Episode Search

This is a NEXXT EXCLUSIVE Podcast from ChadCheese.com - HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Announcer: 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. 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. I bet everyone listening is reaching to check their phones right now. Chad: Yeah, I know. I call it our Pavlovian dog reflex of text messaging. Joel: Yeah, that's probably why text messaging has a fricking 97% open rate. Chad: What? Joel: Crazy high candidate response rate within the first hour alone. Chad: Which, are all great reasons why the Chad and Cheese Podcast love Text to Hire from Nexxt. Joel: Yeah. 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 text to hire campaign for just 25% off. Boom! Chad: Wow! So, how do you get this discount, you're asking yourself right now? Joel: Tell 'em 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. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Just go where you know. ChadCheese.com and Nexxt, with two x's. 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, biased opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Welcome to a special edition of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm Joel Cheeseman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On today's exclusive podcast we have Anoop Gupta on the show. Anoop, welcome to the show. Anoop: Hey, thank you so much Chad and Cheese. Joel: You bet, you bet. Give us a little bit about you and history because it is pretty cool. And tell us a little bit about your country ... Company before we drop into ... Sorry I was reading a Trump article before I [crosstalk 00:02:33]. Tell us a little bit about your company and we'll get into some Q&A. Anoop: Okay, so I'll start with the country. I came to the United States in 1980 to be my Ph.D. in Computer Science at Carnegie Melon. And after that I spent 11 years on the faculty of Stanford University. I did my first start up there, which Microsoft acquired in '97. Then 18 years at Microsoft including some really fun roles as reporting to Bill Gates as his technology advisor, running all of the business communication services there. And then two years ago I decided to resign and start SeekOut with my co-founder who was one of the key movers and shakers behind the Bing search engine. What SeekOut is about is talent identification that helps talent acquisition teams hire faster and with higher quality candidates. Some of the things we really emphasize are companies that are looking for diversity and that have deep interest in tech talent. So SeekOut's unique algorithms and custom filters helps high tech companies identify diverse talent for those hard to fill roles. Anoop: We have something very special for GitHub. Our aggregated and enhanced to GitHub profiles and intuitive search helps companies find untapped tech talent. We have a unique insights feature that gives you insights on the competitive landscape and allows recruiters to become talent advisors in support of the hiring managers. So all pretty powerful stuff that I'd love to share more about as we go on. Chad: So let me get this straight, let me get this straight real quick Anoop. So you reported to, probably talked to Bill Gates on a daily basis. Then you move to the recruiting technology space and you're talking to a couple of idiots like us. Is that how this worked out? Anoop: No, not exactly. Joel: Did you confer with a psychiatrist or a shrink before making such a move? Anoop: So, you know, I did spend several hours a day with Bill during the couple of years I reported to him and it was ... I just learned so much from hearing the questions he would ask and how he would prepare and what he would do. Now my move into the talent space is somewhat circuitous. What we started with given my deep messaging background is how to make sure ... We are all going outside our immediate circles to find a better couriers or whatever else, so we created a messaging system that will let people who want to seek attention like recruiters and people who want to provide attention like candidates have a much more fruitful exchange than today. We look at LinkedIn as the middle man where they control who we can see unless we pay them. They control who we can message unless we pay them. And there is no fair exchange between the buyers and the sellers. So that's where we started with and then as we learned more we said, "This is such a noble mission." Anoop: Right, we spend so much of our lives at the workplace. And what we do, who we work with, what impact we make is deeply meaningful and it finds purpose for us. So what better to do to allow people to make better matches and get them hired in the right places? Joel: What activities did you do at Microsoft that you've carried over to the new company. Were you hands-on on recruiting or was it just sort of, you were there on the wall? Anything come from that experience in 18 years at Microsoft that is currently in the SeekOut product? Anoop: So what is relevant there is, my role was as a hiring manager and my team in Unified Communications when I was running that was around 1,600 people. So when you're a hiring manager, you want to say what are the things I am interested in that the recruiters are not doing? What are the kinds of conversations that should happen between a recruiter or a sourcer and the hiring manager? So a lot of the product and particularly this people insights piece that I've talked about is that hiring manager/recruiter relationship and how data can lead to much more useful conversations and productive conversations than just saying, "Hey, tell me more about this role." Chad: So now that Microsoft owns LinkedIn, and then you've got this side ... I would say somewhat of a competitor to LinkedIn, how does that work in the market? Do you see Microsoft trying to prospectively compete and/or create a SeekOut type of platform? Or are you really just possibly showing them a new way to go and prospectively get acquired? Joel: And have they offered to buy the company yet? Anoop: No, they have not offered to buy the company yet. See this is a huge space that is there on how we discover talent, how we communicate with them. We are taking a look at it from a broader landscape. The thing I like to say the CV as we put it with past position titles and education is a very limited representation of who a person is, who is a candidate is. So when we, in the case of GitHub, look across 60 million repositories and bring out the contributions that a particular person has made and the hiring manager can look at that code in an instant and decide whether it is good, bad versus just a 15 minute interview. So bringing this unique information beyond just a LinkedIn resume into the candidate's profile and making it very easily searchable and then being able to reach candidates, I think makes us special and in some ways complimentary. And something long-term we think even LinkedIn ought to be doing. Joel: Anoop, is it fair to put the Entelo, the Hiring Solved, Nameri, those companies, would you count them as a competitor? Anoop: Yes. Entelo is used in a similar way and Hiring Solved too. We think we bring some very unique capabilities compared to all of these companies, but yes we are in the same space. Joel: And what would some of those unique qualities be, for our viewers? Our listeners largely know who Entelo and some of these players are. How are you different? Anoop: We are different, one is in terms of how we do GitHub and how we let people find talent. So if you look at Entelo and many of these other search engines you look at a profile and then there will be the GitHub symbol so you can go to the GitHub profile. And very often when you go there you'll find nothing useful there. Instead we let you start from the GitHub site. We built an aggregated profile that has the public information that people often search with, current company, current title, past company, past title, skills. But we also bring in information from the GitHub profile. We bring in information from each ... We will tell you, this person was the number tenth contributor to the tensor flow Google, which is Google machine learning framework that is there. So we'll bring out their contributions. We will bring out their email. Anoop: So we bring together information that nobody else does. GitHub is a totally unique solution on how we let you source on SeekOut. Similarly, the people insights piece that we have, you can use 20 filters to control what is the competitve of a candidate talent pool landscape you want to look at. Nobody else provides that in that flexible and powerful way. Diversity we and Entelo are very similar. You might have seen a source gone paper by Phil Hendrickson, so we are pretty similar. But I believe Entelo and us are the only two people who are doing the deep analysis on diversity and letting you search and filter in powerful ways. Joel: So we'll get into diversity here in a minute, but when you take a look at the actual platform, obviously that SeekOut has, would you classify it more as a proactive where a recruiter has to jump into the system and actually do a search against skillsets and job descriptions and pre-reqs; versus a reactive system that reacts to what your needs are when you post an actual requisition into your system? Anoop: So it is a search tool primarily for passive candidates who may not be looking. So we are not like Monster or something where people have just said, "Hey right now I'm looking for a job or a position." Within that, there is a lot of judgment that is there on equal skillsets and so it is a place where people come to search. But we have built into some pretty cool AI machine learning capabilities inside that. For example if you were to say you're looking to hire a data scientist for Facebook. So what we do behind the scenes is we look at everybody who is currently a data scientist at Facebook, then we look at what were their past companies, what were their past titles, what were their universities, what were their majors, what are their skills and we cannot automatically surface people for you. And then with a single click you say show me African American candidates that will be suitable and we'll bring those up. It's very very powerful. We call this the position magnet in SeekOut. Joel: So that's where the diversity piece comes in. Where you can actually do a deep search against backgrounds per se, and then you have it broken out with, I would say gender as well as race and prospective Veteran status and those types of things? Anoop: Yes, exactly. That is true. And we do pretty complex things. Just so you know to use as an example our African American filter. We used historically Black colleges and universities. We use African American sororities and fraternities, if you're a member. We use membership in organizations like National Society of Black Engineers or National Black Accountants Associations. We also look at the census bureau and turns out that certain names are much more likely to be African American. We also use that information so these are fairly sophisticated queries that we look at index time to surface candidates. This is not a perfect filter or analysis by any chance, but it can be super helpful to recruiters. Chad: You talked some about AI, which obviously you have some experience in working at Microsoft. We talk a lot about on the show in terms of automation. A lot of companies out there are trying to create an easy button, if you will, for recruiting. I need a Ph.D. developer with five to eight years experience in Seattle, go. And it goes out to the web, searches people, bring them back, prescreens them with a chatbot. Your product does not do that. Are you against that piece of the business? Is automation going to be a part of the product? What are just some of your general senses on that? Anoop: So the first thing I would say is AI is a term that is, I believe, overused. It certainly has its space. It is important, but a lot of it is what I call data science, right? So if you say, "Hey I'm looking for a Python developer." So you can parse out and extract key terms from AJD. You can look at the previous developers who might be at the company who have a certain skillset and then you can get a lot synonyms. So all of that is AI and it is useful in surfacing candidates, though I would never de-emphasize the human additional initiative that might be required. Anoop: The second thing is when you are reaching out to candidates, I think it can be helpful, but my belief is smaller number of candidates, more personalized is always better. I'm going to take a, actually slight tangent, and talk to you about it. Google recently showed the duplex demo. Joel: Sure. Anoop: At the Google, right where the AI and bot is going and talking and making a representation. The CEO of the Allen Institute of Brain Sciences had a very interesting comment on that. He said, "This is terrible. Not because it's making it but it should self-identify as a bot. So when it starts the conversation, it should say, I am a bot, representing Anoop. I would like to make a appointment with the hairdresser." Because the consequences if you don't identify what is AI and what is human and what we might reveal, can be very very bad. Yes, automation can be useful, should be used. But how you ethically use it is very important. Chad: On the front end though, you can fix that pretty easy, right? Hi, this is Chad's Google assistant. Looking to make a hair appointment. That's a funny one. That's not a big change. It's not a big change, right? I mean, it could be something that would be implemented fairly easy. Anoop: Oh the implementation-wise it is easy. I totally agree. I think what people are trying to do is they're trying to fake. So nobody says when you, in Entelo, use their automation to send out 50 emails, "This is the Entelo bot on behalf of company xyz reaching out to you." Because the person will ignore it. They try and fake it as it's not a bot. Joel: Yeah, and there are some branding implications there too, right? Anoop: Yeah, yeah. So I'm all for technology and intelligence and automation. But I am also want us to be cautious about not trying to fake it and fool people because it can have very bad brand consequences. Chad: Yeah, transparency-wise, there's no question there. Joel: Anoop, you've probably watched or heard about the HiQ legal battle with LinkedIn and being able to scrape content, profile data, etc. Which I'm assuming will affect your business quite drastically if LinkedIn wins that case and sort of excludes spiders from getting data from them. I don't know much about GitHub in terms of how aggressively they are against bots. It sounds like they're not so much, but I'm just curious your thoughts on that legal battle, things that you're doing to sort of prepare if the worse case scenario happens, and what it means for the scraping profile business in general. Anoop: So what we as far as, this is an area you are trying to get jobs to candidates. This is your public professional profile that is there. And our belief that our data, and LinkedIn will claim so, belongs to the end-user and not really to LinkedIn and the same in a lot of other papers, what research papers they have published, what open-sourced contributions they have made. These belong to the end-user rather than to any company. I am very optimistic both where the courts are going to go and the availability of such information to allow recruiters to make more intelligent decisions to help find candidates and offer them great opportunities to find purpose and do great stuff and have impact. Chad: So we're talking about all of, not just LinkedIn, but we're also talking about Facebook, right? I mean, there's a lot of optics behind this right now and I appreciate the hope that HiQ comes out on top. But don't think from an optics standpoint right now, that the landscape is or the market is very hypersensitive to privacy? Anoop: I agree and I believe the market should be sensitive, but if you look at GDPR and your look at EU Privacy Shield, they have a number of clauses, the kind of information and the use of that information, the purpose for which that information is being used, actually they're being pretty smart about that. Every EU citizen has a right to employment. So to say don't use my public profile data for that is a very unreasonable thing and I don't think they will go for that. But if you're to use they're posts on Facebook to determine they had a certain personality type and they shouldn't be hired or some other implications, I think the EU and the American companies and citizens won't like that. Anoop: So it is a very nuanced landscape and I agree with the sensitivity part that you're saying. But I think we have to handle the nuance as it is and deal with it. Chad: Okay, so that being said, are you spinning SeekOut, is SeekOut actually going in the direction of being an engagement type of marketing platform as well since you've got so much data. You're looking at trying to have better interaction and experience, are you guys looking to go down that road? Anoop: So we are planning to ship in the next couple of weeks that if you organize people in a project, let's say for a particular job role, you can reach out to those candidates via SeekOut or you may decide to use a CRM system. But many people have very old CRM systems or no CRM systems at all. The reason is that sending just one email is not a way to get high response rate. I get so many emails and I have to ping Joel many times before I get a response. Chad: Joel does not use email well. Joel: Smoke signal only. Anoop: So being able to manage such a campaign and remind people, I think is a very useful capability that we will be providing in the very near future. Chad: So that being said, and knowing that email ... Really response rates on emails suck comparatively, when we talk about text messaging, those types of things, Facebook messenger. Are you looking at prospectively trying to wrap those into your communications system as well? Anoop: We have not thought much about it. The issue that comes up is more telephony. Should we be texting people, calling people? Just from my own personal experience I would be pretty annoyed if somebody just called me out of the blue and even if I would have been interested in will create a bad impression for me and probably true for many of the tech candidates. Imagine the number of calls and messages they get and emails. And if all those are texts and phone calls, their life would be hell. But we should be open to whatever is the way to respectfully reach them, we should allow them to do. Joel: Anoop, what should we expect in your space and your sphere of competition, right? Do you expect more consolidation? Do you expect more competitors to launch? What does the future hold for this sourcing software category? Anoop: I think both things will happen. Many new startups will launch and we will see consolidation too. You know, the small number of really have the deeper technology ... You get a lot of people who have very shallow stacks and just want to offer something. And I think those will disappear. People, I hope, like ourselves who bring deep technology and value and simplicity and intuitiveness to the product hopefully will get much wider an option by the community. And who knows, they may be consolidation then. Chad: So being new to this industry, what is really the most surprising thing that you've seen thus far. Coming, obviously, with your technology background, now coming into the recruitment industry, recruitment technology industry, what surprised you the most? Anoop: One of the things that surprised me is the emphasis on free and not wanting to pay for tools. I'll use an analogy: when I was in grad school I worked on CAD tools, how you design these VLSI Logic integrated circuit chips. And I wrote one of the programs that was very popular for almost a decade that was there. But at that time, we were designing chips for 10,000 transistors and now we design chips for 10 million transistors. So for ancillary, humanity is about tools and powerful tools expanding our capabilities. And people still want to say, "My time is not valuable. I want to spend 15 minutes trying to find an email for somebody else. Or trying to search or try to use 20 different things." So that surprised me a little that people are not, it seemed almost, they were not valuing their time. Anoop: I think being able to do stuff without the tools is a very powerful skillset that they should have. But investment in tools that empowers us increases our productivity, is something we ought to be doing. I was a little surprised by that in the community. Chad: So yes, and then this is what I've been saying for years, Anoop. Free is not a strategy. And that being said, I'm going to roll over into the next question, what's the price? What does it actually cost to engage with SeekOut and start to use it as a very powerful tool? Joel: And do you have any special deals for our valued listeners? Anoop: So we offer both monthly and annual prices. And there are three skews, we have a basic $1,000 for the whole year. A premium one, which gives you diversity and insights for $2,500 a year. And a premium tech, which includes GitHub for $5,000 a year and they're equal in monthly prices too. We think even if you make one hire using the tool it will cover the annual price. But I do have a very great special for this special Chad and Cheese audience that is there. If you buy SeekOut in the next month, in the next 30 days and you mention the Chad and Cheese Podcast when you reach out to us, we'll give you an additional 10% off. Chad: Gotta love it. Joel: I dig it, I dig it. Anoop, I got one more. I want to hear a funny Bill Gates story. If you don't have a funny story drop us a Bill Gates piece of wisdom on us. Anoop: So one is Bill is a really funny guy. You might think of him from everything that you see is a lot of serious stuff. But when you're in meetings with him he'll make you laugh and he'll crack jokes left and right. I'll tell you more though about a piece of wisdom in terms of his strategy. So once I was sitting with him and I think the foundation was just starting and I asked him, "You know it's really hard to decide where to spend money and what you're going to invest in." So his first thing is, "I don't invest in White men's ailments. And that is because there is enough incentive otherwise for the former companies to do it. What is important to me to make my money count is to invest in areas where the rest of the community is not investing." And that's why he chose vaccines. A lot of drugs already existed and just the economic incentives were not there to product them at volume and the Gates Foundation has done that and saved millions of lives. Anoop: So the big lesson is in terms of being very deliberative about seeing what are the gaps, what are wholes, what can your limited resources ... Because even Bill Gates' resources are nowhere near compared to what the nations stand and the former companies stand to say how I can make a big difference. Joel: So find a need and fill it, basically. Anoop: Yeah, find a need that is being underserved and then see if you have the right talents or the right resources, go and fill it. Chad: Excellent, awesome. Joel: Well, Anoop, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. Chad: Please tell the fine listeners where they can find out more about SeekOut. Anoop: They should go to https://seekout.io. So that is our website. You can learn a lot about that and Chad and Joel, thank you so much for having me on the Podcast, it's been wonderful. Joel: Thank you, dude. Chad: Thank you, Anoop. You can tell he's incredibly technical. He started all the way at the https ... Joel: Make sure that secure URL is mentioned. We appreciate that. Thanks, Anoop. Anoop: Hey, thank you so much. Bye bye. Chad: Okay, okay, okay, okay. Before we go, remember when I asked you about the whole reflex and check your text messages thing? Joel: Yeah, you know all about reflexes. And then I brilliantly tied it to text messages 97% open rate, 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 Text to Hire, 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 Text to Hire and it's all about Nexxt. Joel: And elegant design. So go to chadcheese.com. Click on the Nexxt logo and get 25, yeah I said 25% off your first Text to Hire campaign. Engage better, use Text to Hire from Nexxt, two x's. Chad: Boo yah. Announcer: Thanks to our partners at TA Tech, the association for talent acquisition solutions. Remember to visit TATech.org. 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. #Seekout #Microsoft #BillGates #LinkedIn #Sourcing #GitHub #Nexxt

Startup Hirevisor faces the firing squad. Will their warm-and-fuzzy, sharing-is-caring business model pass the test? Gotta listen to this Talroo exclusive if you want to find out. FIRING SQUAD is brought to you by TALROO - The data-driven platform to amplify talent attraction and job discovery Transcript Joel: All right. Time for another Firing Squad. I'm ready, Chad, how about you? Chad: I'm excited. Joel: On today's show, we have Patrick Hillstrom, co-founder and CEO of Hirevisor, which by the way if you don't have a tchotchke visor that you're passing out to people, I think you're really missing a prime opportunity. Patrick, welcome to Firing Squad. Give us the 15 second intro on you. Patrick: Well, thanks Joel and Chad. A quick intro on me, my name is Patrick Hillstrom as you folks mentioned. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Hirevisor. I'm based in San Francisco and ex-LinkedIn alum, and very excited to be here. Joel: Excellent. Chad, tell him what he's won. Chad: You've won the opportunity to stand in front of the firing squad. That's what you're getting. We're going to go ahead and set the format out for you. You're going to have two minutes to pitch us on Hirevisor. At the end of two minutes, you'll hear the bell. Then Joel and I will hit you with some rapid fire Q&A. If your answers aren't concise, Joel is going to hit you with either the bell or crickets. That means you need to move your ass on. Tighten up your game, be concise. Chad: Then at the end of Q&A, Joel and I will give you our honest feedback with regard to your pitch, answering of your questions, and you're going to get graded in one of three ways. You will either receive big applause, that means you've kicked ass and you've taken names, a golf clap, which is my favorite because it's so pathetic, but that just means you're not ready for primetime, and then the firing squad. You should probably pack your shit up, go home, and rethink this whole thing. That's firing squad. It's time to buckle up and pitch. Joel, it's all you. Joel: Are you ready, Patrick? Patrick: I am ready. Joel: All right. At the bell, you have two minutes. When you hear the bell again, you are done. Go. Patrick: All right. In a sentence, Hirevisor is a peer-to-peer talent exchange. Now, what that means in practice is our platform provides a way to invite their second place candidates to leverage all the efforts that we put into application process toward finding roles at our other partner companies on the Hirevisor talent exchange. Patrick: There's really two pieces to the platform. On the one hand, we're a candidate experience, candidate engagement talent branding tool that frankly will interact with most of the candidates who go through your application pipeline and make sure the vast majority of folks have a way to still feel like they had a great experience with your company. Patrick: On the other side of our platform, we're actually a sourcing tool. All of these candidates who accept their invite to join the Hirevisor platform, they're now searchable on the Hirevisor talent exchange. The main value here is these candidates who join, again, they can leverage their efforts in the process toward finding roles at other companies, and hopefully be able to find roles at other companies without ... Excuse me. Without having to fill out another application, without having to do more work than they've already put into the process. Patrick: This really comes from a personal place for me, because as a candidate, I've been second place more time than I can count, and we really wanted to build a platform where as a candidate you're able to, interviewing has been historically a parallel yet siloed process. It's the first time in our platform all of this work can help you land roles at other companies. Patrick: Two pieces of the platform. It's a candidate experience, candidate engagement piece, and also a sourcing tool that helps companies find better talent faster, and builds an overall better candidate experience. Joel: In 15 seconds, where would someone find more about you? Patrick: Hirevisor.com. You can sign up today, or you can request a demo. I'm happy to share more about it. Joel: All right. That's your first piece of critique. Make sure in every pitch you tell people where can you find out more. Patrick: Got it. Joel: Chad, he's all yours. Chad: Yes. Three part question. First and foremost, are you familiar with AllianceQueue? Patrick: AllianceQueue? No, I'm not. Chad: Are you familiar with Jobfox? Patrick: I've heard of them, but not terribly familiar with them. Chad: Okay. When it comes down to the actual pitch that you're trying to make, how are you different when it comes to going after active job seekers than all the other products and platforms that are out there? Patrick: The main difference about our platform is that we're directly integrated with your applicant tracking system. We're as much a sourcing and candidate engagement play as we are a systems integration play. It takes 10 minutes, you get up and running and integrated with your applicant tracking system, and candidates are automatically invited to our platform. The value of this being that we know for sure, hey, this candidate interviewed for this roll, and we have the date and timestamp of when that happened. Patrick: While there are plenty of platforms out there to your point that say, "Hey, we've got the best active job seekers," we know for sure in a data driven way that these folks are ready to go. Chad: This is a platform that is focused heavily on the active job seeker's side in an environment and/or landscape market that is very tight, so therefore, active job seekers are very low. Why are you focusing on active job seekers, when to be quite frank, most people are trying to re-engage with those passive job seekers? Patrick: It's a great question. The way we see it is almost as a philosophical difference about the future of the talent ecosystem. There's plenty of companies out there like Beamery, both Lever and Greenhouse have offered these sort of talent relationship management ... Excuse me, talent marketing tools that help you to your point re-engage with candidates who've been rejected and may or may not be interested in the company later on. Patrick: We see that as fundamentally inefficient. What we're offering is a true talent exchange that almost in a way is just-in-time recruiting where it's more efficient if you have this person who was just rejected from a role and they could be a great fit at another company who's looking for someone like them right now. Why not make that connection, versus introducing this additional, what we see as additional inefficiency in the process. Patrick: To your point, we see it as almost a difference in world view. Joel: Patrick, I'm always interested in the genesis of an idea. You mentioned your LinkedIn past. I'm interested, what did you do for them? Was this idea of this company born out of LinkedIn? Tell us about the lightning bolt that hit you that made you come up with Hirevisor? Patrick: Sure. I was at LinkedIn for two and a half years, and I worked on the business operations team and worked very closely with the product teams as well, specifically on content products like SlideShare, Pulse, the publishing platform, Groups, and then also when LinkedIn acquired Linda.com, I helped lead the BizOps effort for that integration. Patrick: A lot of what I was doing was working with product teams and understanding how different users were using LinkedIn products and services, and how that was incorporated into the overall growth of the company. I would say what my time at LinkedIn really did was give me a sense for how the 800 pound gorilla in this space thinks about the talent ecosystem and what their sense of how the market is shifting, where it's heading, and product strategy, et cetera. Patrick: That definitely informed some of the things that I'm doing right now with Hirevisor, but really the lightning bolt for this idea came after two and a half years at LinkedIn, had a great time there, but really felt this itch to try something on my own. LinkedIn's a fantastic company, I would've stayed if I didn't have this itch basically. The original genesis, even more so than from working at my time at LinkedIn was just born out of personal experience. Again, as I mentioned, I'd been a second place candidate more times than I could count, and coming from a ... Joel: You're barely into your 20s. How can you have so many second ... Patrick: Welcome to the Millennial struggle Joel: There we go. The Millennial struggle. Patrick: I had to throw it in there. I had to throw it in there. In all seriousness, I graduated with a history degree, right, and I managed to weasel my way into finance first, and then from there, weasel my way into LinkedIn. There was a lot of learnings that came from branding myself and how do you actually understand and navigate this job market. The process sucked, frankly. That core sort of feeling about the candidate experience married with my time at LinkedIn helped inform the genesis of this idea. Patrick: Do you want me to get into the specifics for this, because this particular idea is actually a pivot. Our original idea was more of a core candidate experience piece, but this is more of a pivot. I'm happy to get into that if you want as well, but that sort of, that core genesis. Joel: Typically people a little bit more grizzled or they have some experience in employment, which you do, but not that extensive, or people who've had startups before. Their story is a little more cut and dry. To me, yours is a little less so, so I wanted to just have you sort of create some color around your story. You're also I believe a Penn, a Penn grad? Patrick: Correct. Joel: So Ivy League kid, LinkedIn, now doing this. Got it. Patrick: Correct. Correct. Chad: When it comes down to a silver medal candidate- Patrick: Quick question. Do you guys like that term or dislike that term? I've found it's polarizing. There's people who love it and there's people who hate it. Joel: Hey, we're asking the questions here, pal! Patrick: All right. Chad: I don't think it matters. Second, I'm a company, and I have silver medal candidates, it's a tight job market. There's no way in hell I'm giving you my silver medal candidates. How are you getting companies to actually come on board and say, "Oh yeah, I'll give you all my great talent into your shared resume database"? Patrick: Another great question. I will admit, there is a profile of company that is much more excited about this idea than say other profiles of companies. They're typically high growth, mid market, call it 100 to 1,000 employees sized companies, folks who basically, they needed to fill a req a yesterday. Whereas, if you talk to say much larger enterprises, you're getting some of that reaction where they say, "Why would I ever share my candidates with you? Our talent pipeline is bigger than yours will ever be." Patrick: There definitely is a sweet spot in terms of profile of company we're working with. To directly answer your question, the way the pitch basically works is we say, look, you need to find better talent faster, active candidates. Our platform provides you a way to do that where you can see candidates who have been interviewed by other top companies on our platform. Patrick: If you buy this hypothesis that hey, if I'm looking for a software engineer, this person made it to the final round at Facebook or final round at LinkedIn or you name it, if I know that company has a high bar for talent and this person just recently joined the platform, chances are I want to talk to them and potentially fast track them through the process. Patrick: At the same time, the other piece of the puzzle is the candidate experience, candidate engagement piece around closing the loop with all of these folks who don't ultimately end up getting hired at your company. Frankly, we've actually had a number of emails come from candidates and from our customers alike saying, "Thank you so much for this opportunity, I really appreciate it." Joel: Patrick, you said something earlier that really I think struck a nerve with me, and it was Millennial. Aside from saying get off my lawn, your business feels so Millennial to me. Like, let's all share candidates, hold hands and sing kumbaya. Are your clients Millennial-driven, are they Millennial ... Do you have Toms Shoes? Is there something in the DNA of these customers that you have that screams Millennial, and does that create a ceiling for your business? Patrick: First of all, I threw Millennial in to be sort of tongue-in-cheek. I more see what we're offering as, it's just ... it almost feels like a no-brainer. We see an inefficiency in the market where just the numbers game, supply and demand, you have a finite number of openings at X number of companies and you have vastly more number of folks who are applying for these roles. Patrick: For any given req, you have 100, 200 people who are under consideration, and you hire one person. Chances are, the top 10% are still pretty good. If someone makes it to the final round only to get rejected at the 11th hour, it's not because usually they lack skills or qualifications, it's timing, budget, commute, salary, some other factor that comes into play at that point. Patrick: Again, the core genesis of this platform is well, it seems inefficient that these folks who got this far in the process aren't able to leverage all that effort toward a role somewhere else, versus having to start all over again. Patrick: Again, I said Millennial to be tongue-in-cheek, but really it's just a looking at the numbers game of the market. Joel: But my question is genuine and not tongue-in-cheek. I'm really interested to know if this business is a uniquely Millennial strategy. Patrick: It was, maybe just by virtue of the fact that people are switching jobs more and more, there could be that, especially in the "Millennial age group". That could be part of it, but it's not, nothing in our marketing or advertising- Joel: Customer wise, you're being embraced by Boomers, Gen X-ers, and Millennials? All of those decision makers are deciding to buy this product? Patrick: I would have to check and see the age group of all the folks we're working with, but I would say probably more Gen X-ers/Millennials. There are some Boomers who've been interested in the product as well, but again, it sort of comes with the territory of some of the companies we're working with in the Bay Area that do tend to have more Gen X/Millennials in these heads of talent roles. Chad: Okay. Patrick, what we're seeing is, we're seeing a good amount of companies, new vendors who are actually trying to help companies re-engage their applicant tracking system, their database and their applicant tracking system, because some companies have spent millions and millions of dollars to create that database. They haven't done anything with it, but these new technologies are allowing them to do something with it. You on the other hand are going the polar opposite way and saying, "Hey, look, why don't you share those resumes and those candidates?" Chad: Why are you going really the polar opposite of some of these other technologies that are out there? Patrick: I would just look to the data. I would say what actually is the hire rate off of the re-engaging candidates that have been in your database for six months, a year, two years. At least what we've seen anecdotally is you're not really getting any meaningful return off of that until a few years later. Patrick: You may, you have touch points with candidates in terms of their reading the marketing emails you send out to them, but really at least what we've heard anecdotally and speaking with other recruiters is, you're not getting a meaningful hire off of resurfacing someone in your database unless they've actually had a meaningful title bump. Like say originally if they were under consideration for a software engineer and now they're a senior software engineer, it might make sense to re-engage and talk with them for another role and potentially hire them. Patrick: Besides what I was saying before earlier about this different world view around just creating efficiency in the talent ecosystem, just looking at the data as well, we haven't seen, and I don't have the numbers in front of me, but at least anecdotally, we haven't seen meaningful hire rates off of reservicing folks beyond say one or two years out of the original application date. Chad: So, you're really creating a shared community-like database that is fueled by the attraction strategies of these employers over the years. Patrick: It's really in addition to how I answered the question earlier around this different worldview of is it really efficient to "recycle" candidates versus actually try to help them find other roles and find candidates who've been invited by other companies, and just looking at the data, at least what we've heard anecdotally, candidates are only really resurfaced and rehired, at least, this is what we've heard from the recruiters we've spoken with, when a meaningful amount of time has passed beyond their initial application. Patrick: If you're marketing to someone for six months after they've applied, chances aren't super high they're going to get hired for a role at your company, but say one or two years later after maybe they've had a meaningful title bump from say a software engineer to a senior software engineer, that's when we've seen it make more sense at least for some of the folks that we've talked with. Patrick: At the end of the day, it's, we just see it as, our worldview as being more efficient around why not help this person who's looking for a job now find a role at one of our other partner companies. At the same time, you can find these candidates that weren't a fit at our other partner companies. Joel: Patrick, do you think PR is a big issue and privacy and things like that? Are there any issues with your business in terms of sharing candidates, what kind of control do they have in terms of their data, how long is it stored? Talk about that for me. Patrick: Fantastic question. I just had an hour call with our attorney yesterday about this- Joel: Boring. Patrick: May 25th, right around the corner. Joel: That's for you, that's for the attorneys and the conversation that you had, I'm sure. Patrick: Yes. Privacy by design is very important, GDPR is obviously top of mind for folks not just in HR but across any industry that collects data. The way our platform works, when a candidate accepts their invite to join the platform, first of all, they can always choose to accept or ignore an invite, but when they do, they accept our terms and conditions and our privacy policy, and they affirmatively consent to what they're actually sharing with us on the platform. That's one. Patrick: Two, within the actual user profile itself, candidates have toggles where they can say, "Hey, I'm searchable," or, "Show my profile," toggle that on or off. That determines whether or not they're searchable on the platform. Patrick: They can also determine whether or not they auto accept connection requests from recruiters. If it's on, basically, when a recruiter requests a connection to a candidate, it will automatically connect them over email to start a conversation. If it's off, the candidate needs to basically say, "Yes, I want to talk to this recruiter before I do that." Patrick: In addition, candidates have complete control over how their profile appears in search results. Patrick: As I mentioned, we get information about how well a candidate fared in a process from the company that invites them to the platform, but the candidate is able to control how they want that to appear on their profile. What that means in practice is, let's say a candidate made it to a final round at company A but bombed the interview at company B, they'd be able to say, "I want to show company A my profile but not company B." So they have control over that. Patrick: Lastly, if a candidate does say, "Hey, I want nothing to do with your platform. I'm off it," they can email us and we can delete everything about their profile. Joel: Have you guys taken funding? Patrick: Only friends and family so far, so we're bootstrapped. Joel: Is there a plan to raise money? Are you actively looking for money? Patrick: Right now, yes, we are. The reason behind that is just, well, one for the two years that we've been working on this, neither myself or my co-founder has taken a salary, so it'd be nice to get paid at some point. Patrick: More practically for the business itself, we need the team, we need to scale the team to actually meet the goals we've set for the business, and actually really create a meaningful presence in the market, not just in terms of marketing, but also in terms of the size of our customer base and the continued growth of our candidate pool. We need capital to do that. Joel: Aside from keeping bologna in the fridge and mac and cheese in the pantry- Patrick: Ramen. Joel: And adding some team members, what's sort of the vision in terms of features that we should expect in the future? Is the business primarily a sales and marketing organization? Is there going to be more development behind this? What does the future hold? Patrick: Great question. At the highest level, where we would love to go with this is actually, almost a social good angle, where you say, you have candidates in Silicon Valley or you have candidates in companies in Silicon Valley, candidates in companies ... I'm from Florida originally, a small town called Bradenton in Florida, and there's plenty of companies in that area who are looking for great talent, but no one from Silicon Valley knows about these companies in Florida or elsewhere in the country for that matter. Patrick: It would be great to expand and get the platform to a place where you can actually connect these disparate markets and have talent actually move to different geos and areas where there's high demand, it's just folks don't know about it or don't know the opportunities that exist there. At the highest level, that's somewhere we want to go, and really connect these different geos and regions who are looking for great talent. Patrick: On a more practical product level, there's also an interesting thing that we're exploring around this idea of how is there a way that we can actually Hirevisor meaningful for in-house recruiters, right? What we've seen is that as a recruiter, the only real way to really make a name for yourself and build a brand is to go out on your own and have an agency or a consulting business in that way. If you're in house, it's sort of hard to do that, let alone carrying your book of business with you so to speak. Patrick: Stay tuned for some of the interesting things we're going to do around building your reputation as a recruiter on the platform as I mentioned, say, we know, hey, Jane Recruiter at XYZ Company referred these candidates, and if we can say for example, hey, the candidates that Jane Recruiter refers tend to get clicked on the most out of anyone else, or at a 10X higher rate than other recruiters and you build your clout and professional reputation on the platform. Patrick: It's an interesting avenue that might help us break out of this frame of being just another sourcing tool. We're exploring different ways to do that, in addition to moving towards this vision of actually connecting different communities and supply and demand of talent. Chad: How much does it cost for me to give you my silver medal candidates? What's the pricing on this thing? Patrick: Sure. Joel: Is there a bronze pricing and your thanks for participating pricing? Chad: Participation medal pricing. Joel: Participation pricing. Patrick: Our primary applicant tracking system partner is Greenhouse. If you are a company that uses Greenhouse, it's actually free to join. It takes less than 10 minutes to set up and get integrated, and then you're squared away to both send invites to candidates and automatically push folks that you source out of the platform to your ATS. You would only pay us on the back end if you do end up hiring someone out of the platform, and our list price on that is 12.5% of the candidate's first year salary. Patrick: If you don't have Greenhouse, there are obviously plenty of companies that don't have Greenhouse, what we do is provide, you can still access the platform, but there's a subscription fee to access the platform. Again, the idea being that since you're not actively submitting, sharing candidates with us, you can pay to access the pool of talent that have been invited by other folks. That pricing is $3.99 per user per month, and then there is a success fee for folks that do you hire out the platform as well. The same 12.5%. Chad: So if you're not sharing, you can still access the database. That's the millennial side. You still have access to the database, but you have to pay for access to the database. Patrick: Correct. Joel: Patrick, you mentioned in terms of growth looking at different geos, to me, and you live this every day, I don't, but to me, it seems like this is a business that may really take off in the association space or the government space. Has that been a target for you? If not, why? Patrick: Fantastic question. Our different sales channels obviously are direct companies, but that only has so many legs. The other channel that we're looking at is exactly that, associations, groups, venture capital portfolios. In fact, one of the groups that we're working very closely with is the Collaboration for Talent, which is an umbrella ... Are you folks familiar with Collaboration for Talent? Patrick: It's an umbrella org and a bunch of nonprofits, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation, a few other folks. One of the things we're exploring is, okay, for groups like this who are looking for nonprofit talent and are always starving for that talent, is there a way that our platform could be used to actually help these folks share talent and find great folks within that community. Patrick: So yes, that's definitely something that we're looking at as well. Joel: I'm getting the signal from Chad that he is ready to go and I think I'm done with my questioning. Are you ready to face the firing squad, Patrick? Patrick: I'm ready. Chad: I've got to say, Patrick, you've got a big heart, man, and that's a big Millennial heart you've got there. I also have to say that some really, really smart guys have preceded you. I asked about AllianceQueue, Jason Kerr actually headed that up and then Jobfox, Rob McGovern who actually was the first CEO of CareerBuilder, you've got to know history before you recreate it in any industry. Those are two glaring platforms that, to me, I saw come and go very quickly because they were in this exact same niche. Chad: We've seen it over the last couple of decades. The model won't stick because you're trying to share candidates in a very tight labor market. I know, you see that was an obstacle, but I believe that you're not going to see it to be big enough of an obstacle unless you start to pivot out of this. Chad: These companies have spent millions of dollars in creating these applicant tracking system databases, and they are learning how to re-engage them, because they understand that they're not just candidates, they're also customers that are impacting their bottom line, actual sales bottom lines in some of these brands. Chad: Which is a reason why, if I was a VP of global talent acquisition, I wouldn't be giving away any of my candidates. I would be treating them better, right? I agree with you. You have to be treating them better. Chad: I believe you're on the wrong side of demand in both cases, which is one of the reasons why I've got to open up the guns on you. Joel: Ouch. Patrick: There we go. Joel: My turn, I guess. Patrick, Chad mentioned that he sees a big heart in you, and I agree with that, but I see a big brain as well. I've met you personally, just from a small sample sizing of being around you, I can tell that you're a smart dude. Joel: You're also very young, which I know from your statement of you've been in so many interviews and you've gotten so many silver medals, doesn't necessarily ring true with me, because you are a young guy. Your experience, education sort of proves that out. Joel: To me, you are going to find that great idea. This is actually a pivot, we didn't talk much about that. There may be another pivot in your future. I don't even know if the employment space is where you will end up. I do say with some assuredness that I think you will do great things in the entrepreneurial realm and create something great. Joel: This business for me, it's just really hard to get over a lot of things Chad said. Get off my lawn, but get out of my database, leave my candidates alone. I spent so much money to get them into my pool of candidates, sharing them is just, I think, a concept that Chad and I can't get our head around. Maybe it's a product for younger folks or younger businesses or startups who don't give a shit. A Boeing, a Walmart, I don't see them embracing this in a way that a startup in Silicon Valley would. Joel: Where Chad's gun was just put you out of your misery, my gun is more of a mercy killing and saying this idea, to me, isn't the idea that you're going to end up with. It's going to be the idea where we look back five or 10 years from now and go, "Man, remember when Patrick did that, and it's so close to that one idea that he's doing now that's really successful?" Joel: So, Patrick, you're a great dude. I think you're really smart, but the business idea, I think there's another one in your future, and this one, to me, isn't it. Patrick: Fair enough. Joel: Balls for being on the show, kudos for that as always. If you have any comments or feedback, that's great, otherwise we appreciate if you just want to get the hell off the show and throw darts at our faces. Patrick: No. Thank you so much for having me. This is great, and I appreciate all the feedback. I'm still standing even though I'm not on the firing post, but yeah. Chad: Awesome, man. Joel: Enough said. Chad, another episode. We out. Chad: We out. Speaker 4: This has been the Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, so you don't miss an episode. 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. #Talroo #HireVisor #FiringSquad

With Chad in Europe for the next 3 weeks, Cheese pulls a Lionel Richie and goes solo, talkin' news and opinion on Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub. Who are the winner and losers? Additionally, Facebook and LinkedIn are in the news with new tools aiding recruitment, CareerBuilder keeps bleeding executives and Vermont wants you. Enjoy, and visit the show sponsors: America's Job Exchange, JobAdX and Sovren. I'm on a roll, it's time to go solo ... Transcript Hi-de-ho, boys and girls. Welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast, lovingly known as The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman, flying solo with Chad on a three-week bender in Europe. On this week's show, Microsoft just bitch slapped the whole industry again. Facebook isn't taking anything sitting down, and the dominoes keep falling at CareerBuilder. Stay tuned. I'll be right back after this word from JobAdX. How many times has someone said to you, "We're the uber of," or, "It's the PayPal of," maybe, "We're the Facebook of." In many, many cases, these comparisons fall short of being close to reality, or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. In the case of JobAdX, our example is so accurate, so spot-on that it's synonymous with our work. JobAdX is Google AdSense for jobs. That means we're an efficient, consistent, and smarter ad unit for job-related advertising. As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs, and staffing firms, real-time dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. All this is down with the flexibility of JobAdX's cost per impression, click, or application. We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. We are not set in regrets. For direct clients, JobAdX delivers superior candidates with the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. We also provide publishers and job boards higher rev share than other partners through our smarter programmatic platform, in many cases, 30-40% greater, and more for our scalable partner. To partner with us, you can visit or search jobadx.com or email us at joinus@jobadx.com to get estimates or begin working together. JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Oh, you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK too. Jolly good, JobAdX. Yes, everyone. You heard me right. In the opening, Chad is not on the show this week. That's either- Woo. ... applause or- Boo. ... a big boo, I guess, depending how big of a fan you are of Chad, but yeah, Chad is on a three-week vacation in Europe. Yeah, even Chad takes vacations. That brings us to our shout-outs, and my first one goes out to Chad, who I know is listening over in Europe probably over some beer in Germany or a pint in London or something, probably hoping that I fall flat on my face and realize how much I need him on this show every week to get it right. The good news is that, well, if you don't like Chad, that's the good news, but the good news also is this should be a much abbreviated show because I know how much Chad likes to talk on and on and on about usually nothing, so we'll cut out a lot of the fat in this podcast, hopefully, and cut it down for you guys so you can enjoy your summer a little bit quicker. Also in shout-outs for me, Colin Day, CEO and founder and chairman over at iCIMS. Shout-out to him. We did a great podcast late last month and published it on Wednesday of this week. If you haven't heard that interview, go out to the show archives and listen to that interview. Colin's very honest, very transparent. He's very opinionated as well, so we got some great feedback on that podcast. I encourage you to go listen to that. Another shout-out to Christine Shaw, an Australian listener who heard us for the first time, and we were talking about [inaudible 00:04:32] on the show. She ended up running right into [inaudible 00:04:34], the CEO and founder of the company at some event in Australia, apparently. Shout-out to Christine and our Australian listeners. I love making those connections through the podcast. It's always great. Lastly, on my shout-outs, we haven't been getting a lot of love on the Twitter account #ChadCheese lately, so I encourage you to leave some notes, particularly if you miss Chad, hate me, or maybe you hate Chad, don't want him to ever come back on the show, hashtag on Twitter ChadCheese. Leave a comment. Say hi to Chad. The good [inaudible 00:05:11], I'm sure, will give him a shout-out to make him feel loved. Those are my shout-outs, and with much ado from there, let's get into the news from the week. Well, there was a huge bomb that dropped. If you heard an explosion, that was Microsoft buying GitHub for 7.5 billion, that's with a B. If you're not familiar with GitHub, you're probably not a recruiter. GitHub, for those who don't know, is, I guess, sort of a meeting ground for developers, programmers, tech talent to write code, share code, share ideas, connect, et cetera. It's a hugely popular platform for recruiters to source talent. If you're keeping score at home, Microsoft bought LinkedIn for 26.2 billion last year, 2006, and now they own GitHub. There's not really much argument. They own the two most popular professional networking sites in the world. That's kind of a big deal. We talk quite extensively about Glassdoor going for 1.2 billion to Recruit Holdings, which also owns Indeed. We're talking about $7.5 billion for this deal. This deal kind of laughs in the face of the Indeed-Glassdoor marriage. These are real big companies with real big resources making real big moves in our industry. I got thinking about this move and who exactly were the winners, who were the losers, who were the "We'll see what happens." My short list of winners in this deal, number one, goes to LinkedIn. LinkedIn now adds GitHub as a partner, a platform, potential partner in terms of sourcing. The key here really in terms of recruiting that I see is, a lot of people on GitHub are not on LinkedIn. I hear recruiters all the time talking about "I can't get tech people on LinkedIn because they hate LinkedIn. All they do is get calls from headhunters." From that perspective, I think that's a huge win for LinkedIn. I think at some point the platforms will bleed into another. Maybe you'll go to your LinkedIn account and be able to source people on GitHub [inaudible 00:07:31]. I think LinkedIn is a big winner here. Facebook as well I think is a winner. This further proves that people are where the value is in these deals. [inaudible 00:07:39] when you see [inaudible 00:07:40] really small numbers compared to what we were seeing out of what people pay for profiles and active users on our website. If you connect the dots there, Facebook has most people on the planet Earth that are online using its site. If Facebook ever decides to get really serious about employment and professional profiles and connecting with those people through searching whatever, which a lot of those pieces are already there, I think they'd become a winner in this trend of connecting with professional talent. I think Dice is an outlier winner of this. Ironically, Dice should've been the headline in the story. Ten years ago, if we would've said who's going to build GitHub, it would've been someone like Dice; however, I do think there's an opportunity for Dice in the fact that a lot of people on GitHub, the open source developers, aren't real big fans of Microsoft. If Dice can build a, provide a GitHub competitor, something similar, I would go out and pay the top 50, a hundred GitHubers that are open-source folks that aren't real happy about this deal and pay them to come over to Dice and build maybe an open-source only product or something similar. I think there's a window here for Dice to take advantage of what just happened with Microsoft coming in and taking that property. I also think that Stack Overflow is a beneficiary of what's going on with this deal, primarily because they're the Pepsi to GitHub's Coke. They have profiles. They have somewhat of the same things going on over there, so $7.5 billion price tag really only means that Stack Overflow should be a much more valuable properly. In terms of the losers of the deal, I mentioned Indeed and Glassdoor. I think they're a big loser in this. I think they continue to add pieces to this Indeed platform. I think they'll add all of Glassdoor. They just bought resume.com, workopolis, the Canadian mega-site. I say that sarcastically. All these pieces they're putting together seem way too little, way too late. The resources, the Microsoft, the Facebooks, and the Googles have are just going to be really, really challenge, so I think they're a big loser in this deal that GitHub joins Microsoft. Another loser in this I think is anyone who provides technology for sourcing candidates where it creates profiles from information on GitHub and LinkedIn, et cetera. A couple ways that that, that this is why I think these guys are losers. Number one is the HiQ case is still out there. For those of you don't know, there's some interviews. An interview we did with a HiQ CEO, we've talked about this case, but basically, LinkedIn is in a lawsuit battle with HiQ over being able to scrape content, profile content from LinkedIn, put that profile data into HiQ's own system, et cetera. There are a lot of sites to do this. The SeekOuts, the HiringSolveds. You guys probably more than even I do if you're a recruiter out there. I mean, there are a lot of sites that make their living on scraping GitHub and LinkedIn data. You can rest assured that if LinkedIn wins the case, then there's a good chance that GitHub and LinkedIn get shut down for anyone trying to access their site as a third party. Even if that case doesn't happen, you're going to have double resources, you're going to have LinkedIn coming in and saying, "Let's create technological ways to keep the scrapers off, let's do things that make it harder to scrape GitHub content and LinkedIn content." I think regardless of what happens, it's going to harder to go in and get GitHub and LinkedIn data following this deal that Microsoft did. I think Google's a loser in this deal. I think that Google would've loved to have had a site like GitHub in its ranks, and I think Google would've been a better acquirer of GitHub because I think most Githubers, if that's what they're called, probably are more amenable to Google as a buyer than they are Microsoft. So for Google to lose this if it was a bidding war, I think is a real negative. I also think that if Google, as part of it's higher product/ ATS, if they want to be able to source the web for profiles and have those profiles accessible to it's users, that just got a lot harder. There's a really good chance that LinkedIn was not going to play ball if Google was trying to build that. There's a very good chance now that GitHub will not open itself up to a Google ATS sourcing search people tool. If that's in the offing. I think we mentioned when Indeed bought resume.com that resume.com resumes would also be closed off to Google in response to this defensive move. So there are three sites right there that probably won't be available to Google if they want to build a sourcing tool in LinkedIn, GitHub and resume.com. So Google is a loser in this. Lastly, sort of fringe, but I think Monster and all job boards continue to be a loser in this game. I picked on Monster a little bit here because they passed on buying LinkedIn a long time ago, over a decade ago. They bought Tickle instead. They shut down Tickle, which could have been all kinds of stuff in terms of networking, professional networking. They had BeKnown when sort of the branch outs of the world were leveraging Face Book to build communities. They tanked that. So they've had multiple times to try to build something social networking wise and they just continue to drop the ball on that. I also think that Job Boards in particular continue to lose footing in this battle of resources and big dollars. So job boards in addition, I think are a loser here. On the I'm not sure yet list, is going to be consumers. Consumers particularly being employers. On one hand, you have the fact that by being purchased by Microsoft, GitHub is going to have a lot more in terms of resources, money, new features, things that will go on. In that case it's good. I think if you're an employer and you love Linked In, I think eventually those two properties will bleed into the other. Will you be able to use LinkedIn and then also advertise on GitHub as well, or source talent in GitHub while you're in the LinkedIn platform? I think that's probably good from a user's perspective. You're not bouncing back and forth and a lot of those tools don't exist now on GitHub. For example, posting jobs in mass on GitHub. It hasn't been real easy. I suspect that to change. You could probably post a job on LinkedIn, you can upgrade that listing to go onto GitHub if it's a tech position. So that will be easier and probably more user friendly. However, I think on the other side of it, it will cost more money to use LinkedIn and GitHub services. So they'll be pulling more and more money away from what you're already using to recruit. If you can't add more dollars, if you can't add more dollars, God bless you. Most people aren't in that position. So, money is going to flow out of the traditional players that we look at now because you're going to be spending more money with LinkedIn via GitHub and that whole platform. I also think that a loser in this might be Innovation. As business as we know it sort of condenses or consolidates into three, four, five major players, a lot of the start ups out there are going to have a tough go at it because companies use one or two platforms to recruit. So I think in that aspect, it does kill Innovation a little bit, which does obviously impact the consumer long term. So, that's a negative as well, but the jury is still out on how bad this will be or how good this will be for consumers. Moving along here and I'm a little slow with the sound board because it's just me and I can't look at it while Chad's talking. But our second story here I wanted to talk about, speed kills. In the news this week, both LinkedIn and Cornerstone on Demand released new features, products to basically make it easier, quicker to apply to jobs, sort of the one click apply notion. Now historically, one click apply hasn't been hugely popular with employers, they like to pre-screen. They like to add steps that keep out the undesirables or the most aggressive job seekers, make their job a little easier. The Amazon'ing of things won't let that last for very long. People want to quickly apply to jobs, they want to get to that application, move on with their life and I think that moreover, this is more of the Google for jobs effect. In other words, if you go search for a job for Google today, you will see apply to this job through usually ATS, or the company page and you'll see a variety of job boards. So you'll see Linked In, which may or may not be a job board, but job sites. So Zip Recruiter, Monster, multiple sites. I think that, ultimately, Google will algorithmically start showing only the ones that people like to use, continue to click, don't click and then come back and use another service. Google will eventually learn where users want to go and they will slowly filter out the sites that, frankly, aren't very user friendly. So if I click on a site and the application stinks and I've got to put a bunch of stuff in and I don't have an account already, I might go back and say, "All right. I noticed LinkedIn was on that list. I have a LinkedIn account. I'm just going to go to LinkedIn and apply that way. Ultimately, the sites that have the easiest, frictionless ways to apply are going to win in a world where Google for job sort of owns the space. So, for vendors out there, if you're not making it super easy to apply to jobs, you're going to be losing out in this battle and you're going to slowly fade away from the landscape of Google. So I encourage you to do that. Also, if you have an ATS, how quickly and easy is it to apply to your jobs? If it's slow and it stinks, you may start losing out, ironically, to job sites that are easy and quick to apply. I think LinkedIn, by far, has the pole position on this, the advantage. Most people that are searching for a job, or a lot of people already have a LinkedIn profile. So if LinkedIn is making it easy to apply, it's real easy to just go to LinkedIn, apply one click, go back and search for more jobs and apply that way. So I suspect that LinkedIn will continually be a winner in this move to create a one click apply. It really helps them out in that space. Without further ado, let's hear a quick message from America's Job Exchange. Then I'll talk a little bit about some moves by Face Book and some departures by CareerBuilder. 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. So I've talked a lot about Facebook on the podcast today and sure enough, they are in the news this week. Facebook announced early in the week that they were opening basically their job component, job postings employment in three countries, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Germany certainly being a very impactful country, a big economy, lot of jobs. So that was a big move for them. Facebook has stayed primarily in the Americas until now, so branching out into Europe is obviously a show of strength and a show of the fact that jobs must be working for them. Users must be going to job postings. Engagement must be pretty high. This is something that Facebook is not sleeping on. I think that ... I wrote a post on ERE recently about not falling asleep on Facebook. We talked about it on the podcast as well, but 800 million users per month on their marketplace products. Those are people that are not only selling used bikes and furniture, but they're also posting jobs, looking for jobs and whatnot. So that's a lot of people. If only 10% of the people that go to marketplace search for jobs casually, that makes them one of the biggest job sites in the world actually. If you're not paying attention to Facebook, particularly if you're a smaller business, which is where I think Facebook is really targeting their employment efforts, you should definitely keep your eye on and start playing around with Facebook. Start putting some budget toward it because it is an important platform and will continue to be. If the news of growth and how many people are on Facebook jobs platform isn't enough, the news that they are now allowing users to boost or advertise their marketplace postings, should definitely get you interested in viewing and looking at what's going on at Facebook. So the news that came out recently is that if you ... they're starting to beta test I think in US and Canada, the ability for users to, let's say, "Hey, I have an old bike for sale." I post it on Facebook. Hey, there's an option now where, for a minimal cost, I can boost my listing, my classified basically. And by boosting it, not only I assume it's boosted in the marketplace, but we do know from the news reports out there that the item will be promoted on the newsfeed of Facebook users and I assume as well the Instagram users which Facebook owns, Messenger which you're starting to see more and more ads show up on Messenger. Also the stories, putting stories on Instagram and Facebook, now we're starting to see ads there. You will start seeing, more than likely, more and more used furniture and bikes and things like that advertised on Facebook. They do have the advantage of knowing where you are based on your mobile phone. So you'll get stuff that's near to you, maybe stuff that your friends have clicked or shown an interest in, we're not quite sure what the algorithm will have, will filter these things, but it is a foregone conclusion that Facebook not only will allow you to promote that treadmill that's for sale, but also allow you to boost job postings as well. So I definitely expect that to be something in the near future. I think that in their partnerships with Zip Recruiter and Job Score and some others that they'll probably go to them first and say, "Hey, let's do a bulk deal and let's promote a certain percentage of your jobs, or all your jobs," and then we'll have those employment opportunities promoted within Facebook's news feeds. So expect to see postings in your news feed that are sponsored here in the near future based on Facebook's new advertising option. That should be fairly powerful if they do it right. Also in the news this week, recently I guess, a couple CareerBuilder departures to note. CareerBuilder as you know, if you listen to the show has been going through some challenging times to say the least, it looks like Apollo, their private equity firm that came in and bought them has made some tremendous changes. I encourage you to listen to past podcasts that we've talked about this item. But, a couple of veterans apparently have left, as well as some of the handful of those, the Richard Castellini's, the guys that have been there since the head hunter days in 2000. Rosemary Hefner, who was head of HR at CareerBuilder has definitely left. She has a new LinkedIn profile and a new company. She was at CareerBuilder for 14 years. The story that I heard, again this is alleged, but allegedly, this was in the tech department, that a manger or someone high up had done something that HR didn't really like. So Rosemary came down on them fairly hard. I think called him out on his bullshit was the quote that I got. I just put an expletive writing on the show, sorry about that. Called him out for his bullshit and the next day, she was let go from the company. So, not sure if that's true or not. If you know anything, feel free to head on to chadcheese.com, send us a note, or you can reach out to me directly. But Rosemary, after 14 years at CareerBuilder, is gone. Another resignation that we heard about, Kyle Brown, who was President of the staffing and recruiting group there at CareerBuilder. His LinkedIn profile is still CareerBuilder, but we've heard that he has resigned from the company. More on that later, but allegedly, Kyle Brown, President of the staffing and recruiting group is gone. The soap opera at CareerBuilder continues. Let's take a quick break, hear from Sovren and then we'll talk about HR blogging and potentially moving to New Hampshire. Sovren AI Matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks about each individual transaction. It will find, rank and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches, it tells you how and why it produced them and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you so you don't have to learn to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI Matching, visit sovereign.com. That's S_O_V_R-E_N.com. So I said moving to New Hampshire. It's actually Vermont. We'll get to that story at the end, but I get those two states mixed up. Politically, they're super different, but geographically, they look the same. So I apologize to anyone for offending that. I wanted to talk about, sort of get off the news feed for a second. There was a post by Mark Vogul at Fistful of Talent. If you're not familiar with Fistful of Talent, the blog, I encourage you to go visit. It's basically a group of bloggers, recruiters, thought leaders that occasionally blog about certain topics. Anyway, Mark wrote recently a piece called Did HR Blogging Jump the Shark? If you're not familiar, number one with jump the shark, you don't remember Happy Days and Fonzie more than likely. That was an episode where Fonzie, in a leather jacket, water skis over a shark and by most calculations, that was the end of the popularity of Happy Days. So when anything is sort of dying or dead, we call it jumping the shark. Most of you probably knew that, but those who didn't, I wanted to just bring that up. Anyway, Mark writes that in the early days of HR blogging, it was sort of risky, it was sexy, it was like that new band throwing TV's out the window of hotel rooms. It was really sort of a cool thing to do. I speak from a position of uniqueness in this for the fact that I started blogging in 2005. I continue to blog today for ere.net. I encourage you to read some of my stuff if you haven't. And I also podcast, so I have a pretty good understanding of what Mark is talking about in regards to blogging had a heyday, social media came out, podcasting now is sort of the hot new thing. I assume at some point video will become as big or just as big as podcasting, although I think podcasting has a unique place in sort of the lives of people. If I'm working out, I go for a walk, I'm hanging out laying in bed or whatever, like audio books. Audio has a uniqueness about it that's really cool. But the gist of the story is blogging was cool. It's not cool anymore. Companies are blogging. The corporations are blogging. It's not cool anymore and you see people like Chad and myself, he mentions Laurie [inaudible 00:30:12] in the story, are gravitating towards podcasting. Vogul said, "Some of the outliers who introduced us to blogging and social media in the HR and talent space have gone heavy with audio. Can you say Chad and Cheese or Laurie [inaudible 00:30:28]? These folks led the charge in HR social media a decade ago and have switched gears in their content delivery. Podcasts, which have been around for years are finally starting to be adopted in the HR and Talent space. And HR blogging, which was once a place for those that were innovative and on the edge of HR has now gone mainstream. HR tech company blogs and [inaudible 00:30:51] bloggers are now at all the major conferences. Like music that goes from edgy to popular, the rough surface and the creativity gets watered down as consumption goes up." I agree with most of that. I will also add that podcasting is way easier than blogging. I write roughly three stories a week for ERE. I do an hour to two hour show during the week. We do firing squad. We do monthly podcasts, but I'd say by and large, the time that I spend blogging is probably three to four times longer an investment than I take in podcasting. I can say that podcasting, from a financial rewards standpoint, is equal to what I do writing. From that perspective period, would I rather ... it's much easier to podcast than it is to write stuff down. Blogging can be really frustrating because you could spend a lot of time writing a well thought out article and nothing happens. You can also put something on LinkedIn or Twitter that's really ridiculous and silly, or meme, and get tens of thousands of engagements. So, blogging is just ... I think there's just so much more competing with it that fewer people are doing it. Corporations and publicists do it just because that's what they do. But blogging really well is hard. Podcasting and speaking into a microphone for an hour or two, not that difficult. So that's where I see a lot of the trend in terms of blogging versus podcasting. Anyway, I wanted to throw that in there. It's something Chad would not probably care to talk about, so I wanted to throw that in there. Lastly on the show, Vermont is in the news, going back to them. Vermont is offering to pay people who move to the state up to $10,000 to move there. This is quite an interesting move to get talent into your state and it would be certainly interesting if a lot of other states started offering bounties for people to move to their states and increase their tax rates and everything else. There are some caveats here. To be eligible, workers must be full time employees for an out of state business. So right there that becomes challenging. I'm assuming that if you're a gig'er, if you're a freelancer, you're out of luck. You actually have to work for a legitimate business full time and move away from where they are in order to get this deal. You must work primarily from home or a co-working space within Vermont and you must become a full time resident on or after January 1, 2019. Based on the budget that they have for this program, it looks like they can accept roughly 100 people per year. I think this stretches out until 2022, this program. So anyway, if you fill those eligibility standards and you want to see really beautiful foliage in Fall and go do some skiing and you're a major Liberal, maybe Vermont is the place for you and you heard it here first maybe. That's all I got. Listen, this was a lot of fun. It's a little more challenging to be on your own, but it does allow some freedom to talk about some other things. Chad, I know you're listening. I hope you're having a great time in Europe. I'd like to say I miss you, but I don't really. But, three weeks from now, maybe I will miss you. Regardless of that, have fun and I'm out.

This is a UNCOMMON EXCLUSIVE Podcast from ChadCheese.com - HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad: This The Chad & Cheese Podcast brought to you in partnership with Tatech. Tatech, the Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions. Visit tatech.org. Joel: Chad, why do recruiters spend money on unqualified or uninterested candidates? Chad: Dude, I don't know, because they're recruiters. What in the hell are you talking about in the first place? Joel: All right, stay with me here. PPC campaigns mean you're paying per click and the person who clicks could be qualified or unqualified. You don't know and you're still going to pay for that click. Chad: Hell man, a subscription model is even worse because you're paying for all of the candidates, not necessarily qualified ones. Joel: Bingo. So the answer is current pricing models suck, duh. So what if you handed over cash for only interested and qualified candidates. I'm talking about candidates that are actually qualified. The ones that meet all of your job requirements from years in the industry to specific skills. Chad: I gotcha. Now you're talking about Uncommon. Joel: Bingo. Uncommon is where the model does not suck, and right now Uncommon only charges 14.95, that's $14.95 per interested and qualified candidate. If you do volume hiring you'll get bigger discounts. Chad: Man, that's cheap. So yeah, Uncommon is simple. You set your monthly budget and Uncommon only charges you when you get an interested applicant that meets or exceeds your job requirements. Joel: And to sweeten the deal, just create your free account and get your first five qualified and interested candidates for free. Just go to uncommon.co to create your free account. That's U-N-C-O-M-M-O-N.co and get those fresh five free peeps with mega skills. Chad: Haha. 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. Chad: Hey kids, it's the Chad of the Chad & Cheese podcast and today we have a special guest. Colin Day, C.E.O. of iCIMS, founder, stud extraordinaire. Joel: Pump him up before we break him down. Chad: That's what we have to do. We have to lift him up, lift him up before we break him down. Colin, give the audience a little bit about yourself for all of those who've been in a corner in the fetal position for the last 20 years for goodness sakes, tell a little bit about yourself and about iCIMS. Colin: Yeah, sure. So again, yeah, my name is Colin Day. I am founder and C.E.O. of iCIMS and really this has been my entire career. I came out of college, I started a job as a recruiter. I was a tech recruiter working at a staffing firm doing a lot of hiring for Bell Labs which headquarters in New Jersey so I was hiring for AT&T and for Lucent, for Telcordia. The company I was with had build the beginnings, they weren't even calling it an applicant tracking system. They called it, their name was Comrise's Information management system or CIMS. Yeah, just sort of figured I loved recruiting but my heart was in trying to start a business and wrote all these different business plans and sort of had these moments of eureka where I would be up at night writing a plan thinking it's the greatest thing in the world and then finally get a good night's sleep and wake up and think what the hell was I thinking there. There is no way I'm pulling that off. Colin: I think they typically say the real opportunity is literally staring you in the face and for me quite literally I was waking up and logging into CIMS and using it and that really became the genesis of the idea for iCIMS. We actually bought the rights to that company's software. We spun it out, we funded it with loans from the parent company which I say thank God always. If we'd gone the VC route we'd be a tombstone because we had to go through the dot bomb era. We have been focused on recruiting ever since. Colin: Started off as just kind of a pure applicant tracking system. Chad: What year was that? Colin: So, we officially sort of spun it out in '99 and then we incorporated it in 2000. Perfect timing, right, right before everything blew apart. So I had a near death moment in the dot bomb but very thankfully because of the organic beginnings came out of it and was stronger for it. And I've been fighting ever since. Chad: So did you start out as a client server applicant tracking system or were you always, how did it actually work because obviously there were the RecruitSofts of the world where you had to do an installation on your servers or was it something that people just used the web to interface with. It's funny because that's how we do everything today but that's not how it started. Colin: That's not how it started. The other thing I think they always say is timing is everything. Man, we just nailed the timing, we got so lucky on that. But to give you a sense of kind of how long we've been around, yeah, we were around in the days of Webhire and Recruitmax and all these other names. We were very lucky. Most of the existing competitors were having to make that really difficult transition from client server over to, it wasn't even called SAS at the time. I think they were calling it ASP. Colin: We started pure web and I'd like to think that we even started pure SAS. What we were seeing is that as people made the conversion over to like a web format, that basically we're still doing what we would call the no-nos of SAS. So even though it was web delivered they were customizing it, they were putting people on different installs of it. They were letting people put it on their own servers and then a host it via web. We went in saying we are going to go pure SAS, literally one code, one version, we will never customize it for anyone. We're going to kind of build for the good of the platform and if the platform is configurable enough over time it should be able to service all customers via one code. Colin: I think you just talk about that moments where you came in, we didn't have to make a hard transition and then I think we just got the philosophies of SAS right early. Joel: Colin, I'm really curious and I've always wanted to ask you this. The name. Tell me about the genesis of it. You had a perfect opportunity to brand it something other than iCIMS. Have you thought about changing the name over the years? Has is it been a hindrance? Do you think it's been a positive? Just talk about the name for a little bit? Colin: You haven't been talking to our marketing department, have you Joel? Joel: Oh, oh, we might have a scoop here. Everyone's rebranding. Colin: I think what we like to say now is if you can make it with the name iCIMS you must have a really good product and service. It is a mouthful. For us again it was a name that we inherited as we spun out of a company. We rebranded the acronym as kind of Internet Collaborative Information Management Systems. We didn't actually see it at first as just a recruiting application. For that company, it was more of an ERP because it was a staffing firm. So they used it for work flows. So think of like a service now today. Much more of like a workflow management engine. Colin: So we liked having this very generic name Internet Collaborative Information Management System versus, all of our competitors were recruiting this and hire that and they all had exactly the same name which is great. It said what they did, but the irony is is when they started to diversify and come out with other offerings, you must remember every single one of them had to go through a rebrand. RecruitSoft to Taleo and Recruitmax becoming Vurv. Absolutely everyone had to change their name. Colin: We got asked all the time, hey, would you consider changing the name, it is a bit of a mouthful. Sometimes we have to explain it's not 'icims' or it's not 'I-C-I-M-S,' it's iCIMS. But I think at this point we have gotten to significant enough scale, significant brand exposure that the name is here to stay. We really think that we'll build a brand around it. Joel: Thank God the video game The Sims has sort of faded. That must have been a hard, hard time for your sales people. Colin: There was Sims and then ISIS didn't help for very long. Chad: Throughout the growth we've just seen here lately you've acquired a little company by the name of TextRecruit. So going from back in the days of ASP to jumping forward, several what, about a decade, more than two decades for goodness sakes, to be able to talk about TextRecruit. So what did that mean to the organization and what does that mean for the philosophy of iCIMS as you guys move forward? Colin: That was a really interesting one. I think maybe to give it a little bit of background, our viewpoint was that, call it seven, eight, nine years ago, maybe even before that, when ADP bought VirtualEdge and it was the first time that we saw okay, maybe there are going to be companies that aren't just going to try to do recruiting. They're going to try to pull together everything in H.R.. Our viewpoint was let's be the contrarian here. We don't want to look like everyone else. Recruiting just too damn important, it's too hard, you don't want to break it, you don't want to jam it into an H.R. suite and make it sort of your worst offering. Colin: So we stayed focused on recruiting. We kind of built the ATS to have the CRM so that you could do the passive candidate kind of marketing and sourcing. We put the onboarding in to close the transaction. We're actually coming out with an offer management model. So we're trying to make sure that we're always building the core componentry of sort of end to end recruitment. But along the way we realized that, and I guess it's just a good thing about our industry, we are not it. The average customer uses god, it can be anywhere from a dozen to two dozen different tools to get their recruiting job done. So typically they sort of fall into sourcing tools where you might hey, we use Entelo, we use LinkedIn, we use CareerBuilder. Colin: The screening tools is absolutely enormous. You can have companies, particularly at the enterprise level that are using two, three, four background checks, different assessments, WOTSI tools, video screening tools. We kept asking ourselves, our customers were saying, guys, we want you to do all of this, when are you going to build it all. I think just had a moment where you have to take a look at what did Apple do with the iPhone, what did obviously Benioff do with force.com. We do not need to necessarily own it all, we don't need to build it all but we do need to basically pull it all together in one core platform. Colin: So we launched UNIFi which is really our sort of version of force.com for the talent acquisition industry. And literally we categorized about a thousand companies in the ecosystem. We just went through and figured out what everyone was doing and we sort of put them into a periodic table of elements and write, okay, these ones do sourcing and these do screening and then what we did is build API's and what's called S.D.K. software developer kits and really did the hard work over four years of reaching out and saying guys, we're one of the largest and fastest growing kind of recruitment software providers and we really want you to build off of our platform so that we can bring everything together that the customer needs in the world of recruitment. Colin: And really happy to say that we got 600 different companies integrated in. 215 of them have formally gone through this program. I mean, literally writing their products to our API's, now beginning to use our S.D.K.'s to build a rich user experiences in the platform. It's a long winded way of coming to TextRecruit which was one of the companies that had done this. I think one of their first customers was actually an iCIMS customer in Cracker Barrel. They were able to essentially build a tool that worked really well for that customer. They built it in our marketplace, they used our API's. They kind of followed the prescription that we'd set out and then they started killing it. They were just the right player at the right time which was saying the way the candidates want to be communicated with is radically changing. Colin: We knew we were very good and hey, it's the recruiter who wants to do the phone call, the recruiter who wants to do email. But candidates now they want to be texted and they're much more responsive to texting. They're expanding beyond text obviously into messaging, Facebook Messenger and WeChat and other mediums. And then what was really interesting is they were going even beyond that to a subset of candidates who literally just don't even necessarily want to talk to a human being. Chad: Joel Cheesman. Colin: They just want to go to a career site and say hey, I hope you have a bot, I want to have a discussion with the bot in order to help find jobs and learn about your company and your culture and your benefits before I even get on the phone with a recruiter. Colin: So, we were watching them and that was the beauty of the UNIFi play is we got to watch them. They were pretty stand alone so there are some categories in our ecosystem where it's just ultra competitive. There's just so many background check providers. But TextRecruit was really unique and we thought this seems like something that almost belongs like [paz 00:14:38] infrastructure in our UNIFi program. That if we do this right, we can build it not just as a product, I mean, it is a great product but almost as paz componentry that can be extended out to any products or to anyone who wants to build a product off of our UNIFi framework. Joel: Colin, talk about the decision to buy TextRecruit as opposed to just build a text messaging platform within iCIMS. Colin: Sure. We do strategic planning every single year. We sit down and we take a look at just everything for the business. What markets are we going into, what geographies are we going into, what verticals. Obviously when we get to what product we try to lay out the product roadmap. I will tell you and I think it's the good thing about recruiting is we've been at this for 20 years and I could legitimately say I could probably line up at least another 10 to 20 years of things we would love to build. And so, it's just always for us going to come down to priorities. Colin: Our biggest priority was to really continue both our TA suite and our TA platform. So we wanted to come out with the TA suite. We've been going upmarket signing larger and larger companies like now Intuit and Microsoft and Amazon. So making sure that we're building in everything at a very large scale multinational would need. So that was taking a lot of our attention, coming out with the offer product was taking a lot of attention. And then building in the UNIFi framework everything that the vendors needed to kind of start creating rich experience in our platform. So it was just one of those things that we knew we needed to do it but it was very hard to try to figure out how to de-prioritize anything on our existing list. So acquisition just made a lot of sense for us. Colin: Culture was huge too. We were out there, we were co-selling with them. Once we saw how successful they were, we wanted to fuel and that's part of UNIFi. We put marketing resources behind these companies that are doing very well, sort of selling their wares to our customers. Chad: So you talked about Microsoft and then it just automatically came to me, Microsoft's competition for you guys. They're creating this Dynamic 365 including talent, but yet, Microsoft from an enterprise standpoint uses the iCIMS platform, right? Colin: They do, yeah. The classic sleeping with the enemy which we've gotten very comfortable with in this industry. I think it's the way obviously software goes particularly as you play up at the high level. So yeah, Microsoft is a customer and they are obviously working on relaunching Dynamics. Our view point is we see opportunities there. We really do think as long as we remain really, really good at what we do and sort of above some of the others, then there's typically good opportunities to play in other people's ecosystems or become part of their go to market strategy. Colin: Honestly, Chad, the thing that we have, the benefit of being around for 20 years is we've just seen this play over and over and over where it was a bunch of point solutions fighting each other. Taleo versus Vurv versus VirtualEdge versus iCIMS. Then ADP launched the first shot. Everyone told us hey, you're dead because you just do recruiting and now this amazing sort of H.R. payroll company is going to have recruiting. I think we know over time they did not get that right. Monster, when they were the LinkedIn of industry decided that they were going to build an ATS, they just could not get it right everyone told us we were dead. The number one sourcing tool is building an ATS. Colin: CareerBuilder bought their way in and everyone thought okay, another great job, boards getting in, that's going to kill everyone. They couldn't get it right. The list just goes on and on. I mean obviously Workday's thrown a product out there. We're not so sure they're getting it right. So I think it's a long winded way of saying, yes, the advantage is this is an enormous industry. It's a huge spent and everyone does want to get into it, but you've got to focus on it and you've got to go deep. You can't just sort of come out with an H.R. platform and say hey, we've got a basic kind of post and pray applicant tracking system and that should be good enough for you to do your job. Joel: So what I'm hearing Colin is you're not afraid of Google. It's Past Prologue with big G. Are they not going to get a ATS right? Are they not going to get job search right because Chad and I are seeing a ton of reaction in the job board space where Google is clearly making an impact on the jobs side of the house. Are you not seeing that or fearful or see Google as a threat right now on the ATS side? Colin: Maybe I'm a little bit of a contrarian here. I see Google as a savior. I really do. I see Google as a potential savior in the industry. From being around in 20 years there's always been two problems. Number one, candidates say, hey, finding and applying for jobs just sucks. I mean it just sucks. Sometimes the ATS gets the brunt of that because we're the end of the transaction but no one wants to talk about like hey, I started at Google, Google ignore me. They sent me off to some sort of middleman. I had to sift my way through, find this thing called Indeed, register with Indeed, put in all my data. Then it turned out that the link that Indeed had on a job was a dead link because they'd scraped it off of an ATS a week ago and they hadn't updated it even though the company had shut that job down. Colin: So I went to that career site, started my search again, found another job and then had to basically start all over because Indeed had all my info but it wasn't transferred over. And it shouldn't necessarily be, it's just a horrible experience. And so, we are fantastically optimistic about what Google for jobs can do in terms of saying right. Let Google become the world's job boards, let them, 80% of candidates, I don't know if you guys hear a different stat but the most common I'm hearing is 80% of candidates start at Google. Chad: It's behavior. Colin: Yeah, it's natural behavior and Google just hasn't focused on it. They've been thinking about how do we build smart cards for restaurants and for travel and for shopping. I think the fact that they're finally turning their attention to the candidate, the job search and getting them directly to jobs is absolutely fantastic. I think we are very, very optimistic. We're working very heavily with them. We see an opportunity to do a direct connection of where the candidates starts the search to where they apply into the company. In my mind, if we can wipe out the middleman and I think that's what Google's got a long history of being able to do, we are doing something right for the candidate. Chad: Well, and what you've seen or at least tell us a little bit about the actual attribution, so attribution. You work with a bunch of different job boards, job sites, sourcing sites, so on and so forth. Those sites are really scared what's going to happen with Google for jobs. So there's some moves that are happening out in that land per se where there's source attribution being stripped in some cases. Is that the case? Colin: Yeah. I guess I would start off by saying that I would be afraid if I existed anywhere between the Google search and the point of application right now. I would be rethinking my model. It's pretty clear when Google came out with this and everyone sort of, are you going to embrace it, are you going to work with Google for jobs, are you going to get the jobs over to them in index and according to the data they need and the time frames they need, the algorithms they need. If you do, traffic goes up for us because we were one step away. We have the middleman in between. It spiked heavily. It went up I think about 90% the traffic for us. Colin: What we're seeing is that the middlemen, the boards who sort of sit between the ATS and Google, if they're playing nicely with Google they're going up too to the tune of about 30, 40 percent and these are good candidates. These are candidates that as far as we can see from our data are a higher quality, which means that they stay on longer, they do apply, they have a higher application rate. What we are seeing is there are one or two out there. I think indeed being the biggest is decided not to play well and the traffic has gone down. Our data seems to show it's gone down about 30% since this. Joel: Interesting. Chad: Yeah, imagine that, right? Colin: Yeah. Then last but not least we're really interested to see who's doing this, as a middleman who's opting to work with Google for jobs. There's a short term spike in traffic which obviously looks good. I think you only have to look at Indeed's clay. When they started as a company they sort of had the same thing which is hey, Monster, CareerBuilder, everyone else, let us be an aggregator, we'll get the traffic, we'll win Google SEO, we'll get the Google traffic, we'll sort of sift it over to you, you'll win until we decide not to sift it over to you. It seems like Google is playing Indeed's playbook here. Chad: And the thing about it is when Indeed was playing their playbook, Monster and CareerBuilder could have squashed them in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, there's no way in hell Indeed is going to be able to squash Google. But that being said, going back to iCIMS and user experience, you guys have actually adopted the Google jobs API. So the job search, the Google job search within your platform. Is that a standard, is that something that one of your clients has to ask for? How does that work within your platform and why did you make the decision? Colin: Yeah, so good question. We're treading lightly. We always believe in kind of crawl walk run. What Google did, I don't think anyone realized. They launched three things all at once which I think maybe confused the market. Like okay, Google's in but what is Google for jobs versus Google Hire, this ATS that they're putting in the G-suite versus Cloud Discovery, which seems to be this sort of AI machine learning matching engine. Colin: It is a very cool combination but we're having to do a lot of education with our customers, that guys, this is in fact three totally different things. Google for jobs is just going to completely change how people advertise their jobs and how candidates find and apply for your jobs which we're huge fans of. The Cloud Discovery, the sort of AI job matching, we also think is very interesting. Colin: So if you think about those two problems I was alluding to, the two biggest issues in our industry over the last 20 years. Number one, finding and applying for the job sucks and that's Google for jobs. Number two, the ATS seems to be a bit of a black hole which means that thousands of candidates can apply in but only if you're so lucky to sort of make it to the next rounds and not get the formal ding letter. You sort of feel like hey, I'm not sure what's going on. Colin: Cloud Discovery has an opportunity to kind of do some pretty amazing things for large databases like ATS's and sort of talent CRM systems which is to surface matches much faster and much better. So on one side yes, when candidates come to our career sites, we want that to be able to be powered by Cloud Discovery so that they can get the absolute best matches. No frustration in sort of having to sift through with manual searches looking for the right jobs. But on the flip side, when the recruiters in the ATS and you might be sitting on and some of our customers quite literally are sitting on millions of candidates in their applicant tracking system. To be able to have an AI machine learning engine just immediately service up some of the more interesting matches that exist in your database is sort of like finding gold that you didn't even know you had. So we are big fans of those two things. Colin: You start to think about, as Google comes out with more of this kind of paz componentry. So I think they think of that AI machine learning, that cloud discovery as paz componentry that can be embedded into software out there. I'm sure you guys saw the duplex. Chad: Voice assistant. Colin: But if you think about that, there is so much of recruiting which is very simple calls in. Hey, I'm calling in. I just wanted to know if you got my application. I wanted to know if I'm still in consideration. Begin to think about some of the really cool things that can be serviced up by some of this kind of AI machine learning paz componentry that they're building. So we're we're pretty excited. I think the big question was always great, they've come out with Google Hire so that makes it now look like competitive. So instead of these two amazing things that we want to work with, they've launched out an ATS. Colin: In our mindset, we see ourselves as in two very, very different markets. I think iCIMS services the enterprise market. So we go from typically a company that can be about 500 employees all the way up to well north of 100,000 employees. I think Google Hire higher will be a great ATS lower end of the market. Put it in the G-suite, people that are very comfortable using sort of docs and sheets and hangouts. We've got a high degree of confidence that getting enterprise recruiting right is a huge endeavor. And so we see ourselves as kind of with Google Hire playing in two different markets. Joel: Colin, in most technologies we see commoditization and certainly in our industry it's been similar even with the job posting market as well. Are you seeing that in the ATS market? How are you going to combat commoditization? What's sort of your take on that for the future? Colin: It's a tough one. We've been told for, I don't know, the better, I keep getting told that I'm dying. I don't know if it's something about me but for 20 years people have loved to tell me that what I do and what my company does is dying and commoditizing and- Chad: Is that why you cut out caffeine? Colin: That may maybe why I cut out caffeine. We'll see if it helps. I think at the end of the day, listen, I think commoditization is the wrong word. The ATS is still fundamental, it is the fundamental building block. You cannot exist without an ATS, I'm sorry. I think people are going to say, hey, we can just build a talent CRM or whatever. That's not going to be a compliant, GDPR compliant. It's not going to interface properly with kind of the job, location, dynamics of your HCM system. It's not going to have the EEO, the OFCCP. Like all the regulatory components that you need. Colin: The ATS is certainly not dead. I think I've heard a lot of people who want to say it's dead. It is not the sexiest part of recruiting. Recruiting has just moved on. So what you sort of believe is hey, your fundamental building block despite not being the sexiest part is the ATS. We say it's for the ABC's of recruiting. It's not sexy, the ABC's. The automation, the branding, the compliance. You got to put it in for those three reasons. Joel: I'm not necessarily building your tombstone but we're seeing trends where smart recruiters had a free product forever then they went paid only and now they have sort of a freemium model sort of post Google Hire. We see Indeed sort of launched their own sort of free ATS, I'm sure LinkedIn. I'm not calling you dead, I'm just saying, like are you seeing, it seems to me like there's pressure on ATS now to sort of reduce the pressure, reduce the entry into their product. So you're saying you're simply not seeing that, you're not concerned about that. Colin: No no. I would say I'm seeing it Joel. So definitely. But I think that pressure believe it or not has come from the HCM industry. That came a long time ago when ADP bought VirtualEdge and started throwing it in their bag. That then came when Ultimate built a very basic ATS and threw it in their bag. When Workday built a basic ATS and threw it in their bag. When Oracle acquired Taleo, kind of throughout the pricing sheet and said, hey, you can take it down to zero as long as we're getting some of the surround services from Oracle. Colin: So the ATS became sort of the punching man. That is why we diversified. So it's not dead, you have to have it. It's just you can get it from low cost from just about anywhere. So obviously that's where we focus on, well guys, RTA suite has the CRM, it has the offer management. It has the onboarding, it has the entire ecosystem so that literally you'll never have to worry about integrations with background providers, assessment providers, video providers. We've done all that hard work. So, I think it's just forced us to say that the value and the innovation doesn't necessarily lie in the ATS. But what I will tell you Joel is these free ATS or these ATS that are getting thrown in by HCM systems, there is no other way to tell you, they are just bad. They're just bad systems. Chad: They just suck. Colin: I heard the boo, I thought I'd get a cheer for that. Joel: All right, I'll cheer you. For your comment and for them the boo. Colin: You can get a low cost or a free or a freemium but you're going to get what you pay for. And so the question is do you value recruiting. So what we see is the entire market has bifurcated into two. If you value recruiting and it's quite obvious when we're meeting with customers and they say hey, we're growing rapidly, getting talent is the hardest thing, we've got to do it, then they tend to go best and breed. They will choose a sort of full TA suite. If they don't value recruiting then they're either going to go to this kind of free one coming out of their HCM provider or really out of their payroll provider or anyone else out there. Colin: So our viewpoint is we're building the best tools for people who value recruiting. But that is not the entire marketplace. There are those who just don't. Chad: So, we start talking about some of the sexy things that are happening out there obviously, going out and buying TextRecruit, that was sexy. We're seeing obviously finally companies starting to focus on their applicant tracking system database and being able to mine that in a very smart way obviously because companies have spent millions of dollars on creating this database that is just withering away. My question to you, knowing that Google Hire now is using the, I think they're calling it the Google Candidate Discovery kind of process, that's going to turn into an A.P.I. much like the jobs A.P.I. did. Are you working with Google or are you in the early kind of stages of working with Google and being able to help them prospectively integrate or create one of those A.P.I.'s so that iCIMS can benefit from it as well? Colin: We're definitely looking at it. We're very interested in it. So I do think you're right, that sort of the next phase. We kind of see two next phases. One is hey, with Google for jobs programmatic advertising is going to get a hell of a lot more interesting and then number two, mining your own database particularly with what's coming out with Google but not just Google. There's a war at the highest level for AI machine learning matching engines. Amazon will have one and Google will have one and Microsoft will have on and Watson will have one. This will all just become paz componentry and you'll sort of, just like you choose right now am I going AWS or Azure, you'll choose which one that you're going to your kind of matching engine. Colin: We're big fans of Google. We really like what they've built. I mean obviously they got a leg up because they built it for themselves and they've built it for Google for jobs. Our viewpoint is yes, we will ingest A.P.I.'s and whether it's from them or we can let the customer control. We see a day where you might be able to go to our marketplace and say what engine do you want to use to turn your talent acquisition platform into a smart talent acquisition platform. And we might have three or four options. We'll say hey, Amazon, again, they're a customer but we can be sure that they're building things in this industry too or Watson or Microsoft or Google. Sorry. I don't know if that got directly to what you were asking but we're very interested. Joel: So Colin, you dropped some futuristic terms and we talk a lot about that on the podcast. What's your sort of sense of, in five years what does the ATS market look like. Are we looking at more consolidation, are looking at more growth, more people getting into this. What does this space look like in five years? Colin: The interesting thing that we've taken a look at. People always assume hey, iCIMS, you're a recruiting platform so you must compete with like a Greenhouse, a Java, a Lever, SmartRecruiters. We actually internally we just don't see it that way. When we look at the data, so we can take a look at our market, the enterprise market. When you take a look at the enterprise market the top five players are, there are four HCMs and iCIMS. And then in the majors, so what most people call the low enterprise mid-market. And then in the high end of the enterprise it's four HCMs and iCIMS. Colin: The point that we're trying to make is at the enterprise side of the market there's a war where people are saying like if I value recruitment hopefully we'll go with an iCIMS. If I don't value recruitment we might take the throw in that our CTO has negotiated in the workday contract. So I think you'll still see this classic kind of full suite versus HCM battle and I think it's or viewpoint to out-innovate them and continue to show that recruiting is just too damn important to break. It can't be the worst part of your offering. It's the front of the funnel. I mean who cares what your payroll system is if you've got the worst recruiting software. Colin: I think that's number one. I think the second trend that you'll see and you're already seeing it is the low end of the market's going to get decimated. Literally, the second Google announced, every single recruiting competitor we saw put out press release like we're going enterprise. Chad: Run to the hills, run to the hills. Colin: It took us 10 years to even start to get somewhat good at the enterprise market so I don't think a press release necessarily should be the thing that announces it. I think you will see at the low end there's just so many options. I mean there really are. At the very low end you don't even need an ATS. Just go get a zip recruiter and have them blast you candidates and like put in a spreadsheet. Maybe you'll get it out your payroll company, something very basic out of a paycheck, a pay com, a Paycom, a Paylocity. You'll get it out of the Levers, the Greenhouses etc. Colin: It really is at the high end. And so again, I just think you'll see this, there's just a myriad of offerings and many of them are free. But at the high end I still think it is a value play. You just can't afford to break recruiting if you're an enterprise organization. Joel: So speaking of the future, when are you guys going to file for I.P.O.? Colin: We get asked all the time. I think the beauty of our company is it's all organic. So I'll give a little bit of explanation to that. We do have an investor but it was all liquidity secondary. So we always like to say that everything we've built in the company came from the company's money. We're not a classic raise money, burn it as fast as you can in marketing and sales grow as fast as you can. Run out of money and then go public when you're out of money. We've done it all by ourselves. We've never spent anyone else's money and we're very profitable. We're buying companies through profitability right now. Colin: So there isn't a huge need to go out for public market money and I gotta say sometimes just being under the radar and private thinking about the long term and not necessarily kind of quarterly results just seems like the way to go right now. Joel: So you're saying there's a chance. Colin: My favorite Dumb and Dumber quote. Joel: I had to throw that one in because you are talking to Chad and Cheese. Chad: So Colin, we appreciate you taking all the time this morning to talk to us. I have to say in working with iCIMS since I think like around 2004, so you guys have been incredibly easy to work with, probably one of the easiest organizations to work with when working with talent acquisition and technologies. But we appreciate you coming on and sharing your story and definitely would love to have you again. Colin: It's been my pleasure. I'd love to come again. Joel: Thanks Colin. Colin: All right. It's a pleasure. Thank you guys. Joel: Remember to visit uncommon.co. Chad: Where the candidate model doesn't suck. Right now Uncommon only charges $14.95 per interested and qualified candidate. Plus, if you're into volume and I know you're into volume, there are bigger discounts. Joel: And to sweeten the deal Uncommon allows you to create a free account and get your first five qualified and interested candidates absolutely free. Chad: Uncommon.co, do it. Chad: Thanks to our partners at Tatech, the Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions. Remember to visit tatech.org. Chad: This has been the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss a single show. Be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more visit chadcheese.com. Oh yeah, you're welcome. #iCims #GoogleJobsAPI #GoogleforJobs #Google #ATS #Uncommon #BadAss

Indeed keeps building-up that moat against Google, but the latest acquisition of Resume.com has the boys shaking their heads. Plus... - Dice still has a pulse - sells HCareers to... Virgil? - Facebook fights total bullshit claims - Walmart is sending the blue vests to college - ZipRecruiter flexes it's R&D muscle - GDR bites Facebook & Google in the ass - SEEK & Indeed battle! Enjoy, and show sponsors Sovren, JobAdX and America's Job Exchange some love. 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, splash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Summer's here, and the time is right for podcasting in the streets. See what I did there? Welcome to The Chad & Cheese show, HR's most dangerous podcast, I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I am Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, the Indeed mote gets a wee bit bigger. Someone swiped right on Dice's parent company, and Wal-Mart is sending the blue vests to school. It's gonna be a hot one. Stay tuned. Sovren: Sovren AI Matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market because it acts just like a human. You decide just how our AI matching engine thinks about each individual transaction. It will find, rank, and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches; it tells you how and why it produced them and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you, so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. Sovren: To learn more about Sovereign AI Matching visit Sovren.com, that's S, O, V, R, E, N dot com. Chad: It acts like a human; it can even tell you what your favorite drink is. Joel: We laughed about the Sovren ad before the show, thinking it's our shortest add. It's basically, everyone uses us, S, O, V, R, E, N dot com. Thank you. Chad: Hey, I'm matching. We kick ass. Here you go. Joel: AI, all the buzz words, S, O, V, R, E, N dot com. Let's get to shout-outs. Chad: Dude, first, I've gotta stretch here for a minute. Getting ready for a three week family vacation in Europe in June. Joel: And I'm clapping because I don't have to deal with you for three weeks while you're in Europe because your wife has read the riot act that if you contact me at all, your ass is grass pretty much. Chad: Yeah, I think I might be able to throw a few Facebook messages over to you or something like that, but that being said, we do have a killer line-up of podcasts coming up in June, so that's where I wanna start my shout-outs because, first and foremost Colin Day, CEO, founder, chairman extraordinaire of iCIMS is going to be on the uncommon exclusive in June. Joel: It's a great interview if that's enough of it to use, but it was good. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: He's very honest, which is nice. Chad: Oh, dude, you cannot get a CEO who can be that honest. I love the interview. Anoop Gupta, this dude has a crazy amazing background. He actually reported directly to Bill Gates. Joel: Yeah, he rose the IQ level on this show by about three X, easy. Chad: Yeah, knowing that, we take it in the negatives. Elena Valentine--let me get that right--CEO of SkillScout, and I'm actually wearing her shirt right now. She was a real groovy, funky interview. It was a good time in Nashville. Joel: Co-founder, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: She's Co-founder. Chad: and CEO Joel: To a woman named Cheesman, by the way, I just had to put that in there. Chad: Yeah, so Elena and I, we are the other halves of the Cheesman group. Not too bad I guess. Joel: That's cute. Chad: James Ellis AKA Talent Cast Podcast. We actually had a great time talking about employer branding, tech, all this shit that we're hearing about tech stacks and shit like that, so he was fun. Joel: Another overly honest guest on the show. Chad: Love overly honest guests, and this next guy, Dan Sirk, who's the CMO over at Kununu, that's one of the companies that you really wanted to interview. Joel: Yup, yup. That was interesting as well. They're making headway here in the States doing a lot of cool stuff on the employment branding side. Chad: Yup. Last but not least, you're not gonna wanna miss the firing squad this month. Great firing squad, great young company, and it is a Talroo exclusive. Joel: It is a Talroo exclusive. I'll send out a shout-out to Kaia Pesano, I'm saying that wrong for sure, but she is the content person at Smart Recruiters, who we know and love. She quoted me for a story, which was pretty interesting about American Apparel. If you know anything about them, they have a real sleazy former CEO, barely legal advertising campaigns. The story was, can they come back from that horrible brand and come back from the dead and be successful? So, shout-out to her for the story as well as quoting me for the story. I appreciate that. Chad: Yeah. I would say you should appreciate that. Joel: Yep, yep. I also got Russ Herl -- I think I did say that one right -- Fan of the show; he's a Google guy at the higher API cloud component, big fan of the show. Appreciate you, Russ. And my final shout-out this week goes to a former classmate in college. This is a non-recruitment shout-out because we like to educate on more than just employment. Shout-out to Tiffany Anton. Tiffany is a sex therapist, and she just launched a podcast. Came to me for some advice, not sexual but podcast. Chad: Duh. Joel: And so, it's called Tiffany, Turned On. So, if you're interested in this topic, go check that out. I've listened to a few episodes. Pretty intriguing stuff, so Tiffany, shout-out to you. Chad: Joel is now the number one subscriber to that podcast. Joel: Hey, a lot more people are listening to her topic than our topic. Chad: I'm sure. No, I'm sure. Joel: She'll have more listeners by the end of today than we have in a year and a half. Chad: Yeah, instead of HR's most dangerous podcast, it'll be HR, Turned On. Joel: We could have her on the show. Chad: Exactly. We could do the show, HR, Turned On; that would be awesome. Joel: All right. Are we done with shout-outs? Chad: Yes. Topics. Joel: Big news: Dice. How often do we start the show off with Dice? Wow. Well, they sold off one of their shitty job boards that they've been trying to sell off. Chad: HCareers? Joel: HCareers, hospitality careers. A hot sector. You're intrigued by who they sold it to: your cousin, Virgil. Chad: Yeah, my cousin, Virgil, actually bought it. I thought it was interesting. I'd never heard of Virgil Holdings. I had no clue who this entity was. And then found they had a career site, virgilcareers.com, and it was interesting and interesting from the standpoint of, it really at this point is just a shell. Chad: So, it has like six jobs on a ... Four of those jobs are pretty high level jobs for Virgil Careers, so they're eating their own dog food; that's awesome, but yeah, there's career pathing elements and some of those video elements, which from UX standpoints looks pretty cool. Joel: It's like career assessments, so you're out of school; you're in school; what the hell am I gonna do with my life? You go to Virgil I'm sure. I hope to God Virgil turns into HCareers because Virgil is a horrible brand. So, you go there, you do this assessment, you pay for it, so I'm assuming that now they have a database of people to sell this assessment to, now they have jobs that they can get traffic to get people to take the assessments. So, I'm sure at the bargain basement price that they got this thing for that it was a good deal for them, and they'll do well with it. Joel: My comment was that this space is changing so fast. We've talked about Snap before and interviewed him with their gig-economy work for multiple gigs. So, to me this whole hospitality, restaurant. This whole sector is going gig, so how Virgil reacts to that or does it with TaskRabbit and Shiftgig and all those guys. To me a job board for hospitality careers is sort of passe to say the least. Chad: We spoke with Doug; I think it's Doug Johnson at Jobalign, and that is more of one of the high volume types of platforms, and we talked to them about some of the hospitality side as well, and again, that is more, I think, of a fashion forward type of a platform versus what we're seeing at the Virgil Careers. It doesn't see kind of a decade old or so. It looks nice; it's got a nice little UX on in, but still, that doesn't mean it's gonna get used. Joel: Yeah, and I'd like to say that we'll keep our eye on this, and we'll update our listeners to what happens, but we probably won't. Chad: Yeah. Joel: This thing'll probably just fade to black, and we'll be done. However, Dice also in the news--probably more exciting for their shareholders--A letter came out late last week about a hedge fund that has a 10% stake in the company, and they apparently have written a letter saying that there is an intent there to buy the company. What does that mean for the company that has been trying to sell itself since 2016? I guess that's good news. Joel: If you bought in at $1.25 at the beginning of this month, your stocks are now worth $2 and 30-something cents as of today I would believe, so you've made a killing, and it looks like someone's finally going to buy Dice. Chad: Yeah. You've upgraded the junk stock that you bought. I think it'll be interesting, though, for individuals who are working for Dice now knowing that a hedge fund could actually come in and buy them. I mean, at this point I would be looking for that eject button on my desk. Joel: Yes. If you're at Dice, working at Dice, DHI, you have a new CEO, who I assume is making changes. You have companies being sold off; you have a hedge fund potentially coming into the mix. And from what I know Dice has a really good culture. They're sort of Midwest; they're based in Iowa; they have this Midwest values vibe. That could all go away really quickly with this buyer, so don't get too excited yet. Chad: Yeah, we saw that with CareerBuilder, but take a look at what they're doing, though. They're chunking off, obviously, these different pieces, parts, and they're selling them off, which they said they were gonna do, so good on the new CEO to actually get that done. Joel: Yeah. If he sells this thing, which I'm sure was in ... This has been a long process, selling this thing. And it probably took the stock getting down to a dollar basically before someone actually came in and showed interest, but yeah, we've been talking to Dice for a while. They're an old player. Looks like changes are coming for them just like it did at Monster and CareerBuilder. Chad: Agreed, agreed. Joel: All right, lawsuits, one of our favorite topics. Facebook is in trouble for, I don't know what you'd call it, racism or prejudice in advertising ... Chad: Ageism. Joel: I don't know. This is one of your hot buttons. Chad: Yeah. I think that Cambridge Analytica is really screwing with everybody's minds at this point, which I understand. I mean, the optics behind that and how you can use data perspectively to do different things, but in this case, I think it's something that we have to step back, and we have to better understand as an industry. Chad: So, the actual article actually said the Communications Workers of America is suing on behalf of union members and other job seekers who allegedly missed out on employment opportunities because companies used Facebook ad tools to target people of other ages, okay? Chad: So, let's break this down real quick, and let's understand this is not Facebook's fault, okay? This is on the actual company who is using that targetability within the actual platform itself to look for younger workers. They need to be more diverse. Totally understand that, but if you think about it, companies who are heavy, and there are some very large companies who are heavy in college recruitments and being able to pull college graduates into full time positions. We don't look at them any different, right? But do you think we're gonna find old white men on college campuses? No, we don't, and that's how we've done things forever, and this is the same thing. It's just ... We're blaming the tool as opposed to the individual actually using the tool. Joel: I mean, if anybody should be in trouble, it's the companies, I guess. It's definitely not Facebook's fault. You mentioned job fairs, right? If you go to a college job fair, there aren't gonna be 80-year-olds looking for work at the college job fair. They're gonna be young people looking for jobs. Joel: If you advertise in an African American magazine or a women-centric magazine, you're targeting that demographic. This has been going on forever. Chad: It's no different. Joel: I'm not sure why, unless they think it's just gonna be an easy buck to put Facebook in the headlines about a lawsuit, that Facebook should be in trouble there. I think if you have a company that you suspect is only targeting young people, you can audit their advertising and say, okay, why was your ad dollar on Facebook only towards people that were 25 and younger? Chad: This is a deeper rooted issue than just somebody using Facebook. Again, Facebook is one tool. If you're just using these other vehicles that are focused on specific demographics, and you're not being more diverse ... This is not a Facebook issue, although, from my understanding, Facebook might also be looked at by the EEOC for these same types of recruiting tactics, so using their own tool to be able to target more of a younger crowd. So at the end of the day, it might be Facebook's fault but not because of the tool. Joel: Yeah. I agree. I think this ageism is a real thing. Chad: It is. Joel: I really do believe that companies are laying off people over 40 because they're too expensive, and they could get the same work cheaper. Now, I think long term, a lot of it's gonna be contract. So, whether you're 40 or 20, if you can do the work, we'll contract out. I just think when you have full-time employees it becomes really hard to justify paying them twice as much when you get two people that are more tech savvy, maybe, or have newer skills to do that. So, it's a real problem. I'm not sure how it works out, but I wouldn't blame Facebook for the issue. Chad: No. Well, and there are some people who are quote, unquote, "over-qualified", who will take those positions maybe because they wanna scale down, and they don't want to big responsibility of the bigger salary and/or positions of having a ton of director reports. Who knows? There are different reasons. If you're actually filtering them out because of that, that's wrong too. Joel: Yeah. A lot of companies do the opposite; they'll hire more experienced workers to do more experienced jobs or come in for train- You know, whatever the job may be, just like on your side, you see veterans, right? There are companies that just are committed to veteran hiring, and that's what they do although a lot of companies shy away from that, a lot of companies don't just like with older workers. Chad: What it comes down to, talent acquisition and anybody out there who's in the vendor space, it's not about the tool; it's about the process; it's about the intent. And I see the EEOC and perspectively OFCCP down the road, using this date to be able to prove that your practices, your practices, not Facebook's tools, your practices are the reasons why you have the workforce that you have, which is not a diversified workforce. Joel: Yeah. So, if you or your agency are targeting ads on Facebook towards a certain age or race or any of those things that'll get you in trouble, you better make sure there's some diversity there that you can prove, yes, we did target them, but we also targeted a diverse candidate pool, or else you could get in trouble. Chad: Oh, yeah, and what do you expect a company to do if we've got nothing but old white dudes programming or doing a specific job, right? You have to be able to build for the future, and you have to be able to diversify, so if I am, I look at my current talent pool population, and I want to be able to diversity that. Well, how in the hell am I gonna do that just by sending it out generally to everybody. And as you'd said before, there are job boards that are specific to just women, job boards that are specific to just black female engineers, right? This is the same exact thing. Companies are trying to diversify their talent population, their talent pool, and this is how they do it. Chad: Now, here's the key, though. Don't trip yourself up by getting too much of that talent in one place and not diversifying; that's the big key. Joel: And speaking of diversity and tools, let's here from AJE, which ... What a great segue to our sponsor that covers this just sort of thing, right? Chad: That's exactly right. AJE: America's Job Exchange is celebrating our 10th year as an industry leader in diversity recruitment and OFCCP compliance. We've been helping our 1,000 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. AJE: Want to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Chad: Yeah, Gary Cowan over there at AJE, that's the guy who actually used to work with the OPCCP. You need to have experts that you can reach out to when you have these types of questions. When you have an oh shit, moment, who the hell do you reach out to? That's why you wanna be able to engage with an organization like AJE because they have the Gary Callens of the world, who are experts and have great experience in this. Joel: Yeah, it's a complicated world. The Europeans aren't making it any easier with GDPR, which we'll talk a little bit later, but yeah, governments are getting a little bit squirrely, and you need to be prepared for it as an employer. Joel: Speaking of feeling a little squirrely, Indeed buys Resume.com this week. Chad: Huh. Yeah. So, we talk about building a fortification, right? And dude's gonna build there, and this feels like they're building it a pebble at a time, doesn't it? Joel: Well, okay, for those who don't listen regularly, Indeed and their parent company, Recruit Holdings, have been on an acquisition buying spree lately. Workopolis, in Canada they bought recently. Before that, Simply Hired, they sort of gobbled up, Glassdoor, which was huge. If you haven't heard that podcast, go back and listen to that one. This is just another acquisition, and both of us I believe feel strongly that this is a reaction to Google for jobs, inch by inch killing their business or gobbling up their market share, and this is a way to sort of, let's buy a bunch of stuff; let's get a lot of friends to fight the bully on the playground, and hopefully it'll work out for us. Chad: Well, what does this do? What does this do for them though? That's my question. Joel: Well, okay. So, Google has yet to do resumes really, right? Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Joel: So, to me it's like ... So, it's a good URL. I don't think we can debate that. Resume.com is a pretty good URL. Chad: Yes. Joel: According to the news that I read, they're getting 40,000 resumes weekly. So, if your thought is, okay, Google will eventually have a resume component to their Google hire employment system platform, which I think we agree they will. They can't have an ATS really without that. Then you're looking at this going, holy crap, what if Google is the platform for posting a resume, and they're not gonna come and post a resume on our site? Or Glassdoor or any of our other parent sites, but if we have this thing called Resume.com we could brand that thing as the central resume platform to combat both LinkedIn as well as Google. That's the only thing that I can come up with. If you got something better, I'm open to it. Chad: Yeah. I mean, again, I see that not as a long term strategy because if Google starts to pull resumes in, it's what they do; they index, and they already have so much data as it is. I'm wondering if part of this is not a short term play for just adding revenue and perspectively exploding revenue around the job seeker side of the house and actually building resumes and charging for the build of resumes. Monster does it, and that's something that they're promoting now on some of their little 15-second funny ass videos. But 40,000 a week, I wonder how much they have to pay for that kind of traffic because that's not happening organically; there's no way. Joel: Well, I'd have to do keyword research, but I'm sure a lot of people are searching resume writing tips, resume writing, how to write a resume, and they probably have pretty good rankings for that stuff, and those are also searches that aren't related to job search, so that is a way to flank Google searches that are job related to get traffic to your site for resume writing traffic. Joel: I also think if Google is interested in going in and scraping or getting profiles from sites, if this was a potential site that Google was gonna rely on to get resumes, Indeed just cut that off. So, it is a source of ... Google could've gotten resumes that they won't have anymore. Chad: So, building that mote around these resumes, but still, there are so many goddamn resumes out there as it is, not to mention, I wonder how much information Google has from LinkedIn. Joel: Yeah. It's speculation from us at this point. Chad: It is. It is. I gotta say, man, they're making the buys, the Workopolis, I mean, yeah, it's Canada. Glassdoor, that's big, no question. It's just, this one was really interesting because I just don't see much there. Joel: So, not interesting but a little bit intriguing? Chad: Yes. Joel: Okay. Yeah, I mean, maybe they know something we don't, what Google's gonna do. This was maybe a smart move to outflank them on that. I guess we'll have to see. But yeah, I love the acquisition binge. I can't wait to see who they're gonna gobble up next. Chad: I enjoy it too. I enjoy it too. I'd like to see them take somebody bigger though. Again, I really would. I'd like to see them ... The Glassdoor thing was really cool. I see that again; we were talking about StepStone Universum; that's almost like a parallel, but being able to go further. What's next? And this, to me, was just like, hmm, okay, yeah, whatever, what's next? Joel: I am also hearing a lot of people in the practitioner space more so than usual talk about Indeed face to face meetings. So, they're building a more personable face to face thing I think, and they think that's probably another way to counteract Google's technology face. I don't know if you're hearing the same thing. Chad: I've actually heard from some salespeople that, that's being forced, that the actual in-person meetings, they're starting to really ramp those up and force that to happen, which I don't see as a bad thing, although, from an overhead standpoint, again, it's one of those things. I agree; you have to be in front of the customer, but if they're not qualified and ready, then what are you doing other than wasting overhead? Joel: Totally, and you look at going, you know, back to the future. I mean, back when Indeed started, it was very in vogue to have face to face meetings locally with people. Chad: Didn't happen. Joel: And you had local job boards all over the place, and of course, the recession happened, which doesn't help, but that model is incredibly expensive. You gotta pay for people, and they're out of the office and blah, blah, blah. Indeed succeeded because they were tech focused. All their call centers were out of one place. They did lean and mean, so it's sort of ironic that they're becoming what they killed 10 years ago by becoming a heavy focused face to face expensive organization to combat Google. Chad: And CareerBuilder is going the entire opposite direction. They're not doing face to face. It's one of those things where we're seeing with Apollo, they're squeezing, right? They're squeezing as much as they possibly can, and it looks like Indeed's doing everything they can to spend money, so good for them. Let's see how that works for them. Joel: Yeah, and they've spent a lot of time pissing off a lot of employers over the years, which, let's be honest, they've had really aggressive salespeople that have ... There's a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, so hopefully for their sake, they can smooth that over and make nice, but at the end of the day people want results. The bottom line is important, so I'm not sure how important face to face meetings are when it comes to dollars and actual results. Chad: Yeah. I just don't see the nice as a part of Indeed DNA. Joel: Yeah. I agree. Their DNA is tech, and they've done that really well, so ... Joel: Well, another company that they probably won't be buying is in the news. One of your favorites: ZipRecruiter. Tell us what they've done. Chad: Yeah. I mean, they're expanding; they're actually ... They've had an R&D team in Tel Aviv, which I think is probably bigger than some of the bigger names that we know that are actually out there that are actually focused on machine learning, AI, and doing what they do incredibly well, doing it better, right? Chad: So, they're expanding, new location in Tel Aviv, and I think this is really just a shot across the bow to everybody: Indeed, Careerbuilder, Monster. It's like, look guys, we're takin' this shit serious; we're not ... We're hunkering down, and we are putting money into our R&D. And again, going back to Careerbuilder, I hate to make Careerbuilder my whipping boy for this. Joel: That's okay. Chad: From my understanding and talking to some of their engineers, that group is shrinking dramatically on the R&D side, so again, to see Zip do something like this and to really show strength, I think is pretty frickin' awesome, and they are investing in the future. That is cool. Joel: Yeah. I mean, where so many companies in our space are lookin' to get sold or scratchin' back from the depths of hell, whether it's stock price or just market share. Zip is one of the wild cards to me. I mean, they're sort of stand-alone. They've only made one acquisition that I can think of, which was JobBoard.io. They haven't done anything since then, but they continue to be a force. Traditional marketing, they crush it globally. Joel: I don't think they have a real huge presence. We do believe they made a play for the Workopolis deal in Canada, so yeah, I think it's awesome. ZipRecruiter could be that underdog that we don't really pay attention to that really comes out swingin' and makes a lot of waves, and this move to me also says, yeah, we're not goin' away, in fact, we're bigger and better than we were yesterday, and this is a show of strength on a global scale to Indeed and everybody else. Chad: So, how big to you think Monster's R&D team is? Do you think it's as big as Zip's, or do you think it's smaller? Joel: Right now, it's smaller I would say for sure. Chad: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think Monster. I think CareerBuilder, a lot of the names that are out there; they are not really building for the future like Zip is building for the future. Now, don't get me wrong. I know that they do have R&D out there, and they're trying to stitch together some of the technologies that they've acquired over the years, but this is something entirely different, and I think this is cool. Joel: Yeah, and it's also interesting because Zip has traditionally been a online job add, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's sort of ... It's lowest common denominator; it's your service provider; it's your retail space, and so, to have an R&D tells me that they have a bigger vision for what they're going to be than just an SMB or your local mom and pop hiring solution. Chad: Yeah, there's no question there. Joel: All right. Well, let's take a quick break and hear something from JobAdX, speaking of high-tech, and when we come back we'll talk Wal-Mart, Google, Alexa SEEK, and GDPR. Chad: Rapid fire. JobAdX: How many times has someone said to you, "We're the Uber of ..." Or, "It's the PayPal of ..." Maybe they're the Facebook of ... In many, many cases these comparisons fall short of being close to reality or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. In the case of JobAdX, our example is so accurate, so spot on that it's synonymous with our work. JobAdX is Google AdSense for jobs. That means we're an efficient, persistent, and smarter ad unit for job related advertising. As the best job tool in the industry JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs and staffing firms, real time dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings through the industry's first, truly responsive tool. All of this is done with the flexibility of JobAdX's cost per impression, click, or application. We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. We're not set in regret. JobAdX: For direct clients, JobAdX delivers superior candidates with the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. We also provide publishers and job boards, higher rev share than other partners for a smarter programmatic platform. In many cases 30 to 40% greater and more through our scalable model. To partner with us you can visit or search Job A, D, X dot com or e-mail us at joinus@jobadx.com to get estimates or begin working together. JobAdX: JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Oh, and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX was just launched in the UK too. Chad: So, does that mean, every time they launch in a new country they're going to have a new accent? I think that's what they're saying. I think that's ... We're getting set up for all of these new accents. Joel: We have to push 'em on that. Yeah. Totally. Totally. I want some eh's when they're in Canada. Yeah, I definitely want a little French thing going on when they go to a French ... Ze Germans. Joel: All right, Dude, we haven't had it in a while, but let's do a little ... Little rapid fire and get on with our lives. Joel: Wal-Mart is paying for college for their workers for a dollar a month that a worker has to pay, which I guess you have enough workers that Wal-Mart has, that can be a little bit of money, but they have three colleges, one that I knew of. The others are online based colleges, so you can get your college education by working at Wal-Mart, which I think we both agree is a great retention and recruiting tool. Chad: Yes. Amazing for attraction; amazing for retention, and if you're looking for ... I mean, it's a big brand, and for a company to say that they care about your career, no matter where you start ... I think this is incredibly smart. We talked about it last week. This is a strategy every company needs to take a look at, and they need to add more to it, but this is a great start, I think, for Wal-Mart. Joel: Don't you just love the warmer and fuzzier Wal-Mart? 20 years ago Wal-Mart was going to destroy the country, and put every little mom and pop out of business, and just kill everything, and then Amazon came along, and now Wal-mart is the underdog. Paying for college, and increasing minimum wages, and giving maternity leave and all that good stuff, so good for you, Wal-Mart. Keep it up. Chad: Yay, Wal-mart. Joel: Let's talk about Google, one of your favorite companies and topics, voice assistance. You're really bullish on Google in this aspect. Chad: Yeah, so Alexa was kicking ass and taking names, right? On the Amazon side, but Google last quarter shipped 3.2 million Google Homes and/or the new mini speakers that they have versus Amazon shipping 2.5 million Echos, so we talked about this. We've talked about really how Google just takes a market, so first off, obviously, there was the iPhone, and then Google came out and said, we can do that better. We're gonna do the software; we're gonna be on more phones, and now they're killing, obviously, IOS with Android. That's exactly what's happening here, not to mention, foreshadowing Duplex, right? We talked about Duplex and being able to use it as your actual assistant. This is cool shit. It really is, and somewhere that Alexa hasn't gone yet. Joel: Yeah. Duplex, which we talked about ... By the way, our interview with Seekout was interesting because he had some thoughts on Duplex that were sort of negative, but yeah, the day where we just have conversations and not just order this thing to do something, Google, I think is probably way ahead of the game in that. And also, I bet the story didn't mention much about Siri and HomePod, but Apple is way behind in terms of people using it or buying it. And part of that is because it's like a $350 device when everything else is under 100 bucks now, so I assume that will change. Joel: But yeah, this whole voice assistant thing, it's evolving quite interestingly. I don't know how it's gonna impact our industry. We've had Tim Sackett on, talked about, hey, find me a PHP developer within 10 miles of me and set up some interviews for next week, not like that will happen. We're not there yet, but how this will affect recruiting and employment ... You know, we'll see, but it will be interesting. Chad: There are many companies in our space right now that are specifically focused on the formula to create a solution to this for recruiting. I know that for a fact. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of my predictions was that this voice assistant thing will happen this year. We'll start seeing seeds planted for voice assistant recruiting. Chad: Yup. Joel: VAR. I just made it up; there ya go. Joel: SEEK out of Australia versus Indeed; you like this story that came out this week. Chad: Yeah. It's interesting because we always talk about Indeed building a mote, right? Well, SEEK has been building a mote for a hell of a lot longer than Indeed has. I mean, SEEK didn't take ... They didn't play the game with Indeed like everybody else did. They focused on their own little island, pun intended ... Joel: Boo. Chad: ... And they've been doing business differently, so in this case, we're taking a look at the Indeed interview assessments piece versus SEEK putting money into Vervoe, who is actually our first firing squad, and I think that is incredibly interesting because in going down parallel lines I see with two entirely different types of technologies. Joel: Yeah, and you look at voice from a job seeker's perspective. How soon before you have your resume on Google, and you see an ad for a company you wanna work for, and you say, hey, Google, send my resume to ABC Inc., and that's your resume. To me that could be a future that happens. I think the Vervoe side of it with the automated video interviewing stuff, that's definitely interesting. Joel: Whereas Indeed tends to be sort of old school with their resumes, which a lot of people support as well. A lot of people say, don't change the resume. I'm probably one of 'em. I mean, we both are bearish on video resumes. No one's gonna sit through a three minute video, maybe a six second video, like Snapchat or something like that, but yeah. I do love the fact that SEEK turned off Indeed early on. Craigslist was smart enough to do that as well. I did not know that, so good on SEEK for having the wherewithal and the knowledge and the vision to shut off the aggregators early on and keep that mote in Australia strong. Chad: Yep, and it's good to see Vervoe, I mean, a startup holding hands, I guess you could say, with big brother SEEK and being able to build that interviewing type of technology. It's not just video, I mean, they're tests. It's a pretty deep kind of a platform that I think, like you'd said, you could perspectively use one day with voice assistant as, you know, the voice assistant is actually asking you questions, and you're answering it, it's going into the system, which is really cool. Joel: Yep. Lastly GDPR, which, have we talked about on this show yet? I don't know. Chad: In passing, I think. Yeah, Facebook and Google, I mean, they got nailed with lawsuits on the very first day--go figure--which accuses both companies of coercing users into sharing personal data. Now, Facebook was a hit with 3.9 billion, Google with 3.7, so right now Facebook is leading Google in the lawsuit side of GDPR. Joel: To me GDPR is a total big company money grab. I got so many e-mails, and I'm sure you did too last week ... Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: ... About our new privacy policy. We're GDPR compliant, and these are pretty small American based businesses. Europe is not going to come after those companies; they're gonna go after the big guys that can write big checks really quickly to get the European Union off their backs. Chad: Because it's resources. Joel: And this exemplifies exactly what I knew what gonna happen. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Everybody that's a big company is gonna get pinched. Chad: So, I'm mean, the resources that the EU has to actually enforce this, is spread amongst all of the EU. It's not just one force, and they're trying to sew this together, so yeah. They're not gonna have the resources to go after everybody. They're going to focus on the big names where they see they can perspectively get those big winds, and that's where it's really gonna sit to be quite frank, but yeah. I agree. Joel: Yeah. They might go after a small company just to keep people honest and scare people, but your odds of that are very, very small. And if it happens, it could happen in our space because a lot of resumes are out there that are really old, and so if it does happen, it could be our space that sees a little bit of pinching by the EU. Chad: It could. It could. Joel: Are we out? Chad: We're out. Joel: We out. You have a show next week, right, and then you're done? So, I don't wanna say goodbye if you're here next week too, right? Chad: No, I'm not. I'm not here next week. Joel: Oh, so you're gone. Chad: I'm gone. Joel: All right, Dude. Have fun in Europe. I'll have fun holding down the fort. Chad: Enjoy. Joel: We out. Chad: Later. Tristen: Hi, I'm Tristan, thanks for listening to my stepdad, the Chad, and his goofy friend, Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss out on all the knowledge droppin' that's happenin' up in here. Tristen: They made me say that. Tristen: The most important part is to check out our sponsors because I need new track spikes. You know, that's a shiny gold pair that are extra because well ... I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #Indeed #Resumecom #Dice #DHI #Facebook #GDPR #ZipRecruiter #WalMart #SEEK #HCareers #VirgilCareers

If you thought an upcoming holiday weekend would mean a slow week in the recruiting industry, then you're gravely mistaken, kiddies. Chad & Cheese bring da noise and da funk on a episode featuring: - Indeed sets up for an EPIC collapse - Phenom People gets PAID - Vervoe gets PAID - Debut.Careers gets PAID - Job.com gets Blockchain? Really? - Microsoft teases their Indeed killer - Do you really the degree and debt? and Millennials getting smacked around by their Boomer parents. Enjoy, and visit our sponsors: America's Job Exchange, JobAdX 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 the birthday edition of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. More on that in a second. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I am Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's vomitous episode. That's vomitous. Indeed says, here we grow again. Millennials still suck, and so much cash is being handed out to TA tech start-ups that Oprah would be impressed. Your check is probably in the mail as I speak. Chad: You get funding. You get funding. You get funding. Joel: Stay tuned. JobsAdX: How many times has someone said to you, "We're the Uber of," or "Is the PayPal of?" Maybe "They're the Facebook of." In many, many cases, these comparisons fall short of being close to reality or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. JobsAdX: In the case of JobAdX, our example is so accurate, so spot-on, that it's synonymous with our work. JobAdX is Google Ad Sense for jobs. That means we're an efficient, persistent and smarter ad unit for job-related advertising. As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs and staffing firms, real-time dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. All of this is done with the flexibility of JobAdX's cost per impression, click or application. We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. We're not set in regrets. JobsAdX: For direct clients, JobAdX delivers superior candidates with the best in programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. We also provide publishers and job boards higher rev share than other partners through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30-40% greater and more through our scalable model. JobsAdX: To partner with us, you can visit or search JobAdX.com, or email us at joinus@jobadx.com, to get estimates or begin working together. JobsAdX: JobAdX. The best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Oh, and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK, too. Chad: Every time I hear that ad, it makes me crave Guinness. Joel: She's English, dude. Not Irish. Chad: It doesn't matter. They brought Guinness to our interview. Joel: That's true. Okay, now I'm with you. Now I'm with you. So, literally as the ad was playing, a news release came across my phone. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel: Hcareers, owned by DHI Group. Owners of Dice and a few other ones, has sold to Virgil Holdings. I've never heard of. So, here's the quickie release here. Virgil Holdings recently announced it has acquired Hcareers, the premier North American recruiting brand and platform in the hospitality sector from DHI group. The investment serves as a growth engine to expand Hcareers' capabilities as the next generation blah blah blah. Joel: So, we can go on with the show, but that just came across. I thought I'd mention it. Chad: Yeah, Dice selling off their shit. There's going to be more of that, right? Joel: Yes. New CEO. I'm sure his first order of business is to dump all the fat from the organization. Joel: So happy birthday. I wanted to get to that real quick. A few people know this. Chad and I born in the same year, one day apart. Him on the 27th, me on the 28th, which makes him always older than me which I like, but we're both celebrating birthdays this weekend. So happy birthday, dude. Chad: Well happy birthday, and, older, yes, but also wiser, of course. Joel: And more follically challenged as always. Chad: That's just all the testosterone. Joel: And it's the Indy 500. It's a big weekend here in Indianapolis. Chad: It is, it is. Joel: Memorial Day. Chad: I've got seven tons of rock in my driveway that need to make it to the back for landscaping for a high school graduation that's gonna be coming up here in about a week or so. So, I've got shit to do around the house as well. Joel: Do you include the two pounds of rock in your head when you count the weightage of that? Chad: Oh, no. I don't count that at all. Joel: Let's get to shout outs. Chad: Shout outs. First shout out goes to Chris Curran from the Podcast Engineering School. Joel: The Podcast Engineering School? Chad: Yeah, dude. Yeah, no shit. This is a guy and go figure because I've had a ton of people actually reach out to me and say, hey, you guys do a pretty clean ... sounds good podcast. What do you use? Well, Chris, that's what he does for a living. So, if you're interested in podcasting and not really sure what to do and how to do it, just visit podcastengineeringschool.com. There are a ton of podcasts and whatnot and he actually featured me on this week's Podcast Engineering School. Chad: I've got a radio background, but still I'm an amateur when it comes to this stuff. So, if you're thinking about it and you wanna throw a pod out there, we had our stumbles and found a couple holes to drop into here and there. Do your research. Do your research and check these guys out. Joel: You can also just pay Chad and I to teach you how to do it. We'll accept checks right now as well. You wanna save yourself from the pitfalls that we had. I got a shout out to my Ratedly webinar attendees. Ratedly, as we mention a lot, had a webinar yesterday about the Glassdoor and Indeed marriage. Had about a hundred plus sign ups, so it was a good show. So, thanks to everyone who showed up. It was a good showing. Chad: Very nice, very nice. Those two just snuggling up. Kuba from Microsoft reached out and said he just found the podcast and is gonna be binging this entire weekend. So, Kuba, just crack open a cold one and let the knowledge flow, man. Joel: We get a lot of bingers. A lot of people mention, yeah, I just binged all the episodes this weekend. That's very odd to me, but hey, if we're in the same category as Orange is the New Black and House of Cards, then so be it. I got a shout out to Kelsey Gee I hope I'm saying that correctly. It's either Ghee or Gee. A reporter for the Wall Street Journal is a fan. Chad: Oh, nice. Joel: So, Kelsey, we appreciate you tuning in. Love it. Chad: Keep listening, Kelsey. Ed from Philly. He's loving the Firing Squad. Here's from Twitter, , "Really hammering their guests on Firing Squad." That's right Ed. Joel: That's right. Suckas beware. I got a shout out to Omer I hope I said that correctly. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: His company is in the news, but I wanted to just give him a shout out as the first ever Firing Squad guest. He's seeing some success there. His company, which we'll talk about later, but long-time fan, first-time victim. Omer, thanks. Shout out to you. Chad: Love him. Ivan Vega gets a shout out for tagging us or maybe he was just trolling us on LinkedIn, I don't know. Anyway, all these damn lists that are coming out. Top five podcasts, top five bloggers, influential people, all this other bullshit, but anyway there was one that was top five great recruitment marketing podcasts. We weren't listed on it, so he was sad that we weren't on it, but Ivan, we weren't listed because it wasn't the top five badass podcasts, which we would've probably had the top three positions at least. Chad: Firing Squad, our exclusive podcast, and our weekly podcast. Not to mention I'm gonna tease this. We didn't talk about this, but stay tuned because here in about a month or so, a new segment's gonna be coming out called, "The Shred." Joel: Nice little tease there. I like that. How are we not mentioned on these top lists for podcasts? One, there aren't that many. Two, we're awesome, but three, no one is cranking out content like we are. We're just churning this stuff out. Anyway, F-you if we're not on your best podcast and HR lists as far as I'm concerned. You ready to get to this or you got more shout outs? Chad: Let's do this. Joel: All right. Here we grow again. Chad: Oh, Jesus. Joel: Indeed announcing this week they're gonna be hiring 3,000 new employees as well as adding two new locations in the Austin, Texas area, which is where they call home. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I say this is pretty cocky considering Google's knocking at your door. Chad: Yeah. Shoot, I see this as show of strength. We've got the money and we might as well use it to be able start trying to fortify and that's with a ton of salespeople, engineers, so on so forth, but Indeed has a quadrupled global headcount in the last three years alone. So, this addition ... they've just been growing on a steady pace. The thing is throughout that growth before, they didn't have a Google for Jobs, Facebook, and Microsoft/LinkedIn looking down the barrel at them. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). To me the hires are one thing but the expansion in terms of real estate is really ballsy. Apparently the total of square footage is 615,000. Apparently, this is in the quote, "block 71" area of Austin. I don't know what that means, but it's apparently really cool, high priced, upper scale type area for commercial real estate. So yeah, they're making some pretty big bets. I hope that their product can cash the checks that their real estate investments are buying. Chad: I think you actually put in our Facebook group. This sets up for an epic collapse. Joel: Yeah. It feels like a lot of all these industries where the times are great, they've had tremendous growth, they ignore the writing on the wall and they're buying real estate or they're building huge skyscrapers. They're having ... it kind of reminds me of the end around the world com stuff where people where having Roman themed parties and crazy ... or even the dot com period where everyone was having parties, they were giving away cars. We take these huge bets then life has a way of slapping us around when we get really confident. Chad: Yeah. No question, and now that being said, you take a look at ... so there was this really short teaser commercial that Microsoft put out with regard to its dynamics product, which is more of a holistic type of product than just recruiting and the entire video pretty much really focused on how LinkedIn will help your sales, not recruiting. So this is, from my stand point, this is where Indeed is really just gonna get slaughtered because Google, Microsoft, Facebook ... these are lifestyle platforms that we use for more than just recruiting. Chad: So, being able to actually seep into every little aspect of an organization, especially when it comes to sales, that's pretty fucking big. So, it was a pretty cool tease. Joel: I'm glad you said that. LinkedIn is pushing this sort of sales tool. Sales harvesting, sourcing, managing, product really, really hard, and somewhere there is a sales podcast with two idiots talking about sales force shitting in their pants because that's having the same impact on the sales. The CRMs as their recruitment products have on in our industry. So, I think when we talked about the acquisition initially, it was a huge sales force flank movement and we're seeing that now with the sales tools that LinkedIn is pimping out pretty hard. Chad: Right. It's just being able to execute. That's what it all comes down to. We've seen companies over the years that have had applicant tracking systems and they've been pulled into a much larger type of ecosystem, different technologies. Over time the ATS in itself just went to shit. So, the question is, will they be able to focus on all of these different areas and do it right? The gamble is, well yeah, they're gonna be able to do it right because of these platforms liked the LinkedIns. They already have that dedicated force that's there to ensure that it's being done right. Chad: So I think, from a Microsoft, LinkedIn, holistic standpoint, that's going to turn out much better than what we've seen in the past. Joel: Yeah, and I think ... we talk about platforms. Google and Microsoft, they're creating the ultimate enterprise platform. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: It's not just hiring, it's everything. It's your docs, it's your PowerPoints, it's your sales, management system, now it's your recruiting and employment platform. That's an area Indeed isn't even gonna go. Chad: No. Joel: They're not gonna do sales tools. They're not gonna do word processing and shit like that. So, these are massive platforms and companies are gonna make decisions like, okay, we're a Microsoft house or a Google house and whichever one we choose is gonna be our front to back solution for just about everything. That's what these guys are building in my mind. Chad: Yeah and in many cases, HR or recruiting isn't even going to have an opportunity to weight in because, oh no, we're already using the Microsoft Dynamics Platform for sales. It has a recruiting component that's automatically a part of it, so yeah, we're either a Google house or a Microsoft house. Whatever it is. We've seen that in the ATS space. It hasn't, again, worked out incredibly well, but we'll definitely see how it works out this go around. Joel: Won't that be interesting if HR doesn't even have a voice with what their solutions are? Chad: Dude, as soon as HR and town acquisition starts to understand how to spin what they do into how it impacts the bottom line, actual business, how do you do that? Then, that's a conversation that business and CEOs, COOs, CMOs, CROs, they all understand. As soon as you can start to speak their language, which is business and bottom line, that's what matters. All these terms that we have in our industry are all bullshit terms that mean nothing to the big C suite. That's where we stare to hone in on and focus on those things and then we start to make up ground. Joel: Yeah, and I'll give you another. We talked to CEO at iCims this week. A podcast that's coming out. Chad: Colin Day. Joel: Yeah, he's very confident that the ATS enterprise market is super safe for him and I'm not so sure when I read stories like this that he shouldn't be super concerned long-term about Microsoft and Google getting into his market because I do believe there will be a time where the CTO just says, hey, we're running everything out of Microsoft. All your sales stuff. Get rid of sales force, whatever hiring stuff you're using, get rid of that because we're gonna use 365 for everything. Chad: Yeah, and that's happened already over the years. We'll throw in the ATS for free so therefore, HR doesn't even get a chance because the CIO or the CTO made the decision. Joel: Yeah, exactly. Well, we've talked about Google for a little bit, but they are a little bit in the news. Here, before we go to a quick break, Google, the "Don't be evil," mantra has been with them for almost the beginning of the company. How it happened has been sort of folklore, but apparently someone ... they were looking at writing the mission statement for the company and someone jokingly said, "How about 'don't be evil,'" and they embraced that and has been their thing for a long time. Steve Jobs famously, before his passing said, "Don't be evil is a bunch a bullshit." Joel: I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said Google is very evil and they should stop using that. Well, this past week the "Don't be evil" has been crossed out or eliminated from any corporate document. So, it sounds like they have officially moved on from that, which, for me is ... an old Google guy, I know you're a current Google guy, it's sort of sad. It's sort of a days gone by internet kumbaya ... those days are apparently over at the big G. Chad: We're getting into the age of transparency. They know that they can't bullshit anybody. Joel: But they are sure gonna try with their crappy phones. Alright, so let's take a quick break and when we come back we'll talk about, oh God, Millennials. AJE: 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. AJE: What to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Millennials. Okay, we have three items here that are in the 35 and under range of relevancy. So, the first one we have here is more and more companies are paying off student loans as a recruiting tool and a retention tool. Chad: Yeah. Joel: How do we feel about this? Chad: It just makes good God damn sense. They should be doing that as a way to pull in candidates, to be able to get them on, let's say three-year contracts or something like that, but I think they should actually go further. If you take a look at the best recruiting machine that is out there in the world, US army or, really, the US military, they bring you in and say, hey, we will actually pay X-amount. $100,000 in some cases. $100,000 in your four-year education. Come in, give us three years, give us four years. Whatever it is, you're on contract and boom, here we go, right? That's a great way to be able to get somebody pipe lined into, obviously, your organization. Chad: It doesn't have to be four years. It could be, obviously, much less time, but this is I think like a stair step into getting to that. That's one of the reasons why I joined the military. They had the college fund for goodness sakes and my parents couldn't afford college, so why not? It makes good sense and if you've got a great brand and somebody wants to come work for you, you're actually recruiting them coming out of high school then there you go. Or, coming out of college. Again, there are several ways you could actually engage talents, but get them on contract. Why not get them on contract? Joel: I think it's an incredible recruiting tool and probably even a grow-your-own strategy, but how do you feel about it as a retention tool because my experience although limited in corporate world, has been, oh, you're gonna pay front my MBA. Great, are you gonna pay for ... whatever education is that you're helping me get, and then guess what? I'm out of here. So, I agree it's a great recruiting tool. I just think companies ... it's getting to be something that companies have to do, but it's incredible risk because once you get somebody an MBA or you pay for education, once you've paid and they've done it, then they're gone. Chad: That's why you need to be on contract. There's gotta be a contract that works for the employee and it works for the employer. So, yeah, I agree, but that's gonna happen. Not to mention that's also your charge as an employer to be able to focus on retention, but I think one of the things that we're really missing here is that the problem is that we're treating a symptom of the actual disease. The disease itself is education is more expensive in this country than anywhere else in the world and that's form David Pratt who's a professor at Albany Law School who actually studies employee benefits. Chad: We're paying more money here in the United States sending our kids into debt and we're asking, obviously, the employers to pay for it. I think the employers should pay for it, but I also think that it is ridiculous. We've had this discussion before that Stanford has a $25 billion endowment. Harvard has a $36 billion endowment. That is ridiculous. They are pulling in cash, sitting on cash, that they can't spend and guess what? They're not giving back to the community and being able to get some of those low-risk individuals who wouldn't be going to college who are incredibly smart and pulling them into their programs. It's ridiculous. Joel: Well, they're private institutions. They can do whatever they want. I agree that public institutions should have more and I think that they are. I think that the whole thing's a racket, dude. Chad: It is a racket. Joel: The government will ensure the payments so colleges charge more because they know that loans will be there to be had. It's a racket for sure and you're right about other countries. We don't have the answer, we're not gonna get to the answer, but I think companies are trying to get their head around how do we recruit the best by obviously repaying loans? I think companies also at some point, will be the educators at many levels. Chad: Yes. Joel: I know that the high school where my sister lives, their auto shop department is run by O'Reilly or whoever. So actually going from high school teaching these kids how to fix engines or whatever, and then they graduate and they just pull them right into the workforce. So, at some levels, colleges will probably start educating these kids. Why not go to Microsoft University? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Why not go to Google U and learn coding? Chad: So, my point when it comes down to these colleges, I don't care if they're public or private. They still have tax exemptions, right? That's bullshit. They need to give back to the communities. I don't care if they're private or they're public. They still have tax exemptions as non-profits. They need to give back to the communities. That's all there is to it. Now, back when we went through high school, and it still happens to day just not as much, we had the quote-on-quote "vocational wing" or even different schools that individuals went to, that kids went to, to become electricians, become plumbers, carpenters. I think we've gotten into pretty much a snobby culture in the United States where it's like you have to have a four year degree and to be quite frank, not everybody needs a four year degree to have a great career, to make incredible money. Chad: You've seen some of the money that these individuals are making and NPR put out an article that focused on, do you even need college, because high-paying trade jobs are sitting empty today and these kids are coming out of high school right out of the gate making $50,000 and that's just starting. Joel: I'm really torn on the issue of do we really need traditional school anymore. I think for sure certain skills or certain professions definitely do. If you're gonna be a lawyer, doctor, the traditional degree profession, to be a professor, you have to go to college, but technology ... it changes so fast. A four year degree, ten years later it's irrelevant because technology has changed. I do think that college ... the best thing about college is learning the ability to learn if that makes sense. College should stretch your mind to the degree that you say, okay, if there's a problem, I should be able to solve it. Joel: I should be able to figure out how to whatever, right? Marketing, for instance, SEO did not exist when I went to school. Banner ads did not exist. Social media marketing, mobile marketing, text messaging, none of that stuff existed. I didn't go to school for it. I had to learn it on the fly. So, I think you're always learning. So I don't think you have to go to college, but I also do think it is something you'll have for the rest of your life that you can say, hey, I achieved this goal. Now is that goal worth $50 to $100 thousand dollars? I think that's a total debate that's healthy. Joel: My college education 80 years ago was much less of an investment than it is now and I think that's a tough decision parents have to make. Chad: As an individual who's hired before and what I look for, obviously, is definitely the willingness to learn. There's no question there, but the biggest piece is I want somebody who's a troubleshooter. Somebody who's a problem solver who has that just instinctively where they're not constantly coming to you asking questions. They're trying to figure it out and they've done a ton of research before they come to you to be able to say, here's what I've done, here's what I've seen, and then start to collaborate on what the perspective outcome might be or what maybe the actions might be. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Those are things that you can learn in college. There's no question. I agree with that, but you could also learn that in the military. You can learn that in trade schools. You can learn that volunteering overseas and dealing in different cultures and different climates with different populations of people. There's so many different ways to do that and tacking a Bachelor's degree on every God damn job that a company has makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Joel: Yeah. Degrees tend to fluctuate in terms of how much demand there is for certain positions, right? So when there's a lot of workers, it's like, oh lets pre-screen people by saying they have to have a Bachelor's degree or X-amount of experience, but when they really need people, they kind of dismiss the degree question. Chad: Yes. Joel: Well, one guy that probably did not have a degree in our next story here. Parents who their 30-year-old son moved out. Yay, Millennials, and the parents won. Now, you know more about this story than I do. Chad: Well, they sent him several eviction notices, right? He just wouldn't leave. He wouldn't leave and forcibly ... now, he was much larger than his father. That just wasn't going to happen unless his dad would've been more like me and got a couple of buddies and said, hey, we're gonna throw your ass out on your ear unless you're out in two hours, but it was something he had to go to court for, which was ridiculous and the judge actually said yeah, get your ass out of your parents house, but it was funny 'cause I was watching a video of it. Even after the decision was laid out, this idiot still approached the bench. Chad: Not asked to, he approached the bench of his own volition and tried to continue to argue with the judge and the judge said, look, my judgment has been passed and he got up and he walked away. It was ridiculous. Joel: I'm gonna take a bit of a devil's advocate on this. Let's point a little bit of the finger at the parents. If they've raised him up to this point to be a bloodsucking leech of a deadbeat, some of that's on them. People should raise independent, self-sufficient, successful people and if they don't a little bit is on them, right? Chad: The expectation definitely needs to be set, but for a grown ass man to pretty much who doesn't have a job, to be able to say, yeah, no, I'm not getting out. I'm not gonna go put my application in at Lowe's or somewhere, which is good work and they need people for goodness sakes, I'm not gonna do that, I'm not gonna pay rent. They even offered him $1,100 to leave, which he took and he paid some of his bills with and he still didn't leave. What an asshole. Joel: On that note, let's here from one of our sponsors and talk about all the money that's been thrown around lately in our space. Sovren: Sovren AI matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks, about each individual transaction. It will find, rank and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches, it tells you how and why it produced them and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. Sovren: To learn more about Sovren AI Matching, visit sovern.com. That's s-o-v-r-e-n dot com. Chad: Okay, I've gotta nail this one home before we got to the next topic. Joel: Nail it. Chad: So, back to this 30-year-old asshole, he was asked whether he was hurt by his parents drastic measure of taking him to court and kicking him out and this was what he said. So, I think this really exemplifies what we're seeing in this generation. Here's his quote, "They're very much a moot point to me. Right now, I'm just worried about what's best for me." What the fuck? Joel: Selfishness. Alright, let's move on from the 30-year old deadbeat and talk about people who aren't deadbeats getting crazy money. Chad: Booyah. Joel: All over the world. I say we rapid fire this and tell which one are we most impressed with or which ones stands out the most. How's that sound? Chad: Let's start with Phenom People. Let's start with those guys. $22 million and overall $31. So, they've gotten $31 million. That's a ton of cash, right? Joel: Not to shabby. Formally, iMomentous. Arguably the worst name ever in our industry. iMomentous. Chad: So this is interesting in talking to Colin Day and we asked him several questions with regard to why they stayed private and didn't take VC. This is one of the things that rang true with me was you gotta watch how much money you take because what are you gonna have to sell for? Let's say to be able to come whole on something like this. Joel: That was something that Eric from TextRecruit at the TA Tech meeting in Vegas. He backhanded Maya the chat bot saying something like, do they really need $40 million. What exactly is there that is valued at that? So, yeah, I agree that basically when you get money in investment, it's not free money. It's a loan that has to be repaid usually 10 times what you get. So, there is a lot of burden in that, but Phenom People ... the platforms, I call it the hub spot for recruiting players, they're in that space and Ed Newman who's a friend of ours, long-time guy in the industry doing their sales initiatives, apparently they're getting some traction. Joel: I know they just signed Microsoft, which is a huge win, I'm sure, for them, and they have some other big enterprise companies so yeah, it can happen. The more and more recruiting and marketing bleed into each other, these companies are gonna find some interest in what they do. Chad: And the more money that's being thrown out there is kind of like Oprah. You get funding. You get funding. You get funding. This is one of those kind of scenarios and I think this is definitely, once again, one of the big players that they deserve some money. $22 million, man, that's gonna be a lot to pay back. Joel: I think $2 million of that was just to change their name from iMomentous to Phenom. Vervoe, who we've mentioned their founder in the opening, they got some money this month to the $2 to 3.5 million. Now, most interesting to them is who it came from. Seek, who we rarely talk about here in the states, but if you're in Australia, they are it. So to have Seek, an Australian gorilla fund your Australia startup is a pretty big deal and I think Vervoe may be their brand that they use to break into the States because to come into the States and say, hey, we're a job board in Australia called Seek is a lot harder to get traction probably than to say, hey, we're a startup called Vervoe that does video interviewing. That's probably a lot closer to get some traction on. Chad: Oh, well yeah. Joel: I also found out from a news report that Seek does not let Indeed scrape their content. So they're one of the big players in a country who's told Indeed we're not gonna play and that has worked out for them in holding their market share. Chad: Well, and as we see with StepStone buying up Universum, we're starting to see these job board-esque, job site-esque types of companies buying up different types of technologies or funneling cash, obviously, into those types of organizations to be able to, perspectively who knows, create a much more full product suite. Obviously, just pushing a few million to Vervoe isn't that step yet, but I think it's a step closer and if you see Seek who is, I mean they are really the Goliath in their market, what are they gonna do next, though, because Google for Jobs is coming their way, too, and everybody's gotta look for that. Chad: Everybody's gotta look for that next threat. So, that next threat is going to be what and what the hell are they gonna do about it? To be able to hook up with Omer and the team over at Vervoe, I think, is a good first step. Joel: I think it makes a ton of sense if you're a currently established job site or anybody that's established to make bets on these startups that are all over the place and let's be honest, $3.5 million to Seek is probably nothing. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So for them to keep the money at home in Australia, to have someone nearby, but any company the next to the world, the TaRoos, the ZipRecruiters, that makes a lot of sense to place little bets around the marketplace to see what hits and what's your next multi million dollar company or growth engine. Chad: Yeah, and I think it's smart for Vervoe. Obviously getting some cash but not getting $22 million worth of cash to be able to start to really build that out, so good on Omer and his team. Joel: Couple others I know nothing about debut out of UK, an App]. They got $6.7 million dollars. I have no comment on them. Chad: Looks focused mainly on interns and graduate student jobs. Joel: Their claim to fame in this investment are that their team is the English version of Shark Tank. It's called Dragon's Lair or Dragon's Den. He was on that show, so that's the news where they part of debut, but other that I got nothing. Chad: So, he was on the show as a contestant trying to get cash or he wasn't? Joel: No, I think he was a judge. I think he's one of the investors, yeah. So, it'd be like Mark Cuban or one of those guys investing. It'd be a news event in our industry, for sure. Chad: Yeah, I think any of those guys actually getting into the job space it probably wouldn't do much. Joel: And Adzuna, I guess I wrote that down right, got £8 million, which is like $10 million, right? If my pounds to money, dollar is any good. Chad: Pounds to money? Joel: I know zip about them, so good for them. Chad: Job search engine and they're more, I would say, global as opposed to just US. So, yeah I think they're going to be in the crosshairs of a Google for Jobs so I think it is interesting that this kind of money would flow to them unless they're looking to try to spin off into something more than just being job search. Joel: Anyone else get money? Chad: Yeah a company called Hopscotch. Hopscotch.work, which is ... .jobs, .work, new one coming out .realestate, but hopscotch.work. They've received seed funding, undisclosed seed funding, but I thought this was interesting because it's another female specific platform for jobs. More like a community oriented ... it looked like more of an app than it was anything else, but just being able to look at instead of the general types of job sites who we know have really dominated over the years, these niche sites I think are definitely going to weather the storm. The Google for Jobs types os storms that are happening much better than the general job sites so that was an interesting headline. Joel: Chad, I want you to make up a random startup business and I'm gonna give you a dollar and we're gonna put out a press release saying you've got an undisclosed amount of seed money as investment and watch how many people write about it. Chad: I'm sure Tech Crunch was on this ASAP. Joel: I hate when I get releases about undisclosed money. Don't waste my time with that bullshit. Speaking of waste of time, job.com. I was trying to wrap my brain. Didn't CareerBuilder own job.com at one point? Chad: I think they owned jobs.com. Joel: Did a big player used to own job.com or have they always been job.com? Chad: Jobs.com, my bad, is owned by Monster. Joel: Yeah, Monster and CareerBuilder is job.com, wasn't it? I thought for sure it was a total SEO play back in the day. They had nothing branding of CareerBuilder anywhere, but it was all CareerBuilder jobs and I think they sold it to these cats a few years ago. They're crap, basically. They have a great domain, but it doesn't mean anything now because Google doesn't give a shit anymore about that. Some people might type in job.com, but I doubt it. Anyway, they've repositioned the company as Blockchain. Joel: I still can't get my head around why that's good. So, you have my data in a Blockchain-like multiple places, who cares? It's still searching for jobs and applying for jobs. Blockchain just feels like, oh, people write about it so if we say we're Blockchain just like AI or deep-learning five years ago. Chad: Yeah, so let me clear up a couple of things real quick. CareerBuilder is jobs.net. Monster is jobs.com. So, they might've possibly bought this from somebody a time ago or maybe not. Maybe it's just been hanging out there, but here's what I saw. So, they've got an interesting video that's pulled together and none of it looks like it's Blockchain to me except for the smart contract. Something else that's different is that employers will pay 6% of the fee so instead of paying 20% of a placement fee, it's 6% of a fee. The employee after they make it through a probationary period, receives 5% of that 6%. Interesting, and job.com is only gonna get 1% out of that. So, that to me was kind of mind blowing. The actual job seekers themselves are gonna get the bulk of the cash. Joel: Yeah, that's kind of interesting. That's kind of interesting. It all feels like a lot of spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks for a fledgling job site, basically. Chad: We should definitely get their CEO on and talk to them about what the hell. All of this seems like the job agents, oh, we're gonna match you up with this. Okay, well, shit, they've been doing that via email for years. What makes this different? Is it AI versus ... what is this and how does that even have anything to do with Blockchain? From my standpoint, it's all AI, AI, chat bots, chat bots, oh wait a minute. Blockchain. We've gotta throw Blockchain in there, too. I don't know. Joel: To go back to the iCims interview, Collin Day, but one thing that stuck with me was he tells his salespeople, our competition isn't ABC job site or ATS or whatever, it's confusion in the marketplace because so many options breeds non activity and to me when I hear about these sites to just throw stuff in the messaging, I think consumers just go, I don't even know anymore. I'm just not gonna buy. I'm just not gonna look at this stuff anymore. Chad: No decision is the worst. Joel: Yep. Well, sometimes. Lets end on this note. Automation who we say is the end of the world and revolution and all the jobs being gone. Report out of Wall Street Journal this weeks says not so fast. The story, quote, says, "Robots seem to be creating as many, if not more, jobs as they're killing," according to the Wall Street Journal. "Companies such as BMW and Electrolux are turning to robots to handle repetitive tasks that could put humans in danger all while hiring and training works to preform duties that require creativity and judgment, today's machines do not possess," and then goes on to talk about Germany's industrial workforce as one example who are expected to do 1.8% by 2021. On the wings, go ahead and cue the songs, of such automation. Joel: I think we all agree that automation is gonna displace the monotonous stuff, but if you don't have a brain, you're still screwed. Chad: Yeah, that's step one and I agree. That's the easy step and that's how you get them hooked on the heroin, right? Oh yeah, it's great. It took all this shit that we didn't wanna do off of our table, but guess what? It's just going to progress. It's gonna get more, so yeah, I see it to autonomous vehicles where right now we don't have enough drivers for semi trucks. So, this is a great window for autonomous vehicles to actually make their entrance into the market and we're seeing autonomous level four at this point. Chad: Five's the last step where there's not driver. We're already at four. So, yeah, I totally get that it's gonna create more jobs so on so forth. We're looking at things right in front of our nose. We're not looking into the future and I think that's where we really need to be spending our time. Joel: Yeah. 2021 is not that far away. Chad: No. Joel: And I agree that automation will augment initially than it will replace workers, but I think what we're talking about is 2050. What's the world gonna look like, and that's gonna be a much more scary place, probably. Chad: It is and if you haven't, go to YouTube, search for "Wall-E dystopia" and that little video that'll show you exactly what's going on. Joel: Or just go look at some of Boston Robotics videos to not sleep ever again. Chad: Yikes. Joel: Anyway dude, happy birthday on that note. Enjoy it until the machines take over. We out. Chad: We out. Tristen: Hi, I'm Tristen. Thanks for listening to my step-dad, the Chad, and his goofy friend Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out on all the knowledge dropping that's happening up in here. He made me say that. The most important part is to check out our sponsors because I need new track spikes. You know, the expensive, shiny, gold pair that are extra because well, I'm extra. For more visit chadcheese.com. #Indeed #Microsoft #Google #College #Millenials #Blockchain #Jobcom #Hopscotchwork #DebutCareers #Vervoe #Adzuna #PhenomPeople

PRESS PLAY >:P News and opinion from the show highlight this week's episode. - Indeed gives Glassdoor a... ummm... - Indeed also rolls out an old-timey assessment add-on - KRT snuggles up to Indeed/Glassdoor - Google for Jobs referral traffic looks awesome - Uber, Wells Fargo and Facebook are "Sorry" - .jobs is .gone for DirectEmployers Association - RecruitLlama is unveiled - and Starbucks is a real shit-show, literally. Enjoy, and checkout sponsors JobAdX, Sovren, Ratedly and America's Job Exchange. 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: Hey, hey, hey boys and girls. Welcome to another riveting episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, Hrs most dangerous. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad "Rickey Bobby" Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, everyone's sorry, dot jobs get dot dumped, and the shit is flying at Starbucks. Literally. What the hell are we talking about? You gotta listen, sucka. We'll be right back. Sovren: Sovren AI Matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks about each individual transaction. It will find, rank, and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches, it tells you how and why it produced them and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI Matching, visit sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N dot com. Chad: You think Sovren's matching engine can run chat bot, too, with their AI? Their AI could do chat bots as well? Joel: I'm just glad that I don't have to think like the engine and the engine thinks like me. Chad: That's what I'm saying. Joel: Sure. I think after a demo with Sovren about six months ago that I think they could probably do about anything. Chad: Yeah, that's what we need to do. Get a demo. Joel: That place is a cash printing machine and so few people know about it. Much more now that our show is live and pimping them, but man. Sovren is the real deal. Their client list is ridiculous. Chad: That's pretty awesome. You know who else is the real deal and we actually got some gear, was Uncommon. They provided us with some uncommon and very high-quality gear, which is pretty awesome. Joel: And hoodies. Chad: Yeah. Joel: No one gives hoodies out. Chad: That's right, yeah. It is the summer, but don't worry it'll be worn all the way through autumn and winter, I promise. Joel: It's nice. American Apparel. It was, yeah. Shout out to them for sure. I'm gonna give a shout out to another one of our favorite vendors, Aman Brar at Canvas. If you haven't heard the Canvas interview, go back and listen, but they're doing the text message thing. They have some pretty cool cozies that Aman teases with. Hopefully we can get those things in our hands pretty soon 'cause summertime here in Indiana does get a little warm. The pops can get stale quickly. Chad: Yeah, no kidding, so it's funny because we're starting to be trolled by our very own listeners. I think it's freaking hilarious. Some of our listeners are in Vegas this week for Unleash and they caught the Career Builder booth empty and it's funny because it doesn't look like the monitor's plugged in, it doesn't look like anybody's home, but we're getting all these pictures of an empty Career Builders booth. We're like, what the hell is going on there? It seems like we're just being trolled by our listeners, which I think is funny as hell. Joel: So, were the Career Builder employees actually at the booth or was there really an empty booth because the pictures I saw, the lights were on and there were people in the exhibit hall. Chad: Right. Joel: It could've been a trick by a competitor to make them look bad. We should maybe confirm whether or not they had some travel troubles or what was going on there. Chad: Yeah, I think they might've been late to the booth to be able to get some of the things plugged in, but it was funny and I think one of the pictures was taken around lunch so everybody was out away from the booth during lunch, so I think it was all kind of posed, so I think it was funny so trying to troll us into trolling Career Builder. Nice move, guys. Very nice move. Joel: Do we know the show that was? Chad: Yeah, it was Unleash. Joel: It was Unleash? Okay, so if you're at Unleash and I know a lot of people were probably listening, hashtag us at #ChadCheese or go to chadcheese.com and let us know what was going on with the Career Builder booth at the show. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I got a shout out to Daniel Woyke I'm not sure, it's W-O-Y-K-E. from our friends at Madgex over the pond. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: He's a big fan of the show, gave us some love. Daniel, thanks for listening. We appreciate it. Chad: I am also being trolled by the people over at Monster. It's funny because as we give Monster shit it's like they give us shit back which is like the polar opposite of Career Builder. We start to give Career Builder shit and they go and hide in a corner or they get in the fetal position or something. Joel: Call the lawyers, call the lawyers. Chad: Call the lawyers. Send some letters. So, what did Monster do? I've been making fun of this stupid, purple, Bugs Bunny rip off monster that they've been using, and what do they do? They send me and you both a couple of these furry, fluffy monsters plus some mousepad and also a squeezy monster as well. So, good on you, Monster. That's exactly what we're looking for. We're proving snark and then you're just sending it right back at us. Gotta say we love it. Not sure that I'm 100% on your job search yet, but this is funny as shit. Joel: My eight year old daughter loved the stuffies, so I'm not gonna hate on them too much for that. Shout out to Sarah Brennan, a long time industry participant. She gave me word that she's leaving Cornerstone on Demand and going out on her own again. Chad: Good for her. Joel: Writes a lot, she goes to conferences, she's a thought leader, speaker. So, I'm kind of happy that she's out from under the corporate thumb and on her own again. So Sarah, thanks for being a listener and good luck to you. Chad: Yeah, good for her. I've got a couple of programming notes. First and foremost, we did our very first demo, video demo. Chad and Cheese video demo and we did it with Teg from Uncommon. We did it yesterday. It's gonna be dropping on the websites. We're gonna be pushing out on social media. It's really cool. Obviously, we wanted to dig in deeper into the guts of Uncommon because we heard a lot on the podcast. It got pretty much double applause from us and we thought, okay, how can we take this further? Let's see what you got. Chad: So, Joel and I sat back with a couple of beers and Teg took us through it so it was pretty awesome. Joel: Yeah, for anyone who doesn't want to actually talk to a salesperson or schedule a call, just check out the video if you're interested in Uncommon and get the demo and we'll be your Q&A for you. It's a nice little thing that we've done, I think, for the community. So, you're welcome. Chad: You're welcome. Last but not least, we also did a new firing squad which you've gotta listen to. Woo.io CEO Larin was on firing squad and we have another one already in the can for next month, but some really, pretty cool start ups that are joining in and they're taking the shots from the Chad and Cheese. So, good on them. They've got the balls to actually come on the show. Joel: No spoilers, but I'll say that we weren't all wooed by woo if you know what I'm saying. Chad: So bad. Joel: Alright, lets get to the news. It was Indeed's week in addition to Unleash. Indeeed had their annual meeting which things are just starting to trickle out from what was going on there, but they had two releases. The first one was Indeed assessments. So a few months ago, they bought a company called Interviewed, I think, which was assessments. So now they finally integrated this service. It seems a bit antiquated at this point and manually put all this stuff in, particularly when you talk to people like Uncommon who uses AI for that stuff, but it's a step forward, I think, for most of their users. It's a fine little addition to their service. What are your thoughts? Chad: Do you know if the actual interview itself, like the interview process, if it can be done by text or is it just an old timey going through answering questions on your browser and going on that? Is that pretty much what they've implemented? Joel: Yeah, from the look of it, it's the pre-screening questionnaire. How many years do you have, are you a U.S. citizen, do you have a college degree, basic questions kind of like that. So yeah, it is what it is. That kind of stuff's been around for a long time. Indeed is just now starting to catch up to that. Will it become more AI focused and automated in the future? I guess, but for now it to me looks pretty cut and dry. They do have an advertisement apparently that's pimping the Q&A. It looks really focused at the small business side of the house. Joel: Someone hiring waiters or whoever. Do you have wait service? Do you have your own car? Do you have a driver's license? Can you get to where we need you on time? That kind of thing. So, yeah it's fine, but I don't think it's earth shattering news whatsoever. Chad: Yeah and then the SNB market. I think ZipRecruiter's kicking their asses as it is and if they would just spend some cash on buying ZipRecruiter's, maybe that would solve it for them. Who knows. Joel: I will add, we talk a lot about Facebook, but in little different variances like with their slack product and thinks like that, but F8 happened a week ago, I believe, which is their annual developers conference. So, Zuckerberg revealed that 800 million people per month globally are in their marketplace section using it. I think one in three Americans are using marketplace on a regular basis. Chad: That's pretty sweet. Joel: So, I just did a post for ERE that isn't live yet, but they're enhancing their job search component for, this sounds really archaic, but for them they're catching up so they have alerts on your mobile for jobs that you're looking for. You can actually segment your search now. It already does a localize your search, but when you go to the post job section now, in addition to putting the job description and basic information, it does allow you to ask questions, which I assume are going to be part of their Instant Messenger, so when people reply they'll get a message or pop up that says, hey, answer these questions. Almost in a chat bot format, which will also serve, I assume, as a pre screening solution. Joel: So, don't fall asleep on Facebook in the SMB section. I think that they're doing a lot of these things as well and they're already integrated in most of everyone's life as it is. Chad: Yeah and you take a look at GoogleHire. Right out of the gate it was very antiquated, very boring, very, "what the hell am I doing here" kind of a product, but that was the foundation. They had to start with something and they had to start with a foundation which is what I think you're seeing with the Facebook and Google and Facebook can get away with that. Especially on the SNB side of the house because they're gonna start genning up much quicker. So, the new Google Hire with the matching pieces, we're starting to see them making some pretty big moves and I think, also, we're gonna start seeing Facebook doing the same thing. Chad: Now on the Indeed side, which is, obviously, where we started the conversation, being able to take an old timey interview-y platform, they don't have the same time that Google and Facebook does. They don't have the kind of resources, they don't have the kind of tech. They don't have all of that. So, if Indeed's going to start making moves, it should be with organizations that do have more mature tech so that they don't have to try to catch up because on that side, they're gonna be catching up. Joel: Well, further evidence of where Indeed might be going in terms of fending off Google and Facebook and others, they also released this week their Indeed transparency report. We know from last week that Glassdoor and Indeed are basically married now. They have the same ownership. We speculated that they would become one brand at some point or at least have the same content, both job search and employee reviews. So, Indeed putting out something like this is pretty new. I've not heard of them do this before. Joel: So, they're asking people how important are reviews, what do you think about poor reviews and things like that. Some of the things that were highlighted from the report that caught my eye were the fact that no reviews is worse than bad reviews because people look at if you have no reviews, are you even real? You don't even exist if you have no reviews so if you have bad reviews, take some heart that at least you're better than no reviews and people actually think the job postings that you're putting out there might actually be fake if you don't have actual reviews on your site. Joel: The other thing was for Gen Z, reviews are ... if you don't have them you're not even in the game. If you wanna hire a Gen Z and you don't have reviews out there, just forget it. You can still recruit boomers and X'ers and some millennials, but Z will tune you out totally. Chad: Yeah, we're getting intro the behavior. Restaurants and products and so on and so forth. We're looking at reviews for quality for whether we wanna go there or not 'cause we're making a decision to buy and in this case we're making a decision to buy and actually buy into this company and work there. So, yeah, that makes hell of a lot of sense, and last week we actually talked about this and I had said that Google, not Google, Indeed is going to start beating the hell out of their employers and clients with the Glassdoor stick because they're looking to diversify their areas of revenue and if they do come under one umbrella, GlassDeed, InDoor, whatever the hell, they're gonna have to get better at diversifying the model, and take a look at the employer branding and things of that nature, which is, once again, you point back to the Stepstone Universum acquisition. Chad: So, this is happening and I think it's smart. I think it's good and it was funny because we ere on a call with Peter Weddle earlier this week and he asked us is the Recruit acquisition of Glassdoor good for the industry and what do you think of that? Joel: Is the Glassdoor-Indeed acquisition or marriage good for the industry? Chad: Yeah. Joel: I think anytime that you have another strong competitor, competition is good for business. The ultimate winner in all of this is the consumer, whether it's the jobs seeker or the employer. Probably more the job seeker than anything, but they don't have to go through multiple sites to post, apply for jobs. Applying for jobs is easier, they have more information about a company in terms of choosing the right now. So, I think, ultimately, more competition is better. I think the question is exactly how much of a competitor is Glassdoor-Indeed going to be to these gorilla-esque competitors in LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google. Joel: I'm of the belief that Recruit Holdings, who owns both of those two, are gonna have to continually acquire more and more job boards to compete on this level. I think ZipRecruiter should be on their radar. I wouldn't be shocked if Career Builder is on the radar or Monster. That could happen. Dice and their family of sites. These are all for sale for sure. Now, does Recruit Holdings backup the Brinks truck and buy all of them or buy more of them? I think more of them, but I don't know which ones. I don't think Glassdoor and Indeed by themselves are gonna compete long-term with the big three. Chad: Right, so you're looking really up. You're looking up. Let's look down for a second. I think that some of the smaller brands believe it or not, the Career Builders, the Monsters, and all the other vendors that are in the space that are not the behemoths like the Googles and the Facebooks. This is going to challenge them to be able to innovate, quicker, faster, harder and to partner because they're not gonna have the acquisition dollars to be able to keep up with a Glassdoor-Indeed type of acquisition. So, I think it's good for the industry overall. Joel: Yeah, and I think, you and I talk about this all the time, is that AI and automation and deep learning and who has the most PhDs. Ultimately, AI is gonna scale across everything from the stuff we buy to our homes to our work-life balance, to job postings and employment. And the companies at the forefront of that are the bigger companies and if they could scale AI to all of their product offerings, then it's game over. Chad: Right. Joel: Then at that point, Indeed and Glassdoor and everybody just looks like Craigslist at that point. It just looks like online job postings. So, I think the kind of acquisitions they should be making are probably in who are doing really cool AI things that we can integrate into our brain trust and start competing on that level. Well, instead of looking at going to Google and I really think that they're, obviously, gonna smoke everybody in the end, but right now if they're not going to integrate Google Jobs API and if Google actually finally comes out with a people or candidate API, who do we go integrate with? Chad: We start looking at other brands, smaller brands like Opening.io or some of the other Brilent or what have you. Who do we actually integrate with that could be maybe a little bit more cost-effective for us from a margin standpoint but still be able to compete. Joel: Yeah, and I'll add on the transparency report. Part of that was to also unveil sort of enhanced profile pages that are currently on Indeed. So, the offering that they're starting to create is a very Glassdoor type offering. Most of the whole post was sort of a hand job to Glassdoor and we're gonna be more like Glassdoor. Sort of paying homage to what they're doing. So, I still believe at some point they'll be one site and part of these changes are to make sure that the data sets that they're gathering are equal and the metrics and the people who are on Glassdoor, they easily transition over to Indeed and all their content and data all comes over as one major data point and I think, probably, this was a step in that direction as well. Joel: So, if you don't have a profile page on Indeed, you should be noticing. Or if you do have a profile on Indeed, you should have noticed or should be noticing some enhancements from that side at least in the US coming forward. Chad: Yeah, so you saw there was actually a post put out by Ryan Christoi from KRT about some of this. About this marriage. Joel: Ya boy. Ya boy Ryan. Chad: So tell me because you've got some pretty strong opinions about this one. Joel: I do. In his post, he sort of framed it as, hey, Glassdoor and Indeed are gonna have a real chance at competing with the big guys at Google and et cetera. He was very non-committal in his quote which is basically quote, "The combination of Indeed and Glassdoor will give Recruit Holdings," who's the owner of those two, "the firepower to try to compete with Google for Jobs." Now, I love that he put the word "try" in there because you and I could try to compete with Google, but it doesn't mean we're gonna win. Joel: So, that was a nice little diplomatic wordplay there for Ryan, but I think the key here is, you and I talked about it, is every agency on the planet in recruitment should be rooting for Indeed and Glassdoor because if they become the employer brand juggernaut that they could become, it's a goldmine for agencies, right? Chad: Oh, yeah, and the focus on, really, the experience and the story and all those different things, the warm fluffy things, that matter. Don't get me wrong, that matter, that agencies have always been good at. Content, being able to create all those types of things and really getting back to those areas of what agencies are good at as opposed to creating technologies that are going to be outpaced. Joel: I would bet a lot of employers out there have already gotten calls from Indeed reps, Glassdoor reps, agency reps, to talk about, how do we enhance your brand on these sites, and agencies are probably foaming at the mouth thinking about all the campaigns that they could run on Indeed and Glassdoor to make that happen. Chad: Yeah, well talking about brands and ones that have taken some hard hits, they've got some- Joel: Can I interject? Chad: Go ahead. Joel: Let me inject real quick. Shameless plug, next Wednesday, Ratedly, my little side company, I'm doing a free webinar on Glassdoor plus Indeed and what it means to employer branding and what you should do to prepare for the impending doom of what's coming on, so for listeners who wanna join in on that webinar, you can just go to ratedly.com/glassdeed and I'll spell it out for you. If you're having trouble, just go to ratedly.com and check out our blog post and you'll find the post about the webinar. Chad: So, how come I wasn't puled on as a guest to heckle you? This is bullshit. Joel: You can register and I may unplug your mic. Who knows? Chad: Such an asshole. Okay, so we've seen some of these big brands like Wells Fargo, Facebook, and Uber with these "so sorry" campaigns. We're so sorry that we fucked up. Joel: Yeah and this started, at least for me, with Domino's. So a lot of people remember Domino's used to be wet cardboard with cheese on it. Chad: Bad pizza. Joel: And they went out and had a whole ad campaign with a CEO saying, we know we suck, we had some real chefs come in, we've improved our pizza, we're gonna get better, and then no one said sorry for a long time and then now everybody's saying sorry. Chad: Yeah, dude. Joel: You like one in particular better than others. Talk about that. Chad: So, Wells Fargo. They did some pretty shady, nasty shit and you can look it up. I'm not gonna delve deep into it, but Wells Fargo's a name that's been around since back in the stagecoach days. So they've got this awesome ad that actually sets up what they've been doing to earn the trust of their customers for so many years, for decades, and then it says, "It's how we earned your trust until we lost it." It's this point where it's like they say, look, we know we fucked up and we're sorry and this is how we're going to earn your trust back at Wells Fargo. It was done incredibly well. Chad: I don't know who the advertising agency was who did this, but they did an amazing job. I saw it on the TV. Very first time and at the end of it I was like, kudos, man. That was well-spent money. Joel: I like how you said I saw it on the television. Chad: I saw it on the television. Joel: I saw it on the moving picture box. One of the things that got to me is all of these ads are sort of employment related subliminally. They're all saying, we're good people, we treat our employees well or we're focused on building a better world, we're getting it right. I think Wells Fargo in particular, it's a pretty quick cut but an employee at Wells Fargo who's in a wheelchair as part of the ad. There are lot of different faces, male and female, lot of different shades that you see in the ad. Was that your takeaway as well 'cause you're sort of our go-to compliance diversity guy. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Or was it more pandering? Chad: There's all of that, but it fit within the actual context of we're here to help everybody and earn your trust back. We know this big group. We've gotta earn the trust back. So, again, it's all about actions, but that story was incredibly impactful and that's what advertising should do. Especially when it comes to somebody who screwed up this bad. Joel: Now, for me I'd say Facebook was my favorite. I think with the Russian stuff and the hacks and the fake news. Chad: Too soon for me. Too soon. Joel: Facebook has way more penetration than Wells Fargo does. A lot of the country doesn't even have Wells Fargo including here in Indiana. There are very few Wells Fargos. Chad: Right. Joel: If any in our neck of the woods. Even though they have investment services, so I'm sure people use that and mortgage services et cetera, but Facebook, huge penetration, and it made me remember my first experience with Facebook. That first time, add a friend or add as a friend and to me that was more impactful and I think from an employment standpoint, I think that Facebook and Silicone Valley has taken the toughest hit because from what I understand is people, developers, are a little gun shy to go work at Facebook because of the Trump connection and the Russians and the blah, blah, blah, and they're choosing other employers instead of Facebook. Joel: So, for me that was the most important employment ad even though it wasn't an employment ad because it was saying to job seekers, hey, it's okay to come work for us. We're fixing this problem. We're gonna get it right. Maybe you could be one of the ones who comes on board and helps us make sure we keep it right. Chad: I think it's important to understand that companies, I believe, are starting, especially these sort of companies because we're talking about Wells Fargo, Facebook, and Uber, who ... they're all service oriented companies. They know that people who perspectively might work for them are also are their customers. So, at the end of the day, I think there's more of a holistic understanding of what employment means that candidates aren't candidates. They are customers, too, and these three companies actually go it and it's one of the reasons why I'd really like to just see the employment brand, let's say, kind of fade because it's so important to understand there's more of a holistic feel. Chad: Yeah, you gotta be able to talk about how it feels to work there, but it's more than just that. It's about the product, it's about the mission, the objectives, the culture, and I think these ads did a good job, but that was because they were service oriented or product oriented. Joel: I agree, and you know who else is service and product oriented? Chad: Who? Joel: Our next sponsor. AJE: America's Job Exchange is celebrating our tenth year as an industry leader and diversity recruitment in 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. AJE: Want to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Chad: Compliance is mandatory. Diversity is essential. I love that so much. I gotta say it over and over. It just makes good sense. You've gotta be compliant. Have a nice day, but being diverse is totally essential from a business standpoint, from a success standpoint. Joel: Is this the tagline or is this your own? Chad: No, this is their new tagline that's on their homepage americasjobexchange.com. Good stuff. Joel: Yeah, I like that. Like that. Let's go a little dumpster diving in our next talk in the irrelevant category. Your old stomping grounds. Directemployers and .jobs. USNLX. What's up? Chad: So, it's interesting. I had an email forwarded to me and it seems like this is about the time frame that the Employ Media, which is the company who owns the .jobs domains, the entire top level domain of .jobs, and Direct Employers ... they had an agreement going. Joel: Can you give us 10 seconds on the history of that because you were a part of it. Chad: Yeah. So, Employ Media really wanted to focus on driving really, corporate content through a, corporate content meaning jobs, through their .jobs domain because it just made sense and they felt like if you could get pure, good, non-duplicated, non-spammy content, that Google would love it. So, we had starting out 40,000 domains and we spun up 40,000 .jobs domains. Boston.jobs, indianapolis.jobs, sales.job, indianapolissales.jobs, et cetera. Joel: Employ Media, by the way, has the license to sell .jobs domains. So when you're buying a .jobs domain, their licensing that to you, right? Chad: Yep. Joel: So they partnered with Direct Employers to basically do what you just said. Chad: Yeah, and it seems like it's probably around the time where the agreement is over because I've just seen an email that was forwarded to me that says that Direct Employers is moving their job site us.jobs, which is ... that's a pretty damn good domain, US, United States, .jobs. Joel: It's been around a while if nothing else. Chad: Yeah, it's been around for a while, and they're moving it to usnlx.com. We always give organizations shit because the .io and the ai.io.ai, whatever, but in this case they've had that job site on that domain for at least five years, around there. Probably even more. Joel: Probably. Chad: So there's history and trust that they're just blowing out the window when it comes to google and SEO and obviously search engine ranking. Joel: And also, we talked about find.jobs, right? Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Which was sort of their own Indeed backfill thing. So, there has been divorce, I guess, happening gradually here on some levels. Would you say that's true or not? Chad: It looks like it. I don't know that it's true, but I would say from all of these different moves that we're seeing. They're moving from an awesome domain that they've had for years entirely, completely, brand-spanking new domain that's gonna take a very long time to be able to earn trust and, obviously, to have history, but we're also seeing privateservice.jobs, landing.jobs, we're seeing all of these job boards popping up on the .jobs domains, which didn't happen before. Chad: So, it seems to me that everything is happening around the severing of a relationship and they're going their separate ways. Joel: So, USNLX, just for those who don't know, is US, United States, National Labor Exchange, correct? Chad: Yes. Joel: Which is so intuitive. It's just so obvious. I wouldn't agree with you that us.jobs was a great domain. I doubt that if you went to a thousand people in the street and said, have you ever heard of us.jobs, that they would say yes, but I'll defer to you on terms of SEO and search because you we're seeing the metrics back in the day and you could gradually see where it goes ... where it would be today. Also interesting, we got wind of a new site or service that Direct Employers launched. I don't know if we heard about it at their annual meeting that happened recently. I love the logo. The name not so much. Recruit Lobster. Recruit Chicken. What was it? Recruit Rabbit? Chad: Recruit Llama. Joel: Oh, Recruit Llama. Chad: Recruit Llama. No, it was Recruit Rooster. Unveiled that at the annual meeting and Direct Employers Association is a nonprofit. It's a 501C4 or 5, one of those, and this is a for profit that is being launched underneath that umbrella, which is interesting to say the least. It's a marketing platform and that marketing platform was actually created originally like a jobs to web SEO platform, but since that had to pivot into more of a marketing type of a cosmetic platform to be able to sell, that's what happened, but it's a marketing platform. Chad: There's analytics behind it. The hard part is, how do you stay up with all these kick ass startups and also Google who is feeding APIs to these kick ass startups with a new little start up yourself that has old technology? Joel: Don't these career sites feel antiquated to you? Chad: Oh, no. They're totally antiquated. Joel: We're moving into ... I feel like 1998 to me. If you wanna know about a company, you go to Glassdoor, you go to FairyGod Bot, you find the real nitty gritty on Yelp, not the restaurant's website. Chad: Right. Joel: Which are antiquated as well, but then we have chat bots and text messaging and it's all about ... the brand to me is the experience that someone has in finding a job and getting it. Getting the resume information to you in a quick, effortless, painless manner. Are people really, I guess they are, going to our culture page and pictures of our company picnic? Chad: It's content. It's story. There are definitely those things that they want to have that they really need to have an experience on their website, but I don't know. The thing that they're gonna have to do to be able to compete at all is they're gonna have to partner a ton with chat bot companies, AI companies. They're gonna have to do a ton of work either one or two ways to actually build it, which is not gonna happen. Or partner to be able to provide a product that is going to be on par with things that are already out there and just knowing from pretty much the culture that they're in, what they'll try to do is they'll try to provide something that's halfway decent at a bargain basement price. Joel: Yeah. I'm done talking about them. Chad: Recruit Llama. Joel: Recruit Lobster. Recruit Pigeon. Anyway, some of your favorite names to hashtag #ChadCheese. Google for Jobs continues to roll on, but we're getting numbers now from people we know and people in the job board industry about what exactly it means to traffic numbers. So, last week, Chris [Russell 00:37:18], who a lot of people know in the industry. He's quote-on-quote "The mad scientist of recruiting" because he launches a new business every week, but one of his more interesting businesses is his consulting with job board industry and he posts his findings from job boards. Joel: In his latest posting, he revealed that one third of his organic traffic in one of his boards was all generated by Google for Jobs which is pretty impressive. Chad: That's a shit ton of traffic. I don't know what that looked like before and if there was some switches from Indeed to Google. We'll have to get Chris on and talk to him a little bit more about what he's seeing especially on the smaller job board sites because that's really his forte, but that's a hell of a lot of traffic. The thing that they've really gotta focus on, job board owners, job site owners, is how they interface with Google to make sure that they're not trying to game the system or at least seen like they're gaming the system because Google's actually put out notices that they will manually penalize your ass. Joel: What I thought, too, was there's a pretty good chance that those jobs that Chris is getting are not original jobs. They're probably posted elsewhere. So, I would love to see some numbers around what impact Google for Jobs has on traffic if you are the original source of the job i.e. the ATS. I know Susan Vitale at iCims has talked about this before. I know that we'll talk to their CEO here soon. That'd be one of the questions I'd really love to know if they have that data because to me, they are the original source and the source that Google is going to give preferred treatment to in the results and in the posting. Joel: So, my idea is that'll be way more important than the job boards as we go forward, so I wouldn't be surprised if a job board that was really doing a good job of getting its postings into Google for Jobs wasn't seeing a 40% to 50% spike or percentage of their job or traffic depending on what else they're doing money wise, but in terms of free traffic, I bet Google is a huge percentage for a lot of them. Chad: Yeah, I think if its original content, that's what it all comes down too, right? The duplicate jobs thing are gonna be kicked out. So, being able to drive, and again, small to middle market in most cases, i.e. ZipRecruiter, you're gonna see a good amount of traffic because you're going to have more content that you can actually send over and isn't going to be kicked out. So yeah, as we start to see what's happening on the Google for Jobs side of the house, you'll see that you can apply to several different, like Glassdoor or what have you, but those are more of the trusted sources in Google for Jobs. I don't see that list growing to 10 different sources that you could perspectively apply to. Joel: Hey, if you're listening, if you're at an agency or a job board and you wanna share some of your traffic data, from Google for Jobs, hit us up at chadcheese.com. Lets here a quick sponsorship spot and we'll talk about shit hitting the fan at Starbucks. Cool with that? Chad: Alright, yeah. JobAdx: How many times has someone said to you, "We're the Uber of," or, "It's the PayPal of," maybe, "They're the Facebook of." In many, many cases, these comparisons fall short to being close to reality or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. In the case of JobAdX, our example is so accurate, so spot on, that it's synonymous with our work. JobAdX is Google Ad sense for jobs. That means we're an efficient, consistent, and smarter ad unit for job related advertising. As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs, and staffing firms real-time dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. All this is done with he flexibility of JobAdX's cost per impression, click, or application. JobAdX: We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. We're not set in regrets. For direct clients, JobAdX delivers superior candidates with the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. We also provide publishers and job boards higher rev share than other partners through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30% to 40% greater and more through our scalable model. To partner with us, you can visit or search jobadx.com or email us at joinus@jobadx.com to get estimates or being working together. JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for your means. Oh, and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK, too. Joel: Jolly good. Chad: Jolly good, yeah. Joel: Are you gonna watch the Royal Wedding this weekend? Chad: No. Joel: My wife has set her alarm for 4:00 am or some crazy shit. Chad: C'mon. Joel: I'm just saying. Well, she's Canadian, so she's basically English. Chad: Okay, yeah. Well, hopefully you'll still have your little sleeping mask on and you'll be good to go. Joel: Oh, for sure as long as my one-year-old stays quiet I'm fine. So shifting so something entirely different, Starbucks went loco this week. Chad: Yeah, there's been a lot of stupid shit happening at Starbucks lately and this, I think, tops it all. Joel: Yeah, so there's a video of a crazy woman who, I hope to God she's on drugs, 'cause if this is just her normal state, then she's got some real problems. So, the video has no sound, which really cheats America out of enjoyment, but she's yelling at this barista, berating this barista, and then she pulls back, drops trow, and takes a dump in the Starbucks right by the register and then she picks up her shit and throws it at the barista. I got nothing else, but that's just crazy. Chad: Yeah, no. That's beyond crazy and to be able to think that somebody would be trained to know how to deal with that is ... that's a new level of training that Starbucks' baristas are now going to have to go through. That is ridiculous. Joel: That's new latte I don't wanna know how to mix, man. That's something I want no part of. Chad: I got nothing. Joel: But I feel so bad. That's probably a 20-year-old kid making coffee and this crazy bitch walks in, high off her ass, and throws shit at me. Chad: Being at those types of jobs and actually having to deal with all types of people every single day, that is a big, big skill because you're taking, and pun intended, you're taking a lot of shit all day from people and this is just a new way. Joel: Now the question is, when robots are taking your order, how is this woman going to respond? Chad: She won't have an option because if she does that, then the robot guardian will actually come out and kick her ass. Joel: That's when robo-cop comes out and tazes her ass. Alright, I got nothing else after that. I say we out. Chad: I'm with you. We out. Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. 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.

