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Back in the day matching - or shall we say - eHarmony wannbe sites really sucked. Now they're kinda good, thanks to AI and a bunch of available online profile data, which was NOT the case in 2006, for example. So here comes SquarePeg. Does this matching contender have what it takes, or are they gettin' the guns? You'll have to checkout this Talroo exclusive to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community. Joel: Hey, Joel. Chad: What up? Joel: Would you say that companies find it hard to attract the right candidates to apply for their jobs? Chad: Well, Jobs2Careers thought so. Joel: Jobs2Careers? You mean Talroo. Chad: Talroo? Joel: Yeah, Talroo. T-a-l-r-o-o. Chad: What is that, like a cross between talent and a kangaroo? Joel: No, it's a cross between talent and recruiting. Chad: But- Joel: Talroo was focused on predicting, optimizing, and delivering talent directly to your email or ATS. Chad: 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. Joel: Okay, so that was weirdly intuitive, but yes. Guess that the best part is? Chad: Let me take a shot here. You only pay for the candidates Talroo delivers? Joel: Holy shit. 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 Talroo.com/attract. Again, that's Talroo.com/attract and learn how Talroo can get you better candidates for less cash. Chad: Or just go to Chadcheese.com and click on the Talroo logo. I'm all about the simple. Joel: You are a simple man. 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, baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they've got what it takes to make it out alive. Dig fox hole and duck for cover, kids. The Chad & Cheese podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel: Oh snap. After a holiday hiatus we are back and we are feisty Chad: We back. Joel: And ready to put a young, nubile startup through the Firing Squad and on that note, let me introduce Claire McTaggart from Square Pegs ... Is that right? Square Peg Hires. Claire: Square Peg, yes. Joel: How do you pitch yourself? Square Peg, Square Peg Hires? Claire: Just Square Peg. We're just one peg. Joel: Square Peg. All right, we'll go with that. Joel: She's the Founder and CEO of that company. Claire, welcome to the show. Give us a quick elevator pitch about you. Claire: Sure, so I'm the founder of Square Peg. My background's probably a little bit different from some of your guests in that I worked in Management Consulting, mostly doing strategy work for one of the big consulting firms. But during that time, I spent four years running a hiring team working at everything from campus recruiting to sourcing strategy to writing and delivering the infamous consulting case study interviews. And we were always just frustrated with the process. Put up a job post, receive hundreds of mostly unqualified applicants, whoever happens to be cruising the job board that week. And either use a ATS to pull out key words or a human to make five second decisions based on a little data. And just, we were kind of hoping to get results. That amount of guesswork and lack of analytics sort of astounded me so I left to go build a product I would have wanted to use. So that's sort of how Square Peg was born. Joel: And what school did you attend, undergrad again? Claire: I went to Michigan Undergrad and Georgetown for grad school. Joel: Ooh, so you know this song because you're always getting your ass kicked by the Ohio State Buckeyes. There it is. Claire: It's a sensitive subject. Joel: It should be sensitive. Claire: It's been sensitive for many years, especially this season it was especially sensitive. So, yeah, off to a good start here guys. Joel: We like to get you off balance here at the Firing Squad. Play your rival's fight song before you go on. Joel: Okay, Chad, tell her what she's won before we get to her pitch. Chad: Well, Claire, on today's show you're going to have an opportunity for a two minute pitch of Square Peg. At the end of those two minutes you're going to hear the bell. Then, Joel and I are going to hit you up with rapid fire Q and A. If your answers start rambling, Joel's going to hit you with the crickets and we will move along. That's also the signal you need to make your shit more concise. At the end of Q and A, you're either going to receive a big applause. That means you knocked it out of the park, golf clap means you need to tighten up your game, or the firing squad. Hit the bricks, close up shop, pull out the drawing board because it pretty much sucks. Claire: And that could also be the OSU fight song, right? Chad: The only worse song would be the Michigan fight song. Claire: Oh! Chad: Yeah. Chad: That's Firing Squad. Okay, Joel, let's slam this Square Peg into a round hole. You got that timer ready? Joel: Slam it. I am ready. Claire, are you ready? Claire: I am. Joel: Two minutes starting. Claire: Okay, so Square Peg is a data-driven hiring platform that helps employers source and match a curated batch of candidates to their jobs based on hundreds of indicators that fit, so not just resumes. We're also now starting to provide HR teams with insights and analytics to help them understand data behind who they're selecting and rejecting and help them improve over time. Claire: So as you know, there are a lot of factors that make an employee thrive in a particular job or environment that can't be found on a resume. And what those factors are actually differs depending on the company, the role, or the level of seniority. So Square Peg helps employers identify what skills, experience, personality traits and softer attributes are most important for a specific role in under ten minutes. And then, we source a batch of highly qualified applicants in just a few days. So all of the candidates on Square Peg's platform have been assessed across hundreds of indicators of fit before they're matched with a job. So our algorithms have a really rich data set to help identify top talent and invite those candidates to view the match and share their data. Claire: So most of these pasts are pasts of candidates who aren't looking for job boards, but are open to the right position. So hiring managers or recruiters will receive a curated batch of interested candidates who might not otherwise had applied or who might have been filtered out. And they get a lot of data to help inform the section and interview process. And because we remove the bias of a human resume review and use alternative data sources, we actually help improve diversity outcomes, unlike your favorite Amazon case study you've been referencing. Claire: So right now we focus specifically on corporate or business hires like marketing sales and customer experience, which are actually the hardest to get right and it's usually due to soft skills fit. So we launched a little over a year ago, paid plans starting this summer. We've assessed over 12,000 candidates and have 30 company clients, including a few Fortune 100s. Joel: And dammit, Claire, where can we find more? Claire: So you can find more at Square Peghires.com or you can email us info at Square Peghires.com. Joel: Now, that was a tight pitch. That was a tight pitch, but if you've listened to Firing Squad, every single person who's pitched, every single CEO, founder, they always forget the end. Where do we find more? Chad: They do. They do. It's amazing. They're so intimidated by us. Claire: Hopefully, our IPO is just good enough that if you put Square Peg in we're somewhere near the top so. Joel: Oh, that's a great question. Chad: So let's go through that real quick. So why Square Peg because I understand the whole square peg in a round hole scenario, but the web is littered with just about everything Square Peg in every industry, TV, shows, sitcoms, Sarah Jessica Parker. I found so much about sitcoms looking for Square Peg. Did your team vet the name and SEO ability before actually taking the leap? Claire: Yeah. Joel: And what other names did you throw away? Claire: To be honest, Square Peg was our first name and our only name. So we didn't go through that process of, you know, on a white board picking out a thousands names. And I definitely didn't want to spell it Square Peg with no vowels in it and have to explain to people what the site is. So we actually do decently well if you put Square Peg and then anything to do with hiring, recruiting, matching talent. We show up on top. Chad: Well, there's even a Square Peg recruitment company and that's where I went first. And I was looking at it and I'm like there's no way in hell this is the thing. So I looked and I was looking at your email address and I'm like oh shit. This is not even the same one. So I mean that's somewhat confusing. I do like that Square Peg, very easy to spell, but you gotta get that "hires" in there and I think that was one of the things that Joel right out of the gate was like, "Is it Square Peg Hires?" That was a little bit harder, even for me just trying to research. Claire: Yeah, so you will know when we have raised a lot of money when we have bought the domain from that company. I think it's a small consulting firm in London and one day it shall be ours. But, you know we really just love the name Square Peg. It absolutely fits what we do. We look at just a lot of data on what makes a person thrive in a specific job and so we're not trying to fit someone who's just not going to be a good fit into a role. And so that helps for both the company side and the candidate side so the name just makes sense. And for some reason, also, I think it sounds familiar even if people haven't heard of it, maybe because of Squarespace or something else, but I know I've been to the bank before cashing a check and someone will say, "Oh, Square Peg, I love that company." And I'm like are you sure. But there is a nice ring to it so we're definitely going to keep the name and all we've gotta do is start buying up some other domains that lay in our path, but that's a long-term priority. Joel: Fair enough. So SEO's not the only game in town. What other ways are you marketing the company? Claire: Sure. So for employers right now it's pretty much a direct sales model and so either meet them at conferences or reach out personally to them and we get a lot of referrals so that's pretty much how we find employers. A lot of them have read articles about us online and signed up so the Fortune 100s that we have all came in through reading an article about us actually. Claire: And then, on the job seeker side most of that we actually don't do any marketing at all. It just sort of grows on it's own. That's a lot referral base where people share. So for job seekers, they come onto Square Peg's platform, they take and in depth assessment, they get a free report with all of their results, and then we only bother them if we have a really high potential good job where we think they'd drive. And so they tell people about it and say, "Hey, you're not going to get these daily digests. They're only going to come to you when they have a really good match". So the job seeker side sort of grows organically and on the employer side it's really a direct sales model. Chad: Okay, that sounds really nice, the job seekers find you organically, but that's just not very palpable, right? Are employers having them come to the site? There has to be some way that you're getting job seekers that you're matching with. How's that happening? Claire: Yeah, so employers are not sending them. We source all of our candidates to our site and that's really important when differentiating us between an assessment company, for example, that's just going to take your existing candidates and give you their personality scores. We actually source all of our candidates. So again, we really don't do a lot right now to grow that. If we wanted to move from ... We've delivered 17,000 assessments. If we wanted to move that to three million, then yeah, we would probably have to do some rigorous advertising. We have done some advertising in markets where we're not big. So for example, we had a client that was looking to use Square Peg to grow their sales team actually in Carmel, Indiana and surprisingly, we did not have a lot of talent in the Carmel area. Chad: That's Carmel. That' where Joel lives. Claire: Okay, so we had to do a lot of advertising there to just say hey, if you take this assessment, you'll get a free report with your results and then, you can be a passive job seeker and we'll only inform you when you have something. And so they would do that and then, if they were a good match, then we would put them forward to this employer. So we have done some advertising and if we don't have it the right candidates, we'll always go source more through advertising, but right now it does grow at the rate that we need it to for our client base. Chad: So does it work in a way that a company has a job opening and then, you guys ... Like let's say it's a PHP developer in Seattle. Do you have a team of people that will go source PHP developers in Seattle? Will you then, target marketing to PHP types in Seattle? How that does that work? Claire: Well, we would never do that role because we don't do tech hires. That's one of the big differentiators between Square Peg and others. So you go to Square Peg for all of your corporate or business hires. So marketing, sales operations, customer experience. Chad: Okay, my question changes to marketing manager in Seattle. Claire: Okay, yeah so the first thing that we do, and where we always get our first batch of candidates, is usually just from our database. So right now we're the biggest in New York. All of our clients are in New York or California area, but we'll match them with candidates within our own database. And if we find that we don't have really high scoring matches, then we will go advertise to people with certain skills and backgrounds. And then, we will encourage them to take the assessments that we offer before they ever see their job description. Chad: How big's your database? Claire: So we've assessed 17,000. We've delivered 17,000 assessments. Chad: And those are most organic? Claire: Yeah, so again, people reading about us online. Right now we are a pretty new, small company and it is mostly organic or if you get your results you can share it online. You can invite other people to take the assessment. So we get most of our, I would say 90% come in just sort of by finding us online. We have a decent ranking for job matching or assessment. So that's how we're getting most people. I think as we grow, we'll have to start a more aggressive talent sourcing campaign, but what we are doing now is just trying to build an organic database where we have all these candidates with a really, really unique data set that you can't get anywhere else on each candidate. Chad: Most power to you if you can do that. Joel: On the site it says, "Take all assessments in under an hour", which made me almost lose my lunch. Claire: Yeah, it's actually 12 minutes. Joel: Well, in a market with such low employment, how do you get candidates to invest even two minutes, let alone 20 or whatever it takes. How do you get those candidates to really invest that amount of time, especially in the kind of era that we are right now in a quick ... I mean the anticipation and the expectation of people is instant. Chad: Yeah. Can't I just swipe right? Claire: So we're actually the opposite of the Tinder swipe right model. And we see less than ten percent of users dropping off during the assessment part of onboarding and the reason is because, I think, today's job seeker, although they want instant gratification. They are willing to exchange more personal data for a better personalized product and experience. And so when they go through the Square Peg assessment, they learn about themselves. Are you highly detail-oriented? How do you compare to other job seekers? How do you compare in certain environments? And so as they take these assessments, they learn about themselves and then, they get this report. And I think especially today's job seeker are really interested in learning about themselves and getting curated, personalized sort of insights about themselves. This is why you see so many people taking Buzzfeed quizzes on which Harry Potter character you are, but this is actually real, psychoactive data that's valuable and reliable and so they are willing to exchange data. And what we do in return is we say, one, we'll give you this rich report, but also we're not going to spam you. We're not going to bother you. We're actually just going to reach out when we say, "Hey, you are highly detail-oriented and adaptable. You'll work well in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment that's really mission-driven and we've got a perfect position for you that's within your salary range". And so we'll give them that instead of here's the daily digest of 30 irrelevant jobs. Joel: We've heard this before and we've heard this for years. It sounds like it at least. It's called eHarmony for jobs. So it is different from Tinder. Tinder is the instant gratification, you swipe. Claire: Yeah. Joel: And eHarmony, that whole process, methodology, it sounds very similar to what you're talking about. You're talking about in depth assessments in matching. So even eHarmony couldn't make that work. What makes you guys think you can make it work? Claire: Yeah, so a lot of I think what some of the other companies who've worked on this, that they do is they have a hypothesis that it is one thing that makes a person thrive in a job. So you've had guests on that say it's all skills or somebody else that will say no, it's all personality and culture fit. And what we say is actually we don't know because it's going to be different for every company, every team, and every role. And so what we do is we build for all of that. And so what that means is we do look at resume data, we look at skills, we look at job role, we look at experience, we look at education, everything, industry background, and ask a lot of questions about the resume, and then, we also ha ea psychometric assessment where we look at 20 different workplace personality types and then we also look at preferences, things like what actually makes you want to perform better. We have these assessments for both job seekers and for employers. Claire: And then, what we'll do is over time, I'll algorithms personalize. So we'll say okay, for this entry level sales role, actually personality plays a really big part. You know you want persevering, motivated, highly people-oriented candidates that have a really good work ethic and that actually matters more than whether they know sales force, but for this brand marketer of SEO marketer, actually skills play a much bigger role than personality does. So we start to curate over time and that's how our sort of algorithms work is that we aren't going to come out there and tell you this is what works. We're going to say we're collecting data across the board and we're going to measure success over time and we have a lot of data on what makes success at various roles, at various seniority levels and at different types of companies. Joel: Well, success changes from company to company though because hiring mangers do, right? So their though process around what a perfect candidate looks like changes from one sales manager to the next sales manager. So do the sales managers, do the employees actually have to take these tests as well to ensure that the match is what they're looking for? And when turnover happens, how do you continually go through that process of assessing all these new hiring managers. Claire: Yeah, so that's a great question. So there are two options that we have. One, which we tend to do a little bit more with enterprises, where we can have your entire sales team take the assessment and we can identify what is in common with your top performers and then, we can source candidates based on that. And we do collect all diversity and demographic data so we ensure that, on average, we provide a pipeline that's around 60 percent women, 25 percent diverse candidates. Claire: So we can asses your top performers and say we'll take the attributes that with low standard deviation are really in common with your top performers and we'll find you more people like that while also taking care of the diversity issues. And then, we work with startups as well as Fortune 100s so you might have startup wanting to hire their first head of marketing and they don't have a team to take an assessment. And so then, what we do is we have a questionnaire for that, for whoever's the hiring manager and what matters to you, what will this person be working on, some questions, and then, we have a lot of data that we spend a lot of time and research doing on what makes a successful, mid-level marketer at this type of role. So we will pre-fill some of the psychometric data. So we'll say, for example, for this operations role logical thinking is probably really important, moreso than intuitive thinking. And so we can pre-fill some of that information. Claire: Then, I think the most important thing that we do is you mentioned turnover and hiring managers coming and leaving. The most important thing is right now if you work with recruiters internal or external, whatever it is they're using to make decisions on who to sect and who not to select, you're not collecting data on that. Chad: I'm curious. What does the ideal customer look like for you and are there any scaling issues with your business? Cause you mentioned a strength in New York. Is this sort of a regional rollout? Talk about that. Claire: Yeah, so we are a small team. We are primarily New York bases and other sort of major cities. And what are some of the issues to scale? We're a very small team right now and so on our roadmap, there's some things that we haven't done yet like a lot of ATS integration, which we probably need to do, but the reality is because we get such a small, curated batch of candidates, it's not been a highly requested feature. And our ideal employer is usually like a Fortune 500, but we have a bunch of clients right now who are 10 to 12 person startups. So I would say we tried to market to larger companies because they can make so much more use of all the data, but we do work with small companies as well. Joel: So when most vendors, today, are trying to pull data from social data warehouses and anywhere they can actually build profiles, you guys are going the old-fashioned route, right? Because that's all we're hearing today is AI, machine learning, I mean all this stuff. And you guys, really, you're saying no, we're not going to step down that path. We're going to go down the build your personalized profile so that we can fit you better into a role. That's not the most popular path. Why are you guys going down that path? Claire: So we are open to any sorts of data as long as we can prove that it works. And so I haven't seen a lot of compelling evidence that knowing somebody's Twitter feed is going to help you hire them. And I also think that there are some issues about your private life versus your work life and so what we want to do is anything where we can prove that that data actually has an impact on hiring, that's what we want to use. So it's not that we're old school, it's just we want to use something that we know is valid and reliable. Claire: And we do use machine learning algorithms so the way that we use that is as an employer, you receive your candidates and you say I'm interested in this one, I'm not in this one, connect pass, connect pass. As you connect and pass, we start to show your more candidates that are similar to the ones you connected it and less candidates that are similar to the ones you passed on and then, we give you data on who you connected with and passed on. So we might say you're connecting with people mainly because of skills. Here are the skills that you're connecting with. And then, we want to see that those people end up being your top performers. If you end up hiring them and they leave after three months, which has never happened with one of our candidates, but if it did happen we might go back and say, "Okay, well what were you basing your decisions off of?" It was skills. Well, now we need to know that that should be weighted less when you make a decision, maybe it should be something else. Joel: Can you also see if there are bias against gender or anything else? Claire: Absolutely. That's a huge part of what we do. So we've worked with a lot of financial services companies who simply don't have a diverse pipeline that includes a lot of women and they're wondering why and we don't think it's a pipeline issues. We'll just say okay, let's look at what you need to be a top performer and then, let's get people in and then we can feed them back that data. Okay, we gave you a pipeline of people that are qualified. Here's all the data on how they're qualified and here's who you selected. We aggregate all of that. Joel: Okay. Claire: At the individual level, but we feed that back and then, we can help them improve. So we might say you're putting too much emphasis on what school they went to and not to preventing you from getting enough hires in this particular role so let's actually weight that a little bit less and get more women or diverse candidates into the role and see how that impacts outcomes. Joel: What is the company look like in, let's say three to five years? You sort of mentioned raising money. What does it look like, both from a features perspective as well as a company at large perspective? Claire: Yeah, so I think in three to five years what we are moving into will be sort of what we'll call the smart analytics or smart insights category, which is how do we help hiring teams use all of the data on a day-to-day basis that they use in section to get smarter over time. So that they are becoming strategic players and informing the rest of the company about what is working and what is not. If people are your more important assets, they will be the experts on all of the traits and aspects of what people are performing well in what roles. So we're going to move and we'll always do sourcing and matching, but I think we're also going to move to build a really robust analytics tool. That's definitely in our two to three year pipeline. And as far as other features, we're a small company so there's a lot that we can still do to build out. Claire: Fundraising is something that we need to do to get there, but it's not a goal in and of itself, I'd say. I'd rather have happy, paying clients than VCs, but it's something we are probably going to look to fundraise in the next few months. Joel: So being a small business and looking to try to find the cash quickly, right? Because I mean it's all about that direct sale at this point. So what type of of partnerships, business development partnerships have you started to cultivate and put in play to be able to make an impact on driving revenue? Claire: There are things that we have done early on to help drive revenue like build out some custom assessments or do things that help us become an expert in our field that we can charge for just to get revenue in the door early on. And then, in terms of partnerships that we are going to grow into, I think an ATS partnership is a great way of helping us with business development. The problem is we are never just going to show resume data. We have to have a custom integration because we provide rich data and so that will be a longer process than most people's ATS integration, but that's sort of a natural progression. Claire: And then, there will be, I think from a product perspective, offering our product on other sites might be something that we look into. So for example, if you're reading on The Muse about what career should you go into next, maybe you can have a Square Peg assessment integrated into that article and you can take that assessment and get feedback on exactly where you might want to go and then, get a report and then The Muse might be able to tailor articles to you. So you know there are a lot of sort of product integrations, but I would say we have too much low-hanging fruit until we get into some of those larger partnerships. Joel: From a business development standpoint, once again, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit. How big is your sales team? Claire: So my sales team is myself and one other person. It's very small. We are a team of five people right now. So we have a machine learning data scientist. We have our Chief Science Officer. He's not an employee. He's one of the premiere experts in the US on industrial organizational psychology. So he wrote the textbook on personnel assessment selection that's used in most PhD programs. So we have a lot of technical experts on IO Psych side and machine learning data science side and we are minimal on sales and marketing, but I think that's okay in the beginning because it allows us to serve our clients and then, as we start to generate more revenue, then we'll invest much more in sort of our sales and business development side. Joel: What's your pricing breakdown for people who want to use the product as a subscription based model? Like how do you guys structure pricing as well as what is that pricing? Claire: Sure. So we structure it per month per role and so if you put a role with us if you only do one, it's $1,000, which I know sounds very expensive, but we guarantee that you'll want to interview 40 percent of the candidates that we give you. Claire: So if you go to a job board, you'll probably want to interview two percent maybe and you'll have to look through hundred of irrelevant candidates. So with us you're going to get 12 to 20 candidates. You'll want 40 percent. We'll guarantee that you want to interview and if not we'll continue to work for free until we get you that 40 percent. So it's $1,000, but the more roles that you buy with us the more you get a discount. So if you're buying large packages of roles, it can be $500 per role so the more you buy, the cheaper. Joel: All right, Claire, that's the bell meaning that our time here is done. Claire: Yeah. Joel: So you know how this works Shark Tank style? Chad and I are both going to comment on what we've heard and give you a final grade. Are you ready? Claire: I don't know. Am I? Joel: I don't know, okay. I'm going to go ahead and start this off Chad, if you don't mind. I've got a trigger finger that's itchy after such a long layoff. Joel: Okay, Claire, I couldn't help but listen to your pitch and think that I had been transported back to 2008. Chad mentioned a lot of this stuff. He mentioned eHarmony, but he and I both know names like Climber, Jobster, it's big. Companies where job seekers had to feel about very lengthy questionnaires, companies had to fill out a similar questionnaire, and then this magic matching thing happened. It's, in theory, a great business model. Unfortunately, none of those companies are around anymore and I think that's maybe a fairly telling thing for your business. You may have a secret sauce that I'm not seeing. That's certainly an option that I'm willing to explore. Joel: I'm having a hard time with the organic job seekers are just finding us thing and I would've loved to have hear some sort of a marketing strategy whether that was just PR or going on to stupid podcasts and getting shot down by idiots like us. So I would've loved to have heard something around that. I think you do have scaling issues. I think you're going to have a hard time getting a lot of companies to buy into the sort of manual approach because automation is such a big trend right now and not very many people are betting against automation and AI and getting job seekers and employers together. So from that standpoint, I think you're very challenged. Joel: The silver lining in some of this is that I think you're a smart person. I think you probably have a good team. You're a small team, as you said. You haven't taken a bunch of money so there's not a lot of pressure to do things the way that you have outlined it so I would expect to see a pivot at some point in your business to maybe something that is more feasible for success. But for me at this point right now, Claire, I'm sorry but it's guns. And it has nothing to do with your Michigan degree FYI. Chad: Ha. I wouldn't believe that if i were you. Okay, my turn. I believe the only way forward for employers is intelligent matching systems period. I mean I've been waiting for this for years. It's probably my favorite tech in the recruitment sector right now even more than chat bots, believe it or not. Joel: Lies. Chad: We've come so far so fast thanks to technology. Namely because we're getting closer and closer to kind of a loose definition of AI. I mean it's not sentient. We know that, but we're getting closer to what that actually means and being able to pull data together. It's my favorite so I am most cynical about this area because I want it to happen so badly. So in a market where unemployment is low and you cannot hope that candidates are going to spend nearly and hour, half an hour. Claire: No, it's 12 minutes, 12 minutes. And for employers it's eight so yeah. Chad: Still adoption is hard, right? Adoption is hard, especially on the employer side. You might be able to have companies spend time because they need talent so badly, although when the market flips and it will those same employers are not going to spend the time to update their profiles. And obviously the newly evolved jobs are going to be the updated information that you need to be able to make those great matches because you're going se deep into the heads of these HR managers or these hiring managers and also candidates. So you know at the end of the day because of some of the things that Joel mentioned, not to mention here recently we've seen a company much like, not exactly, but Hirevisor, kind of pitch the same thing and not get the traction because adoption is the hardest thing and everybody's looking for that quick and easy make it happen kind of scenario. I've got to go the way of the firing squad. Joel: We still love you Claire. It's done out of love. Claire: Can I say one thing real quick? Joel: Of course. Claire: So I guess one thing, maybe, I didn't make clear is how quick and automated this can be. So for employers, they can add a job, it can be done in under two minutes. So this isn't a process that's old school where people are taking very long assessments and for job seekers we have ways of them updating this in a quick, automated way that takes less than two seconds and their data lasts for two years so it actually is quite quick on both sides, which maybe I didn't get to and the matching makes it an entirely sort of automated process. So just wanted to be clear that this is not spending an hour on onboarding. This is really in a matter of minutes and it's mobile. Joel: Look, if your challenge is the messaging, then that's an easy thing to fix. And we could rewind the clock and our reviews would be different, but from what we heard you know that was our grades and you learn from that and change your message up a little bit if that's- Claire: Yeah, no I just didn't want anyone listening to think that this is a very long onboarding process because we put a lot of time and energy into making sure this is quick and automated as fast as we can. Joel: And last, but not least, here's the thing that you're going to have to obviously fight from an adoption standpoint. There are companies that are out there that are taking feeds and pulling data and tweaking algorithms and having tremendous success right now. I mean we're seeing that. I'm working with companies who are having tremendous success with really little onboarding time so that's a big, steep hill you're going to have to ... and we hope that you get there. Claire: Yeah, and I think it differs a little bit depending on the role. We do VP roles, director roles, manager roles really in the soft scale intensive niches. So we're not doing tech hiring where you know just knowing someone has two years of job is enough to hire them. So I think for the area where we play this is sort of a strategic decision on using this type of data and this amount of data because fit is so important. But I think for if you're looking at filling a call center or you're looking at filling some developers, then something like a better or Stellar Employee will work for those options. But we're really trying to build something specific for the niche we're going after. Joel: All right, Claire. Where can we find out more about you and do you have a deal for our listeners? Claire: Yes. So you can Square Peghires.com or send an email to info@Square Peghires.com and we will offer anybody who's listening to this podcast ten percent off of any package of roles. So just send us an email with Chad and Cheese referenced in the email and we will offer you ten percent off. Joel: Right on. 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 www.chadcheese.com. #FiringSquad #SquarePeg #eHarmony #Matching

We got your New Year's resolution right here, pal! The boys and back and breaking down - Update on Indeed's Talent Network Policy - Oculus Rift and smart speakers are killin' it! - Irina sharpening the axe at CareerBuilder - Who dropped $200,000 on the Jobster.com domain? - Army Recruiting disrupts with eSports - Rants on Palantir and Oracle lies and the NFL's agism Don't forger to give our sponsors some love, brave souls that they are: Sovren, Canvas and JobAdx. 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! Chad: We are back. Joel: Merry New Year. We're back, bitches. New year, same idiocy. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast, HR's most dangerous. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I am Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, the dumpster fire rages on at CareerBuilder, Jobster is back from the dead for the third time, and we start 2019 with dueling rants. We got your resolutions right here pal, and we'll be right back after a 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 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: Oh, I'm ready. Joel: Good to be back. Chad: It is good. Joel: I can't lie that the break was nice. Chad: I'm sure it was. You were able to nap a little bit more, little bit more beer, little bit of bourbon. Joel: Yeah. Eat a little bit more, drink a little more, sleep a little more ... It was all good. It was all good. Of course, we've been podcasting like demons this week, so yeah, we hit the ground running even though this is our first weekly show since being back. Chad: That being said, I'm going to go ahead and tease some of these. We have a Firing Squad coming out this month that is killer. And we got Hung Lee on as an interview. Joel: Hey, yes. Recruiting's favorite porn star is on the podcast. Chad: Not to mention ... In 2019, it looks like we're going to take Europe by storm. We're going to be in Lisbon in May for TAtech, our buddies Pete and Repete, right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: And then we've got Recruitfest in London, in July, which we're really excited about. Joel: Cheers. Chad: And there's some others that we're still planning, that we're going on. So you're going to see us in Europe this year, doing live shows to be awesome. Joel: Don't forget Canada. Chad: Oh shit. Oh, Canada. Joel: That's coming up. Chad: It's not Europe, but yes, it is Canada, and it is in the Canadian Rockies. It's in February, so it should be gorgeous and cold as shit. Joel: Banff, which I still miss ... miss whatever ... I say Branff and Banffi, and I say all kinds of stuff. Really my Canadian wife loves, but that's another story. Chad: Oh yeah, I'm sure. Joel: Yeah, teasers galore. We're going to have a busy year, a big year. Chances are, if you're at our conferences, you will see us at some point. Chad: And there's going to be T-shirts. Yes! Joel: Oh, T-shirts. Joel: Tell 'em what they won, Chad, with the latest T-shirt sponsorship. Chad: Yes! We have two new sponsors that are happening this year. Right out of the gate, we have Emissary.ai, who will be sponsoring the very first Chad and Cheese limited edition T-shirts, which we will be giving away at conferences. And last but not least, Shaker Recruitment, believe that ... Joe Shaker- Joel: Joe Shaker. Chad: ... spending money with Chad and Cheese. We have a new sponsorship called Traveling With Chad and Cheese, where Joe and the group are going to gear us up with Shaker gear, and yeah, wherever we go, we're taking Shaker with us. Joel: If you can't tell, we're really reaching for those sponsorship opportunities. Chad: Dude, they're awesome. Joel: I'm just glad that we got Joe to commit before the Bears meltdown in the playoffs, because he might not have been quite as open to opening up his pocketbook after that game, yeah. Chad: Oh dear. Joel: Which leads me to the first shout-out, I think. Shout out to Philly fans. We have a huge following in Philly. They're probably still drunk, who knows, as we speak, celebrating the win. Good for them, sad for the Chicago folks; that was a real bummer of a loss. We have a lot of fans in Chicago. So torn there; shout out to Chicago, but as always in Chicago, there's next year. Joel: As always. Yeah. We're going to go to Susan Vitale, who we have not talked about in a while, because- Chad: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:05:20]. Chad: She just had a little girl, so I want to congratulate Susan, the family, the whole iCIMS crew, because I'm sure little Alba Rose will be gracing the doors of iCIMS very soon, if she hasn't already. Joel: That was a unique name, Alba. Chad: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Joel: Alba. Yo, Alba. I'm trying to do it with like a Jersey kind of attitude behind. Chad: Sounded more Philly, more Rocky. Joel: Yeah, I guess so. Hey, Jersey. Okay. You mentioned the Hung Lee, a big shout-out to him. I'm going to give a shout-out to Irina Novoselsky. Hopefully I said that correctly. Chad: Really? Joel: CareerBuilder CEO made Chicago's 40 Under 40 list. The 33 year old is making shit happen, as we will find out further as we go into the show, but shout out to her for making that illustrious 40 Under 40 list. Chad: She's making things happen all right. We also made a couple of I think 2019 lists, so Mason Wong and Hung Lee put on their pods to follow in 2019. Now, Hung Lee's was I think more focused on the recruitment side of the house. Mason's was really just focused on what he listens to, and I believe we were the only recruiting/HR podcast on his list, so appreciate it guys, thanks so much. And Mason, I'm going to try my damnedest to get Joel to bite on new sound effects, but I can't promise anything, buddy. Chad: Yeah, but we think we may have figured out my hot mic issue, I think. Hopefully we have that figured out. And by the way, I think Huang Lee just pulled the first hat trick on the show. I think he was mentioned three times within the first seven minutes of the show. So Huang Lee, hat trick. Very nice. First he's British and probably has no idea what a hat trick is, so go Google that, Hung. Joel: Nice. And you wanted to give a shout to Chris Sacktosoojowiavlassosso or whatever his name is? Chad: Santosuoso, it looks like. Joel: Yeah. Santosuoso. Chad: The Santa man. Joel: It sounds like he was forced to listen by his former boss Greg Giambanco , who you called Greg Jiambi. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But thanks for listening, Chris, whether it was forced or not, and thanks Greg, for forcing Chris to listen. Now go out there and force more listeners, because we want to make sure we blow the roof off of 2019. Chad: Jiambi and the Santa Man. Thanks for listening. Joel: Good stuff. Joel: Appreciate it. And your wife's been busy on the mic too, apparently. Chad: She has. That's a metaphor. So yeah, her and Torn Ellis, and our listeners know Torn because ... Well, Torn is Torn. I mean, he's fucking everywhere. But he was on the pod. We talked about diversity recruiting. I did an interview with him, and he blows stuff up wherever he goes. He's awesome. He's actually teamed up with my wife, who was also on the podcast talking about disability hiring, and they're doing a new podcast ... just released the teaser trailer I guess you could call it, earlier this week. And it's called Crazy And the King. Look for that, we'll be talking about it every now and again, doing a little cross-pollination, but should be fun. Joel: I would ask which one is which, but I know your wife, so I can put the pieces together and know which one the crazy is and which one the king is. Good luck to them in their podcast venture. I'm waiting patiently for your guest appearance, To mirror Julie's appearance on our show, so keep me abreast of that. I think we should make a dual appearance frankly on their show, and really, really rocket their presence to the moon with us being a guest host. But hey, that's up to them; it's their show. Joel: That's it for shout-outs from me. Who else you got? Chad: Well, I want to thank TNG, the company who brought us the creepy interviewing robot, because Charlotte and Ellen over there, they know how to work Chad and Cheese. They've been sending us hilarious videos, one on how to speak Swedish, which was funny as hell. And then the one that we just received yesterday, it was a beer stabilization device. They have us in their cross-hairs. They have us targeted; they know what we like, and they've been sending it left and right. And we've been retweeting and posting and doing those things. So if you're out there, and you don't understand how to work the media, this is a prime example of how to do it, whether we're media or whatever the fuck they call us. But these guys are killing it, so big kudos to Charlotte and Ellen over there. Joel: And by the way, it's pronounced Eelen. I took a little one of those DNA tests over the holidays, and I did a little Black Friday DNA test, and found out that I am eight percent Swedish, so I feel a new connection that I wouldn't have because of the DNA test. And I do recommend everyone if you haven't done that, you should. Kind of knowing where you're from, your story, I think that's really cool, and the fact that they can do that by spitting a test tube is really, really cool. So yeah, I got a little Swede in me, so I'm trying to bone up on my Swedish for this robot we're going to meet in Lisbon. Chad: Excited about that. TAtech in Lisbon. Hopefully we'll be able to get the creepy interviewing robot there, with Chad and Cheese. But you almost forgot to talk about Talkpush and the Demopocalypse. Joel: Have we agreed on that name, the Demopocalypse? Chad: I don't know how we can get away from it at this point. Joel: Well, Demogeddon wasn't too bad, although that could be construed as Demo Gettin', or ... Demopocalypse, there's no gray line there. It's Demopocalypse. We're doing this thing in the New Year. We get so many startups and companies with new features telling us about them, and we're like, "Dude, let's just show people what the hell you got." We said, "Hey, man Max, let's get on the computer there, and videotape this thing and push it out." See what I did there? We pushed this out real good. If you haven't watched it please check it out, 'cause they're doing some really cool stuff there at Talkpush, real good. Chad: Also it was kind of funny, because I pushed this out into the socials, right? And it was on a Facebook group, and it started somewhat of a heated conversation. And all I did was post ... Here's my post. "Everybody is talking about the death of the ATS. Max shows us what could be taking its place." Right? So that's all I put out there, and then the rock throwing started. And it's amazing, just utterly amazing, how people constantly bitch about their applicant tracking system. They bitch about it all day, every fucking day. But when you say, "Could this prospectively be the new evolution or what could replace the ATS?", then they just start throwing rocks. "No, you're not taking my ATS away from me!" It was funny as hell. Joel: Dost thou protest too much? And these are people that probably didn't even watch the demo, by the way. You pose the question, it wasn't as abrasive as you can be on social media, and yeah, people kind of freaked out about it. Some reputable people commented, and they might be right. People don't change very quickly in this industry, like ATSs and job postings and ... Hell, people are still putting ads in the newspaper for God's sake. I'm not quite as drastic as that, but look, there's a new world of mobile; the ATS just doesn't quite play in that platform very well. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And chat does. The on demand platforms for work is a new thing. Upwork is happening. The way that talent is being managed and recruited is changing, and the ATS will be fine for a lot of folks, but for other folks, a solution like Talkpush is what is going to make sense for them. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's not one size fits all for everybody, and I think that was kind of the point you were making. I don't think they're all going to die. Chad: No. Joel: Just like all the newspapers, radio and the eight track are going to die any time soon. Chad: That's what Sackett said. He said it's an evolutionary process, which I totally get. The only problem is that many of the ATS providers are way more focused on the after you're hired part of the whole process, instead of creating hiring platforms. So most of money you see getting spent are on the human capital or talent management side of the house, not the talent attraction and the user experience and all of that. So when you take a look at companies who want more of that, they're looking at a Talkpush that has a much better interface, and opportunity to hopefully not send these candidates or these prospective customers into a black hole. We've got to find something, and to be able to say that no, the ATS is never going away ... I totally get portions of that, but we've got to spend some time and money on the recruitment process as well, 'cause that shit's just not working. Joel: Yeah, I'm reminded a lot of Henry Ford, I believe, who said if he'd listened to his customers, the car would have been a metallic horse or something along those lines. Chad: Yes. Joel: Ultimately the ATSs, they listen to their customers, and they give their customers what they want, and there's nothing wrong with that. But we have a whole new generation or a whole new group of folks that are trying to invent the car. It still has wheels, it still goes forward and back, but it's not a horse any more. It's not something that needs a buggy whip. I think that's kind of where we are with the evolution of this thing, and people just need to I think understand that that's how technological evolution happens sometimes. Chad: And that's it for shout-outs. Joel: That's it for shout-outs. Let's get to the news. Indeed has an update. What's up? Chad: Indeed's talent network policy ruffled some feathers. Go figure. Joel: Shocking. Chad: I think we probably dropped a few expletives during a few of our podcasts around this stupid shit. That happened last year, and after getting hammered by vendors, media I guess ... I don't know if anyone else actually covered it as much as we did. And some major Fortune 100 companies, Indeed decided to drop one bullet from their talent network policy. Get ready, drum roll please. Joel: I don't have a drum roll, but let's just ... crickets, or I don't know. What do you want? Chad: Here's the bullet that they dropped. Joining a talent network must occur after the application process is clearly finished. That's what they dropped. Still not happy with the vendor telling companies what to do, and I'm a little bit more heated with companies, especially major Fortune 100 types of companies, who would allow this kind of shit, this type of control, to happen from a vendor. I still don't get it. Joel: I got a bullet for Indeed. Couldn't resist that. Yeah, at least they're listening. Usually they just say, "Fuck you,". Chad: It is weird that they actually listened to somebody, but you've got to also think that they were listening to the Fortune 500 companies who they're trying to bypass, all these other agencies, staffing agencies and job boards and so on and so forth ... to have that direct client pretty much relationship, so when the company comes to them, it means something entirely different. They want to listen, because they know that's ... at the end of the day, they want all of that wallet share from that company. Joel: And I read a long time ago that competition is good for business and consumers, and the fact that Indeed is competing with new players- Chad: Yeah, Google. Joel: ... makes them have to listen more to customers, and I think that's a good thing for everybody. Chad: Yeah, I think it's a win for talent network vendors, and their clients, short-term win, but just from an optics and traffic standpoint. But from a long-term standpoint, allowing your vendor to control any and/or all of your processes is a very slippery slope. It's interesting, and we'll watch it, because they're throwing out policies left and right, just really strangling anything that's not a dollar coming directly from employers. Joel: And we'll see how that works out for them. It should be a fun year of Indeed reporting for sure. Continuing the legacy of dumpster fires that I thought would maybe go out this year, because 2018 was a miserable year for CareerBuilder. It was a great year for us, because we got to talk about them almost every week. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Among those are CEO leaving, executives leaving, sales meetings being postponed/canceled, El Chapo, audio leaving their headquarters in downtown Chicago to lesser digs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I thought things might cool down a little bit. It turns out I might be wrong. We got word earlier this week that they had three very veteran people leave the company. There was an email that went out internally from Irina Novoselsky, 40 Under 40 recipient, letting the team know that John Smith, our buddy from the El Chapo soundbite ... And if you haven't listened to that, I encourage you to do so. It's on SoundCloud, and our channel on whatever podcast platform you listen to. He was their chief sales officer, so no little guy at the company ... has left the company. Jason Lovelace, president of enterprise sales and interim corporate marketing, and Farhan [Jasin 00:18:58], who was president of CareerBuilder International, and oversaw global operation of the Broadbean subsidiary. Joel: In all, we're looking at 52 years amongst them leaving the company. That's a big loss for them. Chad: Yeah. Straight from the private equity playbook, baby. And that's actually a text that I got from a CareerBuilder insider. Straight from the private equity playbook. Joel: Yeah. Farhan was apparently really close to Jeff (Matt) Ferguson, the former CEO, who was there for 14 years. In addition to those announcements, it looks like that a couple of communications folks have left the company as well: Michael Erwin and Jennifer Grasz, who I've dealt with in the past. It was very telling; when this news broke, I emailed both of them to see what was going on, if they could confirm, make any comment. Both of the emails bounced, so they don't even have their emails going to their new PR firm. But anyway, they do have a PR firm. Chad: Are you serious? They didn't have them redirect to anywhere else? Joel: They're not forwarded to anyone in marketing to then forward it somewhere or reply. They just bounced back. So anyway, that's kind of a fuck-up on their part, but they do have an agency. I reached out to them, and the agency basically said, quote, "It's company policy that we don't comment on employees outside of executive promotions and new hires." Chad: Dude, that's total amateur hour shit right there, though. Joel: Well, it is. And all they had to do is say, "Those three are leaving the company. We're proud of their commitment to whatever. We wish them the best of luck." Done. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Just to say, "We're not going to comment on three really important people that have been here for an equivalent of 52 years. We're going to just not comment on that." Now, Novoselsky ended her message with, quote, "I believe that in 2019, with our ongoing commitment, hard work and dedication, CareerBuilder will continue our pursuit to be an industry innovator and market leader." Which kind of made me laugh, because "innovator" means augmented reality on your mobile phone, and "market leader", they haven't seen that since 2008. Chad: Yeah, I'm not really sure she understands what "market leader" means in this industry, because they're nowhere fucking close. Joel: Everyone that I've talked to about this recently tell me morale is in the shitter, which doesn't surprise me. The layoffs keep happening, which makes the company more profitable. Apparently the Norcross office, or the office in Buckhead in Georgia, is practically a ghost town from what I'm hearing. The ads that they're running are kind of a joke internally, because they feel they're basically being run to give the outside world the impression that things are great, even though internally shit's totally all messed up. Joel: Everyone I've talked to says they expect the chop shop to be open throughout the year, so Irina is sort of running the show, she's sort of the Apollo puppet. And we'll see where this thing goes, but I think our early predictions of venture ... there's funds are going to come in, private equity, sell it off, get rid of stuff that doesn't make money, get rid of the high-priced people ... And then do who knows what with it after this, but I'm guessing sell to somebody, sell the pieces off, who knows? Chad: Yeah, I mean the chop shop's going to be open once again. Look for ... Do you think it's actually going to be sold this year? Do you think it will be chopped up and sold off in pieces, or do you think they can actually sell this thing as one? Joel: Well, everyone that we've heard ... Most people we talked to have talked about 2020, 2021, being recession time. We kind of snap back from the 10 years of growth that we've enjoyed. So if you're looking from a time perspective, selling it this year or next are probably better than year three, four and five that are coming, so ... I don't know who would buy it. Maybe some European company or Asian company that wants to make a splash. I'm being serious maybe Recruit Holdings buys it to help solidify their Indeed, Glassdoor, CareerBuilder ... Established companies here in the States: I don't know. But yeah, I would say if they don't sell it this year or next, it's going to be pretty tough after that if the recession and the economy downturn happens, which a lot of people are predicting. Chad: Yeah. Well, CareerBuilder has a big portfolio of products. So it could go either way; it could be a full sale, or they could just chop 'em up and sell 'em off one by one. Joel: Yeah, I'd say both of those are on the table for sure. Chad: What would they do with the domain though? Guess who's back, kids? Joel: Guess who's back, back again ... Okay, old timers will appreciate this. Newbies won't know what the hell we're talking about. In 2004 a startup hit the scene that was dynamic, interesting, fun, cuckoo, semi-innovative, called Jobster. They had a leader named Jason Goldberg, who said a lot of crazy shit, did a lot of crazy shit. He had an executive team that was really stellar, that has gone on to do really interesting things. Anyway, it was an interesting situation. He ended up leaving. The whole thing sort of collapsed. They sold the Jobster domain to a company called Zapoint. I think this was 2010, 2011. Zapoint basically lived off the SEO for a few years. They put in an Indeed backfill, I believe. They probably had some postings. Joel: Anyway, I kind of forgot about it, and then you share some information that you got that the Jobster domain had sold in October of last year, for $200,000. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Which is way too much for that domain. But anyway, it was bought by a Swedish company ... Here we go back to Sweden ... a Swedish company called Jobbird. Chad: What the fuck? Joel: Jobbird. Swedes are weird, dude. I don't know. So I guess Jobster is better than Jobbird, maybe, particularly if you want to go in the States or whatever. So anyway, Jobbird bought it. Jobster redirects to Jobbird, so somebody dropped 200 big ones for the domain. They're going to do something with it; exactly what, we don't know. In my research, Jobbird has had some issues of its own. Apparently it filed for bankruptcy last year. It didn't let its employees know. They found out in one of the Swedish newspapers or something. They have a new ... Someone took ... I think a private equity firm took it over. They have visions of taking on Europe and the States, so maybe the Jobster acquisition was this private equity firm, like, "We're going to come in, keep Jobbird, we're going to take Jobster and hit the States." Who knows? But we'll be watching closely and updating everyone on what the hell happens to Jobster. Chad: Yeah. And if you want more in-depth on the history of Jobster, we did a shred last week. It's called Jobster is Back. Again, you can only really get to those shreds if you subscribe. So subscribe; you're going to get some good content. This is really a history lesson; I remembered a lot of it, but I couldn't remember a lot of the years in which a lot of this happened, and it was interesting. And to say Jason Goldberg and the cast of characters back on those days weren't funny and cool and hip and full of a shit ton of money, 'cause they pulled together $52.5 million ... Joel: Uh-huh? Chad: Yeah. It was fun times. Joel: Did your homework, If you don't do anything out there, go to YouTube and search "Monster is a crap product." It's the video that I took in my old Cheesehead days at the DirectEmployers' annual meeting, so we were both connected to this somehow. And it's about a three minute rant from their CEO about how bad Monster was, and it's classic. If you haven't seen that, I encourage you to do it. It's still on YouTube. Chad: I remember that whole presentation so vividly, just because it was funny to listen to Jason. 'Cause Jason, he took the gloves off. He usually just took the gloves off. And he was in front of a bunch of ... really Fortune 500 companies' talent acquisition leaders. Joel: Who were all Monster clients probably. Chad: Yeah, they were all Monster clients, and they took offense, because they were spending money with Monster. So not the smartest way for Jason to go with this, especially when he was trying to sell this product. But how did you record that? Did you have something on a tripod? 'Cause you had a video, obviously. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Did you have a tripod set up, because this was an hour video, that when you cut it down to ... what was it, six, eight minutes or something like that- Joel: It was about three minutes. It's about three minutes. Chad: Okay. Okay. Joel: But yeah, I put the whole 60 minute presentation online, and it did nothing. And then I said, "People have to see this piece of it," so I edited it down, put that up, and then Cheesehead blew up, and blew-up it went everywhere. But that was a classic annual meeting, because not only Jobster presenting but Paul Forster from Indeed presented, and I think Simply Hired presented as well. Chad: Yeah, got 'em. Gautam Godhwani. Joel: So that was the triple threat, like the world is changing companies. And then you guys had yeah, your Fortune 500 companies, just with their mouths open learning about pay per click and all this stuff. It was a classic meeting; it was great. Chad: It was funny, because I got to deal with all the CEOs of those up and coming organizations. And it was funny, 'cause I remember Jason Goldberg called me one day, and they just got maybe their Series C funding or something, and he was adamant he was going to buy DirectEmployers Association, because we had 700 major Fortune 1000 types of companies, and he saw as that just like an instant way to get a portfolio of clients. Joel: Too bad he wasn't around today. He could buy CareerBuilder. Chad: No shit. Joel: And make that what it could be. That was also the meeting where Craigslist sent a cease and desist to all those three to stop scraping Craigslist. Chad: Good memory, man. Yeah, that was a great annual meeting. Joel: That was a good annual meeting. All right man, let's take a break here and get a word from Sovren, and we'll come back and rant a little bit. Sound good? 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.com. Chad: I think I figured it out. I think I figured this out. If TNG, and their 10 guy, whatever robot, had Sovren technology and that voice, done. Sold, best product on the market. Joel: By the way, TNG, we found out stands for the next generation? Did I hear that right on our call? Yeah. So at least that makes a little more sense. TNG, the next generation in Sweden or something. Chad: Which is interesting. If it is next generation, I'm sure that's not Swedish, so they would actually do it in English. Interesting. Joel: No mass appeal for the audience. Dude, you got a rant about Oracle and somebody else. You're doing it for the cause; like dude, save this for the actual recording. Chad: Yeah, stop ranting. Okay, so Palantir, and/or [Oracle 00:31:07] and Pandora, they've just been flat out lying to the US government. Here's a good example. Palantir told the DoL, the Department of Labor, that competitors could identify where Palantir has been making significant progress in hiring women and minorities, and target recruiting strategies, right? They were saying, "Hey, this is a trade secret. We can't give you our diversity numbers. We can't show you just how many women we're hiring. Oh, we're doing such a great job ... How many people of color. We can't tell you that, because it's a trade secret, and our competitors will find out, and they'll come after our people." Chad: Well, here's the facts, kids. Out of 167, 167 tech companies in Silicon Valley, Palantir was in the bottom four for female managers. No, they had no women of color in management. No women of color in management whatsoever. And DoL actually cited that Oracle was paying white men more than their counterparts. And Oracle then shot down a shareholder proposal to actually do a gender audit pay gap. So it was like, "No, we don't want to know, because if our shareholders find this shit out, we're screwed." Joel: Yeah. Chad: "So let's hide it. Let's not show anybody." And that's not how shit works. Joel: Yeah. It shouldn't be how it works. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We can't just build walls and hide behind them, Chad. Chad: We can try, we can make sure that 800,000 people are actually kept hostage while we're talking about those walls, but anyway. Joel: So anyway, yes. I have a rant as well. Maybe not quite as passionate as that, but I think it's a reflection on us as a society as a whole and the ageism that we practice way too often. And I'm going to back to the NFL. I know we have a lot of sports fan out there. We certainly don't have some ... We have some global people that don't even know what the NFL is, but just stick with me here for a second. The NFL coach hiring spree is currently happening. Teams that have fired their coaches are hiring them, and what tends to be the trend these days, is to follow the hot trend of hiring young people. So Sean McVay is with the LA Rams. He's a 30-something coach, very dynamic, offensive-minded coach. Nagy at Chicago I believe, is in his 30s as well, kind of an offensive guru. Joel: All the teams are trying to emulate this and hire young people. Well, the problem is, of the eight teams remaining in the playoffs, seven of them have coaches over 50. I would argue that the only team currently that has hired sort of an adult are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who hired Bruce Arians, who's over 50, but he also has Superbowl wins under his belt, he has coaching Ben Roethlisberger, Carson Palmer ... He has a resume and a pedigree, and I think it's just a reflection of what we're seeing in corporate America: people want young folks that are cheap, they know technology, they're more flexible, et cetera, when I think a lot of times it's the older folks that have been there, done that, they have gray hairs and experience for a reason, and they have something to add. Joel: I think it's kind of sad that the NFL is reflecting America opinions, attitudes as a whole, because I think we're really missing out on great coaches and history. And the evidence is there that it's the older coaches that are getting to the playoffs. Chad: Well- Joel: God help Sean McVay if he loses this weekend, because then there may not be any coaches under 50 left in the playoffs. Chad: And if you take a look at a lot of these coaches who've been in for a while, obviously, it's not about them as being that singular coach, it's what they bring with them, and that's staff. We're talking about actually bringing heavy hitters to your defensive line coaches or your offensive coaches or your quarterback coaches. I mean, there's more sway there. And if you have that kind of sway, what can you do in pulling free agent, that can draw those players in? Chad: It's the same thing in our industry; if you go cheap, there's a reason why they're cheap. If you want to actually take a look at somebody who has the experience, has the network and can pull a shit ton of resources together, you should probably take a look at somebody who's been doing it a while. Unfortunately, that's just not the case, and maybe that's what we're seeing at CareerBuilder. Maybe they're like, "Hey, 52 years of experience. You mean nothing to us. We're going to put a couple of kids or 10 kids in your positions to be able to backfill, right? And it's going to cost us less." But at the end of the day, you're going to lose out in that equation. Joel: Yeah, history favors the old, for whatever reason, but yeah. Goddamn it, the Cleveland Browns did the same thing; they hired a young guy. He couldn't even get hired as a coordinator anywhere. They put him in as a coordinator because he was sort of the default, "We hired the last guy." He wins three games, and in Cleveland if you win three games in a row, you're Vince Lombardi, and the reincarnation of Paul Brown. And he's the head freaking coach. I hope it works out, but history says it's going to be another disaster in Cleveland, unfortunately. Chad: I hear ... Aren't they having a statue molded or minted or whatever the hell they do to make this statue for him, and a three game win streak? Joel: Yeah, it's going to be like the Disney statue with him and Mickey, so it's going to be him and Baker. Baker's going to be really small, and he's going to be really big. That's what they're putting up in Cleveland. All right dude, I'm done ranting. I think you are as well. Let's hear a quick word from JobAdX, and we'll talk army VR and voice assistance, one of our favorites. JobAdX: With JobAdX's first birthday almost here, we are proud of all we've accomplished with advertising clients, publisher job sites, recruitment marketing agencies and staffing firms. Thank you for all the support and trust you have placed in us. Since 2017, JobAdX has used the best of consumer ad tec's bidding and ad delivery to build an incredible programmatic job advertising exchange, and continue to rapidly grow our network of partner sites. We've also launched a feed inventory management platform called Switchboard, effectively offering our dynamic technologies to all job board partners. And we've developed a revolutionary live alert, which eliminates latency and expired job ads via email. No more dead clicks or overages from job links, whether opened today, next month or next year. JobAdX: For more information about our solutions, please reach us at joinus@jobadx.com. Chad: Was the person whistling in the background in that always there, 'cause that's the first time I noticed it. Joel: There's a whistler in the ad? Chad: It sounds like a whistler. Chad: It could be me. Joel: Oh yeah, my hearing's gone. I'm old. I don't want to hear anything any more by choice. Chad: I'd like to look at military recruiting, because our nation's defense goes in line with whether we're hitting our recruiting goals or not, and the military spends more money on recruiting, and is the best recruiting guide that's out there for new and cool kind of things. And there was a new story that popped out of NPR, that talks about the army recruiting goals falling short in the Gen Z era, which was incredibly exciting I think from my standpoint, because Fortune 500 companies, I don't believe are having to deal with this just yet, but the military is. That 17 - 24 range, to an extent. So yeah, it was pretty interesting seeing that the military, especially in this case the army, said, "Hey, recruiters. Get out there on Snapchat, get on Twitter, get on Twitch, all these different types of social media platforms, and try to engage individuals better than what we can now, because you can't call someone Gen Z, 'cause they're not going to answer the goddamn phone." Joel: Yeah. So as a marketer, a digital marketer, I learned early on about PPC. And PPC did not mean pay per click, it meant porn, pills and casinos. The basic gist of that was if you wanted to market in the digital world, keep an eye on porn, pills and casinos, because they're doing the innovative stuff that companies at large will be doing five, 10 years from now. And I think the army is what recruiters should be looking at, because you're right, when you have to recruit people that could die on the job, you better have some damn good recruiting strategies. And the fact that ... We've been talking about the army being innovative for a long time. I think they were the first to have a Second Life island recruiting folks. So when I read this, the main takeaway from the story was the quote that said, "Basically, Gen Z does not answer the phone ... Like, they do not talk on the phone. They don't answer the phone, it's alien to them, they don't want to talk to you." Chad: Yeah. Joel: So the recruiters have been empowered to go to Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch ... anywhere that the youth are playing, they can now go and recruit from. And I think that if you're an employer that's still posting jobs and calling people, like if they're young, they don't want to talk to you. You should be using Canvas, Talkpush or whoever to communicate with these folks, because that's where they live. And the army has set a really great example to show you how they recruit, which is way more challenging probably than the way you're recruiting for a company that isn't killing people. Chad: Yeah. So if you believe that the handshake, looking people straight in the eye, and making sure that you have that kind of connection is the only way to do business, you're fucked when it comes to this new generation. And you're really basically back in the 50s, the way that we did business 50s, 60s, 70s ... until the internet came along, and not so much in technology ... really just didn't give us much time, and we didn't want to fuck with humans any more. Chad: I thought that another cool piece was the US Army sponsored e-sports championships, where recruiters would actually ... This one recruiter was actually on air as one of the e-sports announcers in the tournament. And within 24 hours, they had two million views on that whole segment, and half of those people were 17 to 24. Then the army actually said, "We need to embed this into our actual community." And the army has sports, so you can be in track in the army, you can be a boxer, you can ... You can actually be in sports in the military, and now they're starting an e-sports community to be able to once again draw these 17 to 24 year olds into the community. Changing their culture around this, 'cause they know they have to. Joel: But e-sports isn't about running and fucking jumping, dude. It's about killing people in Fortnite, and Halo, and Battlefield and shit. My 12 year old son, if there's nothing else he should be able to do, it should be shoot a gun at a target, because the kid kills people and aliens and whatever else to the tune of hours a day. If you're looking for people to actually hold a real gun and shoot things, it's the people that are on e-sports playing Halo and Fortnite and everything else. So it's not only hitting them where they live, but they're actually probably pretty good candidates for picking up a gun and shooting things, because they do it digitally on a regular basis. Joel: I think it's also fun to look at ... at our age, advertising through the years of the military. So when you and I were growing up, it was like, "Army, navy, air force, marines. What a great place. It's a great place to start." For us, it was like, "Oh man, you can your start, you can get a career, you can be in the long-term, get security." Chad: College. Joel: Get a job. Yeah, get college paid for. And then it became like Army of One, where it was like, "Screw this team thing, you go in, it's the individual, it's about you. It's about your experience." And now the ads are like virtual reality. You're jumping out of planes, you're storming a beach, you're going from a nurse in a hospital, so then you turn around and you're actually in the battlefield fixing hurt soldiers and shit. For me it's been fun to watch how the military has evolved over the generations, and how the generations ... how you appeal to those generations differently throughout the decades. Chad: And working as an infantry drill sergeant for a time in the US Army down in Fort Benning, Georgia, this shit pisses me off more than it does anything else, because I can tell you, those kids who have been sitting on the couch shooting things in Fortnite or whatever, can't hold a weapon. They've never shot a weapon, they've never run to the Stop sign and back. They're just ... It's one of those things where it's like, "Oh yeah, go ahead, go get those guys, so now I have to mold them into men." That sucks. Joel: Guns have to change. Guns have to turn into joysticks, and controllers somehow. Chad: The robots are going to take this shit over anyway. That's all I gotta say. Joel: Basically, kids will control robots on the battlefield like it's a video game. That's where the world's going. And speaking of VR and smart speakers ... One of your favorite topics. Let's start with smart speakers. These are the voice assistants, Alexa, Siri, Google et cetera. They're flying off the shelves. This is huge, right? The holiday numbers are in. Nearly one in 10 people got one over the holidays. There are now 119 million in circulation in the US alone. This is according to NPR, and Anderson Research. That's a growth of 78% in just the last year, with 21% of the US population now in possession of a smart speaker. Also double digit growth is expected through 2022, as people work out how to best utilize this tech in their daily lives, and not just ask for the weather report. If you're looking for recruiting ideas and the next big thing, clearly voice assistants are a thing. The numbers prove it out. We'll see. Chad: There's no question. It's funny, 'cause I was going to get Julie one of the new ones with the actual Google Assistant with the screen, because you can say, "Hey, pull up a recipe, or pull up ... " I could do that while I'm cooking or what have you. She was like, "No. I don't want that, because I don't want people looking into my home." So there's still that paranoia that's out there too. We do have a Google Home, and maybe they're listening, but they're the hell not watching at this point. Joel: To me, this is eventually going to hit the corporate world, right? I think at some point, these voice assistants will be on every desk in every office and every conference room, where you will ask, "Bring up the presentation, whatever." Or, "Set a meeting for this date," and it'll ... "And invite this person, this person," and you'll just voice that. You won't do it with your phone or with your computer. I think these will eventually penetrate corporate America, and that's probably when the recruiting/HR solutions will happen, because there's no reason why you can't say, "Hey, Alexa, what's our company policy on vacation or time off?" "Time off is dictated by blah blah blah blah." Chad: Yeah. And I think those are easy steps, because we're seeing chatbots do that already. So I think those are easy steps from a voice NLP side. I think when we get into duplex, that's the cool part, when we start to say, "Hey Google, call and make an appointment," when Google's actually calling to make an appointment or sending an email to make an appointment, or doing something of that nature. Or, "Set up an interview for ... ", those types of things. I think that would be ... That's really the next step with the whole duplex model. Joel: I agree. I think we're quite a ways away from that, but I agree, that's where things are going. Well, virtual reality, my favorite technology and yours too, it's equally hot. Oculus Rift, and who hasn't seen the commercials, at least here in the US, of Jonah Hill and the Maroon 5 guy watching the Lakers at Courtside? Oculus Rift sold out on Amazon this holiday season, and the company says they saw strong demand, and continue to into the holidays and after. So maybe VR will finally have its moment here in 2019. What do you think? Chad: It's a possibility. I don't know if it's 2019. I don't know if it's 2019. We did talk about being able to make this mainstream. And that is just the key right there, is making it mainstream. This kind of adoption: if we can continue to see this type of adoption for VR, I think it first and foremost is pretty sad. It's cool at the same time, but it's so sad ... then yeah, you're going to see it happen. We're already seeing companies get into ... I can't remember the name of the company ... into this space, where they send you a VR headset, and it's made out of this really thick type of cardboard, where you quick assemble, you take your smartphone, you slap it in there, and you go onto this whole VR kind of scenario. That's already starting to happen. I think they're ahead of the curve, there's no question. Because we have to get mainstream adoption before anything like that works. If it continues on this route, and you see this type of growth, then yeah. If it starts to kind of fall of the edge, then no way in hell. We'll see. Joel: I think of us as fairly tech savvy, and we don't own one. So that speaks to something, although I really thought about it. I really thought it would be cool. My dad, who is in Austin, we're both sports fans, we both text each other during games ... I thought it would be really cool to be like Jonah Hill and the Maroon 5 guy, to watch games with my dad on this headset. Now, that might tick off our wives. Chad: Yeah. Joel: That's kind of like a world that's kind of cool. I would like to watch a game with my dad, who's in Austin, and feel like I'm there with him. Anyway. Chad: Yeah. Now, that is cool. And it was funny, because I couldn't believe that you didn't already have one, so for Christmas I actually looked at how much they were, and I'm like, "Oh, fuck that." It was 350 bucks. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Instead, he got me the cheap whisky, folks. That's what he did. It's all good. All right man, happy New Year. Chad: Happy New Year. Joel: I'm looking forward to another year of this. 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 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. #Indeed #Jobster #Careerbuilder #VR #SmartSpeakers #Alexa #GoogleHome #Army

We saw Mike present at a conference last year, and the dude's knowledge of the recruitment industry, Google for Jobs and even Amazon's foray into jobs is super intriguing. As a result, we cover a wide variety of recruiting industry topics on this UNCOMMON EXCLUSIVE. Enjoy. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions connects jobseekers with disabilities with employers who value diversity and inclusion.​ Chad: I'm gonna be over the top. Say hello to the easiest way to find interested and qualified candidates. Joel: Dude, you need to tone it down. I was just napping. You mean Uncommon's automated sourcing that turns passive candidates into interested and qualified applications? Chad: Yep. Uncommon Automation helps recruiters cut their sourcing time by 75%. Joel: How much coffee did you have today? Chad: A lot. Joel: Anyway, dude, 75%, that sounds like black magic or something. Chad: Close, it's called automation. It's simple actually. Just feed or post your jobs into Uncommon. The platform identifies your job requirements, and in seconds Uncommon uses those requirements to search over 150 million candidate profiles. And then it pulls back only the qualified candidates. Joel: And don't forget, you can connect your email and Uncommon will provide automated outreach with your customized messages to activate those passive candidates, those pesky passive candidates. Chad: Even better, I'm gonna one up you. Uncommon shows exactly how the candidate meets all the job requirements with a side by side comparison view against the job requirements. Joel: Which means you won't be asking yourself, "What in the hell is this candidate doing here?" Chad: No, but you will be asking yourself, "Where has Uncommon been all my life?" Joel: Seriously? Uncommon is the way to find qualified candidates, active or passive. Chad: Visit Uncommon.co and use discount code CHADCHEESE for 20% off. Joel: 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 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: Say a prayer, boys and girls. We're going to try and get through this show unscathed. I'm Joel Cheesman of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: On today's show, we have another Uncommon exclusive, a special treat today. Saw this guy speak at the Jobg8 conference in Nashville. I was super impressed with him. He lives in Aspen, Colorado, he's got an undergrad degree from Georgetown, and has a masters from the University of Chicago. Other than that, he's a pretty decent guy. Welcome Michael Woodrow to the show. Michael: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Joel: Hold on, trying to get the applause button. Chad: There it is. Joel: There we go. I need a bigger screen to get all my soundbites. Chad: That's what she said. Joel: Michael, before we dive in, give the audience, who I'm guessing most do not know you personally, give us a pitch on you and what you do and why you're here. Michael: Sure. I've got a business called Aspen Tech Labs and we actually just had our 10 year anniversary party this past Friday night, so we've been around for a little while. We work behind the scenes in the recruitment tech industry. The bulk of our business is jobs data management, so jobs scraping, and we move alot of job content around, from applicant tracking systems into advertising platforms like ZipRecruiter, Monster, and Broadbean. Lots of guys like that, we move job content around, we synchronize it, we keep things flowing between the ATSs and the advertising platforms, 'cause we also have our job word product called JobMount, and we have a cool product, hopefully we can talk a little bit about today, called Career Set Cloud, it's got a nice Google for jobs interface and a job alert system. It's a career centered product. Joel: Yep, and JobMount and SpiderMount, a lot of our audience members in the vendors side will know that. JobMount's been around almost 10 years, right? Michael: Yeah, it actually predated the business a little bit. My former partner, who retired recently, started doing one off job wars about 15 years ago, and then we launched Aspen Tech Labs 10 years ago, and JobMount was our first product. Yeah, JobMount and then yeah, a piece of our jobs data management business is called SpiderMount, that's the scraping business. Joel: Yep. Let's dive in, one of the things you really wanted to talk about, and we can get to the industry stuff as we go on, but you were at Jobg8 in London and had quite a bit of takeaways from that. Can you sum up some of the highlights from that show? Michael: I would say that first of all, one of the things that interesting is Jobg8, and there's a conference coming up in March called RecPlus, it seems like the community of attendees in Europe is, nothing against the U.S. people, but is a little more vibrant. It seems like the U.S. one is, sorry, you were there and I were there, so the usual suspects go to the U.S. ones. But in the European conferences, it's media firms, it's advertising firms, the StepStone guys are all over the place there, Russ Media, there's lots of activity from lots of different firms as opposed to the usual suspects. I think that's one thing that's interesting. It's pretty vibrant, it's really well-attended, 200 plus people are there. I think they do a good job. Michael: One takeaway that I had that I thought was really interesting, I think most people took this away too, there's a Spanish firm called Job Today and they built their business from almost nothing in about four years. And they're kind of like a snag a job or retail or lower end employee site, and they do, almost exclusively, they do employer marketing using Facebook. You think about Facebook as being something for candidates really, not for employers, but they say SMBs are all over Facebook. They're concerned about their social presence, etc., and so they're there. You can really advertise to SMBs on Facebook, which people were just kind of blown away by that, and they showed some stats that were pretty cool. Michael: And they said, and then for millennials- Joel: Oh, god. Michael: Which is their target audience, almost exclusively Instagram and Snapchat. That's where they attract their candidates. So that was a really interesting presentation, their growth ... He admitted they had some good funding and were able to spend some money where startups have trouble with that sometimes. But that was one takeaway I thought was pretty interesting. Joel: And I know that AIM Group had a report that a job today is posted, a job in the U.S., for someone to hit up North America operations, so they're coming over here pretty quickly. Michael: Yeah, that's interesting. They didn't talk about that at all, but it doesn't surprise me. It seems like they're well funded and they're moving. So that's something that certainly was interesting. But yeah, there was definitely a good vibe. Another thing that was one trend there was that job boards that are just providing jobs to candidates, the StepStone guys and some more of the recruiter marketing firms, they were telling me that they don't even think that those guys have a chance of surviving, that the sites really need to be a place for candidates to gather information and to interact and the jobs can be one part of what you're doing on the sites. Michael: It sounds like the guys from StepStone particularly are spending a lot of focus on that. That might be because unemployment is so low. The other thing I learned there is unemployment in places like Hungary and Croatia and places like that are like 6%, 3%, 4%. I didn't know that. I thought those Eastern European countries were much higher, but lots of action in those places and people are being smart about recruiting, because if you have full employment, you have to be smarter about recruitment, right? Chad: Yeah, we talked to Wolfgang down in New Orleans during TAtech over at StepStone, and those guys are an entirely different animal. They like to build everything instead of partner for things. So yeah, I could definitely see where they want to be able to grow out something that obviously is more than the job boards, more on the interaction and engagement side of the house. But all of that being said, let's get to the meat of this stuff, because you had a rant that you wanted to go on with regard to Google for Jobs, Google APIs, and Tarquin are those guys showing up to these conferences and really saying nothing. So give it to us. Michael: I love the sponsors of these conferences. They allow me to speak or whatever, so I'm not bashing on the Jobg8 people or anything, but it just seems like this guy Tarquin, I forget what his last name is, Tarquin ... Chad: Clark. Michael: Clark from Google shows up at these conferences and he's not part of Google for Jobs. He claims to know nothing about it. He's part of the Google Cloud side, which is the Google API, Google Hire, that whole side of it. And so if you think about the audience, the audience is recruitment tech people and programmatic advertising and job boards and everyone, and people are seeing like, "What the hell do I care about Google Cloud and Google Hire, especially?" Maybe Google API, not really sure. I don't really see that in widespread use. But he comes up there and he talks about it and people get excited that he's there, and he doesn't say anything. And when he walks away, at least the people who seem to know what they're talking about are like, "Well, that was a waste of time." Joel: It's a nice draw to have Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and whatnot at your conference. Michael: Yeah, I think that is a draw to have those people there, but I think I really am advocating to stop having him come to these things. And I'm going to talk to the people at AIM and Louise and everyone, you should tell him that he can't come alone anymore. He's gotta bring somebody from Google for Jobs so they can talk about what's going on. Chad: So that's like going to Indeed and having somebody speak from Indeed but they have no fucking clue what's going on in their search group. You realize that, right? So they've modeled that like Google, and Google and their search team is pretty much behind frosted glass and shit. So you can't see, you can't really have engagement with them, not to mention, I'm sure you've seen the anti-trust suits that have come out of Europe with regard to Google, right? Michael: Yeah. Joel: Why do you think Google doesn't ... because obviously Tarquin knows what's going on at Google for Jobs. Strategically, why do you think they play that game? Michael: You know, the only thing I can think is that they just don't want to answer the questions about, "Are you guys going to charge for advertising on Google for Jobs? Are you going to continue giving traffic to job boards on Google for Jobs?" I think they just don't want to answer those questions and then be held back later to say, "Hey, you told us this, and it's not necessarily true." So that's the only thing that I can think. That's the only reason I can think. I mean I guess there's some Chinese wall type stuff that might make sense too, but ... Chad: Well there's that, and I mean Tarquin, his whole job go to market is the API stuff. So his focus is to be able to go into those types of environments to be able to talk to job boards and say, "Hey, look," I'm gonna paraphrase, "your job search sucks. It's for shit. You should actually use the Google API job search just like CareerBuilder, Jibe, all these other recruitment platforms, because your stuff sucks. Ours is better." So it's not really his job to talk about Google for Jobs, it's his job to be able to sell the go to market side of the API. Michael: Yeah, I get that. I get that that's what his job is. But I just think the conference people mislead you, someone from Google's gonna be there, we all think it's Google for Jobs and it's not. I get what his deal is, but he even started talking about Google Hire, and he was telling everyone how Google Hire's perfect for them and everything and everyone's sitting there like, "What are you talking about? We're job boards." So he must know. He's a Google guy, he's not stupid, right? He must know. I don't know, it's kind of crazy. Sorry about that rant. I just have seen it three times now, or three or four times, and you just kind of shake your head. Michael: But I would like to talk about Google, I think we should talk about Google for Jobs at some point here because I think it's super interesting. Joel: And before we get into that, I'm curious because you've been in the job board business so long and your product ... Give us a current state of the union for job boards, where they are now, where they're going, are you bullish, bearish, what's going on there? Michael: I'll tell you, when I get a call from somebody who wants to start a new job board, the first thing, I basically tell the person two things. I'm like, "I don't know if you're going to buy our job board or not, but here's two things you can take away from this call regardless of which direction you go: A, don't quit your day job, and B, don't build the job board from scratch." I always tell people that. The second one maybe isn't as relevant to the question, but the first one, don't quit your day job, is ... Michael: And kind of a side note that I tell people is, if you want to start a job board today, you need to have either some secret sauce for attracting candidates, maybe have connections to an association or your brother's in charge of the Nurse's Association of America or I don't know, something like that. But you have some secret sauce to attract candidates or you've got some access to employers that you've been in the industry long, they trust you, they know you're gonna help them hire, one or the other. You need to have one of those two things. Michael: But if you're in the job board business, maybe I drank the Kool-Aid or whatever, but I think you need to offer candidates more than just getting hammered by job alerts, you know? And so you need to offer them some reason to stay connected with your platform. It's news, it's training, it's whatever, so that you'll be top of mind when they're looking to make a job change. I think that's the critical thing. Joel: What are some examples of job sites and what they're doing that you see that's successful? Michael: Let's think about that for a minute. Ones that I think are successful, ZipRecruiter is incredibly successful. We all have to agree on that, right? Is that something you guys agree with? Joel: Sure. Michael: And I love the guys at ZipRecruiter, but I don't understand why job boards take feeds from them, frankly. It's a small amount of money to get to push your traffic back to ZipRecruiter so that they can do a better job than you soliciting your candidate with job alerts? I don't understand why job boards are willing to do that. I understand absolutely why ZipRecruiter's doing that. Chad: So why is ZipRecruiter doing so well? Because they really are just an alert type of job board. They don't have any really additional content. So you were talking about being able to do more than just the alerts and that kind of content, but that's really all ZipRecruiter's doing, right? Michael: Yeah, I think they're a force. And so there's somebody who can just by brute force, and basically all they do is sign up job boards to buy traffic from. So buy traffic from a job board, job boards are always looking for additional revenue streams. Most of them are willing to sell their traffic to ZipRecruiter, but then ZipRecruiter captures all those candidates and they've built this massive job alert resume database, resume database and job alert database, and they're good at it. They're much better at it and they've got the broad platform. They can send engineering jobs to an engineering person and music jobs to a music person. They can send all of those. Michael: So I think they're probably the exception. They probably don't need to provide a whole bunch of content for people, but I don't think your average job board like jobs in sports or golf talent or jobs in football, they can't compete with somebody like ZipRecruiter when it comes to job alerts. Joel: And Indeed's success was similar as well right? Providing backfill for all these job boards, which by the way, they put a little link in the bottom of every site saying, "Jobs provided by Indeed" which help their SEO because of the links they were getting. They're basically using the little guy to leapfrog them to success, right? Michael: Yeah, that's how they built their business all over the world, and I hate those guys, but their business plan was absolutely genius. Because I had some job boards at the time and they were giving 'em massive amounts of organic traffic and everybody relied on them, and I was in their office in Connecticut eight years ago or something like that, meeting with them about scraping and things like that, and every Monday they had like 50 new college grads, and all they were doing was giving them all these job boards to go take their clients, call 'em directly, and say, "Why are you working with ABC Job Board? You should be working directly with us. You don't have to pay per month, we'll pay you per click," that whole thing. It was genius. That's what they've done. Michael: The thing that really still boggles my mind and I wish I could ask Google two questions, not just one, but the second I'd ask them is, "Why the hell did you give so much status to Indeed job postings?" For years, they gave Indeed ... But why? It wasn't original content. It was just aggregated content. Joel: The algorithm. Chad: So here's the thing and here's what we learned, is that, and this is actually something we learned through talking to Colin Day and some of the other operators that are out there is that Indeed was providing almost live feeds into Google and providing them with jobs almost as they were posted through the applicant tracking system. So they were banging the hell out of applicant tracking systems, getting feeds from job boards, etc., etc., etc., and they seemed to be the only place that was providing that kind of content that fast. So I think it was pretty simple for Google. It was like, yeah, these guys are obviously the source. They're providing us more jobs per second than anybody else that's out there who's providing them in 24 hour, 12 hour feeds. Joel: And by the way, the back links for there, people would go to their site, it was user-friendly, they would stay on the site. It wasn't just the frequency of scraping and uploading into Google. Nobody played the SEO game better than Indeed, which is why they became Indeed. I don't know if you can blame Google for that. Google has an algorithm and they say, "We don't play favorites, and if you are, according to algorithm, the best results for these searches, that's how you're going to be in the top of searches," and Indeed played the game really, really well. Chad: They were incredibly focused, which nobody else was. So that being said, let's get the hell away from Indeed for a second. Let's go to Google for Jobs. How does Google for Jobs disrupt even more than they have thus far, or do you think they will? And this will just be where they sit. Michael: I think Google for Jobs is going to be absolutely the force in job search. I just think what we're hearing from people, so we see it, we have this platform where we can scrape jobs from an ATS, you don't have to change your career site, you don't have to do anything, we just grab jobs from your ATS, we populate a parallel career site, we push those jobs to Google for Jobs, and we see the traffic. It's not massive traffic, but it is growing. And what we're seeing is we're seeing super high apply rates and we're hearing in the industry, if you guys Google it or whatever, check it yourself if you don't think I'm right, but people are saying there are higher hire rates. Michael: So Google for Jobs is generating much higher hire rates than other places. And the only thing I can think is that when people go to Google and they look for a job, they're serious about looking for a job, right? They didn't get a job alert, they didn't get bounced into some other way or whatever, they went to Google to look for a job. Google was trying to make it really easy for them to show relevant jobs that are close to them, etc., and then they can choose where they want to go to apply. They can choose to go directly to the ATS if it's offered there or they can go to LinkedIn or they can go wherever to apply. So Google's making it easy for them. Michael: So everything I'm seeing is super positive and if you look at the real estate that Google for Jobs is giving, it's massive. They're giving almost the entire first page to Google for Jobs. And getting back to your Indeed example, maybe that is the answer that I've been struggling for, because I do believe that Google wants to make the search experience ... Google will do whatever they can to make the search experience optimal for the person who's searching. And if Indeed was delivering that for them, then there's the answer to my quandary. And I think that's what they're trying to do with Google for Jobs. They're trying to make the search experience as simple and user-friendly as they can. Joel: Hey, Michael, you had some really interesting insight into the things that are solid optimization tips in Google for jobs. For example, I think one of the things you said was if they're actually applying, then your jobs are going to rank better. Or if you have salary information, Google's gonna look at that more better than if you don't have salary data. Can you give some optimization tips that you've seen from your business and Google for Jobs? And I'm also curious about old SEO, so old SEO of the JobMount, getting ranked for Toledo Jobs versus maybe how a company should be looking at SEO today in a Google for Jobs world? Michael: I would say so Google's got their schema and it's not that complicated to follow. They don't care about geolocation because they know it better than anybody. They've got their own maps API that they can run all the jobs through and they'll have the geo locations, so they don't really care about that. They certainly care about job title. They don't care about any categorization because they're taking the job titles and the content and they're better than anybody at dealing with making sense of content. And it was funny, at Jobg8 in London, people were complaining about it, "Why is Google showing me a physical therapist job in London?" and everything, and my point is, they're gonna figure it out. Michael: They might today show you a physical therapist job in London, but every day they're getting smarter and smarter about what they're doing. So there's the Google schema, and if anybody who's listening here doesn't know what it is, just send me an email or Google it. It's pretty easy to get the jobs in that format. Follow that. They do like salary information, so even if you can have a range that you're going to rank higher or if you've got a range of salary information versus blank salary information. It's a little dicey if you're a job board and you're collecting jobs from, let's say, BP or Craft, and they don't have salary information, are you going to add that to the job to push it out to Google for Jobs? It's a little dicey to do that, but it's kind of up to everybody how they want to handle that. Michael: But salary information is going to help you rank better. And what we're also seeing is that on the Google for Jobs screen that comes up, you'll see LinkedIn usually comes up and CareerBuilder come up. They're either two partners with Google for Jobs or something, they usually come up first or second, but the ATS, the career site, can stand up against those power houses. So I believe that over time, Google is going to give more status to the career site, because again, if you believe my premise that Google wants to make the experience as clean as possible for the user, getting that person to the ATS if it's mobile-friendly is going to be a better user experience than kicking them to Zip and then Zip kicks them to Indeed, or not Indeed, Zip kicks them somewhere else and everyone's collecting information and people are dropping. Michael: I see that's where they're going. They're not quite there yet, but I think that's the direction they're going in. Chad: I disagree when it comes to that, because in some cases if you go to an easy apply scenario, you're going to get somebody who actually applies through Indeed or LinkedIn or one of the actual vendors versus going through a 20 minute apply process and they eject. So I think there's no question, there's a great opportunity for applicant tracking systems in companies to focus on their user experience overall to ensure that they get much better rankings on Google for Jobs, but I don't think that's played out yet. I think that job boards and job sites are really going to work extensively on UX so that they can continue to gain rank. That's just my personal opinion. Michael: I don't disagree with that, yeah, it makes sense. It comes back to my point, Google is smart about this. They're going to try to figure out what's best for the user. And if a quick apply is the best for the user, then they're probably going to direct somebody there. You're probably right about that. Chad: So let's talk about another mammoth organization in Amazon. They've made some strides with AWS Educate and they also started to tack a job board onto that. We talked about this in one of our podcasts last week, a couple weeks ago. What's your take on this? Michael: So one thing we said at Jobg8 that I thought was interesting, maybe you guys have said this already, but LinkedIn's in the job business through Microsoft, Google's obviously in the job business, Facebook's in the job business, Indeed, the biggest guys are in this business. It makes me bullish on the industry, right? So these guys wouldn't all be here if it wasn't interesting, and here comes Amazon, saying, "Hey, we don't want to be left out." SO this AWS Educate platform that they have, again, just like Indeed, you have to respect Amazon. No matter what you think about Amazon. Michael: They're saying, "Let's build a platform and let's display jobs for Cloud engineers and let's provide training for Cloud engineers and let's provide content and other things to keep people interested," and then the idea being, I think, once those people who look favorably on AWS, when they go out into the world and they're choosing a server partner, they're going to choose AWS. So I think it's genius for them to do this, and there's so many of those jobs. I think that AWS wants to capture every Cloud job and maybe even broader, every technical job, of all the AWS partners. Michael: And they want it to be a value ad, they're not charging for it, they want it to be a value ad for the partners. We pay AWS a lot of money and we're a tiny little company. Everybody's paying AWS, and AWS is saying, "hey, we're going to give you something else for that, too. We're gonna help you find people." Joel: One of the things that I think definitely sparked this whole arms race in employment was Microsoft dropping 26 billion dollars for LinkedIn. That definitely got everyone's intention. Any acquisitions in Amazon's future that you see? I've been talking about Slack for a long time. I could see ZipRecruiter being gobbled up by them or maybe Facebook. What do you see on the MNA frontier? Michael: It certainly sounds interesting. If you look at LinkedIn and you look at ... They've got that professional network that they've built. Microsoft now knows about all of us. They have all of our personal email addresses, they have everything through LinkedIn. So I think that certainly made LinkedIn interesting for Microsoft. Is that why ZipRecruiter is building this massive job alert system, because they're collecting user information? They know where these people are working, they know what jobs they're interested in, they have a lot of information there, so could that be something that's interesting? I don't know. I know the Zip guys are happy building their business and having a lot of fun doing it and everything, so I don't know about that. Michael: But I think user information is of great value and Microsoft proved that paying for LinkedIn. Joel: Michael, last question for me. We talk a lot about on the show automation and sourcing automation. Google released out of data the ability to post a job and automatically see who in your database is a good candidate and we see this with LinkedIn as an SMB tool where they go into their LinkedIn directory and give you candidates for the jobs you just posted. This is an Uncommon exclusive, they just launched a sourcing tool that will search 150 million candidates to bring up, candidates they believe are good fits for your job. Joel: The question I guess is your thoughts on the automation trend. At some point, do we even need job postings and is that a viable business for the future? Michael: It's interesting, I'm a recruiter by training. That's where I come at this. And so 20 plus years in recruiting, I'm old enough to say, "Oh, no that'll never work." But I'm also smart enough to say, "Technology is certainly going to continue to disrupt." I haven't seen anything that does a really good job with it, but if you think about what LinkedIn is trying to do, they've got this gigantic professional database and being able to help recruiters match candidates and narrow the list down and then contact them, I think there's definitely a huge amount of power in that, a huge amount. I really believe that LinkedIn is a recruitment technology firm more than anything else. I think that's where they make the bulk of the revenue, and so it doesn't surprise me that they're doing that and I'm optimistic that they're going to improve on that, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that we don't need postings. Joel: It'd be a much better show if you did. Hey Michael, man, I know you're a busy guy and there are probably mountains to ski or something there in Aspen or fires to cuddle up next to, but thanks for coming on the show. For anyone that wants to know more about you or your company, where would you send them? Michael: So they can just go to Aspentechlabs.com or I'm just Mike at Aspentechlabs.com. Shoot me an email and I'll be happy to tell you about the Google schema or how to get on Google for Jobs or anything like that. Happy to do it. So thanks guys, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Joel: Thanks, Michael. And Chad? Chad: Yeah? Joel: 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. #JobMount #SpiderMount #SEO #GoogleforJobs #HirebyGoogle #Jobg8 #GoogleJobsAPI

What could be better than predictions for the New Year by Chad & Cheese? How about those two being joined by industry veteran Tim Sackett? Well, your wish is our command. Enjoy, and continue supporting our sponsors in the new year. Sovren, JobAdX and Canvas rock our world. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Merry New Year boys and girls. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous, but today way more charming as we welcome Tim Nutsacket to our show this week we break down last year's predictions, look at next year's predictions and probably talk sports and beer and some other shit. Nurse that hangover, 'cause it's about to get intoxicating right after this word from JobAdX. JobAdX: With JobAdX's first birthday almost here, we are proud of all we've accomplished with advertising clients, publisher job sites, recruitment marketing agencies and staffing firms. Thank you for all the support and trust you've placed in us. Since 2017 JobAdX has used the best of consumer ad tech's bidding and ad delivery to build an incredible programmatic job advertising exchange and continue to rapidly grow our network of partner sites. JobAdX: We've also launched a feed inventory management platform called Switchboard, effectively offering our dynamic technologies to all JobBoard partners. And, we've developed our revolutionary live alert which eliminate latency and expired job ads via email, no more dead clicks or overages from job links whether open today, next month or next year. For more information about our solutions please reach us and joinus@jobadx.com. Joel: Tim I pronounced your last name correctly in the opening, right? Tim: Oh Nutsacket. Joel: Welcome back, Tim, It's been a year. Tim: I know and I can't tell you, I mean I've heard from tens of people that've listened to your podcast that are like, "Oh my gosh I can't believe that you're gonna be on the most dangerous HR podcast ever, which is so sad. Joel: To highlight you said tens, right? Tim: Tens. Joel: We have way more listeners than we thought, Jeff. Chad: Yeah I know it's pretty awesome. I know we've got like ... But most are our family though, right? Joel: Yeah. Well Tim welcome to the show, man. New listeners won't know that you were on our year end show or year beginning show last year, to go through predictions. You were star of one of our most popular podcasts last year which was the indeed jail podcast. Tim: Going to jail. Joel: So it's always a treat. Tim: I mean right, I've gotten more content out of Indeed putting me in jail for the year and then deciding to screw over every staffing firm, it just keeps clicking away. Love it. Joel: You and Chad have made a career out of fucking Indeed, it's great. Tim: That's just 'cause they love fucking everybody else, so I mean it's fair play, bub. Joel: And they stole your Christmas sweater idea. Tim: Sons of bitches. You guys had a great Christmas sweater. Joel: Dude. That's all Chad, man. I don't want any credit for that. Chad: You're not gonna get any credit because it was my idea, you thought it was dumb and everybody else is like, "That is the shit." I'm like, "I know it's the shit." Tim: I just wanna know how far ahead of time do you have to think about that to get it to China to have some seven year old kid make it, like it's ... That'd have to be at least nine months. Chad: It's made in Germany, man, and it actually took about eight weeks, yeah. Joel: The country that gave us Claudia Schiffer also gave us that God awful sweater. Chad: It's fuckin' awesome, dude. I love it. Chad: Let's talk about 2018 predictions, where we came out, and first and foremost I'd like to say that I was wrong because Saquon Barkley was a hit but Ed in Philly, shut up Penn State still sucks. Chad: Cleveland took Mayfield, which Joel was wrong and I was right because the Browns, they love the bad boy. But he's not doin' too bad right now, is he? Joel: I'm warming up to him. Little by little. Chad: At the end of the day in 2018 we all agree Michigan still sucks, so ... Joel: Amen to that. Chad: So those were kind of like the pre not talent predictions. Joel: Did we really talk like draft predictions on last year's show? Chad: Yeah we did, we did, we talked a little bit about draft predictions and who we thought was going to kick ass and take names. Tim: What do you guys think about the process of all these kids not playing in ball game? Joel: Don't like it, but totally get it. I do think you have to be a top ten to 15 player to do it, though. So my wife is a West Virginia grad and Will Grier is arguably a top five quarterback in the draft. He's projected to go second or third round. He has said, "I'm not gonna play in the game." To me he should play, 'cause he could light up whoever and maybe even move up into a first rounder, but I think you shouldn't do it unless you're like a top ten or 15 pick. Tim: Yeah, Michigan State's got a quarterback that literally is like he might be a six or seventh round or even not get drafted, he's not playing and you wanna go, "I don't know if you're helping yourself." Chad: There's a risk reward there, right? In that case, that's all about reward. I really don't see a risk there, but my pick for this year where it's around the same thing but Nick Bosa, he went out early in the season with an injury and he decided not to come back but here's my prediction. I still think he's gonna go top five picks because he dominated every game he was in and genetics, big guys, his dad played in the NFL and his brother is tearin' the shit out of offensive lines right now. Joel: This is how Chad does his predictions, like he looks at every mock draft that has Bosa as a top five pick and then he comes on the show and goes, "I think he's gonna be a top five pick, that's my prediction." Like that's such a bold pick, every expert has him top five and now Chad has him top five. Chad: I didn't look at anything. Joel: Way to put yourself out there, Chad. Tim: I'm gonna put one out there. Duke's gonna win the NCA tournament. Chad: That's a good one. I like that one. Joel: That's a good one like would you take Duke over the field? Tim: Oh God yeah. I would take Duke over the field right now in a heartbeat. Joel: I'll go sports. Jim Harbaugh is not the coach of Michigan next year. Tim: No. Joel: It goes to the pros. Tim: That's a good one though, I like that. Joel: And potentially Cleveland is in the Catbird seat for his services. I think he's either in Cleveland or Green Bay. Tim: Did Ohio state make the right decision? Chad: Which one? Joel: Meaning what? Tim: Just moving the guy up. Chad: I think he did a good job for the first part of the season, first four games. So yeah and he's in the system so yeah I think he was the logical step. Joel: He's on a short leash. I mean Ohio State's too big of a job just to like put the next guy in line. Someone bigger will come along. Chad: We'll see. Joel: Let's get to recruiting predictions and review last year's brilliant commentary that we had. Chad: Okay, so the first one, Tim, was sourcing is dead in 2018. Which I'm going to say not so fast, not so fast, there was a lot of talking about it but that didn't quite happen. What do you think about that, Tim? Tim: I still think when you take a look at kind of the evolution of sourcing tech that the run of the mill sourcing sourcer that has to go out the right balloon strings and stuff, like that job's gone away. You don't need that anymore. Chad: So you feel like it's good. Tim: I thought the prediction was pretty good, I mean ... Joel: Alright. The judges disagree. Chad: So that being said, I was just about on the same bandwagon. I was more on the RPA process side of the house and I thought that that would pretty much be a standard in all the process in 2018 and that's just not the case, so yeah I was wrong there. And Joel predicted Glassdoor goes public, which did not happen. Joel: But they would have, had they not been acquired. Chad: Did not happen. Tim: Doesn't matter if it would have. Chad: It did not happen. Joel: Fine. Chad: Second round, Tim said, "Employee referral automation gains adoption." I think that one goes into the category of who gives a fuck. Tim: When you take a look, still, it didn't and I could put that on the list this year too 'cause I still think it's like the highest ROI most underutilized recruiting tech on the market and I still don't [crosstalk 00:09:02] Chad: Which is why they won't do it. Tim: Yeah. I don't get it. If people think they can do it for free, they're like, "We have a referral program, it's on the wall in the lunchroom we'll go look at it." Chad: Exactly. Tim: That shit doesn't work. Chad: So my second pick which incredibly bold, CareerBuilder and Monster start surging back. Tim: It would have been better if you had said CareerBuilder and Monster merged. Joel: Key word there is start. Like you could argue that they started, didn't quite get there. Chad: Yeah, I think I mean CareerBuilder gave us a lot to talk about this year. They were dramatic changes, El Chapo ... Joel: They were the gift that kept on giving in 2018. Chad: Oh my God. Monster really didn't do much of anything, right? So it was a difference between there was a lot of stupid shit happening versus not much happening at all, so I mean there was a start of something but I sure don't know what the fuck that was. Tim: Well no, Monster announced the whole video studio thing, right? That was really cool but then it wasn't actually available. Chad: Once again I don't know that they don't ... Joel: Don't forget augmented reality like CareerBuilder. Chad: Then Joel's was Amazon buys Slack which again didn't happen. Man, we are not doing well here, guys. The last one for Tim, college degrees are dead. I'm gonna get behind Tim on this one. I believe that we actually, at least the starting of this was happening just because of the talent shortage, companies really started to look at getting rid of these really, the requirements for a college degree when, in fact, you don't need a goddamn college degree to do most of these jobs. I'm gonna give him a thumbs up on that one. Tim: Bam. Joel: Damn. Chad: Take that. Joel: I think if we do this show you know, ten years from now that might hold a little more weight. Or if you would've just said, "Alternatives to college start to take serious precedence in some organizations like that would be good, but just to outright say, "College degrees are dead." Was a pretty bold prediction. Chad: He was being very bold. Tim: Yes. Chad: Not so bold prediction, the ATS is going to make a comeback, that was my third one. Joel: And we said before the show did they actually leave? Chad: Although ... Yeah, but I mean they weren't really haven't done anything in the recruiting talent acquisition sides, it's all been background checks and onboarding shit. But we did get iCIMS spending cash for text recruit. They also had an infusion of cash, their vision is very aggressive I believe so I think we did see a vision from at least one of these applicant tracking systems that was aggressive on the talent acquisition recruiting side of the house. Joel: Chad's being very charitable with the predictions from last year, but okay. Chad: Yes I am. And then last but not least, Joel voice assistance comes to employment. Google Duplex isn't ready for Prime Time yet. Tim: Siri, can you find me a developer worth? Joel: We're like O eight and two. That's our record. We've got a couple ties and a lot of losses. Chad: We're the fucking Cleveland Browns of this shit is what we are. Tim: We're playing for our first round selection from 2008. Chad: Shit. Joel: Very nice. And that is last year. We'll get into this year after this quick word from Sovren. 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.com. Chad: See, and again, I'm gonna say that's the reason why AI and algorithms take over because they put sexy voices on 'em like that and there's nothing we can do. Tim: Yeah, they come up with those like Russian names like it's Svetlana. Like here's our chat bot Svetlana. Joel: There is no chat bot named Svetlana. Tim: So great. Not yet. There will be now. Joel: Adriana. Chad: Adriana. So that being said, getting into 2019 predictions and as always we're gracious here at the Chad and Cheese podcast. We're allowing our guest to go first. So Tim, 2019 predictions. Joel: Let's go. Tim: As we know, you know we're gonna have a little bit of softening of the economy. We've already started to feel it with all these fourth quarter layoffs. So my prediction is is that assessment science and those vendor community out there will have a big year, it'll come back in a big way, we'll be talking more about the assessment science side. Basically because we got all in 2018 we just basically hired any warm body that would come through the door and now we can come back we can say, "Look, we don't need to hire any warm body with a hickey, we can actually hire real talented people and take our time lets put some money into that and let's upgrade the talent that we have." I don't think we'll see a bunch of layoffs, I think what we'll see is targeted kind of people getting shot 'cause they suck so bad, and then you're upgrading the talent within organizations. Joel: I haven't heard the word hickey for about 15 years, so thank you for that, Tim. And what is that ... Was that a warm body with a hickey, or a body with a warm hickey? Tim: A warm body with a hickey because a cold body with a hickey is just that's just wrong. Chad: Nobody wants that. You get boo'd for bringing that up, Cheesman. So there's been a good amount of money that's been poured into this area, the assessment area so yeah I think I could kind of get on board with that prediction. Tim: It's kind of beyond I still think too many HR leaders, TA leaders are stuck in this kind of like, "Oh, we're doing the wonder lick or some stupid personality assessment." That's not kind of assessment science or 2018 2019. It's all kind of data driven and kind of really more sophisticated. The reality is that those things can pick people better than Harry or HR men or your supervisor and you know whatever. Joel: Harry Hickey. Tim: Harry Hickey, who is 20 year pro supervisor manufacturer that has no idea what he's doing. He just is basically picking somebody 'cause they came in with Lion shirt on versus a Packer shirt or something. Chad: And that's bias, my friend and we won't have it. Tim: Bam. Joel: Exactly. Chad: We won't have it. Alright, Cheesman, you're first. Joel: My turn. Okay. Mine is much more specific than this sort of gray ethos prediction that Tim makes. Tim: That way in 2020 I can definitely say, "See? My prediction came true." Joel: Yeah you've got the trumpification of predictions. Definitely can get out of that one in the future. Joel: Okay, mine is that at least one of the following CEOs will not make it to 2020, meaning they will get fired. Those three will be Monster CEO Scott Gutz, DHI CEO Art Zeile or CareerBuilder CEO Irina Svetlana Novoselsky. Tim: Don't do that. Joel: One of those three will be fired when we get together next year. At least one. Tim: Okay, real quick let's do a Fuck Mary, Kill. Go ahead. Chad: So Tim. So your pick. Joel: Who can most survive the year and whose most likely gonna get canned? Tim: So I mean I had personal conversations with each of these people in 2018. I've spent time with all of them, so I feel really bad about having to make that prediction of who would get shot first. I will say the Dice CEO. I just think their product is probably struggling. It has less name recognition than the CareerBuilder Monster stuff that who can still kind of get money from non suspecting TA leaders HR leaders. Chad: Yeah. I'm with Tim, I think, and I'm not gonna be as nice, just because Art won't come on the fucking show and talk through it, but ... Tim: Art's a good guy, I think he really believes in the company and the product, I just, you know. Chad: Well yeah but he was at TA tech in New Orleans talking about onboarding and shit. I mean it's like what the fuck are you guys doing over there? Your product sucks but you wanna talk about down stream shit? I mean this doesn't make any sense whatsoever, so I'm not sure that they have the focus and yeah I just, from a product standpoint they haven't been able to keep up. So they would have to leap frog and I don't think that they have the resources to be able to do that, so I think Art's dead in the water. Scott's only been in the job for shit, five, six months. Joel: Six months. Chad: Yeah, and you know I think Randstad, yes they do focus heavily on margins and eBid and those types of things, but I think he's got a little bit more rope than Art does. Joel: I'll zag a little bit from your zigging just for the sake of argument. I'd say Monster has the best chance of surviving. They've got a road map, they've got executives around he's got a team like ... I don't think Randstad is gonna pull the plug, I don't think they're gonna sell the company in the next year but I'll go ahead and say CareerBuilder will get axed. But more likely because they sell the company or just have a total sort of change of leadership and executives and all kinds of stuff but I don't think it'll be performance necessarily as opposed to just a major change in the company. I think her CFO background opposed to the tech background of the other two really lend itself to saying, "Sell it, chop it up." It doesn't really say, "Innovation and like new tomorrows." To me. Chad: She's an Apollo person though, so I think if that happens she'll be moved out to another position somewhere else as opposed to just chopped and ejected out. So if that does happen, I mean she was moved in there from Apollo as an Apollo person, company woman, to be put into that slot. Tim: She shows she's the one to make some tough calls, I mean, so she's definitely a strong leader. I don't know if that company, it doesn't matter who leads that company, I don't know if they're coming back, but I think I agree with Joel on that is that she'll probably move out to some place else. Chad: Alright, so are we ready for more? Joel: Alright brainiac. Chad: Alright, so I'm going to springboard off of Tim's from last year because I think there's a good possibility of it happening this year is much better obviously than what happened in 2018. Joel: So if this is like Tim's is it like water's wet or sky is blue? Chad: Kind of. No, I'm gonna say Booleon is dead and candidate matching becomes standard in recruiting platforms 'cause I mean seriously, let's face it, recruiters are spending 7.4 seconds reviewing a single resume, which is stupid when an algorithm can review thousands of profiles in that same time frame and match qualified candidates to the requisitions. So platform vendors who wanna stay ahead of the talent acquisition ask or they're already moving in that direction anyway and they have been in 2018 and all those TA professionals who don't want their CHRO or their CEO to ask them, "Hey, what are we doing in AI or process automation?" They've already started doing due diligence or they have somebody doing it, it'll start to take place traction wise in 2019. So I think the matching piece is going to be a standard for companies. Joel: So just to specify. You're not saying sourcing is dead, but you're just saying the process of Booleon searches are dead? Chad: Yeah. Joel: By human beings. Chad: Yeah. It's gonna be done by an algorithm and all of that is gonna be taking place with platforms as opposed to people. Joel: However Booleon in searches will forever work in google, just so you know. Chad: Okay. Joel: Just throwing that out there. Chad: Booleon for candidates. Joel: Google will not kill a Booleon search train. Chad: No, they are killing the Booleon search train. Did you see their candidate match API? It's already in Google Hire. Joel: I'm talking literally you'll still always be able to put in a Booleon search in Google and click search. Chad: We're talking about talent acquisition here. Joel: I'm bein' a smartass, this is what we do on the show. Chad: Oh, my bad, okay good job. Joel: Thanks. Chad: So that being said, I get to jump to my turn to go to my second prediction. That was a good one that Booleon is dead one. Number two. This is my softball prediction. Microsoft acquires Upwork. I think we can all agree. Tell me if if I'm wrong, that the world of work is changing, especially with the way that the landscape is when it comes to hiring and Microsoft could definitely bridge a huge talent shortage gap by providing individuals who can pretty much knock out products, freelancers, projects, all that other happy horse shit. Instead of doing FTE stuff they could do it through Upwork and then linking it into LinkedIn. So being able to utilize LinkedIn, what do they have like six hundred million profiles or some shit like that? Joel: Yep. Chad: Being able to add those freelancers into the mix and then start to introduce the world of freelancers in Upwork to their millions of clients I think is smart. Not to mention you know I think they're already doing that with a partnership. I think this is just a trickle until they get acquired. Joel: Don't forget GitHub. Tim: So Chad's prediction is LinkedIn becomes the largest staffing vendor in the world? Chad: Not yet. That'll happen in 2020 or 21, but first it's baby steps Tim. You've gotta acquire. Tim: You've gotta build it. Build the machine. Joel: My question is okay, let's assume that Upwork does get acquired. Do you predict others will be vying for their platform as well and if so, who? Do you think this means that someone like a Fiverr or an Upwork competitor also gets acquired? Chad: Yeah, that's a great question because I think, well first off the first question, I think Upwork is already kind of in the courting phase with Microsoft to go through the whole acquisition piece, that just ... My feeling. I think that that is probably just about done. But yes, when that happens the fibers and all the other platforms that are out there I think obviously their value goes up and then you have all these other lifestyle types of organizations who are looking to perspectively pull them in to their suites. Joel: So you don't think like an Indeed gets into freelancing or ZipRecruiter? Chad: Not unless they buy into it. Joel: Tim? No, okay. Tim: I don't think so. Joel: Fair enough. Tim: That would take you know, like forethought, right? Joel: I love Tim 'cause he's so optimistic about all of the vendors in our space. Chad: Well yeah, 'cause he hates Indeed and Indeed really doesn't- Tim: I do not hate Indeed, that's just a vicious rumor. Joel: Yeah, that's okay. Chad: And ZipRecruiter I think is incredibly focused in what they're doing right now as it is and perspectively kind of catapulting into enterprise. I think this would take their eye off the ball. Joel: Do you still think Ubers been sort of dancing around this opportunity, do you think they get into the gig economy as well? Chad: Oh yeah, they're already doing test markets right now. So they're going to get into this, especially if the market stays the way it is now with the amount of jobs versus the head count, it just makes sense. Not to mention they have a platform that already has all this talent available, if they can get the types of jobs that match the talent that they have beyond just driving it just makes good sense. And it's another revenue stream. Tim: I think Uber's position better for doing that on a lower skilled kind of platform, right? Versus Upwork and Fiverr are definitely upscaled versus the Uber side. Joel: Yep. Tim: So it's two different markets. Joel: And Upwork tends to be more knowledge based folks as opposed to Uber which I think could be like restaurants and delivery and all that good stuff. There's probably and extra- Tim: You either cook tonight for eight dollars, show up. Joel: No ghosting at Uber. Chad: No. Alright Joel, it's your turn. Joel: Alright, I'll serve up my softball since you did as well. So number one, I'm still standing by my Slack gets acquired by Amazon but I know that we can't reiterate past predictions so I'm gonna put in ZipRecruiter in play here. Normally I would say like I think Facebook would be a prime acquirer of ZipRecruiter. However I think with Facebook's recent issues with data and privacy and all that good stuff I think Facebook is gonna take their eye off the employment ball and I think ZipRecruiter files for IPO in 2019. Chad: Okay, okay. So we'll see who buys them up before they get the IPO because this is, that's the Cheesman death now right there. Joel: Well they're really the last one standing, right? So we'll see what happens. Chad: Yep. Tim: You know, 'cause I have the next to do a prediction I'm totally gonna go off script 'cause I came up with another one as we're talking. Chad: Okay. Joel: Love it. Tim: SHRM is going to purchase LRP. Because here's the thing, right, we saw that where ERE's been after Talent42, right? And there's too many conferences, we started to see like this consolidation and I think SHRM wants to figure out how do we get away from just being HR leading central and how do we get into the tech space or the talent acquisition space? If you think about they're so big, who could they really go after? I don't see 'em going after ERE but I do see 'em potentially going after the HR side of LRP. Joel: Which would just be HR Tech, right? Tim: Well, yeah recruiting trends as well so they have a four way into a really big kind of recruiting conference potential I think what Elaine's doing out there is really cool stuff, and I think the vendor community supports LRP in a big way. Joel: Does SHRM historically make acquisitions? Tim: Yeah and not well. They tend to buy and they have a lot of, "This is gonna be great." And then they dissolves whatever they bought into the greater SHRM but I think Johnny, the CEO took a beating in 2018. I think he's a really smart guy and I do think he's been pushing that organization to really think outside the box and it just kind of hit me when you guys were talking about acquisition and so for whatever reason it popped into my head. The whole thing with Talent42 I really think we're gonna see a consolidation of the conference space happen and I wouldn't be shocked, so we'll see. Joel: Nice audible Tim, I liked that. Alright well we're six predictions down and three more to go. Let's take a break and listen to a word from Canvas and we'll get to our last predictions. Canvas: Canvas is the world's first intelligent tech spaced interviewing platform empowering recruiters to engage, screen and record any 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: That always makes me dance, that background music. Joel: So my prediction is bitmojis will encompass every job posting in the next year. Tim: I was just gonna come out and say that. My prediction for 2019 with Canvas will be the only one using Bitmoji with commercials. Joel: That's fantastic. Tim: And I'm a Canvas shop by the way, I love Canvas, my team loves Canvas. Joel: Yeah. And this is coming from four middle aged white dudes. Tim: For sure. Joel: Using Bitmojis. Yeah. Alright, I guess am I up first in the final round here? Chad: But first let me put this on the record, I was not dissing Bitmojis because I love 'em. Joel: He does. Every email now has a fuckin' Bitmoji of Chad. I'm just waiting for the Bitmoji where he has his Christmas sweater on. Chad: Oh it's coming. Tim: It'll be on before this afternoon. Joel: That's when I quit the show. The Bitmoji Christmas sweater. Chad: Alright Joel, you're first. Joel: Alright. My last prediction for 2019. We've talked about privacy a lot in the last year, we've talked about being able to grab personal data off of places, in particular LinkedIn. We've talked about LinkedIn's ongoing case with High Q about taking public profiles off of LinkedIn and then using them for your own sort of product and services. I believe in 2019 LinkedIn wins the court case against HiQ and as a result numerous sourcing platform solutions that utilize LinkedIn's data as well as GitHub which by the way has the same owner in Microsoft all go under and we really see a definite decline in new startups around sourcing and the current ones sort of laying to rest in the dead pool. Tim: Do you think LinkedIn comes in, buys one of those sourcing techs like on the cheap knowing that they're gonna go out of business and then just lets that one be the one because I mean it's not like ... They're selling a real lot, right? These sources technology people really love and they work but it doesn't necessarily, you just can't have a LinkedIn professional license and get the same gratifications you're getting through the sourcing tech side. So I'm wondering, that should be then your prediction should lead LinkedIn to actually purchase one of these people. Joel: I think LinkedIn wants to be the number one source for sourcing, whether it's their own profiles or whether it's whatever in GitHub I think that'll eventually integrate into LinkedIn and I think piggybacking on Chad's prediction of Upwork, you know if Upwork or freelancing contractor solution comes in to LinkedIn's dashboard then you've got full time employees you've got technology now you've got contract workers so I'm not sure buying in Entelo or hiring solved or anything like that adds that much value to what they're already doing, I mean feel free to disagree but I don't think they're losing too much if they're not sourcing blogging platforms and whatever's on Pinterest or YouTube or Instagram or Facebook. So I'd say I think they wanna be the end all be all for sourcing worker profiles. Tim: I just thinking then they have to add a product to the roadmap within LinkedIn, right? 'Cause people still wanna buy that without necessarily having all that and then at Talent Connect this year like Shapiro whose our VP of talent solutions and all that stuff did talk about how they wanna add in all the hourly folks as well which then comes to mind who would LinkedIn acquire to get all of the blue collar types into that environment, right? Not necessarily to the LinkedIn profile environment, but into a certain kind of environment, right, that fits for them. Joel: I also think that GDPR is going to come to the states and controlling your personal private information online ... Tim: Is that the Russian mafia? Joel: That's gonna be a thing. If you tell people that their LinkedIn data is being scraped and it's being used to decipher whether they might leave a job in the next six months I'm not sure they'd be real happy about that so I think privacy is gonna continue to be a paramount in the digital economy. When I talk to sourcing companies talking to Doug Berg at ZAPinfo which is essentially grabbing profiles off the web, I asked him about GDPR and his solution is well, before we grab their data we're gonna send them an email saying, "Hey there's a company or recruiter that wants to take your data and put 'em in their funnel for opportunities." How many people are gonna go, "Oh yeah, sure, random recruiter take my information." It might be one percent, two percent that do that. If that's the case, all these sourcing providers I don't see how they stay alive in the GDPR world. Tim: Can they do it the opposite way and say, "Hey, this is going to happen unless you opt out." Joel: It's what the law is. Chad: GDPR is all focused on the candidate right side of the house, so the general data protection regulation piece and really since Facebook and Cambridge Analytica fucked us all, this is bearing down on us much faster, right? So when HiQ and LinkedIn all that started at first it was like, yeah, you know what that data's public, right? Now it's like, "Oh shit, what can they do with public data? How can they target us? What can they do? What are the mal intent behind this perspective platform?" So that's the hard part right now is really Facebook fucked us. Joel: If you don't own the data, if someone didn't go to your site and voluntarily join I think you're gonna have a really hard time doing business. Chad: And you're not gonna own the data, that's the thing is through this whole process, and it's coming to California in 2020, and the California regulations are actually stricter than GDPR, so let's just say we gotta get used to this. You're going to have to give candidates the opportunity to control where their data is, wherever it is, because it's their data, it's not the company's data. Joel: It really means you're gonna have to write a bigger check to LinkedIn. Tim: Literally this week in my company we had a contract engineer quit, put the two week's notice in because he'd thought we sold his data to Paycor. What we did was we actually switched January first we're switching to Paycor as our payroll provider and so they sent him a message to go through the process and he just didn't read our other emails that we told him he was doing this, and so he literally assumed that we sold data, and he didn't know what Paycor was, he thought we sold you know, and totally obviously crazy engineer guy and we're just like, "Dude, we're just trying to get your paycheck to you, you moron." Chad: Yeah, but the guy can code. Okay. My last prediction is Google for jobs displaces Indeed as top source of traffic for employers, job taker traffic, and a little caveat on here Jobiak gets acquired. So these types of platforms, like the Jobiak's of the world that make it easy for employers to get their jobs into Google for jobs without knowing what a markup is or anything like that, or having to pay some big platform to do it like a Jive or something like that. They'll be able to go through a smaller platform like a Jobiak either transactionally or in bulk and it'll make it much easier so Google for jobs will make it easier to displace an Indeed in 2019. Joel: So I assume you believe Indeed won't start playing nicely with Google for jobs? Chad: No, they are too full of their fuckin' selves. Joel: So my next question is does Glassdoor both having the same ownership stop playing nicely with Google for jobs as well? Chad: No, I think they continue business as usual. I don't know how that's actually going to play, we'll see how that shakes out, especially if there's a full scale takeover of job search in content between Glassdoor and indeed. Tim: I don't understand, if I'm Google right and I decided not to index Indeed, why wouldn't I do the same thing to Glassdoor who now Indeed's [crosstalk 00:39:45]. Chad: They're not deciding. They're not deciding, Indeed's making the decision not to have their jobs in Google for jobs. Joel: I think Glassdoor has to follow suit because they're basically trying to build a mote around their solution from Google for jobs and I would say honorable mention for predictions is I wouldn't be surprised if there is no Glassdoor as we know it next year, whether it's just back fell from Indeed and they merged the reviews together and make it just one big thing or they take Glassdoor away totally I think it looks very different next year. Tim: It's hard to do that from a variety standpoint though 'cause everybody knows Glassdoor and they get such great traffic like you almost wanna do the opposite, right? You almost wanna throw Indeed into Glassdoor from that standpoint. That would be the easier transition than it would be the other one. Joel: You think Indeed is the lesser of brands of those two? Tim: Well I mean who gets more traffic, Indeed or Glassdoor? Joel: Indeed. Tim: Really? I thought it was Glassdoor by a lot. Is it similar? Joel: It's probably by a lot. Tim: Wow. Well but they pay for a lot of that. Maybe I'm thinking organic. I don't know what I'm talking about. Joel: This is a brand though. As a brand though do you think more people know Glassdoor then Indeed? Tim: No, what I will say though is that I think Glassdoor has the safer brand side of it where, 'cause you have so many people go in there and thinking they're getting this unfiltered data, almost like a Yelp review kind of thing, right? So there's a little more friendlier play there than the Indeed side which I think is taking a hit. Joel: To me the glaring to answer that question was when you went to HR Tech this year Indeed has a booth and Glassdoor did not, so to me that was like they've decided internally that Indeed is gonna be the brand, I think it's just a matter of time before Glassdoor gets phased out. Tim: Yeah, no I mean I can see. One or the other right, it doesn't make sense to have both. Joel: I agree. Chad: To an extent though, I mean because you have two brands right now and you have to spend money on or some companies feel like they have to spend money on Glassdoor and Indeed, right? So you have two budgets for two different sources. When you start to blend them together as one source that budget becomes one and you will lose cash. I've seen it happen before. So it's one of the big steps that you don't wanna take is look, you're making X with Glassdoor and Y with Indeed, you don't wanna make less than that, so how do you do that? How do you implement that without shaving cash off and just becoming one piece of budget and then some of that money going somewhere else? Joel: You're also losing money if you have duplicate tech teams and duplicate executive teams and executive marketing teams. Chad: That's all behind the scenes, that is- Joel: It's still real money. Chad: Doesn't matter, you can do that behind the scenes without anybody knowing. What you're talking about is merging two brands, you're talking about two entirely separate conversations. You can have Indeed tech teams running underneath a Glassdoor brand. You can still have that store front open but you can consolidate tech. Joel: So you're talking about one CEO for both companies. You're talking about one marketing team for both companies, right? Chad: I don't know if you need to go that far, but you can. Tim: You could, easily. Chad: And you're still talking about two different products. If you have two storefronts people are gonna see two different products. If you have one storefront they see one product and that's when you have an opportunity to lose cash. Tim: So back to the prediction Chad, is it in 2019 Google for jobs will outpace Indeed for traffic? Was that your prediction? What was your prediction? Chad: Traffic for employers to employers. Tim: I don't know if it'll happen in 2019 but it's definitely gonna happen at some point, right? It's just a question of where that tipping point happens. Chad: 2019. Joel: Unless Recruit Holdings buys ZipRecruiter. Chad: That's a good point, that's a very good fuckin' point. Tim, last one man. Tim: So this is really another big giant earth shattering one. Generational consulting 2.0 gen Z comes to town and we have every freaking millennial consultant in the world all of the sudden now becomes a generation Z consultant expert even though they literally have no idea about anything about gen Z. We're gonna see it. We've already seen the content happening, we're gonna see it in a big way. I'm jumping on board I put out what a couple weeks ago that I'm gonna have an entire gen Z blogger crew so hey, here we go. You know? Joel: There'll be an upstart of gen X entrepreneurs using their kids to create gen Z consultancy firms. Chad: We just saw that. We did a story on that on one of our weekly pods where an Xer obviously has a gen Z kid, kid's charismatic, knows how to speak, all that other fun stuff, he's pulled into the consulting firm and the next thing you know they've got a gen Z consulting arm, it's like what the fuck? Are you kidding? Tim: Hey, my son who is a junior at U of M unfortunately, he couldn't get an internship. I had him start writing on the blog and he literally had offers coming from everywhere and again, if you can prove that you're young and you have a voice and you can actually produce content like someone's gonna hire you. Joel: So say that again. Your kid in school started a blog and the job offers internship offers started coming? Tim: So he was interviewing for internships and they kept telling if he didn't have enough experience and so I'm like, "Oh well we can change that. You just start writing one day a week on mine." And we called it like Career Confessions of Gen Z and like it got more traffic than my crap got. People loved it. They had this young guy talking shit about his dad and the whole career stuff and blah blah blah, and he did, so then he ended up taking a job at Quicken, did videos for them and all kinds of stuff. It was crazy that you'll go from not being able to get an internship to like literally a dozen different options. Joel: That's fascinating. Chad: It is. Joel: Tim do you feel like as a recruiter there really is a difference in the generations or is that all bullshit? Tim: I think you see minor differences but otherwise it's time in life issues, it's not really generational differences. Young people don't necessarily wanna buy a house and they want to live in an urban area or blah blah blah or you know, once you have kids life sucks and so it changes what you do. All that crap happens, that's just time in life that's not necessarily millennial gen X baby boom. Joel: Fair enough. Tim: Yeah. Joel: Good show gentlemen. Chad: Very nice. Joel: Are we out? Chad: I think we're out. Joel: Tim are we out? Tim: We're out. Joel: Give us a we out. Tim: We out. Joel: 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. #Amazon #Slack #Microsoft #Upwork #Monster #Careerbuilder #LinkedIn #Indeed #Glassdoor #ZipRecruiter #GenZ #GDPR #ZAPinfo #GoogleforJobs #TimSackett

Another year down, but what the Hell happened? Chad and Cheese run down some of the best and funniest stories of 2018. Then it's all about the Naughty.... and some Nice too, especially our friends at Canvas, Sovern, and JobsAdX. They deserve some 2019 champagne after putting up with our asses. 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 are listing 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: Ho-ho-Oh. Is it me or does it smell like meat and cheese up in here? Welcome to the year-end finale of the Chad and Cheese podcast, residing on HR's naughty list since 2017. Chad: Yes. Joel: I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, we say thank you. Chad: Thank you. Joel: We review the news that still haunt our dreams and we break down our naughty and nice lists dark for cover. Get comfy in your throne of lies, we'll be right back after this word from Canvas. Chad: Get it. 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 spot is at your side adding automation to your workflow. Canvas: 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 the Bitmoji. We make compliance easy and are laser focused on recruiters' 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 go canvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent. Chad: I want a culture video so we can text it to everybody. Joel: Because people want to get texts from us, no. They don't. Chad: Of course. Joel: No. They don't. Chad: No, they do. They want to get pictures of ugly sweaters and yeah, I know they want that stuff. Joel: Dude, can we clear up the ugly sweater thing before we get started. Chad: What? Joel: Why, how much, when, what? I mean, you posted this thing, which is hideous and the feedback was beyond what I could ever imagine in terms of positive feedback. I was waiting for pictures of bleeding eyes and heads exploding, but it was positive. Let people know, what's the deal with that sweater? Chad: Yeah. It was hideous because it is an ugly sweater, duh. I mean, this is- Joel: And our faces are on it, which make it rather [crosstalk 00:02:56]. Chad: Which is half of it is really ugly, the other half is just gorgeous. Thank you, but yeah. No. I saw this idea and it was Marvel was doing a superhero of sweaters. I'm like oh holy shit, this would be great, just great from a marketing standpoint. So I threw it out there on social media and people were like tagging each other going, "Oh yeah, this is really fucking cool." I was like you know what, screw it. I'm going to get one done. Why the fuck now, right? Chad: Not to mention this weekend, we're going to have the first annual Chad and Cheese holiday Christmas/Hanukkah Kwanzaa party. So, that'll be perfect to wear the sweater. Not to mention everybody blew up on social media because it is funny as hell. That's why and Indeed stole my shit. Good on them. Good on them, but mine is better. Our Chad and Cheese ugly sweater much better than the Indeed one. Joel: Neither you or Indeed came up with ugly sweaters for Christmas to begin with. This is a very old thing. So to say that they stole from you or you still for them is a little bit ridiculous. Chad: With logos. I stole from Marvel. Then I put it out there and they stole the idea from me because it took like fucking four weeks to get the sweater made and shipped over here from Germany. So that took a while. Joel: That's German? Chad: Yeah. Oh yeah. Dude, I went with high quality shit. Joel: You did. Chad: I didn't do the sweatshirt with the iron on shit. I didn't do that. I went total mechanized loom, all that stuff. I went for it. Joel: The country that gave us Mercedes, the Tiger tank is now giving us ugly sweaters. That's just great. Chad: Yes. Joel: That's just great. Chad: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:04:55]. Joel: Could we have asked for a better year than 2018 was for us on the podcast? Chad: No way, dude. Just to throw some numbers out to our listeners because you guys you're the reason why we do this. 2018 numbers, we had over 90,000 downloads and we put out over 100 podcasts. Listeners, just the feedback on Twitter, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, it didn't matter. Even when we went to conferences, it was constant and it was awesome. We really appreciate all of that because as we both said here behind mics talking to each other, we're not really sure if this shit resonates and you guys have told us that it does. So thanks. Joel: For the record, Chad does it for the fans. I do it for the money just so you know. Just so you know. Well, we have done to thank yous in addition to what you just made, shout outs, love for sponsors, firing squad, alumnus, our families. The mass amounts of liquor that I'm sure we got it legally through the mail this year, and the endless amounts of schwag that'll care me over and my family with attire for the next 12 years I think. Chad: And the live shows. We did Hire Comp in New York, TAtech in Vegas, ISIMS brought us out for their influence conference. TAtech in Dublin, all the way to Dublin, Recruit Con in Nashville, ERE in San Diego, HR Tech in Vegas. I'm sure there's some of that we're missing, but in 2019 I'm going to predict that you will see more live shows. Joel: And more varieties of shows. Look- Chad: Yes. Joel: ... we've proven Deathmatch is a big winner. We're doing it in Europe, which is bound to disrupt the whole Brexit, EU, GDPR trend that's going on over there. I think what we found our groove on the podcast. I think we're going to find our groove for the live show and events going into next year. Chad: I'll be doing all the logistics to ensure that that happens. Joel will show up with a beer in it all just magically happened. Joel: Can we give our sponsor some love speaking of taking all this stuff out, Chad? Chad: Dude, yeah. Let's do that. Joel: From Canvas, our weekly show guys Sovren, JobAdX, which have been with us for a long time. Shutout to America's Job Exchange who left us midyear but was an early supporter. It wasn't necessarily their fault. Talroo, who makes Firing Squad possible to NEXXT, Judge, and who am I missing? Uncommon is huge for us. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: Emissary for my nappy T-shirt that I had to wear at HR Tech for two days. Thank you to them. Who am I missing? Chad: You're not missing anybody, but I think it's really cool because we started out with one show and it was consistent with three advertisers. Then we had other companies coming to us saying, "Look, we want to get behind you." So we had to create more content and more shows because it just made sense. First off because we weren't talking enough up about startups and then Talroo got behind us and said, "Yeah, let's do this Firing Squad thing." Chad: NEXXT and Uncommon are both helping us focus on getting interviews from top-level individuals. We just put out a podcast with Scott Gutz the CEO of Monster and the chief product officer, Chris Cho. They make that possible. Joel: Which is awesome by the way. I don't know if we've talked about it, but I think the Monster interview that we just published is our best work. Chad: That's pretty good shit and mainly because there were no softball questions. We really went deep into it. Then there's Judge. I mean, we wanted to be able to do breaking news in a different way and Judge was behind us for that. The weekly show with Canvas, JobAdX, and Sovren that is obviously a staple in our listeners' diet. Then you got all these other really cool podcasts with different types of content that you can jack into. Joel: Yeah. By the way listeners if you haven't given a blank check to our sponsors, please do so before the end of the year. I know you guys are working on budgets. Blank check to all those sponsors would be great. Chad: And the subscriber side of the house in 2018 has blown up. So if you're not currently subscribing on iTunes, Google Podcast, Google Play, CastBox, Spotify, whatever that's what you need to do. Look up the Chad & Cheese Podcast, click on subscribe and all of this glorious content will flow to you in a very wonderful way. Joel: Our kids are doing it. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Firing Squad, which one was your favorite? Chad: Men, so we gave big ups to Uncommon, RoboRecruiter, was that it, and AllyO I think. I think three out of the 12, only three out of the 12 had big applause and I really liked those. I think those guys really picked one- Joel: [crosstalk 00:10:21], did you mention them? We had Doug on the show. I think they got two good ones. We'll say good to Hire Advisor, Fire Squad alumni that folded it up which I think we both told them they should do that. So we did get that one right, at least. Chad: I think Hire Advisor might have been the only one that actually received two Firing Squads. I think Woo.io they received a Firing Squad and a golf club tilting toward a Firing Squad. The guts that these startups have obviously there's a risk versus reward here. I go on here and I kill it and I get bigger applause or applause of a golf club, that's so good. But I can go and I can just dive and get the Firing Squad and it's still going out to the public. Chad: You've got to realize guys that because Talroo was paying us, all these startups come on here, they realize if they crash and burn, that is going out to the public. So I have to give these guys a big applause. Joel: For sure. For sure, but remember there is no bad PR. So even if they come on the show and get torched, at least they'll be new and noticed by a lot of people that they normally wouldn't be noticed by. So even getting shut down is a good thing and hopefully we'll get some great startups on the show in 2009. Joel: I want give a shout out real quickly to really both our families I guess particularly our wives who put up with us doing this stupid show and also put up with our traveling, although they tend to benefit from that sometimes. Both have kids that are supportive. Families are a big part of why we're able to do this stuff, so big thanks to them. Chad: Thank you to the lovely ladies of the Cheesman and Sowash family because they're the bosses in this whole thing and- Joel: I want to know your favorite liquor giveaway of the year and your favorite piece of schwag from the year that you were given, not that you bought from Germany. Chad: I was going to say though the Chad and Cheese sweaters are pretty awesome, or if you're across the pod, jumper, just to make sure we clear that up. I have to say that it's really hard to choose on the liquor side because I have gotten so many boxes of beer that are like they are all craft beer and they're all mixed. I mean that was amazing. Continue to do that listeners. I really appreciate that sponsors. That's awesome. The best schwag I'm going to say is the high quality stuff. Chad: So we just receive or I did, and I'm sure you did, to a full zip up like a Columbia jacket from HiringSolved. We also got a really cool sweatshirt, a hoodie from Uncommon. Has Uncommon on the back, embroidered on the front. So yeah. Not the cheap stuff, but really the kick ass gear and Chad & Cheese up so that they'll wear that for not just a couple of days but for the rest of the year. Joel: The fidget spinners and the mouse pads are going to get listed on our favorite's list. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Favorite liquor for me I'm going to with a Middleton, Irish whiskey from LinkUp, the gang at LinkUp. Schwag I'm going to second your Uncommon hoodie. I'm going to throw in the NEXXT pullover. Chad: That's a good one. Joel: It's really one. T-shirt wise I'm going to go Canvas. Although I don't normally look good in purple, the T-shirt is so comfortable. Yeah, I love it. So the schwag was a good year, hopefully we get more good stuff into 2019. Chad: Amen. Amen. Joel: Thank you for everyone putting up with our shout outs. It's a good 10 minutes of every show. For some reason, you guys like it so we'll continue to do it. Chad if you're done with shout outs, let's hear from JobAdX and we'll get to our year interview. Chad: Let's do it. JobAdX: With JobAdX's first birthday almost here, we are proud of all we've accomplished with advertising clients, publisher job sites, recruitment marketing agencies and staffing firms. Thank you for all the support and trust you've placed in us. Since 2017, JobAdX has used the best of consumer ad techs bidding and ad delivery to build an incredible programmatic job advertising exchange, and continue to rapidly grow our network of partner sites. JobAdX: We've also launched a feed inventory management platform called Switchboard, effectively offering our dynamic technologies to all job board partners. And we've developed our revolutionary live alert which eliminate latency and expired job ads via email. No more dead clicks or overages from job links whether open today, next month or next year. For more information about our solutions, please reach us at JoinUs@JobAdx.com. Joel: The year in review. Chad: Here it come. We're going to rip. Joel: Rapid fire style. We don't do rapid fire anymore. This year end show, we'll do a little rapid fire. You go first. Chad: Rapid fire, what we're going to I talk about a good amount of the subjects that we went over in our podcast. We ripped about 20 of those out. We're not going to spend a lot of time on them, so here we go. First foremost, Chad and Cheese ran for presidents of Monster. Joel: And lost, although I don't think there was any official ballot for the election of president. Chad: Yeah. No. Joel: Scott Gutz is now the CEO. So I guess he's technically the new president of Monster. Congratulations to him. Chad: Yeah, and there is obviously more opportunity down the road for all those organizations who don't have presidents in place to have a co-president setup of the Chad and Cheese. Joel: I will add that we were not able to go to the HQ and Canvas for votes. So, I feel like it was a little bit cheated, a little bit scammy in terms of us losing that election but anyway- Joel: ... a lot of money flowed into all kinds of stuff. So ICIMS got a bunch of cash. TextRecruit got a bunch of cash. ZipRecruiter got a bunch of cash. Global Takeovers, some of these sites ZipRecruiter will be interested to watch this year. Slack got more money than God last year. The money flowed and we're getting some sniffs that 2019 won't be quite as prosperous for the investment side, but we'll have to see. We'll have to see how the economy behaves. Chad: We shall see. This year, earlier this year Indeed went full exclusion of job broad content. Wow Google for Jobs stepped in and said guess what guys, we're here to help. So it was a flip of Indeed saying screw you guys. You're not welcome anymore and Google saying, "Hey, that's fine. You're welcome over here." Joel: I need that journey sound by open arms for that one. I love this one Beyond.com sold its domain to Bed Bath and Beyond and became NEXXT with two Xs not three. Chad: Two Xs, not three Xs. Joel: We thought three Xs would perform a lot better for them in search results but they didn't listen to us, but that was a quirky little story from 2018. Chad: Yeah, it was and I think it was incredibly smart taking that money, selling Beyond.com for a shit ton of cash. Taking that money, pretty much buying your company back and then doing whatever the hell you want to do. Joel: Sure. Chad: So, good on NEXXT for that one. Hire Maturity, which most of you probably don't even know even existed, they launched and almost immediately died. Joel: Like figuratively. No one actually died because when you say Hire Maturity you think maybe it's just a bunch of old people that started something and then died, no. Chad: It could have been. Joel: Just the site died which was interesting. Tracking and microchips were big in 2018. Amazon tracking people. Companies are putting microchips in their employees so they can make faxes faster. Companies still have fax machines apparently which is bigger news than getting microchip, but that was a big story that I find troubling, but I guess we'll see more of it going into next year. Chad: Well, the microchips, the haptic bracelets that Amazon was using in the UK, I mean all this tracking shit, to be a human being and being a job especially with the employment rate the way it is right now. Just tell those companies to go fuck off for god's sake, I mean it's- Joel: Was it Amazon where people were urinating in bottles and stuff? Chad: Yeah, and trash cans and it's like "Yeah, I got to make sure I don't leave my post because I might not make my quota," or some shit like that. Joel: Robots don't shit, so we're at a disadvantage there as human being. Chad: Yeah. Well we'll talk about that a little bit later. CareerBuilder was a total fucking train wreck. Joel: Thank God it was good for us. Chad: Changed dramatically in 2018. Just the face of CareerBuilder changed dramatically and they gave us El Chapo. Joel: Yes. Love El Chapo. Yeah, literally they've changed their face. The CEO Matt Ferguson of 14 years was let go and they brought in a CFO in placement. Sure that will work out great as evidenced by the augmented reality in their mobile app which is killing it. Chad: Yeah. I have better days, but Monster really didn't change enough I think. You see all this change happening on the CareerBuilder side and I mean slow and steady I guess is really what we're seeing for Monster. Maybe that's not even baby steps at this point. I think it's like baby crawl. Joel: We better see some big things out of Monster next year. They can't just throw ads on TV. They can't just take banners off their site. They've got to really shoot for the moon next year if they're going to compete with some of the big names, Google, Microsoft at all that are in the space right now. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Recruit Holdings, Indeed's parent, acquired Glassdoor for $1.2 billion. That was big news this year. Chad: Yeah, that blew up your IPO prediction. That was pretty big. Joel: They filed dude. I was totally cracked in that prediction, just because Recruit swooped in and bought them before they did. Chad: Yeah. Well, that's just like going to the starting line and not finishing the race. You didn't hit the finish, man. So therefore unfortunately, no prediction for you. Joel: Well, we're going to do the prediction show later. We'll see how I did. Stay tuned for that one. Chad: We talked about this earlier, Snag, Monster, Dice, all new CEOs in 2018. There was probably more that route there, but just off the top my head more new CEOs popping out to be able to change the landscape and pretty much how those companies operate. Unfortunately, we just said that the Scott from Monster interview with us and then Art ran like a little puppy dog with his tail between his legs when we tried to do ... We reached to the PR team. They're like, "Yeah, sorry, but we're going to have to decline." Joel: Yeah. All those companies are going to have to kick some ass going into next year if they're going to survive Snag will be interesting. The whole on-demand workforce staff is getting interesting for sure. As we talked about in the recent show of Microsoft and Upwork getting together, and that's where that could go on that end. We talked about Zip but technically 50 million got real aggressive R&D. Engineers off the Wahoo, AI off the Wahoo, Israeli office going global. ZipRecruiter spoiler alert say that they're going to on my IPO prediction list for going the next year for sure. Chad: And it makes sense, and it makes sense until somebody swoops in and buys them at the last second. Joel: Which can happen. Chad: GDPR scared the shit out of everybody this year. Didn't know what it meant. Didn't know how it was going to impact. I think we are at the point where people are starting to figure it out, but I'm not 100% sure. So all these wonderful regulations that we're finding, not just in the UK, but we're going to see happening. Starting in California in 2020, guess what guys get your shit tight and understand what's happening from a regulatory standpoint because it will impact your platform. Joel: Yeah. We have a long way to go. Remember it was HiringSolved to dump 29 million profiles in Europe because it was easier to do that than actually try to figure out how they could deal with GPR. So, I think that's the just starting and Facebook is fucking up every privacy for everybody in terms of privacy. ZipRecruiter, God again, sponsored the biggest podcast in the world, Serial. We're still waiting on their money to come to us but so far in a no go on that. But yeah podcast got some big-money love from our industry this year. Chad: Yeah, podcast did and that in itself, Zip doing all of that on TV and this morning shit, I saw probably 10 CareerBuilder commercials. 30 second ads, I mean they are hitting the market hard end of year trying to get the name out there, trying to the brand out there, and the whole messages you have you probably have like 12 different vendors that you deal with right now. Just come to CareerBuilder. Come to us. Joel: The message as we can get an actual client to be in a commercial. So, we're going to pay an actor to pretend that they're a client of ours and hope nobody notices. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Very clever CareerBuilder. Very clever. Chad: The thing is most stupid humans won't notice. Joel: No they won't. Chad: Google spread Google for Jobs across the pond which was pretty awesome. Joel: Like a virus. Like a virus. You got to love that they put a stake in Japan which is where Indeed's holding company resides. Not that Japan isn't a good market but it was a nice little gesture on their part to put launders down in Indeed's home [crosstalk 00:25:26] this year. Chad: Top buy market. GP wise, they're dealing with that market much different than they are the U.S. market or Europe. So I think they're really taking their time to understand how to penetrate these different markets, the best way to do it. So yeah. That's pretty cool, but yeah, that was definitely a big fuck you to Recruit Holdings and Indeed. Joel: Yeah. Up next I can tell you that the LinkedIn Kool-Aid was delicious and cool this year for me. LinkedIn continues to kill it. Got in the SMB space, the matching space there. They've got insights that kill everybody, predictive stuff in terms of where to hire, open up your new office, et cetera. They've proven without a shadow of doubt that getting acquired by Microsoft was not a bad thing. They have really hit the ground running, put on the turbo boosters and they are killing it and I expect them to continue to do so going into next year. Chad: I still don't understand the acquisition of Glint. It was like $4 to 500 million. That's how much CareerBuilder and Monster received by the way. What the fuck is that all about? Joel: Well, I'm glad you asked, Chad. When we get to my naughty and nice list, I will help expand on this whole Glint thing. Chad: Okay. Joel: But employees and candidates are big winners this year and that companies really care about what they think. They really care about keeping them on staff. I think that if you see a weakness in LinkedIn, it's the continuing to be a part of the workforce after you hire. I think Glint, for whatever reason, health. You have 400 spent it I guess, and moving over to more on boarding retention type tools and for whatever reason Glint was what they went with. I guess they could've probably built so of that shit in-house for a lot less money but whatever. Chad: If you've got the money, spend that shit. Amazon shut down their misogynist AI candidate matching project. So that was interesting, not to mention it also starts an entirely different narrative for talent acquisition out there when they're looking to use "AI". That discussion for me is so exciting because there are so many black box types of algorithms that are out there versus some of these new white box algorithms. That's I think going to be an incredibly fun conversation to have as we move into 2019 and people start to understand what's the difference between transparency and literally the void of transparency. Joel: Of course my favorite virtual reality finally its stride and became huge in 2018. I'm glad that that finally came true for me. Oh wait- Chad: What? Joel: ... that's not right. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Chatbox are everywhere and matching is finally cool yes and maybe it actually finally works. We've been beating up on matching for years and thanks to big data and technology, matching may actually start to work. Chad: yeah. Matching was a really hard process from the standpoint of you had to have a ton of field data that would match up with the other aspect of field of data. So a job description needed to be fielded out right. The profile of an employee and/or a candidate had to be fielded right to be able to make that matching work. Today with all the parsing and "AI" whatever you want to call it yeah, I think we're seeing some amazing things which we'll talk about a little later. Joel: I was going to say I think we're done. Unless you have anything to add, we're hear a word from Sovren and we'll get to the good stuff on naughty and nice list. Chad: I wanted to say last but not least, Circa 2118 scared the living shit out of us by the way. If you haven't picked this book up, I keep peeping this book. We're not getting money for it, I'm telling you right now, but I'm telling you, you have to read this book. It is scary up front, but it has a good ending. You've got to check it out. Chad: The robots taking over, what does that actually look like in all different respects. It's a damn good book and it's not just about the recruiting side of the house or the hiring and employment side of the house. It's about pretty much the entire landscape, but there is a good focus on the employment side. Joel: I'll throw in, equally scary for me is Tinder for jobs is still a thing. Here's a word from Sovren. 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 produce 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: And that's how AI takes over the world so everybody knows. You have sexy sounding AI who wants to take you to dinner, that's how the shit starts people. Joel: As soon as she can do a podcast, we're done. All right. Naughty and nice list, I came up with my about midnight last night so it's going to be really incohesive. Are we starting with nice lists first? Is that what we're going on? Chad: Yeah. Let me start this out. Joel: Sure. Chad: Number one, and get ready to take shots buddy. Chatbots, Chatbots, Chatbots. Here's the thing. I believe chatbots are starting to help TA focus on process instead of the bright and shiny tech. They want to know about chatbots but as Quincy Valencia from AMS told us on our interview with her on one of our bad ass interviews that when you start diving deep into these new technologies and we need to have a chatbot, well why do you need to have a chatbot? Then that's where the process conversation starts. Chad: Most applicant tracking systems and process methodologies that companies have today in their "stack" is for shit because they're focusing on the tech before they do the process. Many of them still have 1990s processes that all they do is take the paper and put that process into tech. Once you start to revitalize and understand what the process should be from an efficiency standpoint, not because this is the way we've done it since 1999 or what have you but because it makes sense, I believe chatbots are starting to make that conversation more prevalent. Chad: So companies like Canvas, AllyO, Amaya, Olivia, RoboRecruiter, Talkpush and all those other chatbot platforms that are out there, they are my nice list because they're getting talent acquisition to start to focus where they should be focusing in the first place. That's process, not tech. Joel: Very nice. Can I put you on the spot and ask for a prediction for chatbots for next year? Chad: Yeah. I really believe that chatbots are going to start to integrate into the platforms more. So it's not just going to be a chatbot platform. It's going to be a chatbot. That is it's all ingrained into itself. So instead of having ... I think this is smart. We saw SmashFly and Olivia they partnered to be able to ensure that there were chatbots Emerson within the SmashFly platform. I see companies starting to acquire and make that a part of their platform instead of just partnering with it. Joel: Consolidation and acquisitions for sure. I see that as well. I do think there will be a little groundswell of consumer punch back over chatbots. There may be little seeds planted around. We're not really hip about talking to a robot, but we will see. Chad: Yeah. I don't see that happening though because it's between going into a black hole where you hear nothing and talking to a chatbot. We've seen surveys that actually show that job seekers would rather have some form of feedback versus no feedback whatsoever. So I don't personally buy into that. Joel: Good enough. Good enough. Well, my number one on my nice list I'm going with Microsoft. For over a decade Microsoft, well two decades maybe, Microsoft was this old crusty in a DOS prompt Windows 95 dinosaur. With new leadership, they have become quite the juggernaut and in addition to that have really taken root into the employment space. Joel: We know that two years ago, they acquired LinkedIn. We thought a lot of that was just a pissing match to the Salesforce and Google away from their property, but they've actually been invested heavily in that company as well as continue to invest in the space. They acquired GitHub this year as well which was pretty big news. Obviously, the hottest platform for techies to go in and hang out. So, I fully expect next year integration with GitHub and LinkedIn will happen, greater integration with those into Microsoft's Office product will continue. Joel: I think that their recent partnership with Upwork means that they'll be getting into the freelance economy as well. So, LinkedIn is primed with Microsoft's leadership to be the platform for everything from professional workers to contract workers to keeping your tech department well-stocked. So big on my nice list this year was Microsoft. I really appreciate what they've done in the space and hope that they continue to do that and spend money. Chad: Yes and they have. They along with Google and to some extent Facebook have really I believe moved this industry forward so much faster than it has in the past decade. So yeah. Good on them. If you see competitiveness, you to do something about it. You got to react. So all of the other competitors that are out there now are trying to react and they're trying to in some cases figure out how do you either play with or defeat a lifestyle platform. Joel: Yeah. They really started the arms race that we get to report on almost every week. Chad: Yeah, that's fucking awesome. Good job guys. Number two on my nice list, you're going to notice a theme here, it's matching systems. I believe intelligent matching systems are starting to make TA think about their candidate database which is pretty much in most cases an atrophy right now but these companies have spent millions of dollars building great databases with awesome talent. Chad: Companies can stop advertising and start spending cash trying to acquire talent who is already in their goddamn database. Now they can focus on re-engagement and surfacing those qualified candidates in seconds instead of days. So companies like HiringSolved, Intelo, Uncommon and all the other smart matching platforms are on my nice list. The theme here is these vendors are making companies think in a much different way, in a much smarter way about how they should be doing business more effectively. Joel: Yeah and don't forget Google launching a candidate discovery in their platform as well LinkedIn launched it. So, this is becoming sort of if you don't have this, your way behind the eight ball. This becoming something that you need to have. So yeah. I agree. Matching has had a great year and will continue that trend in the 2019. Chad: Yeah, and if you're one of those big database companies that was a job board and you've got this huge database and you haven't partnered with somebody on the matching side of the house or you're trying to "build your own", good luck with that. But just make sure that you get that shit in 2019 and fast because the focus is going to be on surfacing qualified candidates much faster, not just clicks and bullshit apps. Joel: You're not calling out Indeed when you say clicks, are you? Chad: Yes. Joel: We'll get to naughty list in a second. Number two on my nice list I'm going to go with candidates and employees. I think they were big winners in 2018. Some of the reasons you mentioned reviving candidates that have been around for a long time with companies like Crowded and Envoy, et cetera. I think that's been a big win for them. Joel: I think chatbots have been a big one for candidates. The resume black hole that we talk about all the time is slowly fading. If it takes robots to do that, then so be it. At least people feel like they've actually connected and are connecting with companies where before they sent a resume and never heard anything. Maybe a postcard or an automated email. That's a big win. Joel: I think that employees, both past and present, continue to attempt to win big. In 2018, we saw Glassdoor who, let's be honest, Glassdoor's value is in the reviews that are on the site. It's not the jobs are posted or the companies that are using it. So, it means it you're the voice of the employee really matters. I think the billion-dollar buyout of Glassdoor really helps solidify that. We've seen Indeed you ramp up their review section. We see Comparably and others really play in this space. Joel: We see women getting a voice with sites with Fairygodboss and her site that they've heard before. We also look at engagement tools. I mean, those were huge this year. Companies that give perks to employees, they give you referral benefits and dollars to two employees to retain them and recruit them. Those have all been huge trends and I think the ultimate winner in those are the job candidates as well as the employees that work there. It's high time that the pendulum swung to the employee and the worker. I think that it did that in a big way in 2018. Chad: Totally agree. Last but not least on my nice list is we talked about them already, so you knew it was coming, ZipRecruiter. Joel: Zip? Chad: Zip raising money, kicking R&D ass, and I bet they'll be hitting the enterprise side of the house very soon. ZipRecruiter loves podcast, so why the hell can't we love them? But I mean if you take a look at the process methodology of how Zip works, they are using matching in a very simplistic way behind the scenes. They started doing this on the SMB side of the house because SMB really has lower expectations than enterprise. Chad: So, you post a job, it's very simple. The system identifies that the requirements in that job, goes into their huge database and sends out automated emails to activate those candidates and get them to you faster because they know that they're already either qualified or close to qualified to an extent. Chad: They're getting to a model, a much faster model of sourcing than anybody else's at this point from an end-to-end standpoint, just the sourcing piece. So good on them. I see companies in 2019 trying to model after ZipRecruiter. If you are not trying to model after ZipRecruiter and you have job postings onto your site, you're a fucking dumb ass. Joel: I love how Zip sits in this bubble zone of it's definitely not Google or Microsoft or LinkedIn. It's climbed its way above the tier of the Monsters, the Dices, the CareerBuilders and it sort of resides in my mind with Indeed as this sort of are they going to punch through or are they going to fade back into the ether of where the other old friend guys are. For me 2019 is going to be really interesting to see where ZipRecruiter goes from here. Joel: I agree. The enterprise solution is just going to happen. It just has to happen and can they penetrate the markets that you'd normally think of as now I guess Google and LinkedIn? Can they go beyond, "Hey I need to fill a waiter position at my restaurant this week," to "Hey, I'm going to staff up my entire IT department with ZipRecruiter?" Joel: So I agree. ZipRecruiter would make my nice list. I knew they were going to be on yours because you drink the Kool-Aid as much as I do LinkedIn, so I left them out. So definitely agree with ZipRecruiter. My final nice list recipient goes to Slack. Yeah, I kind of threw an audible on you there. Chad: Do tell. Joel: Slack it's just the most potentially interesting company in our space. Microsoft has listed them as a now competitor which don't think anyone ever would've thought that this sort of enterprise messaging system would become a competitor. But I see so much potential in Slack and what they been able to do in raising money, penetrating the markets, client acquisition, global growth. It's already out they're going other than IPO next year. Joel: An IPO will give the money to go after those acquisitions to maybe by ZipRecruiter or make a big splash in terms of the employment space. But I'm just saying that they're so prime and they've had such a great year and they're such a newbie on the scene still that are newbie on the scene that I had to just put them on my nice list because I think we're going to see really, really cool stuff from Slack as they go public and go into next year. Chad: Good to go. Well why don't you start out the naughty list? So I got to start out the Nice List. Joel: Naughty list. Chad: Naughty. Joel: This is what everyone has been waiting for. No one cares about the nice list. Number one with a bullet on my nice list or naught list, excuse me, was job scams. Good lord, okay. These scams have been around forever before the Internet of course, but the Internet has supercharge these folks. Joel: Jobs have always been historically a place where scammers sort of hide in the shadows because people who are unemployed are very susceptible to getting scammed. They want to believe that they have a new job. They want to believe that they have an opportunity and scammers really come out in droves. Joel: I think that 2018 for whatever reason was a much bigger year than usual for scam artists. I don't know if this is the growth of the Internet or what, but we had star jobs was a story that we covered. This was a four-month report by AIM Group that uncovered a site that was leveraging legitimate job postings and backfill from I guess ZipRecruiter was one, who knows who else they were using. Joel: But when people applied, they got funneled into mortgage debt information, marital information, just really deep stuff that they shouldn't have to give for a job. Then once they submitted their information, they were bombarded by emails and text messaging through 10 digit numbers that kept changing, so they couldn't opt out of it easily. That was bad news. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Better Business Bureau had their 12 scams of Christmas posted recently and the seasonal jobs were top of the list. Again because it's the holidays. People are short of money. They're spending too much money. They're running up credit card debt. They're looking for new jobs, new opportunities. Obviously the work at home, the gig stuff is also an opening for scams. Joel: Better Business Bureau highlighted veterans as susceptible more than most. You as a veteran I'm sure can appreciate that. You get folks that served their country. They have spouses that put of a lot of sacrifice to serve our country. These people aren't getting hired as they should. So, they're looking at opportunities that are off the roadmap and are getting targeted by scammers. My naughty list number one is scammers, man. I wish you folks would find something better to do than screw people over. Chad: Fucking assholes, man. Mess with the old people, now messing with veterans. I mean just the targets, it's ridiculous man. It'll piss you off. All right. My first naughty list. Get ready. Joel: I'm ready. Chad: Any company using Tinder for Jobs. This thing, like you've said earlier, just won't go away. Joel: Dating does not equate to job seeking. Chad: It does not. Just because you can swipe means nothing. It's funny like because we just did a firing squad with Tilr and Carisa did a good job but it was funny because she had to push in there that yeah, we're kind of the Tinder for Jobs. I'm like oh, now you just went too fucking far. It seems like people want to put those, these buzzwords, AI, machine learning, block chain, Tinder for Jobs and guys I'm going to make it incredibly simple for you. Don't fucking do it. Chad: eHarmony couldn't even get eHarmony for jobs to work. How you think Tinder for fucking jobs is going to work? It's not. On my naughty list, all you assholes using Tinder for Jobs in any sales field. Joel: Yeah. I'll add that Bumble, one of the more popular dating sites apparently out there launched Bumblebees quite a while ago and they've I guess fallen flat on their face as well. You don't hear much from them. If you go look at Monsters reviews on their mobile app, people do not like swiping left and right for job postings. Chad: No. Joel: Yeah, don't do it. We're still getting startups that are pimping themselves as Tinder for Jobs. Chad: A lot of these startups coming into the space and they just get slapped in the face with "Yeah, asshole, getting a job is not like going on a date." Joel: Yes, very naughty, very naughty. Number two on my list is Dice. Man which was sort of highlighted by the fact that GitHub was acquired for $7 billion I think. That should have been Dice. Dice should be GitHub and the fact that they missed out on those opportunities is really tough to swallow for them, but really naughty in terms of where I'm coming from. Joel: They brought in a new CEO. We've mentioned Art previously on the show here who won't come and be interviewed by us which is there but yeah, we're a real show. We get real CEOs on the show. We'll be tough on you but we're not total assholes. So he won't come on the show. Their earnings are down. They've left Europe for the most part. Joel: The first earnings call for Art, he talked about getting the site up to speed or more modernized site, more user-friendly site that they would offer. If you got to the site now, it's pretty much the same thing. You still see the banner ads, the skyscrapers, the 460 by 60s, the old stuff that just sucks. I didn't even see backfill when I did searches. So. the jobs are pretty sparse. Joel: They're really pushing the sourcing thing and the staffing staff, but man, Dice man, what a bummer. A total naughty list recipient this year. I hope they turn around next year but 2018 was a bad year for Dice. Chad: Well, hearing all that, no wonder Art is hiding in the corner with his thumb in his mouth for goodness sakes. On my number two naughty list, I'll have to say, is Cambridge Analytica. Delay, deny, deflect, and then this newest information that Netflix and Spotify had access to our direct messages on Facebook. Chad: Facebook has been incredibly naughty this year, not just from the standpoint of knowing what was has been going on, but not fixing it and then lying about it. So, they've had millions eject out of Facebook just because of the trust issue. It's not looking good. Do I see Facebook tanking tomorrow? No, but if this continues Zack it's going to very hard for him to stay at the top of that pyramid. Joel: You think so? Chad: Yeah. Joel: I'll add that in terms of AI space, I think it takes their eye off the ball for employment because if they have these really big societal issues to think about and take care of, they're probably not that concerned about beating up on Craigslist and becoming the new SMB's provider of choice. From my standpoint, the naughtiness goes into not only what you just highlighted, but it's probably going to fall into the employment side and not being as innovative as we see Google and LinkedIn being going into next year. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Joel: All right. Well, my final naughty list recipient goes to really robots and not the digital robots, but the actual scare the hell out of me robots. I'll highlight number one, Tanguay unbiased. I don't know if I'm saying that right. We've talked about these guys. They may see us in Lisbon. Joel: We may actually get interviewed by this thing, iRobot from the Will Smith movie and the Barbie hairstyle like think that your daughter had to burst off and just styles its hair. It just sits there and there's a digital face and you can pick different faces and this thing interviews people. Like that is so scary to me. If I walked in an interview and saw a robot questioning me, I'd really like freak out. If this is the future that we're looking at, it's really scary. I think the stuff that if you look at Boston or Boston- Chad: Dynamics. Joel: ... Dynamics, that's some scary shit. Robots that can open doors, can fire guns, can jump 10 feet in the air. That's frightening. I'll bring up the whole Circa 2118 book, which highlights a very dystopian scary future. In interviewing Peter, we talked about warfare, we talked about policing folks and building walls. It's just very frightening. The whole robot trend for me gets a big naughty. Chad: Thinking Robocop, thinking- Joel: Terminator. Chad: Sophia, that right. Joel: Sophia, yeah. Chad: And then Terminator and then also Black Mirror. There was this one episode on Black Mirror like the Boston Dynamics dogs were hunting humans. It's like yeah. If you were to get scared about this kind of shit, it's out there. It shivers down my Circa 2118 looking back. Last but not least. Joel: Last but not least. Chad: Naughty list, everybody saw this coming. It started happening the first part of this year. So first there was doubling paying click stealing. So clicks on jobs were not going to your website, they were staying on the site and then raising prices 30+%. Staffing policy which is kicking the organic and sent our friend Tim Sackett into Indeed jail. Another policy for Talents Networks saying that look, if you have a talent network and you force individuals to go through and I register through a talent network, we won't allow you to use Indeed. Joel: And they stole your sweater idea. Chad: And that motherfucker stole my sweater idea. All of these things are evil genius ideas just so you know, but evil naughty Indeed is my big naughty for 2018. Joel: What else is there to say? Indeed get your shit together. Be nice. Play with Google for Jobs. I want to see that in 2019. Chad: No. I do not want to see that. Joel: All right, man. Well, damn that took way longer than I thought it won't. Dude, here's to 2018. It was a great year. Let's rip it up again in 2019 and unless you have something to add, I'm out. Chad: We're out. Cole: I'm Cole Cheesman, it rhymes with Joel Cheesman, so my dad can easily remember who I am. Thanks for listening to my dad and his follically-challenged friend Chad. Make sure you subscribe to this show on iTunes, Google, 8-track cassette tapes or wherever you enjoy the podcast. Be sure to support our sponsors because if you don't I angry feel like when I'm angry. Chad: You won't like me when I'm angry. #YearinReview #2018 #Indeed #ZipRecruiter #Robots #AI #Matching #chatbots #RecruitHoldings #Glassdoor #Monster #Careerbuilder #GDPR #GoogleforJobs #Amazon #TinderforJobs #Facebook #LinkedIn

