a meaningful moment. We lived our value of being a host. We had to be hosts to our hosts. We had to make sure that they felt safe, and that they belonged with us, and that we stood shoulder to shoulder with them, and that we wouldn't simply roll over and comply with this unfair subpoena, that we'd take the risks with them, side by side and fight it, and invest millions to fight it, which is what we did. Chad: Right. And that is a huge meaningful moment. Joel: Yeah. Huge. Another one of many, which we will still have with Douglas. [crosstalk 00:47:58]. Douglas: Exactly. Joel: Well, Douglas, we know your time is valuable. You've been talking for a while now. I'm sure that bottle of wine is empty by now. Douglas: Actually, it's still full. I've been drinking my cup of tea. I'm desperate now for a glass of wine. Joel: Well, then we are keeping you away from that fine bottle of wine. As usual, we greatly appreciate the time. We will continue the series. For those listening who haven't heard the ones before this, check out the backstory and be sure to stay tuned for future episodes. Douglas, as always, it's a pleasure. Chad: Thank you. Douglas: Thank you. Joel: Appreciate it, sir. Douglas: Thank you very much. Talk to you next time. Chad: Excellent, Joel. We out. Announcer: This has been The Chad & Cheese Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss a single show. And be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit chadcheese.com. Oh, yeah. You're welcome.

What does long-term focus really mean? Do companies really wait months to decide on a priority position? When does culture really matter? We welcome back best-selling author, branding expert and former Airbnb global head of community, Douglas Atkin on this Cult Brand Series episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast. This podcast is a companion to Douglas' series authored entitled Purpose Must Come First on Medium. Enjoy this SmashFly exclusive. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your sourcing and recruiting partner for people with disabilities. Joel: All right. All right. All right, let's get ready to pod. We got Douglas Atkin back- Chad: Yeah. Joel: ... for our fourth show installment. Chad: Dude, the cult brand hits just keep coming kids. Today, we welcome back our friend Douglas Atkin, former global head of community at Airbnb, partner and chief community officer at meetup.com. And all around, incredibly smart, branding icon, dude. Joel: And he's just a good guy too. Chad: Knowing that Douglas is going to be on the podcast, I mean, I just can't sleep the night before. Douglas: Could we do this every morning? I just... I need you to say all these things every morning to me so I can have a good day. Joel: We can record it, man. You can just pop in your iPhone and listen to this everyday. Chad: No, that's not good enough, I want to have some more Douglas time. That being said, this is the fourth installment of Douglas' How to Live Your Purpose series, which is really intended to be a compliment to your writings over on medium.com, Douglas. And most importantly, again, this is about how to become a cult brand and stay a cult brand. You know, we all have the why, kind of like the Simon Sinek why, but this is the how. How do you you actually make that happen? So again, welcome back Douglas. Thanks for coming back on the show. Joel: Great to have any Douglas. Douglas: Oh, it's my pleasure, I love talking about this stuff. Chad: Well today's show is centered on, this is one of my favorites, being relentless, focused on the longterm. So in a short term profit and board driven world, how in the hell is that even possible today? Douglas: I know, I know. It's... but I mean, think about it. When Airbnb... I joined in 2012, late 2012, when there was about 150 people there in HQ. And it was a classic Silicon Valley startup. So, craziness every day. So build on top of that the fact that almost everything we're doing at Airbnb's never been done before. You're inventing stuff up, you're making stuff up every day as you're going along. Chad: Yeah. Douglas: So even within that context, your being faced by daily craziness. What I loved and admired about the founders and my colleagues was that we would always try and make decisions that favored the longterm. Or what we called plan "B" decisions, there's a separate podcast you've done about this. But Nate describes these decisions really well. Which is, normally the pla- Douglas: ... what we call plan "B" decisions, we take, because they do favor the longterm in some way... they're better for the culture, they're better for our hosts, they're better... they live our values and they will achieve our mission, our purpose. Douglas: If you do plan "A" though, however, the way something is normally done, it won't do any of those things. So we always make plan "B" decisions. But plan "B" decisions don't exist, you have to invent them because they've never been done before. And as Nate says, told me once, "It's like there's a path before you and you can down it and it's kind of safe but you don't like it and you say no, I'm not going to do that. But then it's not really clear what the alternative is and you have to forge a new path." So Nate told me that one day when he was trying to describe... Basically, I had asked him and the other two founders to think of all the meaningful moments in the company's history, and by meaningful moments, I mean those moments where you did something with meaning, on principle. Chad: Uh-huh (affirmative). Douglas: Often there was a big risk attached. Often there was a big short term cost to it, like short term cost of money or not being able to launch a product on time or whatever it was. And that was one of them. He said, "Basically, we make plan "B" decisions in forging our own path." And actually one of the first things that the founders did for their... the first hire they wanted to make, this is way back in 2008, was another software engineer. And there was only three of them at the time and they were trying to hire this software engineer because what was also happening at the time is they were in "Y" Combinator, which is an incubator in Silicon Valley, a famous one. Chad: Pretty popular. Douglas: Yeah, very popular. And Brian and Joe were flying to New York every weekend to talk to hosts and find out what they needed and would telephone back to Nate, who is the CTO, who was the programmer, and get him to often change the site overnight, more in line with what the hosts needed to be good hosts. Douglas: So... but they... and then we had a long list of products and innovations they wanted to make to the site and so on. So they really needed this first engineering hire and that, actually, I'll just read you something that Brian told me about this. He said, "Our first engineering hire, we desperately need an engineer but we still waited four or five months, maybe six months, till we hired this guy Nick Randy because we wanted to hire somebody we felt could represent the culture. So that had a cost of growing slower because of an investment in the culture." This is still Brian talking. "Culture's really a short term price you pay for longterm results, very long term. Like, you pay a short term price not to hire your first engineer because you believe, in the longterm, that they'll hire 10 more people that will represent the culture." Douglas: So imagine it, there's only three of you, you're in startup mode, incubation mode, you're trying to get product made. You would think, like most startups, you would hire... any engineer will do, basically. Any decent engineer will have them. But no they deferred all the products that they wanted to launch so urgently until they found the right one, the right person who they felt shared their values and would perpetuate a strong culture. Joel: And Douglas, so we have a lot of recruiters that listen to this show. Douglas: Uh-huh (affirmative). Joel: And they're sitting there thinking, "What in the hell? My job is to find people as quickly as possible." So to that recruiter that says, "I can't worry about culture, I got to fill this rec immediately, or as fast as possible." Your answer to them is what? Douglas: Well normally that recruiter, and I know because I've been in exactly that situation, that recruiter is saying that because the manager is usually standing on their desk and saying, "I need this engineer, I need this marketing person right now, otherwise we're screwed. We won't launch this. We won't be able to do "X", "Y" and Zed." Right? So it's for really good reasons why they're desperate to hire. But we don't. I mean, from the outside, Airbnb looks like this meteoric... At the time, by the way, we were growing, and this is when I was there, which is 2012, '13, '14, '15. We were growing at 200 to 300% per year. Douglas: Meaning that we had twice, or three times as many, people, customers, revenue, listings, hosts, guests, every single year. So it was as Marc Andreessen, the VC guy, called us, like he called eBay, hyper growth company. So we were going hyper, hyper growth. And this is still true, we would never hire someone without checking they fit the core values first. Because everyone in the company knows that no matter how urgent their hiring need is, for whatever they need it for, it's not so urgent that you're willing to sacrifice the powerful culture that helps deliver the purpose or the mission. Douglas: Because yes, you may solve a short term problem, but you'll create a much worse, longer term problem. Where, in a couple of years, you look around and say, "What have we become? This is not what we intended. This isn't who we are. We've got all these high performing assholes," as my colleague called them, "... really good at their jobs and make a lot of impact but don't live the values. And this is not the culture that's going to deliver our mission." Douglas: So what I would say is, even in a hyper growth company like Airbnb, where we were growing way faster than 99.9% of companies in the world, we still paused on hiring and made sure that ,for new hires, and it's absolutely true now, they get six to eight skill interviews. Say I'm an engineer, there'll be interviewed by six to eight engineers to check that I'm a really good engineer. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Douglas: Then I'll get two interviews, core value interviews, that are being... that are given to me by non-engineers, by people not in my discipline. And what those interviews are for is to check that your personal values are aligned with the values that are shared at Airbnb. And if those core values interviewers think that you may be a good engineer but you don't embody those values, they have veto power. So... and this also happened to me once as a manager. I wanted to recruit this grassroots organizer, one of the best in the Obama campaign, I think. I urgently needed her to parachute into a city and to mobilize hosts. And she went through all the interviews, I knew her skills were brilliant but she had two core values interviews and they turned her down. Douglas: And of course my first response, even though I should know better, was, "What the fuck? It's like, I need her to fly in tomorrow, you know? It's like, this is crazy because there's going to be this..." Some legislation was being passed in three weeks time, I really needed her to go in there tomorrow. But then I calmed down and thought, "Okay, fair enough. We all live with this. It would solve my immediate problem but will create bigger, bigger, much worse problems, longer term. And I'd rather deal with a short term issue than the longer term one." Chad: I mean, this came from the top. That the core values... I mean, the founders. So we're talking about recruiters but really we also have a ton of DPs, and directors of talent acquisition, that listen to us. It's really on their shoulders to focus on this, being relentless for the longterm, right? Douglas: It is, yeah. And so, yeah, no, the founders keep talking about it all the time. And I mean, as I say, it's built into our values. Our first value is, champion the mission. Which, our mission is our purpose. Which is, create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. And there's a... There's three behaviors under each mission and under each value, by the way, core value. And one of the behaviors under that, champion the mission, core value is, always favor the mission in every decision you make. So it's built into our values and everyone is held accountable to the values. Old and young, whatever seniority, whatever discipline, whichever country you're in, you have to live the values, specially if you're a leader. Douglas: Because as leaders tend to make the big decisions and are more visible and if they don't embody the values, which includes championing the mission and making decisions for the longterm, then why would anyone else? Joel: Douglas, do you have any insight into what that extra set of interviews meant to recruiting? In other words, I think on the surface you would say, "Wow, if engineers knew that not only do they have to pass the skills stuff but then they have to take a values interview." I think you would say, a knee jerk would be, "Well I'm not going to even bother with interviewing with Airbnb if they're going to put me through that kind of rigor." But my guess is this probably helped you recruit better people, and more people, because of that extra hurdle. Douglas: Oh yeah, yeah. No, it's the opposite effect. People want to work at Airbnb because of the culture of the values, they say that. It's... They're kind of famous. And it's a fantastic differentiator actually. It helps us recruit in a highly competitive market, particularly in San Francisco, it helps us recruit the best. And by the way, it's not just recruitment. This, again, is going to come up in another podcast but it's recruitment, it's reviewing and it's rejecting as well, the three "R"s. So once you're in Airbnb, your reviewed not just on how much impact you've had, what you did, but you also reviewed about how you did it. So... And it's 50/50. So did you do all these things whilst living the core values? And if the answer is no, then you'll be given a warning and fired if you don't change your ways. Douglas: And this is true also of people on the leadership team. There were two or three people in 2015, 2016, who... I talked to a lot of people in the company at the time. A lot of people were grumbling about them because they felt that they had somehow got through the filter and really didn't embody the core values and didn't really seem to be championing the mission. And the decisions they're making too didn't seem to be... they seemed to be favoring short term growth rather than the longterm mission. And eventually those three leaders were let go. And now leaders in the company are given much longer core values interviews by more senior people, including, sometimes, the founders. Because it's even more important for the leaders to demonstrate that they are living the values in the long term. Douglas: There's a good example I wanted to tell you about actually. Joel: Sure. Douglas: So I gave you an early example about the first engineering hire. There was another pretty early example too which, other companies, famous companies folded, did plan "A". There are these brothers called the Samwer Brothers in Germany and their business model is to make a copy of a successful American's startup internet company. So they made copies of Groupon of eBay and many others. And then the whole modus operandi is to build it up enough so that you have to buy it. Because if you don't buy it- Joel: That sounds evil. Douglas: Evil. Because if you don't buy it will be a major competitive threat. So they had done this, they had launched a site called Wimdu, it still exists. They had about, I think 200, maybe 400 I think, people in the European offices. They had a large customer base and the three founders in 2011, I think it was, flew over to meet them and meet the people in the company and try and decide whether to buy them or not. Douglas: And eBay and Groupon, in those situations, bit it and bought their copycat versions of their organizations. But they decided to say no. And again, here's Nate, again, saying why. I asked him to tell me about. He said, "It was an example of not compromising and not giving into pressure but then also having to hustle. We need a plan "B" as we call it. Which is, if we're not going to pucker up with these guys, who could basically make us, then what are we going to do to counteract that threat? Because they had 400 people and we had 40." So what he was saying there was, "We're not going to buy them because their culture is pretty toxic and alien compared to ours. And if we merge them by them, they could destroy the culture and the mothership. But if we don't buy them, they've got this business already established in Europe and we don't have any. We've got a small little business with 40 managers and people around the continent. What are we going to do?" Douglas: So they went ahead anyway and didn't do plan "A", which was to buy Wimdu. They did plan "B", which was to create their own European network force from scratch, in six months, to be as good as, if not better than that already established competitor, which they did. Chad: Wow. Douglas: So that's another good example of a plan "B" and thinking for the longterm. So again, most companies, eBay, Groupon, they bought the Samwer Brothers clones of their companies. And it would seem to be the logical business thing to do. The founders weren't thinking about just the logical business thing, they were also saying that the culture is more important than short term business results, even business results over the next two or three years. Chad: We'll get back to the interview in a minute. Building a cult brand is not easy, which is why you need friends like Roopesh Nair. CEO of SmashFly on your side. Joel: To become cult brands, companies need to build from the inside out. How can messaging and technology facilitate that type of growth? Roopesh Nair: It's easy to build a so-called employer brand in paper and say, "Hey, this is my EVP and these are my pillars of EVP." But it is much more difficult to activate it internally and ensuring that as you build your EVP, that activation is top of your mind. I've seen a lot of organizations build these awesome EVPs which stands for who they are, but then not necessarily using that effectively internally. Some of the times it's because the EVP is not created in a very genuine way. Roopesh Nair: Then obviously it will not stand the test stuff, that internal activation and hence you need to ensure that your EVP is credible and aspirational as you think about the future. But at the same time spending that time to ensure that every persona in your company understands what your differentiation is, what do you stand for as a company and why is it relevant to that particular individual in that particular role is very important as you basically ensure that you're building that culture or value proposition inside out. Then it's easy to activate it because then you can use your own employees to really activate your EVP and you brand as you think about external activation. Chad: Let SmashFly help activate your brand and keep relationships at the heart of your CRM. For more information, visit SmashFly.com Joel: Also sounds like another, fight the power, moment. Douglas: Yeah it was, it was. And of course, there are investors, they had investors and the CFO saying, "No, we've got to buy them." And blah blah blah, blah blah blah. And they just said, "No, we're not going to." Chad: It shows... great examples. Because all the way down to... One hire versus the opportunity to take a competitor off the board but the problem is, it didn't align with purpose. That engineering hire needed to align with purpose. Those managers didn't align, which is why they're not there anymore. And the rest of the culture- Douglas: Exactly. Chad: ... will let you know that, right? But yeah, this is... I think this is a great example because this isn't just about a hire, which is definitely important. This is about something that is very big. And when you talk about the founders focusing on purpose, they're not just looking at everybody else and saying, "Hey, you do this because this is our purpose." They're actually living the purpose and they're demonstrating that by doing their own plan "B" and not buying Wimdu. Douglas: Absolutely. Yeah. And again, that was another meaningful moment in the organization's history. One that has a lot of meaning, that's used and reviewed and talked about by people. Because it did embody what we stand for, which is the longterm, creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere. I mean, in the end what happened, as I say, is they built their own European offices, staff and marketplaces of hosts and guests. So that by the time I arrived in 2012, 2013, you could fly into London or Berlin or Stockholm and both the offices looked like, and the people there felt like, the people in San Francisco. Even more so, I must say. They welcomed you, they hosted you, were made to feel like a guest in that office. They would offer you tea or a stiff drink, whichever you needed after a long flight and set you up properly. Douglas: And really, there's a whole team in Airbnb and all of the offices called ground control. Ground control to major tom. And ground control is, they're like the leading edge of the hosting part of the offices, where they really look after people who are coming in, anyone, whoever it is, visitors, whatever. So yes, the thing... So it's an unusual thing for companies to do, which is to favor the longterm rather than the short term. And in fact, most public companies unfortunately, I'm sure they hate it too, they're held to short term goals to quarterly reporting. Joel: Yeah. We talk a lot about automation on the show, in terms of recruiting, right? It becomes a very objective form of recruiting, where it's not about how old you are, your skin color, your sex, it's about your skill levels and your skill sets. We've been talking before the show about an actual robot that is interviewing people for jobs. And what I'm hearing from you is that there is a level of human to human contact that should happen in order to make sure that there's a fit for the culture. How do those two ideas of automation and taking out bias in hiring join with Airbnb's mission of culture fit and getting people who actually fit with each other to work together? Or are they complimentary? Douglas: We didn't automate that at Airbnb. I mean, we had a recruitment team just in San Francisco of about a hundred people. Their job was just about recruitment. I mean, the way they did it was, in the recruitment process, from the first phone call and letters and coming in for interviews and things, they were treated like guests. Again, these recruiters would be living one of the core values, which is being a host and engage in lots of face to face contact, make the person feel incredibly welcome, like they already worked here and are already a huge success. They may end up turning them down in the end but it was all about this humanity. It's part of our ethos and DNA and it's part of our, being a host is basically being a human with extreme empathy. And I don't know how you could automate that, to be honest. And I don't think Airbnb ever will because there's too much of an emphasis on humans. Joel: And I think that'll be a struggle with a lot of employers who want to be unbiased in their hiring but also want culture fit. And somewhere in this journey of podcasts, hopefully we can find some answers to that maybe. Douglas: Well so the... Yeah. I mean, the culture fit at Airbnb is so important that it has veto power and it also has firing power. That if, somehow, you've slipped through and you're not working, behaving according to the core values and living the mission, that you'll be removed on that basis alone. So it's extremely important. And basically, you have to decide as an organization, do you value culture or not? If you really do value culture then you'll eat the costs of it. And the costs are things like, not hiring urgently and putting bums on seats but hiring well, according to the culture. And taking your time and getting, not just the skills, but also the culture fit that you need. And that's a cost. That's a cost of work not getting done that's urgently needed to be done. Douglas: It's a cost of having recruiters and interviewers. I mean, it's costly now. In an Airbnb now, which is about five, 6,000 employees, 500 of them also double up as core values interviewers. So that's 500 people around the world taking time, not doing their job, to interview people to make sure that they are a cultural fit. Chad: I mean, it's just that important though, right? Yeah, it's very important. For Airbnb it is, yeah. So my point is that, as an organization you have to decide if it's important to you. And the next podcast we're going to do, I think, is about culture. And we talk about, I talk about, why we think culture is unbelievably important. And certainly the founders think it's probably the most important thing. Joel: For sure. Chad: I can't wait to get to it. Joel: Okay. Very good. Chad: Excellent, Douglas. Hey, we appreciate, once again, you taking time. This is the fourth installment. We have much more of Douglas Atkin to share with you. Once again, thanks Douglas. Douglas: You're welcome. Chad: There any way that these wonderful people might be able to get ahold of you, a LinkedIn, website, how can they find out more about you? LinkedIn probably is the best thing. And also just, you can see my articles about the stuff we've been talking about on Medium. I talk about how Airbnb found its purpose and why it's a good one. And then a series of articles about how Airbnb lives its purpose, which again, most companies don't ever do. Joel: Thanks Douglas. Douglas: Thank you. Chad: We will have those on the website as well. So if you go to chadcheese.com, you're already subscribed, we will make sure those links are there so you can check out the Medium articles as well. Thanks so much, Douglas. Douglas: Thank you very much guys. Cheers. Joel: Thanks Douglas. Chad: Cheers. #Brand #CultBrandSeries #CultBrands #DouglasAtkin #EmployerBrand #EmploymentBrand #Branding #Marketing

The Chad & Cheese #GotQuestions and we're hoping Kshitij Jain (aka KJ) Founder and CEO of programmatic jobs platform Joveo has answers... Or maybe just spicy opinion :) Why does Mobile Apply still suck? Is Indeed really that far ahead? Who is afraid of Google for Jobs? and why are we even talking "Clicks vs. Hires"? Brought to you by Chad and Cheese - HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Subscribe at chadcheese.com. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your bridge to the disability community, delivering custom solutions in outreach, recruiting, talent management and compliance. Morgan: 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'd rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, you're 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. Intro: 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. Chad: Welcome back, we're continuing the conversation with a veteran of the recruitment tech industry, Kshitij Jain. (aka KJ), Founder and CEO of Programmatic Platform Joveo. Enjoy. Let's transition real quick to MoBolt. I mean where did MoBolt come from in the first place number one and how did you start to gain steam and traction? KJ: There's always a story there, there had been a story. So when I was on my international jonts and messing around with the heads of talent acquisition. And my job would always be to talk beyond the business, what's going on? What are you guys doing? And I have so many interesting instances but one thing I saw that mobile adoption worldwide was so much faster than it is in the U.S. Because there was a generation leap happening, people who never owned a phone was jumping to a smartphone. They never had a phone, they never had a landline that you've never seen the world, people never had a desktop and we're getting a tablet right away. So they didn't really lose out in the technology innovation they just leave that one. And when I was looking at numbers of mobile when people are doing e-commerce on job boards, the numbers were literally doubling every quarter. KJ: I'm not saying like 10%, 20% improvement, doubling every quarter, 1%, 2%, 4%, 8%. And I think for that reason U.S. in this case was a lot more behind and knowing this massive tsunami is coming. So you can see it as a tsunami if it's going to devalue, if you're going to see it as a married, nice ride of wave that you want to ride. I saw that as a vape and I felt there was an opportunity and I saw that in our business. The people who has an intent to apply about a 100 of those people who have intend to apply only maybe five or finishing the apply. I said, "Why is that the case?" And it is the message of application form. I remember one hospital that was hiring a lot of nurses had 450 plus questions. Chad: My God. KJ: Nurses only do mobile. Would you ever answer, unless of course somebody puts a gun on your head, would you ever answer 450 questions? So the idea is let's create, apply process that's- Joel: These are the days of when 3G was fast. KJ: Super fast. My God, that is so slow. And so we asked ourselves, "Can this be fast enough like a bolt of lightning?" As fast as that, can we really make it in one minute, two minutes or three minutes or whatever that looked like. Can we reduce it? So we thought mobile was Mo and Bolt was that's fast and we created, and behold we had interesting thing, right? That Olympics happened that time, Mo Farah won the Olympics Marathon Gold and Hussein Bolt of course, everybody knows. And there was a whole acronym that went as MoBolt, At that point of time everybody was hitting our website. So we just got so lucky that everybody was looking at us without spending a dollar in marketing. Chad: That's awesome. Joel: So I'm curious, I would argue that we still haven't really figured out the mobile apply process, would you agree, disagree with that and why? KJ: I would agree to that wholeheartedly because there's always versions of the product, the version one is just to replicate supply and make it simpler on a mobile device. But number two is now with all that knowledge insight, how can you on a real time optimize apply process? And all that you do by.... Have not changed, you still have to complete an apply for a recruiter to actually process an application. And all those quick applies don't really ever put completed applications, it's a partial application. So now the owners is back on recruiter as if the poor recruiter is not already burdened to death, now you put more on him and say, "Now I give you only incomplete applications, pick up the phone, talk to the guy, the candidate. And if the person interested go fill out the application." Still there's a lot of dissonance I totally agree with you, Joel. I think the problem is yet to be solved in a seamless, elegant, graceful fashion and I don't think one such exists out there. And so the keyword is elegant. Joel: Are chatbots close? Some people think that chatbots might be the answer, what are your thoughts? KJ: They could be. So there are two parts to this equation, right? One is experience and second is tech, right? If you have to integrate with every single ATSC using their APIs, it's not scalable. You can do to one company, two companies, 10 companies, right? So there has to be a universal standard in the industry and why should there not be, right? But everybody can feed off that. But chatbot is from an experience standpoint is awesome, right? You can deal with a person like you and I are talking right now instead of a one way conversation to a blank form, which is awesome. But I think even the chatbot is not able to get the whole application process, then what good is that, right? Because it's not going to serve any purpose. KJ: And that also therefore begs another question, if you can't solve this problem, you don't know the deep down data of the applicant to actually know if the applicant is the right match or not. On what basis of just a simple click can you say that this person is going to be the highest likelihood of being hired? So the problem has to be solved if you have to really connect the dots between click and hire. Chad: Got you. So you were the very first acquisition of what we now call the evil empire, how'd that feel? KJ: Well, I think it was a great outcome for a short journey that we were in. And I loved working with the product and tech team at Indeed, they were really the best I've ever seen working anywhere in the world and I've interacted with a lot of tech companies, by the way. The vision on the product and the tech side, everything was as at indeed perfect at that part of time. So I think Indeed DNS product and tech powerhouse and they continue to build upon their strengths. So I would say that experience taught me a lot of stuff in terms of how to continue to stay focused on tech, which is where the core of MoBolt was. KJ: And there's a lot of adaptation that you got to do as you grow a company, like a wise man ones said, "It's one thing to manage a company of 10 people versus managing a company of 50 people. And then when you get past a 100 it's a different ball game and you sometimes have to reinvent yourselves." And I went through the same process and I think that's what I learned at Indeed. So I feel about that acquisition of Indeed as something that would have this technology could be used at a scale that we could have as a company. Chad: Got you. So as we talked about Monster and how they really took turn from a tech company into a brick and mortar company. It's almost like the same feeling that we're seeing from Indeed, where they're more sales driven, and we're not really seeing the technical innovation from them that we are from other areas across the world, across the globe. Are you seeing the same type of thing or are you seeing different types of innovations that maybe we're just not seeing on our side? KJ: There's two types of innovations, one that shows and one that gets built up. And the massive team that exists out there, even at LinkedIn for that matter, you can argue, what are these engineers doing? What does that army of product managers doing? They're building a lot of innovation within their product and of course they are doing new products too. And Indeed has perhaps launched about 15, I'm not wrong in the last 12 months alone about four to five that I have known off. So and I think Indeed is right now taking the right step of saying, "Hey, we've got to be everyone. We got to really be the end to end solution provider." At the end of the day if you look at this industry at a very philosophical level and you start looking at outside. KJ: Google was the first company in the world they own the ad business, they own the supply, they own the source, they are the Uber source. But what they did not do is delivery part of it. If You want to look at a product, find a product, research that product, everything is on Google. But when you're to buy it, Amazon came way after Google did and see what they did. They did the fulfillment and see how valuable Amazon is. So there has to be an opportunity and someone has to think like that in an industry that, can I be the Amazon of this industry? The true future is if you can predict what hires will happen and give that company or an employer the confidence that I will deliver that many hire not as predictability but may be able to bet on that and say, "All right, I'll do business on that basis." Joel: So Chad and I talked quite a bit about Google For Jobs and we think that a lot of the reactionary solutions are closing down of things that Indeed is a direct correlation to Google For Jobs def basically becoming what Indeed is on Google. In addition to taking away Indeed secret sauce of getting organic traffic from Google. Is that your take as well and what sort of your overall sense of what Google is going to mean to the employment space going forward? KJ: I think Google For Jobs is trying to democratize the visibility of jobs to everyone out there and they of course have owned algorithm to rank and everything. So in that case, yes, the visibility goes down from Indeed but I think if I was Indeed I would just step back and say, "I'm already a big brand, I get my own people coming to me as a destination site." Destination sites has a huge amount of entry barriers. That's destination script real mote. Like Joel you talked about in the death match about the mote and that is a mote. So it would perhaps impact but at this stage it would not deter if I was Indeed, it is not going to keep me up at night is what I would say. And Google For Jobs is great because now enterprises can claim their rightful visibility. If they are removed for jobs optimized, then they will get that traffic and everybody else will get less of that, because that's how Google has built that regarded the actually. Chad: I was in the room when I was actually working for a Ron sod source, right. Had a big group in, had a contingent of Indeed executives in the room actually pitching us because obviously we were a huge account for them. One of the things that they had said was, "We're going to be more search optimized than you are, you can't beat us number one. Number two, we're going to buy more ads and more keywords than you will and we'll outbid you, so don't even try." So that being said, you're saying that they don't care about some of these things and they don't lose sleep, I can't see how that's true. I mean, from their standpoint they were riding high because they owned organic and they had so much money coming in they were outbidding everybody. It didn't matter how big your brand was, Pepsi we're going to outbid you for you, right. So from my standpoint I understand where you're coming from but if I was Indeed personally that would... I mean, that's a huge part of my stream that leads to revenue. KJ: No, you're totally right, they can outbid, right. Of course you're talking about what LinkedIn and Indeed and anybody who gets to that size, right. Tons of billions of dollars of annual revenues can perhaps outbid anybody with the recruiting departments of even the best companies in the world is maybe double digit millions. Where it becomes really interesting is if your career site is indexable by Google, then you will get the lion's share of the organic clicks. After that, it's a fair play for everybody, like whoso outbids each of the right, that's the whole marketplace that Google has from ad words standpoint and even Facebook for that matter. So, which is where things are a lot more democratized as I say, and I said, right up having become a very solid destination, I think they're getting a lot of that organic directly. People don't have to go find indeed through Google. KJ: They already know that if I need to look at a Pepsi job, I've got to go to Indeed and look for a job at Pepsi. And when I asked my nephews and nieces, even in India, right. I know my friends were in different countries they say, "Hey, my kids don't go to the company's website to find a job, they actually go to Indeed." That's the power of the brand, right? At the end of the day if you'll ask me and I'll ask you a question, why does a job seeker click on 100 clicks or 200 clicks for that matter to get one job? When I go to a job board, why does no job board in the world tell me, "This job you have 80% chance of getting hired." Or, "50% chance, apply for the job." Why does everybody want me to click on 100 jobs, right? Chad: That's how they're getting paid on the click side now. It's all how much action can you get on the clicks as opposed to targeting. And I think overall we're moving toward targeting, we're not doing it fast enough. And obviously tonic position is not synonymous with adoption. From my standpoint we're looking for companies like the Joveos of the world and programmatic to be able to help the targeting so that we're not clicking a 100 times as a candidate to find what we're looking for. We're being delivered the right type of job. KJ: Precisely. And we have this whole deep rooted belief and vision that it's three, two and one. Three clicks should result into two relevant applies, should result into one higher, let's get that predictability in place. Joel: I like that. KJ: I'll go further on where I think the industry is got a dissonance. I feel that there's a noise, back in the day old days, right? When you were heading sales for most of our region. You remember when our customers will buy [tuition 00:14:30] as postings and we would not promise anything. But when you went for renewing the contract they'll say, "God, I spent a $100,000 on you guys but I only hired 10." At the end of the day no matter how you sell, you're judged on hires and that's something that has not changed. KJ: So you may think that you're orchestrating a cheaper CPC but if your CPH not there... Actually believe it or not, I actually went through a client's dashboard, they spent $27,000 on one publisher, got one higher. But if they had done the CPC evaluation, they would have seen that this was maybe one of the best publishers out there, unless they had this visibility over cost per hire. And that's where I'm coming from is to your point, right? Which is the one job board, which has remained among the top three in the world and the U.S. since 1997, it's only one Craigslist, right? Joel: I knew it. Chad: Million dollar company with 50 employees, they're the smartest of all of us. Joel: Talking about Craigslist. They basically just launched a native app for Android and the iPhone. And I'm curious from your perspective both today and your time at MoBolt. Steve Jobs famously once said something along the lines of, "Google is screwed because when people want to know restaurant information, they'll click on their Yelp app and find out information there, they won't go to Google as much." I'm assuming you disagree with that or maybe you do agree with it and if so, why did it take so long for Craigslist to have an app on native applications. What do you see on Joveo in terms of where applications are coming from on native versus web apps on mobile? KJ: I will be very honest, I think that's a step in the right direction. And maybe I have a bias for Steve Jobs but I think he was right. In your life if you are doing something repetitively 10 times, 20 times you would rather have an app for that. But if you want to do something only once, but two times, would he actually download an app? You would not, unless you're forced to of course, right? So now why do you go to Craigslist? Is it something that you always on Craigslist looking for something to buy or something to sell or looking for a job? If you're doing that, you would want to have an app, so I personally again, I don't have data to back, but given the number of people who get employed through Craigslist, I assume that they're going on Craigslist a lot more than just one time. KJ: And if that is a case, having an app makes the experience a lot more seamless. Again, coming back to the early days I saw some data, Craigslist's on tracking side cost per click was sometimes as bad as $5 a click, whereas everybody else was about a dollar or less. But the cost per hire was at par with the best, they were the best source to hire. And I kept on asking myself, "Why do these stocking companies are spending on tech, what is wrong with them?" A $75 job posting in California in San Francisco. How many truck guys are you going to get? You may be getting one application maybe, you may not even see an application and still the money gets spent, is because when you get that application, the user is not seeing hundreds of jobs. KJ: You're not being pushed hundreds of jobs. You just stumble upon a job and you find a job and you apply to that. And coming back to the same argument that Craigslist native app is going to make that experience a lot more seamless. And if they can add on functionality of notifications and say, "Guys there's a great job matching for you." If they can do that, they can just explore, right? $800 million in our business nowadays is nothing. They get about six to $800 million if I'm not wrong through the job ads or maybe I'm wrong. But I think that was the number I remember last, I think that can become double quickly. Chad: Look for more episodes of voices, this Chad and Cheese Podcast series devoted the stories and opinions of industry leaders. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show. For more visit chadcheese.com.

Can you name the first startup to face The Chad & Cheese Firing Squad? It was Vervoe, and almost three years since facing The Squad, the company has raised money from the most popular job board in APAC, Seek, and have grown the company to 8,000 customers, including Walmart. So, how are things and what does the future hold? Gotta listen Podcast powered by Sovren, technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your bridge to the disability community, delivering custom solutions in outreach, recruiting, talent management and compliance. Sovren: Sovren parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner. Intro: 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 opinions and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh, my God. We got Vervoe on the show today. What's up everybody? You're listening to The Chad and Cheese Podcast, I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I am Chad Sowash. Joel: And on today's show, we are honored to welcome the first ever survivor of Firing Squad, Omer from Vervoe. How are you, buddy? Omer: Hey guys. I'm great. Thanks for having me again. Joel: So it's 11:00 PM in Australia, you're sipping on a nice cognac, I'm sure, with the smoking jacket. So welcome. Welcome to the show. Yeah, we were reminiscing, it was 2017, you were our first ever firing squad. What do you remember from that day? And what's been going on since then? Omer: Wow. I remember that I had no idea what I was talking about, back then. Joel: We didn't either. Omer: Yeah. And a lot's been going on since. It's extraordinary. We sort of ... back then, we were just trying to figure things out, and now we're working with some of the biggest companies in the world. But in some respects, nothing's changed, the vision is the same. At a fundamental level, we help companies see how candidates do job related tasks so that they can make hiring decisions based on who can do the job. We're just working with a lot more customers, bigger customers all over the world. Chad: If you could point back and say, when we made that decision, that that helped out tremendously. Omer: This might sound like a cliche, but actually listening to some of our biggest customers ... we had ... In the beginning back when we spoke to you, and this is probably on tape from that original podcast, we thought we were going to get, attract a lot of small companies that were all just going to pay via credit card. Chad: Yeah. Omer: And while that happened, what surprised us was that big companies came knocking on the door. And they had a real problem that they wanted solved, a high volume of applicants that they wanted to filter through very quickly. And we were totally unprepared for large companies in the beginning, in terms of getting through their procurement process, security, and all the SLS. And what happened was the companies, the large enterprises that really needed our solution kind of educated us and were patient with us, and sort of taught us how to execute in the enterprise, and really told us what features we need to have, and influenced our roadmap. And instead of being stubborn about it, we just used that to help us find a market and it shaped our product and it's influenced where we are today. And I think we're much better off for that, just for listening to those customers that really cared about the solution and led us in the right direction. Chad: Well, and SMB is getting smashed right now, right? You thought that, you look at the ZipRecruiter's of the world, there are a lot of companies that are out there that are SMB focused, and right now they are taking huge amounts of damage because SMB is nonexistent. Changing and pivoting from an SMB platform solely to more of an enterprise platform, I see that as a big pivot. I see that as a big pivot. Omer: Yeah. And the other thing is, when you talk to investors, they always want to know with a high degree of specificity, who's your ideal customer? Which industry? How big? How many employees? And we've always thought that we solve a problem for a lot of companies, for companies of all sizes and across industry. And what we've found is that the companies that are the ideal customer for us, are companies that believe what we believe, that want to hire based on skills, that want to give every candidate and opportunity, and so on. And today, we've found ourselves in a situation where we've got customers of all sizes across all industries and across multiple geographies. And like you said, that sort of diversification in some respect has saved us now from being in a tough spot that a lot of other companies, a lot of other startups and vendors are finding themselves in. Joel: So I'm curious, the elephant in the room in every interview that we do now is a little thing called COVID-19. In your neck of the world, Asia-Pacific, you've handled it much better than we have here in America. How has it impacted the business, the sales process, have you had to have ... go through a round of layoffs like most other folks? Talk about that. Omer: Sure. So, there were three things that we immediately focused on when it became clear that this is going to be a very severe situation. The first was health and safety of our team. The second was the financial health of the company. And the third was to understand the opportunity and what's actually unfolding in the market. Now we've not done any layoffs, not taken any pay cuts. We have a number of cost saving measures. But the impact on us has been ... there's been some churn and we definitely have some customers that are in industries that are impacted, but the net impact on us has been a positive. And the reason for that is that while less companies are hiring, the companies that are hiring, are seeing a far more applicants on average per role. And it's not 10 or 20% more, it's like five times as many. And so the sense of urgency around the problem that we solve is much greater. And so we've seen a large increase in demand, and not just demand from new customers, but our existing customers are expanding. So we're in a very fortunate position as a company that we're actually doing really well. But the other point I want to add to that is, we are still venture backed and capital markets are somewhere between shots and difficult. And so we're still being very conservative and very cautious around how we manage our capital. Joel: And I'm curious, a lot of businesses have had opportunities sort of fall in their lap with the spread of coronavirus. And you guys talk a lot on your website about diversity and unbiased recruiting. Has the messaging on marketing turned a little bit more towards safety, having your automation, having your recruiting team not have to talk to folks on a face to face basis or not have job seekers come into a dangerous situation, has that been a little bit of a re-spin on your marketing message or not? Omer: No, we haven't changed our marketing at all, and I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, it's just the fact, we haven't. We've basically just continued to do the exact same thing. But what we have done is being more flexible in how we implement. So for example, prior to this, a few months ago, we hadn't really done anything in healthcare, or in government, for example, and those sort of industries, we consider them to be slower to adopt, and bureaucratic- Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Joel: .. and not something we should focus on. Now, we're doing a ton in healthcare. We've had healthcare, not just health care, aged care, health insurance, mental health, come to us and ask to do, one week sales cycle, like can we implement next week? And we've helped hire 150 mental health counselors. We've helped hire dozens of personal care assistance in aged care facility. Something we wouldn't have dreamed of doing a few months ago. And so we've been really flexible. And again, coming back to the point I made earlier, we sort of let our customers take us in the direction that makes sense for them so long as the product's being used in the right way. But the messaging has not changed. Chad: I like that you are what you are. My question is really beyond just our industry, but being down under in Australia right now, and knowing how well New Zealand also handled this crisis, as you look toward the United States, what are you seeing? Right? Because we're here, we know what we see, but in another land, across the globe, what are you seeing? Omer: Yeah. And I want to be careful what I say, because I don't want to get political, and obviously I've got a strong opinion. But there are some stock differences, and I think this pandemic has exposed a bunch of problems in society that existed long before. Chad: Yes. Omer: And people aren't sort of ... I can't imagine a situation when 0someone can't be admitted to hospital because they don't have money. That's just not a concept that exists in this country. Right? And some of the reasons that I think we're doing so well in Australia, some of it's to do with luck. But some of it is structural. So we have a healthcare system that is a very high standard. We also have ... we fund out healthcare very differently, so healthcare is not attached to your employment. Chad: Right. Omer: And people aren't sort of ... I can't imagine a situation when 0someone can't be admitted to hospital because they don't have money. That's just not a concept that exists in this country. Right? Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Joel: And so we have that, we're more spaced out, and our government took precautions very early. So, I've been following the US very closely because I consume a lot of news, but also we have a team on the ground in the US, on the East coast, near Boston and in Dallas. And some of it is scary. It's scary to see that you've got parts of the United States like New York, and then you've got other parts that are acting as if there's nothing happening at all. Chad: Yes. Omer: And all I can do is look after my team, we moved the whole company to work from home in, I think it was the first week of March. We've relinquished all our offices. We'll do everything we can to support our team and their families. And we can't control everything that's happening in the world, but it is scary. Chad: Is work from home or working for you? Number one. Number two, if it is, will you just stay in that posture and not incur the overhead of doing any type of physical locations? Omer: So for the time being, yes and yes. It was a pretty smooth transition because we're already in three major time zones, so people already had worked from home part of the time and take calls at weird hours of the day and night. But there was ... we do see a benefit in being co-located in an office and spending time together and socially, it's enjoyable. But for the time being, we are in a permanent state of work from home. It was a very easy cost saving action to take. And what we've said to the team is that until further notice, and at the very minimum, for all of 2020, we will be working from home, and it's the equivalent of a few people's jobs. So it's just, it was a very easy decision to make. Now, I think when the world changes and/or we raise the next round of capital, we'll consider it then and see if it makes sense to take up an office. But for the time being, we're working from home. Joel: We have a lot of vendors that listen to our show. And if they don't know about you before, they're going to go out and check out vervoe.com, and see that you have 4,000 plus customers. I know that was a year ago. Has that changed? Omer: Yeah. Over 8,000 companies. Joel: They're going to see 8,000 and go, "Holy shit!" And so my question is, are you fudging those numbers? Are you cheating a little bit? Or how did you get to 8,000 in like three years? What's your secret? Omer: Yeah. There's absolutely no cheating. And if you ask our customer access team, they'll tell you the exact number of tickets that we have, and may feel like it's 80,000. So, the way that we did it was we opened the doors. We did a number of things, we introduced a free tier, and at various stages we had a free trial, but basically we've opened the doors, almost every single vendor in the talent space, and certainly all of them that are selling to the enterprise closed. So what I mean by that is, you can't just go on to the website, go into the product and [Crosstalk [00:13:38.19] Joel: Free demo. Omer: Right. You basically have to contact sales and they'll schedule a time to speak to you. And what we've done is, we've just opened it up and let people use the product, whether it's for a limited time or limited amount of usage. And we did that because we believe that we build something that we're proud of, and also you kind of need to see it to believe it. And so what we wanted to do was it's really a new way of doing things, so we wanted to let people experience it. Now we've also paid a price for that because some people have come in and they don't get it, and it's been so hard to activate them. Joel: Yeah. Omer: But by and large, I think it's been beneficial. And so when you do that, you attract all sorts of companies from all over the world. And the vast majority of those 8,000 companies are SMBs, and a lot of them are struggling at the moment. And then to the side of that, we have this core group of super enterprise, huge companies, and they're just very different in nature to these small companies that are hiring three times a year. Joel: So you know my next question, of those 8,000, how many are actually writing you a check? Omer: I'm not going to disclose that number, but it's a significant enough ... Right. But it's a significant enough proportion to make economic sense. Joel: So it's a freemium model, essentially? Omer: That's right. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Okay. Chad: So, tell us a little bit about your relationship with SEEK and how that is maturing or not? Omer: Yeah. So SEEK is a major investor, and for those who don't know, SEEK, they're a major job board, just like Indeed or ZipRecruiter. Chad: The only job board in Australia, right? Really, they are the 800 pound gorilla. Joel: Huge. Omer: Pretty much. And they're also ... they've made over 20 investments in startups and they've got a presence in Asia and Latin America. And their main competitors would be LinkedIn and Indeed. And so SEEK is an investor, and we also do a number of other things with SEEK. So we're working with them on a partnership that will ... I can't say too much, but you can imagine what it will look like. There'll be accessory, SEEK's platform to do skill testing, and it'll give the job seeker's own sake and opportunity to stand out when they're applying for jobs. So that's something that's being worked on. And SEEK is interesting right now, and a lot of this is public and similar to other job boards around the world, it's a very difficult environment if you're a job board. Job ads are down over 50%. So SEEK's sort of going through that. And interestingly, the vast majority of the startups that SEEK has invested in are actually doing very well. So, that's an interesting dynamic. Joel: So, we took a trip down memory lane and talked about, Firing Squad two years ago, and then we sort of know the current state of the company. I'm curious about going forward, what does the company look like two, three years from now? Let's assume we get a vaccine for this thing in the next 12, 18 months, which might be optimistic, but let's just pretend that we're in a little bit of a vacuum, what does Verveo look like two, three years from now? Omer: Yeah. So hopefully a very big and very important company to a lot of major employers around the world. But some of the things that we're working on, are improving the, what we call the core transaction, so the fundamental activity on our product. So we're always investing in enhancing the candidate selection experience. So we're investing in better functionality to deliver assessments and that'll include more immersive, sort of audition style testing. We're also enhancing our machine learning capabilities significantly. So that's sort of going to be out of this world. Yeah, I think beyond that, it's just growing and accessing more customers. And coming back to the point we talked about earlier around freemium or not, we really want to do business differently, so we want to make it possible for companies of all sizes, we want to make it easy for them to discover and buy, right? They shouldn't have to go through a complicated lengthy process. They should be able to come on, it should be easy to figure out, and then they can go and hire someone. And if they think that's great, then you can have a discussion about a bigger contract or deployment. And I think if we can do that, that's business model disruption, so we can really access a lot more companies faster. Chad: I definitely like to say, in wrapping this up, that back in August of 2017, I gave you a big applause, just don't know if you remember or not. But the vision that you had back then, and you're still carrying through today, where you allow the system to do the work and the people to self select out, to allow the requirements and the people to be able to take tests, these are the types of systems, I believe, we should be using now and through the future. And also, as you were saying, this crisis, I believe, will allow people to really get through the noise and see platforms like you for what they really are. They're platforms of the future. We really appreciate you taking the time. Joel: Omer, do you remember what I gave you? Omer: It wasn't applause, it was something else. Chad: It's a golf clap. Was it a golf clap, or was it a ... Joel: I believe it was a golf clap. Omer: It was something painful. Joel: So, clearly my motivation drove them to be better- Chad: Yeah. Joel: ... than what they were. Chad: Yeah. Now. Joel: Anyway, Omer, for those who want to know more, where should they go? Omer: Yeah. So vervoe.com, the voa.com. Or reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty easy to find. And we're pretty easy to access through the website. So we'd love to talk to anyone who is interested in learning more. And guys, to both of you, thanks again for giving us an opportunity to tell our story and- Joel: Sure. Omer: ... hope that you continue to stay safe in Indiana, and in the US. Chad: Thanks, man. Joel: We salute you, Omer. Omer Molad, if I pronounced that right up, or I didn't. And with that, from Australia, we out. Chad: We out. Outro: This has been The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss a single show. And be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more visit chadcheese.com. Oh yeah, you're welcome.

On this week's episode 62% of employees want to know your company's #BLM stance Silicon Valley plays lip service to diverse hiring Amazon uses more smoke and mirrors to screw employees Ivanka Trump touts skills-based hiring - is this a joke? Canada's Shopify is hungry for American brains What's more, The Mom Project scores an ace with Serena Williams, along with $25 million. As always, The Chad & Cheese Podcast are powered by Sovren, Jobvite, and JobAdx. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Hung Lee: It's Hung from Recruiting Brain Food and you are listening to the Chad & Cheese Show. This in my opinion is the number one podcast in our industry. They are the people that seem to know what's going on before everyone else does. You just have to subscribe and listen to these guys. Intro: 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 & Cheese Podcast. Joel: Isn't it ironic, don't you think? Yesterday was Canada Day, which meant karaokeing to Jagged Little Pill all night long. Welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast, eh? I'm your co-host Joel Moosehead Cheeseman. Chad: And I'm Chad, it's almost 4th of July Sowash. Joel: That's right, on this week's episode, Silicon Valley plays lip service to diverse hiring. Ivanka Trump touts skills-based hiring and Canada's Shopify is hungry for American brains. Which, by the way, goes really well with Molson. Stick around, eh? We'll be right back. Jobvite: This summer job Jobvite wants you. You and you to join hundreds, thousands, millions... Okay, maybe just thousands of recruiters, HR and talent acquisition professionals for a summer you won't soon forget. It's Jobvite Summer to Evolve. The Summit to Evolve is a 12-week series of free content to help recruiters brush up on their skills. Learn from industry thoughts leaders and see how technology can help them improve, automate and evolve their recruiting efforts. Jobvite: It will be a chance to share tips and ideas with your peers. And we may even have some surprises for you along the way. I love surprises. So, visit the summertoevolve.com to register for the Summer to Evolve sessions that suit your needs, peak your interest, or float your boat. Because starting June 16, it's the summer to evolve the way you attract, engage, hire, onboard and retain talent. Jobvite. Recruit with purpose. Hire with confidence. You, you, you ought to know. Chad: It's interesting the artists like Alanis Morissette, when they're pissed off and they just went through shit, I think she went through a major breakup, just major- Joel: From the dude from Full House. Uncle Jesse or whatever. Chad: Then that's where Jagged Little Pill came from. But then she got married. She got a nice life and now she just puts out shit. Joel: Sure. That's the story of every great rock story ever. Come from nothing. You're mad, pissed off, whatever, you create great art and then you get fat and happy and it ends. That's kind of the way this goes. Kind of like this podcast. We were pretty good the first year, year and a half and now the show just sucks. Chad: Dude. We totally sucked that first year. Joel: Trust me, I'm witness to my mid-section growing fat and it's all good. But, anyway. Chad: Speak for yourself. Joel: I'm still waiting for that Sowash boot camp videotape to come out streaming on my Peloton. Chad: Yeah, Julie was the happy recipient, maybe not so happy recipient, of the morning workout now, now that Tristan has moved to Portland for his last year before he goes to college. Now she's getting up every morning and doing the Chad workout which is pretty awesome. Joel: Being married to you is like being married to a StairMaster isn't it? Chad: You'll have to ask Julie. I don't know. Joel: I know being your podcast partner is like being married to a StairMaster, so I can only imagine what actually being married to you is like. Chad: Yeah, no clue. You'll have to ask her. Joel: We have a therapy group, Chad survival support group that her and I have. We meet secretly. Chad: Shout outs, okay, congrats to our friend Ellie Doty. You might remember Ellie. She was the CEO, I'm sorry, the CMO of Chili's Grill & Bar. Joel loved it because I think he got some free burgers out of it. Joel: I got some coupons. Chad: She left and has taken the CMO position at Burger King. Dude, talk about a step up. Being in a brand like Chili's everybody knows Chili's but having a brand like Burger King, I automatically said okay, cool, you're at a place now where I can get Impossible Burgers and then she responded back with, "Yeah, and breakfast sandwiches." Joel: And by the way, is there any place in fast food to be a marketer than Burger King? As the number two, they take all the risks. They do all the things that are outside the box. What a great opportunity if you're a marketer. But she's going to have to step up and send me a King mask if she's at BK now. I won't just put up with coupons. I wants masks. Chad: The creepiest mask ever. Joel: For sure. Halloween is going to be here sooner than you think. Chad: Oh, good call. Joel: Shout out to Mississippi. I know this is a little bit odd, but Mississippi if you hadn't heard took off the confederate flag which took up about a fourth of its current flag. Kind of a strange situation. But, Mississippi is not New Jersey so this was a pretty quick move unanimously voted on to take it off. A secondary shout out to sport. I think of a lot of this was provoked by one of the star running back at Old Miss saying that he would not play for a state or would support a state that had confederate flag or support that messaging. Joel: If you know anything about SEC football, they're not going to lose talent to something like a confederate flag from 150 years ago. So, shout out to sports and the state of Mississippi. Chad: The SEC said they would not hold any SEC games like bowl games or anything like that in the state of Mississippi while they still had the stars and bars represented on their flag. To say that this was a quick turnaround, that flag's been around since, I think, the early 1900s. I don't know if it's a quick turnaround, but I'm just glad that [crosstalk 00:06:45] was taken down. Joel: The voting was quick. Yes, it happened fairly quickly. You know what I'm saying, man. You try to spin this shit. Chad: After 50- Joel: Make me look bad. Chad: ... or 100 plus years, yeah. Joel: It wasn't like it's been on the table for a vote for 100 years. Chad: Ooh, so quick. Joel: Ass. What's your next shout out. Chad: Shout out to two T-shirt sightings. Have Eva Zils and Torin Ellis were sporting Chad & Cheese T-shirts last week during online video segments. That's right, Chad, Cheese- Joel: It's a good look. Chad: ... We're also going to have, we're going to re-kick start the Chad Cheese T-shirt's program that's right. New T-shirts are going to be coming out. Covid kind of put a crimp in things because obviously live events aren't happening. But we found a way, stay tuned, to get T-shirts to the people. Joel: Wow. This is news to me. I'm excited. Shout out to Mike Batman Cohen or is Michael Cohen? Don't mix the two up, who is a covid survivor, I guess. He tweeted out this week that he had not symptoms that were so bad that he had to go to the hospital, but I think it quote, "Sucked for a while." He's back on the mend and we're happy to announce that he is a survivor of covid. For me he's the second person that I actually know that has come down with it. It won't be the last, but he's number two. Chad: Awesome to hear Batman. Hopefully you'll be back soon. Joel: Covid can't kill Batman, come on now. Chad: Yeah, that ain't going to happen. A cluster of shout outs because we have so many, to listeners Oliver Kipfer, David Papp, Joseph Wilkie, Matt King, Wes Winham, CEO of startup right here in Indianapolis called Woven. And one of those guys, one of the reasons why I did this in a big group so you wouldn't know who said it, one of these guys said and I quote. "Your podcast is good stuff. It's the only one I can make it through without falling asleep." Joel: By the way, all those names lend themselves to really great nicknames if you dissect each one of those, but anyway. Chad: I'll work on that later. Joel: I digress. Another group of names I'll throw out there, hundreds of companies are now boycotting Facebook from advertising. Big names that you'll know like Walmart, Starbucks, Home Depot and Levi's joined the fray recently. The jury is out whether or not this will have any effect on changing Zuckerberg's state of mind. But it is certainly a statement in the hundreds at this point of companies who are saying F-U to Facebook advertising. Chad: Yes, and we're one of those companies. We don't spend a lot of money. Joel: That's right, Chad & Cheese they're boycotting Facebook. Chad: Not spending another dollar on those assholes. On LinkedIn this week it was really funny because Ted DeVito said, he actually commented on one of the posts we put out- Joel: Is that Danny's brother? Chad: Yeah, I think so. And I quote, "We could have done without the foul language and blasphemy." I thought that was just fucking hilarious because on our home page it says, it has the little explicit content. Joel: As do all of our episodes have a big E on every episode. Chad: Yeah, and again, I just wanted to reiterate to those listening that we appreciate you listening and one of the reasons why we did this in the first place is so that in HR, unlike most of the sleepy podcasts that are out there, you could have one that was original, one that was authentic and when we spoke to listeners, Joel and I always thought that the old HR lady would never listen to us. Those are the ones that are coming up to us saying, "I love what you guys are saying. I've been saying it for 20 years." Joel: Yeah. Every industry recruiting has an id and we are it. Chad: So, anyway, thanks again for all you listeners and Ted DeVito, I'm going to give you just a common term from our friends over in England. Fuck off. Joel: By the way, what's your favorite Danny DeVito movie? Chad: What was the one where they were twins? That was horrible. Joel: Twins. It's called Twins. Chad: With Arnold Schwarzenegger. That was probably the worst fucking movie. Joel: Remember Romancing the Stone? Chad: Yes. Joel: He was great in that. And Hoffa he was pretty good too. A rare underground hit, I think, one of Nicholson's better performances that doesn't get noticed. But, anyway, I digress. Shout out to Gordon Collier who survived the firing squad. That episode went out this week, I believe. Chad: Yeah. Joel: He's a big fan of the show. I know he was real excited to be on and glad that that went out. He's been pimping it big time. We appreciate that as well. Chad: Ready for events? Joel: I'm ready for events, baby. Chad: All right. We have the big event coming up this coming week, kids. Jamie Leonard and the team that brings you Wreckfest every year is bringing you something new. Something cool. Something global. It's called TA Global Gathering. Joel: Something timely. Chad: That's right, yeah, it's very timely. Next week so July 8th and 9th over 100 speakers across the world are going to be a part of this thing. And we, the Chad & Cheese, we've created this entirely new competition and it will be airing on just like July 8th. Get your pens ready kids. July 8th at 2:15 Eastern time. We actually have the biggest chunk in the entire event. Joel: What? Chad: I think most of the speakers are 30 minutes and we have four contestants doing what Joel? Joel: They're pimping their new features. We're calling this thing Featurama. We have death match which features startups and their businesses. Now we have Featurama which features established companies that are launching new and cool things that we put under the microscope, we judge and we pronounce a winner which will then receive the bad ass belt of HR tech aside from the chain of champions so we're bringing out all the hardware, all the good stuff. We have four great companies that are competing. We got Nexxt with two xx's. We got Zor who just won death match. We got HiringSolved and we have Jobvite. Talk about some 800-pound gorillas going to the mat, going into the octagon. It's going to be fun everybody. Chad: It's going to be a blast. Going to be a blast. And since everybody loves firing squad in death match because those are more startup driven, we wanted to be able to give some of the bigger brands an opportunity to cut through the noise because they're working really hard to drop new features. And in most cases, they don't get any love. Joel: Established companies are people too, everybody. They're people too. Chad: And now they have a platform to be able to do so called Featurama, so there you go. Joel: You're welcome everybody. You're welcome. You're welcome. Chad: Topics. Have you heard of this thing called Black Lives Matter? Joel: Yeah, I have. Chad: So, HR Executive, they actually had this number of the day thing that they put out around Black Lives Matter and this is from a Monster survey. 62% of employees would be more likely to work for a company because its response to the Black Lives Matter movement. So, depending on the response of the Black Lives Matter movement, are you just staying silent not saying a goddamn thing, this actually impacts how people look at your brand, your company. Obviously, not just from a standpoint of coming to work there but also buying shit. But 62% say that it matters if they're going to come work for you or. Joel: Absolutely. Now, my first take on this story is how the hell did Monster only get 300 people to answer a survey? Don't they have more people than that- Chad: Probably not. Joel: ... in their database. Yeah, that tells you the state of Monster that they can only get 300 people to fill out a survey. However, that is within the realm of whatever official survey data as we know from our buddy George LaRoque. The only thing is I'm curious, people answer surveys largely in tune with what they think they should say, so it'll be interesting to see how... and we talk about this with [inaudible 00:15:19] getting on to diverse hiring and sort of the we've heard this story before. Chad: Right. Joel: So, I'm really interested. We can't see in the soul of people and the heart of the people that were surveyed. But, curious how much of this is I guess white guilt coming out a little bit as opposed to real dissension and feeling. However, I do think no matter what, one of the points in the survey was really valid and it was made by Claire Barnes who's the SVP of HR at Monster who said quote with all that in mind from the data that they got, "It's essential to evaluate your employer branding and ensure all of your recruitment materials and efforts accurate reflect your corporate values." Joel: You and I, you in particular grew up with websites coming up with diverse jobs in their name and their URL and diversity hire and things like that which were really only things that were done because I the government came calling, you could say, "Hey, we're making efforts to hire these folks," as opposed to actually doing it. I think that you're paying lip service and answering a survey is one thing. But actually putting your money in your mouth and your resources to the other is another thing. Joel: So, yeah, I agree that the world is headed this way. The future is not in the confederate flag a la our Mississippi shout out. And companies should be moving in this direction and at least in terms of this survey, they are. Chad: 70% said it's very important that companies are upfront about their diversity of their employees. More than one third cited that being transparent about the diversity of employees would help a company demonstrate its commitment to diverse hiring. Now, to me that only makes sense, and we've been talking about this for years now. When a company says quote unquote, "We are diverse," or, "We're female friendly," or, "We're veteran friendly," or, "We believe in hiring individuals with disabilities." Well, then if that's the case, be transparent about it. Show your numbers. Right? It feels like you are hiding something. Chad: And the transparency can't stop there. This also drives the pay equity conversation. Black females make about 66 cents on the dollar compared to white dudes, right? Hispanic women make even less. So, the conversation needs to be loud and we need to continue until measures are put in place to ensure that equal pay is happening, that equity is happening, that diverse hiring is actually happening. Because, again, a lot of this shit is just smoke and mirrors. Joel: Absolutely. And by the way, stop using stock photos in your employment branding with people of color if they don't actually work at your company. That's a bad look in terms of transparency. And in terms of transparency, I think that's great and part of... I don't want to jump ahead to the next story. Chad: No, go ahead. Joel: But, there's an element of the transparency being real with he messaging that you're giving the world. I bring up Nike quite a bit. Go to Nike's website and look at their executive team. It's really white. That should reflect on their marketing and their messaging and who they're appealing to. I hope that that starts changing over the next few years. I also think that transparency in terms of level of employment and what really matters. So, to jump ahead a little bit to our next story, Amazon and Apple tout their diversity numbers, however, that's a little bit skewed because of warehouse workers and the retail shops. Joel: They're able to sort of skew the percentages because they hire mass amounts of people that are basic level folks that can look more like America which is not transferring to the high tech jobs and sort of the management positions. I think it's really important to be transparent in terms of all levels of your organization and not just say in aggregate here's our number and that's good enough. Chad: Yeah. You definitely have to break that down. The transparency piece, the aggregate especially when you have jobs which are from retail all the way up through tech and whatnot, it's not good enough. Especially from somebody on the outside looking in. Facebook, being really a technology company cites... Six years ago they released statistics on the makeup of its global workforce that did not reflect the demographics of its users. Just 3% of its workers were black. Then Facebook cites the creation of a diversity team a year before vowed to make more hires with lower attrition and that came out to be 3.8%. Right? Chad: So, then COO Sheryl Sandberg announced a new effort with more specific goals and support. A company committed to a 30% increase in the number of people of color in leadership positions over the next five years. Now, personally from my standpoint there's non-question in the C-suite you have to have diversity because that's where everybody's looking at. Right? That's where the standard should be set, but it's not good enough. That has to bleed back down. Chad: For me, this always rings hollow. It doesn't ring true. I've seen companies perform this smoke and mirrors bullshit tactic for decades. They announce they have working groups and then you don't hear a goddamn thing. Joel: Yeah. By the way the 3%, 3.8% is really hilarious in terms of- Chad: Well, it's not. Joel: Well if any company- Chad: Fuckers. Joel: ... should look like the world it's Facebook, right? Chad: Yes. Joel: But, yeah, obviously not. You can speak to this better than I can, but the story from Market Watch that had this with the quote of, "Most companies just stay in the lane of what is legally required." Your time at Direct Employers I know you saw this and can speak to it more than I can. But, government interaction and the risk of going to court and being fined tends to have more impact on companies than actual society sentiment. So, I'm really curious as to whether or not these companies really, really get serious about this. Joel: Of course, some of the commentary from some of the African-Americans where they've heard this all before. For years they've heard about diversity programs and it's all just lip service to the press to make themselves look better. Hopefully, we see some actual numbers increase. We actually see the needle move because for decades it hasn't. Chad: Yeah. The biggest issue is that companies want to make huge announcements and then they don't want to fund any type of internal creation of programs that would develop talent. Companies should be aggressively funding internal programs which manufacture their own talent like the U.S. military does with the ROTC program. Right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: You want them to actually learn specific skills etc. Well, guess what? We're going to go ahead and we're going to pay for your college and here's when you pop out or what have you, you're going to have a three-year contract with us etc. But they should also be aggressively funding companies like The Mom Project which we're going to be talking about later in the show. That's the thing. They talk about all this money that they send out to the black community in this case, right? Chad: The problem is they're not investing in their own infrastructure and they're looking for quick hits. They're looking for silver bullets. Well, guess what, people? They don't fucking exist. If we don't build infrastructure, and that's being in the company. If we don't build, we don't actually put money into it, we don't put resources into it, it is all hollow. It's not going to work and it's going to take your 3% to 3.8%. Joel: I think it's worth noting as well we talked about Netflix's CEO donating I think $120 million to historically black colleges. You can bet your ass that Netflix is going to start hiring more from those colleges as they're giving money to them and certain programs I'm sure to help funnel people into Netflix for jobs that they need filled. Also, Microsoft announced this week that they're hoping to train 25 million people on digital training and education. Of course, they have the nice benefit of using things like LinkedIn and Gig-Hub etc. to drive some of that stuff which also drives users into Gig-Hub and LinkedIn etc. Joel: But, there's no crime in if you're helping the world while also helping your business that's not necessarily a bad thing. So, companies like Netflix and Microsoft I think are worth highlighting as companies that are looking like they're putting their money where their mouth is and will actually make a real difference. Chad: Netflix should be going into those universities and they should be providing guidance on what the universities are teaching because it's what they need, it's what they want. So, those universities should be turning into talent factories for them. We hear way too many times that individuals pop out of university, they've graduated, and they have all these skills gaps. They're not worthless, but they're sure the fuck not worthwhile on day one. Chad: We need to be able to ensure corporate America that we're not looking to the government to try to fix all of our ills. We fix our own shit. We go to those HBCs that we're spending a shit ton of money with, and we're helping them better understand the type of talent that we need. That's what we should be doing and unfortunately, all they do is write a check, given them a check, walk away and expect something magical to happen. Joel: Let's take a break and we'll talk about that Mom Project that you mentioned. JobAdx: Stand out in a feed full of boring job ads with a dynamic, enticing video that showcases your company culture, people and benefits with JobAdx. Instead of hoping that job seekers will stumble upon your employment branding video, JobAdx seamlessly displays it in the job description while they're searching, building a connection and reducing candidate drop off. JobAdx: You're spending thousands of dollars on beautiful, informative, employment branding videos that just sit on a YouTube channel begging to be discovered. Why not feature them across our network of over 150 job sites to proactively compel top talent to join your team? Help candidates see themselves in your role by emailing joinus@jobadx.com. That's joinus@jobadx.com. Attract, engage, employ with JobAdx. Joel: Mom. With age comes context right? When I was born in the '70s mom stayed home. I don't know what yours did. I'm assuming it's something similar. Chad: Somewhat. Joel: And then as divorces grew including within my family and mom took on a role of working and the latch key kid generation, kids coming home alone was like a thing. And then it became guilt and raising kids that didn't have mother and how do I do both things. You and I remember commercials like, "I can bring home the bacon, I fry it up with a pan, and never, never let you forget you're a man." Or the Virginia Slim cigarettes like you can have it all and all that shit. Joel: So, when I see efforts like this The Mom Project that helps women navigate both being a mother and having a lucrative and fulfilling career and bringing together those entities with companies that are willing to provide both or support all of those legs of the stool if you will, I think it's awesome. And The Mom Project sort of highlights the world that we're going into which I think is a much better place than where we were decades ago. Chad: Definitely. Yeah, mom worked her ass off. Mom and dad divorced when I was eight and she worked her ass off. And the thing is that in this case, I'll just go into The Mom Project. They just raised 25 million in Series B funding which brings in- Joel: 36 million total. Chad: ... 35.6 according to Crunchbase. So, overall not to mention they also have an advocate in Serena Williams who joined the company as a strategic adviser. That's big. Joel: Super woman. Talk about super women. Chad: Yeah. The Mom Project community of over 275,000 talented professionals in more than 2000 companies links moms and small businesses and leading brands like Delta Airlines, Pinterest, Dropbox, Accenture, Etsy, Facebook and Nike. This is a project that I think that companies like the Facebook's and the Amazon's of the world should be getting behind. We were talking about the actual funding of getting behind the projects where there's already infrastructure that you can tap into this, this group 94% have bachelor's degrees, 40% advanced degrees, 250,000 in 50 states. It's pretty amazing that you can tap into a group but also understand that you have to provide them with the autonomy to get done what they need to get done. Chad: What they need to get done isn't just work for your fucking company. They have a life. They have kids. They have idiots like us that they have to deal with. Joel: I think it was SHRM in the early 2000s featured Jack Welch who's a famous executive made most famously at GM .... Chad: GE Joel: ...where he famously said "5% of the workforce needs to be fired every year because at least 5% suck. But, he went on and essentially touted that women ultimately have to make a choice whether they are a career person or they're going to be a domestic stay-at-home mom. And that the two entities could not coexist. And Jack Welch, rest his soul, I think he passed away this year or last year. Smart guy, good executive. But you had to think listening to that that there's got to be a way that this uber talented group of people didn't have to choose between one or the other. That somehow they could balance both of them and that there were companies that were willing to embrace that reality. Joel: So, 10, 15 years hence, it really makes my heart smile that companies are embracing the dual existence of you can be a mom and also be really super talented and help our company. You don't have to choose one or the other. Chad: Yeah, Jack Welch really embodied that of the management in the 1950s. You come into work, you're busting your ass and you're staying late and you're doing whatever we, the company, need you to do. Screw your family, okay? This is about us and if you don't think so, then go find a job somewhere else, right? And luckily we've evolved to the point to understand that we can get more out of people. We can keep them longer. They can be happier at work. They don't have to begrudgingly get in and do their fucking job. They can enjoy what they do on their own time just as long as they're getting their shit done. What does it matter, right? Joel: Yeah. And fortunately the culture is catching up to that as well. I think there's much less sort of envy or aggressive behavior on people who aren't there all day or work from home more than others. That there isn't this sort of animosity which I think Jack Welch's time definitely was. Like not showing up to work, going on vacation was a weakness. All the other companies, this is corporate America, dog eat dog kind of mentality and we're getting away from that which I think is a great thing. Chad: Yeah, on The Mom Project website it says, "86% of working mothers will leave a job for an opportunity that better supports their work and life considerations. 75% of women surveyed believe employer support of work-life flexibility is the most crucial criteria for feeling respected at work." Again, it's giving a shit about the human beings that are actually making the products and providing the services under your brand. Once you don't give a shit about them anymore, your service starts to suck and so does your product compared to your competitor who's actually giving a shit. Joel: Yep. And thankfully also technology allows us to do this more and more which is a good thing. Covid with Zoom meetings and everything else has made it that much more amenable in today's world. Chad: Is Amazon giving a shit now that they're paying 500 million in bonuses to frontline workers? Joel: I'm ready for you to bow down to the statute of Bezos and apologize for all the hate that you've spewed at them for the last three years, announced this week they're going to be giving five billion, I believe, worth of bonuses. Chad: Millions. Joel: 500 million. Sorry. Yes. Chad: 500 million. Joel: They're doing five billion to fight covid in the workplace. Yes, they're giving 500 million in bonuses to frontline workers have been deemed essential in the last three, four months. This is a good thing, right? Are you actually going to come up with some angle of where this is a negative? Chad: Imagine that. A white guy thinking this is a good thing. The payout comes after the company decided last month to end a short-term pay bump. Okay? Let's do the math real quick and help you understand why this is fucking horrible for workers and more of a PR stunt than anything else. A one-time bonus is just that where a bump in salary is a long-term investment in that person, in that worker, in that employee, in that fucking human. Right? Chad: This is just another bullshit optics play for PR. A LinkedIn commenter because this is actually on LinkedIn, actually said, okay, so listen. Amazon has 840,000 employees. Let's assume 500,000 of them are frontline workers. I think it's probably less but let's just go with that. That's $1000 bonus each. Roughly $800 after taxes. Is that hazard pay? Is that good headline? If you think about it overall, let's say it was twice that. I'm going to be generous. Let's say the bonus was $1600. Well, a $2 pay bump would catch that $1600 or that $1600 bonus in about five months. And then that worker would continue to make more money not to mention when the next pay raises would happen, they would be making more than that. Right? Chad: So, this is a play by corporate America to be able to smoke and mirrors shit as opposed to paying people more. Nearly 20% of Americans, 20 fucking percent are considered working poor. That means they are at the level of poverty but yet they're fucking working. We need to lift them up by paying them more and quit giving them the scraps. These are the scraps. Jeff Bezos, you think he's getting scraps? Fuck no he's not. He's giving these people the scraps. He's telling them take it or leave it. You can find a job somewhere else. Joel: I tried, Jeff Bezos. I really, really tried. Chad: This is another reason why Amazon needs a union, by the way. Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That S-O-V-R-E-N dot 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: Oh, Canada. Joel: Oh, Canada. Canada's largest most influential company Shopify, no everybody it's not Blackberry anymore. By the way there's a bad track record of being Canada's biggest tech company. But anyway, I digress. So, if you hadn't heard our president Donald Trump is sort of cold toward immigrants and people coming in from outside the country which is a longstanding American tradition, and has put a pause button on H-1 visas for workers to come into the country. Have you heard about this Chad? Chad: Yeah. All over the news. Joel: So, not to be outdone Shopify who would love to get this brain power into Canada and at their company had a fun little dialogue on Twitter this week where their founders commented about, "Hey, if you can't go to the U.S., come to Canada. We'll love you here." Chad: Canada has been trolling the U.S. for workers especially individuals who are outside of the United States and even inside the United States ever since Trump took office. They're like, "You might want to come up here for a little while." But the visa system was conceived so companies could hire overseas workers to fill a shortage of highly skilled positions in technology services, product development. But critics argue that companies abuse the system by replacing American workers with foreign labor. Chad: From my standpoint, I was just thinking how many people are here on H-1B? In 2019, the USCIS said the U.S. has 388,000 plus H-1B visa holders who work in occupations that require theoretical and practical application of a body of highly-specialized knowledge. That's a bunch of fucking fluff right there. Overall, here in the U.S., once again, I'm a big fan of the H-1B visa program. But there has to be a balance. From our standpoint, we talked about this earlier with regard to company's actually creating infrastructure and spending money on resources that will tap into their local communities that will skill those individuals up and get them in the jobs. We are looking for the quick heroin hit with H-1B visas. Chad: I'm in a little town that has probably one of the most diverse communities in the world. I kid you not because Cummins Engine Company is here and we have the most H-1B visa allotments in the country. I love it because most of my friends are from Europe. It provides diversity not just for me but for my kids so I love that. But, we here in the United States are always looking for the quick hit and we need to find a balance which means companies need to spend money making sure that the local communities are pipelining talent into their companies. Not just pulling H-1B visa holders and taking those jobs. Chad: Am I a fan of H-1B visas? Yes. Do I think we have too many of them and we need to really focus on spending money investing in our local communities? Fuck yeah we do. Joel: If you had to estimate, how many of Cummins workers that come from overseas become American citizens? Chad: That's a good question. I know that most of them that is a goal. Not that they want to stay here per se, but that is- Joel: They want to vote against Trump. Chad: Yeah. Especially. I know that there are many and I've seen many of the Facebook posts of those individuals, friends, who are like Christine did last week getting her American citizenship. That's big. And it's easier to stay, obviously, if you have a skill that is in high need. Again, I think our community is much richer because of the diverse an H-1B visa program brings, although we have to invest in our own people as well. We have to find a balance to this. Joel: Yeah, I agree, balance and I'm by no means a expert on this issue. But, I do know that America's brand in the world has historically been one of openness, of opportunity, of freedom. It was a place where the world wanted to come whether it was to get rich or to worship in the way that it chose. And the optics of stuff like this whether it be the wall in the southern border, whether it be H-1B visas, all goes toward corroding the brand of America that has made it so strong. Joel: We talked about diversity in the workplace. Think about what diversity as a country has meant to us in terms of growth, in terms of ideas, in terms of innovation, in terms of all that stuff. In many ways we're turning out back on that when we do things like this. And countries like Canada are smart to say, "Hey, we're open for business and we're open to you coming to our country." I think that optically is a bad thing for America. I do agree there's probably got to be some balance in there. But I don't fault other countries trying to take advantage of our stupidity and eroding our brand of one of openness and opportunity and freedom by doing things like this that Shopify exemplified. Chad: You have to ask yourself would they still be pulling these programs together if they had to pay the same rate that they did to Americans in the same jobs. Joel: Yeah. I don't know. My wife's a professor and we were talking about this the other day. Her university as every other university is very concerned about enrollments for the next year or the coming semester. In her school which is a microcosm of other schools around the country certainly undergrads at Duke are different than undergrads at Nebraska, right? But in her world they're looking at a 3% decrease in undergrad, but they're looking at 5X that in terms of their graduate program which tend to be very heavy on international students. Joel: So, starting sort of there where countries want, or people want to come to America for an education, they're starting to feel excluded from that world and they're going to go to places like Canada and get an education and stay there and work there and build companies there. I just think that's a shame that America is losing some of that as a result. Chad: That's revenue that they're losing as well as a university. Joel: Yes, that's true. And that means people losing jobs and hours and all that good stuff. Chad: And then we have this great spokesperson who's talking about skills-based instead of degree-based. Joel: Yeah, so Trump signed an executive order to quote "Transform the federal hiring process and replace the one size fits all degree-based hiring with skills-based hiring." Not anything particularly wrong with the message. Chad: No. Joel: However the messenger who's probably been employed everywhere that she's worked in due part because of her father, sent the internet into a tizzy as you can imagine on Twitter. There's some great ones. Chris Hayes on Twitter said, "New policy. Anyone whose parents had the job can get hired for the job themselves regardless of qualifications." Hart Hanson said, "Does that mean you all will leave in favor of people with actual intelligence and ability?" Norm Wilner said quote, "I'm grandfathered in. Well, okay, I'm fathered in," etc. So, poor Ivanka. She can't get a break. Chad: But you would think that someone would have put their hand up and said, "This is probably not the thing that you want Ivanka to talk about." If I was Ivanka I'd say, "You know what? This is probably not the thing I should talk about." But they're all so fucking blind. Joel: I got nothing. I got nothing except- Chad: A beer. Joel: We out. Chad: And we out. Outro: Thank you for listening to podcast with Chad & Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Anyhoo, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.

COVID-19 is a bitch for business, but are you thinking enough about the people being impacted? Protect Your Brand is a Limited Podcast Series. The Chad & Cheese call on a real cast of experienced characters including Gerry Crispin, Principal & Co-Founder of CareerXRoads, Deb Andrychuk, VP of Client Services with Shaker Recruitment Marketing and Steven Rothberg, Founder and President of CollegeRecruiter.com.to answer the questions employers should be asking themselves. Lead question: What impact to their campus hiring efforts will employers experience if they rescind job offers to students and recent grads? Support provided by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing - COVID might keep us at home but it won't keep us quiet! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. VIDEO AVAILABLE HERE Intro: 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 Chad: Hey, I'm Chad Sowash of The Chad and Cheese Podcast and I'm joined by my partner in crime, Joel Cheesman. Joel: What up? Chad: We have Gerry Crispin- Gerry Crispin: You bet that. Chad: ... recruiting soothsayer and founder of CareerXroads. Joel: Best beard in the industry, right there. Chad: That's damn right. Joel: One day, Gerry. Gerry Crispin: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:00:48]. Chad: Deb Andrychuk, industry veteran, and VP of recruitment branding goodness over at Shaker Recruitment Marketing and that's actually your title, right? Deb Andrychuk: Yeah. That's my title today, I like it. Chad: And last, but always least, Steven Rothberg, president and founder of Collegerecruiter.com. Big applause for everybody. Joel: Don't forget, Shaker, proud sponsor of The Chad and Cheese Podcast, Chad: Proud sponsor- Deb Andrychuk: That's right. Chad: ... of The Chad and Cheese Podcast. The theme of today's discussion is protecting your brand in the realm of college recruitment. And first question goes to Gerry Crispin. Okay, Gerry, if employers rescind job offers to students and recent grads, will they experience a negative impact in future campus recruiting? Gerry Crispin: Yes. Chad: What should they do about that? So that they don't experience it? Gerry Crispin: Not do that. You got to be kidding me. You don't resend a promise that you've made, you have to be able to engage around that. So I will tell you that we've had lots of our members who've had these kinds of conversations of late, and I would tell you almost every one of them did not rescind any of that. Some of them delayed it. Chad: Okay. Gerry Crispin: Some of them moved, in fact, one company moved it an entire year, in terms of how long they delayed it. But most delayed it in a relatively short period of time. Most of them changed it obviously. I mean, you're not going to have a whole bunch of people coming in when they can't be moving anywhere. And when their parents are going to tell them, you're going to travel where, to do what? Chad: Yeah. That's enough. Gerry Crispin: That's not happening. So virtual internships and virtual onboarding for full time folks has become pretty much what's happening now. And there's an awful lot of folks who can get into the details of how they do it. Everybody's doing it a little bit differently. But if somebody figures out that we don't have hiring managers who are going to be able to oversee work for these folks, and we want to give up hiring from early hires and everything else, they better find some nice way to provide a parting gift and some support for those folks to be able to go and work with motivation from their competitors, if they really have to do that. The companies that rescind work for early hires are going to be remembered for the rest of those hires lives and not in a good way. Chad: Seems like- Gerry Crispin: That's just not going to be a good thing. Chad: I think as humans, we have a short memory. Steven, I'm sure you've seen big brands do this before in the past. And they've been able to come out of it. How did they come out of it? Steven Rothberg: I've never seen a situation where so many companies are all hit, all at once in such a short period of time. And, at least in some minds, so unexpectedly. And where almost nobody could go to work as work normally was almost overnight. So I think everybody was in panic mode. We were all trying to just keep our families safe, how am I going to pay the rent? How am I going to pay the mortgage? How am I going to get food? All that. So I'm not surprised that a lot of these employers were at least considering rescinding. We are seeing a lot of companies rescind offers. I suspect that the companies that Gerry is talking about are mostly Fortune 1000 companies, but a lot of small startups, absolutely rescinding. And some of them- Chad: Do you think they're going to get a pass? Steven Rothberg: Oh, hell no. And they shouldn't. I wrote a blog article earlier today, KPMG and PWC, two of the big four accounting consulting companies. What they did was remarkable, generous, brilliant, self-serving in a great way, everything. So they said, "Well, rather than coming to work for us as a paid intern for the next 10, 12 weeks, we're going to create a virtual internship for you for two weeks, so that you can at least have a feeling for what it's like to work here, you'll get to know your boss and throw you a little bit of a bonus summer." That's nice. But what was really amazing is that every single one of their 2020 interns have already received offers for 2021 entry-level employment. So when they graduate next- Chad: Wow! Steven Rothberg: ... May, they have a job. Chad: They don't even know how good this guys are. Steven Rothberg: And we're talking 10 to 15,000 people for each of these employers . Gerry Crispin: And that's more common than just PWC, et cetera. Because there's a lot of competition out there for these interns, particularly. And so I think I've seen a dozen companies change the time frame and offer similar kinds of things for that. The one last thing I really would like to say though is that, the small companies don't do a lot of interns and hiring when you look at the 4 million kids who are out there, it's the large companies that are really doing the bulk of that kind of hiring. Steven Rothberg: People say that small business employees, most Americans, it's actually really not true. And serving as an only career, it skews heavily to large employers. Joel: Is it fair to say that companies, while they've put the brakes on everything, most if not all are expecting to put pedal to the metal, full gas a year from now, that's the expectation. Gerry Crispin: That's their hope. Steven Rothberg: I would say- Deb Andrychuk: I think they're pushing it off to later this year too, I don't think it's even just waiting until next year. I'm seeing a lot of our clients are just delaying, abbreviating the time. There's a large employer, I just started working with who just went through a huge round of layoffs and they did push the start bids out until next year. And, they took a lot of criticism for it, but I thought it was really ingenious on their part. I mean, they're trying to do the right thing. They also gave a lump sum of money to those new hires. And I agree with Gerry 100%, I mean, you never want to rescind when you've already given someone an opportunity, but I also think that you'd have to think about last one in as first one out. And so what does that do? If you bring someone in as a new hire and then, what if COVID lasts and other six, eight, nine months, and that person just ends up getting cut anyway? I don't know. I mean, is that better? I think the new hire is going to be mad either way. Steven Rothberg: ... Yeah, it's an interesting question. Deb Andrychuk: Really, I mean, I think a lot of it boils down to why are you rescinding? Two, How are you communicating that? And it better be delicately, compassionately and like Gerry said, "It better have some package with a bow on it and you need to have something that you're giving to them." And I think it's also really looking hard at, what are alternative ways that we could put this person up, so. Steven Rothberg: And Deb from a marketing and communications firm standpoint, I suspect that your advice to your clients was, communicate what you know, communicate what you don't know. Right? Don't just go radio silent. Deb Andrychuk: Yeah. Steven Rothberg: That drove me nuts in March and even into April where students had authors last September and every three, four weeks, they'd get a gift basket, an email, or a phone call, or a text, whatever, until about the 10th of March. Chad: Uh-huh (affirmative). Steven Rothberg: And then nothing, silence. Gerry Crispin: I think a lot of it is from- Deb Andrychuk: Yeah. Steven Rothberg: They didn't know if their boss was in the hospital, if their job was there or not, in some small percentage, but it was still significant, of the employers were saying, "Well, we can't tell them because we haven't made our plans yet." The fact that you're making plans is something you should tell them, right? It's March 18th- Gerry Crispin: ... 2018 I think- Steven Rothberg: ... we have a meeting on the 25th and I will have an update for you by the 26th. Right? That's all they're asking for at that point. Gerry Crispin: ... I think there were a lot of mistakes made in 2008 with the financial crisis. And I do believe that a lot of those mistakes came back in conversation early on with a lot of employers who said, "We have to communicate better." And so I do think a lot of companies recognized early on that they needed to adjust quickly, to at least communicate to the interns or potential interns, what they were going to do, that they were thinking about virtual. And they were thinking about this and so on and so forth. And then- Joel: But it's also hard to lay off 20% of your staff and still have the internship program. So in terms of communication- Gerry Crispin: ... That's one- Joel: ... that's not a delicate thing, or that is a very delicate thing to dance around. Yes? Gerry Crispin: ... For some companies, they were able to preserve some of their recruiters jobs, instead of furloughing. Joel: Yeah. Gerry Crispin: They transferred them to university relations to help figure out, what those virtual internships would work on. Because obviously when you start inventing something called virtual interns, there's a whole host of things that now are going to have to be done, in terms of what is the project? How do you oversee the project? Who's helping you when it comes to this? Joel: How do you deliver coffee in a Zoom meeting? I still haven't figured that one out. Steven Rothberg: Uber Eats. Joel: Oh, no. Yeah. Steven Rothberg: To go back to the brand issue on campus. I think, I'm hoping that if there is on-campus recruiting this fall, which I think is a big question mark. Because I don't foresee that many campuses are going to be open. And the campuses that are going to be open, I think are going to be very restrictive in terms of how many people are there, how many people can be gathered at any place, visitors to campus. I mean, only if you're a big company and you're planning on sending student or recruiters and hiring managers to 20 schools, I don't think you should count on the fact that those schools are going to let those people on-campus. I could Joel: What are you telling those companies strategy-wise? Where does that budget go now? Steven Rothberg: ... Well, I think 100% of it goes to us. No, I'm just kidding. I do think that it's going to go virtual, that they're going to be more virtual career fairs. I think that that some of the careers service management platforms are going to do well, some of the job search sites like ours will do well. What I'm hoping we're going to see is some students, maybe some career service office directors asking employers, the question: In March and April, what did you decide to do? What did you do for your insurance? What did you do for the new grads? Did you rescind the offers? Did you walk away? How did you communicate to them? And if there's one hardware store that did a fantastic job with all of that and their direct competitor did a terrible job with that, I think like what Gerry was saying at the beginning, it's going to take years for that hardware store to recover, that didn't communicate, that didn't take care of its employees. Chad: Do you think the Career Center directors, the career centers overall are going to be the ones who are going to drive this? Because I can't think that the kids or the interns are even going to think of that. I mean, they're so much into how do I get an internship? Steven Rothberg: Oh, yeah. Chad: ... And thinking before. Do you think that that's not going to be the case or will? Steven Rothberg: Okay. So the career service office directors mostly know they're going to be grateful that the employers are coming on campus or otherwise recruiting your students. I can think off the top of my head, three or four, that I could absolutely see them. And they're the stars saying to the employer, "You know what? We have limited slots and we are going to give those slots to the employers who are likely to treat our students the best, and your past performance is the best predictor of your future performance. You screwed our students over last April, sorry, you don't get to come on campus this fall because we just don't have room for you." I could see some of them doing that. As far as the students go, and I know this is very anecdotal. I have a 20 year old who's going into her senior year. And I can tell you for a fact that she and her friends are absolutely going to be asking employers, what did you do with your interns last year? What did you do with your new grads? Because some of them are being treated very well and some of them still have no idea if they are about to start an internship and it's big. Chad: Wow. Gerry Crispin: There's one caveat, I'd throw it in here. And that is, there's an awful lot of colleges out there, but the STEM colleges, the engineering college, the IT programs, the career services folks for those groups, they're going to hold up those companies, for sure. Chad: Oh, yeah. Gerry Crispin: Because they can. And because those students are going to end up with an average of three, four, 10 offers that they choose from. Because those students- Chad: Is that a problem for STEM schools right now though? Gerry Crispin: ... I was career director for a college as my first job. And I got to tell you in that recession, we killed about 20% of all of the companies that came on campus, because we had more companies coming on-campus than we had students. So that's- Chad: Well, that's what I mean. But right now, do you think STEM is, do you think they're rescinding at all? I would think that they understand what's going to happen, the future. It's like, "Okay, let's continue to go. Let's not rescind." Gerry Crispin: Think about how crazy you are, if you're a technology company and you're rescinding offers for five or 10 folks at a critical campus that you think has the program that's going to make our company really run well. Chad: Yeah, that seems like the death miles. Gerry Crispin: [crosstalk 00:15:38]. And I do think you're digging your own grave, if you do it. Deb Andrychuk: Larger companies are definitely keeping. They're keeping those new hires and they're keeping their internships. Again, they're just pivoting, to online shortening, doing whatever they have to do. I've seen a couple companies where they've set it up so that it's on demand. So the managers get to decide, how long the days are. And they do it by weeks. So if they have something going on in a particular week, they might scale the hours back. But overall the students are still getting that nine or 10 week internship that they were planning on. And then as far as rescinding offers for new grads, with the large companies that are hiring STEM folks, I haven't seen it, but we did have one startup who I had worked with her at a larger company, went to head up TA at a startup in Silicon Valley. And they just let go of, I don't know, probably 25 of their new grads. And some of these folks had only worked there a month or two. So it wasn't rescinding, they were laying them off, ripping them, but it goes back to my point, do you do it now? Do you do it later? I'm sure those people probably have a really bad taste in their mouth now about that company and will never get over it. But I also think too, at that age, we take everything personally anyway. So I don't know that we have the maturity to separate, here's what's going on in the world, we're having a global crisis and then this is about me when you're at that age. Chad: Well again though, that's brand. Deb Andrychuk: Everything's about me Chad: That's brand in its reputation and that's something that sticks, right? Whether it was back when you were in your twenties or what have you, that could still stick with that person throughout their career. So from the shaker standpoint, this has got to be reputation management at this point, not just brand, I mean, it's bigger than that. Gerry Crispin: Yeah. That's a good point. Deb Andrychuk: Yeah. It's a lot of coaching and it's, I think trying to get people to be more transparent. I think that's hard, especially when you are financial services or just any risk adverse company, you're going to be less inclined to, pull back the curtains, but that's what's required right now, in order to keep that brand intact. And I do think, we'll see more and more requests. We're getting them every day where clients are coming to us and saying, "Help us with our internal communications." We've always really focused on external as you guys know. But internal has become so critical. And we're also... A lot of clients are coming to us right now and saying, "Help us build up the positivity, that we do have within our ranks, help us push that story out." So we're doing a lot of PR for jobs. We're getting a lot of requests for it right now. And I think clients are also really interested in taking this time to take a step back and assess everything from end to end. So whether it's a candidate experience audit or hey, you know what? We know that there are some spots in our brand that probably needs some help, maybe we do a Glassdoor audit right now. We're seeing a lot of those requests. I mean, I think that's the cool thing that I'm loving so much is that, I really thought the minute that COVID hit everything would just poof, evaporate. And it's just been amazing to me, how many leaders are savvy enough to get it that, this is the time to lean in and really make sure that everything is operating at the highest capacity, so that... I mean, we all know this virus is going to end at some point, right? I mean, I'm goint to look terrible. I'm going to have... big foot's going to be jumping out of my eyebrows. Joel: Hey Deb. Gerry Crispin: The longer it last though, the more likely we will revert to some serious problems that, that we really can't help. I mean, when you start running out of money, you're done, and there's only so much the government is going to give us. And the complexity now of multinationals who have to deal with the different ways each government in each country is treating all of this, also complicates another problem of who you keep, who you don't, who you furlough, whether you give them benefits, whether you give them actually pay. One large retail organization is still paying, they closed all of their stores over a month ago, and they're still paying everybody their full pay. Others have reduced pay in some way, shape or form, even if the government is giving them a loan that allows for them to pay employees, it often isn't enough to fully compensate all of that. And then somebody in the back room is figuring out, well, we can keep doing this for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. And then a whole different decision is going to happen. And then they're not going to be worried about all of that stuff, they're just going to be closing stuff up, period. Chad: That's excellent. Joel: Hey Deb, you mentioned internal communications and I'm curious, how is that evolving? I mean, is it still email, is it Slack? Is it just dependent upon the company, do interns SMS or what's the current state of internal communications and how that's done? Deb Andrychuk: Great question. So, we are seeing, most of our clients are using email and it's kind of interesting though, because if they do have a way to launch a bulk email, they're asking us to do an HTML. So we're programming and designing something that looks really nice. We've had some clients ask, "Instead of email, can you put it in a PDF? We'll attach it and send it out." I'm like, "Yay!" Joel: Wow! Deb Andrychuk: Yeah, but- Chad: A carrier pigeon? Deb Andrychuk: ... no one so far has asked us for SMS. Joel: Okay. Deb Andrychuk: Which is kind of surprising. Because you would think that that would be part of it, but- Joel: I understand. Deb Andrychuk: ... I do think email still, I mean, when you're sending a larger message, I mean, that's really hard to do. Chad: Thanks everybody for joining us. We appreciate it so much more to actually talk about, but this gets it going for the next segment. Joel: Awesome. Chad: Don't forget to check out the discussion segments on chadcheese.com. I'm sure they'll be all over College Recruiter, Shaker. We'll see you next time. Joel: We out. Chad: We out Chester: Thank you for listening to podcast with Chad and Cheese, brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.