Liran Kotzer steps in front of The Chad & Cheese Firing Squad to test his Woo.io pitch, his nerves, and ultimately his mettle. Woo.io claims to automatically match jobs to candidates who are discreetly exploring new opportunities. That sounds good but will it be enough to keep Liran out of the line of fire? Thanks to our Firing Squad sponsor Talroo... That's right Talroo, not Jobs2Careers you silly beast. Visit Talroo today and find out how to get better candidates for less cash. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad: Hey, Joel. Joel: What up? Chad: Would you say that companies find it hard to attract the right candidates to apply for their jobs? Joel: Well, Jobs to Careers thought so. Chad: Jobs2Careers? You mean Talroo. Joel: Talroo? Chad: Yeah, Talroo. T-A-L-R-O-O. Joel: What is that? Like a cross between talent and a kangaroo? Chad: (Laughs) No. It's a cross between talent and recruiting. But Talroo is focused on predicting, optimizing, and delivering talent directly to your email or ATS. Joel: Aha, okay. So it's totally data-driven talent attraction which means the Talroo platform enables recruiters to reach the right talent at the right time and at the right price. Chad: Okay, so that was weirdly intuitive, but yes. Guess what the best part is? Joel: Let me take a shot here. You only pay for the candidates Talroo delivers. Chad: Holy shit, okay, so you've heard this before. So if you're out there listening in Podcast land, and you are attracting the wrong candidates, and we know you are, or you feel like you're in a recruiting hamster wheel and there's just nowhere to go, right, you can go to . Again, that's Talroo.com/attract and learn how Talroo can get you better candidates for less cash. Joel: Or, just go to ChadCheese.com and click on the Talroo logo. I'm all about the simple. Chad: You are a simple man. Gollum: Yes, me precious, yes me precious candidate, we wants it so sweet precious, yes. Announcer: 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. Announcer: Dig a foxhole and duck for cover, kids, the Chad and Cheese podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel: My trigger finger is a little itchy today for the Firing Squad, we'll see how this goes. What's up, gang? We've got Liran, which is like Lebron without the B so it's easy for me to say as a Cas fan, but anyway Liran is a CEO founder I guess of Woo.io. Liran, welcome to the show, and before we start give us the fifteen second intro on you. Liran: Hey guys, first thanks for having me, I'm really excited. And so I'm Liran, I'm the CEO and founder of Woo.io. I'm a techie, I live in Israel and I'm excited for what we're building and for the reason we're building it. We'd be happy to share what we're doing. Joel: Very good, about 15 seconds exactly. Liran: Boom. Joel: Chad, tell him what he'll win on this show, otherwise known as the Rules of the Show. Chad: Well first off, before we even get into this, Liran, I'd like to say kudos on having the high school picture of Joel on your home page. Dude, that is amazing, I never thought that I would see Joel Cheesman on the home page. Joel: Are you referring to the orgasmic guy on the home page? Is that the one you're talking about? Chad: Oh yeah, like with the Vic 20 or the Apple, or whatever it is, yeah. It's awesome. Liran: We read about the show, so we took a few pictures. Joel, we want him to know and how he is a famous guy. Chad: Good job with him. Okay, we're rolling on. Here's the format of the show, Liran. You will have two minutes to pitch Woo. And at the end of two minutes, you will hear the bell. Then Joel and I will have our way with you with a little Q&A. If your questions aren't concise, then Joel's gonna either hit you with the bell or some crickets. Means you need to tighten your game up. Joel: Keep it moving, baby. Chad: Keep it moving. At the end of Q&A, we're going to pretty much give you our opinions on the pitch and obviously on the Q&A, we're either gonna give you big applause, that means you have exceeded expectations, golf clap, you're on your way but you have a lot of work to do or last but not least, nobody wants this, it's the firing squad. It's time to pick up, go home, get the drawing board back out, and do it again. Chad: So that's firing squad. It's time to buckle up and pitch. Joel: Are you sweating yet, Liran? Are you regretting this? Liran: Guys, please be gentle. Joel: All right, all right. Liran: I'm far, far away from Israel, please be gentle. Joel: We're typically nice to our international guests, so you've got that going for you. All right, on the bell you've got two minutes. Are you ready? Liran: Sure, let's do it. Joel: Go. Liran: All right, so Woo is basically a technology-driven marketplace where we connect between district job seekers and companies that are ready to offer them the opportunity they truly want. The reason we built Woo is because we met so many people that are comfortably numb in their job, which means that from one hand they have a lot of ambitions and inspiration regarding what they want to do next in their career, it can be new technologies, relocation, working with big company startups, whatever, but when we come to reality most of those people don't do anything regarding their inspiration because they don't want to go through the hassle of getting a job, which is a risky process, you don't know what you can get out there, and people don't want to put these efforts. Liran: So we basically created the platform to give them no excuse, because the way Woo works is it's dramatically simplified the way people can consume job and turn the job consumption from a one time event into an ongoing exploration where we serve as your agent, which means that when you're get into Woo you put everything about yourself. It's totally discrete, but we know everything about you. And then we help you to set up your wish list regarding what kind of opportunity you would define as interesting for you. Liran: Of course, we help you with using our information so you won't ask working on the moon, which means that we make sure that you're asking for realistic things. And from that point, once you have the wishlist and we know everything about you, from that point we start showing you opportunities from companies that we're working with that you qualify for on one hand, but also meeting your preferences. Liran: So once you get an opportunity from Woo you know that it's very relevant, you can see who's the company, what they want to discuss about, how these opportunities meet your expectation, and from that point you can ask Woo whether you want to be introduced to that company. If we introduce you to that company, one out of two of those interaction will turn into active interview. Chad: (Bell rings) That's the first one. Liran: I'm the first one to pass the two minutes. Joel: Although you did say comfortably numb as part of your pitch. Chad: Yeah, it's very nice. Pink Floyd. Joel: Which I thought it was interesting. Chad, you wanna go first? Or do you want me to take the first? Chad: No, I'll go, I'll go first. Joel: All right. Chad: So the pitch in itself, right, is focused on being able to solve a problem. The big question is at this point, what was the problem? What's the problem that you're trying to solve, Liran? Liran: Yeah, so the problem we basically trying to solve is the fact that people today has no control regarding what is their next step, how they're getting to their next step. Meaning that there are 20% people that actively go and pursue job when they don't have any job, but most of the people the way they see job is very sporadically. Meaning that one of their friends calling them, say, "Hey, I have a great position for you." But what if I want to control my career, meaning that I want know I'm dreaming about relocating to Boston. What I'm going to do about it? I need to invest a lot of efforts in research and see who is ready to take me in Boston. Liran: So Woo is a new alternative where you quickly in the platform, meaning you're not putting yourself as a job seeker. You set your wishlist, meaning for example, I want to relocate to Boston and work as CEO and earn 160K annual salary, and you know that Woo is going to find you that opportunity because we're working on the other side with companies, and only company that can offer it to you will be able to approach you. Liran: Now, what is the other solution? You LinkedIn, you don't have any control in LinkedIn regarding what kind of opportunity you're getting, so you're getting a lot of stem. You can go to job boards, but in job boards when you apply to job, you don't know on the other side who is there and if you are qualified, so you're gonna waste a lot of time sending your CV. Or you can sit with agencies, which is very limited operation ... Chad: Okay, so wait, wait, wait. So this so far has been all candidate side, right? You've been talking about the candidate and helping the candidate and the candidate, candidate, candidate. So I'm gonna jump right to one of my questions that I generally go after last. Is this something that you price out for the candidate? Does the candidate pay for this? Liran: No. Chad: So since the candidate doesn't pay for this, can you tell me as an employer how are you going to solve my problem? Liran: Yeah. Excellent question. If you would give me four minutes for the pitch I would probably get into the employer. But you are giving me only two minutes. It's only one side in two minutes. Liran: So let's talk about employer because I think that what we are offering today for employer, nobody can offer them. So when we speaking about employers, employers basically what they want, they want to hire the relevant candidate in a minimum efforts, right? That's what they want. And what we do to them is exactly doing this exact facing this exact challenge, which means that the way it works from employer's side, we eventually understood that if you want to build a healthy marketplace, you cannot open the marketplace listing to each of the side. Liran: For example, in LinkedIn where employers are getting and seeing a list of candidates, they can decide who they want to approach, right? This is a problem in scale because they are getting more and more candidate, getting more and more stem. So we said, employer cannot see any of your listing. Which means that we need to come up with the technology like a recruiting agency but with a robot, that understand the requirements of the employer, and from that point go and try to approach the relevant candidate, the qualified candidate, and offer them the opportunity. Liran: And all the candidate that says yes will be introduced to the employer. So from the employer's side, we are the only company that today giving them, we call it QIP. Q-I-P. Qualified candidates that already interested and are passive, which mean they are not in the market. And it means that this is the best thing that you can get as an employer in order to save your time, because think about it for example, in job boards you're getting interested candidates, but they're not qualified. In LinkedIn, you see qualified candidate but they're not interested. Or in agencies you're getting qualified and interested candidate, but they're not passive, which means that you can invest a lot of your efforts on interview them, but eventually you're going to compete with other, three, four offers they are going to get just because they are in the market. Liran: So the ability to give the access to candidate that are discrete, which mean they are not in the market from one hand, and only introducing with those that are qualified and show interest, creating a very powerful mechanism for employers to work with. Joel: Liran, from my perspective you have a traditional problem, which is the chicken and egg issue of the job board. In other words, if you have candidates but no jobs, then what's the point? If you have jobs but no traffic or candidates, then what's the point? So my question to you is, how are you driving candidates and how are you driving job content for them? Liran: This is a very good question. I think that the chicken and egg is the number one problem in any market, I say mainly in the recruiting space, where people come in for a very specific need and then leaving, like in job boards. So in our case, that's the true game changing that we make, is that because we approaching candidates that are not looking actively for job, we basically creating a pools candidates that don't have any urgency, which means that even if they will get the first opportunity from Woo after two months, they are still going to be in the system. Liran: I can tell you that a very, very important number we have today, we are only focusing on software engineers, so we have around 60,000 software engineers. And what we find out that 87% of the software engineers that we have in the system are engaged with opportunities they are getting from Woo after two years in the system. And that's what I told you at beginning, we change the job consumption from a one time event into an ongoing exploration. And this is how we solve the chicken and egg, basically when we open a new territory and first going through the candidates, say, hey, here is the agent that will eventually be your agent for the long run and will always show you your demand based on the things you want, and then we started bringing the companies. Liran: We made it in San Francisco, in New York, also in Israel, and in San Diego. And we sold at these ports. Joel: So you're targeting specifically developers in San Francisco, New York, and whatever other markets, and then going after companies in those markets. So if I'm a developer in Miami, you're not really for me yet. Liran: I'm for you if you're ready to relocate to one of the locations that we have companies in. Joel: (laughs) Liran: By the way, we do a lot of relocations. 20% of the inventory that we have are people that are not in those locations but ready to move. For example, we made around 10 relocations to Israel engineers to U.S. companies. Think about how easy it is, because today if a U.S. company want to hire an Israel engineer, what are they going to do? You need to go to what, to LinkedIn and try to see who is ready to relocate? Liran: So in our case if they say I'm ready to relocate someone, all I need to know is that there is an engineer in Israel that is qualified and ready to be relocated to the U.S., and then here is a new match. Right? The layer about what candidate ready to do or what they want, allowing us to create a new kind of match. Chad: So who out there is doing what Woo is doing? Who's taking this really angle at the problem? Liran: Well, I can tell you the closest entity our company that is doing similar thing today is recruiting agencies. Right? Because in recruiting agencies, the only place where you go and get a premium service off only qualified and interested candidates. The difference between us and them is that we are online platform driven by technology and not a bunch of recruiters. I will be head ... Happy to tell you about the technology. And the fact that we are user-based is mostly candidates that are not in the market and feeling very comfortable with using a platform [crosstalk 00:15:24] Chad: So it's more like an agency type of stance, although I've seen where you guys say more H ... I'm sorry, more AI, less humans. Liran: Exactly, exactly. By the way, we started with fully manual, meaning human-driven operation, and then we switch it by our robot, our recruiter robot, which called Helena. And this was an amazing journey on how you develop an AI in that type of system. I know there are a lot of companies speaking about AI and you know, but it's really tough to create an AI in the HR space. And you know why? Because AI is like a baby that you're trying to teach, right? So when you try to teach a baby, you need two things: You need to give him a lot of information from one hand, and you need to give him the ability to make mistakes. This is how you basically building a brain and how you teach people. Liran: So the problem in the recruiting space is first there are no books, meaning there are no pre-defined data sets where you can take and train your AI. You basically need to build your information ... Chad: You need to learn all that data and from that point you go on, right? So we actually talked about Helena earlier this year, and it was specifically pointed to Helena is going to take the place of recruiters. Is that really what you see technology doing? Especially like Woo technology, taking the place of recruiters. Liran: I would say that yeah. Helena is basically practically took the place of recruiters in our company. But I would say that if we're looking at recruiters, the next generation of recruiters will be people that know how to implement those Helena's and make out of those robots the maximum. Because even if it's in AI, there's still like in advertising and every other economy where the operation is automated, there are still human touch where you want to make sure that the robot is understanding and doing the right job, right? Liran: So I would say that the recruiting is going to be more technology-driven profession that will eventually be able to implement and deploy an execute those kind of technologies in order to get the most out of it. Joel: Liran, I'm going to go back to the job seeker. What's the unique proposition to them to use your site? Because developers are hit up all the time, they have a lot of services to choose from. Why have those 60,000 people entrusted you with their job search? Liran: Right, so it's a combination of three things. One is discrete, you can keep doing what you're doing and nobody know that you're there. Second is that relevancy, meaning that only opportunities that meet your preferences, only companies that can meet your preferences will be able to approach you, so you know that every opportunity is super relevant. And third, is the efficiency, which means that once you said yes, 50% chance that you're starting the process. Liran: And this is something that nobody can get out of today. You don't have a place where you can keep doing what you're doing, say the next thing that you want, I want to work for Google for 150 or whatever, and you know that once we alert you, you're going to get exactly what you wanted. And this is nobody giving you. Sure, we give you also insides regarding how you collaborate your expectation to meet reality so we can help you to understand your demand, but the main offering is that ... You know, number 1 stress point in career is the unknown. People don't know what they can get out of. And they don't want to do this proactive in order to understand. Liran: So using a tool like Woo, you know what your opportunities. You know that in any given moment, you can click on the make me an introduction and here you go, you move on to the next thing. So it's simplified ... Chad: So I'm gonna switch gears on you real quick. I did a little research on you guys and it seems like Woo believed that interviews really stem from lack of candidate information, and your vision in the next five years or so is to eliminate the job interview entirely. Is that correct? Liran: Yes, so regarding our vision, basically once we have Helena fully deployed, the first challenge that we gave Helena is the ability to create the right connections. And now in the place where 50% of those connection during interview which is very high conversion. The second thing that we look at is we're saying okay, what about the rest of the process? Because the rest of the process is also time consuming for both sides. If I need to get interviews in five companies, that mean I need to share the same information pretty much for those five companies. So they spend time, I spend my time, and this can be reduced or even spared once you have the AI. Liran: Which means that Helena keep learning more and more about their uses. We keep discussing with them, eventually what we want is to give them a professional assessment and so on. So eventually the way we see Helena is that Helena is going to be so smart that both sides is going to trust her. And meaning that we can spare the technical interview, we can spare many of the other thing, and maybe even eventually the culture interview regarding your character and personal interview. Those kind of things by AI eventually will be sold. Liran: The reason I'm saying is because the way we envision the market in five to ten years from now is you're going to sit with your wife in the living room and say how about we relocate to Boston, and then you're gonna open the iPad or whatever it's gonna be in five years, and you're going to say to Woo, "I want to relocate to Boston and work in that industry," and whatever you want. And Woo gonna offer you two to three positions. You're gonna select one, and then bam, it's gonna say you're going to start next week, 9 am, good luck. That's it. No interviews, nothing. Liran: It sounds a bit science fiction, right? It sounds a bit science fiction. But this is how envision the market. This is how we see people switching job in the future. Of course, for us right now we are only at the beginning of the tunnel, but once we put technology and it's not a human-driven marketplace, we have more capabilities to do those things rather than give it to each side to filter out each time. Chad: No interviews is really the vision of your ... Liran: No interviews, exactly, no interviews. [crosstalk 00:22:08] Or you think interviews is important? Joel: Hey, we're interviewing you, pal. Liran: Yeah, sorry about it. I forgot about it. Joel: Hey, it looks as though email is the primary way that you communicate with job seekers, is that correct? Liran: Email right now is the primary way we communicate, yeah. Joel: Is messaging, native apps, is that stuff coming, or is it a business decision to stick with something as sort of old-school-y as email? Liran: Yeah, I got your feedback, thank you, but we're doing a lot of discussion about it. And right now we under the impression that the best way to communicate in that aspect of career and job opportunities is probably through email and not through mobile phone. We did some research with our users. It's feel less secure once you have an app calling Woo that you're basically getting opportunities. So we find out that because the high engagement of our users opportunities they're getting through email, we don't need to do this layer at that point. Liran: Maybe in the future, we're planning to do an inside tool rather than an inside app that will help you always understand your market value and things like this, but not necessarily show you opportunity through this app. Chad: So and just to ask one more time, and I'm sorry for the redundancy, but email is the primary mode, not Facebook Messenger, not texting, not actually using the mobile phone other than a phone call? Liran: Exactly. This is the most private channel that you can get opportunities from. Joel: Liran, you've raised 9 million today, is that correct? Liran: Yeah. Joel: So what is ... You got around a little bit late last year I think. What's the millions going toward? Is it development, is it growth globally, is it salespeople? Tell us about what the investment that you've gotten is being used for. Liran: Yeah, so the main things that we invested so far the money on is of course building the technology that will help us scale in a way that we're not affecting the marketplace performance, so we invested a lot of efforts on Helena, we have a brilliant dean here of machinery and doctor scientist, people who can build those technologies. And now we are in a phase where we feeling very secure, very confidence with our product and with the technology and everything, and we're working with very high rents that are very satisfied and making hires from the system like Uber and Lyft and Microsoft and recently Amazon and many others that are using the tools. Liran: And now we are in the phase of start extending the marketplace and open Woo in more territories, mainly in the U.S. and at the end of 2018, we want Helena to start working with other profession, which mean that we are going to extend it to at the beginning to marketing and sales, and eventually we want to be able to help everyone. Chad: Okay, so how's this priced out? I went to the website and I really couldn't find anything else out other than a lead form. Liran: So the costing of the ... We have two basically two models, one model is that you pay success fee, which is highly discounted, you pay 10% of the annual salary. And the second one is what we call a hybrid model, which is you basically think about a subscription, you're basically paying a fixed price and from that price we derive the volume of leads that we gonna generate for you. Joel: Are there exact costs that an employer can expect to pay through? Liran: Well, if they're taking the success, they will pay 10% of the annual salary of the candidates. If they're taking the performance base, they will have to pay based on how many leads they want to generate from the system. Joel: So what, if we're looking at two and three years if we sit down for another interview, what are gonna be features that should expect, what are gonna be new markets that we should expect you to be in, etc.? Liran: So we got in the markets, it going to be ... We gonna open for all the cities in the U.S. from one hand, and we're going to also open Europe, we're talking about three years. And on the other side, we're gonna, I assume that in two years we're going to support all the professions out there, but the most important thing that in three years people will be able to switch job much more efficiently than today. Even today, we took the experience to a new level where you just need to click and 50% that you are in the interview. In three years, you basically once you do the click, 50% you got hired. Or even 70% you got hired. Liran: So this is for us the main goal, is from the moment that will bring derived opportunity, how can we make the process shorter and more efficient, and this is where we expect to be in three years. Chad: (Bell rings) There it is. Joel: The questioning is over and the day of reckoning is at hand now. Chad has passed it on to me to take the first shot, so to speak, at Liran and Woo.io. I ... So we started off on a pretty poor note. You had two minutes to give us the pitch, which you couldn't do, so you need to tighten up your pitch to people like us. Two minutes should be plenty of time to explain what you do and why it's different or important. Joel: I asked you what's unique to a job seeker, you told me three things. One of them is actually maybe unique, I don't think anonymity is unique. Maybe telling you, hey, I only want to work at Google, maybe there's some uniqueness there, but I didn't see anything that was really sticking out to me as something that was gonna play, and I think you still have a really tough mountian to climb with convincing not only developers but anyone to join the site as something that's really unique to anyone else. Joel: Now, you may have an AI secret sauce down the road or even now that I'm just not seeing that will be a big plus for you in getting job seekers engaged and aroused. Technologically, being email, I appreciate the argument that email is ubiquitous, it's everyone, but for someone, a company particularly trying to appeal to a tech-savvy audience being developers, I really would have loved to have seen text messaging, even Facebook messaging like Chad said, which is pretty private because no one's gonna pinch you for being on Messenger on Facebook. Joel: So I would have loved to have seen more of that stuff down the pipe. So in short, I think you have a long way to go. You're in a really tough market. I think you're probably moving slower than I would like to see as well. I mean you guys have been around for over a year and you're still in San Francisco, New York, some of the markets that you've been in, particularly with the investment you've had, moving faster on that front I think would be really appealing to me. Joel: So for me, a long way to go, apologies, but ... (firing squad) Liran: I appreciate the feedback. Chad: Very good feedback. I'm gonna go ahead and go after I listen to that hail of gunfire. Yeah, so first off, no question, tighten, tighten, tighten. Tighten up the message. Know who you're pitching, quicker and on the candidate side especially. You know there's a problem on the candidate side, but the thing is, that has to be tight so that you can actually focus on solving the problem for the people with the money. That's what it comes down to. It comes to the revenue. It comes to how are you going to help those companies to be able to get those individuals, and obviously taking the candidate experience and being able to be anonymous, to be able to not fear going into a system and all these different things that Woo can do, they're all great pitching points but not to the candidate, to the employer, because the employer's obviously the one who's going to be paying for this. Chad: I like the idea of no more interviewing and the concept does make some sense. But just making sense won't guarantee sales and revenue, right? We've seen that over the years. I believe you have a wonderful vision, although I don't believe HR will really embrace that. I believe you're not leading the target enough in trying to change a fundamental part of hiring, right? I love the AI to be able to really enhance recruiters, I believe in that entirely, but you have to be able to focus on also how you're reaching and engaging those individuals. Email is pretty much passe. If you're trying to reach guys like Joel and I and our demographic, it might work, but from the research that we've seen, texting and messaging has much higher engagement rates. Chad: We actually see platforms like yours, not exactly like yours but much like yours, that are getting amazing engagement rates and they're getting quicker turn arounds on hires from high volume standpoint. So two things: Focus heavily on the message and who you're actually messaging to. And start to focus on obviously what you can do with this amazing AI and engaging with perspectively chatbots, that makes sense. Chad: So from my standpoint, I'm not gonna go full guns, I'm gonna go with the golf clap. Liran: (laughs) I'm not sure what is better. Joel: Buddy, regardless you have the balls to be on this show man, and kudos to you for that. Any last words before we close the show? Liran: Yeah, first thank you guys for the feedback, I really appreciate it. I think you made some really important points and of course we are in a tough journey and we working on implementing and fixing a lot of things and I hope that in one year if you invite me again, we're gonna change it to other sound at the end. Chad: We hope to see that. Joel: Sounds like a deal, man, we out. Chad: We out. Liran: Awesome, perfect. Announcer: This has been the Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the firing squad, contact the boys at Chadcheese.com today. That's www.chadcheese.com. #Wooio #FiringSquad

Well... what started out as a pretty slow and boring ass week gained some steam by Hump Day. So what happened? - Glassdoor see acquiaition dollars from Indeed's parent company for $1.2 billion - Monster lands a new CEO (Get it? Travel... Lands?) - CareerBuilder goes down - Oprah is giving everybody a FREE job board (Ok it's not Oprah) - Google's demo of Duplex tech (AI) is a jaw dropper - FairyGodBoss loves them some VC Glassdoor-for-women site raised $3 million. Enjoy, and checkout our sponsors America's Job Exchange, Sovren and JobAdX. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION El Chapo: Evidently, when El Chapo was incarcerated, the code of ethics that he instilled in Cabo and throughout Mexico has gone away. There's no code of ethics, there's no code of honor. All of a sudden, there's a war for power. So you're seeing things happen that you haven't seen in the past, where people, gangs, drug dealers, will actually go into restaurants and shoot up the place. That never happened before. 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. Joel: Hey hey hey kids, welcome to another week in the wild, wonderful, whimsical world of recruiting and HR. This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I am Chad Chatbot Sowash. Joel: This week, that'd be much more fun to work with. This week, Careerbuilder goes down, Monster finally gets a fearless leader, and, oh yeah, Glassdoor gets acquired. Buckle up, everybody. We'll be right back. JobAdx: How many times has someone said to you, it's the Uber of, or it's the PayPal of, maybe they're the Facebook of. In many, many cases, these comparisons fall short of being close to reality, or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. In the case of JobAdX, our example is so accurate, so spot on, that it's synonymous with our work. JobAdX: JobAdX is Google Ad Sense for jobs. That means we're an efficient, persistent, and smarter ad unit for job related advertising. As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies and staffing firms realtime, dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. All this is done with the flexibility of JobAdX's cost per impression, click or application. We offer unique budget conservation to effectively eliminate spending waste. We are not set in regrets. JobAdx: For direct clients, JobAdX delivers superior candidates with the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. We also provide publishers and job boards higher web share than other partners through our smarter pragmatic platform. In many cases, 30 to 40% greater and more with our scalable model. To partner with us, you can visit or search jobadx.com or email us at joinus@jobadx.com to get estimates or begin working together. JobAdX. The best ad tool providing smarter pragmatic for your needs. Oh, and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK, too. Chad: Very nice. Joel: We symbiotically became classier and global with hat ad. That's nice. Chad: Thanks JobAdX, for making us more classy. I don't know that you can do that though, really. Joel: And they show up with Guinness for live shows. Chad: Oh yeah. Chad: Classing the joint up, JobAdX. We appreciate it. Chad: Well, let's talk about classy. Let's talk about throwing axes. Let's talk a little bit about that. You got a shout out for Nexxt, right? Joel: Oh, a double axe with two x's. Now I showed up with the incorrect footwear which was a major mistake because I would've enjoyed kicking your ass in competition but that will have to wait for another day, apparently. Chad: Yeah. First off, never gonna happen, and second, who shows up to an axe throwing event in flip flops? Joel Cheesman does, that's who does. He shows up and doesn't get an opportunity to throw like the regular people who have appropriate footwear, meaning like, tennis shoes, but he did get a couple of throws in and luckily we got tape of that. Joel: Hey, a burly bearded man comes in barefoot. I don't know what's more ax throwing than that. Chad: Like I said, you're like a younger version of Santa, so don't play the viking role. Joel: Everybody loves Santa, alright? Everybody loves the fat jolly man in red, alright, but thanks to Nexxt, they have an office here in Indianapolis which some people don't know about. They had some of the Philly crew come in. We had pizzas, beers, moonshine, for God's sakes, and we threw axes. What's cooler than that? So, thanks to the Nexxt crew. Double x. Joel: That was awesome. That was awesome guys, thanks. Shout out to Chris Pickle. She gets a shout out. She said something pithy, something funny on LinkedIn. I can't remember what it was. Do you remember what it was? Joel: I don't know but I love her last name and she loves us, so that's enough for me. Anytime you get food last names on the show, you get props. Chad: Well, if you know Chris Pickle, you don't call her Chris or Christina. You just call her Pickle. That's what she goes by, by Pickle. Joel: Now we just need a burger to comment on the show and maybe a tomato and some onions and we gotta full meal. Chad: Oh, Jesus. Joel: I got a shout out for Lindsay Sanford. A Ratedly customer with network. She was at a Career Crossroads event recently and we both know Jerry and Chris very well. If you don't know Career Crossroads, you should, but anyway they were asking about cool tools that companies are currently using and Lindsay gave Ratedly a thumbs-up to the audience there, so we appreciate you, Lindsay. Not podcast related, but certainly from me, you get a big shout out. Chad: Good stuff, good stuff. Well, I am here today at Recruit Con in Nashville and I had another drive by hugging by Susan Vitale. Now actually, we had a chance to sit and chill. She gave an amazing, I don't wanna say speech per se, but presentation on millennials and Gen Z'ers so the Joel Cheesman aura was in the room. Also, talking about Google for jobs, texting, does any of this sound familiar? Joel: Yeah. Joel: So, good stuff. Good stuff from Susan and another shout out to Elena Valentine from Skill Scout. Thanks for the awesome T-shirt. Yep, nope. She gave me an awesome T-shirt. It says, "your job post is as boring as this T-shirt. Skill Scout." Good job. Joel: I'm glad Elena doesn't work for Lever because we'd have a whole issue with that big time. Thanks for the T-shirt, Elena. I appreciate it. I'm still waiting on line, by the way. My last shout out is to Nicole from Thompson Creek Window. Now, this is sort of random, but when we were at SHRM Talent, I ran into Nicole. Never met her before, but we started talking about pragmatic solutions. She started talking about hating Indeed because it costs too much. Salespeople are paying the ads, blah blah blah, stuff we've always heard. I said, Nicole, you need to get on the pragmatic bandwagon. I pimped out JobAdX, our newest sponsor. She contacted them, they got a deal in the works, so it looks like we're gonna make a match here in Chad and Cheese dating land for customers, so shout out to her and JobAdX. Go make some money and go get some great candidates. Chad: Dude we're like the Tinder form pragmatic. Joel: I like that. Chad: That sounds good. Joel: It doesn't quite ring as well as HR's most dangerous podcast, but it could work, it could work. Chad: Can we do the show? Yes. Chad: Oh my God. A little bit of news came out in what was a pretty slow week until Wednesday. Glassdoor gets acquired by Recruit Holdings out of Japan, who if you don't know, also owned Indeed. A little job site here in the states. I could go a lot of different ways with this. Do you have any preference with what we talk about first? Chad: No, hit it. Hit it. Joel: Alright, $1.2 billion. Chad: Nice. Joel: They actually published the amount which was sort of, I don't know, odd, because when they bought Indeed, there wasn't a published number. Chad: Right. Joel: The whispered number was about $1.6 billion, which would put it in line with the Glassdoor acquisition. I'd like to talk about pricing first because some people think it's a great deal, others think it's not a great deal. I tend the side on the not so great deal. Glassdoor had $200 million in investment money. They had been rumored to go IPO, which I think Google for Jobs probably put a little bit of a damper on that and typically you want 10 X out of your investment cash, which would've put that at a $2 billion dollar event if my math is right. So, to me it was almost a half price on what they should've gotten based on their investment cash. What's your take? Chad: So, again, going back looking at Google for Jobs, don't you think it was one of the tactics? Hey, we've gotta take a good price and that price isn't gonna be 10 X. We've gotta take something. Take it now before it drops even more. Joel: Yeah, I think this was on both Recruit Holding's and Glassdoor driven by Google. I think Recruit Holding, I would say if a bully goes on the playground, what happens? The weaker kids get friends fast and to me, Google is the big bully that showed up on the playground and Recruit Holdings with Indeed said, holy crap. This shit's going down. We need some reinforcements. Let's look at Glassdoor who we know going public, they're looking for a cash out event. That spurred an easy conversation, I'm sure, with them. Joel: Now on Glassdoor's side, I'm sure looking at, oh yeah, let's go public and as we are a public company, let's watch Google for Jobs grow and keep biting at our market share and valuation and watch our stock price go lower and lower. I think that's the future that they saw in their IPO and Google drove that deal, I think, big time. Chad: Yeah. Joel: For both sides. Recruit and Glassdoor and I don't think Recruit Holdings is done. If you look at the small list of who they would buy, who would you put on that list? Chad: ZipRecruiter was thrown out there pretty quickly and I thought that was very interesting especially from the SMB side of the house and I think that would be a smart addition. I don't know if they could get that done, but I think that would be a smart addition. I don't know. What other names did you hear out there? Joel: Well, the list is sort of straight up job sites is dwindling. I'd throw Talroo slash Jobs2Careers in there, although they are pivoting more toward technology solutions. I'd look at Nexxt, but again, same thing. Traditional job board pivoting out of bad business into more technology-based solutions. So, the list isn't very huge. I would definitely put ZipRecruiter at the top of that list and I'm sure they could be bought, but to me right now, if you put Glassdoor and Indeed against Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn, are they even in the ballpark at this point? To me that's not even strong enough to tackle this trifecta. Chad: No, it's not and I think a lot of this has to do with really corporate buying behavior first and foremost because for years companies were buying big names like Monster and CareerBuilder and their ROI wasn't even close to what it should've been to continue that buying. A lot it had to do with optics and having to do with those big names. So, being able to pull another big name in is big from an optics standpoint and when we're talking about not really focusing on our spend on statistics and analytics and those types of things, we're doing it more on how our recruiters feel and the big names that we van bring to the table and talk about. Chad: That's our industry, man. That is our industry. We don't focus enough on statistics and all of our analytics and ROI. We don't do that and when we do bring it to the table, we still hear, yeah but we've been with these and this is something that's a part of our culture. Just bullshit, dude. So, I think just from my standpoint, Glassdoor and Indeed cannot, by themselves no question, stand up against any of these lifestyle platforms that we've been talking about for years. Facebook, LinkedIn, which is obviously now a part of Microsoft, Google, so on, so forth. Chad: They do need to do more, but they are gonna have to pivot into being something that is more lifestyle because it doesn't matter what they do. They're gonna have to continue to plonk a shit ton of advertising dollars into the market constantly to ensure that they can keep their name out there and it's not sustainable at that point. Now, turning on the SEO juice from Glassdoor because Glassdoor's jobs are in Google for Jobs and the reviews- Joel: For now. Chad: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. You depend on the life's blood of your traffic and obviously, the ability to get those eyeballs from a perspective competitor who could easily flip that switch. Keep you in the search rankings, but push you further down into page two, three, so on so forth. That to me is just a very bad strategy. Joel: We gloss over it because they've been bought and things we're going on there, but CareerBuilder's gotta be on the table at some point. I'm sure Apollo would love to talk to Recruit Holdings. Monster at some point. Dice has a new CEO. All these companies are probably gonna be looking for exits and Recruit Holdings might be sugar daddy to a lot of those companies as well. What do you think this does to the employer review space and the branding space more broad? Chad: Yeah, and I think it's more on the branding side of the house. I think, again, it's an optics thing for employers to now see these too big brands that they know coming together and now Indeed, depending on how these things actually transform between Indeed and Glassdoor, Indeed's going to be talking more and they're gonna be pounding the living shit out of all their prospects and clients about employer branding now and it might actually be a bigger subject because one of the bigger names will do nothing but use a sledgehammer to be able to do so and they need to. There's no question. Chad: We talked about, last week, StepStone buying Universum and doing that because they needed to become something more than just a job board. They need to have that ability to focus on employer branding to look for more revenue streams. This is a new way of doing that. There's no question, but again, that's short-term changing, pivoting, versus long-term getting smacked over the head with the Google stick. Joel: Yea, SHRM had called me, Roy Mauer, they're doing a story and what I told him was, do Indeed and Glassdoor become the employment branding brand? Is that their thing going forward? If jobs don't have a ton of value, then what do you hang your hat on? They already had a headstart on branding if you look at reviews and company profiles and CEO ratings. That is definitely one area where they are far ahead of anybody else in this game and if they turn off aggregation on that on Google and anywhere else, that becomes really tough. Joel: I see where LinkedIn, with profile pages and I think they've been tinkering with reviews as well. I think that's the biggest threat to that, but I don't see Facebook or Google really caring about the branding piece anytime soon. What about you? Chad: Now that's a good question. I think you're right with regard to Microsoft and LinkedIn. There's no question they have the upper hand. It doesn't matter where these companies are positioned today from a Glassdoor's standpoint, because that could switch very quickly if there's an algorithm change. Just a slight algorithm change. Indeed, Glassdoor focusing, more on, again, being more of a platform that's not just jobs-oriented. It's more candidate experience-oriented and again, heard Susan Vitale speak earlier and it was mainly about candidate experience and taking care of these people. So, if Indeed and Glassdoor can make something like that happen in a symbiotic type of platform, then yeah I think they've got a good product on their hands but again, it's gonna be hard to fight these other organizations what are out there that do, I think, I should say a fighting chance to stay and fight in the employer branding space. Chad: Look at all these agencies. That's what they do. They're creative, right? So, you get a TMP who was just bought and they partner with these other organization's review sites or even employer branding, candidate experience sites, platforms or what have you. There's a good war to be had in the employer branding space and I hope we see that. I really do. Joel: Yep. So, In five years, what does the future look like, and I'll give you three scenarios that I envision. Number one, probably least possible is, these guys stay the same. Glassdoor and Indeed. Nothing really changes. They stay as is. The other one is they cross-pollinate each other. So, reviews go back and forth. You find the same reviews and the same jobs on both site, essentially, and the third one, which I think is probably most feasible is one of them goes away and basically consolidates the reviews, the jobs. It's basically one destination site. Chad: Yeah. I think the latter would be easier to be quite frank, but I- Joel: Meaning destroying one of the brands would be easiest? Chad: It's one of those things and I think it's in Indeed's nature almost, but that's a good question. I really believe that if Indeed and Glassdoor, Recruit overall, understands that there are these systems pieces that need to be put in place and that's the Indeed side. The process being able to pull people under the applicant track with just one click apply, those types of things, and then the nice, warm, fuzzy review piece as well. The story-telling piece as well. Glassdoor, I think there is an opportunity to run two brands and to do it efficiently because you do have two pieces that are coming at you. Chad: One is a more technical piece. The other one's more of an experience type of story-telling and branding piece. Joel: I'm gonna go in five years. We're talking about one of them and whether they maybe change their names to InDoor or GlassDeed, but to me that's the future. I do think that Indeed will be the flagship. I think that renting out big buildings in Austin and building that out sort of tells me that they're really serious about building the Indeed brand and that is the bigger brand of the two, but I do think that Glassdoor's founder, CEO, is serious about sticking around whereas Indeed's were not. So, I think you'll see Indeed as the flagship, but I think you'll see a lot of leadership from Glassdoor come over to Indeed and basically run that one brand in five years, if I had to predict. Chad: I think they're gonna stick with two brands. Again, this is the outside chance, it really is. I'm really leaning toward what you think, but the outside chance is they're gonna have two brands. Joel: Alright, if will definitely be fun watching. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: We will be watching. Let's hear from Sovren and we'll come back and talk about Monster and CareerBuilder, those two companies we never talk about. Sovren: Sovren AI matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks, about each individual transaction. It will find, rank and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches, it tells you how and why it produced them and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI Matching, visit sovren.com. That's s-o-v-r-e-n dot com. Chad: Who is this cat? Joel: So this was announced before we went on air. I read the press release. So, Monster finally has a CEO. I'm not even sure it took. Sal left after Randstad, right? Chad: Yeah, I think it was before that. Joel: So, it's been over a year. Chad: It's been a while. Joel: It's been a while. It's been way longer than a big company should wait. Chad: Oh, hell yeah. Joel: And it's also interesting that the CEO is almost the last piece of the puzzle. They brought all these other executives and now they have CEO, so let's hope to God that the CEO gets along with everybody in the C Suite because if he doesn't, it's gonna be bad news. It's gonna be like the Browns with the new GM when they kept the coach. It's not gonna work. Chad: They still need to pull us in as co-presidents, and we'll make sure that everything's- Joel: That's right pull us in as co-idiots to really get this thing back on track. So, he does follow the trend like a tech. He went to MIT, he's a technology, big picture guy from what I can tell. Similar to Dice. So, these guys historically have almost CFO type CEOs, right? They know the dollar figures, they know how to run an organization, how to run teams, but they don't don't really know grandiose, what's next, how do we look around corners? So, to me Dice and Monster their new CEOs are both attempts to get those guys that can look behind the corner and see what's coming to develop products and services that sort of compliment that as opposed to what they've in the past. Chad: Yeah. So, Scott is the CEO of Amadeus which is a nice size company. 15,000 employees, so it's not like he was a little, small time CEO. The company really focuses on the traveler and travel provider marketplace in proving technology to them, and what we're seeing here is, is Monster looking for parallels in the market and saying, hey look. We need to see something that has happened in the market. Not our industry, but in a different industry. This being the travel industry, and hopefully steal a person, pull them over and have them recreate the magic that they had in travel. Yeah, it's interesting. Chad: Guy obviously has done things, no question, in travel, but it just doesn't have the industry chops on our side. I don't know if that matters or not, especially from a Monster standpoint, but really what I think what we're looking for, at this point what they're looking for, is really the Expedia for jobs. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). We're gonna get him on the show and find out exactly what's going on. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I think we can get Monster's CEO on the show, do you? Chad: Yeah, I think we could. Especially we could do this as an interview. We can interview him because we wanna talk a little bit more about being co-president of Monster just to make sure that we deal good working with him on this endeavor. Joel: We can quiz him on the history of the industry to see how well he does. Chad: Well, and he needs somebody. He needs a couple of idiots like us who have a couple of decades a piece of industry- Joel: We'll play a little industry jeopardy. I'll take failed start-ups for $500. I was founder of Jobster. Who is Jason Goldberg? Ding ding. Good stuff. Well anyways, Dice and Monster both have tech-heavy CEOs who have no industry experience for the most part. We'll see how that works. We'll pay attention. One CEO with a ton of industry experience and not much tech industry experience probably wishes he had some more tech experiences because his site went down this week. Tell us about that. Chad: Last week, I start getting ... my phone blew up literally. I had so many texts and messages via LinkedIn, Messenger, and it was just this picture of a site that had pretty much gone offline, and I'm like what the? What the fuck is this? Well, it was CareerBuilder and they were dead. It was well over an hour at least from what I saw. Joel: It's one of those little orange pylons like in construction, right. That's great. Chad: When you are a brand the size of CareerBuilder and you're trying to claw back and you obviously were just acquired, we hear all these things about being squeezed, which is again, what happens after acquisition, but to be able to squeeze enough where you don't even have the engineers or the bandwidth or whatever it actually took to keep your site up, this to me seems like a bigger problem than most people probably think it is. Joel: Well, when you close your doors because you're going out to lunch, that's obviously a bad thing. I literally have photos that engineers, former and current CareerBuilder folks, have sent me of empty offices, empty cubicles as far as the eye can see of places where that used to host engineers and development folks. I instantly, when I saw that, just laughed to myself thinking I wish they had a few more of those engineer back in those cubes because something went very wrong. If someone the size of CareerBuilder in the middle of the day goes down, it's bad and I loved that the message on the screen was, "We're down for basic maintenance," or "general maintenance. We'll be back up as soon as possible," and I'm thinking, no one goes down for general maintenance at 2:00 P.M. on a workday in the employment industry, Chad: Not a brand like CareerBuilder. You're doing maintenance behind the scenes and you're not pulling this down. You're not doing that. So, yeah it's interesting, and I've definitely heard a bunch of engineer stories on the CareerBuilder where, again, many of them have either left or what have you and it's funny because one of the engineers that I was talking to actually said when you go into really the big space where all the engineers sat, it is literally a ghost town and what happened was that everybody that was on over by the windows who were leaving, they left and obviously, everybody migrated toward the windows which is away from the actual entrance. Chad: So, it's like you walk in and it's like, cricket cricket and there aren't any people. Joel: Hold on. Hey everybody. Live from CareerBuilder's design and engineering department. Chad: So, we also received an email that was originally sent from Jason Gold. He's the CareerBuilder director of client services and support he pretty much was saying, hey guys. Quit sending tickets to us. We know this is going on. We're already overloaded. Seriously, it was like this. Number one, please do not submit any more cases around this issue. Number two. Check. internal.Careerbuilder.com must be the internal, the intranet, for what we've got going on. If customers call, they can always route these issues, so on and so forth. Chad: So, this was obviously such a big deal that there was a broadcast message out to everyone saying, don't submit anymore Goddamn tickets. We know there's a problem. Joel: By the way, for the listeners, Chad made me take down the baby crying sign, but this would be perfect for that crying baby, so I'll just, wah. Yes, again, lets breve this that the engineering department at CareerBuilder. Chad: In the wild. Joel: Wow. It's just too much fun. Alright, should we move on or beat a dead horse some more? Chad: Nah, I think we're good. Joel: Alright. Okay. From Back to the Future news releases, something that should've happened in like 2008. Chad: Yeah, no shit. Joel: There's, and there probably was free WordPress job board software back then, but there's a new one out and we're not so much touting that as much as why. Chad: Yeah, when I saw the actual article or the write up about it, I was like, who cares? Free job boards. It was almost like Oprah. You get a job board, you get a job board, but who cares because job boards are getting killed right now. They're not getting traffic which means even though this job board platform has Indeed backfill, which pretty much everybody would just start it up and use Indeed backfill, if it's not getting any traffic, it's not getting any clicks. So, if it's not gonna get any clicks, it's not gonna generate any money and all you are is noise on the Internet and nobody's gonna care. It's ridiculous. What is happening? Joel: And on the other end of the market, you have the jobboard.io. There I said it, right? They're the ones helping out the association sites, the education sites, the government sites, et cetera, who already get traffic and just wanna throw up a job board to make more money. Those folks don't care or have the resources to work on a WordPress theme and URLs and blah blah blah which seems easy to a lot of people, but to the head of an association, no freaking clue. I'm just gonna call this jobboard.io or job mount or whatever and I'm just gonna let them do it and do the processing of the money and yadda yadda. Joel: This board probably gives you the ability to via PayPal, buy job postings, right? How many people really in the real world are using PayPal to buy stuff? Not a ton. Chad: Not at all and take a look at history one more time, people. So, we're gonna go back to the .jobs thing, okay? DirectEmployers had 40,000 domains in which there were job sites. In which there job sites, and if that was a complete fail, then how in the hell are you going to just take some free job board technology, plug in who knows what the hell it is, and actually make it successful? Seriously guys, don't waste your time. Quit screwing with this shit. Joel: I'm adding to my heaping pile of hot garbage. Chad: There it is. Joel: I'm shooting this idea down. Let's hear a quick word from America's Job Exchange and talk about mind-blowing new technology from Google. AJE: 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 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. What to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com Chad: Diversity, baby. Joel: Let's talk about Google Duplex. Chad: Dude. Joel: The name sucks, but I have to tell you my mind is rarely blown at 46 years going on 47 soon. My mind was blown watching this Google Duplex. Chad: Dude, Google Assistant has Duplex technology I think is what they're calling it. Joel: Sure. Chad: Google Assistant kicks Alexa square in the fucking face on this thing, dude. It is amazing. The natural language process that they have this goes to incredibly new heights. Now, if you haven't seen it- Joel: A lot of people have no idea what we're talking about, so tell them what duplex is and what it does. Chad: So, if you haven't seen it, you've gotta go check out. Just go to YouTube or something like that and look for Google Duplex and Pinchai, the CEO of Google, goes through this amazing, stupid demo of what we're talking about and here's what it is. So, I ask Google Home, my Google Home, to set, and this is gonna be funny, a haircut appointment for me. It actually goes, makes the phone call behind the scenes. You can't hear it making the phone call. Makes the phone call behind the scenes, and like a real human being, it sounded like a real damn human being. Chad: It made an appointment and it wasn't just a straightforward, we would like to have a 5:00 appointment, it actually collaborated with the person over the phone to find out what was better for the schedule, had great real pauses and "um's" and things like that and it was freaking amazing and after that appointment was made, and there was an affirmative action at the end of that then, guess what? It goes straight to your Google calendar. It was ridiculous, and there was another one that was making an appointment at a restaurant. Joel: It was a reservation. Chad: Yeah, right? And the lady had a very thick Asian accent which was really cool just showing natural language processing and the technology went back and forth with her several times because they only had four people and you have to have five to make a reservation so you had to be a walk-in. So, there was the understanding of that and it was really cool. Joel: So, I have two thoughts on this. First is, this is going to alter the world of sales, recruiting, and customer service. Chad: Yes. Joel: In a major, seismic, asteroid hitting the industry way because this goes beyond. My other point is this may kill chat bots particularly in recruiting, but my first point is, imagine being able to sell a product without a salesperson or at least not as many salespeople. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Or have an entire customer service team where the voice on the other end isn't, hello. Please press four to ... he's right. It sounds like a person. They have "um's" and "mm, yeah, okay," and I'm sure at some point we'll figure out what is automated and what isn't , but customer service, sales, and recruiting are gonna change drastically because of this and my second point was, yes. Does this make chat bot solutions obsolete because this is essentially chat botting with an actual voice? Chad: No, it doesn't. What I think it does is it could prospectively make that experience more rich because not everybody wants to have a conversation on the phone or a voice conversation, so I think using that technology, this just demonstrates how far Google has come and they can use that same type of technology, exactly the same type of technology just in straight-to-text and that was one of the things that he had actually outlined, that they were also on the voice text side of the house. So, I think that you were 100% right. This is going to impact us in a very real and crazy way especially for recruiting, sourcing overall standpoint. Scheduling, all those tasks, but I really believe it will enhance the chat bot side of the house. Chad: Just the messaging side of the house, and how we do things. How we do things. It was truly amazing to watch and they had said that they had just plucked a couple of examples and these were real-world examples. These weren't just something that they had staged. These were real-wolrd and they said they have hundreds of them. It was. Joel: I think it was an actual call. I think it was an actual call during the event, yeah. Chad: Yeah, I see that there's going to be a huge swing in the market and when we start to talk about AI and natural language processing and those types of things, the world is going to look at Google for these types of things and again, I go back to the Indeed, Glassdoor conversation. This is why you're going to get your asses handed to you, guys. Joel: Yeah. Google, Microsoft, these guys are going to be API-ing all this stuff. There's gonna be cool products and services created from it. It's very interesting and exciting and I do think it's a no-brainer to build this stuff into Google Hire. Chad: Yep. Joel: This will take a while to happen, but let's agree this is happening and this is where the road is going. By the way, I hate to go back to the last story, but for the people who were like Chad and Cheese are idiots, they don't know what they're talking about. Indeed had their best year ever, they're making more money than ever, their traffic's going through the roof, you know what? This is proof that we're right because their own company knew enough and saw enough to say we need to get reinforcements to go out and buy Glassdoor. So, for me it's a little vindication that we're right about what's going on and their holding company saw the same thing. Chad: Dude, I don't care how cocky they sound. They are waking up with the night sweats. Joel: Let's end on a lighter note. Chad: Yes. Joel: FairyGod Boss, basically Glassdoor for women, I guess that's fair to say. I won't get in trouble for saying that, and apparently the employer review space is a profitable one with $1.2 billion exit. FairyGod Boss, not even two years old I think, got $3 million to build out their Glassdoor for women website. So, I know their comment with that, but good for them. I think you're gonna see a lot more start-ups in this space because Glassdoor just proved you could make a billion dollar company out of reviews and we'll probably see more money flow into not only FairyGod Boss, but in her site and comparably in probably some new ones that start up, to me this is just the start of this industry in where the transparency and branding and reviews will go from here. Chad: Agreed, and having these types of specific kind of tribal sites, review sites or what have you, just specific for women or what have you, being able to better understand how your brand impacts that group is more than important, right? Especially, not just form a recruiting standpoint, but also from a branding, sales, revenue standpoint. So I think there's some really good upside, obviously, for companies like this. Joel: Alright, man. Good show. You're in Nashville for the RecruitCon conference, so get us some good content, some good insight for next week's show. We out. Chad: We out. Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. Thanks for listening to my dad, the Chad, and his buddy Cheese. This has been the Chad Cheese podcast. Make sure to subscribe on i Tunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show. Make sure to check out our sponsors because their money goes to my college fund. For more, visit chadcheese.com #Glassdoor #Indeed #Monster #Careerbuilder #Google #AI

The Chad and Cheese sit down with Doug Johnson, CEO of Jobalign, to talk HIGH VOLUME HIRING. Why? Because it's hard shit and as Doug says "There's a bunch of pain for employers in the high-volume arena." So I guess it's time for THE PAIN TRAIN! Chad: This, The Chad & Cheese Podcast brought to you in partnership with TA tech. TA tech, the association for talent acquisition solutions. Visit tatech.org. 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. I bet everyone listening is reaching to check their phones right now. Chad: Yeah, I know. I call it our Pavlovian dog reflex of text messaging. Joel: Yeah, that's probably why text messaging has a fricking 97% open rate- Chad: What?! Joel: Crazy high candidate response rate within the first hour alone. Chad: Which, are all great reasons why The Chad & Cheese Podcast love text to hire from Nexxt. Joel: Love it! Chad: Yep. That's right. Nexxt, with the double X, not the triple X. Joel: 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 & Cheese Podcast, you can try your first text to hire campaign for just 25% off. Boom! Chad: Wow! So how do you get ths discount, you're asking yourself right now. Joel: Tell them, Chad. Chad: It's very simple. You go to chadcheese.com, and you click of the Nexxt logo in the sponsor area. Joel: Easy. Chad: No long URL to remember. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Just go where you know chadcheese.com, and Nexxt, with two X's. 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. Joel: [00:00:00] Doug Johnson definitely not a made up name is a CEO of Jobalign Doug welcome to the podcast. Doug: [00:00:09] Thank you very much. Chad: [00:00:09] We're here at SHRM Talent don't forget about that. Joel: [00:00:10] We're here at SHRM Talent who fascinatingly let us come and do this podcast. And we haven't really broken much. We're still allowing us to set up shop. Chad: [00:00:22] So far Joel: [00:00:24] Doug, a lot of our listeners don't know Jobalign couldn't spell it if they were you know in a spelling bee like give them the elevator pitch of what you do. Doug: [00:00:32] All right well if you are hiring hourly candidates you have pain today and we are there to solve that pain and take the pain away. Hourly candidates. So you know the workers who are landscaping and cleaning the rooms and maid services the warehouseman those people are the people that we address that we connect with and align with employers. Joel: [00:00:59] Clever I see what you did there. These folks don't have resumes right. That's sort of your sweet spot. How do you know that you're with no work experience. Me as My first job is there site is your site for them. Doug: [00:01:11] So we really bridge the gap between these employers who are hiring high volumes. You know one of our biggest customers literally is hiring over 10,000 workers a month on our platform. Chad: [00:01:24] A month! Doug: [00:01:24] A month. Right. So we're producing for them... Joel: [00:01:28] Chad gets really excited when we're talking high volume hiring.. So he's chomping at the bit Chad: [00:01:32] Yea, this is hard stuff. Doug: [00:01:34] And we're super proud of the fact that we literally our Jobalign is putting to work roughly 20,000 people a month. So we're proud of that. So we feel like we're doing something good you know for that worker but at the same time solving a problem for the employer because the employer's ability to reach in this marketplace those those workers those job seekers is so difficult. So our technology just bridges that gap. Chad: [00:02:01] So bridging how do you how do you get candidates so do you have programmatic outreach do you use their database the company's database. Because generally made a music site as well. How do how do you get those candidates. Doug: [00:02:14] Yes yes yes. So everything is quite directly. I mean first of all we have a network millions of candidates and we present those. So you know that's that's able ready to work. Candidates at the same time we work with all job boards. We sit between if you will the the job board world and the ATSI. So we communicate and we disperse and distribute rather to job boards 100 job boards and then pull that talent along with the talent from your career page because in any other organic know texting technologies that we present to employers that they'll use to source candidates and then put them to our superintelligent apply process. Joel: [00:02:59] Some super fascinated by the space and part of it is driven on the fact that I did a story about snag a job recently who is rebranding. They're essentially going for an Uber for hourly model where the platform you sign up for hey I want to do shifts in multiple restaurants the company brings in multiple people for a shift and then they're gone and snag handles the payments so you know the Craigslist I assume still works for a lot of companies like just post a job you have job boards and indeed you have you guys. Then you have the shift gate the snag a job like where are we going to end up in 10 years with the hourly workforce. How are they going to find jobs. Doug: [00:03:40] I think I think both apply. I think that there's there's some markets far go back to the employer and the worker and their needs. There are especially in the restaurant hospitality space that shift solution that snacks to mix. Thomas says there are other places where a full time or rather a a a 40 hour week hourly worker makes a lot of sense in the janitorial space services space. That's not necessarily. So I think that that both will exist coexist in that world. I think what's Snga's done makes a lot of sense. Chad: [00:04:19] So more like is a strategy to these types of positions and some work better. Yeah I enjoy the quote unquote Uber kind of app versus really the traditional more. I would say hyper automated platform like you guys are trying to pull together. Doug: [00:04:34] Exactly. Exactly. And so my my strong belief is that you're going to end up with both experiences. Joel: [00:04:43] You see a lot of big players getting into the employment space that didn't really play in it before. You see Microsoft that linked and you see Google when we talk. We talk about a lot and you see Facebook as well. Do you see any of them being a more major player in the Aurelie space than others. Or do you think they're not even interested. Doug: [00:05:00] I don't think they have their eye on it. Yeah. Fortunately I don't think there's. I think there's a tremendous opportunity. But I don't think right now that that's being addressed. I think we talking about a lot about Facebook being in the sort of the pole position like every company has a Facebook page and posting jobs is pretty organic and then having candidates come through there and the messaging system but how that shakes out. Yeah I agree with that. Chad: [00:05:24] So when a candidate applies say they do that I'm assuming through their mobile phone what's kind of the time frame between somebody actually getting in touch with them and how would that actually happen on the employer side. So we've got candidates come in. What's that. What does the platform do. What. What sets it apart from everything else out there. Doug: [00:05:43] So first everything that we've done has been designed for rolling out. So literally AB testing the you know the text saying to apply for smarter process is done in a fashion that we can do when we're looking at the advent of abandonment rate right now this is a dirty little secret. The endowment rate in the hourly world of applicants leaving the process at avocations 80 percent on average. So whatever you're spending... Joel: [00:06:14] So does that mean from the time that they start applying to a company to finishing 80 percent don't finish . D Doug: [00:06:20] Don't finish. Joel: [00:06:20] Really fascinating. Chad: [00:06:22] It's what I call ejection rate Doug: [00:06:25] Abandonment has two this there's the data. You know again we've got millions of points of data that look at two places where there's a minimum occurs. The first is just enough in the processing of the application. Doug: [00:06:37] So what we've designed is a what we call smart application that is largely text based but it has this very quick design template structure for particular jobs in particular markets. Then we take that data and we push it into a resume format because the recruiter wants to look at a resume that's how they work knowing the answers worked so well represent that to them on our platform weren't there 80 hours and then put a canot what we call Candidate Messenger. But it's a texting tool right up against that resume. So when the candidate comes in we'll give you a quick story. National Retailer launched our product last week. We were training the senior director nationally just to show this woman how it was going to work. She posted a job within three minutes a candidate happened to pop to the window. Now we were just in the process of explaining how the system kind of she'll tell. All right. Chad: [00:07:41] Kinda show and tell. Doug: [00:07:42] I'm telling the candidate pops in are our account management person Chris says. We'll go ahead and this text just text the candidate Chad: [00:07:51] And they're doing this and you do this through your platform which is really what it is. Doug: [00:07:57] So she says Hey Charlie appreciate you sending in your resume by the way. We only. We only present qualified candidates so unqualified candidates we screen out based upon knock questions like you because of all the conventions she's qualified and texts the person and says hey would you like to get on the phone? So they say up within five minutes interview and she sat back in her chair and said like wow that's that's the power. So everything. I mean start everything designed for hourly engineer for hourly scale. Chad: [00:08:32] So we start talking about things like that and my brain starts going haywire because you you take a look at the types of candidate flow that comes in for some of those positions. And you know is there the prospect of automated replies going out? Doug: [00:08:48] Sure absolutely so based upon you know the position and how you want to communicate with deploying your recruiting pool of talent and the availability of them we need to be able to respond you know the fashion with that candidate and keep them warm. So we do a ton of it. Another interesting thing there is there is the difference between good texting and bad texting. So is remarkable. So if you if you have a candidate that pops in and in our model we know we by the way it's an important thing to note that we have a model where are our product is is fee based based upon the applicants. Right. So you only pay per applicant. Our motivation is completely together to you successfully. Chad: [00:09:49] We're talking about qualifed. Doug: [00:09:50] All right. All right. So you don't pay us anything but for qualified applicants. So you know we are studying constantly how to improve this process because it's in our best interest as well. That was my point. Chad: [00:10:02] Serve qualified candidates get paid off qualified candidates. Doug: [00:10:05] Exactly. So the you know we're we're constantly looking at you know into those that test texting dialogue to see what are the right responses. Right and we can you know we measure the time of response to see. So interestingly the more bot like you sound the the unfortunate reality is that that is if you can smells that they abandon. Chad: [00:10:33] Really? Doug: [00:10:33] Yeah but if you're if you're warm and you're in human need to real in your authentic people will continue to engage. And so we're studying that now you know where that's kind of on the front burner. Joel: [00:10:43] So carrying on with the automation robotic message omlet I'm going to bring it from another angle. It's pretty clear to me from you know eating out and just things in my regular life that there's an extreme shortage of talent for people who are willing to work at restaurants and grocery stores etc. and it seems to me like robots inevitably will take on a lot of the duties of cooking food serving food... Chad: [00:11:12] Flippy... Flippy! Joel: [00:11:13] Flippy... We talk about what to be like what what's your sort of insight on that based on your work at Jobalign. Doug: [00:11:21] I don't think there's any question that that's an inevitability. We from our perspective however you know we serve the customer whether out today. We keep a keen eye on what the future's going to hold. But the reality is today that restaurant needs you know the pain that our customer feels today that is look am I going to ship. I've got to cover. You know I've got a room that needs to be cleaned. I've got some food that needs to be cooked and I'm in business myself turn my utilities off. I'm not in business. If they're not working so that's the pain that we're really dealing with today. Doug: [00:12:03] Not withstanding what's going to happen because really you know we're our eyes are on it today but our solution addresses the pain that they feel today. Chad: [00:12:11] Well why couldn't why couldn't this platform also be adapted to engineers. Or any. I mean because it's its process methodology and it's its engagement. So I would assume that your outreach obviously would have to change dramatically. But other than that I mean it's really just the core of the process that happens and the engagement piece right? Doug: [00:12:31] So one of the pieces that we really value is that network that multi-million population network of hourly workers. And we. Yes. OK. OK. Yes. Yes you're right that it could it could for a variety of purposes but but there's 77 million workers in the U.S. and underserved today. Now employers are in pain and so we don't don't cook too many don't see that Italian restaurant that cooks you know Chinese and American and Thai at the same time because it's not going to do well. We are nailing that part of the puzzle right. We're about trying to make sure that we solve the pain of hourly hiring. Chad: [00:13:15] So you are focused focused focused on... Joel: [00:13:17] Nothing wrong with that. Chad: [00:13:17] No.. on the in the room with no way. And that's one of the things that we hear and I'm glad that I appreciate the candor on that. One of the things that we hear is Well yeah well we'll look to grow and oh yeah that's a great idea which we should definitely do that. And to understand what the opportunity is and to be able to go after that opportunity especially in that market because again it's not it's not a small opportunity at all. And you have. What percentage of that today. Right. Doug: [00:13:45] Totally. And the other part of it is that our company and every employee in our company has a very real desire to help that hourly worker. And it's not it's not just talk it's the culture of who we are a part of how we were founded was around this notion we want to do well of the company but we want to do good at the same time that we can build something that hits close to 20,000 people who work last month. Dang that's you know that that's important. So it's important work.. Joel: [00:14:18] In the fields Chad: [00:14:20] In the fields that's some impact right their. Look at him he's tearing up a little bit. Joel: [00:14:24] It seems to me like you're on the forefront of a younger and in many cases younger audience... Doug: [00:14:33] Not me personally. Joel: [00:14:33] Nobody at this table personally. And so this is such a sweet view more than a lot of people in this industry see you know trends that are before they're mainstream so you probably saw Snapchat being used by your audience before snapchat came in. So what what technologies do you see coming up that we should be paying attention to. We have voice assistance we have we are wearables like what are you saying. Doug: [00:15:01] I'm not sure about wearables. I mean I think that the profound technology you already mentioned which is just the name of the company that you take AI you take what's happening in being able to really understand how to predict behavior. And then you look at what's going happen with the whole robotics industry and the change there. That the combination of those pieces are going to be radically change the game. But I don't think it's going to happen today. So again... Chad: [00:15:40] There's a huge need now. Doug: [00:15:41] Yeah we you know your thought leaders in this space we have to stay ahead but at the same time the need is so profound. This hourly market has been underserved and bridging that gap of that need the job seeker helping them find a job that's 20 minutes closer to home. So they can pick up their child after day care and helkping that employer who truly has you know it's like utilities going in the building you know that's that's important work. Chad: [00:16:17] So do you work with like big like Marriott like big HQ Marriott or do you work you know from hotel to hotel or I mean how does it actually work from my clients standpoint. Doug: [00:16:28] In that particular vertical that we have a number of hotel rooms that are manageing 9o to 150 hotel projects and there's a whole industry that's fascinating. So but they have Marriott Hotels in Courtyard hotels right. That is very much a target market of ours. You know we so in the verticals where you can imagine those 77 million people working we are serving those verticals. Joel: [00:16:56] Are you global. Or just strictly just the U.S.. Do you have plans to go global. I assume that's a wholw ball where you have huge plans to take over the world at some point. Doug: [00:17:08] So right now we're just we're just focusing on this. Joel: [00:17:11] How does your how does your pricing work and I assume you make money in a traditional sense. Doug: [00:17:16] So we. So today you're probably spending outside of your in HR and the recruiting side of H.R. you're probably spending 30 40 percent of your money on sourcing. So probably 10 15 percent on technology. There's a big spend there that we will reduce that sourcing spends materially because we're just more efficient. We charge on a per applicant so there's no contract we make we make it easy for each person to buy our product because we don't ask them to sign long term contract and give us fifty thousand dollars up front so it is actually pay as you go pay for performance pay by candidate. So it's. And the price is what you are going to spend insourcing anyway. You're just going to get four times a throughput. So that's the that's the promise. And then we just try to you know try in a few markets straighten a couple of hotels targeted to the restaurants. Chad: [00:18:25] So when you get so many applicants does the system automatically shut down is there like a threshold ninety five applicants. And I guess I'm going to pay for all five of those applicants right. So there's a threshold for that. Doug: [00:18:36] Right. Then the risk on our side is that we have to go and get those out again. And they have to be qualified. Yeah right. So. So we work with you in design and designing with that template looks like making sure that we want to pay for qualified applicants so we take a little bit of a loss. Chad: [00:18:52] Right. Doug: [00:18:52] If we are sourcing intelligently so one of the one of the other pieces of technology that we've built is really how to be brilliant at sourcing a janitorial job in Memphis Tennessee versus New York City. What job were to go to this Craigslist let's work here. So we're constantly looking at and managing this spend against jobs to get that get that qualified talent. Joel: [00:19:17] So how do you market to the job seeker and which was the market or the most effective. Doug: [00:19:22] So there's a couple of different. There's a couple that just click collateral of the hold up cameras and audio. So it's a test. So it depends on your brand whether or not you have natural draw to your brand and if you do there's a lot of what we call organic traffic that we can optimize that we charge pennies because we're going to take that and put it into our system. Chad: [00:19:56] And if your brand sucks you're going to pay some money. Doug: [00:19:58] If there is nobody coming to yout career page. Joel: [00:19:58] Or it's not well known. I t doesn't have to suck. Doug: [00:20:04] Thank you. Thank you for helping me. Joel: [00:20:07] No problem. Doug: [00:20:08] So if you're not well along and you don't have any organic traffic then you're going to rely on us to source that of course is going to be based on our best efforts around job boards and the like. Joel: [00:20:22] So you basically customize a marketing program each month. Doug: [00:20:27] And they come in these kinds come in with you knowledge, their experience some here. They know that you know there's a there's a very large business in the auto space that will be launching a texting platform because they have a lot of a lot of brick and mortar stores. So text jobs to this number will be considered an organic play because they have to walk into their door but we text into our platform and creating opportunities you know that is really inexpensive but a super smart thing for them to do is that they have that presence. Right. So many cities in America. So if you didn't have that then. So we design again we just decided based upon them. Joel: [00:21:24] Well for listeners who want to learn more about jobalign and maybe sign up where would they go to learn more. Doug: [00:21:29] Well of course they come to Jobalign.com spelled J-O-B-A-L-I-G-N DOT com job and have ability to connect with us there. Joel: [00:21:41] Thanks for your time today Doug. Doug: [00:21:42] Thank you guys. Chad: [00:21:43] Thanks Doug. Chad: Okay, okay. Before we go. Remember, when I asked you about the whole reflex and check your text messages thing? Joel: Yeah, you know all about reflexes. And, then I brilliantly tied it to text messages 97% open rate, then I elegantly tied it to a better experience for your candidates. Don't laugh, Chad, I can be elegant. Chad: Whatever, man. I know it's redundant. You already heard about text to hire, but you're still not using text to hire from Nexxt. Joel: What?! Chad: I know, man. Joel: Come on, 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 text to hire, and it's all about Nexxt. Joel: And, elegant design. So, go to chadcheese.com, click on the Nexxt logo, and get 25 ... yeah, I said 25% off your first text to hire campaign. Chad: Whoo! Joel: Engage better. Use text to hire from Nexxt. Two X's. Chad: Boo-yah! Chad: Thanks to our partners at TA tech. The Association for Talent Acquisition solutions. Remember to visit tatech.org. Chad: 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. #JobAlign #Nexxt #TATech #HighVolume #SHRM

On this week's show, Joel always says "NEVER GO FULL GOOGLE!" Well... CareerBuilder went "FULL GOOGLE" but wait there's more.... - We find out why Microsoft really bought LinkedIn - Monster's ad strategy goes full GEICO?..? - Monster loses the NASCAR ads - Stepstone swallows up Universum while Joel takes a nap - Facebook is focused on @Work - Russians launch Vera the HR robot - Chips, wristbands and now brain sensors take over employee insights and PrivateService.jobs launches right into the steaming hot pile of garbage Wait for El Chapo after the final credits... While you're listening check out out sponsors America's Job Exchange, Sovren and JobAdX! 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're back for another week, bitches. Welcome to Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm El Chapo. Joel: On this week's episode, it's a tale of two cities with Monster and CareerBuilder job search. Monster goes all Geico or gecko with their new ad strategy and China companies are putting a motion sensor headgear on employees to gauge happiness. Chad: What? Joel: You have been warned, Glassdoor. Here's your new competitor. It's another fun-filled week in the recruiting industry, kids. Stay attuned. Announcer: Sovren AI matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks about each individual transaction. It will find, rank and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches. It tells you how and why it produced them and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI matching, visit sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. Chad: Smooth. I love it. Joel: Silky smooth. Chad: Silky smooth. Shout-out. Joel: Let's go to the show, man. We got shout-outs. Chad: Shout-outs. Joel: You first. Chad: Right out of the gate, Steven Rothberg of collegerecruiter.com fame, he loved the interview that we did with Thad over at Talroo and Amit at JobsAdX. If you haven't listened to that pod, it's very simple. Just go to chadcheese.com. Click on podcast in the upper right-hand corner and you will have plenty to listen to. Not to mention also, for some reason and I don't know, maybe it's 'cause I can't read, people love the transcripts. Joel: I know. Chad: People love the transcripts. We hear people that actually listen and read the transcripts at the same time. Thanks to our transcript people over at Disability Solutions. That's good stuff. Who do you got? Joel: Does anyone have a better sponsorship lineup than our show? Chad: Never. Joel: I don't think so. Chad: Not ever. Joel: I don't think so. By the way, as long as our main navigation on chadcheese.com says podcasts, I can cope with you calling it a pod on the actual show, but if the navigation changes, you and I are going to have a problem. This shout-out goes to John Frazier. I recently wrote about CareerBuilder's trials and tribulations for ERE and shared it on LinkedIn. John was kind enough to comment. John is a former CareerBuilder salesperson. He currently works for Build Trust. He's also an Iowa grad, which is neither here nor there. Let you read into that however you'd like. Quote from John, "Cheesman, it's time to grow up and get off the HR tabloid train." John, John, thank you for reading. By the way, when you comment on my post, it means your network gets wind of it and they learn about my post as well. I appreciate all the love that John Fraser is giving us out there in the internet. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Okay, John, that was sweet. Ed from Philly has a new podcast drinking game. Apparently, every time I say chatbots, he takes a shot. I'm going to have to amp up my use of the word chatbots, Ed. Chatbot. Joel: Drink up, Ed. Chad: Chatbot, chatbots. Joel: Drink up, baby. Can he do that at work? Does he listen to us at work? That could cause problems. Chad: I don't know. I don't know. He might just be doing this on the weekend, which is a great chatbots game. Not to mention, props to Job Board Doc. This guy tweets as he listens to the show, has comments about the things that we're saying, likes it, doesn't it, it's all good, but props to the Job Board Doctor. Joel: That dude needs to get a life in a big way. I think all he does is listen to us. Chad: Stop it. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. Joel: I'd like to also introduce maybe a brand new game. Chad: Uh-oh. Joel: I'd say every time we say CareerBuilder ... Chad: Lastly, trip. Yes, there will be a trip. I just don't know when and where yet ... Joel: I don't know, just an idea. It might be some good comic relief. Chad: Oh, shit, dude. Joel: We might need to shorten that to just El Chapo, whatever that quote is. That sound bite was pretty good. Chad: Yeah, I'll work on that. Last for me, the Joel Hates Baker Mayfield, the draft night video received over 5500 views on LinkedIn. That shit was hilarious. Joel: I could not believe I'm still seeing likes and comments from that video. It was a very dark moment for me so I'm glad that the world can revel in my misery and the rest of my Browns fans. Chad: Dude, how can the Browns just screw stuff up constantly, constantly. Anyway ... Joel: Yeah. I'll also add that they passed up on the best defensive player in the draft at number four. Yeah, I hope that works out well for us, but I'm not real hopeful after almost 20 years of misery. Chad: They did pick up a who they can put on an island. Joel: They did. They need a corner. We'll see. We'll see. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Corners are hard to come by. Joel: On that note, I'll say we get to the show. CB goes all Google. Tell us about it. Chad: Yeah, CareerBuilder is going full Google, which I think it was you that said- Joel: Not just the tip. Chad: Yeah, I think it was you that said never go full Google. They put out a case study with Google and apparently now, CareerBuilder is 100% job search on the Google platform, which is that's saying a lot, man. I mean they've been around since 1995. They're a huge name in our industry and they realize that Google is going to do search better than they are, period. Doesn't matter, right? So 40% increase in users viewing jobs on their talent networks, which is big because the talent networks are actually the pages that they've created for their clients and they're more of like the cosmetic pages, more of the SEO types marketing pages. So they're getting 40% more on those pages, the talent network pages alone, which is pretty big. Joel: Can I be a little devil's advocate on this? Chad: Yeah. Joel: I'm keeping with this. Now ... By the way going full Google is fine, but going full Monty, I always recommend to anyone. There is a little danger here in getting totally in bed and married with Google for your job search. Isn't there? Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: I mean Google can turn that shit off. They can start charging an arm and a leg. I mean there are pitfalls to this, although the fact that we apparently know that most of the engineers at CareerBuilder are leaving. It is saving a hell of a lot money on the overhead and the technology piece, which makes things more profitable, which we know their private equity firm does love, but I do want to point out there is some danger in getting fully in bed with Google, Facebook and others like that. Chad: Agreed. Agreed, but those I think are the risks that you have to take because if you know that you are not going to out-Google Google I mean from a search standpoint, then I mean why waste money in trying to put your horse and buggy up against their Ferrari? To me, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Plus, they've also seen a lift in the number of users viewing jobs sent via automated alerts, 15% up on that. I mean it's more than just search. It's improving qualified applicants across the different major job categories like close to 20%. To your point, the chief product officer, I think his name's Humair, he pretty much said that the Google team, the Google team of engineers, incredibly responsive with his team. It's almost like they didn't need to have all those resources. Chad: Yes, some of the engineers that are definitely leaving on the search side of the house, that's only a portion of what CareerBuilder does, this I think will definitely alleviate that pain, but yeah, I mean it seems like that has been a good move for them to be able to move to this type of a search. It's a better search. There's no question. Then selling off, what we talked about last week, selling of Emsi. I mean they didn't know how to sell it. It was less than 1% of their revenues and if you don't know how to sell it, you don't know how to leverage it, shit, get rid of it. Those are a couple of good moves that we've seen by CareerBuilder. Joel: Can't touch this. I had to say that. MC Hammer. Let us not forget the lesson of BranchOut who was very successful on Facebook's platform until Facebook decided to change things up and destroy the company. I will tell you one company in the job board space that's pretty well known that is not getting on the Google train and that's Monster, who we know and talked about changes at the top, which have already been made. Most of their positions are filled, minus president/CEO, which we're still in the running for that obviously. They've decided to enhance job search as sort of phase 1 of their site recalculation and they're doing it on their own. They're increasing speed. They're increasing what they think is the matching component, jobs to candidates, and most importantly, my jaw dropped on the floor when I read this, they're getting rid of banner ads on both the website and the email alerts. You and I are old enough to remember when Monster looked like a NASCAR race. Chad: Oh, dude. Joel: They were asking for Social Security numbers and interstitial ads, pop ups. Yeah, that to me was crazy. Chad: Treasure Island, I think it was 2007, Jason Goldberg and you actually caught it on tape and put it on Cheezhead that is when he really blew that up and called Monster a crap product mainly because of these different interstitial ads, these different types of banner ads, this NASCAR-ing of Monster. Yeah, I know it's great to see that they're focusing on the usability. There's no question there. Here's the thing though. You can still do that and not have to plunk a bunch of money into search because when it comes down to it, you are still going to have to compete with the best search in the business, which is going to be Google. Joel: I agree. I just think getting in bed with another solution is dangerous and I think Monster is probably, although they're spending more than they'd probably want to, and some of these changes aren't crazy like speeding up your site, getting rid of crappy stuff like banner ads. These aren't insane changes that require a lot of people. But anyway, I think it's interesting how you have two sort of old time-y players. One's like, "Cut it all out, cut every resource and overhead that we have and get in bed with Google." The other's saying like, "Let's get a new executive team on board. Let's get some new resources thrown at this." Ultimately, I think they'll both lose to Google in some way or another and all the other bigger players, but for this point, it makes for interesting podcast topics. Chad: We've also heard that the API from many of the job boards that are out there, the API is pretty expensive. If you're a big site, it looks like you're going to be able to prospectively afford it, but they might have to take a look at it for smaller sites and the actual pricing for API calls. Joel: Yeah, right. Google gets you hooked on the heroin, right, the first few bits are free or cheap and then wham-o, we're going to increase the prices on you. Guess what? You can't do anything because you laid off all your resources and engineers so you're kind of screwed. Chad: Yeah, totally get it. Joel: You know how that goes. All right, we love talking about advertising and Monster, who continually gets it wrong with advertising we think, maybe got it right this time. You like the new ads. Chad: Yeah. I really feel like Monster's going Geico where they've got this monster, this little fuzzy, instead of this little nice little fuzzy monster that they can use in some- Joel: What do you call it? The Bugs Bunny- Chad: Knockoff, yeah, that's a rip off. Joel: Rip off. Chad: Bugs bunny cartoon. But it's almost like they're going the whole Geico route where Geico has the cute little gecko and that's for one demographic. Then the other demographic have these very smart, really brilliant kind of ads. I see Monster starting to do that and I think some of this is because they spent so God damn much money on that stupid freaking monster in the first place. From what we've heard from ad agencies and what not, kind of estimations and what not, that that one ad that they did was over $1 million. Joel: Does that monster have a name? The old one was Trumpasaurus, which I'm sure Donald sued them for that. I don't think the new one has a monster ... Yes, Monster takes Manhattan was a pretty bad ad. These new ones are quick 15-second ones and it's like yeah, I'm looking for a job on Monster. It'll never happen. Then they're switched with the new employee because Monster is so fast with the hiring process. My takeaway from the ads is I think advertising should work really hard to differentiate yourself from the competition. All the Indeed ads look really anti-Google. They're anti-technology, faces, a lot of human stuff, don't let algorithms destroy us kind of thing. Chad: Yeah, I still think they're trying to find their way in who they are, in who they're trying to message to be because none of it really gels at all. Joel: Are we talking Indeed or Monster? Chad: Yeah, Indeed, Indeed. The Monster ads I think are great, 15-second ads. The One Foot Out the Door campaign that they put out first and they have three or four different ... One Foot Out the Door, a doctor who had one foot out the door, I mean those are really cool. They're really smart. They were funny. Then this newest one called Boxes where, as you'd said, it's really cheeky and they're pushing the mobile app. I think it's really cool. I was talking to somebody earlier this week and I think they had some great advice. Run that first Super Bowl ad again. It's cool. Now because it's a throwback and you don't have to spend a dime on recreating it. It's a classic and maybe some of those people can fall back in love with the Monster they once knew before Sal's dumb ass came and screwed everything up. Joel: It's akin to rehashing the old Coca-Cola commercial of "I'd like to teach the world to sing." Chad: Really? Joel: I want to get back to my differentiation point before you interrupted me so rudely. Chad: Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I do that. Joel: To me, the differentiator of Indeed is like we're human and Google is a machine, right, but no one has really thought about mobile first job search, like we are the mobile solution. In a generation that's really mobile in terms of millennials and people who don't remember Monster ads back in 1998 and personally think Monster is an energy drink, to me, the differentiator in this ad is that Monster is positioning itself as the mobile solution to find jobs, which appeals to a younger audience I think, but also most people, particularly on a television set where they have their mobile device, but I would really like to see Monster sort of push this mobile thing and really create solutions for the watch, which we know from quarterly reports from Apple, people are buying this watch and they're buying smart watches. I think voice stuff, they should get big into that, leapfrog this whole internet search thing, Google thing and really be above and beyond what we typically think of job search. Chad: It has to be lifestyle, right, and if you can embed yourself in the lifestyle, in the wearables ... I'm still not a big believer in wearables just yet, but I mean being able to talk to Google Home, to turn your lights off, to be able to get reports on jobs and things of that nature, I think there's no question, it's smart and I believe again, that's where instead of spending money on your search and making your search better, right, don't do that shit, dude. Just spend the money on being able to evolve in these different areas. Joel: I also think ... Have you seen the new Facebook ad? Where they talk about how Facebook started. It connected everyone and then it got bad with hackers, Russian shit. Then now we're going to change that and be back to what we used to be. Have you seen this ad? Chad: I haven't seen that ad, no. Joel: Which is a great ad and it sort of goes in line with the old Dominos ad that we used to talk about where they said, "Hey, our pizza sucks. We're going to change it." I'd love to see Monster come out with an industry ad, even if it's just a YouTube video that says, "Hey, HR person, we know we lost our way. We forgot about the job seeker, blah, blah, blah, but we're under new management now. We're going to change that and here's what we're doing, the change that we're making." I think that would be a really genius move by monster. I don't know if they're going to do it or not, but I certainly think that they should. Chad: They could do that. They could do that with that old Super Bowl ad, right, and say, "The Monster that you knew and loved ... " Joel: Yeah. I mean going back to your roots, "Here's when we were good. Remember when you liked us?" I don't think that whole ad should be that 'cause again, I think there's a whole generation that can't connect with that ad, particularly on the job seeker side, but to sort of reconnect with that like, "Hey, here's how we evolved. We were on the forefront of job search on online. We lost our way. Now we're back and we're on mobile. We're doing all these things." Anyway, we're basically doing Monster's marketing for them and we probably should not do that for free, but this is what we do on this show. Speaking of not for free, unless you have any more point to make on the ads, I say let's hear from one of our awesome sponsors. Chad: I would just like to say that you said Indeed is trying to be more human and knowing how they've been interacting in this industry, they've been probably the coldest, hardest brand to work with. That's to me is rich. If they want to change and become more human, they should act it. Joel: Damn. All right, we'll end on that. Announcer: America's Job Exchange is a market leader in diversity recruitment and an OFCCP compliant solution provider. We serve over 1,000 customers consisting of federal contractors and subcontractors to SMBs and Fortune 500 organizations. America's Job Exchange specializes in job distribution to over 6500 state one-step 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. For more information, call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Chad: Yeah, looking for outcomes, want a more diverse workforce, give AJE a call. Joel: You just love you some compliance and diversity and [crosstalk 00:20:47]. Chad: Dude, research shows that a more diverse culture in your organization, it drives success. I'm all about success. Joel: Okay, Donald. Chad: Thank you. Joel: Let's about a story out of Microsoft LinkedIn and why they paid $26.2 billion for LinkedIn. You love this story. Tell us about it. Chad: Dude, it's huge. Really, we're talking about ... Joel: Huge. Chad: ... looking to kill SalesForce with Dynamics 365 coupled with LinkedIn and I think ... We'll go through this, but at the end of it, there's some shining hope possibly for talent acquisition to be able to use these same processes and the same Dynamics 365 type of platform. Right out of the gate, the 365 actually will power products pages for companies, which allows lead forms and those types of things. When you start to get the cookies and the actual information from lead forms, then you can start to re-target. This is all sales focused, but still it's engagement. It's much like talent acquisition. We're still trying to get that individual who has the skills and obviously, the experience that we need. They know your browsing history. They can hit you with obviously email engagement with different sales triggers. It really gets deep into engagement from a customer standpoint, right. Chad: This is where they're turning their guns with LinkedIn toward SalesForce. Here's a really cool piece that they're putting into this and this is very Big Brother. If a buyer really seems disengaged, what the system will do is prompt you to through LinkedIn ask one of your shared people in your network to get an introduction to this person. Joel: I need to stop you because for the guy who gave me such a hard time for "drinking the LinkedIn Kool-Aid," you, sir, sound like you're enjoying a nice cold glass of LinkedIn right now. Chad: From a talent acquisition side of the house, it's all about engagement. If we in talent acquisition start viewing the candidate as a customer and use these powerful engagement systems, the business will better understand us and then, we will better understand them. We will be able to start getting candidates the way and engaging candidates the way that we should have for years and get rid of the black hole. It's not just about LinkedIn doing this. We see other companies like the Candidate.IDs, we see Crowded, we see all these companies. I'm big on being able to ensure that we get rid of this God damn black hole that we've had for decades. Joel: I'm just glad that you're finally agreeing with me on some of these points. Chad: Fuck off. Joel: I think that SalesForce is an obvious target for Microsoft paying for this. I think Google is another and maybe less so Facebook, but Google had to be super pissed that they lost social to Facebook and then, they lost LinkedIn to Microsoft. That has to rub them in all kinds of the wrong way. I agree SalesForce is upset and ticked off, although, I think it's a much smaller player than what we're talking about with Google and enterprise stuff and software, but yeah, the 26 billion at the time made a lot of jaws drop and I think when all is said and done, the LinkedIn acquisition by Microsoft will go down as one of the more savvy acquisitions by a major company in a long time. Joel: Speaking of acquisitions, let's keep on that for a second. You're also really excited about the StepStone acquisition of Universum. Tell us who those guys are for those who don't know and why you're excited by it. Chad: Yeah. StepStone, they have job sites in 21 countries. They have a ton of job sites, over 25, 26 million different CVs, 15 million active subscribers. StepStone is a huge network of job boards all across the world. It's global. Universum, on the other hand, is a Swedish data company that focuses on branding, building stories, slogans and market insights. All these things, all these warm and fluffy things are focused around engagement, right. You've got this hard line job board provider in a StepStone and they don't have anything that's really there to pull people in and engage them. That's what Universum is there to help them with. Joel: I think we both agree in talking initially, this is driven by Google. What do we mean by that? Chad: Yeah, no question. Google is making companies. Now let's say for instance, StepStone, without Google getting into the market and showing their hand that hey, we're going to push Google for jobs everywhere, StepStone has to be something more than just a bunch of job boards because they are not going to be able to compete with Google in many of the different countries that they're in. Now obviously, there are going to be high priority countries that are more susceptible right out of the gate, but still, it makes a hell of a lot of sense that they start to diversify the portfolio that they're going to be providing so that they can diversify revenue streams because the one revenue stream, jobs ... Joel: Yeah. Bye-bye. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's so interesting how companies, how job boards are deciding to fight Google for jobs, right. You have Indeed saying, "To hell with it, we're not playing. We're building a moat and hopefully, the Huns will stay at bay." We're looking at CareerBuilder who's saying, "Screw it. We'll get in bed big time. We'll cut overhead and have Google just run all of out shit." You have Monster sort of playing, but we're going to keep our own search. It's ultimately making job boards look in the mirror and say, "The future is Googles in terms of job postings and how do we combat that?" In StepStone's instance, and I think you're right that it was driven probably by Google and looking at the future, and maybe even seeing traffic numbers with any state side or [stalking the 00:27:11] state side companies and what Google is doing and we know that they're launching in Canada and India and soon to be in a country near you. In this case, they're saying, "Hey, let's get on the branding train. Let's help companies with that." Joel: We've talked about the impact that Glassdoor reviews and employer reviews are incredibly impactful. They affect recruiting. They affect people turning down job offers so branding is going to continually be a major important part of company's outlook whether its job's on Google or not. I think it's a good step. We don't know how much they paid for it. That wasn't disclosed, but one job board's strategy to combat Google we're sort of on board with for the most part. Chad: Yeah, yeah, no question. Wait, we still got ... Joel: Facebook. We can't have a show without the big three. Chad: We got more StepStone stuff because totaljobs and Jobsite became one. There's more news out of StepStone. To be able to ... First, you buy Universum. Joel: Sorry. Yeah. StepStone, what'd they do next? Chad: All right, dumb ass. Two of their sites, TotalJobs and Jobsite are now under one platform, but that seems like an amazing waste of money. Dude, this is the business side of things. I know you have problems understanding it sometimes, but this makes sense. Joel: Sorry, sorry. Are we on to the next story yet? Chad: You don't think it's important that these business models, about these business models and we go back to the Monster board and OCC business models and how that actually came up, right. What happened under that? Do you remember? That was kind of big at that point, right. These are two of the biggest job sites in fucking England, the UK, and you don't think it's a big deal. Are you kidding me? Joel: Dude, calm down. Chad: You're the one snoring and shit. Joel: I'm sorry. I apologize to our UK affiliates that I found that not too exciting. Sorry. You're salty today. I should be the salty one. I got the Browns to root for. Anyway, are we on to the next story? Chad: Yes. Joel: It's a simple one. Facebook, we can't have a show without talking Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Indeed and Facebook. They continue to focus on their Slack competitor AtWork. This week announced they've integrated with 50 SaaS solutions and they've launched a bot directory or they've partnered with a bot directory or integrated with a bot directory so Slack needs to sell fast. I don't know what is going on with them, but Facebook continues to be focused on this piece of their business. We haven't heard much from the job search stuff yet, but I see ads for work all the time and news alerts come across my desk fairly frequently about their messaging system. Chad: It's scary because now are we going to have to worry about Russian bots trying to engage us and get data from us that way, too? Facebook doesn't have this shit figured out yet, but yet we're looking at bots in different ways to actually engage users to prospectively pull more data out of them. Is that what I'm hearing? Joel: As long as they're not integrating with the KGB, I guess that ... Chad: They didn't know that before. Joel: That's true. I mean Facebook Connect is still a thing. A whole bigger question is do people really give a damn about their privacy on Facebook? I don't know. I don't think you're seeing mass exodus from Facebook, but they will play the game. They'll play the PR game. They will do some security updates and checks, and they'll make sure this doesn't happen again, but the fact that they want to put work in as many integrations as possible, I think that says they're serious about employment. I don't think they've ever not been serious and I expect to see more stuff from their job posting/classifieds/we-want-to-kill-Craigslist strategy, but for now work seems to be a real focus for them, which is why Amazon will buy Slack this year. Chad: You're still banking on that one. You're still banking on that one. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Chad: Yeah, again, I don't think they're going to buy them for $9 billion or whatever the valuation is right now, but yeah. No, to watch Facebook move more toward business, I just hope they do it in a very sensible way. Joel: I agree. Let's hear from new sponsor, JobAdX and then, we'll talk about real fun stuff. Chad: Oh, Jesus. Announcer: JobAdX, as the best ad tool in the industry, we provide publishers and job boards higher rev share than other partners through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30-40% greater and more. We're like Ad-sense, but with a better split for you and added relevance for your audience. JobAdX also offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs and staffing firms, real time dynamic bidding and delivery for your clients' postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. Not set and regret. Announcer: All of this is done with the flexibility of cost per impression, click, or application. We also offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. Finally, JobAdX delivers direct clients, superior candidates through the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. To partner with us, you can visit or search jobadx.com. You can also email us at joinus@J-O-B-A-D-X.com to get estimates or to begin working together. JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Chad: And a case of Guinness. Joel: Love the background music on that by the way. They do know our audience a little bit. Although, if you knew their executive team, you wouldn't necessarily equate that to hair metal. Chad: Dude, I'm the one who put the background music on that. Joel: Oh, did you? Chad: Yeah. Joel: There you go. That's why. All right. All right, we love to end the show on the most important topics of the week. We have three here. I don't care which one we start with. Chad: Private service, let's do privateservice.jobs. Joel: Okay. Chad: They tout themselves as the very first six-figure job board. Is that the case? Is that the case? Joel: Yes, yes. For those of us who remember the original The Ladders, now they're just Ladders, their thing was 100K jobs like we only have 100K jobs. They stuck it to the job seeker by making them pay to access these six-figure jobs. The model went away basically after 2008 when there were no jobs at all, let alone $100,000 jobs so they've changed their ways and whatever. It was inevitable that somebody would come along and do this 100K thing and in this case, it's 100K for celebrity service jobs I guess, right? Chad: Interesting the type of employment that they're ... Again, private service, but first off, I'd like to say that The Ladders is still The Ladders because take a look at their domain. It's still theladders.com. They want to pull this whole, "We're Ladders bullshit." Now, look at your domain. But back to privateservice.jobs, they're trying to do kind of what The Ladders did in charging job seekers. You can search jobs as a job seeker and just see what they have out there, but then you have to sign up for weekly, monthly and/or annual subscriptions. They're looking to game that. Joel: I don't know if you know something I don't, but on their site, it basically says launching June 26th. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: As far as I know, we don't know who they're going to be charging ... Chad: Oh, no, we do. It was in a press release. It was in a press release. Joel: Oh, it's a press ... Chad: Yeah, yes. Joel: They're going to stick it to job seekers as well as employers. Chad: Yes, yeah. Joel: This is more predatory crap. They're going to sell the promise of be Kanye's private whatever for $100,000, right? People are going to be like, "Yeah, I want to be Kanye's private valet." I'm going to pay them $19 a month to try to be Kanye's valet. Chad: Yeah, they're going to stick it to job seekers and employers get it for free. Let me make that correction. Employers get it for free. Job seekers have to pay. Here's the big problem in that whole model itself, The Ladders. There you go. It's already been tried. It failed miserably. The money is with the companies, first off. That's who's going to pay for this, not to mention, why are you trying to stick it to somebody who is looking for a job? Joel: Because people will pay to work for Taylor Swift or whoever ... I'm serious. They're counting on people to want to do these jobs with celebrities. Chad: You know it's going to major C listers and shit like that. There's going be no Taylor Swift on there. Joel: I have no clue. Kanye West isn't hiring people. It's probably his agent or his ... Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel: This is total crap. Chad: Garbage pile. Joel: They should be ashamed of themselves for doing this. You thought it was interesting that they are a .jobs domain. Chad: Yeah, because .jobs did not allow ... The actual top level domain, .com, .org. So .jobs did not allow job boards to buy their domain. They actually did a ... When I was with DirectEmployers, they did a deal with us and we launched 40,000 different domains, which really pissed off a bunch of job board companies, but from my understanding and our sources is that was an epic fail and they're going to start pulling those .jobs away from DirectEmployers and this to me looks like they're going to start selling those domains to job boards. If you are a job board and you're looking for a better domain, which some of you have shitty domains, there might be a .jobs domain in your future so go check them out. Joel: If you'd rather pay 129 for a domain instead of $12, then have at it? Do you want to talk about brain sensors or Vera next? Chad: Yeah. No, let's do the brain sensors. Joel: Brain sensors, company in China or companies maybe in construction I believe are putting brain sensors on hard hats to gauge the happiness of their workers. Now on the surface, this is a funny story and it's kind of amusing to think of a bunch of construction workers with sensors on their brains. I'm sure there won't be any health issues with that whatsoever. Is there a day when Glassdoor and sites of their ilk are irrelevant because through facial recognition, cameras, through body temperature, through voice recognition, through just technology, employees know what their workforce feels like because of all these technologies and they don't have to count on them going to a random website and typing in, "I hate my boss and my life sucks," right, because I know that from technology and I think amusing as it is, technology will eventually give employers a gauge on how their employees are feeling. Chad: I think this is totally enemy of the state stuff, right. They're trying to get every aspect of you so that ... Hell, they don't even have to talk to you to find out how you're feeling. The camera on your laptop or PC or what the hell ever, they can do the facial recognition. They've got microchips that they're putting into people. They've got these hard hat sensors. I mean it's just so fucking weird. Joel: I forgot about the microchips. Thanks for ... Chad: It's so weird that we are really supposed to be focusing on the people, but yet, we don't want to engage the people to see how they're really doing. We want technology to engage them instead. Joel: Yeah. Governments will do this, right? Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Governments will have sensors and facial rec and they'll know how their voters feel. That's pretty scary shit. Chad: It is. Joel: Equally scary is Vera, the Russian HR robot. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I love that she's the HR Robot and not just Vera, the Russian robot. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: As if HR makes it less threatening. Chad: Again, there are Russian companies out there that are totally legit. I appreciate that. I don't know who they are, but just the whole landscape right now with everything that we're dealing with, with data and information and so on and so forth, if I'm a company and I want to actually go buy a chatbot, then guess what? It's probably not going to be a Russian chatbot because I don't want my data sucked into whatever the hell they've got going on over there. Again, a lot of it has to do with optics I think, but obviously, it's reality as well because the shit's happening and we've seen it. Joel: How many American companies are going to get in bed with a Russian robot to hire people? It's funny stuff. Chad: Dude, total optics. No. Yeah, it's crazy. Joel: Yeah. But according to the story, people like talking to a robot. They find it enjoyable. This is apparently some big companies are doing this. PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, HBC, etc. yeah, and whether it's Russian or not, robotics and automation, we talk about this almost every week, this stuff is perpetrating the HR hiring recruiting process and it's not going away, right. The HR Russian robot will eventually be the American HR robot and they'll hire your service people and your hourly people and everything else. Yeah, here's to Russia for HR robot trailblazing the path to better hiring all over the world. Chad: And scaring the living shit out of us while you do it. Joel: Are we out, dude? Chad: We out. Joel: Out. Announcer: This has been The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, GooglePlay 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 chadcheese.com. Oh, yeah, you're welcome. El Chapo: Lastly, trip, yes, there will be a trip. I just don't know when and where yet. As soon as I will know, you will know. And know this, we're not sleeping on this. It's not like ... Chad: We're not sleeping on this. El Chapo: We actually had a trip done and sold out three weeks ago. Chad: We had a God damn trip. El Chapo: We had a great hotel in Cabo. Chad: In Cabo. El Chapo: We had dates confirmed. Problem is Cabo has become completely destabilized. Literally, this holiday season, they've had over 50,000 reservations canceled. Evidently, when El Chapo ... Chad: There it is. El Chapo: ... was incarcerated, the code of ethics that he's instilled in Cabo Mexico has gone away. Chad: Code of ethics from El Chapo. El Chapo: There's no code of ethics. There's no code of honor. All of a sudden, there's a war for power. You're seeing things happen that you haven't seen in the past where people, where gangs, drug dealers were actually going to restaurants and shoot up the place. That never happened before. Bottom line is this, I wish I could sit here and tell you we ... #Careerbuilder #Monster #TheLadders #StepStone #Facebook #Robots #LinkedIn #GoogleJobsAPI #Google

An Uncommon.co EXCLUSIVE... It's Tony Lee and it's time to get your recruiting industry GEEK ON! That's right the boys sit down with industry icon Tony Lee for a jaunt down Memory Lane, an update on what's new at SHRM and even talk a little Cheap Trick. What's in this episode: - How the WSJ got into the "job board business" - It was Jung Lee not Junglee - Seriously? - The birth of Adicio - Cheezhead antics - An Online Career Center (OCC.com) insider story - "huckster extraordinaire" - MonsterBoard before it was reborn as Monster.com - PURE RECRUITING TECH HISTORY BABY! Visit Uncommon now and gain access to this red-hot start-up's free trial now and receive 5 FREE candidates! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad: The Chad and Cheese Podcast, brought to you in partnership with TAtech, the Association for talent acquisition solutions. Visit TATech.org Joel: Chad, why do recruiters spend money on unqualified or uninterested candidates? Chad: Dude, I don't know , because they're recruiters? I mean, what in the hell are you talking about anyway? Joel: Okay. Stick with me here. In a PPC campaign when you're sourcing, you're paying per click and you don't know who the click is coming from, it could be a qualified click if you're lucky, but most likely it's an unqualified click, you know? And you're still gonna pay, regardless. Chad: Yeah and it's pretty much the same in a subscription model. You're paying to open the door to any candidate, not necessarily qualified ones. Joel: Exactly. So the answer is, current pricing models suck. Chad: Duh. Joel: So what if you handed over cash for only interested and qualified candidates? And I'm talking actually qualified. I mean candidates that meet all of your job requirements, from years in an industry to specific skills. Chad: Okay, I gotcha, now you're talking about Uncommon. Joel: Bingo, Uncommon is where fantasy comes true, and right now they only charge $9 and 99 cents for interested and qualified candidates. Chad: Seriously dude, do you fantasize about this stuff? Weirdo. So Uncommon is simple, you set your monthly budget and Uncommon only charges you when you get an interested applicant that meets or exceeds your job requirements. To sweeten the deal they're offering a 5 free candidate trial. Just go to uncommon.co to make your free account. That's uncommon.co. 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 recruitment 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: SHRM, talent, Vegas, who's excited? Pretty much after this interview it's all downhill so we're basically peaking at our first interview and it all goes down. Chad: So much bullshit, he's like "me". Tony: I have to talk to these two idiots, are you kidding me? Joel: So this is the highlight of your day [crosstalk 00:02:47] Tony: Career. I mean come on. You know I actually woke up this morning from a dream about this, I was so excited it was in my dreams. Joel: You weren't like sweating [crosstalk 00:03:02] we weren't in our statue of David outfits were we? Tony: I actually have one of those on my Caesar's Palace [crosstalk 00:03:11] Joel: Nice, nice. SHRM Tony: I'm like, "I think you gave this to the wrong guy." Joel: Let's interview, or let's introduce our guest before we get too much further into this. Tony Lee. Tony: Tony Lee. Joel: VP of editorial at Shrm. You can find out more at Shrm.org. We are at the Shrm talent show. Tony: Yes. Joel: Tony is a long time industry person. Tony: Yes. Joel: Give our listeners an elevated pitch of your experience and where you've come from. Tony: Holy cow, so I started at the Wall Street Journal in the early 80s and covering job hunting and career management. I ran a publication that few of your listeners have ever heard of called the National Business Employment Weekly which is a 100 page tablet. Joel: NBU. Tony: NBU. Are you ready for this? It cost in the early 80s, it cost $3.95 and we sold 100,000 copies every week. Joel: Holy shit. Tony: It was a huge, huge profit maker. Joel: Yeah. Tony: The idea was, the Wall Street Journal had 22 regional editions and each one had different help wanted ads in it. Joel: Yeah. Tony: We put 'em all into one publication and then had four or five articles every week about how to interview more effectively, how to whatever. So it was for job seekers. And it was hugely popular because it was pre-internet. Joel: What was the advertising cost? The $3.95 was the actual job seeker to buy it. Tony: Right. Joel: But if I wanted a full page ad in that sucker, what was I gonna spend? Tony: A million. Joel: Holy cow. Chad: No way. Tony: It was a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal and then that got you in. Joel: Ah. Chad: So is that the way we could get in? Tony: Advertise in the journal and you gotta- Joel: Wow. Tony: We broke the rule for Jeff Taylor. Joel: Wow imagine that. Tony: [crosstalk 00:04:47] "I want full page monster ads in the back cover" and we said, "OK." We gave him some crazy price, never expected him to take it. And then David Price then threw a shoe in. Chad: Dude. Tony: Anyone old enough remembers what [crosstalk 00:04:54] Joel: So in 2018 dollars that's like a billion dollar ad. Tony: That's right. Chad: Oh dude. Joel: It's crazy money. Chad: Yeah. Tony: And we had, at that point we had blimps, we had Superbowl ads, we were a money making machine. So doing that kind of shit was nothing. Not to mention he loved to just throw it out there. Chad: Yep. Tony: It was pretty amazing. Joel: God it took us all of two minutes to get onto Jeff Taylor. Tony: All right so I'll keep going. So I did this for a bunch of times, moved over to Wall Street Journal and wrote a bunch of columns. They used to have a column called "Managing Your Career" on Tuesdays, so I would write that column a bunch and then moved to the team that created and launched WSJ.com. And from that I became publisher of all the Wall Street Journal sites other than wsj.com. So Career Journal was the big career site and we also had College Journal for college students, Start-up Journal for entrepreneurs, Real Estate Journal, Opinion Journal. Tony: So I did that for a bunch of years- Joel: That's a hell of a lot of content. Tony: Oh it's a ton of content, we had a big content team, we were writing stuff every day. Joel: Are they still doing that much content in those spaces? Tony: No, it changed. Joel: Yeah? Tony: Yeah, this was pre Rupert Murdoch so- Joel: Were you working the Gutenberg Press as well? Tony: Let me stroke my long beard to see. Yep. I mean when the internet came in we embraced it big-time and made a lot of money. Joel: Yeah. Tony: Yeah and you know from 99 to the early 2000s the money just poured in. Because Venture Capital was part of my deal was I helped launch Future Step, remember FutureStep? Joel: Oh yeah. Tony: Korn Ferry. Joel: Uh-huh Korn Ferry. Tony: Corn Ferry Wall Street Journal product. And the money that came outta that we helped launch something called freeagent.com. I don't know if you remember. Chad: Yes. Joel: What year was that? What year was that? Tony: 2002. Joel: Yeah, oh shit. Tony: The money was great [crosstalk 00:06:44] brand with somebody who would help them advance their brand and bring in folks. Joel: Yeah. Tony: So we went out to the journal audiences and said, "Here you need to sign up for this." And they did. It worked and it was effective- Joel: Where are they now? Tony: FutureStep's still going. Joel: Okay. Tony: Futurestep still has that as part of their portfolio. So did that for a long time and then in 2006 moved to Adicio, needs a little back story. So in 97, 98 Rick Miller, the guy who created Adicio, Careercast.com at the time, we needed a new platform. We had launched an online job platform through Wall Street Journal. With a company out of Seattle called Jung Lee. Chad: Jung Lee? I always pronounce it jungle-ee. Tony: It's Jung Lee. Tony: J-U-N-G-L-E-E. Chad: Really? Tony: So their first client was [crosstalk 00:07:36] Joel: That is way back. Tony: Yep. There first client was the [crosstalk 00:07:40] so they laid out all the stuff how great it was gonna be and we signed up as a client. And we immediately started getting requests from companies, you know, "We need to customize this, we need to be able to post ten jobs not eight jobs." You know, whatever it was and they were like, "Yeah the next release and the next release." And then next release never came and we just kept asking for it. So one weekend the two founders of Jung Li created automated shopping cart. Within six months they sold it to Amazon for 30 million dollars, they then took the recruitment piece of their business and sold it to a company in Canada for 3 million dollars. So that shows you how much investment they had made. Tony: So at the same time, when that became obvious, I went out and found Rick. And he was doing data aggregation. He was doing it primarily for defense contractors. You know, Lockheed Martin, [crosstalk 00:08:23] people like that. And I said well, "Can you do the same aggregation for commercial job board." And took about six months and he built it. And at the same time there was no such thing as wrapping, created wrapping, we could go in, we'd come and grab all the jobs, import them in, all that kind of stuff. Tony: So we launch our job database, Wall Street Journal, on this Adicio platform, and within weeks the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Orange County Register they're all like, "We need this." And so he came back and said, "Well it's just me I need money to go out and hire developers to build all of this" so put together a business plan, put it up the flagpole at the Wall Street Journal and it got approval. And we bought a 40% equity stake in Adicio, and he had the money to go hire programmers. And it boomed. Started adding all these newspaper clients and association clients and all sorts of different clients. Tony: And it was great. Joel: Were you guys competitive with career building newspaper relationships, Hot Jobs and Monster at the time? You were sort of another competitor in that space? Tony: Well what it was was that the career building newspapers were kind of stuck in the career building platform and they never liked it - from the beginning. The Monster papers, initially Monster was just going to partner in [crosstalk 00:09:36] do it. Adicio's sweet spot turned out to be the independent papers, that weren't part of big chains. So you got like, Seattle, you know Boston and different who were more independent. And they ran on the Adicio platform. And then we did a partnering with Monster. So Adicio and Monster had a long partnership where Monster couldn't handle all the back end work so Adicio was actually the technology behind the Monster Newspaper Partnership Program for years. Joel: [crosstalk 00:10:03] was that after they went, bought Hot Jobs and acquired all those newspaper relationships? Tony: It was actually before. Joel: Okay. Tony: And then extended. Joel: And then extended. Tony: Beyond. Joel: Okay. Tony: Yeah, so I left. So they had gotten really growing, I had gotten on the board of Adicio while working at the Wall Street Journal. And they had gotten to the point where they had just added two big East Coast clients, Advance Internet and New York Times. And both of those papers said, "you need somebody" and so I had been working with them and they said [inaudible 00:10:31] so we worked it out and I joined Adicio full time continuing to manage the Dow Jones investment. And it was great. So did that until three years ago when I came to Shrm. Joel: Yep. So we're seeing a lot of, you mentioned Career Builder and they didn't like that relationship. Well Career Builder has recently gone from their relationships and Real Match slash [crosstalk 00:10:55] whatever the called. Tony: PandoLogic. [crosstalk 00:11:00] Joel: [crosstalk 00:11:01] yeah. Tony: Connection and he's here too at SHRM [crosstalk 00:11:07] Joel: Recruitology is sort of heading head first into the newspaper space, is that a smart decision. Are those guys still getting tons of traffic, and is that something yeah, he's shaking his head for the listeners [crosstalk 00:11:20] Tony: You know what's the long term future of the newspaper business? In the job board space, probably not great. Joel: Okay. Tony: It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense but I think there's a long term future for online newspapers. There's no question because of the local community aspect. They can put feet on the street, can do what nobody else does until the Politico or somebody else makes that kind of investment, you gotta rely on anything you can get. Joel: That's content though, right, [crosstalk 00:11:46] Tony: Content but the question is, if you live in Dubuque, Iowa do you need to go to a Dubuque, Iowa newspaper site to find a job? Joel: You're going to Google. [crosstalk 00:11:55] Tony: You're going to Google- Joel: And then- Tony: Thank you that's right and then going [crosstalk 00:11:59] Joel: Not any more. Tony: Just so they can get branded search and I mean that's just not sustainable [crosstalk 00:12:08] Joel: If we had Terry here I think he would say something like programmatic- Tony: Right- Joel: Is gonna make that so much better, and they're gonna integrate with the content. Tony: Well you know, and everyone does it. It wasn't invented there. I mean Adicio's been doing it, essentially Programmatic and niche networks from day one. Joel: Yeah. Tony: I mean that's always there and it's still there. And it still works. I mean if you were looking for, build up university hiring and you don't know where to go, Programmatic's gonna put you in front of a diverse audience wherever it happens to be. And frankly, I'm not sure it matters who you buy in from because it's gonna get [crosstalk 00:12:42] everybody's sharing the same source it's gonna end up the same, whether it's Jobs To Careers or whatever they're now called. Same thing, I mean they're all putting in front of that same audience- Chad: What are they called now? [crosstalk 00:12:47] Joel: Which I think I why you see like Job Boardio, or Board IO. Whatever we're calling it. Are getting caught because the distribution is so important. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: I mean it's a commodity, I mean jobs are everywhere, they're all on google, everywhere, so how do you differentiate yourselves and put eyeballs on your jobs that aren't necessarily gonna be found. Tony: And you know the key ends up being who has the audience. And from our perspective sure, and we've got HR people, there's no question. They go to SHRM.org, they trust shrm.org, we stick job postings contextually targeted into whatever it is they happen to be reading on shrm.org. Joel: Right. Tony: Then they're gonna see it, they might not be actively looking but they'll see it and apply for it. We've got one of the best response rates of any job board I've ever seen. Joel: Well it's target, it's targeted. Tony: That's right. Joel: It's that niche HR talent acquisition. Tony: Axy. Joel: And the way through, right? Tony: And it's not necessarily the keys,. It's not necessarily the active job seekers, which makes no difference whatsoever. Joel: So what you're talking about is, so. I mean we talk about on the podcast a lot is, we've turned into lifestyle beings when it comes to technology. We get out feeds from certain areas and we use Google to do search. And we see these things pop up on our feeds, whether it's on Linked In or whether it's information that's been provided by Sherm, it's just part of our normal day. Tony: Yep absolutely. Well it's no different, I can't remember his name, the CEO of WebMD said, they do this intense research of their most loyal users and said, "I trust WebMD, everything you put on there's great, I would make medical decisions based on them." And the last question was, "So you have this medical question, where do you go?" "Google." Joel: "Google." Tony: Got it. And then when they see WebMD in the results they're like, okay. Chad: Brand recognition. Tony: But they see someone else, that looks like it's good, well they're gonna come up there too, they're gonna read that. Joel: Where are you guys seeing the most growth? Is mobile booming for your audience, is it still email? Where are you reaching most of the HR folks these days? Tony: Yeah mobiles, everybody's got a mobile device so we're platform agnostic, we publish for whoever wherever. It's almost to the point where it doesn't matter [crosstalk 00:14:52] Joel: Is there a SHRM app, like a native app? Tony: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Joel: Do you know how to get downloads? Tony: We have apps for every- this conference has an app that you can't do anything without it. If you wanna get feedback on any of the sessions you must use the app, there's no alternative. So now we've embraced that from day one. Joel: That's great, you were through the newspaper, the high times, the beginning of the low times anyway- Tony: The low times, yes. Joel: And I think, we talk about the job boards a lot and how they're reinventing themselves and getting bought, do you see a lot of similarities between what the Monsters, Career Builders, Dices are going through today that the newspapers dealt with 10 years ago, 15 years ago? Tony: Yeah I guess so. If you were to ask me, "Is there any way Workopolis would be bought and shut down?" Until a year ago I'd say, "No way, that is such a robust business, they own the market." And yet, here we are. Joel: Wow. Tony: You know. So it seems very similar. And I don't know what the job boards are doing to prevent it from happening. How can the build a- it's all about brand and brand loyalty. Chad: Yeah. Tony: Unless they've got that loyalty. I think Indeed kind of proved- [crosstalk 00:16:04] Joel: Is it though? If jobs are commodities does it matter [crosstalk 00:16:07] where we get them? Tony: That's it, if Indeed blew up the model and said, "Who cares, we've got everybody's jobs." Joel: Right. Tony: The brand model is just completely gone. So unless you've got, again I'll come back to us, or any niche site that has a loyal audience that's not just about a job board, I mean that job's [crosstalk 00:16:26] Joel: Yeah. Tony: Rest his soul. Did a great job of promoting our website. Because he had [crosstalk 00:16:32] I mean he was embedded life with various associations. But they're not all like that. You know there aren't a lot where you have this incredible loyalty to the site, where you know you're gonna get your audience. And without that you're done. Joel: Well that makes sense, so we're talking about job board, job board, job board, there are tons of start-ups that are out there that aren't job boards. They're focused on process. We heard about chat bots and AI and whatnot. What are some of your favorite start-ups that are actually out there today. Name 'em if you want to, name Process or what have you, but what are your favorites? Tony: I'm not gonna name names. Chad: Boo. We need the sound guy. Joel: It's not for you. Tony: Whatever is making it much simpler for seekers to get what they need immediately. And that extends to video, that extends to making it so that any candidate can make themselves known as quickly as possible to all the logical places. So I think there're a number of folks that are playing around in that space. On the flip side the thing I'm most nervous about are all the people who seem to claim that they're at the AI solution. They're got it down pat, don't have to do anything, it's all been automated and then you actually start playing around, poking in ... it's not. To put it bluntly. Joel: So are you not a fan of AI at this point or [crosstalk 00:18:04] we just haven't figured it out yet? Tony: It's not there yet. I mean look there are so many redundancies in Hr that you can automate, there's no question about it. Joel: Right. Tony: But that's not necessarily AI to me. I mean I think it's just, it's automation for the sense of creating efficiencies, that frankly you could have one five years ago if you thought about it. Joel: We throw AI around I think personally, too loosely. Because machine learning has to work first. And to be able to get machine learning in your culture and in your environment? That's the very first thing that you have to, that you have to do, right? And then AI can start to work from there. If the learning's not there then AI just can't happen. So I think we jump to AI way too fast and we're not talking about machine learning. And that was one of the things that, you know from the panel discussion that we talked about today, was jump right to AI. Tony: Right. Joel: And I don't believe, and you tell me what you think, I don't think talent acquisition even understands what AI is versus machine-learning. Tony: I think you're right. Chad: I don't think most of the public at large understands AI and what it'll be let alone- Tony: [crosstalk 00:19:09] see it demonstrated in front of them, I'm not sure they see it. But real AI, and we're talking about motion picture stuff here, you know we're talking about [crosstalk 00:19:15] really cool, exactly. Chad: There's like six companies in the world that actually do it. Tony: Exactly. Chad: And none of them are in- Tony: And none of them are in the recruiting space, right. Joel: Google's getting there. Tony: Yeah but to the point, give it a year or two and they will be. And the question is, will any of the current players be the ones that are doing it or will it be a new entrant who takes up and developed for universities and say, "You can apply it here, here you go." Chad: Yep, yep. Joel: Before we hit record you talked a lot about Amazon and how they've automated the recruiting, talk about that. Tony: Sure. So Danielle Monaghan from Amazon called my panel today. And she's always great, we've worked together a lot. One of the things they've done, which I think is brilliant, is they've basically eliminated the interview process. So if they've got a position, and it's not just engineering positions, they're doing it for a lot of positions. Where you go online, you see the description of the position, if you have an interest you apply. And application is basically saying, I wanna be assessed as to whether I'm good for this position or not." Tony: So it's not a resumé based thing, your basically filling out the key requirements for the position. Joel: Ah, okay. Tony: Assuming you fill it in and you match what they're looking for, they then may come back and say, "Can you please complete this exercise." Whatever it is. So if it's engineering it might be a lang exercise, whatever. If you then scored a certain level of that, you're still not talking to anybody, you get an email that says, "You're hired." And you start, "When can you start?" And that's the process, there's no recruiter involved [crosstalk 00:20:45] Joel: And when is Amazon releasing this to everybody? Tony: Exactly. And they're using this now, this isn't pie in the sky it's implemented. Joel: It's like when you talk about Google's ATS and it's like, "This is the best ATS in the world, why don't they release it?" And they finally did 10 years later. But Amazon could probably release that and make a lot of money. Tony: Although by the same token, I don't wanna speak for Danielle, but they're competing for candidates with Target and Walmart and everybody else, why give them the ability to use this [crosstalk 00:21:12] Joel: We'll take their money. Tony: They'd rather have the people. Joel: Yeah. Tony: They'd rather have the pl because they've got so much hiring to do, so it works. Chad: Yeah I mean we talk about the big names in our industry now, right, that are coming into the industry now. It used to be Monster, it used to be Career Builder. Tony: Sure. Chad: Indeed, right now we're talking about Facebook, talking about Google, talking about Linked In because of Microsoft, right? But amazon, I mean the thing that literally struck me kind of weird when she was talking about all these things and talking about predictive and whatnot. It's like, "you already do that, Amazon. Why don't you apply that to the process method- I need the decisions that you're making every single day, because you could have this thing whipped before you know it and then respectively sell it." Joel: Which is why they're gonna buy Slack based on my 2018 predictions [crosstalk 00:22:06] Chad: Nobody's buying Slack for, what was it? Nine billion dollars? It's probably more than that now. Joel: Bezos has that they're in his couch. Tony: They have been a leader from the beginning [crosstalk 00:22:23] if you haven't seen it, and if your listeners haven't seen the video of Amazon explaining their new delivery process, it's fricking' unbelievable. I mean you go to this, they have it in Seattle they're building another place where- Chad: Is it on YouTube? Tony: Where, I'm not sure if it's out there, they showed it at our conference (SHRM) last year. So you're in a facility right, and round the corner there's this huge baking operation and they're baking bread and they're baking all kind of things. And this side over here's the grocery op[. It all comes together that their designers spent however much time to design this container that keeps the ice cream frozen, it keeps the bread warm out of the oven, it does all this. The whole thing goes to a little cart that goes out with a drone, picks it up and takes it to the house and drops it off in front and calls you as it's coming down to land and you come out and you take it. And they're doing it, it's already being done. Tony: So- Joel: Where is it being done? Tony: They're doing it in test markets. Chad: Now they just have to drop the perfect candidate on the doorstep of employers [crosstalk 00:23:17] have something. Tony: They're gonna start hiring drone recruiters. That candidate there, zap him back in. Chad: "My name is Bob, You're hired". Joel: So we're getting a little bit away from way out. What are people at the show talking about in terms of services, features that are exciting to them? What's the buzz? Tony: AI. Except I'm not sure most of the people know what they mean [crosstalk 00:23:41] Chad: They don't, they don't. Tony: You know what they mean? They mean that, so I'm this recruiter and I have 80 hours of work to do a week and so I'm looking for something that makes it 40 hours a week and AI must be the solution. I think it's more in that vein. How can I do this and be efficient and effective? With the resources I've got. Other than that, pay equity. Huge issue. The amazing thing right now is that workplace issues are in the news every day. It's what the whole country is talking about every day and HR's in the middle of it. Chad: So if Starbucks can reach and close that gap and they have 1400 stores or more than that- Tony: More than that- Chad: Locations, just in New York, just in the US. They have figured it out. What in the hell is the problem with the rest of the companies? [crosstalk 00:24:28] Joel: Well wait a minute, they have the arrest in the news of an African American [crosstalk 00:24:34] Chad: That means nothing. Joel: Oh, it does. Tony: Starbucks is the one who called the police. Joel: If you wanna recruit a diverse [crosstalk 00:24:40] Chad: I totally get that, right, I totally get that but right now we're talking about pay gap. Right now we're talking about pay gap. Let me get to that. Joel: People don't wanna say, "I work at Starbucks if- Chad: We'll get to that gimme a second. Joel: All right. Tony: And what branding- Chad: And that's something entirely different. So anyway, so the pay gap thing that is, why can't companies figure this out? Tony: All right so here's a perfect example, Walmart and Target go out and they raise their minimum wage, 11, 12 dollars depending where you are. There's a catch. How many of those positions are full time with benefits? And I think you'd be surprised, few are. Chad: Not many. Tony: And how many have, how many people who work in those jobs know exactly what their schedule's gonna be next week? Very few. Chad: Right. Tony: So are they really closing the pay gap there? Or is it more of a short term fix? I'd argue it's more a short term. Chad: Got you. Tony: And Amazon and many other companies that embrace the higher starting salary, do it and then offer a full, full-time job behind it and that's a very different strategy. Chad: Gotcha. Tony: So, and then pay equity's the other issue, you have to go back and look at your entire workforce and say, "are we paying you illegally?" And if not, what are you doing about it? And so that's a huge issue, and it's not just Me Too and harassment, it's just fair equitable payment for board and stuff. So HR's the one who need to be leading the way here. And they need to be. And in some cases they are, and in some cases they've got some work to do. Chad: So then you've got an important- Joel: Well speaking of Me Too and the branding I think even Facebook to a certain extent in the valley. It's toxic in terms of, "I work at Facebook." No-one wants to mention that. Are you finding that the employer review sites, the Glass Doors, Indeeds, are they getting more attention in light of this news in the public eye? Tony: I think their attention's already incredibly high. One of the points we just talked about on the panel is, "are you managing your brand?" Because if not, others are doing it for you. We had Kristen DesPalmes from Davita which is a huge operation, they hire, can't remember what she said 20,000 or 30,000, they put their Glass Door reviews on their career website with a stream, so every time there's a new review it updates. complete transparency. Joel: Transparency. Tony: Because it's the only way that they can deal with the candidates honestly. So if you can't do that, if you're afraid to do that then you got a problem. You got something you need to address. Chad: So this really is the age of transparency. Why are so many companies having problems being transparent. Tony: It depends on the company. Chad: Culture? Tony: It's all culture, it's all about company culture. If you got a board of directors that understands the value of transparency and puts it to fore, it's not an issue. If you've got a CEO or a board that doesn't, it's a huge issue and then you start to see cries for change- Joel: Priority shift. Tony: And you see change. And that's what- we're in an environment of protest, right? And so that extends to everything everywhere. And so if you've got employees who feel like the CEO's earning 10,000 times more than what I'm doing is that really fair? And that's gonna extend to this too. So t's across the board, people feel the power to say something and try and make a change. Joel: Hmm. Tony: And you know, I think that's a good thing. Are coz ready to deal with it~? That's another story sometimes. Joel: You got a couple announcements that you're making this week and I didn't want to let you get away without discussing that. So talk about those two items. Tony: Cool. So the first one is, SHRM has certification for HR professionals, SHRM CP and SCP. We are creating specialty certificates within this. We've already launched one for California, you can be a specialist in California, which is its own world. Its own laws, its own everything. So it take a huge body of knowledge. We announced today a special certificate in talent acquisition. So it's the first one out there that exists. It's rigorous, you do not have to have SHRM CP or SCP to get it, so if you're a talent acquisition person, the reason we did this is that we talked to a lot of HR departments, a lot of people who are recruiters within Hr departments, who feel like they've gotten this great expertise in talent acquisition. They think they're doing great. Joel: Right. Tony: But they're responsible for other HR things. So they might just be an HR generalist who know how to recruit. And so they want to then apply for a job somewhere as a recruiter, and they're told, "Well, you've never been full-time recruiter." By doing this they can say, "Look, I've proven that I know what I'm doing. I know how to recruit, I know how to handle talent acquisition, I've got the certificate showing it from SHRM. So give me a chance." And so that's what we're doing and you know, it's not an easy thing to do, it takes a lot of work and an exam to get the certificate. Joel: What's the investment, money and time, what would someone expect coming into the program. Tony: You know, time's a little trick- the money's not much, I don't know it off the top of my head, but we're not talking that much money, hundreds if that. The time is you know, how much time does it take you to study for an exam? Some people are good at it and some people need more time. Joel: Right. Tony: But. Joel: Do they need to be a SHRM member? Tony: Nope. It's a certificate that anyone in talent acquisition can study for and pass. Chad: Now what's the name of the certification? Tony: It's the Talent Acquisition Specialty Certificate. Joel: Got yeah, okay. Tony: And then the other announcement is little more out school. We're actually doing our first university job fair. And I know job fairs people are like, "Oh [crosstalk 00:29:56] how 1990s of you, woo!" But this one's a little different. This one's a little different. Joel: How so? Tony: We have our annual conference in Chicago this year. So on our last day of annual conference, Wednesday June 20th, we have an all suite setting in Chicago and it's a diversity and inclusion fair. Chad: Cool. Tony: So these are companies that are dedicated to making sure that they are diverse, and that extended beyond just race, it's race, it's gender, it's diverse thought frankly. It's a lot of different groups that are represented here, we're doing it in partnership with Thurgood Marshall College Fund and Hispanic Lives for Career Education and a number of different groups. And so it just gives companies an opportunity to make sure they're seeing really good diverse candidates in a setting where they can extend, they can give first interviews, second interviews and extend offers. It's not a big ballroom with a lot of people standing around, you know it's a much more professional setting. Tony: so our members, and it's not just HR it's for any job. And this came outta member requests. They said, "Look, we wanna hire diverse candidates, we can't find them. So you can help us identify these folks by partnering with organizations who can bring them to the event." So that's what we're doing. Joel: And I'm assuming shrm.org I can find information about both of those? Tony: Yes sir. Joel: Now, few people know Tony Lee is the number one cheap trick groupie. Tony: Yes he is. Joel: Male groupie [crosstalk 00:31:20] in the world. Tony: Among many many bands but yes they are at the top [crosstalk 00:31:22] Joel: So I want you to give me a memorable Cheap Trick concert moment and your favorite Cheap Trick song. Tony: So I went to undergraduate school in Denver, small place called Regis College. And we had a field house that held 300 people. And I promoted concerts there in my junior and senior year. In junior year I got Cheap Trick. Chad: Damn. Tony: I just kinda liked them at the time [crosstalk 00:31:47] Joel: And what year was this? Tony: You really gonna make me? Joel: I'll, [crosstalk 00:31:50] my point is it was probably the height of- Tony: 1979. Joel: Pretty close to height of Cheap Trick's coolness [crosstalk 00:31:56] Tony: [crosstalk 00:31:57] which was their biggest selling album. Joel: Kay. Tony: And I got to meet the guys and hang out with them and they did the show and they were incredibly nice and it was one of those moments. So I got to meet them multiple times since then and chat and there's a big Cheap Trick fan club and then I had to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony when they were inducted a couple of years ago. So that was fun and I ended up sitting with all the relatives from this day. Joel: If only Facebook and selfies had existed back then. Tony: Back then I know. Joel: So, favorite song is it a common one or you go out of bounds [crosstalk 00:32:31] Tony: Tell you what I'll come up with a song everyone will know, Dream Police. It's got a great riff. It's like a [crosstalk 00:32:37] Chad: Yeah Joel will start singing in a minute. Joel: The dream police [crosstalk 00:32:41] Tony: None of us can sing. Chad: No but he loves to. Joel: Anything we didn't ask you that we should have? Chad: Ooh I know, I know. So you've been in the industry for a long time. Tony: Say that one more time. Joel: Yeah we have established the tenure of Tony Lee. Chad: Joel and I were talking beforehand and I asked him this one question and we came up with this one person. Who is the biggest huckster that ever- Tony: [crosstalk 00:33:14] answer for this but I'm gonna get sued [crosstalk 00:33:16] Chad: No you won't, you won't get sued. Tony: I'm gonna tell a story instead. Chad: Okay. Joel: All right. Chad: And we'll give him our answer. Joel: We had the same person and you can probably guess who the person- Tony: [crosstalk 00:33:27] I think it's a different person but I'm not gonna mention any names. So I was at the Wall Street Journal and there was this great site called the Online Career Site, OCC. Uh oh, is it the same person. Chad: No. Joel: Keep talking. Tony: So in Indianapolis and so I reached out to them and we were just building our job board online and said, "Wow, this is really cool what you're doing." And we were talking and all this stuff and he said, "Well you know we're for sale if your interested." And I said, "Wow, you know sure, what do we need to do?" So I flew out to Indianapolis, met with him, all the stuff, it was great- Chad: What year was this? Tony: It would have been 98. Joel: Okay. Tony: 97 or 98, (i think it was 95 or 96 actually) somewhere in there. And so I go out there and it's great and we have a great visit, everything's great. So I come back again to Dow Jones and say, "okay, we need to buy these guys, you know they have all these employer members, it's employer owned, non-profit [crosstalk 00:34:18] Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Chad: Yeah. Joel: Great technology at the time. Chad: Yeah. Tony: Yeah. Price was a million bucks to buy, so put together the whole plan. And a senior guy, a very well respected guy who's still very involved a lot at Dow Jones and other journalistic stuff, flies out to Indianapolis to meet and they have a nice conversation and he says, "okay, let me see your operation." And the response was, "This is the operation." And he says, "Well, we're paying a million bucks, what are we getting?" And he gets up, he goes to the closet, he opens up the closet and there are all these servers. He says, "This is what you're buying." So the guy flies back to Dow Jones, we don't want these guys, this is nuts. Tony: Monster buys it for a million bucks six months later and it doubles the size of Monster overnight. Chad: Well what happened was, the Monster board was dying technologically. Tony: Right. Chad: And OCC had far superior technology. So what Jeff did as not the huckster but - he was a huckster - he was very good at it. Joel: Carnival barker. Chad: Yeah he was carnival. But anyway he knew that they were on the down and their sister company OCC, because they were both owned by TMP was kicking ass and taking names. Tony: Right. Chad: Not that I was there or anything (I was). So anyway it just made sense. Let's go ahead and merge these together, killer technology, put the Monster brand on it and away you go. Joel: Do you wanna take a guess at who we said, the number one industry huckster? Tony: No. Go ahead. Joel: I'll give you a hint, Jobster. Tony: Oh, okay, there was a gun involved. Joel: Jason Goldberg. Tony: The gun. Joel: I miss that guy. Tony: I miss reading about him on [crosstalk 00:36:05] Joel: Yes. Chad: Or listening to his explosions. It actually happened just down the road at Chester Island [crosstalk 00:36:17] Joel: One of the more famous videos. Monster is a crap product. If you go Google that you'll see the highlights of his speech with Direct Employers. Tony: So I gotta throw out a prop. The only place you could go to get information about this industry was Cheezhead - oh I'm pounding the table, sorry. They had the best information before anybody else. Joel: Cheezhead was the shit. Tony: It sure was. Chad: Then he sold out [crosstalk 00:36:44] Joel: Where'd that guy go? Chad: Sold out to the man. Tony: Well he lives large now with all those [crosstalk 00:36:49] Chad: That's why he's doing a podcast. [crosstalk 00:36:59] Joel: Yeah you guys are gonna come to see me to buy, I got a closet full of stuff [crosstalk 00:36:59] Tony: We could have had it for less [crosstalk 00:37:02] Joel: Yeah. Chad: It's mainly dirty socks [crosstalk 00:37:04] Tony: I don't wanna know what dirty stuff he has in his closet. Joel: Well Tony, we know you have a life and stuff to do here, we appreciate you taking time out and rehashing old times and new adventures. Yeah, we appreciate it. Tony: Thank you it was a lot of fun. Joel: Don't forget Uncommon.co is where your recruiting fantasies come true, and they only charge $9.95 per interested and qualified candidate. Chad: The important part is Uncommon's trial where they're offering a 5 free candidates. Just go to uncommon.co to make your free account. That's uncommon.co. Chad: Dude, why are you so fricking weird? Joel: Uh, I don't know. Chad: Thanks to our partners at TA Tech, the Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions. Remember to visit TATech.org Ema: Hi I'm Ema, 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. #SHRM #Monster #OCC #JungLee #Adicio #MonsterBoard #WSJ #TATech #Uncommon

The boys are still working through hangovers from a week in Ireland for TAtech, but our pain is your gain. We were able to secure a handful of interviews at the Guinness Storehouse. For this week's episode we spend "five good minutes" with Terry Baker, President of PandoLogic and Adam Gordon, CEO of CandidateID. Enjoy! And don't forget about our sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly, Nexxt, Jobs2Careers and Catch 22 Consulting. #Pandologic #RealMatch #CandidateID #TATech