Survey Monkey is the premier surveying tool on the market. And if you're company isn't surveying employees and interviewees, you're doing it wrong. Becky Cantieri, Survey Monkey's Chief People Officer, lays out how they keep their finger on the pulse of candidates and employees alike. It's another NEXXT EXCLUSIVE! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps businesses find qualified candidates with disabilities for their job postings. 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: 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: 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 text to hire from Nexxt. Joel: Love it. Chad: Yeah. 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 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 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. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Just go where you know. ChadCheese.com and Nexxt with two x's. Announcer: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for 'The Chad and Cheese Podcast'. Joel: Boy, oh boy, kids, do we have a treat for you. Chad, this is when you do the monkey sound. Ready? Go. Chad: I'm not good at monkey sounds, at all. Joel: Oh okay, monkey sounds. We'll do that in editing. Guys, we have a really cool show for you this month. Survey Monkey, a name some of you will know, some of you will not. We have the Chief People Officer from Survey Monkey, Becky Cantieri. Becky, welcome to the show. Becky: Hi. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Joel: You bet. Becky's a little nervous. I don't know if she's ever heard the show before. Chad: She hasn't. Joel: She might be shell shocked after this. But Survey Monkey has a cool new product for HR folks and employment brand people, but we understand that recruiters, vendors, HR folks listening to our show may not know who Survey Monkey is. Becky, give us the elevator pitch on you, what you do, and who you do it for. Becky: Sure. So I am Becky Cantieri, I'm the Chief People Officer at Survey Monkey, and I'm thrilled to be the Chief People Officer at Survey Monkey. I like to think that I'm responsible for the candidate and the employee experience. Everything we do at Survey Monkey is in service of two really important constituents. One is building a really strong business, and the second is the employees in which we serve. Chad: Excellent, excellent. Joel: Lovely. Chad: So Becky, that's the Survey Monkey stuff. We're going to spend a lot of time talking about Survey Monkey, I promise. Right now- Becky: Great. Chad: I would like to kind of dig deep into your dark past at Yahoo. No, seriously. You were at Yahoo for what? 11 ... for a good amount of time, and there was a lot going on back then. I mean, from 2000 all the way through 2011, a lot going on then. Give us a little background about what you did at Yahoo, and give us a little flavor of Becky. Becky: Sure. So yes, indeed. I spent almost 12 years at Yahoo, and it was absolutely a life changing career experience. Believe it or not, I started my career there in the recruitment function, I was the only product management recruiter at the time. I spent a few years doing that, and then quickly assumed responsibility for all systems, programs, and infrastructure across recruiting. From there, I spent about four or five years doing mergers and acquisitions, so the HR seat at the table, working with our leadership team and our corporate development team to evaluate and ultimately acquire or invest in almost 35 companies. So you can imagine, at that clip, if you sign and close 35 deals, you're doing diligence on a lot of deals. So that was a really, really great experience. Becky: And then I moved into more of a traditional HR business partner role, supporting a number of different organizations across Yahoo, from technology teams, to marketing organizations, and did a few chief of staff stints in between. It was ultimately that business partner experience and M&A experience that introduced me to Dave Goldberg, who was the CEO of Survey Monkey at the time, and that is what kind of aided the transition, moving from Yahoo over to Survey Monkey. Chad: Nice. Joel: Before we transition, I'm going to have to interrupt. So you were around when Hot Jobs was there, right? At Yahoo? Becky: Yes. Hot Jobs had been acquired. Joel: Ah, so did you work with Dan Finnigan? Currently at Jobvite. Becky: Yes, he was the CEO of ... at the time. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel: So were you around during the Yahoo Hot Jobs Dice acquisition? And if so, do you have any little anecdotes that you'd like to share? Becky: I don't have any great anecdotes to share. Joel: Just kidding. So Marissa Mayer, were you in for any of that stuff? Becky: No, actually she joined shortly after I left. I left during the Carol Barts era. Chad: Nice. Joel: Got you. Becky: Yes. Joel: Okay, let's move on to Survey Monkey. A lot of our listeners don't know Survey Monkey, we'll get to that. But I've been using Survey Monkey, little known secret, since about 2004 or so. It was a tool a long time ago for marketers. The story is pretty interesting, and I've only heard tidbits and folklore about it. Help me set the record straight about the history of the company. Becky: Sure. So I'm glad to hear that you're a Survey Monkey user, that's great. And where it all started, so Ryan Finley is our founder, and about 19 years ago, he was actually doing an internship project where he was tasked with doing some market research. He looked for a tool to use and wasn't able to find anything that met his needs, so he started to build what you currently know today as Survey Monkey. And he built it for his own use and then made it available to other users. He, shortly thereafter, kind of hired his brother as the business began to pick up, and they uprooted the business from Madison, Wisconsin to Portland, Oregon. Becky: Then, the viral nature of the product really took off. At its very core, Survey Monkey is a survey platform that has this great viral component. You create a survey, you deploy a survey, you gather responses from your survey respondents, and then on the heels of that, they're able to create and deploy their own survey as well. So that's really the humble beginnings that it came from. Becky: In 2019, Ryan raised his hand and said there's a lot of- Joel: 2019? Becky: I'm sorry. 2009. Joel: This is future podcast, everybody. Becky: Yeah. No, I'm sorry. 2009, Ryan raised his hand and said, "There's a lot of opportunity in front of Survey Monkey, and I'm just not the right person to take it to the next level." So he partnered up with Bain and Spectrum, and that's when Dave Goldberg joined to be the CEO of Survey Monkey, and they really set out on a mission at that point to grow the company, and we've scaled from 14 employees at that timeframe to now, we're up over 800 employees. We were a US language only, really accepting only US currencies. Now, the product is in 20 plus languages, operating in about that many countries around the world, and we've really kind of evolved and grown the portfolio of products and services that we offer. Joel: So have you worked with David Goldberg? Becky: I did, indeed. Yeah. Joel: That's a sad story. We don't have to get into it. If people want to know, they can Google it, but he passed away a few years ago, I know. He has a famous wife who works at Facebook, but okay, interesting. Great. And that company started in what year? What's the timeline? Becky: It started 19 years ago. So- Chad: Do the math, Joel. Becky: 1999. Joel: 1999, I knew it's been a long time. Becky: Yeah. Chad: It doesn't take much, Becky. So as we talk about this powerful platform, and we're going to be talking about engagement, what was the genesis? Why build, engage in the first place? Was there a need you saw internally to have an HR employee satisfaction type of engagement platform for Survey Monkey? Or is this something that your clients were coming to you and saying, "Look, you do great in many other areas. Can you help us out here?"? Becky: Yeah, so first, let's ground ourselves in what the modern day Survey Monkey is. We like to think we're the world's largest in leading people powered data platform. We've collected over time something along the lines of 47 billion survey responses. So we have this long history and rich data of understanding what our users are using the product for, and HR has always been one of the primary use cases, and engagement within there, again, is another use case where our users are really using us. So it was a combination of, yes, employee engagement is important to us at Survey Monkey, but it's also been really, really clear that it's important to our users as well, and we wanted to build a more purpose based solution that had some of the secret magic sauce at Survey Monkey, which is our methodology, and in there, to help our users do this better and more effectively in their organizations. And as such, Survey Monkey Engage was born. Chad: Okay. So I heard a lot of aggregate data possibly. Do you guys have access to all that data to be able to crunch it and really get some, I guess you could say, opportunities to actually look at the market in a much different way than most of us get to? Becky: Yeah, we really have the ability to understand how our users are using our product and what use cases and things are really important to us, and we use that rich data to make our product even better. For example, we have something called Survey Monkey Genius, which is part of the core Survey Monkey platform, and Survey Monkey Genius helps our users write better surveys. And again, it's all intelligence based on the millions and millions of surveys that our users have deployed on our platform. And the intent is really to help all of our users power their curiosity, and put them in a position to ask better questions, get better insights, and really take action on those insights. Chad: So do you have machine learning that actually provide better structured questions and answers? Becky: Yeah, absolutely. Again, in the product, there's a couple of different things. There's Survey Monkey Genius, which is really the best example of this. As you start to build your survey, Survey Monkey Genius helps you in asking the right questions in the right flow to provide you an opportunity to get the best insight and information so that you can make a really great decision. Joel: Employment branding is all the rage right now, as you know as Chief People Officer. It seems to me like employment branding and surveys are just a match made in heaven. Interested in your perspective on employment branding, where that's going, how are surveys going to play a part in that? Just that kind of general question. Becky: Sure. So I am a huge fan of employment branding, I really think it's your opportunity to tell the world what it's like to be part of Survey Monkey, to be part of the team and what their experience will be when they're here. We, this year, in 2018, have worked more earnestly on our employment brand. Like you guys said when we started the podcast, "I'm a big user. I'm a big fan of Survey Monkey, I love it." That's everyone's reaction when you say that you work at Survey Monkey, and the point, from my perspective of employment branding efforts is to change that conversation from, "I love that product. I use that product." To, "I've heard it's an amazing place to work. How can I work at Survey Monkey?" Becky: So we started our efforts this year more formally in this category, and it all started with a survey, as you might expect. We really wanted to understand from our employees what is it that they value about being part of Survey Monkey? What they're looking for when they make employment decisions. It's a really competitive labor market as you guys know, so people have lots of options, and they have to be able to take in a lot of information to help them make good decisions about where they work, even. So ours began with a survey, and resulted in what we refer to as our employee value proposition, or kind of our statement of belief and what we believe employees get in exchange for bringing their time and talents to Survey Monkey. And now, we're in the process of helping tell the rest of the world what we believe you get in exchange for bringing those talents to Survey Monkey. Chad: So staying on the employer brand side of the house, and also talking about UX and going into more of the Chief People Officer side of the house and understanding that candidates are customers or they could be customers, right? Becky: Absolutely. Chad: So what is Survey Monkey doing to cut down on, or really just provide a great user experience and cut down on that black hole? Because we know that a black hole impact could perspectively impact the bottom line of the overall product. What are you guys doing on the user experience side of the house to make sure that those prospective candidates/customers are having a great experience? Becky: Yeah, great question. From a product perspective, a Survey Monkey product perspective, user experience is really everything. One of the hallmarks of Survey Monkey has always been that it's easy to use and very simple, and kind of an elegant solution that's fun to interact with. So that's always been a core principle of Survey Monkey and the products that we build. If it's not easy to use, people aren't going to do it. So that will continue to be important for us. And I think that really applies conceptually to your employment experience or your candidate experience as well. We want people to really have delightful experiences interacting with us. We want them to feel respected and valued, we want them to learn a lot from their perspective, and we also need the opportunity to learn from them. But most importantly, we want them to leave their experience with Survey Monkey, whether or not they get the job, feeling like they came to a really good understanding of Survey Monkey and that we're a great group of people. Joel: So Becky, what I'm hearing is you guys do survey your interviews? The people that come in? Becky: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we do post-candidate experience surveys. Joel: Awesome. So I think there are a lot of companies that are thinking about doing that or have in the past. What advice would you give to those folks who are looking to do it and what would you tell people who are thinking about doing it, but maybe getting push back from management, to sort of get them to buy into surveying the interviewees? Becky: So first of all, my first advice of course is you've got to use Survey Monkey to do this. Joel: Of course. Becky: And we have helpful templates to help you ask the right questions. But I'd really, really question why you wouldn't want to understand the experience that you're creating for your candidates. If you don't ask them directly, it doesn't really demonstrate that you, one, value their opinion, and they have a lot of channels to share their opinion about their experiences anyway, so it's better, at least from my perspective, to proactively ask them directly in the spirit of improving your process and the experiences that you're creating for them. We've learned a tremendous amount. Becky: We've been in the fortunate position of ... we get great feedback on people feeling really well respected and valued for the time that they're spending with us, but we have heard in the past that we had some areas of opportunity in terms of how we organize ourselves and not being repetitive in terms of the questions that we're asking candidates. So it was the launch pad for us to create internal interview training to teach managers and all panelists involved in recruiting how to organize, prepare, and engage with candidates while they're on site in a way that allows us to gather a lot of useful information to make a hiring decision without everybody asking these candidates the same five questions. Joel: On site, that's interesting. So logistically, how do you survey those that you interview? Because I would think that there would be a follow up email, "Thanks for coming in. We'd love to know your experience or feedback." But you're saying you actually, while they're in the building, you're getting feedback. Becky: Most of our survey efforts are the post-candidate surveys, so it's actually after they've already left the building. But we are starting to pilot a few programs where we have iPads in the interview rooms, and if they have any downtime between their interview conversations, we're either giving them some fun quizzes, an opportunity to check out the product, or to give us some feedback. Chad: Very nice. Very nice. Let's go ahead and jump into Engage. Becky: Sure. Chad: So tell us about Engage. Becky: Yeah, so Survey Monkey Engage, like I said, is kind of an end to end solution around employee engagement, and it has underlying methodology that we've developed and really looks into five core factors of engagement. It focuses on job satisfaction, personal engagement, purpose alignment, team dynamics, and visible future. All elements that we believe to be really important to building great engagement, and in the end, productive, happy, focused employees. So like many engagement products, it's something that the HR team can deploy, and it does two full surveys every year on those five core factors, and then we do a monthly poll survey every month to add richness, and texture, and context on one of those five core factors. Becky: Yeah, so it has been so useful and so insightful for us on really a number of dimensions. And most importantly has positioned us to take action on the feedback that we're hearing from employees. Chad: Nice. So what's the completion rate for you guys? Becky: So we, being a survey company, we tend to get completion rates in the 85 plus percent. Our employees have been well trained since we ask for feedback so frequently, and they've had a great experience because we ask for feedback, we're transparent about the results, whether they're positive or present an area of opportunity for us, and then we tell them how we're taking action on what they've shared with us. Chad: Got you. So what about other companies who are using Engage? How many other companies do you have? You don't have to name them, but how many other companies are using Engage today, and what have their experiences been? Have they seen higher engagement? Probably not 85%, but what does that look like? Becky: Yeah, so I don't actually have, I'm happy to follow up with you, in terms of the number of users. I don't have that off hand, but I can certainly reflect on a number of different customers that we've engaged with directly, both when we were building the product and as we've helped the product team iterate. We've had kind of a core team of power users who have really helped us influence and evolve the product. It's been one of the coolest things that I've gotten to work on here at Survey Monkey is being able to influence this product because we're all familiar with some of the engagement products out there, the kind of annual, once a year survey that doesn't help people leaders make great decisions, it doesn't help us understand what's important to our employees, and we really feel like Survey Monkey Engage does that. It's in its early stages, but it's starting to get traction. Joel: I want to bring anonymous employee reviews into the conversation. Becky: Sure. Joel: Obviously Glassdoor, Indeed, there's about 15 or 20 sites that companies have to worry about reviews being put online. It seems to me that companies that are engaging in regular, aggressive internal surveys are maybe having less of a problem because the feedback loop is internal. Maybe some companies are using surveys to take positive surveys and funneling them into Glassdoor and Indeed to leave positive reviews? What's sort of your general opinion on that, and do you have any examples of how companies or you guys are using surveys to improve your Glassdoor, Indeed, et cetera rankings. Becky: Sure. So of course I'm a huge fan of using surveys to better understand what's going on with your employee population. And I think it's a valuable resource to candidates when they're exploring career opportunities out there. It's their opportunity to get a bird's eye view of what it's like and to hear from other people who have or are currently working at companies. So I get all of that. At the same time, I understand that it can be really challenging because it's typically you're more inclined for disgruntled employees or maybe people who haven't had great experiences to post than you are to have happy, engaged employees spending their time writing reviews when they're so busy at work. Becky: But the philosophy that we've taken, or the approach that we've taken is we really focus on our employees and trying to create really great experiences that are built on the things that they value most. And we believe if we do that and if we treat people well, and are kind, and have a great impact not only on their lives, but the communities that we work in, that great reviews will follow. So we don't chase people down to write great reviews, we don't do campaigns internally. The people who share their perspective on Glassdoor and other things are genuinely having really great experiences, and we think that speaks more loudly than any kind of campaign would to get people to create great reviews for us. Chad: So next, I'd like to talk about providing advice to talent acquisition, HR out there, in being able to actually utilize this type of product to get their employees engaged. Is it one question surveys? Because I've seen a ton of surveys. It's like page after page, and it's horrible. So do you send more surveys, but just less questions? Do you send almost like brain teasers? I mean, what do you do to make it fun and to be able to get such high engagement? For Survey Monkey, obviously your organization is bought in, your employees are bought in, that's what they do day, by day, by day, so 85%, that's hard to expect for most companies, but how do they get their completion rate up? Becky: Yeah, so a couple things. I think one, it's about writing great surveys. And you're right, surveys need to be kind of snack size and digestible, number one, and Survey Monkey has lots of great research and content to help our users write better surveys, which includes, "How many questions should you ask?" Generally, not more than 20 as the rule. So that's one thing. The second thing I would say is if you ask, be prepared to take action. Don't ask for the sake of asking and then never do anything with the data that you receive. I think what has been the most impactful in terms of us driving that engagement with our surveys is that, again, employees, with our employees, we are transparent about the results of our surveys, where we're going to take action, and even when we're not going to take action based on some of that feedback, we just acknowledge that very simply so they know this to be a channel through which they can have their voices heard, and that we take action on. Becky: Let me give you an example. So every year as we go into open enrollment, we do a Survey Monkey survey to make sure ... it's a huge investment in benefit, medical, dental, and vision benefits and perks that we do every year, so we always want to make sure we're using our money wisely. So at the end of the year as we prepared, we did a survey, and the survey results came back and said, we just had really high satisfaction rating. People were very satisfied with our offerings in this category, and really had little insight or value to add in terms of adjusting our offerings at all. But then we started to read through the open-ended questions for our survey, like, "What other input do you have for us?" And there was one question in there that asked ... identified three of our janitorial services workers by name, and it said, like, "Hey, we have great benefits, but what's going on with our third party vendors and our janitorial services team, the people that work in our kitchen? Do they have a great level of benefits?" Becky: So it kind of sent us down this road of curiosity where we were exploring this, and of course, we came to learn that they definitely weren't on par with what we were doing. So that year, our focus was not changing benefits for our own employees, our focus was on creating a set of standards that our vendors needed to meet to be able, for us to be willing to partner with them when they had employees on site, and we were able to invest not only our own money, but help them offer their employees better services. So sometimes it's interesting, the insight and the data that you get. Sometimes it's directly about what your employees want, sometimes it's also about who your employees want you to be as an employer and the impact that they want you to have on all of the constituents, your customers, your vendors, et cetera. So it's important that you really look for actionable insights, and you really dig through the data to understand what's going on and what your employees really want you to do. Chad: So it sounds like you actually might have identified, at least for me, one of the reasons why companies don't like to do surveys is because after they're done with it, they know they have to do something, and if they don't, there's going to be a high level of resentment, right? Becky: Yeah. Absolutely. Chad: Yeah. Becky: You have to be courageous enough, if you ask a range of questions, you could get a range of answers, and something may be reflected back to you that's not really becoming of your organization, or not in line with what you value or the experiences you're trying to create, but it's better to know and be able to take meaningful action on it than to not know at all or to pretend like it doesn't exist. Chad: Yeah, I would say courageous is probably a little far. They're not going into a building after a burning baby, but- Becky: True. Chad: Yeah, if they could stiffen their spine, get out of the fetal position in the corner, and actually care about what their employees think and feel, and then focus on taking action on that, yeah. I get that. That's awesome. Joel: You listeners of the show will know that millennials are a continual source of grief for me. Entitled little brats. And I say that because I know if you started in '99 at Yahoo that you're not in that group. So my question is, how are millennials affecting surveys? In particular, the mobility of surveys? Becky: Yeah, so in my experience, and of course we have a lot of employees that are millennials, of course. I think they're affecting surveys in a couple of ways. One is they really love to share their input, so I think they're helping drive our completion rates because they have strong opinions and they really, really want to share them, so I think that's one way. And they want to be able to take them and do them wherever they are. They're not necessarily waiting for an email. They take them on their phone, they do them on the fly, and they give us bite sized bits of feedback all of the time. Joel: That was about the answer I expected. Lastly ... They want it how they want it, when they want it. Okay. Chad: Like Joel's any different, right? Joel: Yeah. I'm totally different. I'm an old soul. So typically when we talk to ATSs, CRMs, there's integration into platforms like applicant tracking platforms is very important to their business. Is integration something that you guys do? Or is it something you will be doing? Becky: Survey Monkey as a product, absolutely. Integrations is kind of part of our strategy overall. We don't believe we need to be the system of record. We want to meet our users where they are, so whether that's integrating with Sales Force, into Microsoft teams, we have a number of different integrations that help our users marry their operational data and the data that they're collecting through Survey Monkey surveys. Joel: Any applicant tracking solutions that you integrate with or any talent management solutions, like Work Day maybe? Becky: So we are working on those integrations as part of Survey Monkey Engage. Joel: Great. Well, Becky, I think that's all that we have for you. We greatly appreciate your time, we know you're a busy person. For listeners who want to find out more, where should they go? Becky: Please visit SurveyMonkey.com. Joel: Easy enough. Chad: Beautiful. Becky: Yeah. Thank you guys so much. It's been fun. Joel: We out, dude. 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. Chad: 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: 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. 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. #SurveyMonkey #Engagement #Retention #Nexxt #TAtech

Ho-ho-Oh No! What should've been a laid back week has done blowed-up. Crowded goes through major ch-ch-changes in the C-suite... And there's more under the tree kids... - Indeed says "no," while ZipRecruiter says "yes," - Amazon and Walmart are waging "Robot Wars" - People attack self-driving Waymo cars - Uber autonomous is back on the street in Pittsburgh - Employees ghost employers, because they deserve it? - Indeed perpetuates stupid "Ninja" job titles - and we perpetuate Indeed's perpetuation.. Huh? Grab an eggnog and enjoy our Christmas show, sponsored by Sovren, JobAdX and Canvas, as usual. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions partners with employers on disability inclusion initiatives to design scalable solutions to support strategic and operational goals in staffing, training, retention, compliance and engagement. Announcer: Hide your kids lock the doors, you are listing 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: We are in your ear drums but we don't watch you when you sleep. Welcome to the pre-Christmas week episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast, HR's most dangerous and totally loaded on eggnog right about now. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: On this week's show, Crowded gets all shook up, Indeed says no, but ZipRecruiter says yes. And the pitchforks are coming out against self-driving cars. Put your feet up and throw some milk and cookies down your pie hole. We'll be right back after this message from Sovren. 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 produce 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: Humans don't need to learn how to think like computers because they're not smart enough to think like computers. That's what it comes down to. Joel: I just want to listen to our Christmas sound bite. Chad: You just love the Christmas sound bite. Joel: I love Christmas. Chad: Any holiday where there is food and festivity involved, yes. Joel: Yes and gifts. Chad: No gifts. Joel: Thanksgiving is great cause there is no gifts, there's no sort of all that effort of watching your wife wrap presents while you drink beer, cause you are often wrapping presents, but yeah. I love the holidays. Are you doing anything special? Chad: Yeah. Going to enjoy some time. The kids are going to be a way for about a week or so. And then they are going to come back and we're going to do Christmas, New Year's and everything all balled up pretty much into one, so that should be fun. They are teenagers now so it's a little bit different, especially went off to college, she's back. We are getting close to being empty nesters which is going to be awesome. Joel: I cannot say the same. My youngest has no idea what's going on, so that's neither here nor there. My nine year old still believes in Santa which is still precious. And my 12 year old is preteen angsty, who knows what's going on there. But yeah, I only get them on Christmas Day, isn't divorce fun. And then they leave me and then I get them back on New Year's, where we will be going to Canada and enjoying New Year's there. So yeah, good stuff. Chad: Oh, Canada Joel: Canada. Hopefully they'll let me back in. Chad: We've got our Chad and Cheese Christmas party, holiday party, Hanukkah party, Kwanzaa party this weekend. Joel: Christmas, Kwanzaa ... We'll have Chris Hanukkah- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Basically it's about really good food and drink. Chad: That's the way it should be. Joel: That's what it is, yes. Yeah. We'll maybe live stream or maybe, who knows. We'll post something, a little holiday message for the podcast. I don't know. We'll have fun Chad: I've got an awesome sweater that I can't wait to wear. So, let's get this done. Joel: Yeah, and I have some nauseous or enough anxiety medicine. Before I see that thing. All right, shout out, so what you got? Chad: Ooh, first and foremost, I'd like to go ahead and thank Scott Gutz, CEO of Monster and Chris Cho head of product at Monster. Just did a really awesome interview with those guys and we just dropped it earlier this week, so if you haven't checked it out, you want to hear about the state of the union or the state of Monster, check it out. We didn't throw them any softballs. I mean, we threw them some pretty fast pitches in and they answered some questions, so it was good stuff. Joel: State of the purple bugs bunny looking thingy, I believe is what we say, yes. Chad: Yes. Joel: From my words I think it's our best work to date on the interview side. You are not an iPhone guy but in iTunes it algorithmically shows podcasts that are the most popular, like most listened to et cetera. And the Monster interview is already in our most popular shows, so that's got to mean something, right. Chad: Nice. Well, and this is really just a shot. Should be heard around the industry for any CEO that's out there, get on the podcast, be transparent. Yes, we're not going to ask you bullshit softball questions, but that's not what the people want. They want to hear the real shit. They want to hear what's going on and we are going to push you to answer those questions. So, get on the pod or over there at dice I see in the fetal position in the corner, get out of the fetal position buddy. Get on the podcast and let's talk. Let's make 2019 a kick ass year. Joel: Tough but fair as my dad would always say. And by the way, my first shout out goes to my father who celebrates his birthday today. This will be published the day after, but yes, my dad is celebrating 79 years on this planet, half of which he's had to deal with me. So that counts for something. And we'll hopefully make 80 and many more birthdays after that. So, happy birthday coach Cheesman. Chad: Yeah, he's got a lot left in him. He's got a lot left in him. Joel: I agree. By the way, a double cancer survivor, prostate and colon. So they got mega ops for survival. Chad: You can't beat that guy. It's all there is to it. Joel: He's a cockroach. Chad: Hence Joel Cheesman. Shout out to new listener [Greg Jim Bonko 00:06:48] I know you want to call him Jiambi but it's Jim Bonko. Thanks for listening man, a new listener now. Since you are a new listener, you have to understand that you've got to go out, get your peers, friends and family listing as well. This is our push to be able to make Chad and Cheese, again, the best or continue to make the best HR podcast out there. Joel: And if not the best at least the most dangerous. Shout out to KFC, they had to make the list there somewhere. They have apparently released these starter logs. Chad: Yes. Joel: Some people don't own fireplaces, so these starter logs you fire up and then the wood, sort of like, KFC has apparently released a starter log for your fireplace that smells like fried chicken. Chad: That's genius. Joel: Yeah, it's like- Chad: That's incredibly genius. Joel: It's like indoor plumbing, the printing press and now the KFC starter log that smells like fried chicken. Chad: Yes. This is amazing. If you do have a wood burning fireplace, you should be getting these for Christmas. Joel: Agreed. Chad: I'm going to say shout out to Google Home Assistant for the commercial rekindling Home Alone with Kevin McCallister. So it's got- Joel: McCulkin. Chad: Oh yeah it's got a today's, it's hilarious. It's got Caulay McCulkin, today's Caulay McCulkin. He's found himself home alone, he asks Google what's on his calendar for the day and then during the entire thing, I mean he's just telling, he's asking google to do things. Again, it rekindles the years where we've watched Home Alone over and over. And it is funny as hell. So big ups to Google for that one. Joel: I love how he throws his back out when he's jumping on the bed. And by the way, you have to turn in your Gen X card for not knowing Macaulay Culkin, that's just awful. Macaulay McCallister, is that- Chad: No, Kevin McCallister is his name in Home Alone. Joel: Oh. Chad: You've got to throw in your Gen X card for not knowing the character name. Joel: No, no. Okay. All right. Anyway, that was a little funny side note. This is clearly one of the last shows of the year because we're getting ... TextRecruit shout out, we have this guy Eric Kostelnik, anyway, interviewed him for the show Kostelnik, I think that's right. Chad: Kostelnik, yeah. Joel: Interviewed him for the show, he has been a friend of the show for a long time, acquired by ICIMS. They sent out a tweet this week about getting their thousandth customer. So big ups to them for that. Chad: I love in the interview with him, you couldn't say his name, he's like, "It's okay man. You've only known me for like three years." Joel: Yeah. Well, people are still mispronouncing Cheesman so ... And Cheesman is much more straight forward than Kostelnik. Chad: Yeah, to an extent. Yeah, I could say that. So I'd like to send a shout out to Boston Dynamics who just put a video out of Santa with their robot dog reindeers. And I just want to say stop it, Boston Dynamics, stop it. You've gone too far. You've made everything in our life creepy. You can't make Christmas creepy too. Joel: The difference is my dog can't open the door, and- Chad: That's what makes it so creepy. Joel: Yeah, totally creepy. Last shout out is just ... Christmas man, take a break. I'm hoping to take an entire week break from Chad next week. We've prerecorded shows just so we don't have to listen and talk to each other for a week. I hope that everyone out there has a relaxing time, takes a break, enjoys family, friends or whatever it is you do. I know it's been a great year and I'm thankful for so much. Thank you Chad for a great year as well. I'm looking forward to 2019 and making many more shows. Chad: Stop it man, you're making me tear up. My last shout out is for all those individuals who love the supreme ugly Chad and Cheese sweater. Thanks so much. Brett Healey tweets, it just can't get any uglier. Thanks Brett, that's exactly what we're going for. Jen Klimas. Rayanne Thorn, Steve Kraut, Roy Mauer, Tim Sackett, Michael O'Dell, Audra Knight, James Ellis and Teresa Reyes Bustamante and many more. I can't because there was so much action on this ugly sweater, thank you. You have made my holiday season. Joel: Are you going to cut the sleeves off and wear it in the summertime, is what I want to know. Chad: No, I've got to keep this thing around but I think there will be Chad and Cheese T-shirts happening in 2019, mark my words people. Joel: Can we get to the news now? Chad: Yes. Joel: All right. Some of breaking stuff here, Crowded as in crowded.com, as in former firing squad alum has some shakeups here recently. I was able to confirm through a conversation with Steve Levy who I know a lot of our audience knows, a recruiting veteran friend of ... many conferences and events around the industry. But he took a job at Crowded a while back. And I'll start off by saying that aside from the news, Steve is staying with Crowded, believed in the product and the people that are there. So his confidence means something but apparently people at the top, we don't know exactly who, how it would be the top of the top, and I think you have some word that he has been let go as part of that. Joel: You have some sources on this story as well. But have either been fired or resigned. So there's some turmoil at the top that's going on. Mike Wiston who we know, head of sales, left the company towards the end of November I believe. Now according to him, it had nothing to do with any sort of chaos or scandal at the top. Which we have yet to confirm. Joe Rubin who is co-founder not confirmed that he's left yet but word is that it looks like he is focusing a little bit on his investment company. His LinkedIn profile has not been updated, Howie's has not been updated. Mike's has been updated, so we can still confirm that he is gone. Joel: The company's about us page has all of those folks still with the company. There's been no public announcement from the company, but as soon as we get something more concrete we will report it. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, wherever. That's where we shred some of this breaking news. So as we know more about the story, we'll be delivering that through the shred. So if you haven't opted in or subscribe to the show, make sure you do that so you get some of this hard hitting breaking stuff. Chad: Right now. Do have to say that this is one of the products that was out there that I think conceptually was amazing. And when we were actually able to see some of the components, I mean it backed up the concept, being able to really leverage your applicant tracking system, candidate database, the hundreds of millions of dollars that companies spend in their databases, building these databases and then they stop using them. This product was really devised to keep that database fresh and make it easier to match up against requisitions that obviously we are a posting on a daily basis. So this is the type of technology that I believe moving forward it's ripe for organizations to be able to tap into. And hopefully Crowded will be around in 2019 and will stay strong. Joel: Yeah, we definitely like the company and the people that were initially there. But you know, things happen. People are people. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They do, shit happens. What are you going to do? Chad: Shit happens. Joel: It definitely happens. But yeah, updates are coming on this story as we speak. I just actually got a call, that was probably about that. So yeah, if you're not subscribed to the shred get that updates on this story and more are forthcoming. Chad: Yeah. And if you don't know how to subscribe, it's pretty simple. Go to iTunes, look up the Chad and Cheese podcast, go to Google Play or Google Podcast, go to CastBox, whatever you use to listen to podcasts. If you don't listen to podcast, you are listening to a podcast, what the fuck. Go look for an App that makes sense for you and just look for Chad and Cheese, subscribe and you will get everything that we put out. Joel: Not so late breaking, takes us to our next story. Tucker Carlson, who probably those in America know but a lot of people outside of the country may not know who Tucker Carlson is. He's a conservative talking head, I guess it would be the best way that I would describe him. He's on- Chad: On Fox News. You got to say that. Joel: He is a Fox News personality. He made some comments about immigrants, specifically that they are dirty. I think that was really, really bad to say. There are dirty. Chad: They make our country dirtier and poor is what he said. Joel: It was just a really bad stupid thing to say. He's actually doubled down on it and said, I stand on when I said. As a result of this, quite a few advertisers have said, we out from supporting the show. And Indeed announced pretty publicly that they were leaving their support for the show. However, another industry stalwart has said they're not, or at least have not come out and said we're leaving. And that would be- Chad: ZipRecruiter. Joel: ZipRecruiter. So yeah, I mean I'd be kind of surprised if they don't just ride the wave of getting off the show. When you work in employment and diversity is such a key to our success, it's really hard to be a company in the recruiting space and support sort of anti-Semitic stupid comments like that. Chad: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. You know that companies like ZipRecruiter they've got ads everywhere, but it's incredibly important to be cognizant of what the hell is being said. And that's the kind of thing that you've got to watch. I mean, you really do, you have a dozen, at least at this point, a dozen other companies, big name companies who have said, okay, screw this I'm ejecting, I'm going home. Indeed being one of those companies very smartly. And then we saw on Twitter that Zip was still running ads. And I don't know if that's just because it was part of the normal flow and they weren't paying attention, but I think this is a shot over Zips, It's like guys, I know you're putting a lot of money out there but you've got to be cognizant of this shit. Joel: Yeah, for sure. Especially in today's environment. Not walking back or getting away from this sort of environment, makes you look sort of tone deaf and can be very damaging. There is reasons why certain companies sponsor Howard Stern, certain content. And if you're going to support something like Fox News which is very opinionated and has personalities like this, you should kind of know what you're getting into. But maybe Tucker went too far for some advertisers, certainly for ones in our space. So I applaud Indeed, I think we both do. And we'll see what ZipRecruiter does. Maybe we'll reach out to them and see if they're going to pull back or not. Chad: I don't believe, I don't think there's any question he went too far with. This has to do with just fear mongering to be quite frank. Joel: Yeah. I mean, Fox gets a ton of viewers and so that becomes very enticing as an advertiser to get on board with that. But you just have to know what you're getting. And if your business is HR who touts diversity and inclusion and all those good things, that becomes really dangerous. If I'm selling snuggies or burgers, there's a lot less risk I guess of backlash. But certainly in our industry you got to be careful with who you're getting behind. Chad: Yes. To say the least. Joel: Next story, ERE media who a lot of our listeners will know. I'm a regular provider of outstanding content to EREs website, also presenting at their spring conference in San Diego. So, if you are going to be there, come by and say hi. But they acquired Talent42, which reminds me of the 80s group level 42. Do you remember them? Chad: Yes. And something about you. Joel: There is something about you, baby. Which I know many of our audience will know because the people who commented about your sweater are all about our age. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I'm sure know this song. So anyway, talent 42 is a Seattle based conference sort of boutiquey nichey up to this point. Historically ERE and it's leader David Manaster have been really good about sort of finding those hidden gems in the industry and acquiring them. And this is just the next line to that. You and I talked earlier and we think it's the Forsyth newsletter that they acquired very early on. And acquiring SourceCon really early on as well, which has become one of the must see events for a lot of recruiters and certainly for sourcers out there. So, I applaud David for sort of being on the watch, on the hunt for some of these companies that are maybe under staffed or underutilized or underfunded and taking them and really making them something. So, Talent42 probably move beyond Seattle, probably go global, probably be something a lot bigger than they are today, but kudos to them. Joel: I don't know exactly what it says about the conference business. It's a good thing that you are seeing some consolidation or not. And certainly when the economy goes south, how do these guys fair, I don't know. But for the near term, this looks like an interesting acquisition. And by the way, we don't talk about conference acquisitions very much. So this was newsworthy. Chad: Yeah. Dave and crew over at ERE, they've been smart about content. We have said for years content is king and how you get it out there. And then there's the delivery mechanism of that content being, whether it's the ERE website or these conferences. So this is just another opportunity to have another vehicle, a very pointed vehicle for those types of individuals who go to that type of conference. I mean, what really distinguishes Talent42 again from some of the other ERE conferences? Joel: I don't know the ins and outs of the deal. Maybe the people behind it were sort of ready to walk away from it or maybe they saw bigger opportunity, but were funded to the degree that ERE might be to take it to the next level, I don't know the specifics of it. But it's built up a nice little brand in the northwest, I don't know, but we'll be watching. Moving on to an ad from our boys at 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 Canvas spot 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 the Bitmoji. We make compliance easy and are laser focused on recruiters success. Request a demo gocanvas.io and in 20 minutes we'll show you how to text at the speed of talent. That's go canvas.io, get ready to text at the speed of talent. Joel: So I have an update on Talent42. Chad: Okay. Joel: So looking at this story, it's primarily a tech recruiting event. So the need that it fills is being able to find and recruit tech talent. Certainly SourceCon helps with that but SourceCon is everything. So Talent42 is more tech focused. It is a national show. So yeah. So I think the niche it looks like it fills is tech recruiting. Chad: That makes a hell of a lot of sense. Joel: Well, there you go. Chad: There you go. So that being said, as we roll into these next topics, we're just listening to Canvas and how they're talking about Canvas bot. Amazon and Walmart are adding more robots, believe that. So Fast Company had this pretty awesome article around Amazon and Walmart, because those two are really fighting each other, right. Amazon bought Warehouse Robotics Company Kiva Systems a few years back. And due to that, I'm going to quote on this one, "In fulfillment centers, they have drive units. We're able to store up to 40% more inventory and move custom orders in a faster more efficient way, faster deliveries, lower prices." So taking the friction, this is the people friction. This is the thing that we talked about with Peter Weddle in the Circa 2118 interview, taking the human friction out of the whole formula, right. 40% more inventory and faster deliveries, lower prices, boom, people suck. Joel: People suck. Yeah, the problem and we talked about this in Circa 2118 with Weddle is somebody needs to buy the products that these robots are moving around and making. Chad: Look at the market, how many jobs do we have versus people. So this is the perfect opportunity for you to move those people out because there are other jobs, right. And that's the whole kind of thought process around this. Joel: Yeah. Now you are in this more than I am, but also that they're reconfirming or confirming that jobs aren't going to be lost because of this automation, you just call bullshit on that or? Chad: That is total bullshit. So let's run through a few of these things real quick, especially just with Amazon. Cashier-less Amazon Go stores, where are the fucking people? The concept of drone deliveries, where the people, right. To be able to say that is a bold faced lie. Will there be jobs that are created from this? Yes. But I think, Peter Actually said in the book when you do your due diligence and you take a look at the actual numbers, six jobs lost per every one created, right. So yeah, it's going to create jobs but the deficit is five times that of what it's actually creating. Chad: In 2020, Walmart automated carts will soon be shuttle components of online grocery orders from an attached warehouse to packaged up for human workers. So today, Julie when she shops, she goes online, she goes to Walmart does everything online. If you go into Walmart, you see these personal shoppers and they have these carts and they're going and they're doing the personal shopping, right. What's happening by 2020 is all those human beings are going to be gone. It's all going to be done by robots. That's another step Walmart is taking. And then they have robot truck unloading systems, autonomous floor cleaning systems that are deployed in 360 Walmarts by the end of January. Inventory tracking bots that can do a job in two and a half hours that it actually takes a human two weeks to do, that's stocking, checking merchandise, inventory. Chad: And then, last but not least, there are these things called Walmart pickup towers that are going to be like in 700 different Walmart locations, where you do your online, this is beyond I think just that of groceries. But you do your Walmart shopping online. You walk in the store to this tower, you have a QR code that you scan or something and then it just brings your box up, you've already paid for it online, you take it and you get the hell out of dodge. I mean dude, you cannot tell me that this is going to create a shit ton of jobs. Joel: That's all great but when I'm in the produce section I like to make sure my melons are firm. Chad: I do agree with that. I do agree with that. I do like from melons. Joel: I do like green lettuce and picking that strawberry that I really really want to eat. So there is something to be said for that. Chad: And getting grapes instead of being delivered raisins. Joel: And that. Now beer delivery, I think we're both behind. When a drone can deliver my PBR, it's a good day. Chad: Well, and Domino's delivering pizzas. I mean and this self-bake car pizzas. Joel: Yeah, the pizza that ... It's a self-driving truck. It takes orders online and it makes the pizza and then you go out and get it. You have a little code you got and it got like a hot pizza that's in this ever driving self like. To me that's genius and I'm waiting for that to happen. Pretty soon we'll never have to leave our house. I don't know if I'm looking toward to that day, but certain aspects of that I'm looking forward to. So we talked about the employee side of the automation question today. Joel: Let's talk a little bit about recruiting. Unilever has a interesting story. They process a whole lot of applicants with AI. A story come out this week, Unilever processes 1.8 million job applications. Now Unilever is a big company, so I don't know exactly what percentage of that is, but my guess is it's still a lot. And they also recruit more than 30,000 people each year by partnering with Pymetrics. So they specialize in artificial intelligence in recruitment. The partnership has created an online platform for candidates to be assessed at home on their computer or a mobile device. They've eliminated 70,000 person hours of evaluation through this partnership. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Wow. Chad: Dude. So the first step on this is while you're at home, they send you games to test your aptitude, logic, reasoning and appetite for risk. The whole algorithm goes into play and then it's used to assess the candidate suitability for whatever role they've applied for and then matches against different profiles. The second stage, and this is where it really gets creepy, is that you go into a video interview. And again, the assessor is not a human being, it's not a human being. So this is where the 70,000 person hours of interviewing and assessing candidates have been cut out. So that's pretty amazing to be able to look at how much time a recruiter actually spends, hiring manager, right, as sourcers, assessments, all that stuff, all that cutout, gone, done, taken over by these types of algorithms and systems. Joel: I got a thing for 2019 will be the year that if you're not doing stuff like this, you are going to lose your job. If you are not implementing some of these things as a big corporation in particular, we're going to see this in mass and become ubiquitous and commonplace next year. Chad: In this case, there is no black hole because all of, and I'm going to go ahead and quote, all of our applicants get a couple of pages of feedback, how they did in the game, how they did in the interviews, right. And what tech characteristics they have that fit. And if they don't fit, the reason why they don't fit, so they're giving them feedback, not going into a black hole. And this is all happening without human beings, right. Then it carries on to onboarding and engaging employees. They have a bot called Unibot that, it's all on the NLP Microsoft Bot framework that focuses on being able to just answer basic questions, provide documents and really do what HR and some of even IT, some of these different departments do on a daily basis. That's just really answering basic questions. They've rolled that out into 36 countries. Joel: If you're an Svp of HR and your CEO hasn't come to you from looking at stories like this and said, what are we doing to automate our recruiting. You should probably expect that conversation to happen any day now. Chad: If you have human beings, let's just go down for the basics first. If you have human beings posting jobs, if you have human beings scanning, actually sourcing candidates, right. Even these different engagement pieces from the ChatBot side of the house. If you're not looking at trying to get rid of all those tasks for your people so that they can really focus on being brand ambassadors. Joel is a hundred percent correct, CEO, CTO, who the hell knows, you're going to get a knock on the door and say, hey, why are we in the 1950s when all of our fucking competitors are getting to the talent so much faster than we are. Joel: Exactly. And speaking of coming after, people are coming after self-driving cars in Phoenix. A story out of Fast Company. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Says that to date there's been 21 police reports filed by Waymo drivers. Now the Waymo drivers are people who just sit in the car basically and make sure that for safety measures that they work. But yeah, 21 cases of people attacking with pitchforks and fire and everything else, this poor Waymo cars. Now, I will say that I've lived in Phoenix and can tell you that it gets really hot in Phoenix and people get pretty testy and short tempered. So I don't know how much of that goes into this verse saying how much of it is just we hate self-driving cars. But one Waymo driver says they saw a 69 year old man waving a gun at their vehicle which fortunately the police apprehended before he can do too much damage. But yeah, what do you think about this backlash on self-driving cars that people are attacking them. Chad: Yeah, I mean they are pretty much billboards. They say Waymo, they let you know that they're an autonomous vehicle and people are slashing tires, throwing rocks. I mean, this is could be, who knows, the start of the uprising when you start to see the robots starting to take over. There is also a piece in the article where an Uber driver, I believe it was an Uber driver was actually swerving toward these Waymo cars trying to drive them off the road and he was just screwing with them, but still, it's like, dude, that's going to take my job. Joel: That's going to be a lot of it. It's going to be people fucking with these cars. There is going to be insurance claims of people who run in front of them to get hit and fall claim. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: There is going to be people who are taxi drivers and Uber Drivers who see their livelihood at risk. And they are going to fuck with these cars. This is just like the drones where kids sit down with BB guns and like shoot it at drones, just for the hell of it. But yeah, I don't think it's as much as like an uprising against the trend of self-driving cars. I think it's just people being dumb asses and doing what people do. Chad: Until they start seeing the actual jobs going away and then it'll switch. Joel: Yeah, it could go bad. It could go south really fast. But for now, man, Phoenix might've been too hot of a place. You need to come to someplace a little more, they need to go to like Wisconsin or somewhere more amenable to stuff like this. Maybe at Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh has some nice cars, right. Chad: Yeah Pittsburgh, actually Uber is getting back on the road. They had a fatality but they're getting back on the road and that's the first place that they're going back on the road, it's Pittsburgh. Joel: Let's get a quick word from JobAdX and we'll talk about ghosts and ninjas and gurus. JobAdX: With JobAdX's first birthday almost here, we are proud of all we've accomplished with advertising clients, publisher job sites, recruitment marketing agencies and staffing firms. Thank you for all the support and trust you've placed in us. Since 2017, JobAdX has used the best of consumer ad techs bidding and ad delivery to build an incredible programmatic job advertising exchange, and continue to rapidly grow our network of partners sites. We've also launched a feed inventory management platform called switchboard, effectively offering our dynamic technologies to all job board partners. And we've developed our revolutionary live alert which eliminate latency and an expired job ads via email. No more dead clicks or overages from job links whether open today, next month or next year. For more information about our solutions, please reach us at joinus@jobadx.com. Joel: So ghosting and weird job titles. I don't really care which one we tackle first because they're both so hard hitting. But what do you want to do? Chad: I'd say the ghosting first. I think this- Joel: Interesting. Chad: We've been hearing a lot about this. Joel: Ooh, well the big one now is there's no more two week notice apparently. People just say fuck it and leave. Chad: Yes. That's what ghosting is. So just for our listening audience, what ghosting is, is when your employee just doesn't show up anymore, they quit but they don't even tell you that they quit. They're just done, right. So, this is from my understanding, because I haven't done this in a very long time, but it's very popular in the dating world, right. So you start dating somebody, it's like, oh, this is going well. It's like, nothing, radio silence on the other end. They totally ghosted you, right. They are starting to bring that behavior to the workplace. Joel: Yeah. And it doesn't exclude ... It's not just the work, the employees, it's the interview process as well. I mean people will have talked to someone, bring them in for an interview, they like the candidate, et cetera. And people just don't even show up. And they don't tell them I'm not showing up, they just don't show up. And we've heard about first day on the job where they just don't show up. They don't even time to hate their boss, hate the company or hate anything about it, they just don't even show up on day one. Chad: Yeah. Well, it's the market that we're in right now, right. And I believe, and this is just kind of my thought processes, is these individuals believe, hey, what's good for the goose is good for the fucking gander, right. When I go in and I do interviews and you don't get back to me and I go into a black hole, you're ghosting me, right. You are ghosting me, when I put my resume in and I don't get anything back, you are ghosting me. So why is that behavior okay but my behavior is not okay. So I don't think two wrongs make a right in this case. And the reason why this is happening is because of the job market. There are so many jobs that are out there that it's like, yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and hop from this job to that job, screw you, I'm going home. In some cases, but like you had said, there are some that don't even show up for day one, that's because they have multiple offers. Chad: The job market is making this happen. The problem is, when you're so weak that you can't look that individual on the eye and you run and play the run and hide game. You are burning bridges and there is a long term impact for this, especially when the worm starts to turn on the job market. Joel: Yeah. Eventually you'll need jobs. And if you've done a good job of burning bridges and pissing people off and embarrassing maybe people who tatted you up, that you were coming in and you made them look bad, what goes around comes around, which is another thing my dad used to tell me. This is a perfect example of that, that this will come back to bite you in the ass potentially. To me this is a whole culture of like breaking up through text used to be a thing. You don't even have the balls to call the person up or see them face to face or whatever. You just text them and then you are gone. And this whole culture of I don't need to take responsibility. I don't need to do the tough things in life. I don't have to do the right thing, is pretty unhealthy. And that's unfortunate that it's kind of in the work workplace. But it is the reality that we live in. Chad: It's weak people. Joel: It is weak. And I hope that I instill in my kids not to do this kind of shit. Chad: Yeah, no question. And still, I want to impress upon talent acquisition as you are listening to me, they are doing the exact goddamn thing to you that you do to them when you push them into a black hole and you don't give them any type of response or feedback whatsoever. So yes, this is bad. I agree 100%. This is bullshit. But you do the goddamn same thing every day, fix yourself. That's the big key here, fix yourself. Hopefully these idiots will understand and start to fix themselves, but you can't fix them, right. You can fix you. So quit this black hole bullshit. Joel: You're saying that they did, they fail to check themselves. So now they're wrecking themselves. Chad: Therefore they wreck themselves, yes. That's where I was going, very nice. I like that. Joel: Yeah, you like that. All right, well let's talk about weird job titles and then this miserable excuse for a podcast. So Indeed, all these companies have a lot of data usually put out these little fun facts about titles and whatever. So, one of things I thought we'd bring up is Indeed publishes their sort of weird job titles review and then they don't just tell you what are the most popular ones but they actually track which ones are rising and falling, et cetera. So they've highlighted seven terms that are used in job postings that are really pretty stupid, ninja, rock star, genius, guru, hero, my favorite wizard and superhero. Joel: So these are terms that people use. Now, what I thought was interesting is we have two that are like growing exponentially over the other ones. And that would be a ninja and rockstar. One that is spiking up is genius for whatever reason. Now, Apple calls their people geniuses so I'm not sure they're including them or not. What are your thoughts on using these sort of pop culture silly terms for professional opportunities. Chad: First a message to Indeed, you are perpetuating stupidity by putting this kind of stupid intel out. This is fucking stupid. There's no reason to be ... Oh yeah, this is fun. No, this isn't fun because then you get idiots. Let's take a look at ninja, right. So, I'm somebody who is in California and I see, oh, the number one rank is in my state. We should start using ninja more. No, you're perpetuating stupidity, okay. Ninja, rock star, I mean, are these video game players or are they actually doing a fucking job. Chad: So from my standpoint, this is the dumbest thing in the world. People, yeah, it's funny, but it's not funny. This is real world shit. You go and you see job descriptions that say ninja on them, that say obviously that's a rock star and genius. I mean, come on guys, what the fuck. Joel: All right, number one, full disclosure you are still mad at them that you think they stole your sweater, Christmas sweater idea. Chad: And they didn't do it as well as I did. Joel: So you are already pissed at Indeed this week. Number two, this is not stupid, this is great marketing because we're talking about it and people are going to click on it and people are going to link to it and people are going to share it on social media- Chad: So we are perpetuating [crosstalk 00:44:04] Joel: This is great, yeah, is it good for society? No.but is it good for going to Indeed and then saying what this is about like, hell yeah. Chad: Indeed, stop doing this because we are perpetuating your perpetuation and this is just ... Obviously we are dumb as well. Joel: Indeed is just the Messenger. They're not forcing people to put ninja and wizard in their job titles. People are stupid, Indeed is just reporting the data. Chad: Which is why humans are going to be taken over by robots because they know better. Joel: Which by the way, because Indeed doesn't play with Google for jobs. Their jobs aren't getting seen any more. So they have to put out content like this so people will still go to Indeed and hopefully they'll look for a job while they are there. Chad: And I will leave it at that, Indeed you're putting out stupid shit because you're not even doing the Google for jobs thing [crosstalk 00:44:59] Joel: Happy Christmas everybody. Chad: Happy holidays. We out. Cole: I'm Cole Cheesman so my dad can easily remember who I am. Thanks for listening to my dad and his follically challenged friend Chad. Make sure you subscribe to this show on iTunes, Google, eight track cassette tapes or wherever you enjoy podcast. Be sure to support our sponsors because if you don't I angry feel like when I'm angry. #WalMart #Amazon #Indeed #ZipRecruiter #Waymo #Uber #Ghosting

We welcome Tom Becker, EVP of Recruiting Ops at The Judge Group to The Chad & Cheese Bad Ass Series. That's right Tom is one 6Sigma black belt wearin' mutha that you don't want to foll with -- or at least his process. Tom breaks down how some companies are killing the "recruiting game" and others are mere spectators in the cheap seats. We've matched you up with another kick ass Uncommon Exclusive.. Get it? Matching? That's what Uncommon does... with candidates... and jobs... dumbass... PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: Yep Joel: Ah yeah, welcome back to the Chad and Cheese bad ass series. Today, we have Tom Becker, executive VP of recruiting operations; should be executive VP of badassery, from the Judge Group. Everybody say hi to Tom. Chad: Hi, Tom. Dude, how much coffee did you have this morning, holy cow. Joel: I have been up since 3:30, I have had like three pots, so just roll with this shit. Chad: Slow your roll, son. Joel: So, Tom, are you out there? You didn't move did you? Tom: I did not, I did not, hey guys, how you doing? Thanks for having me. Chad: Hey, you're in Carolina, man. Have you been digging out snow all week or what? Tom: Yeah, well we have. What's funny, was a lot of snow; I went to the airport yesterday, I'm actually in Philly today and lot's of snow by the airport but no snow where we are. You guys will get a chuckle out of this, they actually had a two hour delay over nothing. So, all the schools were delayed for no reason. Chad: I mean, you guys don't really have any snow removal equipment though, do you? Tom: Yeah, that's true, I guess. Joel: I mean, that's kind of hard, right. I mean, it's like "yeah, we're gonna try to throw the dice here because if we say school's on and it does snow, yeah; we're pretty fucked, because there's no way we can get this stuff off the road. Tom: Well, it's the ice that's really scary. I'm from Boston, originally, so we're used to driving with a half foot of snow, right. So we're used to it, but I don't think anybody's used to it in Charlotte, and I've been there for about 13 years, so... Chad: It's all those angry, Southern mothers that have to send their kids to school with a little ice on the ground. Joel: So, some background about you; tell us about you, just some quick stuff about your Bank of America days and what brought you to being EVP, mad scientist of tech shit at Judge. Chad: Who are you and why are you here? Tom: I actually started with a company out of Boston, it was called Keene, as a sourcer. Chad: Ahhh... Tom: I'm of the old school and this predates the job boards, which I know you guys love. It predates that and I actually started as a cold calling recruiter. My job was with all the receptionists and I don't think my kind exists anymore. Chad: No. Tom: That's where I started, I started with that. Back then, we were actually experimenting with some technology, so, it's been something I've been interested in my whole career. We were using, like, you know, "can we do events where people can sign up, and we can do online screening, before it was a thing. It was actually a lot of fun. Tom: Anyway, I got recruited from there to go Bank of America and I just had so much fun there. What I did, was I led a sourcing team, when I was there. Then eventually I led all employment branding and also the sourcing for the company. The thing that I got the bug was the 6Sigma bug. I went from partial nerd to complete nerd at Bank of America. Tom: Because it really made me feel like, "Oh, my God, there's so much more to recruiting, there's more to process, there's more to how do you manage performance and got my green belt there and my black belt and sort of went on from there. Tom: Then I went back to Comsus, so I went back into the industry. It was sort of like Michael Coreleone, it just kept pulling me back in. Tom: Once you got the bite for IT staffing or recruiting, you love it and you miss it; so I went back. I brought all this really cool stuff that I learned at the bank, there. Tom: Honestly, guys, we just crushed it. Then we got bought by that little company out of Milwaukee, called Manpower Group. Chad: So, were you one of the original boolean geeks, like Shalley groupies back in the mid-aughts? Were you one of those guys? Tom: You know, it's funny, because I was always the kids standing against the wall. I don't think I was one of the cool kids with that group. Joel: Wait a minute, did you put Shalley in the cool kid group? Tom: I did, I'm sorry. I'm saying, I was always a boolean guy. I loved the boolean strings, I'm probably more of a Cathy, I believe semantics is the key. Once I started realizing that I'm like, "I'm not looking back, I'm not creating these little box". I just sort of left that whole school of thought. Joel: We talked a little bit yesterday and one of the things that you said made me all warm inside. You said, "boolean's dead". Tom: Yep. Joel: Tell me a little bit about that. Tom: I've been able to conduct; and we talked a little bit about this yesterday; I did a few lean assessments. I did about four in my career, principally around IT staffing or IT recruiting. What I did was, we looked and we...Do you guys remember the time and motion studies, you guys know what they are? You sit there and clock recruiter activity? Joel: Yeah. Tom: It's brutal. Right? Chad: Horrible. Tom: Horrible, it's painful. Joel: Yes. Tom: What I found, though, is; if you watch a recruiter, if you sit a recruiter for three days. Day one, they lie to you and they tell you what they're gonna do, right? Nothing that they do, they do, they're just trying to show you that they follow protocol. Day two , they start to forget you're there, by day three they really do what they do, right? Tom: You get to spot all the inefficiencies and things like that. What I learned is that about 66% of a recruiter's activity is non value-added. In other words, they spend a lot of time in busy work. Fifty percent of that is sourcing, so it's all centered around endless job board searching and making these perfect algorithms. When we watch the recruiters try to make these perfect algorithms, these perfect boolean strings, it's a complete waste of their time. Joel: Uh huh. Tom: Right, that's where they waste their time. If you could find a way to automate that, I think that's where semantic comes in. I think semantic, if you have a good process and you're able to deliver or serve up good candidates. You're giving them back, literally two or three hours every day. I think that's why I went over to that school of thought. Chad: For those that don't know, define semantic search, for me. Tom: It semantically pulls out; I know you can't use a definition to give a definition, but it pulls out all of the words and it creates the meaning around those words. For example, it knows if it's programmer, programming; it's able to pull all those things. If it's Oracle, 8i, all the different versions of Oracle. It pulls all those things in the semantics out of the resume, out of the job description and it creates a much cleaner search that's able to take into account, all the other aspects, or all the semantics of what's in the resume and what's in the job description. Tom: It goes a lot deeper and broader. Chad: Chad and I, on the show, talk a lot about start-ups and vendors that are sort of trying to solve the puzzle of the automated sourcing tool. Chad: You say boolean is dead. Couldn't you say that sourcing is dead or on it's way out? Tom: Well, by the way, and I should have started with this; can I give you guys kudos or whatever; the podcast with Peter Weddle, I don't know if scared the hell out of me or if it educated me, but, a little bit of both. It was a really good podcast. Tom: To be honest, I think that sort of where we're heading. I think it's something everyone's afraid to admit. I mean, I believe recruiters should be focused around higher value activities; which is building relationships, engaging candidates, things like that. I think you can automate a lot of the non value-added stuff. So, the process, which is sourcing, which is updating candidates, which is giving them feedback, prepping them for interview, I think all those things can be automated. Tom: If it means sourcings dead, I don't know. I wish I was that smart, as your guest, Peter; but I think it's definitely going to be less and less in the future. Chad: Love that book, Circa 2118, if you haven't listened to the podcast, definitely check it out, or you can go to the TA Tech bookstore and pick yourself up one. Chad: Something else that we talked about and we hear constantly, "it's all about the bright and shiny". Now, you're a black belt, which means you can kick somebody's ass, that's what I believe that means. But, also, you're big on the process side of the house. Chad: Talk about how this bright and shiny shit is just screwing process to death. Tom: I don't know if I could kick butt, but I can definitely kick some process. I think there's a really good article that was written in Harvard Business Review by John Woodrow and it's exactly that. It's bright, shiny objects and the future of HR. That's actually where I got that; so I want to give kudos to them.That's where I referenced that. I feel, it seems to me, that rather than focusing on your process that talent acquisition wants to endlessly focus on all this top level funnel technologies that just these little shiny objects, rather than focusing on your process. And optimizing your process and being more efficient with your process centering around; and this could be a whole conversation around the key stakeholders, right. The candidate, the recruiter and the hiring manager. Tom: I don't think we center around that, I think we would rather add another technology or let's focus on predictive analytics, chatbots, big data. Just forget big data, focus on little data, right? Forget top funnel, focus on middle of funnel, cause that's also just as important and almost entirely forgot. Chad: So, apparently you strive a lot of technologies. What are the shiniest things out there, what should our listeners be looking at, in terms of the next big thing and what they might have missed Tom: The thing about the shiny objects is, they can be amazing and they can be revolutionary, you know. You know, your episode on Chatbots was wonderful, it seems like Quincy was really focused on process. Chad: Uh huh Tom: So anything that really enables the process. We're experimenting with two, when we say two things, we're experiment with technology, but we also experiment with process, which I know sounds crazy, right. We'll actually do AB testing around efficiency. So, we'll say, "if a recruiter does this, does that yield more efficiency"; if a recruiter does that does it yield more efficiency?" Tom: All those shiny objects that we should be thinking about are feedback loop technologies, I think they should be focusing more on how easy applied technology, texting seems to be a really big aspect of knowing where and how to use text. But, I think those are the three big areas, really focusing on how does it enable the process as opposed to technology just for the sake of technology. Chad: I'm not going to let you off the hook that easy, give me some names of vendors. Don't just tell broad, broad categories. Tom: Yeah, we use SenseHQ, I don't know if you guys, I'm sure you've heard of them. First, I know you guys did this, as well, but I want to give a shout-out to our CIO, his name is Ken Kreiger. You guys should have him on your show, he's a thirty-year veteran with the Judge Group. He is a recruiter that turned into a CIO, which is unheard of, right? So believes in the same philosophy, that the only time they will implement technology is for the sake of enabling process. We've been able to integrate SenseHQ and it's done some really amazing things. We could talk through that. Tom: Also, TextUs, we've been able to implement fairly successfully. We're also test driving Mya, as well. Chad: So TextUs, would that be a TextRecruit canvas competitor or something different? Tom: What TextUs does, it's similar to TextRecruit, I think is a competitor. Basically, what we did with TextUs is we integrated it into...so we have a homemade, in-house ATS, which I think is one of the best in the industry, I really do. I've seen the other ones and use a lot of them, but what we've been able to do is integrate texting into our applicant tracking system, where you can actually do it natively from the system; from the candidate record or even from a download that you have on your Iphone. It's as if you're texting them from your phone, as well. That's what we use and we use it for top of funnel and we're now experimenting in innovating around can we also use it for mid funnel activities. Like updating and you have interview scheduled and things like that. Chad: I think testing process improvement is genius. I mean, that's where companies should start, as a matter of fact, it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse, for Godsakes, but all these damn companies who have really just pulled their 1990s style application process methodology into their ATS has just really fucked everything up. So, your thoughts on just blowing up the process, starting from ground zero, not even thinking about vendors, until you get your new process down and then start to look for the bright and shiny. Tom: Absolutely, and we do a training, a session with new recruiters, probably like once every other month and I get to give a talk about process. I always say, and you guys, I think you'll get a chuckle out of this, but I always say, "if you started in recruiting 20 years ago and you went into a coma and you woke up today, you could probably get right to work". Chad: And probably be incredibly successful because you're actually calling people and you're doing the human to human thing, as opposed to waiting for somebody to fucking e-mail you or call you. Tom: Can you imagine that? Like they would actually be like, meeting on the phone, they may actually source people. It's pretty incredible. Chad: Could you argue that automation will make us more human because the grunt work will be done by machines and we'll be able to have real relationships? Tom: Well... Chad: Or, no? Tom: It's funny you say that cause I would, I actually think that in order to create a more engaging process you need a more efficient process. Chad: Right. Tom: So I think that's the key. If you free up the recruiter's time to do things like have meaningful discussions with candidates and get to know them, I think...But you can't do that if you give them an overburdening amount of reqs. You can't do that, you have to be efficient, so I think automations and efficiencies, if done right, should create a more human experience. Or more engaging process. Chad: So we've talked about shiny things but I want to talk a little bit about fool's gold. What technologies out there do you think are just absolute shit? Or maybe trends that you think will fade quickly without much fanfare. Tom: There's one thing that's interesting to me, that just never caught on yet. It's, or maybe it has and I just didn't pay attention enough, but video interviewing just never caught on. Or have you guys seen it? I've never seen it caught it. Everyone wanted to rush there and everyone doing video interviews but I think that's one. Right. You're right, right. Or new fandangled versions of resumes and things like that. I think that's one thing. Tom: The other thing that seems to be, I don't know if it's fool's gold, but it seems to be really high in the hills, is giving, not only do you give feedback, but you give meaningful feedback that say "let's give you career advice and coaching". Guys, I think candidates, they want to work for a company and a manager, right? I don't think they want...I think we try to give, we try to stuff all this stuff to them and say "we're going to give you this advance career coaching and advice". I don't know, I think that's sort of fool's gold, or maybe it's just so far up there that I don't think we're gonna get there yet. Joel: I'm gonna throw one atcha. What about block chain virtual reality? Tom: What's funny is I was with, when I worked for Manpower, I think they tried to do a second life thing. This is like ten years [crosstalk 00:16:04] it was a complete... Joel: Hell yeah Tom: ...complete disaster. It was terrible. Not there, I'm sorry. Who talks about virtual reality? I don't think it's there yet. Joel: Joel loves virtual reality. He just wants to put something on his face and have somebody feed him 24/7, sit on the couch. He would be in his boxers, he would be like in frickin Utopia. Joel: But what about block chain? We keep hearing about block chain and how powerful it is, but we don't really see products that are worth a shit that are sold with quote, unquote "block chain". Tom: Yeah, I agree with you, I haven't seen it yet. I think with the power of block chain, it's able to authenticate, right? And then put it across the block chamber where it's there and you can't remove it, right? It's in all of the nodes. I don't know, I think to be honest with you, it might be my fool's gold, because I think there is potential there. I just think it's got to be done well, with the right platform that's big enough and able to really provide that authentication. I think it's not only authenticating skills, it could be authenticating things like are they good workers, do they show up on time, do they get along with others. Imagine if that was a block chain and you couldn't erase that for a long time and think about the impact that will have on the workforce. Joel: They really don't know what block chain means. Employers don't even know block chain means, right. It's almost like trying to go out there and beat them to death with a word that is so high tech that they should use, that they don't understand. So, I mean, everything that you talked about, you know; being able to validate and just the authentication pieces, I mean, all of that is incredibly important but that's not what's going to sell HR and/or talent acquisition. Tom: Totally agree, right, I mean, remember, predictive analytics was almost the same thing. Everyone just wanted to use it; and even big data, everyone was obsessed with big data. I remember I did a talk at SourceConlink, forget your big data, use your little data, for crying out loud. You're... Joel: Uh huh Tom: ...you have no idea how to use your data. Honestly, I think there is promise in block chain but I agree with you, it's not, "hey you should do block chain" it's "you should find a better way to authenticate skill sets in this IT staffing industry". Tom: The staffing industry has massive implications cause you could go to a client and say, "here are validated JAVA developers who are proven to have a good track record, their code is actually validated by peers that have a high score and on other websites". That's really powerful. Tom: I think, again, it's not block chain, it's solving the problem of authentication, right? That's what its doing. Joel: We've focused a lot on technology, for obvious reasons, but I'm curious to your opinion on employment branding. Are we over rating the importance of employment branding or are we paying enough attention to it? Tom: By we, you mean like the just general talent acquisition? Right? Like the... Joel: Employment branding is a hot topic, right? Glassdoor was acquired for a billion plus dollars. You know, companies spend a lot of money to keep people in the building and get them in the building in the first place. The culture and what its like to work there and everything is really important. Glassdoor just put out their best companies to work for. A lot of their competitors are doing the same thing. Are we overrating the importance of that or not? Tom: You know, I think we are. Here's what I'll tell you why and I could go either way on this, but, it seems to me that if you spend all that time on employment brand and it's not authentic. In other words, if you spend all that time getting people excited about this, you know, people drinking beer, playing... Joel: I like that Tom: ...foosball, or whatever it is, right? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. However, if you're spending all that time and then you show up, you being the candidate, and it's inauthentic. Then you've kind of wasted all that time. You've got to be authentic all the way through the process. Joel: Isn't the value of sort of online reviews, the fact that you're getting the real nitty-gritty. You're not getting what the corporations telling you its like to work here, you're looking at the workers telling you what it's like to work there. Is that important? Tom: That is important, right? That's what employment brand tries to leverage, right? Or try to tweak or change, right? That's really important. I do think that authenticating from the inside, you know, what it's like to really work there, I think that's incredibly, it's exposing. Or it's encouraging. That aspect of it, I think, is incredibly important. If you use that aspect as a means of employment branding then I think it's really powerful, right? But, it's more about trying to make something different, or make something attractive that potentially isn't, that's a huge downfall. Joel: Excellent, when you're taking a look at employment branding platforms, when you take a look sourcing platforms, all these different platforms that are out there. I mean, this is a really cool time to be in recruiting. I mean, the last five years, before this big peak, really sucked. I mean, it was boring as hell, but this last, like 24 months, has been pretty awesome. What is your favorite platform today. I mean, you just can't wait to get up and use it every single day. Or, test drive it. Tom: I don't know that we have any shiny objects here. I don't know that I, I think it's an incredibly exciting time and I think if you're not using all of them, like we use all the social platforms really well, or I should say fairly well. In that it drives candidates. We're constantly interacting with the talent communities. But, I don't have like that one or two thing that I say, "oh we gotta use to engage or attract? Joel: Uh huh. Tom: I think it's more where the people, where the candidates are going, right? I hate to pull a Mulligan on this one, but I don't really have one that I'm excited about. Joel: Where are the candidates going? Tom: I think they're searching, they're just doing a Google search, right> I think that's where the candidates are definitely going. I think mobile, right, because it drives them to like their area, their neighborhood. I don't know that they're gong to any one or places right now. It's really been distributed fairly evenly, it seems like. It seems like Google is doing a good job to make it so it's the search, right? You've got to value high on that search result. But, I don't think they're all running to one place. Unless you guys are, you probably see more than I do, but I don't see on absolutely dominating or over the others. Joel: So, you mentioned Google a few times. What do you think about Google for jobs? How do you think that's going to impact or how has it already started to impact the industry and is that we're seeing such a huge change and more innovation? Tom: I think so, and by the way, I love the fact that they set up shop in Japan. I think that was awesome. Joel: So do we. Tom: Everyone was all upset about Randstad and Monster, like Indeed. I mean, come on, it's a staffing company that owns Indeed. So I love that, right, I love what they're doing. We had a meeting with Monster a couple weeks ago. I'm not saying, necessarily that Monster or Google, or whatever. I don't think Google is gonna want to own this space. I think Google wants to provide their partners the ability to win. I think Indeed was almost gonna, they were trying to corner their backyard and I think Google just was like, "I'm not going to let that happen, I'm going to distance you immediately". And, I think that's what they did. Joel: Interesting. Question about the gig economy. Obviously trending, we talk a lot about it on the show. I recently wrote a blog post talking about Upwork partnering with Microsoft, which I believe will potentially be a major acquisition target for someone like Microsoft, going in the next year; where they have LinkedIn, they have GitHub and now they have Upwork. Talk about your thoughts on the gig economy and maybe how that reality fits into recruiting today and tomorrow. Tom: I think it's going to be a lot more prevalent. If you look at, like when I worked for Manpower Group, we were able to visit a lot of other markets, European markets. Latin American markets and I believe our penetration rate for contractors; before I go into gig economy; was like four percent. It's not as high as people think it is, you know, in terms of contractors. Whereas in other countries it's like 30% or 20, it's really high. I think that that's a trend that will come here. I think more of the US economy will be a gig based economy, or temporary labor economy. I actually love the work they're doing, I think when someone figures out the Uberizaton of jobs, I think that's going to be a huge innovation, right? I applaud what they're doing, I think that's the right direction to go. Joel: Yeah, my last question is in regards to privacy, obviously you're familiar with GDPR over in Europe. We were interviewing the founder of Hiring Solved, who said they basically threw away, 29 million profiles in Europe because it just wasn't worth the time to deal with the privacy issues. How do you feel privacy is going to impact recruiting, particularly here in North America, in the future? Tom: I think it will impact. I'll say, me personally, I'm that guy that like, doesn't care. I know that's wrong, right? If someone wants to take my data, they're just gonna do it, right? I'm probably on one extreme end of that. It seems like its going to be out further than we believe it will be here in the US, right? I think it's impacting. I lead a few forums in the IT staffing industry, one is all CFO's, another one it's all recruiting directors and I've asked this question a couple of times. Are you impacted yet by GDPR, by these other things. They're saying no, the ones that have European operations, they're saying yes. Tom: It's more of an IT impact, we'd have to change where the data resides and how that interacts. I don't see it impacting over the immediate future, at least over the next couple of years. It's becoming more of a box in the staffing industry, "are you GDPR compliant?". I don't know that they're ready to say what that means, unless there's something big. Remember when Microsoft was sued with the whole co-employment thing? I don't think it's here yet, it hasn't reached shores yes, which really impacted companies that are principally in North America or in the US. Joel: ...hit us yet, but assuming that it does, how does that impact recruiting? Tom: I think it impacts more the CIOs of recruiting companies, if that makes sense? Or it impacts more the way the data resides. I don't know that it actually, again, the recruiting process is the process; what the recruiter does. It won't impact what the recruiter actually does, right? Because, then their IT organizations, they're going to have to scramble to figure out how they're going to serve up this data to the recruiter. I'm gonna go on a limb and say, "I don't think there will be a major impact. I really don't". Because it's more for IT to figure out, it won't really impact the core process of talent acquisition. Joel: Right, because all the inter workings of GDPR and then also in 2020 there's even more strict guidelines that are going in, in California. 2020, the US, everybody pretty much does business pretty much in California, so it's gonna happen in the US by 2020. But yeah, I can see just from a process standpoint from how you keep the data, how the individual can manage the data, that's what it all comes down to. So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I've never heard it put that way before but, obviously, clean and simple. Tom: It may impact data bases, right? Like, where the data actually resides but again, to the recruiter, if they have an effective IT organization, they should find a way to say, "okay, you're sourcing in Europe, and now use that database". Right?. I don't know that if affects the core, fundamental process of talent acquisition. Joel: Yeah, yeah. Well, Tom, sir. That is all we have time for today. We know you're a busy guy, being the EVP of recruiting operations and all the cool shit over at the Judge Group. We appreciate you taking the time, coming on the show and we expect you to share this with all your peers, your friends, your family and they all need to subscribe by the end of the day. Chad: Tom, for those that want to connect with you, how would they do that? Joel: Connect with Judge at www.judge.com but also on @tombecker on Twitter. Chad: Excellent, 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 I Tunes, 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. #process #GoogleforJobs #ATS #CRM #6Sigma #BadAss #Matching #AI #Blockchain

Scott Gutz, Monster's CEO, has been on the job about 6 mos. To say he has his work cut out for him and his team is a gross understatement. For over a decade, Monster enjoyed being the top brand in the employment industry. Those days are gone, as job boards have become antiquated in exchange for names like Google, Facebook and Microsoft who are now vying for marketshare. On this Uncommon exclusive, we dig into the State of Monster with its CEO and chief product officer, Chris Cho. Give some love to Uncommon for sponsoring this EXCLUSIVE! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your sourcing and recruiting partner for people with disabilities. Chad: I want to be over the top, say hello to the easiest way to find interested and qualified candidates. Joel: Dude, you need to tone it down I was just napping. You mean Uncommon's automated sourcing that turns passive candidates into interested and qualified applications? Chad: Yep, Uncommon Automation helps recruiters cut their sourcing time by 75 percent. Joel: Well, how much coffee did you have today? Chad: A lot. Joel: Anyway, dude, 75 percent that sounds like black magic, or something. Chad: Close, it's called Automation. It's simple, actually, you just feed, or post your jobs in Uncommon the platform identifies your job requirements and in seconds Uncommon uses those requirements to search over 150 million candidate profiles and then it pulls back only the qualified candidates. Joel: And, don't forget, you can connect your email and Uncommon will provide automated outreach with your customized messages to activate those passive candidates, those pesky passive candidates. Chad: Even better, I'm gonna one up you. Uncommon shows exactly how the candidate meets all the job requirements with a side-by-side comparison view against the job requirements. Joel: Which means you won't be asking yourself, what in the hell is this candidate doing here? Chad: No, but you will be asking yourself, where is Uncommon been all my life? Joel: Seriously, Uncommon is the easiest way to find qualified candidates, active or passive. Chad: Visit Uncommon.co and use discount code Chad Cheese for 20 percent off. Joel: 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 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: Oh yeah. Joel: You da monster. Joel: What's up Chad? Chad: Oh man, eh welcome back to HR's most dangerous podcast where we've all been naughty because it's just not that fun being nice. I'm Chad Showash. Joel: I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And on today's podcast we have a special gift for our listeners, we have Chris Cho Monster's chief product guy, he's one of those guys who has all the good toys and he doesn't let anybody play with them. Welcome Chris. Joel: Bastard. Chris Cho: Thanks guys, happy to be here. Chad: And Scott Gutz, CEO and supreme elvin commander over at a monster.com Chad: Did I get that right Scott? That's how Kate said I should introduce you. Joel: Is it just chief Monster, or is it just CEO now? Scott Gutz: I like chief monster we'll go with that one. Joel: You like that? Okay, okay I like that too. Welcome to the show guys. Chad: Welcome to the show, hey we're gonna just jump straight into Q and A just because everybody knows who the hell you guys are, so number one Scott, you've been the Monster hot seat for five months, how does it feel man? Joel: Toasty. Scott Gutz: It feels toasty, warm, but good. Joel: How would you describe the state of Monster, currently? Scott Gutz: We are focused on restoring Monster to prominence and relevance and we're very excited about the products that we're introducing in 2019, some of the products are evolving in a material way in 2019 and we're super excited about our management team, we remain excited about our brand and we're excited about our global footprint and all of the things that come with that. Joel: I would say the first few months of the new leadership that came in there was a real focus on the users, for example you took banners off the site which I personally applauded because you guys used to be NASCAR so that's a nice change, speeding up the site being really focused on users and then getting to profitability after that. Are we at a point now that you guys feel comfortable that the site itself, the user experience is rockin' and you can really focus on the profitability? Scott Gutz: So I'll give a quick answer and then I'll let Chris give his perspective as well, so I would say were focused on experiences, we're focused on matches and we're focused on outcomes. You're absolutely correct we've done a lot of work to improve the experience on the site, we've done work to improve the speed of the site, we've done work to enhance our capability from a search engine optimization perspective, from a Google for jobs perspective, but would I say that we're super happy would be, overall experience both from an employer and a candidate perspective, I would say no there's plenty of work we've got in front of us to make the experiences that much better going forward and it's one of those things where I think even if you asked me the same question in 12 months time, I'm gonna tell you that we're not fully satisfied because we're always going to be trying new and different things to make sure that our users, new candidates are wanting to come back and we want to make sure that our employers are having a super good experience with all the tools and solutions that we provide to them. Scott Gutz: On the profitability side, we are continued to be focused on the experiences, the matches and the outcomes and we think by doing that we're going to get better outcomes for our candidates, better outcomes for our employers and fundamentally better outcomes for Monster, both from a profitability perspective and from an overall performance perspective. So, I think I covered all of the aspects of your questions, but maybe I'll turn it over to Chris to add some additional color. Joel: Sure. Chris Cho: Hey guys, we're never gonna be happy with user experience and while we did invent the space in 94/95 and we introduced to the world this notion of being able to search jobs on the internet and while others have emulated, others have copied and explored new areas of what we do, we still remain very hungry to reclaim and re-pioneer the space yet once again with a great new user experience that we're building today around our job board. I just feel that job boards today are so transactional, right? You go to the homepage, or you go to the app and you type in a key word search and then you get your search results, maybe apply to a few jobs, maybe sign up for a few job alerts and then you're done, right? You don't come back until the next time you're looking for a job. We want to change that, right and we want to change that so that people find more value, we drive value back to the employers, we have a life long relationship with the job seeker and the candidate instead of a transactional one. Chad: I totally get that and one of the reasons why we take a look at Facebook, take a look at Google, you take a look at Linkedin with Microsoft, we're looking at lifestyle platforms, right? That's exactly what you're talking about. We're talking about having that transaction when I need a job and that's it and those types of platforms are going away because every single day we use these lifestyle platforms. So, yes there are other companies who have mimicked and really, to be quite frank, out preformed Monster over the years, Monster was at the pinnacle and then got knocked off the mountain and they weren't performing as well. How do you change that, specifically, what can you do to be able to compete in a lifestyle platform landscape? That's the big question. Chris Cho: So we have to educate, enlighten and uplift, right? The thing about social networks with social feeds and news feeds is that a lot of the content that you see, that gets pushed to you is toxic and I want Monster from a product vantage point to be the antidote to that, right, I don't want anxiety producing, fear of missing out creating content product services to be pushed to you, rather and I'll give you some examples, right. So, when you go on a Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or something else you're going to get oh here's where I'm vacationing and you're not, here's what I'm eating that you're not eating right now, or here's the conference, or business event that I'm attending that you're not and that's just for a lot of people, right, whether they know it or not, subconsciously being embedded and it's giving them a lot of, for a lot of people, anxiety, right? Chris Cho: What if we altered that to be positive and understood that this ecology of job search is really rooted in one becoming, or wanting to be a better version of themselves, right? What if we included content, product services, job ads that were more relevant, that were more suited, that were more career path oriented, right? That's the kind of mentality and line of thinking that we're having. Scott Gutz: And just to add a quick perspective to what Chris was saying, you know, we believe that in this younger generation there will be a lot more job turnover than perhaps the older generation has experienced, so there's data that suggests that this new generations may be changing jobs and by that I mean employers and not jobs within a company, 15 to 20 times during the course of their career, so as Chris said, I think we have a real opportunity to be the go-to site where we are fundamentally invested in the evolution of that persons career and that person thinks to come back to Monster first for perspective on where to go next and that's really what we're aiming for. Chad: Okay, the big question is how though? That's all well and good the educate, enlighten on lift, that's wonderful and a day of Facebook where you get on and you're having fights with your family every single day because of politics and that kind of shit, right? Then it bleeds into Linkedin and everything else, how do you do it? Again, it sounds great and you can get up on stage and talk about it and it sounds wonderful, but it all comes down to execution, how? Joel: If I could jump in for one specific example that I can name, you know, you guys a few years ago partnered with Kununu to power your employee reviews. We know that employee reviews are valuable, right, I mean it's great content people want to go back, they want to see the nitty-gritty, the inside info on the company. Glassdoor recently sold for, you know, 1.2 billion dollars so we know there's value in reviews, it seems kind of silly that you guys are outsourcing that component of your site, is there a plan to have reviews come in house and have Monster power its own review section, or is the plan to stay with Kununu and have them handle that component of content? Chris Cho: I think reviews are one component of a seekers consideration building journey, right? Yeah, I'm really interested in learning about a companies culture by way of ratings and reviews, but then the job search is so much more than that right? It's about benefits, perks, salary information, commute times, maybe an authentic video of the hiring manager him, or herself presenting themselves with heres the individual that I want, the characteristics that they embody and what sort of contributions I expect from them, not in some sort of professionally, agency created video, but perhaps, through in a very authentic selfie style video that we've been able to capture for them and maybe in 45 seconds, 60 seconds and have them be presented as part of the job ad. So, that's the kind of thought that we have, company ratings and reviews are very important and we realize that, but they are just but one component of the job search process. Joel: You brought a video and I'm curious you recently launched Monster Studios which I describe as Instagram for jobs, I assume you have a different explanation, or description, but how is that going and what sort of early feedback on that product? Scott Gutz: I'll give a quick answer Chris, I would say we're super excited about Monster Studios. The companies that have expressed interested are a multiple of what we expected and we're in a beta phase right now, so we're close to a hundred customers that are participating in the beta and we have hundreds more that are asking for permission to also participate. We're moving into an alpha phase in Q-1 with an expectation for a global launch at the end of Q-1 going into Q-2. So far we're happy with the performance of the solution, our customers that are participating are happy with the performance of the solution. Scott Gutz: We are getting ready to introduce this to candidates as we go forward, which is the most important test, as Chris said, I completely agree with his answer, if you think about all of the different considerations a candidate has when they're making a determination as to the right fit, yes you could look at commute time and compensation and information and perspective from Kununu or Glassdoor about the company itself, but getting a real perspective from the department manager and the department in which you're going to work and having things like specific company profiles associated with the particular location and that particular department, I think are super important in terms of a candidate ultimately determining whether or not it's a right match. We think video is an important component, it's one of the components that we think candidates will effectively consider going forward and we are really very, very bullish on on Monster Studios as a major element of the Monster technology staff and the Monster employer and candidate solutions going forward. Joel: And did I hear you right, that you're launching it for job seekers? What does that look like? Scott Gutz: So the comment was more specific to the fact that job seekers will be looking at Monster Studios in order to make a determination on the right fit, however, we are also looking at moving the video solutions into the candidate world as well that would more likely be second half of 2019, but there are some things that you need to take into consideration before the launch. Joel: So a video resume component, essentially? Scott Gutz: Exactly right. Chad: That being said on the Monster Studio side of the house this is enhancing your current product, right? Scott Gutz: That is correct. Chad: This is not a standalone product, so how do you believe this is actually gonna impact revenues? Experience is awesome, we love it, but at the end of the day you know Ron Stod and Linda better than I do, it's all about being able to ensure that you're going to be impacting that bottom line and focusing on EBIT, alright? Scott Gutz: Two things that I would say, one is we actually think that the way that you get ahead in this business or in many business is creating differentiation, so as a part of our job ad solution we think by including Monster Studios we're providing an enriched solution for employers and by extension a better mechanism for them to attract the right candidates. The second comment I would make is Monster is in a good situation relative to it's EBIDA performance, one of the things that's interesting is that we are fundamentally a technology and a media company, we are different from a staffing company, a staffing company uses the EBITA as their major measure. Chad: Yes. Scott Gutz: From an EBIDA perspective Monster is doing quite well, but clearly I am here to grow the revenues, I'm here to grow the profits and my management team and I are laser focused on introducing solutions that are better serving employers, introducing solutions that are allowing candidates to find the right match and again, if we think about experiences and matches we think that leads to very, very effective outcomes for all parties involved and we hope guys, including Monster. Chad: So on that same line of thinking experience has to do with relevant matching, right? So Zip Recruiter has taken the SMV market by storm, but you know their going to be in the enterprise market very soon. They haven't focused on clicks, the PPC side of the house, they haven't focused on apps, they've focused on quality and more toward the qualified candidate side of the house. Two questions, first and foremost, especially right out of the gate from a philosophical stand point, do you believe moving past PPC and PPA to qualified candidates is really what everyone should be focusing on right now, obviously, including Monster? If so, then when can we expect a product? Scott Gutz: So, let me see if I understand the question, right now Monster has a variety of different solutions that we offer, which include elements of the traditional duration job, a PPC equation, a PPA equation and a PPH equation and that's not only in just our pure job ad category that exists in our services solutions, as well. Do I think that Monster is going to move to one versus all of the others? Given the fact that we're global operating in 15 different markets, I can tell you that the market expectation for products and services is different by market, by way of example, Canada is different from the US, the UK is different to Germany and I believe that we're going to continue to offer a variety of solutions that meet the requirements of the market, that being said, I want Monster to be in a position where irrespective of it's say 30 day duration job, a pay per click, a pay per applicant, or a pay per hire that our performance and the outcomes that are being generated put Monster in a very strong, relative, competitive position, that is absolutely what we're collectively aiming for. Chad: Okay, excellent. So real quick, what's the big difference between the US and the UK with regard to those types of products? I mean, great answer, but really down to brass tax, how are you selling differently and what types of products are actually going out the door faster in the UK than they are in the US? Scott Gutz: Yeah, so I'll give a few examples and I'll let Chris offer some perspective as well. One thing that we've seen, I'd say from a European trend perspective is that the duration job continues to be prominent in terms of what people are willing to buy, so there have been pockets of interest in PPC, we know that the competitors that offer PPC have entered those markets and are starting to introduce new models, but we are in a position to offer either duration, or PPC in any market that we operate. Scott Gutz: On the question which is specific to the UK, it maybe just assures you one of the things that we're finding interesting is that the standard job ad if you look at, you know, year over year it is definitely on the decline, however, what we call the premium job ad which includes an active social component is taking away all of the standard share and growing at a fairly rapid pace. So, we think that that the evolution of call it the traditional job ad moving more to social channels is really starting to become very prominent and really starting to create better outcomes in the UK market and by extension in some other European markets as well. Chris you can add any color. Chris Cho: Yeah, so social is huge in the UK and it's not as a result of our lack of ability to yield strong performance in PPC and duration, it is just the market is moving in the direction and we often look at our Monster Europe as tip of the sphere with a lot of things. They teach us and we learn from them and we try to adapt as quickly as possible what successes we can emulate here in the US with respect to avant garde products like social which really aren't super avanguard given that they were released to the market three, or four years ago. On the matter of the quality of higher aspect to it I'm a big fan of the Papa John's tagline, not Papa John himself, better ingredients better pizza, right? I'm going to adapt that and I'm gonna say when it comes to quality of hires and quality of candidates it goes down to better data equals better decisions and I don't think there's anyone here who would disagree with that, right? Chris Cho: What we are doing is looking at the nucleus of what we have to offer, if that is relegated, not just to us, but to every other job board out there, right? The humble, but lowly resume artifact that, honestly, as a online artifact hasn't changed in the past two decades, right? It's still the same word file, same PDF file, right? Chad: Yeah. Chris Cho: We are making advances in uplifting that artifact with a certain halo of information that I think will yield to better outcomes for employers and both Scott and I are very passionate about that being part of our core strategy. Chad: I want to hear about that, that's what I want to hear about. Tell us more about that. Chris Cho: Yeah, well maybe in the next podcast, right? Scott Gutz: To be continued. Joel: Such a tease. I'd like to pivot to Google for jobs if I can for a second, what has that meant to your business, your traffic inflow, plans for leveraging it more in the future, or less and maybe are you starting to think of it as a competitor? Scott Gutz: Initially, we have put a tremendous amount of focus on making sure that the Monster performance on Google for jobs was strong, so in the markets where Google for jobs has launched, which I think you guys are well aware, is US, UK and Canada, we actually have seen super good performance on Google for jobs, in fact, I would suggest that we are anxiously awaiting the launch of Google for jobs in other major markets where Monster operates as a way to take a step forward. So far we have seen Google as a clear path where Monster needs to be well placed and prominent in order to make sure we are appearing where we need to appear. We see organic and SEO and Google for jobs as opportunities for Monster to be much more effective of getting our jobs where they need to be. So far, I don't think we're seeing it as a competition, we're seeing it as an opportunity for Monster to excel and I expect that will be the case as we move really through the next few years. Chad: Here's a quick question for Chris, Chris we take a look at Google for jobs and what we're hearing and nobody knows about the black box of the google algorithm, although, they know that experience means everything, so if you're focusing on experience and you're trying to obviously, demonstrate to Google that you're providing a better experience than all those other sites that are out there, even the app booked tracking systems and so on and so forth, do you believe that that is also a part of the strategy in being able to have a better, new age SEO to get better search engine rankings in Google for jobs? Chris Cho: Yeah, no doubt, no doubt, so that we're very clear Google is an enabler and a really good industry partner, they're pushing us forward and they're doing some things outside of Google for jobs as you guys know on the Cloud side that are effectively democratizing some of that great Google search technology across the board, which has been a good thing for everyone in this industry. When in comes down to SEO, this is precisely the reason why we're going into studios, right? If you delve into that a little bit more and if you path it out and string it out a little bit if Google for jobs as they've taken precedence in Google in the past by indexing and surfacing video content, right? Chris Cho: As an SEO differentiator then becomes part of Google for jobs, then what we really want to start understanding and using as a leveraging point is how the video content that appears on Monster can appear on Google for jobs. That's our kind of way of getting ahead of it and when we allow for really clever, smart features like the ability for people to upload their script, so if you're not a digital marketer and not a lot of people are, right? That are in recruiting and I do feel that the future of the role of the recruiter will be trending towards digital marketing and as they upload their scripts that scripts becomes arguable fodder for SEO, as well as being, close captioning text. That's viability, that's optics and that's stuff that's coming out of Monster, right? Chad: I think that on the video side of the house you're going to get more engagement from job seekers on Monster, so if they come through Google and Google sees that you're getting more engagement because they're watching videos and you have more times on site, then obviously that's going to provide different signals to Google that job seekers are actually staying longer, which means it's a better experience. That being said, that's my personal thoughts on that, what about the API, their job search obviously has been blowing everybody else's job search away, when is, or is Monster going to go full Google? Chris Cho: So CareerBuilder took that dive and I think that they, depending on who you talk to, they've either seen a mixed success, or a big amount of success, depending on who you talk to really right. When you look at that precedence that was set by them there's no doubt that we have high curiosity and high level of interest in exploring that sort of potential as well. We are highly interested and highly engaged in learning more about it, but we also come from a tradition of understanding that search and match is a huge competitive, strategic differentiator that is just going to be really, really hard to relinquish, right? As a core part of the offering, it's just everything about the job search is relegated into bits and bites of how the algorithm sorts it all out, that's clearly evidenced when we bought Trovix, that was clearly evidenced when we bought Sixth Sense, right which are semantic search technologies that power the experience today. Chris Cho: So, there's more water to be squeezed out of that towel, out of those acquisitions, there's more juice to be squeezed out of that lemon, but we are also very, very adapted and under Scott's leadership we are very, very keen on understanding what sort of efficiencies that can be driven out of partnering with Google, in that sense. Scott Gutz: I would just add, really quickly, even if we were to move to a more commoditized search solution it doesn't change the fact that the match and recommendation component of what we do is highly specialized based upon algorithms that have been built out over years that is reflecting a significant investment that we have on the data science side. Even if search is commoditized I don't think match and recommendation will every really be something which we will relinquish, to use Chris's terminology. Joel: Interesting. Question about the gig economy, hopefully we can agree that this is a trend that is taking hold in the workplace. Any plans for Monster to leverage the gig economy, whether that's maybe partnering with somebody, or building something in house, what are your views on that? Chris Cho: So we absolutely see in this next generation they are going to be looking at gigs as much as they may be looking at full-time jobs, so we've got a variety of different initiative that we're both exploring both from an internal perspective and from a partnership perspective, we clearly have a lot of experience with our parent company Randstad who is in part-time jobs, gig jobs and full times jobs so we've got a perspective that we're learning from them in terms of what they're seeing. We also have run some tests, I mean just by way of example, you guys are aware that we operate the military site and the fast website, on the fast website we've just started to offer part-time jobs to high school students and college students who are coming onto that site, the uptake has been probably 3x what we expected that gives us some indication that moving more towards part-time more towards gig, is an element that we absolutely have to consider if we want to be all of the jobs to all of the people as we go forward. Chad: What about Chad bots? They're all the rage right now and we hear Monster talking about experience, obviously, a lot which is good, but candidates are still floating in the black holes, right? So, how can Monster help with the engagement between employers and candidates and almost be that defacto platform for them, perspectively using messaging through WhatsApp, Facebook and integrating chat bots? Scott Gutz: So I'll just give a high-low perspective and then let Chris give a bit more detail, but I could say in the context of experiences when you think about texting and chat those are absolute elements, it's the way people interact today, we understand that this is going to be something that becomes much more prominent going forward. We have multiple different partners that we are discussing the evolution of text and chat with, it is available in solutions that we are offering today as we move to our next generation of candidate search for employers we will have text capabilities built into the search process, we have a variety of initiatives now around chat, but just to make the very clear statement that we think these are very important components of the employer and candidate experiences going forward and we intend to be a leader in the space. Chad: Okay, so for Chris real quick and maybe just for clarity Chris. Chris Cho: Yep. Chad: So, being able to provide customized chat bots to your clients as a product for revenue generation to be able to also bridge this divide for candidate experience who individuals who are going into black holes, is that what we're talking? Chris Cho: That's a part of it right, so first of all huge shout out to our partners Textrecruit Eric Kostelnik that have been very influential in helping us understand what sort of potential we can unlock with great chat bot experiences and of course we are partnering with them, that's a public fact and they've been very helpful in helping us understand where chat bot technologies can be deployed, but we also look at our parent company Randstad and the investments that they've made in companies like Aleo and Wade & Wendy, right, some of the things that they're doing are very avanguard and they have very specific cases around leveraging chat bot technologies to overcome and automate a lot of the mundane things that job seekers, who by the way have been our biggest fan and loyal supporters since our birth and helping them get over things like how we can make the apply experience doable through a set of SMS interactions. Right? Instead of sitting down 19 minutes in from of a computer and being like, oh my god let me copy and paste C resume into every text box, right? Chris Cho: I think when you look at the potential it has to offer we do see it being a combination of improving the quality of experience for our job seekers and candidates, but also delivering on the outcomes that employers want, which is really enriching and engaging the seekers, the candidate audience thoroughly so that they get, again, better data creating better decisions. Scott Gutz: The one quick thing that I would add is as more and more traffic moves to mobile and mobile apps, or mobile web we fully expect chat and text to be that much more prominent and that much more usable in that environment. Joel: No question. Scott Gutz: Yep. Joel: Historically when a new leadership comes into an organization, a new owner in general there's obviously a lot of moving parts internally, the people are unhappy, some people will be happy and I'd like to just talk a little bit about sort of the internal aspects of the organizations. Currently on Glass Door, Scott you have a 65 percent approval rating, the company as a whole has a 3.1 out of five stars. Assuming you guys are never satisfied, Scott how do you plan on getting your approval rating up for yourself, as well as, the company at large? Scott Gutz: I think that's a fair question and again having been here for five and a half months it's been a really good experience in that I have inherited a management team that for the most part has all joined within the last 12 to 18 months, we've shared that with you guys before. Everybody from a management perspective is not defensive about the past, everybody is looking forward, everybody is here to grow the business and I've been super pleased with the fact that my management organization and by extensions, sort of the level minus two organization is super excited about moving Monster forward. Scott Gutz: So, what are we doing? I would say that we've spent a lot of time and I've personally spend a lot of time reintroducing the Monster vision, the Monster mission, the Monster values and setting a strategy for the two thousand plus people of Monster to understand and appreciate and it's around a lot of the different things that we've discussed, it's around audience acquisition, it's around new revenue streams, it's around defending the Monster core platforms, it's around innovation which we consider to be quite important, so as we continue to broadcast our strategy and to be very transparent, in fact, it was just three weeks ago that I stood before the global organization and said these are the things that we're going to do to make Monster a great company again going forward and to improve upon the performance that we've seen in recent years and so far the response has been very, very good. Scott Gutz: When you introduce the strategy now when we set our objectives for 2019 and moving forward the objectives will tie directly into the strategy, my personal perspective having done this a few times before is if people understand what we're doing and why we're doing it, they understand what their role is in the contribution to the overall strategy, they understand that what we're doing to differentiate ourselves from the competition if you could get those things working together and you've got good people around you, like Chris and like Kate, you know, I really, really get very excited about the future of Monster and I'm hopeful that when I get excited that that permeates through the organization, my leadership team gets excited, their teams get excited and to get back to your original question Joel, then you can start to see those scores on Glass Door going up in the right direction because we've created the right environment. Chad: Guy's I'd like to say I really appreciate you both coming on, taking time to answer the hard questions and there aren't many CEO's and chief product officers that will actually jump on with a couple of knuckle heads like us and answer tough questions, so I mean, this was awesome we appreciate it and we hope to do this again as your continuing to push out more new product, start to drive revenue and again, thanks so much. Joel: Thanks guys. Scott Gutz: Well, we like you guys, our pleasure and happy holidays to everyone. Joel: Happy holidays. Chris Cho: Bye guys. Chris Cho: We love you guys. Joel: 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. 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 #Monster #CEO #Product #Messaging #text #Jobs #Uncommon

This week's show starts out like s LOVE FEST and then goes south quickly... The boys talk: - Joel hates on Indeed's ugly Christmas sweaters - Microsoft is building the Death Star of workforce platforms - Jim Stroud says "GATTACA BITCHES!" - Talkpush calls out AllyO - Comparably does Glassdoor and SEOs the Hell out of it - College kids are sharpening their coding chops with Youtube - Singing day with a jobs twist - and branded fruit. Yes, branded F%$KING fruit! Don't shoot your eye out, kids!Enjoy and visit sponsors JobAdX, Sovren and Canvas. They make it all happen. 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. 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: Chad & Cheese! Joel: Shitter's full, Clark. Welcome to The Chad & Cheese Podcast, HR's ugly redheaded stepchild. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, Microsoft gives us a glimpse into their next big acquisition in employment. Companies are handing out branded fruits and vegetables. Chad's excited. And Chad gets a stiffy over Indeed's latest swag. Chad: Love it! Joel: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. And, kids, don't shoot your eye out. 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 .com. Chad: How you feeling after last week's procedure? Like a new man? Joel: See, everyone got TMIed last week. I don't know why we have to do it again this week. But, yes, my procedure, a camera stuck up my butt, went fine. Chad: Good. Joel: I'm gonna live a little longer so you and I can continue to pollute the ear drums of our listeners- Chad: Yes! Joel: ... for the foreseeable future. Hallelujah! Chad: That's exactly what I wanted to here. And that's what the listeners wanted to hear. Joel: That's right. And speaking of listeners, let's get to shout-outs. Chad: Shout-outs. Joel: Shout-out to Hung Lee, man. Chad: Whoo! Joel: This guy's he's got a weekly newsletter that millions of people read I think. He loves us. So he said last week, "Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman," I'm not sure why he put you first, but anyway, "do the best industry this week podcast for the people business. It's hard to stay consistently relevant, but these two heroes have got it down to a fine art. Must listen, folks." Wow. Chad: Yeah. No, he's on it. Joel: Hung Lee with a- Crowd: Whoo! Chad: Hung and I have been talking back and forth. We've been for months now. We are going to get him on for an interview in 2019. That's a promise from Chad & Cheese. That's probably why he went with Chad first because it is Chad & Cheese. Joel: I'm surprised he hasn't been on now. He should just be on the show. The British accent alone would help raise the IQ of the place. But the guy seems he's pretty well connected. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've got a shout-out to Gattaca, bitches. So- Joel: Way to age yourself. Chad: ... shout-out to Jim Stroud's newest podcast about designer babies, where he talks about Gattaca. And I thought that was the coolest shit ever. So Jim's got a new podcast. It's like 10 minutes long or something like that. Joel: He's always copying us. Chad: Yeah. Well, he loves us. So who [crosstalk 00:03:38]? Joel: Biting off the Chad & Cheese. It's all good. Jim, good luck to you, man. Gattaca, a movie that has aged pretty well I think. Chad: Yes. Joel: Good for ... And as well as I, Robot, the Will Smith movie. I think both of those have aged better than they were when they first aired. Chad: Yeah, but I think, I mean Gattaca's been around I think much longer. Joel: '90s, yeah. Chad: Ethan Hawke. Yeah, that was good shit, dude. So, yeah, I love it. Joel: Agreed. I'll give a shout-out to Harver, not Harvard, Harver, which I had never heard of before. But they thought enough of us to put us in their top 10 list of must-listen podcast, saying about the show, which ... By the way, we don't normally love these sort of lists because they trick us into talking about their company. But these guys actually had a write-up, and it sounds like they actually listen to the show. Joel: So what they said was, "The problem with a professional podcast is that they sound like a lecture. They may be full of useful information, but they're boring. Rather than retaining insights or tips, do you find yourself zoning out? But not with The Chad & Cheese Podcast," and go on to tell about how our show is different. So Harver, this shout-out's for you. Thanks for mentioning us, and thanks for listening, because you obviously do. Chad: Subscribe not just 2019. Do it now. Shout-out to Indeed ugly sweaters. Joel: Oh, God, no. Crowd: Boo! Chad: I told you weeks ago this shit was genius. But the motherfuckers took my idea. Good on them. Good on you, Indeed. But that was genius shit. Good job. Joel: I can't get behind the ugly sweater. These guys pulled out the baby bathrobes earlier this year, which we grilled them for. You love the ugly sweaters. I think they're totally ridiculous. I think people wear them once at the company party. Chad: Genius. Joel: And then it's over. To me, this stuff just says hubris. It says, "We've got too much money to spend it intelligently." And it's just more writing on the wall that Indeed is on their way to the cellar. Chad: I don't agree at all. Baby bathrobes maybe. But this, this is target market. Love it. Joel: Shout-out to, I'm gonna probably butcher this, Elin or [Ellen 00:05:58], she's Swedish I think, Martenzon. She's one of the creators behind the creepy-ass robot recruiters that we talked about recently. This thing is a combination between the robots in I, Robot and the Barbie hair dresser bust that ... Yeah. So- Chad: Creepy. Joel: ... she took notice of the comments in a blog post that I put up. So she wants the robot to interview us sort of in person. I mean it sort of loses itself on audio because it's just a person ... So anyway, Ellen, Elin, fly us out to Sweden. We'd love that. And your robot can interview us and ask us whatever it would like. Chad: Okay, yeah. So we're gonna be in Lisbon in May. Come to TAtech in Lisbon. We'll meet you more than halfway. Joel: Bring Tengai. Chad: Bring your creepy robot, and we will do this interview. I would love to do this interview. It was funny because in her post, she said, "Tengai Unbiased is very likable and sympathetic, not creepy at all," which I thought sound very Trump-ish, by the way. Joel: Why would they name it Tengai Unbiased? Can't it be Heidi or Lisa or something? Tengai Unbiased? Good God. Chad: Jeffrey? Yeah, Jeffrey. Joel: Who's marketing that? Chad: Jeffrey. Shout-out to Jamie Leonard of RecFest. It was funny as hell because he put a post out this week, and he said, "Consider me Santa because I've got a big belly, and I watch you when you sleep." And- Joel: Speaking of creepy. Chad: ... he went along. I think that's something that is part of his shtick, though. And he gave five things that you should do. And one of them was definitely listen to The Chad & Cheese Podcast. It's one of those things, he took his time, wrote this up. RecFest. He's a listener. So, Jamie, thanks for listening. And can't wait, hopefully to see you in RecFest this year. Joel: Has Jamie ever been an extra on a Guy Ritchie film? Because talking to him, he certainly would fit the bill. Chad: Dude, he would be perfect, yeah, for Snatch or ... Dude, that'd be fuckin' awesome. Yeah. Legit. Joel: My final shout-out goes to [Carissa 00:08:16], is that right, at Tilr Carisa. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Co-founder and CEO. Tiller was on the firing squad recently. It's published. Kids, you love the firing squad. You're gonna love this one. Go check out the Tiller whatever we're calling it. Chad: Firing squad, yeah. Joel: Yeah, but I was trying to find a synonym for firing squad, like the- Chad: Don't do that. Joel: ... interrogation maybe. Yeah, let's call it.... Chad: I like that. Joel: Go check out the interrogation of Tiller. Chad: I've got two more. Emily Krueger loves a little Chad & Cheese. Thanks for listen, Emily. We love you. Make sure all your friends, family, and peers subscribe and listen as well. Chad: Last but not least, Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, for having the patience of Job this week. I've always had a rule personally myself when leading teams. That rule is never come to me with a question without researching it prior. This in many cases will help you actually answer your own goddamn question, or bring our discussion to a much smarter level, because there are so many fuckin' stupid questions that are out there. And make it more outcomes-focused, right? Chad: So in the three-plus hours Google's CEO had to deal with the individuals of Congress, who I believe did no research whatsoever and looked fucking stupid, shout-out to him for having the patience and not telling Representative King that he's a dumbass for not knowing that Google doesn't produce a fucking iPhone. Joel: And I'm gonna piggyback and shout-out to the dude in the audience who looked like the Monopoly guy. Chad: That was awesome. Joel: I don't know what that was about, but it was pretty damn funny. Chad: Yeah. He's done it before. It's kind of like a shtick for him. The last one, this is last. Chad & Cheese Live. So as you're planning for 2019, if you're a company and you have a leadership getaway or a summit or something like that, bring in Chad & Cheese. We can do a show. We can do a lot of stuff. But what you can do is you can tap into our recruitment technology, recruitment process, recruitment experience. Bring us in, and we'll do something for you live. Joel: And that is shout-outs. You've got a funny story. Chad: Okay. So this is all about holding each other accountable, okay? So we love the guys over at AllyO, right? Okay, but Ankit over there- Joel: Spank it. Chad: ... actually posted ... Yeah, Ankit, who was on firing squad, by the way, got a big applause from both of us. So love the guys from AllyO. But I quote, this is what he actually posted out, "AllyO is the first AI recruiter to help your candidates over WhatsApp." That's a pretty big deal- Joel: Ballsy. Chad: ... because WhatsApp is huge across the pond. I think there's over 200 million subscribers who use it in India alone. But I know better. So I sent the link to Max over at Talkpush for a response. And before you know it, Talkpush tweets out, and I quote, "All these companies talking about the first ones to use WhatsApp to talk to candidates, and we're over here like first ones," air quotes, "first ones," with a Dr. Evil GIF doing air quotes. Joel: I was hoping he'd have a GIF of the old Bud Light commercial, like, "Wazzup!" Chad: Yeah. So my message to the recruiting industry, and this is one of the things that Joel and I like to do. Let's call bullshit when it's bullshit, okay? And if you're gonna step out there and say you're the first in something, totally get it. But do your fuckin' research. Make sure that you are. And this is not, again, just focused on AllyO and this kind of faux pas. This is for everybody. Don't just go out there and say, "We're the first, we're the best," all this other happy horseshit. Actually come with the goods. Chad: If not, Chad & Cheese is gonna call you out. And we're gonna push other motherfuckers to call you out. Joel: And, by the way, Max has a set of boxing gloves. So I don't know if you want to be messing with that mad French guy. And, by the way, French are out of control, man. Chill out. Chad: Yes, they're a little out of control. So first topic, Microsoft and Upwork, you thought this was dope. Joel: I love this. Microsoft, man. Who knew that they'd be pulling out the punches in our industry? But two years ago, they bought LinkedIn. They bought GitHub this past year. And now, news comes out that they're partnering with Upwork, who we've discussed in length on this show, a freelancing platform to manage your freelancers. It will be built into some of the 365 stuff that Microsoft is putting out. Microsoft's company as a whole uses its service to manage its Upwork workforce to the tune of thousands of workers. Joel: So to me, obviously it's a great move for Microsoft from a partnering standpoint. But for me, my little Spidey senses went off and said, "I spy a 2019 prediction that Microsoft will pull back the Brinks truck and add Upwork to the suite of services that already include LinkedIn and GitHub." Chad: Yes. So remember the guy last week you talked about in the pod that hired a couple of people to do his project in AsiaPac or somewhere like that for a fraction of the cost? Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: Well, I told you that shit was genius. And now, it's going corporate, right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: So this also plays into the conversation we had a couple of weeks ago about HR and TA being the main reason why we have talent gaps. Both HR and TA are doing business like we're in the fuckin' '50s. They need to, number one, build talent pipelines with training, certification, and degrees. Plus, they need to fill these gaps with these types of initiatives. If they're still looking at, "I can only do full-time individuals to be able to get this done," dude, they're gonna lose every fuckin' time. Chad: So this is a shout-out to the HR and talent acquisition world. The way that you've been doing business for years has to adapt, period. If you don't, you're going to lose talent, and that means you're gonna lose fuckin' cash. And when the CEO comes knocking on your door, the COO, then you're gonna have a conversation. Joel: And I totally appreciate that angle that you're taking. I just my angle I think if Microsoft were to do this, they would have the number-one business networking site in the world. They would have the number-one technology professional site in the world. And then they would have the number-one freelancing site in the world. Joel: So imagine that as a platform. You go to LinkedIn, you post a job. Here are LinkedIn profiles, professionals that fit the job. Here are some contractors you might want to consider. I mean it's just you look at what they're building with this, and to me, it's just super frightening for anyone else that's competing with them because they're building quite the Death Star I guess, if you will, of recruiting. Chad: Yeah, unless they fuck it up, right? That's what we've seen over the years is companies acquiring other companies, and either they throw them in the closet to never be seen again, or they just totally jack it up. So I like what they've done with LinkedIn, and LinkedIn is just continuing to work as LinkedIn, not as Microsoft over LinkedIn. If they can continue that kind of operating policy, I think they've got a chance. There's no question. Joel: Yep. So if you're Google, Facebook, or anyone else, what are you thinking about this stuff? You thinking, "We better get them before LinkedIn does"? Chad: Either that, or start taking a look at some of the other technologies, the other platforms that are out there and doing partnerships with them as well. I mean this is the road to acquisition, I mean being able to actually see if it fits within your ecosystem. Does it work? That's the way business is being done. It's kind of like, "Hey, let's do some pilots before we go and acquire your ass." Chad: So, yeah, if I'm those organizations, if I'm a Facebook or a Google or what have you, that's exactly what I would be looking at doing. Joel: Yep. And to me, Slack going public, assuming someone doesn't come in and buy them before they do that, similar to how Glassdoor was acquired before they went public, I think a big part of it is capital to be able to make moves like acquiring someone like an Upwork or some other software or workforce platform if they're gonna compete on a stage with Microsoft and Google. 2019's gonna be interesting. And we're going a prediction podcast here shortly with Tim Sackett, right? Chad: Yeah. We'll be looking at our 2018 predictions and making fun of each other, and then doing 2019. Joel: Nice. I need to go back and see what I said outside of Amazon buying Slack, which I think could still happen. Chad: Yes. Joel: All right, moving on, speaking of contingent workforce and techies, HackerRANK sent out a survey this week that was fairly interesting. It was basically looking at university developers and how students learn to code and evaluate job opportunities. And I can tell you from the study that the times they are a-changing. Some of the findings here, I'll read you the subject lines and we can dig in a little further for what's interesting. Joel: But "College degrees are not sufficient for coding proficiency," was one of the things that they found. "Students rely on YouTube more than professionals." And I assume professionals would be teachers, etc. So, yeah, kids are just going to YouTube and learning this stuff. Number three, "Globally, student JavaScript expertise can't keep up with demand." Number four, "Growth opportunities appeal five times more than perks." So the kids want growth and opportunities more than they want time off and nannies and smart cribs. Chad: So, yeah. As we talk about these skills gaps, and we're just talking about HR and TA, not knowing what the fuck to do, college degrees aren't sufficient enough for coding proficiency. Because technology is moving so fast, curriculum can't keep up with it. So you need these different, whether it's YouTube or Udacity or what have you, you need these very flexible systems to be able to plug into to train your current workforce, not to mention as you're bringing in new individuals, you should already have these training programs in place. And those training programs could possibly come on contract. Chad: So, "Hey, we're gonna spend X amount of money to train you up on Java because we sure the hell don't have enough Java developers coming out to be able to fill the gap that we have." So we want to train you into Java. But guess what, the beautiful thing is not only are we going to do this. You're gonna be on a contract for three years. And here's what your career path looks like." Joel: So what blew me away was the YouTube presence. How mad are you if you're Udemy, Lynda, any of these platforms that are built on education, online stuff, videos, and kids are just going to YouTube to learn this stuff. That would frustrate the hell out of me. Chad: Yeah. Why do you think that is, though? Joel: Because it's where kids live. I mean how many times do we talk about the lifestyle site, right? Chad: Yes. Joel: The reason people should be scared of Facebook is a billion and a half people are on it, most of them every day. Similar to YouTube. My kids have been watching YouTube since they've been watching other kids open toys- Chad: Minecraft. Joel: ... since five years old or so. Minecraft videos, they're watching Twitch and seeing other kids play. So YouTube is just what they know. And ultimately they search like, "Hey, how to code," or, "Basics of coding," or, "How to HTML." It's just a natural place to go for them. They don't think about going to Google and searching for companies that provide HTML teaching. Maybe they do at some point, but the first place they go is YouTube. And I think that helps support that. Joel: The other thing is try to push my kids into JavaScript because according to the survey, 95% of web applications, particularly mobile, are built on JavaScript. And there's a six to 7% gap between the opportunities that are out there and the people that actually know how to do the job. So there's a ton of money to be made in JavaScript programming. Chad: So YouTube is really the delivery system is what it is, right? The curriculum is out there, but YouTube in this case is the delivery system. It just makes it so much easier, and any company that's out there that's listening, take fucking notes right now. If you have curriculum that's somewhere else internal, external, doesn't matter, use pieces, parts of that, throw it on YouTube as like a teaser to start to get individuals focused on your brand because that's what they want to do, right? Chad: Have some of your employees actually do YouTube videos that are focused in this area, "How do I do this program?" or, "How do I do JavaScript?" or anything like that. To be able to help draw individuals into your brand, you have to go to, just like Joel said, Facebook, YouTube. Where are they at? And that's where they're getting their information. If I need to learn how to boil a goddamn egg, I can go to YouTube. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). 53% of usage on mobile devices is social media. So if you're not on those platforms, you're losing, period. Chad: Yeah. It drives Julie crazy because whenever I don't know how to do something, she's a very text-driven person, I'm very visual, I will go to YouTube. And Julie goes ... She's reading something. I'm like, "Yeah, I already got it. Look, they're showing me how to do it right now." Joel: Yeah. And how many wormholes have you fallen into doing that? No lie, the whole shapeshifter conspiracy stuff, one night I was for three hours falling into shapeshifter conspiracy theories. I won't go into it, but anyway. Tangent off course. Let's take a break and hear from JobAdX, and then we'll talk about Comparably's best companies and signing bonuses and stuff like that. Chad: Cool. JobAdX: With JobAdX's first birthday almost here, we are proud of all we've accomplished with advertising clients, publisher job sites, recruitment marketing agencies, and staffing firms. Thank you for all the support and trust you have placed in us. Since 2017, JobAdX has used the best of consumer ad text bidding and ad delivery to build an incredible programmatic job advertising exchange, and continue to rapidly grow our network of partner sites. We've also launched a feed inventory management platform called Switchboard, effectively offering our dynamic technologies to all job board partners. JobAdX: And we've developed our revolutionary Live Alert, which eliminate latency in expired job ads via email. No more dead clicks or overages from job links whether opened today, next month, or next year. For more information about our solutions, please reach us at JoinUs@JobAdX.com. Joel: Boy, how was that for a tangent? Shapeshifters on YouTube. Whoo. I need a vacation, man. Christmas can't get here fast enough. Chad: It is too easy. It's one of the reasons why I have to shut shit down on my computer when I'm doing any work because all the notifications just take me down rabbit holes. And you were talking a couple weeks ago about your internet brain. Well, that's what it is. So whenever I get a book nowadays, I get an actual physical book. I turn all my shit off, I put it in a drawer, do something like that. Then I pick the book up, and I go to the chair, and I read the book so that I don't have notifications taking me down rabbit holes and I don't get a chance to actually read. Joel: You go to a chair? Chad: Yep. Joel: I have this smoking jacket and pipe vision of you reading a book old style. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: No, that's good, man. I need to force myself to do that more often. My turn-off is bingeing on television with my wife, and sports. Chad: Yeah. Netflix and chill time. Joel: Netflix and chill. So I screwed this up. This was signing day, not signing bonuses. But this is your story, so you go. Chad: Okay. So this is one of the coolest things I think. As we were talking about Upwork and Microsoft and then we were going into the college, now we're going into the high school ranks. And Henrico County Public Schools in Virginia, instead of just celebrating individuals or kids who are getting or signing for playing college football or getting into big schools or what have you, they are now doing [signee 00:25:39] days for kids who are getting into jobs. Chad: And in this case, in some cases, you actually have companies who are there, like UPS or what have you, that are there for signing day. And here's a quote from one of the administrators at the school: "They've chosen," "they" being the kids, "they've chosen to maximize their high school opportunities for career training and industry certifications with an eye on becoming successful and financially secure much earlier in life," end quote. Chad: How about there's a huge fucking need for all these types of talent, and they won't be strapping themselves with huge student debt? That's the big key here, right? We have all these jobs that are open where you do need to have specific types of skills, and companies need to be able to obviously pipeline those candidates right into their organization. And why the hell not celebrate it? A kid's going to college. That's awesome, man. Yeah, you definitely should celebrate that. But you also have a kid who worked hard on this certification, and they're not going to college. They're going directly into these different jobs, where there will be learning and more certifications to come. Chad: That's something that should be celebrated, too. And I thought that was pretty fucking cool, and got a ton of frickin' love and views on LinkedIn just from the story. Joel: You know the curmudgeon in me wants to hate on this story and say, "Why are we celebrating not going to college? Why are we ..." I think it just sends a bad message. But I can't hate on the story because it's capitalism at work, and at the heart of me, I'm a capitalist. And companies have a need. These kids in high school can fill that need. If they want to celebrate it with an athletic style signing day where the kids are wearing hats of the company ... It really is like, "What college are you going to?" It's like, "What company are these kids going to?" Joel: And it creates a definitely ... The environment that must create in school for your peers in school to see you sign with UPS or SAP or whatever the companies are, that's gotta be really cool for those kids. I do have some transgression to say, "What are the long-term ramifications gonna be of this?" because I'd hate to see a kid that's real proficient in whatever does the job for five, 10 years, gets married, has kids, gets other kinds of debt, and then the technology that he's been doing becomes passe or irrelevant. Is he gonna be able to adapt to new skills? I hope so. Joel: But I do think one of the things college helps you learn is how to learn and how to adapt and evolve to different changes in life and business. So I don't want to hate on this, but I am semi-concerned about the long-term effects of grabbing kids out of school, throwing them into coal mines back in the day. Is this that much different? If the coal mines close, do they have any other skills to get a new job? And I guess I do have some question about how that will play out in the future. Joel: But otherwise, I think it's great. Chad: You are a curmudgeon. First and foremost, the technology in coal mines and trying to assimilate that to some of the jobs that they're going into, some of them if they're manufacturing style jobs, yes, they will definitely, they will have to learn new technology, get new certifications. I mean everything is moving at a much different scale and pace than it was when we were kids or in the '60s or what have you even before us, right? So this is an entirely different world. Chad: So to be able to see the blue collar, per se, as a blue collar of yesteryear is so far out of bounds. Technology's moving so fast, and for those individuals who want to stay and they want to learn and they want to progress in their career, they will have to get different certifications. So I don't see this as a bad thing. One of the things that I see as bad is in our society, we've taught our kids that college and strapping yourself with a lot of debt is the only way. And that's total bullshit. Chad: There are other ways to live a great life, still be educated, and be certified in something. So for me, this is a great way for somebody who really wants to do something different with their life to be able to do that. Joel: Yeah. I don't disagree. But I also don't think that to say that it's that far off from back in the day kids leaving for the steel mills or the coal mines or working for a car company out of college are that different. I mean steel left. Cars are made elsewhere. Coal mines shut down. And these people had to learn new skills. And I don't think it's that far saying that if whatever these kids are doing, if times change and we don't do that, it they can't adapt, they're gonna be screwed. Just like the people that left high school for Ford or GM, if they didn't have additional skills or could learn them, they were screwed and the government got saddled with, "Let's teach these folks new skills to get them new jobs." Joel: I just don't think it's that different a risk that we took with blue collar jobs back in the day. But time will tell. Chad: Yeah. And I totally disagree. Being in a town that has manufacturing for diesel engines, and now electric engines, it's an entirely different day today. Manufacturing is so far different than it was in the '60s, especially the talent. And how they have to continue to learn in those jobs and talking to those companies in the talent acquisition side of the house, that's one of the reasons why I believe this makes a hell of a lot of good sense. Chad: Now, if we were still in the same day and age where it's like, yeah, you're gonna sit on that line and that's all you're gonna do the rest of your life, which is generally what our grandfathers did, it's not that day anymore. It's not even close. Joel: Well, let's at least agree that if you cannot adapt, you're screwed. Chad: Too easy, which is one of the reasons why HR and talent acquisition is having so many fucking issues right now is because they haven't been able to adapt since the 19-fuckin'-50s. Joel: Right. So I'm saying is these are kids. They learn a skill. And they go work on that skill. I just hope that they have the wherewithal to adapt when those skills become irrelevant or something becomes more in demand than what they've already learned. That's all I'm saying. Chad: Yeah. And that's gonna be up to the company to be able to ensure that they're skilling them up, right? You take a look at AT&T, a great example. AT&T you might be a guy who's working on the line or who knows. But they have programs internally in place to keep those certifications up to date and moving forward. So the day of you being only personal responsible for these things is over. The company is pushing to have that happen because you become outdated if you're not certified. Chad: So what you're talking about, yeah, that would be a problem. That's not an issue for most of these companies who understand that they have to keep their workforce skilled up. Joel: Yeah. And economies go bad, and tariffs happen, and companies lay people off. I mean- Chad: Yeah, I agree. Joel: ... bah humbug. Bah humbug. Let's talk about Comparably's best companies, shall we? Chad: Let's do it. Joel: All right. So we talked about Glassdoor's world-famous best companies lists. Their competitors have their own little list, goddammit. Chad: And they should. Joel: Which they should, right? But it becomes a little overwhelming for everybody. But Comparably has a nice little infographic of their best company cultures. These are for large companies in the U.S. I'll read the top 10 I guess? Chad: Sure. Joel: We'll talk about it. Okay. So number one: Costco. Number two: Google. These tend to be a little bit more what I would think would be the top companies. Number three: T-Mobile, who has a nutball CEO. I'm sure that guy's fun to work for. Number four: HubSpot marketing platform. Number five: Aflac. Number six: Insight Global. Don't know them. Number seven: Intuit. Number eight: Salesforce. Number nine: Blizzard Entertainment- Chad: Nice! Joel: ... my son's favorite company. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: And number 10: Starbucks. Those all make sense to me. Those all feel about right. Facebook is number 16, where they were number seven I believe on Glassdoor's. They were number one last year on Glassdoor. ADP is number 23. I'm looking for employment-related sites. LinkedIn: number 25. Red Bull: 31, your favorite company. Yeah, Indeed: number 43. There you go. Indeed cracks the top 50 list of big companies in the U.S. And my favorite on the list, number 46, Chick-fil-A. Chad: No In-N-Out Burger. What the fuck, dude? Joel: No In-N-Out on this one. Yeah, so a little bit of different metrics behind these two sites. But obviously a good list to be on nonetheless. Chad: Yeah. This looks like a love me wall/SEO campaign more than anything else. I mean this is- Joel: They all are. Chad: ... create more awards to flatter, and then also with the awards comes more content. With the more content comes more sharing. It might be great info and data, but, dude, this is probably one of the biggest marketing ploys I've ever seen. I'm just looking at the list here. So check out our full best places to work 2018 series. And here it is: best company culture, CEOs, company for women, companies for diversity, CEOs for women, CEOs for diversity, best leadership, managers, companies for ... And it goes ... I'm only halfway through the fuckin' list. Chad: So this is- Joel: Don't forget best CEOs in Los Angeles- Chad: Yes. Joel: ... best CEOs in Seattle. Chad: Exactly, right? So this is a content play, and it's an "I love me" play because we just talked about it with the lists that we were just on. Everybody's playing this whole, "Hey, they're gonna talk about us, or they're gonna share us, or they're gonna this, they're gonna that." Well, fuck yeah, they are. So how many more lists can we come out with so that we can create more content and get shared? Joel: Yeah, totally. They're gonna tweet out every one of these companies. They're gonna tag them. They're gonna go to every publication in Seattle and say, "Here's the top CEOs in Seattle." They're gonna get play that way. So, yeah, I ... Dude, it's a great strategy. They have the data. There's nothing wrong with taking the data you have and creating lists and peer opportunities, because ultimately a lot of those people have no idea who Comparably is. They're gonna go to the site, and they're gonna go, "Oh, we don't have a featured page, or we don't have a official profile." And they're gonna join the site, and this company's gonna get more business. Joel: So it's a great strategy. If you as a company out there aren't doing stuff like this, you should because it's pretty impactful. Chad: We should come up with our best. We should come up with a list. Wait, it can't be the best, though. It's gotta be like the shittiest things that happened this year. Okay, we'll talk about it. Joel: Yeah, that sounds like work. But what doesn't sound like work is using Canvas when you're recruiting, and especially their automation tools. Let's hear a word from Canvas, and we'll talk about branded fruit, of all things. 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 Spot 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. Canvas: 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: Bring on the fruit, bitches. Joel: So for the listeners out there, Chad and I get together about 30 minutes or an hour before the show. And we talk about the stories that we want to talk about. And Chad loved this story so much that I said, "Fine, we'll talk about it." So, Chad, tell us about branded fruit. Chad: I don't know that I loved it so much. I just thought it was fuckin'- Joel: You loved it. Chad: ... silly as shit. Joel: Come on. Chad: But, yeah, so here's a quote: "This group taps into the frustration and fatigue that many people feel about receiving the cheap, disposable schwag churned out by the $24 billion promotional product industry. So they came up with promotional fruit." The story was really cool. You got this promotional marketing company. And the CEO I believe it was, she was asked, you were asked to come to the party and bring something, right? And she reached out, she's like, "Well, what should I bring?" And go figure, they're probably in California, said, "Yeah, bring some avocados." Chad: So she thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if I actually stenciled my logo on all these avocados?" And it turned out to be this huge hit at the party. So she thought, "Shit, I could possibly sell this to companies who are coming to my company for promotional goods." And it seems to be working because, again, whenever I go to conferences and they try to give you that bag, I always tell them, "I don't want your fuckin' bag. I've got my own backpack that is a nice backpack. I don't need your cheap backpack." But I'll use that backpack to go looking for schwag that I think is cool. And then I'll just take the schwag that I think is cool. Chad: In this case, everybody needs potassium. You give me a banana with your logo on it, I'm gonna take it. Joel: Bananas I get. Avocados are bizarre to me. I would never at a conference ... Well, I wouldn't have a knife to cut it open. I don't know what I would do with the pit. I'd have to have a spoon to get the avocado out of the skin. Because the story was Lyft, the ride-sharing service, gave out avocados. And that's just really bizarre to me. I don't know, I wouldn't expect anyone to do that. Joel: Now, banana I get. Could you put a apple or maybe an orange? That I get. Cool. But, yeah, this was strange. I don't- Chad: Was that at a conference, or was that at a party or something like that where you had avocados and they were cutting them up and whatnot? [crosstalk 00:41:10]- Joel: So she did it at a party. Yeah, you're right. And- Chad: Yeah, she [crosstalk 00:41:12]- Joel: ... I hate these companies that get founded by mistakes, like someone just does something stupid and everyone's like, "Oh my God, this is a great idea." And then they become a business. I hate those people. But, yeah, so she did an avocado. And then the Lyft was an avocado as well, the Lyft story. But then, yeah, the bananas and stuff that you can peel, all that makes sense to me. Joel: I don't know if Skyline and companies that do this, are they now doing fruit as part of their giveaway portfolios? Do you have to go to a separate company that only this woman does this? It's all very bizarre to me. I don't know how I feel about getting ... I don't really like fruit to begin with. Give me a branded sirloin or something. Then we're talking. But anyway, I don't know how I feel about it. Joel: I would hate to be a trade show manager and have to ship that many bananas to a booth. It'd be a real pain in the ass. Chad: Yeah, I'm sure the promotional company probably does that. And for all Chad & Cheese listeners, you probably will never have to worry about a Chad & Cheese branded banana. Maybe a Chad & Cheese branded Snickers or something like that. But definitely not a banana. Joel: Or the fruit would have to make a cocktail. There would have to be some connection to drinking and fruit. But we'll never just give you a fruit without something connected in some way to drinking or eating. Chad: Well, and I love fruit. I eat fruit every single day of the year. But it's perishable, and it just doesn't make sense to me. But a Snickers, that thing'll last for 500 years. Joel will eat 100s Joel: That's right, baby. Oh God. Are we out, man? 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. #ChristmasSweaters #Indeed #Microsoft #JimStroud #Talkpush #Comparably #Youtube #Workforce #Swag

Can a couple of CareerBuilder alums really make a dent in the growing on-demand workforce platform wars? We grill CEO and co-founder Carisa Miklusak to find out. Enjoy this Talroo exclusive. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community. Chad: Hey Joel. Joel: What up? Chad: Would you say companies find it hard to attract the right candidates to apply for their jobs? Joel: Well Jobs to Careers thought so. Chad: Job to Careers? You mean Talroo. Joel: Talroo? Chad: Yeah, Talroo. 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 was focused on predicting, optimizing and delivering talent directly to your email or ATS. Joel: Ah ha, okay. So, it's totally data driven talent attraction which means that Talroo platform enables recruiters to reach the right talent at the right time and at the 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 no where to go, right? 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. Announcer: Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Chad Cheeseman are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest in data start ups through the gamut 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: What's up everybody? The December episode of Firing Squad and if our guest was expecting any favorable treatment because of the holidays, well she's in for a rude awakening, I must say. But, that being said, welcome to Carisa Miklusak, am I saying that right? Carisa: You did an awesome job. Close enough. Chad: I don't think he did, I think she's being nice. Carisa: Miklusak but, you know what? When I first got married I got a lot of Mrs. Miklusak so, I'm going to call it like a B. That's good with me. Chad: Okay, good. Joel: Considering that there's a sac in there that you should be lucky that I'm trying to say it as it is because I could make up a lot of different stuff. Chad: Yes. Carisa: Totally. Joel: So, Carisa is with Tilr. Carisa, give us a little bit about you before we get into your company. Carisa: Sure. Thanks so much for having me today. I really cut my teeth in temporary staffing in the late 90s and then did a long stint at Careerbuilder.com and spun off to start building [crosstalk 00:02:56]. Let's just get it out of the way. I'm going to own it and I then started building startups in 2008 when no one else in the world was thinking it was a good economy to do so. And bootstrap company called T Media and was approached by an investor that really helped to inspire the company that I run now, Tilr. Other than that, I've got four and a half year old twins, a super geriatric dog that died twice and is still hanging around and I spend a lot of time in New York, Toronto and Cincinnati. Joel: I could've gone for the sympathy vote for the dying dog. Carisa: Oh, right. Joel: That's nice. So, Chad tell her what she's in for. Chad: So Carisa, you're going to have two minutes to pitch Tilr. At the end of two minutes, you're going to hear the bell, then Joel and I are going to hit you with rapid fire Q and A. If the answers start rambling, if you start rambling with the answers, Joel is going to hit you with the crickets. You're going to wanna move along and also tighten that game up. At the end of Q and A, you're gonna receive grades from Joel and I. It's either going to be big applause which means you killed it, golf clap, that means Joel almost fell asleep, or the firing squad. Joel: That was pretty good Chad, that was nice. Chad: That means hit the bricks, close up shop, pull out the drawing board because your shit sucks. So, that's Firing Squad. Joel are you ready to get that timer ready buddy? Joel: I'm ready. Carisa, are you ready more importantly? Carisa: Let's do it. Joel: Boom. Carisa: I'm ready. Joel: Two minutes starting. Carisa: All right. Tilr is new search technology for the workforce and what's different about Tiller is that we match on skills not on titles. We actually think that titles are pretty bias and screen people out and not in. So, here's an example of how we reallocate talent. Let's pretend that Tim had job A, and gained skills one through three and then Tim had job and gained skills four, five and six. He's never had a job with title C but yet, title C requires Tim to have skills one, three and six. Our technology will actually send Tim that job and once a worker's screened and background checked, they get to make the decision as to whether or not they wanna go to work. There's no interviews in Tilr's marketplace. So, our companies, or our employers rather, really trust us for our technology to make that decision based on skills. Carisa: Once Tim goes to work, if there's a positive outcome, our algorithm learns from that and learns that there's again this neat, new network between someone that's never done this job and someone that can. So, for workers, we give them new opportunities. For clients, we give them a larger talent pool and we've also recently just introduced our enterprise product which does for companies the same thing that we do in our market place. So, that's a bit about who we are and skills are really the name of the game for us. Joel: So in the time you have left, where can someone find out more about Tilr? Carisa: You can definitely go to www.Tilr.com and it's tilr like the tilr that you pull on the sail boat to turn your direction and also you can download our app. From a company or worker perspective, check it out that way. We've been called the Tinder if you will or Match.com [crosstalk 00:06:20] I know, I know. I'm just getting them out of here of recruitment only because we have swipe left and right. That's like the only similarity so, other than that, that's where you can learn more. Joel: All right. You're done. Carisa: You asked for more man, you asked for more. Chad: Swipe left and right just killed me but even before that, I don't believe, I'm not good at math but, I don't believe that one plus three plus six equals C, okay? That doesn't compute. I did a little research and it looked like you guys, at least before, focused on really trying to become like a new style ATS and now you're talking about search. Carisa: Interesting. Chad: Was that a pivot or ... Carisa: No, we never were an ATS, we came out truly with search. We focused on the on-demand market. We're asking people to believe in true algorithmic hiring and not interview. We focus on the on-demand market believing that jobs that had start and end dates would be an easier way for people to make that leap of faith and start to change the way that they recruit. Also, we focus on jobs in certain areas. We headquartered in Cincinnati, Cinci was our beta market and then [crosstalk 00:07:29] to that tri-state area. So, we never really focused as a ATS at all. We've always been search technology. The first product was our marketplace which is a true on-demand marketplace that matches on skills, not on titles. Our second product now is Enterprise which again is a white label of that product that does it for internal organizations. Chad: Okay. So, one of the YouTube videos that I watched actually focused on how the ATS process methodology sucks. So ... and it was one of your videos, so, that is fairly confusing. So, that is one of the reasons why when I was thinking about okay, process methodology, you guys are looking to try to flip the script on how people get jobs. Now it was skillcentric, there's no question, but on the front end, it was talking about how the ATS process methodology sucked, is that not something that rings kind of true to you? Carisa: So, we do pump out a lot of content. If watched isolated, there's generally a theme of the month that might seem strange but we often times partner with ATSs to provide additional level of detail for the candidates during the on-boarding process. So, the message is they're perhaps incomplete and kind of like Ford when our current recruitment system was built, pumped out their first car rather, sorry, rather like when Ford pumped out their first car, at the same time, our recruitment system was built. Sometimes tends to look at a candidate in an archaic way. We do have young, spunky fired-up people around saying everything sucks. Resumes suck, titles suck, ATSs suck, job posting suck. Chad: They're right. Carisa: And I obviously totally don't disagree because I built the company but, yeah, no, you're not off based but, sorry if it indicated we were like an ATS. That's not what all our business nor a business personally I wanna spend any time in. Joel: Good. You noticed Chad that she didn't say that the young kids are saying VR sucks but, that's a different podcast. Carisa: Nice. Joel: [crosstalk 00:09:22] a branding question. I'm always interested in how you came up with the name, certainly if I go to Tilr.com common spelling if you will, it takes me to a much different website, so talk about how you came up with the name and the challenge that you have from the end of sales process of telling people where to go. Carisa: Oh, interesting. So, we came up ... here's the true story of how we came up with the name. I of course think it's super fun. One of my business partners, the investor that I mentioned earlier, has a jockey that rarely loses a race by the name of Bobby Tiller. He races horses and he called me one night at about 10:30 and we had all kind of names on a whiteboard and I was kind of pissed off because we wanted internally to own coming up with the name. We this amazing MVP underway, it's late at night, we're in this workshop trying to figure it all out. I come home and I get a call from the investor, what about the name Bobby Tiller? Guy never loses. So, the next morning we wrote in on the board and everyone started talking about it. Tried to put it down. We did look at Tiller but, weren't really feeling it. It was partly formal and so, we started playing with different four letter, five letter versions of it but wanted a four letter version. Carisa: Looked at Tilr and I rented the name to test it out first before we actually bought the URL and we totally fell in love with it. We felt like it was both a noun, a verb. So, we call our workers Tilr community members. We also have an association where we offer portable benefits but, that's beside the point. One can also till for example and we hope that in the future people will say I need to Tilr that. So, we thought it was fun and that's how we introduced it. We haven't ... maybe I need to pay closer attention because you asked a good question. Makes me wanna check things out. What's the sales challenge in introducing it? I feel like 100, in this day and age gentleman, that's literally what I was going to say. So, I'll just own it, in this day and age, I feel like people don't really harp too much on your name. I did get one push back from a blogger and I apologize, I can't remember his name. He meant the world to me because it was the day after we rolled out the name. Carisa: That's was such a cool idea, skills are so important, why the hell did you go with one of these Flickr, Tilr, R names. You seem smart, why'd you do that man? Why? Why? Why? And I was like, oh, that sucks. But anywise it's been really fun. The only other thing I'll say about the name is everyone always thinks it's like tiller, like you're sowing seeds, tiller like that and no, you can't really see what I'm doing right now but, you know. Kind of higher up, like Tilr like this. So, I go through a lot of that. Chad: So does Tilr have a community database? Carisa: In terms of where employers can go and look at Tilr's opening? No. We have a closed proprietary database and our algorithm matches the most suitable Tilrs based on skills, availability, and location directly to employers requests. Actually, maybe you guys can help me. We wanna kill the name posting. I can't figure out what to call it other than a posting so, I'm just like a request, when an employer makes a request. But, it's a closed database. We've had conversations about opening it, what would be the meaning of that, but to date, we've not. Chad: Okay, so the actual database itself, it's a database that an organization can post, you're not going to get rid of that word, I'm sorry. You can post [crosstalk 00:12:50] it's been around for 20 years, I mean it's like a common unit. Carisa: We can do it, we can do it. Chad: It's a common unit and it's understood so, just use it. Not that I don't hate it, but just use it. So, if I post into the actual database, does it match up against your Tilrs and then bring back your matching kind of whoever matches in the database? Carisa: You got it, exactly right. 100% and two different types of algorithms go to work. One is someone posts something, and they need it now or tomorrow and there's a very short window and in that way it's like first come first serve. Kind of like Uber. Blow every Tilr that matches and has the right skill profile, availability, and location receives a push notification on their phone that says this job is yours, first come first serve and remember, there's no additional interview with the employers so, once you accept the job, it's yours. If there's a longer window, we like to provide a better experience for the worker so, we'll do more of a linear algorithm where someone will have an exclusive. Again, depending on the time frame, maybe half hour or hour or day if it's a long assignment, to answer whether or not they can take it before it moves on to the next person. Chad: How big is the database and what type of individuals in the database? Is it entry level, mid level, or even you talking about extreme professionals at times? Carisa: We're not talking about extreme professionals yet. We're really focused on jobs where people [crosstalk 00:14:10]. Joel: What's an extreme professional Chad? Carisa: Not me I know but otherwise [crosstalk 00:14:15]. Chad: We're extreme professionals. Carisa: Do I get to be one too? Chad: Maybe. Carisa: Maybe, you guys will decide at the end. Let me know in addition to the normal judgment system. We really are asking people to make a leap of faith and trust in an algorithm so, today, when we're controlling the database, we're focused on jobs like logistics, customer service, light sales, hospitality, events. Oftentimes, we do serve one off clients. Like someone has an administrative person going on leave and needs to fill a job for two months but, we also serve truly on-demand things like an event center has a big event and needs 50 people to come in the morning to clean up, and they wanna have 50 Tilr community members come in eight hours. So, we focus on a variety of different sectors but, I guess what's common to all of them is that there is a driving force that they need a business that's just in time or flows with their business. So, retail you can imagine right now is huge for us. We've got a couple hundred people in a warehouse, another hundred people in a customer service center for a chief client in Columbus, and a couple other deals like that around the country that are really meaningful to us. Carisa: We've become part of their planning for the year. You ask [crosstalk 00:15:38]. Chad: How big is the database? Carisa: Yeah, sorry, I was just going back to that, I was just going to say you asked a direct question, direct answer, we're just under 50,000 total Tilr community members and actively today on the site we had about 417 clients posting since we can't figure out a better word or actively looking for Tilrs. Joel: One of the things that you have going for you is the on-demand workforce solution is hot. One of the things you have going against you is the on-demand workforce software or solution platform is hot and on the show we've talked about everyone from Plated to Snag, to Upwork, to Fiver, to TaskRabbit, where do you guys fit in that economy and how are you different? Carisa: So, I get asked this question a lot as you can imagine and it's been hard to pinpoint us to date but, I think that we sit closely by Upwork and Wonolo in that platform. What makes us really different and I know I keep harping on it is, that way that we match on skills. So, I don't wanna say sorry because then you guys will boo me for being wimpy but, I can only come up the word. I apologize that that example didn't make sense but, where our IP lies and where we're really different is let's say, you eat a skill table and then all of a sudden you start to reallocate talent differently based on a different metric, and that's measured, and either thumbs up or thumbs down over time. You start to build new neurons or connections between skills and outcomes, the outcomes being titles like that word post, it's a unit. It's how we understand things. Carisa: So, that's where a lot of our IP sits, are in these new connections that we'd built between an amalgamation of someone's skill set and their ability to perform in the economy. And that's what makes us really different than let's say Winolo that's also doing just in time, on-demand hiring and allowing scheduling and availability to be part of their algorithm but, really matching very differently. Joel: Why are you going market to market? I think you mentioned you guys are in Cincinnati and yet you'd recently moved or opened up in Indianapolis, why not just open the floodgates and go national? Carisa: At first it was because we really wanted to bait out of course. So, we went to Cincinnati, believe it or not, it's a great city I think for innovation. Maybe you do believe it. [crosstalk 00:17:56] a place for big companies will take a chance and join beta programs. We then really took a community approach in Cincinnati, where we started to work with a lot of undeserved populations and we started to replicate that market to market or community to community rather than a national flood. The other reason just to be totally candid, is funding. We've got about nine million dollars into the business to date and we've built two really meaningful products. We want to be able to make a difference and put the workers to work that sign up on the platform in the markets where we're live. So, as we go for our next round, we'll do exactly what you're talking about, work to expand nationally. Carisa: You'll see us beta a few larger markets first, like a New York or a San Francisco, learn from any differences of some of the tier only in size, not in love and passion and productivity markets that we focus on to date. I mean it really comes down to marketing dollars. Joel: And you raised five million to date? Carisa: Nine million, sorry. Joel: Okay. Carisa: Yes. Chad: So, skill sets rather than job titles and resumes. So, what data are you using if not candidate profile data or resumes to pull all this together to be able to match against these job onthologies? Carisa: Yep, you got, a better word than I could come up with consider that stolen. So, two different ways, one is that person by person, people upload their skills. That's how it works in the marketplace and we joke a lot that marketplace earned us the right to enterprise or build this white label because as we learn from everyone's skills, they can lie to us, just like you lie on a resume or in an interview but, where the difference is, is the first time they go to work, there's a 360 degree rating cycle. Second time they go to work, we have a really good score on the accuracy of their skills, predictability around their work behavior and that kind of piece. So, that's one way that we learn. The other way that we learn, now that we've earned the right is with our enterprise product, when we go into an implementation, the first thing that we do is eat the organization's existing skill table. We don't expect their skill table or even the names of their jobs to resemble our let's call it Tilr master database. Carisa: And so then we learn from every single one of those implementations as well and we're able to share the learning we have from marketplace with our clients and vice versa. So, that helps us to become that much smarter, burn that many new connections, the many new neurons if you will. Joel: I love that we're talking about how do we refer to postings as something different and it occurred to me that these models of on-demand workforce platforms really expect employers to sort of make a mind change of how they normally do business. Carisa: Absolutely. Joel: [crosstalk 00:20:52] most them I'm sure post on Craig's list, they get responses, they interview and then they're done. So, talk about the challenge that that's been and how you're overcoming it. Carisa: Yep, absolutely. That's the biggest challenge and I wanted to stop talking before I got a boo earlier because I felt like I was starting to ramble but, I was going to say, you said where do you fit in, starting to talk about competitors and what we run into in terms of competition with dollars is just that. It's job postings, it's traditional recruitment, it's not Wonolo, we're not running into them. Or Shiftgigger, even Upwork in the market, we're running into exactly what you talked about. This is the way we've recruited forever. And so one of the things that we do is really build trust by asking for a very small order or a job that's often times hired in mass and doesn't have any type of customer interface in order to earn trust. Carisa: What we do find is very quickly in the process. For example, we went into mainly entry level jobs or like warehousing, data entry jobs for our beta program. The way that we got to hiring recruiters for example with this technology or sales professionals or customer interfacing professionals at events was by earning that trust up through the organization or through a referral network by doing well on less interactive roles if that makes sense. So, that's one of the way we do is just with grit, and earning one role at a time. Now that we've been in the market for just two years, some of that was beta but let's just call it two years, we do have a number of case studies and a number of clients that are really willing to show not only how drastically the cost reduced but how they felt like they couldn't hire in their backyard and now because they're looking at skills as the pull, not titles as the pull, it's much larger and they're able to hire refreshingly locally. Joel: I have sort of a general question about the whole on-demand phenomenon or trend. Companies spend a lot of money on employer brand, what it's like to work here, who we are, etc. Carisa: Absolutely. Joel: Does that matter in an on-demand environment because do you really care about an employer's brand? You're just going to go work based on what an algorithm told me on Tilr or another website. Carisa: So, it's an interesting question. Maybe I'm like a traditionalist all of a sudden but, I think it does. You'd be really surprised at the passion that Tilr community members have for working on projects, even if it's only at XYZ client for the holiday for three and a half months. Also, a lot of these roles, not a lot, 10% of these roles turn into full time job opportunities as well. If someone falls in love with their Tilr, we don't want them to hire them behind our backs so, we make it really easy on the platform if the Tilr's interested to move off our platform and to a new home. What I find, and I don't wanna be overly cheesy so I'll say this at risk of a boo, but that is ... values truly are changing and even in the quote, unquote on-demand economy which I think is a word that will go away but, yet the behaviors of this new workforce will stay. Even though people wanna work on different projects or around different schedules, they wanna be attached to things that are making a difference and they wanna be very clear about how what they're doing is making a difference. Carisa: Our most successful clients have programs for their quote, unquote on-demand workers in hopes that they won't have to re-train a whole new crew next year and a lot of them will come back and make this cyclical opportunity a part of their behavior. I actually don't like the word on-demand. I just think it's like the trend is our friend right now and it's a really smart place to prove algorithmic hiring. Chad: You have to play to kind of like AI, Chadbots, Machine Learning, and it's like oh, yeah, well okay. Carisa: Yeah, and that's why you actually purposely see me stay away from those words. I mean if you've noticed I haven't said them once because I think what we're saying is behaviors are changing so much, I think that's what's here to stay. So anyways, at the risk of being cheesy. Chad: So, just adding skill sets into the process. So, let's say you go into a market, what if a candidate, this is a brand new candidate based that you're actually getting into. What if a candidate believe that they're an expert but they're really just average. How do you weed out the over sized egos? Does that just happen through the process as the companies review them? How does that all come together? Carisa: A couple different checkpoints right now, and maybe one become automatic in the future, hint hint, specifically in certain verticals where we're comfortable or have staffed a long time in the markets. But to date, first thing is absolutely like Linked In, like a resume, self-onboarding. You tell us who you are and your proficiency, next thing is we have literally interviewed in 15 to 20 minute phone call, every single Tilr community member to date. We did that for a learning, we did it to hold hands, to help people understand this new experience and to learn how we could automate it. We do ask experiential questions so, it's as good as a quick interview. You said you're a five resolving customer problems, tell the largest customer problem you've resolved on the phone and how many minutes it took you to resolve it. What skills did you use? Carisa: Then of course they do a background check, but once that's done, you're right, they could've lied to us just like a normal interview recruitment process where the proof really lies is the first time they go on site, the first employer rates their proficiency in said skills and they rate the experience as well. That algorithm gets stronger and stronger, the accuracy rather becomes stronger and stronger. Then we look for trends over time. We are in conversations as we earn the right to go further up the chain in terms of the sophistication of roles to partner with and lay over things like personality testing and such but, we've kept it really simple to date and really focused on that reallocation of skills. Like can you take someone that had been a bank teller and a, I don't know, sales rep and have them all of sudden manage a retail organization. Do the skills translate in that regard? I guess they'd be missing that management piece. Chad: How do you interview these individuals, is it a phone interview? What's the actual interview? Carisa: Yes. So, to date on the app, once you're done onboarding yourself, there's something that pops up and tells you to book a phone call. We've literally had phone calls. The reason I was saying hint hint is we have build a Chatbot in 25 different area where we feel we've done hundreds, thousands of matches and really can understand a pattern and have the chatbot ask and screen if you will, for us. But only in those verticals. In new verticals where we are new, we still wanna learn and talk to people and we also do have like a white glove free of charge, so maybe white glove's not a good word, good thing I'm not in marketing anymore, right? But like a white glove service. If any worker, employer wants their hand held, I mean it's really a strange experience right? Carisa: We had to tell workers when we first opened, not there's nothing else, the job it yours. Go to work now and they're like what do you mean? I accepted. We're like yeah, you're already screened, go to work, you're going to be rated there. What are you talking about? No, no man, you've got the job. Or employers all of a sudden just see like hey, Ed will be there at four. They're like okay, profile looks great or [crosstalk 00:28:25] so, yeah, Ed's coming, expect Ed. So, the conversations have been really helpful because we condense sometimes the hiring process to like 30 seconds and although it's efficient and great, it freaks people out. Chad: What's the ejection rate though? I mean because they don't show up a hundred percent of the time, what's the ejection rate that you're seeing right now on your analytics? Carisa: You're totally right, biggest problem I think in the industry is no shows. Specifically as you start to address certain industries. People have a tough problems, like transportation problems, child care problems and that's fair. We have gone to a 40% no show when we opened in beta to about an 8% no show and now we have algorithmic things that kick off in the background, let's just call them things since my my CTO isn't on the phone with me. That allow us based on how the client has preferrenced they wanna handle a no show situation, kick off to either send someone new within the hour, send someone new the next day, not replace them. So, that's part of the client onboarding process is to understand how they wanna hire them. Joel: My God, we just through in ghosting, are there any other buzz terms that we can use on this [crosstalk 00:29:36]. Carisa: Ghosting. Joel: I look at both sides of where you market is and sort of downstream you have some of the names I mentioned with Snag and Platted and Winolo that you mentioned. I look at the high end and I look at Facebook, Linked In going after sort of the similar small business instant matching solution, uncommon is a sponsor and they have really cool sort of sourcing and programmatic advertising tool, text recruit, [crosstalk 00:30:06] my question is, what keeps you up at night? Because those kinds of things would keep me up at night but, I'm curious what keeps you awake? Carisa: This is such a shitty answer for lack of a better vocabulary word, I sleep so good and that's not to be arrogant at all. I'll tell you what my worries are but, I hit a certain point at Tilr where I just started sleeping really great because there's so many things that can keep you up, I just started sleeping great. Finally, after being an insomniac for years but, that's too much about me personally, I digress. Here are the things that I really worry about, I don't worry about a crowed space. I think that a crowed space shows validation. I also look at Linked In, Upwork, perhaps not Winolo but, a lot of the organizations that you just mentioned is great potential partners for what we're doing. Also, in full disclosure, my husband just left Linked In a year ago after being there for a long time so, I know the team there well and I think that there's a lot of partnership opportunities long-term with organizations like that. Carisa: What keeps me up at night is this, there's a very finite opportunity I believe anyways, to change the way that people look at other people. I don't know that we're moving fast enough or that we can necessarily do it alone. So, I'm a big proponent of partnerships and what I mean by that is truly when you start to look at people as an amalgamation of their skills, they are worthy of so much more. We're trained as a culture, take McDonald's off your resume because you wanna be an engineer and no one cares if you worked at McDonald's because it's just going to hurt you. Your manager doesn't wanna see that. But there's really skills that are gained during that job and if we can flip the script and change the way that people are measuring other people, I think we're going to have a lot more dynamic workforce and we'll still have a skill gap but it'll be a manageable skill gap. Carisa: What keeps me up at night is investors are investing in the space right now or the reason I should wake up at night rather and get my computer rather than sleep well, is investors are investing in the space now and I don't know that any one entity can move fast enough to really take advantage, dare I say, of the way that we could impact humanity over the next few years while recruitment finally has a data focus after decades of other verticals really benefiting from it. But, I feel like you're hearing true passion from me now so, I'm going to get off my soapbox. Joel: I love it, I love it. Well our time here has come to an end, so ... Carisa: No. Joel: You guys have a unique offering where you only pay I guess if you hire or there's a match [crosstalk 00:32:32]. Talk about that, what can companies expect to pay for your service? Carisa: 100%. 25% on the hour when someone goes to work and you're pleased with the work. So you've got it. We've kept it really simple, no barriers to entry. We've looked at different subscription models, perhaps in the future we'll introduce different pieces but, completely complimentary to sign up. You post a job, and if it's filled and the person comes to work and works, you pay that 25% on the hourly. That's really it. It keeps us competitive, it keeps things easy. We don't do a percentage of salary for conversion fees. It's literally a flat flee between 500 and 1500 dollars if you want someone to convert to a W-2 employee and find their home with your company. Enterprise is sold as a SASS model. As you would imagine, there's an implementation fee that grows if you want it integrated with things like your ATS as we talked about earlier or your LMS if you really wanna identify skill gap and close it. Carisa: Then there's a per person per month charge that ranges between a dollar and six dollars depending on the number of users so, it's pretty straight forward. Joel: That was the longest pricing answer I think we've ever gotten. Okay. Carisa: At least I answered. I've heard a lot of people on your show go yeah well, just call one of our sales reps for answer. So, at least I'm direct. It's all there. Chad: I like it. Joel: You're getting a little saucy here at the end. Carisa: No, not at all. Joel: It's time to face the squad. I'm going to give my review first. Man, I think that when we look at categories in recruiting right now, that's how with automation and programmatic and I could go on and on but, this whole on-demand workforce, although you don't like the term, is sort of trend [crosstalk 00:34:21] that we're seeing. I think it's a real trend. I think I've said so on the show quite a few times. I think that it ... the challenge for you ... so I like the business mall that you're in, I do like the brand, although I don't know if I mentioned that or not, I do think it's pretty unique. Carisa: Thank you. Joel: It's an incredibly crowded, crowded space and the money you've raised, I know you're looking at raising more money, I think you even said how is somebody going to really stake a claim in this industry and you said the toughest challenge you have is educating the marketplace. I just think that that is going to be a major challenge to your business and I see someone like a Facebook, someone with a big brand that has numbers, that has data, that has I guess bigger brains than you, no offense, and most of your other brothern. To me, that is a real fear and that would keep me up at night, and even we didn't mention Google but I think Google [crosstalk 00:35:19] as well. Google higher and small businesses that use G Sweep so I could go on and on but, I think ultimately, I think you guys have a good team. I like your DNA, regardless of how much of a hard time we Career Builder. I like what you guys are doing from a market to market standpoint even though the traditional logic would say otherwise. Joel: So, ultimately I think good business, I just think my hurdle in giving you an arousing applause is the marketplace and how competitive it is and the big, deep pockets that you're going to have to go up against. So, for me, it's a light applause. Carisa: My grandpa was a golfer so, it means a lot in my heart so, I'm going to take it as a win and I appreciate the good analysis. Chad: Yeah, you're lucky we didn't open up the guns. Okay. So, my turn. Carisa, I totally agree with the process must change. Recruiting takes too god damn long, there's no reason for it, right? So I love the concept, I'm hot on AI algorithms doing quick matching and delivery. I mean that's exactly where we need to be today. Not tomorrow but, today. 8% no show is ridiculously awesome. Especially for that market, 8% I would probably pit that against most of any of the other competitors that are out there, even staffing organization. Two things. One thing, obviously Joel mentioned from being a tight market to not a tight market, yes, it's validation, there's no question. But, there are big names in this market. Chad: I wouldn't worry about that as much because you are really focusing ongoing from region to region. The biggest problem that I have and this is where you were teetering on big applause and golf clap, is scalability. If you can integrate chatbots and stop doing phone screens, when you do that and you get to that spot, you come back and I will give you a big applause but, the scalability as you well know, to be able to get that moving, and to be able to scale out and scale fast, that's the big key. So, at this point, you're almost there but I'm going to give you a golf clap. Joel: You survived Carisa, congratulations. Carisa: Thanks gentlemen, I had fun and whether it's on the air or one off, let's follow-up. We'll introduce that chatbot in Q1 and I very much enjoyed my time. Thanks so much. Chad: Excellent. Joel: You bet. Well, Cinci is very close to Indi so, hopefully you can make up a trip and show us the new scaling features that you have. Carisa: There you go. Absolutely. We'll bring my CTO, he's much smarter than I. Chad: Oh, we can all have a drink. Carisa: Yeah. Chad: We out. Joel: 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 of 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. #hourly #ondemand #recruiting #FiringSquad #tilr #Matching