Voice assistants are a thing. You know Alexa better than your own kids, right? So it was just a matter of time before searching for a job was a thing on these voice platforms too. That's where My Career Fit comes in. Jumping on the voice assistance trend, this startup aims for aural glory equated to what job boards like Monster had on the early days of the internet. What say Chad & Cheese? Gotta listen to find out if this spunky company survives Firing Squad. Firing Squad is supported by our friends at Pandologic, crunching data and performing programmatic job placement since 2007. PODCAST TRANSLATION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Chad: Damn programmatic is hot. Joel: Yeah, it is hot, dude. Pass me a cold PBR. Would you? Chad: Okay. Number one, I wasn't talking about the temperature. And number two, PBR is a shitty beer, time to upgrade to an IPA. Joel: Okay. My bad, guessing you were talking about programmatic job advertising being hot. Yeah, that shit is everywhere and all the kids are doing it. Chad: I know man, but there's only one company that's been doing it since 2007. Joel: Damn, 2007? Hey man, what wife were you on in 2007? I was on number one. Chad: We don't talk about her. Focus, dude. I'm talking about PandoIQ from our friends at PandoLogic. PandoIQ's programmatic recruitment advertising platform, helps employers source talent faster and more efficiently than ever. Thanks to predictive algorithms, machine learning and AI. Joel: Buzzword, overdose alert. Yeah. Pando is on the cutting edge of programmatic, while being deeply rooted in the recruitment industry. PandoIQ provides an end-to-end programmatic job advertising platform that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance, without any way so spending to maximize the ROI on your recruitment spend. Chad: And their AI enabled algorithms use over 48 job attributes and more than 200 billion historical job performance data points to predict the optimal job advertising campaign. The machine does all that shit. Joel: That shit sounds expensive. Chad: Think again, Cheesman. PandoIQ provides an end-to-end job advertising solution that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any wasteful spending. Joel: Sold. How do I get started? Chad: Go to pandologic.com to request a demo and tell him Chad and Cheese sent you. Joel: Ooh. They have a chatbot too, that we can talk to. Chad: God kill me now. Intro: Like Shark Tank, then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they've got what it takes to make it out alive. Dig a foxhole and duck for cover kids. The Chad and Cheese Podcast is taken into a whole other level. Joel: What a fun show, I'm in a great mood and you are pissy as hell, Chad. Chad: I am. Yeah, I'm not liking this coronavirus shit. The world's fucking burning. We've got the stupidest president of all fucking time. And even though it is beautiful outside and I'll be able to walk the dogs and that'll make me happier later, right now I just need another fucking cup of coffee, pot of coffee. Joel: Who knew the world could just fix itself in a month. What an amazing thing our world is, just get rid of us for a little bit and it's all back to normal. Well, anyway, welcome to the Firing Squad kids. This is your favorite recruiting news duo, Chad and Cheese. And this is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: Well, hello. Joel: And we are happy to welcome Gordon Gecko Collier, CEO of Land Pipeline Search Solutions. Sorry I got that wrong, Pipeline Search Solutions. Gordon, welcome to Firing Squad, how are you, sir? Gordon Collier: Thanks for having me. Joel: You bet. So you're calling in from Virginia. What's the status of the world from where you are? Gordon Collier: It was raining yesterday and most of the day. Today, it's nice and sunny. It's going to be a nice day today thankfully, but yeah, we've got the coronavirus here too. And so yeah, we're a little pissy as well. Chad: Yeah. I think its- Joel: Yeah. Chad: ... a little thicker in the air there in Virginia than it is here in Indiana. Joel: Yeah. It's definitely a little stinky in the DC Metro area. Good God. Well, give us a Twitter, an elevator pitch just on you and your past. And then we'll get down into the company that we are reviewing today. Gordon Collier: All right. Well, my name's Gordon Collier, I've been in HR and corporate talent acquisition space for probably about 20 years. Got into recruiting way back in the early to mid-nineties and have spent the bulk of my time... I haven't worked for mid to large Fortune 500 companies. And most recently for the past four years, I've owned my own recruiting firm called Pipeline Search Solutions. And about a year and a half ago, I launched my first product called My Career Fit. Joel: Which is what we'll be talking about today. A very tight, personal intro, we appreciate it. Chad, tell him what he's won. Chad: Well, Gordon, you will have two minutes to pitch My Career Fit. At the end of two minutes, you will hear the bell, then Joel and I will hit you with rapid fire Q&A. If your answers start rambling or get boring, Joel's 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&A, you may receive one of three grades, number one, big applause. That's right kids, it's time to cash it in. Joel: Make it rain baby, make it rain. Chad: Golf clap. It's okay. But you can do better, or the Firing Squad. Joel: Oh, shit yeah. Chad: Pack it in, closed up shop, dust off the drawing board big boy, because it's time to go home. Gordon Collier: All Right. Chad: That's the firing squad, are you ready? Gordon Collier: I'm ready. Chad: All right, Joel. Joel: In three, two. Gordon Collier: All right. Well, so over the past number of years, there's been significant growth in the voice first technology space, namely Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, along with the rise of podcasting. And a report actually by VoiceSpot.ai found that almost 90 million US adults were using smart speakers as of January this year. And Edison Research reported that 51% of Americans have listened to a podcast as of last year. So I believe both of these unique platforms have grown because voice reduces the level of friction between the user and in my case, employers. There's no more screens, no more clicking, tapping, swiping. You just ask a question and you get an answer back pretty quickly in a podcast. Of course you can listen to anywhere and at any time. So if you've ever spent any time paying attention to talent acquisition, you'll know that an organization's brand message sets them apart from their competitors and tells a story of why their company's better than the other, as it relates to, employment. And I believe voice technology podcast helped deliver that message in an effective and very unique way, which is why in June of last year, I launched My Career Fit. Now My Career Fit allows employers to effectively communicate their brand message in a unique audio based format that removes that friction, as I mentioned earlier. So I do that in two ways, number one, employers can post their job opportunities using the, My Career Fit voice assistant to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. But these are not standard job postings. Job seekers can launch the My Career Fit skill on Alexa, or the action on Google Assistant and search for jobs by job title, company name, or by location. And what they hear is the actual recruiter, hiring manager, and sometimes even the CEO provide information about the employer brand and a job opportunity in a very real and authentic way. So if the job seeker likes what they hear, they simply say, "Text me," and the assistant then sends a link to the company career site, to their smartphone by text. The second way we do this is through podcasting. In addition to the voice assistant, My Career Fit also provides a podcast platform. Joel: Dang, thank you Gordon for that pitch. And just quickly, if people want to know more and I'll give you this one, where do they go? Gordon Collier: They go to, www.mycareerfit.io. Joel: All right. So there in lies my first question. So two issues and help me understand this. Number one is, I would expect your brand to be something voice related. Gordon Collier: Right. Joel: Talk something, or listen, or something like that. Right? My Career Fit sounds like I'm wearing a Fitbit and it's talking to me about jobs or I'm going to go get a job at a gym. And I'm also confused when I researched this, I automatically went to mycareerfit.com, because it's not a one word thing or something I thought would be IO. If I go to mycareerfit.com it's some sort of a site, it's not you guys. So walk me through the name and why you felt like not having a .com or something more prevalent in that way, it wasn't that important. Gordon Collier: Yeah. So My Career Fit, I chose the name because, I feel like a lot of people go looking, when they look for employment, they look for jobs as opposed to looking for a career. And I really feel like most people, when you think about what you want to do for your profession, the rest of your life, we spend so much time at work, that more and more people today. And I think even more so in the future are choosing jobs based on their own personal purpose, their own passion, their why, their own personal vision, they're looking for organizations whose values align with their own personal values in some shape or form. So they're looking really for that fit. And so we talk about culture fit and fit with company and the person. And so that's why I chose career fit, because I think more and more people are looking for careers more so than they're looking for jobs. And certainly in the pandemic that we're in, there are a lot of people who are certainly just need a job in order to pay their bills and that kind of stuff, I totally get that. But I think in the long-term, I think most people are looking for a place where they can go, they can stay, they can add value and they can be a fit. So that's where the name comes from. Joel: And the .io versus .com? Gordon Collier: So .io, I chose that really just because it's a little techy in that regard versus the .com. And I'm trying to do something that's different, very unique and it's different than the web and so I chose to go in that direction. And really the website isn't where you're going to do any of your work necessarily in terms of posting jobs and doing recording. The website is really for more so, I guess a landing page for folks who, employers, recruiters, who would be interested in using the service would go, versus the client, the customer, or the person who's actually looking for the job. Chad: Okay. So is voice really ready for this. I mean, the experience is new. It's kind of cool, but it's really weird. I mean, I can't apply with Alexa, because Alexa doesn't have my... Well, it might on AWS somewhere, but Alexa doesn't have my resume, it doesn't have any of that stuff, so I have to go through this process of send me a link so that I can go to the applicant tracking system, which really sucks in the first place. So it's really cool, because I can talk to Alexa for about five seconds. Gordon Collier: Right. Chad: So is voice really ready for this or are you just a vanguard, you're out there, you're first and you're really cool. Gordon Collier: Right? Yeah. There's certainly the cool factor, right? I mean, Alexa is very unique, it's very different. But I think when you look at the numbers and you look at how fast this technology has grown, you got 90 million people who are using it now. I think it's a really viable platform. And I think we're sort of in that stage, in the same way the web was back in the early 90's, certainly you had companies, or Monster, a great example they started posting their jobs on the web. And for the most part, it took them forever to have to explain exactly what they were trying to do. But then, not just two, three years later, the web was blowing up with job boards all over the place. I think voice is sort of in that similar place. And I think there's an opportunity now, to start building and creating some innovative tools around recruitment and talent acquisition, in this space. Because I think it's really going to be one of those things that's going to be taking off. I think in a lot of ways it's already taken off, you've got, companies, banks, TD Ameritrade has one, Capital One has one, there's a variety of big brands out there who are already creating their own Amazon Alexa skills and Google actions. I think the timing is now to start doing this versus wait later. And in the same way, a lot of companies were with the web, which was, oh my God, we've got to build a website all of a sudden. I felt like there was an opportunity to jump into this now and start building and creating some value for job seekers as well as employers. And I think there's an opportunity to do a much better job of putting job ads and recruitment marketing out there. Job ads in particular drive me bananas, I can't stand them, they're completely terrible. Chad: They suck. Gordon Collier: So this is a way for, I think, employers to really bring a voice to the opportunities that they're hiring for and provide more value to job seekers than what we do now on the web. Chad: On that note, video is cool too. And employers suck at videos. They do these highly polished videos that they put out on YouTube and they put on their website and they get 60 views. So I mean the delivery system in itself. Okay, so step back real quick, we do a podcast, our delivery system is our marketing mechanism, right? And we have to actually focus very hard on that one train of getting the audio out there, focusing on our audience and getting them to subscribe and be a part of the community, right? Gordon Collier: Right. Chad: That we've seen with video right out of the gate, it doesn't work for most organizations. What makes you think that they're ready for audio? Gordon Collier: So I feel like the... Great point with video and one of the reasons that I don't think video works all that well, is because you just said earlier, they're highly produced. So they come off very inauthentic, I think audio in general, podcasting voice tech like this, it really builds a sense of trust and loyalty, because you can communicate in a way that's very authentic. Which is why I think podcasting has grown so fast. I mean, people listen to your show because they trust you and they probably have never even met you, but they trust you and they trust the information that you provide because you do it in such a real authentic way. I mean, what you guys do and put out there is so good, that I think people really can build trust with you by the value of the information that you're providing. So I think audio can do that as well. And of course, with audio you can listen to that anywhere. Especially with the podcast and definitely with Amazon Alexa and Google, you can get that information on your phone, through the Amazon Echo, in your car now. So you can create a very authentic brand message using audio in a way that, I feel is limited with written content and video. Chad: So for you, and again, I still think employers are going to fuck this up. How are you... And it's your product, right? Which is awesome. I'm an employer coming to you saying, "My videos, I did great videos, they didn't get any views, I want to do audio, but I don't think they're going to get any downloads." How are you going to help me get to that point where they are actually going to be used and they're going to be useful? Gordon Collier: Of course, as my business, I'm doing all my own marketing and that kind of thing. So I'm putting it out there, I'm driving the message on my end. What I tell my customers, especially with the podcast is the podcast is super social media friendly. And you guys know your audience way better than I do. So you know where your talent lives, and where they spend their time, and how to communicate with them effectively. And so it's really great when they drive that podcast themselves because the social media, the podcast is social media friendly, you can share the link to your episode anywhere. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, InMail, email, however you want to do it. So you can drive that. And a great example of that was, Quicken Loans, we did a podcast with them and they drove that message. And I mean, within less than a month, they had well over 100 downloads of that podcast. The same with the job ad they placed on Alexa and Google Assistant as well. So, it works really well. And I'll be honest with you, I tell my customers too, "Look, you're not going to put a podcast ad up on My Career Fit or on Alexa and Google and tomorrow morning walk into 150, 200 resumes in your inbox." And that's because I don't want you to get 250 resumes to your ad, because more than likely, most of them are not going to be even qualified for your job, because that's what we have seen time and time again, with the traditional job ad postings. What my hope is, is that by creating an authentic audio message like this, customers are going to truly be invested in the opportunity if they're qualified, right? And they're going to listen to the whole podcast, they're going to listen to the entire ad on Alexa. And if they're truly interested in, they've got the right skills they're going to apply. So my goal is that you're going to get more qualified applicants than you will, just in inbox full of resumes that you barely have any time to go through. Joel: So walk me through this Gordon. If I use your service as a job seeker, am I going to hear a podcast with an employer about how great it is to work there and what kind of jobs they're looking to hire for, and then maybe a URL to go visit, to apply, or am I going to hear an actual job description, or what exactly am I going to hear as a job seeker? Gordon Collier: So on the podcast, what you're going to hear is, an eight to 10 minute formatted podcast episode with an employer. And it can be the recruiter, it's the HR director, it's the hiring leader, or hiring manager, or sometimes it's the CEO. And the idea behind the podcast is to really drive the employment brand message. So we talk about culture, we talk about mission, we talk about vision, we talk about what it takes to be successful there. And what it takes to be a good fit within that organization. That's typically what you're going to hear on the podcast. Now, we'll also do a job spotlight, where we talk about a specific position. So we did a podcast episode with a company called Givelify and we talked about their bilingual customer service rep position they were hiring for, it's a remote role. So we talk specifically about that, what they look for and what it takes to be successful in that position. So those are the things that you're going to hear on the podcast. If somebody is interested and they want to apply, the contact information, the web link to their career site is going to be in the show notes. Joel: Okay. So this is not for anyone who thought it was a, "Hey, Alexa, I need a sales job in Toledo, Ohio," and then apply through voice, and then you guys distribute that resume or something along those lines. Is that something you want to get to or not? Gordon Collier: Yeah, so what I just described was the podcast with Alexa and Google, with the Assistant, for example, you're going to launch the My Career Fit skill and then you can search for a job. So you can search for the job by job title, location, company name, you'll get more information and audio, very short, brief, 77 second audio ad. And then if you like, what you hear, you just say, "Text me," and then it'll send you a link to your phone, with their career highlights so you can learn more or apply. Joel: All right, let's focus on that for a second. So every job board has the dilemma of, I need job seekers and I need jobs. Where are you getting your job content from and how are you driving usage to the, to the skill on Alexa and other voice assistance? Gordon Collier: Right. So the content is coming directly from a bulk of my customers. I've got, well, I mentioned one earlier Quicken Loans, I have some management IT consulting firms on there, a variety of other organizations that are using as well, that I reached out to early on, to when I first started building this and started testing it. And then some of these customers have just stayed with me. They really believe in it and they see where it's going. So, that's where a lot of where the content is coming from. The job seekers in terms of how I'm driving, that message, I'm doing primarily a lot of marketing and sales, direct marketing through Facebook, LinkedIn, that kind of stuff. And then also just connecting and networking through a lot of job search groups and things like that to try and drive the message that you can actually find a job now using Alexa and Google Assistant. Joel: So as the main product, the job search on voice assistance, or is the main product podcasting, or is the main product, your staffing business, and these are just supporting that goal? Gordon Collier: Yeah. No, the main product is primarily My Career Fit and that involves Alexa and Google as well as the podcasting. So, if a customer comes to me, we're going to talk about the platform, which is both the podcast, as well as Alexa and Google. Chad: So for users, what's the expectation? You ask them to engage the Alexa Skill, but what's their expectation going into it, because as we'd seen with our friends over at McDonald's and Paradox, those guys set really crappy expectations, and you really don't hear them talking about it anymore. They were first out of the gate, but it was also first to the garbage bin right now, at least. What's the expectation for a user as soon as they engage. Gordon Collier: Right, so as soon as they engage, what they're going to hear is, well, if they let's say example, they're in sales and they search for a job in sales. So just say, tell me about sales jobs in Detroit, Michigan. So what they're going to get back is an ad maybe more, of the actual employers. And they're going to hear audio. They're not going to hear an Alexa, robotic voice talking, reading two lines of a job description, they're going to hear directly from that recruiter or even the hiring manager in some cases, talk about the company and then talk about the job. So you get a real authentic experience in this versus just hearing two or three lines of a job ad, which is what you heard with McDonald's. You're going to hear directly from the recruiter that's probably hiring for this job, or even the hiring manager that's highiring for this job. And then of course you can follow that to the next step, which is to get the link to the career site, learn more, or apply directly to it. Joel: A big challenge with job sites is getting people to continually come back, right? Once they get a job they're done with you, LinkedIn is solved this problem as being a content play. Job boards, they sort of solved it with email alerts initially, like, yeah, you've got a job, but here's a daily email to let you know, keep your ear to the ground. How do voice solutions keep people coming back even after they're employed, or can they? Gordon Collier: Yeah, so you can actually, with the, My Career Fit, Skill on Alexa, as well as on Google Assistant. So both of those platforms allow for notifications. So if you turn the notification on, within the Skill or the Action, then like for example, on Alexa, you'll get a little green ring flashing on your Alexa device that'll let you know that you have a notification. And that's how I update folks when new positions are posted. So there'll be, Alexa will just read off and say, "You've got a notification from My Career Fit, Quicken Loans has posted a new position for their branch office in San Francisco, "or wherever. So that's how I'm driving notifications and trying to keep people coming back as well. Joel: And can you share some numbers with us in terms of number of jobs and what kind of traffic, I guess traffic would be searches or visits users per month. Gordon Collier: Yeah. So, right now I'm tracking about 60 invocations, which basically means that's the number of times the job seeker has launched the Skill or the Action, generally in the past 30 days. So I tend to see right now anywhere between 50 to 60, sometimes more invocations on the platform. Right now, I've got about 31 job ads posted and total number of responses as of just a couple of days ago. And I was looking at this, it was about 942 responses, which means I've had that many playbacks of those audios or in the past 30 days. Chad: Got you. So who's actually voicing these ads now for your current clients. Gordon Collier: The clients themselves. So, my clients basically get an app on their phone and they can actually record their ad through the app, and then once the recording is done, it uploads to my platform and then I can approve it and replay it, and I- Chad: You mean like TA VPs, or do you get CEO's? I mean, what kind of level, because I think that's important for a user, "Hey, this is Jeff Jeffrey's a CEO of ABC corporation," who's actually doing this? Because it's pretty powerful if you can get time with the CEO to voice something. Gordon Collier: Mm-hmm(affirmative). Right. So a great example is a company called Impact Makers, that has been using it since the very beginning. And we've got their CEO doing an ad, on Alexa. So if you say, "Tell me about Impact Makers," you're going to hear directly from their CEO. Quicken Loans did an ad for their mortgage originator position in one of their locations. And they had the senior town acquisition director for the company do you do their ad, and he was fantastic. He had a ton of energy. He just communicated really well on that ad. In other cases, we have the actual recruiter, that's hiring for the position do it. And then in another case, I had a company called Sundance Payment Solutions, they were hiring for salespeople, and so they actually had the sales manager do their ads. So the actual hiring manager. So if somebody hears that job ad, they're going to hear the guy who was actually hiring for it, which is really neat. Joel: Do you have have competition? Gordon Collier: Not that I know of. So I check in quite often just to see who's doing anything. And I haven't seen anyone out there. There's a few skills that are job related, but they seem to basically just pull in information, just say you have 150 sales jobs available in Richmond, Virginia. And that- Joel: Got you. All right. Gordon Collier: ... Yeah. So I haven't seen anything quite like this. Joel: So I'll let you out on this. Give me the pricing breakdown. And I'd also just like to know, are you looking to raise money? Have you raised any money, sort of what the end goal is, Gordon Collier: Yeah. No, I have not raised any money. Honestly, I've kind of stayed away from that for the time being, mainly because I'm just not at that point yet, but the platform is definitely continuing to grow. I'm seeing increased folks who are interested in the platform, want to learn more. As far as the price is concerned right now, basically have a standard plan, which includes basically five job ads per month. They're basically like parking lots, so you can do five jobs per month, you can put whatever jobs you want into that slot and then you get one employer branded podcast, and that's 400 per month, that's billed yearly. Then there's a premium plan, which is 550 per month, you basically seven job ad slots and two podcasts. So you get the employer branded podcast and then one career spotlight podcast. If we want to do more than that, then we can talk through, we can talk about what that looks like, how many jobs they want to post and what their strategy is. Joel: Very good, very good. Well, that ends our Q&A session. Are you ready to face the Squad? Chad: Uh-oh! Gordon Collier: I am. Joel: Chad have at it? Chad: All right, Gordon, I have to say that I obviously, am a big fan of audio. Hello, podcaster. The thing that I'm always worried about is adoption. And again, we go back to YouTube and the need to hold the marketing's hand to ensure that you can effectively use this product, right? And that's hard to scale, because as soon as you sell something, you have to be in there and pretty much consult them through, until you can get some really good base studies done, so that they can pretty much follow the guidelines. And then you're still going to have to hold their hand because they're not going to do it. Not so much there's not much market validation out there other than McDonald's stinker, nobody else, I mean, we're not really seeing anybody else doing this to an extent from a competition standpoint. But, I think mobile personally will be the driver of a product like this. Mobile, I believe is going to be the driver of this, especially Google Assistant, not the Google home per se, but the actual mobile app, voice is going to be even bigger. Overall, this is also a big vanity play for a brand and it's people, if they can hear themselves, if they can be a part of the process, if they can extend themselves as the voice of the brand itself, you're going to get some money just because of that vanity play. So I think overall because of the growth of audio and the egos of HR and TA and the vanity play, I think this is a winner. So I'm going to give you a big applause. Gordon Collier: All right. Thank you. Joel: Wow! All right Gordon, my turn. Gordon Collier: All right. Joel: We mentioned cool factor, right? Video's cool and the Internet's cool. You know what else was cool? QR codes were cool at one point. One of the big... I have a few challenges with the business, the underlying thing I'll go through first, but then I'll go to a macro challenge I think that you're going to have. But let's dig in a little bit, first of all, I think you've got to broaden the job content. It can't just be your folks, it's got to be hundreds of thousands of jobs. Everyone that says, "I need a job in whatever zip code," needs to have jobs and certain categories and segments. And that has to happen for you to get any kind of major traction with a product like this. The other thing is I think you're going to have to eventually enable people to apply to these jobs with their voice, like to say, "Text me," and then you text a link to the job and then I go through the traditional apply process. I think that has to change ultimately. And it and chatbots are doing this now, it's just through texting as opposed to my voice. But I think voice, that hurdle has to be something that you clear at some point. And then it's sort of a marketing game. I think that the traction of people doing more and more voice searches is going to happen. But a lot of people that were on the internet in 1999 had no idea that you could search for jobs until Monster spent 1,000,005 on a Super Bowl ad and HotJobs did the same. I think a similar thing has to happen to your business. Assuming that you get past the hurdle of tons of jobs like in Indeed or Google for Jobs, and then make it able that people are going to apply to their voice, then you have to worry about, does this activity on voice assistance actually happen, right? And I think there's going to have to be a huge play advertising, probably not you, but someone's going to have to advertise, like McDonald's for example, right? McDonald's is going to have to go with their ad budget and say, "Hey, apply to jobs at McDonald's with Alexa and help Google Home and Siri and all this other stuff." So people actually understand, oh wow, I can actually do job searches and stuff on a voice assistant. And then to me that something that you can't control, unless you go raise a bunch of money and do the advertising yourself. Those are two challenges. Now that said, I do believe that voice has a huge future. I think smart earphones, at home assistance are happening and will continue to happen, more so than even visual and smart glasses and things like that. I think you're really, really, really early. I think you have room to improve, and I think you have an opportunity that someone helps you marketing wise to hit a home run, to let people know that search can happen in this way on voice assistance. I'm not giving you the guns, but I'm also very hesitant to give a round of applause, because I think you have so many challenges and you have so much growth that you can do technologically with the app. So for me, it's the golf clap. Gordon Collier: All right. Okay. Joel: Get to work, baby, get to work. Gordon Collier: I'm at it. Joel: And with that, Chad. Chad: We out. Joel: We out. Gordon Collier: All right, Outro: 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.C-H-A-D-C-H-E-E-S-E.com.

How about some good news? - The Supreme Court of the United States protects LGBTQ people against workplace discrimination AND defended DACA. - Target raised its minimum wage - Shaquille O'Neal is backing a new gig platform and, well, OK, that's most of the good news. Otherwise - COVID at work is going to obviously be a thing - ERE layoffs and almost 20% of Americans are pouring Clorox on food, which they think will save them from coronavirus. As always, the podcast is powered by Jobvite, JobAdx and Sovren. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Intro: 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: Oh, yeah. HR's most dangerous podcast in beast mode, everybody. Hey boys and girls, you're listening to The Chad and Cheese podcast, I'm your co-host Joel, diesel, Cheesman. Chad: I'm Chad, it's pronounced GIF, not Jif, Sowash. Joel: On this week's show ... That's a hot topic. SCOTUS does the right thing. Employers say, "Don't sue me, bro," as states reopen. And Shaquille O'Neal dunks on the gig economy. Go grab this alley-oop while we grab this assist from Sovren. Sovren: Sovren parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner. Joel: I'm ready for a little lighter show today. I had too much weight last week. It's too much. Chad: My chest was all tight after we were done. It's like, I need to breathe. Oh, fuck. Joel: Oh my God. Yeah. I had to just hang with my kids for a few hours. Like, good God, let's talk about SpongeBob or something. Chad: Well, there'll be some light points in this one. But I'm sure there will be some smack you in the face points. And I'd like to start out actually with a shout out to Baker Mayfield. Believe it or not, he says when and if let's say, the NFL actually starts playing games, he says he's going to take a knee. Joel: I think it's fine. And I think that the NFL tripped over its own dick by saying that players shouldn't do that. I think GMs and owners did the same thing. Chad: Right. Joel: America has changed more in the last three months than it has in the last, maybe 30 years. Chad: Taking a knee doesn't seem like a big fucking deal anymore. Joel: No. We've talked about this before the the black-gloved olympians. Chad: Yeah. 60's. Joel: That was a historic moment and nothing was wrong with it. Those guys were vilified for sure. But damn, 30 years on, we're still having these issues 40, 50 years on. And so much change has happened that's been positive. I say, let's keep it going. Chad: I just want to put in a little context though, a little history. Kaep was sitting at first, right? It was actually an army special forces dude, Nate Boyer, who had a conversation with Kaep and said that he believed if Kaep was going to protest, he should take a knee, which is one of the things that we do in the military when we lose a friend, when we lose a comrade, right? It's sign of reverence. And not to mention, this was never about the flag, it was about bringing awareness to Black Lives Matter protesting and obviously the treatment of Blacks. Now, the thing for me, personal story, Nate Boyer was actually one of my trainees in basic training. So he was one of my guys that we had prepped to send off to the special forces and to be able to see that, it's like, Holy shit, it's a small world. Joel: Well, the irony to me is, and then you're a military guy and I know you're sensitive to this possibly, but the flag to me represents the freedom to burn the flag. Does that make sense? Chad: Does. It hurts. Joel: There's a great pro historically of, I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The flag represents the ability to disrespect it. If that makes sense. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. It's something I would never do, but this is one of the things that my seniors at the time, because I was a dumb, a buck sergeant, and we actually saw protests where individuals were burning the flags, and I got all flamed up and he's like, "Dude, this is why we're here. So they can do that." Joel: Wow. Chad: I was young. Yeah. It's one of those things that we have to understand as a people that is not something that we have to agree on, but that's what this country was built on, was, we don't have to agree, we can debate those things and have an opinion, but we have the freedom to be able to do that. And unfortunately, as we've seen with Black Lives Matter in this case coming full circle, Blacks over centuries have not had the same freedoms that we have, or privilege as we do, as White do. Joel: If Adam Gordon has trouble with Michael Jordan and LeBron James, he's going to be totally, totally miffed at Baker Mayfield. He's going to have to Google the shit out of that. Sorry, Gordon. Shout out to Reed Hastings, I know everyone out there has been binge watching. Netflix, Reed Hastings is the founder and CEO. Committed $120 million this week to Historically Black Colleges. Which is putting your money where your mouth is. And so shout out to Reed, another CEO with a lot of money putting it to good use. Chad: Shout out to Bill Mussman. He loves the podcast and said, "We inspire him to think, question and act." Thanks Bill, we'll continue to do just that. Joel: Scary world when we're pushing that envelope. Shout out to PepsiCo, who is eliminating the Aunt Jemima brand of pancakes. Many people have enjoyed Aunt Jemima pancakes in their life, maybe not knowing that it was sort of racially charged brand, built back in the 30's, I believe. 20's. 30's. To me, this is a layup for PepsiCo. This is long overdue, clearly racist, caricature, and glad to see Aunt Jemima gone. Shout out to PepsiCo for doing the right thing. Chad: Yeah. I would say when you talk about micro-aggressions, that might be a little bit bigger than a micro-aggression. Joel: Now, does Mrs. Butterworth get the axe next? Is the question. Chad: It'd be the easiest thing to do. A couple of shout outs, first to Adam Chambers, founder, CEO of Applichat and Joel's- SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: ... Spirit animal. Thanks for the thanks for the Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage Bourbon, it goes down smooth. And thank you Shazam, from Joveo, for the second bottle of bourbon. That's right. The second bottle of bourbon in 30 days. A wonderful Woodford Reserve Double Oaked select edition. It is so good. Joel: I'm convinced people think we're better drunk. I don't know what that says about us, but keep the liquor coming folks. Chad: I'd say I agree. Joel: It's much easier to record these things and live with Chad, if I'm drunk. Chad: Ask Julie. Joel: Oh, man. Okay. Shout out to a Clorox, who's seeing increased sales. A new story this week says that 19% of Americans are putting Clorox and other bleach products on their food to kill COVID. I got nothinng. Chad: Yeah. I got fucking nothing. 2020 is going to be the year of the Darwin Awards. There are going to be so many people who die of stupidity. It's evolution. Right? It's thinning the herd. Okay. Have fun with that. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Big shout out to Przemek Berendt, who is the CEO of Talent Alpha, for the latest Firing Squad, did a great job. If you haven't heard it yet, go to chadcheese.com, just look for Firing Squads, they're all right there. Joel: Very nice. I just remembered this, because you mentioned the booze. Last Sunday was National Bourbon Day. I'm sure you celebrated as I did with a- Joel: ... With a variety of the dark stuff, very tasty. Chad: Last but not least, James Ellis wrote a book, it's called Talent Chooses You. Find it on Amazon. And James is a friend and I think he's- SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: He's contractually obligated to put us in every book he writes from here forward. Joel: That's fake news. But I think we both are in the book, which is nice. Ellis is not a fan of Twitter, who's in my shout outs for launching audio tweets. I'm not sure how we feel about this. And recording a podcast, knowing that the variety of sound quality really varies based on what you use, I can't imagine that audio tweets are going to be worth listening to, it's just going to be a mass garbled piece of shit. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But it could be a thing. Another shout out from me goes to Trade Hounds, wanting to be the LinkedIn of the construction industry. Sure, they need LinkedIn too. Raised 3.2 million this week in seed funding. And I don't know if there's a shout out or a big boo, depending on the way you look at it, but Zuckerberg announced that you'll be able to opt out of political ads on Facebook. I'm guessing that finding that off switch is going to be really difficult, they're not going to make it super easy. And this to me is just window dressing to try to keep Zuck out of the news for not giving a shit about the First Amendment. Chad: Yeah. Well, we just need to shut all that shit down. This is a much larger discussion, but we need to shut all that shit down. And doing a recap, yesterday was a busy day on my schedule. Adam Gordon, Hung Lee, my brilliant wife, Julie and myself had a pretty awesome debate/discussion on the Facebook cost of living salary adjustment that they're doing for remote workers. One of the things that you and I disagreed on. Adam also disagreed, so we had a debate on it. It was pretty fun. And right after that, you remember, I was also in a discussion like two hours later with [Boss Von de Hartford 00:10:46.14], I can't fucking say her name. Boss, I'm sorry. Joel: Easy for you to say. Chad: And [Awana Ayochesku 00:10:52.07], that one was called Future of Recruitment Tech. That was fun. It was close to an hour. Joel: Any surprises? Any curve balls out there? Chad: One of the things that ... When we were talking about the Facebook conversation, Julie had some great points. She went off on her own, did her own research, we kind of did our own things, and she had some great points with regard to redistribution of wealth, population density, those types of things. And that's why we have these discussions, just to at least spark it, and then they might grow. And this one definitely grew. The tech conversation, Awana, she is a talent acquisition leade in the organization that she works in and it's across the pond. And it was really cool just to have more of a global conversation about technology. And to be quite frank, we are growing so much closer together, between North America and Europe and Asia pack in how we're feeling and using tech. We used to be anywhere from three to five years ahead of everybody else in the world, but we're getting closer as much faster. Joel: Yeah. Did you say Julie did research before this podcast? Chad: Before the debate. Joel: I should try that sometime. Research before the interview. I want to know why you guys are on video, and she was a block image. Chad: I have no clue. I have no clue. Not to mention, this thing was at eight o'clock in the morning, she got up, did the makeup thing, the hair thing, she looked great. And then Hung Lee had like bed head, and it would have been great to see them next to each other, that would be awesome contrast. But for some reason, she couldn't get the Zoom video to work for her. Joel: Yeah. Hung Lee and I are going to the same barber apparently, here in the pandemic radar. My guess was, when I watched it, was that she didn't want any visual proof of associating herself with you three meatheads. But according to you, it was a little bit different than that. That was my first assumption, like, no way that she want to be associated with these idiot. It's enough that she's married to you. Chad: Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Joel: Says you. Chad: Says me. Joel: I'm your work wife, I might say different. Chad: Yeah. Well, I also have Jobg8 iSummit. I'll be moderating a panel on June 24th. Go to jobg8.com for more info. It's a free summit brought to you by Jobg8, So just register there, jobg8, J-OB-G-8.com. Joel: They love you over on the other end of the pond, man. What what's going on? You got like Scottish- Chad: I'm getting action. Joel: .. English. Like, what's the secret? Chad: Well, Jamie Leonard- Joel: Because you're moving there after Trump gets reelected? Chad: Yeah. Good call. Good call. Jamie Leonard, the end of the team that brought you RecFest, that's across the pond. Joel: Sure. Chad: They're bringing you TA Global Gathering. It's something new, they've never done it before. RecFest is still supposed to happen later this year, but because of the COVID, they had to make a digital change and they're going global instead of just, specifically they're in London. So it's called TA Global Gathering, July 8th and 9th. It supposed to be a shit ton of speakers from all over the world. And we've created a new competition called Feature Rama. Joel: Oh, that's so brilliant. That's so brilliant. Who came up with that one? Chad: Tell us about Feature Rama, Joel. Joel: Sure. Feature Rama. We love Death Match, everyone loves it, but we exclusively talk to startups. And the fact is that there are established companies that are releasing new features and products on a regular basis that frankly we think should be talked about and should have a platform to pitch their new stuff. So we came up with Feature Rama, which we're launching for RecFest. Chad: TA Global Gathering. Joel: taglobalgathering.com or something. Chad: Com. Joel: So, we're bringing Nexxt. We're bringing XOR, our most recent Death Match winner. We're bringing Jobvite. And we're bringing HiringSolved into the ring, fighting it out over the newest and best features that they each have. We had our first interview yesterday; we have three today. So I'm hopped up on coffee, and it's going to be dope. July 8th and 9th is when these things will go live, we're going to have a championship belt, the bad-ass belt of technology or something like that, we're calling it. We're excited to see how this turns out and I'm excited to see who wins this thing. There's going to be some really good competition. Chad: Yeah. And it's free. So go to taglobalgathering.com, register. Ton of content. And to be quite frank, I'm really starting to dig these digital events. I want to go to the real live events. I want to go to the real live events, don't get me wrong. But TAtech is really starting to get it down. Talent tech rising was damn good and Symphony Talent Transform had some ridiculous content- Joel: I'll give you that. Chad: ... And the experience box was over the top. So I think companies are really starting to understand that they can create an experience that goes well beyond that of what we're used to just doing, fucking webinars or Zoom calls. Joel: Yeah. And let me underscore the digital DJ that Transform had. All these things should have a DJ. Chad: Yes. And then they also had incense and candles and they sent us Blanton's. That was an experience people- SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: That's going to be hard to match. Joel: No doubt. Chad: Unless you're at the base of the Canadian Rockies, in Banff. Joel: True that. Ready for the news? Chad: TOPICS! Joel: SCOTUS. Dude, this is your lane. This is your jam. Supreme Court, United States. Chad: LGBTQ. Joel: SCOTUS did the right thing this week. What happened? Chad: Yeah. So, article by NBC News, Supreme court rules LGBTQ workers are protected from job discrimination, quotes by a vote of six to three, which was incredibly surprising. The court said, Title VII of the civil rights act of 1964, which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate because of person's sex, among other factors, also covers sexual orientation and transgender status, and upheld rulings from lower courts that sexual orientation discrimination was a form of sexual discrimination. I know it's hard to believe that we need SCOTUS to rule on equal protections, but they did. And now we can move forward because this was a big win. Joel: To me, this was like almost as much of a layup as the Aunt Jemima decision by PepsiCo. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And I was a little bit shocked to think like, man, really, it's now what? Really? This is 2020, and we're just getting to this now? And the fact that we have a conservative court, but apparently the majority of States favored or had laws on the books against this demographic of folks to make it illegal. So to me, it was like, wow, we live in a really fucking backward country sometimes. And I think that it was also a little bit of a celebration for the constitution. I know that we beat up on the constitution and the government and quite a bit of things a lot, but when you have a conservative core, you have a conservative majority of governors, and yet we still side on the right side of things because it's constitutionally prudent, I think says something about the institution of our government at a constitutional level. And that the judges don't just vote on party lines, and that we can do things that aren't political all the time in this country. So on many levels to me, this was inspiring, particularly in the world that we live in right now. And this is just great overall. I think for that group of people, we don't talk enough about the discrimination that they've seen, the challenges that they've had in their life. And this just was a great win for America, and for those folks and our institutions, at the federal level. Chad: Yeah. It's amazing that again, we focus on so many discussions, focus on how do we hire more diverse population of people. And then it was up for discussion, wait a minute, you can be fired because you're prospectively gay or transgender. Joel: Yeah. Chad: That obviously didn't level at all with me or many other people. But think of this though, the protests that are happening today, if this would have gone down and they would have lost, can you imagine the protests in the streets? Joel: That would have been bad. Yeah. That would have been another 2020 trend of disaster and inhumane activity. Anyway, I will also point out that for our younger audience, if you haven't watched the movie Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, it kind of covers this issue of being able to fire people for sexual orientation. And it's just a goddamn good movie, that has aged fairly interestingly, I think. I think people forget the AIDS scare, and what that meant to society. And I think it's beneficial to remember what the world was like so that we don't go back there. And Philadelphia to me is a great movie, that really highlights and frames what the world was like, wrapped up in some really good acting by the way. Chad: Yeah. Well, I just think it's fairly simple for us to say that, humans are just human. Doesn't matter who you go home to. Doesn't matter if you wear a dress or a pair of pants. I still don't think it's happening fast enough, but you know it's happening. Joel: Yeah. The world is changing very fast for the better, and that's a good thing. COVID in the news, it's still around. I don't know if you've heard people are still dying and still getting this thing - Chad: Yea. There's resurgence. Joel: .. tend to forget about it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And by the way, Trump says, if we stop testing for it, we won't see spikes in cases. Duh. Chad: Yeah. You can't manage what you don't measure either. Right? So it's like, "Oh, we don't need to manage anything, because it's not there," the guy's just a fucking idiot. Now, from the, a associated press, businesses ask patrons to waive rights to sue if they get ill. As businesses reopen across the US after Corona virus shutdowns, many are requiring customers and workers to sign forms saying they won't sue if they get COVID-19. Wow. Joel: Yeah. So there's two sides of this, the employment side, which we focus on, obviously, people are going to get sued. Companies are going to get sued, there's no way around it. To have them sign something, I think obviously everyone is going to sign it, whether or not a court will uphold these agreements. I don't know. I think, although you hate everything about Amazon. Amazon is spending a lot of money to try to protect their employees and try to make the environment as clean as possible and as antiviral as possible. And I think they're going to set the standard for companies, particularly enterprise level companies to keep their workers safe, because lawsuits are going to happen. It's the right thing to do, of course, but companies hate getting sued. The other side of this I think is patrons. And what it made me think immediately was, when they have football this season, there seems to be a growing consensus that there won't be football. But if there is football with fans, every fan is going to have to sign a waiver saying that they understand that there's this virus and that they could get sick and potentially die. Chad: That's the stupidest thing ever. Joel: But if they're going to ... Don't, you see that happening? That's immediately what I thought about. Like, they're going to have concerts, you're going to have to go in and sign some shit. You're going to have to sign something for anything that you do that has like more than a thousand people. Chad: I don't think so. I don't think so. I think there's going to be a precedent that, if you choose and that's you at free will, to go to a concert or go to a football game, you therefore could catch something. And that's on you, it's not on anybody else, you know what the risks were. So in this case, I get why companies want to reopen and people want to get out of the house. Companies need to make money, and the economy doesn't work without people spending money. Critics argue that liability waivers open the door for corporations to skirt protocols, like the plexiglass barriers, providing face masks and other equipment and keeping people a proper distance apart, which again, would provide more spikes of this virus. What I can't, and I don't think anybody should ever stand for, is firing an employees because they decide to stay home during a pandemic. Not coming to work because they don't want to risk it, they might be in one of those groups, right? Joel: Sure. Chad: And there are individuals who have been fired because they won't come to work during a pandemic. Not to mention all these idiots that are out there, who won't wear a mask because it's their right not to wear a mask. Well, this is not about you, this is about protecting you and everybody else around you. This is about community. I think we think too much about this as an individual decision. Well, no, it's not. This is a decision to protect those around you. That's what this is. This is not about you asshole. This is about all those other people that you should help protect, and they should be protecting you as well by wearing their own. Joel: Sure. But I guarantee you in the NFL offices, there have been meetings with lots of lawyers about how do we have fans by signing some shit getting us off the hook. Chad: They will put up signs. Joel: Yeah. It'll be like smoking. Entering this arena could kill you. Thank you very much. And that's protected the cigarette industry, I guess it might protect a sports industry and concerts and everything else. Chad: Yeah. And there was also a report of what 25% of employees could be at risk of catching. Joel: Like, how fucked up is that? So yeah, a new report, one in four employees are going to be at serious risk, not minor risk, but serious risk, going back to work in the face of reopening the world. And that's a lot. I was walking the dog today, beloved Peepers. Chad: Mr. Peepers. Joel: And they're doing some construction work near my house. And there are probably 12 to 15 construction workers, working pretty closely together, none of which had a mask on. So I think that we forget about a lot of the world, but there's a big chunk of the world of workers that are lower level, entry-level, construction, service industry that are close together, not wearing any protection whatsoever. So that made me think this one in four maybe wasn't so crazy because so many people are working in this manner. Chad: And also, I thought it was interesting, big thanks to Holland Dombeck for pointing this one out, Salesforce has a contact tracing platform, or I should say app, let's say, within the Salesforce platform, which helps companies identify individuals who have come in contact with somebody with COVID. So if you test positive for COVID, then they can use this platform to contact trace within the actual organization itself, which I think is really fucking cool. And it makes sense for now everybody to say, "Okay, I need to get in and start managing this to ensure that we don't have that one in four happen." Joel: Holland is a proud millennial. I want to point that out as well. This research by the way is from the Kaiser Family Foundation. And a quick summary, the analysis estimated 37.7 million workers in the US, that's roughly 24% of adults, are at high risk, including 10 million who are 65 years or older, and an additional 27.7 million with pre-existing medical conditions. Chad: Yeah. I'd like to say, in the state of Indiana, we don't have a dense population, which helps out. Right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: But the problem is, we do have a bunch of people who are the types of the Trump supporters who are individualism, and you can't tell me what to do, and carbon dioxide and all that other bullshit. Joel: Clorox. Chad: Yeah. It's one of those things where we just have to stop thinking about ourselves, quit being assholes, and think, how do we get through this faster and better and at less risk? Not just for us, but everybody around us. We have to think more about the community, which we have stopped doing in this country. We've been more rugged individualists, which we need to stop that shit. Joel: Yeah. And it starts with the guy in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who refuses to wear a mask ever. Chad: We can never look at that asshole. Joel: Yeah, I know. I know. Well, who's not an asshole is our friends at Jobvite. Let's take a quick break, and we'll talk about Shaquille O'Neal for the first time. Chad: I love this commercial. Jobvite: This summer, Jobvite wants you, you and you to join hundreds, thousands, millions, okay, maybe just thousands of recruiters, HR, and talent acquisition professionals for a summer you won't soon forget. It's Jobvite Summer to Evolve. The Summer to Evolve is a 12 week series of free content to help recruiters brush up on their skills. Learn from industry thought leaders and see how technology can help them improve, automate, and evolve the recruiting efforts. There will be a chance to share tips and ideas with your peers. And we may even have some surprises for you along the way. I love surprises. So visit thesummertoevolve.com, to register for the Summer to Evolve sessions that suit your needs. Pick your interest or float your boat, because starting June 16th, it's the summer to evolve the way you attract, engage, hire, onboard, and retain talent. Jobvite, recruit with purpose, hire with confidence. Joel: Nice. Chad: This just came in. This might be the best day, best podcast ever. We just talked about LGBTQ, the Supreme Court today, just minutes ago, blocked the Trump administration's attempt to end DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This is an Obama era program that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the US as children, from deportation. So maybe it's not all bad, the SCOTUS is looking at stuff saying, okay, Trump's a dumb ass. Everybody sees it. Got this new Bolton book that's out, that even demonstrates that he's a bigger dumb ass than we thought before. But this was a five to four ruling, and this is great stuff. So we've had two big wins just in this podcast. Joel: Wow. This is inspiring. This is nice. This is nice. So freelance explosion in the news this week. Got a story out of Forbes talking about the coming growth around the freelance economy. It is quoting a survey from Upwork, which I guess we should disclose, is a freelance platform. Chad: It might be a little bias. I don't know. Joel: A little bit of self-interest going on here, but the research showed, 73% of hiring managers are continuing or increasing their use of independent professionals. 56% of hiring managers said working remotely has exceeded their expectations. And 62% said their workforce will be more remote than ever before because of COVID. 32% of hiring managers say remote work has increased- Chad: Productivity. Yep. Joel: Yes. My screen just went crazy. A 59% of hiring managers agree that organizations that aren't adopting a flexible workforce are falling behind. And this is a trend that you and I have talked about for quite a while. We knew it was the future or thought it was, and COVID is putting it on steroids and making this stuff happen. Chad: This research makes it sound like just freelancers, but they're actually talking about remote, in some of this. So it's kind of blurry to an extent. I do believe that there's no question, we're going to see more remote work, but those are going to be full time employees. We will probably see an uptick, there's no question in freelancers. But the biggest problem is I don't think we will see a boom because we don't have the protections, we don't have healthcare, we don't have benefits. And we want so badly to move in this direction, but here in the United States, we are not set up for it. So yes, I think this is definitely kind of like massaging the data to make it work for you because Upwork is a freelance platform, but I think what this does, is this unveils more about remote work than it does freelancers. Joel: Yeah. They are a public company that's seen a nice rebirth in their stock price, recently. I think the interesting side, which we don't know yet is, with 40 something million people unemployed, how many of those folks are migrating over to Upwork, Fiverr, Communo, et cetera, trying this stuff out for the first time. Right? Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: They have no choice. It's like, why don't I just get on and see what happens? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Your brother-in-law is a recent sort of diving into this freelance world. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So when the world gets back to normal, do these folks say, "Hey, this freelancing thing works for me," or "No, it doesn't. I'm going to go back to full time employment." Obviously a percentage are going to find freelancing, quite amenable and preferable to the full time employment stuff. So companies, I think we both agree are going to have to realize that more and more people want to be freelance, and they're going to have to find out ways to contract with those people, to manage those people, to engage with folks that are on Upwork and other platforms. So a lot of this story has yet to be written in terms of what people do, who are unemployed to find work and get money. But when you mentioned the healthcare thing, I think that's a huge piece of this puzzle. Chad: Right. Joel: And we have Steady, a company called Steady in the news this week, and this is where our buddy, Shaquille O'Neal, the big Diesel, comes in. They raised 15 million in series B funding. And interesting about them, Recruit Holdings, who we know from Indeed and Glassdoor and others, was a leader in this, and Shaquille O'Neal is an investor as well as a, I guess an ambassador. If you go to the steadyapp.com website, there are a lot of videos with Shaq. But the goal of these guys is to find people steady work, not necessarily full-time employment, but also provide discount insurance, education, expanded training and things like that. So Steady is sort of gig freelance work, but we're going to wrap it into helping people get insurance, to get educated, et cetera. It's targeted to inner cities and lower income demographics. So I'm really interested to see how this thing takes off. Clearly some smart people are backing it, and it has a pretty good chance of success, I would say. Chad: Yeah. They're looking at areas in which our economy, and policies here in the US are failing human beings. And that's the issue, unfortunately, that we have. Capitalism looks for different ways of making money, where to be quite frank, there shouldn't be a way to make money. Everybody should have healthcare, right? It shouldn't be a low cost way to get healthcare. When it comes to education, we obviously are having our issues with education and hopefully, through COVID and what we're seeing now, that's going to change. Joel: Yeah. Colleges, by and large are in dire states right now. Obviously the Harvards and Stanfords are going to be fine. Chad: Yeah. Tier 3 schools are going to be having issues. Joel: Yeah. Big issues. And my wife is a professor and this is an ongoing discussion at the university level, and this is a publicly funded university, that she works. The liberal arts colleges, the little guys, it's going to be really challenging. And most of them are talking about opening up because they don't want to lose the money that they get through students coming on campus. But if they run into the buzz saw of COVID outbreaks, that's a really, really catch 22 hard situation. So there's a story in New York Times, that if you're interested in this topic, go check it out. They talk about it pretty extensively. But yeah, universities by and large are going to be in big trouble in the next year or so. Joel: Target workers are getting a raise. I'm sure you're happy about this. At $15 an hour. Chad: Yeah. $15 an hour still ... And the thing that's still bothering me is that these are the types of workers that we see as the necessary workers during a pandemic. Right? And we can pay them a couple of dollars more, but now when we start to kind of like reopen, and it's not a big deal, it's like, "Let's give him $15 an hour." Let's pat them on the head, give them $30,000 a year before taxes. Yeah. Okay. I dig that Target. Good job. I think we can do better. And I definitely think organizations like Chipotle are ones to follow. Ones who have, for part-timers, benefits. And I know there are different benefits package for Target and whatnot, but benefits for health care, for part-timers. The college programs, the degree programs that Chipotle has. I believe everybody should look at what Chipotle is doing and they should be there now. They should mimic, copy, whatever the fuck they need to do, but do what they are doing. That is the starting point, I think, of what right looks like right now. Joel: I think there is some warm and fuzzy to this obviously, but I think most of this is market driven. You have two, 800 pound gorillas named Amazon and Walmart, that are actually benefiting from a lot of the closures of the mom and pops and small organizations. And companies like Target, which are sort of the Dr Peppers and Fantas of the retail world, are having to do things like this, just to compete to survive. So to me, it's part warm and fuzzy, part PR, but a lot of it is just survival in retaining and recruiting talent that would normally otherwise go to Walmart or God forbid, Amazon. Chad: Yeah. Is Target losing money? I don't think. I think they've got plenty of money. Joel: You've got to grow, baby. It's not about making money, it's about growing. Chad: Yeah. It's about fucking all those essential workers. Again, making everybody feel good. Joel: For God's sakes, Hertz is going out of business, Chad. The world is ending. Chad: Yeah. I saw. Joel: Hertz, 1918, it was founded. It survived the great depression. It's not going to survive COVID. Let's take a quick break, and we'll talk about layoffs at ERE. JobAdX: Stand out in a feed full of boring job ads with a dynamic enticing video that showcases your company culture, people, and benefits with JobAdX. Instead of hoping that job seekers will stumble upon your employment branding video, JobAdX seamlessly displays it in the job description while they're searching, building a connection and reducing candidate drop-off. You're spending thousands of dollars on beautiful, informative employment branding videos that just sit on a YouTube channel begging to be discovered, why not feature them across our network of over 150 job sites to proactively compel top talent to join your team. Help candidates see themselves in your role by emailing joinus@jobadx.com. That's joinus@J-O-B-A-D-X.com. Attract, engage, employ with JobAdX. Chad: Whew. I'm in a good mood now. Joel: The Hertz story is cool by the way. I don't know much about it, but it was, they say a kid, it was 1918, his name was Hertz. He bought a bunch of Ford model T's in New York and made Hertz out of it. So anyway- Chad: There you go. Joel: Layoffs at ERE. Chad: Yeah. Tell me about that. Joel: So this one hits this one hits somewhat close to home for me. I wrote ERE for years, fairly recently. You and I both know David Manastir very well. We know a lot of the folks that have been there, source con, the conferences that they put on used to be a must go to conference before HR tech sort of took that mantle. But they're in the publishing business, which is the ad business basically, and they're in the conference business. And word out is that they had a bunch of layoffs, a majority of their employees are now out of the company. Sad for them. We know probably all of them, we've met them at some point, hope that they land on their feet. But it's obviously tough times if you're doing conferences, even if they're virtual. And if you're in the publishing business, particularly in this business to have people, that are vendors that rely on people hiring to make money, their ad dollars are certainly shrinking up or going away. Chad: Right. Joel: So it's hard to make a living on that end. So, yeah, I expect them not to be the first. David is pretty savvy from a business perspective, so I know that he acts quickly on these things. But I also expect them to bounce back when the world comes back and make their way into our schedules every year as a must see event, as they put on their conferences. Chad: Yeah. This is really kind of nostalgic, right? Because 10 years ago, or what have you, ERE was the place, that's where you got your info. That was the one of the major places, right? Joel: Yup. Chad: And ERE, the actual events, that was the go to events for the industry. I have to, and this is a hard question, man, because I love David and the group, and I think they've done just a great job over the years, but they had competition come in and take market share, and I just didn't see the kind of evolution that a company needs to have within their organization. Obviously there's still a ton of content, that they've been putting out and events, but it just really to me, and this is me, you tell me different, because you're definitely closer. Joel: Sure. Chad: They just don't feel much different than they did 10 years ago. Joel: Yeah. I think there was a time, before HR tech and back in the 2000s, there were maybe four or five shows. Kennedy and [Onrak 00:42:56.20] and a few others that have also gone by the wayside, ERE was a must go to event. And they had shows in San Diego, in Florida, they were great destinations sites. I think Vegas, they had it one year. But David stepped down for a short period and things really changed from a strategy perspective. Chad: Yeah. Good point. Joel: It used to be a place where, hey, if you had a blog or a Twitter account, you wanted to be there, either it was free to go or cheap to go. These are the people that spoke at those events. Vendors wanted to be interviewed by those folks and put on their blogs and whatnot. And those folks who were the taste makers, so to speak, were sort of pushed out. It was a pay to play. It was executive level type stuff. And it really lost, I guess the cool factor. And people went to HR tech, they went to LinkedIn's event and company sponsored events. And then when David came back a few years ago, I guess it was maybe '13, '14, '12, somewhere around there, it started to get back to what it was. SourceCon was always pretty cool, which they had acquired at one point early on. But I know that some of the latest events were as well attended and registered attendees were as high as they were back in '06, '07, '08, during the heyday. So they were certainly on the way back, obviously still a lot of competition, but there were obviously people that had money and budgets to go to a lot of shows. Chad: Right. Joel: And that just dried up overnight. So it's sad to see a conference sort of on the way back have to face the tsunami that is coronavirus. Whether they make it back or not, I guess time will tell. Chad: We can only hope that, obviously they can find either some way digitally, or maybe live events some day, to find their way back to that path. But again, I forgot CEO change, that was a huge riff in the industry. Joel: Yeah. Chad: It pissed a lot of people off. And it was good that Dave did come back, because he knew what the original vision was. And that was something that the community embraced. They did, they embraced it whole-heartedly. And yeah, I agree that, unfortunately that change, that CEO change and the change of vision did create some impact. Joel: No doubt. No doubt. Which is why we can't get rid of each other, because the show would never be the same without both Chad and Cheese. Chad: Yes. Joel: And with that, we out. Chad: We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? Podcast. With Chad, with 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, there are 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. It's so weird. We out.

This is the 14th straight week more than a million people have filed for jobless claims, since the pandemic began. So, how's your week going? On this week's episode, the boys dive headfirst into Entelo's dumpster fire big brands unfriend Facebook Glassdoor gets pulled into Indeed's Death Star and... CareerBuilder tip-toes into 2018 with an update. As usual, powered by the best in the business - Sovren, Jobvite and JobAdx. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. Intro: 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: Oh, yeah. This is the 14th straight week. More than a million people have filed for jobless claims in the U.S since the pandemic began. So how's your week going? Welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast, aka Chad and Cheese. I'm your cohost Joel, my three-year-old woke me way too early this morning, Cheeseman. Chad: I am Chad, mask the fuck up, Sowash. Joel: And on this week's episode, we dive head first into Entelo's dumpster fire, big brands unfriend Facebook, and CareerBuilder tiptoes into 2018 with an update. I miss 2018. JobAdX: Stand out in a feed full of boring job ads with a dynamic, enticing video that showcases your company culture, people, and benefits with JobAdX. Instead of hoping that job seekers will stumble upon your employment branding video, JobAdX seamlessly displays it in the job description while they're searching, building a connection, and reducing candidate drop-off. You're spending thousands of dollars on beautiful, informative employment branding videos that just sit on a YouTube channel begging to be discovered. Why not feature them across our network of over 150 job sites to proactively compel top talent to join your team? Help candidates see themselves in your role by emailing joinus@jobadx.com. That's joinus@J-O-B-A-D-X.com. Attract, engage, employ with JobAdX. Chad: We're peaking again. I've been in this goddamn house for months. Okay? I've been doing things right, I've been putting a mask on, I've been doing those things. Joel: Indiana is doing okay. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Indiana is all right. That’s right. Chad: Thank you. Thanks for calling me. Joel: Florida is going to Florida. Texans are going to Texan. Chad: California. Joel: And Arizona same thing. Chad: California was fucking nasty. It was over 7,000 cases yesterday. I mean, it's just, yes, we're I think lucky enough to an extent, to live in a less densely populated area, but overall man, you're watching this stuff going. What the F, really guys, I mean seriously. Joel: The shock to me and people outside of the U.S that listen will probably not understand this, but the mass thing being politicized, just blows me away. But you get a sense when you go out, people who don't wear masks, they do it proudly. As if, F you to the establishment or whatever they're saying F you too, and healthcare should not be politicized in this way at all. It's just really strange. We live in strange, strange times Chad: There was a video yesterday that I watched and I just couldn't believe it. This lady was saying that the mask was the devil and I mean, it's just like, where do this- Joel: I saw the same thing. That was great. Chad: ... Where do this people come from? Joel: Yeah, you're going to hell. Chad: Yes. Joel: Yeah, you're going to hell. Yeah. Chad: You prayed before this council meeting, who are you praying to? The devil? It's like, Jesus, fucking, why are Americans so fucking stupid? Joel: Yeah. We've gone from medieval time where the devil sent us the virus to now the devil is making us wear masks to fend for ourselves from the virus. Chad: Yes. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Oh, good God. Joel: Evolution baby, evolution. Well, let's get to shout outs. First of all, how was your Father's Day? Let's cover that real quick. Chad: Father's Day was pretty amazing. Got to relax. Had the dinner made. Julie was like, "What do you want?" I'm like, "Whatever you want to make me." And we had just had a great dinner, great day. Joel: Chocolate covered strawberries- Chad: Awesome. Joel: ... and champagne. Chad: It can't get any better than just sitting back relaxing. Joel: Yeah. It's easier to sit back and relax without a three year old, but we did our best, I think in our household. But the thing with me is, Father's Day is so much more disrespected than Mother's Day. Mother's Day is like a holy holiday. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: When Father's Day is like, here's a funny t-shirt and a poop card, with the poop joke or something on it. So, if you like Chris Rock, he does the, daddy's only get the big piece of chicken bit, I don't know if you've ever heard it, but it's pretty good, it's pretty right on. The only good thing that dads get is the bigger piece of chicken during dinner. That's about it. Chad: I think every day's my day, so I don't care. It's just like birthdays and all that stuff. It just like, I get to enjoy all of this, so screw it. Joel: Every day is Chad national appreciation day. Chad: Well, I'm going to tell you what though. On July 3rd, my first shout out, goes to Disney+. Joel: All right. Chad: Hamilton comes out on July 3rd. So if you don't have Disney+ currently, or if you do, if you've seen Hamilton, you are already Jones in and ready, and can't wait to watch this thing. If you haven't seen it, you don't know what you're missing yet. Get Disney+, watch it or just get a password from your buddy, right? Watch it and enjoy. Joel: Yeah. You know I have not seen Hamilton, but I'm going to be forced to watch it because my wife's going to make me. I'm sure it's great, I'm sure it's fantastic. And I'll love it like everybody else. So I will be watching. July 1st is Canada Day, which you know, that I celebrate, because my wife's Canadian. But as of last Friday, she is also an American citizen. Chad: Wow. Talk about timeliness. Joel: Yeah. Welcome to the shit show. She's mainly happy about being able to vote. So there is that. Chad: Yes. Joel: That's, that's my first shout out, I guess, officially to my wife for being Americanized. Congratulations. Chad: Yes. And I'm a big fan of that. Because I know she's playing for the... What teams she's going to be voting for. It's not the orange team. Shout out to boss Von der Hotrod just wanted you to get a hat-trick of shout outs, man. And every time- Joel: Yeah, everywhere. Chad: ... And every time I've butchered your name, Joel: He's the new Job Board Doctor every day, every week, we have to have to say hi to him. I'm going to give shout out to NASCAR. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Again, another more national story, sorry, our international listeners, but NASCAR, which is broadly in my lifetime and historically been, I don't know, an exclusive sport for white folk. Chad: Yeah, white dudes. Joel: Guess, I can say that. And recently banned the Confederate flag from being flown at its events, which was a total shock to me, based on what I know about NASCAR. And then, one of their more high profile drivers, Bubba Wallace, had an event this week where a noose was found, I guess, uncovered. It had been there for a long time. It wasn't a hate crime against him. I'm not sure if that will ever be figured out, but anyway- Chad: Just because nooses are laying around all over the place. Joel: ... Yeah. Well, this is NASCAR. So who knows what's going on, there's- Chad: That's so much bullshit. Joel: ... Mountain Dew and nooses hanging around. So anyway, there's a scene from this past weekend where he's driving his car and basically every NASCAR team is walking behind him. It's a chilling sort of goosebumpy moment, but hats off to NASCAR, man. I mean, talk about appreciating where the world is going and making changes that are really significant from someone who didn't expect to make those changes. That was big. Chad: Bubba Wallace is the only, and correct me if I'm wrong listeners. Because I am not a NASCAR viewer and or fan. I believe he is the only black driver in NASCAR. So the news, wearing Black Lives Matter t-shirts, before a race and those types of things, all being pulled together with the Confederate flag being banned, which we're seeing that now pretty much everywhere, not to mention we're seeing monuments come down and those types of things. So, from my standpoint, that shit belongs in a Confederate museum, if it belongs anywhere. And hopefully that's where it'll end up and all of the little racist motherfuckers can go visit it. Joel: Amen. Chad: So shout out to Kevin Lowe. Now that's a name I can't screw up, talent acquisition leader over at Abu Dhabi Bank. He's a listener. David Krish over in Greenville, South Carolina. He's one of those podcast walk listeners. You know what I'm talking about? Right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: The only time they really listened to the podcast is when they're on the treadmill or they're taking the dog for the walk. David's one of those guys. Joel: Nice, nice. Shout out to our buddies at Tin Guy. You remember the Tin Guy robot? Chad: Yeah. Joel: It sounds like they're franchising the business basically. You can partner with them in multiple countries. They now have an English speaking version, so shit's really going to get real, now. So if you're interested in reselling the robot, give Tin Guy a call, shout out to the ladies from Sweden. Chad: Dude, Charlotte and Elan. Those ladies are working it, not to mention this is the time for it, right? I mean, this is where we need to social distance. If somebody has to come in, I don't know why, but if somebody has to come in and actually do that physical interview, there's no reason to put them in another room with another person, right? Joel: Yup. Chad: Go ahead. Let Tin Guy take care of it. It's great from an efficiency standpoint, it doesn't have any of that facial recognition shit and it transcribes and records, right? So you get all that stuff. Joel: Yup. Chad: This is the perfect time for those guys to really just bolster automation. And we're seeing a lot of that. Joel: No doubt. Chad: Big shout out to Liam Cosgrove over in Sydney, Australia. He's a listener, he's an old JobAdder guy and just moved over to Al Sorter . Have you heard of that one? Joel: No. But I'm sure that we will, if our buddy Liam is over there, shout out to JobSync and talent.com. Chad: What? Joel: You know JobSync is a Death Match winner. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And you also know talent.com formerly Neuvoo. So those guys are getting together, shout out to them. Also shout out to Adam Chambers, our buddy in Ireland, who has no shame with marketing. If you follow Adam on LinkedIn, probably anywhere else, he shared a video of a customer talking about dancing in the office or dancing in the aisles because of two placements, I think for nurses that were done at a total cost of, I think $3,200. So Adam man, we love that marketing buddy. Keep it coming. Chad: Good stuff. And another guy who is amazing at marketing, Adam Gordon, of course he doesn't know who Baker Mayfield is. We knew you wouldn't Adam, but hopefully we're broadening your horizons to overrated NFL players. Joel: Shout out to Ashley Collins. Chad: Yes. Joel: Ashley at Joveo is now on the advisory board, I guess, of get optimal, which is a good segment to pimp our Joveo KJ Voices series that I think dropped the first episode this week. Chad: That's right. Joel: As well as Get Optimal, who is a Death Match contestant. So Ashley is an advisor, but more importantly, Ashley is also a Ball State graduate, just your boy. Chad: Oh my God! Joel: Just doing the Alma Mater proud. Shout out to you, Ashley. Chad: Yeah. Don't tell anybody that you might want to take that off your LinkedIn profile. We were ready to hit events real quick. Joel: Sure. Let's talk about events. Chad: All right. So events sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. That's right kids. We're not going anywhere. Although digitally we're showing up everywhere, like a bad penny, we keep turning up. So today my Jobgate I Summit Panel is going on its investment in M&A in our industry. So that's all we're talking about. I have three white guys joining me, imagine that. But if you didn't get a chance to actually enjoy, because by the time you hear this, it'll be over. You can find the recordings, @jobgate.com. It's the I Summit. And check it out, this should be a fun discussion today. Louise Grant and the Job Board Doctor, Jeff Dickey Chasins, he pulled- SFX: Hell, yeah. Chad: ... They both pulled me in to be able to add a little color to this conversation, because some people can find M&A boring, not me not to mention this is not going to be a boring conversation. So I'm pretty stoked. Joel: No, that's exciting. Don't forget Feature Rama. It's first voyage over to the UK, but it's a virtual event from Wreckfest we're featuring XOR, Jobvite, Nexxt with Two X's and HiringSolved. It is a juggernaut of competitors battling it out for the Feature Rama bad-ass belt of wrec tech or something like that, that we're calling it. So that. was awesome. We filmed those last week or earlier this week, and then those go live July 8th and 9th. One of those days, I don't know if the actual schedule has been set or not, but tough competition. It was tough for us to figure out who won the competition, Chad: That's right. And if, obviously you want to see the competition, four big names, some big features go to taglobalgathering.com. It's free, it's content, it's good stuff. Check it out, but we've got to really quickly tell the Feature Rama story. So technology is amazing until it's not, I've been using this platform called Whereby, which is awesome for video calls and conferences, and those types of things. I love it. Joel: We love it. Chad: It has an add-on for recording. It's like, "Fuck, yeah, I get to use this and we get to do it. And it's really cool." And it was garbage. The audio that came out was just garbage and it was just... So we had three out of four, actually were recorded already because we were doing it in such quick fashion. We did a review, it was garbage. So we actually had to find another platform which actually Louise Triance helped us with. Joel: Oh, there you go. And now they're all recorded. They're nice and smooth as they can be, smooth as a baby's butt. And they're ready for you to watch. So sit down, register, taglobalgathering.com and check out the content, is going to be coming straight to your computer. Joel: Now, do you want to plug the solution that actually worked or are we going to keep that a secret? Chad: Yeah. Crowdcast was it, we saw that when Hung Lee did his brain food marathon, he used Crowdcast and he blew it up, but he had over 2000 people on it for God's sakes. So talk to Louise who actually has worked with the platform for a while. It worked out amazingly. So we're pretty happy about it. Not to mention it was pretty cost effective as well. Joel: Yeah. And by the way, shout out to all the founders and whatever employees of the companies that worked with us to turn around another round of interviews. Chad: Quickly. Joel: Within roughly 72 hours, that we got all these recorded. So shout out to them. I know they're busy people, but they made time for the Chad and Cheese Show. Chad: Yes. And thanks to India over at the Recruitment Events Company who actually said, "Yeah, take a couple of days to get that redone because the shit that you have is garbage." Joel: Although there's probably a curve for working with us, like, till on Monday, but that's really Wednesday because they're going to fuck some shit up. Chad: Yes. Joel: So anyway, the Chad and Cheese curve. Chad: We are everywhere, we're in shaker gear and loving life, just from home unfortunately instead of getting on an airplane. Joel: Ready for the news? Chad: Topics, Joel: Glassdoor, some rumors perculating from the podcast of fear, I guess, from our listeners. Apparently Glassdoor reviews are going to start showing up on Indeed with some sort of Glassdoor tag or something that indicates that it's from Glassdoor. We both think this is sort of a pretty ominous sign for the future of Glassdoor. Chad: Yeah. This is a dead brand walking kind of a thing I think. Joel: Zombies. Chad: Yeah. I mean, COVID is a killing a lot of bottom lines at this point. And, unfortunately- Joel: COVID is wreaking havoc. Chad: ... Yeah. When we take a look at Glassdoor, especially if it's seen as a review site, primarily, which it is, for employment brand. Many of these companies start putting employment brand on the back burner once they get flooded with candidates. So you'd think they'd start with back office consolidation, which makes more sense in not shutting down the Glassdoor brand, because it is a big brand, unless they're failing miserably to make numbers. So, they might just do a simply hired on this thing. Joel: Yeah. I fear that... I've always thought this was the future of Glassdoor. I kind of backtracked when they sort of kept it alive. I think COVID is putting this on speed dial in terms of what Indeed is going to do with it or Recruit Holdings. We reported not too long ago that 30%, I believe of a Glassdoor staff was let go. Indeed so far as we know, hasn't let anyone go. So it's sort of convenient that you can cut costs by eliminating another business, but yes, the reviews are very unique to Glassdoor. So how do you slowly build that content over to Indeed? It sounds like that's what's happening. We haven't heard anything about Indeed's reviews going over to Glassdoor. So it's not a shared thing. And I also think that in terms of the review space, I speak sort of closely to this because, I have an application or app called Ratedly that basically aggregates 30 some sites of reviews for employees and other sites, that aren't review sites like Twitter and Reddit and whatnot. But I can tell you that when I started the business, I was pretty convinced that this thing would fragment immensely, that you'd have, InHerSight and Fairygodboss, which you do, but I think their success is limited. You'd have like a Chicago Glassdoor, you'd have African American Glassdoor and that really hasn't panned out. It's basically Indeed and Glassdoor, is like 90% of the market. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So indeed is in a enviable position to where they can eliminate Glassdoor and still keep that 90% of the review traffic. So unless someone like LinkedIn, Google, Facebook really gets hot and heavy into the review space. This seems like a pretty positive move that doesn't do much to hurt Indeed. And it looks like they're going to save money and Glassdoor is eventually going to slowly go away. And we're seeing it quick and by the COVID pandemic. Chad: Yeah. And employers won't hate this at all because they hate the thought of managing all of that, especially just the damage control shit, right? So if they don't have to deal with a big brand like Glassdoor, because they were the review place for employers, employees, then the rest of them don't matter either, right. I mean, it's just, that's how the thought process is going to go, unless somebody else can come up and actually take that traffic and those dollars. But unfortunately, Glassdoor can't get the dollars. So what makes anybody else think that they can? Joel: Yeah, money's not flowing there like it used to be, companies have always felt like Glassdoor was attacks. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: They had to pay it sort of like how restaurants feel like they have to use Yelp in many cases. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Karma is a bitch. And I really think that Google needs to really look at doing reviews. They do it for restaurants and everything else. Why not employers? I'll keep an eye on that one. Chad: Keep an eye on that one. Another dead brand walk- Joel: Another dumpster fire zombie that roams the streets. Chad: ... Yes. Entelo, which we talked about their new CEO who was a pretty much a product guy, who was at Jobvite for awhile. Joel: Jobvite, yeah. Chad: Yeah. Was that Jobvite for a while. Was a product guy and he took the head position there at Entelo. And I feel like this is much like Scott over at Monster. He joined, he was airlifted to the Titanic as it was going down, if he can save that thing that's awesome. But the likelihood of that happening is very low. And I think from an Entelo standpoint, it's even much lower. I mean, his runway is so short right now. And then Danielle just left, which we said would happen, a couple of podcasts ago. Joel: Yeah. Happened much quicker than we thought. So rumor is that when the ConveyIQ Entelo deal went down, Danielle came on, had a lot of product ideas, wanted to bring a lot of innovation. And according to sources, she was really stifled and shut down in terms of innovation that she want. Her and Bischke didn't get along too well. Apparently you would think that once Bischke left, maybe Danielle would stick around to sort of build the product, with the new CEO. But either she was so far out the door when he came in, or maybe he had the same ideas that Bischke had or who knows. But yeah, not only has she left the industry, I think for ... It's called 24/7 software, I think. She also left New York, which I think she's a born and bred New Yorker. Chad: Wow! Yeah. Joel: To go to Florida. So part of that story also is people fleeing New York. She has on her post talking about, leaving New York and how impactful that was on her decision. But yeah, her leaving was big, in light of him coming on as CEO. But I also know from the source that I spoke with, that 12% of the company was laid off recently, the entire marketing department was laid off as well as most of the U.S engineering. They also had two customer service leaders, leave the company for other greener pastures, if you will. And there is currently no head of product or customer service leadership at the company currently. So Mr. So I think that's how you pronounce his name from Jobvite new CEO, has his work cut out for him. And as you said, his runway is probably short. So don't envy that cat one bit. Chad: Yeah. Get the life rafts out kids. I mean, if they're not already, you better get them out and start filling them up. I was very surprised that, Danielle wasn't put into the CEO position, number one. And that says one of two things either she didn't want it and she was trying to get the fuck out or she did, and they just passed her up. Right? And then again, just another reason why she's out so quick, so not sure which one happened, but either way, she was definitely a big voice in that ecosystem. Joel: Yeah, for sure. And then you humorously shared their about page, which still has Danielle and John on it, I believe. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Which makes sense. Because they let go of all their marketing folks. So they're probably going to be a lot of changes to the About Us page anytime soon. Chad: How do we change the About Us page? I don't know, we fired all those fuckers. Joel: What's the WordPress login and password. I don't fucking know. Chad: Oh shit, I don't know, yeah. Joel: All right, man, let's take a break and talk about at least one company getting money that might be able to hire all these Entelo refugees. Chad: I'm on it. Jobvite: This summer Jobvite wants you, you and you to join hundreds, thousands, millions. Okay, maybe just thousands, of recruiters, HR, and talent acquisition professionals, for a summer you won't soon forget. It's Jobvite summer to evolve. The summer to evolve is a 12 week series of free content to help recruiters brush up on their skills. Learn from industry thought leaders and see how technology can help them improve, automate, and evolve their recruiting efforts. There will be a chance to share tips and ideas with your peers. And we may even have some surprises for you along the way. I love surprises. So visit the summertoevolve.com to register for the summer to evolve sessions that suit your needs. Pick your interest, or float your boat. Because starting June 16th, it's the summer to evolve the way you attract, engage, hire, onboard, and retain talent. Jobvite, recruit with purpose, hire with confidence. Joel: So first of all, yes, there's a CEO spot at TaskRabbit that needs to be filled. Chad: Yeah. And they were acquired by IKEA in September, 2017. Joel: Smarty acquired. Chad: Yeah. I think, but I mean, we haven't heard anything really about TaskRabbit, I guess we're not following them closely or they're not speaking loud enough. Joel: When we interviewed rich from IKEA, what was the percentage of TaskRabbit jobs that were just, build my IKEA couch. It was huge. Chad: Yeah. It was pretty big and just another reason why to use it. So I don't think they're a dead brand walking because they're really- Joel: No. Chad: ... an extension for IKEA, but Stacy Brown-Philpot was one of the few prominent black women in the technology industry in Silicon Valley and has left the gig worker marketplace. Man, she oversaw the sale of IKEA, she's a very strong CEO, no question. And we talked about LinkedIn a few weeks ago and I felt was a mistake and not just upping the white dude into the CEO position, but finding a person of color who obviously could set that standard for culture and understanding, before their problems and their rage machine started. In this case, you have a very strong black female CEO. The question is what's going to be the process and to be able to backfill. I mean, that's not going to be easy. Joel: Yeah. The good news is this looks like there's no animosity whatsoever from the stories that I've read. She's going to be in the role, through the end of August to help fill, the new CEO role. So, I think it's safe to assume that she'll be very engaged with who that is, the process, do they bring in another diverse candidate, which I'm assuming they'll at least bring diverse candidates to come in and interview. So I think it will be a strong transition as she's got a huge resume. A story say that they don't know exactly what she's going to do next. She's probably a very rich woman. But, yeah, I think TaskRabbit is strong. They're just really built into the system of IKEA and what IKEA does. And I think that Stacy will pick a great leader and they'll continue their run as the gig economy becomes that much stronger. Chad: Yeah. We'll see and the industry is watching. I mean, when any CEO position is getting filled, especially right now everybody's eyes are on them, but when you have a strong black female CEO, especially in Silicon Valley, I don't know how many of those actually exist. This is going to be- Joel: Unicorn. Chad: ... Yeah. This is going to be a very closely watched position and in we're sure they'll be watching. Joel: Yeah. And she'll be in high demand, from companies- Chad: God, yes. Joel: ... looking to fill CEO spots with diverse candidates. So the future is bright for her and hopefully for TaskRabbit as well. So we had some raise this, this week, a company called Humanly who was a Y Combinator company and was featured news wise about, in February, in terms of winning the Y Combinator and getting some money, just got, we think as a C round, it wasn't advertised as an A round, but they got $800,000, these guys are trying to automate everything, from they have a chatbot, candidate screening, scheduling. They're trying to bring it all together like so many of their companies are and they're making noise, they're out of Seattle. Chad: Yeah. I think their website byline says it all, "Candidate screening, scheduling, and engagement at scale." That last word is the key, right? If you are in talent acquisition now, you have to be thinking scale. You have to get rid of your old processes and you have to think about what happens when business comes back. I have to scale not to mention when business goes away, because this is a fluctuating industry cycle, whatever you want to call it, we have to get better at flexing, right? Whether it's expanding or contracting from a staff standpoint, the best way we can do that is with technology. Joel: Yup. Chad: And these are the types of platforms that will get funding and smart talent acquisition leaders, HR leaders they'll be looking at these now. They should be implementing and looking to try to implement as soon as possible. Joel: Yup. I also think It really underscores the question that we've been asking since this thing sort of started was, as companies let go of recruiters and human beings that do these jobs, when the times get better and they need to start hiring, are they going to choose automation or are they going to choose bringing the people back? And I think this underscores, at least the smart money is going to the automation side of the fence. The story in GeekWire that highlighted this round said, "For company is still looking to fill positions, budgets are tight as they manage an influx of job applications with thousands of laid off workers seeking new employment." And then the quote from Humanly CEO, Prem Kumar was, "Companies are turning to automation, like never before," sign of the time. Chad: Just simple, again, candidate screening, scheduling, engagement, they have a chatbot, at scale, right? That is- Joel: Don't call it a chatbot. Chad: ... Yeah. They have a chatbot. They have- Joel: A conversational AI. Chad: ... Coversational AI. Yeah, there you go, they have conversational AI. But overall, we need to, as an industry adapt much faster, we don't take enough risks. I know that people are afraid to take risks, but guess what? That's how you get to tomorrow, you don't get there by just putting your thumb in your mouth and going into the fetal position in the corner. Joel: Yeah. And it's a dollars and cents question, it's, okay, I'm I going to hire back a team of recruiters and people doing these jobs that can be automated or do I use a service like this?" I think most people, I won't say most, but a good number of people are going to choose automation, if they find success through that it'll start bleeding into the companies that didn't choose that, eventually. Chad: And good talent, acquisition leaders, not managers, leaders will understand that this type of technology will give your humans the opportunity to be more human, to be able to connect with those humans, to have a better experience, not just with great technology, but through the human experience as well. So it takes all of that mundane shit that people have to do tasks every single day, technology can do that kind of stuff. Let the human be the human and be your brand ambassador. That's what we've been talking about for years. This is the time to actually start adopting and implementing. Joel: Well, someone who probably needs a little help being humid. Chad: Oh, Jesus. Joel: Mark Zuckerberg our buddy at Facebook is in the news for quite a few things this week. What do you want to start with? Chad: Oh my God. The boycott, so out of the New York Times, I quote, " Facebook put on an upbeat presentation to advertisers on Tuesday, the same day, the clothing chain, Eddie Bauer, the film distributor, Magnolia Pictures and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream brand, announced that they will stop advertising on the platform through July." Now, these companies joined Patagonia, the North Face REI, and others in a growing boycott that has targeted Facebook's content moderation practices. This is exactly what we need. The problem is, most of these companies really need the eyeballs and they really need the sales and Facebook has been a good return on investment. So this is going to be hard for many companies to be able to embrace. Joel: Yeah, very hard. I mean, it's essentially a duopoly with Facebook/Instagram and Google, in terms of where you put your dollars online. Chad: Right. Joel: Obviously an opportunity for the Snapchats, the Twitters and the other fringe players, but the bulk of the market is there. It is worth noting that I think all of the companies are still active on these, like Instagram, for example, I know Patagonia is still posting pictures and whatnot on Instagram. So they're not abandoning the platforms, which would really be a statement for them. And it is only through July. It's not like we're done forever. But it is a nice statement. I think ultimately, in terms of Zuck, they're not going to lose users because REI is not advertising, they're not going to lose probably that much advertising dollars because a huge bulk of the dollars come from smaller businesses than the bigger ones. But I think one angle that people aren't talking about very much, is the current employees and how they're impacted by this, right? Chad: Right. Joel: They're going to work in Patagonia, and REI, and all these cool brands, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: And then when they get wind like, "Oh, this cool brand that I love and stands for something is saying, who you work for is bad." I have to look in the mirror and say, "What am I doing working at this company, that's pissing off all these people?" So I think there's a real, probably what Zuck is most worried about is the talent potentially and how they feel about it, morale at the company, maybe people exiting to work at companies that stand for something. I think that's an angle that doesn't get much attention, but probably should, and probably will get more if more companies jump on board, this trend. Chad: Well, and I think the companies that are boycotting are sending a message to their employees. So we actually saw Tom Herbst, who was the North Face CMO at the time speak in Banff at the gathering of cult brands. And his message was simply, be more fucking human. I mean, that was his message. We have to be more fucking human, not just to the people that buy our stuff, the people that we work with on a daily basis, the people that we engage as a brand and in this case, that's really what they're saying, "We don't like what you're doing," and I know that from our culture, the North Face culture, Padagonia culture, REI, et cetera. Especially Ben and Jerry's, God. This is a message, not just to Facebook, but also to their employees. We don't stand for this shit. Joel: Sure. And we talk about voting with your wallet, voting with actual voting, the employee vote in terms of walking out or being really pissed off, is more and more meaning something. So it'll be interesting to see what happens, but so the Trump ads that were rejected, for interesting reasons, sort of using subliminal, Nazi, anti-Jew insignia, Nazi insignia. That was kind of crazy. So those ads were rejected. Thoughts on that, I mean, I think that, to me it looks like a little bit of a tit for tat thing where Facebook policed Trump's commentary. And then he came back and said, "Okay, we're going to investigate you guys and make your life harder." And then this is like another blow. So this feels like a little bit of an internal war between social media and Trump, but the fact that Trump and their advertising is sort of subliminally trying to provoke Nazi nostalgia, is really scary. I don't have anything else to say about that, but it's fucked up. Chad: This is a time COVID, the economy, obviously George Floyd, Black Lives Matter. This is the opportunity for us to actually start to come together and a leader would understand that. That's definitely not what we have in this administration. Joel: Yeah. To think that it's calculated strategy, to sort of have this dog whistle, a rallying cry for your idiot supporters and racist supporters. Chad: Yes. And Zuckerberg has got to find a spine. I mean, this was a fucking lay up for God's sakes, but he's got to find a spine. I think Jack and Twitter for God's sakes, everybody's like, "Oh, he's standing up." I don't think that he is, he's doing little things, but most of the content that's being put out really just through the president's Twitter accounts, it is either erroneous or it's just trying to incite bullshit, right? So it's like, shut them down. I know I have friends, just put it this way, who have been kicked off of Twitter on several occasions for much, much, much less. Joel: LinkedIn jail. Chad: Yeah. So anyway, I think, I think social media platforms, they're trying to play both sides. Let's hope in November, we have somebody else, that's going to be coming into administration in January. And at that point, the decisions that they're making now will impact what happens next year. Joel: Yeah. And I also think there's a little element of Trump losing is becoming more and more of a reality, right? In terms of polling, I mean, unless he turns this shit around, the next four and a half months, you're seeing an... I see this in terms of GOP leaders slowly pushing the eject button on the Trump campaign. And Facebook is pretty closely aligned to Trump, whether it's obvious or not. And so I think if they don't want to be in front of Congress for the next four years, they need to start doing this distancing from Trump. And that also to me is part of the game that's being played by Facebook and Zuck. Chad: They need social Trump distancing right now. Joel: Boom. I see what you did there. That's not too bad. Let's take a quick break, and after that- Chad: CareerBuilder. Joel: ... then we'll talk about CareerBuilder. Don't call it a comeback maybe. Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com that's S-O-V-R-E-N dot 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: Whoo. Back to the main dumpster fire. Joel: Yeah. The three years and running, four years and running, I don't know, since we started thos podcast, CareerBuilder has given us unlimited fodder. Chad: Yes. So- Joel: Or content. Chad: ... what's this smoking mirrors all about? Joel: Story comes out, CareerBuilder launches a myriad of product advancements, amidst the pandemic, so essentially this is a quote from Irina Novoselsky, jeez that's a mouthful, who's CEO, remarkably of the company. So, "With an increase of available talent, the market now is a time now for companies to focus on building their talent communities." So, Talent Discovery Platform, a CareerBuilder product, they've added some AI shit, some machine learning capabilities, that let people find talent faster. They have a social referral product that they have improved, done some staff. They have added sms apparently to the feature set, which pays great. They introduced two-way sms, for allowing hiring managers to connect with candidates more efficiently. The company said, "About 70% of job seekers are looking for new job opportunities on the mobile devices." So if you're missing out even CarrerBuilder's are saying that. But most of the stuff is not life altering, but it seems like fairly solid progress, to tech that is being evolved and expected to engage with in our market and they are getting away thankfully, for the pokemon for jobs technologies that they've been famous for, the last couple of years. Chad: Whoo. Thanks for catching up CareerBuilder. Welcome that's awesome. Joel: Yeah. Welcome. Chad: You're only about two to three years behind and that's okay. Because the big question is, who are they using to build this shit? All their engineers in- Joel: Bingo. Chad: ... Atlanta were fucking gone. I mean, it's like, see from my stand point, what I am seeing is a company who's continually using PR in marketing, to bullshit, to squeeze more money out of the stone, I mean, they've already sold off pieces, parts. I think they really, could have gotten a shit tone of cash, for Broadbean, if they would have funded a programmatic switch for Broadbean, back two, three years ago. And I know that was actually on the table and they didn't do it. So the decisions that they made, back then, not to fund moving forward, they're trying to catch up now with the bullshit sms. Okay, great, that's awesome. Joel: Yeah. And for all we know they're partnering with somebody to power that. Chad: Ethical. Joel: And they've plugged in a new API, AI solution, to add AI to something, like search functionality. So, yes, that's totally what I said, "Who the hell built this stuff?" And it's probably just third party plug-ins, then they come out and say, "We have this now." So we'll see. Chad: Yes. Smoking mirrors kids, don't buy it and if you're buying it, okay. Joel: Stop buying it. Chad: I don’t know what you're doing. Joel: Go to Humanly or somebody else. We out. Chad: We out. SFX: Adios Turd Nuggets. Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? Podcast. With Chad, with Cheese. Brilliant.. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts 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. There's so many cheeses and not one word. It's 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. It's so weird. We out.