The mergers and acquisitions market is heating up this week starting with Careerbuilder's first foray of sales under Apollo with the selling of EMSI. Oh yes there's more: - TMP acquired by Gemspring - Adecco acquisition positions then to grow talent - PeopleFluent gets a pathetic pricetag - Google for Jobs gets busy in India - Google for Jobs will penalize your ass! - Work180 velvet ropes their female community - ONLY qualified employers allowed - Buy stocks in Sex Robots and VR now! Enjoy, and visit our sponsors: Sovren, America's Job Exchange and JobAdX. 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: Hi-de-ho boys and girls. Welcome to the Chad Cheese podcast. HR's most dangerous. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, TMP gets gobbled up by a private equity firm. Chad: Another one? Joel: We know how this one turns out, don't we? CareerBuilder dumps MC and if you thought job boards were worthless, wait till you hear what someone paid for old-timey ATS PeopleFluent. It's the mergers and acquisitions episode. Stay tuned. #ElChapo: Lastly... Yes. There will be a trip [crosstalk 00:01:02] Joel: Oops. Wait. #ElChapo: I just don't know when and- Joel: That's not the ad. Chad: That's the El Chapo ad, dude. Joel: The El Chapo visit Mexico ad that we have. No. Sorry. Let's play the real ad for our listeners. JobAdx: JobAdX as the best ad tool in the industry. We provide publishers and job boards higher rev share than other partners through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30-40% greater and more. We're like Ad-sense, but with a better split for you and added relevance for your audience. JobAdX also offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs and staffing firms. Real timine dynamic bidding and delivery for your clients postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. Not set and regret. All of this is done with the flexibility of cost per impression, click, or application. We also offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. Finally, JobAdX delivers direct clients, superior candidates through the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. To partner with us, you can visit or search Jobadx.com. You can also email us at joinus@J-O-B-A-D-X.com to get estimates or to begin working together. JobAdX. The best ad tool. Providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Joel: If people think we have fun. Our sponsors have a lot of fun. Case in point. The JobAdX crew from Vegas, showing up with beer for an interview and peeps, by the way. A little Gordon Ramsay dinner. So, shout out, I guess, first, to those guys. Isabelle, Tim, the whole gang. Had a great time with them at SHRM Talent. Chad: Don't forget Amit because we have a podcast with him, so if you haven't heard that one, you don't know about JobAdX or even Talroo, used to be Jobs2Careers. Check out our last podcast. Joel: It's a one-two punch of knowledge and insight into two really interesting companies in our space, for sure. Chad: Yup. Joel: We're not just saying that because they pay us. Chad: No. Why the hell would we do that? Joel: It doesn't hurt, either. Chad: Other than bringing us beer, maybe. Joel: The beer is probably more valuable than anything else. But, anyway. Shout outs. We've had feedback that they're too long, so we're gonna try to tighten them up. I don't know if I can reel Chad in. Chad: Good luck. Joel: But, let's get to an abbreviated, hopefully, shout out. Chad: You first. Joel: Okay. Number one, Jack Russell. Chad: The dog? Joel: It's not a dog, I swear. Jack Russell is a former CareerBuilder intern, who was very insightful and a story that I did for ERE he's not real keen on the deal, for whatever reason, you'll have to read the story to find out exactly. Jack is ... let me get his ... he's the strategic recruitment analyst at Advanced Group in Chicago. Thanks for listening, Jack, and thanks for having such a cool name like a dog name. Your parents much love you. Chad: Yeah. So much. Joel: Mac Pritchard, who we met at TATech in Vegas, a job board owner in Portland. His site is called, “Macslist”, which is very Craigslistyish and Angie's Listyish, but Mack is a really nice guy and, hopefully, a new listener. Mack, a shout out to you. Lastly, from me, Blair Cheeseman, from Fusion Academy for no other reason, than he has the best last name in the world and he attended this week's Ratedly webinar. Blaire, thanks for joining and thanks for listening. Chad: Since you were the only one on the webinar, Blaire. We appreciate that. Joel: Now, see, that's bullshit. That's bullshit. Chad: Can I go now? Joel: Yes. You may. Chad: Okay. LinkedIn loves us. Sara from LinkedIn. Tom, I'm gonna screw your last name up, Preziose. He's out there pimping the pod to his friends on LinkedIn, which is awesome. Ed from Philly, who's hating on TATech audience. Good job, Ed, we love you for that, man. Nancy from Philly tweeted us a pic. Joel: From vacation. Chad: From vacation. Joel: What's with the vacation pics? We're getting pictures from the beach, from airplanes, first class cabins, like, what is the deal? Chad: It's good. Angela Payne from Monster, for the Google for Jobs intel coming to Canada soon. Last, but not least, Ed Newman from Phenom People for his HR's most interesting man video. Dude, seriously. Just because we've coined the phrase, “HR's most dangerous podcast” doesn't mean that you can just go ahead and take “interesting”. Joel: Yeah, I assume, go to YouTube, search Ed Phenom People, interesting video and it's a funny take on, obviously, the Dos Equis commercials. And these sort of gorilla ads are interesting. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You remember [Lena's 00:06:12] from ... Chad: Leela Joel: From Lever, Lever, whatever it is? She had a nice Christmas video that blew up, so we're seeing a little more of these gorilla-type homemade, raw videos and I assume we'll see more of these. Maybe we should make one. Chad: Yeah, don't get crazy. Joel: Yeah, sorry. Chad: Let's talk a little bit about the trip, though, man. We were in Vegas for a whole damn week. Joel: Yeah, my liver still hates me. Chad: I've gotta say, I've gotta say, Tony Lee, always thought he was cool, but he is much cooler than I ever thought. What do you think? Joel: Big Cheap Trick fan. Yeah. Tony's like ... he's a child of the '70s, I assume, in terms of, he came of age in the '70s, so he has some really cool rock stories, concert stories. If you ever can corner Tony over a drink, ask him about his concerts portfolio. Chad: We've got an interview with him that should be coming out in the next week or so, so check that out when you see Tony Lee. Guy's been around this industry for a very long time and he's got chops. Thanks to Susan Vitale for the drive-by hugging. It feels like, she's off all over the place, but appreciate the quick hug, as in, you were on your way out. Joel: Yeah. She's a popper-inner. She pops into shows and then leaves. Chad: Great interview with Sackett on Indeed “jail” and the two CEOs that we've got going on right now. We did find out that our listeners are pretty damned cool. Joel: Yeah, we continue to be humbled by our fans and that people actually listen to this crap. So, yeah, it's awesome. Totally awesome. If you haven't heard the Sackett interview, it's really, really good. It's only about 14 minutes, but very insightful. Chad: And Erik Kostelnik, he was at ... He actually gave the keynotes at TATech. Erik, you straight stole our shit, dude. You've been listening to the podcast and that was a Power Point version of our show. Congrats. It was great, but you stole our shit, man. Joel: Apparently, he rattled of a whole bunch of companies that stole his shit, so there's a whole lot of stealing going on in this ecosystem, if nobody knew that happened, it does. But, yes, Erik, love is candor, love is openness, he was great as the keynote and we're interested to see what's next for him, as he cashes on iCims, excuse me. Chad: Last, but not least, to Armando from HireMatch, dude, this is advice, man. If you need to- Joel: are you throwing ... Are you gonna do this? Chad: Yeah. I'm gonna do this. Dude- Joel: This poor guy. Chad: He's gotta hear it. Joel: Okay. Chad: He's gotta hear it. Dude. If you need to read from a script, while presenting and, legit, can't run a Power Point, I don't trust your blockchain knowledge, man. I don't trust your blockchain knowledge if you can't do those very simple things. So, get your shit together, dude. Joel: Yeah, don't give a Power Point where it still says, “Click here to add text” on the Power Point. Chad: There's a tweet out there. Joel: I did it. I did it. I drew first blood on the poor guy. Yeah. Don't do that. Otherwise, #chadcheese for more shout outs and more love. Check out our tip line at chadcheese.com. We've been really surprised at how many people are coming out of the woodwork with stories about vendors and lay-offs and mergers and acquisitions and whatnot. If you got a tip for us, go to Chad Cheese and hit us up. Chad: Cool, let's do the show. Joel: Alright, following the private equity playbook to a T, CareerBuilder looks like it's starting to sell off it's crappy businesses that aren't making money, starting with Emsi, I'm saying that wrong, probably, MC Hammer, they sold this week. Yeah, I don't know much about Emsi, they do analytics. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They do predictive stuff. They were bought by a company called, “Strada” who does education stuff. That's about the extent that I know about this stuff. You had, actually, some insight from an insider, though, didn't you? Chad: Yeah. I mean, Emsi, so it's E-M-S-I, and it's labor market information, it's got jobs data, profile data, and they pump a lot of that information into talent discovery for CareerBuilder. In a message to CareerBuilder employees from Matt Ferguson, we actually got a copy. Joel: CEO. Chad: Yeah, it was pretty much just trying to tell everybody at CareerBuilder, “Yeah, we're selling Emsi off, but it's same as it ever was, same as it ever was,” although, I'm not sure that it's going to be the case. The messaging says, “All connections will stay the same. We will still keep CareerBuilder, we'll still keep selling Emsi products,” and Andrew Crapuchettes that's one of the worst last names I've ever ... Crapuchettes. Joel: That's worse than Cheesman, geez. Chad: At Emsi, is still happy to hear that. Although, you go further into the message, and the email actually unveil that the Emsi representation of CareerBuilder revenues is less than 1%, so you understand why they're getting rid of this. They're looking at the bottom line saying, “You know, this isn't doing anything for us.” But, there are really two things that CareerBuilder, I don't think gets, and I don't think Mr. Crapuchettes gets, is that CareerBuilder wasn't selling that product anyway. If you're going to hope and pray that CareerBuilder sells it now, that it's not actually owned by CareerBuilder, you're gonna have a problem, dude. Less than 1%, if you believe that's going to grow, you're wrong. Chad: Number two, CareerBuilder didn't know how to sell it. The data, all that information ... One of the biggest issues, and we've talked about this last few months, but CareerBuilder's biggest problem is, using what they have in their portfolio to create kick-ass products. They're not doing that. Developing concise branding and messaging and, most importantly, how to monetize those kick-ass products. Joel: Yeah, and for all we know, this thing was bleeding the company, in terms of, resources and headcount and everything else. I'll go back to Apollo Global Private Equity firm that is majority shareholder of the company, this is part of their maximizing profits initiative and this is what private equity does. We'll talk about it more in depth with TMP a little bit. Look. We know that they're laying off people, we know that people are leaving from executives on down, engineers, salespeople, probably glad that people are leaving to a certain extent because they can just increase the bottom line. This is the second phase, and they've probably been working on this just as much as they have headcount. Chad: Right. Joel: Is, what businesses can we dump to increase profits? Emsi, in my opinion, is the first of many companies that are gonna be dropped by CareerBuilder in the coming year. Chad: Yeah. Or just tech that they're going to really just eject. After talking to more salespeople at CareerBuilder, more engineers at CareerBuilder, the big focus that they've really heard, is EBITA, EBITA, EBITA. CareerBuilder was slammed into a tight EBITA culture and they are not an EBITA company. Joel: Not historically. Chad: Not like Randstad and I think they're sliding Monster into that direction, but they're not slamming into that direction. It's all about margins. If you understand EBITA and you understand overhead, they're cutting a bunch of hubs. Joel: Yeah. You said something that is really telling in that salespeople, typically, are really good about focusing on a few products or one product that they can really understand and if you have a salesperson that's used to selling job postings and now they have to sell analytics predictive whatever, that's a really tough leap for a lot of people, let alone, salespeople to make. My guess is, this product probably wasn't being sold, like you said. Chad: Right. Joel: So, let's get rid of it. It's an expense. We're not getting it anyway. The revenue isn't there anyway. So, get it out of here. My question would be, what of CareerBuilder's portfolio, would you categorize as a challenging sell to get, to understand? Right? That's so far out of bounds for job postings that it's probably gonna be next on the chopping block. Chad: Well, here's the thing. I'm gonna take it the other way. From what I've heard, CareerBuilder's focusing heavily on the job posting piece because the margins are so high. Joel: Sure. Chad: And all their solution architects. So, when you start talking about building these dynamic solutions, you see this in RPO, they have what you call, “solution design” or “solution architects.” That's where the big dollars come from. Actually sales come from is when you can pull together those different types of technologies. Well, all those people are actually gone and they pushed them back into sales roles. That's the focus of, again, trying to maximize where they see their biggest margin. To answer your question, anything that is not core, that has high margin, has a lot of EBITA ability there, they're all low hanging fruit, dude. Joel: Agree. Let's talk about TMP, the most recent victim, well, I shouldn't say victim, maybe I should say victim, of being gobbled up by private equity firm, in this case, one called, "GemSpring", which I have never heard of. Chad: No. Joel: Thoughts on this? Chad: See, CareerBuilder, they have a ton of technical assets in their portfolio. They have all these different products, they have these different companies, that they earning that they can sell. So, from an asset standpoint, CareerBuilder, I can see where you can look at it and say, “Oh, there's money to be made there. If you squeeze tight enough and you start selling shit off.” From a TMP standpoint, the only ... They have technical assets, but they're around TalentBrew, in most cases, and I think they've really pushed hard to create a platform that has also created bias for them because they're supposed to be an unbiased purveyor of knowledge and spending money. I'm not really sure that they can keep up with all the start ups that are happening out there as it is. Chad: So, I think it's gonna be harder for a TMP in this scenario, unless they really start to boost the hell out of products or boost the hell out of sales through what they normally do from a traditional standpoint. That's just selling a shit ton of ads, using everything that's out there. Instead of trying to build up a TalentBrew, which is a competitor to most of these people in the market. Joel: Yup. You know, historically, people that are new to the industry, don't appreciate the fall that has occurred with the agency business. The days of when agencies could just answer the phone and put display ads in Sunday newspapers, life was really good. Getting 15% of a $5-10,000 display ad and doing that a lot was very profitable. The job board industry created commoditization, so the 5,000 display ad is now a $99 ad on HotJobs. Then, there was a phase of like, “Well, let's create our own technology and try to get a hundred percent of the profit. Try it. So, let's make a jobs to career, a jobs2web-” Chad: Competitor. Joel: “Competitor.” You saw that on the direct employers end and create all these social, like, “Have a page on Facebook” they offered that for a while. That really hasn't worked out. They're a skeleton of what they used to be. I commented at the SHRM talent show. All the SHRM shows used to be half of agencies. Chad: Right. Joel: Tons of agencies. Now there's two. There's a small number of agencies. I agree with you, they are consultant. I think there's a need for them, particularly with all the AI, automation, Chatbot, deep big data stuff that's out there. There's a need for companies to say, “We don't really know what the hell we're supposed to do or buy or use. Help us do that.” But, that's less some of the advertising situation because you have the programmatic end coming in, which is gonna be a thing, right? Chad: Yes. Yes. Joel: So now, it's like, “Who's the best programmatic?” This becomes a really challenging industry, although, they make a lot of money, TMP has some really good clients, the private equity firm is probably gonna replicate what we saw at CareerBuilder, what we're seeing at Monster. It gives an opportunity to the boutique agency. I think you and I both, in Vegas, heard stories about people dumping the bigger type TMP agencies for the smaller, more personable ones. I think that's gonna continue. I think a lot of companies that use TMP are gonna look at this acquisition and see people leave or see people see things go away that they're used to and look for alternatives. Joel: We'll see what happens, but I don't think this is probably a great thing for the future of TMP. I don't see them hiring people and growing this thing out, but I guess we'll see. Chad: It'll be interesting to see the direction, as I had said, with the technology. Are they going to try to continue to compete in the realm of technology? I don't know. That's hard. Then, also, like, you'd said, on the programmatic side of the house, everybody's doing the ad buying piece, so there are so many different, as you said, boutique types of agencies that are really specialized, competition is high. Very high. In all flanks for them. Joel: Yeah. And what did we hear at the conference from the programmatic guys? That's ultimately a commodity, too. Chad: Yup. Joel: Right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: I just don't know where a lot this stuff goes. In private equity, it's not in their DNA to say, “Let's build out products.” Chad: No. Joel: “Let's enhance, let's evolve, let's throw stuff at the wall.” Like you said, maximize profits, sell stuff, sell it off to whomever, and that tends to be the history of what happens with these guys. If you're at TMP and stuff goes on, hit us up at chadcheese.com and let us know what's going on. Chad: Where's the bell? Joel: You want the bell? You like the bell. Sovren: Sovren AI Matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks about each individual transaction. It will find, rank, and sort the best matches, according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches, it tells you how and why it produced them and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you, so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. Sovren: To learn more about Sovren AI Matching, visit sovren.com, that's S-O-V-R-E-N.COM. Joel: Google, we gotta talk about Google every week. We need a theme song. Chad: A Google theme song, yeah. You'll be definitely be hearing it in India, right? Joel: Google for Jobs is coming to a neighborhood near you and all around the world. Chad: Yeah, yeah. There's really not going to be an area that Google for Jobs is not going to try to penetrate. Europe, Canada supposed to be coming, supposedly. Joel: Yeah. We both heard, the country up north is getting Google for Jobs. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. It's coming. The big question is, how do you work with it? How do you leverage springboard off of it? That's the big question. As we've actually talked to job board owners and job site owners and whatnot over the last month and, especially, last week at SHRM and TATech, the question is, where do you pivot? Where do you go? You have to find something different than just being a damn job board, unless you're super niche and you've got a community that people really need. Unless that, you're gonna be struggling. You're gonna be struggling. Joel: Yup. We, again, going back to Vegas, it's great to get out and see presentations and different points of view and updates, but one of the things that really struck me, was someone said, someone presented and said, “What is the scariest page on the internet?” Of course, I said, “You're LinkedIn profile,” but that was the wrong answer. The right answer, according to this presenter, was, Google for Jobs, search results page. Chad: Yeah. Joel: One of the things that I thought was interesting was, Google has stopped putting the ATS URL as a apply option and their putting in the company name as the option, which, I think, is part of the taxonomy, or whatever, when you submit jobs to the site. But, to me, I think we've talked about this before, is that, look, if you're a job seeker, and you see, okay, here are the ways you can apply to this job, either the company or CareerBuilder or ZipRecruiter or Monster or whatever. You, as a job seeker, which one are you going to pick. Even though the others might be easier, you're probably gonna think that your best chance to get into the company is by using the company website. Agreed? Chad: Yeah. I would agree just from what I know over the last decade, or so, but I think that's changing because some of these services are offering a better experience. That's what Google's looking for and that's really what, I think, Google is trying to find out. Is ZipRecruiter a better experience than the actually corporate website? Is that site? Is this site? Chad: I think that's something that we're gonna figure out. This is really the key. When I talked about these different job boards or these different job sites, or whatever, recruitment companies, trying to leverage Google for jobs. This is what I'm talking about. If you have a better experience for that customer coming through to the job, you're gonna win. That's the beautiful thing, or you're not, so you better focus on being great. Joel: Yeah, we've talked about it is you gotta Amazon that shit. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's gotta be one click, good to go, done, and effective. I think what someone asked in the presentation was, “How does Google decide which job boards show up on Google for Jobs?” Certainly, there's some relationship things there, at least initially, but over time, Google's gonna know which sites people click on and come back to Google and click something else, because they do this with their search results. In their search results, if you click on a result and then you're back on Google within five seconds, they know that the result that they gave you sucks. So, eventually, that page, in this case, is going to start slowly going down the search results page or rankings and, eventually, not show up. Joel: I agree with you, if Job Board X is horrible and people click on it and go, "This sucks" and goes back to Google and clicks on something else, that initial site is going to disappear in my best guess, over time. You need to work on your apply stuff and make as Amazon as possible. Chad: Right. Again, it's about experience. Google cares about the user. That's the person searching for the job. Your content really doesn't matter to them because it's shit. Guess what? It's gonna be kicked to the curb. Joel: Also, it's a red flag, or wake-up call, for ATSs to make applying really easy on their site because if you can make your apply really easy, so the point where, I, as an employer, don't have to put my job on all these job boards that also show up? Then, guess what? I'm gonna save a ton of money, if I'm not using half or a percentage of the job boards that I'm not using or I'm using today, because my ATS got it right with the apply process. Chad: Yeah. I think a handful of ATSs really give a shit about the user experience. Just a handful. The rest of them, they don't give a shit. You can go out and you can go buy a cosmetic apply partner to be able to do that. Joel: I agree. Joel: Adecco and PeopleFluent. We got more mergers and acquisitions. Chad: Oh, man. Adecco. I think Adecco, out of the two is much more interesting. Just from the standpoint of, we're talking about a people company, a staffing company, it's their job, it's their money to be able to get the right people into right jobs. Then, you've got General Assembly, which they're more of a credentialing, skilling up type of organization, so if I needed in-demand skills, whether it's coding or something like that, I could actually take courses through General Assembly. This makes sense. Obviously, from the standpoint of, Adecco being able to go out after these different clients and say, “Guess what guys, whether it's just staffing, RPO, whatever it is, we can actually, not just go out and find the types of candidates that you're looking for, we can take what you need.” Joel: "We're gonna grow them." Chad: “We can grow them.” This is what an actual fucking talent pipeline looks like, guys. You don't just go out and steal and find, you grow that shit, too. This, from my standpoint, for $412 million is genius for Adecco, if they pull this off right. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. I think we feel about this acquisition sort of like how we felt about IKEA buying TaskRabbit. It was such a normal and natural and organic marriage. Chad: It made sense. Joel: This is the same thing. We place people, let's grow the people ourselves, let's get them right off the tree, and then place them. That makes a ton of sense. This isn't a private equity deal, where there's no synergy, really, at all. It's not just, “Hey, let's just maximize profits, cut out fat, and then sell this thing off.” Chad: Yeah. Joel: This a real acquisition and kind of marriage that we like to see happen, so kudos to Adecco for seeing that and making that happen. Chad: Well, here's the thing, and I say this all the time, If you want to look at what is more efficient and smart, look at staffing companies, look at RPO, definitely look at RPO because they are focused on the EBITA on efficiencies, and that's where dollars come from, from efficiencies. If they have a competitive advantage in the market, they're going to squeeze the hell out of it. Companies can do the same damn thing without acquiring another company. They just have to be smarter about it. But, unfortunately, they're not, so you might as well go ahead and just plug into Adecco. Seriously. Bullshit. How stupid. The people are out there. You can skill them up. Go do it. “No, we're just gonna go ahead a pay really high fucking fees.” Okay. Have fun with that. Joel: Fun with that. Our insight into the other acquisition of PeopleFluent is a little less optimistic, but we're both really shocked by the price tag. Chad: $150 million and this is an applicant tracking system. It's gone through a rebranding, but it's been around for well over 10 years, 15 years, maybe 20 years. Joel: Yeah. It's old. Chad: It's (PeopleFluent) technology. It has assets already. It's huge on the compliant side of the house. I know that, which is always something that federal contractors, who have huge dollars, need. So, they've got that from an asset standpoint. Then you take a look at the sales side, which I have no clue what their sales is, but with this low-ass ticket number, what do they have, like two or three clients for goodness sakes? This is pitiful. Joel: Let's put this in context, a little bit. Okay. LinkedIn sells for Microsoft for $26 billion. Chad: With a B, yes. Joel: With a B. CareerBuilder and Monster, from what we can tell, about 500 million. At their peak, $10 billion valuations. Okay? Chad: Okay. Okay. Joel: Dice and their network valued, I think their valuation's around 200 million, or maybe that's ... yeah, I think that's valuation, so, 200 million. You have an ATS, which like you said, okay, you have low unemployment, you have clients, you have revenue, you have a technology, you have a brand, and, from what we can tell, that's not worth a whole lot. In fact, it's worth less than most job sits that are prominent in this business. Joel: We talk about commoditization, we talk about value. What in the world is going on that an ATS is valued so low? I don't know. That does not bode well for its competition. Chad: I had to read that snippet twice. I think they're going through the process right now; it hasn't actually finalized. Joel: Yeah. Chad: But, still. That's a pathetic price tag for somebody who's been in the industry as long as they have, that should have enormous amount of technical assets and enormous amounts of fucking sales. Joel: How much of selling, do you think, is potentially fear of the big guys getting into this? The Googles, the LinkedIns, those guys. Is this just, “Hey, it's time to sell and we better get 150 now or our asset's gonna be 75 in a year, it's gonna be 25 in two years.” Is that part of the thought process, you think? Chad: Oh, yeah. I definitely think it is. Not to mention, you're looking at all these other un-ATS types of technologies that are popping out all over the place. A lot of the older platforms, they haven't evolved as fast as they have needed to. Joel: Yeah. Chad: They see these newcomers coming out and it's like, “Look, we gotta get out of this now, because we're gonna get out with zero after a while.” I think it's definitely pressure on their side, not just from the big names, but all these small up and comers who have better tech. Joel: I agree. Let's hear a quick word from AJE and we'll talk about our favorite topic: Sex Robots. AJE: 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 on-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. For more information, call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Joel: So sex robots is on a part of branding commentary. The first one, I guess, we should talk about is a pivot, by DCC, I've never heard of these guys. DCC jobs raises one million seed round led by Skip Capital and rebrands itself as Work180. Sexy. Chad: Yeah. Work180.co. Yeah. This is interesting, just from standpoint of, this is a women's search network, pretty much. Here's the key. It's a velvet rope type of platform/community, let's say, where you have to be endorsed to be able to use the platform. So, if your policies don't actually meet the policies of Work180, then you can't use it. We're talking about policies with regard to equal pay, the, obviously, equality types of policies within your organization. From my understanding, they vet you for all of those things before you're allowed to come and speak with their women. Joel: Velvet ropes are nice, but this sounds a little bit discriminatory, to me, in the reverse. No? Chad: Yeah. You could say it's discriminatory. Here's the thing, though. This is what I don't think people actually get. It's kind of like the idiot who said, “I couldn't see an ad on Facebook because I was a while male and they only put it out there for females.” The reason why they do that, the reason why these sites exist, the reason why disability hiring sites exist, is because companies suck at actually getting those people to become more diverse. What do you do? Seriously, what do you do? Do you just go to a general population site, throw jobs out there and say, “God, I hope women apply.” Or, do you smartly target and go after those types of individuals in these types communities. I say the latter because it just makes good sense. If I know my culture, if my culture sucks, when it comes to females, or it sucks because I don't have veterans or individuals with disabilities, or what have you. What do I do? I go after them in a targeted fashion. Chad: I think this is smart. I just think the velvet rope piece could be a little much. I guess we'll find out. It's an interesting play, that's for damn sure. Joel: Historically, diversity is one of the biggest rackets in our industry. I will say it because, traditionally, companies need to target diverse audiences, right? Chad: Yup. Yup. Joel: So, the model of like, “I'm gonna create a job site and call it, “Diversity Jobs” or “African American Jobs” and get money from companies” because then tell the feds like, “Oh, yeah. We're diversity because we're on Diversity Jobs” or “we're on African American Jobs” “Women Jobs” dah, dah, dah. But, all the while, these vendors that are getting money aren't that interested in being diverse, they're interested in leveraging the power of the law to make companies buy into their product. Chad: And their brand's saying [crosstalk 00:37:31] “we are diversity.” Joel: Yeah. To me, this is like 2.0 of what we saw in the early 2000s. Chad: Yeah, but, here's the thing. It's all about outcomes, now. Before, it was like, “Oh, let's be warm and fuzzy and let's say we love women and we love veterans and individuals with disabilities, so on and so forth,” all these different ... “Let's say we wanna hire them all, but yet, we don't effectively do it because our outcomes show that we're hiring a bunch of white males or we're hiring a bunch of Asian males,” depending on where you're at in the country. Chad: It all comes down to outcomes. Many of those sites, those old-timey sites like you're talking about, where, really, just there for that word, “diversity” it didn't matter. Now, smart companies, not all of them because they're not all smart, I'm talking about talent acquisition, they are focusing on outcomes and they wanna see business cases that are focused on outcomes for specific companies to get women into these types of jobs. How can you help me actually diversify, really diversify, my culture? If you can't show me that, hit the bricks, pal. Joel: Fair enough and you know who else loves women? Chad: Oh, Jesus. China and India. Joel: Yes. The discrepancy of male to woman ratio in these countries, apparently, you've got an interesting story here. Chad: Actually, Julie sent me this story and she was like, “This is gonna flip your lid.” Out of China ... China's population is 1.4 billion and there are nearly 34 million more males than females, which is actually the equivalent of the population, closes to the population of California or Poland. This is the big ... Obviously, we're talking about diversity. This is gonna be hard for them to have diverse organizations. But, we're talking about guys- Joel: Oh it's gonna be hard, alright. Chad: They'll never find wives and they will rarely have sex. Joel: Come on, dude. That's funny. I made a joke and you didn't acknowledge it. It's okay. Chad: Oh, I didn't hear it. Joel: I said it's gonna be really hard. Anyway. Chad: Oh, God. Joel: But, we know the sex robots are coming and they're definitely coming to China and India because there's a lot of horny dudes without women. Chad: Yeah, India's worse than China, so those numbers that I just read to you are China and India's actually worse. So, yeah, from an industry standpoint, we joke about sex robots, and we joke about all these types of things with automation, but seriously, this is a real thing and I think I'm gonna start looking at stock. Joel: Dude. Yes. Virtual reality. We're human beings. We still have needs and shit. Anyway, yeah. China made this problem. Right? Chad: Yes. Joel: Culturally and legally. They're in this problem that they have now. Chad: Yes. Not thinking about the long term impact of only having male children. How's that gonna impact all the other countries that are around them? Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Chad: Not just their own country, so this is actually kind of scary, especially when we're talking about diversity, we're talking about culture, that's a hell of a lot of men that outweigh women 35 million in China and I think 37 million in India. Joel: This is, historically, when governments say, “Let's just start a war.” Things happen when there's an imbalance in nature and I'm just saying war is sometimes the remedy for that imbalance. Chad: Obviously, governments start wars for far less than something like this. We're talking a huge difference in population, not just in that country, but globally. I'm talking about the size population, almost of California. That is ridiculous. Joel: And Poland. Chad: Had to throw that in there. Joel: I think we out, dude. Chad: Sex robots, we out. Tristen: Hi, I'm Tristen. Thanks for listening to my stepdad the Chad and his goofy friend Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out on all the knowledge dropping that heading up in here. They made me say that. The most important part is to check out our sponsors because I need new track spikes. You know, the expensive, shiny gold pair that are extra because well, I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #Careerbuilder #EMSI #Adecco #PeopleFluent #Google #GoogleforJobs #Work180 #SexRobots #VR

Live from SHRM Talent in Las Vegas! The Chad & Cheese sit down with two of the most exciting companies around today, in two of the most talked about technologies. Thad Price, CEO of Talroo, formerly Jobs2Careers, talks rebranding and the future of job distribution. Amit Chauhan, CEO of JobAdX, discusses how they are looking at programmatic ad buying from an entirely different - and better - angle. Enjoy. and give our sponsors your wallets. Because, we said so. Lots of love to America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly and JobAdX. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad: Hey it's Chad. Joel and I were in Vegas all week this week. I know, it's hard being us, guys. But guess what? We've got some amazing interviews and if you didn't know, if you didn't hear, Jobs2Careers is now Talroo. That's right. So we're gonna talk to Thad, the new CEO over at now, Talroo, and also, if you don't know about JobAdX we're going to talk to their CEO, Amit, and the dude is awesome. So, take a listen, learn more about this industry and about these new names that are coming out. Whether they've been in the market and they're pivoting, or they're entirely new. Enjoy. Announcer: 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: What's up everybody? We're back with our series of SHRM talent interviews. We're real excited to have Thad Price, newly named CEO. Congratulations, by the way. Thad: Thank you very much. Joel: That's quite an honor. When I met you, you were sort of slogging in the trenches with Shelly Mudd and company, so good on you, man. Wanted to really get you in ... You have a big announcement here at the show. Why don't you just tell us what you've unveiled here at the show and we'll dig into the whys and the whats. Thad: Yeah, great question. So we've unveiled our new brand. Our new brand is Talroo. And from our perspective, Talroo is the unification of the Jobs2Careers.com destination and also our growing employer suite of services. So back in October, we launched On Demand Talent, which is a product that we built under the Jobs2Careers.com brand. Chad: ODT. Thad: ODT, that's right. Chad: Yeah, you know me. Thad: On Demand Talent. So we launched it and got a lot of great feedback, and so now that product is actually Talroo Attract. And so now we're bringing in the brand together around our new brand that is Talroo. Joel: So what's going to happen to the Jobs2Careers brand? Because right now I believe, if you go to Jobs2Careers, the logo is still there, powered by Talroo. Are we looking at a multi-brand situation? Will Jobs2Careers go away and everything will be Talroo? Will Jobs2Careers be a separate thing and Talroo will be a tech arm? Tell us exactly what the future holds. Chad: What's going on? Thad: You guys really want to know this. Joel: Chad and Cheese want to know. Thad: It's a burning question. Joel: Jeez! Thad: It's a great question. So from our perspective, it's basically the technology. Talroo is the technology, Jobs2Careers.com is the job seeker destination. That's how we look at the world right now as really unifying around this idea of software and technology that helps power how employers attract talent. Joel: So consumers should think of Jobs2Careers as a job promotion, distribution arm, correct? Thad: Consumers, or ... Well we- Joel: As employers, HR people should look at distribution of jobs, pimp my jobs, get exposure. And they should look at Talroo as a technology arm solution? Thad: As a platform. Joel: As a platform, okay. Thad: As a data-driven platform to essentially find and reach unique audiences that we can uncover to help uncover quality candidates. Chad: So are we talking programmatic? Thad: It's not so much programmatic in that ... In our world, as you look at the definition of 'programmatic', it's really ... in some cases, it's kind of muddy. Right? Because at the end of the day, a job site should be programmatic in their own ecosystem, right? They're being a great marketer. So if you look at what we do is we read ... All of the programmatic vendors are actually great partners of ours. We actually amplify how we work with programmatic vendors with our system. So the programmatic vendor serves as the rules engine, then we read the rules engine and we provide access to our unique audiences. So as Talroo continues to gain traction and we power more, then there's more audience data. So right now, we're powering about three billion job searches a month. That's actually e-mail alerts, in some cases SMS, site searches, all these things together. Joel: So why Talroo? What does it mean, and what other names did you come up with that you didn't go with? Thad: That's a great question. It was fun. We looked at a lot of different things. We looked at On Demand Talent being ... There wasn't a lot of mystique in On Demand Talent. There wasn't a lot of intrigue in On Demand Talent. So when we started looking, we were like okay, what is important for us? And really what was important is we wanted mystique and intrigue. Because there've been aggregators and job boards around for so many years, and from our perspective it was really important to bring this mystique and intrigue. Thad: So when we looked at it, we said well, what do we really do? Right? And we connect talent and recruiters, and so how can we build a brand around what we do, and what's the connection that's there? So how we look at the word is we say we're bringing jobs seekers together with employers and we're attracting talent. So when that happens, there's this intersection, and so it's been great for us. Thad: So that was kind of the how we looked at it, and we're like, let's create a word that really speaks to what we're looking to do and what's interesting. Joel: Any other words that you created that didn't make the cut? Thad: There were a couple. But that was the one that really stood out that we worked on. Cause- Joel: Nice sidestepping that question. Chad: We wanna know the names. Name names, Thad. Name names. Joel: We'll have to go see what domains they've recently reserved. Chad: So you said it was fun. But there had to be some like back and forth argument. Tell us about the height of that, because branding, this is like for lack of better terms, like birthing a new child, right? Thad: Yeah. Chad: So- [crosstalk 00:06:07] Joel: Let's be honest, Jobs2Careers is not the most innovative name, imaginative name. So- Chad: Jobs and careers- Joel: Talroo is a little bit out there, so there must have been a nice conversation? Thad: Yeah. That was in the conversation, we were saying okay, again this idea of mystique and intrigue. How do we showcase this? And there was a lot of conversation around okay, who do we want to be? How do we want people to receive us as a brand? And that was a lot of fun. Thad: What was really interesting is that we all rallied around it. So Cindy, who heads up our sales team, she's had a lot of experience in the industry, she was like, "I love it. Let's do it." Tony, our new VP of Product who's like, "This is great, I love it. It feels good." And then we have a new VP of Marketing and Brand that joined us, Keith, about almost two months ago. And he was like, "I love it. It's great." So it all resonated. And then explaining about how we created it, and the intersection of talent and recruiting, and how that's so powerful was really important to us. Thad: And you know, what's interesting about our story is, we fully believe that great people grow great companies. Because you guys have seen all the turmoil that's happened in the industry over the last 10, 15 years. All the highs and lows. And so- Chad: We just did a podcast. And I don't know if you saw the Careerbuilder's a Trainwreck podcast. But yeah, it's happening all around us. Thad: Yeah. And people make all the difference. And so, if we can attract great people for companies that work with us, we can provide a great value and service to them. And just like we've attracted great talent to help grow Talroo to the next level. Joel: So let's talk about the jobs piece for a second. And you're in a unique situation, and a lot of people don't know that you ultimately share this same space, office-wise, with Indeed. They're in Austin. I mean, you literally could throw a rock and hit Indeed's office. Thad: We probably did. Joel: So you have a unique perspective on job distribution, the job board industry, the players. Google For Jobs obviously has been a meteorite into the whole industry I would think. What are your thoughts on the present state of the job board, job distribution industry? Thad: Great point. So my ... And great question. I agree with you all. I think that the idea of Google For Jobs is bigger than jobs. I think it's all about tapping into a B2B audience, and I think the clickstream data behind Google is what they want, is what's important to them. I think that's very big. When this first announced, I asked myself, I said, this is a big industry, right? 10 to 12 billion dollars worldwide. But it's Google. Is that exciting enough for them? Right? Is a few billion exciting? I don't know, I can't answer that question. Thad: But I do know that the whole idea to reach a B2B audience is much larger. I think it's like 80 billion. Joel: I'm pretty sure that 26 billion LinkedIn got their attention as well. Thad: Yeah, absolutely. Especially with Microsoft and how they can integrate a lot of that. So I think it's changing. And I think it's interesting to see how all of this is moving. With Indeed, we call our office the center of the job search universe. It's like this funny little thing we created, cause it's like literally there's Talroo , Indeed, and we're right there and have the same address. We're Building Two and they're Building One, right? So we do call it the center of the job search universe, which is pretty funny. Thad: But it's definitely changed a lot in so many different ways. But it's all moved to being data-driven, like any marketing. We talk about what's different about Talroo. We say we're bringing a marketing approach to job advertising, right? And it's not an emotional buy anymore. It's like, does it work? Are the hires in my ATS? And if it does scale and invest. And I think that's the big thing that's happened. Chad: So, on the employer's side, are you providing that scale of data? So that they know ROI is here, here? And how are you interfacing with applicant tracking systems? These aren't all easy questions, right? Thad: No. And it's an ongoing process. Chad: Yeah. Thad: So as we looked at it today, our first real mission was okay, how can we provide transparency and how much opportunity is there? What's the labor supply look like? Right? So if I open a wreck in your marketplace in Jobs2Careers, what does that look like? That was on demand talent. The predictive nature of it, right? I think I can drive 300 clicks at a cost of X price, we saved budget this, right? That's the first step. Thad: Where it gets really interesting is then taking that down to the additional steps. Into the higher data as well. So that becomes really interesting. But the other thing that's changed in the industry a lot is that the stat that is looked at is the source of hire stat. And the source of hire stat is about volume of hires, where do all the vital hires come from. And so there's a strategy that says I'm gonna be the number one source of hire. And that's a strategy that has worked really well for some. Then there's the other strategy of saying well, I really need to provide efficiency. I need my app-to-hire rate to be decent. Because that's time I'm wasting- Chad: Plus, it's a candidate experience, right? Thad: Yes. Chad: So if they're ejecting out of it, I mean, you want to make sure that it's nice and fluid. It's going to that ROI piece, right? So how do you really help them focus on being able to get that efficiency? And be able to focus on price? You're talking about transparency. Transparency is not easy to get with this. How do you do that? Thad: Yeah. It's a tall order. It's a tall order. But it's exciting for us, because there's steps. There's steps in the process. It's first, okay, what's available for me? How do I make that work? How do I become more efficient? Number two, I'm building a career site. I'm leveraging one of the platforms that are there. I'm using a recruiting marketing platform. Or I'm taking people directly to my ATS. How do we bridge that? How do we reduce friction, right? And then how do we ensure that there's a great candidate experience? Thad: So those are the things that we really focus on. And the next step is what are the other data attributes that we can help make decisions for our customers and for our employers? That's where the opportunity really is. Joel: From an outsider's perspective here at the show, you've got a nice booth. You've got the 20 by 20, it's probably the fanciest booth here at a relatively modest show. You're ramping up hiring. I noticed you brought on Mark Anderson, who has sort of long history in this industry. Cindy's been around forever. Like, a lot of new people, a lot of new energy. What are those new people going to be doing? [crosstalk 00:12:58] In other words, are there global aspirations here? Are you sticking in the US? There's just such a hunger for the products that you're ... I mean, in other words, it's a vast change from some of the other companies, CareerBuilder, that we talk about, that aren't growing and sort of scaling up. So I guess, just talk about what are these people going to be doing? Is it global? Are you sticking in the US? What's going on? Thad: There's massive upside in the US. Like that market, there's a huge opportunity in the US. So from our perspective, we're focusing on embracing the relationships with the advertising agencies that we work with. We bring on more enterprise business. That business could come through some of the programmatic partners that we work with, or it could come direct through companies that want to work with us direct. And largely when companies work with us direct, there's one key thing that they're yearning: service. Who would have thought that service as a software? Right? You know, the reverse, right? If you think about it. Joel: Huh. You need to trademark that. Thad: Yeah. So but I'm serious, right? If you think about what people are yearning for. That level of service is so important for so many different people. And I think that that becomes very important. You look at all of our testimonials from customers, it's great service, great service, great service, great service. So a lot of that is just focusing. And there's so much opportunity here in the US. That there's tremendous upsides. So we have no plans today look international. Joel: Okay. Chad: Is that kind of service scalable? Thad: Yes, with the right people. Chad: Okay. Thad: Right. With the right people and the right customers. Right. You mentioned Joel you wrote an article about our product that we launched, Ipply, that was focused on small businesses, and we shut down that product. And it was a great learning lesson for us. And what it told us was that small business isn't something that is in our DNA at this time. So we learned a lot from that. So we retooled a lot of what we do, and we said okay, this is our focus and this is where there's a lot of opportunity. Joel: So in light of personal service et cetera, some other tech that we talk about on the show pretty frequently are Chatbots, automation, AI. What are your thoughts on that in terms of your own business or just the industry in general? Thad: I think it's the future. But I go back to this whole idea of humanizing HR. Like Chatbots ... This is what we do. We have a relationship with people. We're in human resources. Chad: But we got a black hole problem and- Joel: If you're a job seeker [crosstalk 00:15:23], I'd rather talk to a robot than nothing at all. Chad: Yeah. Thad: That's a terrific point. That's a terrific point. I think there's an opportunity with it. It's just a very specific opportunity. It's how to become more efficient in what you do on a daily. It's not gonna solve all the world's problems. It's how you use it. Thad: I think one of the tracks, there was an individual director in town, I think was from Amazon, looking at how do they automate the entire hiring process. So I think that there's- Joel: Basically drones delivering candidates to your door I think is [crosstalk 00:15:53] where Amazon's going. Yeah. Yeah. Thad: Dropping them. So it's pretty wild. So I think there's definitely a use case for it. So, we'll see. We'll see. Joel: Ipply was built sort of on an app. Any aspirations to just sort of revisit the app, sort of native app world, and create anything around that? Thad: Not at the moment. Joel: Okay. Thad: No. Not at the moment. No. It's been interesting seeing from an app perspective. There are a number of things that have to happen and to reduce friction for it to be truly valuable for job seekers. So our thesis has been we're gonna invest in products and services where there's added value. So in the case of, like, we've looked at creating a job seeker app, and we're like, well, there's a lot of work that needs to be done with applicant tracking system integrations. So if we don't have the applicant tracking system integrations, then would an app be that powerful for us? So ... Chad: So how does a customer actually interact with you now that's you've turned into Talroo, versus the old ODT product? And certainly not the old ODT product, just really rebrand ... Is there a different mechanism in which they're just gonna buy something that's rebranded? Thad: Yeah, they're buying it rebranded as a product. And as a new company. And a lot of things we're adding into the product as we continue integrate. But as it stands right now, there's no difference in the core product. Chad: So what is the actual core product? And what do you see as next steps, road map-wise, on being able to evolve that product? Thad: Absolutely. So today, there's really kind of three pillars of the original product is: how do we predict? And how do we optimize? And how do we deliver? So the whole idea was, how do we predict how well we think your job is going to perform in our ecosystem? How do we optimize it for you? How do we scale up what's working and scale down what's not working? And then how do we deliver right into your ATS or into your career site. Thad: So a lot of it is how do we make that kind of predict area, how do we make that more robust? What are the other signals and signs we can use of whether people click or they don't? What's the brand like? What's the employer brand like? What are all these types of things that are really powerful? And then more importantly, what are the other areas to make that experience rich for people? What are some other things that people are interested in? Thad: So data. Going around it. The idea of data. Right now, if you look at our system today, and in most systems ... And I hate saying this, cause we're in the business of people, we're not in the business of clicks, right? But there're clicks in the system, and they're reported. But what do you do next? These are people. How do we bridge that gap? Chad: Well, how do you bridge that gap? I mean, that's the question. Because- Thad: You'll have to wait and see. Chad: Come on, Thad! Joel: He talks so much about Talroo's mystery. Chad: Yeah. Sam made us wait, she couldn't even tell us- [crosstalk 00:18:57] Joel: The Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. Chad: And now you're making us ... ah. So, into my next question. So you have a vision really for process and for employer brand. You're talking about experience, right? Thad: Experience is very important to us. Chad: Okay. Thad: Absolutely. One of the things when you look at how we interact is, we would rather drive a candidate directly to a career site that's mobile optimized, right? That's not a Jobs2Careers.com experience. I mean, that's a big differentiator, how we look at the world. So if we were saying, hey, we're a job site, we're gonna be focused on okay, how do we keep these people in the ecosystem and have resumes being posted? Chad: To your ecosystem, as opposed to the employers? Thad: Exactly. Chad: Okay. Thad: Exactly. So we look at the world a little bit differently from that perspective. Joel: Your founder Bruce Ge is a pretty interesting cat. Thad: Ge. Yeah. Joel: Or Ge, sorry. Thad: That's alright. Joel: What's he up to? Cause it's kind of an interesting story for people who are geeks in the industry. What's Bruce up to now that he's sort of passed the CEO baton to you? Thad: Yeah. He's having a lot of fun. So he's spending a lot of time being a Chinese entrepreneur. A successful Chinese entrepreneur. He's spending a lot of his time thinking about how he can help Chinese entrepreneurs be more successful in the US, and that can also mean how he helps Asian companies come to the US in a lot of different ways. So it's a very unique trait. Thad: And it's very interesting now of course, with what's going on politically. But he looks at it and says it's a very different market. The US is a very different market. How did I succeed, and how did I build a great business in the US, a profitable business in the US? And then how do I help Chinese entrepreneurs be more successful? So there is a lot of great opportunity. So that company is with us. There's a conference that focuses on entrepreneurship, it's called F50. It's where he spends a lot of his time. Joel: What are some of your takeaways from the show so far? Either the Expo Hall or just the attendees, what are some of your takeaways after a day and a half? Thad: So it's really interesting. There's a lot of focus around changing. I see change, right? I see change in every corner by a lot of the different products and services that are there. People are looking for something different. Joel: Do you think they know what they're looking for? Thad: No, I think they need to be told- Joel: Educated. Told. Yeah. Thad: Educated, right. Told probably a horrible word. Chad: Literally, I think they- Joel: I don't know, I need a Chatbots. Yeah. Thad: You know, it's interesting because there's just so much opportunity there, cause it's such an important sector. So important. Joel: Any vendors that catch your eye up to this point? Or from the show- Thad: Talroo. Joel: Well, obviously Talroo. Chad: Got this huge tower- [crosstalk 00:22:14] Thad: Talroo [crosstalk 00:22:16] Joel: Drink the Kool-Aid for God's sakes. Chad: Talroo Kool-Aid. So what can you tell us about what's next? Come on, Thad. Thad: How about next episode? Joel: Wah-wah. Okay. Well, where can we find out more about Talroo for our listeners? Thad: Talroo.com. Joel: Thank you, Thad. Thad: You're welcome. Thanks, guys. Joel: It's commercial time. Announcer: Sovren AI matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market, because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks about each individual transaction. It will find, rank and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches it tells you how and why it produced them, and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you, so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI matching visit sovren.com. That's sovren.com. Chad: It's SHOWTIME! Joel: With our SHRM Talent Interview Segment. Chad: SHRM Talent! Joel: SHRM Talent! Chad: Hoo hoo! Joel: Talented people. We're joined today with Amit Chauhan, I hope I said that- Chad: Is that good? [crosstalk 00:22:55] Joel: CEO of JobAdX and also Recroup, which some people may know as your previous company, it's still going, but the first company you launched. We're gonna focus on JobAdX here today, which you launched fairly recently. So for those that don't know, and probably that's most of our listeners, tell us about JobAdX, the genesis of it, and what you hope to accomplish with it. Amit Chauhan: Absolutely. And I'd really like to thank both of you for having me here today. Big fan of your podcast. Joel: Aw, thank you. Amit Chauhan: Just putting it out there. Chad: He's sucking up already! Joel: The question, though, are you Team Chad or Team Cheese? Chad: Oooh. Amit Chauhan: I'm Team Chad and Cheese. Chad: Ohhhhh! Joel: Ohhhhh! [crosstalk 00:23:41] Thank you for listening. Amit Chauhan: Absolutely. Coming back to your question. Originally we're an ad tech company. My background is from consumer Ad Tech, manage PPC counting for some big companies. No programmatic, not the programmatic we seek in our industry, but what programmatic is in consumer streams. Amit Chauhan: And the focus has been for us, when we got into recruitment industry, was to bring the consumer Ad Tech into recruitment technology. We did that with recruit, where we brought in ... retargeting more generalized analytics platform as well. And some social advertising and everything. And then, when we saw an opportunity when we started to learn about programmatic in recruitment space, which a lot of companies are doing, and we realized that they're focusing on one specific part, which is the buying side. And it just struck to us that why just buying? How can not you make the delivery that I make? Because when you make delivery programmatic, you don't have to worry anything else, because that takes care of all the rules that you have to set. Amit Chauhan: And that exactly is how the idea evolved, and we started working on it not too long ago, just maybe mid-last year 2017. An idea was to build the first real IDP-powered job advertising exchange. So the idea was we go to publisher partners, claim dedicated slots on their search results. And whatever topic their search is, we can in real time dynamically deliver a job based on what criteria they're searching. And that just gives us so much control. Amit Chauhan: Same thing if you to auction you see an ad. That ad is a response off of real time action that happened microseconds before the page was loading. Now the reason you see the vertical ad may be because of the data ad exchange. We as an industry have a lot more power. We have invented base advertising. We know exactly what ad a candidate wants to see. We know what they're searching for, where they're searching for it. And if you're still not delivering that way, like how good are we as a technology platforms. That's exactly what we'll bring you with JobAdX. That intent-based job advertising with real time delivery and real time direct. Chad: So, talent acquisition. Programmatic sounds good. It's almost like AI and machine learning, and it's like, oh, it's programmatic. It's like I can say it but I don't know what the hell it is. So, you guys talk about smarter programmatic, and you talk about bringing consumer Ad Tech in, right? How's that so different from recruitment Ad Tech? Are we talking about like the horse and buggy versus a Porsche? What are we talking about here? Amit Chauhan: Yes. So traditionally, we see the recruitment advertising exchanges that are being existed for quite some time now. What we are doing is, we created a network where they will rely on their publishers to show their jobs when they have to. So like, publisher job one X will get a feed from one of the exchanges. They feed from everywhere. And that even becomes like a responsibility of a publisher to show the jobs. Amit Chauhan: Now in that case, as the exchange itself, as the platform itself, they have no visibility of when the job will be shown, whom it will be shown, and how it will be shown. That doesn't make any ad platform powerful. Now, what makes Google so powerful? What makes Ad Techs so powerful? Their ability to see through other exchanges, through other networks, and place an ad based on what data they collect. And that is the same thing that we're doing. We see everything that is happening in our exchange, we see what keywords job seekers are searching. When they're clicking, when they're not clicking. The ability to turn on a job and turn off a job in real time. So it's not like a publisher has to refresh a feed every three hours or one hour just to make sure there are new jobs. We don't have to do that. Chad: So it sounds like it's more transparent throughout the network, and just fluid. It just flows, as opposed to you waiting and having to click a button to be able to get into a slot. The system it just works more fluidly than what you've seen in recruitment Ad Tech over the years? Amit Chauhan: Absolutely. And like we have access to those dedicated slots. It gives us more power that again, how we can locate more jobs. Like one of the more common concerns raised when I'm talking to a lot of agents and clients, that with traditional ad exchanges, especially job ad exchanges, they will give you the budget and the way they're set up, you'll spend your budget within an hour or two. And then you'll have to spend more. We don't do that. Because we understand that okay, if you give us less than a thousand dollars, we can spend it out over the whole period of your campaign. It can be ten days, 20 days, 30 days. So we do the budget continuation for our client. And we do it the same way ... we have been seeing that happening in consumer Ad Tech. Amit Chauhan: We want to run a cam ... like your job is on page one for a publisher today. Now, it might be on page two or page three with a traditional way of job posting. That doesn't mean that no new job seekers are coming. One thing we also need to see that we are so spoiled by Google, especially like millennials, that we don't want to go to second or third page on any searches. Like, I don't remember like when I went to my second page on Google search. For me, those results are irrelevant. Amit Chauhan: We think the same behavior we're doing the job search. We don't go to second or third pages. That's why like we see that negate the traffic for any job posting, it drops significantly after a couple of days. That I think is solved by having the placement. Our jobs are where the candidates are. So it's not second or third page. It can be any page where job seekers are. And we have a belief to make sure that if that candidate has seen this job x number of times, hasn't clicked on it, don't show them this job again. So that just gives us more ability to locate jobs more efficiently, conserve the budget, and just make sure that all advertisers get more access to unique candidates. Joel: We're seeing a lot of activity in this space. Pandologic. Appcast. A lot of ... Joveo. A lot of competition. How do you guys differentiate yourself from the others? Amit Chauhan: So we do overlap in some way or another. But I think our core focus, which is the technology side of it, is completely separate. Like for example, you talked about Pandologic or Recruitics, Clickcast, that's where they are the buying side of the platform. Which is a Google base and that has been the programmatic in our space for like previous couple of years. Amit Chauhan: We're not focusing on that part. Because what we have seen from consumer Ad Tech, if you make the delivery dynamic, you don't have to specifically set the rules. Because then, algorithms and then the exchange itself take care of the whole rules that you have to face. Be it okay when to stop a campaign, like when to run a campaign, when to show a job and not to show a job. So all those key factors come in play, but they have just done automatically. That's where we are focusing on, and that's where the core differentiator for us is. At some cases we do work in conjunction with them. So like some of our clients. But from the technology part, I think that we are very separate. And the vision is very separate as well. Chad: So on the analytics side of the house, do you have an analytics platform that you provide to them? Do you just plug into their analytics platform? How does that work? Amit Chauhan: So that's where we have capability of doing it both ways. But we do have an analytics dashboard for our clients to use. And like if our clients are using an existing programmatic platform, then we can send it out there as well. Like from technology, I think we have taken care of every aspect to make life easier for our clients. And any advertiser or anyone that comes to us we have seen the challenges of traditional programmatic platforms, the complexity of it. And it happens. Whenever industry evolves and brings you technologies from other industries, the complex part is actually addressed first. And that's exactly what we've seen. So the platforms that are out there, they're complex. They're good, they're performing well, but still. And the end user and talent acquisition manager is not the one using them. That's where our focus has been, to simplify the process so much that even if an end user, it can be like one person shop, can use programmatic to advertise one job or 100,000 jobs. Chad: So, in most cases, talent acquisition, they feel like they have to go an agency to be able to get this done. Because it is just so complex. What you're saying is with JobAdX, that's not something that you really have to worry about. You can plug into it, it's simplicity, and really the platform does the work for you. You don't have to sit there, watch your budgets, any of that other stuff. You get into the platform and it works for you. Amit Chauhan: Absolutely. And that's like that is the same thing that we have seen happening almost in I think in every industry around the world, whatsoever. So from consumer ad tech, what we have learned initially, is when you build a platform, if it's too complex at least these price lines, they will go through the agencies. Now the smaller market SMBs, they don't have budget to go to agencies, so they have to either learn themselves to do it, or they just don't do it. Chad: Mainly the latter, right? Amit Chauhan: Exactly. And that's exactly where even today's recruitment programmatic market is, where it's always focused on the high-priced client or the big companies, which can either afford an agency or which can have someone to really manage. Like who can hire someone to manage the programmatic side of it. Which is very rare, though, because most of them actually just go through the agencies. Amit Chauhan: We want to make sure though we have a platform accessible to anyone. It can be smaller companies, companies with two people, HR department or [crosstalk 00:33:47] department, and they want to advertise their jobs. They don't know if they want to go into Jobbook to do it, or they want to go to one particular place. Just like want it done in a way that it's optimized automatically. So we are building a platform that's accessible for everyone. Not just for special needs or just for enterprise clients or the big agencies. Joel: One of your big pushes when you launched was to get publishers onboard. In other words, sites where your jobs could be seen. Which I saw as a pretty big challenge. How is that going? You're smiling, so I assume it was. Talk about that, and where you are with that today. Amit Chauhan: So we're receiving really good response from the industry. I'll say the launch timing was off because we launched in December last year, and all the publishers that want you to Q1 Q2 for their product. And they like, we all understand that. A majority of the companies, publishers in our industry, they have significantly small tech teams. So like squeezing in even a small sprint can take a long time. Amit Chauhan: What we were able to achieve, working with even the handful of publishers, we were able to achieve something important indeed. Now that we've come to you to share with world perspective of publisher and client. That how, not just be adding our slots there, maximizing their on their revenue, which they will get from many of the job exchange. But also, if they're replacing our unit with a Google Adsense unit, they're actually starting to see more engagement for their other jobs as well. Because now their job seekers are seeing more relevant ads. They're not distracted by a Domino's Pizza ad from Google Adsense, just because someone do it. I've seen those happen myself. Chad: Unless you're Joel. Joel wants to see the Domino's Pizza. Joel: I'm good with pizza. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Here's pizza guy. Now, here's pizza. Amit Chauhan: But yeah. You don't go to job boards to search jobs there, right? Chad: No. He's looking for jobs and pizza at the same time. He's a very niche customer, though. Amit Chauhan: Okay. Chad: Yes. Joel: Super niche. Super niche. We talk a lot about on the show the challenges maybe what we think of as traditional job sites have from the top. So you have LinkedIn with Microsoft. You have Google and Google For Jobs. And even Facebook getting into this game. It seems like a challenge that we don't talk about enough maybe is the programmatic buying side. Do you agree with that? And if so, what do you feel like is the programmatic impact on the traditional job site? Is it good for them or bad for them? Or good for some, bad for some? Amit Chauhan: It's good and bad both. There's no real answer to it, like it's definitely good, or it's definitely bad. The players that you mentioned, like with Microsoft or Facebook, Google. Those so far, they've been staying away from actually entering into the market. But the core of powers that they have, like all of their ad exchanges, they're not doing it just yet. But when they do it, programmatic will become the norm. Because like they're not going to do it like the usual way of how the ad exchanges work in our industry. They will come with the same data bank hosting and like how everything is more real time and everything. Amit Chauhan: The sooner we adopt to it, it will be a better transition for the industry. So that when these players come in, we'll know where we fit in and where our ... either by the business models or the technology specs are fed, because they will come in eventually. They are very aggressive, like Google especially is very aggressive. And all the publishers, and that's where we think, all the publishers are really using Google Adsense. So sooner we realize that how and where we fit in as technology, as market, as companies and partners, it'll be an easier transition for the industry. But- Joel: I might have asked the question incorrectly. Do you think programmatic ad buying is good for sites like Indeed, Monster, et cetera? Or good, bad, like what's your opinion? Amit Chauhan: Oh, it's definitely good. Joel: Good? Amit Chauhan: It's definitely good. Joel: For all of them? Amit Chauhan: For all of them. And the reason I'll say it's good. If they can translate that results to their customers. Because in the end, what's good should be good for industry. What they're doing with programmatic, if they're doing with their job distribution- Joel: But if I'm Indeed, and you're putting ads on all my competitors as well and I'm in a free marketplace competing with the results on other pages, then that's bad for me, right? I'd rather have all your money on my site, and not compete with the other job sites. Amit Chauhan: But that happens either way. Even if you- Joel: Not if Indeed doesn't play. Amit Chauhan: Like in the end, you would have to, at some point. Joel: Okay. Alright. Amit Chauhan: When the market will growth. Like you can say okay, I don't want to, we don't want to do it just yet. Yeah, we begin to say that a lot of job boards or exchanges are denying adopting to programmatic, just because they don't understand it. And that happens with every industry when there's a new thing that comes which people don't understand, they want to stay away from it. It's okay for now, but there will be in maybe a couple of years or so, you will have to adopt to it. Even for like bigger players like even Monster, they will have to agree to the point that okay, programmatic is the way to go. Chad: It ain't. Think that really the short term loss per se, the click dollars versus the posting dollar, is really the issue right out of the gate. It's like, well, I'm gonna lose this concrete $500 or $200, whatever it is, to post a job versus I don't even know how many clicks or what dollars I'm going to get from there. So do you see that as a long-term kind of win versus a short-term kind of, hey, this is the dollars we now, you gotta let that go and you gotta evolve? How does that happen? Amit Chauhan: Well, without actually naming out, see like- Chad: No, name, name, name! Amit Chauhan: No names! No names! No names. I think that we have seen from the bigger players, they are industry, that they're very concerned about the short-term impact rather than the long-term strategy. Because they are companies who should be working with Google rather than not working with Google. Because you need to understand that Google is the destination for job seekers. And when we're in market where there's so little, especially like unemployment where it is historically low, so we need to understand that if you want to play with the most important search engine in the world, and if you just want to go against them, it's not going to help us. Like you have the traffic right now, but you're not gonna have it for long. Chad: Could you hear that, Indeed? Amit Chauhan: I didn't say Indeed! Chad: No, I didn't. Joel: He didn't mention names, but Chad will mention names. Chad: Chad mentions names - Joel: No fear on doing that. Amit Chauhan: But in the end, whenever you have these companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, entering this space, because they have all the resources, that they can make big changes. It's better to play with them rather than against them. That should be the focus for ... These are the bigger players in our industry. It also opens doors for the smaller ones. Because once they start to adopt to the newer changes and the evolution, it makes it easier for the smaller techs to get in. Chad: So these smaller Nit sites, and we've actually received comments and emails from smaller Nit sites saying hey, look, what do I do? Job boards are dying, what do I do? This would be your answer for them is like, hey, you need to go programmatic. You need to be a publisher. Amit Chauhan: Absolutely. But when someone say job boards are dying, and it's a challenge to see how you can save a job board. Because it's a very different topic altogether. Chad: Yes. Amit Chauhan: But how you can work with everyone else can really make a lot of difference. Okay, do you really understand your audience? How can some other technology can activate your audience better? Programmatic can. Programmatic, that's the whole power of programmatic in general that how it activates the audience, to capitalize, to really maximize your [inaudible 00:42:19]. A lot of time you post a job when they actually see they're getting keywords, clicking or not clicking. Just see when it comes to tracking the results, tracking the convergence. Job boards haven't done a great job 'til now. There are some that are adopting to it, but largely not. Amit Chauhan: When you go programmatic on a higher level, you start to see those things. Even if you don't have a huge audience, it can make a lot of difference, because you'll see that your jobs are located more frequently. You can see people are applying, people are clicking. They're really just engaged and the convergent rate is starting to go up. And everything translates end up later on. Joel: You mentioned the world of marketing, and I appreciate your statement that if you want to make a successful HR business, just look at what's working in the sales and marketing world. And we're five years behind. So just do something- Chad: At least. [crosstalk 00:43:13] Joel: In the world of marketing, programmatic ad buying is a huge percentage of what's being bought out there. What percentage are we at in penetration with HR and recruiting? And how big do you think that number of percentage will be in the future, like how high are we gonna get? Where is the ceiling? Amit Chauhan: Well, the numbers that we're seeing in the industry are very different. So some places I am reading it's five percent, some places I'm reading it's 80 percent. I think- Joel: You agree there's no chance it's 80 percent? Chad: No way. Amit Chauhan: No way. Chad: No way it's 50 percent, let alone 80 percent. Amit Chauhan: I think the answer to this is, when we're talking, you respect all. So when we're talking to the job boards, job boards they're going programmatic. And there's a really good percentage of that. If you're talking in terms of agencies, there's a really good percentage of that as well. But if you just talk about employers in general, it's a very small percentage. Joel: Right. Amit Chauhan: And it will also remain a very small percentage until we realize that we really open it up to SMBs, which we aren't yet. Because platforms are more focused on further enterprise. I'll say for the direct employers is definitely one to five percent, at max. Chad: So, with a platform being easier to access, utilize, kind of go on autopilot per se, how do you really penetrate that SMB market? Joel: And do you care? Chad: Oh yeah, they care. Amit Chauhan: Oh yeah. Chad: Look at Zip. Amit Chauhan: And actually that's a very good example. For us also. The motivation to build JobAdX was not just for enterprise, it was for SMBs. And like for example, a lot of time we like to talk, also things like Google Adsense for jobs when we talk to people. And that's exactly what the motivation is, that from the consumer Ad Tech, we have seen that if you don't have a platform that can sort of do smaller spaces, which is like I'll say 85 percent of the market, which is the small and medium size companies, you're missing out big. Amit Chauhan: DMPs, DSPs, the big companies that came in and they focus only on the agencies, and very soon they realized that if you really want to make big dollars, you have to have self-serve platforms. You have to have easier self-serve platforms which anyone can use. Even if they have a hundred dollars or $500. Amit Chauhan: The programmatic platform that we have in our industry right now, they're not fit for one job, or two jobs. Or even ten jobs. If you give them anything smaller than maybe a hundred or 200, it's not really worth it. It's not worth for it employers, it's not worth for even the platforms. That's where we are focusing. That's where we want to take it. That even if you have one job, even if you have a hundred dollar budget, you can create a campaign the same way someone will create it with thousands. System is designed to save in a way that won't leave you spending more. You get more visibility and more visibility. But even for the hundred dollars, we get the best value. And that's exactly what the focus is. That's happening in any advertising technology. It's about how much you're spending, how much work results you can get, and just translate it into that. Joel: So talking about spending, tell me about pricing. What can someone expect to pay if they have a thousand dollar budget to put towards JobAdX? What piece of that do you get? Amit Chauhan: We get? Let's not talk about that! Joel: 50 percent! Amit Chauhan: To be honest, we don't know how much we get. But I'll say it this way. I like traditional exchanges where it's a flat out share between publisher and advertisers, like sometime 50-50, 70-30. We haven't done it that way. Because that just makes, from my developmenting, they just say that makes their life easier. But like whatever we are trying to do, that makes their life so much difficult. But the idea is how we can maximize the returns for publishers. And so- Joel: So customer doesn't say I'm paying you a thousand dollars to push my jobs? How much of that is actually going toward buying ads? And how much is going to you? Like you don't let them know that? Amit Chauhan: Not right away. And the idea is, because what happens is, there's some jobs which are less competitive, where the CPCs are lower, and we want to make sure that if the CPC is really low, say it's hovering around 20 cents a click, in that case a really big chunk of that CPC goes to the publisher. And that has been the focus for us. The vendor the CPC starts to increase, that's when our shares start to increase. Where it goes, it fluctuates. But- Joel: So you're not a non-profit? Amit Chauhan: Oh, no- [crosstalk 00:48:11] Joel: You're a for-profit business? [crosstalk 00:48:13] So you don't just say, hey, 15 percent off the top is going to come to our platform? We're gonna get 15 percent? Amit Chauhan: No. It's like, it's programmed ... the system is designed to see that how it can maximize returns for publishers for good quality. It also does a couple of things from like quality traffic. So for example, we don't do the traditional partnerships in nature that'll give 50-50 from publisher partnerships. We just keep it open. We say okay, the system will analyze the traffic you are sending. If you send, let's say, your convergence rate is anywhere from 10 to 11 percent, you might actually get 80 percent of the click. If your convergence is five percent, you might get another 60 percent. If it's below five, you might 50 or lower. But it's focus on the quality, so that just makes like both sides meet even. And a lot of time it slows down the traffic for job delivery for one just to make sure that they're okay. It's balanced out. It's like there's no friction. Joel: Tell me something cool you're development team is working on right now. Amit Chauhan: Well, if I tell you that, those guys will freak out. Joel: Really? They'll freak out? Well, they don't listen to us. They won't hear this podcast. [crosstalk 00:49:29] Amit Chauhan: I've told them. I've told the whole team to listen to it [crosstalk 00:49:35]. But the better reason I think is- Joel: So speak in generalities. Is it new features? Is it just grow out the platform? What's sort of the major direction from that standpoint? Amit Chauhan: I think right now, our focus is performance more than features. Joel: Okay. Amit Chauhan: And something we have learned from Recroup generally, we all built Recroup. We build so much. I used to come up with the stupidest ideas and my dev team never said no. And they would just go and build it. And to realize, we're the only ones using those features. So this time, we're not focused on features that much. We're focused on how, what we have so far. From reusing some prototype one, prototype two, prototype three. And we're going to be until prototype 23. And focusing on what do we have, how we can improve the performance. How we can improve the search matching, job matching, click through rate, impressions, deliverability and all of that. Amit Chauhan: Right now, more focus is on the job search, so from where we were a month ago 'til now, we have seen significant improvement in our search matching. And now we're actually implementing what we're learning in that, because what we saw was, job seekers searches are really random. Can you guess what is the most common search parameter that we get? Chad: Jobs near me. Joel: Jobs. Amit Chauhan: It's actually no strain. People just come and search. Joel: Just browse, basically. Chad: Yeah. Amit Chauhan: And they obviously see where it comes. So now how do we address that? That's where the candidate profiling provider comes in. And if that candidate has an important strength, let's show the man his job. And try to see if they click on it, if they don't click on it. Chad: Learn from it. Amit Chauhan: Learn from it. Chad: Yeah. Amit Chauhan: And that's where the emotional learning is coming in very handy. Joel: Where can our listeners find out more about JobAdX? Amit Chauhan: Well, they can log in at www.jobadx.com. I just pulled up the spelling for some reason. Or they should reach out to our amazing VP of Sales Tim Hawk at tim@jobadx.com. Please don't email me. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Tim's in the room, so he's amazing. Joel: Yeah, he's ... yeah. Thank you Amit. Amit Chauhan: Thank you. Announcer: This has been The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Subscribe on iTune, 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. #JobAdX #Talroo #Jobs2Careers #SHRM

Could you be going to "Indeed Jail"? -- Seriously, WTF? The Chad and Cheese spend some time with industry veteran Tim Sackett as he discusses the trials and tribulations of being sentenced to Indeed "jail." You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll long for an alternative to Indeed. Enjoy. -- Straight from America's Job Exchange! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Announcer: America's Job Exchange is a market leader in diversity recruitment and an OFCCP compliance 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. For more information, call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: SHRM Talent. Hey, this is Chad and Cheese and- guess what? Yeah, we got Tim Sackett in the house. Joel: The Sack-man. Tim: -before? Am I the biggest guest you've- Joel: I guess you are. Tim: Like, the most frequented guest? Chad: I think so. Joel: Yeah, it's an illustrious list of all-stars. It's like SNL, where if you do five shows, you get a jacket. So you're well on your way. Tim: So close, so close. Chad: I think it's gonna be a Jobs2Careers jacket, because they're trying to get rid of those now. Joel: They're on clearance. Chad: What's the new name? Talroo Joel: Something like that. We're gonna get him on and get to the- Tim: So the marketing firm where they fired him after he came up with that? Joel: Oh, ouch, you're feeling salty today, Tim Tim: I got something that's on my nerves. Joel: So Tim is on the couch. Chad: He is. Joel: He's gonna vent a little bit. Chad: And he should, he should. Chad: Because from what I'm hearing, there's some bullshit happening over at Indeed. Tim: Well, yeah. Tim: That's nothing new but- Joel: Tell us your situation and what it's like to be in indeed jail. Tim: So yeah, if you don't like me calling it indeed, but it's Indeed jail. Remember when we used to do LinkedIn jail. And people still get into LinkedIn kind of told you, "here's how you get out of LinkedIn jail." We all kind of figured it out. And unfortunately you can't figure out how to get into Indeed jail. So, Indeed jail is when they stop scraping your site and no longer get free traffic. Which is awesome, we love the free traffic. It's like a crack pipe, right? They got us to- Joel: Heroin drip, heroin drip. Tim: You got addicted and you loved it and then they took it away. So I'm in Indeed jail, they (inaudible) my side because my search quality was bad. Now they send you a couple of blog posts in terms of, "here, let's have this define what search quality is." Chad: Yeah, okay. Tim: So basically there's a thing, right? So if you're a corporate company, corporate talent acquisition, those jobs are number one priority. If you're staffing for them like I am, mine take kind of second priority. And then the job boards they claim, like Careerbuilder and stuff take third priority. I don't know if that's really true, but whatever. So if I have a job that's very similar to corporate job that I'm working, even though it's not a direct job, basically they're saying, "hey, candidates don't wanna see the same job, they wanna see only the job from the real corporate entity. Chad: So the duplicate (jobs) conversation. Joel: So ABC company is the real company hiring the job, if Tim's company HRU Technical Resources actually put with the job on there, they're saying, "hey, that's bad search quality, we're not gonna scrape your site, because candidates don't want the duplicates." Joel: Which, okay, you can say is reasonable. Tim: That's very reasonable. Tim: Yeah. So I was told, "hey you're putting in duplicate jobs, right? From the search quality perspective." So we go through and say, "well, they're not really duplicates because this company that we're working with, we're hiring contract jobs, not direct jobs, which are completely different, blah blah blah. And they don't care, they don't listen. So we go, "well show me where they are and we'll make sure we get these dupes off so that you can come back and search quality can run and we'll be good." Chad: Show us what you don't like. Joel: So you're bending over backwards. Tim: I really, I truly wanna fix it, right? Because I wanna go out to the audience and say, "hey, don't get yourself in Indeed jail, that's how you don't." And so I said, “just give me an example, show me." No we can't do that. Can't give you examples. But, Tim, today only, if you pay to have all of your jobs sponsored, we will go out and scrape those crappy jobs off your site that our candidates don't wanna see, and we will put them in front of the candidates, because we really are concerned about candidates, but you have to pay to do that. Chad: So it's different, if you pay for it, they're not crappy jobs anymore. Tim: No, now they're great jobs- Tim: Although, they're great jobs, okay. Joel: You pay, they'll play basically. Tim: They pay to play, but the other part I love, is in every communication I get from them, it's always about the candidate, which it never was until Google for Jobs came in and say we're about the candidate and then Indeed goes, "no, we are. No really, we are." No you're not, never were." Chad: And never were. Tim: And if I pay, guess what, you're not again. So that's kind of how it works. Joel: So I wonder what happens to the duplicate jobs, quote unquote, that used to be there. That used to be there instead of yours, do they still remain on the index in the search results? I doubt they talked about that, but- Tim: They don't talk- yeah we didn't get into that. Chad: Well that's the quality. Tim: They didn't give you anything that's the problem. Chad: That's the quality that they don't wanna tell him about, which it almost feels like they're trying to be Google, and we don't want you to know our algorithm, right? Tim: Oh for sure. Chad: Which is all bullshit, it's like, "look, if you wanna help us focus on quality." Joel: Google will actually tell you how to fix the problem. Chad: Yes. Tim: Yeah. Joel: If you have spammy links, you have crappy content, there's a pretty robust FAQ knowledge base that will tell you how to get out of jail, you submit, hey I fixed the problem, they review it, and hopefully they get you out of jail. Indeed it sounds like does not have similar process. Tim: No, in fact I got an email that basically said, "this decision is final." Final? Chad: Final until you pay. Tim: So if I fixed everything and actually rerun the search, it wouldn't matter. Unless I wanna pay, then it's completely fine. Chad: So then it's not final then. It's not final, because if you wanna slam down the gold card, the platinum card, then it's not final. Tim: Yeah the crazy part I don't understand though is how the whole process- so here's my recommendation would be; if you're currently getting your jobs scraped by Google organically, you're paying nothing. Never paid them a dime. Because if you do, they know now that you're a willing participant- Joel: Indeed or Google. You said Google. Tim: Indeed, sorry, Indeed. If I could pay money to Google in the new Google for jobs, I probably would. But that's not there yet. Joel: Are your jobs in Google for jobs as well? Tim: Yes. Joel: Can you speak to the performance of that versus- Tim: Well, yeah I mean again ... I know right now I'm not getting really any organic traffic from Indeed so, my Google traffic is way higher. But no, it's been increasing while I'm [inaudible 00:07:19] decreasing. And we actually have couple of clients that we worked with as well that were seeing some pretty big decreases from Indeed but also some pretty big increases from Google. But again, it's not necessarily there yet to say, "oh, well we can just walk away from Indeed, but ..." Joel: So where do you go from here? Tim: Probably Programmatic, JobAdX, you know, Jobs2Careers/Talroo, Appcast whatever, right. Joel: Pando. Tim: But yeah, you know, really playing in the different space. If I'm gonna pay for something, I'm gonna pay for something that works. Chad: Yeah, well. That's pretty smart. Joel: And how long have those jobs been on indeed? Tim: Total in scraping? Joel: Yeah. Tim: 8 years. Joel: So 8 years no problem. Google for jobs shows up, hey we've got a problem" Tim: Got a problem. Joel: Okay, I think that's not a coincidence. Tim: I don't think it is either. And so I'm thinking, okay well I'm just a staff member, it's just me. So I'm at SHRM Talent. Yesterday I had a really great conversation with a corporate talent acquisition leader position leader, she fills about 150 sales jobs a year. And she said, "oh well we decided to change up our job posting strategy. We went from 40 and then we wanted to add a bunch of micro markets and stuff, so we went from 40 to 120." Indeed did the exact same thing to them. Search quality issues, even though it's all direct jobs. Chad: Search quality issues? Tim: Shut 'em down, and I said well how much were you- we were paying $9,000 a month to be sponsored and now we don't have a search quality issue, she's like, "we wanna get out of that mess." Chad: So wait a minute, we're talking about an organization who this is where the job, the impetus, where the job starts. It's created, it is pushed. Nobody else, it is- Tim: It's all them. Chad: But they have search quality issues. Tim: And again, they wouldn't tell her exactly why, they kind of hint. Chad: Shitty job descriptions? Tim: Well no it was location, right? They were in Columbus, Ohio and then they're Strongsville, Ohio and then they're like, "well that's the same location, same job." And you're like, "well yeah, but it's our job, and maybe those are two actual locations. You can't say that that's what it is. Chad: And you should be able to parse that shit out if you wanted to anyway. I mean there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to split that into two jobs. Tim: Yeah, but again, the reps, literally, all they do is go, "it's search quality, we have no control over it, telling us we have no idea, search quality, search quality." And it's like the gestapo, right? Joel: Would you go as far as to say extortion? Tim: Well no, because they're giving you something for free, right? Chad: Well they're not now, they're not now. Tim: The crack dealer wasn't extorting me when I decided to buy crack- Joel: The first hit was free. Tim: The first hit was free. Tim: I'm a willing participant in this scheme, right? Chad: An eight year high, but now you gotta pay for it. Tim: I mean, I think the reality is though I think I have really good recruiters, and we do a lot of different things, it's not gonna kill us, we'll be fine. But, for me it's always about, again, this is happening to me, it's happening to other people that won't be fine because they post and pray and maybe the only way they're getting candidates. So how do we go out and say, "oh, well here's probably some things you might have to do." Joel: So if you're listening, and you have a problem with Indeed, or you're in Indeed jail you wanna share your story, go to chadcheese.com and tell us what's going on. Chad: I would love to hear that. And just a little love, little Tim Book love. Tell us about the new book that just came out. Tim: Yeah the Talent Fix, it's on the SHRM store, it will be on the Amazons probably in six weeks, there's always a time lag there. But it was my thing, I get tons of TA leaders that call and say, "okay, I'm broke in. What would you do, how would you fix." And so I just said from beginning to end, here's what I would do if I came in to run your shop. Chad: And you're talking about different types of tech stacks per se, which is really cool, because we see so much redundancy, we see companies; they don't even use their applicant tracking system right, but yet they wanna start stacking other pieces of tech on, so from your standpoint, you go through just nice and clean and say, "this is, if you want this kind of stack, this is what you should look at." Tim: Yeah, I mean I still I think I did an ebook too as well, a book that you can download, you guys I look at probably 100, 150 different techs systems a year where I write about probably 50 on the blog, but the reality, there's 20,000 plus, right, that are out there. I mean that's the one thing when you come around SHRM Talent, your own practitioners that are in the weeds, they're overwhelmed by all of it. Chad: Oh god yeah. Tim: I mean, they're just, they're just like, "oh crap, like what do we do? I have an ATS, now what?" Again, I was talking with some people yesterday. I mean they're just literally starving for permission. What do I do for texting? What do I do for sources? Chad: And then there are these chat bots, oh my god. Tim: And then they bring chat bots, and you're just like ugh. Chad: Oh Jesus, yeah. Let's focus on process first and then we'll start to plug technology. Tim: I mean, I know you guys agree with this, if your recruiting sucks, that technology is just gonna allow to suck faster. So how do we first fix recruiting, and then let the tech help you. Chad: Stop blaming your applicant tracking system and your platforms, first off, find out where your recruitment suck comes from. Tim: It's the number one issue I give. You come in into our place center, "well our ATS sucks, we need a change." Chad: No. Tim: Well wait a minute, let's take a look at what you have. And it's usually decent tech, they're just only using 25%. I'm like, "if you become a super user of the tech you have now, do that first and then let's come back and talk, because they just don't do it. Chad: The new book, once again- Tim: The Talent Fix. Chad: The Talent Fix, get it at- Tim: You can find it at the SHRM store. Chad: Okay cool. Joel: Any blog, where can we find that? Tim: timsackett.com. If you Google Tim Sackett, I'm like the first 100 pages of the Googles. But there's also another Tim Sackett. Chad: Of the Googles. Tim: The Googles. Tim: There's another Tim Sackett, he's a truck driver chaplain. I am not the truck driver chaplain, Tim Sackett. So if you run into Tim Sackett truck driver Chaplin, different guy. Chad: Does he have a blog? Tim: I don't know if he does. I've always though how cool would it be if I was the truck driver chaplain Tim Sackett I was both guys. Like as my super hero. Joel: Thanks Tim. Tim: Thank's guys. 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. And be sure to check out our sponsors, because they make it all possible. For more, visit chadcheese.com. Oh yeah, you're welcome. #Indeed #Sackett #SHRM

DUMPSTER FIRE!! CareerBuilder is a mess right now, according to our sources. We're talkin' execs jumping ship, layoffs, angry sales people and a lot of bitter 'Builders. Tune in for all the latest. Oh wait, there's more: - Indeed Crowd is a failure - Ladders tries its hand at referrals - Snagajob is now Snag ... here's why - Monster goes 2-pane - What do Textio, Uncommon.co and Indeed have in common? - Oh, Canada! Indeed acquires Workopolis And lots more. It's the first show to go over an hour, but we think you'll be rewarded for your time. Just listen to it in 2X and cut it down to 30 mins. Boom! And check out our sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren, JobAdX and Ratedly. No dumpster fires at these companies (cough ... CareerBuilder ... cough). 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 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: Spring is finally in the air kids. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast where we have our way with the news of the day and HR and recruiting. I like that. That's [crosstalk 00:00:37]- Chad: That was bad. Joel: No. That's awesome. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, Careerbuilder is an absolute dumpster fire. Indeed, is throwing in the towel, aye? Chad: Yeah. Joel: That was awful, and we ask does a Snagajob by any other name taste just as sweet? Buckle up kids, we're not drunk, I promise, but this is going to be a bumpy show. Announcer: Sovren AI matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market, because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks about each individual transaction. It will find, rank and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches it tells you how and why it produced them, and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you, so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI matching visit sovren.com. That's sovren.com. Joel: New ads, same silky voice from Sovren. Chad: Whoa. Yeah. You're dumb so don't worry about trying to outsmart the robot. The robot will take care of all your pleasure and needs. Joel: Absolutely. This show could tip the scale at an hour, so let's run through shout outs real quick. Chad: Okay. You were in Erie last week. I've got a quick question, did Ed from Philly jack up any of your interviews? Because he was stalking you for a while. Joel: No. You know, he talks a lot of trash. I was a little afraid that he might, you know, pop me on the head, you know back of the head during the show, but he didn't even come say hi, so I'm a little sad. Yeah. Ed, next show, man, come say hi, we love our listeners, whether they're team Chad, or team Cheese. Chad: Ed come on, man. You're team Chad, you should at least put a little smack on his head while he was doing the interview. Joel: A little karate shop in the throat. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Something, man. Chad: That's what we expect somebody from Philly, the city of brotherly love. Also, Nancy from Philly said, "No more of the use of off the chain or lit," she said, "Don't do that." Joel: I'll agree with that for sure. Yeah. Sorry, Nancy. Chad: Our bad. Job doctor, "Very smart," love this guy. He wanted us to know about 82 labs. They just received eight million dollars in funding to create a better hangover recovery drink, because he knows all of next week we're going to be where? Joel: Vegas. Vegas, baby. Chad: Good. Love it. Job doctor. Joel: You know, I have found, I think, the solid hangover remedy. It's called Fly By, F-L-Y, B-Y. Chad: Okay. Joel: It's a pill, and I have tried it as an old white guy, not that white has anything to do with it, but as an old guy my hangovers were hurting, so for what it's worth I've tried a few Fly By is pretty good. I'm going to be taking it to Vegas for sure. Chad: Okay. I'll be bumming some off of you then. Louise Triance I want to hope that I'm saying that right, she sent a picture to us on Facebook, she tagged us, she's on a beach looking at, I'm assuming the ocean, and she said, "Chad and Cheese, you sound so much cheerier when I'm listening in the sun." Joel: Now, Louise is English, so I'm guessing she's in the south of France, or Spain, or Greece, or somewhere really nice like that, so glad we could cheer you up there, Louise. Chad: Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. We've got some big ups for new leaders out there, Tom Kenney, who was the CTO over at SmashFly, and if you listen to Chad and Cheese regularly we just did an interview with him in Ireland while we were drinking Guinness. He was just promoted to CEO of SmashFly. Awesome. Joel: That's great. Chad: Big ups, man. Joel: Thad- Chad: Yep. Joel: Thad at our buddies at Jobs2Careers is their new CEO as well, so shout out to Thad over there in Texas. Chad: Thad Price, man, he's been there forever. Big ups. Joel: It's not because of his long tenure that he's CEO, the guy actually knows what he's doing. Chad: Oh, yeah. Maybe I don't know. Joel: Speaking of dudes who know what they're doing, a quick shout out to Anoop Gupta, who I did interview on the last podcast from ERE, just the dude is super smart, he's CEO of SeekOut.io, he's from Microsoft, he's way smarter than most of the people who get into this business, including yours truly. I just want to thank Anoop for being in the industry, and making it a little smarter, so shout out to Anoop there in Seattle. Chad: Yeah. If you didn't listen to the last podcast, go back, there are four interviews, very quick interviews, and I believe, Joel, at least two of them have already shown interest in being on firing squad. Joel: Do they know what they're getting into, is my question? Chad: I hope not. I want to be able to give a quick shout out to everybody that's out there listening about LinkedIn meltdowns that are happening and we get to watch them, much like we get to watch it happen on Facebook every day, but I actually had an individual reach out to me on messenger, I can't tell who it is, you might have seen him in the stream go crazy and meltdown this week, "Chad, please look over my profile and resume, if you see that you can help me finding some interesting products to work on I cost X, expenses," blah, blah, blah. "Here's my resume. My specialization is turnaround, and startup." I thought, wow, okay, that's pretty cool. But this is how he ended the message, "If you can't help me, drop me." At that point, dude, at that point- Joel: Drop me? Chad: Yeah. Exactly. I was like, okay, well fuck you. Joel: Is he a baked potato? Drop me? Chad: Yeah. Just off of- Joel: Did you know this cat? Chad: No. Joel: Did you disconnect with him? Chad: I don't know him we're just linked like you are with many people on LinkedIn, and he's just like pretty much, like, hey, if you can't help me get a job then just drop me from your connections. Everything was great til then, then I looked back and I started looking in my feed and he just had a total meltdown on LinkedIn, so yeah, this is a great example of what not to do on a professional network. Now, if you want to treat LinkedIn like Snapchat, or you want to treat it like Facebook, understand there are going to be more than likely ramifications that are different than if you do that on Facebook. Joel: This had to be a millennial. Chad: No. Dude, I don't think so. I really don't think so. Joel: Did you reply to his, drop me if you're not going to help me? Chad: No. Joel: Or did you drop him before he had a chance to drop you? Chad: Dude, I don't have time to go through all that shit, if he wants to he can find a way to drop me. Joel: Right. We have LinkedIn etiquette, occasionally on the show. Yeah. Don't reach out to someone you don't really know just because you're connected and say, help me, or drop me. Chad: That's just dumb as hell. Joel: All right. Speaking of LinkedIn, on the positive side, a shout out to Nick Nick Kroshus who I met in San Diego, a big fan there employed at LinkedIn, shout out to Nick, appreciate the listenership. Chad: Love the LinkedIn. This is just for fun, a shout out that came from Ron Pearlman to Mark Zuckerberg this is his tweet, “Is it just me, but every time I hear Mark Zuckerberg talk I feel like Jim Henson's got his hand up his ass.” Joel: Zuckerberg who had testified in front of Congress- Chad: Yeah. Joel: This week, actually sat on a booster chair, you didn't believe me when I told you, but go search Zuck Congress booster chair, whatever, and he's literally sitting on a booster chair. Chad: Is it like a phone book? Is it like an old standard phone book? Joel: It's like one of those seat cushions you would get going to baseball games, and sitting in the bleachers, you want to pad your butt a little bit. It's like one of those booster chairs. It's not like one of the ones at the restaurants for the kids. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's not quite that bad, but somebody wanted him to be elevated, so he looked more powerful, I assume. Anyway, my last shout out goes to Brian Mercer who is also at ERE, a fan of the show, he's head of the digital HR tech over at Mercer Healthcare, so thanks for listening Brian, appreciate it. Chad: One big thing, where are we going to be next week? We're going to be in Vegas. What are we doing? Joel: SHRM Talent, we're just going to break shit and scare- Chad: Yeah. Joel: People, I think. Then TATech probably the same thing, although it'll be a repeat performance of all of our TATech shows, so it won't be quite as nice. Chad: Yeah. I think- Joel: [crosstalk 00:09:35] I guess. Chad: We've tempered the crowd at TATech and they understand what's going to happen, but SHRM Talent, I mean, literally it's going to be a fun time for us, let's just say that. Joel: It's going to be like the movie Weird Science, where the motorcycle gang kind of breaks into the house and eats all the food, and trashes everything, and then Kelly LeBrock comes in and fixes it, but up until that point I think that's going to be sort of us at SHRM Talent next week. Chad: That being said, last but not least, I want thank Disability Solutions, because Disability Solutions understands that everyone, even the hard of hearing and the deaf need a little Chad and Cheese in their life, so thanks again to Disability Solutions for making sure that transcription of this podcast and all the other podcasts are available. Joel: Can we get to the show, now? Chad: Yes, please. Joel: All right. Great. Okay. I'm going to take a breath before this. Okay. Chad: Here it is. Joel: I'm going to start, here it is, Chad is just going to sit back and listen. There's a Careerbuilder story that I've been working on writing for ERE for over a week now, and I want to express that the opinions that I'm about to drop are not the opinions of ERE who I write stories for. They're totally divorced from what I'm about to say, and comment. A lot of it will be the same as a story, but a lot of it will be sort of my own opinion, but they are not responsible for anything I say. Now, that, that is out of the way. Chad: Wait a minute. Nobody tells me or Joel what to say. Period. These are our opinions. It's our show, and if you don't like them, stop listening. If you love it, then share the hell out of it, but other than that ERE doesn't have anything to do with us. I mean, even our sponsors, or our conference partners. We let them know right out of the gate, this is our shit, if you don't like it you don't have to be a part of it. The thing is, they enjoy it, and hopefully you do too. Joel: Thank you, Chad. You're right. Nobody tells us shit. Chad: Fuck yeah. Joel: And we don't listen anyway. A little back story, a couple of weeks ago I get a text, all these sources are going to be anonymous, I will say none of my sources are scrubs. They typically are upper level management type folks, so take that for what it's worth, but I get a text from someone that basically says, Careerbuilder has canceled their annual show for sales people. They have a conference every year in multiple places around the country, apparently called, The President's Club, where sales people that perform really well are rewarded appropriately. As many of you know, Careerbuilder was acquired last year by Apollo Global, who is a private equity firm. Now, when private equity firms buy a company, it's not like Randstad buying Monster, like a staffing company kind of synchronized business models. Private equity firms have one job, and that's maximize profitability, which is what Apollo is doing. Now, when you maximize profit some eggs get cracked. Right? You're making omelets- Chad: Yeah. Joel: You're making the most money, things are going to get broken, so a lot of things have been canceled. Executives are leaving. It's a little unclear in terms of are they being fired? Are they resigning? Quote on quote. Are they actually just getting the hell out of dodge, because they don't like how the furniture is being reorganized. We also have really mad people in sales. We have engineers exiting. Anyway, I get a text that sort of starts this whole flow. I check with sources at the company, people I know, and people that they know, et cetera. Right? This thing starts unraveling. I get an audio clip, which we're going to play- Chad: Yeah. Joel: After an ad, because we're going to talk about the executives, first, then we're going to talk about the engineers leaving. I get an audio that's just gold in terms of media perspective, but it's basically their head of sales, or someone high up in sales saying that this sales trip is not canceled, it's postponed. He goes on to blame really unique reasons as to why they're not going to Mexico, which was the original plan of the company, and this contradicts the plan that- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Their CEO had said, the trip is canceled. Okay? Chad: Yeah. Joel: We'll get to that in a second. Anyway, as I dig deeper into this story, more and more people come out, because I was writing a story in ERE that was in draft form, it wasn't ready for primetime. ERE was legitimately hacked probably by WordPress SEO people and the story went live, unexpectedly, not on purpose. It has since been pulled. Of course, it was in Google's cash, good old Google grabbed it up. The story was still available and still made the rounds. I don't know if it's in Google, still, but it might be. Finalized version of that story should be coming out soon, if it's not already out by the time you listen to this, but the story got out, so when the story got out, more and more people came forward to tell me what was going on. I think most notably some top executives are leaving the company. You and I know most of these guys, like Richard Castellini is a former headhunter.net guy- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Who's been there for almost 20 years. Chad: Yeah. Joel: He left for a little bit to join the Groupon phase, when everyone was into that, it was a site call like Coupon Cabin, I think, but he quickly rejoined Careerbuilder and he's been there for a long time. There's another guy, Colin Field, who was a headhunter acquisition he's vice president of infrastructure, he has since left the company. His LinkedIn profile has been updated. He's now at New Relic, apparently. Jim Butler, not a headhunter guy, but he was former senior director of governance, risk and compliance, not a flimsy title. He's not COO at a company called, NetWatchman according to his LinkedIn profile. Kevin Knapp, who is or was CFO, apparently, according to my sources been gone for quite a while, even though his LinkedIn profile says that he's still at Careerbuilder, so I'm not sure about that. These are really important people that- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Leaving the company. Old time people, part of the culture. Part of the fabric of Careerbuilder. Apollo brought in their own COO it looks like at the end of last year, Irina Novoselsky, if I'm saying that correctly. I don't know if she was brought in to ax people and upper level stuff, I don't know. The first piece of this story is that executives are leaving that have been with the company for a long time, and I have to attribute that, and the sources that I've talked to, attribute that to what Apollo's doing with really just cutting stuff up. Sources I've talked to said, "They wouldn't be surprised if all these sort of businesses that we talked about in the past will either be auctioned off, chopped up, closed, you know, shuttered in the future," but it's a problem. CEO, Ferguson is still there. He's been there for a very long time. I think he was a headhunter guy, too. Chad: I'm wondering how long that's going to be, though? Joel: Yeah. I mean, my guess is, this is my own opinion is he's probably under contract to sort of get the ship to port, and then do whatever you want, but I think similarly to how Sal left Monster, a little bit different, but Sal's gone, Dice is looking for a new CEO, I would not be shocked to see Careerbuilder looking for a new CEO this time next year. Chad: I agree a 100%. Again, what we're seeing is we're seeing some heads be lopped off left and right. It's interesting because I think one of the quotes that you had actually said from director of global communications he was talking about Castellini the quote was, "As with all expat assignments, visas have expiration dates and he is returning into the states in April." There is no senior level executive role based in Chicago office, in the Chicago office available at this time, and he will be leaving Careerbuilder. I mean, it's like, yeah, we'd love to have him back, but we really don't have a slot for him. I think that's bull shit. If you've got a guy that has that kind of cred, that kind of experience and he's done shit all over the world for you, it doesn't matter, you're going to find a place for that person. Period. Right? This was overall, yeah, you're done, and you're done. Joel: Yeah. That is, we'll get the Careerbuilder communications guy, Michael Irwin in a second, particularly with the sales side when we come back from the ad. That's sort of his job is to sugarcoat, or spin the news it's like, "Yeah, you know, his visa ran out. He came back and we didn't have a spot for him, so he's going to go elsewhere." I'm like- Chad: Yeah. Joel: But he's been there for three months, he was just on a little project and now he's leaving, like this is an almost 20 year executive- Chad: Yeah. I mean, from a transparency standpoint that just doesn't jive. The sniff test, I mean, it doesn't pass at all. Yeah. I get that Irwin it's his job to make a piece of shit smell good, but I mean, come on man, you've got to do much better than that. Transparency is going to be important for the organization, and if you're making changes then make the God damn changes, and have a spine for God sakes, and say why you're making the changes. If you're going to make those changes, and you have business reasons behind it, you have business reasons, but guess what? Don't be spineless. That's all I'm going to say. Be transparent. Joel: Yeah. I think, additionally, the fact that there was no statement from Richard Castellini saying- Chad: Yeah. Joel: "I've had a great run with Careerbuilder. I've made a lot of friends. I've progressed as a human being. I'm leaving because of A, B, and C. Appreciate the time here." Chad: Yeah. Joel: "Nice, great knowing you," kind of thing. There was no, these people just basically left. There was no statements from these folks. It just stinks. I won't go as far as saying, unprofessional, but they certainly could have handled the exits of the executives a little better. I'm sure they hope that people like me wouldn't- Chad: I know. Joel: Get wind of it, and write about it, or talk about it, but that's not the case. Yeah. They've handled this pretty poorly, I think. It gets a little worse for Mr. Irwin as we talk more, here, today. I think it's probably going to get worse before it gets better for them, which we'll talk about, which leads me to the engineering team at Careerbuilder had a fairly high up person in engineering contact me after the leak story from Google Cash, he says almost 50% of the engineering team is gone. He says, most of them have left on their own freewill. Apparently from what I can gather the new owners, Apollo, are into the core business, what makes money. They understand the job posting stuff. They understand- Chad: Right. Joel: The basic business. The R and D of the company, which is what the developers love- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Right? They love the new stuff. They love the experimenting, is gone. I think that probably plays a big part in it, but apparently compensation has played a much bigger part in terms of the exits of the engineering staff. Apparently, compensation is reviewed every year around it looks like raises happen in January and July, so I guess there are two phases of raises. When Apollo took over in October of last year, they brought in the new CEO, they postponed reviews and compensation increases til April, which apparently most people were cool with, but when they came out with what the raises were going to be they were significantly lower than what people were thinking they were going to get, or expected to get, or certainly what was sort of consistent with history of raises that were given at Careerbuilder and engineers are not happy. They've left in exodus, I mean when you cut almost half of your staff and engineers that's kind of a bad thing. The other ones I understand are looking for work, they're not happy, and will be gone eventually. My guess is it won't take long. I had one of my sources, who's an executive at a competitor tell me that they have about a dozen candidates- Chad: Yeah. Joel: In their queue from Careerbuilder, so that's not just engineers that's probably a mix of folks. Yeah. I think from an engineering side that's bad not only from losing that kind of talent as a tech company, but also it doesn't bode very well for future products, and new features, and innovation. Chad: Back to Irwin, this is the kind of shit you're going to have to deal with. If you're going to try to blow smoke up our ass, this is the time of transparency. The public, not just us, the public's going to find out exactly what's going on, so you either embrace it, stiffen your spine and take care of it, or keep playing these games, and you're going to have issues like this and they're going to continue to become a train wreck for the organization. Joel: On Irwin, quickly, when the leak story came out online, I went and got clarification on some of the facts from the story, things that I had written in the story, for clarification. He was fairly quick to answer, now he spun his answers, for the most part, like the one in Castellini, it was the visa, it wasn't anything. He did answer me, now, when I got a flood of people come to me after the story was sort of unexpectedly released- Chad: Yeah. Joel: I went back to him to clarify those facts, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Or those statements. He came back and basically said, "I clarified the stuff from the first story, this is not consistent with what we expect from ERE. I will not be answering anymore questions, or giving you sort of the pleasure of asking me more stuff," which is really bull shit, because if it's your job to communicate with press, you should do it. The only reason you wouldn't do it is you don't want to answer the questions. It's sort of a Trump move, like let's- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Just move on to the next thing. This is way beyond you guys, this is fake news, this is crap. You guys should be out of business. I should probably be let go, et cetera. Yeah. PR from a multiple perspective has dropped the ball at Careerbuilder, and I don't know if it's Apollo pulling the strings, or if this is business as usual at Careerbuilder, but yeah, it's definitely a sour taste in my mouth from dealing with the communication folks at Careerbuilder. Chad: He literally just told you, I'm going to run and hide. I'm going to find a corner, I'm going to get in the fetal position, and I'm going to put my thumb in my mouth, and I'm going to start sucking on it, and hope that all this shit goes away? Joel: That's one way to look at it, for sure. You can speculate all you want, but they clearly don't want this story to be out. They don't want this to be talked about. I'm sure they're hoping it will just go away, but of course it won't. Yeah. Instead of saying, you know, hey, let me address each of these things, yes, we've lost 50% of our engineering, because of this, this, and this, or hey, yes we had this sales comment, this did happen. The layoffs happened like this, or they didn't. There's no clarification, or even sort of confirmation of the facts, so if they're not going to answer all I can go on is what my sources tell me. Chad: Yeah. Again, it's about transparency. If what you're being told can be contested, it should be contested. If it can't be, you can obviously run and hide, like this individual obviously is and he represents the organization, so is the organization running and hiding from transparency? That's all there is to it. Joel: Yeah. Let's take a quick break, and we'll talk about the sales side of the story. Sound good? Chad: Yeah. Announcer: JobADX, as the best ad tool in the industry. We provide publishers and job boards higher rank share than other partners through our smarter problematic platform. In many cases, 30% to 40% greater, and more. We're like Adsense but with a better split for you and added relevance for your audience. Job ADX also offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPO's, and staffing firms. Real time dynamic bidding and delivery for your clients postings through the industries first truly responsive tool, not set in regret. All of this is done with the flexibility of cost per impression, click, or application. We also offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. Finally, JobADX delivers direct clients, superior candidates through the best of programmatic efficiency, and premium page ad positioning. To partner with us you can visit or search Job ADX. You can also email us at joinus@jobadx.com, to get estimates or to begin working together. JobADX the best ad tool. Providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Chad: Big love to JobADX. Joel: JobADX. All right. Back to the Careerbuilder story. Let's talk about sales, which is apparently a total mess. A couple things, so I mentioned- Chad: Yeah. Joel: I mentioned the sales trip that happens annually, so that was in the original story that got published, unexpectedly, and that was part of my email to Irwin was to clarify what had happened with the trip. Now, he comes back, and basically says there's never been a company trip to Mexico. Chad: Wrong. Joel: Okay. I do a little digging, it turns out social media is a great way to clarify or confirm stuff, so I dig around Instagram, and if you search the hashtag, CB Trip 2015, there are clearly pictures from Mexico of sales people at Careerbuilder enjoying a nice time. Everything that Mexico has to offer in these pictures. I go back to him, and I say, basically, "Instagram says differently about this Mexico thing." Chad: Right. Joel: He basically comes back and says, "Oh, yeah. There was a trip for sales people in 2015," and then he goes back to his line of, "We didn't have a trip, but sales people were given a cash reward," or some sort of compensation, and the feedback was positive, but the mere fact that he went from saying that we've never, no one at Careerbuilder has ever taken a business trip in mass to Mexico, and then me catching him on Instagram and him backtracking and saying, "Oh, yeah. There was that trip in 2015," is really funny, and for my money, homeboy has no credibility from what he's doing anyway. Anyway, that happened. The trip is sort of a menial side story. Right? Like I don't really care, take sales people on a nice trip, okay, cancel it, because its too expensive, and the new owners don't want to do it. The bigger story around sales, to me, again, sales people came out, and sort of shared some of this stuff- Chad: Right. Joel: With me and I cross referenced some of the stories, so a 152 sales reps, apparently, were let go by an automated phone call. Chad: What? No fucking way. Joel: That their position no longer exists at the company. Yeah. The comment that one person gave me that was great was, they dragged a 120 people that bled orange and blue, which is the corporate colors, or used to be, they're entire professional careers and slaughtered them without notice. They preach all these different values, they're plastered all over every wall, and they're the biggest bunch of hypocrites I've ever dealt with. That's a really crappy way to let people go. I don't know exactly if they knew a call was coming, if it just came, or what, granted it's an official way to let people go, but it's a real crappy way to do it. Chad: These people, I mean, are they getting calls at home? I mean, these are automated calls, which really blows my freaking brain in the first place, but where are they getting these calls? Joel: I don't know. I'm not sure it matters. Chad: Okay. Joel: My guess is that it was probably a day at the office- Chad: Yeah. Joel: It may be their cell numbers, before the day began, and saying, hey, when you come in, if you do know more about this, feel free to reach out to us at chadcheese.com and let us know any specifics, but all we know at this point and it was not, I gave Careerbuilder a chance to say this was BS- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Which they failed to take that opportunity. What I can tell you is that they received automated phone calls that their job was done. From what I could tell they weren't given, actually, they were given, I believe, a month of severance for every year that they had served at the company, and I'm not exactly sure about that, so they were given something, but they- Chad: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:31:12]- Joel: We were given notice that they we're being fired. Apparently, some of the sales people were pretty good from what I can muster, they weren't like the worst of the worst sales people. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Apparently, morale is really taking a hit because of this, so one of the quotes I had in the story was, quote, "This past year we had our idiot sales leader," which we'll get to in a second, get us all involved to tell us that we were having our car allowance taken away, because we were tight on expenses." Now, this car allowance was apparently really a big deal. My source said, quote, "It was factored into our salaries, that's $5,000.00 that we all depended on to utilize for trains, or gas, or whatever. It was part of our salary that made our compensation a bit more competitive without notice gone," end quote. Chad: There's a lot without notice happening, here. Joel: Yes. Back to this trip thing and back to the original commentary about it being canceled or postponed. We have a source telling us, telling me, that CEO, Matt Ferguson went on a conference call to the company saying that the annual sales trip would be canceled. We have the global head of communications confirming that the trip didn't happen, but the people were given money for their troubles, and that they were happy about that, however, we have audio from John Smith who's I think chief revenue officer, let me verify that, when we come back, but the tape, the recording was sent to me, this is a company sales call as to why the company was not taking a trip to Mexico. Let's listen to that real quick and then we'll talk about it. I'm going to- Chad: Roll the tape. Joel: I'm going to mute us, because we can't listen to this without laughing. Chad: Yes. Joel: It will detour from the effect. Without further ado, Careerbuilder. Careerbuilder Sales Tape: Lastly, trip, yes, there will be a trip. I just don't know when and where, yet. As soon as I will know, you will know. Know this, where not sleeping on this, it's not like we're not focused. We actually had a trip done, and sold out three weeks ago. We had a great hotel in Cabo. We had dates confirmed. Problem is, Cabo has become completely destabilized. They've literally, this holiday season they've had over 50,000 reservations canceled. Evidently, when El Chapo was incarcerated, the code of ethics said he is still in Cabo and throughout Mexico has gone away. There's no code of ethics. There's no code of honor. All of a sudden there's a war for power, so you're seeing things happen that you haven't seen in the past where people, gangs, drug dealers, were actually going into restaurants and shoot up the place, that never happened before. Bottom line is this, I wish I could sit here and tell you we- Joel: And that's all I got. Chad: And that was not us laughing by the way. That was- Joel: No. Chad: That was actually sales people who were on the call, or wherever they were, they were taping this, and they were laughing, hashtag, El Chapo. Joel: Honestly, we're not exactly sure who's laughing. Chad: Yeah. That's a good point. Joel: But it's not us. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Which is the point. Chad: Yep. Joel: Yeah. According to that recording, the trip was just postponed, we're waiting for El Chapo to face the justice system, or whatever, and things to calm down in Cabo, which was a little bit different from Careerbuilder telling me that we're a little tight, or telling sources of mine that money's tight, and the trip isn't going to happen. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Basically, on the trip front there's a lot of different stories, and I'm not exactly sure, I don't think it's that important, frankly, I think the way people were laid off, I think the morale of the company, and what's going on with things like car allowances being taken away are a way bigger deal, but these sales people in your, you were in sales, right? These folks- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Love these trips. They work really hard to take them. I've heard that Rolex's and whatnot were given to the best sales people, so this was something that people looked forward to, and it was taken away. Chad: At the end of the day, it's all about messaging. Right? Again, what we're seeing from the actual international com's guy, or whatever the hell he is, and his inability to actually message, and then we've got this, where we're talking about, we're blaming everything on El Chapo, I mean, this just seems like a comedy of errors. Joel: Yeah. It's a little bit of keystone cops there in Chicago, and Atlanta, and everywhere else that Careerbuilder is spread around. Chad: Three fucking stooges. Joel: I will end, because I'm frankly tired of this story. Chad: Yes. Joel: Because it's been hanging on me for weeks, now. It is a bit of a statement on the job board industry. It is a bit of a statement on when you get acquired by private equity what's going to happen to you, and my guess is Monster is on a similar short leash, even though their masters, now, are a little bit different than a private equity company. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Who's sole mission is to maximize profit, get rid of things that don't matter, or don't make money, get rid of people who are too expensive, et cetera. But this is a word of warning to anyone who works at company who has a private equity firm come in, or have a new owner come in like this happens pretty regularly it's not exclusive to Careerbuilder, and I think it's a little bit of a statement on the job board industry, and how it's almost become like a commodity of hey, let's just juice as much profit out of this thing as we can, get rid of it, flip it, go public, whatever it is, but the name of the game with job boards now is not high growth, it's about buckling down, maximizing profits- Chad: Yeah. Joel: And getting rid of the fat. That's kind of the state of the industry right now. You ready to move on? Chad: Please. Joel: All right. Let's talk about Indeed Crowd, and their referral reward. Chad: Yet, another company flames out in their try, in their want, and their need to get another referral space. Joel: Now, we should have some historical perspective on this, because you and I have seen so many of these things come and go, and in theory they're great ideas.right? Like, hey, you know a friend whose in sales, we have a sales position open, if we hire that person on your referral we'll give you a bunch of money, like it makes perfect sense in theory, but- Chad: Right. Joel: No one can make this work. You and I remember H3 from back in the day. We remembered Jobster, we remember refer.com. Chad: There's a bunch. Joel: A handful of them. Right? Yeah. Indeed, launched Crowd two years ago, I thought, well, if anyone can make it work Indeed can. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You know? They got a ton of users. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They're user friendly. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It can work. Announced this week, they're shutting it down in May. It was an experiment, quote on quote, that they tried and just didn't work out, and they're moving on. If you're out there thinking about creating this business, just don't, because it apparently just does not work, even if we have social media- Chad: Yeah. Joel: We have easy ways to share stuff, and email. People do not share jobs with people. Period. Chad: Hans, who is CEO of H3 had a great quote, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, and in this case, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make them refer their friends for jobs. It's a very small percentage and we always hear that referrals are like one of the number one sources for organizations, that is, it's not easy to scale because there has to be a want, and/or need to do it. To be quite frank, I mean, I don't want to sit around all day and look for jobs to refer my friends to. If I see a job, or if I'm in an organization where I think there's a great fit then I'm going to want to pull that talent in, because it's going to benefit them, and more than likely it's going to benefit me, too. Joel: Yeah. And the scalability is a great point, because you have to get people involved, they have to approve the- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Candidate that you're submitting. There's usually a 90 day period where the person has to stay employed. You know? I mean, there's so many hoops, it's not simple, it doesn't scale. It just doesn't work, however- Chad: Ladders. Joel: Our friends at Ladders formerly The Ladders, just The Facebook they thought that would be fancy to do The Ladders. In the same week they pretty much that Indeed announces that they're getting out of the business, The Ladders has announced their own referral business, but their payouts are in the 10 grand range, which they think will make a difference. Now, Indeed got up to as high as 5,000 and couldn't make it work, so can a fringe site like The Ladder's, or Ladders at 10 grand make it work? I don't know if there's a sweet spot for money, but let's try 10,000 and see if that works. Chad: Yeah. I think, you know, if you can actually mobilize recruiters, independent contractors, that's not a bad payday, especially if you can go out and do what you normally do, and do referrals through this system, the only way that you can scale this thing is to hope that people who are actually interested and passionate about getting people jobs will want to be able to help, because in most cases the rest of us have other shit to do. Joel: Enough said. Textio- Chad: Yes. Joel: Has a new thing. We'll talk about that. Diversity, Indeed is bringing diversity reviews into their platform in Uncommon, as a way to create better job ads, so this is a little bit of a segue into job postings, and diversity. I guess we can talk about Textio, first. You're pretty high on their new product. Chad: I'm just high on the concept overall, because I see this happening no matter what. Textio, very smartly gets into the space and says, hey, they say exactly what we all know, your job descriptions suck, not to mention they probably focus on one gender bias versus another just with specific types of words, so what we can do is, we can help you balance them out, and/or if you're looking for more female engineers, we can try to help you use different words, different phrases, things like that to focus more on drawing females in than possibly the male side of the house. That made a hell of a lot of sense on the job description side. Chad: Now, they're pushing this into messaging, so emails, and things like that. Now, we see this already on my android, or Facebook, or what have you, you get pretty much AI responses to conversations that are happening, this is pretty much, it looks like composing parts and/or all of a message for you, which is incredibly cool. I see this happening more on most of the texts that we do now, whether it's texting, whether it's Facebook messaging, WhatsApp, emails, not all humans write well. To be able to have kind of like a cushion, or at least a piece of AI machine learning type of technology help us with that, I think is smart. Obviously, Microsoft and being able to help with my spelling, just isn't enough. Joel: Now, look, historically when people post a job they go to Google and they say, you know, "Sales job description search," and they pull out the best thing they can find, copy and paste, change some words around and go on with their life. Very few people start from scratch to post a job. Yes, we're copying and pasting jobs from probably the early 2000s like caveman language. Right? Like, for job postings. The fact that we're getting some technology around improving these is a great thing. Chad: Yes. Joel: Uncommon.co, who we had a firing squad with recently and is now actually a new sponsor- Chad: Yay. Joel: Thanks to them, we like those guys a lot. They have also just released a way to submit your job into their system, and then they have a little like meter- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Like green to red, and green in the middle. It tells you if your job posting, the keywords, and description is too vague, or if it's too specific, and it gets you hopefully right in that sweet spot. We really haven't seen a ton of technology. Chad: No. Joel: Around making better job descriptions, so it's good to see Textio and Uncommon, create some solutions to help us write some better job descriptions, and more inclusive [crosstalk 00:43:51]- Chad: I've got a byline for tag over at Uncommon, I think this is great, Uncommon.co, scoring your shitty job descriptions. I think that'll work, I think that'll actually really pull people in, and you'll sell a hell of a lot. Joel: Uncommon. Make your jobs not suck so much. Chad: See, we're talking about real transparency. Everybody knows they've got shitty job descriptions. They need help. Go after those people. Joel: They need help. Chad: Go after those people. Joel: Wrapping the sense of some diversity as well, you really like what Indeed has done with pulling in some diversity review sites like Fairygodboss for women, and Her Site comparably another one to pull some of that data into their company descriptions, talk about that. Chad: Yeah. You won't hear me say much on the positive side about Indeed, lately, but I think this is a great move from the standpoint of being able to position themselves better in the market on the review side, and to be able to help individuals who are more diverse, to better understand how the work environment is, so Fairy God Boss, whether it's on the female side, and I think that's a great place to start. If there are already review sites and you can aggregate that information, and make it usable, and beautiful then that's really freaking cool, but again, I see this as an opportunity for them to really bolster not just their reviews, but to be able to do a little aggregation and focus, so that they can start to compete better against Glassdoor. Not that they're doing a bad job against Glassdoor, but to be able to start to kind of carve in and to be possibly more specialized. Joel: Yeah. And frankly, you know, Google For Jobs, as well, is pulling in review data in terms of the number of stars in their search, so it makes sense for Indeed to sort of not only have- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Their own reviews, but also how do we build more context around companies and hiring diverse candidates. Yeah. I agree, this was a great move from Indeed. Let's hear a quick ad from our boys at America's Job Exchange, and talk about Snagajob. Announcer: America's Job Exchange is a market leader in diversity recruitment, and an OFCCP compliance solution provider. We serve over a 1,000 customers, consisting of federal contractors, and subcontractors to SMB's, and Fortune 500 organizations. America's Job Exchange specializes in job distribution to over 6500 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. For more information call us at 866.926.6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Joel: Just remember, compliance is mandatory, diversity is essential. Chad: wow. Mind blown. Joel: Snagajob is a success story that we don't talk about very often, just because I guess we don't cover the hourly retail sector very much. Chad: It hasn't been as exciting, though, really. I mean, Snagajob really hasn't, they haven't done really much exciting from a change, or anything like that, so it's kind of been business as usual. That's why I would say that we haven't really- Joel: Yeah. Chad: [crosstalk 00:47:25] on that. Joel: If you don't think growth, and revenue or exciting I guess they've been pretty boring. Anyway- Chad: Good point. Joel: They- Chad: Well taken. Joel: After 18 years in business, I believe, they are rebranding, and they're not just rebranding because they sold their domain, or- Chad: Right. Joel: Just because their CEO had a bad breakfast, or something. They're changing their brands, because the market itself is changing. That the comment that the CEO gave to me that I thought was great was, he said, "People aren't looking to snag a job anymore, they're looking to snag a shift." We look at the guys of Shiftgig, and we had those guys on a X exclusive webinar, recently. Chad: Yep. Joel: The world of work is changing, and these guys are changing their brand to snag.co primarily mobile based platform, so people that are on the hourly, seasonal, retail sector they can get up similar to Uber- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Check themselves if they're ready to work. Employers can say, hey, I need four waiters tonight, go on the platform, bring four in, pay them through the system- Chad: Yeah. Joel: I mean that's kind of where the world of work is going, as opposed to, yeah, I just work at Cheesecake Factory, and that's it. Chad: Yep. Joel: In this case, I work at four different restaurants, and I can choose my own time, I can select the employee that I like better over the other one if their shift, if they're dueling shifts. It's really pretty interesting, it's just very interesting how the world of work is going, and someone that's been around for 18 years like Snagajob believes that it's important enough to change their branding, and their platform to accommodate. Chad: Yeah. I think the brand change, first, I'm going to hit the brand change, because this is big, we've talked about Indeed, Monster, and I mean all these different sites who they don't have job in them or career in them, or anything like that, so they can do multiple things, they can pivot, they can do some really cool things. I think it was smart for Snagajob to go to Snag as opposed to Snagajob. Snag.co, I hope they can acquire the dot.com sometime soon, but I think Snag, that was a very smart pivot, and then being able to focus on, and I agree with this a 100% taking a look at Shiftgig out there, take a look at Moonlighting, I mean, there are all these different sites that are really- Chad: Really being able to push what work or gig work means, and really, I think, aspiring to be the Uber of all of these different segments of gig work. Right? Joel: Uber for hourly jobs. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah. Chad: It's freaking amazing. I think they've got some really funny shit that's going on, like badges, you know? I don't think that we need any stinking badges, but that's okay that could be a quote on quote certification. I think, it was funny, the CEO gave an example of Snag created a bun dresser badge for burger joint, Five Guys, so all the restaurant know a particular worker is fit for flipping burger patties at all of their locations. It's like, okay, I probably could have gotten a better example, but apparently they need a shit ton of burger flippers, so maybe that makes a hell of a lot of sense. Joel: Right. Part of the point was, you know, some of these are different franchises- Chad: Yeah. Joel: They have different owners. Some of them are corporate owned. In the case of like a Five Guys, if you're a franchisee, and someone works primarily at maybe a corporate owned restaurant, they already have that seal of approval that they can step in right now at your restaurant and start making burgers because they've been approved, because they've done it in multiple Five Guys restaurants, or wherever. Yeah. I think the badges are cute, kind of fun, but I do think it does have some pertinent asset or value to a hiring manager. Chad: The biggest way is how you get paid. I mean, that is the most interesting, and cool thing, because from an Uber standpoint you don't have to worry about all the money changing hands and all that other happy horse shit. What happens is you get paid through the app and no matter whether you've got a Five Guys, or White Castle, or wherever you're going, it doesn't matter, everything gets paid through that app. Joel: Yep. I did talk to, also taxes, and all that stuff is handled just like an Uber and Lyft, et cetera, from the app, or from the platform. I will add, because you mentioned the dot com, they are in negotiation to acquire the dot com, I know that, I think, they're into like seven figures for it, so- Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: [crosstalk 00:52:08] to do, if they can do it. I also think that in a mobile app world, having the dot com isn't quite as important as just going to iTunes, or Google Play, and searching Snag and seeing the app. Anyway- Chad: I agree. Joel: Let's talk about pains. One of your favorite topics. Monster is getting into the T-pain, or the two pain game. Chad: Yeah. What was reported from Ireland was true, and it was funny, because we were on stage and we were talking about Indeed and this whole two pain thing that they're doing, and somebody was like, "Hey, Monster's going to do this, too," and they were actually testing it in Europe when we were in Europe. Monster, their job search switches from that nasty ass, NASCAR logo driven job search results, and now they're going to more of a new frills Indeed look. I think it's definitely good for candidates and good for employers, and here's why it's different for everybody, and it's also different from the Indeed piece. It's an easier way to find jobs, one of the things that you noticed, when we were talking about Indeed doing this, is that it was very easy to browse jobs. You don't actually have to go from page to page, to page, to page, it just pops open a pain, and you can browse really easily, and it makes it much easier from a user experience standpoint to try to find, and quickly glaze through all these different types of jobs. Chad: Now, the big difference is and we got clarification from Monster on this is on all of their CPC ads, the only time that a client actually pays for a click is when the candidate clicks apply, not on the job description that shows the job, which is different from what we've heard from the Recruitics Whitepapers, and all those other things from Indeed. I think that is good for the job seeker, obviously the candidate, and great for the employers. Here's the big thing that I want to push out, and the thing that Careerbuilder, and Indeed, and many of these other companies that we smack around a lot are really getting wrong. Monster, is really trying to engage, and they're trying to help us understand, and they're trying to help others understand, obviously in some case through us, what's going on? They're being incredibly transparent. Chad: On LinkedIn last week one of the VP's of product posted a screenshot of this new two pain thing that they've got on the calling combined search, and I started asking questions, because if you're going to put it out there in public, you better be able to start answering questions on it, so I got contacted through this and they started, they actually provided answers to the questions from the SVP of product, Nathan, so it was like, look, we understand that you're curious and we want to answer those questions, so we're going to engage you, and we're going to help you understand. You might not like our answers, but guess what? We're going to give you the answers," and they gave it to us both barrels whether we liked it or not. In this case we liked it, we might not like the next ones. Joel: Not like Careerbuilder. Chad: Not like Careerbuilder. Not at all. Joel: By the way, what a concept to create something that benefits job seekers, and employers at this date and time. Very cool. Chad: Just makes good God damn sense. Again, this is a culture thing, so we see a difference between organizations who don't reach out to try to engage us, and be transparent, and then we see an entirely different feel from this new Monster leadership, and again, whether it comes out to be an amazing product, and they make a shit ton of money, or not, you're starting to see a huge cultural shift over there that is more toward transparency. Now, if it continues to go that way, obviously, you know, we're going to talk about it, and if it doesn't we're going to talk about it, but to me that's refreshing, more than what we're seeing from this guy who's in the fetal position over at Careerbuilder, or anybody. Joel: Good enough. All right. We have an acquisition, and we're done. Chad: Boom. Joel: Indeed, has acquired, or their corporate company- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Recruit whatever out in Japan, a juggernaut north of the border in Canada, I'm not really sure what to make of it, what are your thoughts? Chad: I wasn't very sure, either, and I think Steven Rothberg threw out to me is like, you know, this might be more of a defensive tactic, being able to buy up a competitor to really focus on sustaining foundation, instead of having another competitor come in and buy it up, because they have been around forever, they do have market share, there is a database that's there, so it's more kind of like securing your area in north of the border. Joel: Yeah. You know thinking about it, I don't think Google For Jobs is yet in Canada. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think they are. I think they're just in the US, currently. That being the case, Indeed saying like, hey, let's gobble up as many distribution points that we can at a reasonable price, and Workopolis is a well known brand in Canada, as we both know. To gobble up a brand, put your jobs on it is increasing job distribution. We believe that Indeed is under increasing pressure to get- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Traffic to the site, because of Google For Jobs. Buying advertising on TV is expensive, so maybe somebody did some math and said, Gee, it's going to be cheaper to buy companies that are already established in other countries than it is to go buy ads in Canada. To me, this is a total Google For Jobs move, to get ahead of that, and try to maintain as much traffic and relevancy as they can in different countries. Chad: If you're in Canada, and you can do a search, and let us know if Google For Jobs is actually working, please do so, that'd be great. Then, second, again, I see this as a short-term thinking, I mean, they're looking for the types of traffic that's going to go away, it's not sustainable, it doesn't matter, you're going to go buy that brand, but still you're going to have to continue to pump life into that brand. Now, if you absorb that brand, then obviously you're still going to have to continue doing what you were doing to be able to pump life into your Indeed brand in Canada. Chad: It doesn't matter, because as soon as you stop doing that, we saw this with Monster, we saw this with Careerbuilder, that brand doesn't beat out how I do business every day, or how I just as a human being how I use the web, and I use Google, so if I'm not thinking of you, and it's funny, because we saw that the lift in traffic that Indeed has been seeing is through Google is organic, but it's all branded Indeed sales, Indeed this, or Indeed that. Once that goes away, and we're not using that, guess what? We're not going to Indeed anymore, so this is not sustainable. It doesn't make sense. If you take a look at what Snag just did, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. It's talking about turning what you're doing into a different way of lifestyle, and if you can't find your way to do that, you can't pack up and go home, but you better fucking find one. Joel: I got nothing after that. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I think we've surpassed the hour mark for the first time on a show. Maybe we should relieve our poor listeners- Chad: We out. Joel: And just say, we out. Now, tell us real quickly who our guest announcer is today. This is my stepson, Tristan, who describes himself as extra and I have no clue what the hell that means. Chad: All right. We out. Here's Tristan. Tristen: Hi, I'm Tristen. Thanks for listening to my stepdad, the Chad, and his goofy friend, Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss out on all the knowledge dropping that's happening up in here. They made me say that. The most important part is to check out our sponsors, because I made new tracks by it, you know the expensive, shiny, gold pair that are extra, because well I'm extra. For more visit chadcheese.com. #Indeed #TheLadders #Snag #Monster #Workopolis #Textio #Uncommon #Careerbuilder

Chatbots... CHATBOTS... CHATBOTS!!! There's a lot of confusion around chatbots in recruiting. Do you need one? Which one? How much? Questions abound on this technology that serves as a buzzword at every conference and practically every blog post online. RoboRecruiter thinks chatbots are not only the future, but the present as well. We'll see about that. The Chad & Cheese bring in CEO Chris Collins and put him through the Firing Squad to see if chatbots truly are all that, and if RoboRecruiter should be added to your shopping list. Hang tight! And be sure to visit Firing Squad's exclusive sponsorship partner Jobs2Careers, a company that could make Firing Squad its bitch. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad: Okay Joel, before we get into Firing Squad, I have quick question. Would you say that most companies find it hard to attract the right candidates to apply for their jobs? Joel: Well, Jobs2Careers certainly thought so. That's why they created their new talent attraction platform, ODT. Yeah, you know me. Chad: Dude, that's OPP. This is ODT, which stands for On Demand Talent, where data driven talent attraction is made easy. The on demand talent platform enables recruiters to reach the right talent at the right time, at the right price. Joel: And the best part- Chad: What? Joel: You only pay for what Jobs2Careers delivers. Chad: No. Joel: So, if you're attracting the wrong candidates or you feel like you're on a recruiting hamster wheel, just go to go.j2c.com/cc and learn how on demand talent or ODT, yeah you know me, can get you better candidates for less money. Chad: I'd say you just go to chadcheese.com, click on the jobs2careers logo there and it's just that simple. Joel: It is simple, army with harmony. Announcer: Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman 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: All right. All right. All right gang. Joel Cheeseman here with Chad Sowash on another episode of Firing Squad. On this month's episode we're talking to Chris Collins of RoboRecruiter. Chris, say hi. Chris: Hey guys. How you doing? Hey Joel, Chad, good to be here. Chad: Good to have you. Joel: Don't adjust your volume, Chris is Australian. So, yeah, that's the deal with that. A quick introduction. Chris, CEO of RoboRecruiter. Anything else you wanna mention? Second Life? Chris: Yes. The CEO of RoboRecruiter, got a bit of background with virtual worlds and virtual reality combined with HR Texas, probably quite different to maybe other people you've had on here. And I'm based over in San Francisco. So an Australian, but been in the US for 14 years. Joel: Awesome. Awesome. Chad do you wanna take it from here? Chad: Yeah. So first off, I definitely have to say we talked a little bit in the pre pod about this, but Joel is wetting his pants right now because Chris has some time with Second Life and everybody who listens to this podcast- Joel: Like a baby I'm crying. Chad: Knows he loves the virtual reality, man. So Joel's going to be loving this one. Okay, So here's the format. If you haven't listened to a Firing Squad before, shame on you. Joel: Shame on you for sure. Chad: Welcome. So, Chris, this is how it goes. You're gonna have two minutes to Pitch RoboRecruiter. At the end of two minutes, you'll hear the bell. And Joel and I are gonna hit you with some rapid fire Q and A. If your answers aren't concise and you're starting to drone off, you'll get hit with the crickets. Means you need to tighten it up and move along. At the end of Q and A, you're gonna either here one of these three things from myself and or Joel. It's a three point rating system. That first one is the big applause. This is what you're going for, which means you've exceeded expectations, you're kicking ass, keep doing what you're doing. Number two would be the golf clap, which is my favorite. It's so pathetic, but that just means that you have a lot of work to do. And last but not least, you don't want this one. It's the firing squad. That means you should go ahead, pack your shit up and go home and try again. Joel: Go back to Second Life. Chad: So that's firing squad, it's time to pitch so buckle up and let's do this Joel. Joel: Chris are you ready? Chris: I'm ready. Joel: Two minutes starting- Chris: Great. So Chris, CEO of RoboRecruiter. The situation is, here's the big problem is that over the next few years we're gonna see a seismic shift on how we interact with candidates and what that's going to bring on is what we see as the active intelligent database. Now, why the active intelligent database? If you look at all the systems that are out there, you know Salesforce, Bullhorn, really all these massive database systems, you've got a wealth of data in there. However, you don't have the resources to be able to reach out and contact all these people, so you've got assets that you're unable to utilize. That combined with the political environment and how people are changing around ownership of their data, you need to be able to interact with people and keep them engaged. And so that's what we do with RoboRecruiter. Very dead simple. We go out chatbot technology, can communicate over SMS, Facebook Messenger, Slack, really anything out there. Chris: We engage and update those candidates and we keep them active. In keeping them active, it allows you to be able to make a lot more money and allows your candidates to be a lot happier because they're ready to go and you know when they're available. So why do it over with RoboRecruiter? One of the really cool things is how much data you get back. So firstly, when you do a RoboRecruiter campaign, let's call it tens of thousands of people, you can see engagement rates of up to 20 to 60 percent. That engagement comes back within the first 10 minutes. You do a campaign, first 10 minutes you got 40 percent of the people have already replied. So with that, you've got incredible real-time data that's valuable coming to you really fast. So to sort of summarize at a high level what we do, is we can go out to your database, we can completely activate everything that you've got on there. In engaging with that database, we can do a multi lingual and we can do it at scale. And then the final thing there is that we can completely automate the process. So we automate the process and keep them updated for you. So that's what we do. Joel: So in three seconds, where can I find out more, Chris? Chris: Yeah, so you go to roborecruiter.ai, to our website. We've got everything you need to know there. Joel: Good enough. All our guests forget that. They should put that in there, like, "To learn more, visit robotrecruiter.ai." All right we gotta pull the people on. All right, I'm gonna start off Chris. It is so noisy with solutions like yours. We've talked to crowded.com. We've talked to candidate.id. There just seems to be so many of these sort of automated, bring your candidates back from the dead, engage with candidates automatically. How are you guys so different from all the others out there? Chris: So I'll take that in a couple of ways. Firstly as far as the actual core company makeup. So we're a combination of traditional recruiters, which I'm sure a lot of people have got that piece as well, and then technologists. Technology is based out of Silicon Valley. So we've got people that have worked on the floors and understand it and then we're applying tech to that. The second piece is how we're going about the tech in activating these people, and we do that with what we call PALS. PALS standing for price, availability, location and skill. So in us activating the candidate, that's the core elements that we're bringing to bear, and then we're keeping those pieces active. And we're not trying to replace a Linkedin, we're not trying to replace the information that you've probably already got on your database. We're purely just focused on the PALS, then using our chatbot with some AI pieces to it, keeping that active based on the information that we get back from the PALS. They're kind of about two pieces, the makeup of the company and then how we're tackling this problem. Chad: Chris, it's interesting. We just got back from Dublin and one of the pitches, or one of the presentations that we heard was, "Everybody's looking for a chatbot. And it's interesting because it sounds like RobotRecruiter, really the base of is chatbots, number one, and number two, you always said chatbot once in your pitch. If it is so popular and everybody's looking for a chatbot, why aren't you chatboting the hell out of this thing? Chris: For us the key piece is the active intelligent candidate profile, right? And with that it's then how do you get to that active, intelligent profile? And that's key piece to a company. And what right now currently enables us to do that is chatbot technology. if you look at my background, with VR and all that kind of cool stuff, in five years how you get that active profile, the technology that does it could be completely different, but our core with RoboRecruiter is that active intelligent profile and what supports it right now. So at the moment is the chatbot technology and it's very cool what we've got. But in as maintaining that active intelligent profile, who knows what will happen in the future. Chad: So when it comes down to actually getting your active intelligent database, as Joel said like we've Crowded.com and we actually talk to uncommon yesterday. There's this scraping or this ability to actually go out to social profiles and really rejuvenate profiles within your database that way as well, which is different from a chatbot. So are you currently doing that or is really the chatbot the smart way to go, especially with GDPR happening? Chris: Yes for us the chatbot is what does it. So we don't go out and do any scraping across the profiles. We get them with the responses that come back from the person. We used that to update what you've got on your database or we completely integrate into your ATS, whereby when you're doing your search, not only are you getting your results back that you should speak to that person, but also a visibility into, again, the PALS, their active intelligent features of their profile. Joel: Chris, how does the technology integrate on the consumer side? How would I as a job seeker interact with your product typically? Chris: Yeah, sure. So you'd get an SMS from us, or you'd get a Facebook Messenger from us and that's coming from the customer. So it says, "Hey Mike, this is Chris from ABC recruiting, we've got ..." And it could be a number of different things, "We've got an interesting role for you", or "Hey, we haven't spoken to you in a while, we just wanna update your information." So from there you can opt in to a conversation. So I'm cooking on that. Then you will start engaging with the chatbot. The other pieces were very clear that this is a chatbot that you're engaging with, and then what it starts to do is go through. If it's a job saying, "Hey, I've got a Java script role based in San Francisco, here's the information we've got on you. Can we discuss through and update that information?" And then it'll go on. Joel: Will you be integrating with sort of the career site interface where someone searches for jobs and a little icon in the bottom where I can start chatting there or is it all sort of actively based where there's an sms or a message sent? Chris: Yes. So then you can embed the chatbot into your website so it can be much ... The active side is you get a broadcast out to you. The passive side, you've done a search, you go to the job chatbots there that can qualify you on the role or the person has a link that they can send to someone. So I could be talking to you and say, "Hey, I've actually got some other jobs for you. Let me just flick you a link to our chatbot that could qualify for some other jobs." Chad: Well okay, so let's dive deeper into whole process methodology because in most cases talent acquisition leadership, they don't understand. With so many different products that are out there, they don't understand what a chatbot does entirely, right? So take me and take the listeners through kind of like the process methodology. I'm a candidate, all the way from hitting the website through interview handholding. I mean, what can your work chatbot actually do and how can you help talent acquisition really take a lot of those administrative, I would say administrative tasks away from recruiters and sourcers? Chris: Yeah sure. I think that's a really great point. I think in some cases with new technology, you may be thinking chatbots and people may be thinking AI and thinking that sounds cool, but it's a little bit out of my reach where, what's interesting with the chat box technology, it's just doing messaging and messaging is something that we're all super familiar with because we SMS, we talk to our friends over chat all the time. So all that a chatbot does and especially in our case, is that we're just working with the recruiter to be able to help qualify the candidates or keep a candidate engaged to allow the recruiter to have a meaningful conversation. So it's as simple as the equivalent of you send out an email to someone and you're waiting for their reply, and with that reply the recruiter then acts on the information that comes back. Chris: However, in a chatbot, what you're doing is that instead of an email, a chatbot's going out and conversing with someone a little bit more. And so the information that comes back to you is a lot more targeted, a lot more kind of meaningful. Again, it's just simply helping you have more information when you get that person on the phone. Chad: So specific tasks, the chatbot can help with really gathering data from the candidates through the application process? Is that a checkbox that a TA can say, "Okay, chatbot can help with that? Chris: Yep. Yep. Chad: So what about the interview? Can it help with the interview too, gather data from the interview side? Chris: This is interesting, we often eat our own dog food and so us doing our own hiring and having recruiters within the company that used to be recruiters watching how we work, and it helps guide some of our product roadmap. Chris: So what the chat box does really well is text. Let's say 200 people and it qualifies them, sort of does that first screen on them for getting the information back on who could be right for the role. But getting that person on the phone and being able to speak to them when you've got the short list of people that you want to be able to do, we don't get involved in that. Again, doing something face to face in an interview level like that, that you still do, either you do as a human to human. Which again it's kind of one of our big 10 taglines is that RoboRecruiter making conversations more meaningful because we want to get you to a place where you're having ... As a recruiter you've got let's say eight hours in the day, or 12 or 16 depending on how busy you are. Chris: So let's say you've got limited time. So what the chatbot does is for every minute allowing you to everyone you're talking to, it's pre qualified. It's said that they're available at saying, "Here's the information you've got on them so that every conversation you're having is more meaningful, which is gonna make you more money. Chad: Can you program it to automatically schedule interviews after they've made it through that first set of screening? So it goes through screening and then if they screen through, will automatically start the scheduling phase. Chris: Yes. Yeah, you can hook all that stuff up. So what we do, is that we integrate with third party applications that do that kind of scheduling. So for example, you record integration with Calendly. So you say, "Hey, here's this hot job that I want to get RoboRecruiter go and shortlist people for me. If there are people that are qualified for this job that I would like to speak to, then get them, let's start scheduling them and use Calendly or use whatever third party system that you're using for your calendar to do that for me. Joel: Hey Chris, we've talked in the past about the resume, black hole, candidates applying the jobs and not getting any sort of engagement whatsoever. And the word about a year ago is that candidates enjoyed talking to a robot or an automated system because at least they're engaging with the company in some way. Are you still finding that's true today? Are candidates sort of still enjoying talking to a robot as opposed to a real person, or do you feel like at some point there'll be a point where people are like, "Why am I talking to a robot? This is stupid. I'm gonna go somewhere else"? Chris: Yeah, I think that a couple of interesting things is one that this whole thing around and it's kind of the philosophical debate. Do you tell someone they're talking to a robot or a real person, even though it is a robot? So one, we believe you tell somebody you're talking to a robot because to your point, it's kinda they respect it, they're not trying to guess if this is a robot and they understand what's happening, I think the key part around is balancing with new technology. How much is this a novelty, therefore people are enjoying it. But they may stop enjoying it, to how much is this sort of impacting my business. We say that the chatbot is continuing to impact the business because it just gets to the point of each question. Chris: You, it doesn't dillydally along, it can be very quick. But the whole thing around, yes, a chatbot can get back to people and, and I think then what it comes down to is, what's the sentiment of the conversation that's coming out of that? Maybe it's a rejection. So it's whether or not the rejection is done in a way that's not insulting to the person that felt like it spend enough time with the person. You want to value the person's time in going through that rejection. I think that's really important. I think the other nice thing that you can do with a chatbot that often happens that you can't do in other models is it kind of can do that at scale. So, you know, I think you had a thousand people who apply to a job, 999 couldn't do it. If you don't have a chatbot, you've got to do some kind of email that doesn't feel personal or you've got to try and call through these people. Where chatbot does that, it talks to them all. Chad: Do you have a business case around that? Because that is powerful. To be able to say that a thousand individuals apply for this job, the chatbot screened them, then scheduled them, right? Those are two things that recruiters don't really need to mess with. So do you have like business cases to show time frame on how that would happen versus the amount of time it would take for an actual human being to do that? Chris: Yeah. So we've done a couple of data points, in the kind of two minute pitch, it said that you do what a blast out to a thousand people and you're gonna get a response rate of 20 to 60 percent. Of that, 40 percent of those people reply back in the first 10 minutes, right? And that's incredibly rich information the first 10 minutes. There's no other way that you can do that. So we've kind of gone up against a call desk in Europe where say, we're processing through several thousand candidates they hadn't spoken to in a long time. They had five people going through in three weeks, and they got great information back. For a recruiter, finding out there are a whole bunch of people you haven't spoken to are available and what company they're at or what company they're interviewing with. I mean, there's your money right there, right? But hat took three weeks and they made money off that. We did the same thing with RoboRecruiter and they got that information back in 24 hours, and it was of the same quality. Chris: So you know, that's where you kind of ... Matching this stuff up. People engage people give you great information and could do it at scale and the key being, it's just to let, giving you the information that for your limited time during the day, you then having great, meaningful conversations with people. Joel: Chris How do you feel a chatbot impacts employer brand? Chris: I think, you know what I'm going to say, I have to say it's fantastic for the employee brand, but I think what it comes down to is that the technology adoption is just getting quicker and quicker. Right? You guys have all seen those great curves of how long things took to get to a billion. The radio, the TV, the Internet, smartphones, and chatbot is even a bigger hockey stick. Chat is even a bigger hockey stick, SMS has been around for a long time, but then all of us ... it's something happened in the last sort of five years where everyone, you know, phone usage, voice phone usage dropped and chat just spiked. Chris: So back to the question specifically on brand, consumers are communicating via messaging or all ready. In some of my SMS, Google, I'm a known android user, Google is suggesting replies, that I can make to friends. Working this way is native to my day. So it's more of companies that aren't engaging using this kind of tack potentially damages their brand because everyone is just using this stuff day to day as a consumer. So that's kind of how we see it. Chad: Okay. So when it comes down to clients, I mean from a client standpoint, who would you say is your priority? What pool at our group is really your major target for this product? Chris: Yeah. So we are selling to staffing companies, the core technology, great way for them to be able to engage with their candidates. And we're starting to go and sell to actual hiring managers for them to be able to access and re-update their systems as well. That's where we're focused on really, anyone that's looking to hire and has data already that they wanted to really update and utilize its scale. Joel: Chris, one of my biggest challenges with sort of embracing chatbots and companies that do it, is just sort of the underwhelming feeling that this is a commodity and that eventually chatbots will be free and someone will have an API for questions in regards to recruiting, and you'll be able to plug that in to your chatbot. convinced me that chatbots are not a future commodity or just a feature for every ATS to add on easily in the future. Chris: I'm not gonna convince you of that. I a hundred percent agree. I think that with most technology, that's where it moves is as the technology becomes something that everyone uses. And I think that comes back to my pitch that I gave you guys and the exact thing that you called out. I use the word chatbot once because what we're focused on is that active candidate profile and how we keep that candidate active and give you an intelligent profile. And again, we've got great chatbot technology that does that. We've got the best chatbot technology that does that. But as we move forward there's gonna be other technology that we bring to play to keep that data are active. So, maybe a surprising comment, but it's obvious. Just look at technology and how it works. A point thing we're all about the active intelligence database. Chad: Yeah. I definitely dig that and anybody who's been in this industry realizes that, you know, through evolution, that's what's gonna happen. So my question knowing that, that we've seen texts recruit actually be absorbed or bought, acquired, whatever word you want to use by one of the major applicant tracking systems. So what's your exit strategy? What are you looking to do? Are you looking to trying to build and become a part of one of those big ecosystems? Chris: If I throw on my pitching to investors your way, we are looking to completely change the way that a candidate looks at their profile in a similar way that Linkedin changed the way that, that putting your profile online for everyone to be able to search against, radically changed the industry. So, we've got pretty massive aspirations to become the next way that you consider a candidate profile. And again, do that with PALS. In five years we would open this podcast with, "Hey everyone, let's tell each other up house. In a similar way that we can watch a Linkedin profile? That's where we wanna be. Chad: That's a very political answer and I appreciate that. But I mean, Joel and me we were just talking about the commoditization prospectively of every technology that's out there. So there's got to be a plan. Do you have any major targets? Are there any types of systems that you guys would actually really like to say, "Hey, from a priority standpoint, we would like this awesome chatbot technology, this active, intelligent database technology to, be a part of that ecosystem. Chris: Yeah. I think that for us to be a part of the Linkedin ecosystem, any kind of an ecosystem where there's the matching details of the candidate is where power is perfectly sits on it, If that makes sense. Joel: Chris, give me a sense of a money that you've raised. Are you bootstrapping this thing a Gimme a sense of pricing for our listeners? Chris: Yeah, sure. So, we as a company been around for 18 months. I joined to go to the company CEO five months ago, but we've been working with the main founders over 17 years. We did a family and friends round, when the company first got started and mainly one of the founders getting bootstrapping that from family and friends. In the last five months we've just closed a seed round. Chris: Seed round was a $2,000,000 round and finished up in February. So we've got a nice bit of runway, some pretty nice targets that we're going after and starting to see some good adoption on to build up towards a series. As far as pricing goes, we've really got two options, one is on just what we call just on a one off campaign. So easiest way to describe that is GDP, and someone's got a million records. Someone has, someone has tried email that they don't have the time to speak to everyone on the phone. They're like, "Whoa, hang on a second. These guys can get me anywhere from 20 to 60 percent engagement on the rest of these guys." Let me give you a whole bunch of people and you can activate them. So we got pricing, that's on that, that starts it anywhere from sort of $250 all the way up to tens of thousands depending on the size of the database. Chris: "One off hit send you back the data. Nice doing business with you." The second piece is on a monthly subscription, and that comes down that we priced that on conversation credits. What is the chatbot doing as far as keeping people updated? And that pricing starts at $250 a month for sort of small number of people, a small number of candidates that you keeping up to date. It's more being upwards of a thousand people that you're keeping up to date. And then like depending on enterprise, depending on deep ATS integration, how embedded we're going into the ATS can go all the way up to. [crosstalk 00:27:58] You had to get it. You were waiting for it. Joel: Dude, pricing should not be a long answer. All right Chad, I'm good. Yourself? Chad: Yep. I'm ready man. Let's do this. Joel: All right Chris, are you ready to face the firing squad? Chris: I'm placed. Joel: I'm gonna start it off. I think that you guys have some great tech pieces here. I think you guys have some smart technology. You have certainly a crowded field, the Mias and the Olivias and the Gobies of the world are sort of all vying for a piece of this chatbot space, which is probably why I think there's some major hurdles there for me. Yes, I appreciate that you agree this is a commodity, but how do you grow out of that? How do you build a moat around that is really hard for me to sort of get my hands around. So I think in terms of where the, where the puck is going, chatbots or certainly a piece of that, I'd just love to hear more, I guess in terms of the mode that you're gonna build, the business stability that you're gonna have and not just get swept up by Google's technology or something that Linkedin launches next month. So for me, RoboRecruiter gets a modest clap. You've got some work ahead of y'all Your turn Chad. Chris: Cool. Chad: Excellent. Okay Chris. A great pitch. I think right out of the gates, you have to remember who you're talking to. You're talking to talent acquisition professionals. You need to keep it simple, stupid. So I really appreciate the active intelligence database that you're building in all the powers and all these things. The thing that you have to remember is who your customer is and who you need to pitch, right? So keep it simple, stupid. Don't get too heady. Tighten up the language, and even though you kind of move from chatbot to active intelligence database or candidate profile, it's not a bad word to say chatbot, especially right now because it will turn heads and it will get people focused on, "Okay, what can you guys do to help us?" Chad: That being said, I believe because of Gen Z, the Millennials and really everybody focusing on taking less phone calls, much like you said, we're going to see more of a shift toward this type of process methodology for everything, for interviews, I mean all the way through the process. So I think the stock is definitely gonna go up on this. And I know Joel was talking about Mia and Olivia. I don't see that as competition, I see that as validation, so that's good. If you were the only one in this market who were doing it, guess what, then there would be a problem. Being able to take that business case three weeks, 24 hours, you need to pound the hell out of that and from an employer brand standpoint, which Joel brought up, that's another piece. Job Seekers do not mind. As a matter of fact, they would rather talk to a chatbot than to talk to nobody at all. That will increase the employer brand and overall from my standpoint, I see nothing but heading up for RoboRecruiter which is why I'm giving you a big applause. Chris: Thank you. I knew I liked you better Chad. Chad: Everybody does. Joel: Chris, congratulations. You made it through the gauntlet bullet free. How do you feel? Chris: I feel good. I feel ready to take on my day. Chad: Excellent. Joel: Awesome. Awesome. Well everyone, thanks for listening. And until next time, we're out. Announcer: This has been the firing squad. Be sure to subscribe to the chadcheese 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 gone today. That's www.chadcheese.com #RoboRecruiter #FiringSquad

Hey kids, this week Joel was in San Diego at ERE and Chad was in San Francisco at a Biddle Consulting Group Institute Summit - swanky right? Luckily between naps Joel was able to get some quick interviews from - VideoMyJob - Kristen Graham, Co-founder - YouVisit - Erik Carlson, National Ad Director - Seekout - Anoop Gupta, CEO - AllyO - Ankit Somani. Co-founder Look for these companies to get in front of the FIRING SQUAD very soon. Give it up for our sponsors. Lots of wallet share love should be bestowed upon America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly and JobAdX - only one X. Enjoy! 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. Chad: It's Chad. This week, Joel was in San Diego at ERE. And I was in San Francisco at a Biddle Consulting Group Institute summit. Swanky, right? Luckily, between naps, Joel was able to get some quick interviews from VideoMyJob, YouVisit, Seekout, and AllyO. The problem is, without me around, well, Joel goes a little soft on the interview. So look for some of these companies to get in front of the firing squad very, very soon. Enjoy. Joel: I'm here with Kristen Graham of VideoMyJob. Kristen, give us the ... Well, you're Australian so welcome to the States here, first of all. Talk clearly, 'cause our audience is a little slow. Give us the elevator pitch about what VideoMyJob does. Kristen: VideoMyJob is exactly that. We bring jobs to life on a scalable way for organizations to govern their brand and ensure their brand is ... Can we start again? Joel: Pause. Go. Kristen: VideoMyJob helps organizations bring their jobs to life on a global scale. Joel: Very good. There are a ton of video solutions out there. What makes you guys different? What's your differentiator? Kristen: So, VideoMyJob helps organizations film with in-app features like teleprompter, lighting balance, volume, audio enhancement. We then allow you to edit the video and add B-roll footage of your team or the environment that you're working in. And then, we share. So, we allow the organization to share throughout their ecosystem. Whether it's on a job board or whether it's on their internal Vimeo, internet, or whether it's an email or text message. Or on all their social platforms in the right file format. Kristen: And then, we track that video. So the fourth thing we do, we track how the video's performing. How many applications it's getting. Views, comments, engagement, all that sort of thing. Joel: There's some debate about video. About whether it should be sort of a high-priced ad agency manicured video, versus just push play on the iPhone or record on the iPhone and submit to YouTube. What are your thoughts on those two worlds? And where do you guys sort of come closer to? Kristen: Sure. I think there's always a place for highly polished corporate videos, especially for TV and promoting products. But when it comes to promoting a job, it's the people that sell the opportunity. And it's ... people join companies for people. And a hiring manager or recruiter or even an employee in the job are the best people to actually describe what the actual opportunity is. So I think there's somewhere in between. Picking up your iPhone and recording, I think, is a little bit too casual for a corporate environment. But VideoMyJob helps you get that authenticity across in a video. And, yeah. I think that's pretty much covered it. Joel: Yeah, to me, you guys ... And we certainly can't show this on a podcast, but you guys have some features that sort of allow you to have a raw type video but then also look professional at the same time. Talk about those features that allow users to do that. Kristen: Sure. So, we work with an organization's marketing team. So we set the brand guidelines in the app, and then close it down so your employees can be generating the content but keeping their brand guidelines set to the company's brand. We also have governance across, in the app. Where a standard user can create, edit, and ... But the administrator is the one that shares and promotes the video. Joel: And one of the features that I think is cool is almost a little teleprompter where you can have a script and be video taping someone and they can read the script. So anyone sort of shy of video and nervous, I think you guys kind of take that out of the process. Joel: Tell me a little bit about your pricing, the product breakdown. What does your typical client look like? Kristen: A typical client looks like a large corporate client who really has a great brand. They have a great employee brand and they want to bring that to life through using video. So, we have different pricing models for size of company. But we're just started out in America. And opened our office in San Francisco 10 weeks ago. And we're going to market with a US launch special of 2,000 a month. And that allows an organization across America to create unlimited video, have unlimited users on the platform. We also ... that includes your onboarding. So, your users get to go through our online training platform. We also have these cool little selfie sticks that you get for your team. And also all your brand set up integration, that's all included. Joel: Any thoughts on VR? Augmented reality? Are you bullish on that, bearish? What are your thoughts? Kristen: I love it. Especially if ... for grad campaign show days where you try to really immerse the person in the role. I think it's an awesome opportunity. I am struggling to see how that can come to life in everyday job ads. I still feel typical bringing a job to life through seeing real people is a better, more scalable approach to that. If VR can be scalable, how awesome would that be? Joel: She's trying to speak English, which is her second language. So she's stumbling through some of this. It's okay. Joel: Where can I find out more about VideoMyJob? Kristen: Videomyjob.com. Joel: Thanks Kristen. Kristen: You want coffee with that? Joel: It's commercial time. Announcer: JobAdx has the best ad tool in the industry. We provide publishers in job boards higher rev share than other partners through our smarter, programmatic platform. In many cases, 30 to 40 percent greater and more. We're like Ad Sense, but with a better split for you and added relevance for your audience. JobAdx also offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs, and staffing firms. Real time dynamic bidding and delivery for your client's posting through the industry's first truly responsive tool. Not set in regret. All of this is done with the flexibility of cost per impression. Click or application. We also offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. Finally, JobAdx delivers a direct client's superior candidates through the best of programmatic efficiency. And premium page ad positioning. To partner with us, you can visit or search jobadx.com. You can also email us at joinusat@jobadx.com to get estimates or to begin working together. JobAdx. The best ad tool. Providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Chad: It's show time. Joel: Hey guys. I'm at the ERE conference, as you know. I'm here at the YouVisit booth. We're talking VR headset employment, which I've always found fascinating. Chad doesn't think so much of it, but I do. They are the only VR headset company here at the show. So I wanted to take a second to talk to them. Here I've got Eric Carlson, senior sales manager. Eric, how are you doing? Eric: Great, thanks. Thanks for coming by. Joel: Excellent. Well, give us the quick elevator pitch on what you do. Eric: We create virtual reality and interactive 360 experiences for different use cases. From recruiting purposes, for training, branding, et cetera. Joel: So a lot of people will say, "I don't have a VR headset. I've never done VR." What is sort of your opinion on the future of this? Is it really gonna take off? I assume your business is predicated on it actually being popular, or maybe it doesn't. What are your thoughts on VR sort of as a general business strategy? And ... yeah. Eric: Well, VR ... Part of the ... Is VR is gonna continue to evolve as content becomes more available and accessible to be able to use it. Our platform actually, you don't need just the VR headset. You can actually access and have full interactivity on your mobile phone, on any platform. Tablet and desktop as well. Joel: So you're working with Deloitte to do this. Tell us exactly what you're doing for Deloitte and how they're benefiting from VR. Eric: Yeah, we've worked with a lot of companies. From Cisco, Deloitte, Pilot. And what we're doing is creating experiences that show a day in the life. So, someone walks in the door goin through ... it could be a different job track, for example. Something like that. With a compass group is something we created, where you can choose the job track that you're going on and now follow that person in a virtual experience, and a day in the life and see what their day is like and what it's gonna be like to work there. Joel: What would Deloitte or one of your companies say is sort of the goal of VR? Is it actual leader candidate generation? Is it just a branding tool? What are they getting out of it? Eric: It can be both. It's certainly branding. The part of it is vetting. You wanna get the right person who's truly interested in your company for the right reasons to come through the door to ... When, sometimes people are spending resources to bring people in for interviews, things like that too, you wanna make sure that you've vetted the right person and that there's true interest. Also, people are spending a lot of time researching your company. From going to LinkedIn, Glassdoor, whatever it might be. And going to your website. If they go to your website and find a link that can take them through a 360 experience and different parts of your company, there's a true value to that. For them to truly have an understanding of what it's going to be like to work with you. Joel: Now, one of the things that your product sort of requires is that a user download a native application on Google Play or iTunes. Have you found that to be a hurdle for adoption or not so much? Eric: That's only one component. You can use the mobile app for the mobile experience. Or, to put that into a VR headset. But the other components of what we do, as well, is that you can have the full interactivity on any platform. On a desktop or even a mobile device without downloading the app. The value to downloading the app is getting a fully cached experience. You don't have to worry about wifi, for example, or internet connection. But then also, being able to put it into a VR experience, which works really well. If you wanna bring some sort of cardboard headset, for example, to any type of event that you're doing or hosting. Or even use as a mailer to drive attention and to brand yourself. Joel: Now, one of the things that I find amusing ... and I've been doing this for a while. When webcams were first on the scene, and not every computer had a screen on it, companies would actually send out branded webcams to candidates to then do over the internet interviews. And you guys have a nice little package here where I don't have to necessarily have a VR headset. I don't necessarily have to have the tools. So tell our audience a little bit about the packages that you're enabling companies to send to people, how they're using it, and just exactly how that's working. Eric: Sure. We work with companies that you can actually ... it's called a cardboard headset. It folds down to basically like a four by six and a one-half inch deep. Very light. And these are something that you can actually brand. You put your logo information on it. On the back side, you can put the information. "Download this app. Put your phone into the headset." And now they have the VR experience. So this is something that you can use as giveaways and also as mailers. People will often mail it out, too, when you've identified a certain quality audience that you want to send this experience to. And now they have a branded headset specifically with directions to have the VR experience that we've created for you. And they're gonna hang onto this headset, as well to continue with your branding. Joel: To me, it looks a little bit like a DVD box. Eric: Yeah. Joel: About the size of a DVD. Tell me about pricing. Eric: Pricing ... the experiences really range depending on the level of interactivity that we do. We're a full-service solution from pre-production, going on location and shooting, post-production. Pricing starts in the 20k range and then builds from there depending on how many interactive elements we build into it. We are, with the experiences, able to take your existing videos and photos, et cetera, and build them in as hot spots, as well. So you can use your existing media as part of the experience. Joel: Where can I find out more about you? Eric: Come to youvisit.com. Joel: Thanks, Eric. Eric: All right. Thank you. Joel: It's commercial time. Announcer: America's Job Exchange is a market leader in diversity recruitment and an OFCCP compliant solution provider. We serve over 1,000 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. Insures 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. For more information, call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Chad: It's show time. Joel: I'm here with Anoop Gupta, CEO and company-founder of Seekout. Anoop, thanks for taking some time out with us today. Anoop: Thank you, Joel. We are excited to talk to you. I love the writing and the work that you do. Joel: Thank you very much. Well, a lot of people don't know Seekout. Give us the elevator pitch. Anoop: Seekout is a passive recruiting tool for the savvy recruiter. Some of the unique points are how we give people talent insights. So you know, whatever role they are looking for, how do they find where the candidates, what they do. Both has a ... to be more focused in their recruiting and in conversations with a hiring manager, which has increasingly become important. We are very good at diversity, and that is important to almost all enterprises and business. To grow a business. Whether you're looking for African Americans, womens, Hispanic, veterans. How to find highly qualified candidates. And then one of the most unique aspects of Seekout is how we can enable you to find great coders who are there are on GitHub. We can take their GitHub profile, combine it with their public information, run education and experience. We can bring the work they've done in their repositories and serve it to you in a beautiful, searchable experience. Joel: Great. Now, you have a pretty unique background. Tell me about that, and then also tell me, what inspired you to get into the HR space? And have you been verified by a therapist to be sane? Anoop: That's a ... So Joel, my background is I was a prof at Stanford. And I sold my first company to Microsoft in 1997. And had a variety of amazingly interesting. I was fortunate. Roles inside Microsoft. From directly appoint to Bill Gates as his technology advisor to heading all our business communications exchange and Skype, global tech policy, education. Basically, after 18 years at Microsoft, I wanted to travel new roads. You know, all of us have one life and we gotta have the experiences and the learnings. And Microsoft is discovering the world when in an 18 wheeler truck. I wanted to get on a bicycle and travel the hills. So, you know, this is an amazingly humiliating and ... humbling, not humiliating, experience. And it is a tremendous growth experience for me. Joel: There are the a lot of competitors out there that are sort of sourcing tools like yours. Entelo, Hiring Solve would be ones that our listeners know about. How are you guys different? Or, can you use all the services together? I don't know there's a winner take all? Or, what are your thoughts on that? Anoop: So, Seekout is unique, as I said, in terms of how we help you develop tech talent. How we help you get to diversity. How we let you get the insights. And some deep machine learning in the search engine that we do for you. We interface and play vowel with other tools. And you know, ATS/CRM systems that are there. But it is our take, coming from a hiring manager. So one is, we love recruiters. We don't think it is replacing them, anything like that. But we also come very much from the hiring manager perspective. How do you improve that interaction? Because if you can engage with the hiring manager, you will waste less time sourcing people. So a lot of it comes from that perspective for us. Joel: What do you think the profession of sourcing looks like in five years? Anoop: I actually write what the recruiting toolbox people say. It has to go to be a talent advisor to the hiring manager. And also, similarly, a resource to the candidate. For the candidate to say, "Yeah, I wanna have a relationship with Joel and him pushing me or taking me to my future dreams." You've got to offer something. You've got to say, "This is what people like you are doing." Hiring manager needs to know whether this talent is scarce. How scarce? How do get it and what is really important. So, we wanna enable that relationship. Joel: Give me a sneak peek into Seekout product-wise. What can we be expecting in the next few months for you guys to release if you can let us know? Anoop: So, we are very rapidly evolving and adding things. And we are driven basically by what organizations recruiters what, hiring managers want, and which can facilitate. Today, some things we want to add a lot more sources. You know, LinkedIn profile is one snippet of what a human being, a professional, is. So one big area for us is how do we bring in information from many, many other sources to build a more complete picture that will allow a better relationship with the candidate and the hiring manager? The second thing I believe is that engagement is really important. One is to find the person, but then, how do you reach out to them? How do you engage? How do you follow up? That is extremely time consuming in hard. And we are figuring out what our role should be in that. Joel: Gotcha. You mentioned LinkedIn. And our listeners know about the case with LinkedIn and HighQ. The scraping of data and profiles. Obviously, this impacts you. What are your thoughts on the case and how it might turn out? Anoop: So, my belief is that the public profiles belong to the candidates. They want it shared with the world. And if LinkedIn is making it available to the public, the way the internet is structured, they should be available to anyone. And this si regardless of how we think about the data. If you do price comparison on internet, it won't work if you are not able to look at Amazon and [inaudible 00:20:41] and Nell. So internet, in fact, it's value comes from the openness. And that is what we believe in the LinkedIn and support the HighQ case. Joel: Cool. Tell me about pricing at Seekout. Anoop: So pricing, we have three levels. We have a 100 dollar a month, or a 1,000 dollar annual pricing. We have a 250 dollar price point, and a 500 dollar a month price point. And this is all depending on the capabilities. For example, the one with our GitHub and diversity and insights and lots of things at 500 dollars. But we have all different price points to meet the needs of recruiters. Joel: And where can our listeners learn more? Anoop: They should come to seekout.io to look at website. And you can mail me directly, anoop@seekout.io. Joel: Excellent. Thank you, Anoop. Joel: It's commercial time. 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. Chad: It's show time. Joel: Instead of starting out trying to pronounce my next company's name, I'm gonna let him do it for me. Ankit: Our company is AllyO and my name is Ankit Somani. Joel: Ankit. Correct? Okay. Ankit: Yeah, that's my name. You got it. Joel: All right. So, AllyO, providers of Ally, the chat bot. You guys just got some money. How much? Ankit: Very raised overall 14 million dollars. And Bing Capital Ventures was the lead for the round. And we have Google AI Fund, which funds AI first companies come in. As well as Roundstar, who's a great industrial partner for us. Joel: Great. So, give us the elevator pitch on what Ally does. Ankit: So, Ally is ... The shortest version is, it's your team's AI recruiter. But the longer version is it really helps your applicants as well as hiring managers becoming their single point of contact throughout the recruiting process. For applicants, it means taking them all the way from initial hire to when they're hired. All the steps of the process automated over any form of conversation platform. So, it could be texting, it could be web chat. You could be seamlessly going between each other. But not only does doing it for applicants turns out hiring managers and recruiters don't have a great experience with existing systems anyways. So it's a lot about, "How do you make their life much, much easier?" 'Cause at the end of the day, you need to make their productivity much better. Joel: So there are quite a few chat bot players here at the ERE conference. Paradox and their Olivia chat bot is here, as well as Maya. Anyone going through the exhibit hall asking what the difference is between you and the others, what answer do you give them? Ankit: I think there are a few different things that we've done. So first, if you look at number of public deployments there are out there, that is this product proven or not? We literally let our customers shout out for us. So you see bunch of case studies. You actually see them deploying this product, completely scale it, and see and reap the advantages. And we have done multiple presentations with customers. So one is, the actual value of it. Is it proven? And in our case, we think it is. Ankit: The second is, it's really end to end. So, we don't think of ourselves as just screening tool. We don't think ourself as just standard experience or just scheduling. We think the biggest problem with the ADS and HRS and the payroll world was that people spend their entire careers building these products and integrating them with each other. We wanted to have, as I said, a single point of contact. So, one that takes people end to end. And automated at that. We already do multiple languages. We are in multiple countries. So all of that is there. But the end to end part is really important. Because if you look at AI, a big part of AI is the conversation system itself. But the bigger part of it is, how do you collect data at each of these instances and make two plus two five? That is, use the data to self-improve the process over time. And I think that's where we really wanna be playing. Joel: Give us an example of a current client and how they're using the tool today. Ankit: Absolutely. So, one of our current customers is Hilton. And we even did a public presentation with Hilton two, three weeks ago at a conference at Vegas. And Hilton ... so, different customers use it in different places. There are people who use it pre-ADS where they are really trying to attract more applicants. There are other people who are trying to use it post-ADS. Where for them, it's not a problem to attract people. It's a problem that it's too overwhelming. So, how do you make recruiter productivity much better? And so in Hilton's example, and several other customers' example, there's a whole lot of screening and scheduling that needs to happen after that. All the way to somebody getting hired. Like, we even do offer extensions, background checks, lots of different things. And even continue the conversation post-hire. So we think of it as a complete package for the applicant. That's how people have been deploying it. Joel: The latest round of 14 million. What do you plan to do with that money in the next year or so? Ankit: Absolutely. So, I mean, we're a technology company. A big part of it is to continue to make our technology much, much better. We're investing a lot in that. We've just hired rock stars in that space. People who have been doing dialogue systems for more than 15, 20 years. So, a lot of focus on that front. We're gonna be investing ... you know, our scheduling product is our own. Already does multiple types of scheduling. We're gonna be investing a whole lot on that. But that's mostly on the product side. Bringing it global, making more languages happen. A lot of that. There's a ... there's a big part of focus which is around the sales and marketing side. So, we stayed in stealth for the longest time. Because we were getting enough customers, we were able to prove it out. But now, we wanna use this funding to really put the name and word out there. So that's gonna be a place where we've been investing a lot. Joel: Right. Tell me about pricing. Ankit: Pricing is, you know, it's always an interesting thing. Because when you are focusing on individuals and SMBs, you almost need to publish it out on your main page because that's how ... you just want that to be a very friction-free process. Ours tends to be primarily focused on medium to large size enterprises. So we have an enterprise-type pricing. So, it's not something you go on a website and you see. But it's very value-based. So we look at it in terms of, how is it that a customer's gonna use it? What's the value they're gonna get out of it? And how do we make sure that while they're enabling that value, we get a piece of it? So, that's how we think about pricing. Joel: How can I learn more? Ankit: There are lots of ways to learn more. You can go on our website, request a demo if you haven't seen that, of Ally. Would love for you to see it because the best part about chat bots, it's extremely experiential. And once you see it, I bet that you'll be a fan of it. So just come hit us up at www.allyo.com. Request a demo. Hit me up. I'm Ankit Somani, you can hit me up on LinkedIn. I'll respond to your text even if it is at two a.m. in the night. Joel: Fantastic. Thanks. Chad: Joel and I will be back in our virtual studios this week. So get prepared for the Chad and Cheese at snark level alpha. Yeah, I have no fucking clue what that means. But it sounded good. We out. Tristen: Hi. I'm Tristan. Thanks for listening to my stepdad, The Chad, and his goofy friend Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out on all the knowledge droppin' that's happenin' up in here. - They made me say that - The most important part is to check out our sponsors, because I need new track spikes. You know, the expensive, shiny, gold pair that are extra because ... well, I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #VideoMyJob #YouVisit #Seekout #AllyO #ERE