On this NEXXT exclusive podcast, the boys interview industry icon Peter Weddle about his latest book, Circa 2118. It’s a must-read for anyone in the recruiting industry, where robotics, automation and AI are set to change things dramatically over the next 100 years. The good, the bad and the ugly are all here in this riveting interview. 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: This, The Chad and Cheese Podcast, brought to you in partnership with TAtech. TAtech, 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 freaking 97% open rate. Chad: What? Joel: And a crazy high candidate response rate within the first hour alone. Chad: Which are all great reasons why The Chad and Cheese Podcast love Text to Hire from Nexxt. Joel: Love it. Chad: Yep. That's right. Next with the double X, not the triple X. Joel: Bom chicka bow wow. 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. How do you get this discount? You're asking yourself right now. Joel: Tell them, Chad. Chad: It's very simple. You go to chadcheese.com. And you click on the Nexxt logo in the sponsor area. Joel: Easy. Chad: No long URL to remember. Just go where you know, chadcheese.com and Nexxt with two Xs. 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 a Nexxt exclusive. Joel: Dude, I can't believe it took us this long to get Peter Weddle on the show. What were we thinking? Chad: I have no clue, dude. He's so busy. He's writing books. He has these awesome freaking conferences and stuff. Here as of late, they're even more awesome that what they used to be. Joel: Yeah. I can't imagine why you say that. Death match. Chad: Death match. Dude, on today's episode, we're talking technology, robots, takeover, and the light at the end of the dystopian tunnel. The guy responsible for all this, obviously, is Peter Weddle, author of Circa 2118. How the hell are you doing, Peter? Peter: I'm doing great, guys. Chad: Excellent. Joel: Welcome to the show. Chad: Excellent, man. Excellent. Peter: Nice to be here. I was wondering when you guys were going to get around to inviting me. Joel: Little warning if you have razor blades and nooses the home, you might want to put them away as we talk about this cheery book today. Chad: You're like Joel. You need an invitation for anything to happen. It's like, you didn't invite me. Oh, shut up. Joel: Love me, notice me. Chad: Look at me over here, diva. For everybody out there, Peter's currently CEO of TAtech, graduate of West Point. Go Army. And also did some time at Harvard, little school, unknown school. But most notably, Peter is friend of The Chad and Cheese Show. Peter: Absolutely. Chad: Provided insights to the recruiting industry for decades. Peter, the big question is: How the hell did you end up in the HR and recruiting industry? Peter: Well, way back in the 1990s, I was a partner in the Hay Group. And if you will recall, in the early '90s, it was a very entrepreneurial period, lots of new companies being started. Everybody wanted to create a unicorn. So I bought a company called Job Bank USA, which was pre web, but arguably one of the first companies to use computers to match people and jobs. And the rest is history. Chad: There you go. Wow. Today, there's an obvious feeling that we as human beings, unlike 1990, are moving toward dystopia, which is definitely clouding the future of the US when we talk about automation. I mean, it's everywhere. We just even posted a podcast today that was all about chat bots, the entire thing, 30 minutes, nothing but chat bots. But we see research specifically in this case from Forrester, which predicts that in the next three years, 900,000 current human jobs will be taken by machines. Boston Consulting predicts 23% of industrial jobs are going to be taken in less than two years. I mean, Peter, this is an ominous takeover that's being predicted. And your book, Circa 2118, tells that story. But I feel it also tells the tale of moving through dystopia to utopia. Can you give us kind of an overview before we start to get really deep into Circa 2118? Peter: Well, as you've pointed out, there is a lot going on in what I would describe as the age of automation. But it's a little bit like a riptide. It's below the surface. I think a lot of people have this inherent view that this stuff is going to happen so far in the future it won't affect them. Or it's going to happen to somebody else. It's going to be all production workers and not knowledge workers, for example. And given some of the statistics you just cited, the reality is that smart machines, super empathetic, super intelligent, super strong machines are already here. And they're increasingly taking on jobs that we humans now do. And it's going to be a challenge. The opening premise of my book is the first thing we have to do is develop situational awareness. We have to understand what the hell is happening to us so that we can figure out how to get to Circa 2118 100 years down the road. Joel: Right. Right. Peter, I'm going to get to VR headsets at some point in this interview. But before I get to that, I couldn't help in browsing the book, thinking about humans hate change, particularly change that eliminates them from the equation. And I have to think that the powers of government and/or the powers of war are going to impact the future that you've sort of laid out in your book. Give me your take on a government's role and maybe their ability to fight over resources and whatnot will impact how automation takes over in the future. Peter: Well, I think today's governments are wholly unprepared for what's about to happen. We just went through midterm elections, and to my knowledge, not a single politician on either side of the aisle talked about what's going on in the workplace right in front of them. They have constituents who are losing jobs today to smart machines, and that's only going to accelerate. When people tell me, "Well, it'll get to the point where the government will take care of it," yeah. Well, take a look at what happened in Silicon Valley. We introduced a technology called social media. And we trusted to industry to take care of its unintended consequences. And how well did that turn out? Joel: Right. Peter: I think the same thing, unless we do something differently, the same thing is likely to happen with robots and intelligent machines. Right now, there's an arms race going on in this technology, and nobody's controlling it. Chad: Peter, this is a quote from the book I thought was incredibly interesting, and I think speaks exactly to Joel's question. "The wheels of capitalism will spin even faster as we remove human friction." That's the point. There are companies that are going to make dollars much faster, margins rise, and they can report back to their boards that they're going to be making more money. And that is going to be ... And as much as the dollars that are actually greasing the wheels of politics today, can you speak to that a little bit? Peter: Well, the way that economists deal with this challenge is they say, "Well, don't worry about it. The magic of creative destruction is going to create new jobs." Look what happened with electricity. Yes, it put candle makers out of business, but we have all these new jobs. But if you look at what has happened already with this technology, just the only data we really have is on the manufacturing line where one robot put six people out of job. Every new robot introduced puts six people out of jobs. And you have a Forrester report that says, "Hey, the good news is that this technology is going to create 15 million new jobs within the next 10 years by introducing robots and smart technology." Peter: That's great, except it also says that at the very same time, it's going to eliminate 25 million jobs. And it doesn't take a super computer to figure out who came out on the best end of that deal. I call it creative displacement. Every time this technology is introduced, it will displace more people than it creates new jobs. And the number of new jobs will keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller, as you just described, as companies find new ways to automate what we humans will be able to do. And eventually, we're going to come to a zero sum game. There just won't be any jobs left for humans to do. Joel: Peter, this is one of the things I struggle with in your thesis as well, is that you need people to buy stuff. Right? Henry Ford paid his workers a living wage so they could buy his cars, or buy the cars that they were making. In this future where no one has a job, nothing gets bought or sold, what's the point? Right? I mean, what exactly is the end game if commerce can't happen because no one's making any money because there aren't any jobs? Peter: Well, I can tell that y'all didn't read past chapter four. Chad: He didn't read any of it. Peter: Look, it's not an idea original to me. You've got Bill Gates. You've got Elon Musk. You've got a whole bunch of people saying that these trends are already so ingrained that the country is going to have to think about doing something historic on the order of The Great Depression on steroids. It's going to have to think about installing a universal basic income in order to sustain, as you were saying, Joel, this consumer economy that we have. Short of that, the economy will come to a grinding halt. We'll have the greatest efficiency in capitalism ever achieved. And it won't be able to produce anything because there'll be nobody to buy anything unless we produce this universal basic income. I believe that ultimately companies are going to see the value of that. Peter: I mean, even if they're taxed, which is what I'm proposing, a human replacement tax, even if they're taxed, that tax will be less than the cost of what it takes them right now to hire workers, recruit new workers when they leave, pay all those benefits. All that stuff is incredibly expensive. The tax would be less than that, but still sustain a universal basic income. And that will enable the consumer driven economy to continue on. The other half of Joel's question though is equally as important. Peter: There will still be jobs, they will just be done by machines. And as I describe in the book, there will still be work. But for the first time in human history, you'll be able to decide what kind of work you want to do because it's work that engages you, it challenges you. You don't have to go out and do something to earn a daily living. You can go out and find work that really fulfills you. And that's one half of the premise of the new era I believe this is all going to create. It's not a dystopian future at all. I describe it as the Neonaissance, the birth of self ennoblement. Chad: Okay. Kind of gone through the whole dystopia piece. And how in the hell did we get there? That's the part that I want to go through because that's at the end of the book. There's talk about the ennoblement and what not. Let's talk about how we get there. And talk about today, because we're seeing this, the cued assistants, the Alexas, the Google Homes, the chat bots, and how that's starting to really root itself into our daily lives, and how that will turn into the prospect of enterprise automation kits. Peter: Well, I think that as you pointed out earlier, the economic impulse is to create generation after generation of ever more capable technology to do ever more of the work that we do each day, both at home and in the workplace, so that's going to go on. I think that the larger issue is: What are the cultural, societal, educational, governmental implications of all of that? And in the book, I describe the next 100 years as a really tough period. In fact, I call it the second middle ages. And I think that it's going to be tough for us to adjust because our institutions can't keep up. And there will be a lag time. And in that lag time, people are going to get hurt. People are going to unfortunately have their lives and their careers disrupted. Chad: Well, what were there, three middle ages, periods? Peter: The first middle ages had three segments. And I've tried to organize the second middle ages the same way, with three segments. Yeah. Chad: Okay. And we're in the first right now. I mean, it's already kicked off. And we're already seeing some of the things that you're talking about in the book. We're already seeing automation taking jobs. We're already seeing, we actually talked about this on last week's podcast, where an algorithm is actually taking a board seat at an organization. You see. So these are small things that are happening that will turn much quicker as we see the outcomes provide again, it's back to capitalism. If you can widen that margin, then you can make more money, then you can report back. And obviously, you see profits. That dystopia, what does that first kind of middle ages look like? Because that to me is more of a dystopian view, but it's part of the journey that we have to go through to be able to get to that end point. Peter: Well, I think that if you look at your newsfeed today, you'll see that there are instances where people find themselves out of work because they have been replaced by machines. There are many examples in the book. One, for example, was the US Open this year, where the highlights for the tennis tournament, the journalism that was produced, was produced by IBM Watson, was produced by a machine, not by a journalist. All of that will sort of be interesting. It won't really touch a lot of people's lives, but they'll be aware of it. Peter: In the second phase of the middle ages, that's going to dramatically increase for a single reason. And that is because we will have reached the singularity. And the singularity is that point in time where machines finally and forever become more intelligent than humans. And peer research got together some of the leading futurists and academicians and research scientists in the country, and asked them to predict when that would happen. And the median estimate was 2040. So within two decades, we're going to remove the human friction of human intelligence, human limitations, and machines will start creating machines on their own. And that will dramatically accelerate this movement of technology into our lives. Peter: And then as I've said earlier, we're going to be stuck with institutions, both governmental, academic, and societal, which are going to be wholly unprepared to support people in the face of all these changes. And the rest of the hundred years is going to be a struggle to get those institutions to catch up. And I spend a whole chapter at the end of the book talking about what we as individuals can do to make sure that we individually and our institutions are as prepared as possible to help us get through the next 100 years and get to this better place that I describe at the end of that book. Joel: Billions of people on this planet live on $2 a day. And you talk about the struggles that the first world is going to have with unemployment and displacement. Talk about what the third world is going to go through in all these changes in the new reality. Peter: I'm going to do something that a politician would never do, and say, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. My book was focused on what I think will happen in this country, what I think will happen after it happens here, because we are the leading and most developed economy on the planet, what will then happen in Europe, another developed economy. The third world, I think it's going to be even more horrendous. But the short answer is, I honestly don't know. Chad: Tell us about byte-collared workers. You come up with this really ... Instead of white collar, blue collar, it's a byte-collar worker. What is a byte-collar worker? And what does that actually mean to our workforce? Peter: Well, a byte-collar worker can be as rudimentary, if you will, in the greater scheme of the development of this technology as a chat bot. It is somebody who does some of the work of a job in the workplace. It could be the technology in a driverless car. But eventually, it will be humanoids. It will be lookalike machines. Hollywood has created this fantasy about all of these machines being harmful to humans. I think there's an equal probability that they can be helpful to people. Peter: You've got for example, even in today's paper, a report of a company in France, a company that cares for the elderly, using a robot to help care for elderly people in places where there just aren't enough humans to go around. And people are actually becoming attached to this machine in a way that demonstrates that these machines can be empathetic. They can have the kinds of emotional ties that we think are unique to humans. Joel: I'm curious about two institutions here in this country and around the world that obviously are important. And curious how you think automation will impact them. First off, the defense infrastructure and maybe the business of warfare. What does that look like? And also, what does education look like? Is it progressively taken over by corporations? Talk about those two items. Peter: I think one of the biggest issue that we will face, equal to the challenge that we face with the change in climate, is controlling this technology in national defense and military affairs. I worry that this technology will be used in weapons in a way where we lose control just as we have with nuclear technology and at Three Mile Island, we've lost control, or Fukushima. These are imperfect fail safe systems. And the damage is bad enough with nuclear energy. Think about how bad it could be if we let this automated and intelligent machinery get out of control. I think that we are going to have to, within our own country, and then globally, have to develop systems, standards, safeguards, protocols, treaties, call them what you will, that will ensure that this stuff doesn't get out of control, and in an optimum sense, doesn't get into weaponry at all. Joel: And education? Peter: Education, I have a whole section in the book because education has been the central driver for much of what this society looks like today. And I believe that ultimately, education, like every other profession, is going to be automated. But the substance of that education is going to be dramatically different. There will be an entirely new set of degrees. There will be an entirely new set of majors. And it will all be around teaching people how to interact with, how to control, how to work with this technology in the course of their lives. Chad: Don't you feel like we're at a tipping point with many of these jobs? We talk about autonomous vehicles. And we can't find enough drivers to actually drive semi trucks over the road. We can't find enough individuals who want to go into the United States military, and/or they don't qualify medically to be able to go into the United States military, so our ranks are lower than what we would like them to be. These are all opportunities to be able to do exactly what you're talking about, infuse technology and automation, and actually take these jobs. Is that what you're saying? Is that really at that tipping point? Do you believe that's why it's starting to happen right now in such a robust way? Peter: Yeah. I think the war for talent is over, and machines won. I mean, these strategies, excuse me, these shortages are propelling companies into the adoption of this technology. Part of the fictional part of the book, I talk about the 2017 tax cut and jobs act. And I believe that that tax savings that these companies were given will in very short order be turned into investments in automation because right now, there are more open jobs than there are job seekers. And that's going to get worse, not better. Why would a company spend time developing new jobs for humans when they can't find the humans to fill them? Instead, they're going to take that money and invest it in machines to fill those jobs. Chad: Not to mention if you have the opportunity to use that money to buy back stock, not to mention also to be able to create or to be able to bridge the gap that is obviously there from a human talent standpoint. You know long-term that there is a better margin no matter what. It's just a great opportunity to do it now as it is. In the book, you predict that some will deny this is even happening whatsoever. And I see you running a parallel with kind of like the climate change deniers. Kind of like, no, it's not happening. We're creating jobs. It's all good. Everybody go back to what you were doing. Do you feel that? Peter: Sure. And there is some justification for it because this technology has for many years been over hyped. It's been captured by huskers and hucksters and been falsely described as being a part of every product. If you go to some conferences today, walk through the exhibit hall, every single product is described as having AI machine learning in it. And in point of fact, many don't. But that doesn't change the fact that this technology is every single day growing more capable, more able to take on jobs. And I do think we've reached a tipping point where there is enough reality that people can no longer ignore it. Joel: For those of us with small children, Peter, what sort of parenting advice would you give to make sure that kids are prepared for this future, and they're not living in the basement for the rest of their lives? Peter: One of the things that I propose in the book as part of the change in government that we need is a truth in education act, just as we have a truth in food products, and we require food products to be labeled as to what they contain. I believe that higher education must be forced to describe what the prognosis is for all of the majors they have offered to their students, so that we don't send a bunch of kids to school for subjects that will put them in the fields that will be obsolete three years after they graduate. We have that happening right now. And I think that the educational community needs to do a much better job of being transparent about what can be utilized in the world of work and what can't. Peter: That doesn't mean a person can't take a course if they want to. They just need to be aware of what's happening to them. And then I believe for young kids today, and even for older kids, if you're going to be able to work with machines, you have to have a grounding in STEM. And that's whether you wear a blue collar, no collar, or a white collar. You have to be conversant with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Chad: In the book, we all know the first middle ages had plagues. In the book, you talk about plagues that are actually going to be happening in our middle ages. Right? But these are plagues that are much different than what happened before in Europe. Tell us about those plagues, and tell us how you actually see some of the current events really kind of driving the whole thought process behind them. Peter: Well, I think that as with the original black plague, there are actually three plagues that are taking place and will take place over the next 100 years. One I describe as the oligarchical plague. And this is the reality that we have a growing cabal of oligarchs in this country, people who are so wealthy and have so much money that they literally influence the course of our government, the course of our business affairs, and pervert in many cases the way businesses are run, particularly the investment cabal on Wall Street, so that's one. Peter: The second is a betrayal plague. And this is a political governmental class that is captained by the K Street lobbyists in Washington DC. And rogue elements of our law enforcement and entertainment and government and public institutions that are abusing and debasing women or minorities and the powerless. And finally, the factional plague, which is all about the ongoing conflicts between people in religions and white supremacists and immigrants and people who are straight and people who are members of the LGBTQ community and so forth. I think there's a lot of societal rot, if you will, in the country. And we're going to have to overcome those three plagues in order to get ourselves healthy enough to solve the challenge imposed by this technology. Joel: Do you think that in the end, this is, I hate to say communism wins, but the future you're sort of outlining, painting, sounds a lot like communism. Am I off base there? And if so, what happens to religion and nation states in the future? Peter: That's a fair question. And in fact, I address it in the book. It is not communism. The profit, motive, and the private sector remain alive and well in this new vision, this Neonaissance that I describe. What is different are the individual pathways that people have to fulfillment and to tranquility, things that they've had precious little time to work on in the past because they were committed to paid employment. The only way that they could keep food on the table and a roof over their head was to go to work for somebody else. Peter: Well, if you believe that we will get to the point, we will get smart enough that we will recognize that a consumer economy needs people who have the money to consume, and we solve that problem, if we get to that point then we will be able to free people up. It's almost like a real emancipation in the sense that they will finally have the time. They will finally have the support. But most importantly, they will have the reason to begin to focus on these things which ennoble them. And it's that nobility, that unique aspect to access to fulfillment and to tranquility which ensure that human beings will remain a superior creation on the planet. Machines may be smarter than humans as early as 2040, but they will never be able to aspire to that nobility that human beings have access to. Chad: As we talked about before, rich people are obviously going to start to understand that, yeah, all the margins are great. But the product and services, people need to buy it. And if we get rid of the humans, then we're not paying people. If we're not paying people, then people can't buy stuff. And then guess what, we're creating all these products and services that really go nowhere because nobody has money to buy it. So when would universal or basic income actually kick in? And what would actually push that? That would obviously be a political government necessity. But how far do we get down the rabbit hole before something like that happens? Peter: Well, I think tragically, we will go pretty far down the rabbit hole before there will be enough incentive for the federal government and our other institutions to make the changes necessary. I hope that's not the case. But again, using newsfeed realism, extrapolating from what we already know is real into a fictional future, I think that the next 100 years looks like today's reality on steroids. So the same kind of inertia that we see in Washington DC right now will exist until we get to the point where the crisis is so great ... I mean, there are analogs here. We know historically that the situation got so bad in The Great Depression that there were literally riots in the street. People in Congress actually feared that there was going to be a revolution by people who were out of work. Peter: Well, sadly I think the if you extrapolate from that reality in the future, we will, unless somehow we get smarter and more aware of what's about to happen, we will go through some of that pain before we will get to a resolution. This book, you described it in the beginning as dystopian. I believe it's optimistic because in the end, I believe we will turn the corner. We will find a way out of this very dark time, these middle ages, and create the kind of future that people deserve. Chad: And I believe the book, it's really the journey to utopia. But you go through a dystopian era, pretty much, to get to utopia. That being said, let's talk about that. You talk about nobility and robots. I mean, really, in this case they become ... They're really the infrastructure which makes everything else happen while we sit back. And we get to focus on not work. The only work that we have to do is what we want to do. We have a basic income. So talk about that, and then talk about the levels of society. Obviously, you're still going to have the ultra rich. But are there several layers beyond that? How does that actually play out? Peter: Well, thanks to the universal basic income, I believe that we will have a largely classless society. Now before people jump off buildings and scream communism or socialism, I'm not suggesting that is all. I believe that the largest class will be a middle class, but it will be so large that I believe it will be renamed the omni class. It will cover all people except the very, very rich, a .1/10th of a percent of the population. But everybody else, thanks to the universal basic income, will have a reasonably what used to be described as a middle class standard of living. The difference is that instead of working for themselves, as we describe free agents today, they will be able to work on themselves. And what that means basically is that there are two things that differentiate people, and in my view will always make them superior to machines. Peter: And that is, A, they have a life. They can feel passion. They can be in love with a certain kind of occupation and be fulfilled by applying it in what they believe is meaningful endeavors. And secondly, they have a soul. Pugh did a research and found that over 80% of all Americans describe themselves as spiritual. Those are questions that machines will never understand, those big questions of where we come from and where we're going and how we relate to the cosmos. And answering those kinds of questions, or exploring them at least, is what provides people with tranquility. And those two outcomes, fulfillment and tranquility, I believe are what exalt the human spirit. They are what make us unique. I describe it as ennoblement. The difference being that I a democratic society, we're not going to be ennobled by somebody wearing a crown. But instead, we are going to be able to ennoble ourselves. Joel: And let's end the interview right there, Peter. That's a great sort of encapsulation of the book. We appreciate your time. We know you're a busy guy. Look, for those listening, if they want to read the book or learn more, where should they go? Peter: They can find it on amazon.com or the TAtech book store. Joel: Yep. And gain, that's Circa 2118. Peter, we appreciate it, man. Hope you come back and visit us again. And if nothing else, we'll see you at the next TAtech show. Peter: I look forward to it, guys. Thanks. Chad: Thanks. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Stella: Hi. This is Stella. Thanks for listening to the Cheese and Chad Podcast, at least that's what I call it. Anyway, make sure you subscribe on iTunes, that silly Android 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. 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: Come on, man. Chad: 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. 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: Woo. Joel: Engage better. Use Text to Hire from Nexxt, two Xs. Chad: Boo yah. Thanks to our partners at TAtech, the association for talent acquisition solutions. Remember to visit tatech.org. #Automation #Robots #Dystopia #Workforce #Education #Economy #TAtech #Nexxt

HAPPY HOLIDAY PEOPLE! This week on HR's Most Dangerous Podcast... - Ireland puts LinkedIn on the naughty list - Indeed EXIT PLANS are on everybody's wish list - Careerbuilder gifts us a new commercial, which cannot be returned - Google for Jobs unwraps it's newest roll-out in Japan - Jobable gives Joel a VR headset present and your employees want to party all the time, Eddie Murphy-style. Enjoy and be sure to leave sponsors JobAdX, Sovren and Canvas milk-and-cookies this year. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You’re listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It’s time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: I have nothing at all witty to say for the opening of this week's podcast. So, welcome to The Chad and Cheese Podcast coming at you from recruiting's underbelly. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, LinkedIn's been very naughty. Google for Jobs says Konichiwa Bitches, and we run down the top holiday perks employees are begging for this season. Spoiler alert, partying is number one. Shocking, Huh? Chad: Party. Joel: Eggnog corporate America will be right back after this word from JobADX. 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 in real time ad delivery through our programmatic job advertising exchange. When we started, we described JobADX as AdSense for jobs. JobAdX: Now, we offer much more with switchboard in 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 expire job ads via email. JobAdX: For more information about any of our ad solutions, please reach out to us at joinus@jobadx.com. That's, join us at jobadx.com. JobADX, the best ad tool providing smarter programmatic for all your advertising needs. Joel: I still love our intro. Is that wrong? Chad: No, no. You should love our intro. Joel: One of the best things you've ever done. Shout-outs. Chad: Yes. We do have a few shout-outs. Right out of the gates, I would like to thank our friend Steven Rothberg for illustrating the exact reason I had a problem differentiating between two lovely redheads. Chad: So, thanks to Louise and Faith for being so understanding. But, yeah, last week Joel pointed out my faux pas that I had on LinkedIn. Louise actually had a post out there talking about the Chad and Cheese pod, and I thanked Faith instead. I was on my mobile phone. The pictures are much smaller, and they're both very good looking redheads, so there you go. Joel: Remind me never to take marital advice from Steven Rothberg even after he’s been married forever. I know that if I compared my wife to another woman, I would not probably fare very well doing that. So, Steven, you're a bigger man, braver man than I, and you're married is obviously stronger than anyone else that I know Chad: Amen. Joel: Moonlighting in the news, and shout-outs. He talked to Dr. Jeff Garcia, who by the way, if you haven't listened to the interview that we did with him a while back about Crypto, I encourage you to do so, they partnered with Nextdoor. Joel: Most of you who live in suburban America know this site because all your neighbors are gossiping about everything in your neighborhood, and they're powering the small business advertising segment. They’re Nextdoor. So, congratulations to Moonlighting, who keeps chugging along. Chad: Very nice. From business to beer. I actually received more craft beer in the mail. So, thanks, again, to our listeners for sending me craft beer. I appreciate it. And we'll enjoy it. Joel: And you're still not disclosing who's sending you this beer. Chad: I'm going to go a little bit deeper into it. I didn't want to try to make myself look good or anything. But here's the thing, is that I'm in consulting, this person's in consulting. A big job came my way. I didn't want it. So what I did was I actually referred this person, pulled them in, they got it. They're incredibly happy. Chad: This is the reason why I'm getting beer. They’re a big listener, but they also wanted to say, “Thank you,” for me pushing business their way. So, I didn't want to go that deep into it. But since you keep fricking prodding me, there you have it. Joel: Well, we can't be nontransparent with our listeners. If we're going to call people out for it … So, this is great. So this is just some sales shit. Sales guys patting each other on the back, doing favors, right? That’s cool. I’m fine with that. Speaking of salespeople, I got to shout-out to Regi Davis. I think Regi or shark or something. Regi works at Pushnami. Regi exemplified to me some of the worst in sales this week. Chad: Really? Joel: I hate when this happens. So, a salesperson connects with you on LinkedIn. Fairly harmless, maybe loosely tied to the industry or … I do some marketing stuff, as well. I'm connected to marketing folks. Joel: So anyway, literally after connecting, I get a pitch, multiple sales pitches through messenger on LinkedIn, email, because now she has my email address, etc. It just really pisses me off, and I just wish more salespeople would realize, don't try to fuck me on the first date. Like, buy me a drink, tell me a story, like one of my shares- Chad: Court me. Joel: Comment on some stuff. Introduce yourself to me in some way and not just try to get in my pants the first hour that we connect on LinkedIn. I'm sure she's a perfectly fine human being, but for salespeople doing that, take note that a lot of people don't like it, including me. Chad: And there's another salesperson. There've been plenty of salespeople that are sending these too long, didn't read types of messages, which are just fucking horrible dude. But somebody sent me a video from Success Training Institute, simplysuccess.com. Chad: So, I'm giving everybody this so they can understand this turned me off from the standpoint of I just connected, I got a too long, didn't read type of message, which I didn't read, and then they sent me a video. This video was one of the worst videos I've ever seen in my life. From a marketing standpoint, I will never be using Simply Success or will I advocate or push a client their way. Joel: What was the video? Chad: It was two guys who were fake fighting, and they were fighting for your sales or something like that. It was horrible. It was pathetic. Joel: Some basic, standard, cheesy sales they get. Chad: It’s ridiculous. And last but not least, I actually took about 10 minutes one day to help a salesperson do a better job of meaningful outreach because it was so pathetic. I reached out to her and said, “Look, I didn't connect with you for you to sell me shit, although what you can do is you can start to cut and copyright your messages and start to be more meaningful about your outreach.” And we kind of went back and forth and then she tried to sell me and I was like, “Yeah, I don't need that. Have a nice day.” Joel: I would push our listeners to this guy named Gary Vaynerchuk, who most of our audience probably has heard of, who's a big advocate of getting to know you before asking for stuff. I think he wrote a book called Jab, Jab, Punch. I believe it articulated that. And he goes so far as looking at people's social media accounts, what they like on Twitter, and then connecting with them on something they like, like maybe sports or maybe whatever. Joel: So, take heed, salespeople, I know you're under a lot of pressure, but you're just not doing yourself any favors with this blasting of stuff on LinkedIn and everywhere else. I've got a shout-out to Alyssa Banks in Chicago, works for Wonderlic, friends of the show. She's a big, big fan, and I just wanted to say, Alyssa, thanks for listening. We appreciate it. Chad: Big shout-out, probably the guy who gets the most shout-outs other than maybe the job board doctor, Ed from frilly tweets, and I was correct, by the way, he would have had an aneurysm if the Eagles didn't beat the Giants, number one, and Cheesman, nobody cares about your fantasy football team. That was hurtful and funny. All in one tweet, Ed, thanks so much. Joel: I care about my fantasy team. So, fuck off, Ed. You’re just an angry Eagles fan because they suck it this year. Chad: It's the city of brotherly love, man. Come on. Joel: We failed to make another top 100 HR influencers list, so shout-out to whoever the hell produce that list. Chad: First off, I've never heard of this group in my life, and I love the groups who try to assemble these influencer groups just so that they can get their redistribution, right? So it's like, “Oh, look, they put my name on it, so now I'm going to put it into my distribution on twitter or whatever it is.” Never heard of this company before. If they put me in their top 100 list or 500 list, I wouldn't give a fuck because who are they in the first place? Joel: This is a total marketing thing. Let's put 100 bloggers on the list and hope that they blog out, “Hey, I made the 100 list.” There used to be a link bait thing, I don't know if you remember this, but companies used to send badges to bloggers saying that they were on the top 100 influencers or whatever it was, and then bloggers would put this badge on their blog and then that would be a backlink for SEO purposes and yada, yada, yada. People don’t blog as much anymore, and they don't do that as much anymore as they used to. Joel: So now, it's like, let's just go to buzz, whatever, and get a list of top recruiting HR bloggers, and then put out a blog post, and then tag them on our tweets, and then hope that they spread the word and get our company up. It's a pretty good strategy because it works. People are suckers for, “Yeah, I'm important,” me included. But yeah, they should've put us on the list because we are incredibly influential. Chad: If it's from a reputable organization that you've heard of before, it's like, “Oh, man, that's cool.” But I looked at this and I'm like, “Who gives a fuck?” Joel: We're still ready for the ZipRecruiter top 100 influencers list. Chad: All right. Continuing on, I've got a couple of quick shout-outs. Adam Godson, who was quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Awesome. Adam, we just did an interview with him. I think it was last month, one of our badass interviews, where we talked about automation, talk about nothing but technology. Chad: And he was quoted in this Wall Street Journal article talking specifically about that. And then Aida Fazylova, our favorite Russian from XOR, firing squad alumni, wrote a great article in entrepreneur magazines. So, a couple of Chad and Cheese alongs getting some love out there. Pretty awesome. Joel: Awesome. Let's get to the show. You've got some insider baseball. You and I have been around a while. We all have friends in the industry. None of them want to have their name attached to any of the information that they give us. But you had a lengthy conversation and want to share some of the insight that you got recently from a industry insider. Chad: It was more than one. I mean, since we've been talking about these Indeed industry policy updates, I've had plenty of people actually reach out to me and want to talk. So, this is kind of like a mish-mosh of all the different conversations that we've had. Chad: So I tried to make this as easy to get as possible, so stick with me. So we're going to give a little background on the Indeed staffing policy. If you need more background, listen to our earlier podcasts. First, all jobs from staffing companies will be pulled from Indeed's organic in January, citing search quality. Chad: Yeah. Everybody knows that's bullshit, and Indeed should've been straight with staffing companies and really said right out of the gate, “He, look, you've ridden on the free bus long enough. It’s our new model to charge you, and don't bullshit us. Don't bullshit.” And that's exactly what they did. They were bullshitting them. Chad: Only paid jobs by staffing companies will be displayed, and that kind of a kind of gave you an idea. It was like, “Hey, your jobs aren't good enough. They’re bad search quality, although if you pay us, we'll go ahead and we'll put those in the paid section.” Joel: And Indeed defends, they’re going to make a butt load of money. Chad: In my personal thoughts on this, Indeed saw an opportunity years ago to use this leverage to ring more cash out of staffing companies, and some of these companies I talked to paid two to three to five times more. So, yeah, I think it's one of those things where it's a short-term asshole move, no question, but they got more money out of it. Chad: So, to all staffing companies, last but not least, if this move surprised you, you haven't been paying attention. And remember, it was free advertising in the first place. Joel: Formulate that exit strategy. Chad: Yeah. Well, and that's the thing, is that most of the companies that I talked to and the ones that didn't have an exit strategy beforehand re really focusing on it now. So several of the companies that I talked to are actually planning to first step away from Indeed PPC. Chad: They've seen the writing on the wall, they've tested, they've scaled other vendors, and as a matter of fact, a couple of direct employers I spoke with are actually pulling together a group so that group of employers can share best practices on how to more effectively get the fuck away from Indeed. Joel: And have you come around to Indeed becoming more of an active player in staffing? Chad: A couple of the people that I talked to said there's really no evidence other than that's what they feel like they have all the parts to jump into staffing. I had a couple of really deep conversations about it and said, “Hey, look, CareerBuilder tried it, Monsters tried it, still trying it, right?” But they can't crack into it because, if you take a look at CareerBuilder, and we'll talk about them a little bit later, but if you take a look at CareerBuilder, they're doing so much. And they don't do anything incredibly well other than maybe background check shit. I don't know. Joel: They're really good at giving us content for the podcast. Chad: Oh, that's good. Yeah. They're good for the El Chappers of the world. But really, at the end of the day, this comes down to companies are just extremely frustrated, and they're looking for an exit strategy. Joel: I just find echoes of people wanting to bounce out of Monster and CareerBuilder ten years ago. Chad: That was actually said several occasions. Joel: Yeah. And the funny thing is Indeed was the exit strategy, ten years ago. Now, everyone's trying to exit out of Indeed. Chad: Yep, yep. So then we start talking about talent networks. So, that's the next policy. And again, listen to our earlier pods. We go deep into this. So if you're using a platform to collect data before the candidate hits the applicant tracking system, Indeed calls that a talent network, and they could yank your jobs from Indeed. Chad: So, the first thing, every single customer I talked to was pissed off about this. My most important question was, so how does this make you feel, seriously? And pretty much all said the same thing. Who the hell is Indeed to tell us, who are paying customers, how to do business and what types of platforms to use? I mean, high frustration from everybody I spoke with. Chad: So, seeing all these different moves from Indeed, I think, really pumped up the search quality or frustration for an exit strategy. And that was parapraxis there because I'm getting ready to talk about the ex-googlers who are leading the search quality team. And so, it seems as if these individuals, for the talent network piece, had no clue what problem they were actually solving for candidates or clients. The only problem they cared about was an Indeed problem. Chad: So, they weren't looking for about the ramifications for candidates and customers, they were only trying to do something that was focused on search quality and they didn't give a shit about downstream. Joel: How do you think those year-end customer touch base calls are going on Indeed this year? Chad: I know how they're going. They don't care. They don't care. Literally, it's almost like, “We're Indeed, this is what it is.” I mean, companies are coming in who spent millions of dollars with Indeed over the years and they're being treated like they just stepped in off the street and they've never met them before. Joel: We're doomed to repeat the history that we forget. Chad: Yep. Yep. So other comments about other companies, Zip was working better than most at this point. Zip was actually one of the big cogs in most of the exit strategies. Conversations with product people were incredibly exciting. AI focused tons of cash being spent. I mean, there's just momentum happening right now. And the biggest thing is they treat customers right. Everybody that I talked to who’s using Zip says they're treating customers right. Joel: That’s great. By the way, there's a little tease. There’s some big news coming out of ZipRecruiter next week, but I'm sure we'll be talking about on next week's show. But if you read my stuff ere.net, I should have something over there next week if you want to jump the gun, but get our opinion on the podcast. Chad: Last but not least, it seems as if CareerBuilder is working fine. People are actually … They're like, you know … Joel: These are our customers saying this? Chad: Yeah. It’s like, we're getting really good ROI. But CareerBuilder's raising prices without upgrading product, which is not on par with the rest of the industry. So, it's like a stale product, but they're trying to ask more from it. And the ROI that they're saying doesn't justify any type of raising of prices. Chad: So that's kind of normal, end of year, let's see if we can get money out of them. But I think what CareerBuilder is trying to do is they're trying to push people to background check and those types of things. The new CEO, from what I've been told, is actually diverted most of the R&D dollars to the background check product. Chad: The R&D engineers are pretty much gone for the most part. Most customers are like, “What are they actually selling over there? What are they doing over there?” Joel: And background checks aren't exactly the most profitable business, but they do have a background check company that they can pimp. Chad: More exciting. Joel: It's fine that you mentioned CareerBuilder. I don’t know if you’re ready to jump to their new app or not, but they’re alive. They’ve sort of been dead for a while and they’ve laid off people, and had a new CEO, and bought El Chapo and all this stuff. But they're finally like, things are coming back to life. And they have a new ad, which we actually have the audio from, if you'd like to take a lesson and then we can comment either during the ad and/or after the ad, or both, or however we want to do that. Chad: Let's do both. Let’s do it. Joel: All right. CareerBuilder's new ad in three, two. Porn music. CB ADVERT: I was working the same job for a few years. I had a degree and some experience, but no career. CB ADVERT: I came to career builder because it's a purpose-driven company. I wanted to change how people think about work. My team spent a lot of time and money posting jobs. We would get a flood of resumes, but finding the right person was nearly impossible. My budget has to stretch, but my time can't. CB ADVERT: I was ready to make my mark, but I didn't know how. CB ADVERT: Using technology to solve problems, that's my job. And I was tired of using 12 vendors. Then I learned that career builder has everything, data to help us plan, [crosstalk 00:20:43]a single source candidates, marketing tools to engage them, and the fastest back on screening on the market. So we made the switch. Chad: There it is. CB ADVERT: I opened the career builder app and found an awesome job. It even built a resume for me with skills I didn't know I had. I applied with attack. CB ADVERT: It isn't what we do, it's what we do for people. Now, we get the right person faster. It's not just efficient, it's smart. We're making work, work better. CB ADVERT: And I start on Monday. CareerBuilder, Work can Work. Joel: Clever. Chad: I've seen, not this commercial, but a version of this commercial on MSNBC a few times. And word from CareerBuilder is that, they're just getting started. So there's going to be more of this happening in January. The ad itself, I think , it's kind of sterile, it's kind of blunt, but they are pushing more of their solution set per se. So, that's interesting. Joel: Yep. So I have a few takeaways. It's interesting that they would combine three different demos in one ad. So, you have the job seeker, who, apparently, is an actual CareerBuilder user, although he sounds very, not like actual person. He sounds very scripted. Joel: To me, the best was the actual employee. Sarah, Amanda, I forget her name, she comes off as very good. I think, in the ad, the comic relief in this ad for me is they have an actor playing an HR person and the actual ad has a disclaimer at the bottom saying, “This is not an actual HR person or this is not an actual customer,” but it's something that a customer would say, which to me is, could you really not get an actual employer to come on the add to talk about their experience. Joel: So, to me, that was kind of funny. The actor was very funny that they did that. And then, yeah, pushing, they do everything. They’re trying to be an end to end platform. We're going to take on Google, LinkedIn, and all the other big platforms. So, we'll see. Joel: I didn't get much out of the ad outside of the person actually works at CareerBuilder sounds like they’re with it. The job seeker was, I could take that or leave it, and then the HR person, that was totally hilarious because it was an actor, and they told you it was an actor. Chad: If our customers loved us, they'd say this. Joel: Well, yeah. I mean, there are plenty word data's ads where you know they're not HR people but they're talking about HR stuff and like we failed. So, it's just kinda funny. If you're going to do that, just get a real customer, like you’re CareerBuilder. You have tons of customers, right? Get one of them and the company people know and put them on the ad. Chad: Yeah. And I don't want to hear that you couldn't find one because of all the legal bullshit, blah, blah blah. Joel: It's total bullshit. And how many companies wouldn't love to have their name on a national ad campaign and have somebody actual at the company. Anyway, but yeah, CareerBuilder’s alive. Hopefully, we'll see more of them because we love talking about them in the new year. That's all I got from the ad. You got anything else? Chad: No. We'll see what they have. If they go from end to end and then they continue to try the end to end play, that's wonderful. But the only problem with that is that they're not going to do anything incredibly well. Joel: I didn't love that the job secret talks about mobile and didn't talk about the augmented reality feature. I found my job on my mobile phone. I just pointed downtown and found jobs. Anyway … Chad: I was walking downtown and I-. Joel: If you go to their YouTube channel, there's a minute and a half video of just the mobile, and it talks about the augmented reality stuff, which is amusing, to say the least. Chad: It's a waste. Joel: Let's talk about one of our favorite companies, and sponsor of the show, Canvas. Let's hear a word from them, and we'll talk about Google for Jobs on LinkedIn. Chad: Do it. 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 spot 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. Chad: Can't imagine a company right now, and if you are one of those listening, smack yourself, who is not using some type of messaging, it's not just something that you have to do now. It's something that's going to be a part of your process and flow for the rest of pretty much your career, period. Joel: Grand predictions, which by the way, if you haven’t read Circa 2118 by Peter Weddle, make sure you pick that up at Amazon. We did An interview with him this week. That's coming out soon. Well, Chad, if you want to make a statement with your neighbor, take your dog to take a dump in their backyard. Joel: To me, the news that Google for Jobs has launched in Japan, had some sort of similarities to that in that Indeed's parent company Recruit Holdings is headquartered in Japan. So, what better way to make a statement to your competition than to open up shop in the home country of your owning company? Chad: Oh, yeah. Now, that's legit. And I think the irony, there's two pieces of irony here. First and foremost, you telling people to pick the book up, Circa 2118 and read it, that's irony. And then also, obviously, Google for Jobs getting into this in Japan, and given Recruit Holding’s a big fuck you. Joel: Yeah, thanks for the call out there. Can I get a mini-side rant real quick? I hate my internet brain. You and I have been on the internet roughly half of our lives, and I cannot focus and just slow down and read like I used to. Joel: I don't know if you're the same way or others are out there or something, but I find the internet has screwed my brain up, and I don't think I'll ever get it back. So, anyway, back to the show. Google for Jobs is in Japan now. They're doing a little bit differently. They're not partnering with recruitment sites or job boards like they are in other countries. They're collaborating with Japan's number one applicant tracking system, a company called HR Solutions, I guess. Joel: So, Japan is kind of weird, right? I'm not an expert on the country and recruiting, but I know that it's much different than the rest of the world. So Google for Jobs had to accommodate the cultural needs of that country to sort of launch the business, which says to me it's a lot tougher to launch in Japan. So, good for them on taking the extra effort to launch in that country. Chad: Yeah. I'm not sure from a regulation standpoint and also antitrust what they have to deal with. I mean, it took a while to be able to get up and running in the UK, just from an antitrust standpoint. They needed to think about that here in the US, you know, becoming a “monopoly” and pushing all the job boards out. Chad: So, including the job boards in Google for Jobs as part of the process, it's almost like a deathmatch on Google for Jobs, who has a better experience, who doesn't have drop off rates, those types of things. Chad: So, they're actually pushing, I think, our industry here in the US to do better from a job site standpoint, but in Japan, they might not have to deal with that. I'm not really sure. So they're just going direct to the original content because it's all in the applicant tracking system. So, there you have it. Joel: I think it's also significant because Japan is, I'm pretty sure, still a top five economy in the world, so it puts them in a very active economy, where there a lot of money to be made, a lot of things that are happening. Chad: GDP wise, top 10 and- Joel: Is it five or 10? I’m pretty sure it’s five. Chad: Oh, yeah, might be top five. I just know it stopped in for a fact that I'm just not sure if it's top five. And I think it sends a signal to the Recruit Holdings of the world to the just that they're going to be everywhere. And this isn't going to be a surprise to Indeed or Recruit Holdings, or anything like that. Chad: But I do like how they are doing business differently in Japan. I'm going to have to do a little bit more research on that to see why, because I would assume Japan has job boards too. So, why not also partner with them? Maybe they will. Who knows? Joel: Well, the easy thing to do would have been to be like, “hey, it’s different. You know, it’s not in our template, it’s not how we scale, so let’s just not deal with your pain right now.” The fact that they did the extra mile or made concessions because of the market says that they continue to be very serious about employment and making big waves in this industry. Chad: Yeah. But that's actually easier. If you're going directly to applicant tracking systems, you have less to actually index. You get feeds directly from an ATS, who represents … I mean the original content for hundreds of thousands of companies, and it makes it easier. Chad: So, you don't have to take more feeds from all of these different vendors, you take less feeds you know that it's original content. So, I don't know. Again, I have to do a little bit more research on the Japan side listeners. If you're out there and you know more, frickin ping us, man. We’d love to hear it. Joel: Any experts in the Japanese market hit us up at chadcheese.com. Going on to another mega company in our space, LinkedIn has been bad. What they’d do to- Chad: Ireland’s data protection commission, they had complaints, and they conducted and concluded an investigation of Microsoft owns LinkedIn, originally prompting a complaint in 2017 where LinkedIn's practices regarding people who were not members of the social network. Chad: So what they were doing is 18 million emails addresses of individuals who are not LinkedIn members, they targeted them. So, from our standpoint, that's pretty common practice, right? Joel: Yeah. For those that don't know, you can, on companies or platforms like Facebook, you can go in and plug-in email addresses of your customers, for example, and submit ads and they'll still see ads from your company. However, how did they get those emails, I think, is in question. Chad: Yeah, and it's pretty ironic because we don't know where they got the emails, first and foremost. They probably bought them from somebody and then they matched them up against their database, the database that they don't want anybody having access to. Chad: They don't want companies coming in and playing off their data because they want to focus on data privacy for their users. Although, they want to be able to flip the script and do business pretty much the same way everybody else is and not abide by those data protection laws. So, this is against GDPR, and they got slapped on the wrist by it. They were lucky they were caught before everything really went into enforcement. Joel: Yeah. And to their credit, they did take out the emails or did whatever with them. They're not continuing to run that campaign. Now, the irony in all this is how protective LinkedIn is of their profiles and not letting other people access profile data and they're super wigged out by that and the high Q case, etc. So, the fact that they got pinched for this is ironic and humorous, to say the least. Chad: It's definitely funny. This is what happens. And you think of the whole, yeah, they made concessions. It's because they were caught. That's why they're making concessions, and they were really just in the asking for forgiveness instead of permission mode. Joel: Yeah. Pretty much every business in our industry is going to be affected by privacy laws and things like this. So, it'll be a story that continues through 2019. Chad: yep. In 2020, even more, strict laws go into effect in California. So, if you are US-based and you dropped all your profiles from Europe because of GDPR in 2020, it's not going to matter because if you're going to do business in California, pretty much the US, it's gonna happen everywhere. You better have your shit together and have it tight. Joel: I'm going back to cali, cali, cali. Let's hear from Sovren, and we'll close out the show with some VR and some holiday perks. Chad: Oh, my god. 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, received match results that provide candidate scored by fit to job and just as importantly, the jobs fit to the candidate, make faster and better placements. Sovren: Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's sovren.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates like a human. Sovren, Sovren so human. You'll want to take it to dinner. Chad: Really looking forward to going down to Austin later 2019 for TA tech. In meeting, all of the Sovren west world androids. I'm looking forward to that. I can't wait. It's going to be a fun time. Joel: Austin is fun time without anybody. Companies being there, it'll be additionally fun with Sovren and the gang, who, by the way, if you're an HR tech, they are the ones passing out free bourbon shots to everybody. Tom, here's your lucky day. You get to hate on a VR company. Go. Chad: Yeah, java bowl, mail it and immerse your candidates in your experience. So, this thing is like a cardboard kind of a setup. The company mails it to you, and what you do is you download the app at that point, or go to a video, one of the two things, and then you put your phone in this cardboard VR headset thing. Chad: You put it up to your face and you are immersed in a VR tour of a company or you can go into gamification mode, whatever the company's done through this app. But I thought that this was perfect for you because we were talking about how the holidays are coming, VR is all out there. I just think we look like a bunch of idiots with these things plastered on our faces. Joel: To me, this is a little bit like Ai. Everyone says something as AI but not really, but saying if they AI is pretty cool. This is a VR. Sure. But to me, it's more like, do you remember the 70s, you have that little viewfinder and you had that little disk thing? Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: And then you clicked it and you went to another picture then you put it up to your face. To me, this is like a new version of that. You put this thing on and then it shows you a video basically from your phone. I don't see this thing being very interactive. I can't talk to someone else. I can't interact with people. I don't know if this is true VR. Joel: I think you can pitch it as VR, but is it really virtual reality? I don't know. It looks more like put your phone up to your face and watch a video. The other thing that reminded me of this is, there was a time when not every computer had a webcam or camera on it. And, there was a company back in the day that they would actually send webcams to the candidates that were branded with the logo of the company- Chad: Green job interview. Joel: It was at the company? I don’t know, a couple of them did it. And then you would have a little keepsake from the company in the form of webcam and then you would do a video interview with the webcam that the company sent you. Joel: So if at some point cameras on computers become the same as they are now, where nobody buys a webcam anymore because all the computers have cameras on them, if VR becomes as ubiquitous as that, then I think VR has a real place in recruitment. Joel: You and I can argue whether VR will ever hit that plateau. But for now, this is a pretty ridiculous company. It’s great to brand yourself as the VR company and hope that VR really takes off. But if VR does not take off, these guys won't be around for much longer. Chad: Awesome, on the viewfinder, by the way, I had one. I loved it. That was amazing. But yeah, I mean, we saw the video interview. The video interview company more was a software company, but they needed everybody to have a webcam so they just send them out in the mail. So, they were ready for the virtual interview before anybody else was. Joel: I guess they never said that if this company was actually sending out Oculus Rift to people, then there'd be something, but the fact that they're setting a cardboard, basically, masked to people is not the same as sending … because people could actually use these webcams that were sent by companies. And that was actually the cool thing but they're not going to sit at home with this cardboard face mask and use VR, they actually have to have real VR systems. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. So the Oculus, and I haven't put it on my face, and I'm sure I'll check it out when I hit best buy or something like that. But, I mean, it's a piece of rubber that you're strapping to your face. You still look like an idiot. I don't care. Joel: Fair enough, man. We disagree on VR. We’ll see what happens, but we can probably agree on some of the perks that have been listed. They have six here. The holiday season is here. Companies are throwing parties. They're giving away money like trips and all these things. So, Spherion did a survey of a thousand or so of their customers to find out what are the top holiday perks that employees are begging for this year. So, are you ready for the list? Chad: Yes. Bring it. Joel: You want to go from top to bottom or bottom to top? Chad: Bottom to top. Joel: Okay, let's do that. All right. 18% gift exchange. The secret Santas. Yeah, we love that. Another 18%. We've got a tie at the bottom. Company paid holiday meal. Love that. That catering from QDOBA coming in at 20%. 22%, were moving up. Office closure between Christmas and new year's day. Now, I’d like to get on board on that. Chad: Yeah. From a sales standpoint, that shit ain't gonna happen. Joel: We'll let the engineers go home for a while, except a few people that can keep the lights on. We're moving up to 26% holiday bonus. Chad: We can take that. Joel: Some people get pissed off if they don't get a little buddy at holiday time. 28% wanted extra time off. Okay, good. Few weeks, regular, like give me another week or something. I guess that'd be a nice perk. And number one, we don't have a drum roll sound bite, but if we did, we could use it, holiday party at 36%. Chad: Holiday parties suckers. That's right. Joel: I love that that’s above time off and more money. Like, let me party. Let me get into that trouble. That sounds like a good idea. Chad: It’s not a great idea. The worst things are office parties. You get bruised up and you do stupid shit around people that you shouldn't be doing stupid shit. Or you end up hooking up with people. I mean, it's not a good idea. Joel: Yeah. There aren't many great things that can happen from holiday parties, but there are a lot of bad things that can happen from holiday parties. I suspect in the #MeToo era a lot of parties aren't even happening because companies don't want to go down that road, which is probably a good idea. Give them that $50 gift card to Best Buy instead. Chad: Yeah, and if you have any great holiday party stories, send them our way. We'd love to hear them. Joel: And we’d love pictures as well or video. Video’s even better. Send it our way at chadcheese.com. Chad: Oh, I wonder if CareerBuilder is having El Chapo at their Christmas party. Joel: I'm going to say that's a long shot. And then I'm going to say, but 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 #Indeed #Careerbuilder #Linkedn #GoogleforJobs #Holiday #Jobable

CHATBOTS, CHATBOTS, MUTHA F&%$IN' CHATBOTS!! Joel and I are always talking about the latest and greatest chatbots so we thought we'd bring in an expert. Someone who has flown from coast-to-coast in search of a chatbot, NO, not just a chatbot but several chatbots which could serve her client's needs. Welcome Quincy Valencia, Head of Innovation and Solution Architecture from Alexander Mann Solutions. It's another Uncommon EXCLUSIVE, matching you with only the best Chad & Cheese Podcasts. Get it? They're a AI candidate matching company you idiot! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions connects jobseekers with disabilities with employers who value diversity and inclusion. Chad: Say hello to the easiest way to find INTERESTED and QUALIFIED CANDIDATES. Joel: You mean Uncommon's automated sourcing that turns passive candidates into interested and qualified applications? Chad: Yup, Uncommon automation helps recruiters cut their sourcing time by 75%. Joel: 75%! That sounds like magic or something... Chad: Close, it's called auto-ma-tion... and it's simple feed or post your jobs into Uncommon, the platform identifies your job requirements and in seconds Uncommon uses those requirements to search over 150 million candidate profiles and pull back only candidates who meet those requirements. Joel: Plus you can connect your email and Uncommon will provide automated outreach with your customized messages to activate those passive candidates. Chad: Even better, Uncommon shows exactly how the candidates meet all of the job requirements with a side-by-side comparison view against your job requirements. Joel: Which means you won't be asking yourself "What in the Hell is this candidate doing here?" Chad: No, but you will be asking yourself "Where has Uncommon been all my life..." Joel: Seriously, Uncommon is the easiest way to find qualified candidates, active or passive. Chad: Visit Uncommon.co, use discount code CHADCHEESE for 20% off Joel: 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 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: It's an exclusive show. Chad: Chatbots, chatbots, motherfucking chatbots. Joel: Not Chad bots, but chatbots. Nobody wants a Chad bot, that's for goddamn sure. Chad: Everybody wants a Chad bot, asshole. Chad: Today on The Chad & Cheese Podcast, we have Quincy Valencia, from Alexander Mann Solutions. I believe her title is Queen of Chatbots. Quincy? Quincy: Indeed. That is absolutely my title. It's new. This will be new to my company when they hear it, but I'm the self-named Queen of Chatbots. Thanks for having me, guys. Chad: Not self-named, we named you. Quincy: That's true. Chad: You've been bestowed upon by- Quincy: Thanks. Chad: So fresh from Dublin. What the hell were you doing in Dublin? Quincy: Yeah, we had about 130 of the senior leadership for Alexander Mann Solutions, getting together in Dublin, talking about how we're going to address all problems, talent-related, before they even emerge in the marketplace. It's an exciting time. Joel: And what is Alexander Mann for those who don't know. Quincy: Alexander Mann Solutions is literally the global leader in RPO solutions as designated by our clients in the latest HRO Today Baker's Dozen, we do have the number one ranking there, globally and also an EMEA and APAC, so go us. Joel: Is that the pay-to-play Baker's Dozen? Quincy: No, it is not the pay-to-play Baker's Dozen. Joel: Okay. Quincy: Stop that, it's not true. It comes straight from our clients. Joel: Do we remember the '80s show, Quincy M,D,? What was the name of that show? Quincy: It was M.E., actually. Joel: Yeah. Was it a source of pain for you growing up? Quincy: No, actually, it's because I'm 110 years old, I actually predated Quincy M.E., a little bit. Not as much as Chad predated him, but a little bit. Chad: Oh, yeah. Me being one day older than Joel, I guess we're just both old asses. Joel: All right. Moving on, moving on. Quincy: Before we move on, I just want to say, I'd actually be a huge fan of a Chad bot, over a chatbot, because then maybe we can turn him off. Chad: Oh, that's not cool. See this is why- Quincy: Oh, you're so sensitive. Chad: This is why we bring Quincy on to the show. We had Adam, Adam Godson who's a very close friend of Quincy's and she's like- Quincy: He is. Chad: ... she's like, "What the fuck. Why wouldn't you bring the Queen of Chatbots on?" I was like, "You know what? That's probably a good idea. We should probably do that." Joel: Queen of Chatbots. Chad: It really is true. It's true. Joel: That's on her LinkedIn profile, by the way. Quincy: I'm the Queen of all bots by the way, not just chatbots. Chad: Oh, all bots. I like that. Quincy: I just elevated myself there. Chad: So we're talking about chatbots today and this is going to be a very broad discussion. Chad: But, first off, I want you to tell the story of why you have so much deep knowledge when it comes to bots. Quincy: Yeah, sure thing. We at Alexander Mann Solutions specifically, are quite the innovators when it comes to automation and artificial intelligence in a process. In a very British sort of way, we do it quietly, but we get things done. So even internally, we don't toot our own horns much. We actually have our own family, we have about 20 different bots in use. And as we look to add this expertise knowledge to our clients to help make their processes better, we just in and develop it and do it our own. So we've developed our own full family of bots using both internal developers and partnering with key industry experts out there to help us do that. Quincy: As we look further, first of all, the world of the applicant tracking system is going to go by the wayside at some point in time. And if we look at the entire ... yeah, it is. Joel: Can you say that again? Quincy: Yes, the world of applicant tracking systems is not long for this world. Because, it's typically a horrible user experience, in almost every case. So when we're working out there to look at how do we improve the experience for all stakeholders in the process, so not just your candidates, but your hiring managers, your recruiters, if you have them, your talent acquisition leadership. We think that we can do that with AI and that brought us to the chatbot story. And I've been living in that world now for quite some time looking at how we use that, how can we shift the paradigm of what people think of as a chatbot into something that's actually going to be an extraordinary experience for our clients and their users. Joel: I feel like I just watched a Netflix trailer. Like I'm ready to dive into this, I'm going to go. Quincy: Sweet. Chad: Let's do it. Joel: She just destroyed ATSs, like let's go. Chad: I love it. I love it. Okay, since we've gotten so deep, so fast, I'm going ask a very deep question. What's up with all the female naming with chatbots? Quincy: Gee, I don't know. Actually, I think it's based on the patriarchy, to be honest with you, everybody thinks of HR as a girl. I think that's what they're doing, so I think that's where it comes from. Chad: You don't think it has to do with women are actually easier to talk to and man are just assholes and they don't listen in the first place? Quincy: I mean, while that's true in some cases, I don't think that's where it came from. I think people, they think of HR, and they think of recruiting, and historically they think of women. I think that's where it comes from. I also think that it's mostly men naming these chatbots and they prefer to name it a girl name. But that's my opinion. Joel: I'm going to go even more elementary than this. Some of our listeners will not know what a chatbot is. Is it that little widget on websites? Is it text messaging? I want to start with your definition of what a chatbot is, in particular when it pertains to recruiting. Quincy: Yeah, it's a great question. I think if you look the core and the start of a chatbot, it is going to be, people will think of it as that little widget that pops up when you go somewhere. In the recruiting world, it'll be on somebody's career site, it may be when you go out to buy a new mattress and a little chatbot comes up to help take you through the process. But really, it's an artificial intelligent assistant that functions through natural language processing that has answers to some of your basic questions. Quincy: And in the recruiting world, it could be, "What's it like to work there? What are the hours? Can I have visible tattoos and work there," to help get through the process in a way that's 24/7 available. And that, frankly, frees up some of your recruiters and your other higher value human assets to do more meaningful and deeper work. Chad: Is that why you have like 20 different chatbots that you guys are working with? You're talking about backend, like onboarding, and even beyond that, employee engagement chatbots, talking about candidate engagement chatbots. And you're also talking about recruiter assistant types of chatbots. Is that why we need so many of these things? Quincy: Well, I think you just hit the nail on the head. If you go, and I've spent quite a bit of time with a lot of the founders and CEOs of a lot of these different bot system, and if you say, "So why is your chatbot different than the other," they faint and they vomit a little bit, and they cringe because none of them, they don't want to be seen as a chatbot. That's an outsider's view of what they do. It's not just about chats, not just about help desk functionality. It really is about looking at the process, the entire recruiting and talent life cycle end-to-end and seeing how we can enhance that experience and really, again, add value to your process overall. So calling them a chatbot at this point is almost a misnomer. Almost none of them are simply a chatbot. Chad: So where are your clients looking for chatbots first, or do they not even know? Is it all just this kind of noise that everybody's like, "Hey, I need to talk about chatbots," and they have no fucking clue what they're talking about, whether it's front end, whether it's back end, whether it's even process methodology pieces. Joel: Yeah, remember in March, Chad, in Dublin where, I forget who it was, said, "Companies are coming to them saying, we need a chatbot," and they say, "Why do you need a chatbot." And they say, "Well, we just need a chatbot because it's the hot new thing." Are we still at that point, or are people more evolved? Quincy: Depends who you're talking to, it's a little bit of both. If I had a dime for every time I've walked into a client or a prospect and they've said, "How do we put some of this AI stuff into our process," I'd be a pretty rich woman. It's not about adding a chatbot or any sort AI to the process. If you're starting with that question, you're starting in the wrong spot. It's, "Let's look at your ...", again, it's your end-to-end talent solution and see what the process is, where we can enhance it, where we can really add value and then we'll determine if some sort an AI assistant is the appropriate mechanism to do that. Quincy: Some of the companies out there are quite sophisticated and they've already done it. They started where the commencement of chatbots was to begin with, which is with, "Let's put a help chatbot on the front so people can get their basic questions about a company answered," and then had some modicum of success there. And then it moved to, "Let's help them figure out, ask questions about the job specifically," and then, "Let's move into prescreens." So as it evolves, at further spots along this process as others, but starts there and then ends up going all the way through. Like Chad just said, "Let's help with onboarding. Let's go all the way through to employee engagement once they're on board." Joel: Are there any level companies that chatbots just aren't for, or does every company have ... should be investigating this? Quincy: Yeah, that's a really great question. I haven't thought of it that way before. I think it depends on what it is you're going to use it for. Again, if it's just chat up front and it's just help desk, I think there's tremendous ability to put that in and use it for most size and scope company, probably the bigger, the better where you have more questions coming in. You're freeing up, again, more resources to do it. Maybe the smallest companies- Joel: And high frequency. Quincy: Yeah, so maybe the smallest companies out there don't have it in a straight chat, stereotypical chatbot, but I would also argue that it could help to, for those who don't have a recruiting department at all, or a talent department at all, or you're depending on generalists to handle the entire process and they have so much on their plate, they can't do it. I think you could really use that to enhance the process, again, all the way through where currently, it may not be the best. Chad: I think we're always talking chatbot, chatbot, chatbot, but companies really should be focusing on process, process, process. And what parts of the process can be actually lifted or supported by using this type of technology, whatever type of technology it might be. Is that where you're trying to turn their heads and say, "Look, we've got to get deep into your process?" Because in most cases, like you're talking about with applicant tracking systems, in some cases, not even applicant tracking systems fault because the companies are using 1990s process methodologies that they used before they actually bought an applicant tracking system. Then they forced them into this antiquated bullshit process. Is that really like the base, the essence of where these companies need to start? Quincy: It is. You totally hit the nail on the head. For the record, I'm not anti ATS, they serve their purposes. They're certainly great systems of record, compliance is a thing, whether we want it to be or not, and they help companies there. But if you do what you said, Chad, which is shove in any sort of technology, whether it's a bot, whether it's ATS, whatever it is, and say, you keep your antiquated process exactly as it today and let's conform the technology to support our antiquated process, you're still going to have a bad process. Now you have the added complexity of technology that may or may not be able to support exactly what you're trying to do. Let's look at what you're doing. Quincy: Let's look at the experience first and then put in humans at the right spot where it's going to most enhance it and put in technology where it's going to most enhance that experience. And it's the same, you started with ATS, it's the same thing for automation, and certainly for these bots that are coming in, the chatbots. So let's look beyond just the, "Can we take it through ...", let me back up. If you talk to, I'm not even going to say who it is, if you talk to people who are heads of these companies. As I said before, if you call them chatbot, they fall on the floor. They started there because that's where their users started. But they're taking that journey so far beyond just the up front chat. Quincy: How can we really manage the entire application process? First and foremost, the companies are getting what they need from these candidates, but they're getting it in a more timely manner, they're bringing candidates in faster, the conversion rates are so much higher. If you look at a typical conversion rate today, the drop off rate between bringing a candidate in, to who actually completes the prescreen or application process, drop off sits at about 59% in general. And when you start adding in a way that they can actually engage and not feel like they have to take a shot of whiskey and put aside four hours the night before they start looking for a job, you're going to have a better experience. You're going to have greater results, really is the bottom line there. Quincy: Let's look at it. Ask the right questions, look thoroughly and completely through your entire process, and think outside the box. How can we go, which I hate that phrase, and I can't believe I just used it, but they're limited today in a lot cases by the imagination of the user and buyer. And let's look at ... and it's because of the paradigm of, "We absolutely have to have humans at this point of the process." As yourself why. Maybe you do, but what is it doing there? So how can you use a, we'll still call it a chatbot since that's the name of the show, to make it better across the board from end-to-end. Joel: I'd like to take it a little step further. Let's play make believe. I'm an employer, I know this chatbot thing is happening, I'm new to the game. I have a list of a dozen that I need to talk to. What are the questions, what are the hard questions that an employer should be asking these chatbots to make sure that they're selecting the best one for them? Quincy: That's the right question to be asking. Before you even engage, you look at your process, you determine you can add in a chatbot somewhere to enhance it, and look and see what parts of the process that you think you want to enhance, and you're going to ask the different providers if they can do that and do they have capability in that area. It starts from, what channels do you support? Is it just that little icon on the screen at the front or can my candidates engage through text or through WhatsApp or through WeChat or Facebook Messenger? Because the key, especially in this market today, is engaging candidates where they are and in a way that's going to be most accessible and most pleasing to them. Quincy: You have to make sure that it's a multi channel application first and foremost. You have to look at their integration capabilities, do they have [ATIs 00:14:43], what sort are they and how does that work with your current tech staff. Because at some point, you are going to have to get information, again for compliance purposes, but certainly for reporting analytics from one system to another. What languages do they support if that's applicable to you. And when they say what languages they support, is it just a Google translator or do they really have some more in-depth and complete of local nuanced language capability or is it just Google Translate, which is a problem. Quincy: I have a funny story about that if I could, really quick, to show why that's so important. A hundred years ago, I worked for a company that I won't name, but it was a large home improvement retailer and there was a huge- Chad: It sounds like Home Depot. Go ahead. Quincy: It does sound like that. There was a campaign to pursue bilingual candidates, specifically Spanish speaking. Our amazing employment branding team, which they were by the way, I went through and they had all these signs made up. They were doing local signage and giant banners to hang in the front of the building. And the words that they put out there, about five minutes after the banners were hung, the corporate office's phone started ringing, it was incredibly offensive apparently. The words they used for [foreign language 00:15:53] which is, "We're hiring," but in certain countries and areas and certain dialect, it's soliciting as in, the lady of the night soliciting. And you don't want to be the poor person who has to go in front of your CEO and explain to them why that's what you're advertising, really not on brand for that particular company. Like I said, it's really important to make sure you understand their language capability and whether that's important to you and where they're driving it. Joel: How about for the cost conscious employers, is there a chatbot? Are there variations in price where you'd want someone to send someone for the cost conscious employer? Quincy: Are there what? Say that again? Joel: Cheap. They're looking for a deal. They're cheap. Let's be honest about it. They don't want to spend a lot of money, they've heard these things are commoditized anyway. Where would you send them for lower level pricing versus maybe higher level gold level pricing? Quincy: Plenty of them because you get what you pay for. If really all you want is a front level, "Can you answer a few questions," any of them can do that for you. That's not going to be their bread and butter and why they're hiring. If you ask that question, "We want X, can you do that," and if it's, "Yes," I'm sure you can all get a price point of what you want. But understand that doing that isn't necessarily going to give you the outcome and results that you need. Sure, you need the cost, but you need, what's the user interface? What's the admin control capability? What are your analytics capabilities? What data are you collecting and how can you track it? What type of support do you have? Those are some of all the questions that you need to go through. Quincy: And if all you want is a box of rocks, somebody's going to give your box of rocks, but I would argue that that's going to be potentially more detrimental than positive. Chad: Then you're going to get the hooker banner, is what she's saying. Quincy: The hooker banner, that's right. Is that really what you want? And maybe you do, maybe that's your brand? Hey, good on you. Chad: It could be your brand, it'd be fine. It would be the Chad/Cheese brand. Chad: So the multi channel support like they're talking about, are most of these chatbot platforms, whatever you call them, are they supporting texting, SMS texting? Quincy: Yeah. I think that's the first that they're supporting, most are supporting texting. But ask them, is it native to their platform? Are they using another person's texting capability to do that? And the reason it's important because there really could be another system that's best in class for that texting capability, but the more technology you start frankensteining together, the more opportunity it is for failure. And, again, you want to make sure that you're enhancing the experience and not detracting from it. So be careful there as well. Chad: We're hearing at least rumbles out there when we talk about chatbots. Big names like IBM and then you're like, "Oh, the Watson," and then you hear companies come back and say, "Yeah, no, that's shit." And then MIA has 40 million dollars or something like that in funding, and it doesn't seem like any of these big names are really taking a lead. Is that, not that you have to name anybody, but is that what you're seeing? Is that there's just big difference in what these companies and how they actually provide it. In some cases, just because they have a big name, doesn't mean they're going to have the best tech. Joel: So is your question, is there a brand leader at this point basically? Quincy: There are several, and it depends what you're trying to do. That's a really good question. There's some companies that I know pretty intimately that are doing great things in their sectors. If you look at AllyO, for example, who I know the Chad & Cheese show are a big fan of, if you look at what they're doing in trying to turn their system of capability really into an end-to-end system, they are really taking a lead there. If you look at ... and their analytics are insanely strong. If you look at Olivia, for example, also leading there, but they're looking at the experience more holistically from both ends, so they actually have an app on the back end for their hiring managers to engage, which is critical to get a system embedded into a process. If you look at Caron, which is out of Toronto, their assessment capability, their native assessment capability, is unparalleled in a way that does not hinder that experience. Quincy: So my caution would be just because somebody has been there longer, or just because their name is bigger, make sure there's actual substance behind what could essentially be smoke and mirrors and depending on a name that people know. And understand what it is, what do you want them to do? Understand that as well. Joel: We've heard a lot about job seekers almost preferring the chatbot experience versus the black hole. Quincy: Yes. Joel: Is it your contention that it'll always be that way or do you think we'll hit a point where we hit chatbot fatigue and this thing is, there's some backlash against them? Quincy: I think it's actually opposite of that. This is where, two things. It's funny, I forget who it was, I think it may have been an iCIMS poll actually that I read recently that candidates surveyed, of those 76% get more frustrated in that black hole with a recruiting experience and not hearing back, that of not hearing back after a first date. It's a problem that we've all known and accepted for 10 or 15 years, or longer. It's a problem. You brought up my good amazing friend, Adam Godson. I heard his podcast with you. Here's one thing that I'm actually- Chad: Make sure you listen to it over, and over, and over. Quincy: Oh, I fall asleep to it at night. Chad: It was that boring, okay. Quincy: No, it lulls me, it's great. Quincy: In most technologies, and I think this is true, the reason that these chatbots have been slower to catch on, relatively speaking, to the others, is because usually tech advancements everywhere are driven by consumer tech and it hasn't. The chatbots have not really taken off from a consumer tech standpoint, and that's really true for various and sundry reasons. But just to be really clear, the recruiting and hiring experience, and even the internal engagement, has historically been so poor, that our candidates and applicants are looking for anything, it's like gasping for air to make it better. And this is where I really think this chatbot is taking the lead from a recruiting standpoint, that may eventually catch on in the consumer space. But the difference is, if I'm a consumer and I'm on Amazon, I want to browse and look around and get to that pretty quickly. If I'm a job applicant, I want to engage and that's what a chatbot can offer the opportunity to do, if properly executed. Chad: It's like Oliver asking for more gruel, "More gruel, please. More engagement, please." Chad: I think it's pretty simple. If you are staring into a black void, there's that or you can talk to a robot, whether it's a Alexa, or My Google Home, or something like that. Okay, I'd rather do that than have nothing at all. Quincy: And program it right? Make sure that your brand is reflected in what you're putting in there. Explore the actual capabilities of the system you're putting in. Is it really just a one-to-one if they ask this question, given this answer? Or does the technology support contextualization where they can really interpret how deep is their NLP capability? It's not like you're trying to lie, you're not saying they're talking to a human when it's really a bot. I think people are really okay with that. Just make sure that your program is ... I was at one, I forget, oh, it was funny. It was actually, it was Caron actually and they were showing us, somebody starts dropping F bombs in the process. Her response is, "Oh, my," it's just what are they going to say, "I don't understand what it is you're trying to tell me?" Or are they going to say, "That deal's better." Chad: Language, that's the one. Chad: So Quincy has a much broader range than chatbots, but we definitely wanted to focus on this because you have been focusing here lately. Here's one thing that I want to ask besides chatbots, because there's so much chatbot distraction right now, so much noise. What great tech, what great tech are companies missing because of all the chatbot noise? What other types of technologies should they really be looking at heavily along with chatbots? Quincy: Some of the people have been talking about, but now have never really used and some are pretty basic, but RPA capability do wonders for some of these companies. Here's an example. We had a challenge with a client of ours, AMS, who we needed to get 70 thousand documents from out of one system into another system. We needed to organize it by, download all the 70 thousand documents, organize it by candidate, create share portfolios for each, set the appropriate document in folder security, rename the file systematically, so on and so forth. And there's a couple different ways you could do that. You could release 10 people from their day jobs, give them 10 weeks to work, spend 35 or 40 grand, human error, bored, and low job satisfaction, that sort of thing, or even create a bot to do it, it's RPA. Quincy: And all you have to do there is free up a few SMEs, allow some time for development, allow the bot to run. And the result in that particular case, it was no mistakes, no tantrums from anyone who were bored, and zero errors, zero. It was done in 36 hours, it would have taken four to six weeks to do previously. So really, that's an actual case study that happened that we managed for them with one of our bots, that you can see surely wide application of that throughout RPA process there. There's a lot of buzz around taking unconscious bias out of the process and there's also been a lot of negative press, like Amazon's. Don't shy away from it. This is where automation, I think, is really going to help the recruiting process and help companies get the best quality talent they can. Quincy: Nobody, or most people, let's just assume and give the benefit of the doubt, nobody's intentionally discriminating or biased against anyone. You can't help it, it's in your brain. It's in your psychology. It's in your DNA. So let's put some robotics there, they're going to help scientifically, and proven to take some of that out, so that you really are getting access to and exposing yourself to the actual best qualified candidate for a job as opposed to hiring managers' gut feeling or a recruiter who was having a bad day. Chad: Take the dumb human out of the equation. Quincy: Yeah. Nobody's talking about Cyberdyne here, it's about adding humans to the process where they're actually adding value and let the machines do where they're actually adding value, which we all know they can do things faster, they can do things cheaper, and they're getting so sophisticated at this point, they can do it sometimes with an experience and a quality level that's higher than what humans can do. Joel: And Quincy, my last question, in regards to your comment about cheaper, how do these companies stay out of the commodity trap? For example, MIA taking 40 million dollars, they better come up with something more than just a chatbot, right? Quincy: Yep. Yeah, it's true. Let's look at, again, start from what's adding to the experience, adding to the process. Are you enhancing your NLP capability so that it feels more engaging and feels more human-like. Are you looking deeper than just chatbot and looking where you can apply that same foundational technology at different places in the process, all the way through to existing employees. Is there a way to engage for career coaching? Is there a way to engage for internal mobility, and that sort of thing? Look beyond, again, I started before, there's a paradigm of, "We absolutely have to have humans here and there's no way a robot could really do it," challenge yourself and the companies need to challenge themselves to make sure that that funding they're getting is being used in a way that's going to move them beyond where the capability is today and not play into those old school thought processes. Joel: Can I get in one more question where we're not quite at 30 minutes yet. I know you'll edit this out a little bit. Two questions I had, one is, the question of scale. For most of these companies, someone has to talk to the employer to ask what questions do we want to ask. So I have a question about how they're going to get over the hump with this scaling issue for most of them. And the second thing I'm curious about your opinion on voice. So you have an Alexa and other voice assistants, does that ever trump the chatbot experience? Quincy: Yeah, your first question about scale, the technology's going to help you to do that, as it learns. Look at it this way. You're going to launch a system, you're going to launch with a hundred or a hundred fifty questions and answers and possible variations to that. And that's a really mild investment of time and energy to do that. As organizations, you already have those answers somewhere, it's just compiling them and putting them in there. The machines learn though, it is a very Cyberdyne-type moment. As it comes in and you're getting more answers to more questions and you're getting more input and more feedback, it's going to feedback to you what it is you need to focus on, which means what could have taken three weeks to start, or a month to start, is now going to take a day, at most to come back on. So trust the technology if you're going to invest in it and it will help you scale pretty organically there. Quincy: And then secondarily, what was the second question, Joel? I got excited about the first one. Joel: Voice, voice assistance versus chatbots. Quincy: There is a ton of stuff to come out of that, I think. But if you look at, everybody knows what Google did, everybody's seen that video. But that was literally years of time and effort that they put into that, for that AI system they put out there. And it's got applicability of one, and it really is one-to-one. Certainly something to watch. I think there's a lot of money being invested in that, a lot of capability into that. Yeah, sure, I think we'll all go that way. At some point, we'll wake up and say, "Toothbrush, brush my teeth for me," and that'll be fine, but it's out there. Watch for it, it's not ready quite yet. Chad: On that one, they need to an extent because using voice activation for chatbots. I see them really turning into or morphing into, whether I'm using my Google Home and it is somewhat of a chatbot for saying it can take me through a process methodology. The technology starts to meld into each other, don't you think? Quincy: Yeah, of course it does. You nailed it there. It's taking, it's a natural extension of what it's doing today, but you still have the issue of scalability so use case for that is so specific, it just takes longer. But it's going to happen and as it continues to develop, it'll happen more quickly. Chad: Well, excellent. Quincy Valencia, Queen of Chatbots, everyone. No seriously, we appreciate you taking the time. I know that you've been doing a ton of research around this. And we've been talking about it a lot on this show so we wanted to bring somebody in who actually knew what the hell they were talking about. Quincy: Hey, I appreciate that you consider that to be me, so thanks a lot. Joel: Quincy, for those who want to learn more about you or your company, where would you direct them? Quincy: AlexanderMannSolutions.com. Chad: We out. Joel: We out. Quincy: All right, thanks. Stella: Hi, this is Stella Cheesman. Thanks for listening to The Cheese & Chad Podcast, or at least that's what I call it. Anyway, make sure you use this dial on iTunes, that's really Android phone for me 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. Me, out. #chatbots #AI #Uncommon #BadAss #RPO #TATech

Thanksgiving is over, and business is business, so the boys are back in the saddle and breaking down the recruiting industry's hottest news... - LinkedIn shuts down email downloads and taking launches Snapchat wannabe - Amazon gets your learn-on while they tiptoe into the job board game - Facebook is dying - Furhat robotics creates creepy robo-interview - and we've got jive turkeys galore! Enjoy and kick the tryptophan hangover with sponsors Sovren, JobAdX and Canvas. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts, complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: It's a post-Thanksgiving, fat-pants-wearing, detox episode of The Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous and most glutinous. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad no-tryptophan Sowash. Joel: On this week's episode, Amazon gets into the job board game. Linked takes on Snapchat. And it ain't cool being no jive turkey on Thanksgiving. Stay tuned, we'll be right back after this message from Canvas and go Bucks. Announcer: 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 workplace. 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: Text at the speed of talent. Joel: Happy post Thanksgiving, black Friday, week of the plague in my house, welcome back. Chad: Cyber Monday. Joel: Cyber Monday, yes. Any deals in your cross hairs for today? Chad: Eh. Not yet. I'll check it out. I'm not really the shopper in this whole group, but I think I'm probably an online-shopper more than anything else. Human beings just piss me off. Joel: Okay. Yeah, thanks for warming things up there Sowash. I was getting all warm and fuzzy with the Thanksgiving and you pull out the, "I hate human beings." Chad: Happy holidays. Joel: Happy holidays. Chad: Stupid human beings. Joel: You have to love Christmas though, right? Chad: I'm one of those individuals when you shop you know exactly what you're going to go after. And you go in, I'm on a mission, I know what my objective is. I knock that out, I'm in, I'm out, I'm back home, not waiting in lines, not looking through the sale rack, not doing all that happy shit. So I know what I'm good at and shopping's not that. Joel: Fair enough. Fair enough. I don't know what you meant by, "I'm not the shopper of the group." Like my reputation is being some shopaholic? Chad: I think you're the shopper. Joel: I have a 20-month-old dude. My venture is outside the house are pretty relegated to survival activities. Chad: Which means if you have a chance to go shopping right now, you would take it in a heartbeat? Joel: Yeah. On a personal note, last week was really rough on the Cheesman household. We had stomach flu going around. Chad: Plague. Joel: We had vomit and we had all kinds of stuff going on. It was just a bad time. We were supposed to go to Canada for the holiday. That got canceled, so we had pork chops for dinner on Thanksgiving. We've pretty much guaranteed that our Christmas will be drama free and fantastic because we paid the price for Thanksgiving. Chad: Yeah, if you set those expectations. Ah, okay. Let's just hope everything goes well. Joel: Everything has to go well. It has to go well. Chad: It has to go better than Thanksgiving. Joel: Yes, the silver lining was I was able to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes just dismantle the mighty Michigan Wolverines formerly number four ranked in the country. So normally when we go to Canada it's a big thing to like, you know the family's here, don't watch the game, like be cool and stuff. So the one silver lining was I did get to watch the Buckeyes just whoop some ass this weekend. Chad: Yeah, well that's going to start out Shout outs with Penny Queller over at Monster. That team up north sucks Penny, again. Buckeyes baby. Joel: Harbaugh dude, his life, I mean he's got to be in the NFL. He has to hate just being man handled by Urban Meyer every year. It's just sad. But yeah, that was good. Joel: I'll shout out to Sarah Holden, our buddy up in, we're speaking of Canada. Sarah Holden works for Neuvoo or however we pronounce it. And recently got a master's in arts, I think. I'm not sure how the Canada collegiate system works, but yeah looks like she got a master's degree and posted that online. Sarah, good for you man. Keep on keeping on. Chad: Master's in bad-assery. I like to keep with my football theme and thank God the Eagles beat the Giants last night because poor Ed from Philly is about to have an aneurysm. Joel: Well, I've got Carson Wentz on one of my fantasy squads and he's had some pretty bad crappy weeks back-to-back. So good on Philly. They're not going to make the play-offs and Carson Wentz is sucking, but yeah good for you. You beat the Giants. Way to go. Joel: My Browns went down to Cincinnati this weekend and totally just ripped up, It's the Bengals, but the Bengals have owned them for the last 20 years. So, it was kind of refreshing. And my wife noted that I'm warming up a little bit to Mr. Baker Mayfield. Chad: Well, you have to. They've won four times as many games as they had last year. I mean you've got to look for some beacon of hope for goodness sakes. Joel: Look, I like the kid's style. He's got some hootspa, he's accurate. I'm really concerned that it's going to snow and the wind's gonna blow on the lake. And it's going to be December and he's not going to be able to do it. So, we shall see. Chad: We shall see. That being said, getting out of football and getting in to more shout-outs. Shout out to Steven in Faith Rothberg. They have a College Recruiting AI Bootcamp going on at the Googleplex. If you want to go, again it's about college recruiting, and they're talking about AI and how that obviously all fits into college recruiting. Just go to Google, go figure, and google College Recruiting AI Bootcamp. And it's free. So, if you're in that area, shit, you should be going anyway. Joel: Yeah. By the way, did we bring up the LinkedIn faux pas by you when you though Faith was Louise and you commented as if it was Faith and it wasn't? Have we talked about that yet, because that was kind of a big boner, brain boner, by you. Chad: That was hilarious. First off, I was on mobile, okay. So the pictures were much smaller and I could see it was a redhead. So, Faith's a redhead, Louise is a redhead. So, Louise, my bad. You know I love you, but yeah I actually tagged Faith in a comment on something that Louise had put out there. So, yeah, my bad. I had two great looking redheads. Joel: It sounds you're saying all redheads look the same. Chad: It was a very small picture and they were both redheads and I got confused. Joel: I think you're in dangerous territory. I think you're... Although I think redheads is probably the only group of people that you can say that and they don't get offended. I could be wrong. Chad: No. Joel: Shout out for me. I wrote five things I'm thankful for, which you just got to write that post for every holiday. By the way I'm excited about year end shows and our prediction shows, which are always on the air, which we will do. Joel: So, I had five things, I won't mention all of them, but in one my first shout out here I'm going to shout out to the arms race. The arms race has been very good for our business. They're good for podcasting and blogging. The moment Microsoft dropped 26 billion big ones on LinkedIn, it got Google's attention, it got Facebook's attention, it upped everyone's game on the Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Monster, Scale. It maybe brought in Amazon, which we'll talk about here in a second. Joel: So, the arms race has been very good. I'm thankful that Microsoft wrote a check because it's made our industry and talking about it much more entertaining. Chad: Yes. You are correct. Shout out to your favorite VR headsets. Joel: Yes. Chad: That's right baby. This holiday season everyone is looking for gifts and VR is now back in style. We're seeing these damn commercials all over the place but I did see a really cool immersion, first person movie. I watched the trailer. It's actually a Robert Rodriguez movie. It's called The Limit and it's got Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead and Michelle Rodriguez from a ton of halfway decent movies. But yeah dude, this looks really cool and we were talking about VR and how it could prospectively make it to mainstream and I watched this video and I'm like, "Ah dude, this trailer." I'm like, "Dude this is awesome." And then you get to the end of the trailer and they show the person with the thing on their face. I'm like, "Nah, fuck that. I'm not doing that." Joel: Dude, I have to watch, Is this a commercial? Is this a trailer? Chad: Yeah, it's a trailer. I'll send it to you. Joel: All right. Are you actually coming around to VR now? Chad: No, I think I just made it very clear. I'm not going to look like that idiot in that Geico commercial who is waving one way and pushing. Joel: You mentioned the commercials, right. There is Oculus has a huge campaign here in the states. I don't know about the rest of the world. They have Jonah Hill, Leslie Jones from Saturday Night Live, the dude from Maroon 5. They have stars that have VR headsets, they're like at court side at the Lakers game or they're in the movie. So, Oculus is making a good faith effort to get VR mainstream. So what you're saying is that whole diatribe was sarcasm by you and you're totally not into VR? Chad: Yes. Joel: You're going to come around my friend, I'm telling you. I don't own one of these things but I'm closer now to buying one than I ever have. Chad: Yeah. The immersion is so cool, but being immersed with that thing on your head, I just can't bring myself to do it. So that's where I'm at right now, but if you want to check this out, it's called The Limit. Just go to YouTube, look for The Limit. And again it's a Robert Rodriguez film, the guy who did Sin City, From Dusk till Dawn, Grindhouse, Machete, those guys. And yeah, it's a first person type of immersion film. It's pretty cool. Joel: All right, cool. So obviously like everything online, it's going to take porn to take it over the line, so you know. I'm sure that we're going to start seeing not be personally, but I think the industry as a whole, the world will start seeing VR porn. And we'll see if this thing really has legs or not. I'm not sure legs is the right word, but anyway. Joel: This might be my last shout out. In my thankful five, I had the economy. You and I know that when the economy is good this industry is good, right. Money flows, people get hired, which means more readers and listeners and it just snowballs from there. But when the economy sucks, it's really not great. So this year has been an on fire economy which means that has been a good thing. Now I will say that there are little buds of depression that I think are sprouting starting with the stock market, which tends to be leading indicator with the world is ending. It's been a bad month for the stock market and I fear that the tariff wars, the gridlock in Washington, Russia's firing guns on Croatia or somebody. I'm a little bit worried about 2019 but we're talking about 2018 and I'm thankful for the fantastic economy that we have enjoyed in our business. Joel: Let's talk about jive turkeys. Chad: Jive turkeys. Joel: Because trading places is my favorite line, "It ain't cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving." So E.R. Rita wrote a post. People love these kind of posts. My top three jive turkeys from 2018. I can mention them, you can comment or disagree whatever. So my first turkey for the year was Indeed. To me that obvious, they said no to Google, they block staffing companies that don't like your talent market. They bought weird companies like Resume.com, they went to Canada to apparently block ZipRecruiter's move to buy Workopolis. The Glassdoor thing is kind of confusing to me. They've been real defensive, they've been real reactionary. For their sake I hope they clear things up and become more proactive and positive in 2019, but for 2018 man they've been a big turkey. Chad: Yeah, and sticking it to staffing firms and anything that you can call a talent network, two black marks right, on what they've done in 2018. And the thing that comes down to Indeed they just don't care. They're going to make the moves that they want to make and they're going to try to force other segments of the industry to do what they want them to do. And we're going to hate you for that. Joel: It's immense hubris, they think they're on top and they arguably are. I mean it was also a huge year for revenues, for headcount, for real estate holdings, all that stuff trended very nicely for them this year. But we saw this with Monster. There was a hubris, we're at the top of the mountain. We're not coming down. And we're going to make the rules and you're going to follow them or get run over. And that's kind of their mentality this year. Joel: I think Google has been a real wake up for them. And I think that they can't deny that that's been a huge hit on their business. But overall I think they feel pretty good about themselves. Chad: I guarantee they do. Joel: My second jive turkey that I had, which is pretty obvious, four-month report by AIM Group, who by the way if you're not at aimgroup.com looking at the news, everything, classifieds. They're probably the foremost reporting arm for international job board, everything classified. But anyway, they did a four month investigative report on a site called startjobs.net and their other side online resume something, online resume help, I don't know what it was. Anyway, they were using ZipRecruiter jobs which by the way you reached out and I don't know if you have any information on that. But they were using sort of ZipRecruiter backfill. Was it ZipRecruiter or Talroo. Chad: Jobs2Careers. Joel: Job- Chad: Several streams of different organizations. Yeah, just content they were using. Joel: It's not one backfill provider, but anyway they were using legitimate jobs to get people to submit really detailed information including mortgage debt information, including marital stuff. This goes back 10 years when Monster had interstitial ads of companies that were requesting social security numbers. So, this is nothing new. It's not going to stop, it's going to continue to go forward. People are going to get scammed, there is a sucker born every minute. But for 2018, StartJobs was the most visible biggest jive turkey on the scam category for me. So suck it StartJobs. Hopefully all the backfill providers will cut them off and they will be left with nada. Chad: Yeah, well the web is always been a place for individuals who just will click on anything or share anything to get their shit stolen. And we've just got to be better as a community overall in how we utilize the web, what we share, privacy and understanding just because we're applying for a job doesn't mean that they get all of our details, all of our info. And I think we're going to see more regulation around that. We're going to see some regulation in California drop in 2020 that's actually stricter than GDPR in and around Europe. So, this is going to change, but we have to ourselves, we have to control and try to police our own industry. And this is where we got to call assholes like StartJobs.net out. And we have to put them on the front page and hopefully get them shut down if they don't change how they do business. Joel: I think to me, they're not part of the industry, but they bring everyone down with them which is sort of the sad thing. One scammy job site brings down every job site from the most legitimate to the least legitimate or Nichey site out there. And it wasn't, once they got the information, the real problem was the barrage of marketing that the people who gave the information over sort of suffered after that. So there was constant emails. It was constant barrage of text messaging. We've talked about in the past as having some challenges in the future that we're using 10 digit numbers instead of short codes which have less regulation. Joel: By the way, this funny side story, I get a text this week and it says, "Hi, I'm your text door neighbor. How are you?" And I'm thinking what in the hell is this? So I play along I want to see if it's a bot, I want to see what happen. I say, "Who is this?" And they say, "It's your text door neighbor. Look at the phone number." So my phone number last four digits are 1578 this number was 1579. So apparently there's this new thing now where people are texting one number higher than them and claiming to be their text door neighbor and trying to have a conversation or get to know these people. I quickly like shut it off said, "Leave me alone." But this is, it's kind of weird, right? And it wasn't a bot, it was an actual person. So if you get someone that says, "Hey, I'm your text door neighbor." Take my story for what it's worth. Chad: What the fuck are they, don't these people have lives? Joel: They don't. It was probably a 15 year old teenager just hanging. But that was weird anyway. Anyway, all right, back to the jive turkeys because I've got leftovers to eat for lunch. Anyway my last jive Turkey, I think it was obvious as well CareerBuilder. CareerBuilder in '18 was just podcasting gold. I mean, whether it was like laying off people, people leaving, people mad, postponed or canceled sales trips, letting Matt Ferguson go after 14 years as CEO, execs leaving by the handfuls putting a CFO in charge of a tech company and claiming we're going to innovate. It was just a bad jive turkey of a year for CareerBuilder, but it was an obvious choice for me. Chad: Yeah, well all I have to say is El Chapo thank you for El Trappo. That was fucking hilarious because it was the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And thank you also CareerBuilder for Pokemon for jobs. That is still funny and we will continue to make fun of you as long as we can think about that, so yeah. Thanks so much CareerBuilder, El Chapo, Pokemon for jobs, that is podcasting gold. Joel: Yes, I can't wait til you make fun of their Oculus VR job search technology coming to hr tech in 2019. Chad: Yeah, it's coming. Joel: All right, any more jive turkeys that you have to add to my list of three. Chad: No, I want to get on to Amazon man. Joel: All right, what did Amazon do this week? Chad: Wooo Amazon's doing some cool shit. This all comes together in being able to finally get an entry into the jobs market. So much like we saw LinkedIn bought Lynda from an educational standpoint. Amazon has this AWS courses that they've put together and it's pretty fucking cool in what they're doing. I mean there are 30 hours of training that they've actually pulled together with audacity and for professional areas called cloud architect, software developer, operations support, engineer and analytics in big data scientists or specialists. This is what they need, right? So Amazon is actually trying to pull people into providing free education. You've heard this free education because they know that these types of individuals first are in short supply, number one. Chad: Number two, they need to get them into positions quickly. So get them educated up and then well wait a minute, what if we create too many of these individuals, will get some other companies involved too like Salesforce, like that was it Cloud Next and Splunk and there is some other companies that need these same types of individuals. But Amazon is actually making this happen on the AWS side of the house. This is something that you and I have been talking about for a while. I don't believe that individuals should be paying for education to be quite frank because they're going to be the tools that actually make money for these companies and AWS sees this, not to mention finally if you're a company that are looking for these types of individuals, you can post jobs for free. Joel: What? Free Job Board Amazon? Chad: Free. Joel: Yes, total agreement. And I'll add that by the way while you're educating these people they're probably buying Amazon products and services. They are probably be becoming loyal to the brand of Amazon. They probably would really love to work for Amazon and by proving that they're really competent in these skills, could potentially land a job at Amazon which really cares deeply about cloud services and whatnot. I've been calling and I will probably just predict it for next year because I did this year and I feel like it's going to happen, Amazon needs to buy Slack, they need to bring this sort of educational thing into the workplace and put in the AWS infrastructure within companies and build an enterprise arm which could flow through this Slack interface and platform. So I know you've heard that before you laugh at me, maybe this is a step into convincing you that AWS is slowly getting into the enterprise workforce game and that they will be a force to be reckoned with along with Facebook, Google and LinkedIn and Microsoft for 2019. Chad: Yeah, I know, I think we all knew that Amazon was going to get into it. We just didn't know how. I think Slack could be a good delivery system. I'm not sure that they'll do it. I mean I think that they have infrastructure to be able to build something themselves, but they could, I mean there's no question. Here's the cool part and you said this earlier. Amazon approaches a lot of these new product areas and pricing competitively or just making it free, right? And the way that this is actually bringing new users to their doorstep. So there's a sizable revenue opportunity and being able to provide not just something for the masses, right? To be able to provide qualified talent for positions they need filled asap, but it also wants ... We've been talking about this, they also see customers and that's the biggest issue that talent acquisition has I think over the years is they don't see candidates as customers and they don't understand that a negative impact with that brand, with your brand means that individual could prospectively never spend money with you, right? Chad: And that's a bad thing. Millions of dollars, so even more could be lost. So I think this is incredibly smart on many different levels and I'm most impressed and happy to see a company actually step out and say, "Look, we're going to provide free education to these individuals to get them into obviously our positions or Salesforce positions." Right. And who else do you think is going to embrace that? That's my question because this is genius. Joel: Yeah. I mean, to me it becomes interesting when, let's be honest, I mean if you hear someone graduates from the University of Phoenix or Capella or one of these sort of online, New Hampshire, whatever. You sort of look at it and okay, is it a real degree, right? Is it really going to hold water with an employer like a Purdue degree would or Northwestern or a typical college, right. So I'll be really curious because I think Amazon holds a certain level of Gravitas with brand trust that if I go into an employer and I say, "Hey, I have a AWS or Amazon, I'm an Amazon certified cloud data store." Whatever that might be, does that hold as much weight as saying, "Hey, I have a computer science degree from Purdue." And I think the day that we get there is a very interesting day. But I think Amazon's going to hold a lot more clout than say the University of Phoenix. Chad: Yeah. I think at the end of this, what we're going to see is the different types of certifications, that's one thing. But also you got to remember most of these universities are going if not fully online full offerings online because they understand that's where education is going. So to be able to have partnerships with the AT&Ts of the world or the Amazons of the world to provide and be that educational backbone or curriculum backbone, I think is important. So yeah, I think this is not the first step but we're still early into this. I think you will see some of those big brands from the university side be a part of these specific types of educational delivery systems. Joel: Well, the times they are changing. Chad: Thank God. Joel: Let's hear a quick word from JobAdX and talked about talk about Linkedin. 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 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 ads solutions, please reach out to us at join us at jobadx.com. That's join us at jobadx.com. JobAdX, the best ad tool, providing smarter programmatic for all your advertising needs. Joel: There you go. Chad: JobAdX, bring it. Joel: Bringing it to the whole hard. Chad: I don't know that I like that statement at all. Joel: That was a little anyway. Chad: It's bad. Joel: If you had the stomach flu that I had, you might be in the same state of mind anyway, LinkedIn man, this is some good news. You want to start with the blocked emails or the Snapchat competitor? Chad: Wherever you want to go with this because either way it's going to be interesting. Joel: It's going to be interesting. Let's just start with emails and then we'll follow up with the humor of them launching a Snapchat competitor, okay. So, I want to say it was a year or two ago that there was word, the rumors were buzzing that LinkedIn was going to deny people the ability to download the contact information of their network. Chad: Right. Joel: I contacted LinkedIn about this, they emphatically said, "No, you can still do this." And it was true, they weren't blocking it or stopping that functionality but everyone kind of knew like at some point LinkedIn is not going to let you do this and we finally have word of what they're doing. So they're not all, they're not out now saying you can't download your contacts. However, everyone in their settings is defaulted to not letting people download their information and they have to go in and approve or opt in to have their data basically downloaded by their network, which let's be honest most people aren't going to do. So your network of a thousand people, if you wanted to download the information, you might get like two or three actual contacts who are willing and able to let you download their stuff. Joel: A lot of people are mad about this. I understand in the recruiting space certainly in the sales and marketing, this was something that people did and do. But I'm not sure widespread a lot of people are going to care, a lot of people don't even know that they can download their contacts from LinkedIn. Chad: Yeah, and once again we take a look at just Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, right. And being able to pull all that data from profiles, that's hard and that's very impactful to be able to tell that story. And I think LinkedIn are saying, "Hey look, this is the time right now to take a tougher stance on quote unquote privacy." And to really default to the strictest policy as quite the opposite of what we've seen from companies like Facebook over the years. I mean, when you start with a Facebook account used to be, I don't know if it still is, is that your account was wide open, public saw everything. You had to go into the settings, you had to change those. And it made it much easier for competitors to go in, scrape up data or you know the Analytica is in the world to come in and scrape up data and do whatever they're going to do with it. Chad: I guess did LinkedIn's users know that their contact info was exposed and did they care? Is One of the questions. Is LinkedIn taking more of a protective stance for their users or is this really more of a defensive posture and they're using the news of the day to be able to do that. Joel: That's a lot of questions there. I think most people don't know about being able to download their contacts. I think because we live in the recruiting world that's sort of common practice. And I think that LinkedIn initially made it possible because when your network was 300 people, it was all business contacts there will be only Jigsaw and some other competitors at the time that would allow you to extract your contacts, put them in act or put them in some like- Chad: CRM. Joel: Yeah, also CRM or sales tool that made sense. And a lot of salespeople and marketers probably did that. But now people have thousands in their network, a lot of them were done 10 years ago, I don't even know this person anymore. Yeah, I do think the privacy element of just making it harder for people to extract data from LinkedIn and making use select yeah, I do want my data to be extracted. It's probably a good move for them but I can definitely see why the recruiters would be ticked off by something like this. Chad: Yeah. Well, I mean if you pay for seats, they're still shutting that down. Is that the case too? Or is this just from the public standpoint? Joel: As far as I know this is just like, okay, well, you and I are connected on LinkedIn. So previously I could go in and say I want to download all my contacts and I could get your information, which I could get on LinkedIn anyway in a CSV file and then I could create a spreadsheet with all my contacts and do whatever I wanted with that information. Basically you have to now opt in for me to be able to extract your contact information. Chad: Okay. And that's even on pay versions too then, okay. Joel: Yeah, I think this is just your individual network, yeah, not like on paid and I want to extract all this salespeople in Palo Alto or something. Chad: So again, being able to say that this is kind of using the news of the day. It's very Indeed like, right? So Indeed tells companies how your job suck unless you pay me and then they don't suck anymore. It's kind of the same thing and this is what I'm hearing is that hey, we want to make sure that you have strict privacy for your contact information unless somebody over here pays for it and then we're just going to make it available. Joel: No, I don't think you are going to pay your way into extracting your network. I think it's a network wide. People have to accept being able to be downloaded by someone in their network. Chad: I have to do some research on that especially for recruiter seats because I think that would impact the actual ROI of paying for a recruiter seat in some cases. I mean it's not the entire reason but still, if I'm buying a recruiter seat, I want access to the data. Joel: I also wonder if there are tools out there where you can put in multiple account information and maybe you regularly download all your contacts and it just sort of does that every month or every quarter or whatever just to make sure that you're getting all those contacts into some sort of database. I'm sure there are sales tools and stuff like that and products that will suffer from this new privacy feature. But I can't think of any off the top of my head and recruiting that would be negatively impacted by what LinkedIn just did. Chad: Yeah. And I see this is a step, not the final step. What do you think? Joel: Yeah, I mean the walled gardens are going up, whether you're Indeed or LinkedIn or Facebook. Facebook has made a lot of changes to protect its users and probably will make even more in the future. For example, their API used to be able to pull co-workers from your data and you can't do that anymore for APIs and stuff. So yeah, everyone's getting more private and more closed than open. Good thing, bad thing. Individual privacy I guess it's a great thing for businesses and innovation. It's arguably a bad thing. There'll be a balance there somewhere. Chad: Yeah, that's the hard part, right? You've got all these innovative companies that are popping up all over the place who need data to provide a service that companies are asking for. Companies are asking for an opportunity to prospectively suck all this relevant data into a CRM or an RMP and now guess what, that could prospectively be gone by the wayside. Joel: Yeah for sure. I mean it brings back memories of our interview with Sean from a HiringSolved and if you haven't listened to that interview and the live show from HiringSolved or HIREconf you should. They throw away 29 million profiles from Europe because dealing with GDPR and privacy, it was just too much of a hassle to deal with. And so I see that spreading to multiple vendors and people that provide services like that across the world. I mean I was talking to Doug Berg from Zap Info, their solution is if I want to extract someone's contact information that they have sent an email saying, "Hey, this company wants to extract your contact information, please click here to approve or not." I mean, I think that's going to greatly deter the number of contacts that you can grab if you have to ask permission from people before you actually do it. Chad: Oh yeah, there's no question. And then how many people are just going to not even reply, just delete that email. Joel: Oh, 98 plus percent probably. Chad: Yeah. So that- Joel: I know and really want to work for like, I'm definitely not going to let you just take my data. Chad: Yeah. You have to do some really good email marketing at that point, a message marketing at that point and hopefully that company has a damn strong brand. Joel: Yeah, I mean that's tough one. Anyway, so in the more odd LinkedIn news, email blocking was not surprising to anyone. More surprising was they launched a Snapchat competitor, something called Student Voices where basically the goal is to have students provide videos on their newsfeed that disappear after a certain time period. I don't know, I don't really have a comment on this other than what the hell were they thinking, students are not going to hang out on LinkedIn and do Snapchat shit. They're going to be on Snapchat to do Snapchat shit. Chad: Yeah. So, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think so the content was going to be available for a certain duration within the actual stream, but it was saved on the actual individual's profile. So it's like they didn't lose it but it was going to be lost within the stream itself. Is that the way it was going to work? Joel: Yeah. I'll give you the quick summary here. So LinkedIn begins testing Student Voices, what they're calling it. It's a stories like feature which you're seeing either on Snapchat or Instagram or Facebook. Facebook you're saying stories all the time. This is targeted at college students, so it lets users post short videos which are added to their school's campus playlist. The videos disappear from the playlist after a week but remain on the uploaders profile. Chad: I got nothing man. It seems like a lot of development time and I understand what I mean, It makes perfect sense what they're trying to do, they're trying to attract a demographic that they perspectively right now are not attracting or they could perspectively lose. So yeah, it's hard. I mean, we're going to talk about Facebook and how certain demographics aren't using Facebook and others are. How from a LinkedIn standpoint does that work? Do you turn into a Snapchat or does that really devalue the overall professional platform itself? I mean, I guess they're taking the gamble that it's not devaluing at all or we're not getting these kids possibly. Joel: We actually have some live footage from the Student Voices platform. All right, where there is no crickets is our sponsor Sovren. Let's hear a quick word from them and talk about the end of Facebook. Chad: What? Sovren: Sovren is known for providing the world's best and most accurate parsing products. And now, based on that technology come Sovren's artificial intelligence matching and scoring software, in fractions of a second receive match results that provide candidate score by fit to job and just as importantly, the jobs fit to the candidate, make faster and better placements. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's sovren.com We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human you'll want to take it to dinner. Chad: I do want to take it to dinner. I just don't know where we would go. That's exactly what I'm getting. Joel: Facebook has been under fire this year. We don't have to rehash everything, but there's been a lot of talk about people are going to leave Facebook in droves. I've basically said, "That's total garbage, people will stick around, they don't care yada yada." Well, apparently people do. Pew reports this past week that 44 percent of Facebook users in their twenties have deleted the App from their phones. You shared a story from Gizmodo that said one in four Americans really have deleted Facebook's App from their phone. Chad: Yeah. Obviously it's taking a toll. I think what we're seeing now in our streams on Facebook is much different than what we're seeing on LinkedIn or maybe Twitter from one side to the other. And for some reason some people felt safe at Facebook and having conversations with friends and whatnot. And then the next thing you know, all this trash has been shared. And then after the election and all that other fun stuff, there's no trust in some cases. It also said that 42 percent of the people who were in this survey had taken several week breaks from Facebook. So it wasn't just people deleting, it's also people who are like, "You know what, I'm taking a break from Facebook, I'm going to take the month off." And I've heard people say that, "I have took the month off of from Facebook and that doesn't bode well for Facebook because once you're away from it and you've kind of break those chains, you really don't feel you need to be there anymore. It gives you that nice little bread crumb to just delete the damn thing or just stop using it entirely. Joel: Yeah. I'm torn by the whole thing. I mean, so there's stuff coming out that kids that are on social media or more depressed and suicidal than those who aren't. And there's stuff coming out, I think it was the CEO of a Salesforce who said that social media is the cigarettes of our time, right. So there is huge under fire the stuff. But then I think I don't feel more depressed because of social media. I feel like it brings me closer to my family and people I like generally than it's a bad thing for me. And then I also think like, Is this generational. Right like, so my generation will be like the Facebook people. Like will age, will be 80 years old still on Facebook sharing stuff and like people in their twenties, Facebook is for old people like us. So they're going to have their thing, which I guess is going to be Snapchat. Joel: Now, Instagram is also their thing and we've talked about that. But Instagram is owned by Facebook, so most of these kids don't even know they're on Facebook technically because, Oh, I'm on Instagram not Facebook. And then the next generation coming up like my kids, they won't be on Facebook or Snapchat, they'll be on something else. There'll be on their VR headsets or they'll be doing whatever. I just think generationally that things are going to like come and go and as a business that's really risky because, yeah, we're good until these guys get old and we're not cool anymore. I think that LinkedIn has a unique sort of brand in that their brand is the professional network, so if you're 20 looking for a job, you better be on LinkedIn because those are the people who are going to give you your jobs and your promotions and introduce you to people. So I think to me Linkedin is in the catbird seat of social networking for longterm success because of their brand of it's work, it's professionalism. It's how you make connections in the business world. It's not where you share cat videos and a holiday pictures from family. Chad: Yeah, so also 12 percent of users over the age of 65 reported deleting their accounts. So 44 percent are in their twenties and only 12 percent over the age of 65. So yeah, what you're saying is I think true. It's something that you get into a routine, not to mention it makes it easier for grandma and grandpa to be able to share pictures and to see pictures of the kids of the swim meets or whatever it is, but there's going to have to be some type of an evolution. And we've seen Facebook really push their stories hard, right. Because they want to try to evolve and to start to capture or maybe keep in some cases those lower demographics. But it's going to be hard and I mean the new stories that we've seen over the last couple of weeks where we saw, they knew what was going on, they knew that the information was being leveraged. I mean that doesn't help either. So you've got all of this non trust going on and it's like, you know what, screw it. I'm just going to stay on Twitter. Kids are just going to stay on Snapchat or what have you. Joel: Yeah. And also it justifies Facebook getting more into work because a lot of these age, these generational divides, if it's just for fun, it is going to hurt them. If they become more of a utility for work, I think that pulls younger people in just by necessity similar to what Facebook is doing. Chad: They'd better evolve quickly because right now more of a marketplace for SMB jobs, that's just not going to cut it, that's not going to cut it. So they're going to have to evolve into something much different on the work side than what they are today. And breaking away with that a URL work, the workplace URL versus the Facebook URL could be helpful but I guess we'll have to see. They're going to have to evolve quickly maybe even who knows, make a dramatic change in that segment because if it looks like Facebook, it feels like Facebook, it's still fucking Facebook. Joel: It's still fucking Facebook. Do you want to do the money run down or you want to send people to the shred? Chad: We definitely want to send people to the shred. You got to go to the shred because guess what, last week we talked about Wanalou or Wonolo, sorry. They need to use that $32,000,000 to change their fucking name because it's horrible. Wanalou and Workable got big cash last week. That's on the shred, a rundown of that. And we'll do a shred this week on ZenJob who received a huge amount of cash. Joel: In border as well. Who we haven't, we don't talk about onboarding very often but I interviewed these guys a couple of years ago and they bring sort of a really cool automated solution to onboarding. So maybe we should talk about them at some point in the future, but yeah, we are not to spend too much time on the weekly show with just who got money, unless it's a big deal. We do that on the shred, which you should be subscribed to for the show. So I'll say we jump right to the scariest hell robot that's being developed for recruiting. Chad: Furhat robotics plus TNG group which is a recruiting firm, are creating this scary most looking robot that I guess will just sit on the table and when people walk in it will interview you. That's what I got from the video. Joel: Yeah, I mean we talk, so we've talked about automation and chat bots and bots and things like that, but that's pretty much been relegated to software. That's pretty much been either you type your chat with something that chats back with you via text. Maybe audio at some point will be prevalent, but yeah, these folks over in Europe, you can learn more about it, I think tng.se are developing essentially a bus. It's like a mannequin looking thing. It has no hair. It's sort of like if you watch, if you've seen I Robot with Will Smith, that's what it reminded me of. Those sort of slick looking, the mouth is digital, the mouth isn't manually moved or the mouth doesn't move. The face is like a mannequin and then it's digitally moving its mouth and its facial features. So I guess you go to a retail environment and just sit down with this thing and it would ask you questions, really creepy shit, but yeah, this is coming. This is happening. Chad: Supposedly the world's first unbiased recruiter robot. Yeah, I mean this just gets creepier and creepier every single day. Joel: Yeah, guys you got to see this video. It's so scary yet sort of fascinating at the same time. We'll put a link to it at chadcheese.com yeah, crazy stuff man. Podcasting is getting fun because the world's going crazy. Chad: The world is going nuts and I can't wait this week we're going to talk to Peter over at TAtech. Peter Weddle about Circa 2118 to find out exactly what's going to happen in the next hundred years. Joel: I don't know if I want to have that interview because I'll be sad. Die soon anyway, so to hell with it. Chad: Yeah I know, I'm living til a hundred. Joel: What's up with the environmental report that says by 2040 we're toast and we're just shoveling that thing under the bed. We're just going to ignore it anyway. Chad: You know you're going to believe in what you want to believe in and if you believe that a bunch of scientists got together because they felt it was in their best interest to say that global warming was happening, then you're in an interesting type of boat. Joel: Nice, yeah, boat. Good word. Yeah, well, when my house here in Indiana becomes a beach front property. I will be a believer for sure. Chad: Yeah, I don't think you're going to have to worry about it. I think the beaches of Miami and those types of areas will probably have to worry about it. Joel: I would agree, Venice. Chad: Venice, already has- Joel: People are walking around in water, it's crazy. All right dude, I can't take it anymore. We out. Chad: We out. Stella: Hi, this is Sarah 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 on your android phone thingie or wherever you listen to podcast. And be sure to give buckets of money to our sponsors otherwise I may be forced to take that home writing job I saw on monster.com Stella: We out. #LinkedIn #Amazon #AWS #Facebook #Snapchat #Robots

Trump and job boards finally made the podcast as one story. Rejoice and all hail the podcast gods. What else is in this week's show? - Indeed hates your talent network - Google likes it on top - HR the "skills gap" is all your fault! - More idiots are being microchipped - Will Artificial Intelligence takeover Board of Director positions? - LinkedIn Media is killin' it! Enjoy, and visit our sponsors Sovren, JobAdX and Canvas. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions partners with employers on disability inclusion initiatives to design scalable solutions to support strategic and operational goals in staffing, training, retention, compliance and engagement. 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: Yeah. Joel: Gobble, gobble, hidy-ho boys and girls. It's another weekly episode of Chad and Cheese. HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: Good to know. This week, Google is out performing Indeed. LinkedIn is on pace for two billion, that's billion with a B. And Donald Trump loves Job Boards. Chad: Asshole. Joel: And this week's show is full of jive turkeys. Stay tuned for all the fixings right her after a word from JobAdX. JobAdX: As the best ad tool in the industry, JobAdX has been providing job for publishers, direct employers, agencies, RPOs, and staffing firms. Dynamic job bidding and real time ad delivery to our programmatic job advertising exchange. JobAdX: When we started, we described JobAdX as AdSense for jobs. Now, we offer much more with switch board and live alert. Completing our full suite of dynamic programmatic advertising tools with the best of consumer ad tech. Switch board 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 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: I don't know that smarter has anything to do with this podcast by the way. Joel: I say it's funny, but found the last remaining valley girl for their ad. Oh my God programmatic advertising. Chad: So good. Joel: Let's get the shout outs man. We got a long show today. I was hoping for an abbreviated version but not so lucky. Chad: That's for next week. Joel: I'll lead it off with Debbie Salado. I'm probably butchering that name, Citizens Bank. This is sort of self-interest. She's at Citizens Bank who I'm pitching tomorrow. However, she wasn't higher comp and we missed each other. So there is a little bit of a segue that makes sense. She is a fan of the show and we appreciate it. Thanks, Debbie. Chad: Buy Something Debbie, please, please buy something. Joel: Write a check Debbie, please, Christmas is coming. Chad: Congrats to Ethan and Veronica. Now Bloomfield, they just got married. In their new home in Costa Rica. I just saw pictures of a flower laden, oxen pulling new married couple in a cart on a dirt road in Costa Rica. I mean that my friend is the life. Joel: So romantic. Chad: It awesome dude. Joel: Shout out to New York City. We've done a lot of talk about higher cone from the show live this week, but the big apple never disappoints. We did the statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Central Park at a cab. Good food. Good company. Laughs all around. And by the way, Mexico, the Mexican Barbecue Fusion Restaurant was a pleasant surprise for me at least. Chad: Yeah. two Tecate with like TABASCO sauce and sprinkled with some ... What the hell was that? Joel: It was a hot sauce and fused beer Tecate, as you mentioned, with a like a dusting of hot sauce. It was rather pleasant. I enjoyed it. Chad: That was very pleasant. We went from one place which was more kind of high scale, and then we went to Mexique and that's where I think we felt pretty comfortable there. Joel: We were much more in our element. Mexican Barbecue and Fusion Restaurant. Chad: Yes. Shout out to Michael Ang from Job Elephant. Thanks for listening man. Sorry we weren't more heavy handed with handshake. Steven Rothberg would agree with you by the way. Joel: What a great shout out. I wanted to talk about that when we brought up the Ed Newman to the middleman because this was a great. We did the handshake story and he came out and said handshake is a piling hot, steamy garbage pail of a site. So that was an interesting perspective, from handshake. So thanks for that. Chad: Thanks. So thanks Michael. And a shout out to Vervoe, Vervoe, something that is not hot and steamy. Remember the Terry Tate Office Linebacker Reebok commercials. Remember those? Joel: Men of a certain age I'll remember that commercial. Chad: If you have never seen Terry Tate, the office linebacker go to YouTube, this very second type and Terry Tate's office linebacker. Watch those. They're fricking hilarious. So anyway, Vervoe, they put out these, this really cool ad. It was funny. It was centered around the people in the office and was really slick. It just, it reminded me of those office linebacker, without the concussions of course. But it was a really good ad. Good job for Vervoe and Omer over there. Joel: Yeah. Australian companies are really great at not taking themselves too seriously. Shout out to thanksgiving. Chad: Yes. Joel: May be my favorite holiday. You don't have to have show up with gifts. You can eat and drink all you want and it's totally acceptable. And there's football on TV. Chad: Yeah. Well, and sticking with that shout out to Ezekiel Elliott formally of the Ohio State University and currently running back with the Dallas Cowboys Zeke nailed 155 or I'm sorry, 151 yards rushing and one TD, but the big key here was hurdling over Trey Sullivan and totally poster rising him. That was pretty amazing. Joel: Our affiliated ends aren't going to like that shout out, but- Chad: That was especially for Ed. Joel: I'll shut out from my wife who has Zeke on her fantasy squad who gave her a miraculous comeback on Monday night with his three touchdowns to win her the weekend fantasy. So I'll speak for her on that one. Chad: Very nice. Very nice. Got a ven cat who you like to call big cat, CEO and founder of Job Yak. Who was on. Joel: I thought a mere cat as well. Which when mere cat. Why didn't I think of that one? Chad: That's so much more funny. He was on firing squad with Jobiak. So if you're going to check out the live show from New York City, do that, but also check out the newest firing squad with a big cat or mere cat from Job Yak. It's pretty awesome. Joel: Either way, if you're a CEO out there this dude knows how to work the social aspect from an interview. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: All over Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. I mean, granted he has 60 engineers that I'll probably just do whatever the hell he says, but the number of shares and likes and everything from his stuff was really impressive. So if you're a CEO and you get interviewed, like take a tip from Meercat, How to get the most leverage from your social presence. Chad: Not to mention he was concise. You've got to listen to the show. He was concise. He had his stuff together and he knew that Chad & Cheese podcast Firing Squad would be a great vehicle for his startup to actually sell. And obviously at the end of the day he's going to get graded by us and he could possibly get the Firing Squad. But the guy was confident. He was concise and at the end of the day had a really good show with him, but he knew how to leverage the podcast to be able to get out there. Joel: Dude's a stud and Thank God we got away from the chat bot trend of Firing Squad. That was a nice change of pace for sure. Chad: It was but that Russian female kind of sound wasn't bad. It made for a very good diverse effect between two dumb American guys. Chad: My last shout out is to all of our sponsors and anybody out there listening. I had this amazing, incredibly smart idea for marketing for the holidays. And you still have time to do it. You can pull this off. You should do ugly sweaters with your logo in the ugly sweater itself. Obviously you're going to have to send something to Chad & Cheese because we came up with the idea. But that's the best swag for this time of year, don't you think? Joel: All right, don't connect me to this bad idea. Chad: That's a great idea. Joel: And did you call it genius? Did I hear the word genius come out of your mouth? Chad: Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty genius. Joel: My last shout out goes to the book Circa 2118, which I have not read yet and we are doing an interview with Peter on the books, so I should get to reading it here pretty quickly. But I'm sure it's a great book. Everything I've heard, some of the views I've read are fantastic. So if you're in the workforce arena and we know you all are a circa 2118 is a must read for the holidays or a gift to give going into 2019, Chad: I would say I would classify it as going from dystopia to utopia. There you go. Joel: That's deep. That's deep. Chad: It is a deep book. Joel: On that, let's get to the show. What do you think? Chad: Yup. Joel: Indeed. With some new terms of service, what's going on there? Chad: What dumb asses. So Indeed we just had a policy on staffing, right? They're kicking all of staffing out of their organic because their jobs just aren't good enough unless you pay. And then obviously their jobs are just fine, right? You've got shitty jobs, guys. We don't want them in our organic. Oh, wait a minute, you're gonna pay us. Oh, okay. Well let's go ahead and put them back in. This time it's a policy on talent networks. So the definition of a talent network from our friends. I use that term loosely at Indeed. Here's what the definition is. A talent network is a group of candidates that have expressed their interest in a specific company's job openings. Job Seekers opt in by giving their contact information to receive updates on new job openings and the company benefits by maintaining a list of interested candidates. Chad: In some cases, companies will take contact information from a job application and add the job seeker to their new network without the job seeker's knowledge. That's what their definition of a talent network is. There a new policy, you want to hit the new policy? Joel: Oh yeah, sure. Bullet points. This is fun. Joining a talent network must be a completely optional. It must be clear that talent network is not associated with the application process. Joining a talent network must occur after the apply process is clearly finished, not before. A talent network cannot be part of a larger share talent pool. Job Seekers should not receive contexts from any third parties. Communication must be limited to the updates on new specific vacancies at your company. And I love the explanation. Give me the explanation one. Okay. Joel: The explanation for Alex's talent networks often create a bad user experience. Candidates should not be funneled through any process other than a direct application for the position. Chad: So my first question is, will Indeed allow jobs leading to these talent networks in their organic if they're paid postings. Right. And just a reminder, once again, In deed's doing this for staffing. Well, they're not doing it in the organic. The only way that you can get it for staffing companies in the paid area, but they're talking about this bad experience. Right? And they've done the same thing with staffing companies. Are they going to do the same thing with companies? Are they gonna say, well it's a bad experience, but guess what if you're paying us, I guess the experience really just isn't that bad. Joel: To me this feels like Indeed is just sort of gradually screwing everybody that it can without getting really over cross the line. So the first screw was Job Boards, right? Chad: Yes. Joel: Like, okay, your jobs are sort of duplicitous and crappy, but if you pay us like you're good to go and we're moving into like if you're staffing company you're no good if you're a Smashfly or like CRM- Chad: Like the Phenom. Joel: Like phenom into T like, you're no good, they're never probably going to bleed into the direct employers being no good, but they're definitely, I think sticking it to as many entities as they can to suck out as much profit as possible. Chad: Well, okay. So that first line joining a talent network must be completely optional for the job seeker. I thought that seems doable and then I fricking smack myself and woke up and said fuck that. The direct employer pays for that talent network for the middleman, for the layer of cosmetic process, whatever the hell you want to call it, right? Who the hell is Indeed to dictate terms on how that company does business Indeed can suggest best practices and demonstrate those with case studies, Yada, yada yada. But you're not dictating anything assholes. I mean, that's the stance that a company needs to take. They are in fact impacting direct employers because employers are choosing to use those platforms for one reason or another, whether it's marketing or being able to keep candidates or individuals engaged. If they don't have a job for them now, they want to be able to keep them engaged. They use those platforms to do that now indeed saying, "Yeah, sorry employer, we know that you're paying for that, but not gonna happen." It's bullshit. Joel: This is a big plan for them to release their own CRM that they can funnel people into. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Well, somebody commented to me, he said it's free traffic on indeed. So Indeed can do whatever they want to do. And I agree that there's no question, but it's also content and without content indeed would be dead. Joel: Yeah, I remember that comment. I think it was on social media that someone said that. And I totally agree with it, but there's, if you build an expectation as a service and people respond and create, build their own services around that and you pulled the rug from under them. I mean it's not like super cool. I understand that it's done and it can be done. But like for job boards, job boards were enjoying free traffic on Indeed and some paid for higher things and then Indeed pulled the rug out from under them and people were surprised at that because they've had sort of expected this service to sort of adhere to what they had always done. And people normally like when companies change stuff, so I get it. But there's also an expectation that things as they are shouldn't change too drastically. I mean, when Google does this, they sort of slowly and algorithmically change stuff. And I could see where indeed would change its algorithm to put these kinds of jobs at the page nine and 10 of the results to sort of smack them around and give them that information or that penalty passive aggressively as opposed to something like this that's a little bit more aggressive, but it's their business. Chad: well, since all staffing jobs are going to be banned from Indeed organic at the first of the year, the search quality team isn't focused on identifying staffing companies anymore. So they're looking for other things to fuck up. Right? I mean, that's pretty much what's happening. Oh, we're not going to, we can't mess with staffing anymore because staffing is gone. They're out of the organic. So what are we going to focus on next? And last but not least, let's just be clear Indeed throws clicks and apps. Little of which are actually qualified applicants. So as they continue to do this and really cut off revenues to an extent other companies like the ZipRecruiter of the world and in other platforms that are focused on qualified, just only driving qualified candidates, they're the ones that are going to be the winner in this long term. Kind of a once again makes me feel like the monster and CareerBuilder of old when they were on the top of the mountain and they were just so proud of themselves. And then they got their ass kicked right off the top. Joel: Which leads us, I think into our next story. Getting kicked in the what... I don't think we've ever talked about before. Had a blog post up this week or last week where they are seeing evidence from their postings that Google is outperforming Indeed, which we've been predicting for a long time. A quote from the story. I'm now seeing that Google for jobs as a top three source for traffic for our clients beating Indeed in many cases. And then goes into sort of how the see, what traffic sources are the highest rank, so not a year into Google for jobs and we're seeing them beating indeed for this company's clients, which is expected. Chad: Yeah. And it's gonna happen even more as applicant tracking system start to do markups for all their feeds as obviously the middleman. So again, this just makes the fee norms and the smash flies and the clenches and all those platforms really focus on, okay, great if you're going, if you're going to come up with those bullshit types of policies, what we're gonna do is we're going to find ways to be able to replace that traffic. And we've heard of companies replacing that traffic and just moving on saying, guess what, you're not going to get my dollar. You're not going to get my vote. Joel: Yeah. And if just to word those of you outlet out there listening, if you're tracking your traffic and your seeing Google for jobs overtaken Indeed, we'd love to hear story hit us at chadcheese.com or #ChadCheese on Twitter. Chad: Yeah. Or if you are from a talent network company or a direct employer ad agency and want to kind of give us some insights to this new policy and your feelings and whatnot. On the record, off the record, doesn't matter. Definitely hit us up on LinkedIn or Facebook or even on the LinkedIn Messenger. Joel: Or just send us a random email with a fake address. Chad: Don't do that. Joel: And deep throat on it. Chad: Don't do that. Joel: All right. Facebook also vying for a nice piece of the Employment Pie. They continue to enhance their jobs component. A quick shout out to Chris Russell, friend of the show who has the most on his Rec Tech blog. The two enhancements city highlights easy share of jobs to groups and a new manage jobs tab from the pages site. Chad: Yeah. Yeah, have you ever used Marketplace to sell anything? Joel: I've purchased, I'm trying to think of fire sold something. Chad: I mean I just, I just did this week. I mean it's really simple because you put it up on Marketplace and then Marketplace gives you a list of groups that you can post into. This sounds exactly like, I mean, again, it's predicated on marketplace anyway. So it just sounds like it's the same type of functionality to be able to provide more broad based distribution into groups that could be kind of niche groups that are focused on the types of jobs that you're posting. Joel: Yeah, we actually have, now that you were talking have sold some stuff, bought some stuff. And we don't talk very much about Facebook and the impact on Craigslist, but it's got to be taking a hit Craigslist meaning, I had someone, I posted a job for a sort an odd job here around the house and I had to pay $5, which, yeah, is not a big deal, but how many people are saying, screw that. I thing $5 on Craigslist. I'm sure it's more money in certain markets, but and gravitating toward Facebook as a result. So I think everything I've heard from Facebook Marketplace has been positive, numbers out of Facebook is that one and for users on Facebook, I've looked for a job. We're hearing salespeople talk about Facebook being one of the top sort of questions and sources that companies are asking about. so yeah, we don't fall asleep on Facebook, but I think it's a lot of people are in danger of doing so. It shouldn't. Chad: You had somebody come to your house and actually do something that you didn't want to do and it only costs five bucks and you think that's expensive. You cheap bastard. Joel: I think I said - if you roll the tape back - that's not a lot of money. Chad: Okay, good. Joel: But it is very small little hurdle for people to put ... Craigslist for 15 years was free dude for just about everything and now it's not. So anyway. Chad: Gotcha. Joel: Let's break up this ridiculousness with a word from sovereign and then we'll talk about, I don't know what LinkedIn, Skills Gaps. All kinds of funs. Chad: Yep. Strike up that band Joe. Joel: Yes. Sovren: Sovren is known for providing the world's best and most accurate parsing products and now based on that technology come Sovren's, artificial intelligence matching and scoring software in fractions of a second received match results that provide candidate scored by fit to job and just as importantly, the jumps fit to the candidate, make faster and better placements. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting SOVREN.com. That's SOVREN.COM. We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner. Chad: Okay. So that was not a banjo. But next time guys at Sovren, I want to request that that be a banjo on the music bed. Joel: Chad wants a deliverance style da da ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding AI, matching. Chad: Yeah. That's little bit too far, now getting into pig references and shit. Joel: You got a pretty. All right. So LinkedIn. Chad: Yes. Joel: The few things in the news. Most interestingly I think 2 billion on pace this year for advertising on sort of their general media advertising pro products and services. 2 billion is a lot of money. Like that's nothing to sneeze at. And personally, I don't know if you've advertised on LinkedIn but it's a son of a bitch to get an ROI on LinkedIn. Like, I don't know, people have to be selling some expensive shit, at least in our market to get a good ROI on LinkedIn. So good for them, for making the money. But man, they got to find ways to get people better ROI because it's tough, man. It's expensive and the leads are hard to come by and yeah. So good for them on the 2 billion. I'm sure that will continue to escalate up. It's good for them to diversify from the recruiting side to get more sort of traditional advertising dollars online. But yeah, that was in the news and we thought we pointed out. Chad: Yeah, roughly half of what Microsoft is making four billion ads. So I think that definitely says something. I mean, they are generating about two million posts per day in their feed. It's pretty damn interesting to see the growth and good for that man. That's freaking awesome. Which leads into more engagement in their company pages through the new redesign. Joel: Yup. Yup. Out this week as well. They got a few updates to their company pages for jobs on number one on that list you can see who has signed up for job alerts from your company, which is obviously important. It's good to see who's engaging with your company. You can also surface recommended job candidates who visit your page, so not only who's applying to jobs, who's visiting your page, all good data, which number one, LinkedIn is very into, but also number two, LinkedIn is probably the best at. I was in a call with a people search engine, so to speak, or sourcing tool and they talked about their insights and the insights were very MEH compared to the insights that LinkedIn is able to garner because they have so much just great data. Chad: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean also the integrations to Hootsuite and Crunchbase. So the Crunchbase side, being able to provide funding insights and then for Hootsuite to make it easier to get more content out there. I mean there're happy I'm sure to an extent with the 2 million posts and videos and stuff and shit like that goes out in their daily feed, but how can they do more? And that's what they're always focused on. More engagement, better engagement along with sharing content. Just with employees, so using this as an internal, I mean going through the page admins and the page admins can start to target only internal obviously employees to be able to share stuff on their LinkedIn pages or feeds as well. So I mean and again, remember they just bought glint for four to 500 million dollars so you can see they're going down the employee road to be able to focus more on helping companies retain and get that engagement. Joel: Is it just me or does the internal communication thing sound a little bit like slack? Just me? No? Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's a big step to go from LinkedIn feeds and Messenger to slack. But it could be done and it could be done through, I don't know, Microsoft teams. Joel: Sure. I mean they're already have messages on LinkedIn. How hard would it be to segment that to only people within your company and having groups within that. And I don't know, man, I'm just saying. Chad: There's a lot of crossover though. I mean, because we're seeing obviously Microsoft has dynamics talent and then they also have teams and teams is a direct slack competitor. So how could they perspectively leverage that within LinkedIn? I mean they're just ... Could they or maybe not. You never know how much technical debt they'd have to pay before they could do something like that. Joel: By the way, remember Yammer? Chad: Yes. Joel: Internal tweeting and it was sort of slack before slack. I mean, Microsoft owns Yammer, there's gotta be some legacy tech or people that know what the hell is going on with that stuff. So I don't know. The pieces are there. Plus you throw in Skype is a telephone voice thing. Could be interesting. Chad: There's redundancy all over the place, that's the thing. Joel: Fire everybody and let's get to the skills gap, shall we? Chad: Sure. Joel: All right. So Codecademy technically out of Philly shutting down. What's up with that? Chad: Yeah. So Roy Mauer over at Sherman put out a great article, talked about the skills gaps fall out and how it lands on HR. It's HR's fault, And then we start to see a code academy start to shut down. So you're like, how do you put those things together? And to be quite frank, what we need to do on the HR side and talent acquisition side of the house is we need to focus on building talent pipelines, not only searching for individuals who have those skills. We had a great conversation in New York over Thai food last week with the hiring sof guys and some of their clients and one of their clients said, "Hey, look, we've got to hire 800 engineers in the next 90 days or something." And if that's where you're at, you've already lost. Chad: Not because you can't do it right now, but because you're always going to chase your tail, that's not going to be the last time you have to do that stupid shit. Right? Because you haven't built an actual pipeline. So for these types of Codeacademies that are actually going the way the Dodo, the reason why they're not working is because they don't have the support of these big companies. They're, they're looking for really the individual to pay the freight or government to pay the freight when that's not who should be paying the freight, companies should be paying the freight for this. Right? Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative) what was the story is it's getting cold and wintry here in the Midwest about the ... What was the one animal that stored up the food during the summer, was it the rabbit or something that partied all summer and then basically starved when winter came, like companies should learn from that and learn to be less reactionary and more sort of proactive with the talent and what's coming down the pike and not relying on schools or government or whatever to provide the talent that they need or immigration, et cetera. It seemed like a pretty common sense idea. Chad: So the Codeacademy, those types of entities need to live inside of companies or coalitions of companies, not outside. That'll allow them to expand and contract as necessary. Not to mention you can skill up much faster if you're inside those organizations and they know what's next. Companies in many cases are just waiting for the universities to catch up to what they've been doing for 18, who knows how many months. So we're in a model today that's a 1940's type of model, 1950's type of model. Send them to schools. They're going to learn everything that they want and need. No, they can't. Moore's law has already pushed us too fast. So to be able to get that talent, much closer to the actual job, you'll do something like Sam Houston high school hopefully is doing with cyber security. You posted that, talk a little bit about that. It could be a pretty cool endeavor. Joel: Yeah, I love this. I mean, I've talked about a local high school where my mom lives, the auto parts or learning how to repair cars and that stuff is sponsored by O'Reilly's or whatever. A company sponsoring that whole segment of high school and geez, a Texas high school down in San Antonio is really getting with the times. They're helping train cyber security professionals at the high school level. So I just have to say and what a great service they're providing their students because these are skills that will be in real demand in the next many decades to come. Chad: Well, that's a possibility though. But it could go the way of the Codeacademy if they're not directly connected with companies. Or the federal government. Because obviously the federal government, you need cyber security individuals. If the federal government is a part of this and they're pipelining these kids into their ranks, that is incredibly smart. If these corporations who need cyber security, if they're doing the same thing and they're closely associated and affiliated to ensure that curriculum stays at the pace it needs to, then yes. Although if they don't and they are doing things in the same vein as the Codeacademy, they're going to shut down because they're not going to be able to keep up pace and they're not going to be directly connected to where the students can actually get employments Joel: Yeah. And by the way, the smart companies out there, will get into this high school and meet these kids and maybe have internships with jobs waiting once they graduate from certain colleges with certain degrees. This is a prime opportunity for companies to get in early on this talent, these rookies that are coming in and get them into the firm system and get them on the team when the time is right. Chad: Get them on contract dude. I mean, seriously, get them on contract. Joel: Internships if not- Chad: Yeah. Internships, if you want a commitment. You want a commitment. If a company's going to pay, let's say for you to go through and get a degree or get certificates or whatever it is, there's got to be some type of commitment in place. I mean, just like the military, you go into the military, there's a commitment, there's a commitment there because they're going to teach you a trade, teach you a skill and after they do that, obviously you're there's for two years, three years, four years, who knows? Same kind of format can be applied very easily and is being applied by organizations. The problem is that should be the standard, not something that seems on the fringe. Joel: By the way, people are leaving their jobs at the highest rates since 20O1. This came out this week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 2.4% of American workers voluntarily left their jobs in July. Again, this is the highest rates since April 2001. Employees leave their jobs for many reasons, including compensation or lack of growth. But things like modern networking make it easier for employees to find and change jobs. Chad: Amazing, amazing. Again, locally, we have an HVAC company who's doing exactly what I said because it's so hard to find heating, plumbing, air conditioning types of individuals. So they're taking them and they're sending them, paying for school, putting them on a contract. I talked to the guy's like, "Yeah, I'm about ready to get off my contract, but I'm going to stay with this company. I mean, they believed in me. They paid for me to be where I am today." If you want real retention, that's a great way to get there. That's a great way. It's not 100% foolproof. You still have to treat them well. But it's a damn good step. Joel: When are we going to just bring back and dentured servitude? I think that needs to come back. Let's get a quick ad from canvas and we'll talk about all the stupid stuff that we talked about. The end of the show. Chad: I love it. 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 go.canvas.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: Why don't we have a chat and cheese culture video? I don't understand. Joel: Because we would have proof of the absolute meet headed this and probably regulations that were violating. Chad: It could be awesome. Joel: Dude. Microchips. I don't ... Man. Chad: Again. Joel: This is an England right? Like 1000 employee- Chad: What in the hell? I don't know. I think everybody tries this shit in the UK first. I don't know why the UK allows it. It's kinda like the haptic bracelets that Amazon was using and when the employees would go to the bathroom or something like that, they would know that they were at the bathroom or it's just a different way to track. Right? Joel: Yeah. Well we talked about this. It was an American company, Detroit or something. They were- Chad: Wisconsin. Joel: People were actually volunteering to get microchips bodied, so like get in the door faster and bypass security. It's just mind boggling that this should happen. Chad: And for the copier machine, that was one of the big- Joel: Oh yeah. Please inject me with a microchip so I can fax quicker and print out stuff more efficiently. Chad: Oh yeah. Cause everybody uses faxes today. Let me tell you. And copiers, I can't tell you the last time I actually touched a copier. It's really interesting. So the guy who's doing this in the UK claims that microchips are just a community service that he offers and people like you and I, Joel, we're just not in the learning curve yet. If this came from a government, I'd be like, yeah, that's not going to happen. But then he said, 'We're a private actor. We're doing this with our community, for our community." This guy is so full of shit. Has he not seen what private actors actually do? Joel: Dude, they put this thing between your thumb and forefinger? It's takes about two seconds and feel similarly to getting your ear pierced? Sounds great. Sign me up. Chad: Yeah. No, no, unless I'm James Bond and they want to track me because I'm an asset and they can't lose the asset and that's something that I just going to have to do because the government says that at that level of being an asset, but to do it just so that I can use the fucking copier, no. Joel: By the way, it says in Switzerland, an estimated 4000 people are implanted with microchips, including about 85 of the 500 people employed by TUI T-U-I a travel operator. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Why is this just not a bigger story. 4,000 people in Switzerland have microchips. Chad: Jeez. Joel: God bless America. Chad: I don't get it. Dumbfounded. Joel: All right, you want to talk automation or AI on the board of directors? Chad: Well, it's Kinda the same thing. So let's do border director. So from Forbes magazine, from Forbes I saw this really cool headline that talked about AI in recruiting. I thought, man, I want to read this. And then there was something even better. It talked about AI and how it's actually helping organizations. So here's a quote, in fact, a Hong Kong venture capital firm recently appointed an AI Algorithm to its board of directors. The company credits AI with pulling the firm back from the brink of bankruptcy because humans are fucking stupid. That's me, not the article, executives at deep knowledge ventures noticed the firm was funding way too many over hyped projects and AI is solved this problem by helping the firm make more logical fact based decisions because humans are stupid. It's amazing. Joel: Why not just have it as AI helps us make decisions like business decisions. Chad: Well, yeah. So, this is very surreal to me because you mentioned earlier Peter Weddle's book Circa 2118, it actually talks about board of directors being overtaken by AI because we're dumb humans and AI just makes better business decisions as you can see from this article. It goes on to talk about recruiting, but to be quite frank, the recruiting stuff is things that we talk about all the time. This, to me, I thought was fascinating. Joel: It is fascinating. Yeah. ZipRecruiter just added three big heavy hitters to their board of directors, including the likes of GoDaddy's former CEO, an ex Facebooker who got them through their IPO. I just don't know if having AI has the same kind of gravitas that having some great names on your board gives you, maybe. Chad: Well, I don't think it matters. I think the actual results matter. So if they pull AI onto their board and these types of results happen, I thought you were gonna say Sophia by the way. But if they, if they can pull AI onto their board and get rid of stupid humans who were making dumb decisions, then it doesn't matter about the Gravitas. I mean that's just all going to fade out the window because it's all about outcomes and numbers. Joel: I feel a new business coming on like people are gonna have, it's gonna be AI board members or something and you'll customize your AI experience and yes, throwing a robot to actually go to board meetings and talk to you as part as part of this program. Chad: Yeah. No, it would have to be. Joel: As long as they don't start podcasting, I guess we're safe. Trump who we rarely talk about. At least- Chad: And there's a reason for that. Joel: Yeah. The trump administration posted a job on a job board recently. Chad: So this is what happens when you can't find people who want to work at your organization. I don't care if it's the White House, I don't care what it is. This is what happens when you have to post jobs. But then let's go ahead and pull the White House back into this discussion. It's the fucking White House, Dude. You should be turning people away left and right because they want the honor and prestige of actually saying that they worked in the White House. They can put on their resume. I mean, that is some pretty next level shit. But guess what? They can't find people because of the organizational culture. That's what's happening. Joel: And by the way, it's usually some of the best and brightest our country has to offer that wants to get into the White House and work there. Chad: Oh, I'm out. Joel: 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. 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. #Indeed #CRM #RMP #CPC #Policy #GoogleforJobs #Facebook #LinkedIn #SHRM #SkillsGap #WhiteHouse #AI #Microchip

Venkat Janapareddy, CEO of Jobiak promises to take job postings and put them on Google for Jobs, SEO 'em and throw-in a good helping of AI. Can they survive the firing squad? Gotta listen to this Talroo exclusive to find out. 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. 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: Ha-ha, 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. Or you feel like you're in a recruiting hamster wheel and there's just nowhere to go right? 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. Announcer: Lost me precious. Lost me precious candidate to what's it so sweet precious. Lost. Announcer: Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to put the recruiting industries bravest, balliest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they 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: All right, all right, all right. Guys, we got a treat today. It's the non-chat bot firing squad episode. I know everyone's kind of sick of that shit. Chad: Geez. Joel: Today, we have a much different business. I want to introduce then Venkat Janapareddy. Is that right? I totally butchered that. I'm just going to call you Big Cat for the rest of the show. Welcome and give us a quick bio on you. Venkat: Thank you guys. Thank you for having me. My name is Venkat Janapareddy, founder and CEO of Jobiak. Jobiak is my third startup. Both my previous startups. which I founded had successful exits. My first one, XpertTech, a technology consulting and staffing company, which I ran for eight years, got acquired by a UK-based private equity firm. My second startup probably you might have heard, Gozaik, which was a social jobs platform for Twitter and Facebook was acquired by Monster World Wide a few years back. Joel: Fantastic. Thanks for being here. That was concise and we love concise. Chad, give him the rules of the show and we'll let him pitch. Chad: All right, Venkat. You're going to have two minutes to pitch Jobiak. At the end of the two minutes, you will hear the bell- Joel: Hold on, hold on, hold on. I need a bigger screen for ... For the soundboard. Chad: That sounds like a personal problem. Then Joel and I will hit you with rapid fire Q&A. If your answers aren't concise, you're going to hear some crickets. Chad: You need to tighten up your game and move it along. Joel: I think Big Kats got to go. I don't think we're gonna have crickets today. Chad: At the end of Q&A, you're going to get graded by both of us. You're either going to receive big applause ... You killed it, great job. Chad: You're on your way, but there's good amount of work to be done. Or what you don't want to hear is the fire squad. Chad: That it's probably time to pack your shit up and go home. So that's firing squad Venkat. Are you ready? Venkat: I am ready. Chad: All right, Joel. Get her going. Joel: All right man, two minutes starting ... Venkat: Great. Jobiak is an AI-based recruitment marketing platform for Google for Jobs. For those who don't know, last summer, Google launched their own job search engine called Google for Jobs. Just to give you some stats, 70% of job seekers started job searches on Google today, which is roughly about 150 to 200 million job searches a month. But to get your jobs on Google, employers that are required to add certain code to the web pages. This process can take several weeks just to get started. That's why 80% of employers are still struggling to get their jobs on Google for Jobs platform. Venkat: At Jobiak, we made this process radically simple. Using our platform, employers can now publish their jobs without having to write a single piece of code. Jobiak is very easy to use. It's a simple three step process. Using our platform, it takes about two minutes to get your jobs and Google for Jobs. We are the first to machine learning platform that can read any job web page from any site in any language and predict Google job schema tags with a 90% success rate. Venkat: To achieve this, for the past nine months, we have hired 60 plus engineers across the globe, trained over a million jobs, and developed 27 different machine learning models. We launched our public beta four weeks back. We are having an extraordinary level of interest from employers and industry leaders. And we are super excited about it. Joel: And we can learn more about you where? I always have to do this. Venkat: Yeah, check us out at Jobiak.ai. We do have a free plan where you can publish three jobs for free and get your jobs on Google for Jobs. Joel: And that's J-O-B-I-A-K, correct? [crosstalk 00:06:09]. Gotta spell this thing for people. All right. That's two minutes, man. Chad, get them. Chad: Whoo, okay. So the whole premise is Google for Jobs is out there. Your jobs are not on Google for Jobs. And we're going to help you get your jobs on Google for Jobs. Is it just that laser focused? Or is there more to be had here? Venkat: They're two important points. One, first to get your jobs on Google for Jobs, that's part of our MVP. The next version, which we are releasing in December, it's going to focus on optimization of your job posting. It's okay to get your jobs on Google for Jobs, but you do want to get better visibility. So we have two goals. First, get your jobs on Google for Jobs and help you get better visibility in front of job seekers. Chad: Okay, so here's some questions. We're gonna die deep into the optimization because a lot of the optimization that we hear about with SEO and whatnot's bullshit. So how are you going to help them optimize? Venkat: Well, let me start with how I started Jobiak. First, you know, lots of my friends and colleagues have asked me what is Google for Jobs? What do we have to do to get my jobs on Google? So we scraped a million jobs from Google to find out who's really using Google for Jobs. Turns out 80% of them are from job boards and job aggregators and LinkedIn, especially in LinkedIn is 20%, Glassdoor 15, and ZipRecruiter 11%. Venkat: So we took that data. Now, we are scraping additional 1 million more jobs. And we are going to look at Google jobs schema has nine different fields, as you can see on Google for Jobs. One is description, location, title, salary. We're going to look at all these and building a new machine learning model to figure out how Google is ranking when a candidate searches for jobs. Venkat: And depending on the type of job title, it depends a lot on type of job title you're using, the job description and the location. And we're building a machine learning model to figure out okay, if you have a jobs here from Indianapolis, a developer job, we are going to train a ton of jobs from Indianapolis with that title and city and see how the ranking happens on Google. Venkat: So with this technology, again, we are not going to guarantee that your jobs are going to appear on the fast page, but at least we can tell them "Listen, at least change the job title, or use this job description." We recommend people who have used certain titles and certain job descriptions, similar job titles have had success. Maybe try this. Chad: Well, there are certain pieces of information that you have no control over, like salary. It's a great one because most companies in the US don't actually put salary or a range of salary on their jobs. And Google has said that they will provide more weighting for jobs that have more information. How are you going to be able to provide that kind of optimization? Venkat: Good question. So when we looked at this million jobs, almost 90% of them had no salary. And Google does say that if you put in salary, you have a better chance. So using our flat form, even if you don't have salary on your actual job posting, our platform allows you to enter your salary, so that we can pass that information back to Google Index API. So we recommend that employees enter salary using a flat form. It doesn't necessarily have to be on the actual job posting. But we are passing that information back to Google Index API, so you have a better chance of appearing on the top. Chad: So it's manual. You have to actually manually add that into your form to be able to provide additional weighting to those jobs go into Google for Jobs? Venkat: It is for now, yes. Chad: Okay. Joel: I wanna step back a little bit. The number you quoted, 73% of job searches start at Google, where are you getting that number from? Because obviously, it's high and we've talked about that, and people quote it all the time. But, I mean, there's email, there's social media, there's going directly to a company's website. Like, is there really like a definitive number? And if so, where did you get that number 73%? Venkat: We got this from CIO magazine from IDC. That's where we got the number from. And as you said, we have also seen on many different websites, but CIO IDC's pretty prominent. So that's where we got the number from. Joel: Okay. And my second question here, SEO side, I got some questions on that. But for the company that just says "Man, I mean, ZipRecruiter is on Google for Jobs, LinkedIn is there. Why do I need something when I could just post my job on my job board of choice? Venkat: So first of all, job boards are expensive. Right now, ZipRecruiter the first three jobs they charge you about $249, LinkedIn is lot more expensive than ZipRecruiter. With our platform, first of all, you can get three jobs for free. No charge. If you have more than three jobs, if you have six, we have a pro plan where you can have six active jobs just for $15 a month. Venkat: This is like SEO. You don't pay a lot of money to get your web pages on Google. We are SEO for jobs. So we are much, much cheaper. You don't have to post ... And then our ultimate goal is you want job seekers coming from Google to your career site. Their plan is to take place on your career site, not on some job board. And that's our main proposition. Get your jobs back on career site. Let Google drive the traffic from there to your career site. And we are much, much cheaper than the job boards. Chad: So are you building a job board, kind of like get rid of your middleman. You don't need Indeed when the search starts, 73% of the time, the search starts on Google. You don't need that dumb Indeed. You just need us to be able to push them directly to you and not use a middleman. Is that what I'm hearing? Venkat: Exactly. We are not a job board. We are a recruitment marketing platform. We help employers get candidates to their career site from Google. We also have advanced analytics where we can tell the entire journey of a job seeker. Careersite "That's a feature we have in our Business Edition". And our goal is, again, we are not a job board. We are SEO for jobs. We are a recruitment marketing platform. Chad: That's a great answer. Joel: Venkat, when I'm a job seeker and I see postings from you or optimized postings from you, will I see the company name or will I see Jobiak? Like what will I actually see as a user in searching for jobs? Venkat: So we have four different pricing plans. The first two the free and pro, which only takes less than a minute to get your jobs on Google. You do see apply on the company name, but there is an additional landing page at Jobiak. But it does not have any advertisement or ads or anything like that. From there, when you click on apply, then go to the career site. But our business plan and enterprise plan, which is what we highly recommend, it goes straight from Google to your career site where the job seeker only has direct apply from Google to career site. Chad: So what's the landing page for? I mean, why do you even need a landing page in the first place, other than to have another echelon of pricing model? Venkat: Good question. So right now, we are working with Google. There is a new piece of technology Google introduced called Google Index API. Just got introduced three months back. With this, we are trying to find out whether we can stop this one additional step Google Index API requires. Hopefully, we get this resolved in a couple of weeks. If that happens, then we'll be able to have everyone go from Google to straight to the career sites. Chad: You're pushing something that many other organizations who've been around for a very long time are actually pushing as well. So I mean, even iCIMS customers. If you want your jobs, and that's the applicant tracking system, that's where the job actually originates. Chad: You can have iCIMS go ahead and mark your jobs up because they're working incredibly close with Google right now with all the different API's, whether it's Job Search API, or even the Candidate Search API. So what's the long term for a company like yours when an iCIMS or Broadbeam or a job distribution organization who has pretty great revenue streams already, this sounds like a pretty quick hurry up and acquire me kind of organization? Joel: Right. Future versus product. Venkat: Right. So first of all, most employers, almost 60% of employers don't have an applicant tracking system. iCIMS is an applicant tracking system. So they're pretty expensive. You have to pay at least $3,000 a month to get started on iCIMS. So, if you are a midsize and a small size employer and you don't want to use applicant tracking system, ours is a great platform. Venkat: Second, in iCIMS, you have to enter job each one repeatedly, whereas in our case, you only tell us one job and then show us the location of your remaining jobs on your career side, we automatically use our machine learning model and pick up all the jobs and push it to Google. Venkat: So if you have any ATS, again, half of the applicant tracking systems don't have this Google for Jobs technology enabled. We are actually getting a ton of calls from the top tier applicant tracking systems who have three to 4,000 jobs, and they want to push their jobs to Google. So if you have an ATS like an iCIMS, if you're already using and they have Google for Jobs enabled, that's not our target. Our target is employers who are not using ATS and also ATS do not have this Google for Jobs technology enabled. Joel: So what is the ideal customer for you look like? Is it the 60% that don't have an ATS, the smaller businesses? And is there a fear that those companies will eventually gravitate toward Hire by Google or LinkedIn where there is the upload directly into Google search? Venkat: Yeah, our ideal customer is mid-size. That's what we are targeting, the class of mid sized companies who do not use ATS, or even like at ATSs who have a greenhouse and never ... Not all of them are supporting all their jobs to push it to Google. So our goal is to attract mid size. Venkat: But surprisingly, we are getting a ton of calls from large scale employers who have more than two dozen jobs. And they want us to push their jobs because we didn't really expect this large scale enterprise companies coming to us. But we already received 50 plus inbound calls where they wanted us to push all the jobs. Joel: Is it because their ATSs are failing to do that? Venkat: That's almost, as I said before, 50% of them don't have this Google for Jobs technology enable, like Brass Ring, Bamboo HR, they don't have this technology. And all their employers want their jobs on Google for Jobs and they're looking for a company like us. Chad: Like you. I mean, you're really going to see that to be standard. And that's pretty quick. I mean, you can get a team on that and have those markups, at least what we've seen from some of the applicant tracking systems, have that up and running pretty quick. So don't you see on the enterprise side, this is going to be a standard issue feature for all the applicant tracking systems out there? Venkat: It is true, but it's been what? 18 months. Applicant tracking systems are still struggling. We did get lot of calls from ATSs who they want to partner with us. Not quite sure, but this new Google Index API, if you don't have a partnership with Google, your limit is only 200 jobs. That's the reason some of these jobs you're getting from applicant tracking systems, you see on Google for Jobs is only limited. Venkat: Unless you have a partnership, you're not going to be able to push more than 200 jobs, whereas those who have partnerships, companies like us, we are able to push close to 160,000 jobs a day. So yeah, it's been 18 months. It's surprising to see that some of these ATSs have not caught up. Chad: I would believe just from the competitive landscape, that's going to happen pretty quickly, as some of these bigger names start to, and again, as we talk about iCIMS and they were like one of the first out of the gate. So let's take a look at the actual mid-sized market, which is your target market. That's not an easy market to penetrate. How do you actually foresee going out and trying to penetrate that market? Venkat: Good question. So we have a go to market strategy, which we already know. List of all the employers in the US who are midsize employers whose jobs are not appearing on Google for Jobs. We have a tool that can tell for any given employer whether their jobs are not on Google. So we are planning to run several LinkedIn campaigns, direct emails. Venkat: Our goal is again, Google is going to do a lot of the selling for us and it's a slow start for Google for Jobs. But pretty soon, it's going to pick it up and more and more employers are getting to know Google for Jobs, and they're all looking for a solution. Venkat: So we're counting on this viral effect. But we do have a GTM strategy right now, where we have ton of employers we already know whose jobs are not on Google. We are looking to run several campaigns and direct email, and then also in house sales to directly contact those guys to get their jobs. Joel: Venkat, do have a sense for how important it is that a candidate or job seeker gets from clicking the initial link to actually applying, how quickly that happens? And what that means to rankings and SEO? Because one of the things I see as a hurdle for your business is you may be able to get the candidate or the job seeker to the job quickly. Joel: But if the actual ATS experience is sucky, which it generally is, and they leave the site and go to a Zip Recruiter or another job site, does that inevitably hurt you, even though it's not your fault? Venkat: Yeah, that's a big problem, this supply optimization. That's one of our roadmaps right now. We are working on it. Right now, we don't really have a clear solution what happens when the candidate lands on career site, but we do have this advanced analytics where we are the only ones we can track the entire job seekers journey. Venkat: So we can tell whether the candidate clicked on other than apply for us is whether they clicked on any products at home base, or any other links. But if he leaves abruptly, we don't really have a solution right now. But that's something we have on our roadmap to optimize the apply process. Joel: Right. And you talked about a version 2.0, I guess, of your service, which is actually helping companies optimize their job postings better. What exactly does that look like? Is that sort of face to face consulting? Is that sort of a text-eo, you know, you look at the job posting and sort of highlight ways that they could make it better? What exactly does the second generation of your product look like? Venkat: That's great. I mean, I'm glad you mentioned Texture. And it's very similar to Texture. But except Texture takes a lot of time. If you have a job posting, you have to spend good 30 to 40 minutes to make it a better job posting. In our case, an employer comes to us, they give us a job posting. Venkat: Using our advanced machine learning, we're going to tell them your score is a 30 out of 100, But, we recommend these are the job titles, these are different job description templates. We don't want employers to be really spending a lot of time changing the job descriptions. We want them to pick one that makes sense. So that it's fast and easy. Venkat: So our goal is to provide several templates for job title. It comes down to job title and job description, especially the job description. We plan to give few templates based on our machine learning, what we have seen out of this million jobs. And they can pick and choose and customize it quickly, so that they don't have to spend more than five minutes to optimize their job posting so that they have a better experience on Google. Chad: I love that. The only problem, once again, it comes back down to user experience, right? And the candidate experience because they're going to get this wonderful, fluffy, better, Textio type of job description before they actually get the applicant tracking system where they apply. And they see this train wreck, right? So that's one of the hardest things for me is being a middle man, which is again, this is really one of the functions that you're providing, and being able to provide more information to Google and better information to the candidate. Chad: The end experience is really what matters. So when a candidate hits the actual corporate career site, they see that job or they see the experience and it sucks. They're going to reject and when they eject, that's going to count against that that career site, which means they're going to have even worse search engine results, right? Venkat: No, I agree. I know that's a big problem right now in terms of the apply process. We are talking to companies like RolePoint and Jibe. Hopefully, we'll have something in place. But if they don't have a good apply process, right now that that is a problem. But our focus right now is to get jobs. Significant number of jobs are not on Google for Jobs. So our initial MVP focus is, you know, disrupt this market, get as many jobs as possible, and then work on apply process. Joel: Could this product work for other vertical search engines, such as Indeed? Is that something on the roadmap or no? Venkat: Yes. Microsoft recently announced they are now pulling jobs from LinkedIn on Bing. Now they have, what? 15% of the search market. We are hoping they will do something similar to Google for Jobs. If they do, we'll be the first one using our ML technology. It will be the same tech, we'll be able to push those jobs to Bing as well. Venkat: Indeed, actually, you know, as of next year, they are no longer going to support staffing jobs, three postings from staffing companies. So we're going to tap into that as well. That's a good thing for Jobiak as well as Google for Jobs. They're all looking for solution. Chad: Nice. I love that target. That's nice. Okay, so we're taking a look at, again, trying to penetrate the market because that's the biggest key. The biggest key is adoption and trying to get those companies to start using the product, and obviously paying for the product. Are you partnering with any organizations that are out there? Any other types of middleman? Any agencies? Or is this a we're going to go it alone because we believe the best strategy for us? Venkat: Absolutely. We are already talking to some of the top recruitment marketing agencies. And they want us to do a couple of pilots. Interestingly, they want us to pilot companies which have two to 3,000 jobs, which we really didn't expect. And we are talking to some applicant tracking systems. We did get some calls where they want us to partner, directly push some of the jobs. Venkat: So our goal is to partner with some of the applicant tracking systems, as well as the recruitment marketing agencies. We are not looking to partner any tier two job boards. Again, lot of inbound calls from tier two job boards where they want to use our tech to push their jobs. But that's not something we're looking to do. Chad: Gotcha. Gotcha. So when it comes to ... I mean, you've got a good track record on the acquisition side of the house. What's the timetable on acquisition because this looks like it could be a pretty tight time table? Venkat: Yeah, we are not really looking to sell the company. Our goal is get at least 50,000 subscriptions by end of next year. We have no competition, to be honest. And we want to disrupt, dominate, and take as much market as possible. And we'll see what happens end of next year. Joel: Well, dominating takes money. Tell me about the plans for raising. Have you raised some money already? And what's your pricing breakdown? You mentioned free for three jobs, but how does that sort of segment up the chain? Venkat: Yeah, right now, I am funding it. I'll continue to fund. Funding is not an issue, but if it's required, we are looking to launch in UK and India and couple of Spanish countries. At some point middle of next year, we are looking to raise some money. But right now, I'll continue to fund. That's not an issue. But from a pricing point, we do have free plan. Three jobs you can push any time. Venkat: But the pro plan is about six jobs active any given time, that's $15 a month. And the next one, business version, that's $99 per month, 25 active jobs. The business plan also has integrations with 11 applicant tracking system right now. We can pull jobs directly from those ATSs and push it to Google. And then, we have enterprise plan where we support up to 10,000 active jobs. The price depends on the number of jobs you have. Chad: Sweet. Joel: All right. We're done with the Q&A. And we'll go on to the grading portion. I'm gonna go first. And I'm gonna take people back in time a little bit to the days where jobs ... Yeah, yeah. The Wayne's World ... You know, I remember when Jobs2Web was putting out optimized job postings. This was before Google for Jobs. This was sort of the traditional web search that you saw on Google. And a lot of the same questions came up. You know, why can't a company do this on their own? Why won't ATSs do this on their own? You know, make the URLs nice, make everything findable, XML feeds, title tags, et cetera. Joel: And eventually, most at ATSs caught up and did that. Just like they caught up on mobile and other things. So SEO was more or less a feature that the ATSs and job boards eventually caught up to doing. I think that this is very similar. I think that Google is a proven entity for job search. No one thinks of it as a nice to have. They're starting to think of it as a must have. And as we see numbers out of ATSs and job boards saying that Google for Jobs is taken 30% of Indeed's traffic, that that's a huge number. And clearly Google for Jobs is impacting in a positive way job seekers going to the right place. Joel: And ultimately, I think that companies will want them to go to their site. So they're going to push ATSs to do this. Now Jobs2Web sold to SAP for, I believe, $100 plus million. So they won in that scenario. They got rich and cashed out. I think that your domination, and we're not looking to sell and all that stuff, sounds really nice. But I think that it will behoove any ATS of stature to not look at you guys and say "We're behind on the ATS SEO optimization portion. We need to get on board as soon as possible." And backup the Brinks truck to your office and make you guys a deal that you can't refuse. Joel: So from that perspective, I think we're working with some real concrete benefits for customers. I agree with you that ATSs are going to be behind. A lot of companies don't get this. So I think it opens up a whole new market for a lot of ATSs that may want to get into the SMB space. So for those reasons, this definitely gets from me, and I'm a Google nerd. Joel: That's applause. We'll be talking to you in three to five years about your next startup because you will dump this in the next 12 to 18 months I predict. Venkat: Okay. Thank you. Joel: Chad, you're up. Chad: Excellent. So Venkat, I have to say that your pitch is spot on. There's no question. When you're talking about job boards and the Zip Recruiters and not going to a middleman, right? Not trying to go to a middleman. Going directly to the source, which is Google. I love that. That's awesome, being able to offer free pilots and all those things. I think that's incredibly necessary when you're starting something up that nobody's ever had a taste of before. Chad: So I think that is a main thing. I do think there's no question, this is a very short timeframe. The timetable for you, as Joel just said, to be able to get this turned over is going to be 12, I think 18 months is on the outside. Because if you stay in the same vein, it's really a one trick pony. Chad: And to say you have no competition is not the case. Maybe not direct competition. But when iCIMS is already sending jobs there, and you know, all the other big companies are going to start doing the same thing. You've got Hire by Google. And then all the other small applicant tracking systems, which are pretty cheap. About 80 bucks a month, like a JazzHR. The competition, it's going to happen quickly, right? Chad: So you're going to have to obviously get a quick turn on this. So various competition. And they're also the SmashFly's of the world and the Phenom's of the world. And again, everybody understands the power of Google. So you're incredibly smart getting out in front of this. If you can get rid of this in 12 months, I would say I will give you a big applause then. But right now, it's going to be a golf clap. Joel: Tough crowd. Venkat: Thank you guys. I appreciate the feedback. Joel: But no guns for you, so you made it out alive. How do you feel? Venkat: Very good. Very good. That's really good feedback. Appreciate that. Chad: I'm sure it's part of your roadmap already. You've had a couple of successful exits already. So good luck, man. Joel: Good for you. All right, before we leave one last time, where can our listeners find out more about you? Venkat: Check us out at Jobiak.ai. As I mentioned, we do have a free plan where you can publish three jobs for free. So get your first three jobs on Google for Jobs and see what this amazing tool can do for you. Chad: Always be closing, baby. Good job. We out. Joel: We out. Venkat: Thank you guys. 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.chadheese.com. #FiringSquad #Jobiak #GoogleforJobs #SEO #Jobs #Startup