A veteran of the Recruitment Tech industry for 20 years Kshitij Jain (aka KJ) has worked with well-known companies like Monster.com, Mobolt, and Indeed. A career steeped in jobs and technology sees him today at the helm of the programmatic platform Joveo as Founder and CEO. Before we step into the world of programmatic, Joel and I want some history starting with a truly Monster discussion. Enjoy this history lesson as we talk about how it shapes the future. Brought to you by Chad and Cheese - HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Subscribe at chadcheese.com. 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. Morgan: 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. Intro: 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 opinions and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: What's up everybody? Welcome to another edition of Voices, our Uber popular series, where we talk to really smart people- Chad: I dig it. Joel: ... to help make ourselves look even smarter. Chad: Yes. Joel: I am your co-host of The Chad and Cheese Podcast, Joel Cheesman, and I am joined as always by my co-host, Chad Sowash. And today we welcome KJ from Joveo, founder and CEO, industry icon, and overall product leading bad-ass. KJ, welcome to the podcast. KJ: Thank you so much guys. I'm glad and excited to be here. Chad: Excellent man. We're glad to have you. Joel: No kidding. Chad: We'll talk a little programmatic, but we're not going to get there just yet. We're going to build up into the crescendo on that bad boy. First off, thanks for coming on. Second, for Voices, one of the big reasons why we wanted to do Voices is because there are plenty of people that are out there who have really expertise steeped in this industry, steeped in technology. And you are one of those dudes. Give us a little bit of a history of KJ. Why did you get into this industry? Tell me how, and just let's flow through it. And then as you do that, we'll probably hit you with questions and whatnot. Joel: Tell us about your mother.. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Into the industry, what happened? KJ: I worked before Monster, for a couple of other startups in India. One was the biggest B2B marketplace in India at that time, it was like the Alibaba of India. I was always interested in learning how to see a thing shape up from a seed stage to a much more advanced, grownup tree state. And how does that foundation take place? So Monster was just starting out in Asia, back I was one of the very first employees. Chad: What year was that? KJ: It's actually a few months after you left, I left Monster, Chad. It was about in July or August, 2001. Chad: Got you. Joel: When the glory years started- KJ: Yes. Joel: ... after Chad left. KJ: I said yes before, but so ... Believe it or not, back in the day, we were trying to sell free jobs because we wanted an option to happen. And from there on to ... and I moved from Monster, APAC managing there. Having managed some product for APAC, sales for part of India, managing the cross-border sales. So we called global sales at Monster for APAC to the US. We had grown to, I think if I'm not wrong, more than 2000 people just in Asia PAC. And that was phenomenal, right? It iwas just ... from the first 10 to 2000 journey in a matter of two to four years, or so. I think the world hasn't seen a growth like that, like that dramatic in that short frame of time in any division, and at least in our industry, that I'll acknowledge. KJ: So a lot of what I learned over there, what is really exciting for me is my job was to travel within APAC, to meet the heads of talent acquisitions, recruiters about the cultural nuances of their countries. Why someone recruit in a certain way, why not. What are the latest and greatest in recruitment tech out there? And then when I moved to the US and Monster, it was even more, right? Now I was not only looking at cross-border sales in APAC, middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, Russia, Turkey, Latin America, but just an amazing experience to be like a subject matter expert of knowing everything that happen in the world of recruiting outside of North America and bring that knowledge back to our multinational customers, and Monster had some really big ones back in the day by the way. Like spending millions of dollars and go in front of those global heads of talent acquisition and say, "This is how you're recruiting worldwide. This is what you're doing right and wrong. And this is the new wave coming." Chad: Well, that being said KJ, Monster back in the day, tried to take their US business and really just carbon copy it all over the world, with Monster UK and Monster Carin, Monster this and Monster that, and it failed for the most part, in many of those different countries. Were you are a part of that group and helping them, and advising them on how to do it? Joel: Were you a part of that group that failed? Chad: Or the group that actually helped them get it right? KJ: That's such an interesting question. And only someone who knows their inside would actually ask that question. So, yes, there was a one size fits all kind of approach that was there, and that was not going to work when you're talking with people with so much of a cultural ... Like for example, in India, you call it grad as someone who's done bachelor's, I heard you call it so. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KJ: Just that, and you're looking at a resume and say, "Hey, I'm looking for a grad," but the person is something else. So, as a product manager, along with my executive leadership that time, we took a very hard call to de-link the Monster platform and create our own platform. And that is the reason why APAC grew that dramatically. Chad: Uuh. KJ: So we were the first country, and perhaps the only region, to have done that and said, "We will create our own monster." So for all practical purposes, it was the same company, but the entire technology, website, everything was scripted from scratch. Chad: Got you. So when you're talking about, like today, we see a bunch of companies in the US, start here, because this is really where a shit ton of the money is, and then they've got to move globally for many different reasons. Do you see the same issues happening as they're building? And they're just really just trying to carbon copy, and a carbon copy is not going to work. Or are there, I would say, more attuned companies today than there was back in the old Monster days? KJ: Well, I would say that definitely is changing, but it's changing too slowly. Companies are still failing and not just in our space, but otherwise more often than not, in going to international, not getting it right. Like even large, large multinationals, even when they become like billions of billions of dollars of companies, don't go to China. A small little company like us, we were in Mobolt, we went to China and we had companies which were Lenovo, back in the day Lenovo was huge, Huawei as customers. And the point I'm trying to make is, it can be done right, if you just know how to, and companies are still messing it up all over the place. It's better, at least the sensitivity, the realization is there, that you got to act local. Like McDonald's, right? The Mobile McDonald's sells in India, is something you would have never heard of. Right? So they started getting there, but it's taking time. Chad: So, they're really rushing into the market as opposed to taking their time and really figuring out how the culture is, and doing their research. That's what I'm hearing, is that correct? KJ: That's one, that's a very important thing to do, primary research, right? The multinational global managers sitting in headquarters should not think that just because they do some secondary research, they know the country well enough. Then number two is, trust your local management, and give them ... don't bond them by corporate tic tacs, and boundaries, and mandates, let them create a new version of you in the local countries. And I think the combination of these two would work, right? Doing primary research, you get to sensitize, like, for example, I've not worked in Brazil, but if I go there, I will actually go on the ground, meet at least 25, 40 customers. I'm just trying to make it up, right? Like if I were to go in Mexico, or anywhere else, I would do that, to get a feel. And then knowing that no matter how much I do, I'll never be local, and then trusting the local management to actually lead that way. But now when they talk to you, you know why they're talking in a certain way. You know the reason why, you know the cultural nuances why. And that, When it comes together, actually creates music. Joel: You were at Monster for a very long time. You saw the rise, the fall, and then the attempt to come back from 2008-9 great recession. I'm curious, just sort of your overall take of the business, the leadership, how things changed, was it all on the great recession that really caused Monster to collapse? What's your take on the history that you were there? KJ: Sure. I think I'll call it two phases of Monster history. Right? I would see Monster as preAndy McKelvey, like Andy McKelvey, and post-Andy McKelvey. Andy McKelvey was of course, the owner of TMP. And he was an entrepreneur at heart. He actually ... his executive team respected and worked with Jeff Taylor, who was the founder of Monster. And at that time teams werre empowered, right? They were innovative, they were failing fast, they were correcting fast. And whatever happened, right? And, Andy had to step out for the legal reasons. And I guess at that point of time, that DNA of constantly trying to innovate rapidly and see what works, what does not do, kind of that thing was a little bit missing. And of course, right? When the downturn happens, the downturn creates a massive opportunity. And Monster was very much a great sales and marketing company, right? Even the best ad campaigns that perhaps have been created in the industry, you still remember, When I grow Up, that ad at Monster, right? Joel: Of course. Chad: Yeah. KJ: So, they were great sales and marketing agents. Joel: Of course. KJ: But what they didn't realize, the world was changing and the tech, and the product, and the person who does that better than anybody else is going to be the ultimate winner. It's like the reason why Tesla became what it became today, right? It's Amazon. It's all of these companies were built on a solid tech foundation to deliver scalable results. And that's where someone was coming from the ... you could not even see the rear view mirror and the likes of Indeed came, and then just literally zoom past monster. And I think that's what Monster had to do, catch up. And if they had reacted on time, it would have done well. Joel: What's your take on Sal Iannuzzi and his sort of strategy. He seem like a Wall Street guy that was hoping to get as much shareholder value as possible, as opposed to innovation. Chad: Sal was an idiot. Joel: Yeah. KJ: I would say things could have been done a lot, lot better. For leading a tech company, you needed a tech leader and tech mindset, and then a person who deeply appreciates the both marketing and the tech side of the house. Sal was extremely, extremely sales driven, but without a leader driving the innovation, is what the point is, right? It's leader sets the culture, leader sets the tone of what the company prioritizes. And it was run like more of a brick and mortar company that time, which was exactly the opposite of what it should have been done. Chad: But there was definitely an ego that monster had, that nobody was going to take their mountain from them. And many of us who were ... I was actually on the outside at that time, I saw Indeed coming, and I saw exactly what they were doing. The whole Trojan horse scenario wasn't really that much of a Trojan horse. Everybody could see exactly what was happening. The only problem was, Monster didn't think they were susceptible to breach, and they were totally breached and they were taken. KJ: Until about 2010, '11, Chad, I even saw that there was a whole gender mindset of dismissing LinkedIn as a threat. Well, they were already seeing that three X or five X bigger than you are, right? Or Indeed for that matter. Right? And even I've heard the the feedback that nobody who is a serious job seeker would ever apply for a job on a mobile device. And that was the reason why it was not an interesting thing for Monster to do. Joel: Can Monster be saved? KJ: I'll tell you one thing. Right? You go to build upon your strengths. Anything, anytime in life, right? Even you are in down, you've got to identify that strength and build upon it. I will tell you one thing, marketing has been Monster's strength, for whatever it is, that DNA still continues to be that. The brand is still strong. I would block on the road and I asked people, "Do you know Monster?" They said, "Hell yes, absolutely." Everybody knows it. If your brand has a value, people take forever to build brands. Joel: Well, the pushback on that is a whole new generation of people who think Monster is an energy drink and not a job site. So wouldn't you agree that they've lost a generation branding wise? KJ: They have lost a generation, but if you see, right? Still, I would say a significant number of jobs, and I'm taking a wild guess, in five, seven years, if you look at the working life of a person of 30 years or 35 years, the block was lost in seven years, you lost about 20% of the workforce that doesn't know Monster. So, if they captured the 80% right again, I think the rest 20% will automatically start gravitating towards that. There has to be a ... right? There's always a way to have a comeback. Chad: Yeah. Well, I ... yeah. The problem is, you've got the good side, they're now owned by Ranstad, who is ... they're a moneymaking machine. The bad side is they're owned by Ranstad, they're a moneymaking machine who focuses on EBITDA and return and Monster's not giving them that return. So I think the perspective pro to this is also the con because Monster is not performing and because they're really on old technology, and to be able to pay that technical debt, to be able to build something new and really strive in a landscape that has all these amazing startups, they're not in acquisition mode. So I really believe that their chance of being that marketing engine, like you said, is gone because they're owned by Ranstad and they're going to pinch pennies, and they're not going to acquire for new tech. So therefore, guess what? I feel like they're going to be dead. Joel: Yeah, I agree. And I'll add that, from above, you've got Google in the game now, we're hearing a lot of people talking about Facebook actually being serious. You have LinkedIn and Microsoft partnered together. There's no innovation and they're not so big that they can't fail, which I think they're in a really, really bad position, just like CareerBuilder and a few others. KJ: Yeah. I guess so. You're right. Right? I guess sometimes, perhaps it's my 10 years of Monster that I feel some sort of attachment to, sometimes maybe perhaps it is because I've interacted with even the current leadership team in marketing, and I see the kind of quality they have is actually pretty top notch, on the top floor. And I believe that, even product team, there are some really cool people out there. And I think what Monster need is to stitch it together, do it fast. But I would not, if I was you, not write off Monster. Chad: Yeah. KJ: They really don't see monster at all, I will not. Because we have seen the Phoenix rising from the ashes. Chad: Look for more episodes of Voices, this Chad and Cheese Podcast series devoted to stories and opinions of industry leaders. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss a single show. For more, visit chadcheese.com.

The "brand people" get the budget, the conferences, the glory, the press. The "people people" work in the background. How do we build a powerful connection between the two? Panelists answer the tough questions about brand + people, recorded LIVE during Symphony Talent's Transform with The Chad & Cheese - HR’s Most Dangerous Podcast and special guest, Co-founder and CEO of CULT Collective and Co-founder of Forbes rated "Must Attend" event The Gather of Cult Brands, Chris Kneeland. Let Symphony Talent help activate your brand and keep relationships at the heart of your Talent Strategy. For more information, visit SymphonyTalent.com PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. Chad: Welcome to another edition of the Chad and Cheese Cult Brand series, which focuses on building a bridge between big brand, marketing and talent acquisition. In this episode, we ask how do brand people see the world? Luckily, friend of the show, Chris Kneeland, CEO and cofounder of Cult Collective joins the discussion. Chris has worked directly with cult brands like Zappos, Airbnb, and Harley Davidson, just to name a few. And he gives insights that TA and employment brand professionals really want. And the hard-straightforward discussion we really need. Big applause goes to Symphony Talent in pulling together an amazing transform event during a crisis plus, 30 minutes before Joel and I virtually stepped into the transform green room, a large chunk of the Midwest experienced an internet outage. No shit, COVID now this. Not to fear, because the Symphony team found a way to make this discussion happen. Needless to say the quality isn't amazing. But the conversation with Chris Kneeland is. Enjoy, while you hear the birds chirping from my sunny porch in Indiana. Intro: 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: That's right kids, raise those drinks baby, that's right. Okay. So before we get moving here, I want to check the pulse of the crowd. Let's go ahead and let's run a poll. Because everybody loves polls. Run a poll for me, let's go. Chad: That's right. Do you like polls. Uh-huh(affirmative), you see where this is going, right kids? Three feets to the win, Blanton’s bourbon that SmashFly sent me. Joel: Yeah. I've been up for about 30 minutes. And I've done about eight shots with the internet going down here in Indiana. So I'm ready to go. If you don't know who we are, I am Cheese, he is Chad, we are the Chad and Cheese Podcast. You can find us at chadcheese.com or wherever you like to listen to your podcast. We cover the industry. We interview the thought leaders and the experts and the CEOs and we certainly like it. And they liked it enough to bring us on to Transform. Chad: Yeah, just so, that sets the tone for the discussion kids. And let me set it up a little bit here. We were onstage back when we could actually travel to live events, earlier this year in Banff, Alberta, Canada, leading a discussion around marketing's blind spots. That's you by the way, talent acquisition, employer brand, HR, you are marketing's blind spot. We had Bill Neff, VP of marketing from YETI, on the stage, we had Tyler Weeks, head of HR Data Science at Intel and saving the best for last, always Allyn Bailey, who is the talent acquisition transformation leader at Intel as well. We had the CMOs and the brand leaders from some of the biggest brands in the world, and we were talking about their blind spot. Their first blind spot, Joel did an incredible job talking about the application process. The gasps that were in the crowd from marketing execs were pretty loud. Joel: Yeah. Sorry. I need to take a drink on you saying that I did a good job. That's such a rare compliment, but yeah. So what I did for the session is, I actually went out and I applied to a job at YETI. For those of you who know YETI, which is probably most of you, that their brand is, it's fun, it's adventurous, it's outgoing, it's a little bit brash and dangerous. Needless to say the apply process was none of those things. Chad: Yeah. So overall they really gasped when they heard that Intel receives about 1,000,000 resumes a year and over 2,000,000 visits to their career site ending in this thing, we call in talent acquisition, the black hole, which is really for all intents and purposes, we're paying hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to be able to pull a bunch of candidates into a database that we let atrophy. So, yeah, it was pretty amazing from that standpoint, because believe it or not, you know that marketing execs and people in marketing they've applied for a job once before Bill Neff even said that he did and they thought it's excruciating. But we had a special guest in the audience at that time, he is actually this cofounder of the gathering of cult brands, the Cult Collective and Communo. That is our friend Chris Kneeland. Joel: Chris Kneeland. Can we bring him on the show, there he is. Look at that lovely head of hair. That's beautiful. Chad: All right, Chris. Joel: Hey Chris, I'm just curious, as a Canadian, do you feel like you live- Chris Kneeland: Oh, is it a question? Joel: ... in the apartment above a meth lab? Chris Kneeland: First of all, I'm not Canadian. I'm a proud Texan that has found myself living in Canada for the past 10 years. And if you were to pick 10 years to go on a walk about another country, this has been a pretty good time to be away. Chad: Yes, I would agree 100%. So we were talking about you being in the crowd during our presentation or our panel discussion in Banff. What were you thinking about as a brand leader, as we were starting to talk about the marketing blind spot that was happening? Was this something that was new to you or is this just something that pretty much CMOs and brand execs they really just don't worry about because they don't think it's important? Chris Kneeland: Yeah. I don't think it's that they don't think it's important. I think it's a little bit out of sight out of mind. I think blind spot is a perfect metaphor for it. You don't really think about it until you almost crash into something. Lynn said something in that meeting that I still think about as I drift off to sleep, which was, "60% of applicants who have a negative experience, adjust their buying behavior or shopping behavior as a result of the way they were treated in the HR process." And I don't even know if 60% was the right number, but some large percentage of people were not only upset that they didn't get the job, it's they would stop buying from that company as a result. And if that is a true statistic, then that's something that should be run up the flag pole immediately within every organization. Joel: How important Chris, do you believe it is for organizations to carry the message of what their [inaudible 00:06:50] product is into the application process? Chris Kneeland: Well, we've charted offline guys about ... It is one brand, it's not a commercial brand and an employer brand. There is one way that people expect to interact with Nike or with Starbucks or with Ford Motor Company. And the more inconsistent those expectations are, if you're ... I remember when we were doing some work with Gatorade and they were trying to elevate the brand to become even more sports centric versus just being a colored flavorful drink for thirsty people. And it was all about the embracing of the athlete and even so much that they were not only looking for MBAs, they were looking for MBA students who played collegiate sport. And so the HR strategy was perfectly aligned with where the brand was trying to be elevated in the marketplace. And I think, unfortunately we have people that are diluting themselves, because HR doesn't know how to build an employer brand or should they and the marketing team is only focused on the external brand not the internal one. Chad: So we're talking about some trauma that's happening here, right? I mean, we're brand trauma, whether we're losing customers or we're actually losing candidates who really could be amazing talent down the road that are never going to come back to visit your brand. What kind of trauma do you think a CMO sees that and how good talent acquisition work with marketing to try to alleviate that trauma? Chris Kneeland: Yeah. I just don't see many CMOs having this conversation and I don't know, what's easier, training the CEO to ask the right questions or training the CMO to return the phone calls of the talent acquisition and HR people, who should be beating down their door saying that there's a gigantic missed opportunity here. I don't know that they think of it as trauma, I think at best, maybe they think of it as a missed opportunity. So whether we lead with opportunity or with fear, different strokes from different folks, but it's certainly, I think inappropriate for any business that's trying to live up to its full potential. Chad: So you just said CMO and I heard CEO. And I think if a CEO knew that this kind of impact was happening to the brand and perspectively, negatively impacting the actual bottom line, what kind of conversation do you think they would have with HR or marketing? Chris Kneeland: Yeah, I think they would start by going to HR and asking for them to step up. Now a very good retort to that would be, well then give me more people and more money to do so. Because I don't think the HR departments are funded- Chad: Exactly. Chris Kneeland: ... in a way to capitalize on the opportunity. But I think the other thing happening here to be sensitive to, is that CMOs are having their own little crisis, the whole craft of marketing has sort of devolved into what I call mark-downing. Marketing is overly prioritized advertising and sales. They've become communications experts more so than value creation experts. So it's not like everything is rosy in the CMO office and now we can add one more thing to their plate. So I think as a CEO, you have to decide if our people are going to become a core part of our competitive advantage and a core part of our brand delivery, who is the most qualified person in the company to do that? It might be elevating the role of the CMO. It might be elevating the role of the HR professional, or it might be the creation of a third role, sometimes known as a chief experience officer, where they're now thinking a little bit more holistically about all of the touch points, not just the advertising or in the case of HR, HR I think it's relegated a very administrative compliance sort of roles, not engagement marketing roles. So I think all of these disciplines and departments have an opportunity to step up and to think differently about their job description. Joel: Getting on that vibe. Part of the reason that we got involved with the Cult Gathering, Chad and I, was to bring, be a bridge if you will, between marketing and recruiting. And one of my questions obviously is if you're talking to an HR person, a talent acquisition person, what sort of ammunition should they have to start a conversation with marketing? And part of this could be a timing issue where dealing with COVID-19, a lot of ads today talk about how we're treating our workers, how we're taking care of everyone. It seems like now would be a better time than any for talent acquisition and marketing to get together. What are your thoughts? Chris Kneeland: Yeah, I totally agree. I hope one of the positive things coming out of the COVID crisis is a complete re-imagining of the work environment, whether that's allowing remote workers, whether that's thinking differently about the office space, whether that's thinking differently about the blend between full-time versus contingent, and then certainly the opportunity to integrate HR and marketing more closely. You look at what's happened with Amazon right now, or Nike right now, as they're trying to align the external perceptions of their brand with some of the internal realities of whether it's diversity [inaudible 00:12:10], or labor practices, or just being a great place that people actually want to work. As a preface to this, I mean, the reason why we got into internal engagement and then talent acquisition, was with our work with Zappos. And to realize that one of the symptoms of their brand adoration was the volume of unsolicited resumes that they were receiving, which was 25,000 resumes for 200 positions. And then we looked at Airbnb, the same way, we looked at Converse the same thing. So we started finding some trends about brands that were truly beloved didn't just have customers that wanted to buy from them, they had talent that were begging to work for them. And so one of the symptoms that listeners of Transform can do, is just do a very simple, what is the application to job ratio? And if you're getting 10 or 20 applicants per job, your brand is not doing any of the heavy lifting that it should be doing that would inspire people to want to come to work with you. And then once you start getting hundreds or even thousands of applicants per job, then you can start looking at wages and start figuring out, I remember we're doing a project with Target and Target was actually paying 20% less than other retailers in the Minneapolis area, because of the aspiration that people had, they just wanted to work at or for Target. So there's a lot of other HR benefits that come from having a brand that people sort of salivate over. Chad: And start that second poll. I'm going to talk through it. Chris, we spoke with Jay Anderson, who's the SVP of brand marketing over at, Cadillac Fairview, and his response to working very closely with HR and talent acquisition was, I quote, "The reality is that marketing's budget is bigger than an HR budget. So we in brand marketing are not going to let 10, 20 or $50,000 get in the way of a great idea." So, looking at that poll question, people, are we talking to marketing about support, are we getting that close or are we just trying to stay out of their way? Do we have a poll back yet? Joel: All right. It's a real time poll. So this is exciting. So, are you freaking kidding me?, is at 40%. Wait, I can ask marketing for money, 36%. That's a tie right now. I'm hiding right now, is 14. And, are you kidding me? ... It keeps moving, but are you freaking kidding? tends to be at the top of the list, consistently. Chad: Yeah. Which is amazing because again, when we talk to these enlightened brand leaders, again, like Jay Anderson, over at Cadillac Fairview, we talked to Douglas Atkins who was at Airbnb and built that brand up. This was something for them that just made sense. And they worked very closely with the people on the ground who were the people. Chris, why, I guess from the standpoint, don't we see more of this and this is not just a money conversation, right? There's their support that can be heard here. Chris Kneeland: Yeah. And that last point first, I mean, asking the CMO for a check might not be the best place to start. You might ask for some talent, can you brief your agency on maybe polishing off our job descriptions? Can you give me your eCommerce crew to help build an online applicant portal? Can I work with some of your creative directors, ideally the first 90 days of an employee onboarding experience? So, marketing doesn't just have dollars. They have creative problem solvers, and digital talent, and writers, and designers. And sometimes some ... Maybe all the HR team needs is a better career fair booth that doesn't blend into the noise of everybody else’s [inaudible 00:16:02]. So I would start by asking for some help, by stroking their ego, "Hey, your team or your agencies are amazing at making our brand sing, can you apply some of that magic juice over here to the things that I'm working on?" But the other thing to help your CMO understand, is he doesn't have a media budget. The CMO has a brand budget and he makes decisions, or she makes decisions about what to spend that budget on, that frequently includes things like media. And so they start to get very defensive about, "Well, I need all that money for these things." It's like, "No, no, you need that money to build the brand, you need that money to boost our profit, you need that money to attract more customers." If we've decided the best way to get more customers is to improve our salesforce, or our call center agents, or our frontline associates, then isn't that a better use of achieving the same end. So, I think the CMOs sometimes get a little bit distracted about what their job really is, it's not to spend all the media money on media. If you can spend less money on media or less money on markdowns instead of being 50% off, what if we're 40% off and we save that 10 percentage points and put it into an employee retention program. I think they can be far more open minded about what their real intentions of those dollars were for to begin with. Because it's all discretionary. And I haven't met a CEO yet who feels good about the amount of money they're spending on media and markdowns. They just don't think that there's any other alternative. So if the HR team can start providing a better alternative for that money, I'm pretty sure it would be happily redeployed. Chad: We'll get back to the interview in a minute. Building a cult brand is not easy, which is why you need friends like Roopesh Nair, CEO of Symphony Talent, on your side. Okay Roopesh, hiring companies, can't hire diverse candidates, if diverse candidates aren't applying for their jobs. What should hiring companies do differently to attract a more diverse candidate? Roopesh Nair: So for diversity, specifically, companies should think about, why do they want diversity in their organization and ensure that they are bringing that into the conversations about hiring diverse candidates, because that's how they can be genuine about diversity, because just checking a box saying, "I want to be hiring diverse candidates," is not going to help. So the first thing is thinking about why do you want diversity? What are the different groups you're targeting as you think about diversity? And then bringing those messages, which basically is going to resonate to that particular group of diverse candidates into your engagement, whether it is kind of, as you reach out in the mass media and target specific diverse groups, as you basically nurture these diverse groups once they have connection with you, is very important. Because, to your point, you won't get a diverse candidate till you get in front of a candidate. And the only way you can do that is by figuring out what is the connection point between you and the diverse candidate. And it is very easy to kind of cast a net saying, "I want a diverse candidate," but the truth is there are many, many groups of that diverse candidate and you need to be really clear on who exactly are you targeting. Chad: Let Symphony Talent help activate your brand and keep relationships at the heart of your talent strategy. For more information, visit symphonytalent.com. Joel: Hey, Chris, Douglas Atkins name was thrown out there by Chad, a guy that we love, we've interviewed a bunch of times. And I want to make my next question a little bit timely with the work from home movement. It seems like in an era when all the employees are working from their own little Island work, or home office, or wherever it is, that culture is going to be hard to come by. And Douglas talks a lot about getting employees together, rubbing them together and making them sticky, which creates an internal culture. We're talking about HR and marketing getting together in an office. How do we do it when they're at an at home office? How much more difficult is this going to be if everyone's at home now? Chris Kneeland: I do think that there needs to be a level of trust and there needs to be an alignment of what we're trying do. We're not trying to build our [inaudible 00:20:28]. We're not trying to defend our turf. We're not trying to say, "My discipline is more important than your discipline." We're trying to say, "In order to get to the company's goal, in order to achieve our goals, advance our goals, we need to be more creative in our problem solving." One of the things that I would suggest that we're going to toy with Joel for our team, is that work from home, we're not going to take all of the money that we're now saving on office space and put it to the bottom line, we're going to take some of that money and put it into other internal engagement initiatives. For example, we do a week long trip every year to Mexico to do some third world country humanitarian work. You want to talk about building relationships of trust, you get people out in the heat, away from their families, serving people in need and you start to form more relationships. We're talking about getting together every Friday on a patio someplace, and they're doing a big team outing, and using some of the funds to make sure that there's a weekly meal and an ability to congregate. And is there more bonding that actually happens in the unstructured environment of a lunch versus the confines of a meeting with a set agenda. And we also are doing a little get togethers, doing socially distance walks. So one-on-ones, but not allowed to do it over Zoom, but go meet at a mutually convenient park and get out and get some exercise and have a conversation that's both personal and professional. So it just requires a whole new way to think about it. No, it's not about one is right, one is wrong, [Inaudible [00:21:56.21] all this muscle memory that thought that the way that we're going to get work done is having meetings in boardrooms and in conference rooms, and in reality is, just as if not more effective ways to build meaningful relationships with people. Chad: Chris, I think it's interesting because it seems like the highest poll count was, are you freaking kidding me? Like HR, talent acquisition, employer brand, they don't want to even talk to marketing. When we talked to Bill Neff, who's the VP of brand marketing for YETI. He said, "Hey, I'm kind of scared to talk to those HR people." It's almost as if there's this barrier that we can't get beyond to be able to create this sync. The brand that you're talking about, this single brand has been splintered. How do we pull that together? I hear you go, "Go serve the community," those types of things, but where does it start? And how can somebody in talent acquisition or employer branding start this discussion with marketing, coming from a brand leader like yourself? Chris Kneeland: Yeah, I think most of the brand leaders that we associate with would view HR sort of like the legal department. They're more focused on compliance. They're more prone to introduce barriers, they're more quick to say, "No" than to say, "Yes." They lack some of the creativity that I think the marketing team thrives off of. So there is an opportunity, I think to reposition, what is the role of the HR profession or the talent manager, and how are they not so task centric or all about risk mitigation, but they're about building something that's irresistible to customers and to staff? And if they start using each other's language, if they start to understand each other's working styles, and I think sometimes HR feels that way because they're overworked and underpaid, they're their burden, if they have to hire 10 new people this month, and there's just about checking the boxes and moving forward, they're not oftentimes raising their head up to realize that what they're investing in and what they're building are the people that are going to create the brand equity, that's going to manifest itself on the balance sheet and on the form of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. So, in addition to the revenue, there is a brand and that brand needs to be managed and both the CMO and the head of people need to really recognize their role in it. And maybe together partner up to help the rest of the C-suite. Because, I mean, if these guys haven't gotten it right, I guarantee you the CFO hasn't gotten it right. And sometimes the COO is a bit clueless. And unfortunately, oftentimes the CEO is a bit clueless about what the real potential is. So there might need to be a bit of a groundswell or a bit of a mutiny where HR and marketing work together to paint a picture of what's truly possible. Chad: Well, I think the conversation right now is more shock therapy than it is anything else. We talked to, again, the brand leaders in Banff at the Gathering of Cult Brands, it was shock therapy. I feel like there's probably the same thing happening right now. This is not the end of the conversation. I believe this is purely the beginning. So, I think we're pretty much at that time. Is that what I'm hearing Joel, or do we have time for one more question? Joel: We have two minutes. We can do a poll or I have one question, I guess I could throw out. So Chris, you're obviously familiar with the George Floyd incident here in the States, with the police officer killing a civilian. Part of that problem seems to me, is recruiting the right people to be policemen and women. If you had the marketing unlimited budget in the US to fix recruiting for police in this country, what would you do? Chris Kneeland: Wow! What a doozy to hit me with- Joel: In a minute and a half. Chris Kneeland: ... with a minute, 30 left on the clock. I saw something recently from Bernay Brown that I really ... and she came to the gathering two years ago and I got to know her a little bit. I think I like not just what she says, but how she says it, has a certain tone and delivery that is intended to not be off putting so that people don't instantly put their guard up. But this idea of, it's not about the people, it's about the system. And we kind of reap what we sow here when we create systems that then become systemic, we can't get shocked when were simply reaping what we sowed. So I think, the police force issues are beyond just HR or marketing, I think it's about helping us understand the role of a 21st century police force and what's possible beyond just the enforcement and punishing. They're not the punishing arm of the United States, they should be an enabling arm that protects and serves. And sometimes we overemphasize the protect part and underemphasize the serve part. So I think that would be the project of a lifetime to work on, the rebranding of the police force. And it is a project that could be done. NASA comes to mind, is a brand that had to get rebranded and good things can happen when you sort of re-imagine from the top versus some of the micro-issues you focus on the macro. Joel: Well, it looks like we're out of time. Chris, who wants to follow you and get more insight into marketing, where do you go? Chris Kneeland: You could follow, @Chriskneeland on LinkedIn for a daily rant against the machine, or go to cultideas.com as our website to learn more about how we're trying to encourage brand leaders and C-suites to elevate the role of talent management in their organizations. Joel: Awesome. And I will add to that if you- Chad: Beautiful. Joel: ... don't have the cult gathering on your conference must go to list, it should be. I am Cheese, he is Chad, we are The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Find more out about us at chadcheese.com. Thank you Transformers, it's been a blast. Cheers. Chad: We out. Tim Sackett: Hey guys, before we take off, I've got a question that came in from the audience, and I'm going to throw it to Chris first, basically what they want to know is most marketing departments. When you go as a TA leader to ask for help, they have this overbalance of, well, we're going to do all of this stuff for customers. And then how do we stick in or how do we jam in a little bit of employment branding? What should be the right mix, if marketing and TA are working together on the social channels? So you think of the LinkedIn’s and the Twitter’s and there's IG and all this other stuff. How much should be customer based? How much should be employment branding based? Is it a 90 ,10, 80, 20? What does it look like? Chris Kneeland: It's two situational. The talent person that needs to hire 10 people a year versus Intel that needed to hire a thousand people a year, I think would dictate the number of resources or the blend. But I think the short answer is, it should be substantially more weighted to HR than it is today, whether that's, 30, 40, 50% more. I think until you get the marketing leader to understand that he's not doing his TA or HR professional a favor, that this is foundational to the brand that he's, or she is trying to build. Therefore, it should be resourced and time allocated appropriately as a core initiative, not something that you do off the side of the desk, the way they might think about planning the holiday Christmas party as a favor they're doing for somebody. There's a completely two different paradigms and opportunities to add value. Tim Sackett: All right, thanks. Thank you guys. Chad and Cheese, Chris Kneeland. Outro: This has been The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss a single show. And be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more visit, chadchees.com. Oh yeah, you're welcome.

This podcast was recorded pre-covid and at the base of the Canadian Rockies in Banff Canada with Paul Meehan, Creator, Owner & Brand Manager, NÜTRL Vodka Soda right after a little company named Anheuser-Busch acquired him. You can hear the pep in Paul's step during this Cult Brand podcast. Enjoy this Symphony Talent joint, SmashflyX style :) PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. Intro: 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: Oh, yeah. Chad: It is beautiful here. Joel: What's up snow bunnies? It's The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: This is just gorgeous. Joel: I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Chad: And this is Chad, I'm mad I'm not skiing, Sowash. Joel: And we are recording today from Banff Canada at the Cult Gathering Event, the number one marketing conference in the world. And what better first interview for us to have- Chad: Oh, the first. Jeez. Sorry. Joel: ... At the event, than the founder of a distillery here in Canada. Chad: Yes. Joel: I can't think of any better guests. Chad: Yes. Joel: So please welcome Paul Meehan. Paul is the president and founder at Goodridge & Williams. Paul, welcome to the podcast. Paul: Thanks guys. I'm completely honored to be in a bar, on day one, just post noon chatting with you guys. Strong start. Strong start. Chad: It's a strong start. Chad: By the way we get introduced a lot at this conference. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I'm going to come out swinging here a little bit. Your LinkedIn resume says you did some time at Guinness Canada. Paul: I sure did. Yeah. Chad: Tell me about that. Joel: So, is is it true that the Guinness really is better at the source in Ireland. Paul: Well, let me tell you a quick story. So when I was a younger man, I was in sales and I was at Guinness. And one of the first things I had to do was go out to all my accounts and tell them that the price of Guinness was going up $20 a keg. And I'm not going to swear on your podcast, that's not allowed. Joel: That's okay. Chad: Yeah. This is explicit. Paul: Okay. Good. So most people are, "Who the fuck are you and why are you doing this?" Joel: And when this? Paul: It was 20 years ago. 20, well, 25 years ago, probably. No, its about about 20. This will answer the question at some point though, about 24 years ago. So the price was going up $20 a keg. And the reason why, was the average age of a keg, could be anywhere from three months to nine months old. And my boss is smarter people than me, said, "Well, let's do this. Let's bring the frequency of orders up and the shipment size down, so the beer is fresher." And main reason the beer wasn't as good in Canada and the USA at the time was it could have been- Chad: Fresh. Paul: Yeah, it wasn't fresh. Chad: Fresher. Paul: Yeah. It wasn't guaranteed to be fresh. Chad: Right. Paul: And also wasn't on draft gas. So what we did is, we went around ... And this is when, I remember people used to say to me, "Paul, no one's going to spend six bucks for a pint of Guinness," which is hilarious because probably Guiness could be 15 bucks at this hotel- Joel: Yeah. Paul: ... But people want to have good things. And I said, "Just charge another dollar. Charge more," and ended up being just kind of at the beginning of premiumization of a beer. But to answer your question more succinctly, it's the same beer, it's just fresher. I've actually had it in Brazen Head in Dublin, which is like literally, the rumor's there's a hard pipe from the brewery to the bar. They physically could have one, I don't know if it's fact, but it certainly tastes like that. So yeah. Freshness, we need freshness. Chad: We were lucky enough to be in Ireland together, not the entire time for a week, and we did nothing but drink Guinness pretty much the entire time we were there. It was delicious. It did taste different. It was totally fresh. Joel: Little snow hangover, which- Chad: Yeah. And that was the big ... Joel: I don't know if that was just ... Chad: What was that about? Paul: That's just good living. That's just good luck. I think that's good things happen to good people. I'll tell you, there's two different stories about that. Well, I'll just tell you the most boring one. Again, I'm not the tallest guy in the world. I grew up from two directions, my face down and my belly up. But when I was working at Guiness, I was always remarking how many pints I could put down, and I put on weight, but nobody noticed, I didn't really have a lot of mirrors around the house. But I did go to Dublin on a trip once they came back eight pounds heavier. Chad: Oh. Damn. Paul: Now, that is not to do with the Guinness, so much will have to do with all the various foods and the lack of sleep. Chad: Oh, yeah. Paul: But a pint of Guinness has got 191 calories in it. So whereas like a pint of a light beer would have pretty much the same, it's 4.1% alcohol, so it's not any worse for you than like a Bud Light or something like that. Joel: Very thirsty all of a sudden. Paul: Yeah. We should actually have pints here. Chad: We should. Yeah. Paul: I can make that happen. Chad: Hello. Bartender. So why break out and search your own thing? What was the whole reason behind that? What was in your brain to say, "I gotta do this"? Paul: Well, you only have a couple of minutes in the podcast here, but I've been in the industry for a long time. And I'm glad you pulled out that, for me, I'm very proud of my time at Guinness, which is something I think of often, lessons learned there. But actually, post that I worked for many other companies, Mark Anthony Group, which is a Canadian business here, it's actually now around the world. And I worked at Sleeman and which is the third largest brewery in Canada. But what I figured out at one point was that, what I was best at was the brand marketing part of it and everything else was babysitting. And my wife will tell you, any employee who I've worked with will tell you I'm not a great people manager. It's not that I don't like people, I still don't really want to listen to them tons, they have all sorts of needs and demands. Chad: So many needs and excuses. Joel: Business would be great, except for the people. Paul: Well, As you know, I have three kids, I'm legally required to take care of them, everybody else I don't need to. But, long story short, I figured out that I could do the best parts of my job in the structural strategic side. So I opened up a company, an agency, about 14 years ago called Me&Ideas. And we've done work for, you name it, tons of different businesses with a heavy bias towards beverage alcohol. We did all the marketing for the world for SAB Miller's flagship brand, Miller Genuine Draft, Miller High Life, Miller Lite. Chad: Yeah? No shit. Paul: So I've been all around the world selling American beer. So that's a Canadian selling American beer around the world. Joel: Love it. So I want to dig into that a little bit. Your background is marketing, and so when you started your own distillery, was it you just had a passion for liquor and wanted to make it? Paul: Sure. Joel: Or did you have a passion for making liquor and then creating a brand that would then stand the test of time or in this case be bought by Anheuser-Busch? Chad: There had to be a market gap. Paul: Well, the gap was more based around my ... Well, let's go back to the original point about my strength doing business plans and brand plans and structural stuff and creative, and like not the human side of it. I joke but serious, I enjoy looking at brands, seeing what their opportunities, what gaps exist on the brand side, for sure. But to answer your question though, Cheese, on a macro level, what it was was, that 14 years ago, I was either going to open up a craft distillery or an agency. And the reality is the CAPEX is a lot cheaper between my ears than it is on the equipment side. So, I opened up and we actually ended up ... The agency to this day, is a pretty good size agency. At one point it was a 60 employees, now it's a little less than that, because the focus is more on the distillery. But an opportunity came up to create some brands. So I created brands before I had the distillery and the place where we actually made the brands came for sale and I bought it. My wife and I had a discussion, it was about two minutes long, she said, "Absolutely. Let's buy that." Chad: "Do it." Paul: So that was a fairly nascent space. Joel: So you made an acquisition- Paul: I made an acquisition. Sure did, yeah. Joel: ... Which got you off and running, and then the brands came after that? Paul: Yeah. One came in, and then we bought some with the business and we killed two of three of them, and then we built some new ones. Yeah. Chad: So, you're on the sales side, you're on the marketing brand side. When it comes to being here, what actually makes your product a cult brand product? How did it get there? Paul: There are many brands within my business, but the big one is called Nutrl Vodka Soda. And speaking of gaps and opportunities, we are all social people, we all drink beer and wine and whatnot. But there really wasn't a product in the market that met the need of the person who didn't want to have anything too heavy, and light beer's still full of carbs and calories, and light wines are still full of sugars. And we needed to create something that had a really nice, kind of very social, very easy drinking, very non-bloating, you name it on the positive side of the drink side, Plus had a premium feel good, kind of replicated a lot of the kind of things premium beer did. So, my wife and I were in Whistler, we go to Whistler every weekend. And post the third child, we said, you want to be social, you want to have a good time, but you don't want to feel all heavy. We already had the vodka brand and we said, well, let's start drinking vodka sodas. The average vodka soda in Canada has an ounce of alcohol in it, and the in United States has about, in the land of the free pour, I know, two ounces. Most vodka sodas in the USA are like, "Oh yeah, there's a fight in every glass," right? Like there's just too much vodka. So we made it to the point where it actually had the 5% level and also in the taller serving, so in the standard beer can. So we used a standard can, 5%, and very much like the same system that Perrier uses for their fruits, vapor distillation. So an all natural, three ingredient, no preservatives, no chemicals, no pasteurization, very, very light product. And by the way, we're sponsoring the reception tonight, so let's make sure we put the mics down and the drinks up in a bit, and you let me know what you think of it. Chad: You got it. Paul: But we started with all the citrus brands, and we have a portfolio of brands now across the range and they've grown to be over 65% of the vodka soda category, which it wasn't even a category three years ago. Now it's a category. It's called seltzer as well, but seltzer's bit more of a US term. Joel: It's trending. For sure. Paul: Yeah. But seltzer in the US means bubbly water, right? Joel: Pretty much. Yeah. Paul: And most of the seltzers in the US also have malt spirit or sugar spirit, we actually use vodka, because we're distillers. Chad: Well, it's saying something when Bud Light, which I think is the worst brand for a seltzer. Paul: No. I can't ... I'm not legally allowed to agree with that right now, but it's ... Joel: Guinness seltzer might be worse. Paul: I agree. Guinness seltzer would be ... Caymus seltzer maybe a bad one also. Yeah. Louis XIII seltzer might be a bad one. Yeah. Joel: So you don't like people, or at least managing people. So- Paul: I love people, I just find them draining. Chad: He loves drinking with people. Paul: You guys are killing me. Joel: Being a podcast dedicated to acquiring talent and finding talent- New Speaker: I love people. I tease. I tease. Joel: So you make this acquisition of the distillery, I assume you had employees up and running. Paul: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. Joel: You had all those pieces in place. So talk about that transition phase, how did you get them to sort of believe in the new brand and vision? Was there a new mission of the company? And as you built a brand, did you find that finding talent or incoming talent became better and more frequent because you were building that consumer brand? Paul: Yeah. I'll start with the end of your question there, yeah. We built a bright, shiny thing from something that could have been a bright, shiny thing. So there's some polish involved, and there's also some funny new knobs and whistles to add. So we added some new series of brands and we attracted a lot of great people. When I bought the distillery, it was a business that had literally no line items for sales or marketing, it was all ... The feeling with the previous owner was that ... Feel the Dreams, I used to call him, great guy, but he'd be like, "Build it, and they will come." So on the human side, amazing technical team, but literally no sales and marketing. So we attracted a lot of great sales and marketing people. And funny, one of the things we did in our business, we actually hired, we had sales reps and most people go with distributors, we had our own people across Canada. A whole bunch of branded vehicles, and a whole bunch of sales people and marketing people, excuse me. So we attracted a lot of humans. And one of the reasons why we were attractive is most people funny enough, didn't know how big we were. They knew by volume, but then they found it, wow, you guys did this with like 20 people. But we certainly took on the world, with the humans were the biggest part. And we created a culture of, as we jokingly said, post-acquisition, that our Kool-Aid was pretty good, because it's hard for people to put down our Kool-Aid. Chad: We'll get back to the interview in a minut. Building a cult brand is not easy, which is why you need friends, like Roopesh Nair. To become cult brands, companies need to build from the inside out. How can messaging and technology facilitate that type of growth? Roopesh Nair: It's easy to build a so-called employer brand in paper and say, "Hey, this is my EVP and these are my pillars of EVP." But it is much more difficult to activate it internally and ensuring that as you build your EVP, that activation is top of your mind. I've seen a lot of organizations build these awesome EVPs which stands for who they are, but then not necessarily using that effectively internally. Some of the times it's because the EVP is not created in a very genuine way. Then obviously it will not stand the test stuff, that internal activation and hence you need to ensure that your EVP is credible and aspirational as you think about the future. But at the same time spending that time to ensure that every persona in your company understands what your differentiation is, what do you stand for as a company and why is it relevant to that particular individual in that particular role is very important as you basically ensure that you're building that culture or value proposition inside out. Then it's easy to activate it because then you can use your own employees to really activate your EVP and you brand as you think about external activation. Chad: Let SmashFly help activate your brand and keep relationships at the heart of your CRM. For more information, visit SmashFly.com. Joel: And do you remember how you found those initial sales and marketing folks? Paul: Literally, most of the people in the early days for people who we knew from the industry, who were kind of- Joel: Poaching. Paul: ... They were full on stars. Yeah. So we ripped off as many best and we also paid about 120, 130 index and we also had cooler cars, whereas most would have like [Crosstalk 00:14:14.26] Joel: So you posted bribes, basically? Paul: Oh, for sure. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Yeah. It's bright, shiny toys, right? Chad: All the perks of working. Right? So what about purpose? What about the things that we hear about here? What made you different and that way than all the other breweries or brands that were out there? Paul: Yeah. It's funny that purpose is actually one of the main topics of my talk later on today. Like, what do you want to do? What someone wants to do for their life, can it fit within what we want to do as a company? We were very much about alignment. So we'd like to win. We'd like to grow. Nobody in our business had that major love of money or overt success, it's more like success of doing things right. And that sounds trite, but it's totally true. We had a cult- like mentality in terms of this, our way is right, but we're also able to improve, so- Chad: Non-apologetic. Paul: Yeah. Just direct, straight at it. Kind of Canadian-American type style. Chad: Very ... Yeah. Very- Paul: Yeah. Chad: Because Canadians are nice. Americans, depending on what coast you are, not so nice- Paul: Yeah. Chad: ... But direct. Paul: Well, I love all our brothers and sisters. Joel: My Canadian wife says Canadians aren't nice, they're optimistic. And there's a difference. Paul: I'd say Canadians are not always nice, but always polite. Joel: So you've bought in, you're five, six years into it. You've sort of mentally said, "We're not interested in selling. We're not flipping this business," but then a big company called AnheuserBusch comes along, walk us through how that went down and how the sale actually happened. Paul: Well, they were actually the last company to come approach us, of all the big companies and midsize companies and venture capital people. As I've mentioned before, we had the folded pieces of paper across the table. We had some mafia phone calls late at night and deep threat. Chad: An offer you can't refuse. Joel: You make it so that they can't refuse. Paul: Oh yeah. There's horse heads, you name it. But- Joel: Mooseheads would have been better. Paul: Oh, Mooseheads. That would have been. I always missed. Too late. It was the people from ABI Labatt here were just unbelievably cool. And overall they wanted to ... They'd loved the Kool-Aid we'd made, and they loved what they saw. Çhad: I love that you call it Kool-Aid. Paul: Yeah, for sure. They wanted to see how we could add value to their business, not just on our volume or profile, but our personalities are humans and post-transaction, everybody stayed and everyone got promotions and raises and like, Oh, it was bright and shiny. It was really cool and respectful. So the president of that company is Kyle Norrington, who's a very inspiring guy. He's the president of Labatt Canada, and you could tell he wanted to be part of what we had, and wanted our brands and our personalities, our perspective would be part of his business. And we felt the same way, so it was legitimately like a good fit. But it is funny because that was never the plan. Chad: So when it comes to branding, when it comes to attraction, in many cases at this event, we're talking mostly on the consumer side. Right? The way that we see the world is, yes, consumer side's huge, but you need that talent. So the attraction on the talent side is as big as well, which means brand is incredibly big. That purpose is big. How do you differentiate, or do you differentiate between the attraction of really customers and candidates? Paul: I think that everyone wants to win. It's like sports, right? Everyone wants to be part of a cool team. Now, necessarily would, now that these guys are part of a bigger, are they part of a bigger league because they're part of a more funded team? Not necessarily, it's an interesting thing to discuss because everyone who we attracted wanted to almost take them on. Right? And take on this faceless thing. And it was interesting, the last couple of weeks, we were like, "Whoa, who do we take on now?" And I think good people gravitate towards not only their own self directed prize, but like macro ones as well, the purpose driven ones. And so there have been some challenges in that, but what we want to do is make sure that everything we do on the consumer oriented stuff and everything on the internal service is the same. It's like make it as bright and shiny and cool and momentum oriented, and hopefully people want to perpetuate that. And we have consumers who feel like they are part of us all. We get pitched by consumers for various sponsorships, which is a great amorphous term, I'm like, "What do you mean by that?" And also just involvement because they want to be part of it. They want to ... It's like Velcro, right? It's hooks and eyes, they want to be a part of it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: One of our favorite guests on the show is Douglas Atkin, who was a sort of head of culture at Airbnb. And one of the quotes that he had to the founders, or one of the co-founders that we love is, "the minute you bring HR into this thing, the culture's fucked". So I'm curious when you took over the company, was there a HR department? Did you eventually put one in? Who was doing the recruiting? Talk about some of those aspects of the business. Paul: No. Yes. Me. No, there was no HR function. And the guy who runs our business now, RJ, and he can laugh at this, because I hired him, but everybody else, it's questionable. I'm not a great HR person, but I can set a cultural tone. We have HR people now. And there's different ... They're sneaky, right? The HR people, they use different terms like people managers or director of culture. Chad: Or compliance. Paul: Yeah, exactly. But the good HR people who we've all met, there are some, they understand their job is to make sure that the people are connected, engaged, and just working properly. Very much, like an engineer would look at a machine how it functions. It's not necessarily lever pulling, but if they're not working like clockwork, right? Joel: How much if any, does the marketing arm connect with the HR recruiting arm in the company? Or is that something that doesn't happen? Paul: Again, pre-acquisition, that was a major thing we were looking at doing, is making sure that head of HR currently, within ... It's still a separate business within ABI. That's the mandate, is to make sure that the cultural fit is not just cookie cutter, rather it's more like, how can we constantly improve? And understand, like our main product is momentum. It sounds cheesy, but we want to make sure we're doing something, and that doesn't mean we're always distracted, but we're always moving forward. So we can't have an HR department or head or anyone there that doesn't want people who want to move forward. So it's very much part of that mix. Chad: So you're going from being big, to being much larger, right? Under the umbrella, a big umbrella, the ABI umbrella. Does that change like motivation and purpose? Because when you're kind of like a challenger cult brand, that's much different than being almost like King of the mountain. Do you think that's going to make a difference with regard to mindsets and going out and being innovative? Or do you think that, again, it's just going to be able to fuel it? Paul: Well, literally at the post-acquisition, like in the announcements, I think what we're doing is we are actually looking how we acquired, quote unquote, I'm using air quotes here, microphone people, people into our mentality or psychology, the people who already existed in this business. Right? So we have to make sure they understand that, although we're standalone within, we're business as usual, that this bigger parent company understands again, like Kyle would have said, why we work. So we had to adopt people or attract people more over in terms of like our cultural differences and our ... So I don't think there's anyone in our business who can be like, "Yeah, we're now with the big guys, and so now we act big," but it is like having a big brother or 200,000 of them behind you, eight times. But you can also get lost within that. So the job is to stay unique and differentiated and strong. And I'm the fifth of six, so my job is, I'm used to being able to hide, but make yourself over it and make your cultural values clear as well. Joel: So it sounds like you're going to be expanding at least into the US in the near term, I assume worldwide, at some point. There obviously challenges, new challenges in terms of talent and culture and growing that into a new market. Americans are different in many ways than your Canadian employees. Is there a plan around growth and bringing Americans employees into the culture and how best to do that? Paul: Well, absolutely. USA is like the biggest market in the world. Joel: And the best. Paul: It's a very good one. But you need to ... You can't walk into any market and assume that something worked in your home market, it's going to work the exact same way as the other one. And also we have a different ... We're not first mover and our main product is not in this market, so we'd have to ... And by the way, I was in New York last week and the senior level people there, and also everyone I met in industry, they've all been very supportive. Our hope is on the human level, is to make sure people understand, as people understand obviously, country dynamics and market dynamics, we want to make sure people understand what culturally we do differently. And it's cool that this business, that size respects that. So I guess my obligation is to make sure that I make those values international versus Canadian, which they kind of are, they're kind of constant challenger. They're ones to watch people. So the bar is kind of always moving up, and the human side, we got to make sure anyone we have internally understands that at a base and loves it at an ideal. Joel: Strange Brew or Slap Shot? Paul: That's not even a question. Seriously, come on. Obviously, Strange Brew is a Canadian made movie and Slap Shot's an American made movie. Slap Shot is still far superior. Come on. Joel: Barenaked Ladies or Tragically Hip? Paul: Well, I'm a fan of both. That's a tough one, but I'll have to go with the Tragically Hip. Joel: Celine Dion or Justin Bieber? Paul: That, can I vote for neither? Joel: Paul, great to meet you, man. Paul: Nice to meet you as well. Joel: For those of our listeners who want to know more about you or your company or your portfolio of beverages, where we can send them? Chad: Where can they get their dink on? Paul: The best thing is to follow us on Instagram, because that's what all the kids, I mean the young adults are doing these days. Instagram.com/nutrlvodka, N-U-T-R-L Vodka. And if you can't spell vodka, then you're probably not supposed to be looking for.... Chad: And you've probably had too many. Paul: Exactly. Probably take a break and just sit back. Thanks for having me on guys. Really appreciate it. Joel: Thanks Paul. Paul: A lot of fun. Chad: Thanks, man. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Outro: This has been The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss a single show. And be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more visit chadcheese.com. Oh yeah, you're welcome.

Getting old sucks. My back hurts just writing that sentence. Anyway, author, speaker and all-around solid dude Vinay Singh believes work really sucks for the aging. He feels so strongly that he even wrote a book entitled, "YOUR FUTURE IN PIECES: The Brutal Truth: How Ageism & Income Inequality Are Destroying America." Sounds like the perfect topic for a podcast about all-things-employment, huh? Enter Chad & Cheese to get to the bottom of all this ... but not before a glass of prune juice, because staying regular at our age during an interview is paramount. **This podcast was recorded a few short months before the COVID shit hit the fan. Needless to say, the Ageism conversation will have a much larger impact than we originally thought. Enjoy this Sovren Exclusive PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps forward thinking employers create world class hiring and retention programs for people with disabilities. Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner. Intro: 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: All right, all right, all right. What's up everybody? You are listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I am Chad, young at heart, Sowash. Joel: Very nice. And today we are to meet, greet, Vinay Singh, the author of a new book entitled, Your Future In Pieces. Vinay, welcome to the podcast. Vinay Singh: Thanks for having me guys. Joel: You're an author. What else should we know about you? Vinay Singh: I spent my entire career, 22 years and counting in talent acquisition and human capital business partnering with hundreds of companies. A lot of it was on the agency side, quite a bit of it was on the corporate side. Chad: Excellent. So let's just jump right into this, right on the front of the book, it says, the subtitle, "The Brutal Truth: How Ageism And Income Inequality Are Destroying America." And then you take a look at the back of the book. Now I know why you look so pissed off on the picture, on the back of the book. Joel: Are you an angry man Vinay? Vinay Singh: No, not at all. I'm actually very funny and jovial. Chad: Why the book then? Obviously ageism is happening, we know what's happening, but why the book? Obviously it's a much bigger issue than what we all think it is. Vinay Singh: Absolutely. It really is. When I first started in talent acquisition recruiting back in the nineties, I was very surprised to see people coming to me at ages, mid to late fifties and highly accomplished. But because of M&A, which is obviously happening every single day, there's a new M&A. But these highly accomplished people simply couldn't get back into the market at a position where they were and sometimes even one step down. And I was surprised to see how long it took for these people to get on. And me being in recruiting, I mean, I was representing people of all ages and of all technical abilities. I was a technology recruiter and the speed of which people at a younger age were getting off the market was very, very quick. And it was progressively longer for older people, and honestly a number of people that I was representing never got on the market. Chad: Is this a salary issue? I mean, because if you think about it, somebody obviously has more experience, they can ask more and if you are younger, and you're coming new into the market, you're more moldable, right? So it's kind of like can't teach old dog new tricks, not to mention that's an expensive dog, versus the new little puppy that you can train. Vinay Singh: Yeah. So that can be something that a company may say, but working internally, I know it's actually not really the truth. Chad: Okay. Vinay Singh: When companies, every quarter post profits for, per three month period in the billions, but then they want this experience, yeah? Chad: Yeah. Vinay Singh: On the job description, the person matches, but, yeah, you know that $5,000 we just can't make it. Yeah, we're a multinational, $75,000,000,000 company, but that 5,000 we can't do that, so Chad: We can buy back stock, but we can't pay that extra $5,000. Vinay Singh: ... Buyback stock, at last year to the tune of $1.2,000,000,000,000. Chad: What? Vinay Singh: I'm sorry, 2018 to '19, yup? Chad: '18 to '19. Wow, that's huge. Vinay Singh: Yup. That's what they did with the tax plan. Joel: So a little bit of devil's advocate, just coming out the gate, I'm an average person, in this example and I'm watching the democratic primaries, and I'm looking at the party of diversity and inclusion, and I'm looking at their first round of eliminations, more or less people of color go away, right? Black candidates, Asian candidates, the next round of eliminations, women are gone, a gay man is gone, a younger gay man has gone. And the two candidates fighting it out for the nomination are surprise, two old white dudes. So what do you tell someone that's just an average person on the street, that's looking at that and convince them that ageism is a problem, and if I combat with, isn't racism and sexism a bigger problem? How would you refute that? Vinay Singh: So let me take the ageism and then I'll respond about the racism and sexism, yeah? So ageism, isn't it ironic that so many people in the workforce at ages 40, 45, 50 are told they are not qualified or they don't understand technology or they don't fit, yet the average CEO's age is 58. And so you can't really work in a company unless you're a CEO or if you're not in a company and you go into politics, you can't be in politics, you can't do a lot of things in corporate America, but you can either be the president of the United States or a CEO of a company. So really, how does that work out? Chad: So you're saying it's fringe more than anything else? Vinay Singh: It just doesn't make sense, does it? You can only have the highest jobs or nothing. So that's ironic. And now to answer the ethnic and the gender issue that you brought up. So this is the thing about ageism as this last frontier of ism, what it does, so to people, of women or minorities, people of color, it is exponentially exacerbated in ageism. So women that are older, get exponentially more discriminated against than men, yeah? And if you're a woman, who's a minority, X times even further. So I like to say it like this ageism doesn't care about color, gender, ethnicity, anything, doesn't see disability, doesn't see veterans, doesn't see anything. All you have to do is wake up and every day be a little bit older and slowly but surely ageism is coming for you. If you're healthy and you happen to get to an older age and are highly productive, it's coming for you. So if you're even a white man, it's coming for you. So if you happen to be a minority man, times it by two, and if you happen to be a woman, times it by three, and if you're a minority woman, times it by five. Chad: So there's compound interest is what you're saying. Vinay Singh: I wouldn't say it's interest. Joel: No. Chad: Joel and I are both Xers. Are you an Xer? You've got to be an Xer. Okay. So here's the thing. And I know we're getting into that age now, but I think for years, we've always thought the boomers have had it so fucking easy, right? They had cheap college, they had great economies for the most part, right? And when we were in bad economies, they were in great places because they had about three fucking houses. So why are we feeling bad for these guys? Joel: Don't forget free love. Chad: Yeah, free love. Yeah. We had to worry about HIV. SFX: Hell, yeah. Chad: We had to worry about HIV and all that stuff. Couldn't get a shot for that. So why should we Vinay Singh: Yeah, you're not kidding. Chad: ... Why should we care about these guys having a hard time when they've had such an easy life as it is? Vinay Singh: From a generational... So I'll group it into different generations. The boomers are on their way out of the workforce, but we are all living supposedly longer. And of course it's true compared to a half century. I mean, that's just true, overall, the statistics are there. But a perfect example is this, this is Q4 data from EPI. I'm a big fan of EPI, Economic Policy Institute, right? They're a very well known global institution. One out of five or 20% of baby boomers will have to work till the day they die, there is no retirement, there is no golden years. That's fact, it's not me, that's the real research. So I don't think when they were planning their retirement, they were looking forward to working at Walmart at 75 and going to some other part-time waffle house just to pay the bills and to keep their neck above water till, again, there is no goal, that's it, no retirement. That's what this American Dream was for them? No, of course not. This is the struggling dream, right? This is the reality of today. So there is that for the boomers. Now you mentioned Gen X, right? That's us, the three of us. Guess what? We're going to be moving into retirement in the next five years or so, right? Or some of us are already heading in there. Chad: Yeah. Very doubtful. Vinay Singh: Right, or I should say, let me take it back, retirement age. Chad: Yeah. Vinay Singh: But that's not going to happen, right? So we're going to help, in this number. So I just gave you one out of five or 20%. I say, it's going to get worse and we're going to move the basis point five to 25%, that's one out of four. When do we consider this an epidemic? One out of four Americans will not retire they'll work till the day the die, that will be happening in the not too distant future. I don't think it's going to get better there either, I think it's going to... The needle is going to keep on pushing closer to one out of three Americans, 33%. Joel: We talk a lot on the show about the gig economy and gig economies tend to be marketplaces that are meritocracies, right? Do you really care that your Uber driver is 25 or 65? In most cases you probably don't. Is it your sense that a growing gig economy will help level the playing field or do you still see problems ahead for that as well? Vinay Singh: Yeah. This gig economy is... And every 20 years, we just changed terms, terminologies. It's just a consulting economy that's what a gig worker is. So let's just look at what a gig worker gets. We see in the media, the gig economy gives freedom to people, people can set their own hours. How fun is that to know that you can be fired on any given hour of any given day? How great is it to wake up every morning and not wonder if you have, when you go into work, will you even have that job? How great is it to have no career ladder and no future prospect of where you're going? How great is it to not get a company bonus? How great is it not to get company benefits? All these things. I don't know anybody that's excited about not having those things. And in California, they're already constructing laws, that if you get hurt on the job, you can't sue. So I guess that goes into... And I'm not an expert in corporate legality and this kind of stuff. But I assume maybe that means you can't get workers comp. So where is the, all this wonderful stuff that we talk about for the gig worker? It doesn't really exist. Who does the gig economy benefit? It benefits shareholders and the executive class. If a company can hire 30% of their employees or their workforce, because gig worker is not an employee, if 30% of their work productivity is coming from a gig employee, well, they don't have to pay those people benefits, that's a huge savings. Where does that money go? I don't know. Joel: Shareholders. Vinay Singh: Shareholders and executive class? Sure, why not? Joel: We also talk a lot on the show about automation and how robots are going to put all of us out of work anyway. So what are your thoughts on automation and aren't we all really screwed anyway, no matter our age? Vinay Singh: But we're so, so excited to implement AI technology into HR or TA and into marketing and everything else, right? We're all so enthusiastic to see the elimination of our future careers or at least that's what it's touted, right? How excited we're all are about AI and tech which will eliminate our jobs. So there's that, but if there are better jobs, which is the counter to that, right? The menial jobs, the jobs that have minimal, tasks that are repetitive and redundant, right? If those things go into automation and that frees people up to be more creative, then that would be a good thing. But that in turn requires probably more education and more reskilling, but are companies putting that money into reskilling, which brings me back to ageism, then why are people fearing for their careers at ages 35 in San Francisco, believe it or not, and 40 in New York, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, et cetera, et cetra? And that's really where ageism is happening, 66% of not blue collar, or coal miner, or a rust belt. I'm saying 40 to 66% of people ages 40 to 45 in white collar IT jobs fear for their career, jumps to over 90% at age 50. So this is a whole group of qualified workforce that has already proven to be productive, but we're not reskilling them. So then what are we doing? Why are we creating this ageless culture and making it harder for these people to either retain their jobs or move up? Chad: And I think you're right as you grow older, it becomes a bigger problem. Companies don't want to put money into reskilling, they don't want to put money into wages. They don't want to put money into the areas in which they actually grow their company. They grow their company off their employees. The employees make products, the employees provide the services. The individuals at the top, the CEO is getting paid 1500 times that of the person actually doing the hard work, we have a fundamental issue in understanding how our system should work, capitalism combined with some type of redistribution of prosperity, whether it's wealth, whether whatever it is, our middleclass is getting fucked. And in this whole conversation, the individuals who are in the middle-class are older for the most part, so therefore they're definitely going to be in the higher realm of getting fucked. So, I mean, this is a hard question to answer because there are so many fucked up problems in our economy and the way that our government deals with corporate America today, right? Vinay Singh: Well, so you've mentioned two things. So from an ageist culture, you had said, "We're getting older and this is happening." But here's the kicker, we're making... Ageism is creeping younger and younger and younger, ageism was happening 20, 30 years ago when you were in your fifties. Now it's permeating the age 35 and up class. So we're telling people in San Francisco get out of the way you're too old at 35. So that's what I'm trying to say, it's so counterproductive to just human life and the ability to generate equity, A. But what are we doing when we're telling people you're no longer relevant at ages 35 and 40, that's not old, that's prime. So it's a perversion. That's what ageism and ageist culture is, it's perverted. So that's what I wanted to say about, ageism is not just about older people. It's quite frankly, we're creating people that are younger and making them deemed as older when they're not. So there's that. And I think that is a huge problem and that is a corporate culture problem, and it is also a social problem. And when you combine these two together, I mean, that's, we get all our... We go to work, we spend at least a third, if not a lot more of our lives at work. And then when we're not, we're living in our social lives. So this is the kind of stuff, you turn on TV and I mean, I see some of the most popular talk show hosts say about themselves. I literally just saw Trevor Noah yesterday, he was talking to one of the people on the staff that comes in as that side component, the person was younger, I forget the person's name, but he said, "I'm not old," Trevor Noah's saying that. How's Trevor Noah old? Right? But he's saying it, I think to somebody that must be... Well, clearly, he's younger, but it's perverted culture and it doesn't benefit the vast majority of society, hence the reason why the middle class is slowly being deteriorated. And quite frankly, what this is doing overall to the country is it's actually imploding our country because if the majority of Americans cannot spend, then GDP does not grow. So this backfires on the United States of America, Chad: We're Xers and we grew up with Gordon Gekko and Greed Is Good. And that's really a mantra that we've really embraced. I think in our country right now, I think is really providing this mechanism for implosion. I mean, don't you? How is this happening? How's the ageism piece, whether it's salary benefits, whatever it might be, how does that fit all into how we've lived our last 30 years of our lives? Vinay Singh: You're right. I mean, it's funny that you mentioned Gordon Gecko, right? That might be the beginning of how the boomers took it and ran, and Gen X grabbed it and ran and et cetera, et cetera. So it has been happening. It's not just a new thing, yeah? It's been happening for a while and I guess, I'll just throw out some statistics, we're heading towards the 50 year mark where, there was a point in the seventies where things actually just turned and the CEO class was exponentially getting more of an increase and compensation, while the bottom multiple classes saw little to nothing. And so year over year, excuse me, adjusted for inflation. It's about 0.2% for the last 40 to 50, somewhere in there, 45 years. While at the same time, the CEO class has seen their gains go to about 937%. That was the last statistics I saw. It's not 2020 stats, but 2018 to 2019 stats. So this has been happening for a while, but it's now exponentially increasing more and more and more. And here's the thing. The CEO compensation is really not validated, they are not. There's no performance components that say, "If a CEO hits X, X, X, X targets, they get this money," like maybe a sports player or the majority of workers do, you've got to produce That Isn't really the case when it comes to the CEO class, their compensation isn't tied to performance. So that also is why that's perverted too. Joel: Where are you on in terms of education? I mean, obviously the traditional route is you go to college for four years. If you want a little advancement, you get a master's and the wheel keeps rolling. But today we see more and more about continuing the education, learning new skills, whether it's on a site like Udemy, or Lynda ,or wherever online that you learn new skills. Do we need to go to college like we always have? Is your viewpoint on that changed? Does this get solved by continuing to educate yourself and getting new skills? Vinay Singh: So, Joel, that was... I'm really glad that you asked that. And Chad had mentioned earlier, right? We're not reskilling, but yet when you hear CEOs come out, they're like, "Well, we're investing in reskilling our population or our organizational employees," but are they? And I don't think so, or not to the degree. Because if they were, we wouldn't see so many people being let go, especially with their talent, they have solid talent. So reskilling doesn't seem to be a priority truly within organizations. Although, we're in the talent and HR, human capital space, all three of us, we hear reskilling is a major thing that is a top priority, yeah? We hear about it, it's a big push, it's a big agenda, it's a top of mind thing, but is it where you go? And so when you... I can tell you this, countless candidates have come to me when let go and I do tell them to reskill, because it can help and it does. If there's 10 resumes and this one or two candidates happen to have just done a graduate certificate in AI for Business Leaders, from, I don't know, Harvard or MIT, that might be the thing that pushes them over out of that group. But I will tell you this, two things are happening, and they are very counterproductive. Talent acquisition and HR do not present to candidates with a higher education as something that is that much more important when it should be. Because the ability to think outside the box creatively, like Mark Cuban and Elon Musk says, "The greatest skills are in creativity and to be able to think outside the box," yet we're not doing that, we don't promote that. A number of major corporations, the household names have actually said in the last 12 to 24 months, they're thinking of taking the lower level opportunities and taking the bachelor's degree criteria off. What does that do? People are like, "Yeah, that's great." Is it? Because if you don't have that and you get the job, chances are you might not go to school while you're working. That's a tough thing to do. I did it once, I don't want to do it again, work full-time, go to school full-time, brutal, but it can be done. But how many people do it? Not a lot of people do that. So if you get the job and you don't have that bachelor's degree, oh, guess what? You're not going to be able to move up. Ooh, that hurts when you want to come and go to your boss for a salary raise or apply for the next job, who's going to get those jobs? It won't be the Americans, it'll be foreigners. So we backfire on education. We don't promote education and put it on a pedestal, when it is all so critical and has been for centuries, millennials. And we all know today, or we should know that what we know has a half-life of about, depending on who you talk to, something like 18 months, and then it's no good. So reskilling, critical, education, critical, thinking outside the box, critical, being able to take degrees at a master's level for mental... Just to be able to feed your brain in multiple different ways to think critically outside the box, as the great billionaires that we do promote and put on a pedestal, say that we need, but we're not doing it. Who's doing it? There's a many other countries that are doing that. I mean, just look, you can Google it all day long, where we stand on education, right? Statistically, we're trending at the bottom in multiple areas, especially STEM. That's where we're at. Joel: Vinay, well, before I jump off the ledge here, we appreciate your time and coming on the show, as I age more and more with each passing second. For our listeners who want to know more about you or read the book, where should they go? Vinay Singh: So the book is available on Amazon and my website is, risingmiddleclass.com, and they can find me on LinkedIn too. Chad: Excellent. Joel: Thanks Vinay. Vinay Singh: Thanks guys. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Vinay Singh: See you.

If you love a heavier Chad & Cheese - and we're not talking about Joel's midsection - then this one's for you. On this week's episode: LinkedIn made the wrong decision... Again... Reddit CEO and Portland Chief send a major BLM message adidas swings and misses IBM leads by saving face and in our OK boomer segment: TikTok! As always, this podcast is heroically powered by Sovren, JobAdx, and Jobvite. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities. James Elis: James Ellis from, The Talent Cast. You may not be aware of this, but a couple years ago I lost a bet, so now I'm contractually obligated to say nice things about Chad and Cheese. Well, I took that, let's say lemon and turned it into lemonade. I took interviews from Chad and Cheese and turned it into a book, but I added a lot of other people you're going to want to talk to. It's called Talent Chooses You. It is hiring better with employer branding and it is available on Amazon, June 15th, you should go and buy it, bye. Intro: 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: Next up for 2020, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters is attacking New York. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, everybody. I'm your cohost Joel Egon Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad, Black Lives Matter, Sowash. Joel: On this week's episode, employee unrest at, well, a bunch of companies. IBM saves face. And in our okay boomer segment, TikTok, grab your proton packs, It's about to get paranormal up in here. Jobvite: Getting the right people to apply for the right jobs at the right time has always been a challenge. And now with an influx of candidates and increased workload, recruiters have to work smarter to provide a memorable candidate experience. Make Moments Matter, with Jobvite, a comprehensive talent acquisition suite, that offers a marketing inspired approach to recruiting, so that talent teams can more intelligently attract, engage and retain top talent, combine the power of AI and the human touch. Jobvite, recruit with purpose, hire with confidence. Joel: Say, "Proton packs and paranormal," really fast three times and see how you do. Chad: You wrote it. Joel: My weekend last weekend, camping with the family, which includes a three year old, that's probably all I need to say. Chad: Genius. Joel: I'll throw in mid to high 80's, in the Midwest, which means muggy and humid. The quesadillas were really good though, that we fixed on the grill. That was nice. How about your weekend? You definitely won that battle, my friend. Chad: We stayed in the backyard on the patio for a good amount of time. And then we went up to Indianapolis for the Black Lives Matter sit-in and then march, and then enjoyed ourselves on Sunday as well. So yeah, getting out there, enjoying the weather, social distancing. The really cool thing about the Black Lives Matter march was everybody had a mask. It's like, you go out to Kroger today and maybe half the people have a mask on, right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: Everybody, there was extremely considerate. I mean, there was free water given out, snacks, it was like, look, we want to keep you guys healthy, hydrated and safe. And I thought that was really cool. The Black Lives Matter organizers, they did a damn good job. Joel: How do these things get organized? Is it Twitter? How did you guys know about it and know to go at a certain time and a certain place? Chad: When you have organizations that are as well organized as Black Lives Matter, they have several channels. We found out through Facebook and that popped up in our feed and we also saw it on some of the news channels and whatnot. So it was several channels that we were hit with it by. And that's pretty much how everybody gets their news today, right? Joel: Got you. So pretty much if you follow Black Lives Matter and it's an actual organization apparently, right? So they organize all these events around the country. Chad: Right. Yeah. And they'll do sponsored ads on Facebook, right? So if you're in the area, one of those ads might pop up. Joel: I'm obviously not being targeted by these ads. I don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing. And apparently your wife is making moonshine now. What's going on with that? She's making gin flavors and things, this seems news to me. Chad: So last year when we were in London, she really enjoyed rhubarb gin and we can't get it here in the States, or at least it's not readily available around where we are. A friend gave us a fairly easy recipe. And within 28 days you have regular gin, which metamorphizes into rhubarb gin. And the two of us took that thing out in the weekend. So it was that good. Joel: Just one of the many things we can thank the British for, flavored gin, how nice. Let's get to some shout outs, shall we? Chad: Yes, let's start it out with Lowe's. Everybody knows Lowe's, they've funded $25,000,000 in grants to help minority business reopen. And one of the reasons why I want to focus on Lowe's is because Marvin Ellison is one of only four black CEOs in the Fortune 500. I think we need to focus on the leadership that is happening because such a small amount of the Fortune 500 is represented by black America. Joel: Yup. Merck is another and the company that makes Kate Spade bags, I'm zoning on the ... You know I'm a Kate Spade bag guy. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: I'm zoning on the name of the company. And I forget the fourth one, but yeah, I talked about voting and spending money where it needs to be appropriated. And if you want to vote with your dollars, choose those companies to spend because it makes the difference. Chad: Amen. Joel: Shout out to Amman Brar, a friend of show. Chad: Yes. Joel: Trash talker galore this week on LinkedIn also, but we don't have to get into that. He had a great post on the George Floyd murder. It almost read like a poem. It was really thoughtful, if you haven't read it, go out and search him on, Brar, follow him, try to connect if you're not already and check out that post. It was really powerful stuff. Chad: It was powerful. I read it at least a half a dozen times. As a white dude in America, we just don't fucking get it. And when we say that we do, that means, pretty much identifies the people who don't. So being able to actually listen to, or read some of these writings or the Baldwins of the world, listening to them debate, is something that we need to do to really better understand what's happening, because we just don't get it. Joel: Yup. Chad: And that being said, this is also LGBTQ month. This is Pride Month people. Pride occurs in the U.S to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which occurred at the end of June of 1969. And this is my big shout out to Lady G, aka Lindsey Graham. I think he's about ready to come out of the closet and here at Chad and Cheese Podcast, we support all of those of you who are closeted or uncloseted. You're welcome here. SFX: Hell yeah. Joel: So little context, Chad and I talked before the show and we make notes and figure out what we're going to talk about on the show. And he said, "I need a shout out to Lady G." And I was like, "Is that Lady Gaga? Are you hanging out with rock stars now?" And he's like, "No." He's like, "Let me just say it and then you can react to the show." So this is the Lindsay Graham whistleblower, I guess we could call him or her. Chad: Yeah. That was his code name for the group of male prostitutes who used to service or still do, I don't know, Lady G and in this case, Lindsey Graham. Joel: Shocked at this news. Chad: I'm not. Waiting for Mike Pence to come out. Joel: Yeah. Oh, come on now. Don't tease me. Nike, shout out for partnering with Jumpman, the Michael Jordan logo and apologies to Adam Gordon, who doesn't know any athlete outside of the UK, Scotland, Ireland area. Michael Jordan is a famous basketball player in case you don't know. Nike's dedicating 100,000,000 to diversity causes, to education, a whole mess of things. You can look it up on Google, but I thought $100,000,000 even for Nike and Jordan was a decent statement, especially when we're talking about 10,000,000 and 25,000,000 for some bigger companies. So shout out to Nike. By the way, Nike has an all white C-suite. I know that we jock them a lot, but they could go a long way into making a statement, into putting some diversity of color in their C-suite. Chad: That's exactly right. Big shout out to our outro voiceover artist, Chester, who is a six year old SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: ... son of adamant listener and CEO of Get Optimal, Daniel Fellows. Daniel actually WhatsApped me this week and he's like, "Listen, Chester's getting back to school and he's a little anxiety. Can you give him a boost?" And this is the boost Chester. We know you're getting back into school, man. That's awesome. Get the heck out of the house, go meet some new mates, enjoy yourself and tell them that Chad and Cheese sent you. Joel: Did you say meet some new mates? Chad: That's right. Oh, I've got to speak the speech. Joel: Did you write that or was that greatness. Shout out to Ron Bauer. Ron is an old friend from my Cleveland days. He runs a company called Interview Path, I love it when people just reach out and say, "Hey, we haven't talked in like, I don't know, a decade, why don't we get on a Zoom call and just see how things are going." So I talked to Ron for an hour. I know you do this quite a lot. I don't normally like to talk to people, so I don't do this as often, but it was fun to talk to Ron. So shout out to him. I know I've made him a newly minted fan of the show. Chad: Excellent. Shout out to Jonathan Reynolds. Remember the center point of the Douche Marketing Podcast we did a couple of weeks ago? Joel: Yeah. Chad: He actually came on the show, so I got to give him a shout out for that. Joel: Sure. Chad: I'm not sure that we can release that podcast, because it really felt like we were beating a puppy and that just never feels good. Joel: Really? And you don't want to release that for our fans. That's all they care about, us kicking puppies. Chad: Well, this tells you. You should listen to podcasts before you get on them. Joel: Yes, so that's my point is that he didn't know what he was walking into. So it's hard for me to feel sorry for the guy. If you don't do your homework before going onto a show that you know could be adversarial. So anyway, shout out to him. But I say we publish that bitch. Chad: Okay. Joel: Shout out to Bailey Fields. Chad: Huh? Joel: Yeah, I know. So, on LinkedIn where it recommends people, based on either your school or where you've worked before, or who you're following. I got a recommended contact, Bailey Fields, who is a current student at my alma mater, Ball State University, aka testicle tech. And she is currently an intern at Paradox, our buddies over there. I don't think there was any connection when they were recruiting her that Cheeseman and Ball State. And so she earned it on her own. I had nothing to do with it, but shout out to Bailey, Ball State represent in the industry, watch out. Chad: Nice. Well, I'm going to finish out shout outs for two gentlemen who have actually started their own podcasts. Kevin Kirkpatrick, recruiting manager over at Humber River Hospital, started his very own podcast called Primary Care Unpolished. It's brand spanking new. If you're in the healthcare space, definitely check it out. And then we've got some love from Craig Fisher for pimping our podcast on LinkedIn. He has a podcast called, Tide Talent, so check those boys out. Joel: Did you say, “Hammer river?” Chad: That is probably better than the real name. Joel: Yeah. I was going to say, launch a podcast called Hummer River and watch the listeners flood in. My final shout out goes to my wife. And this is legit. She's a professor. Yes, she takes pity on me and my little brain. Anyway, she was awarded the 2020 Research Frontiers Trailblazer Award. Now what the fuck is the Research Frontiers Trailblazer Award, you ask? Well, established in 2010, this award recognizes outstanding IUPUI researchers, which is where she's a professor. People in Indiana will know this, it's a collaboration of Indiana and pretty universities. These are for researchers who show promise in becoming nationally and internationally known for their research and creative activity. SFX: Hell yeah. Joel: She's showing the promise, so once she is internationally known, she's going to dump my ass and I'll be on the street again. But anyway, that's my final shout out of the day. Chad: Events. Okay. So next Wednesday at 8:00 AM, no shit, 8:00 AM. I'll be debating Adam Gordon on Facebook's bullshit cost of living salary adjustment. Remember Adam is in Scotland. So that's a tad early for most of you, but look for the replay. Then right after that, no shit, same day, 10:00 AM Eastern. I'll be on a discussion panel with [inaudible 00:13:57.13] and owner. I've got to get this last name right. Joel: Yeah. Chad: [inaudible 00:14:03]. This panel is called The Future of Recruitment Tech. They'll both be live from Amsterdam while I'm here in good old Columbus, Indiana. Then on June 24th, I'll be moderating a panel at Job Gate Summit. So go to jobgate.com, it's free. They have a full day summit happening. And last but not least for the team that brought you breakfast, that bring you breakfast every year, they're bringing you TA global gathering, July 8th and 9th, with 100 plus speakers, for all across the world. Joel: Everybody. Chad: We have a new competition called, Feature Rama. That's something Joel came up with. SFX: Hell yeah. Joel: Thank you. So yes, Feature Rama, it's a little play on Death Match, but we didn't want to do Death Match. Because we already do that. We wanted to give established companies a platform to come on and talk about their new shit, because a lot of really cool companies that you know and love are doing new shit all the time, but you just sort of forget about it, because they're in blog posts or little emails to their customers. So we're going to give them a platform to come on and talk about their new shit, which I think is really exciting and can't wait to get. The companies that we have on, we have three out of four confirmed. I'm pretty sure we'll get the fourth one confirmed by the time the show airs. But we're talking about XOR, we're talking about HiringSolved, we're talking about Nexxt on the show. And I won't mention the next one until they confirm, but we're going to have four awesome companies talk about new features. We're going to have the judging panel. I don't know if we have the third judge confirmed yet, but it's going to be awesome. The winner will get a cool piece of hardware. We're going to divert from the chain and go a different angle, but it's definitely going to be awesome. We're excited as hell to do this. It's the first ever. Make sure you tune in. Chad: Taglobalgathering.com, it's free, go sign up. There have been already 1500 signups, a shit ton of attendees. It's going to be a great event, over 100 speakers. So get out there taglobalgathering.com. Joel: Did you say free? Chad: I said, "Free." SFX: Hell yeah. Joel: Now to the news. LinkedIn, mutiny on the bounty, what happened to LinkedIn this week? Chad: Yeah. LinkedIn, they have an issue going on. So earlier in the week, their new CEO started, Ryan Roslansky, right? Joel: Welcome to the job. Chad: Yeah, he took the helm on Monday, and on Thursday, his racist employees started climbing out of their holes. Well, he gave them a platform. They had a virtual town hall and he allowed anonymous comments. Here's some of those wonderful comments, mourners were there obviously to be able to really get their emotions out, which is incredibly important and necessary. But their employees had comments like, "Blacks kill blacks at 50 times the rate that whites kill blacks, usually is the result of gang violence in the inner city. Where's the outcry?" And another employee said, "As a non-minority, all of this talk makes me feel like I am supposed to feel guilty of the color of my skin. I feel like I should let someone less qualified fill my position." Joel: I've been thinking a lot about sort of the wave of companies taking leadership positions in the current state of things. And I feel like it's a sad state of our union when companies feel almost like they have to be the beacons of right and wrong and justice and everything else. Because I think they feel that way in light of our government being so broken, divided, on both sides so stringently. And I know that if you look past some of the commentary at LinkedIn. And LinkedIn people are educated folks, right? These aren't knuckleheads. And I feel like if you look deeper in that, you're looking at a lot of opinions that are probably very mainstream in a lot of America. I mean, one of the comments that you didn't read was that, "LinkedIn is built on Ameritocracy," and ideally companies should be, right? Chad: I don't agree. Joel: And if we're looking for companies to be the leaders and the voices in this movement, that's fine. But I think you're going to be disappointed. I think that government needs to really take the leadership role on this. And like I said in last week show, "Voting is the way that we're going to fix this stuff." And Nike giving 100,000,000 or any company giving whatever amount of money will help the problem. But in many cases, I think it's a bandaid. The root of this issue is the systemic racism that happens when life has started, with this group of people. And our school system is broken, our educational system is broken, our communities are broken. And Nike giving X amount of money is going to help that, but it's not going to solve it. I've been thinking about this issue and this isn't necessarily LinkedIn specifically. I do think that the similarities to the Nixon election and law and order, and silent majority are eerie similar, but I feel like it's just a weird time to expect companies to carry the burden of social justice. Does that make sense? Chad: It does, but I don't agree at all. I think, yes, there are bandaids for the ... The dollars are bandaids, there's no question. You have to be able to do something that's more systemic, right? That's, whether you're giving a whole class at Howard university their debt-free education. That is awesome. It's a great way to anoint all those kids go out without debt, but it stops there to an extent, right? Systemically, where do you change the system? And I think you're a 100% wrong when it comes to corporations versus government. I think they are both mutually responsible for ensuring that all of this happens. So yes, LinkedIn is responsible for their culture. The president of the United States is not at all responsible for LinkedIn's culture, right? They have to, as leaders, take that responsibility and they can't just shirk it and focus on, hey, let's just make money, right? That's not their job because the way that you make money is through your people. And if you're not treating your people right, if you're not paying them right, then this whole systemic thing continues to happen. It's not just government. It's also on the corporate side. I do think, and I said in The Shred that, I think that LinkedIn had a great opportunity when Jeff Wiener stepped down as CEO. They could have found a person with color to be able to fill that position. I know that Ryan Roslansky had been at LinkedIn for 11 years. No question, qualified for the position, I would say more than likely, but I guarantee you, there was a person of color that could have taken that position. Joel: Sure. Chad: And that's exactly what we need to start seeing as leaders, when we have four CEOs in the Fortune 500 that are black men, we have zero black female CEOs in the Fortune 500. That's saying something. We as corporations have to change, we can't always wait for government to regulate our change. Joel: Yeah. I think your point of the decision of who would be CEO would have made a huge statement. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Where they're going as an organization. And in that case, you're looking at board of directors, you're looking at shareholders and those can be directed to look more like the quilt that is America. And I think more and more companies are doing that. I mentioned Nike who has an all white C-suite, their board of directors, from what I understand is pretty diverse, really tough. This is a cancer that's been with us for hundreds of years. Chad: Yeah. Well, which is why we need to rip off the fucking bandaid. Joel: We need to go in. And this needs some surgery and some chemo, like this is beyond. Chad: Well, here's a great example. Reddit CEO, Alexis Kerry Ohanian, says he's trying to set an example for other leaders by stepping down. Reddit, the social networking site he founded 15 years ago, gave birth to a lot of the shit that's happening out there online, racism, hate, those types of things. But now two years after stepping away from his day-to-day duties at Reddit, a white man is resigning from his company's board and asking that he be replaced with more diverse choice. Ohanian is married to Serena Williams and cited his family as one of three reasons for this decision. He tweeted, "I'm saying this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks, what did you do? This to me is what needs to happen." Not everybody's in this position, right? He's already rich. He can step away, but he's making a decision. And he's asking to be replaced, who he was, by Y Combinator CEO, Michael Seibel. Joel: When I read this story, I thought about my blogging days, in the early days of blogging when anonymous comments were a thing and people get sort of just unleash hell on each other. And in many ways, I felt like, why am I, or how does it feel to sort of be the platform that people can just be angry with each other and insult each other? So on a very, very small scale, I felt some guilt and felt some remorse over what the platform had become in some cases. I can't fathom what this guy and what Reddit is with neo-Nazis. I mean, like extreme, extreme shit. Chad: I get it. But you're missing the point. A white dude stepped down and said, "Put a black dude in my place." That's the point. Joel: Sure. Chad: Not the cesspool of racism that was created, is that he actually took a leadership position because he has a black daughter, and he has a black wife, he made that decision. Those are the types of things that we need. And hopefully, Michael, I think it's actually, Siebel, he sold Justin TV for about $1,000,000,000 and we know it today as Twitch. I'm sure he has some ideas on what to do with Reddit. But we also saw in Portland, which is a very liberal city, their police chief resigned Monday, promoting a black Lieutenant to serve as her replacement amid protests in the city, following George Floyd's death. What I thought was interesting about this was it was a female, it wasn't a white dude, it was a white female. And she even recognized that, hey, look, I got to push my whiteness out of the way and I have to actually make this decision because it's going to be better for our city. Joel: And I apologize if I didn't say, "I agree with you." I do on the Reddit story, I just wanted to put in my own little personal experience, because I like talking about me. So I apologize if that didn't come through. Yes, I get the point and agree with that. I just wanted to throw in my own little 2 cents in there. Chad: Yeah. Or just, I didn't say you couldn't have a story. I was just saying that there was a point and you just missed it. So yeah, I mean, I think these are great examples of what we should be looking forward to. Now, not just people taking themselves out of the way, but when new CEO stepped down or anybody in the C-suite, then boards need to be looking at people of color, period. And if there aren't white people in that pool to be able to choose from, so be it, because more than likely your entire board and C-suite is already white. Right? I thought that was incredibly interesting, two people that took themselves out of the game, because they knew that they could have somebody else, a person of color take over their position. Joel: Yeah. And I think, obviously police is a government entity. So I think seeing things like this should be more common place than even say the responsibility of public companies or private companies. But yeah, let's take a quick breather. It doesn't get any lighter as we get into the show, but let's take a break and we'll talk about more heavy shit, sound good? Chad: Heavy shit. JobAdX: Face it, we live in a world that is all about content, content, content. So why do we expect job seekers to react differently while reading paragraphs and bullets in templated job descriptions? Stand out in a feed full of boring job ads with a dynamic, enticing video that showcases your company culture, people, and benefits with JobAdX. Instead of hoping that job seekers will stumble upon your employment branding video, JobAdX seamlessly displays it in the job description while they're searching, building a connection, and reducing candidate drop-off. You're spending thousands of dollars on beautiful, informative employment branding videos that just sit on a YouTube channel begging to be discovered. Why not feature them across our network of over 150 job sites to proactively compel top talent to join your team? Help candidates see themselves in your role by emailing joinus@jobadx.com. That's joinus@J-O-B-A-D-X.com. Attract, engage, employ with JobAdX. Chad: All this talk about Nike, and Adidas actually put out a press release this week that said they will invest 20 million in black communities. "We will increase the funding for our programs that support, empower and elevate black communities to $20,000,000 over the next four years in the U.S ." They also said that they will invest in university scholarships for black employees. And this is the big one, will increase the number of black employees, a minimum of 30% of all new positions in the U.S at Adidas and Reebok will be filled with black and Latinx people. That's a big one. Joel: Which a lot of people thought it was great. And then there was a story that came out, entitled, Adidas Black Employees Say CEO Response to Race Issues Is "Laughable". When you shared the story on our feed and I thought, okay, that's great, another company stepping up. And I mean, if we're being honest, Nike and Adidas largely make their living on athletes of color promoting their shoes and doing contracts and that being their consumers, these are sort of like layups for them, I think. And I was a little bit taken aback by it being laughable. And I didn't know if it was because as well, Nike has given 100,000,000 and we're only giving 20,000,000 or if it was a numbers issue. And then I thought it was just simply, this is a negotiation, and this is smart negotiating by the part of, it's a black coalition, 13 member representing 200 Adidas employees, cards are on their table in terms of they hold all of them. To me it was like, okay, that's your first offer, let's push for more. I looked at this move of just simply being really good negotiating tactics to try to get Adidas to move further into either more money, or more programs, or whatever it is, because they're in a position of strength. And it's just really smart negotiating at this point. I expect Adidas to do more in light of sort of the walkout or the protest that's going on there internally with their employees. I also think it's interesting to note that they were talking about Germany being sort of the biggest offender, in terms of race diversity. And we focus so much on America in this show and America is evil and bad, but this shit happens everywhere and it's worth noting sometimes, that it isn't just an American problem. Chad: It's interesting because, the group, the actual employee coalition delivered a presentation, a 32 page deck presentation dubbed Our State of Emergency. Now this was seven days before the Adidas press release and they were coming to Adidas saying, "Hey, look, we want an apology to the black employees, we want 30 million or greater committed to invest in black students." And some employees were concerned that the black executives were not included. So this kind of more white group think that was happening, not to mention the 30% is, I mean, that's something to talk about, number one. But to talk about diversifying that 30% in all levels, right? Not just in our retail, right? In C-suite, everywhere throughout the organization. I think this was a huge miss by Adidas. And the reason being is they had a group that came to them and said this is what they want. You're right. This is not a negotiation. They are holding the cards. Adidas has plenty of money to be able to do this. And they should have just welcomed them in with open arms. Instead of playing this back and forth game, they should have just said, "Yes, we agree, this all makes sense, let's pull you in and let's devise something together." But they didn't do that. They had to play this corporate bullshit game. Joel: So as my diversity sherpa, can I ask you a question? Chad: I'm the best you've got. Let's just put it that way. Joel: What is Latinx? Chad: That's a good question. Joel: Ooh. I just Googled it. Latinx is a gender neutral neologism, sometimes used instead of Latino or Latina to refer to people of Latin American culture or ethnic identity in the U.S. The ?-x? suffix replaces the standard ?-o/-a? ending of nouns and adjectives that are typical of grammatical gender in Spanish. Chad: So it's everybody. Joel: So it's kind of like a non-gender Latino, Latina. Chad: It's everybody. Yeah. Joel: Yeah, exactly. We figured it out together. See, we can come together and figure this shit out. Google is the answer. IBM, holy shit, we're talking about technology now. Still in the same way. IBM, basically the news is they're discontinuing their facial recognition department or development that the company, which by the way was a growing profit center for the organization. But they believe so strongly that it will be used for bad, that it wasn't worth sort of the negative impact on civilization or society to keep the program going. So IBM, huge kudos for them to can this program. Keep in mind though that, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft and others are still aggressively looking at facial recognition technology. Chad: Yeah. This is what leadership looks like though. This is what right looks like. If somebody has to step up and say, "This is wrong and why is this happening now?" Well, AI researchers and technology scholars continue to warn about facial recognition software, particularly how some of the data driven systems have been shown to be racially biased. For instance, the MIT Media Lab has found that the technology is often less successful at identifying the gender of darker skin faces, which could lead to misidentification. Then back in 2018, this is awesome, the ACLU found that the software mistakenly identified 28 members of Congress as people who have been arrested for crimes. Now I would contest, since they are politicians and they should probably ask about crimes against humanity, maybe the AI got that one right. Joel: Was that it? Chad: Maybe. Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner. Joel: Well, we're going to lighten it up a little bit, I think. TikTok. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: This was spurred by a post on LinkedIn by Daniel O'Neil, Daniel's a VP at Bayard Recruitment Advertising Organization. He asked, "Okay, boomer," which was a nice, fun way to get attention to his question, basically why hasn't TikTok, taken off huge numbers, huge usership? And he's totally right about all that. And then he asked Chad and I to come in and give our 2 cents as to why TikTok isn't a thing. I said, "Basically for a few reasons, number one is that employers are still trying to figure out Google." Chad and I in the mid-2000's were trying to educate companies on Google, they're still trying to figure it out. We're still doing podcasts on Google. So TikTok is way too novel to think about companies aggressively going after that. You have the whole COVID-19, unemployment, you have uncertainty. You have, in my opinion, Snapchat, being mostly a huge failure in recruitment advertising, it sort of got some steam early, but with McDonald's and some others. I don't think anyone wants to risk anything on TikTok after Snap sort of falling from grace. No one's going to get fired for using Facebook/Instagram and Google to advertise, but they might get fired for putting the bank on TikTok or Snap. And the third one was a gray area, but the whole Chinese spying communist shit just scares people. And I think they're just a little bit uneasy with China and the news related to TikTok. Those were my reasons as to why TikTok has not, and probably will not in any foreseeable future become a strong recruitment advertising mechanism for employers. Chad: Does anyone care that, I mean, Facebook and Google and Snapchat, I mean, they're all spyware for God's sakes. I mean, I don't know about if anybody's heard about this Cambridge Analytica thing. I don't see a company, for the most part hiring companies. I don't see hiring companies doing this because they don't have time not to mention they adapt so slowly. But we did have a senior director of talent acquisition ask about that. I'm just going to wait until somebody figures it out. And it's like, well, you can do that, but you probably have people on staff who use TikTok. And why not have conversations about it? And then start to have the discussions instead of just waiting, right? We wait too much. We're always on defense in talent acquisition. We're never fucking playing offense. So start playing offense and start having the discussions, have the discussions with your advertising agencies. If you're an advertising agency and you don't have somebody doing R&D around this big ass social platform, these are the things that you should be doing. You should be doing the R&D pieces. You should be ... This is the reason for your being. But again, back to the talent acquisition side, have the discussions about these platforms, how they could be used, how do you currently use them? How would you use them for recruitment? Would you use them for recruitment? Those types of things are important because, shit, when I get on TikTok, I'm probably on there for 30 minutes, watching dog videos and shit like that, because that's the stuff I enjoy. And that's what the algorithm feeds me. But don't just sit back and wait guys do this shit. Joel: I apparently really love animals fighting each other in the wild videos, for some reason. Just make sure that it is R&D budget, it is experimental budget. And when it's thrown down the drain, you can say, "Yes, well, this was experimental." Because if you're putting real dollars that you expect an ROI, you're probably going to be disappointed and maybe in trouble. Chad: You're not telling them to go to TikTok and spend the next three hours on TikTok for God's sakes, but just have the conversation. Joel: Time is money. And if you're having conversations, you are utilizing resources to do that. We can just disagree on that. It's not free for people to talk. Chad: That's a difference between management and leadership. Joel: What are you saying? Chad: It's fairly simple. Joel: You calling me a manager? Chad: If the clipboard fits. Joel: I just need to have those super tight latex coaching shorts, if you're going to call me a manager. End with that. Chad: Whew. Thank God. We out. Joel: We out. Chester: Thank you for listening to podcast with Chad and Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Anyhoo, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.