After a bit of hiatus and a stint at the Guiness Recover Unit at the local hospital, Chad & Cheese are back in the groove, sticking it to everyone who, let's be honest, deserve it. Here's a taste: - Indeed's new commercial isn't so Sunny.. It sucks... - Indeed makes it official with higher prices - Google beta-steps into candidate search - It's only the start... - Starbucks closes the gender pay gap - LinkedIn gets its Snapchaty wit-it - A NYC councilman has lost his damned mind - IBM old people keep getting screwed - Weed continues to be a magnet for investment cash, even in online recruitment ... and a boatload more, boys and girls. Enjoy, and give our sponsors your wallets. Because, we said so. Lots of love to America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly and NKOTB, JobAdX. 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: Heidi-ho boys and girls. The boys are back in town. Chad: Damn straight. Joel: Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I am Chad Guinness Sowash. Joel: Amen to that. On this week's show Indeed ruins a perfectly good song from our childhood in their new ad, Google recruitment's love train keeps on trucking, and LinkedIn embraces its inner Snapchat. And oh yeah, we might have a little something to say about Career Builder. Buckle up. But first, a word from our brand new, spanking, shiny sponsor. Announcer: JobAdX has the best ad tool in the industry, we provide publishers and job boards higher rev share than other partners through our smarter, programmatic platform. In many cases, 30 to 40% greater and more. We're like AdSense, but with a better split for you and added relevance for your audience. JobAdX also offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs, and staffing firms. Real time dynamic bidding and delivery for your clients' postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool, not set and regret. All of this is done with the flexibility of cost per impression, click, or application. We also offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. Finally, JobAdX delivers direct clients, superior candidates through the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. To partner with us, you can visit or search JobAdX.com. You can also email us at joinus@jobadx.com to get estimates or to being working together. JobAdX, the best ad tool, providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Joel: Getting programmatic with it. Chad: I heard better than AdSense and then also go to the website or you can go to chadcheese.com and click on the JobAdX logo on the site. We make it easy. Any way you want to get to them, you can get to them. Just get to them. Joel: I'm just hoping that they don't pull a Nexxt and add another X on their name, so we have to say, "Job Ad Double X". Chad: Dude, I'm telling you right now, it's going to be a thing because it's obviously worked for Nexxt. So that's awesome. JobAdX. Just one X, guys. Just one X. Joel: Keep it to one. That's how we like it. Oh man, we're back. Ireland, we're sobered up. Chad: Dude, I'm so excited. I'm so excited. We've got so much yet to talk about and yeah. We had a great time in Ireland. I mean, big props to everybody that was over there. Joel: TATech. Chad: Yeah, TATech and everyone that was there. All the attendees. It was amazing. We were on stage and you asked, "Hey, you know, who's ever listened to Chad Cheese podcast?" And literally, like 95% of the audience raised their hand. So apparently we're big in Europe. Joel: I hope they heard the question correctly. Maybe it was, "Who hates the Chad Cheese show," but yeah. That was very impressive. Yeah, well, we have a lot to talk about. Let's get to the shout outs. My first one, Wendy Cosmak from LinkedIn, just a big fan, wanted to say that to her. Thanks for listening, Wendy, and keep bringing those LinkedIn folks in because we love them. Chad: We do love them. We also have Jem from Talent Nexus. He's over across the pond in England. He tweeted a picture of a traffic jam and this is what he said, "Sitting in this for two hours. One highlight is listening to the Chad Cheese Guinness-fueled podcast." God damn straight, Jim. Very nice, very nice. Joel: Nothing makes a traffic jam in rush hour better than a little you and me in the ear drums. Louise Triance, I hope I'm saying that correctly, she's at UK Recruiter. She's a big fan. Wanted to give her a shout out. Louise, thanks for listening over on the other side of the pond. Chad: Amazing. Joel: We appreciate it. Chad: Love from Japan. You saw this, right? This was some crazy shit. Joel: Crazy. Chad: Yoshio Fujimora, I hope I got that right. He tweeted in Japanese, so I had to use the Microsoft translation that's already embedded in Twitter and it actually- Joel: You're such a Microsoft whore. Chad: No, dude, it was just embedded in Twitter. So it said, "HR has been delayed about 20 years in Japan," and the rest of it made no sense whatsoever. So big thanks to Yoshio and a big come on, man, to Microsoft for shitty translation software. Joel: So we think Yoshio likes us, right? Chad: Yes. Joel: From the ... Okay, well that's good. Yoshio, keep listening. Chad: Yes. Joel: Shout out from me to Alan Barker who just appreciates us and we appreciate you, Alan, there at Monster. Chad: Love our Monsters. Shout out to HCMTechnologyReport.com. That is a damned mouthful. Mark Feffer, he's been pulling me into some articles, some round tables and stuff like that, and it's really good stuff. It's funny. One of the quotes he just had from his last article I thought was very Chad and Cheese-ish. "If two or more HR professionals get together and don't begin discussing engagement halfway through their first drink, something's wrong." Joel: Would it be Chad and Cheese-ish or Chad and Cheese-y? I'm trying to figure that one out. Chad: Depends on the article. Joel: Yes. I think you and I are on the road next week separately. We're dividing and conquering, I think. I'll definitely be at Erie and San Diego. I think you're going to be on the west coast as well. What are you doing? Chad: Yup. I'm going to be at BCGI, Biddle Consulting Group Institute. They've got a summit going on in San Francisco and me and my lovely wife Julie are actually doing a tandem presentation, about an hour and half on how companies suck- Joel: I'm sorry. Wife talk gets the crickets today. Chad: How companies suck at recruiting veterans and individuals with disabilities, Joel. That's pretty goddamn important. Joel: Fine. When you do disabilities compliance, that's great. Yes, if you're in Cali, you have no excuse to say hi to either Chad or myself because we'll be conquering both sides of the state. Chad: That's right. Joel: Also wanted to say, again in April, SHRM Talent in Vegas, TAtech in Vegas, be there or be square. We're going to tear a new one and make them regret every minute that they invited us to their show. Chad: SHRM Talent, guys. I mean, if you're on the talent acquisition side, you've a vendor, or you're a talent acquisition professional, how in the hell are you not there? And then wrapping your week in Vegas up with TAtech. What I like to call the Spring Edition of TAtech. We're going to be enjoying the hell out of Vegas a couple weeks from now. Joel: I know I prefer my Pete and RePete in springtime. Chad: Those guys kick ass. Joel: Very nice. Chad: Couple more shout outs. Joel: What else you got? Chad: I've got Job Board Doctor. He was listening and thought it was funny that we were giving Mulberry's millennial CEO shit. And then a long list of just love and thanks: Amy Butchco, I think, over at SAIC is listening. Lauren from LinkedIn, Irish Recruiter, that's Ivan Stojanovic, one of our- Joel: Big fan. Chad: Buddies, yeah. WhyApply, Shane at Clinch, Thom at SmashFly, Adam at Candidate ID, Bogomil at Google, Terry at Pandologic, and last but not least, it's going to be repetitious but damn it, mad props to the TAtech boys, Peter and Pete - You guys are kicking ass and taking names. Joel: For sure, for sure. Chad: More than I expected, guys. Great job, great job. Joel: Yep, and definitely the clench boys showed us a good time in Dublin. We appreciate the locals showing us how it's done. Chad: Jane and Pat. Joel: Yeah. Ready to get to the show? Chad: Let's do it. Joel: Alright. Your favorite whipping boy Indeed- Chad: Yes. Joel: Starts us off this week. You're not a real big fan of their commercial. Lay it out for us and what you don't like. Chad: So I mean, talk about a great song. Sunny by Bobby Hebb released in 1966. Smooth, awesome. I mean gets you into a mood. Joel: Low town. Chad: Yep, but it's a horrible damn commercial, man. I mean it gets you in and you're like, "Wow okay, I'm in the groove." And then it's just a really bad commercial. It takes you through what looks kind of like the first person shooter games that are out there. It's a first person type of video. A guy is getting rejected over and over and over, just having a hard time. Then he goes home, his dog gives him a Java development book. He goes to Indeed for interview tips. And the world opens up for him. I mean it's dumb as shit. But apparently it's gotten them some traffic. Joel: So if you haven't seen it, go to YouTube search, "Indeed Sunny," you'll find it. So my first reaction ... My overall reaction to the advertisements on TV, which is sort of new territory for Indeed who has relied on Google traffic for the most part, but they can't do that anymore, is that how are they branding themselves versus, you know, Google? So when I first saw the commercial, I thought, "Okay. They're branding themselves as sort of a career platform. I can go learn new skills, upgrade my game, and get a better job." Which is a totally acceptable brand against Google, which is pretty cold and corporate, search for jobs. You know, Google is this minimalist technology company and Indeed is trying to be this sort of warm and fuzzy like, "We're your career platform." Joel: Now when I looked back at the commercial, there are a few things that are confusing to me. Number one is the guy first gets an alert on his phone. I don't know if you noticed this or not. But he gets a notice from Indeed that he has an interview request, okay? So the interview clearly goes badly on all of these jobs. So the first message to me is okay- Chad: Indeed sucks. Joel: Indeed's matching sucks because all these interviews this guy has are awful and they're all driven by Indeed search. So that was number one. Number two was the guy comes home and his dog has a coding book. So I'm thinking, "Holy shit. A technology company is promoting a book to go upgrade your skills in technology." And then I thought, "Okay, that's really stupid." But then I thought, "Oh, well maybe Indeed has like some educational tools." Well, they don't. And then I thought, "Okay, I go to Lynda. Chad: LinkedIn. Joel: Which is owned by LinkedIn for that or I go to Degreed or I go to, you know, Udemy. So Indeed doesn't have the services to help you learn coding. So I thought that was a big mistake. And then the last thing ... Shit, I'm spacing on this. But the last thing was- Chad: You mean when he comes in and they're all like clapping because he got the job? Joel: Yeah, that was ... I guess the two things that got me were like the matching sucks because the first interviews sucked and they were all Indeed jobs. And then the second thing was the coding, or like upgrading your skills. I know there's a third thing but I'm spacing on it. Maybe it will come to me as we talk about more Indeed stuff. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Which is their subscription model, which was officially released. Chad: Well now, before we get there, before we get there, let's talk about traffic because this is important, too. So because they actually realized traffic, they've been realizing traffic from these ads. So we got some analysis from a listener, which is pretty cool, and this is what we saw. And actually got some data, too, which is really cool. A couple of reasons Indeed still gets it's organic and it is growing. So they've got growing organic right now a very large percentage of their organic is from branding terms. So for example, people are searching in Google for Indeed. So this is growing activity as they spend more and more on branding such as being the primary sponsor on March Madness. This is where they use this ad. Chad: Here's they key, guys. Indeed, guess what, this is demonstrating that your model is not sustainable. You believe that you can build a brand that will stand the test of time. I give you Exhibit A: Monster. Shit didn't work, guys. They had Superbowl commercials, they had blimps, they had all that other stuff. Guess what? That shit doesn't work. You know what works? Behavior. Joel: Innovation. Chad: And these people are going to Google as behavior to look for you. So when your brand fades, which it will, guess what they're going to do? They're going to search jobs in Google and they're going to use Google for jobs. Which you are not pumping jobs into. Idiots. Joel: So I'm pretty sure I know the person who gave you that and the research that he showed you. One of the things that it reminded me of was ... Can you name the most profitable year in music? Chad: Most profitable year in music? Joel: I'll give you the answer because we have a lot to talk about. The answer is the year 2000. Okay? You had NSYNC, you had Brittney, you had Backstreet Boys. Like it was a huge year for music sales, okay? Now if you were in the music industry, you could argue that, "Okay, I'm looking at this Napster thing. I'm looking at this internet thing. And who gives a shit? Like we were more profitable this year than we ever have been and the good times are going to keep rolling." Now if you were a smart person and that was most other people who weren't blinded by the money, you could say, "Okay, dude. Napster and the internet, that is going to totally disrupt your whole world in the next five to ten years." And guess what, it certainly did. Joel: So to me, spouting off about how much Indeed's revenue is growing and how much their traffic is growing, to me, falls on deaf ears because this thing happens all the time. High revenue and whatever doesn't translate into the fact that your world is, you know, crumbling. You know, this is going to hit them like a ton of bricks whether they get it immediately or over time, it probably will be over time, but it's going to happen in our opinion. You can be blind to it and say like, "Things are good. They're going to get better." Or say like, "Yeah, the writing is on the wall, we need to address that quickly." Chad: Yes, agreed. It's not sustainable. So now to resume subscription. Joel: Yeah. It's official. Chad: Prices are up. The newly launched model is out. And apparently this product was delayed two months, at least this is what I'm getting from sources, because they wanted to, "Let enterprise customers get ready," which sounds like a load of bullshit. It's more like Indeed has pissed off a lot of big customers with this announcement. So they wanted to wait a quarter, let the proverbial dust settle, and then try to stealth it in there. Because you and I both know many vendors out there try to sneak stuff in when talent acquisition leaders are not paying attention. Because they're so goddamn busy in the first place, so they just say sneak it under. So yeah, companies were pissed off. Joel: Yeah, and you have some contacts telling you like prices going up two to three times what they were previously, right? Chad: Yeah, actual ... I mean, here's some customer quotes, "They are the absolute worst," they being Indeed, "We saw a 2-3x increase. Not worth it." "I hate Indeed. Their reps harass nonstop." Last but not least, "It's a mess and a big miss." Joel: Yeah, that's crazy stuff for sure. And you know, the strong arm sales tactics by Indeed have been there forever. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: I'm kind of still surprised with change in leadership and whatever that hasn't changed, but apparently according to your sources, they're bastards. Chad: I remember in the early days when I was VP over at Direct Employers, and I would have our members call me and say, "Hey, can you get these Indeed sales guys off my back? They're calling me every day." Joel: Yeah. Chad: But I mean when you're seeing prices raise like that, I mean, just the regular subscription model from a dollar to $3. And then they had this complex kind of buyback engagement system which, from an intent standpoint, oh that sounds all well and good, but it's not practical. And to try to keep it, I mean you're going to need an actual individual who is focused on trying to make sure that you keep that shit clear on the credits that you get back and what you're paying. It's complex and it's bullshit, and TA doesn't have time for it. And Indeed hopes talent acquisition doesn't have time for it as well because again, they make more money, right? Joel: Yeah. And Indeed's pushback would be, "Well, we became a billion dollar company in five years so screw off with your criticism of our sales tactics." And they probably would be a little bit right on that. LinkedIn. Video. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Embracing video big time. Embracing their inner Snapchat was one of the first stories that came out this month. We now have LinkedIn with filters. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Some of our subscribers or listeners maybe don't use Snapchat. I use it very minimally just to keep track of what the hell the kids are doing. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But if you are familiar with filters, you can put little signage on your video, you can put like where you're videotaping from. Snapchat takes it to a whole nother level and LinkedIn has some really pared back filters, but filters nonetheless, which says to me they're trying to keep hold of the younger user. Maybe attract younger users because I know I'm not going to use any of the filters probably on any videos I make for LinkedIn. What are your thoughts? Chad: Video is incredibly smart, not to mention the way that video is gaining traction in LinkedIn. I think you're saying it better in the actual results. A shit ton of views. I mean that's just content that LinkedIn wants to pull in so they're really giving you bonus views and whatnot for it. So that's awesome. I think you're 100% right when it comes to the actual filters and I think the correct word would be, "LinkedIn video with filters is lit." "Off the chain." Joel: Off the chain, baby. Chad: But yeah. I think it just makes sense. I mean you got to, as we've been talking about, there are different social platforms for different demographics. The individuals who are using Snapchat are incredibly different from those who are mainly using a LinkedIn or mainly Facebook. I mean there's ... Obviously LinkedIn is there, I wouldn't say a major player on the social media side of the house as a Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, you know, Instagram. I think that's where it all lies. So they're trying to ingrain some of that, which I think is smart and you know, with Facebook and all the bullshit that they're going through right now with Cambridge Analytica and all this data. Joel: Privacy. Chad: It's turning people off. We'll see if it's enough to send them to other platforms, but I think it's a good move for LinkedIn. I won't use filters, but you know, I think younger demographics definitely will. Joel: Yeah, I totally agree. And also I think released today, they announced video for company pages and also sponsored video for their advertising product. So they're certainly seeing the engagement, because they're spending time developing for it. I want to see them come up with live video. I know every time that we do a live show, we sort of default to Twitter, which I think gets minimal engagement. I would really love to see LinkedIn launch a live streaming video service where I can go see conferences, streaming video, or things that we do. I got to think it's around the corner but I certainly hope that's on their roadmap because I know that we would certainly use it at our conferences because it is more of our demographic and target audience. Chad: I think LinkedIn as a platform, they're having scalability problems. Just because when you go into it, sometimes it lags. I mean you try to post a YouTube video and it won't even post correctly. It won't give you the video caption or anything like that. So I think they're trying to scale and it's not happening the way that they want to. So going live is going to take a little longer, but there's no question, we would definitely use it. Chad: Here's the danger guys, two dangers. First and foremost, when you start to allow the younger generation, let's say, to use LinkedIn like they use Snapchat, all the shit that we talk about and we get pissed about, "You shouldn't put that on LinkedIn." There's going to be a hell of a lot more of that, guys. More of the, "Personal not professional," stuff. Second, video resumes. We're going to be seeing people on this goddamn thing doing what they see as a "video resume" or ... Exactly, exactly. LinkedIn is going to go into a, "Oh, you can do your video resume." If they go that direction, I don't think it's going to fare well. Joel: No, no. If you're listening, LinkedIn, and we know we have some listeners. Chad: Don't do it. Joel: Do not go down the video resume path. Chad: Don't do it. Joel: Because you will feel our wrath. Chad: Don't do it. Joel: Okay, moving on. This one's in your sweet spot. Starbucks is doing some gender pay gap adjusting. What's going on there? Chad: Don't we have an ad first? I thought we had an ad. Joel: According to our notes, no. I can go to an ad if you want to like really set yourself up for the Starbucks stuff. Why don't we hear from Sovren and you get prepared to talk about Starbucks. Maybe have a cup of Starbucks before we talk about it. 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: So one of the things that our listeners love about us, we put this show together like 30 minutes before, we throw notes in, and sometimes, this case included, things get mixed up and we miss stuff and whatnot. So basically, Chad, you have our notes, what would you like to talk about after the Sovren ad? Chad: Google. Joel: Google. Okay. Let's talk about Google. Did we talk about the Gmail integration? Chad: I think a couple weeks ago we did, but I think it's pretty amazing to start to see. A couple of weeks ago, they launched a seamless integration with Gmail. That's pretty damn big, right? Joel: Yeah. Gmail is used by a few people, last I checked. Like a billion. Chad: Yeah, yeah. It's fricking crazy. But now we're talking about the entrée into really people search and matching with Google Hire. And you wrote a little something about this. Joel: I did. The beat goes on. Now you and I have been talking a long time about having an Entelo hiring solve type where they go profile hunting around the net. What they launched this week was sort of more logical. They have basically Google search technology within the Google Hire product, which is essentially an applicant tracking system, for users. So you know, I posted this on LinkedIn and someone replied, you know, "This is the same thing that our ATS has, like what's different?" I said, "Well, Google does search better than anyone else and your ATS does not. That's why this is different." So Google is going to be Google-fying your resume search in terms of related searches, candidates that are similar, trying to predict what you're looking for based on the job. Presenting candidates before you actually even search for them. I mean they're going to Google-fy the whole process. Chad: Yes. Joel: And you know, you and I believe that's eventually going to be in sort of a search the web component as well where they bring in, like, "Here are your candidates, here are some others around the web that we think match that as well." You know, "Would you like to send out a message to them? Would you like to schedule on Google?" And you and I are fortunate enough to hear Bogomil from Hire with Google at the TAtech conference. And the vision that he laid out for everybody was sort of this entire soup-to-nuts AI powered search matching, scheduling, you know, interviewing process. And this just to me is another step into the grand vision of where Google is going. Chad: Yeah. And so we've ... Take a look at Job Discovery first, the API that they've put out with Job Discovery, that has been incredibly successful. It's machine learning, AI, whatever you want to put into it, right, but it's been incredibly successful and it's probably going to get out of beta here in the next few months or so. That is amazing for a Google product to be in around 18 months and then be out of beta. They are seeing some amazing strides with Johnson & Johnson with Career Builder, that is a jobs API that is machine learning AI, right? Chad: So that being said, now we take a look at Google Hire and they are launching something called Candidate Discovery. This is a way, and this is from my standpoint, this is a very smart way to start to baby step into more of an enterprise API like the Jobs Discovery API. So Google and Gmail ... Think of it from this standpoint. You got the data around jobs now that you've done all this mapping and whatnot for Jobs Discovery. You can use that data against the actual people data that you have now within Hire. One of the things that I love about technologies today versus five, ten years ago, is that we didn't even screw with candidates that were in our database. They went into the black hole, and the black hole was the black hole, and that's just ... It is what it is. Google Hire, Candidate ID, I mean we're seeing all these companies that are starting to ... Crowded. Joel: Yeah, Crowded. Chad: Starting to revive the candidate resume database because these are individuals that you have already paid for. Instead of going out and paying for them again or paying for others that could perspectively have like skills, go ahead and rejuvenate the ones that are in your database, match them against open recs that you have now, before you go paying for new ones. Number one. That is amazing. It just makes good sense. For anybody that thinks that their ATS has the exact same type of process, in the same class of Google? Yeah, you're fooling yourself. We're going to see applicant tracking systems once this becomes an enterprise API, we'll see ATSes using it, we'll see companies like the Career Builders of the world using it. It just makes damn good sense. And here's the thing that kills me, it cracks me up. I was pounding Bogomil from Google during our interview, and I was like, "Where's the people API?" And he just kind of smiled and then guess what? A week later they launch it. So it's not the API, but it's, I think, a baby step into an enterprise level API. Joel: Yep. Google is being very methodical, calculated, probably trying not to step on too many toes too quickly. You mentioned Career Builder and how much they've embraced the Google train and you know, Career Builder has a product called Talent Discovery, which sounds a lot like Candidate Discovery, right? So you know, Google's doing the Google thing and you know, we'll see how that plays out but if I'm at some of these companies that have embraced them, I'm thinking a little ... I'm a skittish maybe about what's going on, but maybe I expected it and I'm just, you know, I'm waiting it out until I find out something else to do when I grow up. Chad: Think of the products that you can plug in for Google. I mean you've got Google Analytics, you've got Google Sheets for you know reports and things like that. There are so many different opportunities to spread this out and to be able to use this data. I mean big data was a big term for a very long time, but it didn't matter because we didn't have the machine learning and AI that we do now. Joel: Yep. Moving on or anything else to say about Google? Chad: It's good stuff. Joel: We're watching Google. And by the way, if you haven't heard our interview with Bogomil from Ireland, I encourage you to look back at past episodes and listen to that. It's only about 10 minutes long, but pretty insightful stuff, although he was very diplomatic in most of his answers. Chad: Chadcheese.com. Go there. Joel: Chadcheese.com, baby. Alright, do you want to talk about Starbucks now? Chad: Yes, yes. Joel: Alright, Starbucks. Okay, man. This is your sweet spot. Starbucks. Gender pay gap. Go. Chad: So they're reporting that they're closing, or they've closed, all gender pay gaps in the US. And they're planning to do it worldwide. This is big because we're talking about equality, we're talking about talent, right? So this is very big for any company. So it's funny because when I posted this, you know, there are critics that are out there and the retail industry shouldn't have much of a big issue because you know with pay gaps, because they're pretty much aligned as it is. And it's like, okay. So there are a few things to kind of unpack there. Chad: If that's the case, I have two points veiled in questions, probably because I watch too much Jeopardy. If it's so easy for a sector like retail to do this from a pay gap standpoint, why the hell haven't more companies declared they fixed the problem? If it's so goddamn easy, then why isn't it fixed on the retail side? I mean more companies, more brands should be standing up and saying, "Yes, we agree. We've got this fixed." That's number one. Number two, if Starbucks culture made this a nonissue, which is one of the points as well, made this a nonissue, don't you think that's a pretty goddamn good story in itself? "Yeah, well, yeah, well. You know, Starbucks culture, yeah, that was easy for them because of their culture." Well shit, dude. That's a big fricking story. If they automatically were really focusing on equality for all of their employees, doesn't that make for a big damn story? Joel: Yeah, and it's probably a pretty good recruiting and retention tool, as well. Chad: Yes. What about product, though? You think about brand, who buys Starbucks, right? Pretty much everybody does. Joel: Everybody. Chad: Everybody does. So from a PR standpoint, from a brand standpoint, from an employment product sales, I mean, that's the thing that I don't think talent acquisition really has gotten a handle on over the years, is that they affect the brand. They play this bullshit employment brand thing, which I don't believe in. They impact the brand. The brand is bottom line. It's sales. I mean candidates are customers, and if we don't treat them like customers, guess what? We're going to lose their sale. And we saw that with the Virgin media report that they put out and losing 6 million dollars because they treat candidates like shit because they didn't treat them like customers, yada, yada, yada. But anyway, this is a key point. If your brand is not taking the lead on many of these issues, then screw your brand because it sucks. Joel: How much do you think politics plays into decisions like that? Because Starbucks historically is a pretty liberal organization. I don't think Howard Schultz has much fear about the Trump organization at this point. Like do you think that plays into it and why Walmart and others don't come out because of political reasons? Chad: No, I don't think it's really political reasons as much as it is an overall holistic sense of understanding your product and understanding how you're seen to your customers. And I'll give you a great example. So Starbucks was very heavy on hiring veterans. Thousands and thousands of veterans. They put their stake in the ground and they killed it. And they're still killing it. That translated, and remember, when I was active duty, I was deployed. I was on Fort Benning, Georgia. There was a Starbucks that was probably, you know, another half mile further away than the closer coffee shop. I always went to Starbucks, man. I knew that they cared about us. That was the brand. That was what our community felt. That's exactly the smart thing for any brand to do. And for you to say that, "Oh, it's easy for them to do that." You know what? I'm done. Joel: Okay, you're done. I'm going to ring the bell. And we're going to hear a word from our favorite compliance sponsor AJE, unless you have anything else to add. Alright. Announcer: America's Job Exchange is a market leader in diversity recruitment and an OFCCP compliant solution provider. We serve over 1,000 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, insures 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. For more information, call us at 866-926-6284. Or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Chad: Another thing on the America's Job Exchange side of the house, one of the things that they're actually pushing, which I agree with 100% is their new byline is, "Compliance is Mandatory, Diversity is Essential." And I really think that Starbucks is trying to embody. Pretty cool stuff. Good job America's Job Exchange. Joel: Good job. Alright, man. We're going to bring back something that we did a while back but haven't done. I don't think this will be a normal thing, but we have a lot of news, so we're going to go rapid fire hit on some of these stories and just make some brief comments and then move on to the next one. So do you want to tackle the first one? It's one of your favorites. Chad: I don't know if it is or not. Let me see what we have here. Okay, yeah. So New York councilman introduces a bill that will prohibit bosses from requiring employees to reply to an email after work. This bill would impose a $500 fine for employers. Joel: What? Chad: For the first offense. Employees would be entitled to like a $250 per violation. I mean okay, so at the end of this, and I think this is crazy, it's an overreach. Total load of bullshit. Joel: Well, it would ban it from requiring people to reply. You can still send the emails, just don't expect them to answer it until work hours. This is so un-American it makes me want to puke. You also didn't add, also from the story, if an employee experiences retaliation from the boss, they're due $500 like per violation. And then they're due $2,500 if they're fired for not replying to emails after work hours. Like this is so ridiculous, and there's just no way. Like this probably wouldn't even pass in France this is so like communist. Chad: It's ridiculous. Joel: But yeah, it is New York City, and things are a little crazy out there sometimes. Okay. Next story that we have, Hire Maturity, which we talked about a week, two weeks, three weeks ago, and sort of made fun of them for being a blue haired job board reminding us of eons.com back in the day. We talked about them going out of business, but apparently you have word that they literally are like going out of business. What's up with that? Chad: Yeah, I mean if you go to hire-maturity.com. Joel: Great URL. Chad: Because you never would unless I actually asked you to, there's a message, "Due to unforeseen circumstances," it seems like there might be a non-compete issue or something like that that's going on here, but I mean, really at the end of the day. This model overall is dead in the water. And like Joel said, we talked about it a couple of weeks ago, check it out on the podcast. It's not worth much of our time now. Joel: Good enough. But what is if we're talking about old people, IBM last week or recently cut more than 20,000 US employees aged 40 or older, which includes us, Chad, by the way, in the last five years. This was according to a Propublica investigation. I've never heard of Propublica, but I assume they're legit. The publication alleges that IBM did not provide older workers with paperwork they're legally entitled to and showed an age bias when implementing layoffs. Propublica also says managers encourage some staff to apply for new roles while also telling the hiring departments to not employ them. The report claims the moves were part of broad cost cutting measures that allowed the firm to bring on younger workers on lower salaries. Chad: Exactly and that's what it comes down to. That's what it comes down to. Cost cutting measures IBM's getting their lunch fricking fed to them by now bigger names. IBM used to be the name on the block, now it's not even a part of the conversation a lot of the times. So what do you do? You look at your top earners who have been in the company, have been trustworthy, and they've been there loyal, and you go ahead and just cut their heads off. Joel: Do you think this is really age bias or just the fact that IBM is sucking as a business and they're cutting costs and over 40s are the most well paid? Do you think that was more of it than just actual straight up ageism? Chad: They're not targeting 40+. I don't believe that they are, at least. I think what you've hit is really the nail on the head. Take a look at the tenure in the company. Obviously if you're younger you're not going to have much of a tenure versus, you know, if you've been around for 20 years, 10, 15, or something like that. And the salary that you have, that base wage, is going to be much larger than somebody that you can bring in. So in most cases, I've seen this with some companies, I don't know if IBM did it, where you can cut one head and then replace it with two individuals who are coming straight out of college or have just a little bit more kind of entry level, and still pay less. So twice the manpower, which is what they would say, and you keep going forward. It doesn't generally work that way because of expertise and getting shit done. If you've been in the seat for a while you know how to effectively get shit done. But yeah, that's fairly the norm. Joel: I think Raphael [Espani? 00:40:51] from New York City who introduced the email bill should also introduce the ageism bill where you're fined $500 for every 40 year old that you lay off. Anyway, alright, so moving on. Quickly on Career Builder. Okay. This one hits home for me. I am in the process of writing a story about Career Builder and sort of the state of things at the company, which I will say, seem to be in turmoil. The story I was working on was accidentally published it's since been pulled. But the story is like an onion that I keep peeling and it gets a little stinkier each time. So I know that there's stuff out there, but we're going to hold off a little bit until we get the whole story and we'll come with you with sort of the whole thing that's going on and everything that's going on there. So I know some of our listeners are like big time fans and know that this article's out there. I will just have you temper your excitement for probably one more week until we get the full story, and then we'll come out with everything that we know that's going on at our friends at Career Builder. Chad: Hashtag El Chapo. Joel: Alright. We're flying along here. Some people raised some money. Frankly, I have no idea what they're doing. Do you? Chad: It says AI, so they're automatically going to get money. Joel: Oh, of course. So AI, automation, chat bot, here's $14 million, okay, good luck to them. Vangst, probably out favorite startup because they are pot. Chad: Weed. Joel: They're getting weed people jobs. God. They've got 2.5 million. Any day now I'm waiting for the feds or Trump or whoever to be like, "Nope. No more weed." And the feds will walk in and put all these people out of business. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I don't think it will happen maybe, but it's certainly a risky endeavor. And lastly on our rapid fire is Randrr, which is a horrible name. R-A-N-D-R-R. Chad: Yeah, it's horrible. Joel: I guess R-A-N-D-E-R was taken so they're Randrr. Chad: Or E-E for Randee. Joel: Randee. I don't know what Randrr has to do with anything is sort of silly. They bought a company called anonymous, who was originally Poachable, which kind of got some buzz early in the days. So it looks like the two founders Poachable, they changed the name, they did some other stuff, and then they sold this company to Randrr. And then I think the two guys from anonymous, like they work for YouTube or Google or something. So they basically, like they just dumped this thing on Randrr and we'll see if they do anything with it. But that's our rapid fire. Chad: I've got one more. Joel: Oh, you've got one more. Let's go. Chad: One more, I've got one more. Dutch Staffing Firm, young capital announced today it is planning to offer job candidates a joint, a marijuana cigarette or a shot of alcoholic beverage in order to get them ready for the job interview. Joel: What's strange about that is that's sort of our strategy before we start the show, to get the best out of our show. Maybe there's something to giving candidates a shot of vodka or whatever before they do the interview. Wow. What a crazy freaking world we live in. Chad: I love it. Joel: I got nothing else, man. How about you? Chad: I'm out. Joel: Alright, we out. Chad: We out. Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. That's 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.

People on LinkedIn aren’t looking for a job and too many candidates on job boards aren’t qualified. Therein lies the heart of start-up Uncommon.co and how it hopes to break through the crowded space of recruitment technology. The company says it uses AI technology trained on over 50 million career paths and analyzes applicant resumes for hard skills, like expertise in data science or kinesiology, by looking for factors like degrees attained or years in a role; soft skills, like creativity and entrepreneurship, are found by extrapolating skills necessary for success in past jobs. Chad & Cheese put Teg Grenager, CEO, through the gauntlet and see if his company has what it takes to make it in the world of recruiting. The companies that put $18 million in their company recently certainly hope so. And after listening, be sure to checkout Jobs2Careers, exclusive sponsor of the show. Jobs 2 Awesome, more like it! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad: Okay Joel. Before we get into Firing Squad, I have one quick question. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Would you say that most companies find it hard to attract the right candidates to apply for their jobs? Joel: Well, Jobs2Careers certainly thought so. That's why they created their new talent attraction platform, ODT. Yeah, you know me. Chad: Dude. That's OPP. This is ODT. Which stands for On Demand Talent. Where data driven talent attraction is made easy. The On Demand Talent platform enables recruiters to reach the right talent at the right time at the right price. Joel: And the best part? Chad: What? Joel: You only pay for what Jobs2Careers delivers. Chad: No! Joel: So, if you're attracting the wrong candidates, or you feel like you're on a recruiting hamster wheel, just go to Go.J2C.com/CC and learn how On Demand Talent or ODT, yeah you know me, can get you better candidates for less money. Chad: Whoo! I'd say you just go to ChadCheese.com, click on the Jobs2Careers logo there and it's just that simple. Joel: It is simple. Arm me with Harmony. 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've 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: Alright, alright, alright. What's up everybody? Joel Cheesman here. Chad Sowash up on the other line. And welcome to Firing Squad. Chad: Here we are. Joel: Today, we have a very special guest. We have Teg Grenager, I believe I pronounced that last name correctly. Chad: Butchered it. Joel: Teg is with Uncommon.co. Utilizing a lot of AI automation, cool stuff. He's going to tell us more about it. And Chad and I are going to determine whether or not he is going to pass the Firing Squad without injury. Chad, how are you doing man? Chad: My trigger finger is itchy dude. Joel: I know. We talked about that. And I'm a little drunk still from Ireland. So the guns could go off today, I don't know. Chad: Well excellent. So Teg. So what's your position there at Uncommon.co? You chief bottle washer? What's going on. Joel: Quick intro. Teg: Yeah, I am chief bottle washer. But I'm also chief executive officer. Joel: Very nice. Very nice. Chad: So, here's how it's going to go, my friend. You will have a two minute pitch. And at the end of two minutes, you'll hear the bell. Then Joel and I are going to hit you with some rapid Q&A. Now if your answers aren't concise, Joel is either going to hit you with a bell or the crickets, whatever he feels like he wants to hit you with. Joel: I prefer the crickets, because I'm natural like that. Chad: But they generally put him to sleep. Chad: At the end of Q&A ... we've got a three point scoring system here my friend. You will either receive big applause, which means you exceeded expectations. The golf clap. My favorite. You're on your way, but you have a good amount of work to do. And then last but not least, you don't want to be in front of the firing squad. Chad: That pretty much means- Joel: Ouch. Chad: That pretty much means you're going to pack your shit up and go home. But that's it. That's the firing squad. You're going to hear the bell. You're going to start the pitch. Joel, it's on you man. Joel: Teg, are you ready? Teg: I am totally ready. Joel: Two minutes starts now. Teg: Alright. Thank you guys so much for having us on. So I want to tell you about Uncommon. Uncommon is a programmatic talent marketplace that makes it really easy for recruiters and hiring managers to use and benefit from programmatic recruiting technology. But no mistake, this is not a job advertising system. This is not complicated. Uncommon doesn't require any training. It's designed to be simple and intuitive for everyone to use. Teg: With Uncommon, recruiters can imagine the perfect candidate for their position, write down the precise qualifications that meet or exceed the, sorry, the precise qualifications that they should have and then sit back and receive a stream of applicants, interested applicants that meet or exceed those qualifications. It's very simple. And we think it's the way things should be. Teg: So put yourselves in the shoes of a recruiter who needs to source candidates. I know we've all been there. And today you have two choices. One, you can advertise the job on a bunch of job boards, in which case you have to, first of all, figure out which ones to advertise on. Then you have to pay them usually on a CPC basis and when you sit back, you get a flood of candidates who are very interested in your position, but mostly unqualified as well. And then you have to spend your time screening them to figure out who are good ones. Teg: Or number two, you can go license an expensive database of passive candidates and write down some complicated boolean search string, in which case you get a bunch of candidates who are very qualified for your position, but not interested. So you have to spend your time of course trying to convince them that they need a new job in the first place and that they should be interested in your job at your company. Teg: So we at Uncommon are changing all that. We provide recruiters with a stream of candidates who are both interested and qualified out of the gate. And we show you, this is my favorite part, in a side by side comparison exactly how each of those candidates stacks up against the required qualifications that you asked for. It's like a dream come true. And best of all, Uncommon has introduced a new pricing model. We charge the employers on a cost per interested and qualified applicant basis. In other words, you only pay for the interested candidates that meet or exceed those custom qualifications that you wrote down initially. This means that we're totally aligned with the recruiter's best interest. Teg: Make sense? Joel: Makes sense. Are you done? Teg: Awesome. We're transforming the in ... okay. Joel: Uncommon.co. I'll tell everybody for you. Okay. Chad: Uncommon.co. Yeah, no, good call man. You got two minutes. I think we're giving them way too much time. Because they're just killing us. Teg: A little nervous. Joel: A little nervous here, I think. Chad: I love it. He's listened to the Firing Squad before. Teg: I don't know why, with that firing squad out there in front of me. Chad: So, where the hell are you finding qualified candidates? You're going out from a programmatic standpoint, pushing jobs out. And how does that work from there? Just for the talent acquisition, VP or Director or Manager, whatever, who's listening right now, how does that actually work for me? Teg: So I don't want to focus on it too much when I talk to recruiters, but of course, we do have AI and data science at the core of everything we do. That's my background, you guys might know already. So the last company that I built together with our founder, Amir Ashkenazi, was an advertising marketplace, a programmatic advertising marketplace. And we heavily leveraged AI and machine learning there as well. So we basically are using those technologies to do the things that recruiters would have to do themselves if we weren't around. And that they have to do today without Uncommon. So we figure out which job boards to post on, we figure out as the candidates come in, as the applicants come in, which ones are actually meeting the requirements and why. Show you side by side. Teg: And we also go to other source of candidates. We have increasingly our own growing database of candidates as you can imagine. People that we're looping in and engaging over time. So we reach out to them and ask if they're interested, the ones that are qualified. And we hit third party passive databases as well. Teg: But the whole point is that the recruiter shouldn't have to know about all that. That's like mechanical stuff that machines can be really good at. The recruiter should just focus on what kind of candidate they want to talk to and then let us know about that and we should do all that hard work for them, whether it's looking at passive databases or screening through the active ones, whatever it is. Chad: So, it sounds a lot like Zip Recruiter. How do you differentiate yourself from Zip Recruiter? Teg: Good point. Zip Recruiter is a great company. And I think they've obviously experienced tremendous success and growth recently. There are some really big differences. First of all, Zip Recruiter doesn't ask you in a precise way what kind of candidates you want to look for. So when you sign up with Zip Recruiter, you specify, you list the job they are looking for and you write some text in your job description, but you don't actually tell them who you would consider to be qualified. And so when they send you candidates, it's generally everybody. They sort them for you, but they generally are sending you all stripes of candidates. People that you consider qualified and lots of people that you don't. Teg: Second of all, I think Zip Recruiter has really focused, and I think these two are actually related. I think Zip Recruiter is really focused historically on the small and medium sized market. They've generally been serving small mom and pop and other kind of local businesses with lower skilled jobs. And we're really, we serve those guys, of course, but we're really focused on skilled jobs. And we've built a system that's filled with pretty sophisticated models of skills and experience in different kinds of roles and different kinds of companies and all that kind of stuff. And that's just stuff that Zip Recruiter hasn't done yet, mostly because they haven't really had to, for the kind of customers that they've been serving. Chad: So, you're mainly enterprise, is what I'm hearing then? Teg: Yes. I would say that we are currently, our customers are largely, are mostly kind of large enterprise, although we also work with many staffing agencies as well. But yeah, typically I think we do best on those high skill jobs that are at a range of verticals, but still where there's really a heavy screening task that otherwise a human would have to do. Joel: Hey Teg. I'm going to go the other direction from Zip Recruiter and I have the luxury of doing a report on you guys. We've talked previously. And I think there's a serious Intello kind of component, where you guys have 50 million, or at least when we spoke, there were 50 million or so profiles, I believe. Teg: Yes. Joel: How are you different from an Intello, a Hiring Solved, from that side of the product? Teg: I think I lost you for a minute, but I think you're asking how we're similar or different from Intello, Hiring Solved, Job Jet, those kind of guys, right? Joel: Yes. Teg: Yeah. So in my opinion, they're solving part of the problem. But they're focused so heavily on finding passive candidates in these big databases. And they're not activating those candidates for you. They may give you some tools and maybe you guys know differently, maybe there are some who are doing a great job with this, but what I've seen is that you then get an opportunity to reach out to these people, but it's still left to the recruiter to try to go and turn them into interested applicants, from ... they may be qualified. It's easy to find qualified people in those databases, but there's still a lot of work to be done. You've got to reach out to them, often to have some kind of pipeline or some kind of ... increasingly we're talking about CRM for job seekers and so on. And we believe that, again, recruiters shouldn't have to do all that. That's something that we should do. And that we can go and leverage those databases and we have partnerships with databases that are similar to some of the guys you mentioned. But all that work of trying to engage those candidates, that's something that we're doing for the recruiter and the hiring manager. Chad: So there's a marketing aspect that a Brilent or Hiring Solved or what have you, does not have that you're saying that Uncommon does. Teg: Exactly. So to come back to my pitch at the beginning, the candidates have to be interested and qualified. What does every recruiter want? They want a list of interested and qualified candidates. In other words, people that have already said they're interested in the job and they know meet the basic qualifications, that they're ready to then show to their hiring manager. And if you're going to go use a big database, you're going to have to go turn all those qualified candidates into interested ones, get them to actually apply, indicate their interest. Or the other way around, if you're going to go and collect all the stuff coming in from job boards, you're going to have to take all these interested people and figure out who's qualified. Teg: So again, we think that that's something that is very automatable. And we provide a beautiful system that allows recruiters to do just that in an automated way. Joel: So, there's some big companies getting into the AI space, as you well know. A little company named Google. Do you guys think that you can out AI Google, knowing that they've turned their guns on the recruiting space? Teg: Oh, I love that question. So, for reference, in my last company, AdaptTV ... it was a video ... we were building a video ad, programmatic video ad marketplace. And Google had just bought two amazing companies when we started our company. They had just bought YouTube, which meant that they were basically the king of online video. And they had just bought Double Click, which those of you may remember, was the premier largest ad marketplace. And we just thought, okay. This is it. They're going to eat our lunch. Why are we even doing this? Teg: And it turned out that Google moves very steadily. They're very smart. They move very steadily, but they also move very slowly. And typically, predictably. And they do things in a very Googly way. And over the years that we build AdaptTV, we actually ended up partnering with them a lot more than competing with them. And they didn't in the end, I think, have a negative impact on our success. Teg: Now who knows what's going to happen here? I can't know what's going to happen in the future, but I see the moves that Google is making, just like you do. I have a very similar view on it. I think that they are disintermediating essentially the big job search engines. I don't need to name them, but you can name them. Joel: And we do weekly. Teg: And that that is a landscape that we're now going to have to live in. Unfortunately with our strategy at the moment, this is honestly at the moment, just kind of lucky, but we're not going head on for them. That we can benefit from a world where Google does a great job with job search, because we work for the employer typically. We sit between the employer and the job seeker and help make that application and screening process great. And we can keep doing that, because the employer wants to keep doing that, even if Google is the one that's providing job search. Joel: Teg. I'm really curious about your pricing model. I believe you call it Pay per interested candidate. Is that correct? Chad: CPIQ. Teg: Hey. Thank you. Joel: Yeah, tell us about that. Expand on that for a minute. Teg: Yeah. So cost per interested and qualified. We invented that term. What we've seen so far is that the world is generally operating on a CPC basis, and that's itself sort of an innovation over the old listing fees that we've had for the last decade or two. But we think CPC is wrong. And the reason why CPC is wrong, it's wrong for the customer. It's wrong for the recruiter. Because when the large job boards are billing you CPC, their incentive, their motivation, of course, is to send you more clicks. And more clicks doesn't mean more qualified clicks. So, yeah, exactly. Teg: So, you know, so what we see is that, that actually it's a sad thing, because if you think about the way job matching has worked forever, it typically starts with an employer listing a job and an applicant indicating their interest. It doesn't have to be, but that's historically how it's been for most of history. And basically, employers have lost faith in the job boards. They've lost faith in that active candidate channel because the quality has gotten so low. So we don't believe that has to be the case. We actually see a lot of good candidates coming through the active channel. But they need to be, there needs to be a level of automatic qualification put inbetween so that that employer is not just overloaded with these people who are spraying and praying for their job search. Joel: And is this different than cost per acquisition? Just to be clear. Teg: I think that it is, very much. Because it's cost per qualified applicant, right. So it's, or cost to acquire someone qualified. So we're running the automatic screening with a side by side comparison. We're doing that for every candidate. What's really cool guys is that it can benefit not just the employer, it can actually benefit the job seeker. And we're already doing a little bit of this and we hope to do a lot more of it in the future. But we can actually show the job seeker as they're coming in, as they're indicating interest in the job, as they're applying for the job and so on. We can show them where they stand. And not in some kind of fuzzy way, like you're in the top 10% of candidates for this position, which you can see on certain, like LinkedIn and so on, but that's always been nebulous to me. Well, what does that mean? Am I going to get a call back or not? Am I qualified or not? Teg: We actually can tell you, show you the same side by side thing that we show to the employer. We can show you, hey, here's where you stand relative to the things that this employer, this hiring manager has said is important to them. Wouldn't you love to know? Right. And if you can see that you're clearly falling short, there's things that you can do. Maybe you forgot to put stuff in your profile on your resume. Or maybe you want to go back and get a little training. Right. Teg: I've been talking to a lot of people recently who are taking courses that, like general assembly, or boot camps or online courses. And these things can really help people backfill missing positions, if they have a particular job that they're going for. And we're, our service, because we're automating and creating this transparent and automated view of the qualification of the candidate for the position, we actually have the power to be able to do that and to help the job seeker in that way. And I don't see anyone else right now who can do that. Chad: So on the CPIQ side of the house, you're talking about interested. Well, yeah, they applied, so therefore they're interested. So you check that box. And qualified, you pretty much have an arrangement with the employer. Let's say, hey look. These are your requirements. If they meet these requirements, than they are qualified. So therefore, that's when you go in and that's when we bill you for that candidate. Is that how it works? Teg: So, yeah. Very good. Thank you for asking me to qualify Chad. That's exactly right. Joel saw a demo of it earlier. And I wish I could demo on the air, but of course that doesn't work so well on a podcast. But yeah, basically you know, there are other pricing models you can imagine. Like obviously, you can go all the way to the hire and have a success fee and then you look like a contingency agency or whatever. But we're trying to find a happy medium of something that we can do really well. Like a metric that we can optimize to. Or a goal that our system can be trained to optimize to. That is also total aligned in the interest of the employer. Teg: And so we have found that what works really well for us is that when the employer is rigorous and writes down what they're looking for and that's part of our process. It does take an extra minute up front. We got to ... instead of just writing a job description and copying and pasting a bunch of requirements, you've got to actually think and write down the requirements you're looking for. And once you've done that, when we find people that meet them, that's when you pay. You pay $9.95 by the way, just to be very clear. That's our introductory pricing. We can actually have a whole cool discussion about the future of pricing. I believe that in general, it should actually be dynamic, not static. But we're starting to keep things really simple with a $9.95 per interested and qualified candidates. This is the one you've talked to and who meets all of your custom requirements. Teg: But that means that you do have to think in the beginning, what do, ... sort of visioning your future. Like, you need to sit down or think, what is it that I want to, who do I want to talk to? What do want to receive? Before you start the process. Because then you are going to pay, yes. Chad: So on the partner side, following up. You were talking about Google. So how specifically, and I see it on Uncommon.co, you're partnering with two big names. Google and Amazon. How are you partnering with them. Teg: So I believe that they're actually listed as customers on our website, not as partners for right now, just to be super clear. But actually to talk about today, how we are. So Amazon ... hey, wait, wait, wait. Why? Chad: He was giving it to me. Teg: Oh. Okay. Alright. Well, Bill wants to make sure the website is clear. But. Joel: No Chad. Chad: The website ... wait. First off. The website says Joel, dumbass, Brands we've proudly partnered with. Teg: Oh. You're right. Joel: Oh. Chad: I know I'm right. Joel: Teg. Joel: Chad is rarely right, for the record. Teg: Alright. These are our customers. Okay. Just to be clear. Everyone knows they are our customers. Chad: Well you've got some pretty big name customers. But you did say earlier that with an earlier venture, you partnered with Google. Are you partnering with big companies now? Like the Google's and the Amazon's. Joel: Google for jobs. Chad: To be able to fill out your product offer. Teg: Okay, so the answer is yes. I don't have any to announce. But you guys would be, definitely on the short list if we, if and when we have some cool announcements to share. But let me give ... well, there's a very obvious way to work with Google right now, which is that we are building a product that is starting on the recruiter side, the employer side. And so we're very happy to have all of our customers position listed on Google. And we're actually getting nice, healthy, you can call it SEO or whatever you want to call it, but a nice flow of candidates from Google for jobs. So that works very well for us. Teg: But if you want to think just more generic terms about some of the, let's say incumbent job boards from the decade past, there is a great opportunity without naming any names for us to white label or otherwise provide technology to them so that they can start to operate, instead of on a CPC, they can start to test out this new CPIQ model, on both sides potentially, with their job seekers and with their employer relationships. And the reason why they might want to do that is that they see that, they see the writing on the wall like we do, that Google is going to really eat up a big part of their value proposition and that the old CPC model for just getting search clicks isn't going to sustain them forever. So they're quite interested in exploring partnerships with innovative technology companies like ourselves. Teg: And by the way, for any of those people who are out there listening, we do have some very cool partnership opportunities, if you are a job board or a job site. We can take the very sophisticated and I think very innovative technology that we have inside and white label it and make it available for people to create their own offerings. And that's something that we're very happy about. Joel: Always be selling Teg. Always be selling. Chad: Closing. Joel: Chad. Teg: Anything. Chad: Always be closing. Joel: Yeah, that too. Chad and I have been around quite a while in this industry. And the companies that kind of come and go are typically ones where there's very little core competency or experience in the employment space. And if I'm incorrect let me know, but it sounds like you guys are from a totally different world than recruitment. So what do you think, if that's the case, is that an advantage, a disadvantage? Talk about that. Teg: Well, first I want to say it's an advantage. But I also want to have enough humility to say that I hear you. And there's a lot that I don't know and I'm learning every day. So yeah, I'm definitely coming from outside of recruiting. I never worked at a job board or an ATS. And every day is about learning for me in our company. We do, or course, have a lot of people now working for us who bring some pretty deep experience in our industry. Teg: So for example, our significant people in our data science team have actually come from recruiting other, very exciting, out of recruiting tech companies of days past. But you know, so I'll tell you the advantages. So the disadvantage is I have to learn everything and every day is a new day. The advantage is that there is actually a tremendous amount of experience that I think we can bring from our experience, our time in online advertising. Teg: So online advertising went through a programmatic revolution while we were building and running AdaptTV. And basically when we started, there was no such thing as programmatic. And by the end, programmatic was the lion's share of the digital spend. People decided that it made a lot more sense to spend their money with data, actually cherry picking. Understanding who the audience was and the users were and cherry picking and advertising to the people who actually were interested in their products. And they found that that created a lot of value. And of course, needed a lot of technology. It needed to be able to represent this huge datasets of users. And you needed to be able to make decisions very quickly in an automated way. But we built all that stuff over several years. And that was incredibly rewarding and created a lot of value. Teg: And I think recruiting is going through the same thing now. It's just the very early days. But we are, employers can benefit tremendously. And I don't have to tell you guys this, but from more deeply understanding ... I mean, imagine putting an ad out there and having no idea who you were showing it to. That would be silly. That's like 200 year old advertising technology. Teg: But it's the same thing. Recruiting today is listing job ... job boards are showing jobs to candidates where they have no idea whether that candidate is qualified for that job, is interested in that job. It doesn't make sense. Instead, we have tons of data about these candidates. Let's use it as they come in and let's use it to show them the right jobs and to then show the right candidates to the employers. It just makes sense. Chad: So on the other side, you guys actually state that you leverage, are transparent and objective analysis of qualifications to increase diversity and reduce bias. How does your system? Because you have all this data. And this is about, obviously, how you're dealing on the recruiter side of things. How do you boost diversity? Teg: I love this question, because it is one of the reasons that I think many of us in the company get up and come to work everyday. If you think about how recruiters and hiring managers make decisions today, it's very manual. Typically it involves reading or reviewing a whole lot of resumes and profiles. And we've all been there. It's very hard to make those decisions. You're going to spend maybe 30 seconds, maybe a few minutes looking at a resume. If its really interesting. And you're trying to make that ... it feel like a gut decision, for a lot of us, when we're doing it manually. It's sort of like, yeah, this guy doesn't really have what I ask for, but on the other hand, why I really like that company or that school that he worked at. And wow, that project sounds really, that's something, I worked on something like that. Or I understand people like this, or whatever it is. Teg: And we're using gut, we're doing gut decision making basically. And we all know that that can be very good, productive in certain domains, but also does of course, it's filled with implicit bias. Even if we're trying not to be biased, we are. And so, by giving some of those early decisions about the level of qualifications of a candidate over to a machine, who's going to rigorously just follow, do the most dry and boring comparison, cut and dried comparison possible, we do remove that really big factor, that introduces bias at the beginning of the process. Teg: Now we can't remove bias from all process, of course not. But we can at least have a positive impact in that screening process. So that's one of the things that, one of the benefits, I think that we provide, over and above obviously, being cheaper, faster. Chad: So, you're really removing the face of the candidate, per se, and just trying to boil it down to, do they meet the qualifications. The big question is, and this is the hard part. And I think this is what you actually talked into was, what if the requirements are actually biased themselves? Teg: Yeah. No, that's a real, well ... one of the fun things about being in the position we're in, is that we are defining the language that employers and candidates are using. We're asking our customers and it's mostly coming from them, but we also get some editorial say. And like, what kind of requirements do we put in there? So, for example ... and we've been very judicious about choosing the kinds of requirements, or even able to put into the system today. So I don't have an age requirement, for example, because our nationality requirement or obviously a gender requirement. You can't put those things in as requirements. And I've had people really ask me for age over and over again. And we have not done it. And the reason is, I myself am 46 years old. So I'm getting up in the years. And if I wanted to go get a software engineer position or any other kind of contributor position, I'd have a lot of hiring managers who'd start to look at me and say, "Well, he's kind of an old guy. I'm not sure I really want to hire him." Teg: And so I've had a lot of hiring managers come to me and say, "Hey can I put a limit, like an upper limit on the years of experience or the level of seniority?" And that in general, we have not done. We do of course have a lower limit on years of experience and level of seniority, but the upper limit I think is prone to be abused. And we can handle ... and I'm like, "Why? Why do you want to not hire someone more senior? Like, wouldn't they be more experienced?" And then you dig into it, and they're like, "Well, I'm afraid, because they're so senior that they won't like the job or that their salary expectations are going to be too high, or whatever. And so, we're going to try to address those things separately, in a more specific way, but not just like, Hey, let's discriminate against people that have a lot of years of experience." Teg: So that's just one that I happened to relate to, but obviously we're doing the same thing across the line with a cultural and ethnic background and sexual orientation and gender and all this kind of stuff. So we keep those things out of the qualifications. And we keep the qualifications really cut and dry. Joel: I'm sorry. I've got to pull the plug on this diversity stuff and compliance. Chad loves it. I've had enough. Chad: Everybody loves it but Joel. Joel: Yeah. Teg, last question from me. You guys have recently raised a lot of money. Tell us about that. And then, tell us what are you planning on doing with the fundage? Teg: Well, so we raised $18 million, a series A, from three different investors actually. So we have- Joel: Whoo! Teg: Yeah. We have Spark Capital, we have Kaden Partners and we also have Ventures. So some of these guys actually invested in our last companies, so they're folks we've had a good relationship and a long time. We're not going to do anything mysterious with that money. It's very simple. We're going to continue to develop our product and to market our product. So, both of those things cost money. We have an incredible engineering and data science team I'm super proud of. So we're going to continue to fund them and grow that team. And then of course, we're going to invest in sales. And you guys know about that as well, but you've got to get in front of all these recruiters, especially in the enterprise and the large agency, staffing agency space. We've got to have people to help connect to those agencies. So that's another area of our investment. Joel: How refreshing that you said sales people. Teg: I didn't actually say the word sales people. But yes, we're employing sales people. Joel: Alright. Chad, I'm ready to send my card in. How about you? Chad: I am. Joel: I'll go first, if that's okay. Chad: Okay. I'm waiting with baited breath. Joel: I bet. I bet. Man, this product is, I mean, it's so in depth. It's hard to have a 30 minute firing squad and really understand what's going on. You're pulling in programmatic components, you're pulling in sourcing components and automation. Your pricing model is very interesting, although I'm assuming that most of your prospects will find it very tough to understand. Pay per click, for example, was very challenging at first for people to understand. I think this is in the same vein. But you're pulling in so many components to this product. I love, you guys have a great past of success. I actually like that you're not from the recruiting sector. You're from the marketing, advertising sector. So for me, you guys definitely get a rousing applause. And I'm really excited to see where this goes in the next 12 months. And hopefully we can get you back on and see where it's gone. But you're throwing so many ingredients, that I hope it works out for you guys. Teg: Thank you Joel. Chad: Ugh. Now it's my turn. Joel: Your turn. Chad: Trigger finger. Okay. So, Teg I have to say, there's no question. I don't quite agree 100% on the CPIQ side of the house, that Joel is saying it's going to be hard for employers. I think the last part that you just went over, talking about marketing and especially to advertising agencies. They'll eat us up. They might not like your price point right out of the gate, but they will eat this up. It's different, it's something they can understand and it's something that they can measure. Right. Because you are giving them exactly interested and qualified. You tell me what qualified looks like, we're going to give you exactly what that looks like. And then guess what? You're going to pay us for that. Chad: So I think from my standpoint, it's incredibly simple. What I love is that you are using a programmatic outreach. And again, we see some other platforms doing this too. The programmatic outreach. And also the AI piece, which to be quite frank, is going to kill sourcers and it's going to rejuvenate and really reclassify what a recruiter does, in the long run. But I think this is definitely what a platform of the future looks like. And it doesn't hurt that you just got $18 million. So from my standpoint, its definitely a big applause as well. Teg: Awesome. Thank you for that. Joel: Alright. Congratulations Teg. Teg: Thank you both. Joel: What do you have to say for yourself? Teg: Delighted. You guys are believers. Yeah, no, we- Joel: You have a 14 day trial. I wanted to put that out there. Where can listeners find out more about- Teg: Uncommon.co. And we have a 14 day free trial. What's amazing about that, it's actually too generous. We should, we'll have to reign it in at some point, but you can list as many positions as you want. Let's say you have 10 or 100 open positions right now. If you want to go through and get those listed in your 14 days, you can get a lot of qualified candidates. Joel: For free. Chad: Holy shit Teg. You're going to have to stop that quick. You're going to have to make it 7 days. Joel: Chad's a real stickler for free stuff. He doesn't like it very much. Joel: Alright man. Teg, appreciate it. Good luck to you. And success. Congratulations on surviving the firing squad. Chad: Good stuff. Teg: Awesome. Thank you Joel. Thank you Chad. Announcer: 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 start-up who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today. That's www.chadcheese.com. #Uncommon #FiringSquad #TATech

A NEXXT EXCLUSIVE! One of the biggest treats from our time at TAtech in Ireland this month was the opportunity to see Hire with Google's Bogomil Balkansky, VP Cloud Recruiting Solutions, present. A bigger treat was enjoying some Guinness and interviewing Bogomil at the social TAtech event from the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. Enjoy. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Intro: This, the Chad & Cheese Podcast, brought to you in partnership with TA Tech. TA Tech, the Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions. Visit TATech.org Chad: Okay Joel, quick question? Joel: Yeah. 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: (Laughs) Yeah, I know. I call it our Pavlovian dog reflex to text messaging. Joel: Yeah, that's probably why text messaging has a frickin' 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 & Cheese Podcast love Text-to-Hire from Nexxt. Joel: Love it. Chad: Yep, that's right. Nexxt, with a 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 & Cheese Podcast, you can try your first text-to-hire campaign for just 25% off. Boom! Chad: Wow! So how do you get this discount? You're asking yourself, right now. Joel: Tell 'em, 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. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Just go where you know. ChadCheese.com and Nexxt, with two X's. 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. Chad: Okay guys, we're back. Yes, we're at the Guinness Factory, is that what, it's the factory. Joel: I'm totally sober. I promise. Chad: He's full of shit. Anyway... we're here with podcast favorite, Bogomil. Joel: He's actually not a podcast favorite, he's more like Sasquash of podcast. Chad: (Laughs) Joel: ... Giving him ... he's actually handcuffed to a pint of Guinness right now. Bogomil: I think Bogomil is enough- Chad: No? (laughs) Bogomil: You can't hit people with both Bogomil and Balkansky. Chad: See I like Balkansky. Bogomil: Either one. Joel: I agree, I agree. Our audience is not that sophisticated. Chad: Yes. So five good minutes with Bogomil. You had a presentation. Very interesting from the standpoint of... talking about pretty much a ton of different aspects of recruitment technology. That it looks like Google is diving into very quickly, is that correct? Bogomil: Well, we don't enter recruitment technology until April of last year. It's no secret by now, but we're fully in. Chad: Yes? Bogomil: And yes, I think Google as a company as AI first strategy... across all our products and product line. So, you'd think that also in recruiting, our efforts would be very much in the direction of leveraging AI in the new products and solutions that we're rolling out to market. Chad: So you guys have had the... How long is the... jobs discovery API actually been out? Little over a year right? Bogomil: It's not fully out. Right? So it's still in private beta. Chad: But it was in... Okay. How long- Bogomil: It was announced at the end of 2016- Chad: Okay. Bogomil: ... So it has been a little more than a year. Chad: And soon... I hear- Joel: Soon, possibly, maybe- Chad: ...its coming- Joel: ... you've heard a rumor Chad: ... out of beta. Which is amazing for a Google product because... that's not even a year and a half. Right? Bogomil: Yeah. No, it will graduate from Beta at some point soon. Yes. Chad: At some point soon... which means it has been incredibly successful. Bogomil: So far the experience has been really really awesome. We are working with a whole bunch of career site providers and staffing agencies- Chad: Yeah Bogomil: ...and Chad: Big names. Career builders, [Jibs 00:04:14], Zip. Bogomil: And also powering a lot of big name company career sites. Chad: Yeah. Johnson & Johnson. Bogomil: Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, and some others that we haven't announced yet, but they're really like the Fortune 100 companies. Chad: So on- Bogomil: And the result that we're seeing on SDR are quite impressive. When we went into this whole thing and when we announced Job Discovery. We're pretty confident that we have a good product. However, we didn't really have a good benchmark of what the real impact would be. In some sense, we didn't know exactly what to expect. Chad: Yeah. Bogomil: And we have been pleasantly surprised with the kind of results past customers are achieving. Like Johnson & Johnson has been very public with their 41% increase in qualified candidates for hard to refer jobs. Right? Chad: Yeah that's big. Bogomil: And so emphasis and key word is qualified. So honestly the last thing anybody wants is another pile of candidates that are not qualified so that your recruiters have to spend more time to shift through more resumes- Chad: Well, that being said... resumes- Bogomil: Yes. Chad: ...people... being able to turn an API or turn your machine running onto the people problem right now. How soon can we expect a people API in actual launch? Bogomil: Well, take them one at a time. We are... first focused on graduating the jobs API or the job... they call...job discovery services- Chad: You're so excited about it though! Bogomil: ...to get it in the hands of everybody. And that's what the chief focus is on. Joel: So you're not running for president? Bogomil: I am not running for president. Don't [inaudible 00:05:46]. Joel: Yeah. Yeah- Bogomil: ...for president. Joel: A few years ago I wrote a very nice post about how good Google's homemade ATS was. And I'm assuming that a lot of the elements of the homemade Google.com job seeker experience has translated to some of your Google Hire technologies and development. When will see and will we see Google Hire replace the Google.com, sort of, homemade ATS? If ever... Bogomil: Yeah. So the quotes are different. Hire is a separate and different product from the Google internal past Google ATS. Joel: Yeah. Bogomil: And the reason for that is, we're targeting Hire at existing G Suite customers all in the US for the time being. And obviously, the typical G Suite customer is a much smaller company than Google, which is one of the largest companies out there. And the requirements of our G Suite audience are quite different from the requirements of Google. Google has one of the most unusual and [inaudible]. For example, hiring managers at Google won't make any hiring decisions. The hiring decisions are made by hiring committee, which consists of people who actually have never met the candidate live. And these are the kinds of requirements, quite obviously, that we haven't actually who haven't actually baked in Hire. And that's the major reason why Google is not using Hire yet. We're really focused on the G Suite for this. Joel: You heard him say, "yet." Right? Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Joel: We got that. Joel: What's next? Can you give a preview? Obviously, you're talked a lot about the future, the matching stuff, the job seeker, the scheduling... what can you share with subscribers and listeners about what's next at Google Hire. Bogomil: Yeah. We are still... I would say, the very beginning of our journey. Its fair to say that we're a big company, but we're the new kids on the block, until we create the technology, job discovery... still in beta. Hire still a version one product. So we have a lot of opportunities in front of ourselves to deliver great capabilities to our customers. Bogomil: I can comment on kind of very specific things, but you can expect that a lot of the innovations that will come from us goes into the direction of... in two directions, I would say. One is to extricate people from a lot of the mundane, kind of tedious things that every recruiter and every job seeker has to go through. There's still too many processes and talent acquisition that are honestly, mind numbing, tedium people clicking endlessly page per, per page, per page. And our team is very focused on trying to reduce that tedium to be able to, A. focus the recruiters on what they should really be doing, which is... build relationships with candidates, like try to sell candidates at working for their company. And same thing with candidates that will continue making that process of looking for job and applying for a job a lot easier and more elegant. Bogomil: So that's one aspect of what we're focused on, just making our process faster and more efficient. And the second thing that we will continue to be focused on is really... to continue improving our technologies in able to better match more people for jobs. If you think about how we as a company can have great impact on this two sided marketplace, is by enabling better matching and helping people find the best job that they're suited for, and helping companies build the greatest teams. Chad: Right. Right. Which gives you an opportunity to start to break down their skills and their resume, and then match it... which leads to a people API. Bogomil: Says Chad... Joel: Bogomil, we thank you for your time. I for one, I cover this industry, it's exciting to see Google- Chad: Very. Joel: .... Facebook... some of the big players with a lot of resources and brainpower get behind this challenge of hiring. So we appreciate your time. Enjoy the party, and we'll have fun watching you in the future. Bogomil: Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Chad: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Before we go. Remember... when I asked you about the whole reflex and check your text messages thing? Joel: Yeah, you know all about reflexes. And then I brilliantly tied it to text message's 97% open rate. Then I elegantly... elegantly, tied it to a better experience for your candidates. Chad: (laughs) Joel: Don't laugh Chad. I can be elegant. Can't I? Chad: Whatever, man. I know it's redundant. You already heard about Text-To-Hire, but you're still not using Text-To-Hire from Nexxt. Joel: What? Chad: I know, man. Joel: Come on, man. Since advertising takes repetition to soak in, I just thought I'd remind you again, this is all by Elegant Design. It's all about Text-To-Hire, and it's all about Nexxt and Elegant Design. So go to chadcheese.com. Click on the next logo, and get 25, yeah I said 25% off your first Text-To-Hire campaign. Chad: Whooa! Joel: Engage better. Use Text-To-Hire from Nexxt. Two X's. Chad: Booyah! Outro: Thanks to our Partners at TA Tech, the Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions. Remember to visit tatech.org. #Google #GoogleHire #GoogleJobsAPI #AI #TATech #Nexxt

The Chad and Cheese take their act across the Atlantic for TAtech Europe, conveniently scheduled around St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. Sláinte! MAJOR love to our partners at TAtech and copious amounts of love goes to America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly, Catch 22 Consulting and our newest sponsor - coming in April - JobAdX! And special thanks to Nexxt and Jobs2Careers for sponsoring our monthly shows. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (apologies for missing some content as not all speakers in the room were mic'ed up) Chad: Hey, boys and girls, Joel and I were in Dublin this week for TA Tech. Enjoy. 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. For more information, call us at 866-926-6284, or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Joey Stubbs: Without further ado I want to introduce Chad and Cheese [crosstalk 00:01:02]. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. Joel: What's up Dublin? Speaker 3: We got ... Pete? We got music, Pete? Chad: What's up Europe? Announcer 2: The most dangerous podcast, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here on 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 Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: Now, it's real. Now, it's real. Joel: Can we do the show now? Chad: Yes. Joel: Awesome. What's up Dublin? What's up TAtech? Chad: Bring it. Joel: Welcome to the hangover detox session of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: There we go. Louder. That's right. Who else is hungover? Joel: We're the only ones, dude. No one else in Dublin at this show is hungover. That's great. Chad: I'm blame Shane. I'm blame Shane. Joel: Well, thanks for listening. I'm amazed we have so many listeners here today. Chad: Big in Europe. I never knew. Joel: Huge in Belgium right here. Chad: Belgium. Joel: Brussels loves Chad and Cheese. Chad: Brussels. Joel: We have a fairly short period today, so let's get to the show, I guess. Chad: Yeah. Shout outs. Joel: We have schwag. So, I guess the rules are if you ask questions, if you say something snarky, insult another company, you get schwag. You get rewarded for that. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So, if you're game, we got schwag for you. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We usually start out the show with shout outs, some of you know. I'm going to do the show shout outs, and then Chad has some, I guess, external shout outs. Chad: Yep. Twitter. Joel: Number one, Shane and Paddy, who I don't think are here, showed us a fantastic time last night and our incredible representative of the Dublin area, shout out to them. Adam Gordon, who also isn't here, but shout out. He'll also do the show later. He was a great sport with the interviews yesterday. Tom, did an interview with us. Chad: Yep. Joel: Bogomil from Google, we really got him to just spill it, all of it, yesterday. We'll be publishing that podcast soon. Let's see. Terry, the Dutchman, Baker, thank you for the interview. What was the joke? If you're not Dutch, you're not much. I think that's what I learned, yesterday. Eugene and Paulina from Job Today. Russian fans, originally Russian fans. We like that. They came up and said, "Thanks." Joey Stubs, for wearing the ugliest sport coat I've ever seen. Thank you for that. Chad: Yeah. It said, "American," all over it. Joel: I'm still having nightmares from that. Chad: Like, Shamrocks. Joel: And I guess Pete and Repeat. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Thank you for having us, again. We love it, appreciate it, and will try to continue the grade A work that we do here at TA Tech in Europe. Chad: Much love for TA Tech. Is that all you got? Joel: That's all I got. Chad: Are you done? Okay. So, we also ... Obviously, we're big on Twitter, too. Hashtags, #ChadCheese. So, if you are tweeting right now, just use the #ChadCheese. Ed, from Philly, you will be listening. He wants you to stop hating on millennials. Joel: Yeah, but one of our other boys loves the millennial bashing, which we don't have on the docket for today, so we'll have to save that for another time. Chad: Not today Joel: Millennials, I apologize, but I hate you all and I express that on the show. I'll save it for today. Chad: Yes. He's a crusty old bastard. Joel: Yes, I am. Chad: Then, he wanted to go hate ... Now, he's hating on Tinder for Jobs. Who was the Tinder for Jobs guy, yesterday? Who was the ... He's not ... There he is. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Tinder for Jobs. Joel: You suck. Don't do it. Good Lord. Chad: Job Board Doctor giving us love. Don't know where you're at, dude, but you're missing a party here in Dublin. Kyle, couldn't make it. Sucks to be you, Kyle. Jason Roberts said that ... I don't know. Does everybody know that we're actually running for co-president of Monster? We need votes. Monster doesn't have a CEO. Monster does not have a President. Joel: Not yet. Unless they announce it, today. Anybody know anything? No? Chad: We believe Chad and Cheese can co-president Monster. We got a whole- Joel: We can't do any worse. Chad: Yeah. We got a whole campaign behind this thing. But insiders in Monster say that's not going to happen, so we've got to get the ... We got a Russian connection now, so we can get the bots going. Get the trolls. Joel: We could. We could. Chad: We can win this election. Joel: They're not going to let us back in America after this. There we go. Chad: There it is. Joel: Now, the party's starting. Chad: There we go. It's not pumpkin though, Joe. Joel: Cheers or what is it, Sláinte. Joey Stubbs: Sláinte. Joel: Sláinte! Dang it. Chad: Sláinte. Joel: I'll get it, eventually. Chad: And that's it for shout outs. Joel: Awesome. Let's get to the show, shall we? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yes. Okay. Chad: I need to get to my beer. That's much better. Joel: I guess, we could start with Google. Who was at the Google presentation, yesterday? Chad: Anyone? Who was not at the Google presentation? It was packed. Joel: Who was writing down an alternative business plan while they were listening to Google? Yeah, that was scary. Chad: It was good stuff. Joel: So, if you weren't there, Google's going to AI the shit out of your ATS. Chad: Yes. That's putting it nicely. Joel: They may actually make matching a reality. Chad: Now? Joel: Matching has been a Sasquatch, if you will, for about 10 years. Google might actually pull it off. Chad: Yes. Joel: At least that's what I got yesterday. Everything from matching resumes, to jobs, to your scheduling. I'll probably forget a few things due to hangovers. Oh, and glasses, too. Chad: Nice. Joel: Is it ice cold, though? Chad: It's a little cold. Joel: I don't know, what are your takeaways? Chad: Yeah, so it's funny because it was like the whole, "If." If we could do this? Ask everybody, "If we could do this," and then he's showing screen shots of shit they're building, right? It's like, "If we could do this," which we're doing right now. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty awesome. Again- Joel: I love how he softens everybody up with cucumber stories. "There's this farmer in South America that's growing cucumbers and he's using our AI technology." Chad: Japan. Joel: It's probably not a good accent or impression of you at all. Chad: No, not at all. Joel: They soften you up at Google and then they punch you right in the gut with what they're going to do. The good news is, they gave you an alternative business, though. They said, "Voice assistance are our next business of the next two to three years." So, if you're scared to death of what Google's going to do to your business, start making that Alexa app today, that Google Home, that Syria app today because at least Bogomil gave you the next thing that you can be a couple years ahead of it. Chad: Yeah, I mean, we saw the Trojan horse with Indeed when they were going after the Monster and CareerBuilder take down, right? Monster and CareerBuilder could have crushed them. Now, we've got this company called Google. You're not crushing Google, so it's like how do we play well with Google. Now, anybody using the jobs API? Joel: Yep. Chad: The discovery API? Not yet? Is it available here? Joel: They're here in the country during business where they have to deal with Google for Jobs. Chad: Yeah. Well Google for Jobs ... Yeah, yeah. Joel: Alright, well let's get this out of the way. Winter is coming everyone. If you're not prepared for basically having Indeed within a Google search, you're going to be greatly behind the eight-ball. We are here to provide a service, I guess, to tell you what's coming. Now, the good news is- Chad: Fairly simple. Joel: -if you play with Google ... Chad: Nicely. Joel: ... you're job site will be listed with the other jobs that are on Google. Duplicate content, you'll be competing with other job sites. I will tell you one thing that you can do to help yourself is to Amazon the shit out of your application process. If applying to your site isn't super easy, a job seekers is going to have a lot easier time going to your competitor through Google for Jobs than they ever have. Chad: And data, too. Joel: And data, too? Chad: Yeah. Get more data. That was one of the biggest issues. Companies in the US, and I don't know if it's the same in Europe, they don't like to give a lot of info. They don't like to give salary ranges. I mean, these are the things that obviously job seekers, the users, customers, it's nice to have. I mean, I would like to before I apply for a job know how much you like to pay. So, they're really forcing, Google's really forcing companies to push more information. Now, take a look at ZipRecruiter. Joel: They're also pulling data from PayScale [crosstalk 00:09:48] salaries. Chad: Yeah, but if you push it yourself, I mean, I don't know their algorithm, obviously, but I believe you're getting heavier algorithm on that. But ZipRecruiter, their case study, and it was actually a Google case study, showed that they're getting a 35% lift in search traffic. Anybody want 35% lift in search traffic? Speaker 6: Monster got 100%. Chad: What's that? Speaker 6: Monster got 100%. Chad: Monster got 100%? That's 'cause nobody was going there because they suck. They've got the worst search engine for [crosstalk 00:10:22]. Joel: What do you want? You want some Purell, a pen, or a cup? Oh, boom. Nice catch. Chad: Yeah. I'm pretty good. Yeah. So, getting that kind of a lift. I wonder ... So, 100% in the US, I'm assuming. Joel: There's a word of warning for sucking from the Google tit though, that we should let people know about. So, when Indeed launched, everyone was like, "Free traffic," "More traffic," "Awesome." Over time, traffic went down. You had to pay for traffic. ATS direct employers jobs became more prominent than Indeeds. So, there's a word of warning. Enjoy the Google traffic while you can, 'cause it may not last. Thank you. Chad: Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, so right now the Google for Jobs experience isn't really great for the applicant tracking systems. I mean, if a job seeker wants to go through an applicant tracking system the button actually says the applicant tracking system name. SmartRecruiters. What does that mean to a job seeker? I know what Glassdoor is. I know what ZipRecruiter is, probably. I might have used those before. So, more than likely just from a UI standpoint, it's not great for the [Iceman's 00:11:45] of the world. I see that changing. I don't know how they're ... I mean, it's just verbiage to be quite frank, but right now it will say Taleo. What's a Taleo? Joel: If I'm a job seeker, I don't know what Taleo is. I don't know what Connects is. I don't know what Isis is. I might know what Monster is. I might know what LinkedIn is. So, branding's going to be important in this new world unless Google can figure out how to put the direct employer name within that site, which they probably can at some point. So, enjoy that branding while you still can. Who here is dealing with Facebook as a job posting competitor? Well, you guys have it easy here in Europe. States now, we're fighting tooth and nail for real estate.Facebook just launched in 40 countries, apparently none of which are in this room represented. Chad: Either way, not pushing it. Joel: Another word of winter's coming, Facebook is coming for your kids, as well. They're going after more of the small businesses, I think it's fair to say. They have a ton of data. They have a ton of profile data. I don't know if you guys do this, they are leveraging messaging in their job postings. They're starting to leverage automation in those chats. We talked about chat bots. Facebook is already playing in that game, as well. To just add a word of caution, what's going on, essentially it's going to be my opinion at least is we're going to have three platforms: The Microsoft LinkedIn platform, the Facebook platform, and the Google platform. Chad: Amazon Joel: Companies eventually will choose which one is their product of choice. Chad: Yeah. I think Amazon [crosstalk 00:13:22]. Joel: And that's where they'll have their ATS, that's where they'll post their jobs, and that's where they'll be happy. Chad: The biggest question is, where do you take ... If you're Job Board, right, and you're fighting for traffic, how do you change your model? Partnership, obviously is a big key we see with ZipRecruiter. They're using many different Google products. They've partnered very closely with Google. Long term we'll see how that turns out. It's working out well for them now. But Google for Jobs, it's no question, it's going to be coming to Europe. When it does, who's not going to be happy when it comes to Europe? Indeed. 'Cause Indeed's not playing. Joel: Sure. I have a long list of people who probably won't be happy, but let's go with Indeed. I don't even know when that plays into space, is going to be unhappy. Chad: No. Google- Joel: Eventually, unhappy. Chad: Google ... Well, eventually [crosstalk 00:14:16]. Joel: Indeed doesn't play with Google. You won't find Indeed jobs on Google for Jobs. Indeed has made a conscious decision to say, "We're putting up the mode, we're battening down the hatches, and we're not going to play with Google." Whether or not that lasts is up for debate, but at least for now they're holding the fort against the big G. Chad: Yes, and that means ... what we've seen in the US ... that means a redistribution of traffic back to everyone else. That's what happened, right. So, Indeed's got this big pipe that they've SEO'd the shit out of fricking Google, right, and next thing you know, all that organic is pushed down, Google for Jobs is there and guess what? Since Indeed is not pushing their jobs into Google for Jobs, they're down further on the page, your jobs, perspectively, at least the jobs of the job boards playing the game in America, they're seeing a really good lift. Somebody had a question? Joel: If you'd been in the states, you would have noticed a big spike in Indeed advertisements on television and elsewhere, which I assumed was a freakout of the fact that they lost traffic to Google. Chad: And not sustainable. Yes. Speaker 5: There's a reason people [inaudible 00:15:33] Joel: Privacy. Speaker 5: 2.4 billion [inaudible 00:15:36]. Joel: Can we get a mic. Oh, there it is. Speaker 7: Repeat the question. Joel: Yeah, repeat. The question is, basically, Google hasn't launched here because they're in a legal battle- Speaker 5: [inaudible 00:15:55] Joel: Which they can find in their couch, by the way. Speaker 5: In [inaudible 00:16:04] jobs promoted by all the other [inaudible 00:16:27] into the European [inaudible 00:16:30] legally would be a problem- Joel: So, the shocking case, correct me if I'm wrong, is their own search engine for- Speaker 5: [inaudible 00:16:40] Joel: Correct, so they're- Speaker 5: [inaudible 00:16:45] Google got bloody 60% of the market search [inaudible 00:16:52] so for them to artificially promote their service above everyone else is [inaudible 00:17:04] right in the face of the European union. That's why they'll never launch here in Europe. Chad: Have you seen the interface? Have you seen the Google for Jobs interface? Speaker 5: [inaudible 00:17:16] Chad: Yeah, but the thing is they're not pressing their jobs, what they're doing is they're actually, that's what we're talking about, redistribution, so right now, they're not giving anybody really I would say a lift over anybody else. If you're playing. Speaker 7: [inaudible 00:17:38] Chad: That's not their service. It's search. It's search. It's not a service, it's search. No, what does Google provide? They provide search. Google provides search. Speaker 5: [inaudible 00:17:50] Chad: What is search in the first place? It's an aggregate, right? It's a directory. It's the same thing. Speaker 5: [inaudible 00:17:59] Chad: They don't- Joel: We don't have time for this. Chad: No, we do. We do. Joel: We really don't. Chad: Anyway, if you take a look at the interface, the way that Google is actually going after this is they're not promoting their service, they're providing a better interface to get to jobs on other job sites. Joel: Google's in the room, by the way. Would you like to comment about this case [inaudible 00:18:20]. Damn it. Speaker 7: [Not gonna happen] Joel: Okay. Alright, if you believe Google will not have a jobs component ever in Europe, then you can just forget what we just said. If you believe there's a chance that Google might beat the case or do what Google does and win in the end, then keep listening to us and eventually this will happen. Chad: It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. Carry on. Joel: Carry on, okay. I will pick up the pieces. So, I don't know, we've got five more minutes. Chad: Okay. Joel: We can do Q and A. We can talk some more stuff. What do you guys want? Raise your hand if you like Q and A and discussion with the audience. Raise your hand if you just want us to talk more and bullshit. Yep, question. Speaker 8: You talked- Joel: Wait for the mic. Speaker 8: [inaudible 00:19:06] Chad: Wait for the mic. Speaker 8: You talked to me a couple of weeks ago and brought my focus on [inaudible 00:19:11] the way I can bring traffic to first week on the [crosstalk 00:19:17] Chad: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Talking about the two-click? Speaker 8: Exactly. Chad: Yeah. Speaker 8: Can you please update us on what's going on in Europe and customers speak of Germany as of [inaudible 00:19:30] Chad: Yeah. Indeed, to be quite frank, they're fucking up right now. They're not playing with Google. They're in a non-sustainable position. They're spending a shit ton of money to press the traffic that they were getting from Google for free, right. And what are they doing to be able to subsidize this position that they're in? They're charging the shit out of their 35% plus, number one, and then they change the models. Everybody see the two-click, two pane model? Not two chains, the two pane model. Actually, you're getting charged for the first click that doesn't take you to the job. What? Joel: I'm with you. Yeah. More click, more money. Chad: And big props to Recruitics. First and foremost, they put out an email to their client to let them know what was going on. One of their clients actually shifted it to us and then we got a hold of Recruitics and they did a little white paper or something like that. So, they're trying to keep people informed, which is great because to be quite frank, Time Acquisition wouldn't know what the hell was going on because they don't pay attention. They don't pay attention to that shit. Joel: The one's that listen to us do. Chad: Yeah. That's why they listen to us 'cause we pay attention. Joel: And they're not the only ones sucking money everywhere they can, 'cause everyone heard about the Glassdoor IPO rumors? Yep. Glassdoor's raising prices. They're going after staffing firms. Question? Okay. Chad: There we go. Speaker 9: I have a comment on the two pane. Indeed launched that in January and Monster's launching this week. Joel: Who? Chad: Monster's launching a two pane this week? Speaker 9: Yes. Chad: Are you kidding me? Joel: The energy drink is launching a job search? What? Chad: So, we're going to have to have a one-on-one with Chris Cho. The new Product guy of Monster. Joel: Sure. Monster actually talks to us now because they need to, I guess. [crosstalk 00:21:34] Chad: Because we're going to be co-president. So, where did you get ... What source? Is that somebody- Speaker 9: Monster. Chad: Source Monster. Okay. Joel: Scoop everybody. Tweet. Chad: Scoop. Scoop. Joel: Any other questions? We got a couple minutes, unless Pete and Repeat want us to give ... Oh, 10 minutes. Chad: There we go. Joel: We're on fire. Chad: 10 minutes. Joel: Wie Gehts? Speaker: Hi there. I really like your opening on opportunity for recruitment. Joel: Oh, shit. Speaker: Oh shit or bullshit? Chad: Ooh. So, Blockchain to me ... How long does it actually take for a transaction to happen at Blockchain Speaker: A couple seconds depending on which platform you use. Chad: So, a second to ten minutes. Speaker: Yep. Chad: Yeah, okay. Joel: I think it's one of two roads. One, is that no one gets it, understands it, cares about it, and it's just kind of a fringe technology, or it really transforms how we do business. I was watching the Blockchain before I came in and when I hear him talk I'm saying, "This could put the background check business out of business." If you have a ledger of where you went to school and where you went to work, you don't need background check companies. I also heard if you have a social network that's built on this privacy infrastructure, then do social networks pop up and say, "We don't collect your data but you have a profile and your safe and we're going to use your data to advertise to you. We're not going to re-target you." Do people embrace that and go do a private social network. Does LinkedIn change their model in light of that. I think it could either really transform and shake it up or it will just fizzle out and not catch on. Chad: It has to do with adoption, I mean, overall. Especially, for platforms who are using, blotching, as a selling point. Nobody understands what the hell it is. You got to be able to come down with a very concise and easy way to ensure that your customers know what it is. I mean, if it's a candidate thing and you're doing it for candidate privacy or whatever it is, you're just going to have to be more concise. We had a CEO from Moonlighting on- Joel: Yeah. There are a few companies, well ICOs, so there are two job sites that are raising money. One has raised over a million and a half dollars in an ICO, which is Initial Coin Offering. I guess you guys know that. Yeah. There's some underground stuff that's going on that's interesting, but does it stay underground or not, I don't know. Chad: But we asked him to just define what it was and it was not concise by any means. Again, people aren't going to buy what they don't understand. Joel: Yeah. Well, I would say Tom, from Smashfly, he's talking about chat bots and how people go, "I need a chatbot," and you're like "What do you want a chatbot for?" They're like, "I don't know. I just need a chatbot." Chad: 'Cause they're easy. Joel: You're going to see people say we're built on Blockchain, just like we have AI and we're automation. They're buzz words you're going to hear and Blockchain's going to be one of them for sure. Chad: If they can understand it. They understand what a chatbot is. A chatbot is so simple. Joel: I don't know what ... If you talk to Tom, they don't. They just think they need it 'cause it's hot. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And to be able to tell their friends "Yeah, we're on that Blockchain stuff." Chad: Like the Blockchain chat. Joel: Ooh. You're innovative. That's cool. Any other questions? I guess we're down to like two minutes. Chad: Oh God. Now, you've wrestled the damn bear. Speaker 11: [crosstalk 00:25:00] comments on the chatbots. Yes. Joel: Did you not say that? Speaker 11: It's a question about not showing up for the one chatbot formats, right, but what we're trying to do is increase their engagement with people coming to their sites and looking for their jobs. So, while the question may be, "Yes. What do you want a chatbot for?" "I don't know. I don't know how to use it," doesn't mean there's not value that they're seeing in engaging with those people. Joel: But the motivation to even ask about it is because they heard it on a conference or they heard it on a ... read it on a blog. Chad: It's the shiny. Joel: They just say, "We need a chatbot." Speaker 11: That isn't how all great ideas come from. You hear it from somewhere, you do a little research, you ask questions, you figure out what it means, you then talk to people about what it can be used for, and there you go. Joel: He's doing a real good job of spinning what I heard yesterday. Chad: Yeah. Yeah, he is. It's good. I think it's got to be simple. Joel: Do you agree that Blockchain is a buzzword, is going to start making its way into sites to draw attention and customers? Speaker 11: Blockchain is a buzzword? Joel: Well, yeah. It's like we have Blockchain or our shit's built on Blockchain. That's going to happen, yes? Chad: It's going to happen. Joel: Okay. Chad: Yeah. Joel: That was kind of my point. Not going after you for the chatbot thing, but just people will use stuff because it's a trending word. Three minutes. Chad: Three minutes. Joel: Questions. Chad: One more question. Oh, not Murphy. Joel: Oh, Murph. Chad: Damn it. Joel: Nice tie. You're always so well dressed. Murphy: Thank you. Joel: [inaudible 00:26:24] could take a few tips. Murphy: I think you're bullshitting. The comment about the two pane from Indeed came up and Monster's launching it. Glassdoor's been doing that for over a year, if not from forever [inaudible 00:26:36]. Joel: But they don't charge for clicks. I mean, there's a difference, right? Murphy: Last one we charted has a [CBC 00:26:40] model where they do anything first click on [inaudible 00:26:44] Chad: Well, okay. First off, what was Indeed ... what was their slogan when they first came out? Joel: Google for blank. Chad: Google for Jobs. Right? They were Google for Jobs. They- Murphy: Someone else said that. Chad: A search engine. Yeah. Joel: Google said that, I think. Chad: It might have been Google. Joel: Google became Google for Jobs. Chad: It might. Yeah. Google became Google for Jobs. Very nice. It's like they set it up for them or something. Chad: I mean, it looks like a huge regression. You're going from super simple to now you're just putting layers in front of job searches. Joel: So, what does a search engine do? A search engine takes you to another site. Right? That's the whole point of Google. What sites have what I'm looking for? I go to that website. Indeed's initial value proposition was we're a search engine for jobs. Click on the job, you'll go to the site that has the job, apply through that site, whatever. Now, Indeed is progressively wanting to not have you leave Indeed at all. The value proposition has changed in our opinion. We think that change is largely due because the monetary suffering that they're going through with Google taking their milkshake. I don't know if that answers your question or not, but last years propositions never been word search engines for jobs. [crosstalk 00:28:05] Chad: They're a review site that turned into a job site. Murphy: Google started out as search the web, right, and then they had Gmail and then that's where most people spend more time outside of Facebook than anywhere else. So they grew to platform with new services. Indeed's doing much the same thing, right? Joel: So, you're comparing going from a search engine and adding a email product [crosstalk 00:28:31] Chad: To changing the search engine entirely. Murphy: Well, Indeed is doing more profiles, resumes, you can apply to jobs directly. Chad: Indeed prime. Murphy: It's a lot more than a search. At least that's the intentions. Chad: It is now. Murphy: I guess that my question is, why not find a way to generate a higher revenue off the site. It seems to me [inaudible 00:28:54] I'd rather pay money to keep a person on the website rather than having them leave. Chad: As somebody who obviously works with the companies and you probably do too, that sucks because I want the candidate to go through my experience. My experience my suck, but still I'm paying for that experience. Joel: Maybe I want to re-target these people. Maybe I want to present [crosstalk 00:29:12]. Chad: That's not your choice. That's my money that I'm spending to get that candidate and you're still keeping them on your site. I get what you're saying from their standpoint. Murphy: You think it sucks because of perspective evidence TA professional. Chad: Yeah. Joel: From a user, I don't. I think as a user, if you click through say Indeed, get window panes and quickly go through jobs, I think that's great. But from a non-posting standpoint and a TA standpoint, I think there are questions there. Chad: And they make a hell of a lot more money because of a lot more clicks. Joel: And it's our job to present these issues so you can ask your own internal team, "Does this matter to us or not?" Murphy: [inaudible 00:29:48] Chad: That's never a bad thing to do. Yeah. Joel: Because people must see you do it. Thank you guys. Thank you. Murphy: Thank you guys. Thank you very much. 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 intelligent 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. #TATech #Indeed #Monster #Google #GoogleforJobs #GoogleHire #GoogleJobsAPI #Nexxt #LIVE

Call it the International Women's Day episode, although it's mostly about Millennial-bashing. This week: - United Airlines does a U-turn on bonus lottery - Glassdoor sends out conflicting messages about a price increase - Burger King torches traditional recruitment advertising - Come on Jobu Jobs stop the stupid "Tinder for Jobs" shit - Activision coddles its Millennial employees - Will Google's end the "War for Talent"? ... and a friggin' bunch more, yo! Like always, go show out sponsors some love. America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly, Catch 22 Consulting and our newest sponsor, JobAdX rock the house! And special thanks to Nexxt and Jobs2Careers for sponsoring our monthly shows. 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. Joel: Yes, all right. We're recording this episode on International Women's Day. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So what better way to celebrate than listening to a couple of meatheads talking about recruiting, beer and whiny-ass millennials. This week, United Airlines makes a U-turn with employees, Glassdoor is tinkering with its pricing model, and Jobu is not just one of your characters from the movie "Major League" anymore. Chad: Jobu. Joel: Wild Thing is coming out of the bullpen, kids. Get ready. 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 sovereign.com. S-O-V-R-E-N dot com for a free demo. Chad: Free demo. Joel: Happy International Women's Day, Chad. How are you celebrating? Chad: I'm celebrating with a wonderful woman. Julie Sowash, yes, a very strong business woman who loves her International Woman's Day. Joel: As do all women obviously. My wife a professor in college, far more educated than myself will be attending a smart woman's dinner tonight, and I'll be watching the kids. Three of them. Chad: She's so smart, but yet she, you. I mean, I don't, I still don't get that. Chad: Anyway, International Woman's Day. They deserve more than a day. Joel: Glad you stopped there. Pretty much every day is women's day in my house. Joel: Shout outs. Let's get to those. Chad: Shout outs, right out of the gate, David Zaneski sent a zinger, where he said, "I was channeling my inner Xena yell during the Google Goes Latin podcast." Very nice, DZ. Very nice. Chad: Here's the thing though. So I missed Remy. Where did Remy go? Remember we gave David and Remy shit on the same exact podcast, and David's still shooting snark at us. Come back, Remy. Come on man. The snark it's warm. Joel: All the Recruitics kids are snarky, and then we hit back and they kind of curl up in the fetal position. Chad: Oh, wow. Joel: Zila that's for you. Chad: All Recruitics kids. I can't believe you went there. So anyway. Snark is obviously, it's gonna be warm. It's gonna be very uncomfortable, but it's fun. It's good stuff. Joel: They're all dead to me at Recruitics. They're all dead. Chad: I still love you Recruitics. Joel: What else we got shout outs. Chad: I wanna thank Cory Kapner for pointing out. He actually did a screenshot of a Find.jobs fail. We talked about Find.jobs I believe it was on the last podcast, and Cory sent a screenshot. It actually showed that this new high tech Find.jobs platform couldn't even handle different location formats. I meant it's the very basics of job search. Location formats and their system couldn't even handle it. I thought it was pretty pathetic, and obviously Cory did too, so we shared it with the world. That was a big Fail.jobs moment. So thanks Cory for that, and Find.jobs whatever dot jobs. Get your shit straight. Joel: I feel like we're enabling a whole new generation of snark, smart asses. Chad: Why not? Joel: What do you think? Chad: One of the reasons why people listen to us is because they enjoy listening to no bullshit podcasts. They want to listen to, just cut through it, right? People have that need. It's a safe place. Come on. We're not getting personal here, right? We're talking about things that are actually jacked up, and to be quite frank, we're giving you really free consulting. So fix your shit, guys, and hell, I think it's healthy. It feels good and cathartic to me. How about you? Joel: Hey the more people that are out there like us, I say the better. If we're helping enable a new generation of snarkists, then I think we're doing our job ultimately. Chad: Here's another example. So Olivia added me on LinkedIn. I won't share her last name. She added me on LinkedIn, and then she sent me a note. Thanks for the add. I was just listening to your latest podcast, and added you after I pushed the invite button. She got into the millennial segment about adding randoms on LinkedIn, so apparently she was a random, without context or note. I couldn't help but laugh, since that's exactly what I just did to you. Keep up these kick-ass podcasts. Now that is how you save a bad situation right there. It's like, "Oh yeah, I'm just gonna be lazy and press invite," and then she was like, "Oh you know what? He just accepted. I should send back a nice note thanking him and saying he has a kick-ass podcast." Good job, Olivia. Very good job. Joel: Yeah, and I don't even mind just the sort of cold and corporate connection on LinkedIn. It's when you ask me for something that pisses me off. Like connect me with, great, but then 30 minutes later, "Hey what do you think about," blah, blah, blah, or "What are the ten ATS' in your opinion?" Like get the fuck outta here with that shit. That pisses me off. Joel: But anyway, I appreciate the shout out, and yes it is kind to say something when you connect with someone on LinkedIn. Someone I'm connected to on LinkedIn that I want to send a shout out, and I can't believe I haven't yet, is Abby Cheeseman at Skill Scout. Not only does she have the best name in the industry, Cheeseman, it's spelled correctly, which is often, but we are not related in any way that I know of. She's married to a Cheeseman. Now he and I may in a past life be connected someway, but apparently a lot of people go to Abby and say, "Are you related to Joel," and she has to say, "No," and I get the same question too. Chad: She says, "Who's Joel?" Joel: I'm gonna clear it up right here on the podcast. Yeah, exactly, Joel who? Joel: Elena as well. This is a startup out there that's run by two women. I know they're super passionate about that, and a big shout out to them out there in Chicago where they're based. Chad: So Skill Scout? That's the one, right? Joel: Yep, Skill Scout. They do video, which we love videos, so yeah. Call them up and support a women's business out there. Chad: Where are we gonna be next week, man? Joel: Dublin. We've just been talking about it for the last six months. Chad: So excited. Joel: We're finally gonna be there. I'm hyped. Chad: No I'm totally hyped, and dude I took a look at the individuals who are going to be there. Not just the ones on the agenda, but you've got Nexxt, Zip Recruiter, SmashFly, Google, Clinch, Madgex, Lensa, PandoLogics/used to be Real Match. Candidate I.D. I mean you've got an awesome mesh of U.S. TAtech and Europe TA tech. If you're not there and you're in this industry, I gotta ask: What the hell are you doing? I mean are you in the fetal position in the corner? What's going on here? Joel: Pete and re-Pete Weddle always bring it, so shout out to them as well. They always amaze me with their conferences. Chad: Last but not least, go to the ChadCheese.com site. There's a little banner that says, "Meet us," and much like TA tech, Joel and I are going to be at different places. Joel is going to be at ERE in San Diego in April. I'm gonna be presenting in San Francisco in early April around the same time. Then, drum roll, SHRM Talent. Joel: SHRM. Chad: In Vegas. Joel: Yes SHRM somehow let us into the party, and we're probably gonna break stuff and they may never invite us back, but at least we get that one shot to have our fun at a SHRM conference people. Chad: I hope they've upped their insurance. That's all I have to say. Yeah, so we're going to SHRM , and then right after SHRM, I mean we're gonna spend a week in Vegas, man. Then right after SHRM we're going straight to TA Tech. So if you are in Vegas for SHRM, you should also take a look at TA Tech right back to back. You're already there. Joel: It's Vegas. Chad: Oh man it's Vegas. Stay. Have a good time. Joel: By the way did I hear SHRM right in our call with them that they're gonna give us access to their Facebook streaming video accounts? Chad: Yes. Joel: Good God, someone drug test the folks at SHRM because something's in the water out there. I don't know what's going on. Cause chaos and rock like Amadeus. Joel: All right, you ready to get to the show? Chad: Let's do it. Joel: All right, United Airlines new worlds of stupid this week, replaced quarterly bonuses with a lottery, okay. Workers who hit performance targets will be entered to win prizes including cars, vacations, I guess that's a free flight, or even a hundred grand for one lucky employee. Chad: Yes. Joel: About 1.6 percent of United's 86,000 workers will win something every quarter. That's not a lot. That's not a high percentage. Anyway, the new system replaces previous pay incentives, which have been anywhere from $63 to $7,589. Chad: Yes. Joel: Ink Magazine estimates. Social media, at least in my circles, went sort of ape shit when this was announced for obvious reasons. Chad: Yeah. Usually a lottery is something that you choose to do, right? In some cases you're gonna go. You're gonna spend a buck or $5 or $20 or whatever it is to go play the lottery for a chance, right? This isn't even giving you an option, right? This is, "Guess what guys? You're not gonna get a pay increase, but we're just gonna go ahead and throw you into this lottery, which only," as you had said, "1.6 percent will win." Just from a PR standpoint, this is one of the dumbest things, which is why they backed out of it obviously. Chad: One of the dumbest things you can do. Hey look, we think this is really cool. So cool that we're gonna make sure that pretty much 98.4 percent of you are not gonna get anything, right? Joel: They took this flight back to the gate, yes. It did not get very far before social media and I'm sure there was an uproar internally that we don't even know about of people. Yeah, it's clearly sort of a cost-saving measure. Sure they wrapped it in sort of a fun thing. They wrapped it in you can win a car, a hundred grand, but people who hit bonuses, they just want average shit back for hitting their goals. I don't know what it says about human nature. We want what we've earned, and not put our name in a hat and maybe I'll win something big or I won't win anything at all. Chad: Right. Joel: This certainly exemplifies human nature and how companies really screw this up. I wouldn't be surprised if some HR folks got fired over this because of the outrage that followed. But dumb idea on all counts. Joel: If I know that you really suck, you might have just barely hit your goals, right? But I totally crushed it, and you win a hundred grand, how am I gonna feel as an employee that got to see someone substandard to me win a hundred grand in the lottery. I'm probably not gonna be real happy about it. Chad: That's gonna happen a lot. Chad: So here's how you fix this, United. I'm gonna give you a little free advice. What you do is you keep the raises in place, and because you created this PR nightmare for yourself, some idiot within PR and/or marketing, what you do is you go ahead and you institute the lottery as well. You do both. Don't be dumb asses. You're gonna come out of this like dragging a guy off a plane for goodness sakes. You need to be smart about this. Go ahead and institute both. Whether you do it for one year or not, you've got to be smarter about how you do business. This is dumb. Joel: This needs to be, again, going back to the International Women's Day, they need to find their inner Oprah and everybody gets something. So you get a car, you get a car, you get a something. Like give everybody something that hits it, but then have a few lucky winners that really strike it rich, right? I think everyone would be happy with that. Joel: We're in agreement on that. United fix your stuff and you're welcome. That was free advice from Chad and Cheese. Chad: You're lucky. Joel: Also needing advice apparently is Glassdoor. What happened with them this week? Chad: Well, you know, I think looking to position yourself for IPO does some weird things to companies, don't you think? Joel: Yeah, people lose their minds in IPOs. Chad: People do lose their minds, yeah. Joel: Like where can we make money? They throw the couch cushions off, right, and they go looking for change. We need to pump up that first initial report to Wall Street. This to me is clearly them saying, "Okay let's flip up the staffing industry cash cushion and see what kind of dollars we can generate from this." Chad: Yeah, so I mean this next segment actually started with a weird email that was screen-shotted and it was shared on Twitter, and it was asked to pretty much to Glassdoor, marketing communications in Glassdoor overall. What the hell does this mean? Here's what the email actually said. "I want to let you know effective April 1, 2018," I actually thought it was April Fool's at first, "Glassdoor's rate card will increase." Very nice. "If you're currently receiving any organic applies from Glassdoor," this is important. "If you are currently receiving any organic applies from Glassdoor, they will stop. That will no longer be a free feature. Again, that will stop. If Glassdoor is something that you're interested in, this is where the sale comes in, then you can call your account executive right? Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: So I reached out to Samantha, I'm gonna get her last name wrong, Zupan, who is in charge ... She's VP of communications over at Glassdoor. Joel: She's very nice. I will vouch for her. She's a good kid. Chad: But the thing is, what she responded back with on Twitter totally contradicts what I just read. She said, "The changes reflect how we're doing business with staffing firms." Just staffing firms. "We're looking to set up paid business relationships with them to help boost their recruiting efforts." Go figure. "We're not removing organic job listings." Okay they didn't say they were gonna do that in the email, although job candidates will continue to be able to apply for free jobs on Glassdoor organic or sponsored, which is counter to what the actual message was. So I wonder, if this was a communications error kinda on the sales side that was sent out to be able to try to spur the sky is falling for staffing firms, say "Oh my God we've gotta buy this," or which one. Who's lying, that's the big question? Joel: It's a rogue sales person obviously. Chad: They're everywhere. Joel: Dude, yeah, there's confusion here and no doubt to me, Glassdoor's gonna look at how do we bleed this turnip for more cash. Staffing industry historically has been the whipping boy of the whole thing, and even you and I have talked about the money that Monster made from staffing companies and Hot Jobs didn't do that. I forget what you said what percentage of Monster's revenue was staffing firms, it was like 70. Chad: It was like 75 percent. It was like 75 percent, yeah. Joel: Yeah, 75 percent. Like I can't fault Glassdoor for you know, "Oh shit. There's some money there," in doing it. But also to me it's a little bit confusing in that Glassdoor is built on sort of companies having profiles and having reviews and interview questions revealed, where if you leave a review for a staffing company, do they have profile pages? Is it for the company they're hiring for? If their interview questions, would you leave that question for the staffing firm or for the direct employer? Do they even know the direct employer? Joel: So from a usability perspective, I see this being potentially challenging from them, but hell, we've gotta raise money because we got an IPO coming up, so to hell with users. Chad: So I actually reached out to somebody in the staffing industry and said, "Hey, what the hell's up?" They said, "You have to have a minimum $2,000 spend, and if you don't pay, your competitors sponsored jobs actually show up by your reviews." So obviously your jobs, over in that right rail, are not gonna populate because you're not paying to get your jobs into your profile, so they'll go ahead and slap obviously some competition over on that right rail. Chad: This to me is really taking the brand hostage. It's not a great way to do business man, because nobody likes, I don't care if it's a staffing agency or not, nobody likes to be taken advantage of, and as soon as they see a window, they're going to fricking take their spend, and they're gonna run to somebody else. We saw this with CareerBuilder. We saw this with Monster. When Indeed starting to make their play, as soon as people had an opportunity to be able to take their money and go somewhere else, guess what they did? Joel: They did. They went somewhere else. Chad: You saw where I was leading there. Joel: This feels like if you followed Yelp at all, and it almost feels like Glassdoor is taking a page out of Yelp's strategy, there were a lot of local businesses that complained about Yelp, sort of, you know, not directly saying it, but sort of around the way saying, "Hey if you don't pay us, your competition's gonna be more visible. Those shitty reviews are gonna be at the top of the page." Sort of subtly if you're a paying customer, if you pay us money, you'll be able to control those reviews, or maybe those reviews will go away or go lower down the totem pole. Joel: This sort of blackmail business is real shitty, and it usually doesn't work long term, although again, if you have an IPO coming up, you wanna show growth, get that stock price and then everyone cashes out and who cares. Long term it's not a real great strategy. Chad: No, and so I asked, "What the hell? Why aren't they doing the same? Why are the focusing on staffing and not talent acquisition?" Their response was, "If you had a shitty Glassdoor rating, would you sponsor jobs? If you did, do you think the cost per applicant would be good, or that your advertisers would even want to suppress," there it is, "The bad reviews." There's no question. We see trouble actually brewing for Glassdoor I think on a long-term scale, but again, if they're thinking short term just because they wanna get to IPO. They wanna be able to squeeze as much as they possibly can. The big question is if you're a staffing company right now, do you just tell them to go to hell? Joel: Maybe. You got other options. But a lot of them, if it's successful, they'll stick with it. Chad: Yep. Joel: Time will tell, man. You know one company that's not short-sited, and looks out for their customers and users is America's Job Exchange, and you got something to say about that. Chad: I was actually just thinking about them. They're starting to roll out a new website and new messaging, and it's actually pretty cool. The new messaging is, "Compliance is mandatory. Diversity is essential." I think that is very smart and really packages up, yeah. Joel: I like that. Chad: Good job America's Job Exchange. Joel: They must have come up with that under the three feet of snow that's in the northeast area this week. Way to go, team. Chad: So they're messaging. Great things happen when organizations embrace diversity. America's Job Exchange provides a simple yet effective solution that connects equality-focused employers with the talent they need to build successful teams and maintain OFCCP compliance. This is the big message that major Fortune 500 companies, federal contractors, they all need to understand is yes, yes, yes, yes. You gotta check the box. You've gotta do the recording. Compliance is mandatory. If you wanna continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases billions of dollars a year, from your client, the U.S. Government, then you have to focus on compliance, but the big key for business is diversity and how essential it is. Research has actually shown how essential diversity is to a working team. Chad: A new idea is being able to really launch companies into the stratosphere of success. Big, big ups for America's Job Exchange. Check them out. New beautiful starting to roll out site, Americasjobexchange.com. If you do care about diversity because you know it's essential, go to chadcheese.com. Go down to the sponsors area, just a little scroll, and click on America's Job Exchange, and there's a 25 percent or some type of discount. There's a discount there to start using America's Job Exchange and focusing on compliance and diversity. Joel: Did you just say, "Little scroll?" Chad: Little. Joel: I like that. Just a little scroll away. Chad: Just a little scroll away. chadcheese.com, little scroll. Joel: Of Fortune 500 companies only 10 percent are women-lead, so AJ fight the good fight. Get that diversity into the bigger companies as well as the smaller ones. Chad: Amen. Joel: Do we have to go to millennials. Damn it. I was having a good day, and now we gotta talk about millennials. Chad: You're so excited about this. Okay so let's talk about the Burger King ad. Let's talk about this. Joel: Yep. Chad: Tell me about these Burger King ads, because you I think you put them up and I was like, "What the hell?" It looked like it was fake, didn't it? Joel: So I get all kinds of news stuff, and marketing is obviously something I'm passionate about, and every once in a while on one of the Ad Week or advertising blogs or publications, there will be an employment-related story about advertising, and this story was print ads for Burger King, that were totally out of bounds. The whole gist of it was to get your attention. No shit. They had pictures of soccer hooligans, or football hooligans because we're going to Europe, football hooligans with like, you know- Chad: Molotov cocktails. Joel: -Molotov cocktails. Like throwing fire and fighting police and it was like, "Oh you like burning stuff? Come charbroil some burgers," or whatever it is. That was such an extreme message, but clearly Burger King ads to be so outrageous with their ads because millennials apparently won't get off the couch to go work at Burger King unless they see something really outrageous that connects with them. Apparently, by the way, I guess part of the advertising from the agency was like, "Look, young people are mad about government. They're mad about the man. They're mad about everything," so connecting pipe-bombing the government is equated to going to work for Burger King, which, let's be honest, is a relatively boring job I would think. Joel: It just showcases the depths that millennials have driven marketers to get their attention. Chad: Just allowing these types of ads to go out. I don't know who, and I think this was in Germany, right? Whoever is in charge of marketing in Germany, if they still have a job right now, I would be incredibly surprised. This is ridiculous. Joel: It doesn't really matter probably because a company that you shared on our stream this week is developing flippy, which has a cute name, but is putting all these kids out of business because it's gonna do the burger flipping for us, like much of the things that will be automated. So flippy will be there, and we won't have these Burger King ads anymore because all the Burger Kings, Wendy's, McDonalds, etc. will just buy robots to flip burgers, which will also be to order from your mobile phone. You won't have to talk to someone to take your money. The future of fast food is interesting, but it's probably a lot with fewer humans I would think. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And that affects the millennials as well. Self-driving cars or trucks were in the news this week as usual? Chad: Yep, so Embark Trucks. They've actually created a system that they've built with Peterbilt Trucks that had an autonomous truck drive from California to Florida. 2400 miles without a human driver. Pretty amazing. We're always talking about AI and machine learning for our industry, and there are a lot of people that actually scoff at, "Oh yeah AI and machine learning, whatever recruitment," blah, blah, blah. Listen guys, if they can do this on the road. I mean we're talking about AI machine learning to map everything around you to avoid obstacles, to know where you're going. Mapping obviously all the GPS, oncoming traffic and shit like that, it's like having robot situational awareness really. It has cameras everywhere. It's equipped with radar and lidar, the light detection ranging systems. Joel: Lidar, geez. Chad: Yeah, I mean it's got all the cool shit that's on it, and it only needs humans when it needs fuel. To be able to actually get off an exit, fuel up, do whatever it needs to do and come back on, or obviously go ahead and drop your load. Chad: Yeah, right now, you "need" humans. Much like flippy, you know a human has to put the patties onto the grill right? That shit's gonna change guys. If you can actually make a robot that's going to flip burgers and drive, even more so drive from California to Florida, and right now it needs a human for off ramps, how long do you think it's gonna take for them to get that shit right? Joel: Not long. In fact I heard a story this week as well as Dominoes how they're sort of secretly R and Ding self-driving cars to deliver pizza. You get a code on your phone to open the locker with your hot fresh pizza, and not have to deal with a deli very person. Yeah, the future is scary. Chad: And millennials won't do those damn jobs, right? We can't find truckers. We can't find burger flippers. We can't find pizza guys. So who is going to take those jobs? Obviously have immigration problems and we think that obviously all of our jobs are taken. That's so much bullshit, man. We need to focus on where the need is from a workforce standpoint and long-term need. Robots are coming, guys. Joel: Just give people their VR headset, hook them into Xbox and the sex robots will be delivered and we're all good. What else do we need? Chad: Wall-E. Joel: Something near and dear to my heart, Jobu, as a former Cleveland resident, love the movie Major League, but maybe not the best name for a job search site. Jobu Jobs is in Beta, and this is still on our Millennial rant. So a 22-year-old kid basically started this company. It's a "new Tinder for jobs site." Chad: Oh God. Joel: It's in Beta, but there are screenshots. They even have the whole like, "It's a match thing." The visuals if you've been on Tinder. It's been a while for me. I know you've never been on it, but you've seen screenshots I'm sure. We need to get away from this Tinder for jobs stuff because no one has the time to flip through right and left on candidates or jobs that they want. They want to search it. They wanna get to relevant results, and more and more on the recruiting side, they just want to automate the sourcing with robots. To think that we're gonna swipe left and right on candidates when there's so much more efficient ways to find people is ridiculous. Joel: Stop the madness. This company out in Boise, which I understand is a beautiful place, find something else to do than launch Jobu Jobs/Tinder for employment, okay? Chad: Don't waste our time and your money. Don't do it. I literally thought this was a joke when you threw it out there at first because I read it and I'm like, "This has gotta be a bullshit joke." I mean since eHarmony for jobs is now dead, it's proven to be dead, now we've got a fall back position. It's Tinder for jobs. Everybody now is going to be Tinder for jobs. Joel: Yeah. Still with the Millennial rant, Activision Blizzard, great company, have friends there, anyway, they are giving new parents that are employees, a $1,200 baby crib. This crib will change your kid, rock your kid, feed your kid, talk to your kid, white noise it to sleep, etc. This is what we've come to with Millennial coddling is giving new parents at the company this $1,200 baby crib because I, Millennial need my sleep and don't want to wake up at 4:00, I want this machine to raise my kids. Again, this is going I guess where the world is going. To me this is a sad statement on employment that we're giving cribs away because we want our nice young employees to get their sleep at night. Chad: Well Activision ... Did they develop this crib? Joel: No. Chad: Okay, okay yeah that's pathetic then. Yeah, so at the end of the day, it's back to the millennials just wanting things handed to them. Yeah, I shouldn't have to do that. I shouldn't have to raise my kids. Does it really change the kid? I don't think it changes the kid. Does it change the kid? Joel: No I was kinda being facetious about that, but you know that's coming. Chad: Yeah, but again I don't want to do any of this, right? I just want some machine to do it for me, and that is ridiculous. How do you believe people become successful? They have to do the dirty work. How do you think that you become a successful parent or ... It doesn't matter. You gotta do the dirty work, right? That's the fun part about it. Chad: I look back into those sleepless nights that I had with my kids, some of the best memories I've ever had, and you're just screwing yourself out of them because you're a lazy ass. Joel: Do you think people choose Activision Blizzard to work because of something like this? Probably right? Chad: I don't think they [crosstalk 00:32:39]. Joel: I bet all the new parents that get this crib are like, "Activision is awesome. They bought this crib for me. I sleep at night. I don't see my kid, but hell, I'm sleeping at night." Chad: Yeah, I don't know. Joel: Lastly on the Millennial rant thank God is Phil Strazzulla, I think I'm saying that correctly, who works at Next Wave. He put up a video on LinkedIn. I got no problems with that. It was a whiteboard Wednesday video, which is sort of getting popular or has been popular for a while. Anyway, he made a statement like SEO for employers is dead, or they don't have to worry about it, yadda yadda. You and I both know that, I mean look. Are there other options? Yes, but you know your point, and I would have made the same point is that Google for Jobs is creating a whole new sort of discipline around optimizing your jobs, right? I even wrote a post on ERE. You can go search for it. It's like seven optimization tips for conquering Google for Jobs or something. Joel: It's all very practical, organic search result optimization tips that will affect your search. So he sort of glossed over that. He was looking at sort of old, general job search stuff even though he does mention Google for Jobs so it was around. Chad: Sort of, I mean it was over a four minute video, and it mentioned Google for Jobs. And it's like, dude, what the hell are you talking about when you're talking about optimizing for job content. You're not even gonna go ahead and spend a good portion of your video on optimizing Google for Jobs. Joel: He spent no time on that. Chad: Yeah. Joel: He said it was there, but he didn't, he just said SEO was irrelevant. No company should worry about that, which is a relief for I'm sure a lot of companies to think that. To also think like, you shouldn't care about it because Indeed and Glassdoor and everybody else has those top rankings, is sort of dangerous. I could take any decent company and compete and most SEOs could with those rankings. So it's not like, "Oh well, so-and-so ranks for it, so you're screwed. Don't even worry about it." Joel: The video's gotten 20,000 views so kudos to the kid, who I've spoken to and seems like a nice guy. Kudos for the 20,000 views, and that sort of helps his argument that focus on social media stuff because it's more pertinent and relevant, and you're gonna get more traction, which was the case in this. My problem with him was, you kinda sort of really lightly with gloves went to him and he called you, no reason to be a jerk, and it was this whole thin-skinned Millennial stuff like, "Oh don't, wait." If you have an opinion, get ready to be called out on it and defend it. You and I deal with this everyday, right, maybe because we're old and grissled and angry at the world, but deal with it. You got an opinion, you own a company, don't call someone a jerk because they're putting you on the mat for something. Come back with more ammunition. Come back with an opinion. Come back with facts, and don't just curl up in a fetal position and call someone a jerk about it. Joel: Millennial rant over. Chad: Yeah, it was fairly simply. The guy didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He was looking for something. He might have read a book from the late 1990's on SEO or some shit like that. Maybe he watched a video, but he truly didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I just threw out there, "Hey dude, you're glossing over the biggest piece of this, and then maybe you need to listen to a Chad and Cheese podcast," and yeah. I've been called much worse than a jerk. I actually kinda chuckled about it because yeah, he is a kid, and he needs to be whipped around a little bit. Joel: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with it. You're gonna get hit, dude. Just get up. Don't jerkify it. I gotta move on from this because I'm getting irritated. Joel: What better way to do that than to thank a new sponsor from the show. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yes, we're very excited. Chad: Coming in April. Joel: In April, Job Ad X from the folks that have given you Recroup have a new programmatic solution for your job advertising needs. I won't get too far into it because they'll have their own message for you, but we're both very excited. We have officially sort of filled all the spots on the show for sponsorship, but we also want to take this quick ad spot to talk about our own stuff. Chad: Oh yeah, so you obviously know us for the Chad and Cheese podcast. We both have together collective 40 years in this industry and we've seen a lot of shit obviously, and we know a lot of people. That's the big key. So one of the things that we can help most businesses out with, whether you're talent acquisition or you're a vendor, is to be able to innovate, compete and really just focus on your business. In most cases you don't have the experts in-house to be able to do that, and you don't have the cash to hire them full time. Go to chadcheese.com click on Huddle, and we have consulting, obviously, opportunities where we can sit down with you and we can have a huddle, and we can start to talk about some of these things. Chad: Again if you're on the vendor side of the house, in most cases, your big focus is how do we increase sales, right? We can help with that, so look at Huddle. Joel: Sales, marketing, you're a startup looking to understand the business better, the demographic, the customers that you're hoping to nab. If you're an international company looking to crack into the United States. Chad and I have 40 years I guess combined experience in this space. We have incredible networks to sort of help plug you in to companies or contacts. Joel: Yeah, if you're looking to take your business to the next level, chadcheese.com click on Huddle. Check it out. We'll come out and spend a day with you. If you're looking to take your conference to the next level, click on Roadshow, and we'll come out and shake up your event for sure. With spring and summer, a lot of conferences are starting to come out and looking for new ways to entertain and titillate their audience. Chad: That's a big thing, right? You definitely want to drop knowledge on your audience, but you don't wanna do it in a boring-ass way. That's one of the things that we've been able to do, right? Joel: It's a no-cricket process. Chad: Put our asses on stage. Live podcast. No PowerPoints. No sales speel. No yawning. We're gonna invigorate the crowd. We're gonna have fun, and we're gonna talk about shit that matters. So go to chadcheese.com, click on Roadshow, have us at your event. Joel: All right closing the podcast, iCims ATS, popular ATS. We've talked about on the show and had their wonderful Susan Vitali, marketing person on the next exclusive a few months ago. Had an interesting blog post that we thought we'd talk about. Tell us about what he said? Chad: It was entitled, "How Google Begins and Ends the War for Talent," and pretty much to kinda paraphrase what he's saying in this is, "Hey TA tech industry, you created the gap. Now Google is going to fill it." Job search sucks. Remember that Monster said that. We talked about that last week. Imagine that. Monster says job search sucks. Applying from one site to the next, throwing all your information out there on the web, It isn't fun. It isn't easy. It isn't safe. The candidate experience just falls flat, and it sucks, right? Chad: So all these different pieces of it. There's an opportunity, and you've left room for Google to come in and take market share. That's really- Joel: Drink your milkshake. Chad: - yeah, drink your milkshake. So TA tech industry, you had one job, one job, and Google's now going to take that job. Chad: What are you thoughts about that? Joel: To me, he makes a great point. We've talked about it on the show in terms of Google data. Google knows that people were clicking on job pages and finding duplicate jobs everywhere. Google knew all that, and part of I think the inspiration for Google for Jobs was to help the users better navigate the duplicate content issue. The multiple sites issue and going back and forth. They sorta brought that upon themselves. They needed money, and multiple postings, and the distribution model is a great model for profit. It is biting them in the ass. Joel: My challenge with the post was that he sort of, his context was that nothing would change going forward. That job search would continually be, I go to Google.com, I search for jobs, there are the jobs. That's end of story. It's a little more, potentially ... It is more complicated than that, and I think the future of job search will continue to evolve, and I'm not sure how Google's place in that new world is going to evolve with it. Joel: I still really think that voice assistance will have a place with all this, and I'm not sure Google is gonna be there. I think mobile devices, automation stuff. I just think searching for a job, when you and I were doing it, we bought the Sunday paper, we looked at the ads, we sent out letters, we made phone calls. That was our reality. It has evolved significantly from that. No one does that anymore, so can we say ten years from now people will still go to Google? Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel: I don't know. They probably will, or a good number will. I think Facebook has a good opportunity as a lifestyle business and a place where people spend most of their time, to be a juggernaut in terms of job search. I think Microsoft LinkedIn component in terms of the workplace enterprise software has a place in this. Ultimately, my problem with it is it sort of puts us in the mud and we're not changing and Google has won. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And I think that that's not gonna be the case in the future. Chad: Yeah, I think we're seeing a ton of startups, really cool startups, really push some of these old codgers in the industry, and that's great. One of the things that Collin does cite is some CareerBuilder research that said 80 percent of job searches actually start on Google. I don't know if it's that high, but I know it's high. To your point with regard to voice and mobile, I think, to be quite frank, voice and mobile, Google has those covered. They have an amazing voice assistant. They own probably the lion's share of operating systems on the planet for mobile. Chad: I think they're good there, it's all about that lifestyle piece like you're talking with LinkedIn and more so with Facebook. Where I think Collin is amazing, but I think where he misses the mark is his real focus is, "Hey Google is going to be sending these job seekers to the corporate career site." That's pretty much what it's all coming down to. Yeah, you can go to Glassdoor and their little buttons and all this other fun stuff, but it's gonna be so much easier for a job seeker to go directly to your isem system or what have you. That's not what we're seeing now. If you do a search, and you check out some of the options when you click on a job, it won't say, "Career site." It'll say, "Smart Recruiters." As a job seeker, I don't know what the hell a Smart Recruiters is. I do know what a Glassdoor is. I do know what LinkedIn is. I'm gonna use one of those, right? Joel: Or Taleo, or Kenexa or iCims. Chad: Yeah, I don't know what iCims is because I'm a candidate. I don't know these things. To think that it's already kind of figured out is wrong. I think the way that Google is going after things right now is very smart to ensure that they're not focused on creating a "monopoly". They've gotten in trouble for that before. There are still a ton of wrinkles to iron out, so Collin I agree there is a huge gap in the market. That's why Google is here. That's why they have pretty much the trifecta of products that are out there right now. I don't think they're anywhere close to where they need to be able to offer a great user experience. Joel: Yeah, and brand still means something. I think ease of use, right? A lot of these ATSs still suck ass in terms of applying. If I'm a job seeker, and I see jobs that I like, if I like applying through Glassdoor or I love how Monsters interface works. By the way, if you're Monster, you should really be working hard on making that as easy as possible. Like whoever's gonna Amazon the apply process is going to win because just like buying a product. If you think Amazon is super easy, which it is to buy stuff. If you did the search for products, and you could buy it from either Walmart, Target, Buy.com or Amazon, if you are an Amazon loyalist, you're gonna click Amazon. You're gonna click one-click buy, and you're gonna be done. Joel: That's how this is gonna work. The job search site that is the most seamless, frictionless process is going to win. I totally agree. It's not just gonna be Taleo or iCims or anyone else because it's the corporate site, although I think there is some relevance to that. If you can make it easy as possible to apply, you're going to win. Chad: That's the charge. That's the charge for every company out there. Really for every vendor out there is to be able to make that one touch so that I don't have to worry about pushing my data out from site to site to site to site to site to site. Joel: By the way, I would put LinkedIn as the front runner in that race. People already have their profiles there. It's already pretty easy on LinkedIn. No upload or resume thing. It's already done. Personally for me, I think LinkedIn is in the pole position in terms of that environment. Chad: Facebook is coming up fast. Joel: 50 minutes dude, although you'll probably edit down to like 30 minutes. Anyway, we've been on a while. I say we out this thing, and go on with our lives. Joel: I do want you to introduce the outro because it's your daughter and it's awesome. So any intro to this? Intro to the outro? Chad: Yeah, it is awesome that it's International Women's Day and my daughter is actually doing the outro. A very strong, young lady who's gonna be a strong woman one day. So here's Ema. Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. 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. #BurgerKing #UnitedAirlines #Jobu #Google #iCims #Activision #Glassdoor #Millenials

March Madness is podcast madness, apparently. On this week's episode, the "badasses" are talkin': - Wait... Albert the Frog has LinkedIn endorsements? - Google keeps kickin' ass and takin' names in employment tech - Bloomberg says Glassdoor is headed toward IPO country - Facebook eyes global market with jobs plus messenger update / impact - RealMatch is now PandoLogic, er, pandoIQ er, PandoProdux? - New CareerBuilder looks pretty much like the old CareerBuilder, minus the orange Chucks - Monster's new 'hype' video and adds purple Chucks - Cash keeps flowing: Peakon get 22 million, Nomad Health gets 12 million ... and a shit-ton more... Enjoy and give our sponsors - Sovren, America's Job Exchange, Ratedly, Nexxt, Jobs2Careers and Catch 22 Consulting - a blank check. Don't forget to MEET The Chad and Cheese at TAtechEurope or SHRM Talent. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman: Chad and Cheese is brought to you by Ratedly. Stop manually checking your anonymous employer reviews. Ratedly monitors over a dozen sites online automatically for you. Visit ratedly.com today to learn more. 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 Cheesman: Welcome to March, boys and girls. Welcome to Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad Sowash: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel Cheesman: On this week's episode, Google continues to kick ass and take names. Glassdoor eyes, Wall Street, and Real Match really rebrands itself, Pandologic Really. Really, Real Match? Stay tuned. We'll be right back for real. Chad Sowash: Really, really. Joel Cheesman: Really, really. Announcer: America's Job Exchange is celebrating our tenth year as an industry leader in diversity recruitment of OFCCP compliance. We've been helping our 1000 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 Sowash: I feel all nice and warm and cozy in my America's Job Exchange Columbia jacket. Joel Cheesman: As I'm writing show notes in my AJE notebook, yes. They need a new ad, man. They've had that one for a while. We need to get on them for a little spunky ad. Chad Sowash: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Well, I mean, [crosstalk 00:02:16] when it comes to compliance, you've got to sex it up, right? So we might have to do a little bit of that. We'll just put the Barry White of podcasting on that. Joel Cheesman: Did you say compliance? I think you did. Oh man. All right. We've got two rants to start off the show. Do you want to go first or you want me to rant away? Chad Sowash: Oh, you know I do. Joel Cheesman: Okay. Chad Sowash: Do you receive these random LinkedIn endorsement from people you don't even know? Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: Okay, okay. So like Jeff endorses you for leadership. And I'm like, "I don't even know who the fuck Jeff is." I mean, I've never worked with Jeff, so I thought for some reason, I don't know why. But I thought I'm going to go check this out. I'm going to go check Albert the Frog's profile to see if this purple little guy actually ... No, seriously. I want to see if he receives endorsement. Joel Cheesman: Don't tell me the frog has endorsements. Chad Sowash: The frog has endorsements. As a matter of fact, six people endorsed a damn purple frog for talent acquisition. And this is gone too God damn far, LinkedIn. It's time to get rid of endorsements because we all know they're just a ploy to suck us back into your system. But they don't really mean anything. Joel Cheesman: Did you know any of the endorsers? Chad Sowash: I did not. I was actually second connection to all of them. But I do know, just being connected to this purple frog. I mean, come on. So Jim Stroud, buddy Jim Stroud, we love him. John Sumser, the couple of guys, they're connected to this guy. I mean, come on. They were not- Joel Cheesman: Come on, Jimmy. Chad Sowash: They didn't provide any endorsements although, I mean, come on. This is literally, this is not legit for a quote unquote "professional platform", especially when we have Twitter and Facebook going through all this validation shit with bots and whatnot. Don't play with the fucking purple frog, okay? Joel Cheesman: Agreed, agreed. Now what company is the frog again? Do we know? Chad Sowash: Preferred Hired, I think. Joel Cheesman: Preferred Hired, okay. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: All right. Yeah. Change that. My rant is LinkedIn as well. Chad Sowash: Really? Joel Cheesman: Basically. So, I don't know if it's a millennial thing because most of the cases are with younger folk. Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel Cheesman: But they connect with you on LinkedIn and I appreciate the fact that maybe they listen to the show or they read my shit or whatever, but as soon as they connect, they email me and they want advise. They want connections. They want something. It's like, take, take, take. And you got to give in this industry, people. Don't just take. Give three times or more before you ask for something. Or at least tell me, "Man, you wrote such and such," or "When you said such and such, I really liked that and here's why." And then maybe get around to asking me for something. Don't just ask me for something as soon as I connect with you. Chad Sowash: Well, that's not a LinkedIn rant. That is really a millennial rant but they're trying to get at you through the professional mechanism as we know as LinkedIn which also houses a purple frog named Albert. I know we have LinkedIn peeps that listen to us. Can you please fix this shit? That would be awesome. Joel Cheesman: Fix the millennials' LinkedIn. If you can do that, we'll all be a lot happier. Okay, let's get onto the real thing. Chad Sowash: Shout outs. Okay, so shout out to Thomas and Jim over at Talent Nexus. So, it's interesting because we're hearing so much about Google for jobs and whatnot here in the states because we see it. They're not seeing it in Europe yet but they're going on. From my understand, job boards across the pond are scared as hell about Google For Jobs. Joel Cheesman: As they should. Chad Sowash: The total uncertainty is apparently paralyzing them right now, which is another great reason why ... Listen up, people. If you're over in Europe and you're not going to TA Tech in Europe, in Dublin, this is one of these reasons why we have these types of conferences. You should be there. If you haven't registered for TA Tech Dublin. It's tatecheurope.io or go to and click on the banner, "Meet Chad and Cheese". It's right there, too. But you should be there. If you're paralyzed or you're uncertain about Google For Jobs, then go find out about this shit, guys. Joel Cheesman: Because Chad and I will be there. We may not be sober enough to remember our conversation, but we will be in Dublin at some point this month. Which also remind the folks of our Vegas tour later on in April, is that right? We're doing TA Tech in Vegas and also Shurm. So we're going to kill it in Vegas. Chad Sowash: TA Tech, I mean Peter and the gang over there, they know and I think they've baby-proofed everything for TA Tech. I call it the Spring Edition. For some reason, Peter likes to call it a Congress but we all know Congress doesn't get shit accomplished. So I'm rebranding it at TA Tech Spring Edition. Once again, go to the Chad Cheese Website. Click on Meet Us, the Chad and Cheese. We're also going to be at SHRM Talent, who I guarantee you have not baby-proofed anything for Chad and Cheese while we're in Vegas. Joel Cheesman: They don't know what the hell's coming at them at that show. Chad Sowash: SHRM, SHRM, SHRM- Joel Cheesman: Is engaging with us. Chad Sowash: It's awesome. Joel Cheesman: It's the end of the world as we know it. Millennial and SHRM, okay. Here we go. Chad Sowash: You've been getting trolled by Jonathan Zila on Twitter so I wanted to give a quick #ChadCheese shout out to Johnathan. Love that guy. Keep trolling Joel. We love it. Mason Wong- Joel Cheesman: All right, stop, stop, stop. Okay. Zila, number one, he's jealous of my beard because it's better than his. And number two, he comes off as this really nice spiritual sort of earthy granola guy. And then he just unloads on Twitter. So Zila, I'm not buying it, your little Recruitics, analytics company isn't fooling anybody. We know the real you and the next time I see you, I'm shaving the beard of, just to be ready. Chad Sowash: Okay. So I would have your body guards ready. You won't need it for Joel because he's not going to do it, seriously. Mason Wong, also trolling you. He said, "Yammer my ass." He didn't really say that. I'm putting words in his mouth. He said, "Joel, you need to get educated on Microsoft Teams." Because we were talking about the whole dynamic signal thing. He's like, "Yeah, you got to get edumacated, Joel." Joel Cheesman: Was this Mason? Chad Sowash: That was Mason. Mason's trolling. Joel Cheesman: Mason. Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. Joel Cheesman: Mason's usually my buddy, man. Come on, Mason. Chad Sowash: Damn. Joel Cheesman: I'm going to get yammerifed on these folks. Chad Sowash: Shout out to the Hawk brothers, Tim, Bill, and Brian, they all listen. I can't remember which one said it. It was either Bill or Brian but they referred to the podcast as "The Badass Podcast". Joel Cheesman: Dude, do they know that we're two middle aged white dudes in our 40s? Hardly badass. Chad Sowash: I'm badass. I don't know about you. I'm total badass. Joel Cheesman: Good lord. Chad Sowash: You got a shout out from Robin Hannah over at Dynamic Signal, didn't you? Joel Cheesman: Oh, dude, this is like the Hate Joel shout out day, so all of you can go to hell. Yes, Robin, the PR chick at Dynamic Signal got all uppity on me. She wants to schedule a call, show me demo, try to change my mind about the company. Okay, Robin. I'll talk to you. I'll give you some time to change my mind and if you do, I'll go on the air and tell you I was wrong about Dynamics. Chad Sowash: I think it's nice that Robin offered her education services to get you up to speed on employment engagement platforms. I mean, seriously, they just- Joel Cheesman: She's in marketing. It's her job. Chad Sowash: It's charity. Joel Cheesman: This isn't charity. Chad Sowash: She's trying to help you with that tin cup. Throw some knowledge in that tin cup. Dude, last week they got 36.5 million. This week, Peak On, who is also an employment engagement platform, a la Dynamic Signal, they got 22 million this year. Joel Cheesman: That's a lot for some Peak On pie. Chad Sowash: You don't think it's a big thing and it's not genius, but I'm still standing by it. I think they're throwing cash at it because this is a very smart type of platform to be in. Joel Cheesman: And they're stilling money to healthcare job boards, apparently. Chad Sowash: That was cool. Joel Cheesman: Nomad Health got 12 million this month or week. So good for them. Yeah, if you want to do a job board, do it in healthcare or tech, I guess. And you'll make some money. But don't launch that Toledo area job board because you're going to go no where with that. Chad Sowash: That's probably not smart, no. Last but not least- Joel Cheesman: Can we get to the show? Chad Sowash: Jesus, man. You've got all these people that are out there listening to the Chad and Cheese and they might be listening on their desktop. But they can listen on Stitcher, Cast Box, Pocket Cast, Over Cast, and this week, Tune In just added the Chad and Cheese. You can go to iTunes, you can go to Google Play. And if you have a podcast player on your phone and you can't find Chad and Cheese, message us and we'll do everything that we can to get that pod feed up and running for you. Just let us know and listen more. Go back. Binge. Joel Cheesman: Yup. And by the way if you listen on iTunes, Google Play, et cetera. Leave us a review. Let us know how we're doing. Hate on us, love on us. We don't care. Your feedback and engagement is our oxygen because Chad and I sit here at a microphone and hope that people are still listening. But getting that feedback is great for us. So take two minutes out of your day and tell us you hate us or love us, either way. Chad Sowash: And if you have a beard and you hate on Joel, he's going to try to come shave it. Joel Cheesman: Well, I know who doesn't need beard to be successful is Google, apparently, who is not taking this employment thing likely. Chad Sowash: They are not. They are not at all. The trifecta of Google. You've got the Google For Jobs, the Google Jobs Discovery API, I still don't like that. And then you've got Google Hire, right? Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Now you talked to these guys. Can't you get them to change the name of Google Cloud Job Search Discover API or whatever it's called? Get them to snap that up a little bit. Chad Sowash: Well, to be quite frank, I don't think they're going to because from my understanding and they don't have an official date, but it's going to be coming out of beta soon. As you know as well as I do, Google keeps shit on beta forever. And these guys, they've been in beta for months so they're kicking ass and taking names. Joel Cheesman: I think G-Mail's still in beta isn't it? Chad Sowash: I think G-Mail's out of beta. I think, yeah. Joel Cheesman: Oh, okay. Maybe not my version. Chad Sowash: That being said, Google Hire just launched an add-on for G-Mail. You saw that right? Joel Cheesman: I did. I did. Which, by the way, is quite a nice advantage that you can build your product into, oh, I don't know, G-Mail. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Or Google Sheets. Or all the other rest of the Google suite of services that they have there. But I mean for small to medium sized businesses who get the majority of their applications via email, now Google Hire and G-Mail ... Google Hire has an add-on for G-Mail that allows the SMBs who are using Google Hire to easily drop candidates into their database directly from G-Mail. Then you can create a profile. You can invite the candidate to the interview. You can disposition the candidate. You can do all that from your G-Mail inbox, which is fricking cool. Joel Cheesman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Which, by the way, some good news on the Google Hire front from OnGig, who does a study of like a 1000 plus companies and their ATS preferences. So, Google Hire, although a small usage number, is currently now, according to OnGig a top 25 ATS, which frankly, considering all the ATS's out there is not too shabby considering it's less than a year old. It is also in the top ten for most used small businesses as an ATS, which I think is probably their target anyway. And they're also ... Well, they are by far, the fastest growing. Now I know they're coming from zero so that's not super impressive but some of these things, numbers and we're getting metrics around Google Hire, it's not too shabby. And launching some of these new features is only going to help propel it further up the charts. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think some of this is suspect though because OnGig is partner very close to Google. So again, this is on the propaganda wagon. Because you're right, I mean, Experiencing, they show over 300% in client growth. Check my math. If you have one client and you add nine, which makes 10 clients, you're at like 900% growth versus if you have 301 clients and you add the same amount of clients, nine, it's only 3% growth. So I mean, come on guys. I get it and all this stuff is cool. Joel Cheesman: Hooray. Let's hear a hooray for the Ohio Public School system. Chad Sowash: Woo-hoo. I used easy numbers to be able to make sure that I could get those and it still might not be right. But yeah, I think Google Hire, with this add-on to G-Mail and then also just the ability to start using suite products in a very fluid manner is going to be really awesome for all the SMBs that are out there as they start to ... I don't know how long it's going to take them, but as they start to eye the enterprise market. Joel Cheesman: And we're going to see Bogomil, the head of the snake ... I guess snake's a bad word. The head of the whole thing in Ireland this month. Maybe we'll try to corner him for a little interview. Chad Sowash: Well, I actually talked to him yesterday and I said we're going to get him drunk so that we can try to get more out of him. He said he could drink you under the table. So there's no ... He's European. He can hold his liquor and he doesn't think you'll be able to. So hopefully you've been training for this because I know I have. Joel Cheesman: My only question is if he's European is he going to put the murse on the ground before we start drinking or is he going to still have it over the shoulder. That's what I want to know. Chad Sowash: The murse slash man purse. That was very nice, very nice. Joel Cheesman: I just ticked off a whole continent. That was great. Okay. Let's see if we can piss off the North American contingent. Our next story unless you got something else you want to add on Google Hire? Chad Sowash: No. Carry on. Joel Cheesman: So Glassdoor, the brilliance of Joel Cheesman, your partner, predicted that it would be file IPO this year. And sure enough, Bloomberg has a story that they're projected to go IPO in the middle half of 2018. Your thoughts? Chad Sowash: My thoughts ... It's like predicting the sun's going to come up tomorrow. That was a pretty easy prediction to make, right? I think it's going to happen. But you also pointed out in your story that you put out there that there are some bumps in the road that Glassdoor is going to have to think about. What were some of those bumps? Joel Cheesman: I'll go on record to say I don't expect to purchase said stock. There are three main hurdles that I see. You can feel free to disagree or agree. Number one, I feel is that reviews are becoming commoditized. I feel like Indeed is creeping up on their numbers just by the pure traffic and volume of people that go to Indeed. I feel like they're smaller players, they're niche players that are making an impact. I feel like Google having reviews and Google For Job search results is sort of commoditizing reviews. I think LinkedIn is going to have reviews at some point. I think Google will probably have reviews at some point. I mean, a restaurant review no matter where you get it, is usually positive or not based on the food. Doesn't matter if it's a Yelp review or a Google Review or a Facebook review or a FourSquare review. So to me, this stuff is going to get commoditized and when Glassdoor loses reviews, they lose market share. Joel Cheesman: The second reason is jobs are being commoditized. Most of the revenue of Glassdoor as far I know is all job board, job posting related. And we're seeing what's going on with that with Google For Jobs and commoditization there. I don't see that as a growth driver of the company. They don't have profiles of people like a LinkedIn or even an Indeed where you can at least search resumes. So to me, that's a real hurdle for them. Joel Cheesman: Number three as we've talked about on this show briefly, they're in legal battles all the time. Companies want to know IP addresses and they want the company to reveal who said such and such. If there's precedent in the legal system of you are no longer anonymous on Glassdoor or these other anonymous sites, then what are you? You've lost trust with your users who only leave stuff because they think they're anonymous. There's so real land mines, in my opinion. And there's really a lot of commoditization in terms of what they provide. For those reasons, I think they're going to have a really hard time being public, although they've raised $200 some million and they have no choice but to go public and try to have a liquid event in that way. But to me it's sort of like when FitBit launched, it was like, "Oh shit. Apple Watch is coming." Or maybe Pandora with Spotify. They have to do it now and try to get as much as they can before the whole wall comes down and I think that's why they're going public. It's not a stock I would recommend or buy. I think it'll be a tough ride for them. Chad Sowash: I agree. And as I said before, I think saying that they're going to go public is like saying the sun's going to come it. It's got to happen. It's got to happen. Joel Cheesman: I'm sorry. Mr. Monster's going to come back, speaking about coming up from zero. Chad Sowash: Which you said was laughable. So I'm making the hard predictions unlike you. But back to my assessment here. Yeah, if Glassdoor does try to add other services, I mean, reviews have to do with employee engagement. We just talked about two companies who just received 36.5 million and 22 million in for employment engagement or employee engagement types of platforms. Which could be turned around also into candidate engagement types of platforms. So if Glassdoor is smart, they'll understand what they have right now and they'll be able to pivot off of it. But we'll see. Again, we've seen companies like Monster and Career Builder not be able to pivot because they get hooked on the crack and they focus on that one piece and they think that's going to take them through and you know, it's not. It's all about being able to change and reinvent yourself, much like again, Netflix. Joel Cheesman: Are you going to buy the stock? Chad Sowash: Hell no. Joel Cheesman: Do you think the stock will be worth more on day 365 than it is after day 1? Chad Sowash: Again, I think they have way too many big hurdles in front of them. They're going to have to add more than what they have in their portfolio today to make it interesting for an investor like myself. Joel Cheesman: Agreed. Well, it'll be fun to watch, either way. And speaking of fun- Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: Let's take a quick break. Let's hear from Sovren and when we come back, we'll talk about Real Match, Career Builder, and Monster. Sound good? Chad Sowash: Pando. 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 Cheesman: You have to tell the folks what your comment was to me when I shared the Real Match rebrand story. Do you remember what it was? I was something like- Chad Sowash: I can't. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, real smart. Go from two works that people can spell and say to two words that not so much, so something like that. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: There's something in the water, right? Beyond is now Next, although there was some financial incentive to do that, that we found out later. So the story. Real Match, about a month ago, launches Pando IQ. Chad Sowash: Right. Joel Cheesman: Pando is apparently not the bear, the black and white bear that's really cute but can kill you. It's a life form of plants' roots that have survived millions of years. Apparently, Wikipedia says this thing is dying, so it might not be the best name for a new company or new brand. The idea was like it's the root of life and information, et cetera, and then IQ just because it was a progmmatic thing and smart. So now, Real Match is Pando Logic. We have PandoIQ, which was kind of strange because they launched Pando IQ before Pando Logic. So I'm assuming that Pando Logic will be the mothership for all these other PandoIQ, Pando AI, Pando Bot. Chad Sowash: Pando Products. Joel Cheesman: Pando job posts and what not. But yeah, it's hard to rebrand. I don't know if it was the right move. Real Match, people kind of knew. What are your thoughts? Chad Sowash: So my first question is, do you think a dating site offered Real Match dollars so that they could make this. I mean, a la, Beyond.com and Next with Bed, Bath, and Beyond. It was kind of like an offer you can't refuse. Joel Cheesman: I'm going to give you a little love for that because that was pretty good. Match.com might have backed up the Brinks truck to get real match. Who knows? Chad Sowash: I don't know. But from my standpoint, Real Match, yes. It is a known entity in our industry but just on the vendor side of the house. And Real Match was incredibly smart because they focused on vendors and driving traffic and doing programmatic and those types of things to vendors because vendors understand that they need traffic and they will spend money for it, right, where talent acquisition won't. They just see all this mystical ... It was like SEO in the day. It was like magic. What's this magic I'm paying for? Vendors would, right? So they've been doing that for ten years. Now they're pivoting and they're providing that service now to talent acquisition with Pando IQ. So from my standpoint, you're a known entity. We know what you do. Now this talent acquisition side of the house might not, but who cares? It's still a brand that everybody knows. Why pivot and why try to rebrand? That to me is interesting to say the least. Chad Sowash: I think from a products standpoint, I've gone through and talked to Terry and some of the team about product. It sounds incredibly smart. I think the pivot's smart. The data points that they have available to them, being around for a decade, is much different, I would say deeper and more breadth of knowledge and data than most of the other analytics platforms and programmatic platforms that are out there. It made just a hell of a lot of sense to do what they did. Other than the rebrand. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. I don't think the name is any criticism on the product. I think that they're going to be a player in the programmatic ad game, which we both agree is the future of posting jobs. I tend to agree with you. It was a known entity. They're ten years old. I guess, but it's also an argument, if you're starting a business, dude, just name it something that means nothing. Like Indeed, Slack, Monster, Amazon. Then you can do whatever the hell you want, right? Don't pigeonhole yourself into Ohio Jobs if you want have job posting in New York. Just name it something crazy. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, we like the product. We like Terry. We like him personally but this was sort of a head scratcher to me. Chad Sowash: Well, here's what's going to have to happen. And first off, I don't know what's up with that new logo either. But here's what's going to have to happen. They're going to have to focus on targeting the same market that they've been in for ten years to be able to rebrand and then this new market with an entirely new name. So they're really going to have to do some great targeted marketing to talent acquisition and back into industry professionals to be able to get that new spin out. Much like Next has done. I think Next has done a pretty damn good job. So hopefully- Joel Cheesman: Sponsor. Chad Sowash: Yeah. That's a good idea. Joel Cheesman: Clearly leveraging Chad and Cheese is the answer for Pando. So if they're listening, write a check and we'll take care of the whole branding thing for you. Chad Sowash: Yeah, we can do that. Exclusive podcast. Joel Cheesman: Speaking of brands that are old and crusty, let's move on to Career Builder and Monster, shall we? Chad Sowash: Let's do that. Joel Cheesman: There's a new Career Builder, and I'm going to be honest with you, I don't review every single thing that we talk about on this show, and I had done no homework on this new Career Builder thing. So please enlighten me on the new Career Builder. Chad Sowash: Well, first shout out over to Roy Maurer over at SHRM who wrote the story. He actually did an interview with Matt Ferguson. And this is a quote from Matt, "Most people know our job board but they don't always know that we're a single source provider of end to end solutions to find hire and manage talent." Exactly, Matt. No shit, buddy. We know that. We know that. Marketing has been a huge issue for Career Builder. Even talking to their clients and rebranding the same damn platforms over and over and over so you don't even know what the damn names are of them. Chad Sowash: Although, taking a step back, part of my 2018 prediction was that Career Builder and Monster were going to either start to sprout back up or they were going to die. One of their product platforms, talent discovery, does some pretty cool shit and I really believe Career Builder can start to get their groove back if they can get their messaging and their sales down. I mean, those are two really big areas that you have to get right. I don't care if you've got the best widget in the world. If you don't have sales and marketing right, that thing is going to be a dude. They need to get those two things right. I think they've got the right people in place to do it. It's all about execution. It's all about execution. Joel Cheesman: So you're saying if they just act like Stella and get their groove back, then it's sunny skies ahead basically? Chad Sowash: That's so bad. Yeah, so move to Jamaica. Wasn't that the thing? Joel Cheesman: I don't know. My daughter's name is Stella so I catch those references when you make them. Chad Sowash: Yeah. So Career Builder, Monster, Career Builder is new again. That was the whole thing. So again, it's all about execution on the marketing and the sales piece. Joel Cheesman: So it's basically not a new story. It's the same one that they've been trying to relay to everyone for a long time. "We're not just job boards. We're this new ... " They launched this new logo how many years ago? Like, we're moving beyond the orange and blue job board fun converse Chuck Taylor sneakers. We're now service and technology. They've been pitching this idea for a long time. It apparently isn't getting through to people. Chad Sowash: Well, it's not getting through to people because they're not executing on it. I mean, they expect, or at least from what I've been able to see over the years, experience over the years, is they expect telesales organization to be able to push this type of message. And pretty much that by itself. And maybe show up to some conferences here and there but you have to have a multi-layered outreach strategy put in place and I mean, that's how you're going to get things done. I mean, look at what Indeed did to be able to get not just their message out there but to be able to shape and educate a market. That's what you have to do. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, the sales force that's getting job postings is a much different sales force than the one that's selling tech products and services. All right. So the Monster continuing with the onslaught of YouTube videos, has a, what you called a hype video. Chad Sowash: Teaser. Joel Cheesman: Which is nothing like the Ohio State Buckeye football hype videos. But you called it a hype video. I call it more of like an Apple strategy video. Basically what Monster's done, they're doing the Monster Bugs Bunny thing, which we love not so much. But they're doing that. Now, they have Richard Cho who we, I think, both know and like and respect. He's doing sort of the Apple videos where they have Johnny Eye in black and white and music and he's like, "We looked at the new iPhone and we looked at designed and how people are made." So he's going up job searches f'ed up and people aren't getting what they want and we're here to fix it. It was sort of like a teaser about Monster's going to break through with this new product or technology to fix job search. Joel Cheesman: My take was sort of like a big yawn. But I get what they were trying to do. It's like they need to come out with the Deal Domino's ads where, "We know the pizza sucks and we're going to fix it." They just need to come out on YouTube and go, "Okay, guys. Monster blows. But we're fixing it and give us a month or two and we'll come back to you with a brand new Monster and it'll be awesome." Chad Sowash: Yeah. Well first off, obviously Chris didn't make a big enough of impact on you because his name is Chris Cho not Richard. Joel Cheesman: There is a Richard Cho though, right? Chad Sowash: There is. I think he was actually at Facebook- Joel Cheesman: He's at Facebook, okay. My bad. I'm bad with names. Chad Sowash: So we know job search sucks. This is pretty much what the video is. We know job search sucks. The problem is Monster, you had one job. Over the decades, you've had one job. Joel Cheesman: I see what you did there. I kind of liked it. Chad Sowash: And you blew it. You had one job and you blew it. So hopefully, and I think Chris Cho and I think there are a ton of big names that they've brought in to fix Monster. I don't want to see teaser videos. What I want to see is hype videos of shit that you're actually launching. That's what I want to see. That gets me excited because it's real. I see this as a teaser video. And I think he's going to be able to do some really good things at Monster when we can see them. I'd like to see them plug into Google Job Discovery API because yeah, your search sucks but guess who's search doesn't suck? Google's. Joel Cheesman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad Sowash: Start to leverage partnership and start to really focus on that portfolio that you guys have there to be able to turn out some really, really kick ass products. But you know, I don't want to hear about it. I want to see it. That's what I want. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. It sounds to me they need some new leadership in addition to the leadership that they've already brought on. Chad Sowash: That's a good point. Joel Cheesman: And that leads us to our next sponsor. Announcer: The following message was paid for by the campaign to elect the Chad and Cheese as co-presidents of Monster. Chad Sowash: Hi. My name is Chad Sowash. Joel Cheesman: And I'm Joel Cheesman. You know us as the- Chad Sowash: Chad- Joel Cheesman: And Cheese podcast at chadcheese.com. Chad Sowash: 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 idea and new, proven leaders, which is why- Joel Cheesman: Let them eat cake. Get it? Chad Sowash: What? Joel Cheesman: Lopped off heads, Marie Antoinette. Oh, come on, man. Chad Sowash: Which is why the Chad and Cheese are officially running for co-president of Monster. Joel Cheesman: The Chad and Cheese understand that current vulnerability of Indeed in a market that is crying out for new platforms for and of the people. Chad Sowash: Really? The baby sound effect? Again? Joel Cheesman: You know it's my favorite. Chad Sowash: Yeah. You do love that damn thing. Chad Sowash: The Chad and Cheese pledge to build and drive cost effective recruitment options through a new Monster vision. Joel Cheesman: Yes. And the Chad and Cheese also want to answer your longstanding questions. Like, "Whatever happened to Monster networking? Chief Monster? Jobr? Hot Jobs? Gozaik? Job Pilot? Talent Bend? Trovix? Tickle? And that blue collar thingy, what was that called? I can't remember. Chad Sowash: The Chad and Cheese promise to get you, the people, answers. And we also promise not to make boneheaded decisions like buying Tickle instead of LinkedIn. Yeah, that actually happened. Joel Cheesman: Aye. Chad and I are asking for your support in our bid to co-president Monster. Chad Sowash: 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 ripoff thing, either. Joel Cheesman: It's a new day. Chad Sowash: You deserve a new Monster. And you'll get one, with the Chad- Joel Cheesman: And Cheese as co-presidents of Monster. Announcer: 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 Sowash: Speaking of blue collar thingies ... Joel Cheesman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Damn, we got the segues galore today. Chad Sowash: Facebook! Joel Cheesman: Facebook! Chad Sowash: Yeah, so Facebook roles out job postings to become blue collar LinkedIn. Did you see this article? You saw this article? Joel Cheesman: In 40 new countries. They're not forking around, people. Chad Sowash: So, thoughts on this? So, starting again, I mean, blue collar and also really very focused on SMBs, right? Joel Cheesman: I think Facebook is a serious player in the small business, seasonal, retail, service. People who don't have resumes, people who are used to chatting and messaging and they're on Facebook anyway or they're on Instagram or whatever. I think that Slack could eventually have something like this but every small business and big business is on Facebook. It's free. They get customers and feedback already. It makes sense that they can post jobs. It makes sense that they can message with these folks. And as we see, also out on the wire this past week is there's a new messenger where you have sort of chat bot options. It's very easy to see where a company, a small business that has a Facebook page can post jobs there, can direct users to Facebook to see their job openings. People can apply with their Facebook account. They can have chat bots ask about how old are they, do they have a driver's license, do they have an education. All those things that are sort of prescreening questions for service jobs and retail, et cetera. That makes total sense to me. Facebook is in the pole position to really impact small business hiring. I think that they are doing the things that they need to do to continue doing that. I think Google, although helping SMBs and they will continue to do so, I think they are going after LinkedIn and Microsoft, ultimately. Chad Sowash: Yup. Joel Cheesman: So I think Facebook, they're going after the Craigslist crowd. They're going after those kinds of companies and businesses. I think that's smart. Let Google and Microsoft hash out the big enterprise, high tech AI stuff and let us handle the other 85% of hiring. Chad Sowash: I think, there's no question. To be able to, and I don't really think Slack. They might try to break into this game but I think Facebook being able to move forward with the messenger piece is the biggest piece of this. Just being able to post jobs out there, I mean, okay. That's all well and good. But it's all about engagement and connectivity. And then being able to allow candidates to be able to apply with their profile information. At that point, if you're actually looking at jobs and you need to put more information into your profile, that means Facebook's starting to get more information about you, which means they can target you with ads and do all these different things. Chad Sowash: So I mean, from a strategic standpoint, this is great because I want to put more of my information into Facebook so that I can answer questions, apply for jobs, and those types of things through messenger. I think just overall it's a really cool strategy. We'll see where it goes. Hopefully they can stay out of all this fake bot profile building and all the other crap that's going on in Facebook and Twitter right now. Joel Cheesman: And by the way with, I think, 80% of Facebook usage being mobile and most of these kinds of jobs being local that to be able to serve the opportunities to people that are only within a one to two mile radius of your small business, that makes a ton of sense because you're not going to get applications from Zimbabwe or Russia or China or places that are totally irrelevant. So Facebook has a lot going for it, to tackle this marketplace. And they seem to be doing the right things. Chad Sowash: Which is another nail in the coffin of another app called WorkHere, right? Joel Cheesman: Ouch. I figured you might work that one in. Chad Sowash: I mean, it is though. You can't ... How are you going to combat something like this, something that's already scaled. It's already scaled. It's already there. It already has the user base. It has everything that you need but you will never get. You're dead. Joel Cheesman: So their answer would be that they're helping enterprise companies on a local level. They're not helping the local pub or the salon- Chad Sowash: No, because that's what they were doing before. They were- Joel Cheesman: Yeah. And that didn't work. Their goal is ... They're more like national focused, where Uber ... Anyway, yes. To go tackle the local ... I mean, Craigslist is going to be challenged if this thing works out and local job boards are going to be screwed if this works out for Facebook. And people like Work Here are pivoting outside of this because it's so hard to compete but Facebook has two billion users that says it can work. Chad Sowash: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And then when do they start to get into the enterprise space? Joel Cheesman: Do they? I don't know. I mean, I'd be pretty happy with 85% of the hiring that goes on in the country using my shit. Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah. And you don't have to worry about all that other compliance record keeping bullshit. But yeah. Joel Cheesman: Are we out? Chad Sowash: Well, first off before we're out, we have new outros that are [crosstalk 00:43:57] because Joel and I did not like the dude from the suburbs who was doing our outros from before. What did you say to this guy? Joel Cheesman: I had this vision of this guy on a mic with the Brooks Brothers polo and the Sperry Topsiders and sort of the Clark Griswold khaki shorts. Chad Sowash: Not badass. Joel Cheesman: And we just said, "Let's bring it in house." You did two. I picked the best on that I liked. I think we're going to have family members come in. Maybe we'll have some guests do the outro. But we decided to make this a little but more fun, a little bit more family-esque. Chad Sowash: Should be fun. So our outros from now on, you probably will hear many different outros so enjoy them. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. It could be a dog at some point barking. Yeah, who knows? But yeah, thanks for listening everybody to our quote "badass podcast". Chad Sowash: We out. Chad Sowash: 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. #AlbertTheFrog #GoogleforJobs #GoogleHire #GoogleJobsAPI #Glassdoor #Facebook #RealMatch #PandoLogic #Careerbuilder #Monster #Peakon #NomadHealth