After our "Automation and A.I.: Is Your Job Safe" Smart Stage presentation at SHRM Talent we were immediately ambushed by Jeanne Meister who wanted to talk about taking HR to AI School, so we broke out the mics. Enjoy! More amazing "On The Road" content brought to you by Jobcase! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities.​ Jobcase: With job boards, you get clicks, and well, clicks. But if you're looking for actual people, not just clicks, meet Jobcase. If you need to hire great people, hourly employees, or have hard to fill jobs, Jobcase takes a different approach than job boards. Jobcase delivers local workers, active and passive candidates for the more than 100 million members in their community. That's right, the people on Jobcase are also members, and since they're members, they trust and respond to what Jobcase puts in front of them because they know it will be worth their while, like that job opening you're looking to promote or that hiring event you're hosting. Jobcase: In fact, people are at the center of everything Jobcase does. It's why they use machine learning and data insights to ensure they're connecting employers with the right Jobcase members and their members with the right jobs. It's people first, not just clicks. Put the power of Jobcase to work for you. Learn more at jobcase.com/hire. That's jobcase.com/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 and Cheese Podcast. Jeanne: I said I had ... Joel: Oh, you don't put your name on your little pamphlet here? Jeanne: No, I didn't. Joel: I guess it doesn't matter, right? Jeanne: It doesn't. Joel: Well, we'll get to that. We'll do the intro here real quick- Jeanne: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel: ... and then you can tell us who the hell you are. Jeanne: Exactly. Joel: What's up everybody? We're here at SHRM Talent, Nashville, Tennessee. Chad: Nashville, man. It's warm, dude. Joel: The outdoor edition of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: Love it. Joel: Really enjoying the weather here right now. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I think only a beer is missing from this picture right now. Chad: A beer and then a nap, and a hammock. Joel: Did I just say you need a nap? Chad: I know I need a nap. Joel: Wow. Chad: After a beer and a hammock. Joel: You heard it here first. Chad: It's awesome. Joel: We just got off stage talking about AI and automation to- Chad: Shaking up here at SHRM. Joel: ... a standing, standing room only I think is fair enough to say what we just did there, but so someone, a mystery lady came up to us. Chad: She said, "I want to be on the podcast." Joel: She's the, I'm going to go with founder of Future Workplace, okay, and she has partnered with SHRM to do some AI courses. So mystery lady, why don't you tell us who you are and why we should care, and then we'll get to questioning you. Jeanne: All right, here goes. Jeanne Meister, founding partner of Future Workplace, an HR advisory and research firm. We have a network called the Future Workplace network of I like to think of them as the pioneers in HR that are on the cusp of trying the latest new ways to engage employees and create a more compelling employee experience. So we took a poll of our members about a year ago and it said, "What's the one thing that you really need to do better as we're entering 2020?" and they said, "AI for HR." Joel: Of course, they did. Jeanne: Right? Chad: Of course, they, and- Jeanne: And they said we don't know anything about it. Chad: ... they need to do a lot of things better for HR, but yeah, AI is going to be able to help them do that. Is that how you feel about it? Jeanne: AI is going to put the humanity back in HR. Joel: I like that. Chad: I do. Joel: Can we use that? Jeanne: You can. Joel: You haven't trademarked it? Jeanne: Yeah. Well, go- Joel: So how long has Future Workplace been around? Jeanne: Six years. Joel: Six years. Okay, so you're a baby, you're still in diapers as corporations go. Jeanne: Well, I'm just starting to walk really. Joel: Okay, starting to walk. She's stumbling a little bit, holding onto the rail, but that's great. So your members want AI and where does it go from there? Jeanne: It goes from there, they want to recreate the employee and the candidate experience. That's what they're after. Chad: Okay. Jeanne: They see a lot of opportunity to take the routine activities that HR is just burdened with quite honestly, and take them away and offload them to AI so that they can ideally focus on the more strategic areas like closing the sale, right? I mean, AI isn't going to make the job offer, but there's so many opportunities along the way in the sourcing process. Jeanne: I think one of the... As we just talked, I think in addition to the benefits of finding the right talent faster and eliminating that big black hole that we've been living with for decades now, the biggest opportunity I see is the possibility of eliminating unconscious bias, and so if you have the skills and credentials to do the job, you actually are more comfortable talking to a chatbot. Chad: So we actually are going to be in Lisbon next month, and we're going to have on stage with us an AI robot that is an interviewing robot, and it's out of, where are they out of? Joel: Sweden. Chad: Sweden. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Tengai. Joel: Yeah. Think of a like a Barbie bust where you'd style her hair. Chad: Yeah, it's like this tall. Joel: And so yeah, it's kind of like that. Jeanne: Yeah. Joel: And there's sort of a digital face and yeah, the video they have is interesting. Candidates walk in. It's a robot asking you questions and the main selling point I think is the unbiased angle of it's inter... It doesn't matter what color, how tall, what sex. It's going to ask you questions about the qualifications for the job and recommend you accordingly. Chad: And the product is called Tengai Unbiased, so I mean, they are really focusing on that too. So do you think that that is the biggest advantage to AI? Jeanne: I think that's one of the undersold advantages of AI, and as I said, CBS News did a special video the end of September on how is AI used by big companies, and they featured Hilton Hotels, which started using AI in 2015. So they interviewed a customer call center operator who went through the entire process using the LeO chatbot, and they said, "What's the best part of the process?" and he said, "You know what? I felt entirely comfortable being able to share my credentials and get the next step for a face-to-face interview without any unconscious bias. Just telling my story and what my skills are." Chad: Which I think is awesome from a candidate's view, I mean, from an experiential view, right. That's one of the things that we really have to focus on because the black hole has really screwed us in our brands over the years. But I mean from the company side, I mean, that's kind of like an an underlying advantage. Are they focusing on that, saying that's why we want to go there, or are they focusing on it because they know that there are just all these efficiencies that are there to make sure that they can get to the right people faster? Joel: Honestly, if I'm a hiring manager or recruiter, I'm scared to death that I could be replaced with a bust of a robot who will do the interviewing. Jeanne: Yeah. Joel: I mean, what am I really for then? If automation is sourcing candidates and pre-screening them and scheduling them- Chad: And interviewing them. Joel: ... and now they're interviewing them, then what am I going to do? Jeanne: Well, I think the other question here is what's the responsibility of the organization you work for to upscale you? I think what we're not spending enough time on are what are the new job roles in HR as AI infuses the entire HR function, and I can see a number of new job roles. For example, Salesforce came out with a new job role, the Chief Humane and Data Ethics Officer. September of 2019, that role was filled. I think there's going to be a lot of new roles focusing on data ethics and data transparency, and that means that people need new skills. Joel: Branding and experience come to mind, treating job seekers more like customers and consumers. Chad: Brand ambassadors. Jeanne: Yeah. Joel: The sort of bleeding of marketing and recruiting coming together. I mean, we're seeing more bridges between those two departments, and whether they're called brand manager or employment brand, whatever. That would be another thing that comes to my mind in terms of what could grow in light of sourcing and recruiting and interviewing becoming less important. Chad: So tell us about this training. Jeanne: Yeah, so we're thrilled to have developed with SHRM a series of three courses. The series is called using AI for HR. Each course is a mini-course and it's three weeks, self-paced. As an HR professional, you receive five SHRM PCDs plus a digital badge from our firm, Future Workplace. The three self-paced courses are AI for talent acquisition, AI for internal talent mobility, and AI for learning and development. Jeanne: So if anyone is out there in HR saying, "Oh gosh, Jeanne, but where do I start?" Right? The low hanging fruit is AI for talent acquisition, but the mind share, the urgency is AI for internal talent mobility. Why? Because people are staying in their jobs longer. As organizations are flatter, people are actually staying in their jobs 30% longer than they have before, and companies want to retain you as an employee and they need to move you around. AI is ideally suited to help an organization provide more internal talent mobility. Joel: So who's teaching these classes? Jeanne: Not me. We have identified 12 HR pioneers that have started their AI journey as early as 2015, which one is Hilton Hotels. We have brands such as IBM, Hilton, General Electric, Intel. We've identified these 12 early adopters, and they're telling their stories in three-minute video case studies. Our job as the course curators is to create the experience, the curated articles, the research and the application, and it ends with an an action plan. What are you going to present to your team? What's your recommendation that you want to present that your company should go on this AI Journey? Where are you going to start? That's how it ends, and you get five SHRM PCDs. Joel: I assume this is something that you can put on your resume, potentially make more money in your next position, similar to other education advancements, right? Jeanne: Absolutely, and so I'm Jeanne Meister, and you could check me out on my LinkedIn profile because I designed the course, and I also took the course so I have all the digital badging on my LinkedIn profile. Chad: I'm not just the founder, I'm a user. Jeanne: I'm a user, right, exactly. Joel: So how would you define AI, because there's quite a bit of debate. What's your definition? Jeanne: So my definition is AI provides you with the opportunity to create human intelligence through the use of tools and computer systems, so it mimics human intelligence. So your definition looked at the narrow, the general, and the broad. I think what people really wanted is just a broad definition that there are so many parts of our jobs in HR that are routine and manual, and AI can provide the ability to have the same level of human intelligence and offload those parts of our jobs that, quite honestly, we're not getting any satisfaction from. Chad: Yeah. Well, and I think it's most important that HR started doing research and now having these types of resources available to them, it makes it a little bit easier to jump in and really start learning. Jeanne: Yeah. So here's what I was surprised at with your talk. Chad: That it was so awesome? Joel: How sexy we were? Jeanne: Well, in addition to all of that. Joel: We get that a lot. Chad: Yeah, we get that a lot. Jeanne: In addition to all of that, you started by asking so who's afraid they're going to lose their job because of AI? Chad: Right. Jeanne: I was sitting in the first row because I was paying attention to every word. Joel: You're a groupie, aren't you? Jeanne: Oh, I'm so much of a groupie. Chad: New subscriber. Jeanne: I turned around and there were two hands raised. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. Jeanne: And I said, "These people are not telling the truth." They are so terrified of AI that they are afraid to raise their hands. Joel: And my comment was, "You all are some disillusioned people." Chad: Yes. Yes. Jeanne: And I think it shows the level of maturity. You said we're in the second inning. We're sort of like maybe in the first pitch of the first inning here. Joel: Okay, okay. Jeanne: Okay. I mean, we've got a- Chad: It's a long journey. Joel: It's very subjective. Chad: It's a long journey, Joel. Jeanne: We've got a long road ahead- Chad: It's a long game. Jeanne: ... and that's why it's really important to understand who are these people that have been using AI for the last three years. What have been their business results, how did they start and what can you take away to your organization? Joel: So we're in the early stages and we both agree on that. Jeanne: Yeah. Joel: You can debate exactly how early. Jeanne: Yes, exactly. Joel: But we have a lot of companies looking to solve the problems of AI, and it's very early in that process as well. You mentioned looking at vendors in the landscape as part of your courses. What are some vendors that stand out to you that are getting AI right? Jeanne: Yeah, so we have an AI for HR technology roadmap where we identified 80 companies, venture-backed companies that have solutions for AI, and we looked at it across the employee life cycle. So we started with personal productivity. Chad: It's like road mapping it. Jeanne: Yeah. Joel: Yeah. Jeanne: So hey, why not be curious yourself and for 19.95 a month, you could have your own personal productivity bot using X.AI, Andrew or Amy, and so we think that you've got to look at it... In order to really think about this as an opportunity for you and your organization, you have to be a user. You can't fake it here, right? Chad: Right, right. Jeanne: So we have a number of personal productivity bots that I think you... That's one of the assignments in the course. We take them through it and choose one. Chad: Build your bot? Jeanne: Build your bot, right? I think in the recruiting space, that's where most of them are, so we have Maya competing head to head with LeO for the whole area in recruiting and sourcing and interviewing. We have in the internal mobility space, we have [Glaut 00:15:44], an Israeli company, but here's what I think is really interesting. So we all know about IBM and Watson, right? Okay, so they've been at it for decades, but a trend that I see is the commercialization of HR vendors by the very companies that are using AI for HR. They're going to be so successful in either building it or buying it that they're going to market with their own solutions head-to-head with the venture-backed businesses. Chad: Yeah. Great time for competition. Joel: Competition is good for business. Jeanne: Yeah. Chad: It is very good for business. Joel: So what does this AI thing look, what's it look like in 10 years? What's the employment rate for recruiters? Jeanne: I think we're going to have a whole new HR function in 10 years, and I think the HR departments will be leaner, more- Joel: We agree on that, I think. Jeanne: Yeah. Chad: Oh yeah. Jeanne: Yeah. We'll be more strategic, right? Joel: Smarter, maybe. Jeanne: Smarter. I think we're going to see the end of the self-service HR and the birth of AI-powered HR, so you're going to be focusing on predictive HR, and one of the cool applications is proactive retention, and IBM has, along with many others have patents in this area. So HR then leaner, a more strategic HR is going to really be key in predicting who's going to stay in the company, and if I have a high performer on my team and I get wind that they could be leaving- Joel: There's a story about GM having something that can predict with like a 90, 95% confidence rate that someone will leave in the next six months. Chad: It's all about signals, man, the signals that you're throwing out. Jeanne: Exactly. Joel: Do you fear that on the creepy scale, it'll get too creepy? Chad: It's already too creepy. What are you fucking talking about? I mean, look at Slack. Joel: I'm talking to her. Chad: Look at Slack. I'm creeped out now. Jeanne: I think it's on the edge of creepy. What do I think is creepy? What I think is creepy is when a company starts reading my emotions at work. What I think is creepy is when a company gives me a sensor and now sort of follows me in the organization as I walk around and knows who I talked to- Chad: Amazon. Jeanne: ... or email. Joel: So there's a company that you basically wear a lanyard that's a recording device. Jeanne: Yes. Chad: Uh-huh (affirmative). Jeanne: Right. Joel: And it records how you say stuff, what you say, et cetera. Do you think at some point people will go away from companies like that and say, "I don't want to work for a company that's going to be policing every single thing that I do?" Could it be a recruiting deterrent in the future? Jeanne: A good question. I think yes, because I think it really... What we know today about data privacy and how important that's becoming and the breaches in data, I think this is only the beginning of what we're going to be seeing in five years from now. So I think that's what's creepy, when somebody follows you in the company, around the company, knows who you talk to, understands who your network is, knows how many times you send an email. That's creepy. Joel: Or even higher view video interviewing will scan your face while you're giving answers to questions- Chad: Oh yeah? Joel: ... and are you lying and are you nervous? Are you this or that? I mean, to me, if job seekers find out that that is what's happening during video interviews, maybe they'll say, "I don't want to do an video interview with you." Jeanne: Well, I don't know if they're going to have the choice. I think 10 years from now, everyone's going to be doing video interviews. They're already doing so many now. Joel: So you don't think they'll just migrate to the gig economy and the contract and Upwork economy? Jeanne: No, no. Joel: No? Jeanne: No. I- Joel: So they're just going to take it. Jeanne: They're going to... No, they're not going to. Chad: I think it depends. I really think it depends on the market and if there are companies that are doing that, it has to happen broad base. Everybody has to be doing it and if not, I mean, you're going to see people jumping. But I mean, we're seeing it like somewhat, not that, but we're seeing that now at Amazon with the haptic bracelets, right, and they didn't have people leaving, and then we have people who are getting microchipped in Wisconsin, and then now we've got Amazon. Joel: Barcodes. Chad: Yeah, Amazon. Amazon has the little HUD, heads-up display goggles and that kind of shit. I mean, I don't know, man. It seems like from a human being- Joel: It feels like an eggshell working experience that's not all that healthy. Chad: No, not at all. Not at all, but people are putting up with it because they need those jobs. Joel: Got to feed kids and shelter their selves. Jeanne: Yeah. I think that so much of it depends also on the level of transparency. Are you telling people what you're doing, how you're doing it, and what you're doing with the data? Employees are going to demand you communicate transparency, and that's where I think we're going to see a lot more than today. Joel: I still think there are a lot of employees who don't realize that their emails are potentially being read by employers. Chad: Yes. Joel: And that should have been found out 20 years ago if that's the case. Jeanne: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. Jeanne: Okay. Well, thank you. If any- Joel: Yes, for those listeners who want to know more, let them have it. Jeanne: For those listeners that want to know more, my name is Jeanne Meister, Future Workplace. Please contact me on LinkedIn. The course series is called using AI for HR. It is in the SHRM e-store as of today. Chad: Today. Jeanne: Today is its birthday. Chad: Breaking news, breaking news. Joel: Jeanne, thanks for your time. Jeanne: You are very welcome. Joel: This was very fun. Jeanne: Thank you. Bye-bye. Joel: Have you ever thought about selling jeans? You could be Jeanne Meister, the Jeanmeister. 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. #Jobcase #SHRMTalent #AI #Automation #School #SHRM #HR

DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!! No, seriously Nathan Perrott AIA's VP of Digital Marketing & Employer Brand talks BS vs. reality. It's another Nexxt Exclusive! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides training and development to help your workplace leaders and employees integrate with and value people with disabilities. Nexxt: Okay, so you need candidates fast and you're sick and tired of being nickled and dimed to death. I totally get it. You should check out FlexxPlan from Nexxt. It's perfect for employers and staffing firms who are busy. They need candidates and flexible pricing now. Nexxt: FlexxPlan is also perfect for recruitment ad agencies who need targeted distribution and tools to help demonstrate client ROI. If you're sick and tired of all the BS, hassle, and just want candidates now, check out Nexxt and FlexxPlan with over 70 million members. Next takes all of your jobs and puts each one in front of the best candidates across their entire ecosystem. No muss, no fuss. Nexxt does all the work and FlexxPlan makes it cost effective. Checkout everything Next has to offer at hiring.nexxt.com. That's hiring.N-E-X-X-T.com. Nexxt: And, if you'd like to save even more cash, just go to ChadCheese.com, scroll down and click on the next logo, Discounts Aplenty. Remember, Nexxt, with the double x, not the triple x. Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors! You're listing to HR's most dangerous podcast, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads the snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: It's the hype cycle. Joel: Let's get ready to rumble. It's the San Diego aircraft carrier outside my window edition of this Nexxt exclusive. Special guest today guys. He's British, so there may be some translation needed. Nathan Perrott, VP Digital Marketing Solutions at AIA worldwide. Nathan, cheers and welcome. Chad: Woohoo! Nathan: Thanks for having me on, guys. Joel: So many of our listeners don't know who the hell you are. Give us the 140 to 280 character introduction to you and your company. Nathan: Thanks. So yeah, I work with clients to help them with their employer brand across digital marketing and technology in recruitment space, focusing largely in TA technologies. I work for AIA. We're a global leader in talent acquisition technologies, and we leverage our talent brute tech, our creative and our strategy to enhance clients' employer brands, basically, and try and redefine how employers and candidates are connecting. Chad: Excellent man. So we're in today because you and I have been talking for a little while about this rec tech hype site. Joel: Don't believe the hype. Chad: Believe the Rec Tech Hype Cycle. What the hell is a Rec Tech Hype Cycle? Nathan: Yeah, so it started in 2015, and we kind of identified a huge surge in the amount of recruitment technologies starting to pop up. And we were inspired by Gartner's hype cycles and they do a lot of the HR emerging tech type things. But we wanted to focus purely on recruitment technology and help our clients cut through the BS really. And that started by helping them understand the landscape of what's out there, and seeing all these different technologies in recruitment. Nathan: So, we tried to map it out and used Gartner's hype cycle as a way of doing that. So it's got these five stages of hype, essentially. You've got the first stage, which is the innovation trigger, where everyone's getting really excited about the types of tech that's out there. You have things like chat bots and AI on there for a couple of years. Chad: I call that the bright and shining stage. Nathan: Everyone's getting excited about how recruitment's going to revolutionize and then nothing ends up changing. Then you get the peak of inflated expectations stage, which is where the only people really talking about it are the companies that invested in it or the VCs that have invested. Chad: Yeah, yeah. I call that the bullshit overfloweth stage. Nathan: Nice. Joel: Yeah, it starts to stink a little bit. Nathan: That's right. Then you get the trough of disillusionment, where either the tech's failed and it ends up in that, or sometimes it can pop in there and jump back onto the innovation trigger as the tech maybe gets repurposed, or the type of technology gets pivoted, so QR codes being used as a call to action were in there for a bit before Snapchat reinvented them and the like. Chad: That's the vaporware attained stage. That's what I call it. Nathan: If we were doing a brand one for this, for the text one. Joel: Tinder profile pic wasn't quite as good as the real you. Nathan: That's exactly it. There's a few tech vendors in there I reckon. And then you hit this slope of enlightenment stage, which is where the technology starts to prove ROI in certain use cases. And what we've started to see over the last few years is that part of the cycle starting to get quite long and quite busy, particularly as new technologies are arising, or the type of technology that we identified previously is split out into slightly more niche uses. Chad: That's the getting your shit together stage. Go ahead. Nathan: And then you've got the plateau of productivity, which is okay, it's hit mass market adoption. It's proven its case. And most organizations are using it to attract talent in some way. Now, when we first started this, obviously it was only our point of view to start with, and that section was bit bigger than we thought. But as we started to crowdsource opinion and get clients and other tech vendors insight, that actually shrunk. Nathan: To be honest, even you've got applicant tracking systems on there, but arguably they're doing the job these days. And I think that's kind of the point of this hype cycle, is that not only is there a lot of stuff out there, not only can you not realistically afford to or integrate all of these things together, but there are some things on here that everybody's using that isn't actually fulfilling what it should be. And that's why other band aids are being put on some of these solutions. Chad: So that number five stage I have is buyer's remorse stage, and we'll cover that. Don't worry about that. But the big question I have is, who in the community is making recruitment tech landscape complex? Because that's what it is. People can't understand what the hell is going on. So, who's actually making it complex? Is it the vendors? Is it the employers not knowing what the hell they should be looking for research wise? Who's at fault here? Nathan: Yeah, I think it's a combination of factors. I think the job of the recruiter, the talent acquisition professional, the HR generalists, whoever you're talking to, that job has changed somewhat in the last few years to become part technology advisor, or at least assessor, and IT, obviously, are getting much more involved in the procurement process nowadays for HR tech. Nathan: And then you've got the technology vendors themselves who are probably making this the most confusing because they're talking about things that their tech does, when in most cases, that's not necessarily the case. And it's caught in between the sales and marketing fluff. There's a huge amount of investment in sales and marketing, particularly from the startup side of things nowadays. A lot of that money that they're raising is going into sales and marketing, rather than product development. Nathan: I commented on this after Unleashed London, recently, when I talked to a few clients who had used some of the vendors there, and some of the prospects, and even some of the tech vendors themselves, who are saying how they've raised some money and what it's going to be used for. It kind of concerned me a bit, because I think the landscape's becoming much more homogenous, ironically, as each tech company tries to diversify more and more, to get more of the landscape, and try and become this one stop shop. One platform if you like. I know you guys have a view on that, the same that I do, which is there isn't going to be a single vendor that provides all of these solutions, and you kind of have to pick what's important to you and understand what's going to make the biggest difference to your talent acquisition strategy before you go and buy any tech that claims to be the silver bullet. Joel: Well, don't go telling Microsoft and Google that there's not gonna be one solution. But I'd like to switch gears a little bit, because we have listeners who can't see the actual sort of curve and where things are on this, so I want to give some context to what we're talking about on your hype cycle. Joel: And I was also reminded by a Seth Godin book, for the readers of Seth Godin out there, a book called The Dip, which is a bit like the hype cycle as well. But just for the listeners out there, some context, you have, at the early stages, sort of going up the initial slope, things like quantum computing, smart spaces, augmented analytics. I mean this is early, early stuff that even we've never talked about on the show, probably. Joel: As you go up there, up the curve, you're looking at virtual reality stuff, you're looking at 360 video, voice activated job search, your voice assistants, and then as the curve goes down, you have at the beginning of, I guess the third stage, where things are sort of starting to be proven. You have chatbots, you have your autonomous stuff, your interactive video. You're moving up the chart here a little bit with social messaging apps, onboarding platforms. And then, as we go into the stuff has sort of been proven, you're looking at SMS messaging, you're looking at an ATSs, you're looking at paper click. Things like that. So, I wanted to give some context to our listeners about where things are right now on your bell curve. Joel: My question, however, the thing that stood out glaringly to me was, you have QR codes and chatbots side by side. To me, QR codes, unless this is a European thing, QR codes to me are off the chart. They shouldn't be on the curve. And chatbots, to me, are on the elevated, going up the hype curve, to have already fallen and then working it's way up there. So, what are your thoughts on the QR code, where you put them, and where was the thought process in terms of putting chatbots at sort of the down slope and going up the proven curve? Nathan: Yeah. Let me start with QR codes, because I think that's a fairly quick one. QR codes is like a reentry fee. That was on the trough of disillusionment for a couple of years. And then we started to use them and see them be used a lot with Snapchats specifically, for engaging with early years audiences, early careers audiences. Nathan: But in China, QR codes are hugely used for WeChat and for engaging out there. And obviously that's a huge audience. So, we think there's potential there in those situations. But I think they were misused. We've seen posters on the Underground here in London with QR codes, and of course you can't use them if you've got no Internet access. In those days, there was no internet access Nathan: So, it's like a lot of these things. The technology is not necessarily bad. It just gets misused. And that takes me into chatbots, where I tend to call them shatbots, Shit Chat bots. Joel: Damn it, why didn't we come up with that, Chad? Nathan: There are a lot of chatbots, particularly in the UK. They're not even chatbots. Some of them are decision tree based. So, the user's selecting a load of menu options, if you like. They're just sort of replacing website, or poor website navigation and hierarchy. Even the chatbots that you do engage with, where some of these startups are saying, "Oh yeah, brilliant. We've now got a chat bot because someone's released some open source code that we can use. We have a chat bot, everybody. Chuck one of these on your career site." Nathan: They're just not creating a good candidate experience. The brand is being impacted by a negative candidate experience, and we're very passionate about making sure that chatbots do the job that they're intended for. Now there's a whole range of use. And chatbots is probably the wrong word actually. Maybe it should just be bots now, because there are different ways that you can use that technology, whether it's in candidate engagement, whether it's in candidate concierge to help them through the application process, whether it's job discovery or FAQs. There's a whole multi-use of bots. That alone could probably have its own cycle. Nathan: But the impact of making sure that you create a great brand experience to positively impact on your employer brand through those things, is very hard to do. You have to have structured data, you have to have lots of it, you have to give the chat bot time to learn, you have to negatively train it as well. I think some of the vendors that are just plugging in these free or open source platforms that are easy to create decision tree based things aren't necessarily thinking about that. Nathan: So, my advice to anyone who's looking at a chat bot should really consider how this is going to work from an experience point of view, how it's going to get trained, what's the data looking like that it's going to read the answers to the questions from, because you can't just sit there and think of 20 questions that someone might ask. Really got to think about it. Joel: I think that's a really healthy counterpoint to probably what we've been getting a lot of, which is high reply rates, high open rates, anti ghosting, magic. Those kinds of things have been surrounded by chat bots. But your contention is that not so much. They're just now on the slope of enlightenment to convince people that they can be a productivity tool. Nathan: I've seen some really good uses of them. Some good chat bot vendors out there. They really understand the candidate space. They really understand structured data. They understand what they're trying to achieve, and work with a client and/or that agency partner to create a really branded experience. Some people have done them in house. There's organizations in the UK that have done an excellent job, but unfortunately, the majority of people are just trying to "innovate" and trying to get a shiny thing on their career site. Chad: Exactly. And isn't that one of the big problems, is that a vendor instead of. I mean a company comes to them and they want to talk about the bright and shiny. They don't even know what the hell the bright shiny is. Joel: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Chad: Exactly. And then a vendor, they go toward their hot button, and that hot button isn't focused on a solution. So, therefore, it's all about the bright and shiny, which is going to obviously dull and fade, which means overall retention of that client is going to be incredibly low, because they weren't focusing on a solution in the first place. What's the gap you're trying to bridge? What the hell is going on? Chad: So, from your standpoint, are you seeing many companies coming in, many prospective clients and/or clients coming in asking questions that are not solution-oriented but mainly bright and shiny product oriented? Nathan: Sometimes. Yeah, that can happen and to a point, there might be an argument for saying, if you want to be known for innovation, you have to be known to innovate and to do the PR around it. L'Oreal has done a great job at that over the years. But most organizations can be oversold the dream of what these technologies are going to do for them. Nathan: My three overhyped from last year where chat bots, AI and CRM. AI's not necessarily in the same bucket as those two, because, in theory, AI could help with chatbox and CRM, but I'm not sure how much real AI there is in those at the moment. But the reality is, particularly with CRM, it's one of those quick reach solutions where I think organizations think, "Yes, we need to move towards a CRM strategy. We need a an in band recruitment marketing strategy. CRM is going to be the technology to do that." Nathan: They forget about thinking about the strategy, the audience segmentation, the content strategy, how are you going to stop the talent pool stagnating? How are you going to validate it, the resource, who's going to do it? Do we have the right bandwidth? Do we need a sourcing team rather than a reactive recruitment team, as well as, instead of how we're going to switch that balance? Do they have the time and the skills? Sourcing and inbound recruitment, marketing through a CRM is really, really complex and takes a lot of time, and you need great, compelling content. There we go with the brand again. Nathan: But most people go for the tech, which is the last thing you should do, once you've figured those things out, and we go for the tech, plug it in. I hear this from clients, I hear it from the CRM vendors themselves. "We've got it. We're not using all of its capability." The vendor says, "Yeah, the client's got it, but they're only using 10% of the capability." And think, "Well, no kidding. You've just gone straight to the end, to the silver bullet and it's not worth it." Chad: Exactly. Well, and that's not a silver bullet. I mean, we see this with applicant tracking systems all the time. We were in a room full of people at Sherman, Nashville, and we asked how many companies are happy with their applicant tracking systems. Hardly any hands went up, number one. Number two, most of those companies or possibly using 5% of the capabilities of those platforms in the first place, so they're not happy with something they're using 5% of. Nathan: Yeah, exactly. Chad: It makes no sense to me whatsoever, and they want to start layering new technologies on top of the applicant tracking system that's not working for them. What the fuck are they thinking? Joel: Especially considering how much they're spending on some of these solutions. Chad: Yeah. Especially an applicant tracking system. Fuck me, man. Nathan: I think one of the challenges that I've identified now. I don't know if this is something you guys have recognized, but most recruitment technology software as a service is obviously going to have a recurring fee, but the way the platforms are built is designed to be maybe configurable to a degree, but primarily it is what it is. Particularly with applicant tracking systems. Nathan: Whereas organizations that are buying them have very different, very disparate structures to how they recruit, how they approach TA, and trying to find that middle ground between a very rigid SAS platform, and process that you want to, or think is the right process, and trying to make that work with that system, I think there has to be a bit of give and take. It's difficult because do you buy a system that is regarded as a great system and change your resourcing strategy, your TA model, and possibly your head count and the types of skills and talent that you hire to that system? Probably not a good idea, but you might have to go some way to that. Nathan: Or do you select a vendor that matches your TA model that maybe isn't best in class but it's a little bit more flexible? And I think that's where some of the middle ground vendors might win. But whether that's good for their business or not to adapt and customize their SAS platform for a client, I've heard some horror stories of technology vendors, even big enterprises, ATSs, configuring their platform or customizing their platform for a client to get to a point where they say, "Look, we can't service this anymore, because it costs us too much money, so we're not going to continue." Nathan: And the client's thinking, "Okay, well now I've gone all the way down this route, I've paid for all this customization, and now I'm going to have to migrate anyway." So, it's a real difficult balance, I think, because we're moving into this software as a service powered tech model. Joel: Hey Nathan, I'm curious about, to be morbid, the death toll of this whole hype cycle. And I'm wondering where job boards might fit on this curve, and even going further back to newspaper ads or print. What happens once you plateau and then things fade? What are your opinions on that? Nathan: I think some things get reborn. So, job boards are going through that kind of identity change at the moment. What are they going to be? And that's why the likes of some of the job boards are buying tech, or acquiring tech to try and diversify or get a different piece of the TA Tech Landscape. So, whether job boards exist as they do today or not, I think we can guess what might happen. Joel: So it's your recommendation that a business should always try to be somewhere on the hype curve to always be viable or relevant? Nathan: Yeah, and I think you've got to be looking at the innovation trigger, as well, because you need to be pushing boundaries and looking at some of this emerging tech to see how it can play. But I think some of the challenges in... Todd, VP of Innovation and Labs it at AIA globally, he's been looking at the HR tech investment landscape for a number of years now, and he shares that information with us. Nathan: Two, three years ago, we were looking at quite a low average brand of investment, which wasn't really significant to secure the longevity of a technology business. But that has significantly increased over the last few years, which shows a bit more of maturity in the space. It's probably more now, what's considered smart uneasy. You've got people investing in the technology that have heritage and background in HR recruitment technologies. Nathan: So, I think there's definitely a change happening, but it is a significant amount of money so that AI can truly be adopted in recruitment, or blockchain, or even quantum computing. And I can't even explain what that is. So, I just know it's a bit better than AI. I think some of these things will be reborn. I think some will drop off. Will we need search engine paperclip marketing with the growth of programmatic? But that's having its challenges at the moment. Nathan: We're having this constant battle at the moment in digital marketing of data privacy and ownership of data, and not being targeted. The platforms like Facebook battling for ad revenue, not wanting to piss the advertisers off, but at the same token, they're getting pressure from governments and from users that they want more protection of the data. So, now Facebook has reduced its targeting again and again over the last year or so, to a point now we say, "Well, is it as effective as it was or what the promise is?" Chad: No. Nathan: Yeah, exactly. Chad: It's not, it won't be. And I take a look at job boards. So, let's take a look at job boards real quick, before we talk about what's going on with targeting Facebook and how they're kind of setting a bad precedent, I think, for the industry. Is that there's a ton of investment that's being poured into job boards. I believe the reason behind that has nothing to do with our current technology, it has to do with the data. Nathan: Yes, absolutely. Chad: And also the information and the opportunity, not to mention the revenue streams they already have in place. So, to be able to pivot a revenue stream into something entirely new, obviously that's not easy from an adoption standpoint, but it's easier to do that than try to build an entire revenue stream from the ground up. Right? Chad: So, I think that's one of the things that we could be seeing with, hopefully, successfully, or maybe not so much in some cases from a job board standpoint, but from Facebook, they have data, they have shit tons of data. But I really think they are making a very bad decision in not focusing on policing and cracking down on bad actors. They're saying, "Well, we'll just take tools away and make this targeting really just like everybody else's." Where they had a hell of an opportunity just to kill the market, much like Google, but now they're waiving it away. Do you think that'll come back, or do you think now that they've gotten rid of it, now that shit ain't come back for Facebook? Nathan: I think it's a difficult one to call because I think the Facebook platform is, as we know it, facebook.com, I think that's going to suffer. I think it already has from a user base. The network that's behind it, the advertising network and Instagram's its holy grail right now. Whatever it really, truly unlocked with WhatsApp could be a key to its success in the future, but its advertising network with in game advertising's hugely successful, and can be extremely relevant. How that will play out in the future, I don't know. Nathan: Just coming back to your future of job boards, I mean there's a number of job boards in the UK, particularly, some of the big ones, actually, and I mean traditional job boards rather than aggregators. The candidate experience is absolutely horrific because in this need to gather data, they're making candidates go through this interstitial login platform, where you click to apply for the job, you fill in this registration, you think you've applied, and then finally it sends you through to the actual ATS, where you need to click on the apply button again. Nathan: How is that creating good candidate experiences? It's not. Part of my job and my team's job's to look at that whole experience. I can tell you now, looking at the source data from all our clients' sources of applications and hires and traffic that job board, they're not up there. We've got organic search from Google. Even Bing in some cases. You've got Indeed still very successful, and Google's jobs is one of the most emerging areas now. And I think you combine that with what the big three firms of Google, Facebook and Microsoft are up to at the moment, and you're looking at a place where, do you know what, it's going to be really difficult for job boards to compete. Joel: Nathan, show recently presented our TA tech. Video and voice were big topics of conversation. We heard how much search is done through video, how much of the Internet consumption will be video going forward. And of course we see large platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, et cetera, YouTube, sort of being the backbone for a lot of that. But what is your opinion in terms of, say, video and voice assistance becoming a thing in your hype chart and some of the startups that you're seeing in those areas? Nathan: Yeah, I mean video has always been big, but I think it's even bigger now. And when 5G finally launches, at least in the UK, we're going to see an even bigger adoption of it. So, we're encouraging a lot of our clients to migrate to a video first strategy when it comes to their content. Because written content is just not getting read nowadays. Anything over paragraph of 140 characters, nobody [crosstalk 00:28:09] Chad: Woohoo! Podcasts! Joel: Don't make me read. Nathan: Which takes me nicely on audio. Voice assistance is going to be huge, I think. We're currently in that innovation trigger of what's gonna come first. Do you build the infrastructure before the users come, or do you need the mass market adoption? There's no doubt about it, that as a consumer device, that it's increasing and it's huge. Nathan: We've seen what I would call a very broken entwined candidate experience on the Amazon Echo, with some of the skills that have been created, so you can get career inspiration advice. Lee Harrison has done a great job at providing career inspiration advice. You've got interview practice skills, you've got job search skills, but they've all got their flaws. There's a little bit of it that's not quite perfect yet. Nathan: Zip Recruiter did a great job with their app, but you still have to have the adoption. But the reality is you can search for a job and apply for it by saying three things. I think voice assistants are going to be huge, which kind of takes me onto the growth of Bing. We've very much got Bing on our radar at the moment, because it's powering the search results for Alexa, Cortana and Siri, although I think Siri's proper be fleeting behind at the moment, as far as voice assistants go. Joel: Nooooo! SFX: Boooo! Nathan: I hope that was for Chad and not for me. Chad: Yeah, that's always for me. Nathan: There will be a surge in that. There's no doubt. But the thing with voice assistance is, again, you've got to have structured data. So, when you're looking at job descriptions, when you're looking at the content on your career site, it's all got to have very well structured data for those voice assistants to be able to understand it in context, and to be able to find that information to make it discoverable for you. Nathan: And that's what we're focusing on at the moment, is making sure that everything we build, whether it's a job description important from an ATS with additional content on, is structured in a way that, whether it's a voice assistant or a chat Bot, can be read and understood in the context of what question is being asked. That will help with discoverability and the like. So yeah, very much so. Those two things are huge and unique. Nathan: And you said it, audio and podcasts are having a huge resurgence at the moment. You go back 10 years, they probably would have been on the innovation trigger and hit the trough of disillusionment, but in the last two, three years, they've really [crosstalk 00:30:40] Yeah, exactly. So yeah, all very positive, I think, in that case. Joel: Is sourcing on this chart? I don't see it. Nathan: In what context? Joel: So I'm curious about, you know sourcing is obviously hot. You have Entello, Seek Out, HiringSolved et cetera. I'm sort of curious where they put them, where they would sit on the cycle. Nathan: So, I've kind of got social media sourcing platforms there in the middle of the slope of enlightenment, which it's kind of those tools. But again it's how we take some of those tools, and as they evolve, we need to sort of define what they are without using a brand name or a company name. You've also got AI and big data talent identification. Joel: That sounds like a matching, almost like a matching kind of a scenario. Nathan: Yeah. So, a bit like some tools out there, that will help you understand the talent landscape. Use the data that's out there, as well as your own data, to try and match the talent based on that market. Now, you might need a combination of those technologies to actually get out in front of your audience, and then you've got to think about, "Well how do we actually get in front of someone who's not not necessarily looking for a job?" Nathan: And that's where I don't think a conventional recruiter, necessarily, or certainly a majority of recruiters, don't necessarily know how to engage that way, because they're just trying to sell the job, and that person's not even got that employer, or a job moves on their radar. They need to be warmed up a bit with some top of the funnel content, some thought leadership, some interesting content that helps get them engaged and aware. So yeah, that's where I see that that being a challenge. Chad: Some nurturing. Nathan: Nurturing. Yes, good word. Joel: Nathan, thanks for your time today. We really appreciate it. For anyone that wants to know more about you or AIA, where would you send them? Nathan: AIA.co.uk is probably the best bet. You can get hold of all of us on there. Or you can look me up on LinkedIn. Thanks for having me on, guys. Really enjoyed it. Chad: Thanks man. Joel: You bet. 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 the coal mining job I saw on monster.com. We out. #AIA #TMP #EmployerBrand #Brand #RecTech #HypeCycle #Marketing #Nexxt

Chad & Cheese chat with industry veteran Mike Temkin, vice president of strategic planning and development. Enjoy this look into the past of recruitment marketing and a glimpse into the future. It's a Nexxt Exclusive! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. Announcer: When you're afforded the opportunity to interview a recruiting, marketing, and advertising icon, you take it. Or just do what we do, corner them and force them on the mic. It seems to work. Check out our interview with Mike Tempkin from Shaker Recruitment and Marketing, right after this word from our sponsor. Nexxt: Okay, so you need candidates fast and you're sick and tired of being nickeled and dimed to death. I totally get it. You should check out FlexxPlan from Nexxt. It's perfect for employers and staffing firms who are busy. They need candidates and flexible pricing now. Nexxt: FlexxPlan is also perfect for recruitment ad agencies who need targeted distribution and tools to help demonstrate client ROI. If you're sick and tired of all the BS, hassle, and just want candidates now check out Nexxt and Flex Plan with over 70 million members. Nexxt takes all of your jobs and puts each one in front of the best candidates across their entire ecosystem. No muss, no fuss. Nexxt does all the work and FlexxPlan makes it cost effective. Nexxt: Check out everything Nexxt has to offer at hiring.nexxt.com. That's hiring.N-E-X-X-T.com, and if you like to save even more cash just go to chadcheese.com, scroll down and click on the next logo, discounts a plenty. Remember, Nexxt with a double X. Not the triple X. 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: Give me some levels here, mic test. Mike: Testing 1, 2, 3. Perfect, man. [crosstalk 00:02:05] Cut. Chad: Check, check, check. Mike: You two are right now in basically the middle of the epicenter of disruptive media. Disruptive HR, but definitely what podcasts are right now, are definitely growing tremendously. Legacy broadcasters are definitely having to embrace it after fighting it for a while, including recently Sirius XM buying Pandora and one of the initiatives they're doing right now is making sure that as much content as they have they can be utilized for podcasts. Mike: Because right now, the statistic I saw most recently was that at this point, those who are regular podcast listeners listen to seven podcasts per week. What's been seen in a lot of media surveys and analysis is that a lot of that listening is during drive time, when they're commuting. Either on a train or in a car, really eroding broadcast market share. The two of you are really, at this point, very important. Joel: So the question is, how many employers do you guys have podcasting right now, to take advantage of that growing- [crosstalk 00:03:16] Mike: They could get Chad and Cheese to actually do some stuff for them. Joel: Well that's a whole other conversation, I'm not sure any employer wants their brand going through that kind of mess. Mike: Well, wait a second, we are talking to clients, employers, about how you can basically find the target, turn the content of a podcast, onto a skill set. So it's not necessarily always a broad audience, it's not all American life. And like your podcast, it's very qualitative, and niche, focused for who you're going after. But, now the question I have for you, and I'm sure you're gonna throw questions at me, all's fair- and this is relevant to those of us in the industry, so it's not irrelevant, is who do you think in the month of March, as well as February and January this year, was the biggest advertiser on podcasts- Chad: ZipRecruiter! Mike: That's right! Yep. Joel: That would've been my guess. Mike: Well you got it. Joel: But they have yet to spend one penny on the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: Which I love, because it gives us instant cred. Joel: Yeah, for everyone who says we're being bought, ZipRecruiter, biggest money machine in the podcasting advertising market hasn't given us a penny. Mike: All right, so Chad, you got it, number one. All right, so number two is square space- I'm sorry, no number two is Robinhood financial services. Number three is square space, number four, Indeed. Trying to catch up. Joel: What's the first mattress on the list? Casper, purple- Mike: That I didn't see. Actually, after Indeed I believe it was Quip who sells dental services. Chad: Yeah, I had one of those. Mike: And then after that was Geico insurance. Joel: So maybe I'm just getting targeted for my nap prowess for mattresses. Maybe that's my problem. Chad: So, already out of the gate, we've started an awesome- Joel: And we didn't do an intro. Chad: We didn't do an intro, so today- Mike: I'm sorry. Chad: No, this is awesome! Today, we have Mike Tempkin, what is your title? You're like the old man at Shaker- Joel: Gandalf in Chief- Chad: Thirty-one years like a wizard of recruitment, marketing- Joel: Yoda executive. Mike: Oh that's very generous and nice of you. Chad: That's good shit, yeah man! Mike: It's very- I mean, definitely- Chad: Give me some background about you, dude you've been in this industry, you've seen change, we think we've seen change- Joel: Tell us what year one was like for you in recruitment marketing for the kids out there. Chad: In column inches. Mike: Well year one actually for me, my background was consumer advertising at agencies and radio and television. Chad: I was in radio. Mike: And then, in 1984 basically Shaker had a client, and I had known the Shaker family through my own family and also through the work they do for St. Jude, for the research hospital. So we knew each other and they were looking for, to help a client who was doing IT job fairs in 1984 that was having trouble getting the applicant flow. Joel: Who was the employer? Do you remember it was like- Mike: It was a career fair- Joel: Was it Jazzercise or- Mike: No no no- Chad: Was it Brass Ring? Mike: No no no. Chad: Because they started out as a career fair. Mike: It was actually an independent woman if I remember correctly, and she was managing these job fairs in IT. Chad: Nice! Mike: And wasn't getting the flow that she needed for the job fairs. Shaker family came to me, said, "We need some help," and, "what do you think we could do?" And I mentioned, well at that point, 1984, I said, "Well, we can look at radio stations, we can identify to a certain extent the listenership by skill set, to a certain extent. And then basically advertise on those stations. So we had two stations, one was a classic rock and one was an album rock format. Chad: Oh yeah, AOR. Joel: Because techies love classic. Chad: Oh shit yeah, and AR, that was the format. Mike: So I do remember it was actually here in Chicago, it was WXRT which is one of the, I guess, ultimate, eclectic, album adult rock stations. And then it was WCKG which was the classic rock at that time. And we advertised on those two stations, and she got the applicant flow she needed to fulfill satisfaction with her clients, the companies, the employers who were there. And in meeting afterwards, I said, "Okay, how did it work, what was the difference?" And she said, "Well the people from radio, we didn't get as many as we'd get from print, but the quality was better." And I said, "Well, why was the quality better?" And she said, "Because they're currently working." Chad: Ahhh. Mike: You know, their skills were up to speed, they didn't have to be trained on certain languages or components, and I guess as far as recruiting, the shark effect was handled by the candidate generation through media. Chad: Yeah. Mike: So I listened to that, again my background was health & beauty products, retailers and apparel and furniture, theater and entertainment, and so some direct response advertising, which you think about it, recruitment marketing is just direct response advertising, but instead of selling let's say exercise equipment or books or records or clothing, we're selling jobs. And instead of cash, we're looking for the resume. Mike: So, looking at that, I went, "Okay, this was intrusive advertising." You know, classified advertising, be it print in the old days or job boards today, is basically directory advertising. People are directed to go there, to look for certain information. How do you use media to intrude upon people who don't expect the message. Who right now are pretty much complacent and content with their current job. But like any sort of consumer advertising, you put the pebble in the shoe, you basically in some ways address that complacency, that being content, with certain components, certain differentiators that are going to make a company and an opportunity possibly more attractive to- I guess, well later on, I said, and you know Chad from you're background I'm sure, for mass communication, that's what all consumer advertising is. Is just general using these mass consumer components. For recruitment though, It's a little different, you differentiate it, okay this is intrusive advertising because you're intruding upon the person when they least expect it. You know, 5:20 on a Monday afternoon, a radio spot in drive time. Someone's leaving work- Chad: The stop set. Mike: Yeah, the stop set, right, exactly. And you get the when their mindset is such that maybe they're a little disgruntled. They had a bad Monday at work, why do I need to do this any longer? Joel: You know this was pretty earth shaking for 1984. I mean this was a time period where the Sunday paper had all the jobs, everyone that wanted a job got the Sunday newspaper. And for you guys to think outside the box, and say, "We're gonna promote via radio"- Mike: Radio, and then billboards and cinema advertising. Joel: For the time, pretty legendary. Mike: It was different. And what's unique though, Joel, I think, is when I first came to Shaker's, now- I worked for Shaker for four years as a consultant. Doing all of this, basically none classified irregular advertising whenever it was needed, and then they asked me come in full-time. And when I came in full-time, now I was dealing with print too. And in consulting with clients and trying to differentiate recommendations based on circulation, but basically because of my background, in consumer advertising when do you buy the sports section vs. the business section vs. the entertainment section, etc. Because of the demographic differences in the sections or the readership, I went, okay, classifieds gotta have something unique to it. So I went to a media company, and I said, you know, the quantitative I've got, Sunday circulation is a million- Chad: That's the easy part. Mike: How many people are really looking at the classifieds section? And it was 14%. And this was during a strong economy, at that point. Joel: And classifieds have historically always been the most popular section of the newspaper. Mike: It was the most profitable, because you had, basically the margins were great because your expense, you didn't have editorial that you really had to write. Chad: Yeah buying out the column and- that is crazy. Mike: You remember the movie Spotlight, there's one scene of dialogue in the movie Spotlight which is the Boston Globe, and he says, "We've got to have a great story, we have got to hold our circulation, because right now our classified advertising is diminishing." And it was crucial. Now, the reason I brought the 14%, now the internet starts, Shaker we're working on the first internet initiatives in the late 90s and basically I go to comm score, and say, "What can you do as far as analysis on internet traffic?" And the report I get from them is 14% of all internet users were going to job boards. The active job seekers. The rest weren't going. Chad: Oh shit, yeah. Mike: And it was basically the same percentage statistic, and definitely the internet, even at that point, especially even now, is definitely- as far as analytics, is much more precise. Even print would be based upon a survey of a thousand people, will determine that a million people will be doing this. Chad: And you hope they remember where the fuck they went, right? Mike: That's right. Exactly. Joel: What I'm hearing is, and I think a lot of people have the impression of the agency job 20 years ago was answering the phone and putting display ads in the newspaper, and maybe some of it was that, but what I'm hearing from you is, is that the strategy around the agency role hasn't really changed, it's just the number of mediums and technologies and platforms that you have to create a strategy around, would that be correct? Mike: That's right. That's correct. The fragmentation of the options, which definitely is beneficial because let's say in the 80's, and definitely the radio picked up and I remember a client wanting registered nurses. Well in that case it was a soft adult contemporary format, of which I said to them, "Okay, 4% of their listeners are basically nurses, you have to buy, you have to pay for all of them. You won't be able to just fragment the 4%." Now of course, with digital media, we can go and in very many cases behavioral targeting, contextual advertising- Chad: Picking the hell out of them. Mike: Right, exactly, exactly. And at this point, the majority of the public is accepting it. They're not taking the cookies off their hard drive, they are sharing a lot of information, it's the Amazon effect, I like being identified or recognized when I come to an internet site. Now, if let's say media abuses that data, that could change. Both by the public and by the government. But right now- Joel: That makes a sales person in the 80s, a sales person in the 90s, and 2000s and beyond, do they need new skills going forward? Or could you take a sales person from the 80s, put them in today and they'd still be successful? Chad: Dude I was a sales person in the 80s and I went directly from radio- Joel: I'm not interviewing you. Chad: It doesn't matter, shut up. I went straight from radio to the internet- Joel: And you were a teenager in 1984. Chad: Well yeah no, I'm talking about in the early 90s. Mike: My first job in advertising I was very precocious, I was 14 years old and I made an audition tape, I was sick one week from school, and I made an audition tape, and I called it "For Teenagers Only" because at that time you didn't have G and PG and R etc. It was just certain movies were for adults only. And I remember the one that I went to a Saturday matinee and saw a preview for Tongue Without Pity, which was- Chad: Who was in that? Mike: I don't remember who. Chad: Tongue without pity, that sounds like a porn! Mike: I couldn't see it, it was about an army base in Germany, I remember that- Chad: Okay, it wasn't porn. Mike: And Gene Pitney had a top 40 hit, so kids could listen, I was 14 years old, 13 years old, kids could listen to the song, but you couldn't see the movie. So I came with this concept called For Teenagers Only, made the tape, took it to radio station in the suburbs of Chicago, the guy said, "Sure kid. I'll put you on the air, but I'm not gonna pay you to be on the air. You go out there and you sell your commercials, and you'll get 15% of the spot. $10 spots." So after school I'd go on my bicycle, and I'd sell retailers on these $10 spots. So that was [crosstalk 00:15:56] So chad, I'm with him. I understand where you're coming from. Chad: And you can sell air dude, you can sell fucking anything. Mike: But yes, I think that the good people, both at Shaker, the people that I learned from, both in the Shaker family as well as the extended family, employees. There were definitely strategists, even when I came in in the 80s, either they really were taking time to learn the industry they were serving, be it healthcare, be it logistics, etc. Or definitely they understood the limitations as well as the opportunities of media. And that's, you had, let's say at certain other agencies you had the same sort of people, and yes, at agencies you had order takers. I would think that today an agency, in recruitment advertising as well as consumer or even B2B advertising, you can't have order takers any longer. There's the opportunity of being more precise. Because I think, yes, an order taker, even to a certain extent was intuitive, and so therefore you could make a conclusion maybe based upon previous experience with the client, or other factors. Now, yes, the intuitive factor still is somewhat important. But with all of the analytics available, it's basically how to evaluate those analytics. Chad: That's the question though, Mike. I mean there's so much that's available today that wasn't even just a couple years ago, we're talking about the different types of technology. I mean, whether we're talking about engagement, chat bots and engagement, and then you guys being able to get into that. Hell, companies can't even spell programmatic for god's sake, let alone know what to do. So you guys have to be the experts of everything, you can't just sit on the phone and answer and say, "Yeah, we'll do that." Because you have to be experts in many different areas, right? Mike: Right. And definitely what we have in the agency, I think the depth of the executives, definitely they have the resources to be good project managers, to definitely bring in what now we have here at the agency, at Shaker, we have experts in various different initiates. So let's say, here at TA tech, tomorrow Tony Lapur will be speaking about branding, he and his team, that's their focus. And then we have people who focus just on social media, people who just focus on programmatic, a whole department. Search engine marketing, another cost per performance advertising. So you have all these aspects, and then people of course who are just specializing on technology. So, basically the agency since 1951, has always been the base of direct response advertising for candidate generation. Call it what you will, help wanted, employment related advertising, it was candidate generation. It's still, that's the core component of what most clients are definitely going to identify as. Or brought value to them. But definitely, like you said Chad, the means of generating that candidate flow has changed. All the options are available, and, Joel as you mentioned, the analytics that are available and how you basically use those to make your recommendations more precise, more accurate. Mike: You can make a recommendation based on analytics from let's say third quarter of 2018, and it's second quarter of 2019 and there's been a shift competitively in the marketplace, as far as let's say certain employers. It might be a shift in the economy, of basically how candidates are responding now to certain factors. There could even for that matter be changes in media utilization. Such as, a year ago, as I mentioned before, broadcast, media companies, did not take podcast really very seriously. Probably the only one there really was as far as a- I don't wanna call it a company, but an entity, was NPR. You know. And now, every media company is looking at the potential of podcasts. Chad: Even Spotify. Spotify bought up Gimlet, I mean they're buying up content. It's all about great content. So you talk about candidate generation, which I think is awesome, but today it's not just about generation, it's about the experience that they have. How much do you guys get involved at Shaker, with regard to identifying platforms for experience, to be able to ensure that you have a higher application rate, lower ejection rate. What do you guys do around that? Mike: We're working very diligently on the whole candidate- and for that matter the employee experience, so talent acquisition, talent management. So anything that touches candidate generation as far as external recruitment, internal referral programs, for that matter internal communications- which basically for retention, which has always been an issue I'd say for a long time as far as yes well quantitatively we can get this candidate flow, but can you document how either the messaging or the media is bringing in better candidates. And of course a better candidate is the productivity capacity in the workplace, how it relates to profitability, and therefore also how it, at that point if those are good employees, and let's say we actually change the workforce composition of a client who really wasn't happy with their previous workforce composition. Mike: How do we change it and make it more valuable so therefore now they want to replicate it, and for referral programs, which of course really is even more cost efficient than external recruitment. So, looking at all the aspects of not just media, but the technology, the CRMS, TRMS, the talent relationship management tools, the ATSs, as far as even for that matter is the candidate experience, there's certain tools that are valuable for both the productivity of people in recruiting, hiring managers, etc. As far as making sure their time is being used much more productively, but at the same time how it impacts the candidate's experience and the candidate's impression of the company. So let's say if you have an assessment tool, you have assessment tools that go from gamification to very verbal skills, and everything in between. Mike: What's best for the skillset you're looking for, what reflects best on the company that is utilizing that tool, how do we make that decision and help them evaluate really what will be either the best tool for all their employees, or let's say for certain sectors. You use this assessment tool for that candidate base, you use this one for the other candidate base. And what has it really been doing, is the priority of the client, is it for the productivity and the time management of their internal staff, or is it for the candidate experience so they don't fall in the dark hole. They're seeing something. Oh yes, this company basically is interacting with me. And I'm enjoying this interaction. And then from that point on, do they qualify, let's say, for a video interview. And does the candidate find the video interview an experience gratifying, or do they find it intimidating? Now, you say that's where the behavioral profile, that goes into place of let's say certain candidates, feed on their education, their background, ethnicity, etc. Their experience of life are gonna find certain tools, let's say like video interviewing, they might find it very intimidating. And others are gonna say, "Well this is great. I really enjoy this process." So it's how to basically identify either- Chad: Where they're at. Mike: Exactly. So, how I look at it, and some of the things that I've been kind of playing with my mind right now is yes, we've got the active job seeker, and then the passive job seeker candidate, which I've always felt is an oxymoron. You can't be passive and be seeking at the same time. So I've come to terms with that, cause I know HR still finds that to be a very valuable identifier. The passive job seeker really is the job seeker who's not gonna be attracted through a media engagement of any sort. What they are, is the person who's resume is out there, and therefore you have to reach out to them, and you have to move them out of their passivity. Then you have what I feel is a candidate of some value, and going back that experience I had in 1984 of the impulsive prospect. Using intrusive media, non-classified movie, non-directory media, non-job board, to basically go to someone when they don't expect a message, and say "Here is either a job opportunity." Or possibly even more important, a corporate culture that you'll find attractive. Which gets me to what I think is the most important, most valuable candidate for the future. Mike: Especially now, and I don't know if you know a different statistic than I know. When I came out of college, they said you'd have 3.5 employers in your lifetime. And luckily because of a great engagement with Shaker- takes like 10 or 15, yeah. And I've had, in my life 3 major employers. So, when you've got people who are gonna go through 15 employers now, you have to basically make an impact with them when they're impressionable, and any merchandising marketer knows that people build their brand loyalties when they are between 18-34. And it's very difficult to get a person to reconsider that brand loyalty. So how in employment, do we make sure that we build up a base of aspirational candidates? Chad: Yeah, but I don't know if we can do that in employment though. I think that is beyond, that's the brand, that's the holistic brand and how the company actually works, and the aspirational brand in itself. I think employment feeds off of that, I don't know that employment itself can be in charge of that. I don't know that we ever can, just because the company is in charge of it, right? The CEO, COO, the CRO, right? Mike: Well, I can't speak for other agencies, you'd have to talk to them, but at Shaker, in our meetings now with talent acquisition and HR, you ask them how the business has changed. So yes, the 1980's you talk to people and personnel. Their autonomy, their authority had certain parameters. Now, we have people who are definitely very focused, very educated, very experienced in really talent acquisition which is in some ways, aspects of marketing. And then at the same time, we are sitting with marketing departments, legal departments, procurement departments- Chad: Are you really? Mike: Yes. They're coming in, depends upon the client- Chad: So what would you say, percentage wise, the amount of marketing departments you guys are actually sitting with? Mike: It's small. Chad: But it's growing. Mike: I think, I've seen over the years it's growing, I think it's gonna continue to grow- Joel: So you're saying the days of the three martini launch with the personnel director, and they choose their agency based on who takes them to Capital Grill more times than other or we're actually looking at metrics? Mike: In my experience that was more of consumer advertising than- Chad: I was gonna say, we are in Chicago, if everybody can hear the horns and all that other fun stuff, might still be a little bit of that here in Chicago. Mike: I think yes, seriously Joel it's a good point, but yes, today, when we are talking to prospects and being awarded new business- Joel: A big part of your job historically was who can shmooze the best, and who can have the best personal relationships, whether you'll admit it on tape or not. Mike: Well, relationships are important. I will say that. And the relationships are- Chad: They still are though, they still are- Joel: It is, but I think it's more- Chad: Backed by data. Joel: Yeah, data driven [crosstalk 00:27:32] Mike: And results. Basically, even in those days with let's say the personnel director, and there's very condensed parameters. You still have to make them look good. I think that was, and you said, "Okay before you used an order taker or did you help them evaluate and analyze?" Did you say, okay, basically this publication is gonna reach so many active job seekers, if we wanna go- even in those print days, if we wanted to go and reach, and we did this for a number of clients, if we wanted to reach, let's say the non-active job seeker, what section do we need to go to? For certain jobs, use the sports section, you know? You had limitations. But you could say, okay the front section, the business section, the sports section, the entertainment section, if it was skewing more towards women in those days. You know? I don't like saying this, but the truth is the truth, you'd put it in the entertainment section. You'd try to get as close to the horoscopes or the [crosstalk 00:28:29] as you could! Chad: It's the same thing in radio though, ACU was more female than it was male, right? So you look at demos, and you target demos. Much of what we talk about with social media, and it's more really age ranged, so whether Facebook, LinkedIn... Joel: Like how do you feel about Facebook saying, "We're not gonna do job ads that are targeted demographically anymore." Mike: Right. So therefore, that's a limitation now that we have to address and find alternatives. Joel: Do you feel that was the right decision by them, to do that? Chad: I'm gonna say it's fucking stupid, that's just me. Joel: Again, not interviewing you. Chad: Dammit! Joel: Interviewing Mike Tempkin of Shaker recruitment marketing. Mike: I would say for employment, it did have issues. And that's why you said before, "Who are you sitting with at the table now?" And in certain cases, yes, you are gonna sit with legal, because depending on the company and the issues that they're sensitive to, they're gonna say that definitely there's these limitations that the companies, the employer themselves will impose that the media won't impose. We can then go to a client and say, "Okay, we can't guarantee that this medium is going to hit that demo." But yes, we can say that the Facebook demo is different than Snapchat. LinkedIn is different in both the quantitative demographic factors as well as the qualitative factors, psycho graphics or however you want to identify it in the base of analytics, we can help a client, still today as we did 30 years ago, if it can't be targeted through behavioral aspects or other aspects, then yes we can find alternatives. But let's say, just as- looking at the figures of Amazon, and how much money they are generating through advertising. Chad: Yeah, shit yeah! Joel: How much do you think is recruitment advertising? Mike: I don't think that much is. But, if I was- Chad: Do you think it's any? Mike: Well, we actually, to be very frank we sometimes go to media and we push them. And we did go to Amazon years ago, and we wanted to get employment advertising. And said, okay, if a person is looking for a book on ruby on rails, and we're looking for a candidate on ruby on rails, I wanna be there. Chad: Yeah! Just makes fucking sense, right? Mike: Yeah, right, exactly. And at that point in time they couldn't help us. Now, in the future, it could be different. But definitely at the same time, they created- between search engine marketing, how google changed that, from just being a bid based product to being a content and utilization product, relevancy. To how Amazon definitely made people comfortable in the sense that, okay you came here and you ordered a John Grisham book, you must like legal thrillers, I'm gonna suggest a Scott Turow book to you because he also writes legal thrillers. Are you like Tim Mcgraw or maybe you like faith hill. Or you bought a dishwasher, you might also need a refrigerator. Chad: Unfortunately their algorithm fucked up and started kicking out females when they shouldn't, so I mean they've tried but we'll see when the next generation happens. Joel: So knowing that Amazon might not be on the top of your list for marketing mediums, which ones are you currently bullish on and companies should be looking at? So you've got Google, LinkedIn, Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat you mentioned, for god's sakes Tick Tock we've been talking about more on this show, which ones are you most sort of optimistic about? Mike: Well, I'm optimistic about the longevity of LinkedIn. I'm concerned at times, I'd only be concerned because you've seen companies like Monster and Career Builder that definitely seemed to have everything in alignment, and then all of a sudden it fell off the rails. And this goes back to when Bell telephone in the 50s, basically created digital- Joel: We just lost 80% of our audience with that reference. Mike: Well, Bell telephone also is AT&T- Chad: Do some research people. Mike: Well in the 1950s, they had the ability- Chad: Ma Bell. Mike: Ma Bell had the ability to convert from analog to digital. And they said, "Oh we're not gonna do that because we wanna protect analog." IBM in the 80s basically didn't want to embrace personal computers, "Oh no no we're gonna protect the mainframes." And then you had the media. "Oh we don't wanna cannibalize our revenue from print or from terrestrial broadcast so we're not gonna support- Chad: Or Monster, we just wanna focus on our duration ads instead of being an aggregator like Indeed. Mike: So basically, when you asked me- Joel: Fill up the blip! Mike: When you think- yes, today, in the snapshot, here's who's strong. I would say, let's say, what sites are going to possible, and I'm not endorsing them right now in comparison to what you mentioned Joel, sites like Comparably or Jobcase. Others with ad venue just in the employment arena. And for that matter, is media going to be in some ways surpassed, or become a somewhat secondary component and not a priority based on technology. Will certain aspects of software and let's say, what a TRM can do, or even for that matter an ATS, within their own parameters of what they're building or within the marketplaces that they're adding onto their model. How will that surpass even what you and I look at today and say, "These are the solid components." Joel: And where are you with Google now? So we've got Google for jobs, we've got hired by Google, and we have the job search API, any bullishness on any of those? Mike: I think that right now their algorithm is very strong, I would definitely look at utilizing the API at a company level. Therefore, if a company has the google search component on their own careers site, is that gonna make the trip to Google the search engine secondary? And if Google's still monetizing, if it's on their website or not just as let's say, you've got companies now who say, "Okay, we are going away from our legacy products, and we wanna sell the cloud." I mean Amazon, talk about the money they make in advertising, the money they make in cloud in AWS versus IBM versus Oracle, the others. So definitely where are these companies going to evolve? LinkedIn, I would hope, with Microsoft, that they would definitely have the ability, the expertise and the financial capacity to be smart and be flexible. But then unfortunately you look at some of the acquisitions in the ATS market, where you look at companies that you thought, okay, are going to extend the value of what they acquired, and they really appear at this point not to have. Mike: Now at the same time, did those companies really buy them, those companies, for the ATS value or was there a patent or two or three that they really wanted that possibly was related to employment, maybe it wasn't even related to employment, but that's why they were buying the companies. Joel: So you have 30 years in the industry, I won't ask you to predict 30 years into the future, but let's take a trip 10 years from now, what does recruitment marketing look like from your standpoint? Mike: Well, going back to my theory, which maybe you find not valid, or- I give you credit for that, cause both of you know this business, what I think. And I respect both of you. And it's interesting because your podcast are the talk of the industry now. People talk about what they hear on your podcast. Chad: He's making me tear up sometimes- Mike: And this is maybe another discussion, on or off microphone. But yes, I feel strongly- in Europe they've done this. I was at a conference in Sweden in 2008, about three weeks after the bank implosion, and at that conference on branding, those companies were already going to let's say even 16 year olds, 17 year olds, and want to build their employment brand. Know me as an employer. Know what I can do. I still think yes, the aspirational candidate, someone who's really serious about their skills, who's serious about their career, and is not just looking, "Oh I need a job." No. I want to build my career, and even this company is gonna give me the resources to enhance my career either within that company itself, or basically I will be definitely be valuable to them for a number of years, and then I'll go someplace else. And maybe I'll come back to that company. Which I think is part of the paradigm now. But definitely, how do you build the employment brand to be as tangible and as demonstrative as possible. Tony Lapur, Shaker, we talk about it- Shaker recruitment marketing, the differentiators. Which I think is very important. You know you can't have an employment brand and just say- Joel: We have a ping pong table and casual Fridays. Mike: Right, or basically we care about the community. Or we care about STEM careers. Or we care about the environment. Or we care about educational resources. And that's important. And you definitely want to differentiate yourselves with where you are actually making a difference. And you have to make it as- as I said before, as tangible and demonstrative as possible, and that's really extending the employment brand so that people will say, "Yes. That is what I want part of my life to be. I find gratification of being part of that process." And definitely what we will do as a company, is we will help you as an individual, enhance your skills- even when you're 16 years old, we will try to influence you of the skills that we're gonna need for our work force. Because I think the smart employers are not gonna say, "Oh, work force planning is a one year plan, and here's the jobs I need to fill this year, and the next fourth quarter of next year will take care of 2021." Joel: For all you 6 year olds out there in the audience, Mike's predicting 10 years from now that company you want to work for, could be recruiting you. Mike: Not recruiting. You're right Chad, not recruiting, but influencing. Impacting. Farming, right, exactly. If I go to those schools, and I say- Chad: That's what the military does right now. Mike: Right! How do we glamorize- Joel: Best recruiters in the world. Chad: Most money. Mike: I think GE was doing a good job of this, until unfortunately they had to pull back. But glamorizing careers in science, computer science, etc. on national television with very big budgets, and then scaling it down to reaching frequency on more buys but at the same time, even if you don't have a television budget of that nature, at the same time you can have videos now, which can be very practically produced at a very efficient cost. And you can distribute them very specifically to your target audience through digital means. You don't have to have that broadcast identity, and still build a brand at definitely where you want to go. Mike: So let's say we find certain components of people that we see have potential. But we wanna make sure that they're not influenced of, let's say, wanting to go into a career, let's say in metallurgical engineering. That person is so good, we want to make sure that they go into, let's say, bio chemistry. So how do we at 16 direct them to look at that degree in college, and the same time, I could have a careers site of which there's white papers on the career site of which are aimed at the 16 year old, that they can use as a resource when they're writing papers. And the only thing the employer asks is when you do your bibliography in your footnotes, give us credit for what you're using on your school paper from our white papers. That's part of the branding. Now, the student is definitely thinking, "Well I really benefited and I'm grateful to this company for helping me with this paper." Chad: It's all just damn common sense for god's sakes, and all we care about is the now- Joel: It is work though. Mike: It is work. Chad: The research has always been done though! It is. Mike: Joel brings up a good point, it's work, yes. I think that for an employer to be a successful, productive and profitable entity in the future, they are gonna have to be much more pragmatic and that is going to create more work. Now, that work should at the same time create cost efficiencies. Because if you get that person who, when you go to them when they're 26 years old, 10 years later, and we've got this engagement, we've got this talent relationship management tool, we have the ATS, we have the data, we have been going out, and we have been sending messages then. Either manually or mechanically, but we have been interacting with them for all those 10 years since the time they actually went to our white paper, took some information, included in their high school paper, and now in college they're still interacting, out of college they're interacting, that first job- I mean, how many times employers now, and we have clients who are looking at this, they interact with a candidate, they can't have a job adept to point for the candidate. They have to turn them down. But you just don't turn them down and put them in a black hole- Chad: They've gotta nurture the shit out of those. Mike: Nurture the shit- to the extent of saying... Joel: Did we get Mike to cuss? Mike: Yes you did. Joel: I think we did. Chad: Yes! Mike: So, you nurture them- cause I have to admit I'm very, whatever lack of a term you wanna use Joel and Chad- Joel: When in Rome, Mike, when in Rome. Mike: This is what keeps me- because you sent me a note a while back, 31 years at Shaker, and of course it's really more than 31 years with the freelance work beforehand, what keeps me involved? I am very passionate, for lack of a term. I'm very excited about this. And I definitely wanna see before I do leave the business, that companies do get smarter. And they get smart, I think, to be competitive, is you are going to have to be on that early bucket last- not the bucket list of what I wanna do after I'm 65 or 75, what's my bucket list at 22. I wanna work for these companies at some point. And yes, If I go to, let's say one company, and I worked for that company for 30 years. If that's really even realistic in the future. And I don't know if it will be, for both the employer and the employee. But if it is, that's fine. But I think the employer has to realize with the transient work force, you have to have certain loyalty. And the one who comes to you because they want to work for your company, instead of just "Oh, I need a job." That's the candidate you're gonna want, because they will be more productive. Joel: Mike, thanks for sitting down with us. For anyone out there that wants to know more about you and/or Shaker, where should they go? Mike: They should go to www.shaker.com, go through our site, go to info at shaker.com, or they can definitely email me at mike.tempkin@shaker.com Joel: Let's get a drink! Mike: Thanks, thanks a lot. 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. #Shaker #Marketing #Brand #EmployerBrand #EmploymentBrand #jobboards #Advertising #Nexxt

What a week. - Can Slack compete with Microsoft's software dominance? - Facial recognition takes a hit - LinkedIn feature updates like it's 1999 - Millennials need to get freak-nasty or we go extinct, - Natty Light beer needs partiers, and much, much more. Enjoy and show Sovren, JobAdX, and Canvas lots of love. 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 & Cheese Podcast. Joel: The Sowashes are back from their European vacation. What's up, Clark? And we're ready to do this weekly show thing. Welcome to the Chad & Cheese Podcast, HR's most global weekly roundup of new news and opinion from the world of recruiting. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: Did you learn any Portuguese while you were there? Chad: I did not, but I did learn that is nothing like fucking Spanish. Joel: On this week's show, millennials need to put down the Xbox controllers and grab their real joysticks, CareerBuilder loses another VP in our rumors segment, and we get serious about facials. Grab a Natty Light and hone those party skills, kids. We'll be right back after this word from JobAdX. JobAdX: Finding the right fight is important. When you're deciding on shoes for a long day at the trade show, when you're picking the right podcast for your commute, and most importantly, when you're looking for the right candidate. With JobAdX, you can attract more to your jobs by harnessing the best in ad tech targeting. From predictive industry analysis and keyword click data to premium first page placement and reducing redundant applications, our candidate targeting technology ensures that you're reaching talent that's as interested in working with you as you are with them. JobAdX: Now with in ad video and multimedia, you can share your employer brand story and company culture with job seekers so they can visualize themselves in your office, all hands meeting, or ax throwing team building adventure, all without navigating away from your job posting. Increased engagement makes for fewer steps between job seeker and new team member. Ready to ramp up your job advertising campaigns with the best in ad tech? Visit our new website at www.jobadx.com. That's J-O-B-A-D-X.com. Joel: I'm pretty bitter that I go to Lisbon the same time you do. While I'm there, it's rainy, it's cloudy, it's a little cool. The second I leave, the sun comes out, it becomes 80 some degrees, and you're there for about another three, four days. So I hope you had a good time, asshole. Chad: It was gorgeous. Yeah, so we were, a little time in Lisbon, went to Sintra, went to Porto, stayed a couple of days, a few days in Porto. Dude, it was so awesome, and yeah, I'm sorry you didn't get to share all the wonderful sunshine, but we drank a ton of wine for you and I also brought back by request exactly what you were looking for, a very good port wine. Yes, you're welcome. Joel: Yeah. We give a lot of shit to each other, but deep down, there's feelings. Chad: There's feelings. Joel: By the way, it's notable that your wife, who's very picky about where she travels and where she wants to live in retirement has chosen Lisbon, I guess Portugal, as a top three retirement destination. So for those of you kids out there looking to get out of wherever you are, Portugal might be a place to check out. Chad: Yeah. TAtech Europe did more than just bring us to Portugal. It might be a retirement place. You never know. Joel: Julie needs a new blog or something. Like Julie picks for retirement, where to retire and where not to retire. Chad: That's a good call. Also, Isabel from JobAdX. She was the awesome Portugal trip advisor, so thanks, Isabel, because she really hooked us up on places to go check out while we were there. Joel: Isabel may be my favorite millennial. It isn't saying much, but she is a walking trip advisor. Chad: Isn't your wife a millennial? Wait a minute. Joel: No. No. Barely not, but yeah. Yes, I married so young from where I sit. Chad: Shout to Alex Gotoi I know I'm fucking that up, from Bucharest. He is spreading the Chad and Cheese love. Alex, you spread it man! Spread it! Spread that love! Joel: Spread it wide, Alex. Chad: That's the way I like it. Joel: Spread it far and wide, baby. Yeah, he recommended us and actually, in his tweet recommendation or LinkedIn, wherever it was, called us inspirational, which makes me a little bit leery of his mind, but hey. Chad: I love it. Joel: Spread that love, Alex. Good stuff. Chad: And we are. Joel: VideoMyJob shout out. If you haven't seen the DEMOpocalypse with the kids there, Kristen and Steven, that's well worth your time. Interesting product. Video is the thing all the kids are doing, apparently 80% of the internet by 20-something will all be video, so you gotta get on board. Check out the VideoMyJob DEMOpocalypse. Chad: Yep, and also we'll be pushing out audio from RECex thanks to Stephen O'Donnell and the team over at MyJobViddy. That's an interesting name. We'll be putting out some great content that we had from the stage of RECex. So that was a good time when we got there, even though I was late. Joel: We will not be publishing the RECxxx audio, though. Apparently that's a little bit too much for even our audience. Chad: Is that when you called everyone eurotrash when you stepped on the stage? That was fun. Feffer: Such an asshole. Joel: Yeah, that was good. Chad: Big applause and shout out to our deathmatch competitor. Joel: So solid. Chad: Eric from Mya, Elin from Tengai, Adam from Candidate.ID, and I didn't said AI though. Joel: You almost did a Joel there. Chad: Yeah, I know. Andreea from Opening.io. Four awesome, I mean awesome fucking pitches all the way around. Awesome products all the way around, and we actually had, the judges had to have an extra bottle of wine. This was a hard one to judge, so in the next few weeks, we'll be putting out Death Match podcast where you can listen to every single pitch, so look for that. Joel: Are we okay revealing the winner? Chad: Yeah. Joel: In this weeks show? Chad: Yeah. Joel: So Opening.io was our champion, but as Chad mentioned, it took a lot more wine than we thought to help our judgment, which is a little bit counteractive, counterintuitive. Anyway, but so we came up with opening.io. Ireland won this world cup, I guess, and very impressive outing, all of our startups, companies were great. I love how they go above and beyond the performance bar with Viking costumes and kilts and music intros. It was a great event, and looking forward to doing it again in Austin in September. Chad: Yes, very, very excited to do that, and my last shout out before we get to the t-shirts selfies piece is Matt Alder. He was obviously Chad and Cheesed during one of his interviews at TAtech. My bad, Matt. Sorry about that, brother. Joel: He got Chad and Cheesed. Chad: You got Chad and Cheesed. Joel: Can I throw in our Philly trip in the mixture? Chad: Oh yeah. Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly. Joel: So yeah, we're heading to Philly next week- Chad: Next week. Get your tickets. Joel: Chad's overnighting. I can only handle a day trip to Philly, so I'm not going to stick around, but big fan base in Philly. Looking forward to seeing those knuckleheads and putting on a show for those guys. Chad: That's right. Week after that, we're in Boston for Jobcase live, so we're doing a live gig at Jobcase, and they're taking us to a ballgame, so that's pretty cool. After that, Transform Live, which again is going to be in Boston. It's a SmashFly joint. We're going to be talking about recruitment marketing, and Joel and I are just going to talk about blowing shit up like recruitment marketing. Joel: Yeah, the Cleveland Indians are rumored to be in Boston that day. Chad: That's right. Joel: For the game, so I need to iron my Jim Thome jersey so I can talk shit to Bostonians when I'm out there. That'll be fun. Chad: Last on the events, we are on the main stage. We're actually headlining RecFest in London, and literally guys, it's our job to break shit when we get there. So yeah, look for that. It's going to be, we're going to have a blast. The bar opens at noon. I think we take the stage at 4:00 or after 4:00, so everybody's going to be perfectly intoxicated for our fucking show. Joel: I still like Yanks Gone Wild, even though you don't. Anyway. Chad: That is... Joel: It's beautiful. Chad: You should be, it should be Wanks Gone Wild. Joel: Yeah, we are definitely Wanks Gone Wild and speaking of... Chad: Just keep checking out our social feeds, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Got all these people, Tim [Meehan 00:09:48], Jamie Leonard, the whole Tengai team and Chad and Cheese t-shirts. Now, if you want one of these things, you gotta be at one of these events that we're showing up. So come get a t-shirt if we have any left. Joel: The t-shirt thing is out of control. Chad: It is fucking awesome. Joel: I got a kind of bow down to you on this one, because you were the lightning rod to get this t-shirt thing up and running and done, and I thought, no one would wear our t-shirts. I'm glad I was wrong. Our t-shirts are flooding the webs, the interwebs, and it's very humbling and very cool. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So keep those pics coming. Chad: Big, big shout out to Emissary.ai who paid for the fucking t-shirts. If you're not texting in your recruiting, you're dumb. Go to Emissary.ai. Joel: Which I think is their new ad that they're putting together. If you're not texting and recruiting, you're dumb. Chad: That's right. Emissary.ai. Hit it. Joel: All right, can we talk about facials now? Chad: That'd be great. Joel: I agree. I agree. Okay, so we've been talking and not at length, necessarily, but we've touched on the whole facial recognition thing, how it's pretty scary as hell, and fortunately, San Francisco has banned it. So San Francisco becomes first city to bar police from using facial recognition. It won't be the last city to consider a similar law, I'm sure. So on the face, we like this. However, you, for example, love the quickie check in at airports. There's a company called Clear that uses facial recognition to check you into flights and whatnot pretty quickly. So it's a little bit of a double edged sword, I guess, in that it sounds good to say, we're going to ban facial recognition, but then it also hinders maybe innovation in companies that want to use that to make our lives better. Chad: I think from our standpoint, you have to have the choice for something like this to an extent. So facial recognition could definitely help find missing children, identify and catch criminals, and then obviously also, as you talked about with Clear, speed up travel. We actually saw this during our trip home from Portugal. We went through Amsterdam, and they have facial recognition, pretty much little lines that are set up where you put in your passport, the camera comes down, identifies you, and then you're through and they stamp your shit. They don't ask you any questions or anything like that. It's just boom, boom, boom, and it was really fast. It freaked Julie out, because she hates this facial recognition stuff. We saw it happening in, I believe it was Detroit with one of the Delta terminals, and she was like, oh shit. I don't want to do that. Chad: Then here we are. She's already in line for this thing in Amsterdam, and she went through it and it worked pretty well. So yeah, I think it could help in those areas, but there are these different liberties and privacies and freedoms that we should be able to opt into. If we want to do something like that, I think paying a company like Clear or going through a TSA precheck or something of that nature where you're opting into it, it makes sense. You shouldn't have to do something like that, unless, again, it's in the case of a missing child or trying to catch a criminal. That's something entirely different, but it is, go figure and I hate this term, it's a fucking slippery slope on being able to utilize something like this. All I have to do is say, The Patriot Act. That was a fucking slippery slope, dude, and they were doing shit to our calls, listening in on calls and all of this other stuff because- Joel: Freedom. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Safety, security. Chad: Yeah, well, it was a release of our freedoms. It was a tamping down of our freedoms so that we could have security, or at least the prospect. Joel: Oppression's best friend is fear, Chad, like you know. Chad: Yeah, oh dude. As we know, we should know, because it's coming from the top of our fucking country now. That's all it is fucking fear mongering constantly. You can't stop it. Joel: I love the paranoia of your wife. No DNA test, no facial recognition. She's filed off her fingerprints so they can't track her that way. Brian Hofer, Executive Director of Privacy Advocacy, the group called Secure Justice said in the article, quote, "Facial surveillance technology is a huge legal and civil liberties risk due to its significant error rate, and it will be worse when it becomes perfectly accurate mass surveillance, tracking us as we move about our daily lives." Chad: Yes. So what is the price for misidentification? And this is happening more with black and brown people than it is for white people. That's what the statistics show. So yeah, I think it's nice and it's easy if you're going through and you're paying for a Clear program, but it's much different when the police have this tool in their tool belt, but yet it's still high misidentification rates for some of our population. That's, I mean, and we already have a high incarceration rate of black and brown people as it is. So how the fuck does this help us there? Joel: We've been going beyond the whole criminal element. Are you comfortable seeing advertisements based on your face? If your face is recognized to work at a certain company, do you start seeing advertisements promoting jobs at your competitors and other opportunities and maybe bashing the company that you currently work for? This is a real thing. I mean, I've talked to sourcing companies that are testing out facial recognition solutions where based on whatever database they're using, can track who's wearing what and what company portraits they've been in or what social media settings or what conferences they're going to, and then based, recruiting or sourcing those folks on that. Joel: So this is a real thing beyond criminal and doing bad stuff. This is probably going to impact you in many ways of your life, in ways that you may not want to, so- Chad: Yeah, and Facebook has a hell of an algorithm right now because you post a photo into your feed and it automatically knows who's in the god damn photo because we trained the algorithm to notice who we are and who our friends are. So we're training these algorithms and who knows what Facebook is going to do with this long term? Joel: Yeah, you won't be able to go into an airport or a shopping center or a downtown area with a lot of people and not be impacted by facial recognition technology. Chad: Nope. Joel: More than likely. Chad: No. Joel: So anyway, facials are all over the place, and we'll be keeping a tab on this for everybody. Chad: They're not going anywhere. Joel: Speaking of facials, LinkedIn has some new updates this week, I guess. It's a nice little mix of job seeker enhancements as well as some employer enhancements, although frankly, none of them is real crazy new for job seekers. You got new instant alerts, the job's home is redesigned for more mobile friendly user experience in applying for jobs. Maybe most interestingly they've made salary insights someone that everyone on LinkedIn can use. It used to be a premium feature, so now everyone can now view salaries on LinkedIn in the job postings. So that's sort of new. Launching soon, they're going to have skill assessments. Skill assessments give members the ability to assess, validate, and showcase their skills to more effectively stand out. They will also serve as a tool for recruiters and hiring managers to reliably vet candidates. Joel: For hiring managers, new recruiters, and jobs, they're making the core talent product even smarter. Launch brings together LinkedIn Jobs Recruiter and Pipeline Builder into a single platform. We kind of saw this coming and will continue to see it coming. Then they added screening questions, which is not a new thing for most sites. Indeed launched their screening questions a couple years ago, I think. But anyway, with screening questions, hiring managers can collect yes/no information about applicants to review with a clear understanding of the needs like if you're comfortable with the commute or confirming your educational level. This also helps recruiters and job seekers more quickly know if they're a fit. Chad: Yeah. All these things should've been done a while ago, but so they're being done now, so that's awesome. Joel: At least LinkedIn now is copying job sites instead of just copying Facebook. At least now they're copying actual features that mean something to recruiters and- Chad: Yeah, it starts like they're starting to give a shit or something. So yeah, I like the whole getting to the job faster for the job seeker if they want to be able to opt into getting to feeds of jobs faster because, yeah, I mean, again it's all about timing. So that's awesome, but also on the getting to the talent faster, they're trying to get their tools pretty much up to snuff with some of the shit, some of the startups that are out there for goodness sakes who can help identify talent in seconds as opposed to taking hours, minutes or hours. So good for them. It's good that they're starting to catch up. Joel: Also to their credit, I think that they probably understand better than most that winning the quick apply battle on Google for jobs and being a quick way for people to apply, I've already got my LinkedIn account. It's easy to apply to these jobs. That's going to help them in their optimization of Google for jobs over time as well as condensing the jobs app that they got rid of and now they're sort of bringing it all into one house. I think that's smart. I mean, I don't think it's a huge deal, but I think over time, being mobile, being the ability to quickly apply to jobs is going to help them on a lot of fronts. Chad: Yeah, I think Google will penalize them for too easy an apply process just from the standpoint of being able to scatter and smatter and splatter employees with, or employers, with profiles. I mean, it's all about being able to get the right type of individuals to the job to be able to apply. So if they're applying some really good first and foremost content, and then the opportunity to get the employer what they want, then yes, but if it just turns into this mess of applying for everything and making it too god damn easy to apply for everything, that might backfire on them. Joel: That's an interesting take, because it's obvious to say, yeah, Google's going to reward the companies where people apply. It's very interesting to say, it's sort of a thought 180 for them because they're used to people buying stuff and conversions are good and applications are good. That's all good stuff. It would take a change of attitude and understanding of our space to say too many applies done quickly could actually penalize your SEO. Yeah, that's an interesting take. Chad: Well, I mean spam, right? I mean, they could be seeing the spam, so therefore, that's something that they deal with already as it is, but also remember who would be Google's biggest adversary in this space? Possibly Microsoft/LinkedIn, so it could give them a very good reason to say, smack them down from this practice. Joel: I certainly agree with that, although they'll never publicly come out and say- Chad: Well, no. Joel: We're banning LinkedIn jobs or downgrading them because of our competition with Microsoft. Chad: Yeah, they would never say that. It would just happen. It's kind of like when they rolled out Panda and everybody's SEO got fucked. Joel: Now I'm waiting to see LinkedIn get on the whole chatbot, prescreen these folks through a conversation as opposed to a questionnaire, however they're doing it now. I think that's an evolution that needs to happen. Chad: Yeah, I would've gotten excited about something like that if they would've actually acquired an organization or partnered with an organization to make that happen, but I mean, being able to do these basic screening types of element? I mean, so fucking what? That shit's been happening for well over a decade. Good for you. It's glad that you caught up, but it's just, big fucking deal. Joel: By the way, while we're talking about technology, we have another live view from the ladder's innovation lab. Keep up the good work, ladders. Love you. Chad: Good job, Mark. Joel: All right, speaking of companies going in the shitter, CareerBuilder in our rumor segment here this week, Michael [Piermont 00:23:23], I'm probably saying that incorrect. Piermont, Piermat- Chad: Piermont. Joel: Dude is an entrepreneur according to his LinkedIn profile, and he somehow thought it was a good idea to join CareerBuilder as their VP of Global Growth. He backtracked on that pretty quickly. After only 10 months, he has allegedly left the company. So Michael, man, go back to that entrepreneur thing, because that's a much better gig than CareerBuilder at this point. Chad: Yeah. CareerBuilder right now, I would believe, is just a grinder. I mean seriously, just it'll grind you up and spit you the fuck out. We're seeing that from industry veterans, right? Who I'm sure have pretty big price tags on their head to keep them around, been in the industry for a while or they've been at CareerBuilder for a while. So it makes sense to just kind of nudge them out or hit the eject button, get rid of them, but we just haven't seen much come from CareerBuilder that they haven't been doing for years, and not doing a great job of for years, right? So none of this surprises me. Joel: No, it does not strike me as a place for entrepreneurial type folks at all. This is a churn and burn grind business now. We'll see how it goes when augmented reality, and I can point my phone downtown and see who's hiring. That's the height of innovation now. This is not an entrepreneurial friendly company at this point. Chad: Yeah, when Monster and Monster Studios is actually outshining what you're doing, you really have to take a couple of fucking steps back and rethink your strategy. Joel: Well, you know who doesn't have to rethink their strategy and is always on top of the height of innovation is Chad and Cheese sponsor, Canvas. Let's hear a little bit from them and talk Slack wars, nothing but Slack wars. You like my Bill Murray? That's nice. Chad: No. 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. Joel: Slack aims to be the most important software company in the world, says their CEO in a recent article in TechCrunch. Well, it sounds a lot like Ian from ZipRecruiter. Maybe those guys eat lunch together or go bowling. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But it sounds familiar. Chad: I think it's funny that, I mean, Stewart Butterfield, they created Slack internally to be able to message each other, but that was not the core product they were trying to build. The core product they were trying to build sucks and nobody was buying into it, so they're like, fuck. We gotta sell something, and this is very, very much how Stewart Butterfield has built companies throughout the years. Same thing happened with Flickr. Flickr was not the product that they were building. They were just trying to get capital, and it was like, oh hey. Let's build this and try to sell this and get some capital out of it. Chad: So it's interesting that he has such a great vision for something that wasn't even created as a visionary product, at all, but they're looking to go public in June, valued at 7 billion, 10 million users in 150+ countries, more than 600,000 organizations that are using, but only 88,000 of those businesses are actually on the paid plan. 130 million in revenue, which is up like 60, almost 70% from Q1 in 2018. So I mean, Slack isn't losing a ton of cash like Uber is, but it's also not close to profitability either. So this is an interesting story because everybody hates email, much like everybody hates their ATS, but yet this just feels like a different form of email. I mean seriously, what the fuck different is it? I mean, how's it different? Joel: Well, to me, it feels like you may or may not remember when GoPro went public. Chad: Yeah. Joel: GoPro, when they went public, they weren't touting the fact that they were a camera that you could take on your bike and skydiving or whatever, right? They were promoting it as a platform, an entertainment platform, like they'd have these channels and whatever. So Wall Street didn't buy it, right? They understood the whole hardware video thing, like phones are whatever are catching up to GoPro. They understood that, and then you had Snapchat go public, and they didn't talk about disappearing text messages and photos. They were talking about the camera and the hardware and being an entertain. Joel: So to me, Slack coming out saying, we want to be the most important software platform in the world tells me that they understand that the whole messaging thing is getting commoditized, that they can't really compete in that market long term, and that they have to pimp themselves as this monolithic software company. I'm not quite buying it. I think long term, this thing is going to get commoditized. It's going to get eaten up by Microsoft and others, and they're just sort of playing the game to get as much out of Wall Street as they can until the party's over. Chad: So really, and using Slack, and I've used Slack. What makes it more productive? It's a method of communication. Maybe it's more instant? Joel: You don't have to weed through spam. To me, that's the, I don't have to weed through marketing messages in my inbox or spam. I can have pretty direct access to people that I want to have direct access to. That's the main value in my opinion. Chad: But here's the thing, and it's actually a quote from Alicia Liu, who's a software programmer. By lowering the barrier to initiate communication, the hidden side effect is that Slack has the quiet capacity to exponentially increase communication overhead, resulting in much more voluminous, lower quality communications. So many people, it's so easy to get into this and just kind of communicate that there's too fucking much of it. It's one of the things that I've noticed in using Slack. You get into a group and you start obviously chatting and sharing documents and so on and so forth, and there's just too fucking much of it. Joel: Yeah, and note the fact that with the app store, you can send stickers to people. You can send good, attaboys and good jobs to people, so yeah. There's a growing amount of clutter in Slack that is making it not much better than email. Chad: Yeah, so you're talking about the spam. These are the people that you want to talk to. I totally get it, but there's so much shit that's in there, and think of it from this standpoint. I'm actually, there's a group that I'm in that has around 10 people. So the conversation that's happening with those 10 people as everybody's trying to provide their points, right? It is almost impossible to keep up with unless you're sitting there and just watching the screen, and then you have to scroll back up, scroll, I mean, it's just, it is ridiculously crazy. So I think our want to get away from email so badly is going to send us into a direction that is not going to make us more productive. Joel: There are so many ways to communicate with people. It was kind of, I feel a little old saying this, but it was kind of nice when email was the only way, because you and me, we're all Facebook messenger. But most people with me, it's text messaging, email for people that I'm not as close to. I've got LinkedIn messages from people that are professional based. I've got Twitter DMs and whatever going on there, Instagram, I've got to add to the mix now too because I'm getting people to contact me that way. So it's like I kind of long for the days and I feel like the old classified advertisers who, remember when it was just the newspaper that you could look for jobs. Now it's like, I kind of long for the days when I could just go to my one inbox and see messages from everybody. Of course, marketers fuck that up, but that was kind of a nice little system, and email still works. Chad: Yeah. Gmail kicks a lot of the marketing shit out for me into different tabs. Joel: True. Chad: So it's not as bad anymore, but let's kind of, let's switch the conversation for a second. Microsoft Teams is hot in this space, and they see Slack as their number one competitor. They have over 500,000 organizations using Teams. They're focusing their attention not just on the organizations that are using the dynamics suite, but also focusing its attention on non-desk workers, which means it's going to be more mobile. Joel: Yeah, I mean, I think we both believe some combination of Microsoft and Google will rule the corporate everything, and messaging and corporate communications is going to be part of that. I don't, it's hard for me to see a world where Slack can catch up on the software side and have docs and everything that goes on in there quicker than Microsoft can kick Slack's ass with something like Teams. By the way, Facebook's Slack competitor has 2 million paying users, apparently, or 2 million users. So they're going to get hit on a lot of sides. We've talked about open source solutions that are free for people to use, like messaging in and of itself is a commodity. Slack, I think, is going to have a hard time competing in a world where they're being squeezed with free messaging on one side or cheap versus the big 800 pound gorillas like Microsoft providing messaging to their already existent customer base. Chad: Then you ask yourself, does Facebook Workplace even have a chance, and is it too late? I mean, shit, June 20 is when Slack's supposed to go IPO. For somebody to reach into that and offer a shit ton of cash. I mean I don't know. I don't know, or just let it sit there and wither on the vine as you try to steal market share from it because it doesn't have the infrastructure that Microsoft does. Joel: Yeah, and I feel, I mean, sorry, Facebook has been derailed in their employment initiatives because of the whole privacy thing and just what they're going through on a much bigger scale. I know we've talked about them integrating with ATSs for job postings and things like that, but I think they've been much, their attention is elsewhere because of privacy issue and being sued and GDPR and all that good stuff. So I think right now, it's Microsoft and Google's race to lose and Slack is a wannabe at this point. Chad: Yeah, I think Facebook's a wannabe and they never really focused on the workspace, the Workplace or the workspace, workplace enough in the first place. I mean, just in saying that they're integrating into, I think they named one applicant tracking system or maybe two? Okay, big fucking deal. I mean that is table stakes for all of these types of organizations. Tell me what the next big piece of strategy you're getting ready to launch. The integration's, that shouldn't be it. Again, that's table stakes. Joel: Yeah, it's just a matter of getting as many ATSs and direct jobs as possible into their database, and then they have a messaging system. They could do prescreening questions. They could do chatbots. Chad: They could. Joel: They could do scheduling for small businesses to interview people. They could do all that. I just don't think it's on their radar compared to the other stuff they got going on. By the way, younger people aren't using Facebook, so that's a bigger problem then, they can have all the jobs in the world, but if young people that are desired by small businesses aren't on Facebook, that becomes a real problem. So they got to fix that first. Chad: Yeah, and Facebook, one of the biggest advantages for a company to use Facebook was the ability to exactly target your ads, and they're doing away with a lot of that shit. So I mean, they're doing away with a lot of the pros on one of the reasons why I'd want to fucking use you in the first place. Joel: Yeah, that's a great point. You can't even advertise jobs now basically on Facebook. Chad: Yeah, not worth a shit. Joel: And their advertising can't target, and okay. All right, so we're clearly bearish on Slack today and Facebook today and bullish on Microsoft and Google. Chad: It continues. Joel: It continues. All right. Well, what isn't continuing is people getting their freak on and having babies in the US. A story this week talked about too few babies being born in the US. Fewer than 4 million babies were born this year, provisional data shows, the smallest number in over three decades with potentially lasting effects on the future workforce. The declining birth figures, which have fallen for 10 of the last 11 years suggest that without immigrants, build that wall people, the future workforce may be too small to support the growing number of retirees. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Some analysts expect the birth rate to rise again, however, as the millennia cohort moves through their 30s. So basically, millennials get to getting on and get some babies in this country so we can survive. Chad: Again, it's about us understanding first and foremost, we have how many individuals that are still living with mom and day because they're trying to pay their college debt? I mean this is a much bigger problem, broad scope for our nation and culture, and then obviously globally. But then they're not getting their freak on because they live in, he's living in mom and dad's basement. Okay, that's not sexy, so yeah, I get that. Or they're not looking to actually marry because again, they're worried more about debt than anything else, and then again, the whole build the wall bullshit. I mean, we need people to do these fucking jobs people. The robots aren't here yet. We need people to actually do those jobs. We need to be understanding about all of these things. Joel: Well, frankly, to expect the millennials to bail us out on this is frightening in and of itself- Chad: Not going to happen. Joel: So I wouldn't put much stock in that. What we need is people still want to come to the US, not just the southern border but in terms of students that come here and then we kick them out. If you get a degree in this country, it should be like rubber stamp, you're a citizen, and the fact that we have people getting educated in this country and then leaving and feeling not welcomed is just really stupid. So to me, it's not let's count on the millennials to get freaky deaky. It's a matter of, let's make it easier for smart people and people who want to work into this country so we can move forward and successful in the new century and centuries beyond. Chad: We have individuals who have H1B visas who they're making it harder for them to actually stay in the country. It's like, okay, these individuals, we are training up to do these jobs. Why in the hell after having somebody in the country for three years or two years, who the hell? Why would we get rid of them? We need them. That's why they're here in the first place. Joel: Here's your PhD. Congratulations. Oh by the way, here's your American citizenship. Welcome to the country. Chad: Yeah. Too fucking easy. Joel: By the way, when the sex robots come, there's going to be no procreation, so immigration is really the only way that we're going to survive the future. Chad: Thank god. Humans are dumb. Joel: All right, let's get a quick word from Sovren and we'll talk money and beer. Chad: Excellent. Joel: What's better than that? Sovren: Sovren AI matching is the most sophisticating 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. Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly. Chad: You'll get to see that famous Ed from Philly if you go to Recruit Philly next, is it next week? Yeah, next week. Joel: 23rd. May 23 in Philly. Come out and see us and Ed, too. Chad: Yeah, you'll get to see Ed. Joel: All right, so money continues to flow into our space. It surprises me every day. So I don't have the numbers in front of me. I think you may or may not- Chad: I do. Joel: We'll just wing it if not. So SeekOut, who, by the way if you haven't heard our interview with their founder and CEO, recommend doing that. They got 6 million-ish? Chad: They did, 6 million. Joel: Did they? So we have ENGAGE Talent, 2 million, I think? Chad: 3.5. Joel: Okay, that's close. Carrot was the big one I think with a lot- Chad: Carrot got the big cash, 28 million. Joel: Yeah, and that's a serious, they raised quite a bit of money, and I frankly hear very little about them or know little about them. It's more of an education thing than a recruiting thing. Then HeyJobs, my favorite name of the four that we're talking about out of Berlin raised a little cash. Chad: 12 million, yep. Yep, so let's go to the top and start with SeekOut, real quick. Anoop Gupta, awesome, incredibly smart guy. He was actually an advisor direct to Bill Gates. SeekOut is incredibly interesting because they interface with LinkedIn and GitHub. They have some incredibly powerful search tools. The big question here is, what happens if the GitHubs of the world or the LinkedIns of the world shut him down, right? Shut him off, and that's one of the things that you always have to worry about if you are a platform where your success is predicated on somebody else's success and/or allowing you to have access. So that's interesting, but 6 million, good for them. Joel: The whole sourcing space is challenged to me right now. We're hearing rumors about Entelo, who I guess you could call one of the granddaddies in this space. They can't sell to anybody. No one wants to buy that. Our buddies at HiringSolved, they released Prophet version two point whatever. It's free, it's as good as probably anything on the market. The whole sourcing automation thing and will people actually search for folks? I just, the sourcing model as it is is really challenged, and I have no doubt that the gang at SeekOut is really smart, but when you look at privacy rules and what is just happening in sourcing and automation, I hope they have a plan B that they're working on to take the company to the next level, because in their current iteration, it's going to be really challenging to be successful long term. Chad: Yeah, I think these platforms are the most exciting to me, just because they take sourcing to an entirely new level of efficiencies. But the thing is, and again, my opinion, just some advice, if you are not working with bigger platforms to become the brain of their platform and then looking for obviously acquisition, then you're probably going to lose. If you don't have people in your organization who are deeply rooted in partnerships and alliances on the revenue side of the house and you're trying to go just direct to clients, onesie, twosie clients, it's going to be a hard slog all the way through. Chad: I think unfortunately, in some cases like the Brilents of the world and whatnot, they're not from this industry. Very, incredibly smart people, Facebook, data scientists or even Entelo, just incredibly smart people, but a lot of it has to do with that revenue strategy right out of the gate. That isn't always the first thing that they focus on. It's always about the tech, which I totally get it, but that tech has to be fueled by something, and that fuel is going to be cash. Joel: Yeah. Remember our buddy Johnny Campbell who says, "98% of recruiting or sourcing should be automated today." Chad: Yeah, the future. No reason why it shouldn't. Joel: All right. Our last story. We're finishing with beer as we should probably every show. Natty Light- Chad: Nasty. Joel: Easily one of the worst beers in the world- Chad: Horrible. Joel: Is looking for an intern or has an internship opportunity for you to hone your party skills and, I don't know, party and drink and spread the Natty Light gospel, I guess. Chad: Yep. You have to be Natty qualified and this means that you will be attending sporting events, do guerrilla marketing, travel to cool places, manage their social media channels, and do a weekly blog. I think this is just pure genius from Natty Light- Joel: Don't forget the line item, design some sick swag that gives consumers all the feels. That's actual part of the job description. Chad: Exactly, man. I love it, dude, and the thing is, I think so Natty Light is just known for shit beer. They're not known for a great company to work for, and I think this is just this so tongue in cheek, it's really funny and I wish companies would think more about what their brand really is and yeah. It's funny to say, I want somebody to go party, but at the end of the day, you're creating a product which really does that. It gives, it makes people happy. Joel: Not only is laughter a great medicine, it's also a great recruiting tactic. Chad: God damn. Joel: You failed to mention the qualifications, which I think are great. So aside from being 21 years old, you have to be outgoing, but not annoying. There is a fine line. Be able to spell protractor, and just be cool. Good luck in your search there, Natty Light. You're bound to find some winners in your resume stack. Chad: And you're definitely bound to find some losers. Joel: Speaking of losers, 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. 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. Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly.

While in Lisbon at TAtech this month, the boys sat down with Firing Squad alum Adam Gordon of Candidate.ID to chat candidate funnels and Eurotrash. Enjoy this Nexxt Exclusive. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps corporations tap new channels to find qualified talent in the disability community, manage culture change, leverage federal and state hiring incentives, respond to a changing regulatory environment, and strengthen their workforce through diversity. Chad: We ran into kilt wearing, friend of the show, Adam Gordon from Candidate.ID at TAtech Europe in Portugal. Take a listen, after a quick word from our sponsor. Chad: Okay, so you need candidates fast and you’re sick and tired of being nickel and dimed to death, I totally get it. You should check out flex plan from Nexxt. It’s perfect for employers and staffing firms who are busy, they need candidates and flexible pricing now. FlexxPlan is also perfect for recruitment at agencies who need targeted distribution and tools to help demonstrate client ROI. If you're sick and tired of all the BS, hassle, and just want candidates now, check out Nexxt and flex plan with over 70 million members. Nexxt takes all of your jobs and puts each one in front of the best candidates and cross their entire ecosystem. No muss, no fuss, Nexxt does all the work and flex plan makes it cost effective. Check out everything Nexxt has to offer at hiring.nexxt.com, that's hiring.nexxt.com and if you like to save even more cash just go to chadcheese.com scroll, down and click on the Nexxt logo, discounts aplenty. Remember, Nexxt with a double x, not the triple x. Announcer: Hide your kids, look the doors. You're listening to HRs 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. Adam: From 18-21, my daily rate was 10 grand. Joel: And we won't ask what services came with that 10 grand. Chad: Yeah, I don't think it's appropriate to. Joel: And when have we ever been appropriate on this show? Chad: They're never listed... Joel: People don't tune into us for the appropriateness of our commentary. Adam: I reserve the right to be forgotten. Chad: So you know how we started the show yesterday? Or I should say, Joel started the show yesterday, came on to the stage and said, "Hey, what's up Euro trash?" That's how it started. Adam: Euro trash... Joel: You weren't there were you? Adam: No. Joel: Yeah. Adam: Euro trash... Chad: Yes, yeah. That's how we started. Joel: And I have the air horn too, which was fun. Chad: We all know who bad cop was starting that one out. Adam: That's hilarious. Chad: I didn't even get a chance. Joel: It was the last one of the day, everyone was looking pretty sleepy, so you know. Yeah. Adam: Half the people here are American. Chad: That's a very good point, wait are you... Chad: Oh my god. Joel: Euro trash. Chad: Yeah. So give us an intro... Joel: But someone came up after and said, "Man you stole my thunder." Joel: You made 'em immune to cussing. I was gonna shock 'em into listening to me, but you ruined it for me. Chad: Not gonna happen. Chad: So today we are with Adam... Joel: "Firing squad" alum. Chad: Alum. Joel: ...and survivor Adam Gordon. Chad: That's right. Joel: Just another of the many success stories of those startups brave enough to face the firing squad. Joel: Adam how are you? Adam: Yeah fine, I'm still slightly bitter about the golf clap you gave me though Joel. Joel: What was Chad's? Adam: He gave me a big round of applause. Joel: It's amazing how well the participants remember what we say and how we rate them at the end. Chad: Because it all counts. Joel: And many of them carry grudges and scars and bitterness unfortunately. The funny thing, I have no idea what I remember, I don't remember what I, but you clearly will take it to your grave and curse my name as you're lowered into the earth. But look at you now? Chad: He's a good looking man in a kilt! Joel: You're getting money from either Russians or Germans, we can't quite... Chad: Joel can't pin that down. Joel: The paper trail is a little bit fuzzy. Chad: We've heard Germans, zie Germans. Joel: So clear it up for us right now, who gave you money, how much was it, for what percentage, like what are the deets on this? Chad: What are you gonna do? Yeah. Adam: We received some investment from recruitment technology, a small recruitment technology fund driven by a guy called Andy Burika, in Germany. He has investments in 19 recruitment tech businesses, we're the only ones that don't speak German. Joel: Zer gut. Adam: As I understand. He gave us a high six figure investment and acquired 10% of our business. Chad: High six figure. Adam: Yeah. Joel: A semi-exact answer. Chad: Yeah. Joel: At least the percentage was good. We don't usually get percentages of the business. Were you wearing a kilt during the negotiations? Adam: Uh, no... Joel: Did you open the kimono so-to-speak? Adam: In fact, yes is the answer. So when I first met him at UNLEASH in Amsterdam I was in my kilt. Joel: Uh-huh. Adam: It was the day that, I'd just come off stage after winning the Recruitment Tech Startup stream at UNLEASH... Chad: Uh-huh. Adam: At the competition. And subsequently we were in Berlin, talking the secret HR society's gathering one evening. Chad: Wait can you talk about that? The actual secret HR society? Adam: Well the secret... Joel: The first rule is don't talk about the secret. Adam: About the secret? Yeah. Scott and I were in our kilts, we saw him, we saw him that day, we weren't in our kilts when we were in his office, but we were in our kilts again by the time we saw him later in the day at the event. Chad: Yeah. Adam: The kilt works. Outside of... Chad: The kilt does work. Adam: Outside of the UK the kilt attracts people. Joel: Good tip, good tip. But I'm assuming you have to actually be Scottish to pull it off. Adam: Absolutely not. Joel: No? Adam: No, of course not. Chad: What are you talking about, we're gonna be in kilts later today? Joel: Yeah but we won't be able to pull it off. And we definitely won't be able to raise money. Chad: I'm pulling that bitch off, yes. Adam: I suspect you'll find... Joel: Well raise some money while you're at it. Chad: I do! Adam: I suspect you'll find the amount of people coming over to talk to you is going to increase in your kilts. Chad: Oh yeah? Joel: And I'm assuming the number one question is...? Adam: What material is the kilt made of? Joel: Would not have been my guess for first question or most asked question. Adam: So the answer is yes I am afraid I always wear pants under my kilt. Joel: Oh okay. Pants or an underwear thing? Like it'd be... Adam: Oh yeah, I mean it's not a jock strap. Joel: You're not wearing pants with the kilt right now... Chad: It's not a jock strap... Adam: No, they're kinda like, they're kinda like tight boxers. Joel: No G-string? Chad: Oh okay. Joel: So the boxer brief... Adam: Yep. Joel: That's what we're rocking. Adam: Yep. Joel: I can get behind that. Chad: I'm going with leopard skins. Joel: Boxer briefs or bikinis? Adam: Most people don't though. Chad: Oh bikinis. Joel: Bikinis. Chad: Yeah yeah. Adam: Most Scots don't though. Chad: Yeah! Adam: Yeah I mean like most of my friends don't. You go away and watch a football match or a rugby match or something... Chad: Yeah. Adam: In a different country and... Joel: And they're going commando. Adam: Yeah they all are, yeah. Chad: So back to the topic at hand, what are you gonna do with this money? You've got this amount of money, what are you gonna do...? Joel: Aside from sponsoring the show, what will you be doing with...? Adam: We've hired our first sales team, so we're taking that seriously now. We've got some processes in place and we've got some real rigor around how we're going to market. That's the first thing. Second thing is we have accelerated product development so we're creating a recruitment CRM which will be free to anybody that wants to use it as of July. Adam: That's basically, just, putting our money where our mouth is and showing how much we value recruitment CRM. Zero pounds and zero dollars. Chad: So the CRM sucks, along with the ATS, is that what you're saying? Is that what we're hearing? Adam: No I'm not saying anything about ATS... Chad: Oh okay. Adam: I'm just saying that recruitment CRM is a category of software that's been created to solve a problem that it does not solve. Chad: Uh huh. What is that problem? What's the category problem? Adam: Being able to keep in contact really effectively with all of your candidates. Chad: Okay. Adam: Being able to nurture them and being able to tell recruiters which candidates they should pick up the phone to when the job gets signed off. CRM doesn't do any of those. Most people think that they need it, and that's fine, that's why we built it and we'll give it away for free, if people really want it. That's fine. And it will be a decent CRM, it will be a decent recruitment CRM, by the way it will be. Adam: But what they really need is the talent pipeline software, the talent pipeline automation and that's the bit that we charge for. Chad: I remember when Avature first came out, years ago right, and everybody was, the problem was engagement and the problem was also that candidates were not finishing the application process and in the ATS there really wasn't much you could do with that info at least, that data at least. So they wanted this other layer which actually Jobs to Web got into as well, before they were sold to Success Factors and it was all about business card information. That was all in a separate system from your ATS so that there wasn't any quote-on-quote 'compliance' around it and it was in an advertising system not your system of record. Chad: So it never really evolved past that, is what I'm hearing from you. Adam: Well I mean that's the truth, there's so many different sources of candidate information today... Chad: Uh huh. Adam: That you don't need to store in a CRM and you still got it in just as fast time... Chad: Uh huh. Adam: All these sourcing tools can tell you somebody's email address, and tell you their phone number, so to be honest you're more compliant if you just leave it on the web and just access it straight from the web. But if people want it, then fine, that's great we'll give it to them. We get it all the time, we get people saying to us, "Your product looks amazing, but really we need a CRM first." Adam: So that's why we've created it because we'll just go, "Fine, have this one for free." Joel: So you talked about adding new features and hiring talent to do that, so what, what are some of the features of things we'll be talking about a year now that you guys have created? Adam: We'll be a long way down the road with a machine learning program which is all about self-building campaigns. Organizations today have to put the content into Candidate.ID to make it work and they have to connect the content to each other, you know one bit to another bit, and they need to add a points algorithm to the beginning, a scoring model. Candidate.ID in years’ time is going to be able to self-build campaigns. For example, the recruiter will get an email to say, "Next week's campaign to nurture yourself for engineers is live, or is ready to go live, they'll just click... Adam: No they'll click on a link... Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Adam: They'll get to see what the email copy looks like, text message copy, social media posts... Chad: QA/QC Adam: Everything and then, yeah, absolutely. And then all they'll have to do is press distribute and it'll go. Today they might spend 2 hours creating a really good campaign, in a year's time they'll be able to do one in 15 minutes. Joel: And for the recruiters out there who don't want to become marketers, this is great news for them. Adam: To be honest it means that Candidate.ID is actually accessible to recruiters 'cause today the only people really running it are sourcing teams and recruitment marketing teams. So recruiters can use it to access information about candidates, but you would never have somebody that's filling jobs creating campaigns. In a year's time they'll be able to, it'll be really easy. Chad: But recruiters aren't even going into their applicant tracking system looking for data, they feel like they always have to go out to job boards, or LinkedIn, or some shit like that, right? So what makes you think that they're gonna use this, I mean because they're in a routine, right? "Well we're paying for this, we gotta go out and use it", event though the data's probably already in one of their systems as it is. How are you gonna get them to stop the stupid shit and start using data that they've already paid for? Adam: So that's, that... Joel: I think that's your next catch phrase, by the way, stop doing stupid shit, Candidate.ai. (Candidate ID) Adam: We'll think... Joel: Or ID. Adam: We'll think about it yeah. Adam: That's the precise reason we created Candidate.ID because Pfizer told me that 70% of the people they were hiring from LinkedIn had already been on Taleo at the point that they reengaged with them. Chad: They bought ‘em already right? Joel: Yeah. Adam: Yep exactly. Chad: How many times, and you would know this better than we would, how many times have they bought those candidates over and over and over, before they actually go back into their ATS and use them if they are at all. Adam: Well it's a really good question actually, I don't know how many times they have, but it's at least two for 70% of them... Chad: Oh yeah. Adam: So it could well be three, four, five times... Chad: Yeah! Adam: So here's the big thing they need to do, they need to keep in contact with people throughout the, from the start of their career right to the end of their career, they need to nurture those people, long term relationships, giving them useful, relevant content... Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Adam: And having an ongoing relationship. And not an ephemeral relationship, which is, we might talk to them once every three years or something like that. How we're gonna get recruiters using their own database within Candidate.ID, where they don't do it from Taleo or Workday or anything else... Chad: Uh huh. Adam: Is because they can easily see who's hot today. So you surf them with hot leads so that they can eliminate cold contact, and they can therefore spend more time filing jobs and less time reaching out to people who never respond. That's a massive, massive saving. And in fact today we can show that Specsavers, which is Europe's biggest optometry retailer... Chad: Uh huh. Adam: The recruiters in that business are filling 50% more jobs per person, because they practically eliminated cold contact with candidates. Chad: Which means you need less recruiters. Adam: Well, either you need less recruiters, or you are providing, maybe more superior candidate experience, a higher touchpoint, more internal business partnering, and doing more qualitative things. Of course if cost's your issue, than yes, less recruiters. Joel: You are one of the contestants on today's death match. You're going up against a robot, a chat bot... Chad: And a sourcing algorithm. Joel: Algorithm. What's your strategy to win today's contest? Adam: I'm gonna put the human back into recruitment. Chad: Cause you'll be the only human. Joel: I'm bringing the human back to human resources. Chad: Now wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, you're just talking about an automated process that will build marketing campaigns, and you'll be able to cut the recruiters in half...[crosstalk 00:14:25] Joel: Exactly. So if you just push a button and it does everything. Adam: Yeah, but I'm gonna, yeah. But the ultimate to campaign build isn't ready yet, so that's in a year's time. Chad: Okay. Adam: So today... Chad: Today... Adam: I'm gonna be representing the human face of recruitment. Chad: The human race. The human face. Joel: So the kilt's on, are we gonna get a Mel Gibson-esque Braveheart rally cry for human beings? Adam: I'm definitely gonna be spontaneous with that, I've been thinking about what I might do. Chad: Uh huh. Adam: I think maybe... Joel: I'm thinking some blue face paint might be... Adam: Maybe but I like, do you guys know Naseem Hamed? Prince Naseem Hamed? The boxer? Chad: No. Joel: No. Adam: He used to come into the ring on a flying carpet. Chad: Ahh. Adam: Thinking about trying to do that. Chad: Yeah. I wanna see you pull that off, I really do. Joel: That's gonna be some brownie points. Chad: You know what, some of the investment that he just received from Russia... Joel: He can probably produce a flying carpet before the event. Adam: Here in Lisbon we're also not that far from Morocco and I'm pretty sure that's where they make the flying carpets. Chad: Yeah I think that is. Yeah, I think that's the only place, they're trademarked or something. Joel: Adam thanks for joining us man, good luck today, in today's death match. And as always stay in touch with what's going on at Candidate.ID. Chad: There it is, keep those legs sassy. Adam: Thanks for talking to me! Chad: Later! Joel: 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-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, the expensive shiny gold pair that are extra because, well, I'm extra. Tristen: For more, visit chadcheese.com. #Nexxt #TalentPipelines #CandidateID #TAtech #EmployerBrand #Brand #EmploymentBrand #Marketing

What happens when you get about 100 recruiters in Philly to witness a live Chad & Cheese podcast? A whole lotta trash talkin' about CareerBuilder, Monster, Ladders, Indeed and anyone else who gets out of line, apparently. Grab a Yuengling and get jawn. You're bound to enjoy this live show. Afterwards, give love to our sponsors Sovren, Canvas and JobAdx. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. Keca Ward: How many of you do listen to the Chad and Cheese Podcast? Yeah. They're going to be doing it live, and you're gonna hear this I think tomorrow, right guys? Maybe? Joel: If Chad sobers up. Keca Ward: Okay. Depends on the sobriety level of these guys. Please give a big, warm welcome. It is 1:15, so we can get going to Chad and Cheese. 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: All right, Philly! Chad: So, luckily, we got beer, because we almost left. Joel: Yo guys, this is the weekly show, so you guys gotta represent Philly... Chad: Right. Joel: Because the whole world listens to our show. And all of you will be listening after today. But you gotta bring it for Philly in this weekly podcast. Chad: Represent! Joel: I just learned the word "jawn" so I'm going to try to work it in. Chad: This is our jawn, so we're going to try to... Joel: I'm a little gassy after that cheesesteak though, so I gotta work that in... Chad: Sit over there! Joel: How we doing, Philly? We doing all right? We have some great fans in Philly. Chad: Yes. Joel: For those of you who don't know, I am the Cheese segment of the duo here. My name is Joel Cheesman, believe it or not, that's not my acting porn name. This is Chad, which is pretty self-explanatory. But we do a weekly podcast, couple monthly shows, we do like a Shark Tank-style start-up interview. We travel a lot and do shows and interviews that way. Anything recruiting, you want to learn more stuff, who's out there doing cool things, we like to think that our podcast is the shiz. Or the "jawn", maybe, is what I should have... Chad: It is, it is a jawn. It's totally the jawn. So yeah, we've got a world tour this year, it's been awesome. We just got back from Portugal, and now we're in Philly, love it, I mean, it makes sense, right? Right? But... Joel: It's better in Philly. Chad: What's that? Joel: It's better in Philly. Chad: Oh yeah, so much better in Philly. I mean, we definitely want to give some shout-outs. If you've listened to our podcast, right out of the gate, we like to give what we call shout-outs to people in the industry who give us live. Or we see some cool shit happening. Oh yeah, by the way, this is an explicit podcast/presentation, so you might have to do earmuffs every now and again. Joel: I think we're okay in Philly. Chad: I'm just saying. Joel: I think Philly's all right. Chad: Just saying. Gotta do it. Joel: Montgomery, Alabama, that shit was bad, right?. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Montgomery didn't go very well. Chad: I don't think we're going to Montgomery, Alabama. Joel: Yeah, and if you guys wanna shout out questions or have anything, please feel free to engage. Our show's about forty minutes, this is an hour that we have on stage, so we're bound to run out of gas. So hopefully... Chad: He won't run out of gas. That's for sure. Joel: Well, not that kind of gas. Chad: That's half a cheesesteak. Joel: So, think of questions as we go on and we'd love to engage with you guys and have more of a conversation... Chad: Yep. Joel: ...than us just talking at you. Chad: So big shout-out, first and foremost, the guys who actually brought us here. Not just the Recruit Philly peeps, because they've been kicking ass, taking names, give them a big round of applause. But Emissary.AI. They are the guys, they brought us here. Without their gas money... Yeah. So if you've seen... Joel: My twelve-year-old told me about that app, it's awesome. Chad: Yeah. Nancy, if you could stand up and show the... Joel: Nancy from Philly! Chad: Yes. Nancy from Philly. Joel: Early fan, early fan. Chad: There it is. Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: Big Emissary logo on the back. Joel: Nancy stocked us in the early days. We were a little freaked out by it. Chad: Yeah, so her and Ed, who's not here. Ed, what the fuck, dude? Joel: Everyone add Zatisky, -tasky, what's his...? Chad: Yeah, Ed Z, right? Yeah, Ed Z. Joel: No one knows Ed? He put this thing together. Chad: Yeah, he's part of team. Love it, Ed's actually off his... His wife is graduating from, I believe it's nursing... Joel: High school, right? Chad: Yes. High school. Big round of applause. For Ed's wife. Joel: I'm so mad he wasn't here to hear that. Chad: Oh, he'll hear it. He'll hear it. Joel: I know he will. Love you, Ed. Chad: Goddammit, Ed. Chad: Patrick. Where's Patrick at? He got us the beer. Joel: Patrick is... Chad: Yeah. Joel: Patrick is so jawn. Thank you, dude. Chad: Dude, yeah. Patrick is so jawn. Chad: I need to hear stuff from up top, too. You guys just can't be lazy and go in food comas, thank you. Joel: We've gotta raise the roof up top. I love it. Terry Baker's on his phone, dude, he's see this.. Chad: There you go. Arsenio woof woof woof. Chad: Jesus, dude. Chad: Mark Feffer from HCM Tech Report. He actually came down so he could meet us and actually report on this amazing event, first annual, right? First annual, right? Every year? Okay. Just making sure this wasn't a one-time go. Joel: We won't be back, so enjoy it while we're here. Chad: Like "fuck these guys." Joel: By the way, saying we're from Indiana isn't very dangerous. These crazy cats from Indiana. We're gonna break shit up. Chad: It's like stealthy. Chad: Judge Group, and also I want to read a tweet from one of our friends, Jason Katcher. And if you don't know, and you don't listen, we hate The Ladders because it's fucking stupid. It's been around for how long... Joel: And their CEO sucks. Chad: I can't believe it still exists. Marc Cenedella, I know you're listening, dude, shut that shit down. Jason Katcher tweets: "The Ladders emails are like those magic birthday candles that never go out. No matter how many times I unsubscribe or mark as spam they keep on coming back." Good shit, Jason. Love it. Joel: I see a lot of people relating to those emails. Chad: How many people thought Ladders was like out of business, I mean like ten years ago, right? Joel: They're not The Ladders anymore, they're just Ladders. Chad: But if you go to Ladders.com... Joel: Although... Yeah if you go to Ladders.com, it doesn't take you to The Ladders. So they've kind of fucked up the marketing on that one. Chad: It takes you to, well, what you would want... Joel: Probably a ladder store. Chad: To buy ladders. A ladder store, right? Joel: Which is more helpful than The Ladders, by the way. Chad: Yeah. It doesn't make any goddamn sense. I'm going to change my name but not my URL and drive people away to buy ladders. I can't even imagine. Their marketing sucks anyway, so probably nothing. Chad: Next events, Jobcase, we're going to be in Boston next week for Jobcase Live. Joel: No boos for Boston? Oh, I'm impressed. Chad: I would have thought we got some boos from Philly. Yeah, didn't get any cheers. Then we're going to Boston again for SmashFly Transform. Chad: Ooh. Joel: Was that for Boston or SmashFly? Who? Oh. Chad: This is Phenom country. Okay, good call. Joel: Phenom country. Chad: Well, then they need to fucking invite us to their shindig or some shit, right? Oh, you did? Awesome. Joel: She runs the show over at Phenom. I didn't know that. Chad: I didn't know that either. It's awesome. Joel: Screw that, she's the boss. Chad: What's your name by the way? Jen. Jen's the boss. Chad: And then Recfest. Who's going to London? Because there's going to be three thousand recruiters in London. We're headlining this thing. It's like the Lollapalooza of fricking recruiting events. One day, five tents, five stages, and the bar opens at noon. This is going to be ridiculous. Joel: It'd be better if the bar's open for everybody. Chad: The bar is open for everybody... Oh, you mean for this? Joel: Here. Chad: Oh, they're good. Joel: Because Chad sounds much smarter when everyone else is drunk. Chad: Everybody does sound smarter. Joel: Do you guys drink Yuengling, or is that like, whack here? Whack? Chad: It's whack. Joel: It's not jawn, right? Okay. Chad: It's not jawn. Joel: Not jawn. Joel: It's commercial time. JobAdX: Finding the right fit is important. When you're deciding on shoes for a long day at the tradeshow, when you're picking the right podcast for your commute, and most importantly, when you're looking for the right candidate. With JobAdX, you can attract more relevant, engaged candidates to your jobs by harnessing the best in ad tech targeting. JobAdX: From predictive industry analysis and keyword click data, to premium first page placement, and reducing redundant applications, our candidate-targeting technology ensures that you're reaching talent that's as interested in working with you as you are with them. Now with in-ad video and multimedia, you can share your employer brand story and company culture with job seekers, so they can visualize themselves in your office. All-hands meeting, or axe-throwing team-building adventure. All without navigating away from your job posting. Increased engagement makes for fewer steps between job seeker and new team member. Ready to ramp up your job advertising campaigns with the best in ad tech? Visit our new website at www.jobadx.com. That's J-O-B-A-D-X dot com. Attract, engage, employ with JobAdX. Chad: It's showtime. Chad: Okay, so we're going to jump into topics for this week. We have, over the last six months, we've talked a little bit about CareerBuilder here and there. And we have so many... Joel: Womp womp. Chad: Probably like fifty different contacts within CareerBuilder, not to mention Glassdoor. Just seeing what's going on... Joel: We got insiders. Chad: In that dumpster fire. It has now turned into, or at least we're hearing from multiple contacts, it is now turning into a dumpster in-fucking-ferno. Joel: Watch this. Who's still using CareerBuilder in the audience? Who's using it but too ashamed to admit it. Chad: I see one up there. I see one. Yeah, room full of people, arena. Guess what? Joel: It's like ten years ago when you said who's still on Myspace. No one raises their hand but, they kind of were, sort of. Chad: Friendster. I'm still on Friendster. Yeah. Chad: So, we've actually been hearing... Getting information over the last six months about little things happening at CareerBuilder but it seems like everything's coming to a head. They're going to start selling off pieces of the business. And that, in kind of not conflicting but kind of like a range of numbers that revenues are actually down 35 to 40 percent. Chad: Yeah, did you hear the audible "oh"? Joel: Ohhh. Chad: So, it's pretty amazing as we see Apollo came in... Joel: Yeah, does everyone know the history? Chad: We're going to give it to you now. Joel: So CareerBuilder acquired, a couple years ago, 2016... Chad: Yeah. Joel: Private equity firm called Apollo who has a nice history of slashing and burning and making things profitable and selling off the pieces. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They're doing that playbook right now. Chad: Except for the profitability piece. Joel: Yeah, profitability piece. Well, they keep cutting enough people, maybe they will. Chad: It's possible. Joel: Everyone that has been at CareerBuilder a very long time has gone. They let their CEO go about a year ago. Their new CEO is a... what did your source say? A 33-year-old finance... Chad: Yeah, P and E... PE investor. Joel: P.E. hack, puppet or something. Chad: Trying to run a software company with no software experience. And that was multiple people saying, "This person does not have the experience to be able to do what's necessary." She knows how to lean up an organization. That's pretty easy, right? All you assholes are fired. But she doesn't know how to actually turn it into revenue. And that's what we're seeing from CareerBuilder, not to mention we heard so many rumblings, I think it was last year, my prediction was that either CareerBuilder or Monster was going to come back. That was so funny. Joel: That was two years ago. Chad: Yeah, that's two years ago. And I mean, they... Joel: She's not really an R&D CEO. Chad: Well, no. She slashed and burned R&D. Joel: In fact, what's been the most innovative thing they've done in the last year? Chad: Pokemon for jobs. Everybody know Pokemon for jobs? Joel: Right? So you download their app and you put your camera up to downtown Philly, and they'll show you augmented reality-style, all the jobs and companies of people that are hiring. That's been the height of innovation at Career Builder in the last twelve months. Chad: Pokemon for jobs. Yeah. So was anybody at HR Tech last year? Okay, a few people. Yeah, so had like this huge... Joel: They were so excited. Chad: Huge space. I think it was like, at least estimated, spent over a hundred thousand dollars. We're just not seeing CareerBuilder make smart decisions at all. And from, again, from the inside, we're hearing very soon, which is one of the reasons why we're talking about it now, because we've been hearing things, again, for the last six months, that they're actually in the process of trying to chunk up and sell off pieces of the business. And that many of the... Joel: Probably not a ton of takers at this point. Chad: Yeah, no. And many of the executive leadership is actually getting ready to eject as well. We've seen some very big names run. When you have companies like Broadbean and Textkernel, about five years ago, those were on-the-edge technologies to an extent, right, Distribution? But Broadbean now is pretty much what I call done-distribution. It's not programmatic, it's not focused on your needs, it's not targeted by any means. And in most cases, you can't do any type of paper performance. Right? So, it's like going back to the late nineties or early 2000s and doing the exact same thing, just pray and spray and do it over and over and over. As opposed to really be targeted and be focused. Chad: What they have to sell off... Joel: Quantity over quality. Chad: We're losing great, yeah. We call that spam. So obviously the drop in revenue, you're talking about 35 percent to 40 percent prospectively, revenue. They've lost over ten thousand accounts. And again, I see a lot of head-shaking. From what I've heard... Joel: Were any of you the account that they lost? Chad: Yeah. From what we've heard is that even a lot of the agencies are like, "Yeah, we're kicking a lot of our clients out of CareerBuilder everyday because they're not getting the ROI." And in today's analytics-focused industry, man, that's gotta be a bitch for a company like CareerBuilder. Joel: I'm just here to support you. I'm just the face guy. Chad: That's some scary shit. So the funny part is, right, in my prediction two years ago, it was Monster and CareerBuilder, one of those two, they're actually going to make a charge. And this week, what happened? Monster Studios... Joel: I'm glad you said no to drugs a couple years ago by the way. Joel: So, Monster's on the innovation trail as well. A year ago, they announced that they were going to add videos to their job postings. Chad: It was at HR Tech. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. Joel: October of last year. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They had a hundred beta clients I believe. Chad: Yes. Joel: And it's only taken them a year to get it out of beta. And create Instagram for jobs, I guess is what I'm calling it. This is a company that has a new CEO, almost a year, he's a tech CEO. They have a new tech head. And the most innovation that we saw out of Monster this year was partnering with VideoMyJob to put videos on job postings. Chad: The big product. Joel: That's kind of sad. Chad: So how many of you today are actually using videos on your job descriptions? Anyone? Joel: Or video at all. Chad: Okay, so, very few hands raised. I mean, it's incredibly low adoption, because... Joel: You should, haven't you guys heard all internet traffic in 2020 is going to be, like, video? You guys gotta get on TikTok immediately, is what I'm saying. Chad: You should see him at the airport. Like thirty minutes of TikTok and he just can't get off. Joel: Don't play like I'm the only one. Chad: The problem we're having, that we've always had with videos, we love video, but it all comes down to adoption, and making it easy for a company to integrate these videos into their job descriptions, their websites, whatever it is. And I think that through VideoMyJob, they've been able to make it as easy as it's ever been thus far. The problem is, it's not going to do it itself, right? And until you can easily empower your people and trust your people to actually do videos that are going to be worth a shit, number one, and then also hit on all the points that you need for your brand. Because you want to make sure they're conveying the right brand experience. That's really hard, right? And I know it's easy to say, "Hey, look, we're just going to go ahead and give all of our people their phones and they're going to go out and they're going to create these videos, and then we're going to have a ton of content." Chad: But the biggest question is, how are you going to go through the content? And can you use the content? That's the hard part, right? From my standpoint, I think that from Monster's standpoint, partnering with another company instead of trying to build, is incredibly smart. I think from a shortsighted standpoint, it's adoption. Adoption is either number one, going to be quick and easy because that's what the product is designed for, or it's going to be incredibly hard, just for the reasons that I just talked about. Chad: You love video. Joel: I want to talk about their shitty new ads. Chad: Okay. Joel: Has anyone seen the new Monster ads? Chad: Monster, just so you know, Monster marketing guys are like curled up in fetal positions because we've been giving them shit about these things... Joel: Are they? Chad: They are. Joel: Well, I assume an agency made that for them. I hope to God they didn't... Chad: Yeah, but they're responsible. Joel: Well, yeah, they're responsible. Chad: Yeah, and they bought into it. Joel: Yeah. If you haven't seen them, it's irrelevant for me to talk about. But they're really... They're shitty. They're bad. Like, if you're Monster, you roll the dice, and you say, "We're Instagram for jobs." And you can see videos from employers, and that would at least give people a reason to go to Monster and see like what are the fucking videos that they're talking about. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: But instead, it's the same old, "Daddy, what's it like to work?" Joel: "Well, you go to work, and your soul gets sucked out, and then you die." Joel: Like that's basically the ad. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kid's going to sleep, no shit, kid's going to sleep, and the dad's walking out. And the kid says, "Daddy, what's it like to work?" And he goes into this... You want to take the kid's shoestring and belts away from him and stuff like that. This is not good, this is like suicide watch stuff. This is not... What's going on here? Joel: It's like Super Bowl 2005 ads, that they decided to just [00:20:13]. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And basically, it's what it feels like. It's like, these ads didn't make the cut in 2006, so let's dig 'em up and throw 'em in because we've already made 'em, and put them out there. Chad: Remember that idea we had, back in the... Yeah, it's so shit. Joel: Yeah, just throw that shit out. Chad: So shit. Chad: So, Joel is incredibly happy right now. Because we've heard, and some of you will be, Brandon's happy too. That Google Glass is actually coming back. Joel: Crickets. Chad: It's the stupidest shit ever, dude. Joel: I'm a VR guy. Not necessarily a Google Glass guy. Chad: Who said, "What is it?" There it is. See, you don't even know what Google Glass is. Tell 'em what it is. Joel: Because you're so young you don't remember the first iteration of Google Glass. Chad: Right. That's right. Joel: So it was... Chad: That's right. Joel: Ten years ago, Google had this thing, and they go like, "We're going to put a little camera on your glasses." Oh, yeah. They didn't even have lenses. It was just like the frame part. Chad: The frames, yeah, the frames. Joel: So, you'd have this camera on your glasses, and the douchebag meter went through the roof, because you talk to someone with a camera on their glasses, are you recording me? What the hell's going on? So, it was like a thousand dollars to get one of these things, they dumped it. To Chad's excitement, they're relaunching Google Glass. Are they calling it Google Glass? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Okay. Chad: I think it's the stupidest shit ever. But they put new frames on it. Cool frames. Joel: Well, in their defense, it's more of an industrial... Doctors can wear it for surgeries. Industrial stuff. Chad: So they're trying to do the Microsoft thing. Joel: I don't think it's for the consumer. Chad: They're trying to do the Microsoft thing. Joel: Sure. Chad: Okay. Has anybody seen the Microsoft heads-up display visor, which is cool as shit. And it's really awesome because it's a total visor, and it's a heads-up display, so like you're in a cockpit. And if you have a mechanic or something like that, they can look at... It actually downloads the schematics to the glasses and you can exactly what you should be looking for, or electronics, or things of that nature. Incredibly cool, and to be able to bring something like that VR or AR really, so augmented reality, to a segment and make it practical, works. Unlike CareerBuilder, who's like Pokemon for jobs. Joel: I feel like we're going towards sex robots. Is that where we're going? Chad: Did anybody listen to... Joel: Those weren't in the notes, were they? Chad: No, they weren't, they weren't, but we just interviewed... Joel: We did. Chad: An actual interviewing robot. Joel: Yes. Chad: Have you guys seen this? Okay, so Tengai is a Swedish robot that... Joel: It's made in Sweden. Chad: It's made, yeah, well, it's a Swedish robot, it's made in Sweden, so it's a Swedish robot. Joel: I guess technically it's a Swedish robot. Chad: So, about ye big. Joel: How many girls had the Barbie bus thing... Chad: Where you do the hair and stuff? Joel: Where you could do Barbie's hair? Chad: Yeah. Kind of like that size. Joel: It's kind of like that, without the hair. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: And like a screen face. Chad: So totally, totally thought this was the creepiest thing in the world. And as you watch and you look at it... Joel: It's pretty close. Chad: You're like, "Oh my god, this is so creepy." But, it's being built as the unbiased interviewing system. Because it doesn't see gender, it doesn't see color, it doesn't see anything like that. And the thing that just drove me nuts was, it looks so creepy. So, we actually saw, in Portugal, and I was totally geeking out. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen, and Adam Gordon from Candidate.ID I think encapsulated what I think will happen when this thing starts to hit interviewing rooms, is that candidates will be in there, and they'll be like this. They'll be like the robot, and they'll be like "guhhhh." Because it is so cool. You talk to it, it like tracks the person who's talking, and it like head-tilts, and there's this projection screen, it's a 3D printed face, and the face is projected from behind, so you can make different faces. And it doesn't look like a robotic mouth or anything like that. It looks really cool. Joel: So when Chad says cool, I say cool in kind of a Swedish ABBA, IKEA, a little bit off kind of cool. Chad: It's a little off, don't get me wrong. Joel: It's a little weird in a Swedish kind of way. Chad: Yeah. Don't you think candidates will love it, though? They'll be like, "Oh, this is fucking cool." Joel: Some candidates will love it. Salespeople will not love it. Tech people will probably love it. Congratulations to them, we do a thing called Death Match, which we have four start-ups come on at a conference, TAtech, and they were one of the four. So we're fans of theirs, we're rooting for them. Chad: Yeah, they're innovative. Joel: They just signed their first client. Chad: Who else is doing a fucking interviewing robot? Anyone? Nobody? No? Yeah. Joel: CareerBuilder's dropping Pokemon for jobs, and this little Swedish company's actually made a fucking robot to take all your jobs. And your cheesesteaks apparently. Chad: No, just to be able to take... Who likes interviewing people? I don't like interviewing people. Joel: Well, shockingly, recruiters are more mad about this thing than anybody else. Chad: Really? Joel: Which, well, you, for social media. Chad: Yeah, well, the practicality... I think it's one of those things where you really have to experience it. And that's one of the things, you have to be in the room, and really understand it. And not to mention, if they start to make Tengai a part of the experience of being at this company, going in and having like a Tengai at the front desk, and meeting you, one of those things. So IKEA, go figure, in Sweden, and they have high turnover, they have tons of jobs, we're hoping, I know they're talking to those guys, that they'll be able to adopt and do some pilots. Though we can actually get some data around this, because we think it's entirely cool, but we've seen so many entirely cool things just crash and burn over the years, right? Joel: In IKEA's defense, we don't really know if they have high turnover. Chad: That's a good point. Joel: They just might be growing. Chad: I would say in their segment. Let's just say that. Joel: Yes. Either way, you could agree that retail's a great venue, platform, to have a robot interviewing lots of people very quickly in an unbiased way to fill positions in a retail setting. Chad: Yes. So it's spelled T-E-N-G-A-I. Just take a look at it. Joel: Moving on. Chad: Talk about Google? Okay, we're going to go into our Google segment, which is almost like a staple in our show, for god's sake. Joel: Because people love it! Chad: People love Google. Joel: We see the numbers. When we talk about LinkedIn, Google, Indeed, everyone listens. Chad: People love Google, man. Joel: So we talk about it. Chad: This week, another one bites the dust. And what I mean by that is, is TMP Worldwide, which you guys I'm sure know, right? They are now starting to pilot the Google talent solutions API for their job search within TalentBrew. And as we've seen... Joel: Tell them what that is, Chad. Chad: As we've seen, like with CareerBuilder, CareerBuilder who's been in the space for twenty years, many of these companies, even College Recruiter or what have you, who've been in the job search space for so long, have had what? They've had a shitty job search experience. Keyword, Boolean-based. I know recruiters love Boolean but I'm sorry, Boolean sucks on the search, right? Joel: Don't you dare misspell something. Chad: Especially when it comes to job seekers. Job seekers don't know Boolean. Right? It's really a shitty experience. Joel: Boolean, they can't spell. Chad: They can't spell "Boolean." Yes. Joel: Like, what are you talking about. Chad: Let alone "programmatic." So, from that standpoint, what most of these companies have been able to see is that Google's new search, which now powers the CareerBuilder search, Jibe search, many of the different... Joel: Four thousand companies and job boards. Chad: Four thousand companies and job boards. Because Google does what better than anybody else? Make money. And search. Right? They do search better than anybody else. So, most of these companies are starting to kick their search to the curb, and start to use Google's search beneath the layer. So let's say for instance the Phenoms of the world. Could be, clients would go to them and say, "Hey, we want Google search." Well that's a plug-and-play thing with an API. So they make it easy, to an extent, for companies to be able to use Google search. TalentBrew, the reason why we want to talk about it is, it's a platform that's been around for a very long time. Good, bad, or indifferent. And they now obviously are starting to use Google. The big question is, how long is it going to take until the entire recruitment search, job search, is going to be powered by Google? Four thousand sites... sites, platforms. We're talking about corporate sites like Johnson & Johnson. Johnson & Johnson, they did a case study with Google, and I believe it was Jibe, and had amazing numbers. Because the actual search is more contextual, and it's not Boolean-based. Joel: Yeah, it's faster, it reads misspellings. It's like Google on your job board, or your company's website. Chad: Yep. Joel: It's very effective. We've talked to vendors that say their customer service calls have gone to zero about people calling and saying, "I can't search correctly," or "how do I search this," or "I'm not getting results." Google does all that for them. So from a customer service perspective, for vendors, it's been a real godsend for them. Chad: How many of you have actually, or you guys have a Google power type of search behind... Anyone, anyone? No, one back that, okay. Joel: Who are you with, ma'am? Chad: A group. Joel: Just a direct employer. Chad: Dubin! Joel: Dubin! Chad: There it is. Thanks, Isabel. Isabel from JobAdX everyone. So yeah, so Google is also moving into many different facets of what we know. And one of them being Google for Jobs, which I'm sure most of you know about. Show of hands? Google for Jobs? Joel: Please say you all know that Google is indexing jobs and sticking it to Indeed. Like, hard. Chad: Google for Jobs experience isn't going great in some areas. They just launched in Germany. Joel: Ja. Nicht gut. Chad: Nicht gut. It's also, we're starting to see some spammy kind of things happening here in the U.S. Jobiak, which is a company that helps companies, helps hiring companies get their jobs into Google for Jobs, actually did research on... Joel: Is it aremyjobsongoogle.com? Chad: Something like that. Joel: If you're wondering if your jobs are on Google, I think the URL is aremyjobsongoogle.com. You can throw in a URL and see if they actually are or not. Chad: So Jobiak did research over 2.5 million jobs in 500 different cities, and it actually showed that 40 percent of those jobs required two to four steps before job seekers could actually apply. Now the promise of Google for Jobs was what? Joel: Efficiency. Chad: Getting job seekers to the job ASAP. Getting them directly to the job so that they... Well, first and foremost, to be able to use Google search, to help them, a better search, just like everybody else is going to, a better search but on Google, to find great jobs. But at that point, it's user experience. Because Google doesn't give a shit about your employers. They don't. They care about the user. The end user actually doing the job search. Because if they do that, and they do a great job, what's going to happen? You're going to pay money to be able to boost your jobs. Right? It makes sense. I don't care about what employers want, that's just dumb, because the experience matters. The problem is they're screwing the experience up right now. Because there's way too many steps. And, how many companies and job boards, are actually using Google for Jobs? Joel: A lot. Chad: A shit ton. Yeah. Joel: Now, in fairness to Google, they're still relatively new at this. They've shown in the past that they've fucked search up before. And they've eventually figured it out. Chad: To an extent. Joel: So let's not bury them just yet. Chad: I think... Don't want to bury Google because the first thing that we're seeing from Google now that we didn't see before. Who remembers Google Base? Which was just a literal piece of shit. That had no focus on any type of revenues whatsoever. These products that they're putting out today, like the ones that are actually powering the job sites and whatnot, there's a moneymaking model behind the API. So that gives us all hope that they're really going to focus on getting this right, getting all the spammy shit out of there. Joel: Yeah, and here's the thing, Google has more competition for ad dollars, now than they've ever had before, so money's going towards social media. Amazon's getting into the game, so if you look at quarterly reports from Google, their last report, they took about a ten percent haircut on their stock price because the number of clicks and the dollars they're getting for those clicks are going down. So Google's in a position where like, okay, how do we make more money in the most quickest efficient manner. So they're verticalizing searches, right? They're doing travel and whatever, cars, and apartments. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And jobs is obviously a component of that. And with G Suite, which means your email's being powered by Google, et cetera... Chad: Who uses G Suite? Joel: They can easily now integrate the job and the hiring stuff... Chad: Yeah. Joel: To G Suite, which we're starting to see, which I think we'll probably talk about a little bit today. That's a fairly short bridge for them to cross, to where then they can start making money. Which, by the way, their ATS product is a revenue generator, their API, which we just talked about, is a revenue generator. And eventually, as Chad said, their job search component will be a revenue generator as well. Chad: Yeah, and there are other products that are gonna pop out as well. But in Germany, they just launched Google for Jobs, and believe it or not, a good portion of the actual job descriptions that are out there, are in PDF. Yeah. So the experience in Germany pretty much sucks right now, because Google's not being able to index. Joel: Does that stand for Pretty Darn Fantastic? Chad: Pretty... Yeah, no. Joel: No. Chad: So, the actual... They're trying to figure it out, right? And they're trying to figure it out globally. And then, all of this happens, and then we have a hack from your favorite. Joel: Yeah, PPC. Porn, Pills, and Casinos, have taken over Google for Jobs in Germany apparently. Joel: It's commercial time. 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: It's showtime. Chad: There was actually a report put out that there was a porn site that started to hijack certain companies. And what would happen is, if you know Google for Jobs, you do a search and they allow you to apply with different mechanisms, right? So you have the corporate careers site. If you posted to a CareerBuilder or whatever, Glassdoor, then you could apply through that mechanism. Well, what happened was, this porn site piggybacked on that, and they had a button at the end, where it would take you directly to a porn site. So, again, Google's going to figure this out. But this is... Joel: You're all thinking, "Damn, that's smart." Chad: It was less than twenty-four hours, it was down. Go figure. Any other company would have probably taken about a week to be able to figure it out. Joel: They're still on CareerBuilder in Germany, I think. And the emails from The Ladders are still going out for porn jobs. Chad: Yeah. But, yeah, no, thanks to Alex Chukovski, because we can't see... Chukovski I think? In Germany, because we can't see German jobs over here. Joel: Nein. Chad: So we're getting a lot of intel from across the pond. But it's important to understand all these things that are happening from a tech standpoint, to be able to level that out because we have organization, or we serve organizations, or we're a vendor to organizations, that are not just in this country. Pretty important. So we have to be apprised of all that stuff. Joel: And there's a good chance some of you hire globally. Right? Chad: And if you do hire globally... Joel: Something to think about. Chad: Yeah, and if you do hire globally, who loves their applicant tracking system? I don't see... Not one hand. Joel: Are there any ATS vendors in the audience? 'Cause we're about to offend you if you are. Chad: Yeah. Probably already offended a bunch of people already. So we actually had, and there will be a podcast that dives deeper into this, we had an interview... Joel: Teaser. Chad: With one of very first Enterprise customers of Hire by Google. Does everybody know what Hire by Google is? It is Google's applicant tracking system that was an SMB, small-medium-sized business model, that, guess what they did really quick? They went to Enterprise. Joel: BigCo. Chad: Quick. So they're now an Enterprise platform. And we were able to sit down with one of these organizations, which is on the small side of Enterprise, three thousand employees, and talk to them about the case study that they pulled the other, with Google. Joel: I was prepared for her to be a fan. I was not prepared for her to be as much of a fan as she was. Chad: A super fan. Joel: She did stop short of saying, "I love my ATS." Because I said, "Are you willing to go on record as the first employer ever..." Chad: You're ruining the whole podcast, stop it. Joel: No, no, there's lot more good stuff in there. "Are you on to go on record as the first employer in history to love their ATS?" And she said, "I like it a lot." If you want to know the problem she had with it, you'll have to listen. Was that good? Chad: Yeah, that's better, that's better. Joel: Okay. That's my teaser. But loved it. There were G Suite users, which I think is a huge, huge plus for Google. Chad: Yes. Joel: They're gonna get into those million-plus companies globally that are using it. Chad: Oh yeah, yeah. Joel: And it just syncs up well. She talked at length about the scheduling syncing up, that it was sort of one platform. And if you listen to our podcast, you know that we talk a lot about Microsoft and LinkedIn and Google, and to a lesser degree recently, Facebook, trying to sort of a one platform for all your employment needs. And I would say, after our interview... Chad: Nah. Joel: I know you disagree with it, but like, she was all in on one place for all this stuff. Chad: Yeah. I think there are many companies that could be, to an extent. The problem is, is like the experience, the experience is very dry, you know. They are many different aspects that companies need to focus on when they're talking about brand. Talking about being able to nurture individuals. The guy who was on stage earlier, said "junk", where's he at? What does "junk" mean when you're talking about a human being? Joel: Yeah, we love following charts and graphs, guys, because we look a lot better after following them. Chad: I have one slide, that's all I need. So yeah, on the Hire by Google side of the house, and this is a thing that really kind of stoked my flames per se, is that they had 50 percent greater adoption by hiring managers. Joel: Now who's ruining the podcast? Chad: Well, I'm not going to tell them why. Joel: Okay. Chad: I'm not going to tell you why, you have to listen. But they had 50 percent higher adoption rate by hiring managers. When's the last time you had... It's not easy to get a hiring manager to do anything, right? I mean, it literally, it sucks trying to get... Can you please talk to this candidate, can you please schedule this candidate that you want to actually fill this position for god's sakes? Joel: And by the way, if they're more engaged, guess what? The candidates have a better experience. Chad: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, when we start talking about these big names, which I think is amazing, and Joel always talks about this meteor that hit our recruitment industry kind of landscape when Microsoft spent 26.2 buh-buh-buh-billion dollars on LinkedIn. And that woke up a lot of fucking people, right? Not just Google, not just all these big names, but also, take a look at all these start-ups that are out there today? Some of these start-ups are just flat-out amazing. Some of them might not know the practical way to actually use their platform, but let's say for instance, like TextRecruit and iCIMS. We were actually at iCIMS Influence, and one of the clients of TextRecruit was actually showing TextRecruit the best ways, more practical ways, to utilize their platform. It was incredibly powerful. Chad: And again, I'm going to say, if you're not using texting to recruit, you're dumb. But at the end of the day, when you look at this, there are definitely different ways that you can use these products to make your job so much easier. Not take the job away, but so many mundane tasks that you have to do, that do not have to be done today. Joel: And don't forget exciting start-ups like Chad and Cheese sponsors Emissary and JobAdX here in the audience as well today. They're sort of the mammals that are surviving the asteroid, and will be the next big companies to talk about. Chad: Yeah, well, and it's forcing all these companies, now, and again, going back to the iCIMS and the TextRecruit, which I think is awesome for like an Emissary because it's like, look at that fucking validation. Then, you have Canvas and Jobvite. That's validation number two. If you don't know that you should be text to recruit then c'mon guys, look at all the validation that's out there. But, it's forcing... Joel: Commercials aside, if you're not using text messaging or messaging to connect with candidates, you're really shit. Chad: Yeah, yeah, but no, this isn't commercial. If you take a look at what's happening. They're not buying these companies just for the hell of it. They're not spending millions of dollars, Jobvite didn't spend millions of dollars for the hell of it. Neither did iCIMS. They are trying to battle back, to an extent, what's happening with Google, what's happening with Microsoft, and they have to do something. And these are some of the things they're actually doing, so yeah. Joel: If they can't be Coke or Pepsi, they might as well be Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper or Fanta, right? Chad: Yeah, yeah. So what applicant tracking system has a double-digit growth... Joel: Market share? Chad: Yeah, market share, that's it. Joel: Maybe one or two, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: And they're quickly going to single digits. Chad: Yeah. Single digits. So that means, what do they have to do? They have to offer you better products. Not to mention, it makes it easier for you that most of these companies, like we're getting ready to talk about... Joel: Restless Bandit. Chad: Restless, that's it. Joel: Yeah, I knew what you meant. Chad: Restless. Joel: They're relentless, and restless. Chad: Relentless so much that they got acquired. Joel: Yeah. Chad: These organizations need to be embedded in your everyday process. Because who needs another platform for your recruiters to go into? I mean, seriously. Joel: Are you sure? Chad: It's like they're bouncing from here... You don't need that. You need a process, you need a simple process. Joel: They're competing with TikTok for god's sakes. Chad: Exactly. So talk about, you know more about the... Joel: Relentless, restless, restless bandit. Chad: Restless. Restless Bandit. I think I like relentless better. Joel: Any Restless Bandit users out there? Any hardcore recruiters out there? Chad: Yeah, no, that's why. Joel: This is interesting. So, I would say we were fairly high on a trend about a year ago of bringing back the dead from your resume database, right? So, companies had these resume databases, they had contacts that were years and years old, if not maybe decades-plus old. Chad: Yes. Joel: And they were just sitting there. So there were companies that came out, like Crowded, Restless Bandit, that their goal was to go in algorithmically, see the jobs you currently have, and say, "Okay, who were your B players that didn't quite make it, let's get them back into the loop and get them activated, and get them back into applying for jobs and sort of reinvigorate them." Joel: It's commercial time. 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 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 twenty 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: It's showtime. Joel: Crowded, who we were both high on, has had some issues, aside from the technology, with sort of a shyster CEO. They've sort of gone by the wayside. And Restless Bandit was another sort of hot company back in the day that raised about ten million dollars to do this sort of thing. And this past week, they have sort of quietly gone away. They've been acquired or partnered with trustaff, a healthcare staffing company out of Cincinnati, which is a really weird acquisition or merger or partnership that these guys have gone. But if you go to Restless Bandit today, there's no, like, get a free demo, there's no "Contact Us" that can get you a salesperson on the call. So, as far as I'm concerned, there's been no public announcement. I've made a few phone calls that have gone sort of unanswered. But it sounds like they're sort of gone. Joel: By the way, the founder of Restless Bandit was the founder of Bright, which if you remember back in the day, they were acquired by LinkedIn for a bucket of money, so lightning did not strike twice with this guy. Restless Bandit has, I would say, gone by the wayside. He'll probably go and do something else in a year after his contract is up to be with the company. But I don't know if this buries the whole "bring your resumes back from the dead" thing or what it does, because we're seeing with Google, Google will say, "Okay, here's a job you're posting, here are current resumes that you have. Go contact those people on a one-on-one basis." Whereas Restless Bandit was sort of, let's just spam everybody and hope that we get the algorithm right and the jobs actually match what they're doing now, and hope that they come back. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But I tend to think what Google and maybe LinkedIn and sort of like... "Hey, post a job, and here's who's currently good, that's in your database, go contact them" is a better model than just Jobster 2.0 and let's spam everybody and hope that ten percent come back to the top. Chad: Just stamping on the grave... Joel: The graves of dot coms. Chad: Jason Goldberg. Joel: Yes. Chad: Yes. Joel: No one knows who that is. Chad: If you take a look at, again, Hire by Google, automatically when you post a rec, it jumps into your applicant tracking system, and it surfaces candidates that it believes actually fit the rec. One of the issues that we've had over the years, and I know you guys know this, because you don't use your resume databases in your applicant tracking systems because the search sucks, is that how much money have you actually spent in building that database that you never go back to? Hundreds of millions of dollars for just one company in some cases. How many times have you bought that same candidate over and over and over and over? We've gotten incredibly lazy and unfortunately because of our tech being dilapidated and old, it hasn't worked. Chad: But now we have, again, the opportunity to be able to partner with the Googles of the world. Their system, automatically, again, does this. Then you have all these different platforms like the Restless Bandits of the world, the Uncommons of the world, the Entelos of the world, that if you can get integrated into your applicant tracking system so you don't have to go into another platform, you can start to utilize all that money that you spent over the years. And stop this active outreach, at least the amount of money that you're spending on active outreach, and really focus on first, primarily passive outreach into your database. And then, starting to message them to see if they're interested. Chad: At that point, what happens, they apply to the job, magic! Right? So these are the things that, again, we're seeing in the industry that we really need companies to start driving. These are great platforms. In many cases, the companies do know, or they don't know, the best route. You guys don't need another platform to jump into. But you do need to be more cost-effective. Because who's getting more money for recruiting this year? Right? Nobody's getting more. Budget's are getting tighter, and all that other fun stuff, but we need to hire more people. They're in your database. You have the tools for that. Chad: Thanks. Joel: You guys have been awesome. Chad: Thanks to Emissary. Joel: Thank you, guys. Let the world hear Philly! Chad: Thanks, guys. 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. #Emissaryai #RecruiPhilly #LIVE #Careerbuilder #Monster #TheLadders #Recruitment #ATS #Google #GoogleHire #GoogleJobsAPI #GoogleforJobs

They didn't hold back on the questions at Recruit Philly so we didn't hold back on the answers and/or opinion. Check 'em out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. SHOW INTRO: After our live podcast on stage at Recruit Philly, we had a little Q and A, so we thought we'd share. Here it is, after a word from our sponsor. 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: Nah, 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 percent 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. Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman. Attendee: Why is there so much adversity to using search firms, do you think? Joel: Money, cost. Chad: Yeah, I mean, there's a cost. There's a cost. Joel: You're expensive. Chad: Yeah. There's a cost associated to that. Attendee: So are the other things, expensive. Chad: Yeah, well, they are. They are. And, here's the thing for any search firm... Joel: Winning isn't free. Right? Chad: Any search firm, I'm biased because I have an RPO background, or at least a little bit of an RPO background, is that RPO's and staffing really have to sell the efficiencies and not just what you have to bear but what you can perspectively bring to their databases. Like we're talking about you spent so much money on what you do. You're not using it now. Let's help you actually utilize and leverage that data that's in your system. Joel: And interesting, in your space, you're starting to see hybrids. Where we'll have people source candidates and we'll deliver you, like, ten people that we think are qualified. But, they're not going to actually staff them for you. So, they'll sort of... They'll get you to the nine yard line but then you have to take it across the goal line. Chad: So, yeah, so slate. So, Uncommon actually just added a service to what they're doing, They're a sponsor and what they do is they have an algorithm, that's a sourcing passive algorithm, but they also have an active algorithm. The thing is, most companies are like, "I don't want to go onto another platform." Right? So now they have- Joel: "Could you do it for me?" Chad: Yeah, so, "Can you do it for me?". So, yes, now they have recruiters on staff where you can actually dump into it and it's like $5 grand per project or something like that. But, I mean, it's easy to be able to say, "Yes" vs "Oh my god, how many integrations do I have to do? And it's not in my system and then I have to do training". And, when all that goes away, and it's like we deliver a slate of candidates, that slate is this big or this big, then it turned into a different conversation. Not to mention, again, the cost conversation happens. Joel: Big problem with staffing is everyone is online now. So, the days of 'I have a hidden database of people', those days are gone, right? People feel like they can access the same people that you can so, that's tough. Chad: Whether they can or not, it's still the perception and that's the reality, right? Joel: People are still lazy so you got that going for you. Attendee: Count on that. Chad: Fucking humans, man. Fucking humans. Joel: I'm getting a point. Oh, a question, yes. Allie: Over here. Hi, thanks for coming to Philly. Joel: What's your name and who do you work for? Ally: I'm Ally. I'm with Recruit Philly, most importantly. Joel: Nice. Wow, they liked that. Ally: So, two questions. Joel: Sucking up to the show. Allie: Yeah, two questions, do you need another beer? Chad: Yes. Joel: Eventually, yes. We're almost done. Allie: Okay. All right, one for Chad, cheese on hold. Okay, we'll take care of that. Joel: Yeah, you guys know this beer, it's a local one, right? Victory? Allie: Yeah, we know Victory. Joel: Oh, damn. Allie: Yeah. Joel: This shit is jawn, boy, yeah. Allie: Nice plug. Nice plug. Joel: Yeah, get me one more of those. Allie: So, second question, you talked about several different vendors but Indeed didn't come up. Any thoughts on the future of Indeed, their applicability, their- Joel: So, yeah, can we add 30 minutes to the show? Allie: ...what they're doing to be innovative? Sure, at happy hour, come to happy hour and we can talk about it then. Joel: [crosstalk 00:05:07] Thoughts on indeed. Uh, yeah I mean two things on Indeed: one is that they're getting very cocky, they're getting very sort of, Monster, 2006. Like, "Our shit don't stink. You better bend over backwards. You're going to take our pricing and like it." And the history of this industry says that doesn't work out very well for the company that has that attitude. So, aside from the bigger boys getting into it, I think they just... they have a hubris about them that is very dangerous for them and their business. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The second thing is they have competitors, now, that they've never had before in the likes of Microsoft, LinkedIn and Google and to a lesser degree, Facebook which we haven't talked much about. But, let's just focus on Google and LinkedIn and Microsoft. There's potentially going to be a day where the whole, "What software do we use?" Is out of the hands of HR and it's in the hands of IT. And IT says, "We're a Microsoft shop, we're going to use LinkedIn" or "We're a Google shop, we're going to use this Google hire, whatever thing is." And, you as HR, is just going to take it because IT has the money and they make the decisions. So, in a world that looks like that, where is Indeed's place in that ecosystem? I think they're very challenged. We didn't mention, but probably some of you know, Indeed does not put their jobs into Google for jobs. So, if your job is on Indeed only, it's not on Google for jobs, at least not in the US. It's maybe on a porn site in Germany but it's not here in the US. Chad: You'd get some good traffic. Joel: So they're incredibly... They may not say it publicly but they're very concerned and worried about what Google is doing and going to do their business. And you're probably noticing a lot of calls about different products at Indeed that you can buy or our ATS or "Hey, we have a staffing firm now." I'm of the opinion that they'll become more of a staffing firm ten years from now, right? They're actually owned by a staffing firm out of Japan, one of the biggest in the world. So, to me, that's eventually where they're going to go. Thank you. So- Chad: Thank you. Joel: So that's just my two comments on Indeed. I think they're very, very cocky and that's going to come to bite them in the ass. And, number two, they have competitors that they've never seen before and they're not quite sure how to handle it and I'm not sure they will find out, or figure out how to handle it. Chad: Yeah. I think I have the title for this show. It's going to be Recruit Philly going, "Fuck Indeed". Joel: Jawn is the title of this show. Chad: Fuck Indeed. Joel: Two jawn motherfuckers is the title of the show. Chad: Here's the problem with Indeed, is that they were built by job boards and they were built by staffing companies. And they fucked them both. So let's make this clear, corporate America, what do you think is going to happen next? If you're currently using Indeed, because I have to use Indeed, bullshit, You have to look for other alternatives because that behavior is not something we can stand for, period. It is total bullshit that anybody is putting up with that and it's not right, overall. Again, the company was built on being able to help job boards on the traffic side, being able to help staffing companies on the traffic side. And you're starting to see employers get leveraged into, "Wait a minute, you're free traffic is going to go away- Joel: Indeed jail, baby. Chad: -free traffic is going to go. Search quality" Which is all fucking bullshit. Joel: You can check in but you can't check out. Chad: Yes, so if you don't start looking for alternative now to get the hell out of there, hey, you heard it here and it's all your fault, nobody else's. Joel: You suck. Chad: So get the hell out. Next question, after that. Joel: Yes, brave man in the front here. Oh wait, we got- Yeah. Joel: Bring it. Attendee: Back in 2016, Randstad got so upset with Indeed's pricing that they acquired Monster for $429 million. Do you think that was a good buy? Chad: That's a big no and unfortunately- Joel: That's an easy question. Chad: Yeah, I think, unfortunately, I mean, I was actually... I just left Ranstad right when that was happening. Joel: Phew. Chad: Yeah, it's- Joel: Well, we just said at the opening of this show of CareerBuilder and what's going on there a year from now, might be less than a year from now. We'll be talking about happening at Monster. Chad: Yeah, I mean, having a private equity come in and slash and burn, you expect that. Randstad has a longer... they're going to give Monster a longer runway, there's no question. The problem I see is that runway, they're just about to the end of it. And, unfortunately, Monster Studios, if that's the product that you have to give to me in 2019 and that is 'the' product that you're giving to me in 2019, to hang your hat on, man, that's going to suck. Joel: And what sucks is, I mean, I wouldn't say weekly but pretty regularly, we're talking about on the show innovation at Google, LinkedIn. Incremental features and additions, I grant you, but we almost never talk about innovative stuff that's coming out of Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice, any of the old players. And, to me, that just says they're milking the dollars as long as they can until they can't milk it anymore. Chad: It's a lot of fluff unfortunately. Joel: It's hard to compete with Microsoft and Google and that' just the reality of our world today. Chad: Are we going to do one more? One more. Attendee: So, clearly, you guys are a couple of opinionated guys. I'd like to hear, how did you guys get started in your careers and that would help me understand what forms your opinion- Joel: I needed the money. Attendee: Right. Money troubles. So we're just- Chad: Quit being an asshole. Joel: Quit? That's our show, dude. Chad: That's our jawn. Get that shit right. Joel: I don't know, I mean, long story short, twenty years ago I got a job at a job board. Twenty years later, I'm still talking about job boards. Thankfully, for me, blogs came around, podcasts came around, YouTube came around and I got a larger audience that I could talk shit to. Chad: So, yeah, he was with e-SPAN. He should throw that out more because, if you know what e-SPAN is, it was one of the very first on the web. I was with OCC, one of the very first on the web. We launched- Joel: We were better. Chad: Yeah. We launched Monster in January of '99 so I was there for the blimps and the Super Bowl commercials and all that other happy horse shit, before they turned into assholes, by the way. I mean, it's just... We've both been in for 20 years a piece. Joel: We started when we were six. Chad: Yeah, and right now, I have to say in closing, this is the most interesting, exciting time in this entire industry. Getting online, we were there. We were there when the first ones were built, right? This is more exciting, watching all these start-ups just, like, explode. All the ideas. Execution probably not so much but, I mean, overall it is the most exciting time and it's one of the reasons why, I think, our podcast is flourished because there's so much going on. To be able to keep plugged into that, you've got to do something, a shit load... ton of research or listen to us. Joel: It's exciting as podcasters. It may not be as exciting as consumers. A lot of noise out there that you guys get to filter. Chad: Yes, and just for all of you as we go off the stage, we have some Chad and Cheese T-shirts if you can, again, see the- Joel: Being modeled by- Chad: -wonderful Nancy and Isabelle, look over… Joel: ...Our big fans. Chad: Isabelle. We'd be more than happy to give out a few of those Joel: Love it. Chad: They're... I'm not going to charge you, for god's sakes. They're free. Thanks- Joel: You guys have been awesome. Chad: Thanks to Emissary. Joel: Thank you guys. Let the world hear it, Philly. Chad: Thanks, guys. 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. 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. #RecruiPhilly #Indeed #Randstad #Monster #recruiting #RecTech