Every once and awhile, we get a startup on Firing Squad who claims to do it all, or at least almost do it all (none of them can deliver a case of Pabst with your new hire, but whatever). Talent Alpha out of Poland is once such company. Calling it the human cloud, they'll find, screen and schedule your next IT pro, promising to give you access to a previously untapped talent pool of 700,000 experienced and project-ready IT specialists working in 25,000 small & medium-sized IT Services Companies across Europe. One of your fearless podcasters loves the idea; the other one, not-as-much. Checkout founder and CEO Przemek Berendt bring his A-game to The Squad. Brought to you by our friends at Pandologic, bringing programmatic since 2007 now that's a yottabyte of job data! What the hell is a yottabyte? PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your bridge to the disability community, delivering custom solutions in outreach, recruiting, talent management and compliance. Intro: Like Shark Tank, then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to put their recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they've got what it takes to make it out alive. Dig a foxhole and duck for cover kids, The Chad and Cheese Podcast is taken into a whole other level. Joel: Oh yeah. It's the post St. Patrick's edition of the Firing Squad. I'm a little hung over, Chad. How about you? Chad: Oh yeah. Definitely. I'm not hung over, and I feel amazing just because I drank Guinness all last night. And that's how you feel when you drink Guinness. It's the best beer in the world. Joel: Very nice. I, for one, don't want to hear the guns today because I just don't want my brain to have to go through that. All right. Let's welcome our startup for this episode of Firing Squad. Today, we are happy to welcome Talent Alpha, not Alphaville. Talent Alpha and CEO and founder, Prez Berendt. Chad: Przemek. Przemek. Joel: Did I say that right? Przemek or Prez? Chad: Przemek. Przemek: Hello everyone. Joel: He's like P. Diddy, he's either Puff Daddy or Diddy. He has a lot of different names. Przemek: It's a pleasure to be here. Yes, my name is Przemek, but I also go by Prez, that makes it slightly easier. Joel: Welcome to the show. And you are in Poland right now, correct? Przemek: That is correct. Joel: Very nice. Dealing with your own coronavirus issues I'm sure. Przemek: No St. Patrick's day over here, because we got locked down when it comes to our bars. Chad: Yeah. Us too. We had to have it in our homes. So I had to make sure we stockpiled enough Guinness and whiskey to ensure that we had a good time. Joel: Plenty of whiskey in my place. Przemek: Good for you. Joel: All right, dude. Chad, you want to give him the rules? And we'll get to it. Chad: All right, Przemek. You will have two minutes to pitch Talent Alpha. At the end of two minutes, you'll hear the bell. Then Joel and I will hit you with rapid fire Q and A, if your answers start rambling, Joel will hit you with the crickets. Joel: Ouch. Chad: And that means that you need to move along, tighten up your game. But then at the end of Q and A, you're going to be graded with one of these three: Big applause, that just means get your back account ready. Joel: Well done. Chad: Time to be sugar daddy. Golf clap, you're getting there, but you can do much better. Or, what you do not want to hear is the Firing Squad, that means hit the bricks, close up shop, take your ass home and put that drawing board away because this is not going to go anywhere very fast. Joel: Oh, my head. Chad: Any questions, Przemek? Przemek: I'm ready. Bring it on. Chad: All right. Joel: All right, Prez. Two minutes to pitch starting. Przemek: Talent Alpha Human Cloud Platform enables organizations to manage, measure, access, and share IT talent. We are building technology that allows organizations to get detailed understanding of their technology workforce and augment its capabilities. Our platform indexes unprecedented amount of data about specialists working in these organizations, going deep into their technical expertise, soft skills, and also psychometrics. Having best in class understanding of IT Talent sitting in organizations using our platform, we unlock numerous applications of it. Starting with Virtual Bench, there is a B to B to B marketplace that allows companies to share and access IT talent in what we call the tech teams on demand model. As of today, there are over 160 companies from 15 countries in central and Eastern Europe using our technology, offering their capabilities of over 10,000 specialists to clients around the globe, through our website, talentalpha.com. Thanks to tapping into organizations, and understanding their experience future capacity, we can dispatch entire teams of IT professionals within hours of receiving a request. This maximizes time to productivity, not the time to hire, as clients get a working unit that already has gone through all of the stages of building up the team. Number of enterprise level clients are already testing Virtual Bench with us with a lot of success. Thanks to our proprietary skills to data model, we kept up to 500 data points about every individual on our platform. On top of mapping skills, we measure competencies where possible. Our Talent Lab app enhances this model with capturing additional metrics such as working memory, perceptual speed or tasks switching. We are already working on unlocking other use cases using core functionalities of our platform, including freelance through management, ATF lead capture, just to name a few on our roadmap. So to summarize, if your organization needs to quickly ramp up IT talent, or needs to gain better visibility on the skills already in the house, Talent Alpha Human Cloud is your solution. Chad: Boom. Joel: And you can find you where? Przemek: You can find us at talent-alpha.com. Chad: Talent-alpha.com. Joel: I always forget that part, Chad. Chad: Not always, but for the most part, yes. Prez, we're talking about open virtual benches. Let's dig into this a little bit further. So what it sounds like, and please help dig a little deeper into this, is that there's great tech talent that's there and you have open benches for multiple companies to actually tap into the exact same talent. Is that correct? Przemek: That is correct. So what we discovered as we were building up Talent Alpha is that, in central and Eastern Europe itself, there are over 25,000 small and medium sized IT services companies, anywhere from like five to 500 people. Now, as we started digging into that, we realized that they are not running on full utilization, so at any given point in time, 20 to 30% of their headcount is unutilized. So when you look at this kind of talent pool sitting out there, there are over 700,000 professionals kind of sitting in this talent pool, where 20 to 30% is available at any given point in time for grabs. So what do we decided to do is to connect the dots and basically index talent sitting in these organization and birth kind of a virtual layer that allows other organizations who need to leverage IT talent to access them in this on demand fashion. Chad: Okay. So these individuals, are they working under talent alpha or are they actually working under these other companies and they're kind of lending their talent out, but they're doing this through your platform? How does that actually work? Przemek: It's the latter, right? So if you are one of those small and medium sized IT companies, you registered on our platform, you would then map out talent in your organization using our technology, and you'd tell us when these individuals become available for grabs, basically for sale, right? And then if we can find the matching request, we will basically bring the deal over to you. So, we are not hiring them directly, on the contrary, for the clients who want to leverage our capabilities, we enter it kind of as an alternative IT services vendor, giving clients access to this broad pool of talent coming from various organizations. Chad: Well, it sounds like you're more, almost like an Uber per se, that you know when the driver's available to work, so you can actually just tap into that into one of these other companies. Is that correct? They let you know the availability and then what you do is you make the match. Is that it? Przemek: Well, there are different ways to think about it. This is one way, that you described. Another way is more of an Airbnb model, right? You have certain assets kind of at your disposal, and you know when they are booked or not, and you can then lend them out to others. Yet another way we like to think about it is that, what we are doing is the same thing that AWS does to the IT infrastructure, right? Prior AWS, your service would be sitting on your premise, right? And now they get moved to the cloud. We basically believe that the same can happen with tech talent. They are sitting in somebody else's house, right? They are being managed and operated over there, and we are granting you kind of live access to their brainpower. Joel: Prez, maybe it's the hangover, but I'm still a little bit fuzzy on what your objective is and who your competitors are. So when you go to the site, it looks very much like a people search engine. So the initial thought is hiring solve to seek out a hiring tool is your competition. But what I'm hearing you say is more an Upwork or Fiverr is your competition. Am I getting that wrong? Or how would you describe what side of the fence you're on? Are you a weird hybrid of both of those? Przemek: I would say we are a hybrid of traditional IT services firms. So think, Accenture, Cognizant, EPAM, and the likes, right? Like large IT outsourcing companies and the talent platform, like Upwork or Toptal, right? What is different is the underlying business model, whereas Toptal or Upwork would connect freelancers on the market, we tap into existing companies and map out and basically share the talents to that as they're working over there. Joel: Okay. How are you filling the database with talent? Are you tapping into a database? Are you scraping profiles? Are you buying them from a third party? How are you getting that data? Przemek: So that's the beauty of the solution, right? We speak directly to the CEO or the owner of this company, and we basically tell him A, "Use our technology to better understand the people you have already on board." B, "Use our technology to sell to your own clients and see, we can actually bring you additional deals through our search engine that you just mentioned, that it's available on our website." So we don't have to find this individuals on the market, we make one handshake, one contract, can we get access to 100 or 200 profiles at once. Joel: Why would a company give you access to their talent pool? Przemek: Because they want to build sales. As I mentioned, many of these organizations are not running on full utilizations, they want to bring more attractive projects, they would like to work for bigger, more established clients on more fancy technologies, and that's what we enable them to do. Because on the other side of the spectrum, who we are bringing to this equation, are the large enterprises who are struggling with the tech talent gap, right? So, we are actually closing or building a link that was before not available. The smaller players, they could never sell to a very large enterprise. For a number of reasons, they couldn't jump through the procurement hoops, they didn't have the skills or the budgets to actually make that sale. And we're closing and bridging that gap. Chad: So, from my standpoint, this sounds almost like RPO, but taking RPO to the next level, where you have recruitment process outsourcing and being able to use the bench that you have for other jobs. And that's really what RPO is. RPO has hundreds of companies that they work with, but yet they have the talent that they can dole out to those different projects. This is just done in an entirely different way where you're using talent that that company already has, and you're leveraging that for different projects that they could perspectively work on, so that the company that they actually work for, that they are the full time employee of, gets paid off of that. Does that sound more in line? Przemek: That is correct. I guess the only difference is that in the RPO model, the specific IT specialist would be then ripped out of the organization where he or she is working right now and kind of hired on the client account. In our model, they keep working when they are working. And that's the beauty of the model, because what we are essentially doing, we are unlocking a new talent pool for many of these organizations. Reason being is that many companies who are already on our platform, they operate in very small cities. Like cities you've never heard of before, like Torun in Poland, in Romania, right? Where the large guys are not fishing. Right? And they know back home, these companies are actually quite well recognized companies to work for, so they have, sort of enjoying quieter retention rates, et cetera. Right? And the cost base is much smaller. So there are various benefits of that model. Chad: So how many companies currently are utilizing your platform as the providers of talent? Number one. And number two, how many companies are using your platform to be able to dig into use talent? So how many of them have projects versus how many of them have people? Przemek: Right. So, there are 160 of them who are using our technology to map their talent and basically make their talent available through our network. Chad: How many people in those 160? Przemek: Over 10,000 right now. Chad: Wow. Okay. Okay. Przemek: And then the demand side of the equation, we only started unlocking last November, so it's relatively fresh, but we already work with a number of enterprise-level clients who actually see benefits of that model. Because what we allow them to do is to give them access to something that's very niche skills in a presidented kind of a short time, right? Like to the extent that we've had cases where entire teams were dispatched within 24 hours from getting a client request. Joel: Prez, who's your target market? Whether it's size the company or part of the world. And what is your typical sort of opening pitch to a prospect? Przemek: So geography wise, we are focusing on the markets that are used to working in the offshoring model, so that's mainly North America, US, Canada and also Europe and Israel. So that's kind of our core focus when it comes to generating demand. Company size wise, we've been actually experimenting across the spectrum, and I'll tell you what our initial assumption was and what we see kind of, as we progress on our journey. Our initial assumption was, let's sell it directly to the enterprise, which we did, but it's a lengthy process as you know, right? You can get a sponsor and the IT organization, or the procurement organization, or innovation division that will love the model, but then going through all of the formalities can take quite a few months to do that. Then we actually figured out a few other things. First of all, is that there is a number of what we call like, Tier 1 IT services suppliers, so, kind of midsize to large size IT organizations who struggle with the tech talent gap on their own, and we also become kind of a Tier 2 supplier to them. And this model is working for us quite effectively. We are also talking to some of the MSPs out there for our solution to be part of the total workforce management that they're offering to their huge clients. Right? So there are various ways in which we are going to the market. And there is also SMEs, right? That we are kind of trying to tackle in more traditional approach, through digital advertising, et cetera. Joel: And what's sort of the opening pitch to them? What problem are you solving? Is it just get talent that you can't get to? Or is there something more? Przemek: Well, we start with helping them to close the tech talent gap, right? That was basically kind of the initial idea for building Talent Alpha and the key problem that we were solving, and then explaining the mechanics of it. Right? And the once people get it, they actually see huge value in the model that we are offering. Now, as we traveled the world and we spent last year, pretty much attending different conferences really to see where this concept would be sticky, seven out of 10 conversations we would have with people there was in like, "We get the model, the model is great, but the technology that you guys are building, it's even more interesting," right? So that kind of put us on the trajectory that, maybe we are not only kind of in this talent platform business, but perhaps in the software, as a service, business. So we are actually, as we speak, in a process of validating that hypothesis, where they're not only the small guys who are using our technology today to map their talent would be interested in it, but maybe there is some bigger opportunity in larger accounts that we believe are pretty much blind when it comes to the workforce they already have on board. Joel: Got you. So you mentioned SAS models, how's the pricing breakdown? Is it a subscription model? Is it based on size or seats? How does the pricing breakdown? Przemek: When it comes to leveraging the Virtual Bench, which is our core offering right now, we basically add a margin to whatever GSV comes through our platform. So basically the partners who are exposing their talents through our platform, they are giving us rates and we're writing a margin on top of that. When it comes to the SAS, we make it free up to 150 seats, and then there is a pricing model, and there's a basically pair of seats model depending on how many profiles you'd like to map it out. To be honest, we are kind of in the process of figuring that out and then trying to test the market to see what would work best for the SAS piece. Chad: Yeah. So this sounds like almost an evolution, especially from a technology standpoint of RPO. It's definitely a different take on it. Have you had any interest or are you working with any RPOs out there today, just from a partnership standpoint? Przemek: We do, and we do participate in bits with them. As I mentioned, there are a number of RFPs where we were brought as part of the, kind of the holistic solution the RPO would offer to their own clients. Moreover, we are also building partnerships with some of the VMS providers out there, some of the largest ones, we are already working on integration where Talent Alpha would become basically an app in their ecosystem. So when the company has a requisition to be filled, they could query our database and we were to offer them required time based on what we see in our portfolio. Chad: Excellent. So what's the end state for Talent Alpha? You're growing right now, you're targeting North America, what's the end state? What do you see the end state for what your doing? You become a hub? What does that look like? Przemek: Well, the grand vision is to index the talent around the world, and make sure that we can have this talent to connect with the right opportunities, which you could say, LinkedIn has a very similar vision, but I think we are putting our vision on steroids, right? Because we don't want it to be a recruitment platform, we want to be this platform that basically facilitates this kind of API economy where jobs can freely flow. Now we are in a VC game, we raised a pretty substantial seed round in May of last year, we raised $5 million, that makes us one of the largest seed rounds in the region. So we need to kind of follow up that game, right? So the end state would be some type of an exit, whether it's through the MNA and one of the industry players, either in their recruitment space or more in the technology space remains to be seen or IPO, but God knows where the markets are going to take us these days. Chad: No shit. Right? Joel: Is that five million US dollars, Prez? Przemek: Yes. That was five million US dollars. SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: Who's your biggest threat? You just mentioned LinkedIn, could they perspectively pivot, since they do have so many profiles, could they pivot to this model do you believe, or is there another organization that's out there that's more, I would say, well, suited to be able to pivot into something like this? Przemek: We see LinkedIn trying to get deeper when it comes to understanding and mapping taxonomies of skills of individuals, but I'm not sure how successful they are, especially that they're taxonomies are rather shallow for those IT skills. I haven't mentioned that on every single profile in our database, we can capture today already up to 500 data points, right? And our tech skill taxonomies are very complex. Like, we've mapped out core IT roles I believe to an unprecedented level of detail when you get full visibility of the skills and individual has. So I think LinkedIn would have to try a bit more. I think people update their LinkedIn profiles, kind of in only various number of scenarios, typically, when they are ready to shift jobs, right? We changed the model where we are giving our technology for these companies to basically manage talent on our platform, and therefore we are getting access to a very accurate and up to date inventory. And moreover, we put on top of that a mobile app that kind of in the poll survey way allows us to keep enhancing that data model with additional insights. So LinkedIn potentially, yes. I see also our friends from Upwork and Toptal trying to move with this kind of enterprise level offering as well. But again, their underlying business model, which is the business to freelance model, I think causes them a bit more trouble. I think in one of your last shows you were talking about some of the issues Upwork is facing with the changes to their policy. So Chad: Stupid moves. Yeah. Joel: Prez, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this Corona virus is spreading around the world, the recession word is being thrown around pretty regularly these days. How is your business sort of prepared for a downturn in the economy or is it? Przemek: well, we are in the process of figuring out what this all means to us. And we believe that it creates a potential number of opportunities in what we do. First of all, I believe this will drive the adoption, let's call it, on the supply side or on the small and medium sized enterprise side when it comes to using our technology to map talent. Because some of these organizations with whom we are working today will be stressed when it comes to their future. Right? I expect projects getting cut and they often case work with small companies, kind of an unusual model. I think they will struggle with having their pipeline suit that I believe would drive our adoption. Now on the demand side of that model, I think the large enterprises will also follow the suit, meaning that they will start looking into cost savings and trying to get creative on how to live in this new reality. And I believe that this human cloud that we are preaching and not having the necessity of hiring that talent in-house, or even having it as a permanent staff, allowing you to work remotely, would be one of the potential solutions that they will seek. So I think the after, we are going to definitely wake up in a totally different world once this is done and over, but many successful startups were actually born in the crisis era. And Airbnb, I think was born during the last one. Joel: All right, Prez. That's the bell. It's time to be rated by us and face the Firing Squad. Are you ready? Przemek: I am ready. Bring it on. Joel: All right. So I'll go ahead, and I'll go first. There are a lot of people doing this or some variation of this, which is obviously validation for the business. It's also an incredible challenge to compete with bigger players, publicly traded players, players with a lot of money, really nicely funded ownership, et cetera. So, for me, the market is there, my challenges is the uniqueness there and the ability to cut through the clutter of the competition there. Obviously, as the economy is doing very well, and it's very tough to find people, particularly IT folks and engineers, et cetera, you're going to get a lot of people taking phone calls to figure out how we can get more engineers and it professionals to the door. In a recessionary environment, that could be a challenge for you, because recruiters are going to get laid off, companies aren't going to hire, they aren't going to have a need for your service, et cetera. And that's gonna affect everybody, not just you. I think, marketing wise, the site, I think you're sort of in the infant stages there, but you have a lot of room to grow, in terms of finding your niche, finding your groove. I think the five million in funding that you got is going to give you a nice bit of a runway to figure that out, to withstand the Corona virus scare, however long that lasts, any recessionary terms. So, definitely not the guns for me, but also I think with the competitive landscape, the economic landscape that we're looking at, I think that you've got a lot of work to do. So for me, it's a golf clap. Przemek: Thank you, sir. Joel: Chad. Chad: All right, man. So everyone's trying to close the tech talent gap. And we also saw kind of like forms of these things about 10, 15 years ago, AllianceQ, Jobfox. The problem with them was, they weren't attacking it the way that you are. They weren't using the monetary and almost the heroin drip that you are to be able to lure talent directly to projects. The Corona virus will kick some companies in the ass, there's no question. I don't believe it'll be yours. I think many are doing this, like the Upworks so on and so forth, as Joel had mentioned, but they aren't set up the way that you're set up and they're not making money in some cases, the way that you can actually go after the money with all of these resources that are left on the bench. We're not really working into a virtual bench, especially around technology, which again, everybody's trying to close that gap. So I think crisis will definitely thin the herd, but you'll be the strong bullet comes out on top. You'll be one of those that I believe the RPOs who have tons of fucking cash will be looking at you to evolve how they're doing the technology side of their play. And overall, I think this is nothing but a big applause. Przemek: Hell yeah. Thank you. SFX: Hell yeah. Przemek: Awesome. Joel: Good job, Prez. How do you feel? Przemek: Pretty good. Pretty good. Thank you. Chad: Excellent. Przemek: Always good to speak with some industry experts. Chad: Excellent, man. Joel: Chad, thus endeth another Firing Squad. And we out. Chad: We out. Outro: 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.C-H-A-D-C-H-E-E-S-E.com.

Google for Jobs isn't the only new big brand face in town. The boys continue their interview with Venkat Janapareddy, CEO of Jobiak, and talk: - Google for jobs Global adoption - Does video content even matter - Facebook is outspending Google on the jobs product - Indeed is in a real pickle - It's all about the real-time data Brought to you by Chad and Cheese - HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Subscribe at chadcheese.com. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. Morgan: 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 rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, you’re 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. Intro: 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. Chad: Welcome back. We're picking the conversation up with entrepreneur and CEO of Jobiak, Venkat Janapareddy. How are you guys focusing? Is it domestic or are you really trying to figure out Europe and et cetera? Venkat: Yeah, so we get a lot of inbound calls from, especially UK and Spain, we do have some customers. Interestingly, most of Europe went live with Google for Jobs last year. We are getting a lot of inbound traffic. We are not particularly going there and selling at this point. Our focus is still US, our focus is still get this all jobs product. But we are working with some customers and surprisingly the adoption rate for Google for Jobs in UK is much higher than US. Chad: Awesome. Venkat: First of all, it's in English, but they are looking for ways to ... there are a lot more consulting companies that are helping companies get their postings on Google. But from a go to market strategy point right now, it's US, we take the inbound and we onboard them. Chad: That totally blows my mind to think that Europe is starting to gain traction faster, and I think that's awesome. Just shows how slow and I think lazy we're getting here in the US. We're seeing more start-ups with some really awesome ideas execute, but also companies are looking to gain traction as well. What about some of the other technologies that are out there today? How do you think those maybe, I don't know, chatbots, voice, what have you, I mean, Google has a ton going on with voice. How do you think that all can be adapted to what you are doing? Or do you think right now it's too early to even think about that? Venkat: Yeah, it's too early to even think about it. We keep getting calls, especially to license our technology for matchmaking. We are not really doing matchmaking at this point. Google does that for us. The good thing about Google is the quality because they're looking at the job. The quality of traffic is pretty good. We have got a lot of calls from small players to big players to use our technology to do the matching. But I like this whole, the chatbots and video interviewing that I find them passionating because in my ex company, Deloitte, they do almost 5,000 interviews using this bot videos. I think the whole video interviewing and chatbots and screening resumes, I like that space. It's still early but I really think that space is going to do very well. But so right now we are not looking to license or partner any of our technology at this point. Our goal is to get some of these big players partner with us, go crazy with Google for Jobs and help, especially partners RMPs and ATSs use our technology and get higher rankings on Google for Jobs. Chad: What do you think is interesting though? What's your favorite tech outside of all this cool shit you're doing with Google for Jobs? Venkat: The video interviewing. That's the bot kind of figuring out whether you're answering the questions correct, the behavioral, the whole psychological analysis they did. I think there's a huge scope that technology is deep learning. That's an area, it's the whole AI, and machine learning is good, but deep learning is all about analyzing media frames and images. I think that's going to have all significantly. And I think more and more companies will adopt this. I think that's ... I'm a tech guy, so I keep reading a lot of stuff of that. Joel: You mentioned video. It seems interesting to me that Google owning YouTube, as far as I know, part of the schema isn't plug in a YouTube video, is that correct? I can't do that through the job schema, right? Venkat: Not right now, but I heard rumors that that's coming. Again, it's a rumor, it's not from Google. But one of the schema elements it's going to be video, where the video will automatically show up on Google for Jobs. But it's a good idea, I like it. Video is always helpful, but it's not there yet. Hopefully they will, I think if they do, it's going to be good for us. Joel: Yeah. And I assume that you recommend having video on your landing page is probably a good thing because it engages the job seekers. Venkat: Yeah. That's pretty much what RMPs do. If you look at any of the RMPs landing pages, they have video, that plays a huge role, job seekers, especially millennials, they like medias, the landing page, anything else you can provide other than just a job is helpful. Monster is starting to do some of that. I know they are not doing well, but of lately they are publishing a lot of this video content. I think having Google do it would be a good extension for that. Joel: One of the advantages I see with Indeed and particularly their recent parent company buying Glassdoor is owning the review content and how valuable that is in driving traffic and having that is nice. Do you see Google getting in or Google for Jobs getting into the review game as well? Venkat: If you notice now, for lots of companies, they do show these reviews and salary estimates from this big players, bottom of the job. I'm not sure, it'll take a while for them to get these reviews. But right now, for most jobs, they do show the reviews and the salary estimates, especially from Glassdoor. But at least for the next Joel: Right. But it's not owned, the content isn't owned by Google is what I'm saying. Venkat: Yeah. Joel, I don't know whether they'll get into this. I think it'll take a while for them to do these reviews. But if they do what you said, the apply button, then it makes sense to get some of this own reviews owned by Google. But not in the near term, I don't see that happening in the near term. Joel: Maybe Facebook is an easier shorter bridge to that. Do you see Facebook doing that? Venkat: Yeah. Facebook, they're starting to invest a lot of money based on our discussions. They started with local jobs, blue collar local jobs, but now they're starting to integrate with ATSs. They want to go after every single job. And they're also, as I said, they're looking for ways. I know they're starting to do some random test on company websites, where they'll get the jobs automatically on their platform. But they are serious, they're actually ... If you ask me between Google and Facebook, they're putting a lot more money, Facebook for Jobs than Google. And I think once they figure out on how to get these jobs on their platform, they can do wonderful, they're very good at targeting candidates and getting resumes. They are investing a lot of money. They are going after every single job. The first two years, they focused on blue collar, that's going to change. I really expect them to do very well in near future. Chad: It's interesting because getting the jobs on their site, I'm not going to say it's easy because none of that shit's easy, but it could be much easier through partnerships with organizations like yours, applicant tracking systems, RMPs. If they had quote unquote the source of truth for these jobs and having them flow into their system, that's an entirely different discussion. My question is, why haven't we seen an organization do that? Generally, and Indeed, will just brute force the shit out of somebody. Hey, we're just going to send our spiders and they're coming at you, right? They will set up partnerships and those types of things, but they don't care any other way. They're going to get the data. Why do you think that Facebook, and they're a big name. I mean, everybody you would think would want to be able to be set up with a market differentiating company like Facebook and getting your jobs into Facebook and on your Facebook page. Why do you think it's so hard and why hasn't it happened already? Venkat: It's going to, trust me, both Facebook and Google, it's been only two years and they're working on it and like Jobiak there's going to be more and more companies will come up in the next 12 months and they're going to find more and more companies to get this jobs data very easily. Right now, as you said, Indeed is killing it. But once we launch this in May, I'm pretty sure there's going to be a lot of copycats, but there's going to be lot of value. You can sell this data to even job ads or LinkedIn or Bing, even Microsoft Bing is pushing jobs from LinkedIn. Chad: US government. Venkat: US government. It is coming. The reason no one did it because these guys weren't there, Google and Facebook and Microsoft, a couple of years back. But now that they're in the space, there will be a lot of companies doing what we are going to do. It's going to be interesting to see all jobs on these platforms. Joel: Last one for me, we have a lot of job sites who enjoy the show and subscribe. And initially Google for Jobs was really great for them. Most of them talked about a 15% to 30% increase in traffic. I'd say, if you ask them now, they'd say traffic has sort of leveled off. It's not a huge differentiator in their business anymore. But I'm curious, if you were a head of a traditional job board today and you're listening to this show and you're hearing about Google for Jobs having all the jobs, you're talking about Facebook getting into the game big time, and not to mention Indeed I'm sure is not going to go down without a fight. What kind of strategy do you start to formulate as you look at the future that you're describing if you're a CEO of a job board? Venkat: Yeah. So if I'm a job board first, working with this multiple job distribution networks is a bad idea. I'm pretty sure Google is going to shut that down. So have customers, if you have customers, direct customers, posting jobs on your platform, invest in SEO, invest in landing page. Google for Jobs is free. Get a lot of traffic, be the differentiator, get in the top 10 and get a lot of traffic. But if you are between, if you're getting jobs from another job board and another job board, lots of job boards are starting to do that. And those guys are going to take a heavy beating. You own the customers, you'll be the king. As long as you own the customers. If you only let Monster for example, they hardly have 10% of the jobs, invest in SEO, invest in landing page, do what RMPs are doing. And then be niche, don't be everything, just focus on a particular vertical especially nursing and tech is crazy right now. If you are able to provide candidates for these markets, you're going to do well. Invest in technology and go straight with customers, don't work ... Again, I'm not against this job distribution network job ads, but I think that's going to be a problem, especially if you're looking to work with Facebook and Google. Joel: Venkat, this has been awesome. Chad: Thank you man. Joel: For our listeners who want to learn more about Jobiak, where should they go? Venkat: Yeah. Please visit us Jobiak.ai, the amount of information, the ability to enterprise ATS, RMP. We have solutions for you, we generate significant traffic from Google for Job. It does work. Don't spend too much money, we're 50X less expensive than job ads. Please visit us and try us out. Chad: Very nice. Hey man, thanks so much. And we out. Joel: We out. Venkat: Bye, thank you guys. Chad: Look for more episodes of Voices, this Chad and Cheese Podcast series devoted to stories and opinions of industry leaders. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss a single show. For more, visit chadcheese.com.

Things are getting a tad heavy, huh? Maybe you just need some Chad & Cheese to make it all better? On this week's show: SmashFly gets an X Some Good News for Communo Facebook says, "Lower pay for you!" Andrew Yang says 3 day weekends rule! Spain marches toward equity and UBI Who gives a crap? Come off the ledge, pour a cold one and relax. Just let your ears do all the work. As usual, The Chad & Cheese Podcast is powered by Sovren, JobAdx and Jobvite. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides training and development to help your workplace leaders and employees integrate with and value people with disabilities. James Ellis: James Ellis from the Talent Cast. You may not be aware of this, but a couple years ago I lost a bet, so now I'm contractually obligated to say nice things about Chad and Cheese. Well, I took that, let's say lemon, and turned it into lemonade. I took interviews from Chad and Cheese and turned it into a book, but I added a lot of other people you're going to want to talk to. It's called Talent Chooses You, it is Hiring Better with Employer Branding, and it is available on Amazon, June 15th. You should go and buy it. Bye. Intro: 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: Oh yeah. Chad: Uh-huh (affirmative). Joel: How about some good news? The NBA is coming back and Vegas casinos are opening back up for business. Yeah. Sorry. That's the best I got. Welcome to The Chad and Cheese Podcast, I'm your co-host, Joel, Lordy I need a haircut, Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad, what the fuck is going on? Sowash. Joel: Yeah, I don't know. On this week show, SmashFly goes X-rated, Facebook says, "Lower pay for you," and who gives a crap. Time to exhale as we take a quick break and pay some bills. JobAdX: Face it. We live in a world that is all about content, content, content. So why do we expect job seekers to react differently while reading paragraphs and bullets and templated job descriptions? Stand out in a feed full of boring job ads with a dynamic enticing video that showcases your company culture, people, and benefits with JobAdX. Instead of hoping that job seekers will stumble upon your employment branding video, JobAdX seamlessly displays it in the job description while they're searching, building a connection and reducing candidate drop-off. You're spending thousands of dollars on beautiful, informative employment branding videos that just sit on a YouTube channel begging to be discovered, why not feature them across our network of over 150 job sites to proactively compel top talent to join your team? Help candidates see themselves in your role by emailing joinus@jobadx.com. That's, joinus@J-O-B-A-D-X.com. Attract, engage, employ with JobAdX. Joel: 2020 feels longer than that ad. Chad: Yeah. What the fuck is going on, man? I know that people probably listen because they want to kind of escape what's going on out there right now. And I didn't know that 2020 could get worse and I don't want to see it get any worse than it is right now. but jeez, man, this is fucking crazy. Joel: Yeah. Obviously, the George Floyd incident, which all of our listeners, at least in America, I assume the world will know about. The shootings in Louisville. Other places, we had the runner Chad: Ahmaud. Joel: ... Who, some people took the law in their own hands and killed an African-American guy, just running through a neighborhood. Chad: Running while black. Joel: Running while black. I think you and I kind of struggled with today's show and what we were going to talk about, and I think came to the conclusion that, two white guys weren't exactly the ones that people needed to hear from. But I will add this little bit of tidbit, as two guys that are nearing 50, we have some context around this. And it's happened before, and the sad thing is that it will probably happen again. And no amount of protesting, violence, any of that is going to make a difference when compared to actually voting, actually running for elected office, writing checks to candidates that you believe in, and volunteering for those candidates that you believe in. So I will just add that, as my two cents on the current state of America. Chad: Yeah. I think I've been on several social arguments around the Black Lives Matter where individuals ask, "Well, don't all lives matter?" Well, of course, all lives fucking matter. But when it comes to the United States, for centuries, they haven't mattered as much, black lives have not mattered as much as white lives, right? From our standpoint, we need to realize that, we need to identify that's a problem, and then we don't have hopefully, the George Floyd's. And that is what sparked the protests and sparked the looting and et cetera, et cetera. So we have to identify where the problem is, and the problem lies in our ability to know what the fuck we need to do different. And equity is the big key here. We talk about it a lot on this show. It's the inequities of what we do, not just pay inequities, just every day equity in what we're looking for. And it's something we'll talk a little bit about today, but as a couple of white guys, again, Torin Ellis, who is very big in D&I, diversity, is actually on a show with my wife called Crazy and the King Podcast, check it out. We asked him, "What should a couple of white guys do?" He said, "Get on your fucking platform and scream because we need you guys as much as we need the protesters on the street." And I don't agree that voting will change it all because we've been voting for fucking years. We need people on the streets. We need these protests. And after I get done producing this today, I will have a sign and I will be protesting as well. Joel: Yeah. We'll disagree on this. We won't be able to gauge this, but track the number of people who are in the streets this week, and how many of them won't vote, and you'd probably be surprised at the percentage that don't. Chad: We'll see. Joel: Less than half of our citizenry that can vote, does vote. So when you say we have been voting for years, not enough people have been voting. Trump is in office because a lot of people didn't vote that should have. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And that's the case going forward. Look, we are a country of contradictions. We have a document that we live by that says, everyone's equal, and we were built on slave labor and committed genocide against an entire people that were living here before the white guys showed up. But one thing that has rung true in the last hundred years, is everyone over 18, and isn't a felon can vote in elections, and not enough do. And that is something that can change the system. Politicians hope that you don't vote. Companies hope that the masses don't vote, but you can vote and you should. And that is the one thing that is constant in making things change around the country. We did elect a black president two terms in a row because of voting, and we can change the system now through voting as well. Chad: So that being said, let's move on. Joel: Headspace change. Here we go. Shout outs. Chad: Yeah. So first shout out, Pete Suchy over at CVS Health, thanks for the props on our segment during SmashFly's Transform. That was an interesting virtual event that we had to go through yesterday. It was interesting because most of the State of Indiana, about 30 minutes before Joel and I went live, Comcast went down, the whole fucking internet went down. It was crazy. So, yeah, Pete glad I could actually get on, but only through all those wonderful people at Transform and the people throwing the show could they actually get me on voice only. Joel: So for those who don't know, Chad gives me shit on a daily basis about my internet connectivity and speed. And the poetic justice and the irony that would have gone down had Chad not been able to join the Transform call would have been really amusing to me. He was able to get on the call, if you missed it. So he did join, but Chad, you have to admit, it would have been quite ironic had you not been able to join and I could. Chad: You were tethering, weren't you? Joel: I was tethered to my phone. Yeah. Chad: Okay. So that's not even the same. Joel: Thanks Verizon. Not the same. Shout out to virtual DJs. Chad: Yes. Joel: So we're on transform. I didn't know these things existed, right? We have intermissions to sessions and there's a literal like DJ dude in the corner of the screen mixing sounds that are just suitable enough for middle aged people, Spandau Ballet, Taylor Swift, whatever it was. But, virtual DJ, shout out. I had no idea. Chad: Yeah. I think Elise might've stole this from Banff. When you go to the gathering of cult brands in Banff, there's a DJ on the stage and she was rocking some tunes between sessions. But I got to say this was taking it to the next level. So Elise, and team over at SmashFly and Symphony Talent, that's a big applause right there. Joel: Yeah. I'm not a big fan of virtual events in general, but if you throw some DJs in there and some mixologists, I might get on board with this idea. Chad: Big shout out to Joanna Tuchoska, a new listener over in the UK. She's a Matt Alder fan, so she definitely needed the Chad and Cheese balance. Joel: Yeah. That's some balance for you, for sure. Shout out to Bonusly, a company got 9 million this past week, so they do just kind of what you would think, they ... Referral, employee rewards, gift cards, all kinds of good stuff. I met these guys back, I think two or three years ago, they were in the startup pavilion at HR tech. And when I met him, I thought, eh, I think they're going to be all right. And sure enough, years later, they're getting millions of bucks and growing the company. So, shout out to Bonusly. Chad: Nice. Big shout out to [Bill Barthel 00:10:14.08], listening from a meat processing plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Just kidding. At least, I don't think he's in meat processing plant, but we've heard so much of that lately from Iowa, I thought, why not? Joel: Shout out to Chris Kneeland, again, sort of the Transform theme here. Chris, some of you know, we've talked to him on the show, he is the co-founder of a bunch of businesses, Communo, Gathering, cult brands or Cult ... Shit, what is it? Chad: Collective. Joel: Cult Collective. He was a real spot, a great line, when the cameras weren't rolling was. When we were working on internet issues, we said, "Don't worry, Chris, you're all good." And he goes, "No. The biggest mistake I've ever made was agreeing to be on a show with you two clowns." As for Chris, a little bit of insight there in the background, that was some good comic relief in a stressful time. Chad: Very nice. Big shout out to Sean Paulseth, over at ideal.com. He says the whole company listens. So here's a shout out to the entire company over at Ideal. So at ideal.com, thanks for listening. I think it's amazing the amount of companies that have either Chad Cheese listening clubs, they use our podcast for training material. I can't thank our listeners enough. Joel: I don't know what it says about us being the educational resource for most companies, but there you have it, that's it. I don't think we've given a shout out to Transform yet, have we? SmashFly, Elise Chad: Yeah. Joel: ... The whole aim there kicked ass. We enjoyed it. Thanks for working with us through the technical issues. And I will say the prep that we had to go through for 30 minutes of online virtual talking was really belts and suspenders level preparation. So, the team over there knows their shit. Chad: Yes. Definitely, Elise, Rupesh, and no question, Aya, Lauren, Angela, Caitlin, the whole team was relentless in finding a way to get me to connected. You're the best, especially Aya, because you sent us blunts. SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: But they also sent us an experience box in the mail. That was awesome. I actually used some of that essential oil stuff before getting on the podcast. Joel: Oh, did you? Chad: Well, calms me down. I always need that before I get on the mic with you. Joel: Did Julie apply the lotions? Chad: Hell yeah. SFX: Hell yeah. Joel: All right. I'm going to end shout outs on this, and I'm going to dive a little bit back into the state of the world. But I just want to give a shout out to LeBron James. You and I grew up in a time where athletes had voices around social issues, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Bill Russell, the list goes on and on. And for 20, 30 years, athletes have been pretty silent around social issues and things that are going on. And LeBron James, who most of the world will know, basketball player, famous, he is not shy about going on social media, talking about social issues, talking about injustice. And I just think it deserves a quick shout out for LeBron James, that he's an athlete that isn't just, "Hey, Republicans buy shoes too," he's willing to put his name and his voice out there and shout out to LBJ. Chad: Let's hope LeBron James can go and smack Drew Brees square in the fucking face. Last shout out for me, Adam Chambers, world traveler, founder of Applichat and Death Match contestant. He bought us some bourbon. So that's good stuff. Also look for the Death Match podcast to be dropping, go to chadcheese.com Joel: Drew Brees apologized today, by the way. But let's get to the news. X-Files, SmashFlyX. You did a shred on this thing, what's going on? Chad: It's interesting. We talked to Rupesh Nair, the CEO over at Symphony Talent in February, and talked about SmashFly, talked about Symphony Talent. Symphony Talent is a big organization, although, I don't really know much about all these cloud solutions and whatnot. And he kind of hinted that SmashFly was going to be a product. So the name wasn't going to go away, but it was going to be a product underneath Symphony Talent. If SmashFly did anything incredibly well, it was definitely marketing and sales, right? Joel: Yep. Chad: So then yesterday we get the announcement that SmashFlyX is the new brand, it's a consolidation. So all those M-Cloud, X-Cloud, cloud clouds that Symphony Talent had before, they're all rolling up, all that technology is rolling up under one brand called SmashFlyX. Joel: Yes, yes. You and I talk about acquisitions all the time, and kind of wonder how is the integration going to happen? What's going to happen to the brand architecture? Chad: Fast. Joel: And speed, right? How long is this shit going to take? And considering the state of the world, Symphony and these guys turned this around really quickly. Considering SmashFly had some exodus of some talent, but at least in team and everyone over there picked up the ball and ran with it. And I think SmashFlyX is great. I love the tag, you plus us, plus your ATS equals success. And I have nothing but good things to say, and wish them success. I love that they're not tinkering with the ATS space, they seem to be remaining outside of that and being an enhancement to it. And I think that's where their lane is, and they'll continue to thrive on that. And I love the programmatic interface, which you and I both got a test drive of. Yeah, I think this is a home run for them. Chad: Yeah. We were able, a few weeks ago, to actually jump in and get like a test drive to an extent. Joel: Yeah. Chad: And it looked great. And that's the thing, is that, if you're going to be in something all day, it's got to be pleasing to the eye. Right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: But it's got to be workable. And being able to plug all these programmatic outreach along with automation pieces and experience. Which I would assume SmashFly, the X is for experience, I'm not sure. But to be able to be that layer of experience before you dump all that Intel into an applicant tracking system, I think is really cool, and it's smart. Again, Symphony Talent is starting to really show that they have focus. This is their vision, and they're definitely fucking determined because this happened fast. And this is a shot, easily, over TMP's bow, because those motherfuckers have about 27 billion brands, none of them are consistent. They are all different and disco-joined and whatnot. So I wonder if TMP, AIA, Pernego, TalentBrew, what the fuck ever, if they finally find something, instead of having all these different pieces all over the board. Joel: Yeah. And I think this underscores that very, very well. So many times we see acquisitions they never sort of interact with each other, integrate with each other. Sometimes they're bought just to put them out of business, or they're bought to be a standalone until like they're not a standalone anymore and they just kind of go away. Or if you're Indeed, just plug in your jobs and the same brand and interface. So again, kudos to these guys for really getting it right on the integration side. Chad: This is an incredibly large market. So whether we're talking about Symphony or we're talking about TMP, those are only two players, and if you think about it, the amount of applicant tracking systems that are out there, for those two, to be able to try to own all of that space is going to be hard. So I think there's still tons of space for organizations out there. Like up-and-comers, you've got the Beamerys, the Candidate IDs, they just rolled out a new tech, not too long ago. It's just overall, this is the space that is exciting because it's growing and it's automating and it's making all that shit that we've had to deal with for years go away and including a great experience hopefully, for the candidate. Instead of going into that black hole, hopefully, we can start to nurture them and get them closer to our brand. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Well, great experience for workers, and leading to the next story of great experience for freelancers. Communo Chad: Some Good News, baby. Joel: Yeah. Some Good News. You're big on this, let people know, that haven't heard about it, what it is. Chad: Dude, Some Good News was amazing. I think they only did like eight episodes, but John Krasinski, the dude is on Jack Ryan, The Office, he's a celeb, right? But he's got surprising interview chops. He was able to pull a bunch of his celebrity friends together and they just focused really heavily on trying to bring good news to the people, instead of all this shit that's been happening in 2020. Well, ViacomCBS acquired Some Good News after a bidding war, after a bidding war. And it's going to be on CBS All Access. And dude, they did eight episodes, it's ridiculous. Joel: What episode are we on? And no one's come to us, to buy us. Chad: Yeah. Give us time. Joel: Jeez. Chad: Neither one of us are playing Jack Ryan on Amazon, either. Joel: A Quiet Place, he's a good director too. Chad: Oh, really? I did not know he did that. Joel: Yeah. Chad: John, Emily and the kids weren't staying up editing late at night. Oh no. Joel: No. Chad: Post production was New York based. They had Nashville, Maiden Network handling video distribution. Calgary's Arcade ran social media and they actually had Giflytics, in New Haven, Connecticut do gif analytics. And this blew me away, the SGN, Some Good News gifs alone had more than 287 million views, just the gifs. Joel: What? SFX: Hell yeah. Joel: Jesus. Chad: But this was put together by a platform, and that platform, we've been lucky enough as we talked about earlier, Chris Kneeland and Ryan Gill, we met these guys two years ago at the gathering of cult brands in Banff, Canada, where we are on stage. They asked us to come speak on stage and they're just amazing dudes. And they created this platform called Communo, which is a freelance platform that isn't like all the other ones that are erased to the bottom. These are legit dudes and women making good money, doing good stuff. And obviously SGN and all the product in the production and everything was top notch. Joel: Yeah. And we did an interview with Ryan about the company, which you should check out on our archives if you want to learn more. But also don't forget the fact that they brought in veteran, Cindy Sonya in recently, to head up some of the operations there. And what great promotion? This was a fast company story, and I'm sure it got picked up elsewhere, but these guys have been in business two years maybe. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And to get a note like this had to be great for their business, they really are doing great things in terms of not being a race to the bottom, trying to get premium pricing for premium work and kudos to them for this great story and helping this thing happen. I'm really curious, in this work from home era, television companies and stations and networks have to be asking the question, do we, do we really need to spend all the money that we spend on studios and office space and all this, because everything I get now mostly, specifically 30 days ago, everyone was in their home with a little, you know, circle light and a Zoom connection, which is basically all this was. But you had people behind the scenes, freelancers, that were making it a quality professional video. Do television stations and networks and programs look at this and say, "Why do we have these studios and big cameras and all this?" Does that go away in some of this era or no? Chad: I think there's an opportunity to make it go away. I think that having people on staff to be able to rip it out quicker is still going to be necessary to some extent. I think though, from Communo standpoint, since the pandemic hit, obviously many companies are cutting staff, they've had user signups go up 1400%, and the market value of posted products was up 1300%. So not only were there people, there are signups coming in from the standpoint of talent, but the actual posted projects were up dramatically as well. And I can't say this enough for Ryan, for Chris and obviously Cindy, who is an industry veteran, who's now on the team over at Communo, this is, I personally feel, a platform that freelancers can get into and not sit there and feel like they're getting screwed, right? They're actually going to be doing good work, for good shops and they're going to be doing it for good money as opposed to the other freelance platforms where you're saying, "Hey, I'll do that for 25 bucks." Joel: Yeah. Yeah. If you're good at it, this is a place you're going to go to get top dollar for the work that you do. Chad: And if you're an advertising agency or a recruitment ad agency in our space, and you're doing any of the videos or creative design, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, I don't know why you wouldn't check these guys out. Joel: Let's take a break and we'll come back to some Facebook and three-day work weeks. Jobvite: Getting the right people to apply for the right jobs at the right time has always been a challenge. And now with an influx of candidates and increased workload, recruiters have to work smarter to provide a memorable candidate experience, make moments matter with Jobvite, a comprehensive talent acquisition suite, the opposite marketing inspired approach to recruiting, so that talent teams can more intelligently attract, engage and retain top talent combining the power of AI and the human touch. Jobvite, recruit with purpose, hire with confidence. Chad: Well, I do have Amber Ferrari who said that she will be voicing that. So now all I have to do is push her into it to make sure it happens. Joel: Yeah. Was it Adam Gordon that asked, "Why do all American ads have British accents in them?" Because they sound more trustworthy. Chad: Probably. I'll go with that. Joel: Facebook. Chad: You shared an article, and again, this is going to be an interesting conversation. The article was entitled, Why You Should Follow Facebook and Pay Remote Workers Less. It was on Inc.com. So why should we pay remote workers less? Joel: Well, in the article, the defense of this is that the standard of living in San Francisco is not the same that it takes to have that standard of living, pick a city, Boulder, Terre Haute, Detroit, wherever. So the basic premise is like, as we go more and more virtual, as we go more and more we can live anywhere and do our jobs, that pay will be responsive to where you live. So if I live in Indianapolis and I work for Facebook, I shouldn't expect the same salary as I would if I lived in Palo Alto. So fairly reasonable argument, I think, but I'm guessing you're going to disagree with it. Chad: Yeah. It doesn't make any fucking sense. Joel: It makes sense to me. Chad: What about the building cost you're saving? You don't need to expand space, rather you can contract space and you can save money. This is just another way that Zuck wants to hoard his fucking money and screw his employees. Not to mention your cost of living drops when you move, that's a personal, not a corporate decision. Let's look at this from the lens of cohorts, which is your favorite. Let's take a look at maybe a younger millennial or a Z. Younger workers will want to work from a Metro, which is going to be higher cost, right? Because they want, and they need social interaction, bars, clubs, the Metro experience. Where an Xer with three kids, they don't want that, plus they have a fucking family, and they could get paid less for doing the same job just because they're not looking for the party lifestyle. This is one of the stupidest fucking things I've ever heard. Does it make sense because it costs less? You're doing the same fucking work. It doesn't matter. We talk about inequity, this is another form of driving inequity. So let's say for instance, you live in Detroit, do you believe because you are a programmer in Detroit, you should be paid the less because you chose to live in Detroit? Fuck no. Joel: The answer is they already are. Chad: And that's wrong. Again, we're talking about pay inequity. Joel: Costs more to live in San Francisco than Detroit. 100 grand goes a lot further in Detroit Chad: It doesn't fucking matter, dude. Pay inequity. It's something that we've talked about for a very long time and it still exists. All this does is widen the pay inequity gap, period. Joel: No one in Cleveland is bitching about salaries because someone in Seattle's making more, they understand it costs more to live in Seattle than it does in Cleveland. Chad: Okay. Doing the same work, you have three kids and a house that are in the suburbs, that might be less or maybe even beyond that, and you did that because you wanted to have a different lifestyle for your family. You're doing the same work, there's no reason you shouldn't get the same pay. Joel: We'll just disagree on this. Chad: Yeah. Because it's total bullshit. If somebody was making more money than I was, and I was doing the exact same work because of where I chose to live, that's total bullshit. That's socioeconomic fuck you, is what it is. It's pay inequity, pure and fucking simple. Joel: It's geographical balance. Chad: It's socioeconomic bullshit, is what it is. Joel: Let's talk about something else though. Like Facebook and the whole like leave Trump's shares up, and when the looting starts, the shooting starts and all that shit. From a talent retention and recruitment standpoint, they are dancing on a fine line of getting into a place where no one wants to work at Facebook that gives a shit about morals and doing the right thing. Right? We agree on that at least? Chad: Well, yeah. First you want to pay me less because I want to live outside the fucking city. Then you want to take a stand that leaves these stupid fucking posts up and you don't want to take responsibility for your own platform. You just want to back away and just let it happen. These companies, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, they're all media companies. They might not have started out that way, but they are media companies. Where do they drive all of their revenue from? Its media. Guess what? You're a media company. So now we should get the FCC and fuck involved and start making sure that they have to abide by the same types of rules that local radio stations do or Network TV. That's where we should be focusing. Joel: To me, Twitter has a real opportunity to do a real business, like come to Jesus moment. And in my opinion should go to a subscription based service. They'll lose a lot of users, but the interaction that you'll get on it will be much better. They could charge a very minimal amount and really clean up the space, have no advertising, they've already said no to political ads and the like. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And the businesses that are tearing our world apart, are social media sites, right? Teen depression, suicide, political forces against each other. Like nobody wants to kill each other over at Netflix, a nice little subscription model. So to me, if Twitter really wanted to make a statement, and I'm going way off on a tangent, but Twitter should go to a subscription model and get just out of this cesspool of social media shit that's going on right now, and that Zuckerberg apparently doesn't give a shit about, because at 22 years old people told him he was Jesus and he still believes it. Chad: Yeah. Netflix and Twitter, that's apples and oranges. But I do agree, you get what you pay for. And right now, we're paying for free and we're getting a lot of shit that's unregulated. Joel: And speaking of free, how about, we had our buddy from the Yang Gang, talk about a three day workweek in a post this week. Right? Did you share that one? Chad: Yup. Andrew Yang Joel: And how did we go from four to three? We were just debating four like a month ago. Chad: No, it was three day weekends. So Yang wants three day weekends, after this last three day weekends he's like, "Man, this is great. Let's do this." Some studies have shown four day workweeks increase worker satisfaction and productivity. And Microsoft, Japan subsidy, reported a 40% boost in productivity after trialing the chain. Joel: I think the irony of all this discussion is, thanks to our phones, laptops, wearable shit, whatever, most people never really stop working. You and I have an unwritten agreement that we just don't necessarily talk to each other on Friday and Saturday and Sunday. But for most people, they work through the weekend. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So to talk about three day weekends, to me, it's just all conversation. We all work, most of us, seven days a week, whether it's on the weekend or the week day. So unless we have like a serious, okay, we're unplugging, we're going off the grid for three days, we're still going to be working. Chad: Yes. I agree. Working from home, remote work, connectivity, you're still going to do the work when you do the work. And I think this is one of the easiest things to do, is to say that you have a four day work week, but you still have projects that need to get done. Right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: So that is what it is. And that's going to change, obviously, if you start talking about manufacturing. I mean some manufacturers already have four day workweeks, thing is they're 10 hour work days. Right? So you're still getting your 40 hours in. So this has happened in some form or fashion with companies and in some industries healthcare over the years. So is this a big change? To an extent. I think we just need to change our mindset around what those hours actually mean. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. The real solution is we all just moved to France. Chad: I'm down with that. Joel: I'm down with that too. And I know you're down with universal basic income as well. There was a story on that this week. Chad: Yeah. So the Corona virus has made things even more difficult for like a quarter of all Spanish people, which is about 12.3 million people who are at risk of poverty or social exclusion after the country was not fully recovered from the previous economic crisis. So Spain's government approved universal basic income to help 850,000 vulnerable families, counting for about 2.3 million people. This is something that we've talked about this for a while. What is a country supposed to do? It's supposed to support and protect. And in this case, you're supporting your people. You're driving equity to provide dollars to those individuals, and you're going to build the economy because when you provide that money, they're going to put it right back into the economy. Joel: The capitalists and me hates this, but the sort of realist embraces it. The inequality of the rich and the poor in our country, and let's let's agree much of the world, is such that, look, the people with the money at some point are going to have to give it to the people who could pick up the pitchforks and burn the whole shit down. Because history tells us that when there is such pay inequality or inequity, that the people who don't have it get really upset and take it from the people who do, and then nobody has anything after that happens. So if you combine that social unrest with coronavirus, which is going to happen, I don't know how long it's going to last. You have automation taking jobs, we talked to Peter Weddle about his book, and this is something that he talks about, I believe. It's going to happen, it's just a matter of how much are people willing to give to where they don't go. Well, that's way too much. What's that balance? I don't know. And this goes back to our San Francisco versus Cleveland argument, Cleveland's a beautiful city, by the way, in terms of like, does someone in Cleveland get the same as someone in San Francisco? Chad: Yeah. Well, I think overall, when CEOs are making a thousand times or 1500 times more than the actual people who are making the product or providing the service under that brand, that was the concept of the founder or the president or the CEO, or what have you, you said balance, we have lost our balance here, especially in this country. We have no fucking balance. We have our minimum wage is $7.25, which is about $15,000 a year. That's fucking ridiculous. The thing here, is that the government again is stepping in and estimates that they're going to be spending about 3 billion euros per year, and that 3 billion will go right back into the economy to fuel it. It won't go into stock buybacks, another fucking yacht, or into some rich guy's bank account. That's the thing, is that we have to have government step in when this inequity and this balance is all fucked up. Joel: It's all going to go back into weed and taco bell, baby. Sovren: Sovren parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry, the more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's S-O-V- R-E-N.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: Software so human, Who Gives a Crap job postings on LinkedIn. Joel: I had to do like a triple take when I saw this story. Not even a story, someone just shared a job posting on LinkedIn, but the company is called, Who Gives a Crap. That's literally the company name. They're out of Melbourne, Australia, and they do try to bring toilets to the world, similar to Bill Gates and what he's doing. That's that was my takeaway from Who Gives a Crap, the company. Chad: But why didn't you share it other than the name of the company? Joel: It was shared because the job description kicks ass. Chad: Yes. Joel: It was an example of like, here's what your job posting should look like. They shouldn't look like templated copy and pasted corporate bullshit. This is a human, humorous, but also heartfelt why you should work for us. Like you give a crap. Yes (Inaudible) because we generally want to make the world better, a better place to work. We want you to every minute you spend working with us, you're making a difference. The ad is very long. It's very engaging. You want to read the entire thing. Chad: Yeah. Joel: If you want to look at it yourself, anyone out there, again, it's Who Gives a Crap. Go out to LinkedIn and search that and look at their job postings. But we just thought it was worth noting at the end of the show, which we knew was going to be kind of heavy at the top, light at the bottom. Who Gives a Crap, that's how you do job descriptions my friend. Chad: Yes. Go to whogivesacrap.org. Their blog is called Talking Crap. It is SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: ... It is legit funny. There is purpose behind this company and to be able to actually read a job posting, Joel's right, reading the job posting and getting into it at first, it was like, "What the hell is this crap?" Right? And then you're like, "Oh my God, this is freaking awesome." Somebody actually sat down and wrote something that was meaningful. Holy crap! Joel: Yeah. It reminded me of, if you were, if you're buying Groupons 10 years ago, when it was really like a deal a day Groupon and the body copy of those ads, they were hilarious and engaging. Chad: And just for all of you people who do give a crap, we out. Joel: We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to podcast with Chad and Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Anyhoo, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out

The Future of Text Recruiting: Lessons from Liberty Mutual, Randstad Sourceright, and Whole Foods Your Hosts: Joel Cheesman & Chad Sowash The Chad & Cheese Podcast Guest Presenter: Erik Kostelnik, Co-Founder and CEO of TextRecruit What to expect: An analysis of shifting candidate behaviors How Fortune 500 employers are using text messaging to achieve hiring goals The role of artificial intelligence and advanced automation Insights into the future of candidate communication Industry snark and the possibility of inappropriate levity REGISTER - https://www.chadcheese.com/webinars WEBINAR! #text #TextRecruit #Video #Webinar #Nexxt

Max Armbruster CEO and Founder of Talkpush talks with The Chad & Cheese Podcast about building a CRM intertwined with world-class messaging. Is Talkpush the replacement for Applicant Tracking Systems? #Video #CRM #ATS #chatbots #Demo #RMP

Vervoe demos their desktop and new features. Chad & Cheese sit back a listen to Firing Squad alums Omer and Damon from Vervoe. Vervoe helps companies uncover hidden talent.

The Chad & Cheese welcome Teg Grenager CEO & Co-founder of Uncommon to demo the Uncommon NEW PASSIVE candidate matching tech. #Uncommon #Matching #AI #MachineLearning #Video

Kristen and Stephen find a pub, drink and demonstrate how easy VideoMyJob is to use. Pull up a pint and enjoy. #VideoMyJob #video #Recruitment #JobDescription #DEMOpocalypse #Demo

After coming off the stage Torin Ellis jumps into it and shares advice with Chad & Cheese on how we ALL can impact what's right and stamp down what's wrong. #Diversity Shot by our friends at Talent Nexus #Diversity #life #Recruitment #Inclusion

Programmatic is scary... No it's not, especially if you have an expert or even team of experts on your side. Chad & Louise speak with Thomas Prince, co-founder, and an uber-smart programmatic dude from Talent Nexus, talk about the simplicity and efficiency of... You got it! PRO-GRAM-MATIC. Watch, listen, and enjoy! #Programmatic #video #ChadLouise #TalentNexus #jobs #jobdistribution

The boys are back after the 4th holiday and Chad trekking to Oregon for college visitations. And it’s a good thing, because the news was hot-and-heavy this week. Google Hire officially launched. Are the guys impressed or not? Indeed and LinkedIn were also making waves this week. In Indeed’s case, the product offerings continue to come down the pike. One of the guys is not impressed. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is busy leveraging its relationship with Microsoft to get deeper into Windows 10 and video. And they also really, really hates when people do (tune in to find out). Additionally, some start-up just got a check for $30 million to take on this segment of the industry. In other news, some head of HR said a certain social media app was the “new LinkedIn.” Really? Really?!?! As usual, visit partners America’s Job Exchange, Sovren and Wonscore by Wonderlic. Without them, there ain’t no show, people. Enjoy and stay cool. It’s friggin’ hot out there. #GoogleHire #LinkedIn #Microsoft #Indeed

On this week's Super Bowl version of The Chad and Cheese Podcast: - Amazon is tracking your trips to the shitter - Monster gets a bad case of the shrinkage - Top 10 industry commercials of all-time - Super Bowl ad from Chad & Cheese - Super Bowl picks .. and much, much more As always, visit our sponsors. They're amazeballs. Sovren, America's Jobs Exchange, Ratedly and Catch 22 Consulting rule! PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Announcer: 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: It's Super Bowl Weekend, and we're ready to give you a super show. Get it? Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm the show's quarterback, Joel Cheesman. Chad: Dude, you're the water boy. I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's episode, Monster suffers from shrinkage, Amazon knows when you've been napping on the job, and we run down the best employment related Super Bowl ads from the last 20 years. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Get ready for a stroll down memory lane, meatheads. Announcer: America's Job Exchange is a market leader in diversity recruitment, and an OFCCP compliant solution provider. We serve over a thousand customers, consisting of federal contractors and subcontractors to SMBs and Fortune 500 organizations. America's Job Exchange specializes in job distribution to over 6,500 state one-stop career centers and community based organizations, ensures the creation and maintenance of state credentials, obtains veteran preference on job postings, robust outreach, management, and supports effective, positive recruitment efforts designed to recruit individuals with disabilities, veterans, women, and minorities. Announcer: For more information, call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.AmericasJobExchange.com. Chad: America's Job Exchange, they do a lot of shit for not a lot of money. Joel: All right, all right, all right. Chad: And mainly keeping you from getting fined by the federal government or loss of big federal contracts. Joel: Way to throw out the expletive in the first two minutes of the show. That was great. Chad: Thank you. I've been practicing. Joel: Might as well bust the seam now. Oh man, we got a ton of shout-outs man. Chad: Yeah we do. You want to start taking a crack at it, or you want me to. Joel: I'll start it. I'll start it. First up Nick from Boneit, I mean Honeit. One of our last Firing Squad podcasts, which was awesome by the way. If you haven't listened to it, go back into the archives and check that out. Anyway, Nick is all boats and hoes now since the show. He's reeling in the new prospects and customers, so a big shout-out to Nick there on the West Coast. Chad: And as a matter of fact, he even created a discount code. Can you believe that? CHADCHEESE is the discount code. Go to chadcheese.com and check out just the Firing Squads. I mean just go to Podcasts, and you'll see Honeit, and give it a listen. Chad: But also on the same note, got some tweets around Crowded who was a part of the Firing Squad as well. So great product, definitely check this company out, and there's no question. Those guys got big applause from us for a reason. Chad: So two things. If you haven't checked out Firing Squad, you need to because they're startups that are kicking ass and taking names. And a lot of them don't have the brand awareness, so that's one of the reasons why we created it. Joel: You might get to hear ... Chad: I hope. Joel: By the way, Nick gave us a discount coupon code, but he didn't tell us how much it was off. So it's kind of a mystery special here on Chad and Cheese. We don't know how much of a discount you're going to get with that coupon code, so you're on your own on that one. Chad: Yeah. Well I'm gonna say Chad is gonna give a 30% discount on Honeit. Joel: Let's go 50. I like 50 better. Chad: Okay. Okay. I like it. Joel: It's a Groupon discount on Honeit this week. We love you Nick. Chad: It seemed to work for CareerBuilder and Monster, so anyway. Joel: Ouch. Chad: So let me go ahead and hit Ryan Christoi up a little bit from KRT. Joel: Okay, that's your boy. Chad: Yeah, no. He was giving me shit over the highlights of the funny meme that we did. The Brady versus Foles. He said, "How could you forget about Tom Brady's Oscar-worthy turn in Ted? And who could ever forget his breakout role as computer geek number one in Stuck on You?" So yeah he definitely put it- Joel: Wow. Chad: You're right. You're right Ryan. Joel: Specifically, I believe it was Ted 2, and I don't even know what in the world you're talking about with Love Potion No. 9 or what was that second movie you just mentioned? Anyway. Chad: Stuck on You. It was a Greg Kinnear, Matt Damon thing, which is horrible. But Ryan, just like to let you know, our fans in Philly, Nancy definitely from Philly, loved the Foles versus Brady bit. So mission accomplished Buddy. Take that. Joel: Dude, so many Brady lovers out there, which brings us to our next shout-out, Ethan Bloomfield. Chad: Oh good. Joel: Buddy over at Baird. He's having a special cookout this weekend in honor of the golden boy from Michigan. So have a good cookout there and have a few cold ones on us there Ethan. Chad: Yeah, it's gonna taste sour. Let me tell you. It's gonna taste sour. Then Jonathan Zila, he quoted actually our last pod, the CEO from Canvas, Aman Brar, said, and I quote, "Startups are a world filled with infinite trade-offs. Big fan JZ." One thing JZ you gotta remember, but one of those trade-offs probably shouldn't be your name and corresponding URL that just doesn't match. So yeah, I don't agree on that one buddy. Joel: Hey, Aman knows where you live dude, so watch out. Watch how you say that. Kelly Robinson keeps being a pain in my ass there at- Chad: He's awesome. Joel: Australia or England, I guess, wherever the hell he's from. I'm super mad at Joey Stubbs for sending you food and forgetting about me, for God's sakes. The Fat One. I mean come on dude. Chad: Dude, so good. So good. Well he knows he needs to fatten me up. But yeah, no. Joey Stubbs sent us some Oh Ryan's Irish potatoes straight from Philly probably because he knows I'm not gonna be rooting for Tom Brady. Joel: And speaking of Irish potatoes, quick shout-out that we'll be in Dublin about a month-and-a-half from now. I'm certainly getting my liver in shape. How about you? Chad: Oh yeah. Of course. There's training to be done, and I am down for the training my friend. Joel: Yes. And truth be told, there'll a little Super Bowl shindig at my house this weekend. I think we can probably put our livers through a little bit of a workout on Sunday. Chad: Amen. Amen. Let me blow through a few more shout-outs here. Josh over at Smashfly tweeted, "Smashfly survived the most dangerous podcast in HR." Yeah, that was a good pod. Loved it. But keep your nose clean over there at Smashfly guys because we'll be watching you close. Chad: Jim from Talent Nexus. He said, "Commuting on Monday is much easier with the #chadcheese podcast." Thanks so much Jim. Appreciate it. And last if not least, and this should get another one, is our friend Mark Feffer. He "enjoyed the last pod." And he does a lot of good writing. Have you read any of his stuff? Joel: No. Chad: Yeah, he's over at HCMtechnologyreport.com. That is one long damn URL. Although- Joel: Is that a dot io URL? Chad: It's a dot com. Joel: All right. We'll give you the credit. Holy cow, someone has a dot com. All right. Chad: Woo-hoo! Joel: Congrats on that one. Big time. Chad: Yeah dude. Joel: I got nothing else. If you got no more shout-outs, let's get to the show. Chad: Let's do this. Joel: All right man, Amazon, aside from their rocket to the moon stock price this week, is tracking you at work. What's going on with that? Chad: Dude. So straight from the article, "What if your supervisor could identify every time you pause to scratch or fidget or for how long you actually took a bathroom break?" That's what Amazon ... It's actually not just ... They've patented this wristband, but they're using it. And they've been using it for a couple of years in England to be able to make sure that people are doing their jobs. Joel: I love this story for the ... They're testing this out in Britain first. I'm not sure why the Brits get this initially, but so be it. I guess it's for the Revolutionary War. They deserve to have this first. Anyway, the quote I love from this story, and I'm gonna give my best British accent on this. Quote, "There was no time to go to the loo," which is a bathroom for our American listeners. He said, "You had to process the items in seconds and then move on. If you didn't meet targets, you were fired." Chad: You're fired. Joel: That's hardcore man. Amazon is brutal. Chad: So months ago, we roasted idiots for getting microchips embedded in their skin. But that was their choice. That was their choice. Remember that? Joel: Yeah. Chad: In this case, it's the employer who is mandating the use of this tracker. And here's the bullshit reasoning behind it. Here we go. In theory, Amazon proposed technology would emit electronic pulses, blah, blah, blah from the employee's hand. Chad: So what this does is, ensures that they are doing the right thing from bin to bin, or they'll get haptic feedback, which means if you ever wear a Fitbit, like I do, if you don't move enough, it just vibrates, and it gives you that haptic feedback. If you're not doing the right thing, it just buzzes on you, and it lets you know we're watching. Joel: I bet you like that vibrating sensation, don't you? Chad: It depends on where it's at. Joel: Dude, how did we not have the embedded chips in our Naughty List at the end of the year? That should have so went on the Naughty List. Anyway, dude, this is just oh man, big brother- Chad: Yeah shit, that's [crosstalk 00:11:07]. Joel: Companies know who you are. This is why we're not employed because we would be fired for drinking on the job, smoking on job, or something. I don't know. Chad: Dude, but this stuff is going crazy. I mean it's even more scary than that. I mean we've got to be careful with our tech because bad shit can happen. Because on Monday, you probably saw on the news the tech industry actually was jolted because Strava, the fitness app, is being used by individuals in the military. Well what happens is you can map their movements. Yeah. You can map their movements, so they can actually see the outlines and actually see the military installations and troop movement. Joel: I saw, they could see where the most trafficked areas were and the whatever, the camp sight, and where the bathroom was because of traffic, and where the workout stuff ... Yeah, so yeah. Yeah, it's over folks. Just have a good time in the final days of humanity. All right, I'm sick of talking about that. Chad: Yeah, so this goes right into our robot overlords. Right? Joel: Oh yeah, okay. So Uber is trying to propagandize self-driving trucks by telling us it's good for humans. Do you want to comment on this? Chad: Well hell yeah. I mean- Joel: I just want to blow up Uber at this point. Chad: You take a look at U.S. transportation. I mean there is some reasons behind this that they're trying to pivot this into something good. But 66% of the billions of tons of goods actually being shipped domestically is being done by truck drivers. Only 9% is moved by rail, 4% is moved by water, 2% by air, and then rest of the 19% is done by pipeline fixed infrastructure. Chad: Dude, this is important shit. Joel: Sorry. Chad: So here's the thing. Here's the thing. We have problems filling truck driver positions. Right? Joel: True. True. Chad: Yeah, so this is where technology can start to eke in and start to take those positions because we don't have enough humans who actually want to do the goddam jobs in the first place. So what do we do at that point? Joel: I think we have to put the Amazon wristbands on the robots to make sure that they're doing what they need to do all the time. Chad: Here's the proposal from Uber because they're pushing Uber Freight. Right? Uber Freight's their new big thing. "Self-driving trucks should be complimenting humans." And most of the long-stretch of driving should be done by autonomous vehicles, where there would be hubs where humans would actually pick up these vehicles, and then take them into port. Right? And get them docked up. Then take them back out, and so on and so forth. Chad: Well Uber has this new app that is Uber Freight. And their vision is "self-driving trucks will manage long-haul driving on some interstate highways, but having two hands on the wheel, will still be the best way to get a load to its final destination," which we could take that in many different ways. But we're talking about truck- Joel: You said "load". Chad: But what they're trying to do, and if you go to these different sites, they're trying to fight all of this research that's being done. So Goldman Sachs, McKenzie Global, the International Transportation Forum, they have all this data that's showing that humans are going to lose these jobs. And Uber is trying to fight that with all these warm, fluffy videos and this quote/unquote strategy that humans aren't gonna go away. Joel: Can I throw out a conspiracy theory real quick? Chad: Yeah. I'd love it. We've been hearing a shit-ton of them lately. Did you know the memo's out? Joel: I haven't read it, but I did see the update that the memo is out. What if Uber created Uber Eats, right, where they deliver food to basically keep us fat and happy, while their automated driving trucks and cars took over the world. I'm just saying. Keep us fat and happy, deliver us food, keep us fat and happy. This'll be brought in with some video game or porn delivery service. And the trucks will just move freight all over the world. Okay. It's getting a little bit more ridiculous the more I talk, but I do think it may have some credibility. But yeah. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel: The robots- Chad: Have you seen the movie Logan? Joel: No. I go to you for all my Marvel reviews, and I know it's a good movie. I assume I will see it, but it's rated R, so I couldn't take my 11 year old to see it. Chad: Oh Cole would have loved it. But anyway, yeah, I mean they've got some scenes where they actually have fully autonomous semi-trucks. And they're obviously looking into the future. And that was all over the road like barren interstate kinds of things. So that's the kind of shit that we're looking for. That and then you can actually show the kids Wall-E, the animation that's rated G, and that pretty much just talks about the conspiracy theory that you just played out. That was the entire show man. Joel: I did sneak a viewing of Terminator 2 past the authorities, and he has seen that. He has seen the evil side of what's to come, which we all will see at some point. Which is liquid metal killing everybody. Chad: Yeah, hopefully sooner than later. Joel: We've talked about some downer tech. Let's talk about some positive tech. Chad: Yes. Joel: And get a quick word from our sponsor, Sovren, and then we're gonna talk about Monster shrinkage. How does that sound? Chad: It sounds horrible. Go ahead. Announcer: Google, Lever, Entelo, Monster, Jibe, what do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovren technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job, while others use our technology to help companies find the perfect candidate. Sovren has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996, and we can help improve your hiring process too. We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit Sovren.com. S-O-V-R-E-N dot com for a free demo. Joel: This next story's huge, but then it shrinks. Chad: Huge. Huge of shrinking. They just stepped out of the cold water. Joel: Let me give a little bit of background. There was a day when Monster was gonna take over the world. Right? They were gonna have the job board of the globe. They were gonna have outposts everywhere. And I want to say it was about seven, eight, nine years ago, they brought in like HR China, and it was at the cusp of China getting ready to blow up. And Monster was in a really good position, so when I saw this story that basically says they're getting out of Asia and focusing on North America and Europe, that's a huge 180 from the Monster of old. Joel: And I know that that is a theme. It used to be Monster would build and buy people. Now they're just partnering with people. Now instead of take over the world, let's just work with North America and Europe. So I'm really I guess surprised, but I shouldn't be by this story, just because of the way they've evolved or devolved in the last few years. Chad: Right. Joel: But what are your thoughts on this announcement? Chad: Well out of the gate, it was a holy-shit moment because Quest Corporation is not new to this segment overall. I don't know about as much job boards, but the segment in itself. And to know that the agreement to acquire 100% of equity in Monster Singapore, Monster Hong Kong and nearly half of Monster Malaysia, it's a pretty damn big deal. Chad: But back to my 2018 prediction, I think this is what Monster needs to be able to focus and prioritize to actually make that comeback. I mean from my standpoint, I believe this is good for them. Joel: So what's Randstad's footprint? Is it Europe/North America? Or is it everywhere? Chad: No it's everywhere. Yeah, Randstad's everywhere, but I think that smartly on their side, they can take a look at business and see where they're doing well, and where they should be prioritizing. So I think this is a big measure from an organization who knows how to do business and really crunch numbers versus the job board industry, especially Monster and the CareerBuilder of old. Hell, they were just printing money. And they were buying shit just to buy shit. That's not how it is today. Joel: It is not, and this reminds me of the old Steve Jobs story, and I know you're not an Apple guy, so maybe you don't know this story. But when Steve Jobs came back to Apple in '96-'97. They had tons of products, printers, just all kinds of crap. And he drew four quadrants on a white board or a chalkboard or whatever they had at the time and said look, we're gonna focus on these four things, and that's it. Everything else we've been doing is gone. Joel: So to me, I have this vision of someone at Monster, even though they don't have a CEO, for God's sakes, somebody in charge said- Chad: Or president. Joel: Somebody in charge said, look, we're gonna focus on this, this, this, and this. We're gonna focus on this location and this area, and everything else, it's either partner or do something along the side. We're not buying anybody. We're not spending any money. This is our focus. This is clearly a move to say look, we're not worried about Asia. We're not worried about half the population of the world. We're only gonna worry about that 20% here in North America and Europe. Joel: So I agree with you, it's probably the right move, and I think we both like what Monster's doing, and in a weird way we're rooting for them. So yeah, let's hope this works out. Chad: Yeah, well and Quest, I mean I really think that Quest has their finger on the pulse of that market. They're already in payroll, compliance, executive search, training, general staffing, RPO and more in that area. Right? And that's just part of the actual industry types of business that we're doing. Chad: And I think it just makes sense for Monster to be able to hand this over, and I believe from a Quest standpoint, makes good sense for them too. So agreed. Four quadrants, maybe in this case, two. Do what you do, and do it right. And don't try to be a drack-of-all-jades. Joel: A drack-of-all-drades. That's right. Chad: Jack-of-all-trades. I'll get it right. Joel: Let Indeed get bogged down in other countries. Let LinkedIn worry about those other places. We're gonna be awesome in Mishawaka, Indiana. That's what we're gonna do. Good luck. Joel: All right, so positive for Monster. Let's get into football. Chad: Okay. Joel: And we'll ease the audience into it. I did a post for ERE this week that frankly was a ton of fun to do. It was my top 10 employment-related Super Bowl ads of all time. Number one, to me it's not even close, is the original Monster ad, When I Grow Up from 1999. I can remember ... You know, you and I are old enough, and many people aren't. But I remember the buzz around that, seeing it on TV on my 32-inch 800 pound TV probably at the time. And how cool that was. Joel: Do you remember that? And what was sort of your emotional attachment or feelings when that day happened? Because it was also the Hot Jobs ad. So it was a big day in job work world. Chad: I was at Monster then, and they brought us all into ... It was in Indianapolis. They brought us all into a conference room, and they said we're gonna play the ad. And the buzz had been going on that we're going to do a Super Bowl ad. So we were excited because we didn't know what the hell was gonna happen, and what we were gonna do. Chad: So they had a few TVs set up, and we were all in there, turned the lights out, everybody was packed in there. It was uncomfortable as hell. But they played it, and just it was amazing. I mean it was almost ... It was a loss for words because that was such a good ad. Chad: From our standpoint, we had just launched Monster. This is something that just happened, so we had the Monster board and online career center were coming together pretty much as families per se. And this was something that we could actually hold onto together. I mean that ad to me, is personal and special. And I think it is for many people that were at Monster at that time. Chad: Yeah, no, I definitely loved that, but I have to say that the Audi ad pretty much tops my list. I mean every time I watch it, I think of my daughter Emma. Right? And I think of my step-daughter Kennedy, and I think of all these girls that are out there, and it's incredibly moving. Right? You know where Monster's is tongue-in-cheek, this one is just amazing. Joel: I cry like a little baby every time I see it. It's- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah. So I'm curious, did they bust out some VHS tapes and put them in and push play to see the Monster ad? Or was it streamed? Was it on a CD-ROM? How did they show it? Chad: I think it was on a CD. I don't know. It was all prepped and ready for us to get in there. It was all prepped and ready for us to get in there. Someone had a remote, and they played that shit. But I also have to say that in my top three was the CareerBuilder monkeys ads. Funny as hell. I mean just funny as hell and memorable because of the office environment. Chad: So that was funny, and one that wasn't ... It was office scene, but it wasn't really an employment kind of company. It was Reebok, the Terry Tate Campaign. That thing, I could watch the Terry Tate ads over and over and over for hours because they were so freaking hilarious. Joel: Yep. And that was my honorable mention. I felt a little guilty putting that in as an employment-related ad or recruiting ad, but it certainly is office-related. Chad: I loved it. Joel: The one thing I'll ad is the Hot Jobs ad, which also aired in '99, you and I being around that time, Hot Jobs was pretty much unknown. They were just ... I remember in '98, the year before, they had a 10 by 10 booth at Sherm, and they were sort of a punchline because it was like what kind of Hot Jobs do you have? Right? Like it was a porn job site or something. Joel: And when we found out that they were doing a super bowl ad, we thought what in the world. So it came out ... I mean they pretty much blew half of their bank account on this ad, which we thought was ridiculous. But at the time, everyone was looking for quote/unquote brain share or mind share. And it was like we want to be the brand that people think of for jobs. And God bless them, I mean they did it. I mean with Monster and Careerbuilder, or CareerPath at the time and Hot Jobs, immediately became the top three sites for jobs. Joel: And a year or two later, they sold to Yahoo for $438 million, which ironically was about what Monster sold for 10 plus years later. So I think that's a story that's worth sort of highlighting. Otherwise, you get a lot of comedy. Most of the ads are trying to be funny and sort of stand out. But it was a great trip down memory lane. If you haven't seen it, just check out ERE.net. It was a really fun post to put together for sure, for sure. Chad: And for Hot Jobs, it really identified one of their biggest faults was not allowing staffing companies to actually use the system. It was only companies direct that could use it. And at Monster, at that time, about 75% of our revenue was from staffing firms. We were making big bank off of those organizations, and Hot Jobs just told them to go away. Chad: So really, there was only one place to go at that point, and it was Monster. I actually had a friend that was over at Hot Jobs, and I would thank him all the time when we were bringing in staffing deals. Joel: Remember how bad CareerPath used to look and Career Mosaic? Mosaic was okay. Chad: Horrible. Career Mosaic was okay. Joel: CareerPath was like and newspaper jobs online. It was really awful. It was really awful. Then you had eSpan. Anyway. Chad: AKA, Job Options. Joel: Well I mentioned earlier that Monster doesn't have a CEO/President. And I think that something needs to be done about that. Chad: I agree. I agree. Especially with this shrinkage and this new focus. I think they should bring someone or some people- Joel: Like a team. I think a team is needed to solve this problem. Chad: I think I agree. Yeah. I agree. Joel: And in spirit of Super Bowl weekend, we're gonna unveil our own commercial. I don't even know how to set it up. We'll just play it and let it speak for itself. How's that sound? Chad: That sounds amazing. Julie: The following message was paid for by the campaign to elect the Chad and Cheese as co-Presidents of Monster. Chad: Hi. My name is Chad Sowash. Joel: And I'm Joel Cheesman. You know us as ... Chad: The Chad ... Joel: ... and Cheese Podcast at chadcheese.com. Chad: We are aware Monster's new owners have lopped off the heads of old Monster leadership and have focused on filling those positions with fresh ideas and new proven leaders, which is why- Joel: Let them eat cake. Get it? What? Lopped off heads, Marie Antoinette, oh come on man. Chad: Which is why the Chad and Cheese are officially running for co-President of Monster. Joel: The Chad and Cheese understand the current vulnerability of Indeed, and a market that is crying out for a new platform for and of the people. Chad: Really? The baby sound effect again? Joel: You know it's my favorite. Yeah. Chad: You do love that damn thing. The Chad and Cheese pledge to build and drive cost effective recruitment options through a new Monster vision. Joel: Yes. And the Chad and Cheese also want to answer your long-standing questions like, whatever happened to Monster networking, Chief Monster, Jobr, Hot Jobs, Gozaik, Job Pilot, Talent Bin, Trovix, Tickle, and that Blue Collar thingy. What was that called? I can't remember. Chad: The Chad and Cheese promise to get you, the people, answers. And we also promise not to make bone-headed decisions like buying Tickle instead of LinkedIn. Yeah. That actually happened. Joel: Chad and I are asking for your support in our bid to co-President Monster. Chad: Vote for the Chad and Cheese for co-President of Monster because you deserve a new Monster, and we don't mean that purple Bugs Bunny cartoon rip-off thing either. Joel: It's a new day. Chad: You deserve a new Monster, and you'll get one with the Chad ... Joel: ... and Cheese as co-Presidents of Monster. Julie: This ad was approved by the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Look, there's literally no way in hell these guys are getting this gig, but they have a pretty amazing podcast. Honestly. So visit ChadCheese.com. Paid for by the campaign of the Chad and Cheese for co-President of Monster. Chad: Boom. Joel: So I'm feeling that sort of welling up of emotions when I watch the Audi daughter/father ad a little bit when I hear that. So yeah, I'm a little bit inspired and emotion-driven. Yeah. Chad: Verklempt? Joel: That was fun. Chad: To the listeners, we're actually gonna drop that as a podcast on Sunday. We can't afford to obviously put it during the Super Bowl, so we're gonna drop it as a podcast. We'll let everybody know that it's out there, and that was just the audio version. We also have a full cheesy commercial. That's right audio and video, which we're gonna drop on Sunday as well. Joel: Which I haven't even seen yet, so I have not approved it. It may not come out. Chad: It's coming out. Joel: All right, man let's give our Super Bowl picks and get the hell out of here. Chad: Okay. You first. Joel: Oh man. How can you go against the Goat, dude? Chad: It's easy. Joel: Hey, I'm talking here man. I'm gonna bring out some Steven A. Smith on you here in a second. But look, five Super Bowls, the best coach of all time, the best quarterback of all time against a backup quarterback named Foles from Arizona. A pretty good defense in Philly, super underdogs. Joel: I'm definitely picking the Patriots, although I will say there is zero pressure on Philly, and I would not be surprised if the Eagles pull a win out of their ass and made history. But as far as predictions, if I had money on it, definitely would have to go with the Patriots. Chad: Saw that coming. He had to say that people because his wife would have killed him otherwise. Joel: That's true. You're gonna love my shirt on Sunday by the way. Chad: Oh I'm sure. Okay, here's where it comes down. The Eagles running game is gonna wear down the Pat's defense. The rushing offense is number three. It's number three. We're talking about Jay Ajayi, who has 5.8 yards of carry. You've got LeGarrette Blount, 4.4, dude is like a freaking wrecking ball. And then we've got Zach Ertz, who was the number one tight end in the post season, and he was number three during the entire regular season. Chad: That's good from an offensive standpoint, especially bashing that little pissy-ass no-run defense of the Patriots because they really, literally have no run defense. But the Eagles defense on the other hand, that's the strong suit of the Eagles. They're number one in rushing D. They're number four in interceptions, and I think this is gonna be a close one. I mean they both are very close when it comes to points per game. So I'm gonna go Eagles 24-21. Chad: The biggest mismatch on the field, literally, is gonna be the field goal kicker. We've got Gostkowski, who kicks ass. Then we've got a poor little rookie Jake Elliot, who let's hope he puts his big boy pants on and can knock it to the uprights. Joel: He may pull a Vinatieri circa 2000 and who knows. All right, so you're saying 24-21? Chad: Yep. Eagles. Joel: All right, I think it's a little more scoring than that. I'm gonna say, 31-27 Patriots. Chad: 31-27 Patriots. Still close, which hopefully, this is a good ballgame. Joel: Yeah, let's at least hope it's a good ballgame. All right man, have a good weekend. We'll see you on Sunday, and we out. Chad: We out. Announcer: This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes or Google, so you don't miss a single show. And be sure to check out our sponsors because they make this all possible. For more visit chadcheese.com. Oh, and you're welcome. #Amazon #Monster #SuperBowl #Uber #UberFreight #Tracking