Dollar bills continue to flow into HR and recruiting tech companies and people are still launching job boards..?? Wait.. What? Yeah, you heard that right. Job boards. C'mon, really? The boys break down all the latest news. - Is this a WorkHere pivot or the withering dance of start-up death? - Find.jobs launches - Is Universe.jobs now officially a failed experiment? - Hire-Maturity launches?? Doesn't this feel like Eons 2.0? - Joel hates on Dynamic Signal after getting $36.5 million - Vettery gets acquired for a rumored ~$100 million by Adecco - StatusToday scares the hell out of us! - And a Halloween beat down that ended badly ... very badly. Enjoy. And visit our kickass sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly, Catch 22 Consulting and Job2Careers. Feel the love! 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 opinions and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Joel: Greetings and salutations homeboys and homegirls. Welcome to Chad & Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman, also known as the Barry White of HR. Chad: And that is so much shit. And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, old people need jobs, .jobs, gets jobs and a lot of former WorkHere employees are looking for jobs. Stay tuned. Chad and I might need new jobs by the time this one's over. Chad: Word. Announcer: Google, Lever, Entelo, Monster, Jibe. What do these companies and hundreds of others have in common? They are use Sovren Technologies. 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. Announcer: We'd love to help you make a perfect match. Visit sovren.com, S-O-V-R-E-N.com for a free demo. Chad: We'd love to help you make the perfect match. Joel: Her voice is way too smooth for the saltiness that we're feeling today. It's going to get ugly I think. Chad: It's going to get ugly. It's going to get ugly. Well, let's start with the ugliness. Something that wasn't ugly was Jeff Tennery from Moonlighting.com. Joel: I have to say, they did the promotion of the show the right way. If every company that we interview gave us that much love, we'd have the highest rated podcast on iTunes. Chad: He also edumacated you and I on a blockchain, cryptocurrency and the Moonbit. What the hell a Moonbit was until Jeff talked to us. Joel: Plus educating us is usually like animated gifs and emoticons, but other than that ... Chad: Sock puppets. And then the newest Firing Squad, brought to you by Jobs2Careers, featuring our friend Adam Gordon. Joel: Apparently, we had a bit of good news. We're going to see Adam in Dublin next month. Chad: We are. We are. Which means I told him I would buy him his first Beamish since he said that is the beer to drink when you're when you're in Ireland. Definitely, there's no question, you got to drink Guinness. Joel: Got to. Chad: But he said Beamish ... He actually, said this is his quote, "Beamish is bad ass." Joel: It was. You and I enjoy a bad ass beer like no other boys I know, and Beamish will be on the menu for sure. Chad: That's right. So, if you haven't heard of the Firing Squad podcast. Adam's with Candidate.ID, he knocked it out of the park. Good job for him. Check it out on chadcheese.com. Joel: Well, I'm not sure he hit it out of the park with my review, but yes, he did well, I appreciated the time. I'm going to give a shout out to the Job Board Doctor who gets a shout out every week. He commits to the show, so he deserves it. For his quote that I am the, quote, 'Barry White of a HR'. Yeah, baby. Thank you. Chad: Dude, you not have Barry White level of game. That's all there is to it. Joel: I'm thinking more Marvin Gaye, but I'll take Barry White. Chad: I'm thinking more Tweety The Bird. Listen, we've got something coming up March 6th. It is the Chad And Cheese webinar series. What is that, Joel? What is a Chad And Cheese webinar, first off? Joel: Our webinars are are unconventional to say the least. We're on screen, we're interactive, we're peppering our guests with questions, we're challenging them on issues. This is not just a show me a PowerPoint and tell me what I should think. This is some legit battle bot in the octagon. What other cliché can I make up? Mad Max: Thunderdome webinar experience. So, you need to head on over to chadcheese.com and sign up because you'll be sorry if you don't. Chad: That's right. It's on the growth of the gig economy, starring Lori McInerney from Shiftgig, Ryan Christoi from KRT Marketing. Yeah, it's definitely not going to be a run of the mill, that's not how we do shit. You know that or you wouldn't be listening to this goddamn podcast. Go to chadcheese.com, click on the little banner, register your ass, be there and have a good time. Joel: Awesome. LinkedIn folks continue to rob us, apparently. I don't know why but we appreciate them. Chad: Yeah. I love the LinkedIn folks and also love from others on LinkedIn, Elena Valentine, Matt Disher, Brian Howard, Mark Feffer, Ed Rogers. There's a bunch of people that are out there giving us love on LinkedIn. So, thanks guys, we really appreciate that. Joel: Yes. And no one gave us duplicate content emails this week, so we appreciate that. Way to go outside the box everybody. Give us separate messages. Chad: Very nice. Also, shout out to Josh over at Randstad. Thanks for listening dude. And no, there will not be a grilled cheese Sowash, just so you know. Not cool dude, not cool. Joel: I'm not sure what a grilled cheese Sowash is. Chad: It was a very bad joke, Josh. A very bad joke. Joel: Yeah, it was. Chad: Shame. Joel: That's a double boo. You're getting some crickets on that one. That's all. Got any shout outs left for you? Chad: Got the Philly crew. Ed Joel, Joey Stubs, Bridget, Michelle, Julie and never forgetting Nancy. And then the Boston Crew; Kia, Tracy, Colin, Jayman, Bill, Gerry and all the hardened lessers over in Beantown. John, Kyle, we got all these people that are freaking giving a shout out. Last but not least, I actually had to create a page because we are going to all these damn places, conferences and meetings and stuff and people for some reason want to meet us. So, if you to to chadcheese.com, there's a little banner that says, "Come meet us, the Chad And Cheese." You click on it and you can see all the different places that we're going. Chad: Obviously, you'll hear about it, but definitely you should go to a TATechEurope in Dublin, Ireland. The discount code is right there on the website. We also have SHRM Talent coming up up in Vegas. Joel: Dude, how weird that SHRM, like the ivory tower SHRMites are letting us to their show and break shit? It's awesome. Way to go SHRM. Chad: And I have to give big props to the people at SHRM because they know we're going to break shit. It's kind of like when you're that new parent and you go around and you're baby proofing the house. That's exactly what they're going to try to do at SHRM Talent in Vegas, but we're still going to break shit, guys, I'm sorry. Joel: They think we read contracts or something. I don't know what the hell that's about. All right. You're ready to get to the show? Chad: Yes. Joel: $100 million, dude, that was so much money thrown around this week, none of it came to us. But lead story, Vettery got $100 million, rumored get 100, I don't think they actually published that number, but Adecco backed up the Brinks truck for, I don't know, not the most exciting company in the world, but good for them. What's your take on this $100 million investment? Chad: It's kind of weird because their focus, it doesn't seem scalable, first and foremost. On the website, it says, "Our team will help you polish your profile, nail your interview and be by your side all the way till your new job." That doesn't seem scalable. How many fucking people do you have working at that company that can obviously service all of these job seekers and curate lists of talent for companies at the same time? It doesn't seem very intuitive. It doesn't seem very scalable. Chad: But then I went into one of their job descriptions as I was researching it, and in the job description, not on the website but in the job descriptions, it talks about leveraging machine learning, AI, real time data. So there's something that's happening behind the scenes that they just don't want people to know about or something. Because you can't find it anywhere other than digging really deep into some of the information on the site. Joel: You know what else doesn't scale very well? Chad: What's that? Joel: Paying job seekers $1,000, I guess it's now $500. It used to be $1,000, which proves that it's not scalable. They've lowered it, they've cut it in half since they launched back in the day. But yeah, paying job seekers a lot of money is usually hard to scale, so good luck with that one as well. I think they probably stopped at the market of high tech. Accounting is not in there, it's like high tech- Chad: IT, finance and sales. Joel: Finance and sales. Yeah. Once you get to burger flippers and janitorial staff, you're probably not dishing out $500 per player. Now, this is not just for registering but you actually av to get hired and be on the job for 90 days, but paying job seekers lot of money usually doesn't end very well. Chad: That's a gimmick, and that's a gimmick to be able to pull, obviously seekers in, and as you said, they started out at $1,000. It might have been more than that at one time, but they started out like at a $1,000 and they've been cutting that down. It's a gimmick and that's how you get these things roaring and it's going to go away. There's no question. How do you hit critical mass? That's not scalable, but also I think human interaction piece is not scalable, so they're going to have to do something about that as well, especially with a company like Adecco. Joel: That's a big company. Yeah, they might just swallow them up and forget they bought them. I wrote about these guys are about two years ago and the bonus, the signing bonus was a grand. And they had a referral program that if you refer someone, you get you get 1500. I don't think the referrals is still there. They charge a one time fee of 15% of new hires' based salary and they have to be on the job for 90 days or you get 100% of your money back. Chad: Just from a business owner standpoint, I don't see it progressing and maturing in the same way. There is no way in hell they can scale. Joel: How many startups come out and say, "We're going to put recruiting out of business," and for some reason never do? It's kind of weird that way, but they do get PR. Chad: They do, and they get bought, apparently. Joel: Let's start a business where we put recruiting out of business, we have AI, automation, block chain, and we launch ICO and we'll all get rich. Chad: We'll call it the Cheese Bit. (cricket sound effect) Joel: U had to wait for it but you knew you were getting the crickets. Let's move on to something about; higher maturity. Chad: Yeah. Let's just talk about companies that are not going to get a $100 million. Remember Jeff Taylor the 50 plus social network back in the day after he left Monster. Remember that? Joel: I do. Chad: Yawn. He said Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Jane Seymour. Everything was lining up. The problem was that it wasn't adopted, and it really turned into literally a list of obituaries. It turned into a graveyard. And they eventually shut the site down, so Eons doesn't exist anymore. But now, in the advent of 50 plus dating sites and those types of things, I guess ... Peter, over at ... he used to be CEO at Recruit Military, he thought that this might be a good idea, a good niche. Chad: But the funny part about this is, it's not just being a website, it's about having job fairs and feeding a website in to this demographic. So, you tell me, how do you think, we're not 50 yet but how many job fairs have you gone to in the last 10 years, first and foremost, and do you see yourself doing that in the future? Joel: No. And not many, in that order. Chad: To me, this just doesn't make any sense. It's not focused on the actual target demographic itself. It just sounds like he kind of like the model of Recruit Military, which is a very heavily event-focused organization, and it feeds in to a job board. But you can't do that with everything, Peter. So, good luck buddy, but I don't think there's any way in hell that you're getting out of this one. Joel: First before I before I spout off here, if you have time go to YouTube and search Eons' commercial. It's E-O-N-S. It's hilarious. I assume it's still up there. The one thing that's funny about old people is they don't want to admit that they're old. And the reason that Eons failed was because if I join an old people's social network, I'm basically admitting that I am old. And I don't want to do that. So, I'm going to go to Facebook or MySpace at the time was probably the number one social network online, but there was very little need for that. Joel: Dating is a lot different because I'm guessing most people are realistic and think, "I'm only going to date people that are within like 10 years of my own age." Being on tinder if I'm 69 years old is probably not a real reasonable strategy. Maybe it is, I don't know. But yeah, for jobs, why would I not be on Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Jobs2Careers, Google, etc. Chad: Remember, AARP put out their own goddamn job board. It's targeted to a base of people who they used to hurt. That makes fucking sense. This doesn't make any sense. Joel: And by the way, there's a lot of stuff in ... you know diversity better than I do, but apparently people aren't hiring old people, they're hiring young people. So posting on old people sites, probably not something a lot of companies are going to do, whether they'd admit to it or not. If you want to get a job, go to where everyone goes, not just where like a certain age, demographic goes, particularly old folks. Joel: Your favorite company here in Indianapolis- Chad: Canvas? goCanvas.io? Joel: Not Canvas, not ... There's another one, shoot, I'll think about it. No, not them, not direct employers, not, Monster you sort of hear. Chad: Next is here. Joel: Not Next. Well, next might be your favorite. WorkHere who you love, know and love. WorkHere, I'll refresh our listeners' memory before you throw them in to the sausage grinder. They initially launched a sort of a small business, they wanted to go to like your local bar, restaurant, laundromat, etc, have them put a sticker on their window similar to Yelp and have people download the app on their Android or iPhone, and then clicked that they wanted to work there, work here or work there, and then the business could then download the app themselves and they could connect. Joel: If this is getting boring, you're not alone. They they connect with the job seekers and then you get a job. It turns out that that model doesn't really work very well. In November of '17, they laid off their sales team, which sounds ominous but it was I guess two people, and they have basically pivoted to having like large enterprise companies that have like global to at least national needs and then they have super targeted advertising messages. People download the app, and then, this is where you're going to go off. Joel: On the scale thing is, they actually have what's called a career coach, and these career coaches then contact the job seeker based on what the company needs. They're going to try like fix people up, match make, and companies are going to pay on a per applicant basis. Chad: Oh God. Hit the cricket sound effect, would you please? Jesus. Joel: Not the big guns? How about your favorite? I'll let you go off on them and I'll defend them probably. Chad: I'm just not going to waste my time, really. There are three things. We're in the age of productivity, of efficiency, of AI, machine learning and those types of things. Three things. It's counter intuitive, it's not scalable, and it's fucking stupid. Take a look at companies like Jobalign and Talentify. These are high volume tapes of companies who can really focus on scale and being able to help companies like WorkHere is trying to help, but but doing it in a totally different and automated manner. Chad: It just makes a hell of a lot more sense. And what they're trying to do, again, it's almost like they're regressing to trying to go back in to the late 1990s for goodness sakes. So, it just doesn't make sense at all. Joel: The precipice of this was the fact that people would download the app and register, and just sort of assume that they would get a job. Companies would join this thing and just assume they would get mashed with candidates, whereas with employers, there's a lot more action going on with like resumes being submitted on whatever job sites they are on, etc. They needed a way to spur job seekers to actually move, to actually like put on a tie and go into Starbucks or wherever and ask for the manager, so these coaches are there to make that happen. Joel: Now, I agree with you that ... There's two sort of schools of thought here, there is automation and we're going to talk with chat bots and that's what's going to happen, or AI is going to let go through tons of profiles online, everywhere and then like engage people in that manner and then bring people to you. I tend to agree with you that that's where the world's going, but if you sit down with the WorkHere guys, they're convinced that the human touch, the people talking to other people is where it's at, and they can pay someone a very minimal amount of money and get that application there for 200 bucks a pop, and make money from that. So good luck to them. We'll see how it works out. Joel: Yeah. Let's take a break, shall we? I think we both deserve a little break. Chad: I need a beer. Joel: Yeah. It is four o'clock on Friday, it's five o'clock somewhere too. Let's hear from AJE really quick because we love them and we want them to get some exposure. We'll be right back. Announcer 2: America's Job Exchange is celebrating our 10th year as an industry leader in diversity recruitment an OFCCP compliance. We've been helping our thousand plus customer 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 outrage with their local community based organizations. Announcer 2: Want to learn more, call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Joel: The show just gets worse from here, but let's do this. More money is getting thrown around, I swear to God, like Dynamic Signal, who you love. I am not so much, and StatusToday, which one do you want to talk about first? Chad: Let's go with Dynamic Signal since I love it. Joel: All right. Tell us why you love it. Tell us what they do and then why you love it. Chad: It's one of those things where we need to meet and we need to engage individuals, employees, job seekers, where they are at. If they're using Facebook, if they're using texting, any way that they want to engage, even if they're using the phone. We need to be able to engage them that way. Dynamic Signal is pretty cool because it pulls all of those together in one app. Let's say, for instance, I'm a manager and I want to be able to disseminate information into a large team scenario, or I'm a CEO or something like that, and want to disseminate that information out. Chad: It's not just all coming over in intranet, or in email, or what have you, and actually is fed down through the messaging pipeline that is pretty much determined by me, the employee, and what they're seeing is, or what the research that they have shown is that, you have 77% higher productivity when employees are engaged and are educated on what's going on. So I think as we take a look at Slack and the evaluation that Slack has, Facebook Messenger, Text, all these different platforms, it's going to be really hard for companies to get their hands around, how do I communicate with them after they're hired and how do I help from a retention or productivity standpoint, being able to actually pull all that together in this one app, I think is pretty genius. Joel: Okay, Genius, it's an engagement app, it's people chatting with each other and taking polls and getting data around that. It's a nice business maybe, is it genius? Probably not. That would probably StatusToday, although that's scary. We'll get to them in a second. The thing that confuses me ... You have a lot of companies getting money in this space, you mentioned Slack, Facebook has a product now, Google for Hire. They all probably have some sort of messaging that you may all be able to download as an app, that would probably be kick ass. Joel: You got Yammer, who people forget about, was the original sort of Twitter for the workplace that was bought by Microsoft, which to me that's a huge drop by Microsoft, that they would let Yammer just get taken over by Slack. That's neither here nor there. It's a nice little business, but are you going to choose it over those other options? I don't know. Is anyone going to buy these guys? Chad: That's just isn't choosing over the options, that's just being able to pull those options all together into one platform, that's the beautiful part. You don't have to go out and compete against Facebook, you don't have to compete against Slack, what you're doing is, you're providing an overall kind of an umbrella to be able to have a messaging system, to use all of those. And if you like Facebook Messenger, which I know you do, and I like Text, we can receive the same type of information, polls and all those other types of whatever they're throwing out to their employees, the way that we want to get them. Chad: So I think it's not competing against them, it's wrapping them all up into one and making it very simple for a company to be able to get it done. Joel: I don't know dude, I guess, that doesn't come out very clearly on their website as far as what they do. To me, it looks like it's like Slack with a little bit of different bells and whistles. Like I'm not seeing anything on the site that says, "Connect your email, texting, yada, yada, yada," on the site. You can share like articles, videos and shit like that but whatever." All right, sexy stuff. Go check out Dynamic Signal, everybody. Chad: Watch some YouTube videos [crosstalk 00:25:18] Joel: Chad says it's brilliant. StatusToday. Chad: That's scary. Joel: That's scary as hell. Chad: On the website it says, "Understand your employees, the use of data to produce insights." So you think, "Okay, that's sounds pretty cool." Well, this is how the company started. StatusToday originally set up to use AI for cyber security, specifically by analyzing a company's internal online communications and network activity. That's how the company started. They are a monitoring, they are a big brother system. And now what they're doing, which is launched in beta, the middle of last year, they've got a more comprehensive piece that is focused around employee insights to be able to focus on employee activity, rogue employees, human lapses in security, and those types of things. Chad: Much like we've seen with Amazon putting wristband monitors on employees and some people getting microchips. This is pretty creepy, right? Joel: Yeah. You essentially plug them into your Office 365 or your G Suite, and they monitor everything about your employees. They should have called this company 1984 basically, because it's so effed up. And I am so glad that I don't work for somebody because I would be fired immediately with the stupid stuff I do in the workplace. But to me, it should have been StatusToday that got 36 million and not Dynamic Signal, instead of 3.9 million like, I think. Chad: This is feed funding. This is feed funding. I think there is an opportunity for them to get a lot, tons more cash. I think you're overlooking just the simplicity of Dynamic Signal, that's okay. Joel: I feel a Firing Squad with StatusToday coming. Chad: Just yesterday, Dynamic Signal, both of them, we need both of them. Joel: I don't know. Well, maybe, but StatusToday, I usually like doing Firing Squads that I would actually like listening to, and Dynamic Signal does not get me excited but StatusToday could be pretty interesting. Chad: Yeah. It's really creepy and I can't imagine the type of information that we would get out of them, it would be... I think it would almost be like listening to a politician. Joel: Yeah. Which is not good for anybody but we're rumbling. Let's move on. .Jobs, can you believe were talking about .jobs, launching back in 07 or 08. You and I are close to them, we both know them and less people have moved on, but it was a domain, the goal was companies by IBM.jobs, Boeing.jobs etc.. And then job seekers have a easy place, quote unquote, 'to go to' when they need to look for jobs. Joel: That didn't quite work out the way they wanted, so they partnered with direct employers, who launched, you know better than I do, like millions of domains, just totally polluted the internet because the internet is such a clean happy place to me, which apparently still isn't working very well. They recently launched find.jobs, which is touting the Google API, which is funny because- Chad: Well, before we ... Don't go too far yet. I think we have to talk a little bit about what this whole .jobs things is about. We know .com, .jobs is just the top-level domain. A company owns it, Employ Media out of Cleveland and they've been doing everything they possibly can to try to leverage this top-level domain, differently than all the other ones, instead of just breaking up and selling off the different domains. What they did was, they entrusted about 40,000 different .jobs domains to another organization to be able to build search technology underneath it. Chad: To just give you an idea, if you go to today engineer.jobs or Boston.jobs or Bostonengineer.jobs, you're going to see job search on those sites. And there all specific to what you typed in. If it's engineer, obviously you're just going to find engineering jobs. Joel: Currently powered by direct employers. Chad: Some people loved it and a lot of people hated it, enough to sue us when we put it up. But the basic strategy was fairly simple, it was the flank Indeed, you really run an experiment to see if Google would trust 40,000 different domains that were relevant and they were .jobs domains, and to see if we could kill Indeed SEO . That's really what it was, because Indeed was killing it, on the SEO side of the house. 40,000 domains with jobs search underneath it versus one domain with Indeed, and obviously we know the answer to that. So Indeed won, and they did more than win. Chad: The funny part is, we see Google For Jobs is coming out now, which is totally crippling Indeed. I don't want to say crippling Indeed, it's hurting them, it's hampering their ability to actually drive free job seekers back to Indeed. That in itself also hurts anybody who's trying to have an SEO play. Again, the whole .jobs 40,000 domains that they probably have a few thousand domains now, they probably don't have 40,000 anymore. It's irrelevant now, it is a failed experiment and now, with the advent of find.jobs, which is from the makers of the .jobs top-level domain, Employ Media, they launched just a single website that is powered by, as you'd said, the Google discovery jobs API, XPL doses, whatever they call it. Chad: And that's just signaling, once again, their experiment is dead and SEO for jobs really at the end of the day, it doesn't work anymore. My great my question to you is, why the hell start up a new job board, just a single job board in the first place? Joel: I don't have a good answer for you. In their case, they have this license for this domain, they don't have to do something with it, but they paid money, I assume they're still paying money to have the license. Chad: Sell the domains. Joel: Well, if nobody is buying the domains and the initial experiment ... Well, that's the thing, people bought the domains for potential SEO purposes, so if SEO is like a really tough game right now, then what's the benefit of that as opposed to like .io, I was kidding, but it doesn't really matter. In their case, if no one's buying the domains, if no one's going to the job search sites that they currently have all over the internet, they are not making money there, they've got to look like, "Okay, well, how do we make money?" Joel: And it's like, "Well, let's just have one central domain, let's pull in Jobs2Careers, or Zip Recruiter, or where ever they're getting their jobs and at least we'll get paid on the clicks, the applicants that we're sending, at least we're getting some money for it. I don't think the direct employers experiment, outside of a few banner ads, was all that beneficial to anybody. In their case, they're starting a job board because they're sort of out of options and they're still paying money and trying to make this thing work. Joel: Now, in the case of our buddies at Hire-Maturity, to me that's a total waste of money and time. Like just a total throw money in a garbage bin and put gas on it and throw it on fire because that's what you're doing. To answer your question, there is really no good reason unless you are in health care or tech, maybe sales, that you would ever have a new launching of a job board. Chad: But now a general job board. Joel: No. And hiring old people is not niche enough. I'm sorry. Chad: Yeah, we've gone past that. Here is the last question. We're talking about and this is one of the things that I am trying to drive in to companies' heads today, is that they're looking to buy new domains for maybe job sites, or career sites, or trying to just do something special because they think it's cool. You're an SEO guy, and we just talked about how SEO pretty much is dead when it comes for jobs. What's the worth of going out and buying a brand spanking new domain versus anchoring onto your corporate domain, that's probably more than likely a dot com, that has so much trust in history. Would you do that yourself? Joel: No. Especially if you're these big companies that are doing this and your Boeing or Hewlett Packard, or whoever. We're talking about domains that have been 20 plus years online, the trust, just the power of that domain to go and start a new one is just really stupid, just throw a sub folder on that and be boeing.com/jobs, that's going to be highly more beneficial than Boeing.jobs. Chad: Which means you're going to rank better on non-jobs content, career content, other content that might be relevant, so you still might not rank incredibly high on the job side the house because the Google for jobs is going to take a lot of that above the fold organic. Joel: The thing is .com, .io, .net, none of that probably plays very much impact in to where you land on search results. Search results are going to be based on the age of the domain, the links that are coming in, the quality of those links, the people going to the site from search engines, how long do they stay on the site, do they bounce back to Google. What kind of social signals are we seeing on that site. You're just way better off leveraging an asset that's been around forever and already has tons of links, and tons of trust, and tons of brand awareness, than you are just starting anything new or whether it's .jobs or .net or dot whatever. Chad: It doesn't matter, don't do it. Joel: Don't do it. And the SEO play is the content out side of jobs. Like if you want to search traffic, you're going to have to create content and not just rely on jobs. Anyway, we're getting off on a total tangent, but yes, they're going to have a really hard time having find.jobs show up on search results. They're going to have to figure out a different way to market this thing if they're going to make it work. Chad: Yeah. This is not a bad conversation because on two sides, you've got a bunch of companies that are out there, I've had people come up and actually ask me if they should start a new job board, I'm like, "Hell no." It makes no sense, especially on the general side of the house. But also companies asking, "Hey, do you think we should go on and buy a new domain just for our career sites?" Hell no. We've learned so much. I think from the vendors stand point and from the town acquisition standpoint, it's important to understand the value and the worth of domain that your company has put a lot of time and Google has a lot of trust in. Joel: And if you are going to buy a domain, don't buy gocanvas.io. We have learned that, We have learned that. Chad: We love you Aman. So bad. So bad. Joel: Well, there's a lot of upheaval in the political landscape of America, and I think that not only America but some vendors are in need for a change, which brings us to our latest sponsor. Announcer: 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 of 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 'em eat cake! Get it? Joel: 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 of a new platform, for and of the people. Chad: Really? The baby sound effect? Again? Joel: You know it's my favorite. Chad: Yeah, you do love that damn thing. Joel: The Chad and Cheese pledge to build and drive cost effective recruitment options through a new Monster vision. Chad: Yes, and the Chad and Cheese also want to answer your long-standing questions like, Whatever happened to Monster Networking? Chief Monster? Jobr? HotJobs? Goziak? Job Pilot? TalentBin? Trovix? Tickle? And that blue-collar thingy. What was that called? Joel: 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: And you deserve a new Monster. And you'll get one with the Chad ... Joel: And Cheese as co-presidents of Monster. Announcer: This ad was approved by The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Look, there is literally no way in hell these guys are getting this gig, but they have a pretty amazing podcast, honestly. Visit ChadCheese.com. Paid for by The campaign of The Chad and Cheese for Co-President of Monster. Joel: Nice. Chad: She cracks me up. Joel: All right. Let's end this on a humorous note, which is probably how we should always do this. Massachusetts trolley driver is now guilty of paying a buddy, I guess, two grand to wear a Halloween mask and attack him at work, which I guess is driving the trolley, so he can receive workers comp and disability insurance. Now, his folly was, he gave the guy like one of those plastic pumpkin, another thingies that you put your candy in. And I guess his fingerprints all over this plastic pumpkin thingy. So the cops kind of caught onto him and he's in trouble. Joel: But apparently, if you read the story, he took a beating, like this guy, his buddy, beat the hell out of him and he's going to go to jail for it. It's a pretty funny tragedy there in Beantown. Chad: Darwin Awards, almost Darwin Awards, it's like it's one of those things that you tell your buddy, "Hey, you got to make it look real, so you got to put some bruises on me." In many, he like ruptures a kidney or something like that. That's what he deserves. Joel: I want to know, they didn't really report what the Halloween mask was, so I'm trying to figure out, was it like the Scream mask from Scream, was it maybe a hockey mask from Jason, what are some of your favorite ghosts Halloween mask? Chad: Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Joel: That's not a mask. Chad: It would be a mask. Joel: Beetlejuice is not a mask and no one's getting beaten down by Beetlejuice. Chad: That would be funny as hell though. somebody get beat down by Beetlejuice, oh damn. Joel: Dear God. You'd beat me up for free, I wouldn't have to pay you for that? Chad: Oh, yeah, I'm here for you. I'm a friend. Joel: All right. On that note, I think we're done. What about you? Chad: I'm out, dude. I need a beer. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Announcer: This has been the Chad and CheesePodcast. 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. #HireMaturity #Adecco #Vettery #Findjobs #StatusToday #DynamicSignal #WorkHere

The Chad and Cheese listeners know that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning has taken center stage as the bright and shiny objects of the recruitment industry over the last year, but what about the entrance of ​Blockchain and Cryptocurrency? What the Hell does Blockchain and Cryptocurrency have to do with RECRUITING? We haven't a damned clue which is why we have Jeff Tennery the CEO of Moonlighting.com is on the podcast to answer questions like: - Why do we need Blockchain Recruiting? - What could cryptocurrency mean to the world talent economy? - What the Hell is a Moonbit? - and.... Is Moonlighting backed by Bruce Willis? Don't forget this edu-tainment is made possible by the gang over at Nexxt and in the spirit of saving some currency (in dollars) – YOU can receive 25% off your first Text2Hire campaign by visiting nexxt.com/chadandcheese25. You are recruiting with text messages... Aren't you?!? PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad: This is, the Chad and Cheese podcast brought to you in partnership with TA Tech. TA Tech the association for talent acquisition solutions. Visit Tatech.org. Announer: Hide your kids, lock your 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. Joel: Alright everybody. This is Joel Cheesman, Chad and Cheese show, welcome. Today we have a really special, cool show that Chad and I are super psyched about. We have Jeff ... Chad: So psyched. Joel: We have Jeff Tennery of Moonlighting on the show. Jeff, welcome. Jeff Tennery: Great to be here. Joel: Great to have you. Look everybody if you're in the dark as much as Chad and I are about crypto whatever, ICO's, block chain, and what that means to employment. This is your show. We're gonna talk to Jeff, who's doing a lot of things around this space and get down to the bottom of what it means and is it really as much bullshit as Chad and I think. Jeff Tennery: There you go. Joel: It's commercial time. Chad: Okay Joel, quick question. What happens when your phone vibrates or your text alert goes off? Joel: Dude I pretty much check it immediately. I bet everyone listening is reaching to check their phones right now. Chad: Yeah I know. I call it Pavlovian dog reflex to text messaging. Joel: Yeah, that's probably why text messaging has a fricking 97% open rate. Chad: What? Joel: Crazy high candidate response rate within the first hour alone. Chad: Which are all great reasons why the Chad and Cheese podcast love Text to Hire from Nexxt. Joel: Love it. Chad: Yeah that's right. Next with the double X, not the triple X. Joel: 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 Text to Hire campaign for just 25% off. 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 X's. Chad: It's showtime! Joel: Well lets hear a little bit about you and Moonlighting I guess to start off for those who don't know you. Jeff Tennery: Yeah well Moonlighting is a three, almost three and a half year old company that is focused in on helping people generate and create their own form of income. So back in 2008 my colleagues and I and co-founders, we suffered through, like many the great recession and kind of the fall out of the market and found ourselves not quite unemployed but scared at the concept of being unemployed. So it took us a few years to kind of come up with the plan and the vision, but Moonlighting's been called the Craigslist without the creepiness, which is something we always giggle at. We focused in on mobile and speed by which we can get people connected and so it's a labor of love, we're very passionate and we've grown very quickly. We have over 600,000 people signed up to be a Moonlighter on our platform here in the states. Jeff Tennery: Backed by the three largest news media companies in the US. Gannett, Tronc, and McClatchy and we're a top ten app in the app store for the past two years in the jobs' category. So we're definitely capturing people's attention and really focused in what we think is, instead of working for the man, we think you should be working for yourself and creating some form of independence, just in case, god forbid the market turns again from an employment perspective. Joel: I know Chad's champing at the bit to ask a question, but I have to make a comment that, thank god you have a solid URL, because when I found out it was actually Moonlighting.com I about fell out of my seat, cause every URL today is go blank dot IO or go blank dot CA dot UK. So I just wanna say thank you for having a simple URL that I and everyone else can figure out. Jeff Tennery: Well it took us a few years to get there. We had to raise some money and actually had to go buy that and thinking maybe that the old Bruce Willis, Sybil Shepherd show would somehow have a hold of that. It did not and so we were able to buy it, but we went through those iterations in the early days. That's sometimes the path by which you have to go. Chad: And obviously you thought it was worth it because you stepped back and you had cash available and you went after a URL that you though was gonna make sense and it was a .com. You weren't playing the IO, IA game. Awesome. Joel: Yes, thank you for that. And yes Chad is still trying to look like Bruce Willis to this day and he has a full head of hair, but he shaves it just to try to look like Bruce. Chad: I'm actually more sexy than Bruce is. Joel: A little hidden secret for the show, it's for the fans. Chad: Okay so I gotta get into this. So it was funny that you started off by saying something about not being as creepy, especially with most of us kind of like on the outside of block chain and the BIT coin and the currency side of the house, because really that are of the quote unquote feeling like the dark web, has been crazy shady with Silkroad, all the crazy shady things that have been happening with Bit coin, Bit coin foundations. How do you separate yourself from that? Because everybody automatically starts seeing ICO, oh Bit coin and they start to really attach you to things that have happened in the past. Joel: And what is an ICO? That might be a better place to start for some people. Jeff Tennery: So an ICO is short for Initial Coin Offering, used very similar to an initial public offering, which most people and investors are familiar with and it's phenomena that's taken place over the last 18 months where smaller upstart companies are leveraging block chain and they're leveraging crypto currency to be able to raise funding for their companies, projects, very similar to crowd funding or crowdsourcing. But they're also doing it where they're finding a utility that can be used. So when you create a token, it's not just a token for the sake of tokens sake, but putting it out there so you can use it within your particular use case or solution, so in this case with Moonlighting we have a very strong use case, which is using the Moonbit, which is what we're calling the Moonbit for our coin, to be able to use it to make payments or receive payments and also to be able to buy services, premium services. Jeff Tennery: So it's not unlike a lot of the gaming world when you think about a lot of the gaming that goes on, people buying digital weapons or digital coins or using currency for the Candy Crush of the world. So it's a phenomena that's given some leverage back to start ups instead of having to chase always after the venture money, which can be very challenging. Chad: So back to the original question, how do you separate yourself from the shadiness that we've seen from Bit coin and some of the other Silkroads of the world in that arena? Because again the rest of the world, we're only seeing the bad stuff thus far and not the good stuff. What are you guys doing to be able to separate yourself? Jeff Tennery: We've been around for three years, so unlike a lot of these ICO projects that are literally nothing more than PowerPoints or demonstrations of thought around a white paper, we have been around for three years so we've seen what has been working in the gig economy and what hasn't, what's been holding it back and the number one issue is trust. People don't know who they're hiring. If you think about Craigslist analogy, but even Uber, you don't know who your driver is. Yeah you're relying on maybe an $8 background check that Uber did to find the right person to drive you and the safe person to drive you. So what we're doing with Moonlighting is we've got 600,000 people signed up, so a very rich profile data. Jeff Tennery: That data's great, but it's all user generated by the folks that have signed up and so we believe moving those profiles onto the block chain, makes it more authentic, makes it more real, and these are things like your recommendations, your reviews, your payment, transaction history, all those things on the block chain will bring more credibility to a freelancer, make it more trusted and so we're migrating over where some of the people on our platform won't make it over. They won't cut the mustard because they may not be operating in the best fashion or don't have the best reviews, so I think what will happen, specifically with Moonlighting is the cream will rise to the top, block chain profiles will be the new norm, and then also using crypto currency to exchange payments makes a lot of sense as we look to ... We're planning to go global towards the tail end of this year in Canada, UK, and Latin America. Chad: And those are two entirely different subjects that I definitely wanna hit head on, but first the validation. The resume validation piece and also the background checks, which obviously is great for block chain or at least it seems like it is. But you said user generated and we're seeing and we've seen over the years that trying to get somebody to actually fill out a ton of information about themselves is really heard, which is why you see a ton of these organizations right now are going out to the web, they're scouring it and they're pulling data back about you to make your profile more full. Are you guys doing something like that or are you just really focused on the only data we're taking is directly from point A being the actual candidate themselves? Jeff Tennery: Yeah. Every bit of data that you see on Moonlighting today has been generated by the actual user, which plays itself wonderfully into the block chain strategy for us. So we're not screen scraping, we're not going out there and pulling profiles, we're not grabbing everything from a LinkedIn profile or Facebook Connect, everything that you see in a profile from Moonlighting has actually been generated, which is really to your point, super hard and difficult and it's something we've been very good at and I think people wanna tell their stories about how they wanna work. Chad: Yeah no question. So how do you engage them to get more rich data? Because that's the hardest part, right, is the engagement piece. Tell me more about yourself. Jeff Tennery: Yeah so we have not done anything other than ask them, and this is kind not being cute, but we have just gone to the market with a message of just trying to take back your work career and pursue your passions. What we plan to do though with the block chain, with our ICO's, when we launch the token is a big part of the use of the Moonbit will be a rewards program. So for the first time we'll be able to actually reward the users on the platform that use it the most and do the most amount of business and engage it the most. So what we're excited ... And this is very similar to an app called Kick, if you're familiar with that, a messaging app that's very popular where rewarding the actual users will be what drives the platform forward and will help us expand. Chad: Well that sounds interesting because Jobeum is doing that right now. I don't know if you're familiar with them or not. They've got the ... Jeff Tennery: There are a host of them that are out there, but again don't get fooled by, okay a company announces ICO then they're doing this thing, they're decentralizing this or they're decentralizing that. What we've done is, we've got a three year track record with true transactions, with people operating on our platform, we're not just that white paper. A lot of folks and even Dataum and some of the other ones that are out that that have conducted very successful ICO's and have great block chain projects, they don't have any customers and so what I mean by that is what I thinks unique and why we've gotten so much attention, and I'm not trying to brag, is that we have real users and real data and everything's authentic and kind of homegrown organically and I think that's what makes, what will make our platform standout more uniquely and then our bigger, grander vision is to not just keep ... Jeff Tennery: The world of keeping your data for yourself, like I think Facebook and some of those companies are gonna be under a lot of pressure because Facebook owns all the data, they control all the data, and they monetize all the data. What we plan on doing with the Moonlighting profile, the block chain profile is to make it available for our users to control where they want the profile to be and then to be compensated for that, where they do wanna share their data. So long story short, not to go down a rabbit hole, I think places like Facebook, Amazon, places where they wanna control the data and not share it, are gonna be the ones under the biggest duress, because marketplaces like Moonlighting that are on the block chain where you the user control the profile, that is where the market's heading and I think that's where the revolution of block chain really begins. Joel: Jeff, help me, if we could back to ICO's for a little bit and block chain is making more sense to me now. So sort of the catalyst for this was, a story I did for area about Connect Job, a company over in Europe I believe that has raised over a million dollars in their initial coin offering. How does that actually work when you raise money? Do people say I'll buy it for ten bucks and then they get one Moonbit and then it becomes more valuable? And then my second question is, is having an ICO similar to almost like a country having their own currency? So will I be able to have Moonbits that I get from jobs I do on the site and then can I transfer that into Bit coin or can I transfer it to my Wells Fargo account into dollars? Talk about those two sort of issues please. Jeff Tennery: Yeah, so all of these ICO's are using a platform called Ethereum and so it's kind of the second most popular crypto currency and so Ethereum was born out of what Bit coin wasn't doing. So Bit coin was used for payments, but mostly speculative trading right now, but Ethereum said, "Hey let's let other companies, let's let people build their tokens on top of our platform." So going back to your first part of the question, was everything that's created, a Moonbit that we're creating, a token that's being created is actually being done with an ERC 20 standard by which you could use Ethereum to get to that token and also back out of it, almost like a gateway. So you buy Ethereum and then turn around and buy Moonbit and then if you receive a Moonbit you can back into and Ethereum, which by the way all goes back to Fiat, which is basically the fancy word for US dollar, whatever currency of the country. Jeff Tennery: So you go back to your then second part of your question, which is, is it like a form of being within a country? The answer is absolutely for solutions like Moonlighting. It's like being on the Moonlighting platform, we have a currency, you don't have to by the way, you can still use the US dollar or the pound, the Euro, to make transactions take place, but the benefits of the token, just like when you go to Chuckie Cheese, they can let you use all of the tokens. They can let you put your quarter in there, which that makes it easier for you to walk out of there and use it elsewhere or they can get you to buy the token, because that's what's going to drive the tickets and you can go buy the crappy gifts, all of that. Jeff Tennery: So it's happening within an ecosystem and that's the way the token world will play out. Although some projects and some companies, like ours, is we're not gonna just relegate the Moonbit to just our marketplace, if there are other gig economy marketplaces that are out there that want to use it, we'll have API's available and that's again the idea of kind of giving yourself up to block chain and to the platform and let it be governed by the users and also be very open to sharing the technology, which is what makes it trusted. Chad: I appreciate you using the Chuckie Cheese example there, cause that's just helps Joel understand this more. Joel: It's my favorite restaurant, by the way. Jeff Tennery: Fine dinging and cocktails included. I have five kids by the way, guys so I've spent a lot of time there. Chad: Yeah you probably know a little bit about Chuckie Cheese. That's what Joel has to wake up to. Joel: Yeah. So can I give you $10 and buy tokens? Is that how this works? Jeff Tennery: What you'll do is you can basically go to an exchange and you could take your US dollar, you will buy Ethereum and then from Ethereum you can turn around and buy a Moonbit. Joel: And then I can use my Moonbit with anyone who accepts Ethereum? Jeff Tennery: You can use the Moonbit ... Yeah correct. If other people are using Moonbit and have accepted that, that is correct. Chad: Okay, so say I'm using other bits or other coins, what have you, if they're all backed by Ethereum there's probably some exchange rate for the Moonbit versus these other coins. Is that also kind of like the same thing? Almost like the same kind of scenario we're looking at? The US dollar versus the Euro or what have you? Jeff Tennery: And it's really crazy right now. So as we're planning for our ICO, our spreadsheets are changing by the minute, cause Ethereum's gone up, it's down, it's very volatile, so at the point when we do the ICO, that'll be the jump off point where one Moonbit will equal X Ethereum and that I won't be able to tell you till we get to the point of launching the ICO, but that's how that works is so it'll be tied back a value of Ethereum for you to be able to gauge it against the US dollar and really against other crypto currencies. You can turn around with Ethereum and buy Bit coin or Ripple or Lite Coin, all the other currencies. Chad: So what about these background check companies that are out there today? It sounds like, and I could be entirely wrong, wouldn't be the first time, that really block chain could get rid of background checks in these background check companies, cause you've got all the data. It's all legitimate data that's been checked before and you can just continue to hit that data. So is there an issue, prospectively, for background companies and some of these validation organizations that are out there? Jeff Tennery: I don't think so, cause I think the good ones that have good data, you're always gonna want good data and there's always a starting point cause remember starting from scratch ... Like we've been at this for three years and while 600,000 users is great it's still again a small fraction of the freelancers out there in the US and so I think that the background companies, the good ones, will figure out how to use block chain that then just leverage that data, make sure that it's authentic and that it's being ... What the beauty of all of this with block chain is that it's really democratizing you controlling your data, your business, whatever it may be and a background check is your data, it's what you want it to be and you can't just fudge it because over time most of these block chain marketplaces and background, anywhere, they're gonna let the real data that happens in real time, that's what gets put on the ledger, the distributed ledger and that's what basically sits there and becomes immutable, which the fancy word for saying you can't erase it, you can't get rid of it. And I think that that's where ... Jeff Tennery: No I wouldn't say a background company at all has a very legitimate opportunity and should be moving to block chain just to take that data, they'll actually have a jump start on it. It's like, I think it's be interesting not to go back and make this a Facebook conversation or an Amazon conversation, but I think the bigger companies are the ones that ... That's why banks are so threatened and countries are being threatened. Large institutions where they have a control from a central point, are going to be disrupted and how they embrace this is going to be very interesting. Joel: Jeff, how would you explain block chain to a sixth grader? Jeff Tennery: How would I explain it to a sixth grader, block chain? I would describe it as, there's a ledger that has kind of your pros and cons, your minuses, your negatives and your positives and everything that happens from a coding perspective gets put on to this, making sure that it's balanced, that things net out to where the positive and the negative equal net zero. So what I would tell a sixth grader it's code, and most sixth graders by the way know far more about coding then, I'm a 49 year old entrepreneur, than myself or perhaps you gentlemen, but the sixth grader understands coding and IT and understand that it's basically code that you can't change once it's written. It becomes something that you have to ... The golden rule of you do what you say, you say what you do and it becomes something that, once you put it out there, something you gotta honor and there's a thing called loyalty and honor to what is being written and done. Jeff Tennery: So I think that's how I would at least begin the conversation. From there the distributive part, I think is a little bit more complex for anyone even sixth graders to ... Basically if somebody wants to hack, which most sixth graders understand what hacking is, someone wants to hack the block chain, it's very difficult to do it because basically you're messing with everybody on the block chain and so if you try to break the block chain it kind of immediately breaks so nothing can happen. I shouldn't say it breaks, but it stops so you can't do anything because everything's distributed so that if you try to steal from one person, you're trying to really steal from many. Probably a horrible analogy on all parts, but that's how I would try to break it down for a sixth grader. Joel: So I understand how it works with money a little bit. So the way it was explained to me if today, if I wanna give Chad $100 through my Chase bank account, it would go to Chase and then Chase would basically give it to Chad. Whereas today if I wanted to give Chad 100 Bit coin or whatever, I would basically tell the block chain, which is a large group of people keeping various ledgers and I would say, "I'm giving Chad 100 Bit coin." And then they would all basically take note of that and it would be record for everybody. There wouldn't be a central sort of monolithic thing kind of keeping the records of all that stuff. Would that be sort of correct and if it is, how does this pertain to my resume or searching for a job, because that's not necessarily money driven, it's data driven, or identity driven? Jeff Tennery: I would say it's not even, to take the money piece aside as you just did, it's rules driven. So you still need to, regardless whether it's your resume, or a picture, like Kodak's doing their ICO now, which is very interesting, but yeah so whatever it is you're putting on the block chain, which by the way you can't store much on the block chain today from a technology perspective. It's very limited. It's why Bit coin's so slow and all these crypto currencies are so slow. But it's rules driven, so what I would say is kind of going back to your sixth grade analogy, what are the rules of engagement and whatever you are using that happens to be engaging for using block chain technology. So could be your school grades. So going back to your sixth grader, like if your school grades, once those grades go in, the principal or school can't change it, it's gotta be whatever the rules are written and the way you input grades. Chad: And it's motivation too right? There's a ton of validation behind this, correct? Jeff Tennery: Well it's validated ... I mean listen, there's gonna be pirate block chain. Everybody's making out block chain like it's gonna be the panacea for everything, but there'll be pirate ones and what I mean by pirates, so there's ones where the rules are just written to be disingenuous and other things of that nature, so really what it is at the end of the day, it's about making it non-changeable. And I think that's what the rules ... So when you're looking at different applications, that's why it's blowing people's minds, because it's not just about the financial markets or how to do financial transactions, it's about data and it's also just about rule, it's about the rules. It's almost the old if then. If you're writing code, it's like if you say that this is the case, then this happens and there's no subjectivity to it. Chad: There's a ton of computing power that goes into this, right? Because validation and being able to actually go through validation for at least, and again this is on the currency side, it might be different on the recruiting side, but crypto money itself takes up almost as much power as the country of Greece. It's like 40 terawatts per hour. There's so much power that is taken because of all the validation that needs to happen and it doesn't seem like it's efficient, by any means right now. Jeff Tennery: That's why the crypto market as a whole just even in buying and trading now is so difficult and it's just ... Like remember the dial up, go back to your dial up days and how long you would wait sometimes because there was a flood of people trying to get on the internet. Remember your ugly AOL disc driven days of signing on to AOL, that would be good analogy. So I do think those things work out in the wash as technology gets better. In fact, you're seeing I think rivals to Bit coin of people trying to come up with a speed solution, but I think that's the computing power, everything you're saying is no different when you're thinking about telephony. I know I came up through the wireless business in my past where you think about how many phone calls could have been made in the early 80's when mobile was coming. It wasn't that much capacity and then capacity kind of grew with demand. I think you'll see the same thing happen with block chain. Chad: So really and what you're saying is, block chain or at least the internet when we first started off, not everybody was really bought into the internet. They thought, yeah this things gonna kind of go away, it's kind of shady, I don't know if I wanna get on this, but we saw what it did with our lives. Because it made our lives easier, we're able to access more information quickly, what you're saying is, this is really just the infancy of block chain and of crypto currency and it should be something that we're looking forward to in the future. Jeff Tennery: Absolutely. And I think, I don't know if you followed the regulatory climates around doing ICO's, obviously you mentioned it earlier in the discussion, most ICO's have been set up for failure, poorly represented, overstating what the benefits of an ICO are, and so the regulatory commissions like the FCC and the CFDC are now starting to weigh in and even their notes last ... There was a Senate hearing last week, their notes last week were very encouraging because they're not just coming in like China and saying we're gonna ban all these ICO's, we're gonna ban all these crypto currencies, they're using a term called Do No Harm, which is what was used in the early internet days, which was ... Jeff Tennery: I think the government realizes that this is a special technology and it's really about block chain and while there's a bunch of bad actors and apples out there that are ruining it for the bunch, that the technologies and what's happening is too important, especially to this next generation, the millennial generation and the Gen Z generation where this is gonna be the new norm for them. This is not ... Asking them whether Bit coin is worth $10,000 or worth zero or taking some of the statements that have been made by like Morgan Stanley's CEO and other such where people are making absolute comments about it, it's way too early, I do think that all of this means, what this means for people out there listening, is that crypto currency isn't going anywhere, not is block chain technology and really, now it's just a matter of siphoning through all the mayhem, which I think will become more and more clear by each quarter. Joel: Jeff, I'll end my questions on this and you mentioned crypto's not going anywhere, block chain's not going anywhere, where is it gonna be in five years though? Will I be able to go into Target and buy paper towels with my Bit coin? Are we ten years, 20 years from that? Give me some context around where you think crypto currency's will be in say five years from now? Jeff Tennery: I think it won't take five years to do what you just described and I'm not trying to make this to be like I'm some sage, but people are already, millennials are already buying and exchanging services and goods right now using Bit coin. It's just the Visas, the Master cards, the Amex's haven't caught up. Heck you're seeing some of the banks actually blocking your ability to use coin base today, to buy using your credit card, that's a lot of paranoia because they don't know what's taking place. There is some bad data associated with it, but the idea of you being able to use crypto currency to do everything is really gonna be no different than ... What do you care whether it says Visa or MasterCard or Amex on your card? Really when you think about it, when you go to the store. Chad: And this goes back to how you're looking to pay freelancers though right? With the Bit coin, with the Moonbit, right? Is that part of the whole schema, is that look companies come on, you can be a freelancer and go work for somebody and then the exchange happens on the actual app itself and the currency is the Moonbit. Jeff Tennery: It is, but what will happen with the Moonbit too, is you can quickly move the Moonbit into Ethereum and then quickly turn that into Bit coin, Bit coin cash, whatever you want it to be and that's the speed of currency and the movement of it and that's gonna be the complexity that takes place where somebody could literally be paying you one day in a Moonbit and you could determine whether or not that's worth cutting the lawn or designing a website and you can figure out whether that's something you wanna buy and hold, so it's this mixture of the utility of payments mixed with something that could value you could trade on. The point I always make too, kind of people who are ... Jeff Tennery: Millennials aren't too keen to go to the stock market and buy Disney stock or Verizon stock or AT&T stock, largely because it's slow and arduous and millennials are for the most part inpatient. They're multi-taskers, ready to move forward. No hey listen, I've got a lot of millennials at home as well, but it's the idea that you the user have this flexibility in how you earn and receive money in crypto and then what could be exponential growth and this is by the way exponential loss. Jeff Tennery: I don't make this out to be everything's up and to the right, is that you're giving people the power to come in and that's why this ICO market's so hot, is people can come in and look at these opportunities as being at the ground floor of a Facebook, of a Google, and by the way by no means as I saying that about Moonlighting, I'm saying that that's the way it's viewed by millennials who look at those projects and opportunities because it's decentralized and it's more fair, which is most millennials have been taught and brought up in that fashion of everything needs to be fair, that that's how they're gonna drive this forward and that's what the power of block chain will be in the next five years as they'll be using it at Whole Foods to buy groceries as much as they are to go to the movies or do anything else that's out in the retail world. Joel: And remember kids, for every Amazon there was 100 pets.com. Jeff Tennery: That's right. Amen. And that is exactly why this ICO market is so confusing to folks because I think people want to get in just like it was in the heat of the IPO markets in the 90's, the late 90's, is everybody wanted and they just were buying stock based on whether they had a cool URL like that. My advice to everyone is, look at the right projects, we're doing a very compliant ICO. We're working with Cooley, one of the top law firms in the US. We're taking our time, we're doing it right, we're doing actually the presale right now that we're letting people get in, get bonuses and tokens to get in early and so we're being thoughtful, we're trying to educate people along the way and make sure that people follow. And so is the SCC and the regulators, they just want people to be truthful and honest and transparent, all the problems you've seen regulatory wise are companies that mis-stepped by promising future returns that they could never ever promise, not sharing their financials, all the things that you just can't do if you want to be a credible company. Joel: So I just thought of another question Chad, is that okay. Chad: Yeah, hit it. Joel: Will VC's be a thing of the past and will more ... Will companies more and more raise money through ICO's or is that just sort of a novelty and the VC firms don't have to worry? Jeff Tennery: I think that the good VC's right now have already quietly made this move and they have to be careful cause they have all the limited partners. No different than I think there's a lot of publicly traded companies that are making moves but don't wanna alarm the public and don't wanna alarm their shareholders because it's so new and they're still getting their hands around it. So I think for sure VC's are just going to continue and their very nimble and their very agile, but you'll just see them start to move and it's like anything else, they're move a percentage of their portfolio into these opportunities. We're talking with some of the largest ones and most renowned ones that are out there that are actually quietly doing this because they don't want to tell people they're into it yet. Joel: So I might have asked my question incorrectly. So if you're a startup today would you rather raise money through an ICO or would you rather raise money the traditional way? Jeff Tennery: I think the answer is, not to be cute, a little bit of both, but I think what the ICO market has done, is that it now gives some leverage back to the startup because when you raise token, you sell tokens, it's a non-dilutive events. It's actually treated as if it's a revenue event or a big sale. And so you don't have the delusion. So what that does is now companies like mine could go to that market instead of going and essentially getting bent over by a venture capital firm that's looking to take a big chunk of your business. We've raised six and a half million dollars through traditional means over the last three years. Jeff Tennery: So we've gone that path, we have institutional investors, we have strategic investors and that's great, but you hit a point in time where you don't wanna dilute yourself out of the business and so the ICO market, I think for sure gives power back to the entrepreneur or the startup and gives them an alternative, which is why VC's are taking notice. If you look at the inverse of last year in 2017, you could see where the ICO market blossomed and kind of exploded and you see VC investment has come down and I think what VC's are doing this year is they're regrouping, again they're trying to find the best projects and the best companies and I think you'll see that all settle out where you need a little bit of both. Jeff Tennery: I don't know if you know this about crypto currency, but when you do an ICO you pick a finite amount of money that you put out there. So you put a fine out, so we're targeting a $25 million dollar token sale. So the thing about block chain, I can't decide to make it 26 or 27 million or 30 or 50, once we print, we mint those tokens, it's finite, so that's the beauty of not being like the governments of the world that are printing money and then deluding the value of that money. So I think that's something to keep into mind as entrepreneurs have to do what they say, say what they do, do what they do, they pick an amount that they think is fair, but if I need more money a year or two from now, which as we continue to scale venture capital will be a wonderful opportunity to do that. Joel: Fascinating stuff and clearly the tip of the iceberg on this issue that we will continue to watch closely, I'm sure. Jeff Tennery: Yeah. Joel: Jeff, thanks for your time. If I wanna learn more about Moonlighting or your ICO, where should I go? Jeff Tennery: Yeah well we have, as we talked about earlier, Moonlighting.com is our operating website. We're a top ten app in the app stores and then we have a site set up specifically for people that are interested in crypto currency and block chain, it's ICO.moonlighting.com. Joel: Good enough. Chad: So easy. One of the easiest URL's I think we've talked about. Joel: Yeah, you need to put like a go or ask or get [crosstalk 00:36:33]. Jeff Tennery: We do have gomoonlighting.com, we just kind of not using it. We used it earlier in the early days. Joel: Jeff, seriously thank you man and we appreciate your time. Jeff Tennery: Thanks for having me. Best of luck. Chad: Thanks Jeff. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Joel: Okay before we go, remember when I asked you about the whole reflex and check your text messages thing? Yeah you know all about reflexes and then I brilliantly tied it to text messages 97% open rate then I 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 Text to Hire, but you're still not using Text to Hire from Nexxt. Joel: What? Chad: I know man. Joel: Come on man. Chad: Since advertising takes repetition to soak in, I just thought I'd remind you again ... Joel: This is all by elegant design. Chad: ... it's all about Text to Hire and it's all about Nexxt. Joel: And elegant design. So go to Chadcheese.com, click on the Nexxt logo and get 25%, yeah I said 25% off your first Text to Hire campaign. Engage better, use Text to Hire from Nexxt. Two X's. 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. Chad: Thanks to our partners at TA Tech, the association for talent acquisition solutions. Remember to visit Tatech.org #Blockchain #Cryptocurrency #Moonlighting #JeffTennery #TATech #Nexxt #ICO #Moonbit

CandidateID is WAKING THE DEAD in your ATS resume database and then nurturing those newly awaken candidates with engagement and scoring. Companies like Crowded (Firing Squad alumni), Lever and ConveyIQ are getting noticed for taking the best strategies in marketing and bringing them to recruitment. Will CandidateID be the newest name in this strategic category? Candidate.ID is taking on this challenge to solve the problem of keeping candidates engaged and warm when a new opportunity arises instead of starting all over again to attract new talent. The Chad and Cheese put the company's CEO and co-founder Adam Gordon through the wringer to see if his company has the mettle to thrive in this new, competitive landscape. Will he get the gun? Gotta listen to find out. And be sure to checkout, exclusive sponsor of the show. Jobs2Careers.com - Jobs 2 Awesome is more like it! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Announcer: Like Shark Tank, then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman 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: What's up, kids? Joel Cheeseman here of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Welcome to Firing Squad. In our long tradition of having people with much better accents and probably a lot smarter than us, today we're going to be talking to Adam Gordon from Glasgow, Scotland, from CandidateID. Adam, how are you? Adam: Great. Thank you very much for having me on the show. Joel: Assuming your at happy hour at this hour in Glasgow, so have a drink or two on us. The show's a lot better if you're a little bit tipsy, I promise. Chad: Seriously, when is happy hour in Dublin? Isn't it like a 24 hour clock? Adam: It is, it is. Glasgow is better though. There are pubs, which are open 24 hours. Joel: So Chad and I are going to Dublin, which I assume you've been? Adam: Yes. Joel: Any recommendations for us on beer or pubs? Adam: Anywhere in Temple Park. That's where you want to be. That's the very center of Dublin. For the live music and cool people. Chad: Excellent. Joel: That's all you've got? A city as big as Dublin and you give us one pub? Adam: No, no, no. The area, the whole area is called Temple Park. And once a little known fact, Guinness is great but look out of Beamish. Beamish is bad-ass. Chad: There we go. Joel: That's what I'm looking for. Chad: Yes. Beamish. Joel: Thank you. And the show is over. Thank you very much. Chad: Okay, Joel. Before get into Firing Squad, I have one quick question. Joel: Yeah? Chad: Would you say that most companies find it hard to attract the right candidates to apply for their jobs? Joel: Well, Jobs2Careers certainly thought so. That's why they created their new talent attraction platform, ODT. Yeah, you know me. Chad: Dude, that's OPP. This is ODT, which stands for On Demand Talent, where data driven talent attraction is made easy. The On Demand Talent platform enables recruiters to reach the right talent at the right time at the right price. Joel: And the best part? Chad: What? Joel: You only pay for what Jobs2Careers delivers. Chad: No. Joel: So if you're attracting the wrong candidates or you feel like you're on a recruiting hamster wheel, just go to go.j2c.com/cc and learn how On Demand Talent or ODT, yeah you know me, can get you better candidates for less money. Chad: I'd say you just got chadcheese.com. Click on the Jobs2Careers logo there and it's just that simple. Joel: It is simple. Arm me with harmony. Chad: It's showtime. Joel: Chad, why don't you read the listeners the rules of the Firing Squad? Chad: Okay, for all those listeners who haven't heard a Firing Squad, shame on you, first and foremost. But, here we go. Okay, Adam. You will have two minutes to pitch CandidateID. At the end of the two minutes, you will hear this bell. Then Joel and I are going to hit you with some rapid fire Q&A. If your answers aren't concise, Joel's going to hit you with bell or he he's going to hit you with the crickets. That just mean you need to tighten up your game and we need to get some quick and easy answers out of you. At the end of Q&A, you'll either have big applause, which means you kicked ass, a golf clap, means that you got some work to do And the last but not least, you don't want to face the Firing Squad. That means your shit is bad and it needs to go back to the drawing board. So that's Firing Squad. It's time to buckle up and pitch. Okay, Joel, start that pitch timer. Joel: Adam, are you ready? Adam: I'm ready. Joel: Here we go. Adam: So when I started in recruitment in 1999, candidates couldn't access much information about opportunities or employers. So they needed to talk to recruiters to guide them through the education and consideration phases of their decision-making. Today, we have an abundance of information online. Candidates can become aware of an employer through an advert or a LinkedIn post. They can educate on a career site and they can more deeply consider, by reviewing the hiring manager's Facebook page, the company's Glassdoor reviews, and they can practically taste the coffee served, that's an employer, before deciding whether or not to talk to the recruiter. So, candidates are in control and they're making themselves invisible. Meanwhile, talent acquisition teams are being told to find and hire everyone in record time, but 80% of the total addressable market according to LinkedIn are not interest. So how do employers adapt? CandidateID is a talent pipeline software for the age of the candidate. It allows employers to distribute content to potential candidates, multi-channel, multi-format, and it tracks and scores their interactions on email, text message, social media, landing pages, career sites, and more. Adam: Unlike CRM, CandidateID was built as a system of engagement so the two main benefits are that recruiters can reduce time to short list by 60% because they can filter their candidates according to the engagement score. Recruitment marketers can serve up a personalized, nurtured experience at scale and much better measure the effectiveness of all their brilliant work. Chad: Damn. That was tight. Joel: All right. You had 20 seconds left. But, yeah, well done. At first I thought you had someone there with a stopwatch because you kind of sped up at the end and I kind of thought someone was saying, "Go, go, go." Adam: No, I thought I was going to get crickets. Chad: No. Joel: No, no, no, you never get crickets on the first two minutes. The crickets will come when you start droning on about whatever later in the show, probably. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You might be tight. You're a Scotsman, so it might be clean. I'll start with the first question. I'm always interested, Adam, why this idea? What was the catalyst for it? Do you have a background in recruiting or not? Give me some of the genesis of all this. Adam: So yeah, I started in recruitment in 1999. I started a research and sourcing business in 2009. In 2015, I was asking some of my teams, "What are we working on?" And we were working with a big buyer tech company. And I said, "What are you doing for them?" And she said, "We're trying to find sales people and scientists for them in Western Europe." I said, "Have we not been doing that for the last two years?" I mean, if we don't find everybody, what about the people we found six months ago and the people we found 12 months ago? It turned out that employer was simply making contact with all those people at the point we were finding them but then never going back to them three months later or six months later or nine months later. Adam: So we were always looking for net new and topping up the pipeline. What occurred to me was talent acquisition teams are always doing that. They got a dependency on what I call, an addiction to what I call the dependency triplets, which are recruitment agencies, job boards, and social media. They're constantly topping up the pipeline. They don't need to be doing that because most of them, many international employers have millions of people in their ATS. One big American pharmaceutical company told me 70% of the people we hire are already on the ATS. When we go to onboard them, they were already on the ATS. Most of them we are finding through employee referral, through direct sourcing, and through advertising. What a complete waste of time and money. Adam: I've got a background that includes recruitment, but also sales and marketing. We have, between myself and my co-founder Scot McCrae, who's a recruitment technology guy, we just realized there's certain types of technology in sales and marketing which would work so well to solve this problem. So products like Pardot and Marketo and Infusion Soft and Sales Fusion act on. Those kind of marketing automation products are designed to give sales team warm leads. A constant stream of warm leads. So they know which prospects not to pick up the phone to and which prospects to pick up the phone to today because the people have been looking at the company's pricing page and their products spec and all that sort of stuff. So the sales person phones up the prospect and the prospect goes, "Well, that's a coincidence because I was just looking at your pricing page yesterday." And the recruit, the sales person is like, "Well, yeah, I know that because I've been stalking you online." But basically, that's exactly how it works and it's precisely the same as we ... You know, the way we go about buying products and services or other high-consideration things like a house or a car or a wife, is exactly the same way we go about making career decisions. So the parallel is just identical and that's where we came up for the idea for CandidateID. Chad: Here's the thing, Adam. Here's the thing. We're talking about many different silos that are kind of blended together very nicely. But the thing that your whole ... I've read the Wake the Dead white paper that you guys pulled together. I don't believe you guys have enough emphasis on that. You're 100% right. The money that's being spent, we'll go over that here in a few minutes, is huge on the job sites, media, referrals, so on and so forth. But a big question for you. Do you know the percentage of candidates that are hired from the applicant tracking system resume database through your current clients? What is that current percentage. Adam: At the point where a customer becomes a CandidateID user, it may well be that the percentage is zero. They're not hiring anybody because their applicant tracking system is just not searchable. And even if it is searchable. Let's say a company's a pharmaceutical business, has regulatory affairs manager and they're looking for somebody in London. They'll go onto their ATS. They'll filter regulatory affairs managers, bring up 2000. Who do they pick up the phone to? Do they do it A-Z? Do they send them all one email. Which, it's kind of spammy for most people because they're not in the market. So, the answer is zero percent. We've got a couple of customers who are a year down the line with CandidateID, because we only launched in January 2017. Adam: I haven't gotten any data for them around what proportion they're now able to say their hiring from their own database. But what I can say is that they're getting to shortlist 60% faster. And they're getting to shortlist 60% faster because they're not picking up the phone to people and cold calling them without knowing whether they might be interested or not. Because they're able to track exactly what are they looking at. That gives them the insight that tells them who to pick up the phone to. Who are the hot leads today, in real time? So I've got to be honest, I can't answer that exact question. But what I can tell you is that the 60% reduction in time to shortlist is the big thing that our customers are highlighting as the main benefit they're getting from CandidateID. Chad: Got you. So, job sites, media, and referrals are the top three, but what companies are doing is they're really just sending the same people back into their applicant track. Are they buying those candidates over and over and over, without using their applicant tracking? Adam: That's it. I mean, that's it. That's exactly what they're doing. I said last year a couple of times that I think recruiters are addicted to heroin and some people didn't like that analogy. So I no longer say that. They're addicted to job boards, social media, employee referral. And they're addicted to anything else which will help them find a whole lot of net new talent. But that net new talent's probably already on the ATS. Our mission is for an employer's database to become the first place that they go and that they're able to get to short list by using their own database. It's the exception that they need to go and do other things. Chad: Well, tell us, real quick, tell us how the Wake the Dead process actually works within an applicant tracking system. Because I think most companies would be incredibly interested in understanding how they can take this graveyard of candidates and turn them into live, walking, engaged candidates. How does that process start? How do you start with it and how do you keep them engaged? How do you nurture them? Adam: We love this, we love this sort of Waking the Dead analogy because recruiters are always talking about, "My database is dead. The information in it's all stale. I can't really use it, even if I can search it." So the concept of waking the dead is taking all of that stale data and running it through CandidateID for an initial probably six week kind of nurture period. By the end of which, you're going to know which email addresses are dead, which candidate records should be taken off the system. You can do some progressive profiling with people to find out more information about them by getting them to give you information. To access this white paper that will help you get ahead in your career, what's your current salary banding, or what's your likelihood of making a job move in the next six months. Chad: So this information that you're sending to the candidates to keep them engaged, is that what I'm hearing? For actual company information that's already available on their website? What is this information that we're talking about? Adam: No, not necessarily. And that's a really important point. Using CandidateID, you get to understand about individuals at scale. You get to understand which channels do they prefer, which content formats do they prefer, which content subjects do they prefer. And what we've got up to date is a situation where any organization that's doing candidate nurture, typically, they're just sending the same email to everybody. It's probably just job alerts. So that's not really nurture. What you need to be able to understand is, you need to be able to understand that Joel likes content about skills sent through email in a video format. Whereas, Chad like content about industry insights sent through WhatsApp and in an infographic format. If you can really get a sense of what does each individual prefer based on their behavior and you can track and score that behavior, then that's how you can really nurture people at scale and in the way that they prefer to receive that content. If you get that right, you're going to get more people coming through the funnel from being effectively cold right through to lining up outside your office- Chad: Well, Joel likes chocolate cake, just so that you know. Go ahead, Joel. Joel: Chocolate cake and naps. And by the way listeners, if you're hearing Adam's accent and the word heroin, I want to let you know this is not the Trainspotting podcast. This is still Chad and Cheese. Adam, there are a lot of competitors out there. Just ones that we've talked about on our show, ConveyIQ, Crowded, et cetera. I mean, to say that you're the HubSpot for recruiting, you mentioned Pardo and a few others that are marketing platforms. It's sort of becoming the norm. So how do you sell yourself differently from those guys and why would I pick you over those competitors? Adam: So the reason that I don't use HubSpot is because HubSpot wasn't actually built as a marketing automation product. It was built as an inbound marketing product. That's a different thing. So something like [Clinch 00:16:55] would be more equivalent to HubSpot. And that's great for the real high volume areas like, I don't know, restaurant companies, hospitality companies, construction businesses, and those types of organizations. But the reason that I made the comparison with something like Pardo is because that's much, much more about the kind of nurture through the funnel, if you like. It's much more about the relationship building and the real, the technology that's really able to understand more about people. The ones that you mentioned, I'm not completely familiar with. But the organizations who claim to be able to do the same kinds of things. They call themselves recruitment marketing products or something like that. Really, they're CRM. They're recruitment CRM. CRM is a system of record. It's primary purpose is enabling internal workflow and storing information. Whereas CandidateID has been built as a system of engagement. It really is built just to do one specific thing and that is bring people through the funnel. It's not lika a half-ass bolt on, which is basically just an email ... a glorified Mail Chimp. Adam: Now the big difference is, is what CandidateID is tracking is candidates' interactions across a whole load of different online assets that a recruitment CRM doesn't track. So recruitment CRM will track an email open and a link clink. And then it will track activity around a career site. What it's not able to track is does the person go to the hiring manager's Facebook page? Does the person go to the company's Glassdoor or the Muse or all sorts of other online assets. So CandidateID's tracking far, far wider than incumbent recruitment technologies. As a result, it's able to give a much, much deeper and richer insight into the individual so that you can score them. It's not a shallow score. It's much, much more- Chad: Tell us what that score is. So the score's actually an engagement score. It's not a skills test, anything like that. Am I correct on that? It's an engagement score, how much they have engaged with certain content or they researched or what have you? Tell me a little bit more about the candidate scoring piece. Adam: We believe it's very important to identify suitable candidates based on their motivation first and skill set second. If you identify people based on a skill set, 80% of those people you find are not in the market. They're not going to be responding to your LinkedIn message or your telephone call, because they're not ready for a conversation. If you can identify people based on their motivation to want to work for your organization first, then assess them according to fit, you're going to get to shortlist 60% faster. Now, of course, what you don't want to do is use CandidateID to nurture the plumber who applied for a job as an economist. Or the sales person who applied for a job as a scientist. They're not people that you want to be nurturing. What you want to do is bring in the total addressable market of people who you would be interested in interviewing now or in the future. Adam: A simple example would be, I'm head of recruitment at KPMG. I want every single person working at PWC, Deloitte and EY in my system of engagement. I want to be nurturing all these people, tracking them, scoring them, so that I can see which of these people are going to be ready for a conversation about working with me at KPMG. That's utopia. Utopia is that you're tracking every single person that you might want to hire now or in the future. Based on who they work for and what their current job title is, that I believe is the first cut of is this person going to be somebody we should be nurturing. So then you then filter them according to their engagement score. You probably want to interview anybody that works for one of those organizations. Assessing people or finding people based on fit first is going to mean that 80% of your outreach is wasted. But you don't know which 80% it is because you don't know anything about the people. So assessing them according to what they're doing is absolutely logically the first thing to do. Joel: Adam, if I'm looking at your website, and I am, I go to features and there's a whole lot of stuff you guys got going with branding and candidate experience. It sort of feels like throwing stuff up there just to have people check it off. But do you really believe those are core competencies of your product, employment branding? Adam: We got very, very specific message for anybody that's in employer branding. And that is that we can help them to track the effectiveness of every single piece of content that they put out on the Net. Ever single Tweet that they put out. Because everything is tracking. And what that means is that they can get better and better and they can measure the effectiveness of their work or the n-th degree. They can really understand not just which channels are working best but they can understand which day of the week works best, what time of the day works best. They can make a cut according to different locations. They can cut it according to different skill sets. They can really, really cut up their talent nurture in a way the becomes highly versatilized. So for those kinds of people, it really helps them prove their worth and demonstrate ROI. Joel: So from a branding standpoint, back to branding, we've been talking about engagement systems forever, whether they're quote, unquote "R and P's", whatever they might be. What you're saying is from the employment branding standpoint, and correct me if I'm wrong, this is a way to continue to engage them and then also better understand, really, the behavior and how the individual wants to see content from you? Is that what I'm hearing? Adam: Well, we're living in a world where personalization becomes more and more important. So you go on to certain websites, like Amazon for example, and it's giving you a personalized page based on your history and what it knows about you. Using the same kind of techniques, CandidateID's able to understand what content formats, what content channels, what times of the days, days of the week, what subjects that you're interested in. And this is a really important one, what subjects you're interested in, because that will determine where you are in the pipeline. So if somebody is only interested in skills or interested in industry insights, they're not ready for a conversation. Whereas, if they're starting to look at your job descriptions and things like that, they are ready for a conversation. And one of the automated aspects of CandidateID is, if Joel starts looking at job descriptions, the intensity of what Joel gets from then on, it gets ... The communication gets more frequent and it's much more about, "We need to talk. Come in for a coffee and meet people in our organization. Come to our team pizza night." It's all about the intensity, the communication goes up. Adam: Whereas if Joel is just looking at skills and that kind of thing, Joel will keep getting something once every ten days or so, but it's ... You're not a priority. So we want to keep you warm. And the key thing is, for the 80% of people who are not in the market, you need to make sure that you're not sending them job descriptions because that will piss them off. What you want to be sending them is things that will help them get ahead in their career. We know from the data from our clients' work on CandidateID that people want, even if they're not in the market, they want content which is useful, relevant, and will help them with their career. Chad: Well, I think, Joel, they're already tracking you because Adam knew about team pizza night. Adam: I knew about the chocolate. [crosstalk 00:25:51]. Joel: Bad joke, bad joke. Question about the future for you. I'm looking at your website again and the pricing page, it's in pounds, which is very Brexit. I like that. But are you looking to grow into other countries, adding more features, money raise, looking to raise more? Tell me me about the future of the company. Adam: So first of all, the UK was never using the Euro as our currency so it's not a Brexit positioning statement in any way. So that's the first thing. The second thing is to convert that to US dollars, add on about 25% more and it's US dollars. About 40% of our customers are in London. About 40% of our customers are in the USA, and about 20% are in parts of Europe and parts of Asia-Pacific. So we're already serving the world. Our customer market is what we call F600, which means Fortune 500 plus FTSE 100, which is the UK stock market, top 100. So those 600 is our customer base plus international RP organizations. So we already work with four. We have self-funded the company to-date. Our customers have helps us to fund the business as well. They have, in certain cases, they have prepaid 12 months in advance to allow us to move our product roadmap forward and they've worked in consultation with us to help us do that. Or for us to include their wishes into what we're planning to do. Adam: We're not going to be ... People have told us we need to become a CRM. We don't want to become a CRM. It's absolutely not the plan. That's what we call a red ocean and it's not something we want to be involved in. We absolutely, we will be raising investment. We're talking to three RPO companies today about investing in CandidateID. The only reason we're talking to them, because we can self-fund it, maybe not as fast as we would like to. So raising money is something that we need to do. But the main reason we're talking to RPO businesses is because these companies have got case studies. They've seen how it works for them. And quite honestly, the opportunity to receive 40 new customers at the same time as the investment is something that's incredible appealing. Joel: Very nice. Any clients you can mention? Any name dropping? Adam: Yeah, I could tell you we work with ... It was Quintels. It's called Iqvia, Fortune 500. We work with Mondelez, another Fortune 500. We work with Therma-Fisher Scientific, another Fortune 500. We work with Spec Savers, which is, it may be the world's number one optical retailer. It certainly is in Europe and Australia. We've got some ... It's pretty public. I can tell you one of the RPOs we work with is Cielo Talent. We've been up for some joint rewards with stuff we've done with them. And one of their clients called Dialog Semi Conductor. Joel: Okay. That's good. That's good. I just wanted a few, not the whole portfolio. Chad: Okay, so two quick questions. The first one is are you GDPR compliant, and for Joel, that's the General Data Protection Regulation. It's an EU thing. Are you GDPR compliant? Joel: What's that? A baby crying? Chad: Yes, he loves the baby crying. Are you GDPR compliant? Joel: Can you say, "Get in my belly for me," just once? Adam: I didn't say that. Joel: You know Fat Bastard, right? Chad: From Austin Powers? Joel: Get in my belly. Sorry. Adam: I do, I do, I do. Okay, so Nanny McPhee is that not Scottish as well. Sorry, Ms. Doubtfire. [crosstalk 00:30:10]. GDPR, okay, so you could use CandidateID to spam strangers, in which case it's not GDPR compliant. Or you could use it in a GDPR compliant way. So it just depends on the way that you use it. Chad: Gotcha. Adam: One of the important things about GDPR is a lot of organizations think you need to think of the regulations and say, you need to reach out to all your database and ask them to opt-in again. You absolutely don't. One financial services company I know did that recently, and they got an 8.5% opt-in rate because they asked that question. They've got to delete 91.5% of their database. That opt-out suicide. Chad: Great answer, great answer. I love that answer because that is not a yes or no answer, but my last question is knowing that you have this engagement with RPO, why the hell hasn't an RPO company or an applicant tracking system bought you guys yet? I mean, seriously? Because the thing is RPOs are incredibly efficient. This seems like a very efficient way to utilize the candidates that they have in their huge databases, in their clients' databases. Not to mention, applicant tracking system's shit. They've got the worst search technology in the world, which is one of the reasons why recruiters don't search the database. This seems like a very smart move for an RPO or an applicant tracking system. What are you guys still doing on the market? Why aren't you bought yet? Adam: Well, I think ... We've only been in the market since January last year. So we're pretty early stage. And I think we're down near the bottom of the top ten kind of hot issues right now. We keep coming up high. HR Tech World, we keep coming up high in one of their kind of most disruptive start-ups. But there's so many other things like onboarding and programmatic and AI related things, chat box and other recruitment technologies where there maybe is a cluster of organizations that are really creating bigger market penetration. At some point, of course, yeah, absolutely. If we continue to grow our reputation, grow our market position, and become successful, there will be other organizations that will be trying to do the same thing and some of those will probably look at those and think, "Actually, it's going to be cheaper for us to buy that than it is to build our own." But that's not what we're in the market for, so we'll have to wait and see how things pan out. But our current priority is to build, build, build and to be working with every one of the Fortune 500. Chad: I see. Well, it's that time, Joel. Unless you have another question? Did we lose Joel? Adam: Is he putting the dog out again? Joel: Sorry, sorry, sorry. I was talking but on mute. Yes. I am ready to put Adam in front of the Firing Squad and see how he does. I apologize for that gentlemen. Adam: I'm going to shut my eyes. Joel: Chad and I both love the whole black hole elimination strategy and taking candidates and keeping them fresh or bringing them back to life, which is popular these days in terms of saying it. So I like the general model. I like kind of where you guys are going with it. I'm not ... I think the competitive thing ... I don't want to say you danced around it, but I think you should have a better feel for the competitive landscape, be able to talk about how you're different than Crowded, how you're different than [Lever's 00:34:08] recent addition of sort of bringing back the dead from their candidate pool. I'd like to hear more just context around the branding piece. I heard sort of around how candidate branding is effected but not much around how you're helping a company build their brand and their employer brand. Like integrations and help with Glassdoor stuff. I'd like to see that in the future. I think you're off to a good start. Definitely not going to bring the guns out. But for me, I think you got some work to do to convince me that you are a stellar start up. But you're on the right track. And my grade at this point is ... Chad: Oh, my favorites. Okay. So, Adam, here's the thing. And there's no question. Again, I'm going to be consistent with my conversation that we had with Crowded. The whole waking the dead piece is huge. That is incredibly strong and if you can demonstrate, which I believe you guys can, that you don't have to spend 55% on a job board or 36% on media or whatever it is, you can go back to your applicant tracking system first and use that as your primary weapon of going out and actually finding candidates. In addition to, and this is something even more new, is filling them out and starting to engage them, nurture them is obviously the term you guys use, that is amazing. Because it's not just about waking the dead, it's about keeping them engaged. And then in scoring them, to be able to know where they're at in the funnel. I also believe on the employment branding side of the house, there's no question. There's some tightening up on the message that you guys can definitely to. This is part and parcel to exactly what employment brand should actually be. It should be engagement. It should be the way that you treat your candidates. They shouldn't be in a black hole. They should be woken from the dead and guess what? They should be constantly hit with the types of content that they want, the way that they want it. Chad: So that being said, yeah, there's definitely, you've got some work to do. But to be quite frank, the technology and everything that you guys are putting together there, I'm going with the big applause. Chad: All the way through. Joel: Hurray. Adam: Hurray. I was thinking about clapping along with Joel's golf clap to just add a little bit more volume into the sound. Chad: Yeah, adding your [crosstalk 00:37:05]. Joel: How do you feel, Adam? Do you feel okay about that? Do you feel like we ripped you off? Adam: No, I feel okay about that. We have got more work to do, absolutely. We're constantly refining our positioning. We're getting better and better. I'm aware, we're certainly not the finished article and yeah, I'm actually very pleased with that feedback because it is giving me some good pointers on things that I need to work on. Joel: Well, good deal. Thanks for you time. We appreciate it. We'll be watching and keep us updated. Chad, you got anything else? We're out. Chad: We appreciate you being here, man. We're out. Adam: Thank so much for having me. Announcer: 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 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. #FiringSquad #CandidateID #Watson #TATech

Dollar dollar ZIP ya'll! Money is flowing into the recruitment tech space like a melting glacier into the Atlantic Ocean. In this week's episode, ZipRecruiter eyes a new round of funding to the tune of $50 million, valuing the company at $1 billion, or the cost of both Monster and CareerBuilder put together. Plus: - Recruitics exams Indeed three major changes already rolled out in 2018 - A salesperson at Indeed employee is pissed and goes off on Glassdoor - Soda Stream drops a killer advert, but the execution blows - RealMatch launches pandoIQ, and agencies are losing their shit - A bunch of companies just got funding - Workday turns on a start-up homing beacon And much more. While listening, visit our sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly, Catch 22 Consulting and the Campaign to Elect Chad & Cheese to President ... of Monster. Don't forget to REGISTER for TAtechEurope - Discount Code - TATECHTEN18 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: Heidi-ho kiddies, welcome to The Chad and Cheese Show, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: Giddy-up. On this week's show Recruitics calls out changes at Indeed in a white paper, no doubt. Recruitment ad agencies are losing their shit over programmatic ad buying, and ZipRecruiter goes looking for a Brink's truck to go hijack. Dollar dollar bill, y'all. Stay tuned. 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. For more information, call us at 866-926-6284, or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com. Chad: Yeah, if you're a federal contractor, just so you know, make sure that you're checking to make sure that your jobs are getting actually listed into the state job bank for God's sakes. If you're not checking that stuff and you feel like vendor's doing it for you, but you're not checking it, you're probably getting screwed, dude. So check that out. Joel: Dude, I love how much you love compliance and all this crap. Because if you didn't care about it, we'd never talk about it. Chad: It's hundreds of millions of dollars. Joel: Oh I know, veteran hiring, government, that's your lane, man, and I love that you love it. But yeah, we feel pretty good about this show so I say, let's get to it. Chad: Let's hit it. Let's hit it. Joel: All right, shout outs. Chad: First off, Ed is officially on Team Chad, even though he doesn't even know what that means. I love blind commitment. Ed, I love blind commitments and I think this leads to ... before we get into anything more shout out-ish, we should talk a little bit about that Super Bowl. Joel: Oh, God. Okay, here's what we're going to talk about. The only reason he's on Team Chad is he's an Eagles fan and you picked the Eagles, so it has nothing to do with your intellect or your charm. It's just the fact that you blindly picked against the Patriots. Chad: Sometimes Ed and I are very symbiotic in our thoughts and it just happened to be that way with the Eagles, and I bet that he would also believe that my favorite Super Bowl ad was his favorite Super Bowl ad. But before we get there, what was yours? Joel: Favorite Super Bowl ad? Chad: Yeah. Joel: I think Tide ruled it. Chad: Tide. Tide did well. Joel: Yeah, Tide crushed it. That's probably the few I only remember from the game. Chad: Dude, everybody's gonna remember this one. Dirty dancing ... I had the time of my life with Eli Manning, yeah, yeah, and the lift. Dude, that was the funniest. I mean, the Manning brothers do some of the best commercials out there and the NFL knocked it out of the park on this one. Joel: The Mannings are great pitchmen for sure. Dublin's coming up. We always mention this. Eventually we will get there and not have this as a shout out anymore, but if you're gonna be in Dublin, we'll see you there. If you're not going to Dublin, you need to go. I think we have a coupon code too, which is really long. Chad: Yes, so get your writing utensil out and get ready to take this down. It is TATECHTEN, which is spelled T-E-N, not the numbers, and then 18, which are the numbers. So TATECH, with the numbers 18, TATECHTEN18. Joel: Was shamrock or leprechaun too hard of a coupon code to use? Chad: As you can see, they're fairly consistent with this coupon code, so I think they've actually created this as our coupon code. I could be wrong. But yeah, it should have been Chad and TATECHCHEESE, right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: So before we leave talking about the Super Bowl, first off the ad, the Chad and Cheese- Joel: I tried to get him off this, everybody. I really tried. Chad: ... the Chad and Cheese ad, though, man. It was funny because we weren't really sure how Monster was going to take this ad, you know? We thought that they might turn their- Joel: I slept with one eye open. I slept with one eye open that night. Chad: I don't believe that. We weren't sure how they were going to take it, but to be quite frank it was really cool, and there was kind of like this moment of silence, I think, and then one of their SVPs actually came out and thought it was hilarious. I think they reposted it, so we started to see a lot of trending from Monster. They really embraced us making fun of them, which I thought was cool. Joel: It's a new Monster. Everyone that was there is gone, pretty much. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The new band is pretty fun, so we're going to keep rolling with this I think. Chad: Yeah, so shout-out to David Zaneski over there. I understand he's a huge fan. He's a huge fan. Joel: David. We appreciate it, man. David'll be running that place here soon, from what we hear, so way to go David. Christi Moon, our self-proclaimed biggest fan. Chad: Woo-hoo! Joel: I was in Salt Lake City this week and Christi is in some city I've never heard of in Utah. It's probably Mormon central or something, but she came up and said hi, which I thought was awesome, because she's such a fan. So Christi, you've earned this shout-out for the two-hour round trip that you made to come say hi and hang out for a little bit. Chad: Very nice. I had an anonymous comment on LinkedIn about the Super Bowl commercial. Here's what it says, "Saw the video, thought it was very funny, but Monster will never have staffing support again now that it's owned by Randstad. None of us are going to hand over our hard-earned revenue to the competition and trust they will treat our postings fairly or securely." They end up with "Come on, Google for Jobs!" Joel: He's probably right. Chad: All rooting for you. I think it's interesting that a lot of these companies use the hell out of Indeed and they don't realize that Recruit Holdings has ... I mean, part of their portfolio, they have staffing. Right? I know it's not a big name like Randstad, but what do you think about that? Joel: I think it will further prove my point that iCIMS is going to make TextRecruit exclusive to them because none of the competitors of iCIMS want to have their API open to one of their companies, which was sort of confirmed by a certain CEO that we interviewed recently. So we will see about that, but I tend to agree that if it's so blatant as Monster is owned by a staffing company so why would staffing companies get in bed? If Monster became the Monster of old it wouldn't be an issue because everyone would have to use them, but you can sort of not use Monster now and be okay. So, yeah, I kind of agree with his point. Chad: Okay. Okay. I'm not quite there yet, but I think a lot of it does have to do with optics. There's no question, and I think you're right there. One thing I want to throw out real quick, so, Kelly ... being Robinson Kelly ... he sends us funny shit all the time. Some of it's funny, some of it's not so funny. So, there's a quick segment we're going to call Funny Shit Kelly Sends Us, and this is really a caution to talent acquisitions. Think about this, because vendors are actually doing this and their testing your systems. Here's the story. Chad: A vendor is getting ready to engage with a client and they're testing their system. In doing that, they apply for a job, which I'm sure you've heard a million times and probably some of you in talent acquisition have done this as well. They apply for a job. The next day, that individual actually received a call from a recruiter. The whole funny part about this whole stupid-ass story is that- Joel: You did say real quick. Chad: ... he applied with Big Bird's resume for a dental surgery position. So, this either means that that company needs to do a shit-ton of training from a recruiter's standpoint or maybe we need to step up our game, talent acquisition. Joel: That's your real quick story? Chad: That was a very quick story. Joel: Holy cow. Let's get through shout-outs here real quick. Apparently, there's a Melting Pot owner in Dallas with three or four franchises who listens to this show. Chad: Really? Joel: I have no idea how he found out about us, but he listens to learn about recruiting and employment, so whoever you are in Dallas owning Melting Pots, assuming you're listening, big shout out to you. Chad: Yeah, and Dallas is a huge hotbed for recruiting, TA leadership, that kind of stuff. You can go ahead, and you've got our permission, to play Chad and Cheese Podcasts over the sound system in your restaurants. Joel: I think their goal is to actually sell food, not clean it up after it's regurgitated. Chad: Good point. Joel: Chris Amato from OptiJob is still alive. Chad: What? Joel: Shout out to him. Chad: Dude. Joel: I didn't even know they were still in business, but yes OptiJob is still around doing the SEO thing, doing the social thing, and he reached out to us. I consider him a friend, I think you do too. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: It's good to hear from him and hopefully we'll be hearing about new and exciting things from OptiJob in the future. Joel: All right. You got some commentary on Recruitics this week. What's up? Chad: Ooh, so we talked about Recruitics and how they look out for their customers. Well, they had actually sent an email out to their customers talking about some of the Indeed changes. They went a step above. They created a white paper and they provided it to everybody, so you can actually go out there and look for this Recruitics white paper. It's called The Major Indeed.com changes to start 2018. People were only in February of 2018 and there have already been three major changes Indeed has made. Chad: First is the resume database. Did you hear about this? Joel: Please enlighten me. Chad: Okay, so Indeed had a very simple model. I mean, you're familiar with Indeed's model. It's a dollar per pretty much resume to be able to see the contact information, and I mean that's fairly simple. You go in, you see a resume that you like. It doesn't have contact information on it. You buy it and then you get the contact information. It's a dollar for a resume. Right? Joel: That's simple. Chad: That shit's simple. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Okay, so this isn't really the smartest always to evolve a product, but Indeed just went really crazy and they've gone to a subscription model, which should seem simple, but they've actually raised the rates from told scale that would cost $100 for 100 candidates ... right, pretty simple ... to $250 for 100 candidates. That's a huge increase. But wait, there's more. Because that's easy- Joel: Is that a 150% price increase, if my math is correct? Chad: Yes, it's good. Joel: Okay, just checking. Chad: This is where shit gets weird, okay? Joel: Okay. Chad: When reaching out to the candidates through Indeed, if you receive a negative response from a candidate yet it's still a response, you receive a candidate credit, which pretty much makes that candidate's contact information free. Right? The complexity here is already fun. If you receive a positive response, you receive a three-candidate credit, meaning that the candidate that you obviously reached out to is free, plus you get two additional credits to your contact. So what they're saying is, talent acquisition, and they're doing it in a very weird, complex way as look, we're going to charge you more but if you interact with these candidates better and you get more positive responses, you get more responses, it could actually be less than what you paid before. Joel: Okay. That sounds really complicated. They're trying to incentivize better outreach? Chad: Yeah ... I mean, really the whole scheme was created to drive better engagement using Indeed and not pissing off their candidates, which makes sense, but what it's really done is risen the cost about two and a half times and created just a complex system overall. I mean, who's going to true this up over time, and are you going to trust Indeed to say, "Oh yeah, no, you had X amount of positives and X amount of negatives, and who's actually going to tell who's positive and negative? I mean, is there a star system? Again, the level of complexity went through the roof when it was so easy before. Joel: Are the other two that complex or are they simple? Chad: The next one's fairly simple. They're kicking job board off the site, right, so cutting duplication, which means job boards you're pretty much screwed. Really, the companies who built Indeed are now getting kicked off Indeed, and this is your favorite- Joel: Fort Indeed. Chad: ... Trojan horse method, right? This is what we've talked about over a few podcasts and we're Recruitics, who also provides analytics for these different vendors too, they're also seeing this. Job boards obviously are seeing much less traffic from Indeed and they're really having to focus on seeing what they can do to supplement, and one of those things is being Google for Jobs. Joel: Yeah, and from what we've seen early on is it pretty much replaces Indeed traffic, so they don't really care that they're getting bounced off from what I can tell. Chad: And it's free, at least the traffic that we've heard- Joel: For now. Chad: ... thus far, yes, for now. Joel: So that's two changes, or was that three. Chad: No, that was two. Number three ... hey employers, we're not a search engine anymore. We talked about that a couple of podcasts back. The real big change is that Indeed is really going through regression. They started out as a pure search engine, pure search engine. Joel: Google for jobs was their mantra. Chad: Yeah. They were a pure search engine. They didn't have a resume database. Then guess what? They had a resume database, and then they obviously added complexity to the resume database, and now they've added this whole new two-pane scenario which- Joel: Did you say T-Pain? Chad: Yeah, no, not T-Pain. Two-pane. It was close though, it was close. Joel: Two-pane, got it. Chad: So instead of one click to actually go and view the job on your site, it's two clicks now, and you pay for candidates who never even hit your site. So that first click you're still getting charged for even though they're not hitting the job on your website, and you'll pay more, which is one of the things that I think you saw is that the user experience is much faster for a job seeker, but what that means is they can just click more things faster, which means it's going to cost a hell of a lot more money for employers. Joel: You're going to see a lot less traffic from Indeed because of this, but the traffic that you're going to see are people that want to apply, so I'm sort of torn between is it better to send traffic that's less but it's more applicants or people are going to look at their traffic analytics and go holy cow, Indeed's traffic dropped off the cliff? Chad: Yeah, I think- Joel: [crosstalk 00:16:53] candidates. Chad: I think a lot of it has to do with short term versus long term when it comes to employers thinking about their brand and thinking about experience. Even if that individual is needed qualified for that position, can I get them into my database because they might be perfect for another position or six, eight, 12 months down the road they might be perfect for another position or maybe even this position? Who knows. That's the thing. They've paid for that candidate view, and for all of those idiots that are out there that say, "Well, I don't want unqualified candidates anyway." Bullshit. You're paying for those individuals, get them into your database, and then start to use them the way that you're supposed to be using them. Against other requisitions and future requisitions. Don't be idiots. Joel: Plus, if you spend a lot of time making your career site awesome with videos, which we'll talk about after this, but if you've done the work, well now you don't even get the traffic because they're just going to look at the job posting on Indeed, if they're not interested just go to the next job down and keep sort of machine-gunning through the job postings. So yeah, I don't know. I think ultimately it's better for the job seeker to sort of quickly go through all these sites instead of go to each one, but there's going to be ramifications in terms of people who are on and posting Indeed and losing out on traffic and losing out on the things that they're used to. Chad: And again, I think it has to do with our relationship to the job seeker. Do we think it's more just quick and easy wham bam thank you ma'am type of transaction or is it a longterm relationship where we continue to keep them engaged and hopefully we can find an opportunity in our organization. Joel: So you came across a review on Glassdoor about working at Indeed, which that was interesting because someone at Indeed is posting on Glassdoor instead of posting a review on Indeed, but that's beside the point. The reviewer had some really interesting comments. What were some of those? Chad: Yeah, so I was actually having a conversation with one of Indeed clients and I said, "Man, I mean you guys have got to be really pissed." He's like, "Yeah, there's no question. All of me and my compadres, we're not happy about this, but the person I'm incredibly sad for right now are my sales reps because they are taking it from all flanks" and it really must suck to be an Indeed sales rep right now, and then somebody else actually sent me a review on Glassdoor that was from a sales rep. Now mind you, so Glassdoor has five stars, right? They're a five-star review. This was a four-star review, and this person picks Indeed apart. Joel: Maybe they didn't understand the star system. Chad: Who knows. Maybe they wanted to try to float this in where Indeed thought, "Oh, this is four stars, that's fine." But anyway, here's one of the quotes, "Tech teams are untouchable, even when a client has valid issues. This creates unbelievable expectations on the sales team to keep the client happy with no power while your quota and livelihood is tied to this insanity. I've been in sales for most of my life and luckily I've been able to grow into being a sales kind of liaison in overt technology groups for a while. This is the kind of rub and friction you do not want in your organization. Chad: Going on it says, "Everything operates in a shroud of mystery. They intentionally keep departments away from each other and their favorite word to a client is no. Be prepared for no more than you've ever experienced before just because they're locking things down. It took me four months to figure out pricing." This is a sales person. "It took me four months to figure out pricing because there is no pricing really schema. It is what can you get out of the customers." That was in quotes. "What can you get out of the customers," which is why I think this shroud exists and quite frankly right now it's working because talent acquisition does what? They find out what has worked in the past and they beat it like a dead horse, man, and they don't look at their ROI. That's the biggest issue. Joel: Dude, how much does this sound like what a salesperson would have been saying in like 2009 working at Monster or CareerBuilder? Chad: And that's what we keep saying, man. Indeed leadership, okay, I implore you, change your shit. This does not work, and if you think trying to play this silo game, not to mention also trying to manage by chaos ... we've seen empires like yours crumble, remember that, and they crumbled when a little startup took them down. You don't have to worry about a little startup taking your dumb ass down. You've got to worry about Google and you've got to worry about Facebook, and some of these other startups that are actually banding together to be able to attack your fucking flank. Joel: LinkedIn. Chad: They're kind of big. Joel: All right. Do you feel better after your weekly Indeed rant? Chad: I just want to see them do better, man. This is bullshit. Joel: All right, well we have a very special advertisement from our greatest sponsor ever, us. Announcer: 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 am 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, aw 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 in 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. Chad: Yeah. You do love that damn thing. Announcer: 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 longstanding questions like what ever happened to Monster Networking, Chief Monster, Jobber, HotJobs, Gozaik, JobPilot, TalentBin, Trovix, Tickle, and that blue collar thingy ... what was that called? I can't remember Announcer: The Chad and Cheese promise to get you, the people, answers. Chad: And we also promise not to make boneheaded decisions like buying Tickle instead of LinkedIn. Announcer: Yeah, that actually happened. Joel: Oy. Chad and I are asking for your support in our bi to co-president Monster. Announcer: 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 ripoff 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. Female Announce: 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. Joel: Those guys are idiots. What do you think when I say PandoIQ? Chad: So RealMatch- Joel: Who you do know. Chad: Yeah, Terry launched- Joel: Yeah, Terry. Shout out to Terry. I saw him this week. They're launching PandoIQ, which is essentially their sort of self-serve Appcast, Recruitics challenger programmatic ad buying. Basically, for those that don't know, programmatic is essentially a plug your jobs into our platform, we're going to put your jobs in multiple places, we're going to manage your budget as we algorithmically figure out which positions on which sites during which time of the day, et cetera, work best, and thus you get the best results for the best bang or biggest bang for your buck. This would seem pretty straightforward, but it's got quite a few people in a tizzy for probably debatable reasons, which we will get into now. Joel: I wrote this story yesterday and at least one agency person reached out to me, one agency person reached out to you. They may be the same person, but who knows, and they have some pretty strong opinions about this. What was your guy saying? Or gal. Chad: Well, I actually reached out to my agency person, so they didn't reach out to me because I was trying to get a feel for this. Joel: So you're doing real journalism. Chad: Okay, yeah, a couple of vendors and a couple of agencies I reached. This person's take was that the world doesn't need another job board network or programmatic network. None of these guys get premium inventory on most of the sites unless you maintain a bid as if buying directly. Most buyers don't, so they end up serving just as backfill so you end up on page nine or something like that. That was the agency kind of thought process. Joel: My feedback was that because RealMatch in particular has a network of partners that they are going to sort of favor those sites as opposed to other sites and that there was a direct conflict of interest because of this setup, which I think is totally fair. I could say, well, if our network gets you the best bang for your buck then so be it, it's just our algorithm figuring out where to place ads, et cetera. But I do definitely see where double dipping may take place where we're getting money on the front end to post the ads and then we're getting money on the other end because we're the ones that are putting the ads up. Joel: I think bigger point potentially is that agencies are a little bit scared, which is doth thou protest too much ... throwing Shakespeare into the conversation, which will probably never happen again. People tend to scream when they are hurt and agencies have a direct interest in continuing to buy ads for people because that's kind of what they do beside from the warm and fuzzy and point of branding and other things like that. If you take away the job posting piece and where should we put our ads and what should the ad say and et cetera, then programmatic ad buying really hurts agencies who aren't really doing incredibly well anyway. Joel: This is going to be a battle that wages on. Which side of debate do you think will come out on top? The programmatic kids or the agency ? Chad: Well first, I think they're both going to come off well and here's why. Talent acquisition, they don't want to deal with this shit, so what are they going to do? They're going to hand it over to their agencies. So yeah, there could be this kind of frictionless platform that set up, but still talent acquisition is not going to want to jump into that shit and do it. It's going to take a while. It's going to take a while. I mean seriously, we talk about it every week. Talent acquisition, they're a jack of all trades, they're masters of none, really. To be able to take a look at this and say oh agencies, this is going to hurt agencies ... I really don't see that because of the behavior we've seen for decades. Chad: Now, one of the things that I have seen and when I was talking to one of the vendors is something actually popped out to me that I thought was interesting because RealMatch, it made it sound like that they have an actual opportunity to take a look at the inventory of all of these job sites to balance inventory and prices and all that other fun stuff. I reached out to a couple of vendors and one of them reached back and said, "It's categorically false that RealMatch has access to inventory. It's kind of like the vaporware kind of thing. I mean, with some vendors it might be that way, but not all. Chad: I think having these types of platforms, and as we talk about AI and machine learning and all of this stuff, it's going to evolve, so don't expect perfection out of the gate, but also don't expect that some of these claims are going to happen throughout the entire industry. Joel: The presentation from RealMatch actually that 1% or probably less of advertising in recruitment right now is programmatic, so we have a long way to go before this moves the needle on anybody in terms of their bottom line. I tend to agree with you in terms of most employers will say like, "We've heard we're supposed to be programmatic. We don't what the hell it is, can you guys do it for us." Agencies will be like, "Yeah, we can manage your programmatic ad buying. So I think, yeah, ultimately agencies will probably be fine, I think the programmatic solutions will be fine, and as usual it will be the employer picking up the tab on everybody being fine. Chad: Yeah. In RealMatch, I think this is a very smart move for them because they've been developing technologies on ad placements, partnerships with different distribution points throughout the web, so I think this is a good move for them. You know, you need to move forward and this was I think just the most logical step for them to take. Joel: Yeah, look, because we talked before, look at what marketing is doing, and in five years that's what recruitment is going to be doing- Chad: Exactly. Joel: ... and the marketing world has been doing programmatic for a long time, it works, so it's bound to happen in our industry as well. And speaking of agencies and employment branding, SodaStream released a really cool employment ad, which I guess I would essentially say is their founder or CEO walking through a warehouse with employees and talking about, hey, we look for creative people, we're looking for whatever, and then there are really sort of cute, funny ways that they integrate those ideas in the commercial. But there are some problems with the commercial in the execution. Chad: Let's just go over just quick five top points that SodaStream knocked it out of the fuckin' park. They had the CEO on. The pitch was perfect and it melded the actual product and the employees into the pitch. That was awesome. The spokes-dude, who is the mountain, Game of Thrones, that was really cool and it was funny. They worked him into it. They focused on diversity, they are company out of Israel, and the slogan Join the Revolution. I thought all of that was just put together so well. I was excited to join the revolution and actually go see ... okay, let's go see what this thing is all about. Chad: Unfortunately, not everything is nice and tidy as it seems. Number one, the video had subtitles but it didn't actually list the website to go visit, so they told you to go join the revolution, but the question was after the video was over it was like, okay, how? How do I do that? Joel: There must have been a link in the copy talking about the ad on YouTube, right? Like I could just click a link. Chad: No. Joel: No. Okay, so no link. What if I went to Google and searched SodaStream, working at, video. Chad: I actually put in SodaStream jobs, because that's just my behavior. My routine is I'm going straight to Google, typing in whatever the company name is, jobs, check them out first on Google for Jobs, so I did that and three jobs came up from SodaStream, only three, and they went to SmartRecruiters. Well, I actually reached out to their VP of HR, who is awesome, here in North America, and that is their old applicant tracking system. So their new applicant tracking system wasn't even getting indexed by Google. Chad: This is a lesson for everybody in employment branding, PR, and talent acquisition. If you have an old applicant tracking system and throughout the years that I've been dealing with applicant tracking systems and doing job scrapes and feeds and all that other bullshit, this happens more than you would think. Those sites say up for years in some cases because the client doesn't actually tell them to take it down. So that was an issue, so that's a good lesson. Chad: Next, and this is the big one, I went to sodastream.com and then I also saw there was sodastreamusa.com, and I went to both sites and they were pretty much just mirror sites, but there was no jobs link and there was no careers link on the entire website. Joel: Are you kidding? Chad: So how could I get to this? After this crazy journey that I've taken through just to try to join the goddamn revolution, I went back to the article where I originally saw that SodaStream was doing this and I finally found a link, one link that said micro site. I clicked on it and it took me to people.sodastream.com and the page itself was really cool. I'm not going to say it was amazing, but it was really cool. It had the CEO, had the video, it actually had their top HR leaders that were on there that you can connect with on LinkedIn, which I thought was really cool. Chad: At the end of the day the thing that really got me was throughout the entire process they weren't just selling come work for us, they were selling their product too, and it that was the most genius thing. You don't see AT&T selling their product on career sites. You've already taken them through this journey and, hey, why the hell not? Take a look at our plans or take a look at SodaStream or join the revolution. It was a really cool way to kind of close the loop, and I would love to see companies start doing that. I know that there are many experts that are out there that would say, "Hey, you're crossing a line here," but I don't think so. Joel: Yeah, and I think that the fact that the title of the page was Join the Revolution instead of Work at SodaStream or Find a Job at SodaStream. They should also buy ad space on Google and YouTube when people search working at SodaStream or jobs at SodaStream, that that video should be prominent because they did a really good job on it and just really dropped the ball on execution. Joel: But someone who do know about execution is our sponsor Sovren. Why don't we hear a quick message from them and then we'll talk about ZipRecruiter getting paid, y'all. 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 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 for a free demo. Joel: ZipRecruiter. Chad: Money. Money, money, money. Joel: Raising some money to the tune of 50 million dollars. Now that's newsworthy, but more newsworthy is they'll have a billion dollar valuation in this round of funding. Now, I'll remind you that Monster sold a couple years ago for about half that and CareerBuilder essentially the same. Chad: If you're from those organizations, right? How do they feel after seeing that kind of valuation? Joel: Well, probably a little better than seeing Slack's valuation at 5.2 billion and LinkedIn selling for 26 billion- Chad: Yeah, that- Joel: ... so the job posting thing is still not exactly super rich in the world of where most people live in corporate America, but yes, a billion dollar company is still pretty rare in employment, and ZipRecruiter achieving that is nice to mention. Dice is about 20% of that. What ZipRecruiter has done is take a job board, traditional marketing perfection in terms of ... I think we talked about this where ZipRecruiter doesn't care about the people who go to conferences for HR. They care about the small business owner, they care about the people that are listening to Rush Limbaugh, and people that are watching MSNBC and Fox on television, so they've really just done a great job of going from from this little niche distribution site to being where a lot of smaller companies go, and they're clearly successful at it if they're looking to have a billion dollar valuation at a fifty billion round. Chad: Well, and they're not all grown up yet. I mean, they first came out of the gates and they focused on driving candidates to vendors. That was the entrée in, right? Then they started the SMB play, so they've hit the first-rung vendors, which was incredibly smart because that's quick dollars to be able to drive ... that just makes good damn sense. Then they went to the SMB side of the house and from my understanding doing fairly well there as well. They haven't even really broached enterprise yet. Now, some enterprise companies are buying, but they really don't have the enterprise suite to where it's matured to where it's going to be. I see this money obviously being used for advertising, go figure, but also to be able to continue the huge R&D that they've been doing. Joel: Yeah, and I would assume going outside of sort of their current markets and going more global, but Zip you're doing something right, man. Keep it up. Keep it up. Joel: Someone else doing it right is Workday, who we hardly ever talk about. Actually, I think founded in Salt Lake City, again, which was where I was this week, and there's actually a building with a Workday logo on the building. They made news this week because they are creating a 250 million dollar fund for companies in AI and robotics and all kinds of stuff. They're putting their money where their mouth is in terms of trying to create an ecosystem of companies that are building the next great things in recruitment and workplace, whatever. Hat's off to Workday in the news this week for the 250 million dollar fund that they're creating for startups and new companies. Chad: Yeah. Well, this is a great opportunity for them to be able to really have this nice big pot of money that everybody sees and then what happens then? Everybody comes running to you to pitch their new startup because they want the cash, right? I think this is a great kind of homing beacon that they just created to be able to get all those new startups really coming to them, flocking to them, and then they can pick and choose and I think it's smart. Joel: Yeah, and even if they don't buy these companies or invest further in them, it's a great R&D department that you can sort of look at other ideas and people outside the company to get ideas about your own products and services. It's a ton of money, so good for them, and I'll be interested to see what kind of companies they find and come out of this fund that they're creating. Chad: Very smart, very smart. Joel: Yep, yep. All right, well the money continues to flow into HR and recruitment. We have three companies in particular that got money this week. The first one and the most highest raise was Joveo. They raised five million dollars. Employee Wow, which is not to be confused with Wepow or Pow ... there's an agency right called Pow or something. Okay. They raised a million. They're out there in Austin, Texas. And then CultureIQ, which you can imagine what they do. They try to improve the culture of companies. They've gotten two point two five million from their raise, so money continues to go into sort of these engagement tech companies as opposed to job sites and job posting sites, which I assume will continue, but good for these guys. Joel: I actually have an interview with the Joveo CEO for ERE next week, so I'll something interesting to say in next week's show about them. Chad: They just also acquired Ripple Media, purely focused on programmatic, being an agency for programmatic and obviously that fits incredibly well with Joveo. Joel: And I think that's all we got in 45 frickin' minutes of podcasting. Chad: Boom. I love it. Joel: I'm going to go enjoy the rest of my Saturday. How about you? Chad: Yeah, it's time to get a beer I think. Joel: Yeah, I agree, so with that 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. #ZipRecruiter #Recruitics #Indeed #Monster #SodaStream #RealMatch #Workday

YOU ASKED FOR IT!!!! Okay, maybe you didn't.... But you know you wanted it! It's our first The Chad and Cheese Super Bowl Commercial - that you won't see on TV because we're way too cheap. PODCAST STYLE TRANSCRIPT The Chad and Cheese Presidential bid Julie: The following was paid 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 position with fresh ideas, and new, proven leaders which is why.... Joel: ... Let 'em eat cake... Get it? What? Lopped off heads... Marie-Antoinette... Awe 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? Joel: You know it's my favorite. Chad: You do love that one... Chad: 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 longstanding questions like - What ever happened to: Monster Networking Chief Monster Jobr HotJobs Gozaik Job Pilot TalentBin Trovix Tickle and that Blue Collar thing - what was that called? Chad: I can't remember... Chad: The Chad and Cheese promise to get you - the people - answers. And we also promise not to make boneheaded decisions like buying Tickle instead of LinkedIn... Yea, 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. There is no way in Hell they are getting this gig, but they have a pretty amazing podcast. Visit ChadCheese.com - Paid for by The campaign for The Chad and Cheese for Co-President.... of Monster...

One of the biggest stories from 2018 was recruiting software solution Scout getting $100 million in investment. The company is quietly becoming a force, so the boys decided to sit down with CEO Ken Lazarus to find out what's going on. Enjoy this Uncommon exclusive. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community. Tengai: Hi, this is Tengai, the unbiased interview robot. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I love these guys. Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and 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: We're back, back again. Chad: I know you missed us everybody because we don't produce podcasts every day or anything. Special guests today, we have Ken Lazarus, CEO of Scouts, all around just smart guy that has increased the IQ points of this podcast by about 300. PhD from MIT, Bachelors from Duke, tons of boards and all that good stuff. Ken, welcome to the the most knuckleheaded podcast in HR. Ken: Thanks guys. Thanks for having me on. Chad: You bet. So what did we miss in the intro? And feel free to give us a little bit about Scout for those who do not know. Ken: Oh well it sounded pretty good to me, so I liked it, thank you. I have been running companies for about 25 years or founding them as a founding board member or CEO. A bunch of different types of companies, but all tech, typically trying to shake up an industry. Done similar things in kind of hardware and semiconductors. Recently in advertising, bringing all that printed media ad into the internet through demand side platforms and all those kind of algorithms that have, you know, if you'll look at a chair and it follows you around the internet, the retargeting, it's got all that fun stuff. So you're welcome for that. Ken: And now most recently in the HR space where we've got Scout, which is really a new way to use data for recruiting. And what we do is we connect employers who've got jobs to fill with recruiters who have a track record of being really successful in filling them. We make those matches, and then those recruiters get you great candidates to make really good hires. One way to think about it, and I know it's a little bit of a tired analogy with Uber is you know Uber, you push your button, it connects you with the driver who's best able to take you from point A to point B. Essentially we connect you with the recruiter that has got that best track record of filling that position so they can help you get a great hire. Ken: And literally like 91% of all hires made by third parties are made by specialists. So that's folks who specialize in one role, they get to know the job spec really well, the company, they know the candidate pool, they can make the match. So we match you up with the matchmaker essentially. Chad: So Ken, one of the things I... And what you're talking about right now, Joel and I talk about all the time. We think the on-demand kind of marketplaces are definitely the way that pretty much recruiting is evolving toward. But the hardest thing about HR and recruiting is adoption is incredibly slow to adopt. Now you're coming in from an entirely different industry. Tell us a little bit about what you've been able to see within obviously Scout in itself and engaging the recruitment community with regard to adoption of new technology, new processes. Ken: Yeah, I'd say it's a similar and different. So it's similar in that most folks in most industries don't like to adopt new things. You think about in the ad space, right? Where the old joke was 50% of the ads work, but we don't know which ones and you can't move it or anything. And the sales people, they sort of had, they knew the client, they said, I know what you need, I know how to get your stuff done. But there was no data to actually assess if any of it was right. They pushed back hard in terms of adopting this new thing. But you know, the data speaks for itself, and also actually knowing what works and not and only paying for what works, it's really kind of a really good thing, right? So even though there's pushback and it's slow and you have to get them to believe and understand and all that. Ken: Then you have the same thing going on in kind of the HR space here where people are used to having one recruiter they like, they know, they trust, and they basically pressure them to do more. But that one person isn't necessarily an expert in the jobs that they want and so forth. So you know, they really need to use the data and get connected with the ones who know the candidate pool really good. And you have more pushback, similar adoption. Now the biggest difference is HR folks on the most part, I mean generalized, but they're more people people, not data people. Chad: Right. Ken: And so, you know, getting them to kind of be comfortable and deal with the data and that part it has been harder. They typically want someone to help them with that. But there has been a lot more now like analytics people placed into HR, side by side with the people people. And that's really helped. So I actually see it starting to accelerate quite a bit now. It's interesting. Chad: What ingredients do you need to actually create a marketplace? And how is your marketplace different from some of the ones that you mentioned like the Uber's of the world? Or maybe even the Fivvers or what have you? Joel: Is Bounty Jobs a competitor? Ken: Yeah, well I would say a couple of different questions there. So yes, Bounty Jobs is a competitor, but it's a good kind of a compare and contrast in talking about what makes a marketplace work and what really doesn't. So one you need to actually have everyone working together kind of under the same rules. And what we've done is we've created kind of a uniform contract and getting a bunch of Fortune 200 companies to all agree on the same terms is quite a challenge. But once you do that, now we have, 600 so companies and 5,000 or so recruiters under the same terms and conditions. And therefore we can instantaneously connect any one of them to get working on any job that they're expert at being able to do whereas others like a Bounty Jobs and others they don't have that uniform contract. Ken: If you think about your Uber, you don't want to be negotiating with each of the drivers as you go, right? It's all under one contract. The other thing that you need is you need to be able to match, right? So you need good matching. People have really sort of looked at matching resumes to jobs and that's really hard. We can get into why for a number of reasons, it isn't because of the algorithms, the machine learning can't do it, it's really a data problem. We can get into that later. Chad: It's a human problem, right? I mean because we really write bad job descriptions. Ken: Yeah, exactly. Job descriptions have very little useful information, as does a LinkedIn profile for that matter, right? So it was connecting kind of garbage and garbage and that becomes quite hard to match. Joel: Did you just call LinkedIn garbage? Chad: No, he called your profile a garbage. Joel: Oh okay. My bad. Ken: Well mine too, my LinkedIn profile is as much garbage as anyone else's. But what you can match to is a track record. And so if you have a recruiter track record you can really match to that. And that's one of the fundamental things that differentiates us as well, is we have all that track record data and it's all done in a way that's sort of systematic, and we can uniformly apply it across companies, across industries, across job types. It doesn't matter what the job title is because we can figure out what it means and all that. Ken: And we have access to all these jobs and so forth because we're integrated into ATS', which is another thing our competitors aren't. So for the enterprise you can basically check a box and post the jobs to Scout, there's no redundancy. If you want to track your candidates, and I know you guys know ATS as a note, you hate them like everybody else, as we do. But when you track it in an ATS, we'll pull that information, we'll send it out to the search firms so it cuts down on the noise. Everyone can know the status of the candidates in real time and all that. So we're trying to create this marketplace that's really information rich, available to everyone, transparent, and just really easy to make those matches. If you think about trying to find like a headhunter, third party recruiter for 40 different jobs, you want a couple for each of them, like yeah, good luck with that. You got to interview like 200 head hunters, like just hang me now, right? Like I don't want to do that. Joel: Shoot me now. Joel: Ken, I have a question, Chad. I want to get back a little bit on the company. Last year I wrote a blog post that highlighted I believe the 10 like biggest news stories. And one of them was was you guys raising $100 million, which honestly doesn't happen a lot in our industry. Jobcase did it again fairly recently, so there must be something in the water there in Boston that people are just writing checks. But I'm curious, what have you done with that money in the past year and when are you guys filing for IPO? Well. Ken: So first, one thing that really surprised me when I started looking at this industry is the amount of investment that's going into it. And it only makes sense considering it's literally like a half a trillion dollar market. That's the amount of money people spend worldwide on recruiting. And that doesn't even include kind of SOW, which is like consultants and stuff, which probably be $5 trillion if you added that in. So it's a huge amount of money. Companies are getting, even in the ATS space, Taleo was bought. They're getting 10x revenue on those recurring revenue streams. And there's a lot, a lot of BC, PE investment going into that. So that's number one. And it's ripe for disruption, right? So it's a great investment area. I was surprised about that to learn that, but it was very cool. Ken: And also we have an investor, John Schwong, who's an industry veteran. He's been pioneering lots of different stuff. He's a founder and not just an investor, he's totally committed believer in this, and he's got deep pockets. So that's good. The downside is, it's just him and I, and so we don't agree, he writes a check so you know who wins that argument. Joel: Sounds like a wife. Ken: I spent a lot of time like raising them money with BCs and that's a whole kind of thing in itself. And I love all my BCs, and I've had great ones, but there's a certain inefficiency of having to go raise money, and spend a little, and wait, and hit some milestones, go raise some more money, get five partners from five different firms to agree on anything, all that stuff. So this is really efficient and I mean what we've been doing with that is building a fantastic crop product, building a great a service organization because that's a big part of this. Matching technology and so forth and just investing in building the marketplace. Chad: How does the matching technology work? You have algorithms around recruiters, but is it also algorithms around the actual candidates in the system matching up against the job descriptions? Because, I mean we were just talking about how job descriptions and profiles are pretty much junk. How do you match the garbage to the garbage? Joel: By the way, I love how you just ignored my IPO question. That was great. Ken: I'll answer that, no idea. No, that's all right, we're here to build a big valuable company. There's a lot of different liquidity options. There's no specific, we don't have any specific time table right now. Joel: Fair enough. So back to Chad's question, I'm sorry. Ken: Yeah, back to the matching. So what we do is we match the job to the recruiter track record against that job type. So basically we have this machine learning system that takes any job and it doesn't really matter what the title is, it basically looks at all the words on a job description and classifies it into one of about a thousand different job types. And then we group them into subtypes and categories and things like that. So basically you can figure out it's an employment lawyer, or it's a front end developer it's a backend developer, it's a marketing manager, those types of things. There's enough information in a job description to categorize it, at least at that level. Ken: And then we do that for every single job and we look at every single recruiter, what they work on, what jobs, what candidates they submit, do the candidates get accepted into the interview process, how far did they get, did they get hired, all that stuff. So we just look at that track record against the job type, and you have a rating, a track record against that job type, that industry, that geography, all those different things. And then it makes it really easy to match it because we have these track records and all I have to do is just figure out what kind of job it is and match it up to the one who's got the best track record. If you think about it someone's been placing Java Developers in Boston for the last six months and been pretty good at it, they're probably going to be pretty good at it the next two months as well and get you some good candidates. Chad: And I totally understand that because you're matching against a track record. That's something that should be solid, right? But on the other side, we're talking about trying to match profiles against job descriptions. You don't believe that we're up to that just yet because it's all garbage data. Is that what I'm hearing? Ken: It's a lot less useful. So it's not completely useless. But, I'd say 95% of our matching comes from the track record and maybe 5% from their profile. Now you can augment those. So you can do testing, you can pull information. So for example in a resume, someone may have, it may at least list a company. Well, you can pull the information on that company and find out, hey, this person stayed five years at a company that was a hundred person company or got promoted three times, so they're probably kind of good. So you can figure out stuff, but it's a lot more complicated and difficult. Ken: So the track record is going really, really good and over time we'll build up and just in general, you know the matching of the candidates to the jobs will get better over time, but it's going to be a long time before it is even a higher weight even then the recruiter matching. Recruiter matching is going to be the main thing at least for the next five years. Joel: You have an incredibly strong skillset in terms of artificial intelligence, and obviously being a PhD from MIT that should come as no surprise. But AI is obviously the buzzword in the vendor space in our industry. So everything from chat bots, to automated sourcing, to scheduling, to all of it. Just kind of curious about your overall thoughts on AI. How much of it is real? How much of it is just plugging in Watson? And what should HR people and recruiters as a whole sort of appreciate about what's going on with AI in recruiting? Ken: Yeah, great question. It's actually something I love, I'm passionate about. It's actually, it seems hot now. I think two years ago, and I've got my head of marketing sitting around here, like I would say, we got to talk about AI, she'd be like, "No one in HR wants to hear about AI." And now it has become like obviously a pretty big thing and for good reason, right? Because the algorithms have gotten over the last five years, the algorithm has gotten really good. The ability to process lots of data, even for a relatively small company like us, we're using AWS and other things like that has gotten relatively easy. Ken: So we can use the same tools that everyone else does to do that to, to build these algorithms, and the applications of them have started to work. So for instance, our recruiter matching that really works using let's say a chat bot to ask screener questions, no problem with that, it fits pretty good. So if you try to use a chat bot to figure out who you're going to hire, it's going to be a disaster. If you're going to use a chat bot to do the screener questions, great. If you're going to use machine learning to match your resume to a job, you're going to end up with the problems Amazon had, which is arguably the best at machine learning, but they had this completely biased algorithm that didn't work. But if you are going to match your recruiter track record, it's going to work pretty well. Ken: So the great thing that I've seen is not only the algorithms getting much, much better over the last decade, but now, especially even in HR, they've got real applications that really work. You've got to pick them carefully. I sort of think about it in terms of human decision making complexity. And you don't want to start with the hardest problems, you want to start with the easiest time consuming problems. And that's just like automation, you do it that way regardless. So in AI, now there's applications that really work and that's what's exciting. I think it was- Announcer: It's commercial time. Chad: Dude, we're always talking about cool new tech, but it's hard for hiring companies to change. I mean adoption's a bitch. Joel: Yep. Chad: New tech can get them to qualified candidates so much faster. Joel: I know man, but recruiters already have their routine in place and nobody wants to jump into another platform, especially when it's expensive and also requires hours, maybe days of training. Chad: Exactly, but that's where Uncommon's new service comes into play. Uncommon pairs expert recruiters with in-house kick ass technology. Joel: All right, interesting. Interesting. It sounds like Uncommon understands the problem of change. Chad: That's why they hand select veteran recruiters, train them on this kick ass technology that has access to over 100 million active profiles. Joel: Yeah, yeah. But I bet they're expensive and I bet it requires some kind of annual commitment or contract, right? Chad: No, man. Uncommon is not an agency, they don't require a contract, any contingencies. All they do, they charge one flat fee per project saving, I don't know, anywhere from 50 to 80% on each hire versus the average agency cut. Joel: Oh, snap companies could save big stacks of paper, especially if they're rapidly scaling and need hires today. Chad: Yep. And all you have to do is reach out to Teg and the Uncommon crew at Uncommon.co. That's uncommon.co. Joel: Change doesn't have to be a pain if you're using Uncommon. Chad: It's show time. Ken: What do they call it? Like the nuclear winter of AI was for about 30 years starting a decade ago where all these people were working on and none of it really worked for anything. So it was pretty cool to see it start popping up and actually working. Joel: Yeah. You mentioned chat bots and a lot of the money that's flowing into this industry is going to chat bots. Should we believe the hype or do these services have a long way to go to really make a difference? Ken: Oh I think a little of both. They've got a long way to go to really make a difference, but like I said, you're starting to see some initial places where it actually kind of works okay. You know, initial screenings. You know the beginning, if you think about a recruiting process as a sales process for the big funnel of the world of candidates at one end and the alpha couple or one that you want to hire at the other end. You know, at that big screening step at the beginning, or getting people to pay attention to you, or marketing to them, you don't need humans to do all that stuff. You really can do that algorithmically and then have a little bit or interaction with the people who respond. I mean, it's better. Ken: Right now what does marketing have for that interaction? They see if you read something or clicked on something. Okay, well take it to the next step, ask them a simple question, get an answer one way or another, and now you've qualified them a little bit further before you turn it over to a human. That stuff actually is starting to work pretty well. Chad: We were actually on stage with Holland Dombeck from a Delta Airlines a couple of weeks ago and she was talking about how her recruiting team has, they've been able to log that they're actually getting back 80 hours a week to their recruiting team. And I believe, I agree a hundred percent, chat bots have a long way to go, but because our processes are so jacked up right now as it is, these little technologies, if implemented correctly, there can be huge impact right now. Ken: Agreed, totally. Chad: So kind of spinning away on talking about AI, you just mentioned Amazon and that algorithm, and how it kind of went haywire. Knowing that there's a lot going on with compliance with GDPR across the pond and then obviously here pretty soon in California they're going to have a GDPR-like type of regulation that is coming out. Do you believe that black box AI is going to be able to exist? Or do you think all of that is going to have to be open and transparent so we can actually find out why the AI is making the decisions that it's making, especially when it comes to candidates and pushing them through the process? Ken: Yeah, the compliance stuff is pretty interesting. We're already GDPR compliant here at Scout. So we kind of know how to deal with a lot of that stuff. And again, because we're looking at a track record where we can look at the track record against even let's say gender, right? We know the answer should be 50-50 that one's pretty easy. And we can see, basically the bias in the system, we can correct for it so we can show that stuff. So we have a big advantage to be able to dealing with that stuff right now. Ken: But you asked a really... One of my favorite questions about the black box problem, right? And how do we deal with that because no, people are not going to put up with a black box for picking candidates in a world where there's known biases and things like that. So what do you do? And it's an interesting problem because if you break out the components of why you're selecting people and then use that, you're actually have now sort of handicapped your algorithms by doing that. But if you don't do that, then what are you going to do? I do think there's a solution in the middle, which is where you actually can not only output the selection, but you can output the why out of the black box. And then if you show that that why actually correlates and stacks up to the output, over time you can show that you're compliant. That's what we're doing at Scout. Chad: Got you, got you. So when we talk about Scout itself, how many recruiters are in pretty much the database that are ready for work? And then also what segment of the population are you currently focusing on to be able to obviously provide these services? Ken: Yeah, so we have about 5000 recruiters on the network. We probably have about 1000 kind of weekly active or so users, just kind of how we measure it, which is someone like working on a job right now. So that's kind of the population we're dealing with right now, we are focused in North America. We're not international yet, that's probably going to be next year's a task for us. But we do all industries and all job types and so forth. And we started in North America, we started with I guess what you would consider your traditional headhunter contingent firm roles. You know, your engineer, your director of this or that, even like nurse, doctor, whatever, that kind of stuff that you hire a headhunter to go help you find. And that was interesting and that's sort of how we got started. Ken: But what we found is now this network has gotten more and more powerful and efficient because we're able to direct the jobs to the folks who are experts in them instead of them using their 10 candidate pool that they found to fill one position, they can now fill three with it. So they're getting a lot more efficient and that drives that efficiency, drives the cost down and so forth too, right? So everyone is more efficient. And what we found is we can go after not just traditional headhunter jobs, but all kinds of jobs. So we fill manufacturing operator jobs, at a couple thousand dollar a piece, we fill call centers at $1-2000 apiece. And interestingly all the way up to directors of medicine, heads of global markets, chief investment officers, $100000 fee. So the fees range from $1000 to $100000, and we really now can have a great strategic conversation with our customers about where do they need to augment their team, where do they need help hiring, and those are the jobs we can help them fill. And it could be the traditional ones, it could be executives, it could be more the volume jobs, either one. And now we started adding temp as well. Ken: And we'll be able to optimize even between not only which firm, which recruiter works on these different jobs, but even do you want to do a temp or a temp to perm or perm, what geography you want it, and we can really advise our clients based on all the data we have. So it's a whole other set of services and information we can provide to our clients just around the huge amount of data that we're collecting. I think right now, basically a candidate is submitted like every 30 seconds or something like that. I can't remember the exact number, but it's getting pretty large. Chad: Got you, got you. So it's interesting because as we talk about AI, and machine learning, and all these big kind of scary things, recruiters kind of feel like they're going to lose their job. And we've had conversations about how we feel about that. What are your thoughts? Let's say in the next five years, what does a recruiter's job look like? Does it look pretty similar to what it is today? Or is it much different than what it is today? Ken: No, we won't need recruiters at all. So it's going to look quite different though. And what's going to happen is, I mentioned before kind of this human decision making complexity model, which is when you look at disruption of jobs and job functions. So the type of work that's done, that's more the mundane lower-level stuff, reaching out to candidates, scheduling, initial screenings and filters, the recruiters are not going to have to waste our time doing that anymore. Chad: Got you. Ken: What they're going to do is spend their time on really assessing the few that make it through all of these automated screens and so forth, or maybe finding the diamonds in the rough and really figuring out are they a fit for the company, for the job, and are really doing that actual hard work of doing that. The other thing they're going to do is sell the candidate, right? No one changes jobs and leaves a good job, but the people you want all are highly sought after. Ken: And what's going to change because a chat bot asks them to come take this cool new job and it really takes a human to sell somebody on something like that. And not only that, the candidates we want, they're passive. They have jobs. We don't want people who are filling out job applications online. We all want to hire people who are great employees that are currently gainfully employed and probably don't have a whole lot of time to pay attention, and certainly not pay attention to chat bots reaching out to them. So you need these recruiters and the relationships to network to the right people and to have relationships with them and convince them to even look at a job, look at a new company. That's the hard work that a recruiter is going to do, they're not going waste their time scheduling and screening and the other stuff that frankly they probably don't want to do anyway. Chad: Right, right. So knowing that AI is getting smarter and smarter, do you believe that AI is going to be making a lot of these decisions up front and then it's just going to be the product on the back that we're really having to work through? So they're doing the candidate matching, they're doing the screening, they're doing all of these things that have pretty much been programmed into them of what we want and what we need. Is it just going to be a press the button to push the job out and then you wait until after the first interview before you actually see what pops out on the end? Ken: I think a lot of it will be done in that way, but also you need ways to introduce randomness because you don't want to get too stuck. You're like you're never going to learn and do new things if you keep doing kind of the same thing. Chad: Yeah. Ken: And we even give that ability. So we'll give the ability of newcomers to try out and search for jobs, find them and work on them. We'll give them the ability to try new companies, new job, whatever. They'll start getting shut down if their performance stinks and kicked off if they're not good. And so if it's not working for them, they'll move onto or they'll stick with what they know or whatever. But you do need ways to make sure that your system isn't stifling in a nation, that your system isn't, blocking out certain segments, especially because of bias. So it's not that simple as just saying, oh yeah, we'll wait until we have this sort of short list of great candidates and screen them. There's a lot more work to do, but it's more of the intellectual work to make sure your system is working right. Then the mundane stuff of figuring out, oh, how am I going to get these five people scheduled on the same day for these three people I want to bring in? You don't have to spend a lot of time doing that anymore hopefully. Chad: Last question, I don't know if you're familiar or not, but Indeed bought a platform called Sift. And Sift is really a marketplace from my standpoint, as we take a look at Indeed is owned by Recruit Holdings out of out of Japan, they are a huge recruiting/staffing company. I personally see Indeed trying to move staffing into more of a marketplace type of scenario. Do you believe that big companies like Indeed are going to start to pivot into your market? And if so, is it going to be more on the staffing side or do you really see it as more direct to an employer? Ken: You know, I don't know if they're going to try to shift into our marketplace, but there's a huge need for kind of what they do, right? So all of the recruiters on our network need to find candidates are what we call our providers, right? The 5000 search engines out there. We're not providing the candidates for them, they're finding them through their network through other ways. And Indeed frankly is one way. There's also companies want to hire some folks directly, they don't always want to use a third party recruiter and so forth. And so again, the internal recruiters, they have limited networks for all the different job types they have to try to get and so forth. So they're always going to use things like Indeed to post their jobs and source and so forth. Ken: So there's still a need for all of that and a big need for all of that. And it's just consolidation is good for this industry in that sense. And that for the candidate's easier, like I don't want to look at 20 different job boards or whatever. If there's one place that's serving the need or a couple that's actually not so bad. So the fact that Indeed has been buying up all these different properties and sites to do that, and that they're trying to match the candidates of the jobs they should be trying to do that, even though we all talked about, it's really hard. Whether we're going to get into tracking recruiter track records and all that stuff. And one of the problems they have is that once a candidate is submitted, they kind of lose visibility of it. So they have no way to know who's good, where we have visibility into those submissions and what happens to those candidates throughout every job, every company, and so forth. And we can normalize it, as I said, by job type and industry and so forth. Ken: So we can build those track records because we have access to all that data and we use that to create the ratings for the recruiters. And those ratings, incorporate all the things these recruiters are good at. Like finding candidates, finding jobs, candidate experience, all that- Chad: Sounds like an Uber rating, right? Ken: Well, it's like the stock price, right? You know how they say all the information about a stock is included in the stock price basically? So our recruiter rating is basically that. So if you want to know who's good with candidate experience, well it's the higher rated ones because they've got people placed. And so having access to that end to end data set, is something that as a marketplace operator and us being in the middle and being integrated and ATS', we have a pretty unique view in terms of being able to track all that stuff. Chad: Got you. So I lied, last question. We just talked about having one place to go, like where we were referencing Indeed. What about Google's foray into this market from the Google For Jobs standpoint, not to mention applicant tracking system, they are currently powering like 4000 different recruitment platforms. What do you think about Google's foray into recruitment? Ken: I think it's great. So I mean we actually work with them quite a bit on some of this stuff, including the job categorizations and things like that. I mean they basically got into it because people were searching for jobs. And what is Google good at? Search. And we're actually using some of their capabilities in terms of job search, everyone uses Google search, right? So I think it's great that they're in that. We've collaborated on the categorization and all that stuff. I think that in terms of their ATS, if you look at the Google Suite, what do you have? You have calendar and you have mail, right? I mean that's awesome, right? So again, I was talking about chat bots doing scheduling and all that stuff, putting that in the ATS platform, that's awesome, All the ATS platforms are our partners. We're partnered and connected with IBM Connects and and Oracle, Taleo, and Workday, and Google and so forth, right? Ken: So we don't view that as competitive at all. We actually view them as a great partner. Chad: Excellent. Well Ken, first and foremost, I'm going to have to apologize because this is after lunch and Joel usually takes his nap after lunch and I think he actually is taking his nap right now. But I appreciate you coming on, talking to us and anything you want to leave us with? Ken: No, just thanks so much for the opportunity. It's great chatting with you guys, even if Joel did fall asleep. And yeah, anytime you guys, I'd love to chat about Scout, and recruiting, and AI. It's like nothing I'd rather do, so thanks. Chad: Excellent. So if somebody wants to find out more about Scout, where would the go? Ken: www.goscoutgo.com. Chad: Excellent. Thanks so much. Ken: Thanks guys. Chad: We out. Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. Thanks for listening to my dad, the Chad and his buddy Cheese. This has been the Chad & 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. #Marketplace #AI #Matching #CollegeRecruiter #Recruitment