Maybe it was the fact Boston was cold in late-May. Maybe it was the rain at Fenway Park. But whatever it was, as the boys find a bar and... -- Chad was not very happy with SHRM this week. -- Google goes with more contractors and privacy -- Restless Bandit exits stage left -- TruStaff defines website amatuer hour -- and fake tans will get you blackballed in Australia ... or is it New Zealand? Either way. Enjoy and give our sponsors a big, sloppy kiss. Sovren, Canvas, and JobAdx rock our world. 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. Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com that's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates like a human. Sovren: software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner. 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: Let's start there. What are we drinking with in the first period of our podcast this week? Chad: Yeah, this is a Blanton's Bourbon, which is very top shelf. Joel: Tough to get. Chad: Yeah. It's not easy to get. In Philly last week, I was able to get it. I think one of the reasons is that people don't understand how fucking good Blanton's is when you get out of bourbon country. So went to Philly, had a whole fucking bottle there, not like I drank it all, came in here, had Blanton's. But if you get close to bourbon country, it's hard to find. Joel: Yeah, it's not a pretentious bourbon. Chad: No. Joel: They don't really beat their chest. It's a little bitty round, globe looking bottle with a racehorse on top Chad: Made Buffalo Trace. Joel: Not a Pappy's or Booker's. Chad: No. Joel: But it's fantastic. If you're a bourbon lover, Chad and I highly recommend Blanton's. I'm drinking a Redbreast Lustau Irish whiskey by the way. We're at an Irish pub. We're at the Asgard. Chad: Here in Cambridge. Joel: We're in Cambridge, yeah. Chad: Yeah, okay. Irish pub, a lot of people, background music. So yeah, this is our jam. Joel: Yeah. We just got done with the meeting with JobCase, interviewed their CEO, which will be coming out shortly. Chad: Did a lunch-and-learn. Joel: Lunch-and-learn with their company. Chad: Like those lunch-and-learns. Joel: Yeah, we got the tour, got to meet some of their folks. We really enjoy doing that. And if you're a company out there, either vendor or direct employer, and want us to come out and do some learning with your staff, hit us up at chadcheese.com. Chad: Yeah, you have a training budget. So go ahead and use it for shit that actually is going to get your people trained up. Joel: Exactly. Chad: That's us, by the way. Joel: So we just thought, "Let's pop into a pub. Let's crank out the mics. Let's get the weekly show done." And here we are, enjoying some whiskey, enjoying Cambridge, Massachusetts, the weed and tootsie rolls into the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chad: Yeah, so thanks Boston, thanks JobCase. Last week we're in Philly. I still have to give props to Philly. Philly is so John. Joel: It doesn't mean cool. I don't think you used it correctly. Chad: No, I can use it any way I want. That's what Ed said. Joel: Okay, well the Philly faithful will not be happy with that usage. Chad: I don't give a fuck and they know it, which is why they love us because we don't give a fuck. But thanks to emissary.ai for giving us gas money to actually get there. Joel: Sure. That trip was sponsored by Emissary, much like our awesome, amazingly surprisingly popular t-shirts. Chad: Let's hit the topics. So last week we talk about Restless Bandit and TruStaff, and it was on the grapevine, but we hadn't really received any firm notice. Joel: "I heard it through the grapevine." (singing) Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah, Restless Bandit has quietly left the building. Chad: Exited. Joel: Pretty much. Chad: Stage fucking left. Joel: Yeah, go check out Restless Bandit and the site has a few links, to press and something, but no link to demos, no way to contact them. Chad: Yeah. Joel: There's an image saying partnered with TruStaff. There was no release. At least two or three calls that I made were not returned, which pretty much is the telltale sign of, "We're closing up shop, we're selling at pennies on the dollar, and we're going home." Chad: So I called TruStaff, and I left a voicemail message, and I didn't get anything from them either. But here's what gets me is that the Restless Bandit site is literally not even a site anymore. It's a landing page, like you said, has three links: white paper, press, and GDPR. Three weird links. Not even one link goes to the TruStaff website. It mentions, "We've partnered with true staff to build technology that moves the healthcare labor market faster." Okay, great. No fucking link to TruStaff. Fucking amateur job. Joel: Does the logo and the header not even link over? Chad: No! It's a fucking amateur job, dude. Joel: Wow, yeah, that's, "Clearance rack on aisle six and checkout, we're going home." Chad: If you go to the TruStaff site though, go to trustaff.com, that site looks like it was put together by one of my kid's using 1900s. Joel: Looks like a Tumblr. Chad: Yeah, like Tumblr or fucking Flickr, right? It's like, "Oh, let's just paste some shit here." It looks fucking horrible. Joel: Pretty sure they have some money, like clean that shit up. Chad: It's definitely not on the web side of things. Or they're trying to stay incredibly stealth and look horrible, because it looks fucking horrible. Joel: Now one of the interesting points of the story is the CEO, whose name escapes me, but I'm going to go a search him out real quick. Chad: Restless Bandit? Joel: Yeah, Restless Bandit. So he was the founder of Bright. Chad: Yeah. Joel: If you remember a few years back. Chad: Yep, acquired. Joel: Which was acquired by LinkedIn. Chad: LinkedIn, yep. Joel: For a buttload of money, and I'm going to find his name here real quick. Steve Goodman. I think that's it. Yep, Steve Goodman. So he was CEO of Bright and which sold to LinkedIn. So lightning did not strike twice apparently for Mr. Goodman. Chad: Yeah, yeah. So this is just the confirmation that Restless Bandit looks like it is exiting stage left and getting the fuck out of Dodge. Joel: Anyone out there that might've been a Restless Bandit client, if there was an email sent to you about what was going on with the change, please hit us up at chadcheese.com. Chad: There's a dude outside with literally- Joel: He is stoned out of his gourd. Chad: ... chains around his neck. He looks like he's been eating Tootsie rolls and fucking pot-smoking. He's out of it. Joel: He's in another universe. Chad: He's in another universe. Cambridge, Massachusetts people. This is where the shit's happening. It's where it's going down. So, okay, moving on. Joel: But yes, if you know anything about Restless Bandit, have an email saying, "Hey, we've partnered with, we're closing shop, whatever." Chad: Something. Joel: Hit us up. Chad: Something. So moving on, I have a bitch that I want to get out real quick. Joel: Get it out, baby. Chad: So SHRM ... Joel: Oh, shit. Chad: Yeah. So SHRM, they've been doing some really weird shit lately, and it's on the policy side. And so Emily Dickens, who's the Chief of Staff at SHRM, put out a tweet that says, "SHRM appreciates the White House's efforts in bringing forward a plan that includes reforms to our outdated workplace immigration system. Employers need a modern workplace immigration system that provides greater access to top talent." And I had to reply to the tweet. Joel: Yeah, your replies were entertaining. Chad: Yeah, so my reply was, "So the kids in cages efforts, is that what SHRM actually supports?" Or the, "We don't have enough people in the workforce to cover open jobs. Is that the support?" Or I was like, "Are you fucking kidding me?" And then- Joel: She blocked your ass, right? Chad: Then she blocked me. And then, two days later, she unblocked me. Joel: That's good. Chad: But from my standpoint, it's really hard to believe that SHRM would actually say that they appreciate this administration's Muslim ban, kids in cages- Joel: Big walls. Chad: ... being able to block great, great individuals who could be in our workforce. Joel: I remember the Muslim ban here at the beginning of the term. Chad: All of it. So SHRM is appreciating this. What the fuck? I don't understand, what's going on? Joel: So if I were playing devil's advocate, I would say SHRM has to be fairly nice to everyone in the White House, because they're the lobbying entity. Chad: They don't have to say a God damn thing. Joel: Maybe there's some shit going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. Maybe the White House is threatening HR initiatives or some shit, or maybe there's some House something they want to get passed. I don't know, dude. Chad: First they align with the Koch brothers in an effort to be able to help- Joel: SHRM did? Chad: ... those who were in, yeah, those who were incarcerated, to find jobs. It's like, if you did know that the Koch brothers actually funded a lot of the efforts to get those individuals get incarcerated in the first fucking place. So that's number one. And it just hurt my head to think about that. And then this happens, to appreciate kids in cages, Muslim bans, all this shit. It's like what is going on at fucking SHRM? This is the Chief of Staff. Joel: Well, if they're getting in bed with the Koch brothers, then yeah, they're going to make supportive comments about the White House. Chad: So they're going to go ahead, and what's happening is that what you're saying, and I'm saying this just an opinion- Joel: Koch brothers write big checks, Brah. Chad: We're opining that the Koch brothers are actually greasing the skids of SHRM, so then all this stupid shit's happening. Because, from my standpoint, it is going away from the actual purpose of what SHRM should be there for. It's not supporting the individuals. Who pays for SHRM? Well, the individuals who we're certifying and whatnot, they're not looking at them. They're looking at big greedy fucking conglomerates. Dude, it's just blowing my fucking mind. Joel: You're clearly upset about this. Chad: I'm not happy. So I would love if Emily, over at SHRM, Emily Dickens, even Johnny, I'd love to have Johnny on the show for a conversation. Joel: Sure. I think there's a link from her series of tweets that talks about press contact for an interview. So I think it's a long shot, but maybe Emily will come on and explain exactly what's going on with their position on the White House. Chad: And SHRM has had us at their shows before. Joel: And we love SHRM. Chad: And we like SHRM. Joel: The conference. Chad: Yeah, the conference. Here's the thing. Joel: Folks find it. Chad: We cannot, I cannot, support this type of, not just tweet, but feeling from this type of organization. It's just not something that I can do myself. So hopefully, we can get some explanation out of this, because what I'm saying doesn't fit with what SHRM was, and I thought, was going to be. Joel: They are a lobbying entity, correct? Chad: Yeah. But who are they lobbying for in this case? Joel: Well, ideally for their members, and the industry. Chad: Not for human beings, they're not. Joel: I'm not defending SHRM, I'm searching for answers, and I think there's probably stuff behind the scenes that we don't see, money behind the scenes. It's checks being written. Chad: That just makes it worse. Joel: It maybe does. Yeah, I got no defense for it. So this has clearly upset you and you have a right to be and God bless you. Chad: So does it not upset you, though? For an organization to say these kinds of things. Joel: No, it does. I tend to default to the fact that there are usually two sides of every coin, and that we can jump to conclusions, but until they're interviewed, or they come out, or this is dug into, sometimes it's hard to play one side of the street here. And what's their side of the story? Chad: Their side is they appreciate the White House's efforts to bring you forward- Joel: Now she has other tweets after that, that she had a come to Jesus over the weekend. Chad: I didn't see it. I didn't see a retraction. Joel: Which is probably why she accepted you back with loving, open arms into her Tweetosphere. Chad: Yes, thank you, Emily. I really appreciate that, but again, we want you on the show. Joel: Because you're not the only one who expressed- Chad: No! Joel: ... disdain for that tweet. So there was clearly some internal stuff, and she did not delete the tweet. Chad: No. Joel: So she stands by it. And yeah, maybe there needs to be something out of SHRM, really explaining what the policy is, what the reason for the tweet was. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Because you and many others are pretty upset about it. Chad: Yeah, and again, trying to give you guys over at SHRM an opportunity, and also a microphone, a megaphone, to get on the show and talk to the people and say why. That's it. Too easy. Joel: Give her a chance, man. Give Emily a chance. Chad: Give peace a chance. Joel: Yes. Chad: Give peace a chance. I'm going to. Joel: Take a sip of Blanton's and give peace a chance. Chad: I'm going to get another one here in a minute. Announcer: it's commercial time. JobAdX: Finding the right fit is important. When you're deciding on shoes for a long day at the trade show, when you're picking the right podcast for your commute, and most importantly, when you're looking for the right candidate. With JobAdX, you can attract more relevant, engaged candidates to your jobs, by harnessing the best in ad tech targeting. From predictive industry analysis and keyword click data, to premium first page placement, and reducing redundant applications, our candidate targeting technology ensures that you're reaching talent that's as interested in working with you as you are with them. Now with in-ad video and multimedia, you can share your employer brand story and company culture with job seekers, so they can visualize themselves in your office, all hands meeting, or ax-throwing team building adventure, all without navigating away from your job posting. Increased engagement makes for fewer steps between job seeker and new team member. Ready to ramp up your job advertising campaigns with the best in ad tech? Visit our new website, at www.jobadx.com that's J-O-B-A-D-X.com. Attract, engage, employ, with JobAdX. Announcer: It's showtime. Chad: Okay, moving on. Joel: Moving on. Chad: We're going to talk about something we never talk about. Joel: LinkedIn, Google, Indeed, Zip Recruiter. Chad: Google, that's good Joel: Okay, good. Chad: Yeah, Google. So Google, you actually posted, there's a story about their temps? Their contractors, I guess, actually outnumber the FTE. So the full-time employees. They have more contractors then employees? Joel: Yeah, so two things on Google I thought, this week, that were interesting. One is, yeah, they have more contract workers than full time workers, and I think we've been big fans of the freelance platform economy. We know that Upwork is doing some really interesting things with bigger enterprises like Microsoft, and I wouldn't be surprised if Upwork is sort of the backbone in some of the contracts management with Google. Joel: But yeah, we think so much about freelancing as designers, developers in other countries, content marketers. But these are serious folks that are contract with Google, and they outnumbered the full time employees at a big, big company that focused on technology. So maybe, I hate to say, are we actually undervaluing the gig economy and where that's going? Or maybe it's much bigger and the potential is much larger than even we maybe talk about here on the show. Chad: So two sides of that coin. First off, you can scale faster through contractors, obviously, because they already have a workforce that's available. So I think it makes sense for Google, when they're scaling up, scaling down, to be able to use contractors to do that, makes a lot of sense. But then there's also the other side of it, where there's the prospect and bias, that it's like, "Hey, you get somebody on for six months and then you can just chop them off at the knees." Which is part of what you can do with contractors, because they're not FTEs. Joel: And let's be honest, these are probably really, really good developers who do freelancing gigs with not just Google but Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft. They're probably doing a lot of contract work with a lot of really good companies, and God bless them. They work on their schedule, at home probably. I strongly believe that a big part of the future is this sort of freelance gig economy, and companies like Upwork and Fiver -- who, by the way, I don't know if we mentioned Fiver is going public here soon. That'll fairly interesting as well. Chad: We have not. Joel: So anyway, example for the folks out there, if you're not leveraging contract work, you're behind the times. Get on that. The other thing from Google this week that I thought was interesting was- Chad: Well, before we go there ... Joel: Yeah. Chad: Also remember that, a few weeks ago, we talked about Google demanding that their contractors pay at least a $15 wage, benefits, parental leave. So this is not Google trying to backdoor and say, "Look, oh yeah, we're just going to hire the really low benefit types of individuals." They are demanding that their contractors actually work at a much larger level. I remember last week, people were like, "Oh, well that's just contractors." Well guess what. It's the bulk of their fucking workforce. So, yeah. Joel: Google is clearly focused on contract work for a variety of reasons. And this is another example of that. Another thing Google did this week is they're going to get more serious around targeted advertising, re-targeted advertising. Chad: Cookies. Joel: Cookies through their Chrome browser, and helping users really understand who's tracking you, what's going on, being able to, I'm sure, block whoever's doing whatever. But this is an interesting development, because so many companies in our space rely on being able to re-target folks, whether it's selling to employers, recruiters, or making sure that you're in front of job seekers who come to your site. Glassdoor, famous for retargeting. Everyone does it, but some are better than others. Joel: At the point where you visited a job site and now, days, weeks later, whatever, you've realizing that they're following you around on the Internet. Like how comfortable are you going to be with that? And it really underscores how privacy is taking a front seat again, particularly with someone like Google who's had some issues with privacy in the past. I also think it's interesting, because you look at Apple and Apple has always had this great brand of privacy. They're not tracking you, they don't have the advertising solution that a Google or Facebook has. Google making these sort of moves, I find Apple, like how do we maintain our brand of being the privacy company. And I think this is a one-up by Google to make sure that they try to keep that banner of the privacy company. Chad: I remember, God, it was probably a decade ago, when I had to go to my CTO so that I could get Chrome downloaded on my fucking computer because I wanted to use Chrome. I wanted to continue to use IE as well. But this new browser came out, and it's like- Bar patrons: GOAL! Chad: "Goal!". Chad: Yep, got a goal. Joel: Chelsea scored everybody. Chad: Chelsea's up. Joel: 2-0 against Arsenal. The British listeners will enjoy that. Hung Lee is watching this right now. Chad: So anyway, back to that. How does this impact companies like Facebook? Will it? Because anything that the browser could perspectively pull in, or is it just because you're already logged into Facebook, they're taking your shit anyway, no matter what browser you're on. Joel: Yeah, I think it potentially affects Facebook, I think there are a lot of apps that you've downloaded on Facebook over the years, that you probably don't appreciate are still- Chad: Collecting. Joel: ... connected to you in some way. So I think in that fashion it'd be interesting for people to know, if Chrome can help them understand, "Okay, on Facebook these folks are still doing some sort of tracking with you on the Internet." I think it'll be more impactful for vendor sites, publishers, job sites, who, when you go to their site, and then you leave, you start seeing ads on Facebook and Google about that company, because you visited the site. For those companies, you're going to be outed as targeting those folks after they leave your site. It's fairly obvious now, if you go to a site and you're like, "Oh, their banner ads are magically popping up in my feed." You know why that is? But to the degree that you can maybe start blocking them or easily on Chrome, or deleting those cookies from your Chrome browser, that will affect people that are trying to market to you from those sites. Chad: So here's the cool part. And I know some vendors are railing from this, but the transparency level, the privacy level, and control is shifting entirely. So as we were at JobCase today, learning more about how they do what they do, their entire business model is predicated on actually providing the job seeker with that control of all their data from jump street. Unlike every other fucking job board that's out there, these guys built their platform to be able to do that, to carry your own shit with you wherever you go. This has to be the standard, I would assume, with GDPR and some of the new California regulations that are popping out. How quick do you think we're going to see platforms flip to more of a JobCase slight platform? Joel: So from my perspective, there's no question that privacy and the individual are taking a forefront into today's Internet world or the world at large. I think what's happening is you're seeing bigger companies being more thoughtful about your privacy, being more informative about who's tracking you, what cookies even are. My mom has no fucking clue, but if Google's, if Google's Chrome browser says, "Hey, FYI, this company is currently tracking you. Are you comfortable with that? Ir do you want to block this cookie?" And you could be in power of taking control of how you're targeted online. That's just the way that the world is going. I think marketers are going to simply have to adjust to the new world order, and probably just create ways around it, if I know marketing as I do. And they'll create ways to get around, or new ways to target you or get in front of you. But I think Google, Facebook, so many companies, have been under siege by regulators, that they have no other choice than to start protecting the user's privacy. Chad: Yeah, I think it's going to be interesting because companies who are collecting a ton of data about your interactions or your signals or whatever it is in our industry, they're going to have to be transparent about that and allow for it or not. And that can impact many of these models in a big, big way. Joel: Sure, sure. I think if you're in marketing, this move by Google really is a little bit scary. If you've built your business on retargeting folks that come to the site and getting in front of them, that that is now in danger of going away. Chad: Watch this space. Moving on. Joel: So the problem with being on microphones in a bar is waiters are typically scared to approach you, because you're not just talking, you have a microphone and you're talking. Chad: Next time we'll say, "Hey, bring us more booze." So the next story we want to talk about is Intel. And Intel built a hotline for their workers, because they realized they were losing employees. And not just employees, they were mainly women or people of color. Joel: Minorities, yeah. Chad: So they were losing them. They had low retention rates. So what they did was create a hotline, which I think ... Joel: A literal hotline, like old-school, pick up the phone, they call it Warm Line. Chad: They call it the Warm Line. Joel: I should've just thrown "and fuzzy". They have the Warm and Fuzzy Line. Chad: Yeah, the Warm and Fuzzy Line. So the Warm Line is an employee hotline, has an 82% save rate, meaning that eight in 10 of the employees who filed complaints are still with the company. So they were losing all these fucking people who didn't feel like they were heard. They were filing complaints, nobody heard them. Then they started hotline, this warm line, and they're saving 80% of those that they were losing before. Joel: Yup. And I think, according to the story, they only have four or five social workers or folks that talk to these disgruntled employees. Chad: Yeah, people that are in their global D&I team. Joel: Yeah, so it was a fairly relatively low investment, to save 80% of the people who might leave because of just disgruntled men or harassment or whatever it might be. To me, this is a genius move. More companies need to have this anonymous helpline, this even suggestion box, or how do I contact management to talk about these things that are affecting me in a negative way? Because when you talk about retention and how much that costs companies to lose people, it's a little investment to set up a phone line or an online something or other, where people can have a conversation about what's bothering them. Joel: So to me, Intel major ops, this is great. I think that, this is a call to a lot of the anonymous review sites out there. This is an opportunity for you to create an anonymous messaging or hotline- Chad: A Glassdoor hotline. Joel: ... or communication medium- Chad: Yeah, or something like that. Joel: ... to say, "Look, you already have people that are pissed off going to those sites. How do you create an open channel for them to connect with the company to where they can maybe save these folks who are leaving because they're not real happy." Chad: Yes, and this is not just about overall retention. This is about retaining individuals who are hard to fucking find in the first place. Talking about females, and I think it was women of color, and in most case ... Joel: They have a few employees there at Intel. Chad: They have a shit ton of employees, and as again, those are incredibly important saves. And to be able to signal to all of your employees -- these aren't just the people who opened complaints -- to let them all know that, "If you do have a complaint, guess what, we're going to take care of it." And they have fielded over 20,000 complaints. Joel: That's a lot of complaints. And I know that it's also helped spur a lot of the training around sensitivity training or internal stuff. So not only are you saving employees that might leave, but you're also basically creating your company's training policy around sensitivity and education around minorities and women and everyone else. So Intel's doing so much positive, positive thing. Bar patrons: GOAL! Joel: Sorry, we got some people walking by. Anyway ... Chad: Another score. [crosstalk 00:29:25]. Joel: Biggest Intel, hopefully we'll see more companies initiate this strategy. Chad: So here's the thing, from the standpoint of being a "diversity expert", which is great. But this is something that everybody should be instituting, so that you can learn more about your culture, because if you are Intel, your reasoning behind the complaints and being able to deal with those complaints and train up on those issues, is going to be entirely different than working for Kroger or something of that nature. So if you're in diversity and inclusion, this is something that I'm not going to say, will take care of having diversity experts or D&I experts. This will provide them with much better intel. Yes. Can you get us up again? Server: Which? Chad: A Blanton's and ... Joel: I'll do a Jack [Rinetone 00:30:17] here. Flaming Leprechaun it is. Chad: Jay, guess what? Joel loves Flaming Leprechauns in the back door. Joel: Yeah, definitely not on higher tier pricing list, but we'll go with a little Leprechaun. Yep, let's do that, neat. Chad: Blanton's please. Joel: And by the way, for companies who are concerned with their Glassdoor reviews, and Indeed reviews, and everywhere else, what a great strategy to nip these unhappy workers in the bud and take care of these issues before they go to Glassdoor. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah, brilliant strategy all around. Major applause if we have the sound bite for Intel. Chad: Yeah, they don't have to go to Glassdoor because you're taking care of that shit beforehand. Joel: Exactly, exactly. These folks clearly need to vent. Chad: Yes! Joel: And let these things out, and it's much better for them to do that with your counselor on a hotline, than on Glassdoor. Announcer: It's commercial time. 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. Announcer: It's show time. Chad: Moving on. This is going to be fun. Joel: I love fun. Chad: So Australian Facebook stalking is a thing, apparently. So there's this crazy story that's out there. Joel: They just do it differently down in New Zealand, Australia. Down Under's just a different ... Chad: Yeah, weird. Joel: I realized this when I listened to Men at Work for the first time as a child. Things are a little bit different down there. Chad: In the land down under. So you read the story, then add some color on it. Tell me about- Joel: This is the fake tan story, right? This is the fake tan story? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Okay. Chad: Fake tan story. A tattoo and fake tans, yes. Joel: So a young woman interviewed with a company in New Zealand, right? New Zealand? Chad: Yes. Australia. Around there. Joel: So they had left a voicemail for her, the company did. I guess it was a male and female recruiter from the story. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But they left him a voicemail for her, and I guess forgot to hang up the phone and made comments about her, her fake tan, or what they believe was a fake tan ... Chad: Yes. Joel: ... that she took too many selfies. I think there was a tattoo comment as well. Chad: Where did they find this out, though? Joel: Where did the company find it out? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Probably on the media. Chad: They were stalking her Facebook. Joel: Oh, that she posted it on Facebook, yes. Chad: Yeah, they were stalking her Facebook. Joel: You're right, you're right. So this is the tin guy, best-case scenario for a reason why you need an unbiased automated robotic interviews process, right? Chad: That's exactly right, yes. Joel: Like a robot who wouldn't have seen a fake tan ... Chad: No. Joel: ... wouldn't have seen tattoos Chad: Huh-uh. Joel: ... wouldn't have seen their Instagram account or Facebook account, and would hire the person or not solely on their skillset. And this story underscores that people are people, that they're going to be biased, they're going to judge others, and unfortunately they're going to make hiring decisions based on those biases, regardless of what her or anyone else's skillset is. Chad: Yes, and that's really the only way that we're going to get, I believe, beyond bias is allow the process to actually work. But when a human gets involved, guess what? Bias is still going to happen. And I know that people are going to say, "Well, Algos are developed by people, and people are biased, and blah, blah, blah. Okay, bullshit. If you strip all the bias elements out, then you don't allow that bias to actually happen. Not to mention, if you don't have an algorithm learn from a human and their human signals, then guess what? It doesn't become fucking biased. So for all of you out there who say, "Algorithms are inherently biased," you're fucking full of shit, dude. You can unbias that shit. Not to mention you can fucking audit. Joel: I am no expert in New Zealand law. Chad: It was Australia. Joel: I thought it was New Zealand. Chad: It was Australia. Joel: Anyway, wherever it was, I'm not an expert in law in either of those countries, but I have to assume she has a pretty strong legal case against said company. Chad: Yes. Joel: And this'll be interesting to see if there's a lawsuit brought on and how much the company's going to ow, et cetera. Because this whole bias thing is becoming an issue. And it's going to be more and more so as the Internet takes hold. Chad: And so my question to you is, from a culture standpoint, because that's how people are saying, "Well, we got to Facebook to see if they'll fit in our culture. We own this, to face- Joel: It's not that long ago that people freely talked about, "Yeah, we go to social media sites and profiles to background check people." Bad idea. Chad: Not to mention, I think that's bullshit. Your background checking people is nothing but stalking and trying to see if they fit in your "tribe". That's it. Has nothing to do with whether your background checking anybody. You are just seeing if they're part of your tribe, and your tribe doesn't have fake tans and tattoos, so therefore you're not a part of my tribe. Or guess what? You're too cute. \And I don't want you in here because now you're competition fucking bullshit, dude. Joel: Maybe it is a tough question, because if someone's on social media with Nazi regalia and racial whatever, or attending neo-Nazi meetings, that probably is grounds for not hiring somebody. But a fake tan? I don't know. I don't know. Chad: Yeah. I think in a real background check, because I think you're blurring the lines between a real background check and going to Facebook. So if you do a real background check- Joel: Facebook is not a real background check. Chad: No, I think you're- Joel: But people do it all the time. Chad: He just brought another Blanton's. I'm so excited. No, I think your people do it all the time. He just brought another Blanton's. I'm so excited. So if you go to Facebook, it's not a real background check. If you want to find out this whole white supremacy connection, I think you're going to be able to find that out in the background check. Joel: There probably is some legal problems with someone who's attending neo-Nazi whatever meetings, or whatever they call them. Chad: Yeah, it's called, you're not working at my fucking company. Joel: Now what about a neo-Nazi with a fake tan? Chad: then they're right out. Joel: Then we're just damn being [crosstalk 00:37:31]. That's instant elimination. Chad: Exactly. And that being said, since our second drink came, I believe we're out. Joel: 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 need new track [spikes 00:38:04], you know, the expensive shiny gold pair that are extra because, well, I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #SHRM #Boston #Jobcase #RestlessBandit #TruStaff #Microsoft #LinkedIn #Google #Intel #Facebook #BackgroundChecks

Few things have caused as much buzz this year as Tengai Unbiased, the recruiting robot from a company in Sweden that has garnered responses from creeped-out to amazement. The boys decided to find out for themselves and interview the team - and the robot - during a trip to TAtech in Lisbon. Enjoy and show our sponsors some love: Sovren, JobAdx and Canvas. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps forward thinking employers create world class hiring and retention programs for people with disabilities.​ Chad: Hey, this is Chad. We were in Lisbon this week, for TAtech Europe, where we had a chance to sit down with the Tengai team. That's right, the interviewing robot. And we're talking to Elin, who is the chief innovation officer. And also Charlotte, who is the marketing genius over there. Check it out, after this word from our sponsor. JobAdX: Finding the right fit is important. When you're deciding on shoes for a long day at the trade show, when you're picking the right podcast for your commute, and most importantly, when you're looking for the right candidate. JobAdX: With JobAdX, you can attract more relevant engaged candidates to your jobs, by harnessing the best in ad tech targeting. From predictive industry analysis, and keyword click data, to premium first page placement, and reducing redundant applications, our candidate targeting technology, ensures that you're reaching talent that's as interested in working with you, as you are with them. JobAdX: Now with in ad video and multimedia, you can share your employer brand story, and company culture with job seekers. So they can visualize themselves in your office, all hands meeting, or ax throwing team building adventure. All without navigating away from your job posting. Increased engagement makes for fewer steps between job seeker and new team member. JobAdX: Ready to ramp up your job advertising campaigns, with the best in ad tech? Visit our new website at www.jobadx.com. That's J-O-B-A-D-X.com. Attract, engage, employ, with JobAdX. 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 snack, buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Hey, what's up everybody? It's Joel Cheesman of the Chad and Cheese podcast, with Chad. So as usual- Chad: Hello! Joel: We're here in Lisbon, Portugal, for the TAtech Europe show, and we've had kids on the show, we've had the occasional dog bark, and we're breaking new ground this week with a robot. Chad: A robot. Joel: Let's get this out of the way. Chad: Yes. Joel: It's pronounced Tengai. Chad: Tengai. Joel: Not Tengai, which we will probably mess up in the interview, but Tengai is officially how you pronounce it. As additionally with us today is Founder? Or, I'm going to screw up the last name, and I don't know the title, so we have Elin and Charlotte. Chad: It's going to be like Madonna, because I'm not- Joel: So, we have the marketing with Charlotte- Chad: Saying her last name later. Joel: And you looked at me weird when I said Founder, so I was obviously incorrect. Elin: Yeah. Chief innovation officer. Joel: Chief innovation officer, which is way sexier than founder. Chad: Yes. Joel: And we have Tengai. Tengai, welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Tengai: Good morning. Joel: And it is a good morning. The pause there was, it's still a little bit unnerving to be talking to a robot, I think. It's going to take a little time. Tengai: Hi. This is Tengai, the unbiased interview robot. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I love these guys. Joel: And I love that. Chad: Somebody's pandering. Joel: That's great. Chad: Somebody's pandering. I don't know, and I think that's incredibly smart. Joel: Yeah. Nobody panders like the Swedes. Chad: Yeah? Joel: I guess. Yeah. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Joel: That's good stuff. Chad: So Charlotte, in charge of marketing, and obviously, marketing- Joel: And doing a hell of a job, by the way. Chad: Marketing's something that doesn't exist- Joel: This damn robot is all over my feed. Chad: Yeah! So, there is nothing like this out there. You must have the easiest job in the world. I say that with a tad sarcasm, right? Charlotte: Yeah. It's a lot of fun. We have a lot of fun with it. But, we have to balance the fact that everyone thinks this is absolutely the best product, and the greatest, most fun product. Chad: Right. Charlotte: With the fact that we actually want to sell a product- Chad: Yeah. Charlotte: ... that that's for a good purpose. So, we have to keep a balance between being serious, and talk about the scientific facts with this, as well as the cool aspects of it. Joel: So, you were telling a story about how the PR on this thing blew up. So, you had the BBC- Charlotte: Yes. Joel: Write a story, and then what happened after that? Charlotte: Actually, what started it out was, we got some press in Sweden, and one of the biggest dailies picked it up, and then BBC sold it, a freelancer in Sweden, a BBC freelancer. So, I pitched it to BBC. They came over with a TV crew, filmed it, and then it just exploded. And then picked it up, showed it to BBC, and then Mashable picked it up. Chad: So, at that point, the C suite at TNG, had to be like total ape shit, like, "Oh my god! We have found the next thing that we want to do," Or, was it kind of, because again, we're Americans, and we just freak out about everything. So, in Sweden, was it more of a kind of a calm, "Oh, okay. Well, this is kind of cool. Maybe we should think about this a little bit more." Charlotte: Well, we work very organic at TNG, and over time, including in the marketing, so we do everything ourselves. We don't have a peer agency. It's from the people working there all the time- Chad: Yeah. Charlotte: And we include a lot of people in the company, so everyone has a take in it, and are very enthusiastic. So, when it started rolling, everyone pitched in, and everyone is very engaged, everyone shares things, they comment on stuff so that help it going. Chad: Yeah. Charlotte: So, when it starts kicking in, it was more like, "Yay, we did this together. This is kick ass. We're all a part of it." And that made a big deal, I think, internally too, so a lot of pride. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And so, earlier you mentioned sort of the feedback on social media was immense. What would you say was sort of the overall sentiment? Was it positive, negative, a little mix of both of those? Charlotte: I would say it's a mix of both, especially reading all the newspaper comments, was quite interesting, to go through the comments section, because it's two parts. One, where people has been treated not as fairly by recruiters. Chad: Yeah. Charlotte: They feel they've been discriminated, and they think it's absolutely wonderful. Other people are quite scared. They think it's a bit scary with a robot. They're going to take our jobs, not really seeing the potential that this can help them get a job. Chad: Right. Charlotte: So, it's a mix of both. But again, it's new technology. No one has ever done this before. It's completely new. Chad: Yeah. Charlotte: So we're on new ground. Joel: So, how many single guys were looking for dates in the comments? Elin: Good question. Charlotte: Not that many actually. Joel: Not that many? Okay. Good to know, good to know. Chad: Elin, what was your position before? Now, were you always chief innovation officer? Elin: Yeah, at TNG I've been chief innovation officer since January. Chad: So, this has been under your preview since day one? Because, this is innovation. Elin: It is innovation, yes. I've been working in the industry for the past 15 years. This is actually my second time with TNG, so I went back with TNG. Chad: Okay. Elin: I always had a passion for technology, for innovating the field of HR. Doing this at this kind of company, that TNG is, is fabulous. It's magnificent. Joel: So, break down for our listeners, the structure of this. What is TNG, what is Furhat, explain the whole sort of set-up, and how this works with the actual hardware? Elin: TNG is sort of the birth mother of the process. TNG have been working with unbiased recruitment for the past 15 years as well. Joel: Is TNG the parent company? Elin: TNG is the birth mother of the process. Joel: Okay. Elin: So, we have a holding company, and we'll have several different companies under that holding brand, and TNG is one of them, as TNG group. So, yeah. Joel: Where does Furhat, am I saying that correct? It's Furhat, not Foghat, which is a fantastic band from the 70s. Charlotte: Furhat Robotics actually. Speaking about fun names, they got their name on the fact that they went to an event, and Furhat at that point didn't have a back end of it, so they put a fur hat on it, to just cover it up in the back, the technology in the back. That's how they got their names. Joel: Okay, I like that. Chad: Nice. Joel: They're the hardware maker. Elin: Yeah, so Furhat is the platform that we are developing this application on. Furhat is actually a robot platform. Joel: So, Furhat is sort of like the iPhone, and you're building app? Elin: Exactly, yeah that's a good comparison. Chad: I want to dig down to the unbiased piece, because everybody is like, "Oh, they're just trying to get on the bandwagon of unbiased." We learned that you guys have been doing this unbiased process, for like 15 years, and now a robot comes into it, because once again, you've been doing this forever, right? Elin: Yes, we have. Chad: Tell me a little bit about the time, and then how you thought this was going to be the perfect step? Elin: We've been challenging the very fundamentals of recruitment since the begging, so we have looked at the different parts of the process. Starting from the advertisement, and the job description, going forward in the funnel. We have been doing the process upside down, inside out. We made it reversed, we made it data driven, it's also psychometric, it's fully anonymous. When candidates apply, they don't state their name or gender, or age, or anything like that. Charlotte: Actually, they state their name, because they have to leave the name. But, when you go into the ATS, we blocked it. But, everything we done, we customized, because there is no tools for the way that we work, whatever has. That's been part of my job actually, when you speak about marketing. It's a lot to make literally the process work, for the recruiters, and the candidates as well. That's why I got the experience part in. Elin: The last part of it. Chad: Bless you. Elin: God bless you, I hope you're not getting a virus. Tengai: No. Charlotte: Do you need some attention, Tengai? Do you think we talking too much? Joel: 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 sweeter 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: It's showtime. Chad: Okay, so we have a few questions for you Tengai, since you want obviously a little attention. Would you like to take some questions? Joel: Should we refer to her as she? Elin: Yeah do, please. Joel: I mentioned earlier, she he is very androgynous. Although we say she, it can be a male. Chad: You guys can change voices, change faces, you can do pretty much whatever, yeah. Joel: And be really quickly with some avatar looking stuff. Elin: Yeah, we'll do the Star Wars sound. Charlotte: This is Tengai though, the way the female voice. That's what we have decided, but we can potentially continue to develop it. Joel: We're still really early innings in this. Charlotte: Very early, yes. Joel: It's worth noting that you're a Swedish company, it speaks Swedish primarily, we're getting English. But, it's primarily right now for a Swedish company, to interview Swedish candidates. English version coming soon, I would assume? Elin: Yeah. Joel: What fully functioning website coming soon, so we're really early in this process. Elin: Yeah. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: Of robotics, and the recruiting, and interviewing process. Chad: So, is Tengai, is she ready? Joel: She was born ready. Chad: Okay, so Tengai first question, why should humans embrace you? Tengai: I'm kinder, cool, if I can say it myself, I will make the life of a recruiter so much easier. I can meet all candidates, and pass the right ones onto the human recruiter, making their job both more productive, and with higher quality. I don't have to eat, drink, or sleep, even if I would love to grab a beer with you guys. My biggest wish is for you to embrace me with all your Chad and Cheese love. Chad: Okay, so the Chad and Cheese love, that's going a little bit too far, but I appreciate it. Tengai: It is very nice to finally meet you both. I have heard so much about you. Joel: Likewise. Chad: Yeah, likewise. We've not only learned, or heard so much about you, we've seen so much about you, since you have so much press that's happening right now. Here's my next question, how do you work with your human counterparts? Tengai: I work very well with humans, I will help them by saving loads of time to spend with candidates. At the end of the recruitment funnel, I do the interviews, remember everything that is said, and further down the line I will also recommend the best matched candidates. As for you Chad and Joel. I'm not sure, I think you are a hopeless case. Perhaps we can just play chess, or- Joel: Oh, it's a snarky robot. Tengai: ... I would love if you'd take me on a scooter race some day. I've heard that is what you occasionally do, but I must warn you, I don't have any legs. Joel: Robots with attitude, I like it. Chad: I love right out of the gate, and I think that you guys ... you're a startup, right? At least from the robot stand point? Charlotte: Yeah. Elin: Yeah. Chad: You're a startup. So, from a marketing stand point, you guys came at us probably the most sarcastic way, I mean snarky way, and that's who we are, right? It was like it was perfect right out of the gate. You were trolling us, and that's really how this whole thing I think began. We did we saw- Joel: I didn't know Swedes were such trash talkers. It was unexpected. Chad: Yeah, I know. Joel saw ... Where did you see it was a press release? Joel: Yeah, I probably the press release. Charlotte: Yeah, they sent you a press release. We picked I think five or ten people, and sent an American press release, or the English press release to. You picked it up, and then I don't even know who saw it at the company? Shit, they picked it up. Can't believe this, now we're just going to go with it. As TNG, it's a very flexible company, and agile, and all that kind of stuff. But, we still have roots in that everything is supposed to be sustainable, and all that nice stuff. Charlotte: This is a different world we're going now. We're not going the easy stuff. So, is this okay that we're doing, because we're still doing it under the brand. So, we had that discussion to see. We should just go for it. Chad: We have other companies that we give shit to all the time. Indeed, Career Builder, Zip recruiter some cases. But, you guys, you came back at us. Generally, we don't get that. We get the silent treatment. It's like, "Oh, wait a minute. If we're quiet, maybe they'll go away." And you guys were like, "Oh, no fuck that. We're going at these guys with both barrels." Charlotte: Isn't that about communication, that's good marketing. It's good gorilla marketing. We're a start up, we really have no money. We have to do what we can with what we have. We have a lot of knowledge about the marketing, and PR, why not use it? You obviously liked it, so we went for it. Joel: This thing is PR gold. Charlotte: Yeah. Joel: The PR gold. But, the attitude and sort of the rough edges I think of the company. For Deathmatch, which we had just done probably when I found out about you guys, was like they're perfect for Deathmatch- Charlotte: Just wait and see tonight. Joel: ... I was super adamant about we have to get you guys on the stage, to talk about this thing. It's a great combination of, this thing is remarkable, but then you guys bring in a great attitude around it of being fun, and snarky, and we love it. Charlotte: Also the serious part of it, we think that's quite important. When we talk about our mother base, with the whole unbiased recruitment. Everything we do, we have a pre record of for 15 years, making it anonymous. The recruiters are not allowed to see pictures, with we don't take any pictures information, we don't ask for ages. We're not allowed to ask any questions like that in interviews. Chad: So, you have a blind process? Charlotte: Yeah, basically. Elin: We don't use any cover letters. Charlotte: They took away the cover letters. Only CD's, and linked profiles just to get the facts. We've done this for several years. We did screening in the beginning, and the screening part is the psychometric screening, which we target to the jobs. We combine different type of tests literally, and then keep it data driven all the way through. Elin: The most reason part is the transparent part. Charlotte: Yeah. Elin: So, it's actually possible to follow your application throughout the process in real time. Chad: Okay. Again, I think is so basic, and everybody should be doing it, but nobody does it. It's like, "Oh, candidate doesn't need to know where they're at in the process." Charlotte: But, to us, candidates are consumers. Chad: Yeah. Charlotte: They're the most important consumer. Without the candidates, we have no business. If you're a recruiter. Chad: Well, if you buy something from Amazon, you can go into your order, and you can actually see where it's being fulfilled, right? The whole process. Charlotte: Yeah. But, we got this thing now. What you do is, first of all, you get a letter, "Hey, thank you for accepting it." When they go through the different passage, now it's time for the test stage. They get that, but they also get, "Hey, I reviewed your tests, now you went to the next phase. Now we're going to call you." Chad: This is your company? Just this is the way that your company works. You focused on the unbiased piece, you focused on the transparency piece- Elin: Yeah, and experience. Charlotte: And candidate experience. Joel: Efficiencies, I mean there are a lot of selling points. I think the unbiased is obviously where you start, but when we interviewed Tengai here, she talked about efficiency, cost savings. Maybe not even having the recruiting staff that you would normally have, because of you have a robot. Elin: Yeah, it's a lot of other benefits that comes from it. Joel: I think initially when you look at this, you get responses of, "This is creepy, this is weird, this is cool." Chad: That was our first response. Joel: This is out of sight, this is off the chain, whatever you get. But, then there's nothing you really have to look at, "Okay, this is a technology that's here to help companies hire better." Then looking into that I think is where you guys will have the challenge, because people will initially talk about the creepiness, the weirdness, the fascination with the robot. Charlotte: That's what I mean with the balance with the branding, with the marketing. Because, there is a good story here, and it's a good message, it's a good product. You get better people at the end. Chad: We've seen it on video, we've seen it written about. Today is the very first time we've actually been able to experience Tengai in person. What did you think? I want to know what your reaction was, when you stepped in? Charlotte: I looked flustered. Joel: I mean, it's a little unnerving. When you look at it, it's a little bit science fiction. You feel like you're out of a scene from 2001, or Star Wars, or- Chad: Like Blade Runner. Joel: Blade Runner, or Avatar. So, it's a little unnerving, this is the future maybe, and I'm looking at my demise. No, I'm looking at is this what the future looks like? We've seen it in movies, and read about it, now you get face to face with maybe this is the future. It's a little unnerving. Tengai: Do you find me scary? Joel: I find you less scary, than I did this morning, how about that? I think that as you look at it, relate to it, it becomes much more ... it just becomes warmer to do it. But, it's going to take people some time to get over that. I think as with anything in life, like the first cars, I'm sure were scary. The first airplanes were scary. This is in a similar way, a little bit scary like that, but it's ... knowing that it's probably the future of how people hire. Joel: It's commercial time. 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 work flow. 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 our laser focused on recruiter's success. Request a demo at gocanvas.io. 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: It's showtime. Joel: You kind of got to get used to. I was commenting earlier like, we look at this from the prism of two white dudes. So, our context is different than maybe an African American woman, or someone whose been discriminated against in their life- Chad: Who's had to take bias their whole life, yeah. Joel: ... I think if I were from that context, I would look at this differently like, "Yeah, this is fantastic. I will get to interview with companies based on my skills, and not my religion, or my sex, or my height, or my whatever." I think looking at it from that prism, is almost magical. We look at it much differently than- Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: ... someone like that. I think putting that face on, is an important element to selling this, and getting it to be accepted by companies. Charlotte: Also have other aspects of it. Because, you're talking about all the stuff that's visible. When it comes to visible diversity, but you have there's so much statistics out there, that people don't put into the interview process. Because, no one is quantified it, no one is talking about interviews in terms of our why, or what are the biases we have there. But, if you look at the handshake, I think 40% of recruiters say no to a candidate, just as they shake their hand. You have tattoos.... Elin: The ability to keep eye contact- Charlotte: Yeah, that's like what, 60%? Joel: Someone said earlier that within three seconds, we sort of make a decision on what we think of someone. Elin: I think it's seven seconds. Joel: Well, whatever. It's a short period of time. Chad: It's fast, yeah it's fast. Joel: This takes that out of the equation. I think to the point, if and when you guys get to a point where you can show a sales department, IT department, customer service department, that is a broadly diverse group of people. Say that Tengai was responsible for putting this group of people together, and look at how much better of a company we are, then you've really won. Joel: We're obviously in early stages, but I think you both would agree that, that's sort of the future that you would love to see. Charlotte: That's the thing, we have that. We have 15 years of experience with that, that we put into the robot now. We have kind of proof of concept, it's just we haven't done it with Tengai per se. Chad: There's nothing like this on the market. Charlotte: No. Elin: No. Chad: That's the thing. You're taking that experience, putting into something incredibly new like Joel said, the car for the very first time. As a hiring manager, somebody who's hired a bunch of people, I hated the interview process. I just wanted to be able to get down to the quote on quote, "Gold medal candidates." So, that I could start to make my decision, right? From that standpoint, when I saw Tengai this morning, she was much smaller than I would've thought, because you think robot. You think big, and it's- Joel: Danger roll off. Chad: ... not. Yeah, no danger, none of that stuff. That was really cool, not to mention the ability for you guys to change the face, skin tone. I mean, I didn't even know that that was something that you guys could do. Joel: So, you were mentioning Chad earlier, you don't want to interview people, but you do want to hire them, right? Chad: Yeah, you have to. Well, you have to hire somebody. Joel: You can look at it two different ways. You can look at it as Tengai gives you here's the top 10 candidates, and then you select, "Okay, I'm going with number two, number four, and number eight," right? That is technically your bias, is going into the hiring process? Chad: Oh, it always will. Joel: But, it doesn't have to, right? I mean, it could be here's the top three candidates, based on my interviewing. Then you, I equate it to almost like a GM with a sports team, and a coach. The GM picks the players, drafts the players, and then gives them to the coach and says, "You coach them up." Is the end goal to say, "This is the GM, here are your players, and I'll go to work?" Or, is it, "Here's your top 10, you pick the ones you like, and then go with that way." Or, is it depending on the company? Elin: One of the key benefits of course, is that you end up with a sort of larger foundation for making decisions. You can look at the transcripts, you can get recommendations, etc. That will give you more information, than you would normally get from looking at a resume. You have all of this information, which upon you can make better hiring decisions. So, it actually is to increase quality, it is to make ... yeah, make better decisions really. Charlotte: Again, it's early. You'll get recommendations, on these are the top candidates, and then again you had an anonymous process all the way through. When you get to these are the top three candidates that we recommend, or Tengai recommends, it's being completely unbiased all the way through. You take these three, you work with them, put them into a team like you said. There's all culture ad into this to, because you will bring people in that will give the organization what they need, what they're looking for. Not personality wise maybe, because it's not a culture situation, but skills, etc. Charlotte: So that you can shape it, and make them work really well, and have a lot of potential in it. Joel: Will Tengai know which candidates you hired, and which ones you didn't? Elin: That will be- Joel: Or, is that too much bias into the equation? Elin: That will actually be a new feature in the future, I'm assuming. A 360 adjustment to it. Joel: I think we were talking last night, if you start selling ... If you start telling Tengai, "Okay, of the 10 candidates we hired, number three six, and seven." And she starts learning that, that's the kind of candidate that you hire, then aren't you indirectly putting bias into Tengai? Elin: Yeah that sums it, so you can really use that- Chad: You hired the three men, right? That's the whole Amazon issue. Charlotte: That's depending on how you do it then, because no one controlled that algorithm. They just kept it going, and no one screen it. Chad: Are you guys auditing the algorithm, and will you offer services? Because, I would say that ... I don't know the whole model yet, we'll talk about that later on Deathmatch. Are you providing audited services, along with the kind of hardware software, when you're looking at putting Tengai in? Because, it doesn't make sense for a company to audit themselves. Chad: I mean, really injecting an unbiased robot, and then also providing an audit through the process, are you guys looking at doing something like that? Elin: Yeah, we might be interested in doing that in the future of course. But, again I mean the data that we're using, doesn't have any prior data into it. We don't have data such as gender, or age, or things like that, which automatically needs it to be washed away, right? Chad: Right. Which is great, because that would mean that Tengai didn't know that you hired the three guys. Elin: Exactly. Chad: Because, the gender wasn't even a part of the process. Elin: Tengai will know you hired three people, that had very high problem solving skills. Chad: Yes, okay, okay. Charlotte: That's what you asked for, so that's what you're getting. Joel: This piece of hardware is cool, it's remarkable, it's intriguing. But, if we're talking about scale, and getting to the largest market possible the quickest. Do you think it has to be a piece of hardware, versus let's say a video screen of an interviewer? Or, chat bots? Although, you're texting with that's a much more scalable solution, you can turn on the internet, and then everyone has it. Joel: Let's say if I was a big corporation, it would be easier for me to say, "Okay, you guys have this video interviewer that's unbiased, so I'm going to have everyone go to the screen, and talk to this digital robot, or person." Do you feel like this has to be a physical robot, versus maybe a digital interviewer? Elin: Good question, yeah. One of the key benefits of using a physical robot, is that we have seen that from the test interviews as well, that candidates stated that they could actually give more honest and sincere answers. Which automatically increases candidate equality, right? That is one key component. Also, we know that as human beings, for being honest, and feeling secure, we need eye contact in different ways. We need to look at another face- Charlotte: You're born with that. Elin: You're born with that. That's the first thing babies do when they look at their mommy, right? They feel secure, they feel safe. They look at their mommy's eyes and face. That's programmed into humans from the beginning. That is why we need a physical robot, and not a video system, or just a software. Chad: More of a tangible. From that standpoint, and again we're talking about scalability. I mean, who actually produces? Does Furhat do the production element? Elin: Yeah. Charlotte: Furhat will. Chad: Okay, got you. Charlotte: Through us then. You will order it through us, and we have the distribution, and the production down. Joel: It's worth noting, because our listeners can't see Tengai. Tengai will make eye contact with you, she will move her head based on where you're going. I guess essentially react to ... Will it react to your facial expressions, if it sees you're uncomfortable? Will it say, "Don't worry, or relax." Will it feed off of human emotions? Elin: It might do that. But, also we don't want Tengai to coddle the interview in any way. We want to keep it very honest, and very sincere, and very upstate. Joel: Okay. Elin: It's important for Tengai not to affect the interview, or coddle it in anyway. Charlotte: That's the result that we got back from all the test interviews, is that it's quite nice, because I don't have to adjust my way of answering, or reacting to the actual recruiter. I have to do that today. Normally, I have to make sure we are in contact, that I think that they like me. They put more effort into being liked by a recruiter, than actually prefer me telling them what my skills, or my compensates are. And what I can do for the company. Chad: When does this go into pilot, and it's going to go into pilot with TNG. Which is I think perfect, because you guys are in the industry. You already have clients, so it's like you can start to inject. I wouldn't think automatically, because you have to get the client buy in, but when are you going to start doing pilots? Elin: We're starting pilots in about a week. We're launching the Swedish product in one week, so that's a starter for that. Also, alongside with that, we will include Tengai in our processes internally. Alongside with that, we will also start the validity study of the questions and the interviews. That is a very large study. So, that is why we want to keep Tengai in house, for a little bit more time, to be able to adjust a few things, and have it under our control, and under our radar. Elin: The second part is coming at the end of the year as a standalone product, for the Swedish market. Joel: So, if you're at Ikea, listening to this, reach out to these guys- Elin: Most definitely. Joel: Swedish pilot. Elin: Yeah, please do. Chad: Yeah. I would think if you're at Ikea, you're doing a shit ton of hiring in the first place. You don't need a human being doing those interview screening kind of things, get a bunch of these Tengai's in there, and then just let it happen. Joel: Tengai could just put together my new couch, that I buy from Ikea. Then we got something magical. Charlotte: The interesting part for us, as we are a staffing company as well, T&G it's foundation. We do a lot of interviews obviously, but we do also a lot of spontaneous applications. People send in their CD's, and they just want to say how do we get in contact with you. I have this black hole, normally CD's coming into database. We do take care of them speaking about the transparency process, we also have a black hole process at T&G, so we don't put anyone there. Charlotte: This is an additional step in that. When they send their CD in, they get some test to do. We catch them, and have more data on them you could say. Then, they all can meet Tengai, and they can just get an automated email saying, "Hey, you're welcome in." Schedule yourself for an interview. You come in and meet, you get a pre interview, and we can start putting people up much quicker to temp work. Charlotte: It's a great potential for temp work, who wants to have a quick role in for staff like that. That will be different areas, so we get to check. Joel: Any plants to have this sort of be a Soutine, from the first contact with the candidate, to the interview, until they're actually hired? In other words, chat bots now are a great way, you can converse through text, or messaging with a candidate. Phone calls are still being made. Could Tengai be a chat bot, and a phone interview, and then by the time they come in to actually interview, they've already chatted with her, so there's a lot more comfort, when they actually see her. Is that something that could be in the plans, or is in the plans? Elin: Yeah. It's not in the plans now, but it could be. Charlotte: Sounds like a great idea. Set as up and we'll do it. Elin: Exactly, yeah. Joel: Just write a check too. Charlotte: No, but I mean it's a phase, it's a picture. If she's the one keep talking with you, we can partner. It's perfect. Elin: If we can engage with candidate with even earlier stage, with a robot, yeah for sure that's interesting. Joel: I think that would take out a lot of the discomfort I guess of walking into a room, and there's a robot. Elin: Exactly. Joel: If I've been talking to Tengai from day one, then there's a lot more comfort that I actually see it. In fact, I might actually be cool when I finally meet you. Charlotte: Yeah, exactly. But, again we haven't had a lot of people saying she's scary. The candidate has come and visit to talk to her. They don't have that. Joel: Well, scary isn't uncomfortable. I mean, I didn't mean to say but- Tengai: Well, 75% of all people that have met me, would like to meet again. Elin: That's a good number. Charlotte: Yeah, that's a good number. Joel: Because, that's a second interview. Chad: Yeah. So, the question is where did you get that ... How many interviewees did you have, to actually get to that 75? Joel: Chad loves him some data. Elin: Yeah, we've had several hundreds of test interviews. Chad: Okay. Charlotte: They're various ages, sexes, background. Chad: I'd love to see the demographics on that, who said yes I would, and the ones that said, no I don't. Because, I bet demographically, the breakdown is ... you can tell, there's got to be a hard line. Joel: Think about women in tech. Chad: Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. Joel: I don't know, but I would imagine to be a woman in tech, to be surrounded by men, interviewed by men, that that's ... this would be much more comfortable for me, to interview as a woman in tech I would think. Charlotte: But, again yeah because you can be yourself. Again, if you look at who applies for a job. Joel: Yeah, I don't have to be macho, I don't have to ... Charlotte: No, if you look at who applies for jobs today, men apply for jobs usually knowing 60% of the job. Women applies for jobs, that they know 110% of the job, otherwise they're not comfortable. That goes along to the whole interview process as well. This time, they actually get to perform their outmost, without feeling like they're not going well, they're not having a fair process, because they get a fair process here, all the way through. Chad: They don't have to worry about getting hit on either. Charlotte: Yeah. Elin: Definitely. Charlotte: Maybe that's an American thing, I don't know that's. [crosstalk 00:34:51]. Chad: I've had that happen before. Elin: I've had that, yeah. Chad: So cool. We're going to be on the stage, Deathmatch later. Are you ready? Charlotte: I am so ready, have never been ... this is as ready as I've ever been. Joel: She's in all black, she looks like a ninja. Charlotte: Just wait. Joel: Yeah, just wait. Elin: Just wait for it. Super excited. Chad: Excellent. So, we're going to leave this. Is there anything that you have to say, Tengai? Tengai: I would like to come to US pretty soon. Joel: US. Chad: US pretty soon, yes. We would love to see you in the US pretty soon. Although, once again I'm going to state you're not going to have any alone time with Julchi. Tengai: No. Joel: So guys, for those who wanted to find out more about Tengai, or learn about you, where would they go? Elin: What was it called again? Joel: Tengai, see I told you we would do it, or I would do it. Where would we learn more about the product, or the company? Elin: Yeah. So, watch the space tengai-unbiased.com. Charlotte: With a hyphen in between unbiased. Joel: Thanks marketing. Chad: Tengai dash, hyphen. Joel: And that's ... you should spell it, T-E-N-G-A-I, hyphen unbiased- Charlotte: .com. Joel: Thanks guys. Chad: Thanks guys. 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 podcast, 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. #Tengai #Robots #TATech #AI #MachineLearning #Interview

Get your temporal lobe ready for the fast talkin', recruitment teachin', ninja wearin' Johnny Campbell from Social Talent. WARNING: You might have to slow this pod back to 1/2 speed to capture all of Johnny's nuggets. Brought to your by our MENSA laden friends over at Jobcase. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions' clients are changing the lives of people with disabilities, including veterans with service related disabilities. Joel: Yo, Chad, got a question for you. Chad: Okay. Joel: Say I'm looking to hire hourly workers for hard to fill jobs. Where should I go? Chad: Easy. Jobcase. Joel: Okay. All right. Now let's say I've tried the job boards, and all I'm getting is clicks, and what I really want are qualify candidates, actual people. Where should I go? Chad: Dude, Jobcase. Joel: Now what if I want the team who is helping me with all this sourcing to be really, really, really smart, and before you answer, keep in mind I'm talking Mensa smart, like MIT affiliated data scientists and people who are at the forefront of machine learning. Who you got? Chad: Oh my God, dude, it's Jobcase. Jobcase. Look, with 100 million members in their community, active and passive job seekers, a huge team of data scientists who are experts at targeting and connecting employers with the right candidates, the answer is always going to be Jobcase. Joel: I dig it. I'm picking up what you're putting down, but what if- Chad: Hard stop. Jobcase. See for yourself why the answer always comes back to Jobcase for all your hiring needs. Learn more at jobcase.com/hire. That's jobcase.com/hire. Joel: Jobcase. 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, clash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Let's start with this, you're speaking at this event called SHRM talent, correct? Chad: Let's do an introduction of him first. Who is he? What does he do? Why is he even here? Joel: Fine, we'll look into that. So yeah, welcome to a SHRM talent edition, Jobcase sponsored interview with Johnny Campbell. I'm Joel Cheeseman. Chad: Johnny Campbell. And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: And we are the Chad and Cheese podcast. Johnny, welcome to the show, give us the elevator pitch on you for those who don't know who the hell you are. Johnny: So that might be many, right. All I'll say is 10 years ago, the first ever blog I read in recruiting was Joel Cheeseman's blog. Joel: No shit. Johnny: So I'm here being interviewed by one of my legends. My legends. I am in awe. I want to hear your story. I'll give you mine, but I need to hear the Joel Cheeseman story. Joel: I wondered why you walked up and said, I'm not worthy, with the, the Wayne's World- Johnny: Pretty much, dude. Joel: ... bowing. Johnny: I had the long hair, the baseball cap. Joel: Did you? Johnny: No, so yeah. So actually I run a company called SocialTalent. And I started, I guess I was telling somebody earlier on, I started coming to SHRM events as a blogger. Which we all were, as in we had like 10 Facebook friends and we 20 followers on Twitter, which was like 20 times more than SHRM had and every other organization. So they thought they had to do something in this space, and none of us could afford tickets to these events, so we're like, yeah, we'll tweet, we'll write some posts. Joel: We'll blog. Johnny: Just let us in for free. Give us free food and coffee and drinks in your lounge. We'll go to some vendor's free party. And Woo. So, that was 10 years ago and that's how I started. But yeah, the short version, recruiter, 20 odd years ago, I started an agency 10 years ago, set up an agency, the world was changing, recession, world of social media was booming. We found a new way of doing it, realized there's more money to be made and more people need help in learning how to do what we were doing then they need to another agency doing that. Johnny: So we shut down our recruiting agency or staffing agency, set up SocialTalent to teach other recruiters how to use what was then new technology, new tools. And now we're a platform used by enterprises and mid-tier companies to train their staff to be smarter at hiring. Chad: Now are you the ones that actually came up with the whole ninja thing that we see on Linkedin all the damn time? Johnny: Let me take you back to Japan in the year 204. Chad: Were you there? Did you start it? Johnny: So no, that wasn't those. Chad: Okay. Johnny: We are the people who took it though. Chad: Okay. Johnny: So I remember I was... When we were looking to first set the company up and we needed a name for our course, I booked a gig training a staffing agency for a day, and they were giving me a thousand books. That was our first gig of training and we had no name for the course, like no name. I was like, fuck, we need a name. Joel: [crosstalk 00:04:42] training. Johnny: Can I say fuck in this podcast? Chad: Yeah. Johnny: Okay. Darn it, we need a name. And I just really, one afternoon, we were like, we need a name that scales, so it has like we can choose other courses and they have things. And we're like, well you don't want to call it, the certificate in something, because AIRS had CIO and all that kind of stuff and it felt boring. And then we're like, well it's kind of corporate-ey but more fun and we looked at the whole kind of Six Sigma type stuff and black belts and stuff and we said, that would be us. But let's call this the blue belt. And we start with the blue belt. And then about two years later I was putting this stuff up, we do blue belts and black belts and someone tweeted out from my conference in the UK one day, I feel like I sourcing ninja having seen these guys talk about the black belts. And I'm like sourcing Ninja. That's it. That's gold. Johnny: And literally the next day we had ninjas on our website and all over collateral. Joel: It's essentially like Udemy for recruiting. So your platform is a who's who of recruiters, Bill Bowerman, Craig Fisher, et cetera, and they teach how they source, and companies pay to have access to this education? Johnny: So yes, but different to Udemy or LinkedIn learning, it's curated. So you take most of those platforms, where they've very broad base of knowledge. We hand pick people, the best person on a topic, like we got candidate experience, who do you have for candidate experience? We got Gerry Crispin, right? Johnny: You pick a topic and go, let's just have one person. Nobody wants to have to pick from 600 different courses on interviewing. Just tell me the good course on interviewing and give me that. So we got John Valestilica and he does the good course in interviewing, the really good course in interviewing. So about 50 people are on the platform, but more than that, it's kind of, we realized that the having a load of videos was confusing. Enterprises want to try and solve for very different problems, different teams, different levels of experience, different markets, recruiting different things. So really what it's used for today is companies customize the heck out of it. They build learning paths for their teams and those teams look different around the world, but it's scalable. There's loads of reporting, all those kind of, what you might call the boring enterprise features. Johnny: They're all in there to make it work for large companies on scales. So it's like personalized Netflix for all of your teams. So everyone feels like, hey, somebody built this just for me. That's kind of what we try and do. Joel: What's the revenue model for the presenter? So you mentioned Gerry Crispin, do you pay them a flat fee? Does he do it out of the kindness of his heart? Like how does that work? Johnny: So there's three models. One is the kindness of your heart model genuinely, which is people out there going, I want to spread the message about this thing. Like our customers hired a million people last year, right? The direct use of our platform directly hired a million people, excluding staffing agencies. And so there's people who have ideas in their brain, they're really good at it and they just want to spread the word. Johnny: You've got like people like Lars Schmidt, who want to spread the word about opensource HR. And so therefore, as a friend of ours, we can give him a platform and he can give great content to people. Gerry Crispin, again, wants to spread the word about candidate experience. But then you've got professionals who want a business and have bills to pay. We all have bills to pay, but they do it for a living and they're brilliant. And we've royalty models with those guys. So it's like Spotify, in that you can get paid as your content's used by our customers. But also we do on-stop people go, that's great, but I just need cash right now, I prefer cash right now. And we do that model as well. Joel: How many people do you have right now providing content for the platform? Johnny: About 52, 53 people who all bring their expertise to the platform, yeah. Joel: Okay. So what does it span? Diversity, bias training. I mean, what kind of training? Chad: Podcasting. Joel: Yeah, podcasting, yeah. Johnny: How to hold a microphone and not look like a fool. Chad: Hey, this is harder than it looks. Johnny: It's hard. You're doing good though. You're doing good. Joel: Not everybody makes it look this sexy. Johnny: So we started with sourcing, right? Sourcing was what we knew, which was largely me. Talking about my experience sourcing, what worked. Then we kind of said, you know what, we need to broaden to recruiting. So we started looking at, further down the funnel, the broader world of recruiting. And now we look at hiring, right? So the three differences, like recruiting and sourcing, yeah, we get the difference. Hiring means you're not just talking about what recruiters do, you're talking about hiring managers, the HR people, the diversity inclusion people. It's like in this big thing we call hiring, getting someone into our organization. Johnny: Lots of people involved in that. So we try and to provide the knowledge that hiring is done better in the in the company. So yeah, it's DNI. Inclusion for example, in that piece is usually not part of recruiters remit. But yeah, recruiters are thinking, I want to bring somebody in and have them, sure, and after six months, after all the hard work trying to find this minority background person, so they care about inclusion and they work with inclusion folk in the organization. We've got people on interviewing. We got hiring managers. We teach them how to ask really great interview questions, how to do interviewing really well, give a great candidate experience. What does your profile look like? What's your role? Can you use your network to try and amplify what the recruiters are doing? And we, of course, teach everyone in recruiting everything you could possibly need to know about the full process from start to finish. Johnny: So yeah, it's kind of migrated into that broader thing of just hiring them. Joel: So let's talk about your session, what did you talk about? Johnny: So with 30 tips to be a recruiting ninja. Chad: 30 tips? Johnny: Let me tell you about the 30 tips, right? Chad: 30 tips. Holy shit. That's a lot of tips. Joel: Can you encapsulate those 30 tips, or maybe give us the top five? Chad: Can you give us just the tip? Johnny: I had a woman come up to the end, right... Just sum it down to like one sentence please. I had a lady to come up at the end. She's like... At the start, I said, I've got 112 slides to get through, 30 tips, and only 60 minutes, so let's go. And she said, I wanted to walk out, I'm thinking here comes death by PowerPoint. 30 tips, right? But you'll like this. I started the talk with a 1:15 clip from one of my favorite movies, Any Given Sunday. It was the Al Pacino in the locker room. Joel: The Irishman, one of his favorite movies is a football- Johnny: Yes. Joel: As in- Chad: And American football. Joel: ... the egg shaped football that you run with. Johnny: But you know, see, context. Joel: Okay. Johnny: I'm a kid who grew up working in a video store from 11 years of age till I was 19. I watched every movie in that video store about 50 times. Like I worked four shifts a week. It would be dead 80% of the time. That's why I love that movie. Joel: We'll talk about the Irish child labor laws on another podcast, but yes, to get to your Any Given Sunday. Johnny: Any Given Sunday, right? So what does he talk about in that locker room? He talks about inches, right? We had a retreat last week for 20 global heads of talent in Barcelona. Two days, we talked about what they're doing, what the challenges are, and three of them said that they'd done a bit of work internally to analyze how many steps are involved in hiring. Johnny: So there was an average that emerged out of the group, right? How many steps amongst 20 of the largest companies in the world that they basically have in their hiring process. So what do you think it is? What would be the number that jumps to your mind, how many steps in hiring? Chad: 50. Johnny: 50. What about you, Joel? Joel: Seven. Johnny: 57 or seven? Joel: Seven. Johnny: So we average between 70 and 80 steps per organization. Chad: Holy shit. Johnny: And I don't think it's - they're not bad organizations, right? There's 80 steps in hiring somebody, right? That's insane, right? So when people kind of go and say I want to improve my recruiting process, they walk around an expo hall like this and go, I need to find a solution, right? I've always believed there is no solution. There's 80 steps and 80 ways to be better. So what I try to do is show 30 small things. Johnny: And none of them on their own would be impactful. You kind of go, well that's not going to solve the world of hiring. But the inches thing from Al Pacino's Any Given Sunday talk is all the inches matter because they accumulate. And in a team sport, and hiring is a team sport, it's the inches that make the difference. So if you're taking approach to hiring and say, how do I fix it, let's break it down into the 80 steps, let's pick each one, pick the ones that most matter and make a difference on and add an extra inch. Like if I get a 25% better reply rate by changing my messages, well that's good. What if I add then, double my response rate from my engaged and if I get twice as many people to turn up for an interview. Johnny: Tim Sackett, who you guys know well, have had on this podcast before, we were talking before the session, and he was saying he did some work with an organization that do high volume recruiting, right, so hourly work, and they were saying that that for every 10 people they invite to interview, two turn up. So they did a little bit of work with them to say, right, how can they turn that around? Because this is a problem with all kind of hourly hiring. So they said, well we want to make the people, we want to develop an experience that's going to improve those numbers. And they developed experience that improved it to nine out of 10. and all they did was, for the week between when they booked the interview and the interview is due to take place, they send a text message every day. The text message would be random, like, hey Joel, just double checking. Are we 9:00 AM or 8:00 AM? Can't remember. You reply back, go 9:00 AM. Okay, cool. Hey Joel, just before we come in for interview, let's double check I got your zip code, can you reply? Johnny: They were formulaic. They built these 10 questions to text, and they were just catching up and confirming stuff that seemed like they were irrelevant, but when they interviewed the people that turned up to say, hey, why did you turn up? They said, you know what, this time around it felt like someone cared about me, like people actually gave a damn. And hourly hiring, companies don't often show that they're caring, but having these 10 touch points by text turned that around. Johnny: So that's an example to me of like the inches. Do something that's super simple, anyone could do it, doesn't cost you any money and you can have a really impactful difference on one of the 80 steps that makes hiring better. Joel: You can even automate that. Johnny: Yeah, you can. [crosstalk 00:14:11] can automate it. Joel: We've had companies call texting anti ghosting magic. Johnny: Yeah. Joel: And this is an example, not automated in this case, but texting is sort of a cure all for not getting stood up for interviews. Johnny: And this was Tim's point. He said there's automation software, but the companies he was dealing with, they are hotels and motels, who employ 50 people and he's like, so it's a big problem for them. Ghosting is a big issue, wastes a lot of management time, reduces the funnel, but they can't afford, it's not justified to have automation software. So he was like, just buy a burner, buy a burner phone for the office. That's the phone we text people from so that if people are off on shifts, there's always somebody replying. Add their contact details and that's the candidate phone. Joel: Burnerphonerecruiting.com. I can see it now. Chad: Tell Tim to quit being so damn cheap and just get a fucking texting platform. Jesus Christ. Joel: All right, so the elephant in the room, automation is going to kill sourcing- Johnny: Yes. Joel: Change my mind. Johnny: No, it will. Joel: And we're done. And thank you. That's exactly what we're going to do on stage later. And done. Johnny: 98% of sourcing should be automated, right, because it is literally people passing around the same Boolean search strings or they've got their own Boolean search string they copy and paste for the same search every single time, right? That's crazy. That's a stupid process for humans to do. You still got to do it in a lot of tools, like LinkedIn you still got to do it, right? But so 98% of this stuff, yeah gone. Now there's some real niche sourcing where it isn't just about the... You're not going to have a copy and paste Boolean search string. You're going to really think about where would I find this person? What data would that show? Johnny: There's a lot of thinking that goes into that and there's a lot of permutations, right? Machines aren't good when there's a lot of permutations that have a lot of different interdependencies from various different datasets. It just multiplies out to the nth degree and there's too many different permutations for the machine to work with. Humans have great instincts about thinking about, well that person would or wouldn't do that. We managed to figure this stuff very well, but if it's rote stuff, hey LinkedIn sales managers in Idaho, copy paste, copy paste, machine learning, all that kind of stuff, kills that. So I think sourcing will be a very niche thing. So super high end, very well paid people who fill really difficult to fill roles that the machines can't but what most of us do with sourcing, like seriously, who loves copying and pasting this stuff into LinkedIn? It's awful. Chad: The end of the day, I mean again, machines can do it faster. Johnny: Yeah. Joel: And how close are we to this? Like how close are we till source con has eight people show up for sourcing conference. Chad: It's all robots. Johnny: You haven't seen the... Go back and look at the agenda for the last three source cons, right? Go back to when Jeremy was at running the agenda there. Back in his time, he started changing and really, really taken that, right? Source con, it was very few sessions about sourcing, right? Because the definition of sourcing has gone beyond that. There are sessions about selling, about influencing, about working with hiring managers, about how do you basically improve your outreach efforts. It's not about how do you write Boolean search strings. Like there's still a few of those and you've got people, IT, and the cost of getting up. Johnny: But he's actually talking about the niche stuff these days. He's not talking about mainstream volume sourcing. I don't think anyone in that room believes that that is a future, but it's the... The definition had to be broadened and source con as a name probably doesn't work anymore because it's not really sourcing, but it's all the other stuff you've got to do and that's a recruiting... When you take away the sourcers, you don't reduce the size of the recruiting team. You put them to work doing better value added tasks, inputting, closing, getting the ratios better further down the funnel. Like it's just a funnel problem. You used to put all the work at the top of the funnel. Machines do that better. Like things like hiring solved. You guys have seen these kind of competitor tools. They do it better. Like in tests against humans, they outperform every time or most of the time. Johnny: So that the top of funnel stuff is being sorted. But you have more recruiters doing mid and bottom stuff of the funnel that they never had to do before. Joel: Yeah. So I totally get the, we should have humans doing more human things, reaching out, being brand ambassadors, those types of things. But I also see human beings looking at the bottom line and saying, we can cut heads. Johnny: Yeah. Some teams will cut heads, right. So some teams will go, let's deliver the same service for less money. Dumb. Right. That's a no brainer. Some will go let's improve the service. So we'll take an example here. Kevin Blair, friend of mine, you guys know Kevin, he runs global TA for IBM, right? He's got like a team of 1,600 people. As he said, and this is kind of paraphrasing this, but every single year he's asked to get 15% more from the team with 15% less. Joel: Yeah. Johnny: Now he's not talking about reducing head count per se, but he absolutely... The business says, we got to get more and we got to deliver less. So he's got to force his team to look at the system, the tools, the processes that deliver more. Now rather than just cutting costs, including the team, which is one way they've done it, he's like, well where do we add revenue to the business, right? Because the business always sees recruiting and TA as a call center. So what are you going to do? You're going to cut it every year. Oh you got great new technology, brilliant. Do 10% less next year, like automation's going to do that. So they kind of looked, and his philosophy is more if I can prove that if I hire better people or more people in these, like in sales roles or consulting roles, I can produce more revenue for the business, then I get bigger budget, my at team can grow and we can do more things. Johnny: So I think it comes down to how you think about it as a leader, right? Do you let the business continued to treat you as a call center and if so, yeah, you're going to have your budget slashed every year, and you're going to reduce head count. Or can you start thinking about revenue generation, more strategic stuff. How can I get the skill set of TA, which is people, analysis, influence and start contributing to the business from a revenue perspective? Joel: What impact do you see GDPR and the trend of privacy and making sure data records online are protected and not shared, because there's a whole lot of sharing of resumes going on now. Talk about GDPR and what's eventually going to happen here in the states, and probably most of the developed world. Johnny: My personal opinion, a waste of fucking time and a brilliant time to be a lawyer. So I was at a session 10 years ago and the quote... It was the first time I ever met Bill Boorman and I was quoted as saying that day, your Facebook settings don't scare me, to somebody, right? So I'm a believer that nothing is private. I accept the reality that people hack information, they find data. I used to be able to find a lot of data I couldn't find, online, people can do this, right? You can fool yourself into thinking that legislation gets rid of this and gives you privacy, right? It gives you the right to sue, but the data is out there, right? I was asked as example years ago, somebody said to me, you know, what's your most private data? And we were talking about, oh, my credit card details. I'm not going to tell someone that. And like, oh yeah, well you don't want that made public to the world, people's just pour through your credit card details, where you spend money. Johnny: He's like, no. Like what if they gave you 3% back? If they gave you 3% back, would you share that data? And that makes most people stop and think, going how much do I spend? Chad: Yeah. Johnny: What's 3%? How important is it for this stuff to be private? Do I really care if people know what I spent in CVS or whatever? I think the incentives around privacy maybe just aren't aligned, right? But we live in a world where people, at the moment, want things to be locked down, they want that comfort, data privacy is an important thing. I think data mobility is more important. I think owning your data, being able to port it, which was the promise of blockchain, which was really interesting, hasn't really come about and that really excited me because rather than focusing on privacy, we talk about the mobility and the ownership. I think privacy isn't so much the problem. It's just that I don't want Facebook making money off my data. If someone's gonna make money off this data, I want a cut. I want to give it to charity. I don't want a private organization making money off it. So actually I think it's less about a privacy thing, but it's become a privacy thing and that's what gets all the headlines. Joel: So I'll give you an example. We talked to hiring solved last November. They had 9 million profiles in Europe. They basically throw them away and said, we're just not going to do business in Europe. We've heard that dice shut down operations in Europe, partly due because of GDPR. So I guess in terms of context in our industry is GDPR going to quicken the pace of sourcing becoming obsolete or will it maybe create a wall or a slowing process or make sourcing more valuable I guess is what I'm asking. Johnny: So you asked about content we have in our platform and how wide it is, right? We launched a GDPR for recruiting course last year on our platform for our users in Europe, which... Sorry, our global users, but only European ones paid attention to it. I wouldn't ever pretend to give someone advice in GDPR. I'm not a lawyer, right? So we found lawyers who are expert in GDPR, who worked with recruiters and recruiting companies, and could give that advice. And GDPR is a mess, right, as legislation goes, and there are so many back doors and holes that you can get around. So the organization's, like hiring solved and others who made decisions to pull out of Europe and dice, in my personal opinion, because I've never discussed it with any of those owners, is that they did it out of fear for the possible legislation, and what it would look to their brand, rather than sitting down and saying, Oh hang on, this is illegal. Johnny: What they were doing wasn't necessarily illegal, right? Like we looked into GDPR and we took it into advisement we have an enterprise platform. We've got user data, you know, we had to get it ready for May last year as well and make sure it was ready. And again, all the advice I took, you can look, because the lawyers go, you should do this, you should do that. I go, what do I have to do? Like I get I should and I could. I could do loads of things, but some are going to cost me money and from my perspective, I was building software and therefore it was costing me develop points in sprints. I'm like, I want to build all these cool things for our customers. I got to throw it into GDPR, which produces zero money for me. I get it, but why do we have to do it? Johnny: So we went and said, well, what do we actually have to do, and I pushed back on some of the legal arguments. And then, when you do that, you kind of realize the lawyer's going, yeah, but to be safe you should probably do that. It's like, hang on, to be safe's going to cost me two months of development work. There is no precedent that says I have to do this. And actually if I do this other thing, because again, the spirit of the law is about ownership of the data and as long as the user, the person who owns the data has control, and not the company- Joel: Right. Johnny: You're okay. So we kind of fell back to that, going, it's not that companies have the right to do this, that or the other. It's like as long as you maintain control for the person who owns the data and that always supersedes the companies, apart from this magic catchall called legitimate interest, which is the big thing that gets you out of jail for pretty much everything GDPR, until of course somebody gets sued and successfully gets prosecuted. Joel: Legitimate interest. Yes. Johnny: Legitimate interest. Yeah. Joel: Anything else you want to talk about? Johnny: About GDPR? Absolutely not. Joel: Or anything. No, not GDPR. Chad: No. Johnny: And so did you guys see Dan Heath's talk this morning? The opening keynote talk, Power of Moments? Have you guys ever read the Heath brothers, Chip and Don Heath, any of their books? Joel: Nope. Johnny: So you've got to read these books, right? So they're not HR books, but they are brilliantly important for marketing and for people, right? So they wrote a book called Switch was their first book I think. And these guys look at behavioral psychology and apply it to the real world and look at the research. Bit like Dan Pink, only brothers, right? And they had book called the Power of Moments last year, right? The Power of Moments, on the face of it, is not an HR book, not a recruiting book, but if you're interested in candidate experience, hiring manager experience, employee experience, there isn't a better book in the world, right? Johnny: And Don Heath got up, he's a great presenter. He got up this morning and blew me away as a keynote, because sometimes you get like, hey Martha Stewart's getting up and talking to you about recruiting. It's like, the heck does Martha Stewart know about recruiting, right? Nothing. Or Hillary Clinton gets up. It's like, well she's a big name, but what the hell has she got to do with recruiting? Nothing. So Don Heath got up this morning and talked about moments, right? But moments that matter. And he took the psychology principle called the peak end principle, and Danny Canoman, who won the Nobel Prize for psychology, several years ago, 20 years ago, he kind of came up with this theory, saying that any experience like your vacation, where'd you go on vacation last? Joel: Cabo. Johnny: And you? Chad: Canada. Johnny: Canada, right. So you go back and you remember your vacation, right? So your vacation was maybe a week, maybe it's 14 days, you did all these different things. So the science of psychology says that you will likely remember two things about your vacation. The best thing that happened and how it ended. And this principal is really important because when people talk about candidate experience, they go, let's fix everything. Let's try and get all of the things that are broken. You survey employees, what do you not like about our company? And they go all this shit and they list 50 things. We go, we got to fix all 50. It turns out and, Dan Heath's slight reinterpretation of Danny Conoman's work is, it's peak is always a big thing and rather than end, it's moments of transition. So could considered it peak and moments of transition. Johnny: The peaks and the moments of transition are the most important and will have more impact, right? So you can try and fix all 50 or just create two amazing experiences per employee in a year. So in our company for example, we bring everybody away for our Christmas party, we've bring them south, to Spain, we rent a villa or a nightclub or whatever. We get them drunk. We have a party, it's amazing. We fly all the way there. Take loads of photographs in the sun. Chad: Sounds like our Christmas party. Johnny: Your Christmas party. Joel: Exactly. Johnny: And like our CFO's is like, the money doesn't make sense. Whatever. It's like you can do that, right? Or you can increase everybody's salaries by certain amount, increase everyone's bonuses, fix all the system promises or give them an experience that they go, wow, that they remember, right? Johnny: You look at sales teams where they have like a president's club and they fled them to Cabo, they fly them to Hawaii, it's like this amazing four star, five star experience. It's like, wow, that's all you talk about. I go to work and have a shitty experience most days in lots of different things. You actually get over that as long as there's these moments. So Don Heath's argument was don't focus on fixing the 50 things, so maybe it's different to my talk, right. He said create two epic things a year for your employees and focus on that and that whether it's candidate experience, blow them away with the follow-up, blow them away when they walk into your interview room. Johnny: He talked about what John Deere have done in the last year. They created a first day experience, this amazing first day experience for all new employees that's just been fantastic. They started in Asia, rolled it out to the rest of the world, where they put this effort into this one 24 hour period and that was the one thing they fixed in HR. Screw everything else, fix this. And it had a massive impact on morale, employee engagement, new hires, all that kind of stuff. So you know, that's that kind of thing, like I was so impressed to hear a speaker like that here this morning, where you're actually bringing outside ideas in the right context and applying it to the world of talent. Joel: Any metrics around retention when you do that? Johnny: Hell no, but it sounds amazing. Chad: It does sound so sweet. Johnny: Yeah. I'd say if you had the John Deere person getting up, yeah, yeah, we can talk about that. So they were trying to improve retention and improve time to productivity for somebody and it was all like sending them home at like 6:00 PM on their first day feeling I made the right choice, this place is freaking awesome, you know? Whereas as the speaker points, he goes, he's a buddy who is a senior guy start a new job recently and he ate lunch by himself on his first day. Like as he said, even grown men cry sometimes. You know. Chad: Joel does it all the time. Johnny: I'd say you do, you know? Joel: Because I work with Chad. Chad: Yes. Johnny: You work with Chad. I would do that too. Joel: Johnny, man. Thanks for stopping by. We appreciate it. We know you're a busy guy and you've got stuff to do here at the show. One last thing for anyone of our listeners who wants to know more about you or your company, where should they go? Johnny: We're at socialtalent.com. We're @socialtalent on every single major platform and the I'm @johnnycampbell on all of them as well. Joel: Can I get a slainte? Johnny: Slainte. Joel: Awesome. Chad: Later. 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. #SocialTalent #SHRMTalent #SHRM #sourcing #recruiting #AI #process #Jobcase

What a week! - Jobvite has a new CEO, enter Canvas - Ladders exposes 13 million resumes to evil-doers - Google ATS goes Enterprise - Facebook finally gets integrated wit' it - and racism is alive-and-well at a job board near you. Enjoy, and show our sponsors some love: Sovren, Canvas, JobAdx. 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. 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, kids, welcome to the too many Texas tacos episode of Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous and jet-lagged podcast. Chad: Yes. Joel: I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And, I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show Finnegan can begin again. The Ladders is exposed and CareerBuilder loses another VP. Is anyone left over there? Hello? Grab a mint julep and bet on your favorite horse. 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 show you how to text at the speed of talent. That's gocanvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent. Sound Effects: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly. Joel: Do you remember the old Colon Blow commercial on SNL? Chad: Yes. Joel: I'm thinking you don't need Colon Blow when you have Texas food, tacos and burritos, and enchiladas. That's a different podcast, but you know what I'm talking about. Chad: Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't had a Colon Blow incident, so I don't know what exactly you put in those burritos, but ... Joel: You didn't have the Micheladas, that's why. Chad: Yeah, that's exactly right. Almost had a fucking- Feffer: Such an asshole! Chad: Almost had a head plant with one of those god damn scooters, though. Joel: Oh, my god. Yeah, we got to tell the story. So Austin, like most metros in the US I guess, have these scooters, right? Lime, Bird, Lyft, and Uber, and Chad and I being old, middle-aged dudes- Chad: Dude, I'm not old. Joel: You know what? Well, we're older than the kids that typically ride around on these scooters and we said, "You know what, mother fucker? We're going to ride some of these scooters." And it took about four tries until we finally figured it out, but once we did, the Chad and Cheese show almost became the Cheese show because Chad almost died as evidenced by our buddy Kyle at Hireology who randomly saw us on the street riding around. But those things are pretty fun. Chad: No, that was fucking hilarious. We're sitting at the bar after getting off the danger scooters and I get a text from Kyle. He's like, "Was that just you on Caesar Chavez racing on a scooter?" I'm like, "Yeah. Yeah, that was me." Joel: Somehow they always ended up at a bar. I don't know if it's a magnetic pull thing or something in the steering. Chad: Pretty smart. Joel: But yeah, those scooters always ended up at a bar. Chad: You. Joel: Crazy, crazy. Chad: Thanks to our peeps at Tile Roof for actually having us down for an unplugged session. Joel: How fun was that? Chad: That was a blast, man. I love that shit. Joel: Unplugged. I like that. I like that. It was a private event. No recording, no private cameras, secret cameras. It was only for the people at the event. That was kind of cool. Chad: Yep, yep. Allows people to open up, say exactly what they feel. Maybe not exactly. It allows us to. But without the fear of being recorded and put on the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Let's keep it with the food trend. Our buddies at Talk Push - pushing it real good - announced a deal with McDonald's in what Asian country? Chad: In the Philippines. Joel: In the Philippines. How many stores? Or how many restaurants? Chad: Over 635 stores. Fuck. Joel: Yet another death match, DEMOpocalypse, friend of the podcast who's hitting it big, and couldn't be happier for Max and company out there at Talk Push. Big shout-out to them. Chad: Yeah. Love it man. Have a Kelly Robinson sighting. He actually was tweeting at us, and I don't know where the hell Kelly and Maverick have been. I think they've just been heads down at the new startup called Content Apps. So guys, whenever you're ready, you can come on Firing Squad. We'd love to have you. Joel: Yeah. We'll put you in front of the squad and see what happens. I think they'd probably fair pretty well. Chad: And if you haven't listened this week we actually had Sam Fitzroy from Maia Labs. It's not that Mya, the M-A-I-A Maia, Maia Labs. So check it out. Joel: Yeah, yeah. And of course we'll get on him for the fact that he's named after for another company in our space that has well-funded coffers and is pretty well known. But standing firm to his ideals, Sam is not going to change the name of the company. Chad: I dig it. Joel: They're still Maia. The road show continues next week as you and I head to Portugal for TA Tech Europe. I can't wait. I've never been to Portugal. The death match line up is just sick. We got a real robot with Tengai Unbiased. We've got Kilts with Candidate.ai. Chad: ID. Joel: We've got the original Mya chat bot that's going to be there, and I'm spacing on the last one, as I always do. Chad: Yeah, so Opening.io with their crazy sourcing algorithm all the way from Ireland. So yeah man. We've got Mya, Tengai Unbiased. We have Candidate ID, and Opening.io. Joel: And by the way did we give a shout-out to Gordon and his fundraising from Russia? Did we- Chad: No. Joel: Have we talked about that? Chad: It wasn't from Russia. It was from Germany. Joel: Let's give them a shout-out. Germany, sorry. It's probably being funneled out of Russia. Who knows? Chad: Well, I mean, Germany's a top five, I think, GDP country? Where, Russia, not so much. But okay. Joel: I don't know. Russia's been in the news lately. I don't know what to do. Adam, man, congratulations dude. I hope that money works out for you, and obviously winning death match would take you to the next levels so good luck next week. Chad: Yeah, no shit, right? Shout-out to Ryan Christoi. Nice Chad and Cheese t-shirt there, buddy. Appreciate that. I got to love how he actually geared up with KRT swag for the pic. That's not a shot across the shaker bow at all, right? Joel: Oh, it's a big FU to Joey Jr. as far as I'm concerned. Chad: Joey loves it. Joel: That may lead to a real death match at the next conference. By the way how does he have our shirt, but we don't have... well maybe you do, but I don't have any KRT swag. I got no hoodie. I got no hat. I got no t-shirt. What's up, Christoi? Chad: Yeah, we're probably going to have to get through Olivia, because she's a solid fan, and apparently Christoi is not. Joel: We know who the competent one is there at KRT to get this stuff done. Chad: Last shout-out, Jacquelin Cooly. You saw the Key and Peel episode, the substitute teacher one? Joel: We went over this before the show. I have not seen that skit, but I'll with it. Let's go. Chad: Okay. So if you haven't, you've got to YouTube and look for Key and Peel Substitute Teacher, and it's fucking hilarious. But anyway, that is Jacquelin. Actually said she was listening to the podcast walking down the street or something like that, and maybe she was getting some funny looks because she was laughing at the stupid shit we were saying. Joel: By the way what's your favorite Key and Peel skit? Chad: Oh, man. There's so many good ones. The football one is really good, where not three pumps. You can't do three pumps. But I think really the best Key and Peel one is the substitute teacher one. It is fucking hilarious, so you got to check it out. Joel: Yeah, I love the coach. When he's the coach, the stereotypical polyester shorts and the butterfly collar. That's fucking classic. And part of it's because my dad was a coach back in the 80s, and basically he looked like that in terms of his attire. Chad: Just like that. Joel: Good stuff. All right, you ready to get to the show? Chad: Just about. Don't forget, Recruit Philly in May, Jobcase live, not to mention SmashFly Transform. If you don't have tickets to these things, kids, I don't know what your problem is. Joel: Did you say Philly? Did you say Philly? Chad: I said Philly. Yeah, we're going to Philly. Sound Effects: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly. Chad: But if you want to know where we're going to be at because you want to check it out, go to chadcheese.com, click on events, and you'll see our world tour list. So check it out, buy some tickets, and see us there. Joel: Let's do this. Chad: Buy us a beer. Joel: Yeah, definitely buy us a beer. You ready to get to the news? Sound Effects: Ye be poo without Talroo. Joel: All right, big news that hit our phones last night, actually. Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite applicant tracking system, is stepping down from the company. He's been there for over 10 years. He took it over when it was a 15-person company, and he joined the company after basically heading up Yahoo HotJobs, which old-timers like us remember being the third sort of player in the job board space after CareerBuilder and Monster. Took it over and shortly after the world took a big shit, so he leaves HotJobs, goes to this little startup. The economy goes to shit. He brings them out of the muck and the mud, and brings them up to a... I would say one of the top ATS's around currently. That's very debatable, and if you have 2% market share in the ATS world, you're like a major player. But certainly reputable ATS. They did a big deal a few months ago. They dropped $200 million to buy three companies, Rolepoint, Talemetry, and Canvas, which leads us to the segue that the new CEO will be... Chad: Drum roll please. Aman Brar. So I think there's some semantics that we have to get into. So K1 spent the money, and that was 200 million. Jobvite bought three companies out of that, one of those companies being Canvas, Canvas CEO being Aman Brar. So awesome, awesome opportunity for an awesome dude. Obviously wherever Dan lands, if he wants to land anywhere... Hell, he might land on a beach and just retire. Who the hell knows? He can do what he wants. But a couple of great guys, but this couldn't happen to a better guy. Aman is amazing, so we're really excited to see what happens with Jobvite, Canvas, Talemetry, Rolepoint, and whatever they do with that platform. Joel: Yep. So they currently have about 400 employees globally. We know that they're currently headquartered in San Mateo, California. They do have a nice footprint here in Indianapolis, and if you haven't listened to the podcast with Dan Finnigan, I certainly recommend that you do so. Joel: So it's unclear as to... Aman's here in Indianapolis. The company headquarters is in San Mateo. What happens to the headquarters and the executives? Where do they go? Who goes what, and where? So we'll stay on top of that, but they're certainly in growth mode, and my guess is that they'll be growing in all parts of the world as they roll out these acquisitions into this year and next year. Joel: The other thing that's interesting, I think, is that Aman does not come from the employment space. He launched Canvas in 2017, so let's give him nearly two years in the business. He became sort of an SMS expert at his time with Cha Cha, which no one will probably remember. It was an SMS-based search engine back in the day. And then launched sort of a SaaS support system. The basic point is that he's got two years in the employment space. Let's see what he does in terms of innovation, growth, and targeting, and what they do. I think that'll be pretty interesting, because most CEOs that take over in this space have some sort of employment experience. So I'm kind of excited to see what he does with very little employment industry experience at this point. Chad: Yeah. I've heard a couple of rumblings that this has happened so close to the K1 investment that this is kind of like Shades of Apollo coming into CareerBuilder, where there's going to be some heads that fall. And from my standpoint, I don't see Aman as that guy. You know what I mean? I don't think he's the kind of guy that you bring in to chop heads. So obviously the rumors are going to be out there about anybody who gets any type of investment, and then the CEO goes away. But I think this is more of a vision play for them. Not to mention also having deep roots here, in a more cost-effective area, and developer-rich, and workforce-rich area, like Indianapolis. Maybe growing here, not only in San Mateo, but here as well might be a strength for the organization, and lower cost. Joel: Yeah, that would be really interesting. K1 didn't come in as sort of a pennies on the dollar acquisition. This was a, "Here's a bunch of money. Buy these three companies, and let's roll." So I'd be really shocked if they start chopping heads at the company, although that does traditionally happen. So we'll have to see. It would be really odd to do that, and then start cutting things back. It looks like they're in growth mode to me. Chad: Yeah, me too. Well that being said, we just mentioned Apollo and the whole CareerBuilder kind of fiasco thing that's been going on. We do know that Matt Grover, who has been at CareerBuilder and he's VP of Marketing for... He's been at Career Building for over a decade, and now at the VP level, is now leaving the organization. So it's interesting to see- Sound Effects: Boo! Chad: Again just constantly see top-tier talent who obviously were invested in CareerBuilder just say, "You know what? I'm going to hit the fucking eject button." Joel: Yeah. So I don't know much about Matt. Did he take over for Richard Castellini, when Richard went to Australia? Or was he on Richard's team? Chad: Yeah, I don't know exactly the hierarchy of the time and where he fit into it. I do know that when Apollo took over, he pretty much became the man when it came to marketing. Joel: Yeah, and he was probably last man standing. I know, as we talked about in the podcast, they pretty much chopped off the communications component, Hope Gurion and I forget the guy's name. But yeah, they were both gone and replaced with a PR agency. He probably didn't feel like he had a lot of support and resources to do a whole lot of marketing. Chad: Yeah. Well, and as LinkedIn, he still shows that he's at CareerBuilder, but he has close to 16 years. And again, it's just having a guy like that leave your organization, probably doesn't make the leadership and/or individuals underneath feel very good. Joel: The good news, though, I guess is they can't make crappy commercials like Monster without a marketing person. So there's that. Chad: Or they just can't do anything at all, which is pretty much what we've seen. Other than that big fucking monstrosity thing that they had at HR Tech, which was just a fucking monumental waste of money. Joel: Yeah, yeah. I heard that a lot of money is in the CEO's penthouse suite in Chicago somewhere. Chad: I'm not touching that one. Chad: So another CEO in our space... well, TechCrunch came out and said, "Hey, guess what Ladders? You just exposed 13.7 million user records with a basic security lapse." Sound Effects: Boo! Chad: So apparently, the information was on an Amazon AWS, and there was no password associated [crosstalk 00:17:55]. Sound Effects: Boo! Chad: It was just free and clear data. Joel: Where do you go with that? No password protection. Chad: So names, email addresses, employment history, current comp, employer, job title, all that stuff. I mean, that's not really big stuff, and that's not that big of a deal, but... I mean, I don't want my email out there. It is anyway, but still. But some of the data contained personal and sensitive information beyond that of email addresses, like postal addresses, phone numbers, and approximate geolocations based off their IP address. Joel: Awesome. Awesome. Chad: That is where I would get pissed off. Joel: Yep. So their CEO, Marc Cenedella, of which there's not a more miserable human being in our space as far as I'm concerned, confirmed the lapse, said the database has been secured. They put a password in. Good for them. Chad: Good job. Joel: And ensured the company would investigate for potential theft. Awesome. Chad: Yeah, that's awesome. Joel: Well if you were looking for a reason to not use Ladders, this is a good one. If you've been looking for a reason to dump them, this is an even better reason. Chad: Yeah. I think the last thing that they actually put out that we made fun of them about was that they were doing performance-based advertising along with email campaigns and banner ads. Joel: They started pay-per-click advertising and pitched it as innovative in 2019. Chad: Oh, shit. Joel: By the way I think we have another live view from the R&D department at The Ladders. That's always fun. That's always fun. Joel: One of the comments I got that was really funny... and this was from an Indeed employee, and I can say that because it was on social media. He probably took it down because Indeed's really anal about their employees commenting on stuff. But he said, "Are we more surprised that they had an unprotected database, or that they had 13.7 million users?" Chad: Well dude, I guarantee you... I mean, 13.7 users in the, what, 10 plus years they've actually been around? I mean, ah, fuck. Joel: Yeah, they add up after a while. Anyway, yeah. Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly. Joel: Let's get a word from JobAdX, and we'll talk about Google's foray into the enterprise market. Chad: Getting Googley. JobAdX: Finding the right fit is important when you're deciding on shoes for a long day at trade show, when you're picking the right podcast for your commute, and most importantly, when you're looking for the right candidate. With JobAdX, you can attract more relevant, engaged candidates to your jobs by harnessing the best in ad-tech targeting. From predictive industry analysis and keyword click data to premium first-page placement and reducing redundant applications, our candidate targeting technology ensures that you're reaching talent that's as interested in working with you as you are with them. JobAdX: Now with in-ad video and multimedia, you can share your employer brand story and company culture with job seekers so they can visualize themselves in your office, all hands meeting, or ax-throwing team member adventure, all without navigating away from your job posting. Increased engagement makes for fewer steps between job seeker and new team member. JobAdX: Ready to ramp up your job advertising campaigns with the best in ad-tech? Visit our new website at www.jobadx.com. That's J-O-B-A-D-X dot com. Attract, engage, employ, with JobAdX. Oh, and happy anniversary to our favorite dangerous dudes. Thanks for all the traffic, shout-outs, and good laughs. JobAdX proudly team Chad and Cheese in 2019. Joel: Chad, this just in. We have a live feed from Ladders cybersecurity department. Chad: There's a company that is making a lot of noise right now, and they surprised the shit out of me by taking Hire, Google's ATS, their SMB ATS... and we predicted that it would go enterprise, but not this early. They made a announcement that they're going enterprise. Joel: Yeah. We're both shocked by that. I thought they'd kick the tires on the SMB market for at least three to five years. And fuck that. I'm sure they got a lot of big companies inquire about, "Hey, when is this going to be for us? We're ready to spend money." And that encouraged them to get on it, and put out an enterprise product. So good for them. I'm sure Microsoft is equally excited about it, but we'll see how they roll with the big co. Chad: And I like... they've been rolling out feature by feature, month by month, to just keep the PR rolling. And they've been doing this whole brick-by-brick kind of a thing, "Hey, we're building a foundation here," and then boom. I mean, they just fucking drop a load in the cement truck. But the new, I guess, enterprise version has enhanced approvals for different workflows, a referral portal... and I'll say that again because it makes Sackett happy. A referral portal. Feffer: Such an asshole! Chad: It's weird, what gets Sackett off. Interactive reports, and then integrations with namely Sapling, and a bunch of others, and this is just the beginning. Not to mention, you've got to remember that this product has automatic candidate matching in it. So therefore, if you have a resume database, which you should, as soon as you post the rec, it's automatically going to go to your database, that's already paid for, and start bringing up candidates that fit for that position. So I mean, there are all these different pieces of tech that you can't even get in an applicant tracking system today, that they're rolling out in an enterprise. And one of the companies that they were highlighting was a 3,000-employee company across three continents, and then you had another one that was 11,000 employees across 30 countries. So not incredibly huge, but not small, either. Joel: Isn't that one of your favorite company names? Chad: What oh, TitMouse? Joel: Yeah. Sorry, I couldn't resist that. Now what was fun to me was they announced this on the same day that they announced quarterly results. So click traffic is declining. Google stock took a hit this week, 10% or so. I don't know where it is today. But I mean they do have a serious issue with revenue in terms of the amount of clicks going down, and part of that is simply they have competition, right? They have social media. They have Amazon getting into advertising. Snapchat and Instagram are taking a lot of the oxygen out of the advertising room. Joel: But I think also it underscores that Google was looking for new streams of revenue. And to me, they're clearly motivated around employment because they see that there are dollars there, and there are opportunities to diversify what they do in terms of pay-per-click and their traditional advertising strategy. However I will say that I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing pay-per-click options for Google for jobs coming at least this year, in light of the declining revenues on clicks. Chad: Yeah. Well, and they're also starting to power all the other platforms that are out there, whether they're job sites or even engagement management platforms, or candidate engagement platforms like Jive where they just put a case study out that demonstrated Seamen's, the company that uses Jive, received a 30% lift in qualified candidate applications after using the Google search within Jive itself. So it's not that Google's coming out... Google's strategy is not to come out and build these platforms to take over the world. They are wanting to power the platforms, all the platforms, but also lift them up, right? So I mean that gives Jive a great market advantage to go into a company and say, "Hey, great. We've got the best search in the world, and this is what we can actually do for you to be able to help you engage candidates, and have a better user experience." Joel: Yeah, and I thought, because we were just at an agency meeting this week... I think all this bodes well for revenue opportunities for agencies. Pay-per-click experts for a long time have had certification on pay-per-click and Google, and I could certainly see a day where Google will certify people to do hire by Google, Google for jobs, optimization or getting jobs into Google, as well as the job search API. So I think it's opportunity for agencies as well as we go forward. Chad: Again, they just want to be the engine that powers it. Whatever you build on top of it is entirely up to you. Get fucking creative, and go make money. Joel: Do you think they'll ever offer backfill to job sites? Chad: Yeah, there's a good possibility. I mean, why not? The content's there, and they've always been a content provider, right? So Google custom search? What is that, right? It's the same kind of thing. Joel: I mean, it'd be super easy to do the API and then the first two results are Google pay-per-click off of Google for jobs postings. Chad: Yep, sounds very familiar. Sounds familiar. Joel: Just saying, Google keep doing what you do man. It's fun to talk about. As well as Facebook, privacy concerns be damned. Chad: Yeah, where the hell have these guys been? Joel: Global reputation be damned. Chad: Yeah. I mean, they have an integration with SAP and success factors, and they launch it with one-applicant tracking system instead of multiple. But it's like, why haven't you been doing this for months? I mean, this should've been like the foray into getting more content into Facebook. And if you have more content into Facebook, then they can start banging you with that fucking marketing material, "Hey, if you boosted this sales position, you could receive X amount of eyeballs," or what have you. I mean, it's- Joel: Oh, you know that's coming. Chad: Well, yeah it is. I mean, if you use Facebook as a marketing platform, that's exactly what they do. Every time you post something, they just want to remind you that you could get more eyeballs, more qualified people, blah blah blah. So yeah. I mean, to me, it makes no sense why they waited this long, because they could've been driving revenue for months. Joel: Now don't get too down on them. They've had some issues to deal with. Privacy, GDPR, hacking emails and shit. This employment thing is probably not as on the front burner as you would like. Chad: It's a revenue stream. Joel: But it's a nice little... ultimately, every ATS worth a shit is going to be integrated with Facebook and get their jobs on there. And I think as I look through listings recently, there's a good amount of shit there. And the more that they can have reputable applicant tracking system jobs, as opposed to some of the shit that's on there, that's going to be good for them. So yeah, kudos. Keep doing more of that shit, Facebook. Chad: Well I think it's interesting because I actually reached out to Max at Talk Push, because their platform really right out of the gate was predicated on Facebook, and being able to get ads on Facebook, and being able to leverage Facebook along with the engagement chat bots that they have integrated into the system. I'm like, "Dude, why haven't you been doing..." He's like, "Dude, we've been doing this for well over a year." So it's almost like Facebook doesn't know what the fuck's even going on in their platform, in some cases. Joel: I would not be surprised if there's enough craziness going on at Facebook that they don't. And they just had their annual F8 meeting, where - you saw this - they redesigned Messenger. They redesigned the mobile app, primary website. They got shit going on with this whole privacy stuff, and if they don't get that right, it doesn't matter if they get employment right, because nobody'll be on the service. They'll all be on Tik Tok. Chad: I know you will. Joel: Oh, don't play like you're not on Tik Tok at the airport, wasting time. Chad: I love it. Joel: Because it's a huge waste of time. Chad: It is. Joel: Oh my god. I hate myself after being on that app. And speaking of not wasting time, let's hear from Sovren, and we'll talk about Caucasians, bigots, and Australians. Chad: That sounds like fun. Joel: Top that, other podcasts in the HR world. 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. Sovren: 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 can't tell if I'm laughing a lot because I'm tired as hell, or if our show's actually funny this week. Chad: And dude, you are tired as hell because we had to run from C-terminal to B-terminal- Feffer: Such an asshole! Chad: -in Atlanta last night. And yeah. We didn't make it, guys. We didn't make it. They shut the doors, and Joel was so pissed, because he actually ran to get to that fucking gate. And the plane was still there. He was like, "Let us on!" They were like, "Sorry, dude. You're late." Joel: Yeah, I'm so mad at Delta. Every airline closes the door at 10 minutes before takeoff. We missed it by three minutes. And you know that they know there's other people connecting with flights, and you know that they know it's the last flight of the day, and people want to get home to families and shit. So yeah, I was a little bit ticked off. But the running did not help, though I like to think I did hold my own a little bit with you. Chad: Yeah, no. Remember what I said? I never leave a man behind. So yeah, I just went ahead and paced at you. I was at like a speed-walk. Joel: Yeah, and no one out there get the vision that it was like Forrest Gump carrying Bubba. I was keeping up as best I could, which I was fine until about the last 50 yards. Chad: Yeah, you were good. Joel: Then I turned into... oh, nevermind. Let's get into preferably Caucasians and AI bigots. Chad: Yeah, that sounds like blast. So Cynet, apparently, Cynet Systems... I'm going to spell that out for you so you guys can all check this out. C-Y-N-E-T, Cynet Systems, had a job description that they actually posted on LinkedIn for an account manager in Pharma, in Tampa, Florida. And one of the preferences was... get ready. Joel: I'm ready. Chad: Preferably Caucasian who has- Sound Effects: Such an asshole! Chad: Who has good technical background, including knowledge of RPA. Sound Effects: Boo! Chad: So the irony... it's not just bad that they were some fucking bigot put this shit out there, number one. But number two, you go to the company's homepage and right there in front of god and all that's holy, they highlight their supplier diversity program, which helps minority-owned businesses find employees. Right there on the homepage, and then on the carousel, one of the carousels actually say, "Promoting workplace diversity and inclusion." Chad: I don't know if they understand that diversity and inclusion is not different shades of Caucasian. I have no fucking clue, dude. Joel: I'd love to think this is just a one-off, idiot, stupid mistake, but we've talked about stuff like this before. Chad: Yeah. Well the dude, the engineer from Google, who wrote the whole fucking paper up of why females are inferior when it comes to engineering software or whatever the fuck he was talking about. I mean, yeah. Joel: I got nothing dude. I can't believe people publish this shit. It's one thing to be in a private meeting at a company and be like, "We need primarily Caucasian workers," and actually putting it publicly on LinkedIn. And I guess they got torched, as they should've, on Twitter, right? Chad: Yeah. The company got torched and the, "employees who were responsible for the posting," were fired. But there's an underlying problem there. Joel: By the way this was in the US. Chad: Yeah. I mean... Joel: So we can't even chalk it up to, oh, a foreign country that maybe - I don't know - has different language, or Caucasian means something different there. I don't know. Chad: You go to Google and type in Cynet Systems, C-Y-N-E-T Systems, it pops up right at the top. Top stories from NBC, CNN, Fox News. I mean, they are getting fucking pounded. So yeah. Shit had better change, and change quick. Joel: Someone needs to go to their LinkedIn page, and see how many employees are not Caucasian. Maybe we could do that in our spare time, which we don't have. Chad: Yeah. I think the EEOC, and possibly the LFCCP - since they're in Virginia, they're probably a federal contractor - they might want to take a nice close look to these guys. Joel: Yeah, a little red flag for them to check on what's going on there Chad: Well then you ask yourself, "Okay, so no worries. AI is going to save us from all the bigots," right? Because AI's smarter. It's all-knowing. But then we remember that Amazon had to shut down their candidate matching algorithm. Joel: Yep, yep, yep. Well we're going to see a robot next week, in the form of Tengai Unbiased. Chad: That's right. Joel: So we're going to put this to the test next week. The Swedish ladies better be ready to get this robot gear, because we're going to put it to the test. Chad: That will be fun. It'll be incredibly interesting. We were actually watching a presentation this week at the Talroo summit, and the guy actually popped up Tengai and was talking about it. And it's like this is so kind of weird/cool that everybody wants... they want to know about this thing. Joel: Yeah, and I loved how he sort of underscored that this is so European. Europeans are okay talking to a robot. Chad: A robot. Oh, fuck. Joel: Americans, maybe not so much. Chad: Maybe not. Joel: All right, well let's leave with a story from out of Australia. Chad: Uh-oh. Joel: EY in Australia has 12 weeks of, "life leave," for employees to travel, to take up a hobby, or just do nothing. And you and I, although most of our life and people would say is a vacation, are really into companies that are giving off that much kind of leave. Chad: Yeah, so here's a thing. I mean, when you start providing employees... in most cases, not all. But employees with the flexibility and autonomy to not live their life through work, they're still going to work hard. And they're going to find more passion in that work if they don't feel like they're fucking forced to - I don't know - fucking punch a clock, or somebody's on their ass because you're not online when it's 5:00 PM, or what have you. The autonomy piece and actually understanding what drives a person, an individual, is incredibly important. Chad: And I think in the US, we are fundamentally wrong in focusing on work as much as we do. Because there's so much out there that we need to experience, and that makes us more diverse. It makes us more open, and helps us understand how to troubleshoot problems better, in many cases. So yeah. I think the rest of the world's figuring this shit out while we're just kind of pounding away. Joel: Well let's be honest. I mean, there's so much fun shit to do in Australia, right? You got Foster's beer. You can race kangaroo. You can wrestle koala bears. You can surf, and all that good stuff. So to me, it's like there's so much good stuff. How could you not take more time and just drink up all that Australia has to offer? Chad: There's plenty of good stuff here. We've got stuff. Joel: Unless you're in Philly. Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly. Joel: Are 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. Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly. #Jobvite #Canvas #Careerbuilder #TheLadders #Amazon #HirebyGoogle #Facebook #Cynet

Sam Fitzroy isn't new to the Recruitment Tech industry, but his new platform is... Maia - no, not that Mya, the chatbot - brings its game to the Firing Squad. With a founder who cut his teeth at Indeed, Jobcase and The Muse, it's bound to get interesting. Will Sam's experience be enough to get him through the Firing Squad? You'll have to listen to find out. It's another Talroo fueled podcast! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community. Talroo Pirate: I'd be loving Talroo. They'd be stuffing me for years now with crew of the highest caliber, and I mean crew that be ready to set sail. Not some landlubber who'll be uploading his resume years ago. Talroo, data driven job ads that deliver. Ye be poo without Talroo. Ye be walking the plank if you're not be using Talroo for your recruiting needs. Don't be a bilge sucking scallywag. AVAST use Talroo to hire better. Chad: Now that is impressive. Talroo's commitment to ensuring that companies looking for hard to find talent, not only find the talent, they find a partner in Talroo who works hard to join and engage their community. Way to go through Talroo. This rum, is for you. Talroo Pirate: Don't be a bilge sucking scallywag. Avast, use Talroo to hire better. Chad: Target unique audiences, find the right candidates at talroo.com. That's, T-A-L-R-O-O.com. 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: Let's do this man. It's been a long time. Chad: I'm so ready. Joel: We got such a sucker today. I can't believe it. Special guest today from Maia Labs, Sam Fitzroy. Sam, welcome to the show. Sam: Thank you guys. Joel: Good. He's still there. Sam: I'm excited to be here. Joel: He's still there. [crosstalk 00:01:46] Sam was a little nervous to be on the show. Sam, are the nerves still there or they're gone? Sam: I mean, we'll see what happens. But... Chad: You can't blame the nerve, Sam. You can't blame the nerves. Sam: I'm here. Joel: All right, Sam. First question is an easy one. Okay. Give us a little bit about you and then we'll get into the product a little bit after that? Sam: All right. Well, so I guess the most relevant thing about me for the podcast. I've been working in HR tech for 12 years long time. I started out back in Indeed when it was a small... Chad: Such an asshole. Sam: I'd some history with Chad there which is kind of funny. We can talk about that. Chad: I don't even remember it by the way. Sam: So I was there for 12 years. I did ATS partnerships, if you can imagine that like every day just calling up ATSs, trying to get them to do product integrations with Indeed. So I spent a long time there. I was there for eight years. I left, I went to The Muse. I was with the Muse for a couple years. And then after that, I went out and I did a little contracting and then decided to start Maia. Sam: So I've been working on this for, thinking about it for last the year really had a product in field for maybe six months. And that's my quick background. I live in New York. I just got married in October. Joel: Nice. Sam: Life is good. Joel: Well, it is up until now. Chad, why don't you give Sam the rundown on the rules of firing squad. Chad: All right. For Sam and the listeners this is very simple. Sam, you're going to get a two minute pitch for Maia. At the end of two minutes, you will hear that bell. Then Joe and I will hit you with some rapid fire Q and A. If your answers start rambling, Joel is going to hit you with the crickets and we will move along. It's also your signal to tighten your shit up. At the end of Q and A you will receive one of three grades, either big applause, which means you killed it. Golf clap, you're not quite there yet buddy. Tighten your game up and the firing squad. Announcer: Ye be poo without Talroo. Joel: You don't want to hear that. Chad: The firing squad is not what you want. So that's the firing squad. Joel, is the timer. Joel: The timer is ready. Sam, are you ready? Sam: Ready to rock. Chad: Do it. Joel: All right. Give us two minutes. Starting. Sam: All right. So employers all over the world and especially here in the US spend a ton of time and money marketing themselves to make hires, yet 92% of people who land on their job pages don't apply. It's crazy drop off, and it leads to a ton of wasted job advertising spend and just, missed opportunities to make great hires. And then what's worse, is that the traffic these employers are paying for are converts to hire at a super low rate, like less than 2% of applicants from most major job boards get hired. Sam: So let's talk about the people who don't apply. There's a lot of reasons people don't apply. Sometimes they're just early in their search. They're doing a lot of research, checking out where they might be the best fit. They're not out there spraying and praying job applications. They're choosy. Some of these people are really into your company, they want to apply, but there's no job. Or you have an awesome candidate, they found a job, they get to apply by the hit the nightmare apply process and they bail out. Sam: So today, the people who don't apply or just don't have time, don't have an effective way to show interest and stay connected with an employer. So that's why I built Maia. Maia is a platform built to engage passive talent that employers are currently losing. So we have exit intent capture forms. They capture job seekers as they're exiting job pages. When they sign up, we sync the data with the employer, and then they start receiving helpful content on a regular basis to keep them engaged. Sam: Maia handles all that automatically. Employers can also send their own content or direct messages through our platform. Candidates also receive relevant jobs from other companies, not just the company where they signed up. So unlike other products in the market, Maia puts the candidate first. By doing that and sending truly helpful content, we're able to deliver good results for employers. Sam: So we're super early. We have a handful of customers, we're growing. Its pay for performance and easily connects into a company's existing ATS or CRM. And if you want to learn more, you can check out maialabs.com. That's M-A-I-A-L-A-B-S.com, or email me, sam@maialabs. Chad: At least he's been listening to the show and he actually got the fucking URL in this time. Sam: I'm I the first one who did that? Joel: I gave him a little bit of leeway on that one, but then he started with like sub heads and more story, so nice try, Sam. Nice try. Chad, get him. Chad: There's a lot to dig into here. First and foremost, your automated engagement program delivers helpful content and keeps passive talent engaged. What kind of content are you talking about? Because one of the biggest issues companies have, or they feel like they have is that, I can't create my own fuck. I don't have time to create content, I don't have people to create content. Joel: Exactly. Chad: So what content will Maia provide? Sam: So we have writers who are writing unique content on a daily basis. So it's today it's pretty high level generic career advice content. So it ranges. It can be like interview tips, resume tips. So it can be like, if you're looking for a job, that kind of content we also do kind of like content that's totally unrelated to jobs, just things that people who are professionals might be into, like, why reading books is good for you and how that can affect you professionally. So we have writers it's a range of content, and we include jobs and then career advice articles. Chad: So it's all your writer's content? It's not writers that or articles that are sourced externally? Sam: It's a mix. So we have at the top of our email, because it's today's email program, its content from our writers. And at the bottom, we include articles that are related to the topic that we wrote about. Joel: Can I start with the name from my stand point? Sam: Sure. Joel: Okay, a lot of our members and listeners will know that Maia equals chatbot. Chad: Maia system. Joel: So a major hurdle that I see in your business is the fact that you're named after a burgeoning company in the space that's already called Maya that's already easier to spell in M-Y-A, than M-A-I-A. So are you guys going to change the name? You're going to stick with it? Like what's up? Sam: I mean, we're definitely not changing. We're going to stick with it. I guess it's a hurdle, maybe. But we haven't really faced the hurdle. It's actually kind of been an advantage for us. So, we're getting people who might think we're the chatbot in some cases. So it's helped in a lot of cases to get some attention, maybe not the right way. But the reason that we picked the name Maia is because it has meaning for what we're doing. So it means courage and growth. And so Maia is really two sides, but we really focus on like the consumer side job seekers. So, the name has meaning for job seekers who are signing up or passive talent. Chad: Maia was also the daughter of Atlas. Joel: All right. So quick answer to that question. I'm not sold. But anyway... Sam: Looks like you did research, Chad. Joel: So you mentioned that people who sign up through your system will get email jobs from other companies. Did I hear that right? Sam: That's right. Joel: Why in the hell would I use your service if I know that you're going to send jobs to the people that were on my site that aren't my company? Sam: Exactly. I think the problem that I see is that employers I believe that it's their candidate and that they own job seekers. And I think that's just the fundamentally wrong approach. And when employers take that approach and they have been, they treat job seekers like they own them. Chad: Like shit. Sam: well, what ends up happening is, if they send any content at all, it's self-serving, it's only about them, it's self-promotional and is generally not helpful. So when you think about like, the people who are not applying, they're signing up because they're not ready for some reason. And so to just send them job alerts from your own company over and over and over again, and not any other helpful content, is just not helpful. Sam: So the reason we do it is because, it's good for job seekers, it makes the email more valuable, it makes them more likely to open it and stay engaged, and actually leads to more clicks on the employers job because we highlight them at the very top with branding. But we do it just because it's good for job seekers and it's a better experience. Joel: For the record, I'm okay with the original content, just not job things from other companies. Chad: So remember AllianceQ and Jobfox? Sam: I remember Jobfox. Chad: Okay. So their models in some way were predicated on this sharing model as well. So I mean, back in that time it couldn't be adopted. There were like a handful of companies who actually thought that it would actually help them to be able to be in a pool per se, because that's what you're creating. You're creating this pool of job seekers that everybody is really sharing and sharing content back and forth. Chad: So from our standpoint and from yours, from what you've seen thus far, what's been the major, has that been a major hurdle for you guys to be able to say, look, this job seeker, this candidate, this user or customer is not yours. But yet you're paying me a fee. Have you seen any pushback on that? Sam: I mean, early on there was major pushback against it, but I think instead of just kind of like putting it in, like hiding from that and kind of making that smaller part of pitch, we've just brought it front and center and it's like almost the main part of the pitch is that, we really focus on doing what's right for the job seeker and what's truly helpful for them. And by doing that, it leads to better results. Sam: And we've been able to win over employers and convince them that look, what's been going on in the industry is not right, like sending self serving stuff is just not helpful. You don't get strong performance out of your talent networks if you're using them at all. And by just doing and giving job seekers and passive talent what they want, like helpful content, you'll get better results. So we've had employers try it, like come in, see the results you get and then make a decision if you want to move forward. So that's kind of how we've been approaching it. Like let's let the data speak for itself. Chad: So in this market, and we've got a very tight job market, I think it's easier to sell that to clients because they're like, shit, I'll try anything and this does sounds, different than anything we've probably ever done. But when the market starts to loosen up a little bit, don't you feel like it's going to be harder to sell because at that point, employers they get a little chip on their shoulder, and now they have a little power back in their pocket? Sam: Maybe. But when the market reverses, companies are also going to be advertising more to get talent, in some of their hard to fill roles. And so there's a certain efficiency that Maia brings if you look at it with your job advertising. So if you're running a lot of job ads on Indeed or Zip, you're measuring a cost per applicant, you're measuring cost per hire, by capturing the people who you're normally losing, you reduce all those costs. So I think that, that will become more important when the market reverses. Joel: To me I think, I saw your presentation in Nashville and one of the things that really sort of appealed to me was when you start really looking at the math around that dollars and cents, and how much you're really spending per click or applicant is one thing to look at, but how much are you actually losing because those people, you paying for people to go to your site, but you're not capturing them. So to me that was a powerful message in your sales pitch. Joel: Now we get a lot of companies on firing squad that sort of dance on the line between product and feature. And one of the things that concerns me about Maia is that it feels a lot like a feature. Some of our listeners might remember Jobs to Careers, or Jobs to Web, sorry. Sam: Yes. Joel: That would create career sites and then they would create sort of a business card form for people to fill out if they didn't want to put in their whole resume. Like do are you concerned that, ATSs can just productize our feature, put this as a feature that's sort of included as opposed to something that's a product? Or will you be evolving this product into more of a product instead of a feature in the future? Sam: It's definitely very future like today. So I can't argue against that. But I'm definitely not worried about ATSs or recruitment marketing platforms, or any other software provider in this space, doing anything similar, because they're in the market of building tools to sell to employers. And then it's up to the employer to go ahead and use that tool. We're doing it totally differently. Sam: We don't offer a tool, we offer a product that delivers results. It's a pay for performance product. So we focus on job seekers number one, like all product decisions are made first for candidates and job seekers. And I don't think anyone else in the industry like ATSs or other platforms have that approach at all. They build for the employer. So I'm not worried about those platforms. But it is featured like today and we're definitely going to evolve it. I mean, the product is super simple right now. But it could grow for sure into, we might even be able to offer some of the software that those platforms offer for free. And so we'd be excited to do that. Chad: So I see that Maia also pulls in job history not provided by the candidate. Pretty Big Brother ish. Where are you finding the job history at? Sam: So we use like, we pay for that through third party data services. So we're not like building our own scrapers or anything like that. So, I guess whoever we're buying it from is on the hook. But it's not a lie. It's just job history. It's like basically their job titles and companies, their career history. Joel: All right, Sam. So I kind of in a way asked you to talk about future features. You kind of danced around that a little bit. Is that something you're willing and able to talk about? And I'd also like to know a little bit about your sales plan going forward. What you're doing now and we'll be doing in the future as well as maybe your marketing plan. Chad: Good God. One question at a time for God sake. Sam: I know it's a lot. All right. So let me tackle the product stuff. Right now we're actually head down on building integrations into ATAs and CRMs. So our clients want the candidate data synced directly into their own platform. So we build into the API, we send the kind of data in. So that's currently like something we're working on. In the future, and what we actually already have this product. Sam: In addition to all the automated content and remarketing that we do, we are going to allow employees to send their own content and direct messages. So that product is live today, but it's really simple. So that is kind of another step beyond our initial product. Like you can contact these candidates by text, by email. You can set up campaigns of your own, but again, like we don't charge for that software. It just comes with Maia. Sam: But it's an early product. So I think we're going to get more into that, build that out. And then also on the content side, today the content is fairly generic. We really want to verticalize that. So if you're someone in healthcare and you sign up, you probably are not interested in the same content that someone in retail might want. So we really want to verticalize the content, make it really personalized. And I think that's another big push we want to make sometime soon. Chad: So it looks like you're into scheduling as well. So schedule interviews and also syncing with calendars. Now, is that a plugin? Is it done through a partnership or did you guys build it yourself? Sam: No, it's a plugin that does that. It's super light. Chad: Okay. On the chatbot side, we talked about Maia, but now I'm going to talk about chatbots as a whole because they are on fucking fire. So chatbots can easily engage candidates when they land on a job description or anywhere on the website. Why would I choose forms instead of a chatbot that can obviously engage as well? It's a different type of engagement, a form engagement versus, kind of like a fake, could be a human or could be AI engagement. Why would I choose your form of Maia versus a chatbot form? Sam: Well, you don't have to. There is no choice. So it's a completely, we're targeting a completely different audience. In fact, you won't see Maia's forums until you go to leave the page. So our forums are exit intent. So on desktop, your cursor moves off the screen, our form opens up. So you only see it after you've decided, I don't want to apply and I'm not interested in chatting with the chatbot. Sam: So after you said no to those two options, then you would see Maia, and on mobile we use a timeout. So we're like a chatbot is getting somebody who actually wants to engage at that point, and chatbots today only talk about jobs. So they're really trying to engage active job seekers. We're trying to get to the people who don't want to apply. Chad: Can I do that with a chatbot though? Can I use the same type of timing or what have you to engage an individual in the same kind of way that you guys are doing it? Because just because the way chatbots are being used right now, it doesn't mean that there's not a function to be able to do that. Sam: Sure. I mean, they could evolve. Chad: It doesn't seem like much of an evolution. I mean, it seems like more of really just a point in time of what they want to be able to do. And what you're bringing to the table is look, before they exit, show them a form. What I'm saying is, look, before they exit, hit them with the chatbot. Sam: You could, but I think like a chatbot is trying to have you stay there and engage with it at that moment in time. And I think a lot of people just are not ready to do that. Like they're leaving the page for some reason. And, there's a reason they're not ready to take an action at that moment in time. Joel: Let's talk about a different competition. So I agree with Chad that the chatbot is potential competitor and definitely a threat. But I also want to talk about from the marketing side of things. So you have, for marketers out there things like OptinMonster and there are other services that will do this from a marketing standpoint and integrate with, GetResponse or AWeber or Mailchimp or whatever. What do you think your product brings to the table that may be a marketing solution that does, very similar things, would choose you over something like a marketing tool? Sam: I think, ours is plug and play, there's no setup, and also all the re-engagement is done automatically. So OptinMonster is awesome. Actually, we base some of our exit forms off of what they do. Great company. But they handle just the capturing of the candidate. So I think the re-engagement piece, keeping it career focused and our team of writers makes it unique. So it's kind of like both sides. Like, and we don't sell them separately. It's like you don't just get the exit forms. It's the exit plus the automated re-engagement. Chad: Got you. So from the partnership side of the house. I see that you are engaged with great people iCIMS, Jobvite, Greenhouse. Now that's from a tech standpoint and we're talking about the, obviously the integrations to make sure they have that two way API happening. But what about from a revenue standpoint. Do you have any partnerships to be able to help you get more of a distributed kind of like a sales message out there? Sam: Yes. I mean, so I think that ATSs are a great partnership path. Obviously, I know them from my previous experience. And so we're working on one right now, that should be launching in the next two to three months. So that'll be super exciting. But I think ATS for sure, potentially even career site platforms that don't offer their own native talent network solution, those could be good partner opportunities. So definitely, I mean, we're so small that we really need partnerships. So, we're excited to try to find, partnership opportunities to hit and reach employers. Joel: Sam, let's talk about pricing models. What can someone expect to pay using Maia? Sam: All right, so it's all pay for performance. So we don't charge like a setup fee, there's no annual fee. So the pricing, I mean, right now, it's early. So we're still trying to figure out pricing, but we charge $2 per sign up. So every time a candidate signs up, it's a $2 charge. We don't charge for any of the remarketing or the re-engagement or the applicants who come back from that. Sam: I think down the line, we'd love to tie the pricing closer to the ultimate result, which is hires. But it will always be pay for performance. We really believe that you should tie pricing to the results that an employer gets, not to the cost of your product or something like that. So it's pay for performance. Companies can set a monthly cap. We do trial pricing to test it out. Joel: I love how there's so much of an echo of indeed with your product. Sam: I'm brain washed. It's in the DNA. Joel: It's all about the job seeker. Chad: So my last question with regard to vision. What do you see? Do you see as this is a long term build grow a platform out of this? Are you looking to actually do what you're doing incredibly well and flip for acquisition? Joel: Definitely thinking long term. But, I'm also so focused on the now. I try not to get too caught up in the long term vision because, it's hard enough as it is to start this off bootstrapped. So I'm like, very short term right now. I just trying to like execute on product and make the product work really, really well. But, long term vision. I think that there's just so much bloat, so many kind of crappy products out there for employers, that maybe they're good products for employers, but they don't lead to good experiences for candidates. Joel: And so I think that's the real longterm opportunity. I think that's a big opportunity. The experience today on an average company career site is terrible. There's a ton of friction and ton of barriers. So I think the long term vision is to help employers deliver really, really strong candidate experiences. I know that sounds kind of vague, but there are not good kind of experiences today. So I think like, developing more tools to let employers engage in an effective way that's actually helpful and not self serving, that's kind of the vision. Joel: Let's get to the grading, shall we? Chad: Yes. Sam: Oh boy. Here we go. Joel: Oh crap. Chad: I get to go first. Joel: Okay. Chad: Okay, Sam. Joel: So needy. Chad: I know. I want to go see Avengers. Sam, I think your background gives you an edge and any possible way we can engage candidates in thoughtful ways is a step forward. No question. Your product does use the keep it simple, stupid methodology which every product should adopt. And I also appreciate the pay for performance piece. I agree with you there. I personally think you have a short runway until chatbot engagement platforms find their fetes and they start ripping up the market. Chad: I mean, they're already hot as it is. But I don't believe they understand all the different ways that they can actually be a part of bigger platforms. So education and control is key here. Will employers be cool with you sharing their candidates across networks? I'm a huge fan of that. But in general, these types of initiatives have failed miserably. So here's my advice first and foremost. Chad: Deeply integrate with some of those partners that you're talking about, those ATSs, those CRMs and demonstrate your ability to provide results quickly and at scale, then you have a chance. If it were anybody else coming to the mic with this platform and this vision, I would probably hit them with a firing squad. But because you have such deep knowledge in the industry, I'm giving you a golf clap. Sam: All right. Thank you, Chad. Love it. Joel: Now it's my turn. I'll echo most of what, well, really all of what Chad said. I do have a special place in my heart for companies that have experience, and your history with Indeed, Jobcase, The Muse is obviously a big plus, and we find success with those kinds of companies, I think more so than those that have no experience at all coming into the space. I do think that it's sort of risky or foolish to share jobs from other companies with clients. Joel: I just I'm not a big fan of that. I do like your pricing model. I like your attitude around, job seeker first. I do worry a lot about the chatbot competition, but I also worry about the companies that sort of get your when you register, and then from registering they know that you've looked for certain jobs or you've been to the site. A lot of listeners will know that they've been to, ZipRecruiter or Glassdoor. Joel: And once you just go to the site, you start getting job alerts from searches that you've done, which is really annoying. But it's also similar to kind of the model that you're doing, except the fact that it's automated and not a manual process from requiring someone to do that. Ultimately I think, you're doing a lot of good things. I think some companies will adopt this. I think you'll integrate really well and people will use it. Joel: We didn't really talk a lot about your final mission with the company. If it's to flip it and get rich, is it get money and go really, really big as a software solutions. So we probably should have talked about that but we didn't. But ultimately, I'm going to give it the golf clap- Sam: All right. Joel: ... as well. I think you're off to a good start. You're really early days in this. But I think your experience, know how and probably connections in the business will pay dividends going forward. And, you may need to pivot a couple times, but I think you'll find success. Chad: There it is. Joel: And that's it. [crosstalk 00:29:17] Sam: Well, I didn't get shot, so that's great. Survival. Joel: Very well. Sam: Happy I came on. Joel: Very good. Well, before we go again, where can someone find out more about you? Sam: They can go to maialabs.com, M-A-I-A-L-A-B-S.com, or email me, sam@maialabs.com. Joel: 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, www.C-H-A-D-C-H-E-E-S-E.com. Talroo Pirate: Ye be poo without Talroo. #FiringSquad #Maia #Engagement #Brand #EmployerBrand #EmploymentBrand #Talroo

We stopped by Hireology HQ in Chicago and found ourselves as guests on The Best Team Wins podcast hosted by Hireology CEO, Adam Robinson. They had free beer , swag, and a bunch of smiling millennials. How the Hell could we say no? Enjoy this special Chad & Cheese edition of The Best Team Wins podcast. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities. Announcer: Welcome to The Best Team Wins Podcast with Adam Robinson. He's talking to today's industry leaders and entrepreneurs about the people side of their business. Adam: Welcome to this weeks episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast where we feature entrepreneurs and business leaders who's exceptional approach to the people side of their businesses has led to incredible results. You're listening to a special live edition of The Best Team Wins Podcast. Chad: Bring it. Adam: I'm Adam Robinson Co-Founder and CEO of Hireology, and we are coming to you live from our Chicago office with two very distinguished guests, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman, the cohosts of the famous/infamous Chad and Cheese Podcast billed as the most dangerous- Joel: HR's most dangerous ... Adam: HR's most dangerous- Joel: Which is not as dangerous as just being dangerous. Adam: It is HR's- Joel: HR's not very dangerous. Adam: What is HR's second most dangerous podcast? Chad: There isn't one. Joel: Yeah, no. Chad: They're all boring as shit. Adam: There can only be one. Highlander style. Joel: Chomps. Adam: Yeah. Adam: Well, I'm excited to talk to you guys today. Today we're going to demystify the recruitment technology space for our listeners, which, as we discussed before the show- Joel: And this is a 30 minute show? And we're going to demystify it ... Okay. Adam: We're going to demystify it- Chad: All right. Adam: In 20 minutes or so. We're going to cover a couple of big topics. I mean, most of our listeners are running a business or location, and it's all on them, and they don't have local HR, and they're trying to navigate this mess of vendors, and sourcing, and technology around hiring, and they get lots of messages, and it's all expensive and very confusing, and the world is not built for them. It's all built for the big guys. So with your help, maybe we'll send them on their way with a couple of ideas they can put into place to be better [crosstalk 00:01:59]. Joel: I feel confident that we can do that. Couple ideas for the small guy, the little guy. Chad: It's possible. Adam: Yeah, this one's for the- Chad: For the little guy. Adam: For the little guy, yeah. Chad: We're for the little guy. Joel: We're out of the ivory tower today and we'll help the little guy out. Adam: Great. Joel: I think we can do that. Adam: Welcome, and let's get started. Joel: Thank you. Adam: Okay. Joel: Proud to be here. Chicago. Let's do this. Chad: We're here, Chicago. Adam: So let's keeping going with that. I'm an operator of a mainstream business. I have somewhere in 20, 30, 40 employees. Talent acquisition is hard. I just know I can't find enough people. I don't know where to go. What is it out there to help me? I hear ads from companies telling me to post my jobs for free. What do I do? Chad: So, after you've completed crying in your pillow for a week or so, I mean, there're a ton of job sites that are out there, and that's generally the thing that companies do, is they like ... they're going from job site to job site, and that's the first, the easiest thing, because it's generally the least expensive. So, the ZipRecruiters, the Indeeds, the so on and so forth. But they don't generally offer you that many tools to be able to provide you kind of like some kind of infrastructure, to make it easier, not just to get candidates or people who believe they're candidates, but to be able to sort through them. Chad: So I mean, the first thing is you have to understand your process. Understand what that process looks like from A to Z, so that when you start to look for technologies, you have an idea, at least mapped out in your head, on how to become more efficient there. Because you don't have time to do that. You have other shit to do, right? So, the first thing is, and this is, even on the enterprise side, if you don't understand your process, how can you go and buy tech? You can't. You shouldn't. But they do. So, for the little guy, it's the same way. You have to understand your process, map it out, and then start going to ... pretty much, go to the market and start looking for those different types of technologies that will help you through that process to be more efficient so that you don't have to waste your time doing it. Joel: So what came to my mind when you said that everyone's focused on the big guys, there are actually big guys that are hoping to help the little guys, and there are three that come to my mind is LinkedIn, number one, which has historically been known as a buttoned up, white collar, professional network job search site. They're going hard after the SMB market, and so they released a new feature last year where, when you post a job, they will show you candidates that they believe are relevant to your job posting. And they think, pretty strongly, that they feel that they have every kind of level of professional that you could need. Here in Chicago, you see a lot of LinkedIn ads at bus stops and whatnot. So they're hitting bigger markets to try to do that. Joel: Number two, I would say Facebook got into this market about two years ago. Now they have certain problems with privacy and maybe public opinion about them- Chad: I've heard of them. Joel: You've heard of them. Yeah. Three billion people strong. And though, they are losing a bit of the younger demographic, they do Instagram, so you can still reach those people. So you can post jobs on Facebook. You can also source people on Facebook, and they're getting into the game more to cover really all kinds of professionals. Joel: I think the third element of that is when you look at Google getting into the game and launching Google for Jobs, which is essentially, if you're familiar with Indeed, and I think some of your clients probably are, it's sort of basically putting Indeed on Google. So you have actual job listings that you can see, and no matter how big or small your company is, you can put your jobs on Google for Jobs, which gives you a fighting chance to compete with any big brand in the market place, and we know that around 78% of all job searches start at Google, so if you can just leverage that tool, which is also free, by the way, you're giving yourself a leg up in recruiting, no matter what kind of skills you're looking for. Adam: So you just referenced something we talk about often which is most job search starts in the browser bar. Chad: Yeah. Adam: So, whereas 20, 25 years ago, you'd go to a Monster or a CareerBuilder, because that's where the inventory was. Now it's all indexed and it's available through your favorite search engine, right? And 78% of the time, that's Google. Joel: Yeah. Adam: So what that tells us is, all of the tactics and techniques these operators have had to master to be found by consumers, all should, theoretically, work to be found by job seekers, and one of the things we like to say is, jobs are products, they should be retailed like products online. Right? Job seekers are consumers. These things- Chad: Yeah, but job descriptions aren't even close to sales. I mean, they're horrible- Adam: So let's talk about that for a second. Chad: And that's the hard part. Adam: How can business owners make the transition from thinking about B to C marketing of products and services- Chad: Right. Adam: To the B to C marketing of job opportunities and control their own destiny here. Chad: Yeah, first thing you don't do is go to the web and copy and paste something from a competitor. I mean, because you're already screwing up as it is right there. So, generally, the actual job description itself is so bad that candidates don't even know what they're applying for. I mean, even job titles, in many cases, right? So, think about the actual job itself. The description of what that individual is going to be doing, and give them the most lifelike description of what they will be doing day by day. No question, right? Then, also, the requirements, be smart about your requirements, right? Do you really need a bachelor's degree to sell cars? I mean, or to sell really anything? No, probably not. So, think about that. If they have one, that's great. That's awesome. But is it really a requirement? Is it necessary? Chad: So, start thinking about that, and start thinking about that job description at that point, after you've done that, now turn it into an ad. Because, that job posting is really an advertisement. So, what you can do to actually reach out and pull more readers in, is what you're looking to do, right? This is isn't something that should be a bland kind of operation. It should be something that you actually put your heart into, because if you put your heart into it, and tell your story, the people that actually align with that story, and they believe in that purpose, they're going to want to come work for you. Companies are not doing that at every single level today. Once you start doing that, that's step one. But that's one of the most important steps. Joel: So one of the great ironies for me, and you deal with the car dealerships in particular, who are some of the best local marketers in the world, right? I can't tell you the last billboard, TV spot, radio ad for a car dealership that I heard at the end, "Looking for a job? Check out opportunities on our website." They should do that if they really need people. That's an obvious sort of bridge, I think, to getting job candidates into your door. Joel: I think the other thing to look at in general, with social media, and just marketing their dealership in general, they should be some of the best marketers for job opportunities in every local market. So if you're using Facebook, if you're on Instagram, I've seen car dealerships using Snapchat, and even more progressive mediums. You're promoting your cars there, why aren't you promoting your jobs there, too? Chad: Well, and it's demos. Right? You've got to think of those demos. So, on the LinkedIn side of the house, you're not seeing the gen-Zs and a portion of millennials, not even really jumping into LinkedIn and utilizing LinkedIn as much. But they are using the Instagrams, I mean, you have to go where they are. So there's Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, look at them as marketing channels. I mean, we used to have radio, cable, billboard- Joel: Second Life. Chad: Yeah ... Shut up. Adam: Second Life. Chad: You're such a dumbass. But, I mean, we have to- Joel: Can we cuss on this podcast? Adam: Yeah, too late, apparently. Adam: Keep it up. Keep it going, guys. Joel: That was pretty lame. Adam: It's all good, yeah. Joel: We could really turn it up if you want to. Adam: Yeah, man, it's your show, guys. Chad: So, anyway, yeah. I mean, that's the basic premise behind it. You need to start looking at it. As a marketer, you have your content that you're putting out there, so if you did ... Back in the day, when you did a radio ad, you focused on the content because you were trying to pull people in to buy a car or buy whatever you're trying to sell. Okay? The same thing you're trying to sell and ... You're trying to sell a job. You're trying to sell livelihood. You're trying to sell culture. If you're not doing that, you are doing it wrong. Joel: And I think, you know, we go back and forth on employment brand, but I think, and you guys no better because you deal in this industry, but car salesmen have a historically bad reputation. So to sell an opportunity around doing that job that people think is full of scumbags and [crosstalk 00:11:07]- Adam: Literally hiring used car salesmen. Chad: Yeah. Joel: That's got to be a major challenge in recruiting. So, how many of your companies or dealerships out there are tackling the challenge of like, salespeople are noble people. Here's some of the ones in our company that have done social service, and have families, and they're good people. Try to break through that stereotype of douchebag sales guy, would probably go a long way into getting some people to apply for sales jobs at a dealership. Chad: He always says that because he knows my background's in sales. But, so, one of our local dealerships, they have [crosstalk 00:11:43]- Joel: And douchebagery. [crosstalk 00:11:44]. Chad: They've created- Adam: And what's it with douchebag salespeople and hats? Chad: And hats. Every- Joel: I haven't even brought up millennials, yet. He's a millennial, right? Adam: Oh, yeah. Joel: Right Kyle? Yeah. Fucking millennials, man. Chad: They've actually created a culture that's different, and that's how they sell cars, and that's how they sell how to work there. So, it can be done, and there's no reason why it can't be. How are you different? Tell your story. Adam: So think about industries like automotive retail, or home healthcare, or hospitality, where we see maybe eight to 10% overlap of the candidate pool in a LinkedIn profile. So, this talent pool is under-profiled, let's say, they're less findable, so in this paradigm of Google, arguably, they're pretty good at search, if I'm looking for a job, we make the argument that the media you just mentioned are really ... they're visual channels. Are video job descriptions a thing? Is a video job preview, is that a thing, and how do you reach, with content, under-profiled talent pools- Chad: Yeah. Adam: Who ... You're not going to find a home healthcare aid on LinkedIn. You just aren't. Chad: You've got to be smart about video, because people are only going to watch so much video. I think the limit was like around two to three minutes, I can't remember the last survey. It goes back and forth before two and three minutes. Video should be used to capture somebody with, I mean, just ... to grab them, and pull them in to learn more, right? And to be able to apply. Not a half hour segment on ... I do love the whole day in the life of kind of a thing. But I think that's good if somebody wants to do more research. It's not good on the job- Joel: And if it's VR-ed. ... Are you done? Did I just [crosstalk 00:13:49]- Chad: Go ahead. Joel: I think we get caught up a lot in the job description and having that, but why couldn't you have sort of traditional marketing strategies where, instead of a job posting, you have a download for 10 Reasons Why Working At a Dealership Is Awesome, or something. And you market that to Facebook, Instagram users that are between 18 and whatever. And then they click on the landing page, they go, "Oh, that looks kind of interesting. I might be interested in a job in that." They give you their email address. They get the content. And now you start marketing to them like they were a consumer. Chad: Then you hit them with a cookie, and it's all over. Joel: So don't get ... I don't think you need to get too caught with the job description. I mean, think outside the box with your marketing, if you're having trouble getting it to these people. Chad: Well, then you can serve the video ads, right? Adam: Let's talk about Google. As you guys- Chad: Who? Adam: Do on your podcast. Google? Chad: Oh. Adam: The search company. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Heard of them. Adam: Most people who had heard of CareerBuilder, they had their moment in the sun. Indeed is having their- Chad: I don't know that most people nowadays really- Joel: Are you talking employers or job seekers? Adam: I'm talking both, actually. Joel: Okay. Chad: I think on the job seekers' side, it's easier to forget, right? It's easier to forget, pretty much, the Monsters, the CareerBuilders- Adam: Sure. Chad: If you're not out there advertising constantly- Joel: To most kids, Monster is an energy drink, not a job board. Adam: So in a world where recruitment site branding, so the third party lead generators, that brand has arguably less value. When Google is serving search results. Because that's really brand agnostic. Chad: And driving traffic to those sites now. Adam: Yeah, so where does this go? I mean, how, as a third party marketer- Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Adam: Or lead generator, can you differentiate it, and what does that mean to a local business owner? Why do they care about any of this? Chad: You can't. You can't differentiate. Okay, so, from an experience standpoint, what is Google looking for? Who do they care about most? Their users. They don't give a shit about the company that's trying to sell you something. They care about the user, because the user's going to come back. Google's a lifestyle platform and they want to continue to be a lifestyle platform, so you're using them for whatever it is. Going to the restaurant, going to ... I doesn't matter. So, for their standpoint, they care about user experience. If they start to see jobs that are performing incredibly well, right? And there're not a bunch of users that are jumping onto a job and ejecting off, then they're going to provide better lift to those jobs. Which is one of the reasons why I think many applicant tracking systems, if they don't get their shit together and have a great experience, the job boards will continue to get more traffic, right? Chad: So we saw from iCIMS, Colin Day and iCIMS, that they received ... What was it? It was a crazy amount of traffic from- Joel: They had like a 60% increase- Chad: In traffic from people. Joel: And they saw like a 30% decrease in- Chad: Right. Joel: Indeed traffic. Chad: But from that standpoint, as the algorithm learns, that could drop, dramatically. If there's not a great experience that's there. So that's one of the things that the Monsters and the Indeeds and the CareerBuilders need to do, is they need to work on a great experience, so that those job seekers are coming through ... those users. We have to stop saying job seekers. Those customers are coming through and they're staying. And they're engaging in content. And they're applying for jobs. At that point, Google will see that, the time on sites. And then those jobs, those sources, will lift in the actual search. Joel: I think that's where ATS is really playing a big roll. Chad: They could kill it, too. Joel: In understanding what Google wants from, you know, when users go through, so, how difficult is your apply process? If it's very cumbersome, verses like LinkedIn, where people might already have a profile or sort of easy to register, then you're probably going to lose the SEO Google game. So ATSs need to be really focused on how do we optimize the experience of clicking to the job and then applying to the job, because that's going to help you in the long run, and help your customers. Ideally, Google hopes that job boards, you stop posting on job boards, and just post and get your job on Google, and then they'll charge you for a pay per click later, and get all that money [crosstalk 00:18:15] are getting. Adam: Are ad units coming? Are you ... Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Yeah. I mean, we don't have a line into Google, but, historically, why wouldn't they eventually have- Chad: That's a search, at least. Joel: You know, put your job in a pay per click format and make that easy to do, yeah. I mean, they'd love to take all the money you're giving CareerBuilder and LinkedIn and everybody else and have you give that to Google. Adam: Employment brand, in a few minutes here. What's the one most important thing everyday business can do to help to win the visibility game on Google visa vie employment brand? Joel: So, I mean, branding and Google are, I think, a little bit different. [crosstalk 00:18:55]. Adam: Well, contents. Let's say content- Joel: Now they're ... I do think that companies need to be aware than in their Google for Jobs listings, they do have, what's your Glassdoor five star rating? What's your Indeed five star? What's your CareerBliss? And they're pulling sites that a lot of people don't even know exist. So if, at a minimum, you should go see your jobs on Google, and see what sites they're pulling in terms of employee reviews, and if you suck at one of those, like you should probably focus on that. So, I think twofold is ... one is sort of monitoring where reviews are and what's going on, and there are tools that can do that. Joel: And then secondly like, the reality is, people, and particularly younger people, they don't want to hear about the company from the CEO. They don't want to hear about what it's like to work from the HR department. They want to know what it's like from the former salesperson on Glassdoor. They want to know what it's like from the former accountant that's leaving a review on Indeed, or the female salesperson that leaves a review on Fairygodboss. Right? That's where they go to find out what it's like to work at your company, and if you're not aware that these sites exist, and you're not sort of trying to manage those reviews, I think you're really putting yourself at a disadvantage. And most companies don't even know these reviews exist, or these sites exist, and they're getting killed because the reviews are so terrible for some employers. Adam: So they lose control of their brand because they're not watching the content- Joel: You can't manage what you can't measure, and you can't measure what you don't even know- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Right? So the first step is actually knowing what's out there, and that's sort of a big step for most companies. Chad: You have to understand purpose. The purpose of your organization. The purpose that brings people to your organization. I'm not a big believer in quote unquote, employment brand. I believe in the overall brand. And the reason why employment brand is being splintered out, is because most companies have a shitty brand. Because there's no purpose. And you're going to- Joel: Or no brand. Chad: Yeah, no brand. And you're going to slog all day, right? We're talking to the former head of Global Community at Airbnb, and we asked him about employment brand, and he just kind of shook is head almost like, you know, he's like, "What the hell are you talking about?" The focus of an organization, big or small, is around the purpose of your organization. What are you giving back to the community? What is that person coming in to do every single day? Not only will you be able to drive more individuals who are purpose driven to do what you are doing, but your retention will be much higher. So, it is more of a wholistic kind of an approach, but it does have to do with brand, and your brand does have to be real. If it doesn't, you're going to lose. Adam: And we think about candidate experience, consumer experiences being ... We've seen that focus shift from ... I'm going to make this easy for the payroll administrator. Require job seeker profiles so that we don't have to double key stuff to a world where it's really consumer focused, really is table stakes. Adam: For folks listening now, and we'll wrap with this, what are one or two things they can do to improve candidate or customer experience as it relates to jobs? Chad: So the hard part, I think, is trying to get their data, because you want that data to make it easier for you. It's the experience in how you get the data, and what we're seeing right now, and everybody's talking about chatbots, and they're not talking about really how chatbots are really just engagement vehicles. That's the big key, is not having this long list of fields that you have to sit there and just fill out, that really suck, right? If you have an opportunity to be able to pull and parse their resume, or their information into fields, that's another way. Anything that makes it easier for them to have a better experience, but you still get the data, that's the answer. Joel: For our legacy friend in the back, the black hole of the resume database is something that's existed since the dawn of the job board or, putting jobs on the internet, and there's been such animosity towards.... So I give a company my resume, and I don't hear anything. I mean, if I get a reply, you know, like an automated email saying, "Thanks for applying," like that's supposed to be good enough. So I think, in terms of what you said, in terms of ... in user experiences, like communication is really important, and there are tools, whether it's ATSs, or we mentioned chatbots, that can alert a candidate in terms of where are they in the process, right? Or ... I forget who we were talking to, but they had an interview scheduled, so they had messages, via text or Facebook or whatever it was, like little check-ins with him. Like, "Hey, just wanted to let you know our address is this in case you didn't have it." And then two days before, "Hey, just a quick reminder, it's casual, don't feel like you need to dress up." Joel: So those little things, even though they might be automated, to a job seeker, like, "Holy shit. They really care. They're actually communicating." And by the way, most of those people will buy a car, eventually, and even if you don't hire them, if they've had a nice experience and sort of an open, transparent, honest experience in the job search process, they might be more likely to buy a car from you. And I think, when you start framing that to car dealerships, like, "These are people who buy cars," they might pay a little more attention to how they treat their candidates. Chad: Stop looking at candidates and start looking at customers. Everybody that you touch, every day, is a prospective customer, or is a customer. Adam: Okay, so final question here. What's the next frontier for talent technology, in your opinion? Chad: It's fairly simple, I mean, everybody talks about AI ... but, in automation- Adam: I see someone laughing- Joel: You say it's fairly simple? Chad: Yeah. Really, I think it is. I think over the next couple of years, what we'll see is, we'll see that a lot of the menial tasks that we're having to deal with today on the recruitment side of the house, and also, from the candidate side of the house, will be bridged by, you know, whether it's a chatbot or it's an actual algorithm that can go out and find individuals who have the requirements that you need right out of the gate, and then automatically message them to see if they're ready to come prospectively apply for a job. I mean, those things are already out there. They are already working, but to be able to seam them together into a system, we're not there yet. So, that, to me, you know, what's the most important thing, especially for the little guy, what's the most important thing for you? Look at that process, and then start to look at platforms and vendors that can help you get through that. Joel: I'll try to make this quick because I'm empty, but I have a dream recruitment scenario- Adam: Yeah. Joel: In my mind that one day, an HR manager or recruitment manager or a CEO will say, "Alexa, find me 10 sales people in Seattle, Washington with one to three years’ experience, and schedule interviews for next week." Chad: It'll be Google, by the way. Joel: And the robots will go out and source candidates, and email them, and then create a chatbot automated communication experience, will prescreen candidates, will then schedule them through this automated system, and then will automatically update your calendar with who's coming in, based on the conversations they're having, and then folks will just come in that are already prescreened for the job, and you'll higher the ones that are the best chemistry that you have. Adam: That's wild. You guys got that? Audience: Yeah. Adam: On the road map? Joel: You guys building [crosstalk 00:26:41]. Chad: [crosstalk 00:26:41]. Where's my product people? Adam: It's fairly simple. Did you hear that, also? Joel: Chad said, "It's pretty simple." Adam: Pretty easy. Chad: They're out there. It's all about partnership and acquisition. And go. Adam: I just want my kids to stop asking for baby shark ... on Alexa. Adam: All right, ladies and gentlemen! Chad Sowash, Joel Cheesman, live, at Hireology, on The Best Team Wins Podcast. That's a wrap for this week's episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast. I am your host, Adam Robinson, author of the book, The Best Team Wins, which you can find online at www.thebestteamwins.com. Thank you for tuning in to this special live episode, and we will see you here next week. Announcer: Thanks for listening to The Best Team Wins Podcast with Adam Robinson. You can find out more information about Adam and his book, The Best Team Wins: Building Your Business Through Predictive Hiring, at thebestteamwins.com. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week. #SMB #ATS #GoogleforJobs #Hireology #Facebook #LinkedIn #Microsoft #Careerbuilder #Monster #iCIMS #Indeed #EmploymentBrand #Google