A Nexxt Exclusive in partnership with TAtech.org, the boys are onsite to interview Aman Brar, CEO of Canvas, a text messaging recruiting tool. In addition to covering a wide array of topics, including the power of SMS, the benefits or building a deep data pool powered by communications, and exploring what comes after messaging, the guys have a great time. Enjoy. Looking to leverage text message marketing to recruit candidates? Checkout Text2Hire from Nexxt and get your first Text2Hire campaign for 25% OFF! Just go to ChadCheese.com and click on the Nexxt logo in the sponsor area or www.nexxt.com/chadandcheese25. Twitter feed edition: https://twitter.com/joelcheesman/status/956264124757004288 PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION This, The Chad and Cheese Podcast, brought to you in partnership with TAtech. TAtech, the association for talent acquisition solutions. Visit tatech.org. Announcer: 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, rash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: Okay Joel, quick question. Joel: Yep? Chad: What happens when your phone vibrates or your texting alert goes off? Joel: Dude, I pretty much check it immediately, and I bet everyone listening is reaching to check their phones right now. Chad: Yeah, I know. I call it our Pavlovian dog reflex to text messaging. Joel: Yeah, that's probably why text messaging has a fricking 97% open rate- Chad: What? Joel: And a crazy high candidate response rate within the first hour alone. Chad: Which, are all great reasons why The Chad and Cheese Podcast love Text2Hire from Nexxt. Joel: Love it! Chad: Yep, that's right. Nexxt, with the double X, not the triple X. Joel: Bow chicka bow-wow. So, if you're in talent acquisition, you want true engagement and great ROI, that stands for return on investment folks, and because this is The Chad and Cheese Podcast, you can try your first Text2Hire campaign for just 25% off. Boom! Chad: Wow! So, how do you get this discount, you're asking yourself right now. Joel: Tell them Chad. Chad: It's very simple. You go to chadcheese.com and you click on the Nexxt logo in the sponsor area. Joel: Easy. Chad: No long URL to remember, just go where you know, chadcheese.com and Nexxt with two XS. Joel: Alright, hey guys. We are here live on site for the first time ever- Chad: Live! Joel: With startup phenom Canvas here in beautiful downtown Indianapolis. Chad: Woo hoo! Joel: I think it's 20 degrees and flurries coming down, so wherever you are, it's probably better than where we are, weather-wise. Quick introduction, Aman Brar, if I say that correctly. Say hi Aman. Aman: Perfect. I am Aman Brar of Canvas. Joel: Aman Brar, like Almond Joy- Aman: There it is. Joel: Aman Brar, and unfortunately with us as always is Chad of The Chad and Cheese Show. Chad: Ugh, hello! I keep pointing at stuff. If you're on Twitter, you could actually see what I was pointing at, but a beautiful view here downtown Indianapolis. Joel: We have a total of zero viewers on Twitter, right now. Chad: That's okay. Joel: I can see from the little live cast. Chad: They watch it later. They always do. Joel: Yeah, we'll share that in the show. So anyway, Nexxt exclusive, two XS, make sure they always remember that. Chad: Not triple x. Joel: Not triple x, which we told them would have more traffic, but they failed to listen to us. Chad: They should've bought it. They should've bought it. Aman: There is a church right behind you. I love that. Chad: They should've bought it. Aman: Which is fantastic. Chad: It is. Joel: It looks like a hat. Chad: Yes. Joel: Okay, churches and the psychology or psychiatry office is right next to us, so Chad and I will probably be checking into that after the show. But, let's get into it. Love the name, what's up with URL? Could you not get something better than GoCanvas.io? Aman: Yeah, I would say thus far with our inbound lead traffic, it's working just fine, so ... Joel: It's working just fine. Chad: Now is that SEO traffic or are you having a lot of direct people actually- Aman: We have a lot of direct through the media and so forth. Chad: Really? Aman: Now, I would say ... Look, I think every startup's got trade offs to make, right? Chad: Yes. Aman: And Canvas.com was just, at this point, a little ... Joel: Probably taken. The dot com. Aman: Well, let's assume it's taken. We own a bunch of iterations of, there's going to be lots, right? And so as we kind of test it and figure things out that's one that we rolled with, so that's where we are right now- Joel: But you're not changing the name? Aman: We're not changing the name of the company. Joel: But if Canvas.com comes up for sale, you might explore ... Aman: Might throw 5 or 6 dollars. Joel: If it's reasonable, five or six dollars. Fair enough. Aman: I think like ultimately, we'd certainly, you know, optimization's always the thing we can look into. We own a lot of variants. This was the one out of the gate. We wanted to build a durable brand for the long term and decided look, if we have to make some short term URL trade offs, we will, and so that's the story. We did get, we own the trademark for Canvas in the HR and recruiting space- Chad: Yeah. Aman: So, you know look, that's going to be the- Joel: So now that the hardball question is out of the way- Chad: Wait a minute, I'm not done. Joel: Oh, you're not done. We should get an introduction from them at some point about what- Chad: Well, we'll get it next. We'll get it next. Joel: Okay, we'll get to that next. Chad: So, I mean, you guys have to be doing like a shit load of SEO to be able to try to get that, because Canvas is obviously just a regular term, and if you do a search, it's really hard to find, you've got to have like "Canvas text", "recruiting"- Aman: That's true. You do. Chad: So I mean, brand means so much, and you've got to spend a lot of money on brand, right? And you guys aren't, and you can't at this point do the Indeed and ZipRecruiter commercials out the ying yang, right? So what do you guys do to actually just embed that brand? Aman: Yeah, so A, we're not spending a lot on SEO. There's probably lemonade stands and food trucks in town that are spending more than we are. But I do think, you know, two things we've done incredibly well, sharing our story through our media and that's been really, really good for us. And also, word of mouth has been really strong for us. You know, I'd say just people sharing stories about us on Link Din generates traffic. We're certainly, just to be clear, SEO, for sure is part of the story, SEM is not part of the story, right now. I think we're very content conscious. We're writing and distributing materials and happy with where we are on that journey and I think, as we continue to grow, we'll probably spend more there, on the SEO and SEM side. But, right now, the thing about star-ups is it's a world filled with infinite trade- offs, right? We're making them everyday, and we decided to go on all in on a long-term, global brand and we could've called ourselves like, yellow toilet brush- Joel: Booger text. Aman: Booger text and- Chad: .io Aman: Yeah, yeah. Joel: BoboogerText.io Chad: He always makes fun of jobboard.io. He always calls is job Borodino. Joel: Yeah, JobBoard.io. Chad: So, anyway. Aman: Yeah, totally. Anyhow, in the scheme of things, .io is where we landed. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: So, let's back up- Chad: Yeah so, intro. Let's do an intro Joel: Agree, so most listeners out there don't know Canvas from carpentry, or whatever- Chad: And they should- Joel: So, give us the elevator pitch. What do you do and why should our listeners care? Aman: Yeah, we launched June 13th as the world's first text-based interviewing platform, so you can screen candidates at the top of the funnel, continue to engage with them, like many other products will allow you to do as well. And then we got some really unique features to de-identify candidates and resumes, et cetera. So, we're really excited about just the power tool that we've built in the platform. Joel: So, I really enjoy your past because it's steeped in rich tradition of text messaging- Aman: Yeah. Joel: Give us a little bit about ChaCha and your experience way back with text messaging. Aman: So, one of the secrets to Canvas is that many people here on the team were part of a text-based start-up darling 10 years ago, called ChaCha. We became one of the prominent text entities in the US. We're right up there in traffic with the Twitters of the world, et cetera and had our 15 minutes of fame, if you will but we launched as an "ask anything" service to 2422242 and the game plan there, which we did largely succeed on many elements of this, was while it started off being completely human-powered, so, you'd ask, "who won the '84 world series?" And we'd serve up that answer. We were able to layer in natural image processing and some other interesting things, so we could re-serve those answers. So, over time, a bigger percentage everyday, of those answers we were gonna serve, were not being researched again, right? And so, you can certainly see parallels in our strategy when it comes to recommended questions and answers, and so forth, in the recruiting game. Aman: So, that's a bit of our story. The company launched out of Sundance, had an incredible amount of success, structured some deals with AT&T and ultimately, macro-economics kind of shifted ... Moved into more of an app economy and the company kind of fizzled and didn't quite get over the hump. But, you know, I'd do it all over again, if I could- Joel: What percentage of phones were feature phones, back in '07? Aman: Huge percent- Joel: Over 80%? Aman: Yeah, and there was a lot of demographic learnings we had and why we thought the time was right. As you're seeing four companies to be launching in the text space or have launched already- Chad: Right. Aman: But, you had teens and tweens that were really latching onto text but, one of the things that people don't get is that, the second faster adopter of texting 10 years ago, were moms, right? So, you had a pretty decent population of people who've grown up with texting and engaged with the children through texting and now, certainly, it's everywhere. Aman: But, you know the story of ChaCha was, how do you re-serve these answers that we had researched? And we were able to cook up some interesting deals in that space and the ultimately, you know ... I really think it probably more of a timing issue than anything- Joel: Pretty sure Chad's mom got upset about the number of text voting that he did back in the American Idol days. Chad: Exactly right. Joel: His Motorola Razor, back in the day. Aman: So exactly. John build a lot of the core application and Zach, he built the ad engine and ran out of analytics there- Joel: He's pointing at the crack-pot tech team here at Canvas. Chad: Boom! You'll see us pointing on Twitter- Joel: But we're surfing domain names on GoDaddy, right now, as we speak. Chad: So- Aman: Gocanvas.io, we're sticking to it. Chad: gocanvas.io. Dot dot. IO, yeah, that's it. Chad: So, talk about the transition. What you learned from ChaCha and bringing it over to Canvas because it seems like there's a ton of, not just technology, but experience that you could port over into talent acquisition because ChaCha had nothing to do with talent acquisition. Aman: Yeah, true. Zero percent. Chad: Yeah. Aman: I would say this has been a thread through many parts of my career, including ChaCha but I was up at the country's first DSL broadband company in the Silicone Valley. To be successful, you had to play within the ecosystem, right? You know, at ChaCha to be successful ... Back then, we were out there negotiation relationships with carriers directly, right? And so, you had to figure out how to be successful in the ecosystem. Then much of the team here, we built and scaled the management company, Apparatus from a local company. National, we were acquired by a global company. So, we all of a sudden were managing 1500 people and again, that was enterprise IT integration. Again, an ecosystem play. Aman: So, I think the common thread to have the ability to have the fast start that we've had in the HR ecosystem, is that we've always understood that ecosystems are important. Aman: And I think what we did right, even in our softwares engineers ... you know, our interaction layer has sat outside of our core platform since before we had a product or a partner. So, we just designed it the right way from the beginning. It's making our ability to play with others real easy. Aman: So, I think if there's anything that's been a common thread through the success this team's had, it's understanding that more often than not, you're going to be successful because you were part of an ecosystem that was having success, right? And that's the approach that we took. Now, there's no doubt we understanding texting, we understand a lot of the new technologies. You know, John understands scale in a way that very few people who are gonna understand, who's experience at ChaCha then been with email at Salesforce. I think all those things serve us well because we get high input-output situations from the get-go and we have a deep understanding of data through the many parts of our careers. Joel: You mentioned when we were talking, before the show, about the sort of resources and money it would have taken to build ... And you just sort of mentioned it briefly, building actual relationships with the carriers and what not before Toleo came along. Some would view that as a threat. Is Canvas' business, is this easy to re-create? And I guess, a deeper question is, is text messaging a feature or is it really a stand-alone product? Aman: So, I think the secret to Canvas, is we're out to capture the world's interviewing information. That's what we're doing. The first logical place to extend into that was text messaging. So, we think, if you look at how do most people communicate today, and it's really text-centric. Wouldn't that support the thesis that you could be a stand-alone product in that space. I think, Exact Target proved that with email to the tune of a $2.5 billion exit, right? So I think there's- Chad: Not bad. Aman: So, I think there's some legs there. And one of the things, if you think about the data story, you look at a Salesforce and an Exact Target that's near and dear to here. Really, Exact Target is the company that brought rich data to the table about customers. And if you think about how much data we're probably collecting per day about Canada, versus let's take an HES provider. I think there's a really rich compelling data story that shouldn't be overlooked. I would think about the work that Canvas, and other companies, are doing. Chad: Well, that being said ... So, TA today and with all these system and ... Talent acquisition, they have so many gaps. So many systems gaps. So many process gaps. They have issues all over the place. Why is this one of the most important issues that they should really focus on? And how do you actually get their attention? Because their hair's on fire with all the issues they have, that they're dealing with. Aman: You know, it's been surprising, I'm actually encourage by the adoption I'm seeing by, what I call, the not traditional early adopters. Chad: Yeah. Aman: When we fist launched ... And there's no doubt we still see this, that kind of traditional, cross-the-chasm adopter, arriving early. And I thought, that's probably the part of the market we're playing in for a few years. Then, I'd say, what we have are these traditional businesses that are out of answers, right? And they're just searching a seeking ... And you're seeing this, I bet, as you're talking about this. And so, we've been quite surprised at, I think, the willingness of companies, who might be considered more traditional companies, but they've just been bumping their head in the wall for so long, that something fresh, or interesting, or new comes along and they're wiling to go say, "hey, let's go give this a shot". Aman: We were with a client yesterday and she said, "of our recruiters using this, there's one over here that told me, there's just no way I'm going to text my candidates" and she begrudgingly got on it and she said, "Look, Aman it's amazing. I got an email today from X recruiter saying, you know, this is amazing and the response rates I get are amazing." And so, I think it's about getting it into people's hands and I've actually found there to be a fair amount of open-mindedness. Chad: Yeah. Aman: More so than not. Now, let's be honest, it's not so different than what we just lived through with Clock Routinizing in our last company. I think where we've got work to do is in middle management and we kind of look at that as our opportunity to help educate middle management at these companies. Because, companies who made progress getting more innovative VPs of talent, right? We're seeing new people in that realm, they're rising to the top. They're innovative. They're getting a seat at the table. We're seeing talent professionals coming out of college understanding this way that they might want to communicate or engage and there's this maybe middle management who still trying to figure out how to make sense of this world. Aman: Let me walk through this analogy with you. It's no different than when we were selling cloud technologies and seeing CTO going, "wanna be in the cloud". Seeing a developer, coming out of college, saying, "I wanna use the cloud" and seeing a developer of infrastructure, "I'm not so sure about the cloud". Aman: And, it's the same story, all over again. And disruption oftentimes looks like a barbell. You get more interest at the top and bottom and it's this middle part that you have to work through and I think that's where we spend a lot of time educating and working through folks. So, it's not just, is a company interested, it's really inside that company, there are just people. And these people have different levels of either fear or excitement when it comes to technology. Joel: But you think that they text every day. So, how do you not put together the pieces to say, "why aren't I texting candidate in the same way that I'm texting my wife about what's for dinner?" Joel: Does it surprise you that it's taking this long for- Aman: A little bit, but I also would say that when we work through these moment and you see the light bulbs go off, and so ... I mean, yeah, you're right, it is surprising that sometimes you can't make the leap, but I think as you work through tying those things together, there tends to be some open-mindedness there. Aman: And you're not going to win them all. There's still people right who say, "There's no way we're going to us the cloud for our whatever". That's still going to happen, right? But one by one, we'll continue to get them all. Joel: That's the general market downtown, yeah. Aman: And back to the ecosystem. I think part of it is ... We're talking, is there anything that'd off limits. I was like, no because it does take the ecosystem to lift all the boats ... For the tide to lift all the boats. So, I actually think that competition and interest and companies doing really new things in the space is good for everybody, quite frankly. It's a big market out there. Big, massive market- Chad: Few phones out there- Joel: It is, but as you talk about all this, what is the main, pinpoint problem when you're trying to help talent acquisition really get bought. The solution and really how's the going to impact down from a dollars and cents standpoint. Aman: I think the piece, that's from the beginning, is that, let's just think of the notion of inventory for a recruiter, right? It's time. That's what your inventory is. And you can live in a world, today, where you're going to schedule your four to six photo screens, and those are going to be the meaningful moments with another human you've had today, or you can get on a platform, like Canvas, and do it with 40 to 60 people a day. Aman: And here's an interesting thing, when you put it in like, betting is always kinda fun. So, if you were to say to anybody ... They were hesitate about leveraging texting and you say, "Cool, don't buy the product but here's what we're going to do. The goal is you're going to go have a meaningful conversation with 100 candidates today. You need to use your black Sysco telephone with the red button on it, on the table. And I'm going to use Canvas. Who do you want, to take the bet?" Aman: No one will take that bet because when they really stare at it, they go, "There's no way I can win that race". It's impossible. It's not even fair to try that race, right? And so- Chad: So, you're empowering, really, recruiters to be more efficient... And this is very focus on the tactical play of day-to-day recruiters, right? When it comes down to just that conversation, we see it's obviously text and it's also chat. Facebook Messenger, those types of things. So, why Canvas versus some of the other products that are out there that are not just ... I mean, are you more than text-based? And why put it in the hands of a recruiter, when I can have AI do it? Aman: But you can't have AI do it. You can't go to that grocery store across the street, right now, and buy a can of Campbell's soup without somebody staring at the four cashiers ... Look, you cannot buy Campbell's soup with 100% accuracy- Chad: Amazon Go! What a minute- Aman: Amazon Go, right? So, the problem is ... What we believe ... And you'll see us not market AI and ML much, but that is what is doing the magical stuff, behind the scenes. So, when you're a recruiter and someone asks a question and the system presents you the answer to that question, you're like, "That's cool." It says, "Suggested response. Do you want to send that?". Actually, I do want to send that. Click. I'll do that, right? So, we believe in it, but we believe in it side-by-side, enabling recruiters to be like symphony conductors, right? Aman: You can do our machine learning based screen process ... It's completely automated. Delivers a prospect to the recruiter. The prospect looks at that, decides if they want to continue the conversation as a human. That stuff's in the software but you're very confused- Joel: So Canvas today will say, okay, grocery store across the street, are you 18 or older? Aman: Can do right now. Joel: Are you a US citizen- Aman: Not even as you can say, "Yup, yeah". It'll understand and assign probabilities to it. Joel: So, there is somewhat of an automation- Aman: Oh yeah, 100%- Joel: Portion of the product. Aman: Yeah, 100%. Both for a truly automated experience, as well as what I call, this machine-assisted experience. Both are in the product today. Joel: So, what's your option of the Mias, the Olivias, the Hellos. The companies that are touting like, human-free, we'll do the whole thing. Are you skeptical of those solutions or do you think- Aman: Look, these are smart people in good companies working on interesting products- Chad: Some of them. Aman: But if you pay attention, I think it's like HBO ... HBO's trying to become Netflix. Netflix is trying to become HBO. If you think about it, right? If you look at some of those technologies that you mentioned, they can go take a very narrow cast of the candidate type and they're going to automate the heck out of that one type of candidate, right? Whereas today, seven months after launch, we've got everything from machinist, welders, process engineers, sales professionals, mortgage analysts, pilots, physicians, aircrew, nurses, physical therapists. The breadth of conversational data that we have, you cannot touch it. You cannot touch what we're capturing when it comes to insights around questions and answers from a wide array ... When it comes to breadth, right? I think it's a question of a narrow focused AI or a more, maybe harmonious machine and human type of enabled system that we're building. Aman: And I think both have a need in the market place. And I think it's no surprise that we're dealing with a lot of companies that hire not just retail and not just light industrial but professional staff out there. I think it's just, what's the right tool for the job? And I think there's more than enough room for all those companies. So, their goal, for those companies, would be, how do I become wider over time. My goal is, we've got all this data, how do we start automating slices of it, over time. Aman: If you really think about it, we're just approaching a similar problem from two different angles. And I think the ecosystems require all of the above to really solve the problem, at the end of the day. Chad: So, you talk about that data and you guys have transcripts. Aman: Yes. Chad: Which is I think amazing from the standpoint of ... And we talked about this, I think, on the hone it firing squad- Joel: Oh yeah. Chad: So, that information is amazing because there's always this "he said, she said" thing that's happening and you have al that information. Is that something you port over into ... You just an API, pop it into the ATS so they have that system. Aman: Yeah, we're super supportive of the ATS as the system of record. That's exactly how it works today. And even if you're on some on antiquated ATS, let's just say that it has a monochromatic green screen, we'd probably still find a way to get in there. You can download it, export and put it in. Aman: That's exactly right, so the problem we were trying to solve there ... And all this just learnings from our past when we were scaling the last company. We had so many conversations where a wonderful recruiter ... "They're busy. Talk to Sally today. It was a great conversation, you really ought to interview her." And that's what you get, right? And in our world, it's like, talk to Sally today, check out this amazing transcript. And you're like, well, I actually do want to interview Sally, that sounds amazing. Or, you know what? Could you dig in here a bit before I go spend an hour of very valuable hiring manager time before you dig in. And that was really the premise there and let me tell you, I've said this since pre-launch. I said it at the launch. We have 50 more features now ... My favorite feature is still transcripts. When I demo now, I say, by the way, my favorite feature is transcripts. All this other and all the bells and whistles and all the machine learning and all that stuff ... Transcripts in an of itself is really where.... Chad: What are you doing with that data, though? Because that's all data and if you take a look and swaths of it ... So, let's say for instance, you're looking for engineers ... Developers, doesn't matter. You're having specific types of conversations with that community. Can you pretty much take that from a machine learning standpoint and start to actually create better processes for the interview? Aman: Yeah, you nailed it. You have a few different things that feed into this. You have, understanding what the role is that they're being recruited for, that kind of space. You have the transcript. You have decisions that might have been made. So, imagine an expression of this technology where ... Cause you're realtime scoring the questions and answers. You get the thumbs up and the thumbs down. And now, you can start to generate based off your scoring of Lisa, you might also think about Sally. So, that's exactly the type of opportunity that we have and that we're really excited about right now. When you look at that ... Aman: Now, let's take it a step further. Now imagine you're tied into the HRS of a system and now you can actually look at the efficacy of a question with regard to people's first year performance reviews. If you have enough data on this side and enough data on this side. So, that's where things get really, really interesting. And the things that ... Let's call it text-chat. Any vehicle that's not the traditional phone call. For 104 years we've been having phone calls and losing every bit of data to the ether, right? I mean, literally. Just think about it. It'd be sad to think about the trillions of bits of data that have just been turned into, "Hey Sally's great, you really ought to interview her". We got an entire 30 minute phone call. Sally's great and you really gotta interview her. And the world, when you think about platforms, is very, very different. Joel: So, let me connect the dots with that real quick. So, you're talking about the HRS system. You're talking about actually having this data to demonstrate that the retention of certain- Aman: Performance, yeah. That's right. Joel: High performers ... Retention. I mean, a lot of this data could actually be tied back, perspectively, hopefully, to the interview. Aman: And I think retention, that's probably a whole other Podcast conversation about the merits of retention or not ... Chad: We got all day. Aman: Yeah, we got all day. Joel: Chad and I have nothing else to do Chad: Speak for yourselves! Aman: And here's the thing. There should be many companies working on solving this problem and we should expect that. And I think that's why it's so darn interesting. And when you think about ... You've taken decades of what I call, lost data ... Just lost data and now finally, companies are emerging with step one, how we capture the conversation with text maybe, I'd argue is the best vehicle to do this with, right now. Those vehicles will evolve and there'll be more channels where this is really, really interesting. You got companies starting from every different ... Companies that started video first, somebody started text first. All of this is going to be required to get to that end-game that I think people get excited about. Where maybe, for the first time ever, we actually have meaningful insights of talent. Joel: You've mentioned twice little about deep data and all that. So, to me, this says this is more than just a text communication company. Aman: Sure, yeah. Joel: Talk a little bit about your investors because particularly from an Indiana Hoosier perspective, you have some really interesting investors from that side. What vision did you sell to them, which I'm sure included this data play and I guess, what's after this in text and moving forward? Aman: I hate talking about it, Joel, but I will. In fact, I think this is the first time- Chad: I don't believe you. Aman: I think this might be the first time we've actually talked about capturing the world's internet information. That was in the original thesis, right? Our investors are phenomenal. We've got, Brett Flinchum who just exited the company he was at to Cisco out in Silicon Valley. Some of the first people I pitched it to were the previous head of talent at AirBnB. Elon Musk's previous talent at SpaceX and then Todd Richardson, previous head of talent at Salesforce at Exact Target. They all asked to invest and advise on that spot, so that ... This is like when I have a slide that talked about these things- Joel: Cummins as well- Aman: Tom Linebarger, the CEO of Cummins is our- Chad: Woo! Go Columbus! Aman: Yeah, exactly. He's our board member with me and chairmen on the company and an investor. One of the founders of the finish line ... So just a great array of investors and so, we're very, very excited about their belief in what we were set out to do. Aman: What was great was, so many of our investors have business scaling background and no matter what demographic they were in it, all can solve the problem, right? They all could relate to the, have a recruiter walk over to you and say, "Hey, you should talk to Sally, it was great." What does great mean, you know? And so they all had similar experiences and saw how they were communicating with their kids or their loved ones and peers and saw the opportunity. So, great group of investors that we're really excited about and I think, as you know, the market's wide open, in this space and we're excited to go- Chad: So, the vision you sold to them ... Aman: That's exactly what it is. It's the data story, right? Chad: Okay. Aman: That's the real piece and the thing about machine learning, it's really hard to do without that data. It's nearly impossible. Chad: I would say it's impossible. Aman: Yeah, it's impossible. So, if you think about what we're doing ... You'll see that we don't oversell anywhere this concept of automating your job or machine learning and what we wanted to do was just to create these moments behind the scenes. So, when you're using our software, it's less about selling the process or the specs, but selling you the experience as a recruiter. Aman: Our NPS score is through the roof. I mean through the roof. It's firmly in world-class category. And we have automated NPS scoring that comes in through our system and I think it's because we're putting the focus on the experience. Its beautiful software. It functions, it scales. It creates these delightful moments for you behind the scenes and I think our recruiters are really appreciating that. Aman: The thing I don't want to get lost on this either is the appreciating from candidates. So candidates ... It's been awesome. We've had hard hearing candidate write in saying, "This has changed my life, that I can actually have an intelligent conversation around an opportunity without having to get on the phone"- Joel: Chad hates talking about disability with clients. Aman: But these are real stories- Chad: I don't, my wife builds disability hiring programs. Aman: The other thing I mentioned is for as much as, you know, you don't see us overly focusing on this millennial story ... You know here's another massive example here, we have people writing into our employers that use the software saying, "You know, gosh, thanks so much. You know I'm a welder in a rural mid-western town, you know I'm sick of going to the library to figure out if I'm going to make sense for you, and the fact that I can do this in my noisy manufacturing facility, during a break and go through a text ... And I'm just further text engagement, like, when's the interview? Without having to get on a phone or get to library. It's a total game changer." Aman: And so, we use this term, that you're allowed to punch me for, but it helps democratize employment opportunities in so many different ways. Because what you're finally able to do with a text is, you're reducing the friction and the Brarier for entry for the company again to engage. And I think that's really what's really compelling about it. And we've always believed the use case was beyond one [inaudible 00:31:19] and it's certainly proven to be true. And we know that, just even from our ChaCha days. We knew this whole, somehow only 25 year olds once texting is not accurate, right? I mean, its just completely inaccurate. And so, that is a bit of education that we have to do. Aman: The other thing people are confused about is, they don't understand demographics, so they think millennials are the people graduating college and millennials are nearly 40. I mean they're getting there, they're in their mid-thirties now. These are people will families and homes and they're driving Honda Accords. You know what I mean? So, everyone needs to relax on the millennial thing. Joel: This sponsorship brought to you by Honda. Aman: Yeah, Honda. Chad: So, that being said, as he pushed all the diversity stuff out there. I'll just get on my soap box. So, you're actually showing me that there's some diversity aspect- Aman: Totally. Chad: Of the actual platform itself. Talk a little bit about that because that is important today when we're starting to talk about trying to be more diverse, but we've got all these biases that are already built into us. How does Canvas help with that? Aman: Yeah, we're trying to make a dent in that problem by, what we call, candidate de-identification. So we can literally click one button that de-identifies the transcript, really- Chad: What's that mean now? What does de-identify mean? Aman: Gender, race, nationality, those types of things. Chad: Cool. Aman: Even to the degree, if you said, "Can you tell me about your leadership experience?" And you said, "Oh yeah, cool, I was captain of my football team", it actually knows to redact the word "football" or "softball" for the other gender tells. It's a pretty slick system. We also do the same for resumes, so imagine sending the payload to a hiring manager, where it's this de-identified transcript- Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Aman: A de identified resume and maybe, perhaps, it'll less bias a decision about who gets an opportunity from a hiring manager. Chad: Yeah. Aman: Because, what I believe, and I think the data rally tells a story, is that, bias happens unconsciously, we all have it and we're more prone to look past it, if we're in the same room together. You know? You don't know if Aman Brar has a thick accent and is a skinny Indian guy, versus the large, loud, American accented Indian guy that I have, until I'm in the room with you, right? But I think a lot of those ... We think that we can help get people on base and from there, man, you still gotta run around the bases and get the work done, but I don't think there's an opportunity to reduce bias at that very top of the funnel. I actually do. Joel: Something happened in the new recently, you may have heard it, I dunno. iCIMS, a pretty well-known long-standing ATS in the industry, recently acquired Text Recruit, which I assume would be a competitor of yours. Aman: For sure, yeah. Joel: Thoughts on that? Is it going to be a thing? We also saw Job Align launch their messaging, texting service. What are your thoughts on the news? Aman: Cheers to the Text Recruit team. I think it's exciting for them and iCIMS. You know we've got client on the iCIMS platforms, just like we do on many, many platforms and so, I think we're looking forward to a heterogeneous universe, whether ATSs tend to align with a single player, or not. But I think if you really look at where the market's going for ATS ... If you're doing it right, you're thinking about marketplaces right. And if you want to service your clients, you're thinking about servicing them across a broad need and a broad set of technology. So, I'm very bullish on ecosystem and continuing to learn. I hope iCIMS takes that approach. We'll see. Aman: I told our investors from day one, you shouldn't expect 10 competitors in the next five years, you should expect a thousand. So, I think, we've been ready and excited about competition, which is why we built a product that was so deep from the get-go because we wanted to make sure we have that technical moat and that data moat that we're starting to build. Aman: I think the competition's good for the space. I mean, quite frankly, if you think that we're anywhere near market penetration, you're super confused about ... These people ask me all the time, "What happens when you and Text Recruit run into one another? How?" And I'm like, well the three times that's happened ... You know what I mean? You know, I'm super happy for them. I think it's great. I think it takes ... Just like with cloud computing, you don't want to be the only cloud computing company. You want to go create categories and work through, what I believe is an undeniable and inevitable change- Chad: Validation, too, right? Aman: That's exactly right. Joel: And how many phone calls from ATSs have you fielded since the news landed. Aman: Lots of phone previous to the acquisition. Here's what's probably happened to ATSs, I think it's validated the need across the client base and so, to the credit of the 80 ATS providers, we found the majority were friendly pre-that and they continue to be friendly, if not friendlier after that. Especially the modern ATSs, honestly, they've been a pleasure to work with. They get the marketplace economy, they get the open environment. I think some of the legacy ones can be a little more challenging, but not impossible, just, you- Joel: That's a really nice way to say that- Chad: Legacy. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Those assholes! Aman: Yeah, they're proving to be a little more daunting at times because instead of just two people to approve it, there's 600, you know? But, even there, it's just time if it's not knows. I think you summarized it well. Its good validation for the space. Chad: So, we are ... And he's talking about us being in Hoosier land. We're a couple Buckeyes, just so everybody knows that. But, why Indy? You talked about going to the Silicon Valley and- Joel: And why the Midwest? Chad: Yeah. Why the Midwest? I mean, you could have gone anywhere. Joel: And they may be leaving. Chad: No, we're not leaving. Shut up. Joel: So, you're ready to commit to Indy for the next 10 years? Chad: Yes, that's what we're trying to do. Aman: I got a Tweet on record. I got a Tweet on the record, no kidding, from a few days ago where a VC had asked us if we'd consider moving the company. And we're like, "No, no, we don't wanna move it." And then the second question was, what about talent? I said, look, that's not a concern either. So, we feel really, really good about both those. So, listen you, it's hard to ask the guy ... Chad: Push the X. Joel: No, it's good. Chad: You're good. Aman: It's hard to ask the team that just scaled and sold a business for $40 million, if you can be successful in Indianapolis. Do you know what I mean? So, I feel like, we did it with some really intense technology hiring people that didn't exist. AWS engineers and engineers and so forth. We can do it here and many companies are proving that you can. And in some ways, it's a market advantage for us, like what we've been able to do with the capital versus our startup here is in other parts of the globe, is pretty phenomenal and I think, you know ... The main brains in VC are absolutely monitoring, talking to us from both coasts and I feel like, what else needs to be set? We're doing just fine here. People aren't over-looking us. You get the occasional question, "Would you consider moving the company?" But it's not even positioned as an ultimatum, it's like, would you consider it? And we're like, "No" and they're like, "Okay, just curious" and then you move on, right? Chad: Do you tell them I'm looking at Sale Force tower, right now? Aman: Yeah, exactly, we're okay. We're good. Chad: I think we're okay here with talent. Aman: And I've lived in both, right? And if you're going to ask me if there's something special about Silicone Valley, the answer is yes, it's amazing. It's a very special place. But, I do also believe that ... It's going to sound cheesy, but for the US to be what we need it to be, it's going to take more than Silicone Valley. I left for a reason. I mean, honestly, I did not know what I was going to do here when I graduated college and I really yearned and wanted to be in Silicon Valley and then when I came back, I say, I happily stay here for good reasons now. I'm very committed to moving the economy forward here. And I hope it's not just Indy, but I hope it's the Columbus' and the Cleveland's and the Saint Louis' because I think that's what it's going to take. With the advent of virtualizing and clock computing and the way you can build technology now, it's not as geo-centric anymore. You don't even know where your servers are. You'll be okay. Chad: Yeah, exactly, like, where's your serve from? Huh? What? Joel: So, the last thing I have is, I'm curious about what next. And I think voice assistants are interesting. What are your opinions on maybe that, as well as what's next? Is there anything after text messaging? Is it just brain waves after that, or... Aman: Well, you saw the VR kit in the other room, so- Joel: That's true. Aman: So, I don't wanna talk too much about that. Chad: He loves VR. Don't talk to him about VR, Jesus. Aman: I think if we're talking without revealing too much, I think we're super interested in where communication's heading and how the connections happen between people. And I think, you have a very accurate view of how to understand Canvas through the arc of time. I think if you view it as a text company, I'm great with that because we want that right now. We want people to understand how to communicate with candidates. But I think the story's going to become more clear over the next few years as we launch what we have in our pipeline. Aman: I think as an ecosystem, you're going to continue to see a push around data. I think you're going to continue to see this movement that I'm really excited ... I really hope that we play a part in this, among other players, but I think the movement of recruiters really understanding and functioning like marketers, that's a real opportunity ... Versus the traditional world, it was an expression of salesmanship and I actually think it's going to become an expression of marketing work where you're thinking of the one to many- Chad: Brand. Aman: Yeah, of course, not just in texting, but in every way we think about it. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Aman: I will say, I think companies are woefully behind when it comes to employment branding and Joel: Don't even get me started. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Aman: So, I think there's so much opportunity and I think there's gonna be ... Just like what we've seen with sales and marketing technology over the last 10 years. I think we're at chapter one of what's going to be, I think, a renaissance of really smart people and smart capital. And we're in the space to go try to solve some really cool problems. Aman: And I think the focus has to be with this particular buyer. You can't just drop it. It's gotta be, how are you gonna get the buyer there? How are you gonna make a difference with HR professionals to get them to move down this continuum? Because it's gonna take, I think, a different kind of work. You've asked these folks to manage process and policy and now, all of a sudden, you're saying "No, nevermind! We need you to be marketing and innovators, in the space." That's not the easiest transition to make. Oh, and by the way, you still have to be responsible for management and policy, as well. It's like two jobs in one and I think we should be sensitive to that as we go try to deploy new things in there. Aman: My analogy with understanding IT ... Same thing, right? We need you to be super innovative, drive massive revelations for our clients and please have no security issues and be patched and everything else. It's these folks we're asking to do impossible things and you have to really understand how to go work with them, I think. Joel: That's why one day, robots will just hire robots. And we'll have our VR systems on all day ... Chad: It'd be like Wall-E. Like Wall-E- Joel: Sure. Chad: It will. We'll just drive around in cars, they'll feed us- Aman: Here's something I think about a lot. What does immigration mean when it just feels like we're working together. If you were in Sweden right now and I was here. What does that start to mean? It's going to be really fascinating to see how we adapt to work like that. And what does it mean to worry about Visas and have the limitation on only a certain number ... I don't think we really understanding the concept of what it means to go to work is going to change over the next 20 years. And how our traditional structures are going to be absolutely called into question. Just like this structure. One of the thing I say about Canvas is, it's fine to say texting is weird, but you know what else is super weird? Two people that are strangers talking on the phone intimately. That's super weird, right? So, I dunno. Which one is actually weirder? Where else do you that in your life? Nowhere. Okay, but recruiters are going to keep doing it? That's not going to last, right. Joel: So, buy your Bitcoins now, kids. Aman: Buy 'em now. Chad: Buy 'em now. Crypto currency is going fast. Joel: Aman, thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure. We've outstayed our welcome, I think, they're marshaling us toward the exit, so, we will bid you adieu and thank you for your time. Aman: We shut down at 4 am, so you gotta go, real fast. Joel: Thanks. Chad: Excellent. Joel: Okay, okay, okay. Before we go, remember when I asked you about the whole reflex and check your text messages, thing? Chad: Yeah, you know all about reflexes. Joel: And then I brilliantly tied it to text message's 97% open rate and then I elegantly, elegantly tied it to a better experience for your candidates. Don't laugh, Chad. I can be elegant, can't I? Chad: Whatever man, I know it's redundant. You already heard about Text2Hire but you're still not using Text to Hire from Nexxt. Joel: What? Chad: I know man. Joel: C'mon man. Chad: Since advertising takes repetition to soak in, I just thought I'd remind you again, this was all by elegant design. It's all about Text2Hire and it's all about Nexxt. Joel: And elegant design. So go to chadcheese.com, click on the Nexxt logo and get 25% off your first Text2Hire campaign! Chad: Woo! Joel: Engage better, use Text2Hire from Nexxt. Two XS. Chad: Boo yah! This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, so you don't miss a single show and check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit hiredaily.com. Oh, and you're welcome. Commercial: Thanks to our partners at TAtech, the association for talent acquisition solutions. Remember to visit tatech.org. #Canvas #iCims #TextRecruit #ChaCha #Nexxt #TATech

This week, Indeed is quietly making some big changes for users, a new report says recruiters don't give a damn about AI (yet) and there's another mobile app hoping to take down LinkedIn (good luck with that Sparky). It's a barrel full of monkeys, enjoy. Plus: - Automation is going to hit this industry really hard - Recruiters don't care all that much about AI - Recruiters really care about diversity recruiting - Is it profiling or targeting? As always, show our sponsors some love. They rock this bitch! America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly, Nexxt and Catch 22 Consulting. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Announcer: 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: Hello again boys and girls. Welcome to another episode of Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: This week Indeed is quietly making some big changes for users. A new report says recruiters don't give a damn about AI, yet. And there's another mobile app hoping to take down LinkedIn. Chad: No. Joel: Good luck with that one there Sparky. It's a barrel full of monkeys. Stay- Joel: ... and we don't have the ads loaded up Chad. Chad: Where's the Sovren man? So how much do we love Sovren? Joel: I'll go see if I can find the ad here real quick. Joel: Google, Lever, Entelo, Monster, Jibe, what do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovren Technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job, while others use our technology to help companies find the perfect candidate. Sovren has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996, and we can help improve your hiring process too. We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit Sovren.com, S-O-V-R-E-N dot com, for a free demo. Chad: Boom. Joel: Boom. Chad: Yeah, glad you could find that. That was awesome. I could hear you scrounging around. "Where the hell did I put that?" Joel: Well we did sound check. Anyway. I love editing. All right, let's get to some shout-outs real quick. Chad: Yeah, well the shout-outs are kind of light this week. Little peaks and valleys. We had a shit-ton last week, and this ... Not as many, but we still have shout-outs. Jonathan Duarte, our buddy, said he's already broken his #chadcheese record from 2017. He's already- Joel: Two Chad: He's tweeted us, yeah, more this year than he has last year, which means I think he just started to use the Twitter. I'm not sure. Yeah so. Joel: You know we should be getting some news from him about Gobe pretty soon, his little chat bot. Chad: Yeah, I hope so. Joel: Duarte if you're listening man, hit us up with some Gobe scoop. Chad: Gobe. Big Ed from Philly sent us some stuff. Unfortunately Ed, we're gonna be hitting some pretty big topics this week. Keep sending us stuff though. Everybody out there, if you've got something that you think is a topic that you would like for us to read, we'll check it out, especially if it's a slower news week. Unfortunately, this is not one of those weeks. Joel: It is interesting that we don't get more sort of PR love of people who want to give us stories or exclusives or hey, we want to get so-and-so on the show. I haven't got one of those. Have you? Chad: I think they're afraid in some cases because we get them on the show, and they're really not sure what the hell. That's exactly right. That being said, Jimmy Stroud who has been on the show, he actually filled in for you while you were on vacation. He gave us some hashtag love. We should probably get Jimmy on the show sometime. Joel: Jimmy, sourcing god. Jimmy Stroud. Chad: I love me this Jimmy Stroud. Last but not least, TAtech AI in Scottsdale, Arizona, February 12 and 13. Joel: Beautiful. Chad: Why the hell wouldn't you want to get out of this crazy weather? Unless you're already in Scottsdale, then it should be easy for you. Go to TAtechAI.io. Man, some of these website addresses. Joel: I can't keep up. Chad: TAtechAI.io, yeah no shit. Joel: Without Google, I'd find no sites. Chad: Now the beautiful thing about this is Chad and Cheese has a discount code. Joel: What? Chad: Yeah, yep, yep. So if you want to go to this AI conference, who in the hell doesn't want to go to an AI conference? Here's the discount code. It is TATECHTEN and spell out ten, T-E-N, the number 18. So TATECHTEN18. Chad: And last but not least for the TAtech love, join the Chad and Cheese Podcast in Dublin, Ireland March 13 and 14 for TAtech Europe. You got to ... Here's another site. Get ready. TAtechEurope.io. That's TatechEurope.io. Check out the agenda and guess who's gonna be speaking Joel. Joel: What's the leprechaun from the cereal box? Does he have a name? I probably just offended a whole country, but anyway. Chad: I think you did. I think you did. Well Google's going to be there. Yeah, one of the guys who lead up all the Google recruiting products. Bogomil's gonna be up and it'll be good to see Google at TAtech in Europe. Joel: Oh Bogomil's gonna be there, huh? Chad: Love it. Love it. Joel: You know he was my number one person for the year in 2017 as far as impact to recruiting on the vendor side. Chad: And you won't return his calls. Joel: Well he just now connected with me on LinkedIn, so come on man. It's a two-way street. Chad: He might have to rethink that. Joel: These Google people man, they're on a different level than us. Chad: No they're not. That's bullshit. So our last shout-out actually rolls into our first story. It's a big shout-out to Recruitics. Joel did you hear anything happening with Indeed here lately? Joel: You know I like to think that with my time on the podcast and my writing on ERE, that I'm pretty in the know for what's going on, but this one was a surprise. Chad: Yeah, so Recruitics because they look out for their customers, and you gotta love that about a vendor. You partner with somebody, or you choose them because you think they're gonna watch your back. Right? Well Recruitics actually sent an email out to their clients about a change, a major change that Indeed has put in place, which is focused on their search engine results. Joel: Quit teasing me. What is it? Chad: Yeah, so okay. So you do a search on Indeed, and what you were used to like any other search engine, is that when you get your results, you click on the result and then where do you go Joel? Joel: You go to the site that's in the search results page. Chad: That's right. You go to the site. So if I go to Google, and I do a search. I click on the link. I know that it's going to take me to another site because it's a search engine. Well Indeed is supposedly a search engine. But guess what, they're actually changing into a job board because they've added a second pane that pops up the job description right beside the search results. Now this to me, is a huge regression. Joel: So for our viewers ... Not viewers. For our listeners who can't view the page, they're working out, they're in their car, on the train, whatever. So imagine you're seeing results on Indeed. You click the title of a result. Joel: Typically or historically, you would then go to say CareerBuilder or a company job page. Today if you click the subject line or the title of the job posting, a separate window pane, if you will, opens up within Indeed, and you see the entire job. Joel: Then if you want to apply, you click "apply to job" and then that takes you to your corporate page or your job site or whatever. So why they did this, we have some theories. Mostly conspiracy theories. What are some of your thoughts on why they would do this Chad? Chad: Well I think it's fairly simple. They want to keep job seekers more captive on their site. And also, when you go through the process, it is so much quicker to click on more links, which means if they're paid links, they're getting more money out of this. Chad: So again, they're losing traffic because Google has taken away a good amount of their organic. They raised their rates 35 plus percent. And now they're making a change to be able to keep candidates more captive on their site. To me, it seems just like another major fuck-up in a string of Indeed fuck-ups lately. Joel: So you feel a little bit like this. SFX: Booooo! Joel: As a user, I will say this. It is much faster. Without having to click on a link and go to another page, takes out a lot of time. From that aspect, I understand it. However, it does violate pretty much the rules of a search engine. Chad: Yes. Joel: So as an SEO, less so than they used to be, there are actually rules, FTC-type stuff that says if you go over a certain number of characters or words, one of the two in terms of what you're presenting to a user that is someone else's content, then you're essentially stealing it. Joel: That's why when you go to Google, the summary is only a certain number of characters or words long. Google could do this. Right? You could click on a results on Google. It could bring up everything that's on that page. You could take out the advertisements that are on that page. You could take out the tracking. All the things that you benefit from Google would be gone. Right? Joel: So that's sort of theft in terms of the eyes of the federal government, as far as I understand unless the rules have changed in the last 10 years. But I doubt they have. Joel: So, you could make a case that what Indeed is doing is essentially stealing these job postings. Now job postings aren't literary works or a thing that maybe fall under that rule. And I'm not sure anyone's going to sue Indeed because they're taking a job posting and putting it on their site and not letting people go to the page directly. Joel: But you could make a case that this is sort of not the most legal thing to do from that perspective, although I'm not a lawyer. I do know also that when Indeed first launched its mobile application some 10 years ago, they did this. Instead of taking someone to CareerBuilder or Monster at the time, they would take the entire job description. Then if you wanted to apply, they would send you over to the page of the job on a job board or whatever. Joel: Now that made a little more sense 10 years ago on mobile because a lot of mobile sites sucked. They were super slow. It was a really bad user experience. Chad: Or they weren't mobile at all. I mean the corporate career site might not have been mobile at all. Joel: Totally. Totally. I mean how many ATSes weren't mobile back in 2008. Chad: God, yeah. Joel: Like a lot. Chad: A lot. A lot. Joel: A lot of them. That's why companies like Jibe and others could make a living for a while because they just did mobile versions of these sites til the ATSes woke up and did that. Joel: So anyway, there is some precedent for this. There was more interest in job boards to maybe say hey, this is bullshit because we're serving ad impressions. We're tracking stuff, and if they're not even coming to our site, the job is getting viewed but as far as our customers know, it's not getting viewed because they're not coming to our site, and we can't track that. Chad: The whole experience, right? From the standpoint of an employer paying you to actually pull their content onto your site is so that that candidate can actually reach the experience on your site and learn more about the company or just click out and go back to the search engine. But that's how a search engine works. Chad: This is how a job board works. They have moved from a search engine model to a job board model. And guess what, this is what really sucks, those clicks that used to go ... Especially for sponsors who are paying, that used to go to the actual corporate site, that led that candidate to the corporate site and that you paid for, now when you click on that link and it opens up a new pane, you get charged. They don't even go to your site, but you're still getting charged. Joel: You're gonna have clicks that you're paying for that you won't even see as traffic. Chad: No. No. Joel: So people will see it. None of your banner ads are gonna be served, none of your tracking code, none of your retargeting stuff. This is a bitter pill to swallow. Now Indeed has done a good job of sort of getting rid of job board content, which frankly are the people who would really scream about this. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: If they're just going to corporate sites, how many companies give a damn about banner ads because they're not on the site. How many care about retargeting because they aren't doing that. Or care about analytics probably as a whole? If they get applicants, then that's what they probably care about. Joel: Again, these applicants are probably coming from Indeed now moreso than they were before because before ... Let me think about this. Before I would go to a job board, and then I would potentially post my resume there, which is good for the job board. I would apply from there, which was good for the job board because the ATS would say, hey, this came from this site. Joel: If I'm bypassing a lot of that ... Yeah, I don't know. I have to think about that one. Maybe it doesn't matter. Chad: Okay, so when Indeed launched, it was a pure search engine, didn't have a resume database, didn't have any of that shit. Right? Then it started to pull people in to get profiles and resumes. And I mean they are going backwards. They are regressing, and it all comes down to as we talked about, and we will continue to talk about. This is a greed move. Chad: There's no reason for a company to pay for a click if they're not gonna get an opportunity to have the candidate go through the experience on their website. If I'm paying for it, and my experience sucks, guess what? That's my money. Okay? It's not yours Indeed, and if that's how you want to play ball, guess what. You don't get my money anymore. Chad: There are many other organizations that are out there that I can utilize who are actually playing with Google and starting to get your old search engine traffic and guess what. I can make it happen. And that's what's going to happen if they don't start to change their way. Joel: This is non-job example, but so there was a period when Google was taking Yelp reviews on restaurants and local businesses and basically doing this. Where you wouldn't even have to go to Yelp. They were pulling all the data, the stars and everything. So Yelp, rightly so, got pissed, took them to court and said, "You can't do this anymore. You can't do this." Right? Joel: But Google does not do that anymore. Now Yelp has paid the price in search results and other stuff, although Google probably won't say that it's affected them at all. So there is some precedent that search engines do this. Now whether or not anyone is gonna care, I don't know. Yelp has a lot to care about because that's their business. Joel: A company in whatever, doesn't care as much because it's job posting. They're not making their money on that. So we'll see how this plays out, but yeah, I agree it's a greed move. It's a move to keep people on Indeed and off all the other sites. And it will probably work, and people probably won't care. Chad: Yeah, well that's what they're banking on. They're banking on TA keeping their head down and not paying attention. That's what they're banking on. But thanks to the good people at Recruitics for actually letting us know what was happening. Chad: Obviously most of what was said was my opinion, not in their email. They just gave me a structure to be able to go by and actually gave us some intel that we didn't have. And obviously you didn't see anything, announcement public-wise. Or at least I haven't seen a public announcement on this yet. Joel: And there won't be. Anyway, if you're listening, go to Indeed when you get a chance. Go do a search. Click on some links, and you'll see what we're talking about. Joel: Well Chad, employment branding is more important than ever, as you know. Chad: Well yeah, and if candidates could actually go to your career site, it would be even more important. Right? Joel: True, that's true. We all know Glassdoor. Glassdoor had a news item last week that says, "Pay is the number one reason why people leave jobs." Chad: Really? Joel: And some of these recruiting numbers that we've been throwing out in terms of why people join companies in the first place have a lot to do with their reviews. Chad: Right. Joel: People are going to Google, like we just spoke about and searching working at, 'fill in company name', seeing what reviews are out there. And they're deciding on those reviews whether or not they should apply to a company. Many of these people are going through the interview process, and then finding out that the reviews are bad, and they back out of taking a job. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Which by the way, costs money and time for a company. So monitoring your reviews is more important than ever. That's why I created Ratedly. Ratedly monitors about 15 review sites, Glassdoor, Indeed, the ones you know as well as ones you don't know. We mention one new one last week, WomenHack, which is a female-centric site. Joel: Anyway, monitoring these sites is very important and getting more important. Ratedly is out there to help you do that. Chad: Yes. And did you take that stupid dollar promotion away yet? Joel: I haven't. The code still works for a limited time maybe. If you're listening, it could be down by now. But if you use coupon code CHEDDAR, C-H-E-D-D-A-R, you can try Ratedly for a dollar. Joel: Now I will say, little inside information here, is I will be raising prices soon because we're going to be adding analytics around the service. So you have about a week from this recording to get in on the current pricing of just $147 per month. After this next week, which I guess will be the twenty-sixth or seventh of January, we'll be raising prices, and you won't get that special rate. Joel: So if you're interested in Ratedly, thinking about it, this is probably the best time, if you want to save a buck. Chad: And it's only $150 a month standard right now, which is way too cheap. You definitely need to raise your prices. That's my two cents. Joel: Fair enough. Well if you want to find out more about Ratedly, just visit www.ratedly.com. Again, that coupon code is CHEDDAR. Maybe not active for long, so use it today and sign up in the next week or so to make sure that you get on that lower pricing before we raise them. Chad: Why do you use the W-W-W? I mean do we still have to actually emphasize that we're going to the World Wide Web? Joel: I felt like going back to old school. I brought up 2008. I figured, W-W-W. Remember there were actually ads that were like, "Please go to H-T-T-P, colon ..." Chad: Yeah. Oh dude. Those days were painful. Those days were very painful. Joel: All right man, we wasted a lot of time on Indeed, but there's a lot of other news to talk about. Chad: Let's hit it. Joel: Automation, which we have to talk about every week. In this news item, construction workers are looking to be impacted by automation. A new story came out. Increasing automation in the construction industry could displace or replace as much as 49% of the America's blue collar construction workforce, which is about 2.7 million and eliminate nearly 500,000 non-construction jobs by 2057, which I assume are jobs that support construction companies like accounting, etc. Joel: This is a study by the Midwest Economy Policy Institute, which I've never heard of. But I'm sure people that are doing this sort of work know that organization. And also the Project for Middle Class Renewal from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. So it seems fairly legitimate. Joel: Now my take on this is we've always thought about automation either from a sort of technology side or digital side, or a machine side. Right? Like a car drives itself, or a plane drives itself. But to actually think about construction workers being automated, I guess is something you don't normally think about. But I guess machines can just automatically build roads or bridges or fix buildings. Chad: Build walls. Joel: Yeah like- Chad: Yeah, I saw a bricklayer, a machine bricklayer. It actually did the job like five times faster than a three-man crew. And for performance and product, everything was pretty much in line with standards. So yeah, that just blew my mind, thinking a bricklayer. All the way down to a bricklayer. Joel: I mean I've seen these huge Star Wars looking machines that build roads without people or build a bridge without people. That's some crazy sci-fi stuff. But yeah, you think about it, that's where the world's going. And the fact that 2.7 million or nearly half of those workers are gonna be displaced is pretty scary. Chad: How many times have you seen a road being worked on and half the crew just standing around? Joel: I could look out my window and probably see that right now. Yeah. The orange whatever is very, very prominent here in Indiana for most of the year. Chad: Oh Jesus. Joel: But yeah. Chad: Okay. Joel: Let me ring the bell because that's just fun. Okay, on a more technological news item this past week, Ripple, not to be confused with the cryptocurrency that's in the news, if you're following crypto stuff. Joel: By the way, we're having a Nexxt exclusive podcast in February about crypto, block chain, ICOs, all that stuff. Anyway, quick plug for that, but I'm excited to learn more about this. Joel: Anyway, Ripple is not the block chain cryptocurrency. What Ripple is essentially selling itself as a mobile first LinkedIn. This is not new. Bumble, a dating app, launched BumbleBiz last year. For whatever reason, dating sites think they can just make a leap into professional networking and make it work. But it doesn't usually turn out that way. Joel: Now these guys are a little big unique in that Match.com and Tinder are actually funding/supporting this initiative. So we'll see what happens. Chad: Well, yeah. Whenever I hear the world Ripple, I always think of Sanford and Son and the wine that they drank. Joel: Give me my Ripple. Chad: But when it comes down to this, I mean the thing that you've gotta remember, how was LinkedIn born, and how did they grow? How did they evolve? They evolved in building a database. It was more of the six degrees from Kevin Bacon kind of thing that was going on, and there was all this technology and research done around the six degrees of separation. And it was all about connecting. That's what it was about. And they were building this database so that everybody could connect. Chad: Then what did they do? They built products off of that. What we're seeing with most of these wannabes are the other way around, where they're what they think is a really cool product, and then they're trying to get a database of people to start using it, try to draw them in that way. Chad: I don't see any type of app like this killing LinkedIn. The only way that you can actually take something like this and make it work is if you have a huge database of people that are already employment-centric. Or at least they joined your group for employment. And then start to spin new products around that community. Joel: The network effect, if you will, must be in place. Now what they're selling this as is as sort of LinkedIn's technology is old. It's brand is crusty, and we're gonna implement some new stuff that's cool. One of the things that they're doing, which frankly, probably borders on creepy is they're gonna be using facial recognition as part of the app where you can just point your camera at someone and facially recognize them. Then connect with them through that facial recognition. Joel: So I can't wait to go to a conference, assuming this thing takes off, which it probably won't. But having people point cameras at everybody and then connect with them through facial recognition. That's a sort of scary world. Joel: I did download the app and used it. I will say that it probably has no recruiting value whatsoever at the moment. You can't search people by skillset or interest. You don't even know who's near you yet. Chad: That's because nobody's in the database. There's nobody in the database, so nobody's near you. Joel: That's true, but at least start near me, and then like expand. I was getting pictures of people in Jamaica, people in Asia. I don't think these were vacation photos. I think they actually lived in these locations. But yeah, you're right. Joel: So at some point it may evolve, but to me it's like, we already have Coke. Coke is LinkedIn. It's a huge network. Even young people want to be on LinkedIn because old people that give them jobs are on LinkedIn, and I don't see that changing. I don't see it being hippified by mobile. Joel: Dating is visual. It's potentially having sex, which most people find really appealing. So there's a benefit to having more apps because the more apps you have, the more chance you have of having what you want. Right? It doesn't work that way with professional networking. There's one site with most of the people. I don't see a startup making an impact here or a dent. Chad: No. No. So you gotta take ... So LinkedIn or Monster or CareerBuilder or any of these organizations who have a huge database, they need to pull the Netflix pivot. Right? Netflix pivoted on themselves. They recreated the entire industry themselves, and they transitioned into it in a very smart manner. Right? Chad: This is what Monster should have done a long time ago and CareerBuilder should have done a long time ago. But we're seeing that the pivots need to happen again. Joel: And who's pivoting? Where are they pivoting? Chad: That's what I mean. We're not seeing the pivots that need to be done. And we're talking about Indeed and this stupid second pane thing. They shouldn't be doing that. They should be pivoting on something that's going to focus on matching and driving targeted candidates, not trying to soak their clients for more cash. I mean that's not what you should be doing. They should be pivoting and focusing toward the future. Joel: By the way, let me remind people that LinkedIn actually does have mobile app that's pretty good. So it's like, LinkedIn is the LinkedIn for mobile or something. Chad: Yeah, it's not bad. Joel: Anyway, all right. Let's go to generational profiling. Something that you've been hot on as the compliance diversity part of the show. Chad: Yeah. This is more common sense than it is compliance diversity or any of that other bullshit. You take a look at generational profiling, and Tim Sacket actually, he did a post on it this week. And I agree that we take a look at different segments of talent, and sometimes there is huge bias behind it. So his whole post was more ageism, which is what you talked about last week when we were talking about Facebook. Chad: But here's what it comes down to. When companies don't do the right thing, it gives government an opportunity to step in and rectify it. Right? And as we focus on diversity in the workplace, this should be an aspect of our diversity mix. I mean we shouldn't just focus on age. We should focus on obviously, ethnicity, gender. It's gotta be a big mix, and we need to be smarter about how we hire. Chad: Tim had some great statistics with regard to developers in some companies, some of the newer companies where they trended much younger versus the IBMs of the world and so on and so forth. And really, at the end of the day, it comes down to understanding that you have to have a better mix of these individuals coming in and flowing into your organization. That's on the company, or they're gonna get slapped down by the federal government, by the OFCCP, EEOC or what have you. Chad: This all revolves around Facebook, the Facebook conversation that we had where they took away micro-targeting- Joel: And micro-targeting, for those that don't know, is what? Chad: Is being able to target many different segments of a person. So their age, where they live- Joel: Sex, education. Chad: Sex, yeah. I mean just anything you can think of, just the little pieces that Facebook has about you, every little piece, they can target. They can help target on that. They took that away from jobs because they felt that it would increase bias, which is total bullshit. Joel: Now my point of this is if that is the only way you're marketing your job, then you're potentially in a weird illegal situation. But my guess is, if you're doing your due diligence and being compliant. Right? Joel: So you're putting the job on your site. You're putting on the state, or whatever local government type sites they need to be on. You're putting them on some general job sites where they're showing up everywhere anyway. Joel: Then you're also saying hey look, we want to target a certain demographic in addition to the general advertising that we're doing for the job. To me that should not be frowned upon or thought of as like illegal or shifty. You're just kind of being a smart marketer, actually. Chad: We've been doing this for years guys. I mean don't be idiots about this. And I've actually heard ... I listened to a podcast. I'm not gonna say who is saying this. They believe the Facebook stripping out the micro-targeting was a very smart thing from a compliance standpoint. And guys, you're idiots. We've been able to do this for years just going to different websites. Just go to a diversity website or a female website or what have you. Joel: Put a billboard in a certain part of town, or put an ad on a radio station that has a certain listener demographic. I mean that's called targeting. Chad: And that's what it is, and when you're trying to ... Here's who you're screwing up guys. You're screwing up the organizations who are smartly trying to develop a more diverse mix. They understand that they have Bobs and friends of Bobs that are working with them right now. Right? And they want more Karens. They want more of a gender mix and an ethnic mix. Chad: How in the hell are they going to do that if you don't give them the tools to do it. Yes, some organizations can twist it and do stupid shit with it. But guess what, they're gonna get caught. Joel: So remind me, this sort of came to a head because of an older situation. A person that was older, and they weren't targeted- Chad: He couldn't see a job on Facebook because he wasn't targeted, so therefore, it wasn't fair. And that's total bullshit. Joel: Now you've seen these AARP commercials I'm sure. Chad: Yes. Joel: To me, if AARP really wants to help their demographic, they should have ad campaigns that say, Older workers are valuable to the workforce because of A, B, C, D, E, and F. They're smarter. They know more people. There are a lot of things really, really good about people who have been around the block a few times as I know because Chad and I are getting up there in age, although we still look fabulous. Joel: There's a lot of value there, and instead of trying to sell subscriptions, to me the best thing they could do for a lot of their readers or their universe is say like, "Look, here's why you should hire older people." That would be more helpful than anything that they're doing now. Chad: This is marketing and advertising 101. Period. Joel: It might be 201, but okay. That leads us to our next sponsor ad. Chad: Is it loaded? Can we play this one? Joel: It is loaded. It's locked and loaded baby. Here we go. But you have a few things, maybe, you want to lead into this? Or no? Chad: Oh yeah, so if you think about what we were just talking about, the diversity mix and being able to target better, to be able to not just target but also be compliant and have that partner in your corner. I mean there are only so many that are out there, and one of the best, if not the very best ... I've got their squeezy ball right here that I've been using all podcast, is America's Job Exchange. Joel: America's Job Exchange is a market leader in diversity recruitment and an OFCCP compliance solution provider. We serve over 1,000 customers consisting of federal contractors and subcontractors to SMBs and Fortune 500 organizations. Joel: America's Job Exchange specializes in job distribution to over 6,500 state one-stop career centers and community-based organizations, ensures the creation and maintenance of state credentials, obtains veteran preference on job postings, robust outreach management, and supports effective, positive recruitment efforts designed to recruit individuals with disabilities, veterans, women, and minorities. Joel: For more information call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Joel: W-W-W. See all the kids are doing it. Chad: Godammit. So Facebook, not knowing the smart way to actually go after diversity recruiting, they're just trying to do the politically correct thing, which is wrong in this case. This is where America's Job Exchange is a perfect partner to be able to help you focus on that diverse mix and compliance. Boom. Joel: Just give them a blank check. That's all we're saying. All right, let's- Chad: Last topic. Joel: Let's end the show on this news item, which we talked automation. Let's talk a little AI. Bullhorn, a fairly well-known vendor in the space, did a study recently. And they looked at four major trends in recruiting staffing, and AI came in dead last in regards to recruiters thinking that it was very or extremely important and last place in terms of who has adopted the technology either mostly or completely. Joel: So the numbers around this, only 35% of recruiters thought of AI as something that it was extremely important. And only 8% had actually adopted the technology in some manner. So should we just give up on AI, or are we just super early in the ballgame? Chad: The key word there is what? It's recruiters. AI in itself is going to be a strategic ad. It's all about process methodology, efficiencies, those types of things. That's not what recruiters are really focused on in the long-term. Right? They're more tactical. They're more focused on the day-to-day. Chad: So you take a look at this, just from my standpoint, it's the wrong audience. Recruiters are incredibly smart, and they do a great job in what they do. But this is more from a strategic standpoint. This should be a survey that talent acquisition, you know, VPs of talent acquisition, managers, directors of talent acquisition should be coming after. Chad: Now that being said, it didn't surprise me at all with the results because in most cases, companies, they can't even do the basic shit right. Joel: Don't you think recruiting and staffing firms will fight AI tooth and nail to adopt it because it means lost jobs. No? Chad: No. No, no, no, no, no. As a matter of fact, they will suck this up. The big reason is the efficiencies and head counts. So the big cost to like an RPO or a staffing company is what? The recruiters, the headcount. So if I can get rid of some of these process methodologies with AI or just process efficiency technologies or platforms, then great. I take that head count and put them to more of a client facing, candidate facing, or what have you. You can do better things than have your recruiters do these menial tasks. That's an automatic efficiency upgrade right out of the gate. Joel: Do you know what number one was in terms of very or extremely important? Chad: The usage of Snapchat. Joel: One of your favorites. Chad: What? Joel: Diversity. Chad: Diversity. See and this is so much bullshit. We talk about diversity and diversity hiring and all this, and it's all a puff of smoke and hiring veterans and individuals with disabilities. And they don't have experts come in to actually build these programs, which means it will not be sustainable. Chad: So it's funny. I've talked to major Fortune, shit, Fortune 50 companies, and they've grilled me on what kind of sources or resources they could get for free for diversity recruiting or veteran recruiting or what have you. I'm like are you fucking kidding me? You say this is your number one, but yet, you don't want to apply a budget to it, and you don't want to build a sustainable program. I call, here we go, bullshit on that number one. Chad: Man, I've just been ranting and raving this whole goddamn podcast. Joel: Dude you are salty today. Chad: Salty, damn. Joel: Word to anyone out there, if you want to get Chad fired up, talk about diversity, Indeed, AI, and what else? Generational profiling, Facebook targeting. Chad: Anything stupid. I mean it's just- Joel: You should just end the show before you throw your computer out the window. Chad: Yeah, I'm not gonna do that. I paid too much for it. Joel: All right, man. Have a good weekend. Chad: You do the same. Joel: Out. Chad: We out. Announcer: This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes or Google so you don't miss a single show. And be sure to check out our sponsors because they make this all possible. For more, visit chadcheese.com. Oh, and you're welcome. #Indeed #LinkedIn #Ripple #AI #Robots #Diversity #Facebook

Nick Livingston, CEO at Honeit Software not only faces the Firing Squad, but the prospect of a real fire during our recording session. Will Nick stand in the pocket, take his licks and score a BIG APPLAUSE? Or will he crack under the pressure and face The Chad and Cheese FIRING SQUAD?!? You'll have to listen to find out! About Honeit: Honeit interview technology makes it easy to record, transcribe and share live candidate answers and insights from everyday phone conversations. The Honeit interview platform streamlines three critical steps – scheduling calls, talking to candidates and sharing interview intelligence. Announcer: Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest and baddest start-ups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive. Dig a foxhole and duck for cover kids. The Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel: Hey what's ups guys, it's Cheese. We're here with another Firing Squad. We have a new sponsor for the show, Jobs2Careers. Sponsors always get a big applause. Special guest today is Nick Livingstone from Honeit. Nick: Hey everybody. Joel: Alright, cool. So we're going to hear from our sponsor real quick, and get to the show. Chad: That's right. Hey, yeah. Before we get to the Firing Squad, a quick question for you Joel. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Would you say that most companies find it hard to attract the right candidates to apply for their jobs? Joel: Jobs2Careers our new sponsor certainly thought so. That's why they created their own new talent attraction platform ODT yeah, you know me. Chad: Come on man, that was OPP. No, this is ODT, which stands for On-Demand-Talent. Where data-driven talent attraction is made easy. The On-Demand-Talent platform, I can say this, I promise- Joel: Easy for you to say. Chad: Enables recruiters to reach the right talent, at the right time, at the right price. Joel: The best part, wait for this, you're only pay for what Jobs2Careers delivers. So, if you're attracting the wrong candidates, or you feel like you're on a recruiting hamster wheel, go to jobs2careers.com/odt and learn how On-Demand-Talent can get you better candidates for less money. Chad: Or, do it the easy way. Go to chadcheese.com and click on the Jobs2Careers logo. That's all about simple. Joel: Well, you are a simple mind. Chad: Very much. Joel: Alright man. Let's get to it. Chad: Got this Nick guy here, where are you from Nick, what do you do? What's this Honeit thing about before we give you this two minute pitch. Nick: Hey guys. Thanks again for the opportunity. Nick Livingstone most recently from the Bay area. I've spent sometime in New York before that, but originally from the state of Washington. Chad: Excellent. Excellent. Here's the format of the show. Very simple. You have two minutes to pitch Honeit. At the end of two minutes you're going to here the bell. Then Joel and I are going to hit you with rapid fire Q&A. If your answers aren't concise, Joel's going to hit you with bell or he might even hit you with his favorite crickets. That just means, tighten your shit up. At the end of Q&A, you're going to receive one of the three from both of us. Big applause, means that you kicked ass. Golf clap, means that you did okay but you need to tighten some shit up. You need to get to work. And the last one, you don't want this. The Firing Squad. That means your shit sicks and you need to go back to the drawing board. So that's Firing Squad, easy, and it's time to buckle up and pitch. Are you ready? Nick: Yeah. Joel: Two minutes starts, now. Nick: Hey everybody. Nick Livingston with Honeit. After 15 years in the recruiting trenches, you know, I realized our conversations are important. You know, the daily phone conversations with candidates, that's kind of the initial step of the interview process. And I found most of my day with scheduling calls talking to candidates and sharing highlights with the clients. But I thought, you know, take a step back and look at our phone interviews. They're a black box with zero visibility into the questions that are asked, let alone answers that take place during those conversations. So, Honeit technology, it's simple, natural, phone interview technology. We let recruiters capture the great insights and answers during those conversations. Lots of competitive intelligence. Lots of insights again during these conversations that go unnoticed. And instead of scribbling notes and sharing opinions with hiring managers we make it really easy for recruiters to package up a couple of great answers that were heard during a live phone interview and share those with the client. Or share those with a hiring manager so that they can hear the candidate in their own words. Nick: And what we're finding here is this is removing redundant steps of the interview process. No more two or three phone interviews before you invite a candidate on site. And similarly, once you decide you do want to hire someone, we're seeing this really accelerate offers, where a VP, a CEO can quickly hear a few highlights themselves and say, "Wow. That person sounds great. Those are great technical answers. I trust my team. Go ahead and hire him." So, we're excited to remove steps of the interview process, help recruiters communicate more efficiently and more effectively with clients and to remove a lot of this underlying misinterpretation and bias that goes along with interview communication. Nick: So, again, natural phone interview technology. You can record, transcribe, and analyze live answers during your calls and share the best parts with other people. Chad: Boom. It's like you're right on. Joel: It's tight. Joel: Nick I'm going to go first in a non-technical business question. How did you come up with the name, and is it a bitch to say it on sales calls? Nick: It's a little of a bitch to say it on sales call, I'm not going to lie. Honeit, we've been through a couple pivots, and my two technical co-founders kind of, helped to come up with the name and it stuck. So we've kind of gone through ... not to say there might not be a name change in the future. Chad: So, from the pitch, I mean there, sounds like there are ton of different things that Honeit can help companies and recruiters with. What is the major problem that you're trying to solve here? Nick: I think it's interview communication, if we had to say like, very simplistic. I think, you know, even when a recruiter gets on the phone, they do all the work. They talk to a great candidate who says a lot of great things. I feel like you hang up the phone and the onus is on the recruiter to try to convince, to sell, to articulate to an in, to an internal higher manager or external client, why they felt this candidate is worthy of next steps, right. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Nick: And I felt like today, scribbled notes and our opinions, are all that recruiters to have to try and make that argument. And I'm saying, you know, why ... and so we're doing ourselves a de-service. We're making it even harder on ourself. I'm saying, screw my opinion, let's just share a couple of the great answers that we heard and say, "Hey, hiring manager. You're the expert. You're the QA director, this QA engineer just said a couple of great answers about writing scripts and, you know, automated testing, you tell me if that's a great answer." Right. So we're trying to remove some of the subjectivity and take some of the pressure off the recruiter's back. Chad: So this is mainly on the backend, behind the scenes. Recruiters, hiring managers, back and forth, this really doesn't have a lot to do with candidate engagement, I'm I correct saying that? Nick: I mean, our platform focuses on three steps right now. It's making it really easy to schedule these calls. So there is a bit of a candidate experience where they can click a simple scheduling link, right. No back and forth on scheduling and then, you know, these counter invites go out so the calls are locked in. So there's a bit of a candidate experience angle there. But, yeah. We're basically trying to improve the steps that are already happening, that I consider to be offline steps. You know, most of the ATSs and CRMs that I view, I even worked at Taleo. I'm a big fan of HR techs. I've been following the trends and the evolution of the ATS and CRM, but I would argue the three steps that I find myself doing as a recruiter, scheduling calls, talking to candidates, and submitting candidates, those three steps were pretty much offline experiences and outside of my ATS. So what we're trying to do, is bring those three steps, you know, back online. Joel: Alright Nick. I'm going to address the big elephant in the room. Aren't you on the wrong side of history with this business? I mean, millennials and Gen Zs, they all text. They don't talk on the phone. You got automation coming into play, chat bots. I mean, no one actually wants to talk on the phone anymore. Nick: I would disagree. I think candidates have questions too. I think they want to talk to somebody at a company, and I would argue it's more the vendor messaging that we've been seeing around. One-way interview technologies, one-way interview tools, where they're trying to say, "Yeah, recruiters. You don't have to talk to people." It's easier to put more work on the candidate and, you know, we'll take work off your plate. So, we're not trying to add work. We're trying to say, hey recruiters, if you think your conversations are important, and if you agree that candidates probably do want to talk to you to learn more about, and, there's an opportunity for you to sell the role, sell the company. We're saying, those conversations are great. I think it's two-way conversations, but I just say, there's a lot of data and intelligence in these conversations that recruiting teams and companies are missing out on. Chad: Right. And to kind of spring board off of that question, you know, why should clients focus on an interview, which doesn't include the visual aspect, or video? And again, taking a look at mobile usage and being able to actually use the mobile phone for video as well, why get away from the actual visual piece? Nick: I think video's interesting. Industry has combined video into a single topic. But I think the conversation is really more one-way, versus two-way interview tools. I'd say, Skype is great. Hangouts are great. Zoom is great, right. Those are two-way video experiences and all of my companies and my recruiters have used video tools, you know, at later stages of the process. So hiring managers, a lot of the times use video, two-way video conversations for those next steps, right. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Nick: But I would argue that most recruiters are still doing the initial conversation over the phone. Why? Because it's convenient for candidates who are busy working, who don't want to book a conference room to do a video call, right. And, yeah. I would argue ... What I'm excited about Honeit tool, is that we're not introducing additional bias or discrimination. I think as soon as you add video, and let alone two-way. I'm talking about the one-way video interview tools that are essentially extended job applications, right? There's a reason we don't put pictures on resumes yet it's okay to send the candidate a link to record themselves with, answer four questions on video as a second step of the application process. I don't understand how those are not introducing additional bias. Joel: You're going to get Chad all excited talking about bias and compliance Nick: You know, you don't tell it when you hear it, right? You can hear enthusiasm. You can hear personality. You can hear communication style. All of that you can hear over the phone. Our point is that, recruiters have typically heard it. But the next person in the hiring process didn't. All they got was some scribbled notes and a resume. And so that's why there has to be another one or two phone conversations, because everybody wants to hear it. But, I would argue you don't need three separate phone conversations to get to the uh huh. We're saying, and now a non-technical recruiter can ask three technical questions on that initial phone screen. The very same questions that a hiring manager would typically ask, or a tech lead, right? And now, it's no longer about a non-technical recruiter knowing a great answer. They can ask the great question and someone in the company can listen and decide if it's a good answer. Nick: So, that's where this cooperation or collaboration starts to come in, and, you know, some people get scared of that. But really we're saying, "Hey recruiter, ask a couple great questions. Share the answers with someone who knows a great answer." Chad: Oh, here's a good question. I mean, can you collaborate in the platform then? Because you're talking about the communication happening and you want to share these instances or these, let's say for instance, just these snippets, let's say. Nick: Yeah. Chad: Can you share just snippets of questions or just specific questions and not the entire interview? Nick: That's the whole point right. We have 30 minutes phone screen. You're doing a lot o selling. You're pitching all this stuff, right. And when you get to those two knock-out questions of like, tell me about a time when, or what is your experience with this specific thing, that candidate is going to give a great minute, minute-half answer to those two questions. Those two highlights are what you can click and share with your clients. Joel: Are you transcribing these conversations Nick? Nick: Yes. We record the whole conversation. We transcribe the whole conversation, and then we actually, you know, record and transcribe just those select highlights or those snippets as you'd say. And everything can be searched. So now imagine a team of ten recruiters, 30 recruiters doing five calls a day, at the end of the week, you could search these conversations for competitive intelligence, what topics, trends, right. Now all of this ... This becomes very rich data and very big data very quickly. Joel: Now, so my questions is, snippets are things like that, is there an analytics component to the product, and I guess, who are some of your competitors if you have any? Nick: I think our biggest competitor to be honest is the telephone. People just, are used to picking up the telephone dialing a phone number and having a great 30 minute conversation. We're saying, do that, but connect to that call on the cloud so that you can record, transcribe and analyze those answers. Chad: So, interview notes, the actual recording, transcriptions. You have integrations with Applicant Tracking Systems. Are they full integrations and can you take this data and push it into the ATS because, companies need to be able to do a better job of recording and reporting in their Applicant Tracking System off of this information as well. Nick: Yeah. I've been a HR buyer for ten years. I mean I've you know, usually been the one purchasing technologies so I know how important integration is, which is why we designed this system from the ground up to play nice with any CRM or ATS without a rigorous integration. Although, we are excited about integrations as well. But I'm saying, to use Honeit, all a recruiter needs to do is put up a scheduling link and [inaudible 00:14:01] right, into your email templates and ATS templates that you're already using. And this is a Honeit scheduling link, so it's really easy to schedule these calls, and then after you hang up the telephone, in Honeit you have all of the transcription, all of the audio highlights, all of the conversation, and then there's export likes, right. Where you could click a button and all of that phone interview intelligence can live in your ATS or CRM. Joel: Nick, how does the voice assistant revolution with solutions like Alexa, Siri, et cetera. Affect your business or doesn't it? Nick: We're very excited about that. We're focusing on the initial step. The first stage of the interview process, the phone screens. But, you know, we're learning a lot. The system has been getting smarter and smarter with the answers, the insights, the questions, et cetera. And so I'm very interested in taking Honeit to impersonal interviews, right. So, I think audio devices in the room are great for us, right. And that we're developing the technology that can understand a good versus great answer. And that can be beyond just the initial phone conversation. Joel: So can we expect you to be on services like Alexa? Like would I be able to say, Alexa, play back the Honeit interview with such and such? Nick: Without disclosing too much, we're really excited about that, and there'll likely be something announced in the short-term. Joel: Fair enough. Chad: Sounds like some of the congressional testimonies that I've been hearing. So, saying ... Talking about the landscape over all, which I think is incredibly cool, especially with technology, you're talking about voice assist, but another piece of the landscape is the competitive piece. So, Indeed just acquired interview.com, what, months ago. How do you think that's going to impact the interviewing and assessment space overall? Having a name that big start to suck up an interview assessment type of platform? Nick: Yeah, again. I think it goes back to ... and I'm glad there's visibility into interview technology that are more than just the a one-way tools, right. But hey, it's because there's 20 or so one-way video interview technologies out there that have been around for a decade, right. And I think companies are starting to realize the one way interview experience is not going to get you the best candidates, right. The best candidates are going to go across the street to your competitor, have a phone conversation and go on site, right. They don't want extra work. So, I'm excited about anything that's going to push this industry for real-time communication and or, more data-driven and, analytics. Interview data, interview analytics, because I think, while conversation's important, we still are trying to get towards that quality of higher metric. But until we start to know what goes into interview conversations, what questions are asked, or what makes a good versus great answer, you know, we're not going to be able to correlate hirers with quality. Nick: Or be able to go back and say, "Well how did our best employers answer those initial questions?" Those are leading indicators that companies can start to look at. Joel: I've got a blocking and tackling question here. If I'm going to set up an interview with a candidate, do they call a phone number with your system? Do they have to go to a URL, like, walk me through that process. Nick: Yeah. So we have U.S. customers who just, you know, they just turn on the phone conversation checkbox, right. So candidates gets a branded email confirmation with a counter invite. And for the candidate, it's calling a phone number and entering your interview pin number. So, just like you would connect to maybe a webinar, you're calling into a conference slot. So that's how the candidate would do. And then some of our international customers, they love the ability to just send candidates a VoIP link, so there's no international charges, it doesn't matter what country you're in, candidates can just talk through their computer or talk over their smartphone, with a recruiter sitting anywhere. Nick: And then to the recruiter, similarly, they can connect through their telephone and connect to the call that way. Or most recruiters, they just plug in their head bugs like we're doing now and talk through their computer. So there is a VoIP aspect built in with the platform on both sides. Chad: Excellent. I'm sure with your platform, they don't have the problems like you did with your Apple crappy Mac, before we started this. Nick: Yeah. No plugins to download, no operating systems to worry about. Yeah, so the candidate is simple. They just dial a phone number like they're used to and they have a great conversation with somebody on the other end. Chad: Yeah. Okay. So, how many customers do you guys have today? Nick: We're not disclosing kind of the number, but I can tell you we're working with companies in the US both on teams, internal corporate TA teams. And we're really seeing a lot of growth internationally. Customers in Mexico and Europe et cetera. So we're excited being a global communication platform. Chad: Well, let me attack it from this side. Do you have case studies that prove that this solution works? Nick: We do. We do. We've got testimonials from candidates who say, "Wow. I can have a great conversation with a recruiter and then on site." We've got great feedback from higher managers saying, "Wow. The candidate looks light on paper, but as soon as I heard a couple answers, holy smocks, they know what they're talking about. Let's get him on site." Nick: I think our fire alarm just went off. That's not- Chad: Firing Squad. Nick: That's not a button on my side. That's amazing. Chad: That's right people. Firing Squad. The big question is, is Nick going to stand with the smoke all around him or is he going to run. That's the question. Nick: I think we got a couple minutes. I think we can talk around this fire. Chad: Okay, so. Who is your biggest advocate and what company are they from? Nick: You know, we've got folks at LinkedIn who are excited about this. We've got, you know, VPs of HR who are excited about this. I think anybody who recognizes that the interview process ... A lot of people will tell you that the interview process is broken, right. I'm saying let's do a small change of behavior to share a little bit of data, instead of sharing opinions, and you wouldn't believe the trust and credibility recruiters can build with higher management, when they start to remove opinions and perception from the process. It's like, "Hey, this is fact. This is what the candidate said. Let's talk about the candidate. Let's not talk about my interpretation of what the candidate said." Joel: Nick, I always appreciate the fact that people that have been in the business start companies. Your background is as a recruiter, and I think we can all understand the benefits of being a recruiter and starting a business in this space. But are there any disadvantages? Nick: You know, yeah, I probably think about things a little too much, you know what I mean. I think about all the nuances and the what if's just because I've been in the trenches and, but at the same time, I'm really excited about focusing on something that's just universal, right. Like every recruiter's on the phone doing phone interviews, yet, you look at the telephones, and how much have they evolved in the last 20 years, right. We've got computers in our pockets. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Nick: Yet, the phone interview has not evolved. We're still scribbling notes, right. On a pad or paper, or maybe we're typing notes, right. And that just seems so archaic and at the end of the day, I look at my hiring managers and I look at why recruiters we have this kind of strange reputation, right. And I go, "It's because we're just sharing scribbled notes and opinions. Like, we're not providing a consultative, we're not sharing evidence, right. We're not being consultive. We're not ..." So, you know, ultimately, this takes the pressure off recruiters. We don't have to talk, every time we submit a candidate, our neck is not on the line. It's our reputation that's on the line. It's what a candidate said. Chad: From a company stand point, I think this is a great angle for you to be hitting as well. There's data, there's proof. It's all there, it's in voice, and it's transcribed. So, a couple of different things. First and foremost, you can tell, specifically what kind of work your recruiters are doing. But you can also take a look at the information. There's no he said, she said. And then we start taking or we start talking about bias. You start talking about recording and reporting off of these interviews. Companies do not have said data today, because again, they don't record or they don't have this transcription available. The biggest key though, and again, I just want a little bit of clarity on this, if I have the transcription in Honeit and I have the actual voice snippets and all other great data, can I get that into my Applicant Tracking System? Nick: Yes. Those export links make it super easy to get all of the rich audio intelligence and notes and transcription into you ATS and then with specific integration partners, we're very excited about, you know, extending that integration to be, you know, more robust and more inclusive, and, yeah, more of a seamless process. You click a button in your ATS, just kick off the work flow, et cetera. Joel: Nick talk to me about pricing as well as money raised, are you looking for money in the future, like sort of, what does that look like. Nick: Yeah. We've been pretty boot strapped to date. We've been really focused on nailing the products and whittling it down to its core. So, we're excited now to have some good logos and some good customers paying and using the system and giving us great feedback, and you know, we're working on our, we're actually pulling out a version two of the platform right now, to kind of, incorporate what we've learned and take things further. Make it more extendable. And you know, so we have raised a small kind of friends and family. But it's really been more about boot strapping the business and now that we have customers, now that we've got a great story to tell, we're actively starting to folks and focus about raising a round. Joel: There you go. And pricing? Nick: Pricing. So, it's per recruiter, per month. Kind of a SAS subscription model to get going. And then once companies add enough users, they can, we can switch to more of a volume based, so they can pay, well, by the minute. You can say 30,000 40,000 minutes a month. However, many recruiters they might have. So it's not about seats, it's more about usage of the platform. Chad: Usage, and the usage is all pretty much allocated. It sounds like by the minute. Nick: Yeah, exactly. To easily get going, you can think of it, we start at around 80 dollars per month, per recruiter. And that's unlimited interviews and unlimited transcription. And then as you add users, there's opportunities for kind of, volume discounts or to a certain point, you know, we're happy to kind of work with larger companies and just say, "Hey, I'm going to reduce the product for a flat monthly rate." Chad: Okay. So, here's the question that I'm goin to pivot from Joel's question as he asked about dollars. I believe, and I think Joel does too, this is the year of acquisition. Are you being corted right now? Nick: Well, you know you can, we've designed this to fill some gaps, right. We've designed the scheduling, screening, sharing, you know, those three steps, and so, we've designed this to kind of complement the ATS or CRMs. I guess I can't say if we're being corted right now or not, but we're excited to go into business. And we're excited to bring interview innovation to the masses. Joel: Great, non-answer. Chad: I like how you pivoted out of that. You've been watching may too many congresstional testimonies lately. Nick: Hard to avoid it these days, isn't it? Chad: Yeah. No shit right. So Joel are you ready to, you're ready to give Nick your grade? Joel: I'm ready to this. I'll go first. Joel: Okay Nick. My knee-jerk reaction to this product and my first, you know, line of questioning, well these guys are going to get squashed by the wave of technology around AI, automation, video, you know, this just seems like and old technology. It just feels like it's antiquated. And then, I know you, I know that you've got a great history in recruiting. I know you've got a great team. Your advisors, which are on your site, are top-notch. And then I remember the industry itself. And our industry as a whole is very slow to change. They like stuff the way it is. There's you know ... all these AI and fancy things that Chad and I talk about on a regular basis, are a long way off and they may not even happen. They may not even be a big deal, right. So to me it's like, you've got a guy that knows recruiting at its heart. You've got a team around that understands it. You've got you know, solid technology. Phone conversation isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Joel: Someone has to be the leader in this space, and why not you guys. So for me, it's a little cautious on the future, but as far as right now, I think you guys have a great product and I'm going to go applause on this one. Chad: Big applause from Joel. Okay. Nick: Thanks Joel. Chad: My turn, my turn. So, first and foremost, I agree a 100% and one of the things that Joel said right out of the gate is something that you have to always frame in this conversation, is the new work force. Millennials. Gen Z, and how you know, they're more focused on Snap Chat and chatting versus actually using the phone. I mean we have conversations all the time about not having conversations on the phone. Although, we do live and work in an industry that is really focused on pragmatic in simple ways to make their job easier every single day. Chad: Not to mention, you also provide transcription. All of this information that doesn't the he said, she said, kind of scenario, which makes it easier and better for recruiters and it makes it better for companies. Best part of all, all that data can be pushed into the Applicant Tracking System. So, because of the industry that we're in, keep it simple stupid. And I know that you have your eye toward the future, but for the now, there's no question man. This for me is definitely a big applause. Nick: Well, thank you Chad. Joel: Way to go Nick. Chad: Alright. Nick: Thanks guys. I mean, I guess I, you know, and I know you, don't get me wrong. Like saying phone interview technology makes me cringe a little bit, right. Because it does sound archaic, but I think we're more excited about the interview data and interview intelligence that happens in these conversations and, you know, we originally built the system to work for both phone and video, but we ultimately pulled down that video aspect because we realized just conversations are that much more convenient. So, you know, we've not lost touch of video and we're very excited about what we can start to do with all of this data now that we have it. I think one of the big things with AI and [inaudible 00:29:10] learning and natural numbers processing is that people talk about it, yet they haven't been collecting all of the data. Joel: Nick, show's over man. You won. If our audience wants to learn more about you or maybe a special Chad and Cheese coupon code, where would they do that? Nick: We can talk about that. Honeit.com, you know, just submit a demo request, happy to chat. Do a live conversation trough the system and share my screen. We actually use our technology for our demo so you can experience how easy it is use it as a candidate, and we can talk about a discount for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Alright. So call Honeit, H-O-N-E-I-T.com, mention the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: Not Boneit Joel: And Nick and his team will sling you a major discount, cool? Joel: Alright, thanks Chad, thanks Nick, thanks to Jobs2Careers. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Our newest and only sponsor for this show. Big ups to them. We appreciate it. And we out. Chad: We out. Nick: Thanks guys. Announcer: This has been the firing squad. Be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese podcast so you don't miss and episode. And if you're a start-up who wants to face the firing squad, contact the boys and chadcheese.com today. That's www.C-H-A-D-C-H-E-E-S-E.com. #Honeit #FiringSquad #TATech