Live from New York, the boys recorded the weekly show at HireConf, HiringSolved's conference. In addition to covering news from Monster, Dice, Glassdoor and Under Armour, there's a riveting interview with HiringSolved co-founder and CEO Shon Burton. Enjoy, and visit sponsors Sovren, JobAdX and Canvas. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. 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: This week Chad and Cheese was live from New York City and HIREconf, brought to you by the wonderful people at HiringSolved. Enjoy after a word from our sponsor. Canvas: Canvas is the world's first intelligent text-based interviewing platform, empowering recruiters to engage, screen, and coordinate logistics via text, and so much more. We keep the human, that's you, at the center while Canvas bot is at your side adding automation to your workflow. Canvas leverages the latest in machine learning technology and has powerful integrations, that help you make the most of every minute of your day. Easily amplify your employment brand with your newest culture video, or add some personality to the mix by firing off a Bitmoji. We make compliance easy and are laser focused on recruiter success. Request a demo at gocanvas.io and, in 20 minutes, we'll show you how to text at the speed of talent. That's gocanvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent. Chad: Whew, hello New York, bring it. Audience: Woo! Joel: Dude, you said that would feel like we were in a rock band, and it was pretty close. Chad: It was pretty close. Joel: It was pretty close. Chad: Yeah, I thought, let's move in, yeah, that was good stuff. Joel: Who knows who we are, anyone? Audience: Woo! Chad: Who doesn't know who we are? Shame. Joel: All right. Chad: Shame. Joel: I'm the good cop. We have a podcast, for those of you, who don't know who we are. We cover a weekly show, where we cover the industry, who's buying, who's getting money, who's going out of business, who sucks. We cover that. We have a show called Firing Squad, what's sort of like Shark Tank for the employment industry, and we have two. Chad: Without the millionaires. Joel: Then we have two shows, where we dig deep into subject matter like automation and chatbots and shit like that. We will cuss during the show, so if you're offended by any of that, fuck it. Chad: Ear muffs. Joel: This is a live show, this will be our weekly show. I'm ready to go at it, unless anyone has any questions, we're going to launch into the show. Chad: Questions, comments. Okay and we won't be using ear muffs, so you're just going to have to do it yourself, right, so. Joel: All right. Chad: Hit it. Joel: Live from New York, it's the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Chad: Bring it. Joel: Yep, HR's most dangerous podcast is in the Big Apple. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm drunk Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, turns out everyone actually is looking for a job, every minute of every day. Under Armour is not okay with those three martini lunches, at the local strip club anymore. Chad: What? Joel: And we get a few good minutes with HiringSolved's founder and CEO, Shon Burton. Chad: Woo. Audience: Woo. Joel: Let's do it, so let's do shout outs. Chad: Do it, okay. First and foremost, shout out for the beer, Shane Gray, everybody, Shane Gray. Came all the way from Dublin, just to be able to deliver Modelo Beer. Joel: It's not a party if the Irishman is not here. Chad: That is good shit, yeah. Joel: Yeah. Chad: I mean, that's obviously his first. Joel: Modelo from the Irish guy. Chad: Ed from Philly, stand up buddy. Ed: I don't wanna stand up. Joel: Yeah, no. Chad: He's a super fan right there, bringing all the hate from Philly that you can get, we love the man. Ed: Boo. Chad: See. Joel: Early on, Ed's been there for us and we're here for you Ed. Chad: We're here for him. Joel: Always. Chad: He needs friends though, so. Joel: Jo Weech. She's in the audience, there we go. Chad: Super fan. Joel: Super fan is here. Chad: Love her. Joel: Front row, no panties. No panties or bras on the stage, if you were thinking about it. Audra Knight, is on our shout out list, as well. Chris Russell. Tincup is not here, although he's on the list. Chad: There he is. Joel: Yeah, if you're in New York, Chris will be somewhere eating pizza or drinking. Chad: Or both. Yeah. So Ross Henderson, gave us a shout out. Joel: Yes, Ross Henderson of LinkedIn. And you know I love to drink the LinkedIn Kool-Aid. Chad: You are such a stinker. Joel: Ross Henderson, LinkedIn, super fan. He calls us an unvarnished show, in a good way, which is nice. Chad: Yeah, yeah, in a good way. Jorge, I'm going to screw this up so badly. Albinagorta. Joel: Is he here? Chad: No, I don't think so. Joel: Oh, okay, well, who cares if he says your name. Chad: Yeah, just love. We got to give people love, who listen and show up as well. And Jackie because she said she's going to dance. Joel: Jackie is going to dance? Chad: Yes. Joel: Nice. Nice. Chad: She needs to get a beer though, you need a beer to dance. Joel: I had one, Debbie Salado. Chad: Huh? Joel: Is she here? I threw it in. Audience: She was here yesterday. Joel: She was here yesterday. Chad: Okay. Joel: All right, well shout out to her. Chad: Sucks to be you Debbie, you're not here. Susanna Frazier, where's she at? Here somewhere. Yeah, no, she tweeted a top five recruitment podcast list out. Have you ever seen these podcast lists? Right, they're like, hey top five, this is what you should listen to. Matt O'Donnell, actually gave us a good response and said- Joel: Wait, we weren't on the list of podcasts though. Chad: We weren't on the list, yeah. Joel: Like you need to add that, it's kind of, an important- Chad: Matt said the fact that hashtag Chad Cheese isn't on the list, is a shock. Joel: It's kind of bullshit, I don't know. Chad: Yeah, it's bullshit. Joel: Just saying. Chad: John, okay this is awesome. We asked definitely to connect on LinkedIn and Facebook and tweets, you know hashtag Chad Cheese. So I got called out on LinkedIn. Jon Hedlund. Apparently I took too long, to accept his LinkedIn invitation. This was John's response, "Fucking six weeks for the Chad to accept." And that was it. That was it, so shout out to John. Yeah, Jon I'd say that I'm sorry that it took me that long but dude. Joel: So many haters. Chad: But I don't sit on LinkedIn, waiting for motherfuckers to send me invites. Like I just don't do that. Joel: Recruiters have no patience, at all. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not my job, I don't do that. Joel: Ed Newman gone crazy, we'll give him a quick shout out. Chad: Jesus Christ. Joel: Ed Newman, a lot of you know in the industry, Phenom People. If you listen to our podcast and a lot of you do, you know that we were at iCIMS, a few weeks ago. Chad: I'll just say right. Joel: We're saying to their CEO, talking about destroying the middle-men of which he named Phenom, as one of those middle-men. Well, Ed Newman took, not too kindly to that comment. His so, in all fairness, Ed's take on this is, it's iCIMS, that is the middle man, they're getting crushed on the down. The smaller businesses are being serviced by Lever, Greenhouse, the big enterprises are being serviced by Workday and the Goliaths like that. And it's the ATSs like iCIMS, that are sort of stuck in the middle. Chad: Yeah. Joel: In fairness to Ed, he's been around a long time, he knows the industry. He is sort of lobbying for his, you know his folks. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: But time will tell, exactly who wins that game and who doesn't. Chad: Yeah, I think we've seen this, throughout the years, right? The whole cycles of the big Uber enterprise systems and then they just crash because they suck. Because they have all these things that they try to do and they don't do anything well. So, yeah. I think the middle-men, they are niche players that were born because user experience sucked, right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: But if he doesn't think that he's a middle man, he is so full of shit. I don't think that they're going away but they, he's a middle man. That's all he is. Joel: He's a layer, I believe is what- Chad: Yeah, a layer, which is a middle man. Joel: ... the vernacular is. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Colin Day says he's a middle man, I say he's a middle man. Joel: We'll see. No, he believes that they're at least five years ahead of any other ATS, that wants to do what Phenom people does. Chad: Okay. Joel: Any Phenom users, in the audience? Chad: Yeah, I think that says it all guys. Joel: Darn it. Chad: No hands, no hands. Joel: Any iCIMS users in the audience? Chad: Yeah, I think that says it all Ed Newman. Joel: iCIMS wins, okay. Chad: No, I think somebody did raise a hand but it was very slow, it was like ah shit, I'm the only user here, damn it. Yeah, so you had one Ed, that was it. Yeah, so no, we love you Ed but dude, you're a middle man, get over it. Joel: Let's do a Russian shout out, real quick. Chad: Okay. Firing squad. Firing squad we just talked about. We're pleasantly surprised. Has anybody heard of these things called chatbots that are out there? Audience: Yeah, no. Chad: Right, yeah, no shit, right? Yeah, duh. Joel: Who hates chatbots? Not yet, okay, give it time. Chad: All over the place. Everybody, chatbot, chatbot, for everything there's a chatbot, right? We were getting ready to flame the hell out of this Russian chatbot. I mean literally. Joel: The chatbot wasn't Russian. The founders of the company are Russian. Chad: Which means it was a Russian chatbot, anyway. So anyway, we're getting ready to flame this and she comes on and she did a wonderful job. If you haven't heard, it's XOR.ai. Check out the firing squad. Joel: X-O-R.ai, which I thought was the worst name since- Chad: XOR, yeah. Joel: Go Cavas.io, but. Chad: If you're into math you know Xor, like an Xor gate and that's, she's a mathematician. So it's all kind of. Joel: Nerd alert. Chad: Yeah, anyway, sorry about that. Too deep, too far. Joel: And the last one we have is The Hiring squad, crew, let's brown nose them for a second. Jeremy, Sean. Chad: Woo. Joel: Everybody, yeah, let's hear it for The HiringSolved crew, woo. Audience: Woo, woo. Chad: They got suckered into bringing us on stage, yes. Audience: Yeah. Chad: Love it, love it. Joel: All right. Let's get to the show. Chad: Hit it. Joel: All right. DHI. Chad: Everybody knows DHI. Joel: The artist known as Dice, Clearancejobs and eFinancialCareers, reported earnings, this past quarter. Dice is down again. 6% lower this year, over last year. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Not good. They have a new CEO, as most of you know. Art Zeile. Chad: Art. Joel: Who by the way, spoke at- Chad: TAtech. Joel: TAtech. Chad: TAtech, yeah, yeah. Joel: We begged him for an interview. He's like, "No problem." We never saw him. Chad: He's like, "Yeah, I'll be right there." Joel: Never saw him again. Chad: Yeah. Joel: He was gone, yeah. Chad: He was ninja-ed out of there. Joel: We drove him out. Chad: He's like, fuck this, I'm not doing it. Joel: It's not all bad news, I guess for Dice. Clearancejobs revenue was up 22% higher than the prior year. Chad: It's not all bad news for Dice, they're down in this economy? Are you, who I mean, is anybody? Joel: Well tech is down in this economy. Chad: Is anybody recruiting for technology today, at all? There's a little bit, maybe. Joel: For the listeners, 80% of the hands go up. Chad: Are you freaking kidding me. Yeah, there's a show of hands, sorry guys. Joel: Who uses Dice, anyone? This is the fun part of an interactive show. Chad: There's one, two, okay. Joel: Keep your hand up if you're happy with your Dice experience. We won't name names. Chad: Yeah, zero, okay. Joel: Okay, hand went down, bummer. Chad: So this is what I'm saying, this is bullshit because in this type of an economy, these guys should be killing it. But then you take a look at Clearancejobs, Clearancejobs is killing it. So what are they doing different than what Dice is? Joel: Well there's a need for Clearance. Chad: There's a need for both. Joel: Peeps. Chad: There's a need for both, what are they doing different? Joel: Well you said, what are they doing right? Chad: What are they doing different? Because obviously they're doing something right, what are they doing? Joel: They're one of the only brands out there, for Clearance, I think. I mean there aren't a lot of sites you think about when you need, you know Clearance folks for government and whatever positions. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: But if you said, how do I recruit tech people, you can come up with 20 sites immediately. Chad: It's not cool to be on Dice anymore, is it? I mean if you're- Chris Russell: Sourcing is killing Dice. Chad: Sourcing is killing Dice. Joel: Sourcing is killing Dice from the cheap seats, thank you Chris Russell. Chad: Hey yeah, Chris Russell. Chris Russell. Joel: Nice. Chad: So I mean but it's not cool, is it cool to be in tech on- Joel: Tech people don't want to be on a job board, right? Chad: ... on Dice anymore, is it cool? Joel: If you're the best tech person in the world, do you want to be on a job board called Dice? Chad: No. Joel: You want to be on GitHub, showing off your shit. Chad: Yeah, until LinkedIn screws that shit up. Joel: Do we have anything else to say about Dice? Chad: No. Joel: And DHI? Chad: No, I'm just, they- Joel: Art. Chad: Art. Joel: Come on the show. Chad: Get your shit together Art. Joel: Art, come on the show. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We want to talk to you. Speaking of dinosaurs in the industry, Monster has a survey out this week. Audience: Ah. Joel: Which is a fun little survey. Chad: Yeah and they were down too. Joel: They found that 63% of employees. Chad: Yes. Joel: Dream about a new job all day, every day, every minute of every day. It is true, everyone is an active candidate. Chad: Who's the sorcerer? Good news. Joel: Everyone is an active candidate. Chad: Who's a recruiter? Good news, yes. Joel: Is that all your commentary on that, that you're going to give me? Chad: There's not much to say, I mean seriously. I mean how, what's the ... We were talking about underemployment, I think yesterday, Sean said something about it. That's one of the biggest issues that we see. I mean it, let's just say in one of my verticals that I work in, on the veteran side of the house. Yeah, employment's up but underemployment is horrible for individuals in that sector. Yeah, they have a job but they're incredibly underemployed. Yeah, I mean I'd be thinking about a new god damn job every day too, if I was underemployed and I knew that I was qualified for something more, right? Joel: There's a great quote for those who used to watch the Drew Carey show, The Drew Carey Show. Where he says, "Oh you hate your job, oh there's a group for that, they meet every day at the bar." Anyway. What else did the findings say? Chad: I know. Joel: 8% said they think about a new job on bad days, only 8%. And 3% said they couldn't imagine working a different job because they love their current job so much. That's heartwarming at 3%. Chad: That was because they were taking a survey. Joel: Groundswell of people. Chad: They were taking a survey and they knew that the Google big brother was watching. Joel: Well, you know that is like us, that'd want to talk about it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Because we like, that kind of stuff. All right moving on to, soon to be dinosaur, Glassdoor. Few tidbits on them. Any Glassdoor users in the audience? Love the interactivity, okay quite a few. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Quite a few. If you're thinking about using Glassdoor, their 30 day trial period is ending, if it hasn't ended already. An email went out to some folks it said, "The 30 day trial is over." Chad: More freebies. Joel: We think that this segues nicely into Indeed, not giving away anything for free anymore. As they bought Glassdoor or at least, their company bought Glassdoor. So Glassdoor and Indeed are basically the same thing. My contention is that, Glassdoor won't be around in a few years. They're going to get hot jobbed. Audience: Hot jobbed, hot jobbed. Joel: The reviews will go over to Indeed. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The job postings are already in Indeed and all the candidates, which is our second news item, will also go to Indeed. So Glassdoor updated their terms and service, this week. Chad: Well wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, time out. Joel: All right. Chad: Everybody knows, I mean Indeed is obviously pushing staffing off of, unless you pay. Because your jobs suck, unless you give us money. And then they don't suck anymore, right? But the thing is, from the, at least insiders that we've talked to, is that it seems like they actually make more money, they being Indeed, after they kick staffing out of their organic. Because they feel like they need it so badly, that they're willing to pay three times as much, in some cases, to be able to get that traffic back. Anybody feeling that, anyone? No names, okay good. Chad: Being able to take a look at Glassdoor, starting to see these, kind of like these Indeed movements, into the Glassdoor space. I mean, where do you think that's actually going to go? Do you think it's going to be one brand and how quick do you think that's going to happen? Joel: Yeah, it doesn't make sense to keep two brands alive, as is. I mean, Indeed already has upgraded their profiles for companies. They've added analytics to that, so I think it's just a matter of time before you're, you have one profile. All their views go over to Indeed, they become this huge monolithic employer review site. Until Google starts getting reviews and or LinkedIn starts having reviews as well. Joel: But it makes no sense to have two sites, they'll bring over some talent. They'll take away any duplicitous jobs, that are with both companies. And I think Indeed is the stronger brand, anyway. It's also very telling that if you were at HR Tech, one of the glaring admissions from the show, was Glassdoor. There was no Glassdoor. Chad: There was no Glassdoor, yeah. Joel: At the show. Chad: Yeah. Joel: HR Tech tends to be a show that a Glassdoor would show up. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And exhibit and they weren't there, which to me was another thing like, why are we spending money when the brand isn't going to be around for much longer. Chad: Google wasn't there, Facebook wasn't there, so I mean. Joel: They don't need to be there. Chad: You can read into it. Joel: Some brands are bigger than HR Tech. Announcer: It's commercial time. 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. Sovren: We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates, like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner. Announcer: It's show time. Chad: I don't know that. Joel: Microsoft was there though, remember that? Chad: I mean I see, yeah. Joel: Microsoft had a 10 by 10 booth. Chad: Microsoft had two booths, they had one glorious booth and they had this little one with two guys. It looked like in a garage band. They were like selling Dynamics 365. That's all they were there for, was Dynamics 365. Literally, it was just a regular booth, like garage band. Come on up, guy had like his shirt half tucked in and it was not Microsoft. Joel: Which wasn't as bad as the crowded booth, which had a toilet in the booth. Chad: Yeah that was, yeah. How did you manage that? Joel: Yes, they had it. Chad: Yeah, okay so. Joel: Yeah, it was a 10 by 10, they had a toilet. It wasn't, it didn't have water. It wasn't a working toilet. Chad: Right. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Okay so. Joel: And some graffiti wall on the background. Chad: Yeah, so my take on the whole merging brands, I think it's going to happen just because of the hubris of Indeed. Everybody just believes that everybody is going to come to Indeed anyways. But I don't think it makes a hell of a lot of sense because once again, you're taking two different revenue streams and they're going to smack them together. And they're going to lose in some things. Joel: But it's also two cost centers. Chad: Yeah, in some cases. But they're going to see one brand. Joel: It cost money to run Glassdoor. Chad: When you see one brand and you think that you can squeeze something out of that, and put it to something else, that's some, it's entirely different. Joel: Okay then, okay they may not hot job it, but maybe they'll Simply Hired it, where they just put their jobs on the site. You can still go to Glassdoor, you can still use it but it's all. Chad: You can, posting your blogs on there too. Joel: Plus as an employer, they'd rather you go to one site. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Being Indeed and maybe they'll say, we'll cross post it to Glassdoor for an extra fee. Now in that case, they might keep Glassdoor if they're upgrading the postings. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel: But yeah. Chad: I think that's telling though. I mean Simply Hired is still around, I have no clue why. But Simply Hired is still around. Joel: They're still doing surveys, interestingly enough. Chad: And content. Joel: Anyway, we talked about that on the last show. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel: But you can't post jobs just on Simply Hired. It's just, Indeed's feed, basically. Chad: Okay, but it still exists. Joel: I think Glassdoor, if it- Chad: But it still exists, that's my point. Joel: Yeah, okay. Chad: That's my point. Joel: For no reason whatsoever, in my opinion, do they exist. Let's talk about strip clubs. Chad: Again, okay. Joel: Because the show is dying, we need to spark it up a little bit. We don't get radio silence on the podcast, we just think everyone is still listening. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Under Armour, a little known company out in Maryland. Apparently strip clubs were an expensable thing. How many of you work at a company that you can expense strip club trips? A couple hands, I like. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Who do you work for? Audience: A staffing company. Joel: Under Armour, okay great, no. Chad: Man Monster, in the early Monster days, I mean I think that was like probably 50% of the expenses back then. Joel: You heard it here first folks. Chad: Not mine, yeah I know. Because we had so many staffing companies, that's why. Clients. Joel: So Under Armour has made it, they've banned strip club trips, being expensable, expendable. Chad: Yeah, whatever. Joel: Expensive, I don't know. Audience: Expensive. Chad: Expensive. Joel: Expensive, there you go, we'll go with that. I don't have a comment, I just think that's really funny that news came out. Chad: Well I think it's interesting that they put an email out. I mean that, okay so they had to put an email out to employees, to announce this. I mean this is not like you know, in 2000 or something like that, right? This is 2018 and this is something that they had to actually adjust to. Then and this also springboards into what happened in Google, was it last week? The protests at Google? Joel: The walkout, yeah. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The big walkout. Chad: I mean how do we do this in 2018? We've got Google one week, who has thousands of Googlers walking out, right? Because of some idiot, who gets a $90 million parachute, out of the company. But thousands and then the next week. Joel: Alleged sexual harasser. Chad: The next week. Joel: You should probably add to that. Chad: Alleged, whatever, he's an asshole. Joel: Idiot is not quite descriptive enough. Chad: Yeah, that's a good call. Joel: Okay. Chad: But the next week, no strip clubs, the next week. Seriously? Joel: One Googler said on the walkout. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Quote, "They told me I'm no longer allowed to talk to anybody about this issue, they recommended therapy." Chad: They recommended therapy, yeah. Announcer: It's commercial time. JobAdX: As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX has been providing job board publishers, direct employers, agencies, RPOs and staffing firms. Dynamic job bidding and realtime ad delivery, through our programmatic job advertising exchange. When we started, we describe JobAdX is AdSense for jobs. Now, we offer much more with switchboard and live alert, completing our full suite of dynamic programmatic advertising tools. With the best of consumer ad tech. Switchboard offers our dynamic technologies to all partner job board feed management. And Live Alert eliminates latency and expired job ads, via email. JobAdX: For more information about any of our ad solutions, please reach out to us at Join Us at JobAdX.com. That's Join Us at J-O-B-A-D-X.com. JobAdX, the best ad tool, providing smarter programmatic, for all your advertising needs. Announcer: It's show time. Chad: That being said. Joel: You know who else we should take a look at, Mr. Shon Burton, CEO and founder of HiringSolved. Audience: Woo! Joel: Come on up Shon. Audience: Woo! Shon: But I didn't. Joel: But we have dollar bills, just in case you change your minds. Chad: Yeah, yeah no, we got, we got. Joel: Jeremy, are we good on time? What do we got? The clock's running but. Chad: Right there, yeah, no, we're good. Joel: Oh it's counting down. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Okay, I'm quick. Chad: That's the smart one. Joel: Oh, we got- Chad: So yesterday there was a fireside chat and we really talked about the real close, who is Shon. We don't care about any of that stuff. We want to know all the cool stuff about Shon. Tell us background and then let's get into the bullshit. Joel: To me, to me Shon is sort of a reclusive CEO. Chad: Because we don't know, yeah. Joel: He doesn't tweet, he doesn't Instagram. Chad: He's stealthy. Joel: He's not snapping. Shon: I do have a Twitter account. Chad: You have a Twitter account? Shon: Yeah, it's actually. Joel: And nobody follows it, so nobody knows. Shon: It's @Shon. Joel: It's @Shon? Oh nice, I'm going to follow. Anybody, who follows him? No one. Shon: Who has a four letter Twitter account, raise your hand? Nobody. Joel: That's good. Shon: That's right, this guy. Okay. They never do. Joel: For me, the genesis of the company, you're not a recruiting guy. I know this is going a way back but for my benefit, I'd love to know how the company started and why? You're an idea guy, which I got from dinner. Why was it this idea that sparked you to action, to found the company? Shon: So I am a recruiting guy. Joel: Oh yeah? Shon: Yeah, I mean I did a brief tour in recruiting. That's how we started the company. I was an engineer that got talked into starting a recruiting company. We talked about this on the fireside chat. Chad: He wasn't here. Joel: I wasn't here. Shon: Oh. Joel: Yeah. Chad: See. Shon: That's what I said. Joel: And our listeners weren't there either. Shon: Sorry, sorry everybody. Joel: There's no toilet in here today. Shon: Yes, so yeah. I was an engineer and I actually hated recruiters at first and then grew to love them because I learned that, I got hired at KPMG and a recruiter enlightened me that I could make more money. They're like, "You're asking for way too little money." That recruiter got me something like a $30,000 a year raise, at the tender age of 25. I loved recruiters after that. Then I went on to start my own consulting firm. The economy took a shit. Joel: What's the timetable on this for you? Shon: This is 2000, this is the economy took a shit in 2008. I'm selling like high end consulting services. One guy, we talked yesterday, one guy we had out at Google for $2400 an hour and he was just billing. We had a little bit of margin in that guy. Joel: Yeah. Shon: Then 2008 hit, my segue into recruiting was, we were working with Google, Apple and a couple other big companies on scalability stuff. End of 2008 hit and we just got called, one after the other, send them home. Your $2400 guy, get him out of here. Then a couple of them starting saying, we'll hire your people because we had- Chad: How did that feel though because that had to be a moment? Shon: Yeah. Chad: I mean that had to be, that kind of had to be the moment, right? Shon: Oh it was yeah, so this was in downtown, we had the little office in downtown San Francisco. At that same time, we had seen a PowerPoint from Sequoia, a venture capital firm. That was like, the party's over. That was the headline. It was that and then a bunch of, it felt like shit. Yeah, it felt like, well I guess we got to figure out something else to do. Joel: So this shit's actually happening, yeah. Shon: This shit's happening. Joel: Yeah. Shon: And like all good consulting firms, we were basically a recruiting firm in disguise. Joel: Yeah. Shon: A thinly veiled recruiting firm. So I said, hey let's do recruiting because these guys are willing to buy our people from us, so let's just make placements. And my two consulting founders didn't want to do that, so we started a recruiting company. You know I was taught recruiting by an awesome nurse recruiter, that used to recruit nurses for one of the bigger public nursing companies. So that's how I got into it. Scaled it up from three people on my couch, on unemployment, to a multi-million dollar company, within about two and a half years. Then just hit a scalability wall, so we were beating our heads against the, we couldn't grow anymore. One of our people left to go to Google and then we started HiringSolved. Chad: Ta-da. Shon: Can I go now? Chad: No, no, so we want- Joel: Wasn't that in Phoenix though? Shon: Yeah. Joel: So how did you get from San Fran to Phoenix and that journey? Shon: We had a little office in San Francisco, about eight recruiters there. At the time, I went out to Phoenix thinking the only way I can scale this recruiting company, at the time my best idea was, I'll go out to Phoenix where recruiters make, you know a good recruiter might make, I don't know 60 grand a year at that time. This was 2010, now. Recruiters are starting to make crazy amounts in San Francisco again, like $100 an hour is starting to go up again, 2010, 2011. Shon: Go out to Phoenix because it's cheap. End up working out of this dusty co-working space. And found a kid walking around with no shoes on, an astrophysics degree and a head as big as the universe. We built, we started building HiringSolved. I started to think, I couldn't find any recruiters actually, I did try to find recruiters. I hosted a free recruiter training, like it got in the newspaper and everything. One person showed up, so I was sucking at that. Joel: What was the conversation like with the bare footed astrophysicist? Like was it, we need to make a business, what should we do or I have this thing? Shon: No. Joel: Like let's grab profiles and searchable? Shon: Yeah. Joel: Like what is that conversation like? Shon: The conversation was, we had about 10,000 resumes in an open-source ATS, called CATS. Anyone know CATS? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yep. Shon: CATS yeah. Joel: CATS One. Shon: PHP, yeah, CATS soon became CATS One. Chad: Yeah. Shon: So the conversation went, so I was maintaining that and had modified it a little bit. It was based on PHP. At 10,000 resumes, it was actually pretty slow to search and it sucked at search. My conversation was, hey kid, I see you're walking around without shoes on, do you think you can make this database faster? Because it, you know I had kind of topped out my skills at MySQL, at that stage. Trevor, his name's Trevor, he's a really brilliant guy and an intuitive sandbagger, so he tells me you know, "I think I can do it in about two weeks." He takes, I let him into the system, he starts looking at it. In about probably two hours, he had taken it down from a minute to search, to under one second. Shon: I was like, "Now let's start talking about what else we could do." In the meantime, again we can't scale. We hit like 2 million, a little over 2 million in revenue. Can't hire recruiters, can't train them up fast enough. We're losing recruiters and we only worked, you know they didn't give us the easy recs, right? Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shon: In the meantime, I'm kind of like, thinking through, how do we automate this stuff? Like what are we doing every day? I was recruiting myself, I was filling recs, you know. The work was crushing, you know the amount of work we were doing between reading resumes, which we trained heavily on, to be able to do and identify, what a person did in under 30 seconds. But reading resumes and sourcing and you know, it was just killing me. Chad: So right there, that's where I want to shift into the actual Ladders stuff, right? You said the new Ladders survey, as you talk about reading a resume. Shon: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: Has gone from six seconds, to was it 7.4 seconds? Joel: Boy, it's gone up because when the recession was hitting. Chad: Right. Joel: You had so many more resumes, it was like how do I get through this stack faster? Chad: So it's faster. Joel: So it's actually more time now, then it was but based on the recession. Chad: Question is, I mean why is it taking that long in the first place, when you have all this technology to be able to at least, help you through that process? I guess, well here's a big question and maybe this is in the survey, maybe they're getting more qualified candidates, which is why they're taking so much longer. Because they are using, some of this technology. Shon: So they're getting, yeah, the premise though is still that they're reading a bunch of resumes, right? Yeah, I don't know. I think from my perspective, there's a quote by William Gibson, who's one of my favorite authors and he says, "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet." Right? Chad: Especially in HR. Shon: In HR, yeah. No more, more than, nowhere I think in the enterprise, other than HR. When we started this business, we started saying that sales is about 10 years behind consumer. So if you think about Salesforce and its best tech. You can think about consumer is, is Apple, it's Amazon and that type of stuff. Sales about 10 years behind that. HR Tech is about 10 years behind that, when we started the business. That's what it felt like to us. Shon: I'd say that's actually catching up, somewhat quickly on the leading edge of HR Tech, mainly due to a shit load of investment coming into it. But I think the short answer about the resume reading, you know first you have to get tools implemented that work. Then you have to actually trust them, to not duplicate the work they're already doing. A lot, we see, we're building a new version of software right now and we see the issue of trust. Some people trust the software, some people don't. It's the same barrier as, you know my wife has a Tesla, that Tesla has tried to kill us multiple times on autopilot. Would you buy a Tesla today, that didn't have a steering wheel? Chad: No. Shon: No, the humans completely fucking uncomfortable with the idea that, there's no way to override this thing. So somewhere, so we're right in the place right now, in an interesting time in automation where, there's a ton of bullshit. The bullshit wave is caught up in HR Tech. So everybody is saying, "Blah, blah, blah, AI." I saw Phenom people announce today, "AI, blah, blah." That was their press release. Shon: Everyone is saying that and there probably is some really good technology out there. HiringSolved. Somewhere. But there's also a lot of bad stuff and it's hard to tell the difference. And even the good stuff, we're not sure we trust yet. Definitely not enough to just trust it to schedule, you know go through the review process, do everything and have a guy turn up to work tomorrow or a gal, we don't trust it that much because we still need that steering wheel and it might try to kill us. Joel: Well, will we ever? Erik Kostelnik, CEO of TextRecruit. You know he sees a day where, humans don't actually talk to each other, until there's an interview scheduled and someone shows up. Like, will we get to that point? If not, why? And if we do, how long is it going to be till we get there? Shon: I think I read something and I think a number of us are thinking that same thing. Kevin and I were talking, we had a great conversation at dinner last night about that. Kevin, from SAP, everybody. Audience: Woo. Shon: Now. Chad: Oo. Shon: Then and Donna, I think we're going to get there 100%, I think we're going to get there. I think there's still going to be problems in that. Like Donna, from Lowe's was speaking here. We're working with Donna and one of the things she said to us is, "I need to hire 80,000 people in the next six months, right?" Shon: That's a really hard task, no matter how you do it but it's a proving ground for us, to try to figure out how to get to that next phase. The cool thing about some companies is that they are under enough pressure where they're willing to take some risks. That's what's going to have to happen. Chad: Is it on the high volume side, first though? Because I mean, there's a huge need there. Shon: Yeah. Chad: Obviously the workload is just crazy. Shon: Yeah, easy target on the high volume side. High volume side has actually been a really hard problem for us, in automation. You know we work with Staples and it's one thing to say I want a pediatric neurologist or I want you know, some specific technology guy. But it's another thing, you know our technology was driven crazy by trying to follow what the Staples recruiters were doing, which is they would recruit a bartender. They would recruit a sales clerk, they're basically recruiting anyone that they thought wouldn't say fuck off to a customer or something. I'm not exactly sure what it was but it was hard to lock in. Chad: So a bartender would do that by the way, just so you know. Shon: But high volume, there's a lot of need there. Chad: Yeah. Shon: I think what Kevin and I were talking about, he needs to hire 700 developers, right? 700 engineers. If anyone is coding in the room, talk to Kevin. Chad: That's the guy. Shon: I think where the automation is, needs to be in different paces, right? We have another company that is very high tech, one of the leaders in AI. Undisputed in the world. They're getting 40,000 applies, a month. And this is for a high tech job, this is for like you know, very high tech specialized skill job Joel: Yeah. Chad: How do you rip through those, right? Joel: You know, are they automating that process? Shon: Yeah. Joel: Through the funnel and how? Shon: Well the first step is, so we're layering in automation. I think the first step, transparently is, first it's ranking and then it's, is the ranking doing the same thing the human would do? Basically think about it like, the recommendation engine has to make a prediction. The prediction is, I think this person is going to fit. Then if you guys know anything about genetic algorithms, right? Genetic algorithm has a fitness function and the fitness function is, was the prediction right? Did you do the right thing, right? Yes or no, well we know the answer because the person either got hired or got to a first stage interview or whatever. Got an offer and didn't take the job, whatever it is. Shon: I think if you look at those, you know high volume, for us high volume is a challenge. The other scenario, the company can't mention that it's getting 40,000 highly technical applies. It's sort of the same problem though. And it's layering in that automation, trying to get it trained up to a place where, it actually is doing something similar, that makes sense to the human. Which is highly biased by the way because humans are highly biased. Chad: Well, yeah but I mean that's the problem though, right? We take a look at the Amazon side of the house. We have to, there's got to be a place where we stop trying to learn, from humans. I mean because humans are biased, right? I think Jack Ma actually said, "My computers are smarter than any human in this room." Why are we trying to learn behaviors from humans, who we know are biased? How does that make sense? Shon: Well, it makes perfect sense because the humans are the consumer, of that technology, right? Chad: Mm-hmm. Shon: If you take the bias out and you let it- Chad: But you're not going to get any females. Shon: Yes, well if you start letting a machine make a decision for you, without bias, on nutrition say, you'll never eat another french fry, fucking throw that beer away, right now. Because you're not drinking that anymore guys. Get some soy. Chad: No I want it because Shane got it for us. Shon: It's a soy IV, for the rest of your life. Chad: Yeah. Shon: The machine is going to make a decision. If you let the machine make a decision, not on training but on unbiased thing or what's best for you, the human won't like it. Chad: You won't get the sell, at the end, really? Shon: Well you won't get the sell, they won't use the technology because they'll think. All joking aside, our real take on this, my belief on this is that, you have to show humans when they're being biased. That's the best you can do with AI. You can't take the bias out because at the end of the day, if the person shows up to work, even you automated that whole thing and then they show up for work that day, we're humans. Joel: Yeah. Shon: So we're going to smell and do the pheromone thing and size you up and be like, I don't like you, you're going home because I have that power. Joel: Because he was stinky. Shon: Right, so there's going to be bias somewhere. Chad: I'd love to see the UX behind that one. Shon: You can visualize. Chad: You know, you're being bias, yeah. Shon: You can visualize it, yeah. No, I mean the UX is actually, if you think about it, we're working on this right now, it's called diversity analytics. Chad: Ah huh. Shon: It's a product, not a product. It's a feature that plugs into what we do. But it visualizes the hiring pipeline and shows you how diversity is changing. You think you have a problem but maybe you're crushing it on the top of the funnel. Maybe you've got 50% of your job descrip pipeline is females. But if you can visualize how that flows through, at the phone screen, at the first on-site interview. At the second on-site interview, when they interview with Chad and he locks them in a room with a button under his desk and then no one comes back after that. Chad: Nobody knows about that. Shon: And all of a sudden diversity, female diversity dropped by 80%, after meeting with Chad. Joel: Yeah. Shon: We can start to visualize where that problem is, right? I think that becomes very powerful. All joking aside is you know, you can't take the bias out with a machine because I think the human thinks it's wrong. But what you can do with the machine, is you can show the human, yeah right, you're only hiring 22 year old white kids. I'm showing you more 22 year old white kids because that's what you want to hire. You're thumbs-upping Metallica every time, you're only going to hear Metallica. Joel: I have a question, as we're running out of time. On privacy, obviously a huge issue. GDPR over in Europe. How is a person's data used, how is it shared? How is it scrapped from one site to another? Like these seem all like really serious issues for the employment industry because we're dealing with recruiting people and all this data is being shared around. What is your opinion on the future of that? How do services that are using profiles, sort of freely, make it not so illegal in the future, potentially, of using people's private data? Where is your place in that future? Shon: We see it as, it's interesting, we see it as a great opportunity to build experiences that are opt-in. The good news is for us I guess, we deleted 29 million profiles, for Europe. Just to say, we didn't want to deal with it. But we already learned what we needed to learn, from a lot of that data. Now I think it ushers in a new generation, it's not going to be the job board. Like kind of what we were talking about last night. But it does give us, those of us in technology and those of us in this space, it gives us some motivation to create a new experience that is compelling enough for people to want to share their data, even when they know how we're going to use it. Shon: If I can give you something, whether that's advisory, like if I think about the underemployed. If like, underemployment kills me because there's people that can crush these amazing jobs. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Oh yeah. Shon: There's you know, one of the coders I know literally was working at In-N-Out. Saw my friend, my friend went up to order a burger. He had a Ruby on Rails shirt on and the In-N-Out guy, Jeremy is his name, says, "I know what that means." And the guy goes, "Why are you working at an In-N-Out?" And he hired him, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that's an underemployment scenario. Shon: I think if we can build these compelling experiences with all the stuff we've learned, from all this social data. And give them to people, in terms of advisory and in terms of you know, you'll never have to not go, you'll never have to go without knowing what happened to your job application. If you can ask a bot, "Why didn't I get the job?" What's different about me, then the person that did get the job? What do I have to do to be a mechanical engineer at Tesla? I'm 10 years old, what do I need to do, to get there, right? Shon: I think there's some cool, really compelling use cases that we can use. I think, GDPR for us and the California law, what it really does is it, it puts pressure on us to make those compelling experiences and get people opt-in, rather than just scrapping it. Joel: Yeah, I mean to me, the headline of that was, we threw away 29 million resumes because we didn't want to deal with the law. To me, like if that law came into play in the US. Shon: And it is. Joel: How many solutions like yours just say, fuck it, let's do something else? Shon: I mean our solution, thankfully we moved away from social data, as a core to our business. 85% of our revenue comes from our software running on top of customer data. So ATS, HRIS, CRM type data. Chad: Yeah. Shon: So thankfully, we wouldn't have to throw in the towel, if that happened. What we would do literally and what I think a number of you know, the good startups that have the capability would do is, we'd, you'd pivot into something like I said, that gives you the power to go out and get that opt-in. We did an experiment early this year. We knew GDPR was coming. We ran a Facebook bot. We were traditionally, really terrible in trucking and nursing, in terms of social data because you know, those people are not. Chad: Not on as much. Shon: They're not the same as other people on professional networks. We did that on Facebook and we got an incredible, we learned a ton. The test with J.B. Hunt in trucking. We had 20,000 truckers and an 89% engagement with the bot. They would talk to the bot. Sometimes they would call J.B. Hunt, something they're writing with J.B. Hunt. The bot wouldn't know what that meant but they were very angry, in some cases. But we learned a ton from that, that the engagement was huge. Shon: I think there's, you know there's a lot of places we can pivot. I think that's where we're going to get because of GDPR and because of those things, we'll probably see some things that content with LinkedIn and contend you know, some more compelling experiences down the road. That's a good thing. Chad: And that's it kids. Joel: We're out of time. Thanks Shon. Shon: Yeah. Joel: Thanks everybody. Chad: Thanks Shon. Shon: All right, thank you guys. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Shon: Thank you guys, good job. 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. #HIREconf #Event #HiringSolved #chatbots #sourcing #LIVE #DICE #DHI #Glassdoor #Indeed #GDPR

At the iCIMS analyst day last month, the boys sat down with Erik Kostelnik, founder and CEO at TextRecruit, a recent acquisition by iCIMS. If you've never heard Erik, you're in for a treat. We talk CareerBuilder, Dice, chatbots, competing with Slack and much more. Michael Wilczak, SVP, Strategy & Corporate Development at iCIMS also joined in. Enjoy this NEXXT exclusive. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. Announcer: 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. Chad: Okay Joel quick question. Joel: Yeah. Chad: What happens when your phone vibrates, or your texting alert goes off? Joel: Dude, I pretty much check it immediately. 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 freaking 97% open rate. Chad: What? Joel: 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: Yeah. Love it. Chad: Yep, that's right. Nexxt with the double X, not the triple X. Joel: Booomchakabowow.. 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 text to hire campaign for just 25% off, boom. Chad: 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, using the long URL to remember. Just go where you know, chadcheese.com, and Nexxt, with two x's. Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangers podcast. Chad Sowash, and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting agency right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinions, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chase and Cheese podcast. Joel: All right, we're recording correct? Chad: Yeah it's what that red light is for. Go ahead. Joel: What's up everybody it's Joel Cheesman here with Chad. We are at the iCIMS Influence Conference in beautiful, historic New Jersey. Chad: Jersey. Joel: Joining here is Erik Kostelnik- I said that wrong. Kostelnik? Erik: Kostelnik. It's alright, I've only known you for 3 years. Joel: Co-founder and CEO of Text Recruit, recent acquisition of I-Sims. Also, Mike Wilczak - Mike: You got it. Nailed it. Joel: He's SVP of Erik as well as strategy. We're late in the day, we're a couple beers in, we wanted to get these guys together and talk about some things. Joel: Erik, for those who don't know Text Recruit, not many of our listeners don't know you- Erik: Yeah. Joel: But give them the quick elevator pitch on what you guys do. Erik: Yeah, it's a candidate and employee engagement platform that leverages chat, text message, and AI to help you hire better people faster. Joel: It's that easy. And the name pretty much says it all. Text Recruit. Chad: Yeah, Message Recruit would be good as well. Erik: That was a little long. That was a little long yeah, it's alright. Erik: You gotta write the ad before you sell the product or or build the product. Mike: You gotta buy the URL, right? I mean that sort of determines the naming. Erik: Unbelievable that was open. I still can't- Chad: No shit? Erik: Yeah dude. Chad: Did you go to GoDaddy? Erik: Of course I did. No joke- Chad: No shit. Erik: I hosted Text Recruit on GoDaddy for the first 3 years. It was only until we got like some money and were like, "Well maybe this is not the right way to do it". I built this site on WordPress. Personally. So everything that you see on our site is all the stuff that I built. Erik: Original branding, original content, all that stuff. Joel: It's not as janky anymore. Erik: It's not as janky, I actually hired a professional to do it now. So yeah. Anyway. Joel: Erik one of the things I thought was interesting was you have a whole suite of products and I think people think of the Text Recruit messaging component. But talk about the two or three other products that you guys offer. Erik: What we did when we started was, we figured out, "Hey, how can we take all these text messages that are happening out there and make them centralized and more professional and compliment?". And we just naturally rolled into leveraging text message for attraction of candidates. Cheesecake Factory was using us in storefronts and on their Craigslist ads, and so we created a product called Text Apply, which helps on the front of the funnel there. Erik: We also found that companies were looking at, this is funny, but they were on our website and they would say, "Hey, what's that chat function that is on your website?" And it was just a lark. It was just intercom or, and they were like, "Well I want that on my career site". I'm like, "Well, why can't just make that for you?" And that became job chat, it's now Live Chat. Erik: And the Text HR side of things, it just was natural to progress into the onboarding experience and helping these candidates get onboarded as they become employees, since that became Text HR. Erik: As we moved down the funnel, UPS came to us and said, "Hey, can you help us managing all communications for our entire temporary workforce for the seasonal hiring, not just to get them onboard, but actually to build software to help engage them through this whole entire season, so we don't have to issue everybody phones", and it ended up being Text Reach. So we still to this day leverage that platform for those guys. Erik: Obviously, this sweeter products we didn't think it was gonna be this, we thought it was gonna be Text Recruit, but part of our core values has always been, much like iCIMS, it's always listen to customer, and we're customer founded and customer driven. And ultimately that lead us to these additional revenue channels and value for customers. Joel: If the customer will pay for it, we'll build. Erik: I'm a salesman, so I'll build you what you need, I'll sell it to you. Chad: So Mike, how do you figure into this whole thing? You always keeping the reins on Erik? You let him- what's going on here? Mike: I don't know if there's keeping any reins on Erik! Chad: He doesn't have flip flops on right now. Erik: No, they made me wear shoes. Mike: You look very professional today, even with the boutonniere. Erik: Fantastic. Mike: He looks like he's going to the prom after this. Mike: I lead the strategy and acquisition Text Recruit from the iCIMS side, so part of my role is to incubate that and make sure that it's successful coming out of the gate with us. Then once we've got a great comfort level, just make it a part of our normal business. So we're in that phase right now, and it's been fantastic over the last 9 months to see this company continue to grow. Chad: It's your job to sit and watch. Is that what it is? To watch kind of the incubation period? Really you were helping along the road of, "Hey, this is what you need to do to be able to get seen by us", I mean, what's all- Mike: Yeah, it's a bit of a story there. I think I met Erik probably four and half, five years ago now. I had just joined iCIMS, I didn't come from this space. I really didn't know much about HR Tech. Pat Crest has a great SaaS conference every year in Vail, Colorado- Erik: It's Key Bank now, but yeah. Mike: Key Bank yeah. So I went out there and they put together a number of meetings for me. Kind of '30 minute Speed Dating pitch an idea to another company' kind of thing. And Erik and Jedd came in with a PowerPoint deck talking about how they were gonna kill this category and I thought, "Wow, that's an amazing feature!". Chad: Yeah. Mike: We've got to be doing this, right? Every ATS- Joel: What year was this? Erik: 2014. Joel: Okay. Mike: 2014. Every recruiting software company has to be doing this, right? I found out we weren't. My guy says to Erik, he says, "Look, it's a really interesting capability but you've got to broaden it. You've got to get more of a platform, more of portfolio of products, not just this one component", and man, over the last four years we've just seen him broaden the product portfolio, we've seen him add a lot of our customers to his customer base. Mike: So when we were looking at this deal, we took it to the board and the board literally said, "This is the most logical acquisition we've ever seen". Chad: Now you simplified, but you cheated a little bit, right? Text Recruit was integrated into iCIMS, you sort of saw the growth in the numbers. Joel: That's the incubation period. Chad: You need a little bit about what you were getting into correct? Mike: Yeah, totally right? So, at the same time that Erik was building his business, we were building our platform strategy, which was enabling other companies building products to plug into us and to integrate with us, right? He had the foresight to say, "Look, if we're going to go build this product that works with ATS providers and CRM tools, that we should build it to their specifications and via their platform". Mike: I think that greased a lot of the sellability of the product of our customer base. So we started holding them up, "Hey, this is what a great product integration looks like". So we were able to see the two big hurdles to M&A in software is, 'How does that product work with yours' and 'Will your customers buy it?'. We were able to see both of those things. It's been fantastic. Chad: So tell us the Dice story. Erik: I had just gotten off of the identified acquisition, right? That was another big tile. SVP of monetization and sales strategy for Identified, which funny enough, became Work Days acquisition and became their shitty ATS now. That's kind of what it's became. Erik: So, fast forward, I was able to get out of that situation and say, "Okay, what do I want to do? I have this idea" and I pitched my buddy on it, Ryan Chad, he's my co-founder and he said, "I think we can do this, I think I can sell this". Erik: So he built the product and we got customers going. Then it was like, "Hey, let's be agnostic, let's actually go to all our contacts all over this ecosphere", and part of that was going to Job Boards. I'm an ex Career Builder guy and learned a lot there and learned that, "Look, these are the types of job boards that we should look at working with", so Dice happened to be right down the street in San Jose and walked down to- got the train. I was living in San Francisco, got off the train, went to 225 Santa Clara, walked upstairs, beautiful 11th floor in downtown Santa Clara, or downtown San Jose on Santa Clara street. Erik: Go into this big board room and all the executive staff are from Dice is there and I start pitching. I start pitching Text Recruit and capabilities and how we can change the way that they're engaging with all their candidates and their massive databases and create drip marketing. Chad: So it's a room full of people just- Erik: Yeah, all the executives, all of them. 'Cause they were like, "What is going on with this?", 'cause we were gaining traction already. It was really interesting because I left the meeting feeling like, "Oh man, I feel like I killed that, right. This is great and it's another engagement platform, we're gonna manage all text communication for Dice, it's gonna be massive". And I got an email like a week later, "Hey we just don't think it's going to be right for us. We don't think it's going to be very professional to text and communicate for jobs". Erik: I was like, "Wow. Okay". Total miss, whatever, I move on. Fast forward four years, we just took over the Dice space in downtown San Jose, so- Chad: Life's like that man. Erik: It's amazing how things kind of come back around and you know, things change and new companies have to evolve. I think that's a big learning- and one of the key reasons why we chose iCIMS candidly, was that you gotta hook your horse to something and someone. We knew that there's going to be a lot of challenges along the way in building up a really big company. We built a pretty big company, but not like a multi-billion dollar company. Which is what all VC's want, right? Erik: To build a multi-billion dollar company, you have to have a little bit more than what just Text Recruit was. So I was real about that. But we knew iCIMS was changing the way that they had been doing business. And it wasn't just a 15 year old company, it actually was something that was becoming a new way of doing business in the HR space and Unify was part of that. But also the way these guys were looking at strategy and how to build this company out. Obviously it's worked for them and it worked for us, so I think it's good stuff. Chad: So I have your one sheet here of your material and what you guys do. And I'm reading Text HR, communicate with employees over text message and live chat at scale and Text Reach, manage projects and coordinate with your employees over text message. Erik: Yeah. Chad: That sounds a lot to me like Slack. Am I off base there or not? Erik: You're not. That was the vision for Text Reach. I'd say like, if we didn't go through this acquisition, we'd be probably doubling down on Text Reach right now. We believe that Text Reach, candidly, is a competitor of Slack on the white collar or hourly work forces that don't have smart phones or don't have access to corporate email address]. Erik: So generally, when you have Slack, you have corporate email addresses that you send out invites to, and then you have your Slack that happens. Erik: But in the blue collar workforces, all of our customer based, those out of the hourly workforces, you don't have the ability to send out corporate emails. You can't invite them to corporate chat functions because it just doesn't work for those. Companies like Crew and some of these other systems that are trying to be Slack for the hourly, I just didn't believe it was gonna work because everybody communicates via text. Erik: So if I can do the same thing that we did for recruiting, and put it into a managers hands to communicate with it's existing employees and group texts without sharing personal data of the employees as well as the manager, that could become a very big company. Erik: That's what our VC's originally saw within that application and that's why they were gonna be willing to give us $15 millions if we didn't get acquired because we were gonna build that out. That's kind of the thing, you take this strategy, you take what you think is right for the time, and ultimately iCIMS did a good job by positioning itself in what we could do together. Chad: I'm gonna do a quick re-direct. So you guys, talking about this product, you can actually get sentiment. Employee sentiment, so at that point, you know if they're happy, sad, all that other- and we were talking last night, kind of laughing about Glint saying how much money and just the other disbelief in Mike's eyes last night at dinner. Mike: I still believe. Chad: So what do you think about that? $400-500 million on Glint. Mike: I hadn't heard that number before so that seems like a massive amount of value. Chad: Yeah. Mike: Especially for a CEO who said he built it for the good of humanity. I almost felt like he needed to give it away after all of that. Erik: Jesus. Chad: He probably felt like he was giving it away. Erik: How much money did he take on? Mike: I think it's a recognition of the fact that Length is trying to broaden it's tam. It's trying to get into something beyond talent acquisition and start looking at more of the talent engagement side. I'm sure it makes sense for them, I'm sure they've got a whole thesis around how they're going to take that product and get $400-500 million worth of value out of it. Chad: So I won't ask you to tell me the next companies that you're gonna acquire, but what are- Mike, what are some of the segments or overall, themes that iCIMS going to be looking at getting into in the next two, three, five years? Mike: That's a great question, right? We just did this round with Vista and I think the output of that is to step on the gas. We've built what we think is the category killer in talent acquisition software. How do then take this platform that we've built, that has scale in a market that has an incredible amount of data and now turn that loose to create something that's incredibly more valuable? Mike: For us, it's not getting out of talent acquisition. It's doubling down on talent acquisition. What we're looking at is things that we must more up-funnel and enable our customers to really leverage our product, not just to manage workflow, but to actually do sourcing. Mike: That ability to connect candidates and to connect candidates to hiring companies and to make those matches is really interesting to us. We think we have unique data that enables us to do that in a way that's completely different than the way companies are doing it today. Chad: So iCIMS has changed, I mean really, the outlook. Wasn't an acquisition kind of a focus before? You have put your foot on the pedal, especially with Vista money. So why? Why the change? What did you see- what was happening in the market that made pretty much the executive team, everybody say, "We've got to do shit differently?". Mike: I think it's just a matter of life cycle. When we were a smaller company, we were focused on how do we grow and do it at a manageable pace. Things fell into place the last couple of years that have given us more confidence in the ability to do M&A. You need scale in a market because you have to be able to afford to go buy something new. Our valuation, because of our growth, gives us that ability to write a check. Our cashflow provides us with a lot of cash that we can use in order to deploy to do M&A. I think this recognition that there's so much innovation that's happening in this space that we don't have to build everything ourselves. Mike: That was the whole thesis around the ecosystem model. Let the ecosystem build things, see what's working, see what our customers are buying and then use our ability to fund a deal to step in and acquire the leadership categories. Chad: A question for both of you- there's been a lot of change in the ATS talent management space here. You've seen nuts like LinkedIn getting into the HS game, of course we talk about Google Hire quite a bit on the show, you see smaller players, enterprise players, there's just a lot going on. And you guys sort of seem, not necessarily in the middle, but you definitely don't play in the small, the bottom tier. You see these big companies, not only LinkedIn and Microsoft and Facebook and Google, but I could throw in potentially Sales Force, I could throw in Amazon. Where is iCIMS place and maybe the same tier of ATS or talent management system? Where do you guys fit into the new ecosystem going forward? Erik: You talking about from a positioning in the market, what segments of the market we're focused on or how do we see ourselves positioning with Amazon and LinkedIn and Google and everyone getting in the space. Chad: So if I'm a customer, what does the customer look like that you think will choose iCIMS versus a Smart Recruiter or Job Score or someone's that gonna choose LinkedIn? Erik: Yeah totally. I think at our core, we are a company that tries to focus on simplifying the complexity of recruiting, right? If you're a company who has very basic requirements, you hire one persona, you don't hire a lot of people per year, you're probably not our best customer. But if you hire lots of different types of roles, from lots of different sources, lots of different hiring types, like hourly and professional and those kinds of things, then there's a lot of complexity around that. You can't source all of your candidates from one place, you can't manage them through the workflow the same way. That's where we fit. Our tools are really designed to simplify the complexity of the recruiting workflow, to simplify the complexity of engaging and managing candidates, to simplify the complexity of finding candidates. Honestly, to simplify the complexity of plugging all of these other peripheral tools that companies are using. Erik: The way that we fit in the market is also that we are that system of record. People view our product as that first system that they put in and that becomes your hub and everything else then plugs in to that hub. One core workflow tool, one data repository, one analytics engine that you're using for your hiring process. Mike: What he said. Chad: Erik, messaging is hot. It's the number one activity on mobile devices. Obviously mobile is hot. I'm curious your perspective on, there's got to be something next. What is next? Is it voice? Is it- Erik: Next for me or next for the industry? Chad: Industry or the world at large. Erik: The world at large. Chad: Something like voice messaging? Erik: No, I mean- Chad: Video? Erik: I think what you're going to find is that there's not going to be anything created, unfortunately. It's all in front of us. So everything that is the future is already built. It's really the question of, how do you take what is already built and optimize it for specific problems? And how do you create solutions for, with existing technology for existing problems? Erik: The problems have been identified within the HR world, it's finding candidates, getting them into the system, getting them through a hiring cycle, hiring them, onboarding them, and then keeping them. Erik: If we know all the problems that happen within those, then all you have to think about is, how do you build solutions that will optimize each part of that funnel. Ultimately, you have the lowest first run yield that you could possibly get, the highest first run yield you could possibly get. Erik: There's a couple of things that you can use to do that. You can use products that will help you automate systems and maybe that's automating the way, taking a chat bot and making it something that is a voice. Or maybe it's creating an interview process that leverages all of the AI components to help understand 'is this person lying or not?', or what type of communication are they having? What are the sentiments that's going on? Erik: Or you just take something- this is way out there but- something like quantum computing, which I was at TechCrunch and I saw the Watson Cubist computer. If you start processing all these things faster, and you put problems into these Quantum computers that actually can solve problems at a exponential rate from existing computing power, then it becomes really crazy. Then all you have to do is the same exact base time that you currently have but then you put it in something like a Quantum computer and out puts, you're going to get an exponential out put on it. Erik: That's like, super heady, and way in the future and I doubt that it's going to come to HR first. We're going to have that in sales and marketing first, my guess is. Chad: HR can't spell programmatic. Erik: Right, right. Programmatic is a big thing for us and our industry, but it takes a while to catch up. I think the net of it is, I believe there's still a lot of disruption with existing technologies out there. I think there's a lot that AI can do and machine learning. I think matching is broken, which I think probably is a significant problem that no one can solve. I think that's probably next- Chad: You think so? Erik: I mean, I think matching candidates is really hard when you have horrible data, which anybody that says they have great data in their ATS is lying. Nobody has great data. Everybody tries to bypass the application process. They do that with Text Recruit. Its not like the data's getting better, it's gonna get worse. Chad: We're seeing problems though, like Google is building a models on the job- Erik: And Amazon is doing models too. Chad: Exactly. Everyone is building models so you keep building these ontologies because we know that job descriptions are always gonna suck, and that resumes are always gonna suck. So, really focusing on the job titles and the company, the type of company, along with the actual resume and the type of job that that individual actually did. And trying to make the match there as opposed to all the fluff and bullshit that's in, or not in the job description or resume. Chad: You don't think really? Erik: I don't know, because then it's easy to gain. If you're a candidate then you're just gaming the system and then like, where's the cross-referencing on it. I think there's a lot of holes in there from both sides. I think there's a lot of holes, when we talk about bias and the matching technology based on what you think it is. Erik: Also, what candidates- candidates are humans, they are filled with holes. How do you figure that out and connect the two and you have two processes that are really hard. Application and showing interesting in something and a labor force that's massive and then technology from the company's side of matching these jobs, which is really hard. Erik: I think it's a really hard problem and I don't think there's enough money into it right now. What do you think about it Mike? It's- Mike: I think there's always that disruption curve where things get incredibly hyped and everybody's talking about it. You're good at HR tech and everybody's an AI company and- Chad: AI and blockchain- Mike: Yeah, right. Everybody's going to be Quantum computing in about four years by the way. You're going to go to HR tech and be like, "Erik was right! There's Quantum computing everywhere here!". Mike: The marketing organizations get out in front of that and create a lot of that hype. But then it does go into that trough of disillusionment. Then from there, it gets incrementally better over time and people start to understand how to adopt this stuff, so I think there is going to be continued disruption, but I think it's going to be micro-disruptions, I don't think it's this big bang kind of change that we're going to see in the market. Chad: So on the startup side, Mike. If I'm a startup and I'm listening to this, what kind of advice can you give me? Kind of the same kind of advice you might've given Erik. Mike: So maybe two things. To Erik's credit, what he tapped into was that he recognized that there was a need in the market that was not fulfilled. You made the comment earlier of, "Hey let's go build something", and then who pays for it, right? There are a lot of things that people can build, but there aren't a lot of things that people will pay for. Mike: So find that thing that somebody's willing to actually pay for and build around that. Put that into the market, the market will tell you if it's good or not. Then you can get better from there and you can evolve your product from there. Mike: That's the key to software development, right? It's not getting to the market with the best product, it's getting to the market with the product and then making it better over time. Mike: I think the other piece of it, and we've seen it in our business, it's just been religious devotion to focus. You can't be good at everything, and the more things you try to be good at, the less you're good at anything. So, when you're starting out, you don't have sales resources, you don't have product development resources. Mike: We started off as a Saas business by design because we could only afford to spend money on building one thing. We couldn't customize it for everybody, right? We can only afford to market for one thing. So that's my advice- pick a category where you think people would value it and pay money for it. Then stay focused on that until you get to enough scale where you can start broadening out from there. Chad: Erik, you have some pretty strong opinions on the future of my- Erik: I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. Erik: Love all those guys by the way. I'm a big Ale fan, a big Erin fan, I don't know the founder of AllyO, but I'm sure we'd be buddies. Erik: They all know my position on it right, I've been on panels with them and talked about how- Chad: The listeners don't. Erik: Okay, so. There is, like Mike said, there's a massive hype cycle happening right now. It's like lemmings jumping off a cliff in VC land. It's really hard to find good companies right now as a VC. They are giving, they are trying so damn hard because there's so much money out there by the way, when there's tons of money and not so much supply, it just becomes a market for these guys that are traditional founders that have had raises before or incredibly successful exits as employees to establish themselves as the next best thing and raise as much capital as they want. Erik: Now, Aaron at Paradox hasn't done that yet, but it feels like he's gearing up based on the size of the booth and everything we saw at HR Tech. The reality is, I think that they're going to have to pivot to do something else. And I think that they are smart enough to think about doing that now. That is creating something other than just being a chat bot for recruiting and replacing the whole entire recruitment piece of the biz. Like, doing all of recruitment is pretty much impossible at this point. You're always going to have human intervention in there. Erik: As a company, you don't want a robot hiring your whole entire workforce. As a CEO, you'd be like, "Are you fucking crazy? Absolutely not! Absolutely not, I want to hire my own people". Right? So I think there's a disillusionment of that piece. Erik: I think there's going to be four winners within AI. It's going to be commoditized, it's already commoditized because I use it with IBM. So IBM, Google, Amazon, and- Chad: Microsoft. Erik: Microsoft, thank you. I always forget them. It's been a long day. Erik: So those four are, and that's a big maybe, but those four a really gonna be the key plug-ins if you want to build a chat bot or if you want to match technology or do NLP. They go and plug it in to all your data and come up with insights, it's all commoditized and you're gonna do it based on API call. That's available today- you want to go build a chat bot, go do it. Erik: You also want to go build a little testing platform, that's fine, but you want to do everything together, that's a platform. Live Chat, text, chat bot, integration, communication, platform, automation and marketing- all that stuff is very important to have as a platform. That's why we've succeeded. Erik: I find it really difficult for them to be as successful as they need to be to have a good exit with raising that much capital. I have a hard time believing they're gonna get there with what their current product set is. Mike: I'm convinced there's a mathematical equation where you can take the amount of money raised, divided by the square foot of the booth at HR Tech, equals company longevity, right? Erik: Yes! That honestly might be fun to run. What's the size- we've always done 10x10. And we're in like a startup little area. We were in a startup little area until last year. That never meant anything to us. Honestly, the companies that wanted to see us, came and saw us. Chad: Playing devil's advocate- Erik: Sure. Chad: I could come back and say, "Oh, text messaging, I can go get a Twilio account and set up some basic text messaging platform dashboard for people". I obviously know you believe it's a product versus a- Erik: Feature. Chad: Feature. But tell the audience why that is. Why is text messaging a stand alone product? Erik: If you want to go build a little texting component, or use Google Voice, like Google Voice is a great entry point into texting. If you want to use Google Voice and then just test out texting professionally, that is a key thing. And then Twilio too, you can build a little Twiio application too. Erik: The problem that you have is that when you want to have two-way communication, you want to have more than two-way communication, so campaign based communication, you want to put AI on that, you want to ingrate automation to it, and then you want to be able to track across all your recruiters and share communication within the applicant tracking system. In addition to doing live chat and all these other functions that gotta be connected. Erik: Short quote codes, tracking candidates, all this stuff that we've done. It's really hard to build that successfully and make it easy to explain and have have companies buy into it and see the value. We heard Laurel today, all three of those, St. Jude, Hertz, and Advanced Solutions all text recruit customers. All iCIMS customers. They all use it completely differently. Chad: Yeah. Erik: I wish everybody would use it like Laurel. That was incredible listening how she, I didn't even know that man. Chad: Those are best practices that you can start to kind of roll out in messaging, right? Erik: Yeah, and that's the best thing you can get out of these customer events and analyst events. You learn stuff about your company that you never would've heard from your customer base. Erik: That's something we heard about, the Glass Door thing was crazy. I was like, we actually impacted their overall rating on Glass Door. I think that's a great little add-on for Glass Door. Like, "Hey, Glass Door, we should probably partner". Chad: A little background, a little context, for all your talent acquisition professionals out there, you need think harder about how you use a lot of these tools because there are some really good fucking ways you can do it. Chad: That was Hertz, what that Hertz? Erik: That was Advantage. Chad: That was Advantage. Chad: Okay, last question is for both of you, I'm going to start with Erik though. Me being an old Monster guy, I kind of watch what Monster does and it pisses me off because I get so frustrated to watch their movements. You're an old Career Builder guy, so you've got to be frustrated as hell when they come out with stupid shit like augmented reality and so, tell me what the hell's going on over there? Erik: I don't want to create that many enemies in this- I love Career Builder, let me just preface this. I will never say a bad thing about CB outside of they've made some poor decisions along the past. Erik: I will tell you that training system and the people I met there were absolutely incredible. Chad: So its sales training system? Erik: Sales training system, leadership training- that's where I cut my teeth in leadership. I will say nothing but great things about that company and their, at the time, executive staff. Erik: I had a good experience there, it lead me to where I am today. There certainly has been a shift, here's the difference. Apollo is a much difference PE company than Vista. Chad: Oh yeah. Erik: And you can already tell that. And Career Builder is a much different company than Accent. There's two directions that you're going in there and there's two types of PE companies. The one that Career Builder is involved with right now, is absolutely one that's a turnaround. They're gonna try hardest to- Number 1, catch a hype cycle because they want to become cool again, and it's kind of like a dude in his 40's, like wearing earrings, or doing something like going to 20-year old clubs. You look at him and it's kind of sad. I don't know, it's a little bit sad, you want them to turn around, be like, "Dude, it's never gonna work, I'm sorry", you gotta figure out what's better for you. Erik: When they release something that is obviously part of hype cycle, there's really no value within the marketplace, outside of just like, "Look what I can do", then it's a little sad. Chad: So, Mike, not a being Career Builder guy, but still, looking at the industry, what the hell are they doing over there? Mike: Yeah! So I don't want to speak about any one company, maybe I'll just bring it up to a higher level. For me, I think that lore of being out front and competing on product innovation is what a lot of companies try to do and they mature and want to repurpose themselves. Chad: So do you think AR is that though? Mike: No, I can't imagine that that's gonna change the game for them specifically. Companies need to decide what they want to compete on, right? It's easy to say, "We're gonna compete on product innovation", but it's hard to actually do it really well and do things that customers value. Mike: Obviously iCIMS, our secret sauce is operational excellence. Ideas are cheap, execution is really expensive. Chad: Yeah, that's the hard part. Mike: And that's the hard part. Erik: You never know, it could be amazing, they could kill it with this because they just have a badass sales force. They could go out there and sell the thing and it's all churn. It's all gonna churn. They might be able to show results and that's any business, that is a hype cycle business. Chad: They have good product though. Talent discovery, that's not a shitty product- Erik: No totally. Chad: Right? But they're not pushing it! That's the thing, so anyway. Mike: That's it, focus. Find the things that your customers really value, figure how you operationalize around that and focus there. Erik: Dude they make a lot of money and they got a lot of smart people at that organization. They gotta be looking at something that we can't look at. I think the same thing with Monster, Monster has really interesting leadership, they've upgraded from a leadership perspective. Chad: Oh yeah. Erik: They're gonna have to make sure that they make some good moves within the market for this to all work out for them as well. Chad: You have to hope that that legacy anchor doesn't drag them down. Chad: Okay guys, Mike, Erik, appreciate you taking the time. Erik: Thanks guys. Mike: Appreciate it. Erik: Take care. Joel: Okay, okay. Before we go, since advertising takes repetition to soak in, I just thought I'd remind you again this was all by elegant design. It's all by Text to Hire and it's all about Nexxt and Elegant Design. So go to chadcheese.com, click on the Nexxt logo, and get 25, yeah I said 25% off your first Text to Hire campaign. Joel: Engage better, use Text to Hire from Nexxt. Two x's. Booyah! Announcer: This has been a Chad and Chee podcast. Subscribe on I-Tunes, 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. #TextRecruit #text #iCims #iCIMSiNFLUENCE #Event #chatbots #Chatbot #Dice #Careerbuilder

Welcome to the last installment of this three-part Chad & Cheese iCIMS iNFLUENCE 2018 Series. In mid-Oct when Joel and I flew to NJ and landed at iCIMS HQ we really didn't know what to expect. What we got was an event where Colin Day, iCIMS CEO and Chairman of the Board along with other iCIMS leaders shared their common vision for more than just iCIMS. It was a vision for the industry and how iCIMS was going to take the lead in reinventing it. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions' clients are changing the lives of people with disabilities, including veterans with service related disabilities. We're starting out this final episode with the sweetest sound to Colin Day's ears. Colin - Well guess what, GDPR comes along it's the sweetest thing we've ever heard. I know its annoyance for some or whatever, but it needed to happen. So, all of the sudden GDPR gets launched, candidates actually have rights, they should know what you're storing on them. They should be able to edit it, archive it, delete it, update their preferences. And that quieted these boards down a little bit. Colin - Even better, this thing called Cambridge Analytica happens, and that really begins to quiet down the boards. Now they aren't going to remain quiet forever because their whole business model is in jeopardy if they don't get the (hiring) signal data. Our viewpoint is, we have the opportunity to not only go to GDPR but to take it even further. We want to be the moral compass for data security and privacy in our industry. We really really do. Colin - So we're creating something call PASSPORT, and Passport some of it you've heard before. This is kind of the create a single passport, single click applies. Make it dead easy. So, for the customer the benefit will be candidate experience. The candidate will come in - if they haven't created an iCIMS Passport - they can create one. If they've already created one, we're talking single click apply in to other companies. While they're in their passport they have their data rights. We can show them everyone (organizations) they've applied to, what's going on. They can say I'm okay sharing some of that (data) with LinkedIn or I'm fine if you send that over to background check. They can get a history and because we have a modern communications platform, they can say how they want to be communicated with "Stop texting me", "Stop emailing me" full their rights. Chad - (Laughing) Remember JobFox, AllianceQ and even Taleo tried a Universal resume, but none of these efforts had the hammer of compliance and regulation not to mention the nasty stench of Cambridge Analytica to drive their efforts. iCIMS has found the perfect time to focus on creating a universal system predicated on protecting THE CANDIDATE. But how will the candidate PASSPORT play bring it all together? Colin - This is true end-to-end recruiting. This is why I'm so excited about the future. We've never been there. You know we've been the ATS but we've been reliant on "What is Google doing?", "What are the boards doing?" or "What are the third-party sites doing?". This is the first time we can say we're gonna go in, full bore end-to-end. So, we talk about, we will be right there when you post your jobs. We don't want third-parties. We want to be right in there posting the jobs. We want to be right there when Google hands-off the traffic to your career site or you get it with programmatic advertising with a next generation of career portal. We want to be right there when the candidate applies. Hopefully they've built their passport already. If not, very easy to build a passport and we'll show them everything they've ever applied to, all their data. When they update that data now you're going to see the power of the marketplace. We can be that, not only through all of our products, but through the entire industry. Chad - But the Enterprise Talent Management System buy is tedious and time consuming at best. You'll have to wait years until some companies are even ready to talk about this new integrated end-to-end system. In the meantime, how will iCIMS get their foot in the door and penetrate the market? aka drive new revenues? Colin - How important is it to have these foot-in-the-door products? That when you walk into any unique customer you can say we can get you on our entire tech stack, starting with the ATS. Wonderful. If we can't, let's get you with the CRM, if we can't let's get you with our new Offer module, which we are going to building as portable as well. Let's get you with TextRecruit and you'll see some other things that we're coming out with... Chad - There it is... Most Enterprise systems aren't complete at all, so iCIMS new modular product design will allow them to target competitors weaknesses and attack with a smile. Knowing this you can imagine iCIMS sinking further into client relationships where their probability of winning the full Enterprise buy down the road increases dramatically. Chad - So that's it kids... In this series we've heard how iCIMS is Working with Google Talent Solutions, creating a slow lane for job boards as iCIMS speeds by, getting rid of the user experience middlemen, embracing GDPR and attacking the market holistically and in chunks. If you missed any of these episodes, or just want a quick review -- You can find the entire iCIMS iNFLUENCE 2018 3-part series at chadcheese.com... #iCims #iCIMSiNFLUENCE #TextRecruit #text #ATS #CRM #GDPR #jobboards #Programmatic

The RUSSIANS are coming!! We were totally unprepared for this chatbot startup. Mostly, because of the mere fact that they're so far off the radar. They sound more like a Marvel villain. Boy, we did not see the Firing Squad that unfolded coming. How'd it go? Gotta listen to this Talroo exclusive. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides comprehensive website accessibility testing with personalized recommendations to enhance usability for people with a variety of disabilities or situational limitations. Chad: Hey, Joel. Joel: What up? Chad: Would you say that companies find it hard to attract the right candidates to apply for their jobs? Joel: Well, Jobs2Careers thought so. Chad: Jobs2Careers? You mean Talroo. Joel: Talroo? Chad: Yeah, Talroo. T-A-L-R-O-O. Joel: What is that, like a cross between talent and a kangaroo? Chad: No. It's a cross between talent and recruiting. Joel: But- Chad: Talroo is focused on predicting, optimizing, and delivering talent directly to your email or ATS. Joel: Ah, okay, so it's totally data driven talent attraction, which means the Talroo platform enables recruiters to reach the right talent at the right time and at the right price. Chad: Okay, so that was weirdly intuitive, but yes. Guess what the best part is? Joel: Let me take a shot here. You only pay for the candidates Talroo delivers. Chad: Holy shit. Okay, so you've heard this before. So if you're out there listening in podcast land and you are attracting the wrong candidates, and we know you are. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: Or you feel like you're in a recruiting hamster wheel and there's just no where to go, you can go to Talroo.com/attract. Again, that's Talroo.com/attract and learn how Talroo can get you better candidates for less cash. Joel: Or just go to chadcheese.com and click on the Talroo logo. I'm all about the simple. Chad: You are a simple man. Thad: Yes, my precious, yes. My most precious candidates sweet, precious, yes. 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 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 taking it to a whole other level. Joel: Yeah. Chad: There it is. Joel: It's been too long since we've had a Firing Squad. Chad: Damn. Joel: Hey everybody, this is Cheese and that guy, whatever, is Chad. Our special guest today, special startup today is XOR.AI. Chad: XOR. Joel: We'll get to the name in a second, but representing XOR is their CEO and founder, Aida Fazylova. Aida, how are you? Aida: I'm good, thank you. Joel: Good. Love that you're here. Give our audience a quick elevator pitch on you and then we'll get to the rules and then get to your company. Aida: Yeah, sure. My name is Aida, I'm founder of XOR. Prior to founding XOR, I've been working in IT recruitment for six years, and the company was born out of by personal pain. Joel: That's good. Aida: What frustrated me was working as a recruiter was that 60% of my working hours I was spending doing routine and repeated tasks like prescreening the resumes, scheduling the interviews, so this is why I found a co-founder two years ago and we founded this company. Chad: Cool. Joel: Aida is Russian if you couldn't tell from the accent but lives in Austin, Texas, which I think is very cool. Chad: Yeah. Our first Russian. Joel: Our first Russian, yes. We're very international on the Firing Squad. Chad, read her the rules and we'll get to XOR. Chad: Okay, Aida. You will have two minutes to pitch XOR.ai. At the end of two minutes, you will hear the bell, then Joel and I will hit you up with rapid fire Q&A. If your answers aren't concise enough, Joel is either gonna hit you with the bell or crickets, which means you need to tighten up your game, quit being so long in the- Joel: Move it on. Chad: Yeah, keep it moving on. At the end of Q&A, you're gonna receive one of three, big applause. Joel: Oh, you'd go with that one first. It's the last one on the sound board. Chad: Which means you've exceeded expectations and you're kicking ass, taking names, or we believe you're going to. A golf clap, you're on your way but you do have a lot of work to do, or last but not least, the firing squad. Joel: No. Chad: Which means it's probably time to pack your shit up and go home. So that's the Firing Squad. It's time to carve up your jack-o-lantern and show it to the judges. Okay, Joel, are you ready to- Joel: Halloween reference, I like that. Chad: You like that? Are you ready to start that pitch timer? Joel: I think Aida's still here. Okay Aida, you've got two minutes starting. Aida: Yeah. So at XOR, we help employees to accelerate and streamline their recruiting efforts using chatbots and AI, so we automate the initial candidate engagement, prescreening, scheduling, answering frequently asked questions, and work with cold candidate database from your ATS. The implementation of our customers experience three main things, first one is decreasing the time to hire by third, decreasing the cost per hire by half, and significant improvement in candidate experience and increasing the conversion rate from visit to apply by 85%. Aida: So we've been in the market for two years now. So far we've processed over two million candidates. Right now we work with 121 corporate customers in 15 countries, both direct employees and staffing agencies. We are at 1.6 million dollars ARR right now. And yeah, that's about it. Aida: Also, a thing about XOR is we recently made a survey for randomly picked candidates asking them how did you like the experience with a chatbot, 93.3% of them said it was excellent experience, 6% said it was good, and less than 1% didn't like it. Aida: So the company is headquartered in Austin, Texas. We keep the development team in Moldova, it's in Eastern Europe. I'm originally Russian, as you said, so yeah. Main differentiators in the market of XOR from everybody else is first one is we support 103 languages while everybody else supports a couple of them for the most part. Second one is we have the richest feature set that lets us cover the most retained repeated tasks from the moment the candidate is curious up to the moment of the job offer. Third one is we are the most enterprise ready, that means GDPR compliance, technical compliance, and really domain expresses that lets us do the very smooth change management within the customers. Aida: So far very high customer satisfaction, we have zero turn rates for two years. Yeah, that's about it I think. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Your time is up. For those who want to find out more about XOR, where would they go? Aida: It's XOR.ai. X-O-R dot A-I. Chad: So right out of the gate, the name. Where did the name come from? Aida: The name stands for extraordinary optimized recruitment, and we do know that people call their chatbots with a female name. Joel: Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. Say that again? Aida: It stands for extraordinary optimized recruitment. Chad: Extraordinary recruitment. Okay. So it has nothing ... you're a mathematician right? Aida: Absolutely. Chad: It has nothing to do with XOR gate at all? Aida: It does. It actually started as binary operator. Then we found a way to kind of decipher it for the recruitment purposes. Chad: So you started with the whole mathematician side of the house, the XOR gate piece and then you went mainstream and sold your people out, sold your mathematician people out. I have to give you big applause for that one, good one. Joel: Logistically though, isn't Xor a difficult time for your sales folks? Like I can't imagine calling up an HR professional and saying, "Hi, I'm Johnny with Xor." How do they get around that? How do you spell that? Is that an issue right now with the company? Aida: Not an issue at all. Absolutely not. Joel: Okay. Have you guys gotten funding at this point? Aida: The company ... we started from Eastern Europe. You know what situation this is right now is there, so the company has been profitable from day one. We've been bootstrapping for a while with my co-founder. Then we started to make money and then we started to hire people, but we got the angel investment from two Austin based angels of $350,000 in the beginning of this year. One of them actually joined us as a COO. It's a person who exited his previous company for $1.2 billion to Emerson. His name is Dave Perry. Joel: Okay. Aida: He's based in Austin. Yes, he's our COO right now. Joel: I just want to get this straight real quick, because your pitch was a little bit quick for me. You're $6 million a year in profitability or revenue? Aida: We are 1.6, 1.6 in ARR. Joel: One point six. Okay. Aida: Regarding revenue. Joel: So the only money you've taken is $350,000. Aida: That's right. Joel: And you have how many employees? Aida: Twenty five. Joel: Twenty five. You have 121 customers. Aida: Yes. Joel: And you've been around for two years. Aida: Yeah, we started the company a little bit more than two years ago, we've been in the market for 18 months, 18 to 19 months. Joel: I like everything you just said there, by the way. Okay. Chad, you're up. Chad: A little bit more background. You started in IT recruitment and you said there are three things that you wanted to be able to change that you had pain around. What were those three things again? Aida: Absolutely. As a recruiter, I'd been spending, as I said, 60% to 50% of my working hours doing three things, first one is prescreening the resumes, second one is scheduling and rescheduling interviews which killed me. Everybody hates to do this. Our third one is answering the same questions over and over again, like you know, will you provide me with Visa support? Can I bring my cat to office? And so on and so forth, so I had to find a way to automate that without losing the human kind of touch for the candidates. Chad: Can I bring my cat to work? I like it. Joel: I bring mine to work. Chad: We know. Aida: Even though people do know for sure that it's not a human at the other end of the thing, it's a chatbot, they're getting so engaged that they always ask all types of personal questions, like are you a robot? Do you have a girlfriend? What's the weather in London, and so on and so forth, so it's really, really hilarious. That's why we added the small talk functionality with the chatbot and now it can handle all of those questions. That's pretty cool. Chad: That's hilarious. Where did everything actually start? Where was your first customer? Where location wise and what was the customer's name? Talk to us about that story. Aida: Absolutely. Our first customer was the largest retailer in Eastern Europe, it's called X5 Retails ... X5 Retail. They have three retail grocery chain stores, chains back in Eastern Europe, so altogether they have 200,000 employees and they use XOR in order to stay in touch with their candidates after hours, during the weekends, during the holidays, and now they're hiring 160,000 people per year with a huge turnover and they're using XOR for this. They're still our customers, they're still very happy. Joel: Aida, you service 103 languages you said, I think that's amazing. How did you do that, and you said most of your competition just covers a couple languages. Get a little more specific about some of your competitors and how they fall short of servicing so many languages. Aida: Yes. Actually my technical co-founder is a pretty impressive guy. He's been in software development for 16 years, managing all types of teams, so he won the national wide competition in AI chatbots back in Russia two years ago. That's when I found him. So the way we did it is we don't use the Microsoft LUIS or IBM Watson, we built our own proprietary chatbot engine that actually works in two main languages, which is Russian and English, and then above that we use little twists and tricks and know-how with the use of Google translate. Chad: Gotcha. She just said Watson sucks. I love it. Joel: Competitively, who would be in second place with the second most languages? Aida: The two main languages that mostly used are English and Russian right now. Joel: Correct. Aida: And Spanish as well. Now we're getting actually traction in Brazil as well. So yeah, we're doing this very big partnership with Brazil. Joel: But you know your competition, you know Mia, Olivia, AllyO, etc. What kind of language penetration do they have outside of English? Aida: I believe all of them cover English for sure. I don't ... I'm not aware of any other languages. I do know some of the competitors also cover, for example, Dutch or German, but none of the rest. Chad: Okay. So what messaging platforms do you actually connect into? I mean, what if I'm on a mobile phone, I'm in an Uber, I'm actually going through the process of applying and I've arrived at my destination, I close the browser. What happens next? Have you lost me? Does it go to my ... Did I choose to use Facebook Messenger? Is it text? Tell me how you don't lose those types of individuals. Aida: Absolutely. So first of all, we do use our web app. Of course, that works with any browser on any device. This is the first one. We also connect all the data of all the candidates from the moment they apply in order to re-engage with them, to confirm the meeting, to give them the opportunity to reschedule, so we're using pretty much emailing, texting, Facebook Messenger, Telegram messenger, Viber, Skype. Now we're adding WhatsApp because they just released the chatbot API, finally. But new ones are web application and combined with the texting. Joel: You say that you, in your promo video, that you integrate with every ATS and every digital calendar system. Certainly not every one, right. Talk about that. Aida: Yeah, sure. So we're integrated with the most popular calendar systems, obviously, because scheduling is everybody's pain point right now, so this is Google calendar, Outlook Microsoft 365, and as for the ATS, we are currently integrated with 12 of them and we build integration as we go so that means as we acquire a new customer, if they need a special integration, we do that. There are like all the mainstream ones and also we are integrating with a whole bunch of congruent ATSs that our customers are using, obviously. As for the mainstream ones, it's Taleo, SmartRecruiters, iCIMS, Greenhouse, Lever, and a coupe of others, TempWorks, JazzHR, I need to kind of recall them, but 12 of them altogether. Chad: So as we take a look at, I mean really, the globe, there are plenty of places for you to attack and really gain amazing penetration, so like Russia, Europe, so on and so forth. Apparently you guys are really going to focus on the US market. Why move to the US market so quickly without just going ahead and owning Europe and Russia and Asia, etc? Joel: Middle East. Chad: Yeah. Aida: Let me tell you that US market for HR technology is 300 times as big as in Russia, for example. So it's the biggest market as well as the obvious step for us to go. Also, in the US in a couple of industries, five industries, they do experience a very high labor shortage right now, labor crisis they would say. Industries such as construction, which is booming and they cannot hire people fast enough, health care, retail, restaurants, and hotels. This is why we're focused on the US, because the unemployment rate is so low, they need to do something about it. Chad: Gotcha. So there's just the opportunity. I mean, obviously the dollar amount is ... that's a nice little draw, but also the opportunity because it is so hard, especially right now in the US to recruit. That being said, high volume recruiting is something where you guys have focused. How do you serve, because that's a big change going from high volume to a corporate more of like a white collar professional type of a platform, how do you serve both sides and do it well? Aida: Yeah, absolutely. We started with high volume recruitment, because there we saw the immediate results for the customers, obviously. But when we started to penetrate the American market, we actually even shifted a little bit more to being the industry agnostic system because we're currently working with a technology company, with staffing agencies that are hiring white collar types of jobs, types of people, so it doesn't really matter. We'll automate the same things for them, asking the filtering questions, we prescreen them, then we schedule them, answer their questions. Aida: The only difference is that maybe in FAQ part of the chatbots. For example, if we're talking ab the white collar types of jobs, we are mostly focused on what's my career development, the Visa support, internship programs, so on and so forth, whereas for the blue collar, it's a little bit more straightforward, because ... what my salary will be, will I have to wear a uniform, will I get a corporate car, so on and so forth. Joel: I want to ask you about onboarding. You mentioned in your promotional material that when someone becomes a customer, one of your "AI team onboarding members" will call them and go through questions, etc, which to me one of the big issues with chatbots is one of scale. They all have to have a human involved to build the Q&A and hand hold for a little bit. Do you ever see your company getting to a point where's not a human onboarding team involved? That it can be turn key or just some basic questions that a company needs to fill out or answer? Aida: Absolutely. We are actually working right now, so first of all, we do have a huge database of library templates that we use, and we also edit them and also launch them as fast as we can. Our custom success managers do that. But, right now we're serving enterprise customers and staffing agencies as well as high volumes of types of jobs, but we do think that our solution is something that every company with over 50 people could have benefit from. So for those types of people, we definitely will build the kind of ... we're actually right now working on a system that will turn the job description requirement parts into the chatbot right away for those smaller companies that will be able to do the onboarding themselves. Aida: But right now how it works is our technical team and our customer success team are working together, so custom success team is working closely with the talent acquisition team of the customer in order to build up the chatbots in order to set up the initial knowledge base of the chatbots in order to build out the filter questions for every type of position. The technical team is taking care of the integration with ATS and calendar system. Chad: How are you actually attacking the market, because attacking the high volume market is entirely different than attacking the blue collar kind of more corporate type of market. So how are you attacking the market from an education and a sales standpoint? Aida: As for the sales, it's pretty straightforward. It's B2B sales process. The prospecting emails, qualifications, demos, proposals, the usual thing. So as for the educational market [crosstalk 00:19:58] Chad: Fortune 500 companies right out of the gate or are you using partners to be able to facilitate that process? Aida: We do both, but we do see for sure that the most reliable way source of leads for us is prospecting and the cold emailing if you can say so. But the partners is another way of ... for example, the partnerships with a couple of ATSs that we're currently working with. Yeah, this is very interesting for us but you cannot really scale it up and it takes a little bit longer. Joel: AI has been under fire in recruitment lately. You've probably read the story about Amazon. Aida: Oh yeah. Joel: Building their own AI component and the bias was sort of starting to build in to the platform or the application. In your materials, you talk about your own AI and the more that it's being used, it learns and it starts recommending who might be good candidates for jobs. So talk about that solution that you guys have and how you keep bias out of your solution, whereas Amazon failed. Aida: Actually as for the Amazon, let me add the little comment you can ... I do not believe they actually launched it and somebody was discriminated, although ... and I also cannot believe that they couldn't exclude the feature of the gender out of the equation. That's very interesting for me. But at the same time, so the predictive analytics of the chatbots is another very big component where for usage of which you do have to have very big data set. So we're currently ... what we're doing right now is we build out the predicted analytic that will let you ... based on the number of metadata that you gather about the candidate from the moment they apply and based on historic data, what types of candidates were successful in the company in two ways, were they ever promoted, and how long did they stick with the company, will predict not only the level of engagement of the candidate and the score based on hard skills and how many years of experience and education and so on and so forth. Aida: But also, how likely will the candidate turn out within three months, or how likely will the candidate be recruited or stay with the company for longer than a year? That's one aspect of predictive analytics and the second one is how fast do you need to move with this candidate in order not to lose him to the competitor and that makes sense. That's also extremely important for us. Chad: It certainly does. So let me ask this just from a clarification standpoint. You are looking to do transactional type of business with employers who are like under 50 employees, and then you're also looking to try to go after top notch Fortune 500 companies at the same time. Is that what you're doing today or is that what really your long term focus is? Aida: It's our long term focus, because right now our main focus is enterprises and staffing agencies. Chad: Gotcha. So go back to the partner strategy kind of conversation. So we've seen Paradox and Olivia do some pretty smart partnerships, like one with SmashFly, where they have Emerson automatically embedded into a platform that is already serving hundreds, hell, who knows, even maybe thousands, of employers currently. So that was a just add water kind of scenario. What are you doing beyond the applicant tracking system side of the house to be able to create those types of partnerships to really drive adoption? Aida: Right. In order to drive the adoption, first of all we do the partnership with the ATS which is the most obvious way because the chatbot is the thing that stands between the job board, so whatever the job distribution channels are, and ATS, and automate this engagement with the candidates, right. Chad: Right. Aida: You also mentioned Olivia and Paradox, which I think is the same thing, right? Chad: Yeah, yeah, but they've partnered with SmashFly. That was my point. They partnered with SmashFly. Joel: Yep. Aida: That's a good one. We don't do any of those types of partnerships, if that makes sense, right now. Chad: Okay. Aida: That might be a good idea. Chad: And I mean, so right out of the gate, the applicant tracking systems really haven't given a shit about candidate experience at all. Aida: Absolutely. Chad: So having the opportunity to embed the chatbot into an ATS, that's all well and good, but why wouldn't you focus on trying to embed into an actual candidate experience platform? That's what they're there for. Aida: Yes. That's right, but ... that's a good point, actually, but we don't really believe in the partnership between the ... I don't know. When we're in the early stage startup, not early stage anymore, but at the same time, we do know that the main focus should be at the customer acquisition currently to do the partnership on the same terms, if that makes sense. Chad: Gotcha. Aida: There will be benefit for both, for the commercial standpoint and from the ... yeah. So that will not be sole dependent on the partner in that point. Joel: I want to ask about Ikea. It looks like you guys are doing some work with them and what I found interesting was you did some sort of a kiosk program with Ikea and we think so much as chatbots as either a desktop application or something on your mobile phone, but I think kiosks is pretty interesting. Tell us about what you did with Ikea. Aida: Absolutely. So with Ikea, we do the kiosks. It's in every Ikea, there are a couple of ... you could say it's an iPad, right? Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Aida: So any person could just go up there and just apply for a job. Pick a job that suits to this particular person the best, find a location that's closest to their home address, and then apply for a job, go through the prescreening and be scheduled for an interview right away. That's the idea for that. But what we also do in terms of the ... it's gonna all fly in chatbots, if you can say so, it's not an online source. You go by hands ... you go by feet and then you feel it out. Aida: We also do ... we have a couple customers in retail, we also need experience with scanning of QR codes, which are not that huge in the US anymore, but they are pretty still used in Europe, so you can just scan a QR code and get to talk to the chatbot right away from your mobile phone. For example, for students at job fair or something like that. Joel: Gotcha. So as we're sort of winding down here, tell me about pricing, and I want to know about your ultimate goal for the company. You've taken very little in money so you have some flexibility. Do you want to grow the company and have it for five, ten years? Do you want to flip it here in the next one or two? What's the ultimate goal and what's the pricing of the product? Aida: Absolutely. The pricing, it's SAAS, it's an annual subscription which depends on two factors, first one is how many applicants the company is processing per annum basis, and second one is what are the feature set, what are the business process they actually want to automate? For example, whether or not they want just basic scheduling for the first step of the interview process as opposed to the complex scheduling with all the hiring managers, panel interviews, sequence interviews, and so on and so forth. Also whether or not they will need the video interviewing functionality, the widget on the websites, and ... yeah. It can reach anywhere from $30,000 to $600,000 in the US alone, so that's the pricing. Joel: And ultimate goal? Aida: We are actually ... we're committed to the company for at least the next five to seven years, the team is and we will do what's best in the interest of the shareholders, if you can say so. It might be in a position, it might be an IPO in this timeframe. The ultimate goal for the people is to build out the ultimate tool to hire any person so that you can just tell to ZOR for example, "I'm opening up a new restaurant at this location in two months. Bring me all the staff I need on this particular day." They will be all assessed, they will be all ready to go. Joel: There's our first IPO drop on the firing squad, Chad. That was ballsy, I like that. You heard it here first. Chad: That's pretty awesome. So, my last question. Aida: Yes. Chad: Going back to partnerships and driving revenues and vision, so what agencies have you closely affiliated yourself with and give us some success stories on how you've been able to work through agencies, advertising agencies. Aida: Advertising agencies? Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Aida: What's ... I mean? Chad: The TMPs of the world, the NASs, the KRTs, the Shakers, those types of organizations. Aida: I'm not really sure I got the question. Chad: Okay, so in recruitment in the US, their, in many cases, adoption is incredibly slow for talent acquisition because there's so much being thrown at them so fast, they can't take it all in, so what they do is they have advertising agencies like TMP Worldwide, like KRT, like NAS, like Shaker. So in most cases, they're a conduit for adoption. What are you doing, what formal programs do you have going on with them right now, and give us a little explanation of one that's really working well for you. Aida: That's actually a great question. I am under Indeed, but we're very currently, very deeply involved with several of those types of companies right now. What we do with all of them, it's an Indeed kind of thing, but it's ... yeah ... I think I don't know about it. Joel: Maybe we should move on. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: All right, all right. We're at our threshold here. Aida, thanks for putting up with the firing squad. Chad and I are both gonna give you our rating and then you will hopefully still be friends at the end of it and you can say goodbye. Joel: So I will get into my rating at this point. I'll go first. I love a lot of what I heard. I loved 121 companies that are using it, I loved so little amount that you've taken in money, low amount of employees. You have 25 but I'm sure most of them are contract over in Europe, very low cost, low overhead folks you have cranking out code on a probably 24-hour basis. I love the 100+ languages. We don't have time to put that through the test, so I'll just have to assume that all those languages are very, very integrated. Somebody in China that's using it, it sounds really like you're talking to someone that's Chinese and not someone that just threw in a translator, because we know translation is a tough game and if you guys have figured it out, I think that's really, really solid. Joel: Satisfaction rating of chatbots doesn't surprise me. People hate the black hole. I think that from an engagement perspective, it's great, so to me, chatbots are gonna be this sort of must have application for every ATS, everyone that's in this business serving enterprise or clients in that area so for me, you guys are gonna be a major acquisition target and considering how little you've taken in money, someone to write you a check for a few million dollars, is not gonna be a big deal and it's something that you're gonna have to deal with, probably in the near future as all these chatbots get consolidated. Joel: For me, I think what you've done is fantastic. You've been around a little longer than maybe some of the others. The language thing is huge and I think you guys are gonna be prime for an acquisition. So for me in the firing squad, big applause. Congratulations. Chad: That's amazing. So my turn. Joel: Yep. Chad: Aida, I have to say right out of the gate, totally incredibly impressive. No question. Profitable on day one, 125 customers, I mean the ranging ability of the platform, not just in the US, only $350,000 taken at this point when what, the Mias of the world I think have taken like 38 million or something, I can't remember. Joel: Yeah. Mia's taken a little bit more than that. Chad: Yeah, yeah, a lot. Taking that 1.6 million ARR, 25 employees, 93%, I just think all of that is just amazing and it is an awesome story. Here's the thing. The competition for the US honeypot is much different than it is in anywhere else in the world, and really the word of the day is partnership. That's all there is to it. If you're out there on your own and you don't have tightly integrated partnerships and you don't understand the user experience platform ... I guess you could say landscape that's out there, like the SmashFlys of the world, the Phenoms of the world, that's going to be, I believe, one of your biggest vehicles. Yeah, the ATS is awesome and it's great to have those names, but at the end of the day, the ATS really doesn't care about a user experience, most of them, the big ones. They just don't. That's why these other platforms have come out of pretty much nowhere. Chad: So partnership is key. I think you guys are on an amazing trajectory, but that one piece, that one partnership piece could really kill adoption if you don't win there, because adoption is cash, and it's retention and it's sustainability, so for me, I think you guys are doing an amazing job, but because of that one piece, here in the US, it's gonna be a golf clap. Joel: By the way, she's gonna get a few phone calls from those folks after this show airs, by the way. Chad: Oh yeah she will, and you're welcome. Aida: Thank you guys. Joel: All right, Aida. Congratulations. How do you feel? Aida: I'm feeling good. Thank you so much. Joel: Good, good. Good. All right, again, where can our audience find out more about you? Any deals you can throw at them for the Chad Cheese show? Aida: Yeah sure. We can give them a little discount. Joel: Just mention Chad Cheese when you call. Chad: Exactly. Aida: Yep. Joel: And that website is? Aida: It's XOR.ai. Joel: Very good. Aida: Very good. Joel: Chad, we out. Chad: We out. Announcer: 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 W-W-W dot C-H-A-D-C-H-E-E-S-E dot com. #XORai #Talroo #chatbots #AI #MachineLearning #FiringSquad

Straight off Halloween's sugar high, the boys are in rare form this week and talkin' about - What the hell is Handshake going to do with all their new ca$h? - Possible walkout protests at Google - eHarmony sells for mere pocket change - Facebook's rumored Workplace.com - Ladders deserves the spanking the receive ...and get your lazy asses out to VOTE! I'll say it again VOTE! Enjoy, and throw money at sponsors Sovren, Canvas and JobAdX. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your sourcing and recruiting partner for people with disabilities. Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listing 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: It's to come down from your Halloween sugar high, and tune into the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous. I'm Joel Cheeseman. Chad: I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's episode, Facebook is launching, Google is protesting, and Handshake is raising. Gotta stay tuned to know what the hell we're talking about. Grab a Kit Kat, and relax to the sweet sounds of this Sovren ad. Sovren: Sovren is known for providing the world's best and most accurate person products. Now, based on that technology, comes 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 jobs fit to the candidate. Sovren: 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. Chad: I already do. Joel: Chad, I'm a little bit scared for the future. Last night, Halloween, as you know. I'm sure you had trick-or-treater's, you were doing the whole thing like I was. I've got to tell you, the costumes were pretty weak by the teen and preteens that came to the door. There was an entitlement like, just give me candy. I might throw on a baseball cap, or maybe I'll throw on some boots to look like a cowboy, but I was really unimpressed, and I feel like this is millennial 2.0 that we're getting ready to see, if Halloween is any indication from what I saw last night. Chad: Our kids went all out. I mean full body suits, I mean the blood in some cases. Yeah, I mean it was rainy down here, so yeah anybody who was coming out, I mean they also wanted to go the extra effort to be able to get candy, right? Joel: It's because you live in Mayberry, and Uncle Jed and Ed Clampett come over in their outfits. Yeah, you're small town America dude, I'm big city urban area up here, up in the big city, so yeah, maybe that's the problem. All right, let's get to shout outs. Chad: Lazy kids. Joel: We're moving beyond Halloween, we're going into November, and it feels like Christmas in my house dude. I've got major shout outs to LinkUp, particularly their CEO, Toby Sasquatch Dayton. We call him Sasquatch, because no one's ever sees him, and we finally saw him in New Orleans. A Sasquatch T-shirt was part of my goodie bag, as well as a little bit of refreshing beverages. Joel: Also Judge, The Shred sponsor. By the way, if you're not listening to The Shred, what the hell's wrong with you? These are great little appetizers of news done only how Chad and I do them. Shout out to Judge and LinkUp for some great goodie bags, making it feel like Christmas already. Chad: Yeah, you have to subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts, to be able to get The Shred. It's not just something that we're going to throw out there all the time, so if you're not getting The Shred, that's because you haven't subscribed to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. What the fuck is your problem? Joel: There's a velvet rope, because it's so valuable. Chad: Yeah, and it's free by the way. Ty Abernethy, CEO of Grayscale, and Gretchen Lindlau of Quad/Graphics, both fans of the show, big time shout out. Thanks for listening guys. Joel: Yeah, I think that's two weeks in a row for Ty Abernethy. He's doing all the right things for us. HIREconf. Chad: Yes. Joel: Hiring Solves annual conference is going on next week in New York. You and I will be doing something. As anyone who knows Jeremy Roberts, knows it feels like it's this the seat of your pants, but it all comes together at the end. Whatever we will be doing there will be awesome. November 7 and 8th in New York, come check it out. Chad: It's only $250 to get into this bad boy, if you go to chadcheese.com, you click on the banner, and it automatically has the discount code in it. If you do go to Eventbrite, just use ChadCheese, and that is the 50% off discount code. We'll be live on stage, and it should be a blast. Joel: I mean come on, $250 in New York? That's what you pay for lunch. Yeah, just get under the seat cushions there of your studio apartment, and get $250, and show up. Chad: Yeah, so Jared ... I think it's Glubin. Is it Globen, Glubin? Over at ZipRecruiter, yeah fan of the show. He nearly caught me on the wrong day though, sorry Jared, but it was Monday, so you should know better. You get snarky with me, the snark's going to come back, there's no question. Bill Boorman, dude thanks for sharing this fantastic T-shirt. Chad: Here's what it said, don't blame the foreigners, you were shit at your job. Joel: Bill is the quintessential English, snarky, self-deprecating person. It's been way too long since I've seen Bill, hopefully I'll run into him soon, but yeah he's well known for the snark. Chad: Very nice. Joel: He could be on the show at some point, we need to start upping our game on guests I think. Chad: We've got great guests. Joel: They're all ... Hung Lee should be on, there should be a whole British invasion of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: Well, I mean Hung Lee, is ... He can't get off a God damn plane to do the podcast, that's the problem, the guy is everywhere. Big shout out to Max Armbruster, the CEO of Talkpush, for tweeting a response to last week's texting shower rant that Joel had. His response was, "While regulators may struggle to protect SMS as with email from spammers, Facebook is equipped to fight them efficiently on Messenger and WhatsApp." Chad: What he's saying, is his platform doesn't need that texting bullshit, they have messaging. Joel: Yeah, I'm going to back up on my rant, which I totally stand by. I got some pushback, and I just want to make sure it's clear what I was talking about. Chad: Oh, okay. Joel: Okay, I understand that politicians don't have the same laws that marketers have, and people have, which is bullshit, but that's its own little rant. What I'm talking about, is today, I could get a Twilio account, set up a phone number to text people, plug in 100,000 phone numbers, and text those numbers through that Twilio 10 digit phone number, and there's nothing currently that I'm aware of that can stop that from happening. Joel: If it can happen, it probably is happening, it will happen more. I'm just saying that needs to be addressed, or else people are going to start freaking out, because texts are going to be coming in at an escalated rate for sure once that starts happening in mass, that's all. Chad: That's all, that's all, yeah Max, says, "Don't worry about it if use Messenger." Joel: By the way, new legislation out of AT&T, that you can't use shared short codes. The companies that allow people to send one number, and have multiple clients sent through that same short code. AT&T apparently is starting to crack down on that. I'd say even the short code text messaging that we've seen is under fire. I'm just saying, this whole space could blow up really fast, if regulators, and phone companies, which phone companies like that you're texting, right? Joel: Phone companies don't want texting to become email. They're going to do everything they can to make sure it doesn't. Chad: Yeah, but unfortunately the regulators don't self regulate, and they just do whatever the fuck they want to do, which is another reason why ... Joel: Phone companies do, phone companies don't want spam texts. Chad: They're not the regulators overall, right? They're not, they can be regulated by government. That's what I'm saying, that's why the vote counts. Moving on, we'll get more into those rants. Big shout out to the U.S. Army for continuing to be the most bad ass recruiting machine ... If you're talent acquisition out there, or you're a vendor, and you're not reverse engineering the shit out of some of the major pipelining, or branding methods that the U.S. Army has come up with over the 100 plus years they've been around for God sakes, you're stupid, seriously. Chad: These guys are the best recruiting machine out there, and as we talk the clients, as I talk to companies daily, weekly, it's amazing how many deer in the headlight looks I get when I start to point toward, "Hey, are you trying these pipeline methods?" It's ridiculous, look at what's happening out there. Look at the companies who are kicking ass and taking names, and have for over 100 years, and try to mimic that shit, idiots. Joel: By the way, your recruiting better be good, if part of the value proposition, is you could die. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I'm going to give a shout out to our buddies at TAtech, who are launching TAprose. That's prose, as in the writing prose, not like pro football players. P-R-O-S-E. Apparently this is going to be a publishing arm of the organization. Yeah, so shout out to them, we'll wait to see exactly what it is, and what's gonna unveil from that. We always love what TAtech and the Weddle's are doing, so this is one more thing that they're diving into. Chad: Yeah, and that being said, if you haven't checked out Peter Weddle's new book, "Circa 2118," check it out. What humans will do when machines take over. We're going to have him on the pod here in about a month or so, but check out that book, it's pretty cool. My last shot out, is for beer. Joel: Yay. Chad: I told this person I would not say their name. Joel: You can't anonymize. Chad: I can anonymize whatever I want, it's my fucking beer. Thanks for the beer, always welcome guys. Audra, thanks also for being a smart ass on Facebook. James Ellis, dude you gotta learn how to podcast better. That's one of the reasons why you're not getting beer man. Joel: For the record, I disclose my alcoholic gifting, and people know that if I talk about the company or person that gives me alcohol, that, that's disclosed. Way to go Chad, way to hide and veil who's gifting you beer, that's great. Chad: This is a listener, not a company. Joel: I bet they work for a company. Chad: Not one that sponsors the show. Joel: One we might talk about. Chad: No, they don't. Joel: Bullshit. All right, I'll trust you man, because we have a show together. Chad: Yes. Joel: I'm done with shout outs, I'm ready to do the show. Chad: Let's do it. Joel: All right, you're big on the whole voting thing, man I'm going to let you just run with this. Chad: Okay, so how are we not all fucking big on this voting thing? I mean seriously, how can we not be? Joel: Is someone anti-vote? Chad: Voter participation has been at a low 36% in recent years, and that often has to do with work life obligations. I mean work is important, right? We need that paycheck, managing kids, and the normal routines before work and after work is important, and sometimes gets in the way. Especially in these midterm types of elections, they just don't seem to matter as much, right? They're not Presidential elections, but they do matter. Chad: Not to mention our right to vote is pretty God damn big, when you take a look at it from a global standpoint, but we don't do it. I definitely wanted to take the time to say, "Look, we have early voting, not every state, but most states have early voting." If you haven't voted yet, and you don't want to be in the long lines on voting day, do it now. Don't put down the podcast, just take the podcast with you, and go vote now. Joel: You and I are generally I think opposed to big government regulations, and bureaucracy. I think we're probably in agreement that election day should be a national holiday. Chad: Yeah. Joel: There should be something to help motivate, because yeah, the latest numbers I've seen, is 48% of people don't vote. That's insane. Chad: It is. Joel: A lot of really good people died for us to be able to have the government and the country and the world we live in. I know we're a US-based show, and people from everywhere listen, but they're in similar situations as well. Yeah man, make your voice heard. I mean Donald Trump in aggregate won by the skin of his teeth, and it made a huge difference. If you think that you don't matter, you probably do, and this election is going to be a big one, so get out there and vote. Joel: Companies, if you own a company, let your folks, especially the small businesses that listen, let your folks have some time to go vote. Don't pressure them, you can incentivize them or however, but voting is important. We wanted to get that word out, next Tuesday go to the polls, do it. Chad: People are happier when they know the culture supports this type of activity. That's all there is to it. It's pretty fucking simple, and this leads into ... Joel: Get woke. Get woke is officially nerdy now, because people like me know what it means. No one's going to be saying get woke anymore, but we're going to say it, because it seems to be a hot topic in employment, in retention. News story out last week? Yeah I believe, basically how you feel as a company about the likes of Colin Kaepernick, and other such socially responsible folks in companies, is a really important thing. Joel: Let me read you some of the survey results here for you. A whopping 62%, and the survey asked 500 business professionals what they thought. 62% said they would not work for an organization, if they disagreed with their stated beliefs. 65% said they wouldn't buy from a company, if they disagreed with their state of beliefs. A mere 5% stated that what an organization says about an issue, would not influence their interest in working for them, which means 95% are interested in what a company says. Joel: While most, 56% said their organization has not ever taken a public stance on a political or controversial social issue, 30% said that their organization has. Times, they are a changing. Chad: It's pretty amazing, I mean what you say matters as an organization, and when you say nothing, that matters as well. When we take a look at how you treat your employees, how you actually have a message from a culture standpoint. I know here in Mayberry, in Columbus, Indiana, where a Cummins engine company internationally is headquartered, they have a big stance with regard to diversity overall, and they make it clear. Chad: When the states started taking stances against the LGBTQ community, right? Cummins actually was a huge voice in saying, "No, we will not stand for this as an organization, as a Corporation of people. This is something we won't stand for." The entire community got behind them, as well as other companies like Salesforce, and that meant something. Chad: That makes you puck your chest out, and believe in not just the country, but also the organization that you were affiliated with. I don't work for Cummins, but it makes me feel good that they are truly a part of this community. Joel: Yeah, it reminds me of when we were younger, and a famous quote by Michael Jordan, who would not get political when he played, said, "Republicans buy shoes too." That sentiment seems to be changing. The likes of Lebron James, and other stars are much more vocal than generations past. I think it's time ... It's getting to a time where companies are needing to take stands on issues. Joel: The Levi's example of gun control, having statement about that. Chad: Right. Joel: We've seen Silicon Valley companies talk about the immigration policies of the current office. If you're not seeing it externally into government policies, you're seeing it internally. This week, more than 200 Google engineers are apparently planning a, "Women's walk," where they will walk out in protest of the company's alleged protection of executives accused of sexual misconduct. Joel: This is according to BuzzFeed sources. An internal message board indicates the group plans to walk out on Thursday, which is the day of this recording, so we'll see what happens, talk about it next week maybe. This was big in response to executive Andy Rubin, who was given apparently $90 million in an exit package after an investigation found allegations against him credible on the sexual-harassment front. Joel: If you're not handling stuff externally, it's going to handle itself internally, if you're not being more responsible, and less tone deaf with social issues. Chad: Yeah, no question, not to mention from the standpoint of trying to actually hire let's say more female engineers, how do you think this impacts that endeavor? I mean it's going to negatively impact it, no question. As Google is probably already having issues in that area trying to hire female engineers, or really any types of employees, it's going to become even harder as they have these things pop up. Chad: You have to change your culture, and giving somebody a $90 million parachute, I don't know if that's always the best of answers. Joel: By the way, I'll mention that social media gets a lot of slack, and deservedly so in many cases, but I think this individual empowerment, and group empowerment, is happening only because we have social media. I don't think that any of these things would have the prominence that they do, without people having a voice that they never had before with social media. Chad: Transparency, there's no question. There's a new form of transparency. They're the pros and cons of social media, right? Being able to, from the standpoint surface problems that have been happening for years, probably decades. Also, on the other hand, the ability to falsely influence somebody with a bunch of bullshit that never happened. Chad: I mean it's going to be our job, to be able to do better from a research standpoint. When you see a company is going through ... Let's say for instance you see a story or, "You think it's a story," do your research. I mean that's what it all comes down to, make sure that it's real first. Again, you're right, from a transparency standpoint, there's much more information coming out. Joel: You as a company get to deal with it, and it affects recruiting and retention, amen. Handshake this week, a lot of people don't know Handshake. I didn't know about them until probably eight months ago or so. Raised $40 million this week, they raised them from the likes of Zuckerberg's Fund. He and his wife I believe, Chan Zuckerberg have a fund. Joel: The guy that founded eBay has a venture fund, so they both donated money, or they invested money, sorry, not donated. The company now has about a $300 million valuation. For those who don't know, it's essentially a software that colleges use for their students to connect with employers. What I think is unique about it, is they have Glassdoor type reviews on these sites. Joel: They're behind a walled garden, so only interns, or college students can see these reviews. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Whereas, if you go to Glassdoor, or Indeed now, it's difficult to segment just interns, so this is a neat way to do that. They also have a system where you can give a review anonymously, or you can choose to sign your name to the review, which I think is good. I think you'd probably be surprised by how many ... They're all good obviously, but how many interns will put their name to a review, and don't have to be anonymous all the time. Chad: Yeah, remember the days of JobTrak? Do you remember that? Joel: I do remember JobTrak, but I can't say I was an expert on what they did. Chad: College recruiting, I mean that's what it was, and then Monster bought it, and they fucked it all up. They called it MonsterTrak. Yeah, it's interesting the Handshake's of the world, and the domain is joinhandshake.com. They've really gone through a metamorphosis per se of really just being a job board equipped with interview scheduling a platform. An employer would come in, post a job, and then they would go ... If they were coming on site, on campus to do any types of interviews, or what have you, they could use the interview scheduling system, to be able to do that. Chad: There were some other functionality that was available too. I think today, and you start to see with some of these newer platforms, it's much more robust from a feature standpoint. It's easier to do that, because again, you're building from the ground up now, versus something that is 10 to 20 years old, so it's interesting. What do you think they're going to do with this 40 million fricking dollars? Joel: Probably what it said, is they're going to try to get into more companies. I mean I think they've done a good job with getting into colleges, and obviously if the colleges are on board, then they've got the students, which is a nice byproduct of that. Now they have to get more companies using the service. I will say if we're going historically on things like this, I think that when the economy is great, these college recruiting sites do very well. Joel: Companies need these folks, need these students to come right out of college, and join the workforce. Chad: Right, right. Joel: When the economy is in the shitter, no one seems to care as much about college recruiting. Now there's always outliers, right? There's always MIT and things like that, but on a grand scale, college recruiting takes a little break when recessions hit, and economies get bad. I think Handshake is doing well right now, partly because of the economy, but when things go badly, we'll see if Handshake can weather the storm, and come out the other side. Chad: Yeah, I think they're going to spend some of this money ... You said they have the colleges, they really don't have the colleges, they have the college career centers. The college career centers don't represent, in many cases, the lion share of the individuals who are actually looking for jobs. Back in the day before the Internet, yeah, the college career center was the place to go, because where the hell else would you go to try to find internships? Chad: Now it's much easier, they can bypass the college career center. Yeah, having those relationships with the college career center is huge, there's no question there. You also have to spend money to try to hit that, in some cases, lion share of those college students who are not going to go through the college career center. That's through their different colleges, so I think they're going to have to invest in being able to sure up those types of relationships even more, to ensure that they're getting the talent in. Chad: I mean that's their product, right? Joel: Do you remember going to the library on Sunday, and looking at multiple cities newspapers, and looking at job postings, Five Line postings, and then applying to those jobs through the mail? Chad: Fax. Joel: How long ago does that sound? How antiquated does that sound? Holy shit. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Going to Kinko's and getting your resume printed on really nice paper, and actually typing out a cover letter. Chad: Using a typewriter, is that what you did? Joel: I had a word processor, but yeah. I mean you did that shit, like a custom typed envelope, where you actually signed your name, or letter, you signed your name. Anyway, thank God those days are gone man, because that sucked. Chad: Connectivity really sucked back then, not to mention I think from a recruiter standpoint, trying to go through all that shit would really suck, versus the technologies that are available today. Even the ones, the newer technologies, a lot of the startups that'll just automatically go through those hundreds of resumes, and just get it down to the qualified ones, and push those into your inbox. Chad: Yeah, I mean it's definitely an entirely different world, but the coolest thing, is we have been able to live through that, and through the whole Moore's law theory of watching things just progress so quickly. Our kids haven't had that opportunity, so it's really interesting, they don't understand how a lot of this actually came to fruition, but we watched the entire thing. Joel: Oh, we're going to be telling stories 30, 40 years from now about ... Anyway, in summary, we're old and getting older, but you know what isn't old? Is JobAdx's technology. Let's hear from them real quick, and we'll talk a little bit Facebook, and LinkedIn. JobAdX: As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX has been providing job work publishers, direct employers, agencies, RPO's, and staffing firms, dynamic job bidding, and real-time ad delivery through our programmatic job advertising exchange. When we started, we described JobAdX as AdSense for jobs. Now, we offer much more with Switchboard and Live Alert, completing our full suite of dynamic programmatic advertising tools with the best of consumer ad tech. JobAdX: Switchboard offers our dynamic technologies to all partner job board feed management. Live Alert eliminates latency and expired job ads via email. For more information about any of our ad solutions, please reach out to us joinus@jobadx.com. That's joinus@ J-O-B-A-D-X.com. JobAdX, the best ad tool, providing smarter programmatic for all your advertising needs. Chad: Ah, the best, ah. Ah. Chad: Facebook. Joel: Facebook continuing to be serious about employment. Chad: That's what they say. Joel: New evidence, new evidence leaked out this week that they announced to some of their bigger companies, customers, I think in this case it was Walmart who leaked it. Facebook is apparently launching a separate URL called workplace.com, where currently their messaging system, their slat competitor will be an offering on that. I just have to think, if they're serious enough to launch their own domain around this, that they're getting really serious about solutions for the enterprise. Chad: Yeah, I think they need to move away from the Facebook brand, which isn't the greatest brand at this point number one. To be able to make it seem at least like it's going to be viable, as opposed to just something that Facebook's thinking about. Yeah, I think changing the URL is big, but we're going to have to see how this really affects the product itself. Chad: Will it actually be more safe? Will it be something that companies engage with, and start to implement? Joel: By the way, wouldn't a separate domain work really nicely with an acquisition? ZipRecruiter. They could buy an existing service, move it over to workplace.com powered by Facebook, and really crush it I think. I'm speculating, but it would work really nicely if they did that. Chad: Backing up a little bit, I think ZipRecruiter is so ripe at this point for a big company, and I think Facebook is ripe at the same time to be able to put something like that together. There's no question where Zip's going, and where they're going quickly. They're doing it better than anybody else that we're seeing in the industry right now. They are not a job board, they are more of a programmatic outreach tool, and one click apply SMB. Chad: Where Facebook has been, and where they have been focusing on the SMB side of the house, this is a perfect start for them, and would provide them core technology and business, and pretty much a business model they could kick ass with. Joel: I think it's fair to say that ZipRecruiter has at least brought a pistol to the gunfight. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: Although someone with a howitzer is LinkedIn, and there was a post this week that caught your attention that I fully disagree with, so why don't you set the table for what you like about this opinion. Chad: Yeah, I just like it, because it was different than yours. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Holland McCue, she does some pretty good stuff. She put herself out there, she said, "Yes, I'm an optimist, and you might think I'm full of shit." I'm paraphrasing, but the top 1%, and this is through her blog, and through what she's seeing from the LinkedIn blog. The top 1% on LinkedIn, the Richard Branson's of the world, were getting all the algorithm love, right? Chad: LinkedIn finally understands the trickle-down effect for the 1% just doesn't work, right? LinkedIn understands that the regular users like schmucks like you and me, when we receive more likes, we engage more, and we actually push more content out there. Again, it releases those chemicals in the brain, oh, they like us. Yeah, this was Holland's take on it after reading some of the propaganda that LinkedIn was putting out. Chad: Why the hell not? It does make sense, why push all the one percenters shit out there, and make us all feel like we're looking up at the ivory tower, as opposed to feel like we're at the party in the ivory tower? Joel: Okay, so I feel like we're probably in more agreement than not. I feel that the algo's are not defaulting to giving your content a lot of exposure, just because you put it on LinkedIn. In other words, the video example that we talked about. You and I did a quick video at a party, and it got way more views than it deserved, and way more views than we thought it would. Joel: Part of that I think, is because LinkedIn wanted to push its video solution, it wanted to get people energized around doing it. Holy shit, I put a video up, and I got a bunch of views. Over time, that's going to wear on people, like this is just a dumb video, why am I seeing all these video? If it's good quality, if people do like it and share it, then yes, you're going to get some really nice exposure, and engagement on LinkedIn, especially for people like us, who want to be in front of recruiters and employers who, let's admit it, are on LinkedIn. Joel: If we were nurses, we would not be saying LinkedIn was the place to be, but we are in the recruiting business, so it's obviously going to get responses when we talk about Monster revenues decreasing, or so-and-so acquired so-and-so. That's gonna get a lot of attention and engagement, partly because of the audience that we're in. If we're still posting crappy stuff, I believe the algorithm is going to ... Just like it did on Facebook and anywhere else, just start pushing that out of view, because no one cares. Joel: When people care about what you post about, you're going to get engagement, I do agree with that. We're in more agreement than not. I think what Holl is talking about, is content that does engage, and it's good, solid content, not just we're throwing stuff up there, just throwing up a blog post on LinkedIn, because it's getting viewed. Joel: We're just throwing up a video, because it's getting viewed, it actually has to be good. Chad: With these new algorithms though, and if they do flip it for the 99% getting more perspective views and whatnot, or more engagement, then they're going to have to, LinkedIn is going to have to worry about the same shit that Facebook's going through with this fake news, make your own shit up meme situation that they're in right now. People loved the hell out of that, but it's still bullshit, it's still lies, right? Chad: They still love it, so yeah LinkedIn, I mean if you do flip it, there could be some unintended consequences around that, where people are liking a bunch of shit that is just totally false. Joel: LinkedIn benefits from the fact that most of its users, particularly the ones that are engaged, are, let's be honest, smarter than the average user that's on Facebook. Fake news has less of a chance to get through on LinkedIn than it does on Facebook. Chad: You're giving way too much credit to the human race, I think that's bullshit. I think at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the reason why we have a President, he was a TV show President, is because people who are working every day, don't get enough time with their Maury Povich, and their Jerry Springer, or what have you, right? They don't get that, so now they get it during the news times. Chad: I think we're giving way too much credit to the human race. Are there smart people out there that can do research and get through that? Yes, but it hasn't been proven yet. Joel: You don't think on average that the LinkedIn user is more educated than the average Facebook, or Twitter user? Chad: Education has nothing to do with it, people are engaging with these things, because it's hitting something inside of them, right? It's triggering something inside of them, it has nothing to do with their fucking education. Now, if they take the time, and they want to go the next step to actually see if this is true or not, that's entirely different. Being educated and having triggers, has nothing to do with being uneducated and having triggers. Joel: I think you've been reading Circa 2118 too much, and have way too little confidence in the human race. If you want to join Chad, and enjoy the doom and gloom of robotics and automation taking everything over, read Circa 2118. Chad: I'm saying be careful people, do your research, and don't post stupid shit, that's what I'm saying. Joel: I mean PT Barnum famously said, "There's a sucker born every minute," and that was in the 1800s. We've been dumb forever, we will continue to be dumb. Anyway. Chad: It's amazing. Joel: Who's not dumb is our sponsor Canvas, and their supersmart technology. Let's hear from them, and put the show out of its misery, and talk about eHarmony, and the Ladder's. Canvas: Canvas, is the world's first intelligent, text-based interviewing platform, empowering recruiters to engage, screen, and coordinate logistics via text, and so much more. We keep the human, that's you at the center, while CanvasBot is at your side adding automation to your workflow. Canvas leverages the latest in machine learning technology, and has powerful integrations, that help you make the most of every minute of your day. Canvas: Easily amplify your employment brand with your newest culture video, or add some personality to the mix, by firing off a Bitmoji. We make compliance easy, and are laser focused on recruiter success. Request a demo at gocanvas.io, and in 20 minutes, we'll show you how to text at the speed of talent. That's gocanvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent. Joel: Speaking of dumb, I feel like the last sponsor ad is the best one, because we saved the dumbest stories for last. Sometimes I think people just fast-forward to the end, and listen to that final ad, and then the stupid stuff we talk about at the end. Chad: I think with Canvas, the humans will be able to save so much more time, they can take that time to watch Maury Povich and Jerry Springer, and get their fill. Then we don't have to worry about all this shit on social media. Joel: Your ability to text fake news to mass quantities of people, is that much easier with Canvas. Chad: That's not how it works. Joel: Make sure you throw in a Bitmoji when you do it. Chad: Okay, so what are we talking about first here? Joel: EHarmony sells for $85 million to a German company, and we thought, not only that news, but it was a good time to revisit Elevated Careers, which was eHarmony for jobs. Chad: Yeah, good stuff. Joel: Candidate.guru, who acquired them when they did, which I don't know, over a year ago, right? Easily over a year ago, so eHarmony selling for $85 million, any comments on that? Chad: It seems like a low price tag. I mean I thought dating was the shit, and there were so much engagement, and there was so much revenue. I mean just $85 million? They sold to a German broadcasting company I believe called ProSieben, and they're just going to emerge eHarmony with their current dating app called Parship Elite. I mean it's like eHarmony really is dying. Joel: 85 is ridiculously low. I bet from 2000 when they launched to a year ago, the amount of advertising that they've done with that goofy founder on the ads, which was not inspiring anyone to date. Anyway, he's on these ads, I bet they spent $85 million a year on ads over that time, and now to sell for $85 million. This just shows again, people just want to swipe left and right dude. Joel: They don't want to fill out a form and a profile, and maybe that speaks to employment as well. People don't want to work for this stuff, and in eHarmony's case, you might actually have sex. We're not even talking about filling out a resume, or some lengthy assessment test. Chad: What's at the end of that swipe? That's what people are really caring about, but yeah, eHarmony, $85 million, ridiculously low. I mean just crazy, ridiculously low. Joel: Crazy, ridiculously low, and by the way, remember Facebook is getting into this dating game too. EHarmony may have thought well, Tinder took away how much value from our company? How much is Facebook going to take away from our company? We better sell as soon as possible to get as much as we can. Elevated Careers, let's revisit them real quickly. Candidate.guru was really big on the acquisition. Joel: There's an interview somewhere in our archives with their CEO, or founder. Chad: Steve, yeah. Joel: Yeah, Steve, and they've been pretty silent since the initial acquisition. We visited their website today, they've had no press releases anytime in the past year that I've seen. There's been no new features or technology. We visited the site, the most recent blog post is from May. I don't know, it's not a good sign from where I sit that the acquisition took place, or that they're doing anything with it. Chad: Yeah, they pivoted into something entirely different. I mean the site looks goods, it's nice, it's polished, but still, is that just new lipstick on the pig? Joel: It might be, we'll keep our eye on that. Speaking of press releases that come across my desk, this one caught my attention. Chad: Oh God. Joel: I'll read you the headline and the subhead to get you titillated and excited. Ladders, who we know, Ladders announces new, "Tap2Call, spelled T-A-P, the number 2, so you know it's good, C-A-L-L," feature, that allows recruiters to instantly connect with job candidates from their profiles. Holy crap, talk about innovation. Subhead reads, this one-of-a-kind mobile feature gives recruiters the option to call candidates immediately from Ladders mobile site with, get this, a single tap. Joel: Holy cow, talk about progressive. Chad: Okay stop, okay stop, so let me make this point again about Ladders. I've made it before on other podcasts, mainly about how bad their branding is. I mean remember Ladders used to be known as what? Joel: TheLadders. Chad: TheLadders, right, right, and why was that? Because they bought the URL, theladders.com, right? Then they backed off to just Ladders, so guess what's on ladders.com? Joel: Not ladders. Chad: A ladder company, no shit, right? It's the stupidest thing you could ever do in the world. You spend all this money for TheLadders to be able to brand it, and then you back it off, and you don't even have the domain to be able to do what you need ... Okay, that just is a framing of how stupid this fucking company is. Joel: Frame it brother. Chad: Tap2Call, didn't every mobile phone enable this specific technology and connectivity about five years ago? I mean I don't need Tap2Call to be able to do that already, and I haven't had to for years on my android. I'm sure on the iPhone as well, so how much money did their developers actually spend in putting something like this together? Joel: This is innovation man, I don't know what you're talking about. What I think is funny, is I think it was last week, or recently, we poked fun at CareerBuilder and Monster, because the stuff LinkedIn and Google are launching, is crazy cool, and intelligent. CareerBuilder and Monster's answer to that, is resume jobs, Instagram for jobs, or augmented reality to point my phone down a main Street, and see, ooh, wow, Starbucks is hiring, who knew? Joel: If we're making fun of CareerBuilder and Monster, what the hell is Tap2Call? That's so bad, and the fact that you're putting out a press release saying that this is once in a generation technology, just shows you how bad things must be at TheLadders, or excuse me, at Ladders. Chad: Yeah, at Ladders, so all of our listeners out there, when Joel and I were setting up the show, we had to talk about this, because it was so fucking stupid. For everybody that's out there from a vendor standpoint, this is your key. If you are not truly going to impact something in the recruiting industry, do not put a press release out, and don't make it look like it's a feature that is the first ever, because guess what? This is the stupidest shit that we've seen in a while. Joel: By the way dude, we have some live footage from Ladders IT department. Oh God, we out we? Chad: We out. Joel: Thank God. Chad: No shit. Tristen: Hi, I'm Tristen, thanks for listening to my stepdad, the Chad, and his goofy friend, Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss out on all the knowledge dropping that's happening up in here. They made me say that. The most important part is to check out our sponsors, because I need new Track Spikes. The expensive gold shiny pair that are extra, because well, I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #Vote #Google #Levis #Branding #EmployerBrand #EmploymentBrand #Handshake #TheLadders #Facebook #LinkedIn #eHarmony #Workplacecom

When you want to talk recruitment tech you need to call upon one of the very few BAD ASS RPO tech overloads around the globe. So that's exactly what Chad & Cheese did... Adam Godson is High Commander of Tech Solutions at Cielo - that's what I call him - where they have 150,000 hires per year in 27 applicant tracking systems and that doesn't even touch the cool ass tech outside of the ATS. Don't miss the insights and tomfoolery... Sponsored by Uncommon.co - when you or your clients need ONLY QUALIFIED CANDIDATES call the crew at Uncommon. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides comprehensive website accessibility testing with personalized recommendations to enhance usability for people with a variety of disabilities or situational limitations. Chad: Dude, I just got off the phone with Teg. Joel: Teg, Teg ... Oh, yeah, over at Uncommon. Chad: Dude, do you know another Teg? Anyway, Uncommon just opened up their resume database of 100 million candidates to recruiters for free. Joel: Whoa. Wait, what? Chad: Yeah, Uncommon's releasing their new database-matching tech in beta before the end of the year, and they want to show it off to recruiters for free. Joel: All right, let me get this straight. Recruiters can sign up for Uncommon's beta, post their jobs into the system, the system then matches only qualified candidates from Uncommon's database of 100 million candidates, and this is all for free? Chad: I know, dude! Joel: Dude, Uncommon has some of the best matching tech in the industry. That'll be like cheating for recruiters. Chad: I know. Uncommon uses the qualifications in the job description to automatically source, screen, and deliver candidates that meet all requirements. It's pretty freaking dope. Joel: Did you just say "dope"? Chad: Here's how you register: go to uncommon.co, click on the "Join Beta" button, and for all you Chad & Cheese listeners, if you use the promo code ChadCheese, you will get extended by a full week. Joel: I'm sorry, did you really say "dope"? Chad: Dude, shut up. Tell your recruiter buddies uncommon.co, join beta, ChadCheese. It's dope. 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. Joel: Boom. Chad: Welcome to the Chad & Cheese Podcast. This is Chad Sowash. Joel: The way-too-early edition. Chad: Yeah. And that's Joel Cheesman, by the way. Just so that you know, today, once again, Chad & Cheese are committed to bringing you the most high-quality guests on our show. Well, maybe not today. Joel: Ouch. Chad: So today we have Adam Godson, who is the high commander of recruitment technology at Cielo. Did I get that title right, Adam? High commander? Adam: High commander, I'll take it. I'll take it. Why not? Joel: The most biblical name on the show, to date. Chad: Adam Godson, yeah. Adam: Very much so. Joel: Eve Godson is on next week. Adam: Yeah, she was unavailable today. Joel: That's right. Chad: It's kind of like Odinson. Is that what you're thinking? A little Marvel action? Everybody out there, and just for Joel as well, Adam already speaks fast as it is, okay? He's a quick talker. And then he speaks faster when he gets excited. So when he talks about recruitment technology, he speaks very fast, so I suggest that everybody listening to this podcast listen at half speed so that you can understand. Adam: That's right, back it off. Back it off just a little bit. Joel: And if you're in a pot-legal state, go ahead and smoke up while you do that. Chad: Which Wisconsin is not, and that's where Adam's at. Adam: That's true. Chad: So Adam, give us a little bit of background about you, Cielo, what the hell is a Cielo. Give us a little bit. Adam: Yeah, so I lead technology globally at Cielo. Cielo does recruitment process outsourcing, so we hire some or all of a company's hires, always under their brand. We have a "we become you" promise, so people apply to one of our partner companies, they think they're talking to a recruiter that works for them, they're actually talking to a recruiter that works for us. So we drive process and outcomes through outsourced hiring. Adam: My role is the best role in the company, and I work on technology systems. We've got a few technology systems that we bring to help recruitment. We typically work with our clients' ATS systems, so think of that what you will, but we oftentimes inherit those. We use 27 different applicant tracking systems in our client ecosystem, some of them better than others. Joel: So like 1% of them. Adam: Right, exactly. That actually is fairly close. And then we try to wrap the data all together in analytics platforms to make good stories of what's actually happening for talent acquisition and what those outcomes are. But the cool part is we get to try lots of stuff. We know a lot of the recruiting technology in the market, and we're always experiencing, trying, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't work in being able to stay ahead of the game. So that's, I think, where we add some value. Chad: So TA ... oh, talent acquisition always likes to bitch about their applicant tracking system. So at this point, what I'm hearing is, "Shut the fuck up. We have too many." Joel: Yeah. Chad: All these applicant tracking systems. But seriously, how many clients does Cielo have? You guys are global, so how many clients do you deal with? And I mean, these are applicant tracking systems that are not just US-based, right? Adam: Yeah, of course. We've got over 160 clients around the world. We make over 150,000 hires a year. We've got 10 offices around the world in every region of the world. Yeah, over the years, it's gotten much more complex. I've been here for seven years. We were a 200-person, little RPO when I started, focused only in North America. We've been able to grow to over 200,000 employees around the globe and take on really one of the only handful of players in the RPO space that could really handle global complex deals. And that's what makes it a ton of fun, man. It really is, just being able to solve really meaty complex problems you've really got to wrap your head around and think about and do it with tech. Joel: So talk about the global, I guess, variety that you see, what trends are you seeing, globally, for those of us in America that don't necessarily see the world on a regular basis? Adam: I was in Argentina a couple of weeks ago, for example. The economy's really rough in Argentina right now, so I think it's, you know, good times and big parties in North America and in a lot of Europe, but there are certain parts of the world that it's not right now. So I think understanding not only the economic situation of those countries but also their maturity when it comes to talent acquisition. The story we hear over and over and over again in Latin America and Asia Pacific is, "There's a global ATS implemented for our company, but nobody really uses it. And there are processes that corporate follows, but here it's different in our region. Nobody uses those systems." And some of that is the systems' fault where they're not really set up to handle those environments well. Adam: But a lot of it also is just business process maturity. In many ways, those regions are the Wild West, and it's the global companies that are coming first to introduce more process and introduce more systems to do that. So that's much of what we do in our programs, is get more global consistency. Because companies want to globalize, they want to be able to see where their talent is around the world. I mean, mobility of talent is incredible today, but it doesn't work if we're not all working in some of the same systems and have the right business process. Chad: And you can't find them here, right? So if you can't find them here in the US, and there are individuals that are obviously abroad, and you can work virtually, then yeah, there's an opportunity to do something like that. Now, you talk about process, and when we talk about technology, I don't believe that we talk about process enough, but I would believe ... and tell me if I'm wrong ... that process has a lot to do with the technologies that you and Cielo actually pick to integrate into your clients' systems or their "stack." Adam: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It's a ton about process. I actually think that process is where ... I mean, the process is the name of RPO, right? Process outsourcing ... is a big reason why we're able to be somewhat successful in making technology work for clients, because we always have ... our vantage point is always the end outcome in mind. Like, we don't get paid for making people feel good, we don't get paid for getting 30% more clicks. We get paid for hires and outcomes, right? And that always has to be our focus, so we can't use technology that is super cool and we like the salesperson, but does it work? That's not our game. Everything has to work, and we have to be able to get outcomes from it. Adam: I think I was talking the other day about what I see with vendors starting to have some challenges because they only see part of the outcome in what they're putting in, and the incentives aren't always aligned. I was working with a client last week, and they had two vendors kind of working together, and I could tell that both vendors had their goal, neither of which was the client's goal. The vendor at the front end, their goal was to get more people through the very front end of the process, through the website. And they did it. They got 30% more people through the front-end application. They felt great, and they thought they were serving the client really well. Adam: The second vendor was working on screening, and their goal was to get as much of the process in their tool as possible. So they wanted to be sticky, they wanted to be that vendor that could be really well embedded, and so they created this long process where they were using a ton of that solution. And at the end of the day, they had half the output that they did before those two vendors tried to optimize this process. And that happens because those vendors achieved their individual goals, but neither of them looked at the process and the actual goal of the client. Chad: So you, in effect, are really referee and diplomat all the way through this. I mean, you have to focus on the client's goals because, at the end of the day, if they're not getting outcomes, it doesn't matter if these other two platforms feel good about themselves. If they're not getting outcomes, none of this matters. Adam: Yeah, I mean, "diplomat" is probably a strong word. I'm probably not a very diplomatic diplomat, but yeah, I mean- Joel: Neither is Chad. Adam: Chad's definitely not. But yeah, that's exactly it, right? Like, trying to get everybody to play, because this is getting more complex in getting vendors to work together, kind of creating these stacks of technology in an ecosystem. It just requires someone with that process focus, the outcome focus, and the data focus to make it all work together, to orchestrate the parties. Because everyone's got their lens, everyone's got their incentives, and making sure that the incentive is always outputs. Joel: Adam, there are about three or so recent events in recruiting, and I just want to get your thoughts on each one of them. Is that cool? Adam: Yeah, let's do it. Joel: All right. Number One: Amazon recently canceled an AI recruiting program because it was biased towards men. Upwork recently went public. Interested in your opinion of the gig economy and where that's going and how that impacts your business. And yesterday, LinkedIn launched an ATS. Those three things, I'd like your take on those. Adam: Awesome, quick hit, here we go. I mean, Amazon should cancel AI if it's biased against women. I mean, absolutely. That's just a good object lesson to say there's lots of fancy things out there, and I know lots of startups that are working on those problems that are all excited to use machine learning technology to do these certain things, but I think we've just got to be sure that it works. One of the things that we have at Cielo, we have something we call SkyLabs, and that's where we test things. Adam: So we've got lots of things in testing all the time, doing exactly what Amazon did, which is to ... let's put something into practice, let's learn from it, and let's figure out if this is going to be scalable or not. One of them we use is a voice analysis tool so we don't have to listen to recorded interviews, those types of things to do that. And we just spent the last six months gathering data on it but not actually using it. So we'll go back and we'll just ex-post analysis on whether that has bias in it, whether it's effective, those types of things. It was just a good object lesson in we've got to test. We've got to be sure that all stuff works in the real world. Joel: But you're still bullish on AI, I'm hearing? Adam: Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. Joel: All right. Adam: I mean, applied broadly to lots of different ways. You can use that word to mean just about anything these days. But yeah, I think there are lots of AI that drives automation in the process, for sure. Chad: Before we hit Upwork, the definition of "what works" is pretty important. The prospective impact on your talent pool, and ... you know, obviously a talent pool that you have in your applicant tracking system, and also the talent pool that's out there you're going to try to attract ... but to me, it seems like we just overthink shit too much. This AI ... is it just me? I mean, the simplicity of if you're qualified or not qualified, to me, is ... you know, that does kind of make sense. But don't you think a lot of these algorithms are just getting way too complex and they're not focusing on what really matters? Adam: I would say there's a pretty good bucket of stuff that we're overthinking, and there's probably a decent bucket of things that we're way underthinking, and we've just got to get right in the middle of that. We've got to get to our sweet spot. Chad: Okay, so Upwork. What do you think about the gig economy? Adam: Yeah, I mean, gig economy is real. Certainly, lots of people want to work in more flexible ways. I think Upwork is one of a few companies that have a good chance to change how people in the corporate world access this talent. So I think we've got to find a way to have people access that talent that is secure, that helps get them paid well, and helps get this done. But I think what we see is one of a couple things: we see people doing it in the dark, where they're running gigs on Upwork or Fiverr and then expensing it because they ... doing that, or some of it's run of it by procurement, and HR has no sense of any of this going on. And as you think of HR's responsibility to manage talent and organization, that has to be included in that total talent package. Adam: And that's the first step, and that's actually moving contingent labor and permanent labor together, so contingents often run out of procurement today. But then how do we work with interns? How do we work with contractors, volunteers, people in our expert network, gig workers, even robots, robotic process automation? How do we keep that in our total talent pool to make HR responsible for getting work done? And the total workforce, not just permanent hires, it just doesn't make sense to have those all over the place in the organization. So in Upwork, they've got a good chance to help take a good step to bring that together. Chad: So do you see Cielo actually prospectively creating a model to help some of your clients start to use and start to change the way that they think about work? Instead of it being a 9:00 to 5:00 kind of a job anymore, it's broken up into projects that, instead of them trying to manage ... because that would be a total bitch for them to try to manage ... Cielo could have a model to be able to manage those types of things. Is that something that we could prospectively be seeing? Adam: Yeah. We have programs at early stages of that today. The hotter market for that right now is actually Europe and specifically the UK, where much of the total talent market has started to mature a little bit more quickly, I think, than the US. We've also got a couple of pilot programs in the US that are happening with total talent, as well. So I think it's a vision that we've got. There's a lot of org change that has to happen, right? So we've got to work with procurement, we've got to work with parts of the business to help them realize that vision. But many of our more forward-thinking clients are all on board with that. We're working through that with them right now. Chad: Cool. Joel: So in pure cockblock fashion, Chad sort of just totally destroyed my series of questions by interrupting all of them. So we failed to get to LinkedIn and some of the announcements out of them this week, particularly the ATS. Wondering what your take is on what LinkedIn's up to. Adam: Yeah, I think Microsoft has been a huge help for LinkedIn to be able to help clarify their vision and get more integrated with the enterprise. It's going to be really interesting to see what they have. They're going to start with sort of the SMB market, as seemingly everyone does when they enter this space. And much like Google Hire, I think they create a ripple effect by doing that. Adam: So you see all the startups that were playing in the SMB space and trying to be in that running away from them as fast as they can, trying to get into midmarket. You see midmarket trying to get into enterprise, and you've just go this massive log jam of companies in the middle that many of them won't survive, right? But I think LinkedIn has a real shot to take the data ... it's the largest data people in the world, right? ... take that data and make it work as an ATS. I think there's no reason why they can't succeed in doing that. Chad: Don't you see a Trojan horse happening here, though? I'm going to ask it before Joel does because I know he's going to ask you this one. Trojan horse? No? Yes? Adam: There's no secret that they want to be more involved in the enterprise, both LinkedIn and Microsoft. So I think a company like Microsoft buys an asset, like LinkedIn, sort of to be a Trojan horse in some ways, right? So absolutely. Joel: So we talked about three companies that are pretty well known. And you listen to the show fairly regularly, I believe, Adam, as you should? Adam: I do. Joel: You see a lot of technologies and solutions out there. What are ones that we're not talking about that we should? Sort of the hidden gems out there. Adam: Yeah, for sure. Chad has talked about a couple of those over the course of the show. Uncommon is certainly one that I think is uncommon, perhaps. But a super-interesting company ... Oh, I know, right? No more puns. None of that. But one that I think has an interesting background and has some good technology behind it and an interesting team behind them. Another company that most people won't know is Talentify, Orlando, Florida-based company, one that Cielo is heavily involved in, but helping to use its really interesting technology in a platform to get companies on hourly hiring. Another company that I like is actually Brazilian-based, called RocketMat, using some machine learning to test outcomes from- Joel: I'm sorry, RocketMat? Adam: "Mat" with a "T," yeah. RocketMat. Joel: Just one "T," so it's not like a dude named Matt who has a rocket that is on the logo or anything. RocketMat. Okay. Adam: RocketMat, yeah. In Sao Paulo, Brazil. Some interesting guys that have some technology that does some machine learning to help with matching and outcomes-based pieces. You can tell I like outcomes-based things. So been working with them some to do some interesting work. Chad: Well, let's talk a little bit about Talentify, because you're talking about the high-volume side of the house, and you guys came out with ... months ago, probably six months, maybe even more ... I don't know if it was a case study or just a press release, but you had some pretty damn awesome numbers to share, and I'm sure at this point you have even better ones. So on the high-volume side, and even if it goes beyond that, what have you been able to do to be able to really focus on process and effectiveness of driving those types of outcomes, those hiring outcomes? Adam: We came out with a new product last year we called "High Volume RPO." I know, super creative naming on our part, right? But our use case in that was to be able to serve companies that we hadn't been able to serve before, people that hire a lot of the same position that are oftentimes highly distributed, geographically. They don't have like 1,000 openings in one place. They've got one opening in 1,000 places. So technology is really best to serve that, and it's typically not to replace HR. It's to replace the hiring manager having to do it as part of their job and probably sucking at it. So to help those people make better decisions and to help them hire well. Adam: So we've been working in this space for some time, and I've always tried to piece together certain parts of it. It was always quite difficult, so about a year and a half ago, we said, "You know what? We know how this should work. Let's build a platform that will actually do this right." So we did. There's probably three things that it does well. One of those is after Joel's heart, maybe, which is programmatic advertising and using media spend really well. Yeah, right? And being able to do that. Adam: And the second one is having, of course, a mobile first platform, but one that's driven on mobile and text. If you think about people that hire for hourly jobs typically as our target market, they spend their time on their phone. Often, they don't even own computers. So it has to be on the phone, it has to have a high level of automation. And the third piece was being able to have some selection, thinking differently about selection. So as we looked at the idea of a phone interview, for many of the hourly roles that we have, it's kind of a waste of time. We found that it didn't add a lot of value in terms of the selection validity. Chad: Wait, wait. Say that again. Say that again, because there are companies that are out there that just don't get this idea yet, from an effectiveness standpoint. So say that again, if you would. Adam: I mean, Chad, from an IO standpoint, we've known for 40 years that an unstructured interview is not a particularly valid method of selection. And yet we just haven't, as an industry, thought of something better. Chad: We keep fucking doing it, though. Adam: Well, we absolutely do. Absolutely do. But when we broke that down, we looked at ... we didn't find selection validity, but we did find engagement validity to that phone screen. In a phone screen for an hourly worker, we thought this was valuable because we were screening them out or ... but where we were actually adding value was we were engaging that person, so they were more likely to give us good customer experience ratings or candidate experience ratings, they were more likely to show up to their interview if they were engaged by a person. Got to create that social contract like, "I don't want to disappoint Joel because I talked to him in this interview, so yeah, I'm going to this interview." Adam: So we just kind of backed it out a little bit, and we replaced the actual phone interview with some quick assessments, so like a two-minute DISC assessment for frontline roles, like an EQ assessment for emotional intelligence, like a recorded phone call that's measured with the voice analysis. And then we put in some intentional human engagement, right? So we had people call and just check in on people to say, "Hey, I see you have an interview scheduled for tomorrow. We're really excited to see you. Let me tell you about why I love working here. Do you have any questions?" And right back up went those rates for engagement, right? Adam: So just thinking differently about how we engage people instead of having this formal phone screen thing that we've done for ages, it was about a couple quick assessments and then some good engagement calls. Chad: What about those engagement calls, though, real quick? Do you really need, and are you seeing with all your data, that you really need that engagement call from a human being? Or do you think that just a quick text that could be automated really just does the job anyway, and from an overhead standpoint, you don't have to pay somebody to be making calls? Adam: Yeah. You know me, Chad. We did all the math on that, and we spent some time doing A/B testing where we sent texts. We sent texts to confirm, we sent texts to engage. At any point in the process, we sent tens of thousands of texts a month, mostly automated, some of them manual. But what we saw was when a person calls and engages, we saw a high enough decrease in the no-show rate for interviews that it was worth about 2.5x what we actually paid people to do it. So we took it out for some, and then we put it back in because it had positive ROI. Chad: Nice. Joel: Adam, you guys cover pretty much the globe, but you guys cover just about every industry, from healthcare tech, technology, consumer stuff, manufacturing. Talk about the trends in each of those and how some of those are different. Adam: Certainly, healthcare is one of our key industries, so from an RPO standpoint, we've got a significant part of our business in healthcare, number one in healthcare measured. From an RPO standpoint, that's an industry that is really interesting in that there is a structural labor shortage. Structural. There just aren't enough skilled nurses to work. So what I think we've seen there is companies having to get more creative about how we're going to do this. Adam: We can't just fight in this bloody red battle for nurses with 10 years' experience forever, right? So we've got to just figure out how we can do some things differently, whether it's new graduate nurse programs to train them, whether it's bringing people in from sort of mature nursing markets, like the Philippines or Puerto Rico, whether it is labor pools where we can exchange and have nurse pools that share with some of our competitors, all those things that can get better solutions in that. Chad: We keep hearing about all of the nice bright-and-shinies. We already talked about LinkedIn and Microsoft, and so on and so forth. But do you see Google Cloud Talent Solution ... which I think is a worse name than High Volume RPO, by the way. Google Cloud Talent- Joel: GoCanvas.io. Chad: Yeah, that's a bad URL. Do you see those enterprise products making an impact? Or is it just a lot of noise? Adam: No, there's definitely an impact. We've seen a lot of the startups that were working on that problem, trying to do some essentially advanced keyword matching, essentially exit the market. So people that are trying to solve some of the same problems, I think they're all looking at Google being like, "Well, Google's in my space now, and it's time to punt." Even look at technology vendors that are thinking about how they're going to build matching, who they're going to partner with. Google's just the easy answer for a ton of them. So I think it's almost going to become the default. I don't know if that's good or bad that they're the default, but I surely see a lot of people using that and continuing to go down that path. Chad: Got you. Joel and I talk about chatbots all the time, but we disagree in some cases. Joel: Never. Chad: Do you believe that chatbots are definitely going to be a part of long-term process and they're big for the market? Or do you just believe they're a waste of time? Adam: I'm actually somewhere in between. Sorry to be that guy. Chad: Dammit! Adam: I actually think that the success of chatbots in talent acquisition is 100% tied to the success of chatbots in our consumer lives. So if the general population gets comfortable with chatbots for banking, for the services they use in their personal life, and there's a wide acceptance of chatbots and that's a way that people want to communicate, then I think it'll succeed in recruiting. I think today we're sort of in the early innings there where people are starting to use chatbots, recognize that they're chatbots, and some pushback and some acceptance. But ultimately, it's more about the process than it is about what it means to the medium. Joel: I assume you'd say the same about virtual reality? Chad: Oh, good God, no! Adam: No, I ... There are a couple of super niche cases for virtual reality, but I actually don't really ever see that hitting mainstream. Joel: No, but your comment about chatbots was, "If it hits mainstream, then I think X, Y, and Z." So what I'm saying is, if VR does become mainstream, is it a viable recruiting tool? Adam: Yeah, certainly. The major problem with VR in recruitment is 6-axis VR is actually pretty cool and could be useful, but you've got to have all this equipment to do it. Otherwise, you're just strapping a phone to your face and walking around. Joel: You say that it's like a bad thing. I'm doing it right now. Adam: So as you get acceptance, it could work, but I actually don't see that being a huge part of our industry in the future. Joel: Fine. Adam: I'm a fun-hater, I guess, huh? Joel: Be that way. Chad: Well, cool, man. I appreciate you taking the time. We obviously wanted to dive deep into tech. Is there something else, another question that's out there, that we didn't ask? Joel: What didn't we ask you that we should have? Adam: I think a couple things, trend-wise, are we're seeing a ton of new technology in diversity and inclusion that I think is interesting. Chad: Ha! Joel: Whatevs. Adam: I think there's a lot of BS there, to be honest. Chad: Yes. Yes, yes. Joel: Yeah. Adam: I think any technology today that has some element where they're not explicitly discriminating against an element, they're like, "Oh, this is a D&I tech," right? So just like we saw predictive analytics and big data and then AI, D&I is like the next buzzword that ends up on everybody's website. But there is some cool tech in that space. You've got Telvista, you've got Blendoor. There are some interesting tools that will help with that. Adam: I think the other big trend that I'm seeing is what I call a second platform where, in the HR tech space, because ATSs have some feature gaps ... I'll leave it there ... people put in point solutions. You know, a couple years ago, you put in Avature for CRM, you put in Yello for campus, you put in Phenom for your website, you put in someone for referrals. And then those companies' clients have all asked them to start building each other's solutions, so there's a fairly big battle shaping up in that second platform space where a lot of those point solutions are now trying to be platforms on top of an ATS. There's going to be some pretty solid consolidation there in the next 12 to 24 months, I think. So I think that's the interesting one for me to watch, too. Chad: Yes. Joel: Awesome. Hey, Adam, man, we know you're a busy guy. Thanks for coming to visit with us for a while. For those who don't know Cielo and want to learn more, where should they go? Adam: Cielotalent.com is our spot. Yeah, we'd love to have a chat. Chad: Excellent, dude. Joel: Excellent. Chad: We out! Joel: We out! Adam: Cool. Thanks, guys. 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. #Cielo #ATS #RPO #BadAss #Uncommon #chatbots #TAtech

Chad - Welcome to another installment of Chad & Cheese iCIMS iNFLUENCE 2018 Series. In mid-Oct Joel and I flew to NJ and landed at iCIMS HQ for the iCIMS iNFLUENCE event. During the event Colin Day, iCIMS CEO and Chairman of the Board along with other iCIMS leaders shared their common vision for more than just iCIMS. For the industry and how iCIMS will lead in reinventing it. This episode is all about getting rid of the middlemen starting with job distribution.... PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. Chad - Talent Acquisition professionals are busy, which is why TA can't even spell programmatic at this point let alone tell you why they would use it. But what if Programmatic was built inside the ATS and became a natural part of the recruiting flow? What if the ATS partnered with Google to facilitate this process? The future is now because it's already happening with some of the smaller ATS providers, but what about Enterprise platforms like iCIMS? Colin - We've got a third initiative going which is obviously they (Google) have announced the dynamic search ads, this is where the money is made. Um, so if you're not happy with the organic traffic coming through Google you can basically buy inorganic traffic. And so we're doing a little bit of this ourselves, we're looking at the industry, we're taking a look at everything going on in programmatic. I see Matt shaking the head, this is the way the industry is going. We very well may buy our way into this market, umm, rather than build there's alot going on. But at the end of the day we do believe that customers should be able to do all their job advertising right out of our platform. Chad - Programmatic straight from the ATS sounds natural right? But what about when the candidate hits the ATS? I mean seroiusly, what is the average ejection rate of a job seeker who starts the application process? Horror stories about Candidate Experience are frequent between many Employer Brand and Talent Acquisition teams.... But wait... Colin - Another initiative we have going on because it's not just about how quickly you get the jobs to Google and how rich is the job data you get to Google, but Google looks at the landing zone. They look at "Where am I going to send this candidate? and what is that?" and we have decided and we're invested and we're building it out as we speak, and we'll probably talk about it alot while you're here. That we're going to meeting Google half way and we are building the next generation of candidate portal, candidate engagement management site. So just like they (Google) want to get rid of the middlemen of the job boards, there's middlemen on the career site in our equation. So the Jibe's, the Phenom's, ecetera, The Muse's. I think our viewpoint is we need to make sure we can do everything they can do. Chad - Is it time to get rid of the middle men and focus on a fluid candidate experience? Candidate engagement platforms were born out of the need to delight - GOD I hate that word - to impress, educate and grab candidate data before they ejected out of the application process in the clunky ATS. So isn't it just natural the ATS would take over this process? Maybe, make it more fluid and not require a candidate apply twice? Sounds good right? But is it really just that easy? Well Colin and the iCIMS crew says we're gonna find out... Chad - You can find more episode in the iCIMS iNFLUENCE 2018 Series at chadcheese.com... or better yet, never miss an episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast by subscribing with iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotifiy or where ever you get your podcasts. #iCIMSiNFLUENCE #iCims #PhenomPeople #Jibe #TheMuse #ATS #CRM #RMP #Marketing #Event