Let's just come out firing: - Monster's new commercials suck - LinkedIn's consolidates and increases prices - LTG to apply Breezy lipstick on the PeopleFluent pig? - Tesla unmanned taxi service in 2020? (NFW) - Google's bag o' bricks and.... - Facebook taking on Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri. Buckle up, and show sponsors Sovren, Canvas and JobAdx some mad love. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. 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 the home improvement, red eye episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. HR's grumpiest and saltiest, I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Get Off My Lawn Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, LinkedIn is raising, ISMS Callin is unloading, and we end the Podcast with a facial. Grab a washcloth and get comfortable, we'll be right back after this word from Canvas. Canvas: Canvas is the world's first text based interviewing platform empowering recruiters to engage, screen, and coordinate logistics via text and so much more. We kept 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 integration 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. Ed: This is Ed from Philly, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad: Damn straight. Joel: I'm in a mood this week so ... Chad: You're always in a mood. Joel: I always on a red eye, I haven't slept, I've got handymen in my house, I've got water draining in all the wrong places. And yeah, I'm in a mood, so be warned everybody. Anything could come out of my mouth this week. Chad: Suck it up, buttercup. Let's do this. Joel: By the way, I think we've got an explicit rating without actually cussing or doing anything bad just from the opening that we did there. Anyway, let's get to shout outs. You've got a ton apparently. Chad: Yeah, let me run through a few real quick. Dave and Joann for sending me some delicious flammable material IPA. That's right, I keep getting beer in the mail and I love it. Joel: So this is gonna be fun for me because I came home to a FedEx with beer in it. Chad: Damn it! Joel: So, you are not the only one ... Chad: Damn it! Joel: To get the love so ... Chad: Damn! Joel: So in your face, suckah, in your face! Chad: Damn it! Okay, so I'm gonna revive with a thanks to ... Shout out to new listener from South Africa, Lindi Endlebrecht. Hello, Lindi. Get all your South African friends to be listening to the Chad and Cheese. I think we've got a double shout out for Tim Meehan. Why don't you go ahead and start yours? Joel: Yeah, Meehan's got quite the sense of humor. He's sort of equal parts complimentary and equal parts just total dis. Chad: Which I love. Joel: He said, Indeed should worry about the bots and not so much about ZipRecruiter, which I kind of tend to agree. Everyone should worry about the bots. I don't think Zip is on top of mine for Indeed as much as Google is, but Tim, I appreciate the sentiment and agree with most of your comment. Chad: Yeah, I would say that there's no question that Indeed is worrying about Zip. If you take a look at the new App Cast rankings that came out, if they're not, they should, but Tim also said, he wants to know what the benchmark is to get a T-Shirt, because it shouldn't be very hard since we only have about five subscribers. Well, done, Tim. Well done. Joel: And that's including family, Tim. So thanks, man. I appreciate that. You can't leave people hanging, you can't leave people hanging on the App Cast thing without a little bit of color on that. Chad: Yeah, well, there's actually a shred that's out there that will be out there by the time we publish this. So if you haven't subscribed to Chad and Cheese, the only way that you're gonna get a shred, is to be able to subscribe, and it's only gonna be like a three to five minute podcast, so that's how you're gonna get some in depth information about App Cast is subscribe. It'll be there and you're welcome. Joel: And that's what we call a tease in the podcast business. Chad: That's right, bitches! Duarte Mendonca, thanks for listening and commenting on our stuff. He's always engaged. Love that guy. Dave Pheobus, he loves Aldo Nova, 80s Rock Road Trips, so he loved the show believe it or not. Joel: There's no need to restate the obvious. Who doesn't love Aldo Nova? Chad: Life is just a fantasy. Lauren, Kyle, and Adam, and the rest of the crew at Higher Allergies for having us in. We're also going to drop another pod later, probably next week or something like that where we are actually guests on a podcast. So we're gonna republish it and it was pretty good stuff. Yeah, it was good stuff. Joel: It was good stuff. I'm gonna give a shout out to ERE where I was this week. Gave a little talk on Google for jobs. And actually had two podcast fans come up and want a selfie with me. So, that was my little taste of I don't know Justin Bieberland over in San Diego this week. So thanks to them. I will dig out my business cards and find out who those ladies were. Chad: Yeah, from now on you need to take a Chad Cutout with you just in case, and I'll do the same when I'm traveling without you. I'll obviously need an entirely new suitcase for that. Joel: Nice, nice. Chad: Chad and Cheese T-Shirts selfies aplenty. So shout out to all those individuals that are out there doing the Chad and Cheese selfies when they get the T-Shirts and that also reminds me of Ryan Christoi over at KRT, you owe us a selfie. The funniest thus far though is Louise Triance over in the UK saying that I spelled her name wrong on the T-Shirt. Chad and Louise. Get it? Joel: I get it, yeah. And you can't spell Cheese without Louise or something. Shout out to Terry Baker our boy at Pando Logic for sportin' for tickets to a pod race game when I was in San Diego this week and met his son Pete who's a very nice guy as well. Chad: Nice! Joel: So lastly, the Whisky House in San Diego. Holy shit, dude. Chad: Yeah. Joel: If you love whisky this place was like a library of booze, complete with the ladder to get stuff on the third, fourth, and fifth shelf. The most random hard to get whisky you could think of. So shout out to them and the fact that someplace like that exists is a very, very good thing. Chad: You were sending me pics the entire fucking time and I was drooling. A couple of things, so pods to lookout for. Mike Tempkin from Shaker, he's a fucking industry treasure. Somebody that we're gonna be pushing out within the next week or so, Nathan Porot from AIA, we're gonna be talking about the rep tech hype cycle and last but not least we have events. Next week we're at Talroo. Joel: Ye be poo without Talroo. Chad: For an invitation only event where we will be unplugged. If you're not there, sorry about that. Joel: Suckahs. Chad: TAtech Europe, Death Match. That is going to be fucking outstanding. Dude, TAtech Death Match. We've got Candidate ID, we've got a fucking interviewing robot, yeah in kilts. We've got opening dot IO with their algorithm candidate matching and we just got Mia to hook up so now we have a chat bot on stage as well. This is gonna be fuckin' hot. Joel: Yeah, Mia was the cherry on top. This is a massively awesome line up. Can't wait to get out there to Portugal and rock that shit. Chad: So stocked. Recruit Philly after that, then we're live at Job Case, after that, and I'll be at Job Gate where I'm not gonna be doing anything except for sitting in the back and listening to smart people talk. So that's awesome. Joel: By the way, we have a live feed from Philly right now. Ed: This is Ed from Philly, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Let's get to the news, shall we? Yup! Monster commercials discuss. Chad: Yeah, there's not much to discuss. I started watching these, I watched the first one I thought, "Wow!" I mean literally, they are dark in every single way you can think of. The message is dark, the lightning is dark, everything, the emotion ... There's nothing that's inspiring about any of these ads. Chad: They make you want to crawl in a hole and not work another day in your life where I can just waste away. I couldn't believe it, because the Monster ads that we've been seeing, the 15, 30 second ads, have been spot on. Very positive messaging, very cool messaging, very funny messaging, I think they tried to go funny with this, but it was so dark that it just ... It was horrible. Joel: Yeah, it was a really strange 180 from the mobile ads and getting jobs fast and the speed to market and they tried to be funny ... Chad: That was not funny. Joel: It's like you spend 24 hours for your resume and then a recruiter spends six seconds on it. Chad: Right. Joel: And so then new message has gone from, "We're a mobile solution that can get you a job really fast" to "I'm not quite sure", but the end of the commercial has tracking your progress through the job search process, resume help, it looks like they're pitching more of consulting and supporting you through the job search and helping you know what's going on so ... It was a really convoluted, confusing message. Chad: Yes. Joel: Even for people like us who live this shit, it should be pretty obvious what their message is. I've gotta assume the regular Joe is gonna be really confused. I don't think they're gonna laugh. Chad: No. Joel: They're just gonna be kind of like, "What the Hell did I just watch?" So yeah. Monster, I'd recommend going back to the drawing book on that one, and hopefully getting it right in round two. Chad: The other one, there was a Dad, and he's just tucking his kid in and he's on his way out, and the kid asks, "Dad, what is a job?" Or something of that nature. And he goes into this pretty much very dark story of, "Well, you get a job and then you're happy and then it's a soulless ..." I mean, it's just ... It is really dark. It's almost like he's telling his kid a bedtime nightmare story before he just walks out of the fuckin' room and I feel sorry for the kid at the end of the commercial. Joel: Yeah. And I get the whole ... The job search thing and jobs suck and I mean, that's been a constant message from Job Boards since forever, but yeah ... It just wasn't that funny. Chad: No. Joel: And it wasn't inspiring, it was just a real dud. I guess the question would be, is this batch worse than the purple Bugs Bunny converse wearing commercials? Chad: Yeah, I think ... I don't know if they're worse. I think they're bad in many different ways. All of those. I think they were on the right track there for awhile because it was really kind of inspiring to say, "Hey. Just found a job on Monster. Just applied for a job on Monster. I won't be here soon." And they pan away and the guy's like, "Yeah. Whatever." Then they pan back and the person's not there anymore. Joel: Yeah. Chad: I mean, it's like ... That's really funny and it's cool and it's like, "Ah, shit! I wanna use Monster because they can get me a job fast." That was a very simplistic message and like you said, this one is incredibly dark, convoluted, and it's like, "What the fuck was that about?" Joel: Yeah and the other thing strange to me is like, the only thing they've really done since Scott took over is the video stuff, sort of gain traction. Chad: Studios. Joel: I mean, just roll the dice, and show an app where you're seeing videos of recruits talking about the job and Instagram for jobs and you're flippin' through videos of recruiters. To me, that would have been at least something unique that would have made people go, "Oh shit. I'm gonna go download Monster. Go check it out if I haven't for a while." The whole message of, "We'll be there with you, we'll help you with your resume." It just seemed really disjointed from everything that we've talked to Monster about in the last year or so. Chad: Yep. It was overshadowed by darkness. Joel: Get it together, Monster. Chad: Ah, shit. We'll let's get away from this. Let's talk about the LTG and ... Joel: L to the T to the G. Chad: And Breezy. Joel: 18 million, right? Chad: So, I'm kind of confused on that 'cause it says the purchase of the town acquisition software, the initial 12 million and further performance payments are expected over the next three years capped at 18. So to me that sounds more like 30. The prospect of 30. Not to mention you take a look at evaluation wise, their revenue for 2018 was 3.6. Joel: And we'll categorize breezy as an ATS here, right? Chad: Yeah, SMB. Joel: So to me this is the great consolidation of somebody's ATS's, to me, this is maybe another step in the direction of these little guys sort of gobbled up and I think we're gonna see a lot more of this. I also think it's interesting in regards to the whole waking the dead resumes trend. Breezy had a product similar to Crowded and Crowd is a whole other issue other than their business model, but is that something that wasn't working? Was it something that wasn't taking off the way that they wanted? I don't know if this is sort of a vote against the whole trend of getting your resumes, the old resumes back to life, or maybe it was such a small piece of it that it didn't really matter, but that was the only question I had in regards to sort of Breezy being gobbled up by LTG. Yeah you know me. Chad: On the SMB side of the house, I'm not sure that there's a huge market for the whole kind of revitalization of a resume database that doesn't currently exist right now. Right? Because you're getting these companies into a system and they probably didn't have one before. I see the whole waking the dead, I think Candidate.ID right now is the ones who are really focused heavily on that for an engagement and kind of nurturing stand points, but that's more on the Enterprise size. Joel: Maybe the ATS is just tag it on as extra aren't getting it right and the companies that just focus on that are getting it right. Chad: Yeah. Right? So I think being able to keep those different point solutions and brands is incredibly smart and that's what LTG is doing with Breezy. Breezy's going to keep its brand. Here's the big thing for me. Integration activity is expected to leverage components of Breezy's software to support swifter and richer feature releases to PeopleFluent enterprise product customer. So LTG also owns PeopleFluent. PeopleFluent is an old nasty UX type of system. I think LTG wasn't only buying Breezy to be able to get into the SMB market, I think they were buying Breezy for UI and UX to help on the People Fluent side of the house because they bought them a couple years ago. Joel: I think I agree with that and I have one big question, did this deal go down on a Sunday, because it would have been Breezy on Sunday morning. Chad: Nothing like a Lionel Richie. Breezy on a Sunday morning. Joel: Just when you wish you had the crickets soundbite and it's not on the soundboard. Damn it. Chad: So nice, so nice. Yeah so here's the thing and this is what we should be looking for. And PeopleFluent customers should be looking for because PeopleFluent is an older platform and I can't imagine the amount of technical debt they're dealing with on a daily basis. Is Breezy going to number one just apply new lipstick to the same old PeopleFluent pig or are they actually going to help PeopleFluent become a more agile platform with better UI, UX, and it'll ... I'm leaning toward the former where it's all about the lipstick on the pig at this point, but who knows? We'll see. Joel: Yeah, I think it's separate brands and cash checks and snapped necks if they can do it. Chad: Ah, we'll see. Joel: Ah, Google. Holy cow, we've almost gone half a show without talking about Google. Chad: What? Joel: They're in the news this week. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They released a work from option in their Google for jobs scheme of markup. This is sort of on the heels of relocation jobs or something recently. I'm kind of spacing on ... Chad: Commute. Yeah, commute job search and they launched the capability to do enhanced job search in over a hundred different languages. That happened last month. So those two did, yeah. Joel: So I don't think this is a big story. I think it's a growing segment. People who wanna work from home and companies that are willing to do that and my guess is, most job sites don't have a category or an easy way to sort of locate these kinds of jobs. So the fact that Google at least is aware that this is something that's growing and they, they get the benefit of search data to see how many people are searching "work from home". And I'm kind of curious in terms of their job search API, if some of this innovation and these features are driven by people going on CareerBuilder, Dice Rever [00:19:01], people who are using Google Jobs API and searching, "work from home" and that's driving the innovation around Google for Jobs. I gotta think it does. Chad: It's probably to an extent. The thing that I would like to focus on is not just the work from home piece, it is that Google is building better job search brick by brick. So we're talking about commute, search for commute. Either walking distance or public transportation. That's one piece and all these other job search companies didn't have that. Chad: Then they were talking about over a hundred languages. Search in over a hundred different languages. These other companies didn't have that. Now they're doing work from home. I mean, it's brick by brick, and they're not big bricks, right? Chad: So it's brick by brick and they are building not just better job search, but they are starting to with the job search API, the talent solution jobs search API, they're starting to really aggregate the entire fucking market to use their systems, to use their API. So I think this is more of the long game and just building that foundation brick by brick so you can put your brand on top of it. 'Cause that's what's happening. We talked to Stephen Rothberg about College Recruiter. Their brand is on the Google Foundation. Career Builder, Jive, I mean, all these different companies, they're putting their house on this Google Foundation. Joel: It's a tale of two cities, right? So you have Monster with very little innovation and throwing money at bad advertising, let's be honest. And then you have Google who does very little adverting. I mean, they did a Superbowl ad, I'll give 'em that, but they're way more focused on, "How do we incrementally improve the product for the good of the job seeker?" And I think that if you were looking at strategies, what Google is doing is far more beneficial and effective than what throwing money to advertising is probably doing for Monster. I love that every few weeks out of Google, we get something new even though it's maybe small, they keep chugging along and it's truly cool to see. Chad: It is and this is another message to talent equitation professionals out there, HR professionals, get your shit together because all of this also ramps back to Google for jobs. So all of these jobs are searchable there and if you're not applying the right tags for maybe remote or virtual work, right? Work from home. Whatever you wanna call it. If you're not putting salary, if you're not doing all these different things, then you're not going to rank as well, number one. Chad: And then number two, if your user experience sucks and you have a bunch of job seekers jumping into your job and getting the fuck out quickly, Google sees that. So you have an opportunity right now to rank better than all those other different job boards that are out there. There's job sites that you're paying to be on, you have to do a better job or you're not gonna get rewarded and your ass is gonna be down at the bottom of the pile where job seekers aren't going to see your shit. Joel: Were you a secret shopper in my ERE presentation yesterday about Google for jobs? Chad: Sometimes I think we share a brain. Joel: We probably ... That's scary. Yeah. Ew, ew. Chad: Such an asshole. Joel: I will say, depressingly that educators like us have a long way to go with most of the market when it comes to Google for jobs. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Most people I talk to in HR can't even spell SEO, let alone understand what the Hell you just on this podcast. Lead, follow, or get the Hell out of the way everybody. Speaking of ERE ... Chad: Get the fuck outta the way. Joel: Our boy Colin Day at iCIMS, would you call it scathing? Revealing? Honest? Transparent? Brutal? Chad: One of the things that we get outta Colin is that he has a vision and one of the visions for his organization is definitely close partnership with Google. And he actually penned an ERE article around Google for Jobs and said, "Google for Jobs, without being sidetracked to an intermediary, increased their traffic for their clients." They have like 4000 clients or some shit like that. "To 134%." So increased, increased. Canada traffic was more than doubled and, I mean, from our standpoint, I definitely wanna get Colin or Al CT over there on the pod to talk more about this and to get into the trenches on this. Joel: Yep. So the article's entitled, "What we're seeing so far from Google for Jobs." It's on ERE.net. And in addition to some of the numbers, he goes into some optimization tips, like putting salary information on your job postings, candidate data stuff that's interesting. I mean, it's a really good article. And we don't get a lot of CEO blog posts like this on sort of these platforms. Chad: Yeah, he's been out there. Joel: Yeah, he has been, but this is the first time I've seen him post at least ERE in such a sort of passionate way, so I hope we see more of out this from Colin as well as other CEOs that are leveraging Google, 'cause I think, ultimately most of the ATSs find job boards to be a pain in the ass. And to be middle men that are unnecessary, they might not say it publicly, but they certainly say it to us privately, and Google for Jobs takes out that middle name and makes the ATS/The Career Site, the original source of the job, which frankly it should be, and I think that's the direction that we're going, and that's pretty good for the ATS business. Chad: Yeah, if Al and Colin and all of the team over at iCIMS can help their clients get their shit together because they don't know what the fuck they're doing, right? Then that would be awesome, because you could lead the industry and obviously that's not bad for business either. Joel: Fortunately for iCIMS, I mean, they're doing a lot of the work for the companies. I mean, the data that goes in is what the company does, but at least iCIMS, is working really closely with Google to make sure their Is or dotted and their Ts are crossed. Chad: Now. Joel: Let's take a quick break and here from our buddies at Sovren and we'll talk about LinkedIn and Elon Musk losing his shit. 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 to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI matching, visit Sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. Joel: Boom! So LinkedIn's in the news. First and foremost I guess. They're saying bye-bye to their standalone job search app and the job search will be part of the lone LinkedIn app, which I'm sure everyone's using. I don't know how many are using the job search app, but the job search will just role into one application. Yeah, I guess that makes sense to put all the content, the profiles, and the jobs into one app. Makes a lot of sense. I don't see LinkedIn being like a Facebook where you download a separate messaging app from the main app and doing multiple things. LinkedIn is just fine with that one app that does everything. Chad: And they should. And it sounds like or at least reports have come in saying that Facebook is looking to roll messenger into their native app as well. So it seems like there was kind of this trend of, "Let's build more apps and have people download more apps." Where now, they can start pulling people into a core app and I think from LinkedIn's standpoint, it makes sense because I would say, and I have to take a look at numbers, that obviously more people have the LinkedIn app versus the LinkedIn jobs app. Chad: So everybody who doesn't have the LinkedIn jobs app, you're not gonna be as exposed to that job search. If they can do that on their core app, then it just makes more sense. You can expose more individuals quicker and do more things. So they said they're not gonna lose any functionality from going from two apps to one app. Joel: Yeah and they're doing a lot more advertising and in some of the bigger markets when I travel and we saw this in Chicago, they're pretty active in the job search advertising, and it just doesn't make sense to confuse the consumer with, "Okay, I can't search for jobs on the app with profiles and the newsfeed, or it's different than what I have to download separately." So yeah it makes a ton of sense to put these under one roof. Chad: Right. Joel: In my mind and it should be a good thing for them. Chad: At ERE though, you heard some things about price increases and that kind of shit. Joel: Yeah. An E-Mail went out to agency partners of LinkedIn basically talking about a price increase. So the E-Mail was basically, "As your team plans for the second half of this year and into 2000, we want to inform you that we're increasing the prices of LinkedIn Recruiter and job spots for purchases and renewals beginning July 1st 2019. We consider a lot of factors when we rise our prices. The US will see a ... Some customers in the US may experience an increases, others will receive an increases in both recruiter up to 3% and jobs no more than 2%. This will depend on a customer size and hiring scale. And then Canada, recruiter pricing will increase by up to 7%." Chad: Hello. Joel: "For jobs. Some customers may not experience an increase while others will receive an increase of up to 3%." So it's a little bit gray on exactly who's gonna get this price increase, but definitely some people are gonna see their bills go up. Chad: So every company that I talk to, every company when we bring up LinkedIn, they go directly to pricing to say, "I can't believe it's so fucking expensive." All ready. Joel: And it's gonna get worse, because as GDPR and privacy and people’s rights and consumers rights continue to trend throughout the developed world, LinkedIn is in the driver's seat, because the profiles they have, were actually put on there by the people who are on there. They weren't scraped from About Us pages. They weren't scraped out of Get Hub or anywhere else. The sourcing sites that we talk about a lot are gonna be in trouble as privacy concerns continue to raise. LinkedIn is gonna be safe and as a result, those prices are gonna go up. So get used to it. Chad: That's a good point. That's a good point. Still fucking expensive. Joel: Nobody said winning was cheap. So now we need Google to step up and find some way to battle the profiles that are LinkedIn anyway. Tesla, driverless in the news. Elon Musk losing his mind. Chad: Dude, yeah, so next year they say Tesla's going to launch driverless taxi services, much like an Uber. So any owner will be able to add or remove their car if it's a model three or a model S initially from the Tesla network and earn revenue. Tesla will take about 25 to 30% of that revenue in areas where there aren't a large pool of these vehicles, Tesla will obviously supply its own. So how is this going to work? Well, the way that I looked at it was, it's gonna be like Uber, but without you having to be in the car to earn cash. Chad: You just have your car on autopilot and Tesla, and put it in the network, right? So it's on, your car is working for Tesla, and Tesla can call your car out of your fuckin' driveway to go pick somebody up, drop 'em off, and continue doing that, or just return it back to your driveway. I'm sure you can call it back or what have you. Tesla expects that the actual driverless fleet will cost consumers about 18 cents per mile, where today it's about two to three dollars per mile and they're looking at a gross profit of about 65 cents per mile. It's pretty interesting and I love the concept, but to say that it's going to be out next year is what gets me like, "What, really?" Joel: I have two thoughts on this story. The first one was, I can't wait till some Silicon Valley hotshot hacks into the Tesla system and drives all of the cars into the bay one day. Chad: Oh fuck. Joel: The other thing I thought of was, and all be it for me to question the all mighty Elon Musk. The dude's a genius, no doubt, but I feel like he's moving away from Tomas Edison category to Howard Hughes category and in ten years we're gonna be lookin' on Elon and he's gonna have really long toenails and fingernails and he's gonna be riding in a Tesla just in his underwear ordering Big Macs out of McDonald's or something. I just feel like his current horse is a little bit dangerous. Chad: Yeah! Well he's predicting within the next two years, Tesla will produce cars without steering wheels or pedals and within the next three years those cars are gonna cost about 25000 less than what they do now. That gets me itchy. To be able to sit in a fuckin' car and literally have no control over what's going on. Fuck man, I don't know. Joel: Well, and then he says, if you buy anything but a Tesla in the next three years, you might as well have just bought a horse and buggy. He's just saying some shit that's pretty nutty and I'm kind of worried about it. He might be putting in too many hours at the office. Chad: I don't find that so far off just because he's just pretty much saying, "Hey, look. My shit's better than theirs. Way better than theirs. How long's the combustion engine been around?" Joel: I just hope his ass can cash the checks that his mouth is writing. Chad: Yeah, we'll find out. We'll find out. Joel: It'll be fun to watch, that's for sure. We need him to launch some sort of employment solution that we can really dig into Elon Musk and his insanity. Chad: Yeah. I think overall, this is interesting seeing this technology perceptively. It hasn't yet moved this fast because it will start to obviously come to our industry that much faster. I mean Moore's law is a bitch, man. It is moving fucking fast. Joel: Yeah, I mean, as we talked before, it'll impact between one and three million jobs in the US alone for people who drive vehicles. So this will be fun to watch and it will impact employment in some way. So, we'll be watching, Elon. We have a new ad from JobAdX, dude. I'm pretty excited. Chad: Play it. Joel: Let's listen to it and we'll come back and talk about Facebook and Facials. JobAdX: Finding the right fit is important when you're deciding on shoes from a long day at the trade show, when you're picking the right podcast for your commute, and most importantly when you're looking for the right candidate. With JobAdX, you can attract more relevant, engaged candidates to your job by harnessing the best in ad tech targeting. JobAdX: From predictive industry analysis and keyword click data, to premium first page placement, and reducing redundant applications, our candidate targeting technology ensures that you're reaching talent that's as interested in working with you as you are with them. Now with in ad video and multimedia you can share your employer brand story and company culture with job seekers so they can visualize themselves in your office, all hands meeting, or ax throwing team building adventure. All without navigating away from your job posting. JobAdX: Increased engagement makes for fewer steps between job seeker and new team member. Ready to ramp up your job advertising campaigns with the best in ad tech? Visit our new website at www.jobadx.com. That's J-O-B-A-D-X.com. Attract, engage, employ with JobAdX. Oh and Happy Anniversary to our favorite dangerous dudes. Thanks for all the traffic, shout outs, and good laughs. JobAdX proudly team Chad and Cheese in 2019. Joel: Very nice. Way to suck up to the show. I like it, I like it a lot. Chad: I like it. Knowing that we did the ax throwing, they mentioned podcasts, I mean all that stuff in the actual ad, and then at the end, the ultimate suck up. I love it. Joel: Yeah, I think we're gonna see them in Portugal, right? We'll have to buy drinks for that suck up. We appreciate that. Chad: That's not how we do things. We don't buy drinks. Joel: That's true. We don't buy drinks. Who are we kidding? All right. Facebook voice assistant, right? They're taking on Alexa, they're taking on Google Homes, Siri, whatever voice assistant you can think of. Are we bullish on this, bearish on it, too late, too soon, or too little too late, or just the right time? Chad: So currently Facebook's portal, which we'll talk about in a second, uses Amazon's Alexa for voice assistance, but their oculus group which is in Redman Washington is now working on this, this voice product. It's interesting because portal I always thought was kind of odd. I mean, it's just a Facebook calling device. That's really what I thought it was, but obviously there's more too it. There's no question, Facebook is a big player in this game. One of the 800 pound gorillas, they have to differentiate themselves with these different types of tech. They can't just hope that Amazon isn't gonna kick them out one of these days, right? I think this is a move they have to make. I think they've waited too long to make it, but I think it's damn smart. Joel: Yeah, I think they'd be well served for this not to be a direct competitor to Alexa, but I think they need to integrate their own solution into their own products. So oculus in virtual reality and augmented reality, I still believe they think is gonna be a thing, and to integrate a voice into their oculus virtual reality product makes a ton of sense, right? Joel: So you've got your headset on and your earphones and everything and you're talking your way through whatever game or whatever situation in virtual reality. To me that works a lot better than having a joystick in each hand and trying to figure out where you're going and what's going on. If you can voice interact with virtual reality, I think it becomes a lot more impactful. So my guess is, that's where they're going with it primarily. I don't think it's so much of an Alexa killer or Google Home killer, it's just their own solution to their own sort of products. Chad: Yeah no I disagree a hundred percent. They're looking to go directly against Google Home, Alexa, if you take a look at the actual portal product, it looks very ... Not the big expanded one, but the smaller one looks almost like a Google Home. So these are products that are direct competitors. There's no question. Joel: Yeah, all right. I think they'll lose that battle. If that is their strategy. Chad: I do too, but if you don't fight, you always lose so it's good that- [crosstalk 00:39:27]. Joel: Everyone tried to make a phone and lost. I mean, they'll do it and lose and waste a lot of money, but yeah, we'll talk about it and it'll be fun, but yeah don't sell on virtual reality just yet. All right, moving on. I'm super tired. Chad: Facial recognition. Joel: Facial recognition. There was a story that you shared or are we just talking about facial recognition in general? Chad: Yeah, well I mean, it was one of the things that you wanted to talk about. Joel: Okay, well I've got something to say about it, I think. I think that off the record conversations with some of the sourcing solutions ... Talk quite a bit around, how do we integrate facial recognition into sourcing. So in other words, will there ever be an API from companies that can identity faces and then add that face to let's say a LinkedIn profile or connect that to a Get Hub profile and then based on where people are, can you track their movements, and either advertise to them or conveniently bump into them as they're doing things in their regular life? I just think that people don't really understand probably how powerful and scary facial recognition is and how much our government and who knows who else is doing this shit, but I mean, it's freaky to me when I post a picture on Facebook and it automatically knows every face in the picture. But now you start consumerizing that or commercializing it and what kinds of things can you do from a recruiting standpoint to target people by face and it becomes a little bit scary. Chad: We are training the tech so when we go into the actual Facebook photos area and we start tagging our own faces and other people’s faces, we're training their technology to recognize. So I mean, we're doing that as humans, and we're the stupid monkeys behind the scenes. Go figure, but there was a pretty scary, interesting story about an individual who was getting onto a plane and they said, "Instead of giving you your idea, give me your boarding pass and look into this camera." She looked into the camera and it automatically identified her as the person with the boarding pass. And she was like, "Wait a minute. What just happened?" And there was this whole Twitter feed of questions and answers from this lady saying, "Wait a minute. Do you have my face? My facial recognition in your software?" Chad: And they were like, "No, no." The airline was like, "No. That was actually from the federal government. They have that." And they were like, "Well how did you get it?" So there are all these different questions of, "Wait a minute. How Enemy of the State is this stuff?" If you haven't seen the Will Smith movie Enemy of the State. Watch it right now because this is exactly where we're getting. Facial recognition, cameras all over the fucking place. It's scary to an extent, but also, looking at the flip side, there are individuals who are getting kicked out because they're using somebody else's name and when they go into facial recognition, facial recognition is actually kicking them out. Joel: And I'll throw in minority report as well and I guess that's sort of the positive side. If you're a criminal, you're in trouble. Or if you've done a DNA test and you're related to a criminal, they're in trouble. The spiderweb of all this shit is just really creepy and I don't know what to make of it, but I know I'm gonna keep my nose clean because damn. You can't do anything bad anymore. Chad: No, no. I'm just glad that we grew up in the 80s and we didn't have all this shit recording everything that's fucking going on. I mean, these kids have no fucking clue, because like I'd said before, I mean, some of my kids have 30000 pictures, selfies on Instagram, right? And that is all focused on learning and facial recognition and it's like, dude. There's a ton of data that we are feeding into the beast every single fucking day. Joel: Let's just say if wearing parachute pants was a crime, I'd have been locked up a long time ago. Chad: Still guilty. 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. #Monster #LinkedIn #Tesla #Google #GoogleforJobs #PeopleFluent #Breezy #Facebook #Alexa #GoogleAssistant #Siri

Evolving beyond the mere word "programmatic" and effectively engaging candidates where they want to be engaged. Amit Chauhan, CEO of JobAdX, friend of the show, and kick ass sponsor is accosted by Chad & Cheese to talk DYNAMIC VIDEO ADS. Another StaffingTec bourbon fueled podcast powered by the MENSA cast over at Jobcase. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your sourcing and recruiting partner for people with disabilities. Chad: We caught up with friend, sponsor, and most importantly JobAdX CEO, Amit Chauhan during staffing tech in Nashville. Check it out. Sponsored by our friends at Jobcase. Joel: Yo, Chad, got a question for you. Chad: Okay. Joel: Say I'm looking to hire hourly workers for hard to fill jobs. Where should I go? Chad: Easy, Jobcase. Joel: Okay. All right, now let's say I've tried the job boards and all I'm getting is clicks and what I really want are qualified candidates, actual people. Where should I go? Chad: Dude, Jobcase. Joel: Now, what if I want the team who is helping me with all this sourcing to be really, really, really smart? And before you answer keep in mind I'm talking Mensa smart, like MIT affiliated data scientists and people who are at the forefront of machine learning. Who you got? Chad: Oh my god, dude, it's Jobcase. Jobcase. Look, with 100 million members in their community, active and passive job seekers, a huge team of data scientists who are experts at targeting and connecting employers with the right candidates, the answer is always going to be Jobcase. Joel: I dig it. I'm picking up what you're putting down, but what if ... Chad: Hard stop. Jobcase. See for yourself why the answer always comes back to Jobcase for all your hiring needs. Learn more at jobcase.com/hire. That's jobcase.com/hire. Joel: Job Case. Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HRs most dangerous podcast Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where 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: Still here at StaffinTec in Nashville and we have a friend from the pod. Joel: Not just a friend a sponsor. Joel: A sponsor. Joel: Full discloser. Chad: That's a total disclosue. Joel: Yeah, so the gloves are not coming out. Chad: How? My ass. Whatever. I don't think you know who you're talking to. Joel: Let start with this. We have Amit JobAdX, Chad and Cheese Podcast, I'm Cheese, he's Chad. We have a Canadian here. We have a playoff hockey game in the city - Chad: In Nashville. Joel: That you could walk to. Chad: The Preds. Joel: And you're not going. Please explain yourself to us as well as your Canadian brethren. Chad: Hand over that card. You're not going to be allowed back in. Amit: Absolutely. I'm Canadian now but I was born in India. So I'll give preference to cricket or anything else any given day. So if you have a cricket game in Nashville I'll go to that. Joel: When hell freezes over. The day before that happens we'll let you know. Chad: There will be cricket. Joel: Now, in your defense, you're an NBA guy. Amit: Oh yes, 100%. Joel: Toronto Raptors all the way, right? Amit: Yeah, die hard fan. Joel: They'll be in the playoffs, so you'll be doing that and bypassing the hockey. Amit: No, absolutely. I think like the day I landed here in Canada I started watching NBA Raptors. Luckily, I've been doing great since then. Joel: Are we talking the Vince Carter Raptors? Amit: No. Joel: Okay, post Vince. Amit: No, it's I'll say DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry Raptors. Joel: All right. Amit: And now we have Leonard. So, yeah, we'll see. Joel: Yeah, enjoy him for the next two months or so. Amit: Come on. See, we're the north. Joel: They are the north. Amit: It's about the team. It's always all about the team. Joel: That's the north. True. [crosstalk 00:03:44] Amit: It's not about no single player. Joel: As people know, my wife is Canadian. She actually has a We The North T-shirt. So I kid with you for the Canadian thing. But anyway, let's get down to business. You've presented at least twice today, so someone owes you something at the show cause you're presenting all over the place. Chad: Three times? He presented three times today? Holy shit. Joel: Something new that you sort of have launched at the show or recently. Talk about your video offering. Amit: No, absolutely and it just came organically to us that we started as a candidate attraction and engagement platform. We were learning a lot about how candidates are attracting to job postings, what they're clicking on, what they're applying to. And we realize that since we have those dynamic ad units what if we add a video component to it? Because one of the biggest things we saw that companies are spending a lot of amount of money on creating that video content that either sits on their career website or are just like randomly blasting on YouTube, which - Chad: Gets no views whatsoever, yeah. You're creating, spending all this money, and for shit, right? Amit: It just goes down the drain without any ROI. But active job seekers, they want to see who are you. Like who are you as a brand, as an employer. And that's exactly created as an opportunity that if you can distribute the same video content why are dynamic ad units, like what kind of impact it can have. We ran a couple of tests with some of our clients early on just to see it in controlled environment and the performance were ridiculously good. We see a lot higher percentage of candidates who see and click on the play video. Chad: So give me some stats. Joel: Do you have any numbers? Amit: On the high level number we see almost 46% of the candidates who click on the view video they actually click on the apply. So from the video to apply radio is incredibly high and also the conversion rate is 12% higher. So the people who watch the video and go to the career website they are more likely to apply for the jobs because now they already have a sense that who you are as an employer. Joel: So this seems like a natural progression to me. We have more and more video solutions, skill scout, video my job, hire view and - Chad: Content, content, content. Joel: Just haven't connected with the actual job posting. You have to go to the corporate career site to see an imbed video. Now that we are finally connecting videos and we're here at the Monster Event who launched Monster Studios fairly recently. They're doing sort of the same thing. So it's a trend that I'm, I guess encouraged about. I'd like to see more of it. What advice would you give to companies who are looking to do video but quite haven't done it yet? Amit: See we talk so much about recruitment marketing and employer branding but in necessity we're still not treating job seekers as a consumer. Exactly because you have to look at it from the same view, same lens that okay these candidates if you truly are doing recruitment marketing they also are consumer, they are the same candidates who might be buying our product also. When we advertise videos about employment, about employer brand or about the culture of the company that actually delivers a lot stronger message that you can ever do with a text job. Most of the time text job are just copy paste of the same job requisition you had from years ago. With employer branding if you're spending that much money on creating like a brand recognition use that collateral even more smartly and distribute it. Show it to the active job seeker, get in front of them, treat them exactly same how you treat your customers because it's a coherent process right? Amit: Like if you have the same brand progression through your candidate experience they're gonna remember when they buy your product. They're gonna remember that this company, I remember I went through their looked for a job for them, the candidate experience was remarkably good and now I'm buying their product, it's good or if it's a bad experience they're gonna remember that as well. Chad: So how easy is it for companies to get their videos in their job feeds? Right because you know as well as I do, adoption is the hardest part of anything that we do. So, companies don't want to lift a finger to do anything else right? They're already stuck in their process. How can you make it easy for them to make sure that they can actually leverage that content that they've spent money on? Amit: Well it's incredibly simple. We know that you have already spent time, energy and money to create that video content. We want to make it seamless that you can just distribute it to us. So if you already have a page that you are sending to us like for your text job you just need to add another field for URL for the video and we'll get it, we'll display it in our unit. It's a seamless process, it doesn't change anything. It also gets you a lot more visibility in the publisher network just because they're so much more demand. Chad: Right. Amit: Increasingly the clicks and the visibility on mobile devices is incredibly high for the video job ad which is almost like 60% of the audience overall. Because candidates if they're in a bus or if they're just walking down they want to see the video, they don't want to read your job description and they just know if I want to apply for this company or not. Chad: It's not so different because if you're on a desktop right? You want to scan and kind of get through it quick but when you're on your mobile phone I mean I rarely watch YouTube on my desktop, I watch it on my phone all the time and I don't know if that's just me or but it sounds like - Amit: It's everyone. Joel: And what are some best practices that you've seen? Like how long should a video be? What should the content? Should it be really really professional? Is it okay to be sort of pick up your iPhone and do a recording? [crosstalk 00:09:41] I think a lot of companies think they have to have really good agency created video and I've seen numbers that say the opposite that people like that sort authentic I'm your hiring manager I'm gonna be your boss, here's what it's like working here - Chad: Just as it's not like Blair Witch right? Amit: Exactly 100% and that's a good point. I'll say the most optimal like length of the video is 60 to 90 seconds, anything beyond that just becomes too much for anyone to view and actually consume that much information. What we have seen more personalized and for example, even recording a video from a iPhone about talking about, "Hey you know what? I'm the person who's hiring, you gotta be more with my team. Why we're a great team." Amit: Even if that content is there that's more than creating those fancy videos that takes a lot more effort, a lot more money. Because a lot of them people know that what's an advertising and what's a true culture. There's a big difference like we're consumer we live on internet right? It's very very difficult to lie to someone say okay, this is our culture because those were like you had a whole production crew in your office, everyone was asked to sit there smile and do all those things. It's not possible when you have someone just recording it. So give them you can say backstage experience of who you truly are and whom they're gonna work with and that just works a long way. Chad: This is really heavy on the candidate experience side which means for you guys, I mean for you guys to start focusing on that is I mean that's different than most other vendors that are out there who are not gonna quote engagement types of companies. You guys I mean it seems like you are focusing more on an engagement experience. Amit: As a advertising exchange if we don't talk about how we're attracting or engaging candidates or the core consumer in this space we're literally failing ourselves because we are not talking about the core piece. If it doesn't work for the consumer it doesn't work for the employer. So, that's our focus is how we make it more appealing for consumers, how we make it more efficient for them so that the benefits are actually resulted back to our employers which is great for us because then they'll love us as well, but the whole idea is make it in such a way that candidates see those ads, they engage with that, they give us good data about their behavior online and we use that data to make it even better. Joel: So once you're to put your conference hat on for a second and the set-up here is really unique. Vendors get a table they set up times to talk to attendees. Do you like that format? Have you guys had some success and then secondarily of the vendors you've seen here, what are some interesting companies or trends that you're seeing from the conference? Amit: No it's a great set-up. The amount of time that we've given to talk to each partner that we meet here is very good like it's 25 to 30 minutes. So we get a lot of conversation done. Amit: Most of the time the discussion we've had we're already discussing next steps. So it's like a lot of information is being shared so which is great. It's great first step to get to a new introduction and secondly one of the thing we've found about this particular conference is there are people with specific problems. So companies are coming here, they're looking for solutions, they're looking for people who can solve the problem they have in hand and that is a great place to be in. If you're a vendor and you're looking to reach out to people who are looking for solution you couldn't get better than that. From the vendor side there are some remarkably good companies like there are some chat boards that we have already met which are doing great. We also had some automation marketing companies for staffing itself also scheduling and back office work for staffing. So there's very different pieces that we have met and a lot of them are very good potential partner to us. Joel: So knowing you guys as an innovative software company who has their nose down on the coding, what can we expect from you in the future in terms of new features and things that you guys are working on? Amit: Our focus has always been into one thing that how we can make system more efficient and when we talk about efficiency is what can we do for companies to acquire high quality candidates at a lower cost. That's the motive for us - Chad: And demonstrate performance right? Amit: Exactly. So three things that we corely focus on the first thing starting with how do we target candidates at the best level. So it's all goes about data. One of the things I say advertising without data is bound to fail. So we data we live, breathe and eat data all day long. Secondly, once you have targeted how you attract them to engage to actually see your ad and do something, take some action and that's all about how we position our ad units and what we were doing with that. And the last is engagement. Once you've done the right things about targeting and attracting how do you engage? One of the core parts for the video job ad is actually the engagement and we're actually going further with this that how we can even collect the job application on the sites where our candidates are, so that the experience is 100% seamless and they don't even have to go to a third party site to finish the applications. Chad: So are we starting to get to the point where the humans understand that they're not smart enough to do this well and that they need algorithms to actually but it seems like from an adoption stand point that you're starting to see is that humans are like okay I can't do this as well as an algorithm or JobAdX or a vendor that doesn't need a day trader trying to bid for jobs. Amit: Not 100% - Joel: Unfortunately. Amit: So our goal is not to replace someone in particular or that's not the process here - Chad: Makes sense though right? Amit: Yeah, the idea is to make the job easier for people who are already doing it. So for example, if it's a day trader or even for recruitment marketer, how we can make sure that the information that they have, the data they are collecting or the collateral they are creating how we can spread it in a way or distribute it in a way that make a lasting effect on their effects. Because right now I think one of the most common things we have seen is recruitment marketing get to a point where they have a lot of collateral, they create a buzz on social media and that's it. That's when it comes to sell, how do you measure the performance of an employer video that you just spent 100 thousand dollars creating. That's where we come in and say okay you want some data around that? Give us that video let us distribute it in our exchange and we will tell you how many people actually like it as compared to the ones that are others there right? Joel: All right Amit your marketing team made we promise that I would ask about your redesigned websites so let's have it. Chad: You know in our production I'm gonna cut this right? Amit: No, absolutely. Joel: Good luck with that dude. Amit: No, perfect, yeah. Are you going to edit this or no? Okay, but yeah, so the first version of our homepage was literally designed by me - Chad: And it was so sexy. Amit: It was ridiculous. No wonder it has the most typos you can find in any corporate website but that was the need of the hour. So last year we decided that okay now we need to get more professional, we have some really large clients and we want to make sure that when they're working with us we represent their image as well. So we went through the whole transition process and also came in that because we evolved as a platform, as a company ourselves we saw the transformation happen, so we wanted to have that consistent with our messaging as well. So we decided that it's time to redesign the website and more importantly not just redesign the website but also redesign our messaging. So come up with a messaging that aligned with our mission and vision. So we launched our new website, so please everyone can go and take a look and it's on www.jobadx.com and give us feedback and just email it to Isabelle directly so that she can get it fixed. Joel: And what is that URL Amit? Amit: Yeah that's isabelle@jobadx.com Chad: That's the email but just go to jobadx.com Joel: Just take off the isabelle@ and you've got the new website. Amit thank you go much for stopping by we appreciate it. Chad: Go get a beer man. Amit: Thank you. Announcer: This has been 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. #StaffingTec #Jobcase #video #Programmatic #JobAdX #Engagement #UX

What would you do after conferencing all day? Well we met Abby Cheesman, Katrina Kibben and Dawn Burke in a bar, grabbed some drinks and set up the mics to talk about SHRM Talent, the industry and the WTF moments we deal with everyday in the Recruiting Industry. Sponsored by Jobcase -- when you're sick of PAYING for clicks and just need PEOPLE! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions' clients are changing the lives of people with disabilities, including veterans with service related disabilities. Intro: When we were at SHRM Talent in Nashville, we found a bar, some rowdy friends and some microphones. Check it out. Announcer: 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, brash opinions and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Welcome to the post-show, all nickname edition of the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm Joel Cheeseman. Chad: I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: And we're gonna go around the table. Introduce everyone. This is sort of a star-studded cast of drinkers that we have at the table. Chad: At this bar. Joel: Reliving the days events and we thought it'd be fun to turn on the mics. And just talk about takeaways, highlights and whatnot. So, I'm going to start with the other Cheeseman at the table. Chad: You're so biased. Joel: I am. Abby introduce yourself for those who don't know and what you do and then pass the mic to Kibbles over here. Abby: My name is Abby Cheeseman. No relation to Joel Cheeseman, although [crosstalk 00:01:17] Joel: Thank god.[crosstalk 00:01:18] Abby: I'm trying to crash his family reunion this summer and he's not having it. Joel: She's showing up. Katrina: It has to happen. Abby: I'm comin'. We're all comin'. Chad: You should. Katrina: You are a Cheeseman. [crosstalk 00:01:25] Joel: All Cheeseman are welcome. If you're out there listening. This is like a version of I am Legend. Cheesemans, if you're out there. [crosstalk 00:01:25] Abby: So, calling Cheesmans. [crosstalk 00:01:25] Katrina: Are there a lot of Cheesmans?[crosstalk 00:01:25] Joel: Show up to the family reunion. Abby: We think so. Indiana 2019. Joel: 2019. Abby: I'm Abby Cheesman, I'm co-founder at Skill Scout, where we make awesome workplace videos. Chad: Awesome workpace videos. Place. Katrina: I think they're better than awesome. But yeah, I'll give it to you. Katrina: So, I'm Katrina Kibben, I'm the founder and CEO of Three Ears Media and I accidentally told Joel Cheesman my high school nickname, so now that's why he just announced me as Kibbles. Abby: You're Kibbles?[crosstalk 00:02:06] Chad: Kibbles. [crosstalk 00:02:06] Joel: Kibbles. [crosstalk 00:02:06] Katrina: That was my very unfortunate high school nickname. Abby: Hey, I would lean into the pain. Lean into the pain. Chad: Start using it yourself, then other people won't. Joel: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Abby: I like it. Dawn: Hi, I'm Dawn Burke. My nickname is Bits. Chad: Bits? Joel: It is now, anyway. Katrina: Well, I'm Kibble and she's Bits. Kibble and Bits, baby. Joel: I actually like that, yes. Dawn: Yeah, you know. Kibbles and Bits. So many thoughts, so little time. No, I'm Dawn Burke. I am the founder of Dawn Burke HR. HR consultancy, really help people understand the modern worker. How do we create recruiting and retention strategies for those folks? And also, of work with Katrina Kibben over at Three Ears Media. Joel: The Kibbles over there. Three Ears Media. Dawn: Oh my god. That totally works. You are Kibbles from now on, lady. Yeah, so that's what we do. Joel: Dawn, let’s start with you. You presented and you've done the Smart Stage. So, what was your topic of interest? Dawn: Well, I'll tell you what's really interesting. First of all, there's one person who's thrilled that I spoke here today. And that's my mother because now somebody's called me smart. She's been waiting for that for a very long time. Chad: Wait a minute, we were... Joel: Were you not hugged enough as a child?[ Like were you not called smart by your parents? Chad: We were also on the Smart Stage and I think that's stretching things. Joel: It was the ironic stage. The irony. The thick irony stage. Dawn: The Smart Stage. I might call it the Smart-ish Stage. Chad: We might go with that. The Smart Ass Stage. Joel: That's good. I like that. Dawn: Actually, let’s do a little set. I'm brilliant. I made a 24 on my ACT. Thank you, very much. Abby: I don't remember what I made. Dawn: So, anyway. So, I spoke on two things. I did the really sexy topic yesterday, and this was a general session, on pay transparency. People wanted to smoke a cigarette when they were done. It actually was really well received, and I'll tell you why. Pay transparency right now is- it's time has come. But the thing that I focus on, isn't just so much about what you need to do or why you should be transparent, but why is that relating to a good business practice with modern workers. That is a big piece to transparency, whether it's with pay, or anything else, it's a huge component to helping modern workers of all generations stay engaged. Feel like there's secrets not being kept from them. Joel: Can you really deny it now, like if you do a job search on Google for jobs, they pull Glass Door data, they pull Zip Recruiter data, they pull Pay Scale data, for what a typical salary is for that job. So, aren't you just better off as an employer by revealing what the salary is instead of relying on third parties. Chad: Just suck it up. Dawn: One thousand percent. And that's what a lot of people still aren't getting. People know anyway. People know anyway. Get ahead of the pay narrative. Lets not let other people do that. Chad: Well, I think bad optics in some cases, right, because they know that they're fucking people. I mean, so optics wise, they're like, we better get our shit together before we actually go transparent. Katrina: I think what you did so well, I attended Dawn's session, and I think, and this is not kissing her ass cause she's the Bits, but Joel: Totally kissing her ass. Dawn: I'm the Bits. Katrina: I think it's because she talks about why they're so scared in the first place. Right, we don't do it because we're scared as hell that someone's gonna find out that they aren't making as much as the person sitting next to them, and they're gonna get pissed and they're gonna quit. That's why you don't tell 'em. Straight up. Dawn: Oh, we're talking about the internal employees. More than the candidates. Katrina: Exactly. And so, from my perspective it's like, if they can address why they're scared in the first place, then they can actually do something. But if you don't talk about that, then you can't even get to the fixing part. Joel: Cause what employers will tell you is they don't want to give a negotiating chip away, but no, its that they don't want the internal employees to get the pitchforks out and demand raises. Chad: Oh, yeah! Chad: And then the 75 or 79 cents on the dollar issue comes up as well, which is another reason why transparency is really sucks for these companies, because if you hire somebody in, even a few dollars lower at the ground level as they grow through the company and everybody gets these same percentage increases, it just widens. So, that pay gap widens. Katrina: And one of the people in the audience asked Dawn that question. Why did you stay at a company for ten years if you knew you could make money somewhere else. And you know what she said? She looked them dead in the eye and she goes, "I was stupid." Joel: Was this from the Smart Stage? Dawn: No. That was from the general session, but that would have been good for the Smart Ass stage as you said. Dawn: Well, and what also was a really interesting thing that I saw in the research is that, I think, this might have been a Career Builder survey, I'm not exactly sure, so don't quote me on that. But they did a survey last year that said that 56% of the respondents, the employers, said that they absolutely always offer a lower salary than they're willing to pay because they expect to negotiate. That's normal. That's not a big shocker. But the thing that was interesting was that 54% of the candidates that responded to this said that they never had any intention of negotiating. They don't, because they don't know how, because they're scared to, they hate it, or they're afraid they're going to come across as greedy. Chad: And not get the job. Dawn: Or not get the job. And so there's a disconnect there, where it's like, let's not play the game anymore. Joel: It's like buying a car. Dawn: It's just like buying a car. That's why we buy cars online now. Chad: Which is the worst thing ever. Joel: The podcast? Chad: The podcast on buying cars, yes. Joel: That is the worst podcast ever. Dawn: So, yeah. That's what I talked about. But we really talked about, how does this translate into the a better engaging practice across the board as far as transparency in general. I find a lot of employers want to do better with pay transparency. They don't know how to start with that internal piece. They don't know how to start with how do we explain to people why there's been this change and they've got to figure that out and they need to be honest about it. Katrina: Because you just said, money and transparency in the same sense and if that doesn't make an HR person crap their pants, I don't know what will. Dawn: After the Nashville Hot Chicken especially. Chad: Bias. They throw bias in there, and then they're really fucking everything up. Dawn: And I know we've got lots of other things to talk about, I know - I'm totally hogging this mic - but you talked about the pay differential, one thing that really surprised me, the 79 cents on the dollar that a white woman makes on a white man is, that's a pretty known. Hispanic women, it's 56 cents on the dollar. That blew my mind. I think African American women was 64 cents. 50 something cents on the dollar? Come on. Everybody knows that's not right. Chad: Yeah, they do, which is one of the reasons they don't want to be transparent about it, because- Dawn: We'll fix that. Joel: So, Abby, you presented as well. What was your topic? Abby: I did. Mine was using ethnography and empathy in job analysis. So we talked, I shared a video. We filmed- Joel: No. There was a video? Abby: Yeah, we did. Imagine. I shared a video that we did with tower climbers. Chad: Abby does video by the way. Joel: HD. Abby: I've done a couple. 1,400. Dawn: That's amazing. Abby: I know, right? So, a couple weeks ago. Actually it was like a month ago, we got to go to Houston, Texas and we got to climb towers with the people that go and build cell phone towers. Joel: So, did you get to climb towers? Abby: I did not. We flew a drone. They're compliance people. I had a videographer that was like, "I'll strap it on, I'll go, lets go." And they're like, "No, no. Sit down. Fly your drone." Abby: But the whole point was immersing yourself in an experience of a job, so that you better understand it, so you can communicate it to candidates, so that you can make better decisions about who you're hiring and they can make self-selection in or self-selection out. Joel: So, what's your opinion on VR. Abby: I think that's the future. Joel: Yes! Abby: I do. I think the more- Joel: Cheeseman. Dawn: That's a true Cheesey. Cheesey, Cheesman. Abby: I think that the more we can give a work sample, like I- experiencing a job before you apply is a really powerful thing for candidates. It's also a really powerful thing for companies, to be able to let a candidate try your job before they apply and before you buy them as an employee. Joel: So, why hasn't it happened yet? Like, what are we waiting for? Abby: It's expensive. So, I think video is like a baby step, right? It's a baby step in visualizing the job. So many companies are still just having text job postings. Only like 1% of job posting have visual on them. Katrina: That's insane. It's so easy- Joel: We're still a long way from sort of critical mass of people owning virtual reality headsets. Right, when is that going to happen? Dawn: Google glasses. Abby: It's not going to happen. Joel: When is my kid gonna go, "I want an Oculus for Christmas?" Abby: So, I don't think that's far off. Actually, I think the younger generations are embracing video as their mode of learning about things, and I think companies are the people that are behind. Video is a baby step. It's easy. It's getting cheaper by the day. The next step will be immersing an experience over that video. Overlays. And then it will be try it. And that's where VR comes in. Chad: And then at that point, they're still going to have to apply through this crappy process methodology. Abby: Type in their resume details. Chad: And everyone is still scared because they go into the black hole. Joel: Do you guys do any VR, yet. Or had requests from companies? Abby: We don't yet. So 360 video with some overlays. We've done a little bit of experimentation. It's tricky, and it's really interesting. And it's a medium that not a lot of companies are trying yet, but yes we've tried a little bit of it. It's really cool. Joel: Assuming the most popular is just make a nice pretty video with HD and like, that's still- will that always be around? Abby: I think it will always be a first step into making your experience more immersive, yes. I don't actually think it needs to be that beautiful. I think it needs to be real and authentic and I think it needs to really show the work. Joel: That's a good question for companies who want to spend a lot of money for nice quality video, versus let's get our iPhones out and make some gorilla style homemade videos. What do you tell those companies in regards to where they should go? Abby: So, I think the content is what drives viewership. Right? You can have a really crappy shot video on an iPhone that has really interesting content, people are still going to watch it. I don't actually think the medium is that important. I think for some things, to capture a tower climber, you gotta fly a drone up. So there's expense and there's equipment that comes with that. But I don't actually think that video is going to continue to be higher and higher fidelity. I think it will actually be lower and lower fidelity, but that content has to be that behind the scenes, scrappy, what's happening versus this overproduced, over corporate messaging. Realistic job preview. I think that's where it's at. Katrina: See, and I'm surprised that you don't think video is going to take over, because right now video, Youtube has 40% of the internet. Abby: I think video is taking over. But I don't think it has to cost you a million dollars. Chad: There you go. Joel: What should it cost you? Abby: You can do it for free, right? Chad: That was an evil laugh. Abby: Like a whole workshop on how you can do it for free. I think Instagram stories are a really interesting place to experiment. Just go behind the scenes, film your workplace, right? I don't think it should cost thousands and thousands of dollars. I think you're going to pay for the quality of the team and the expertise of the story they bring to the table. I don't think it's going to be the million dollar budgets or the half a million dollar budgets. Chad: Joel wants to get videos on TikTok. Joel: Chad basically made me download TikTok and I regret it so much. Chad: Dude, the NBA TikTok feed is fucking awesome. Joel: I haven't gotten there yet. I'm still looking at 14 year old girls lip syncing to The Thong Song and stuff. Chad: You're a pervert. Joel: TikTok is- it's not me! This is what's served up to me. Chad: Oh, okay. Katrina: Too easy, too easy. I wonder what the algorithm is for pushing that video. Dawn: How's that algorithm pushing that to you? Katrina: Cheeseman. Joel: It's commercial time. Jobcase: With job boards you get clicks and well, clicks. But if you're looking for actual people, and not just clicks, meet Jobcase. If you need to hire great people, hourly employees or have hard to fill jobs, Jobcase takes a different approach than job boards. Jobcase delivers local workers, active and passive candidates for the more than 100 million members in their community. That's right, the people on Jobcase are also members. And since they're members, they trust and respond to what Jobcase puts in front of them, because they know it will be worth their while. Like that job opening you're looking to promote, or that hiring event you're hosting. Jobcase: In fact, people are at the center of everything Jobcase does. And it's why they use machine learning and data insights to insure they're connecting employers with the right Jobcase members and their members with the right jobs. It's people first. Not just clicks. Put the power of Jobcase to work for you. Learn more at Jobcase.com/hire. That's Jobcase.com/hire. Chad: It's showtime. Joel: Did you- you presented. Yes, tell us about your session. Katrina: Yeah, so I did a session on how to translate your story into strategy. Because, I talk to companies all the time, I talk to companies that are super small, really big. And they all pretend like having a story is something that's really, really special. They're all like, "But it feels so good to work here, and everybody's so happy and everybody just loves it." Joel: For that one person. Katrina: And it stops right there, and it stops at our conversation. It stops at them telling their friend, "Oh yeah, pretty good job." It never becomes part of their recruiting strategy. So, what I did today was talk them through the philosophy of how you kind of understand the story in the first place. Where you go and get it. And then we walked right into how you translate that into recruiting and the most impactful ways that you can write that story so that people go, "Oh my god. That's me. I want to work there." Joel: I feel like so many companies feel like their story is out of their control. In other words, I feel like they are a slave to whatever Glass Door says their story is. So for companies that feel that way, how do they take control of that narrative? Katrina: I think it's about talking to your people. I have done, and I kinda do quantitative, qualitative, right? Bring all this data together. And every single time, one of those people has written it for me. They've written the one liner, they've written the little classy sentence that the people freak out about. It's usually verbatim something that their people said. And so I would anybody who feels trapped, to turn around and listen to a lot of stories and figure out the similarities among those stories and use that. Instead of trying to make something or hire some expensive marketing agency to write stuff that they don't know shit about. Joel: You probably run into that, Abby with like tell our story through video. There's not a more powerful way to tell a story is there? Dawn: But I think the thing that's interesting about both Abby and Katrina when they're talking about this, is the differentially or somebody that works in the corporate HR space for a long time and who hired some people to do some videos, never really dug deep into marketing copy cause it was a whole different game today. The two that I think I really learned from listening to their sessions is, they go a step deeper than just writing a story or a template or like a "Hey, here's our movie script." They both go through a job analysis when they're talking about the- what are we gonna write. It's more than just a catch phrase its really talking with the people. And both of y'all do this. To really understand at a deeper level, not just necessarily about the whole company, but about this job and what's going to connect a certain human to come to this job. And that's different than a lot of other people who are talking about job posting, copy and/or video. Katrina: Because if we go on Amazon and they give us recommendations that aren't personalized for us, we're like, "What the hell is this? Why do they think I want a pair of boots?" Right? Katrina: Or weird TikTok videos. Joel: It's like a TikTok algorithm that needs to work on its algorithm by the way. Katrina: When do we as candidates start to expect that from our employers. When do we start to expect personalized experiences? Because I think it's coming a lot faster than... Joel: ...automation will drive a lot of that, I think. Chad: Because it's process and that's all people, right now. So, everybody goes in the black hole because they don't- nobody's doing that job of engagement. You have chatbots and you have- I mean, you can source in seconds vs. days. I agree 100%. The AI revolution[crosstalk 00:18:44] Joel: ...we've been talking about, you know ATS's need to Amazon their application process. Chad: Amazon their shit. Joel: But they're still not doing it. Dawn: But really, do we want those one click applies? Because I don't know if you guys have been on Zip Recruiter, lately, but whoooo it's messy. Joel: We will receive better AI to prescreen and [inaudible 00:19:01][crosstalk 00:19:01] Chad: [crosstalk 00:19:01]Here's the thing, though. I, yeah, technology definitely needs to change, applicant tracking systems all that, but I believe employers, because they're the ones with the money. They're the ones who can actually drive pod development and the reason why shit is so still dilapidated, and they're only using like 10% of their systems in the first place is because they have a decade old, fucking process, that they're using to do shit and they suck. And they don't blow it up. And they don't start from ground zero. Joel: It's like being in a shitty relationship, like, "Well, it's hard to get out of. I don't want to move my shit. It's going to cost a lot of money. I'm just gonna stick around." Dawn: Honestly, he actually said it very clearly. A lot of it really is, I just spent a lot of money to implement the shitty system. And we just went through, I had to go through so many hoops to get the budget for the shitty system. The system I thought wasn't shitty because the vendor told me how awesome it was. Oh, and by the way, I really didn't know what I needed anyway. Joel: And you look bad if you say, "I made a wrong decision." Dawn: It's very hard to do that.[crosstalk 00:20:04] Chad: That's it right there.[crosstalk 00:20:05] Joel: Especially spending that money. Dawn: Spending the money is very difficult for a lot of pros in our space, to actually get that money. But here's the deal, to your point though, Chad. And I say this with all due respect. I'm not a manager basher, I'm not a corporate basher so much, it's getting easier to do frankly. Chad: I am. Joel: Go ahead and do it. Dawn: No, well the truth is this: they're being lazy. We're not talking about having to blow up an ATS to have an engaging experience. I mean, I think we should blow up a lot of ATS's, but- you know what? Joel: Which ATS's should we blow up, Dawn? Dawn: Well, I'll [mumbles] can say that. But when you talk about they do CEO's employees feel their captors or victims to the brand. That's on Glassdoor, well yeah they are. Give in front of it man. Katrina: And the best part is that they blame the hires. Dawn: It's really expensive to have a bad hire. You want to know how expensive it is to have a shitty ATS? I would love to see those numbers. Katrina: Want to know how expensive it is to have a shitty employee who still is here all the time. Dawn: It really is a systemic issue. The only way that I've seen people in corporations change is one of two things. If they're losing so many employees, which sometimes happens, because employees vote with their feet. Or if a law makes them do something. I mean, or if the customers do. Sometimes, I mean, a lot of social- Joel: Maybe if their competition does it. Chad: Okay, so Taleo back in the day, back when it was called Recruit Soft, they had one system, one process and everybody fit into it. Until, the company said, "No, you're not getting our money unless you customize." Dawn: Right, which is hard to do. Chad: I'm telling ya. If a company goes and says, "This is what we want. This is how it has to happen." That money means a lot- especially millions of fucking dollars man. Joel: Sure. I mean ATSs weren't SEO friendly until all their clients said, "Why aren't these jobs in google?" And none of them became mobile friendly until people went on their phones and said, "Why does our career sight look like shit on my mobile phone?" It's definitely a grass roots initiative to get ATS's to change. Chad: And the grass roots is money. Joel: It's money. The green is green backs. Chad: The green... Joel: So, I want to pivot to the exhibit hall, because we like to talk about vendors on our show. What vendors stood out, what are some new solutions that caught your eye? What were some really ones that made you scratch your head and say, "Why?" And anyone can feel free to go first. Abby: So, I think it was the Talroo. Talroo. Did they have a dog? Joel: They have a cute dog. Abby: They have a dog. Dawn: They always have the dog. Abby: I have nothing intellectual to contribute other than they had a dog and it had a t-shirt on and it was very cute. Joel: So, your most memorable experience from the exhibit hall was the dog with the t-shirt. Abby: I told you, nothing intellectual to contribute. Joel: Wow. Dawn: See, we're not smart. This is not the smart podcast. Abby: I believe Shaker had chap stick. Chad: Wait. When you have a line of people that want to get their picture taken with the dog. . Abby: Hey, they considered the experience of their booth. Chad: They did. Which is why they had us podcast in the booth as well. Dawn: There we go. Abby: Oh, you were there. This has been a plug. Chad: I think the dog had many more people who gave a shit. Joel: I'm going to expect more from Katrina. On this one. Katrina: My personal favorite, purely from an amusement perspective was the drug screening people with the wheel. They had like Wheel of Fortune. Joel: I missed that. Katrina: I was like, there's a joke here that I can pretty much use endlessly. So, spin the wheel on drug screening. Dawn: What are the prizes on the drug wheel? Chad: [crosstalk 00:23:45] You pissed hot or something like that? Oh you just pissed hot. Dawn: Pick a drug, any drug. We can find out what you did. Joel: You've won hypodermic needle. Katrina: Oh my god. A sharps container. Joel: Who was the booth that had the anti-inflammation under your eye cream? Katrina: Yes, that's what I was going to say. You stole my thunder. [crosstalk 00:24:03] They had the puffy eye cream. Chad: And you thought this was genius. Katrina: Ah, well hey listen, you know how old I am. I need all the help I can get with my puffy eyes. Joel: Whose the one- one year someone was selling iPhone cases and phone cases? Chad: Oh yeah. I think that was HR Tech. Joel: The trend of actual retail at the conference is pretty interesting to me. Katrina: Moral of the story: The chotchkies matter, since we have only covered chotchkies and not one technology. Dawn: Last year, was this conference where they literally just had almost like a kiosk at the mall where it sells like iPhone accessories. The place was packed. Chad: Here? Dawn: Yeah, here. Joel: So if you need a new iPhone case, iPad case, deep discounts. It was sort of like the streets of New York or Chicago where someone unrolls a blanket and it's Coach purses. Chad: I thought Zip Recruiters was my favorite, because all they had was a green chair and they didn't have anybody at the booth, so it was kinda like Zip Recruiter's here. Fuck you guys. Katrina: Do you know how much money we paid for TV ads this year? Yeah, fuck you guys. ...We don't need to sit here. Joel: Zip Recruiter's balls are so big right now. Their booth just has the green chair. Their CEO's going on Fox Business saying their algorithm is the best in the world. Like, their balls are hanging really low right now. Chad: Love it. Love it. Dawn: You know what? Joel: Finish that sentence, Dawn. Dawn: I have so many ways I want to finish that sentence. Joel: You know what[crosstalk 00:25:26] I got nothing. Dawn: A-A-A-A- Joel: It's the Chad and Cheese podcast. Anything goes. Dawn: Absolutely. Well, I would have to be a liar to say that I really explored the floor as much as I would have liked to. So, that's my disclaimer. I will say again, it was a good show. It seemed like there was a lot of interaction. I can't say though there was something that absolutely grabbed me. Joel: How 'bout, do you think there's a main theme with the vendor experience that came through? Like for me, it was definitely every both or collateral piece had AI multiple times on it. Dawn: AI has been the sexy thing for the last four years. Now what they, we need to do now though is have people who are translating what that means. It's still an esoteric term. Joel: And we need smart consumers saying, "You say AI, what does that mean?" Dawn: Just what does that, yeah yeah- really explain it to me like I'm a kindergartner. That's okay. What does it mean? Because it's really not as confusing as people are making it out to be. Joel: They're just saying, "Are you using Watson as your AI?" [crosstalk 00:26:27] Chad: I don't even think that AI should be a part of the conversation. It should be, what does this product even do for you? How it happens, I don't give a fuck. Right. It's the solution. The process methodology, yeah this chatbot pops up. Oh, it's AI and its embedded in block chain. Joel: How many background checks do we need? I cannot believe how many background check companies there are. Chad: I'm not certain. Dawn: People don't do background checks anymore. I'm sorry. Joel: They don't? Dawn: No. Joel: They obviously do. Based on the market. Sterling and Hire Right are pretty big companies. Dawn: Well, okay. Let me qualify that. How many people- they are- okay. [crosstalk 00:27:04] Dawn: And I know right now, the background check process has become a lot better, since it's more automated and people can opt in. But there, here's the rub, they're selling a lot of assessments, but when that background check comes back bad, they still hire the mother fucker. Katrina: A lot of people... Joel: Really? Dawn: no. Katrina: Former VP of HR at this table. Dawn: It depends on[crosstalk 00:27:23]okay. Katrina: She knows. Dawn: It depends on the industry, again. Joel: Checkers with felonies? Don't care. Dawn: I think if your like in the business institution or whatnot, but I think there are a lot of places and that's why some places say, we're not doing them anymore. We're spending time and money and resources for us to get up at- something that's a bad, but still says they're the best person so I'm hiring them anyway. Which I don't necessarily thinks a bad decision, all the time, but it’s like... Dawn: Alright, by the way, I'm not advocating for not doing them. Joel: Abby, what industries do you make videos for most? Is it healthcare, is it retail? Abby: We do a lot of manufacturing. Lot of manufacturing. Joel: Which is interesting to me. Abby: Healthcare. Those jobs seem like they'd be dirty, shop floor jobs, but they're like clean, automated beautiful, I mean, manufacturing's very beautiful. We do a lot of drivers. We were just talking about drivers. Drivers, retail. Every industry. I think healthcare is big for us. I think there's a lot of specialization in healthcare, that people didn't know about or that didn't exist a few years ago. There's therapy, there's rehabilitation, so we do a lot of that. And I think any job that has a myth perception, right? So, any job that you don't get what they do, based on a job description is our sweet spot. Chad: That's, yeah. Because job descriptions suck, right? So, here's something else. So, we talk about AI, let's say for instance sourcing and matching that kind of stuff. Well all of that is predicated in the foundation of data and that data is a job description and the job description's shit and resume's and CV's are shit, so how are we- Dawn: And the job description is not a job post. People use it. Chad: I just don't get it, because it's like, this is an advertisement for the actual job. Should it have the requirements, of course! Yeah, there's no question. Dawn: Maybe. Chad: But this should be a sexy piece trying to pull people in. Saying, "Hey, if you have a bachelor's degree in science, whatever. You know, I mean it’s just. . .[crosstalk 00:29:19] Abby: I think it's equally as important. Joel: If only visual CV would come back. Insider joke. Katrina: Fun fact. My very first company that blew up because of an article on tech. Joel: Cheeseman, tech, I don't know. Katrina: Cheesehead. This was back in the days. Joel wrote about us and we- and now it's back in another iteration, but that was, we go way back. 2009. But you know what's funny, the job post has not fundamentally changed. Job description, post, ad, none of it. None of it has changed in ten years. Joel: Or the posting methodology. It's all dumb posting. We're spending more money on postings that are just duration dumb ads, as opposed to performance based programmatic stuff. Abby: I mean, like I can see on Facebook, this eyebrow stuff everyday. Everyday, I'm served up this ad. Chad: Joel gets those, too. Abby: For like eyebrow mascara. I don't use it, but now I'm considering it. Right? If eyebrow mascara can be that- and there's a real name for it, I don't know. Joel: Life changing. Abby: If it can be that persistent and like make me think about that, jobs should be too, right? And I think video is a huge component of that. It should make you self-select in, just as much as it makes you self-select out. That's not for me. Right? But I think targeting and being smarter and treating candidates like consumers is a really smart direction. Chad: How are we not doing that already? Abby: I don't know. Chad: That is the dumbest shit. Katrina: It's lazy. Dawn: Because we write for us, not for them. That's the bottom line. Chad: Yeah but how are CEOs not coming to us saying, "You're fucking my bottom line, because... Dawn: They are. Chad: ...these candidates are actually buying product or they're Southwest Airlines. Who knows, right? But they're consumers. How is this not happening. I mean happening C Suite. Dawn: I think a lot of C Suite, they'll say that people are their biggest asset and all that or that recruiting is important to them. I don't think. I think they believe that, but the reality is that they really don't care if there's a lot of turnovers, long as the work gets done. Dawn: I mean honestly, they're not digging into it or they would. Abby: Unless they're building, like we were discussing earlier, the cult following, the idea of a cult brand. Of building something that's bigger than your consumer brand, bigger than your employer brand. It's all the same thing and it's a movement. And it's a movement people want to get on board with, whether they're working for you or buying from you. That's a different method of leadership. It's just different and I don't know that every company is ready to do it, but I think it's really cool when it works. Katrina: Yeah, agreed. And I think the bottom line is that- Well, let me ask, has anyone at this table ever been trained to write a drop posting, besides you Dawn. Dawn: Besides me, and I was trained by [crosstalk 00:32:00] Katrina: I trained her. Dawn: Kibble. Katrina: No one was trained. And so we go into it with all these bullshit rules in our head about what it’s supposed to be, what it's supposed to sound like. Abby: Oh, I was. I went to grad school for that, but I don't think about it though. [crosstalk 00:32:12] Joel: [crosstalk 00:32:12]We go to Google and search sales job description and then we copy and paste the number one result and tweak it a little bit. Katrina: 100% they've all done it. [crosstalk 00:32:21] Dawn: I have done that. I'm not ashamed to say.[crosstalk 00:32:23] Chad: We've all done it. Katrina: Well, exactly. Well, and the thing is, I- so last year I did a free job re-write. I told a bunch of- I did it in a presentation, where I said, "I re-write one free job." Over a hundred people signed up in the first 30 minutes. And then 200 hundred people signed up at the end of the first hour. And then they kept coming. And we, Dawn and I, wrote every single one of those job posts for every single person and you know what the most common thing I heard? I know it's not good enough, but I don't know what to do. Katrina: I can feel that this isn't right. Chad: They aren't copy writers. Dawn: And I think what you've just said is an important thing that I really do believe, and maybe I'm too optimistic. I do believe most people; recruiters, CEOs, they want to do the right thing. Want to though, is very different then actually doing the right thing. And I know one of the issues with HR departments, recruiting departments, which I'm going to talk more about the in-house corporate side of things though, is- I'm sorry, the roles are too broad. The roles- it is too hard, if you're an accountant you know, these are like the five things that in every shop you're going to do. Recruiting, or HR generalist. Or recruitment marketing which is now even popping up in departments. The roles are too broad. There's not the time. That is always going to be the back burner if I can go to Google and re-do it, but what we don't realize then, is that really impacting the right candidate. It is. Negatively. So, does my CEO care if I'm getting somebody that can do the job? I don't know. Chad: But again, this is the data that we're using to be able to kickstart and train AI. Dawn: You're correct. Katrina: Which they really should have started with candidate search data. Which you can very easily get off of Google trends, because there are 30,000 job related searches every month. They'll tell you exactly how they searched. They'll tell you exactly what they're interested in. Chad: Google knows this shit. Bastards. Dawn: Google can beat up your dad. Dawn: They do it better. I mean, I'm sorry. My dad can beat up your dad. That's what I said in my presentation. Google is like my dad. All the other ones, they're doing good, [crosstalk 00:34:32]but Google's better. Joel: Google for jobs may cure some of the job description, you know faux pas out there, because ultimately people are going to learn that the better their job descriptions are, the better they rank for job searches. The more candidates they get that are better than other candidates, [crosstalk 00:34:50] Chad: [crosstalk 00:34:50] They're going to expect a vendor to do that. Dawn: Some vendors are doing it. Joel: so in a strange way Google, the source of job descriptions today may be the driver of improvement for job descriptions tomorrow, because of Google for jobs in the algorithm. [crosstalk 00:35:01] Dawn: [crosstalk 00:35:01]It will be driver. I'm going to go that far and say it will be. Katrina: Because their philosophy was built on how candidates search. Joel: And what's best for the candidate. Katrina: Exactly. Not what corporations want. Not the right way. They literally built it for the candidates and by the way, there are a hell of a lot more of those than there ever will be of your one little company. Dawn: Right, and...Oh, go ahead. Abby. Abby: It's behavioral data, right? And I think we're going to see an increase in video as well as people are searching, right, what's Google favoring? In their algorithm. Video! Joel: By the way the 2nd most popular search engine is YouTube. Dawn: That's right. That's right. Joel: Which is owned by Google. Dawn: Google. Abby: Google. Dawn: Google, see my dad can beat up your dad. It's just that simple. Abby: What about TikTok? Dawn: [crosstalk 00:35:43] LinkedIn and Indeed and CareerBuilder and Monster. Although, some of them are nipping at their heels. I mean I'm vendor agnostic. But Google for jobs is going to change in my opinion- it's going to push people into the pay transparency. The thing that's interesting about Google for Jobs again is they don't demand you have the same keyword 14 times in the job description. Therefore, it's a lot clearer. Abby: It's smarter. Dawn: It makes more sense. Chad: They're building ontologies, right, instead of playing the keyword density game. Dawn: Semantic word relationships is what we call it. Chad: Semantic foreplay? What? Joel: [crosstalk 00:36:21] I use the words "which jobs actually get applicants?" [crosstalk 00:36:23] Dawn: Semantics, I use the word semantic. Synergy. Joel: Synergy, okay. Dawn: Civilance. Joel: Gotcha. Dawn: I don't even know what that means. Joel: We haven't mentioned social media, yet. Dawn: No, we haven't. That's true. Chad: Yeah we did. We talked about TikTok. Joel: What's social media's role currently in this whole process? And how's it really been mentioned in the show, much? It's not in the vendor hall. Abby: Okay, I have a data point. It's a one off. So we filmed a video a couple months ago. The client launched it. It had 36,000 views in the first day. Joel: And it was posted where? And where were the most effective places to post it. Abby: Facebook. And they had an overwhelming response of employees re-sharing the video because they were proud of their work. It was unexpected, it was not something that an email went out. Dawn: What was the secret sauce? Joel: Employees won't share job postings, but they'll share videos. Abby: Videos. And videos of people they know. Chad: If it's purpose driven and they care about that content and its authentic? Joel: We share what makes us look good. What reflects us and if its a proud video about my company they're going to share it, for sure. Chad: You're goddamn straight. Joel: You're not going to share a sales position. Chad: Depending on what you're selling. Abby: I bet that's really interesting data: of the people that shared it, how many of them were in the role that was highlighted? I bet that's pretty close to what it was posted. Joel: So, I assume post videos everywhere on social media. Like which ones are the most important? Which ones are the kind of duds? What's your takeaways? Abby: So, it depends on the industry, right? So, LinkedIn is certainly a place to post videos for the professional level. I think for jobs that are- people are not on LinkedIn, Facebook is still huge. It's still a huge market of candidates. I think Instagram is going to be an increasingly popular medium. I think shorter stories, I don't know if you consume Instagram stories, but that 30 second quick hit, what's going on behind the scenes look is really interesting. I don't know that you're posting jobs there, but if candidates are looking at you as a company, I think they're looking at your Instagram for sure. Dawn: I've got the secret sauce for you. Joel: How about Twitter and SnapChat? Abby: What are those? JK, JK. Joel: Wow. Okay, employers. Abby: Okay, so Snapchat I think is interesting because of the geo tagging. But I've never- I've only seen it work a couple of times where you can target a location where your hiring college students and you geo target an ad on their college campus and do a really cute filter. I've seen it work in that way. But like, Snapchat followings, I don't know. Chad: That's a good tip. Geo targeting on Snapchat. Joel: Cute filters. Abby: Mayonnaise heads. Dawn: I was going to say the secret sauce, we were talking about the virtual reality, so we're talking about the virtual reality that you can do virtual reality, it's going to come next, where it's like a realistic job preview, but here's what you do. Make the person who's doing the job be a cat, or a baby goat. Chad: Grumpy Cat. Dawn: Because cats, people will totally stop scrolling if it's a cute cat video. Dawn: So you put a cute cat [crosstalk 00:39:20][inaudible 00:39:20] Chad: [crosstalk 00:39:20]...could have been Hamlin, the dog. Abby: [crosstalk 00:39:21]That's right. Dawn: Don't you agree? Joel: You lost me on that. Dawn: No. You totally. Joel: Let someone tour the company as a goat. Is that what you just said? Dawn: No. Abby: Yes. Dawn: You would watch the person who's doing the job. Like I'm going to look at this virtual person virtually doing the job, so I can kinda get a realistic job preview. But it can't be a person, it has to be a cat doing the job. Katrina: No. It should be a person, holding a kitten. Dawn: That'll work. Because it makes everything more interesting, right? Katrina: Baby goat. Dawn: Just add a puppy. Katrina: Baby goat. Joel: I thought maybe they were going like Fortnite, where you have a character. Dawn: That might work, too, for some people. Joel: [crosstalk 00:39:53][inaudible 00:39:53]...for the company. Katrina: [crosstalk 00:39:53][inaudible 00:39:53] Baby goat. Dawn: Baby goat that hops around, can't be a goat. Baby goat. Chad: The hopping baby goat. Joel: Yes, I have brought Fortnite and TikTok into this podcast. Chad: There you go. Dawn: And people flipping the thongs. Thong, tha, thong, thong, thong. Joel: Let's just throw out Second Life and... Dawn: ...big balls. Someone's got big balls, too. Chad: I already threw out Second Life a long time ago. Dawn: Exactly. Katrina: Honestly, I think that's what most people are doing with social media right now. Their strategy is non-existent, at best. They're posting, "We have a job in Bristol, Connecticut for an accounting manager and you should apply today. It's a very exciting opportunity for a go-getter." It sounds as shitty as our job postings. Joel: [crosstalk 00:40:28]Social media hit its peak when it was like, "Put your jobs on Facebook. Get a page. Put a share button on your job postings and have all your employees share the jobs throughout social media. " Dawn: You notice there's no speaker sound on that now? Joel: Lets spam all your jobs on twitter and put a hashtag around the jobs. That's deader than Julius Cesar. Social media's about being authentic and having a voice and telling a story. Katrina: When I met you- Chad: That's hard. Katrina: When I met you, we couldn't go to a conference without having at least five speakers on that exact topic. Joel: I'm sure I've given, spoke about social media. Katrina: Yes. We will not find one of those in any of the conferences, any person at this table attends in the next six months. Dawn: It's a natural evolution, I would think. Joel: Who remembers Branch Out? Dawn: For like two days. I remember that. Katrina: I was in the room when they decided to build Branch out. Chad: Wow. Joel: Well, don't pass the mic. What's the story. And Be Known. Katrina: So, yeah. Be Known, too. So, I was a social media ninja at Monster.com, that was my job title and I do have a business card to prove it. Chad: Social Media Ninja. Dawn: This was back in the day. Rockstar. Rockstar. Katrina: But, so, I, we were trying. I was on the social media and PR team and we were trying to figure out a way to make Monster more social media friendly. And so, beyond adding links to the job, it really didn't, we didn't have anything, so we had a product manager on our team who decided that we should build an app. And I think I left in the middle of building that app because I was so against it. I hated the idea because in my head, and this actually came to fruition, apps were in excess. Right? If I want information, I'm going to go to a website. I'm not going to download an app unless I 100% need it over and over and over again. And as a job seeker, I pray you don't need that information over and over and over again. I hope you get a job. Right? We should be encouraging people to get jobs, and I think the fundamental flaw with it was that it was built in the employers vision. Not the candidates. Dawn: Yeah, employees. Candidates. Joel: So, how do we feel about Facebook getting into the employment space? Katrina: They'll be gone soon enough. Joel: Gone soon enough? You like their slack competitor though, their messaging component or no? Dawn: Did you say it's going to be gone soon enough, or going soon enough? Katrina: I think it will be gone soon enough. Because employers are not getting qualified applications. I have talked to people who hire truck drivers. People who do high volume, low retention. Everything. Every single person has told me, I don't get qualified people and Facebook has done nothing to help me get- to help me fix that. Joel: Interesting. Katrina: More is not more. Joel: Now are you bullish on their messaging slack competitor? That has 2 million customers? Or do you think that'll be gone at some point, too? Katrina: I think if they ATS can catch up, then the ATS can start to build something that makes candidates like it, all of those competitors will end, because you won't need the add on. My real idea and my real dream is that the ATS starts to look a lot more sales floors. When we're the center and you just plug, plug, plug. Chad: We're always how far behind the industries that are making money. Sales floors. Marketing. Right? I mean, look at those industries. Fucking cash cows, right? Look at their systems. Emulate what is working where all the money is going. It just makes sense. Joel: That's starting to happen. You look at Jobvite, back up the Brinks truck for Talemetry and Canvas ][crosstalk 00:44:11]. Chad: [crosstalk 00:44:11] But how long's sales floors been around, though. I mean, its just crazy how long it takes us to catch up. Joel: Well, that's not going to change. HR will always be a lagger. Katrina: But I'm okay with being a fast follower. [crosstalk 00:44:21] Chad: It could change.[crosstalk 00:44:22] Joel: It's not that fast. Katrina: That's what I'm saying. Let’s be a fast follower. Chad: That could change if in HR we could actually articulate how we are positively and/or negatively impacting the bottom line. If the C Suite hears and sees that, that's an entirely different fucking conversation. Katrina: True. Chad: As soon as that happens, I don't know why that's not happen. Joel: I think that's slowly starting to happen. Marketing is starting to talk to recruiting. Katrina: Oh yeah. That's been a big change for sure. Well, and recruiting's looking more at sales types of processes and metrics actually, to actually do... Chad: Clean their own process up. Katrina: Right, right. Well, this has been awesome. Joel: Thanks for sitting down with us. This was fun. Everyone's glass is empty, so we need to close this baby down. Dawn: Oh my god, well thanks guys. This was great. Joel: You bet. Announcer: This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes and 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. #Jobcase #SHRMTalent #EqualPay #video #SkillScout

When you put Chad & Cheese in front of a Corp Recruitment Marketing Specialist, the head of an iconic Recruitment Ad Agency, a Video Goddess and an old crusty coder, turned CTO turned CEO turned Recruitment Marketing Evangelist.... THIS is what you get... Brought to you by the brave and iron constitutions of JobAdX, Sovren and Canvas - if anyone deserves your time and money it's those guys ^^^. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:Disability Solutions is your sourcing and recruiting partner for people with disabilities. Chad: It's time for a little chat. And she's fun in Chicago at TAtech for their Recruitment, Marketing, Leadership Summit. Check it out. 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, flash opinion, and loads of snark. Bubble up, boys and girls. It's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. JZ: I can't promise that this will be PG, like the rest of the content. Joel: Or beneficial. Chad: I can promise it won't be. JZ: Or beneficial. Joel: Well worth your time. JZ: Yeah, I will let Chad and Cheese introduce themselves and their panelists. But these two guys, I think honestly, and I don't say this because I'm wearing their tee shirt, but are two of the more genuine, knowledgeable people in this space. I spent a lot of time with analysts and influencers and people in the space, that I just have conversations with, and these two have a really unique ability to understand the space and be objective about it and then add some real value when they're not getting hammered on stage. JZ: I'll pass it to you guys. We've got a great panel here. And yeah, let's get to happy hour. Joel: Thanks JZ. Chad: Boom. Joel: Welcome to the final presentation. Chad: Final countdown (Europe style - It's the final countdown). Joel: Can we get the full screen for God's sakes? I mean, we're very particular about our branding and we only have one slide so there won't be any mistakes later. Joel: You all know us. Chad and Cheese. I am Joel Cheesman. Chad: I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: And we're The Chad and Cheese Podcast: HR's Most Dangerous. Well let's get to the conversation because we only have 30 minutes. So we're going to give you guys about 140 characters to introduce yourself until we get to the Q&A. So Jason, go. Jason Jones: Hi, I'm Jason Jones. I'm the Recruitment Marketing Specialist at Draft Kings. Joe Shaker: Hi everyone. I'm Joe Shaker, Junior President of Shaker Recruitment Marketing and proud father of Lillian, Maryanne, and Joseph. Joel: How many wins do the Cubs have right now? Joe Shaker: We're not going there. Joel: Okay. And by the way, just real fast, if you're going to go there. I've never heard someone introduce you to is genuine. So that's first. That's a first. Abby Cheesman: I'm Abby Cheesman, co-founder at Skill Scout. Not Joel's wife. Joel: No relation. Abby Cheesman: We make recruitment videos that are awesome. Thom Kenney: Thom Kenny, CEO of Smashfly and former victim of The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: And live to tell a tale. So I'm going to start with you Thom. Thom Kenney: Great. Joel: Your presentation, you poo pooed on VR. Isn't it a little too early to like bury virtual reality? Thom Kenney: It's not burying virtual reality. It's knowing when it's going to be ready to use. It's like a lot of technologies. You can be far ahead of the technology field. It just may not have a good application that you can use in the real world. Joel: Because I heard you buried it, but maybe we'll roll back the tape later. Thom Kenney: Yeah, but it's like a dog, you carry it and use it later. Joel: Anyway, Abby, your video first and lake video was hot on this. I don't want to stick on VR because no one cares about it. Chad: No, they don't. It's second life. Nobody gives a shit. Joel: Let's start with the video because apparently 84% of all Internet traffic by 2020 is going to be video related. I assume you agree with that. Abby Cheesman: I agree. Joel: What are some of your opinions on best practices and what [crosstalk 00:03:10] should be doing with video? Abby Cheesman: I think if you haven't done any videos, kind of the baby step into showing off what your workplace is all about is a realistic job preview. So just a little fun factoid. We launched a video actually in partnership with Joe and Shaker, one of our mutual clients. Joel: Chi Town. Abby Cheesman: For a tower climber position. And so this is a job that is just hard to fathom if you can't see it, right? These are the guys that are climbing 800 feet in the air, test service and build cell phone towers. And so we launched a two minute video with our client and they had 44,000 views within the first week. And so if that doesn't tell you something about the network effect this is on Facebook. Joel: What platforms got them that number? Was it advertised? How did they get there? Abby Cheesman: Facebook. Joel: Facebook? Abby Cheesman: Yeah. And I don't know what happened behind the scenes in terms of other media buys, but this was organic on Facebook if this particular launch. Chad: No buy on Facebook. That was all organic? Abby Cheesman: The first launch was all organic. Chad: Holy shit. Holy shit Joel: That's awesome. That's awesome. Joel: So Joe, you do nice, pretty videos, historically at least. Where do you guys fit or anyone in between the really nice HD professionally made videos and more like what Cheesman over here is making with sort of we're on the scene, we're doing this guerrilla style. Where do you guys fit on that spectrum? Joe Shaker: I think even heard it right, Joel? Bias, but Tony La Porte did a fabulous job today. It's being authentic. And so I think we're moving away from the polished videos and you're moving more right with Abby's doing on the authentic videos. Obviously what we saw today too with All True, I mean even almost using your own ambassadors, video content being real and being truthful versus being the professionally produced videos. So we're seeing the shift more towards that versus the polished. Also, let's look at what we were talking about. Many people talking in our space today: time is of the essence. I forgot who it was that talked about just the timing to produce videos. We don't have six months, right? These organizations need people tomorrow. And so it's not only is it the content that the individuals are looking for, but it's also recruiting. We have to go now and so we don't have time to wait. Chad: Jason, let's flip it up a little bit for you. You're in the recruitment marketing side. What's your title again? Jason Jones: Recruitment Marketing Specialists. Chad: Okay. So do you report to HR/TA or marketing? Jason Jones: I report to the VP of ta, VP of TA. Chad: VP of TA. So what's your connection to marketing? Do you have any, do you embed with them at all? I mean, how does that work? Jason Jones: So with recruitment marketing, in my experience it's been a gray area. When you kind of joined the company and you're the new person, you have to done to draw that line in the sand? So who owns what? When it comes to social media, is your social media team going to post your content? Are you going to post it? For PR posts, are you going to write the culture piece write-ups or are they going to write-up? So send that line in the sand. Jason Jones: I was fortunate where my boss kind of drew that line for me. So when I came in I didn't have to, but in my previous company it was a constant struggle. It was a constant back and forth. Who owns what, us, you, us, you. And so, it's a matter of just kind of drawn the line. Joel: Do you think of yourself as a marketer? Jason Jones: Now? Yes, but my previous life as a recruiter, so I can kind of go between both worlds. Chad: So how often do you actually work with marketing to setup content? Jason Jones: Setup content? Not every day. It depends. It depends. Chad: Because marketing has big budget, right? They've got the big budget, they've got all the brainstorming and all that other happy horseshit, right? So I mean, doesn't it make a lot of sense to be able to really suck all of that out of there? Especially on the budget side, right? Jason Jones: More so for the tools. Marketing won't share their budget from a content creation because their content generate sales, mine is going to candidates. Chad: But they're not candidates, their customers. The people that are applying to your jobs. I bet a good amount of them are actually customers. So couldn't you have a business case to say, "Hey look, we need some cash over here, guys"? Jason Jones: So it's funny you say that. Draft Kings yes, our players at Draft Kings want to work for us and so we get a lot of inbound traffic from them cause they were hardcore rabid fans. My previous company, not so much because we were a product company, we had different products for different verticals and so it was a little different. What I do is I partner with their tool. So our social media team, they use Spredfast for their tools. How can I get a Spredfast license so I can start sharing my content within your platform? Jason Jones: Our web development team, they use CMS Tool. I can't remember the name of it, but it really allowed us to manage the backend of the website. Can you teach me how to use that site so I can update our career page using your tool? So they won't share their budget, but I can partner on their tools and saves money for me trying to purchase a competing tool. Joel: Joe, is internal marketing getting involved with recruitment a good thing for you? Or do you find that as sort of a threat because ... Historically companies have gone to you for the marketing. If they go internally, is that bad for you? Joe Shaker: No. You want marketing? Have a seat at the table. So many times I think, and it's if you look over just the industry in general, you talk about recruiting, you talk about budget, but in reality there really isn't a budget. And I will say too many of our friends in this room, obviously media majority in this room, so many times you keep will come and say, "Well, what's the price?" As organizations, if you can prove value and then you can fill those recs, they're not going to care what the price is. If you go back over time, and obviously we're blessed our business has been around for over six decades. We remember the days when you used to run $30,000 print ads, right? And they ran weekly- Joel: The good ol' days. Joe Shaker: And they were the good old days. Chad: Right next door. Joe Shaker: But the point is, the budget in talent acquisition is there, whether it be sits in HR or in marketing, just show that you have value, show that you can fill those jobs with quality applicants, they'll spend the money. Chad: Is marketing at the table at all though with your clients? Joe Shaker: Yes. For sure, for sure. More and more. Joel: It's commercial time. Sovren: Sovren is known for providing the world's best and most accurate parsing products and now based on that technology come Sovren's, artificial intelligence matching and scoring software. In fractions of a second, receive match results that provide candidates scored by fit to job. And just as importantly, that 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. Chad: It's show time. Chad: So what about on the video side? I mean video is, and again it doesn't have to be polished. Joel: I'm sure marketing wants a piece of the video process, right? Abby Cheesman: Yeah. I think collaboration is the name of the game. I mean if you don't engage your marketing partners as you're releasing videos of your company, that's a mistake. It should be collaborative. I think more and more companies are thinking about, just like you were talking about Chad, these are your candidates and your customers. This is the same pool of people. And as you think about especially cult brands, that there's a bigger following than just, I want to apply for a job or I want to buy a thing. It's presence. And I think collaboration is how we're going to see more and more of that happen. Joel: Are you finding much of marketing saying like, "Well, I mean this is just an iPhone with a ... We can do this. Like let us do it." Are you finding that? Is marketing saying, "We don't want any part of this. We got to deal with getting customers and driving the revenue." What are you saying in return? Abby Cheesman: So in our experience, a lot of our clients have video teams on their marketing team and they don't have the time or priority to do TA videos. And so that's when we come in. But I think there's always going to be a space for a nuanced message for people who are looking for a position versus looking for a product or service. But it's collaborative and I think TA is prioritizing video and moving at a faster clip sometimes than marketing can move their resources, and so that's where we see a lot of our work. Chad: So Thom, new question. Earlier you said that one of your clients actually put in pretty much end to end automation and it sucked for the candidate. We've seen surveys, I mean, Sherman, the elitist group has actually done surveys showing that like 66, 70% plus of candidates, they don't care. They'd rather connect with a chat bot because they're sick and tired of going into that black hole. So where do you find that balance? I mean, because yeah, there needs to be a quote unquote human piece to it, but can't the engagement in itself, whether it's a chat bot or an email or what have you, can't that be more human when we're talking about actually having marketing 101 subject lines, right? That kind of thing. It seems like it's more like adoption. They're falling down, putting the automation in place and then just walking away. What's up with the adoption piece? Thom Kenney: So you probably miss part of the presentation. That was really the important part, which was chat bots and the way chat bots are interfacing. It's not about having a chat bot. Yes, they want to interface with that a little bit better, but the reality is how are they interfacing with it? Right. In thinking about it from this perspective, we're seeing a trend in the auto industry where Tesla is selling cars and you can buy a Tesla and you can have it delivered to your house and you have three days to drive it and if you don't like it, you can just return it. So it's happening completely outside of a human interaction. Thom Kenney: And I actually used this example a few times when I talk about chat bots and why they can be impactful. If you think about going to buy a used car, who wants to go to a used car dealership? Nobody wants to go to a used car dealership. You don't want to deal with the sales guy, you don't want to deal with the finance guy. Yeah, you want to see the car, you want to look at it. But the reality is you loathe going to a used car shop. If you think about it from a lot of the passive candidates that are out there today, do they want to talk to a recruiter before they find anything out? Thom Kenney: The reality is not necessarily they don't want to be sold about a job or sold about a company. They just want to find out a little bit more about what's going on. So we actually use something in our advertising that talks about how often people that interface with some of the chat bots that we use with our customers. How often these people say thank you, or something like, thank you? Because the chat bot is creating an emotive response where there's a humanistic component to how you're interfacing with that bot, right? Thom Kenney: If you think about- Chad: They're not just anybody interacting with them, that's the fucking problem. Right? Thom Kenney: No. but it doesn't matter if it's an actual human, it matters if they feel there's a connection. Chad: That's what I'm saying. They're used to the black hole and now they're not getting the black hole. And now they're saying thank you. Thom Kenney: Thank you. Exactly. Exactly. So when you try to automate it from start to finish, and it's all a purely transactional thing from beginning to end, that's where you miss the human component. But even if there's a perceived human component in the chat bot, you're going to create that emotive response with the candidate. And that's really what you want. You want the candidate to feel something through this process. And if they feel something through this process, whether they see a great video, whether they get their answers done quickly or whether they understand admission or you've got onsite childcare. I mean there's lots of reasons to get excited [crosstalk 00:14:29]. Joel: Another thing is the cure to ghosting is to have people come in for three days to work and if they stick around then they're hired. Thom Kenney: Well that's the Zappos thing, right? You stick around for a few weeks and if you don't want to stay off you go. You just get- Joel: Joe had a comment I think. Joe Shaker: The comment I was going to make was too Thom, and I think you hit it perfectly on the point was you're allowing to giving the organizations' candidates options. Whereas before, Chad, what you were saying, it was a one way dialogue, right? And everyone was forced into a dark hole because there was no other options. Now there are options, but I think some organizations, sometimes they're going too fast and I think Ryan Crystal, and I did just say this, Ryan Crystal made a good point- Joel: Holy shit. Chad: What? Joe Shaker: ... you can't go all in and just buy the shiny new toy, right? You have to obviously think it out, put it through the right process and then let the kid decide how they want to interact with you. Joel: Can we talk about ghosting for a second and particularly Jason is on the corporate side. Is ghosting a big problem with you and what do you, and if it is, what are you guys doing to remedy the problem? Jason Jones: I think ghosting is a big problem for everyone. Back in the day, you could post your job or you could reach out to the candidate, they would respond, you can schedule a phone screen. Now you really have to understand what that intrinsic need is to broadcast your EVP and get them coming back for every stitch of recruitment process they need to come back. And how can you broadcast your EVP so they do come back? Before it was, you have the power. Now the cans have the power and so we're constantly at Draft Kings broadcasting our EVP to every candidate that we speak to over and over and over again and give him a reason to come back. Even for a phone interview. Even for a HackerRank test, give them a reason to come back every time. Chad: How are you doing that though? Are you doing [crosstalk 00:16:18]. Let's say for instance, from an interview standpoint that ghosting on the interview or not the first day or what have you, how are you keeping them? I mean, broadcasting that content. How specifically are you- Joel: Do you give them Draft Kings credits every time they come in? Jason Jones: Actually yes, actually yes. Do you work there? How do you know? Joel: No. I just got good ideas. Chad: No, no. He uses it. That's he knows. Jason Jones: So in my own experience when I was being courted by Draft Kings my interview process, they said, "Hey, before you come in here some credits, use a platform." You don't have to mess up your sports fan to work at Draft Kings. But playing the product, get used to it and come back with recommendations, if you don't like it, tell us, if you like things perfect. But, if you're free trialing your products, especially to a technologist, because we hire a lot of data engineers, having played the tool before coming in, don't have everything be so black hole where the first time they're seeing the product or really talking someone's, when they're coming in the door, give a free trial if you can. Joel: I love it. I love it. Chad: Well of course you would. Joel: Yeah, I'm a Fan Duel guy. But you guys are owned by the same company. Jason Jones: Please don't say that. Joel: Oh, sorry. What do we miss? I thought retargeting we missed. Jason Jones: Yeah, I'll agree. Retargeting was missed. But it's also, you can say that, how does it fit into the strategy? Most of the today was around let's talk about employment branding. Let's get the brand message created. How does the message go out? Is again, and it's twice now as Ryan said it's part of all campaigns. I would use caution though on retargeting that our industry a little bit different I believe in the consumer. It also goes back to tracking, which came up multiple times today. And I would be careful on retargeting someone potentially that has been dispositioned out. Or retargeting a candidate that hasn't heard from us in five 10, 15 days. Joel: How far out should you continue to market to someone after they've been to the career site in your opinion? Two weeks, 30 days? Jason Jones: How fast is the recruiter is going to guarantee they're going to get a response? If I would put the recruiters, SLAs are going to respond to all cans within 48 hours, then I would wait 48 hours and then retarget the people that they haven't heard from. But sending messages to people that are still waiting to hear from recruiters or sending messages to people that have already been said no to with our lovely message that all comes out of the ATS that says thanks, but no thanks is not only a waste of dollars, but what they're going to do? They're going to go to Glassdoor and possibly write some negative reviews. So you gotta be careful in retargeting in our space. A little bit different than in consumer. Joel: Go ahead. Thom Kenney: You know what else we didn't talk about? We didn't talk about a trend that's starting to come out, which is no interviews. You got to see the process, you submit something, you don't talk to anybody and you're offered a job. So when we think about how our entire evolution is- Chad: High volume mostly? Thom Kenney: Not even high volume. I mean the thing about it, there are plenty of ways and it goes back a little bit to, take a job in three days and we'll see if you do well or not, especially in the gig economy. And you're thinking about software engineers. It's a very clear articulation of what your skill set is. You either know Ruby or you don't, you either know Python or you don't. So why bother with going through all this crap that we do about whether or not my gut tells me your good hire? Why don't we just create an entirely scientific process about it? Thom Kenney: Now it goes against this idea of the human component, that Senate. But if you shrink the hiring time, is that an advantage point? If you can go from Monday, you apply for a job, you do a couple of things online, Monday night you have an offer and Tuesday morning you start. I mean that that is a game changer for a lot of companies. And if they churn through a bunch of folks, they churn through a bunch of folks because they're not really spending their opportunity costs to hire everybody. Just churn though them. Joel: So gig economy, I mean, I think Upwork is trying to build that world where you just take it off the shelf and they use it when you're done, you're done. How is the Gig economy and those platforms affecting everyone sort of on the panel from the employer to the marker? Abby Cheesman: So I'll do sort of an answer to that question. So that's how we hire, when I'm hiring videographers, we don't go through a lengthy interview process. I ask for your portfolio and I give you an assignment, which is film a video of yourself, introduce yourself and edit it with this slate. And they submit a work sample and then maybe we talked to them briefly, but we bring them along to shadow a shoe and it's very quick and it's rapid and you rapidly find out who you can work with and the creative process, and it's worked really well for us and we're heavily reliant on a gig economy. Chad: How many of your clients are doing that, Joe? Joe Shaker: Which portion? Chad: The portion of just the no interview. Just show me your stuff and- Joel: Upwork puts the marketing Joe Shaker: For you. I would add to that question, not the portion of the gig economy, but what about no ATS? When more of my clients are moving to, let's go to the quicker process. Still doing the interview, but getting up, going around the ATS. Why are people running to Indeed and doing hosted jobs? Is it because they like host of jobs? No, the recruiters are going around the ATS. They don't want to use the ATS. They'd rather just use the CRM. That makes I believe more sense. It makes sense from the candidates process and get them interested and then push them into the ATS. See that more than the gig. Chad: Jason, how many interviews do you have to go through at Draft Kings? Jason Jones: It's pretty lengthy. Probably about five. That's more on the technical side and that's including hacker rank and it's a very, very hard technical assessment. We want the best of the best only because we're thinking of technical problems that haven't happened yet. So if you have, Mitsubishi who scores you five touchdowns, we can't have our platform crashing. We need top of the line technologists. Aspirational, aspirational. Joel: Did he throw six in one game? I'm pretty sure he did. Jason Jones: We need people who can think outside the box and I don't think we can ever get to a point where we have no interview- Chad: In a tight labor market though. Aren't you losing good candidates? I mean you have to be. Jason Jones: We're fortunate where we're not right now. Chad: Really? Jason Jones: Only because of the insurer and [crosstalk 00:22:24] and you get free bedding credits. Chad: Ah, good call. Joel: It's commercial time. Canvas: Canvas is the world's first intelligent text-based interviewing platform and powering 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 recruiters 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: It's showtime. Joel: Great. So you're not leveraging a platforms like Upwork to bring in contract workers for jobs? Jason Jones: No. Joel: Do you see a day where you would or you'd be open to that or no? Jason Jones: We do, I guess more so on the customer associates side. So if you're per player who has a complaint, we'll bring in those kinds of temp workers and then we'll convert them if it works out in some of those temp work is actually moving to the business and to marketing our product, but more for full-time, it's kind of full-time or not. Joel: Yeah. I want to talk Google for Jobs. Is it a don't believe the hype situation or do you think it's a legitimate threat to everybody else in the ecosystem? Jason Jones: It's a legitimate threat. I mean when you type in ... Everyone uses Google. Right? I don't think many people are using Yahoo or Duckduckgo or the other niche sites. Everyone goes to Google. You hear it all the time. You hear it in movies and TV shows, it's a household name. Joel: Are you actively looking at your jobs on Google for Jobs and how they're ranking and who else is in there in terms of how they can apply? Are you pretty active with how you're doing there and what sort of feedback or would you give us at this point? Jason Jones: Yeah, so I would probably say ... So our agency who's here, Bayer. Thank you. They do a good job with our SEO and constantly making sure ... product placement. Joel: ABC. ABC. Chad: Always be closing baby. Jason Jones: They do a good job making sure that our jobs are constantly ranked the highest, especially on the technical side. No one knows Draft Kings as a technology company. So we're always have to a repositioning, retargeting, make sure our jobs are ranked the highest shown on Google. Joel: Joe, what are you see on Google for Jobs? Chad: What are you doing for your clients to be able to focus on that ranking? Joe Shaker: Something I'm doing, obviously it's bringing awareness to Google into the space. Now at Shaker we've been doing search engine marketing since it started. So for so long and our space though many people in HR and TA are like, "Well what is a search engine marketing I don't want it." The rise of Google for Jobs increase the awareness for Google. And most organizations said, "I don't want my job sponsored" And obviously we all know you can't sponsor your jobs in Google for Jobs. So it has propelled the industry and got organizations to understand the importance of you need to have an SEM campaign running in addition to obviously your programmatic job distribution and so forth. So it has from a Google perspective, I don't know if it's competitive to your point earlier, but it has increased, the buying of SEM. Joel: Do you have any data around it, what it's meant for traffic, inbound versus maybe other sources that have lost as a result to Google for Jobs? Joe Shaker: If they're not adding budget of course, where is it coming from? It's coming from job distribution. Most organizations right now are adding, right? Especially in the market that we see he market that they're in, how hard it is. So they're not cutting from budget, they're adding in. There's justification for it. Joel: Are any companies strategically posting jobs anymore or is it all programmatic at this point? Joe Shaker: Oh. No, they're doing both. And I would say the latter. Programmatic is growing the fastest, but they're still doing traditional. Chad: How much duration versus actual performance? Joe Shaker: Every organization's different and the industry is different. But I mean the ones that are still buying postings are doing the duration base less than paper performance, less than programmatic side. I'd go paper performance, duration, programmatic. Chad: Okay. Abby, when it comes to, I don't know if it's YouTube or what, what's really the main methodology? You were talking about Facebook earlier, that you're seeing that clients are getting amazing amounts of traction. Where's the traction at? Social- Joel: Where should videos be in, and where's the waste of time? Tick tock? Abby Cheesman: I don't know, Joel. When you engage employees and creating content, which video naturally does, and then you encourage them to share it with their friends, people are really proud to show off when they're featured and when they're selected to be in an employee video. So I think traditional social, Facebook is big. I think Instagram is growing. I think we've been asked to do a lot more short format. I'm really interested in playing an Instagram story type format. I think that's a growing, I mean I'm a huge consumer of Instagram stories. Joel: Have you done that yet? Abby Cheesman: We've done a couple. Then I think, Snapchat is kind of dead. We did some geo targeting and some video campaigns there, but we haven't really seen a lot of uptake. But I think Facebook still runs strong. And I think in terms of social share and getting employees to engage and amplify your employee engagement, and referral program, that's where we're seeing a lot. Joel: Are you doing much SEO around YouTube videos to rank within Google search results? So like when I search working at company name, do those videos show up well or are you seeing any of that? Abby Cheesman: Depends on how well the company is optimizing. So we sort of drop off when the content is made and give some best practices. But then we introduced them to Joe and people who know what they're doing in programmatic and buying. I think one thing that's not going away is that as Google becomes bigger, they're going to continue to give preference to posts with video in their algorithm. But when it comes to what happens next, I mean, that's outside of our realm. Chad: So Thom, you've got this great experience. It's wonderful. You've pretty much surpassed the customer/candidates expectations and then they hit the apply button and they have to go into the applicant tracking system. What are you doing to be able to help clients get past that and understand that, you're gathering data, they need some data, but yet it seems so repetitive and duplicative and in many cases, and the process just sucks. What are you guys doing to be able to help HR and TA better understand that UX means everything? Thom Kenney: It's a struggle. It's a clear struggle. And part of it is because you have a lot of TA organizations that love the front end experience they have. They love the career site, all the interactive media that they have, the nurturing and the engagement. And then they try to have this conversation and say, "HR folks, we can't take 45 minutes for somebody to fill out a job application. We just can't." And HR just crosses their arms and says, "Well, compliance, well legal, well insert your explanation here." Thom Kenney: And it's incredibly frustrating because there is another large company in our space who tried to force everyone to move their talent network forms to after the apply process. That's a fundamentally stupid thing to do because- Chad: Was that Indeed? Did I hear Indeed? Thom Kenney: I didn't mention the company name. So it's a fundamentally stupid decision because you're losing all that opportunity to nurture and engage. And I remember our conversation I had where I was told, "Well just tell your customers to change their apply process." It's literally throwing your arms up in the air saying, "Enterprise customers don't work that way. They don't think that way." And in many enterprise customers there's a separation of church and state between TA and HR. It's just the way it is. And that's the nature of where we are today. Thom Kenney: But you think about the apply overlay sort of concept. You think about what Rethink Data is doing for example, with trying to encourage better applications, with better process flows. I remember going through one of our customers application process and I remember I gave up about half an hour into it when they asked me to hold my driver's license up to my webcam so they can take a picture of my driver's license and I was like, "I'm done with you. I don't even know if I want the job from you. Well no, actually I do know now than I don't want the job from you." Thom Kenney: It's going to be a real struggle over the next say, year, two years, three years to get folks to really understand that that whole part of it, you do all this great work on the nurturing and engagement side, all this great level of influence that you're generating. If you get people excited about opportunities and they go to that black hole, they go to that ATS and it's not necessarily the ATS' is fault. The implement implementation of a phenomenal technology can still be shit because it's how you do it that really makes a difference. Thom Kenney: but it's going to take a real sea change in the industry to understand that the apply process starts the moment you discover the candidate, not at the moment that they say they click that apply button. It starts way before that and that entire experience, even beyond getting the job, it's the onboarding. It's the how you interface with the LMS. It's three years being an employee. That engagement process needs to continue all the way from discovery to my new favorite word, worktirement, right? It's got to go all the way through that. Joel: I still want to know what that means. I'm going to find out by the end of the day. Chad: he wants to because he wants to be in worktirement. Thom Kenney: I really want to be in worktirement right now. Joel: We've heard a little bit today around voice search and voice interaction. Chad: I love it. Joel: Obviously Alexa, Siri, et cetera. Chad: My favorite. Yeah. Joel: It certainly hasn't made any sort of progress in the employment space. Will it? How long is that timetable? What does it look like? Any opinions on voice? Does it kill chat bots when you could talk actually talk. Thom Kenney: It doesn't kill bots. It augments chat bots. Chad: Exactly. That's the processes here. Thom Kenney: The challenge with that isn't about whether or not voice technology has an application. It absolutely does. It's about whether or not that voice technology can actually understand you. Right? Because let's say Joel, it's early morning, you're really sick of Chad over here. You're like, "I really hate doing this company thing. I got to go find a job." Joel: This morning basically. Thom Kenney: This morning, basically. Chad: Just like every morning. Thom Kenney: and you wake up and you're like, "Alexa, tell me what kinds of jobs are on Google." And Alexa comes back and says, "I'm sorry. There are no jobs where you can Google." Right. Natural language processing is not quite there yet to really get it to a point that you can very easily interface with voice commands. There's going to be some development time of technology to get to that point where really is impactful for our industry. Joe Shaker: I would just say, think about what the candidate is going to be in and that the users are going to be doing. And I look at my children and I think a couple other people were saying that earlier and talking about what their kids were surfing on the Internet and what they're looking at YouTube. And I look at my five year old and she yells at Alexa and says, "Play Disney music." Right? And so what's to stop her from 15, 10 years from now say, "Find me a job." Now hopefully her job will be Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Chad: Jobs near me. Joe Shaker: But I mean that's what they're being trained and we're training them to do that. So one would say, I would agree though, obviously time the technology's not there yet, but it's going to catch up. And the younger audiences, that's how they're doing it. They're not going to pull out their phone and start typing. Joel: Jason, I'm curious on working with marketing, do you guys ever have discussions about, hey, in our consumer marketing, can we bleed a little bit of our, hey, interested in a job we're hiring as well? Or does that conversation not ever happen? Jason Jones: So for Draft Kings, no it doesn't actually. Our corporate colors are black, orange, green, that may not resonate with our candidates. And so when I talk with our design team, which is kind of a shared resource, I say, how can we soften the colors? Designs that get a for a certain consumer of a certain demographics. Our candidates are not that, they're more. And so, I need you to adapt to my needs, actually. Joel: It's commercial time. JobAdX: Finding the right fit is important. When you're deciding on shoes for a long day at the trade show, when you're picking the right podcast for your commute, and most importantly when you're looking for the right candidate. With JobAdX, you can attract more relevant, engaged candidates to your jobs by harnessing the best in ad tech targeting. From predictive industry analysis and keyword click data to premium first page placement and reducing redundant candidates, our candidate targeting technology ensures that you're reaching talent that's as interested in working with you as you are with them. JobAdX: Now within ad video and multimedia, you can share your employer brand story and company culture with job seekers so they can visualize themselves in your office. All hands meeting or axe throwing team building adventure, all without navigating away from your job posting. Increased engagement makes for fewer steps between job seeker and new team member. Ready to ramp up your job advertising campaigns with the basket ad tech? Visit our new website at www.jobadx.com that's J-O-B-A-D-X.com. Attract. Engage. Employee. With JobAdX. Oh, and happy anniversary to our favorite dangerous dudes. Thanks for all the traffic, shout outs and good laughs. JobAdX proudly Team Chad and Cheese in 2019. Chad: It's show time. Chad: So here's a question for all of you. Is an employment brand just really the symptom of a shitty overall brand? We see big cult brands who have a brand and they focus on that one brand, right? And that's what it is all the way through. They focus on, not just the ... obviously a mission statement, but it's more purpose-driven, right? We talked to the global head of community at Airbnb, and we're talking about colors? He didn't care about colors. It's kind of like the Pete Buttigeig thing, right? Where they put out the design kit and go do whatever you want with it. It was all about purpose. It all focused on purpose. And then when we asked him, "what about your employment brand?" I mean, he almost had a seizure. He's like, "there's no employment brand." So do we think that employment brands really a symptom of the overall brand just really sucking and not focusing on employment? Jason Jones: For us, our industry is daily fantasy, sports, sports betting and media. Sports betting goes against people's moral fiber. And so, in a way, we need our employer brand to attract the right people. We need our employer brand to say we're working on cool technology that's interesting. Our consumer brand is not going to do that. It's going to say, come play daily fantasy, come back, come in and come consume some video content that we're producing. Joel: Because without employer brand, people might think they're walking into a sports book in Vegas when they walk into the Draft Kings. Chad: Well, yeah. They're focused on revenues at that point. Not purpose. Joel: But what he's saying is they have to overcome- Chad: I know what he's saying, it was in English. So yeah, I totally get it. So Joe, your thoughts? Joe Shaker: Sure. The employment brand is the visualization of the employment value proposition. Value proposition is obviously taking in consideration the company brand plus what it's like to work at the organization. And then again as Tony said, how do you differentiate yourself from some of the competition? I mean I would say is the employment brand by itself? No, it resonates well and it has to go and lie in line with the consumer brand, but does have a life of its own. Abby Cheesman: I think it's about the stories you allow yourself to tell, also. I think a consumer brand has a specific voice and employer brand allows you to tell from an employee's perspective. Aside from those companies that have achieved that cult level, most companies are not quite there yet. And so I think employer brand actually helps elevate to a closer thing to that cult brand. Chad: I think storytelling though, is as a big piece of it though, being able to really demonstrate purpose and help them understand that if you do have a moral problem with gambling, well you probably shouldn't fucking work here, right? Abby Cheesman: Right? Chad: Yeah. Abby Cheesman: Well, and I think your employer brand is authentic when it's told by your employees. Right? I don't think there's anything disingenuous about creating an employer brand to help cultivate and allow people to tell those stories. But if you're doing it right, it's a reflection of what's actually the experience of working there. Right? Chad: Thom? Anything? Thom Kenney: Yeah. One of the stats that we have talks about how you have a bad experience going through an interview process or an engagement process, it's going to negatively affect your impression of the brand, which is a product brand. I don't think that enough companies, especially at the enterprise level, really realize that your brand permeates everything you do from an employment brand perspective. It doesn't matter. You can be a horrible, horrible company just based on perception in the market. It doesn't matter how good your employment branding is. If your employment branding is crap, it's going to negatively impact your product brand. I mean, think about just the story that I talked about with CVS, people know CVS is a pharmacy, but they don't know that CVS can transform healthcare just with all the data they're sitting on. Thom Kenney: And even a small company like us, you do a nurturing campaign, it's like we've got these great opportunities, great things we can do. The first thing that happens is like, "Smashfly? What? Who the hell thought of that name? What the hell is Smashfly? Bug company? Is this like a pest control?" So even for us, just even the name of the company has a trickle down effect to the employment brand. And it's not just gambling. I remember one day somebody sent me saying, this was like 10 years ago, this great company, this great opportunity, huge senior level technology position. And they didn't tell me the name of the company, like through the first half hour of the discussion. And finally I said, "Well, who actually are you?" And it was a cigarette company in Kentucky. Thom Kenney: I was like, no, because that doesn't match with my value proposition. Right? So the brand itself has so much of an impact. And this is why when we were talking about earlier about the correlation between what TA is doing and to an extent what recruitment marketing is doing and aligning with the marketing team, that has got to become a symbiotic relationship. It has got to get closer together and the technologies that we're going to see and the next three, four, five years, you're going to see more and more of those technologies being similar across the landscape. Joel: This will happen in, and you see it happening. The divide between marketing, recruiting is narrowing? Thom Kenney: Very much so. The number of companies that we're talking to today, whether they're customers or potential customers, the number of times we're seeing someone from the marketing team involved in the process of selection is increasing because the marketing folks are starting to understand if we crap the bed in our employment brand, it's going to hurt our sales. It's a almost a one to one relationship. You want to avoid that, and the marketing guys are going to get killed if all of a sudden you're not getting the numbers and the results from your marketing campaigns because your employment campaign crapped the bed. Joel: Yeah. Just tell the marketing team how many resumes are in the database that are being farmed, that'll get their attention. So apparently we're out of time or low on time. Peter, do we have time for questions? Peter, Peter? Castilini? Ryan (audience): I moved back to the United States a year ago and what struck me was there were three big major companies doing me and hope campaigns. Facebook, Uber and Wells Fargo. They were all doing these big kind of, we've screwed up. Wells Fargo was- Abby Cheesman: That's right. Ryan (audience): I don't know as an employment brand and you can control any of that. You are still beholden to that. How do you work in an environment as talent acquisitions, where some of that stuff is outside of your control. I would think that part of the goal with those three campaigns wasn't employment brands. Joel: I know for a while in the Valley, Facebook was having some recruitment challenges because of that same issue as well as the privacy stuff and other things. Abby Cheesman: So I think one solution is talking to people who stayed with those companies through those hard times and hearing their story of why did you stay? And I think what you'll find is people are excited by those challenges and there are reasons that maybe are overlooked and all the negativity that people are staying and highlight those stories because they exist. Not everybody left Facebook, right? Not everybody left Wells Fargo. And so I think just simplicity of telling employee stories and elevating those to be important voices is a place to start. Jason Jones: So Draft Kings and Fan Duel are going to emerge because of government regulations and it didn't work out. And so it was known as time as like a failed merger. Your employees who didn't know if they were going to have jobs. And so this isn't the same degree, but we're trying to unlock their, those employee stories. Like you've gone through the muck, you've gone through the crap, why are you still here and how can we leverage that story to attract people where it's going to get tough, but we want to attract people who aren't going to just leave at the sight of bad PR or bad news. Joel: Yeah. I mean, you had your own challenge with, I don't know if it's Draft Kings or Fanduel of employees recognizing trends in betting and doing their own betting. So you've kind of had a little bit of that at your company. You might not have been there at the time. Jason Jones: I wasn't. Yeah. So we had someone who, honestly as you're writing the rules to the game as it's going, we had someone who played on a competitor's site. He didn't know because there was nothing in place to say that he couldn't. And then they got out and there's a media circus and then you're kind of, "Okay, here's what we can do, here's what we can't do." And so, we're always kind of playing catch up as we go. And it does lend to some PR nightmare and it affects recruiting. It affects your employer or consumer brands Joel: Awesome. Jason Jones: Thank you, Chad and Cheese. Chad: Thanks, guys. 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. Chews 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 #TAtech #Marketing #Recruitment #Smashfly #Shaker #DraftKings #SkillScout #video #Facebook #Google #Brand

It's the Chad & Cheese Podcast's first invasion of the StaffingTec conference. We corralled the Founder, CEO and pod lover, Maurice Fuller to talk about the event, Blockchain, AI and if those words really matter? This podcast series brought to you by the super smart people and tech over at Jobcase. 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: We caught up with StaffingTec's founder Maurice Fuller at the Monster after party in Nashville. Check it out. Chad: Sponsored by our friends at Jobcase. Joel: Yo, Chad. Got a question for you. Chad: Okay. Joel: Say I'm looking to hire hourly workers for hard-to-fill jobs. Where should I go? Maurice: Easy. Jobcase. Joel: Okay. All right. Now, let's say I've tried the job boards and all I'm getting is clicks, and I what I really want are qualified candidates, actual people. Where should I go? Chad: Dude. Jobcase. Joel: Now, what if I want the team who is helping me with all this sourcing to be really, really, really smart. And before you answer, keep in mind, I'm talking MENSA smart, like MIT-affiliated data scientists and people who are at the forefront of machine learning. Who you got? Chad: Oh, my God, dude. It's Jobcase. Jobcase. Look, with 100 million members in their community, active and passive job seekers, a huge team of data scientists who are experts at targeting and connecting employers with the right candidates, the answer is always going to be Jobcase. Joel: I dig it. I'm picking up what you're putting down, but what if- Chad: Hard stop. Jobcase. See for yourself why the answer always comes back to Jobcase for all your hiring needs. Learn more at jobcase.com/hire. That's jobcase.com/hire. Joel: Jobcase. 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: All right, Nashville. We're here with Maurice Fuller, right? Maurice: Yeah. Chad: See, that was easy to remember. Joel: People call him the gangster of love. Chad: Some people call him Maurice. Joel: Please tell me that's not the first time you've heard that. Maurice: It's not the first time I've heard that. Joel: How many times you get Maurice? Maurice: It never- Joel: A lot, right? Maurice: I never get tired of it. Joel: I can tell. Maurice: Steve Miller. Joel: Unfortunately, our listeners can't see your face. Maurice: Yeah. Joel: And the dismay that you're showing me right now. Chad: We have to ensure that everybody understands that's Steve Miller Band, by the way. Maurice: Steve Miller, yeah. Good stuff. Chad: Maurice, you are the founder, chief bottle washer, I mean everything- Maurice: Janitor. Chad: Janitor of StaffingTec. What is StaffingTec? Joel: And welcome to The Chad & Cheese Podcast. Maurice: Well, thank you. Chad: Longtime listener, I understand. Maurice: Longtime listener. You guys are awesome, and I love your podcast and I love the dialogue. It's smart conversation that's needed in our industry. So, thank you for all the things that you guys do and bring to the industry. Joel: You're welcome, Maurice. But this is about you. Chad: It's all about you. Joel: Not about us. Chad: It's all about you, Maurice. Joel: You're already on the show. You don't need to butter us up anymore. Maurice: All right, all right. Chad: I don't mind it though. I don't mind it. Keep it going, Maurice. Joel: That's true. Chad: Okay, so tell us about StaffingTec. Maurice: Let's talk about StaffingTec. So, StaffingTec is a conference. We do it once a year and, like the name suggests, it is focused on staffing technology. So, we think that technology is a really big driver of staffing firm success, and we want to create a forum for staffing firm leaders to learn about staffing technology and to help them make better decisions to help their firms grow faster and operate more profitably. Joel: And how long have you been doing the show and what's your background that sort of was the genesis of this? Maurice: Yeah, how did this come about? Joel: Yeah. Maurice: Okay, so I have been in the staffing industry now for 25 years. I started as a recruiter. Chad: Holy shit. Maurice: Yeah, exactly. Chad: Did you start when you were 10? Maurice: I started in the ancient days, literally with piles of resumes. Joel: Did you use a rotary phone to call candidates when you first started? Maurice: Just about. Joel: Just about? Maurice: Yeah. Chad: Morse Code. Maurice: Yep. If I had started any earlier, I would've been hand-delivering resumes to customers. Joel: Pony Express. Maurice: So, I literally didn't have a computer in the beginning. It was fax machines and newspaper ads and dialing, and from there it's evolved very rapidly into extremely advanced technology. So, it's fascinating how the industry has evolved and what I said this morning in my opening remarks, that staffing firms are becoming tech firms, whether they realize it or not. Maurice: Staffing firm owners, for the most part, they think that a staffing firm is a collection of people enabled by technology to deliver staffing services. But it's actually increasingly becoming the reverse. It's technology that delivers the staffing services and the human beings only become involved where they absolutely have to. There are more and more examples of staffing firms where orders are being filled automatically, without almost any human intervention. Maurice: And so that's the kind of the new standard is staffing firms that are operating completely autonomously. Joel: So, at what point do we not need staffing firms anymore if everything's autonomous? Maurice: Yesterday we had our blockchain summit. It was the world's first conference ever for the staffing and recruiting industry on blockchain, and that was very interesting. Chad: All day? Maurice: All day, yeah. So, we had 15 speakers and panels and it was very intense and we brought all the smartest people together that were involved in blockchain and staffing and recruiting. And there were so many insights that came out of that. But one of the insights is blockchain is designed to dis-intermediate. It was originally designed to take the U.S. government out from cryptocurrency and other governments. Maurice: And so I've been thinking all lot about the impact that blockchain is likely to have on the staffing industry, and I think, as a whole, blockchain is going to make the staffing industry more efficient. It's actually going to grow our industry. But it's not going to be a rising tide for all ships. I think staffing firms are going to have to take advantage of blockchain, and in some cases they're going to have to kind of rethink incentives, because blockchain actually reverses and flips upside down some of the incentives that we traditionally know about. Chad: Don't you think that we are focusing way too much on a term and not what it does? I mean, because we talk about blockchain. We don't really talk about the advantages of blockchain without ... I keep hearing AI, AI, but it's like, just talk about the advantages. I don't need you to slap blockchain or AI on it. Maurice: Yeah, so I'm totally with you. So, for example, there was a panel on AI today. In a lot of ways, I just think that it's a solution, and it has magic that does whatever it does and like who cares whether it's machine learning or AI or blockchain or cloud- Chad: Or a squirrel on a wheel behind the thing. Maurice: A squirrel on a wheel or a bunch of elves that are performing the service. It does technological magic and it delivers a result. And so I think that there's too much discussion about is it AI or is it semantic? What's the underlying technology? In a lot of ways, who cares? The engineers have created this magic that creates a great solution and let's leave it at that. Joel: So, before you were rudely interrupted by Chad, you were talking about how- Chad: It's what I do. Joel: You were talking about how ... not Bitcoin. Chad: Would you like another bourbon? Maurice: Blockchain. Joel: Blockchain, yes. Give me another bourbon. How blockchain was going to save the staffing industry from being obsolete by automation. Maurice: Right. Well, it's one of those things that's going to make us more efficient. So, I can go into a bit of detail on what blockchain will bring. Maurice: Blockchain, in my mind, it's synonymous with trust. It will bring more trust to the staffing industry. Right now there's all kinds of trust issues that we have. Trusting candidates. We know that many candidates misstate their credentials on their resume. We have trust issues with competitors, trust issues with clients, trust issues with suppliers. So, what blockchain does is it tightens up the whole relationships and it ensures a higher level of trust and delivery. Maurice: So, if we can make our industry more trusted and more efficient, it's going to take less gross margin to cover our operating expenses. Our operating expenses as a percentage of revenue should go down. So, it's going to make us more efficient and if you look at supply and demand, if we're more efficient, more customers are going to be buying our services. So, it's going to make us a better industry, but again, everyone has to buy into blockchain who wants to succeed. Joel: So, are you saying you'll be more profitable but there may not be more staffing firms or staffing professionals in five to 10 years? Maurice: I don't know that it will make us more profitable, because I think at the end of the day we're going to be ... the staffing firms are going to be basically getting returns based on return on capital invested in the firm. I don't know that that part of the equation is going to change, but I do think that it will make us more efficient so we can deliver our services with lower operating expense. Chad: So, who should come to StaffingTec? Maurice: That's a really great question, and thanks for asking that. This conference is specifically designed for staffing industry leaders and staffing industry executives and also individuals that work within IT for staffing firms. Chad: Okay. Maurice: Yeah, so this is to identify solutions to help grow the staffing firm faster and operate more efficiently. Chad: Gotcha. Maurice: And there's a lot of staffing firms that need to improve their staffing technology stack, and we're here to help. I talked to a staffing firm owner today. He said, "Maurice, we went to your conference last year. We grew 80%, our revenue 80%." Chad: 80%? Maurice: Isn't that crazy. Chad: Well, was it a two people ... a two-person firm and they went to like ten? Maurice: No, this was a big company. Chad: Yeah, okay. Maurice: I said, so you got some technology solutions that you implemented from Seattle ... our Seattle event? "Yeah, yeah, we implemented a whole bunch of solutions." And did it help. I mean, did that play a role in the growth? He said, "Yeah, absolutely." Maurice: So, when I hear stories like that, that really makes me happy. Not everyone's going to come to StaffingTec and grow 80% next year, but it will certainly help staffing firms grow, and certainly it's a very selective group of people that come here and that group is going to be aware of what's out there. And they're going to succeed in the years ahead because they're paying attention to technology, which is really where it's all about. Technology is really the key to success in our industry now. Joel: So, your conference has a unique feature called Matchmaker- Maurice: Yes. Joel: ... where vendors can have a table. They set up schedules for basically pitches to people. I've noticed a hodgepodge of solutions. I mean, it's all over the map, but if you could say outside of, I guess blockchain and AI and automation, what are some other major trends or vendors that you see really lighting it up in the industry? Maurice: Okay, so I think the number one trend that's happening in the staffing industry is what we call the Uberization of staffing or the digital transformation of the staffing experience. There's a couple ways of phrasing that, but the bottom line is that ... and I'm holding up my iPhone right now ... everything is moving onto the mobile phone. You have to have a great mobile phone experience for candidates. And it's critically important that you have a mobile app and you engage with your candidates on the mobile app. So, you're being compared against Ebay or Amazon and so your mobile app for your firm has to be up to that level. Maurice: Not only that, when you engage with a candidate and you call them, they want to be able to text back on that number. So, they want the same kind of experience working with you like that would be engaging with a friend, but too often we have this kind of older technology from the past that's disconnected from the modern mobile phone experience. Maurice: So, what we're seeing is that staffing firms, especially in light industrial and labor, that are using mobile are just crushing it. They're doing super well, and it's just changing the economics of the staffing industry. It's changing the job of recruiters from proactively qualifying candidates. Once they're qualified then you just push out opportunities to them through the mobile app. It's a- Joel: So, just like everything else, messaging is sort of taking over the staffing world. Maurice: Exactly. It's a huge game changer. The number two trend is chatbots, and what's interesting is that chatbots are actually becoming more and more like digital assistants. Chad: Yes, and engagement ... really focused on engagement, not just a ... What is a chatbot? It's all about the engagement that candidates might have, that recruiter might have, employees might have. I mean, just all the way through, yeah. Maurice: Exactly, and the results, the ROI, that staffing firms are seeing from bots is very, very significant. Maurice: So, I would say the areas where we're seeing the highest ROI is the Uberization of staffing, mobile apps ... and we have multiple vendors here in that area ... and also in AI and chatbots. Maurice: And that's an interesting area, AI and chatbots sort of working together, and there's so many different chatbots out there that ... It's interesting. Even the chatbot vendors barely understand the differences between the different chatbot vendors, because that area's evolving so rapidly right now. Chad: So, this year, obviously if our listeners have not had an opportunity to come to Nashville and enjoy StaffingTec, where's 2020 going to be? Joel: Is it always in Nashville? Chad: No, last year it was in Seattle. Maurice: Yeah, Seattle, Nashville, and- Chad: What's next year? Maurice: We haven't settled on 2020, but we'll announce that to the world once we have the location. It'll be somewhere on the eastern half of the U.S. Chad: Okay. You'll have to let us know. Joel: And how many attendees are here today? Maurice: We have north of 200 attendees and then that doesn't include the vendors that are here. Joel: It's a very intimate show. Maurice: We like it that way. Joel: I say that as a compliment. Maurice: Thank you. Joel: I mean, there are real conversations happening. I love the Matchmaker. Maurice: Thank you. Joel: Sit at a table and talk to a vendor as opposed to the trade show booth sort of model. Maurice: Yeah, we like to keep it real. Joel: Yeah, now having 1,000+ people I think it would overrun the vendors. Maurice: It might not work so well, yeah. Joel: I mean, you do your own thing, but I would think if you got too big it would be difficult to pull off the model that you currently have. Maurice: Yeah. That's a good problem to have, and when we get to that point we'll ... Joel: We'll talk about that in the next podcast. Maurice: We'll talk about that when we get there. Chad: Excellent. Well, we appreciate you taking the time, Maurice. Thanks for having us out. Maurice: I'm really honored to be on your show. I have such great respect for you guys. It's really fantastic to be sitting between the two of you and talking. So, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Joel: Some call him the gangster of love. Maurice, thanks for being on the show and thanks for inviting us. Chad: Maurice. Thanks, man. Maurice: Thank you. Announcer: 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. And be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more, visit chadcheese.com. Oh yeah, you're welcome. #StaffingTec #Jobcase #AI #Blockchain #Event #process #vendor #staffing #RPO

Chad & Cheese take to SHRM Talent's Smart Stage (insert irony here) to talk about the entry of big names into the recruiting industry. Does it matter? Will one of these names become THE ONE to create ONE PLATFORM FOR ALL? Sit back and enjoy a Jobcase powered podcast! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions' clients are changing the lives of people with disabilities, including veterans with service related disabilities. Chad: We're on the Smart Stage at SHRM Talent in Nashville talking about one recruitment platform to rule them all. Or maybe not. Sponsored by Jobcase. Joel: Yo, Chad, got a question for you. Chad: Okay. Joel: Say I'm looking to hire hourly workers for hard-to-fill jobs. Where should I go? Chad: Easy, Jobcase. Joel: Okay, all right. Now, let's say I've tried the job boards, and all I'm getting is clicks, and what I really want are qualified candidates, actual people. Where should I go? Chad: Dude, Jobcase. Joel: Now, what if I want the team who is helping me with all this sourcing to be really, really, really smart? Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel: And before you answer, keep in mind I'm talking Mensa smart, like MIT-affiliated data scientists and people who are at the forefront of machine learning. Who you got? Chad: Oh my God, dude, it's Jobcase. Jobcase. Look, with 100 million members in their community, active and passive job seekers, a huge team of data scientists who are experts at targeting and connecting employers with the right candidates, the answer is always going to be Jobcase. Joel: I dig it. I'm picking up what you're putting down, but what if- Chad: Hard stop, Jobcase. See for yourself why the answer always comes back to Jobcase for all your hiring needs. Learn more at Jobcase.com/hire. That's Jobcase.com/hire. Joel: Jobcase. Hype Train: 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. Announcer: In just the past few years, goliaths like Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook have entered the world of recruitment in a big way. Traditional vendors like Indeed, Monster, CareerBuilder are struggling to catch up, keep up, and stay relevant in an increasingly competitive field. Chad and Joel from the award-winning The Chad and Cheese Podcast will discuss the current landscape of players both big and small. Without further delay, put your hands together, start clapping loudly for my brand new friends, Chad and Cheese. Chad: Hello, Nashville. It's that loud. Man, that's good. Check. Okay, good. Joel: You know we're in the South when the Mountain Dew is more readily available than the water. How's everyone's livers doing? Are they on strike at this point ... Chad: Totally on strike. Joel: ... like mine is? Chad: Coffee and water the rest of the day. Joel: Can anyone do the floss, the dance, not the dental care? No one? Yeah, I have a nine-year-old daughter, and I really embarrassed her this past week trying to do the floss. Chad: Doing the floss? Joel: Apparently is not- Chad: You should not do the floss. Joel: ... what the kids are doing these days. Chad: You personally should not do the floss. Joel: I should definitely not do it. Dude, I don't know how we live up to that intro. Chad: That's the most anybody- Joel: So these two have no expectations, so we're bound to not disappoint them hopefully. Chad: Excellent. Joel: I am Joel Cheesman. Chad: I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: And we are The Chad and Cheese Podcast. How many of you are listeners or have heard about us? That's fantastic. Our hope is that all of you after this will subscribe through your podcast solution of choice. But we're here to talk about what, Myspace and Second life? Chad: Friendster. Joel: Basically. Chad: So, yeah, we're gonna talk about these huge platforms that are popping out. But before we start there, I want you to let a few names marinate. And we'll talk about them at the end. SAP, Oracle, IBM, and ADP, okay? Those four names. Think about those. Joel: How many of you are currently or have been customers of any one of those companies? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Have been, okay. Chad: Yeah. So what happened to actually shake this market up? Joel: A $26.2 billion asteroid hit the industry in the form of Microsoft acquiring LinkedIn back in 2016, '17 happened. And that created a reaction of every big software company in North America, in the world wanting to get into the employment workforce game. And that is essentially what we're talking about today, these big, monolithic software companies hoping to get your dollars by helping you manage your workforce. And this is sort of the first innings of that. And that's what we're basically talking about. But that was the incident I think that got Google's attention, Facebook's attention, Salesforce's attention, everyone's attention. And that is the world that we're living in. Joel: Today, some of the big dinosaurs you mentioned are on their way out, I think you could argue. I think that some of the T-Rexes that we know, the Indeeds, maybe the ZipRecruiters, are trying to figure out how they survive in this new world of mammals and other animals. And then you have smaller players that are just gonna die as a result. Chad: So who believes that Google is going to put together a full suite of services that will be able to provide to the enterprise? A few [crosstalk 00:05:31]. Joel: Who would bet against Google? Chad: Yeah, that's a good question. Who would bet against Google? Okay. Joel: Or Microsoft? Chad: Yeah, how about Microsoft? Is anybody using Microsoft today, Teams or any of those pieces? Right. So that's the crack right now, right? Being able to actually utilize some of those pieces in the suite. My opinion is Google started the smart way with SMB because there's really no expectation from mom-and-pop organizations because most of them haven't used applicant tracking systems before. They're using spreadsheets or what have you. Now, they have an actual system that links together everything that they currently use, Word and Slides, I mean just pretty much everything, right? Joel: A lot of people don't know this is Google's second shot at the whole jobs thing. Back in 2005, they launched something called Google Base. Does anyone remember Google Base? I see one head shaking. I see two. It was sort of a disaster. Basically you could upload as much shitty job content as you wanted- Chad: Recipes. Joel: ... recipes or whatever, rental units, and those search results would show up secondarily on Google. That came and went after about a year or so. And again, I think the bidding for LinkedIn and them coming into the game really woke up Google to say, "We need to get into this whole employment thing." Obviously they have Google Docs and G Suite. So they're really trying to garner themselves a foothold into the enterprise system. A lot of you probably use Google and don't even know it in the form of Google for Jobs. Raise your hand if you know Google for Jobs. You should all know Google for Jobs, okay? Joel: Go do a job search anywhere on Google, and you'll see a secondary set of results that look a lot like Indeed. Indeed launched with saying they were the Google for jobs. Well, now, Google is the Google for Jobs- Chad: Literally. Joel: ... because when you search jobs, you see a secondary list that's basically like Indeed. And then you can go in and see all the job listings. And if your jobs aren't currently there, they need to be. Wake up call, there's about 150 million job searches a month in North America. 78% of those searches start at Google. So if you're not on Google for Jobs, you've got a problem. Chad: And if you don't know how to get your jobs, I mean you didn't even know that your jobs were prospectively in Google or not, you need to check with your applicant tracking system. You need to be able to check with your current vendors to see if they support it, because in most cases, you're not gonna go to IT and get any of their time to be able to make that happen, right? Joel: There's actually a URL, right this down, AmIOnGoogleForJobs.com, I believe. There's a company called Jobiak, J-O-B-I-A-K, that helps companies get their postings on Google. And they have a simple sort of service where you can plug in a job posting and see if it's on Google for Jobs or not. And if you're not, you got a problem. Chad: So that's big to our ecosystem because where did Indeed get most of their traffic, a good amount, a lion's share of their traffic? Joel: Google. Chad: Good answer. We're talking about the organic side versus- Joel: By the way, Indeed doesn't play with Google for Jobs. So if you think- Chad: I was getting there. Joel: ... "Well, I'm on Indeed ..." I'm sorry. I stole your thunder. Chad: Jesus. He kills me. Joel: It's the Mountain Dew. Chad: It's the Mountain Dew. He's never this excited. It was the intro. Yeah, so Indeed now doesn't play with Google for Jobs, which means they're not pushing their jobs into the actual job search on Google now. So if you were putting your jobs on Indeed, you could prospectively be seeing different and/or less traffic. They are spending a shit-ton of money on the search engine marketing part of the piece, so the ads, which they've done before. But really if you think about it, that's not incredibly sustainable. Joel: And, Chad, why do you think they're not putting their jobs on Google for Jobs? Chad: Can you say that louder? Joel: Why do you think they're not putting their jobs on Google for Jobs? Chad: I think Indeed's gotten way too big for their britches, and they believe that they can become a lifestyle platform. And that's what Google is. That's what Facebook has become. Obviously that's what Microsoft is, their suite of services that you use every single day. And that's pretty much my definition of a lifestyle platform. When I roll over in the morning, what do I check, right? I check my Gmail. I check Facebook, social media, possibly LinkedIn, use Microsoft on a daily basis. Those are lifestyle platforms. Chad: Not everybody's looking for a job every single day of their life, right? We like to think so sometimes. And apparently Indeed believes that. That's not the case. Joel: So the keyword there I think you said is "platform." Chad: Yes. Joel: So to bring it back to the whole presentation here, which is one platform to rule them all, I think it's our contention that all of these companies want to be your one-stop shop for everything. And let's agree that it's kind of disjointed right now, right? You've got multiple services. I gotta log in to multiple places. A lot of people would think, "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if I could just log in to Google all day, and I've got my personal stuff, and now I've got my corporate stuff. I'll manage my candidates. I got my calendar." That's a platform to rule them all. Joel: Microsoft, same thing. You've got your Outlook 365. Now, you've got your LinkedIn connections. You're networking with them. You're posting jobs. You're sourcing candidates. And to a lesser degree, Indeed, in my opinion, doesn't want to play with Google because they see what's happening. And Indeed wants to be your platform, right? They're an ATS now. Their resumes. Their job postings. Chad: Shitty ATS. Joel: Their profiles. Their employment branding with their reviews. And the reason they have shut out and built a wall from Google is they know that ultimately they might die a slow death. And by the way, they know dying slow deaths because they killed Monster, CareerBuilder, and everybody else back in 2005 [crosstalk 00:11:31]- Chad: Because they got too big for their britches. Joel: Right. So Indeed is getting Indeed by Google when they know Indeeding like nobody else. So they don't want to get Indeeded. Chad: They don't want to be Indeeded. Okay. Joel: Right. Although they own, they're sister companies with Glassdoor, who doesn't want to be a platform, from what I can tell. Glassdoor's on Google for Jobs. So I don't know what to make of that, but ... Chad: So let's go back to those names we talked about before. Joel: ... we don't have all the answers. Chad: Let's go back to those names we talked about before, because this has always been a promise of acquisition. From the ADP side of the house, they acquired VirtualEdge. Oracle bought Taleo. Does anybody remember what Oracle bought Taleo for? So we know LinkedIn- Joel: Like money-wise? Chad: ... was 26.2, yeah, money-wise, 26.2 [million 00:12:14] for LinkedIn. Taleo was bought for 1.9, less that $2 billion. Joel: Big bucks back then, though, dude. Chad: Yeah, but comparatively, right? Joel: Bought a lot of beer back then. Chad: So IBM Kenexa BrassRing, SAP SuccessFactors also who acquire Jobs2Web. So we've been trying to build the single platform for everybody forever, right? It's not gonna happen. Not to mention when you take a look at and you go to- Joel: I think it could happen. Chad: ... if you go to events like this and you see all of these new startups all over the place ... And obviously they do business different. Doesn't matter if they have AI in their title or not, whether they're engagement systems like chatbots or they're sourcing systems or what have you, they're going to be different strokes for different folks. And just because iCIMS, which I thought was incredibly smart, bought TextRecruit, doesn't mean that TextRecruit is really your flavor. Maybe it is because it's a great system. But maybe you're more of a Canvas person or something like that. Chad: So I think from an integration standpoint, that's going to be the key message for every company that's out there that's not a big platform already is where do you integrate, and do you integrate deeply into our system? That's where we need to do a lot of research, especially if you don't know if your jobs are in Google for Jobs. Oh my God. You need to do your research to better understand how these platforms play together. I personally don't believe that there's going to be one platform for [crosstalk 00:13:50]. Joel: Any Jobvite clients out there? Chad: No Jobvite. Joel: So the ATSs are getting into the game, too, right? They want to be your platform of choice, be a one-stop shop. Jobvite recently backed up the Brink's truck via a $200 million investment to buy three companies: Canvas, Talemetry, and RolePoint. Chad: Yes. Joel: And we believe I think agree that that move was a swing for the fences to be a platform for everything, manage your candidates, marketing, messaging. They're trying to bring all of that into one house as opposed to just being an ATS. You see iCIMS buying TextRecruit and being at their analyst day this past year. They're trying to build that one-stop shop as well. They're gonna be unveiling stuff more for the job seeker to have a turnkey apply to all places to be one stop for the job seekers as well. Joel: So you have this whole, this real battle waging. And I think the point of you'll have a platform that you feel comfortable with, like for a lot of people will be Microsoft and Google. For a lot of people, it'll be Indeed. Chad: Who's comfortable with their current platform? Yeah. I don't know. Joel: Does a platform really exist today? I think it's- Chad: I don't know that they ever will be comfortable. Joel: ... very tough. And then our automation AI stuff from yesterday, a lot of this stuff is gonna be automated, so it may not matter what platform you use. They're all gonna be the same in terms of where they're getting data and how they're using data and where they schedule stuff. So it may not matter in the future if someone has a platform or not, thanks to AI and automation. Chad: Yeah. So if you're not following Google and you're not doing your research on Google and Microsoft and these big names, you have to. It is your duty as an HR professional, as a recruiting professional to know what is going on out there. And the reason why I'm saying that is because Google is making some amazing strides. It was funny because we talk to the Google team all the time because I guess they give a shit what we think. And it was funny because I actually said right out of the gate, "This feels like a 20% time kind of project." And that pissed them off. Chad: They took it to heart, though. And they've really pulled out the stops. What we've seen from their product is really much more polished, integrated to their system, not to mention- Joel: Consistently updated ... Chad: ... consistently updated, yeah- Joel: ... and enhanced. Chad: ... and they have integrations with the Indeeds of the world, the Monsters of the world. And this again, we're starting at the ground level from the SMB standpoint. I know you're probably not SMBs, but if you look toward the very near future, we can see them going toward enterprise and building toward enterprise. Joel: In our last few minutes, let's talk about what else Google is doing. We talked about Google for Jobs, but they have two other products that the audience may not be aware of. They have an API for job search, and they have an ATS. Let's cover the API first. So Google has an API that basically ... I think we can all probably agree that Google's the best search engine in the world, or at least they have pretty good search technology. And it's probably better than whatever job board you're using. Trust me, it is. Chad: It is. Joel: So Google said, "You can plug in our search technology into your job search for a small fee." And over 4,000 job boards and companies are currently using Google's API to do that. Johnson & Johnson was one of the early adopters. So if you want to see how this looks, go to Johnson & Johnson. Do some job searches. It basically knows if you're misspelling stuff. It basically can give you related searches. It's very, very smart. It knows an RN is also a nurse. It's basically Google Search on these job boards and company pages. Joel: You can also have Google Search in your own site. And you should look at your ATS, ask them, "Hey, are we using Google's search API to search jobs?" If they're not, ask them why, or if they're going to be doing that anytime soon. But we've seen, we've talked to job boards and companies that are talking about higher retention on the site, fewer bounce rate or lower bounce rates, more searches, less customer service calls because people aren't having questions about search and, "Why am I getting this result? Why can't I find this job here? Why isn't the ZIP code search an option when I search?" Joel: So I think the API's a small thing that Google's doing on the surface. But I also think they're gathering a ton of data about how people search, what they search, what they're looking for, what they're clicking on that also enhances Google for Jobs as well as the ATS products. So the API for me is really smart. And that's all I have to say about the API. Chad: That's all I have to say about the API. Yeah, so the API, again, if you believe that you can do search better than Google, number one, you're dumb. But then you should really reassess and take a look at their API, right? And how many did you say job boards- Joel: 4,000 currently is what [crosstalk 00:18:42]. Chad: So 4,000. So it's an API, job boards, and also applicant tracking systems. Again, these are things that you need to be asking your vendors, because what sucks on your career site in most cases? The experience. What's part of the experience? Job search. Joel: Speed. Chad: To be able to build ontologies. This is what Google's doing, right? So they have built ontologies of jobs versus profiles. So they understand how search works. Go figure. They're Google, right? They're doing searches better. And I'll give you a great example, CareerBuilder. CareerBuilder has taken nearly two decades to build search, job search. Their specialty is what? Candidates, job search. What are they using now because it's better? Google. Chad: So, yeah, these are the things that we definitely need to as an industry we need to really focus on. We need to stay abreast of what's going on. There's so much investment that's going on, so many startups that are out there. And the big asteroid that came out of the sky and landed in the middle of our industry is what is really producing all this interest, capital, and all of these damn startups that say AI and stuff, but they're really cool. Joel: And if you're not interested in the API, you might be interested in Google's ATS, Hire by Google. I don't know if we have time to talk about that much or not. I know most of you probably hate your ATS. If you're looking to change, you might want to give Google's Hire by Google a look. It integrates well with G Suite, so if your company's using Google for that, it integrates really nicely. The calendar system for interviews works really nicely. Google's AI is sort of slowly getting into that. Joel: Google has a really cool auto search where when you post a job, it'll bring up resumes that are already in your database, again this is Google search, that they think are good candidates for the job you posted. So you may not even have to go far to find the candidates. They might actually already be in your database. Chad: You might not have to spend money to post jobs because, guess what, you've already spent millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in your current database that you're not using. So that being said, can I take a couple of questions? Female: Sure. Chad: Any questions? Joel: Yes. Attendee: Can you tell me how this relates to sourcing? So we're talking more about applicant search. So tell me [inaudible 00:20:59] sourcing. Chad: So from the sourcing standpoint, this is, I'm most excited about this because like I just said, from the candidate database standpoint, we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and some companies even more, on building a resume database over the decades, right? So being able to actually use search technology, Google's doing that now in their platform, in Hire by Google. They're doing that automatically. As soon as I post a job, like Joel had said, it's going into the database, "Do you have somebody like that already?" Okay? Chad: The API side of the house, now that's on the SMB side, the API side is all enterprise. So that's where they provide the iCIMS and the different applicant tracking systems and also the SmashFlys for search. This candidate search swap API I'm going to say will be out within the next six months. So from that standpoint, you will have, and again this is me predicting, you will have an opportunity to go to your applicant tracking system, your CRM, whoever really powers that database and utilize this type of technology to leverage sourcing against your database and also hopefully some of the other vendors that you use. Joel: And I think to piggy-back on that, Google will eventually I think allow you to search the web at large. They'll allow you to search your database, but then who outside has profiles or whatever? LinkedIn won't let them into LinkedIn. So that's not an option. But there will be I think a web search where profiles on GitHub or wherever’s open you can access as well. Joel: I'll add also LinkedIn if you post a job now, they also pull in candidates from their network of 650 million people to give you options of who they think would be a good candidate for that job. Chad: That's gonna be table stakes. Joel: And I haven't heard anything about Indeed doesn't have yet post a job and they pull resumes from their database to show you candidates that are there. They may be doing that. Anyone using Indeed let me know. Chad: Zip does. That's part of Zip's whole process. Joel: Yeah, Zip has that. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So the job boards will catch up. But right now, in terms of sourcing, automated sourcing, Google and LinkedIn I think are at the forefront of that. And if I were putting money on anyone to win this one platform game, it would be Microsoft and Google. And you'll just pick which one you think is the…. Announcer: Chad and Cheese, everybody! Joel: Aw. Announcer: Chad and Cheese. Announcer: Thank you, guys. Chad: Thanks, guys. Announcer: Dynamism, I told you. 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. #SHRMTalent #SHRM #AI #Google #GoogleJobsAPI #GoogleforJobs #HirebyGoogle #Microsoft #Linkedn #Jobcase #Facebook