On this week's episode, iCIMS buys a Trojan horse, Walmart adds a little sugar to make the layoff medicine go down and hiQ gets some good news regarding its epic battle with LinkedIn. You don't want to miss a second, but if you do, we can still be friends. What else? Here you go: - Harver.com gets $4.2 million to bring unbiased hiring to the masses - Iceland makes a certain employment practice illegal - Walmart has its cake and wants to eat it too (not so fast!) - Shoutouts to Sling, Monster, and the #ChadCheese faithful ... and much more. Tune in for free now! Give all your money to our sponsors instead: Sovren, America's Job Exchange, Ratedly, Nexxt and Catch 22 Consulting. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Announcer: 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: Hidy ho, boys and girls, we're back to our regularly scheduled show. This is Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's episode, iCIMS buys a Trojan horse, Walmart adds a little sugar to make the layoff medicine go down. You like that one? And hiQ gets some good new regarding its epic battle with LinkedIn. You don't want to miss a second, but if you do, we can still be friends. Stay tuned after this word from our sponsor. Chad, there are a lot of employer review sites out there, we've talked about this before. Chad: Yeah, we have. Joel: We've talked about how they're sort of starting to specialize. One such example is review sites specifically for females. Chad: Really? Joel: Yeah, for sure. We don't frequent them because we're not women, but they are out there. Chad: It would be really weird. Joel: Probably, probably, my wife might ask some questions. There are out there and there are two that have been pretty prevalent for a while. One is called InHerSight. One is called is Fairygodboss ... Chad: Yeah. Joel: ... which are specifically for women, so they talk about the glass ceiling, they talk about pay equities, anything harassment, all that stuff. It takes it from that view point. Well, there's another site out there called WomenHack and so this is for women that are technology-focused. Chad: Man, there's going to be a lot of flaming going on there. Joel: There could be. We've talked a lot about the brogramming culture out there in Silicon Valley that sort of permeates everywhere. This site is out there for women to talk about specifically technology and jobs and bosses at these companies and technology. Anyway, it's a lot to keep up with. Monitoring these sites is a real headache. You might want a tool to help you monitor all these sites, which is why I created Ratedly. Ratedly goes out and monitors about 15 employer review sites. You don't have to do it, it does it automatically. Our little system goes out there and does it. We bring it back to you on an easy to read dashboard. We'll also alert you when new reviews come in. Sounds great, right? Chad: That's more than great. Can you imagine the people that you don't have to do with this administrative shit that everything just comes together. Joel: Look, we talk a lot about employer branding, about managing that system. You can't manage something unless you measure it and monitor it. Ratedly is there to help you do that. Now, how much would you expect to pay for such a service? Chad: $10,000 a month. Joel: A month, a year? A month, okay. Surprisingly, our price is only $147 per month for us to do that. Chad: What? Joel: Yep, and we're building in some analytics that's going to be released here this month or early next month that we're really excited about. Ratedly, if employer branding is important to you, if monitoring all these sites and growing is becoming a hassle, look to Ratedly and solve that problem. Especially for Chad and Cheese listeners, use the coupon code cheddar, and you can try us for just $1. If you don't like us, cancel us and you don't have to see us ever again. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's completely risk-free. Check us out at Ratedly.com, R-A-T-E-D-L-Y.com. Again, that's coupon code cheddar, C-H-E-D-D-A-R. Chad: Yeah, I'm going to try to talk you out of that dollar thing because the whole $149 a month is super cheap as it is. If you're out there and you want to try Ratedly, I'm going to try to talk Joe out of that dollar kind of coupon code thing, so you better use that shit quick. Joel: I could be talked out of that, for sure. Anyway, use it while it lasts, cheddar, a dollar trial of Ratedly. Chad: Boom. Joel: All right, let's get to the show. Chad: Let's go. Joel: Big news this week. Chad: Huge. Joel: The biggest news by far, and January is usually slow, so this was nice to see. iCIMS, ATS, Susan Vitale has been on our show, we love her ... Chad: Yeah. Joel: ... acquired TextRecruit who we've been on a webinar with in the past. This was a big acquisition. I have some thoughts on it. We don't how much they paid. We do know that TextRecruit got three million in funding last year. If they got 10x then this is a 30 million dollar deal for them, which is nice. They'll be a standalone company for iCIMS for the foreseeable future. What do you think about this deal, Chad? Chad: I think it was a no brainer. I think we knew that TextRecruit was going to be acquired somehow, someway. We've been talking about TextRecruit and just text recruiting overall for months. There's no question, I think it's incredibly smart for iCIMS. There's no question. Then you have to take a look at how smart it is for a company like Nexxt because they're already integrated into that TextRecruit system. They're already implemented into it. It's like they have a user base or a prospective employer base or customer base, that is going to be just add water. If you've partnered with these types of companies, it just makes a whole hell of lot of sense. Big ups to TextRecruit, to Nexxt. I know Monster just released that they're going to be partnering with them. Shit man, I think it's ... Joel: We talked about that in the last show. Chad: Yeah, so I think it's a good plan all the way around. Again, Erik and crew, they've been growing out there on the West Coast. This is something that you just had to see coming. There's going to be a lot more of this happening. Joel: Yeah, good for them. I think it's potentially quite a Trojan horse for iCIMS to have. TextRecruit has done a fantastic job of being sort of the go to brand for text messaging and communications with candidates. They're integrated with everybody and everyone, most people that do text messaging are using TextRecruit, or using their underlying technology. They have a great API. I know Nexxt's solution is I think driven largely by TextRecruit. They're the either the underbelly or the underpinnings of a lot of these systems. If iCIMS ever wants to put a fat toll on all these other ATSes to use their text messaging service, I think that's a really dangerous thing for most other ATSes. Joel: I think there's a question of is this just a feature or is an actual product? I think in most cases I would say it's a feature, but it's not easily replicatable. In other words, there are legal hurdles to text messaging. There are things from a globe perspective that are challenging. If I was a competing ATS, I would be looking at who are the competitors to TextRecruit. Canvas, I think we've talked about in the show, they're actually based here in Indianapolis. If they're not getting calls from ATSes and job boards about acquisition or how can we partner together, then I would be shocked at that. Text messaging is future. Email is dying. Mail is not as effective as text messaging by far. This is the way of the future. This is how millennials as much as I hate them are communicating. Chad: Everybody does that. Joel: If you're not recruiting in this fashion, you're in trouble. iCIMS did a very brilliant thing in buying these guys. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We'll see how it plays out. I don't think it's a warm and fuzzy, we're going to let them operate as they have for the next forever. I think eventually it will be rolled into iCIMS and they'll have it exclusively as an iCIMS product. All the other ATSes who don't have it will be screwed. Chad: Yeah, I think it's smart for iCIMS to obviously have different features and different types of dashboards and things like that that are integrated into iCIMS. I think it would be a big mistake if they cut it off to other applicant tracking systems, because there's a huge revenue base there that they would be cutting off. That makes no sense whatsoever. I think it's smart from them from a strategic standpoint to be able to take a look at products that can prospectively generate revenue outside of their system, outside of iCIMS itself. Joel: Yeah, that's definitely one way that it could go. There are a lot of ways that they can pull the levers to make it beneficial to use iCIMS. You can say, hey, if you're an iCIMS customer, you get TextRecruit for free. Chad: Yes. Joel: It's an incentive to use iCIMS because it's their partner, maybe the integration is better, or maybe they have features that the other partners don't have because they ... They could make it better, they could incentivize people to use iCIMS in a lot of different ways. They don't necessarily have to just cut it off for everybody. It will be interesting to see how they leverage this new toy because this new toy is a hammer that's pretty powerful and we'll see what they do with it. Chad: It is but every single thing that we think about, the whole, is going to be attached to revenue. The broader base of revenue that they're going to be able to tap into it's there man, it's there. Now, what about the like you're talking about Canvas. We also heard about the Jobalign this week. Joel: Yeah, tell us about the Jobalign. Chad: It seems very, very smart for them that we saw an announcement. Recruiters and managers can now reach out immediately via text via Jobalign. One of their big focuses, which is very smart from a texting standpoint is they include in a fully compliant manner. They're adding these different aspects to their platform and again, why the hell not? It just makes good sense, especially if they're looking at ... I really don't know Jobalign that well, and I don't know if they're looking to prospectively be acquired this year. This would be one of the things that would be primary on a roadmap to be able to kind of fill out a platform. Joel: They highlighted at the hourly work or the service worker in their service and if you're looking to hire that sort of demographic, text messaging is paramount because these are younger folks, that may not even have a computer, that may not even have an email address. That's literally a thing now. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Younger people don't even have email addresses. If they do it's like because they go to school and they have one but they never use it. Recruiting young people in this fashion like if you don't have text messaging, you're not even going to get to them. Kudos to these guys for realizing that and launching it. Chad: And remember a few months back we talked about Cielo and their high volume product that they put together? That was a lot of that, the engagement piece was based on text. A lot of it was based on text. Joel: Can I interject that I love Cielo's song Gangsta's Paradise before we ... Oh, that's Coolio, my bad, never mind. Chad: Yeah, no it's close though, it's close. I know it's early, you need more coffee. I'm going to have to hum Gangsta's Paradise in my brain all day. It's not bad though. Joel: Not bad, you could have weird house versions in your head all day. Chad: Don't say it. Joel: By the way, speaking of coffee, we totally skipped shout outs. Chad: We should do those because everybody loves a shout out. Joel: Yeah, let's do shout outs. Sorry guys. Chad: Tell us the story about Sling TV. Joel: Sling TV, all right, totally has no connection to the show whatsoever. I'm a cord cutter. I've cut the cord for over a year. We were on Sling but we moved over to Direct TV now for the reason that they had local channels, more local channels on Direct TV now. We went on and it's kind of been a shit show. Like a lot of buffering, a lot of like non-clear picture, which we can only attribute to Direct TV now, because we don't get it on Netflix, Hulu or any of the other services that we use. Anyway, during the national football title game, it was cutting out, I wasn't getting to see what was a pretty good game. I took it out, Direct TV now is adding poop emoji and then I said I got to get back on Sling. You got into it somehow. Chad: Yeah, I was trying to troll you on Twitter. Joel: Yeah, Chad trolls me all the time, stalking. Sling sent me a shout out and said, "Welcome back or hello," which was kind of cool. Quick shout out to Slang. Thanks, appreciate it. Chad: It was my genius of my bye, bye, bye gif that I threw out there and they came back with another gif. Yeah, they were given a slot, that was good stuff. That's what happens. Even outside of the recruiting industry, Chad and Cheese are very powerful on the Twitter. Joel: You know the recruiters of Sling are tuning in to show for sure. Chad: I know it. Before we get into hashtag stuff, I've got to say hey Philly, I love you. Yeah, I know I gave Saquon a bunch of shit because I don't think he's going to do a lot hopefully he does. I'll let you guys know that I'll be rooting for the Eagles tomorrow against the Falcons. There's no question. The Colts obviously are not going to be out there. Even though they from what Joe says, they'll probably be talking Saquon. Hashtag Chad and Cheese on Twitter. Our buddy Jonathan Zila gave us some love. Love the last show and giving us some shit. Yeah, we love you Ed. Cory Kapner man, he's hilarious and he's totally bull shitting us. He says, "I love the podcast, using your episodes to help train new hires." Those are going to be some of the dumbest new hires. Joel: I got to get ... That's got to get the gun man because that company is going in the toilet if they're training new employees with the show. I got to ... Chad: So freaking funny. Monster was giving us love. Monster it's hilarious. Nobody has said anything good about this company, probably for what you say, two, three years? Joel: They haven't said anything, not good, bad. Chad: No, I mean, people saying things about Monster. I don't think they've seen anything good. We've provided a little prediction thinking that with this new leadership that they're coming in with, with new owner Randstad that I think, Joe doesn't think, that I think that this could be their year. Thanks Monster for the tweets, love it. Joel: Chris Cho out there, big fan of Monster and Penny, don't know her last name. Chad: Queller, love it. Chris Russell, yes, the pod father, definitely get a shout out man. We'll see you in Dublin. Nancy from Philly. The job board doctor literally tweets at us about 20 times while he's listening. Joel: Get a life, doctor, Jesus. Chad: Yeah, we love you man. No, don't get a ... just continue man, that's good contact. That's all I've got for the hashtag side of the house. Like I said, Philly is representing out there. I know we have different pockets throughout the United States who are listening. Joel: Philly brings it... Chad: Shout out, hit us with the hashtag and that's all I got ... Joel: Maybe it's the Nexxt connection out there in Philly that really, that's on steroids. Chad: It could be the Nexxt connection. Joel: Tatech.ai conference. I know they're on the list. Tell us about that. Chad: Yeah. They're on the list, February 12th in sunny Arizona, that's where you want to be. You can go to ... you can go to chadcheese.com, we've got actually a banner that's there, you can click on it. Then we have a discount code. Joel: Damn. Chad: Our discount code is Tatechten, spell out ten, T-E-N and then the number 18. Yes, it can't be harder than that. Tatechten18, tatech18. Then we're going to be in Dublin for TA Tech Europe, March 13th and 14th, and that's around what time, Joel? Joel: I can't get over the fact that my Wifi password is probably shorter than the coupon code. That's difficult to remember. I'm sorry what was your question again? Chad: That timeframe that we're going to be in Dublin. What's happening around that timeframe? Joel: Oh, St. Patrick's Day. Chad: If you are in Europe and you're listening, you definitely have to be there, that's a give and that's a hop skip and a jump for goodness sakes. If you're in the US and you definitely want to be able to enjoy some St. Patrick's Day, not to mention some TA Tech, this is perfect for you guys. Check it out. Go to tatech.org and register. Joel: Chad's trying to get me to do kind of a lord of the dance thing in our session and I'm not sure I'm ready for it. However, there's enough goodness in that country to maybe make me change my mind. Chad: I think I can, I think I can. Joel: All right, we're done with shout outs. Chad: Yeah. Joel: All right. Thinkful, T-H-I-N-K-F-U-L is in the news. Tell us about them. Chad: Okay. Thinkful. This is actually off of Tim's prediction. Tim, if you guys listened to the prediction show and you should have, just a couple of shows ago. He said that in 2018, companies will be hiring people without degrees, more of hiring people without degrees, degree-less talent. Thinkful is a coding bootcamp, so instead of getting degrees, you're getting these certifications, you're getting the knowledge that you need to go directly into an organization without getting a four year degree. They just raised 9.6 million dollars in a Series A fund. They're merely at 16 million right now, but if you're looking for full stack developers, data scientists, front end developers, they guys train them up. Chad: From my standpoint, just being on the workforce side of the house and knowing from an economic development side of the house from business, you have to be able to look at building talent pipelines beyond just going to a school. That's just a ... especially when you take a look at the unemployment rate today. I think this is something where Thinkful is charging I think like $15000, $8000 or something like that, for some of these courses. Companies would be incredibly smart if they engaged with Thinkful and they started pipe lining these candidates in, paying those fees and getting this talent on contract. Chad: It's all right there in front of our faces, but for some reason, we want to do things the old fashion way. We need to get out of that shit. We need to start doing things which pipelines candidates. Joel: It seems like we're going to be getting away from these sort of four year degree or have a college bachelors and success is going to be defined by do you have the most up to date skills in sort of these bite-sized educational systems online, almost like badges. Like you'll need this certification and you'll need this ... 'Cause like most people that are in four year colleges that are learning computer science and coding and all that, a lot of stuff is going to be irrelevant in 10, 20 years. Chad: Yeah, but that's what I'm saying is that you can't expect somebody to come out job ready, you can't. Not so much when you go from company to company to company. They have different kind of nuances on what they want you to learn and how you want them to learn it. That's why when they pop out or they're just available and ready and they want to be able to do this, companies should be pushing this. They should be pushing these training programs and then pulling talent in for like I said, three year contract, who knows what it might be. Chad: This is exactly what the military does. If you look at how the military runs. You pull them in, they've got a job, they go through job training and boom, they've got a job for three years, four years, whatever it is. It can be obviously much easier than that without a drill sergeant yelling at you. It just makes a hell of a lot more sense. You're pipe lining your damn talent straight into where you need it. Joel: Military. Yeah, these guys should be contacting companies to give them bulk deals on educating anyone that they need to sort of keep sharp on these systems and new technologies. Yeah, I like this trend and I think it's going to happen. I think what's interesting is how it affects the traditional four year, two year college and the value of that degree. I think what Tim thinks and I think you agree as well, is that we're going to get away from that being so valuable. Frankly, it's so expensive to go to college today. Chad: Oh dude, do you know what Stanford's endowment is? Joel: I do not but you have kids that are looking at these things. Chad: Yeah, this is why I know, 22 billion dollars, that's what their endowment is. It's ridiculous and it is totally tax-free money. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Anyway, that's an entirely different subject but that's why shit's going to change is because it's too expensive, number one. Number two, because we can't get these skills that we need fast enough. Companies are going to have to start playing a role on this. They're going to get the talent that they want and they need. Joel: We got a lot of stuff to go through, so let's take a quick break and hear from Sovren. When we come back, we'll talk a little bit of a ripple in the hiQ versus LinkedIn case. Announcer: Google, Lever, Entelo, Monster, Jibe, what do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovren Technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job, while others use our technology to help companies find the perfect candidate. Sovren has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996, and we can help improve your hiring process too. We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit sovren.com, S-O-V-R-E-N.com, for a free demo. Joel: hiQ in the news sort of. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Okay, neither one of us are lawyers. I'm going to try to paint this picture about what happened or what the case was about. Rimini Street, I'd never heard of but they're in a case with Oracle who most people know. They essentially provide a service that would go in and log in automatically as opposed to going in manually. They would download materials from Oracle's website and then bring it into their company's whatever clients' dashboard or whatever. Ultimately, the case was they were automatically going into Oracles' software, automatically downloading stuff for clients. Oracle didn't like this. Joel: They said that their terms of service disallowed this thing. That was their core case. The first time they won, Oracle beat Rimini Street. However, there was an appeal. The latest is Rimini Street has been okayed to do what they were doing and that Oracle could not sort of rely on their terms of service, as saying that's how people had to behave on their website. That there were bigger laws or bigger freedoms at play, not just corporate sort of, here's what's allowed and what's not. Joel: Anyway, this is important in recruiting because of the hiQ-LinkedIn case. It does create some precedent of another company going onto another company site, automatically doing something, whether it's getting content on a publicly available by the way site, and making that okay. We'll see how this plays out. Obviously, this whole year we're going to talk about hiQ and LinkedIn and what happens there. The hiQ family seems to be pretty excited about this case against Oracle, and they think this is going to help their case against LinkedIn. Chad: Well, and it should because Rimini Street, they actually had to go through a log in process to get the information. Now, the information was paid for information from their client. Their client was going to have access anyway. They were just facilitating, making sure that they had the information that they felt was necessary to support their client using Oracle products. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Right, makes sense. I don't know why Oracle is even wasting their damn time. This seems like a huge waste of time. Anyway, they're doing it. Oracle has lawyers. They pay a bunch of money for lawyers and what lawyers do this kind of a stupid shit that they do. From hiQ standpoint, yeah, everything that they're pulling is all public data. Yeah, these types of ... We talked about another organization a couple of weeks ago that is, they're standing to band together, and we're starting to see I think a trend and the courts understanding this whole Internet thing. Because we're using dated regulations from like 20 years, which is all bullshit. Yeah, no, I think this is really good hiQ and again, if LinkedIn wants to get off the naughty list, they need to quit doing stupid shit and creating a terms of service that much like Oracle are bullshit. They go beyond actual regulatory statutes have. Joel: They're on my nice list, by the way. If you haven't listened to the Naughty Nice podcast, you should. One of our better episodes, I think. Yeah, there's going to be some pressing around this. This is big stuff. These were laws written in the '80s that have really very little relevance to today's world. The shakeout is happening and it will have ramifications to a lot of businesses. I think we'll see more cases like this that will help or hurt hiQ's case. Yeah, we wanted to bring it to our listeners' attention because it is something that we've been talking about quite a bit. Chad: Go hiQ! Joel: All right. You can sing your 500 mile song. This news biased Chad is singing really bad '90s songs. Chad: Who? Wait a minute. I think on record, you have sang many more '80s and '90s, bad '80s and '90s songs than I have on this pod. Harver, tell us about Harver. Joel: Harver got 4.2 million dollars in Series A investment. That's news worthy in and of itself. Now, what I think is interesting and this is your lane more than mine. They are really pimping their service as sort of an unbiased way of recruiting. They have all the buzz words that they need, automation, AI, deep learning, blah, blah, blah, to present candidates to their clients that are bias-free. They don't look at sex, age, color, creed, religion, whatever. They take that out of the equation. To me, what's interesting is can we become a more diverse workforce through automation AI? Chad: Well, yes, but there's things that need to change that I'd also like to call out. This is another Tim Sackett prediction, where sourcing is dead because AI is starting to do that. This is one of the reasons why it makes sense for machine learning and AI to do it, because it takes I would say a good amount of the bias out of sourcing. Yes, I think this is something that is definitely brilliant for an organization like Harver to be able to kind of pivot off of and angle in off of. Really none of that's going to change until we can totally understand that our job descriptions and the way that we actually go after clients, the actual talent pools and the different sites that we use are already bias. Take a look at the job descriptions, we talked about that on the predictions show too, job descriptions that have four year degrees on them that should not have four year degrees on them. Chad: That's automatically creating bias, socioeconomic bias. If you're in talent acquisition out there and you haven't even thought about this, shame on you first of. Second, get that shit off of your job postings and understand that you are impacting the diversity of the actual candidates who are prospectively qualified besides your basic qualifications, which are bullshit. That's, why one the big reasons why you're not getting diverse candidates. Those are big pieces. Technology can't help everything because humans screw shit up no matter what. Chad: We've got to fix those guidelines, those gargoyles and then AI can help out more. I think Harver is smart in being able to try to spin this and I think there are more companies that are out there trying to do the same thing. Until we fix our behaviors and the stupid shit we've been doing for years, no technology is going to fix us. Joel: How soon before you think there's a solution that creates incredible bias in their sourcing? Chad: I think it's already out there. Joel: It's called human beings but I'm assuming like at some point they'll say like, "Only recruit male fraternity member," whatever that is. Chad: Yeah, so you see today, I've never heard of it so it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, but you don't see companies that are saying, "Hey, look, let's go after old white males." Joel: Bullshit because Facebook is under some scrutiny about people advertising on Facebook for ageism and other shit. Chad: Yeah, but they're doing it the other way around. What they're saying is and the guy was bitching on about it was an old white guy. Because he was being kept out of seeing some jobs that he felt he was qualified for. The thing is and we have to understand from a company standpoint and from an advertising standpoint outreach, targeting, is that we know that we want to be able to have a more diverse talent pool. Joel: Sure. Chad: To be able to do that, we've got to go into some of these different platforms like Facebook and micro-target for younger, for maybe different regions of the United States or what have you. Facebook isn't allowing that, which I think is bullshit. Joel: Well, may if there are areas that are specifically a different demographic. I'm not even saying that it's evil or that it's on purpose, but that kind of but like seriously, you can advertise on Facebook by age, do they have a college degree, what are they interested in, age. There are so many things that you can segment by and I think age is a missed part of that. Anyway, we're getting off topic but as great as is it, you can source and take out bias, you can also source and put in biases. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Chad: You definitely have to be careful. You have to be careful and I think this actually rolls into a little place called Iceland, doesn't it? Joel: It does but I do want to interject real quick. Tim, I believe was on Suicide Watch last week because the Black Eyes destroyed his number one ranked Spartans. Again, we hope that you're understand-clutched in the corner and you're feeling okay after that embarrassing moment. Chad: Yes. Joel: Yes, let's go to Iceland, shall we? I don't have a good MP3 Mpeg for that. Let's just big applause to Iceland. Iceland did something very cool this recently. What did they do? Chad: They made it illegal to pay women less. This is coming out of a New York post article. On Monday, Iceland became the first country in the world to force employers to pay workers the same rate regardless of gender, sexuality or ethnicity. The two words that I think are very prominent just in that quote is force employers and why is that. Joel: What do you mean, you don't like that, you like that? What do you mean? Chad: No, I think it's bullshit that employers should already be doing this in the first place. To be able to force them as we hear, it's an equal opportunity employer or they've got diversity and inclusion on their website. Or they've got all these warm and fuzzy bullshit pages, campaigns, it doesn't matter if that's the case. We've been talking about this for over a decade, if you are this equal opportunity employer, then you shouldn't be forced to do any of this. You should be doing this already and it should be fixed, period. That's all there is to it. Chad: I'm giving Iceland props but there's still the forcibly piece of this happening. You know why it happened, here is why it happened. Iceland has nearly equalized the share of women in elective office, that's why. They're about 50-50% men to women in office, and 40% of the seats today in local government and national legislature are held by females. That's why shit's changing in Iceland. When you take a look at our congress and it's a bunch of old white dudes in most cases, that's our issue. Joel: This is a plea from you for more women to run for office? Chad: Yeah, no question. I think we're seeing a lot of that as well. You can see how things change and unfortunately, they had to force employers to go there. Employers should automatically know that paying somebody less and females in Iceland were being paid 14% less, who are doing the exact same job. That's wrong. You need to fix that shit and if you know it's wrong, fix it. Joel: Amen, I got nothing else. I think this is unique to certain countries, particularly socialized countries. This could never happen in America for example. Not never but not in our lifetimes. There's too much commercial interests that's there. You could not make a company pay someone the same because of capitalistic systems that say, we're negotiating by the individual. You can do it for government staff but for private industry, I just don't ... Chad: That's already happening though. It's happening. OFCCP is actually enforcing these types of standards. They understand that and there's actual empirical data that demonstrates that women are poor negotiators when it comes to salary versus men. When you start to see the change and trajectory of what that means 10 years down the road, if everybody gets a 3% raise. If a man's automatically getting paid a couple of thousand dollars right out of the gate higher that his female counterpart, what does that mean 10 years from now? Chad: That's where the huge disparity happens. That's where we understand where the issues are at, we do. That's where we have to take a look at compensation and we have to look at it through unfortunately, the office of the OFCCP. They're the enforcement group of the department of labor. This is happening, whether you know it or not. Joel: The government blah, blah, blah. Chad: You don't want to pay females fair? That's all you man. Joel: I just man ... just because picking sex or anything out of it, just because someone has the same title, shouldn't make a employer pay the same amount for the same job title. Certain people are better than others even though they have the same job. Just because I'm a point guard on a basketball team doesn't mean I'm as good as Kyrie Irving. Chad: Right. Joel: Or Isaac Thomas, right. Because I have the title point guard, I should get the same amount of money. It's just un-American. I understand ... Chad: Un-American, okay, so that's a fine because our military actually has pay grade that specifically focused on that. Joel: Well, that's government, everyone goes in at the same time, they all get the same training. It's not the same thing. If I go to Purdue versus the University of Phoenix online and we're both whatever title, it's just I don't know, I just think it's such a gray area in most cases. Anyway, in a perfect world, yeah, it's communism and everyone has a title and the government says, "Hey, you're going to do this job." I just think it's a very touchy issue and people are sensitive about it. Joel: To me, the world should be a meritocracy, and if you're the best at it you should be paid the most. If it's in demand, like the market forces should dictate the pays. I don't care what color, what sex. If you're the best and it's in demand, you're going to get paid. Chad: That's where bonuses and performance come in, right? Joel: Sure. Chad: There are different triggers that you can play with that, but we're talking about base salary. We're talking about base salary, and if you want to try to confuse fairness with communism, that's entirely up to you. Joel: Anyway, let's get out of this landmine-ridden landscape. Let's hear from AJE, which is a great segue for what we just talked about. Chad: That's exactly right. Announcer: America's Job Exchange is celebrating our 10th year as an industry leader in diversity recruitment, and OFCCP compliance. We've been helping our thousand plus customers comply with OFCCP regulations, that directly support positive and effective diversity recruitment, designed to attract and convert veterans, individuals with disabilities, women and minorities, and empower employers to pursue and attract active outreach, with their local community-based organizations. Want to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284, or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Chad: Go to the Chad and Cheese website, click on their logo, boom and it will take you there, so much quicker. Joel: Chadcheese.com Chad: Yeah. Joel: Politics is so, it's just entrenched today in hiring news and it's I don't know if I like it or not. Anyway, some tax cuts came through, new tax policy, republicans here in the United States. Tale of two cities this week, we had Walmart announce an increase in entry level salary, which was previously $10 an hour, now it's $11 an hour. They have their bonus structures and their paying people [inaudible 00:40:44]. They're sort of saying the tax policy has dictated this. I'm pretty sure someone important, president, made a call to the CEO of Walmart and said, "Hey, we want you guys to do something and make this thing work." Joel: I'm sure they were inspired a little bit like a lot of other companies. AT&T and what not, they gave holiday bonuses. Anyway, that happened, but then we also had on the other side Sam's Costco competitor, Sam's Club lay off or close 80 stores. I'm trying to remember ... Chad: 63. Joel: 63. Chad: Yeah, from a PR standpoint, this is where it's really bad falling for Walmart. They go out and they want to say, "Oh, yay, taxes and tit's great and we're saving money and we can pay our employees a dollar more." Then on the backend of it, they quietly try to shut down 63 Sam's Clubs. There are actually individuals who are showing up to work and the doors were locked. This is where if you're trying to mask and don't get me wrong, I understand the scale, a million employees. This is business, but to try to pull this both together, have a huge announcement and then try to just maybe in your Twitter account throw a tweet. This is not the way to do business. Joel: No, the optics on this are awful. This feels like the old a little sugar makes the medicine go down thing. Like we're going to throw some sugar at the PR gods, but then we're going to hopefully get little attention on this medicine that's going down. I tend to think that Amazon is at the heart of all this. I think that Walmart is gradually going all in on Walmart. The Sam's Club, and I think to a certain really, but jet.com, look about a year ago. I think that is something they want to focus on, the online component, what they're doing. Joel: To me, Sam's Club, Costco is already doing it and doing it pretty well. I think the bulk stuff with Jet, which is owned by Walmart, maybe that's more of the focus for them. I think laying off people sucks and closing places down sucks. To me, this is probably more of market force than just pure evil by the Walmart folks. Chad: Yeah, well it's not that it was evil. Business is business and you've got to do what you've got to do. But don't try to mask ... Joel: Yeah, the optics suck. Chad: Yeah, don't try to mask it with something you're giving a dollar a month to everybody. Don't try to mask that shit. Here's the thing, and I agree the change with Amazon and what not. I also believe as you're 100% right, as they're focusing on the Walmart side of the house, where they're gaining traction for individuals who shop without actually going to Walmart. This is actually what Julie does and she loves it 'cause she hates to go grocery shopping. She hates to go with me because it takes me forever. Chad: She goes online, she buys everything online. She shows up, they fill the back of the car. She signs off and boom, she's home. She doesn't even have to go in the grocery store. There's a ton of traction that's actually happening there. You're still buying local, all those different pieces. I think Walmart's looking to try to, no question, pivot. Just again, optics, there's not enough sugar to make this medicine go down when you try to hide this shit. Joel: I think we should end on that. We out. Chad: We out. Announcer: This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single show. And check out our sponsors, because they make it all possible. For more visit hiredaily.com and you're welcome. #JobAlign #TextRecruit #iCims #EqualPay #Walmart #SlingTV #Harver #Thinkful

The holidays are over, and business is business. The boys are back at it this week, pulling no punches ... just like you like it. Believe it or not, in addition to talking Google, Indeed and others, Monster (remember them?) get mad airtime. Here's a breakdown. - Monster's new ad strategy - Albert the Frog (don't ask, just listen) - Indeed lays the smackdown - TextRecruit partners - There's a new addition to the "steaming hot pile of garbage" And must more, as always. Listen now, and visit our valued sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly and newly pimped Catch 22 Consulting. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION: Announcer: 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: The holidays are over, and business is business. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Consider yourself warned, recruiters. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's podcast a hibernating monster starts to wake up from its multi-year slumber. Indeed still hates job boards, unless they're advertising, of course, but they're starting to really make it official. Recruiters go under the microscope thanks to a new startup. It's another weekend edition, which means we may or may not be sober at the moment. Stay tuned. We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsor. Sponsor: Google, Lever, Entelo, Monster, Jibe. What do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovern technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job, while others use our technology to help companies find the perfect candidate. Sovren has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996, and we can help improve your hiring process too. We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit Sovren.com, S-O-V-R-E-N.com for a free demo. Joel: Back in the swing of things, Chad. The holidays are over. Chad: Yeah, believe it or not. It's about damn time, man. Joel: Yeah, I'm about over family, but as I say that I've got family coming today, and for the rest of next week because I'm moving. Chad: You lucky man. Joel: Not too far away, but I am moving, so the family wants to come and help and see the new house and stuff. Yeah, I have a few more weeks of family, but it's all good. Chad: Yeah, guys. They're moving because I know where they live now, and I currently don't know where their new house is, so, yeah, they're just trying to relocate.. Joel: I'm trying to escape Chad, basically. The less Chad knows, the better, so we're running from him. Do we have any shout-outs today? I'm a little bit amiss. I know we had a few. Chad: We've got tons of shout-outs. First off, I'd like to start a shout-out to all the people in the Northeast that got pummeled by this goddamn bi-polar vortex thing. At first, I thought, "Hey, it's the Northeast. They get this shit all the time, big deal," but then I saw there was flooding, and I'm like, "Okay, that's a party foul, Mother Nature." It's way too freaking cold, crazy winds, snow, ice, and they also got flooding? Too much, man, that was way too much. Joel: I'm going to call a New England Patriots conspiracy on that one, I think. Chad: Make everybody feel bad for them. Hopefully, everybody's doing well and you're not iced-in all over the place because that shit looked nasty. Joel: Well, if you are just listen to our current podcast as well as our last few podcasts. Our Predictions Podcast was fantastic, had Tim Sackett on for that. Chad: Damn good. Joel: Our year end- Chad: I love. Joel: Our Naughty-Nice List has gotten a lot of props. Shout-out to Gerry Crispin, old-time friend and industry guy who really likes the podcast, which may be us jumping the shark, who knows officially? We appreciate Jerry listening and giving us props on that, big shout-out to him. Chad: Yep, and we've got the #ChadCheese list. I'm going to try to run through this fast because we've got a ton of people that are hashtagging us thanks to Joel whining and crying about it. First off, long-time listener, first-time caller Josh Acres, he was sucking up pretty hard to be able to try to get this shout-out, so you got it, Josh. There's your shout-out. Keep hashtagging, appreciate it, man. The Job Board Doctor, I swear, hashtags us more than anybody out there, love the Jeff Dickey-Chasins' Job Board Doctor. Joel: Looking for another year full of hashtags from the Doctor. Love it. Chad: The Contentologist, don't know who this guy is, but apparently he listens, so I appreciate it. Joel: Sounds important, Contentologist. Chad: Yeah, the Contentologist, right? Ed from Philly. Hey, Ed, I know you had a heart attack because I said Saquon, he wasn't going to make it in the NFL, but, dude, when you can't roll up more than 51 yards against IU it's really hard. He's no J.K. Dobbins. We know that, right? But, still, it's going to be hard for him in the NFL, my friend, but we still love you. Keep listening. Johnathan Rose- Joel: Maybe when the Colts take him. Chad: Yeah, okay, god. Don't say that, man. He definitely won't get any yards then. Johnathan Rose, appreciate it, man. He loved the naughty and nice list. Obviously Crowded loved it because they did pretty well. Nancy from Philly, she's back in there saying that she loves us, and keep tweeting, guys. We really appreciate all the hashtags. Keep them coming. Joel: Shout-out to the gang at SHRM, who wrote an article that actually quoted our podcast and some stuff that we've said. I know Tony Lee and Mauer have commented on that, so we appreciate SHRM out there listening, shout-out to them. Chad: Amen. Thanks Roy, and before we get out do you have anymore shout-outs before I talk a little TA Tech love here? Joel: Give the TA Tech love. Chad: Okay, TA Tech AI and machine learning conference is happening February 12th through the 13th in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona. You can go to TATechAi.io . I'm going to say that again, TATechAI.io to register. If you give two shits about AI and learning and you're in talent acquisition, so this is for talent acquisition professionals as well as recruitment vendors. If you're a tech company and you're in the recruitment space this is perfect for you guys. You should check it out, TATechAi.io. Joel: If you're sick of the cold it's a nice place to be- Chad: Goddamn straight, man. Joel: ... that time of year, beautiful Scottsdale. Cool, man, and Dublin is creeping up on us, so if you're going to be in Dublin in March come out and say hi to us at the TA Tech meeting in Dublin. Chad: TA Tech Europe. Joel: March 12th through the 13th, I think, 11 through the 13th. Yeah, that's coming up on us. Chad: Yeah, it's around Saint Patty's Day, that's all I got to say. Joel: All right, man. You ready to get to the news? Chad: Let's hit it. Joel: First on the docket, one of your predictions in our last show was that Monster would rise again. Aside from some Instagram advertising that I've seen, they launched some mini ads this week that you caught wind of, which are, basically, what, 15 second ads? Chad: Yeah, they're 15 second ads. They're pretty cool. I think I found three of them, and these look perfect for ... We're all ADD at this point, we have so many windows open, we have so much going on. They're quick 15 second ads. They're kind of cool, one foot out the door kind of thing. Joel: Has a dude in like a corporate meeting and he's talking. They show him at the end, and he's got one foot out the door, and I think that's the message, like, "Got one foot out the door? Come to Monster and post your resume." Chad: Yeah, and then there's a doctor who's doing the same thing. It's like the last thing you want is a doctor with one foot out the door. It's kind of cool. Joel: Yes, we kind of ripped their high-priced purple monster Manhattan ad. Chad: Which was bad. Joel: I think we both kind of like this approach of sort of online, quick appetizer-sized advertisements that may start to get them into the mind scape of people, where I think they've been mostly invisible for the last 12 months at least. Chad: Yeah, there's no question. I see these ads prefacing like most of the YouTube videos that are there, so you know how you get the quick ads that you can't get through, the shorter ads that you can't skip? I think this will be one of those shorter ads that you can't skip before you actually get into your YouTube experience. Joel: Yep, and we've kind of gotten away from comedy in job board ads, where they've been really good in the past with the Career Builder monkeys. It's kind of good to see a little bit of comedy come back into the world with so much seriousness in politics and things elsewhere. We have an example of good advertising, good marketing, and I'm going to throw in an example of really bad marketing. I got a LinkedIn invite this week from Albert, perfectly normal name. Unfortunately, Albert's last name was The Frog. Albert The Frog is an animated frog that's purple. He represents the site Prefer Hired, which we've not talked about on the show, I don't think. They do referrals, and this is their cutesy, let's make a mascot profile page on LinkedIn for Albert The Frog, have him connect to people. I hate this kind of crap. Chad: Yes. Joel: I'm okay with Albert The Frog being on Twitter, maybe even Facebook, but LinkedIn is a professional, real person environment. If I connect to Albert The Frog he's going to reach out to other people. They're going to see that I'm connected to Albert The Frog. It's going to make him look better or me worse, or me better. I don't know how that's going to work, but I'm basically endorsing Albert The Frog, and I don't want to do that because it's not even a real person. I'm probably just going to get spammed with job postings and just garbage from Albert The Frog. Just have a company page, people. Let me follow your company. Let me get updates. Let me get content about the company. Don't have a mascot that's basically posing as an actual profile on LinkedIn. Chad: Well, and that's the thing, though, right? It's funny now that you said that. I'm going to give a shout out to Jim Stroud and John Sumser who are connections to Albert The Frog, way to go, guys. Seriously, when they sent a message to you to connect, and then you responded, tell the listeners about that kind of back and forth because I think this was interesting. Joel: I got, "Joel, would love to connect here on LinkedIn and keep the lines of communication open. Have a great day. Love, Albert." It didn't say love, I added that in. Then I said, "What the hell is this about?" I'm being nice what the language, and Albert says, "Hmm," and Albert is probably a 23 year old entry-level marketing person who thought this was a good idea and sold it to somebody higher-up. Okay, Albert says, "Hmm, didn't think the invite request would get a 'What the hell' or make you up set, Joel. Feel free to ignore. Just thought it might make sense to connect since we are both in the HR tech space, Albert." Joel: Again, Albert is an animated thing. It's not a person, okay. Then I said, "Okay, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to be mean. I'm really curious, like, is this a marketing campaign. What's the goal?" Then Albert says, "This isn't a marketing campaign," bullshit, I'll add that in there. "I'm Albert, and I work at a HR tech startup that focuses on referral hiring. I just wanted to connect and grow my network. That's it, no games, just normal, 'Hey, I'd like to connect invite.'" Chad: Bullshit. Joel: I didn't reply back because I'm not connected to Albert. I'm done with Albert. After I talk about this on the show I'm done, but don't do this companies. This is stupid. Chad: Yeah, so they literally told you that- Joel: That it's not a marketing campaign. Chad: It's not a marketing campaign, and that Albert The Frog is a real person. Now, there are videos of Albert The Frog, and this is a marketing ploy. There's no question that it's a marketing ploy, and I appreciate marketing ploys. I don't think it was some 23 year that's internal that did this. I think they actually paid an ad agency, and this is the bullshit that the ad agency came up with. At the end of the day, man, I think you're right. Now, anybody can use LinkedIn the way that they want. Use it the way that you want, but with all the fake shit that's out there today in social media, we talked about all the fake accounts on Twitter. There's just fake everywhere, right? Why would you want to actually include yourself and your company, tag your company into something that is fake and it's bullshit, and everybody can see it? This is not the time to be doing stupid shit like this. Joel: I'm pretty sure if you alerted LinkedIn to this profile they would nix it because I'm pretty sure this type of thing isn't allowed. Chad: Yes. Joel: I'm not endorsing going and blocking Albert The Frog, but if you want to do it, hey, it's your prerogative. I'm done with Albert. Let's go to some real news, again, with Monster. Your prediction might be correct, they're doing stuff. They've partnered with TextRecruit, who we've talked about on the show. They got a three million dollar infusion of cash last year that we talked about, I do remember that. We've done a webinar with those guys for nexxt, so they know what they're talking about. Monster, as we know, their press page has been pretty much empty for the last year. Now they're starting to do stuff. What do you make of this partnership? Chad: I think it's smart, there's no question because text recruiting, it's all the rage, and we've talked about that. Not just because nexxt does it, because it's smart, and that's why nexxt is doing it is because it's incredibly smart, but here's what I'm seeing, though. I'm seeing that on the product side for Monster they're doing something that they've never done before. They are pulling in top talent, so they're got Chris Cho, Nathan Brumby and Chase Wilson, who they actually pulled in on the product side. Chad: These guys, I guarantee you, are whiteboarding the shit out of all the technology that's happening at Monster that they have available to them, just the portfolio-wise, much like we've been talking about Career Builder. Now this partnership, I think, is also another kind of inkling to those pretty much leaders in product being able to go out and be incredibly smart about, not just doing things ourselves and building everything ourselves, but partnering and trying to create more fluid technologies and cover gaps for their clients. Joel: This sort of goes against Monster's historical sort of strategy. Their strategy in the past has been, "We'll just build it ourselves." For those that remember BeKnown, which was their social media play, sort of against BranchOut, which doesn't exist anymore, but that was hot at one point. They bought Trovix, they bought TalentBin, so as opposed to sort of white-labeling or partnering or sort of infusing this technology into theirs, they thought they could build it or do it themselves or just buy their way into the industry. To me this is sort of an interesting change of pace for Monster. Joel: Instead of saying like, "Let's build or buy it," they're saying, "Let's partner and sort of integrate this technology into what we do," which is good because they realize, "Look, text recruiting and SMS communication is huge. We understand that. These guys do it way-better than we ever would, and we know that TextRecruit is really good with sort of integrating with companies. They do it with nexxt and some others. Let's just do the same so we have this product, this feature as part of the Monster portfolio without actually having to go out and buy and take the risk and commit the resources to doing it." I think this is smart. I think that we'll probably see more of this in the future as part of what Monster is doing, and we'll keep an eye on it for sure. Chad: Yeah, and for all those companies out where who have not done any of this text recruiting whatsoever, quick shout-out to nexxt. Go to the ChadCheese.com website, click on the nexxt logo. You get 25% off your first campaign, so try it. It just makes sense, and Eric and the team over there at TextRecruit, man, those guys are killing it. Joel: TextRecruit and discounts galore. Chad: Everywhere. Joel: Hitting the ground running in the new year. All right, let's take a quick break, and let's talk about Indeed and Google. What do you think? Chad: Cool. Joel: Be right back. Chad: I love it. Sponsor: America's Job Exchange is celebrating our 10th year as an industry leader in diversity recruitment and OFCCP compliance. We've been helping our thousand-plus customers comply with OFCCP regulations that directly support positive and effective diversity recruitment. Designed to attract and convert veterans, individuals with disabilities, women and minorities and empower employers to pursue and track active outreach with their local community-based organizations. Want to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284, or visit us at www.AmericasJobExchange.com. Chad: Yeah, in 2017 diversity was pretty big, right? I don't see that changing for 2018, so if you guys need a partner for diversity outreach, and definitely compliance for the recording and the reporting piece of it, reach out to America's Job Exchange. Again, you can go to ChadCheese.com, click on the logo and get hooked up. For 2018 and beyond diversity is going to be key. Joel: In an election year there's going to be a lot of talk about all this stuff, I'm sure, even more so than last year. Chad: Yep, you ain't kidding. You're not kidding, man. Joel: You got wind of an Indeed letter. Tell us about that. Chad: Yeah, so, actually, we had somebody send us an Indeed letter. You're going to love this. Listen, I'm going to kind of chunk it up a little bit. This is from an Indeed to one of their clients, which is actually a job board. We received many of these. It was pretty much just a templated letter, but anyway it says, "As our valued job board client it's important that you are aware of all the upcoming changes to Indeed's inclusion guidelines," big key there, inclusion guidelines, "Our organization is continuously adapting to ensure the best overall experience for the job seekers. We strive for an experience that delivers you and your clients more and higher-quality applicants." Yeah, that's exactly what we want. Chad: Now, the second paragraph is where it starts to get a little tricky, "In order to best-accommodate a seamless job seeker experience we have made the decision to limit our job search results to only display unique job content. As a result," here's where it comes, "any duplicate jobs or companies from your job board will be removed effective January 8th." That's in two days, guys. Duplicate content can be defined as any jobs that, pretty much, you have on your job board site that we're getting from one of our applicant tracking system customers over here. What's happening, guess what? Job boards are getting the squeeze, and the Trojan horse is in full effect. Can you explain to our listeners what the Indeed Trojan horse is? Joel: Trojan horse is a friendly, on the surface, gift that turns out to be your demise. Back when Indeed launched, '06, job boards loved them, and they loved them for about three to four years when the traffic flowed freely, no cost to job boards. Job boards were most of the content on Indeed. Little by little Indeed started integrating direct employer content, going right to the ATS to get that content on there, which, honestly, as a job seeker it makes more sense. They're probably getting a lot of spam from job boards, a lot of duplicate content. We know that ATS's and companies aren't doing that. From a user's perspective it makes perfect sense. I don't think this would be a surprise to job boards who, I think, have seen their content slowly disappear from Indeed over the years. Joel: I think what's interesting is we talk about Google for Jobs quite a bit, and we talked about Google for Jobs in that how they treat duplicate content is they tell a user, "Hey, this job is on Glass Door. It's on Monster. It's on Career Builder. It's on Snag A Job. You can decide which way you want to apply to this job. Do you want to go to Career Builder and do it there? Do you want to use your Snag A Job account?" Google uses a very inclusionary strategy to say, "Look, this job is everywhere. Here's here it is. You, the customer, can decide where you want to apply." Joel: Indeed is basically saying, "We're going to decide where the original content is or where it's from, and that's going to be what we're going to put on there. We're not going to put everyone that has this job on their site," which are two very different strategies, and we'll see which one plays out. I think we both kind of like the inclusionary model. The walled garden of Indeed continues to grow. In fact, they're buying more real estate in Austin, apparently, so this wall is getting even higher, kudos to them. That seemed like a smart analogy. Yeah, these are two very different strategies, and we see how it plays out. Chad: Let's focus on Indeed first, so they're biting the hand that used to feed them. They only dollar that they received, really, were from these vendors. They weren't receiving dollars from direct employers at all, so they're biting the hand. Joel: I'm pretty sure they still take money from job boards. Chad: Yeah, it's very limited and comparatively, though, I think they really flipped that model. They're actually biting the hand that built the house they live in, period. The dollars that built the house that they live in today were from vendors, the vendor dollars. As we start to see the worm turn, they're going to piss-off, I believe, a bunch of customers, clients, that they have today that they're not going to have tomorrow. When they need them, desperately need them, guess who's not going to be there? Indeed, once again, is the bad guy, and it's only January 6th. They're already on the naughty list for goodness sakes. Joel: In fairness, I don't think they really care. Chad: No, they don't. Joel: They're like, "Screw Google. You guys want to side with Google. We're Indeed. We're the world's 'number one' job site. We don't need you guys, so fuck-off." Chad: There's no question. The thing is they're screwing themselves on so many different levels. First and foremost, it's this line of revenue, and then they rose prices 35% plus for companies and staffing firms and so and so forth. There are all these different angles that they're really screwing themselves, and then with all this bullshit happening they're making it easier for companies like Monster, Career Builder, Zip Recruiter and nexxt to steal market share. On the vendor side of the house Indeed is pretty much serving up dollars on a silver platter, "Hey, we don't want this money anymore, guys, you have it." Chad: Again, I really think that they're looking at their EBIDTA of today, the dollars that they made the last quarter, maybe the quarter before, and they're not looking at the horizon because they're doing so many things to constrain the prospect of revenue growth as opposed to being more inclusionary. Back to Google, Google and Google for Jobs, the actual real estate that Indeed used to pretty much own, the organic real estate for job search is now taken up by Google for Jobs, and Google is going through a redistribution of traffic wealth. See what I did there? Joel: I like that. Chad: They're going through the redistribution piece where they're pushing more traffic to all these different job sites who were not seeing that traffic before because it was getting gobbled up by Indeed organic. All of these ifs are not in Indeed's favor. Joel: This is fort Indeed, they're fortifying their position, and that's their strategy. We'll see what happens. Chad: Good luck. Joel: Let's get onto our next item. They've been doing this for a while, but we're haven't talked about it. On Google for Jobs when you search for a job, the company, Google is pulling employee review data from places like Glass Door and Kununu, and, ironically, Indeed. Indeed is okay with them getting their review data but not their job data. Indeed is playing with Google in this capacity. This makes branding your reviews much more important because the job seeker who used to know only about Glass Door thanks to Google will also know about Comparably and Kununu and whoever else on the review side of the table wants to play with Google and put these reviews on the site. If you care about your brand, you care about reviews it's going to get more and more sort of convoluted because Google is making these reviews accessible on Google. You don't have to really search that hard to find more and more reviews on your company. Chad: Not just accessible, this is a weighting factor. They're weighting, I guarantee you. You know how Google is. They take in information and they weight the actual results on the information that they're taking in. Therefore, if you're getting shitty reviews and you don't know about it you're screwed, man. The traffic that you could prospectively receive from Google through Google for Jobs could go away entirely because your reviews suck, which is one of the reasons why, quick plug for Ratedly, if you don't have Ratedly you don't understand that you could be firebombed. Your brand could be firebombed in a heartbeat. Joel: If you're an employer who has someone check Glass Door, that's great, although, I think that's a pain in the ass, and you shouldn't have to manually do that. Now you've just added at least five to 10 new sites on your list because Google is including that data in their job search pages. Thanks for the plug, I appreciate that and, yes, I do think we provide a valuable service. I think it's only going to be more difficult to monitor these reviews on there. Also, to your point, it's becoming more than just a branding strategy. It's becoming a recruiting strategy. We already know data out of ISENS that says, "Hey, look, a third of people don't apply because of bad reviews. Millennials, half of them won't apply to job or take a job because of bad reviews." Joel: It's more than just a branding play and making yourself feel like an employer of choice. It's actually impacting your recruiting. To what Chad said, look, if someone searches on Google for Jobs, they see a job that they like, but then, oh no, all the reviews are like one and two and three stars, well, I'm not even going to apply to that job. It definitely impacts you on more levels than just branding, and thanks to Google it's even that much more important. Chad: Good point. Joel: Recruitsy, aside from the name- Chad: What? Joel: I'm not sure how I feel about the name. Recruitsy is a startup. I guess the way that I would describe it is like Glass Door for recruiters. The mission of the site is John Doe recruiter hires John X or Jane Doe recruiter to get them a job. Then John Doe can write a review similar to how he would a company about his experience with Jane Doe the recruiter. Then recruiters get ranked and ratings and reviews, and that this will be a way that if you're looking to hire a head hunter in a local market you can look at this site and see who has the best reviews and hire that recruiter to find you a job. Thoughts? Chad: First off, recruit and cutesy, two words that they pushed together to create Recruitsy. That is ridiculous, first off. Second, yeah, I just don't think that this is a model that is going to go anywhere. If we know anything we know job seekers are always pissed-off at companies and recruiters because they're not meeting the job seeker's expectations. The job seeker's expectations are always through the roof, "Why aren't they contacting me? Why aren't they telling me exactly what's happening here and here and here?" Chad: Obviously, there should be systems that do that, but that's an entirely different story. It all falls back on the recruiter, and if that recruiter's name is on an actual job posting as a contact or on the requisition where a job seeker can see it or find it, man, they are really going to be screwed. I think this is just going to be a constant firebomb just happening all the time with seekers who are pissed-off. Job seekers have to find the stupid site in the first place. I just don't see any of this happening. Joel: This is a very challenged business, and it's a chicken and egg situation, right? We talk about this in the job board space. You got to have jobs, you got to have companies, or you got to have jobs, you got to have candidates. First of all, it's a fairly limited number of people who use head hunters, it's tech people, it's healthcare. It's not like a ton of people are using it. You're in a fairly limited market as it is. I don't see people en masse leaving reviews for a recruiter, aside from like, "Hey, they got me the job. They're fun to work with, awesome." If they didn't get you the job, then they suck, right? Which, frankly, is more on you than on them if they get you the interview. Joel: Anyway, I don't see en masse people leaving reviews for recruiters. I don't know what the turnover is recruiters. I think it's sort of high. A lot of people get into recruiting, and it sucks, and it's not what they thought, and then they move on. You have a lot of churn in this business, whereas the restaurant on the corner has been there for 20 years. It's still going to be there after this year. Recruiting is a little bit different, and these are people that we're talking about, so definitely, definitely challenged. Joel: Unless you have a ton of money to market it they're going to have to look at regional or local first, grow it locally, and then go to different markets in that region, but it's a cute idea. We wanted to talk about it because we have a lot of recruiters out there that listen. Recruitsy.co I believe is the URL. They don't have Recruitsy.com, apparently someone has that, or it's not available. If you want to see if you have reviews check it out, or at least keep your eye on it, but for the most part I think Chad and I both agree this is a very challenged business. They have an uphill battle for sure. Chad: This would go on the pile of steaming healthy heap of garbage, I believe. Joel: Wow. You're going to put it out of its misery, huh? Chad: Yeah, I don't think there's any chance in hell this thing is going to go anywhere. Joel: All right. Full disclosure, the dude who founded it is a Purdue guy, he's a Hoosier guy, which, we're both in Indiana, so it's nothing personal. He's a nice guy, but, yeah, the business is challenged. We'll see how it goes. Chad: Yeah, at best. Joel: All right, man. Anything else to add before we get out of here? Chad: One more thing. For everybody that's out there, remember to subscribe to Chad and Cheese. You can always come back and forth to the website ChadCheese.com. Pick your favorite podcast listening app, and there's ton out there, iTunes, SoundCloud Google Play, CastBox, Stitcher, Podcast, Double Pod, Beyond Pod, I can go on forever. Pick your favorite podcast app, and go ahead and just subscribe to Chad and Cheese. We're pretty much on all of them, and if we're not let us know, and I'll get us hooked up to it. Yeah, rate us and tell us that you love us, hint, hint. Joel: Or hate us.. If you're taking the time to comment, we're already getting way too much of your time by you listening to us, but for you give us your time to leave a review, we don't care if it's good or bad, we'll get better for it, and we appreciate the people that are out there. It's hard to speak into a microphone every week without people in the audience that we see, so the feedback is sort of our oxygen, it keeps is going. Leave a review, subscribe, and keep tuning in. We out. Chad: We out. Announcer: This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single show, and check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more visit hiredaily.com, oh, and you're welcome. #Monster #TextRecruit #Indeed #AlbertTheFrog #Recruitsy #Google

A Nexxt Exclusive in partnership with TAtech.org, the boys enlist help from industry expert Tim Sackett to come up with predictions for 2018. Featured are Glassdoor, Monster, CareerBuilder, Slack, and many, many more. There's even a prediction for 2020, so get ready to get woke, mutha huggers! TEXT RECRUITING!! Looking to leverage text message marketing to recruit candidates? Checkout Text2Hire from Nexxt and get your first Text2Hire campaign for 25% OFF! It's a 2018 resolution gift from Chad and Cheese. Just go to ChadCheese.com and click on the Nexxt logo in the sponsor area or www.nexxt.com/chadandcheese25. Announcer: This, the Chad & Cheese Podcast, brought to you in partnership with TA Tech. TA Tech, The Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions. Visit TATech.org. Announcer: 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, rash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Joel: All right, welcome to 2018 boys and girls. Chad: Booyah. Joel: Welcome to the Chad & Cheese Show, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this exclusive episode for Nexxt, in association with TA Tech, we welcome industry veteran Tim Sackett to the show. Chad: Woo, Tim Sackett. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Sack man. Joel: Tim Sackett. We're going to discuss predictions for 2018. It certainly promises to be our balliest show ever with way more talking about football than necessarily. So let's get to it and welcome our guest, Tim Sackett. Chad: Tim. Joel: Tim, thanks for joining the show. Tim: Hey guys. Yeah, I just got off my couching, watching football for like 15 straight hours yesterday, which literally started off with a great game. Joel: Does your ass have barnacles on it? Tim: Oh Jesus. What's the over under on the amount of weight you put on over the holidays because it's completely ridiculous. Chad: I don't even want to talk about it. Chad: Joel actually, the only thing he got in his stocking was laxatives so he can take care of business... Joel: I get a whole wardrobe that's a size up because everyone knows I'm going to gain that much weight. Chad: Oh shit yeah. So no, I'm sitting here wearing scarlet and gray as per usual, right, and after a big kick ass win over USC, which we called. We knew they were going to beat them, but the Big 10, who just dominates all the fricking, cover pretty much most of the spread on all the games and then you got that- Joel: Seven and one. Tim: ... that team up north couldn't close it out. Joel: Way to go Harbaugh. Chad: Most overrated coach of all time, Jim Harbaugh. Joel: Yeah, yeah. Tim: I know. I loved it in the press conference yesterday they actually asked him if this was his last game coaching Michigan. Joel: What was his answer? Did he bring up the heated up oatmeal again? Tim: No, he's like, "No, next question." Joel: He's going to be in Chicago. He's never finished greater than third in the Big 10 in his division. Chad: We also saw kind of a pre-look at the next Browns quarterback, right? Tim: Yeah. Joel: Which, by the way, my first prediction is the Browns will do better next year than they did this year. Chad: Hell, that's going out on a limb there. Joel: That's one win by the way for those of you non-football fans out there. Tim: Yeah. Are they going to go for the USC quarterback or the Oklahoma quarterback? Because they USC quarterback looked awful. Chad: Yeah, well see here's what'll happen though. I really think that you're right, but he was playing the best defense in the nation so he was going to look awful. Tim: Besides Alabama? Chad: Yes, exactly. But when it comes down to it they'll probably go with Baker Mayfield because he's more a Johnny Manziel-ish kind of cat and for some reason they want to sell more jerseys in one season than actually have a whole decade worth of perspective winning. Tim: Wins. Joel: I think if Mayfield had won yesterday and beaten Alabama there might be a chance he gets to be the and number one pick, but I don't think that's going to happen partly because of the Manziel tragedy in Cleveland. I think that it's between Rosen and Darnold assuming they both come out. Rosen doesn't seem to be that excited to play for Cleveland. Chad: No, nobody does. Joel: Darnold probably isn't either, but I'd probably lean Darnold just because of he's a bigger kid, he's more of an AFC North Cleveland, off-the-lake winter kind of guy. Then I think they pray that the Colts don't take Saquon Barkley and that he lands to them in four and they have their QB and running back of the future. Chad: Barkley's not going to make it in the NFL. Joel: Really? Chad: No, he's not going to make in the NFL. There's no way. He faced an NFL somewhat level of defense with the Ohio State Buckeyes and he couldn't get 70 yards. He's not going to get 70 yards against the Cleveland Browns, okay? So no, it's not going to happen. Saquon, they played a couple of shitty teams, he rolled up on them, great for them, but he's not that good. Joel: Wow. All right we've gone through two or three predictions without even getting into the prediction chat. Tim: Should we go- Joel: Do we actually talk recruiting- Chad: Yeah, no that'd be great. Joel: ... or continue with the football talk? All right, we're going to pass it to our guest, because we're just that polite here on Chad & Cheese. Tim, we will pass the mic to you with your first prediction for 2018. Tim: Yeah, I'm going to get crazy and go right out there and say sourcing is dead as a people function just because the technology's so great now. If you think about a normal sourcing person working in a fortune whatever company, the tech can do better than they can right now out of the box. So I'm not talking about the super geeky source con, like nerdfest. You're always going to have a hundred people in the world that can probably source better than tech, right, but I'm talking about the masses. 99% of the people cannot outsource the tech right now. And so for me this is the start of 2018, sourcing's dead as a function and you should just build it into your stack. Joel: How do you think that plays into small business? Because there's some reports that small businesses are really wanting to embrace automation. I assume that you agree with that. But does it filter to them next year or does it take longer? Tim: Well, I mean that becomes then how do you build that into a recruiting platform. I'm always amazed. The whole other trend that I see is small businesses actually buying into a full enterprise HCM suite so like Ultimate or ADP or whoever are building these things out. And the talent side of those are crappy so they're not going to have really good sourcing tech in those things for probably three or four more years so that's tough. Chad: Well, for small business, and I think you guys have already overlooked somebody that's out there who's already doing this for small business, ZipRecruiter. How do you think they actually push all the candidates to these single jobs for mom and pops? And they start on the small business side just posting jobs so they're already doing this and they're doing it incredibly well. Maybe they're just not promoting it? Is that what's happening? But that's exactly why the candidates are making it into those requisitions so damn fast. It's machine learning, it's the Google adoption that they've been able to play as well on the job search side of the house. So this is already happening. Joel: By the way, there's a ZipRecruiter ad playing right now on my TV, just so you know. It's to this conversation. Chad: Dude, they're listening. Tim: You know what's funny? I did talk with the ZipRecruiter folks out at HR Tech and they could care less about what we think as industry pundit kind of folks. Chad: No, they care what we’re saying... Maybe not the Chad & Cheese show. They listen to this shit, but we get calls, emails, they love our stuff. So you (Tim), maybe not. Tim: No, but they really haven't reached out in a big way to the industry so say, "Hey, here's what we're doing. Talk about us." And so I think they're behind a little bit in that. I think in 2018 we'll see them come out more, but they get. They get the small business side, they get the marketing side. They're on every fricking TV show. They're on every radio station. And they're just going, "Hey, how do we go out to a super unsophisticated buyer?" And you're like, "Well, put TV commercials on. They still work for idiots, right?" And they figured it out. They're smart. They know how to make money. Chad: And I think one of the reasons why we haven't heard about them as much on the pundit side of the house is because they've had their heads down. They've been doing work. Joel: Tim, do you have any thoughts on their acquisition of Jobboard.io? See Chad? I said it right. Chad: Good job. Joel: Or no opinion whatsoever? Tim: No opinion whatsoever. Joel: Okay, good. That's good enough for me. Should we move on? Because we have a few predictions and we have a live chat. Chad, you're up. Chad: I'm going to roll right in right on top of what Tim said. I agree 100%, sourcing is definitely something that is going to go away, but this is what we're going to see. AI overall is going to start to aggressively be replacing sourcing and other recruiting tasks. So in today's world where we don't really understand what AI is, right? We have to break it down into keep it simple stupid terms and something that recruiters will actually push for. So sourcing, obviously, is one piece. Throw a wreck in, pulls great candidates out. Scheduling, engagement with chat bots. Chad: And you have to remember this is not just about the technology itself, it's all about process and thinking about the day to day that recruiter has, all those small tasks that you can give a ton of time back to them so that they can actually get hires into obviously the pipe. They can do their job so much faster. Plus, the most important word companies should be focused on on 2018 is engagement. If you give the recruiters time back they can be better brand ambassadors for your organization as opposed to just doing these menial tasks, these administrative tasks. And then with products like Crowded, Refresh, the whole gold mine aspect of your applicant tracking system starts to come to fruition. You have all that talent that's out there, AI jumps into it, refreshes that talent, starts to bring back talent that you've paid money for already. Chad: So I think AI beyond sourcing becomes something that is more embraced because we can take a look at these little tasks and it just makes sense. So keep it simple stupid for the talent acquisition side of the house and for the rest of us human beings who like things simple and it's not just about sourcing, it's about engagement, it's about scheduling, all those things. Tim: You know what all of this is about? It's about talent acquisition leaders not being able to performance manage and that why AI will actually take a foothold. So because you can't get your recruiter to make a fricking phone call or to make a reach out or to follow up with somebody to schedule an interview in a timely basis- Chad: Isn't that sad? Tim: ... and the technology can do it. So I mean ultimately that's what it is, right? Performance management becomes important again, like that's the trend. So to do that we're going to use technology because we're unwilling to ask somebody to actually do the job they're being paid to do. Chad: Well and they can do it quicker and they can do it more efficient period. If I want somebody to go search a resume database, my applicant tracking system, and five other resume databases to make to the requisition that I just posted to our website or through our applicant tracking system I can have technology do that in seconds where it's going to take a recruiter hours, easily hours to be able to do that. So yeah, I agree, but also if you want them to make those calls, right now they're bitching because they have all these administrative tasks, which I understand, right? But still, give them time back and then there's no excuse. There are calls that need to be make, you should be making x amount of calls today. You're right, performance is everything. Joel: Here's my question for either or both of you, how far does AI take a candidate or group of candidates down the funnel? At what point does a human being actually have to be involved? Is it like the sourcing goes to pre-screening and then once they're pre-screened then a human? Or do you think the actually interview can be done and scheduled through AI? Like how deep does this go in the funnel? Tim: I think it's dependent upon the position. Chad: Yes. Tim: I mean, I think there's certain levels of position that they expect a human to be involved and maybe that's a white collar, tech, whatever, doctor, but then there's a lot of blue collar, service-level jobs that I would say you could take that all the way through the interview process and potentially to offer. Chad: And I think that our expectations are much different today than they were just two years ago. So I think if we receive and we can do things via our mobile device and we can start to go through the actually process of setting up an interview and so on and so forth. There's a chat bot or text bot that comes back and starts to help us, make sure that we can get that scheduled and we can do the interview, whether it's via the telephone or it's a high review system, a video system. I think you can take it all the way through to that point. The thing is I really believe, prediction for 2018 that goes along with this, is that recruiters are going to have to be more brand ambassadors than they ever were before. They're really going to have to focus on branding. Companies are going to make sure that they focus on brand and the experience that that candidate is having because those candidates are customers and they are actually dollars. Not just in the sense of you paid money to get them in the first place, but they are money down the line with regard to product and services. Joel: So how long before the robots just interview the robots and hire the robots and we can just put on our VR systems and play video games all day? Chad: Well that sounds like fun. Joel: Is that our 2019 prediction show? Tim: That probably is. Joel: Love it, love it. All right can I go now? Chad: No. Joel: Oh damn. Tim: Do it. Joel: All right. I'm keeping my first one pretty simple. I think Glassdoor goes public. Why do I think that? They've gotten 200 some million dollars in funding. No one gets $200 million in funding if there's not an expectation of a big payout. In this case in the $1.5 to $2 billion kind of payout kind of thing. I think they're getting a lot of pressure in terms of LinkedIn potentially getting into the review game. I think Google will potentially get into this, even if it's just an aggregation play. I also think players like Blind are sort of knocking on the door and I think 2018 is probably the perfect storm for Glassdoor to finally go public. I'll go a step further and say that it is a moderately successful IPO primarily because the economy is good and people are looking for an employment play. But yeah, my prediction number one is Glassdoor goes public finally. Tim: Yeah, I don't think that's much of stretch to be quite frank. I think you're right, I think you're right, but all the indicators are there. Joel: And the big question, I think, up until now has been the legal battles that they've been fighting. I think that that's something that has been a challenge to go public because they have to sort of disclose that and talk about it and I don't think they want to necessarily and it could be a deterrent from people investing thinking that there's a big legal battle or challenge to their business.But yeah, I just think they can't not go public because of the money that they've gotten. Tim: Yeah, agreed, agreed. Joel: By the way our buddies Indeed, when I researched this, Indeed's on the hook for $5 million investment versus the two hundred on Glassdoor so take that for what you will, but Indeed is clearly a little bit more efficient with the dollars than Glassdoor…. Chad: Yes, very much so, very much so. So one quick prediction. Joel: It's not just quick, it's Nexxt. Chad: It's Nexxt. Joel: Yes. Chad: It's Nexxt. Oh my God. We're going to make a quick prediction and also the Chad & Cheese Podcast will be making a 2018 resolution for all of you talent acquisition types out there. So in 2018 everyone will be adopting mobile and text recruit. The question, Joel, is why text recruiting? Joel: Chad did you know that text has an average 97% open rate? Chad: That's ridiculous. Joel: The average response time for the first hour is 15%. Now you can't get that on email, just so you know, not even InMail on LinkedIn. Chad: Well, let's face it. You can't get that on a phone call for goodness sakes. Emails, they're not going to be able to give you that kind of response so talent acquisition leaders know that is awesome penetration and engagement. Joel: By the way Tim I'd wish you'd call me back. Tim: 100% rate of getting engaged is a punch in the face. Chad: Oh that's a good one. Joel: I'm still waiting for Tim to call me back from last year. Also, Chad don't you want all of your recruiters in the same system? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Of course you do. Imagine trying to manage 20 different Google voice accounts that your recruiters are using for texting. That shit is scary and not even practical especially when, this is your lane, you get audited. Tim: Yeah. Chad: Well that's why the Chad & Cheese Podcast are very big proponents of Nexxt's Text to Hire platform. That's right talent acquisition, all of your recruiters can now be in the same system and Text to Hire can help you and your company have more one-on-one conversations with candidates you want to reach out to, instant communication puts you in front of the right people fast, and a smart, simple interface to easily manage and track your campaigns. Joel: And you can try your first Text to Hire campaign for 25, am I reading this right? 25% off? That's insane. Chad: What? Joel: It's a 2018 resolution gift from Chad & Cheese. Just go to chadcheese.com and click on the Nexxt logo in the sponsor area or go to Nexxt, N-E-X-X-T.com C-H-A-D-A-N-D-C-H-E-E 25, Nexxt.com/chadandcheese25 to get your discount now and get with 2018 and start texting your candidates instead of calling them on the phone. Chad: And your thoughts, Tim, on text recruiting? Tim: Oh, it's changed our business completely. It's crazy to me when to talent acquisition leaders and then they'll say, "Well, our recruiters are using their personal phones to do that." And I'm thinking you're losing so much data that you'll never get back. So it's crazy that you would ever even let that happen, but even then just the response rate alone and how fast things have to [crosstalk 00:18:08] is crazy to me that people aren't using this across the board. Chad: And think of the liability. And okay, I'm going to put my corporate hat on, think of the liability your dumb ass is putting out there, the risk. You're allowing your recruiters to actually use their own phones to do this stuff. You don't know what their saying, you don't know how it's been ... I mean you have to pull everything together to ensure that everything is being boarded and reported on just in case our lovely OFCCP jumps in and says, "How are you actually engaging these candidates?" You can't do that in the current systems or lack of systems that you have today, which is one of the reasons why this is important. Tim: Screw the liability. What about just the ability to go back out there and say, "Hey." I'm texting a candidate, they're like, "I'm not interested, but should you ever have anything in Austin I'm great." That recruiter forgets about that conversation forever and then all of sudden three months later you have a position in Austin, you can't remember where they're at. If have this stuff, all of this data in one location that's going to be searchable, taggable. You could actually take advantage of all that information you're getting. Chad: Yeah. Tim just went rogue. He said, "Screw the liability." Screw the liability. Screw you and your liability. Now we have to wake Joel up from his nap because this is all high level stuff. Joel: Oh I'm sorry. Were we talking about compliance again? Oh brutal, brutal. Chad: No, this is generally corporate risk mitigation. Yeah, go ahead. Joel: Whew, okay. So my notes say that I actually have the next prediction. Is that correct? Chad: Yeah, that is correct. Joel: Which may be the only thing that wakes me up from talking about compliance. I'll go a little more off the reservation on this one. I'm going to predict that Amazon gets into the enterprise workforce area and they make a big splash doing that by buying Slack in 2018. I think Bezos backs up the Brinks truck, buys Slack, and Amazon becomes a real player in employee. Chad: So what was the last evaluation on Slack? I can't remember it was so high. It blew my mind. Joel: $5.1 billion I believe. Chad: Billion, BILLION! Joel: Which, by the way, is like Monster and CareerBuilder and Dice times two. Chad: But Joel, the question is how are they going to use Slack to get into the workforce space? Joel: So they already have Amazon Web Services, right? They already have Cloud Play. I think Alexa comes in there somewhere. I think Bezos is looking at LinkedIn getting bought by $26 billion. By the way the company that's in his backyard in Seattle called Microsoft and I think he's saying, "How do I get into this business?" And I don't think it makes sense to launch Amazon Classified or Amazon Workforce Messaging or anything like that. I think with Slack he can probably get a few thousand enterprise customers immediately thinking about Amazon as a workforce solution and then he can use Slack to start integrating things around web services and cloud. Maybe there's another acquisition play in there somewhere, but I think Bezos's ego is such that he can't sit there and watch Microsoft get into this, watch Google get into this, and watch Facebook get into this without getting into it. And I think Slack is sort of the easiest, biggest splash he can make by getting into this space quickly and in a big way. Chad: Think of the data play though, right? We're always talking ... These are data companies and to be able to actually apply AI and machine learning and all this other fun shit that we talk about all the time you need the data. You need all those data points. Slack has so much data, content to be able to help your organization and to be able to have a company like Amazon to be able to crunch on that. I just can't believe they haven't been bought yet. That's the thing that's blowing my mind. Joel: There's also an advertising play. Like we don't talk about Amazon very much as an advertising platform because Facebook and Google are so prevalent in that, but I think that if we were making marketing predictions one of my predictions would be that we start talking about Amazon as a legitimate advertising platform in the same way that we do Google and Facebook and Slack is a way to get ads in front of people. Tim: Yeah. I'm wondering if our buying behavior gives away to what we do as a career, right? Probably, in a lot of ways. So they would also have that data to be able to say, "Hey, by the way here's an entire one million nurses that you can now advertise to in terms of your jobs or whatever." You know that stuff comes out in our buying behavior. Joel: Yep, I agree. Chad: Yeah, so if you want to get an ad in front of Joel all you have to do is use the retargeting for neck pillows. Joel: Actually Squatty Potty would be better for me, to get your ad in front of me. Or maybe that fryer that has no fry oil. That might be good. Tim: Yeah, the air fryer. Joel: Yeah, the air fryer. Yeah, that's a good one. Chad: That's a good one. I like that one too. All right, so my turn. This is going to be a change of pace. You're going to enjoy this. This year, 2018- Joel: Hey, “F YOU” by the way, "Change of pace. You're going to enjoy this.", right after my prediction. You dick. Chad: What? Joel: Oh after Joel's dumb ass prediction here's one you're going to enjoy. Chad: Oh yeah. I didn't have to say that out loud, but since you did. Careerbuilder and Monster start surging back. And you might laugh. Joel: Oh I am. Tim: This is 2001 trends by the way. Chad: Change is good for both of these brands. I mean Careerbuilder was acquired 2017 by Apollo and that organization, from what I'm hearing, is actually forcing Careerbuilder to focus on themselves. Careerbuilder currently has over 70 products in their portfolio. Did you guys know that? 70 products. So Apollo smartly wants to focus on those products before pedaling other products. And if you think about- Joel: Name three of them. Chad: ... it makes a hell of a lot of sense. Tim: You can't because they change the names every three months. Chad: Well that's the problem, right? Okay, so here's the thing, this is the thing that Careerbuilder needs to get right, which they're going to get right this year, packaging and messaging. If they can do that they can focus on making a 100% of the money instead of having to go out to partners all the time and just making fractions of that or percentages of it, right? I really believe that Careerbuilder, they have the products, the product sets, all there. The two things they've done incredibly bad over the years, packaging, messaging, that's what they've done bad. Chad: Now, the next big one. And this is harder one to swallow, but yet listen to me. Monster is an entirely different story. It was bought by Randstad, which we all know is the number two staffing contingent globally. Out of the gate they felt- Joel: That screams innovation. Keep digging Sowash. Chad: Out of the gate we saw Monster fall flat on their face with an expensively produced commercial featuring a purple monster which was really just a Bugs Bunny rip off. But what Monster is doing now and what we've seen from an actual talent kind of move is they are doing a ton, and they're very top heavy, on the products side of the house. So what that's telling me and what I'm hearing is that they're putting a lot of time into taking a look at everything that they have in their portfolio, much like Careerbuilder, to be able to turn around products that are simple. And you guys have to remember they're not going after Google, they're not going after Microsoft and Facebook, they are trying to win back their share from Indeed. And Indeed right now is struggling. Not from a revenue standpoint, but they're struggling from a long-term trajectory standpoint. These guys actually have products within their portfolios that Indeed cannot match. They will have to acquire or build to be able to keep up with these guys. Chad: So I think 2018 is the year we start to see a surge from Careerbuilder and Monster. It's a boomerang. Tim: So what I hear Chad is that you think Monster is coming back with that Superbowl commercial in February? Chad: No, I'm not saying that they're going to have kids on the Superbowl commercial. They should though because that was a hell of a commercial, but no. Joel: I don't even know where to begin. Careerbuilder I can buy. I think there's some serious changes going on at Careerbuilder and we'll see how that plays out. But like Monster is ... Whew, that's a stretch. I did a post last week, end of last week about a new partnership that Monster's announcing with Text Recruit by the way, talking about texting. But in doing that blog I went back and I looked at Monster's press page on their site and it is a ghost town. Like they have done nothing in terms of new features, launching new products, partnering with people, acquiring people, they've done jack. So the floor is pretty low and they have room to grow into doing something. And at this point it looks like maybe partnering with people is going to achieve that because back in the day they would build stuff and buy people, if you remember BeKnown and Trovix and TalentBin. So that's a real stretch to me and Monster, but we'll see what happens. Chad: Any thoughts on that Tim? Tim: I'm a CB shop and we use them. In fact, I've paid to use CB for 15 straight years in my own shop and the one thing that they just step on, continue to trip themselves up is they can't come up with what the name of product is and stay with it for a year. Like it's every quarter they coming out with a new package, a new this. They have a great sales team. It's like the used car sales force of them HCM world is Careerbuilder. And I'll tell them this and we kind of make fun of it, but the reality is is it's insane to me that they can't figure that side of it out. So we'll see. They've been trying to figure this out for three years and they can't so we'll see what happens. Chad: See and here's the thing, I don't really think they have focused on these two areas, packaging and messaging. And when we're talking about messaging obviously it's marketing and it's sales as well. Those two have to be conjoined at the hip. I believe with Apollo and the focus that they've really been hammering the staff with is that that's what's going to happen. If it happens now I think they have a chance. If they wait another 12 to 18 months I think they're dead in the water, but I think they'll do it now. Joel: We shall see. Tim, you're next dude. Tim: All right. So I'm actually going to do something real that everybody can use out there that's listening what you guys do. Joel: Ouch. Chad: Oh damn. Tim: No, so this is super old school, but employee referral automation I'm such a huge fan of and I'm always shocked. Jobvite launched this like six or seven years ago and then roll points come in. Teamable was launched last year and they're probably employee referral automation 2.0. But for me, as the biggest RIO of any kind of tech you can actually get within TA Tech and yet it still has a pretty low adoption rate. So in 2018 I finally believe that this is going to start to get legs and everyone's going to take adventure. Chad: You really think ... This has to be a really keep it simple stupid kind of platform. It does. It has to be. So do you really think that it's time, that talent acquisition gives it enough space to be able to understand it because just from what I've learned over the years is that it's been way too complex. It's not a one, two, three, boom you're done kind of scenario. Tim: Yeah, I think the new stuff is. I think when you take a look at some of the newer platforms that are out there it's become a lot easier. Then the other piece of it is they finally learned ... If I'm getting to get an employee referral I don't want my crappy employees to give me referrals, I want my best employees. Or if I need more diversity hires or I need more women or I need whatever, now you can segment out those and say, "Hey, I'm only going to say my top performers are only going to be the ones that I allow to refer or that I send this automation to." And so to me it just makes more sense on how it's being used. Tim: But I always talk to every TA leader and I'll say, "Well what's your number one source of hire?" And it's like Indeed or ... but within the top three it's always employee referrals. And then we'll go, "Okay. What's your number one quality of hire?" And across the board number one is always employee referrals. And then I'll go, "Okay. Well, how much money are you spending on employee referrals? On actually tech, not gibing out bonuses for someone who refers somebody." And it's always zero dollars. And then I'll say, "Well, talk to me, then, about your LinkedIn spend?" And they'll be like, "Oh, that are number one spend and that's our number seven source of hire." Like well what the hell are you doing? And it hits your face really quick and they're like, "Oh my gosh, we're stupid, right?" And like yeah, spend $25 or $30 grand and put this in play. It will pay for itself in the first 15 seconds. Joel: We've talked historically about players in this space like H3, even Jobster, a few others that on paper this makes total sense, right? Put a job up, make it like an affiliate thing, refer someone you know, if we hire them we'll pay you a bunch of money, but none of those models work. They've never worked. Why do you think historically this has just been a failed experiment with referrals? Tim: For one is the entire employee referral automation program has always failed across the board in every corporation and it's because it just doesn't have legs, it doesn't have anybody that's there pushing this stuff out on a daily basis, on a minute basis, where it's one click and go. It probably wasn't mobile. There's too many step like we talked about, in terms of getting these things all aligned. And I think they've figured that out over the last six years I think it's just gotten better and better to the point now where if I'm running a TA shop I can just ... literally it's like a marketing machine. It's almost like CRM for your own employees to be to continue to shove this stuff down their throats and you do enough of it and little by little you're going to get more and more referrals. The companies that are using and actually doing it really well it comes back. They're showing a 20% increase in employee referral hires the next year. And that in itself easily pays for whatever investment you're going to make and it continues to go down. Tim: I just think the technology's gotten to the point and I think probably people are more comfortable now actually engaging their social networks. Before we always had this life, right? When we first started, when Jobright first came out with this, people were still like, "Ugh, Facebook is Facebook and I'll never talk about work on Facebook. It's my personal Facebook." In fact, we had people ... recruiters would have two Facebook profiles. They would have Tim Google recruiter and then they would have Tim Sackett. And now they figured that out was like, "No, just live one life." And so I think we've gotten more comfortable and say, "Hey, I'm going to have one social footprint and I'm going to personal stuff and then do professional stuff there." Chad: Transparency, transparency. Not to mention I think a lot of it has to do with timing. Is the market ready for it and then execution on top of that. So remember back in the day before Facebook and many of these big social networks that we use today, the LinkedIn of the world, Jeff Taylor and Monster came out with Monster networking. The execution was horrible, the idea, concept, was great, and the timing sucked. I think now is the perfect time. Obviously we've seen that it's the perfect time for some of those to obviously flourish. The question is at this level once again, you have to make it keep it simple stupid type of scenario. It has to be part of your lifestyle or it's a behavior. And the big question is can they make it a part of that. Joel: I'm skeptical. Chad: At best. Tim: Well, you know that's why it's a prediction. I'm hopeful that people will take advantage of the tech and use it for good. Chad: And I have to applaud you for not making easy predictions like Glassdoor is going to get bought. I mean ... Joel: Or Monster's going to come back. Chad: That's a hard one man. Joel: My notes say Chad is next. Is that right? Chad: Yes. Here's another big one guys, again another big one. The ATS is going to make a comeback. Tim: Why does Chad keep making like 2003 predictions? Chad: It has to make a comeback. There's this boomerang effect. Not to mention you've got remember that you cannot live without it if you're a major Fortune 500 company or federal contractor. Literally you'll get fined into oblivion and ATS is your system of record. Not to mention with companies like Crowded.com the ATS will become an actual resource where over the years it hasn't. Applicant tracking systems have had shitty search, they've had shitty experience, and with all for these different organizations like Jibe that are providing kind of a better experience for the job seeker. Not to mention applicant tracking systems now being able to use the Google API search now you've got more of an opportunity to really get a good experience and then start to utilize those candidates as they come in. They don't go into a black hole anymore. You've got the Crowded.com’s of the world that are helping these applicant tracking systems actually become useful. Chad: So yes, when they came out of the box they were tracking systems. They weren't meant to be used for what we're trying to use them for today. With all these different new appendages that they can kind of pop on, like the Crowded.com’s of the world, the Jibes, the Google APIs, so on so forth, the applicant tracking system will once again and it will continue to be the hub for where everything happens. Joel: So it is your opinion that ATSs are currently dead? Because it must be if you think they're going to come back? Chad: No, I think that they were on, really, just a steady decline from the standpoint of the perception of the market. And you see posts out there all over the place why you don't need an applicant tracking system anymore and it's all bullshit man. You need an applicant tracking system. You need the recording, you need the reporting, but what you also need is you need better experience and you need better technology to access some of these things. Again, the applicant tracking system wasn't built for much of what we ask it to do today. So these different technologies will help it come back. So whether you seen an iCIMS where they've got a hub strategy where they partner with companies to actually do this or other applicant tracking systems that might actually go out and develop and/or acquire. So tons of mergers and acquisitions. Joel: Do you think they'll be fewer ATSs a year from now? Chad: Yes. Joel: Okay, I can agree with that. I think the technology's getting commoditized and I think a lot of players are going to go away. Chad: Yeah. And you have to take a look at the level though. So Google Hire and JazzHR and some of these small business applicant tracking systems that's an entirely different discussion versus the higher end, the Fortune 500 side. Tim: Well, we continue to see more and more of that ATS space being take up by HCN talent platforms. I mean Workday's growing crazy, shouldn't, Ulitmate’s is growing like crazy, shouldn't. So we see more and more of those customers like their ATS are getting kicked to the side because IT's telling them, "Hey you have to use now full module." So that's concerning I think across ... That's a trend we haven't talked about that I think is super concerning because we're basically talent acquisition leaders to take a step back like three to five years in terms of potential technology they could use on the HCM standpoint. I think for the ATS isn't coming back, it's growing up. It's turning into a recruiting platform end to end, right? Chad: I like that, the recruitment, it grows up. And here's the thing. Talent acquisition they have to actually more and focus on the dollars and sense. Not just the budgets that you're given every year, but what that actually means in return to the organization. Not just in candidates and production and retention because those are business numbers that you can actually use, but also the types of candidates that you're touching which are customers and now you're engaging them to prospectively embrace your brand and buy your products. Joel: And I think becoming a platform is going to be paramount for these guys, becoming an app store for all these startups and technology companies that are coming along. Like the one with the biggest app store is probably going to win. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I'm next, with two x's. All right, I think voice assistance, Alexa, Siri, Google, Cortana, whoever, will finally become a thing in employment in 2018. To me there's no reason why I can't be watching TV, see an Apple ad, an IBM ad, a GE, whatever, and not be able to say, "Hey Siri, Alexa, send my resume to General Electric." And it does it. Chad: I agree. And on top of that same, mobile is going to be the big help to this. Because we're so used to, right now, using our mobile phones, asking our mobile phones for navigation advice, restaurants near me, that kind of shit, right? So being able to now start to push these devices, like I have a Google Home, I think you have a Google Home, in our homes and start to use that against my Chromecast and ask to watch something on Netflix. As it starts to become a part of behavior, and that's what this all has to come down to guys, it has to break down into an everyday part of your behavior and asking, not just your phone, but your device, your home device, to do simple tasks for you. So I do agree. I think the gateway to that is our mobile phone because we start using more voice on the mobile phone. Tim: I can definitely see a hiring manager at some point in the future going, "Hey Siri, I need a front end developer." And then that's it. And Siri takes off and comes back and says, "Hey, I found Joel and Joel's interested in interviewing next week at Thursday at 5:00 pm," or whatever. Like are we that far away from getting to that point where that's going to be voice enabled. And at that point ... that's my 2020 prediction, recruiting's dead because Siri's taking over. Joel: Oh, you heard it here first everybody. That's what we do here on Chad & Cheese man, we go way beyond. No, I like that, all right. So we started with Tim, we're polite like that. We're going to end with Tim. Tim: Cool. So I'm going to think in 2018 you will be hiring somebody that you traditionally hire with a college degree that doesn't have a college degree. That's just pragmatic because we're at 3.9% unemployment. Thank you Trump. But the reality is I'm hoping at this point ... I mean we know we're going to do it just because we have less options because now we have low employment. But I'm hoping that as unemployment starts to balloon up again, which it will. It's cyclical like everything else. That eventually we'll learn from this and say, "You know what? Hiring somebody with a degree has no correlation to quality of hire." We need to decouple those two things. I think we're getting smart enough with data to be able to prove and show that. Chad: So the big question is why did we start slapping fucking college degrees on all these God damn jobs in the first place? Tim: Because we're lazy. It was an easy way to filter people out. Chad: Exactly. Tim: You're like, "Oh my God. I'm going to put a thing out there for a recruiter. Oh by the way, you have a Bachelor's degree in HR to be a recruiter." Like it makes no sense. Bachelor's degree. Chad: Exactly. Tim: But I didn't want to deal with 5,000 applications I wanted to deal with 500 instead. It's stupid. Chad: Exactly, exactly. So what we've done is ebbs and flows where we see that we're getting this huge amounts of candidates that are coming through and we're getting pummeled by candidates what do we do? Instead of actually finding ways to find the best types of people we start slapping requirements onto a job that shouldn't be a requirement on the job. And then when the market shifts we don't shift and we don't strip that out. It just stays on there. It stays on there. And then we start throwing hands up and saying, "We can't find people because they're not qualified." No asshole, they were qualified in the first place. They were qualified in the first place, but your dumb ass threw these stupid requirements on there and now all these great people, this great talent that could be doing this job are being filtered out. Joel: And I think we all have kids in various ages and I forget the exact numbers, but it's something like 50% of the jobs that our kids will have don't even exist yet and 50% of the current jobs that exist won't be around when our kids group it. I know your kid's older Tim. Tim: Yes. Joel: But the environment is such that we're hiring for jobs that you can't even have a college degree for it. When I was doing SEO 10 years ago there was no SEO degree. There was no Masters in search engine optimization so I agree with that. And a little side note, I did some traveling over the holidays and drove by my sister's small town Indiana high school and there was literally their shop class was sponsored by Auto by Tel or AutoZone. I think it was AutoZone. So companies are getting better at integrating with school systems to teach people so they can just come right out of high school and start working in a field that they want to work in, which I think never has really happened before because we've gotten away from that shop class kind of stuff. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. When you take a look at carpenters, electricians, those types of things, when I went to high school I went to what they call a comprehensive high school which had a vocational wing, I guess you could say. Joel: And you learned nothing by the way. Chad: I didn't take that route. I probably should've. But being able to actually put coding into that and to be able to ... and that should be sponsored by, as you said, the companies that are their local. And that's what happened with the auto body and the carpenters and so on and so forth, the unions, they knew exactly where their talent was coming from. Companies are getting fat and lazy once again, as we talked about, with filtering. In this case they're waiting for the universities, the systems' government to send them perfect candidates. Hey guys, that's not going to happen. It's your job, you know what you want, get out there and actually create programs that drive specific talent into the jobs that you know you're going to need now and in the future. Joel: Grow them. Chad: It's on the companies. Tim: Well, it is leading companies to kind of come up with a new apprenticeship kind of program as well. We always think of apprenticeship as carpenter, electricians, plumbers, but we're going to start to see those in business analyst role, in a nursing role, whatever. Like you're going to see apprenticeship programs happening across the board in roles that we never even thought of because, again, you don't need a four year degree to do this, but you need somebody to show you how the hell to do it. Chad: Well, it's like social media, right? If they want to get into a social media marketing type of background and they focused on different business aspects they might've gone to college later, but they knew that there's certain aspects they can actually do and perform without a college degree. So those are the different things you can go to be able to prospectively propel them into jobs. And then later if they choose to go after a degree, they choose to go after a degree, depending on what the career path they want to take. Joel: I had to do it Chad, sorry. Chad: Damn it. Joel: I couldn't go a whole show without the bell. And we're literally closing in on an hour, which I'm sure is destroying our listenership as we speak. Chad: Everybody loves us man. Joel: Any predictions we want to throw in before we end the show? Tim: Global warming got solved by Trump because it's minus four in right now. Joel: The Chad & Cheese Podcast gets canceled for language or content or just sucking. Chad: Yeah, none of that's going to happen. I'm going to predict ... I'm going to do a Joel prediction that the Browns will suck next year. Joel: They'll be better though. Hey if the Niners can turn it around with one guy it is possible. Chad: Yeah, but still suck. Joel: But we can all agree that Michigan sucks, right? Tim: Yeah. Chad: Amen. Joel: All right. Tim: That Harbaugh will lose in the Citrus Bowl to North Carolina State. Is that your prediction for 2018? Joel: He'll lose to Ball State. All right guys, we out. Have a good year. Chad: We out. Tim: All right. Announcer: This has been the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single show and check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more visit hiredaily.com. Oh and you're welcome. Announcer: Thanks to our partners at TA Tech, the Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions. Remember to visit TATech.org #JobBoardio #Careerbuilder #Monster #Glassdoor #Crowded #Watson #Slack #Amazon #TATech #Sackett