Hello boys and ghouls, it's the Halloween edition of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, which means the boys are counting down everything in recruitment that scared the hell out of them. Hint: The bots are coming! Plus, - Indeed is crushing it, - LinkedIn is teasing you with it - ZipRecruiter is mobilizing it - and Uber is staffing it. Some call an exorcist, because heads will spin! And visit our sponsors, nuthin' but treats, baby: Sovren, Canvas and JobAdX. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for 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 and Cheese podcast. Joel: Be afraid, be very afraid. It's the Halloween edition of the Chad and Cheese Show, HR's scariest muthafuckers to rock a mic ever. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, Indeed is making more euros than you are. The LinkedIn gravy train is coming to an end, and we recap the scariest shit from last year's show in recruitment. It's mostly treats, but there might be a few tricks for your eardrums. Stay tuned. We'll be right back after an actual ad, finally, from Canvas. Chad: Sweet. Canvas: Canvas is the world's first intelligent text-based interviewing platform, empowering recruiters to engage, screen, and coordinate logistics via text, and so much more. We keep the human, that's you, at the center while Canvasbot is at your side adding automation to your workflow. Canvas leverages the latest in machine learning technology and has powerful integrations that help you make the most of every minute of your day. Easily amplify your employment brand with your newest culture video, or add some personality to the mix by firing off a Bitmoji. We make compliance easy and are laser focused on recruiter success. Request a demo at gocanvas.io and in 20 minutes we'll show you how to text at the speed of talent. That's gocanvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent. Chad: You will never hear Bitmoji next to compliance in any other ad ever. Oh, that's nice, that's nice. So yeah, that was Amber from Canvas. We've always talked about how Sovren has great in-house voice talent, freaking Canvas just knocked it out of the park. That was awesome. Joel: Yeah, who needs stinking voice over talent from Fiverr when you've got in-house talent for free? Chad: No shit. Joel: Shout-outs. Chad: Do it. Joel: HIREConf, we've talked about it before, November 7th through the 8th, New York City. We're gonna be there and we're gonna be tearing up shit. They've given us a discount code for 50%, is that right? Am I reading that right? Chad: Yeah, dude, it's 50% off. Joel: Holy cow, 50% off. Use the code ChadCheese. Dude, if you're in New York, Jersey, anywhere on I-95 that can make it up to Manhattan, you need to be there and now is an extra reason to save some money and be there at HIREConf. New York City, November 7th through the 8th. Is it hireconf.com, I guess? Chad: Yep. It's not Mein HIREConf.com, it's just hireconf.com. If you go to chadcheese.com, we've got a little banner that's there, if you click on that it automatically has the code and it pushes it in, so you don't even have to add the discount code, we've already done that shit for you, or at least Paige did. Joel: You are the Wix Whisperer. Chad: Hey, I also hear that Ed from Philly is gonna be there, so I mean, my big question is should we pull together some friends for him while he's there? Joel: That's what I said. He said he's gonna heckle us, and I said you and all your "friends" that will be there. Those who don't know, give them the back story on this whole friends thing, because it's semi-amusing. Chad: It's hilarious, right. We finally get to meet him in Vegas and I can't remember ... he had said something about friends in Vegas, and I can't remember how the whole conversation started, but we took it to the podcast and said, "Hey, look. Ed from Philly is going to be in Vegas during HR Tech. He needs friends. So let's get some friends together for Ed in Vegas," and that's kind of rolled in to where we always need to help Ed get friends. That's our thing. We love the guy. Joel: We became it's just lunch in Vegas. He's like, "Dude, I have friends. It's just sort of a running joke, Ed. We love you man. It's all good. We'll see you in New York. Chad: Derek Pilcher, thanks for sharing the pod. All the love on Twitter. Todd Markle over at Hello Hire says he's a huge fan, and he's actually just over in Cincinnati. Joel: Nice. Josh Zywien. Chad: Oh, JZ. Joel: I did pronounce that correctly. Shout out to him for giving Indeed some shit about their new staffing firm blockage. He questioned whether or not it was really good for job seekers. Was it really a de-duplication issue or was it just, surprise, about making more money? Chad: Yeah, and I think that's pretty simple. It's like, "This is a better experience for the job seekers because we're taking these jobs out of the organic content, which could be duplicate jobs," and it's like, "Okay, asshole. If that's the case, then why is it they can pay you to put those jobs back in the feed?" It's not in the organic feed, it's in the paid feed, but it's still in the goddamn feed, so how is that good for the job seeker ... Oh, wait a minute, you're getting money. That's how it's good for the job ... That's bullshit. Total propaganda. Big ups for Josh on that one. That was funny. Joel: Shout out to Instagram. The research came out this week that says among the kiddies out there, Instagram is now more popular than Snapchat. I think everyone saw this coming, but the numbers are finally starting to come through. Snapchat, it was nice knowing you. Instagram has taken you over with the children. Chad: Kenny Staubach always gives us love on LinkedIn and I don't think we've ever given him a shout out, so Kenny, our apologies buddy. Here's your shout out. Joel: He's like ... this will age me, but he's like the love child of Roger Staubach and Kenny Stabler. How does that work? Anyway, Dennis Tupper shout out who loves the show. Chad: Yeah. Joel: He's got to be a top 10 fan. The doctor is number one and has been from day one, but Dennis Tupper sent us some funny stuff on LinkedIn we'll talk about at the end of the show, but Dennis is always giving us good stuff and I don't know if we've ever given him a shout out, so big ups to Dennis out there. We love your ears. Chad: We also posted that in a day last week that we had over 1300 listeners. I mean, we're just starting to blow the roof off this thing. Thanks guys for listening. We really appreciate it. But still, get your friends, family, and peers. Get them to listen too. So Tim Sackett says, "This is one of the few podcasts he listens to." And Tim, buddy, so I'm not sure listening to only the episodes you're in over and over and over count, but thanks man. We appreciate it. Joel: I did love Tim's comment that our listenership has to be attributed to Russian hacking. I'm not denying or confirming that, but you know, it is throwing stones and we don't really appreciate that, Tim. But it is what Tim does. Chad: Thanks. Joel: My last one, I think yours too. Go vote, suckas. We're like 12, 11 days here in the States from election day. Journalists are getting hacked up across the world. This is weird times. We got bombs showing up in mailboxes. Go out and vote. Get your voice heard. That's the only way things change if you want things to change, but go vote. And by the way, Uber and Lyft, free rides to the polls on election day. Chad: Yeah, no shit. And they're ... they've expanded voting days for goodness sakes. I can go vote today. You can go vote today in many states, not all states, but they've expanded the voting days. Not to mention companies, some companies, are actually giving election day off so that you can get your ass to the polls. This is our ask of you, if you do anything for the Chad and Cheese, go fucking vote. Joel: It's no fun to vote, not on election day though. I just want to say that. It's fun to go and see the whole democracy in action thing. Don't just walk in with a couple people and go ... Anyway. Chad: Dude, have you seen the lines? Have you seen the lines on some of these though? These early voting? It has been huge. The turnout has been huge, so yeah, if you're in a small town like me, I'm in Columbus, Indiana. That might be the case. But, I don't care when you vote, guys. I don't care. Just go vote. Joel: Shout outs done. Chad: Done. Joel: Can I start my rant? Chad: Yes. Joel: Rant/prediction. So, it was a little more ranty this morning in the shower. It's kind of faded a little. But, those who are in marketing will appreciate this, I think. I'm gonna take you back, a little history lesson, because I understand a lot of our viewers are younger, Millennials love us, but there was a time, late '90s, early 2000s, let's just say late '90s where if you had email, you loved email. When you got an email, it was from your mom, it was from your best friend, it was from the chick you were trying to hook up with, you really looked forward to emails. Joel: Then marketers got to emails and fucked everything up, like marketers always do, right. So spam was a huge issue. So I'd say 2000 to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2002 or whenever it was, that didn't really stop the spam, but spam has destroyed email. Fortunately algorithms are better, Gmail and others are pretty good about filtering really, really bad stuff, but spam is still an issue and most people like me, don't really love email. It's just something like, it's a to do thing. You just gotta go through them. I delete probably 80% of my emails. I'm just too lazy to unsubscribe, because I figure, well maybe I will one day want an Old Navy pullover, so I just keep getting these emails. Joel: So anyway, text has been and is, particularly in the States, a haven for non-spam. For the most part, everything on your phone is you signed up for, it's someone you know, it's legit. Because government has said, "We're gonna fine you to the gills if you spam people on their phones," and to the most part they have. Now historically those kind of spam-y mass text messages have been sent through what's called a short code. A short code is a five to six digit number, you've probably seen text whatever to 22118 or something. It's a shorter number to remember. Those are seriously regulated and to spam through those short codes, you're not gonna have the short code for very long. Joel: So now you have Twilio and other services that make it super easy to get phone numbers, the 11 whatever, 11 digits, how many digits are phone numbers now? They're 10 digits, right? So 10-digit number and then send messages. That's worked great because you can get a phone number real cheap, you can send messages really easily, but I've seen signs recently, particularly with politics happening and the election happening. My wife, for example, was sent a text randomly from a 10-digit number and it was a survey of who she was gonna vote for in West Virginia, because she still has her West Virginia phone number, but that's beside the point. She got a spam about surveying the political landscape. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I got a spam a couple days ago about voting for our senator that's up for re-election. Totally not signed up for anything. It's a 10-digit number. If this thing keeps happening where people are spammed with 10-digit numbers that aren't regulated like short codes are, then that whole thing is gonna be cracked down on big time. I'm not exactly sure how they're gonna do it. Twilio is gonna be under the microscope with what they're doing with just giving out numbers. You're gonna have to have a number for a certain period of time before you can text on. I don't know what's gonna happen exactly, but I can tell you that if marketers fucked up email, they're gonna try ... they're doing their best to fuck up text messaging, and I see signs of it happening, and I say this because not only from a marketing standpoint but it could totally derail companies like Canvas, TextRecruit, etc who do send mass messages and have capability to send mass messages, let's be honest, automatically through their platforms. That could really squash their business, so sort of a rant, sort of a prediction that I think the whole text messaging with 10-digit numbers that are gotten off Twilio for free en masse is probably short lived and I think we're starting to see the early signs of that in the last few months, at least from my anecdotal experience. Rant over. Chad: So the effectiveness ... yeah, the effectiveness goes down dramatically when that starts happening right? And that's the last thing we need. But you know, marketing is still gonna fuck it up. Joel: Yeah. I mean, how mad are you gonna be if you get 12 text messages that you don't know what the hell number it is, who it is, it's a marketing message. People are gonna freak the fuck out if that starts happening. Chad: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Not as bad as me freaking the fuck out because we don't need to think about you naked ranting in the shower. Just ... that's not an image I need in my head, okay. Joel: That's YouTube gold right there. It's too bad our mics aren't waterproof. We could do the show from the shower like Kramer style with the garbage disposal. Chad: That's another Rockwell in the shower. Joel: I date us a lot in this show. Chad: You date you. Joel: Most our listeners I think are of a certain age where they've seen Seinfeld and know who Roger Staubach is, maybe I'm wrong. Chad: I think maybe the former, not much is the latter. Yes. Joel: I know. Chad: Indeed. You wanted to talk about Indeed, this whole global thing. Joel: We give Indeed a lot of shit. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And they deserve it, but they are apparently knocking the leather off the ball over in Europe. Recruit Holdings is their ownership. They give public reports and people know numbers. Over in the non-US market, so you've got Europe, you've got the Middle East and you've got Africa, Indeed is destroying it, like crushing it, 66% growth last year, I think 40% growth the year before that. They've doubled their staff. They're building new headquarters, they're in Dublin, Ireland. They're gonna hire 1000 people ... they're gonna get to 1000 people, they're gonna hire another 1000 people in the next year or so. So we give them a lot of crap, but they are doing some really good things over in Europe, Middle East, and Africa markets. Joel: Now, I think what you're gonna say and what I will say is they better enjoy it. Google's coming, LinkedIn's coming, everyone's coming for that market, particularly Google who just launched in Ireland recently, India recently, we know about Canada, and the UK recently. So enjoy it while it lasts I guess would be my caveat to that statement, but for now, man, pop the champagne. Times are good for Indeed over in Europe. Chad: Yeah, well I wonder if the European companies are watching what's happening over here with US Staffing, because staffing in Europe is more prominent for companies to actually go through ... I mean, that's pretty normal to go through a staffing company to be able to get any type of position filled. I wonder if they're watching what's happening over here and just kind of biding time on which that ... when that's actually going to change for them. Joel: Yeah, I don't think they can do it in England. From what I understand, the UK all hiring is pretty much done with staffing companies, and so I can't imagine they could do it over in the UK, but we'll see. Chad: This is a good conversation to have, reach out to Louise or something, to see if the jobs are actually posted on the corporate career sites over there, because if they are then yeah, they could definitely do that. I mean, they could. Since we talked about this big shutting the door to all staffing companies that's gonna happen in January of 2019, I've had plenty of people come out of the woodwork to be able to talk about kind of like from the inside and individuals who have been on the inside about what's been happening there for years. Some of the big staffing companies have had their organic jobs pulled down years ago, but guess what? Those same companies are actually paying more than they did before. Indeed has kind of slow-rolled this whole thing. Indeed just didn't start ripping all staffing jobs down in one day, they started slow-rolling it to see if they'd lose customers, but they gain even more wallet share from others. Chad: Some organizations, I actually had a couple that were pointed to that I won't name, their spend tripled after this happened, so ... Joel: We actually have some live coverage from a staffing company when they learned that Indeed was gonna be pulling the plug on their jobs. SFX: Aaah. Chad: Yeah, that was the Indeed sales rep laughing as they open the door. Yeah, that's ... Chad: Behind this whole thing, sales has targeted companies and they've used kind of like the search quality team as their hatchet men, so if a company wouldn't call their Indeed rep back, their rep would submit a data quality ticket, I think they call it, for the search quality team. The search quality team would then "review" the actual jobs on Indeed and pretty much at that point, they'd get pulled down out of the organic. It was almost like a given that that's exactly the steps that would happen, the jobs would come down. Joel: I love that you call the search quality team the hatchet men, because you're like the nerdiest, lowest key people you'll ever meet that are doing this stuff. Hatchet men, the search quality team. Chad: From what they said is they actually just set those jobs to go to nowhere. They keep the jobs just in case they want to start paying, so they don't have to go through and re-index the feeds or anything like that, but they can send them to nowhere which is where all the CareerBuilder jobs, dot net jobs are going, so you know all of those companies that they provide, kind of like the search pages for, for their corporate career site and have the jobs that are on the CareerBuilder jobs dot net domain and so on and so forth, from my understanding, all those jobs go to nowhere on Indeed today. Joel: Nice. Nice. We actually have another live camera at a staffing company when they learned about Indeed. Chad: Oh come on. What would you be doing if you were a competitor of Indeed right now? Joel: Calling every staffing company I could. Chad: I mean, I would come up with specific programs that were focused on trying to win that dollar, because again, if history shows, and from what we've ... at least what I've been told, is that the staffing companies pretty much just go ahead, pull out their wallet, and say, "Yeah, you got me. I can't do anything about this." Then they just pay, which is ... it just drives me crazy because if you think about it, it's pay per click or it's pay for application. None of that has to do with a qualified candidate and if you take a look at companies like Zip, they're really focused on quality, on quality candidates, not search quality but actual qualified, delivering qualified candidates. Chad: I just can't understand why companies aren't focused in that area to be able to make it more efficient and more cost effective for their dollar. It just doesn't make any sense to me, because Indeed's not really focusing on that right now. They're just throwing as many candidates at you as they possibly can. Joel: I mean, there's a big gap between what job sites are charging still and what companies are paying for this talent. The gap is so wide that companies are gonna continue to pay whatever the hell they have to until that gap is closed, which I don't think it ever will because staffing firms make a ton of money. Chad: They do, but in most cases, they have that talent already in their goddamn resume databases. Joel: That's no fun. Chad: I just ... it's already there. It's like ... I just don't get this at all. You've spent millions, millions of dollars in building a resume, especially if you're a staffing company, in building these resume databases, how you haven't focused on being able to surface talent that you've already paid for and then also refreshing that talent and doing that kind of ... I don't understand. That makes no sense to me whatsoever. Oh yeah, I'm just gonna go over here, open up my wallet, pay Indeed so I can get more candidate flow. You're paying for goddamn candidates that you already have in your database probably six or seven times over. Joel: Yeah, okay. Dude, there are some big winners in this. Like everybody else pretty much. Chad: Everybody else as in you mean all the Indeed competitors or ... Joel: Well, if money isn't going to Indeed it's going somewhere, and it's filtering to everywhere else that people are spending money or they're spending more money where they weren't spending before, so to me a lot of the vendor space were probably cheering when Indeed made this move. Chad: If, if they can execute. That's the biggest issue. Because Indeed has been doing this for years now, slowly picking off staffing companies and then staffing companies either do one of two things, they tell Indeed to go fuck themselves or they pull out their wallet and they pay three times or who knows more, just to be able to get their jobs in there. This is really the call to all of those other organizations that are out there to be able to focus on ... I mean, yeah, definitely staffing companies, but just product overall is not just about the traffic, the active traffic. Shit, you've got so many passive candidates that you can activate in your database, it just makes no damn sense to me. Not to mention, you've got other companies that are out there that, again, if you're looking for traffic shit, they deliver traffic too. Joel: Do we still kind of think Indeed will become a staffing firm at some point, or they will have something staffing related? Chad: I think if they're moving that direction, they're gonna lose. Joel: Their owner, that's what they do. Chad: Yeah, in Asia. But this is an entirely different. Joel: They know how to do it, they know the model. Chad: They know how to do it in Asia, dude. It's an entirely different world, I guarantee you. Joel: in Asia? I understand there are cultural differences, but I mean they still talk to each other and interview each other and call each other on the phone and shit. Chad: I totally get it, but it's an entirely different landscape. I just ... I just don't see that happening. Joel: With Indeed's hubris, you don't think they just think they could pull it off? Chad: No. I think they can try, I just think they'll fail and from my standpoint failure being top five, I don't think they'd ever be able to get that big. Joel: And when they fail, we'll be there to talk about it. I think we've hit our Indeed quota for this week's show, what do you think? Chad: Thank God. Let's talk about Zip. Joel: Zip. Going mobile, going AI. Launched Job Seeker Profiles, which is not the most creative name in the world. So essentially they have seven million or so iPhone, iOS, Android users. Now when they use ZipRecruiter they'll be directed to submit sort of this profile/resume. You've uploaded a resume, you can PDF or whatever, it will take the data from the uploaded resume and autopopulate your job seeker profile. Its AI technology will make recommendations to stuff to add or language to change, etc. Joel: It's not huge news. It's not super sexy like mobile is it feels like almost a story that should have been out in 2012 or something, but I do love the AI component, the seriousness about it. We've talked about it a few times. This to me is just another step to say, "We're gonna continue to roll out AI features. We have 200 employees, engineers, working on AI. We've got a new facility in Tel Aviv with 50, 20 to 50 folks working on AI questions," so to me this is just sort of the ongoing onward AI strategy of Zip that we both find pretty interesting. Chad: Yeah, and again, there are very few organizations that are out there today in our space that are dedicated to delivering qualified candidates, and I'm not sure that Zip they're really going down that path and they're going down that path quickly, especially within AI, being able to parse information out of a resume and then provide context and then ... there's just so much that you can do at that point. We don't ... we just don't see enough of that happening as it is, so I really believe that yeah, this is a nice little piece that I think is starting to close the linkages for more of like a Zip ecosystem, per se. A nice add for companies, the SMB side of the house, to be able to reach new and different candidates faster. So just adding more information into the profiles, being able to target better, but I think they're moving in a different direction than many other organizations are and I believe personally they are moving in the right direction, because it's all about quality. Joel: Keep in mind this is on the heels of raising $156 million at a billion and a half I believe valuation, so Zip is definitely one to watch. I still think they're a huge acquisition target for somebody, or a few companies probably, because as a standalone it's gonna still ... it's gonna be tough long term to make it on their own, but they're doing the right things and definitely adding a tech layer to their offering increases their value. It's not just job postings, which we know from history is not worth a lot. Chad: Nope. Joel: And the people and the tech and the data, that's where a lot of the value is and they are definitely building that if nothing else. Chad: They are. Joel: Speaking of awesome tech, let's hear from our sponsor, Sovren, about what they're up to. Chad: Parsing. Joel: Parsing, and all that good stuff. They are real AI, white hat AI. Chad: White hat AI. 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 job's 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 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. Joel: Love it. Chad: White hat. You were riding up in that white hat. Joel: What did they call it? Was it white hat, like white AI, black AI. I don't know [crosstalk 00:28:50] Chad: Yeah, I think what you're starting to see now is they're talking about white box versus black box. Joel: Oh yeah, that's it. Chad: Yeah, so there are ... like Google is black box. You don't know why you're receiving the type. You don't know what the algorithm looks like, you can't see the algorithm. Google just says, "Hey, this is the best return that you're gonna get," versus some of the other ones that are out there like the Uncommons of the world who have more of a white box kind of scenario so you can see exactly why. Joel: By the way, Uncommon also a sponsor, unveiling some cool shit in the next couple weeks. Just a little teaser out there, but if you're not on the Uncommon bandwagon yet, it's definitely time to get on. Joel: Uber staffing, this kind of came out of nowhere, but maybe not, it makes a little bit of sense, yeah. Chad: It does. I mean, Uber Works is I think the actual, the banner that it's gonna be under. It sounds really cool. I mean it says Uber is quietly developing a short term staffing business called Uber Works to expand on demand model and additional types of temporary work, like waiter, security guards, just all these different areas that just from my standpoint though as I read through it, it was like, "Okay, are you using the base of individuals, like your drivers, as your talent pool?" Maybe they want to also do waiting jobs, like on demand waiting jobs or maybe security jobs. Who the hell knows right if they're qualified? But I didn't really understand where their talent pool was going to come from aside from those individuals who currently drive for them. Joel: Yeah, I think it's ... I think someone at Uber or a few people at Uber said, "Oh my god. Look at the talent base of contract workers or gig workers that we have." It's probably the most in the world. It's probably more than Snag and others that have been doing it for quite a while and someone said, "How do we get them connected to other opportunities, and how do we make a lot of money doing that?" And they already have the infrastructure. People can already use their app, turn themselves on for driving opportunities. It's not gonna be super tough to be like, "Oh, hey, are you open to other opportunities? Like go deliver groceries. Do you want to go deliver dry cleaning? Do you want to go wait tables? Do you want to ... like whatever it is, Uber has the infrastructure and the head count to actually do this thing, so I think it's pretty fascinating. It's a real sort of left turn from where they've been going. I know they're looking to go public soon, so this is like another thing I guess they could build in terms of revenue opportunity and growth, but yeah, it's definitely worth watching. We talk a lot about the gig economy. If anyone is sort of prime to leverage the giggers and mobilize them to opportunities, it's got to be Uber. Chad: So Uber should actually buy Snag so that they can have that database and push it into their system. If they really want to go after something like this, that would make a hell of a lot of sense, wouldn't it? Joel: I don't know if they'd have to buy Snag. I mean technologically they don't. I don't know if Snag has that many more workers. Chad: I'm just talking about on a database standpoint. Joel: Uber doesn't do a lot of acquisitions that I'm aware of, I mean, Uber's not really our lane, but you don't hear much about them. They sort of build it themselves, but yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's just a skunk works project and they'll do a test in San Fran to see what happens and if it works, great, if not, they'll just chunk it. Chad: I like the thought of them spreading out because they are already giving jobs, flexible jobs that are driver jobs, or Uber Eats delivery jobs, to individuals, but being able to expand does provide for a better story for IPO. Joel: Yeah, I mean why can't you hire people for temporary work or gig work on Uber, just like you get a driver? I mean, it's sort of the same. Uber could be like the utility for everything you need work related. Chad: Yeah, and that's what we've been talking about for with Snag, we've kind of seen them possibly moving in this direction of being the Uber of the segment, and they better get their shit together if they're going to be. Joel: Yeah. I mean, Pared with restaurants, Uber Eats, a lot of those relationships are already being forged, but yeah. We're watching you Uber, you're coming over into our space so we're gonna pay attention. Joel: Someone that's been in our space forever is LinkedIn, and there was an interesting blog post by a guy, Tim Queen, I don't know, he's a LinkedIn traffic guru I guess, marketing guy. Had a blog post out basically saying that the gravy train of traffic that people have been enjoying on LinkedIn is coming to an end. Chad: Wait a minute. Is this ... Are we talking about LinkedIn or are we talking about Indeed now? Because it seems very similar here. Joel: Yeah. Gravy train is over for everybody. It is LinkedIn, so anyone who has marketed on social media or at least has posted and seen numbers do what they do knows that Twitter was really nice because there weren't a lot of people on Twitter and it was usually interesting people and like the commentary was interesting. Their algorithm has not really changed. They're trying to change it and they've sort of suffered for masses of people and whatnot. Facebook didn't want to come under that same scrutiny so they created an algorithm based on likes and engagement and what kind of content they know is more favored, a little bit curated because of the fake news thing, so you used to get a ton of traffic on both of those and you've seen that fade a little bit, unless you really post some good shit. Joel: For a long time, LinkedIn has been great for things like if something is liked, it's shared on that person's feed, sharing was like ... they just paid a lot of attention to getting engagement with users and everyone kind of knew that the traffic train was going to come to an end and that you would have to pay for the traffic or you'd have to be really creative and that seems to be happening. Video was a great example, and you and I lived this because on ... was it draft night or Superbowl night of this year, you and I posted a video on LinkedIn which was really stupid, it was just us saying ... I don't even know what we said, like, "Hey, from Chad and Cheese. We're here watching the Superbowl." Whatever. And it got like thousands of views and it was ridiculous. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Those days are over. You can't just post a video and get a bunch of traffic. You actually have to have good content in order to engage, so anyway, it's now time to move on to ... I don't know, Snapchat or Instagram or somewhere else because the traffic gravy train is coming to an end at LinkedIn for crappy content. Chad: So here's a question though. I mean are just companies going to be challenged to kind of Facebook boost on LinkedIn or is this going to be an individual thing? Because most people post as individuals. This is just like our video. It might be company stuff, it might not be company stuff, who knows, so I wonder if this is gonna be like individual account based or how that's actually going to work, because LinkedIn is really used in a much different fashion than Facebook is. Joel: One example I think that the post talked about was if you posted like a blog style update to LinkedIn, which is great, and it typically gets a lot of engagement, if you're not ... so they have ... basically they have premium users or like people that have been approved, sort of the blue badge folks. Those people will continue to post and I think still get a ton of engagement. The average Joe who just posts a blog on LinkedIn, unless it's really good, is not gonna get a whole lot of engagement, and the reason that they pushed that initially was they wanted people to post so they got more exposure and people posted, now they're used to posting and they hope that people still do that. Joel: The same as with video. Anyone who posted a video got a lot of engagement to make people post more videos, but now just because you post a video doesn't mean you're gonna get engagement. Now I do think it's interesting to think that Facebook used to have for personal users, a little boost button and for $7 you could have your birthday announcement or your wedding engagement boosted throughout your network. They've taken that away, because either I guess nobody used it or it was confusing or people didn't like it. I could definitely see a thing for LinkedIn where you boost something and you get exposure where you didn't before or you've lost exposure. I do think they're trying to get more companies engaged. Their new insights have branding. They just bought Glint for $400 million. That's a company solution right that you'd use on LinkedIn, so I think they want them ... companies to post more, they want to get people ... companies to get more followers, and that could be part of where the algorithm goes, but yeah, I think it will affect everyone, but I think if you're a personal user and you've been really enjoying the engagement and the traffic that you were getting on LinkedIn, I think that that could be short lived and you may have to start paying for the exposure that you used to like. Chad: That fucking sucks. Joel: Welcome to capitalism baby. If it don't make money it don't make sense. Chad: Kill me. Joel: But what does make sense is JobAdX. Another awesome sponsor. Let's take a break on them and then we'll get to the scary shit for the Halloween season in recruitment. JobAdX: As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX has been providing job board publishers, direct employers, agencies, RPOs, and staffing firms dynamic job bidding and real time ad delivery through our programmatic job advertising exchange. When we started, we described JobAdX as AdSense for jobs. Now we offer much more with switchboard and live alert, completing our full suite of dynamic programmatic advertising tools with the best of consumer ad tech. Switchboard offers our dynamic technologies to all partner job board feed management and live alert eliminates latency and expired job ads via email. For more information about any of our ad solutions, please reach out to us at joinus@jobadx.com. That's joinus@jobadx.com. JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for all your advertising needs. Chad: Smooth as butter. I mean we did ... those ads, Sovern, Canvas, JobAdX, I mean they're smooth as butter. Joel: Can we get to the scary shit? Chad: For everybody out there, Joel, this is like Joel's favorite time of the year I think, because when we start talking about Halloween and talking about scary shit, it's almost like he lights up on the microphone. If it's anybody's time right now, this is Joel Cheesman's time. So let's all listen. Joel: I like the holidays in general, like from October to January 1st, it's just like the best time. Chad: It is. Joel: It's eating, drinking, the holidays. Chad: Napping. Joel: The temperature changes. The trees change. Football season, baseball World Series, basketball starts, hockey starts. It's the best time, and Halloween just rockets that off. If you have young kids like I do, Halloween is especially great because kids care and they dress up and they carve pumpkins and they go to the hay ... whatever, the farm, and they do corn mazes and all this Midwest shit that a lot of people don't appreciate, but yeah, it's a great time of year and I twisted Chad's arm to be like, "Dude, we gotta do a Halloween segment. Let's talk about some of the scary shit that we've talked about in recruitment over the last year or so." Joel: I don't know how you want to do this. We could each take one or just- Chad: Let me start off with Sophia is the creepiest thing I've seen this year. Period. Joel: All right, give the people who don't know Sophia or women named Sophia out there, tell them what you're talking about. Chad: So the android thingy that whoever ... whose robot is this? I can't remember now. Joel: I don't know. It doesn't matter. Chad: It doesn't matter. Anyway, it's an android-ish type of ... kind of plastic face that has the facial smiles and it just ... it is as creepy as shit, go to YouTube, we're gonna be saying this a lot during this segment, go to YouTube, put in Sophia robot and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Creepy as shit. Joel: Yeah. Her brain is glass and you can see the cords and the wiring. Again, on the YouTube while you're searching her, throw in Will Smith in there. He has a date with her and [crosstalk 00:42:09]. She interacts with him as an AI robot and he's Will Smith so it's pretty entertaining. So yeah, Sophia scares the shit out of us. Joel: I will add on the robot category Boston Scientific, you need to quit it. The first robot was kind of cute, it looked like a dog. It basically jumped a little bit and it kind of walked. Now the robots look like scorpions and they climb walls and they shoot guns and they're creeping me out, big time. Scientific, Boston Scientific, quit it. You're scaring me, goddammit. Chad: Yeah, that shit is scary as hell. So there is an episode, a "Black Mirror" episode where these dogs are actually sent to kill humans. That is some freaky crazy shit, and they look like these Boston Scientific dogs, let alone these fricking robots who are like ... I mean they look like militarized almost robots that can go like anywhere and do just about back flips and shit like that. Joel: Dude, the '80s is the future. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: RoboCop, Terminator, anything you want to know about the future, just go watch movies from the '80s. Chad: Yeah. So, the next one is one of my favorites, because I love the movie "It." Joel: What was the robot ... it was on a tread, like a tank tread and it had arms. Chad: It was like Johnny Five is alive. Joel: Yes. Five is alive. Because he got struck by lightning. Chad: That's a stupid fucking movie. Joel: In the '80s. Chad: So yeah, creepy clowns. From Hurts Donuts, we talked about this last week. This is the coolest thing and the funniest thing in the world, but yet, go to YouTube, I told you I was gonna say this, go to YouTube, look up creepy clown Hurts Donuts, that's the name of the company, Hurts Donut, that's fucking awesome too and look at. Dude, it is the funniest thing ever. They send these clowns into the office with donuts to deliver and just scare the shit out of people. It is fricking hilarious. Joel: It's totally hilarious and every business should do something like this because it's awesome. But yeah, creepy clowns delivering donuts. Awesome. All right, dude. This is brand new scariness. Our boy Tupper sent this. Job posting on Facebook for research scientist, which isn't threatening, research scientist virtual humans. Chad: What? Joel: Facebook is apparently developing virtual human beings because they don't have enough human users, they want virtual users too, but this is gonna be like 3D. It goes way beyond hologram. This is you in virtual form showing up to work, or this is you ... Anyway, this is all really creepy stuff because robots aren't enough to think about, now we've got virtual humans roaming the halls of the workplace, roaming the mall, whatever. Chad: So holograms, I mean that's the thing that we're talking about, right? Joel: Facebook's virtual humans. Let's just leave it at that and we'll keep an eye on what goes on. Chad: Are they working with Cambridge Analytica on this so that they can have like virtual trolls as well? Joel: Let's hope they're not working with Boston Scientific, because then I'm just leaving the planet. Chad: Yeah. Bullshit. Joel: Last but not least, I always feel like somebody's watching me. Chad: Watching me. I have no privacy. Joel: Oh. All right, more '80s references. Rockwell, the hit song, "Somebody's Watching Me." The last thing that scares the hell out of us, Google is now on their G-suite watching you and whether or not you're using the software. Chad: Big Brother, man. Joel: Yeah, so if you're using this to recruit, if you're using Google Hire, whatever, your boss will find out if you're not using it so you better use your freaking Google licenses. Chad: I don't know if you remember this, but we earlier this year actually talked about Slack doing the same thing, so Slack, because that is ... again, that is used in many organizations, is starting to better understand sentiment and some of the messages and some of the documents and things like that to better understand how happy or sad your employees are and, possibly, if they're getting ready to leave. So those types of things, it's like, you've got to be ... really? Joel: Yep. So everyone's gonna be popping Xanax's so Big Brother doesn't know how they're feeling and what they're gonna be up to. Chad: Yeah. Beautiful. Joel: We out? Chad: We out. Tristen: Hi, I'm Tristen. Thanks for listening to my stepdad, the Chad, and his goofy friend, Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out on all the knowledge dropping that's happening up in here. They made me say that. The most important part is to check out our sponsors because I need new Track Spikes, you know, the expensive shiny gold pair that are extra, because, well, I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #Indeed #LinkedIn #ZipRecruiter #Uber #UberWorks #Vote #Elections #Halloween

Holy Hell! Halloween must be close, because companies are losing their minds and scaring the shit out of us. On this week's show, - Start-ups call bullshit on LinkedIn's blacklist - Indeed kicks all staffing firms to the curb - Blinders on their cubical jockeys -- 1984 meets Mr. Ed - Scary clowns are delivering donuts to your office - Start-ups get money (ConveyIQ, Timely & JobUFO) - while HireVisor joins the Dead Pool The boys also give their takeaways from spending a full day with iCIMS. Enjoy, and checkout sponsors JobAdX, Sovren and Canvas ... they've only got treats for ya'! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. 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: Back from Jersey, it's the born to run episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, we give takeaways from the iCIMS Influence Conference. LinkedIn has a blacklist, and scary ass clowns are invading a donut shop near you. We must be getting close to Halloween. Some weird shit is going down. Chad: Yes. Joel: Stay tuned. We'll be right back after this word from Canvas. Canvas: Canvas is the world's first intelligent text-based interviewing platform empowering recruiters to engage, screen, and coordinate logistics via text, and so much more. We keep the human, that's you, at the center, while Canvasbot is at your side adding automation to your workflow. Canvas leverages the latest in machine learning technology and has powerful integrations that help you make the most of every minute of your day. Easily amplify your employment brand with your newest culture video, or add some personality to the mix by firing off a bitmoji. We make compliance easy, and are laser focused on recruiter success. Canvas: Request a demo at gocanvas.io, and in 20 minutes we'll tell you how to text at the speed of talent. That's gocanvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent. Joel: All right. Let's get to the shout outs, man. We got a fairly limited list this week, so our listeners who hate shout outs will enjoy that. Chad: Our listeners love shout outs. Shut up, man. So right out of the gate, big thanks to old friends, Susan Vitale, Colin, Adam, Andrew, and the rest of the iCIMS crew who brought us out to their new digs in Jersey. I mean, I remember when they were a little applicant tracking system thingie, right? And they got up and running and we were working on source coding back in like, I don't know, 2004 or maybe even before that. But anyway, watching these guys grow from that small place in Hzslet, right? To this huge, amazing, fricking, what'd they call it? Like mega-hub or some shit like that? At Bell Labs. That was amazing. That was amazing. Joel: Yeah, I gotta agree. Watching these guys grow, and there aren't a ton of success stories like this. Limited funds that they've taken, I think they've only recently taken some decent amount of money, but yeah. Watching them grow from nothing to what they are today has been great, and additionally, a lot of the players and people that have been there for quite a while are still there. Susan, I know she's been there for 13 year, and shout out to her. She's expecting a little Susan in the next month, right? November? Chad: Yeah, on Thanksgiving, so that'll be a nice little busy time. Hopefully all family will be around and it'll just be wonderful. And she'll be able to drink wine at that point, which is awesome, because I know she misses that. Joel: Did you just call her a wino? I think you did. Chad: No, I'm not a wino. I like wine. Joel: Shout out to HIREconf, the HiringSolved event November 7th and 8th in New York. Chad and I will be there raising hell. If you're in town, come by. If you're going to the event, make sure you say hi. Chad: HIREconf. Can I just say, sounds like Mein Kampf. Christian Malpeli- Joel: So now you're calling HiringSolved Nazis, and you're calling Susan Vitale a wino. Chad: I said it sounds like it! Christian, shout out over at jobboard.io/ZipRecruiter. I thought it was funny- Joel: I think it's pronounced job boardio. Chad: No. I think it was funny he spelled it out in the email for you so that you could actually say I-O. So jobboard.io. Joel: Yeah. Christian, hats off for the sense of humor. That was nice, and thanks for listening. Chad: Yeah, totally appreciate that. Yeah, thanks for dinner and drinks while you're in Indy. The funny thing is, I see Matt Plumber probably twice as much as I've ever seen Christian, and the guy's never taken me out for drinks, dinner, or anything like that. So Matt, you know. Candlelit dinner- Joel: Candlelit dinner. Chad: Maybe some cereal money. Maybe some cereal money. I don't know. I don't know. Joel: Yeah. I'm sorry I couldn't make dinner, I have a young child, and getting out for those wild nights doesn't happen as much as I'd like, so maybe next time I can enjoy a dinner with you and Christian, wherever that may be. Shout out to Dinah, or Dina. I think Dinah Robaski from TMP- Chad: Oh, from TMP. Joel: Yeah, Grasso turned her onto the show. She's been a big fan, so Dinah. Shout out to you. Chad: No, Dina, she is like the super fan at TMP. She is. Joel: Nice. Chad: So no, this is, Dina isn't just kind of like a listener. She like gathers people at TMP to listen to the show. I think they actually might have a listening kind of a thing going on, which is really cool. Joel: That's cool, yeah. She's, I think her comment was thanks for being the smartest thing in my ears or my car radio, whatever it was. However she listens, she's very complimentary, so Dina, we appreciate it, and we'll keep talking if you keep listening. Chad: Off of that one, I'm just gonna go the other way. So shout out to Josh Akers. Josh pointed out that I wasn't smart enough to be sitting next to Kyle Lagunas during the iCIMS Influence Meeting, which he was probably right, but my response Josh, very simply, fuck you. Yeah, now. He's probably right, but don't call me out for that shit, asshole. Joel: Did we really just bring out Josh Akers on this show? Chad: I know. I know. Joel: Oh, we love you Josh. That's it for me from shout outs. What else you got? Chad: I've got Terry Baker, quick shout out. Thanks for the Amazon AWS intel. The learning center, trying to get pipeline talent. The big thing though is are they focusing on females in that program? Because we were talking about Amazon's AI, which was kicking females to the curb. So what is Amazon actually doing? Yeah, they've got a learning center. That's cool. What are they doing to actually funnel females into those programs since they are light in that area? Chad: Thanks to Next, Uncommon, and Canvas for my traveling gear. Joel: By the way, iCIMS having Yeti giveaways- Chad: Oh dude, that was awesome. Joel: Is genius. And I'm using mine right now. If you don't know Yeti, you should. It's cooler system, koozies. They have a whole line of stuff to keep stuff cold or hot, and the fact that iCIMS has them as giveaways was pretty stellar. So shout out. Chad: Are they sponsoring the show now? Because I'd really like the Yeti-sponsored show. Joel: Well, maybe. We'll see. We'll see. They talked about writing us a blank check to buy the show so maybe that'll happen. Chad: Oh. I like that. So last, last but not least, grand champion edition of Death Match dropped this week. Aman Brar and Canvas, and I'm gonna put all the different Death Match contestants tagged in a group, so if you go to podcast on chadcheese.com, look in the right rail, click on Death Match, you can hear them all. Joel: We are the champions. Way to go, Canvas. Chad: Good job, guys. Joel: Death Match, take a listen. You'll see why they were the winners. Let's get to the show. Chad: I see that. Joel: I haven't done the boxing (SFX). There we go. Chad: There we go. Joel: All right. iCIMS. Let's talk about takeaways from the show, what we learned, what we didn't. What you got? Chad: Yeah, so first right out of the gate, class. Sheer class. It was a great experience bringing us in to talk to us about really history, roadmap, and vision, right? Vision and roadmap. So I mean, that was really a cool time, having the executive team there and really answering direct questions, right out of the gate. Joel: And I'll add courage to the class. So apparently some our analyst, blogger, media friends alluded to the fact that Chad and I don't get quite as many invites because we're a little bit dangerous. We're a little bit critical. We're a little bit, they don't like us kind of thing- Chad: They're afraid. Joel: And the fact that iCIMS had some courage to bring us on was really good. So I'll add courage to the class. Chad: Yeah, if you want real analysis or at least our thoughts and opinions, then we're gonna give them to you. And if you don't, then yeah. Definitely don't ask us to come. Joel: Exactly, exactly. If you want people to just blow sunshine up your ass, don't invite the Chad and Cheese Show. Chad: That's just not gonna happen. Joel: Yeah, not gonna happen. Chad: Okay, so one of the biggest things that I loved hearing is that iCIMS is going to own the primary source of jobs, because Google apparently applied more value to sites like the Indeeds of the world, who were jamming jobs down Google's throat as fast as they could get them, and they were pounding the iCIMS site like every five minutes. I mean, just killing all these different company sites to be able to get new content faster, where iCIMS would send them out probably maybe once every 12 hours, 24 hours or what have you. Joel: It was daily, actually, is what Colin Day, the CEO, mentioned, that they were doing it daily whereas the Indeeds were doing like every five minutes. Chad: Every, just pounding their servers. So I think it was cool that Colin and team are starting to figure out that from a Google for jobs standpoint, what is actually going to help them be seen in Google's eyes as the primary source. Colin said something about actually becoming the fast lane to jobs, which means when they get jobs, they're gonna be pumped into Google, and everybody else is going to be the slow lane. So the Indeeds of the world and those different companies, they're not going to be pounding the shit out of iCIMS servers like they used to. They're probably going to be ratcheted down to a few times a day or something of that nature. So that'll be interesting. Joel: Yeah, I think two things from that. iCIMS is clearly all in on Google. The CEO Colin Day mentioned that this was, Google getting into the game was the biggest thing he's seen in 20 years. In his experience, he believes or he quoted 80% of new candidate traffic came in via Google. Some people will argue that, but even if it's 20%, it's still a pretty significant number of incoming traffic. And secondly, that the middlemen are in trouble. iCIMS recognizes that they are the source of jobs, but they've been relegated because of job boards in the past who have outranked them in searches for the old, traditional searches as the main, original source for job postings, and that just isn't the case. And he, iCIMS, and I'm sure many ATSs are realizing that they are the main source. They should be the one that gets credit for that source in Google. Colin mentioned slowing down the lanes for job boards. He wasn't specific about how much, but certainly the days of five minute scraping of ATSs is gonna be a thing of the past, at least for iCIMS. Joel: They want to be the original source for those jobs on Google, and I think they're working very closely with Google to get, what data do we need? What's the schema that you want? I mean, they're all in on Google and they're all in on taking it out on the middleman that have sort of ravaged their servers for a decade. Chad: Yeah. Well, they are the original source. I mean, that's the thing. Now, you have to learn from Google why you're not showing up as the most trusted source, because you are the most trusted source. You are the point of origination. So they're figuring that shit out, and I have to commend them for that and being able to go to the next point of middlemen. I mean, taking a look at some of the recruitment marketing types of layers that are between the job boards and the applicant tracking system and really just kind of like the user experience systems that are out there. They're gonna take them on as well. Joel: Yeah, so historically, for those that don't know, typically the ATSs have been just the job search component. There hasn't been a lot of design thought with some of these sites. Usually the company itself will create some branding pages. Hey, what's it like to work here? Check out this video. And then there'd be sort of this ugly button at the bottom of the page that says, search jobs now, which would take you to the ATS. Joel: Companies like Jibe, The Muse feed on people that have come along, and historically, they provided mobile design first. They offered SEO first, and then eventually, the ATSs of the world had nice URLs for search engines. They got the jobs into Google and other search engines. So those companies went away. The companies that did mobile only, well, eventually the ATSs learned how to go responsive, and then those companies went away. Joel: So the idea is that, okay, these middlemen that are using design, letting companies, or design pages that are mobile, put on videos, et cetera, that they're in trouble as well. In 2019, iCIMS announced that they are going to launch a product called Attract that is essentially a set of templates. Companies can pick those templates. They can customize those however they want, and it will integrate seamlessly with the job search component. Joel: So arguably, the days of those middlemen that are designing sites and doing branding experiences could be coming to an end, because at least iCIMS is figuring out how to put in design in their product. Chad: Yeah. See, that's not gonna happen. That's not gonna happen. The people that are actually designing the sites, and they're launching and they're doing all that. That's not going to happen, because employers will not do that on site. They won't. So they're going to have to have an agency do that. What this will do though is you take a look at a lot of those platforms that are out there, those content management platforms, those RMPs, CRMs, what have you. iCIMS is building all of that on the front end of their applicant tracking system. So they're building that UX piece with the CRM included and also the RMP pieces. Chad: So from the cosmetic piece, you can have your agency still do all that cool stuff that you want them to do. Unlimited pages, go crazy with your footprint, yada, yada, yada. But when it comes down to offering a platform, iCIMS is gonna start doing that. So all of the platforms that are out there today who only do that, this is a warning signal. Joel: Yep. And we got the idea that the design will happen in a Wix or Weebly type fashion as opposed to the company designing the HTML and doing that on their own, which will inevitably be a cost savings to the company, because the design stuff, the HTML becomes expensive when agencies do that for them. Chad: It's not just that piece. It's also being able to easily get the candidate from one platform to the next. So right now, if you're using some of these content management types of systems and you want to be able to ask for information and maybe even a resume or something like that, getting that resume into the applicant tracking system for most of the applicant tracking systems is a bitch. Now, if you have an integrated system that is built on the same platform, that all runs nice and smooth. Joel: I agree. Another takeaway that I had was, I don't know if you could put it into maybe mobile/messaging/automation. These are three trends that are very hot with iCIMS, and I assume that they are with many of the other applicant tracking systems and competitors out there. So for those who don't know, iCIMS acquired TextRecruit in January of this year. TextRecruit we've talked about a lot, sort of messaging, mobile messaging, for candidates and recruiters. They're building out a whole suite of products where internal communications happens, automation, you know, one to many communications happen within a company. Erik Kostelnik who is founder and CEO of TextRecruit spoke, which I found really interesting. One of the things that he said was, "There should not be a human interaction until the interview. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So, where his head is, is a full sort of suite of automated messaging, chat bot if you will, of pre-screening, interviewing, applying- Chad: Scheduling. Joel: Automatically. And then until there's an actual interview there's no human interaction. So, to me that's where iCIMS head is and that's where I think a lot of other companies are going. But they really highlighted that in the event and I think that's something that I'm gonna pay attention to as we move forward. Chad: Yeah it's all process. We're seeing it all over the place. I mean it's RPA. There's some AI in there in some cases but it's RPA. It's just all process automation and it just makes sense. Because if you can take those little tasks out of the sourcer and or recruiter's hands, cause they don't need to do it, they can focus on being brand ambassadors and really having that human to human contact. Joel: I agree. I also took away that, if you're not supporting the enterprise, that life is gonna be really hard for you. And this is sort of underscored by the fact that Google has a lightweight ATS. LinkedIn launched their ATS very recently. Facebook, I assume, will have some sort of easy candidate management, apply you know with your LinkedIn or with your Facebook profile. And so the companies that are sort of servicing the small to mid-level ATS market, it's gonna be in trouble. And the sense of iCIMS is that, the Googles of the world are not gonna be you know looking to penetrate the enterprise market anytime soon because of the amount of complexity that goes into servicing the enterprise. Chad: Yeah and I think ZipRecruiter's actually going at this in a different manner. Instead of buying a seat for a software, what you're doing is, you're actually just buying access to post jobs programmatically, and tap into their database when you need it, right? So it's not always there, you're not paying monthly fees unless you actually need it. You go out, you post a job, that's when the feed goes in place. You still have your seat there and available but it's not active unless you're actually using it. Chad: So I think Zip is looking at this in an entirely different way than most of the other small, SMB types of applicant tracking systems that are out there. And again, Zip is doing shit right man. They're thinking about how small to medium sized business companies actually do work every single day and if they need an actual, an applicant tracking system every single day. They probably really don't. So yeah that's really cool and it'll be awesome to see Zip go from the SMB, don't know how long this is gonna take, to the enterprise. But yeah, there's some big names that are there and there's some different visions of what an applicant tracking system could and should be for the SMB market. Joel: The last takeaway for me that I thought was interesting was the announcement of iCIMS Passport. Chad: Yes. Joel: The Passport products will, is essentially born out of the fact that job seekers would go to multiple career sites powered by iCIMS, and have to reapply for each one of those even though it's primarily most of the same profile because iCIMS is sort of powering each one of those for these companies. So the idea is that you'll have an iCIMS Passport which will be transferable between all the companies that use iCIMS. Which is interesting in and of itself but, more interestingly than that was how does Passport become almost a LinkedIn competitor, or something where companies can source profiles on LinkedIn Passport, among many, many companies. So I think how they do that will be interesting and I think they're still working through some of that. But the fact that they wanna have a cohesive passport for a job seeker to use amongst all iCIMS products, is a pretty interesting development, and I think we'll be watching that one really closely. Chad: It's interesting because we've seen this throughout the years. AllianceQ did it. They had some big names, that were pooling resumes, right? It's all kind of like a, almost like a universal kind of resume which I think that's what Taleo called it at one time. Joel Yeah. Chad: JobFox did it. I mean these companies have done this before. The one thing that they did not have, GDPR. That shit dude, I mean that is going to scare the shit out of companies, not just overseas, but the compliance mechanisms that are going to start to gravitate this way to the United States, I mean yeah. Candidate data is candidate data. It's candidate rights type of thing which I think is really cool and that's the kind of messaging that we're hearing out of iCIMS. You know that's fair, and it just makes sense, right? So at the end of the day, there's a big hammer, compliance, that iCIMS can use today that JobFox, AllianceQ and Taleo could not. Joel Yeah you know, one of the things that Colin said was that they wanted to be the moral compass for candidate experience. And I think that was a theme as well of like, you know, we've focused so much on the company and the employer, for the last ten, twenty years, now is the time where we really have to think about the candidate and their experience. And I think a lot of that's driven by regulation. He also mentioned, you know, the whole, Facebook, you know, disaster that they had with data and privacy. And so, so I think, yeah. Part of Passport is gonna be driven by the reality of GDPR and that the candidate has rights. That those should be adhered to. Chad: We're moving into a much different, landscape than we were back in the Job Box days. Joel: Agreed. Well let's take a quick break and we'll talk about Indeed and LinkedIn's blacklist. Chad: Ha ha. 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 candidate scored by fit to job, and just as importantly, the job's fit to the candidate. Make faster and better placements. Find out more about our suite of products today by vising 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: You wanna take it to dinner. Oh yeah, and shout to our buddies at Sovren because if we're not there before then, but we're gonna be at TAtech in Austin in 2019. So start to get everything ready for a big Sovren TAtech fall event. Joel: Yeah I think, yeah if Sovren wants to have a party and have Chad and Cheese there, you know, like I think we're game for that. Hint hint. Chad: Yeah cause you know they're gonna bring the bourbon. Joel: Alright dude, you've got some news on Indeed cock blocking some folks. What's going on there? Chad: Yeah it's funny. From the Recruitics camp, I don't know. I think this is all kind of like rumor out there, which is fine. But we've also seen this, right? So supposedly in January, all staffing companies are gonna get kicked off of Indeed. Now it's been happening slowly already. I mean I've already heard from many of my friends in the industry that they've been doing it for probably, over a year now. But I think it's really hard for a company like Indeed to give that money away, even though they're doing it. But yeah, that's the rumor, is guess what guys? Indeed's gonna be throwing a huge, and they've been doing this, a huge ton, massive, amount of cash back into the market. So all of those Indeed competitors, guess what guys? Indeed just did you a huge fucking favor. Joel: Why do you think, I mean I get from a maybe user perspective, but Indeed is doing some weird stuff. You know they're not playing with Google, I mean they're at risk with ATS's being the primary source for jobs. They're losing more and more traffic, like they're turning their backs on money that staffing firms and others wanna spend with them. I have a hard time wrapping my head around what sort of the goal is of all this stuff. Chad: So okay, so first off, right out of the gate, I mean when I was at Monster, I mean staffing was 75% of our revenues, right out of the gate. Just because staffing adopts things so much faster, if it makes sense. They adopt things so much faster than talent acquisition. Talent acquisition sits and waits and there's just a longer adoption cycle there. Chad: So 75% of the revenue when I was with Monster. That revenue, period, is always going to be there. It's not like they're going to switch over, right? So that's revenue that they're automatically going to lose. Now long term, do they believe Indeed Prime, is going to take a 100% of the staffing market? I mean is that really what they think is gonna happen? Because that would be really the big play here, right? Oh we're going to become a staffing company, and we only want the candidates coming to us, not to you. So these are our candidates. We want them coming to us, not to you. But, to to be able to make that work, you need 100% of the market, really. Or maybe not 100%. Maybe, it's gotta be a large percentage though, right? So they're losing a shit ton of money, for what reason, I have no clue. Joel: I don't hear a lot about Prime anyway. Do you think that Indeed is really focused on that product? Chad: I have no fucking clue dude. I have no clue why they would do something like this. I mean, and what they're talking about right now, we keep hearing about search quality, right? It's all about search quality. Well, it's pretty fucking simple. If you tell a company, we're going to kick you off of Indeed unless you do X, Y, Z, then guess what's going to happen? They're going to do X, Y, Z, especially if they're a staffing company and they're seeing ROI out of your product. Because staffing companies again, they react much quicker than your talent acquisition, just your regular, you know, direct employer company. So yeah man. I mean from my standpoint, this makes no sense. But, again, just like we're seeing on the Google side of the house where they're not playing Google with Google for jobs, all these different company's competitors are actually seeing more traffic cause they're now getting a redistribution of old Indeed traffic. And now guess what? They're gonna get a redistribution of old Indeed money. Joel: Now the company that owns them is primarily a staffing company. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So maybe the staffing play's it. Like they wanna be the, I mean there's a ton of money in staffing. Chad: How big are they in the U.S.? Joel: Not. Chad: That's what, I mean. Joel: It looks big. Chad: If you're looking to make a play, if they're looking to make a play, they would have to make a staffing play, right? And it just doesn't make any sense, whatsoever. Joel: Yeah and at least like let them advertise. Chad: Right. Joel: I mean you can sort of, you know, you can algorithmically or visually, you know, give them lower exposure or less exposure. But damn, the just to shut the door, is pretty crazy. Chad: So yeah. And this goes pretty much into other things that I'm hearing from more than one source, multiple sources actually, like half a dozen sources, of UX platforms, who are getting kicked off of Indeed as well. So, like we were talking about with iCIMS, if you have this platform that you're using as a CRM and your user experience platform, and you want to be able to post the jobs and have the candidates come to this platform, really cool landing pages and just all experience and content which is what you're paying for, they are gathering data, on that platform, which is exactly what you want, right? Maybe just little bits of data. Indeed is saying guess what guys? You're not allowed on our platform anymore either. How does that make any sense? Joel: It's hard for to wrap my head around it and I've been around a while. So, if anyone else can help us figure this out, hit us up at chadcheese.com. Chad: Yeah. Anybody who is collecting, job seeker data, anybody, and I mean staffing companies, that's what they do, right? I mean that's a part of what they do. These UX companies, these user experience or candidate experience companies, that's why clients pay them. Joel: Yeah. Chad: But I have heard from several companies saying that they've either been, there's an indication that that is rolling out and going to happen or it has already happened. Joel: Well speaking of blacklists, apparently LinkedIn has one too. There was blog post- Chad: Holy shit. Joel: By a Josef José Kadlec. I'm probably saying that incorrectly, but he had a blog post that's gotten a lot of attention. Of companies, mainly Chrome extensions- Chad: Plugins. Joel: That have been blacklisted, by LinkedIn. Some of these we know. SeekOut, he's been on the show before. TalentBin owned by Monster. A lot of sort of small players. Entelo's on the list as well. Chad: Wow. Joel: So this list came out, got a lot of attention. I decided to do a little bit of Q and A or questioning of folks. So, LinkedIn has an official statement that I'll read here. It's a little lengthy, not too lengthy, but I'll make it quick. Joel: So quote, "Our members control the information that they make available to others on LinkedIn and they trust us to honor that control. To protect our members, we don't permit the use of any software including crawlers, bots, browsers, plugins, or browser extensions, that scrapes or copies member data or that automates activity on or alters the appearance of LinkedIn pages. These tools are prohibited by our user agreement and may violate the law. This means that any LinkedIn member or customer who uses a tool like this is also violating the user agreement." Which I think is pretty interesting to go after the LinkedIn members. Chad: That's bullshit. That's bullshit. Joel: Yeah so that was their quote. Yeah, I know you're not real happy about that. Chad: These provide efficiencies for companies, period. That's what they do, that's why they're there. And LinkedIn is really just kind of like the HiQ side, right? HiQ's like wait a minute, they're going to, they're going to create a competing product to us, okay, totally get it you know. Fair is fair. Capitalism, all that other fun stuff. But guess what? Now it's more of like a monopoly. No we're kicking your ass out of our ecosystem, even though our customer and your customer paid for your product, to be able to do exactly what it's doing. We're telling you to get the hell out of our ecosystem. Joel: So I did reach out to Darren Kaplan, at HiQ, because we haven't heard an update on their case for a while. Chad: Yeah. Joel: His message to me was that it's been radio silence from the court, and he'll keep us posted. So that either, either LinkedIn's lawyers have that sucker wrapped up in paperwork, or something. But that thing has hit a road bump. I reached out to Anoop Gupta from SeekOut, who we've also interviewed. If you haven't listened to that, you should. He wrote, "Thanks for reaching out. I'm curious where you learn," which I shared the blog post. He said, "Here's our understanding. LinkedIn tries to detect a bunch of extensions that are installed. SeekOut is one of these. However, to the best of our knowledge, LinkedIn is unable to detect if SeekOut is installed, as we don't have any web accessible resources and we don't make any changes to the webpage. So all they," this is good. "All they can do is try to scare people," which is why my question, if you know anyone else who's been actually banned due to the use of an extension. So ... Chad: Yeah, yeah. See I love that. Joel: Yeah and Anoop's a really smart guy, way smarter than we are. So that comment was really interesting. Chad: Oh god yeah. Chad: Also .. He used to advise Bill Gates. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Anoop used to advise Bill Gates guys. So that's pretty much, you know, and again I'm paraphrasing, Anoop saying, you know, screw you guys. We've got this shit covered. Joel: True story. And then I reached out to Ninh Tran at Hiretual, who's a pretty colorful guy. His response was basically fake news, connect if you want more kind of thing. So at least from the vendor side, there's not a lot of fear. This is a lot of fear mongering by LinkedIn, but it is getting a lot of attention from the sourcing, recruiting world and we thought we'd mention it. So if you have any knowledge or experience of sort of banning on LinkedIn, particularly from a personal perspective, which apparently is happening, we'd love to know more about it. Chad: And I'm wondering ... yeah. I mean, if they're going to be kicking off customers, and really putting them in LinkedIn jail more so than anything else. Or again, is this just a Halloween scare tactic to get everybody all excited and it's like, "Oh my God, I can't buy any of these Chrome extensions or plugins," or anything like to just really hurt their business while they're trying to build competitive products. Joel: By the way, our buddy, Doug at ZAPinfo also chimed in on this saying that they had a "secret sauce," which tends to be Doug's thing, like he's got something that no one else does, but they have not seen any sort of retribution from LinkedIn at this point. Chad: Good for you, Doug. Good for you, Anoop You guys keep fighting the good fight. Joel: So, a little bit more on LinkedIn. We announced their ATS last week. We talked about it. You had an interesting question from ... I forget who it is, but actually quoted or asked, will LinkedIn be in the job distribution business? And we have some thoughts on that. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Question from Ian Partington over in northwest England, that's because they love us across the pond. Joel: They do. Chad: He's a CEO of Simply Jobs Boards. Yeah, he just wanted to know really if that's going to be an issue, or is it going to be one of these closed up ecosystems? Are they going to be able to really do job distribution? That's a great question. I think TalentHub will primarily be an SMB play for starters, so unless LinkedIn applies like a zip like kind of programmatic play, I don't think that they're going to be performing any old fashioned type of job distribution. Right? Joel: No? Chad: No. I think they're just gonna ... they can get away with that with an SMB kind of a structure because the expectations are so much lower. Now, if they were doing this on the enterprise side, that's an entirely different discussion, but I think they can build up from an SMB and start perspectively doing programmatic if that's where they want to go, but right out of the gate, I don't think that they need to. Joel: So you don't think they'll go to Monster and CareerBuilder and say, "Hey, for the low, low price of X, you can be an option for people who post jobs to cross post onto your site?" Chad: I'd love to see that because at the end of the day, if they can get those candidates ... they probably already have them, but maybe they don't. But if they can get those candidates sucked into LinkedIn, that's just, again, that's another Trojan horse kind of scenario, but maybe they just ... again, it depends on whether they want to lock up their ecosystem or they want to open it up. Joel: Well, history says they want to lock it up. I also think that Google For Jobs has maybe made it possible for them to say no play, right? Like, as long as our jobs are on LinkedIn, they're also on exclusively Bing at the moment. Right? And we're in bed with Google For Jobs, so screw job boards and job distribution. They're on LinkedIn, they're on Bing, and they're on Google. What else do you want? What else do you need? Chad: Yeah. Just real quick, I just got a text from an industry insider who is at Staffing World, and they said that they, yes, did indeed announce that all staffing out of organic results by January. Joel: Wow. Wow. Alrighty. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about blinders and scary clowns. Chad: Donuts. Joel: How's that for a tease? JobAdX: As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX has been providing job board publishers, direct employers, agencies, RPOs, and staffing firms dynamic job bidding and real time ad delivery through our programmatic job advertising exchange. When we started, we described JobAdX as AdSense for jobs. Now, we offer much more with Switchboard and Live Alert, completing our full suite of dynamic programmatic advertising tools with the best of consumer ad tech. Switchboard offers our dynamic technologies to all partner job board feed management and Live Alert eliminates latency and expired job ads via email. For more information about any of our ad solutions, please reach out to us at joinus@jobadx.com. That's joinus@jobadx.com. JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for all your advertising needs. Chad: Okay, so I ... another text that's hilarious because this does make sense. Indeed announced this during Staffing World, right, so pretty much you're going into the lion's den saying, "Hey all you motherfuckers, you're not gonna be able to use us. Yeah." Why are they even there? Why are they even there? I mean that makes no goddamn sense, other than prime, right. Fuck that. Joel: Let's be honest. The amount of hubris that we see out of Indeed right now makes the hubris that was coming out of Monster and CareerBuilder at its height look like bush league kind of hubris. I mean, Indeed is really pushing the our shit don't stink button pretty heavily and man, the mighty have fallen, and as we're predicting, it will happen again. So yeah, enjoy it while it lasts, Indeed, because history says it might not. Chad: Hide and watch, kids. Joel: Let's go through some quick, I guess ... some money was ... some checks were written and at least one company is headed toward the dead pool. I'll start with ConveyIQ, formerly take the interview. Danielle Weinblatt, a friend of the show, listener, CEO, founder, Ty Abernathy was part founder of the original company is still involved in some degree, but anyway, she launched ConveyIQ, they went beyond sort of the video interviewing thing to the sort of end to end scheduling, interviewing. Chad: Messaging. Joel: Automation stuff, messaging. Yeah, they're trying to do all of it. That launched a little over a year ago I think and they've raised $5.5 million dollars to take the company to the next level, so congrats to them and we'll be watching. Chad: Another RPA play. I mean, process automation that is incredibly smart. How can I get more out of my recruiters? Take the stupid shit off their plate. Let our platform do it. Yeah, I think it's pretty awesome. Joel: You've got Timely, right? Chad: Yeah, so Memory- Joel: Did they get money or ... Chad: Memory ... Yeah. Joel: Okay. Chad: Memory, a Norwegian company actually secured $5 million for Timely and Timely, it's an AI based time tracking system for the service industry, which I thought was pretty fucking awesome, and they currently are used by 4000 paying customers across 160 countries. That's pretty big. But here's the thing that caught my eye. I started reading into it. Now here's a quote, "The tool automatically tracks the active, native, and web apps on the user's computer, location, and traveling mobile calls and calendar events, and suggests time slots descriptions. It also learns." It learns a bunch of shit and it's tapped into pretty much everything that you do. I have a big no effing way that I would use this thing. Joel: Interesting. Another funding that we didn't I think cover in the pre-show meeting was JobUFO, one of the more interesting URLs or brands out there. They raised two million Euros, which I think is three something million dollars. Anyway, so they raised money. They're out of Germany. They're a sort of video interviewing place, so they received some money, good for them. Chad: JobUFO, a video interviewing thing. Okay. Those don't match up. Joel: Maybe it's pronounced Job-uff-oh. Chad: Either way. Joel: By the way, it's funny when you ... so when you translate your site to other languages, but have video that is not translated, it's very interesting. If you go to the site from the US, it's in English, but the video's in German, so it could be a little confusing for consumers, I think. Something to think about in marketing is hey, if you're gonna translate your site, have a video version of that language that you're translating to. Chad: Yeah, especially if you're trying to penetrate more markets than just the German market might make sense. Joel: Yeah. As pleasant as the German language is, no one knows what the hell the girl's saying that's getting a job. Anyway, if that's it for the money, we've got a death pool, a dead pool recipient, which is a little bit close to home. Chad: It's bittersweet. Joel: Yeah, bittersweet. This was a firing squad company that faced the squad. They were shut down. So we knew the future before it happened and Hirevisor, who faced the squad and was shot down, is now announcing that they're going bye bye. Chad: Yeah. Back in June, they jumped on the firing squad and we had an open, honest discussion with Patrick and yeah, I mean, that's one of the things about ... what I love about being able to interact with the CEOs who really have backbone and they want to hear, really from both barrels, whether we believe they're gonna make it or they're not and we told ... we both hit Patrick with the guns and ... not saying that ... We didn't send him spiraling into this, guys, so don't blame this shit on us. Joel: Don't blame it on us. By the way, my man is smart. Worked at LinkedIn, he's got an Ivy League education, he's gonna be fine. I think one of the things that we said was, "Dude. There's great things in your future, but this is not it." So, we expect to see him again, maybe not in the employment industry, but we will see him again launch something that is successful. Chad: We talked about blinders? Joel: Blinders and scary clowns, yeah. You talk about blinders and I'll talk about scary clowns. Chad: Okay, so it's interesting because there's a company that is providing a new product called Wear Space, and what it is is it's really blinders. You know the blinders that you've seen on horses? Joel: Oh yeah. Chad: It's like those blinders but yet it has ... it also has like Bose or something like that, like ear phones, in them as well, so it's from a peripheral standpoint, you're totally cut off and you're focused on whatever you're looking at and you can put whatever kind of white noise or listen to whatever you want to listen to, but yeah, it looks hilarious. We're gonna ... I'm gonna post a video everywhere, LinkedIn, Twitter, what have you, because it is so freaking hilarious. Joel: It's incredibly dystopian. Like imagine a ... you know, an open work area with desks and people developing and whatever and all of them have blinders on their heads. I mean it's scary. Now I will say that I've been to plenty of companies with developers who all have headphones in and all just stare at the screen all day, so in many ways they're already blinded and deaf to what's going on around them anyway. The blinders I guess would just support and industrialize the whole don't look around and don't listen to anything, just focus on the screen and just code. Chad: Yeah, it's total 1984 shit. It really looks like it. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Scary clowns. It's October. This is fantastic. There's a donut shop in Missouri that you can hire scary-ass clowns to deliver donuts to the office. And they have a Facebook page with videos and the videos of this shit is hilarious. Like the clown will have a balloon and it will stand outside the window of the office, like if it's an executive in an office, the clown will sit outside with a balloon and scare. Chad: Oh that's awesome. Joel: It's just hilarious. Yeah, more companies should embrace this kind of insanity, because it's really funny and people like us talk about it. But anyway, if you live in the Missouri area, we'll put the name of the company on the site. Hire these guys, videotape it. Chad: Yes, please. Joel: Send it to us, and have fun with scary clowns delivering donuts. Chad: It'd be funny as hell if they actually sent the recipient, like they call them on their mobile phone, and they had the recording of the little kid saying, "You'll float too." Joel: Dude, it's good stuff. And you could branch out into all kinds of scary shit delivering stuff. Chad: God yeah, that's good shit. Joel: But anyway. Chad: Yeah. Okay. Joel: With that, man, Halloween's coming. We out. Chad: We out. Stella: Hi. This is Stella Cheesman. Thanks for listening to the Cheese and Chad podcast, or at least that's what I call it. Anyway, make sure you subscribe on iTunes, that silly Android phone thingy, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Be sure to give buckets of money to our sponsors, otherwise I may be forced to take that coal mining job I saw on Monster.com. We out. #LinkedIn #Indeed #ConveyIQ #iCims #Timely #JobUFO #HireVisor

If you can't guess from this week's title, LinkedIn blew up! - New ATS = Linkedin Talent Hub - Diversity is hot = LinkedIn Diversity Insights - Buying GLINT "employee engagement" = $400-$500 million - What the hell should ATS and job site vendors do? Not LinkedIn Topics... - Amazon's AI is a misogynist - Facebook Jobs poaches talent - AND no God, no! -- there's another Tinder for Jobs startup, Blonk. Enjoy, and write blank checks to sponsors Sovren, Canvas and JobAdX. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. 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 Cheesman: LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn. That's my best Brady Bunch impression. Sorry. Welcome to Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad Sowash: And I'm Marcia. Joel Cheesman: On this week's episode, if you couldn't tell, LinkedIn did some shit. Amazon's robots are biased. Maybe they should stick to tweeting. And we rip apart another Tinder for jobs startup. God. Why? Get ready to swipe right on some solid podcasting goodness right after this word from Sovren. 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 job's 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 dot com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll wanna take it to dinner. Chad Sowash: You know that's one of the guys from Sovren in the background actually playing the guitar. Joel Cheesman: Is it really? They have such a talented bunch there. Chad Sowash: They do. I know it's one of them. Joel Cheesman: Everyone's a bartender serving bourbon at trade shows and playing guitar. That's nice. Chad Sowash: I love that shit. That's good stuff. Joel Cheesman: How did we get so many goddamn shout-outs today? I'm gonna apologize in advance. Chad Sowash: People love us and we love people. Joel Cheesman: iCIMS. We're going to Jersey next week. Chad Sowash: Woo, Jersey! Joel Cheesman: I'll start off with that. iCIMS, looking forward to it. You better feed us some good stuff, and we need lubrication throughout the conference. Just a heads up. Chad Sowash: When he says "lubrication," he means alcohol guys. Just for all you idiots out there. Just in case. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, what else would I mean? Jesus. Chad Sowash: Anyway, this month is Disability Hiring Awareness month, and the Chad and Cheese take this shit serious. So don't miss this week's podcast we dropped with Julie. It's an educational interview, "Hiring People With Disabilities is Hot," and she's a total bad ass. Joel Cheesman: We are the nepotism podcast of recruiting. Chad Sowash: Goddamn straight. Joel Cheesman: Starring Julie Sowash! Chad Sowash: Proof though, Steven Rothberg tweeted- Joel Cheesman: Of course. Chad Sowash: "Just finished listening. I learned way more about the recruitment of disabilities in 35 minutes than he has in 53 years. Bravo Julie Sowash. It was an unvarnished conversation about hiring people with disabilities, so listen." Joel Cheesman: Yes. If you haven't listened, he's referencing a faux pas that I made during the interview process, which I made many, but that was the first one. So, thanks Steven, for pointing that one out. Chad Sowash: Yeah, imagine that from an old white male. Carry on. Joel Cheesman: HIREConf coming up as well in November, put on by HiringSolved, kids over there, Jeremy Roberts and team. We're gonna be doing something, I guess a show or a song and dance, or something. So, if you're going to that ... If you're gonna be in New York, make sure you check us out at hireconf.com. Chad Sowash: This week, we actually got into Spotify. Spotify has a beta now for podcasts, but it's still kind of janky 'cause they're in beta- Joel Cheesman: I'm kinda mad about being on Spotify because now, I might have to be nice to millennials 'cause they're all on Spotify, so- Chad Sowash: Dude. Joel Cheesman: If you've enjoyed the ripping of millennials, I might have to tune that down a little bit with the Spotify edition. Chad Sowash: Dude, they love it! Some of our biggest fans are millennials. I mean, when we were in New Orleans, who brought us beer? Our favorite millennial, Kyle. Dude, they love it. Joel Cheesman: True. True. I have some millennial degree on my wall about something or other. That's nice. Shout out to Chris Gamble, ya boy, former Indeed executive employee. Mentioned that I did a post on "indeededjobs.com" a while back, that was a total ripoff of Indeed, saying that it was a matter of time before Indeed took the site down. Shockingly, the site is gone. Chris Gamble gave me the heads up. So shout out to you, Chris, for mindlessly going to "indeededjobs" every day and seeing if it was down or not. I really appreciate that. Chad Sowash: Yeah, really appreciate you taking your time there, bud. Louise Triance, once again, and this is for her actually saying that she listens to Chad and Cheese and it's "bloody good." So, if you're over in the UK- Joel Cheesman: Go on, do the accent. Do the accent. Chad Sowash: I can't do the accent. I'm not gonna ... Joel Cheesman: Bloody good! Chad Sowash: That's horrible. Horrible. Joel Cheesman: You're getting very popular there, across the pond. Shout out to Talroo. We love our sponsors and we give them a lot of love, but Talroo turned that love around last week, and told people to listen to the show. So we greatly appreciate that, Talroo. Chad Sowash: Well, I mean, they were actually just focusing on our banner week. We had over 4,000 listens in one week. It was our best week ever. Really happy to put that out there. And they were happy, being a sponsor, obviously, to push it out as well. Joel Cheesman: Continue to be awe inspired and, getting all English on you, gobsmacked, about all the listeners that we're getting. We really appreciate that. Shout out to Uber and Lyft, who are giving free rides to voters here in the states. Coming back to America. A very important election is going on next month, and Uber and Lyft are gonna help us out with getting people to the polls. So shout out to them. Chad Sowash: Damn straight. If you haven't listened to Death Match this week, we've got two of them out there. We've already had AllyO. Now we've got Talkpush, and Uncommon. Push it real good. Coming out this week, the grand champion Canvas will be out next week. So you gotta listen. Great pitches, and they do a lot of Q and A with us. And this is when they were onstage, live in New Orleans at TAtech. Joel Cheesman: Feedback's been great on the Death Match stuff, so we're gonna do more of that in the future, for sure. My last shout out goes to, another English shout out, John Lennon, assassinated in 80, 1980, would have been 78 this week. And God only know what kind of impact he would have made on the world, but we'll never know, sadly enough. But happy birthday, John. We continue, or at least I do, continue to love your music, and listen regularly. Chad Sowash: I remember when that happened, and they were playing John Lennon music on the radio constantly. And I just remember the song, "Wheels." So that's definitely a memory from our childhood, and amazing music in avant garde in that industry. Joel Cheesman: Shockingly that album was sort of a come back album for him after a weird period, I guess, in his life. And, only knows what could've been. I think he would've been incredibly political. I think he would've continued to make music. I think he would've impacted more generations and more folks to make music. But, sadly enough, we'll never know. You're excited about the Queen movie that's coming out. Hopefully that's good. Chad Sowash: Goddamn straight. Bohemian Rhapsody. I mean, who doesn't love Freddie Mercury and Queen music? I mean, it is literally the soul of rock and roll. It is amazing, so I can't wait to see that. Joel Cheesman: Any band that puts Beelzebub in a song is good stuff. Chad Sowash: Can we do this podcast? Joel Cheesman: We can. You had Indeed Job Spotter. Are we gonna roll over them? Chad Sowash: Yeah. So I thought it was funny. Somebody actually forwarded an Instagram ad of Indeed Job Spotter, and I was like, "Is that thing still fucking alive?" It must be. So shout out to Indeed. I can't imagine the amount of content that you're getting from Job Spotter, but somebody inside of Indeed, if you would, reach out to us. Let us know how much content you guys are getting from that. Or, maybe it's just an ad that keeps running in the background that somebody forgot about. Joel Cheesman: No, I think we've talked about this and I did a story about a year ago. I think if it's working, part of it's genius, because they're getting leads to small businesses that are hiring people. And they're getting the masses to do the work for them. So if they're doing it, it's genius. If no one's taking photos of "Help Wanted" signs in the window, it's kind of a big dud. But- Chad Sowash: Well, I'd like to know if it's working. If it is- Joel Cheesman: Alright, if you're the product manager of Indeed's Job Spotter, we wanna hear from you, get you on this show. Chad Sowash: Well, yeah and this will be the only time that you'd probably get any time on a podcast, ever. The project manager of Job Spotter. Joel Cheesman: It could happen. It could happen. Alright, well, let's go to the show. LinkedIn is holding their annual conference out in Anaheim, I believe. I'm a little pissed 'cause I didn't get invited, but whatever. I did watch the live stream. I got all the news, so we have a few things there. We're gonna talk about the ATS first. We have a soundbite from the conference that we're gonna play, and then we'll talk about it. Cool? Chad Sowash: Play it. Joel Cheesman: We don't normally do soundbites, so this is sort of a new thing. Let's give it- Chad Sowash: Unless it's El Chapo. We love the El Chapo soundbite. Joel Cheesman: The El Chapo or really bad ... anyway. Alright, here we go. Talent Connect: Every year, you come to TalentConnect and you ask, "Is this the year LinkedIn's gonna announce they're building an ATS?" This is the year! But it wasn't enough for us just to build an ATS. We asked ourselves if we could reinvent what it means to be an ATS in the era of tele-intelligence. We challenge ourselves to imagine what an ATS could do when built on LinkedIn's data. Chad Sowash: That's enough. Oh my god. Talent Connect: And so, over the last year, we've partnered with 20 customers who are helping us to design the product, that brings source, manage, and hire together in one place. And it's called "Talent Hub." Chad Sowash: Trojan horse. Talent Hub. Joel Cheesman: They couldn't just call it ATS. They had to have a special LinkedIn-y name. Chad Sowash: Yeah, of course. Joel Cheesman: So we've been talking about this, speculating about LinkedIn doing this. I think, Hire by Google made them have to do it, even if they weren't thinking about doing it. Initial thoughts on this. 'Cause it's big news. I think we can go a lot of different directions with it, but what're your initial thoughts? Chad Sowash: So the initial thought is, why are they creating a applicant tracking system, when Microsoft already has one? Joel Cheesman: Which no one uses. Chad Sowash: But they're not gonna get rid of Dynamic 365, the talent piece, so what does this actually morph into? What does it look like? Personally, I thought, "What you're going to see, is what you saw some of the other Dynamics pieces, is taking the LinkedIn info, data, and just sucking it up into Microsoft Dynamics. But that's not what this is at all. So, how does that change? How does that morph? I mean, I don't know. Joel Cheesman: I think Microsoft's, aside from being integrated with Microsoft stuff, is sort of more like what you think of an ATS today. Whereas, I mean, LinkedIn is leveraging their data in terms of profiles because they can, and no one else can. Chad Sowash: Microsoft can. Joel Cheesman: With LinkedIn data? Chad Sowash: Yeah! What do you mean, with LinkedIn ... They fucking own LinkedIn. Joel Cheesman: Well, that's what it will be. And you'll eventually get GitHub profiles synced into here somehow, and maybe Glint data. We'll talk about that in a second. But, I mean, all these things will eventually come together. I think that LinkedIn will be the hub, if you will, of this whole thing. I mean, the experience will be the same, whether you log in with LinkedIn or use your Microsoft account. It'll be the same data. It'll be the same experience. I mean, but it's simply their advantage that no one else has. And we talk about Google sourcing your current ATS database, or sourcing the internet, which we think they'll eventually do. But only one really has half a billion professional profiles that it can do this and actually make as a big a wave as they can. The product head, that gave the speech, she described it as, "Imagine ATS with, sort of, preloaded, interested candidates," right? And that's essentially what it is. Now, you could argue that your current database is the same thing. You just have to energize them, and you have to build technology that says, "This person's interested," whereas LinkedIn, they actually say, "Hey, I'm open to new opportunities. The resume that's in your ATS is three years old." You have no idea whether they're interested or not. Chad Sowash: They're not truly interested until they apply for the job. You can say, "Hey, these guys have been reading about their interest level as higher," but they're not truly interested until they apply. Joel Cheesman: Well, there's literally a switch on LinkedIn that says, "Am I open to new opportunities or not? If you are open to new opportunities, you're gonna show up in the search results, or the whatever, the automated search that you get when you post a job on LinkedIn." Chad Sowash: Legally, it doesn't matter what that little, fucking switch says. Legally, you have to apply to actually be seen as interested. So yeah, I don't think I'd change that on my profile. When's the last time you changed that on your profile? When's the last time you changed that on your profile? Joel Cheesman: Would a recruiter rather contact ... Well, I haven't looked for a job in a while. If I was looking for a job, I'd change it. Chad Sowash: I doubt people even think about that. Joel Cheesman: I think, well then, they deserve to be unemployed. Chad Sowash: I think that piece, in itself, doesn't really fucking matter. Being able to identify qualified candidates is the big key, number one. And what you're talking about is just fluff and bullshit, okay? So the big piece is actually being able to qualify individuals, you find those qualified individuals, and then you get real interest, which is applying for the job. That's real interest. All that other stuff's just bullshit and fluff. So, first off, apparently Microsoft Dynamics sucks. If Microsoft dynamics talent was good enough, this wouldn't have happened. I thought it was interesting because on a story that a recruiter wrote, I think it was on SourceCon, said, "I can't recall a time when any sourcer or recruiter has ever uploaded a requisition into their ATS and has had immediate access to full pipeline of qualified candidates." Well, that's because you're obviously not doing enough research. There are plenty of platforms that are powered by HiringSolved, now the Uncommons of the world who are popping these things out, the Intellos. This already is working, but it's not happening in one system, it's happening from vendor to vendor. So, iCIMS doesn't do it, but it can with some of these other vendors that are actually included. So here's the big question. Do we now see the iCIMS, the Taleos, the applicant tracking systems of the world start looking to acquire this type of technology, because it's already out there? Joel Cheesman: I think yes, but I want to go ... I want to go back to just agree to disagree on your whole premise that LinkedIn's shit is fluff. I think there's real ... I think people do update their LinkedIn when they're looking for a job. I do think that as a recruiter, I would rather call 100 people that have said I'm open to new opportunities as opposed to calling 100 people where I don't even know, I don't really know. I've got to convince them, I've got to play phone tag, etc. So we can just agree to disagree on that component. Chad Sowash: Like I said, if they apply, they show intent. Joel Cheesman: Fine. We can disagree. We've got a lot of show to cover. We can visit this later. To your other question of consolidation. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: absolutely. Yes. I mean, you know, world of a three pronged monster of Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Facebook becoming the end to end platforms for companies to hire is happening, and it's going ... it's not gonna happen overnight, but it's gonna happen, and these companies are gonna choose are we a LinkedIn house, are we a Google house, etc., and the stand alone ATS, particularly the little guys are not going to last. Chad Sowash: No. Joel Cheesman: So the little ones are gonna get gobbled up by the big ones and the big ones will eventually get gobbled up or go away from the even bigger ones, but I think the future of the ATS is, whew, man, if I'm not, you know ... if you're not awake at night thinking about this as an ATS owner, and I love that we're going to iCIMS next week because I'm going to totally get into this, but if you're ... to me, you're just ... you're walking blind without a cane because the future is ... whew ... it's clear as mud to me that this is the future of the ATS business. Chad Sowash: Easily, and let's make it very simple. A recruiter posts a requisition. That requisition automatically gets matched against the applicant tracking system database, number one. That's priority one for the candidates that you've already paid for. Number two, then it goes into the paid database. In this case Linkedin, right? That's number two. Then number three, if you don't reach the threshold of qualified candidates who have applied for the job, then you start the programmatic outreach, right? This is, it's actually happening today, but this is ... this is really just a big splash in the water to tell all these applicant tracking systems "I know you want to have a "hub" and not really say, you know, "We're not gonna pick a winner." You better fucking pick a winner. Pull together a platform that can do all of those things so that it makes it that much faster to surface qualified candidates and get them into your seats. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. If Hired by Google was Nagasaki, LinkedIn was Hiroshima. Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. Joel Cheesman: Not to use a bad World War Two reference, but another reference would be these are like the two asteroids, if there were two that, you know, eventually killed the dinosaurs. Like, you need to really be thinking about your business and you talk about a lot like, the resources that they have you just can't match. Period. Chad Sowash: No. Well, okay, so say that you're a CareerBuilder or a Monster. What do you do from here? You try to do the same thing. You have databases that are fucking huge. So what do you do? You overlay technology on top of it that if somebody posts or feeds jobs into your system, they automatically take that data and they match it against your database, and then maybe you pay per qualified applicant, who the fuck knows? But guess what guys? This whole pay per click thing, a click isn't qualified. An application is not qualified. You guys are already years behind. You better catch up. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, I mean, if I'm Monster and CareerBuilder, we talked about this last week, I think. I think LinkedIn has, and you could argue, a fairly vibrant, a community of people who use the site. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: Even if you don't think people go to LinkedIn, you at least have to agree that it's more active than the resume database in Monster. Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. Easy. Joel Cheesman: So that alone makes the data fresher, better. I also think there was ... there was a really sort of small comment that they made in the LinkedIn announcement that you had to sort of, if you caught it or not, but one of the algorithmic elements of people ranking well or people coming up in the searches for LinkedIn users for recruiters was not gender, was whether or not the person followed the company on LinkedIn. So if job seekers catch sort of knowledge of that or know that, then you're going to see a lot of people start following companies on LinkedIn just to show that, "Hey, I'm interested in the company," which is going to help with branding, which I think kind of ties into this whole Glint acquisition. Anyway, there's just ... there's an activity level on LinkedIn that you just don't get with any job board, and I just think that's impossible to match. Chad Sowash: Yeah. I don't think it's impossible, but I think it's hard Joel Cheesman: For sure. For sure. Well, LinkedIn did a few other things. Diversity was one of them, which is your hot button issue. What were your thoughts on that? Chad Sowash: Yeah, it's interesting. To be able to take a look at the diversity insights of your organization, the talent pool, and then start to compare that against competitors. I mean really your industry across the industry, so being able to take a look at that and then a gender weighting system. And this is ... I mean this is where we get into some really interesting conversations because Facebook and all the shit that facebook is taking for being able to target ads to only young females, let's say, right? And then the old white male gets pissed off and says, "Oh, that's it, we're going to court." This is the same kind of shit, that's not different. Now I believe that companies to be able to diversify their talent pools should be able to do this, although you have to remember, you'd better be able to defend why you're doing this. Right? So I think it's good. There's no question. The insights provide more intel that you definitely need, especially against the industry, but at the end of the day, I think these are great mechanisms for companies to be able to diversify their platforms, or their workforce. The thing is, they better be ready for old white guys who are pissed off and have a lot of money to take them to court. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. The whole day was sort of an Oreo cookie of announcements for LinkedIn, right? Like they had ... they had the cookie of the diversity. You had like the creamy white center of the ATS, and then you had LinkedIn Learning announced, which is sort of an internal mentor solution, but as we all know, the goodness is right there in the center of the milky white creamy substance. So good stuff from LinkedIn. Glint acquisition happened at the beginning of the week. Glint is a solution for engaging employee happiness, sentiment, etc. This is LinkedIn's largest acquisition ever. Lynda was their biggest, which we don't hear a lot about their whole educational stuff very much. They paid like 1.4 billion I think for, for Lynda. TechCrunch I believe, or Bloomberg reported that they paid between like 400 to 500 million for Glint. It's their first and biggest. So definitely their biggest acquisition since Microsoft has come to town. Thoughts personally I'm struggling with ... I guess it's just they want to be an end to end, they don't just want to be a recruiting tool. They want to be with you forever in your recruiting employment process, and certainly engagement and happiness play into that. They also, you know ... we talked about insights as well, which they're very serious about and it's a very cool product, but employment branding is part of that insight solution that they have, so I gotta think that eventually insights will also encompass how are your current employees from a morale standpoint? Chad Sowash: Yeah. It's all about retention. I mean it's what it is, about retention. It's about being able to gauge whether your people are happy or not. So if you ever go to an airport and you see the happy or sad face buttons that you can tap. Joel Cheesman: I love that. Chad Sowash: To tell whether you're having ... whether your experience in that airport was good or it was bad or it was shitty. You find them everywhere. But it's interesting because they have 200 employees and I'm like, "Why the ... what do they do with 200 employees? What are they doing over there?" I mean there must be some things behind the scenes that I'm just not getting, because that's a hell of a lot of resources to put in to happy or sad faces. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. There may be something there we don't see or a vision for the future. The happy and sad faces that you push in the bathroom scare me a little bit. I'm worried about hepatitis, whatever, being on the frowny face if I were to punch it. So I tend to stay away from it. Chad Sowash: That's why you always have a towel on your way out to be able to do one of two things. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, I get the little nest thing from the toilet that you can ... Anyway, yeah, I think it's a longterm play. Four or five hundred million is quite a bit to pay for what they've got. Hopefully there's something really going into the head there. But LinkedIn continues to move onward in the march of supremacy with the big three, and this week was an evidence of that. Chad Sowash: And last but not least, I mean they paid four to five hundred million, 400 to 500 million for this platform. So all those other startups that are out there right now start to see their valuation going higher because they're more than a happy or sad face. Right. You know, and I mean this is what it does. Joel Cheesman: Well, millennials like to be loved, you know. Retention is hot so the time is right for this stuff. Chad Sowash: I like to be loved. Joel Cheesman: Just like the time is right for JobAdX Chad Sowash: And a new ad. Announcer: As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX has been providing job board publishers, direct employers, agencies, RPOs and staffing firms, dynamic job bidding and real time ad delivery through our programmatic job advertising exchange. When we started, we described JobAdX as AdSense for jobs. Now, we offer much more with switchboard and live alert, completing our full suite of dynamic programmatic advertising tools, but the best of consumer ad tech. Switchboard offers our dynamic technologies to all partner job board feed management and live alert eliminates latency and expired job ads via email. For more information about any of our ad solutions, please reach out to us at joinus@jobadx.com. That's joinus@jobadx.com. JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for all your advertising needs. Chad Sowash: Oh, it was quicker. More to the point. Joel Cheesman: That was efficient. Chad Sowash: I like that. I do like that. Joel Cheesman: But if you're not ... if you're not leveraging programmatic as a vendor or an employer, you've got to go check out JobAdX. They're great. Chad Sowash: Why wouldn't you? That's the big question. So why would Amazon shut down their AI? I mean why would they do that? Joel Cheesman: Chicks, man, sorry. So Amazon is regularly known as an innovator in recruiting, and they're also known for their ability to create efficiencies, cut fat, etc., and they were leveraging a recruiting artificial intelligence solution that I think was homemade actually. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: And over time, as I know the story, it started leaning toward men, particularly on the engineering side and it became biased against women, and the company to their credit, shut it down. Chad Sowash: So it, it says the algorithm began to filter out applications that included words such as women's and also down ranked graduates from all female colleges. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: The company's experimental hiring tool used artificial technology, so and so. See, this is the problem. We try to make things that are easy way too fucking complex. There's no reason. Doesn't matter what college an individual came from. If your qualification says bachelor's degree or master's degree or it says associates, it doesn't matter, the individual should be qualified because of that, and when we start getting into these algorithm matching types of things, once we get over complicated, this stupid shit starts to happen. So we need to really back up and say, "What are we here to do? We're here to hire qualified individuals, not negatively impact our talent pool by pretty much chucking qualified women out the door." Makes no fucking sense. Joel Cheesman: So my question, it wasn't really clear from some of the news that I read, but as I understand it, the algorithm was sort of driven by the results, right? So, so who was actually hired and the hire became sort of weighted against the algorithm. So essentially, as I understand it, if the human beings were only hiring people that were, you know, algorithmically not from women's college or not in women's groups, then the machine is simply learning from the humans and the humans are kind of the dickheads in this scenario, and the machine is just sort of learning from that. From my perspective, the machine was doing what it was supposed to do, it was just learning from humans which is where the error happened. Chad Sowash: Yes. It's learning bad behavior. So we've got to know where to shut machine learning off, and if it's bad behavior. So, again, we're still ... we still have to focus on what is it there for in the first place? To deliver qualified candidates, that's it. That's it. Not to be able to go through and see what kind of donuts Jeffrey likes on a Wednesday so that we can get the right person who will fill that job, who actually drives past a donut shop on the way to fucking work. Joel Cheesman: Well, frankly, anyone who only likes donuts on Wednesday should never be hired, because donuts are delicious every day. Chad Sowash: Here's the thing, we're looking for AI to solve all of our ills and that shit's just not going to happen. What a company like Amazon should do is they should take their, use the bazillions of dollars they have to solve the actual problem and build a training program to pipeline candidates into those positions. If they're not getting enough females and/or diverse types of candidates, then they can fix it. They shouldn't be looking at the US government or any other government to be able to fix that fucking problem for them. It's their talent that's going to build their product and making them money, so they should figure it out, not think that an algorithm's going to do it. Joel Cheesman: ... Never be hired because donuts are delicious every day. Joel Cheesman: Clearly, we have a long way to go with AI and recruiting because Amazon is at the forefront of this. This stuff is going to get figured out. It'll take a while, but it will get figured out and AI will be, as we believe, a major component to all hiring and sourcing. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Again, we're thinking way too complex when this is a simple equation. Joel Cheesman: It's basically saying don't use words like "women" or certain colleges as a filter for not letting someone through. Chad Sowash: Your primary focus should be the qualifications on that job, and does this individual, no matter religion, ethnicity, it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the qualifications. And are you looking to relocate or not? So it's geographic. Once you get past that and you start looking, and algorithm's start looking at those types of terms, then you've already fucked up. Joel Cheesman: I also think it's interesting to think that we believe AI is going to solve all our problems, like you said, and yet we have so long to go from that. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: So a company that hasn't had any issues with women, although they were in the news recently with diversity for throwing out an African American man for just hanging out, waiting for his buddy. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: Anyway, they're in the news, childcare, applaud this story. Starbucks will begin to offer subsidized backup childcare for all of its US employees, sorry rest of the world, including part-time workers. The program will give Starbucks workers 10 days of backup care. The story said just four percent of employers offer similar programs. The move comes as the labor market in the US grows increasingly competitive with employers boosting their benefits to attract and retain workers. Chad Sowash: Just smart business. And the key piece here was including part-time workers. They understand that a good amount of their workforce is part-time, so they have to include everybody. And one of the things that I keep seeing from companies that are out there who are bitching and complaining about not being able to find the right types of talent is they're not willing to change the way that they're doing things. They're not willing to change. And again, this is an expense. There is no question of benefit, but it also keeps individuals, retains individuals into those positions so you're not having to spend a shit ton of money to try to replace them. So I mean, that's the thing. Think outside of the box. If you're only hiring full-time employees and you can't find enough full-time employees, guess what? Start thinking different. Start looking for gig workers. Start looking for part-timers, start looking for all these different ways to try to get the job done. Joel Cheesman: What shocked me was that only four percent of employers offer a similar sort of benefit. And so to me the question is, does this go towards gig economy? Come in and work, then you're done, you get no benefits, versus a few select employers where they say, "We honor your abilities. If you come in and work full-time for us, we can count on you, we're going to give you benefits like this," and that's going to retain some of the best workers. To me, it'll be interesting in the future how that sort of dichotomy works out. And I think ultimately, employers like the big brands, the Starbucks, the Walmarts, the Targets, those guys, Home Depots, will probably offer stuff like this, but the small mom and pop restaurant, laundromat, et cetera, they won't be able to and they're going to embrace the gig economy. Chad Sowash: And again, you're right. It's going to be different from mom and pop than it is for the Starbucks of the world. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, it's a serious issue, employment. I was at a restaurant the other day. Every waiter was wearing an I Love My Job t-shirt. Like when did that ever happen? Holy shit. All the waiters are recruiting people. Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Hey, here. Wear this today." Joel Cheesman: Yeah, it's the, was it swag? What was Office Space? What did the Friday's restaurant workers wear? Chad Sowash: It wasn't bling. What was it? Oh shit. Joel Cheesman: It will come to us maybe. But yeah, yeah. Waiters are going to become recruiting billboards in the future. Benefits. My job's awesome. I tweet about how great it is. All right dude, Canvas. Let's talk about that. Second week in a row we have not gotten an ad from our new sponsor, so you and I are just going to freestyle some stuff about Canvas. Great company based here in Indianapolis nearby both of us. Aman Brar founder, Cha Cha, Cha Cha DNA, texting is in it, great company. Everyone's getting on messaging. What other buzzwords can I throw out there? Chad Sowash: Yeah, I think they love us talking about them so much. Joel Cheesman: They do. I think they're not going to give us an ad because they just want us to freestyle every week. Chad Sowash: Yeah, because they get more mileage out of it. So talk about process automation. So on average, Canvas recruiters complete screens in 4.4 minutes. So actually, candidate screens, they disqualify in 52 seconds, which is saving like 922 hours per year. So what they're saying is if you automate the grunt work and focus on the actual connections themselves, let the chat bots do some of these pieces and then what you can do is you can focus on the actual connection with the candidate. You can be a brand ambassador. and a platform like this, as we talk about chat bots and we talk about texting platforms and all the messaging, if you can find areas to automate and allow your humans to actually be human to other humans and be a brand ambassador, this is the exact type of platform you need to look into at gocanvas.io. Joel Cheesman: What I got is they want our Death Match competition at TATech. I don't know what else better to say. They beat back some stiff competition, quality organization. And by the way, you want to recruit millennials? How about bitmoji recruiting with canvas? Put bitmojis in your messaging, attract millennials. What could be better? Gocanvas.io. Okay, getting back to the news. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: Facebook is in the news. TechCrunch reported that they're poaching folks from a site called Refdash. Wow. Speaking of bad names, Refdash is your typical sort of employment site connecting job seekers with employers, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, from from my standpoint, it sounds like the company's in the crapper. They're winding stuff down and Facebook is there, conveniently, to pick up some of the talent. That's not so much the news to me as the fact that Facebook continues to be serious about its sort of jobs. Offering and poaching these folks to work on the job solution tells me that they continue to be serious and will continue to be a player there up there with everybody else that we talked about. Chad Sowash: Yeah, so I think this was TechCrunch. "Facebook just snatched some talent to fuel its invasion of LinkedIn's turf." Personally, I think it's just TechCrunch manufacturing shit to talk about. I don't see anything here. I think it's just the normal kind of sway of the day and where people are coming from. Yeah, it might be because Refdash isn't doing great and they're all ejecting to go to Facebook. It could be that Facebook is actually doing something worth a shit and hopefully they'll be able to share it with us here sometime soon because I'm sure they are. But from my standpoint, yeah, I think it's just TechCrunch looking for clicks. Joel Cheesman: Are you saying TechCrunch and bloggers in general are embracing hyperbole to get clicks and readers? Chad Sowash: I would say yes. Joel Cheesman: Outrageous. Outrageous. Chad Sowash: Because we don't do that. Joel Cheesman: Outrageous. And what else is outrageous this week? Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: Oh God. Why? A new Tinder for jobs startup is out there. This one from your favorite country, France, home of the nonstop cavalcade of great startups in the job space, has launched an app called Blonk, B-L-O-N-K. Okay. So they've got nothing going for them at the moment. Tinder for jobs is crap. France is still France and Blonk is a horrible name unless you play football. Chad Sowash: Yeah. So I don't know if Blonk means something in French or not. Joel Cheesman: It's French for F America. That's what it is. Chad Sowash: It's French for this is a stupid fucking idea. So one of the co-founders actually said, this is hilarious, "We use AI to connect talent and hiring managers directly in a few swipes, just like Tinder. Personal chemistry is involved." This is the stupidest shit. Who comes up with this? And the big question is, who is actually providing funds for this shit? Joel Cheesman: Let me clarify this. So when you date, okay, you're single. You will put up with multiple folks because the chance to have sex is on the table. Employment is not that. Chad Sowash: No. Joel Cheesman: Remember like when Jobber first came out and you would swipe through jobs that were totally irrelevant aside from the fact that they were nearby. Right? Totally irrelevant, total waste of time. Now, I will swipe right and left and whatever if it's women who are single that want to go out on dates. Chad Sowash: You would. You wouldn't anymore. Joel Cheesman: I'm speaking in generalities. The whole argument of dating should be like finding a job is totally ridiculous, and I wish these companies would stop doing this, but they will continue because people will give money to them and around we go. Chad Sowash: And these companies obviously do no research whatsoever. They didn't see all the dead companies who said that they were going to be the Eharmony of jobs. Joel Cheesman: Right. Chad Sowash: This is the same shit, guys. This isn't different. I don't care if you swipe or you fill out a 20 minute frickin survey. It's the same stuff. The motivations are different. And "chemistry", it's not the same chemistry. That's for God damn sure. Joel Cheesman: For God damn sure. I'm so tired of tinder for jobs sites. And by the way, I shared this on LinkedIn. It's gotten like 7,000 views and interactions and shit. So clearly other people see this and why these companies don't. Do a little research. Right? Do a little intel on the market before you launch this stuff. Chad Sowash: Yeah, Vincent. Joel Cheesman: It's pronounced Vincent, by the way. And I know that because my wife is French Canadian and she has a brother named Vincent. Chad Sowash: Let's go over something real quick. I'm an American, so it's Vincent and it's a stupid fucking idea, Vincent. That being said, the outro today is going to be done by my daughter, who turns 17 today. Joel Cheesman: Woohoo. Chad Sowash: Ema. Joel Cheesman: Yes. Are you taking her to like Benihana and Cold Stone for her birthday? Chad Sowash: So I already have birthday donuts waiting after she finally wakes up, which will probably, we're on fall break so she'll probably get up like around two for God's sake. Then it's going to be a birthday weekend. That's what it's all about. Joel Cheesman: Nice. All this food talk, man, I'm going to go get lunch. I'm out and we out. Chad Sowash: We out. Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. 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 our sponsors because their money goes to my college fund. For more, visit chadcheese.com.

It's Disability Employment Awareness month which means it's time for The Chad & Cheese to pull out their secret weapon who knows her shit about hiring people with disabilities. Julie Sowash, Senior Consultant with Disability Solutions take the guys to school! Yes, that Sowash... Julie and the team at Disability Solutions have helped nearly 1,200 people with disabilities find jobs in great companies like Pepsi and Synchrony Financial. She breaks through the fluffy bullshit and helps us focus on the real deal - getting hiring outcomes. #ActionNotWords Plus, Julie tells us what really pisses her off when talking to D&I leaders who still don't get it... All in today's interview sponsored by Uncommon.co. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. Chad: This, the Chad and Cheese podcast, brought to in partnership with TA Tech. TA Tech, the association for talent acquisition solutions. Visit TATech.org Chad: Dude, I just got off the phone with Teg. Joel: Teg, Teg, oh yeah, over at Uncommon. Chad: Dude, do you know another Teg? Anyway, Uncommon just opened up their resume database of 100 million candidates to recruiters for free. Joel: Whoa, wait, what? Chad: Yeah, Uncommon's releasing their new database matching tech and beta before the end of the year, and they wanna show it off to recruiters for free. Joel: All right, let me get this straight. Recruiters can sign up for Uncommon's beta, post their jobs into the system, the system then matches only qualified candidates from Uncommon's database of 100 million candidates, and this is all for free? Chad: I know, dude. For two weeks, for free, but only during the month of October. Joel: Dude, Uncommon has some of the best matching tech in the industry. That'll be like cheating for recruiters. Chad: I know. Uncommon uses the qualifications in the job description to automatically source, screen, and deliver candidates that meet all requirements. It's pretty freaking dope. Joel: Did you just say dope? Chad: Here's how you register, go to Uncommon.co. Click on the Join Beta button. And for all you Chad and Cheese listeners, if you use the promo code chadcheese, you will get extended by a full week, that's three weeks in the Uncommon beta for three weeks, free. Joel: I'm sorry, did you really say dope? Chad: Dude, shut up. Tell your recruiter buddies, Uncommon.co, join beta, chadcheese, three weeks, it's dope. 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 Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: As if dealing with one Sowash wasn't enough, I've got two Sowashes in this podcast. Joel: Welcome everybody to an Uncommon exclusive for the month of October. Our special guest today is Julie Sowash. Yes, that kind of Sowash. Julie, welcome to the show. Julie: Thank you. Happy to be here, especially on an Uncommon exclusive. Chad: So happy. Joel: So what bet did Chad lose to get you on the show? Julie: Really? He asked me, it is an honor to have me on the show, c'mon Cheesman. Joel: Anyone who calls me Cheesman is good in my book. Joel: Julie, for those who don't know you and love you like we do, give us the elevator pitch and why the hell are you on the show. Julie: All right, well not just because I'm Chad's wife, as some may say, but I work for a non-for-profit consulting company called Disability Solutions. And we focus on helping companies build enterprise-wide hiring systems for people with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. So we work with big companies. Julie: We've helped over the past four and a half years, companies hire close to about 1,200 people with disabilities. So it's National Disability Employment Awareness month. And I appreciate you guys letting me spread the good word. Chad: And she's a badass. I mean that's just, you know, not that I'm bias. But yeah, no, she's total badass. Joel: Not bias at all. Chad: No. Joel: Of course. Joel: I did not know that it was National Awareness month, so that's news to me. And I am much less verse in this disability compliance stuff as your husband, but I've worked really hard to get a list of questions for you, in addition to Chad's thoughtful inquiries. Joel: I'm gonna start it off if that's okay. Chad: Yup, knock it out. Joel: What are companies biggest failure when it comes to hiring and recruiting disabled persons? Julie: Well first, I say disabled persons, they- Chad: Wow. Joel: Ouch, right out the gate. Julie: So just one point of education, I guess, to start off is that you don't put the disability first, you put the person first. And it's harder to say and a little bit of a pain-in-the-ass, I know. But we all feel better when you say people with disabilities or individuals with disabilities, other than focusing on what's "broken with us." Joel: Fair enough. Now we know the podcaster's biggest failure. What are companies biggest failures? Julie: So I think that they just have so much fear and stigma that still exists around hiring this population, really we're only thought of in two different ways. There's the compliance, right, so we do it because we have to or we say we're going to do it because we have to and the government is holding us accountable for that. Or they go the complete opposite direction, which is the charity mentality. That every person with a disability is broken, and they're unable to work in a successful position in your career, so we have to create charitable programs or create jobs for them to be able to have a human experience like the rest of us. Chad: Okay. So here's the thing, because we talk about this all the time. It's about all the warm and fuzzy bullshit that's out there. I mean I see it on the veteran's side all the time, where it's like, "Oh, we love veterans. Oh, we're veteran friendly." So instead of going down that road, 'cause I think it's total bullshit and people talk about it all the time. Even on the side of individuals with disabilities, I wanna hear, and I want Julie to be able to talk about fucking outcomes, hiring outcomes. Chad: So this is your stage, tell us about programs and what you guys have actually done to be able to help companies get actual hires and also retention. Julie: Yeah. And I think that's the important thing is that this is not just a PR activity. When companies are doing it, they need to go all-in and approach it as a talent acquisition strategy. We're at near full employment and there are jobs going unfilled and there's a talent pool that is just not being tapped into because people are scared of how to engage us. Julie: And so from an outcomes perspective, I'll start with my favorite, well my first and my favorite, you know, a long time ago, maybe four or four and a half years ago, Pepsi approached us and said, "Hey, you know what? We really wanna put our money where our mouth is, we wanna start hiring people with disabilities. Not just do philanthropic activities like donations and that type of thing to organizations." And so my organization said, "Sure, let's figure out how to help you do that." And in those four, four and a half years, Pepsi's hired almost 1,000 people with disabilities into just their beverages facilities. So that's a pretty huge number, and I don't see anyone else, maybe one company, that's touted that kind of number. Julie: And you'll notice that Pepsi doesn't talk about it as much publicly, because I think that they can be the brand leader. Because they've actually done it and they've approached it as a hiring initiative or a strategic initiative. Julie: But it's part and parcel to who they are as an organization. They hired in the African America community and marketed to it first. And this was just an extension of who they are as a company. But they also knew to make it sustainable, it had to have a return on investment, it had to have a business value. It couldn't based in feeling bad for people with disabilities or thinking that we can't do physical jobs or we cat do sales jobs. They said, "Find us talent, help us gt the messaging right," and in doing so, they've been successful and they have good ROI and they have great reach now into our community. And people feel comfortable saying, "I'm a person with a disability," when they apply, when they get hired at Pepsi. And that's what I'm talking about. Chad: Okay, so that's Pepsi. You guys also work with Synchrony, which is on the financial side of the house and it's an entirely different kind of organization to hire for, tell us about that. Julie: Yeah. So Synchrony is awesome in terms of like when you wanna work with a company who is like all-in on inclusion, they knew as a strategic initiative from their leaderships, so from their executives, you can see their CEO, Margaret Keane, doing a Bloomberg Talk on the value of hiring people with disabilities. They knew that they wanted to do this because they're inclusive by nature. Chad: Now wait a minute, wait, wait, wait. What does all-in mean to you? Julie: All-in means that they're willing to put resources, dollar, time, and brand to an initiative. You can't say I'm just gonna hire people with Autism in Mishawaka, Indiana and that's not all-in. It might be a nice pilot, but that's not all-in. Julie: When they said, "We need something that we can- Chad: That's probably a shitty pilot too, to be quite frank. Julie: You know, it was the first random place I thought of. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Julie: They really kind of went to that other side, they were thinking, "How can we make an impact in our community? We want to change the world for people with disabilities." And you love working with companies like that because their heart is in it. But my job as their consultant is to say, "That's awesome, but let's make it business driven too. Let's have goals and measures. Let's make sure that our systems are working to create opportunity so that when you have success and you hire people in Kettering, Ohio, you can grow that to other locations. Either at all at one or in kind of a systematic way. And that's what they've been able to do. From one sight and then grow into more sights, which makes sense. But their system also works with that. Chad: Gotcha. Joel: Julie, at the risk of sounding insensitive- Chad: Like that's ever stopped you before. Joel: It's never stooped me before because she's all-in. Joel: What disability is sort of the most challenged in finding employment and why? And how do we help clear that hurdle? Julie: I think that depends on who you ask. And I would say that my opinion is that people with serious mental illness, which is not a huge population in our country, about 10 million people have the biggest barriers to employment because that is where the most fear lies. Julie: I was actually reading an article last week that recruiters would rather hire a person with a physical disability, one that they can see, than someone who suffered from depression or anxiety, which are probably the two most common mental illnesses in this country. And aren't necessarily defined as serious mental illness, so if people like that can't get a job and recruiters are scared of hiring someone because they have depression or anxiety, what is it gonna be like for someone who has a serious mental illness like bipolar or schizophrenia? They're chances of getting employed is almost zero. Chad: Which is why people don't identify as actually having a disability, especially when it's hidden, right? Julie: And they don't even take the chance and they become dependent on government assistance and the social safety net because employers don't feel comfortable giving them even an opportunity. And some would disagree with me, but what I think is the biggest way to start to overcome those hurdles is to normalize disabilities like mine and physical disabilities into the workplace. So that when you think about even the LGBT movement over the past 40 years, you know we started accepting one acronym and then the next one and then the next one, and now we are accepting of so many more people in that community. And it's the same I think with disability. It's like once we get comfortable with, "Hey, depression is a normal part of life." We saw Jason Kander pull out of his mayoral race yesterday because he had to admit for the first time out loud that he has PTSD and he's suffering from major depression. We say it's okay to take care of you, and you have a value in the workplace. Then that's when we start to overcome some of those barriers and we start to really push people who have more significant disabilities to be able to have opportunities. But until we normalize even the most basic or well known disabilities, then the rest of the people have no chance. Chad: Okay. So let's flip that real quick. So I've actually seen organizations who focus on specific disabilities. So let's say, for instance, autism. Julie: Yes. Chad: I mean, so that's one of the things like with veterans. It's like, okay, we want to hire just this segment of veterans because we think they're perfect for our jobs, and that, to me, is a bunch of bullshit. So from your standpoint, is it the same? I mean, so let's say for instance like some of these autism types of ... Not that you shouldn't hire individuals with autism, but what do you think about just focusing narrowly on one disability for positions within your organization? Julie: So that's a tough question to answer. First, I have to put two different hats on when I think about it. The first one is my consultant hat, and the consultant in me says there are roughly a million and a half Americans with an autism diagnosis. 80% of those are under the age of 22. So if I'm thinking about quantity and quality of people that I need to fill my jobs, that's a pretty limited talent pool, and most of them are not even to working age yet. Chad: Right. Julie: There are roughly 45 million Americans, one in five, who have a mental illness. One in four Americans overall has a disability. So you're setting yourself up for some failure. Chad: So 25% of Americans have a disability. Julie: Yes. Yep. And I just got updated last month by the CDC. Chad: Okay. Julie: So when you're thinking about how to make impact, how to actually change the world because that's what these kind of programs are doing. They want to change the world for people with autism or with a certain disability. If they focus on the larger population, they could have so much more impact as a company, but they would also get a much better business return. And then from a branding perspective, it's pretty damn frustrating. Chad: So yeah, from your standpoint, I mean, because you're an individual with disability but you don't have autism. So if a company actually says, "Yeah, we're really just focusing on individuals with autism," what does that do to the really the line share of individuals who disabilities who literally could do that job? Julie: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about such a small percentage of the disability population that it's pretty insulting. As a person with a disability, it's pretty insulting and it's incredibly off putting to the rest of us who just want to go to work, who want to have opportunities. Chad: Right. Julie: It also very much reinforces stereotypes that we would like to break down. It says that people with autism are only good at maybe IT or finance jobs, that they can only work in these four or five positions within a company or that they need special programs where they have job coaches and etc., etc. The point is if you've met a person with a disability, you've met one person with a disability, and trying to shove a certain disability into a certain job classification, it reinforces very, very bad stereotypes within the working world, within employers that we have a limited number of jobs that we can do. But it also then from a consumer perspective and a job seeker perspective, I don't want to go work for those companies. I don't suffer from autism. Julie: I will say I'm glad when any company is hiring. If they hire five people and those five people get to work, I hope those people run with it and they grow into a career within that organization. But the money companies are spending to run these singular small programs could be reinvested into enterprise wide programs if you actually approached it as a hiring initiative that targeted the talent and not the disability. Joel: Julie, we hear a lot in the news about the gender pay gap, but we don't hear much about I guess a disability pay gap. Is there one? Can you talk about that a little bit? Julie: It's a little bit hard. There is certainly a pay gap. With people with the most significant disabilities, there's been a lot of change in our world over the past maybe five to six years about moving away from what's called sheltered workshops where people kind of do piece meal work. Chad: They get paid like pennies on the dollar, literally to do ... Julie: They make may 10-25 cents a day, and that certainly reinforces stereotypes, and those are people with the most significant disabilities, and they may not be able to go into a full time position. But really what we see is that that's a way that companies use to outsource labor to keep piece meal type of production very, very cheap, and then call it philanthropic work when it's, in my opinion, akin to servitude or unpaid work altogether. But overall, because the unemployment rate is still so high with people with disabilities, we don't really know what pay gap is, and because people are not comfortable standing up and saying, "Hey, I am a person with a disability," the analysis can't really be done yet. What I see most often in terms of where I know that it impacts pay is people with disabilities being steered into entry level jobs or being put into jobs because of their disability that are well below their skill set. Julie: I was actually just watching a video from a successful hiring program, and a young lady I believe had like two undergraduate degrees and all kinds of mad skills, but because she didn't interview well and because she came through a program specifically for people with disabilities, she got put into a call center job. I appreciate that she got the opportunity and I hope she gets the opportunity to gro, but that's not really utilizing her talent. And that's definitely going to create even if she continues to grow in the company, that's going to create a barrier for her in terms of pay because she's going to have started in a place lower than her peers without a disability. Chad: Are they incredibly well educated? I mean, again, there are stereotypes behind it. What's the reality behind it? Julie: Yeah. I mean, so autism specifically, about 35% of people with autism are graduating with a degree, an undergraduate degree, and 85% of them are still unemployed. Chad: Wow. So 85% of the ones who actually have a degree? Julie: Yes. Yes. But remember how small this population is, right? Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Julie: So when we get hyper focused on this group of people, we miss the fact that people are working and need opportunities every day who have mental illnesses, who have physical disabilities, who have educations, who have experience but can't get through that barrier of just getting started. Chad: Right. So you mentioned we are pretty much at full employment right now. Job markets doing great. But what's the unemployment rate of individuals with disabilities? Julie: So the unemployment rate is always about twice of what the overall unemployment rate is, but where it really kicks in is that because people with disabilities don't participate in the labor force as much, we have about a 70% unemployment rate. And part of that is because of social safety nets that the government has trained people with disabilities to be fearful of going back to work. But it's also because companies have not sought to engage in any meaningful way with this talent pool. Joel: Julie, in the news recently, we've seen Amazon raise the minimum wage for their employees to $15 per hour. We've also seen the gig economy kind of explode. Up Work went public this week. What do these two trends mean for those with disabilities, both the gig economy as well as the increases in minimum wage? Julie: So I think they're great opportunities. One thing that we do see is a focus on people with disabilities in entrepreneurship programs who are able to work remotely if they're working in kind of gig economy. I think some of the social challenges and networking challenges make that right now maybe not as advantages as it could be for kind of gig work. Raising the minimum wage, in my opinion, is good for every worker, but it's definitely going to impact people with disabilities who are in those entry level jobs because they're going to be able to get higher wages. They're going to be able to start to come off benefits and that kind of thing. They're going to be lifted out of a place of poverty because even people with disabilities who have educations, a vast majority live at or near the poverty line because they aren't able or they're not given the opportunity, let me say it that way, to get into meaningful employment based on their skills. Chad: So what they're actually ... They're being underemployed, but it seems like much like on the veterans side of the house, the underemployment, not to mention what I like to call charity work. Julie: Yeah, and that's the other thing is that these programs that are based on charity, as soon as the economy does what it does. It corrects. We take a downturn. Normal business cycle or worse, then these charitable based programs go away. And these companies have sold people with disabilities employed through these programs a bill of goods. We value you. You have a place here. That's all bullshit at that point because you're just overhead because it's seen as philanthropic endeavor, a charity endeavor, instead of an actual business strategy. And that just reinforces why people don't participate in the labor system, why people with disabilities ... Why employers are scared to hire people with disabilities because charity's been such a high focus of these like kind of PR activities around hiring. Chad: So how are your clients? How is Pepsi, how is Synchrony Financial, how are they viewing it and actually creating these business-focused types of programs versus charity? And what did you guys have to do with Disability Solutions to really kind of get them away from some of the thinking's that were out there, or did you have to? Were they already ... They were just ready to do it? Julie: I would say no company is ready to do it. They might have a great desire to do it, but they're not sure how. And that's part of the trepidation too is they don't know how to take that first step. Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Julie: With some companies, I would say with all of them, it's starting to understanding how their talent acquisition systems function because I don't feel like I've done a service to the company I'm working for or to my community if we have to create special programs every single time. People with disabilities should be able to live and apply and go through your talent acquisition systems like other people. There might be opportunities we can create within those systems, but they still need to be able to be a part of your system of record. That way not only is the program compliant and we can work on those self disclosure numbers, but it also becomes scalable and sustainable. So that's really the first, I think, thought process that companies go. We have to create an entirely different way for people to apply. We have to create all of these systems to support. And yes, people may need some support. But that's on an individual level, and if we can create inclusive hiring experiences through our vendors and systems that companies work with, then the people have a much higher chance of actually getting in front of that hiring manager. Chad: Okay, so Pepsi, because they're consumer good, right? I mean, from their standpoint and the numbers that you just stated, they're close to 1000 hires, around 1000 hires, that's well above any of the other companies that are coming out on the PR side of the house saying, "We love individuals with disabilities." That's a huge number so obviously we haven't heard anything from Pepsi on the PR side, so this is obviously something that they believe in. When are they gonna shift this into more of a focus of their whole culture so that it also helps them sell product. Really, if it is a part of their culture, that's what people want to gravitate toward and they want to be able to support companies who believe in people like them. So, I love that Pepsi's doing this and they're staying quiet about it, but dude. Turn around and start ... I mean, flip on the PR. Julie: Your guess is as good as mine and if I could convince someone in Pepsi marketing to say, "Hey, let's start talking about this all right now," I would have done it two years ago, but to their credit, they care about the community and they care about their brand and they want to make sure that they've demonstrated that they're doing it and they're not just talking about it and so you see some companies who have hired like three people and they're doing PR all around it and PR is good in terms of yes, people with disabilities can work here, but it doesn't really mean anything to me as a person with a disability because it's three people. I want to see a company actually go all in and hire across the country, across the world big numbers, and I think that is Pepsi's vision, or at least that's how I feel and I know how committed they are to it. Would I love them to talk about it? Hell, yes I would. Chad: How many locations have they actually hired individuals with disabilities into? Julie: So we've actively integrated their employer brand and program, which is called Pepsi ACT, it stands for achieving change together into nine US locations, some manufacturing and warehousing, some sales and call center type of jobs, and some technical kind of repair and refurbishment roles so a good variety of roles within that beverages system, but what we really have seen there that is even more impactful is that their self disclosure numbers are raising across the country because people are hearing. We're a small community and so while you haven't heard Pepsi out on their halftime show at the Super Bowl, hint hint, doing PR for this, they've been awarded state and national awards for their programs, state work force agencies are recognizing them. They got a visit in North Carolina from then Secretary of Labor Perez, because local community based providers said, "We know a company that's doing this right and we want to introduce you." Chad: So there's a lot of word of mouth that has traveled that's really helped this to grow in a brand way. Chad: So nine locations, but how many ... I mean, you've seen impact past those nine locations. Julie: Oh yeah. Like, probably 40% of the hires that are self disclosing are outside of those facilities. Chad: So that's happening really driving from a branding standpoint. Julie: Yes. Chad: Because there's a culture and they can see it and they believe it. Julie: Yes, and what I love about Pepsi ACT as a brand, they said up front, "This is something that we want to do. We've made sure that the language is right and what we really stayed away from when we were working on the branding was a charitable based message that achieving change together is the community benefiting and Pepsi benefiting from the talent." So it's a win, win strategy. It's not a charitable based strategy, it's not a compliance based strategy, and I think that's really meaningful and it's one of the ... and I'm biased, obviously ... it's one of the only employer brands for people with disabilities that really is all inclusive and not based on a charity model. Joel: My limited knowledge of this topic sort of ends at the borders of 'Murica. Julie, paint for me a global perspective of disability. What countries are crushing it? What countries are really way behind? Julie: I think some of the European countries are doing substantially better than we are because they have been focused on integration for longer. Other countries that are developing, like India, have a need. They actually have a need to go and hire people with disabilities because there are no social safety nets that help people survive when they're not working, and because they're growing so fast in terms of economy, they need to be able to get people to work. So from what I've seen, and I was able to visit India last year with one of our clients, and they were putting in training to teach managers sign language, they were hiring people from the deaf community, and each hiring manager had a hiring goal and a commitment to the activity because they needed bodies and they needed talent and they also have a commitment back into their community and what was cool about that experience that I think I loved the most was that they were doing it because they wanted to and because they needed to, not because the government was making them. No one said, "We're gonna take away your federal contract if you don't hire some people with disabilities." They already saw the value and the need in their community and in their business. Julie: That's where I think those countries who are developing and growing so much faster than we are in America right now, because we're aging as a population, I have a feeling that they may get ahead of the game in the next 15 years or so and actually start to make real impact because they want to. Chad: Last question. So what really pisses you off most when you're actually engaging with a company and you're talking to them about effective hiring of this amazingly big talent pool, which is well educated and so on and so forth? What pisses you off most that they're saying back to you, or at least the kind of ... the narrative that you're hearing? Joel: Let's get it on. Chad: There it is. Julie: Oh my. That's actually a pretty easy answer, a question to answer. It's in one word and it's called appetite. I have heard so many times from D&I leaders who I'm meeting at conferences who we're pitching services to, sometimes who have hired us and they've said, "You know, there's just not really an appetite for disability in our D&I programs. We're just gonna concentrate on race and gender because we have a commitment to diversity." Well, no you don't. Your old school, 1970s thinking of race and gender is absurd. Chad: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Time out, time out, time out. No, no, no. Time out. So they actually said specifically, "We're focused on diversity but we don't have an appetite to hire individuals with disabilities?" SFX: Boo. Chad: You've got to be shitting me. Julie: No. Chad: They are actually ... People in D&I. These aren't just hiring managers? Julie: No. Chad: I mean, hiring managers that ... we're talking about people who are responsible for diversity hiring programs? Julie: Yes. These are D&I leaders at fortune 1000 companies who will say to the disabled girl or the girl with a disability in the room, "Yeah, I just don't know that we have an appetite for hiring with disabilities. We're gonna focus on race and gender and I think that's gonna be good." That's their commitment. Some have said, "Well, it's a slippery slope. If we start including veterans and people with disabilities, where will that end?" I don't know, where you get an inclusive workforce. That would be awesome. Joel: Oh my god. Chad: Oh my god. Julie: And I can tell you there are brands that I no longer interact with and I would never disclose those publicly, but there are brands that I will not interact with because their D&I strategy is so ass-backwards that it's only focused on what the government required them to do in the original affirmative action executive order. The reality is I'm a woman with a disability, there are people of color with disabilities, there are veterans with disabilities, there are LGBTQ individuals with disabilities. We're a pretty inclusive group. We are all inclusive and when you hire us, you hire those other really important populations too and it's insulting and it's bullshit and it's just ... like a diversion. They might as well just kind of kick me out and throw me on the street, because they don't have any interest in what we're doing. Joel: Okay. Joel: I love that we now have to put an E on this podcast because Julie said bullshit. Julie: Yes. Ha ha. Chad: Way to go. Julie: Awesome. I'm so proud of me. Joel: So Julie, thanks for joining us. Thanks for your time. For those like me who are limited in this subject, where can I learn more about the subject? How can I learn more about your company? Julie: You can visit us at disabilitytalent.org and check out all our services and our outcomes. Chad: Twitter handles, I mean all this other stuff. Come on. Julie: Yeah. Twitter handles? Really? Apparently I'm a newbie. Joel: Sure. Julie: We have a Facebook page, disability solutions. Our Twitter handle is DSTalentAtWork, and my Twitter handle is juliesowash and I also have a Facebook and email and LinkedIn. Chad: LinkedIn, oh yeah. Julie: You can find me everywhere and I want to talk to you. Joel: Awesome. Thanks for your time again. Chad, if there are no more questions from you, I guess we out. Chad: We out. Julie: We out. Ema: Hi. I'm Ema. 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. New Speaker: Remember to visit tatech.org. #diversity #DisabilityHiring #DisabilitySolutions #Hiring #Jobs #Uncommon #TATech #BadAss

Welcome to the newly anointed ReSI WINNER for Most Innovative Podcast / Blog in the Talent Acquisition space - that's right The Chad & Cheese Podcast won! Thanks to all of those who voted! #chadcheese :) That being said, we're still licking a few wounds from a week in N'awlins, the boys started an IV of Pedialyte before sitting down to recap: - TAtech NOLA - DEATH MATCH - SourceCon and Joel's favorite takeaway -- KeywordShitter - Pandora purchasing SiriusXM "Content Baby Content" - and Slack killing email. Enjoy and visit our sponsors, Sovren and JobAdX. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. 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: Hey boys and girls, and all you saints out there, time to put away those hurricanes, throw out that bottle of absinthe. We're back from New Orleans, bitches. Welcome to the newly awarded winning podcast we lovingly call the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: This week we sum up our travels from last week including SourceCon and TAtech. Slack is literally killing email, and you'll never guess how Chad came home with more beads than me after a night on Bourbon Street. Jambalaya, étouffée and gumbo breath is coming at you after this quick word from Sovren. Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to- Joel: Wrong ad, sorry. Here we go. 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 job's 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. SOVREN: We provide technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates like a human. Sovren; software so human you'll wanna take it to dinner. Joel: I think you gotta keep that faux pas in the final edit. Oops. Whoopsie. Chad: Whoopsie. Joel: We gotta- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Keeping those bloopers in the show I think gives these idiots a real stupid appeal that our meathead listeners love. Chad: I don't think we need more of that. That being said, I wanna get these shoutouts real quick. John Bell, CEO of Rethink Data, gotta give him a shoutout for calling us, you and I, Chad and Cheese, the Kardashians of the industry. No talent, but a ton of attention. Yeah, that's funny, John. Fuck you. Joel: I'm sorry, I can't hear him, there's a ReSI award in my eye. Sorry, man. He's no relationship to Le'Veon Bell, is he? Chad: I don't think so. If so they would be shopping his ass around much like they are Le'Veon. Joel: That's a really specific shoutout for a really general week. I'm gonna give a shoutout obviously to Peter and Repete Weddle from the TAtech show. Again, another bang up, crushing it job by those guys, had a great time in New Orleans. These guys continue to do it right, and deserve a shoutout as my number one. Chad: Oh yeah, no question. Thanks to Elan from TMP, you referred a great restaurant, I appreciate that. Because one thing we don't talk about on this pod enough is food, and one of the best places to get food in this great nation is New Orleans. So thanks Elan, we really appreciate that, and my wife thanks you as well. Joel: I can't agree more, and for those out there that know my wife, she actually hates seafood. It's a burden on our marriage for sure, but when I go on the road without her, in New Orleans especially, I'm eating seafood. Ate out with you a few times, and I'm sure you noticed it definitely swam what went into my belly. Chad: Oh God, yeah. Also shoutout to Nexxt, Talroo, AllyO, Canvas, Talkpush, JobAdX, and Uncommon for making me their billboard all week. Wore their swag, whether I was traveling, I was on site, didn't matter. Repping all the people who are a part of either Chad and Cheese or even the Death Match. So big shoutout to all you guys. Joel: Shoutout to our sponsors is basically what you're saying. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And I will second that. Love our sponsors, we see them out frequently. They feed us, they give us alcohol, they give us inside scoop, it's always great to see them, so I will second that shoutout as well. Shoutout to the city of Atlanta and the SourceCon conference for me, I was there Monday and part of Tuesday of last week before I went to New Orleans. Joel: SourceCon, if you've never been, awesome show. It's the freaks and geeks capital of recruiting. The people who were just total wackos 10 years ago are now sort of running the whole recruiting department. Chad: That's crazy. Joel: In terms of sourcing folks. You know the names, Jim Shroud, Steve Levee, I could go on, but that's a great show, it continues to grow. Also a hint for ERE which is coming in October in Orlando, sounds like they've gotten a ... They've had more signups ... They haven't had as many signups on this show since 2008, so it's 10 years in the making that they finally matched the height of the show in 08, and if you remember ERE in 08 you knew it was a must-see show. So really happy for that team out there, and big shoutout to them. Chad: Pretty awesome, pretty awesome. So I'm gonna go back to the alcohol references. Not a member, not a sponsor, but they know how to get shoutouts. Michael Odell from Nuevo, or Nuevoo, or whatever, for the Jack Daniels whiskey that I found in my mailbox when I got back from New Orleans. Chad: Shoutout to Pia and Max from Talkpush who actually flew to New Orleans with mezcal for you and I, we have our own bottles. Joel: Yeah, I've never had mezcal, so if anyone has cocktail tips or, do you just drink this thing straight? On the rocks? I don't know, so send us your mezcal cocktail drinking advice to #chadcheese, or hit us up at chadcheese.com. I'm always impressed about how you're legally technically not allowed to send liquids through the mail, but our sponsors do it anyway. Chad: That being said, Kyle from Hireology is smart about that because he always buys us beer at the conference. Whenever we're getting ready to do a show, generally Kyle will show up with beer, so big ups to Kyle. Joel: And let's keep with the TAtech references for Death Match, which we'll take on here in a little bit, how great was Bloody Marys and Mimosas during and before the Death Match the morning of? I thought that was just total ups on that, total props, total shoutout on that call. Chad: It was perfect, it set the stage for what Death Match is supposed to be. Chilled out, a good time had by all, and all the contestants, Canvas, AllyO, Talkpush, and Uncommon did an amazing job on stage. And we're gonna put those out later this week. Joel: Totally agree. Next Death Match we should make downing cocktails before the presentations a mandatory thing, and make it 5% of your grade is gonna be how you handle the liquor before the show. But that was a great time. You took all my alcohol shoutouts, I might- Chad: You can do the JobAdX dinner shoutout. Joel: Okay, JobAdX, great sponsor, great product, great company, great people. Second event in a row they've taken us out to dinner, so they must think we're a pretty good company, for some reason. Chad: Dropping leads. Joel: Your wife joined us, so that definitely upped the stock in value, bringing us to the last dinner. Mitt, Tim, Isabelle, great peeps, shoutout to all you guys. Chad: And they were taking video during dinner, so I'd like to know what the hell they're gonna do with that video. Joel: I'm not convinced it wasn't black and white, I think it's gonna look like ... It's gonna look like a Sting video, it's gonna ... Yeah. Chad: I think we probably look better in black and white. Joel: Good luck with the mileage on that. Are we done with shoutouts? Chad: Yeah, let's do this, man. Joel: All right, let's do the show, man. Joel: All right, so TAtech, dude, start off with Death Match, start off with takeaways, what do you wanna- Chad: Let's talk about really quick what TAtech is, because all of our listeners maybe they haven't attended a TAtech yet, so what's your thought on ... How is TAtech different from all the other conferences that are actually out there, and why do we go in the first place? Joel: I love TAtech for a couple reasons, number one is its ability to evolve. It started as the IAEWS, which was the International Association of Employment Websites, which is a mouthful. But it was primarily a job board conference. A couple years back they changed it to TAtech, seeing the waves of change coming, that the job board industry was much bigger than just that. Joel: So I love the evolution of the show, it still is a big pull for job boards and job sites, but it's also progressively becoming an all-encompassing tech show for HR. So if you go to HRtech, those companies are there, the job gates with all the job board stuff, they're there as well. It brings both of those together, so that's one of my takeaways. Joel: Weddle is a lifelong recruitment icon, his value is immeasurable in terms of the industry, and he brings that to every show. It's always a party, which I think is great. Yeah, those are my takeaways from the show. I think if you are a vendor, even if you're looking to find out what the vendors are doing, what are the hottest companies, what are the old guard doing to stay relevant and alive, this is a great show to attend. Chad: Yeah, and to be able to separate it from an HRtech, there are no background screening companies on boarding, it is talent acquisition focused, and that's the cool part about it. It has evolved from just job boards to machine learning, AI, chatbots, all the things that we talk about on the podcast is happening in a more intimate setting, and the beautiful part about it is they have this deal center kind of setup, so that when you're in HRtech and you can't find a place to sit down and have a fucking conversation for God's sakes, these guys have actual breakout rooms ready so that you can sit down and you can have discussions, and actually talk about deals and technology and so on and so forth. Chad: So it's a much more intimate setting, it's more focused- Joel: Yeah, and by the way, think of the heavy hitters they get to attend and present. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, a lot of shows don't get those people to present and be there and network with folks. Bogomil, I think the only speaking engagement he's ever had, and he's left Google Hire, but the only one I can think of that he's really had was TAtech in Dublin. Chad: Yeah, I think one of the first ... He might have, but there's no question he definitely felt like he needed to be there. So yeah, if you haven't come to a TAtech definitely check it out. We enjoy it, we go to a ton of different conferences, but definitely it's one of the reasons why we wanted to partner with these guys to be able to get the word out about Chad and Cheese. Joel: Yep, they get it for sure. Chad: The venue was on Bourbon Street, which was frickin' awesome, we were right next to the Absinthe House. Joel: Absinthe House, yeah. Chad: That was prime location. We actually heard a presentation from Art Zeal, the CEO of Dice. Personally I thought it was really somewhat high level and focused on retention, which is more HCM than TAtech, so it was interesting why he would pick TAtech to talk about human capital management retention and that kind of stuff. What were your takeaways from his presentation? Joel: It was a total snoozer, dude. I was so mad I got up for it. It was just very vanilla, it wasn't anything about ... I wanna say the title was like Surviving in an Ever-changing World, or something, and I was expecting what Dice is doing to revive its brand and its business, its growth plans, advice for other job boards, yadayada. And we've seen that when we met with Monster, our stuff's kinda broken, here's what we're doing to fix it, and this is why we think it's a great thing, and I was hoping that Dice would give us something similar. Joel: But it was a total vanilla, just sleepfest, and I was kinda mad that we left. And then I was mad that we went up to Art and said, “Hey dude, let's do an interview,” and he sorta gave us the “Oh yeah, that sounds great, I'll be here all week”, and I never saw him again. I think he bounced right after he talked. Chad: Totally ducked out. Yeah, hopefully, don't hold our breath, but let's try and get this cat on the podcast, and then we can talk about real, real shit, not just this kind of overview of boringness. Joel: Yeah, Art, the guy before you sat down with us, it's time for you to step up. Get on the line, tell us what's up at Dice. Q&A with ChadCheese, let's do it. Chad: Let's do this, goddamn it. Also, thanks to Shane Gray for stepping in last minute. We all three actually had to step in because unfortunately, George Larocque had a medical issue that popped up and we totally hacked up his presentation. So appreciate that. Joel: Is George okay? I guess I didn't know it was a medical thing. I thought it was something else. Chad: Yeah, I think he's doing okay. I think he's going to make it. Joel: If you haven't heard our interview with George, go to archives and check that out. That was a great interview that we had with him. Chad: That's good stuff, good stuff. Joel: Do you have any takeaways from that session? Chad: Yeah, no question. I think the money's still pouring into the job board space, but there're reasons behind that. The big reasons are, there's a brand there. There are huge candidate databases. I mean, there's data that you can work off of. Not so much in these brands have revenue that are already flowing in relationships that they've already connected and have had, for in some cases, for decades. Chad: So yeah, why is money flowing into a dying platform? And some of the job boards got pissed off at us for saying that. But at the end of the day, there's the opportunity to evolve out of this old, classified online bullshit, and turn it into something new and different with the data you have available. So, I see some great opportunities for job boards to become something entirely different, either through VC or partnership, or whatever. And we talk about it all the time on the pod. Chad: That was something that really did surprise me, that, that much money, I don't want to say the lion share, but a very large portion of the dollars that we're seeing in VC are going to the job board industry itself. Joel: Yeah, I think one of my broad takeaways on the investment side is that it's becoming more global. We're seeing more money flow into French companies and German companies, Australian companies. All of those markets are very unique in terms of where the job board industry is, and how healthy is. Joel: So, one of the examples was, someone from Germany stood up and, "Things are good in the job board industry." ... Apparently in Germany, yes, life is very good for job boards. I don't, as you don't, have a real core competency in every single country outside of the U.S. and how their markets are, but certainly in certain places it's better than it is in the States. So we tend to come from it as sort of myopic in just North America. Joel: It's great to go to a conference and get multiple opinions on that. I think the money flowing into job boards primarily, is on a global scale, and people trying to gain market share. I mean, job boards in Africa for example, are super new. So there's a lot of opportunity there that is not in North America. Chad: Right, I think you take a look at some of these in the different organizations, like StepStone. So Wolfgang was from StepStone, he was talking about really, I mean, they built everything, everything from the ground up. They didn't partner to allow those Trojan horses to prospectively to happen within their actual system itself. So, as we talk about partnership to be able to grow quicker, to be able to be more sustainable, possibly. It was interesting to get his take on, we watched America, watched the U.S., and we watched all this partnership which was pretty much laden with the opportunity of a Trojan horse to pop up, like Indeed, and really take your market share. Chad: Where they, were pretty much, hey, we're going to build everything, and we're really not going to partner as much to be able to build core infrastructure. So that was an interesting way to insulate yourself from the rest of the market, to an extent. Until you can't move fast enough, that's the biggest issue. Joel: Yeah, I think one of the questions was, "What are companies doing to balance out or provide value to employers?" And my answer was, most of them are building technology. You know, Monster, with video, or mobile, or whatever it is, like, they're becoming technology companies. Joel: So, if you're listening in another country, if you want to get ahead of the curve, start thinking about new tech that you could be providing or building for your audience, and for your long-term health and sustainability. Chad: So what about those ReSIs, what do you think about those? Joel: The ReSIs are awesome. For those who don't know, recruiting, I don't know what it stands for, but it's an award ceremony. And it started out almost as a red carpet event with tuxedos and gowns and stuff. It has evolved into cargo shorts and flip flops. But, it's a great event, and I think it mirrors the audience and demographic pretty well. Joel: So a variety of awards. I think you did a shred of breaking down all the winners. So, if you want to know the winners, you've got to subscribe, check out the shred, either coming soon or it's already published by the time you listen to this. But most notably, you and I and our podcast, was the nominee for best blog/podcast. There were three other contestants, or nominees, and we won. And that was great. So thank you to our listeners, those who voted. We definitely begged enough, to get enough people to give us some love. But, I'm blown away. Joel: When we started this thing, I thought a few dozen people might listen. The fact that we've been able to touch so many lives is pretty awesome, without getting too cheesy. So it's always nice to get an award and be recognized for the work you've done, and the popular that you're enjoying. Chad: And thanks for all the love and sarcasm on the socials out there, people. Really appreciate it. It was great. I mean, it was great! It's funny, because you were talking about how it was black-tie, and it's the most like, you know what, this industry really isn't, it's more a flip-flops and cargo shorts, to an extent. So I think it was good that it's finding where it should be, this award. But man, it's a good looking award. I mean, I've slept with it every night that I've had it. It's been awesome. Joel: I will add that there's only one trophy between the two of us. So I'm not sure how we're going to juggle. Chad: You already have one. You already have one, you're fine. Joel: I like two, man, common on dude. Peter, if you're listening man, give me a price on my own ReSI award. Because I know Chad's never going to let me see the light of day. Chad: I'll send you pictures, it's okay. I'll let you hold it when you're in the house. Joel: I don't think I've even touched it. I think you grabbed that thing and held it like a baby, and probably did not let go from the time that you got the award. Chad: No, because it's got sharp edges, and I don't want you to hurt yourself. Joel: I appreciate that. Chad: So Death Match. Let's talk about Death Match. Joel: Death Match, it was, yeah, okay. So for those who don't know, right? We did our show in Vegas at the last TAtech. And it felt kind of flat. We don't know why. It's Vegas, people are hungover, lunch happened, there was kind of a Debbie Downer at lunch apparently. So we powwowed, and we said, how do we do something that's going to get people out of bed, get them excited, get them engaged, yadda-yadda. Joel: So we used our Firing Squad, or Shark Tank is kind of an example. And we got four startups in the space, four relatively different businesses, I think. And had them come on stage, 15 minutes, two-minute pitch, Q&A, and at the end, the judges got together and selected a winner. Chad: I think the biggest piece was, on Firing Squad, we in some cases, ripped the startup to shreds and nobody was going to want to do that on stage, right? So we were smart about it, at least we thought we were. We took it down to 15 minutes, so two-minute pitch, and 15 minute total, with Q&A, and then the next contestant came up. Chad: So four contestants, Canvas, AllyO, Talkpush, and Uncommon. Those guys did incredible. It was funny because Max from Talkpush had boxing gloves, and he had this Rocky Balboa apron that he had on. Yeah, he's from California for God's sake. He had this frickin straw cowboy hat. They were throwing out merch as they were going up. We were playing Saliva's Ladies and Gentleman before it started. Chad: The entire production in itself, was just to have fun, drink a Mimosa, drink a Blood Mary or come get some beer from us, that Kyle provided, and let's have a blast. That's really what it was. And this was 9:00 in the morning on the second day of a conference. Joel: In New Orleans. Chad: In New Orleans. And we filled the fucking ... We pretty much, I'd say, three-quarters of the people were there. Joel: And let's not forget Aman Brar from Canvas, serenading judges. And also, making it rain with Canvas stickers all through the show. That was awesome. Chad: Yeah, to be able to listen, we're going to actually put all the Death Match segments out there, 15-minute segments, we're going to put them out, two this week, and two next week. So look for those to drop. Chad: Canvas did end up winning. You'll have to wait to actually listen to all of the pitches and the Q&A, and all the fun stuff. But they all did an amazing job. To be quite frank, I mean, to sit back and to listen to you guys fight it out on who was going to win, was, I think that was just as entertaining. Joel: Yeah, and I think we missed a really important shout-out, a shout-out to our co-judges in Death Match. So we had Faith from College Recruiter, and we had Deb from, I guess now, Shaker, right? So it was great to have different perspectives. We had the agency perspective, the job board perspective, and of course, we chimed in as necessary. Joel: I thought it was a home run. We're definitely going to be doing it again in future shows. It was great. The feedback I got was fantastic, so big ups on Death Match. It was a great success, and good job Canvas, for winning the first one. Chad: Yep. And great job to all the contestants. I'd say probably the next time, we'll be doing this in Lisbon, Portugal. Chad: But just to round out for TAtech, this was an incredibly well put together show. So again, Peter, and Pete, just the logistics of all these moving parts, and assholes like us, to make sure that we have our shit together, that was amazing. Everything, it just, was incredibly smooth. Joel: All right, let's take a quick break and come back and talk SourceCon, Sirius, Pandora, and Slack. Sound good? Chad: Yep. JobAdX: How many times has someone said to you, "We're the Uber of," or, "It's the Paypal of," maybe "We're the Facebook of," in many, many cases. These comparisons fall short of being close to reality, or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. JobAdX: In the case of JobAdX, our example is so accurate, so spot on, that it's synonymous with our work. JobAdX is Google AdSense for jobs. That means, we're an efficient, persistent, and smart ad unit for job related advertising. As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs and staffing firms, realtime, dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings, through the industry's first truly responsive tool. JobAdX: All this is done with the flexibility of JobAdX's cost per impression, click, or application. We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. We are not set in regrets. For direct clients, JobAdX delivers superior candidates with the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. We also provide publishes in job boards, higher rev share than other partners, through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30 to 40 percent greater, and more, through our scalable model. JobAdX: To partner with us, you can visit, or search, JobAdX.com, or email us at, JoinUs@JobAdX.com to get estimates, or begin working together. JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for your needs. JobAdX: Oh, and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK too. Joel: All right, so quick word on SourceCon. You weren't there, I was. I wasn't there for very long, because I had TAtech, but I was there for about a day and a half. Saw the opening sessions, the main keynotes from day one and two. Joel: These are my four takeaways from the conference. Are you ready? Chad: Bring it. Joel: Feel free to chime in. Okay, number one, in-mail suck, apparently. As well as does email. There was an overarching opinion that LinkedIn's in-mail was very ineffective, which I think is a great segue in learning that Canvas won our Death Match. TextRecruit, we talk about a lot. Emissary, you know, texting is clearly how more and more companies and recruiters are connecting with candidates and job seekers. So, that was an underlying theme of the time that I was there. Joel: The second thing that was interesting to me is, VR, or virtual reality, might actually become a thing. Chad: Oh geezus. Joel: Stay with me here for a second. Intuit, there were two bigwigs at Intuit that presented. And, Intuit, most people don't know as a brand. They know some of their brands like there's tax. There are brands that people know, so when they recruit, it's hard for them to like, "People don't know us. We're in the valley. People want to work at brand names that they know." Joel: So anyway, they aggressively are using virtual reality at events, college recruiting, job fairs, et cetera, to showcase the company. People put on a headset, get their phone, whatever, and tour the company through VR. So I thought that was interesting you don't hear a lot about that. I'm not saying it's the next big thing, but if more and more companies use VR to brand themselves and create an experience, that could be interesting. Oculus by Facebook, you know now is a standalone, less expensive product. We'll see how that does at Christmas time. Maybe it'll catch on, I don't know. But so, VR was a highlight from this presentation and I found that interesting. Joel: SEO- Chad: What? Joel: SEO. Not as, like, optimizing jobs but optimizing ... taking tools in SEO to build a recruiting strategy was a very interesting piece of one of the keynotes. So what they'll do is, let's say, I don't know, PHP developer or something, right? Chad: Right. Joel: So they'll use tools like keyword tools, sites that will search ... sourcing tools that will search LinkedIn and other products or other platforms like that, but so, like, what other things are people searching around PHP developer to find those people? And those might be sites that aren't easily found by other keywords. I just found that kind of interesting, that SEO is sort of permeating the recruiting business in that way. Chad: So research tools, really? I mean, they're looking for- Joel: Research tools, yeah. Chad: ... SEO research tools, okay. Joel: Yeah, so like keyword tools were big. I'll just ... one that was definitely stood out, it was called KeywordShitter. So you put in a keyword and then it shits out related keyword terms. So that was memorable, and kudos to the people who made that site because it is memorable. keywordshitter.com if you're interested in that. Joel: The last takeaway from SourceCon was, business is good. Similar to my takeaway from HR Tech, the good times are rolling, man. Money's being spent, companies need people, they're willing to spend money- Chad: Right. Joel: ... and just as that was very evident at HR Tech, it was very evident at SourceCon. A lot of people there. I think they said it was, like, 750-ish registered attendees, which was great. So business is good, and that was one of my definite takeaways from SourceCon in Atlanta. Chad: So it's funny, you talk about VR, and there's this GEICO commercial that's out there now, where this kid has this VR headset on he's doing all this shit, and his Dad's back and he's talking to Flo, he's like, "What's happened to my kid?" Joel: Yes, I have seen that. Yes, and the drones come in. It's a total technology dump on the kid, right, on the family. Chad: If I went to a job fair, I wouldn't want to put on some headset that some other slimy, greasy-headed bastard had put on, to be able to take a walk-through of your corporate offices. I mean, to me it just seems so stupid. If you want to talk about branding, you want to talk about these different things, let's do that, okay, but this just seems ... It seems very Second Life and stupid. Joel: Fair enough. But if you sit down with these two from Into It, they're going to tell you that it was very successful, so yeah. Chad: I'd like to know what their measurement of success is and how that actually got them more individuals to become hired, and was success actually equates to outcomes. Joel: Yeah, I think it was brand awareness, net promoter score for the ... I don't know how to explain that, exactly, but basically a marketing score between, like, negative 100 and plus 100. I think they were able to take their net promoter score from negative 30 to plus 60, I think, and they gave credit to VR as part of the way that they were able to do that. Chad: And how sustainable is that? Let's go to every fucking job fair that's out there and let's see how many times we can get a head into these things. I mean, it just, to me, scalability ... none of this seems ... It seems like just a little blip in the, "Oh, look, cool," Second Life bullshit radar. I just ... so what? Joel: VR definitely has to hit it big for this to matter. Like, super big. Like, in every house there has to be a headset that people are using to do whatever, for this to really be a thing. If it continues to just be like, "Oh, I went to this event, and I put a headset on, and I saw this company that was kind of cool," that's very forgettable. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But if it becomes a thing, then it's a different ballgame, but we're way away from VR becoming, like, every household is using virtual reality to do stuff. Chad: Yeah, agreed. Joel: Not going to happen. SiriusXM ... Chad: Yes. Joel: Is it just Sirius or SiriusXM now? Chad: SiriusXM. Joel: Because it used to be XM and they merged. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Okay. So SiriusXM is now rumored to acquire Pandora. Chad: Yeah. Joel: This is one that you're hot on. Chad: Hell, yeah. I mean, so SiriusXM has an app right now and it sucks, so this provides a much broader platform of content which can become a part of the SiriusXM content ecosystem. I mean, if you think about it, so the number one podcast serial, which is now being sponsored by Zip, it's exclusively on Pandora, or that's one of the things that they're actually pushing out there. Content is huge. We've always talked about how content is king. That's something we've talked about for over a decade. This is a new look at content and content delivery systems, and XM being in the car and having an app where they've tried to get you outside of the car to continue to utilize their services, and I think they've really failed. So therefore, being able to pull Pandora in, who has a very large free and paid listener base, to start to try to incorporate their content with Pandora's content and really create this ecosystem of cool shit to listen to, and obviously start to drive revenues from it. Joel: I think that Pandora is a little-known, particularly with recruiter advertising, medium, that's really effective and cost-effective as well. I can remember a few stories about companies that were using Pandora to ... Let's talk about job fairs again. They were pushing events through Pandora, which is ... Pandora, in terms of targeting, it's almost just like Facebook and social media. You know what people listen to, you know their basic information, their age, you know what kind of music they're listening to for targeting, you know where they are because most Pandora listeners are on a mobile phone. If you haven't looked at Pandora as an advertising option, you really should, whether it's recruiting or not. So do you think that you'll need one account for both Sirius and Pandora? Do you think Pandora will infiltrate cars that are using Sirius? Any guesses on what this thing will look like? Chad: Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, because Sirius right now, they promote that they have all these channels that don't have advertising, right, because it's paid for by the subscriber. Same thing that Pandora does. I mean, that's the exact same model from a music standpoint, right. But being able to deliver different types of content, which SiriusXM has started to do, but not even close to the amount that Pandora has, so I would assume what they would be looking at is really a SiriusXM-Pandora kind of a platform, where you pay that monthly fee, like you do on Sirius, and you get all of the content. So it really explodes the amount of content that you can listen to, either in your car or on your mobile phone, wherever you're at, and that's the beautiful part. Joel: And by the way, this only helps strengthen the podcast ecosystem. So if you're thinking about a podcast or you are podcasting ... and I don't know of many employers that are having a recruitment podcast or, like, life fit company podcast. I think they will come eventually, so this is definitely a move to strengthen, I think, just audio and how you connect with people in that fashion. Chad: Well, and again, for us, it just makes a hell of a lot of sense because this ... again, this just demonstrates that podcasting and audio is exploding, and if you can transcribe that kind of information, it can also be indexed by the Googles of the world, so I mean, you can really win in all different areas because it's more portable. Joel: And by the way, ZipRecruiter, we're still waiting for that sponsorship from you guys. All right, let's talk Slack. Joel: Slack. Joel: They've acquired Astro, the dog from The Jetsons. Astro is an email service. I don't know much about it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: What's interesting here, like, Slack is literally killing email. They're literally, like, figuratively ending it because companies are using Slack more. Many companies use Slack more than email, but now they're literally acquiring email companies and then shutting them down, which is what they did here, but there's a little more to it than that. Chad: Yeah, I don't see them shutting this down. I think them actually ... Here's my kind of long term vision for this, is that Slack will start to gray what email is versus messaging and texting, overall, and there's going to be a platform, which is Slack, in which you can do this in a very simple manner. So you can pipe all your emails, all your messaging, all your texting, everything into Slack. It all boils down to one thing, it's all communication. So why do I have to go to my email for this type of communication, my phone for texting, or messaging, or Facebook, or whatever it is? Why can't I have a single platform pull all of my messaging, my communication, together ... I think. This is just ... looking at Astro and what it's doing, that's what I think Slack is trying to go toward. Joel: Yeah, there was a writer ... The Verge covered this and the author, I think, summed it up for me pretty nicely. He said, quote, "The fact that Slack is shutting down Astro's app makes it pretty clear where this acquisition is going. It seems less like Slack plans to launch an email app of its own and more like Slack plans to include ways to work with your email inside of its chat app. That could include basic email management, but the real key would be features that let you collaborate on email, so using that chat thread instead of a reply all chain for internal messages or directing a customer support message to the correct Slack channel to be answered right there," end quote. Chad: Yeah, well, think of this too, just from a messaging standpoint, and also being able to really rip all that data and content into Slack. If companies aren't integrated with Salesforce, and all of their emails going into Salesforce in a database and logging all of that, this is perfect for Slack to be able to start taking over there. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative), or scare the hell out of organizations like Microsoft. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Bom-bom-bom. Chad: Yes, and last but not least, last but not least, here's the message to all the companies providing apps into Slack. You're in a test-bed, that's really where you're at, so if your app gains enough traction, there's a good opportunity that you could become acquired, especially if you're aligned with Slack's roadmap. Joel: Amen. We out? Chad: We out. Joel: Happy birthday to my daughter, Stella, who celebrated number nine this past weekend, and in her honor, outro by Stella. Chad: Stella! Stella: Hi, this is Stella Cheeseman. Thanks for listening to the Cheese and Chad podcast, or at least that's what I call it. Anyway, make you sure you subscribe on iTunes, that silly Android phone thingy, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to give buckets of money to our sponsors, otherwise I may be forced to take that coal mining job I saw on monster.com. We out. #Slack #Astro #SiriusXM #Pandora #SourceCon #Canvas #AllyO #TalkPush #Uncommon #StepStone #TAtech

Chad and Cheese land after HR Tech in Vegas drop this crazy podcast - like it's hot - and now off to New Orleans for TA Tech and Startup Death Match. That's right, the boys are covering the industry as only they can - hard and fast. This weeks Topics - CareerBuilder launches Pokemon for Jobs - ZipRecruiter just sponsored the world's most popular podcast - Is that Google in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? - Facebook staves off the ACLU - Rigzone sells - well kinda - It's DHI in for a hostile takeover? How do those owrk anyway? It's on baby! Be sure to visit sponsors Sovren and JobAdX. They complete us. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your bridge to the disability community, delivering custom solutions in outreach, recruiting, talent management and compliance. 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 another midnight oil episode, and I'm not talking about the Ozzie band from the '80s. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's Most Dangerous. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Vontae Davis and I quit. Joel: Dude, we haven't even gotten to halftime, what are you talking about? On this week's episode, Career Builder thinks you'll finally fall in love with augmented reality. Chad: Oh, God. Joel: Facebook gets sued for recruitment advertising practices, and is that Google in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me? Poor a cold glass of Zima. Someone could get in trouble tonight. JobAdX: How many times has someone said to you, "We're the Uber of, or it's the PayPal of? Maybe they're the Facebook of?" In many, many cases, these comparisons fall short of being close to reality, or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. In the case of JobAdX, our example is so accurate, so spot on, that it's synonymous with our work. JobAdX is Google AdSense for jobs. That means we're an efficient, persistent, and smarter ad unit for job related advertising. As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, IPOs, and staffing firms real time dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. JobAdX: All this is done with the flexibility of JobAdX's cost per impression, click, or application. We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. We're not set in regret. For direct clients, JobAdX delivers superior candidates with the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. We also provide publishers and job boards higher rev share than other partners, through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30 to 40% greater and more through our scalable model. To partner with us, you can visit or search jobadx.com or email us at joinus@jobadx.com to get estimates or to begin working together. JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Oh, and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK, too. Chad: I think I'm gonna actually put like the sovereign banjo in the back of that and see how it sounds. Joel: I think the voice over for Job, we may have the sexiest most sultry, voice over ads in the podcast universe by far. And anymore Zimas and I might, you know. Chad: Don't even ... Joel: Well, I'm not gonna ask you because you don't know. Anyone out there, if they still sell Zima, hit us up on Twitter, #ChadCheese because I don't know if they do or not. I may have made a joke that totally just aged myself, and fell on deaf ears for like anyone under 40 or something. Chad: I think you aged yourself when you said, Twitters. Like with an S. Joel: I didn't say Twitters. Chad: You totally did. Joel: Hey. It's late at night and I've had a couple whiskeys, but I'm pretty sure I did not say Twitters a la George Bush and the internets. So people apparently love these late night shows, so we're gonna roll with it. We're gonna see how this goes. Chad: Excellent. Joel: Yeah, let's get the shout out, so who you got? Chad: New big fan. That's what he calls himself. Stephen Porter over at FTD gets a shout out. Thanks for the listening, Stephen. Now, all you have to do is get your peers, your clients, and your family listening to Chad and Cheese. Go. Joel: I like it, I like it. Shout out to Doug Johnson of Jobalign, CEO. Just some nice comments via LinkedIn. He's a fan. Thought I would just give him a shout out. Chad: Good man. Tim Oliver Proehm, over at Kelly OCG in Germany. He tweeted this. You're not gonna believe it. He tweeted his personal highlight from the first day of HR tech was meeting me, talking programmatic bots, and TA cool shit. I paraphrased that last part. We sat down, had coffee. Gerry Crispin showed up, joined the conversation. We talked about Burning Man for about 20 minutes because he just got back. And that's my friend, how you do coffee. So, thanks, Tim. Really appreciate it buddy. Joel: So, meeting you was his highlight. Chad: Yeah, like everybody's. Joel: All right, shout out to Brett Morris, CEO at Perception Performance Intelligence. Thank God I'm not a sales person at his company. And an Aussie, so he may be getting this early morning tomorrow, or tonight. Big fan of the show. We appreciate you listening, Brett. Keep up the listenership. Chad: Shawna Williams from Comcast, thanks for listening. Joel: And that's not for your cable connection, right? Chad: No, it is for my connection, because I've got a kick ass connection. Infinity. Or Xfinity, whatever the fuck they call it. Nancy from Philly. Thanks for the QA QC, Nancy. Apparently I forgot the E on spelling judge.com website on this week's shred, and I got flamed by Nancy. So thanks, Nancy. Joel: We're gonna have to keep our sponsors to like five words. Five letters or less so that Chad can spell everything. Love Judge. Peter Weddle shout out. Most of the kids out there will know Peter for the TA Tech conference, but Peter's quite a writer and sent both of us an advance copy or a copy of Circa 2118, if man is still alive, what will we be doing when the robots take over? So I, doing a lot of traveling next week, will make my greatest effort to read, Circa 2118 and probably slash my wrists because I'll be so depressed about what's gonna happen to humanity, but shout out to Peter Weddle for the book. Chad: I think what Peter did, was he actually just took the transcriptions from our show and he put it in the book. That's fine, it's okay, Peter. Joel: Are you calling Peter a plagiarizer? Chad: I don't think it can be a plagiarist if we didn't actually write it, it's just a transcription. Joel: Well anyway, Peter. Chad: Props, props to Dave Phoebus from Farmer's Insurance. He heard us talking about Canvas on the pod, and guess who showed up in his office this week with swag? Joel: Canvas. We are Farmer's, bump da bump, da bump, bump, bump. Chad: Bill Fanning for the 24 beers he sent me in the mail, because he loves me and he wanted to say thank you. Bill, you are the man. Joel: We need to start a score card of alcoholic gifts from fans and listeners. You got the lead, so anyone out there who wants to send me any kind of booze whatsoever, please feel free to do so. I'm trying to build up my Irish whiskey collection, so feel free to hook me up with something. Chad: Well, between Bill and Brendan over at Emissary, my beer fridge is stocked. So, if you wanna send craft beer, I'm your guy. That's all there is to it. Not to mention bourbon. So, one of those two. Anything else, Scotch whiskey, you can send it to Jughead over there. Joel: How many did he send you, like a case? Chad: Twenty-four, man. Joel: Oh my God. Chad: Yeah, legit. Legit. Joel: That's some bullshit right there. All right, shout out to, this is a good one I think. Ed Illig, I hope I'm ... maybe I don't hope that I'm saying that correctly. So, there's a company out here in my back, back door, back yard, called Emplify. They just got seven and a half million dollars. Ed is their marketing person, and I've made multiple attempts to contact the company. Like, "Hey, come on, interview you. Learn more about the company," you know. And I've got nothing. I mean, they're literally in the same little bitty borough here in Indianapolis as me. So, Ed, shout out I guess, but really more of sort of a ... You're just not doing your job man. Chad: Does he not know who you are? Joel: Well, and you too, man. Come on. You'd make the trek up for Emplify, wouldn't you? Chad: Yeah, he'd have to spend money on dinner though. Here's the big shout out. Shout out to my wife, Julie Sowash. Tomorrow is our anniversary. Going to Louisville to see St. Paul and The Broken Bones. If you haven't listened to those guys, look them up on YouTube or whatever. Kick ass music. Looking forward to that. Joel: And yeah, I wanna drug test on her, because you're clearly giving her something to hallucinate into thinking that she's married to George Clooney or something. Because I can't figure out why she married you in the first place and why she's still married to you. But, Julie, hats off to you. I'm kind of his second wife in this whole podcast thing. I can only imagine what a full time marriage is like to Chad Sowash. Chad: It's wonderful. Joel: Shout out from me to SourceCon, taking place next week. I'll be making a brief appearance, but I know a lot of our listeners will be going to the fabled sourcing event. All the freaks and geeks out there in sourcing will be there. Hopefully not crying in their beers at the fact that automation will be putting them all out of business in the next five to ten years, but come out to SourceCon, I'll be there. Chad: They should all pick up Peter Weddle's book, Circa 2118. Joel: Yeah, Peter, if you're listening, FedEx me a box of books so I can take them to SourceCon. Chad: Ooh, okay. Are we gonna do this show or what? Joel: Well let's do a quick Death Match shout out. Next week, TA Tech, if you're not there, FU. Death Match, ALLYO, Canvas, Uncommon, and Talk, push it real good, are taking the stage with Chad, myself, Faith Rothberg, surprise guests, who knows. We're gonna be having a helluva time out there at New Orleans. Shout out to everyone that's going. It should be a great time, and we'll probably do a little bit of live recording, some interviews. There should be some great content coming out of the show. And that is my final shout out. Joel: CareerBuilder. Chad: Ooh, talk to me. Joel: Okay. So Career Builder hoping to one up Monster's release of Monster Studios, dropped augmented reality as part of their newly fangled mobile application, only for us iOS users, sorry Chad. Chad: That's okay. Joel: But if you don't know AR, basically you turn your app on, you turn the camera on, on the app. You point it down Main Street and it bubbles up and shows you jobs that are in the buildings from whence you are pointing your camera. And if that doesn't sell you on it, I don't know what will. Chad: Yeah. It's Pokemon for jobs. Joel: If it would only be that fun. Chad: Gotta catch them all. Catch all those fucking jobs, guys. Yeah so, I'm not sure that Career Builder, we talked about the booth, and now we're talking about this AR Pokemon for jobs thing. I'm not sure if they understand the practicality of anything that they're doing right now. They've got some really good product, and they're not spending time focusing on showcasing that. This to me, once again, I hope is going to change in the next few months, because I would love to be able to see this new CEO rip this thing around and actually do better than what they've been doing for the last five to who knows how many years. Joel: So, you're hoping that this new CEO with the financial background is going to tech up the company basically? Chad: I don't have high hopes, dude. I do not, but again, I'm cheering for them, although they also know that when they do stupid shit like Pokemon for jobs, we're gonna say it. This is dumb. Joel: So let me read you the headline from the official press release of this product. Joel: "Career Builder Creates a Major Industry Disruption with AI Technology That Delivers Next Generation Mobile Job Search and Hiring". Joel: Do you think they're building it up a little too much with the PR? Here's my take on this, if apps like Yelp, Hotel Tonight, Groupon, real things that probably might work with augmented reality that people might actually point their camera down a street and see what restaurants are there, how do they rate, if none of them are embracing augmented reality, do I really think that people are gonna open up their phone and point it down the street and look at job postings at buildings nearby? I really do not. Chad: I'm just waiting for them to come out with their new second life job fair app or some shit like that. Joel: They need to have filters, like Career Builder filters. Someone is gonna get mobile right with job search, but it's not gonna be Career Builder probably, and it's definitely not gonna be augmented reality by Career Builder. Chad: Yeah, and last week when you were teasing us and I told you sarcastically that I was sitting on the edge of my seat, this is why, because I knew it was gonna be bullshit. Joel: All right, moving on to a real company called Facebook. They're getting sued. We did talk about this a while back, people were pissed about the companies targeting on Facebook by, oh I don't know, age ... Chad: Yeah, gender. Joel: ... gender, location. There's all these cool ways to target on Facebook. Well some people aren't real happy about that, including the ACLU, who decided to sue the company, reported by Pro Publica. Facebook let Uber and 14 other firms advertise jobs exclusively to one gender over the other last year. Joel: Let's see what else we got. They also say that recruitment ads for nurses at a healthcare facility in Idaho, a diversity hotbed I might add, were marketed exclusively to women. Chad: Wow! Joel: Facebook says it does not tolerate discrimination. The ACLU has filed an official complaint against them over this issue. I know you're really pretty fired up over this. Chad: These guys are fucking stupid. First off, Pro Publica puts out this article and it's titled, "Facebook is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men". And they talk about Uber and how Uber's been targeting men and so on, and so forth. I love the "letting". It's that they're allowing them to do this, like Chevy is allowing someone to get into an accident. Joel: We were allowing you to promote your erectile dysfunction drug to men only. Chad: Yeah, exactly. Think of this, over the years rock and roll radio, male dominated demo, but if I do ads on that, employment ads, wait a minute, I'm discriminating. Bullshit! Joel: Separate the article from the actual lawsuit, I understand the spinning of the article sucks. Chad: The lawsuit's bullshit too. It's the same thing. Joel: I totally agree. To me it's like ACLU trying to get some pub. I understand hiring and discrimination is different than, "I want to sell erectile dysfunction drugs ... ", and I'm not sure why I'm on erectile dysfunction drugs, it has nothing to do with me personally, but that's on the company. Joel: So my question is, who made the decision that Uber and these 14 other firms to advertise the way that they did? Was it the company's marketing department? Was it the recruitment ad agency? Was it the HR department? Who do you think was the decision maker in where these ads were posted? Chad: Who cares? Because it doesn't fucking matter. You know what matters? The composition of the workforce is what matters. And if they are heavy in the male side of the house they will get slammed with fines. We're talking and focusing on the wrong shit here, that's the problem. We look at the workforce and we see that there are issues and then we start looking at areas that aren't the big problem. Chad: If the company's responsibility is to be able to make sure that they have the right mix in composition diversity, all that stuff, period. It's the company's responsibility, not the advertising medium. Chad: At the end of the day, who cares? Outcomes are all that matters. Joel: So do you think that Uber .. . And we're just pointing them out because they were named in the article ... Do you think Uber has a responsibility to, if they're advertising to men between 25 and whatever, 22 and 35 or whatever, do they have the responsibility to also target other genders? Chad: Think of it from an advertising aspect. I'm kind of backing out in to my media background. First off, they might have done Facebook for who knows how long, and they've actually shown that they're wasting their money in broader scale on the female demographic on Facebook where they might be able to spend their money somewhere else in more female dominated demo mediums and actually spend money there. It's all about where are you getting the best ROI. Chad: If I want to go broad and say, "I'm gonna throw this out to everyone", like a dumb ass, then yeah, okay ACLU, that's what we'll do, we'll just waste our damn money. But if you're focused on actual ROI and in marketing and you know what target audience responds best with what the specific medium then that's what you do. That's what a media mix is. Chad: For the ACLU and/or Pro Publica to actually come out and say this stupid shit, it's ridiculous. Joel: So let's say 20 years ago a brand new company only marketed in the Wall Street Journal, do they have responsibility to market in demographics that aren't in the Wall Street Journal? Chad: Again, the only thing that matters is the outcomes of those efforts, number one. And their workforce composition, done. I don't care if you do everything in male dominated fashion, you had better have a workforce in [crosstalk 00:19:35]. Joel: Wait a minute, so you're saying the proof is in the workers? Chad: The outcomes. Joel: The outcomes, so who are you employing? Chad: Yes. Joel: So you don't care about where you advertise? Chad: No. Joel: Where you spent your money as long as the end product is effective then that's what counts? Chad: That's what matters. Joel: And by the way, don't we have laws on the books to support that? Chad: Yes. And we have all these different acronym agencies that enforce it. So we're talking about stupid shit is what we're doing. The only thing that matters is the action of hiring, and who was hired. That's it. Joel: All right. I feel like I didn't know as much about this topic as I do now, and I want to thank you for that. Chad: Well you're welcome. Joel: Let's go onto Rig Zone. Sorry I haven't rang the bell in a while, I felt like doing that. Joel: This is your deal. Rig Zone, Sold, and DHI is getting stressed about takeovers and shit. Chad: Right. So we're gonna have to talk to Art next week because we're gonna be in NOLA. Joel: DHI's CEO. Chad: Yep. Dice and the other job force transferred a majority ownership of its Rig Zone business to Rig Zone's management team. What they did was, the management team was there and they were like, "You know what, you want to get rid of this, you said you were going to divest anyway, just sell it to us. We`ll take it back, we'll take it off your hands and then you can go ahead and do your tech focused shit." And that's pretty much what happened. So they just sold it back to Rig Zone's management team. Joel: I feel like I need to refresh people's memory about the idiot who sold Rig Zone in the first place. Chad: Yes. Joel: And stole all the data and then tried to sell it back to DHI or Rig Zone and then started his [crosstalk 00:21:24]. Yeah, he's in jail now anyway. That's just such a damn funny story, I had to bring it back up. Joel: And so what's going on with DHI shareholders? Chad: Yeah at the end of this it was interesting because it says, I'm gonna go ahead and read this off. "Hedge fund TSC Capital Management last month offered to buy DHI group for $2.50 per share in cash and said it would force a proxy contest against the existing board at DHI's 2019's annual meeting of shareholders if the company does not engage in the transaction. This sounds about as hostile as you can fucking get. Joel: Yeah, I'm not real versed on hostile takeovers, I feel like it's a shout out to the '80s movies of Wall Street and a few others. Chad: [crosstalk 00:22:13] hand in the air and say, "You better sell this shit to me", or if this could potentially be a hostile takeover. Joel: We did a story a few months ago I guess, it might have been the same firm that came in and said that the company was undervalued, it was worth a lot more than what it was, the stocks spiked, it has since come back to earth, so yeah, to me this is like an opportunity to maybe take over the whole company to its stocks. There are stocks that the company has, at this point I'm not real sure what they want with the company at this point. It's all kind of mad to me. Dice wasn't even at HR Tech as far as I remember. Chad: I didn't think they were. It's like if you would think that they would be anywhere, they would be at HR Tech. Or maybe they just want to separate themselves so much from the industry, they don't even want its money anymore. Joel: Yeah. We need to talk to Art and get down with what's going on. Hopefully there is this same kind of openness and transparency that we found with Monster's new CEO. Joel: Man, I'm tired. These late night shows are doing me in. Let's hear from Sovereign, maybe that sultry voiceover will wake me up and we'll talk Google and some Zip Recruiter. How does that sound? Chad: Good. Sovren: Sovren is known for providing the world's best and most accurate parson 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 score by fit to job. And just as importantly, the job's fit to the candidate. Sovren: 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 you technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human you'll want to take it to dinner. Joel: All right, I have a score update. We're starting the second quarter, Jets seven, Browns, zero. Chad: Holy shit. Sam Darnold right there, I'm telling you. Joel: It was a running touchdown by former Brown, Isaiah Cromwell, by the way. Wow. Chad: All right. Joel: Let's talk some Google. Chad: Yes. Joel: It says, "Hire by Google" on the website. So I'm gonna do "Hire by Google" from now on. It was Google Hire, then it was Hire for Google, or whatever. So now it's Hire by Google. Joel: So Hire is launching an android app. So this is where all you Android users like Chad get to rub it in our faces, the iOS user. Joel: Though if you are a Hire user, Google has available in beta for development. I guess they haven't officially launched, but you could have Hire in your pocket. So anything you do with Hire now you obviously have to be a client to use it. But you can have that access in your pocket for Android users. I will say that what was interesting to me in this, two things I guess. One is, there aren't many ATSs that have native applications. Workable, Breezy HR, Smart Recruiters were a few of them that I saw in writing a story. So there's a real gap there and at this point Hire's actually an early adopter in terms of native applications. Joel: And my second point is I think as recruiters get younger and younger, these mobile native experiences are what they want. And I think it simply strengthens Googles presence and grip on the lifestyle business and it also says that we're continually serious about this whole employment thing. Chad: Yes. So first off, we talk about the whole app piece. So that means all the Apple users get the CareerBuilder augmented reality Pokemon for jobs app and Android users get the Google Hire App. I think we win that one. It's not my ... don't make the Apple users cry. Joel: Had to do it. Chad: So yeah. All I have to say is I remember when I said, and I got a call pretty quickly after I said this on a podcast, that it felt like hire was a 20% project. Remember? Joel: Ooh. Chad: And that wasn't ... that was really to challenge everybody over at Hire to really step their game up, and I'm gonna tell you, I don't think it had to do with us, but they have. It's not a 20% time project at all, bitches. This thing is rolling and this is one of the things that I believe, because if you think about it, from a commuting standpoint if you're on the train, or whatever you're doing and you're working, you don't want to have to pull out your laptop all the time, you just want to be able to pull out your phone and start scheduling interviews and those types of things. You can do that now with Google's ATS, with Google Hire. So all those applicant tracking systems that are out there who have old and weak-ass apps, this is a call to you. And all of you applicant tracking systems that have no app, get your shit together. Joel: Including, from what I saw, iCIMS, so we're gonna go visit them soon. We're gonna have to bring up this whole ... you know. Chad: They have an app. At least they do in the Google store, the Google Play store. Yeah, the Google Play store. Joel: Do they? I didn't ... you know. They could have it. My research was fairly light, as it always is. Chad: Like your beer. Joel: So if they do, I apologize. If they don't, yeah, we'll get to the bottom of it. Chad: Okay. The next Google piece of news was Google Insights, Work Insights and it's pretty cool. It's Google analytics for work or it could be Google analytics for your lack of work. It's kinda like ... Joel: Why are you looking at me when you say that? Chad: Big Brother. I didn't have to look at you. Big Brother with these new analytics tools, because it actually shows how you're using the G Suite of products, if you're collaborating, if you're using them, I mean, all these different things. I see that it definitely would show workforce efficiencies, productivity, those types of things, and help better understand who is and who's not, but one thing that I was thinking about is that now Google, or Hire by Google, is part of G Suite. Joel: Yes. Chad: So recruiters, you better get your shit together. Joel: I mean to me, if you're a young person getting in the business, you've been using Google for how long? This is such a natural, organic sort of extension of your life. Google is just in such a great position right now in this sector and they're doing all the right things from what I can tell. Chad: No question. They're starting to plug and consume all these different APIs coming from Cloud. Again, in the workforce space, it's gonna turn more into a business space, which is exactly what we need. Joel: Yeah. Good job, Google. For the win. ZipRecruiter? Chad: ZipRecruiter. Dropping paper, bitches. Joel: This is funny. So we already know ZipRecruiter is everywhere. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You can't turn on a TV, you can't listen to a podcast or a radio show and not hear or see something from ZipRecruiter. This is even one notch up for them. Announced this week, if you're a podcast listener or even if you're not, you probably know about a podcast called Serial, and not what you eat in the morning but like murder and stuff. Chad: Yeah. Joel: One of the most popular pod ... the most popular podcast in the world, like 175 million downloads since it started a couple years ago. Chad: Crazy. Joel: In season three. ZipRecruiter is the presenting sponsor so they're on the site, they're at the beginning. Basically the whole show is just a ZipRecruiter show outside of the murder and stuff. They are launching ... they're launching like little stories about employers and how they use ZipRecruiter, like little mini stories with each episode. Probably dropped a lot of coin to do this. It's also a testament to the impact of podcasting, I guess. Good for them. But yeah, if you're sick of hearing ZipRecruiter, sorry, you're gonna have to deal with them a little bit longer. Chad: Well, I mean, I listen to ... I have about 40 podcasts that I'm subscribed to and some of my favorites, like Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History, Pod Save America, that entire series, and they get crazy amounts of downloads, they all ... all of them had ZipRecruiter one in some form or fashion in the ads. I guess what I have to say to the recruiting industry is do we need to send up a flare or what? I mean, seriously. This is ... You can hear all sorts of ads on podcasts so for ZipRecruiter to be just about the only ... I really don't know that I've heard any others on podcasts, it's like what the hell guys? I mean, other than our podcast, obviously, but we are specific. I mean zoned in laser into our industry, but man, this is the new wave. Do your research, take a look at how podcasts are exploding. I mean this is fricking crazy. What are you guys thinking? Joel: So full disclosure, right. We have had conversations, or at least a conversation, with ZipRecruiter in regards to sponsoring our show. Chad: Yes. Joel: Now, they declined and that's perfectly fine. Our numbers don't really compete with some of the shows that they are spending money on. It was a little bit out of their wheelhouse with a non-consumer type program, but yeah, we'd love to see ... again, ZipRecruiter was not at HR Tech, correct? Chad: Yeah, yeah. They were walking. They were walking, much like Google was there and they were walking. Yeah. Joel: So ZipRecruiter has this great brand and they're doing great things, but they've been a little hesitant to embrace the recruiting community and I, like you, I think I'd really like to see more of some of that. But if not, screw it, they are counting their money and it's all good. Yeah, it would be nice to see a little bit more engagement from those guys. Chad: Right now- Joel: And the recruiting community. Chad: Right now and it's evident because of, again, you talk about consumer. They're trying to hit job-seekers. They're looking for critical mass. They're just trying to get their name out there and to be quite frank, we keep talking about Indeed and Google and worried about Google, but ZipRecruiter is on that other flank and they're attacking too and I really believe that ZipRecruiter is in a much better position long-term than Indeed is right now. What do you think? Joel: I don't know. I don't think either of them are in super great positions. I still think they're in a bad position with the big three, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Google. I think they'll be an acquisition target or they're gonna go public at some point. We've mildly talked about Facebook coming in and gobbling them up, which could happen, who knows? But in terms of which one would I rather be, I'd probably rather be Indeed just for the fact that they have a global presence, more so than ZipRecruiter, but who am I? Chad: I just think they're a huge threat to that base. They're obviously killing it on the SMB side of the house and where are they gonna grow? Where's the next level that they grow? They grow on the enterprise side. Joel: I will give them this. They have probably done the best job of growing that business through traditional advertising, whereas Indeed did it through SEO, let's be honest. ZipRecruiter has done a fantastic job of being anywhere and everywhere all the time and it's worked for them, because the small business that doesn't read blogs and doesn't listen to podcasts like ours, they want to tune in and see, oh, here's where I post my job and if they get results, they keep doing it. Chad: And here's the thing, ZipRecruiter's experience is just this, you post a job and ZipRecruiter's programmatic piece along with the algorithm brings back qualified candidates, or semi-qualified candidates. This leads into the next story. It's pretty interesting. This deep learning site is masquerading as a career website so using ... I believe they're using TensorFlow Google deep learning to be able to focus on delivering more qualified candidates. Not a shit-ton of candidates because recruiters don't need a shit-ton of candidates. They need the right candidates. I think that's really where ZipRecruiter, they are spending tens of millions of dollars and we also saw the growth of their location in Israel, right, in Tel Aviv. Joel: Yep. Chad: That is machine learning and AI and R&D. Boom, that's it. Joel: Well, they're doing a lot of the right things and we'll see how this shakes out in the next couple years. You're obviously really bullish on them. I am too, maybe less so. But dammit, good job for ... I'm just jealous of Serial for getting ZipRecruiter money. Chad: I dig it. I totally dig it. Again, it validates podcasts. I mean, not that we don't already because we're sold out sponsorships, but it really validates the medium and it's just good shit, man. Joel: Good shit. Do you want to talk about Domino's and tattoos or do you want to close it out? Chad: I had no clue about this, but I think we'll go ahead and ride this wave. Joel: Oh, let's talk about this. Let's talk about this. Okay, so Domino's in Russia. Chad: Oh shit. Joel: Where everything normal happens, they offered 100 free pizzas a year for 100 years to anyone who would get a tattoo of the Domino's pizza logo on their body. Chad: Anywhere? Joel: The rules and regulations aren't in the story, but I'm assuming generally visibly anywhere. I guess the bottom of your foot didn't count. Joel: So the Russians, as Russians do went nuts about this and so many people began getting tattoos that Domino's had to call off the promotion. Chad: Dude. Joel: About 350 people have qualified for free pizzas until the end of their life basically and they've all social media'd this shit. It's hilarious. There's actually some pretty interesting artwork with integrating the Domino logo, but yeah, they are done giving away free pizzas and I just thought that was funny. Chad: Dude. If they did that in the United States I know for a fact every military personnel that's out there would go out and they would get ... because there are some of the best tattoo artists right outside military installations, they would go get those and they would just totally shut down the Domino's system. Joel: I'm not even gonna bring up or start with the Millennials. Chad: They won't get tattoos, there's pain. Joel: Bullshit, have you seen ... Anyway. We out. Chad: We out. Stella: Hi, this is Stella Cheesman. Thanks for listening to the Cheese and Chad podcast, or at least that's what I call it. Anyway, make sure you subscribe on iTunes, that silly Android phone thingy or wherever you listen to podcasts and be sure to give buckets of money to our sponsors, otherwise I may be forced to take that coal mining job I saw on Monster.com. We out. Joel: Jets 14, Browns 0. #DHI #RigZone #Dice #Facebook #Diversity #Careerbuilder #AR #ZipRecruiter #SerialPodcast