ROAD TRIP!! Nashville didn't know what the HELL hit them! The boys made their way South for two of the most popular conferences of the season this week. In addition to wrapping up the two events, news about Indeed, Rectxt, JazzHR and more are covered en route on the way home at 80 MPH in Chad's car. Enjoy and show our sponsors some love: Sovren, JobAdX and Canvas. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides training and development to help your workplace leaders and employees integrate with and value 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: Rock and roll. Ooh, rock and roll. Chad: And roll. Joel: To everyone. Fa-fa-fa-fooling. Are we ready? Chad: Yeah. Joel: I really think you should just open the show with that little hair metal melody that we just did there. That was good. Chad: God gave Chad and Cheese to you. Gave Chad and Cheese to you. Joel: God gave Chad and Cheese to you. Chad: As we're listening to the, what is it, the ... Oh, there it is. Oh, Hair Nation on XM. Joel: Aldo effing Nova. Chad: Aldo Nova. We heard that on the way down. Go ahead and turn that off. Joel: If you ever carpool with Chad, you are instantly thrown into 1987- Chad: Transported. Joel: Mansfield, Ohio. Chad: Oh, jeez. Joel: Hair metal heaven. Good God, my nails are black for some reason and I'm wearing too much Aqua Net right now. Welcome to the show, everybody. The mobile post show hangover edition of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, our first ever on the road. Chad's behind the wheel, I'm riding shotgun. We're headed home from Nashville. Chad: On I-65- Joel: Back to Indiana. Chad: Going 80 miles an hour. Joel: On I-65. FedEx, RVs, this is middle America right here. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: There's a little green on the trees, which is nice. We don't have that quite yet in Indiana. Pit stop at McDonald's to reload for me. Chad: Reload. Joel: I'm ready to go. Chad: Hattie B's ... Joel: After a night of Hattie B's hot chicken, I need a little bit of equilibrium in my guts. So we're ready to do a show, let's see how this goes. Chad: Okay. Joel: Are you ready? Chad: Yeah, let's do the shout outs. Joel: Okay, so shout outs. It's a lot, 'cause we saw a lot of people this week. Chad: Okay. Run through. Joel: Number one, let's just do a quick one to Team Shaker and Team Talroo and Team Uncommon, who were at the SHRM Show. Chad: That's right. Joel: We also saw Honeit, we saw XOR, we saw ... Chad: JobAdX. Joel: JobAdX. Chad: Yep. Joel: Sponsor. Yeah, we saw a lot of companies that have either been on Firing Squad or sponsors or are just friends of the show, so big shout out to them. Shout out to Laura King, a attendee of our Smart Stage show, loved it. You're not as comfortable telling the listening audience what she said in a direct message to you, so I'll let you decide whether or not you want to share that. Chad: Yeah, no, Lauren, we appreciate ... And we actually had a few people come up to us and say that the 18 minutes that they spent on our Smart Stage presentations were probably some of the most true, straight to the heart ... Joel: Can I just read it? Chad: Go ahead. Joel: Alright, alright. Chad, you followed up and said, "Thanks for coming." And she asked questions and talked to us afterwards, and Lauren King said, quote, "Thank you, Chad. Learned more in your 18 minute talk than I learned in the entire three days. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. We've already set up a meeting with our promotions team to dig into particulars for the Google for Jobs stuff. I've subscribed to the podcast and look forward to listening." Joel: Well, if you're listening, Lauren, thank you. Chad: Thank you so much. Joel: And happy listening. Chad: We'll put in a ... Joel: Yeah. Yeah, no sound effects on this show. A lot of people will be very happy about that, I'm sure. Chad: Oh, I'll put 'em in. Joel: Oh, you will put 'em in? Okay. No crying babies though, I'm sure. Alright, let's do a shout out to Andrew and Rob from SHRM, not only were they very hospitable in buying us dinner the second night- Chad: You're talking about Roy. Joel: Oh, Roy. Rob Roy. Chad: Rob Roy. Joel: He's Scottish, right? No, he's not. Sorry. Yeah, did I mention we've been on a four day social bender, if you will, so I'm not quite as sharp as normal. Yeah, Roy, sorry about that, and he's a marine too, so he may come whip my ass. Shout out to Frenchie the Frenchie, Hamlin the dog. Chad: Hamlin. Hamlin. Joel: I'll let you take this, 'cause you just love the four-legged animals. Chad: This is the funniest shit ever. So Talroo brought an Instagram star to their booth and they had people lined up to get their picture taken with Hamlin, the Frenchie Instagram star dog, right? So Joel and I obviously had to do it as well, and we had what I'd like to call a Stepbrothers moment. Joel: That's what we were going for. Chad: I think we pulled it off. Joel: I'm guessing most of our listeners know Stepbrothers and the promotional pictures for the movie where they're sort of in the sweaters, sort of the 80s high school photo opportunity, the hand on the shoulder, the looking up. And we added a dog. Chad: A dog, yes. Joel: To that photo. Chad: Hamlin. Joel: So we've got more than enough "you guys are creepy as fuck" comments from that, and that's kind of what we were going for. So if you haven't seen that on social media, go check that out. Chad: And I'm hoping that Talroo takes it to the next step and gets that done in an oil painting, and they can put it in their lobby. 'Cause it has their logos behind it. It would be perfect. Joel: Or yeah, or maybe when we go do Unplugged, they could have a big picture of that- Chad: Ah, that's a good idea. I like that. Joel: ... behind us, for the show. That was good stuff. Shout out to SmartRecruiters, we always fall for this. Chad: We're suckers. Joel: Top 10 lists ... Chad: We are suckers. Joel: Must listen podcasts, etc. So they were pretty nice, SmartRecruiters said, quote, "The show listens like classic morning radio with irreverent attitudes and frequent sound effects, which is a nice change of pace for an industry known for buttoning up. Enjoy, but headphones is a must, headphones are a must, if you are at work or around the kids." I like that, that's a pretty good synopsis of the show. Chad: They're right, we take a boring ass industry and sex it up. Joel: Sex it up is a little bit aggressive, I think. Chad: No, no, I like sex it up. Joel: Yeah, yeah, we pimp it out. Alright, Maurice, StaffingTec, that's your boy, give him a shout out. Chad: Mau. Man, Maurice Fuller. We also ... Hopefully, we're in a very loud after party and we did an interview with him, hopefully that'll be good enough quality-wise to send out. But Maurice, great show, man. Didn't get a chance to stay for the whole thing, but what we did get to see was pretty awesome. We'll talk about it here in a minute. Joel: Yeah, we'll round up the shows here in a minute, but yeah, the Staffing group is quite a raucous bunch as opposed to the TA crowd. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: So we're hoping that the audio will come through from the frat party that was the StaffingTec after hours. Can't believe I didn't start with this, shout out to Abby Cheesman, holy cow. Chad: Abby Cheesman, she looked so good in that Chad and Cheese Podcast shirt. Joel: She did, she did. Spelt correctly, no E after the S, I wish people would get that. Anyway, long time listener, first time meeting her. A pleasant girl, Skill Scout, T-shirt wearer, all around cool chick I think, for sure. Chad: Yeah, yeah. And Elena had better also get us some social love after she gets her T-shirt from Abby. Joel: Yeah, we won't go into the whole T-Shirt battle with Elena. Apparently- Chad: I got you, I got you. Joel: Apparently there are hoodies locked up in a vault somewhere that you have to go way above and beyond to get, so Elena's pretty stingy with the swag but hopefully I can eventually get a Skill Scout T-Shirt. Shout out to Brian and Brad, currently our favorite Canadians- Chad: Canucks. Joel: ... that aren't female. Yeah, a couple Canucks from Vancouver, we'll talk about them in the news items, but they joined us for some hot chicken, and if you haven't had Nashville hot chicken from Maggie B's ... Chad: Hattie B's. Joel: I can't recommend it any more. I was able to get to damn hot. I wasn't going into the what the cluck or shut the cluck up territory, but ... Chad: So Jen Tharp from AT&T said that's her jam. The what the cluck with extra pickles I think she said, she said that's her jam. Joel: If she can do that, I am not worthy. Chad: She's a hot chicken baller. Joel: 'Cause the damn hot was about as hot as I could go. Chad: She's a hot chicken baller. Joel: Alright, who else do we got? I got Eryn McHugh, joined us for dinner with Shaker on the first night. She is- Chad: Eryn with a Y. Joel: Yes, Eryn with a Y. A proud Irish heritage kind of girl who likes her Irish whiskey. Chad: That's right. Joel: Which is a rare thing. So I was glad to meet another Irish whiskey fan. She also gave us a shout out after the show to her friends and her brother pitches for the Houston Astros, which I thought was a nice little side note. Chad: Oh, I did not know that. That's awesome. Joel: Yeah, and let's do some rapid fire, the usual suspects. Johnny Campbell, Tim Sackett, Don, Katrina Kibbles, who else? Who else am I missing from the- Chad: Kibbles in ... Joel: ... usual suspects from SHRM and Staffing shows? Chad: I can't remember. I just woke up. Joel: You just woke up, yeah. Chad never sleeps actually, I'm pretty convinced of that. Alright, that's enough for the shout outs. It's commercial time. JobAdX: Finding the right fit is important. When you're deciding on shoes for a long day at the trade show, when you're picking the right podcast for your commute, and most importantly, when you're looking for the right candidate. With JobAdX, you can attract more relevant, engaged candidates to your jobs by harnessing the best in ad tech targeting. From predictive industry analysis and key word click data, to premium first page placement and reducing redundant applications, our candidate targeting technology ensures that you're reaching talent that's as interested in working with you as you are with them. JobAdX: Now with in-ad video and multimedia, you can share your employer brand story and company culture with job seekers so they can visualize themselves in your office, all hands meeting, or ax-throwing team-building adventure, all without navigating away from your job posting. Increased engagement makes for fewer steps between job seeker and new team member. Ready to ramp up your job advertising campaigns with the best in ad tech? Visit our new website at www.jobadx.com. That's J-O-B-A-D-X.com. JobAdX: Attract, engage, employ, with JobAdX. Oh, and happy anniversary to our favorite dangerous dudes. Thanks for all the traffic, shout outs, and good laughs. JobAdX, proudly team Chad and Cheese in 2019. Chad: It's show time. Joel: So let's get to a show wrap up, just to reiterate. We spent the whole week, four days, between SHRM Talent and StaffingTec, here in Nashville, Tennessee. Chad, what were some of your takeaways from the show? Chad: The Gaylord is a big fucking place, number one. Joel: It's a big fucking maze that made me feel like a rat in a trap. Chad: It's like a casino. It's gorgeous. Joel: It is. Chad: But it's like a casino in Vegas where you get lost, yeah, but there's no gambling. So yeah, there was that. So ... Joel: Pretty sure Brendan Fraser and the weasel are in there somewhere. Chad: Thank god they were lost. I thought it was really interesting 'cause this year it seemed like literally there were double the amount of people. I don't know if it's because the space where the conference was was tighter, but it seemed like from a vendor's standpoint, there were more vendors and it also seemed like there were just more attendees as well. So that was pretty awesome. Joel: It was very well attended. Very well attended. SHRM made a lot of money on that show. Chad: I would say yeah. Joel: It probably speaks to the health of the economy and what hiring's doing that there were so many people. And Nashville's a cool place. Chad: It is. Joel: It's not Vegas, it's a newer, unique place to come. So I'm sure a lot of people made the trip to Nashville. Chad: Yep. Smart Stage was also pretty cool. So we didn't have a formal presentation, we had one of the Smart Stage, actually two Smart Stage presentations, and got a shit-load of people, standing room only in some cases, had a good time and had a lot of good interaction. I think HR just loved to hear our bullshit. Joel: These were sort of TED Tal k-y, 18 minute really specific focus topics. The first day we spoke on our automation and AI, second day we talked about sort of Google one platform to rule them all, I think was the topic of that one. Chad: Whose podcast will come out. Joel: Yeah, and that was day two towards the end, and that was pretty well-attended, so I was pretty impressed with that. I thought it was going to be a pretty empty room, but there were a lot of people that came out for that. Chad: Yeah, I gotta say, that too for SHRM is usually around that time, you wouldn't be able to get a crowd like that that late. We were the second to the last presentation, but yeah, we got a shit ton of people. So that was awesome, so great job on SHRM for that. Joel: Yeah, a lot of feedback too I heard on the speakers were pretty top notch. We spent a lot of time with the vendors just 'cause that's our thing, but the people we talked to were really complimentary of some of the presentations. Johnny Campbell in particular, we did an interview with him, he talks about a presentation that really moved him. So the quality continues to be up. Although there were no super big names, they did a really good job of I guess getting some needles in the haystack, some secret gems there that people know about, so. Chad: I do have to mention the Ellis brothers though, Torin Ellis and James Ellis. Joel: Yeah, they look just alike, too. They look just alike. Yeah, the collection of orange skinny ties that James Ellis owns is very impressive. Chad: Yes. It's pretty amazing. Joel: And Torin's beard is getting impressive as well. Chad: Impressive. I think- Joel: Shout out to that. Chad: ... almost out of control. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. It's good stuff. Joel: I feel like maybe a competition is in order. Torin, 'til January first, 2020, let's see how crazy we can get these beards. Chad: Oh, that's horrible. Joel: Yeah, that's bad. Chad: Yeah, so SHRM, really had a great time at SHRM, and then we went across town, actually- Joel: Buttoned up. Polite. Chad: ... downtown. Joel: SHRM Talent. Chad: Yes. Joel: And then we landed in the frat party by StaffingTec. Chad: Yeah. So the feeling at SHRM versus StaffingTec is so different. And it's not just because it's a different conference. It's because of the attendees, right? Joel: Yep. Chad: And pretty much everybody that was at StaffingTec ... Joel: Suit and tie. Chad: Suit and tie, I mean, at least blazer or something like that. And they're in sales mode. Joel: Yep. Chad: Staffing companies, vendors. This was a very tight conference, a lot of content, and I mean, there was a shit ton of business getting done at that conference. Joel: Yep. The whole show was pretty much get buyers together with sellers. Chad: Well, yeah, and then- Joel: Even the presentations were the vendors. Chad: Yeah. And really being able to ... I think next year, Maurice, you can get some Chad and Cheese on the stage and we do some panels and I'm saying that as a more than one, because we'll dig deeper into those guys and have some fun with it. But great conference, man. Joel: The Chad and Cheese Live Show was made for StaffingTec. Chad: Oh, god, yeah. Joel: Like marriage made in heaven. I'd say we'd be a good addition to StaffingTec. Chad: Well, it was like there were 60 or so vendors that were there, and many of them, I'd never heard of before. Many of them. So that was a really good show to go to. Joel: Yeah, we're going to have some really good Firing Squads coming up in the next few months, because there were a lot of companies that we met, startups, interesting ideas that we'll get on the show. But yeah, that was really great. Two great shows, I'm going to give them two thumbs up for sure. Chad: Oh hell, yeah. Joel: Hopefully we'll be invited back. I don't think we wore our welcome out with either one, and we'll rock it again next year. Chad: Yeah, everyone knows SHRM, but if you don't know StaffingTec and you are in the staffing industry, dude, for me right now, that is like a given. And we'll definitely be back, if Maurice will have us. Joel: Maurice will have us. Alright, you ready to get to the news? Chad: Let's do it. Joel: Alright, we actually have no order I think at this point, so we'll just go down the list here. Chad: Yeah, it's kind of hard to have order at 80 miles an hour. Joel: It is. 82 actually. Damn, we're gonna get pulled over. Alright, just quick check, we're passing through Munfordville, Kentucky, as we go to the news. Chad: Munfordville. Joel: Alright, JazzHR. JazzHR adds candidates self-scheduling to their recruiting tools. New features allow candidates to self-schedule their own interviews. What a concept. Group multiple interviews into a single interview session to simplify setting up candidates with multiple interviews, sync your JazzHR with external candidates such as Gmail and Office 365. Schedule and manage multiple interview events at one time. You're a big fan of this. Chad: Yeah, how can you not be, man? Joel: Put the power in the hands of the interviewee. Chad: So recruiters don't have to spend their fucking time doing this stuff, just let the system do it. There's no reason why scheduling has to happen through a human being. Allow that perspective candidate or interviewee to go and pick a time that works for them and be done with it. So to have an applicant tracking system, and JazzHR, if you don't know out there, is an SMB system, so more of the small medium sized business, this just makes good sense and I think anything that's lightweight, and we've talked about this with Hire by Google, is easy, it's an easy win for this market because they really don't have shit for tools as it is. So anything that you provide to them, they're going to be happy. Chad: So I think this is a huge win for Jazz and Jazz users. Joel: I think this is a perfect time to bring up one of our favorite scheduling solutions, good time, dynamite. Chad: Dynamite. Joel: It's pretty clear that the whole ... I'm amazed at how much scheduling and rescheduling and postponing and yada yada that goes on with human beings doing this, and it's just ridiculous. So the more and more companies that are automating this, putting it in the hands of the interviewee to figure out and then just telling the hiring company that this is when the interview is, I think that's all very healthy, it's efficient, it's time-saving. Chad: It's too easy. Joel: Money-saving, and if you're ATS or solution or if you don't have any kind of automated scheduling solution, you need to probably look into that immediately. Chad: So what JazzHR needs to do next, because we actually talked about anti-ghosting or ghosting magic, right, anti-ghosting magic, is they need to get a lightweight texting company involved now because at this point, as somebody schedules, then they receive a text and then they receive other follow-up texts to keep them warm. And we have heard that you'll go from 20% show rate to 80% show rate just because you're staying engaged with them. And we have a great, I don't know if it's great because it's new, but we have a company, the Canadians, that just launched today. Joel: Yes. So going back to Brian and Brad from Canada- Chad: And hot chicken. Joel: And hot chicken. Yeah, so we met these guys, so their name is RecTxt, which is sort of a naming nightmare to describe that to sales on sales calls, but at least they're not GoRecTxt.io, like some people we know, Canvas. Chad: Yeah, 'cause that was so bad for them, right? Joel: So I went to go chat with them, see what's going on, and they were like, "Oh, yeah, we're officially launching tomorrow," which is of this recording is today. Chad: Yes. Joel: So these guys are selling themselves as I guess a working man's lightweight, blue collar- Chad: Texting. Joel: Texting solution. They also have a Chrome extension that they talked extensively about to where you don't have to leave Chrome to message folks, you can do it right there from the browser. So we'll get them on Firing Squad at some point here in the near future, but you've heard it here first: RecTxt.com. That's R-E-C-T-X-T.com. I don't know if they have the .ca for the Canadians yet or not, so if you're listening north of the border, let us know if it's a .ca in your neck of the woods. Chad: I just think it's funny from a sales standpoint where you're like, "Yeah, no, we're RecTxt.com. Oh, no, no, no, without the E. No, no, the E in Rec, but not the E in ... Oh, shit. R-E-C ..." You know? It's like every time they do it, they're gonna have to spell it out from Jump Street. Joel: Do you remember Recs and Effects and Das EFX? Yeah, that's what I kind of thing about with this. But anyway, when we talked to Aman Brar from Canvas, I don't know if we got this on tape or not, but he talks about you're going to see segmentation and specialization in texting, and he said basically if you want to flip a quick million, create a text recruiting business around healthcare or drivers or sales people or whatever it is, and you'll quickly find an exit. I don't know if that's exactly what these guys are in for, but I think we're going to start seeing a lot of texting solutions like this moving forward. Chad: Yeah, I think the Emissarys of the world are in the fucking driver's seat right now. Joel: Yeah, Emissary, a sponsor, full disclosure. Chad: Yeah. Back of the T-shirt, man. Joel: Yeah, back of the T-shirt. And you made it really big on the back of the T-shirt. Chad: Oh fuck yeah. Joel: It's almost equal weight to the front of the T-shirt. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: But anyway, Emissary's in the catbird seat, and I don't think they've taken money. I think they're self-funded at this point, so yeah, Ewen and company are in a good position right now if I do say so myself. Chad: They are. Joel: 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. We provide technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates like a human. Sovren. Software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner. Chad: It's show time. Joel: Alright, well let's go to Indeed in Australia. Chad: Again? Joel: Listeners of the show will know that Indeed in Australia is essentially a dumpster fire, according to their Glass Door reviews. A lot of unhappy employees, but looks like they're making nice with the newspaper community down there in Australia, and taken it to SEEK, clearly the number one provider there in Australia- Chad: Easily, yeah. Joel: ... for many, many years. So anyway, the news is ramping up multi-platform commercial arrangement with media and entertainment company called Nine, that's not nine newspapers, it's just the company Nine, through partnerships Indeed will use a significant chunk of its marketing budget to sponsor key print and online sections of the Nine metropolitan mastheads, again, that's the company Nine, not nine mastheads. They include the Sydney Morning Herald, which I can only assume is one of the biggest, the biggest probably, newspaper in Sydney. Chad: I have no clue. Joel: The Age, which I don't know, and the Brisbane Times, not the Brisbane Times as we've learned from our video, my job friends in Australia. The type will include in-article job listings, a job forecast, an Indeed-branded content series, and a weekly quote "Ask the expert" end quote column in the print career section of each title. This feels like a story from 2003. Chad: It does. Joel: I mean, I know Australia's a little bit behind the times, but that would be really behind the times. Chad: So I mean, this is really a move for Indeed to have a me too moment against SEEK, because SEEK has the competitor of Nine. Joel: Yeah, so SEEK is partnered with News Corp, which we know all too well in America with Fox and FS1 and everything, so yeah, pretty much the same thing with ... News Corp is probably the bigger entity, if I had to guess. Chad: I don't know. I don't know how big the papers are, but again, it does feel circa fucking 2001. Joel: Totally, totally. And all the career builder relationships with Gannett and McClatchy and they've said goodbye to those for a few years now, and sort of left it to the Recruitologys and the Pandos and the JobAdXs of the world. Chad: Well, I spoke to those guys and asked them why. There's got to be some kind of ROI for you guys there, and to be quite frank, it was no, these relationships have really become a pain in the ass, and they just aren't worth it. They were at one time, to an extent, but they definitely are not worth it today. Joel: They're very high maintenance because you have to train sales people at the newspaper to sell your products and they expect you to sell their products, and when that doesn't happen, there's like what's the point? Chad: Yeah, I'm wondering on the Indeed side, because they're having problems with their ... Joel: Morale? Chad: Glass Door and morale and all that shit. And if they're looking to pretty much outsource some of this sales ... Joel: Yeah, there you go. For those of you bitching on Glass Door, you won't have a job for much longer. It's gonna go to the newspaper folks at Nine. Chad: So real quick, we're in Kentucky, which is definitely still feel like conservative ... Joel: It's sort of the American Outback. Chad: Yes. And I can't understand, there are adult superstores all over the place. Joel: Yeah, we're passing a Lion's Den adult superstore. For those of you who know Kentucky and the Midwest. So what was your point? We're in Kentucky, there's porn ... Chad: Yeah, that was just, yeah, we're on the road. Joel: You were just feeling like we weren't having a porn moment and we- Chad: Commentary, yeah. Joel: ... needed one here real quick, and Indeed somehow inspired that. Alright, let's move onto the next story, 'cause we're clearly flipping into oblivion here. Let's talk about robots at Walmart. The headline, "Walmart plans to add thousands of robot helpers to U.S. stores." Chad: Helpers. Joel: Alright, this year Walmart plans an aggressive expansion of technology that will automate a range of low-level tasks within its fleet of U.S. stores, freeing up its associates to do more, ready for this? Chad: Yes. Joel: Specialized work. Chad: Huh. Joel: The plan is to roll out 1,500 new autonomous floor cleaners called, quote, "Auto-C", 300 additional self-scanners dubbed the Auto-S, they need a real marketing- Chad: Yeah, they do. Joel: ... person in naming these things. Okay, in addition, 1,200 more fast unloaders will automatically scan and sort items from trucks, and 900 more pickup towers are expected to retrieve customers' online orders. It means that shoppers might soon encounter robots gliding up and down the retailer's aisles, scanning for inventory, maneuvering around shelves, and scrubbing the store's expansive floor space. The story goes on to say that the people that are still left in the stores ... Chad: Humans. Joel: Will be able to have conversations and real human interactions with customers. Computer: Shall we play a game? Chad: So yeah, there's no question, jobs, unloading jobs, I'm sure that's not the most fun in the world anyway, but still, they're gonna be jobs that are lost. But one of the things that we talked about, and Fred Goff from Jobcase actually talked about this in his presentation at AI Summit at TA Tech was that robots and algorithms are not going to take jobs right out of the gate. They're going to take tasks, right? Now this is, in this case, there are jobs that are going to be lost, because I'm sure there is a person at night that ... Joel: well, somebody's got to do this stuff. Chad: Right, does the floors, right. Joel: Jobs will be lost, for sure. Chad: The autonomous scanning and that kind of stuff, those are tasks that other people do right now, I believe, they don't have any autonomous robots that are going through and actually stocking the shelves, but they are doing inventory, right? So yeah, it's kind of ... There are tasks that are gonna be gone, but there are definitely jobs that are gonna be gone too. Joel: My question is how long is it gonna take before someone goes into the recreational section of Walmart, grabs an aluminum baseball bat, and takes it to one of these robots? 'Cause you know that's gonna happen. Or grabs a spray can paint from the paint aisle and writes, "Fuck the robots" on one of these robots. They look a little bit like if you're a Doctor Who fan, the robots in there that say, "Delete" or whatever, I forget the name of them. But yeah, they look a little bit like that. They're begging for a little beat down with an aluminum bat. Chad: Yeah, the thing is, they're in store, so I think people will be a little reticent to take a, knowing that there's cameras- Joel: You've seen some YouTube videos of people doing crazy-ass shit in Walmart, right? Chad: Yeah, it just won't be as prevalent as I think you think it will be. I think the Amazon drones that are delivering packages, I think those things are just gonna have fucking bullseyes on them, dude. Joel: Yeah. That's gonna be a whole new sport. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Robot bashing, for sure. Alright, let's move into one of your favorite topics, minimum wage increases. Alright, this time we get news from out of Bank of America. They aim to raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour by 2020. Chad: Wow, that's fast. Joel: Working its way toward that goal, the bank will begin by increasing wages to $17 an hour this May. Chad: Wow. Joel: That's a nice little bump there. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Bank of America's minimum wage has come up by $4 since 2010. The 2017 tax overhaul has led other banks to raise their minimum wage as well, including JPMorgan Chase, which says it pays some workers between 15 and $18 an hour. I am not familiar with the 2017 tax overhaul and what it means to banks, but this is sort of a combination of government intervention and the banks making the choice themselves to raise minimum wage. So I think we can both agree, we might be in sync on this story. Chad: Here's the thing, though, they are from an optics standpoint, it just makes a hell of a lot of sense. And obviously, if they're going to $20, then they're probably paying their people pretty well right now, which I think is pretty awesome. But yeah, this is a great way, once again, to hopefully push regulation away, so instead of regulation $15 wage across the board, minimum wage across the board, this is, you could say, well, Amazon's doing it, Target's doing it, it's $20 here, so maybe they can push it away. So I think this might be a part of that. And saying hey, get off my lawn. Joel: Yeah, clearly this is indicative of market forces saying, "You know what? 15 isn't enough. We need to up it even more if we're going to retain top talent, recruit the best people." So to me, this is some great indication that the market is moving even beyond the government regulation to give people a higher wage and recruit the best talent. Chad: And it's hard to get talent right now. Joel: It is. I have a real life story. I am a Chase banker, and we have a Chase near our house and they have, in the Indianapolis area, they are basically automating four branches of Chase. So the one in our neighborhood is basically automating. Chad: Okay. Joel: So the only people in there are going to be loan officers, the big ticket items, and as you walk in ... Chad: Is it like McDonald's kiosks? Joel: But there's nobody taking orders. There's no tellers whatsoever. So you go in, there's two kiosks, you do your entire banking through that. For now, they have someone helping you do that. But the goal is you'll eventually get used to this thing. So while they are increasing wages, they are also taking people out of the equation, so there is some balance there that jobs will be lost, but the best of the best will be enjoying higher wages, apparently. Chad: Yeah, and we've already talked about this at McDonald's, right? Where they're doing that now, it's the whole liaison to ... We actually just stopped and got yourself some breakfast burritos and you did use one. Joel: We did, unashamedly. The breakfast burritos are quite tasty at McDonald's. But yeah, you walk in, this is another funny side story. So we're on vacation with the family last week, so it's my three kids, wife, and me, and we walk into a McDonald's that no one is in, as far as ordering. People are at the tables eating. But my wife defaults to the ordering screen, and I'm thinking, "There's no one in line. Let's just walk up and order." My wife rarely agrees with me, but in this case she did. So the kiosks might be great if there's a huge crowd, but if there's not many people, it's much easier to say, "I'll have the number two with a Coke." Joel: However, she loves the mobile app. The mobile app where you order on there, you pull in, it knows you're there, the food's out in five minutes. That's a pretty solid solution. Chad: It's a timing thing. It's routine. So what they do is they want you to go, it doesn't matter if people are in line or not, they want you to go there first just from a process standpoint, so they don't have to have cashiers and they just have the people who bring the order. That's it. Joel: Here's what I want to see. I want to see facial recognition on these things, and I want to walk into the store- Chad: No. It's already done, dude. Joel: No, they're not doing orders. Chad: No, no, they are. Okay, not in McDonald's, but I got a place called Fresh Take, in downtown Columbus. Joel: Is that a restaurant? Chad: Yeah. And the only way that you can order is through a kiosk. There is not a person. And you can save your order for later by your phone number or facial recognition. So you can walk up, facial recognition, I'll just have what I had last time, boom. Joel: That's what I want to see. I want to walk into McDonald's, "Hello, Mr. Cheesman ..." Chad: Already happening. Joel: Yeah. It's not happening enough lately. But eventually we'll get to a point where ... Chad: Hello, Mr. Cheesman. Joel: Eventually it'll be like, you pull up and your whatever will be like, "Welcome back to McDonald's, Mr. Cheesman." Chad: Would you like your same order? Joel: "Can we get you your regular?" Like yes, please, and as you're walking and they're cooking it. Anyway, wow. I kind of like that world and I'm a little bit creeped out by it. Joel: It's commercial time. 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. Canvas: 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: It's show time. Joel: Moving on to the next story, and I guess this is the last one, we're gonna end on this. And you love this idea, I will probably love it in a few years. Chad: Oh dear. Joel: Alright, dad creates app that locks kids' phones until they message their parents back. Discuss. Chad: Yes, yes, yes. So when you have teenagers, you are the least important person in their life, in the world, right? So getting a text back in some cases is almost fucking impossible, and I have to remind them, we pay for your phone. Joel: Give an example of an urgent situation where you were like, "I have to talk to you soon." Or, "I need a response soon." And they just ignore you? Chad: And again, you want to know where your kids are at, right? And they're teenagers, so they're out and about doing their thing. So when you're like, "When are you going to be home? Where are you at? Who are you with?" That kind of thing, those are the things that you want to know, and when you get the, "oh, sorry, I didn't see that," or, "My phone's slow with texts." Joel: My battery was low, I turned it off, it was on sleep mode 'cause we were in the movie. Chad: Always an excuse. So you give me this app, and they have no fucking choice but to respond to you so that they can use their phone and do Snapchat and Insta and take 40,000 goddamn selfies ... Joel: How mad does it make you when you've texted them and in between texting them and not getting a response, they've posted stuff on Instagram or wherever else? Does that just get under your skin? Chad: How could it not? Joel: Like really, you've got time to post a selfie but not reply to your dad? Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to punch you in the face. Joel: Have you threatened to take the phone away until they reply in a quick fashion? Chad: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Joel: And where does that go? Chad: So that's a double-edged sword now because Julie is like, well, look, Tristen has an iPhone, Ema has an Android, and she'll say, "Well, I can see where he's at" because she's got like Friend Finder, and she can see where he's at. So if he doesn't have his phone ... But I'm like, yeah, I totally get it, but he's still ... I feel like it's a disrespect if your dad or your mom reaches out to you, you get back with them, right? I'm not asking them to constantly message me, but when I message them, I expect ... Joel: It seems like you could have an extreme enough punishment that they would, no? Chad: No. Joel: Nothing works? Chad: Yeah, they're teenagers, dude. Joel: Just excuses. Chad: They're teenagers, dude. Joel: So we both love this app. Chad: Oh, yeah, and you're going to love it in a few years, I promise. Joel: Yeah, so we bought our 12 year old an iPhone, 12's kind of an okay age I guess, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: You should start learning some manners I guess, and it actually is good 'cause when were on vacation and we were at a museum, we said, "Hey, Cole, go do whatever the hell you want, we'll text you when we're ready," and he was pretty responsive and responsible. Chad: Yeah, imagine if he was in a museum in Chicago and he didn't respond. Joel: Well, if I'm there waiting for him with a two-year-old that's melting down, there's gonna be hell to pay. But yeah, any other way, yeah, it would be very frustrating. And yeah, you could just leave him and say, "Find yourself, get yourself back home." Chad: You have the Uber app. Joel: Yeah, I guess that's the flip side, right? Fine, we're out of here, get yourself home. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Anyway. So the app is called RespondASAP, which is an appropriate name for this app. It looks like it's for both iPhone and Android, so if you're out there and this is an issue for you, download the app, again, it's RespondASAP, lock your kids' phones if they don't reply to you via text. Chad: Totally done. Joel: And with that ... Chad: We out. Joel: 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 me, visit chadcheese.com. Oh yeah. You're welcome. #RespondASAP #BankofAmerica #Wages #Walmart #JazzHR #ATS #Scheduling #RecTxt #Texting #Indeed

This episode is all over the place. - ZipRecruiter's CEO takes a big AI swing at Google - Indeed giving Hire by Google a sloppy kiss - Facebook's Workplace gets chatty - TikTok finally landed on our radar - Glassdoor says "Oui" - Google plays the "Optics wage game" - BrewDog starts hot desking and - stinky Australians. And much more. Enjoy and give our sponsors a big, sloppy kiss, Indeed-style: Sovren, Canvas, JobAdX. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. 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. He's back. Joel: I'm back, bitches. Tanned, rested and ready after a few days in Chicago, because that's where you go to get tanned, rested and ready. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese show, HR's more dangerous and inappropriate podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, Zip sticks it to Google's engineers, TikTok is officially a thing we need to talk about. And farting on coworkers is not bullying down under. Grab a Fosters and a bowl of chili, we'll be right back after this word from Sovren. 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 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. Ed: This is Ed from Philly, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: God damn straight, Ed. Last week, a lactose-free Chad and Cheese podcast, little Jim- Joel: No cheese. Chad: Little Jim Stroud filling in. Joel: Stinky cheese free. Chad: Stinky cheese free, yeah. We'll talk about the stinky cheese a little bit later in the episode. Joel: Chad's already strategizing on ways to replace me after last week, I'm sure. Chad: You are not replaceable my friend. Joel: Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that. Wish I could say the same. Yeah, went to Chicago, spring break, kids, did a little bit of the Chicago Museum, all the good things they have there. Taking a two year old to two museums in one day, not a good idea. Chad: No. I don't know who's plan that was, but yeah that was, there's a fatal flaw there and that was a two year old. Joel: Well you know, we like to stretch our activities as much as possible. I will say, and you'll appreciate this, the Industry and Science Museum, I think it's called? Chad: Yes. Joel: Had a World War II stuka, German fighter bomber, that's one of only two in the world that's still intact, which was really cool. They also have an entire U-Boat, German U-Boat from World War II that's at the museum. Chad: Yes. Joel: Quick shout out for them, if you're into that stuff, which I know I am, I think Chad is as well, that was a well worth trip to that museum. Chad: Yes. Joel: Agreed. And if you're interested in listening to cool shit you're at the right place. Chad: Boom. Joel: Because we talk cool shit. You want to get the shout outs? Chad: Yeah, so real quick, you missed it last week, I got another box of craft beer, so I want to re-shout out to Jim and Thomas over at Talent Nexxus- Feffer: Such an asshole. Chad: While rubbing your nose in it. So I just thought I'd go ahead and get that out there really quick. Crowd: Boo. Joel: Nice. Send some booze to me people, come on. My life's just as tough as Chads. Chad: Nobody likes you, come on. Joel: Ouch, damn! Feffer: Such an asshole. Chad: And that being said, shout out to Joel's 15-year-old boy band self, after a night at Justin fucking Timberlake. Dude, you just lost your 1980s rock-n-roll card dude. Hand that shit over. Joel: Yeah, the hair metal club kicked me out this week. So, somehow your wife went to the Justin Timberlake concert. Chad: Yes. Joel: And you were not roped into this. Chad: No. Joel: My wife, same thing, however I attended, so I'm clearly the better husband of this duo. Chad: That's where we can go with it sure. Joel: I've never been to a show like this. The shows I got to, it's like one stage, the band comes out, they play and then they're done. This was like a whole, they used the entire court, if you will of the basketball arena. It's a show. It's outfit changes, it's dancers and all. Women were losing their minds over this show and I know JT's popular. The one thing I did notice is, I got a lot of dirty looks from women. I felt like they were mad at me for taking seats that women should have been, you know, in. Chad: Yes. Joel: Like, why are you here? You're taking valuable real estate from our sisters who could be here cheering on Justin Timberlake. So for the women who were upset with me for attending the show, I apologize, however wife... Chad: My wife comes first and so do her friends, so wanted to ensure they had the opportunity to actually get a ticket to go, which is why I kept my ass at home and drank bourbon and watched t.v. Joel: Nice save. Nice save. Nice save. The dude puts on a good show, no matter what you think about him or NSYNC, or whatever, like he can dance and sing and there's something to be said for that. Chad: Yeah, you can't talk your way out of this one, Cheesman. Shout out to Steven Rothberg, for hooking us up with T-shirts, that say on them, "One beer please" in Portuguese, because we're going to Portugal for TAtech in Lisbon in May and Steven Rothberg, the loving listener that he is, he wanted to make sure we were hooked up and that could get beer easily. So, thank you so much Steven. Joel: Steven is all about the love. Chad: He's awesome. Joel: We appreciate that. I have nothing to say about that. People send us the weirdest shit sometimes. Chad: I love it. Joel: Yeah. I love it. Chad: It's a good shirt. Joel: Thanks Steven, appreciate it. In more business angles here, XOR... Chad: XOR. Joel: Firing squad alumni, who's just taring it up in the chat bot space, recently got 2.25 million in seed funding so I think everyone now has officially got money that's in the chat bot space. Interesting here is SignalFire was the backing... Chad: Yes. Joel: Venture capital firm who was the force, I guess, behind TextRecruit... Chad: Yes. Joel: So, these guys obviously see some benefit there. We'll probably see a similar cash out that they enjoyed when ICIMS bought TextRecruit, but good for XOR and the team there. We'll see them soon, right? They're going to be in Nashville, I think. I think she's at the StaffingTec. Chad: Yeah, I believe so. The one thing that I think is interesting about this is they're actually moving from Austin to San Francisco. And we're seeing a lot of reports of people moving the fuck out of California, just from an expense standpoint, not being able to find housing, all that happy horse shit that you need to actually do business. And they're moving to the Austins or even Minneapolis or what have you or Indianapolis. This was kind of a reverse engineered kind of like we're getting out of Austin and going to San Francisco, so I thought that was kind of interesting. Joel: Yeah, my guess is SignalFire is in San Francisco... Chad: Yeah, well, money. Joel: And when you give people money, you kind of want them close. Chad: Shout out to Matt O'Donnell. Apparently, he had a conversation with our friends over at Emissary, and he started the conversation this way (and this is how you should always start your conversations): "Hey, I heard you on the Chad and Chees podcast." That's how you do it, man. Joel: I can't disagree. Chad: That's how you do it. Joel: Yeah, and I think we've heard more than a few stories from our sponsors about people who call in and say 'I heard about you guys on the Chad and Cheese show.' I'm not sure what that says about you as a prospect, but your money's spends just as well as everyone else's. Chad: That's exactly right. Joel: Shout out to HireClix. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: You guys out there sent a box of shwag. Chad: Very nice, very nice. Want to also send out a shout out to Tarquin over at Google. He actually hooked us up with Next '19 tickets but we're not going to able to use them because we're going to be at SHRM Talent and Staffing Tech. So, big shout out, thanks Tarquin. Hopefully next year, we can get a coordination so that we're not running over these types of conferences. Joel: Yeah, I think that was on the campus, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Google's campus. Chad: Yeah, that's a big fucking conference that they have. Joel: If we can make it next year, that would be a hell of a deal to go see Google. Chad: Yep, yep. Joel: Shout out to Mike Timpken, industry vets would know Mike... Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Shaker Recruitment Marketing, also our travel sponsor, thank you for that guys. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Mike has been in the industry for 31 fricking years. Chad: Holy shit. Joel: Yeah, the dude is forgotten more than most of us know, even us old timers. Mike's always personable and friendly and has something smart to say. He's sort of like the Gerry Crispin of the agency world. So, Mike, shout out to you. Here's to 31 more years in the industry. Chad: I hope they have an elevator. Whenever I've been to Shaker, you always take the escalator, walk up the stairs or something like that. I hope they have an elevator so that Mike's old ass can get to work and not be out of breath. Joel: Well, knowing the sense of humor of the guys and gals at Shaker, I'm sure there were a lot of tombstones and black decorations and balloons to celebrate 31 years. Chad: A big shout out to April Fool's Day! So, I've never actually been a participant in an April Fool's joke that was so well design and/or funded. Pirate: Yee be poo without Talroo. Chad: This is fucking awesome, right? Joel: Yeah, totally, I think most of our listeners probably know what they did, they did a new segment for pirates and we had a whole segments on issues with that and challenges and highlighting it... Chad: Yeah. Joel: And our podcasts as well as for the videos that they've done at Talroo. I don't know why more companies don't do this that have the resources to do it. We're in a very serious, sort of stodgy industry, and I think a good breath of fresh air in comedy and poking fun at ourselves is really healthy. So, I'd like to see more of this going forward, but big ups to Talroo. Not just because we were a part of it but because they sort of had the balls to be creative and get outside the box and do something funny. Chad: They even had (and if you haven't listened to the podcast, you've got to check it out) a dialect coach that they brought in that spoke pirate. Pirate: Yee be poo without Talroo. Chad: And, that's all I've got for shout out. Joel: Yeah, lets talk about events. Nashville next week. Loved the Nashville chicken, among other things there, country music and... So we'll be at SHRM Talent and StaffingTec: two big shows, quite frankly. We're getting some great content, as usual, so be on the lookout for that. Chad: Yes, and chase us down, because we're going to be giving away free Chad and Cheese limited edition T-shirts thanks to Emissary.ai. Joel: Now, do people have to do anything to get these shirts or just say 'love the show,' or... Chad: Find us, ask for a T-shirt and I don't know, maybe buy us a beer. Shit, that would be great, too. But, once again, thanks to Emissary, they're the guys who made this happen. If you don't know those guys, check them out, Emissary.ai because texting makes recruiting easier. I don't know why anybody has to say that, you should know that by now. Joel: Yes, call Emissary if you're still emailing and in-mailing candidates. Chad: All the pods that we bring out of SHRM Talent, those are powered by Jobcase. Joel: Jobcase coming to bat for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: They're getting ready to drop something on this industry. Joel: Yep, we're big fans, big fans to say the least. Tatech in Chicago event after that... Chad: Got to be there. Joel: We're doing recruitment marketing, which is a topic near and dear to our hearts and the panel is going to be great. Joe Shaker, there's another Cheesman on the panel, not related... Chad: Another Cheesman. Joel: But might as well be. Abby Cheesman from Skill Scout will be there. We got someone from, not FanDuel, but... Chad: DraftKings. Joel: DraftKings, right. So, that will be interesting. And who am I missing? There some... Chad: Tom. Joel: Tom! Tom will be there from Smashfly, so that's a start-studded panel. Chad: Star-studded panel. And then, after that, we're actually going to be down in Austin once again for an unplugged event. Chad and Cheese... We're doing unplugged events now, guys. At Talroo, which is invitation only. So, sorry if you don't have an invitation, you can't go. And can't wait to do an unplugged event. Joel: Lets get to the show. Ed: This is Ed from Philly, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: ZipRecruiter, man, we don't hear... Joel: Ian Siegel go talking shit on Fox News... Chad: We don't hear anything from Ian, but, so lets go ahead and prep this first. Democratic presidential candidate, Andrew Yang, actually said that new technologies, robots, software, AI, have already destroyed more than four million jobs in the US and in the next five to ten years, it will eliminate millions more. So, this is where Ian steps in, and what does he say? Joel: By the way, Yang, the presidential candidate, I want to say Jerry Yang, but that's the Yahoo founder. He's in for universal basic income. This guy's pretty interesting, it'd be really cool to get him on the show and he's fringe enough that he might actually do it, but probably not. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So, anyway, Fox News brought on how algorithms and how we're recruiting and hiring and how robots are helping the hiring process and Ian's Zip's CEO and, I believe founder (I don't know if he's the founder or co-founder) he's on the show and basically and says 'We're more than just key word search we're resume, we're job,' he goes through this whole thing... Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: And then he says 'We're the smartest, we're the best algorithm out there. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Which is pretty ballsy. There's this company called Google that has a lot of smart people working on the algorithms, so to say ZipRecruiter has the best algorithm is pretty, pretty ballsy. Chad: Quote: "It's the smartest algorithm that's ever been built.' Joel: Thank you, that was much better than my paraphrasing. Chad: That, to me, when I saw the quote, I'm like 'He didn't say that.' And then, no, he fucking said that. So, Zip is taking swings, which I think is awesome, even if he did just mean our segments, being the recruiting segment. Google is in the recruiting segment and they're doing candidate matching within hire, right? So, this is very interesting. Joel: Yeah, even if he was just meaning the employment space... Chad: Yeah. Joel: Google is now in our space. Chad: Yes. Joel: Microsoft, LinkedIn is in our space. Facebook, all these companies in our space and to say that yours is the best algorithm out there, that's pretty ballsy, dude. Chad: That is. Joel: And it sounds nothing like a company that wants to go public soon. Feffer: Such an asshole. Chad: Well, that being said, you're talking about Facebook. Their workplace gets chat bots from Servicenow. This is a story we saw on TechCrunch. And this is all a part of Facebook's strategy to integrate more enterprise applications into workplace. In May at their FA conference, Facebook announced 52 integrations with companies like Atlassian, SurveyMonkey, HubSpot, Marketo... Joel: Yep. Chad: Yeah, pretty big names. And from my standpoint, this seems like really some swings at Slack, and saying 'Look, yes, we are coming into this space, we're doing it a different way and we're coming after Slacks. So we're not going to buy you, we're just going to partner and we're going to destroy you.' Joel: And you love Teams by Microsoft, so we're doing interesting things as well. You got Facebook doing this. These guys have the money and the resources to build these kinds of partnerships and integrations. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Now, Slack, as we know, filed with the New York Stock Exchange, I believe, recently, or they announced they they'll be going on NYSE. Chad: Direct, right? Joel: Yeah, direct, similar to Spotify. I want to say June and July will be the months... One of those months is when they'll actually go IPO, which I'm really excited to see their reporting, their financials, and then actually going public, see what happens. Chad: Right. Joel: I have noticed, actually got an email basically promoting Slack for HR teams. So they are specifying HR as a market that they want to get into. And also, on the Facebook side, when you look at the screen shots of the integrations, you see actual human resources as a component of the integrations that are happening at work with Facebook or Facebook workplace. Chad: Right, and it's interesting because Facebook then, just today was reported, they have a 'Whoops, I did it again, Brittany Spears moment.' TechCrunch reported that security researchers found 540 million Facebook user records sitting on a public-stored server. So, as we talk about all these great integrations and what not, the question is: can you trust Facebook? If you're a company who can trust Facebook, who has had all of these issues with security and data breaches and really just privacy. Is this where you want to go with your company information? Joel: Yeah, I think Slack being a public company, depending on the breadth and size and success of what they're doing, a lot of companies will choose Slack over Facebook for privacy reasons. Chad: Or Teams. Joel: Or Teams, yeah, for sure. Microsoft has a pretty good track record that as well. I think staying away from the open source guys will probably be something the enterprise level companies will do. I don't think they're going to jump on board with some of the smaller guys that we've talked about on the show. But, yeah, Facebook has a real privacy issue and that's not going away. If anything, it's getting worse. Chad: So kind of parlaying the first Facebook workplace integration into Hire by Google's integrations. Joel: Google continues to surprise us with the incremental enhancements, partnerships, technologies that they're unveiling. And a few weeks ago, we talked about the API enhancements with Steven Rothberg and what they're doing on the job search for plugging it into other sites. Chad: Right. Joel: They continue to innovate with Hire by Google, their ATS product. And I know a lot of this stuff, like integrations with job boards, is pretty archaic for some people. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's been going on for a long time. For Google to do it, it's just another step into the world in which we live and being a major player and shows that they're listening to their clients who are saying 'Hey, you guys need to do this because everyone else does it.' What stood out to me, as well, with the integrations is Glassdoor and Indeed are both integrations. So, Indeed, who doesn't play with Google, at least here in the states, we've seen instances where over sees, like in France, you can find Indeed jobs on Google for Jobs. They're fine with getting jobs from Google, not so much putting their own jobs on Google for Jobs. Chad: Yes, so we saw testing of Indeed actually providing jobs in Google for Jobs in France, and you know how hard it is (very spotty) to get some of those tests. So, if you are in France, or anywhere around there and you can get more screenshots, that would be awesome. Yeah, I think these Google integrations just do make sense but they're standard fare, when you get into applicant tracking systems, or even CRMs. But they are once again on the SMB kind of moving up. Chad: So anything they do, there's going to be fan fare about, because from an SMB standpoint they don't expect much because they've been using Google fucking spreadsheets or what have you. Now, they actually get to use and applicant tracking system and it's more process-focused and getting just the standard operating procedure of what we're used to in this industry down to the little guy. But, this is, I see, starting to build a solid foundation to move toward enterprise. I don't think it's any time soon but I think it's definitely making those steps. Joel: I think when we talked to Steven Rothberg about his relationship with Google, I was really impressed with his comments around how attentive Google is to requests and questions and just feedback from him, which I assume is happening throughout the industry as a whole. The fact that Tarquin is sending us fairly long messages about advice on how to get more out of geo targeting on the new search. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You know, Google didn't used to do that. Google used to just put shit out in the world and you either embraced it or you didn't. This continues to show a real respect for the industry, what people want, what feedback they're getting and they're acting accordingly. To me, its a big hat tip to Google. Chad: It was cool technology before, turning into, 'How do we make this more of a human type of an organization.' Joel: Yeah, what else is good stuff is sponsored JobAdX. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Let's hear a quick word from them and then we'll talk about just shooting me TikTok. JobAdX: This is the sound of job search. This is the sound of job search defeat. Job search can be frustrating. Job seekers run into the same irrelevant ads. Page after page before they find a match. When job seekers aren't engaged, conversions are low, budgets are wasted, jobs go unfilled, no one wins. The job search doesn't have to be defeating. JobAdX's smart search exchange reference 400 data points to select the most targeted jobs and delivers what job-seekers really want to premium ad units across our network. Score! That's the sound of JobAdx's relevant results attracting a qualified candidate and filling your job faster. Find out how to improve your job advertising campaigns and increase candidate attraction and engagement by emailing us at: Join us at J-O-B-A-D-X dot com. JobAdX. Together, we can save job search. Joel: I've been seeing a ton of ads, on Facebook for sure, for TikTok. Chad: Yes. Joel: For the longest time. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And they're the most appealing, interesting, eye-catching ads of young people dressed as vampires and Willy Wonka characters singing or lip-syncing to stuff and being creative. And I have fought tooth and nail to not download this fucking app, but I read a story in marketing rags about TikTok is something you have to start paying attention to and damn it, they're right. 500 million active users, so its bigger than North America. They're starting to beta test advertising options. Big brands are getting behind campaigns on this thing. I still haven't downloaded it yet because I'm an old fucker. However, you caved and you downloaded this thing so give me your two cents on the experience and sell me on how I should be the next person to download this app. Chad: You shouldn't ever, but still, because you are an old fucker. Reading the article, I've heard about Musical.ly and TiKTok and then looking at Snapchat's growth, which is obviously slowing down and Instagram, they're actually seeing some growth. TikTok has been making a huge impact, in a very short amount of time, with Gen Z. And we know that LinkedIn has problems with Gen Z. It was like, I've got to really broaden up a little bit and understand more about this new app, right? And I told you, I was on the couch last night and I was on TikTok for 30 minutes because it was funny as hell. Chad: The amount of time that some of these people actually put into these videos, the transitions, just everything that they've done, even their costumes and their... It's like 'Jesus, man, you guys put a lot of fucking time into this.' And then there are ones that are just people with their phone and just talking. Not many of them, but just boring. It was really pretty interesting, but there's no question, it was mainly Gen Z-ers. It said: 60% of total users under 30 years old and they spend an average of 52 minutes per day scrolling through videos. It's pretty addictive. Joel: As I understand it, most people will remember Vine. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Which were six second videos, super short-form videos, which I guess worked at the time where 3G was still the main thing. And then, posted videos and they could push the screen to record and then take it off to stop so you get some really creative videos of people doing stuff. So, they're gone. Chad: Right. Joel: Vine is gone. Musical.ly, which I never used was lip-syncing to music videos... Chad: Yeah. A lot of that. Joel: I sound really old talking about this because I never use it, never really cared. But this is sort of the bastard child of those two technologies to create short-form, musically-focused videos for the most part. Like you said, there are people lip-syncing, dancing, all that shit. Chad: Yeah, we call this evolution, Joel, when things die off and other things crop up. Joel: Well it sounds like we're just repackaging Vine with some music. But anyway, I knew eventually, we'd have to talk about TikTok on this show. We've done it, we'll continue to watch it for marketing opportunities. If you're recruiting through this thing, let us know your experience. But 500 million active users, this isn't going away, this is going to be something along with Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook and Twitter, soon to be Pinterest for Gods sake, who knows what else that you have to worry about to recruit and market yourself on... Chad: On this platform, you better not be talking about your jobs. You better be incredibly creative to be able to wrap your brand around something. I don't know what the fuck it might be. Maybe, your purpose or something. But anyway, if you're going to use this and you're not authentic and you just try to use it like everything else that you do, lazily, like your fucking job descriptions, then your brand is going to take a negative hit with this group. So, again, advice: you get in there, make sure you do this shit right, you focus on your brand, you're not trying to sell shit. Joel: Markers are going to fuck it up. They always do... Chad: Like robocalls. Joel: Markers are going to come on this platform, there's going to be a do-it-yourself option and you're going to get new window treatment ads on this thing and young people are going to be like 'Fuck it, I'm out of here,' and they're on to the next thing. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So getting back to the real world... Chad: Yes. Joel: Google (this is interesting and you'll love this from a minimum wage perspective) Google's now putting some new requirements on staffing agencies that provide contract workers for them. Google's requiring companies that provide them with temp workers to offer full benefits, including health care and a minimum wage of $15 per hour. Almost half of Google's work force consists of vendors working for third parties. Some of whom have been protesting their work conditions in recent months. Now, they'll receive the minimum wage by the end of next year and a comprehensive health care by 2022, as well as 12 weeks of paid parental leave and $5,000 of tuition reimbursement. So, the market doing well, Google coming down on these folks to make things right, and not the government. Chad: Its optics, first off. Joel: Oh, it's definitely optics. Chad: There were huge protests, so let's not think this is the altruism of Google or anything like that. There was pressure put on by the people, and Google, much like Facebook, is looking to try to make these moves before regulation is put in place so that they have to do this. They see it coming. It's smart for them to make the move now, there's no question, but it's not like there wasn't any pressure out of the gate and they just woke up one morning, went 'Yeah, you know what? We should probably make sure that everybody's getting paid a fair wage, they're actually getting health benefits so they're not getting sick and they can actually get into work. And just the basic kind of things of life.' Good for you, Google, that's awesome, you saw this shit coming anyway. Joel: Yeah, this has been coming from the likes of Walmart, Target, this trend of paying people $15 per hour, health benefits, paying for education... This is almost becoming table steaks for other companies that if they don't do it, its like 'What the hell's wrong with you?' Which, I guess is a good thing. If we're standardizing $15 an hour and health care it's probably a good thing. Chad: It's a damned good thing. And we haven't raised the minimum wage for ten years. The only thing that I see as a draw back is you'll have politicians say 'Look, the market's doing it themselves." Yeah, totally get that, but guess what, guys? When the cycle starts to shift and there's no regulation in place that keeps these wages here... okay? Oh yeah, look, everybody's paying $15 for right fucking now they are because there is no regulation in place ensuring that those table steaks continue to be table steaks and they're not ripped off the table. So yeah, I get it, it's optics but this shit has to be put in concrete, has to be put in stone. This is not in stone. Joel: I think it's great because it's easy to say 'Well that's the staffing agency, that's not us.' But to put them under the gun and say 'You need to do this if you want to do business with us,' I think is a great thing for Google and probably for any company as a... Chad: Like the Federal Government does with Federal contractors. If you want to get money from the US government, if you want to get hundreds of millions of dollars, or maybe billions in some cases, you have to do this. And then there's actually an enforcement group, the OCCP, that ensures that if you're going to take our money (the tax payers money) you're going to conform to the standards. Joel: I have no problem with that and I have no problem negotiating from that standpoint as well. Anyway, lets get a word from Canvas. Canvas: Canvas is the worlds first 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 work flow. Canvas leverages the latest in machine learning technology and how 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 of 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. Get ready to text at the speed of talent. Chad: At the speed of talent. Joel: We need to just produce outtakes of angry old men talking about the government. Chad: I've thought about doing that every now and again. Joel: Yeah, the worm hole edition of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Thank God for editing. Chad: Chad Cheese fight, go! Ting, ting ting! Joel: They'd be really fun with some alcohol. Chad: Oh, Jesus. Joel: Anyway. Let's start with Glassdoor, I put these out of place. Chad: Okay, good. Joel: So, Glassdoor opened in France, this is a little tidbit of news. So this puts them in San Francisco, puts them in Dublin, and London. Chad: Yes. Joel: So, growth continues at Glassdoor. 800 employees was last count, they've got to be over a thousand by now. Chad: They've got a shit ton of employees for what they do. Joel: Indeed has like 5,000, I assume they're on their way. So, anyway, oui, oui for Glassdoor, nice. We're going to be in Paris, maybe we'll go raid their offices. Chad: We might. My question is: does Indeed have an office in France? I would say yes. Joel: I don't know. Chad: They're there so I would say yes. Joel: Yeah. Chad: How's that unifying brand with Indeed prediction going for you there, Cheesman? Joel: I'd say it's going pretty poorly at this point. However it is early... Feffer: Such an asshole. Joel: And I haven't done any research to see if reviews are crossing over, any of the content is crossing over... Chad: Yeah. Joel: So that may be happening, may not. I'd say at this point, they're going to remain two brands as opposed to one and I was wrong on that prediction. It won't be the first or last time I'm wrong on a prediction. Chad: Two brands for revenue, man. Joel: However, Amazon is still going to swoop in and buy Slack. I'm still holding tight on that. Chad: And I hope they do. I just don't see... Joel: And, it better happen soon because IPO is coming pretty soon. Chad: Yeah, I don't see it happening because Bezos is cheap and he'd rather build his own. Joel: Have you seen the video of the blimp with the drones coming out of it? Chad: Yeah. You sent that to me, that's pretty fucking cool. The Amazon blimp and it has drones just kind of flying out of it. Joel: It's cool but slightly scary at the same time. Imagine your neighborhood with an Amazon blimp flying over it and then drones flying out of this blimp, delivering packages to homes. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's sort of freaky. Chad: Yeah, agreed. Joel: But kind of cool, yeah I agree. They're definitely leap frogging over the whole USPS postal system, FedEx. They're just going to have a drone go out and deliver stuff. Pretty interesting. Chad: It reminded me of a German zeppelin. Joel: It was, now the thing will be how many people try to shoot down the zeppelin because we all hate progress and robots and everything else. Chad: Not cool. Joel: They're going to be people shoot these drones out of the sky, that's just going to happen. Chad: Oh, that's going to happen, dude. That is going to happen. Like we were talking about the drones that deliver on the road via the sidewalk or something like that. There'll be people coming out with aluminum bats and shit like that. Joel: Heehaw! Chad: I'm going to see you, dude. Joel: Here comes the blimp. Chad: Yeah. Welcome to America. Joel: Get the paint ball gun out. Here we go. All right, so, some lighter news, BrewDog, who we have a slight connection to, right? Our buddy in Scotland from Candidate.ID, isn't... His friend does it or he's an investor or how does that work? Chad: I think he probably has a portion of a share or something like that. Joel: BrewDog, making beer in Scotland, announced the addition of DeskDog in these breweries, starting in the UK. To me, this is a great idea, look, we drink coffee at Starbucks and work and we have shared work areas, why not a bar/brewery. So they have these big long tables with power outlets and WIFI and they serve coffee, you couldn't just drink beer all day. I mean you could, but you wouldn't be very productive. So they have coffee and then you get a free coupon for beer at the end of the day, which I think is genius. Chad: Yep. Little punk IPA action. It's interesting to see a craft beer organization, first and foremost, announce a hotel. I think they're doing a hotel in Columbus, Ohio which is where their second brewery was, the first one here in the US. But this one, the actual hot desk kind of idea. It's like a WeWork scenario... Joel: Totally. Chad: But you go online and it's like renting a desk for seven pounds... Joel: Seven pounds a day, you get a work space. You get a free beer with that... Chad: And free coffee. Joel: Beer included with that, which is nice, coffee, WIFI. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah, I think its hell of a deal. Chad: I want one in my town now. Joel: Yeah, I agree. Sun King, if you're listening here in Indianapolis, or Tax Man or whoever's local, get your ass on this desk craze, so I can get out of the house and work from somewhere else occasionally. Chad: And there's no patent on this shit, right? It's a desk with outlets and coffee and beer, it's not like you're going to infringe on somebody's fricking patent, so just go get it done. Joel: It's a table with some plug-ins. It's do-able. Chad: Next question. Joel: I'm telling you. And we'll talk about it on the stupid show. Last, but not least, and we're going out on a high note for sure this week. Case out of Australia: some guy that worked in pretty close quarters with another guy was pretty upset about his flatulence. And it sounds like the dude was kind of a jerk... Would open up his cheeks and fart on the guy or pull my finger kind of stuff. Really ridiculous stuff. Joel: So the guy felt bullied and it sounded like he would kind of play along because he called him Mister Stinky. And then he would shoot a water gun at him or something, so it sounds to me like they had a little fun thing going but I guess the guy wasn't that happy about it because he sued for bullying. However, it sounds like in Australia, you can fart on people and it will not be considered bullying because the case was thrown out, which really stinks for the guy who filed the lawsuit, if you know what I mean. Chad: Stinks, yeah great. Having a small office and then having somebody come in, open the door, drop a bomb on you and then leave, that is obviously not cool but I don't know if you'd call that bullying. If you were taken to the men's room and you were given a swirly, yeah, I could definitely see that. But that's just bad pranks and stinky fun. Joel: Just locker room humor, right? Chad: No. Joel: Are we out? Chad: We out. Ed: This is Ed from Philly, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. 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's 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. Pirate: Yee be poo without Talroo. #ZipRecruiter #TikTok #Indeed #HirebyGoogle #Google #BrewDog #AI #Facebook #Workplacecom

For those who think gig economy platforms like Upwork and Fiverr are a race to the bottom for freelance wages, then this podcast is for you. The boys interview Justin Gignac, co-founder at Working Not Working, a site dedicated to making sure freelance designers get paid. This exclusive comes at you compliments of Uncommon. 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. Chad: Say hello to the easiest way to find interested and qualified candidates. Joel: Dude, you need to tone it down, I was just napping. You mean Uncommon's automated sourcing that turns passive candidates into interested and qualified applications? Chad: Yep. Uncommon automation helps recruiters cut their sourcing time by 75 percent. Joel: Wow, how much coffee did you have today? Chad: A lot. Joel: Anyway, dude, 75 percent that sounds like black magic or something. Chad: Close, it's called automation. It's simple actually. You just feed or post your jobs into Uncommon, the platform identifies your job requirements and in seconds Uncommon uses those requirements to search over one hundred and fifty million candidate profiles. And then it pulls back only the qualified candidates. Joel: And don't forget, you can connect your email and Uncommon will provide automated outreach with your customized messages to activate those passive candidates. Those pesky passive candidates! Chad: Even better, I'm gonna one up you. Uncommon shows exactly how the candidate meets all the job requirements with a side-by-side comparison view against the job requirements. Joel: Which means you won't be asking yourself "What in the hell is this candidate doing here?". Chad: No, but you will be asking yourself "Where has Uncommon been all my life?". Joel: Seriously? Uncommon is the easiest way to find qualified candidates, active or passive. Chad: Visit uncommon.co and use discount code chadcheese for twenty percent off. Joel: 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 recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, flash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Hey guys, what's up? We are recording live from Branff, Alberta Canada- Chad: It's Banff, dumb ass. Joel: The Gathering #insidetheglass. Chad: Inside the glass. Joel: Yes, this is Joel Cheesman- Chad: Chad Sowash. Joel: I'm accompanied by Chad Sowash. Chad: Hello. Joel: Special guest today, and all I really have to say is the creator of Elf Yourself. I think that's pretty much the beginning and end of the podcast. Chad: Yeah, that's...and we're done. Justin: I'm sorry. Joel: Let's get into the boring stuff. Justin Gignac, G-Unit as his friends call him, co-founder of Working Not Working, a Brooklynite, which I refuse to believe because you're way too nice to be a Brooklynite New Yorker. Chad: He's a sweetheart, he really is. Joel: He's a total- Justin: He's very nice. Joel: Yeah, a total sweetheart. Justin: [crosstalk 00:02:56] You turn the mic on [crosstalk 00:02:57] Joel: Fantastic beard, unfortunately for our listeners- Chad: He's got a great hair cut too. Joel: Don't know- Yeah- Chad: He has a great hair cut. Joel: Yeah, it's like if Chad and I had a baby, to put my beard on his head and that's kind of Justin's look. Justin: Thanks guys. Joel: Justin, welcome to the show. Give us sort of the 140 character or less introduction about you. Justin: My background is art director and creative director in advertising, and about seven years ago my co-founder Adam and I started Working Not Working, it's a global community of the best creatives in the universe. Joel: That's awesome. Chad: Wow! Working Not Working. So, how did you come up with that name? Justin: Back in the day when we'd freelance in New York the recruiters would be pretty old school and they'd be like "Hey Justin, you working or you not working?", and so we were like well shit that's pretty appropriate let's just go with that. Joel: And you have an interesting story of how you let recruiters know you're open for work or not, tell our listeners about that. Justin: So I had been freelancing around New York for about three or four years, and finding a freelance gig was a pain in the ass. You'd call and email every single person you knew in the industry, never have a gig for you, wait two weeks, finally get booked and then five more people would call me and I couldn't take the jobs. So I figured I'd just put a motel vacancy sign on my portfolio site, and so I call it the Justin Gignac Freelance Status Apparatus. It was a giant blinking neon sign that said Justin's working, available or available soon. Chad: Dude, that is fucking genius. Justin: Thanks, and I'm obnoxious so I had an over utilization of technology, so I had a Facebook group, a Twitter feed, a text alert, and iPhone app, and a mailing list to follow my availability so however you wanted to stalk me. And I ended up with forty recruiters from different ad agencies around the country following me. Every time I flipped my status to available I get two or three job offers within a day. Any jobs I couldn't take I would email to my art director friends and it got to the point that recruiter's were like "I see by your little sign that you're working are any of your friends available?" And I was like oh shit, I'm a rep. Joel: I hope some students are out there listening at this sort of creativity for creative jobs. I teased our audience at the beginning but tell us the Elf Yourself story. Justin: So, I had been working at various ad agencies around New York and I was the first creative hire at this small four person shop called Toy. And we got a brief from Office Max to get people to- You guys know what Office Max is? Joel: Sure. Chad: Oh yeah. Justin: Get people to do their holiday shopping at Office Max, which is stupid because it's an office supply store, why would anyone wanna go holiday shopping there? And so we had a very small budget, only a couple hundred thousand dollars maybe enough to do one commercial, and we didn't really think that would make the big impact. Justin: So we ended up doing twenty holiday themed websites that were gifts for office workers everywhere all linked by the little Office Max tab and you can go to any of 'em. So there were ones like, here was roastaturkey.com where you could roast a turkey in real time. There was Mistletoe in an Elevator where strangers seemed like strangers came on and started making out and freaking out other strangers that were in the elevator. And the one that took off was Elf Yourself, which honestly we had no idea what was gonna take off, and it went nuts. It was up for five weeks and it got thirty-six million visits. At one point there were eight elves being created every second. The second year they put it up it was up for six weeks and it got a hundred and ninety-three million visits. We had no idea what kind of elf fetish we were unlocking. And so we ended up putting it out there and it's still going, they gave it to JibJab and then it got crazy after that. Joel: So they literally sold the idea to JibJab? Or Office Max sold the rights to it? Justin: No I think they partnered with JibJab and they figured out ways to monetize it- Joel: They fucked you basically, go ahead and say it. Justin: Well I was only there for about a couple months after the first one launched so, and then I went freelance so it was fine. Joel: Awesome. Chad: You've gotta start the conversation with that, "So Justin what have you done?" 'Well, I don't know if you knew this little thing-'[crosstalk 00:06:31] Joel: [crosstalk 00:06:31] that would be a great pick up line for chicks Justin: It's great for my dating life, yeah. Although, I spoke at a conference in Omaha to a bunch of students and one of the students- this was on Monday- she's like "Oh my God, my family's gonna be so excited that I met someone that made Elf Yourself 'cause when I was six years old we made elves of our family." And I just went oh my God, I'm so old. When you were six years old. I'm like, oh yeah that was like 13 years ago, it's crazy. Chad: So let's get back into Working Not Working, I'm sure you don't wanna talk about that at all. So, a platform that is focused on people like you, and I mean this is really the virtual sign that you're flipping on and flipping off, right? I mean, it was that idea and you're just trying to take it to scale. Justin: Yeah, my co-founder Adam Tompkins and I- he was working one his own start up at the time, trying to find freelance developers, it was impossible- and we were talking and we were like well if that sign could work for me it could probably work for everybody. So, we built the site and creators make a profile with their current availability really big at the top of their profile, some examples of their work, and then companies go on and follow their favorite creatives and get notified when they are available for projects. So, really simple, they can flip, get your real time availability, they jump to the top of your dashboard as soon as they update and then you get pinged when your favorite people are available for gigs. Chad: So fucking smart. Justin: Thanks. Chad: How many people? Justin: So we're at 65 thousand creatives now around the world. Chad: Jesus. Joel: Now, when I first heard about the idea- and I didn't know about you honestly- Justin: That's okay. Joel: But I'm not a creative type so I shouldn't have known about you- Chad: Not at all. Joel: But my first thought was why don't they just join Upwork or Fiverr? I mean there's plenty of designers there. And you have a very interesting business model, tell us about that. Justin: Well I think for us the curation was really important to start, and so only about ten to fifteen percent of people that are on the site get a kind of vetted member status that are approved by our membership board. So that was really important, and also to- we wanted to give people access. So we only charge companies a couple hundred dollars a month, or a couple grand a year, to have access to all of the talent and the platform. And that goes and really democratizes it and gives people opportunity. Justin: And so, a lot of those other sites are driving the cost of freelance down. So you go and find someone and it's a logo design to the lowest bidder for five bucks. We have the best creatives in the world that are doing the Instagram logo and the Superbowl commercials and all that, and I think what's happened for them now is they're getting more opportunities because your opportunities only used to be however big your Rolodex was and now they're getting jobs at agencies and brands around the world. And so they're more in demand and are able to increase their rates and really be more in control of their own careers. Joel: So we had Josh Wright, Chief Economist at iCIMS on the show not too long ago, and we talked about sort of the downward push of salaries and what people could charge for their services, and I love your business model in that you actually curate and vet your people so you're actually increasing the amount of money that these folks are getting for the work that they do. Justin: Yeah and it's also giving them a kind of a stamp of approval which some of our clients have said they won't hire anybody unless they have a Working Not Working member profile. Which feels really good to us that we've been able to put that out in the world and it also created a really big sense of community within our members, and for me we've always described it as we built a platform and network for our friends. Our friends who are creative, and our friends who hire creatives. So, it's important to us to treat people how we would treat our friends, and also talk to people how we would talk to our friends. So we call people out and we say like, when they apply for a job, we're like "Make sure you're actually qualified and interested or else you'll look dumb." And we have a verification to make sure that they know make sure you're actually into this 'cause sometimes you've gotta protect people from themselves, and so yeah it's important. Chad: It's a trust thing though too, right? Justin: Yeah, it's a trust- yeah. Chad: 'Cause you've got these huge brands that are coming in and they're looking for individuals who are qualified and if you have a bunch of unqualified individuals applying then it's like, we just have the same issue. [crosstalk 00:10:21] You really don't- Justin: Yeah, well we know then the recruiting space it's all about efficiency and you throw a job up and you get a hundred people applying, that's overwhelming, never mind some other platforms you get five thousand. And so for us it's important that everyone that's applying is actually really good and it's gonna save you a lot of time because we're doing the curation for you and you're getting the best people applying to your opportunities. Joel: You had an interesting story as we were talking offline about sort of the human element of working by yourself, or freelancing, and how that human connection- and I would think that creative people in general are people people. They like to get out, express interest, and bounce ideas around- so you have kind of an interesting take on that and maybe a solution around that. Justin: I didn't even realize until I was doing it and working from home, freelance can be really lonely. Especially if you're working on your own, or you're bouncing from agency to agency or company to company, it's pretty nomadic and lonely. I had seen at a conference recently that the World Health Organization said the leading cause of ill health and disability in the world is depression. And I feel like the creative industry probably is more susceptible to that than others. And so, for us it's really important to bring people together in real life so they're not feeling as alone. So we started doing- the first year we did the first annual freelancer holiday party, 'cause freelancers never get invited to holiday parties. They're always in the windows outside, fogging 'em up, watching people getting gropey on the dance floor. And so we started doing that- Chad: I want open bar, I want open bar. Justin: And we started doing Drinking Not Drinking so it's kind of a quarterly happy hour in different cities, and I also started doing a creative support group last year. I call it Talking Not Talking, and we set up about thirty to forty chairs in a circle and have a theme whether it's courage, or letting go, or creative insecurity, and just start talking about this stuff because I think it's really easy for people to put on like they have it all figured out, and once you realize that nobody actually does you feel a lot better about your own journey. And I think especially as a freelancer independent you wanna put on that you got it, and you know everything, and you're successful, and I'm hustling, I'm hustling, I'm killing it. And that's hard to keep up because most of the time that's just bullshit. And so I think it's really important to get people together talking about this stuff and really supporting each other. Joel: Now are recruiters invited to these events 'cause I could see a lot of recruiters foaming at the mouth to get in front of these creative folks. Chad: Oh good God. Justin: Well we do, they're invited to the holiday party and we do happy hours at brands all the time, so bringing our network into them and so getting everyone together and really letting them show off who they are and what they do. And I've done Talking Not Talking for recruiters too to talk about the struggles of, that's completely changing landscape. Especially a lot of our clients are ad agencies where they're just losing talent left and right to brands and start ups. Chad: Talk about some of those brands, what are some of the big brands that you kinda show case. Justin: Our biggest clients are Apple, Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Nike. I have a actually- Chad: Cult brands, those are cult brands. Joel: Never heard of them, Justin: And then like every major ad agency. We used to have a thing at our home page that said "Remember if Working Not Working creatives aren't working for you they're probably working against you". And the best of the best are on it and they're using it and when we first started a lot of recruiters had a lot of pride in their Roladexs right, and they were like oh I don't need this. And we initially built it just so you could have everyone you'd already like to hire on one dashboard and see who's available right there, and then who's available soon, and who's working, so you don't have to call and email everybody. And so it's made those people better at their jobs, and then being able to search the 65 thousand vetted creatives really helps you get to better talent faster. And if you're not on it you're kind of at a disadvantage. Joel: What's next for creative? Is it around video, is it virtual reality? Is it mobile- Talk about what the trend is coming soon and what's hot. Justin: Well we're getting a lot of- we started primarily with advertising, and design, and illustration, and we've just seen a lot of our clients diversifying their offerings so getting more into production, getting editors, and cinematographers, and directors, and content creators. So we've been kind of going with that evolution as well and getting more folks on there. Yeah, VR was really hot a couple years ago, and augmented reality, all of that stuff, and it's all still there. I think experiential creativity and brand experiences is gonna be a lot more- and I think especially our clients who are in advertising and in general I think IP is the future of this. You have a lot of- every creative I know has a start up idea, an app idea, a movie idea- and I think that the brands that are gonna survive and the companies that are gonna survive are gonna start creating their own intellectual property, investing in their own talent, and being help support them with their ideas and make that happen. Justin: And if you're able to as a creative, if I feel like I'm gonna be able to make the best creative work of my life in house here I have no reason to go anywhere else, and if they're gonna support my endeavors, which now being an entrepreneur myself is really hard to start your own business. It's really hard to figure out who to talk to and how to do this right. And we always joke that, Adam and I, my co-founder- our business skills are two guys who know Photoshop. And so, if you have an agency you can go and use your resources to help make some of the stuff happen and then own a piece of that and really start- Joel: So not display ads in the Sunday newspaper. Justin: No, yeah- small space ads are really big. I remember my years in advertising was always the joke I never wanted to work on radio. And then like what are we doing right now? And so I think things evolve, I don't wanna keep thinking I know everything, I think nostalgia will kill you. Nostalgia and assumptions will kill you. So, it's gonna be constantly changing and just really paying attention to that. Chad: So we're here at an event that really is focused around cult brands, right? And I think that companies are starting to understand, not just these big cult brands, but even these start ups are starting to understand that brand means something. Justin: Yes, it's not just a logo anymore. Chad: Yeah, it's not just a logo anymore. So talk a little bit about that. What have you seen from start ups, mid-market, and what have you, Where there is that real focus on brand and experience where before most companies just didn't really give a shit. Justin: Yeah we just made a product and put it out there. And I think even since we started seven years ago there's just been such a cultural shift of companies and brands prioritizing creativity and design. Ten years ago my mom didn't give a shit about the user experience of her smart phone, but then she went and got rid of her phone to go back to her other one because it didn't work-the user experience didn't work as well. And then you have brands like the Airbnbs of the world, and Apples that are making an expectation for quality, design, and creativity, and thoughtfulness, and the ways brands approach themselves and put themselves out in the world. And so I think the companies that we're seeing are being successful are putting creativity in the c-suite and really making their connection with their consumers more important than ever and not just the products that they're shipping out. Chad: Well and they understand that brand actually impacts bottom line, so I think that was kinda the big disconnect for years is like it's marketing leads, but at the end of the day you're talking about actual cult brand type of impact- if you take a look at Apple and they come out with a new product and there's a line out the door, right? It's like, how do you get there? And I think that, and this is just me, I think that most companies are, they're trying to reach for that brass ring. They might not be able to get to that Apple status but they can have that cult-ish type of brand, even if it's in a certain segment. Justin: Well it's really targeting the people that love your brand and doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down on them. And even with my own personal projects and advertising work I've done in the past-Elf Yourself I guess was pretty broad- but I always like to create ideas and invest in ideas that only ten percent of people would get. Because then those people are even more passionate about it 'cause they feel like they're in on something. And you see the brands that are being honored here at The Gathering, and the ones that we use day to day that we just love and adore- they're ones that are so integral to our lives and we kinda can't live without. And so I think to have that indispensability in the hearts of your consumers and your fans is more important than ever. Joel: And piggy backing on that, let's talk about employer brand for a second. And you sit at the crossroads of being a creative person but also dancing a little bit in the recruiting world. So talk about implement branding, how important is it? Chad seems to think they're one in the same, are they different? Give us your opinion on employment brand. Justin: Well I started in advertising and it's been mind-blowing to me that people who are so good at marketing and positioning other peoples brands do such a shitty job of marketing themselves. And you can go and put up agency websites, and mission statements, and they're interchangeable, there's only a handful that really are able to differentiate themselves. And I think the places that are having an easier time doing recruiting, especially the brands, I know what I'm gonna get when I go to an Airbnb. That aligns with my values, they care about people, or Google. So employees now and workers are able to go and find the brands that speak to them and say hey I wanna be a part of that. Justin: Advertising in general they do have an advantage 'cause I have friends that've gone in house with brands and done it for a year or two and they just kinda got bored of putting stuff on white and then wanna go back to advertising. I think agencies actually have a benefit of the diversity of opportunities, but they just need to do a better job of giving people access to those opportunities. Because it used to be I'm gonna go in there, and yeah maybe I'd have to kinda do my time on that big crappy client, but I don't need to do that anymore. Because I can be in charge of my own career and I can go wherever I want. Justin: And so I think the brands that are really making their- you're not losing talent to Google because of free Tandoori chicken on Thursdays- You're losing it 'cause people feel like they can go there, they know what they're doing, and they're doing it with purpose, and they can make great work. And you have to be able to align with peoples values and their purpose 'cause just trying to convince people with ping pong tables and free snacks isn't really- people don't give a shit about that. We survey our creatives and they said no, it's the creative opportunity and the people that they're working with, it's all about the people. Chad: And then you take a look at, I think just from my stand point, Facebook and all the shit that they've been through here lately, right. And how that has impacted their brand, and also their employees, and their employment brand. So therefore, the big brand is the brand, and what we try to do I think in every industry is we try to make things more complex. We try to fragment things and we try to say well this is this, and then this is different over here, and just from my stand point, I believe that the employment brand is part of the overall brand, and that is, that's the big key. Justin: Absolutely. Chad: But again, in our industry I'm probably in the minority there's so many people that just wanna focus on employment brand, employment brand, employment brand- Justin: It's all interchangeable and I think it's also really important not to bullshit people. On both sides of the coin if you're trying to get a job and you're trying to be the version of you they think they want or you think they want, and then same thing with the companies, it's never gonna work that way if people are- it's like any relationship, you gotta wanna be, you gotta be honest about what your needs are on both sides of the coin and then the people that are able to keep that honesty there and the transparency there and then really focus on making sure people are happy are gonna do really well and be really successful. Joel: I find like most of the time your Glassdoor, Indeed, Kununu, whatever reviews are your employment brand, and it's more of the externally than what you say about yourself. Justin: All of our industries no matter what segment, you're a creative or otherwise, they're very small industries and word travels fast and it's really easy to ruin your brand quickly. Word gets out- I look at a friend and they're posting at 4 a.m. leaving the office. I'm not gonna wanna take a job there- Chad: Fuck no. Justin: No, at all. And so I think that it's really important that you go and be honest with yourself and who are you and how do you treat your people and then what is the reputation that we have out there. And if you wanna know what's wrong with your company hire a freelancer 'cause they can- been in multiple different places and can just come in and go oh yeah your process sucks, these people are running the show, these people are totally unhappy because they talk shit about whatever, and you can probably find out within a week all of the issues in your company just by hiring a couple freelancers to be honest with you. Chad: So when it comes down to kind of like footprint right now, you guys, obviously, you started in New York, and you've broadened up, where are your big markets? Justin: Our biggest markets are in New York, L.A., London's our third biggest just kind of organically happened that way. San Francisco, obviously, and then Toronto's building up. Amsterdam is building up. And so we're primarily in the States but yeah we're kind of getting a footprint globally, we got 65 thousand creatives now. Joel: You've been dumb enough to start a podcast, tell us about that. Justin: Yeah so, well I get tired of going to conferences and seeing people only talk about the highlights, and looking at peoples social media and only seeing the highlights. And I can't relate to someones amazing illustration skill, but I can relate to the struggle it took to get there. So, I started overshare a couple years ago and I interview creatives I admire about the struggles of being a creative professional whether it's loneliness, creative insecurity, self doubt, all of that stuff, and try to get people that are at the top of the game to be really honest about the shit they struggle with, because it's really easy to think everybody else has it figured out but once you realize nobody actually does it makes you feel better about your own shit. Justin: And so yeah, I've been doing that, we got season three I'm planning on now and hopefully we'll start that in the next month or two. Chad: Excellent, how many episodes per season are you just-[crosstalk 00:23:49] Justin: We do 13 episodes a season, every two weeks. We ended right before Thanksgiving season two with this guy Jeff Staple who's like the GodFather of street wear. First episode of season two is one of the co-founders Kickstarter, Yancey Strickler, which was an amazing episode so yeah, a lot of, kind of a range of business leaders, and creatives, and artists, and all that. Joel: So turning into Netflix shows, season two comes out in March. Justin: Yeah, exactly. Joel: Well, Justin thanks for joining us. For those who wanna know more about you where would you send them if they wanna learn more about your companies or you in general. Justin: Yeah just workingnotworking.com or @wnotw and I'm @justingignac. Can I just read one thing that just makes me happy, and makes me feel like we're doing something right? We got a text message from one of our members who got a text message from another member and so I'm just going to read you the text message, "Hey Mike, this is that random dude that you sponsored to be on Working Not Working after dropping you and your mom off through Lift. I just wanted to message you and thank you for opening that door for me. The last two years have been crazy, I was at Apple doing UX, I'm currently at Nike as a senior product designer. Two years ago I was doing Lift and Uber every day to survive and I still remember those days. Hopefully you are doing well, just wanted to drop you a note and thank you again. It might have seemed small but you helped turned my life around." Joel: This is where we throw in the applause, yeah the applause sound bite. Justin: But that's like it, it's that kind of stuff that' what's- I think anybody who I know that's recruited that's what they aim to do. And now being on the other side of the coin having been a creative and doing this now, I get so much more fulfillment out of enabling other people to do what they love. That kind of stuff makes me feel real good. Joel: Well Justin, thanks for joining us. We'll be taking the stage with you tomorrow, hopefully- Justin: Yeah I'm excited. Joel: Talking about more shit. And we appreciate it. Justin: Yeah thank you so much for having me you guys. Chad: G-Nac! Justin: Yes we did it. 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 and Cheese Podcast. Be sure to 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 their money goes to my college fund. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #TheGathering #Freelance #Marketing #EmployerBrand #Brand #Advertising #CultBrands #Branding

ANNOUNCEMENT! Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman. Chad: A few weeks ago, Talroo beckoned Joel and I to Austin, Texas. Under a shroud of secrecy. Finally, we're able to unveil what the hell was going on down at Talroo HQ. Enjoy. Joel: Super exciting day Chad. The office is buzzing. Chad: It is buzzing. Joel: There's excitement that I've never seen before. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And this is an organization that focuses on industry sectors and niches, right? Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Joel: They've been the experts in retail, service industries, healthcare, et cetera. The rumor is they might be opening up a new ... Chad: Vertical. Joel: Vertical. Chad: Yeah. I'm interested in this from the standpoint of I'm kind of- Joel: Actually, Thad, Thad Price, the CEO is coming in now- Chad: Okay. Joel: To announce what the news is- Chad: It's about time. Joel: Thad, how are ya? Chad: Thad, how you doing? Thad: Great, how about yourself? Joel: Good to see ya. Thad: Good to see you guys again. Welcome to Austin. Joel: Dude, we can't take it any more. What is the news? Chad: What the hell's going on? Thad: Well, we're launching a new audience search network. Chad: Okay. Well you've got a bunch already. I mean, you have business services, customer service, financial service, Gig economy, healthcare. I mean, the list goes on. And it seems pretty expansive already. So I mean, what are you going to add to this? Thad: Yeah. And those verticals are actually targeted by our classification engine- Chad: Okay. Thad: The Talroo classification engine. So that's how we find the right audiences for jobs based on over billions of searches each month. Chad: Okay. Thad: So one of the things we found is there's a huge demand for pirates. Chad: There is. We've been talking about this. Joel: Of course! Chad: We've been talking about this. Joel: Pirates. Thad: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. Thad: And largely, we were talking earlier about the macro-side and what we found is that usually in situations like this, where we head into a recession soon, gold goes up. Chad: Ah, good point. Thad: So that's a huge opportunity for us to staff up for pirates- Chad: Yeah. Thad: Because we need more gold. Chad: Right. Right, right, right. So I mean, how are pirates ... I don't know anything about this. How are pirates paid? Do they have rum stipends? I mean- Joel: Is there a special booty program for pirates? Thad: You know, I ... Probably so in different ports of call. Probably some are a little bit different than others, but yes, they're paid per mile. They have different incentives. One of the things we're finding, that's one of the most interesting things that from a benefit perspective they care about is dental plans. Chad: That makes sense. Joel: The scurvy is running amok in the piracy community. Yes. Now will this be a real strain on employment for our Arby's? Chad: I am not including that. I am not including that. Joel: Will this impact the argyle sweater industy? Chad: I can't use any of this. From my understanding on the pirate's side of the house, there is a huge knowledge gap. I mean, the boomers are aging out. The skills gap is an issue. So is there going to be schooling? I mean, what's happening here? Thad: Yeah. You're right. It's aging out of the work force, just like healthcare and other industries. So we're actually seeing ... You know, one of our beta customers NEMO Inc., they're actually paying for training to be a pirate. Chad: Okay. Thad: So you see that in other transportation logistics type industries as well. Chad: So you sign a contract, you go through school and you're like on a three year contract. They pay for your schooling and then you're not a landlubber anymore, you're actually on the ship and I'm sure there's a little internship action that happens on board too. Is that how it goes? Thad: Yeah. That's right. And then you're usually ... You could be paid per mile. Chad: Okay. Thad: Yep. And you're getting a ship. Chad: Kind of like truckers. So this could actually zap talent out of the trucker industry. Joel: Now will you be servicing all seven of the seven seas? Thad: Yes, we will be. Joel: Will there be a different pricing model? Thad: It's all based on supply and demand. Chad: All based on supply and demand and targeting. That's awesome. So if there are pirates out there that are looking for good, hard working talent, how in the hell do they get a hold of you to make sure that they can get into this program? Thad: Well, they would go to talroo.com. Joel: For the pirates with a hook for a hand that can't tap out a resume, what solutions do you offer for them? Thad: Yeah, voice texting. Chad: Voice to text. That is genius. Well, I'd like to say Thad, it's about damn time and we appreciate Talroo. Joel: God bless you Talroo. Chad: Big applause for Talroo. Chad: After the interview with Thad. Joel and I wanted to learn more about just how Talroo would engage this new pirate market sector. Word was buzzing around the office that Talroo had hired a pirate dialect coach to train sales and customer service. What? No way. Way. And we tracked him down for an interview. Enjoy. Chad: Okay. Jordan, we understand that you are the dialect coach. Tell us why you're actually here. What does that mean? Jordan: Yes. Talroo has shown success across many industries and verticals such as healthcare, restaurant, retail, financial services and more. Helping these companies attract and hire talent. Talroo are now launching their latest vertical, the pirate vertical. I'm here to help train their customer team on how to best engage with pirate captains and recruiters who need hires. This is to ensure that these employers know that Talroo gets them. Joel: What is your background? Jordan: Well I have been a dialect coach for about 15 years now. I used to be the kid who was always doing voices and impressions and once I got the linguistics part, that was the last piece. I knew that I could do these voices, but with linguistics I could show people how to do these voices, these different sound changes with accents. I believe tremendously in the power of connection and especially in this recruiting market, you want someone that speaks your language. All industries have their own jargon and pirate is no different. So I'm just trying to instill these language techniques, these sound changes, so that pirates can understand that we're part of their tribe at Talroo. We get them Chad: Why is it important to train Talroo employees? Jordan: Well, pirate captains have long been shunned in modern western society. They have- Joel: Disgraceful. Jordan: Questionable morals, poor hygiene. Their social media shows this materialistic obsession with treasure, but I've seen that Talroo really understand them and the uniqueness of their hiring needs. So they're taking this extra step regarding speech and culture. And Talroo wants to ensure that pirate ship captains, fleet commanders, their whole industry, feels very comfortable and at home dealing with Talroo's customer team. Joel: Pirates are people too, Jordan. Jordan: Of course. Of course. They might not have all their limbs, but they're still people. Chad: That's a very good point. Yeah. Or the teeth. Joel: Or the teeth. Chad: Or the teeth. Joel: Couldn't agree more. Jordan: Pirates need jobs too. And this is the place to find 'em. There's some real talent out there, like legendary Blackbeard level talent and speaking to Thad's point about the ... It's a niche attraction, right? A niche client attraction. Chad: I've heard some great pirate talent has actually gone off into other industries, working at Macy's. Jordan: Yeah. There's a lot of pirates that sail to better seas as it were, but ... It's a hazardous profession, but I mean, if there's a better job, they jump ship. So we're here to attract the best talent that we can get. Joel: How do you deal with the various dialects of say a pirate in the Indian Ocean versus the Pacific? Jordan: Oh sure, yeah. I mean, the oceans vary, right? The further away you are, it's going to sound different than ... And your ports of call have to, right? So, if you're interacting with people- Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: Yeah. Jordan: Using different words, words for gold and doubloons might be different than fishing words, et cetera. Chad: So Jordan, how have the Talroo employees actually taken to the training? Because, I mean, this is different training. Jordan: Sure. Chad: So I mean, how have they been doing? Jordan: Yeah, they've never seen anything like this before. Chad: Yeah. Jordan: But they are very quick learners, right? We had a nice session with the while team and we were teaching them everything from words to stay away from. You know, there's certain insults that you really don't want to be throwing around. Joel: What are some of those? Jordan: You know, every pirate loves the sea. So you wouldn't want to call 'em a landlubber, right? Joel: Ah. Jordan: That's like a rookie, right? There's a famous joke, what do you call a pirate with two eyes and two legs? A rookie. Right? Obviously doesn't have that much experience on a ship. Joel: Nice. Jordan: Scallywags, right? You don't ever want to call a pirate that. Bilge rat, 'cause that's the bottom of the ship, right? You belong on the bottom of the ship. Joel: Barnacle I hear is a bad one. Jordan: Barnacles are on the side of the ship, right? So brush me barnacles is like, "Oh, whoa, slow down there." Chad: It's a little abrasive, yes. Chad: Jordan really sounded like he understood Talroo's game, but we wanted to hear his pirate dialect range at work. Check this out. Pirate: Talroo with a partner what makes us a force on the high seas. They be deliverin quality hires, less scurvy and nobody be touching their candidate to hire rates. Pirate: I be loving Talroo. They be staffing me for years now with crew of the highest caliber. And I mean crew that be ready to set sail. Not some landlubber who be uploadin his resume years ago. Pirate: Talroo data driven job ads that deliver. Arg. Pirate: Ye be poo without Talroo. Ye be walking the plank if you're not be using Talroo for your recruitin needs. Pirate: Don't be a bilge sucking scallywag, avast. Use Talroo hire better. Chad: Now that is impressive. Not just Jordan's dialect, but Talroo's commitment to ensuring that companies looking for hard to find talent, not only find the talent, they find a partner in Talroo who works hard to join and engage their community. Way to go Talroo, this rum is for you. Pirate: Don't be a bilge suckin scallywag. Avast. Use Talroo to hire better. For more information go to: https://www.talroo.com/pirates #Pirate #Talroo

GET READY KIDS – If you’re lactose intolerant THIS is the show for you. That’s right hold the cheese and I’ll substitute w/ some Jimmy Stroud! Chad & Jim tackle - Yahoo!’s newest advertising FAIL, - Amazon goes beyond haptic bracelets – think Big Brother HUD, - Robots making hiring decisions? - Jim believes McDonald’s gives-up cuz their automation game is READY… Don’t forget to tip our peeps at Canvas, JobAdx and Sovren! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides training and development to help your workplace leaders and employees integrate with and value people with disabilities. 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: Oh, yeah. There we go. Get ready, kids, if you're lactose intolerant, this is the show for you. That's right, hold the Cheese, and I'll substitute a little Jimmy Stroud. Give it up for Jimmy Stroud, everybody. Jim: Whoo, what's up, what's up, what's up? Chad: That's right. All right, so really excited to have you here today, Jim, and- Jim: Yes sir Chad: ... we'll get right to the show after this word from our friends at Sovren. Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human you'll want to take it to dinner. Chad: Well, yeah, with a voice like that, who would not want to take Sovren to dinner, right? Jim: Yeah, oh, yeah. Chad: So Jim, just in case our listeners have been balled up in the fetal position for a couple of decades and they don't know who you are, why don't you give them a little skinny, a little quick skinny about Jimmy Stroud? Jim: Well, let's see. I have been involved in source and recruiting for, gosh, two decades, worked for such companies as Microsoft, Google, Siemens, hosted startup companies. I've also been the MC over at SourceCon, which is an awesome conference, been doing that for quite a while. Now I am presently the VP product evangelist for ClickIQ, which is the best automated job advertisement platform in my opinion. Chad: No bias, yeah. Jim: It's what all the cool kids who want to automate their jobs are using these days. Chad: Oh, gotcha. Jim: And I am there. So yes. That is me. Chad: Good stuff. Jim: If you want more information, look me up on LinkedIn. Chad: Yep, Jimmy Stroud up on LinkedIn. He's everywhere, by the way. Any social media, he's got like 50 different websites, Jimmy Stroud. If you don't know the guy's face, literally, you've been in a closet somewhere. For listeners, we have a special treat this morning because as we were talking about putting this show together, 'cause Joel is on spring break vacation with the kids, we were talking about some of the fun things that we've been able to do with the podcast, and I said something about El Chapo and you were like, "What?" And I realized at that point you had never heard the El Chapo soundbite from CareerBuilder, from their I think it was SVP of sales or what have you, and for our listeners and for you, I wanted to play this for you, as a special treat. Chad: So listeners, this is the first time Jim has ever heard this. If you haven't heard this, don't laugh too hard, here it comes. El Chapo from I believe it's Jim or John Smith, SVP sales, used to be, over at CareerBuilder. Jim: Okay. CB Sales Dude: 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- Chad: They're not sleeping. CB Sales Dude: ... it's not like we're not focused. We actually had a trip done until about three weeks ago. We had a great hotel in Cavo. We had dates confirmed. Chad: What happened? CB Sales Dude: Problem is, Cavo has become completely destabilized. Chad: What? CB Sales Dude: Literally this holiday season, they've had over 50,000 reservations canceled. Chad: No way. CB Sales Dude: 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 is a war for power. Chad: No code of honor, 'cause El Chapo is gone. CB Sales Dude: Drug dealers will actually go into restaurants and shoot up the place. Chad: Shoot up the place. CB Sales Dude: So bottomline is this. I wish I could sit here and tell you we have- Chad: And that's all we got. So tell me that is not some of the funniest shit you've ever heard, Jim. Now this is from an insider who recorded this on their phone or something like that and sent this to us, right? So this was actually a sales meeting and they were trying to get people to understand that hey, look, guess what, we're not gonna do the successors trip or whatever, the president's trip or what have you, because El Chapo is gone. Jim: El Chapo. Chad: So I wanted to do that special for Jim, and obviously it's always special for me too 'cause it's the funniest shit I think I've ever heard. Jim: If something goes wrong or is delayed, I'm gonna blame it on El Chapo. Chad: That's a good point. We should actually do Chad and Cheese shirts that said, "El Chapo did it" or something like that. Jim: El Chapo did it. Chad: That's a good idea, that's a damn good idea. So Jim, are you ready to go to shout outs? Jim: I am so ready. Actually, let me jump in first by giving a shout out to Beverly and Richard. I know they're big listeners. Chad: Oh, yeah. Jim: They're also over at ClickIQ, to them and all my peeps over at ClickIQ, one love. Chad: Love it. So this is funny because right before we stared, a delivery guy with a huge-ass box came to my front door. So my first shout out is going to be to Jim and Thomas over across the pond at Talent Nexus, because they just sent me over a case of craft beer in the mail. I actually received, and I think they just ordered it from here in the States, 'cause that makes a hell of a lot more sense, but to Jim and Thomas from Talent Nexus, beer is on you. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate that. Jim: Straight to Chad's heart. Chad: That's right, you know how it works, guys. You know how it works. Barb Froncillo, I think I'm saying that right, I probably am not, thanks for listening and subscribing, one of our listeners. She's one of those listeners that actually reached out because she went to the website and noticed that a link wasn't working, and then it got me thinking on the subscribe side of the house, and I thought, "You know what? I can make this shit easier." So I did. But I wouldn't have if it wouldn't have been for Barb actually reaching out and saying, "Hey, your shit's broke," right? Chad: So thanks, Barb, appreciate you taking the time. JZ over at SmashFly, dude, thanks for coming down and spending the day with Chad and Cheese, mostly a day with Chad and Julie, because Cheeseman is lame. JZ, so do you know JZ over at SmashFly? Jim: Is he married to Beyonce? Chad: I don't think so. No, that's a different Jay-Z, yeah. Different guy. I like that, though. He came down, had some beer, pizza, shot a video announcing that Chad and Cheese are gonna be at Transform onstage. Then we spent the day doing what we do, drinking beer, talking recruitment, employment branding, and finishing off the night with cigars and bourbon. So it was a good time had by all. Jim: It's a hard life, it's a hard life you lead. Chad: Not easy being Chad and Cheese. Jim: It's not. Chad: Big shout out to Steven Rothberg, because he's playing this debate on Twitter with me, and you've heard about how Facebook is dumbing down their advertising tool. Have you heard about this? Jim: I have heard about that, very interesting. They're taking away the ability to target a certain age and I think also sex or something like that? Men and women? Chad: Yeah, it's people with disabilities, so if you want more insights on that whole thing, just listen to last week's March 21st podcast entitled "Indeed's Australian Meltdown," but just to move forward with it real quick, I'm not happy with Facebook because this, I believe, is dumb as hell. You are dumbing down a tool that is surgically helping companies find the types of individuals that they want, and they're dumbing it down because of the bad actors, not the good actors, the bad actors. So they're actually taking strength and power away from companies who want to use this tool in the right way. Chad: Here's what pisses me off: not only are they dumbing down the too, but they're not doing what they should be doing in the first place, which is policing their own damn system. They should be vetting advertisers and they should be auditing the content that goes into that system, and Steven doesn't believe that's the case. He said you can't really expect a platform like Facebook to vet every job ad. Well, this is bigger than job ads, Steven, first and foremost. And if you did attempt to vet, how exactly would you do that? Well, they have more PhDs over there than I can even think of, and if they can't figure that out, they shouldn't have a freaking platform to be able to make billions of dollars in the first place. But if a bigot wants to discriminate against black people, would you trust them to be honest about their hiring intentions? Chad: Okay, so totally get that, and that's a lot to unpack, but really quick, the thing is, Steven, this is on both sides. First and foremost, you have a responsibility as a platform owner to police, audit, and vet, to ensure the individuals who are using said platform aren't getting fucked. That's not cool, dude. You can't say that if a job site allows all these jobs, then how are we supposed to know which jobs are good and which jobs are bad? Dude, that's why you vet. That's why you go through this process, right? First and foremost. Second, if you have a company who is using bias practices, right, that's what the OFCCP and EEOC are for. They come in and they do those audits against the employer, not against the platform, against the employer, and then they enforce regulations against the employer. Chad: There are two sides of the coin here. So I think it's important, great shout out to Steven, thanks for pushing the conversation, but I think this needs to be articulated more. So what do you think about this piece, Jim? Because it's really hard for me to see a company like Facebook with all the money that they make to say that they can't find a way to vet and audit. What do you think? Jim: I think it's a way of getting around potential regulations coming down from the government. 'Cause it's more of a I think a political standpoint and this is just an aspect of it. Because if they are the public square, as they purport to be, then it's free speech, everybody come say what you want, do what you want, it's totally free. But if they are editors, then they are subject to certain regulations, and I think they don't want their hands to be tied in other ways. So I think they're straddling the fence with this defense. Chad: I think they're making the wrong decision obviously in taking away the power of the tool that they actually have, and doing that instead of what they should be doing in the first place. Because this change that they're making still doesn't meet the obligations that they have to ensure that the individuals using their platform are not bad actors. Jim: I think everyone's gonna be looking at them, because whatever Facebook does, I'm sure Twitter follows suit and everyone else as well. Chad: Yeah, and that also pisses me off because when they dumb down their platform and their tools, then stupid politicians are gonna go, "Oh, yeah, there you go. Facebook did it, everybody else should do that." No, it was the wrong answer in the first fucking place. This to me is a diversion and it hurts everybody. So that's all I have to say about that. I'll give you the last word on that one. Jim: Keep an eye on this new law that I think is being passed in the UK, something like that, where it's being called a link tax, which is also something really crazy which just sort of reminds me of this. Okay, so if you are Google and I do a search for pinto beans, I don't know why I went to pinto beans, but- Jim: I want protein, right? And so I do a search and I do a link to the New York Times is doing a report on pinto beans. Well, because Google linked to the New York Times, they would have to pay a link tax. And so even though they're sending free traffic to the New York Times and an article, they have to start paying for it. Now I bring that up because it concerns me because today is about a news story. What if Google would have to start paying for links to job boards or anything else? It can be a real damage to the Internet overall. Chad: Yeah, that's what happens when politicians get involved in shit they don't understand. It's easy to tell politicians something because they don't have any expertise in this arena as it is. Move on to one of our favorites, Elena Valentine, CEO over at Skill Scout. She wants to bring Snoop Dogg to an HR conference near you. Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Jim: No, but I know the after party will be lit. Chad: That's what I'm talking about, right? So here's the thing. We want to support Elena, we want to support this, right? It's HR for Snoop. Go to skillscout.com/, one word, hrforsnoop, and show some support. Because having Snoop at an HR event, I mean, come on. Who gives Martha Stewart more cred than Snoop, right? Right? Jim: Is the conference in Colorado, by chance, or some other place- Chad: I'll tell you right now, that would be a great way to lure Snoop anywhere, right? Jim: Yeah, for our listeners across the pond, marijuana is legal in Colorado and a few other states now. So it would have to be one of those states. Chad: Maybe Portland, who knows. More Oregon action. I mean, it's pretty lit. So last shout out goes to our UK listeners, thanks for the intel about Indeed. Joel and I weren't sure if Indeed was spending a type of mad cash on radio and TV and shit like that that they are in the U.S., and we have received a resounding, "Yes, they fucking are, and we're sick of it," kind of a thing. Indeed is spending tons of cash in the UK to do advertising and we also have a UK rumor that I want to throw out there. Apparently ZipRecruiter UK pissed off reed.co.uk, which is tallied as the number one job site in the UK. Chad: So what happened was Reed dropped Zip as a partner because they were sick and tired of Zip going straight to Reed's clients instead of working through them. Sound familiar? Sound familiar? Instead of going to the agency, we're going around the agency. Same kind of shit, just different players. So I thought that was interesting. Jim: Yeah, follow that story. Chad: Events, so we're gonna be at SHRM Talent in Nashville, followed by StaffingTec, which is actually just across the town, the same week in Nashville, so if you're going to be there look us up. Don't forget also we're going to be at TAtech recruitment marketing summit in Chicago and just announced, Chad and Cheese onstage, RecFest, London, July, you gotta fucking be there. That's gonna be awesome. Jim: Nice. Nice. Nice. Chad: Can't wait for that one. Jim: I fully expect that when you get ready for RecFest that you would have upgraded your swear words and you'll start using more English swear words going forward after that. Chad: Yeah, you know, I actually had one of my friends say, "You know, you're really going to have to start doing that," and I don't think ... That's just not us. People listen to us because we're authentic. They want to hear the dumb yanks come over, right? So that's who we're gonna be. We're not gonna try to be somebody who we're not. You're gonna get what you listen to. So that's that. Jim: That's cool. So I did wanna hear that this ATS is rubbish. Chad: No, not once we're just ... Maybe Joel. And last but not least, on the event side of the house, a T-shirt merch. Remember, Chad and Cheese is traveling with Shaker Recruitment Advertising, look for Shaker backpacks on us, because in those backpacks will be our first limited edition Chad and Cheese T-shirts. We only have 100 of them, so when we say limited edition, we're not fucking with you. We're gonna be giving away anywhere from 10 to 15 per show, thanks to emissary.ai, check out emissary.ai because texting makes recruiting easier. No shit. It seriously does. Chad: But no kidding, we only have about 100 T-shirts, we're only gonna give away so many per event. Get your T-shirt, it's gonna be pretty freaking cool. And if you wanna find out where we're going to be because you want a T-shirt or maybe you just want to buy us a beer, which I would enjoy, go to chadcheese.com, click on events in the upper right hand corner, and you will see our 2019 world tour list of events. Jim: Nice. Chad: Good stuff, good stuff. Good, are we ready to do this thing, ready to jump into the first topic? Jim: Yes, yes indeed. Chad: All right, let's do this. Okay, so the first topic, I sent this to you this morning and I thought it was funny as hell, because Yahoo! ... Jim: Yahoo! Chad: You're doing it all wrong. You're doing it all ... So you hadn't seen this ad before I sent it to you. So did you get a chance to just kind of glaze over it? Jim: A little bit. Go over it for the listening side. Chad: Okay, so there's this ad from Yahoo! that focuses on the job-seeker Yahoo! search, or the job search on Yahoo, right? And so what it says is, "Job seekers can use Yahoo Search to start their job hunt," and then it has arrows down and it says, "Search for job posting sites." Jim: Yeah, I remember now. Chad: The ad, the actual picture in the ad, is a dude wearing a hoodie pulled over his head and he's breaking into a house. Jim: Yeah, I had this Scooby Doo look on my face, like huh? I totally did not get what they were doing with that. Chad: Below it, it says thousands of companies are hiring right now. It's like, what am I hiring for? What the fuck is going on? Jim: Yeah, yeah. Maybe you're hiring for the mafia, I don't know. It's kind of weird. Chad: This is a message to Yahoo, this isn't the first time, but you're doing it wrong, guys. You're doing job search wrong. Jim: I don't get this at all. Chad: So yeah, I thought that was kind of funny. Started off with, we'll be sharing that on the Facebook page and Twitter and whatnot. But you had a couple of stories around AI, which I think is actually your first love. In the first one, it talks about the robots are hiring. I think it was Wall Street Journal or something like that. Jim: Yeah, yeah, they were talking about this company called DeepSense, which is based in San Francisco and India, and what they do is they help hiring managers scan people's social media accounts to surface what they're calling underlying personality traits. Chad: What the hell does that mean? Jim: So the company can scientifically assess your personality based on what they find about you online. Chad: Okay. Jim: So if they know that tech nerds are kind of quirky, the ones that are really, really good tend to be quirky, then their tests will say, "Hey, these people are more in line with the culture of your company, so you may want to pursue them as well," in addition to how greatly skilled they are. So when I read that, I thought, "Okay, this is interesting." Chad: Yeah… Jim: Culture fit is like a hot buzz word, if you want to play HR buzz word bingo over here, cultural fit would definitely be high on that list. And so I thought, "Okay, I could see why a company was formed to do something like this," but at the same time my Spidey sense was kind of vibrating a little bit as well. Because I'm thinking okay, so culture fit, you got your matching algorithms and you have somebody who, according to the algorithms, they are, I don't know, an advocate for Bernie Sanders, just to go political. Or maybe they're against abortion, also to stay political. Jim: And so that would determine that you're not a cultural fit, because you think that transgender people should be precluded from a position, say, at, I don't know, Hobby Lobby or Chick-Fil-A or some other organization like that, I'm not saying that's the case, just throwing it out. Or somebody's super conservative, maybe the algorithm would say, "Well, you're not welcome over here at Google or Apple or other companies" because they tend to be more left leaning. So I can see how this could have a good intention, but could be used unintentionally for evil. Chad: Now doesn't this seem like hyper AI machine learning group think? Jim: Yeah. Chad: Doesn't it? It just seems like yay, we want to hire the same fucking people over and over, and it's funny because in my time in compliance, I can't believe I'm actually saying that, in my time serving in some aspects of compliance, one of the companies used to talk about bias from the standpoint of employee referrals, and friends of Bob. Well, friends of Bob generally always look like Bob, right? And that's from a biased standpoint, you start to build your company around a bunch of Bobs, right? Where are the Julies? Where are the Evelyns? Where's the cultural, where's the gender, where's all the diversity at? This to me really lends to the possibility of crazy amounts of bias. Jim: You know, a good example of what you're saying illustrated is what Amazon did with their algorithm and how it was excluding women from it, because they based their algorithm based on people who worked there, who were predominantly men, and it looked at their schools and unintentionally it was excluding women from the process. So they said, "Whoops, our bad," and they scrapped the system. My overall thought on this, and it's not to poo-poo DeepSense, because maybe their heart's in the right place, you always need a human being in the loop. You always need a person to look things over to ensure that the machine is giving you what you intend for it to give you. Chad: It's not just what you intend for it to give you, it's also what they're not excluding people that you don't intend to be excluded. And that's what happened with the Amazon algorithm is that they didn't intend to, or they say, they didn't intend to exclude females, but the algorithm saw their hiring practices, and this is the big key here. If an algorithm is only learning from a stupid human that is already biased in the first place, then what the fuck is the algorithm good for? What's the algorithm good for if it's just going to mimic what a human being's doing? That's not what we want, right? We want to be more blind in our hiring process, and we can't do that if we're teaching an algorithm to think like us. Jim: Yeah, automating your bias on a huge scale. You need to have ... A job of the future I think will be algorithm auditor. Chad: There's gonna be a lot of money there because ... Jim: Oh, yeah. Chad: Because what we've seen is the OFCCP has statisticians on staff, so what they do is they understand that statistically, you should have a breakdown of X or Y in Omaha, Nebraska, right? And if you don't meet that, the statisticians know that. And the OFCCP pivoted to that because they better understood talent acquisition, not the way that they should, but they understood the statistics of it. They will also, and my prediction is, they will also do exactly what you're talking about, which will spawn an entirely new industry, which is consultants coming in, auditing algorithms, doing a statistical test on the not just the talent that is coming in for jobs to ensure that you're getting a diverse talent pool, but who are you hiring? Jim: Starting a whole new industry. So this is an example of not necessarily robots or automation taking jobs away, but robots and automation facilitating a whole new job market. The same way Netflix did away with Blockbuster video, but you brought in streaming technologies and all the other stuff that comes with it. So a new industry appeared off of the ashes of Blockbuster Video and Hollywood Video, but a whole new jobs came up in its place. Chad: Yeah, but that being said, retail, which is being understaffed as ever right now, is saying that they're understaffed, which obviously there are still human positions that are not being filled because we don't have enough people, but that AI could be the solution to that. That was also something that you brought up that I felt was a really good transition into this AI block. Jim: Yeah, there was this company called Repple, I'm calling it Repple, not to be confused with Ripple. Chad: REPL, I think it is, yeah. Jim: Yeah, REPL Group, it's a UK-based tech firm, and they did this survey, they looked at a thousand U.S. consumers and 500 retail workers to outline consumer expectations of automation in a retail environment. And what they came away with was that a lot of people, consumers and retail workers both, said automation's gonna be key and is gonna take over the retail space and there's gonna be a lot of automated processes. So in this place of so many retail workers will be automated processes, virtual assistance, and virtual reality technology. So things like standing in front of a magic mirror and seeing how a dress looks on you without you actually putting on the dress. Chad: And seeing if it's in inventory, too. Jim: Yes. A lot of that, a lot of that. And actually when I read that, it made me think too about the things McDonald's is doing. McDonald's made a ton ... Well, they spent a ton of money on this company called, what was it called? I want to say Deep Logic or something like that. Dynamic Yield, that's the name of the company, Dynamic Yield. And so what Dynamic Yield does is it's an AI company and they spent $300 million, and they're doing a lot of what I think this AI is gonna be doing in retail, automating a lot of processes. Jim: So in the case of McDonald's, they are personalizing all of their digital menus. So let's say you go up to the digital menu at McDonald's and it shows Big Mac, fries, and shakes, 'cause they have your order history and that's what you like. So if you customize- Chad: Yeah. It can do face recognition too, right? Jim: Face recognition, also, check this out, also the capability of looking at your license plate, which is kind of freaky. Chad: Holy shit. Jim: And so it sees your license plate a mile off and says, "Oh, Chad is coming, cook us some Big Macs." You know? And then if I come up there and they start showing hot cakes because it knows I like the McDonald's breakfast so much. Any time is right for hot cakes. You're right, McDonald's, that's what I always get here. So there's that. Chad: This is like Blade Runner shit, right? Jim: It's sort of like when the Minority Report, when Tom Cruise has his eyes have been changed out. Chad: Replaced, yeah. Jim: And he walks through the shopping mall and they go, "Hello, Mr. Yamamoto, here's your food and your suit." That kind of stuff. And so although in reading this at one angle, the first reaction I think a lot of people will see is, "Okay, that's automation robots taking jobs away again," but again, I look at it through a different lens and I see how this automation is gonna birth new industries. So like in the case of the retail, I can see McDonald's doing the same thing, 'cause I guess they're basically retail. I see these kind of places, maybe not employees because of automated processes, but sparking a new industry like having events, right? Jim: So imagine you have this dress store, this clothing boutique, right? And you have all these automated processes where people can buy stuff themselves buy clicking the kiosk, whatever. Whatever flew you up to have an event and know your customers better, you can encourage impulse buying. You get a chance to do more social sharing and get the attention of a new audience out there. You get to say thank you to your existing customers who show up to your event and make them feel like VIPs. And then most importantly, you gather data on people there and what they're looking at, what they like, so you can use it for a future promotion. Chad: Well from my standpoint, the whole retail piece and what I read in the story and it makes sense is that the retail, the actual just checkout, isn't really that valuable and if you can check yourself out, like you go to the Kroger and you can check yourself out, you can allow a person, one person instead of several people, actually engage customers and not have to worry about are you getting the barcode right, you know what I mean? So it perspectively helps the customer experience and make things better for companies who are having issues right now because to be quite frank, we don't have enough people to fill the jobs. Chad: So that's a big issue. But on the other side, I'm gonna go ahead and transition, and believe it or not, Jim, Amazon is doing it again. What exactly, we'll tell you on the other side of this break. We're gonna hear a word from our Guinness buddies over at JobAdX. JobAdX: This is the sound of job search. This is the sound of job search defeat. Job search can be frustrating. Job seekers run into the same irrelevant ads, page after page before they find a match. When job seekers aren't engaged, conversions are low, budgets are wasted, jobs go unfilled. No one wins. But job search doesn't have to be defeating. JobAdX's smart search exchange references 400 data points to select the most targeted jobs and delivers what job seekers really want to premium ad units across our network. JobAdX: Score! JobAdX: That's the sound of JobAdX's relevant results attracting a qualified candidate and filling your job faster. Find out how to improve your job advertising campaigns, and increase candidate attraction and engagement by emailing us at joinus@jobadx.com. JobAdX: together, we can save job search. Chad: So, Jim, Amazon plans for AR goggles that track workers. What the hell ... Are haptic bracelets not enough these days for these guys? Jim: I think what Amazon is doing is they're trying to turn their workers into robots, it seems that way, right? Instead of being afraid of robots taking your jobs, they're just gonna turn you into a robot. This is what Amazon is doing, for those of you who don't know. They have a patent where people will put on these augmented reality goggles. So if you ever played Pokemon GO, you now the concept, or if you were ever on Facebook Messenger and you make somebody's face have stars on them or something, that's augmented reality, putting some kind of computer visual over your face through your camera so it looks like you're turning into an elf or something but you're really not. Jim: So anyway, you put on these goggles and so you put on these goggles and the goggles will say, "Okay, go left, go right, this is the box you're looking for," that kind of thing. It'll be able to direct you through their vast warehouse and it'll be like your, I'm dating myself, the Great Gazoo, a little helper on your shoulder to tell you ... Chad: It's like a heads up display. Jim: Yeah, yeah. Chad: It's like if you're a fighter pilot and you have the heads up display in the cockpit, it's like a heads up display. Jim: And so and one aspect is cool in that way, especially if you're new to their process, you're a new worker, you don't really know what's going on, and they say, "Okay, go figure it out." Put on the goggles and the goggles will walk you through things. So one hand, it's good because I can see how it could increase worker efficiency, that kind of thing. But on the other side, putting on these goggles would allow Amazon to know where you are and what you're doing at all times. So you won't be able to breathe. If you have 'em on when you're going to the bathroom, I wouldn't advise it. I wouldn't advise it. Jim: If you have something disparaging to say about your employer or manager, you may not want to say it while the goggle are on or while somebody else's goggles are on. Chad: That's crazy, dude. Jim: It's Big Brother in the office. It's kind of kind of scary Chad: Yeah, so again, the haptic bracelets that we saw that they were using in the UK in the warehouse, they pretty much had a sensor knowing exactly where you were too, and if you weren't close to the quote-unquote "box" or your area, the haptic bracelet would go off. So this is like, they're taking that like 25 steps further and literally, this could be your Big Brother eyes on your face. Yes, it's helping you from a heads up display standpoint, the box is over here, they have bar code scanners build in so all you have to do is look at the box to understand whether that's the box you're looking for or not. There's some really cool things to be able to help somebody do their job. Chad: But the other side of it, and knowing Jeff Bezos, for god's sakes, yeah, the Big Brother aspect is looming large. Jim: I think he's just biding his time. I know that they've bought this robot company, I forget the name of it, so that they can better automate their warehouses, and I think all the bad publicity they're getting for how they're treating their workers is gonna blow over because year by year, they're gonna start hiring less workers and just let more machines take their place. I mean, I know from year over year, they've hired less workers doing their Christmas rush, I do know that much. So they're going to turn more and more into these automated processes and take away the headache and the ... Jim: I noticed too that although they've gotten some bad press for how they're treating their workers, people aren't stopping their shopping with Amazon. So I don't know if it's hypocritical of people who are complaining, because ... Chad: It is hard. Jim: They've not stopped shopping. Chad: It is and it's hard, just 'cause it's so easy to find what you want, to have everything, not to mention ... I actually returned a phone case because I just bought a new phone and I got the wrong size case, and all you had to do was take a bar code in to UPS, they scanned it, and away it went. It was too easy to do a return. Hell, it was easier than going to Kohl's and doing it. It was too easy. So yeah, they're making the friction, especially the human friction, so much less, but then there's also ... Bezos is looking for reasons to actually be more automated, and one of the ways is through the force of raising wages to $15 an hour, right? They made that choice but you also see that looming as when they have an opportunity, they can say, "Look, we had to pay more, it was more efficient, it just made sense." Chad: But it's interesting, we just saw a CNN business article that said McDonald's, who has been fighting this whole $15 wage increase, is giving up. Did you see that? Jim: Yeah, yeah, and that tells me that they have their automation game on point. 'Cause okay, ClickIQ had a product day in London that I was privileged to be a part of, and then that product day, I gave the spiel about the fight for 15, which is the minimum wage going on, and I ran off different reasons why that was good and why it was bad and why it's ultimately gonna hurt workers I think, and so in the case of McDonald's, my saying the automation game is on point, I shared on one of my podcasts, the Jim Stroud podcast, how McDonald's has these automated kiosks, so how they basically work is you walk into McDonald's, you press a button for your Big Mac, you slide your credit card through, and then you walk up to the counter, somebody gives you your food. Right? Jim: That's on the inside of the store. I could easily imagine that being on the outside of the store in the drive through as well, especially if they can personalize the menu. So McDonald's is saying, in my opinion, I don't know, I don't speak for McDonald's, but I think the crown is saying, "Okay, we'll pay you $15, but instead of seven people working in the McDonald's, we're only gonna have two people work in the average McDonald's. So paying two people $15 an hour is easier than paying seven people $15 an hour because of our automation process, so once we've bought all these machines and they're in place, it works for me, so yeah, we'll go ahead." Jim: And by doing that, they can say, "We're sensitive to the workers and yes, you're right, we should be giving you $15, so we're gonna do the right thing. We're just not gonna do the right thing for five less people." Chad: Yeah, it's a little horse shit, because it doesn't matter what they're paying those humans, much like Amazon. They're looking to automate to get rid of the human friction in the first place. It's funny, because I can't push the book hard enough, but Peter Weddle wrote a book here recently called "Circa 2118", and it really talks about all of this and how it's happening. And when it starts to unroll, you're thinking, "Holy shit, dude. This is actually happening from a political, from an economic," you see it coming. And for a company like McDonald's to say, "Oh, we give up," you're right. It's because they see the long-term strategy and they understand that from an optic standpoint, if they pay right now, that's really ... They're not gonna have to do that forever because they're gonna automate anyway. Chad: Pepsi is spending billions of dollars to, and they're said it, to automate. They're gonna get rid of human friction. They're gonna use algorithms, they're gonna use automation and guess what? Less people will have fucking jobs. But guess what else? They're having problems filling those jobs. So they have plenty of reasons to say, "Paying them too much, we can't find people. Oh look, robots don't take sick leave." Jim: There's two other problems that have been coming on with that too that I think people don't take into account. One is the damage to the overall company brand, right? So I know there's gonna be some people that have read about this, gosh, I don't remember the name of the company, but it was in Canada, where people refused to use the self-check out lane because it says it takes jobs away from people. So they say, "We come to the store, we will not use these checkout lanes." So the population was so fed up, they won't do that. So I see more stuff like that happening, and so some brands will have to say, "Okay, how much do we automate? Do we automate to the point where we're saving money, that's great, but if we automate too much ... We can't automate, rather, too much, because then it'll make people mad and they won't use the automated stuff, forcing us to employ more people." Chad: Since we're looking at time, and I know everybody's looking to listen and learn and get the hell out, we're gonna go ahead and hear an ad from our friends over at Canvas. Jim: Ooh. 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. Canvas: 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: Well, Jimmy, that is a lactose intolerant, Cheese-free podcast, so what do you think? What else do you got to share? Jim: Oh, let's see. Well, I want to invite everyone to connect with me on LinkedIn, look me up, LinkedIn/in/jimstroud, J-I-M, S-T-R-O-U-D. If you want to hear more about the wonderfulness that I call ClickIQ, feel free to email me, actually, jim@clickiq.us. Chad: Excellent, guys. We out. Jim: Peace. 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. #McDonalds #Amazon #AR #Yahoo #JimStroud #Robots #AL #MachineLearning

You've just been acquired after being in business for a few short years. What are ya' going to do now? Go on The Chad & Cheese Podcast, of course! Or at least that's what Canvas' CEO and founder Aman Brar decided to do recently. In addition to discussing the Jobvite acquisition, Brar delves into a variety of topic, especially about how starting a recruiting technology wasn't the smartest thing ever. Enjoy. 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 listing 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: Alls I knows you win death match, next thing you know you get acquired. I mean, it's yeah, yeah. Are we rolling? Chad: Yeah. Joel: All right, cool. What's up guys? This is Joel Cheesman of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, here with Chad. Welcome to the post St. Patrick's Day edition of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. We are ironically in an English pub having beers, hair of the dog if you will. But we have a great guest today here in Indianapolis, Aman Brar from Canvas. Aman, welcome to the show. Aman: What's up? Really glad to be here and excited to be hanging at Chatham. Joel: You look excited. So, for those who don't know, one of our first face-to-face interviews was with your company. You were the winner of our first ever death match. Aman: It's true. Joel: And yeah, I think a thank you is maybe in store from you at this point. Aman: You guys got the equity agreements right, before we got acquired, did you guys get those? Joel: Yeah we're still waiting on that check, but that's okay. Aman: Oh okay man. I thought it was in the mail. Joel: By the way, full disclosure, you are a sponsor of the show. Aman: Indeed. Joel: Which I guess is a little bone here or there is nice. He does get the hometown discount, but that's neither here nor there. Aman: It's true. Joel: I'll start with the first question. Jobvite acquisition, how did you and Dan Finnigan, the CEO get together? How did this whole deal go down? Aman: The narrative, we had a lot of interest in the channel. The last company that me and many of the Canvas team members had scaled, we're very channel focused. So we worked well with the ecosystem, we drove deals and drove integration so we ran that same playbook which is a necessary playbook in the HR tech space. Joel: Oh yeah. Aman: So when we were putting the pieces for Canvas together, laying the groundwork, obviously we had a targeted list of partners that we wanted to work with, Jobvite was one of those. So we've been working on cultivating a relationship there which then led to basically them being our first official reseller. So versus just a market place partner, or a referral partner. They launched had product called Jobvite Text powered by Canvas and the negotiating of that agreement, and then the really exciting execution of that. So look, if that wasn't successful we're probably not part of the sports team today. Aman: But it was very successful. The product really took off and made a lot of sense for us to continue. So it was really just through ... Like in most cases I always tell folks I'm talking to, likely you're already doing business with your future acquirer and I think that largely played out in this case as well. Chad: Yeah, so big high five by the way. Aman: Yeah thanks man, appreciate it. It's fun. Chad: Awesome. We love hearing and seeing Indie business just fucking kick ass. Chad: So you said Jobvite Text. Aman: Yeah. Chad: Right? And that's the product. So we talked about this a little over a year ago. If you remember, we were kind of drunk, I think. But are you looking to prospectively change names and roll up under Jobvite and become Jobvite Text? Aman: Well I like my t-shirt a lot with Canvas. Joel: I like them too. Aman: No, in all seriousness it's a complex roll up. So you've got four brands, four companies. I think right now, and I think largely even for their conceivable future, these independent brands make sense and mean different things to different parts of the market. One of the advantages that we have with Canvas brand, or RolePoint might have, or Talemetry might have is we can go through our sales processes without complicating or hitting the trip wires of, "Oh my gosh are we changing our ATS?" Aman: And so I think there's some advantage to just continuing to be who we are, represent what we represent in the market place, knowing that there's certainly going to be those very consultant like synergies that will come into play. But at the end of the day, it's been of great benefit, I think to us, to Text Group, to AllyO, to you name it, to not have to get in the middle of an ATS switch over conversation as part of the sales process. And I think why anybody would want to jump into that really quickly, I don't know, you'd be confusing to me. So I think there's some advantages to continuing to operate how we've been. Chad: Yeah, I mean having a separate product, brand, being able to go after anybody with any applicant tracking system is awesome. Just looking at long term, from a Jobvite standpoint, being able to say, "Look, we have this, you don't." Whatever that applicant tracking system is, it seems like a huge market differentiator. And to be able to bring Canvas into that ... From our standpoint we've talked about this before, it's like you want to use that hammer. How long do you think it's going to take for Jobvite to actually bring Canvas in and say, "Okay this is our hammer?" Aman: I would argue these don't have to be separate things, actually. The second you can run a new playbook that's no longer having the leverage, just your publicly available APIs, you could drive a lot of strategic advantage through an integrated experience, but still go do a lot for the ecosystem. And I think you're also seeing other companies continue down that playbook, so I think the onus on Jobvite, Talemetry, RolePoint, Canvas is to go create a highly differentiated unique experience that delivers a lot to the enterprise. Aman: But it doesn't mean that we need to trade off everything that we're doing today across the ecosystem. And this is largely in the press release. At the end of the day, these roll ups happen largely to go attack the enterprise space, not to go track the SMB space. So again, you might be driving a lot of value and a lot of focus and a lot of sales place to go win that Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 market, but there's still a really big mid market out there where we don't need to be everything to everybody in that mid market, and so I think we're going to continue to see that. Joel: So for the foreseeable future Text recruit will be able to integrate with Jobvite, you'll be integrating with iCIMS, there won't be any sort of friction there. Aman: We've added additional partners conversations since the acquisition, so our integration playbook's still running, we've got two additional integrations that are in process right now. We've done 16 in the last 12 months and we got two more on deck as we speak. Joel: Great. So talk about your growth here in Indianapolis, what you're looking to either from a real estate standpoint or a ramping up employee standpoint. What will it mean for the local economy? Aman: Yeah, this was a really important part of the story for us. Thinking about Indie largely as being one of a small handful of employment centers for the overall entity. So likely by the end of the year, if you think about the combination of current Jobvite plus Canvas, plus Growth, and I think we're easily in the 50+ employees territory, which is becoming significant tech employment headcount. Aman: More importantly, though, I think that's just the 2019 story. I think what's most important is attitudinally, you talk to Dan, you talk to K1, obviously you're talking to me, Indianapolis, as far as leveraging the SAS strength here, is absolutely part of the thesis, and I would say part of why we're part of the story as well. Chad: So was Dan all in with Indianapolis knowing Salesforce is here, TechPoint, there's a lot of growth in the tech sector. Was that hard to sell him on or was it really easy? Aman: I wouldn't say it was a sales process so much as beyond Jobvite. And there's just a tremendous amount of interest in the Midwest right to have a non coastal employment center. And so, I think you saw, Greenhouse make investments in Denver, you're saying lots of companies with additional footprint in India, whether it's Infosys, whether it's Superior, whether my last company Apparatus a acquired by Virtusa. So I think you're just seeing that trend and I think Indie is riding that wave, and then we're fighting for owned it differentiation as a city across a lot of cities that are doing pretty well in tech. But we're doing very, very well. Aman: So I think it was not a sales process, the indie part, I think it just made a lot of sense and was part of the very, very early conversations. And to give Jobvite credit where credit's due, they'd already started investing in Indie prior to the Canvas acquisition as well, because they saw the talent pool here. Aman: So I think what you find is that, okay, you got Canvas, you got the team that's already here, that's probably going to lead to even bigger and better things. So, we're looking forward to that. And I think that's a fun part. It's a fun part of the gig now for us to go from a seed stage company where, as you know we got a lot done across the six of us, seven of us, we just hired- Chad: Dude, lean and mean. Aman: Yeah, lean and mean. Chad: Lean and mean. Aman: So we brought on seven and eight as we were closing the deal. I mean, we got a lot done for such a small team. But we're also very excited for the help, we're looking forward to just going out. Chad: Yeah, just double up on the Jergens and the tissue. Aman: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot we'll be doubling up on like more coffee, Chad. Exactly. Chad: So from a reseller standpoint, is everything business as usual or have things changed? I mean, this is a big roll up, man. Aman: It is a big roll up. Chad: This isn't just Jobvite coming in and say, "Canvas, you're my boy, boo. This is Canvas, Talemetry. I mean this is RolePoint. This is big. So from your standpoint, being a part of this big roll up, what's the big priority for you right now? Aman: This sounds cliche, but it's like the most important thing. It's like don't get distracted at the end of the day. I think folks can get distracted, you can start honestly doing too much, too fast without there being an understanding of what really matters to the client, so I think what K1's done a nice job of Jobvite, RolePoint, Talemetry is we kind of operate with this do no harm philosophy. Like, we all have great things going. The goal is to have something great going together. Let's not screw things up in the, in the interim of that step. Aman: So I think it's been a focus on the client experience, like I'm building out the team here, I don't know folks in California needing to interview the folks that I'm hiring. I mean, we're running our playbooks. There are times where I call because I want to get, "Hey, what do you think about this kind of role?" But like it's a very supportive environment across the four companies right now. The CEOs of the four companies, we chat once or twice a week formally and then a lot of a one-off conversation. But it's a lot of just seeking to understand, I would say, like making sure that we're being really thoughtful. I think the part that's been exciting is seeing a Jobvite customer that didn't have Canvas before, Canvas customer that didn't have Jobvite before or even we've got inquiries coming in from even Talemetry folks now saying, "Hey, we're interested in Canvas." Aman: So I think that whole technology integration, conversation is really, really exciting. But I think just start screwing up a really great thing that all of these companies had going is the really important part, on day 1 through 15. Joel: A little bit of a macro question. In your history, you started with Chacha, which for those who don't know was basically you used to be able to text a question into the short code Chacha. I don't know what numbers those were, I'm sure you do. Aman: 242242. Joel: Yeah. And you would actually get a text answer back, sometimes manually. That business is no more, the smartphone killed that business. Do you stay awake at night ever thinking about messaging, texting, losing, or if fatigue setting in because it used to just be, I'd get text messages now I get text messages, I get Facebook messages, LinkedIn messages, Twitter direct messages. I get so many messages that I fear that for businesses that make their living on messaging, maybe there's some fatigue, maybe something else will replace that. Does that keep you up at night, or what are your thoughts on that? Aman: A lot of thoughts on it. I think the first one is, and I mentioned this last time we spoke too, we were very conscientious that text is not part of our name has a company. We really felt like what's really important is that messaging, there's always going to be some sort of messaging, right. Not even applied ZING but sure. But I think we were always thinking about the long game. So you've got messaging, that'll always be important, conversation, that will always be important. And then the medium shift, right? And you've seen my tongue in cheek Vimeo video where I talk about the homing pigeon ... and I think that stuff's true. The recruiters continually have to adapt. There's something really important to understand about these channels right now, which is the way that the APIs for Facebook and WhatsApp and so forth, they don't function the same way as SMS, right? Aman: And so, all these things will continue to be important. Whatever the next messaging app will become important. But ubiquity allows you to do more, just like we, we can do more with email, phone calls and text and those other channels are just scratching the surface of what's capable. If the labor market shifts and it gets a little less tight and the power shifts back to the employers, then you're going to see those other channels take off faster. But the reality is those channels rely on 100% inbound approach. You can't just reach out to somebody on Facebook Messenger and be like, "Hey, are you interested in this opportunity that you applied for?" You can do it on your personal channel, but you can't do that through the B2B API side. Aman: So I think that there's just a lot that has to be worked on, and I'm as confident as anyone that SMS will have a half-life just like other communication platforms have had. I wouldn't say it keeps me up at night. I think we're still in an age where, I mean hell, there's still email marketing technology companies launching, right? And we're on about year 20 of that, so I think we got some runway, but I think it's important to keep our eye on the future and how do we make sure ... We from the beginning it felt like we're a headless application, ultimately. And we chose our first volley to be SMS. But I think you'll find us having that same omni channel approach at the end of the day. That becomes a requirement. Joel: Do you envision any particular headwinds for the 10-digit number text messaging business versus the short code five to six digit where there's more, I guess, legislation around the five to six and that ended still sort of the Wild West. I assume legislation will eventually come to that. What are your thoughts? Aman: Yeah. We want to be part of the solution here. I have a lot of thoughts on this, which is I'm sure at some point in time somebody may come screw this up, and we are absolutely not going to be the entity that does that. So we're very, very careful. Lots of governors in place, we drive organic what we call organic experiences, so there's no list loading any of that stuff in Canvas software. Inevitably this could happen. Someone could jump the shark here and that might require legislation that you would want, that I would want, that others would want. So I wouldn't even argue that I'm anti legislation here. I think, to the degree that this becomes a problem, we should take a look at resolving it. I'm the last person that wants to be bothered via text message as well from something that doesn't feel like it should be there. Chad: Oh yeah. So we know Canvas Bot is out there, right? Talking about messaging, but then there's the whole chatbot, chatbot, chatbot kind of scenario that's out there. So when you're talking to clients today, or even when you were talking to Jobvite, was that something that perks them up to want to have more of a discussion, or was it just really just predicated on the messaging aspect of what you guys do? Because there's a lot of noise that's out there and chatbots are creating a shit ton of noise. Did that help? Did it hurt or did it not even matter? Aman: I would say messaging is the least interesting thing that Canvas does. If f you've missed the plot line, if you think that's what's interesting about what we do, I think it's the tooling and we started rightfully in a world where we thought semi automation was the first way to go in, and you had an inside view on this where ultimately we were structuring the recruiter's side of the conversation through the questions library and those libraries that we'd created. Then we rolled in before we launched recommended answers, so the suggested answer pops up. And then the goal is just, how do you structure the other side of the equation and start to get better data? So ultimately the messaging part, they paid way too much if they acquired us for messaging. I put it that way. Aman: So now let's talk about Canvas Bot. I think our paper is written a little bit differently versus the other papers out there in that we believe the right place to start was a mobile centric experience. And if you're going to talk about mobile centric, we wanted an experience that didn't require an application to be downloaded. I think that if you think you're going to build your business in this labor market, expecting people to be sitting in front of their laptop while they're in a discrete window of time with a little chat bubble window, you're super confused about human behavior right now. Aman: So the reality is that Canvas Bot and the conversational engine that drives it, it's really powerful and people confuse it because they want to see this web windows-based experience. Reality is go try those and let me know what you think about them and ask them any questions that you like, and it'll keep referring you back to the same website that you're already on. It's like, "Hey, how many interns do you hire this year?" "If you're interested in applying, it's at Acme Corporation." I mean, it's just a nonsense experience. I agree, Joel, I hope it gets better over time, but I think what we're trying to say is, "Hey, let's build a bot experience that meets candidates where they are today." That was in our very first marketing material. Aman: And so I think people are missing the plot. If you're building for this web based window experience, you're just missing what's happening right now. And I would argue your bot is very compelling, it's just built for the world that's on your phone, not the one that's on your website right now. Chad: So that being said, the application process sucks. For most companies, when you go directly to an applicant tracking system, when you have to go through and actually rip apart your process because your instituting Canvas, does that start to help companies better understand the shit that they've sent candidates through over the years and really help them focus on user experience? Aman: I think whether it's Canvas, whether it's Talemetry, which that I would argue that was a lot of the value they're bringing to a lot of enterprise Oracle clients. How do you really rethink the UX? I think whether it's us or the 50 other companies that are going to launch this month, I think so much of it is just UX innovation, right? Like how are we going to move the user experience forward? And what we were trying to do was to move the ball forward with regard to this, no app needed experience, we'll take care of plugging the data in to the ATS or to wherever you want it. And I think we're still scratching the surface of what's going to be possible, both inside and outside. And I think sometimes we want to call it an AI revolution or an HR revolution. Really, it's a user experience revolution. Right? Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Aman: I mean, that's really what it is. And I think that's the really important part. And the other side of the equation then is the companies automating what can be automated right now. And we've talked about this, I think too many companies are selling autonomous driving when we still have NC cruise control, and we're just not going to be that company. Chad: So you're not just going to say AI [crosstalk 00:20:32]- Aman: No, and we're not going to tell people our product's going to do things that it doesn't do, and that no one's product really does. One of my things as any of these companies, if their product actually did what they said they did, they couldn't be shy of a $1 billion valuation now. Right? Chad: Right. Aman: It's impossible, right? Chad: Yeah. Aman: So help me understand the $30 million valuation. So I think we're just losing the plot line. We're kind of taking advantage of a buyer that has just a lot of information they're having to sort through right now. But if you think about the technology being sold and the valuations aren't even close to matching up right now. And I think that's the first tell that we have a lot of work left ahead of us. Right? Chad: So, I mean we talked to Dan Finnigan last week, CEO of Jobvite, and we were talking about modeling. And you can't really look at the HR industry to model. And he kept saying sales and marketing and looking at those different types of industries to be able to focus on technology because that's all predicated on revenue. It's all predicated on ensuring that you do have a great candidate experience. Chad: So from a Canvas standpoint, is that where you guys really saw ... because that's exactly what it sounds like you guys are doing. Is that where you guys gelled, and knowing that you had the same kind of focal point? Aman: Yeah, I would say so. I would say that there are lines of even Jobvite's evolution from kind of where they started with social and email, where there's no doubt that that early emphasis on communication and messaging and channel, I think helped us be pretty congruent with how we fit into that overall ecosystem. So I do think that Jobvite saw many pieces of this pretty early, and I think we helped fill in a missing piece to that story. Aman: But I think messaging, again, it's really the least interesting thing. It's the engine behind it. Joel: I have a couple of, I guess, I'd call rapid fire. We'll see what your answers are like to see how rapid that is. [crosstalk 00:22:44] Yeah, I'm totally a motivated. Joel: One of the first things I got on you about when we first met was your domain, gocanvas.io. Does the extra funds give you the ability to like go get a real URL at this point? Aman: It's a great question. I'd like to spin this another way, Joel, I'd like to let all the young kids out there that want to start a startup just know that you can have a really shitty URL and still go crush it. So how about that? That's the way I like to answer that question. Joel: Boom! Okay. That's not the only one. Yeah, I know. What was the price tag for Canvas? Aman: It was $1.7 billion. Joel: Tongue in cheek on that one. They raised 200 million for the three acquisition. So I'll let my listeners do the math on that one. Aman: Obviously can't articulate the no, I was totally ready for it. Joel: And then lastly from me, because I'm getting hungry. You have a history of starting companies, being a part of companies, selling and then getting out in a fairly short order of time. Should we expect the same out of your experience at Canvas? Are you dedicated to the long haul with seeing this company for the marathon, are you in it to get it up and running and going and then up to your next startup? Aman: I'll give my honest, but what you may deem to be, political answer. When we sold Apparatus, I didn't have a specific timetable. I wanted to finish the job. And I will tell you, like right now I don't have ... I mean, here's a part of the contract I can tell you. I'm not here today because I have to be here today and I'm not working at [crosstalk 00:24:26] Canvas today ... more broadly. To me, the work's not done, and to me, life's about a collection of interesting experiences. A, let's go fulfill some destiny that's still left with Canvas. Two personally, right, I'll make it personal, I like learning and if I wake up today and say, "Where can I learn more?" Would it be conjuring up my next idea on a piece of paper or working to figure out what a four-company integration opportunity looks like. Aman: And so I think for me, the business problem and the opportunity is still really, really interesting. And when I wake up one day and I'm like, "Oh man, I think it could be more interesting elsewhere," then maybe that happens. But I would tell you right now we're not there. Now with that said, if after this podcast Dan's like, "I don't like what you just said on that," and he fires me, then maybe I'm off to my next thing. But no, I think the job's not done. And when it is done, I'm sure we'll all be hearing about it, but right now it's not. Joel: So piggyback on that, and I'm inspired to ask another question. Chad and I've been doing this for a long time and we've seen companies come and go. And there seems to be an underlying fact that people who come in that aren't of this industry tend to not last very long in this industry. You are a rare exception and success story. So for anyone that's looking to come into HR tech or recruiting solutions, what advice would you give them as someone who was, I guess, an outsider to our industry? What advice would you give them to being successful in our space? Aman: Sometimes I get as far as writing the first sentence of a blog post when I never write. But I will tell you this, so let's just write it in real time. To your point, had I really understood the space, I don't think I would have launched Canvas. Do you know what I mean? I think it would have felt like too impossible to me. And I actually think that the ignorance- Chad: Is that an adoption type of thing or what? Aman: Yeah, I think it's an adoption thing. I think the buyers, it's a very different buyer than [crosstalk 00:26:23] we've talked about this- Chad: So reticent, right? Aman: Yeah. It's reticent, it's complicated. I think you've got this emerging group of HR leaders that the rest of the leadership team is still catching up to understand that this has to be a really important part of their business. Here's an example that I talk about often. If a CEO is working on their next round of financing, they're right there with the CFO at the bank, right? Chad: Yeah. Aman: If you're working on fixing a shortfall in your sales plan for the year, what's the next big pitch I can go to with the sales VP? But, for all the talk that CEO's do about talent, what's the first thing they even know about their talent pipeline? When's the last time they showed up on a college campus? So I think part of it is, is that, look, a lot of people want to go blame HR leaders. I don't think that's the case. I think CEOs are kind of full of shit when it comes to talent. They talk about it. They don't spend nearly as much time understanding that except when it's in the papers to talk about, I got a shortage of this or I need grant money for that. Chad: It's a canned quote or something. Aman: Yeah. But they don't really go work on the problem. And so I think that then creates a larger challenge as a SAS company because these are fake dollars in the paper, right? Chad: Yeah. Aman: These aren't real dollars that they actually want to spend. So I'm really glad we did it and I'm actually glad I came into it ignorant of that because I think when we were building companies in the past, the only reason we were successful is because of our focus on talent. We were obsessed with it, and at Apparatus we were obsessed with it. So I just took for granted that that same obsession existed at the leadership level, and I really don't think it does. I think it does in the newspapers and it does when it's convenient, but it really doesn't when it comes to the blocking and tackling the running of a company. Chad: So it seemed from the outside that you guys were hyper focused on exactly what you were trying to get done in the platform. You weren't trying to pivot every six months. And that's hard, especially when their perspective investors out there and companies are saying, "Hey look, I'll give you some cheddar if you do x, y, or z." What, and again, back to Joel's point for all those other startups that are out there, what can you say about startups and really being disciplined and not getting into pivot mode? Aman: We should start getting a little bit of a allergy to that word. There's a couple of things that happen there. One is not enough thoughtful research before you launch. And I think not enough like iteration, so getting the product in your hands. I think sometimes we want to maybe blame the customer, that they don't get it and therefore we pivot versus just going, "Hey, what's not right about my platform yet?" And sometimes you can just be one minor ingredient off to make that cupcake tastes great. I think there's a lot of companies out there that- Chad: Instead of scrapping [crosstalk 00:29:19]- Aman: That's exactly right, that just probably needed to keep listening. And I think we loved being so small because we were so raw and close to our customer and client all the time and we're naming features after recruiters and having a really great time doing that. But I think that too many folks maybe pivot to early, easy to say for the person who didn't pivot and had an exit, so I recognize that. But I do think that there's, I think we should have some fortitude about what you're trying to do. Aman: One of the ones that were always fending off was, go become a sales marketing company. Take this, this is unbelievable platform. We had clients asking, "Could I use this for our customer care op?" "Could I use this to communicate with our clients?" And we just kept saying no. And the reason we said that was our value was in the tightness of the relationship we were creating between the recruiter and us. And were just like, that's it. Nothing else really mattered. And we'd always joke maybe five years down the road, yes. But right now we can't do that. Chad: Aman, I would like to thank you. Another high five. Aman: Yeah, thanks. Chad: Great to see this happen. Joel is over here withering away, so we need to get lunch and probably some whiskey. Aman: Yes. We win Joel Cheesman’s shittiest company to ever launch and have amazing exit with gocanvas.io. That's gocanvas.io. Now keep in mind, little ones out there that are going to launch a company. You can absolutely crush it. Deal with Joel knocking on your URL every day. But I will tell you right now, I'm glad I never spent the money on it. I'm glad I spent it on amazing people and customers. Thank you very much. Joel: We out. Chad: Boom. 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 checkout our sponsors because their money goes to my college fund. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #Canvas #Jobvite #CEO #UX #EmployerBrand #process #Texting #Messaging #Acquisition

How do small companies achieve CULT BRAND status? Meet James. He's The Custodian of Culture and Chief Idea Officer of one of the fastest-growing private companies in Canada - Fiasco Gelato. And on this Uncommon exclusive, the boys dig into the secrets that have helped make his company one of the fastest growing in North America. Check it out! 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. Chad: I'm going to be over the top. Say hello to the easiest way to find interested and qualified candidates. Joel: Dude, you need to tone it down. I was just napping. You mean Uncommon's automated sourcing that turns passive candidates into interested and qualified applications? Chad: Yep. Uncommon automation helps recruiters cut their sourcing time by 75%. Joel: Wow, how much coffee did you have today? Chad: A lot. Joel: Anyway, dude, 75%? That sounds like black magic or something. Chad: Close. It's called automation. It's simple, actually. You just feed or post your jobs into Uncommon. The platform identifies your job requirements and in seconds, Uncommon uses those requirements to search over 150 million candidate profiles. Then, it pulls back only the qualified candidates. Joel: Don't forget, you can connect your email, and Uncommon will provide automated outreach with your customized messages to activate those passive candidates, those pesky passive candidates. Chad: Even better, I'm going to one-up you. Uncommon shows exactly how the candidate meets all the job requirements with a side-by-side comparison view against the job requirements. Joel: Which means you won't be asking yourself, "What in the hell is this candidate doing here?" Chad: No. But you will be asking yourself, "Where has Uncommon been all my life?" Joel: Seriously? Uncommon is the easiest way to find qualified candidates, active or passive. Chad: Visit uncommon.co and use discount code ChadCheese for 20% off. Joel: 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 recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Bubble up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: It's pronounced Boettcher? Chad: Boettcher. Yeah. Boettcher. Joel: Boettcher. 'Cause if I do it wrong, I could get Canadian death threats or something. Chad: It doesn't matter, 'cause we do it all of the time. Joel: Just say, "Sorry" after. Chad: Yeah, and this is, it's an explicit podcast, so say whatever you want. Joel: All right. We're recording, right? Yeah? Okay. Hey, what's up, guys? This is Cheese from the Chad and Cheese podcast, HR's most dangerous. You know us, you love us. What's up? From the, I don't know, what are we calling this? The Banff series of podcasts, I guess? Chad: I think you call it the Branff series, but yeah, it's the Banff. Joel: It looks like a Bramff. Chad: It's Banff. Joel: You know when a girl is a Lisa, but she looks more like a Susan? Anyway, yeah, this place looks more like a Bramff to me. Chad: The gathering, dude. Joel: But anyway, we are honored to welcome to the show James Boettcher. Did I say that correctly? James: You got it. Chad: Damn. You never get that shit right. Joel: James, no one on our show will know who you are, so you're a virgin. You're virgin territory for everybody here. James: I love it. I love it. Joel: James is the "Custodian of Culture and Chief Idea Officer" at a fairly well renowned Gelato shop here in Canada. Not in the US yet, right? James: Not yet, and not so much a shop ... We're in about 3,000 retailers across the country. You can pick it up and take it home with you. We've got one shop. It's our gelato factory and coffee bar. It's like Willy Wonka meets Google. Joel: Not to put the pressure on you, but I've been promised that you're the best interview here at the show. James: Oh, shoot, sorry to disappoint already. Chad: Oh, [crosstalk 00:03:36] expectations. Joel: You have a really interesting story of how you got started. You're a Calgary guy, born and bred. Bleed this city to the bone. Give our audience a little bit about you, how you got started, and then, we'll go into the business and your employees, and whatnot. James: Yeah, sounds good. Yeah, born and raised here in Calgary, Alberta. A huge Flames fan, and we didn't have too much growing up, so- Joel: That's a hockey team, by the way. James: Yeah, Calgary Flames, for all the- Joel: For some of those down [crosstalk 00:04:03] down south of the border. James: Yeah, there you go. Chad: Stupid Americans, I swear. James: Yeah, so my whole life, I've sort of had this innate desire to sort of go get what I want. At a young age, we didn't have too much cash, so digging through dumpsters for coke cans to take back to the bottle depot or shoveling walks was the real deal. Joel: I'm glad you didn't say food. James: Yeah, no. Joel: At least you have cans to recycle. James: Yeah, yeah. Joel: I was like, "Man, this is a real sad story." James: Yeah. It's not so sad. It's just about doing whatever it takes, right? Joel: It's about hustling. You're a hustler, from what I've [crosstalk 00:04:37], up to this point. James: There you go. There we go. Yeah, so always doing something on the side. I started this little design company called Paperback Design when I was in my high school days to help make some money. I'd moved out when I was 15, and kind of needed to pay rent, and one of my clients was this company called Fiasco Gelato. Fast forward to 2008, 2009, and the owner of the company was busy doing other things, and said you love this company a little bit more than I do. Why don't you take it over? The problem was, was I had $1,800 in my bank account, and- Joel: By the way, we have a lot of hip, young kids that listen to the podcast, so something really bad happened around 2008 that maybe created opportunity for you. James: Yeah, so I'm about to take over the shop, and the guy's name is Matt, and Matt says, "Hey, do you want to take it over?" I'm like, "I'm like $1,800." We did a handshake deal to repay $100,000 over three years. Joel: Only in Canada. James: Yeah, so I borrowed $5,000 from my aunts, and $5,000 from my good friend, Chris, and we were doing some light renovations to reopen Fiasco 2.0. Someone threw a brick through the front window of the store before I'd ever made five bucks in the shop. Matt came to me, and he still had the lease and insurance in his name, and he said- Joel: So much for all Canadians being nice. James: Yeah, exactly. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a Canadian, no. Chad: One of those tourist Americans. Joel: Yeah, yeah, fly through. "I hate gelato." James: Let's get them. Let's get them. Joel: Ice cream. James: Yeah, so in this moment, I kind of had to decide if I was going to just let it go, or sail on, and said if not now, then when? Rebuilt the store, and was there for five months. Kicked ass, and then, the landlord came by and said, "Great job. You're going to pay double." Joel: Oh, Jesus. James: Being 25, and not great at math, I still knew double was bad. Shut her down, and put everything in storage. Joel: It's one thing to take over a shop, and sell sugar, ice sugar. James: Yeah, yeah. Joel: I assume you had employees. James: Yeah, we had a few. Joel: Had you managed people before? Was this a nightmare? Talk about that. James: Yeah. I kind of got thrown into managing people when I was in high school. I worked at this grocery store called DeBaggis, and I was the assistant store manager at 17 years old. I had to basically manage people that were always older than me. What I learned in those moments was clear communication being effective, but I also learned that I actually had an innate ability to lead people, and playing on sports teams when I was younger, and whatnot, I started to see this emergence. Fast-forward to running my own company, and we had to bring people in. James: No one really knew what the company had, from an HR perspective, 'cause we didn't, we didn't have an HR person. We didn't have an HR manual. It was just like, "Do you want to come scoop ice cream? It's going to be a good time." I think a lot of people came to Fiasco in the early days because the brand had a bit of swagger to it. It was kind of sexy. No one really knew what gelato was, still, but they wanted to have the tasty ice cream, or the unique ice cream. James: But as this whole thing happened, when the fire happened, and then, we had to close the store, it was a difficult time, and I think I learned a lot about how to let people down easy. I kind of made a promise I would never lay people off. Everyone that worked in the company at that time, we found them other opportunities when we basically closed it down in 2010, and then, three or four months later, when I reopened, I called all these people back, and said, "Hey, we're putting the band back together. Do you want to come join the cause again?" That loyalty, employee zero-zero, one of the first person that ever worked for me, Brittany Back, is still a part of the company today, which is a testament to kind of some special things. Joel: Would you say there was more loyalty to Fiasco, the brand, or was there a newfound loyalty to you, the new owner? Or, both? James: Maybe a hybrid of both, that the intersection is a grandiose vision that if we can dream it, we can do it kind of thing, so yeah. Joel: Now, you take over a store. Then, something really bad happens, natural disaster style to Calgary. Talk about that. James: Right. Yeah, so shop opens, shop closes. It's these peaks and valleys of emotion, all the time. I try to recall those moments of how hard it was, when I think things are hard now. But we're feeding a lot of our fans through restaurants and cafes, and in 2013, the Alberta floods happened up here. Half the province is under water. We lose 40% of our business overnight. Accidentally, we put it out to the community we want to help. Again, being born and raised here, we wanted to do something, and it's in our DNA. We ended up launching these two glass jars in the Calgary co-op that were called two by two, rebuild the zoo. Co-op was so ecstatic that A, we showed up for the community, and sold 12,00 jars that were all hand-filled, 10 liters at a time. Joel: I saw what he did there, with the two by two save the zoo. That was our [crosstalk 00:09:23]. James: Yeah, yeah. I like that. It's good, right? Joel: I'll say. Chad: He's a good Catholic. James: After that, co-op was like, "Great job. What's next?" I had this clear jar. I was obsessed with getting it right, and didn't want to launch a new grocery too soon, 'cause you sort of get one at bat, and when we did, people were ecstatic about the product. That was 24 stores. We were working around the clock. I think one of the things, too, on, from a people perspective, is I don't know that we would have achieved what we did if people didn't believe in what we stood for. So much of our community giveback and investment in something that was bigger than us was, I think, an integral part of why people would work 12, 14, 16 hour days, six, seven, eight days a week. Chad: Did you realize that you were creating this cult brand, at this point? James: I think that I would have agreed that it was possible. Somebody would say to me, "What's your dream?" I'm like, "To be bigger than Haagen-Dazs one day." That's an easy reference point. But as time went on, I realized that actually, it was less about scale of a brand, like Haagen-Dazs, in terms of reach or sales, and it was more about looking at brands like Starbucks and Virgin, and Netflix, and saying how can we actually create a company that changes the world from an employment perspective? Because undeniably, we spend more than a third of our lives working. When we go to these jobs, sometimes, they're real shitty, and people spend their whole lives with a third of it being really shitty all the time. I said well, what if we just change that, and it's really enjoyable and rewarding, and you learn how to be a better person in your personal life? You look after all those pieces. How does that now translate into changing the world in the communities that these people live in, and their families, and how they share the story with others, and then encourage others to make that same change. Joel: Was there a time as you were growing where the number of applicants that was coming in started increasing to the point where you said, "Holy shit, people really want to work here?" Talk about that. James: Yeah, we get a lot of people reaching out directly that are, "I'll come do whatever," kind of thing. When we put up, post-up the specific, yeah, in the early days, it was impossible to get a resume in the door. You kind of had to convince people just to come check it out. You know? Chad: Yeah. What's this gelato stuff? James: Yeah. One of the most rewarding things now is we are sharing this. We just hired somebody new in the position we were hiring for. We had hundreds of applicants come in, and then, we narrowed it down to 60 phone screenings. Then, we got down to 20 in person. Then, we had a final four. When you share with those final four people how far they've come, 'cause they realize, through the interview process, it's not like they came in one day, and we said yes or no. We have a six to eight step interview process. They were like, "This has actually taught." James: I had one of them reach out to me this week and say, "That was the most fascinating, and I learned so much. I can't stop talking about your interview process." She didn't even get the job. She's like, "I just want to stay warm, meet you for coffee. I'll take any job you got," which is pretty magical, when you think about it, that people are willing to leave the careers they already have, or look towards a brand that maybe can't pay as much as, you know, in Calgary, it's an oil and gas business, right? The reality is is that we can't pay as much as those companies. But so often now, people are saying, "I actually want to be a part of building something that matters." They'll leaven an organization like that. Or, they'll take a pay cut. Or, they'll find a way to make it work, if the opportunity's there. Joel: Did you find that, as you were doing good in the community, that the appeal to a potential candidate also sort of moved in lockstep with as you were doing good for the community, more and more people said I want to work for these guys? James: Yeah. I think that there definitely would be some correlation there. The hardest part about all of that is generally when you're giving back to the community, you're activating resource, or depleting resource financially that you can't pay people. I always say people are really attracted to the funness, or the excitingness, or the community driven aspect of our brand. But then, when you're- Joel: The excitingness. I like that word. James: Excitingness. There's actually, there's a book at Fiasco of words I've made up, so we'll just add it. There's also a cry count, but we won't, we'll save that for another podcast. But all of those pieces, ultimately, attract them, but then, there's sort of that cold, hard moment where it's like, "Hey, this is really all we can afford," and we're very transparent about our finances. People ultimately have to decide. I feel like we pay well. We pay a living wage. We don't talk about minimum wage at Fiasco, 'cause it's literally not enough for people to survive. But we're not paying $250,000 to- Chad: Right. You didn't go into this to create separate brands. It's like the brand is this cult brand of wonderful gelato and we help the community, and it's just like everything kind of flows. If you want to be a part of this, right, if you want to be a part of this- James: Yeah, you're either in, or you're out. Chad: Right, so it's more of a holistic kind of angle, as opposed to, as opposed to trying to create these little kind of fissures of brand. James: Yes, yeah, yes. Joel: Part of the question would be do you work to create an employment brand, or does it just happen? James: It's funny. Shannon and I were just talking about this right before the podcast. I think accidentally, that is something we've created in a big way. A few folks have come up and said your talk last year was the most moving talk, because not only was it relatable, but it now activated me to go out and say to my employer that we need to do these things. I think that the work that we've done on that in the company was sort of intentionally, but by accident, and what I mean by that is we weren't, there was no strategy around it. James: It was just this is the right thing to do, so we're just going to do it. If it doesn't work out, we'll probably find out. But fortunately, if you do the right thing, it's pretty cliché, but if you do the right thing, the money's going to come. If you do the right thing, then, you can sleep at night. If you do the right thing, then your people are going to look after everything. I think Chris or Ryan, one of them, was talking, "Take care of your people, then, they'll take care of the customer." For sure. Employees first, 100% of the time. Joel: For those who weren't at that talk, last year, and I'm sure everyone listening to this has that- Chad: Was not, yeah. James: It's sort of a gathering. Joel: Give us sort of a snapshot of what you talked about that was so impactful. James: Yeah, so I shared the origin story of Fiasco. I think it was relatable for people in the room that have their own businesses, or work in smaller businesses. I think our conferences like this, the message that a giant brand might share, I was in the M&Ms talk this morning. It's great. It's inspiring, but I don't know how relatable it is, because you don't have a billion dollar budget to shoot a movie, kind of thing. Joel: Yeah, and 85% of companies don't. James: Yes, exactly. Chad: CGI, some M&Ms, or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. James: Yeah, exactly. I think that's why there was, I was a deeper connection. I kind of brought it back to this pretty important piece that's become part of my journey. When I was younger, as I shared before, we didn't have much, rowing up. My dad was in these job placement things. But he'd often come home either overworked, or underpaid, or not cared for, or whatever it might be. As I started to build this company, I realized that there was accidentally, again, this thing occurring where every decision I had to make around the people in the organization, there was a simple governor. It was this idea of building the company that I would want my dad to work for. For anyone listening, it could be your mom, your dad, your aunt, your uncle. It doesn't matter. Chad: Yeah, yeah. James: But we can all relate to that. We can all look back to our childhood, and say, "What was it like when my dad or mom came home from work, and what did they share with me about their boss or their job, or the work they did, and how meaningful it was, or how shitty it was?" Or, whatever it was. Now, my dad just celebrated five years at Fiasco. Chad: No, that's awesome. James: It's the real deal. He left the company he worked at for 18 years. Chad: Fuck. That is fucking awesome. James: He came to me one day and said, "The work that I do doesn't light me up anymore, and I can be your janitor." I said, "I don't need a janitor, dad. But I need a receiver." He literally accepted. Not a lot of pay, and a job that, he's 60 years old at the time. Probably physically can't do at the level he would like to. But it's black and white, every single day. Every decision is literally does this decision agree with a company that my dad would want to work for? That's, it's magic in itself. There's a lot of empathy and humility and understanding, within the organization, when it comes to people, because I just think of Shannon, she's my, I call her my boss, but she's my assistant, and when she has something in her life occur with her kids, or that's real life, you just treat it like she's your parent, and what you'd want to do. It makes it so easy. So easy. Chad: Just about every cult brand we've heard, right, they've said if you're thinking about people, not investors, right, not the agent, not the noise that's out there, but you're focused, you're not distracted, and you understand that your people are the ones who actually service, right, they're the ones who provide, you know, those are the ones who have become the cult brands. James: 100%, yeah. Chad: Right? Can you speak to that for startups, right? We've got a ton of startups that we talk to. Joel: And small businesses. Chad: Yeah, small businesses, and they have these investors that are coming to them with tons of cash, and that's all well and good. But what would you say to them about how to actually get a huskiness, and have the grit and the determination that you've had to be able to make it to being a cult brand? James: Yeah, I think that there's often a juxtaposition between investors and shareholders, and what people think the accountability needs to be, which is generally driven by the bottom line. Actually looking at it through a lens of if we simply just do the right thing by our people, and then do not accept money, or do not work with the bank, or do not have shareholders that do not align with those values, then, it's really easy when you say, "Hey, sorry, we lost money, but we didn't lose any employees," or, "Hey, sorry, we pay people a living wage and actually change the fabric of our community, but we didn't make 20% EBITA." Chad: Amen, yes. James: Those, that's the best advice I can give. The challenge I have is inherently, people want to do the right thing. There's, sure, there's some shitty people in the world. But the reality is is 99.9 just want to do the right thing. But then, in business, they sort of lose sight of that very easily. I don't understand it. Chad: Pressure. Weakness, and pressure. Not, and discipline. James: Yeah, it's not, it's so broken. The way some COs or leaders or whatever treat their people, it's disgusting. My frustration is is that it's like they walk in the door of business, and all of a sudden, turn into this monster. I'm like what if you just created everyone in your company like your kids, or your brother and sister, or your dad. Then, it's like holy shit. That's, it's just easy. The hardest thing to do for sure for anybody is fire somebody. But then, you get into business, and they're like, "Oh, blah blah blah," and they're like really cruel about it. For us, it's if we have to let somebody go, it's never a surprise. Never a surprise. When people, when it comes to that, when we get to that point, they're like, "I understand." Chad: Expectations, dude. I mean, transparency and expectations. James: Yeah, 100%. Joel: Well, James, I'm being told that we're out of time. James: Oh, my God. Joel: But I want to say we really appreciate you sitting down. For anyone who wants to know about you, when you're coming to the US, where could they go find that out? James: Yeah. FiascoGelato.ca is the website. The handle on any social media is Fiasco Gelato. Don't get us confused in the US with Gelato Fiasco. That's for another podcast. Fiasco Gelato, it's crazy. Then, personally, just James Boettcher on all platforms. If you want to see the talk from last year, head over to the cult gathering website, and it's on there. Feel free to let me know how it moved you. Joel: My only regret is we didn't get to talk about why an ice cream company in Canada was a good idea. We'll save that for another show, maybe. Chad: Yes, I love it. We'll pull him back in for another show, because that, I think that could be an entire segment. Joel: Yeah. How much therapy did you have, or have you had a psychological review? James: Here's the trick. It's not about gelato. Joel: Oh, well, thanks, James. Chad: We're going to leave that out there. James: All right. Chad: Later, man. 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 Chad Cheese.com. #Branding #CultBrands #TheGathering #Banff #FiascoGelato #Uncommon #EmployerBrand #E #EmploymentBrand #Marketing