We've made a list. We've checked it twice. And here's our list of who's been naughty and who's been nice this year. It's the perfect combination of sweet-and-sour for you to enjoy with a stout eggnog and pudding made of fig. Special holiday cheer for our amazing sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Nexxt and Ratedly. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Announcer: 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: We've made a list. We've checked it twice. And we're going to break down who was naughty and who was nice this year. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast, guaranteed to make all the naughty lists. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad, the nice one. Joel: The loyal elf to my Santa. On this abbreviated holiday edition, we'll go through the best and worst of 2017, in addition to giving shout-outs galore. You wanted it, you got it. Stay tuned. Chad: Bodyguard elf. Sovern Ad: Google. Lever. Entelo. Monster. Jibe. What do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovern Technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job, while others use our technology to help others find the perfect candidate. Sovern has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996, and we can help improve your hiring process, too. Sovern Ad: We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit Sovern.com. S-O-V-R-E-N dot com, for a free demo. Joel: I'm about three eggnogs in, Chad, how about you? Chad: Oh, yeah. No, I'm saving mine for a little bit later today. The local brewery is actually, they're releasing a couple of new brews, so I had to work out this morning, so I could earn my beer, but I'm going to say by one o'clock, I'll be ready. Joel: Well, I worked out, as well. I changed a diaper and had a few cups of coffee, so I more than earned those eggnogs. Chad: No, I agree. Joel: Well, it's holiday season, man! What are you doing for Christmas? Chad: Stoked! Well, I've got three teenagers, so they pretty much own our time, no matter what. But we're gonna go to family, a little up north, just north of Indianapolis, and hopefully first of the year kick back over to Ohio to visit more family. Chad: What about you? Are you taking the baby anywhere? Where's Axe going? Joel: We're staying home. We do get the pleasure of having the children on Christmas morning this year. As many know, I'm divorced as well as you are, so some years you get the kids at morning, sometimes you don't. This year fortunately, we get the morning with them, and my mother, who had hip surgery and knee surgery last year, is sort of back in the saddle. She's going to come up and enjoy the holiday with us. Chad: Awesome! Joel: So I'm excited for a little R&R, and a little family time, just like you. Chad: That's awesome. Well, and for those of you who are slightly confused between who Jeremy and Ax is, they're actually the same little baby. I've actually named little Jeremy "Axe", because he's a masculine little guy. Joel: Which does not mean that Chad is the father, just so we're clear on that. We don't want any confusion. Chad: Never even thought about that until you just said it, but that's funny as hell. Joel: I'm glad you think that's funny. It's Chad's little pet name, I guess. It hasn't caught on with anyone else. It's sort of like how Chad calls this a pod, but no one else does. He just has this thing that he likes to do, so yeah. He's Axe. Chad: When he's playing football, and all of his buddies are calling him Ax, you're gonna have me to thank. Joel: If he plays football, I will give you that credit yes. I will give that to you. Chad: Let's do shout-outs! Joel: Let's get to the shout-outs, shall we? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah, all right. I'm gonna start ... since we just discussed my son Jeremy, Jeremy Roberts out there from HiringSolved loves this show, sent out a Tweet, I believe, calling us "the best podcast of 2017" that he listens to, so Jeremy, we love you, and we won't take your vote of confidence as the reason being that I named my son Jeremy. I'm going to assume that had nothing to do with your props. So thank you, Jeremy, and have a great holiday. Chad: Jeremy, you're giving us the feels, buddy. We appreciate it, thanks so much. Chad: Roy Mauer, hopefully I'm saying that wrong. I think everybody understands that Joel and I are probably going to massacre your name if you get a shout-out, but Roy Mauer. This guy knows how to get a shout-out. This is the Tweet that he sent. Listen to this, Joel. Chad: "Love the #ChadCheese show." See how he used hashtag Chad Cheese in the very smart way. "Smart, funny dudes, breaking down the #recruiting industry. Maybe I'll get a shout-out soon." Chad: Roy, you're a smart man. You know how to butter us up. Here's you're shout-out, buddy. Joel: Yeah, and Roy out there at SHRM-land. So, it's rare that we get sort of an HR prop. So we really appreciate that. Chad: Well, and also, he wants to get us out there on a road show, and this is a nice time to talk about the road shows, to let everybody out there who's listening, whether you're a vendor or talent acquisition, if you'd like to have Chad and Cheese come out, spice up any meeting, or any conference, or any show, that's what we're here for, guys. Joel: Well, as everyone knows, we have faces for podcasting. So what better- Chad: We do. Joel: What better way to scare your event, than to bring us out. Chad: I'm a good looking man. I don't know what you're talking about. Joel: I'm gonna add Hung Lee again to the show. Chad: Woo! Joel: He got a shout-out last week, I believe. He's like the SNL guest. Like, how many shout-outs before we give him a jacket? I don't know. But Hung Li listed us on LinkedIn as one of his favorite podcasts for the year. Hung, we appreciate it, and keep listening. Chad: Love it. Chad: Kyle Hager. We talked about him, I think a couple of pods ago, he is the millennial, who is from the Univ- ... That school up north. We never actually say it. But Joel, you'll be happy to hear, he's actually taking your advice, and he's seeking professional help. So, being a big fan of the podcast, I thought that would be important. Joel: Well, and as a Wolverine fan, and a Gen Z or Y ... Chad: Millennial. Joel: Whatever. They all need help. Get that guy a participation medal, and get him some help. Joel: Next up, on my list, Nexxt, as we know, is a sponsor of our exclusive monthly show. That's Nexxt with two X's. I'm a little jealous, but happy. They sent you a goodie bag, but it was a little bit like Noah's ark, because there was two of everything. And I had to remind you that the other extra wasn't for your wife, it was probably for your podcast marriage. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And so I'm expecting a large Nexxt goodie bag of squeezies, mousepads, and whatever else was in there. So shout-out to Nexxt. Chad: Yeah, I think they think we live together. Kind of like we're in a dorm, or something like that. Because they send all of this stuff just to me, it's like, to my address, but it's ... Chad Sowash slash Joel Cheesman. So I think they actually think we live in a dorm together, or something. Joel: Yeah, I don't know if it's like a Joey and Chandler thing, or maybe like a Kramer and Jerry thing, I don't ... Yeah. Yeah. Nexxt has a lot of ideas about us that I think are false. But let's let them continue to enjoy the fantasy. Chad: Oh yeah. And keep sending us stuff. Or keep sending me stuff. That's awesome. Chad: A letter from Philly! Nancy, out there in PhillyLand, I gotta tell you guys. We get letters and we get call ... I mean, we get stuff all the time. Tweets. But when it comes down to this one, Nancy went overboard. And I love it. Because she gave us a rundown of what she liked about the show, what she liked about the recruiting it, I mean just everything. But what I'd like to share, what Nancy said was, "Please don't sell out. I enjoy you just the way you are." So, thank you, Nancy, we appreciate it. Joel: Can you do that in a Billy Joel kind of voice? Chad: I thought I was. Joel: Just the way you are. Do do do! Joel: Yes, Nancy, that took a long time to write that lovely letter to us, and we appreciate it, and hope you have a fantastic holiday. Chad: Every bit of it. Joel: How about Tom Preziosi? Preziossi? Prezioss- Chad: We're gonna mangle your name, man, it doesn't matter. Yeah, what about him? He's a LinkedIn shout-out, on LinkedIn, go figure. He's not gonna go use Twitter or anything like that, so I appreciate it, Tom. He says, "LinkedIn giving a shout-out on the Chad Cheese podcast. If you're in the recruiting industry, you need to check these guys out." Appreciate it, Tom, make sure that all your peeps at LinkedIn, just jam the Chad and Cheese podcast out. You start the intro music, everybody'll be like, "What the hell is that? That sounds cool!" Chad: They'll come around, you'll be the coolest guy in the cube bar. Joel: Oh, totally. Totally. LinkedIn loves us, man. That's awesome. So keep listening, guys, we'll keep churning out good stuff. Joel: I think that's it for shout-outs, right? I guess we should say thanks to our sponsors, as always. Chad: Amen. Joel: The guys ... without Sovern, AJE, Nexxt, and the others, we wouldn't be doing this show, so go and look them up. Give them a lot of money, so they can continue to support the show. Sovern, is an annual sponsor for next year. Super happy to have them on board. Really thankful for them, and hope they have a great holiday. Chad: And Jobs2Careers has signed on for Firing Squad. So they will be sponsoring Firing Squad. Chad: Yay, Jobs2Careers, thanks, guys. Joel: Jobs2Careers. Very nice, yes, thank you for reminding me on that one, Chad. Chad: Yep. Joel: Get to the lists. Here's how this is gonna work. Chad is going to go through his Nice list, I'm going to counter with my Naughty list, and then we're gonna take a little break, and then switch it back up, and go to my list, and his Naughty list. Joel: And if that's confusing, it is because it is, but we're gonna try to keep it in line, and we're going to start with Chad and his nice list. So Chad, we each get three on each list. Who made your Nice list for 2017? Chad: Number one on my Nice list is Howie and the boys over at Crowded.com. If you haven't listened, I'm going to give another shout-out to our Firing Squad. If you haven't listened to Firing Squad, you're listening to some of the coolest, and best start-ups that are out there. Joel and I get pitched by a start-up, and then we pick them apart. I mean, we are left and right trying to angle in, to find the chinks in their armor. Chad: Thus far, only one start-up has received big applause from both Joel and myself. And that's Crowded. And their Refresh product. So I've gotta say, if you don't know what Crowded and their Refresh product is, it's incredibly cool, it actually uses the applicant tracking system, the candidates in the applicant tracking system. Refreshes that data, goes out and brings in social information, and refreshes all of those candidates' profiles, so that you should be doing what you should have been doing for years, using that goddamned database that you spent so much money on, for the very first database you jump into, not to mention matching recs against current candidates that you've already paid for, so Howie and the crew, you're first. Joel: Very nice. If I could piggyback on that, engagement really had a good year, because sites like Lever, SMS, certainly TextRecruit, Canvas, engagement had a good year. And we hope that keeps up, because the resume black hole is a bad thing for everybody. Chad: Amen. Joel: All right! I get to go to my naughty list. So I'm kind of- Chad: Naughty. Joel: -kind of excited about this. Okay. My first naughty list addition is a no-brainer, the naughtiest of the naughty, David Kent. Chad: What an asshole. Joel: If you've been listening to the show, you know David Kent. For those that don't know, here's an abbreviated version of why David Kent is in my naughty list. Okay. Joel: David Kent started a site called RigZone back in 2000-ish. He sold the company to DHI, which owns Dice, which most people relate to more than DHI, sold it to DHI for roughly 50 million dollars. He worked at DHI for about a year, left the company, started a competitor called OilPro, he had somebody on the inside of DHI apparently stealing to the tune of 700,000 data records, profiles, whatever. Stole those, put them into his new company OilPro, and then he tried to sell OilPro to DHI, which ... wow, he got caught, imagine that. So the feds come knocking on his door, he gets pinched, he goes to jail, he was sentenced this year, I'm assuming he's in the pokey, the dude was an obvious choice for naughty list. Chad: Yes. Joel: I hope he cleans up his act, does his time, and gets back on the right track. But as far as 2017 goes, David Kent, big time naughty list. Chad: No question. Stop, thief. Dude's an idiot. I think he actually took the info ... all that data with him when he left after I think serving like a year at DHI after he sold RigZone. But, either way, it doesn't matter. He's a thief, and that's bullshit, dude. You can't be doing that stuff. Joel: If we had the Darwin Awards on this show, he would also win for the Darwin Award. Joel: All right, next on your nice list. Chad: Next on the nice list is acquisition, first and foremost, but ZipRecruiter. Their current acquisition of JobBoard.io- Joel: Jobboardio. Chad: -not Jobboardio. Personally, I hope this is the first of many acquisitions we see from Zip, throughout the industry. A source also tells me, another reason why they're on the nice side, that they have a huge R&D team, that's focused on leveraging on what they already have working incredibly well for them, and we note that Zip kicked Indeed's ass in a case study that we cited, I think a couple of podcasts ago, with regard to price and if- Joel: Resume per resume, yep. Joel: And they love Google, and Google for Jobs. Chad: Which makes a hell of sense, right? So they're focused on R&D, acquisitions, I mean they're putting a lot of money in R&D. They're going looking at acquisitions, and AI and machine learning is very big, very high on their priority list. I really see Zip as a big name coming up in 2018, they did a great job, I think in 2017, so they're number two on my nice list. Joel: Very nice. I will add that they seem to be one of the few companies in our industry that have figured out sort of traditional advertising, they've been doing radio, TV for a long time, and they keep doing it, so it must be working. So props to that. Joel: Interestingly, as I wrote the story about the JobBoard.io acquisition, apparently that is the only acquisition that they've had, which I found kind of surprising. I would have figured that they'd had some more sort of side acquisitions or smaller ones, which I assumed Jobboardio was ... JobBoard.io was a smaller acquisition. It wasn't like they dropped probably 50 million on this company. But, the fact that it does a lot of things and have only made one acquisition, I thought was interesting. Joel: Anyway, I will get onto my next naughty. Because that's a lot more fun than the nice list. Joel: My naughty list goes to Silicon Valley. They had a bad year with the gender bias stuff. It kinda started- Chad: And they're not getting it. Joel: They're still not getting it. And a little bit of my timeline here. There was a Google manifesto, which kinda hit the news, which was essentially a Google engineer talking about how women engineers were different, and why they were different. It was very tone-deaf in terms of equality and gender equality. It sort of followed with Uber. Uber, with their "brogramming" culture, one of their former employees came out and wrote a pretty extensive blog post, I think on Medium, about the culture at Uber, and things really hit the fan at Uber. Joel: Their CEO is gone, sort of as a result of this whole thing, and then ending up the year with all of these holiday parties in the valley, word came out that they were hiring models to come to the holiday parties, which sounds incredibly tone-deaf, it sounds incredibly like the valley really is this bubble that doesn't really connect with much of the rest of the world, let alone the country, so a pretty easy addition to my naughty list was the Valley. Chad: You just gotta ask yourself, when in the hell are they going to get it? It continues to happen, and I understand development and programming is very heavy on the male side, but when are these companies going to get that they need to attract ... they need to actually put programs together to be able to diversify their current teams. And to have an asshole actually write a manifesto saying that, "Men are just better at developing than women are." I mean, it's ... to be able to see this just walk through the entire year of 2017, it was ridiculous, and it still is. Joel: Let's agree that our relationship, in a macro sense, with women took a hit in 2017. And let's hope- Chad: A big hit. Joel: -let's hope that this thing goes through the washer, it comes out cleaner than it was before, because it's ridiculous, all this harassment stuff, and inequality, and pay bias, let's hope that gets cleaned up more in 2018. Chad: One word, man. It's leadership. Joel: Fair enough. Let's go to your next nice addition. Chad: Nice list! Google has a lot going out this year, but the only thing that's going to hit my nice list from Google is the jobs API. We've seen the jobs API with OnGig, with Jibe, with CareerBuilder, with incredible numbers. Incredible numbers. OnGig actually just posted that they've been boosting traffic by 73%, and their applications by 31%. So, you know, it's pretty amazing that you're switching to, instead of doing these two or three boxes, and going through all these different hoops for search, just using the one click google search, one bar, one click, all the false negatives are reduced, the abbreviations are understood, the concepts are actually understood. So saying I'm looking for development jobs near Seattle, misspellings, and obviously all the different things that you can get from using google, and I'm gonna say that one of our interviewees pretty much said it the most clearly. "If you think you're going to beat Google, Google will smoke you." And that's why we are adopting their search. Chad: That's why we are adopting their search. I have to say that google has like three different products that they're out there with this year, I think the other products will gain ground, some traction, but this is the one that out of the gate is smoking the shit out of everybody. And if you have a job site, or if you have a product, or an applicant tracking system or what have you, that uses search, this is what you should be looking at. And if you're not, and you think you can beat google, once again, you're gonna get smoked. Chad: So big ups for google, and their jobs API. Joel: Yep. And I love how it's penetrating the enterprise side of it. We kind of knew it would hit the job board, and that side of it, but the fact that you have J&J, and Marriott, and a few others, really implementing this technology into their job search, I think is a fantastic thing. So, yeah, big ups to google. No surprise that it's their most popular of the three; you've got the API, you've got the ATS, you've got the job search side of it. It's no surprise that they really got this one right. Even though it's sort of a fringe one, it doesn't get the pub that the job search does, but it definitely seems to be working for the companies that are doing it. So, yeah. I agree that they would make my nice list, as well. Joel: Let's go to my final naughty list. Okay, so I was really struggling with this. I had millennials on my list as a potential, I had Dice on my list, who had a horrible year. Chad: Yeah, they did. Joel: I had Tinder for Jobs on my list, which was awful, but- Chad: Oh, so bad. Joel: -I funneled it down to our good buddies at O'Hire to make my final naughty list. And they make my list, number one, because it's a shitty idea. The idea that people will look through two minutes of video resumes is ridiculous, it's a bad idea, it hasn't worked in the past, it won't work now, but I can't get over the fact that their name is so awful. It's O'Hire, O-apostrophe-Hire, which ... There are no successful internet stories that have apostrophes in their name. Their URL isn't even just O'Hire, it's O-Hire, if you put in "Ohire", the domain is for sale, so why they didn't think, let's just buy Ohire if that's our name, because I doubt whoever has Ohire is going to, like, ask for a lot of money for Ohire, they could probably afford it. Bad idea. Bad branding. Bad name. Bad company. They deserve to be on the naughty list. They're on it. I'm done. Joel: And with that, I am totally vented, and I feel like I am ready to go to my nice list. I'm sure you're chomping at the bit to get into your naughty list, but let's talk about AJE first, before we get into that. Chad: We should talk about AJE. So, I'm sure you know that diversity recruiting, it's a big thing. Joel: Huge. Chad: We hear about this shit all the time. Joel: Yuge. Chad: Oh my god. Chad: But using the same old job boards are just going to yield the same old results. That don't reach diversity communities effectively. I mean, it's pretty simple, right? If you're using the same job sites, and you're not seeing a diverse pool of candidates, what do you think the problem is? Chad: Do you think it's your job posting? It could be. It could be. But don't you think it might be the job sites that you're using? I'd say probably. AJE- Joel: Bingo. Chad: Bingo! AJE utilizes a different mix of targeted job distribution across hundreds of diversity job boards and niche sites. I mean, their focus is being able to hone in on that diversity talent in those different diversity communities. So, once again, as we talk about, on this pod, quite frequently ... When you need an expert in an area, don't go see a generalist. It makes no goddamned sense. Go see an expert, have them help you focus on driving diverse candidates into your website. So what you can do is, very simply, to be able to enjoy a discount for some targeted diversity hiring, go to ChadCheese.com, you can scroll down to the sponsors area, click on America's Job Exchange, and it will take you to a page where, guess what, you get a discount. Chad: And it's all focused on diversity hiring. So that's our friends at AJE. It's really cool to see them pivot from just being compliance, boring, check the box kind of compliance, to be able to focus on hires, be able to focus on outcomes, and you have an opportunity to check them out. Give them a call, check them out on the website. ChadCheese.com, click on America's Job Exchange logo and get a discount. Joel: Awesome. Yeah, AJE, it goes without saying, big supporter of the show from day one, continue to be a huge supporter, really appreciative of that, and happy holidays to Bill and the gang out there in AJE-land. Joel: Well, let's get to your naughty list, 'cause I'm kind of excited to hear about who's gonna get the big gun from you this holiday season. Chad: Yeah, so I get to go first? Joel: You do. Chad: I'm so excited. Chad: Okay, so, here we go. The first, numero uno, on my naughty list, and this has been shaped by some recent news, is Facebook. And thanks to Mona from KRT for sharing this. Facebook's microtargeting is awesome, and we've all talked about how the microtargeting is going to be amazing for location, ethnicity, gender, age groups, but the problem is, Facebook is not allowing that on employment ads. Why? Chad: New York Times actually had an article on this. A 58-year-old social media marketing strategist didn't get a hubspot social media manager job in his feed, because he wasn't targeted. So therefore, now it's discriminatory. Wait a minute, I don't get to see the job in my Facebook feed? That's discrimination. No, that's not discrimination, asshole. Here's the thing. Facebook is now trying to become the discrimination police, and that's not their fuckin' job. Gender targeting is no longer available for employment ads, ethnicity targeting is no longer available for employment ads, age, language, there are so many things now, that they're actually cutting down. Chad: And Facebook, that's not your job. That's the job of the enforcement agencies, the EEOC and the OFCCP. The thing is, when a company is trying their damnedest to go out and hire females, or they're trying to diversify their company? And they want to use your microtargeting, and then you shut them off because you want to be the goddamned discrimination police. That's not your job. That's not your job. So, from my standpoint, Facebook, being so excited about being able to use Facebook for targeted microtargeting on ads, and then watching them pull this bullshit? They're automatically on my naughty list. Joel: Ouch. Chad: Rant number one. Joel: You started out kind of light on that one, I think. As I look at your list, it's gonna get a little bit more intense as we go through it. So that was an appetizer, everybody. It gets a lot more Chad-ish as we move on. Joel: I'm going to counter your Facebook naughty list edition, and put Facebook on my nice list. Chad: Mmm. Joel: Because I think that Facebook did a lot of good things last year. We've been talking for a long time about Facebook actually getting into the employment workforce environment, ecosystem, and they did that in a big way last year. They looked at enterprise tools, their messaging competitor to Slack came out, it's free to use for enterprises, they launched job postings as part of their service. Not only can you post jobs as a company page, you can post jobs specifically. You can do that through ZipRecruiter, who was on your nice list earlier in the show. Their relationship with Facebook, I think, has been great. Joel: I'm missing one. Chad: Job posting, messaging- Joel: I think that's it. But I just think that Facebook getting into it, I think that they're really poised to engage with smaller businesses to hire. I think they're really putting the heat on Craigslist for that SMB market, and I also think that if anyone is going to compete with LinkedIn and Microsoft and their AI technology, and their number of profiles, which, by the way, is about four times what LinkedIn is, that it's going to be Facebook. In terms of not only AI but automation, chatbots on their messenger service to screen candidates, I think Facebook is really poised to do some great things in terms of the employment space. The fact that they got into it, the fact that they launched, what I can tell, successful products last year, puts them right on my nice list for 2017. Chad: That, my friend, will be severely hampered if you can't microtarget. Next. Joel: Your nice list. Or ... naughty list. Sorry, sorry. Naughty list. I'm looking at the name, and it's definitely a naughty. Joel: So, let's go. Chad: Definitely naughty. So it's fairly simple. When you raise your rates in the holiday season by 35+%, you are automatically entrenched on my naughty list, Indeed. It's fairly simple, and I mean, we've been bashing these guys for the last few podcasts, because this is a big deal. You take a product, and you don't really do anything new to the product? What you're doing is, you're saying, oh, I see, guys! Customer, Mr. Customer, you're using this piece of our site more, so what we're gonna do, is we're gonna charge you for it. We didn't charge you before, but now we're gonna charge the shit out of you, and guess what? Yeah, we're assholes. Indeed. You gotta remember. Look at history, and there might not be anybody who's actually in leadership who's seen this shit happen. I'm sure they have. But look at history. Chad: Monster did this shit. Where's Monster now, huh? And there are many other sites that did the same shit. Guys. Learn from the past, I understand, you're losing traffic, because Google is eating your goddamned lunch. They're drinking your milkshake. I totally get it, right? The thing is, though, this is not how you're gonna win. As a matter of fact, it makes you more vulnerable. The Zips, the Nexxts, the CareerBuilders, now you make it easier for them to steal your client base, to drink your milkshake. So, Indeed, stop being dumbasses. You're on the naughty list. Joel: Naughty indeed. I'm on record that I'm not as down on Indeed as Chad is. But they've got some major hurdles. They didn't make my naughty list, but it's pretty clear that there's a sense of hubris there. They've doubled their staff, they're growing worldwide, they're making crazy money, but Monster was in a similar position, just like Chad said, ten years ago. Indeed, some of us, obviously not all of us, but some of us still believe in you. It's an uphill battle, you're kind of through the looking glass here, looking at LinkedIn, Facebook and Google, getting into this game. It'll be really interesting to see how this podcast goes next year, when we're talking about what happened. I think Indeed will do some dumb things, and some smart things, but I don't think they're irrelevant ... yet. Joel: Which gets to my next company, which is definitely not irrelevant. I'm going to go with Entelo on my nice list. Entelo! Joel: They started in 2011, they've done it right, they've taken money, but they've grown organically. They've iterated the product. They had a really good year this year. They got a round of funding, to the tune of 20 million dollars, they had some awesome hires, that I think are gonna help take them to the next level. Specifically, one of Google's brains that was behind some of the AI stuff, behind some of the Gmail functionality. I don't know all of the companies he was involved with, but he was a sort of big influence on Google, Entelo, in a very competitive landscape there in the valley, where everyone wants to go work for a big brand, nabbed this guy to come to Entelo. Joel: I suspect either they'll get acquired soon, or they may even go public soon. Who knows? But I think this was a huge year for Entelo. They're quietly doing everything right, from what I can tell, and I expect big things from them in the future. But for me, this was a no-brainer to be on my nice list. Entelo. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. There's no question. When you start to see technologies like Entelo start to crop up, and it just makes sense. I was talking to a vendor the other day, and it was interesting because they were talking about candidate attraction, and this is a big organization. I said, who the hell are you going to attract? You pretty much have everybody, and you have access to everybody. There's no reason. You can have an Entelo that's reaching out there, and it's finding all of these new candidates ... In the first place, you're spending a shit ton of money on commercials, stop doing that stupid shit, and start using the technology that's in front of you. Entelo is the type of technology that's moving us to the future. Joel: Yep. And by the way, you mentioned Crowded in your nice list. Entelo's envoy product is a very similar engaging kind of automation tool that Entelo launched this year that is also moving that engagement piece further, which I really appreciate as well. Chad: Yeah. And so do the talent acquisition who are using it appropriately. Joel: So, Entelo, you get on my nice list. Chad, let's hit your last, so make it count, naughty list recipient. Chad: Nasty. We know we have a very large contingent of listeners from this group, we talked about it a little bit earlier, LinkedIn. Joel: LinkedIn. Chad: Fortunately, continue to do the stupid shit with these small companies. Because they're back in court again. This time it's with an organization called EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They're the leading nonprofit defending civil liberties in the digital world. They're an advocacy group. That's what they are. They're an advocacy group. Grassroots, activism, EFF together with ... Duck Duck Go, an the Internet archive, they're urging the Ninth Circuit of Appeals to reject LinkedIn's bullshit request on the CFAA is hacking. And that being able to actually go out and access public data is not hacking. Chad: Once again, LinkedIn, trying to categorize everything as a bad bot or a hack, which is utter bullshit, and pure and simple, it's gaslighting. That's all it is. They're gaslighting the shit out of this thing, trying to scare people into thinking that there's hacks and bad bots going out there. We see this in our industry. Every now and again. There are some assholes that are out there doing this. Don't be those assholes, LinkedIn. You're on the naughty list, because you're jacking with not just the small guy, but also innovation. Chad: Don't be on the naughty list. And don't be assholes. Joel: On my nice list, and this is my last one, so I'm going to make it count, I'm gonna counter your LinkedIn naughty list, and put LinkedIn on my nice list. Chad: Man, you're just countering everything. Joel: No, I've got to appreciate the legal battles they're fighting. We didn't talk about hiQ in the show, but they would ... hiQ is a definite nice list for me, because they are fighting the good fight for openness and for freedom, if you will, but I also see LinkedIn's side of that. I don't want to focus on the court case because you did, I want to focus on some of the good things that LinkedIn has done. And when LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft for 26.2 billion, there was a sense by me, and probably others, that they were gonna phone it in after that acquisition. That Microsoft spent the money to keep Google out of it, to keep SalesForce, whoever was out there, shopping for LinkedIn, that it was just gonna slowly wither under Microsoft's management, or leadership. Joel: And I think that we can both say that that has not been the case, that they have released new feature after new feature, they're a content machine in terms of putting out good stuff for people to engage with, and digest, and consume, ... You know, I went to their annual show in Nashville, and I can tell you that what they are doing is a different game from everyone else. Joel: While Google is still focused on how do we get this job search thing right, when Facebook is trying to figure out messaging for the enterprise, LinkedIn is really figuring out, how do we use our 550 million profiles, how do we AI the hell out of this with help from Microsoft, and really help companies laser focus and target the exact people when they're ready, where they're ready, and where they live and breathe. Joel: And I think that LinkedIn, when we look back five, ten years from now, LinkedIn is going to be a major winner, because of the things they're doing now, and it's due in part with the partnership with Microsoft, the data they have, and the leadership there, as well. I think they're playing a different game, I think they're going to be a big winner in the future, and for me they were a big winner in 2017. Chad: So how much Kool-Aid did you drink in Nashville? Joel: I'm still on a sugar high, but I've had time to digest that, and think about my position, to let the Kool-Aid pass, and I still feel pretty much the same as I did after the conference in Nashville. Chad: LinkedIn, what I want to see is you continue to do those good things, and leave the little guys alone with the public data, and you'd be on everybody's nice list, man. Chad: Yeah. That's our naughty and nice list for 2017. Our very first one! Joel: I'm gonna give our show a nice list rating, I guess. Yeah. We'll see if anyone watches, or listens. Chad: That's a good call. Joel: But yeah. Hey, man, it's been a great year. I can't believe we've come as far as we have. I can't wait to see what the next year holds for us, which, by the way, our next show will be our predictions show. So we'll talk about going into 2018, what we expect to see. So if you like this kind of crap, and we know you do, make sure you tune into next week's podcast. But for now, happy holidays. I'm gonna go sit by the fire, hang out with my kids and wife, and enjoy life. Chad: And that sounds like a wonderful holiday. I'm gonna try to get these teenagers all together, maybe we can sit down by the fire, who knows? They probably have friends that they want to go see. Chad: But for everybody who's out there, #ChadCheese. Twitter, on Facebook, you can email us. Go to the website, down at the bottom, you can check out our Twitter handles, DM us, it doesn't matter. We definitely want to hear from you, and I am overwhelmed with the feels right now, because of everybody who's been reaching out to us. I mean, it's pretty amazing. We really appreciate it. 2017's been amazing and yes, Nancy, we promise we are not selling out. Joel: We out, though. Chad: We out. Announcer: This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single show. And check out our sponsors, because they make it all possible. For more, visit hiredaily.com, oh, and you're welcome. #ZipRecruiter #Crowded #RigZone #Dice #DavidKent #GoogleJobsAPI #TinderforJobs #OHire #Facebook #Indeed #LinkedIn

Come all ye' faithful if you seek all the latest news and commentary from the world of recruitment. This week the boys take on Indeed, ZipRecruiter and crappy job descriptions. It's not personal, it's just Chad & Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. Need more? Yes, Indeed is raising prices ... here's what you need to know. ZipRecruiter is getting into the private label job board business ... but why? Stop using these buzzwords in your job postings. AI, AI and more AI ... the latest investments you need to know. An introduction to initial coin offerings (ICO) in online recruitment. The boys would prefer to sip egg nog under the mistletoe, but duty calls. And as always, get on over to our sponsors and show 'em some love: Sovren, America's Job Exchange, Nexxt and Ratedly. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Announcer: 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: All right. Let's call this the Easy Like Sunday Morning edition, boys and girls. Welcome to Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show we discuss Indeed's price increase, Stella gets her groove back, and zip-a-dee-doo-dah, ZipRecruiter buys JobBoard.io, which means another job boards aren't dead yet segment. Do we know what our listeners want or what? Chad: No shit. Joel: Stay tuned. We'll be right back. Announcer: America's Job Exchange is celebrating our tenth year as an industry leader in diversity recruitment and OFCCP compliance. We've been helping our thousand plus customers comply with OFCCP regulations that directly support positive and effective diversity recruitment designed to attract and convert veterans, individuals with disabilities, women and minorities and empower employers to pursue and track active outreach with their local community based organizations. Want to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Chad: Or go to chadcheese.com, go to the sponsor's area, click on the America's Job Exchange logo, and guess what people? Discounts. Discounts. Joel: Money, money, money. Chad: Discounts. Joel: Everyone needs that at holiday time. Chad: God damn straight. On diversity hiring, go there now. Joel: Chad, would be on Santa's naughty or nice list this year? Chad: Fuck. That's a hard question. I'd say probably naughty being "dangerous explicit rating." Joel: I think the fact that you dropped an f-bomb in your Santa question, we are naughty to the bone. Yes. Joel: But let's go to our nice list, which is usually our shout outs. Chad: Yup. Joel: I'll do the first one. LinkedIn gets a shout out from me. They listened to us, believe it or not. I'm not saying the entire company, but there are certain folks in leadership and sales folks and partnership people, whether it be on LinkedIn itself or. They don't usually come out on Twitter, 'cause they don't wanna be public about it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But it's good to know that LinkedIn's out there listening to us. We love you guys. Chad: Yeah. And we love anybody coming out, whether they're hitting us on Direct Messenger. You don't have to be public about it. But yeah. Let us know how you feel. Chad: Now these people were public, because they used the hash chadcheese, the #chadcheese. Kelly Robinson, the founder and CEO of Broadbean now. Broadbean is a career builder property. Kelly, you're British, so snarky is automatic. You don't have to try, buddy. You don't have to try. Chad: Steve Gilbert, TA leader over at PetSmart. Joel: The man. Chad: The man. Thanks for reaching out, man. Chad: Big shout out to our Philly listeners. Go get them, Ed. Bring them in. We need them. Joel: Dun-duh-duh-nuh-nuh. Trust the process. Chad: Kyle Hager, hey. Okay. This guy's like the antithesis of the show, 'cause he is a millennial, and he's a U of M grad, knowing that we're both Ohio State Buckeyes, still gotta love him. He's given us love, and he said he just joined. Joel: Kyle, get help, dude. Get help. You've got some issues. Chad: He's getting help. As he continues to listen to Chad and Cheese. Joel: Actually anyone who publicly acknowledges themselves giving us props, needs probably some professional help. Chad: Now you're trying to dissuade people? That's not cool. Chad: And last but not least, the Talent Cast podcast by James Ellis called us goofy, actually this was on his podcast. Joel: I'm insulted. Chad: Fuck, man. I don't know. Joel: I mean, a-holes, dickheads. Something like, idiots. Chad: Goofy. Joel: But goofy? Come on. Chad: HR's most dangerous podcast is goofy. Dude. Joel: We've got to turn up the volume to 11 is some dude's calling us goofy. Chad: So what about that, you also had a shout out to Leever or Lever? Joel: The big one. The big shout out to guerrilla marketer Leela Srinivisan. Chad: Is it Layla? Joel: Or Layla or Leela. We don't really know. We don't really know how to pronounce her company name, which is Lever or Leever. We're just that stupid, but okay. So, Leela. I'll go with Leela. Leela put on a video on LinkedIn. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel: A lot of people probably saw it. It was her singing a rendition of Silent Night I think. But she put in ATS lyrics. Chad: Yes. Joel: And it was totally goofy, I'll call that goofy. Chad: Yeah it was goofy. Joel: And according to her, she wrote the lyrics on her way to work and recorded them on her iPhone or iPad and put it out there for the world. This thing, as of I think Friday when she told me had 63,000 views, 700 likes and like 150 comments. Chad: So the view thing, I mean the view thing for me never really means much. But the likes and the comments, 700 likes and 173 comments. Do we have a big applause that we can give her for goodness sakes? Joel: Oh I think we might have. No, we don't. How about a cry baby? I don't know. It's all we got, man. We'll have to implement sound effects from Firing Squad, which everyone should listen to, into our normal weekly show. But Leela, applause from us. Golf clap, here we go. All right. Yeah. That is some kick ass marketing. And listen, to everyone else, I'm expecting the ATS slew of guerrilla marketing. Susan Vitale, I want to see your video. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: I want to see you break out in song to compete with your ATS brethren out there. Chad: The gauntlet has been thrown down, Susan Vitale. Not to mention Leela has an amazing, amazing singing voice. This lady has chops. So yeah. They set the bar pretty high for iCIMS. And I expect a choir to come out and do something for iCIMS. Joel: Yeah. But in all seriousness, that's amazing. And anyone out there with a marketing department with a pulse should be thinking of something clever to do and leverage LinkedIn and get some views and some exposure and engagement. Because what Lever did was pretty awesome, and it should be followed better. Chad: And we talk about this all the time. Now real quick. We talk about this all the time. There's so much content that's put out there that doesn't get marketed well at all, because in some cases the content is shit. But this is smart, and it's fun, and obviously people like it. So there you go guys. Look at it. Learn from it. Do some shit that works. Joel: Yes. And think about what it would actually cost to do something that gets that kind of engagement, and it's probably, well for her it's nothing. But if you were to pay for this kind of exposure, it might be expensive. So do it for free. Joel: All right. Are we done with shout outs? Chad: One more. Thanks again for Disability Solutions for the transcriptions people. Joel: Yes. Chad: Transcriptions. For all of those who are hearing impaired, who need some Chad and Cheese podcast love, now they have it. All they have to do is go to the website, click on this week's episode, last week's episode, doesn't matter. There is a transcription there ready and available. So thanks so much for Disability Solutions for sponsoring that. Joel: And again I need the applause sound bite, because that's two applauses we don't have any sound bites. There we go. All right. Joel: Are we now ready to go into the bulk of the show here? Okay. Joel: We mentioned at least one or two shows ago that there was some rumblings about an Indeed price increase. Chad: Yes. Well. Joel: There was, there has indeed. See what I did there? A price increase, but we have some context around what exactly they're raising prices on. Chad: So two weeks ago we talked about you and I receiving calls, emails, LinkedIn messages. I mean, it was feverish on my side. And I think you've received some stuff too about Indeed's price, what they were calling gouging at the time, cause they were looking at 25 to 35% tax increase or, tax increase. (Laughs) Oh. Anyway. Joel: (Laughs) Chad: That was Freudian. During those conversations it was abundantly clear that Indeed was raising prices, and they were changing some things about the actual platform itself. But contacts, their actual customers, they were frustrated as hell, because it wasn't clear. They kept hearing different stories from different sales people. They weren't getting the right messaging. And we talked about it on this podcast. There were also other individuals. I think you wrote about it. Other individuals wrote about it. And LinkedIn finally stepped up and said, not LinkedIn. Shit. Indeed finally stepped up and said, you know what? We should probably clear the air here. Joel: I'll come in and vouch for you that you've been in California for a week. So you're not really in the work mode right now. And you're still not over watching the latest Star Wars movie. Chad: Yes. Joel: I talked to the SEP of marketing at Indeed for a story that I did for ERE. So my take on this is that they're sort of going after the LinkedIn InMail revenue strategy. Chad: Yup. Joel: They're clearly either seeing it or scared that they're job posting or promotion revenue is going to take a hit, if it's already not already taking a hit from Google for Jobs. So if I'm Indeed, I'm looking at my current assets and saying, "What can I monetize?" Up until now, they have 100 million resumes in their database. And if you're a featured company, which means you spend a certain amount of money, you used to get this database for free. Chad: Yes. Joel: You could contact as many people as you want at no charge. Now the staffing companies and the big enterprise level companies certainly had a nice run at contacting whoever the hell they wanted. They're going to start pricing, or charging you for sending out their version of InMails to their resume database. Joel: I mean, you more or less have had a free ride. They have 100 million resumes. We have had someone actually say that Indeed still has the best resume database out there. So to me, why not charge for it? Especially if you're not seeing growth in your job postings, and you're scared that Google's gonna keep eating your lunch. This is a way that they're going to replace the revenue that they're losing or could be losing. Chad: Well, you're right. In the end, Indeed is filling the early effects of Google for Jobs. Number one, it's shiny. Number two, it owns their organic traffic now. So all that organic traffic that Indeed used to receive, or at least a portion of it, not all of it, is not there anymore. Chad: So number one they need to continue growth. What do they have to do? From a revenue standpoint, they have to do something. They can't continue to just do the same thing. And this is a good revenue growth opportunity. Chad: And number two, they need to start paying for the traffic to offset the Google organic traffic loss. So the organic loss that they're receiving they've got to do something. So they've got to pay somebody to start receiving traffic somewhere, and this is gonna be a part of that. So growth and also trying to make sure they got that organic traffic back is huge. Chad: Here's the thing though. And I think you might have uncovered this. I believe ZipRecruiter and Nexxt, this is a great opportunity for them to really attack, and also maybe CareerBuilder, to attack, because these price increases will probably allow for an organization to start to shift funds to another organization like a CareerBuilder, a Nexxt or a ZipRecruiter. And from our understanding, from what we've heard and what we've seen, at least from a ZipReceruiter case study, ZipRecruiter really kicked the shit out of Indeed when it came to, what was it? Price per candidate? Joel: Price per resume I think. Yeah. Every one you just mentioned there are big time in bed with Google. Chad: Yeah. Joel: In terms of their jobs products. So yes, those sites use leveraging Google are probably going to see a decreased cost per resume. Chad: Right. Joel: Versus what Indeed is, because of just what we've been talking about. Joel: Someone had shared with me in my report, or in my blog post that Indeed is looking apparently for 40% increase in the States from last year in revenue. So if the jobs aren't growing at a pace that they have been, they really need to look at other avenues for revenue. And looking at their $100 million or 100 million resumes is certainly a way to try to do that. Chad: They have to do something. Again, two things. They've got to grow, and if they're trying to grow 40%, how do you think they're going to do that? And then number two, they've got to replace traffic. And they've got to pay for that traffic. So how in the hell are they going to do it? I mean, and again, this is I think almost a perfect storm for organizations like Zip and CareerBuilder and Nexxt to be able to really go after that base and start to decay Indeed's base. Joel: Yup. And we're also hearing stories, I think you have as well, that they're really clamping down on their partnership program and who they allow to put Indeed job postings. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel: Be it API or whatever on their site. And we didn't have that slated for discussion today, but I think it probably segues nicely into our ZipRecruiter story. Chad: Yes. Joel: Who is doing the exact opposite. They want to be in more places for their job postings. Indeed's doing some interesting things, some of it confusing, some of it makes sense, and we'll see if it works or not. But that certainly is something to keep an eye on. But Indeed pricing is going up. It's just charging in a different area as opposed to charging for job postings. All this stuff is going to be the same. They'll charge on a market based pricing, how you want to promote it. But you can still post jobs for free on Indeed. Chad: I really think though, this is a vulnerability, just time frame wise, messaging wise, confusion wise for Indeed. If those other organizations aren't looking to flank Indeed at this point, this is probably the most vulnerable you're gonna see them in a while, because they're gonna strengthen back up. Joel: Remember was it Mike Tyson who said everyone has a plan until they get punched? Chad: That's right. Joel: Indeed got punched. And I think they're trying to figure out what their plan is. Chad: I think they're getting choked out right now is what's happening. Joel: You would come up with an MMA analogy. Joel: All right. Next story. ZipRecruiter, who we talk about a lot on the show, acquired JobBord.io or JobBoard.io. All these names are confusing to us. So JobBoard.io, or JobBoardeo is a white label job board basically. So they power, if you go to TechCrunch, if you go to Politico, they're the ones that are powering these job sites. And ZipRecruiter said, "Hey, we don't know how much they pay them, but they pay them some money," brought JobBoard.io on, and I have a few thoughts on that. I'm sure you do as well. I'm happy to defer to you first if you'd like, cause it is Christmas, and I need the points. I could also opine if you'd like. It's your choice, Chad. Chad: So first and foremost, congrats to Christian Malpeli, the founder and CEO of JobBoard.io. Nice guy. Dot io, Joel. Nice guy. And to be quite frank, we've seen these types of platforms for years, the Adicios of the world. They've been out there. You have to have these different associations or different organizations like a TechCrunch or a Politico who have individuals who are on their site, and they want more content. And some of that content could be job content. So JobBoard.io I think is bringing more of kind of like a fresh feel to what those platforms look like. And to be quite frank, this is easy from a ZipRecruiter standpoint. This is what we call a job portal strategy. Simply hire tried it with ... Joel: Jobomatic. Chad: Jobomatic, and it failed, because Jobomatic was a piece of shit. It looked like a blog platform that you would try to install with. It was really, it was crappy. JobTarget tried, and I think it did successfully, because they sold off their job board stakes two year membership, so I think that went off well for JobTarget, but I think they're going in reverse fashion than ZipRecruiter. And then last but not least, Beyond successfully parlayed their huge job board network into a larger more powerful data business. Chad: I think you take a look at some very smart organizations pretty much in the landscape, and not just because Nexxt is, they are to be transparent, a sponsor, but they have been incredibly smart in most of the moves they've made over the years. Not all of the moves, but a good amount of the moves, and becoming a data company that focuses on targeting and gathering of data has been amazing. Chad: So watching some of the transformations happen here is very cool, but what ZipRecruiter's doing now is, it's not something that hasn't happened before over and over and over. This is like probably the fifth generation iteration of this. Joel: My take on this is it's a distribution challenge. To me, as jobs have been commoditized, I think in many ways candidates are being commoditized. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel: And as Google for Jobs has all the jobs, and you can apply to a myriad of job boards that all have that same job on their site, companies like ZipRecruiter, CareerBuilder, et cetera, are going to need ways to find new candidates, candidates that aren't found by people that go to Google and search marketing jobs in Chicago. These sort of white label job boards enable you to get in front of an audience that are TechCrunch readers or Politico readers, or Association folks, or government sites. And that's a way to get new eyeballs. Joel: So if companies know, oh geez, if I post a job on CareerBuilder, I post on Monster, I posted on ZipRecruiter, I get the same candidates. So I'm just gonna pick one of these guys. And ZipRecruiter wants to be the one that, hey, I get a lot of the same candidates, but I still get like 5 to 10% totally new candidates that I don't get anywhere else. To me that's why this strategy makes sense. If I were ZipRecruiter I would have a partnership team over at JobBoard.io. Thank you. I said it right. And build as many associations, government entities, schools, blogs, et cetera and really get new and fresh eyeballs on these jobs that are on ZipRecruiter. Chad: And we talk about vulnerability. I mean, you take a look at the old job board platforms that are out there today. Like year memberships, platform, or DCL or what have you. It's really old tech. Joel: They're not dead though, Chad. Chad: They're not dead. They're not dead, that's for sure. But to be able to utilize Zip's power along with this new platform, they've got a great opportunity in the partnership arena to make a shit ton of cash, and do a tone of distribution, and to be more targeted. Remember, Zip is an entirely different animal than any job board really that's out three. They're more targeted in their distribution and the types of individuals that they bring back. This is an entirely different play. It's cool. It's more of an evolved play. And kudos to those guys. Joel: And by the way, all these blogs, association sites, et cetera, are linking ways to monetize, because if you're looking on the blog side, they're not making bank on banner ads anymore. Chad: No. Joel: They need new ways to create revenue, and certainly posting jobs is a way to do that. So bloggers and publishers are looking for a solution like Job.io, JobBoard.io. And I think this is probably pretty good timing to introduce that to them as well. Chad: Yep. Joel: All right. Let's hear a quick ad, and then we'll talk about, shockingly, AI, which we talk about every week. Chad: Yeah. Joel: 'Cause there's buckets of money going into the industry. And a couple other items. So stay tuned. We'll be right back. Announcer: Google, Lever, Entelo, Monster, Jibe. What do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovren technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job, while others use our technology to help companies find the perfect candidate. Sovren has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996. And we can help improve your hiring process too. We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit sovren.com. S-O-V-R-E-N.com for a free demo. Joel: Sovren powers everything, man, so you've got to get over there and check them out. Chad: They power the Chad and Cheese Show for the 2018 season. Joel: They do. Yes. Thank you for bringing that in. Sovren. Again we need the applause. We need to applause. Sovren has committed to sponsor the show through 2018, and we couldn't be happier. They're a great partner, great folks. Go write a check to Sovren. Use their solution. They're awesome. Thank you Sovren for that. Chad: Rolling right into AI, like you said, Sovren powers the world when it comes to AI. And we're gonna talk about one of your favorite names in the world, Stella. Joel: Stella. Chad: And Talenya. One not so favorite, 'cause you don't even know what the hell that is. Talenya. Go ahead, tell us a little about Stella. Joel: Because Talen-Kenny G was taken. Remember Enya? Is she still around? Anyway, bad 90's music reference. Okay. Yes. Stella.ai, my daughter is named Stella, so it's a special place in my heart. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel: One of my favorite beers as well, but we won't get into that. Raised $10 million to grow their sort of AI solution. Stella is interesting, because they apparently have actual brains building their AI solutions. So they're touting people from NASA, DARPA and Stanford, which everyone pretty much needs now to yeah, basically go through your data base, pick out the right people for the jobs, and we don't need you anymore, recruiters. We'll just use AI to pick out those candidates. So they've just gotten $10 million to grow that? Talenya lost money, but a very similar business model. Also got them. Chad: So real quick was Stella. Much like we saw with Helena last week. Now I think we're starting to see platforms target the recruiters and say, "We can do it better than them." Where before they weren't. They were tiptoeing around this. That's interesting. I did go to Stella and try to get into the database to see how easy it was. It sucked. I don't give a shit if you're from DARPA or NASA. I mean, first off, just because you're from DARPA, you're a really smart guy, doesn't mean you know a God damn thing about the employment business. Just so you guys know that, okay? I don't give a shit how many freaking acronyms you throw around. I was in the military. Generally they don't mean shit to anybody unless you know the actual industry that you're trying to develop for. Chad: That being said, yeah. I think it's interesting they have 100 companies, enterprise companies that they pulled in. They probably gave it to them for free to be able to use their brand, which is always smart. But we'll see how that goes. Chad: Talenya on the other hand, an Entelo wannabe I think, where they're going out and they're looking for and using the "open web" or whatever the hell you wanna call it. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: To find candidates. And they also, it sounded like that they had recruitments experts or professionals or whatever the hell to help try to make those matches too. So this almost feels like it's an AI / human kind of scenario that's going on with Talenya, which is a bad name. Joel: Which would you least like to say you were with on a sales call? Chad: Talenya. You don't know how to spell the God damn thing. Joel: Talenya. This is Chad with Stella. Chad: Stella. Yes. Stella. I love. I mean, Stella.ai. Okay that's easy. I'm with Stella.ai. Anybody can spell that. Talenya is a dot com, so I have to give it to them for that, because they didn't try to go with an io or something. But still kind of like PREM from last week? You know? Every sales person is going to have to get on the call, spell it out at least five times, and that's not what you want or what you're looking for. Joel: Yes. Yes. Chad: But anyway. They're a wannabe, and they received $3 million dollars was it? Joel: 3 million, 3 million. Dude, that was a little bit of a rant on Talenya. Like I wasn't expecting that. Chad: Oh my bad. Joel: Good for you for getting a little fired up here halfway through the show. Joel: So the timing seems to be right on this stuff. There were some studies, stories released as well. Out of the UK they found the SMB industry 79% of small businesses says, "they are excited about AI in recruiting." Which makes sense, because small businesses either don't want to pay the exorbitant staffing fees that recruiters charge. Chad: Right. Joel: Or they can't afford to hire anyone on staff to recruit. So yeah. If they can use a machine to do it, I'm sure they would be "exited about it." And the Wall Street Journal last week also reported that work force management software, sales are up 23% in the last two years, which translates into it being an $11.5 billion market currently. Joel: I know some of you guys don't like us talking about AI every week, but guess what. If the money's flowing and these companies are getting cash, which they will continue to do, we're gonna talk about them. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So there you go. Chad: Well this shit's not going away, first off. And we're not gonna stop talking about it, 'cause it's popular, and it's popular. If it's not popular and it's not getting money, right? But it's interesting. Chad: I think it's slightly, not slightly, very ironic that a European study actually showed that SMB's are really excited about AI, when the European market, probably even the Asian market, is about three to five years behind the US market. And we don't even have our shit together when it comes to AI yet. I mean, we're getting there, and I think we're further ahead than anybody else. Chad: But I think it's interesting that the market's ready for it, but the technology in some cases is not being well received by actual vendors in those markets. So I'm really excited, put a quick plug in, to be in Dublin in March for TATech Europe, to be able to talk to European vendors about this, because the market wants it. Why the hell aren't they doing this? I almost dropped my third f-bomb this episode. Joel: That'd be bad. That'd be bad. I mean, we haven't talked about sex robots in a while. I'm sure if you had a survey of who wants sex robots that there would be a high percentage of men in any continent say "Yes", even though none of us have ever seen a sex robot before. And by the way, I would not put myself in that wanting a sex robot category. Chad: No. I do not agree. I don't think that a bunch of men are looking for sex robots. I mean, I think that's more scary than anything else. Joel: Dude, I'm gonna go find a report somewhere that shows what percentage of men want, anonymous study that says how many want sex robots. And I bet it's over 50%. Chad: Okay. Joel: All right. Till next time. Joel: You wanted to talk about Facebook and Google's duopoly as part of our little AI segment. Chad: Yeah. I think it's pretty interesting that recruiting doesn't really get the whole marketing game yet. It's incredibly important that we see recruiting as marketing. Yeah, there are different aspects of it where recruiting is definitely recruiting. But the big front end aspect of this is marketing. Chad: The reason why I'm prefacing all of this is Google and Facebook together, call this a duopoly, they're accounting for possibly around 63% of the US digital ad revenue this year. And that's growing. Nearly two third of the market, right, is two organizations. And those two organizations, correct me if I'm wrong, are two big organizations that we're talking about getting into recruiting. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: Google in three different prongs, three different areas, Facebook, they're shit's all messed up right now. But I think they're gonna come together. But that is, I think that is just a huge resounding siren for everybody that's out there that they need to really start getting their shit together and do one of two things. Either pull together a strategy on how they can work around this, cause you're not gonna work through it. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: Number one. Or number two, partner with these guys and figure out how you're gonna make money within this new landscape, 'cause this landscape's not going away. Joel: Look, there's a reason that money flows into Facebook and Google. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's because it works. Because they get eyeballs. It's because they have engagement. So - Chad: They're lifestyle platforms. Joel: Yeah, the fact that they're both in the employment space now, means that you need to be aware and leveraging the fact that they are so huge and get so many eyeballs and like you say a lifestyle business, lifestyle site. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel: So if you're not using these guys, one you should be advertising. You should be spending money on both of them. But also if you're not posting jobs on them if you're not leveraging them in other ways. Joel: And don't forget YouTube as well. I was at a conference recently where someone said their best social channel was YouTube, which kind of surprised me, cause people don't think about YouTube as a social channel, but it's also a search channel. Chad: Yes. Joel: Clearly, the market has said Facebook and Google, you need to be using them to promote your company. And if you're not doing it to promote jobs, you're doing it wrong. Chad: 63% of the market on the advertising side of the house. I can't imagine how many millions and billions, hundreds of millions. But that's ridiculous, and they're coming for your jobs people. I don't mean jobs as in taking your - Joel: They want your job postings. Your candidates. Joel: And by the way, you're gonna make money off those 100 million profiles, because my guess is Google will go out and search the web for like a billion profiles pretty soon. Chad: Like I said, the vulnerabilities for Indeed are high. They'd better start making, I mean, there's gonna be so many people that are focused on them, crosshairs on their little skulls. Joel: Well, Chad. People should be looking at budgets for next year as we talk about Facebook and Google. You know what else they should make sure in their 2018 budgets? Chad: What? Joel: Anonymous employee review monitoring. And that's where Ratedly comes in. Chad: Companies don't do that already? Are you shitting me? Joel: Well they do it manually. They have the boss' son go to Glassdoor once a week to see what's going on. They kind of look at it, but they're not looking at the dozen to fifteen or so sites out there that have employer review sites, or employer reviews on them. Not only Glassdoor, Indeed, Canoe do comparatively, but you gotta be looking at sites like Twitter, Reddit, and qQora for commentary on what it's like to work at your company, and Ratedly goes out and monitors all of those sites for you, sends you an email every day with all the new reviews, and guess what? We're coming out with analytics soon, so these big companies that get tens, hundreds a day of reviews and it's just too much of a fire hose to make sense of it? Ratedly's gonna start making sense of it for you by breaking it down in terms of analytics that you can understand. And we're real excited about that. Which by the way, we'll be increasing prices. However if you subscribe now, you'll be grandfathered in and get analytics at the price today, which guess how much? Chad: $10,000 a week. Joel: I wouldn't be doing this podcast with you if that's how much it was. No. It's 147 per month, which is the bagel budget for most companies. Yeah, so I'm hoping to increase prices and get out of the business of podcasting with you every week, and just helping companies monitor their employee engagement and their reviews out there online. Joel: So anyway, if you wanna learn more, head out to ratedly.com, and of course it's the holidays. We have a special. Use coupon code CHEDDAR to try Ratedly for one dollar. If you don't like it, cancel. If you do it's just the 147 per month. But do it now before the price increase in analytics coming in Q1 of 2018. Chad: And for all the listeners out there who love hearing Joel's silky, smooth sound every week, he's going nowhere. Don't worry about that. He'll hire somebody to do the important stuff so he can podcast. Joel: The important stuff. Joel: All right. Back to the podcast. We did pretty well. That was totally ad libbed. Anyway. Joel: Let's end the show with some weird, funny fun stories. Joel: Indeed put out a press release. Everyone's having their year end top companies, top CEO's. Indeed published their weirdest job titles of the year. It turns out people are really sort of stupid about putting words like rock star, genius, guru, wizard and ninja in their job postings. Chad: Yes. And from this dumb ass. I mean, here's security princess. Galactic viceroy of research excellence. I mean, do you really want to get those jobs filled? Or are you just trying to, if you're just trying to have some internal kind of laughs, okay, cool. You made that happen. But it's just ridiculous. Chad: I don't know how many rock stars and ninja postings I've seen, and gurus too. I haven't seen many genius or wizard postings. But yeah. Every time I see that I just gotta shake my head. Joel: And let's be practical about this, people. No one is going to Google in search in galactic viceroy, right? They're searching security jobs or crypto currency security. That's what they're searching. They're not searching ninja, guru, maven, overlord, dynamo, vigilante, or superhero on Google to find a job. So stop doing it. Chad: No. Quit being a dumb ass. Chad: Let's talk a little bit about this Tesla ad that you're so in love with. Joel: I love it. So Tesla, as most listeners will know, makes some electric car. Their founder Elon Musk is hoping to save the world with getting us off fossil fuels, getting us to Mars and populating other worlds and doing all kinds of stuff. Joel: Anyway, apparently hiring high tech people in the Valley is pretty hard. I don't know if you've heard this or not, but apparently it's real competitive. And instead of talking about how much money you're gonna make or how much in stock options or hey, you get a Porsche for a bonus if you join our company. Joel: Tesla is going after the purpose based marketing. And their ad, which I'm not exactly sure what publications or where it's showing up, the ad basically reads, "Hiring top talent, accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy". Right? So you're not just making money. You're making the world a better place. The sales people aren't called sales people, although I know like we just ripped people who call people ninjas and princesses. Their people are called energy specialists. And the ad says, "Join us on our mission to change the world. Come teach our customers how to get off the grid and live a sustainable Tesla lifestyle. Interested? Send your resume to blah, blah, blah. Visit our website, blah, blah, blah." Joel: So to me that's a great ad, because it's showing a purpose. And you know, we get into this millennial folks that they all got a participation medal, is that they want to make a difference. They want to make their mom happy and their friends think they're cool cause they're saving the planet. And Tesla is tapping into that. And I applaud Tesla for that advertisement. Chad: Okay. I semi applaud them. I think the actual job title is dumb as hell, because they're looking for sales people. And sales people see energy specialist, and they're gonna go onto the next posting. Joel: All right. Chad: Because it says nothing to them. It has nothing to do with them. So they have to do something that highlights that this is a sales position. Something. It doesn't matter. Chad: So they are getting way too cutesy on this. It might not say rock star or galactic viceroy, something that incredibly stupid, but they've gotta be smarter about the actual experience and the types of individuals that they're looking for. And that's the thing that when we get into this, we start naming things like, this sounds great for us. Well it doesn't matter wheat it sounds like for us. It has to do with the individual who you are trying to reach out to. What will they be searching for? That is the key. At that point, then start to create this wonderful message around what they're looking for. And they're not looking for energy specialists. They're not. Chad: So I think yes, I applaud their vision and what they want to do in life. But they suck at naming actual job titles. Joel: All right. I gotta agree on the energy specialist thing. I think we both like take your job, make it a purpose, make it something more than money or stock options or whatever. If you can do that with your company, whether you're Tom's Shoes where people in third world countries get a pair of shoes. Companies that can do it should do it. Can we agree on that? Chad: Yeah, but I don't agree with the Tom's thing. You gotta watch the Adam Ruins Everything episode on that [inaudible 00:39:44]. You just go YouTubing. Joel: All right. Well this fun segment is turning sort of dark. Joel: So the last final thing for the show, and we should definitely stop. ICO's, Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies are all the rage. Chad: Yes. Joel: And I knew- Chad: And scary as shit. Joel: I knew it was a matter of time before we were gonna have to talk about this. Both of us know very little about it. So we're gonna tease a little bit and say that the CEO of one of these companies is gonna come on our show and school us on initial coin offerings, ICO's, Bitcoin, crypto, block chain, and why it's important to employment. Because either we're getting old or we're stupid or both. But we need some help understanding all this. Joel: Anyway, Moonlighting is the CEO's who's gonna come up, which is a pretty good domain, monlighitng.com. We trash domains, but that's a really great name and domain. And ConnectJob, which is connectjob.io are both unveiling ICO's, initial coin offerings. Joel: And what's interesting or newsworthy to me is ConnectJob has already raised $1.3 million on an initial coin offering. When I wrote about them last week, they were hoping to get $10 million. Go into the site today, they've since revised 10 million to 4 millions, so they're sort of getting a little bit more realistic. But the fact that this company that is getting $1 million just because they're unleashing a coin for crypto-currencies is pretty ridiculous to me, and that's the news. And we'll try to get more information as this thing grows and as we get more guests on that know what they're talking about. Joel: But this whole block chain crypto stuff is going to affect employment, and it's just kind of starting, and this is our first mention of it. Chad: It's going to affect everything, and as all these different technologies grow, and they become a part of this landscape, we're gonna talk about it. As Joel said, we don't know what the hell we're talking about right now, but we're gonna do a ton of research, and we're gonna get some of these CEO's on so we can talk more about it and how, specifically it's going to impact this industry. Joel: Bravo. Yes. Joel: And speaking of things we do know about, it's Sunday, and kickoff has already happened. And some of us are playing for fantasy football glory. And on that note, we should probably stop the show at this point. Chad: All right. So for my last to do. Yeah, no, really appreciate it. Everybody who's out there, definitely #chadcheese, go to chadcheese.com, and also down at the bottom we've added our Twitter handles in too, so if you guys want to hit us on LinkedIn, if you want to hit us on Twitter, let's engage. We're getting a ton of it now. We just want more. Joel: We out. Announcer: This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single show. And check out our sponsors, because they make it all possible. For more visit chadcheese.com. Oh and you're welcome. #Indeed #ZipRecruiter #JobBoardio #Stellaai #Talenya #AI #Google #Facebook

The boys are deckin' the halls and wreckin' the pod with a slew of industry news. Turns out, the holidays are a great time to pass out pink slips and head to court. Feel the cheer! On this week's show, Chad & Cheese talk about the following: DHI, Dice's parent company, is selling off it's albatross of a job board portfolio and going to court. Woo.io, Param.ai and IBM's Watson keep the AI / chatbot train rollin'. Valley companies are paying models to attend holiday parties (can you say 'tone deaf'?). Layoffs hit two well-know TA tech solutions. Boom goes the dynamite! It's a Sunday hangover edition of the show, as Chad dials in from sunny California. Egg nog, West Coast-style, baby! Enjoy, and as always, throw buckets of money at our sponsors, guaranteed to be coal-in-your-stocking free: Ratedly, America's Job Exchange and Sovren. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Announcer: 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: Welcome to a Sunday hangover edition of Chad and Cheese. Chad: Oh my God! Joel: HR's most dangerous podcast, not so much today. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: I'm Chad Sowash. The hungover one. Joel: Looking at a mountain in California as we record this podcast apparently. Chad: Amen. Joel: Which we'll get to in shoutouts I'm sure. On this week's episode, the industry soap opera rolls on with layoffs and lawsuits, just in time for Christmas of course, models are invading Silicon Valley and yep, you guessed it, more AI. I may be a robot, would you really know the difference? Stay tuned, we'll be right back. Announcer: Google, Lever, Intelo, Monster, Gibe: what do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovren technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job, while others use our technology to help companies find the perfect candidate. Sovren has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996, and we can help improve your hiring process too. We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit sovren.com; S-O-V-R-E-N.com, for a free demo. Joel: All right. Let's get to the California reference with our first shoutout which I guess goes to your lovely wife, and lovely because she puts up with you. Chad: Yeah. That's no shit. Yeah. Julie, it's her birthday. One of her big birthdays and we came out to Palm Springs for the week. It's beautiful out here, we've never been here before, and it's freaking gorgeous man. Joel: What does "one of her big birthdays" mean? Chad: It means one that I will not talk about other than saying it's a big birthday. Joel: It's a milestone birthday, is that what we're saying? Chad: Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It's a milestone. Joel: All right. Well happy birthday Julie. We love you. Chad: Yes we do. Joel: More shoutouts. I'm going to do a shoutout real quick to Skill Scout. In last week's episode I totally brain farted who I was going to shoutout from my conference in San Francisco, so to Elena Valentine at Skill Scout. Big shoutout to you. A big fan of the show. We appreciate it. Chad: Nice. Joe Stubblebine was in town from Nexxt. He was in Indianapolis before we came out to Palm Springs here, and had a chance to connect with him, have a great time, talk about the podcast, and have some cigars and bourbon. Big shoutout to Joey Stubbs. Appreciate you coming out man. Joel: Joey is usually pretty bullish on the podcast. Is he still pretty positive? Chad: Yeah. No, he loves him some podcast. He loves some Chad. Joel: Well good. Good. Shoutout from me to Hung Lee, which sounds like a stage name for a certain industry, but anyway, Hung Lee, great fan of the show, probably listening. We love you Hung. Keep hanging in there. Chad: You keep hanging in there Hung. Very nice. Joel: Do you like that? That's good. Yeah, I did that. Chad: Let's throw a little plug in there for workshape.io. That's his gig. He's the main man over at workshape.io. We have a couple of really cool announcements. Number one, go to chadcheese.com. We've got a new survey from Nexxt, and this is one that Joel will love. Will Generation Z Ruin the Workplace? That's a question. Joel: Yes. Chad: Yes. Joel: All right. I have a quick generational hater message or shoutout or side note real quick: we have a child and we're looking at babysitter options. On care.com, for whatever reason, babysitters in their teens and 20s want more money per hour than people in their 30s and 40s. Chad: Why? Joel: Now how you can explain that to me, it's got to be a generational entitlement, "I'm a millennial. I just walk through the door, I need to be CEO by the end of the week," kind of thing, but it doesn't just happen in the workforce, it happens in babysitter land. All these entitled brats want more money than people that have maybe actually had kids and actually have hands-on experience over a long period of time with children. Anyway, rant over. Chad: Joel, automatically says Gen Z will ruin the workplace. We want to hear from you guys though, so go to chadcheese.com. Click on the banner, you'll see it. It's a big purple ... just take the damn survey people. Anyway, there's also a $25 gift drawing. If you get in there, throw your name in the hat, you might win 25 bucks. Joel, what would you spend that 25 bucks on? Would it be maybe an hour for a babysitter? Joel: Well this is a Target gift card, right? It's not just a random $25 Visa card or something. Chad: I don't know man. 25 bucks, I'd just hand it over to Julie and she'd take care of it. Joel: That's nice, yeah. Well, Target, with an eight-month-old it'd be diapers or formula or something like that, because that stuff is expensive. Chad: Now, that's very, very expensive. Last but not least, we want to give big thanks to Disability Solutions for sponsoring the transcriptions of all of our podcasts moving forward. We feel that hearing impaired deserve some Chad and Cheese love too, so we teamed up with Disability Solutions and it's a reality. If you go to all of our November podcasts on the website and everything moving forward, everything's going to be transcribed and we appreciate it from our friends over at Disability Solutions. Joel: In addition to helping the disabled folks, it's great for SEO. Chad: It's going to kick ass guys. Joel: I'll just go ahead and say that as well as one of the benefits, but yeah, we really appreciate that sponsoring, getting that out there in text format. I would say let's be done with shoutouts and let's get to the news. What do you say? Chad: Go. Joel: All right. It's a Festivus miracle, not so much for people that are getting laid off and sued in the industry. Let's start off with the soap opera at Dice/DHI who owns a portfolio of sites, which most of our listeners would know. On the good news side for them I guess they unloaded a healthcare site- Chad: $15 million. Joel: ... called Health eCareers, which sounds very 2003 because it's Health eCareers and it sounds like healthy careers. Anyway, so they unloaded that for $15 million I believe. Chad: Yeah, 15 million. Joel: Which if you consider the fact that they bought some crappy energy job board for 50 million 10 years ago, or less than 10 years ago, these job board prices are going down and going down fast, especially for the healthcare industry, but- Joel: The only three they are keeping are, refresh my memory, Dice, and what are the other two? Clearance? ClearanceJobs. Chad: eFinancialCareers and ClearanceJobs. Joel: Those three are untouchable, but everything- Chad: Absolutely. There rest of them must go. Joel: ... else if you guys ... anyone want a solid retirement plan out there, go buy yourself a job board from DHI. Then they were sued. Tell us about that. Chad: Okay. This is ridiculous. We just talked about ... one of the turkeys that we gave out for Thanksgiving was the former founder and CEO of Oilpro. First, he sold Rigzone to DHI, which has all of obviously the database, the technology, whatever he had, he sold the company to DHI. They bought Rigzone, which was obviously an oil careers type of a job board. Well he leaves DHI, creates oilpro.com, and you can come up with some wonderful slogans for that one, Oilpro, and then he takes the Rigzone database with him, steals it, because he's already been paid for it. Then, he tries to sell Oilpro with all of this data that he stole back to DHI, who bought the shit originally in the first place for Rigzone. I know this sounds complex, and it's just stupid, but it's easy because the guy just kept selling the same data over and over, at least tried to, and now he's in jail. That's where we're at today. He's in jail. Now, Oilpro is suing DHI for their open source product, which they're saying was stealing their data. Joel: Basically Oilpro is suing DHI for scraping data- Chad: Yes. Joel: ... that they didn't have permission to scrape, which is ... okay. Stay with us here for a second. Oilpro stole DHI's data from Rigzone as their own and now ... so that dude's in jail. Literally the feds put him in the pokey and now they're suing DHI for scraping data that technically I guess was- Chad: Theirs already. Joel: ... DHI's in the first place because Oilpro sold it or stole it in the first place. They're also suing DHI for doing that to other companies that have nothing to do with Oilpro's business. It'd be like me suing Facebook because what they were doing was harming MySpace. Chad: Yes. Joel: I have nothing to do with MySpace but I'm just going to decide to sue them because, "Screw it. I'm just going to sue them for it." This is just bizarre. I hope the story doesn't end because it's so bizarre, but yeah, that lawsuit happened. Chad: Well dude, it is so fantastical these days the kind of shit that we're hearing, not just from politics but it's like make up your own lawsuit day, "Yeah. Let's go ahead and make some shit up and then we're going to go ahead and fire it off in a press release." It is amazing. I'm just interested to see how DHI defends against all of this, because there's more than just this lawsuit that they should be looking at. Joel: Well shockingly the judge didn't throw this out- Chad: It makes no sense. Joel: ... and you could say that there's some link between this stuff and what hiQ and LinkedIn is going through with scraping public data. The open web stuff is essentially taking social media profiles, creating a profile of someone, this is going on, but anyway, this is crazy stuff. Homeboy's in jail, suing Dice, Dice has to defend this, I guess it will be fun to watch or at least something to talk about, but yeah. Drama at Dice and let's get to layoffs- Chad: Oh damn. Joel: ... in the industry because no holiday season is complete without layoffs at job sites, or any company. The first one we have is Shiftgig, which is kind of like what it says, they help connect people with hourly kind of shifty- Chad: Gigs. Joel: ... restaurant type positions with companies. They just hired in August I think a new CEO who was from LinkedIn and he has come in and laid off about a third of folks according to Crain's Chicago Business, not the worst thing in the world I guess. He's sort of laying off people that aren't in Chicago, he's sort of condensing everyone in the Chi-Town area, but yeah, it's never fun to be laid off at Christmas and a third of your workforce is quite a few people. That's going to stir things up a little bit I think there at Shiftgig. Chad: I tell you. It's not easy being a new CEO, that's for sure, but making a move like this, a third of the workforce around Christmas, obviously you're taking a look at the end of the year, you're trying to tighten everything up for 2018, there's never a great time to layoff people but probably the worst time ever is around the holidays. From my standpoint, leadership comes in and it is incredibly hard. I've been in those types of positions before, it's hard to restructure and if they are in dire, dire need in trouble, then this might be one of the reasons or he just didn't give a shit that it was around the holidays and said, "This shit's got to happen. It's never going to be good when we do it, why don't we just go ahead and throw a little lump of coal in their stock and tell them to get the hell out?" Joel: Our hearts go out to anyone laid off particularly during the holiday season, however, if you're a recruiter, it does not look like these folks are being laid off for performance reasons. If you're looking to poach some folks going into next year, maybe go see who was at Shiftgig and might be looking for a new gig, particularly on the sales side or whatever those were. It is a recruiting opportunity as most layoff situations are. Chad: Well, and this is great for ... again, when you're in a leadership position, those are things that you should already be thinking about and I know there are some really great people that are over at Shiftgig. I know them personally and I guarantee you that some of them are already thinking about that or have done that, but yeah, our hearts go out to anybody who has to deal with this kind of shit this time of the year. It more than sucks. Joel: In fact, this probably won't happen, but if you are looking, put your resume out there on Twitter, #ChadCheese. We'll do what we can to connect you with recruiters or people or mention on the show. We'll do our best to spread some holiday cheer and get some folks jobs if they are listening to the podcast. Chad: That's right. Joel: They're probably not, but anyway if you are, ChadCheese your resume and we'll see what we can do for you. More layoffs at Cornerstone OnDemand as well. You might remember Cornerstone from a recent investment by a certain company called LinkedIn and Silver Chair, or Leaf, or Lake, or whatever it was, the bad band from the 90s. They put in $300 million into the company, and this is a public company. They announced their quarterly call, a 6% reduction in staff. They have about 2,000 employees from what I can tell, which puts them at about let's say 120 laid off. Word on Glassdoor and other anonymous sources point to a 40% decrease in sales staff. What do you make of that? Chad: Wow. Okay. You get a large infusion of cash and much like a new leader coming in, you've got new leaders that are there that are looking at your bottom line, so you see organizations start to tighten up like this. It is interesting that it happened on the sales side, so you have to wonder are they switching models or are they actually using staff or trying to use staff from maybe some of their partners or something of that nature. Maybe their focus is going away from direct sales to more partnership types of sales, agency sales, who knows, but generally when something happens like this and the sales staff drops, it's not a performance thing. It's generally a restructuring of, or packaging, of the product and/or partnerships on how the money is going to be flowing in. Joel: Or maybe LinkedIn is going to announce the acquisition of Cornerstone OnDemand at the 1st of the year, and all these folks will be gone and they'll just be duplicated by LinkedIn sales staff anyway. I'm just speculating but who knows, it could happen. It could happen. Chad: That's a possibility. [inaudible 00:17:27] think that that would happen. Usually what happens is you see an acquisition and then you hear the, "Nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to happen," and yes I'm doing air quotes, and then something happens. It doesn't happen in this manner, this is kind of backwards from what you would normally see, but you're right. It could be a symptom of what is to come. Joel: If you consider the optics, it's not LinkedIn has to lay off people, which affects stock price or people asking questions and what's going on with the business model. It's Cornerstone lays them off and then LinkedIn acquires them and no one's asking questions because Cornerstone did the laying off and LinkedIn doesn't. It's kind of an optics thing I would think. Now, with most ATSs, they're sales heavy. Every ATS I know is like sweatshop salespeople, so this is sort of odd in that aspect. I can't imagine 40% of your sales staff. Again, this is allegedly. We know the 6% is confirmed but 40% of sales staff we don't exactly know for sure, but that's ... if 40% of your sales staff is underperforming and you're laying them off, to me there's a real problem with your either hiring or training or what, but that's crazy. Chad: This is something different. This is something different. There's some type of restructuring that they're doing. I've seen companies do this before where they have staffed up for a certain type of model, sales model, and they see that it just doesn't work, so they have to switch. Whether it's going from more of the person-to-person kind of lower account executive who is smiling and dialing and just burning up the phones, versus somebody who's more connected, and you're going to be paying those individuals more but they're going to be doing more of the high-value target type of acquisition. It could be something like that but to me if it is, 40% of the sales staff, there's something that's going on from a structuring. Joel: Yeah. I don't claim to be a Cornerstone expert, so I'm willing to roll with anything, but yeah, let's go with a different model and a total 180 of what you're doing. AI is in the news again. Chad: Whoa! Real. Joel: As it always is. We got three items. I guess we can start with Woo. You might remember LEAP Woo. LEAP got money in woo.io. They're all either IO or AO, or AI or OI these days. Tell us what Woo did this past week. Chad: It's funny because we've been talking about AI for shit, almost a year now on this show. Joel: The ship's not even a year old, but yeah, we've been talking about it for a year. Chad: Yeah. I said almost a year. All of these other AI platforms are really focusing on trying to be human friendly, and they're saying, "No, this technology isn't looking to take the place of your recruiter. This is actually looking to enhance your recruiter, and it will help take some of these steps away," and so on and so forth, and some even say it's kind of like an Ironman suit for your recruiter, so it makes it really cool and the recruiters think, "Yeah. I'd love my Ironman suit." Well, Woo said, "Screw that. We're launching Helena," the AI headhunter, "And pretty much all of the AI machine learning companies out there that have been talking about assisting, yeah, we said no. Helena is ..." they're not going to sugarcoat this, "Helena is going to do recruiting better than your humans. Early results ..." and this is from Forbes, "Early results show that employers are accepting 52% of candidates for interview that have been put forward by Helena." Chad: Now that's better than recruiters who are generally around 20% and far better than job boards where you're looking at about 2.5% of applicants suitable for interview. What they're saying, they're coming out here and being ballsy, not sugarcoating it at all saying, "Look, our AI headhunter is better than your human beings." Boom! Joel: Helena is basically a Mount St. Helens on the recruiting industry, at least to be. For those of us old enough to remember what Mount St. Helens actually was, but yes, you're right. Most of these AI support kind of solutions, they don't tout themselves as the destroyer of all mankind in this certain profession. They sell it as, "We'll be your best friend. We'll be the one that does the dirty work. We'll be the one that filters through 4,000 resumes and puts four of them on a silver platter for you to then call and all of them are the perfect candidate, you just need to find one that can speak well and be a human." This one actually says, "You're all out of business. We're taking over. Adios amigos," and that's a scary message. Companies to buy that is sort of putting themselves out there. How many recruiters employment departments are going to buy solutions that are going to put them out of business? I think it's a fairly risky proposition for a company to say like, "Buy our product and we'll put you out of work." How does that sound? Chad: Yeah. RPOs I think would gobble this up in a heartbeat: staffing companies, RPOs, because that is their business, and it's funny. We've talked about on the show before that RPO, they look at recruiting as a business. They look at the EBITDA, they look at the margins, they look at the actual cash flow. Talent acquisition they don't. It's more of like an art for them than it is really a real business. This I believe speaks directly to the RPOs, the staffing companies who have a shit ton of cash as it is, and they get those guys won over. I think being able to switch over into the talent acquisition side of the house, maybe soften your message who knows, it'll be easier, but dude, it's amazing. You hear so much on the AI machine learning side, whatever the hell we want to call it, of just kind of the sugarcoating, "No. This is not good. No, This is not here to hurt you recruiters. This is here to help," not Helena. Joel: This is, "We come in peace." Chad: Yeah. "Helena is going to come and she's going to burn your shit down." Joel: By the way, why are all the bots mostly named women? Chad: I don't know. That's a very good question. Joel: Maya. Chad: Olivia. Joel: Olivia, Helena. We're going to talk about Watson for a second, which is a last name that we associate with Sherlock's counterpart- Chad: Oh the voices. Joel: ... but most of these ... yeah. In a world of harassment and what, let's give some equal opportunities to male names. I want to see Jeeves again, I want to see Bob, or Chip. Donald, or maybe not Donald. Let's equal this thing a little bit. All right. Let's go to Watson because I'm making no sense with the female bot argument, or rant. Watson is going nuts on their build a bot solution, advertising it everywhere, and we've sort of forgot about Watson, but a lot of these platforms are built on Watson, the [inaudible 00:25:15] Watson, but we just wanted to make a side note, give a little props unless you have something more to say, but Watson is still there. It's the backbone of some of these solutions and they want to build a bot for you. If you're looking to do that, check out IBM's Watson. Chad: Yeah. That's a nice ad for Watson there Joel. Watson, seriously- Joel: Better than an ad for iCIMS. No one thinks IBM's writing me a check. Chad: That's better than an ad for iCIMS. Joel: I've also heard Watson blows. I don't program AI, I don't do this stuff. If you're doing AI I'm sure you've looked at Watson and you've made a decision whether to use it or not, but I think the fact that they don't want to be left behind, they want to be at the forefront of this stuff, because I'm sure Google's going to release some sort of AI, API stuff. I know Siri is available on iOS apps and things like that. Anyway, yeah. I don't know. I don't think there's a commercial, but they're out there- They're pimping man. This is like a race. This is an arms race for who's going to power the AI infrastructure of the 21st century. Chad: From what I hear their chatbot, at least the chatbot platform that they have is pretty stout. I think they're finding hopefully their strong suit and they just nailed it, because I'd love to see more than just the Googles and the Facebooks and the normal names that we've heard. IBM's been out there forever, but you just don't see them as a big player anymore. To be quite frank from what I'm hearing they are. Joel: Yeah. They just need to get back on Jeopardy again and destroy the humans- Chad: I won't think much. Joel: ... and then rethink Watson. All right. Back into our industry. A new AI solution out of India, got roughly a quarter million dollar seed money. The name is ... we'll probably talk more about the name and that'll get more interest by our listeners than the actual company, but tell us a little bit about what Param.ai, and that's P-A-R-A-M.ai. Imagine yourself being a salesperson pitching Param.ai, or Param, to a prospect. It would be a total pain in the ass, but anyway, tell us about a little bit what they're doing with their solution. Chad: First off, the salesperson, I guarantee you, they have to spell that name, that URL, probably five times per phone call, because nobody knows what the hell Param is. We'll talk about that here in a minute, but it seems like they're trying to do kind of like what Howie and the guys over at Crowded are doing. They're trying to actually take the data from the ATS and they're trying to pull it back out because in most cases, the candidates that are in the applicant tracking systems go into a black hole, nobody sees them again, nobody uses them again, and usually there's not really good search technology to go in and match against current open recs. Chad: Param.ai, that's P-A-R-A-M.ai, that's what they do, and that's exactly what Crowded is doing as well. We're starting to see companies do some very, very smart programming to be able to use that gold mine that is in the actual applicant tracking system, that black hole that's in there, and then start to match up with some of the social data that's out there, some of the social graph kind of data that's out there, pull in and refresh like Crowded does their profiles. Joel: Well let's get back to the name, shall we. It's not as bad as O-hire, which we talked about a few weeks ago, which ... "I'm with O-hire." Joel: "What?" Joel: "O-hire." Joel: O-hire, whatever it is, anyway. We were so interested or we had so much time on our hands this morning over hangover coffee, to actually look up in the Urban Dictionary what Param meant. Please share with our listeners what you found because I think it's very entertaining. Chad: This is obviously from Indian descent, we saw some of their companies that they're actually working for and whatnot and they are Indian based. We thought I'd look on the web, just from a dictionary standpoint. I wanted to see what this actually meant. Didn't find anything except in the Urban Dictionary, so brace yourself guys. Joel: Of course. Chad: Param, definition number one: a teenage boy from India that enjoys wiggling his toes and making fun of people who eat toast. That's number one. I have no clue what the hell this even means. Definition number two, Param: a cool guy who likes to bang chicks all night because he is savage. That's number two. I've no clue what this shit even means. Number three, and I'm only going to do three. An adjective used to define a person who has breasts. You go to the website and then you take a look at some of the marketing that's on there. Let's take a look at it and let's use some of these definitions. Joel: Sure. Chad: Supercharge your applicant tracking system with a guy who likes to bang chicks all night. Start taking data back decision. It just makes no sense guys. It really doesn't. Joel: I'm most enthralled by the first one. Chad: The eating toes? Joel: A teenage boy who wiggles his toes and makes fun of people who eat toast. What in the hell is that about? Chad: No clue. Joel: If you eat bread you're fine, but once you toast it boy, that teenage kid wiggling his toes is going to go after you. Anyway, all right. Let's hear from AJ and talk about models at Valley parties when we get back. Announcer: Americas Job Exchange is celebrating our 10th year as an industry leader in diversity recruitment and OFCCP compliance. We've been helping our thousand plus customers comply with OFCCP regulations that directly support positive and effective diversity recruitment, designed to attract and convert Veterans, individuals with disabilities, women, and minorities, and empower employers to pursue and track active outreach with their local community-based organizations. Want to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284, or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Chad: Eating toast. Joel: Model sweet toast. You and I have both done our fair share of trade shows, and will continue to do so. One of the phenomenons of the trade show industry are what are known as booth babes, which is essentially attractive women and men, in a booth, they have a basic sales pitch, but their role is to essentially attract people there and then get a basic lead generation thing, and then give it to a real sales person that actually works for the company. I understand how this works, I understand that people are attracted to attractive people, that's as old as civilization, that's not going to change. I understand the business proposition of that. I think it's a little slimy, but who am I to judge. Joel: A story comes out this week that ... holiday parties are in full swing in the valley and a story came out that companies are hiring models, mostly women in the story anyway, to go to these parties and I guess just socialize with the geeks and the people that work at these Silicon Valley companies. Personally, I find this odd because there's no real business purpose for this aside from having attractive people talk to your employees, but I also find an incredibly sort of tone-deaf in the environment we live in right now with harassment and all the things that are in the news. This just sounds like valley bubble shit where they're immune from everything that's going on in the world and they're- Chad: That's totally insane. Joel: ... going to do their own thing, and the world misunderstands it but who cares, we're Silicon Valley. Chad: It's total bullshit, and to be able to ... just take a look at the news today. You're taking a look at the news and you see exactly what's going on with MeToo, and we're trying to talk about equality right? But yet, we want to be able to play this Silicon Valley model game where you have a bunch of wallflowers, a bunch of geeky wallflowers who work at your company, and you want to have a fun holiday party, so instead of getting a bunch of those guys together, we're going to throw some hot chicks and maybe some hot dudes in there as well. Joel: The other thing is any office that I've been in where the technology department resides, most of these cats are in headphones and with like three huge ass monitors coding all day. A holiday party should be an opportunity to actually talk to other people that you may not talk to very much during the work day, and actually get to know them as people and socialize with them. I don't understand how objectifying women and men and throwing them into an office setting for a holiday party serves any purpose whatsoever. I just find it totally tone-deaf and a total Silicon Valley thing and I hope going into the future that Silicon Valley catches up to the rest of the world and gets on board with sort of equalizing of the sexes and gets into the ... you know what I'm saying. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's Sunday morning, a little slow, but yeah. This is just really bad optics on the valley and it needs to stop. Chad: Well, I mean, you've got a Google developer who did ... he wrote an entire ... he wrote about how women are inferior to men. Joel: Women are different, and the whole Uber thing, right? Chad: Yeah. Now you may objectify them by pulling them in this models, I mean fuck guys! Seriously, this is the dumbest shit ever. Joel: You summed it up perfectly. You have this Brogramming culture that on paper says women are different at this than we are. Then you're trying to change that but then you objectify women and bring them into your holiday parties, talk about mixed messages, get woke. Chad: Get woke. Word. Joel: Get woke. On that, I think we're done with the show. Chad: Well, before we leave, we've got to wrap something up though, because we ... last week, we talked about Joe Shaker and his Wisconsin Badgers. I'm sure today as Joe's wrapping up this podcast after he listens, he's going to go ahead and pour himself another glass of eggnog and cry about it. Joel: A glass of cheese curds for our favorite Wisconsin graduate. Chad: Yeah. He's crying about that and we're crying because the Buckeyes won the Big Ten, and we're pissed off because we got left out of the football championship. Joel: Apparently beating two top five ten teams and a top 12 team isn't good enough for the voters, even though Alabama only had two wins over ranked teams, not nearly as high as top five. Chad: No. Joel: But whatever. Whatever. Chad: Buckeyes will beat little USC ass as I sit here in the valley. I'll be wearing my Ohio State gear the entire time I'm here. Joel: Cheers. All right kids, have a good week. We out I guess. Chad: Late! We out. Announcer: This has been The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single show, and check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit hiredaily.com, oh, and you're welcome. #Watson #IBM #Chatbot #Wooio #DHI #DICE #OilPro #Paramai

It’s a Nexxt EXCLUSIVE The Chad and Cheese Podcast where we’re diving headlong into the hiQ versus LinkedIn court battle starring and interview with CEO of hiQ Labs, Mark Weidick. It’s also a lactose-free event – Joel Cheesman (Cheese) is out on assignment or maybe he just found a comfortable place to curl up? In this episode Mark and Chad talk: Updates on their David v. Goliath court battle Negative industry (Global Innovation) impact if hiQ loses Scraping, bots, how can we ID bad from good actors? FlipDog’s name is used in phishing vain Are we losing control? Start-ups in court? Net neutrality? Why are other – affected – companies in the fetal position instead of fighting? CrowdJustice – crowd funding legal battles and last but never least Nexxt gives Mark a reason to think his family might be ducking him during the holidays. None of this would be possible without the gang over at Nexxt and in the spirit of giving – YOU can get 25% off your first Text2Hire campaign by visiting www.nexxt.com/chadandcheese25. HAPPY HOLIDAYS from The Chad and Cheese Podcast! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION: Chad: This The Chad and Cheese Podcast brought to you in partnership with TA Tech. TA Tech, the association for talent acquisition solutions. Visit TATech.org. Advert: What happens when your phone vibrates or your texting alert goes off? Yeah, I bet you're reaching to check your phone right now, aren't you? That's your Pavlovian dog reflex to text messaging, which is why text messaging has 97% open rate and a crazy high response rate within the first hour. All great reasons The Chad and Cheese Podcast love Text to Hire from Nexxt. That's right, Nexxt, with the double x, not the triple x. So if you're in talent acquisition, you want true engagement and great ROI. And because this is The Chad and Cheese Podcast, you can try your first Text to Hire campaign for 25% off. It's a holiday recruiting miracle from your buddies, Chad and Cheese. How do you get this discount? Just go to ChadCheese.com and click on the Nexxt logo in the sponsor area. No long URL to remember. Just go where you know. ChadCheese.com and Nexxt with two x's. Intro: 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. Chad: Welcome to this Nexxt exclusive episode of HR's most dangerous podcast. This is Chad Sowash and I can't tell you how happy we are to have Mark Weidick, CEO of hiQ Labs with us today again. Second time around. If you're lactose intolerant, today is the show for you. THat's right, we are cheese free. As in, Joel Cheesman is out on assignment. Because that sounds better than taking nap. Chad: All right, Mark, welcome back to the show, man. This is the second time you've been on. But for those listeners who did not listen to, shame on you, the August 25th show where Mark actually gave us an interview, can you tell the crowd, can you tell the listeners who the illustrious Mark Wedick is? Who's this guy we've all heard about? Mark: You and me. I'm the CEO of hiQ Labs as of February 2017. And I have a background in early stage technology out here in Silicon Valley. Hold on a second. Do you hear my dogs in the background? Chad: No, you're fine, keep going. Mark: And I'm a dog owner, a dog lover, as I said up in Northern California. And we're dealing, of course, for those listeners that weren't in tune with the prior interview with a legal battle with LinkedIn around public data. Chad: Gotcha, gotcha. So we have a ton to talk about today, but since turkey day is still fresh in everyone's memory, for all those who are not in tryptophan stupors at this point, I'd like to take some time if you don't mind and run through some fun research that we did with the gang over at Nexxt. Are you cool with that? Mark: That'd be great. I'm anxious to hear it. Chad: Okay, okay, so listen. So the main survey question, I'm just going to run through one of these questions, is would you use work as an excuse to miss Thanksgiving? Again, the question is, would you use work as an excuse to miss Thanksgiving. Now I'm sure you wouldn't do that, Mark, because you have a lovely family. Mark: They might use work as an excuse to miss me. Chad: That's a good point. So, here it is. So here's how it broke down and they broke it down generationally, which is really cool. So Gen Z, which is 1997 to today, 48% of them said they would definitely used work as an excuse. 36% of millennials. 29% of Xers and 24% of Boomers. That breakdown is astonishing. Why do you think that is? Why so many? Almost 50% of our Gen Zs and then 24% of Boomers. Still, almost a quarter of Boomers. Mark: I looked at the 24% of Boomers as actually a smaller number than I expected. I thought it would be a little bit more consistent. And maybe we're just more set in that way. Don't want to put you in the same category, but I'm sentimental. I look forward to the holidays. It's a time to chill out, relax. I love to cook. I have friends out here, and we're into the wine scene and it's just a good time. So I don't think we're as motivated to look for a reason to avoid due to sentimentality. Chad: Yeah, well I, on the Gen Z side and the Millennial side, I think most of them, or at least 20% of Gen Z's are still living at home from my understanding. And Millennials are still living at home in most cases, as well. And they already get enough of family time. So, I kind of get that. It's almost like, oh my god, Mom and Dad. You know, they're at the point where they need to get the hell out of the house in the first place. Chad: But Xers and Boomers. You know, Xers, 20 almost 30% and Boomers at 24. That's when you're really ... I mean, as an Xer, not grandfather yet. But when I am, I definitely want to see the grandkids. So it's definitely going to be different than that 50% who says, I've had enough of family. Mark: Yeah, I think you nailed it. I think the notion of being there all the time kind of contributes to the idea that I might want to get away when that family time is going to be ultra concentrated. Chad: Yeah. If you haven't seen the infrograph or taken the new survey that Nexxt has, just go to ChadCheese.com, check it out. You'll see, it'll say survey, inforgraphics. Too easy, man. So we're going to the real show. We're going to stop clowning around. Are you ready? Mark: Sure, fire away. Chad: Okay, sure. Okay, so the big question right out of the gate. Everyone's been hearing about hiQ versus LinkedIn battle, right? But can you tell our listeners why this case is so vital for not just the recruiting industry but every industry out there. Why should anyone care? Mark: Well, this is about control, right? And ultimately, the control of the information that so many of us contribute to the life experience at both a professional and personal level that we all have. That information is owned by us, certainly the case of LinkedIn. LinkedIn doesn't dispute that. They don't own the data. Mark: And the notion that the control of that information would become so highly concentrated among a handful of extremely large companies creates a horrible dynamic. It creates a horrible dynamic around the prospect for innovation and new services. It creates a horrible dynamic ... well, I guess innovation and anti-competitive behavior go together. But history has shown that when choices are limited, so too does the richness of the experience become diminished. And that's the dynamic that we're talking about here. Mark: If this data is deemed to be that controllable, this data that you and I purposely designated as publicly accessible or not is controlled by a single entity other other guys that collect data about us as well, it limits the richness of our professional and personal life experiences. Chad: This seems like an issue, though, lately, because I mean, control along with net neutrality, right? I mean, we're now looking at having an issue perspectively with net neutrality. And we're talking about data, we're talking about control. We talk about net neutrality we talk about control. Do you see this perspectively as an issue that we're really going to have to fight hard for the next four, eight, who knows how many years? Mark: Well, I hope it doesn't take that long, but absolutely I do. The regulation that exists that in some sense is possibly applicable is proving to fail right now. So at a macro-government level, it certainly seems that new regulation reflective of current circumstances has warranted here. And God help us if it takes eight years to figure that out. That's certainly not internet speed, is it? Chad: Not at all. And I think that's one of the biggest issues that we have with government getting into this. They don't move fast and they don't understand, it seems. Like, they don't understand how these types of moves, which again is kind of scary with LinkedIn versus hiQ. At that point, you're not really sure where they're going to go. I'm glad that you guys are in the ninth circuit, as we talked about. But again, when we had our last interview, we talked about the initial win against LinkedIn where you guys received an injunction. Can you bring us up to date on where everything is at this point? Mark: Sure, coming out of the preliminary injunction, the judge in short said the balance of hardships here tips clearly in favor if hiQ. That the things that we were doing with member public profile data, data that LinkedIn clearly does not own, don't constitute really any harm whatsoever to LinkedIn. They certainly didn't do an effective job, if any, of describing what harm they were incurring as a result of this. Mark: So coming out of that, the judge granted an injunction. The injunction prevents LinkedIn from putting in place and technological or legal impediments to our efforts to collect, aka scrape, member profile data. Subsequent to that, LinkedIn had a choice. They could accept that outcome or they could appeal it. They chose to appeal it. Chad: Well, of course. Mark: Expected that they would. When they appealed, they filed their appellate brief on I want to ballpark timeframe, early October. Chad: Okay. Mark: It took us approximately six weeks through November 20th to file our response. These are all public documents, by the way. A lot of ways, if you're even marginally interested, these are fascinating tomes. And well worth the read. Chad: Are you guys publishing these on your website? Mark: Yes, we are. You know what? I say that quickly. I don't know if we've posted ours yet, but they will imminently be up, both LinkedIn's filing as well as ours. Chad: Excellent. Mark: And they're beefy, right? They're excess of 10,000 words each. LinkedIn gets the last say. So they'll have an opportunity to respond to our appellate filing. My understanding is they have 30 days to do that, so before the end of the calendar year, they should be in a position to get filing. And then it's off to the judges process to assign the three panel judge, the three judge panel. And set a hearing date. And our expectation is that each of those things ought to happen in Q1, including an outcome, a decision, Q1 of 2018. Chad: So deep breath, right? Mark: I think so. Chad: Good, good. So what I've read, and I saw that there's a hundred page response that you guys put out. I got to dive in to a tad, surface-wise. It looks like LinkedIn's main regulatory stance seems to be the CFAA, so the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Two part question. Can you tell me about what aspects they're using of the CFAA And number two, how you feel LinkedIn is manipulating it for this case. Mark: I'll give it a shot. Although the documents do a great job of breaking down both sides of that argument. They really do. The lawyers earn their Mooney on the description at least. So the CFA application of course is in question by us. Generally speaking, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was put in place to prevent illegal access to protected, largely password-protected, computing services. Mark: So think about a world where you have some sort of authentication, maybe a password or some other security token that, in the absence of having, you are unable to access that computing service. LinkedIn's position, which Judge Chen described as an overreach, is that by simply saying, we don't want you to access our computing services, their right to prevent us is preserved under CFAA. Remember, there's no password protection for you or I do view LinkedIn member public profiles. Chad: Public data. Hence, public, right? Mark: That's right. And there are ... I'm going to find out, the things you learn through a process like this, Chad. I have the sense that there are literally dozens and dozens of CFAA cases where the root of the issue is someone giving their credentials to someone else for the purposes of accessing data that's on a private computer network. That does not sound at all like the situation between hiQ and LinkedIn public profile data today at all. Mark: As a layman, I look at it and say it's beyond curious that this would even be the device you use to protect this data. So that's LinkedIn's position and that's sort of the genesis of CFAA. This goes back to what I said earlier, that the regulation we have in place is dated at best. CFAA is a regulation that was created in 1986. Think about all the things that existed or didn't exist. Thing about the mobile phone you had in 1986. Chad: Yeah. Mark: And again, we go back to regulation, how it's not keeping up. And that's one of the hardest pieces, right? It's hard to keep up with Moore's Law as it is, let alone with regulation, knowing how slow it moves. Chad: Back to what you were saying, LinkedIn they're actually saying, yeah, we do have public profiles. Mark: No dispute on that point. Chad: If they're public profiles and it's public information and they realize that that data is my data, then why is this even a conversation? Other than them just trying to bully you Mark: Let's be clear, bully hiQ and many, many other companies that scraped before us or scrape concurrently with us. Chad: Why aren't we hearing from them, though? Why aren't we hearing from them? That's the thing that bothers me the most. We see hiQ out there, you guys are in the forefront and you're fighting the good fight. Why are all these other companies that could be coming out for not just hiQ, but for this issue, they are sitting back in the fetal position and they are hoping and praying that you guys actually do the shit that needs to be done. Why aren't they fighting the fight? Mark: That's a hard question to answer. I've talked to dozens of them. So many have reached out. So many have offered to help. THey've offered to help through amicus briefs. They've offered to, in some cases, help fund our legal defense. So I don't know. At the end of the day. I suppose it does have something to do with either access to resources, sufficient resources to combat the bully. If you know you don't have the resources to combat the bully, why waste what you do have? Chad: Why wouldn't you do that in public, though? Isn't that the cheapest way to actually get out? Social media, press the case, and show your support for what's going on in this case. Mark: I think it's among the best ways. I don't think it's the easiest way. I'm a big believer, a follower of Seth Godin. I look at his blog, not all 7,000 of them, but ... a few weeks ago, he wrote something that felt very poignant to me. It was, is your issue important, popular, or viral? And it caused me to think about the plight of anybody who's received a cease and desist letter from LinkedIn. Mark: And by the way, some of those cease and desist letter recipients were clear violators of LinkedIn's terms of service. They've acknowledged, hey, we were doing things that you didn't want us to do so we'll fix that. I don't know how many others have a situation that even similar, let alone identical to hiQ's. Mark: But in this notion of important, popular, or viral, I could argue quite convincingly that this is a very important issue. We touched on why at the beginning of this conversation. This is an important issue. Every human in the world should have some sense of understanding what's going on here. I don't think it's popular or viral yet, though, Chad. No yet. Chad: It only gets viral if people start to stand up and actually use their megaphones. That's the problem, right? I mean, from my standpoint. Mark: Me too. And I wish. I hope, I'd like, but I recognize that in a world where you have thousands and thousands of stimuli coming at you every day, how much time are you going to spend parsing an issue that's as nuanced and complex as this? Chad: Maybe six seconds. And I'll let you know. We've talked about this issue on this show for many episodes. I obviously had you on interview once, thanks, twice now. But this is something that's important to us in our industry, which means the snarky assholes on this show will continue to talk about this. But what you are talking about, though, in our industry, companies have scraped public data, mainly company jobs, and this is all the way back in the Flip Dog days before Monster bought them. Mark: Right, wow. Chad: Yeah, remember that, right? Mark: Way back reaching. Chad: And they've used it for phishing schemes, to be able to compile candidate data for years. So for us, I believe the big question is, how can we distinguish between good actors and bad actors. Russian bots versus legit companies trying to innovate for the common good. How do we know? What's the litmus test? Mark: I wish I were smart enough to assemble it. I'd love to be part of a group that takes a shot at doing that. I think there is a rubric that can be applied that gives us a better methodology for sorting out the good actors and the bad actors. It doesn't exist today, that's for sure. It hearkens back to ... should know the name of the justice who had the is it pornography or not case. And his quote at the end of it was, we may not be abl to define it, but I'll know it when I see it. Mark: Look, the people that I've talked to in this community of interest have a remarkably consistent point of view around what is a good actor and what is a bad actor. And those that are bad actors will often acknowledge privately, yeah, I'm on the margin. I'm a little bit over the line. Mark: So many of us understand or we come back with a similar conclusion about whether something is in good faith, good actor. Bad actor, bad faith. It's doable. It just hasn't been done. Chad: So right now, because the regulations suck and they're back to 1986, that's why we have terms of service, right? Terms of agreement, all these different terms, which you are abiding by with LinkedIn or at least when you started working with them. They might have changed them. They change them it seems like every other day, for goodness sakes. Mark: They change them so much that even Judge Chen referred to them as speciest in their application. That nobody reads the fine print. And again, there are dozens and dozens of very smart people, several attorneys, in fact who have dissected LinkedIn's terms of service to highlight the self-conflict. Literally from one paragraph to the next, you'll find instances of something like this. You must do A followed by you can never do A. Mark: And my experience often, that type of situation spawns from the desire to monetize something. Let's change the terms of service so we can actually do what we want to do to monetize this and we'll worry about the conflict that we create later on. And we'll worry about the confusion that we create later on if it ever becomes an issue. And then you're relying upon the large entity to be a good actor, as well. And whose interest do they have at heart, right? Mark: One thing we didn't touch on as I went off like the busted hose I did around the dynamic here is the money associated with it. Will people care about this when they recognize the billions and billions of dollars that are at stake? Will it be the economic interest that finally catalyzed the masses to make this a popular and viral issue as well as important issue. Chad: And that's the question. And another big question and something else that I don't think listeners or many people out there understand is that this switch wasn't flipped on hiQ until LinkedIn looked at hiQ and said, we're going to get into that business line. Mark: That's how it seems to us. Someone else might ultimately be the judge of that, but the sequence of events and encounters that led up to the cease and desist really do constitute the proverbial I smell smoke so there must be a fire. They knew about us for several years. They participated in our twice annual subject matter experts. People analytics expertise from all segments of industry would join us to talk about issues of the day. Mark: And we were very clear in the evolution and genesis of our product. Keep our retention product and the data that we used to inform it LinkedIn public profiles. LinkedIn was party to that. We met with them on a frequent basis across several years only to find out that they were in fact banking a competitive product. Jeff Weiner alluded to it in an earnings call a while back. He went many steps further in an interview with the now-exiled Charlie Rose in June of 2017. And they launched that product at their Nashville event a couple of months ago. And we have customers who said, yeah, they've specifically said we're selling against hiQ. Mark: So this notion of understanding what skills you have and what jobs are out there and to provide a match along that dimension, right, that's our skill mapper product which we launched in April of this year. Has been in the works, it seems, at LinkedIn for quite some time. And now that we're competitors, we get the cease and desist letter and we can't do what they want to do. Chad: And they want to use public data, my data, your data to be able to do what hiQ is doing. But they don't want to allow hiQ to do the exact same thing. I mean, that's really the issue here. So when we start doing this, everybody else on the block better get off my block. Mark: Yes to all that. And furthermore, as was demonstrated in the preliminary injunction hearing, it seems that LinkedIn is equally flexible with respect to how they use our private information. LinkedIn, my understanding is, a recruiter product will allow a purchasing recruiter to access profile information that goes well beyond public. I don't know if they use public and information designated as private to inform this new product that they launched. But certainly they put up as a shield this notion of protecting member privacy, that they're the steward of member privacy as the reason that they need to throttle us. Mark: Meanwhile, they're going several steps beyond what we would use to inform their own product. So that's the height of hypocrisy and it's all driven by the dollar. Chad: And the shield is scaring the living shit out of everybody because there are so many bad actors out there and we can't allow bad actors to get your information, right? Mark: That's right. And look, it comes back to the important, popular, viral thing. How many of us really understand? When you hear that someone is scraping data to do something you didn't expect, your natural reaction is, bad actor. We've been sensitized to that from the phishing schemes that you alluded to and many others. Chad: Here's a fun one. So in an Ad Week article, you might have read this, I don't know. Rami Assad said that hiQ's a parasite. You guys are pretty much just taking all the hard work that LinkedIn did and really just being a very parasitic type of organization. How do you respond to guys like that who ... he's actually a security specialist, so go figure. He wants everything locked down. How do you respond to this? Mark: I'll respond to that in a moment. What does Rami's company do again? Chad: Thbey're security. On his Twitter, he actually says- Mark: I think they sell tools. Chad: We've been locking down bots for like 10 years or something like that. So it's something that is in his best interest, obviously. Mark: Yeah, that's where I was going with that, of course, that I believe his company sells tools that help with bot management. And certainly this is that degree thing we talked about earlier, Chad, whereby when does an active scraping endeavor to public data begin to look like a denial of service attack? When are you actually impacting server capacity and degradation of the experience that LinkedIn customers ... We're well short of that. We quantified it. We understand that very well. Mark: So how do I respond to the parasite notion? I've been called worse. I've been called better. My customers pay for the value that we deliver to them. And these are enterprise level Fortune 500s who are actively looking to do a better job with their employees. If we were universally viewed as a parasite, I can't imagine that we would have had the economic success that we have had to date. There's clear value in what we do. Other companies are trying to do it, as well. LinkedIn is trying to do it as well. Mark: So the notion that I use a public dataset to do it, it's a red herring. Is Google a parasite because they index everybody else's data for us to have a more affective search experience? Are the pricing optimization applications that look at Amazon pricing all day long to help us get better prices on the goods and services we buy, are they parasites, too? Chad: Right yeah. It's easy to point at these little pieces. And again, when you run a company and you hope that you get an opportunity to stop bots, because that's what your company does, but this is how we innovate. So a big question. If your injunction does not stand, and we hope if does, there's no question. What does that mean for small companies all over the nation who are trying to innovate and trying to provide these services that, to be quite frank, just aren't going to exist because they're not going to have the opportunity to innovate? Mark: Well, certainly there's an obstacle in front of anybody who's trying to use public data to innovate, no doubt about it, if this injunction does not stand. How do they say this? I'm a pragmatist. I'm not an optimist. I'm not a pessimist, but I do know that the optimists often call the pragmatists pessimists. So I recognize ... and we're about the same. I might sound like a little bit pessimist. I have not spent 1/100th the amount of time contemplating our next move should LinkedIn win the appeal as I have spent time contemplating what we do when the decision is upheld. Mark: I think about when we, so to speak, win. And the things that happen subsequent to that. And that this cloud of uncertainty that has put friction on certainly hiQ and likely many, many other businesses, that cloud is gone. And now the market can truly opine around the value that we proport to deliver. It won't be a sales discussion around how long will you have access to the data. Well, what is LinkedIn going to do? All that goes away. All litigation conversation goes away. All the strategy around how we handle it goes away and we get to focus on the core issue, which is what can we do to help your business be more productive and cage better with your workforce to present better opportunities to them. All the things that we want to do. Those are conversations we need to get to. Chad: So you had a crowd justice campaign and many many people, myself included, went out and supported hiQ, but it failed, right? So you're trying to hit a mark. Explain the crowd justice initiative and are you going to try it again? Mark: Don't know. Look, when you're a small company, you get to experiment with many many things, and you get to refine your thinking and take another bite at the apple on many occasions. So the crowd justice thing, it's actually a nice sort of summary to this story arch we've created here across the last 20 plus minutes. It touches on the community of interest outreach that hiQ experienced. I said earlier that I had literally dozens of companies and individuals, CEOs of other companies reach out to ask how they could help. Mark: And I don't know when we started to talk about it. It was more than one, but it wasn't the 12th or the 13th that provoked us to say, well, I wonder if there's enough interest that people would want to be a part of this, that they would want to think that they've contributed to addressing this public data dynamic. And ultimately, we took a shot at that through this crowd justice is the platform that we used. Mark: And then, what became abundantly obvious was cemented with the Seth Godin post that I alluded to. Important, popular, and viral. The notion that this was important was very clear. The media coverage we got driven by our desire to put that crowdfunding out there was immediate. Interestingly, much of the media I think stayed away from highlighting it or even presenting the URL. They don't want to be the source of either success or the catalyst for that tipping point, They don't want to take a position about that, and I respect that. I understand that. It's our job to get the word out there and to catalyze interest to fund it. Mark: But in the big scheme of things, it changes nothing. We still have the same appeal process to go through. We're still funded by investors who will continue this battle to the end. My ability to fight the appeal was completely independent of the success of ultimate failure of the crowdfunding endeavor. Mark: We identified the legal budget for the appeal. It's about a $700,000 endeavor. We thought it was fair for potential contributors or ultimate contributors to know, to have a sense of how much they'd be moving the needle if they made contribution if we got to the $100,000 goal. And we're proud of the way we handled it. It was a very transparent campaign. It ultimately didn't get to the goal, but that doesn't change anything about out day-to-day. Mark: And would I do it again? Chad: Well, from your standpoint- Mark: Here's when I think it might make sense. We talked about why the every man or every woman probably parses on this subject for six or 10 seconds, that was my summarization. It's a six second glance at the issue. And if the gravity of this situation ever reaches the point where all of us could have some common understanding of the impact it will have on society, then I think a crowdfunding thing becomes a more relevant topical action-oriented platform upon which to create participation. But we're not there yet. Chad: Well, I hope we get there. And I'm going to go ahead and round this out by saying, Mark, we really appreciate again, you guys going out there and fighting the good fight and challenging. Everybody else who's out there, if you believe this is an important issue in us to make this viral. You got to speak up. You got to do something. You can't just sit on your hands and hope that people go and fight the fight for you. You've got to stand up and you've got to fight it yourself. And we really appreciate Mark, you guys oing that at hiQ. Chad: This isn't just a story of a blip in time. This is something that could and would negatively impact more than just the recruiting industry itself and we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Mark: Glad to do it and I'd be glad to keep you apprised as this whole situation develops in the future. Chad: Excellent, Mark. Thanks so much. Good luck. Let's knock this thing out. Mark: Thanks for planting the seed in and around the Christmas holiday to wonder why my friends and family may choose not to participate. Advert: Don't forget, ChadCheese.com and click on the Nexxt logo for 25% off your first Text to Hire campaign. Seriously, what do you have to lose? Oh yeah, candidates. You have candidates to lose. My bad. Text to Hire, better engagement, better experience, better candidates. Outro: This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single show. And check out our sponsors, because they make it all possible. For more, visit ChadCheese.com. Oh, and you're welcome. Chad: Thanks to our partners at TA Tech, the association for talent acquisition solutions. Remember to visit TATech.org. #HiQ #LinkedIn #Nexxt #TATech #MarkWeidick