Chad & Cheese run down last week's HR Technology Conference in Vegas, nothing but raw post-game analysis. What sucked and what ROCKED! NOTE: Remember kids, Vegas hangovers suck but that's the kind of shit we do for YOU! TOPICS: - Pitchfest - Start-up Pavillion - Worst & Best booths - HR Tech booth dichotomy - Monster v Careerbuilder compare and contrast - Where was LinkedIn, Facebook & Google? - 7 security guards vs. 1 Ward Christman? Enjoy, and visit our sponsors: Sovren and JobAdX. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps businesses find qualified candidates with disabilities for their job postings. 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 the Rehab is For Quitters episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's Most Dangerous. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm still drunk. Joel: Nice. On this week's show, we're wrapping up the good, the bad, and the ugly from HR Tech in Vegas last week. We're talking big takeaways, hot companies and trends, and our favorite, whisky and cigars. Chad: Wahoo! Joel: Someone pass the Pedialyte. Sovern: 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 job's fit to the candidate. Make faster, and better placements. Find out more about our suite of products 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 wanna take it to dinner. Chad: Yes, or give it a shot of bourbon. Joel: That's right, that's right. Sovren is not messing around. They're on the warpath. Chad: Yes. Joel: I saw at least four different bottles, I think, of whisky that they were passing out the shots at the show. Anything goes in Vegas. Chad: Oh yeah. And so, we were actually pulled over to take shots of Maker's Mark. And that, it was during, was it before? I think it was before the pub crawl. Joel: Yeah, so pub crawl for those who weren't there, and a lot of our listeners were not, they did a pretty creative thing. Instead of having a bar set-up, you went to different booths with alcohol and it was, from what I remember, a pretty good time. Chad: Yeah. And they had them spread out all the way through the conference so you could hit this booth for beer, this booth for some fruity drink or some shit like that. It was really cool. I'm telling you right now, every conference should have something like this. It was wonderful. Joel: I don't even think Sovren was on the official pub crawl list. They just took it upon themselves to pass out liquor to people. Chad: Renegades. I love these guys. Joel: Renegades. Chad: Fucking renegade. Joel: And they're really mad about the whole AI thing. We're gonna do something with them. Chad: Yeah? Joel: They're calling it, I think, Black AI like Blackhat AI and Whitehat AI or something and how most AI is BS so we're gonna get to the bottom of Sovren's opinion on AI. Chad: Well, yeah. What I think should happen is we should go down to Austin, where they're at, you have a ten gallon white hat, because you have such a big fucking head, and I have black hat, and we just do our thing. Joel: Yeah, and my head is bigger 'cause it has hair on it, by the way. Chad: There's a little bit of that, yeah. Joel: Should we get to the rest of the shout-outs? I think we have maybe a few after the show. Chad: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, for first, first off though, big props, thanks so much guys, Uncommon, Emissary for carting our asses along with them through HR Tech. Wouldn't have been there because HR Tech said "Screw you guys, you're not getting media passes." Joel: Yeah, big thanks to those guys. And our sponsors, who were front and center - Chad: Yup. Joel: Of the show. Chad: Amazing. Joel: They were everywhere. Chad: Yup. Joel: And certainly, sponsoring our show got 'em to that point, obviously. It had nothing to do with the talent, or the technology, at these companies. I'm talking, JobAdX, who customized tee-shirts for both of us, by the way, I'll add. Sovren, who we touched on, whisky shots. Talroo was there as usual, really good presence from our sponsors and shout-out to them. Chad: Yup, Uncommon was there and not to mention, JobAdX actually spent more money to be able to get the tee-shirt size that you needed. So I thought that was pretty awesome of them. Joel: It is an extra 'cause when the guns are out dude, ya gotta have a little extra fabric on that sucker. And you got such groupies over at Uncommon, apparently. That's fun to say. Chad: Well, it's pretty cool that, so Emily Wares, I came up to the booth, just to check out, have some conversations with Teg, and it was awesome. Emily was there and they're like "Hey, this is Chad," and she's like "Oh, I know Chad" and she wanted a selfie and I just thought that was really cool that she was geeking out over meeting me. Joel: Yeah, I can't explain that one at all. I don't - Chad: I don't, either. But thanks Emily. And then also Megan, over at gr8 People, who was frickin' awesome. She tagged us on the tweet and we went over and had another picture with her so that was really cool. So, yeah, no, thanks to gr8 People, Megan, and all the peeps over there. Joel: Shout-out to Doug Berg and his team at ZAPinfo. Not a sponsor yet, hopefully one day. But he was on the Firing Squad and according to his team, his presence on Firing Squad resulted in a breaking of the dam, in terms of business and money coming in. Chad: Oh, come on. Joel: So, hat's off and shout-out to ZAPinfo. Chad: Well, that's sweet. Well that being said, Vervoe, our first Firing Squad, we went out and had drinks with Omer. And so yeah, another, not a sponsor but we got all these different companies who've been engaged or have actually worked with, collaborated with Chad and Cheese Podcast. It was fun to meet all those guys. Joel: We touch so many lives. So much love on this show, it's hard to take. Chad: It's a bad touch. It's a bad touch. Joel: And thanks for feeding us, Monster and HiringSolved. I crashed the Monster dinner, you got an official invite which is crap. Shout-out to those guys for keeping us fueled with dinners, we really appreciate that. Chad: Yup. Joel: Very nice. Shout-out to more of our fans, Danielle at Beamery comes to mind. Chad: Yes! Joel: But just a number of people that mention the show, recognized us, whatever, was really cool. The fact that this show touches some people is awesome and we appreciate the love we got at the show, for sure. Chad: And we had a beer with Ed from Philly. Joel: Yeah. Who, as he highlighted, doesn't need help finding friends. Chad: He does not need help. Joel: He's doing just fine on his own, yeah. Ed that was awesome, that was awesome. Philly. They're playing the Colts next week, by the way. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They're in Philly, I think. So anyway, that just popped in my head. It has no relevance to the show, but, yeah. Chad: Philly looks like shit right now, my god. Can you buy a fucking kicker in the NFL today? Joel: Dude, don't even get me started. Carson Wentz is back next week, though, so that'll be interesting. Chad: Thank god. Thank god. So last shout-out, unless you got more but I want to start into another bigger discussion, Ward Christman and Larry Cummings for inviting us to the HR Tech Collaboration Zone. So the big conversation around this is, it seems like HR Tech, they carry a sledgehammer with them and anybody who comes near the conference, they just whack-a-mole, man. Ward was escorted out of the Venetian. He was in the Starbucks, which was outside of actual conference itself, by seven security guards. What the fuck is that all about? Joel: I don't know. There are pictures - for those who don't know, so Ward runs an organization association kind of thing, and HR Tech, the organization has not been very congenial to them. They've not been real welcoming to us as well, although you and I are not been getting escorted out of Starbucks. Chad: Yet. Joel: Yet. Yeah, Dorcey's maybe, which is one of the bars there. Anyway, that was crazy. If you wanna go to like, Twitter, if you follow Ward, Facebook, even LinkedIn, he's got pictures of the cops. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, who knew that HR was such a cut throat, beat 'em over the head business. Chad: It's not, that' the fucking problem. I mean, this is a people business. It's a software business, not to mention, I mean, HR Tech is really like a shark, right, when it comes to conferences. And Ward and some of these other smaller ones are kinda like pilot fish, you know what I mean? And they're there and it's not that they're bad. I mean you can go through life very nicely being one of those pilot fish, right? But HR Tech, I mean, it's like, yeah you can't do anything. It doesn't matter if we're doing it or not, we don't wanna collaborate and we're gonna hit you with a sledgehammer and seven security guards. That was ridiculous. Joel: Yeah, history's not real kind to organizations that do those kinds of things, so, I for one are rooting for a little bit more balance in the conference sector. Rooting for the ERE's of the world, the TA Techs of the world, the Unleashes of the world, to balance this thing out 'cause maybe HR Tech has a little too much power at the moment. Chad: Well and balance, we talk about balance. It was really weird because it's been a while since I've been to an HR Tech. It seemed like there were no practitioners there. I mean, in comparison, it was like there were really no practitioners there compared to the amount of vendors that were there. And I kept asking the vendors, you know, is there really a conference where you guys connect with practitioners at all, and they're like, "Oh yeah, no." This is about partnerships, or nothing because really, the practitioners are very few and far between. Joel: Yeah, which is another reason why, you know, keeping the press out is stupid because these vendors want coverage, they want to talk to people that write stuff, they want to talk to the social butterflies of the industry, and you know, keeping them out just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But yeah, I agree there weren't a ton of practitioners and there were, they weren't very vocal or visible. Chad: It was pretty nasty. It was pretty nasty. Joel: Whomp-wah. Can we get to the show? Chad: Sure. Joel: Alright. First thing's first. I don't know. What do you wanna talk about? Chad: Well let's go with, let's start with Pitch Fest. So, I mean, Pitch Fest was interesting and the production was really cool. The stage, and you know, it was funny 'cause Tim Sackett was like the first MC. He does a great job but it's hilarious. Tim is like the face of SHRM right now. And, come one, ya know. Love the guy to death, but come on. You gotta - Joel: That's the bow tie. The bow tie had me. Chad: You gotta find a much better looking face to be the face of SHRM, guys. Joel: Ouch. Chad: Love him. Give him a big hug. But yeah, he's not the best looking guy in the world. Joel: Dude, he's our Indeed jail informant. It's all good. Chad: But we still love - Joel: Tim's all good in our book. Chad: We love him. Joel: We love him, for sure. Chad: So, Pitch Fest. Five minutes, okay. And they had so many of these start ups doing Pitch Fest. I mean, five minutes, first off to me is ridiculous, 'cause you've got three, I think it was three minutes, to pitch and then you only had two minutes for Q&A. So, that's not enough time really to evaluate anything. I mean seriously, especially HR technology. So, yeah, I thought it was like they just had too much and it was almost like how many start ups can we get into this? And then let's try to crunch the time as much as we possibly can. It just, from a value standpoint, somebody who is listening, I think ten minutes, minimum, should have been where they started. Joel: Yeah, I think the 15 minutes our death match contestants will get is much more viable then the minimal time they got there. However, there's something to be said for elevator pitches, right? I certainly didn't see all the pitches, I don't think you did either, but what were some of the start ups that stuck out in your mind. Chad: Yeah, that's a good question. So, Jane.AI, I went through one of their demo's and I thought that was something that really stuck out. You know, a lot of the other ones were really our sponsors because I want to find out more about what they were doing, so you know obviously JobAdX and Uncommon. I didn't - Joel: Uncommon were great. Chad: Yeah, I mean they're launching some shit here in the new, ya know, few weeks, or month or so that I think is gonna be pretty amazing. But yeah, there were so many chat bots. To be able to have conversations around just that in itself was a full day's damn work. Joel: I'll add, I'll second the ones that you mentioned, as well as I'll throw in Disco. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: What was interesting, and this would be a major take away from me is that I think we're sorta seeing an app 2.0 resurge, so most listeners will know about obviously iPhone/android apps, Facebook apps, essentially building stuff on other people's platform. To me the next wave of innovation is sorta being built on Slack. Slack, as many people know, the messaging service for businesses, both Disco and Jane.ai are built on Slack, and they've grown through that platform. We talked to Monster, which I guess we'll talk about the next break, but they're also dabbling in the app ecosystem. I'll save that for after the break. It's very evident that that platform is gonna be a hotbed for new companies going forward, and I think we're just seeing that now at this year's Pitchfest with Disco and Jane.ai. Chad: Yeah. I think Slack...that was how there business has been built. It's like look, we don't want to build all these apps. We might acquire them, who knows right? But to be able to build them doesn't make any sense, so just leave the power to the people, give them the APIs, give them the tools and let them go and build. The thing is though, from risk standpoint... we talked about this a long time ago with Gary over at Tweet My Job before it was bought by Career Arc...that when you base your business off of somebody else's platform, when they change rules, you could be screwed. You could be done with your entire business model if they change what they're doing. And we also saw that on the SEO side with a lot of aggregators. So yes, it's incredibly cool and if a system like a Slack continues to work in that current business model, that is perfect. But if they're actually acquired and that changes, again, there's just risk. There's risk in any business but that's a big risk. Joel: Huge risk. Yeah. Some listeners will remember a company called Branch Out which basically built its whole business on Facebook's platform, and when Facebook changed the rules, the company went into the proverbial shitter. I assume BeKnown by Monster they're dabbling on Facebook had a similar ending. LinkedIn has changed their API over the years. Facebook continues to change it. Yeah, you're basically a sharecropper. It's a sharecropper situation. When it's someone else's land that you're farming, don't be surprised if they kick you off or change the rules on you. Slack, to their credit, probably will change the rules, so move forward with caution when you move to platforms. Joel: But I think for the immediate future, Slack has a real advantage if they open things up and grow the business, and hopefully don't change things too much for folks. I do actually think that Slack's API gives the company the power to shut off specifically certain apps. So IBM, if they use Slack, they can individually turn off an app from being on their own platform, but you still remain on Slack So they may do stuff a little bit differently from like a Facebook because they are so specific to this space, but yeah, move forward with caution. Joel: What were some other takeaways from the show that you got? Chad: Well first off from what you just said, you could turn from sharecropper into a sharecrapper. Joel: I think you pulled that one at the show and I booed it as well. Chad: No I did it at dinner and everybody loved it except for you. So I actually went around from booth to booth on one of the mornings I was there early... I think it was the last morning I was there early... and I wanted to take some time to look through and see how these companies were actually spending their money. So I'd like to talk about some of the really cool booths and then some of the bad booths and why they were bad. You wanna do that? Joel: Sure. Chad: So, not to pimp our sponsors out, but I do believe that Talroo had a really good booth. It was a big footprint. I mean it was expensive, don't get me wrong. They had leather couches, you could chill and you could charge your phone you could just kinda chill with your buddies. You could do work, but you could charge your phone in their little consoles, and that was really open, inviting... and that's the kind of experience I would want somebody to have with my brand. What do you think? Joel: Yeah, Talroo was great. I think, for those who didn't go, the front of the expo hall was where the big players are, that's where Career Builder drops their load. That's where the startups sorta want to get noticed and make an impact. And then as you go back into the expo hall you get to the 20x10's, the 10x10 booths, the kiosk island with startups that had just a little kiosk to show people. What stood out to me on the booth, two things stood out to me in the expo hall. Number one is apparently chat bots are for real. Apparently the whole automation messaging thing is gonna really be a thing because the two that stood out to me were Mya and Olivia/Paradox. Paradox in particular looked like the monolith from 2001. It was like this big thing coming out of the ground with no windows, there was like one entrance to the thing. But when you went into it, there was stations to work and salespeople, so that stood out to me. And Mya was a very similar big presence at the show. Joel: I tend to like the underdog. My second takeaway was go to the back of these things, go to the nooks and crannies and the corners that don't get the high traffic. The back of the bus so to speak is where the fighting is going on, the passion. The actual founder is at the booth, the CEO is there...they're finding the ground war, the guerrilla war that the other companies aren't. So I got a kick out of going back to see Good Time who's also Firing Squad alumni. Textio was back there, some companies I've never heard of and probably never will hear from again, Happy or Not, the company where you slap a smiley face or a frowning face in regards to how you feel. To me those are the companies that are interesting just because they're fighting that good fight and the people that usually started the businesses are the ones that are actually in the booths. Chad: It's funny because Olivia had kinda the monolith set up, but it was really like the antithesis of Talroo's set up. Talroo was like it felt inviting, come on, engage with our brand, where Olivia was more like stay the fuck out unless we invite you in. That's how it felt, right? And not to say that they didn't have... cause they had an army of people that were actually there who were nice and sweet, but still it's all about that brand and building that brand, and that is what some of the actual booths felt like. It was walled off... I understand there's kinda like this secrecy, what's in there kind of a thing, but yeah that's not what I got from it. It just wasn't warm and inviting at all. It was really cold and stay the fuck out. Joel: Okay I guess we can differ on that. I had no problem with what's inside strategy. It's like a private club kind of thing, what's behind the velvet rope. You didn't have to be invited, you could just walk in. It's hard to be noticed in a sea of booths, that's why companies buy like the overhead to hang from the ceilings, they can be seen. Like Paradox, it was like a house in the center of the exhibit hall. So we can disagree on that. I guess the final verdict is the companies themselves and how they did with that strategy. For me it's like the kiosk, the ground...that to me is interesting. The companies that will eventually be at the front of the expo hall to me is where the action is. Joel: Another takeaway for me for sure was business is good. Money is flowing, companies need solutions, unemployment is down to just bare bones. It's a good time to be in the employment industry. And you and I have seen at least two each downturns in the business and most people are saying in the next two to three years we'll see another dip, but for now man the party is on and it's a good time. Chad: So when you're Oracle and you have this huge like Starbucks...it's not even really a booth, it's like a Starbucks right? And Oracle has a shit ton of cash right? But still they're spending the cash. Cornerstone is hanging donuts off the side of the wall right? It's like what makes people happy? The aroma of donuts in the morning. Grab a donut, get a coffee. I mean it was crazy, cool shit. And Jobalign I would say gets an honorable mention because they were just a few rows back from Career Builder and they were on Main Street. I don't know how they got there cause you know they didn't pay the high price, but sometimes you gamble and they got some amazing placement. Chad: But my best overall was Clickboarding, an onboarding platform. Never seen these guys before in my life, but they didn't spend a lot of money at all. They didn't do the Oracle, ADP stuff. What they did was they bought a double sized booth and they made it really cool. It was kind of inviting, kind of the faux wood, corrugated steel, it had a seating area, a little bar action. It was cool and it was something that again, it was one of those things where you gotta take a look from a marketing standpoint. Do you want your brand to feel cold and steely or do you want it to be warm and inviting? There was really a dichotomy between the two, and that's really what you saw. You didn't see an in between. You saw either really cold and steely or it was just kinda cool, chill, come on in and let's talk. Joel: Pretty sure that's the first time the world steely has been used on the podcast, so drink to that one. And you used it twice. And yeah if Elvis is still alive, he was at the show because I saw at least two or three Elvis impersonators. Joel: And by the way can I just real quickly... I thought this was really cool. So you mentioned Oracle. Chad: Yeah Joel: So the actual badge that you had around your neck has a little whatever thing. So the one that Oracle had is actually a charger for your Android or iPhone, and I thought that was awesome. It's an actual functional badge holder or strap or whatever it's called. So shout out to Oracle for that or whoever came up with that. That was good. Chad: I have one last thing on the booth scenario is my why. Why...and I love these guys, I love Shaker and I love NAS... but why do they have booths? Why do they spend money when they really don't have technology and they could use that money to send more people to shake hands, kiss babies, gather intel, and develop partnerships? Joel: Or sponsor podcasts? Chad: Or sponsor podcasts? Now TMP has TalentBrew right, so that was really their brand while they were there, the whole thing was TalentBrew. So it makes sense to me on that side of the house, but on the Shaker, NAS side of the house, yeah man, spend that money, you know more...don't do a damn booth. Joel: I will end my whatever from the show with it was a lot about who wasn't there. A few companies that should have been were not, or would regularly be there were not there. I will note that Glassdoor was not there, which to me helps support the thesis that Indeed is just gonna suck them up and eat them alive, and there won't be a Glassdoor brand at some point in the future. To me that was sort of telling. There was no Facebook, there was no LinkedIn, there was no Google, who are the three companies that we talk about the most, couldn't even give a shit to even be there. So that stood out to me as well. Chad: Tarquin was there. He was walking around and we actually missed each other. We were gonna have a beer or coffee or something, so he was there. Definitely, again, he didn't see worth or they didn't see worth in spending stupid amounts of cash on a booth, but in some cases, they were probably there just walking and doing business a different way. Joel: Microsoft was there interestingly. There were- Chad: Two booths! Joel: Yeah, two booths. So that was...Microsoft but no LinkedIn. Yeah that was interesting to me. Let's take a quick break and talk about Augmented Reality, Career Builder and I guess, Monster. Chad: Sure. JobAdX: How many times has someone said to you, "We're the Uber of or it's the PayPal of, maybe better Facebook of?" In many, many cases, these comparisons fall short of being close to reality, or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. In the case of Job Ad X, our example is so accurate, so spot on, that it's synonymous with our work. JobAdX is Google Ad Sense for jobs. That means we're an efficient, persistent, and smarter ad unit for job related advertising. JobAdX: As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs and staffing firms real time dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. All this is done with the flexibility of JobAdX's cost pair impression, click or application. We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending wastes. We're not set in regrets. For direct clients, JobAdX delivers superior candidates to the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. JobAdX: We also provided publishers and job boards higher rev share than other partners, through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30 to 40 percent greater and more through our scalable model. To partner with us, you can visit or search jobadx.com or email us at joinus@jobadx.com to get estimates or begin working together. JobAdX: JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Oh, and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK, too. Chad: Amit did really well on the pitchfest stage. Joel: He did. I want to say he almost made it to the end. I don't know if any of them made it, their whole pitch in the three minute time period. Chad: Yeah, it's ridiculous. Joel: Yeah. You would think like the firing squad would prepare companies for the pitch, but no, that was tough for them. Chad: But with two minutes of Q&A, you kind of think like, "God, I got to cram more shit into my pitch, because I'm not going to be able to get it out there in the Q&A." Joel: Yeah, I get it. I get it. Okay. You have a great insider quote. Chad: Yeah, so the reason why we didn't talk about the Career Builder booth, was because we're going to do a segment on Career Builder and Monster, kind of a compare and contrast of the old guard and how they, how we see them today, especially after an HR Tech. So it's hilarious. Instead of me just ripping into them their booth, and when I have two practitioners, which probably were the only two that were there, who actually gave me quotes. This is one, and I'm not going to say who it is, because you'll know in a second. Chad: "Why in the fuck would Career Builder waste money on a 50 by 40 booth at HR Tech. So sad. Like the dude with the tiny penis who drives a bright yellow Corvette" Joel: This is our fan base by the way. This is who we attract. Chad: But a practitioner. But a practitioner at a director level, let me tell you. Practitioner number two, again, very high level, said jokingly, "Next year as an encore to this year's 'experience', Career Builder will be lighting $200,000 cash on fire in their booth space." Joel: Now, that I like too. That I like too. I was talking to an agency person, who I will not name, who compared and contrasted Monster's sort of booth with their mentality. Chad: Ah, okay. Joel: And I think you and I will agree on the Monster side, because we interviewed their CEO, Scott Gutz, which if you can edit that thing, will go live here at some point. But there is humbleness, a humility, in the Monster higher ups that's pretty refreshing. Like I think they really understand the brand's been in the mud for a while, they have a really high mountain to climb to fight off Google, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. But there's a real humble mentality there and I think that came through in the booth. Joel: The booth was very tempered, it was creative and it stood out. Chad: No, it did. It did. Joel: But it wasn't over the top by any means, and this is a company that in the past has had actual semi-trucks in the exhibit hall to put their stuff up, and have had multiple squishy Monster dolls and giveaways. Chad: Right. Joel: Like this was a really toned down company, and I think it represents or reflects their business going forward. Career Builder, my contact mentioned, was like, he doesn't think they understand what's going on in the market. Like, they don't understand, they still think, my comparison is they're sort of like Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, right? Like even though the world has shifted, Lebron has left, the dude still kind of is tone deaf around the fact that they can't compete any more, that's it's all about super teams, it's all about, a different landscape. Chad: Yes. Joel: But they're still sort of in the, they still believe like they're number one. Chad: Right. Joel: Their shit don't stick, they're the top dog. And it's that sort of hubris that you and I have seen through the years really destroy companies. And this really gaudy, ridiculous booth, sort of highlighted both the company as well as just sort of the idiocy of the show, while they're laying off and tons of people are leaving, they're spending buckets of money on a really fancy booth at this show. So that was some commentary I thought was interesting. Chad: Yeah. And again, as we talk about closed off booths, versus open booths, there was a huge difference. One was much bigger than the other one was, but Monster really was focusing on their people and trying to get their people engaged with the industry, the industry professionals, right? The vendors, their partners, so on and so forth, and they were doing that at high leadership levels. Hey, these are our people, meet our people, talk to our people. That I thought was cool, versus something that's really closed off, walled off and was a big video game. Chad: I went through the experience, because I thought, if I'm going to talk about it, I want to go through it. And they, very gracious, they knew exactly who I was, they didn't punch me in the face or anything like that, even though they probably wanted to. And went through the experience, and it was a big video game. Right? And then as almost an afterthought, after the video game, I pointed over to the corner, where they had monitors set up, and I said, you know I was on my way out, and I stopped myself and I said, "Hey, are you guys demoing product?" And they were like, "Oh, yeah. Would you like to see that?" Chad: Well, fuck yeah, I would. That's the big difference here, okay? Is that the video game is not the central point of what the focus should be here. And maybe they just want to get me the fuck out of the booth. That could have been it, right? But I went over, did product demos with a couple of different individuals, and they were incredibly professional, they were very smart, and they answered the questions. Whether I liked the answer or not, it doesn't matter, right? Chad: That's the problem. That should be the focus. That should be, and that's been Career Builder's problem for years, is they're not focusing on the right stuff. They're not being able to pull their products together in something that people understand and selling it to the market that way, they're focusing on stupid shit like video games and Pokemon Go for jobs. Joel: Which, I think we'll save for this week's show. Chad: Yes. Joel: So we'll save that. But yeah, I think the dichotomy of Monster current, current state of Monster and Career Builder is very telling. And I would also add that Monster's booth was filled with execs, like the people with C in front of their title, was there. Chad: Yes. Joel: And they wanted to talk about the future, and where they were going, and they were very humble. Career Builder was the sales force. Irina, their new CO was supposed to, was alleged, was probably there. I didn't see her or meet her, there was no effort to like, "Hey, can we set a time aside", which Monster did, which I thought was great. But yeah. I wish we could have talked about the differences in like Google's booth and Facebook's and da da da, but for the purpose of the show, those were kind of the two big ones that we have to cut, compare and contrast. Chad: Yeah, yeah. That's what we had. And again, big shout out to Monster PR. They reached out to us, and then say, "Hey guys, we want you to interview and have conversations with Scott and Chris Cho, their chief product officer, so I mean it wasn't us, trying to bang down their door. They were coming to us because they again, are open. We're seeing so many different brands that are closed off. Joel: Amen. Now I will say that Monster taking the Career Builder trend of colored Chuck Taylors, was a little bit troubling, because Career Builder has moved on from that. But you know, that aside, yeah, props to Monster for the direction that they're going. Chad: And we out. Joel: We out kids. Tristen: Hi, I'm Tristen. Thanks for listening to my stepdad, the Chad, and his goofy friend Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcast, so you don't miss out on all the knowledge dropping that's happening up in here. Tristen: They made me say that. Tristen: The most important part is to check out our sponsors, because I need new track spikes. You know, the expensive shiny gold pair that are extra because, well, I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #Monster #Careerbuilder #HRtech #Microsoft #Clickboarding #Emissary #Uncommon #TalentBrew #TMP #Shaker #NAS #KRT #Talroo #Vervoe #ZAPinfo #JobAdX

Meet Torin Ellis, one bad MFin' diversity bad ass. Buckle-up kids it's about to get lit up in this Nexxt Exclusive podcast! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. 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. 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. 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 frickin' 97% open rate. Chad: What? Joel: They're 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: Yeah. That's right. Nexxt, with the double X, not the triple X. Joel: Bom 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 X's. Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: It's time to do this. Joel: Ho ho. Chad: This is Chad Sowash. Today we're going to be talking to Torin Ellis, diversity strategist, published offer. You might have heard him on SiriusXM Radio. He does a little contribution there. Torin's all over the place, man, but he is a diversity stud. Torin, say hi to the listeners, man. Torin: Ah, that big good morning. We like it. We like it. We like it. And I absolutely appreciate the both of you for giving me some time, some bandwidth. Let's jostle a little bit and have some fun. Joel: Torin, this is Joel Cheeseman, the cohost of the show. We're meeting for the first time. The name Torin is not a common name. Is there a story behind that? Torin: No, it's not. Actually it's a Scottish name and it mean's king. And my mother, when she was 18, a lot of people told her that she nor her children, because they were kind of clairvoyant and they figured she'd have multiple kings and queens, and so that said that "Neither you nor your children would be successful." You got to understand that I grew up in a time ... I was born in a time where a black man could not swim in the Atlantic Ocean. I'm talking about a pool in a community. I'm not talking about the YMCA. I'm talking black people could not swim in South Florida in the Atlantic Ocean. And so a lot of her instructors told her that she would never successful. And she said she would start naming der firstborn with a name that had power, and so it means king. Joel: Was that some undo pressure on you, though, to be a king? Torin: No, not at all. Absolutely. I felt like ... First of all, I didn't know what it meant until probably 20 years old or so. But no. No pressure whatsoever. I mean, my mother and my father were incredible role models. They were incredible parents. And so they just raised me to be human, if you will. They raised me to try to respect the law and follow directions and do the best that I could. And so that's what we've tried to do. We've made a couple of mistakes, but we're here now. We're good. Chad: Well, today we're here to talk about diversity. We talk about diversity. A couple of angry white guys, as you'd like to call us, talk about diversity on this show. Torin: That's right. Chad: And I thought, let's get somebody who really gets down deep into diversity and let's really ... let's get into the scrum on this one. Let's talk about what needs to happen, what is happening, and all the bullshit talk that's happening out there. So- Joel: Can I interject- Chad: Yeah. Joel: ... because I'm a newbie in this diversity thing? Torin: Yeah. Joel: I'd like to hear a definition of diversity from someone who is really knowledgeable about this. Torin: Oh, it's real simple. For me, it's bringing unknown resources, people, things together and not being afraid to be married, if you will. And just think about that. I don't need a complicated academic definition. It's about just bringing things that are not necessarily normal to be together, bringing cultural insiders, cultural outsiders, bringing them together, and not being afraid to be "married" professionally, socially, communal, if you will. It's bringing stuff together. That's it. Joel: Got it. Chad: Getting away from the old, generic, boring bullshit and trying to spice it up. Joel: Flavor. Chad: Right? Joel: Absolutely. Absolutely. Chad: Right, right? I mean- Joel: Yes. Absolutely. Chad: ... diversity of thought. I mean, we talk about backgrounds. So it doesn't matter what kind of background. But we talk about trying to bring that diverse thought in. In most cases, the way that you get that diverse thought is from an individual who is nothing like you, doesn't have the same kind of opinions or ideas, or maybe, in some cases, there are obviously some common grounds. But how do you really excel in being able to drive diversity? And that's always been my thought. Torin: Well, and, again, when you take it like that ... So I use the phrase cultural insider. On your side, Joel and Chad are cultural insiders, both white men. Chad: Yep. Torin: I'm the cultural outsider in this conversation, yet we are still grooving already. Two, three minutes in, we're already in our flow, getting that mojo, and we're about to make an incredible conversation come forth. That's what I'm talking about, just bringing it together and not being afraid to do that. Now, on you all's side, there's still a difference in who you all are. Chad is different than Joel, vice versa. But together, there is a little bit of cultural outsiderness, if you will. But for the most part, you all are cultural insiders. Bringing the two together, outsiders, insiders, and making magic happen. Chad: So why is it so hard? I mean, we got three guys get on a mic, right, and we start talking and we start the flow, right out of the gate. And you have this sharing of ideas and opinions. Why is it so hard for companies to be able to really grasp this? They talk about it all the time, but we aren't seeing it in the actual numbers. And I know we don't talk about benchmarks or for hiring percentages, but it is important to understand the actual composition of a workforce to understand whether you really are diverse or not. Right? Torin: No, absolutely. And I think companies have struggled for a variety of reasons. Too many of them have had demoralizing results. They've had fatigue of conversation. And, honestly, Chad, that's because a lot of them have had faulty plans, bandaid-like tactics, if you will. "Let's kind of show up at this one event." Just one. I mean, there's 15,000 events that a person can go to. Let's just do one of them. Well, that's what I call a bandaid. Companies have struggled because they've had drips of interest versus that full-throttle effort. There's absolutely no way that for whatever software, 2 point whatever, whatever, whatever, you would kind of half-ass go at it. You would put your entire team on it to make it right. Even though you may deploy a version that's not 100% ready, you're not going to leave that lack of or that gap of closure out there in the marketplace. They're going to have their team fully on that, trying to make it right. Torin: So that full-throttle effort has been missing inside a lot of organizations. Oftentimes, people like myself, strategists and consultants and trainers, we go in and we go in with a punitive conversation around leadership and white men, if you will. And shit, nobody wants to get beat down on like that. So, I mean, that doesn't necessarily bode well for bringing about progress. But most of all, what I think is really missing from most of the work that's being done. And mind you, when I do diversity strategy, I'm not doing it for bias training or unconscious bias training. I'm not doing it for anything other than I'm looking at the recruiting lens. I'm looking at how do we build high-performing teams, and not absolutely feel like recruiters and sources on the vanguard of incredible organizations. We are the frontline, if you will. And so I do my work focused on them. Torin: The main reason why I feel like companies have struggled is because for the last 10, 15 years, if you will, it's been more of a social imperative versus as business imperative. And people like myself, if you will, have not necessarily done an incredible job of connecting the value of diversity to the organization. They have not connected the value of diversity across the chain: hiring, training, and advancing employees, procurement, product design, and marketing. We have missed that particular piece. And so I think that the reason why me and my team are successful is because we get away from ... We don't discount the social side of it, but we focus more on the business side. Joel: Torin, you touched on technology a little bit. And Chad and I, it's a common topic for us. And there are subjects around programmatic recruiting where AI and machines are sourcing candidates. Or you look at virtual workspaces and how companies are sort of expanding and not having headquarters. Or sites like Upwork where the value of a worker is based on their reviews and what people that have worked with them or they've done jobs for review them. And it has less about, say, color, creed, religion, et cetera. Are you optimistic about the technology, or is it more of a band-aid and something that is not covering up the real problem? Torin: I am optimistic about the technology because I feel like this gig economy that we're in provides access for more individuals to participate. Now, certainly, there are some levels of pause for me. Pause in the sense of whether or not these freelance or consultants, if you will, are being compensated and treated the way that they should be treated. I'm really about humanity. I'm like 1,000% in ... Let me say it this way. I care as much about the candidate as I do about the company. And if I had to take my choice, I'm going to always side with the candidate, even though the company is the one that pays me. I just feel like we should do right by people. Torin: So I am optimistic in the sense that technology can extend the border. It can put a different perimeter around people and their ability to pursue opportunities. But I also take pause in the fact that if we don't have enough underrepresented individuals in the rooms that are creating this technology, then these technologies are going to exclude us on a continual basis going forward. And so I do want to see platforms like Upwork and other organizations, if you will ... I do want to see them have underrepresented talent, people that are black and brown, people that are differently-abled, people that are from different religious and political backgrounds, if you will. I want to see a variety of diversity building the technology so that all of the touchpoints don't leave people out. If that makes sense. Chad: That does. Is it a good amount of this actually based off of just the basic job description and how they've been written over the years and all the different requirements that really aren't requirements that push out different groups? Torin: I mean, you can say that. But in my time, see, I've been recruiting since 1998 on my own. I have never ... and I mean this, I can say it without any apology. I have never shared a job description with a candidate because I don't care about the job description. I need to understand from the hiring manager, what is it that you really need in this individuals? And while some people may not ... And the reason for that is because when I worked at MCI, I wasn't the best writer, if you will. And I actually missed out on a couple of promotions because my writing skills, according to the center director, were not up to par. And so the job description for me is, while it's key, it gives me a bit of a guide, a sense of something to go by, I don't see that as being what's pushing people out. I know great companies like Textio, and TalVista, and others are doing some work around optimizing job descriptions, if you will. And I most certainly appreciate that. I absolutely do. But I feel like the job description is just but a part of the process. The cog, for me, is the hiring manager. It's that human to human contact. That hiring manager is a problem. Chad: And I agree, but here's the problem. We start talking about technology, we've got an entirely different conversation because you're not going to see some of those candidates that would be coming through because the technology's actually based off the requirements of the job. Torin: Correct. Chad: So therefore, the filtering mechanism comes in place, and some of those individuals that you might drag along for the ride aren't going to be there because they're going to be filtered out by this AI. And that's why I'm saying the actual base. Torin: That's correct Chad: The actual base of the information being used on the technology side of the house for AI, machine language, whatever the hell we want to call it, is going to be that job description and the requirements. And if those requirements are really just all bullshit, okay, there are some that are in there, yeah, here and there, we definitely need to have certifications here and there, but they really don't need to have a master's degree or a bachelor's degree or who knows, and these are different requirements that have been thrown in over the years, really just to filter out people. What happens then with technology and how do you consult companies to be able to really look through their entire strategy from the ground up? Because this is really part of the ground up scenario, right? Torin: It is, and again, just in how you described it, it underpins and reinforces the need for diversity and inclusion inside of our organizations... Chad: Yup. Torin: And it's needed inside of every point along the value chain as I illustrated in the beginning of the call. And so whether it be the company that is building the technology that you are using as an ATS, whether it be the technology that you are using to do background screening, whether it be the technology that you are using to do the first level of contact with a particular candidate, it doesn't matter, that technology needs to be built by people that are diversely representative of the populations that we are going after. That's Number One. Number Two, our teams need to be diverse, our sourcing teams should be diverse, our recruiting teams should be diverse, hopefully our hiring team is going to be diverse, and all the way up, and that mitigates if you will some of that technology may be screening out talented individuals, maybe hiring managers exercising or leveraging their bias in the recruiting conversation. The more diversity we have in the process, hopefully the less we will experience if you will this unnecessary screening of talent. Torin: I have a really good friend a couple of years ago who was looking for a job and he reached out and I can't remember the company, not that it's important, but he actually called the manager after the posting had been up for maybe a week and a half, two weeks, not a long time... the manager told him, he said, "Listen, I just pulled the trigger." Probably a month, I'm sorry, Chad, he said, "I just hired someone because I got tired of going through the resumes, more than half of them were bullshit... Chad: Yeah! Torin: And so he said, "I just got tired of going through them. Had you called me, had you called me, I guarantee you, I would have interviewed you. I guarantee you you would have probably been in the top two or three." And so I just understand that the technology is but a part of this particular process, and Joel, what I have always said to people is, people do the best job of hiring people. I appreciate the technology, but I don't believe that any tool is going to outperform me in my ability to make a great decision. Joel: Let me switch gears from technology for a little bit and talk about government. Where is government failing, where is maybe government doing too much? One example that I can think of in a short time in the background check industry is the Ban the Box issue. Should employers be able to ask about criminal records or are they a felon, etc. What are your views on government in terms of what they can do or maybe where they're over-reaching in the diversity issue? Torin: So let me just say that we have something in the neighborhood of 70 or 100 million offenders or ex-offenders running around the country right now. Many of them, a largess of them, are for distribution if you will, non-violent crimes. I firmly believe that we should have Ban the Box type legislation in every single state. I firmly believe that. Ban the Box legislation, I think that the only time that should be an issue is for somebody who has experienced a violent crime and even then, we really evaluate that on an individual and case by case basis. I think that we can do a better job of understanding if you apply the human touch, some common sense, a few great questions, a background check, perhaps a review of a person's prison records if you will, I think we can get to a point where we can say, "This person is one that we can bring into our organization with limited access or limited exposure, limited interaction," but I don't feel like it should be a person checking a box because I've served some time and now I'm non-considered for almost any type of employment. I think that that's just an absolute waste if you will, so legislatively, we should put a Ban the Box piece in every state and then, as employers, we should operate with discretion. Chad: So don't you think this is the time for that, right now? We have such a crunch, the new numbers came out, jobs over 200,000, under 4% unemployment, this is the time, I'm talking to companies right now, all the way through, they're having problems finding talent. We're seeing surveys coming out where recruiters are saying this is the hardest it's ever been for them in 20 years or what have you, in trying to find candidates. This is a workforce, that again, they need to put a roof over their family's head, they need to put food in their families' mouths, these are individuals who might've done wrong, but goodness gracious, they've done their time, isn't this the time, right now, to make this happen? Torin: It's absolutely the time, and again, we can't have it both ways, and I say "we," I'll use "we" putting myself in a variety of different disciplines and roles, if you will. We can't have it both ways, we can't keep them from applying and being able to secure employment and then on the flip side, get mad when...we just can't do that. And it's not necessarily working for us. The phrase "war for talent" comes into play, whether it be us talking about felons, or whether it be just in general, we've been saying the phrase "war for talent" for twenty years, twenty. Twenty years. So how played out is that? That's absolutely played out when we know we have a contingent of capable individuals that are lingering on the sidelines, ready to get in the game, ready to play, but we have these rules and these perceptions that are keeping them from playing. 70 million jobs, an incredible job of employing offenders if you will. So I think that now is definitely the time. Joel: I want to stick on government a little bit, or at least politics. I couldn't let you go without just asking the current state of the country -- on one hand, I feel like it's as divided as ever, and on the other hand I feel sorta like, maybe it's energizing a group that wouldn't have been energized otherwise, and bringing issues to the forefront that maybe wouldn't have been, had we not had such a volatile leader of our country. I'm curious about your thoughts on diversity, just politically, immigration...Is Trump bad for this, or is he good for this? I guess is what I'm asking. Torin: I absolutely feel like he's bad for this. And let me try to answer this non-politically if you will. If you're going to fight against immigration, when we have immigrants that are killing the business market right now, killing in a good way, slang, vernacular, I mean doing incredible things. Then why are we cracking down on immigration the way that he's doing it? Why not crack down on the people that are hiring the immigrants? Why are we not doing that? If we're going to do this, let's just do it the right way, not once again these Band-Aids if you will. So I'm going to get the person from Honduras and Nicaragua and other countries that are trying to get away from harrowing opportunity or things that are just putting their lives in danger or their economy or family in danger, but I'm not going to go after the guy who's hiring, the woman that's hiring them? That absolutely makes no sense. Torin: There's certainly a better way for us to do all of this, and when we look at how many immigrants have come to the country and started organizations that are hiring tens of thousands of individuals, hundreds of individuals, when we think about countries right now that are copying all of the work and technology that we're doing over here, I just feel like we can do a better job of this from a governmental standpoint. Chad: Feels like blunt force trauma in some cases. It really does. So I'm going to kick back to the business side of the house. In some cases, where I'm dealing with some of my clients on the veterans side of the house, it's interesting because ... I want to get your reaction, whether it's kind of parallel to what I'm saying... everybody wants to hire veterans. That's all there is to it, I want to hire veterans, I love it, but yet: you talk about that one event. "I went to that one event, and you know what, it just didn't work out for me." Not to mention, it was a free event, and then they're always looking for these free resources, and..."free" is not a strategy, obviously. But what I'm seeing or what I've seen over the years, in most cases, not all, is that companies will not commit. They will say that they are interested but they will not commit by actually putting budget and resources to that specific problem. Are you seeing that in the diversity community overall? Torin: Absolute window dressing. There is no reason, none whatsoever, why we are still 50 years after legislation, basically having the very same conversation. It comes down to skill versus will -- Chad: I love that! Torin: And I have said that probably since 2012, "skill versus will." I can stand on a stage and talk about Chrome extensions and technology and I can do all of those great things but if you don't care about doing diversity, if you don't want to go the extra effort, then it's not going to happen. Skill versus will. Let me tell you, inside of the book Blue Ocean Shift, I don't know if you're familiar with that book, but there is a case study in there for Citizen M Hotel. And really what they did was, they said, "We're not going to continue to try to compete against people that are in our space, the Red Ocean strategy, we're going to look at new ways of doing it because there's a lot of room in the Blue Ocean if you will." Torin: And so what they did, and they were actually quite successful in transforming that stagnant, low-profit mid-range slice of the industry into really a high-growth, high-profitable affordable luxury room. And the way that they did it, they really just did a survey. They said, "Why is it that people are going to luxury hotels? Is it the room, is it the price?" Torin: And people are like, "Hell, no, we're not trying to pay more money to sleep! That's not the reason we are going to a luxury hotel, five-star hotel. And they went down this checklist of all these different things, and it really came down to three things: location, comfort of their sleep, and the third one is surprising but it was the quality of the water. Like, can we get high pressure, great shower in the morning? You know? Can I sleep well in the evening? So they said, we can do away with concierge, and we can put kiosks in, and we can do all of these things that are not necessarily costing us a lot of money. We can restrict or constrict our lobby size, and we can add more room if you will to the rooms, we can add more amenities to the rooms, make the experience better, and people will come to our hotel versus going to the five-star hotel. Torin: When it comes to diversity, they have been window-dressing, man, they have been fighting inside of a Red Ocean. Everybody says this tool is good, so everybody wants to use this particular tool. Everybody says that this is best in class, so now we want to do this best in class. I have an incredible client, probably one of the most talked-about clients this week, and when we first started working together in 2017, they said to me, "Torin, we want to best in class." And to make the story short, I said, "You don't need to be best in class, you need to be your best. Your organization is far different than the next organization and the next organization. Let's figure out, let's do the forensics to figure out what's necessary to make your organization the best that it can be." And you know what? You're not going to achieve results if you're not committed, too many companies are not committed. Chad: And stop looking for that damn silver bullet because it doesn't exist-- Torin: No fairy dust-- Chad: It's a strategy and you've got to go at this from the ground up and look at programs, all the way through, so yeah, man, I totally get that. I love the "Skill vs Will." Torin: That's right. Joel: Torin, I love that Chad hit on veterans, and that's sort of his sweet spot, and I think that, from my perspective, I think diversity for a lot of people is a color issue. When I think of it I think more and more of people with disabilities, I think of ...elderly folks, which are a lot of people, the Baby Boomers that are aging. They're being sort of displaced because they're thought of as not being tech-savvy enough or not having the skills. Talk about those two segments and what kind of advancement are we seeing. Are we way behind the eightball with disabilities and elderly versus maybe some other segments of diversity? What's going on there? Torin: We are. We are behind, but the bottom line is we have to do better, if you will, in terms of being interested in it. Again, going back to the skill versus will, let me just touch on one thing, Joel. The reason why diversity has been so much referenced as a color thing is because we've allowed corporate heads and the media to construct that narrative over the last 30 years. They've made it a black versus white thing. They've not allowed it to be a very blossomed definition of diversity, where it includes the different genres and groups that you just previously mentioned. Torin: Yes, I do believe that color is important because I feel like a person from a different country is going to add a different context to the conversation. I absolutely believe that, if we are sitting in a strategy meeting or a discovery meeting with hiring managers, and one of the managers at the table is blind, we're going to have a different conversation around what's needed in the person that's being hired. Just by the mere fact that he or she is blind at the table, the conversation is going to absolutely change. Torin: I think, for organizations, if you really understand and subscribe to the fact that we have a plethora of job openings in technology, we have job openings in manufacturing, we have job openings in healthcare, job openings in the trucking industry. Even though autonomous vehicles is the rave right now, we still have job openings. We have job openings across the board. We must become, I guess, more willing to embrace a more expanded definition of diversity. We must also not be afraid to consider the positive ramifications of adding color to our environments. Let's face it, you put black and brown people in any environment, that shit is going to pop off and be good anyway. Chad: I've got one more question. It might end up being more. Torin: Yeah. Chad: When you and I first started talking, you'd said that you'd listened to a couple of shows, and you asked me one pointed question that actually caught me off-guard. You said, "Do you get asked if you guys ... Do you get called 'angry white dudes'?" And I was like, "No, no, we don't." And then you told me a story, and I want you to tell that story. You remember that? Torin: I absolutely do, and the reason I asked you that question is because I'm a prophet. No, for real. Seriously, the role of the prophet is not to comfort the king or the leader, but to challenge them. Every once in a while, you have to ask questions. You have to go into conversations that could be considered uncomfortable. Chad: Yeah. Torin: Even in that uncomfort, we both get to grow. We had a great first conversation, even though that was one of the things that I asked. I asked it in reference to a conference and you all's style on the radio and all that good stuff. I'm saying to you that, if I was to do a show the way that you do it, there would be a variety of people that would call me an angry black man. Torin: I was just at SRSC in Austin and did my presentation, and I did the presentation in an hour, bringing people through slavery and Jim Crow and segregation and black laws and all of that, through Barack Obama, ending with Donald Trump, which is where we are right now. In a brief three minutes or so, I used that illustration to kind of say we've been really having this conversation for 400 years. 400, not 40, but 400. Chad: Yeah. Torin: There is absolutely no way that you can say that black and brown people are lazy, that hiring black or brown people is lowering the bar, that you cannot find black or brown talent or differently abled talent or veteran talent or women talent that are prepared. That's the tone of my conversation. You got to understand, when I got my feedback, there were three people, three. There were like 15 comments in my feedback, but three people called me an angry black man. Joel: Wow. Torin: Why? Why am I angry? Because I'm telling the truth? Chad: Yeah, yeah. Torin: I'm telling the truth. Nothing that I said was not true. But I'm angry to you because you don't want to face the truth. Chad: And these people are supposed to be the enlightened people of HR recruiting- Torin: That's right. Chad: -and want diversity, but yet they can't take a basic history lesson. Torin: They can't take it. Chad: It doesn't matter if it was fire and brimstone or not. To be able to take that, and that's what kind of threw me was to actually put in your comments "angry black man," no, I've never had somebody call me an angry white man. Torin: That's right. Chad: You saying that, and Joel and I come off, I'm sure, a hell of a lot more course than you do. That just shows, that demonstrates the bullshit that you have to work through. Torin: Absolutely. Joel: Well, thank about Sheryl Sandberg's book, "Lean In." Chad: Yeah. Joel: Talking about she doesn't want women who take leads to be called bossy or bitchy. They're taking a leadership position. Chad: Yep. Joel: I think women probably face a similar bias as African-Americans and Hispanics and others that people like Chad and I just don't ever have to deal with or think about. I think it's great that we're getting enlightened, more recently now than ever before probably with even the Me Too movement, with females and the African-Americans. Trump is bad obviously in a lot of different ways, but I do think, in a weird way, he's shone a light on how we're more alike than we are different, if that makes any sense at all. Torin: It makes a lot of sense. What I absolutely said, or I think as we rounded out that conversation, Chad, I just simply said that I try to encourage people, even though I'm not a trainer. I'm a strategist. Even though I'm a strategist, I try to help people with vernacular, if you will. I try to help shift the way that people think about what it is that's around us. Torin: What I said was, we need to get away from saying "black on black crime." We need to get away from referring to Chicago when we start to talk about whatever as it relates to the black population. We have these things that are happening, if you will, and you don't ever hear "white on white crime." You don't hear folks talking about the mafia and the mob up in New York City. You don't hear that. But you hear, without any reservation, somebody will say, "Well, those black people, you're not like them." Well, what does that mean? What does that mean? Chad: Right. Torin: That's not a compliment to me. I don't want you to tell me or my children, "Your children are so well-spoken." What the fuck do you ... Joel: Yeah. Chad: Articulate, right? Torin: Yeah, articulate. Chad: How many times have you heard that shit, right? Torin: I don't want to hear that. That's not a compliment. You may see it as a compliment, and I'm not calling you racist or anything. I'm just correcting you. Just accept the fact that I'm correcting you out of love. Those are not compliments. They're not terms that we should be using on a regular basis, especially if we're not doing it broadly. If we're only doing it for one group of people, then we're probably being a bit discriminatory, prejudiced, and we could be borderline racist. I want to try to get people away from that. Joel: Well, Torin, we appreciate you actually taking time, coming on the show. If people want to learn more about you, what you do, where can they find you? Where can they get in touch with you to actually get some real movement into their diversity hiring? Torin: Well, first of all, let me just say thank you again. I appreciate the both of you for giving me the space. Three things that I want to leave people with, it's important to note that one culture is not defined by or mutually exclusive to any one group. Number two, centering around people in the recruiting process tends to mature based on the actions, the conversations, and the scenarios that are presented and pursued. Number three, ethnic, geographic, and workplace demographic shifts are happening right now. The years that are important are 2019, 2030, and 2040. If you want to know more about 2019, 2030, 2040, or anything else that I've said, you can find me on all of social media @TorinEllis. Chad: Or you can go to his website, TorinEllis.com, and look at some really cool-ass videos. Torin: And hopefully it'll be a new site up next week. By the time this goes out, I should have a new site up. Chad: Sweet, sweet. Joel: Go check it out. Thanks, Torin. Torin: I appreciate you guys, absolutely do. Chad: Thanks so much. We out. Chad: Okay, okay, okay. Before we go, remember when I asked you about the whole reflex and check your text messages thing? Joel: Yeah, you know all about reflexes. And then I brilliantly tied it to text messages' 97% open rate. 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 Text to Hire, but you're still not using Text2Hire from Nexxt. Joel: What? Chad: I know, man. Joel: Come on, 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 Text to Hire, and it's all about Nexxt. Joel: An elegant design. Go to ChadCheese.com. Click on the Nexxt logo and get 25, yeah, I said 25% off your first Text to Hire campaign. Chad: Woo! Joel: Engage better. Use Text to Hire from Nexxt. Two exes. Chad: Booya! Chad: Thanks to our partners at TA Tech, the Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions. Remember to visit TATech.org. Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. 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. #Nexxt #Diversity #Veterans #DisabilityHiring #TATech #BadAss

It was just a matter of time. After a 14-year run, Matt Ferguson is no longer CEO of CareerBuilder. The boys share the details and there opinion about what's next. Also: - Upwork goes IPO - Recruiters like it rough? - Tattoos! - and surveys galore leading up the HR Tech conference in Vegas ....wait, are the boys talkin' tech at all? You bet your ass we will! Enjoy, and visit our sponsors America's Job Exchange, Sovren and JobAdX. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community. Announcer: 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: It's an after hours episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, welcome to the Chad and Cheese Show, a weekly round up of all things recruiting. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: With his bedroom voice. On this week's episode, Career Builder dumps their CEO, Upwork heads to Wall Street and recruiters officially don't like it rough. Stay tuned. It's way past our bedtime. JobAdX: How many times has someone said to you, "We're the Uber of," or "It's the PayPal of," maybe they're the Facebook of. In many, many cases, these comparisons fall short of being close to reality or even a useful illustration of what organization actually do. JobAdX: In the case of JobAdX, our example is so acuate, so spot on, that it's synonymous with our work. JobAdX is Google ad sense for jobs. That's means we're an efficient, persistent, smarter ad unit for job related advertising. As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs and staffing firms real time dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. JobAdX: All this is done with the flexibility of JobAdX's cost per impression, click or application. We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. We're not set in regret. For direct clients JobAdX delivers superior candidates with the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad position. We also provide publishers and job boards higher rev share and other partners through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30 to 40% greater and more through our scalable model. To partner with us you can visit or search JobAdX.com or email us at joinus@jobadx.com to get estimates or begin working together. JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for your needs. JobAdX: Oh and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK too. Chad: We're sitting down at HR Tech with Tim Hawk and we're gonna get a shorter ad. Joel: If they win this pitchfest thing it might be a three hour ad. Chad: No, that's not gonna happen. Chad: Oh yeah. Uncommon's gonna be at the PitchFest. We got people. Joel: Yes. Yes. Chad: We got people. Joel: Dude, clearly sponsoring this show is a fast track to the big leagues, without question. Dude, my one year-old is interrupting my football time and it's disruptive. So for those listening we're recording at night. We typically do it in the morning/afternoon. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So who knows where this episode will go? Chad: Good god. Joel: But I'm drinking. I know you probably are too. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: It could get fun. So let's get to shout outs. Chad: Okay. Our listeners probably know Joe Shaker, President of Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Well people, well Joe is a dad with a little boy. Joel: Joe knocked up his wife for the third time. Way to go Joe. Chad: God. So congratulations to the Shaker family again. They just had a little girl about 18 months ago. I think it was a little girl, right, 18 months ago? Joel: Yup. Chad: I'm in serious doubt Joe knows how this whole baby things happen. Joel: He is a Wisconsin graduate. Wisconsin graduates, you know, aside from cheese and beer, they're not too bright. So we may have to alert Joe as to what's going on with this baby machine that he's got going on. Chad: I think we might have to do a public service podcast for all of our listeners for the birds and the bees. I mean come on. Joel: Chad and Cheese sponsored by Vasectomies R Us in the Chicago Metro area. We love to joke. I've got a shout out to Emissary. Emissary.ai , sponsoring my trip to HR Tech. Going to HR Tech next week. Hopefully a lotta people are listening on the plane. Emissary check them out. They'll be at the booth. I'll be wearing a t-shirt and pimping that hard. Emissary.ai shout out. Chad: Yes and they actually sponsor my beer habit ,so you continue to send beer to me guys. I really appreciate that. Gonna give a shout out, big shout out to Uncommon who is carting me along with them and will be at the PitchFest. So if you're going to be HR Tech, check them out in the start up like alley that they have set up. And then also during PitchFest. Joel: I got Teg to agree that if they lose the competition, he takes on Aman from Canvas in a cage match at TA Tech, later this month. Chad: What is up with you and all of this violence? Joel: Aman texted me last night. He probably texted you too that we had to get together and I sent him a Three Stooges gif of them slapping each other so I guess I don't know what it is about Aman. He's such a nice, peaceful guy. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I'm gonna give a shout to, I'll let you do Maverick. Chad: Okay. Joel: I'm gonna do a shout out to Great Lakes Brewery out of Cleveland Ohio. Anyone from Cleveland or the area will know Great Lakes Beer. It's delicious. For whatever reason, they haven't been in Indiana. A beer friend of mine said it's because there's too few distributors in the state, blah, blah, blah. It's finally here. I'm drinking one now. Shout out to Great Lakes. You're gonna make my winter a lot more bearable. Chad: Yes. Thank you so much but thank god even better beer down here in Central Indiana. Maverick. He said his dad actually wanted to name his brother Goose, which I'm going to call bullshit on. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Gonna totally call bullshit on. His mom said no because his mom knows Goose dies and that's never a good idea to name your kid after a character who actually died, especially in the dramatic fashion in which Goose does. Job Board Doctor, he said that we've been talking too much about Google. So to all of our listeners out there. Joel: Bullshit. Chad: We challenge, if there's something you see, a great topic, a great story, article, go to Twitter, share it with us, hashtag Chadcheese. If it doesn't suck we'll talk about it. But if it sucks like the one that the Job Board Doctor just sent us then we're not gonna talk about it. Joel: But this is a great sort of side note. So we see the listenership and we see the numbers and you guys love Google, Indeed. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Facebook, LinkedIn. We talk about these companies because it's what you guys want. When we drop something on Purple Squirrel, nobody cares. So we're gonna keep talking about the companies that you guys care about because we want you to listen to our show. Chad: Yes. And everybody's knows that now since, thanks to Uncommon and Emissary, we're going to be at HR Tech, you might ask yourself how to find us at HR Tech. Well first on Tuesday afternoon, we're gonna be at the HR Tech Collaboration Zone pre shindig thing, so if you're gonna be there and you wanna have some time with us, bring us some beer, that's cool. We're gonna be talking about Googly shit, AI, whatever people want to talk about. Chad: Also, you can download the HR Tech Collaboration Zone app. That's a too long of a damn name. They've gotta shorten that shit up. Or just find us around the hall. We're gonna be everywhere. So look for us, hit us up on LinkedIn, Twitter, all that other happy horse shit. And Ed from Philly needs HR Tech friends people. He went out and sent something out on Twitter today. We wanna help him out, so. Joel: What? Chad: So search #chadcheese on Twitter, find Ed, link up with him for beers at HR Tech. I'm definitely having beers with Ed because he's Team Chad, you know that. But c'mon man, network, make friends, drink beer, find us and let's have a good time in Vegas. Joel: Should be a good time. I only know my schedule because Chad manages my whole schedule. So that was news to me what we're doing and I'm sure there'll be more things added. But yeah, I'll be around, Chad'll be around, hit us up for drinks especially and it should be a good time. My last shout out reminder, TA Tech. Chad: Yes. Joel: September 26 through the 29th. Chad: New Orleans. Joel: I believe. New Orleans. Death Match, Allyo, Uncommon, Talk Push, who am I missing? Allyo. Uncommon. Canvas. [crosstalk 00:09:18] Yeah I got em' all. Talk Push. Should be awesome. We're gonna break shit, crack necks, and cash checks. Chad: Not only that, there's a party at Pat O'Brien's. If you've ever been to New Orleans, you've probably been to Pat O'Brien's. If you have, you wanna go back. If you haven't, what the fuck are you doing? You gotta go. So come to TA Tech, New Orleans, we'll have a great time. There are some awesome freaking talent that's talking. It's much a different kind of environment than HR Tech. It's more intimate and generally the people that you want to be able to connect with are gonna be in that room. Joel: Chad, do you know what happens after a night of hurricanes? Chad: I don't know. Joel: It's a morning of [sound of baby crying]. Had to do it. You ready to get to the show? Chad: It's fucking bullshit. Joel: Alright, so the coup de gras of news happens this week. Chad: Yes. Joel: Career Builder finally, I don't know how long we've been predicting it, let go their CEO, Matt Ferguson, 14 years at the helm. Chad: Yep. Joel: Put him out to pasture, made him executive, whatever. Chad: Chairman. Joel: Which is just a nice way to say thanks for your time, hang out for a little while and then go whatever the hell you're gonna do. Big news. Chad: Yeah, no. Big news. Joel: We knew it was coming. Chad: During our August 10th show, we actually were talking about this and I think both of us actually said, I think it's pretty simple. Apollo's gonna put their person in, whose is Irina and that's exactly what they did. She was the COO, kinda saw that happening, kinda felt like Matt was gonna get booted sometime soon and it was fairly simple. Joel: He's been around since the acquisition, which is a little over a year old now. They conveniently announced this the day after Labor Day, when no one was paying attention. [crosstalk 00:11:12]. This is really interesting, I'm gonna get a little bit conspiratorial here, but Fast Company was the first media outlet that I saw carry it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The Fast Company story actually came out before the press release. Chad: Yep. Joel: So someone knew someone at Fast Company and what I found interesting was the headline was, "Career Builder Hire's First Woman CEO." Chad: Yep. Joel: Which totally sounds spun to me. Chad: Well yeah. Joel: Because the real headline is like they dumped their 14 year old CEO for someone whose never been a CEO before. And by the way they're having like sexual harassment lawsuits going on while they wanna show off that they have a woman CEO. So the whole thing seemed very staged to me, I don't know who they know at Fast Company but you know they have friends there obviously. The other thing that I found interesting, so Dice, so go back in time a little bit, Dice, their CEO before what's his name, that's there now. Chad: Zeile. Joel: Yeah, no the new one. The new guy. Chad: Oh. Zeile. Joel: Zeile. Art Zeile, is that right? Okay. So Zeile is like super techy, like has a history of start ups in technology. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So the guys before was a finance guy. He was not an idea guy, he was like you know, I's dotted, crossed T's. So in this case Irina, Come on Irina, was a CFO, or she was an interim CFO, she worked on Wall Street, she's a totally numbers person. And Career Builder's coming at the press release saying they're all about AI, they're all about innovation, blah, blah, blah. But the fact that they brought in a finance person is a little bit, you know, disingenuous to me and I'm still on par saying they're going to continue chopping this thing up, count the numbers, sell this puppy off within the next year or two, and call it a day. I do not believe that there is a new era of innovation coming from Career Builder with Irina Novoselsky. Am I crazy? Am I nuts? By the way, their CIO is an Apollo alum too. Chad: Yes. Yes yes yes. It's definitely a different day, there's no question. The problem with the day is that Career Builder needs to continue to do demolition before remodeling the house, right? That's exactly what's been happening. They've been cutting left and right. They've been on old infrastructure for who knows how fucking long, right? They need to be able to reinvigorate the brand, which I hear that they've got the right people in house to do that. The problem is, they need to be able to stitch together their technology to make that shit happen, and it's really fucking hard when you don't have any engineers to do it. Joel: Bingo. Chad: Right? That's the big problem right now. I see her coming in, yes, no question to cut the corners. To sharpen the pencil. The hard part is, how do you get the right people in the right places to beat Indeed who's kicking their ass in certain, obviously in the revenue stream that they cared so long about. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: Kicking their ass. Then Google gets in the goddamn game. I mean, what are you going to do guys? I mean seriously. You talk about being an end to end system? Well nobody in the market sees you as an end to end system. Joel: Maybe one or two people. Chad: I doubt it. Yeah, and they're on the payroll. Joel: Yeah. You can only count on Google for so much of your technology to make it work. I will add that they have apparently hired a PR firm that at least gives a shit about bloggers and people like us. The former regime, they might answer questions that are shot at them. But there was a real ivory tower sort of feel with the ... They're still there. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But I received the press release from a PR agency. I wouldn't be surprised to see the communications people at Career Builder slowly go away, and rely on this whatever PR firm. Who have been very kind and open, which is a real shock. Because I've been dealing with the old career builder for over a decade. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's sort of refreshing. In fact, I actually have an embargoed press release that I can't talk about yet, but they are going to be making some shots. They're going to make some pitches to the whole AI tech focused initiative. I'm not sold on it. We're allegedly going to see Irina maybe in Vegas. Chad: Okay. Joel: We're going to have to put her feet to the fire a little bit and see what's going on. But I am skeptical to say the least. Chad: If it has Google's name on it, probably. I mean if they're playing, if they're doing an AI play with Google because now they have all the Google APIs going all over the place, okay. I mean, there you have it. The big question is - Joel: I'll tease you with what it is. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I won't give it away. Chad: Sure. Joel: It's a mobile focus. Chad: Oh big fucking deal. Joel: It is not Monster Studios, I will say that though. Chad: I'm on the edge of my fucking seat at this point. Let's just end this piece at least on a high note. I hope actually getting Irina into that position, it will hopefully put this old boys network behind them. They don't need this stupid shit. They don't need this drama when they're trying to do all this demolition and rebuild. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: That's going to be hard enough. I just want to sit back and watch how they do this, because this isn't a build on top of. This is a demolition rebuild scenario. Period. Joel: Yeah. I mean, Ferguson had a definite sort of pledge class president feel to him, and the pledge class president is gone. There's a new leader in town. I think there's been a new leader in town for a long time, but at least figuratively the old regime is I think officially dead now. Chad: Yeah. Well I mean it was an entirely different day. Newspaper deal. He dealt with the AOL and MSN deal. Which - Joel: Head hunter? Chad: Yeah. Which actually, people gave a shit at that point. But Career Builder was printing cash and nobody cared what they spent at that point. Today is a different day. They have a new leader, and these individuals at Apollo, and obviously the new CEO, they care about what's being spent, and we're seeing that. The big question is, when they demo and they build, what's going to happen? What are they going to build on? Joel: I'm only sad that we didn't get to do a political ad for Career Builder to be their new CEO. All right man, I'm tired of Career Builder. Let's hear, get this, a new Sovren ad. Chad: Whoa. Joel: Come back and we'll talk about recruiters not liking it rough. Chad: They don't like it rough? Joel: No. You like it rough, right? Chad: Well duh. Joel: That's what I heard. Anyway. SOVREN: Sovren is known for providing the world's best and most accurate parsing products. 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 job's 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. Joel: That voice is so butter. Chad: I felt like I was around a campfire, because somebody was playing the banjo. Joel: That was great. That was a great ad. Chad: I love it. Joel: How is she not doing voiceover somewhere? Chad: She probably is. Recruiters say they don't like it rough. Tell me a little bit about this. I don't understand. Joel: Oh, this is your story, dude. Chad: No, I've got it. I've got it. Okay. John Holland over at ERE writes about this. It seems as if, for this Monster survey, 62 percent of recruiters say their job is more difficult today than it was a year ago. 67 percent say it's more difficult than it was five years ago. It's like, no shit. Have you seen the unemployment rate? I mean, okay. Next actually put out an infographic which is pretty freaking stout. Joel: Yeah. Chad: That is, it's just focused on the hard to read job seeker. It was a survey focused on that. Their respondents, which were job seekers, 14 percent of the candidates are actively looking. 14 percent. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: 39 percent passive, which means they're not looking but they're interested. 42 inactive. 42 percent inactive. Not looking. Not interested. Get away from me. Dude, why do you think it's harder? Joel: Well my favorite from the story was, 64 percent of recruiters, "Told us they felt they needed to be digital experts to succeed today". Chad: Oh Jesus. Joel: "While 70 percent of recruiters say their organization is keeping up digitally, 64 percent believe they don't have the right digital tools to make the job easier. Another 51 percent say that technology makes it harder to connect with humans". Who are these 51 percent who think technology is harder to connect with humans? Are they on a corner somewhere with a newspaper sign, or one of those arrow signs trying to find people? Technology makes it easier. I can't believe a majority of people think technology makes it harder, or that only 64 percent feel like they, only 64 percent feel they need to be digital experts. It should be like 95 percent should feel like they have to be digital experts. Chad: It should be everybody. Throwing so many numbers around. Almost 60 percent of respondents say that it's more difficult today to get qualified candidates than it was a year ago. 62 percent five years ago. Okay, here's the big fucking problem. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: First off, the big problem is, 100 percent of them don't believe that they need to be digital experts. Next, they need to realign their expectations, especially with the job market. Which means they should maybe stop asking for bachelors degrees when it's not needed, and stupid shit like that, right? Maybe start creating gap training programs that build your own talent pipeline, and stop black listing smart people who have ink. Right? I mean tattoos? This is a thing now. "Oh yeah, we're going to start looking at hiring people with tattoos now". I mean, did that make somebody stupid because they went out and got a tattoo? I don't get this shit. Chad: Here's a great story. Here's a great story. As a drill sergeant in the United States army, right? Infantry drill sergeant. You knew whenever we were at war, we needed more troops, so that we had more coming through basic training. They would relax the standards, and they would first off start allowing individuals with tattoos in specific areas, which were on their hands, neck, and those types of things. They would give them wavers, right? This is the same shit. It's like, "Oh yeah. Oh, you are qualified. Oh, I guess that ink doesn't really matter much on how you do the damn job". No shit, Uncle Sam. Joel: Yeah, and women have smaller brains than men do. I mean, what? Chad: Idiots. Joel: Was this a survey back in 1972? I am so confused by this. Chad: Oh god. Joel: By the way, aren't tattoos like a military thing? Who - Chad: They're a military thing. It's just, if they don't show in specific areas, because it has to be professional. Usually the ones on the arms and those types of things, back. But you don't see ones on the hands. But anyway, it doesn't matter. It doesn't mater if they have ink or not. If they have the skill set, they have the goddamn skill set. Joel: Yeah. Chad: The only reason companies are talking about, "Well, we should probably look at this standard that we put in place", yeah. No shit. You should have looked at that back in the 1950s, asshole. Joel: And we're old enough to almost remember the 1950s. Chad: Oh no we're not. Joel: Oh. Chad: Jesus. Joel: By the way. Chad: Yes? Joel: You know what is 100 percent digitally proficient? Chad: What's that? Joel: The machines. Chad: Yeah, no shit. Right? Joel: If you don't want to get your ass kicked by the machines, you might want to get more digitally proficient. Chad: So yeah, at the end of this, the writer actually said, he talks about transformation of recruiting. Recruiting is marketing. It is sales. It's one of those things that, you just don't understand the impact of all those different things. It's funny that we have these discussions now about brand and recruiting and outreach and cultivating talent. It's like, this all happens when? When we have a hard time finding the right people. Nobody gives a shit when the labor market is on the other side, and there's all this talent. Nobody gives a shit about the human beings. It's only when I can't find people that I really care about your feelings. Joel: Yeah. It's kind of about money. Chad: A lot. Joel: That's why this week in front of congress, Google said, "I'm not showing up". I say I because Google is a person. Google, I goes back to this vet thing, man. They play this total game of, "We're tweaking our search to help veterans", and then they give the US government a big FU and not show up to congress. Anyway. That's a totally different topic. Maybe we'll cover it in HR Tech. We probably won't. Joel: Another survey, a lot of surveys this week. When companies save all their big news for HR Tech they just send out surveys. Chad: Yeah. Makes it easy. Joel: Phenom People, who we don't talk about too much. Chad: Ed Newman! Joel: We like those guys, and they got a bunch of money recently. They had a survey, so I'll read through the highlights of that real quick. 84 percent of recruiters lack personal ... Sorry, career sites. 84 percent lack personalization through the talent experience. Shocker. 84 percent. One out of three has a visible and easily accessible apply button. What are they, where are they hiding the apply button? 59 percent fail to articulate employee value proposition. Yeah, okay. 98, let's just call it 100%, do not communicate the status of a candidate's application. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Sixteen percent do not have a career site, which I actually think will go up, because I think more people rely on their LinkedIn thing or their Indeed profile page. I don't think you need a career site anymore, frankly. Chad: You do. I mean, if you're a Fortune 500 company and you're a destination location- Joel: Okay, that's only 500 companies, dickweed. How about the other 30,000 in the U.S., or however many it is? Chad: Okay, dipshit. It's pretty simple. The number one or number two actual page that is trafficked on a website is the career site. It doesn't matter how fucking big or small your company is, if somebody is interested in your product, they might actually want to come work for you, so to be able to say, "Oh, they'll just go to LinkedIn," that's fucking stupid. Okay? You've got to have something there to be able to capture them, whether it's a lead generator, it doesn't matter. You have to have something there. So to see that go up, that would be a bunch of idiots who actually didn't have career sites. Joel: Anyway. You don't need a career site people, because you can just tell Alexa what you want to know and she'll tell you. Chad: Don't listen to him. Don't listen to him. Joel: Why don't companies communicate the status of an application? That's a really high number. Chad: These systems were created for processing the individuals on the back end, not as an experience for the candidates. That's not how these systems were created, and here's the problem. Once again, as we just talked about, nobody gives a shit about the human beings going into a black hole or their experience or any of this shit, until guess what? There aren't enough human beings with the types of skills that you need, and then guess what? Everybody gives a shit. That's why we had this stuff come out and people start talking about employer branding again. Chad: The thing that really blows my mind is that for years, for now decades, we've treated candidates like shit and candidates are customers and they spend money, which means you idiots in talent acquisition who don't get this, you've been negatively impacting the bottom line. One day a CEO or CFO is gonna come into your office, shut the door, and show you that you are putting red ink to their bottom line, you personally. Joel: And you're gonna go. Chad: That's so [crosstalk 00:28:36] Joel: Susan Vitale, if you're listening, Chad and I are coming to iCIMS in a month and we're gonna put your feet to the fire on why it's only 98% and why iCIMS isn't helping move the needle to communicating the status of a candidate as they go through the job search application process. Chad: This should be easy shit for companies who have tons of data, which I believe, I could be wrong, but I believe iCIMS has a ton of data. Joel: Yeah, probably. You know who else has a ton of data? Sponsor America's Job Exchange. Let's take a break and we'll talk about Upwork. AJE: 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: Okay. Joel: Do you remember the 7Up Yours advertising campaign? Chad: Yeah, uh-huh. Joel: I feel like Upwork should have something similar. Chad: Yeah. Upwork. Joel: I don't know how it would work. Chad: Upwork yours. Upwork yours. Okay, no. It doesn't work. Joel: Give Upwork. No, it doesn't work. Well anyway, Upwork in the news. We talked about the rumored IPO, apparently it's official. They filed for an IPO. They have not disclosed how much they're hoping to raise yet. They plan to list on the NASDAQ under the symbol UPWK, that's creative, right? The platform claims 475,000 clients listing freelance jobs and 375,000 freelance workers. Upwork has raised $169 million dollars to date. I think it's gonna be a home run unless they're asking for a ton of money or the valuation is crazy, but this to me is the most interesting IPO in our space in a long time. Chad: Well, and we were talking about this I think it was last week. Good for them. I mean, go IPO and let's see you grow this thing. We'll see. We'll see how it works. You're right. Valuation wise, Upwork is such, I think will be, such a good stock to be able to buy into because as I can't find people, I can turn those jobs pretty much into projects, and I can go to Upwork and find them. I might not be able to find full time people to be able to do a job, but if I break that job into projects, I can do something like that and there are many companies who can do that today, they just aren't focusing on it. Joel: Yeah. I can tell you, I've been using Upwork for my own businesses and my own consulting stuff for quite a while and I can tell you that when it started it was largely a foreign-based, let's call it India, Middle East, Philippines types of worker, or workforce. I could say today there's ... you can just see it progressing into a more like European, North America, it's becoming more and more common that you can find English speaking and North American workers as well as European, so to me, these guys are just scratching the surface in terms of the potential growth globally of what's gonna happen, their target enterprise which we've talked about. I think there's a day very soon where companies hire Upwork managers who just manage the talent base or workforce from Upwork. I think this is a real exciting ... Joel: I'm really surprised that there aren't more people looking to get into this space. You have Fiverr, which is really kind of smaller stuff, but to me, LinkedIn could turn this on fairly easily and really make a dent in that space, but no job board is touching this landscape at all, so to me more or less, Upwork has a moat that no one is trying to conquer at this point. Chad: Yeah. I think you might see Snag be able to start moving this way, maybe not entirely, but you've got to remember they're Upwork's old ... was it CEO or chairman? ... is now at Snag. He's the CEO at Snag. There might be a gravid pull from this, but what I want to be able to see is I want to be able to see these Uber types of apps that happen, and we've talked about, that rate the companies and rate the workers and the actual projects themselves, so you can go in, you can look through their portfolio and you can say whether I want person A, B, C, or D, doesn't matter, boom, here it is and I'm done. Chad: There's no reason why a platform like that shouldn't, couldn't really just make a killing, especially from startups, startups needing that base but not wanting the overhead, jump into Upwork or jump into Snag, make it happen, you're done, you don't have to worry about long term cost. Joel: Yeah, I think they're sort of two different focused. Upwork is the knowledge based worker for the most part. Snag is sort of the I need three waitresses tonight and ... I didn't mean to say waitress like I'm sexist, but like I need wait staff today, they show up. Upwork is like, "Hey, I need someone who understands PR to pimp my new product," or, "I need someone who knows how to develop Android apps." They seem to be two different companies or focuses, but I think the whole idea of like freelance nation, whether it's you show up and flip burgers or whether you work with four different companies around the globe to do SCO for example, that's a thing and it's becoming more of a thing and I think Upwork is hitting it probably at the right time. Joel: In fact- Chad: Or Snag. Joel: Or Snag. Yeah, Snag. I mean, we talked about Pared, we talked about Pared a little bit. There are ... apparently there are quite a few companies that are looking to get in this whole hourly on demand workforce through mobile technology, but yeah, it's an exciting time, which leads me to our next story. Chad: Yes. Joel: LinkedIn puts out its top 50, 25 to 50, startups every year and the usual suspects are on that list. The Ubers, the Lyfts, the whatever startup of the week you can think of is on this. Now, what struck me this year is I was going through the list, I was seeing where they were headquartered. There was actually one company, Halo Top Creamery, who I've never had and a chubby guy like me, I should have more ice cream, so maybe I'll check out Halo Top, but anyway, this company has no headquarters. They are a total virtual workforce. I find that fascinating. Chad: I find it smart. Again, we take a look at the 1950s version of what business is today and we start to just break it to pieces. I mean, why do we need a headquarters? Do we need to have somebody actually physically come into an office and talk to us, or can we rent space every now and again when we're actually having a meeting and trying to do a pitch for a client or go to their location, wherever the hell that is? Chad: Thinking out of the box cutting overhead is big. It's big so why do you need an HQ? I don't understand. Joel: Yeah, and you have these WeWork areas where people can go if they need an office or a meeting or a client, whatever. There are I'm sure local organizations all over the place. Here in Fishers we have a tech hub internet of things where you can pay $100 a month to get a workstation. You can use everything that's there from the printers to the offices to the conference room to the kitchen. To me, it's a really cool world because I work virtually. I work from a home office, and to see that being the future is really intriguing and fascinating to me. Joel: Now, I'm curious to see what commercial real estate is gonna do in a world like this, but I guess they'll adapt. Chad: Yeah, who knows? We'll turn them into bowling alleys again or some shit. I don't know. Joel: You can't turn real estate into AI machines so something's gotta happen with them. Chad: That's a very good point. You know, I don't mind, other than missing football, I don't mind this late night podcasting. It sounds like outside. Joel: I feel like you have a smoking jacket and like a shot of brandy or something while you're saying that. Chad: Yeah. Actually, Julie just brought up a bottle of wine, so that was my key to get off the podcast. Joel: Yeah, a few beers, alcoholic beverages, talking shop, it's not the end of the world. Chad: It's not. Joel: Maybe as winter closes in here in the Midwest it will be a good time to do nighttime podcasts. Who knows? Chad: Winter is coming. Joel: Of course the listeners have no idea what time of day it is, because they're just hearing us talk. All right, dude. I'll see you in Vegas. It will be interesting. If you're going to Vegas for HR Tech, look us up. It should be a good time. 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, and be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit chadcheese.com. Oh yeah, you're welcome. #Careerbuilder #Snag #Upwork #iCims #Monster #Tattoos #PhenomPeople

The weeks leading up to the HR Tech Conference are akin to a bucket o' crickets. But Chad & Cheese aren't slowing down. This week: - Google launches military veterans job search (not a big story) - Google shows their strategic hand - Nurses respond to text recruiting -- DUH - Is Careerbuilder prepping the Google logo on their site? - Snag shuffles the deck with a new COO and CXO - Japan's Exit quits jobs for you - at a price - Recruitology loves local newspaper - Amazon unleashes an army of tweeting zombies declaring love for warehouse jobs Get ya' popcorn and visit our sponsors: Sovren, JobAdX and America's Job Exchange. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. 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: Are you ready for some football. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Always a safe bet for your fantasy team. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: O-H. Joel: I-O. On this weeks show, Google shows the military some love, Chad, you'll like that. You can now pay to have someone quit your job for you- Chad: What? Joel: -thanks a lot millennials. And Amazon releases and army of tweeting worker zombies. Yeah. It's about to get a little uncomfortable up in here. Stay tuned. Sovren: Sovren AI matching is the most sophisticate matching engine on the market, because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks about each individual transaction. It will find, rank, and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches, it tells you how, and why it produced them. And offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you, so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI matching, visit sovren.com, that's S-O-V-R-E-N dot com. Joel: I'd the engine thinks like us, it needs some re-engineering. Chad: Yeah. Whenever I hear this ad I think of Westworld, have you watched Westworld on HBO? Joel: I have not. Chad: I always wonder if the androids on Westworld have Sovren logos on them somewhere. Joel: Let's move to shout-outs, shall we? Chad: Please. Joel: Let's preface this podcast by saying, it's a fairly slow week. HR tech is coming up. All the companies like Lock & Load, their PR HR tech. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And by the way, if you're a smaller company, that's probably not the greatest strategy because all the bloggers and podcasters are going to be talking to the big companies, making big announcements. So, if you're a smaller company it's actually a good time, right now, to release some stuff because people like us need stuff to talk about, and that could help us out. Joel: And also, don't want until the week after, because we're all hungover and don't want to talk about anything. So now's a good time, small startup, to drop your news on everybody. Joel: In fact, I think this week we may have more shout-outs than actually news, so let's get to those real quick. Chad: Okay. So Kelly Robinson's son's name, which you asked me on the last pod- Joel: Big fan. Chad: -is actually Maverick. I can't believe that shit. That's a pretty fricking cool name. Maverick Robinson. Anyway, he tweeted us. Joel: Dude, Kelly's the coolest dad ever. Chad: He's got to be. Joel: Name your kid Maverick. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Joel: Does he have like, another kid names Goose, and another kid named ... What were all the Top Gun names? Maverick, Goose ... Chad: Goose died. Maybe, Iceman. But I wouldn't name my kid Goose. Joel: Iceman, there you go. Chad: I mean, Goose ... He died. Dumbass. But yeah ... Joel: Give me a break. That's the only I could think of. Chad: So he reached out to us on Twitter, #ChadCheese. You should reach out too, say hi. Say we're awesome, say we suck. Whatever you want. Darren Revell, from RecruiterWEB, giving us some love on LinkedIn. Joel: Never heard of RecruiterWEB, it sounds awful. But yeah. Thanks for listening. That's great. I'm going to give a shout-out quick to Brian Wilson, at JobAdder, he's a big fan of the show. As well as Beth Herman, a big exect over at Monster, who's a regular listener. Beth, and Brian, thanks for listening. Chad: Brian Wilson, he was a Beach Boy, is that the same ... Not the same guy? Joel: Yeah. I don't think it's the same one. Chad: Okay. Joel: Yeah. I don't think the Brian Wilson is listening to recruitment podcasts. Chad: Could be. Could be. Joel: But that'd be cool. Chad: Yeah. Richard Collins, co-founder of ClickIQ, commented about the pod on LinkedIn, this is what he said, "From this side of the pond it's like looking through a small, angry window at the future. Love it. Keep up the great work." Well, Richard, we sc need to make that window bigger, so let's see what we can do about getting some Chad and Cheese live, over across the pond. I think that'd be a good time. Joel: They don't want none of this. Chad: Oh, they want it. Joel: Hung Lee. Chad: Hung Lee. Joel: We're still not sure if that's his porn name or his real name. But Hung Lee talked about us in his weekly newsletter- Chad: Really? Joel: -which I encourage you to get. It's sort of a synopsis of what's going on. But Hung Lee said we were, "The best podcast for breaking news." So Hung Lee, we really appreciate that. Chad: Love it. Joel: Got to get that cut on the show. Figure out the name thing, as well as tap into his brain. Because the dude knows a few things, apparently. Chad: Yeah. So Jen Henley, who was actually on a webinar with us, sent us, or at least she sent me, a handwritten Thank You card. And you don't get these very often, right? The handwritten card, comes to you in the mail, that is class. So good job NAS, love it, Jen. Thanks for being with us on the webinar. Joel: How awkward would it have been if I didn't get a card too? You might be having some 'splaning to do to Julie. Chad: Right. Yeah. Joel: I did get a card, so we're in the clear there. Chad: Good. Joel: Jen, yes, thanks for doing that. I found in my time in the business world, that the best sales people, the best partnership folks, are the ones that are doing the handwritten letters, doing the extra mile stuff. So, cheers to you, Jen. Not if Matt Adam is NAS would ever write me handwritten card, I'd probably pass out because that dude is lazy. Chad: Not to mention, he won't return your calls. Brendan Cruickshank, from Emissary.ai, hey, dude, thanks for sending me some- Joel: Sugar daddy. Chad: -New England craft beer. I had my first Super Mantis double IPA over the weekend, and it was delicious. He sent me like 12 beers, and there was probably like 6 different beers in it, so awesome, man. Love it. Joel: Yeah. That's great, Brendan. Yeah. I'm waiting on mine, by the way. That'd be nice. Yeah. Kyle Hager, our resident millennial. Yeah. He's really mad about the baby crying, and Kyle, you know what I have to say to you for that? ... Chad: Kyle? Yeah, Kyle. We're doing everything we can to get rid of that stupid-ass baby. HR tech, in a few weeks, what we talked about, reach out to us, Joel and I, we'll be there. Joel is going to be sponsored by Emissary.ai. I am going there with the Uncommon.co crew. If you'd like to talk, that's cool. Or maybe, you just want to buy us a beer. We're open to either one. So get ahold of us. Joel: I just want to know why Emissary is sponsoring my trip but you're getting beer. Like, help my understand that. That's really quite a quandary. Barb [Francillo 00:07:33], I think, maybe I said that correctly. She was in a conversation on social media, wants to know about other video solutions out there. Talked about be discussed Monster Studios, and wanted to know about that. One, Barb, thanks for listening to the show. Number two is, Monster Studios will apparently not be released until HR Tech, which is in a couple weeks, so you have to wait on that. Joel: However, I will add that your initial question was, "Is there someone out there, other than VideoMyJob?" And Monster Studios is going to be powered by VideoMyJob, so if you don't like VideoMyJob, you're probably not going to like Monster Studios. Chad: Or you might. It might all be about the brand. Who the hell knows? Joel: Who in the hell knows? Chad: Also, get your ass to TAtech in New Orleans, because Joel and I are going to be there for Death Match. We have four contestants, four startups that who are going to- Joel: Suckers. Chad: -be fighting to be the Death Match champion. It's all between Talkpush, which is Talkpush it. Joel: Push it real good ... Chad: Uncommon. Joel: Uncommon. Chad: Yeah. That's right, Uncommon. Canvas. Joel: AllyO. Chad: And AllyO. That's right. Those are the four. Make sure that you can get there. Joel: I want to see Aman and TEG go at it. I think that would be a fun fight, a fun match, to the death. Chad: Fun match to the death. TEG, Aman, yeah, no. I think they would just kind of sit down, have a beer, and chat it out. Joel: Yeah. And I think we could join that. I think we should join all the Death Match participants for mass quantities of alcohol for after the matches. Chad: I think that's something we need to do. And that being said, earlier this week, we dropped the Uncommon exclusive interview with Josh Zywien- Joel: Zywien. Chad: -from SmashFly. So if you want to talk a little Chatbot action, take a listen. Joel: He tells us what he thinks the next big thing is, so there you go. Chad: He does. He does. Joel: Are we ready to get to the news? Chad: Yeah. You already hit the damn bell Joel: I know. I thought you were going to the news, and you zigs when I was zagging. It's all good. Chad: Yeah. Just like Emerson. Joel: So Google vets, man, this is your lane. Go. Chad: Yeah. So I see this is really just a search upgrade for Google. You know? Yeah. It's all kind of wrapped in this veteran bow, and so on, so forth. It focuses on translating backgrounds, so if you're not well educated on military jobs ... They have stupid-ass identifiers that they use. You're not a "diesel mechanic" you're a '63 Juliette, to '93 Juliette, or something like that. So being able to take those codes and really translate them into real-world jobs, this is something that we in our industry have been trying to do for many different years. And to be quite frank, it just has sucked. I mean, it's either a separate search, or it's not integrated. Chad: But what Google's doing here, is they're integrating this new capability into their search. Their real Google search. And it works on the API, the Talent Solution Job search API, and also in Google For Jobs. So you can go to Google now, and just type in, let's say, for instance, 42A -- which is alpha -- and jobs. So 42A jobs, and it will automatically start the translation process and push you into those jobs. Joel: Have you tested this yet? Chad: Yes. And like most military job translators, it's not great. But I don't think that's the real story here. Joel: Oh, okay. Okay. How many vets do you think actually put in h2o, or whatever it is, and then jobs? Don't you think most would put in "veteran jobs" and go, "Oh, crap. Google lets me funnel that even more." Chad: If they know that it is available, the capability's available, they'll probably try it. But do they need to? They probably, really don't need to. They're being taught as they transition to be able to translate their own skill, so. I mean, again, I really don't think that the news, here, is being able to do this translation piece, okay? Joel: Okay. Chad: You know? I really that it's different on the capability side of the house. And number one, so all enterprise companies, job boards, and staffing agencies who already are using Google's Cloud Talent Solution, didn't have to life a finger to get this feature to go live on their sites. It was provided directly through the API. And it's kind like when Neo, in the Matrix, wanted to learn Kung-Fu. They just plugged it in, and that shit, he was ready. Right? It's the same kind of thing, dude. I think that's the story, personally. Yes. Getting it's all nice and fluffy. Hey, veterans, you can go put in your thing. Joel: Did you just make our first Matrix reference for the podcast? Chad: I think I might have. Joel: Yeah. I like that. I do like that. So I do like the fact that if veterans go to CareerBuilder, and Dice, and wherever -- like all the places that have this functionality -- and put in the codes, and get the jobs. You know? If they go to a site that doesn't have that functionality, they're going to go, "Well, this blows. And I'm going to go to this other site because they actually care about veterans." Yes? Chad: Yeah. I'd say to an extent. I mean, I would. Yeah. Indeed doesn't have this. Monster doesn't have it on their homepage search. You have to go to another search mechanism, which is all clunky, and it's shitty, and all that other fun stuff. But again, kind of going back to the real story. What happens when Google turns the veteran information loose on the candidate API, right? The candidate search API. Chad: So I mean, there are bigger, more strategic conversations to be having at this point. This is the very first step in the opportunity to start to match candidates for their veteran background to our current requisitions. So yes. This first step is really kind of like a shitty crosswalk step. Big deal, right? Chad: But at the end of this thing, this goes even further. So you have that candidate search APR start to kind of ingest some of those veteran military occupations. And then, I'm going to predict that we're to see Hire by Google surfacing, and matching transitioning military for these types of skills, using this data. Because we're already seeing it with regular recs, now, they've got this new data. Joel: So how is that going to work? Will companies flip a switch to say I'm amenable to veterans? Chad: No, won't have to. Joel: Or will it just say, here's a little flag next to the resume, or the candidate as you're searching so you know it's a veteran? Like, how do you think that's going to look? Chad: Yeah. I don't know that they'll have to do that. I mean, yeah. There could be like a little flag, or something. Who the hell knows? I just think, much like this API went on board and nobody had to lift a finger. People are looking for better ways to surface veteran talent, right? If Google can do that ... And the first step is, obviously, getting it in to search. Then starting to pull the candidates through to understand the candidate background. Then, you can start the matching process. Chad: We've already seen this happen in Hire by Google. Hire by Google, they have the matching piece, where it's actually surfacing candidates out of the applicant tracking system. These are the next steps in to making this happen much better. It's not only about search. It's about this AI matching piece, which I think Google is doing better at this point than most companies are. Joel: So you want to know what I think the story is? Chad: What? Joel: I think this a big handjob to Donald Trump. Now, I don't ... Look, I'm not against helping vets, vets are the best, you're a vet, like, that's all good. But if you think a bunch of geeks in Google's engineering room said, "Let's create a feature to help vets find jobs." Like, I think that's a little bit of a reach. Now do I think the executives at Google said, okay, Trump's on our ass. We came out against the immigrant stuff. Early on, a year ago, Google, Apple, Facebook, all said, immigrants need to come in, what you're doing, making illegal is bad, it just came out that, obviously you've seen Trump is, Google's out to get me. If I search Trump news, it's all bad news outlets and people. So to me, part of this is like, okay, executives in Google, what can we do to make Trump happy or what can we at least do to make it look like we're doing things for the home team? Veterans was probably on the short list, and they figured out, okay, let's help them get jobs. Let's create searches that help them get those jobs. So we'll make Boeing happy. We'll make Northrop Grumman happy, we'll make D.C. employers happy who are looking for clearance people and people in the military. And this'll look good for the home team. I don't doubt that this is a good thing. I just think that it was partly politically motivated and to me that's the story of this whole new veteran search thing on Google, Google for jobs. Chad: Yeah. I would think that there's always political motivation when you're a company as big as Google, but I don't believe that's the biggest reason why they did it. I mean they have veterans on their actual search team who were involved in this project at Google, so not to mention- Joel: Sure. And they have Muslims on the team. Why didn't they create a religious search parameter or why didn't they create, or women or? Chad: Companies are asking for these types of things. So like you said, Lockheed Martin or Raytheon or what have you. If they can make it easier for federal contractors on getting these veterans into their organization, then will they actually gravitate toward Google services? Well, hell yeah, they will. It just makes sense. They have a benchmark that they have to hit, or they have to at least demonstrate that they're trying to hit, for veteran hiring. This could be one of those ingredients in being able to get there, and again, it's all about the data. This is something that we haven't been able to solve yet. Google is all about data and again, I think if any of these AI companies that are out there really take this seriously, they can solve this and they can start to surface candidates into civilian jobs that are transitioning military. Joel: Well, Google's all about AI, but google is also all about making money. They're a public company. They're looking to get into China. It makes sense for them to make nice. I think we're both right. I just think that our listeners would be cheated if all we said about this was, it's a cool new feature. Here's what it does, yippiekiyay motherfucker. I think we should also put in there, hey, this could be partly at least politically motivated to make Trump happy that Google's helping out the home team. That's all I'm going to say. Chad: There's no way that this doesn't position Google better, right? There's no way that it doesn't, so yeah, it does make sense on all different fronts, but I do believe from a cash standpoint, from being able to engage these employers, with hire by Google or these APIs, it just makes a hell of a lot of good sense. It's nice, right. But the big story here is they were able to push these new capabilities out without any of these companies lifting a finger. The guys at CareerBuilder, who pretty much at this point should just put Google on the homepage, all they had to do was wake up and now they have a veteran search. It might not be the best veteran search right now, but it'll get better. They have a veteran search that is integrated into just their job search period. Monster doesn't have that, Indeed doesn't have that. Right out of the gate. So I think that is a big story versus just the veterans piece, right? It's the integration piece and the evolution piece that CareerBuilder is going to be able to enjoy, Jive's going to be able to enjoy, that some of these other organizations won't. Joel: Fair enough. I think stroking the guy in the White House is a bigger story, but that's just me. Joel: Moving on. Snag. You listeners will remember that Snag shit canned their CEO fairly recently, in exchange for a new CEO would help basically build up work and Elance and the whole freelance economy. Chad: Fabio. Joel: Fabio. Yes. News came out this week. They've now got a new COO and CXO, chief experience officer. You looked up these guys a little bit. I guess they're all homer's. They just kind of moved them up the ranks. What do you know about these guys? Chad: This is what you would expect from a CEO right out of the gate is they're looking at responsibilities, roles and responsibilities. So both of these individuals were already C level anyway, right? Monroe, who is now the CX, or the chief experience officer also chief people officer under his umbrella as well. So that is being shifted away and they're really having Monroe focus on the experience. So product, customer experience, candidate experience, those types of things, right? So they're getting rid of this big human resource pain in the ass and I believe they're actually just shifting it over to John Frederick, who joined the team in January as a chief administrative officer or something like that. He's being shifted over to COO, which is again, this is all about shifting responsibilities and priorities. From my standpoint, it makes it a hell of a lot of good sense, but we'll see again how it shakes out. I mean, Fabio has a damn good track record. So you gotta give the guy some props right out of the gate. Joel: Yeah. And usually when you see these new CEO, they either get rid of everybody and bring in their own team, or you see what we saw that with this case, is they start making nice with the people internally, moving them up. It definitely says to me the CEO was the problem, or at least everyone internally thought the CEO is the problem. And I also think that it's a vote of confidence for the vision of being a platform for hiring that we've talked about a few times. So I would expect to see a snag.co, the new app continue to move forward and spread across the country. I think I saw something in the news that they're looking into Canada and other parts of the world. So Snag, it looks like the vision is going forward. The people for the most part are the same folks. Just a new head of the snake if you will. Joel: Recruitology. Chad: We need an advert. Joel: Oh, you want an advert first? You want to hear the British lady from JobAdX, don't you? All right. JobAdX: How many times does someone said to you, we're the Uber of or it's the PayPal of, maybe better Facebook of. In many, many cases these comparisons full short of being close to reality or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. In the case of JobAdX, our example is so accurate, so spot on, that it's anonymous with our work. JobAdX is Google AdSense for jobs. That means we're an efficient, persistent and smarter ad unit for job related advertising. As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs and staffing firms real time dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. All this is done with the flexibility of JobAdX's cost per impression, click or application. We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. We're not set in regrets. JobAdX: For direct clients, JobAdX delivers superior candidates with the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. We also provide publishers and job boards, higher rev share than other partners through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30-40 percent greater and more through our scalable model. JobAdX: To partner with us, you can visit or search jobadx.com or email us at joinus@jobadx.com to get estimates. Or begin working together. JobAdX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatics for your needs. Oh, and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK, too. Joel: So when we organize the podcast, Chad and I have a private Facebook group. We share stories, things we're interested in and then we make notes and we put notes in a system that we record the podcast and sometimes I get a little excited and I skip over stuff. So Chad. Chad, thanks for keeping me in line there. Chad: Recruitology. Joel: Recruitology, say that fast 10 times. So they're in the news recently. They have a product that basically helps newspapers. They power their job postings, right? So companies can go to your local newspaper website, click post a job, you post it. The transaction happens there, the job gets posted on the newspaper side as well as the whole network of Recruitology. This used to be a big thing, CareerBuilder, Monster, Hot Jobs, their newspaper partnerships were huge deals. Those have since gone away. None of those. Hot Jobs doesn't exist. Monsters out of the game and CareerBuilder gave it up about a year ago. So we have this sort of fragmented race to partner with newspapers and as most people know, newspaper business isn't great. They need to make money. So these ways to post jobs are important to them. They don't really have the wherewithal or the technology to do it themselves really well. Joel: So anyway, Recruitology, Pandologic, who we've talked about, seem to be in the forefront. I'm surprised JobBoard.io, or jobboardio, whatever we're calling it today, isn't more into this game because the newspaper business is really fragmented, but Recruitology took the pole position this week. They partnered with the Tribune out of Chicago. They got the LA Times, they have the San Diego, the Tribune paper. They've got some big names under the Tribune brand, which used to be Tronc, which I don't think we ever talked about Tronc changing back its name from being a horrible name, Tronc. Joel: But anyway, big win for them in the newspaper space. I think if Google is going to take over the search thing, that if you're gonna get job exposure outside of Google, that these content partnerships are going to be really important. And back in the 2000s, partnering with media, local TV stations, associations, that was a big deal. And it faded away because everyone was into like, I'll just plug in the Indeed API or Simplyhired, and we'll make money on clicks. That's going away. So I think you're seeing this resurgence for a lot of different reasons, but Recruitology seems to be on the forefront. The leading edge of this race. Chad: There really was this laziness that happened, this real malaise, I guess you could say, in being able to just plug in Indeed API and just let it go and get paid per click and the experience wasn't really a local community experience, just getting whisked off to another site. How personal is that, versus something like this. Now, will it be a big win? I don't know. It depends on how they execute on this. And again, as we talk about local news and newspapers, I mean they're on the rise because of whatever politically that's happening locally and nationally. Chad: But there's more traction on local news and newspapers than there has been in many years. So being able to really just kind of springboard off of that is awesome. But you have to, you must keep it more of an intimate feel, because again, you're reading more of the community information, as opposed to just being whisked off to another site. So yeah, I think it could be a big one. I really do, because I think the content, there's so much content that is there that people are yearning for. They have to get, it's good content. They know it's not all this shit that's out on Facebook and whatnot, but it's also about targeting within that content, and knowing the person that you might have tagged to ensure that you're delivering the right type of job content to them. So there are some execution opportunities there for them, and hopefully it works out, because I'd love to be able to see this type of partnership actually work out. Joel: Yeah. And the crack down on fake news. We're seeing Facebook give preferential treatment to legitimate news sources in their feed. I think that helps newspapers and the jobs that are on those sites. A quick history lesson. Once job boards locally and niche job boards realized, hey, I could get traffic on Google for free, I don't need a big sales force. I can just plug in Indeed's API, make money on the clicks, life is good. My overhead's low, I'm getting paid and then Google for jobs came along and killed all the traffic. So now companies and job boards are trying to figure out, okay, where do I make up that traffic? And these kinds of partnerships are one way to do that. So I think it's pretty interesting. We'll see longterm how the newspapers and how these things go. But for now I think it's a good move. Chad: Yeah. It's all about execution though. I mean if it's the same old shit, just with a different lipstick on the same pig, man, it just doesn't fricking matter. You've got to focus on that user experience. Joel: Yeah. And I think programmatic plays into this, having the ad run on different news outlets, having things in related articles and having jobs show up on that. I know Pando is doing, if you read something about nursing, they show nursing jobs next to that content. All that stuff makes sense. And, and the content makes it happen. Well, another good strategy, segwaying into our next topic, story came out by a hospital. Do you remember what it was? Community Health. Chad: Yep, Community Health Network. Joel: Network. So they released, there was a story that they're getting 83 percent of candidates respond to text messaging. Which is great. It's in line with what we've talked about. 95 percent open rates, 90 plus percent open within the first 15 seconds of receipt. And now we're getting job search numbers around 80 plus percent will actually respond. That's a huge number. Chad: Oh god, yeah. And we're talking about nurses for the most case. But give props to Canvas because, they actually worked with Community Health Network. They had it rolled out in a limited basis in May of this year. By the end of June, they had 22 recruiters trained up and rolling and using the actual texting tool. Now they're talking about to date that they've contacted nearly a thousand individuals that are applicants, and that's where they've gotten their 83% response rate. The coolest part about this is understanding that nurses are hard to find in the first place. They're usually on the go? How are you going to get in front of them? Well, obviously it just made sense to start to integrate texting, so recruiters can pre-load a set of screening questions, interview questions. They can send information like benefits, just whatever, man, FAQs, those types of things. But there's interaction, and they've got that person opening those texts. Again, it's very strange to me that texting isn't a staple in most of these systems, these texting platforms. Joel: Yeah. Any marketing that you do, and recruiting is in there, it's taken how long until we actually start seeing text such and such on commercials to this number, right? That should've been something that was commonplace 10, 15 years ago. And it's just now starting to take hold. I mean, these numbers are legitimate. If you're sending in mails and emails that aren't getting answered, text is the way to get through. And Chad's right. If you're hiring people that are on the go, like nurses ... By the way, anyone under 25 pretty much lives on their phone now, so if you're not texting to recruit them, I think you're definitely at a disadvantage. To me, this is a big win for Canvas, Text Recruit, Emissary. I assume we'll start seeing more of these sort of text recruiting solutions pop up. But yeah, 83%. If you're not using text to recruit, contact one of those companies today and get started. Chad: Yeah. And again, we are more of a mobile culture than we ever have been today. So really, what's the mechanism that you can use to ensure that you're actually getting your message or your jobs in front of these people? I think it's pretty damn clear at this point. Joel: And for God sakes, don't call them. Nobody wants to talk to anybody anymore. Chad: Do not call Joel Cheesman. Joel: Don't call me. Chad: He will not answer the fucking phone. Joel: Listen to this ad from AJE instead. AJE: America's Job Exchange is celebrating our 10th year as in industry leader in diversity recruitment and OFCCP compliance. We've been helping our 1000 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: Get that compliance on. Joel: That's right. Well, it's time for my favorite segment of the show. Chad: Killing me. Joel: Millennials. Chad: Just so everybody knows, Joel has a toddler, so he has to hear this. He wants to put everybody through the same experience. It's not fair, and I say we put together a list, and I need signatures. Joel: Hashtag Chad Cheese to quit the crying. All right. News out this week, this blows my mind. There's a company in Japan called Exit, who will quit for you if you don't want to go back to your job. Chad: Stupidest shit ever. Joel: We've entitled mealy mouthed millennials who can't suck it up and call their boss or go into work and say, "I'm resigning," can now contact this company, and for $450, have them quit for you. Chad: Yes. Joel: Now there are discounts. I love this. There are discounts for frequent customers. If you quit your job a lot, you can get discounts. And what is it? You get a $90 discount if you're a repeat customer. And if you're a part-time worker, it's only $360, so yeah. This is so ridiculous and so millennial. I can't stand it. Chad: I don't understand. It says, "Stressed out, overworked, and just over it." Right? At that point, if you are stressed out, you're overworked and you're just over it, it is cathartic to say, "Take this job and shove it," or, "Hey. I'm getting the fuck out of here." Right? That, to me, relieves that stress. But yet, I guess that would be for a guy like me, who, I don't mind confrontation. Joel: No shit. Chad: But it blows my mind that you don't have the chutzpah just to look somebody in the eye and say, "Look. I just took another job. I appreciate it. Have a nice fucking day." It's hard. And it gets worse. It seems that Exit has tapped into a growing sector in Japan's economy. The Japan Times reports that several competitors have cropped up in this space, and also attracted investment offers from venture capital firms. Right? I mean, not only bad enough that there's one company that's popping up that's helping people quit, you have a bunch of these companies popping up for a bunch of weak ass, okay, I'm going to say it, millennials, who can't look their boss in the eye, give them a piece of paper and say, "I resign." I mean, that's all it is. Joel: It is better than ghosting though. Chad: Yes. Yeah. Joel: It's still weak. It's seriously weak still. But it is better than just ghosting an employer. And by the way, if you're an employer who gets a call from another company telling us that someone is quitting, please contact us. We want to know more. Chad: Yeah. And just remember, back in the day, the Take This Job and Shove It by Johnny Paycheck, I mean, that was something that was celebrated, when you could tell your boss to take the job and shove it. These guys are not. They're whining in the fucking corner. It's crazy. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You just aged yourself. But that's all good, because we're the same age. Keeping on with the millennial trend, although you disagree with me a little bit on this one. A company called Helpr, keeping with the Flickr trend, there's no E before the R, so it's H-E-L-P-R, helps companies provide daycare for their workers. Now to me, this is a total millennial play. This is just like the company that gave young folks who were having children, this space age crib that basically rocked your kid for you, gave it its bottle for you, and talked to it for you. I'm being a little bit facetious, but you get the point. This whole like, baby this generation, give them childcare, give them cribs, give them time, whatever that they need to go yoga or whatever the hell they do. To me, this is coddling. It's a business, in fairness to them, taking advantage of this. But to me, this is another millennial business that I hate. Chad: Okay. This story's wrapped in millennial, which is bullshit, and I don't agree at all with what you just said, especially when it comes to the fucking crib thing. One of the things that we've seen, even Xers and boomers, all the way through, is a female gets what they call mommy tracked. Have you ever heard of that, getting mommy tracked, where when you have a baby, what happens? You are off and maybe you're raising that baby. And therefore, you have to put your career on hold. Now in many cases, the reason why the female feels like she has to stay home, because number one, she's mommy. Number two, they can't afford to pay for possible daycare. And even in this Fast Company article, says, "A Pew study found that 54% of households with two working parents, the mother still does more when it comes to children," and that comes to, obviously, child care. Chad: I think you're 100% wrong, and I think Fast Company wrapping this in a millennial package is bullshit. This has been a problem we have had for decades. Females are getting mommy tracked because they're having babies. And guess what. This is just showing that it's happening to day too. To be able to actually offer ... And as we talk about inclusivity, as we talk about being able to bring more females into different areas like engineering and things like that, these are the types of things that we need to do to be able to help them do that so that they don't get "mommy tracked." Joel: Did your mom work? Chad: My mom did work. Joel: Did your dad work? Chad: My dad did work. They were divorced when I was eight. Joel: What'd they do with you? What's they do your dumb ass? Chad: Luckily, we had family to be able to pick up the gaps. But it wasn't easy. Not to mention, we were also latchkey kids. Remember latchkey kids? Joel: I was one of them. Chad: I know. Joel: We turned out okay. Didn't we? I didn't need some corporate nanny to raise me. Chad: I mean, my mom took time off when I was a baby. There's no question. Was she mommy tracked? I don't know. We haven't had this discussion. Maybe I should. But it's real. It is real. Nobody said that you needed somebody to raise you, but throwing you in a cage with a bottle until mom comes home isn't an option either. Right? Joel: We had a couple wolves in my neighborhood, and my mom just threw me to them and they raised me. And I turned out just fine. Go on to the next story, damn it. This podcast is going on too long. A bizarre story out of Amazon world, reported by TechCrunch, there's a strange little online community. Quoted from the story, "Amazon has developed an unnerving Step ford like presence on Twitter in the form of several accounts of definitely real on the floor workers, who regurgitate talking points and assure the world that all is right in the company's infamously punishing warehouse jobs." What do you make of this shit? Chad: This is a response to the stories of Amazon employees skipping bathroom breaks or peeing in trash cans because it's faster than going to the bathroom because they don't want to be able to miss their quotas, and prospectively get fired, fitting employees with tracking wristlets that they were testing in the UK, I mean, just poor working conditions overall. I mean, go out to Google. Look for Amazon warehouse poor working conditions. Or do a search. You'll see they're all over the place. This, there's no question, is really a response to that. And they're trying to play the human troll farm, I guess you could say, internal troll farm, to be able to try to combat this. It's bullshit. It's the same regurgitating stuff from different people. Joel: I'd love to see how they're logistically doing this. Are they emailing folks and saying, "Copy and paste one of the following and tweet it out"? Are they making the accounts from the employees? Are they setting them up for the employees and then controlling them? This is really intriguing to me. Chad: Yeah. Are they plugging them into something like a TweetDeck, and they have all these tweets already ready to fire out? I don't know. But the tweets are way too similar not to say that they're aren't, they aren't just pushing out standardized bullshit. Joel: Yeah. There's no doubt this is ... If you want, can I read one of the tweets? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Okay. Hello, exclamation point, which is always sort of a giveaway, I work in an Amazon FC in WA, and our wages and benefits are very good. Amazon plays FC employees roughly 30% more than traditional retail stores and offers full medical benefits from day one. Working conditions are very good, clean/well lit. Safety is a top priority at my facility. Number one, no one actually tweets like that, and it just reeks of corporate manipulation. And the good news is the internet will uncover this stuff. It will call you out on it, and you'll get in trouble, just like Amazon is. So yeah, don't mess with the brand because if it's fabricated, people will notice. Chad: The problem is, now they're going to get smarter. They're going to chunk this up and make it more kind of personalized continue to do the same trolling bullshit. Joel: Yeah. I mean, they'll AI it. They'll make scripts automatically that sound like humans. They'll partner with Google Duplex to tweet actual sounding people tweets to mass produce these things. And some vendor will make this a product and sell it to companies to make zombie tweets of employees tweeting out about how great it is to work at the company. This will be a thing. Chad: Okay. I'm done. Joel: We out? Chad: We out. Tristen: Hi. I'm Tristen. Thanks for listening to my step-dad, Chad, and his goofy friend Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss out on all the knowledge dropping that's happening up in here. They made me say that. The most important part is to check out our sponsors because I need new track spikes, you know, the expensive shiny gold pair that are extra because, well, I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com.

With the HR Tech Conference right around the corner, there's no stopping the news cycle in recruitment. This week, the boys discuss - Bing doing its best Google for Jobs impression - Google Talent Solutions will sell your product! - Monster Releasing a new iOS app ... sorta - ReSi Finalists - Vervoe making news, and much more... Enjoy, and checkout our sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren and JobAdX. They make it all happen. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps forward thinking employers create world class hiring and retention programs for 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 and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Aha, aha, aha. Well, less than 10 days before football season. Are Chad and Cheese on your fantasy team? Sure as hell should be. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast, HR's most dangerous. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm your number one pick, Chad Sowash. Joel: Who gets injured in week one. On this week's show, is Monster readying for a close up? Bing does a great Google for jobs impression, and thank baby Jesus, generation Z is going to outnumber those pesky millennials within the year. And when there's a millennial mentioned, you know what comes next. Chad: Sweet Jesus. Joel: Oh, yes. Get ready everybody. But first a word from JobAdX. That wasn't a very good British accent. But here's one, it's horrible. JobAdX: How many times has someone said to you, "We're the Uber of ..." or, "It's the PayPal of ..." Maybe they're the Facebook of. In many, many cases these comparisons fall short of being closer to reality, or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. In the case of JobAdX, our example is so accurate, so spot on, that it's synonymous our work. JobAdX is Google Ad Sense for jobs. That means we're an efficient, persistent, and smarter ad unit for job related advertising. JobAdX: As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs, and staffing firms real-time dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings, through the industry's first truly responsive tool. All this is done with the flexibility of JobAdX cost per impression, click, or application. We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. We're not set in regret. For direct clients JobAdX deliver superior candidates with the best of programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. We also provide publishers and job boards hire rev share than other partners through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30-40% greater and more scalable model. JobAdX: To partner with us, you can visit or search JobAdX.com or email us at joinus@JobAdX.com to get estimates or begin working together. JobAdX, the best add to providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Oh and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK, too. Joel: We need to start putting a time limit on how long our ads can play. I love the British accent but damn, she's chatty. Chad: She is chatty. Come on. Joel: Speaking of chatty, let's get to shout outs. Chad: Yes, first one, guess what HR Tech? Fuck off, guys. Guess what? Guess what? We're coming to HR Tech. Yeah. Joel: We may have to wear disguises. For me, emissary.ai, the artist formerly known are also known as Juju is sponsoring my trip. Chad: Very nice. Joel: But you've been taking care for a while, because you've got sugar daddies all over the place. Uncommon is hooking you up, Emissary.ai is hooking me up. HR Tech's in trouble. It's on. Chad: It's fuckin on. That's all there is to it. Joel: Yeah after getting snubbed- Chad: Yeah, HR Tech, too bad. You're not keeping the Chad and Cheese down. Joel: And we're crashing the press room. Whether you like it or not, so I hope you have security detail at the press room. By the way, if you want to talk to us at HR Tech, if you've got a good story, you got a good product, your start up, whatever it is. If you think you got the hutzpah to talk to us, hit us up ChadCheese.com and we will filter out the bullshit from the dope companies. Chad: That's exactly right. And then another really dope place you should be is in New Orleans, coming up later in September where Chad and Cheese, we're going to do Death Match, startup Death Match. Joel: Yes. Who are those four lucky companies, Chad? Chad: Those four lucky companies. we've got TalkPush, We've got Uncommon, Canvas, and AllyO. Joel: That's a top-notch group of suckers, I mean companies, that are gonna come to Death Match. Can we can we have the salt and pepper Push Push It theme song when Talk Push comes out, because I want to see you twerk to to Salt and Peppa in a little bit Spinderella. Chad: I don't know how Max doesn't, whenever he enters a room, doesn't just like have that playing. Joel: He should just have like an '80s style jam box with a cassette tape. Chad: On his shoulder, yeah. Joel: Push it. Push it real good. [crosstalk] Joel: Todd Markle, a new listener, was turned on to our show by a longtime listener, longtime contact of ours, Matt Adam. They're at NAS. More surprising to me that Todd like the show was the fact that Matt Adam thinks so lowly of Todd to recommend the show to him, but a big shot out to both of those meatheads. Chad: Oh, you know Matt Adam is a big time listener. He waits for it to actually hit the feed and then he's on it, man. Joel: Well he can't watch Reds baseball or Bengals football, because they both stink. Chad: I'm gonna get get beyond that. Louise Triance and UK recruiter. Big shout out for allowing me to engage with your peeps and really just rant about Google For jobs for like 40 minutes. It was awesome. We had a great chat back and forth, had about 125 (actually over 150 opps) people on the chat/webinar, whatever the hell you want to call it, but great. I mean, we talked about impact of Google for job, getting ready for Google for jobs, it will indeed die, and you can see it all. That's right. It's recorded. Go to ChadCheese.com, it's on the home page, click on it and you're good to go. Joel: I'm just happy that there's somebody else as dumb as me to voluntarily put you on the air. Wow, it's good to know I'm not alone. Thanks. Of course, they're from Europe so they have a different hole. Chad: Well Ryan Christoi. wanted to see what Chad had to say, because he emailed me and it was pretty much, I want to paraphrase, it was pretty much like, "What the fuck, Sowash? This is 6:00 am in California. And then he's like, "Oh shit, this is a UK webinar." Chad: Now he didn't actually say that, that's my translation of how Ryan was feeling. But yeah, that was funny as hell. Joel: Californians are so angry. I don't get it. It's sunshine there 300 days a year. Anyway, my last shout out is an order one goes out to Bed Bath and Beyond. And no, I didn't buy a new loofa. Beyond.com now goes to Bed Bath and Beyond new, destined to be super successful subscription service, for whatever you buy at Bed Bath and Beyond, so we've been waiting for that change to happen. It finally did. I thought it deserved a shout out. Chad: No it definitely deserves a shout out. Here's one that I love, so out to our friend Kelly Robinson, he apparently walked in on his 20 year old son and caught him doing guess what? Joel: Well you better keep going or else even our show could be too hot for iTunes. Chad: Caught him listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: What? Chad: I know. What the hell is this? Joel: This kid needs to get out more. Chad: No, he just wants to be like dad he wants to be an industry stud, so he needs to get in a little time with Chad and Cheese, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Joel: Can't blame him for wanting to have dad's bank account someday. That's for sure. Well, what's his name? Do we know? Chad: Kelly's son. That's his name. Joel: Kelly's son, if you're listening, dude, ups to you, man. You're probably our youngest loyal listener, at this point. And go get a girlfriend and drink a beer, while you're at it, which I'm sure is legal in his country. Chad: In his country? In California. They live in California. Joel: Go smoke some weed. Can you do that in California? Chad: If he has a medical card I think. No I think actually they do have recreational, I think. Joel: Well there you go, go get high. Listen to Chad and Cheese on one half the speed, and you'll have a great time, apparently. According to some of our readers. Oh, man. Can we get to the show now? Joel: Alright, this is kind of cool. Bing does great impressions of Google, right? Look and feel, algorithm, pretty much does everything Google does, so we should not be surprised that, I believe, you or one of your peeps found or alerted you to the fact that Bing is now doing a Google for jobs type feature on Bing searches for jobs. Now, what I think is interesting, and you have a little segue into Google's view on this, but the jobs that you see on Bing conveniently are only LinkedIn jobs or jobs that are posted on LinkedIn, as opposed to Google, which is all kinds of jobs from all over the place. Unless you're Indeed because you're too stupid put your jobs to Google. Joel: This is, it's kind of shitty. I get it. You pay 26 billion. You want to drive more traffic and engagement and yada yada. So I have nothing bad to say, I guess I would do the same. Why push some other competitors if you own you know the competitor to them? So yeah, Bing is going Google for jobs. But it's only LinkedIn postings. So, if you're ... you know. Joel: And by the way, it's like we think a lot that like Google is a monopoly in search, and I know it feels that way but they're actually not. Most numbers put Google's search market share in the US at about 60, 65%, which is a lot. But Bing and Bing properties, Microsoft properties, they're at like the 25 percent number. So this is like nothing to sneeze at, even if it's 1/3 of the excitement. If you want your jobs to get extra leverage and exposure on Bing, 25% market share in the US, post those jobs on LinkedIn, because they're going to get more traffic, most likely. Chad: So here's Mona over at KRT. She hooked me up. So she sent the screenshot, and she also gave me some search research that is kind of counter to what you're talking about, where within the last 12 months in the US, Google has an 86% market share, where Bing is at 7.5% percent, and globally at 90% versus Bing's 3%. Now, we're talking market share right. Chad: Different than the actual search gain, but still, we're talking about market share. That 90% of a market share, yeah, that's pretty much teach toward -- if not the definition of -- a monopoly. But when you take a look at Bing and what they're doing, Mona was able to capture it. I wasn't able to recreate it on mine so it looks like they're in beta. But the way that they have it set up, the Jobs Powered by Linkedin, since they only have a 7.5 or a 3% market share, I don't think that they're going to have to worry about any monopoly kinds of conversations. So they'll just slam Linkedin jobs down everybody's throat, or at least the small percentage of people who are actually using Bing. Joel: We're seeing this with Linkedin in general, right? If you're an Outlook user ... You're the Microsoft user in the crowd here. They're integrating Linkedin everywhere, so it certainly makes sense that they do it in their search for job postings. And I would assume that people search at some point, like Linkedin searches for people, will get added exposure as well. Chad: I think it's smart for them no matter what. You're talking about the long game here, and the long game isn't Bing. It's about being able to integrate Linkedin and its content throughout the entire Microsoft suite and beyond. Right? I think from a strategic standpoint, this just continues to demonstrate to us that Microsoft is looking at that $26.2 billion and they're saying we've got to do more with this, and they are. Joel: And I think that it also underscores what we've been talking about forever in that this triple threat of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook is for real, and this is just another sign that it's moving toward that kind of three solution universe. Because they keep doing these things, they're clearly serious about it and this is another example. Chad: Yes. And that being said as we transition into, we're talking about Google products, we saw a post actually before we got on the podcast from Tarquin Clark, who's the Director of Partnerships and Go-to-Market at Google for the Cloud, which used to be Jobs Discovery, which is now Talent Solutions, all that other happy horseshit. Anyway- Joel: Tarquin's a big deal. Chad: He's a big deal. Joel: He's a big deal. Chad: He's a big deal. Joel: He's a big deal. Huge. Chad: He actually posted on Linkedin, and it's probably everywhere as well, pimping their different partners who are using Google, and this is pretty much the truxt of the post. "Hey, look. Hey guys out there. Do you want to use Google products? You should, and here's who you talk to, to actually use those products." And it states, "Career Builder, great people; Jibe, on gig; Phenom ..." And it just goes on. So Google is actually, which is really cool, not do you just want their tech -- their machine learning and their AI and all that other happy horseshit -- but you want them to pimp your stuff. Here's Google actually on Linkedin saying use their shit. Joel: Sorry, Indeed. They're not pimping you. We're partnered with Google, and by the way, their big, swinging you-know-what is tweeting out that they're doing business with us and hot linking to our stuff. That's pretty cool. Chad: And he has a quote. It says, "And the best bit," here's the quote, "it was as simple as making a phone call and asking for it to be switched on." It was too easy, dude. Joel: You and I could figure that one out. Chad: Yeah. I could make a phone call. I could just ... I think at this point, Google knows that I want it turned on so it's just going to do it for me. Joel: Our next bit of news will be Facebook buying ZipRecruiter, and ZipRecruiter jobs exclusively populating Facebook. Can I make that prediction? Chad: Whoo, you can make that prediction. That's a big prediction. I'd like to see that. That would be fuckin' awesome. Joel: For ZipRecruiter, it would anyway. Chad: Yeah. I think it'd be awesome for both. I don't know about you, I think that shit would work out. I don't think it's going to happen, but I think that would work out well. Joel: It'll happen right after Amazon buys Slack. Let's go to our next story, not quite as exciting but much more mysterious. Monster Studios is a new app in the iOS app store. So if you have an iPhone or iPad or -- I don't think there's a watch app for it but maybe there is -- you can go search Monster Studios and download it, however you will not be able to sign in. That's because it's not launched yet. Chad: What the fuck is it? Joel: It will be launched at HR Tech, according to Monster PR. So what this is -- and I did a little digging and did a story for it -- Monster is partnered with VideoMyJob, who I think we've talked about. I know I've done an interview with them at ERE. They do videos kind of a cool, interesting way. They have the actually script on the screen so you can be reading and being recorded, and you can edit it pretty in cool ways. Joel: So anyway, Monster has apparently partnered with these guys. They're going to provide the tech to video record a recruiter employer. They do the recording, they upload it, they can attach it directly to a job posting on Monster, and then they can also push it out to social media, and I believe they'll also be able to advertise it on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook channels. So that's apparently what Monster Studios is. I have been approached by them for us to talk to their CEO, which would be kind of cool, and we'll definitely get to the bottom of it. Chad: Do you think that's the only thing they have coming out at HR Tech? Joel: Monster has sort of said we're going after mobile. Their new ads talk about on the mobile app, the Monster mobile app. And now they have a new app where you can record video, so it looks like mobile and video might be something that they're definitely focused on because that's what we've seen. Now I will say that some of you will remember the Jobr, that's J-O-B-R, acquisition from a couple years back ... Chad: That was crap. Joel: ... that pretty much looked like a big stinker. Chad: Yes. Joel: Apparently someone from Monster, because I dissed Jobr on Linkedin, said you're right but if they get video cover letters right, then maybe we'll have done something. My guess is wouldn't be surprised if down the road they have something for job seekers to record a video, attach it to their resume. And of course, you and I are both big fans of video resumes ... Chad: Not at all. Joel: ... so video cover letters, even more awesome, right? Chad: Right. Joel: Let's Mr. Recruiter give me two minutes to watch a cover letter as opposed to the resume, or give me both videos on both because I have no better thing to do with my time than watch videos. Chad: Yeah, yes. Do we have time for cover letters right now as it is? And then to be able to go ahead and stir the bias into that video resume or cover letter? It's just, once again it seems horrible. Joel: So let's back up. Let's talk about what we know for sure. We don't know that they're going to do cover letters, but we do know that they're going to have employers post videos and connect those to jobs. Are you in favor of that at least? Chad: Yeah. I think that is good content. I think that's good content. And hopefully, it doesn't flip over to the Jobr side. Joel: Well hopefully, employers are creative and actually have their brand come out in these videos, and they don't just point the phone at their face and talk and then attach it, because it could be almost as detrimental to your brand if you just put on these boring little scripted videos to people than if you actually get creative with it. It'll be interesting to see how employers embrace this or if they do. Monster's throwing stuff at the wall. We'll see if it sticks. Chad: See if it sticks. Hopefully, they have more at HR Tech to be able to wow us with. We'll see. Hopefully, we'll get to talk to the CEO and he has the coolest shit in the world. Joel: And speaking of wow companies, we're going to take a quick break here from A-J-E and talk about some of the ReSIs -- if you don't know what those are, stick around -- some of the finalists for the awards at the ReSIs this year. Stay tuned. AJE: 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. What to learn more? Call us at (866) 926-6284, or visit us at www.AmericasJobExchange.com. Joel: Whoo hoo! Joel: So if you haven't heard, the Chad & Cheese podcast is a finalist for Best Blog Podcast, Recruitment Category, obviously. In this space, we're up against Matt Charney ... Chad: Who's that guy? Joel: A long-time blogger, Recruiting Daily. Most of our listeners will know Matt Charney. It should be a fun competition. Anyway, it's nice to be recognized. I am the reigning champ so I'm expecting to have a good showing at this thing, Chad. That means I might actually wear a tuxedo this year. Joel: But anyway, TAtech has these awards every year. They call them the ReSIs. The finalists were put out; maybe we can get a list on Chad & Cheese, a full list. But going through that, what are some of the face-offs that most appeal to you? Chad: First off, just so everybody understand what ReSI stands for because I always have to look it up: the Recruiting Service Innovation Awards. And the ones that really stuck out to me were the ones that included Google for Jobs right out of the gate. Everything else was like, "Yeah, that's kind of cool, that's kind of cool." It's like, "Oh." The Most Innovative Enterprise Solution was either Crowded, Refresh -- which we both like-- or Google for Jobs. And I thought I don't know how that actually fits into it, but obviously anything that says Google automatically makes it to the finals. Chad: And then also the Innovator of the Year, Large Employment Site, Google for Jobs or ZipRecruiter. I see Google for Jobs getting a lot of love because there's no question they're changing the landscape I think right out of the gate. They're still at baby step mode. I don't know that I would say that they are on the precipice of innovation at this point. I think they're on their way to really just kickin' ass and taking names. Chad: But this year's ReSI I think for the Most Innovative Enterprise Solutions should go to Crowded; that's me. And also the Large Employment Site, man, ZipRecruiter has knocked this shit out of the frickin' park. I think they ... I just think it's interesting that when Google is attached to something that they're automatically at the final stage. Joel: For me, any chance that Howie Schwartz from Crowded can go up on stage and say something, I'm all for that because that could go any direction whatsoever. My takeaways from the list are, first of all, who the hell is Pushnami? They're in for Most Innovative Mobile Solution. Oh no, no, no. They're in for Most Innovative Cloud-Based Solution, and I've never heard of them so that will be interesting. Joel: I like the most innovative big data, pitting Entelo versus LinkedIn. We don't see a lot of LinkedIn on this, so it'll be interesting to see how they perform on that scale. I think on the most innovative mobile, Indeed, I'm not sure why they're there and I think Canvas and Emissary maybe missed an opportunity to go against TextRecruit on that one. And I think the fun one is the small guy, innovator of the year, Resume-Library with a hyphen and Mac's List. Which, if you've never met Mac, it's literally like a couple dudes or a few people in Oregon, I think, that have this Craigslist type site. Joel: So to me, those are heavy hitters. They don't deserve to be in the small employment site. By next year, I'm sure they'll be on the enterprise level, but so enjoy these small guys while they're small, because clearly Resume-Library and Mac's List are destined for bigger and better things. Tongue in cheek. Chad: Yeah. And I think ... I know you're talking about suiting up for this and tuxing up for this, but I really think we should wear our Indeed orange jumpsuits. I think that would be cool. Joel: I do like that idea, too. We have time to come up with something creative. You got me thinking. Alright. Chad: Hey, if you're out there in listener land and you've got an idea of how we should dress, throw it out to us. Tweet it. Let's have some fun with it. Joel: By the way, we should shout out to our listeners because we've been begging for votes for weeks. Apparently it has paid off. Thank you for those who voted, we greatly appreciate it. Chad: Yeah. Where's the applause? What's going on? Joel: Oh, hold on. I gotta. There you go. Because if- Chad: You can find that baby, for god's sakes. Joel: Because if we wouldn't have won ... that's where- Chad: You said only millennials. Joel: Damn it. It's just too tempting. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Well, your boys at Vervoe were in the news. What's going on with them? Chad: Yeah. It seems pretty cool. I mean, Vervoe ... and again, they were our very first Firing Squad. And I really like the technology. I really like more of the process methodology. It just made more sense for screening and going through the process and allowing everybody at the top of the funnel to at least have a shot at it. What they're doing now is they've implemented obviously all these different test whether it's videos or it's coding or whatever it is. Chad: What they've done is, they've turned AI and machine learning loose to score and then rank all of those individuals who are taking those tests. So as you're going into your system, which is totally cool because, again, everybody comes through one door and then they're funneled by the system after they're taking these tests and they're answering these questions, so I think it just makes a lot of good sense. They got some money from ... was it SEEK? Joel: Seek and you shall find. Chad: And it looks like they're using it in the right way, so good for Omer and the team down under. Joel: Clearly it's a testament to companies who come on the Firing Squad that brighter days are ahead of you, including big paydays from big companies and new technologies and discussions on our show. So I think Vervoe is doing ... in juxtaposition, you like that word? Of what Monster's doing with video and making it more manual, Vervoe is coming to bat and saying, "Look, we're doing video. You don't have to watch the video. We'll do screening of the video. We'll rank the video in the pre-screening and the tests that they do and how they answer the questions." Joel: Vervoe is making a very nice attempt to AI the whole thing, especially for the small companies, and bring that in a technical video format that's really cool. So it's been fun watching them grow, and I expect to see them continue. Omer, I believe, is gonna be at HR Tech. We should try to find some time to get an update from him. Chad: Oh, yeah. No, I asked him for a full demo and also I'd like him to bring the drinks as well. That'd be great. Joel: If he could bring the Foster's from Australia, that'd be nice. When was the last time you had a Foster's? Man, that beer used to be everywhere in the 80's. Chad: Like the oil can? Joel: Yes. Chad: The big frickin' oil can frickin' Foster's. Yeah, it's been a long time. That's because I like good beer and I'm a beer snob now. So only the good stuff, Omer. Not that Foster's. Joel: But is Foster's even around? I mean, do you have to go to the Outback Steakhouse to get it? Is that the only place? Which, I haven't been there since the 80's either, so. If you got any update on Foster's lager, hit us up at chadcheese.com because the mystery needs to be solved. Chad: Go to Twitter and tag Joel. I don't want to hear anything about that shitty beer, okay? Joel: You're such a snob. And speaking of people who aren't snobs, let's hear that ... get a quick work from Sovren and talk about ... geez, I guess a rapid fire bunch of shit. Chad: Okay. Sovren: Sovren AI matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the marked because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine think about each individual transaction. It will find, rank, and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches, it tells you how and why it produced them and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you, so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI matching, visit sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N dot com. Chad: I love ... the best matches. I mean, literally. She could read the phone book, if they even make those anymore, she could read the phone book and it would sound amazing. Joel: Dude, she's an employee. Chad: Or she was. Joel: I don't know what she does. Yeah, she's probably doing commercials for Clorox now, but we had her first, god damn it. Chad: That's right. Remember that. Joel: Let's talk about money and then let this thing really go off the rails. Chad: Okay. Joel: ThinkHR's in the news for raising, really, quite a bit of money. 67 and a half million dollars. It's a pretty unexciting space. Training, compliance tools, should I go on? Chad: It's boring shit, but it's also shit that needs to be done, right? So there's the training and all those things. I'd really like to see this space become more focused on the experience. Maybe that's what they'll use the money for. I doubt it, but yeah. No, they're focused on the concepting side of the house, being able to provide tools and training to companies, and it's all revolving around compliance and just making sure that you're covering your ass. Joel: Plus that ... we talk about the whole space, and there's a story this past week, I think, about companies hiring folks that don't have degrees that traditionally only hire people with degrees. And to me, it's this whole evolution of ... it's more than just supply and demand. I understand there's less talent to do the jobs. But it's also the fact that skills are changing so rapidly. Get people on that have a base level of understanding and train them and keep educating them, and I think tools like ThinkHR are sort of on the cutting edge of making that commonplace going forward. Chad: Yeah. And that being said, employers now seem to be open to ditching degrees. Nine out of 10 employers report being ready to accept candidates without a four year degree to fill positions in an increasingly tight labor market. And this is my "yeah, no shit." Because after all the year of up and down in the labor market, we start throwing four year degrees on shit that they don't even need four year degrees. And then we look back later and it's like, "Well, why can't we find people qualified to do this?" Well, probably because your qualifications are all jacked up, idiot. Chad: This is the kind of thing that we get into when we don't really look at our job descriptions and our requirements and boil them down to "what do we really need and what's the persona of the type of person who's going to be doing this type of job?" In most cases, you take a look at it, they don't need a damn degree for a sales position or customer service position or many of those things. They might've done other things with other experience which is actually better. Joel: Amen. And you know what else doesn't take a degree? Chad: Drinking beer. Joel: Is reserving a room at the new beer-themed hotel outside of Columbus, Ohio. I have nothing else. It's a beer-themed restaurant. There's beer in the shower. Chad: No. It's ... dude, it's BrewDog. If you know your, again, snobby beers, BrewDog was a beer that was originated in Scotland, and the number two location that they built was in Columbus, Ohio. They've got some amazing beer, and to be able to think that you can just spend the night and have BrewDog just surrounding you, some Punk IPA or some Jack Hammer or Dogma or something like that, just be able to reach out and grab it, to me sounds like heaven. Joel: Beer in the shower. Chad: Yes, I know! I bet is actually has beer-scented soap and shampoo. Joel: We could go to a lot of different directions on that, but I will not. Lastly from me, story to this week, Gen Z is set to outnumber millennials globally in the next 12 months. There's no story or opinion, I'm just very happy that this it- Chad: No, you're happy because you're looking for stories where you can use that goddamn sound effect. That's why you're happy. Joel: Damn it. You got me. There it is again, folks. Yes. Chad: Damn it. Joel: Welcome to my world at three in the morning. We out? Chad: I'm out. Joel: We out. Stella: Hi. This is Stella Cheesman. Thanks for listening to the Cheese and Chad podcast, or at least that's what I call it. Anyway, make sure you subscribe on iTunes, that silly Android phone thingy, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And be sure to give buckets of money to our sponsors. Otherwise, I may be forced to take that coal-mining job I saw on Monster.com. We out.

Employment branding is HOTT! While most think of Glassdoor or Indeed when the topic of anonymous employee reviews comes up, there's an entire universe of platforms hoping to help employers improve their reputation, both nationally and globally. European-based kununu is one such offering, and we sat down with CMO Dan Sirk at a recent SHRM conference to learn more about the growing landscape. Visit our sponsors, Sovren, JobAdX, and America's Job Exchange. 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. AJE: 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. AJE: What to learn more? Call us at 866-926-6284 or visit us at www.americasjobexchange.com Joel: At SHRM talent in Las Vegas, pleasure to introduce Dan Sirk-- Dan: A pleasure. Joel: From Kununu. Dan is the CMO of the North American or just US-- Dan: US. Joel: Is there a Canadian CMO as well? Dan: There's not a Canadian CMO. Joel: Okay. So you're the head guy in North America. Dan: You're the Chief marketing dude. Chad: Yeah. Chief marketing dude. Joel: So, many of our listeners don't know Kununu, never heard of Kununu-- Dan: What? Joel: So, yeah, it's true. Now, if we're an Austrian based show or where ever you guys were ... I'm sure you'll talk about that a little bit. Dan: Yep. Joel: So give us the spiel on Kununu and we'll sort of dig into your thoughts and opinions on the industry and what's going on. Dan: Yeah. Absolutely. So, Kununu is an employer branding and review platform, right. So, we think about what we do, we basically help companies tell their story. Then we make sure that we get that story in front of candidates at those key moments when it would influence their behavior, whether they're looking ... thinking about applying or their thinking about taking a job with the company. Joel: It's fair to say you are a competitor to Glassdoor, reviews on Indeed; some companies that our listeners are certainly familiar with, yes? Dan: Yes. Absolutely. I think an implicit in that question is, well what makes you guys different, right. Chad: He's good at this. He's good at this. Dan: He must be CMO. Chad: Chief marketing dude, CMD. Dan: Yeah. So, when you talk about Glassdoor, even if you ask Glassdoor what they are right, they tend to operate as a job board. Indeed also creates as a job board, right. So when you think about what that means it tends to mean that they're really trying to get candidates when they come through the door to apply to as many potential jobs on the platform. Joel: Are you saying they're a job board primarily? Dan: Yes. Joel: Okay. Chad: There you go. Joel: Someone said it, finally. Chad: Finally. Joel: Thank God. Finally. Dan: Glassdoor says it too. So I think we are ... we're really in it for the companies and our jobs done when somebody's actually applied for that job, we're not to get that person to go to any other job opportunities. Joel: And Kununu is Icelandic for blank page right? Chad: Icelandic? Dan: Swahili. Chad: Swahili. To have your hands right when you do it too. Dan: Depends on who ask you and when you ask them but yeah. Joel: So you originated in Europe, you have a pretty big presence there as well. A couple years ago you partnered with Monster to power their reviews. How is that going, how long is that relationship, are you looking to partner with other job sites as well? Dan: Yeah. That relationship has been going really well. Monster has been an effective partner for us. With Google for jobs, it's a similar architecture right. These entities are looking to leverage our star ratings and our content to try and gain more traction and engagement with the folks who are engaging with that platform. Joel: Google for jobs will present reviews on your site or at least the number of stars in the Google for Jobs. Has that met a nice increase in traffic for you guys? Dan: Nice bump. Really nice bump. Chad: Really? That's cool. Dan: Yeah. Google for jobs actually didn't break out the traffic associated with Google for jobs relative to conventional search until recently, but back when we launched we saw literally a doubling of our organic traffic. Joel: Wow. Okay. And are you looking ... is your marketing ... so partnering with other job sites is that something in the offing, is CMO, how are you guys getting your name out there, how are you sort of cutting through the clutter? Dan: Yeah. I mean we're open to conversations about anything. We're an insurgent in this market and we're trying to make noise. I think when we think about from a marketing standpoint what we want to accomplish it's we really want to focus on the user and delivering value for the user. That's both on the C side and on the B side. When we think about the customers, what can we do to support their work, and then on the C side making sure that candidates getting to understand what it's like to work at a company before they take a job there, that's our purpose. Joel: I feel a transparency question coming from Chad Sowash who loves transparency. Chad: Yes. Been holding back for so long. So on the transparency side of the house, how do you actually position this to company's with regard to; transparency is here, how do you embrace it on Kununu versus -- Joel: Putting your head in the sand. Chad: Yeah. How do you embrace it? Joel: It's commercial time. Sovren: Sovren AI matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI matching engine thinks, about each individual transaction. It will find, rank and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches, it tells you how and why it produced them and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. Sovren: To learn more about Sovren AI Matching, visit sovern.com. That's s-o-v-r-e-n dot com. Chad: It's showtime! Dan: Yeah. I think I've been surprised and appreciative of the fact that I think a lot of HR folks that we've been talking to, here at the show not one person, I talked with 50 people, not one of them has been like, oh my god a review site I can't, you know what I mean. They know that the reviews are out there at this point, there's been a real proliferation of them. It's a reality and I think are all of them seeing it as an opportunity, probably not everybody, but I don't think everybody ... I don't see anybody whose fighting it and saying, "oh listen, that stuff just shouldn't exist, it's completely irrelevant, whatever." Joel: Well, probably. That probably happened in the beginning but the growth has happened so quickly that they know it's going to happen. So what you're saying is, so how does an employer embrace that transparency on Kununu? Dan: Totally. The best thing to do honestly is to claim your profile and actually engage. Joel: Own your shit. Dan: Well. Claiming a profile is free on our platform -- Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Dan: -- so we really want to enable two way dialogue between candidates and the companies. If our purpose is to give an honest view of what it's like to work at the company we need the company's perspective. We make it free for people to claim their profile on our platform and we want people to be able to respond to reviews, respond to questions that candidates are asking and engage at that level as an identified person who works inside the company. That's only going to make the decision making process that much easier for the person who's coming by and trying to look for information about it. Joel: And you guys recently launched a new feature where you could ask questions. Dan: Yes. Joel: Correct me if I'm wrong on this, tell us about that service and how it's going so far. Dan: Response has been great on both sides. We launched here in the US and we were like, okay how many questions are going to role in. And we also were wondering hey -- Joel: A question might be, are there free bagels. Dan: Free bagels is a question. Chad: That would be a Joel question. Dan: You would be surprised at the questions that come in, yeah. Chad: Free beer nights. Dan: They've really been rolling in. They've been rolling in for our customers but then also on profiles that are unclaimed and the questions really do vary, vary quite a bit. It could be something like a specific benefit, could be about working hours, could be about culture. Then there's some wacky ones that really might too wierd... Joel: I bet. I bet. Talk about the future of this space. In most industries you have two horizontals, you have Coke and Pepsi, then you have the verticals under that. Are we going to see more segmentation, are going to see Kununu for over 50, Kununu for African Americans, Kununu or Glassdoor for that? Are we going to see few or these company's come about? Dan: This is a great question. When you think about where the space is going overall, I think job boards are getting commoditized more and more and certainly with the rise of Google for jobs, five years from now they might not even be around. I think company's are starting to come to appreciate the fact that, listen, we need to actively promote our company and our culture and our dollars maybe shouldn't be spent quite so much over here but you'll be investing the future around of building an image for our company. Chad: So what's I'm hearing is Glassdoor is making a huge mistake by focusing on jobs, because that stuff's going away and they should be focusing on the review area. Dan: I would not dare to tell Glassdoor what to do. I certainly have nice things to say about Glassdoor, I've never had a negative experience with them myself. Joel: The good news about Kununu is you haven't taken 200 million dollars from investors to be put into situation where you've got to do something that makes money now. Dan: That's true. Joel: Okay. Dan: I think answering the second part of your question, where is this employer branding space going, I think is also a really interesting question. I would say there's a couple of things that are top of mind for me with regard to that. I do think segmentation is and specificity is going to be something where things are going to move. People wanting to understand not, what it's like in general but what is it like to work in this department for this, you're not going to get to this specific person, but what is it like to work as a woman in this organization. Joel: You can see her in her sight her fairy god boss. Dan: Exactly. Larger aggregators like us of this type of information can do a better job of dissecting and cutting that information up and serving that need and understanding it so we don't have to necessarily be customized like an inter-site which is a great site, we've worked in partnership with them. If we can cut that data on a bunch of different ways we can really help serve the user that much better. As much as possible enabling two way communication is another place where this is really going to go. Dan: What are the questions that candidates actually have, what are the things they want to understand. Then giving the company the opportunity to engage on that level is also a real opportunity for this space, which is, really our Q & A feature is really a toe in the water thing, There's a lot more we can do with that. Joel: For the company out there who has maybe poor reviews or reviews that they would like pump up, improve. What advice do you give a company who wants to sort of greatly improve their ratings and their stars, numbers of stars that they have? Dan: Whether company's partner with us or choose not to I always give the same advice on this, which is, hey ask your current employees what it's like, ask them to write a review and ask them what it's like to work at the company. You would be surprised at the positive answers that you get. We did a study, because we really wanted to understand what is the bias between what's on our site and what's happening internal, for internal surveys. So we partnered with Energage and they do all the best of Boston, best of Philly, they partner up with all these newspapers. They do a bunch of internal surveys to establish which companies are the best to work for around which criteria. We match their data up against ours to see, okay what's the bias, are we moving in the same direction or are we moving in opposite directions. Dan: What we found was we actually moved in the same direction consistently but there was a .75 bias down, so we were moving, and there was a high degree of correlation, but we were more negative than they were. If you just get current employees to actually go ahead and write reviews for your company you're going to see your score go up organically. Joel: So how do employers actually ... how do they work with you? How do they partner ... how do ... what do they do? Chad: How do you make money? Dan: How do we make money? I think like I said earlier we really want to get employers engaged in our platform which is why we allow them to do some stuff for free. We're thrilled to get folks to do that, it's part of what were doing here, getting folks to sign up. For the folks that need more than that and are looking for building out a more robust picture of their culture we partner up with those folks and offer a variety of services to enable them to do that. Joel: Tell us something new and exciting that's coming down the road for Kununu? Dan: So we've got some changes coming with our free claim profile. Joel: We want specifics on the show not just something something. Chad: Come on Dan. You know better. Dan: One of the things folks have been asking for is for us to enable them to put a logo on their free profile pages, so that is something that's in the development pipeline and hopefully we'll have that at some point. Joel: Not the most exciting announcement however but we appreciate that. We appreciate that. Dan: We watched Q & A in January, we can't, we're still working on it. Joel: We won the gold man. We'll have -- Chad: Chill out. Chill out dude. Joel: bronzes from now on until we have another gold on the wall. Dan, where can someone find out more about you guys and learn more? Dan: Sure. I encourage everybody to go to Kununu.com. Joel: And spell it for the listeners. Chad: How many u's in Kununu? Joel: I could spell Kununu a million different way. Chad: It's dizzying. Dan: K-U-N-U-N-U dot com. Joel: Easy enough. Chad: Very good. Dan: And you can check out ... you can check out ... I really encourage people to check out what people are talking about in their company, go ahead and claim their profile. We'd love to have you on board as somebody who's engaging on our platform. Chad: Dan says own your shit guys. This is yours, go get it. Joel: Thanks for your time Dan. Dan: Thank you. Appreciate it guys. Chad: Good job. JobsAdX: How many times has someone said to you, "We're the Uber of," or "Is the PayPal of?" Maybe "They're the Facebook of." In many, many cases, these comparisons fall short of being close to reality or even a useful illustration of what organizations actually do. JobsAdX: In the case of JobAdX, our example is so accurate, so spot-on, that it's synonymous with our work. JobAdX is Google Ad Sense for jobs. That means we're an efficient, persistent and smarter ad unit for job-related advertising. As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX offers recruitment marketing agencies, RPOs and staffing firms, real-time dynamic bidding and delivery for client postings through the industry's first truly responsive tool. All of this is done with the flexibility of JobAdX's cost per impression, click or application. We offer unique budget conservation options to effectively eliminate spending waste. We're not set in regrets. JobsAdX: For direct clients, JobAdX delivers superior candidates with the best in programmatic efficiency and premium page ad positioning. We also provide publishers and job boards higher rev share than other partners through our smarter programmatic platform. In many cases, 30-40% greater and more through our scalable model. JobsAdX: To partner with us, you can visit or search JobAdX.com, or email us at joinus@jobadx.com, to get estimates or begin working together. JobsAdX: JobAdX. The best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for your needs. Oh, and you've been wondering why the British accent? JobAdX has just launched in the UK, too. #Kununu #Reviews #Marketing #EmployerBrand #EmploymentBrand #Glassdoor