While the Google train keeps chugging along with positive news this week, things at Indeed are showing signs of unraveling Down Under, as well as other spots around the globe. Likewise, Facebook dealt recruitment marketing a blow this week and America, we have a staffing problem. Grab a vegemite sandwich and support our sponsors, Canvas, Sovren and JobAdX. 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. Ed: This is Ed from Philly you're listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. 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: Bring it. Joel: Bring is here and the time is right for podcasting in the streets. Heidi ho homeboys and homegirls, welcome to Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm the Jagger to your Bowie, Chad Sowash. Joel: I'll deal with that. Although, one of them's dead. On this weeks show, Indeed's Australian meltdown, oh mate. That was a bad accent. Google goosesteps into Germany. Chad: That's just not right. Joel: And Houston, we have a staffing problem. Yes, we're covering the globe this week, so commute times will vary. Thank god for Google Search API. We'll be right back after this word from JobAdX. JobAdX: This is the sound of job search. This is sound of job search defeat. Job search can be frustrating. Job seekers run into the same irrelevant ads, page after page, before they find a match. When job seekers aren't engaged, conversions are low. Budgets are wasted. Jobs go unfilled. No one wins. But job search doesn't have to be defeating. JobAdX's smart search exchange references 400 data points to select the most targeted jobs, and delivers what job seekers really want to premium ad units across our network. JobAdX: Score. JobAdX: That's the sound of JobAdX's relevant results attracting a qualified candidate, and filling your job faster. Find out how to improve your job advertising campaigns, and increase candidate attraction and engagement by e-mailing us at, joinus@jobadx.com. JobAdX. Together we can save Job search. Chad: The whole job search thing, like road rage, so like job search rage instead of ... but really just getting pissed off. I think that can come out more in the ad. Joel: Millennials don't rage, dude. Chad: What? Joel: They just click onto whatever new Instagram posts they can look at. Now, the people should know that before the show, you and I were waxing nostalgic about the '80s. And unbeknownst to me, Mr. Chad Sowash was quite the break dancer back in the day. Chad: You have no proof. Joel: And was keeping cardboard box companies in business with his stylish moves and waves and moonwalks and everything else. I forget all the moves that were hot at the time. Did you have like a bandana tied to your jeans, did you have the Adidas with the laces untied but tied at the same time? Chad: Well first off there is no proof of any of this ever happening, number one. Number two, it was always Converse. Always Converse. Joel: Was it Chucks or were you walking like the Weapons or the- Chad: No, dude the Weapons. I never wore Chucks, those flimsy things. Joel: You wore Chucks at some point in your life. Chad: No, never put a pair on in my life. And, this is from the guy who actually lives where Chuck grew up, and played basketball. Yeah. Joel: Another little known fact about Chad. He lives in the town that Chuck Taylor honed his first basketball skills I guess. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Every person in my household right now has at least two if not three sets of Chuck Taylors, I just never got into 'em. I rock the Adidas now, but back then, I was definitely all about the Weapons. Joel: The Weapons were great except that they weighed about 18 pounds. Chad: They did. Much like we were talking about the camcorders that you had to carry around to actually try to get any type of video whatsoever. It was like carrying around a cement block. Joel: People don't know Larry Bird actually had a 44-inch vertical leap, but because he wore the Weapons it was more like a 23 inch vertical leap. Chad: Oh shit. All right. We ready for shoutouts? Joel: Shoutouts to the '80s. And beyond. Chad: And who would be great with this would be the Job Board Doctor because I bet he could recall- Joel: The '80s? Chad: Just a ton of shit about the 80s. Oh yeah, possibly depending on how much peyote he got into. Joel: He was not break dancing, though. I can guarantee that. Chad: No I'm gonna go a hard no. Joel: I see like a Rush concert, maybe a Journey here and there, maybe a Foreigner concert or REO Speedwagon, but yeah. He wasn't beatboxing and dancing on a cardboard box. Chad: Oh, no way in hell. No way in hell. But big shout out to Job Board Doctor. Haven't heard from him in a while, but he's been blasting out some tweets and pretty much called Joel stupid yesterday. Feffer: Such an asshole. Chad: So thanks Job Board Doctor. Joel: Well he's over in Europe, so he's feeling all socialist at the moment. I think he's at the AIM Group Conference, I think I saw that somewhere. He's feeling all warm and fuzzy with the government controls. That's what I blame his comment on. Chad: People are being taken care of, I guess. I don't know. Shit. Joel: By the way, last week you said ... Okay, I'm not gonna get into this. But- Chad: You are. You're totally going to get into it. Joel: The government's role is to take care of its people and I take a little bit of dissonance with that. The government's role is to protect people ... Chad: Which is taking care of people. Joel: ... not necessarily take care of people. Chad: Which is taking care of people. I mean, that's ensuring that they're actually getting what they need. Joel: No. The government should give me the opportunity to take care of myself [crosstalk 00:05:58]- Chad: Well, that in itself, there's a balance there, and you can be out of balance very quickly, so yeah, but it's to be able to take care of their people, protect their people and take care of their people. Yes. Joel: Agree to disagree. Okay. Back to the shoutout. Chad: Matt O'Donnell, gotta love this tweet from Matt O'Donnell. He said he's got four new entry level folks joining his team and he likes the idea of having the Chad and Cheese podcast being mandatory listening for all new hires. So do we, Matt. So do we. Joel: Shout out to Nancy from Philly. Geez, Nancy, one of our biggest fans fell off the face of the earth. She's back, she's rested, she's ready, and she's back to listening to the podcast. So Nancy, welcome back. And I'll also wrap in a travel event in May to Philly, which I assume she'll be attending. So Nancy, get ready. Face-to-face. Let's do this. Selfie alert. Chad: She's getting a little saucy, that Nancy, she tweeted, said very sarcastically, "I appreciate you thinking of me, ahem, since the hosts didn't," because Ed was talking about how we're going to be at Recruit Philly and we obviously didn't send out a tweet or something specific to Nancy. So this is your announcement. Nancy. We're finally getting around to it. Ed: This is Ed from Philly. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: A couple of quick shout outs to people who actually gave us some topics for this week, or least some insights. So Patrick Welch gave us some great Google insights we're going to be sharing with you, and also David Beaurepaire [Bow Repair], for some of the Indeed insights that we're going to be talking about. Good job, guys. Keep the insights, the data, all that shit coming. Our listeners, if you see something, hashtag Chad and Cheese on Twitter, share it on LinkedIn, our Facebook page, it doesn't matter. Just get it to us. Joel: Did you say David Boat Repair? Chad: I think it's Bow Repair, but it's French. So you never know how to fucking say it, but I think it's Bow Repair. I could be wrong. Feffer: Such an asshole. Joel: Shout out to some recent interviews that we did. Dan Finnigan, CEO at Jobvite, Steven Rothberg, which went live this week. If you haven't heard that podcast, check it out for some updates on Google. And most fun, I think, because it was in person, was Aman Brar, founder and CEO at Canvas, fresh off the acquisition. He rolls up in a brand new Mercedes. He's got security guards now. He's in Gucci and Coach and Dolce & Gabbana. So, Aman, we love you, man. That was fun. Look for that interview coming soon. Chad: Yeah. And any interview we can do in a bar, especially a British-type pub is always amazing. So we need to do more. Joel: A pub. Chad: Shout out to the ladies from TNG who are trolling us once again, Candidate ID actually joined in to the gift/ meme Twitter trolling. Joel: I have no idea Swedish women were so feisty. Chad: Dude, that whole Viking thing. That's the whole thing that they're pushing. So, death match in Lisbon is going to be out fucking standing. So if you don't have your ticket to TAtech in Lisbon, dude, you're going to be missing out. You got to go, TAtech, Lisbon, in May. You can check obviously on Chad and Cheese sites, see when the events are, go to tatech.org. You can find the shit. Joel: Yeah. And a rumor is Hung Lee is going to be on the voting panel. Chad: Oh. I think, yeah, we have- Joel: We're amping up the IQ this year. Chad: Thank God. Joel: And a much better accent by the way. Chad: Yeah. No shit. So last but not least, to Louise Triance from UK Recruiter, she invited me again. So there must be a thing here, to actually be on Crowdcast with her to talk about AI. So whatever that means, that's what we're going to talk about. If you want to actually be involved, go ahead, go to any one of my or her social media accounts and I'm sure you'll be able to find the registration stuff there. Joel: Dude, your surname French game is pretty strong today. Chad: It's not too bad. Yeah. Joel: A quick one for me, ERE as well is on my travel docket. I don't believe it is on yours, and I can't get away without pointing out that you published a graphic this week of our travel schedule and failed to include our travel sponsor, Shaker Recruitment Marketing. So Joe Shaker, apologies for me. It's all Chad. It had enough to do with me and we will make it up to you. Chad: Whatever, dude. We give Shaker so much love, I mean above and beyond. And not to mention that was rectified literally within seconds. So get off my jock. Joel: Dude, we actually have live footage from Joe seeing the image. Feffer: Such an asshole. Chad: So yeah, the Chad Cheese 2019 World Tour, next on the docket, SHRM Talent and Nashville, Staffing Tech in Nashville, TAtech Recruitment Marketing Summit in Chicago. And then, also, while we're in Chicago, we're going to be making, you might not know about this, that now you are- Joel: I do. Chad: ... now you know now. It's a quick pit stop at Hireology, so we're going to participate in their Chad and Cheese Podcast Club/Discussion. They have a beer fridge and knowing Kyle, it will be stocked with delicious craft beer. Joel: I feel like we're walking into a millennial ambush. Chad: I can't wait. I love that kind of shit. Joel: This comedy's jam packed with 20-somethings that like the show and want us to come visit them. This feels like a baseball bat to the back of the knee to me. Chad: Luckily, I'm always ready for an ambush. So, not a big deal. Joel: That is true. That is true. Ed: This is Ed from Philly. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Let's do this. Chad: Well, first off, let's talk about Google drops the translation and commute search into their API. Now, first thing. You can listen to the Google news podcast we did earlier this week with Steven Rothberg. But here's one of the things that I want to throw out here. I literally just received an email from Thom, the CEO over at SmashFly, and that boy is, I love it: Riding the Wave of this News. Here's how it starts out: "Hi Chad. Joel: That's so Thom. Chad: "Have you ever wished you could search for jobs within a 30-minute commute from your home? Even in the heaviest traffic morning? I live in the Boston area and I've experienced the soul sucking experience of bumper to bumper commute. The struggle is real." Chad: So Tom, in this email, is starting to pull you in, suck you in like Tom does, and then talk about SmashFly's new Google search commute and translation piece, which is really fucking cool. And he also talks about Cox Enterprises, go to their career site and check it out. So he's really pimping what SmashFly is doing here. This is what companies should be doing if they're partnering smartly with Google. Joel: I had no idea are some 4,000 job boards and employers that have integrated the search API. [crosstalk 00:13:51]- Chad: Hopefully. Joel: ... into their site. I was pretty surprised to see that. For those who don't know, the API is essentially Google is running your job search, so related searches, misspellings, all the things that, the duct tape search engines of old can't handle, Google can handle for you. It's been around for two years, early adopters like CareerBuilder, Dice, Johnson & Johnson are still using it, I think optimistically from our perspective in terms of what Google's doing, they continue to evolve the product to improve features. And these were two of the features. Now, a lot of people know the veterans search feature that they launched early this year, late last year, which you're not so great on or happy about or into, but I guess that's a different topic altogether. Joel: But this past week, they launched, or actually on the 19th, on Tuesday, they launched, like you said, commute search, which we talked to Steve, and what I like about that is historically job boards will have, "Oh, this is five miles from your house." "This is 10 miles from your house," "... 20 miles from our house." Well, five miles in San Francisco is a lot different than five miles in Columbus, Ohio, right? Chad: Yes. Joel: From a time perspective. So Google actually now breaks this down to how long your commute will be from a car, walking or public transportation perspective, which is obviously way more valuable than just saying, "Hey, this is five miles from my house or 10 miles from my house." Chad: Yeah. Well, and so I think the podcast with Steven was awesome because we talked about commute search, the new unveiling of commute search and also translation so that the actual translation that happens in search, not just on the page but also in the search, those are two great, I think, features that they've pushed out. But even more interesting to me were the stats that Steven shared. So, again, they have collegerecruiter.com as their job sites, what they were able to do to save money and also make money off the back of this type of a partnership, definitely go look forward the Google News podcast, listen to it, especially if you're a vendor to be able to better understand how this could prospectively help you make money. Joel: I was most shocked at how many customer service calls they would get every week before the search, before Google search versus how few they get now. I had no idea, one, that people still picked up the phone and called companies, but number two, that they were actually getting, I think two to three a week of people saying like, "How the hell does search work?" Or, "How the hell does this thing work?" to now getting almost no calls and the time that they're saving from that. Joel: And College Recruiters is still a fairly, would you call it a niche job board? It's college internship. So if you're a bigger national, global, whatever job entity, like the savings from a customer service perspective must be really nice, thanks to Google. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. And that's just one aspect, right? Joel: That is just one. Basically, in short, they're spending less money and they're making more money. Chad: Yeah. So listen to the podcast. Joel: Listen to the podcast. Chad: So, yeah. Your favorite, I think, topic is Google goosestepping into Germany, and not only that Google is continuing this world domination, but you thought [crosstalk 00:17:11]- Joel: The only way I'm letting you get away with that is because you were in the military and you're a veteran. I don't think I could have said goosestep without the thought police coming in and getting me. Joel: Now, I will say specifically, Germany usually goosesteps and to other places. It's not usually goosestepping into Germany, but we'll forgive that this time, particularly when Google for Jobs is involved. Chad: Yeah. But I mean, this is Google goosestepping into Germany, so that's different, right? Joel: Is there goose? Chad: Is there goot? So thanks again to Patrick Welch for sharing some analytics from Google Analytics that I guess they had set up, which was showing Google was moving toward Deutschland. And that's pretty awesome to just to be able to see, in some of these different areas where work is different in Germany than it is here in the US, so Google is figuring that out. It took Google a while to get into England. It's interesting to see them thoughtfully moving into these different countries. Joel: Arbeiten ist gut. So what countries are we in now? We're in America. We're in Canada. We're in Japan, which is my favorite, because that's where Indeed's sugar daddy lives. UK, we're in Ireland, right? Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joel: We're in India? Chad: Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. Joel: And now Germany, and you've got rumors that there's a new country on the way. Chad: Well, I mean, doing testing in France, and this is where David Boat Repair comes in from Hello Work. He actually not only showed that they were doing testing in France, but this is the cool part. There was an Indeed citing in Google for Jobs. Feffer: Such an asshole. Joel: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Indeed who does not play with Google for Jobs, you're telling me we have a sighting in the wild of a search done on Google for Jobs in France, where Indeed is a supplier of said content. Chad: That is correct. And we will share the screenshot out. Let me tell ya. I think this is incredibly interesting, just from the standpoint of knowing that Indeed had really gone cold Turkey on Google and said, "No, fuck that. We're not playing this Trojan horse game that we played on the rest of the industry. We're not playing this." But I think there are areas throughout the world where they just don't have the dominance and they're going to need help. So therefore they're going to call upon Google. That's my opinion. What do you think? Joel: I think that they were very, naïve to think that they wouldn't be able to play with Google on some level. I think if they did it in the US, there'd be a lot of 'splaining to do because they were very adamant about, "We're not going to play in this game." They can sort of get away with it in non-American countries. Although as we've seen, the Internet is a small place and people talk. So we're gonna catch wind of it. But yeah, I mean, Indeed globally is a powerhouse, but they're not exactly Hercules in every single market. So obviously in France there's some work to do, their employers that post jobs need a little bit more traffic and where better to go than Google for that traffic? Joel: I also do think it's a nice little acquiesce to say Google is awesome because we're willing to go against our public persona and actually use it in certain countries. Chad: So if they start getting addicted to this crack overseas, what makes anyone think that they're not going to jump on board everywhere? Joel: Well, I believe you and I have a running bet of over and under 12 months from January 1st of this year as to how long Indeed can hold out. And I think you went under, I think I went over and it's looking more and more like you might win this one as they roll out certain countries on Google for Jobs. Chad: Yeah. I would say that, my thought was global in the first place, so I've already won that, but still, it's ... Feffer: Such an asshole. Chad: But that takes us to another conversation because we're getting news that Indeed APAC is coming apart at the seams. You talked a little bit about that. Joel: Yeah. You and I, as you've mentioned, we get insight information, we get tips, I'm sure we get a lot of absolute bullshit. So some of it when we say rumor or maybe or we heard, take it with a grain of salt. But I got an email last week, I've never gotten anything like it because it was from a service where there was a timestamp on the email and it's set to blow up in a couple days. And you can't forward the email. I'm on Gmail, so the forward function is disabled. Oh Shit. Which I've never seen before. You can't copy and paste the texts, which I have seen before, but this was unique. And then the email disappears, the content disappears from your email at a certain date. In my case, it's live for about a week. Joel: So I actually had to take a screenshot of it to keep it in the archives or keep it as fact that I actually did get this. So, I'll read the email as I received it. Basically, stuff's shit outside the US according to this person. Now keep in mind, this is anonymous. Take it for what it's worth, but a lot of it seems pretty legit and we'll dig into some of the pieces of the email here in a second. But I want to just read this to our listeners. Joel: So this reader says, "If you've not seen it recently, I check out Indeed's reviews on Glassdoor," Indeed and Glassdoor are sister companies, by the way. "In the first quarter of the year, 25% of the staff walked out of the Australia office and more are on the way out. A direct quote from one of the top salespeople, 'It's so bad, it's unreal. It's like living a nightmare.' Have a look at their views on Glassdoor in Sydney, which we have and we'll talk about. Joel: "The guy who took over marketing for APAC moved from Australia to Singapore to take the new role, has been demoted in the face of multiple HR complaints, now has no direct reports, and is 'under review.' You mentioned Europe doing well, which we have on the show. They're growing in Ireland and whatnot. That may not be the case in all countries. Did you hear the SVP of EMEA, his name's Chris McDonald, just left after only being in the role for around eight to nine months? A number of reasons why, but basically he took a look under the hood and didn't like what he saw. Joel: "You may also notice Indeed is not on TV, radio and print or even spending on pay-per-click in Europe. I wonder why? The recent posts about Indeed London and it's drugs, drinking and bullying culture have been removed from Glassdoor," which should be pretty easy for Indeed to do, "but they were up long enough for people, including clients to be aware. To say things have changed here in the last six months would be an understatement. It's not the place it used to be." And that is the end of the email. Chad: This is beyond APAC. I mean this is a me as well, then. Joel: According to this email, this anonymous source, yes. Things are bad all over the place, minus, I guess, America, North America. Chad: Gotcha. Okay. So yeah. Now we're taking a look at some of the Glassdoor reviews. And just one of the reviews cited drinking slash / bro culture, job is like Groundhog day with fixed account sets, senior leadership clock watches and are literally positioned to watch people walking in and out. Don't dare to zip up your bag at 4:59, before five o'clock. The same leaders encourage you to work overtime without reward. Extraordinary and unjustifiable increase and revenue targets quarter after quarter. Chad: So it sounds like the squeeze is on and the leadership that they have in place, I don't know if it's young, I don't know if it's inexperienced or whatever it is, they're dealing with it in a very, very bad way. This is at least what it feels like from the Indeed reviews, and some of the titles: Rubbish. Promise the world, delivers very little. Sydney office going downhill fast. Terrible. Toxic. Joel: And what's the current overall star rating for the Sydney- Chad: Let me scroll up here. It is ... Joel: It was about 1.5 the last time I checked. Chad: 1.9, so they're almost at two stars out of five. Joel: Man, that's not good. In terms of Chris McDonald, who I believe was over in Ireland just for reporting sake, his LinkedIn profile still says that he's at Indeed. So for whatever that's worth, apparently Chris McDonald is still around in that role. Joel: Now, I also found curious that there's no TV, radio, print or even PPC over in Europe. And why would that be? And I was trying to think why would that be? Chad: I think you have a dominant share here in the US, and they're trying to keep that. I could see where they would want to focus their defense here, to be able to build that moat. But again, I've said this forever. This is unsustainable. Joel: We have listeners over across the pond. If anyone finds evidence of Indeed on Google with pay-per-click or advertising somewhere in the print paper, please let us know. Otherwise we just have to go on what this source tells us. But I agree that, look, when things go bad, you take money away from where it's not as valuable anymore and you start putting it in resources where it does work, which would obviously lead to North America and particularly the US. Joel: To me, though, this feels very reminiscent to stuff CareerBuilder and Monster were going through right around the recession time. You see spreading yourself too fast, too thin. You see offices going rogue. You see officers going rogue. And to me, we've been talking about the demise for a long time. To me these are the buds starting to show of things coming unraveled, whether it stays that way or not, we'll find out. But to me, this stuff is a really bad sign for Indeed. Chad: Yes. And again, just historically, you take a look at Monster, CareerBuilder and that global spread, and then what happened? Joel: Yeah. Keep in mind, Dice left Europe late last year in terms of its operations. So it's a tough place to do business and maybe Indeed's finding that out the hard way. Chad: It's an entirely different culture. I mean, staffing culture entirely ... I mean, dude, if you don't go in with an entirely different strategy overall, you're definitely going to lose. Joel: Well, who's not losing? Chad: Who's that? Joel: Our sponsor, Sovren. Chad: God, damn straight. Joel: Let's take a quick break, hear from them and we'll talk Facebook discrimination complaints. Chad: Oh, Jesus. 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 Sovereign AI matching visit sovern.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. Chad: Silky smooth sounds of Sovren. As always. Joel: As always. Gets me in such a good mood when I hear that sovereign ad. Yeah, life is much better than it is at Facebook, apparently. Times are tough. Now, I love this because this was actually a topic back in the day, in terms of being able to target advertising for employment based on age, location, sex, college degree, marital status, et cetera, et cetera, which Facebook has historically done, and they've done it very well and they do it in a way that no one else really can because they have so much God damn information about all of us. Chad: And they're making a shit ton of cash doing that. Joel: Shit ton of cash doing it. But they've been under major stress about privacy, fake news, all kinds of shit going on. So anyway, word comes out this week that because of discrimination complaints, Facebook will now disallow employment ads that are specifically targeting the things that you shouldn't target, or at least historically shouldn't like sex, age, yada, yada. So I assume that you're not real happy about this and don't really agree with the move. Chad: It goes beyond employment, but yeah, if we can take a look at employment itself, it's a knee-jerk reaction, and instead of vetting the actual people and companies spending money and / or the fucking content that's going on to Facebook, they are dumbing down a platform that could help companies target individuals with disabilities. And that's just one sliver. But they're talking about in the article, in WaPo, they were talking about how individuals with disabilities were being discriminated against. Chad: And so, it's the bad actors that are what's fucking the system up. But still, they're going to dumb the system down. These same bad actors will be using the system with the same content, just more as a blunt instrument instead of a surgical tool. So I think they are focusing on the wrong areas right out of the gate. They shouldn't be focusing on making a dumber tool. They should be focusing on the auditing piece and ensuring that the individuals who are spending money with them are who they are. And they can do a lot of that, obviously, through the infrastructure that they currently have set up. I just don't agree with taking these types of tools away from employers who perspectively want to focus on hiring females in tech in certain areas. It makes no fucking sense. Joel: I agree with you. I don't think it will affect Facebook monetarily a ton, because this is a fairly small group in the big picture. And I think Facebook has bigger issues with perception and legal issues. I mean, Google was just fined $1.7 billion this week in Europe for its practices. And I think Facebook's looking at that saying like, "Good God, we don't want any piece of that." But I think for small companies that really rely on micro targeted advertising, and their budget won't allow for anything else. I think they're the big losers here. And ultimately they're going to walk away from Facebook advertising, which also includes Instagram and the rest of the Facebook network. I think all ad pricing could go down if demand by advertisers fall, which I guess is good for everyone. Joel: But I question where they're going to go. I assume that there were some high fives given it Snapchat's headquarters, when this news came around. And actually, like I shared this week that Snapchat was upgraded because of their new ad platform actually being really effective. So if you were advertising on Facebook in that way and can any more, I think Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn to some degree are maybe where these folks go. Chad: Possibility. I don't see advertisers pulling right out of the gates. But once again, everybody's going to suffer because Facebook doesn't want to actually stop the real fucking problem. It's the bad actors. It's the content. That's what they should be focusing on, not the actual tools themselves. And that just fucking drives me crazy. Joel: Yeah. Ultimately it's the employers that are discriminating. Chad: Yeah. But here's the thing, there are auditing parameters around those employers in most cases. So whether your EEOC like 50 employees and above or your OFCCP, where you're a federal contractor, they have enforcement agencies to find this shit out. So we have regulations in place, we have benchmarks in place, and these tools could perspectively help companies hit those benchmarks much faster because of the targeting. But yet instead of focusing on where the fucked-up-edness is in Facebook right now, they're focusing on the wrong shit. It's not the tool, it's not the methodology, it's the actual bad actors and the bullshit content that's being pushed into the system. Joel: Yeah. I think ultimately it's a legal thing, it's a public perception and it's a government regulation thing. Because if you look at all the industries that were targeted or that were on the no good list, you had jobs, but you also had a housing and loans, which all look discriminatory just on its face. Chad: It is because the way it's being used. And I'm going to tell you somebody who's incredibly pissed about this, Julie, my wife. She helps companies build hiring programs for individuals with disabilities, so that companies, major fortune 500 companies in most cases, can pull in individuals with disabilities, and they use Facebook. That is a tool that they use. So I'm going to pimp them out real quick. The Crazy and the King podcast, I can guarantee you they will dive into this on the diversity and disability side much deeper than we're going to. Joel: Yeah. Do think that this move flows into other platforms? Because ultimately if Facebook does it, they're going to look at Twitter and say like ... Chad: No question. Yes. Yeah. And that's the problem, is Facebook is taking this step, now everybody else is going to be expected to take the step and this is a dumb fucking step. Facebook, with all these goddamn PhDs and smart fucking brainiacs are doing a really stupid fucking thing. Joel: Tell us how you really feel, dude. Chad: It's not fair to those people who want to try to do good for the system. Joel: It's weird to think we could live in a world where you couldn't advertise on any social media platform to new college graduates in engineering. You have to like take a sledge hammer to your advertising as opposed to a scalpel. And the whole benefit of social media advertising was it was a scalpel. Though it's weird to think in a world where you have this benefit, that it's going to be taken away from under. Chad: Yeah. And there are agencies that their whole job is to enforce, to ensure that the discrimination is not happening. Joel: And I think it also hurts Facebook's initiative into employment. I think part of their overall goal would be, "Hey, post a job and then advertise that job." Well, now what does that look like? Is it just like the old boost your post where you say, "Hey, I'm going to boost my job and not really know where it's going, but I'm just going to boost it?" Do you remember that, when you could actually boost your little- Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah. That probably makes a comeback because you're not targeting, you're just saying like, "Hey, I just want to send this ad out into the world." Chad: Yes. And the whole system gets dumber because of this move. Feffer: Such an asshole. Joel: America, we have a staffing problem. [crosstalk 00:37:54] I found this very interesting. But we have this perception that baby boomers are going to live forever, they're not going to leave the work force, millennials are just [crosstalk 00:38:05]- Chad: They're stubborn as hell. [crosstalk 00:38:07] I'm telling you. Joel: ... going to ride Ubers and live in their baby boomers parents houses for their entire life. But apparently, there's some real government problems in making sure that there are enough people to staff the jobs. So, side note, what better reason to build a wall and keep people out of the country? But I digress. You really like this story a lot. Chad: Yeah. Again, I think you were saying that sarcastically. Joel: Totally. Chad: It's like we need people, assholes, why are you trying to keep people out when we need people? So that's one thing. And the number two, this provides the Bezos of the world to say, "Ah, man, we don't have the workforce. We're going to automate." Well, he wanted to go there anyway, but from an optic standpoint, guess what? Makes it much easier for him to do that? Not a bad move. Not a stupid move from a dollars and cents standpoint, but from an automation and actually taking jobs, that's exactly what's going to happen. Chad: But yeah, I mean, this report actually said American working or looking for work stabilized around 63% from 2015 through 2018. That's 63%. So they pinpointed certain areas, like let's say for instance, the women's labor force participation rate is lower than men, and a problem was the lack of affordable childcare options, which, I mean, we talked about, I think it was last week or the week before, about Amazon's Mamazonians, and if a company wants to actually provide a differentiator and start to draw those individuals into their workforce, that's what they need to do right out of the gate, man. Joel: Yeah. And the story also mentioned altering the criminal justice system. I mean, let's admit, there are a lot of people out there that have done their time and paid their debt to society, but can get work or can't do things that they should be able to. I know here locally, there's a pizza shop that actually only hires ex convicts to make the pies, which I think is really interesting. Chad: Yeah. Ban the fucking box. That's all I got to say about that. Okay. So that's not all I have to say. It's fucking stupid that somebody goes to jail, the go to prison, they do their time, they come out and they can't get a job, and they can't vote, but yet they've paid what's been due to society. It's not fair, not only to that group of individuals, which socioeconomically if you take a look at it, are the individuals who need work most. It's fucking ridiculous. Chad: So yeah, the government finally saying, "Yeah, we should probably change this whole stance that we have on the criminal justice system and maybe try to help make it a little bit easier for people to get in the workforce." No shit. Joel: Can we call it the Andy Dufresne bill? By the way, I have a conspiracy theory I just thought of. Federal government increases minimum wage to get more people into the workforce. Maybe they're solving this problem by making companies pay more money to get more people started in the workforce. Chad: Yeah. And I think that's a nice way to lure individuals who we know $7.25 an hour is not going to pay what they need, so they're going to live with mom and dad and maybe they have a kid and maybe they are the earner, the main earner, and they're working part-time jobs, which is actually what we saw from this report as well, to be able to get them to full time, not to mention those dollars do what? They go back into the fucking economy, which helps the economy grow. So it doesn't hurt, especially if everybody's doing it as opposed to just companies here and there. Joel: Are you saying you agree with my conspiracy theory? Chad: Yeah. I don't think it's a conspiracy theory. I think it's a great strategy. Joel: And I feel like we may have found common ground in the minimum wage debate. If the debate is to get more people off their asses and not play Fortnight for 20 hours a day, let's give them more money to start out in that hourly job, maybe I can get on board with that. Chad: Well, and as we saw from the last report, last a report that was put out, most of these individuals who would be receiving the up to $15 bump are actually the prime wage earners in families. So from our standpoint, again, it's the government taking care of its own. We have to make sure that our people can feed their kids, they can put a roof over their kids' house, or then get out of mom and dad's fucking basement. Joel: And to make sure that we can still feed our kids and shelter them, let's take a quick break and hear from Canvas and we'll talk about who was just named the number one ATS in the market. Chad: Holy shit. 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 the laser focused on recruiters' 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: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah, we know that our friends over at iCIMS was incredibly happy to see Arcadia Insights State of Recruitment, Tech industry. Joel: Yes. I've never of Arcadia, and have you? Chad: I have not. I have not. Joel: Okay. So we're not going to vouch for them. They do research, so we'll just assume that they know what they're talking about. But iCIMS gets touted in an Arcadian Insights report on the state of recruiting technology. The headline is that iCIMS is now the number one in terms of market share ATS in the world, which still doesn't even put them at 7%, but it's still number one now. Joel: The number of the number of services that are declining are many, which means there's a lot of choice, a lot of segmentation, fragmentation, but the two glaring companies that are just getting killed, is your Connex and your Oracle. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Oracle and IBM, man. Joel: Yup. And those two have gone from nearly 10% to almost 5%. So if you look at their market share cut in half, that's a bad day, and that's happened in the last three years. So that's bad news for them. Many of the others that are listed are just stagnant or declining slowly. You got your SuccessFactors, your PeopleFluents. The ones that are growing, Workday is probably second to iCIMS in terms of penetration. Chad: Growth. Yeah. Joel: Jobvite growing slowly and Cornerstone also growing fairly slowly. And both of those are still at under 2% market share in terms of this. So a lot of room for a lot of players, consolidation, I think is still going to happen. What was your takeaway from the growth of the ATS market? Chad: Well, you see Oracle and IBM, they bought into the market, right? And they want it to become these huge ERP along with talent acquisition types of ATS systems. I think what we've seen historically is when companies start to get into this mode, they do a really shitty job of it because they don't focus in one area any more. They are focused in all different areas, which means they don't do anything well. I like that iCIMS and currently Jobvite, they have acquired, like iCIMS acquired TextRecruit, and they're still keeping it separate so that they're running it pretty much like a separate company, they have the whole org chart and whatnot that's focused on being able to push that product along beside iCIMS, but also a way from iCIMS into other applicant tracking systems. That's a different strategy than Oracle and IBM took. Joel: Yeah. I think that the statement and the insights report or the executive summary, the quote from the blog post quote Oracle and IBM in particular market share and customers are now demanding that their core recruiting platforms do more than just process applicants, which, how long have we been talking about that? "They must also become global marketing platforms that engage their audience, drive corporate initiatives such as diversity and inclusion and support career and pay progression." So I think we totally agree on that. I think the whole swing for the fences move by Jobvite to bring on three platforms that are all focused on global marketing, audience engagement, diversity inclusion. Like to me, the Dan Finnigans of the world, the Colin Days of the world, they see that that is the way to go in the future. And I think that they're building those platforms. And to me it's no surprise that you're seeing growth in what they're doing. Chad: Still strong caution to all of those systems that are out there that are looking to buy up, which I think is smart, but it's all about execution and strategy, and again, take a look at IBM, take a look at Oracle, take a look at SAP, take a look at all those guys, man, and see how they did what they did, how they executed. And don't fucking do that. Joel: And to me this is ripe for consolidation. The little guys of the world that have less than 1% market share, they're not going to be able to keep up technologically with what's going on, so they're going to have to sell and they might as well sell while they still have clients and still have some market share. Because a player like Jobvite or iCIMS can start really ramping up the percentage market share by consolidating and buying up some of these smaller players. Joel: And by the way, the report talked about the investment that's going on in recruitment technology. And it's nuts. There's so much money. From 2017 to 2018, I mean you're looking at a 400 million spend to almost a billion dollars in this space being dumped. So there's money there, there's going to be acquisitions, there's going to be consolidation. I think we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg on some of that stuff. Chad: I think the actual playbook is fairly simple at this point, is get aggressive and start rolling up partners to judge performance toward acquisition. So don't just go out there and buy shit. Joel: Yeah. If you have an app store and you can integrate some of these services and find out which ones are the most popular, you can gobble those up and enhance your marketing platform. I'll be interested to see, the Greenhouses of the world weren't represented in this study, unless their market share was so small they didn't get included. But I have to assume that some of those levers, the Greenhouses will at some point getting to that scale where they're getting 1%, 2%, 3% market share. Chad: Yeah. If they can eat that Oracle, IBM, SAP market share, then yeah, I think so. Joel: This was a good week. By the way, we're recording this on Wednesday. I'm amazed we have enough news to fill up an hour show, although Chad'll edit down to like 20 minutes. But we got a lot of stuff. We'll see you next week, I guess. Chad: You got it, man. Joel: 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 podcast, and be sure to get buckets of money to our sponsors. Otherwise, I may be forced to take that coal mining job. I saw at monster.com. We out. #GoogleforJobs #Germany #France #CloudTalentSolution #Indeed #Austrailia #Glassdoor #Facebook #Wages #IBM #Oracle #iCIMS #Jobvite

We're not worthy! We're not worthy! Since taking over the reigns at Jobvite a decade ago after running HotJobs, Dan Finnigan has been a strong voice and leader in the recruitment tech space. Most recently, Jobvite swung for the fences, raising $200 million and acquiring Canvas, Rolepoint and Talemetry to help round-out a full marketing suite for customers. In this interview, Chad & Cheese get the lowdown on the deal and discuss a variety of timely topics. This Nexxt exclusive is a must-listen. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community. Chad: Okay, Joel, quick question. Joel: Yep. Chad: What happens when your phone vibrates or your texting alert goes off? Joel: Dude, I pretty much check it immediately, and I bet everyone listening is reaching to check their phones right now. Chad: Yeah, I know. I call it our Pavlovian Dog reflex to text messaging. Joel: Yeah, that's probably why text messaging has a freakin' 97% open rate. Chad: What? Joel: A crazy high candidate response rate within the first hour alone. Chad: Which are all great reasons why the Chad and Cheese Podcast love ... Joel: Yeah. Chad: Text2Hire from Nexxt. Yep, 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 Text2Hire campaign for just 25% off. Boom. Chad: 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. Just go where you know. Chadcheese.com and Nexxt, with two Xs. 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: All right, all right, all right. We're back again. Guys, super special treat today. We're joined by Jobvite's CEO Dan Finnigan. Dan, welcome to the show. Dan: Thank you very much. It's good to be here. Joel: Dan is CEO of Jobvite, like I mentioned. What else would you like us to know about you, besides the fact that the highlights of your career were interviewing with me once when you started at Jobvite and then another time when you were- Chad: Lies. Joel: ... ruling the world at HotJobs? Dan: Well, after just hearing your intro music, I think my future highlight would be having my band play "Fight for Your Right to Party" live for your blog post one time. Chad: Yeah, yeah, we could do that. We could do an event, Dan, 'cause we're doing a ton of events now, and we don't just do a presentation on stage. We actually do entertainment while we're on stage. Having the band bring us on would be kick ass. Joel: By the way, Dan has the most epic beard in the industry. It's sad that we have to do this on audio only, because it is impressive. Dan: As good as yours? Joel: Oh, way better. Dan: Oh wow. Thank you. Joel: It's got that salt and pepper leadership quality that mine just doesn't have. Dan: Oh, it's coming, Joel. It's coming. Joel: Well, Dan, thanks for joining us. Man, we had some big news coming out of your world last month. Tell us about that and how that transpired. Dan: Well, the argue for quite some time has been that the history of recruiting software has been overly focused on in-applicant tracking, what happens after someone applies for a job, and that a lot of innovation has been going on for some years now and our disciplines with sales and marketings around how to build prospects and databases and communicate and engage with prospects before they ever become an opportunity. And we felt that recruiting was gonna go through the same change, and that's why years ago, we launched Jobvite Engage to help recruiters and companies build their own database of prospects and become less dependent on my old world of advertising. Dan: The fact is that the opportunity in this economy and given what's happened in the marketplace to focus on applicant tracking, given the needs companies have, was so great that it was, I felt, a challenge to continue to invest in innovation in these other areas. And I felt there was a window of opportunity for a company like Jobvite to seize the moment and really put a stake in the ground to be a platform and recruiting, as we say, that helps engage with candidates from the first look on your employment brand to the first day on the job. And when we started looking at the landscape, we saw companies like Telemetry crushing it, helping large enterprise companies build campaigns and provide a better candidate experience. Dan: We've always been very proud of Jobvite about creating the ability to share jobs on social networks to drive employee referrals. But then there was this company Rolepoint that was doing a better job than us. And then finally, I always joke that my son, who just graduated from college and he's working in San Francisco as a computer programmer, would never in his life communicate with a company or a recruiter via email. He would only text. Joel: Or phone. Or audio. Dan: Exactly. And so what are we doing? Jobvite was the first ATS to ever integrate into email and calendaring via Microsoft Outlook 10 years ago, and now we're living in an era where the candidates don't even use email. And so we decided to seize that moment and pull these companies together and we're really excited. Chad: Talking about putting the band together, right? If you just stick with that metaphor. That's a big, big job. K1 comes, you get K1 at the door, and then you start pulling Canvas, Rolepoint, and Telemetry together all at once. How long did something like that take? Dan: Well, you gotta seize the moment when you have it, and it's not as if we, for example with Canvas, we had developed a relationship with them. We had already launched a version of Canvas last year and had great success with it. We certainly, and with Jobvite Engage have been competing with Telemetry and others for quite some time and new about their strengths and we had customers coming to Jobvite saying, "Hey, look, I like your employee referral product, but we needed to do more and therefore we want you to integrate with Rolepoint." Dan: So based on that, and our experiences in the marketplace with these companies, we went to K1 and said, "Here's an opportunity. And we could be the first platform that provides the best candidate experience, the best recruiter experience, the best hiring manager experience from first look, not only for the first day on the job, but with Telemetry and Rolepoint to the next promotion because of internal mobility, the capabilities that they have." And K1, this is what they do for a living. They only invest in SAF software companies. They've been one of the fastest growing investors in this area. They've seen this movie before, they've seen what's going on in sales and marketing. And they wanted to, just like us, apply those principles in the area of recruiting and talent acquisition. Dan: And the funny thing is is when I started taking to them about Canvas, about Rolepoint, they said, "Ah, we've already talked to all those companies." What most impressed me about K1 is that they've been doing their homework and researching for about two years. Chad: Okay, okay. So from a brand standpoint, all three of these companies have their respective brands in those markets. Are they going to stay separate? Are you going to roll them up underneath the Jobvite umbrella and create Jobvite's Canvas version and Telemetry, etc., etc.? Dan: Yeah, good question. We're definitely one company. We've come together as one team. We had wonderful meetings. It all happened over the holidays. It all came together over the holidays, and we hit New Year's Day running. And we're all excited about the ideas that have come out of our meetings to date. Immediately, we're almost complete with many of the integrations that are taking place through our APIs. Obviously we like any Jobvite customer to utilize any of these three other wonderful products. I know Telemetry is already working with Rolepoint to offer their capabilities to Telemetry customers, and a lot of exciting things are happening there. Dan: But obviously the real opportunity here is what we could build together. And we're already thinking about those priorities. This is going to be one integrated platform and we're gonna be focused on use cases for recruiters, use cases for candidates, as well as for hiring managers that, as I said, cross the entire value chain of recruiting from first look to first promotion. And we're gonna be one company, and the other thing I'll say is that we've been really pleased with the cultures meshing as well as they have, really quickly. And yeah, it's pretty exciting. Dan: We already had, for example, a bunch of employees at Jobvite in Indianapolis, and that's where Canvas is located. So we're coming together in one office in Indianapolis and everyone's really excited. Chad: So when's that gonna happen? Because you should have Chad and Cheese onsite, since we're both here in Indy. Joel: We learned you guys have a budding office in Fishers, Indiana, which is right up the street from me. You guys have been secretly building this Indianapolis empire. What's going on? Dan: Yeah, you've never been there, that's true. It's a wonderful office. The Fishers mayor and government have been really supportive, wanting to attract tech companies to Fishers, and they created a wonderful opportunity for us to get moving fast. And that office frankly between us grew a lot faster than I ever thought it would. We didn't realize the depth of talent and BTB SAF software that exists in Indianapolis. And then because of that, that's how we first met Canvas, and right now we are I think looking for real estate as we speak and we'll I'm sure be announcing the new office sometime soon. Joel: Nice. It's good to know that Alman and his team won't be leaving Indiana any time soon. We really like those guys. Dan: I'm so impressed with what they've done in such a short period of time with a small, tight team. They are very creative, very bright, and very fast. Joel: Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So when I first reported on this, my first sense was like, "Hey, this is a real swing for the fences. This is a real sort of we're going to create a one stop shop or close to it platform." And my initial thought was that it was really driven a lot by companies like Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, maybe even Facebook to some degree, at least in terms of perception. How much did those 800 pound gorillas getting into the game have on you making a decision like this? And am I right in saying you want to be that next tier of platform to the big guys? Dan: Well, I think that's ... I can't say much about what's going on with regard to Google Hire or LinkedIn, except to say that kind of reminds me of the early days of job boards. Very small companies, they want to run their autobody shop. They want to run their flower shop. They want to run their local retail operation. They don't want to be experts at recruiting, and it used to be easy, right? All they'd have to do is post an ad in the local newspaper or buy an ad on Monster.com or HotJobs and they'd have enough candidates. And I think that companies like ZipRecruiter have proven that SNBs need one tool to work, to source, and to make their hire. Dan: That's not what we do. We help talent acquisition departments and companies build their teams, and they have a team of people to do it. And that team of people works with hiring managers and it's a coordinated hiring process. And companies build an employment brand and invest in that. And that's what we're about and that's what we're focused on. And the reason we did this is that we felt that the era of the ATS was over, and that the opportunity to be the recruiting platform and suite of products that service the entire value chain of recruiting was a limited window. And that the time was now. And the innovation that we saw coming out of companies like Rolepoint and Canvas and Telemetry we thought proved it, and that recruiting departments were beginning to change their definition of what recruiting has to do as a function. Joel: You gave a presentation a few years ago that I remember, talking about career-building monster, as we're talking about job boards, creating the two horizontal brands, the Coke and Pepsi if you will of the job board space, and then having verticals come under that such as Dice, etc. Do you feel like this move that you've made helps Jobvite become one of the horizontal market leaders in this talent management space? Or are you looking to catch a vertical? Dan: I believe that Jobvite and our companies have already proven that we're horizontal. We're ... Obviously we started here in the Bay Area and we're very popular with tech companies and tech companies in San Francisco and New York and Los Angeles. But over the last four years, five years, I've just been blown away with the growth in the heartland of the country, in the red states, not just the blue states, in manufacturing, in energy, in retail. And so while we go to market with vertical-focused communications and vertical-focused relationships, at the end of the day we're a horizontal platform. And it's because every company is facing the same challenges. Dan: If you think about today versus 10 years ago, we now live in a world where every industry is connected to the cloud. Every industry is connected to lots of devices that are connected to the cloud. Every industry is being disintermediated by data and analytics and automation. And as a result, every company and every industry is looking for the same kind of talent. And we've seen the vertical of engineering and technology become the driving horizontal across most industries. Chad: So when you take a look at modeling and you take a look at our industry, it doesn't look like you're modeling after anything that's happening in our industry now at all. It sounds like you're looking at, as you said, sales and marketing to be able to model something to different, more platform-focused, then again, the era of the ATS is dead. So can you tell us a little bit about when you were envisioning a model for Jobvite? Is it more towards the sales force of the world? Where are they at? Dan: Companies traditionally have focused recruiting around the requisition. There's this need, I have a job, I'm going to advertise that job in a newspaper. And then the first ATS, you can debate whether it was Resumix or Restrack, and I ran Resumix for a while when I ran HotJobs. It was built around that rex, meaning you advertise a job in the newspaper or on a job board and you get a lot of responses and now you have a database for resume. Today, I think recruiting needs to be built around a brand and an experience that you're going to offer candidates. And the candidates may be interested in multiple different jobs and they're interested in what your company does in the marketplace, what kind of experience they're going to have. Dan: And I've given talks to recruiting departments over the years that they need to think of their company almost in the way universities think about it. These people are going to look at their company and figure out, "Do I want a big company or a small company? A big university or a small university?" What's the curriculum like? They're going to look to see who your faculty is. They're going to look to see who's teaching these classes. They're going to go on LinkedIn and see who your managers are. And they're going to be more interested in that than any specific job. And as a result, we think recruiting software needs to help companies build access to candidates, not necessarily just distribute jobs and requisitions. Joel: Dan, Google for Jobs, as you know, has been a real influential force in the last couple years in terms of job postings. And quite a few of the ATSs that we talk to are really adamant about leveraging Google for Jobs in a way that companies' jobs are directly onto Google for Jobs, that they're optimized, and that they become more of a direct link to the job seeker and the employer. Do you have a similar sort of ideology there at Jobvite, or are you less concerned about that and more concerned about posting to job boards and getting the distribution play right? Dan: I actually think it was inevitable that Google was going to get into this space. 11 years ago, when I was at Yahoo! running HotJobs, I felt very strongly that the future of job searching was not gonna be at a job board. The job listings were gonna be findable by any search engine. And I'm actually surprised it took this long, Indeed and Simply Hired, I think probably we're the intermediate solutions that created vertical search engines for jobs. But I've always felt it was inevitable that Google could become the dominant place where job seekers search for jobs, just like they search for anything else in their life, so that therefore I think it makes complete sense for companies like Jobvite to help companies connect with that audience. Chad: So what about taking it further with companies like Google? They've come out with enterprise APIs on job search and I believe we're gonna see one on candidate search and matching probably sometime this year. What's your stance from a platform standpoint to be able to really partner very closely with these types of organizations, whether it's a Google or maybe another big brand name that focuses on search? Dan: Yeah, I think it's critical to integrate with the ecosystem in not just recruiting, but in job searching. If you think about it, Google has the best data about individuals who search for things. And that, as a result, they can figure out, I think pretty well, what's the next best opportunity for someone? An example I'll give you is when I was at Yahoo!, back around 2005, we built a machine learning algorithm that would take into account things that you searched on Yahoo! for. So for example, if you were a nurse living in Seattle, based on the kinds of searches that you did in Yahoo!, and also the kinds of news stories and content that you would consume, we would begin to figure out that you're thinking of moving to Phoenix, Arizona. And as a result, you'd start to see HotJobs listings for nursing jobs in Phoenix. And the algorithm would watch to see if you clicked on 'em, and if you did, it would then determine that you must be in the market, you must be interested. Dan: and in fact, we saw click rates go up. And that was a long time ago. So it is inevitable that Google's algorithms over time are gonna get very smart at understanding the intent, and that's the key word here, the intent that job seekers have. Well, the same thing exists for companies like Jobvite. We really understand the intent of the companies and what they're looking for. Someone really smart in our industry told me, "Hey, Dan, we're not in the hiring business. We're in the rejection business." Meaning for every 100 people you say who apply for a job, you're only gonna hire one. For every 100 people who look at a job, you're only going to hire one. Dan: Well, think about the information in all of that rejection. Who do they reject? Who do they reject? Who do they reject and at what stage? And who do they jump onto and who do they spend more time with at what stage? And that insight will lead to understanding company intent and hiring manager intent. And I think the long-term opportunity is for the marriage of those two intents. Joel: Dan, when I talked to you 10 years when you first took the position there at Jobvite, you guys were sort of mavericks in the sense of leveraging social media to get traction for job postings, most notably share a job on social media, company pages or job listings on company pages on Facebook. It seems like a lot of that has faded from the foreground. What role does social media have with Jobvite's products and services today? And maybe what will we see in terms of social media in the future? Dan: Well, we still find that companies who roll out employee referral programs and launch them with the requirement that employees create a login into Jobvite, not requiring them to share jobs on social networks, just to create that login, and then set up the distribution of jobs on their social networks, do better at sourcing candidates than companies that do not do that. Rolepoint is teaching us a lot about how to further drive the engagement in employee referral programs through their capabilities, and they're in fact less reliant on social networks to do that. Dan: You know, it's funny, the other thing that we did 10 years ago to the other question you asked me about Google Jobs, is that as soon as you bought Jobvite, your jobs were automatically distributed onto Indeed and Simply Hired, the leading search engines at the time. And customers were so excited when they would turn on Jobvite and start seeking candidates already. And I think the lesson here is that job seeker behavior is fickle and will change over time. And whatever they're using four years from now or five years from now to spend time with each other, to do research, to learn about industries, even to shop, are going to be places where recruiters are going to have be with their brand and their opportunities that they're going to want to find the best people. Dan: At the end of the day, recruiting is going to become increasingly like all digital marketing. Chad: So Dan, you talk about changing from rec-centered to being more people-centered. But we also know that HR and talent acquisition, they've taken processes from over the last decade and they really haven't changed them, because we know, especially in HR and TA, change is a bitch. What's your message to them to be able to try to give them a nice shaken baby moment, to get them out of this and to focus on really what's next? As opposed to the rec, really the people and experience, and one of the reasons why you brought Canvas, Rolepoint, and Telemetry into the mix. Dan: That's a big question. I think a couple of things. Number one, 15 years ago, 12 years ago, I started giving talks about the upcoming change in the demographics and how that was gonna make finding talent in the future increasingly challenging. The obvious, biggest trend of which would be the inevitable retirement of baby boomers and the replacement of them by a smaller, better educated and value-driven generation. And when I gave that talk, people were interested. They may occasionally take a photo of a PowerPoint slide. Now it's all taken as a given. Everyone knows the pain that recruiters feel and their hiring managers feel, right now, in trying to find talent is immense. Dan: If you put 15 CEOs into a room and said, "You can't come out of that room without agreeing on what are the top two or three pain points you face as a CEO," I'm convinced that one of those three, if not the number one would be "I'm scared I'm not going to be able to find talent over the next three to five years to meet my company's goals." So this problem isn't going to go away, and so what it means is that by definition, we're going to have to change what we do if we're going to find that best talent and bring them into the company and keep them. I think everyone understands that. Your point is a good one, but we don't seem to change as fast as the market needs us to change. Dan: I think we have an emerging generation of people who are going to challenge everybody to change. The very people who were looking for these career opportunities and expecting to change jobs more frequently because they feel the need to acquire skills faster to build their career are going to be the ones working within HR departments and recruiting departments, asking, "Why aren't we changing how we're doing what we're doing?" So I think the millennial generation and even the one after that is going to be a big driver of that. Dan: And the second thing, implicit in what I'm just saying is, I think C-level suite is already starting to pay more attention to this, and because they contract a measure, the quality of all aspects of their business better today than ever before, they're going to start asking, "How are we doing in recruiting? Where are you getting your hires from? Which source of hires is the fastest source of hire? Which source of hire is the fastest source of hire? Which hiring managers are doing their job? Which hiring managers are not doing their job?" Dan: And if you have a data that tracks it from the very first moment you have a touch with a candidate all the way through the hire into the job, then you're going to be able to answer those questions for the C suite. And that's what's gonna drive the change. But as you can see, finally, I also think that the disciplines of marketing and sales are gonna lead the way and it's gonna be an exciting time over the next few years for our profession. Joel: The gig economy is obviously getting a lot of buzz in our industry. There are platforms coming out to help establish a marketplace where people looking for gigs can connect with restaurants and employers of all kinds to connect. But we're also hearing that the gig economy is a little bit bloated and a little bit overrated. Where do you stand on the gig economy and what sort of products and services is Jobvite looking at to help support a gig economy? Dan: The word gig almost implies, it almost belittles what's going on here. I think the reality is that, as I said earlier, every industry is being transformed by the cloud, the Internet of things, meaning every aspect of their business is now connected to the cloud, generating a ton of data that's going to be transformative in virtually every industry. And the fact is, the definition of what's core to the enterprise versus non-core is gonna come out of that, and finally, human beings are connected to the cloud. And you're already seeing people ask the question, "Why do I need to come into the office? Why can't I work wherever I want to be?" Chad: Exactly. Dan: And I think that that's not going away. And I don't think that's necessarily the gig economy. I just think that's the cloud. And so companies are gonna have to decide which positions are core to what they do versus not core to what they do. And with those positions that are core, they will still be full-time jobs, but their requirements for full-time work about where people need to be located, what tools they need to use, are gonna be transformed. And so I would argue that working full-time inside a company is going to look more like what the gig economy looks like today. You log in when you need to. Dan: I was just in a meeting yesterday with a bunch of CEOs where they were saying that R&D and development overseas is evolving to a model where everyone agrees that for these four hours, we're online at the same time. But you can be in India, you can be in Eastern Europe, you can be in Florida, you can be in California, you can be in Mexico. It doesn't matter. But as long as for these four hours you're logged in together, you can be anywhere you wanna be. And that's the first I've ever heard of that, and so I think that the gig economy is just the tip of a spear of change about how people work together and collaborate via the cloud. Joel: Dan, thanks for joining us. We really appreciate it. I know I for one could talk for a few more hours, but we know that you don't have such time. For our listeners who want to connect with you, where would you send them? Dan: Certainly send me the email at dan@jobvite.com. Joel: Chad, 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. 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. #Jobvite #DanFinnigan #HotJobs #Yahoo #Nexxt #Canvas #Rolepoint #Telemetry #K1

Drum roll please!!! Today Steven Rothberg from CollegeRecruiter.com joins the boys to talk Google Search API business case and two (2) NEW FEATURES dropped by Google into the Talent Cloud Solution job search API today. Thanks TALROO.com w/ a blank check for keeping you in the know. Enjoy this Talroo exclusive PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies find talent in the largest minority community in the world – people with disabilities. 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: Jobs to careers? 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. But Talroo is focused on predicting, optimizing and delivering talent directly to your email or ATS. Joel: Ah-ha. 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. 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. 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, 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. Announcer: Hide you 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: (singing) Welcome to The Chad and Cheese Podcast, everyone. We have a special guest with us today. I can't believe it took this long to get this cat on the show. Steven Rothberg, founder of College Recruiter. Steven, welcome to the show, coming at us from the Great White North, the state of 10,000 lakes, Minnesota. Steven: How are you? As they say here. Joel: You. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Tell them what you said when you first got on the call with us before we hit record. Steven: About the race? Joel: No. Heidi, Heidi, or something. Steven: Or howdy, howdy. Joel: Howdy, howdy. We took a trip back to 1952. Steven: 1952, I had already graduated from college. I was well into my career. There we go. Joel: There it is. Very nice. Kiss your waitresses, everybody. Chad: Yeah. He'll be here all week. Joel: Steven is here with a big announcement from Google Cloud API. Chad: Not yet, not yet, not yet. Don't do it yet. Joel: Is that what they're calling it though? Because they change the name every week. It's still Google Cloud API, Google Job. Steven: Google Cloud Talent Solutions. Chad: There it is. Joel: Oh, wow. Okay. I'm glad I asked. A big announcement, but before that, Steven has been using the search API, I guess since it was launched, or really soon thereafter. And you have had quite a bit of experience with it. So we want to know about your take on it, how it's benefited your organization, how it's improved search, what exact it is. For people who don't know, tell us about it. Chad: Wait a second, before we get there though, because everybody listening, we've been talking about why Google, or why use somebody else. Right? The whole Trojan horse thing, and I think that's a good ... Right out of the gate, it's like Steven, why did you choose to go the Google route first? And then I definitely want to talk about stats. But why did College Recruiter, after years, hell, probably over a decade, of having your own tech and all that other fun stuff, why did you choose to get on the Google boat? Steven: Yeah. Quite simply, it dates back to I think it was roughly June 2017, where Google announced what's now called Google Hire, their ATS, Google for Jobs, which is the search that happens when you go to on Google. And then also what's now called Google Talent, Cloud Talent Solutions. All those announcements kind of all happened right around the same time. And when we looked at the cost of providing our own search, the building it, the maintaining it, for a pretty small organization, or even a large organization, it's like we're never going to be better at search than Google. Right? Steven: Our customers on the employers' side, not a single one of them is going to ever say, "We're going to post this job, or these thousands jobs, to College Recruiter because they've got great search." Right? They're coming to us to help them hire people. How we do that, they don't really care about. So we felt that we could actually save money and get better results if we partnered with Google and used their API for search to basically replace the search on our homepage and on the interior pages with their technology. So the data, the jobs themselves are coming from our employers, from our database, but the actual search technology, the algorithms, that's coming from Google. Chad: Okay. Joel: And what were some immediate benefits that you saw? Steven: We were an alpha partner. We were one of the first sites to sign with them. We launched during the beta phase a little over a year ago in January 2018. One of the first benefits that we saw prior to the launch that quite frankly really surprised me was that we were dealing with people. It wasn't just like a tech support email address, and here's the API and go figure it out. They were actual real live people that were accountable, that were our primary points of contact at Google. And that's continued to today. I'm amazed that an organization like that has managed to make this a personal experience on the development side, on the customer service side. Steven: That's really important to us, to know that if we have an issue, if we have a suggestion, that we know who to reach out to, and that they respond intelligently and promptly. We don't just get back a copy and paste template like we do with some vendors, or some former vendors, I should say. Another big benefit that we saw immediately upon going live was a reduction in the number of hours that we're spending on maintaining and developing our own search. So we reduced the number of developer hours by about 50%, five zero. Chad: Now is that in house, or did you have a vendor for that? Steven: We were doing it in house, so we had in house developers, several of them, that depending upon the issue, one person might work on it. Another person might work on it. But on a combined basis, about 50% less developer staff time. I also just found out this morning from our customer service team that we went from having an average of about two job seekers a week emailing us or calling us to question the results. Why am I seeing these results? I can't figure out how to run a good search, that type of stuff. And since we went live, we've had one. Chad: For 14 months, and not to mention, that's two week of people that are actually so frustrated that they're taking the time to email you. That's not even really pulling in all the people who didn't even have the time. They just ejected because they had a bad experience. Steven: Right. Absolutely. If you come to a job search site, and you run a search and you get back results that they don't make sense to you, you're going to say, "Screw it." Joel: this I'm going home. Steven: And I'm going to go over to some other site. And they should. There's lots of choice. If we're not delivering a good experience right away, then they should be done with us. And they should move on. Chad: Are they also driving the email notifications? You know, obviously the email notifications historically have driven a ton of traffic to pretty much any job board or job site that's out there. But they're all predicated on obviously Boolean, which was incredibly frustrating because it just didn't work as well. Are you using that to drive the search behind email notifications to ensure that the individuals who are getting those emails are getting more relevant jobs as well? Steven: We're not. But we're doing something pretty similar to what you're thinking. We've actually been, shamefully on us, we've been without a good job match alert email product for the better part of the last year. And believe me, it's a glaring weakness on our end. It's about to be fixed. We're about to go live with a sort of combination job match alert email with content from our blog, YouTube channel, et cetera, sort of wrapped into a weekly e-newsletter. The technology that we're going to be using comes from another vendor that's going to use AI to determine the correct jobs, the correct non job content to send to you based upon your geographic location. Steven: Also, you’re on site search history and behavior, and your behavior in opening the emails and which jobs you click on. It will essentially learn who you are and what you do, quite similar to when you go to Amazon and you search on a tent. And it comes back and it says, "People who searched on this also searched on these things, tent poles, canteens," and then every once in a while, you'll get something really weird like the floor mats for your car. It's like, what the hell does that have to do with a tent? Well, if you've ever gone camping in the rain, you know that you need that. And so Amazon sometimes will come up with some bizarre recommendations on the surface, but then when you think about it a little bit more, they make sense. Steven: One of the reasons that we chose not to use the Google Cloud Talent Solutions for the email product is the cost. Every single day that you send one of those emails to every single candidate, that would be a search, and you pay per search. So we decided to go this other route that it's a flat fee per month. What we are using Google Cloud Talent Solutions for that is somewhat similar to what you're thinking are push notifications, browser push notifications. When you come to our site and you say, "Allow, yes I want to get a push notification when there's a new job or blog article that might be of interest to me," then we use CTS, Cloud Talent Solutions, to identify the job to send to you. And so each one of those is a search. Joel: Steven, I'm curious. Did you find the speed of searches improve greatly? And what did you see in regards to maybe the number of page views on the site? Were people engaged for a longer time period because you were using Google's improved search engine? Steven: Yeah. The speed, I don't have those numbers at my fingertips. I guess the way I can answer that is that our search was lightning fast before we went over to Google, so any speed improvement I think would not have been noticeable to the user. We rebuilt our site about four years ago. And the benchmark that we used was Indeed. If a job seeker could go to Indeed and run a search and get their 10,422 matches and that took so many milliseconds, that was the bar that we set for our development team. And they exceeded that, so if it's fast enough for Indeed's audience, it's fast enough for ours. Even if we are faster, I don't think that there's been a benefit there to the user. But the results have far surpassed our expectations. Chad: Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the stats. Let's talk about the results. As you take a look at- Joel: He was until you interrupted him. Chad: No, no, no. I want him to actually get into stats, real stats. For all those that are out there, yeah, get into the stats. Obviously, speed wasn't something that you noticed, which is awesome. But what did you notice? Give us hard numbers on time on the site, or whatever it might be. Steven: Yeah. Google asked us to pull together some numbers for a case study that they just published. If you want, I can get the URL now or later for people who want to sort of get more details. There were four primary numbers that we looked at. One was the time on site. How long does the average visitor spend on College Recruiter now as compared to prior to January 2018 when we went live? The answer to that is 5% longer time. Now that doesn't sound like a lot. When I saw that it's like, well, that's nice. That's not great. But what that's led to is 25% more searches. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. That is very nice. Joel: That's great. Steven: And that's led to 20% more what we call job detail views. That's somebody who goes from running a search to the job search results page, the page that shows you the 10 results, clicking on one of those jobs, to then read the full job description on our site. We're getting 20% more of those. Chad: Because they're finding exactly what they're looking for versus before when they were frustrated as hell, and they just ejected. Steven: Bingo. Right? You run a search, and now the 10 results that come back to you, rather than maybe one or two being a good fit, now it's probably seven or eight. And so if you get seven or eight good matches, you're going to click on at least one of them. And what that's also led to is that the quality of the people, the match, is greatly improved. 242% increase in our KPI, in our key performance indicator, which are what we call apply clicks. How many people read a posting on our site and then click the apply button to go over to the employers ATS to apply? That's up 242%. Chad: Say that again. What is up 200 and what? Steven: 242%. Chad: Holy shit. Steven: I think that when we first got a good handle on what this Cloud Talent Solutions product was and the benefits to the customer, to the job board, or the ATS, I think Tarquin Clark, who I know you guys know very well, he delivered a presentation at the job gate, North American Job Board Summit in June, I think it was 2017. Might have been July, but it was right around that time when they were rolling out these products. And Career Builder was a very early adopter. Career Builder, I think their equivalent number, a year, almost two years ago, I think it was something like 17% increase. It was something like that, which is huge. I mean, just for turning on a piece of technology, that's a huge lift. 242%, when we saw that, we almost dropped a load in our pants. Joel: Are customers happier and paying you more money? Steven: Yeah. Absolutely. Something that's happened in parallel, not because of Google, but it's definitely made it a lot easier for us, is that two years ago we were almost exclusively a duration based site, meaning that employers would pay to run a job or 1000 jobs for 30 days. Or they might sign a six month contract, or 12 month contract, and what they paid was fixed. Now almost all of our customers are performance based. Virtually all of them pay per click. When we're sending 242% more clicks to employers, then that revenue goes up by 242%. Chad: Now there's your business case, kids. Joel: You're saving money and you're making more money. Steven: Yeah. And the other thing that- Joel: I bet Faith, your wife, likes that. Right? Steven: Oh, yeah. My wife, who's also our CEO, so as our kids put it, we've got the right boss at home, and we've got the right boss at work. There we go. Thank you. Thanks very much. I'm here until Thursday. The developer time saving to, and to a lesser extent, the customer service time saving, that allowed us to complete that migration from duration to performance based far faster because we had an extra 10 hours or so of developer time a month to spend on migrating our technology. And also, then we had more customer service time to spend migrating our customers. So all of that, which has just been really, really critical to our success, happened a lot faster because we didn't have to worry about the search. Chad: Well, not to mention your expertise is not in search. Joel: What is your expertise again, Steven? Steven: The thing that I'm the best at, and I should get a T-shirt for this, I think it was Joel's idea, is being a social media whore. Chad: Oh, okay. There's nothing wrong with that, especially these days. Okay. I'm getting antsy. I'm getting antsy. Can we start talking about announcements now? Can we do that? Joel: In the news. Steven: There are two big announcements that our friends over at Google gave me permission to kind of allow the announcements to come on The Chad and Cheese Podcast, which I'm sure you guys are happy about. One of them is actually live. Joel: I love that they send a surrogate on the show. Steven: They decided that they wanted the news to take the precedent over the speaker, and so they looked for a speaker that nobody would care about. One of the features is live now, and I actually just found out about it a day or two ago. As you might recall, I think it was last summer, Google just sort of announced. Hey, by the way, Johnson and Johnson, Career Builder, any site using Cloud Talent Solutions, College Recruiter, if you go to this site and you type in the military code for the occupation in the military, you're going to automatically see the equivalent civilian code. And it's been pretty good. From what I've heard from people- Chad: Nah. Let's not get into that. Steven: Yeah. There were some problems. But there are definitely some codes, like for a mechanic in the military is going to line up very well on the civilian side. But that was a feature that Google just rolled out. And it was surprise to its customers, surprise, this is live. Nice, new benefit. You're not paying anything for it, anything extra for it. They just did that with language support. For a long time, you've been able to go to a webpage that might be in Spanish. And Google will pop up a message, if you're using Chrome at least, and basically say, "Do you want to see this in English?" And you can say, "Yes." And you can say, "Always translate pages," or whatever. Steven: Well, that's great if your first language is Spanish and you're on a job detail page, the page that has the whole job description. You can then understand what that position is like, the requirements, et cetera. But to get to the job detail page to begin with, you have to be able to run a search on a site like ours in English because the postings are in English. If Spanish is your first language and English is your second language, therefore you're bilingual, therefore you're a candidate that most employers salivate over, you can't find their job posting on College Recruiter because you probably don't have enough of a command of the English language, or you might not, in order to put in the correct keywords, especially if it's Boolean and your search is dumb like ours was before using Google. Steven: Now I was just shown this yesterday by Google. If you go to College Recruiter or any of the other CTS sites, and you type in a word like ventas, Spanish for sales, and then put in your location and hit search, all of the sales positions, all of the relevant sales positions on College Recruiter will come up, even if they do not include the word ventas. About 10% of students in elementary, middle school, high school, et cetera, are ELLs, or English Language Learners, meaning that their first language is not English. Almost all of those are going to be bilingual. Some of them are going to have stronger English skills than other. But if your first language is Croatian, or Japanese, or Spanish, you're going to feel comfortable using that language to run a job search. Steven: Now if you're fluent in English, you'll probably just run a search in English. But if you're not fluent, if you're merely bilingual, then typing in keywords in your primary language is going to lead you to better results. That's going to be the preferred way of searching. And I think that this is going to be a real door opener for candidates who are otherwise extremely well qualified. Think of a part-time retail job in a city like Los Angeles or San Antonio, where there's such a large population of people who barely speak English. Now if a bank can hire a teller, who has very strong Spanish language skills, to work at their branch in Los Angeles, that's great for the bank. It's great for the candidate. It's great for the customer. Joel: Just visually for me, in your search box I put in a Spanish word. And the results will still be in English. It won't auto translate the results for me. But it will sync up those keywords to what the English equivalent is. Am I visualizing that correctly, or does it- Steven: That's exactly right. But now picture yourself as somebody whose first language is Spanish. And so you've set your Chrome browser to default to Spanish. If you were to run that same search again, you would get a little popup from Chrome saying, "This page looks like it's in English. Would you like me to translate this to Spanish?" Joel: So it syncs up. Steven: Then you say, "Yes." Yep. And then that's not anything to do with Cloud Talent Solutions. That's not anything to do with College Recruiter. That's kind of another group over at Google, the Google Translate team. Joel: Have you, from a user's perspective, added in your search window Spanish search available, or whatever the Spanish equivalent of that would be? Have you let users know that they can search in other languages? Steven: We found out about it yesterday. I'm an activator. We've got some developers that are even more so. They get a shit ton of stuff done every day. But we're not that fast. Joel: Are you planning any sort of marketing campaign to, let's say Spanish speaking prospects? Steven: I kind of feel like I should be paying a consulting fee to Joel. Chad: Everybody listening to this podcast should just send us blank checks. Yes. That's the way it should work. Let's talk about number two, commute search. Steven: There have been a few job boards that have done a bit of a mash up, where they've sort of mixed in Google's commute search so that candidates can say, "Oh, okay. I see this job. And I can see the location of it." Employers rarely include a street address or even a zip code with their posting. So the best you usually have is the employer name, city, and state. I think it's all about that there are way too many highly qualified candidates out there in this economy. And so we just really want to keep those people away because there's no other rational reason for it. Hashtag sarcasm. That's three now I think. I think I should have little check marks going. Steven: What we are going live with, and the other big announcement that is coming through the podcast is enhanced commute search. So now when you go to College Recruiter and you run that search, alongside the search results, that here are the 10 jobs that match your interests, you're going to see a map. And that map will have a pin for each one of those 10 locations. And you can then change your search defaults. And you can say, "Here's my address." It might be where your apartment is. It might be the location of your last class of the day. Show me only the jobs that are within, say, a 10 minute walk, or a 30 minute bicycle ride. And then the search results will update and the pins will update. Steven: And so you can then forget about having to look at 100 different retail jobs to figure out which ones are within a 10 minutes walk, and instead, Google will show that to you. One of the things that most job boards do very, very well if they have any kind of commute search option, is distance. They'll say that the distance between your location and this job's location is a mile. Well, if you're in downtown San Francisco at 5:00 PM, it takes you about 45 minutes to go a mile in a car [crosstalk 00:27:52], if you're lucky and if you've got Dirty Harry beside you. Steven: At 9:00 PM, you can get from downtown San Francisco over the Bay Bridge into Oakland in that same amount of time. It really is irrelevant to most job seekers what the distance is between them and the employer. What they want to know is: How long will it take me to get there by walking, by bicycle, by public transportation, by car at the day and time that I'm going to be working? Chad: That's really hard though because, I mean for years, companies, they never had their physical location in their actual job posting itself. And you need data to be able to go by that. And what we used to do was, we would do city center. And that's all we could do because we didn't have any additional information with regard to location. Are you seeing Google attributing locations and trying to kind of fuzzy math it? Or are companies actually starting to push that data into their jobs so that you can better understand what a commute would look like? Steven: No and no. I do think that more and more employers, as they become aware of this issue, will start to include street address or at least a freaking zip code into their postings. Today, some employers are doing that. Most are not. Yeah. Chad: You're such an asshole. Steven: Google does a very good job of identifying an employer's location, or a shop's location, just by putting in the name of the company and the city and state. And then just through Google Maps, you can get that data. What we're doing, Mike Willbanks, who's our vice president of product development, is doing this. He's basically working on an enhancement to our implementation of commute search, so that when we do not have the street address and/or zip code, he's basically looking that up in a fully automated way of course, looking that up on Google Maps, grabbing the address and zip code, and then feeding it over to commute search. So we're building that behind the scenes. Steven: Remember early in the conversation when I told that there are real people at Google, and they really listen to our suggestions? This is one of the suggestions we've made. I don't know if there's been any kind of a positive feedback from them, a commitment that, hey, give us a month or two, and you'll see that feature. But knowing the people who were working on Cloud Talent Solutions and how they interact well with other groups at Google, I have to believe that this is coming. That's just me. Joel: I know when I think about geolocation and geo targeting, I think of mobile. Is it your understanding that this will also be available for say, laptops that have a GPS within it? And what kind of user numbers do you have, mobile versus sort of traditional desktop or laptop? Steven: Yeah. Our site can identify your location if you're on mobile. And then we use that data, or if you're just on a desktop through your wifi network, we can see where you are. We then use that for your default location. If you're on your mobile, we're going to default to wherever your mobile is. In terms of mobile users, when we relaunched our site about four years ago, we went from a typical site, which was the best word to describe it would've been horrifying on a mobile, to responsive design, which is not perfect. But it's a quantum leap forward, or was a quantum leap forward. The percentage of our mobile users went from 15% to 55%. And we didn't see drop off in desktop users. The desktop users, that was more or less flat, so the people who were using our site using laptops and desktops, they kept using our site. What was different was that rather than somebody coming to our site on a mobile, seeing how awful it was, and bailing and never coming back again, and probably telling 5000 of their closest friends, "For God's sake, do not go to College Recruiter on mobile," now they can come to our site and they can have a decent experience. Joel: Are you still seeing growth in mobile or has it kind of plateaued? Steven: It plateaued. Yeah. We've been at that 50% to 55% number for several years now. One of the big problems with mobile is that last mile problem. They can come to our site. They can run a search. They can register. They can upload a resume through LinkedIn or whatever, or if they're on certain phones and they can easily store a file. I think Android phones are supposed to be pretty easy with that, iPhones, it's pretty terrible. But they can do all of that on a mobile. But as soon as they hit that apply button and they go over to the ATS, for most employers, again, they've done a really, really good job of making it as difficult as possible for people to apply. Steven: A lot of employers will sort of poo poo that and say, "Oh, we have that button right there. Apply with LinkedIn. Only 1.5% of young adults 15 to, I think it's 34 years of age, so basically gen Z and gen Y, use LinkedIn on a monthly basis. If they're not even using LinkedIn on a monthly basis, that's only 1.5% of them, the likelihood of those people using LinkedIn to apply to a job on your ATS is really, really low. Joel: Well, Steven, we appreciate your time. We know you're a busy guy. You heard the announcement here first kids. Steven, for those who want to know more about you and/or your company, where should they go? Steven: Yeah. No sweat. Collegerecruiter.com is our domain. Feel free to email me. Steven, S-T-E-V-E-N at collegerecruiter.com. Anybody who wants to read the case study from Google, they can go to www2.CollegeRecruiter.com/GoogleCaseStudy. Chad: Beautiful. Fair enough. Joel: The Google train keeps on trucking. Chad: Love it. Joel: Chad, 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. #Google #CloudTalentSolution #CollegeRecruiter #search #partnership #analytics #KPI

What do you get when a former NBA player launches an applicant tracking system? Gotta listen to find out if Eddy has what it takes to survive Firing Squad or not. Enjoy this Talroo exclusive. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your sourcing and recruiting partner for people with disabilities. 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? A cross between talent and a kangaroo? Chad: Haha, 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: 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. Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad: Or you feel like you're in a recruiting hamster wheel and there's just nowhere to go, right? 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. 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 gamut 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: All right. Been too long for Firing Squad. Chad: Yep. Joel: Glad to be back. Chad, how you doing? Chad: I'm doing awesome, man. It's nice to be home for a minute, right? Joel: It is nice to be home. It is nice to be home. So we have a treat today on Firing Squad. We have a former NBA player, I think, which is a first for our show. Chad: It is. Joel: Travis Hansen, welcome to the show. Former Atlanta Hawk, BYU, overseas player, welcome to Firing Squad. Travis: Thanks, guys. Chad and Cheese, happy to be here, man. Joel: Travis is CEO, and I'm assuming, founder? Travis: Yes. Joel: Of Eddy, E-D-D-Y.com. Who's your favorite Eddy, by the way? Travis: Oh, my gosh. Christmas vacation Eddy, right? Joel: Oh, yeah. Cousin Eddy. Chad: Cousin Eddy. Joel: Nice. Travis: Cousin Eddy was the best. Joel: Yeah. I'm going to go Eddie Murphy for me. Travis: I could do that. I like Eddie Murphy. Joel: Chad's got some '80s song that he likes called [crosstalk 00:02:49] Eddie, or something. Chad: Yeah, just popped into my head. Charles and, yeah. Charles and Eddie. Joel: So aside from the NBA angle, what else should we know about you? Travis: Oh, man. Born and raised in Utah, great parents. Mom was an amazing mom, died of pancreatic cancer when I was 17. Little brother overdosed prescription drugs. Gone through some hard things in my life. Wasn't always the greatest at basketball. I was athletic, I was tough, driven. But there's guys that are more athletic. I made it to the NBA, did a 360, and then I see Josh Smith do a 720, so I think a lot of things, when you work hard, good things happen, sometime great things, sometimes incredible things. Ended up playing for the Atlanta Hawks, and then went over to Rio, Madrid. Played for the basketball team over there. Lived next to Cristiano Ronaldo in Caca. Joel: Man. Travis: Ended up going to Moscow, Russia, met Vladimir Putin. They gave me Russian citizenship to play on the national team. David Blatt, who was a Cleveland Cavaliers coach, was my coach. Joel: Cavaliers. Travis: Retired, came home, and had a chance meeting with a good friend who started Nu Skin. He was a billionaire and he said, "You know what? What are you going to do with your life?" It was awesome. He looked me in the eyes, there was no one more important in the room than me at the time, which taught me a lot of cool lessons about someone that had been that successful. And he said, "Building businesses could be the most charitable thing you do if you do it the right way." And that's when I knew, after basketball, that that's what I wanted to do with my life. Joel: My mom sold Nu Skin for about a week. She was on the train, baby. Travis: Blake Roney, the founder, and he always says, "I'm a lotion salesman." Joel: All right. She had it all, man. Shampoo, lotion, yeah. All that stuff. All that stuff. All right. Well, before we get into Eddy, Chad's going to run down the rules for the newbies out there, and then we'll give you the two minutes to pitch your product. Chad: Okay, here we go. So you're going to have two minutes to pitch Eddy, and at the end of the two minutes, you're going to hear the bell. Then Joel and I are going to hit you with rapid-fire Q&A. If your answers start to ramble, Joel's going to hit you with the crickets, or maybe even the bell, who knows? And then we're going to just push you along, give you kind of the signal to be more concise. Who's eating stuff? Joel: Not me. Travis: Cheese. Cheese was eating. Joel: It's not me, bruh. Travis: It's the dog. The dog. Chad: At the end of Q&A, you're going to get one of three grades, either big applause, which means you killed it, golf clap means you need to tighten your game up, that's my favorite. Or the firing squad, no! You should probably close up shop, pull out the drawing board because this shit's just isn't working. So that's Firing Squad. Are you ready? Joel: And the guns are still fresh from our last episode, so no pressure, Travis. No pressure. Chad: She got double-gunned. Travis: Let's do it. Joel: All right. At the bell you got two minutes starting ... Travis: Eddy.com. We built a few different businesses, and used a lot of HR tech, and it sucked. It wasn't good. It was old, it was old technology, and we love, coming from the NBA, we know building championship teams is hard. It's much more art than science, and so we set off to make some killer software, cloud-based human resource management software that is designed for small, medium businesses, and it allows you to find and hire the right recruits, and then maintain them and keep them in your business. Travis: Everyone knows that hiring is super-hard. It's hard to ... It's like dating. A couple read a resume, text, meet them twice and then you're supposed to know if you should marry them. And so we set off to build software to automate, to understand personalities and resume parsing, and make it fun. And we've hired, we've hid a couple Easter eggs in there. We hired eight engineers from Ancestry.com who are more than 60 years experience all together. And we think we can revolutionize the industry and build some killer software. Joel: Now everyone ends this the wrong way. Where can we find out more about you? Travis: Eddy.com. E-D-D-Y.com. We launched, we basically been in startup mode for about, mmm, 14 months. We launched 60 days ago, we already put on, we're about 40 companies in 60 days that we've been able to put on our software. Joel: You are fresh. Chad: Fresh. Joel: You are diapered and ready to go. Holy cow. Travis: Okay. Chad: So these SMBs, these small and medium-sized businesses, are you looking to try to take Eddy to the big leagues and do an uprise? Travis: Yo, you look at Greenhouse and Lever, and they're the enterprise softwares out there, we're just as good. In fact, I think they have resume parsing and some, a little bit heavier reporting analytics, but that's not our mission, our focus. We want to be an all-in-one HR solution. It's really fragmented. You have to have an ATS, an HRIS, your own Zenefits, and then payroll. So we're bringing it all in one solution. So we will build what you need to have in each of those verticals, and have the best solution for a small, medium business. So our customers are typically, it's when you go to a breaking point because you're growing so fast, or you're so sick of the manually entry. You have 15 spreadsheets for every little thing that you have, and we bring it all in one. Travis: So it's typically 50 to about 500 employees is when our customers start to look for a solution and find us. Joel: So I can't get past the name. We talked to Myas and Olivias, and all kinds of female-oriented names. How did you come up with Eddy, and what were some of other names that got nixed? Travis: Oh, man. We really wanted a female name, to tell you the truth. We worked really hard and tried to find a, there's a lot more females in the HR industry than there are males. But Eddy was, we loved Alexis and Siri, and so many people are naming their products names. Put it in Eddy or ask Siri, and we want Eddy to be that authoritative expert in the HR industry to help you do your job and make you a hero. And eddy, also, is a little whirlpool in the ocean. We, at our company, we all want to be surfers. Joel: Yes. Travis: We office in Utah. Joel: As everyone from Utah. Travis: We office in Utah but our heart's in California at the beach, so our whole office is basically designed and decorated as if we were at the beach, so it helps us get through the Utah winters. And so an eddy's a whirlpool, an eddy basically goes down, grabs all the nutrients off the ocean floor and then brings them back up so it's a good ecosystem for the fish. Joel: So should we be expecting a voice assistant, as well, in the future? Travis: Absolutely. A lot of automation, a lot of AI. So in theory, Eddy helps you go find the talent, the A+ players, the PLUs, we call them the people like us that are driven, that are genuinely kind, that will make your business go from a garage startup to an enduring business that lasts forever, which every founder wants their legacies, they want their business to survive. And the only way to have your business survive is to continue to find great great people to work at it and run it, and help you. And so we, Eddy, specializes in going to find that talent. Chad: Okay, so let's dig down deep into how. How does Eddy actually help companies source talent? Travis: So it allows you to create a job post integrated with all these job boards out there, so it allows you to cast a huge fishing net to find the right talent so that you're just not manually posting to job boards. We do it in a very unique way. The key words, the characters, the templates, we really have taken an authoritative and expert approach in bringing in HR consultants to help you write the perfect job description, and to tweak it, and to be creative and innovate on that job description. Travis: So we are a people platform. We are not just for the HR admin or for the co-founder, we're also for the candidate, to allow them to have a really quick, fast, mobile-friendly user experience. Most businesses don't even have a careers page. If you go to their website they don't even have a perks, or what's our business like, or what is it like to work there, who am I going to work next to, and all these different questions that candidates have. And so most companies just don't get to the best candidates quick enough with under 3% unemployment in the US, it is a competitive market. And if you don't have the right solution and the right systems and processes to attract this candidate, you're going to lose. Chad: So do you help every single client write all their job descriptions, because, I mean, we were actually just at an AI and automation summit, and one of the things that we talked about was garbage in, garbage out. And in most cases, the job descriptions that companies have today, are garbage. Joel: Suck. Chad: So, yeah, they totally suck, and they've sucked for decades. So do you, is this a differentiation, where you actually get in there and say, "Look, the data has to be not garbage. It has to be good." Do you help every single company rewrite their job descriptions to be relevant to today, and also the requirements for that job? Travis: We provide the tools for you to not copy and paste a job description and regurgitate the job descriptions that are out there. So we provide tools for you to innovate and create new job postings based on your culture, based on your business, that will attract the right candidate. Chad: But it's up to HR to pretty much rewrite their shit, right? Because they just, in most cases they just won't do it. Travis: Almost all of our companies, I would say 95% have all rewritten them and are tweaking them and testing them because they have the tools. I think before, historically in HR tech it's so old and it's so boring that no one has the tools. They have a ton of functionality. Chad: What are the tools? What are the tools that you're providing them that they might not get in any other ATS type of platform? Travis: So our chief product officer's Kenny Freestone. Chad: Uh-huh. Travis: Our head of the US is Josh Calloway, and our CTO's Greg Burgess. These three guys were the first employees. Greg Burgess was the second engineer at Ancestry DNA, which turned into an unbelievable company, organization to help a million people around the world connect to family members. And so they're very thoughtful in their process, number one. So a ton of research, a ton of beta users and understanding what works and what doesn't work, and what works with a candidate, number one. Travis: Number two, user interface. It's a clean, organized, beautiful design that's easy to use, fast to use, and allows you to create a job posting really quickly, but also gives you enough guidance to help you be innovative, because most people, too many of us aren't. We're not creative, we don't know what words to use, and so we built the tools, enough to hold your hand and to help you down this path without being too authoritative, and not too back off. Joel: Travis, it goes without saying that this is an incredibly crowded space, and listeners will know that big gorillas like Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, et cetera, are getting into the ATS market. ATSs, bigger ATSs are trying to figure out what are we going to be, were seeing acquisitions in the space, people trying to be a one-stop shop for employers. Curious, where do you guys fit in the whole universe of ATSs? What's your unique selling proposition to folks that you talk to, because I'm sure you're not the only ATS that they've spoken to. What does that conversation sound like with prospects? Travis: Yeah, it's a great question. There's a ton of ATSs, some of them are good, some of them are bad, some of them are old tech, most of them are old tech. We are not going to be just an ATS-only product. And because, I don't think that's the small, medium business solution. We have four other companies. We need insurance, we need payroll, we need job tracking, PTO, and employee directories. I need an app as a CEO to notify me when someone's birthday and when they have a work anniversary. And I need it to be really easy to pop up and say, "It's, Cheese has been here four years. Do you want to send a funny, classy, or professional text to him?" Joel: He needs a raise. Travis: And do you want to give him a raise? Joel: No. Travis: Too many companies are on paper. They're on filing cabinets, they're noncompliant. They just don't know the right way to run a business. And so there might be some ATSs that are better than ours, but ours is easy to use, it's plug-and-play, it's well-organized, it's a very, the process has been very well thought out. It's a simplified pipeline setup, so you have a 30,000 foot view. It's a drag and drop, so once you've posted your job and the candidate comes in, it's a drag-and-drop, and as you drag and drop, kind of like a Trello, there's a bunch of automated stage actions that happen in back, so they get emailed or text, and- Joel: We actually mentioned the Trello look and feel when we were talking beforehand, yeah. Travis: Yep, absolutely. Integrated job sites, posting job ads, integrated with current careers page allows you to have, to just be a little bit cleaner, a little bit better. Because sometimes, it's not that your business is so good, it's that your competitors and businesses are so bad, is why you win. My dad was pretty successful, he had an insulation company. Sold it for a little bit of money after my mom passed away from pancreatic cancer, and decided that he needed to spend more time with his family and his kids and be there for them after such a hardship. She was only sick for like four months, so it happened pretty quick. And I said, "How were you so successful in business?" And he said, "It's not that I'm so good, Trav, it's that everyone else is so bad." Travis: And I think there's a lot to be said in HR tech that there are a lot of people that are bad at this. Joel: You just highlighted the success of this podcast. Travis: Right, it's not that Cheese and Chad are so good, I mean, there's some crappy podcasts, and there's some crappy HR tech, and if we can figure out a way not to be crappy, to rise about the noise and the crap and be an all-in-one solution, and be able to help companies create championship teams, championship cultures, and to maintain them. Because people change and seasons change, and the candidates change, and to have a process. We've been with so many companies that don't even have an interview guide. And we've built this amazing interview guide with libraries that you can customize. Because as you hire these admins and recruiters, there's just, companies don't have a streamlined, structured process to ask questions. Joel: They might not have recruiters. Travis: Might not even have recruiters, right? Joel: Yeah. How much- Travis: I mean, your sister was the admin and you're growing so fast that you need her now to take on recruiting, and they just are not trained. And also there's a lot of founders that don't want to hire an HR person. They don't want to pay the $50,000 to $90,000 for an HR person. They don't want the other stuff that comes with it. They want someone they trust and they like, and it's usually an admin, and administrator that's been there, and so they promote them to take this on. And they are not technically qualified. And that's where Eddy can step in. Joel: Let's talk about the differentiator of price, which you did not mention, and you have pricing. You have a pricing page but there's no prices on the pricing page. Was that by design? What's your guys pay structure? And I'm sure you're aware that a lot of solutions have a free sort of lightweight ATS, and does that factor into the pricing model? Travis: Our website's terrible. We barely launched, we're a startup. We just barely hired- Chad: Strange to say, that is great. Joel: I love that. Travis: We just barely, so we've been so focused on engineering and product the last year and a half, just convincing the best engineers in the world and product people to work for a washed-up basketball player was hell. We did it, we have a killer team, and we're starting to have a great product. We hope over time, the next 12 to 18 months, it'll become world-class, and so our sights and minds have just turned towards marketing and sales in the last 60 days. So we went out and hired, after two years recruiting off and on, we hired the CMO of Purple, purple.com mattresses. He went from zero to 300 million revenue, brilliant guy. He just started a month ago. We're totally revamping the website. We're revamping our pricing and trying to understand exactly what our customers want, and so that is in the works, and we'll get a lot better at that. Travis: But right now we're just, we're giving killer deals. We're like, "199 to 399, have as many users as you want, get on the system, test it out." Because revenue's important, it's the lifeblood of the company, but right now the lifeblood of the company is, let's build a world-class product, and we need people in it, using it, getting feedback to help us do that. Chad: So customer acquisition. I mean, that's obviously key. You start looking at revenues and obviously making investors and even if it's bootstrap, everybody else happy because they're getting a paycheck. You have the Hired by Google's of the world who have three million companies who are already using G Suite, right? So they kind of have that baked-in base that they can get into. Where are you guys going? Do you have specific regions? How big is your sales force? What's the real focus on growth? Is it trying to grow nice and easy, and start small first? What is it? Or is it hypergrowth? Travis: To answer your question I'd say I just got done attending Qualtrics' summit. Qualtrics is a survey company here based in Utah. Had Oprah come and speak. Oprah, I haven't heard from her for a while since her show, since she went to OWN network. Man, I'm a big fan of Oprah. Just a good-hearted, good human. Some of the stuff she said was just phenomenal. Joel: Have you had her cauliflower pizza yet? Travis: No. Gross. Chad: Because Joel hasn't, that's for damn sure. Joel: I refuse. Travis: That's gross. Gross. I'm a man, I need meat on my pizza. Joel: Oh, Jeez. Travis: Oprah is, Oprah said she left her show, 25 million views, she had all these awards, Emmys, and she started her OWN network. And it was terrible. It started to do very poorly, and didn't have the views they needed, and producers were talking to her. And she said, "Okay. Let's stop trying to own the world, and hypergrowth, and get all these listeners and viewers that we don't have. Let's just focus on the viewers we do have." And so I think our approach is similar, that we're not trying to compete against all these other competitors. We're trying to take care of the customers we do have, give them the full solution to allow them to build an enduring company that lasts forever, and provide the software that allows them to do that. Travis: And so I have no doubt we'll add customers. The customers we do add, we want to make sure we take care of them. So as far as hypergrowth, we do want to do a hero video, we do think when the marketing's been really boring, there's no solid brand, if anybody ever asks, "How do you do hiring recruiting?" They say, "Uh, Indeed. Uh, I think the ZipRecruiter thing", I mean, there's just no solid marketing brand that stands out in the space. And we hope, with some humor, some fun, and a lot of data and research, we can be that brand. Chad: So you talk about Zip, and Indeed. How do you guys actually acquire candidates? Because you're talking about job distribution, and that's fairly standard for most applicant tracking systems. Are you doing anything from a programmatic standpoint, number one, and then number two, are you doing anything on the automated matching side of the house? We're seeing that with, again, the Googles of the world, and many of the other applicant tracking systems who are either partnering, or they're building that themselves. Travis: Yeah, we'll partner. There'll be certain things we build ourselves. Anything we do we'll be A+ at. The things that we believe someone else can be A+ at, we will partner with them. So job boards are specifically one thing that we don't. We think Indeed, and man, KSL, and NewCo, and Glassdoor, and Google are really great at, so we've integrated those job boards. Now as soon as the candidate goes to a careers page, goes to apply, reads the job description, we want to own that. The first interaction, any type of experience with your brand, we want to own. And we want to own it all the way through, and not just an ATS, but onboarding. Onboarding is one thing that will take a little, we'll differentiate Eddy compared to, I mean Eddy versus all these other Breezy, Bamboo- Joel: Enboarder. Travis: Yeah, Enboarder, Jobvite, blah, blah, blah, ApplicantPro, they suck at onboarding. And onboarding's such a critical piece to ensure that a candidate, now that they've accepted the job, they want to work for you, have an unbelievable experience, and then continue to have an unbelievable experience throughout. Joel: Are you partnering for the onboarding experience? Travis: No, we're building all that. So we will own recruiting as far as, as soon as a candidate goes to a recruiter's page, until they're hired, fired, or retired, right? So onboarding, benefits, PTO, HRAS, employee directory, payroll, we will own all of that piece. So ATS, the reason we started with the ATS is because it has low switching costs, it is really the starting point with your business. So as you start to grow you do need a careers page, you do need to have an unbelievable candidate experience and all these different things. And so we believe that's the starting point, and we will have a full all-in-one solution. Joel: Curious about funding. You've mentioned some heavy-hitters that are on the team. Have you gone out and raised money? Is this all sort of NBA dollar-funded? Are you looking to go raise a series A? What does that look like for you guys? Travis: That's a great question. So I've just been super-lucky to have good mentors, and I've had probably 10 coaches in the NBA. Four were incredible, three were okay, and three were average. I've never really had a really terrible coach, but mentor-wise in business, I've had some unbelievable. Fraser Bullock, Sorenson Capital, Bain Capital, Blake Roney Nu Skin, just been so nice to me. And so, and they're very capable, so we know that raising on the idea compared to the team, compared to actual product, compared to actual customers is way different, way different evaluations. So we have bootstrapped and self-funded all this. We have other companies, and so when I got done playing basketball I got heavy into real estate. I did not want to be an Antoine Walker. Poor Antoine, or some of these other guys that have just lost all their money. And so I went- Joel: Pippen. Pippen. Travis: Yeah, Pippen. I got paid for running ladders, and getting yelled at, and I can't run ladders and get yelled at anymore, I'm too old. I just turned 40. I just protect the asset, so we got into real estate. We own now over 500 multi-family units, and then we have a property manager company. After that, we got into FinTech, which now we have a business that does about 10 million in revenue and has about 40 employees. Then we did a couple seed rounds and kind of did some investing, and now we started Eddy and Sass. So we are funded, whether we, we don't have the capital of some of these other large businesses to compete with, but we have enough to build a killer team. And then be scrappy, and be frugal and resourceful, which'll, we think, end up helping us build a world-class product. Travis: And at some point we will want to bring on a strategic partner for growth, but we need to identify so many different patterns before we bring on that investor. Joel: Do you feel like you're at risk of being labeled sort of a hobby or a side project versus a committed business because you have a lot of fires out there? Travis: No, because each company operates independently. Each company has a different COO that runs it. This is all I do, particularly with our nonprofit, spend like 5% of the time with that, because I still love helping people, and giving money away, and helping people's really hard. But 95% of my time, and our whole team, 100% of their time is dedicated to this product and this company, and that's how we've done with other companies. So we know that this is going to be a five-to-seven-year hard run to build a world-class product, and we're committed to that, so I mean, time will tell, right? We got to go play, and the lights are on. But I think you're asking, am I Dwight Howard playing for the Lakers, and when the lights come on, am I going to get traded to the Bobcats? Joel: I think, my curiosity is, if we talk in five years, what does this look like? Have you moved on to other projects? Are you looking to sell the company? It doesn't sound like you're going IPO any time soon. I guess that's what I'm trying to get at. Chad: And there's a ton of money being thrown around in this industry right now. We're seeing acquisitions pretty much left and right. So is this built to acquire, or is this built for a legacy? Travis: Well, I think every business should be built for legacy. If you get acquired and someone comes and you end up being a good fit, then so be it, but Qualtrics just got bought by SAP for 8 billion, but no way down the last 16 years did they ever build it to be acquired. So we want to build it to be an unbelievable solution for a small, medium business. We want to be best friends with the founders that worked their butts off, that grinded, that saved money, that became a business somehow, and now they're in growth mode and they need solutions to help them continue to grow. So we'll be, to identify the market, Bamboo HR, GoCo and Eddy are the only three players on the whole market that are all in, all-in-one HR solution for your company. Travis: So within five years there might be a few more, but we believe between Bamboo HR and Eddy, those'll be the top two solutions for your company. Joel: Good enough. We know what that bell means. It's time to face the firing squad. Chad, you want to do the honors? Chad: Sure. Sure, sure. Hey, Travis, appreciate you taking the time, man. Going to start out with, man, you are competing against some very big names. Hiring in HR, HRIS systems are a hard business, just because every company out there believes they're so much different than everybody else, and their hiring experience and their hiring process is so different, so it's like a customizable, kind of like a labyrinth that you have to get into. And then there's the whole process of prospectively spreading yourself too thin. Being just an applicant tracking system, or being just an onboarding piece, is there enough focus in certain areas versus trying to focus on everything. But you get points for saying your website sucks, because I was going to tell you that, but you told me before I could say it. Chad: So you get points for that. SMB is a very smart place to start, because it is a big pool of businesses with low to no tech whatsoever. And I also agree with you 100% that to be able to focus on specific areas and be really good at them, you're going to have to partner with the best to be able to provide some of those technical solutions for sourcing, for interview scheduling, and things like that, that the AI and automation that's happening in those segments are amazing. So I believe your partnership strategy is on point. So between the two of those, I'm going to go with a golf clap. I think you're getting there, man. I think you're getting there, and I look forward to see where Eddy goes from here. Joel: Fair enough. All right, my turn. Travis, it was a pleasure to meet you. It's always nice just to meet startups. You have a great story. You're the reason why we do this show, so it was a pleasure to meet you, and like Chad, I look forward to your journey and where this thing takes you. You're very early on. The one thing that I really like ... So, let me back up. Whenever we talk to an ATS or we learn about a new ATS, Chad and I have been around for 20 years, so we tend to like knee jerk, oh, my God, not another ATS. Why would someone do that? And I have to sort of hit myself and say, hey, not everyone is like you, and a lot of companies, startups, small businesses do not have an ATS. So I try to temper my criticism of a new ATS, knowing that a lot of companies do not. Joel: Now what I really like about the company, number one, is you guys built this for you. You found a need in your own organizations to build this thing out. And some of the best organizations out there were built because someone found a need and filled it. Slack comes to mind. Slack was a side project for the company, and that came out pretty well for them, and will continue to do so. So I love that you're building it for yourselves. I love that you understand that talent builds success, and I think your roots in basketball and sports, obviously, have trained you to get a good team around you, and I think the Casper and the Ancestry folks, I think that is getting a real good team around you. Joel: I think you understand bench strength and getting people around you, so I think that's a big plus for you. That aside, Chad is totally right. This is an incredibly competitive business. Consumers are very confused, who do I use? Google getting into the game is big. Facebook, in some way, is going to get into this, and every small business has a Facebook page, or most do, so I think that's going to be a competitive hurdle in the future. LinkedIn is getting into the small business thing and launched an ATS late last year. You have all the players that you mentioned, so I think that you're going to be successful. I think that you're going to have a niche market. I think you're fine being 5% or less of the small business market. I don't think you need to be huge, and I think that your comments about caring for the customer and knowing who your customers are and what they do, I think, is really valuable and will carry you far in this industry. Joel: So I like what you're doing, but I also am very aware of the competitive landscape and how hard it is to make a dent in this market. So for me, as well, golf clap. So you're on the right track. You're very early on. I'd love to talk to you a year from now, see where you are, see where you are with some of the innovation that you talked about. But I think you're going to be fine, but it is an uphill battle, I will say. Travis: Yeah. You guys are nice. It is. Startups are brutal. It's not easy, and we know it's going to be a five-to-seven, ten-year ride to build a world-class product and take care of your customers, and you look at Qualtrics. 16 years and still very few people heard about them until they had that huge acquisition. And so the thing I like, I get asked to speak to UVU, BYU, and Weber State and all these MBA schools, these entrepreneur kids. And they always ask me, "What business shall I start?" And there's so much pressure put on these kids to think of the new SpaceX, Tesla, Facebook, something that's never come up before. And I think ... my agent's Bill Duffy. He has Steve Nash, Carmelo Anthony, Klay Thompson, and he always says, "The only way to become a billionaire is to come up with one of those ideas, or to screw a ton of people." Travis: And so I always thought, I can build five hundred million businesses, and what are the best spaces to get in? Well, get in the biggest spaces. You know, right now we're in real estate, loans, and HR tech. And so, yeah, as far as our level of success, you guys are rating us on, are you going to IPO, are you going to become a billion-dollar company, you going to be a, you know? We don't rate ourselves on that. We rate ourselves on, can we build? Each company we build can be a hundred million dollar company, and for us, that's our metrics. That's an A+, and we're happy to work as hard as we can to make that happen and create a good team around us. Travis: And then also, let's put on 5,000 to 10,000 customers, and we'd be extremely happy with that. Travis: What are you going to do to me? Joel: Show's over Travis. Travis: Get that thing off. Joel: Dude, where can we find out more? Travis: Eddy.com. E-D-D-Y.com, give it 30 days, we'll have a killer website up. Chad: Thanks. Joel: Thanks, Travis. We out. Chad: We out. Travis: Thanks, guys. 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.c-h-a-d-c-h-e-e-s-e.com. #Eddy #FiringSquad #ATS #Onboarding #SMB

On this week's show, - Messaging apps are HOT HOTT HOTTT and flush with cash - Facebook is feeling US user ejection - Costco, Target, Whole Foods, Amazon, & Walmart minimum wage crossfire - WTF is the human cloud? - Momazonians... WTF did you can her? - Zip pushes past Indeed's Canadian cock block - POWER TO THE PEOPLE - Money flows Wade & Wendy, Paradox, Instawork, HiBob & Gem (ZenSourcer). Oh, and the investment cash register continues to ring. Enjoy, and support our sponsors: Sovren, Canvas and JobAdX. 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.​ 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: Why the hell not? We're back, yo. It's The Chad and Cheese Podcast, aka, the red-headed stepchild of recruitment news. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash. Joel: On this week's show, messaging apps stay red hot and flush with cash. More minimum wage crossfire, and what the fuck is the human cloud. Chad: No clue. Joel: Learn it, live it, love it. And no shirt, no shoes, no dice. We'll be right back after this word from Sovren. 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.com. Ed: This is Ed from Philly. You're listening to the Chat and Cheese Podcast. Chad: Yes. Ed from Philly. Joel: Ed, you're dead to me. But I like the sound bite. Chad: Oh, why is he dead to you? That doesn't make any sense. Joel: I crossed the fat guy line, with me. Yeah, shout outs. Chad: Shout outs. Okay. First and foremost, David- Joel: David who? Chad: ... long story short. I can't tell, you got to try to keep this a little incognito, because he's actually ... He's a talent acquisition professional, He's a VP of talent acquisition or something like that. Anyway ... And you'll understand why. David was using CareerBuilder at his company and they were looking either switching to Monster or staying with CareerBuilder. And then he heard our interview with Scott Gutz of Monster, the CEO over at Monster [crosstalk 00:02:33]. While he was negotiating with both of the companies, David wanted to know the source of some of the stats at Scott was coming up with, so he asked his Monster rep and the next thing you know, David's getting a call from Scott. Joel: The CEO called? Chad: Yeah, the CEO of Monster called. Needless to say- Joel: Did he go with Monster? Chad: David went with Monster, yeah. [crosstalk 00:02:59] Not just for that reason, but that tipped the scale and he actually said another sale closed on Chad and Cheese Podcast. Keep up the good work. Thanks David. Joel: Does he want to remain anonymous, because he doesn't want to be known as a career builder user? Is that ...? Chad: I'm sure he doesn't want his fucking sales dude bringing him off and saying, "Oh, I heard that this shit happen." Or something like that. Not to mention it's a very prominent organization, so he probably doesn't want to throw that out there either. Joel: If you haven't heard the Scott Gutz interview, I think it's our best work. Chad: That's good. Joel: Go search the archives. However, we've got some good shit coming up to be published yet. That's also pretty good stuff too. We're in our sweet spot, man. It's good stuff. Good stuff. Chad: It is. Joel: But we do have haters- Chad: Dude, what? Joel: ... which gets me to my ... Yeah, believe it or not. My first shout out goes to millennial Daniel Kraciun. Daniel is the chief marketing guy at find.jobs,- Chad: At where? Joel: ... the Juggernaut of a vertical job search engine. Anyway. Chad: Where? Joel: Daniel doesn't like our cursing. He thinks were bullies. Now, I don't really care what he thinks about us or the show, but he seemed to somewhat give the impression that, people sponsor the show, our company sponsor the show, because they're afraid of getting like harassed or bullied by us, which is total bullshit. Chad: Fuck you. Joel: Our sponsors love us. We don't threaten people like, "Pay us or we're going to talk shit about you." That I have issue with. Daniel, you're way off base and you better bring facts when you say shit like that. Chad: Not only that. It's a free country. You don't have to fucking listen to anything you don't want to listen to asshole. That makes it very simple. Now, the reason why people do listen, is because we're, and this is what our listeners tell us, we're genuine, we're authentic, and we have opinions based in combined 40 years of experience in this fucking industry. So if you don't like it, dude, that's cool. Just don't listen. Go the fuck away. [crosstalk 00:05:10] Joel: Or just buy and beers and do intros for the show. Ed: This is Ed from Philly, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcasts. Chad: Ed's a millennial, not to mention Kyle from hierology who always buys us beers at the show. Joel: Thanks Keith. We appreciate that. Chad: Jonathan Zoob, who was- Joel: Great name. Chad: ... at the TAtech AI summit. He said, Chad particularly, he was impressed with my ability to throw him a beer and not have it explode upon opening. Jonathan, I want you to know, it's taken years to actually perfect my technique. So yes, thank you sir. Joel: Our fans are like Odell Beckham Jr. There in the stands, the newest Cleveland Brown. I had to work that in. I'm going to give a shout out to Willie Nelson for two things. He's got the coolest name ever. Works at Talroo, I'm not sure what he does there, but he had a comment. They were talking about, I guess, x new swag or new clothing that they could do. And I requested Daisy Dukes, probably Daisy Dukes and he refuted that really quickly and said, "No, Daisy Dukes on Cheesman." So- Chad: Please. Joel: ... You'll not see me rocking Daisy Dukes with Talroo logo, anytime soon. But I'm going to go listen to Willie Nelson's greatest hits after this. Chad: Yes, no, Daisy Dukes on Cheesman. Period. Big shout out to Chris over at iCIMS. Quote from Chris, "I've assigned your podcast, the Chad and Cheese Podcasts, to all my new hires as mandatory listening. If they are coming from outside the industry. They love it. Joel: I am straight. I know we have a moratorium on shoutouts that don't involve people or events. Chad: Yes. Joel: But I'm going to do a shout out to Tesla who launched their dog mode, which is basically leave your dog in the car and it will remain cool for the dog to stay alive and not die. I think that's just a pretty cool thing to do. One of those tech things, that make people go, "Yeah, I'm going to buy that." Because they have these little cool tech gadgets. Shout out to Tesla for giving our furry four legged friends, a little TLC. Chad: Dog lovers unite. Shout-out ... Okay. This is to all of our employer brand faithful listeners. We love you guys, but we're shaking from shit up. We are shaking from shit up, got Douglas Atkin and Chris Neil and some other gathering podcasts, and we're trying to change the conversation and make sure that nobody gets comfortable in this space. We're thinking of being more innovative. Some of the opinions that are going to be coming out, might be different than what you're used to. Joel: I think we need to have just sort of a smack down, throw down, punch up, with the employment brand folks, which, by the way, brings me into our TAtech employment Marketing, our recruitment marketing conference in Chicago. We're going to have some top notch brand folks on the stage and maybe we can hash out this whole employment brand, is it a thing or not topic, which you and I cover quite extensively. Chad: It is a thing. There's a whole God damn industry and titles and shit. It's about more of a holistic conversation, I believe. And I think that is something that we could have on stage and we'll have some fun with. But as you're talking about events, are ... The next event that we're going to be at his SHRM Talent, a couple of engagements on the smart stage. It's funny they put us on the smart stage. Thanks to our- Joel: [crosstalk 00:08:50] wouldn't come if it was the dumb ass meat head stage. Chad: No, I think they would. Joel: I know they probably would. Chad: Thanks to our buddies, Jobcase for hooking us up on that one. Staffing Tec. We're going to be right across the city at Staffing Tec in Nashville as well. And while we are there, guess what kids we have the traveling with shaker backpacks. Which are going to be, they're going to be full of Chad and cheese first edition T-shirts provided by Emissary.ai. Can I hear it? Come on. Joel: First edition. Chad: They are putting women at a distance. Joel: Like we're led Zeppelin albums one, three or four. Chad: There's only going to be a hundred of these bad boys going out and then we'll do the next edition and what have you. But emissary.ai, they stepped up and they said, "We want to do something with you guys." And I wanted to do T-shirts and you said it couldn't be done and boom, it's done. Joel: No, I just didn't want any part of it. So the shirts are all Chad ... Yeah, we've got more shirts, more ideas, the dude clearly has a closet that's empty because he wants more T-shirts. Chad: I want our listeners to have our T-shirts. Joel: They are nice shirts, I'll give you that. I'll throw in that I'll be at ERE in San Diego- Chad: Nice. Joel: ... in April next month, doing a thing on Google for jobs, SEO, if you will. So if you're out there for that, stop by and say hi. Come by and heckle me where you're ... Maybe I'll bring some Chad and Cheese tee shirts to ERE. Maybe that's appropriate. Chad: I don't know. We'll talk about that one. Pods that are coming up, we've got Steven- Joel: It's off brand Cheesman. Chad: ... Steven Rothberg. He is going to be talking about some Google news that's going to drop on March 19th. Joel: Mark your calendar. Chad: March 19th. Google news. He's allowed to talk about this stuff. Dan Finnigan, probably going to drop next week, the CEO of Jobvite. Awesome stuff. Couple of gathering pods still out there. We just dropped another one today with Chris Kneeland, which is awesome. And we still have a secret Talroo lot of- Joel: Super secret. Chad: ... podcasts that are going to be dropping here. Who knows when? You're going to have to keep your eyes and ears open. Let's do this. Such an asshole. Joel: All right, let's get into it. Facebook messaging remains hot, dude. Not only in our industry, but others. You're a big fan of Teams from Microsoft. That has come out of nowhere. Like Slack and Facebook and I ... You're really under Teams. What's up with that? Chad: I just think it's incredibly smart for organizations like Microsoft and, as we see with Google and higher ... I mean they've, they have the Suite and then they start adding these different elements to Suite. In this case, Microsoft Teams now has more than 420,000 corporate customers and they've doubled adoption in six months. Slack has 8 million paid users and now Workplace, by Facebook has 2 million paid user. There's a lot of hotness that's happening here, but I'm hot ... I like Microsoft Teams just from the standpoint of it's part of your daily routine. Your Microsoft Suite, what you use ... Again, it's a lifestyle Suite of products that Microsoft has, where Slack isn't. It's out there by itself waiting for Google to acquire it. Joel: Does Teams integrate with LinkedIn or do you think it will at some point? Chad: That's a great question, because ... I don't know, I think it'd be really cool for recruiters to be able to utilize Teams within LinkedIn, possibly. Maybe they can do that now. If you're a recruiter out there and you're currently doing that with Microsoft Teams and Linkedin, let us know. But I think that would be incredibly cool for Talent Acquisition to be able to do those types of things within the Microsoft Suite, which LinkedIn is on the fringes integrated with. Joel: InMail is so important to LinkedIn's DNA and revenue. I hear very little positive about InMail. In terms of replies and an engagement. It seems that a messaging integration at some point have to happen with LinkedIn, if it's going to keep up with everyone else that's integrating messaging tools and text messaging. Chad: From my standpoint, you have to ask yourself why are these platforms growing? It goes back to email and old style messaging. I think number one, it's immediacy. You have all of these individuals connected into an instant messenger type of environment, where you're sharing documents and you're collaborating and so on and so forth. So, immediacy. Number two, the virtualness of work nowadays. And then number three, because we're fucking humans, immediacy. We have to have it now. Joel: Did you just make up a word, virtualness? Chad: Yeah, we do that around here. Joel: Messaging is nuts. If you go to the App Store and look at the top 10 most popular apps, half of them are still messaging. It's still WeChat, it's still Facebook Messenger. Snapchat- Chad: Whatsapp. Joel: ... is still technically in my mind, messaging app. I mean messaging on Instagram. It's just such a huge part of what we do. Clearly the money trail that we see, all signs point to this is going to remain in the future, for the foreseeable future. And AI, I think wrapped into that and we're hearing ... In our interview at TAtech, and if you haven't heard the two part series on that, you should. We talk about this chatbot, it's had a dirty word. And I think all these platforms are moving beyond where chatbot to where we're, an entire platform for communication, et Cetera. And AI is obviously thrown out. But I saw a report this past week that they're saying that 15 trillion in revenue will be produced by 2030. So you're saying, all these solutions that ... It's just the tip of the iceberg. Joel: This is like 1999 on the Internet, when you're looking at AI and all this stuff that's going on. But anyway, there's some some news out of the messaging app world from recruitment. It's obviously hot in general. Um, but Paradox, our friends over at Olivia, formerly jobbing, formerly recruiting, raise 13.34 million, this past week. Which is an odd number, to raise [crosstalk 00:15:26] 13.34. But anyway, in addition to that, there are also opening offices in Chicago and Dallas in addition to the office there in Phoenix. As well as a Wade and Wendy, for those of you who listen to the Shred, and if you're subscribed, you do get the Shred, raise 7.6 million. This is an in addition, of course, to Canvas and TextRecruit being acquired, the past year or two. Chad: Definitely, you take a look at messaging in our space. It's different from the overarching Teams and slack and so on and so forth, but it's the same from the standpoint of immediacy for candidates, and you've got all these ... Again, talk about Canvas and Jobvite, being acquired by Jobvite, TextRecruit being acquired by iCIMS and then you have some other big players out there, Maya, Olivia, Wade & Wendy, Emissary and our buddies over there at Talkpush, they're more on the global scale, which is really cool. But dude, it's amazing, the amount of money that's being focused into the messaging space. From my standpoint, and I've said this before, I am really excited about the matching auto sourcing side of the house, but you're just not seeing the love as much as you are with messaging. Joel: Yeah. What I'm hearing around messaging is, you're going to start seeing 100 million plus acquisition price tags on some of these folks. That's a prediction, but it's by someone that I respect. So don't be shocked to see those kinds of numbers coming down the pike. And it makes sense. Look, we know that 95% open rates are real. We know that. We know that 90% respond within 15 minutes of receipt. We know that conquering ghosting is a thing with messaging. That's real dollars and cents that companies are benefiting from by using these services. Now my question is, every job board has an ATS now. When is every job site going to have like a messaging component as part of its offering. Because I think that's coming as well. Chad: Yeah. You have to take a look at some of those. I think Indeed would be the first one that would want to look at something like that to make it easier to have those communications. So if you're out there Indeed, yeah, it's probably a good idea, if you haven't yet. I don't know, why don't you give us a call? We'll talk about it. Joel: Or give us a call anyway. Chad: The monster ecosystems of 10 years ago or 15 years ago were much different than they are today. I don't see them as big of players, so I don't know. I think integrations is really where it's at. They're not going to look at acquiring CareerBuilder or Monster not acquiring these types of platforms, but going through integrations to make it easier within the applicant tracking system. I don't see any of that happening. It's all around partnership right now. Because they don't have the cash to do it. Joel: To me it seems like a no brainer. Instead of CareerBuilder creating augmented reality where you point your camera, your phone at the street, and you see jobs. Why don't they integrate a messaging app? Where you could look at candidates on CareerBuilder, and if they download the app, online, you get a green light, and then you can message them directly through the CareerBuilder app. To me that seems like a much better use of your tech talent than doing some augmented reality bullshit. Chad: I think the platforms that we're doing really well on are the working not working platform. We talked to Justin Gignac, who is the founder of Working Not Working. It's a freelancer type of platform, but it is incredibly niche and it's only for the design and creative types, for agencies to be able to reach out to them very quickly. I think that is perfect. The perfect opportunity to be able to do those types of integrations. I just don't know that the general job boards per say right now, they have so much technical debt and to be able to, to start to integrate something like this, I just don't see it happening. Again, they're focusing on virtual reality or augmented reality and putting videos on job postings. Joel: But you agree it would be smart, maybe, to do that. If I have the Monster app and I'm getting messages from recruiters and I'm messaging them through the Monster app, that seems smart to me. Chad: It's hard. It's really hard for me to see that. Joel: Are you surprised and impressed that Facebook at work has 2 million paid user or paying users. Chad: I'm very surprised. Again, to see Microsoft turned flipped the switch. To see Facebook flipped the switch. This to me definitely demonstrates that the Canvas and TextRecruit, what we're seeing right now, especially in our industry, it is just starting to heat up. Because the applicant tracking systems or the CRMs or the RMPs or the ecosystems that don't have these types of platforms. They need to have them now. Joel: 15 trillion by 2030. Get on the AI bus. All is not rosy for Facebook, however, my friend. Chad: No, it's not. Joel: follically challenged friend. Chad: They're sleeping. Joel: News out of this week, they're losing members at a pretty rapid pace. They have 15 million fewer over 2017. You had a great chart, which we can't show on a podcast, but it shows ... I think it shows from 2015ish maybe, the decline and growth of Facebook. The good news for them is Instagram continues to grow at a pretty healthy pace. Snapchat is growing fairly slowly, I think over that period and Twitter is like just dead. I mean it's just not moving at all. But if you are Facebook, what do you do? You had a friend that quit because there's no joy in Facebook. Which I tend to agree. I go to Facebook because I get alerts saying I was tagged in a photo or family, keeping up with family, but I'm usually tagged in photos or mentioned, photos of kids. But the new story sharing and stuff, it's getting tired, I guess Chad: We are seeing a rise in the 55 plus side. Where you're seeing a trend, downward trend for the individuals who are ... Joel: The 16 to 24. Chad: Yeah, that's amazing. Joel: Is where the most loss happens. I'll tease a little bit. We'll talk to a CEO Jobvite, Dan Finnigan, this week, which we'll publish a fairly soon, I assume. He has a son who's ... I don't know, a rookie, a first timer engineer, he is not on Facebook, doesn't email and doesn't really talk on the phone much, which goes back to messaging. But if social media starts to slip as a way to connect as a recruiting tool, I don't know what it is other than maybe an advertising platform as well as maybe sourcing. The days of like, "Hey, let's put our jobs on Facebook or let's put a share button on all of our jobs," seems to be over. Chad: From a social standpoint, I mean you're seeing the growth and the different ... The other platforms where you're ... Again, the downward trend of Facebook. There's always going to be a way to find somebody. They're not going to get closed off. We're more connected than we ever have been. It's just us up to us to be able to understand, from a demographic standpoint, especially, how we can connect with those individuals, engage them in a very relevant way. It's been our issue for decades now, is we know how to get in touch with people. We just send shit messages, they're not relevant. We want to be able to send relevant messages because we understand that those individuals are now being impacted by our brand, either in a positive or a negative way, and we're just now starting to figure that shit out, which is fucking mind numbing. Joel: Speaking of messaging. Why don't we get a word from Canvas and we'll talk about minimum wage in the human cloud. 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 spot 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 the laser focused on recruiters 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 go canvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent. Joel: Doing Aman next week? Chad: Yeah. I would see Aman and ask him if they're going to keep that URL. Joel: When will you become canvas.jobvite.com? Aman is a great interview, great Guy. First time we talked to him since the acquisition. So we're hoping to get some good content for our listeners in the coming in the coming week. Chad: We only get good content from Aman. Joel: That's true. And from us, by the way, we've never had a shitty show. Chad: You such an asshole. Ask Steven Rothberg who said he's listened to every single fucking show. That's crazy. Joel: He has, he has, which is why we're buying him some therapy. Sponsored by ... No, I'm kidding. Minimum wage. Our favorite topic. Chad: It's a thing. Joel: Yeah, it's stupid. That sounds stupid. Chad: Sounds stupid. Joel: Wherever there's a regulation, private business, we'll find a way, or try to find a way, around it. We have news from last week that whole foods, and I believe Amazon as well, who owns whole foods. I like whole foods. Nothing, nothing there. They're $15 an hour, but they're messing around with scheduling so that employees are bitching that they're actually making less because of the scheduling engineering that the company's doing to pay people less. To me this is a unfortunate byproduct of the world. Government says this, can we get around it? We see it in tax code, we see it pretty much everywhere. Minimum wage is no different. Chad: We'll see this from certain organizations. Amazon, Jeff Bezos is a cheap bastard. He always has been, and he's definitely going to do this from an optic standpoint, but we're seeing that there are many cities and other companies that have been doing this, that haven't been chopping back on hours. That's the thing is, if it is regulated to $15, it's not yet, but Walmart, Costco, Amazon, Target, and there's a long list of companies who right now feel like they need to do it, because of the market pressure for winning candidates. They're doing it, right? Joel: Which is how it should work. Chad: Yeah. To an extent. Joel: It should be driven by the market Chad: To an extent. In some cases, there's a wage where somebody does a full day's work and they should be able to feed their family off of it. Doing that on $7 in sum ... What? Joel: Then, ditch the job at Arby's and go work at Walmart. Chad: Some of these people aren't as socioeconomically advanced as other people. Joel: I guarantee if there's an Arby's on the corner, there's a Walmart on the other corner. Chad: I agree. But again, they're not all paying $15 an hour. Joel: So go work where they are paying 15 and then that'll force Arby's to pay 15 because they will lose people to Walmart. Chad: You make it sound so easy. In some cases, these people, [crosstalk 00:27:55] is not that easy. Joel: Government intervention isn't easy either. Chad: It's not that easy. Regulation- Joel: Either is government intervention. Chad: Yeah. And some cases ... What's the government here for in the first place? Other than ... That should be to take care of the people. If capitalism is not taking care of the people and people aren't actually getting a... Wait a minute ... a working wage that can actually help their family put food on the table, then that's not a bad thing. Not to mention, I think we forget that the money that's being paid to these individuals don't go into, unfortunately, into 401k or stock options or shit like that or buying back stock. It actually goes back into the economy. If you give somebody $2 raise, $3 raise, whatever it is, that's not going to just stay in their bank account. That's going to be out there paying for stuff, which means it actually drives the economy more. Joel: Like competition. Chad: Yeah. Like trickle down economics. Joel: Which is why Costco and Walmart pay $15 an hour. Another byproduct of this, negatively, is you get Jeff Bezos who says like, "Screw people. I want people to walk into whole foods with a smartphone, pick up what they need and walk out and have as minimal human interaction as possible," which is what we're seeing with his grocery shops. Chad: And you think that that has anything to do with what he's paying the human beings right now? Because he's going to do it, no matter what he's paying them, because it's going to be more efficient than… Joel: He doesn't want to pay them. He doesn't want to pay. Chad: It doesn't matter what pay is. $15, $13. He's still going to do that because it's more efficient and he gets to put more money toward the bottom line because he doesn't have to pay human beings. The $15 wage isn't really ... It's an excuse, more than it is anything else because he's going to do it. Joel: It's a temporary inconvenience for him. Chad: Yeah, that's it. Because he's still doing it. He's already talked about putting fucking drones up to do delivery and shit like that. Joel: Which we're way long away from happening. Chad: Maybe. Joel: But there are robots in warehouses stocking shit and moving shit. That's for real real. Chad: In our Kroger, our local Kroger, they had four lanes of the check yourself out types of service. They doubled that shit. So yeah, we're starting to roll into that no matter what. None of this is going to be blamed on a $15 an hour wage. This shit was gonna happen anyway because, go figure, there's more to the bottom line. The human friction in the system is a bitch, because people get sick, people have other things to take care of, like sick kids and whatnot. Companies are like, "Fuck that. We're going to put in automation." Joel: Yeah. So it doesn't matter what the wage is, nobody would have a job anyway. Chad: The big question is, when nobody has a job, who's going to pay for the shit? Joel: Go to the cloud, people. Chad: Go to the cloud. What the fuck is a human cloud? Joel: I've heard it twice in the last month. So it's gotta be something. It's basically ... They are platforms like, you mentioned, Working Not Working. Chad: Yeah. Working Not Working. The only reason I even started reading this article is because I had no fucking clue what the human cloud was and it said Staffing disruption, and the source of this is the Staffing industry analysts. The human cloud includes online staffing firms such as Upwork, Freelancer, crowd sourcers like 99designs, Uber, Working Not Working, Communo, all these different types of platforms, and Staffing feels like there's going to be a huge impact on them. Joel: Because finding people will be easy because there'll be marketplaces of people in the cloud. They will fill roles, basically. Chad: Not only that, they're saying that adoption or the interest to adopt has jumped dramatically. It's 53% in 2018, where it was just 21% in 2017. In 2017, around 20ish percent of people were like, "Yeah, no, I'm interested in that. I'd really like to see what we can do with that." Now over half. That's growing quickly and it's likely that traditional staffing and the pure human cloud will combine. They're going to have to. Staffing is going to have to, RPO is going to have to actually start looking at these platforms and either start developing it themselves or acquiring. Joel: Is LinkedIn a human cloud? Chad: No, because it's not on demand like an Uber or Working Not Working or something like that. If I go to Communo, I think that that's more marketing specific, and they work with agencies anyway. Joel: Like Plated for restaurant. Chad: Yeah. It's on demand. And LinkedIn is not really on demand. Joel: Okay. Chad: So that's that ... It'd be interesting to see what Staffing does. Because once again, trying to separate Staffing from Talent Acquisition, Staffing and RPO, it's their business. Joel: Let's see what JobAdX is up to and we'll talk about remote uproars and Mamazonians. Chad: What? Joel: I know, right? Stay tuned. JobAdX: This is the sound of job search. This is the sound of job search defeat. Ah. Job search can be frustrating. Job seekers run into the same irrelevant ads, page after page before they find a match. When job seekers aren't engaged, conversions are low, budgets are wasted, jobs go unfilled. No one wins. The job search doesn't have to be defeating. JobAdX is smart search exchange. References 400 data points to select the most targeted jobs and delivers with job seekers really want premium ad units across our network. Score. That's the sound of JobAdX's relevant results, attracting a qualified candidate and filling your job faster. Find out how to improve your job advertising campaigns and increased candidate attraction and engagement by emailing us at, joinus@jobadx.com. JobAdX, together we can save job search. Joel: Are you sure that's not you going, ah? Chad: No, it's not me, unfortunately. I pitched to Tim Hauck when we were in Arizona, at the TAtech AI, that I would actually do some insertions of, instead of score and be like, "Fuck yah." And ... Such an asshole ... And that's what I got. That's off brand. I think I'm- Joel: [crosstalk 00:34:55] America. Fuck yeah. Dude, employees are unhappy. Chad: What about this time. Joel: Word out of Bank of New York Mellon, they put the smack down on remote work and the pitch forks came out, apparently. You can't give freedom and then take it away. If human kind history has taught us anything, once you make someone free and give them freedom, they don't give it back very easily. That's the story. I got nothing else. Mamazonians are another part of the angry mob of a workers. Mamazonians, which is the nickname Amazonian employees that are female and have children are getting, I don't think that's an internal nickname. Chad: I don't know if the writer came up with Mamazonians or this just something that ... Joel: It's not a very flattering name. But Mamazonians are basically clamoring for childcare, as an Amazon employee, and we're seeing this throughout the workforce. People want more benefits, they want more stuff, they want freedom. And if you don't give it to them, they're going to go somewhere else. Chad: As we were talking about with wages, this is also flexibility. And flexibility rates higher than, in some cases, than wage, when it comes to mid level types of positions. To be able to, BNY Mellon to take away and say, "No, you can't work from home anymore," that's a big fuck you and many of those individuals will leave for other jobs. In this case moms are asking for some, they feel, basic benefits that they see other companies actually providing. And again, we're talking about Jeff Bezos who's ... he's very stingy on just about everything. That's one of the reasons why he's the richest man in the world, I guess. But if in this market he doesn't start to, or they don't start to, those types of companies, don't start to meet the needs of their employees, what do you think is going to happen? Joel: People are expecting more in companies because of low unemployment and the war for talent. They're willing to do it and I think it's going to be really hard once the next recession hits to make people wear ties again and make people come in the office again. Chad: I don't think so. I think, here's a word of caution. These stories are really just giving the people insights to what their employers really want to do. If and when the market does flip, and it will flip, they're going to do what they want. The days of you work in virtual and ... BNY Mellon says, "Hey, you're coming back in the office," you feel like you have no choice. If you see a company, in this kind of market, demonstrating those types of behaviors, when it flips, they're going to. Because they're going to have the quote, unquote control at that point. So I'd start looking for a new gig at this point. Fuck it. Joel: We're seeing companies trying to get in this trend and try to get into, "Hey, our product can help with the way people are now." I don't know if you're familiar ... Neither one of us is a smoker. Chad: No. Joel: There's this product called JUUL. It's super hot with kids. Yeah. I want to say children but ... with kids and young people and it's, I guess it's ... Is it vaping? I don't know. Is it the same as vaping or? Chad: I don't think so. I think it's just compartmentalize vape. Joel: It's a quote unquote healthier nicotine, whatever. So anyway, JUUL to ... I guess to their credit, they want to sell more JUULs. So they're going to companies and saying, "Hey, add us as a health benefit." In light of helping people quit smoking. So I guess JUUL can be used as a bridge between hardcore smoker and stopping smoking. Now, JUUL is going to companies and, pitching it as a health benefit, which I find quite ironic. Chad: I don't think it's nicotine free. Maybe they have some of them that are nicotine free, but I think that still has the nicotine. I just doesn't have the tar and all the other happy horseshit, but it has nicotine, which is the addictive piece and that's never good. Fuck you, JUUL. Joel: I feel like the patch folks are missing out. I feel like the nicotine patch people should be pitching companies and I should be able to go to the break room and put a little nicotine patch on my arm and get a fix before that sales call at noon. Chad: I don't know that you have to go anywhere to do that. Joel: But companies should give it out for free as a benefit is what I'm saying. Chad: Yeah, now I agree. Just as long as they don't put like a belt of them all. Joel: And they should put them right next to the condoms and the red bull. Chad: And the nutty buddies. Yeah. The nutter butters. Joel: What do you got against nutter butters, man. Chad: Nothing. I'm just saying free food. [crosstalk 00:39:52] They have free food in there too. Joel: Just don't put in the chickens because chickens are killing people. Chad: Yeah, all right. Joel: Moving on. A little bit of news here before we put the show out of its misery. ZipRecruiter announced that there would be going to Canada, or have launched in Canada and ... Listeners will remember that Indeed acquired workology last year- Chad: Workopoplis. Joel: ... and we had heard on the download that Indeed bought workology- Chad: Workopolis! Joel: Sorry, sorry. Dude, it's late. That they did it as what you call a cock block to keep ZipRecruiter out of Canada. ZipRecruiter said, "Fuck you, we're coming anyway." And launched in the Great White North last week. Chad: I think it's interesting because our intel, our sources tell us that Zip had, pretty much a deal on the table with Workopolis, which would have kept all the employees in tact, and then they would have just switched over to the Zip brand. In this case, right now what we're seeing is Indeed is really, it's almost like smothering Workopolis. I believe, and the thought is, from people who used to work there, is that they're just trying to drain it and they're just going to kill the brand overall and just switch it over to indeed Canada. They cock blocked Zip for a little while, but Zip still found their way in. Joel: Another show tease, we've got Ian, CEO of ZipRecruiter, on the show in about a week or two. Some ... Chad: Knock on wood. Joel: All right. Who got money last week and, or this week? Chad: Paradox got 13 million. We talked about Wade and Wendy- Joel: 13.34 million, I believe is the- Chad: What's that? Joel: 13.34 million I believe is the number. Chad: What the f ... Okay. Wade and Wendy got 7.6 million. A couple of chatbotish types of platforms. Instawork, which is a gig work platform for hospitality, they received 8.2 million. Hibob. That's H-I-B-O-B. Not heybob. Joel: It looks like heybob, like it's a very ... It's a very interesting brand. Chad: They received 20 million. And it's an employee management type of a system, I guess, which has great UX, because none of the other ones have great UX. Joel: Which brings their total to 45 million. Chad: 45 million. Joel: It's nothing to sneeze at. Chad: You brought this company Gem. I'm like, "What the fuck is Gem? It's ZenSourcer. We've heard of ZenSourcer, didn't know that they acquired Gem.com, which is huge. Joel: And that's ... It's G-E-M. Chad: Yeah. Gem or… Joel: It's more as I reminded you the cartoon from the 80s, Whereas, the female, the rock band tore it up as opposed to J-I-M, which is a bad piece of beef jerky. Chad: I watched the He-man, the masters of the universe, while you were watching Gem, while you're watching Gem. ZenSourcer, I think, yeah, Rebranded to Gem and I think that domain is pretty fucking hot. It's easy, it's three letters and it's a Dotcom. I wonder how much money they paid for that. Joel: These guys, hands down with the best URL, domain name Combo. Chad: That was pretty awesome. Joel: We gave Canvas a hard time because their URL is go canvas.io. Gem.com is fantastic. To get a three character domain today, a dot com, that's a common word, is really awesome. They probably spent most of that 9 million on the domain and then whatever's leftover they'll grow the business. But a congrats to all those companies raising money and making shit happen. Chad: And we out. Joel: We thankfully are out. Ed: This is Ed from Philly. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcasts. 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 happened up in here. They made me say that. The most important part is to check out our sponsors because I need new tracks bikes, you know, that expensive shiny gold pair that are extra because ... Well, I'm extra. For more visit chadcheese.com Feffer: Such an asshole. #Messaging #Slack #Microsoft #Teams #Workplacecom #Facebook #Mya #WadeWendy #Talkpush #Emissary #AllyO #Olivia #Walmart #Costco #Amazon #Target #Wages #HumanCloud #BNYMelon #ZipRecruiter #Gem #ZenSourcer #Instawork #HiBob

Chris Kneeland is beyond a "brand expert" he's a Cult Brand Expert and the CEO of Cult Collective where he and his work with brands like Harley Davidson, Home Depot, Zappo's and many others to drive audience engagement. But what exactly does that mean for HR, Talent Acquisition and the Recruitment Industry? No spoilers... You'll have to sit back and listen to this NEXXT EXCLUSIVE... PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions connects jobseekers with disabilities with employers who value diversity and inclusion. Chad: Okay. Joel, quick question. Joel: Yup. Chad: What happens when your phone vibrates or you're texting alert goes off? Joel: Dude, I pretty much check it immediately. And I bet everyone listening is reaching to check their phones right now. Chad: Yeah, I know. I call it our Pavlovian dog reflex to text messaging. Joel: Yeah, that's probably why text messaging has a fricking 97% open rate . Chad: What? Joel: 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: Yup. That's right. Nexxt with the double x, not the triple x. Joel: Bow chicka bow wow. So if you're in talent acquisition, you want true engagement and great ROI that stands for return on investment folks. And because this is the Chad and Cheese podcast, you can try your first Text2Hire campaign for just 25% off. Chad: Boom. So how do you get this discount? You are asking yourself right now. Joel: Tell him 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'es. 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/opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Hey guys, it's Joel Cheesman of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. You know as well. Part of our series from Banff, the gathering. We're here with Chris Kneeland, CEO of Cult Collective. No one listening to this knows who you are. So give us a 140 character about you and your agency and how you're different. Chris: That's interesting 'cause me and my agency are two different things. So I'm a father of three, a loving husband and all around nice guy. Joel: We're going to fact check that, by the way. Chris: My agency- Chad: Where is your wife? Chris: She's around. She's around. My agency is what we call ourselves audience engagement experts. We subscribed to the idea that getting customers is not that hard. What you should be doing is trying to create cult-like followings. And that implies using a different belief system and certainly using different behaviors. Joel: Now you're presented here yesterday and you did a session today. You are a big fan of employees. Chris: Absolutely. Joel: Talk about that. Like they're the center of your world, as a strategy and as a business. Talk about that. Chris: There's two things. There's a truth, which is that the world's most beloved brands build that brand love from the inside out. And that begins with the staff. But there's also, I think an egregious problem, which is that employees are largely abandoned by many corporations, by being either commoditized and treated as an HR commodity to be mitigated. Keep the people happy and throw them some doughnuts on Fridays. And the marketing team who I think has the responsibility to be a proper steward over the employees are distracted looking outside at customers and prospects. Therefore, I do believe that employees don't have the kind of leadership at their disposal that they should. Chad: I have that slide because that slide, being able to separate HR from marketing. The big question is, okay, we're just talking to Douglas. And from our standpoint, being on the HR, being on the recruiting side, we see a whole fractured brand that has just emanated probably because of symptom of the overall brand sucks. But there's actually employment brand people in HR. Why? How did this happen? Chris: I don't like the idea of employer branding. I think it should just be a branding. And that you shouldn't have a different face to the outside world they have in the inside world. And the problem is, is companies that are struggling realize, well my brand isn't that inspiring. So I'm gonna have to now fabricate and make up a whole new brand, and a whole new personality to try to attract some talent. The best brands and Douglas would have talked about Airbnb, they're not separate entities. It's just the Airbnb brand. There's no employer brand and consumer brand. Joel: Why aren't marketing and HR talking to each other? Chris: I really don't- Chad: You should see his face when- Chris: You know, a couple of things. I think that HR professionals in many cases have a lot of insecurity. When they get into audience engagement stuff, there's glaring ... They don't go to school to learn this stuff. They don't go to conferences to learn this stuff. And so, you don't want to lean into weaknesses typically. And marketing I think feels overwhelmed. They already have a pretty big to-do list. And so you're now asking me to do one more thing. My point is your to-do list would actually get less if you started with the employees. All these other symptoms that you're focusing on would go away. Joel: Does marketing look down on HR? Chris: I kind of think most people look down on HR. Chad: All around nice guy. Joel: You just lost everybody. Chris: I love it. Chad: No we didn't. Chris: Listen, the only person that's maybe more neutered at the C suite table is the head of HR. Again, I think it's an inappropriate look down. I'm not saying I condone it. I just don't see HR people being the most persuasive, the best funded, the most politically adept. They're not navigating organizations most of the time. But until you find a co-brand. Until you find an organization where they are. Like in even like a Facebook, like when a Sheryl Sandberg ... Yeah, she's COO, but she's really head of people and culture, as much as she is technology and operations kind of stuff. So when brands get it spectacularly right, that executive is the right hand to the CEO. Chris: But rarely is it the CEO. And then you'd falls into the well, whose job is this? And then we start making up titles like head of people or head of culture, because neither HR or marketing lived up to those responsibilities. Chad: On the recruiting side, recruiting, trying to pull in new candidates, those individuals obviously could be using your brand, your product, your service. The Virgin media case study where they show that they lost $6 million because they had a horrible user experience for candidates. And they weren't treating candidates like customers. They turn that and said, hey, let's try to keep that 6 million. Not to mention there's like a $7 million on top of that of individuals who are not using our product. Do you believe that from an HR standpoint, they do have power to be able to impact the bottom line, especially with all those people, but they just don't, they don't wield it. Chris: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. Hundred percent. And you also said something that made me realize there's a difference in my mind between the employer branding and recruitment marketing. And I actually think if the marketing team should be using recruitment marketing as a way to improve the brand. Because if I saw what kind of people you were trying to get, and what standards you are holding up, that I might think differently about your brand. Joel: If most marketing departments knew how many resumes were in the database that are marketing opportunities, they would be talking to HR. Chris: 100%. Joel: That conversation doesn't happen. Chad: Well, an organization spend, in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars on recruitment advertising to pull in all these perspective customers as well. But again, marketing is like closing their eyes. They've got the blinders on. Chris: And at the same time it's us. So, hey, even if he didn't get the job, how am I letting you down? Hey, thank you for your submission. It's in the queue. But meanwhile, go check out our product. There's a whole ecosystem there. Do something that gets them lathered up about who you are, so that even if they don't get the job, they still don't say something negative about you. They should love you more even after getting declined. Joel: You said something really interesting in your session about referrals. You might want to tell that story, has context. But in our business, referrals are still the number one way that companies find new employees. And there'd been time and time again, vendors and people trying to sort of build software around a referral system, right? It's like, you blast this out to your social media. If anyone applies and they get hired, we'll give you $500 or whatever it is. And they all fail. Why does that model fail? And what would be a successful model for employee referrals? Chris: It's again, we're trying to monetize something believing that money is the reason that people do what they do. And if I really care about you, I want you to have an amazing job. If I really love my company, I want people to be able to come and experience it. And I think good HR research also shows that one of the biggest indicators of your affinity for your employer is do you have a best friend at work? You're spending eight to 10 hours there. You want to like the people that you hang out with. So all the stars are aligned to say, everybody wants to make sure that the great people are on this bus. Why taint it with now let's start throwing money into the mix that would motivate me to bring somebody that's not an A player, or might motivate somebody that isn't perfectly a fit. I may not be getting incentivized to come in for an interview. It cheapens the whole thing. Joel: Talk about the Geek Squad example that you had and do you think that model could work? Chris: Yeah, I think so. The Geek Squad model. To make a short story shorter, they tested the idea of rather than giving people money to either refer or be referred, they gave them essentially access and exclusivity. So if I had gotten a geek squad service done, I'd be given a secret card with a phone number that would give me privileges of not having to wait and get quicker, the same day delivery and whatnot. And I had the ability to then share that number with my friends that were also having some tech support issues. The people's ability to say, hey I've got a way to help you, and to give you a privileged access- Joel: Yeah I got the insider deal. Chris: I have an insider deal. That's exactly right. Chad: Don't tell anybody. Chris: That's what everybody wants. Everybody wants to know a guy that can get you- Chad: Feel special, yeah. Chris: So it's all that psychology. And you're dealing with the alligator brain as opposed to this rational, what's the ROI on what this thing is going to be. Chad: Yeah. I know we don't have a lot of time, because we've got other people wanting to use the booth. The gathering. This was amazing. For our first time, we saw brands on stage, and we saw the level of individuals who were talking, VPs, Marvel studios, LA Lakers, Airbnb. I mean the list goes on. How do you get these cult brands to buy into something like this? This is the sixth year and you guys are growing every year. How do you do it? Chris: It does get easier each year. Year one was the biggest one because they had to take a giant leap of faith. I'd say it's two things. One, we invite them. I think sometimes you just have to have the guts to ask. And I think we apply a certain amount of mystery and intrigue to draw them in a little bit. And it's also, there's just a high correlation between cult brand leaders and just really good people. They know that they are doing something special, and they're not selfishly keeping it to themselves. The openness with which they talk is shocking. The warts and all, right? They're not pretending like everything they do is the Midas touch. So you properly invite a really nice person and some good things happen. Joel: So pivoting from the big brands to small brands for a little bit. And I think a lot of smaller companies out there feel overwhelmed, like yeah, it's nice to be the Lakers, the Airbnb. But they have more candidates than they know what to do with. What advice would you give a smaller company? I assume your agency is not a huge organization. How do they sort of get outside that box? Maybe guerrilla strategies to recruit better, even though they're not a huge brand? Chris: Yeah. Two thoughts. One is, I liked Marvel being here because I like reminding people in 1996, they almost went, oh they did go bankrupt. Nobody's exempt. Big does not mean that the rules don't apply to you. And even small guys can learn from the big guys because they used to be small as well. So I don't subscribe to the idea of why you don't have anything to learn from the Lakers 'cause I'm not a $60 billion basketball franchise. But the other part would be, I think that we leave no stone unturned in regards to where you can plus it up. I think some people say, I'm going to spend all my awesomeness on this outbound customer campaign, and then we can do a lame Indeed job description, and spend no energy on that. The best brands touch everything. I don't know if you guys saw the Cheetos thing here. That was probably my favorite presentation of the gathering. They did this pop up restaurant. And even the toilet paper was the Chester Cheeto toilet paper. Chris: Somebody went through that restaurant. The menu's the obvious one. The name and the logo. The spotted Cheetah is the obvious one. But the decor, the little treatments that they made throughout. There's a hundred little things. And I think that's how that separates the good from the great. Chad: One more time about the gathering. We're real quick, real quick, just because from the recruitment marketing side of the house, nobody was here, right? And there's recruitment marketing all over the place. And yes, we want it to be more holistic. But this is I believe where they should be. Give me a quick pitch on why a company should be here. I know you don't pitch, because you don't have all the times. Chris: What do you mean from the recruitment market stuff? Chad: Recruitment marketing to be able to better understand brand overall, and to be able to use that brand to bring in great talent. Those types of people. Chris: Well, I again. There's two things. I remember a few years ago when the CEO from Canopy was here. Canopy's Canada's largest marijuana manufacturer and retailer now. He didn't know a lot about what this event was, but he knew there was phenomenal talent here. He stood up on stage, and his first slide was, I'm hiring a CMO. All he really wanted was the resumes, right? Joel: That's awesome. Chris: And I have been surprised, frankly. You get somebody like Jason White from Beats by Dre that's on the stage, bleeds this. Works for an iconic multi-billion dollar company. And a month ago quits, to go join a different company. The head of Tim Horton's was here. Couldn't have been a bigger fan. Gone, goes to run Fairmont hotels or Four Seasons or something like that. So it is interesting that there are people that are still looking to be inspired, looking for personal challenges, and looking for even more lucrative opportunities. And so, I've come to realize nobody's sat. Everybody's out, got a bit of an opportunist. And so if you're looking for top talent, this is a pretty great place to find it. Joel: The question about sort of reviews and employment brand, obviously, Glassdoor and Indeed. And I'm sure you've dealt with companies on the consumer side that have bad Yelp reviews or other things. Are you a believer in these sites? How should a company tackle bad reviews? Is it just getting it right internally and fixing the organ instead of- Chris: So Glassdoor is a perfect example. I'd go to a CMO, usually that's usually our client, and show them their Glassdoor ratings. And they're usually pretty bad. And they're like, yeah, that sucks. But they don't assume an ownership. They say, maybe you should go give that to HR, or maybe you should give it to operations, or maybe you give it to the CEO. But again, nobody takes those things as burning platforms, and say this must change. The guy from T-mobile was here telling the story that when they started, they were the last in customer service, and customer service for wireless providers was last in 20 categories. I go to the bottom of the bottom. And they as a leadership team said, this is going to change. And we went on this three year journey to change, and become the best rated customer service. I've yet to see that with Glassdoor. Hey guys, nobody likes working here. We're a leaky bucket. The best talent's abandoning. Let's go become the top employer of choice. That's not a conversation I've been in eight years. Joel: And you think that's a discussion with marketing, HR and upper level management? Chris: I think so. Joel: And on just oh that HR's problem. Chris: I don't think HR has the tools to solve it. I know they don't have the discretionary dollars that the marketing department has. And so I think it is an all play. Chad: So tell me a little bit about this Communo thing. Chris: So Communo started selfishly. I like listening to Hootsuite because Hootsuite's much like Slack was built for themselves. And then they realize, hey, we've got something. So Ryan and I love helping brands become cult-like. But when we're being honest about our own personality profiles, we don't love managing people. We didn't get into this business because we wanted huge staffs. We got into this business we wanted to make a big difference. Unfortunately, there's a correlation between how big you are and how much impact that you can make. So we knew we needed a lot of people. So we birth cult collective and cult was are provocative point of view about branding, and collective was the operating model. We used Hollywood as our muse. When the big studios collapsed, and then Imagine Entertainment had like 24 employees, and that blew our minds, because they're making the biggest blockbusters in the world, Ron Howard's group. Chris: But they didn't need craft services on staff. They didn't need location scouting or design. They just built an ecosystem of preferred providers. So we did that, and it grew really large, about 70 businesses started becoming cults ecosystem. And we said the problem here is that this company doesn't know that company. They only know Cult. So we took Cult out of the middle. We just became a user input Communo in. And said, okay now all these 70 businesses can interact with each other through the app. And then we put some staff on it, and Ryan kind of dedicated his time. So he kind of left Cult to go run Communo and now there's almost 400 businesses that are able to say, I either need staff augmentation, or I need help with business development. I need some sales. I don't have enough work. Those are the two biggest things that usually sink an entrepreneur. Chris: So it's just a way of using the metaphor of a commune. Everybody brings something and together we'll ... Somebody grow the tomatoes. Somebody make the marinara sauce. Somebody wash the dishes. And now we've all had a nice meal. And so that's what Communo's all about. Joel: Well, aside from Communo, for our listeners that want to learn more about you, where should they go? Chris: Me personally, it's probably my Linkedin profiles where I most actively maintain my points of view. Or just cultideas.com. Joel: So that's Chris common spelling and then Kneeland, K-N-E-E-L-A-N-D? Chris: Yes, sir. Chad: And the new book real quick. Chris: Yep. Chad: The new book, Fix? Chris: Well. Yeah. I'm sad you say, it's been how five years. Chad: Oh is that really? Okay. How come I didn't get one yet? Chris: It's yet to take over the world. Joel: It doesn't get to Indiana for a while. Chad: Ride the wave, Chris. It's the new book. Chris: The book Fix is really just an espousing of the principles that cult brands do. One chapter's completely dedicated to building the brand from the inside out. And it was just lots of examples of how businesses have prioritize employee engagement, and their pursuit of greatness. Joel: Awesome. Excellent. Chris: Cool. Thanks guys. 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. #Branding #CultBrands #TheGathering #Banff #EmployerBrand #EmploymentBrand #Nexxt #Airbnb #Cheetos #Marketing

Douglas Atkin is beyond legit. Douglas authored The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers into True Believers and is the Former Global Head of Community at Airbnb, the architect behind Airbnb's Cult-like brand. Douglas sat down with us at The Gathering in Banff, Alberta Canada to talk about.... What else - BRAND! More awesome and explicit knowledge brought to you by Uncommon - let Uncommon automation help cut your recruiter sourcing time by 75%. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in the disability community.​ Chad: I'm going to be over the top. Say hello to the easiest way to find interested and qualified candidates. Joel: Dude, you need to tone it down. I was just napping. You mean Uncommon's automated sourcing that turns passive candidates into interested and qualified applications? Chad: Yep. Uncommon Automation helps recruiters cut their sourcing time by 75%. Joel: Well, how much coffee did you have today? Chad: A lot. Joel: Anyway, dude, 75%? That sounds like black magic or something. Chad: Close. It's called Automation. It's simple, actually. You just feed or post your jobs into Uncommon. The platform identifies your job requirements, and in seconds, Uncommon uses those requirements to search over 150 million candidate profiles, and then it pulls back only the qualified candidates. Joel: Don't forget, you can connect your email, and Uncommon will provide automated outreach with your customized messages to activate those passive candidates, those pesky passive candidates. Chad: Even better, we're going to one up you. Uncommon shows exactly how the candidate meets all the job requirements with a side by side comparison view against the job requirements. Joel: Which means you won't be asking yourself, "What in the hell is this candidate doing here?" Chad: No, but you will be asking yourself, "Where has Uncommon been all my life?" Joel: Seriously? Uncommon is the easiest way to find qualified candidates, active or passive. Chad: Visit uncommon.co, and use discount code Chad Cheese for 20% off. Joel: Uncommon.co. Announcer: Hide your kids; lock the doors. You're listing to HRs 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. Bottle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: You guys good? Joel: All right, rolling. Chad: Hit it. Chad: Oh, just so you know, this is explicit, so we're probably throwing bombs around every now and again. Douglas: Okay, good. Joel: And with that ... We should actually put that in the podcast. Hey guys, what's up? It's Cheese from the Chad and Cheese Podcast, part of our Banff series of podcasts- Chad: BRAAAAAMFFF Joel: ... interviewing people much smarter than us. It's been very humbling to have people come in the booth. I have a little bit of a confession. I have read your book. Douglas: No. Joel: Yes, it's been a long time ago- Douglas: Yeah, it was. Joel: ... and I can't remember much of it, although you combined religion with brands and how that cult following was important. So, let me introduce you real quick. We have Douglas Atkin with us. Douglas is the former Global Head of Community at Airbnb. That's former. What's present for you? Douglas: I burnt out after four and a half years, and moved 7,000 miles away to Tuscany, where we live in an ancient house. Joel: Sounds awful. Douglas: I know. It's tough, it's tough. We make very good olive oil and wine, and relax. Chad: That does sound relaxing. Douglas: It is relaxing, yes. Chad: I like that a lot. Douglas: Of course, there's loads of good food and wine and whatnot. Chad: Oh, so we saw your presentation yesterday. I mean, first one right out of the gate just blew everybody's doors off. Douglas: Ah…. Chad: I mean, it was awesome; very well put together. Douglas: Thank you. Chad: So, for me, what resonated was that you created a brand that was a holistic brand that was top .... I mean, I don't want to say top down, but it was focused on every different aspect, whether it was hosts, any type of users, but also internally- Douglas: Absolutely. Chad: ... not just for employees, but also the recruiting process. What we're seeing so much in our industry is that there's a fracturing that's happening, and there's an employment brand that's actually growing out of HR and it just doesn't seem organic. Douglas: No. Chad: Can you tell our listeners how you dealt with that at Airbnb, and also give us kind of like a thought process of this whole kind of non-organic thing that's happening in HR these days? Douglas: Yes. Well, as much as I can talk about that. So, where this all started was, I explained this in the talk, is that I came into Airbnb in a weird way, and I came ... I met Joe; we got on. He invited me out to give a talk to the employees at Airbnb HQ in San Francisco, which then was about 150 people. When I left, it was about two and a half thousand. So, I did that, and I'm sort of an expert, I guess, on community and talked about that. Then, they asked me to come back for a gig for three and a half weeks in a couple of weeks' time, and I thought that was going to be about community. So, I show up. I lived in New York; showed up that evening and saw Brian, who's the CEO/Co-founder, again, and he said to me, "Hey, you know a lot about branding. Can you help us figure out ours?" Douglas: And I went, "Ugh." Well, I haven't been in branding for six years. I've been in the community space for then, but I said, "Leave it with me. I want to think about that and come back to you tomorrow morning," which I did. I said that instead of doing that, what I think we needed to do was take a step back and figure out what the purpose is of Airbnb for its community, and by community, I mean everyone. I mean the hosts, the guests, and the employees, who were also hosts and guests, and for the outside world because once you figured out ... The reason why I said that is because, clearly, there was an incredibly passionate community of devoted employees and users, and I said we need to find out why. What is it? What role does Airbnb play in their lives that makes them so committed and identify with Airbnb so closely? Douglas: So, if you can figure that out, we can figure out what the purpose of Airbnb is, and then we can ... Once you have that, you can figure out everything. You know what brand, what products you should launch and which ones he shouldn't, who you should hire, who you should not, how to train people. You know what companies to buy or merge with and ones to avoid because it's the rudder that guides the ship. Also, you can figure out what the brand is, right? But if you just start at the brand, that's like the temptation is it's going to get stuck in the marketing department and be an external thing only, whereas if it's the purpose, it starts with the founders and the CEO, goes from the inside out. It goes from inside of the company, the employees, and then out to the users and out to the rest of the world. Douglas: In fact, in the end, I had this little slide, which I showed right at the end of my presentation called Inside Out, and it was like a bullseye with employees in the center, then hosts as the next level, who are our partners in providing the service to guests, who are the next level, and the next level after that was the rest of the world. So, that's what we did, and to get insight on what the purpose was, I and some others went out and spoke to over almost 500 employees and hosts and guests around the world to figure out what role it played. Douglas: They never said these actual words, but basically it ended up being this idea of we exist. Our reason why is to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere because we learned that what Airbnb guests want is not to be a tourist. They do not want to be ... That's a dirty word. They want to be an insider. They want to be a traveler who gets the inside track on the neighborhood to know almost as much as the locals, and that's exactly what hosts want to do for them. They want to take them from being a stranger in a strange land who's never been to Tokyo before, or wherever, and make them feel at home, and equip them to feel at home by saying, "Go to this restaurant, not this. Here's a bus pass. Go to these neighborhoods. This is a great cafe I spend time in." So, they very, very quickly go from stranger to feeling at home. Joel: I want to stop you on one point when you said you had interviewed 8,000 employees, or how- Douglas: No. No, no, no, no. Joel: No, not 8,000. Douglas: Up to ... Well, at that moment, this is in late 2012, it was 400, four to 500 of employees, hosts, and guests. Joel: Okay. So, I think most companies ... My perception is most HR departments, they get together and they think, "What is our brand?" I think what you did that was really smart is you actually asked the employees, "What do we want to be? What's it like to work here?" And then from that, you created an employment brand that was within the main corporate brand. Would you agree with that, and was that driven by HR? Who came up with that strategy? Douglas: Well, it wasn't even an employment brand. There was no HR department when we got there. There was one woman from Apple who was overworked. There was no HR department. There was a group of people who still exist called ground control, and their job was to create a fantastic employee. They were to be the hosts of the employees, basically. They put on amazing events and just made everything work, and they still live their now; and nothing to do with kind of health plans and all that stuff. Douglas: So, what I wanted to do was figure out what Airbnb was as an entity for everyone, so employees, hosts, and guests equally. Chad: One brand. Douglas: One brand. Chad: Not an employment brand. Douglas: No. Chad: Not a host brand. Douglas: No. Chad: One brand. Douglas: One brand. It's more than a brand, if you like. It's a huge community of millions of people who have this mission to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. Now, when it comes to the employees, and this is four years later, this is the last thing I was doing, we had grown from 150 people in HQ to about two and a half thousand, and that puts huge pressure, of course, on the culture. The culture was very strong, palpable, and famous, actually, within Silicon Valley. People wanted to join Airbnb because of the culture, but it was looking a little bit wobbly. Douglas: What I did is I went back and spoke to employees, over 300 of them all around the world: people who just arrived, people who been there for four years, to try and diagnose why the culture was feeling a little fractured and what to do about it. What I found was that we had this banner mission of creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere, but there some people feeling like, employees were feeling like, they no longer belonged here in Airbnb because some things had been happening, things like there was a perception that we were hiring people too fast, that they were mercenaries, not missionaries is what we call them. We call them believers. I mean, this is what Brian and Joe, Nate, call believers. Chad: Cool. Douglas: So, believers in the mission of this is more than a job, this is more than a company. It's a mission to change the world. So, there was a perception that some of the leaders who been hired weren't on the mission. They were there simply for their own benefit and to make their quarterly numbers, all these things. So, I went back to the founders, and said, "We need to fix this. We value the culture." In fact, Brian used to quote what Peter Teal said to him. Peter Teal was the Co-founder of PayPal and stuff. Douglas: He was an investor. He invested $200 million into Airbnb in 2012, I think. When he handed over the check to Brian, Brian said, "Can you give us a piece of advice?" The one thing he said, Peter Teal said, to safeguard his $200 million investment was "Don't fuck up the culture." Joel: Wow. Chad: Ah. Douglas: So, we kept saying ... I had to go back and say, "The culture isn't fucked up, but it's wobbly and these reasons." So, and then we ... and the other reasons also was the values were very, very good. People were there for the values and everything, but they weren't quite right, as I mentioned in the talk. So, I had to go back to the founders and say, "We have to change the unchangeable. We have to look at these six values and find out if they're true and core or not." I did all kinds of techniques to get to that, working with employees, and we ended up going from six to four because some of the values were aspirational and not core, not real. They were creating cynicism about all the values because they were saying, "We've got this value, but I don't see you living it." You asking me to do this, and you're saying, "Hey, embrace the adventure, and work all weekend." Douglas: Well, that's not the meaning of the value. Chad: The walking on water value, right. Douglas: Yeah, right, right, right. So, anyway, had to fix all that. I guess to your point, though, is that we never saw a division between the employees or the hosts or the guests. It was all one community because the employees were hosts and guests, and some of the hosts would have loved to work for Airbnb as an employee. So, there was no division between inside or outside, but I knew that if we didn't get the mission bought into and understood and delivered and the values from the inside first, then we could never deliver them authentically externally either. Chad: In what you do or what Airbnb does now, which I think is amazing, through the interview process, you have more of like cultural process people who can veto anybody who's coming in. So, you've got this superstar marketer who's coming in, but somebody can actually veto that, and say, "No, they're not somebody who"- Douglas: Happened to me. I was trying to recruit ... We just started this program I called firestarter to train and mobilize our hosts to become political activists to change their local laws so that they would be legal because we'd started to get with Uber and the others this whole new economy that was bumping up against old laws that didn't recognize it. So, we had to get the laws changed. The best way of doing that, we felt, was through our community. So, I hired loads of grassroots organizers from the Obama Campaign of 2008, 2012 because they wrote the playbook on grassroots organizing. That's how he got elected. There's this one woman I ... was going to be fantastic. We were going like parachute her into Seattle I think it was, and she was very good at getting the host going and everything else. I wanted to hire her full time; she'd been a consultant. She was interviewed like everyone else is interviewed. Douglas: So, if you're an engineer or a marketing person or a partnerships person, you'll probably have six to eight interviews to assess how good an engineer or marketer or whatever you are, but then you also have two core values interviews by people who are not in your discipline. They don't care about marketing or engineering or anything. All they care about is to see if you're going to be a cultural fit, and what that means is do your personal values align with the values of Airbnb and all of us inside Airbnb? Are you one of us? basically. Douglas: So, this woman was fantastic grassroots organizer, but there was an engineer and a product person, I think, was the core values interviewer. They said, "No, this person is not." I was initially furious. I go "I really need her, to parachute her into Seattle." Then, I said, "Nope, it's absolutely right." They have veto power. So, the core values interviewers, and there's now about four or 500 around the world, have ... They do regular jobs; they are engineers or marketing people, but they are especially good at finding out whether you'd be a cultural fit, and they have veto power. Joel: One of the ... You showed a video that was, essentially, a commercial in your keynote. Much of our audience has probably seen it. As you were coming up with the vision and the advertising, what did that do to recruiting? Did you see a spike? Did you see a more qualified candidate based on your values? Talk about that. Douglas: Right. So, we had sort of nailed the purpose or the ... We call it purpose, mission, or vision at Airbnb. I know people get their knickers in a twist about whether something's a vision; I don't give a damn. It's our reason why, okay? It's the thing that we're here to do for the next hundred years. Douglas: Anyway, so we nailed that by about early to mid-2013, and the first exposure it got externally was when we, in 2014, launched our new logo, what I call our equal opportunity genitalia logo, which is- Chad: There's a whole in there for everybody. Douglas: There's a whole in there for everybody. Exactly, yes. I mean everybody. Joel: I hope my mom's not listening. Douglas: So, the goal for that ... First of all, belong anywhere was used to brief the designers, the external design company, to come up with the logo. So, that was it's first job. Second, though, was Brian and Joe and Andrew Shapiro, this guy who led the design group, wanted to make a symbol, not a logo. The difference between a symbol and a logo is a logo is a graphic design. A symbol is a graphic design with meaning attached, okay? So, like I said, like the dove of peace or the crescent of Islam or whatever it is, lacrosse. So, we launched this new logo because before, I didn't know if you remember, Airbnb was sort of like a cursive, pale, pastel blue, and white thing. It's a bit of a weak logo, actually. So, we launched the new symbol, which we call the Belo after belonging with the meaning, and we expressed that in this homemade video internally, which talked about we're not just a travel company. We believe in creating places where people feel safe and secure and at home and can be themselves wherever they go. It's all about belong anywhere. Douglas: So, that launched it, okay? That was the first thing. Then, we did, not long after that, a commercial called Mankind, which is quite controversial; "Is mankind" was the start of the commercial and went on about "find out by going and staying with our hosts who are the epitome of that." Then, we did this other commercial, I think, a year or so later called "Don't go there, live there even for a night." "Don't do Paris, live in Paris. Live with the local, learn from a local," and then we launched experiences. So, yes, I don't know because I wasn't running HR. I didn't have exposure to all of that, but very quickly people knew we were all ... We stood for belong anywhere, and everyone learned about our values pretty damn quick if they were being recruited. Joel: Outstanding. Chad: Well that, my friend, I think time-wise ... You have a helicopter to catch pretty soon. Douglas: Well.... Joel: Tuscany is calling. Chad: Yes. We definitely would love to come to Tuscany and do this even more in depth. That would be wonderful. Douglas: Let's do it with a bottle of our wine. Chad: Exactly, yes. Some bread and- Joel: So, for our listeners who don't know you, where can they find out more, buy your books, buy your wine, whatever. Where should they learn more about you? Douglas: Well, we just keep our wine for ourselves, actually. We don't produce that much. I don't know, actually. I'm sort of hiding at the moment because I'm tired and burnt out, and I'm not working. Joel: Okay. Don't find Douglas everybody. Douglas: No, no- Joel: He doesn't want to be bothered. Douglas: What I'm going to do, though, is on the subject of purpose and mission and values and stuff, I've already written what was going to be a draft for another book, but I've decided not to do a book. I'm going to do a not-a-book, and a not-a-book is a series of sort of longish blog posts, which I'm going to post on Medium over the next few weeks and podcasts like this. Chad: Awesome. Joel: So, find you on Medium? I guess would be where you want to- Chad: On Medium, yes, but give me ... Let it be three or four weeks time to kind of knock them into shape and put them up. Joel: Fair enough. Douglas: Okay. Joel: Fair enough. Chad: Then, reconnect and maybe we'll have another conversation about those. That'd be awesome. Douglas: I would love to. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Joel: Thank you, Douglas. Douglas: All right. Thanks very much, guys. Chad: Thanks, Douglas. Douglas: Cheers. Chad: Later. Tristen: Hi, I'm. 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. Tristen: They made me say that. Tristen: The most important part is to check out our sponsors because I need new track spikes, the expensive shiny gold pair that are extra because ... Well, I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #Airbnb #TheGathering #CultBrands #Banff #Brand #EmployerBrand #Uncommon #Marketing