On this Thanksgiving edition of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, the boys have some mad shoutouts, especially for tweeting fans and feisty Indeed employees. Big fun. Then, like a finely balanced plate of meat and potatoes, the guys go through their Top 5 lists of things for which they're thankful in the recruiting industry and wash it all down the exposing the biggest turkeys in employment. Yummy! Enjoy, you jive turkeys, and be sure to checkout our sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren and Ratedly. All guaranteed to not give you heartburn this holiday. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: 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: Gobble, gobble, you jive turkeys out there. Welcome to Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad : And I'm the tryptophan-free Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's Thanksgiving episode, we go over five things for which we are thankful, we highlight a few of our favorite turkeys and, holy shit, we have hash taggers on Twitter. Chad : What?!?! Joel: Get excited. Get out of your tryptophan coma and stay tuned. Advert: America's Job Exchange is celebrating our tenth year as an industry leader in diversity recruitment and OFCCP compliance. We've been helping our thousand-plus customers comply with OFCCP regulations that directly support positive and effective diversity recruitment. Designed to attract and convert veterans, individuals with disabilities, women and minorities, and empower employers to pursue and track active outreach with their local community-based organizations. Want to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284, or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Chad : So, did you just literally wake up from your nap? Joel: Dude, Thanksgiving is rough. Chad : Dude, I have to say, I actually went without the turkey this year. First year I did vegetarian all the way through. Joel: So you feel fine. Chad : Yeah, I feel great, dude. I feel great. Joel: Well, you'll get to carry this show, then, which, let's be honest, is usually the case, anyway. Chad : Whatever. Joel: You remember "Trading Places", right? Chad : Oh, yeah. Joel: The jive turkey thing, when Eddie Murphy's in jail, and he's like, "It ain't cool bein' no jive turkey so close to Thanksgivin." That's one of my favorite lines. Chad : Oh, well anyway ... Joel: That's when Murphy was funny. Chad : Back in the day. Joel: Well let's get this show over with so I and the rest of our listeners can go back to bed, watch football or whatever it is that they're doing. By the way, we have a lot of international listeners who don't have Thanksgiving, so they're like, screw off. Get with the show. Get with the program. Chad : Well, you can enjoy a day like today with a turkey sandwich, which I sure you can find anywhere in Europe or wherever we're getting our listeners. I think they're mainly Europe. Joel: Or if you're a vegetarian like Chad, you can get your tofurkey sandwich on today. Chad : Yeah. You don't even need that. Just veggie up. Joel: We got a lot of shout-outs today, which, you know, in the season of being thankful, shout outs and highlighting the people that make it all happen are certainly important. So, we'll start out first with our listeners. Shout out to our listeners this year. Chad : Yeah. Yeah, big shout out. So, Dan [inaudible 00:03:27] I believe is how you say it, Sapir from Restoration Media, he's one of those guys who feels ... he's a little bit happier reaching out via LinkedIn. Thanks, Dan, we appreciate the connection and we appreciate you listening. So make sure friends, family, all that stuff, make sure you share it with them and get everybody listening to the old Chad and Cheese.. Joel: And maybe our favorite listener, the job board doctor. From day one, super tweeter, every show we go to, he's in the front row. Yeah. We love the doctor. And our biggest fan, her name is escaping me because I'm still sleeping. Do you know who I'm talking about? Chad : Is it Christy or is it Tracy? Joel: Christy. Chad : There it is. Joel: Shout out to her. Sorry Christy, I forgot your name there for a second. I'd be lucky to name all my kids at this point. Chad : That is freaking classic. That's awesome. So, did we get anything on Twitter this week? I hate to go back to Twitter and see nothing. But I think we actually saw some action out there didn't we? Joel: So a little context. We have been trying like a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest to get people to engage with us on Twitter with hashtag ChadCheese. Chad : And that's hard. Joel: And we've never had success. But we're starting to finally get a little bit of action on Twitter. So, ZWD, which I'm assuming is a company and not the initials of someone because they have a logo. So I was wondering if there will ever be a Chad Cheese episode that doesn't mention Google, Indeed, Facebook or Microsoft? Probably not. How about predictions on which small TA tech startups have a chance to cross the chasm? Uh, New Year is a good time to make predictions. Yes, it will. Joel: Well, we made firing squad for the specific purpose of highlighting these small TA tech companies. So ZWD, get on firing squad and check out at least the three or so shows we've done with startups in this space. Chad : Yeah. If you go to Chadcheese.com, on the front page, maybe not today, but they're usually there. You can get a firing squad. Or, you can go to the tatechlogo. If you click on the tatech logo, it'll take you to the TA tech partnership podcast. And we have a ton of firing squads in there. So flash recruit, Crowded.com which was a killer podcast, Goodtime.io and Vervo. So we've done a handful so far and they've been received really well. So you need to listen to more Chad and Cheese. That's what I'm hearing. Joel: clearly more in your diet is Chad and myself. Chad : More cheese. Joel: More cheese, yeah. More cheese. Mason Long hashtags hey, the November 19th show sounded great. No cross talk. And thank you, Mason. We are a guerrilla amateur podcast, so yes, we do have problems from time to time. So we appreciate the positive feedback. And Mason I know has been a long time fan, so shout out to him as well. Chad : Thanks for listening. Joel: Yep. And Matt Burney @sussexmatt, excuse me @sussexmatt, which I assume is in England. Chad : I would assume. Joel: He says listening to another great show, Chad and Cheese. And Matt is a insight strategist at Indeed. So it's funny that he doesn't want to hear about Indeed. He wants to hear about companies that aren't named Indeed. Chad : What? Actually somebody over at indeed who ... they're probably a few of them over there that like listening to us. Joel: But know one guy who doesn't. Did you see the LinkedIn post? He was snarky. He may like to listen, but he certainly ... he felt like we landed on our nose with Indeed's recent queue, whatever, earnings report from their parent company. Like 1005 growth or something. I'm forgetting exactly the numbers. Chad : Yeah. Joel: But, yeah. You and I are old enough to remember when Monster was real cocky too. Chad : Yeah. It's really funny because as we talk about strategy. And you and I aren't just looking at the ground as we walk, we're looking out in front of us. We know that the earnings report today doesn't mean a damn thing for tomorrow. And remember when Monster was dethroned by a little fledgling startup called Indeed. Remember that? Joel: I do. Chad : Because they got cocky. They got stupid and they didn't focus. They were looking down at their earnings reports of today and they weren't looking for tomorrow. Hers the big problem for Indeed. Is that when Monster got taken down by this fledgling start up, that was a little different fro today, when Indeed is looking the Goliath of Microsoft, Google and Facebook in the face. So the amount of time that it actually took for Indeed to take down a Monster, which it took a little while. Which I thought, it's an awesome story. But the thing that they have to understand is history. Chad : They really have to understand history. Stop looking down, look up, see what's in front of you and you can be snarky all you want but you're going to get you ass handed to you if you continue. Joel: It's much easier to laugh off some little start up with a few million in funding than it is to laugh off companies with a lot of money, a lot of resources, a ton of brand recognition. This is like when Amazon gets into the grocery store business, people muddy their pants, right? Because holy cow, this is a real player that people know and trust that's getting in the game. So to me, Monster laughing off Indeed 10,12 years ago, that was understandable. Joel: For Indeed to have this hubris like, "Oh. Things are good and they are going to keep being good," is really sort of stupid. So, Mr. Gamble, enjoy your moment in the sun because it may not last. Chad : Put on your brown pants because time's coming. Joel: Your big boy, brown pants. Yeah, yeah. And final shout out from me, our sponsors. Guys, if you like the` show, like listening, it's because we have sponsors. Without them, without Nexxt, without AJE, without Sovren and the like, we would not be doing the show. So, go out and visit them. Give them your money. We've got tons of specials usually from their services. Big shout out to our sponsors. The show wouldn't happen without them. Chad : And a big partner, TA Tech. TA tech is really helping the show out, getting us in front of more listeners, and getting us out in front of more companies. So, big shout out to TA tech as well. Peter, Pete, Repeat and Pete. Joel: Yep. Chad : Really appreciate it guys. Joel: And if you're going to be in Dublin in March for Saint Patrick's Day, and you need something to temper down the alcohol, come by the TATech show. Chad and I will be doing our thing live from the conference. Chad : Joel will be eating a turkey sandwich. Joel: Turkey sandwich. All right. You ready to get to our top five things we're thankful for? Chad : Not yet because we still gotta talk about this cool ass infographic that Nexxt provided. Remember that? Joel: Yeah, the Thanksgiving infographic. We can't forget that. Chad : Dude. It is funny as shit. So, our peeps over at Nexxt, right? They are awesome and they're always doing surveys. And we agreed to partner with them to be able to, not just do surveys, but to have some fun with these surveys. So it's not just boring ass metrics. Joel: Yep. Chad : So if you go to chadcheese.com, there's an infographic button that you can click. And it's actually an infographic called skip the turkey. I have to work. So, Joel, what did you think about this thing? Joel: Well, I love Thanksgiving. Always have. Chad : There's food. Joel: Food, after 21 alcohol, football and I kind of like my family. So, spending time with them isn't a big deal. But apparently, a lot of people aren't real excited about Thanksgiving. And this infographic broke down generational opinions and attitudes about Thanksgiving. And shocking to me, generation Z, which unfortunately we're talking about now, up to Baby Boomers, progressively going the other way, don't like to spend time. And what the infographic showed was that almost 50% of the Z's, don't like to be around on Thanksgiving and they will use work as an excuse to not eat, drink and be merry. So, shocking to me but whatever. Chad : Yeah. They'll use that as an excuse and if they could work ... and it was funny because you took a look at they also did ... I think this was a two question survey. The second question had to do with would you work on Thanksgiving? And, 44% either 9% was working, 35% said I'd like to work. 35% of people said yeah. I'm not working but I'd really like to work. Joel: Yeah. Chad : So here's the big question and this is going to roll over into the Nexxt piece. Why in the hell do people not like Thanksgiving like you were saying. I love football. Uncle Joe on the recliner fast asleep in a tryptophan coma, drooling on the leather recliner isn't always fun, right? But it's tradition and it's fun. But, the question is, why don't these people like turkey day? Right? So, what we're doing and what we've agreed to do with Nexxt because this was such a fun infographic, is we're putting out another survey that asks that question. So, if you're listening to the podcast, go to chadcheese.com. You can click on a button that says infographic, you can check out the current infographic, but definitely hit the survey button. And then, you can go through and say, "Yeah. Hey. I love being with my family or no, this really sucks because family talks about politics, any of that fun stuff and tell us why you don't like to go to turkey day. And guess what? It's not glass door, so this is going to be anonymous, okay. So you don't have to worry about your answers getting out. Joel: Ouch. Yeah. That was the last podcast. Anyway, if you want to know what Chad is talking about, listen to the past weeks podcast. Chad : Last week. Joel: Yeah. Dude, infographics are great. And Nexxt is rocking the fun topics. Like these aren't your average boring infographics that we're cranking out. So, awesome. Chad : They're allowing us to kind of collaborate and take webinars to the kind of fun, Nexxt level, infographics. This is what people really want. So big applause for Nexxt. Joel: And it's Nexxt with two exes by the way if you're visiting online. Chad : Not three. Joel: All right. Are we ready for our top five? All right. Chad : Let's do this. Joel: We'll run through this quickly I assume, maybe not. Here are my five things that I am thankful for. Number one is 26.2 billion dollars. Now what do I mean by that? Microsoft buying LinkedIn for 26.2 billion dollars started a chain reaction amongst big ass companies to say, "Maybe this whole work thing is worth exploring and getting into," because once LinkedIn spent that money, Google, Facebook, these big companies said, "Oh. We want a piece of that." And the reason that we're able to talk and write about stuff, usually about Facebook, LinkedIn and Google, is because they're actually active in this space. Joel: And it's a lot more interesting to talk about them doing this than it is about Monster doing whatever, or CareerBuilder parting with whatever newspaper, like this to me is a lot more interesting. So I'm very thankful for the 26 billion dollars that Microsoft spent. Number two on my list is decision trees. Decision trees, as many of you know from high school science class, is essentially taking a response and then moving the tree to different things that occur based on those responses. As you and I have been talking about chat box extensively on this show. We know that these "AI solutions" are really decision trees. But because we've rediscovered decision trees, wrapped them into an AI wrapper, we're able to talk about automation, "AI" on a regular basis and really talk about employment in a really different way. Joel: I think it takes sourcing, the future of recruiting to a different place. That I'm very, very thankful for. Because again, we're not talking about new job boards in Toledo, Ohio, we're talking about real technology and things that are going on in that aspect. Chad : Amen. Joel: Number three on my list is Charles Darwin. Evolution and survival of the fittest. Look, without that, again, we'd be talking about newspapers launching job sites. We'd be talking about the latest vertical search engine for jobs. Because Darwin and Evolution happens in every industry, including recruitment, we're able to talk about new technologies, new solutions. Things like Crowded. Things that we're excited about. I'm very happy that we're not in some stale, boring industry. And most people when they think of HR, they think of really not that much exciting stuff. Joel: And historically, they've been right. So I'm really happy that evolution happens in our industry and we're able to talk about that on the show. Chad : Okay. So, Darwin. Are you familiar with a Darwin awards, right? Joel: I am. I am. Chad : Which may bring us [crosstalk 00:18:23] Joel: Turkeys later in the show. Chad : Exactly. I'm thinking that we should possibly do like an end of the year Darwin awards. Joel: Well, yeah. January 1st, hey. If you've got an idea for our final show of the year and predictions, hash tag chadcheese, let us know what we should talk about and make predictions on. But I certainly agree, the Darwin awards would be an interesting addition to the show. Number four on my list. Man, we're cranking through these. Number four on my list is the rule of law. And I highlight this because I, like you, are incredibly interested and excited about the HighQ versus LinkedIn court case. Chad : It's big, man. Joel: It's huge. And people outside of our industry will be affected by this. People outside of our industry are watching this closely. How bots can interact with websites and your personal data on websites and sites like LinkedIn. This is a very interesting case. So, the fact that this isn't happening in countries that don't have rule of law, like the fact that HighQ is actually going to get their day in court probably and state their case and there will be a judge make a verdict based on precedents and all the other crap that happens in the justice system. I'm happy that we live in a world and I live in a country where that's going to happen and that the little David can take on Goliath and this issue will be played out in court and we'll be able to talk about it. I'm very excited about that. Chad : Yep. Agree. Joel: Number five. A little switch up from my ERE post. Those of you that don't know, I write for ERE quite frequently. I'm thankful for them. Just head onto ERE.net for all of my weekly posts. I know Chad reads religiously. Chad : Yes. Joel: Bringing back the dead. I'm going to throw that in as my number five because I think we're going to heat of the nature later. Chad : Yeah. Yeah. Joel: For years, certainly me and I know you as well, have thought or talked about the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, million in some cases of data and contacts and employers ATS's and whatever they have, that are just dead. Like this whole black hole of resumes has been an issue forever. Chad : Right. Joel: And the fact that companies are being launched ... we talked about Crowded and did a firing squad with them. But Lever, we're going to see more companies like this that are doing unique things to re-engage candidates, think of them more as customers, think of them more as long term relationships than they are. Oh, we got a resume, we're not interested, throw it in the heaping pile of garbage that is our database. So I'm very thankful that we're finally sort of addressing this issue. There are start ups that are solving the problem and I'm excited to see the waves in the future and new startups that try to re-engage with candidates that have applied to your company. Convey IQ I also mentioned formally take the interview. We talked about them on one show. They are doing engagement in a similar way when you apply and so it's just cool stuff to take technology and build a higher level of touch in recruitment and I'm thankful for that. And that is my five things I'm thankful for this holiday season. Chad : Wonderful. Very nice top five. So, we're going to hear a little bit from one of our favorite sponsors before we head into mine. Joel: Yes. Unless you have comments about mine, we will go into our Sovren highlight ad, who we love. But if you have nothing to add, which again is normal, we can go to the advertisement. Chad : I'm going to have five which are going to add to yours. That's just what I do. You know that. Colored commentary. Joel: We'll be right back. Advert: Google. Lever, Entello, Monster, Jibe. What do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovren technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job while others use our technology to help companies find the perfect candidate. Sovren has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996 and we can help improve your hiring process too. We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit Sovren.com, s_o_v_r_e_n dot com for a free demo. Joel: All right. Chad : Silky smooth. So my top five, and this is where all the backtalk should happen. There's no question. Number one, 26.2 billion. You see that as the impetus for Google and Microsoft and Facebook. And my top five are really going to be focused on I think more podcast types of things than anything else. Not just the industry. Because whenever we talk about Google, Microsoft, Facebook and we talk about these new technologies and LinkedIn and whatnot, our listenership, I mean we get so many listens and so much interaction from those. And what we're trying to do is obviously give the people what they want. So I am so thankful that the tsunami of Facebook, Microsoft and Google products and services, whether they're good or we think they stink, it doesn't matter. I'm just glad that they're happening because we're getting a hell of a lot of interaction and feedback and opinions. Chad : And that's exactly what this podcast is for. Joel and I are never 100% right, I wish. But we do have opinions and we want to hear yours too. So, that's definitely one I want to piggyback on, Joel's 26.2 billion. That's a big thing. Joel: Yeah. And to Twitter ZWD, why do you guys keep talking about these companies? The fact is, people want to hear about our opinions on these companies because it is making such huge waves in the industry. Chad : Yeah. It is a good question, especially if you are a start up. It's like, "Why aren't they talking about more startups?" Well we do talk about a shit ton of startups guys. About companies getting funding, right? And not to mention we have an entire podcast once a month called Firing Squad, that's dedicated to startups. So definitely love it. And the only reason we have those is because our listeners told us that's what they wanted. Number two, decision tree/AI. Mine's more on the AI side because it's the glitter, the glam, the sparkly, shiny thing that everybody's looking at right now. Chad : And, it's another one of those cool factors that's breathing life into old products and creating new ones. So, you're starting to see companies pivot and they're pivoting more toward machine learning AI. And this is incredibly interesting. And whether we believe it's true AI, it's sentient, or any of that shit, it doesn't matter at this point okay? Yeah, I don't like the mislabeling of things. But what I do like, what I love about this industry is being able to be innovative and to be able to pivot off of these new ideas. So I love that we talk about AI, we talk about robots, and the only reason we do is because it's out there. And, it might not be as prevalent as maybe a Google's machine learning or as well put together as a Google's machine learning or Sovren's. But guess what? It means it's in the conversation and it's getting there, which means we're pushing more towards innovation. So I'm very excited about that. Joel: Yep. Chad : Mobile. This is the big one guys. So, for all of you who don't know, Joel and I actually did a podcast about 10 years ago. And the only way you could hear this stuff ... it was pretty pathetic. But, the only way that you could hear this stuff was if you were behind your computer, on a desktop, in a browser. And because of mobile, it's so much easier to stay engaged with podcasts. So that's why I'm so thankful for mobile. So, today, I can listen to podcasts on flights, in my car and even my weekly or twice or two or three times a week depending on the rain, mowing the lawn. I love it. I can get out there and I can listen to podcasts and hopefully you guys are doing the same. Chad : Obviously listen to us, but your out there and you're hearing all these new views and opinions. So I'm very, very thankful about mobile because it's taken podcasting to an entirely different level. Joel: And it's only going to get better for this medium. I think that the real mobile device ... ha ha ...is the car, right? Chad : Yes. Joel: And I think that podcasts will continue to infiltrate the cars and how people ... the growth of podcasts will happen, but they will be podcasting in more places, which is part of the reason why we wanted to do a podcast because we saw the future growth in the medium. But, yeah. I think that's a great one. The growth of podcasting through mobile devices is only going to get better. That's definitely something we're thankful for. Chad : Yes. And you haven't seen Julie's new car yet. But she's got a cute little two-door Civic SI. And the operating system that is in that thing is amazing. It's got Android and also Iphone. So I can say, I can say ... Joel: Oh, it does have iPhone. I'm looking it up. Chad : Yes it does, jackass. But I can say listen to chadcheese podcast. Or "Hey Google. Listen to The Chad and cheese podcast." And it'll actually start up and run right through the system. It is fricken awesome. So you're 100% right. I think auto is big. So, number four. Big shout out, big thankfulness to our listeners. We receive messages every single week. And appreciate everyone for their continued listening. Every time ... it seems like every time we get a message, Joel tears up just a little bit. But we do our best to try to, again, listen to your comments and to try to change the show up here and there. Chad : At first, the show was really long and then we started to condense it a little bit because of listener feedback. And that's what we want to continue to get from you guys. So please keep listening and more importantly, please give us your feedback. And share, right? And last, but not least, get ready Joel. I'm going to give you the feels. I'm thankful for Joel Cheesman. You complete me. You had me at hello. Joel: Stop. Chad : Help me help you. That's all I got. Okay, that's all I got. But seriously, thanks for getting off the damn couch after I badgered you for over a damn year to start the podcast. Seriously guys, I was on him all the time. We would go out for beers and I'm like, "Can we start the podcast again? Jesus." But, it's been awesome, it's been fun and it's only going to get better so I'm definitely thankful for my partner in crime, Joel Cheesman. Joel: Aww. I will second that. And yes, I finally said to Chad, I said, "Okay Chad. If we can get I think 100 people to sign up to listen and we can get one sponsor, we'll do it." Or I'll do it. I'll commit to a year and we did. We got 100 people to say like yeah, I'll listen or I'm into this. And we got at least one sponsor, maybe two, when we started out. And now, yeah. I'm amazed and it's literally a three hour commitment a week between recording and talking about it and prepping and so, yeah. I'm thankful for you for pushing me to the point that I acquiesced and did the show because it's been incredibly rewarding and something I think you and I will be doing for a long time regardless where else life and professional life takes us because people like the show and we'll continue to do it as long as people listen. Chad : That's right. And one of the things that I love about our sponsors ... back to our sponsors, is they realize that we're going to talk no bullshit. If they're doing something stupid, we're going to say something about it. But they like that we are straight and to the point. And when we started, that was really the key. We said, "Hey, look. We're not going to be another gloss over program." So that being said, we're ... Joel has some turkeys that he'd like to give away. What is this turkey thing? Joel: I do have some turkeys. I mean look, we can't get all warm and fuzzy without a little bit of battling. And ripping some people up. So, I've created ... I could make more, but I said, "I'll just do three." I have three turkeys for the year that I want to highlight. Number one, purplesquirrel.io. This was actually the first company we threw on the heaping pile of hot trash. Although that might have been ElevatedCareers.com. That might have been the first one. Joel: But anyway, purple squirrel was early on a company that we just hated. The idea is basically ... okay. I want to be a marketing person at Facebook. So, I go to their site and I say, "I want to be a marketing person at Facebook." And then, they have someone at Facebook who's a marketing person, and they will talk to me about getting a job at Facebook as a marketing person. Now, on it's surface, that's fine. Where it really gets weird is, the person at Facebook gets paid to talk to me about working at Facebook. So, there's sort of this underlying scammy feel about like, "Oh. Well if you join purple squirrel, you'll get an insider's take on how to get a job at such and such company," which means it's a slam dunk that you'll get a job at Apple or Facebook or wherever. Joel: So, I hope this company dies early. I hope they don't last. They are a clear turkey this year. So number one turkey goes to purple squirrel. Number two turkey ... yeah, I don't know if we have a sound for ... there you go. There's our turkey. We don't have a gobble, gobble sound effect. Number two is [inaudible 00:33:33] Oh my God, right? This is such a bad ... just the name is so bad. How many apostrefied URLs or brands do you know are successful online? Not very many, right? Joel: O'Charlies, maybe restaurant. O'Reilly, the car company. Anyway, it just doesn't happen. And if they do, they are O'Reilly or whatever. These guys have o hyphen hire. So even if you put in ohire, the name is ... the URL is for sale. Okay, so the name sucks. That's enough to get a turkey. But, their business is video resumes that are up to two minutes in length. How many recruiters do you know would sit through two minute long resumes if they had to? Right? Like, no. They go through resumes within seconds and decide whether or not they want to move on. Joel: So this is a bad idea. It's a bad name. O'Hire gets a turkey. Chad : Not to mention we're talking about frigging sourcing, machine learning sourcing that goes well beyond that and it's all texture in the first place. So, you're talking about something that isn't even going to exist anymore. Joel: Yeah. Let's build layers of intricacy and more time commitment. Chad : It makes no sense. Joel: In a product. So you agree with me, O'Hire is a definite turkey, right? Chad : Easy. Joel: Okay. Number three turkey, and this one is the king of turkeys, goes to David Kent, who may be in the pokey listening. Probably not. He's probably got other things to do. But, David Kent, you got to go to the post to ... like the show to ... whatever. I'll try to condense this quickly, but this dude started an Energy job board in around 2001'ish. Dice bought the company for fifty something million dollars in 2007 when Energy was at it's peak price and stuff was going on. So this guy sells this company for fifty million, he stays at Dice, who owns Rig Zone and still does. Stays at dice for a year, which was probably his contract. He leaves and he creates a competitor, essentially, to Rig Zone called Energy People or some stupid shit. Chad : Yeah. Joel: And then ... so, he's got someone on the inside of Dice, that pulls the database of Rig Zone, 700 thousand record or something. Chad : Yeah. Joel: And then they put that data into his new site. Okay. Now, the crime is bad enough. But now, he creates a competitor, he steals their data, and then he tries to sell back ... Chad : To the same company. Joel: He tries to sell that company to Dice, or DHI, and Oh my God, he gets caught, right? Like somebody did some due diligence and said, "Gee. The fact that we both have 700,000 data points is sort of ironic." So that can't be. So anyway, the dude did a really dumb thing. He got 50 million dollars. He should have retired to Fiji and lived happily every after. Chad : Yes. Joel: But no, he's in jail. He's got no future. And that's why he's a turkey big time on my turkey list. Chad : Yes. So, that being said, I have one. We can close out with. And off of that is my don't be a greedy/turkey. And that being said, to the Chris Gamble National Sales Director at Indeed, keep your eyes on the horizon, not your feet. Your [inaudible 00:37:26] today doesn't mean a god damned thing for 12 months, 18 months, 24 months from now. And again, we like having fun with Indeed. We like having fun with CareerBuilder, and even the smaller startups. But what it comes down to is, we're not going to bullshit you. And if you continue to look at your feet as you walk, you're going to crash into something buddy. Joel: That's sounds really military wise from our resident Sergeant. Yes, thank you. Chris, I'm sure you're a great guy. It's all in fun. But, yeah dude, risk kills companies. Indeed is on top right now, but times change. So keep on keeping on and at 40 minutes almost, I think we're done with our show. Go Ohio State, the big game this weekend. Chad : Yes. Knock on wood, baby. Joel: In the big house. There's still playoff hopes. We're holding out. Go Bucks and enjoy your week everybody. We out. Outro: This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single show. And check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit ChadCheese.com. Oh, and you're welcome. #Indeed #OHire #PurpleSquirrel #LinkedIn

It's the holiday season, but the recruitment news rages on. The boys cover a variety of topics this week, including: Google for Jobs unveils four new features, and one is particularly brutal for Indeed. Glassdoor goes to court and is ordered to reveal the identities of some of its users (their TOS told you it could happen!). Popular native app Blind is coming to the Web, and here's why it matters. Two new startups land on the scene and promise more AI matching goodness. Legit or more smoke and mirrors? All that and more from your two favorite industry knuckleheads. Enjoy responsibly. As always, give our sponsors some love. America's Job Exchange, Sovren and Ratedly rule like no others have ever ruled before. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: 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: Happy, happy, happy day good people. Welcome to Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheeseman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash, the ruggedly handsome one. Joel: Very ruggedly handsome. Joel: On this week's show, Indeed takes it in the you-know-what, compliments of Google. Lawyers take it in the you-know-what, compliments of our robot overlords, and higher intelligences takes it in the you-know-what-thanks to this ridiculous podcast. I can already smell the Thanksgiving turkey. Stay tuned pilgrims. Advert: Google, Lever, Entello, Monster, Jibe. What do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovren technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job, while others use our technology to help companies find the perfect candidate. Sovren has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996, and we can help improve your hiring process too. We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit Sovren.com, S-O-V-R-E-N.com, for a free demo. Joel: Dude, I had a call with Sovren last week and it's just ridiculous. Chad: What's ridiculous? Joel: Their technology is ridiculous and their list... Chad: Dude, they like, run the whole world Joel: They do! Their list of clients and vendors and everybody that uses them is just insane, and so many people don't even know who the hell they are. Interestingly, Trovix, if you remember, Monster bought ten years ago Chad: Six sense search technology, yeah Joel: It was largely built on Sovren stuff. Chad: You've gotta be shitting me. Really? Joel: It was a little bit of a history lesson for me as well. Joel: Well, welcome to the show. Everybody. Let's get to shout-outs, I guess. Chad: Yeah, hit it. Just so everybody knows, this is obviously the boot-to-ass episode. Joel: Boot to ass. (Laughs) I'm glad you repeated that boot. I'm sure a lot of people thought it was something else. Shout-out to David Phoebus. Chad: My man! Joel: David "Phoebus Cates", who gave us some lovely commentary on LinkedIn, was it? Chad: Yeah, man. Thanks for keeping The Chad and Cheese Show out there! Joel: Yeah, that was great. David, we love you. Ed Zetusky. Chad: There he is. Joel: Zetusky? I don't know how I butchered that, but Ed gave us some love on Twitter, I think? Chad: Yeah, he did. He used the Chad and Cheese hashtag, by the way. Joel: Do we know Ed's company? Chad: I don't think we do. Ed, throw us out that company if it's important to you and you want the Chad and Cheese Podcast to talk about it. Let us know about it. Joel: So, we asked for feedback at #ChadCheese from our listeners. They don't give us feedback. Chad: I think they're afraid. Joel: We tell them to not give us feedback, thinking that we'll use reverse psychology and they still don't give us feedback, so let's try this. Leave us a question, feedback, comment, something at #ChadCheese, and we will mention your company on the air, assuming it's tied to your profile, or put it in the comments, something. So, we'll give you a little mini commercial if you engage with us on Twitter. Maybe that'll work. Chad: And, if you like the LinkedIn because most people are reaching out to us via LinkedIn, at least from my side, go ahead and do that, but yeah, definitely hit that hashtag if you're tweeting. Joel: Yeah, we're eventually going to get some incentive to get you to do it. One more shout-out from me. Jeff Hyman has the Strong Suit site/blog. He interviewed me a couple weeks ago about employer branding stuff. I kind of had my Ratedly hat on for that, but Jeff, thanks for the interview. It's a great one. If you want to check it out, go to Strong Suit, suit is S-U-I-T, .com to check that out. Chad: Is that a podcast? Joel: You can also go to Ratedly.com. We put it there, too. It is a podcast. Yes, so... Chad: So, you cheated on me? Joel: So, I knew what I was doing, obviously. Chad: (Baby crying) Oh. I know. That's what happens. So, from my side, there's some pretty cool news. The Chad and Cheese podcast has combined strategic employment metrics. Yeah, we don't have any employment metrics, but we're working with Next, a wonderful gang over at Next, to launch our very first infographic. Is that cool, or what? Joel: I can't even spell infographic. Is it two words or one? Is it hyphenated? Chad: It's one. I just go ahead and smash that stuff together. It's what I'm used to. So, okay, so here's a quick tease. We're going to be talking about Turkey Day stuff. And actually, Next asked the question. So, if you had an option to skip Turkey Day, and actually, say it was work, would you do it? Joel: I'm sorry. I'm confused. Would you skip Thanksgiving to go to work? Chad: Well, would you use work as an excuse, I guess, is the big piece. Would you use an excuse like work to get out of Thanksgiving? Joel: Why would anyone want to get out of Thanksgiving? Because they hate their family? They hate turkey or tofurkey? Vegetarian? Chad: Yeah. Probably the former. I would say, yeah, sitting around with the family, eating turkey, taking naps. I enjoy[crosstalk 00:06:26] Joel: Aren't you guys a tofurkey household? Chad: Yeah, no. I mean, we're ... no. Joel: So, you skip the vegetarianism on Thanksgiving? Chad: Oh, yeah, there are certain days that we do that. I mean, I'd say probably 95% of the time we're vegan/vegetarian, but you know, on those days. Joel: (Bell sound) I'm ringing the bell on all that stuff. Let's get to the show. Chad: One last thing. I appreciate that. So also, the Chad and Cheese webinar that went on. Actually, I think Joel calls it the best webinar of all time. Go to ChadCheese.com. A replay is available. It's called "The Future of Text Recruiting". ChadCheese.com. Go check it out. Pretty cool stuff. Joel: It was a great webinar. Very interactive and engaging. Chad: Best of all time. Joel: That's right. Alright. Big news. Google, which we never talk about, Google for jobs unveiled four enhancements to their search solution, I guess we'll call it. Chad: Yep. Joel: Three of them were kind of ho-hum. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You could choose better location filtering from within two miles of where you are all the way to two-hundred, which is quite a span, but you could do that. Bookmarking the ones that you like. I'm forgetting the third ho-hum one because the big one was so big. Chad: Salary. So, I mean salary is one of the reasons why the big one is an issue. So, salary, you know, obviously Google gives Indeed boot-to-the-ass on this one because we'll talk about that in a second, but the salary information that companies are not including, I think it was 85% of jobs do not have salary information. Well, guess what guys. Google is focused on the user and the user wants more information and you're not giving that information. So, that leads to number four, which is what, Joel? Joel: Well, I want to go back to the salary thing because it's sort of a premonition on the major one. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They're pulling salary data from sources like Glassdoor, PayScale, LinkedIn, and by the way, Indeed has salary information, but it's not included because Indeed has said "We're taking our ball and going home." Chad: Boot-to-ass Indeed. Joel: Not playing with this whole Google for jobs thing. So, Google's like, "Fine, okay." So, in the big update, and I think this is really intriguing and I'll tell you in a second, but the update is, you see a job. That job is duplicated over, let's say, four sites. Like three job boards as well as the company's site. The user can choose how they want to apply to that job based on whatever their preference is. So, above the job listing or the description, it'll say, you know, company name, little button, it'll say CareerBuilder, little button, Monster, little button, LinkedIn, whatever, and if you have accounts on those sites, you can choose to apply to that job through your Monster profile or CareerBuilder, et cetera. Chad: Does not seem easy. Joel: Number one, this is a great thing for job boards. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The traditional boards that are playing with Google because we had always thought, well, eventually Google, just like their search engine, they're going to decide which duplicate content they want to show, and in most cases that'll be the ATS or eventually be the ATS, and the job posting on the job board will basically be invisible. Joel: So, Google found a way to appease everyone, and say, "We're going to list all the sources for this job, and you, the user, can decide which one you want to send to the company." So, traditional job boards should be doing somersaults that Google is making this sort of consolation to them. Chad: So, yes. Here's the thing. First and foremost, I wonder how many sources they're going to use on that because the amount of job boards that are going to be pushing information into Google, I mean, can you imagine the amount of apply buttons that would actually be up there? So I wonder how many ... because they're going to have to cap it. Joel: Knowing Google, once you select one, you'll probably choose to do that for most of your ... that'll be your preference. That'll be your default. Because you're logged in using Google in most cases, so I mean, Google will figure that out I think over time. Chad: Yeah, it's just the first interaction's going to suck. But, this is definitely a big boot-to-Indeed's-ass with regard to salary history like you talked about, and no salary, no traffic. Again, that is ... I don't know exactly how much traffic Indeed was reaping from the organic of Google, which is now pretty much gone, but now they're not going to be able to actually utilize that salary information and/or get traffic from, like you're saying, these apply buttons. Here's the big thing[crosstalk 00:11:57] Joel: Indeed is not an option. Chad: No. Joel: You won't see Indeed, unless they decide to play ball, as an option to apply to a job. And let's face it. A lot of job seekers have an Indeed profile, which is easy to use. It's easy to apply that way. Indeed would be a great addition as on option for people to apply, but they're not even going to be on the playing field. Chad: I can only envision Indeed as Oliver Twist in this scenario. Asking for more gruel, coming back to Google, saying, "Can I please have the traffic gruel?" Joel: I think Google will let them kiss the ring whenever they want Chad: Oh yeah they will! Oh yeah they will! Joel: But I don't ... I think Indeed will come kicking and screaming to do that. Yeah. Which is funny because if you remember with Indeed, there were a few job sites that would never advertise on Indeed. They'll take the organic traffic, but you know what? The two that I'm thinking of, and I won't mention names, eventually came around to buying ad space on Indeed. So, if Indeed does acquiesce and come to Google at some point, it will be very apropos based on the history of the whole thing with Indeed and job boards. Chad: And you know we are going to be waiting for that day, Indeed. You know we are. So, and here's the big thing though. For companies, and this is who should really listen to this, okay? You have the opportunity ... the reason that Google is allowing all these sources to apply is because you don't give enough information in your application process. Your user experience sucks. It's horrible, and until you fix that shit, guess what's going to happen? Candidates are going to continue to go around you through these different job sites because your process sucks. So, until you fix your process, guys, this is the kind of shit you're going to have to put up with. Joel: Yep. You know, Sackett, Tim Sackett, who was on guest host or guest recently, he and I got into kind of a social media thing and his thought is that people automatically just go to the company's apply process. Chad: No, they don't. Joel: And I kind of disagree with that because I think they're going to go with what's easiest. Chad: Yes. Joel: Similar to how, you know, what site do you want to use to go buy something? Well, Amazon. It's super easy. I've got an account already. It's like super easy. It's, you know, user intuitive, right? So, in a way, to me, this sort of forces everyone, particularly the ATSes to make an Amazon-like apply process because if users on Google default to the easiest way to apply, to men that's what they're going to do. They're not going to say, "Oh, I got to do the company because that's what I should do[crosstalk 00:14:50] Chad: Well, the applicant tracking systems don't want to have a complex apply process. I mean, that's building complexity in their process. They don't want that. It is the companies who are using these platforms that are jacking up this process, jacking up the user experience, and they're trying to make it better by putting this layer of cosmetics over it to make it look all warm and fuzzy until you hit the apply process, and then everything turns to shit. That's the problem. You're not giving them information. They deserve to know what the salary is, or at least the salary range. There's more information that they deserve as well. Not to mention they don't deserve a shitty apply process. Joel: So, do you think this move by Google will decrease the number of applicants through an ATS? Chad: I think it will, and I think that the smart organizations will be quick on this, and they'll understand that you got to play the game, and if I want to spend less money on job boards and I want to be able to leverage Google in this specific sense, this is what we need to do. The ones ... but there are going to be many of those talent acquisition leaders that are out there that, I mean, they're just going to do what they've done for years. They're going to pay to do it the old, same, dumb way. Joel: I think a job seeker ... I think many job seekers believe the only way to really apply to a job is to go to the company site, and if they learn a behavior through Google's job search that, "Oh, I can actually use my LinkedIn profile" or "I can actually use my five year old Monster profile, I'm going to do that because I've already done it, it's easy, I understand it," et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I think ... I don't know how this is going to play out, but I think people will gravitate toward the easiest, biggest brand site that they're already on as opposed to going to an ATS and filling things out from the start. Yeah, this will be very interesting in terms of what behavior people use or what people side with. I hope that Google releases data on, even if it's just percentage-wise, like what is the most popular? Do people pick ATSs over job boards and what percentage is that. Chad: I know one of the big reasons why they've moved this way is because they're definitely trying to force a better apply process and more information out of employers. That's what they're trying to do, and they've said that. So, if you care about your process, if you care about the customers that are coming to your website, not the clients, I mean, not the candidates, but your brand? Start to wake up, and do this shit right, guys. Joel: Yeah. If they wake up and go, "Wow, no one's applying through our ATS anymore, this might be why. It will force company's hands to make it simple to apply to jobs. And then the robots will figure out how to prescreen them anyway. (Bell sound.) Joel: Let's go to our next set of stories, automation, which tends to be at the forefront. You got some good news that you shared this week on automation on the legal front. Chad: Yeah, so it's pretty cool. This is our "Robots give lawyers boot-to-the-ass". So, this kid, actually a couple of years ago, his name is Josh Browder. He created this app called, it's really a chat bot. It's called "Do Not Pay" and it automates parking ticket appeals. So, he just did it for himself and his friends and family. Apparently they get a shit-load of parking tickets, but to date, this chat bot has helped more than four hundred thousand people save eleven million dollars in fines. (Applause sound) And dude, that's without any charge whatsoever, so that was so cool. Browder, who is now nineteen years old, and go figure, he is a computer science major at Stanford. Joel: Shocking. Chad: He's out to change the divorce institution overall from the standpoint of interacting with lawyers because about 95% of divorces are uncontested, which those uncontested divorces in some cases can cost up to ten grand. So, (Baby crying) that's a lot of money, dude. That's a lot of money. Joel: And you and I are unfortunately ... Anyway, well to associated with that kind of ... Anyway, so yes, divorces will be free in the future, which is great, so more people will get divorced and society will continue going down the tubes, but anyway, at least it will be free. Chad: But, yeah. Pretty much at the end of the day ... and he's gotten funding, Venture Capital Funding, from Greylock Partners and he's using AI from Watson and it's really cool because they're pulling all the documents together in Watson, creating a chat bot, and just, again, it's all process oriented. And this is what we've talked about for like finance, doing your taxes, you know, TurboTax, or any of these different processes or routines, if they are routine, you can get technology to do that for you, to be able to deliver the right documents, to be able to do these different things and this nineteen year old has got it figured out. And this could obviously dramatically impact this industry. Joel: You know, I think we think so much in terms of automation displacing, you know, blue collar workers, people who build stuff and drive places and I think more and more we're going to see white collar folks not being as safe as they think they are. I mean, legal in particular, I mean, so much of legal is filling out forms that are really just complicated, and people don't want to spend the time to do it because it's a pain in the ass, and if a chat bot or compute program can basically fill in the blanks with the information that it needs and then fill in the form and then it knows where to send the form, and then send your receipt that hey, the county, or the state or wherever it is it needs to go. "Got it. Here's your Docket Number" or "Here's the case number." Yeah, a lot of work that lawyers do is going to be sort of off the shelf. And I really think it affects the paralegals that are the ones doing the lesser work in legal forms. You know, the ones that are doing that kind of work. So, paralegals in particular are probably going to be really tough. I think good lawyers that, you know, have to talk to people and describe the process will still be, you know, employed, but some of those positions are going to be, you know, challenged. Chad: If it's uncontested, it's a little bit different between a contested divorce and an uncontested divorce. A lot different. But, his quote was, which I love, "I'm trying to replace all these lawyers charging hundreds of dollars an hour just to copy and paste." And that's exactly what's happening. Joel: Yeah, I agree. And how many other professions does that impact? Probably a ton. Like, we already know in the recruiting space, like, what information do you need to have an application? Okay. What's your name? When were you born? Where do you live? How old ... you know, like can you drive? Do you have a license? Are you a U.S. citizen? Some of those things are fill in the blank, and a lot of those things are prescreening questions because if you're not a U.S. citizen, you can't work for us. Chad: Chat bot stuff, man. Yep. Nope. Joel: If you don't have a license, you can't drive for us. So, yeah, the bot revolution or devolution marches on. But, there is hope for us humans. According to a Wall Street Journal article this past week, twenty-one million jobs will be created as a result of robotics, automation, AI, et cetera, so although sixty million jobs might be lost, and I'm just making that up. I don't know how much it is, and I know we've said that number before probably, but twenty one million or so jobs will be created, which if you look at robotics, self-driving cars, I mean definitely some jobs and opportunities are going to be made as a result of technology. That's always how it works anyway. Chad: Yeah, well, you see, we're training ourselves out of many of these jobs as it is. I mean. You take a look at the chat bot we were just talking about, but remember when we were really young and there was a filling station attendant, and they would do the gas. They would check your fluid. They would do all that stuff, but that's gone. Automation. I go to Kroger a few times a week in the morning to be able to get fresh fruit for breakfast, and do I go to an actual human being to check me out? No, I go through the self-checkout. I mean, we're teaching ourselves how to get rid of these jobs. And that's continued on so many different fronts. So, yeah, I see exactly where there could be definitely jobs created, and there's so much research that's being done on this right now, I mean, really it's crazy. Chad: Some of it says, obviously, that yes, twenty-one million jobs are going to be created, but on the back end, twice as many or even more are going to be lost. I don't want to be the Luddite 2.0 saying, "Oh my God, kill all the robots." But we definitely have to take a look at this from a standpoint of understanding how these technologies are really going to impact the workforce in the market. That's the biggest issue. Joel: Sure, and societies and governments and all kinds of stuff. I will say, because you went back in history there, like, a lot of the jobs that exist today didn't exist when we were kids. Like, we never would have thought about being an SEO or being a robotics whatever or AI or cryptocurrency person. Like, a lot of the jobs that will be, we don't even know what the hell they are. So, that's a positive, right? Chad: Yeah, the hard part about that is getting the skillsets, getting skilled labor force to get into those jobs. I mean, take a look at Moore's Law and how fast technology's moving, right? It is moving fast. It's doubled up since they've actually created Moore's Law, so I mean (Bell sound) It's ridiculous. That's the hard part. It's like, yeah, jobs are going to be there, but are we actually going to have people that can fill those jobs. There's so many different bad and good fronts. Joel: The good news, Chad Chad: Yes. Joel: Robots will never displace this podcast because robots get smarter and this show continually gets just dumber. Chad: (Laughs) Very good point. That sends us into a very happy weekend. Joel: Yes, and diversity recruiting, Chad, I don't get it. Why do employers suck so badly at diversity recruiting? Chad: Diversity recruiting? That's a very, very heavy question, Joel, and I appreciate you extending that to have me answer it. No, seriously. Seriously. We in talent acquisition, we're talking about many of these different things like AI and technology, and we become generalists in many cases, which means we're a jack of all trades and we're a master of none, which means we don't know what the hell is going on expertise-wise. And one of those areas is diversity recruiting. It's hard. It's not easy, which is one of the reasons why you need to have a partner like America's Job Exchange to help you out. AJE utilizes a unique mix of targeted job distribution programmatic ... those types of things to target the right types of candidates for your jobs, the right types of diverse candidates, not just going into a diverse pool and saying, "Give me all you got." Actually, looking for individuals with the type of skillsets that you're looking for, for those specific types of jobs. Chad: So, what you can do, actually, believe it or not, the show has discounts. Joel: What? Chad: Yep. I'm not kidding. You can go to AmericasJobExchange.com/Cheese, that's cheese, as in what you put on the pizza. C-H-E-E-S-E. AmericasJobExchange.com/Cheese because everybody loves pizza, man. Joel: Everything's better with cheese, right? Chad: That's exactly right. Everything's better with cheese, but America's Job Exchange has been doing this diversity recruiting, overall job distribution, compliance, and those types of things for over ten years. And to be able to align yourself with a group, with a team that know what the hell they're talking about is pretty important. And, what's more important is looking in the mirror and knowing, "You know what, I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about." So, get somebody who does. AmericasJobExchange.com/Cheese. Go get 'em. Joel: Love it. Love it. You mentioned programmatic there for a second, which is a nice segue to our next story, Cielo. I guess I'm saying that right. You shared a story about them this week about high-volume hiring. What's up with them? Chad: Yeah, it doesn't really seem sexy until you get into it. We talk about all this different technologies in silos, so Chat Bots, and programmatic targeted ads, and texting and so on and so forth, and it's really cool. The thing is, being able to stitch all of those things together into one product, that's hard. And Cielo was able to do it for high-volume recruiting. So, the product was actually created for all those high-volume, revolving door gigs, mainly hourly types of positions. And it's funny because we literally were talking with Joe and the next team, gang, about the possibility of high-volume recruiting being one of our huge target areas and things that we would be talking about because it's so important. And there's so much that's going on. And the very next day, the Cielo press release dropped. And Adam Godson, who is the VP of technology solutions over at Cielo, I know him, so I thought, "Hey, I'm going to go ahead, reach out to him, and ask him 'What the hell is this all about?'" It sounds good from the outside, but what the hell, I mean, what is. And as you said, from the press release, it's really cool because they focus on the outreach piece, programmatic outreach, getting those jobs out there, targeting specific types of individuals, bringing them in through the apply process, screening, and then getting the interview scheduled. And all of that happens within seven minutes. Joel: Yeah, what was the example of the weekend posting, and then by Monday, they had like three hundred interviews set up already? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Was that the example that you gave? Chad: Yeah I told them, I said, "Dude, that's all well and good, right, but show me results. What the hell are you talking about?" So, one of his clients actually said, on a Friday night, go figure, they're getting ready to shut down COB and one of the clients called and said, "Hey, look, we need to have more candidates for next week. We're doing a big push. This is what's going on." And by Monday morning, they had three hundred and fifty five interviews scheduled by that Monday morning, and the power, I mean, this is the power of mobile. Seriously. And during the weekend when people really aren't looking for jobs, this just shows how powerful the technology is to be able to target and to be able to go through that whole process. Chad: And the thing that we haven't talked about yet, which I think is pretty cool is that they use texting to be able to keep the candidates warm who are scheduled for interviews. So, when you get scheduled, you begin to receive texts just to be able to confirm, right, that you're there, that you're good for this. And those individuals, those candidates who do not respond, they get an actual human being reaching out to them, saying, "Hey, this is Sally," or "This is Freddy" or whoever it is, "Just want to make sure you didn't have any questions for the interview. Everything good?" That kind of thing. So, they're really trying to tie everything together. Joel: Now, what I find really cool about this is they're using ads to drive traffic to the opportunities, and when I first heard you talking about this, I thought, oh, this is similar to Intello or some of the outreach, so they're looking at profiles and then they're emailing people. They're reaching out to people in some way and that's sort of a push campaign. This to me was cool because it was more of a pull campaign. So, it was using programmatic advertising, finding targeted people where they live and breathe, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera, and then driving traffic through those ads and then engaging, once they came in through the ad. And then I assume some sort of prescreening sequence, which then said, "Oh, we'd love to talk to you if you have time on Monday. What works for you?" The fact that you can do that on Friday and then automatically go through and have three hundred and fifty plus people waiting to be interviewed or scheduled to be interviewed, right, on Monday is just really, really cool. Because ten years ago that wasn't possible and today it is. Chad: And we know. I mean it used to be when newspaper was the big push for jobs. When you would look for a job, you're waiting for that Sunday paper. That's not how people look for jobs now. Generally, Monday is the day that everybody is searching for a job, but because of this mobile AI first kind of technology that they're putting in place, they're able to get past that, which I thought was incredibly cool, and I've got to say, you know, it does not surprise me to see RPO actually do something at this scale with this type of process and being able to pull together this many types of technologies and get it right. And I think companies who really want to get this high-volume piece right, they should start looking at RPO's and/or seeing if they can replicate it. I doubt that they can, but they should definitely start looking at RPO. Joel: Yeah, and as we know, recruiting is a very reactionary job. Right? I'm sure this rep came in the door Thursday, "Oh crap." Friday, "Let's do this." Push a button, bam, Monday we have people. It's a very reactionary thing, so this kind of fits into just the mentality of what recruiters and how they think anyway, so kudos. Well, the bell says move on, so let's move on. Chad: Boom! Joel: News out of the Anonymous Employer Review world. I'll start with, actually, Blind. A lot of people listening may not know what blind is. Blind is native app on Android and IOS, and it's sort of a ... I call it Yik Yak with degrees. So, Yik Yak, for those who remember, was a mobile app where you were totally anonymous. There was no registration. There was nothing. And you just spouted off crazy shit. And the app is now gone because people realized that the shelf life of just crazy commentary doesn't last very long, so Yik Yak died. But Blind is like Yik Yak, but you have to have a confirmed work email address to use the site. So, you can still spout off stupid stuff, but your company is sort of tied with your commentary, so if you say something, PayPal or Amazon or wherever you work is tied to that. There's commentary on MNA stuff, who's buying what, how to get a job somewhere, how to sell a company something, or who do I get to talk to. Obviously career is part of the anonymous stuff that's on there. Joel: But the news out of the company this week is that they're moving beyond the app-only platform and moving into the desktop... Chad: They're looking to drive revenue Joel: So, ultimately ... Yes. Well, yeah. I mean, they've got six million in investment money. I mean, the anonymous thing is sort of risky. I'm sure they're going to try to get as big as possible and then sell it, hoping that the timing's right. Although we live in a world where anonymous is being challenged, which sort of brings us to the next story in this sort of category. Joel: Glass Door, who probably all the listeners know, is in court all the time. They may not know that, but Glass Door is constantly being sued or companies that have bad things said about them want to get IP addresses of the commentators and who they are. You do have to register on Glass Door. Part of their terms of service is that they may have to reveal your identity if there's a lawsuit or the powers that be say, "Tell us who this is." So, liability is still a thing, so you shouldn't do that or slander companies. Chad: Yes. Joel: So, Glass Door's in court to reveal this source. We live in a world where people don't like bullying. They don't like sexism. They don't like harassment. And anonymity sort of breeds off of all of that. So, you know, I guess the question I would have is, aside from these news reports, how much longer is anonymity going to be a thing? Is there a future for it? Chad: That's a good question. I think there is a future for it, I just think you can't say stupid shit. I mean, that's a fairly easy mantra. The reason why these anonymous users are going to be, shall I use the term, unmasked is because they said stupid shit. They talked about fraud and abuse. And those, especially for some of these companies who are federal contractors, that's big. That could perspectively impact hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in revenues, obviously for federal contracts. So, to be able to go on and anonymously say these things, you better be able to point to something. You better be able to say, "Fraud and abuse charges that were here." Right? And being able to point to something that actually exists as opposed to perspectively making something up or just talking shit. Joel: Yep. Which I also think there may be a compromise. I don't know if it was last week or a past show, we talked about LinkedIn getting into sort of the feedback game. And the way that they sort of identify someone is you won't be able to give feedback on a company unless you are actually an employee of the company based on your LinkedIn profile. Now, you can game that, but it's kind of a pain in the ass. So, they've found a way by ... You can't review it unless Company A is actually in your profile currently. So, you'll have anonymous feedback, but it will have some form of identity because the only people who can give feedback, you know, have this in their profile. Joel: So, I think there's probably a middle man somewhere, but I don't think it'll ever be Yelp, where you have a profile and your picture's on it, and you know, like there's a real return address on your comments, but to me LinkedIn is trying to work on a compromise. I think comparably, another sort of competitor of Glass Door, you know, they use a lot of charts and graphs and sort of, you know, feedback isn't more like text based. So it's less sort of flame-y and sort of bullying because it's based on graphs and sort of charts, so there's probably a middle there somewhere. I think we both agree there's no transparency feedback, you know, organic, raw, sort of commentary has a place in the world. I think it's just a matter of how exactly we're going to get that in the future. Chad: And for anybody who's out there who wants to flame a company, you better make sure you have gone through the appropriate processes, and you've done it officially. Because, man, if you're doing it anonymously, you're going to be unmasked. That's all there is to it. And obviously, this sets the precedent. Joel: Sets the precedent. Well, Chad, with Blind going to desktop, it means there's another thing companies are going to have to monitor in terms of anonymous employer reviews out on the web. Chad: Yeah, I can't imagine doing any of that by hand. Joel: The time is now for a tool to help companies monitor all the reviews out there on the web, and fortunately, there is a tool. Chad: The time is now. I like how you said that. That's awesome. Joel: The time is now. Chad: The time is now or you get a boot to the ass. That's what happens. Joel: A boot to the ass for ... Anyway, so Ratedly, R-A-T-E-D-L-Y, a sponsor of this show, and full disclosure, my company, does just this. We go out and we monitor about a dozen or so employer review sites. Blind will be one of those as they venture out onto the desktop. So, if you're looking for a company that will help you monitor, make sense of all the noise out there, Ratedly should be a company you take a look at. Joel: And for a limited time until the end of the month, I believe, we're having a contest where you can get a free year of Ratedly. That's right, I said a free year of our anonymous employer review service. Chad: Now we have contests! We have discounts and contests! This is the best show ever. Joel: We have 100% discounts this week, contests. Just go to Ratedly, R-A-T-E-D-L-Y.com. There'll be a link there that you can just submit your email address, and if you share the contest with your social network, you'll get infinitely more chances to win, so there's an incentive to share with your friends. Again, that's Ratedly, R-A-T-E-D-L-Y.com. If you don't want to enter the contest, you can subscribe to Ratedly for the low cost of $147 per month. Chad: Cheap. Cheap. Joel: Let's talk about Leap-Woo. Chad: Leap-Woo. Joel: We're combining two startups into one. Chad: Yeah, let's go with Leap-Woo. Joel: Leap.AI, let's talk about them first. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, people who hate resumes now get a boot to the ass because they're not dying. As we saw last week with LinkedIn and the integration with Microsoft Word, which I think is genius. You get a company like Leap that is doing something, I mean, not something as cool and as integrated, but I think it's like a baby step of doing just that. So, it's a resume service. You plug your resume into the system, and it makes it not suck is pretty much what the CEO says. I'm paraphrasing, of course. Joel: It's Matching 2.0. This is the dream of Trovix for those that remember. Trovix was submit your resume. Now, it didn't help you make a better resume. Chad: Right. Joel: This will help you make a better resume with quote/unquote AI, and then it does match you with positions, right? Chad: Yeah Joel: It just makes you a better resume. Chad: No, it matches you with positions. It also has testing. You do like behavioral testing and things like that. I mean, I actually went in because there's a free initial sign up and I started to create an account. And their LinkedIn popped up to be able to say, "Hey, do you want to log in with LinkedIn?" Generally, when you do that, it's going to populate most of the fields and I thought, well, my LinkedIn has a good amount of information on it. I'll go ahead and use this. And the damn thing ... All it did was populate my name and then use the summary in this like, block summary. It did nothing other than that. So, you're probably going to have to take half an hour to get your information into the system, take the behavioral tests, and all that other happy horse shit. Joel: Alright, that's Leap.AI, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: So, Woo.IO. All these dots. Man, these are hell to keep up with. Chad: AI. IO. Joel: So, Woo.io - Very similar. They don't do the make your resume un-suck. But you put in a profile as an employer for the job. This is fairly lengthy. You put in your profile as a job seeker. Fairly lengthy. Now, they tie this in with AI and it's smart, and blah, blah, blah. But as I'm looking at this stuff, I just think ... remember It's Big? Chad: Oh my God, yes. Joel: And Climber? I mean the underlying problem with these, like you just said, it takes the job seeker forever. Chad: It's ridiculous. Joel: The employer ... In order to make a match, a lot of data has to be thrown into the engine, right, to make that match happen. Chad: Right. Joel: And unfortunately, humans don't want to spend all this time, especially with a startup that they don't even know, right? Chad: Right. Joel: And it's chicken and egg. You don't have candidates. The employers don't care. They're not going to think it's worth their time and vice versa. So, to me, this is just like matching 2017. It's the same thing wrapped in a different AI package. But the problem still exists in my mind. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And I think their future is the same, unfortunately, for most of these folks. Chad: This seems very much like matching of old is pretty much what you're saying. And all they're doing is slapping AI onto it. That's really it. You know, I think with Leap more than Woo, Leap/Woo ... that if a company like Google, I don't know a company like Google, would take that technology and integrate to ... make it easier, first of, slim it down, and then integrate into their Docs area where you throw a resume into the Docs and this automatically goes through, shall we say, resume assist, and it'd be much like a LinkedIn kind of scenario. Joel: So, the companies that are going to get this matching thing right are the ones that you don't even know that you're being matched. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So, Facebook knows that you share all this stuff about whatever and your friends are whatever. And LinkedIn knows you're connected with all these other people and you share this other stuff, and here's what's in your profile. And here's where I am located because I've got my phone with me and these small startups that want you to fill out stuff and do things ... to me, they're screwed. The people that are going to know you are the people that you use every day. Google, Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn, Microsoft. Chad: It's lifestyle. Joel: It's lifestyle because they're going to be able to say, "Oh, you look like you'd be great for this job." Holy cow! It's like they know me, right? It's like when you buy on Amazon or what TV shows you watch. To me, that's the AI, that's the matching. That fill stuff ... I'm not going to bother with that. You need to know me somehow, and the companies that do are going to win and those that aren't, don't. So, Leap/Woo, good luck. But, it's a hell of a hard row for you to sew. Or sew to row or hoe to row or whatever that is. It's late and it's Friday, and I can smell the turkey. I'm getting hungry anyway because it's lunch time. But, anyway, we're at almost fifty minutes[crosstalk 00:49:40]. Chad: Oh, shit! Joel: The longest show we've had in a long time. Everyone's tuned out. I'm tuned out. I say we shut it down and say "Adios." Chad: Boot to the ass to the show! Joel: Boot to eye, mother! Intro: This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single show. And check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit ChadCheese.com. Oh, and you're welcome. #Glassdoor #LinkedIn #Google #Indeed #Blind

The boys recorded this week's show on Veteran's Day in the U.S., so vet recruiting is top-of-mind. Considering Chad is an Army Vet, how could we not? CareerBuilder is partnering with this vet site - RallyPoint, and rumors that Monster is making changes to Military.com abound. On to other matters, LinkedIn continues to kickass and take names with a new integration with Microsoft Word. The move should have job sites, and even Google shaking in their New Balances. The company is also making Glassdoor a little nervous with a recent move as well. Lastly, tons of news items, so the guys go a little rapid fire to cover stories from Sourceress, Entelo and Jobs2Careers' ipply. There's also new research on what kind of videos you should be making to recruit. They end with a PSA that you shouldn't do this to the president. As always, show our sponsors a little love. Sovren, America's Job Exchange and Ratedly make it all happen. That's an order! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION: Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You are 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: We're still on the air. Welcome to The Chad and Cheese podcast everybody. I'm Joel Cheeseman. Chad: I’m Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week’s show LinkedIn is not messing around. We shoot off a segment on veterans. See what I did there Chad? Chad: Yes. Joel: And doing this to the president will get your ass canned. How's that for a teaser? Stay turn for another 40 minutes of your life you'll wish you had back. Chad, you had something to share on AJE, right? Chad: I think so. No, wait a minute. Joel: Let’s talk about that. Chad: Diversity recruitment stuff. Joel: We love our sponsors. Chad: Stuff that we can't stop talking about. We're seeing it on the news all the damn time and all these companies are talking about how they want to get into diversity recruiting, so stop playing with the same old job boards that yield the same old bullshit results and start taking a look at America’s Job Exchange at americasjobexchange.com. They're recruiting specialist continuously or having conversations with regard to diversity recruiting. Chad: Their team is focused on being able to not just get jobs out there so you can check the damn box, but to focus on targeting the types of diverse candidates that you're looking for with the skills that you need. If, and I know if you're listening to this and you are talent acquisition, you're always looking for diverse candidates. Go to americasjobexchange.com/cheese. There's discounts waiting for you there. Again, that's americasjobexchange.com/cheese. Joel: With Christmas right around the corner, everyone can use all the discounts that they can get. Chad: The discounts and diverse population recruiting. That's what you want, right? Joel: Absolutely, absolutely. Quick shout out, we'll get to those, Tracy at AJE, huge fan of the show, a great commenter on social media. Tracy, we know you're out there. We love you and thanks for listening and thanks for supporting the show. Chad: We love it. TAtech. You've heard of these guys before. You've been to their conferences before, right Joel? Joel: We've spoken at their conference and they're going to have us back, I think, oddly enough. Chad: No, wait a minute. Yeah, I know. I think they are. Peter, our buddy, the CEO over at TAtech said, “Hey guys, I want you to share a couple of, again, savings options. We've got some discounts for your listeners who want to go to these conferences.” Option number one, listen to this, I’ve got two options for you. If you register for any 2018 conference by the deadline end of November and use the discount code when you register ... We'll have this in our show notes. You're going to get 10% off [crosstalk 00:03:15]. Joel: Is that a coupon code or URL? Chad: That is a coupon code. Use the discount code, TAtech1018. We're going to have to put that one out there. Option number two for TAtech Europe, which is really cool because this year, guess what guys, going to be in Dublin, Ireland, March 13th and 14th and where’s that around? What kind of time frame is that around there Joel? Joel: I believe it's Saint Patrick's Day. Chad: Saint Patrick's day, going to be at a conference TAtech Europe. All you have to do is contact our friend Peter Weddle at ceo@tatech.org for your discount. Use the discount code. Just tell him Chad and Cheese sent you. Just tell him that. He'll hook you up. Again, ceo@tatech.org. Good stuff, great conferences and an opportunity to learn a hell of a lot of stuff. Joel: I think our livers are going to need a coupon code for medical treatment after a trip to Ireland for Saint Patrick's Day. I got a shout out for HighQ. Our buddies over there that are fighting the power. They promoted our podcast that talked about their fight with LinkedIn and their crowdfunding initiative, which by the way, it looks like they're going to not meet at all. They're looking for 100 grand. Last I checked, they were under 20, so good luck to them, but they've got a hell of a mountain to climb and we're rooting for you if nothing else that you should have your day in court and be heard. Chad: Yeah and that's crowjustice.com/case/hiq. If you want to root for the little guy route with a little bit of cash. Doesn't hurt. Joel: It does not hurt. Michael Iacoma. Is that right? Is that our last shout out? Chad: Iacona, I think with an n as in November. Joel: Not Iacocca, which we remember from the ‘80s? Chad: Yeah. He's the guy over at Rake and he has one of those nifty URLs that we were talking about last week. Get rake.io. Again, the whole thing's killing me these days Joel: We don't have any crybabies, but I got to hear it today. All right. I think we can start the show now. LinkedIn continues to kick ass. Chad: They're doing some shit; it’s like all at once. Everything's dropping, right? Joel: Shit dropping. Yes. What you said, Chad: A word integration. Joel: Microsoft Word, which is the most used document editor in the world, I believe, is now integrated with LinkedIn. The outlook or Office 365. You're the Microsoft user, so you may have to help me out on some of this language, but basically what they've done is brilliant. Give me a second I'll try to frame why I think this is so brilliant. Basically what happens is you go add your resume or add your resume on word. LinkedIn stuff is integrated. It'll actually tell you, “Oh, your resume and okay, here's language and other resumes you might want to consider using if you are a PHP developer or whatever.” Joel: You can then send your resume to job postings, and here's the brilliant part. Job postings will actually start showing based on the resume that you're adding your editing, and then you can reply or apply to jobs directly from Microsoft word to jobs posted on LinkedIn. Now here's why this is brilliant. For 10/15 years, Google has been the starting point for job searches and they've held that for a long time. If you want it to be in the ground level of Google stuff traffic you had to be on Google. Joel: Now we've never really thought about, hey, the resume is sort of the starting point of a job search too. To me this is so brilliant because Microsoft and LinkedIn have for many people, leapfrogged Google as the starting point for your job search. If at some point people equate posting a resume, searching for a job and you do that with LinkedIn, then they've effectively leapfrogged Google, which I think is brilliant. Chad: Well, and again, going back to the whole conversation of lifestyle platform. We use word all the damn time, or at least most of us do. Joel, you might not- Joel: Google Docs. Chad: ... but 80% of resume updates in the US happen in Microsoft Word. When these resume updates are happening, you're going to be prompted to be able to utilize this new resume assist via LinkedIn. This is brilliant from the standpoint of engagement and it can drag you back into LinkedIn, start providing updates on new jobs. Chad: Again, these are connection points that we've been talking about indeed not happening and not having or the Careerbuilder is not having because they're not lifestyle platforms. They're not something that we use or need every single day, but Microsoft integration with a LinkedIn, everything that's happening with Google. This is where really our recruitment, our engagement is going, right here in these types of suite. Joel: Here's my question, did is LinkedIn a must have now, if you're employing people that typically have resumes? Chad: Are they a what? Joel: Are they a must have? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Up until now you could post on LinkedIn, you don't have to ... People thought of it is more of a sourcing tool or a communications tool. To me, if you hire people that do resumes, I'm not talking about restaurants and service industry people, but if you hire people that are professionals, to me this makes LinkedIn a must have because if you're not listed on that little sidebar of job postings as someone is filling out their resume, to me, you're really putting yourself in a disadvantage. Chad: You're talking mainly on the professional side, there's no question, especially the way that you go through the resume process versus applications. It's two entirely different worlds and in some cases with regard to blue collar versus white collar. I think this is making that argument moving forward for a LinkedIn rep to be able to say, look, this is not just about going and sourcing anymore. This is about interaction and engagement constantly. This is about serving up relevant information constantly. Is your job going to be there when somebody is ready for it? That's the question, right? Maybe it will, but if you're not using us, it sure the hell is not gonna be. Joel: This also helps, for a while we've wondered why LinkedIn doesn't just turn on the aggregator spigot and just become LinkedIn and have all the jobs and go spider stuff. Well, this sort of explains why they haven't done that, because if it's native to LinkedIn they get that revenue and this becomes a must have if you want to be in front of people that are filling out resumes for a position that you're looking for. Chad: Now I agree. Joel: Does this become a copycat? If I post a resume on Google Docs, is Google for job stuff going to start popping up and if I post a resume on Facebook, which they're Beta testing, are their job's going to start showing up? My guess is everyone is going to copy this. Chad: Yes, yes, of course and I think this is in everybody's roadmap already. It's just that LinkedIn has a different type of integration into their suite. I really see this happening. Google Hire isn't to the point I don't think, right now, especially since they're on the SMB side and they're not enterprise and LinkedIn and Microsoft is really focusing on the enterprise side. It makes a lot of sense right now for them to be doing this were Google, it's going to take them a little bit longer just because of where they started. Joel: Moving on to the next LinkedIn item and we have three so we've got to move on these, they partnered with Silverchair, was that right? Or is that the band from the ‘90s? Chad: It’s Silver Lake. Joel: Silver Lake, sorry. Chad: (Laughing) Joel: They dropped 300 million big, big ones in a stake in Cornerstone OnDemand, which is a public company valued at $2 billion, which most people think this is going to be a play by Microsoft who has an ATS but isn't very good as our friend Susan at iCIMS let us know. Microsoft uses them as their ATS, but I'm sure Microsoft notices the value of having this. Cornerstone is essentially everything. It's ATS, it's on-boarding, it's training, all that stuff. Joel: My guess, I think you agree, is that Microsoft is making a play to get an ATS sort of a full service, work day kind of platform that again they'll integrate with LinkedIn and all their other stuff. This is just another step into their workplace domination or platform that they're looking to build and 2 billion is ... Microsoft probably has that in their couch cushion somewhere, a couple billion. They bought LinkedIn for 26 billion. Chad: A drop in the bucket. You take a look at it and I think the best strategy is not going in at just at one flank. You're hitting the market for more than one flank. From this standpoint this just makes it a hell of a lot of sense. They can still work on the Microsoft dynamics talent side of the house and then they have this partnership that's going on as well so you can see how ... And they have money so why not try to create something that's going to mature, see how they mature and maybe one matures faster, becomes an entirely different product suite versus the other. Joel: This fits nicely potentially with their Skype product, which they're starting to add video interviewing as a component to that. Microsoft is doing a hell of a job of bringing all these pieces together. Google and Facebook and everybody else needs to be on notice because Microsoft LinkedIn is not messing around and as we learn there are even testing reviews, which means Glass Door needs to be on red alert as well. Chad: Well, and we've seen from Glass Door, I mean Glass Door, it's taken them years, but they are now starting to be a part of the whole process for a job seeker. Job seekers are now looking to reviews, before applying in many cases. If you have that scenario happening, now LinkedIn has an opportunity since again, they are another trying to force engagement. They're trying to create more engagement types. This just makes sense for them. Joel: One of the things that, and this is sort of testing, but what's really what’s interesting about their play and it, and it looks like it's going to be similar to ... If you check in on Facebook and then it asks, “Hey, does this restaurant reservations? Yes or no? Does this restaurant have takeout? Yes or no?” And you just sort of quickly answer yes or no. LinkedIn will ask questions like benefits or whatever those questions are and you can either thumb up, thumb down it. Joel: Now, what I think is interesting is that Glass Door has had a real challenge with verifying. Their reviews are actually from people who work at the company or used to work at the company. What's interesting about LinkedIn is they only show that component of reviewing a company if that company is actually in your LinkedIn profile. There's a there's a level of validation there that Glass Door has a hard time doing that but I think Glass Door or I think LinkedIn can really challenge them in that area. Chad: No question. They know your employment background. Instead of just waiting for you to show up and say good things or in most cases, bad shit about the company that you work for or worked for, they can serve it up to you because they know they've got the data already. Again, this is another smart data play from LinkedIn to be able to, once again, this is our veterans’ podcasts, to out flank the Glass Doors in the world. I think it's just brilliant. Joel: I agree. Now we haven't seen any information yet on company pages. It's just sort of they're getting the data at this point but there's a company out there that will monitor this for you. When LinkedIn does unveil these ratings on those company pages that are publicly accessible, this company will help you do that. Chad: What? Who’s this company? Joel: This Company is called Ratedly, R-A-T-E-D-L-Y and Ratedly rapidly is sort of life lock for your employment brand. Ratedly will scour the web for employer reviews on online and serve them up to you on a convenient dashboard as well as email you alerts as reviews are posted. Part of their job as well as looking at all the new players in the employment review landscape as LinkedIn is getting into that. If you need to keep tabs on what's going on and what people are saying about you online take a look at Ratedly and the true essence of our show, there's a discount. Chad: What?!?! Joel: I know, right? You can go to Ratedly.com try us for a dollar for the first month. After that, it's only 147 per month. There's no long-term contracts. You can cancel anytime. Just use the coupon code Cheddar, that's C-H-E-D-D-A-R when you're checking out to try us for one dollar for the first month and just 147 after. Chad: Last week we talked to Susan Vitale from iCIMS where they had some amazing survey information research around this and it was funny because the first thing that she said because you asked her what should employers do? She said the first thing, be aware and that's the biggest issue. She actually said that's the biggest issue that companies have, is they're not aware really what the market is saying about them, their former employees or current employees are saying about them. If you are not aware, don't just pull the covers over your head and go into the fetal position. Get Ratedly for God's sakes. It's an app not to mention is desktop, right Joel? You've got both opportunities happen. Joel: You don't want your CEO to be the first one to come in and ask you, “What the hell is this?” And you do not have a good answer for them. Chad: Put yourself in those shoes real quick. If your CEO walks in and she hands you her mobile phone with a shitty review on that and on it and says, “What's this about?” And you say, “I have no clue. I'll take care of it.” What do you think going to happen? Joel: I love that I thought I had ended the ad and you kept it going. I appreciate that. Chad: It’s important. Joel: I appreciate that but we can move on to our next round of topics. Chad: I love it. Joel: We have a lot to cover this week, so we're going to do kind of a rapid fire, two minutes each of these news items and then get to another bulk of the show. Sourceress in the news this week or past week, they raised $3.5 million to basically source, which we're not super bullish on long-term. We agree that this is $3.5 million down the tubes as automation takes on more of the sourcing component. Chad: Yeah but I don't think you read far enough into their site some of the articles. They do have, and go figure, I think everybody says they have some element of AI in machine learning, but they are saying all the right things on their website. There is this human kind of setup that happens to better understand what the hiring managers want and need, which gives you that "buy in", which in most cases is more than necessary and then the AI takes over. I'm not sure that it's a bad investment just as long as it is not people heavy because once it becomes people heavy margins are going to go out the window and then the automated sources are just going to kick your ass. Joel: It could be longer term. They're gonna be people heavy and move, shift more to tech heavy in terms of sourcing. I find it hard to believe. We'll get to Entelo as well, but there are companies that are doing this really well, so we'll see what happens. 3.5 million isn't a ton of money for a start-up doing this so we'll keep it on them. Maybe we'll get them on the Rapid Fire show. We'll get to the nitty gritty of what they're doing. Chad: Firing squad. Joel: Firing squad. Are you ready to move on from them? Chad: Yes, ipply, tell me about that. Joel: ipply is a product of Jobs2Careers, which by all accounts seems to be a pretty successful job site. ipply was the company's attempt to penetrate the micro business or small business market. What the app did was it scoured your Gmail or Yahoo Mail and it would pull out applies or responses from Craig's list in your email campaign. For small businesses posting on craigslist, they go to a personal email address or maybe a company Gmail account. ipply would go in, scour that, bring them into a dashboard, let you manage candidates, respond to them in that capacity. They're shutting the site down or the app down basically. Talking to the company one is small businesses are super entrenched in what they do and secondly, they don't want to learn something new. Chad: I think that's bullshit. Joel: Which is bullshit? Little companies don't want to learn new stuff? Chad: No, I think they do want to learn new stuff. The thing is it all comes back down to really what is a part of their normal work day or what is part of their day? Facebook is going to start kicking their ass in these specific types of areas. I think I would fracking cut bait right now too because if you take a look at the horizon, this thing's going to die. Joel: I agree. Facebook has [inaudible 00:21:56]scale, right? Like scale no one else has. Chad: Yes. Joel: Facebook is uniquely positioned to tackle the small micro business market and they're pretty serious about this. In the news, we didn't write this for the show, but Facebook is on a 30 city tour to talk about employment and how to use company pages to recruit people and hire people and search for jobs. Facebook ... I think you and I agree that LinkedIn, Microsoft and Google are ... Google isn't today, but I think eventually they want to be competitive with what Microsoft LinkedIn is doing. Whereas I think Facebook is quite content with the small business classified Craigslist kind of market and letting small companies penetrate that because most restaurants in town have a Facebook page. All they have to do is post a job to it and they're done. To learn something. Chad: The thing is, you're not having to retrain people. That's the thing. With ipply you've got to explain the whole god damn thing. With Facebook you don't. Hey, you're on Facebook and you post the job on Facebook. You're always on Facebook. Your friends are on Facebook, boom, okay I’m in. Joel: It's nothing to put an ad to company. People have company pages. Hey, post your jobs for free on Facebook, whereas ipply would have to have a sales force, which they weren't sort of given the resources to do that to get the word out, so they were really challenged from the beginning and this thing was probably DOA before it even launched. If you're looking to penetrate the super small market, like save yourself the pain and heartache then just don't. Chad: It's not scalable and it's definitely not sustainable. Joel: Next video, new survey this past week said that job seekers prefer raw, un-manicured videos, almost selfie style videos to the well-manicured slick. An agency produced high definition video. Companies that are out there spending five, ten, twenty-five thousand dollars on really slick videos might be wasting their money and they're better off just buying a selfie stick and having their hiring managers record a little video about the job. Chad: This is simple. People want real. They want authentic, they want genuine. They don't want polished bullshit and that's what they feel like you're giving them in most cases. “Here's a nice, ooh, listen to this nice polished video.” That’s bullshit, man. It just seems like you're glossing over the things that I really care about and that's what you need to get to. You need to be real with these people when they feel like you're being genuine they are going to engage. Joel: This translates into everything today, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: If you want to go to a restaurant, you don't want to see photos by the actual restaurant. You want to see the photos by the people who went to the restaurant. You don't want to read reviews that the company or the restaurant has selected. You want to see the real stuff. This is with the success of GlassDoor. People want to see the transparency. They want to see what actual workers are saying about the company and it translates to video. They want that raw footage. Chad: It translates to pretty much everything. Much like this podcast. It's no bullshit. It's authentic. Joel: It's totally raw. Chad: It’s totally raw. Joel: Also interesting is that they want to hear from the hiring manager or actual co-workers. They don't want to hear from the Marketing Department or an agency and they also don't want hear from HR unless it's an HR job. Even if it's homemade, if it's HR talking about the tech department, people see that as bullshit as well. Chad: That's right. Get out your selfie sticks. Knock it out guys. Joel: Get your iPhone or Android if you're Chad, phones out and a record some videos. Entelo in the news. Entelo as we've talked about before but for those who don't know, kind of a sourcing tool. They track social media habits to see who might be in the market for a job than other people. They hired a heavy hitter from Google this past week. It was a guy from the science group for Google cloud that was working with Gmail, Google docs, Chrome, Android and Cloud platform according to the Entelo release. Chad: Dude is legit. This dude is legit and these are the types of people that obviously Entelo are going to want to pull in to the organization. He’s on the data science side of the house that's Entelo’s ... That's their entire businessman. Big props to Entelo. These are the types of moves that we want to see. When we see big names go to companies we want to see these types of things. This is pretty awesome. Joel: I agree. We've talked so much about big companies with big resources and big bank accounts and brand names. When we see a smaller spunky startup doing these kinds of things, we say, “Wow, that's big balls, good for you.” I'm sure he's getting a hell of a lot of ownership and options and he's gonna make a lot of money when Entelo sells to whoever. Good for Entelo for making that move. They also brought in, I think a marketing person and somebody else that were pretty, pretty heavy hitters, but the Google guy was clearly the golden medal for them. Joel: You called them spunky and big balls in the same breath. Joel: Spunky, yeah. Moving on, actually that might be it for our Rapid Fire. All the news that's fit to print right here on the podcast. You want to talk about vets? Chad: Yeah. This is I think kind of rapid fire as well. We saw a release from Careerbuilder where they are doing an integration with RallyPoint and I thought this was pretty awesome. Just from the standpoint of instead of trying to recreate the wheel and for all those who are out there who don't know who RallyPoint is. RallyPoint is a social media platform for veterans and individuals who are currently serving. There's about 1.5ish million that are in the platform and that's a lot for this community because we're a small community. The thing that I love about this is, is that Careerbuilder is not trying to create something or acquire it. They're trying to partner with people who actually know what the hell they're doing in this community versus what we've seen over the years, like with Monster and Military.com and those types of things. Joel: Do you think that the closed ... Veterans is your is your lane, so I won’t try to get too much into it, but do veterans want sort of a closed ecosystem and do you think the closed social ecosystem can translate into things like physicians or nurses or techies? Chad: I really do and in the, the big reason is that we have conversations within RallyPoint or maybe physicians might have them within their platform that you're not going to see on Facebook. It feels more of a tight knit community. We can talk about things that we're not going to talk about on Facebook and to be able to be a lifestyle platform, which is really what RallyPoint is. Again, just trying to somewhat mimic a Facebook to be able to really get into their community and start to give that engagement and interaction. It's a lifestyle type of platform. I'm getting there. It's not as Facebook proportions obviously, but I think it's very smart for Careerbuilder to be able to partner with an organization that. Joel: This sort of goes into the face of our next gossip rumor, a news item of the week, is that Military.com owned by Monster.com, which is basically is ... I didn't know much about it until you mentioned it, is almost a publisher for military news items. It's almost like a newspaper, online newspaper so jobs are a component of that. The rumor is that Monster, which currently has a dedicated sales force and platform for that will just link it over to Monster. On one hand you have Careerbuilder getting in bed and on the other hand, you have Monster sort of divorcing itself a little bit from hitting veterans. What do you make of that divergence? Chad: You have two entirely different approaches. Military.com is old world and it's got a ton of content and that's what it's really good at and then it's almost like when we talk about this with newspapers. It's like a newspaper that tried to jam a jobs, just try to hair force jobs into and it just didn't work. There just wasn't a flow, just didn't make sense versus what we're seeing with a RallyPoint, Careerbuilder type of a thing where RallyPoint is really where everything's happening and then the job content is they're served up much like Facebook in some cases. I think possibly better and the actual feed so you’re seeing a huge difference in how these two organizations are going after the market. If Military.com does step away from the employment segment, that's going to signal. It's going to send very big signals through our industry. Joel: It seems in a trump America that doing more military stuff would be advantageous, yes or no? Chad: It would but in most cases companies don't know what the hell they're doing. Just to be frank, they don't know what the hell they're doing. It's not sustainable. They throw resources at it for a specific amount of time to make themselves feel good and then it doesn't turn out to be long-term sustainable. When that happens you've got companies pointing fingers at companies like Military.com saying, “Well, you know, you guys aren't, aren't providing the ROI.” When it's really not them in the first place. It's you [inaudible 00:32:07]. You would think that but unfortunately companies ... We can put a man on the moon, but we can't figure out veteran recruiting for goodness sakes. That's just because we're not putting the resources and the focus and the priority on it. Joel: Interesting and Veteran's Day was this past Friday so a quick shout out to Chad for being a veteran. I appreciate you doing what you do and did. While I was getting drunk in college you were out fighting the enemy. Quick shout out to you for doing that and also a sort of a somber shout out to Ted Daywalt, who anyone in the industry will know, but Ted was guy behind VetJobs and he and his wife would basically travel to every trade show and every conference that they could and they'd set up a 10 by 10 booth and talk about that hiring. I, for one, enjoyed Ted, very historically attune and always told a great story when you saw him so a little somber note, Ted will miss you. You did great things and touched a lot of people. Chad: Everybody has a Ted Daywalt's story. It's all there is to it and more than likely it has to do with a bar. There has to be a bar in there but I know Ted, an amazing guy and definitely will be missed, will be missed J oel: Hearts go out to him and his family. Let’s get a quick word from a Sovren, one of our great sponsors and when we come back we'll talk about Trump and doing this will get you fired. Chad: Wait a minute. Advert: Google, Lever, Entelo, Monster, Jibe. What do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They all use Sovren Technology. Some use our software to help people find the perfect job while others use our technology to help companies find the perfect candidate. Sovren has been the global leader in recruitment intelligence software since 1996 and we can help improve your hiring process too. We’d love to help you make a perfect match. This is Sovren.com, S-O-V-R-E-N.com, for a free demo. Chad: Free demo. Joel: On the lighter side of the news, a woman, Julie Briskman, was riding her bike leisurely when Donald Trump's motorcade drove by and Ms. Briskman thought it appropriate to flip off the president and the motorcade and it cost her her job. Chad: We’re going to throw out the name of the company because Akima, A-K-I-M-A, they thought apparently it was bad for them because they are federal contractors. If you know anything about this president, he's going to do what he can to be able to make sure that his opponents feel his wrath. I don't know that this would be a big deal, but they obviously thought it was. Said this what she felt. He was passing by and my blood just started to boil. I'm thinking DACA recipients are getting kicked out. He's pulled ads for open enrollment Obamacare. Only one third of Puerto Rico has power and I'm thinking he's going to the damn golf course again, which, that's gonna piss Americans off, right? Joel: What I find intriguing is this occurred basically because they have a contract with the government. Chad: Yes. Joel: They have a fantastic picture of her doing this, which I don't know how they got that but anyway, do you think that the government or the whatever powers to be contacted that company or do you think the company took the initiative and said, “Okay, well, we can't lose our government contract. So we gotta let you go.” Chad: What happened was, the person who actually took this picture was a photographer who was riding along with the motorcade. They published it and she put it on her twitter and all those other fun things and then just because she's proud of it, right? She went and told her company, “Hey, just so you know, this is what's happening out there and they already have it.” Joel: This was in Virginia, which is “at-will” state and you can be fired pretty much for any reason, so she's kind of screwed. I guess she's going to look for a new job in advocacy and is going to look at planned parenthood or the people for the ethical treatment of animals. Mrs. Briskman with two child children, good luck in your new job search. Let that be a lesson to everyone else, not to flip off the president because it could cost you your job. Chad: Or less than two, if you want to go ahead and show everybody how you feel because you're allowed to, because you know why? America. Joel: America. All right, that was good. I think we are out. Chad: I think we're good, 40 minutes. You were about right on it. Joel: Yep. Later everybody. Chad: Have a good one. Outro: This has been The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single show and check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit hiredaily.com, and you're welcome. #VeteranRecruiting #RallyPoint #Militarycom #Entelo #ipply #Monster #Jobs2Careers #Careerbuilder